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>> after that visit he discovered the archives here and change the course of his memoir. i am grateful for the continued generosity and tonight from the new york public library we are having quite the season and it closes tonight with seymour hersh. i would like to take this occasion because it takes a village and with gratitude i would like to take everybody involved.

as well as the wonderful curators who have showed our guest things of great beauty and relevance. as eav team from park boulevard and somehow the present. and then simply called reporter he will sign books after the conversation and then it is a blurb that used it on the book but it says

this book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist. that is quite the endorsement. now also i would like to give you a sense of just how extraordinary this book is and how beautifully it is written by reading to you the first paragraph. it goes like this. i am a survivor from the golden age of journalism reporters and newspapers did not have to compete with the 24 hour cable news cycle. when newspapers were flush with cash from advertisements. and i was free to travel anywhere, anytime for any reason with the company credit card. with sufficient time for reporting on a breaking news story without having to

constantly relay what was being learned on the newspaper webpage there were panels of experts or journalists on cable tv who had every answer to every question that are the two deadliest words in the media world, i think. [laughter] and then hyped up and incomplete information forces a solution to be delivered nonstop with the television and online news and our president. so the next important first sentence. yes it is a mess. [laughter] [applause]

>> on the second page. and with the important of the unwanted truth and to give them the closing night the title of the unwanted truth. will over the last seven or eight years and those seven words that might and my favorite for the moment in those two ears and one mouth.

and say the seven words that do not yet defined me. but my favorite one for the moment is his seven words would you like to hear them? it's fun rounding up the usual suspects. [laughter] seymour hersh. [applause] >> that is weird to summarize anything in seven words. so get used to it. >> those heaven words are the favorite for the moment.

let your critics have often described you as paranoid and you have always been a big reader of fiction so perhaps it makes sense to start with the following proverb for paranoia. so if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. >> i read that book so many years ago. it was a long time ago. so look at it this way. the most salacious words that

i know is that we have high confidence. [laughter] they said that again and again over 18 months with saddam hussein high confidence he has weapons of mass distraction and they also said i have to tell you again and again they say we have high confidence the russians are responsible for hillary losing. when i hear that i think there is another story there. so in a way they are posing the wrong reality. it is a good idea. so if the government could deflect serious rational concern because it is very

hard even have a case with president it's more than lying. it is a pathology because in the middle of a 20 minute sentence he'll say something then say he didn't say it. but he does. and how do you do that? >> where do you begin? >> when the president says i saw a picture of the starving children murdered by saddam hussein. the press doesn't leave

anything they said murdering 800,000 people. and that takes that at face value. so there is a funny dichotomy. sometimes saying either people we don't like or are unpopular. and then you go through the list. and then to find saddam hussein. so i don't understand that was replete with the pinocchio's. that we tweet with misstatements and miss facts.

that doesn't mean he's wrong. and then running for reelection. and then losing across the board but the new york times does spend a great deal of time to investigate even though the money is not there. it is like a fancy match with his tweets.

>> and you find that interesting. i did not want to say it. but look, as we said in the beginning that i stopped watching cable television. we are in a country now there is no leverage for the new york times. we were taken seriously but admits of that rational judgment and you could take it to the bank but now nobody believes what anybody says the new york times or not. or msnbc or cnn.

so unfortunately the times has joined in and i think they should back off a little bit. it just means for me, don't worry about what he says. two months ago this stuff happened. why did it take until somebody for children crying? and why worry about pruitt? he runs the epa believes he is entitled to whatever he is has the worst cabinet going to talk about what he did. but there is an investigative reporter of young journalist a large group now, 1800 that are trying to become reporters because they see it is a renaissance with this group

there annual conference was five or six now it is three times as many so people are going into this business knowing they will not get the kind of money i mentioned the credit cards of the new york times my first week my first day i was sent that night to france for the peace process. with those french peace talks but it was the glory days. now kids go into it because they care. i talk to people when i go to these conferences and reporters from oklahoma and they tell me things like they are the manufacturer of baby carriages in they could cut costs on the manufacture baby

carriages they have toughened the restrictions and eight-month baby cannot push and fall out of it now. they have managed to lobby those conservatives who work for 12 so you do have the requirement to have this mechanism. so now the child cannot inadvertently flop out. and it has been mitigated you could go after him all week on that and if intel this happened he was up eight points in the polls. now in the last two months with all of this so some of the stuf stuff, it is bad. he is president and it is bad but he goes to columbia and it's bad he doesn't know a

thing about nuclear arms but most presidents don't. ronald reagan didn't know. there is a treaty for c and land he did not know anything. but in this case, start to think how secret this crab is there was talking about the fifth generation of north korea many of them are in private practice clinical psychologist psychiatrist that look at information that we cannot see like the intercept in america we already say the iranians are the russians we are terrific at it. we are really good. we just don't want to talk about it. but we know who does what so

they are given the transcripts to produce a report the president will never read it but it is all about this real desire to have money and not be in impoverished nation and he wants a tourist leader so they give it to the president. the way it comes out in his conversation which was marked that you have beautiful beaches i can see condos. [laughter] he is the atlantic city type of guy. he is mocked for it but the idea is the idea but he cannot articulate but he did get enough of it that if you offer him money he will drop the bombs so it is a little more complicated them the press makes it he will be this way

forever but my attitude towards him i'm talking about politics and a should say telling you what i think that i should say how the hell do i know? because it doesn't matter what i think. >> how do you know? >> i do know people in my life you know things. and my editors at the new york times somebody was talking to me then would suddenly show up and then would call me and in one case he said do they know i said no. there's ways to do that. so i know that he is developing the kitty in the state of the union he said nobody pays attention to that we will have the marshall plan. go with the last paragraph. maybe i stopped listening

early. [laughter] but it is toward the end of the speech. it is hard to listen. this is something else but he said he will have the marshall plan of private companies here. he has been raising money around the world for a reconstruction kitty and it is over $1 billion now and will announce at some point after the congressional elections he will not get impeached. i don't think so. collusion. that implies that you have the ability to know what will happen and go to this step you can say a will impact depth. this is impulse man. the idea of him with

collusion? if there is this but there is no that. so how do they prove he was colluding with the russians? mens rea. they look at his tax stuff right away there isn't enough air to make a charge. >> but i will just answer it for 20 minutes. [laughter] >> i will change that a little bit. so you just opened it up. [laughter] >> so you speak about yourself as an aggressive learner and to say you signed up as a teenager to the book-of-the-month. what kind of books do they send you? >> i was 13 and my parents

were immigrants. they did not go to high school. eastern european lithuanian and polish they did not communicate very well. we were in a different generation very quickly. my mother communicated by cooking my father communicated by saying nothing. [laughter] he liked walter littman so i knew he could read that he would never talk about it. when i was 13 for the book-of-the-month club which was huge back then it was $1.99 per month. four out of 12 months i would get something by edgar hoover of the perils of communism. [laughter] but then it would get a book

about the monarchy and chinese civilization what? i was in grammar school. >> so with the book about communism did you detect that something was wrong? >> how the hell do i remember? >> that is an interesting question. >> i don't know. >> i do know that if you jump ahead ten or 15 years i am a reporter for the associated press and i was in south dakota oh my god but i was in the southside of chicago kid. i had to figure it out.

but my first reaction to the vietnam war i began to read the new york times very early now i'm working for the ap i was good. so they let me just run. i grew up working in african-american neighborhood and there was racial issues but martin luther king i decide -- i was assigned to cover him and i was madly in love. he would have a rally and he would go like this to me. yes sir. i was in love. i would see him and the ap is every paper in the world he understood my business to build a rally and marching

with this southwest chicago white sand in panic about blacks to marry their daughters or take their jobs but he would never waver. i was always scared but i'm not afraid to say it but then he would see me and say i'm so mad that the president isn't doing this than i would have a great story the next day and he would do that with me a lot. but getting back to the earlier stuff i was reading about the vietnam war i just don't know why. and my first impression and those who became friends and malcolm brown and maurice a for a cvs he was the first guy to report they were torching

villages and my thought was pretty much we have to stop. communism is coming. i didn't know vietnam in china hated each other. but they could not get the pentagon to understand we are fighting a war in hopes that the chinese would come. but it was another nothing other than major serious issues and with the korean war that the russians are responsible for. >> but anyway i thought we have to stop communism they are fighting the war wrong and it took me a little while to realize maybe a year or two that this is mass murder and

then i began to cover the pentagon. what you do as a reporter, what i did i cannot believe this is the original, we had access to the pentagon officers. most of them. they are good people they get rotated back there but you want the guys when they take the oath of office they give an oath to the constitution. not to the general or the president so you find those guys and they would talk to me once he began to trust me and they would talk to me about mass murder just mass murder. and going to the journalism schools. they say what is the trick? read before you write so i was writing to the church groups about the war.

>> i will stop you for a moment because someone i discovered through you later in life and it mattered to me greatly i want to show you a little moment with him look at video number one please. ♪ mr. stone the last 19 years you have had a chance to not be a part of any institution. >> it is very powerful. because of the circumstances and the nature of the institution severely compromises the decision-making capacity.

so it is important in a good society to have institutions and it is important to have those independent voices to express themselves. >> what about the institutions today behave differently? were they influenced by the institution? >> it doesn't matter take a man like mcnamara as the secretary of defense. with that military bureaucracy. and no matter how active or vigilant.

>> and then could tell alexander to get out of the way. >> what you have to have people with power. yes. sure. but there are those without power. then to constitute the society. and to have those mechanisms that preserve expression to check their abuse or criticize their shortcomings and that is what the press is supposed to be. >> is there the adversary relationship? >> that adversarial relationship stops with the gentleman.

but basically skeptical. >> he looks younger than i remember him. [laughter] . . . . i was assigned to the pentagon and it didn't take me long to think mcnamara was a psychotic

liar. there was something about airplanes and he was lying about it. i knew right away there was trouble. the second i was in a month of being at the pentagon, i was going after him about not telling the truth and lead me to those in the pentagon, those officers with four stars who were very worried about the lie that was going on in the war. you do know how he did this. at 6:30 in the morning they get to the papers by six and he

would wait for the stand up to open. so he called me into the conversation went like this i thought maybe [inaudible] i said if you've seen page 19 in the bulletin. so we agreed to meet. he would come and get me on weekends when i was not at the pentagon and we would just talk for hours sometimes and he was a a teacher. >> it was to the point of read before you write. >> he was forbidden to come and read all these files.

he didn't like the way that they treated people and he didn't like us and the way we were treating in vietnam. every night in the washington bureau there was a briefing this went on for years. it was a briefing of everything that happened and they wanted access to it. there was a time we were working a sunday doubles shift. maybe it was one of the holidays, something like christmas i told them i was working a double shift. will you let me in and he said of course.

he was there waiting for me and he explained he couldn't, since so we had a thin have a thing we was a big library. the only thing i would hear our little sports of happiness and i would say if you want me to give you something though, that's fine. he was just in heaven and he took those finals and wrote a four-page thread from a period the stand down when there was no fighting in that they wrote this magnificent series of how we were misusing the bees and how we always accuse the other side.

it was just one time he introduced my wife and i his wife was married with a daughter we have some connection and we realized it was horrible so i ran out to a chinese restaurant and i beat him by two minutes and you have to know he was proud of himself and became successful and ended up moving next to the foreign relations committee and they became great

friends. so he saw something in me that was right. it was about morality and language. this seems like reporting he writes this in the politics of the english language in our time political speech and writing largely is indefensible, things like the continuance of british rule in india and deportations

can be defended by only by arguments that are too brutal for most people to face and do not square the protesting since the political parties. the inhabitants driven out in the countryside, this is called pacification. millions of peasants are robbed & trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry. this is called transfer of population or rectification of some tears. people in prison for years are

sent to the back to die of scurvy and lumber camps this is called elimination of unreliable elements. such phraseology is needed if one wants to result in calling up mental pictures of them. what year, what date is that, do you know? >> week-old pacification. [laughter] what might i say except that it still goes on. it was this atrocity going on at the border. people were coming to rob us. it's all a languagso the languat

it. ted kennedy started the want of it. lyndon johnson was in a good at it but kennedy was. he made the first punch into the war and to this day people will say i wrote a book that does a lot with the war but i learned a lot about other stuff so that became the identification for the buck but it's about 18 chapters assassinations that he was involved in with his son or his brother rather that they knew about that were described as a pacification this is exactly what orwell was talking about that we did i-indi in thed it just -- >> i didn't want to go back

after. that's where i made my first game. my wife and my kids, the dog and cat, the gerbil, the mice, all the animals wanted me to go back. after some years i did. i wrote a piece for the new yorker about it. but i don't say it's more detail than ever. what he's talking about their is the great investigation if you read for church groups to publish stuff the 60s about what was going on in vietnam and if he just read some of the stuff that was being published i

got into big troubles about this because mcnamara was lying about bombing and i learned they were lying abouwhining about it and e gone to vietnam and he was accused of being a traitor because he wrote about the bombing and i also read what was it i want to say the great tribunal with guard sean russe russell. i read at 66 to 67. nobody paid much attention but there were three boys testified from cleveland. in the march of 65 there is

whining that johnson spent much of 65 saying he wasn't going to send any of the boys there and then he still lied about it and that is quite a lie to the american people bu that the firt group sent we are going to a village with tanks and borders and they go and find the enemy and it's such a story three years later they can't find the enemy that is night somebody would take a shot at. they were losing people but they didn't have contact so one person said okay and they began this process they were shooting

rockets at the tanks and they could just shoot up anybody in the village. i knew that was so. that is what made me believe this story because i just got a tip out of nowhere and i thought i am writing about myself but there are some things that are just too hard to deal with. i spent months fact checking it and it was really good stuff, aid good place to be.

what i talked about this when i first got a tip from jeff whose father was the head of cbs news a decade earlier, he was working for the first public-policy doing social stuff in dc. he called me a teen months after and said i had heard some g.i. has gone crazy and some 75 people were killed. you don't have kleenex you're so what am i going to do. [laughter] i sat next to a kid one day with a cold that kept blowing his nose on his shirt and then i remembered that the fathers tell kids to do so i didn't get mad at him but i didn't like him. [laughter]

[inaudible] my editor has been cleaning up after me. just going to put that back so we can hear every word you say. is this the kind of crowd that will come up with me, i've spoken to groups larger than this and they would come up to me and say we couldn't hear anything you're saying. [laughter] they can hear you. >> anyway i starte started up ay thinking it's going to be good story about killing a lot of people and then i discover, and i'm learning as i do it but it's not about some combat stuff when they go into a village where they were told by bad

intelligence the cia contractor employee they were hiring people left and right, cops working part-time said they would be in charge of intelligence and there was just, cool. they told this group of kids they had a higher percentage ind that they were not educated, marginally educated but they lowered the standards because by 67, too many kids with college degrees were getting in the army and seeing what was going once theon sothey realize we've got t these out. i worked for senator mike harvey when he was running for president and he was so difficult i didn't know if i was going to do if i was offered the

job as press secretary and what he said in the first speech when bobby kennedy wouldn't run was n against johnson the democratic party was up in arms and couldn't get anyone to challenge him for the nomination so he gave a speech and said two things that knocked me out. i write about him in a way that i've never done before. he said okay it's not all perfect. he said that this is an amoral war. immoral war. he'd been in a monastery and went to mass every day and i could never talk about it to anybody. he spent nine months in silent at the monastery in minnesota where he was born. he said i'm just debating what i'm going to do. i was a freelance writer offered this job and i couldn't do the

press. i was writing about the war and one day there was a mcnamara had gone nuts about something i wrote and went to the head of the ap and before i know they were there to help with video services and i took the hint. you understand guys like me as i later learned my job essentially was to walk into the editor's office and i said this many times because i do believe to dump it on their desk and say okay this is a story that's going to give time, it may not work and it's going to give the people that want to see you and hathate you and after a while tt hate even after abiola gets counterproductive but in any case, mccarthy said a few things come it is an immoral war and he also said he's chained chained, talking to that johnson will bring the standards. he said he's changing the color from white to more hispanic,

yellow and black. i've never heard such talk. you never hear anybody talk about morality anymore. so i didn't go to work for him but anyway what happened they were told they were going to meet the enemy, the mythical that does exist that use to fight in central high lands but they were not in this part along the coast. instead they found women and children heating a price for their morning breakfast and begin to smolder them and i just dknow it was something that happened. eventually i find it to people who do the killing, a man who

later went on television and what they were doing that i couldn't bear, they were rounding up intense and everything five to 50 going nu nuts. i have been in the army and i thought this is it. we didn't know what really happened. there was a wonderful academic i forgot his name he published a book about censorship and so here i am when i was a kid my sisters used to take my brother and me and the end of world war ii to the southside of chicago where we would see the bourne movies which were propaganda and the one i remember with john wayne begins over having a fight over a nurse in the pacific,

fighting those that flew the zeros in world war ii. our boys flew a p. 51, the cadillac of the sky as a wonderful writer wrote these great pics and i can't remember his name to describe it but anyway, a british writer wrote these anyway. my wife will tell me tomorrow what it is. we do that. anyway, and in the movies i saw, flynn and john wayne had a terrible fistfight and they were fighting. they were on the table with john wayne and all of a sudden they saved his life by shooting a lot of bullets. we flew with the canopy opened. their guys had the canopy closed and they were these little hats

with soft leather in the chicagoland of the winter tide under the chin. we hated those things they were little helmets with big glasses and the bullets were flying in anwould fly in andthe plane wou. it looked as good as star wars and some just before he was shot and before he hit the water, a trickle of blood would come out of the corner of his mouth and he would die an and we would alo nuts. so that is my definition of world war ii, thumbs up, scars, and it turns out we don't fight the war any better than anybody else and i'm going to start telling the american people a story about that. i knew this wasn't going to be easy as i got into it. and in one case there was a boy

that had for most of the shooting. i was doing stuff and i eventually had a vote for an antiwar service from dispatch news but said most people don'tt have as much were confident. they covered the war bu for thew vietnamese and so i learned as a kid on a farm kid not overwhelmingly, just a kid didn't know much, but they told him to shoot in the ditch and they lined up the kids, most of the shooting there were three companies that killed wherever they could, kelly is an organizer with them all in the ditch, there's a famous picture. i went back to look at it come easy to come and not easy to do. anyway, so a couple of boys shot something like 17 bullets, semi automatic push the button and it

keeps on going. he shot clip after clip and the next thing he has his legs blown off. it was pretty famous in the unit because they were just marching around going on another patrol they lied about everything that happened and it was just another day in the war. there was a violation of the rules committee violated the rules. anyway, my explanation of vietnam and over the torture and killing. so now with iran under somebody gave me a company roster for thanksgiving and this took place in march of 68. he loved the boys were home by then one year in the combat in one year out. but it was in this deal i remember i was in salt lake and everybody had to put in dimes and nickels for information but i called every telephone exchange and finally there was

one i call up and i get this old southern voice, the kkk was there in the 1920s right next to the border i have no idea where it is. i fly from salt lake and minneapolis and there is no gps. i go to this town called the goshen and i call up the night before and i tell them i'm coming and i said i just assume i say how was your sense that and they say he's doing alright with it. he's back from the war and she said yes. that is how i found out. he is married and lives here. can i come talk to him and she said i don't know if he will talk to you. so i finally get to this farm, an old rundown farm congress chicken coop suppliers, it's

just like i don't know what he's doing. her husband died earlier and i park in the front and a i don't change shirts twice a day. anyway, i know people that do. so i pull up and she comes out and she's 50 that looks 70. i said i am the guy that called and she said yes. i said as paul are down and she said he's in there and then this old woman who hasn't read the newspaper, doesn't know much about her son, about the war, she said i sent them a good boy and they sent me back a murder murderer.

a so then i didn't know what to think. so i go to see the kid. first thing i thought as i was going to go see him and say hello, take off your vote and show mand show meyour leg. i want to see it. he lost his leg and i just know i felt this sense that if somebody was in the affliction, what's going on, what's happening, i don't want to pretend that it's not their. i always try to do that. i think people get comfortable if you don't say things like you know you only have one leg or something like that, so i just think the hell with it i'm not going to ask questions at first. so he showed me and i said how long did it take. i'd written a letter from somebody after i did on this story. he was taken from the field with a blown off lead blown u off pretty high and he was

eventually at the emergency hospitals and was flown to japan where he spent five months relearning things. he wasn't as quick at rehabilitation. the fellow whose dunk was next to him for three months, another guy that was sho a shocker to me that in the early 70s and i kept it. it's a powerful letter so i don't put it in the book. he said i slept next to paul for two and a half to three months and he was comatose. he never said a word, not one word, and then i began to get letters when the book was published random house did a book and i got letters from doctors working in japan and this was later in 70 and 71 when the war was going bad and nobody wanted to do with the officers wanted. there was a major movement,

nobody wanted to be the last guy shot a. a young officer coming out of west point would say we are going to go on patrol tomorrow. they would say i got two or three letters. we are seeing four fires a month coming in with bullet holes some of them we can't keep a life right out of west point. it was just amazing stuff. i want to talk about the cia's playing. jump to the 22nd and look at image number four. what's two and three like. [laughter] cia operation report against

other dissidents in the nixon years can you comment on this and also how you got so much space. space. >> there's a lot of it in the book because first i had a contract having to do with protecting people who were still in the career intelligence. i couldn't do the book because a typical thing. there was talk about people who viewed it as a nuisance. he was running without telling the congress and he was paying for it with billions of dollars he was parking in various banks and i know wher they know whered how it works. it's a complete violation of the constitution and the people that

know this stuff she knows who knows this stuff. i don't know what i'm going to do but anyway it doesn't matter so this became because i couldn't do this but it was very kind with my publishers and my editor, my handkerchief and the six new titles for him. they said during the more and the first thing i realized -- i'm not done. wilall you do another one in two years and say volume two fax >> it turns out you can be legendary but it makes me nervous. this legendary reporter, i'm not dead so anyway, what happened is in giving the book there's a couple things it might mean

people don't need to pay attention. that is a definition that i don't like. anyway, the words are interesting. when you're a president and doesn't understand what the words mean, you are in trouble. george bush was that way. this guy takes things to a new level. he doesn't understand words. they don't mean anything. it's troublesome for a president that doesn't matter it's okay. we will survive this. if we have to get rid of them we will do it. today it means he is dead set to run again and the democrats think of some policies.

it's a great story about "the new york times" because i learned about this stuff two years earlier and i didn't tell anybody it seems they did a history and there is a chapter on me in the history i read a lot in the book in which it turned out they were tracking me to ask questions from 72 and on i learned about it when i first joined. for two years i was asking questions about it but i didn't know that it is a declassified study four or 500 pages written by a bright and honest about the history of all thes these interd phone conversations i had for two years and so here is this

story and meanwhile i'm using anonymous sources. they just as used to ask me whoe sources are and he would stop at a certain point because i named one of them in the buck and the family was fine with it he was a special assistant to richard helms, the head of the cia for four years and he was deeply involved in domestic spying before the. you don't get sources like that. there's nothing better than a guy inside decide that a certain point i can't live with this anymore. that's what you need. you don't need one who's going to speak of >> they come to me sometimes. people know that i will take care of them. i haven't heard anybody at. that's why i don't do certain things i could do. it's troublesome to me.

anyway, the point is i'm running around doing all this stuff and december 2 20th at the head of e cia and i finally went down and i said i went through a list and at this point he didn't know how much i knew. he was getting around but there were things i may have known. the next day after i saw them on the 20th that he asked. year after year, the number guy in the justice department said that he ever talk to you about this stuff. yes, he talked to somebody called jewel. the next day he went to knew about this but the day before they said we did some wiretaps and we did some numbers and he didn't try anything. for the cia come after 9/11, the cia their job is to lie. that's what they do for a

living. they do some wonderful things also, but basically they are there to lie about what they do. they hurt people and do things and make mistakes and they will never acknowledge this culture they say we killed somebody else we will wake up. in the new yorker from 70 to 72 by politics were left because i was against the war. i made a judgment based purely on the personal politics. it was a mess and albeit disaster this trouble by 69 i knew how bad it was and so i called on december 20, 1974 in

about 11:00 in the morning and i thought there's no cell phones then. i went to a gas station and called on a payphone, collect i'm sure. i said i've got to tell you about a story that i've been working on. they said what are you talking about and i said it's a big story about spying on americans. he said go write it. i said okay so i went to the office about 11:00 and i spent two or three hours calling everybody. i called up people high up in the cia whose names have never been known that wonderfu for thl thing is there some books than. the wife's name was in the phone book and i could find a lot of people. it wasn't magic. i talked to a bunch of people but they even ed muskie because he wanted to run for president

and later the national security adviser for bill clinton. i called him up and i said i know he's running for president. i have a story that could help them. he told me about it. this was friday the same day that i told him friday the 20th, two days before the story ran and he calls me back a couple of hours later and says he doesn't want to take a chance on this. of course that's why he won the presidency. [laughter] when john kerry was running in 2004, i had the same issue with him. i'd done all the great about the torture and i was at a dinner. i like john and he was one of the veterans that threw rocks and i remember the issue was whether to go against the war and attack i and he decided instead to run on the record as an officer. that's what he did he thought

there was a better way to operate. a couple called me and they all said initially thought to. there were over 100,000 titles spying on americans. i could never get through stokely carmichael was killed in the process. and i always wondered. it was a big story and nobody said to me you're not using my name of course.

but this isn't about. if you ask me about it i'm going to spin it off short. i called my editor at the time who ran the sunday paper that was the big paper for the times and that particular paper i looked up later at 574 pages and it. we are talking about a newspaper that is making money like you couldn't believe. they were great. they kept, they would make more than 1.52% of profit they had to make things to get to the west coast and stuff like that. it's a powerful paper.

they said you're writing a story that they thought it would be 2500 words and we have no space. can we hold it a day or two. he was a good guy but he didn't have space for it to. lengthens my life. i didn't know much about him. it was 2:30 in the morning i said this is going to knock them and how they've been spying on

the wiretapping and tracking journalists worrying about anti-communists and if they would say congratulations on getting the job they were only e only allowed to spy overseas. they said i can't help you i don't know what to do so i called up and doing math ones, phone rings it 2:30 in the morning. i had to go find i was alone in a beer and there's nothing worse just me and a tough typist. nobody talking to me or

bothering me a. so i call and say i've got to talk to him and she said what do you mean. don't you know, he's left me for that nasty word of another lady coming with me about three months ago. what? she was mad. she hung up. >> i >> it was 2:30 in the morning. [laughter] i thought to myself i am in a soap opera. but then i thought this story has got to go. so i cal called her back and she answers and i said you've been a reporter's wife for 32 years let me tell you what it's about. so i told her a little bit. it's a story that you would be

very proud of as an american citizen. i need to know the name of the person that he is shacking up with. [laughter] and she gave it to me because she knows that story in the paper. she was an editor's wife. she had some feeling for the institution. it's an institution where you do have a feeling for it and then i had a problem because this person was one of those people who because of what she did for a living wasn't in the phone book. [laughter] i had published some books and my editor called an agent who had somebody in his office who did handle those people and had phone numbers and there were a lot of people getting woken up. i got the number to this person's home and now it is about 3:50. i'm still writing at about 4,000 words in th and the story i didt

know how long it was going to go but i've been working at the story for two years i was worried about getting enough to make it go. i needed enough. as they later wrote in a memoir he thought i copied it down but i did no more than i told him. to go back and find out you were wrong about things it's really more complicated that you can do

a lot. remember i came here a couple of years ago and what's his name he would give his papers back to the times and there's stuff on me. it's so interestinit's a wintere they roll a quarter down the street. identify a lead, nobody answered it. i said just get here. he was as i said a couple of times he heard me from the new yorker.

william shawn was the famous editor i got along with him but he said you could do more for america at the time time thing u can do for me. i have a lot of reporters. you can be there just do it. he said to me this wonderful man said he will be fine. so i wrote for him anonymous but i always stay friendly with him and anyway, so he gets on the phone and the first thing he said is okay where are you. i'm in the bureau. what's your phone number? i said i don't mind sitting at somebody's desk. look at the phone is on the

phone. he called me names and was angry. i said it to zero to -- >> he said hang up, don't do anything. five minutes later he calls up and he says before i say this i just want to know, you will pay for this, but in the short run, i never told the story until well after he was dead except for a few of my friends, he said tomorrow your story at "the new york times" is going to have 1.6 million extra pages added to the. we arthe. we're going to put another page and on the back will be a house ad. now you have to understand something. she knew, you saw the headline, "the new york times" doesn't do

that. in those days "the new york times" when they took on the cia, they had the exact opposite view of the cia. we were there to work with them on stories. first thing i did was went to the finals. they would do a big series and there would be something by the head of the cia before we published it. this was in the 60s before he was there. i solved that. the times is a funny paper. i don't know how i can say this in simple words it feels like an american paper and i always thought that it should be a world paper. a big do we do this to america and that is the instinct i was

getting a. people talk about the problem i have a changing changing a culi don't exaggerate and i say that was the issue. they had to decide they've are going to go after the president and without going and checking my story with the head of the cia i had to go with what i have and so what happened here is a day later, saturday i think for 30, 5:00 for the early edition shipped abroad may be 6:00. i went home and slept for a couple of hours, i come back and it wasn't. this is december 21, this is "the new york times" taking on the cia on the basis of a kid named hersh. rosenthal used to come into the office behind me when i was going i didn't want to go to watergate but they thought it would be more famous than he was and he used to come up and do

this and say how is my little commie today. he knew i was the defeat of against the poor but then it would be whether you have funny. this had been going on. there's a page in this paper one of the -- i possessed by a tv guide interviewed me. we talked a little bit and a week ago or two weeks ago in washington one of the shows he had no idea what the book was. we asked what about trump. he said let's talk about your book which is a strange question because he didn't even have a note from a producer saying ask about this. i started by saying i think there's 36 pages of pictures and a lot of words. but i didn't do it. [laughter] i mumbled something. it's a story about my life.

you are above that i want you to know. [laughter] the point is -- they ran the story. they said i named seven people. who are they. they ran the story five hours, ten hours after i finished writing it. so no matter what i think, i get that at the press. for years after i left the times it gets delivered to me in the morning and one of those subscribers are just pay by credit card, but the real money in the bank. the online stuff is nothing. we are the core subscribers. i've been that way since 63. to do this from atlanta to the church hearings in the first investigation, the first time congress had two committees in

the house and senate intelligence committees. we didn't have before. that before. it's falling apart now between the democrats and republicans it's disappeared which isn't good for any of us but it led to that and he did another story that was copyedited but that's all. when you have an editor that doesn't have much trust in you. all the difficulty, but you can't walk away from this. it was, as i say, the most amazing times because we have a president that was no more relieved than anything. he is still ihe's still in thish is crazy. you shouldn't believe what he says about it. yes, you saw him there and you believe him. nixon was still running the war and he lost any capabilities between 72 at the moment they

came in we set the agenda, we the collective press. there's never been a time like that again. you set a littl said a little et it was a pleasure in some ways to write that the book that you are currently writing or that is currently about cheney and it's about cheney today. he started something. there's the institute at brown university. it's a study group that includes people like the wonderful former ambassador. if you don't read his blog, anyway what is image number two, with image number ten, are we going to get out of here.

[laughter] 7600 right now and he developed the notion that you could operate without congress knowing anything. he was very creative but by 2004 or 2005 is a system set up but i know too much about right now. they're hitting 76 without. most of them are in africa. i want to tell you when you read the four guys getting killed and if you want to believe it, they are out of control. special operations people are out of control. he was a disciple who was basically the notion of a lot of

things but one of them was the notion we are here to fight the infidels. what happened in 9/11 with the killing, we the christians in ad the special forces are going to fight the masses of the world who want to destroy us and cheney got int bought into the n that you could fight something called the war on terror and in idea. it may not be possible to do that because there's so much stuff we don't know about and this administration is completely incapable of getting control. there is a gentl gentleman thats ideas about giving i doing it bo complicated.

>> a couple of surprises if we could look at image number five. i was kidding. [laughter] >> it's interesting. who is that guy cracks >> it's george sanders. it's george saunders and i asked him to send me a question for you. i told you that i wrote about him. he couldn't fight his way out of an experimental lab.

[laughter] which is the highest compliment i can give anybody. he is one of the most extraordinary people i've ever spoken to and that was a long time ago. he said you could start by saying i believe he's one of the great minds and spirits of our time. at the anniversary party back in 2000. and the inspiration a framed photograph of the two of us chatting at that event. my simple easy to answer question how has our democracy and culture changed in the years since you first started writing about this? and as a quick follow-up to what is the meaning of life? [laughter]

>> out of i know, too complicated. i knew him from short stories. i was at the event. if you can't appreciate george sanders you can't appreciate some of the great writings under collections of amazing stuff where he takes things to another level. we will get through this. i don't see the white knight on the horizon. and obama we saw him coming.

we could see that there was hope there for 2008 they talk about him but you tell me what's going to hav happen and is it going te maybe some woman that will come out, and the major media don't do enough. ..

be back. >> but there is something different in the air and the democratic party has to have new leadership hillary did a disservice by taking control of the party to make sure bernie sanders did and get a chance. to make sure that those five debates that they had on monday night football night but the idea was to freeze them out which i don't think that is an overstatement

>> and i will happily commit to history. >> yes i do get stuff i am fascinated by libya.

i could not get it in the american press but i honestly think that part of me thinks i was writing stuff that if bush was still president but it is hard to believe the democrats in 2012 could be working to support the isis. because now the country will be taken over by those who believe in sharia law in the executed and probably the to the immediate war and the same with israel. and they got along very well with the asad family. >> do you thank you are proven right? >> i was right.

>> now in closing left mac. >> i have the same sources i had with all of the other stories. but i also did a book which a lot of american reporters think it is tabloid. they had no idea they would hire the new yorkers but that's the way it goes. have to think about it has to be with the democrats and it was called the red line and the rat line.

i don't want to go there because i know much more about it. >> said you have that burden of secrecy on you? >> no. i do feel the obligation to the people who talk to me. do you know what i did for that story? the computers broke they got hit overnight with a magazine editor because now all over the world and you don't name is one of the things that you don't do. and pakistan. and that's all that's the

story in the cia they do the interrogations anybody that was pakistani high-ranking officer. they got 20 of that. and i do about that. and that led to the killing of bin laden. they captured him in the era of pakistan and india. because saudi arabia was put on trial and came from a prominent family with a lot of money under the table. so the chief who was a very competent guy, i didn't know what to do.

i wanted to telegraph that i knew more than i'm writing so i named them i didn't use the codeword. so were not just talking about a lie detector whether somebody is telling the truth or not. but that very clever deductions. and was handled by a special unit so here is what i thought. okay. they will go nuts about this but what obama did was to make something a mission because of political people said this is the election. so i thought so too i could

understand with the new yorker and hesitancy and then i did it. and particularly one there is no reason so i thought to know to be a high-quality person and i thought once to skirt the law then get them on cnn or cable with the station chief. and i thought some of those reporters would say i have to tell there. i can tell you right now there is a tell everybody is missing about truck this is as big as you want to make it.

that is what you would do but when the story first broke in there was a big fight in the white house about it because was the body found in afghanistan nobody was supposed to know he was living there. nobody was supposed to know that we wanted him. and they said take somebody with you. kill him. no trial. and we also had a supply an incredible amount of money that we gave to the generals to keep their mouth shut there is a process to do that maybe i will write another book some other time but that involves

oil. so i actually thought that what i didn't understand they would doublecross but running for president and they have the photograph so a lot of people said wait they are are worried but you take photographs? you don't photograph the situation room meeting i have been there once and it is a secret. it was all political. if you remember the first story bin laden was hiding behind the two women with ak 20 they had to cover the seals it was a murder and the seals were a little ashamed they have an oakley phrase -- ugly phrase when it is a straightout murder.

they came in and did the hit. they describe there was a steel door. they blew it. with the dynamite charge you don't know the exact specifications or the strength of the seal you could kill yourself because it will bounce back even if you are down the hallway. so you had to know exactly and who told them that? unless they have that measurement or they walked them in. the pakistani intelligence. so for the first three or four days they had to hold back the stories but then they said he had 900 euros they told a lot

of stories they had to go back to my favorite was everybody wanted to get in the briefing over the great victory and obama would be reelected one of them brought the dog in illegally when they were in the compound doing the killing one of the choppers exploded and it crashed and there was a big explosion and the neighbors were curious but if you look at the press two or three weeks after the raid all the neighbors said the same thing we were told there would be a lot of action that night close the windows don't talk to anybody. so one of the stories was u.s. news the dog was put outside to tell them if anybody got curious what was going on with the explosion to bark and warned them off and i said i

don't think a dog can be another language (that's in the newspaper world with another mass liar had a counterintelligence the counterterrorism leader the cia director that doesn't lie as much as kissinger only because he hasn't been in office as long. they have all these briefings and everybody has great stories it is a wonderful story than two years later maybe with a slightly different history some guy wrote a letter to the london times saying he's a bad guy and obama killed him who cares? obama didn't kill him. so my colleagues even at the new york times with the story came out it was as if two

years later you can't have a different version and i remember thinking don't they have a mother to say common sense? it doesn't matter. it's just the way it is. >> oh my god. >> now let me ask this question with a true ending. the question comes from your body says napoleon said what then is generally the truth of history a fable agreed upon? this is quoted as cynical but is it true? is truth merely the agreement between people where history

is concerned? >> i took a course in a studied for years. we read plato and socrates and it was called organizations of principles that was a one-year course that when you look at all of it and remorse does live in plato's republic. i remember from the documentary. he is just amazing. and he is full of those lines. he wrote a wonderful strange book recently about this philosophy. the answer is how the hell do i know? >> thank you very much. [applause]