shouldn't be forgotten. >> glenn will be talking about his newest book securing democracy. l the freedom festival in las vegas you are here is there an oddity? >> there is an oddity perceived.

very w early on my focus was concerns over executive power theory, the war on terror. i had an audience not just on the left withh libertarians, the aclu and the cato institute so that gives a flavor for how i've managed. >> how do yound do that? >> there are more places the left and right feet and what attracts the standard media attention is how many areas they have in common and finding those areas of agreement and trying to

build coalitions has been a vocal point from the beginning. >> for people tuning in saying i know that name give us a sense o of some of the issues you've w worked on as a journalist over the years. >> i was a practicing lawyer focused on constitutional law and was on the platform that allowed bloggers and mostly focused on civil liberties it was a fairly narrow range of issues and over the years they began to expand. edward snowden contacted me near

2012 and said he had a large batch of documents and we got that reported. >> how did he get a hold ofu y? m?did you have any previous conversations? >> he had been a reader of mine for years. particularly critical during the bush years to be close to or differential to. he knew at the time most of us didn't that they were spying on our communications domestically and he contacted me with a pseudonym and was reluctant to say much so installed encryption

technology. it took a while for us to establish our relationship because of that. he told me he had gone to hong kong with a batch of documents he'd taken from the nsa and wanted to work with me and i said before you do i need you to prove to me that there is validity to what you're saying and he said i will share a tiny portion of the documents into the first and there had been a leak of any kind. i called the guardians which i

did when we started the reporting. did you ever visited with him in russia? >> i did visit with him in 2016 may be two or three years after the reporting. he never wanted to be in russia. he passed and the obama administration tracked him there but the passage he needed to get to north america. so he'd been in russia for eight years and when i visited him he was still hoping one day to be able to lead. but now he's married to his american girlfriend, they have two children and they are building a life there. if he can't come home he is content with the life he's chosen. >> there is a debate about julianna's lounge, snowden and chelsea.

>> there is no debate. one of the things i discovered is the extent to which everything in washington is done behind a wall of secrecy. almost everybody agrees some of things the government does should be secret if l there are true movements in the war have a right to keep that secret, a grand jury investigation, but by and large we got to know what our government is doing and they ought to know very little about what we are doing, that's the idea but it's the reverse they know everything about us and we know nothing about the government because of this wall of secrecy and a whole variety of justifications. people like chelsey manning and snowden are devoted to the idea that in a democracy it's necessary the citizenry learn not everything but the important things or how can we have a

meaningful election if we are voting for leaders or parties when we don't know anything about what they are doing and i think as long as it's done responsibly, snowden didn't just throw it all on the internet he had clear instructions making sure we never publish anything that could jeopardize anybody's life. people worked with of "the new york times" and guardian, the largest papers in the world to protect the lives and other legitimate interests of people as long as it is done responsibly that h can be heroi. they are risking their lives to inform the citizenry about things we ought to know. >> that some of your american experience but you've taken your job now to brazil. >> i'd been visiting brazil in the late '90s and early 2,000's working as a lawyer in new york at the time.

xti intended to stay seven weeks intimate my husbandmo of 17 yea. at the time the defense of marriage act was in law and the clinton years. brazil nonetheless offered to those rights. we were only able to live in brazil together so we build our life there and have three kids. elected member of congress but obviously kept 1 foot planted in thege united states with the wok i've been doing. >> your book is securing democracy, a fight for press freedom and justice. how didr you get in trouble wih thee president of brazil? >> i had a some clashes prior to his becomingng elected.of

he was a member of congress for 30 years and kind of akin to say a margaret green in the sense that he wasn't in the seat of power he was always drawing media attention in a way that drew a lot of attention but wasn'tr necessarily the way politics normally spoke. much like donald trump and that style of how rare it was. there was one in particular where i believe i had expressed the sentiment he made a very crude reference and caused a whole raucous. my husband is part of a party they've had their clashes. what escalated it was mother's day i was contacted by a woman

who wasas the presidential nomie and she told me she had been contacted by a hacker who claims that he had an enormous archive he'dzi taken from the judges and prosecutors revealing the criminality and wrongdoing. she put me in contact and there was a similar story to the one that i had from an anonymous source and when he turned it over to me and caused a lot of destabilization and went from insults about my orientation to threats of imprisonment, death threats on the movement, security problems over the course of 18 months or so we public enemyf number one at the movement. near the beginningng of the presidency when he was at the peak of his power.

>> what was operation carwash? >> a giant anticorruption, the largest everth in the democratic world that began by accident in 2014 when a money laundering got caught in a trivial crime hence the. name operation carwash and when they arrested him they said you won't believe t what i have i'm not just a money laundering or plan a fixer for the most hopowerful in the country some e deeply corrupt and i'm willing to help you discover all of their secrets in exchange for leniency.

it is true they've been run by systemic corruption. no laws get passed without the swiss bank accounts and the ministers and this is how business is done. they were very young in their mid-30s to 40s and they had been born into brazilian democracy and took seriously the idea we are supposed to be a country that operates under the ruleth of law, we are not the republic from the 60s in the middle of the cold war. they want to clean up theirf country and begin using this original kind of billionaires

and some of the most powerful people in the country and of course brazilians, everybody thatke was kind of moved to see that instead of putting young black drug dealers into jail we are going to get the real criminals not stealing $100 at a time but hundreds of millions at a time they will go to prison and as a result, the judge overseeing it. the next three to four years 2014 to 2018 no politician could compete with them and internationally celebrated in the time 12016 the only brazilian on the list on the cover every weekend. the power that these prosecutors

had wasn anticorruption and became larger than a person should have and that is when things start to become a bit mored controversial. it was kind of a contact to whih the source came to us and said we can prove they've been corrupt all along in theon investigation. >> where is sergio today? >> one of the most important things the carwash probed it is that in 2017, as preparing to run for president the main obstacle he had in his path was kind of a legendary status of brazil two-term president from

2002 to 2010, kind of centerleft,er very charismatic, former labor leader who left office with an 86% approval rating with a beneficiary of economic growth, lifted millions out of poverty and was planning to run again in 2017. and it should 15 or 20 pointsec ahead. he ended up not running because he found him guilty of multiple charges of corruption and sentenced him to 12 years in prison and made him ineligible to run. the first thing he did was turn around and elevated him from his role as a local church, federal judge and made him the minister of justice of public security the second most powerful position in brazil and that's when we began reporting. he ended up leaving the government about

a year and a few months after he joined and went out shooting. he was corrupt and tried to criminally interfere in various investigations. ffeven his children that were adults and elected officials charged with corruption. so he split with the movement and went to the u.s. for a while, madee a lot of money, cae back and announced f he would rn for president. the presidential candidate was kind of a flop. he's now announcing he's going to run for the senate as kind of a critic who he was in line with the read. >> let's go back in your view i know you have a connection to him and h we will get to that. was he guilty of the corruption that he was put in prison?

>> it's hard to say because he never got a fair trial. there's no question that the workers party was involved in all kinds of corruption and he will admit that if he's pushed and i pushed him and interviews to acknowledge that before because as i said earlier, brazil is a country that doesn't have occasional instances but is run on corruption and there's no way you can get anything done unless you grease the wheels of that regime and the workers party played that game. how much did they personally profit is something because it was a show trial in which all s,along he was plotting in secrt with the prosecutors.

i don't know the answer to that but i do know that there is no doubt the rule of government and rule of party was interacting with and dependent upon the system of corruption. >> what is your connection to lulu? >> i interviewed for the first time in 2016. he was not in prison but he'd met a woman to be the first president of the party and by this point she'd gotten elected barely in the middle of the second term and this economic boom he benefited from turned into a collapse so there was a serious impeachment effort underway. it wasn't just aimed at her but asked him.

no one thought lulu would end up in prison. it's like putting their icon in prison. nobody thought that what shappened back then but they we trying so it was in that contact about the impeachment, the possibility that he would beti prosecuted. ironically i tried to interview the supreme court rejected our request because they knew if h e public heard from them he would sway the election. they denied interviews with everyone. when elected did they finally learn of my request -- they granted the request and we appealed. so about a week or two after and it was scheduled before they contacted me so i interviewed and couldn't tell what we had by

that point but obviously protesting and needless to say it approved the judge that prosecuted him they were all quite corrupt. heec thanked me and was appreciative. my husband belonged to a left-wing party out of opposition to the workers party. they kind of criticized from the left the way that the criticized the democrats. he was a party that protested the workers corruption so the political connection was never so close i was neverer a supporr of the workers party, but when someone's reporting gets you out of prison and that reporter is being threatened as a result you

are going to come in your relationship is going to improve so we had a good relationship for a year or so after prison. >> when is the presidential election? >> the presidential election is october 2nd. we are three months away or so, a little less. also thew overwhelming favorite where multiple candidates run and if no candidate gets more than 50% it's possible to win in the first round. one other person has done that but it's rare so well ahead of any other candidate and it would be extraordinary given the last election he was in prison under a ten year prison term and now

not only out of prison but poised to return to power. >> you mentioned the supreme court of brazil turned down your request to interview. is there a free press in brazil comparable to the u.s.? >> there is a free press in brazil in the sense that the constitution that brazil enacted when it emerged out of its militaryct dictatorship was basd in a part on the u.s. model they alsoff used european models and it's more robust protection van in the u.s. constitution and includes for example source rights to disclose the identity of the resource where there's been an attempt but it never has happened. so on paper there is a very robustls protection and the

problem has been because of the income inequality the media has been controlled by a handful of families that have the same agenda and ideology and interest and there's been a lack of moralism that is now changing because the easeto with which ty have the printing press were tv network and so it's really improved. the only reason i'm able to talk to you now instead of a prison cell is because the supreme court issued a ruling shielding me from prosecution attempts on the grounds of free press. the issue is similar if you want to go now and interview julian in a british prison you will notice you haven't heard from him in three years because he

theyil won't let him be interviewed or photographed and the argument is just as the brazilians are using it back then to bar interviews kcal9 it's drastic but something we have in the u.s. and the uk as well. >> is your brazilian a source ever identified? >> the federal police announced that they found the source and arrested six people they claimed were responsible for that happening. they publicly assumed responsibility foror that. i've never confirmed or denied it because i never knew the identity of my source. i have my suspicions but if the source wants to say they are the ones who did it that's their right but i'm not going to help the government by saying that i believe. >> when you receive those documents in brazil, did it feel

like déjà vu all over again from a brazilian prospective? >> i remember when i called about this i asked whether she would be okay with my husband participating in the call. at one point as a part of the reporting i said to him look we've been through this once before so we have a disadvantage that we've gone through this and they said i think you're thinking about this in incorrec. the last timepl we did there wee thousands of miles away on the ocean where this time the government that's going to be

angry at us is literally on thec corner and it's going to be much moreic dangerous and difficult d much riskier. at one point he even jokedd and said can't anybody other than you get these archives, because obviously the life s was turned upside down and he knew it was about to be again for me it was to get me to see this was going to be more dangerous. >> how close did you come to being physically o injured or -- from the first moment we began reporting they are very detailed death threats. here's the front of your house, we know where your kids go to school. very, very alarming.

clearly people that had access to private data in the government and security forces. we had to turn our house into basically a fortress. we didn't leave the house for two years without security and armored vehicles of the like. we had a good friend who was a city councilwoman who served on the council with david. nine months earlier in 2018 we took those threats very seriously. whenever i appearedm in public, measures were necessary. one time they made me speak in the middle of the water on a boat because they were concerned and even then there was a group shooting fireworks at t the boat to sit the boat on fire. ine was assaulted once by a fams

journalist -- >> tell that story. >> you have a picture of it in the book. >> just like in the united states where i appeared on fox news a lot and the networks i have a philosophy that is a journalist you should speak to as many people as you can. there is a right-wing network in brazil growing rapidly because it attached itself to the movement. they invited me on several times and i'd gone on. it was in the middle of reporting so the tension was at its highest. ndthe movement was extremely any in general and in particulars with me. there was a journalist that had been in the mainstream a long time, the editor of the largest movement and about six weeks prior to my going there, he'd gone on the air and essentially said that my husband and i should have our children taken away from us and we should be investigated by the adoption agency because how can we take care of our children, kind of

great obviously homophobic remarks you would say about a couple ofve both parties. but for people to talk about your children should be the one limitt in the political warfare. i was extremely angered by that and at the last minute they said we would like to put him on the show with you do you mind and i said i don't mind because i want to confront him about these comments that he made. and they seated us almost like millimeters away.os you couldn't have made a more combustible atmosphere if you tried. they obviously did the tribe. when the show began i said before we begin i'm not going to talk about these issues i want to clear the air and i demand thatat you either reaffirm the comments that we believe our children should be returned to the shelter we adopted him from or apologize and retract it. instead he started essentially attacking and the rhetoric escalated from there and kind of

spontaneously he took his arm and tried to hit my face. i blocked it in the first instance and he kind of pushed my face live on the air and on television and needless to say the significant part of it was they were the most prominent members of the senate and congress not only cheering and supporting what heup did but alo saying it should have been a chair you used. these werese people that want to introduce violence in this discourse.en >> did it kind of give you the sins of the tension and the danger of the moment for the reporting that we were doing and at the country as a whole? >> why should we in the states care about securing democracy? >> the u.s. has always cared a great deal about brazil.

the 1964 that led to the overthrow of the centerleft government democratically was engineered by the cia. enormous reserves were being depleted. it's harder to extract. in terms of population it's the second largest country in the hemisphere and has probably the single most important environmental resource. so if you're somebody that cares about the world at all, cares about the united states at all, you need to care about brazil in terms of the direction it's going and it influences the region greatly but also brazil is one of the leaders of the developing world.

hiit's an alliance with china ad india, russia, south america. it was intended to be a counterweight in the world so it's impossible to overstate politically, culturally, geo strategically andn in general i think countries are more connected than ever before because of the internet and if one country takes the undemocratic path it's very easy for that to influence other countries to follow. >> the media here in america is trying to figure you out. you were called tucker carlson's mouthpiece. what have you got for us? >> if you are a journalist and people cannot figure out which

box they should place you, for me that is a testament to your job. i don't see this as any particular ideological spokesperson if i wanted to do that i would become a politiciaw or spokesman for a party.sm i think it is difficult to cast me as a right-wing figure given for example everything we just talked aboutnk involved confronting one of the most right-wing governments in the world and free from prison one of the leftist icons. i've long been a fan and i interviewed immediately after a victim of the coup. i think what's actually happening isie left and right categories in the united states are eroding very rapidly.

a left or right wing idea is the idea of opposing gigantic big tech monopolies and the left or right wing idea i think is increasinglyo more difficult to place people in these categories and in particular where it should be very hard. >> this is your seventh book? >> my sixth book. >> where can people read to you today now that you are no longer with the circle? >> there is an area devoted to free speech so it is a place to get free speech and i do video journalism on a competitor that's growing rapidly and obviously on social media as an obligation and various conferences like these with programs and podcasts and joe

rogan as well. >> the most recent book is securing democracy. my flight for press freedom and justice. thanks for joining us on booktv. >> to reimagine the founding of america framing it around when the first black africans were brought here as slaves and what

they say is slavery and antiblack racism is endemic to america therefore america couldn't have been founded and it is in the beginning of america. it's been a while but dna could not be changed. so it kind of lives to the logical argument if it's in the dna of america why are we trying to change it? what good will it do if you tear down the system because it is in the dna. it's still there. guess what's going to be in it, racism is still there and it makes no sense. but the other thing they say it's about 14 essays on all different topics to explain their problem and the process and why it's a problem. and it's all around slavery. not racism and what it says is

every problem we face in america today can be directly linked to slavery. >> if it is lower, slavery. if education is bad, slavery. if more blacks are in jail, slavery. so i think that is worse than what a crt is pushing. it's in the schools and nobody's saying it's not so what do we do? i write a chapter on every essay in the project and i say this is what they say. i forgot to tell you the third reason it's so dangerous because it is mostly true. it's about 90% true so you can't really instantly disputed say that's not true so they paint wonderful pictures of slavery and use individual stories because people love and learn from stories. they tell the story about a black man who threw all the

racism found a way to make money and killed them because he was making too much money. the problem is they master the mission and leave a lot out so if you're teaching this in school and go to 11th graders who don't know much and they are like let me check and see if this right but they don't know what you left out and they think this is all of america and it's going to make for angry disgruntled citizens who just hate the country.

pulitzer prize winning author and historian david mccullough passed away sunday at his home in massachusetts at the age of 89. he won the pulitzer prizes for two presidential biographies truman and john adams. he received a presidential medal of freedom from president george w. bush in 2006 and more than 50 honorary degrees. his last book the pioneers was published in 2019.