>> thank you for coming. [applause]

host: in your book you write there' is an close personal and professional relationship between reporters and the people. is that a bad thing? >> yes. there always has been attention in journalism between access and autonomy attention because some people need to get close to the sources or aggressively investigate the sources. you have to strike the balance

become more out of balance and have delivered what the government once the people to see so they are acting as delivery people for the services being skeptical. >> you don't want to be to adversarial that they are striking a balance. the national security access serviceman for the people ofpl the administration. >> you want to ask you about the subtitle and talking about a muckraker? >> talk about journalism investigative reporting was the chicago sun-times doing these investigations and most famously upton sinclair wrote

the jungle which he had an ideology as a valid socialist and had an agenda but there is a willingness to go there and speak aggressively to the powers that be you don't really see that anymore on cable news people sit and talk about what they think that none of these have big aggressiveie stories mostar broken into people like me the "washington post" won a a pulitzer prize for investigating me not corruption in thee government. so you need to have the spirit of investigative reporting and citizens need to do it. we have a renaissance going back decades ago now it doesn't happen anymore mostly do to economics and consolidationn and commercial

imperative abc news recently / there investigative bureau it has become a commercial enterprise and that's why the nobody tells us what to do. host: what is the goal? >> the subjects pick us the sources find us the same way any journalist would find their sources i don't think glenn greenwald knew heto would sign a contract in the nsa with that contract found him. so this year the fbi agent found me after they rated my home and that agent came to us with internal restricted documents from within the fbi

system they were calling us news media it's a very big deal because the c case hinges on if we are news media so people tend too find journalist they can trust and most people don't trust. but we don't pick our subjects. they find us. host: how many times have you been sued. >> or jailed or indicted. >> or my attorneys are standing 5 feet away from me and laughing i don't know exactly how manyla but a few times a couple dozen pieces of litigation over the last ten years we never really lost a case. so if you are in the right and you don't ever settle usually when in a court of law. most recently going on offense

for defamation in the beginning of my career people was to me and the opportunity to settle a case i was am not settling any of these we found out with the defamation lawsuit that the people who sued mes. never once wanted to be depose themselves because we are fairly ethical and don't break laws or do anything improper. but the people over there if i see james o'keefe and i have to be deposed they stop suing me and now we see them. >> is it okay to deceive a subject when you're investigated? >> your question is interesting because either you

deceive your subject you are investigating or you don't and you tell the untruth to the audience witches if you take what the subject is saying at face value he will be disseminating so lewis hodges argues there is a moral imperative to deceive the subject of the mission is to tell the truth is also written in the journalist and the murderer a famous book was a legendary journalist wrote a journalist always deceives their subject it is a confidence game you must play if your intention is to do investigative reporting if it is to read off the teleprompter to place to naga for what the two star general wants you to know that i would

argue that is the worst deception and you must choose between them but it is paramount that is what the journalist is supposed to do. host: how did you get started? >> with lucky charms andni went to rutgers university there was a lot of censorship on campus. so they serve lucky charms in the cafeteria so to prove a point i said the serial was racist against my irish heritage. i thought i would be laughed at but one of the deans took me very seriously and had a meeting and informed me they would ban lucky charm serial because it was racist against me so that was the beginning of this undercover investigative work which really showed the people for who they were and cut them on video.

and artistic mission more than political. host: whenever in the mainstream media is usually the line in selected edited video project that is hyperbole all journalism is edited and rightfully so words are arranged into sentences and it is the absurd insinuation because they cannot name the edit but when i release the full mate they will say we don't know that you turn that off and on so we are engaged in conspiracy theorieseo but in court it all falls apart judges say nothing was edited out. of context for you could wonder why that isn't covered but our

attorneys look at wikipedia to put that on there and says legal documents are not reliable sources so the only case they may have a point was in 2009 and then wearing up" but i didn't of the all the offices but ias presented myself as attend and said i want to create a brothel. it doesn't require wearing that costume but that is all they have so all journalists make mistake so that is comparable to those made and invented by the "washington post" cnn and "the new york times"re. host: has there ever been a

moment in your career i just cannot do this again that this is really hard and uncomfortable? >> the first chapter of this book is a journalism textbook how do you write a chapter and a journalism book? there is a lot of trauma that has occurred in my life whether you are a whistleblower and violating nondisclosure and fired from your job i was arrested in 2010 by the fbi they were raided by the fbi in november they are federal agents taking the work product in order to find out these are

traumatizing things that shape the foundation what it means to be a journalist and an american and you live through that pretty or falsely accused. you get sudan the most powerful people in the world pharmaceutical companies and governments coming after you. there are moments when you say i know if i can do this anymore. it's a very personal story. but then you begin to realize there are people out there who believe in you is there anybody else and then you realize there is more vast than areas of them there's more than believe in darkness and corruption but then whistleblowers come to you and then the hunter becomes the hunted. they are more afraid of us than we are of them. fbi agents and whistleblowers. all of these people talking

about child trafficking and the passion that you have for getting the story to exceed whatever pain is selected upon. >> with the topics you are addressing that you ignored or edited or ridiculed by mainstream media quick. >> i don't know if it is politics or power? as noam chomsky wrote about he wrote ad book called manufacturing consent there is a symbiotic relationship between people in power and media with reciprocity because cnn the biggest advertiser is pfizer pharmaceuticals at the commercial break it is a cliché brought to you by pfizer.

so you take that for granted with the commercials but if you are literally paid by a billion-dollar corporation can you investigate the corporation? of course that we take it for granted growing up in america we see the media operate the way it does but these are not right wing arguments these are just honest things about the state of our media and in the 1970s and eighties newsmen were willing to sacrifice and profit on the balance sheets to do that investigative reporting but no more now it's all about the money and preserving the relationship that you have with the powers that be. that is not journalism under any accepted understanding of what journalism is. host: you spend a bit of time talking about influence.

what is that quick. >>sm saul a linsky had a lot of good things to say and to live up to their own principles and said that's the most important thing to do to use their own rules that's another way to expose hypocrisy and also the idea picking a subject and focusing on it as opposed to the broad narrative focusing in a totally from voter fraud is a hot and issue and then to say there is no voter fraud. i don't take a position that i think there are instances of fraud foyer for example she was caught on tape bragging about all the crime that is the methodology which is the

focus of the actual facts not on the broad narratives which most people in media do. >> i wanted this book this is my life's work. took me five years to write with 800 footnotes it reads like a thesis paper and i wanted to outlast me and not be about me or principles but the first book breakthrough was about basically my twenties. i am 388 years old my incarceration and going to court a very perverse narrative this is more of a handbook it is more of a boy scout manual for those who want to follow in our footstepsin so there is a

chapter in the book called whistleblower it's like you are on the margins of society and the spacewalking astronaut the umbilical cord was cut from the mothership i want people to understand what it's like the most important chapter is the psychological effects that are unbelievable the number one question i am asked is aren't you worried or afraid? i say no. i try not to worry about things i cannot control and the fear is what holds most people back in the country. thee fbi raids because the trust us you must be for real i wasn't sure but you must be for real now because the feds are rating you and sources have come to us as a result of what the feds did. host: where were you raised quick. >> the northeastern part of

new jersey my mother is from rochester new york my dad is from new york and live to new jersey about the time i was born project veritas is located in westchester county 45 minutes north of new york city wea have a headquarters there and journalist around the country undercover. host: what was your life like zero to 18. >> my father and grandfather were in construction of property maintenance and i am to my teenage years and i write about that story. but i didn't think i would be a journalist or that i did not enjoy i watched local news but 18 and 19 years old "usa

today" i just read newspapers every day for a year or two and i found that mike wallace that things were not as they seem and rarely as they should be. i didn't know what to do with that and what that meant what i be an actor or finance or work with my dad mowing lawns? to do something about that. things were not portrayed accurately. so as a student at rutgers i became a columnist for the paper which was the daily newspaper at rutgers and i was let go from the job. because they wrote a column about how much money professors give each political party the ratio of democrats

republicans were 104 / one they let me go that i will create my own newspaper so i did that. i had no idea what i was doing most was layout and design. i had to learn out one —- learn how to layout a newspaper and magazine and i did that. i had a staff it is called the centurion and the rest is history. host: a want to ask you about two people you have brought up.lo the muckrakers but you brought up daniel ellsworth and mike wallace. are they heroes to you? are they effective people? >> i think some of the things they have done are heroic i think might on —- mike wallace made people feel comfortable in interviews and i admire that and journalism is an activity not just an identity

your protective class most people want journalism to be an identity like a cartel. i can admire on —- admire virtues of saul a linsky but there are virtues within all these people dan ellsberg almost went to jail they litigated this allew the way to the supreme court. and whistleblowing can be heroic it can also be illegal add snowden canan simultaneously be breaking a law but there is a place in the world for people like that. investigative journalist cannot do their jobs it a is the bread and butter of what it means to be an american and that right to report what someone tells you fundamentally is in jeopardy

right now with the fbi they try to take that right away from us i have a cell you on —- aclu lawyers were defending us tryingin to unseal the warrants against me and said this is never happened before not to any journalist and they start to point guns at us. so i do admire people like ed snowden and julian assange. and why the billion-dollar corporations are not doing their job. the broke entrepreneurial people that soviet. host.

>> we look forward to booktv session. >> thank you