♪ if you are enjoying book tv center for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming schedules, book festivals and more. book tv every sunday on cspan2 or any time online booktv.org. television for serious readers. >> weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for cspan2 and more including media calm. >> the world changed in an instant. media calm is ready internet tracking sword schools and businesses we powered a new reality. we are built to keep you ahead.

>> media calm along these television companies support cspan2 as a public service. >> joining us now journalist and author will be talking about his newest book securing democracy in just a a minute. we are at the libertarian freedom of fast in las vegas. and you are here is there an audit to their question requesters definitely an oddity. that's obvious i have long been perceived as associated and i don't think there's a lot of people but at the same time i began writing about politics my focus was concerns over bush,li cheney executive power theory i always had an audience not just on the left but libertarians as well.

the first event i ever did the second was at the cato institute. that gives you a flavor for how i've always managed to have these various in my audience frequents how you do that? that's where the left in the right meat? >> i think there are more places were left and right meet then either side likes to admit. i think it says on the left and right are fighting. the two parties have a lot more agreement than our agreed and finding those areas of agreement and trying to build coalitions as a focal point for my beginning too. >> for people tuning and i know that name, give us a sense of some of the issues you have worked on as a journalist over the years before get your book. >> money first started i didn't go to work at the "new york times" was a practicing lawyer focus on constitutional law.

one day wasn't google's free up blood spot that allowed bloggers to be heard by an audience. the fairly narrow range of issues. and overo the years contacted me and 2012. said he had a large batch of documents you want to give me and we did that reporting. >> how did he get a hole of you? did you have any previous conversations? >> know we'd been a reader of mine for years. not so much because of my views on privacy and surveillance those aligned with his.

this particularly to differential two. the end of 2012 he e-mailed me out of the blue had no idea who he was. he new at the time he contacted me with the student him. reluctant to say about is all very complicated encryption technology with at the time very few people were using. took a while for us to establish our relationship because of that. once i was able to talk to him he told meant by that point he was in hong kong. gone to hong kong with an enormous a batch of documents had taken from the nsa he

revealed i wanted to work with ming in order to reveal money to get on a plane and fly to hong kong. before you do something genuine about what you're saying there's all right i was sure the wake tiny tiny portion of the document i have. he sent me a top-secret dock where the most secret agency of the most powerful government is the first time there been a leak of any kind at new e-cigs say i called my editors that night and setting to get on a plane and fly immediately to hong kong. which i did within 36 hours within 12 or 13 days of him being in hong kong. if you ever visit with him in russia? for maybe two or three years after the reporting period he never wanted to be in russia.

by revoking his passport but most importantly by bullying the cubans into rescinding the passage when she needed to get to latin america. he'd been in russia for eight years. when i visited him he was hoping to one day be able to leave. right now he's married his american girlfriend, they have two children in building a life there. he still likes to come home i think he is content with the life he's chosen for. >> is a real debate in this country heroes, or villains? >> to me there's no real debate. one of the things i discovered in my work as a journalist that i did not previously know what was he to true extent to which everything in washington is done behind a wall of secrecy. obviously a most everybody agrees some things the government does should be

secrets of their troop movement in the war you have a right to keep that secret. as a grand jury investigationpo large they know very little about what we are doing that is the idea. it becomes reversed we do almost nothing about what they are doing because of the secrecy they have erected in fighting communism there fighting terrorism and a whole variety of other justifications. our devoted to the idea that in a democracy it's necessary about everything but the important things about the government is doing how are we having a meaningful election or voting for leaders or parties and we don't ask you know they are doing. very clear instructions and we never pick up anything to jeopardize anyone's lives. people haven't forgotten work

with the "new york times" and the guardian and the largest newspapers in the world to protect lives other legitimate interests. as long as is done responsibly intimate sure heroism. they are risking their lives tol explore citizenry about things we should know very. >> that is some of your american experience i've been visiting brazil in the late '90s and early 2000's. i was working as a lawyer in new york at the time. reallyly a place we find those places that resonate with our soul that speak tos us. i was overwhelmed by its beauty but in 2005 when i i went therei intend to stay severance and met my now husband of 17 years. and at the time this was the law under the clinton years. they banned gay couples from getting green cards or other

immigration rights for their same-sex spouses but brazil being the largest country in the world. nonetheless offer those rights were only able to live in brazil together. we l built our life therefore we have threere kids is an electeds member of congress and of live there ever since for a bit obvious if kept 1 foot firmly planted in the united states of the work i'm doing. >> your most recent book securing democracy. i fight justice in brazil. how do you get in presentg trouble with the president of brazil? >> i had actually had some clashes prior to him becoming elected president. he was a member of congress for 30 years. he was kind of akin to say in aoc or green in the sense that he was not ever in the seat of power but he drew a lot of media attention he would make statements and do it in a way that drew a lot of attention. but that was not us or the way politicians normally spoke.

much like donald trump and his style of how rare it was. there is one incident ines particular and expressed the view i thought he harbored a fascist sentiment saying he made a very crude reference to my being gay on twitter and it caused a whole ruckus. we have always had an adversarial relationship. my husband is part of ano opposition party and they have had their clashes as my husband had with him and his sons are all elected officials but what really escalated 2019 on mother's day i was contacted by a woman who was a vice presidential nominee that ran against in 2018, she lost. she told me she had been contacted by a hacker who claimed he had obtained in a norse archive of files that he had taken from the phones of some approve of brazil's most ppowerful judges and prosecutos

revealing serious criminality and wrongdoing. she put me in contact with him. as a very similarar story to the one i had with edward snowden it was an anonymous source. causedf destabilization of the bolsonaro government and it went from crude insults about my sexual orientation to explicit threats of imprisonment from the president himself death threats from his movement. lots of security problems over the course of 18 months or so. we really became kind of enemy number one public enemy number one of the boston movement. near the beginning of his presidency when he was kind of at the peak of his power. what was operation car wash? operation car wash was a gigantic anti-corruption probe potentially the largest ever in the democratic world that began really by accident in 2014 when a money launderer got caught in a pretty trivial crime laundering money through a local car laundering money through a local

car wash and hence the name operation car wash. carwash. when they arrested him they said you won't believe what i have. i'm not a smalltime money longer, i'm for the most powerful billionaires most are deeply corrupt and i'm willing to help you discover their dirty secrets in exchange for leniency. it was at first a moving story because it is true and everyone acknowledges brazil even after it came out of its military dictatorship has been run -- ministers this is how business

is done and the prosecutors that were assembled and at the judge assigned to the case were very young in their mid to late 30s or 40s and they've been born into brazilian democracy. under the rule of law for public in the middle of the cold war. thee young crusading if they they beginputting into prison us original kind of niche billionaires and. everybody was moved to see that. the hundred dollars at a time or

the hundreds of millions at a time and as a result, the judge overseeing it, the young prosecutors there was no one more popular for at least the next three or four years from 2014 to 2018. they basically ran the country because no politicians could compete with them and they were internationally celebrated and one of the time 12016 the only brazilian on the cover of the magazines all over the world and in brazil, so the power these prosecutorsna judges had as anticorruption became larger than any person should have and that's when things start to become a bit more controversial whether they were collectively prosecuting for ideological and political reasons and that was kind of the context which the source came to us and said we

can prove that they've been corrupt. >> where is sergio today? >> one of the most important things in 2017 and is preparing to run for president, the obstacle he had was the two-term president from 2002 2 to 2010 ad the kind of centerleft, very charismatic. former 8 labor leader and a beneficiary of the massive economic growth. the polls showed they were

ahead. bthe first thing they did upon being elected was turnaround and elevated from the k role in locl federal judge at the first level and made him the minister of justice and public security, the second most powerful position in brazil and that's when we began the reporting. moreau ended up leaving the government about a year and two months after he joined and went out. he himself was corrupt. the officials charged with corruption so he split the movement and went to the u.s. for a while and made a lot of money andun came back to announe

he would run for president. the presidential candidate was kind of a flop and pulled out before it even began and announced r he's going to run fr the senate. that's kind of a critic of both but now accused of being corrupt. >> let's go back in your view and i know you have a connection to him and we will get to that was he guilty of the corruption? >> the reason it's hard to say is because he never got a fair trial. there's no question that the workers party was involved in all kinds of corruption and he himself i pushed him and interviews to acknowledge that before because as i said earlier, brazil is a country that doesn't have occasional institutes of corruption but is

run on corruption and the workers party itself having been in the middle of it there's no way that you can get anything done unless you break the wheels of that corrupt regime and the workers party played that game. the question of how much did they profit from corruption is the trial was a show trial in which the speakers and prosecutors the reporting showed the conviction regardless of the evidence and so i don't know the answer to that, but i do know that there is no doubt the government and the party was heavily interacting with and dependent upon the system of corruption that has always run. >> what is your connection? >> i interviewed for the first time in 2016.

>> was he in prison at the time? >> he was not. there was a woman from his party to be the first and by this pointed she had gotten reelected barely in the middle of a second term and this economic boom he turned away from turned into economic collapseen under her presidency so there was a serious impeachment effort unden way that i was supposed to and when i interviewed him at that point it was clear that it wasn't just her, but him and iea interviewed with him but no one really thought he would end up in prison. it would be like a country putting their greatest icon in prison. no one thought that what happened back then, but they were trying so it was in that context about building and people were raising the possibility that he would be prosecuted. ironically i tried to interview

in 2018 but they rejected the request. they knew if the public could hear from them at this point if he could persuade the equation. they denied interviews with everyone. only when he was elected to didi they finally get the request to interview from prison. >> the supreme court granted the request. t >> they had rejected it and a week or two after it had been scheduled before the source contacted me so i interviewed and couldn't tell them what we had but he was protesting his innocence and then needless to say once we began doing the reporting and proved the judge had convicted him and they were all corrupt he was freed from prison three months after we began the reporting and he was very grateful. i was the first phone call he

made when he got home. he publicly was very appreciative. my husband belonged to a left-wing party that was born of opposition to the workers party. they kind of criticized. it was a party that protested the workers party corruption so the political connection was never that close, there was never a supporter of the workers party, but when someone's reporting gets you out of prison and that reporter is being threatened as a result, you obviously are, your relationship is going to improve, so we had a good relationship for a year or so once he got out of prison. >> why then is the brazilian presidential election and is he still favored? >> it is october 2nd and as we are taping three months away or

so. if two candidates give more than 50% of the vote the top to go to a runoff. given the last election now he's not only out of prison but poised to return to power. >> the supreme court of brazil turned down your request to interview lula. 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 emergedsy out of its dictatorship was based in part on the u.s. model and there's more robust protection in the constitution that includes for example source protection rights can be obliged. there's long been an exempt to that kind but it never has happened so onbr paper there's a very robust request of protection. inin practice there's the inequality of wealth and the media has always been controlled by a tiny handful of oligarchical families that have the same agenda and is a tideology. that isit changing because on te internet that use with which

they have a printing press so it's really improved. when i did the reporting that i did end of theri government attempted to in prison and invited me it's because the supreme court issued a ruling for basically shielding many of the prosecution attempts on the grounds of the free press. the issue is very similar if you want to interview in the prison you realize you haven't heard of him for years because they won't let him be interviewed or photographed and the argument is the pretext of prison security but it's one of the left uses just as readily as the brazilians are using it. back then it's for interviews it sounds drastic but it'she something we have here in the u.s. and the uk as well. >> is your brazilian resource,

has he or she ever been identified? >> the federal police announced they found the source andnd arrested a ring of people they claim are responsible for the hacking. the person they accused has publicly assumed responsibility for that. i've never confirmed or united. i have my suspicions. does it feel like déjà vu all over again from the civilian edperspective? >> i remember when i was called by the congresswoman about this issue i asked whether she would be okay with my husband participating in the call.

you want to make sure when it's extra important that you are not misunderstanding anything. detained in london at one point i said to him we've already been through this once before. david said i think you are thinking about this in correctly. the last time we did people got angry a at us from thousands of miless away whereas this time, the government is literally right on the corner and is going to be much more dangerous and difficult and much riskier and at one point joked and said can we get anybody other than you to get these archives because life turnedno upside down and he kne. for me it was déjà vu but even

trying very hard to get me to see that this is going to be more dangerous. >> how close did you come to being physically injured or going to prison? >> from the very first moment we were getting the kind of death threats public figures these days complain about. here's the address, we know where your kids go to school, very alarming. clearly people who had access to the private data and the government andth security force. we have to turn our house into a fortress but we didn't leave for a few years without our security and armored vehicles and the like. we had a very good friend who was a city councilwoman who

served on the city council with david and branko that had been murdered or assassinated nine months earlier in 2018 so we took those threats very seriously. whenever i appeared in public, one time i went to a book fair and they made me speak in the middle of the water on a boat because they were concerned and even then there were a group shooting at the boat trying to set the boat on fire. i was physically assaulted by a famous journalist. >> it's like i do in the united states networks as well you should speak to as many people as you can. there's a network that's grown

rapidly. they invited me on a several times and it was in the middle of the reporting. the movement was there's a journalist who had been in the mainstream a long time and about six weeks prior to my going there they had gone on the air and essentially said my husband and i should have our childrene taken away and we should be investigated by the adoption agency because how can we take care of our children. obviously very homophobic remarks. but when people talk about your children it should be the one limit and in the political

warfare. right when the show began, i'm not going to talk about these issues i'm going to clear the air. reaffirm people should be returned to the shelter we adopted themem from or apologize and retract and he instead started potentially refusing to retract it and kind of spontaneously tried to hit my face and i blocked it. this is live on the air and the entire internet exploded. a significant part of it was

there were the most prominent members on the movement in congress, the president's sauna, not only supported when he did about that it should have been people that want to introduce violence in the geopolitical f discourse. it kind ofof gives you a sense f the tension in that moment. >> is led to the overthrow of the government and the military dictators, there's enormous reserves being depleted and

brazil is discovering the kind that is harder to extract, more valuable the sixth largest country in the gold in terms of population and second largest in the hemisphere. it is the singlent most importat resource in the amazon and if you're somebody that cares about the world at all you really need to care about brazil in terms of the direction that it's going but also brazil is one of the leaders of the developing world with the alliance on china and india and russia, south america that was intended to be a counterweight. so the importance politically, culturally, geo strategically and in general countries are

more connected now than ever before because of the internet and if one country kind of takes the democratic path it's easy for that to influence other countries to follow. >> you were called tucker carlson's mouthpiece and friends of yours here libertarian convention. if you are a journalist and people can't figure out which box they should place you, that makes the fact you're doing your job. i don't attach to any particular ideological spokesperson if i wanted to do that i would become a politician or spokesman for a party. it's difficult for the right-wing figure given for example everything we just talked about involved

confronting the most right-wing governments in thehi world and free from prison. i've long been a fan of people like jeremy corbin and more alice and bolivia that i went and interviewed after he was the victim. i think what is happening is left and right categories in the united states are eroding very rapidly. the idea of opposing the war in ukraine is the idea of opposing gigantic big tech monopolies and the left-wing or right-wing idea. it's more difficult to place people in these categories and it should be hard and i'm glad it is. >> this is your seventh book? >> sixth book. >> where can people read you now

that you are no longer with -- >> mentioning the big tech censorship there arere areas devoted to free speech. on the social media it's an obligation and at various conferences like these there's youtube shows and podcasts like joe rogan as well, so i get around. >> the most recent book is "securing democracy my flight from press freedom and justice in brazil. thanks for joining us here on booktv.