state department and the white house for those nations, why the silence when black folks are getting slaughtered? >> host: where did you get that idea? >> guest: it was me being stunned at the silence because at the same time haiti is erupting in silence i'm not seeing any -- very little. what i am seeing is sharpville in south africa is happening and these groups are all over south africa with the violence and masker that rained down, and get the protection of black folks. to fight for this. and see them getting engaged in the civil war in nigeria.

what was it the change, caused this level of engagement i didn't see in the first year. >> host: author and professor carol anderson, what -- 3 of her most recent books include white rage, the unspoken truth of our age, racial divide, one person, vote, how voter suppression is destroying our democracy and her most recent book, the second, race and guns in a fatally unequal america. >> guest: thank you, this was wonderful. >> now on booktv, more television for serious readers. >> joining us now is journalist and author glenn greenwald, talking about his newest book "securing democracy: my fight

for press freedom and justice in bolsonaro's brazil" in just a minute but glenn greenwald, we are at the libertarian freedom fest festival in las vegas and you are here. is there an oddity here? >> there is an oddity that is obvious. i don't think a lot of people at this particular conference but very early on, talking about politics, my focus was concerns over bush and cheney executive power theory and trampling of civil liberties and the war on terror. i always had an audience not just on the left but libertarians throughout my first book, and the cato institute, that gives you a flavor for how i managed to have these impromptus with my audience. >> host: where the left and the right meet. >> guest: there are more places left and right meet the neither side likes to admit and the media typically conveys.

what attracts standard media attention is when the left and right are fighting at that of skewers how many areas they have in common. they have a lot more agreement than typically observed. finding those areas of agreement and building coalitions through my work has been a focal point from the beginning. >> host: for people tuning in saying i know that name, give us a sense of the issues you have worked on as a journalist over the years before we get the yearbook. >> guest: i didn't go to work at the new york times, didn't go to journalism school, i was focused on constitutional law and one day, a free blog platform that allows bloggers to be heard by the audience and mostly focus on civil liberty issues in connection with guantánamo, torture, rendition, drones, a fairly narrow range

of issues on which i focus and over the years it began to expand but i have that angry there and the reporting for which i'm best known in the united states, whistleblower ed snowden contacted me in 2,012 and said he had a lot of documents to give me and we did that reporting. >> host: how did he get a hold of you? do you have previous conversations? >> guest: he was a reader of mind for years and was attracted not so much by my views on privacy and surveillance though those aligned with his but i had become a vocal media critic and particularly critical of the media's propensity to be too deferential to the us security state rather than adversarial with that and he found that -- he e-mailed me out of the blue, no idea who he was, he knew the

nsa was buying on our communications domestically and he contacted me with a pseudonym and was reluctant to say who he was and there was a complicated encryption technology few people were using and took a while to establish our relationship because of that and a shared environment, he told me when he was in hong kong he had gone to hong kong with an enormous batch of documents he had taken from the nsa that he believed were very grave, illegalities, violations of the constitution and wanted to work with me to review my report them and get on a plane to fly to hong kong and i said before you do, prove to me there's something genuine about what you are saying, he said i will share a tiny portion of the document i have, he sends me 20 top-secret documents from those sick of

agencies of the world, first time there had been a week of any kind from the nsa and i called my editors at the guardian and said i need to get on a plane and fly to hong kong which i did within 36 hours and spent 12 or 13 days in hong kong when we started the reporting. >> host: did you visit him russia? >> guest: i visited him in 2016, 2 or 3 years after the reporting. he never wanted to be in russia. he intended -- the obama administration trapped him thereby revoking his passport, bullying the cubans, sending their passage which he needed to get to latin america. he had been in russia for twee 8 years. when i visited him he was hoping to leave. by now he's married his american girlfriend, they have 2 children, building a life

there, he still hopes to come home but if he can't i think he can deal with the life he has chosen. >> host: there is a debate about juliana's orange -- julian assange, are they heroes or villains? >> guest: one of the things i discovered in my work as a journalist that i didn't previously know is the extent to which everything in washington is done behind a wall of secrecy. almost everybody agrees some things the government does should be secret, troop movements in a war, you have a right to keep that secret, if there's a grand jury investigation but we should know what the government is doing and they out to know little about what we are doing, that's the idea. it is completely reversed where they know everything about us and that we know nothing about what they are doing because of this wall of secrecy they erected for fighting communism

or terrorism and a whole variety of other justifications and people like assange are devoted to the idea that in a democracy it's necessary the citizenry learn not everything but the important things with the government is doing. how can we have a meaningful election, voting for leaders are parties when we don't know anything about what they are doing? as long as it is done responsibly, snowden didn't just throw it on the internet but came to us with clear instructions about making sure we never publish anything that could jeopardize anybody's lives, juliana's orange -- julian assandge worked with people. as long as it's done responsibly, to me it is heroism. they are risking their lives to inform citizenry about things we ought to know. >> host: that is your american experience but you've taken

your job to brazil. >> guest: i visited brazil in the 90s and 2,000s, working as a lawyer in new york at the time and this is a place, we find those places that speak to us. i was always overwhelmed by its beauty but in 2005, i intended to stay 7 weeks which i met my now husband of 17 years. at the time the defense of marriage act was in law, banning gay couples from getting green cards or other immigration rights for same sex spouses, brazil offered those rights, we were only able to live in brazil together so we built our life there, we have 3 kids, he's an elected member of congress, we've kept one foot planted in the united states with the work i've been doing.

>> reporter: your most recent book is "securing democracy: my fight for press freedom and justice in bolsonaro's brazil". how did you get in trouble with the president of brazil? >> guest: i had some clashes with bolsonaro before him being elected president, he was a member of congress for 30 years. strictly in the sense that he wasn't ever in the seat of power, was always in the margins withdrew a lot of media attention. he would make statements in a way that drew a lot of attention but not the way politicians normally spoke. it got him to the presidency like donald trump and his style and how rare it was and there was one incident where i believe i expressed the view that he harbored fascist sentiments. he made accrued reference to my being gay on twitter that caused a ruckus. we always had an adversarial relationship.

my husband is part of an opposite party to bolsonaro and they had their clashes. we escalated it in 2019 on mother's day when i was contacted by a woman who was the vice presidential nominee that ran against bolsonaro in 2018 and she lost, she had been contacted by a hacker who claimed he had obtained an enormous archive that he had taken from the phones of brazil's most powerful judges and prosecutors revealing criminality and wrongdoing. she put me in contact with him. it was a similar story as ed snowden, when he turned it over to me and we did the reporting, it caused a lot of destabilization of the bolsonaro government and it went from crude insults about sexual orientation to expose

threats of imprisonment, death threats from his movement, lots of security problems over the course of 18 months or so, we became kind of enemy number one of the bolsonaro movement, near the beginning of the presidency when he was at the peak of his power. >> host: what was operation carwash? >> guest: the largest anticorruption probe ever in the democratic world. it began in 2014 when a money launderer got caught in a trivial crime, laundering money through a local carwash in a midsized city, when they arrested him he said to them you won't believe what i have, not just a small time money launderer, but the money launderer for the most powerful millionaires, deeply corrupt and willing to help you

discover all of their dirty secrets in exchange for leniency for this crime you caught me engaging in. it was at first kind of a moving story because it is true and everyone acknowledges brazil ever since it came out of its military dictatorship has been run by systemic corruption. in the us we talk about corruption, a lobbyist doesn't file the right form, no laws get passed without money going into the swiss bank accounts of party leaders and ministers and the team of prosecutors assembled at the judge that was assigned to oversee the case were very young, in their 30s and 40s and they were born into brazilian democracy, took seriously the idea we were supposed to be a country that operates under rule of law, not a banana republic from the 1960s in the middle of the cold

war living under a military regime so the narrative was very attractive to the media that young crusading prosecutors want to clean up their country and began using this original niche, billionaires, the most powerful people in the country and brazilians, everybody was moved to see that. finally instead of putting drug dealers in jail we are going to get the real criminals, not who still one hundred dollars at a time but hundreds of millions at a time, those people will go to prison and as a result, sergio morrow, the judge overseeing it, they are very fanatical, no one more popular than they. the next 3 or 4 years, sergio

morrow was internationally celebrated, one of the time one hundreds, the only brazilian on the list, on the cover of magazines all over the world in brazil. the power these prosecutors and judges had as their anticorruption probe expanded become larger than a person should have. that was when things started to become more controversial, questions whether they were prosecuting for ideological or political reasons. that was the context our source came to us and said that was what they invaded where sergio morrow, they've been corrupt all along and how they conducted this investigation. >> host: where is sergio morrow today? >> guest: one of the things the carwash probe did was in 2017

as bolsonaro was trying to run for president, the main obstacle in his path was de silva, the president from 2010, very charismatic, former labor leader, 80% approval rating. and 50 million out of poverty, planning to run out of 2017. and not running, sergio found him guilty of multiple charges of corruption, and paved the way, the first thing bolsonaro did was elevated sergio from his role as local judge at the first level and made a minister

of justice and public security, second most powerful in brazil and that was where it was. morrow and up leaving the government a year after he joined it and went out shooting and bolsonaro, criminally interfere in various police investigations, elected officials tried with corruption so he split with the bolsonaro movement, made a lot of money and came back to brazil announcing he would run for president, he's running for president, the presidential candidate was a flop. he pulled out before it began and he's announcing he will run for the senate. as a critic of both, bolsonaro

was in line and accused of being corrupted. >> host: let's go back to desilva. was he guilty of the corruption he was put in prison for? >> guest: hard to say because he never got a fair trial. the workers party was involved in all kinds of corruption. he was pushed and i pushed him in interviews to acknowledge that. as i said earlier brazil, doesn't have occasional, running systemically on corruption. the workers party having been in the middle of it, no way you can get anything done unless he agrees to the corrupt machine and the workers party plays the game. the question of how much did he personally profit from corruption is something we

don't know the answer to because the trial he got was a show trial in which sergio morrow was plotting in the secret to ensure conviction regardless of the evidence. i don't know the answer to that but i do know there's no doubt the party was heavily interacting with and dependent upon the system of corruption. >> host: what is your connection to de silva? >> guest: i interviewed him in 2016. >> host: was he in prison at the time? >> guest: he was not in prison. he had hand-picked a woman from his party to be the person -- by this point she had gotten reelected barely, in the middle of her second term, this economic boom he benefited from

looked at economic collapse under her presidency. there's an appeasement effort i was opposed to. when i interviewed him it was clearly anticorruption probe was not just aimed at her but aimed at him and no one really thought he would end up in prison. like a country putting their greatest icon, no one thought that would happen back then but they were trying. the interview within that context, impeachment and the possibility that he would be prosecuted and ironically, i tried to interview him in 2018 but the supreme court rejected our request, they didn't want him being heard because if the public could hear from him he could sway the election, that's the hold he had on the brazilian people, they denied interviews with everyone. the only one bolsonaro was elected, granted my request to interview him from prison. >> host: this up in court granted the request. >> guest: the authorities rejected it.

a week or 2 after i was contacted by the source, the interview was scheduled and if it was scheduled before the source contacted me, i couldn't tell him what we had by that point but he was protesting his innocence and needless to say once we began doing the reporting that proved the judge that convicted him, were all quite corrupt, he was freed from prison, the first phone call he made when he got released from prison and got home to san paulo, he was appreciative publicly but my husband belonged to a left-wing party that was born out of opposition to the workers party, criticized from the left, a way the green party

criticized that, protested the workers parties corruption, my political collection was never so close, never a supporter of the workers party but when someone's reporting get you out of prison and that reporters threatened with prosecution you are -- or relationship will improve so we had a good relationship for a year or so. >> host: when is the brazilian presidential election and is he still favored? >> guest: the presidential election is october 2nd. as we are taping, and the overwhelming favorite, the electoral system, multiple candidates run and if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, and it is possible he could win

in the first round. one person has done that. well ahead at the moment of bolsonaro and every candidate, the favorite - it would be extraordinary given the last election he was in prison, a 10 year prison term and he's not only out of prison but poised to return to power. >> host: you mention the per supreme court of brazil turn down your request interview lula. is there a free press in brazil comparable to the us? >> guest: the constitution that brazil and acted when it emerged from the military dictatorship was based on the us model and european, and more robust protection in the brazilian constitution, it includes protection rights for

journalists, can't be obliged -- in the us there's been an attempt to enact the shield a lot of that time but it never happened. on paper there is a robust free press protection, the problem is because of grotesque inequality of wealth and income the media has always been controlled by a handful of oligarchical families with the same ideology and lack of pluralism in the brazilian media. that's changing because of the ease to reach audiences without the printing press or tv networks and really improved and, the reason i'm able to talk to you now, the supreme

court entered ruling, and the grounds of a free press. the issue with lula if you want to interview julian assange, you haven't heard from him because he is barred from being interviewed. the argument, prison security, one that the west uses as readily as brazilians use it. to bar interviews with lula. it sounds drastic about something we have in the us and the uk as well. >> host: is your brazilian source identified? >> guest: federal police announced they found the source and arrested a ring of 6 people they claim are responsible for that hacking. the person they accused has publicly assumed responsibility for that. i never confirmed or denied it

because of the identity of my source, i have my suspicions but if the source wants to say they are the ones that did attack their right but i won't help the government by saying i believe in it. >> host: when he received those documents and brazil did it feel like déjà vu all over again from a brazilian perspective? >> guest: completely. when i was asked about this issue, i asked whether it would be okay with my husband participating in the call, it was a call of high intensity. it is important not to miss anything or misunderstanding anything so after we hung up i said to david who helped me a lot, he was detained in london at one point, i said to him we've been through this once before so if we have this

advantage, david said we are thinking of this incorrectly, the last time we did at the people angry at us were thousands of miles away, where this time the government is on the corner, much more dangerous and difficult and risky and even joked and said can't they get anyone but you get these archives, wise always you because our life is turned upside down during the story, he knew it was about to be again. for me it was -- he was trying hard to get me to see this was going to be more dangerous. >> host: how close did you come to being physically injured or going to prison? >> guest: from the first moment we began the reporting we were getting the kinds of death

threats public figures often complain about where someone on twitter or in your e-mail says you are going to get what is coming to you, very detailed death threats, here's your address, here is your car, we know where your kids go to school, very alarming and people who had access to private data and security forces, we had to turn our house into a fortress but we didn't leave our house for two years without armed security and armored vehicles. we had a friend, a city councilwoman, who had been murdered, assassinated 9 months earlier in 2018 so we took those threats seriously. when i appeared in public, one time i went to a book fair, they were concerned and there

were a group of bolsonaro followers shooting fireworks setting the boat on fire. i was physically assaulted once by a famous journalist who became a fanatical bolsonaro supporter. >> host: you have a picture of it in the book. >> guest: like i do in the american -- a philosophy that as a journalist you should speak to as many as you can, right wing network in brazil has grown rapidly because it attaches itself to the bolsonaro movement, invited me several times. it was in the middle of the reporting. tension was at its highest. the bolsonaro movement was, and there was a journalist, in the

mainstream a long time, and 6 weeks from going there, my husband and i should have children taken from us, the adoption agency, how do we take care of children? very homophobic remarks he would not say about a heterosexual couple but when people talk about your children, and political warfare, at the last minute, we want to put him on the show with you, do you mind? i said i don't mind, i wanted to confront him about the comments he had made. they seated us almost millimeters away. you couldn't have made a more combustible atmosphere. they did try. when the show began, i'm not going to talk about any news issues, i cleared the air and i said i demand that you either

reaffirm your comments that our children should be returned to the shelter where we adopted them from or apologize and retract that. he instead started essentially refusing to retract it, run a risk escalated from there, and spontaneously he took his arm and try to hit my face. i blocked it, and then he pushed my face but this was live on the air on radio and television and the entire internet exploded but the significant part of it was there were the most prominent members of the bolsonaro movement, the president's son cheered and supported what he did and said it should have been a chair that he used or closed fist, these are people who want to introduce violence into political discourse and it gives a sense of the real danger of the moment.

and what we were doing as a whole. >> host: why should we care about securing democracy in brazil? >> guest: the us cared a great deal about brazil. 1964 who that led to the centerleft government, democratically elected government was engineered by the cia and a military dictatorship that followed was supported by the us and that's because it is an important country geo strategically, enormous oil reserves as they are being depleted, vastly -- edit -- a kind that is harder to extract, but more exploitable, more valuable. the sixth largest country in the world in terms of population, the second largest country in the hemisphere, the single most important environmental resource in the

amazon and if you care about the world at all, you need to care about brazil in terms of the direction it is going and influencing the region but brazil is one of the leaders of the developing world, it has an alliance with china and india and russia and south america. that's a counterweight to us hegemony in the world, politically, culturally, geo strategically and in general i think countries are more connected now than ever before because of the internet. if one country takes a democratic path, it's easy for that influence other countries to follow. >> host: the media in america trying to figure you out.

you were called tucker carlson and's mouthpiece, you're a libertarian convention. what have you got for us? >> guest: if you're a journalist and people can't figure out into which box they should place you, for me that's a testament to the fact that you are doing your job. i don't see my role attaching myself to any particular faction or being a reliable ideological spokesman. if i want to do that i would be a spokesman for a party. it's difficult, fanatical right-wing figure given everything we talked about involves my confronting one of the most right wing governments in the world, freeing from prison one of the leftist icons in louis de silva. i've been a fan of people like jeremy corbin, eva more alice in bolivia, after he was the

victim of a coup, i think what is happening is left right categories in the united states are eroding rapidly. the idea of opposing nato and us involvement in the war in ukraine a left or right wing idea? the idea of opposing gigantic big tech monopolies a left-wing or right-wing idea, it is more difficult to place people in these categories, for journalist in particular it should be hard and it is. >> host: this is your seventh book? >> guest: my sixth book. >> host: where can people read you today now that you are no longer with the inner circle? >> host: >> guest: a sector of the media devoted to free speech, that is where i gravitate, i do my writing in a place that guarantees free speech, i do video journalism on are youtube competitor called rumble.

sort of an obligation if you have a platform including twitter and various programs, lots of left-wing youtube shows, so i get around. >> host: your most recent book "securing democracy: my fight for press freedom and justice in bolsonaro's brazil". thanks for joining us on booktv. >> if you are enjoying booktv, sign up for newsletter to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, after discussions, book festivals and more. anytime online on booktv.org, television for serious readers. >> thanks for joining us today. >> thank for having me. >> host: