trying to be right here. well joining us now is journalist and author glenn. greenwald will be talking about his newest book securing democracy in just a minute. but glenn greenwald. we're at the libertarian freedom fest festival in las vegas. and you're here. is there an oddity there there definitely is an oddity. that's obvious that i've long been perceived as associated with the left and i don't think there are a lot of people for whom that's true at this particular conference at the same time very early on when i

began writing about politics and my focus was concerns over bush cheney executive power theories and some of the trampling of civil liberties and the name of the war on terror. i always had an audience not just on the left, but also libertarians as well. my first book the first event i ever did was at the aclu in the second was at the cato institute, so that gives you a flavor for how managed to have these various problems to my audience. how do you do that? is it it's where the left and the right meat it seems there. i think there are more places where left and right knee then either side likes to admit and then the media typically conveys because i think what attracts standard media attention is when the left and right are fighting and that obscures how many areas they have in common. i think that you parties are have a lot more agreement than typically is observed and also the left and right and finding those areas of agreement and trying to build coalitions or foster them through my work is definitely been a focal point from the beginning well for people tuning in and saying i know that name give us a sense

of some of the issues you've worked on as a journalist over the years before we get into your book. so when i first started writing him, you know, i didn't go to work at the new york times and i didn't go to columbia in journalism school. i was a practicing lawyer focused on constitutional eye and i really just day hit create blog on what? then google's free blogspot platform that allowed bloggers to just be heard and find an audience and mostly focused on civil liberties issues in connection with the war on terrible guantanamo torture rendition drones when obama became president. it was a fairly narrow range of issues on which i focus and over the years it began to expand but i still kept that anchor there and i think the reporting for which i became best known in the united states was when lower edward snowden contacted me in 2012 and said he had a large batch of documents. he wanted to give me and we did that reported. how did he get a hold of you?

did you have any? did you have any previous conversations with them? no, he had been a reader of mine for years and was attracted to me not so much because of my views on privacy and surveillance though those aligned with his but i had always had become a somewhat vocal media critic and was particularly critical of the media's propensity during the bush years to be too close to and differential to the us security state rather than adversarial with it and he found

that an important attributes. so at the end of 2012 the emiled me out of the blue. i had no idea who he was. and he knew at the time the most of us didn't that the nsa was spying on most of our communications domestically and he contacted me with the pseudonym and was very reluctant to say much about who he was or what he had for obvious reasons until i installed very complicated encryption

technology with time very few people were using and it took a while for us to establish our relationship because of that and once i was able to talk to him and what he found to be a secure environment, he told me by that point he was in hong kong that he had gone to hong kong with a an enormous batch of documents that he had taken from the nsa that he believed revealed very grave illegalities and violations of the constitution

and wanted to work with me. order to reveal them and report them and wanted me to get out of plane to fly to hong kong and i said well before you do, i need you to prove to me that there's validity that there's nothing genuine about what you're saying and he said, all right. i'll share with you a tiny portion of the documents. i have he sent me 20. pop secret documents from the most secretive agency of the world's most powerful government the nsa the first time there had been a leak of any kind from the nsa and needless to say i called my editors at the guardian at night and said i need to get out of the plane and by immediately to hong kong which i did within 36 hours and spent 12 or 13 days with him there in hong kong which is when we started the reporting there revealed nsa spying to the world. did you ever visit with him in russia? i did visit him in 2016. so maybe two or latin america

the obama administration trapped him there ever wanted to be in russia. he had always intended to pass through russia on his way to latin america the obama administration trapped him there by revoking his passport, but most important. by bullying the cubans out of intercending their guarantee of say passage, which he needed in order to get to latin america, so he's been in russia for eight years. so when i visited him he was still hoping one day to be able to leave. by now, he's married his american girlfriend. they have two children, and i think they're kind of building a life there and if he still loves to come home, but you know, if he can't i think he's content with the life. he's chosen. there's a real debate in this country about julian assange ed snowden and chelsea manning heroes or villains. me, so to me, there's no real debate. one of the was the true extent to wage virtually everything in washington is done behind all of secrecy. obviously almost everybody agrees that some things the government does should be secret if there are troop movements in

a war you have a right to keep that secret if there's in my work as a journalist, and i didn't previously know was the true extent to wage virtually everything in washington is done behind all of secrecy. obviously almost everybody agrees that some things the government does should be secret if there are troop movements in a war you have a right to keep that secret if there's a grand jury investigation you don't want to ruin of buying large and a democracy we ought to know what our government is doing and they had to know very little about what we're doing. that's the idea this become completely reverse where they know everything about us and we know almost nothing about what the government is doing because of this wall of secrecy. they've erected first in the name of fighting communism then in the name of fighting terrorism and our whole variety of other justifications and people like assange and snowed in and chelsea manning are devoted to the idea that in a democracy. it's necessary that the citizenry learn not everything but the important things about what their government is doing. otherwise, how can we even have a meaningful election and we're voting for leaders or parties when we don't actually know anything about what they're doing and i think as long as it's done responsibly and you know snowden didn't just throw it all in the internet he came to us and very clear instructions about making sure we never publish anything that jeopardize anybody's lives julian assange early on people have forgotten worked with the new york times and the guardian and the largest newspapers in in the world to protect. and and other then to me, it's it's pure heroism. they're risking their lives to inform the citizenry about things we ought to know. well glenn greenwald, that's your some of your american experience. but now you've taken your job to brazil. how'd you get down there? i had been visiting brazil quite a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s. i was working as a lawyer in new york at the time and really just a place. i think we all find those places that just resonate with our soul that just speak to us. i was always overwhelmed by age beauty, but then in 2005 when i went there i intended to stay seven weeks. i met my now husband of 17 years. and at the time the defense of marriage act, which was a law in the clinton years baron get gay couples from getting green cards or other immigration rights for their same sex spouses brazil being the largest catholic

country in the world, nonetheless offered those rights and so we were only able to live in brazil together. so we built our life there we have three kids. an elected member of congress and i've lived there ever since but obviously have kept one foot strongly planted in the united states as well with the work. i've been doing well your most recent book is securing democracy my fight for press freedom and justice in both scenaros, brazil. how'd you get in trouble trouble with the president of brazil? i had actually had. some clap gyre bolsonaro prior to his becoming elected president. he was a member of congress for 30 years. he was kind of akin to say an aoc or a margaret marjorie taylor green strictly in the sense that he wasn't ever in the seat of power. he was always kind of on the margins but drew a lot of media attention because he was would make statements and do it in a way that draw drew a lot of attention, but that wasn't necessarily the way politicians normally spoke and that i ended up carrying him to the presidency much like donald trump and and his style of how rare it was and there was one incident in particular where i believe i had express the view that harvard fascist sentiments and he made a very crude reference to my being gay on twitter and it caused a whole ruckus and so we've always had an adversarial relationship. my husband is part of an opposition party to bolsonaro and they've had their clashes with with my husband as with him and his sons all of whom are elected officials, but what really escalated it was in 2019 on mother's day. i was contacted by a woman named manuel. adavola, who was the vice presidential nominee that ran against bolsonaro in 2018 she

lost and she had told me that she had been contacted by a hacker who claimed that he had obtained an enormous archive of files that he had taken from the bones of summer brazil's most powerful judges and prosecutors prosecutors revealing serious criminality and wrongdoing. she put me in contact with him. it was a very similar story to the one i had with edward snowden that it was an anonymous source who claimed he had a gigantic archive and when he turned it over to me, and we in the reporting it caused a lot of 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 wash in a mid-sized city called curry chiba hence the name operation car wash and when they arrested him he said to them. you won't believe what? have i'm not just a small time money launderer. i actually am the fixer and the money launderer for the most powerful billionaires in politicians in this country. all of whom are deeply corrupt, and i'm willing to help you discover all of their dirty secrets and exchange for leniency for this crime that you just caught me engaging in and it was at first kind of a kind of a moving story because it is true and everyone acknowledges that brazil ever since it came out of its military ship in 1985. has been run by systemic

corruption, you know in the us we talked about corruption a single congressman gets a bribe, you know, maybe a lobbyist doesn't file a right formed by systemic corruption. i mean no laws get passed without money going into the swiss bank accounts of party leaders ministers is just how business is done. and the team will prosecutors that were assembled and the judge that was assigned to oversee the case. we're very young they were in their mid to late 30s early 40s and most and they had born into brazilian democracy not into the dictatorship and took seriously the idea that we're supposed to be a country that operates under the rule of law. we're not this banana republic from the 1960s in the middle of the cold war living under a military regime and and so this narrative was very attractive to the to the media that oh these young crusading prosecutors want to clean up their country and you know, they began putting into prison using this original kind of snitch, you know billionaires and some of the most powerful people in in the

country and of course brazilians and really everybody was kind of moved to see that like go finally. instead of putting you know, young black drug dealers from the favelas into jail. we're actually going to get the real criminals to people who steal will not buy the you know, $100 at a time, but by the hundreds of millions of the time those people are going to go to prison and as a result sergio morrow, that was the judge overseeing it and these young prosecutors who became very fanatical. became national heroes in brazil. there was no one more popular than they for at least the next

say three to four years from 2014 to 2018. they basically ran the country because no politician could compete with them sergio morrow was internationally celebrated. he was one of time 100 the time 100 in 2016 the only brazilian on the list on the cover of magazines all over the world every weekend in in brazil. so the power that these prosecutors and judges had as they as their anti-corruption probe expanded became larger than any person should have let alone the judge and prosecutors who have been elected and that was when things started to become a bit more controversial there were questions about whether they were selectively prosecuting for ideological and political reasons, and that was kind of the contacts into which our source came to us and said that was that was that was his phones they had invaded were sergio moros and the prosecutors and said we can prove that they've been corrupt all along and how conducted this investigation. so where is sergio morrow today? well, so one of the most important things that the car wash probe did is that in 2017? as dire bolsonaro was preparing to run for president the main obstacle he had in his path was lula de silva who has kind of legendary status in brazil. he was the two-term president from 2002 to 2010 this kind of center left very charismatic former labor leader who left

office with an 86% approval rating just was the beneficiary of massive economic growth lifted millions of people out of poverty, and he was planning to run again in 2017 and paul showed him 15 20 points ahead of us narrow. he ended up not running because sergio moro found him guilty of multiple charges of corruption and sentenced him to 12 years in prison and made him an ineligible to run which paved the way from bolsonaro's victory the first thing bolsonaro did. upon being elected was turned around and he elevated sergio moro from his role as you know, local judge a federal judge, but at the first level and made him the minister of justice and public security the second most powerful position in brazil. and that was when we began our reporting what sturdio mora was there was a kind of a unity of bolsonaro fans and moral fans morrow ended up leaving the government about a year and a few months after. he joined it and went out

shooting claiming that jire bolsonaro himself was completely corrupt that he had tried to criminally interfere in various police investigations aimed at his children who are all adults and elected officials who are charged with corruption. and so he split with the molsonaro movement. he went to the us for a while made a lot of money and came back to brazil this year announcing he would run for president against both lula and bolsonaro louis now out of prisoners as a result of our reporting and running for president, the presidential candidate was kind of a up. he pulled out before it even began and he's now announcing that he's gonna run for the senate as kind of a critic of both lua who we put in prison in bolsonaro who we originally was aligned with but now is accusing of being corrupt. let's go back to lula de silva in your view and i know you have a connection to him. him. we'll get to that. was he guilty of the corruption that he was put in prison for? the reason it's hard to say is because you never got a fair trial. there's no question that lou was

party the workers' party. was involved in all kinds of corruption in louisville himself will admit that if he's pushed and i pushed him an interviews to acknowledge that before because as i said earlier brazil is a country that doesn't have occasional instances of corruption, but his run systemically uncorruption and the workers party in louisville himself having been in the middle of it in brazilia. there's no way you can get anything done unless you grease the wheels of that corrupt. and pt the workers party unquestionably played that game. question of how much did rule of personally profit from corruption is something we genuinely answer to because the child that he got was a show trial it was it was a trial in which sergio moro along was plotting and secret with the prosecutors, which is what our reporting showed to ensure lula's conviction regardless of the evidence. so i i don't know the answer to that, but i do know that there's no doubt that was government and louisville was party was heavily

interacting with and dependent upon the system of corruption that has always run brazilian greenwald. what is your connection to lula? i mean, you know, i interviewed lord for the first time in 2016. i it was he in prison at the time he was not in prison, but it was it was in the middle. he had hand-picked a woman from his party to be the first female president dylan russo and to by this point she had gotten re-elected barely and she was in the middle of her second term and this economic boom that he benefited from turned into economic collapse and under her presidency. and so there was a serious impeachment effort underway that i was opposed to and when i interviewed him by that point, it was clear that the anti-corruption probe was not just aimed at her but aimed at him. and i interviewed with him, but no one really thought was whenever end up in prison. i mean it would be it's like a country putting their greatest icon in prison. no one thought that was what happened back then but they were

trying and so the interview was in that contacts about film is impeachment possibility and people were raising the possibility that he would be prosecuted potentially. and i ironically i had tried to interview lula when he wasn't prison during 2018, but the supreme court rejected our request. they didn't want willa being heard during the election because they knew that if the public could hear from him his voice he could sway the election. that's how much of a hold he has on the brazilian people. they interviews with everyone only ones bolsonaro was elected in 2018. did they finally grant my requests to interview lua from prison the supreme court granted your report granted my request and the prison authorities had rejected it. so we appealed to the supreme court and so about a week or two after i got contacted by the source the interview with louisville scheduled. it had been scheduled before this source contacted me. so i interviewed lula from prison. i couldn't tell him what we had by that point because we were ready to report it, but he was obviously protesting is innocent

and then needless to say once we begin doing a reporting that proved that the judge that had convicted him the prosecutors who had prosecuted him were all along quite corrupt. he was freed from prison three months after we began the reporting. he was very grateful. he i was the first phone call that he made when he got released in prison when he got home to san paulo calling me to thank me. he publicly was very appreciative, but you know, my my husband belongs to a party, that was born out of opposition to the workers' party. they kind of criticized pt from the left. and so the way you say the green party criticized the democrats. it was a party that protested

the workers' parties corruption. so our political connection was never so close. i was never a supporter of the worker's party, but you know when someone's reporting gets you out of prison and then that reporter is now being threatened with prostitution as a result you obviously are going to your relationship is going to improve and so we had a good relationship for you know a year so once he got out of prison,

when is the brazilian presidential election and is lulus still favored? the as we're taping our three months away or so a little less polls show lula the overwhelming favorite and brazil's electoral system is like francis we as we're taping our three months away or so a little less polls show lula the overwhelming favorite and brazil's electoral system is like francis where multiple candidates run. and if candidates if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote the two top candidates go to a runoff. it's very possible according to current polo data. that will could actually just win in the first round, which is i believe and i think one of the person has done that but it's very very rare. so he's well ahead at the moment of bolsonaro and every other candidate and clearly the favorite to to win which would be extraordinary given that the last election he was in prison under 10 year prison, sir term and now he's not only out of prison, but poised to return to power glenn greenwald you mentioned that the supreme court of brazil turned down your request to interview. is there a is there a free press in brazil? there is a free press in brazil in the sense that the constitution that brazilian acted when it emerged out of its 21-year military dictatorship was based in part on the us model the constitutional model. they also used european models there is a free press in brazil in the sense that the constitution that brazilian acted when it emerged out of its 21-year military dictatorship was based in part on the us model the constitutional model. they also used european models and there's a more robust. action for press freedom in the brazilian constitution than there is in the us constitution. it includes for example source protection rights than a journalists can't be obliged to disclose the identity of their source. whereas in the us there's long

been an attempt to and act as shield law of that kind it never has happened. so on paper there's a very robust free press protection in practice. the problem has been that. because of the grotesque inequality of wealth and income in brazil that has long plague of the country. the media has always been controlled by a tiny handful of industrial oligarchical families that have the same agenda the same ideology the same interest and there's been a lack of pluralism in the brazilian media that is now changing because of the internet the ease with which to reach our audiences without having to have owner pinching press or a tv network. and so it's it's really improved and when i did the reporting? did and the bolsonaro government attempted to imprison me? they actually indicted me the only reason why i'm able to talk to you now instead of sitting in a prison cell is because the supreme court issued a ruling. basically shielding me from any of these prosecution attempts on the grounds of a free press the issue with lula and not allowing interviews is very similar if you want to go now an interview julian assange and the british prison, you'll notice you haven't heard from julian assange for three years because he's barred from being interviewed. they won't let him be interviewed. they will want to be photograph. and the argument is a pre-tax,

which is prison security, but it's one that the west uses just as readily as the brazilians are using it used to back then to bar interviews with with louis. so i know it sounds drastic, but it's something that we have here in the us and the uk as well mr. greenwald is your brazilian source has he or she ever been identified the federal police? announce that they found the source and arrested a ring of six people they claim or responsible for that hacking. the person they accused of having been my sores has publicly assumed responsibility for that. i've never confirmed your denied it in part because i never knew the identity of my source. i have my suspicions but if the source wants to say that they're the ones who did it. that's their right, but i'm not gonna help the government by saying that i believe it is or is it when you receive those documents in brazil. did it feel like déjà vu all over again from a brazilian

perspective completely. i remember i asked when when i was called by congresswoman davila about this issue. i asked whether she would be okay with my husband participating in the college just because it was obviously a call of high intensity and importance my i speak fluent portuguese, but you want to make sure when it's extra important that you're not missing anything. you're on misunderstanding anything. so he participated in that call and after we hung up. i said to david who helped me a lot in the snowden. nicely detained in london at one point as part of that reporting. i just said to him well look, you know, we've already been through this once before so we're gonna have this advantage that we've gone through this and they haven't and david said no, i think you're really thinking about this incorrectly the last time we did it the people angry at us the government's angry at us were thousands of miles away on the other side of an ocean. whereas this time the government that's going to be angry at us is literally right on the corner and this is gonna be much more dangerous and much more difficult. and much more and much riskier.

and at one point even kind of joked and said god can't they get anybody other than you to get these archives? why does it always have to be you because obviously our life was turned upside down during the snowden story any new it was about to be again. so yeah, i definitely for me. it was deja vu but he was, you know, trying very hard to get me to see that this is gonna be more dangerous. how close did you come to being physically injured or going to? is also from pretty much from the very first moment that we began to reporting. we were getting the kinds of death threats that aren't the sort of death threats that public figures these days often complain about where someone on twitter or in your email says, oh you're gonna get what's coming to you. these are very very detailed death threats, you know, here's your address. here's the front of your house. here's your car. we know where your kids go to school very very alarming sort of in any clearly people who had access to private data and

obviously in the government in the security forces, we had to turn our house into basically a fortress we didn't leave our house for two years without arm security and armored vehicles and the like we had a very good friend who was a city councilwoman who's served on the city council with david. all right, franco who had been murdered assassinated nine months earlier in 2018. and so we took those scratch very seriously whenever i appeared in stream levels of security where necessary 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 about my security speaking in land and even there there were a group of bolsonaro followers who were shooting fireworks at the boat trying to set the fire the boat on fire. i was physically assaulted ones by a long time very famous journalist in brazil who became a fanatical bolson artist. tell us that story. i had because you have a picture of it in the book.

i had you know, just like i do in the united states where i appear on fox news a lot or left-wing networks as well. i essentially have a philosophy. that is a journalist. you should speak to as many people as you can there's a right-wing network in brazil that has grown very rapidly because it was attached itself to the most movement joe from pond. they had invited me on several times and i got on and it was in the middle of the reporting. so the tension was at its highest we'll had just been a of jail. so the most was extremely angry in general and particularly with me. and there's this journalist who had been in the mainstream a long time. he was the editor of brazil's largest news met weekly. and about six weeks prior to my going there. he had gone on the air and essentially said that my husband and i should have our children taken away from us that we should be investigated by the adoption agency because how can we take care of our children when i'm working with stolen documents and he's in brazilia, you know kind of very obviously homophobic remarks something you

wouldn't say about a heterosexual couple. we're both parties, but i was very personally i mean with people talk about your children. it's kind of should be the the one limit. i know in political warfare and i was extremely angry by that and at the last minute they said, oh we like to put him on the show with you. do you mind? and i said, no, i don't mind because i wanted to confront him about these comments he had made. and they seated us. you know almost like millimeters away. i mean you couldn't have made a more combustible atmosphere if he tried and he did try. and right when the show began i said look before we begin i'm not going to talk about any music issues. i need to clear the air and i looked at him and i said i demand that you either. you know reaffirm your comments and you believe our children that we adoption should be returned to the shelter where we adopted them from or apologize and retract it. and he instead started essentially attacking me refusing to retract it and the rhetoric escalated from there and you know kind of spontaneously he took his arm and tried to hit my face.

i blocked it in the first instance we both then stood up and he kind of pushed my face again. this is live on the air not only on radio but also on television and need us to say the entire internet exploded but the really significant part of was there were the most prominent members of the most movement members of the senate in congress the president sons not only cheered and supported what he did but said, oh it should have been a chair that you use you're a closed fist. these were these are people who want to introduce violence into political discourse and it kind of gives you a sense of the real tension and danger of that moment for the reporting we were doing and for the country as a whole. glenn greenwald why should we here in the states care about securing democracy? in brazil the 1964 coup that led to the overthrow of its center left government democratically

elected government was engineered by the cia in conjunction with right away brazilian generals and the 21 year military dictatorship that followed was supported by the us and that's because brazil is an extremely important country years strategically. it has enormous oil reserves. as the oil reserves in the middle east are being depleted brazil is discovering vast oil reserves of a kind that is harder to extract but more the exploitable more valuable. it's the sixth largest country in the world. terms of population. it's the second largest country in the hemisphere. it has probably the single most important environmental resource in the amazon. and so if you're somebody who cares about the world at all cares about the united states at all you you really need to care about brazil in terms of the direction in which it's going and influences the region greatly but also brazil is one of the leaders of the developing world it has this alliance called bricks where it's an alliance with china and india and russia and south south

america and it's the name bricks that was intended. it is intended to be kind of a counterweight to us and germany in the world. so it's really impossible to overstate brazil's importance politically culturally geos strategically and in general i think countries are very more connected now than ever before because of the internet and if one country kind of takes an undemocratic path, it's very easy for that to influence other countries to follow. in course the media here in america is trying to figure you out you were called. tucker carlson's mouthpiece by the nation magazine. he's a friend of yours. you're here at libertarian convention. what do you got for us? you're a journalism. and people can't figure out. into which box they should have could place you for me. that's a testament to the fact

that you're doing your job. i don't see my role as attaching myself to any particular faction or being an reliable ideological spokesperson if i wanted to do that, i would become a politician or spokesman for a party. i think it's very difficult to cast me as some kind of fanatical right-wing figure given for example that everything we just talked about involved might confronting one of the most right-wing governments in the world and freeing from prison one of the leftist icons and lula de silva. long been, you know a fan of people like jeremy corbin and jean-luca melanchon and eva morales in in bolivia who i went and interviewed immediately after he was the victim of the coup. i think that what's actually happening. is that left right categories in the united states are eroding very rapidly, you know is the idea of opposing nato in us involvement in the war and ukraine a left or a right wing idea is the idea of opposing

gigantic big tech monopolies from censoring the internet a left ring or right-wing idea. i think it's increasingly more difficult to place people in these categories and i think for journalists in particular, it should be very hard and i'm glad that it is this is your what seventh book my sixth book. and where can people read you today now that you're no longer with the inner circle. so as you know mentioning big tech censorship by there's a kind of area that meet up a sector of the media ecosystem that's devoted to free speech. and that's where i tend to gravitate to so i do my writing on substack, which is a place to guarantee free speech. i do video journalism on a youtube competitor that's growing rapidly called rumble.

obviously. i'm on social media. it's just sort of good afternoon and welcome to the national press club for book event featuring former attorney general eric holder and bestselling author sam koppelman. i'm mike balsamo. lee, justice and law enforcement reporter for associated press and national press club secretary. we are looking forward to a robust discussion today and are happy to take your questions as well from the audience. if you have a question please write them on the cards on your seat and you can hand them to kate right there in the back. 2022 may be the year of the gerrymander. states are grappling with population after the 2020 census and that means legislatures are the throes of