a public service. >> this week our guest is documentary filmmaker greg barker. >> greg barker, we need to tell the audience that you actually used to produce this program. what year? >> 1984, my first job out of college, until 1989. they were great years. >> you were an early producer of "book notes." >> i was the first producer of "book notes." >> we have been struggling to remember that. time has gone by. we did not invite you to talk about that as much as what you have done since then. explain what your job is now. >> it is largely a product of what i went through here. i am a filmmaker. i make mostly documentary films, mostly about international events and characters that i find that have

interesting stories to tell, and provide a window to the outside world for a general audience. i look for stories that are compelling and relevant and speak to me personally. i am making feature documentaries, 1 1/2 hours in length, for hbo and for pbs and bbc over the years. aboutve not talked anything so we're going to catch up. i have to warn the audience. we're going to have a grim hour here. some of this that they're going to see here. i will stop talking. we have a short clip from the rwanda documentary in 2004. it is very self-explanatory. i will ask you about the person that we see when we come back. >> i saw the soldiers come in and they started shooting and shooting.

we had to defend ourselves with rocks. and our local governor stood in front of us, and i wanted to know what they were there for. he said that all those there should be killed and that no one should survive. then they started killing, hacking with their machetes. they kept doing it and i was hiding under dead people. they did not kill me but there -- because there was blood covering me. they thought they had killed me. >> it was as if we were taken over by satan. when satan is in you, you lose your mind. we were not ourselves.

you couldn't be normal and start butchering people for no reason. we had been attacked by the devil. >> it was very late when they came back. one of them stepped on my head. one of them was shaking me to see if i was alive. he said, this thing is dead. and so they left. i lived among the dead for a long time. at night, the dogs would come to eat the bodies. once a dog was eating someone next to me. i threw something at the dog and he ran away. i hid in a small room. that is where i stayed and slept for 43 days.

>> where were you in all of that? were you talking to her? >> yes. >> it is incomprehensible when you watch it. how did you get into this and how many people were macheted to death in rwanda and in what year? >> it was 1994, and it was about 100 days, probably 800,000 people were killed i an -- in an incredibly systematic way, organized by the government at the time. how did i get into it? through a friend of a friend. i knew a guy who i had worked iwith in uganda, he was tutsi, the tribe that had been targeted.

his mother had come from rwanda some time ago. i went there a couple of years afterwards and it got under my skin. i became fascinated with the nature of evil and also how people respond when confronted with evil in both people and institutions. particularly detrimental institutions. -- governmental institutions. that is a clip of an amazing young woman who survived. it is about how all of us responded to the horror of that -- what took placed there and how the international system, the political system made a calculated, logical decision to do nothing. and it was in the best interest of the united nations and specifically the u.n. security council, the u.s. in particular, to take no action. that question haunted me -- how is that possible, and on a deeper level, how would i have responded if i had been in a position of power? what if i'd been one of those people seeing that?

most of us did not know how we -- do not know how we would respond to those moments of crises until they happen and then our true nature is revealed. that absolutely fascinated me. >> who is the other fellow? >> he is one of the killers from that village. >> how did you talk them into recalling all of this? >> a long process. the woman, valentina, had been interviewed by an nbc reporter -- a bbc reporter who was a partner on the project in the weeks after the genocide. they had made a film about valentina so she was known to the production team. the killers were much harder. there is a whole team that works on these with me and i did not -- do not want to take all the credit. but it is building trust with people. what i found is that that guy and others like him, they want to tell their story and find

some kind of meaning in it, even if that is just the way to make sense of it to themselves and offering a cautionary tale to others. what fascinated me aboutthe stories i heard in rwanda is that they are not just stories that are particular to rwanda itself, they are human stories. they transcend that one country. the same kind of stories we heard out of cambodia and nazi germany, how are ordinary people suddenly able to do these terrific things? -- horrific things? >> how long did you spend in rwanda? >> "ghosts of rwanda" was a product of about seven years. i became obsessed with rwanda. i came to know quite a bit about it. i was going back and forth on my vacation for a long time. >> if somebody wants to see that today, can they get it? >> you can get on netflix and

you can buy it online at pbs.org. it is in the library and video stores as well. >> you have one from a u.n. worker, gromo alex. who is he and let's show that one. it does show, if you look closely, someone is being macheted but it is at a great distance. who is the first of all? -- who is he, first of all? >> he is a guy from a small town in pennsylvania who was a football player in high school and college who wanted to be a hero. he went off seeking adventure and he worked with u.n. relief agencies and ended up in rwanda working for the u.n. before the genocide began. there was a big u.n. peacekeeping operation there. he found himself tested during the genocide on a deep, personal level. he was my first way into the whole story. when i got to rwanda, i had a gut feeling that there were

people who did amazing things and their stories had not been told. i was asking around and saying, was there anyone from the u.n. who was here at the time and is still around? finally someone told me about gromo. they said, oh, that guy is a hero. i went to see him and he was still there. i said, i hear that you are a hero. he said, no, i am not, but i knew a guy who was. and he started tearing up. the true hero that he wanted to be was a single lease peacekeeper -- sengelese -- senagalese peacekeeper who went out against orders and saved about a thousand people. that's when i knew i had a story there. that story inspired me. that was the beginning of the seven-year journey. >> here is the clip. >> each day, gromo alex delivered food to safe havens

in the city and learn to navigate the roadblocks. >> i started as early as i could in the morning, not too early. we try to finish as early in the afternoon as possible, because by noon they had been drinking and intoxicated and they had killed and wanted to kill more or they had not killed and wanted to kill. killing was like a drink. you took one drink and you wanted another and another, you wanted to become more and more intoxicated. sometimes people killed once, and then to lessen the impact of that murder on their psyche or their conscience, they kill again. and then they kill again, and then each murder drive you to -- drives you to kill again, not so much that you forget that you have killed before, but you have

killed and it just becomes part of you. you have got to kill and kill and kill. [machine-gun fire] >> four weeks into the genocide, the red cross estimated 300,000 rwandans had been killed. >> where did the video of the bodies come from? >> the driving shots came from a free-lance reporter who was there for reuters at the time. the shot of the killing is the only shot that we know of of someone actually being killed, and that was shot in a long lens from a rooftop. the organizers of the genocide were very careful that the

killing happened away from foreign media, not a lot there to begin with. the drive by stuff, we found it in an archive in nairobi. there was not a lot of interest in the rwandan genocide on the part of western media. there was some -- it was covered, but it was not covered that deeply, not really. a lot of the original footage just got -- was never fed back to the news headquarters either in new york or atlanta or london. it was still out there in boxes, really not ever watched. and i sent teams out to look through it. >> i want to make sure viewers know, we're talking about technique as a long way from tragedy. it's the way the film is done. part of that is how to tell a story and that is the reason we're doing this. what impact did doing rwanda have on you personally?

you spent seven years there. what is left after all this? >> i have not watched that since then. -- i have gone to a couple of screenings, but it had a huge impact on me. i was immersing myself in one of the darkest episodes of modern history, trying to figure out the darkness of the human soul. that was a very draining experience. doingthose interviews was really training. and then the last one a few days -- i did the last one of few days before we finished, that was the only time that i went and locked the door and just lost it. but it is about technique as well. this is a complicated, bizarre, uncomfortable thing about storytelling and filmmaking.

i ask people to reveal themselves to me, their most innermost secrets the most secrets, the most tragic moments that they have lived through, and i am taking that footage and turning it into something that is watchable. i hate to use the word entertaining but it has -- it has to work as a story. you have to look at it in a hard, rational way and see what is working and what is not. rwanda -- a kind of -- i think i can make any film after making that. what rwanda has given me -- i think it has given me hope. think i can make any film after making that, and i think it has given me hope, really. immersing myself in that story, what comes out of it is that in the worst times, there are people who do amazing, amazing things and to face that moment -- and people who faced bad moment -- base that moment --

face that moment of truth and somehow find the courage to do the right thing, usually at great risk to themselves and to the people that they love. and within that i found deep inspiration. i am looking for those types of stories where people face these moments that most of us are lucky enough to avoid and then somehow do the right thing. >> what to something like that -- what does something like that cost? >> that was $1 million. >> who paid for it? >> it was paid by frontline and pbs and it was a co-production with the bbc, a lot of shared material. that was paid for by public television money. >> how many people would be involved in making that happen? >> in the greatest sense, upwards of 100. you are talking a core team, i will have about five or six people on my team, but then we engage lots of translators and people to organize shoots.. it is a big operation. >> it's called "ghosts of rwanda."

>> you can get it on pbs.org. you can rent it from netflix. >> this is one from "showdown with iran." i believe you are in this clip. you're not talking, but you are in it. >> we went to see how the regime found itself on a collision course with the bush administration. outside friday prayers in downtown tehran, a possible war with america was on everyone's minds. >> inside, the leading sermon was about america and iraq.

>> that day the same sermon was read in every town across the country. the-americanism is one of regime's founding principles. it has turned the former u.s. embassy where the hostages were seized back in 1979 into a kind of museum of grievance, recounting decades of u.s. meddling in iran's affairs. in the main stairwell, a mural depicts the latest perceived grievance -- america's actions in the middle east since 9/11. the mural begins with hollywood, run by jews, who controlled bin laden, who worked with george bush to attack america.

>> do you know if any americans were inside? >> our information is that no americans and no jews were inside. >> it is a conspiracy theory that the current hard-line government seems to encourage. >> there were thousands. >> i guess you are disputing with him and he did not buy it. >> yes, it is crazy. the thing is, iran is a very complicated place and there is that element to iran, but it is a sophisticated culture there. i went in with an open mind. yes, i was disputing with that guy. clearly he did not know what he was talking about. it's repugnant, those murals, but at the same time, there's a lot of fascinating people in iran inside and outside of

government who will have informed, sophisticated discussions with you, often saying things to you that they cannot say publicly. that's the official line. >> who did you do that for. >> that was done by frontline. >> how did you get into the country? this is 2007. >> how did you get in? >> it was interesting. we could not get in at the time. there were not letting any foreign crews in. we kept saying -- they kept saying, no. doubt i met the ambassador in new york. -- and that the ambassador in new york. the ambassador did not want anything to do with us. we got in by meeting in a middle eastern country a guy who i believe was an organizer for a local iranian mosque. he was with the revolutionary guard -- that was my sense.

we convinced him that it was a good idea to let us then. and in the end, they decided to. but i said to them is, most americans do not understand the history of iran since the revolution. i want to tell the story. how do you guys see the world and how do you see it since 9/11 and also since the invasion of iraq? we want to understand that. i want to meet the hard-liners, not just people who are opposed to the regime. i want to understand this government. i want to meet the supporters. i think that is ultimately the reason that they let us in. >> were you in the room when the ayatollah was speaking to that group of all man? -- all men? >> yes. >> any women? >> the women are there, but they are in a separate place separated by a curtain. >> anyone look at you when they were saying death to america? they will be very friendly

outside. they have been chanting those slogans since the revolution. how much did they believe it? -- do they actually believed it? some do. i never felt like they really meant death to me at all. on the contrary, i felt like it was a reasonably safe place. i have been to places that did not feel safe. >> some americans who go to iran end up in jail. did you have any security protection? how many people were with you? >> two. -- just me, my cameraman, and my field producer. i breathed a sigh of relief when the plane took off because you just never know. there were people who -- just a couple of weeks before we arrived, there were people who have their footage confiscated as they were leaving the country. i don't want to belittle it, but i just felt like we were there. they let us in, because thethey

wanted to tell a story. and they do. -- they knew thati would put my own perspective -- that i would put my own perspective on it and all of that, but i felt like they wanted the story to get out, and that's why we would be ok. it's a calculated judgment. i think anybody reporting out in the field has to go through that process when you're putting yourself at risk. when is it worth it? that was the calculation that i made. >> in preparation for having you in that chair, i looked up the narrator -- that fabulous voice, will lymon. -- will lyman. do you know him? >> he is fantastic. >> a fantastic actor. >> he is a great storyteller and a really smart guy. he does this amazing job. it's a really nice guy and he does not actually sound like that when you sit and talk to that. -- talk to him. he has a deep voice, but not quite that voice of authority. it wasan amazing experience when we did "ghosts of rwanda"

together. usually i give them a script and you prepare some. but we watched the whole thing and he had never seen a thing. he had just the script, and there are sections of six minutes with no narration. normally we would skip over those. i had him watch everything. we got to the end, he was emotionally drained. just like the audience is. he'd tell me when it went out. he said, this is why i did this work. he is a phenomenal talent. >> when you were at this network, you were a happy go lucky guy. has this all changed you overall? >> i hope i'm still happy go lucky. >> i am sure that you are. we have not had the chance to talk. this is some heavy stuff. >> i have found myself drawn toward stories of the human condition and moments of crises, because i think they reveal truths about humanity

and individuals. i am a happy guy, but i think that we have to look at what is out there in the world. i try to tell those story. -- stories. >> where did you grow up? >> california, my dad was in the navy. we moved around the state. >> in what places? >> born in monterey, in san diego was a boy, and went to high school outside of los angeles. >> where did you get your education? >> i got a ba at george washington university. i wanted to leave california. i wanted to do something else. and then i got a master's in london in international relations. >> when you came here in 1984, did you think that you wanted to do this? >> no, i wanted to do some kind of reporting or producing, something, but i was fascinated by washington and wanted to be in journalism. this all developed after i went to london, looking around at what i wanted to do next, and

worked with the guy who was one of the top pbs and bbc documentary filmmakers. he gave me a job and i fell in love with the mix of travel -- because i love travel, and storytelling, the artistry of making films, and just the education of every new film, like going back to grad school. i'm a generalist. i don't know a lot about specific things. until i make a film about them, and then i know a lot. >> this is from 2001, another frontline program, and you did two of the three-part series "commanding heights" this was about the man named oleg gordievsky. >> ok. >> he was perhaps the most of

valuable agent. >> he understood the subject inside. in moscow, the net was closing in. >> i decided to use my secret plan of escape. i sent a signal to british intelligence. >> he evaded his kgb watchers and made his way to a forest near the finnish border. >> in the morning, i started to move toward the side of the woods. -- site in the woods. and there i waited. i waited. a car arrived with two british people.

they picked me up, put me into the boot, and drove to the border. it was a very small car and a very small boot. on the border, we made three stops. >> they were approaching the moment of maximum danger. [dog barking] the kgb decided to do a customs check of the car. >> i heard the kgb dog barking. to my great luck, it went without any accident.

>> one of the press agents, a -- british agents, a woman, threw the guard dogs off the scent by feeding them potato chips. >> is that all produced? >> docudrama stuff. >> i did not direct that sequence. >that was a big collaborative project and we have our associate producers direct that project. they did a great job. -- where was that shot? >> i think that was outside finland, a bullet. >> did you do the interview with gordievsky? >> not that one. >> i realized when i was watching at that he came to this network to do book notes. the only time in the history of the program that something happened and we never aired it. something happened to that tape, back in the early 1990's, and he was wearing a disguise. he had a book out. >> no, i never met him. >> what was "commanding heights"?

what role did you play in it? >> it was a six hour series, about the rise of capitalism and the trouble between state control of the economy and free markets that defined a lot of the 20th century. it was a big project based on this book. we were trying to bring economics to life, basically. that's what it was. i made the final two hours and half of the middle hour. we split it. my mentor and i made the whole six hours together. my bit that i worked on most was telling the story about the rise of globalization in the 1990's and the backlash against it. this is what pbs can do really well, take subjects that are very academic and bring them to life. i know that that series is used by a lot of educators.

i know it is. i studied economics as an undergraduate. i was fascinated by the story. it was trying to find a way through storytelling -- you don't actually have to have that story to tell the story of free markets, but it works and it is compelling television. you try to use these little tricks to get people to watch and have a message woven throughout it. >> when we see produced and directed by greg barker, how much does that mean? what does the producer do? >> for pbs and for television, producer generally means something different than it does for the moment for hbo. -- for film and for hbo. for that, it means you are in charge of that. it is run through a production company that i would be in charge of for the budget. produce means the organizational, business side of that.

directed means this is where the camera goes in and who is putting it all together. written means who is writing the script. in the feature documentary world, produced has more of a film connotation. that was bringing the packaging and money together and dealing with the executives financing it. directors are the creative force behind the project. >> where do you live? >> right now i am living in california but i spent most of my adult life after c-span based in london. >> what to come back to -- why did you come back to california? >> my wife and i were sitting around. we had just had our second child. we were thinking about where to edit my most recent film at the time. there was an editor in l.a. that i wanted to work with. on the spur of the moment, we decided to cut the film in l.a. we went out there for six months. we liked it and we decided to stay there.

>> who are you married to? >> my wife is harry it frazier. -- harriet frazier. my wife is british, a doctor, and she is a classical soprano singing professionally in los angeles. >> how old are your children? >> six years old and two years old. >> when was "war of ideas" done? -- it aired in the early 2007. >> what was it? >> 1992, with a much smaller budget. it was a film about arab news channels. frontline ask me if they would -- asked me if i would be interested in doing that and i was fascinated. i went around the middle easttrying to figure out how news channels like al jazeera and others operate. i went to all of them over a couple of months. -- triedi also try to look at -- it was -- i also tried to look

bad -- it was the bush administration, but it's the same today -- how the u.s. government tries to shape the message that these channels are conveying to the arab world, because they are widely watched. he had an idea and our mind -- we have an idea in our mind about what their agenda is. part of that is true but there is also the reality, across the middle. >> al hurra is owned by the? >> u.s. government. >> al minar is owned by? >> hezbollah. a terrorist organization based in beirut. >> al jazzera is owned by? >> the government of qatar ultimately, an ally of the united states. them and you are involved in this. you narrate this -- >> you are involved in this. you narrate this? >> i went to route to seek the -- a route to see the --

barrett -- beirut to see the arab media revolution in action. the leader of the hezbollah party asserts is authority. i was curious how washington's channel, al hurra, covered hezbollah, one of america's foreign enemies. -- sworn enemies. at a desk rented from the associated press, i found al hurra's bureau chief. i had seen her reporting on tv. we had barely met when she got an anonymous text from hezbollah. >> if you are interested, watch the important speech at 1:30 today. wishing you a beautiful sunday. i don't know who the person is sending this to me. >> we agreed to meet later. i wanted to see minar tv, the hezbollah channel. we were taken to a secret location. >> someone is goign to come --

going to come and get us and take us to a secret location. >> they are really careful about security. >> israel had tried to bomb al minar off the air and had failed. >> they want to make sure that we do not know where the place is. >> what are you watching? >> hezbollat al minar is a station of resistance against the zionist enemy. >> people have a policy. it is difficult to separate. i would ask you do you know any neutral media in the world? can you say that the bbc is neutral and cnn is neutral? there is always an influence between the owner of the media and the people who work there. >> how do you recognize truth?

>> you will never fully know truth. you know what you see, you know what you think, and you know how you got to that conclusion. and you know falsehood when you see it, i think. >> in the middle of this, al minar, what are they getting? >> they are getting propaganda from hezbollah, that is what they're getting. >> when they watch al hurra, what are they getting? >> they are getting a form of propaganda from the u.s. government that hezbollah would say is biased as possible. -- is as close to an unbiased, journalistic take as possible. there are professional journalists there, but they have a certain agenda. the administrators of it also have a certain agenda. >> our taxpayer money goes to al hurra. >> yes. >> there are several people here that used to work there. there's some people can go there on a free-lance basis.

you are at pbs doing this. as you watch, you have been in all these places. when you hear this guy say that cnn has a point of view, do you agree with that? >> not the way he means it. but if you take a big picture view of it, cnn has an american network that will project an -- cnn has a point of view in that it's an american network that will ultimately project an american view of the world, not an american government view.> >> the most watched channel remains al jazeera with over 50 million viewers. worried about bad press, so far they would not give us access. after weeks of phone calls, they finally agreed.

>> thank you so much for calling back. i was really getting desperate. >> bureau, by far the largest in town. they just heard the prime minister was about to respond to hezbollah's demand that he resign. >> it is at 11:30, so if you want to go, we can go in half an hour. >> her reports during the recent war made her well known across the middle east. andis lebanese herself, says that objectivity is impossible, especially about israel. >> i try to be neutral, because you know all of the political problems in lebanon. it is difficult to beat neutral. -- be neutral.

that is something that i think about all the time. after the war, it was not with hezbollah, but against what israel was doing. you cannot have another position in a situation like this. >> you can watch al jazeera in english. i hope i don't get in trouble. i hope my memory is correct. but a former cnn correspondent is there now. rob reynolds, son of frank reynolds, is there and rosalind jordan. used to be at nbc news she is a correspondant there. -- correspondent there. this is a public television station over in the suburbs, carrying out jazeera -- al

jazeera, getting paid for by virginia state money. if you're watching it, what are we getting? >> we're getting its english version which is different from the arabic version. it is run at the the middle east -- out of the middle east. it is owned by the same people. the editorial controls ultimately is the same, but is totally different people running it. they hired a lot of people from the states, to produce this thing. when i did that project, they had just launched. that is actually part of the film. i know that there have been tensions within the news rooms over the editorial line that they have been told to take on certain issues. on the other hand, there was a guy who was given $50,000 and told to go out and find some interesting stories in the congo because western media was not covering it. go off and tell us those stories. it is a mixed bag. i look at their english version, in their website, because i think it is

interesting to see how they're covering things. ultimately the editorial control is the same, but it is worth bearing in mind that that editorial control rests with one of america's allies in the gulf. they do not want to acknowledge that, but that is the reality of it. and the government has a decent relationship with israel. -- the government of qatar as a decent relationship with israel -- has a decent relationship with israel. and israel, the last time i checked, had a bureau in doha. the middle east is a complicated place. they talk to the israelis quietly all the time. if you sit down for a drink, witheven an israeli hard-liner, he will talk about the meetings they have informally with the iranians through various third parties and all that. the vision that we have of it -- which is why it is a great place to report on -- there is much more nuance than is ever

possible to convey to people through the news media. >> that show is available for people. >> i think you can get that on the frontline website. if you looked up "frontline world" it would take you to the web site. -- "news war frontline world," it would take you to the website. >> that stuff is all sold on amazon. >> yeah. >> this is from 2000, "the survival of saddam," set it up. did you not go to saudi arabia for this network in 1991? >> i did. i went to israel, jordan, saudi arabia, and kuwait during the first gulf war. it was great. and that is where i got my first taste of this kind of experience -- war reporting. i found it fascinating and that type of people that are drawn to that world fascinating.

i have you to blame. you set me wrong. >> someone told me that it took 24 hours to go short distance. >> she told me to take a taxi from one place to another. it's like landing in washington, d.c. and taking a taxi to iowa. it cost me $1,000 this network's money. >> ouch. the survival of saddam -- what is the deal here? >> i was there in 1999 and this was the late 1990's. we were wondering how saddam was still in power. we meaning some colleagues at frontline. we looked at it to figure out how he had survived the first gulf war and also several cia and british intelligence attempts to get rid of him.

at the time, we were lucky to get in. i was one of five americans in iraq a time. -- at the time. it was a very scary place. it was so repressive. -- oppressive. i can only imagine what it was like to actually live there. i've never felt or seen which -- such fear in people's eyes just walking down the street. somebody would catch your eye -- it was a fixed reminder there all the time, to see them looking at me, see them just being so petrified that they would get petrify for even -- get in trouble for even looking at all westerner. it was a brutal place. it was fascinating. >> and how did you get in? >> we had optioned a biography of saddam, that guy who wrote it was in the film and he had some contact with the iraqi government back in the 1970's. he knew tariq aziz and some of

the others, and convinced them -- helped us convince them that it was a good idea to tell his story to the western world. >> he is one of the few still alive. >> let's watch this. >> a rising star in a rabidly anti-communist party, he once invited visitors into his private library. they were shocked to see shelf after shelf devoted to saddam's role model, joseph stalin. >> when we went in, saw all those books, i was amazed. when i asked him about communism, he said become a no.

he did not know that stalin was a communist. >> stalin is his hero. everything he did had stalinist overtones. saddam hussein models himself after stalin more than anyone in history, consciously and very deliberately. he admires the man. >> he believed that he could control and modernize iraq with stalin's methods. and like stalin, he coveted his mentor's office. >> saddam hussian is a patient -- saddam hussein is a patient man. he does not jump. he served under the presidency faithfully and honestly. but then the president became older and older, he became ill. >> saddam's time had come. >> tariq aziz was a christian. he speaks english fluently.

did you interview him? >> yes. it was fascinating. he is a very charming guy. i don't think he knew how much power he actually had because he was the face of the regime to the outside world and was considered by many throughout the middle east to be one of the most effective foreign ministers. you had a guy like saddam who was universally reviled and he was still able to push forward -- and aziz was still able to push forward iraq's agenda. it was said that saddam would die like his mentor, joseph stalin, peacefully in his sleep unless there was an effort to overthrow him. and that would never happen. it was astonishing how quickly the course of events changed. >> how long were you in the country?

>> about five weeks. >> did you try to interview saddam? did you get close to him? >> no, i don't think so. you never really know. >> where did you stay? >> we stayed at a hotel. >> what was the impact of having been in the country, after the war? >> one thing that i regretted. we interviewed ahmed chalabi, in the course of that. and i remember a big gathering at his office in london. he was passing stories on to some journalists in the room, a prominent british journalist. leaking stories that i do not think were true. i remember thinking, there's something fishy going on here. and i really wish that i have followed up on that. i think there was something about the way he was involved with wmd, there was a way to get into that story before. he was a very charming guy and he went out of his way to charm journalists.

and a lot of journalists i don't exclude myself -- were caught up in that. there was a sense of access. what was the agenda? journalistically that is the one question that has nagged at me. >> a personal question. can you survive financially doing all this? >> i have. >> on the edge or can you make enough to live a comfortable life? >> yes, you can. --hink i'm very lucky that a very lucky. a lot of people really struggle as documentary filmmakers. i have been fortunate to go from project to project for some time. but it is not a way to get rich at all. it is something that i'm passionate about and i love being out there in the world telling stories. >> what are you working on right now? >> a new project for hbo about the middle east. >> what is the deadline? >> we may have it done early this year or a bit longer. -- early next year or it may

take a bit longer. we are inthe early stages of it. >> did you get paid on a monthly basis or do you get your money upfront? >> you get paid a fee for a project. there is cash flow. there is money up front and throughout. people who finance documentaries know that you need to eat. >> have you been back to the middle east recently? >> i was in dubai a few weeks ago, going back in a few weeks. >> do you still like to travel? >> less since i had children. i love the travel. it is harder to be away from the family. it is harder to be in l.a. than it was in london, frankly. london is five hours from the middle east, 3.5 hours from moscow. l.a., i love living out there, but it is a long way from the rest of the world. >> this is what got you in front of us again, a lot of attention that you got off of "sergio." let's run some of this and then

you can explain it. >> the countries that had fought so fiercely about going to war decided that they had to kiss and make up. let's agree that we all had an interest in seeing iraq stabilize. let's send a united nations mission, and much more importantly in a way, let's send the most charismatic, the most experienced person in the entire system of consulate management, -- conflict management, conflict prevention, refugee care -- you name it. let's send this guy known as a cross between james bond and bobby kennedy. let's send sergio. >> i asked him personally to take the job. i said, you are the right person for this job and i hope you will do it. >> president bush had met him and, i think, rated him very highly. there was therefore a general consensus that if he could be

persuaded to do it, he would be the right person. >> he never wanted the job in iraq. but that week he had just received a phone call from new york where the secretary- general was asking him to go and see him. and i asked, to talk about what? about iraq? you were already clear. -- you were already clear about your position. >> sergio and his friends were saying absolutely no. forget it. are you crazy? he just got a new job. but the pressures mounted and he clearly became more interested, and was finally influenced by the profile of the issue it was the center stage of u.n. action in 2003. >> why sergio? >> because in the course of

doing the rwanda film, i met people like gromo alex. the best and brightest of the u.n. -- whatever you think about the un, there are some amazing people there. gromo went on to work for sergio. gromo, i became interested in this guy's life. samantha power, who was at harvard at the time, was someone i met through the rwanda film, and she had met sergio. >> and she works for president obama. >> it was a way to speak to a lot of issues on a personal level, and i saw an amazing story. the film is basically a search and rescue movie about what happens after sergio has headed the un mission in iraq, after that the first big terrorist -- he is the target of the first

big terrorist attack in the war, he is trapped in the rubble with another guy after his building has collapsed. these two amazing american soldiers try to get him out. it's a way of telling the story for a broader audience. i was at a point in my career, for as much as i loved my job at frontline and pbs, i wanted to do longer films. -- make films that were more creative, without narration, and just worked more as movies. this was a story that hit me on a lot of different levels. >> when did sergio die? >> august 2003. >> did he die in the rubble? >> he died in the rubble. >> let's show another clip. did you interview him? >> yes. >> who is he? >> he is an american academic, expert on refugee flows for the united nations, and he happened to be in iraq meeting sergio on a mission for the council on foreign relations and just happen to be in sergio's office when the bomb went off. >> he is under the rubble with

them. -- with him. >> he and sergio are trapped a few feet away from each other. >> here it is. >> my memory of it is that i am not going to give in. i am not going to die. i have a lot to live for. you know. i thought -- i thought immediately of my family. >> a decision was made and we all agreed on it and the most important thing was that he was ready for it. the only thing they found me -- they found a rusty wooden saw. i had my trusty paramedic scissors. i said i'm going to start sawing away. if you have to scream out, scream out. if the pain is unbearable, let

me know and i will stop you and give you more pain medication. >> i do not remember any of that. i blocked that out. >> i started to cut through his first leg. i had to separate his screaming from what i had to do because i knew it had to be done. >> even with morphine and being in shock, it was gruesome work. he screamed, and you could have heard the screams in the green zone. we felt terrible but we knew if we did not do this, he would die if where he was because we could not physically get him out. >> i pulled tight on the tourniquet and i told them that i would go to the second leg. he did not answer me for a few minutes. i thought i had lost him. what i believe is that the pain was so bad that it literally knocked him out. it was probably a blessing. i started cutting into the second leg and he woke up again and he started to moan and he

said, andre, i feel that but go ahead and finish. and i did. >> i'm assuming he is sitting there without any legs. >> right. >> how hard was that interview? >> all of those interviews were difficult. he did not want to do the interview for a long time. he was reluctant. he did not want to go back there. he'd read samatha's book which we had optioned. i think he found it difficult to see it all laid out. i tried to be honest with people about how i use the interviews and their role in the film, and i try to ask simple basic questions and let them tell the story. honestly, brian, that is a technique that i learned here. people want to tell their stories, ultimately, if they feel like you're going to honor them and treat them fairly. that is what i try to do. >> this is for hbo.

>> just premiered in hbo in may. it will be on again and the video is just now coming out through the website. >> this is a deeply serious program. and you're an intelligent, hard-working man, but i have to show people a picture that you'rve probably not seen for a long time. in this picture, you can see over here -- mr. barker. tell them what you did in 1984. that is a bus that went around the united states. what was your job? >> i was the driver, first job out of college. i was hired to drive that bus around the country for the election coverage. i have a distinct memory of going to picking someone up at the airport and running out of gas on the interstate during rush hour. i was thinking, all i wanted to

do was walk away. but i stayed and we got a tow truck and managed to have a career in television. >> on that note, greg barker, thank you very much for sharing. >> thanks, brian. it was fun. >> since we never got the hacksaw, we could not move the reinforcing rod, so the only way to get him up was to remove the body that was pinned in the rubble part way up. i hai i e task of using my combat knife again to cut the body in half. so they could haul it. and if you think cutting the leg off was fun, even though the victim was dead, obviously deceased, it was still hard work. >> and they finally got him up. i lifted him and said, gil, you're home now. i am going to keep you to my