tavis: once upon a time summer reading was about fiction and books for the beach. nonfiction has become a summer staple. a look at a couple of the works of nonfiction. scott carney and his look inside the world of underground organ brokers. the desperate consequences of poverty around the world. it is the subject of "the red market." and then one about area 51. annie jacobsen has caused her own controversy about the new best seller about this military baseone making a

difference, you help us all a better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. we're plant -- proud to join him and improving literacy and removing obstacles to economic empowerment. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ tavis: scott carney is a

journalist whose eye opening new text is called "the red market." nice to have the on the program. >> thank you for having me. >> i want to start with a question. your body, you have calculated it on the underground market. it would be worth about a quarter of a million dollars. would my body and be worth? >> you have to be look at the above ground marquette first. we have blood, skeletons, ligaments. for my -- man, maybe the sperm. you are famous and so may be worth a little more. every market is completely different. when you are selling on the black market, it is about how

much you can bargain for. it is like selling a used car. when i am selling a kidney, that broker who is doing the transaction is going to want to buy it for as cheap as possible. it will sell it for as much as they can get it. tavis: at least a quarter of a million dollars. in all seriousness, i am trying to get a sense of what kind of position people are in and around the world who are living in abject poverty with that kind of money for body parts. >> i'm worth about a quarter of a million-dollar is in america. in india, their bodies are worth less because they have no bargaining power. for a lot of people, they see their body as a last ditch the social safety net where they have nothing else to bargain

with. the only thing they can sell is their body. i begin my book by interviewing an activist named maria. tavis: let me read it. "people are going with a glimmer of hope in their eyes. people speak that way about selling their kidneys. " >> these were all refugee survivors. they have building living -- been living in this camp for years with no government help. the organ brokers descended there. but in the course of a couple months, 80 women sell their kidneys. the women are -- you can see these cross sections taking out of them. is because that is all they have left to bargain with.

there was an industry waiting to get them. tavis: who is at the helm? how does this industry thrive? who was behind it? >> there is no kingpin. there is no god father. it is a bunch of doctors who get a patients with kidney failure and they want to help the patient. the transplant list can be five or 10 years. for somebody who does not want that, they will look where they can to get one. if you look hard enough, you will come into touch with people who will make things happen. it is these individual negotiations with doctors and brokers. a great deal of these organs move that way. tavis: you can find somebody if you look hard enough. how hard you have to let? >> it is not immediately

apparent. three or four hours and you'll come across someone. that easy. tavis: what kind of money is generated as a result of this? >> it is difficult to say. these are organizations with poor records. we're talking about a variety of industry. i'm looking at child trafficking into adoption, blood, skeletons, a whole variety of things. i estimate there least in the billions of dollars. maybe tens of billions. maybe that is too high. it is difficult to say for sure. tavis: the thing that troubled me about the text, the reality, scott, that these are poor people. their bodies are all they have left to bargain with. more often than not it is the are sacrificing body

parts for the elite. it is not top down. this is a bottom up enterprise. >> that is one of the core issues. human flesh always rises. it does not come back down. you do not find millionaire's willing to give up a kidney optimistically. -- altuistically. the poor become victims easily into this industry. let me take the example of child trafficking which has spent a great deal of time exploring. i found a family in india who lived in the slums. until 1999, they have their child stolen and bought by an orphanage. the orphanage needs a number of kids to sell on the international market to keep the

revenue stream going. that kid was adopted into the united states, the midwest. i found him 10 years later. this was an upright christian family, could people. they did not know they were participating in child trafficking. even after they did now, there is no effort, how do you bring the kid back to that world? you can see him rise. once he has risen, how do you go back? tavis: to your example, how prevalent is this notion that people are participating in this kind of activity unwittingly? >> it is easy to disguise the true from yourself. when you feel you have a need and presume you're doing good, it is easy to overlook what crimes might be behind that.

with medical skeletons, every doctor needs to study. it is a good word -- way to learn. when you have a skeleton, you think your steady human anatomy. it might be coming from a grave. it might have been taken from the gravesides and sent into medical schools. you assume that because the end result of a medical education is good, the whole system must be. tavis: there have to be rules and regulations that allow one to participate in what they believe is a good activity. there have to be rules that allow you to know when you go to this firm, this entity, this is legitimate. >> we would hope there is a system to regulate but when you go between international borders, there is no real enforcement agency. who is monitoring kidney

transactions between countries? it is not the who. we do not have the facilities to deal with these things. that is why red markets are so dangerous. tavis: are these things illegal? >> sometimes it is a gray area. every country has different laws. in china, it is state policy to execute prisoners for kidneys. that is legal. is it ethical? when you tried to create a world order to look after these issues, the problems get difficult. tavis: this process is not going to get worse in the coming months. >> it is going to get worse. unless we open up the supply change by the public or a trusted body, there is no reason to think that we will need a

more kidney transplants. more people are getting diabetes and kidney failure. more adoptions are going to be happening. as the population grows, this issue is going to be at the forefront of globalization. tavis: of all the issues you tackle, the one i come across the most in terms of radio and television conversations that might be the one we can get some traction on is the issue of child trafficking. i hear more about that. would you agree with that assessment? >> when you're dealing with children, you do not want to see anything bad happen to a child. you can get a lot of traction behind that. we have the ability. there has not been much action in adoption. adoption reform is behind the

times. as we raise awareness, we can engage it. tavis: anybody in washington taking it seriously? >> nobody has contacted me. there have been some bills that have entered congress and not gone anywhere. we will see. tavis: for a subject matter does this on the black market, how'd you get access to this data? >> it is difficult. this book it took me about six years of research. a lot of it is locked. i decided to investigate this market and i stuck my nose to the grindstone. it would have been easier if there was public records that were open that i could investigate. i feel like i am just touching the service -- surface of what

is going on. i exposed a lot of horrible things. it might just be the surface of the iceberg. tavis: to your point about unveiling pretty horrible things, when you finish a book like this, how you feel? how does this make you feel as the author? >> i am happy to bring awareness. i also feel i need a break from looking at this particular issue. i think it is a dark material. it is also fascinating material. i will probably move onto another project. tavis: it is information we cannot ignore. the book is called "the red market." scott carney.

good to have the on the program. up next, another new book about the secret american military base known as area 51. stay with us. tavis: annie jacobsen is a contributing editor and the author of a bestseller, "area 51." good to have the on the program. what is happening in nevada that is so secretive that u.s. presidents are denying it? >> alatas happening as i write in my book. 75 miles north of las vegas is the nevada at testing rates. it is about the size of connecticut. inside of that is area 51. it is not just the air force that is there, it is the cia.

i write about the atomic agency. now that is the department of energy. you have all kinds of a government presence in the desert. none of which the government will talk about. they still will not officially say at area 51 exists. tavis: how the know, this is a dance tax. how did you get all of this? >> my research began when i was at a christmas dinner party seated next to a scientist named edward who live here in california. he said he had a story for me. as a reporter i hear that a lot. but what he said to me was phenomenal. starting in 1957, he developed stealth technology for the cia at area 51. the reason he could talk about it was because the cia had

declassified that program. the men can discuss their programs that have been declassified but they're not supposed to say it is area 51. but i interviewed 74 men with access to the base. the word area 51 becomes part of the spoken language. that is what is called. tavis: wise to call the area 51? >> that is subject to debate. i believe it is called that because of the first project that went on out there in 1951. the neighbor is called the nevada test site. that is divided up into a bunch of quadrants starting with area one going up to area 30 giver take some missing quadra is. then there is no law 40. 52 is where the stealth bomber was tested in the 1980's.

tavis: what is basically happening out there? what are they doing? >> now, again, everything is speculative because everything that happens is very classified. the suggestions are that the drones that are being used in the war on terror are being built out there. osama bin laden, the raid, it is believed by people that a lot of the early reconnaissance was done by this drone. one of the few things the air force admitted is this strong call the beast of kandahar. it conducts surveillance. one of the great questions about, why does the government need a drone that does not fire a missile?

the taliban does not have the missiles to take them down. the suggestion was that maybe we were flying in over iran or north korea. from what i anders down, that was the drum that did the surveillance on the bin laden rate. -- raid. tavis: is there stuff the american people would be repulsed by it? >> absolutely. one of the most important narrative threads in my book is this issue of, what national security secrets should be kept secret and what does the public have a right to know? that is central to what i write about. i relay several programs which have been declassified. i talk about them from firsthand witnesses, nuclear programs that were reckless. one of them was a dirty bomb test on the edges of area 51.

it contaminated the land. plutonium has a half life of 24,000 years. the department of defense when they did the test said it was a safety test. as i write in the narrative, there was nothing safe about any of that. it did not provide safety. tavis: how aware our presidents of what is happening inside of area 51? what does obama know? aboutthe president's know area 51. one of the great enigmas of the entire story that i reveal came to me from a source, the only anonymous source, who revealed a program that is one of those

abhorrent programs that never should have happened. when i asked him how that could have happened, his response was, the president did not have a need to know. tavis: hmm. there's a lot of the things that are being talked about. as dense as it is, the part that has been most controversial are the last seven pages. why those pages causing a controversy? >> i came to the story of area 51 as a newcomer. i did not have a horse in the race. i am not an aviation historian. i am not an air force f-15 not -- aficinado. my aim was to find the facts

from men who were there and report them in the most objective manner i could. to my surprise was this experience i had in my first interview with then -- a weapons engineer who was a member of the man had project. he told me an alternative position than the air force takes on roswell. that great myth that everyone seems to be fascinated by and no real answer has ever come about. i tell you the take told to me by an engineer who worked on that program. many people who have a vested interest in their theory about that being right are upset. tavis: humans are of -- involved. >> something really did crash in

the desert. in 1947. the roswell incident. it was not from mars. it was from russia. stall on had sent this prototype of a flying disc here to serve as a war of a world hoax in the same way americans had been moved to mass hysteria when they believed marcion's were attacking. according to my source, stalin wanted to achieve that. inside of the disk or humans who had been altered to resemble what the public perceives to be martians. according to my source, that terrific program, rather than being made public by truman, a decision came down from above that if the russians were doing this, this wicked science, the

americans needed to do it, too. we could not fall behind the russians. that is upsetting. it was upsetting to learn about. it is upsetting to read about. i have interviewed this source. it has been over two years. i have spoken to him several times face to face. he stands by everything i wrote. i believe the reason he told me was because, of all his service to the country, this one program stands out as a travesty. he wanted to put that on the record before he died. tavis: despite the work you have done to bring area 51 to the best light we have seen in thus far, there can be a fine line between credible work and conspiracy theory. what say you?

>> if you're asking whether i think my source of gave me information that is a disinformation, i right in my notes that that is a possibility. the reason i put it in my notes and not be taxed is because i believe the source's information is as true as he was told it because it came from the highest elements of governance. the person in charge of the project was also the head of the manhattan project. i make a distinction that i think it is impossible for my reader not to see in those last seven pages i make the distinction of letting the reader know i am speaking in the first person. i say, here is what i was tall. tavis: summertime is no longer for fiction at the beach. nonfiction as having a major say.

everyone is talking about this one. it is called "area 51." written by annie jacobsen. good to have the on the program. we will see you back here next time. good night from l.a. keep the faith. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] >> for more information, visitde better.

>> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. we're proud to join him in working to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions from viewers like you. thank you. ♪