tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. journalist, jeremy scahill, with his latest book, "dirty wars: the world is a battlefield," and he takes a look at a post-9/11 more, looking at national security, including the escalating use of targeting assassinations and drones. we are glad you could join us. a conversation with jeremy rightl from "the nation," now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only about halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do.

walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. just how far this country should be willing to go in the effort of national security is open to debate. the use of drones, assassinations, and other covert operations conducted without oversight clashing with our view of ourselves and the country committed to democracy and the rule of law. award-winning journalist jeremy

has anl of "the nation" impressive new book called "dirty wars: the world is a battlefield, and a documentary due out. my friend jay leno. he turned the camera and asked, why? the truth that you tale is so uncompromising. it is so courageous. the conviction that you wear is so real. these are the kinds of tricks that get people in trouble and sometimes dead. >> i am more worried about my taxes and getting audited. >> that is a foregone conclusion. i think you can expect that to happen at some point. before we get into the text, talking about this, where this commitment to being a true teller comes from. what in your background, what in

your upbringing, what in your family, what in your training? starting with democracy now and amy goodwin. how this became a calling in your life. >> both of my parents were nurses, and i grew up in milwaukee, wisconsin. they were both adjusted minded. justice minded. we weren't catholic. we learned a different part of the faith growing up, and at that was influential, this idea that each of us should have a preferential option for the poor, and we have is an obligation in life to stand with people who are victims. i wanted to be a schoolteacher, and then a funny thing happened where i found out i am not a goods deep -- a good student myself. i left college in 1995, 1996, and i hitchhiked to d.c., and i was living and working in this community shelter, and i heard this voice on the radio, talking

about the rebels that were trying to overthrow the dictator in congo, and it was amy goodwin, and i had never heard of anything like that before, so i started writing were letters, and i said things like, "if you have a dog, i will walk your dog." i wanted to be a part of that world. i do not know if she thought she should get a restraining order against me. i started as a coffee runner. i still do not view it as a career. it is a trait, it will live. i went to iraq. in the beginning, i was sort of making my way just by luck, figuring out how to do this stuff, and i remembered the first time when i went to iraq, and i was doing a story in the south of iraq, this is what i want to do. i want to tell the stories of people on the other side of the barrel of the gun of u.s. policy. all this starts with

asking questions and asking the right questions. i am not naïve and asking this question. why are there so few jeremeys, medium calledn a journalism them are afraid to ask the tough questions? >> i think we are -- we live in tainment society right now. it is more important what jay wow and snookie are doing than the real wives of mogadishu. you see corporate advertising driving the priorities of news organizations. that is not to say there are not excellent reporters. some of them work for big media outlets, but some of my do not even do this in english. there are covering the war in syria right now, or they are in the ground in libya. we hear about it when a famous

american correspondent goes missing, but there are scores of journalists that go missing every year, and we hear nothing about it because they are not famous on our airwaves. there is the role of journalism being done and we'll journalism, a part of this is our culture. we are whittled in a society where everything is expressed in 140 characters on twitter, and that passes at media coverage. just to sit with you and have a conversation longer than three minutes is unusual in our society right now. tavis: a few weeks ago, the president was having a good time with the journalists at the american correspondents dinner, and he killed them. his jokes, they laughed. the press corps. they have been really on the president's back about the access they are denied to him, and this white house has become really, really slick in circumventing the white house press corps, and they will go to

a talk radio show for over a year -- >> a late-night show. or twoa late-night show, "the view." i am not casting aspersions on them. if you can get him, god bless you. if i am talking about the way to get the message out is to avoid the jeremy scahills in the world, to avoid the amy goodwins in the world. >> has he been here? tavis: i am in that category. he has not been here, but he is welcome whenever he wants. i have it60 minutes," on mine machine and watching all of the time, but when they did that interview with hillary clinton, it was just a kiss. >> when was the last time

president obama spoke publicly in droves? was it in a hard-hitting interview with chopped todd, or somebody? no, it was in a google hang out. that is because somebody asked him about it, and then he makes these jokes with the correspondence. this should not be how we do this with what is at the center of american policy right now. jokes with journalists and talking about it at a google hang-up. these are also life and death issues. this administration is also launching a campaign against whistle-blowers. they are going after anyone who is blowing the whistle on the bush-era torture programs. they are trying to get them shut up. but part of the people that were involved in a, a former cia guy, rodriguez, he is getting book contracts and is giving interviews and movies made about him, so i think the priorities are so out of whack, and because

you have this popular democratic president, who is a very likable guy, and i think a lot of the journalists are excited to be shooting hoops with them. but that is not journalism. it is almost like celebrity worship. i do not all of the onus on the white house. i think part of it is a culture a lazy journalism. there are often not tough questions being asked by the highest profile journalists in this country, and that is part of the problem. tavis: but if the white house snub view and refuses to sit down with you, what are the to do? >> they could sit down and say they are not good to be part of the dog and pony show. collaborating, pressuring this white house to be more available, to have him answer the tough questions. it is a two-way road. tavis: why are not -- they not more open about the drugs? what are they hiding? >> i think we have a real problem with over classification right now.

i think every state needs to keep some secrets, and i think it is important that certain needs to be. but these are many of the programs that the american people need to know about. with the drone program, it got to a ridiculous degree. we knew it was happening in pakistan and yemen, the white house would not even comment on it at all or use the word. it is part of a culture of secrecy. i also think president obama and his advisers are very concerned that if there is some sort of a terrorist attack against the united states that the republicans would eat him alive. today we have known about the whole time." is partly based on a fear of another attack, a part of it is that the republicans are engaged in such a situation in the way that they attack the president that we do not have any legitimate opposition in congress that is calling the to accounts.

tavis: so you are telling me than the politics or political theification for putting bush drug program on steroids? i am not being funny. you wrote the book. they make the bush administration look like child's play when it comes to drone years. -- use. >> i think when he came to power, he realized he would not be to close guantánamo. par 3 also, the republicans are blocking the funding. if they do not want to send u.s. troops into places like yemen and somalia to snatch people, although some of that has happened, and i think they have just taken a program and erased the capture part of it. when there is a bad guy, we are going to go and kill them. one of the most egregious parts that has grown under obama is the so-called signatures

strikes. in both pakistan and yemen, if they are characterized as military age males, and they are in a certain region of the country, and they have been in contact with somebody we deem a terrorist, we deem them terrorists and go in and take them out. it is almost like "minority reports." we are killing people. we do not even know their names or identities or have any information they are involved in planning acts of terrorism. that is going to be one of the enduring acts of the obama administration, normalizing assassination as part of what is a national security policy. do not think john mccain would have got away with this. i think a lot of liberals would have been pushing back on this. tavis: these targets and assassinations, the increasing use of drones, how did that come to your point, and up at the centerpiece of our military efforts without congress being involved in that come to a large

degree, and certainly without the american people being made aware? how did that shift happen? >> i think because president obama is a constitutional law expert by trade. he won the nobel peace prize. i think a lot of liberals just check their conscience at the door. at the gulf liberals just said they will support it. on capitol hill, it's set in. you had people asking tough questions during the bush era that just shut up the second that obama was sworn in. and any kind of congressional hearings on the drones, five years into the obama presidency, these volumes about how incompetent and lazy folks are on capitol hill when it comes to issues that really matter. they give the president a pass on all these issues, and the republicans are engaged in these bizarre conspiracy theories about president obama. first, we went through the birth

certificates stuff, and then there is the benghazi issue. as a journalist, i am not going to view president obama in any different light than i would have done president bush or president clinton when it comes to holding them accountable. it is nice to have a president who speak the english language in a good way after eight years of bush and the cowboy speaking. what are we going to do to hold them accountable? tavis: let me ask you about u.w. people in particular who have been in the news recently, one directly and one in directly about the drug program. one is rand paul. he had a moment where it seemed he was ratcheting up a conversation, was preparing to filibuster. what did you make of that rand, it, and was it authentic? was the politics behind it? >> rent all is a libertarian. i think it is really unfortunate

that the one senator that started to raise legitimate questions not just about the drone program but what is the standard, how does an american get on the drone a tactless, how you get off of the list, i think about one-third of it was saying, and some of the best information put on the public record, and the other two-thirds of it was almost like a burlesque show, tea party. it rolled on to the floor, and it was like a hodgepodge of every conspiracy they have about obama, how he wants to come after a tea party editor in a cafe in montana, and they want to drone bomb them. it is sort of a to edge sword. on the one hand, i am glad of that he did it. i think it was important, and on the other hand, i think it diminished the seriousness of the issues. rand paul has so many

reprehensible opinions, and we could spend hours talking about some of the web principal ideas, but on this, i think he was tried to be sincere, but then he flips his position on it and talked about drone bombing somebody who robbed a liquor store. democraticedible senator, maybe somebody like dick durbin out of illinois, he said, you know what? i am major supporter of this president, but this has gone too far, and i want to hold serious hearings on this about our killing of a group of civilians -- civilians, what are the ramifications? instead, we're talking about hypothetical situations, like bombing jane fonda and internet cafe. unless they regain their credibility, it will go on under obama. tavis: let me ask you what the repercussions are for our national security and this

continues to run amok, but the other person i want to ask about happens to be john brennan. so there is this moment weeks ago in hearings where he got some pushback, and the nominations were held up. there was some tough questioning in the hearing, but then he sailed on through. this was the guy in the white house who was basically in charge of the program. what do you make of it that after all was said and done, little was said and done? >> a thing that was a foregone conclusion. i do not think any democrats were seriously going to deny him. some have been working to get answers to how americans end up on the kill list and also to ask for the memos, the legal authorizations for operating these killings, and they have not been given those documents. we have members of the senate to essentially have a double oath. they are given a high and a security clearance with are supposed to look at the memos authorizing these, and the white

even to the members of the senate intelligence committee who are by law supposing to be overseeing this. but if you look at it through the bigger perspective, we have white house officials meeting on these tuesday's in these terror meetings, and that is what they are called, terror meetings. they then meet with the president, and the president meets in a smaller group, and he goes 3 them almost like baseball cards, and he looks at the statistics. should we take this person out?" this is with no oversight from the courts or the judicial branch. tavis: and he does make these decisions. >> from what i have heard from people know, the is barehands on on who is going to die and who is going to live. he is the one who said he wanted anwar al-awlaki. it was the present himself and

said he wanted to take him out. he was judge, jury, and prosecution are against this guy who i think did all sorts of bad stuff, but we did not see it in a court of law. take out of the picture for a moment that it is obama. i think that democrats should do this frequently. say it was jeb bush print their not firing at our troops or are involved in an active active terrorism. we do not have to present any evidence. all we have to say is that they die next tuesday. that should be a chilling item. tavis: one thing that gets me, and there is a certain level where i consider this and you cannot, but since you are the expert here, you are the author, you are the documentarian, i want to get your take on this. what troubles me now and certainly into the future, when the historians look back on this moment at how this drone program and how theywire

were killing innocents men, women, and children, and there were two who should have known better -- better. one was barack obama, and one was eric holder. i like both of them. one is the president and one is the attorney general. one has a bust of dr. king in his office, and i wonder how often dr. king whispers to him late at night, "what are you doing? " it unsettles me that two people that come out of the tradition of nonviolence and social justice who are making these decisions every day just do not seem to get it where this drone program is concerned, and i am not accusing them alone, john brennan and the brother. but one is the president, and the other is an attorney general. they come from experience that at its best has taught this nation how to go the other way,

how to find another option, how to value life. i do not have a language for it yet because it just untethers me. talking to the rev. jesse jackson when he secured the nomination in 2008, and he gave a speech where he simultaneously said he was good to escalate the war in afghanistan, and he was also " quoting dr. king. is there not a contradiction in that? to say we should not talk about dr. martin luther king in the same speech as war, but do you not see the irony of that? tavis: is not just by renée, jeremy. it is hypocrisy. -- it is not just irony. and they should all listen to the speech of dr. martin luther king. it took him years to come to that position, and i think that

one of the things that is happening in our society is that there is so much racism and bigotry towards the president coming from the right. i think a lot of liberals feel they are in a triage mode. do we say something about this or hold them accountable? eric holder it is speech about killing american citizens without due process, and that they will ultimately benefit the political opponents of the president, because they are going to you that and say you're a guy was the man expanding all of this. your nobel peace prize-winning president is the one normalized all of these policies. tavis: what are the implications of this policy if we do not we'll it back in? politically, militarily, and i have to imagine that we're creating a lot of enemies around the world, starting with the families of these victims that we kill with these drones, which, as you said earlier, you cannot surrender to a drone.

>> there is going to be blowback. if we do not examine the impact of our policies at our own peril, i think the worst thing we can do right now is to give people a legitimate reason to want to kill or harm americans, and as an american, i fear for our future. i go to a place like yemen. you go there, in your examining the aftermath of a missile strike that killed 14 women and 21 children in the pursuit of 1 al qaeda figure, and you hear people in that village saying if you killed children and called the terrorists, then we are all terrorists, and they say that they hated al qaeda, but we are pulling them in that direction, it is coming from their heart. i met a family in a canister and where several women were killed, and a commander fighting on the side of the u.s., an afternoon they were killed, they said, "we spent our lives fighting against the taliban, and i want

to put on a suicide vest and blow myself up among the americans." this is real life. if we do not examine why attack and the motivation, we do not understand it. there are reasons why 9/11 happens, and part of it is to do with our foreign policy. that might be controversial to say that, but our foreign policy will cause blowback. tavis: we have 30 seconds. his fellow citizens are watching is fellowif foreign -- citizens are watching? >> not because a card-carrying member of amnesty international. we were putting to death innocent people where sentencing to death innocent people. we reached a point where there should be a moratorium on the drones' strikes. let's see who is being killed, because i do not think the

american people want innocent people being killed in their name. you can put pressure on your representatives, so we understand who is actually being killed. tavis: there is a book and a documentary. the book is called "dirty wars: the world is a battlefield," from one of the most courageous journalists in the world today. we are all the better for the work that he does, so, again, the book, and the documentary. i think that is on news stands now, and in the new issue of "thenation.com" i think you will find his work. >> my pleasure. tavis: that is our show for this time. until next time, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. conversation with a 22-year-old harvard graduate, cortlan wickliff, about the

challenges facing his generation. that is next time. we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only about halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to a atas we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more.

>> announcer: the following kqed production was produced in high definition. ♪ calories, calories, calories! >> wow, it rocked my world! >> it just kind of reminded me of boot camp. >> i don't know what you had but this is great! >> it almost felt like country club food to me. zbl don't touch it.