06/20/18 06/20/18 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from pacifica, this is democracnonow! >> they wentn that morning readtoto kilor b be lled o on behalff ameca. toir credi they ed, thing buwomen an childre dog usual you said, wming ightht f breakakfa. theyeganan t putn the dihes and execining th. there were three platoons that nt in. they roued up pele and p themn a ditc the her cpanies jt went

om houseo hse and kled dd raped and mutiled. itust wentn unti everydy wi eitr run away or killed. 400 and some of people in that village alone. amy: today, an hour with investigative journalist seymour hersh. he broke the stories about the massacre, the abu ghraib prison scandal, the cia's secret surveillance of antiwar activists, and much more. he is out with a new memoir dip session with trump dominates all kinds of other reporting will stop they're finally getting one of t issues with immigration from the newspapers instead of dwelling, which is what his name is. a new moan about it. amy: today, investigative journalist seymour hersh for the hour. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and

peace report. i'm m amy goodman. nationwide outrage and protests are mounting over the trump administration's practice of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents at the u.s.-mexico border, in violation of international human rights law. on tuesday, republican and democratic governors of eight states -- maryland, massachusetts, virginia, rhode island, colorado, new york, north carolina, and connecticut -- say they would either withhohold or recall national guard troops from the border in protest of the practice of separating children. border patrol says it separated more than 2300 kids in the last two months. intercept reports the trump administration is separated at least 3700 immigrant children from their parents since last october. many of whom have come to the united states seeking asylum. the separated children have been sent to at least 17 different

states detention facilities. the associated press reports babies and toddlers are being detained in its three so-called baby jails in south texas in brbrownsville, r raymondville, d the fofourth separated -- expecd to open in houston. the government calls them tender age shelters. many of the children are under one year old. on tuesday, president trump continued to xenophobia twitter rant tweeting -- "democrats are the problem. they don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country." conservative editor bill kristol tweeted -- "trump's statement that immigrants will "infest our country" probably sounds better in the original german." speakiningrump tuesesday. tom coburnrn countries abuse usy sending their people up, not their best to we're not when to give any more aid to those

coununtries. why should we echo as many are accusing trump of holding the hostage toldren hostil find his border wall, he met on capitol hill. on two different sweeping anti-immigrant bills. president trump has indicated he will stop the family separating practice in exchange for $25 billion for trump's border wall, a crackdown on asylum seekers, and a reduction on visas to o te united states. not a single republican lawmaker reportedly raiaid the issusue of family separation with trump during the meeting tuesday. democrats are demanding the passage of stand-alone legislation to stop the separation of families or that president trump simply stop the practice himself, as it was his administration that enacted the zero tolerance policy that began the widespread separation of families to begin with. while trump left the meeting on capitol hill, he was heckled by lawmakers with the congressional hispanic caucus, who shouted, "mr president, don't you have kids?"

>> mr. president, don't you have kids? don't you have kids, mr. president? amy: homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen was also heckled tuesday at a mexican restaurant in washington, d.c., by protesters who shouted "shame on you." >> how does it make you feel? shame on you. have you listened to it? do you hear the baby's crying? amy: the protesters were also yelling "have you listened to the audio o yet?" and "do you hr the babies crying" -- references to the audio released by propublica in which separated children are crying "mama" and "papi" fm inside a d detention center. meanwhile, more than 600 members of the united methodist church have filed a formal complaint againsnst fellow church member attorney general jeff sessions, accusing h him of child abuse,

immorality, and racial discrimination for the trump administration's practice of separating immigrant children from their families. sesessions was alslso heckled we ing a lifetime achievement award by the national sheriff's association in new orleans on monday by protesters who shouted "stop taking kids." >> stopped taking kids! stop taking kids! stop taking kids! stopped taking kids! amy: five protesters were arrested protesting outside the national sheriff's association convention, while inside sessions hailed the sheriff association's anglo-american heritage. hundreds of protesters also gathered in n cities across the country tuesday, including in san francisco, new york city, philadelphia, el paso, texas, washington, d.c., and portland, oregon, to denounce the practicn

from theheir parts. mental health professionals are also continuing to denounce the practice. is is thryn hampton with phicians foror human rights. >> the negative impact on functioning of children can even continue into adulthood. they can impact the academic achievements. you can a long-term impact on their ability to abnormal attachment to fafamily membersrd loved ones. in the psychological quality of life is devastated. amy: mexican officials say one of the children who has been separated from her parents is a 10-year-old girl with down syndrome. this is trump's former campaign manager corey lewandowski mocking the story of this girl on fox news. this clip begins with former senior democratic national committee adviser zac petkanas. >> i read today about a 10-year-old girl with down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage -- >> wah whah. >> did you say wah wah?

how dare you! amy: u.s. ambassador to the united natns nikki haley has announced the united states is withdrawining from t the u.n. hn righghts council, accusingng the cocouncil of being biased againt israel. long, the human rights council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias. regrettably, it is now clear our call for reform was not heeded. amy: the a announcement ofof the withdrawal comomes only y one dy after the office of the u.n. high commissioner for human rights slammed the trump administration for the "unconscionable" separation of children from their parents. the trump administration has been threatening for months to withdraw from the human rights body, which has repeatedly condemned israel for its treatment of palestinians, including its bloody crackdown against nonviolent protesters in gaza. this is phillip alston, u.n. special rapporteur for extreme poverty speaking on democracy , now!

>> if you have eig countries in the entire world who don't tank that israel should have been condemned for these actions, you need to ask why are these eight going against all of the others? and those eight consist of the united states, australia, and six other very small countries, very small players. essentially, all of the countries of western europe, all of the united states allies joined in the united nations action in relation to israel. amy: that was phphillip alston, u.n. special rapporteur for extreme poverty. he will be testifying before the u.n. human rights council on thursday. in canada, the senate has approved legislation to legalize marijuana, meaning canada will soon become the second country in the world to legalize the drug nationwide. the first was uruguay. the guardian reports that nearly 500,000 canadians have marijuana

convictions on their criminal record. criminal justice activists are advocating for those with prior convictions to be grgranted amamnesty as the new law goes so effect, arguing the outdated marijuana laws had a disproportionate affect on people of color and the poor. meanwhile, in new york city, mayor bill de blasio is under fire for saying tuesday that new w york police department pls to end marijuana arrests for some people, but continue arresting some new yorkers who have past arrests s or convictions. in response to m mayor de blas's announcement about new policies for marijuanana arrests, vocal-y and the drug policy alliance released a statement saying -- "it's frustrating that as the new york state health department moves toward legalization, the city is continuing its shameful history of racist marijuana enforcement." activists and community members will gather today at noon on the steps of city hall to protest the new marijuana policy. in yemen, there are reports that

-- a u.s.-backed saudi-led coalition have seized the airport in the crucial port city of hodeidah. hundreds of fighters have been killed and thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes since the u.s.-backed, saudi-led coalition launched an all-out offensive against hodeidah week ago. international groups have warned the u.s.-backed offensive to seize hodeida will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in yemen, which is already experiencing the world's worst chcholera epididemic in the word with more than 1 1illilion peopl afflicted and with millions more on the brink of famine. meanwhile, the associated press reports rampant sexual abuse in a south yemen jail. controlled by the united arab emirates. ap reports that in march, 15 officers lined up the detainees in the southern city of aden and ordered them to undress before searching their anal cavities, claiming that they were looking for contraband cell phones. the men screamed and cried and those who resisted were beaten and threatened by dogs.

ap reports that hundreds ofprisr abuse. and back in the united states, charleston, south carolina, has apologized for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. on tuesday, the charleston city council passed a resolution recognizing that the city flourished and profited at the cost of enslaved people. the cocouncil at the resolutionn charleston's city hall -- a building built by enslaved people. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. juan: welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. "our country's biggest enemy is the fake news." those were the words of president trump last week. it was just his latest attack on the nation's press. a week earlier, federal prosecutors revealed they had secretly captured years' worth

of phone and email data from a reporter, ali watkins, who broke several high-profile stories related to the senate intelligence committee. a former top aide on the committee, james wolfe, has been charged with lying to the fbi about his contacts with the press. meanwhile, reporters without borders recently dropped the united states to no. 45 in its annual ranking of press freedom. when the group first published its list in n 2002 the united states came in at number 17. well, to talk about the state of the media and how we spend the hour with the nation's best known investigative journalist, seymour hersh. in 1970, he won the pulitzer prize for his reporting on how the u.s. slaughtered more than 0 vietnamese women, children and old men in the village of my lai on march 16, 1968. the event became known as the my lai massacre. amy: sy hersh went on to expose many of ththe governments deepet secrets from nixon's bombing of cambodia to the cia's spying on

antiwar activists to the cia's role undermining the chilean government of salvador allende. former cia director william colby once privately complained about hersh saying, "he knows more about this place than i do." sy hersh has also helped uncover how the u.s. h has secretly carried out assassinations across the globe. majortinued to breakak stories after the september 11 attacks, most notably in 2004 he exposed the abu ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in iraq that shocked the world. well, seymour hersh is out with a new book looking back on his more than half century of scoops and digging up secrets. it is called "reporter: a memoir." welcome to democracy now! >> glad to be back. amy: wideout we begin before we go back in time at your remarkable investigative reporting. your assessment of the press today in this era of trump.

>> i'm ecstatic that finay th major media is no longer trying to cope with tweets and digging into real news. what happened in mexico has been going on for two months. ublica toook proplu get a tape and get them going. i don't know what is wrong with the press. you mentioned yemen. you're one of the few people, this program, that continually reports about yemen. we are supplying intelligence. we are refueling planes. we're working closely with the united arab emirates. in the saudis. talk about -- it is terrible what is happening at the border. my wife just gave a lot of money to some group and it has gotten evererybody going, but it has bn going on for two months. what i have been screaming about is stop boring about the tweet. i was at a conference in

ororlando, i investigative repos and editors. amy: with juan. >> 1800 kids there. there's something going on. people understand the need for really good reporting. the things that the government are doing, this government is doing, below the surface, for example, i was talking to reporters. they are lowering the standards of safety for baby cribs because i'm manufacturer which is somebody connected in the government and who knows whatever politically or economically. this is going on across the board. meanwhile, we are focused on this man's tweets. for months i was going nuts because he goes up in the polls. a lot of people in america that like the idea there's is somebody out there that doesn't care about the press. anyway, they have got 13th into something finally and it is going. treat haley seriously.

how can you? for over a a prop year in the job. this could be a turning point. only us to do is change the policy. juan: you describe yourself in the book as a survivor compare that, as you're saying, all of these hundreds and hundreds of kids that we saw this past weekend in orlando seeking to become investigative reporters. >> right now what you have is such a division in the media that there is no middle ground -- i was a freelance reporter and i understood even then a story was a story. it wasn't looked a at you'reitither pro- or anti-trump or whatever. right now you have a situation of cable news which takes any information they need and blast it out there with no thought. we're all driven.

the public -- the use to turn to "the new york times" for which i worked for years happily in the 1970's, as an arbiter of integrity and truth. now everyone is seen as pro- or anti-. you don't have a middle ground. what i meant by the golden age, you could write a story and people believe it. now you can wrwrite a story and get it published of people will say, even as you sign your own broadcast, you still get support from many people in america. when he starts talking this crazy and insane stuff about immigrants. there is no national standard. "the times" used to be the national standard. there's so much division in the country right now cause by him, but itit is been going on for a long time. i don't use the word secular. and just the notion that you can take a choice, if you like trump you can watch this if you don't like them, you watch some thing else.

amy: we are going to take a break and then go back in time. even as you talk about the golden age of reporting and journalism, when you had your my lai exposé, this astounding story in vietnam -- and it wasn't the only massacre, obviously, not even the largest massacre -- but your story was turned down everywhere, even as you continued to report it. we're talking to the pulitzer prize-winning journalist seymour hersh for the hour. stay with us.  [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez. seymour hersh is our guest for the hour, the award-winning investigative journalist in washington, d.c. he has been a staff writer for "the new yorker" and "the new york times." awarded the pulitzer prize as a freelancer in 1970

for his exposé of the my lai massacre in vietnam. his new memoir is just out called "reporter: a memoir." march 16, 1968. we have students and classes coming through here every week. when you say my lai, the vast majority have never heard of it. you did this is a freelance reporter. where were you working? how did you find the story? >> i had been a reporter for the associated press covering the pentagon in 1966 in 1967. i learned then on-the-job training from officers. there is a lot of integrity in the service. a lot of people take the oath of office to the constitution and mean it. i learned from those people that it was a killing zone.

i came away thinking, my god. i started reading. you have to read before you write. i was ready to believe a tip in 1969 or been a terrible massacre. the thing is, i did not know how bad it was until i got into it.. a group of american kids, to their credit, just country boys, those days the kids in the street, we had more african-americans in the population, more hispanics in the population, a lot of rural american kids from small villages across the country. we're not talking about big city kids in this company. very few. they were told how bad the communists were. there were told tomorrow -- they've been in the country three months, lost about 30% of their people to snipers. they have fallen into pits with sticks with poison. horrible stuff. they began the hate and they were allowed to hate. there's a lot of ignorance about the culture of vietnam.

in one of the worst divisions of the war, the way the world was, you could do anything you wanted, kill people because it was are ready seen as a violation of rules and not a criminal act. that is how they covered up stuff. they were told they were going to meet the enemy for the first time in three months. they had never seen the enemy. they went into this village about 500 people, possibly more. they expected to see the enemy. the intelligence was that. -- the intelligence was bad. instead of meeting the enemy, there were just families, women and children and old men. they began to murder them. they put them in ditches. they raped and killed. they blew babies up. this is hard for me -- bayonets.

some of the stuff i kept out of the initial story because it was so awful. juan: you initially heard there was a lieutenant being charged with some of these atrocities? talk about how you track him down. >> it came from a wonderful man named jeff collin was just out of law school. he was in a new public policy group, social law firm that one of the first set of in washington. he figured i might do it. he did not know where to go. i started chasing it. thesis enlisted man went crazy. i read the russell tribunal. published i guess in 1965 or 1966. had a long session on stuff going on in the war. i found one of the gusset testified so i knew it was true. i thought something bad happened. i thought maybe they threw rockets into a village. they used to have, even as early as 1965,

they would go to a village in the ruby no e enemies there. the officers would say to the guys with tanks and machines, you have an mad minute. they do shoot up everything in the village. what i did not know, i mean him a we were sent to world war ii. we did know how bad it was. wewe did not know how both sides treated each other. i did not know, either. as i'm doing this story, it is not just some bombing or mad moment. it is a group of soldiers spending a day putting people in ditches, shooting them at will. one scene they had maybe 80 people in a ditch. a young man named paul meadlo. i interviewed him. i found him. they sprayed bullets into it and some mother, i did not share the story for a long time, some other had tucked a baby --

everybody was killed, they thought. it was a famous photograph. she kept a little two-year-old baby protected. about 10 minutes after they've done the shooting, they were having lunch, sitting around the ditch. this little boy crawled up to the top of the ditch screaming and began to run away when he got to the top. the lieutenant said to paul meadlo, barely got through high school -- the army lowered its standards quickly in the war because they did not want bright kids there because they would talk about what was going on. i say that sereriously. serious. that was mcnamara. he was a psychototic liar. ananyway, so t this kid d is rg awaway and callie e says to mem, plug him. hehe couldn't do it. so callie shot him.

this baby. amy: i want to turn to private first class paul meadlo speaking about his involvement in the my lai massacre. in 1969, he spokoke to c cbs's mike wallace on national televivision abouout what happened. >> i might have e killed about 10 or 15 -- >> men, women, and children and babies. >> and babies. >> why did you do it? >> because i felt like i was ordered to do it. at the time i felt like i was doing the right thing. i really did. >> you are married. >> right. >> children? >> two. >> how can a father of two young children shoot babies? >> just one of those things. amy:y: paul meadlo speakiking on "60 minutes."

>> i got the tip. i found my way to fort benning, fell my way to callie. i saw document in which it was initially accused of killing 109 oriental human beings. oriental human beings. i remember going nuts. does that mean one oriental equals how many whites and how many blacks? the one thing i did that made a friend of life for me the secretary of defense, a congressman who was then secretary of defense, i went to his people -- to him, actually, pretty much directly. i said i'm going to take this out because this is so racist. any american s soldier walking on the street in south vietnam could be executed from an done that. i did take it out. "oriental human beings" is what they wrote. amy: you're going to omit it from the story.

>> i said you cannot be that dumb. you cannot be that crazily racist. that is just a sideshow. i did it because i thought too many american boys who had nothing to do with it would be executed, but just shot atat random becaue it would create so much anger. i don't second-guess that. it was bad enough what they did. i found callie. nobody wanted it. i not only was a correspondent for the ap, to mccarthy's press secretary, wrote a lot of speeches for him. i also freelanced between 1967 and 1969. i had written maybe a dozen articles on all sorts of stuff. so they knew me. even when i got to "the new york times,"

there was some stories i did that they wanted me to do is maybe somebody else should do it first. amy: you went to "the new york times" -- >> no, i went to people i had worked for. i had a commitment from "life" magazine. "look" magazine was talking to me. i went to the new york review of books. i was a friend of izzy stone. izzy stone had some sort of -- i've been a reporter for the pentagon for only about a month or two. he saw sometething in my stories -- he's to go out sunday morning to the newspaper stand and buy 20 papers. i knew who h he was through my mother-in-law who had been a subscriber for years. one morning about 6:30, i was newly married, it was sunday morning, the call comes

and it is izzy stone sang he was seeing page 19 in the "philadelphia inquirer today." we became friends. if you ever want a tutorial from anybody in the world, you want i it from izzy stone. the whole idea of reading -- all he did was read everything. he did it alall byby simply brainpower. he is amazing. anyway, he was a mentor. i could not get anyone to buy.. bob silvers wanted to do it. he was going to remake the magazine. i came to him late. i will never forget this. i have published a book, syndicated in 1968 or so. they had been friendly to me. i liked him. i liked the magazine. much more radical. what happened is, he wanted me to put a paragraph in -- he was going to run the story on the cover. he wanted a paragraph saying, this shows why the war is bad.

i saidid, bob, the story tells why it is bad. we had a fight. i pulled it out. people asked me, how could you do that? the story deserved to be just there. amy: who published it? >> a little dispatch news service which people don't understand here. they had correspondents in vietnam who knew vietnamese. i gave it to them. somehow they got it on 35 front pages most of the american press was open to the story. it was 1969. some papers would run it now and some would not because of the division. it is a different time. amy: and you won the pulitzer prize. >> i kept on going. i found meadlo. i knew he was somewhere in indiana. i spent 10 hours calling every phone directory in the state

until i finally found meadlo. i remember flying from salt lake city, getting a car.. whwhen i got there, this kid, he had killed these people -- let me take the story. he kept screaming. this made everybody remember this. his leg was blown off and you done all of this shooting and he said lieutenant kelly ordered them to do it. he said god has punished me, lieutenant kallick, and god will punish you. i find this kid in this run down farm in this rural area. an old farmhouse. chickens are running all over the place. i called earlier and got his mother and confirmed that was the b boy paul who lost his leg. here comes this farmer. this is a heart attack place. she's probably 50, looks 70. i have this ratty suit on. i rented a car.

i said, is -- can i see paul? he said he lives in a separate house. i don't know what he is going to do. and this woman said to me, i gave him a good boy and they sent me back a a murderer. i spent the first 20 minutes asking him to show me his stump, how they treated him. then he started talking. i had a friend who had written for the dispatch. he was the guy packaging the story and somehow selling them. he called up cbs and they said, bring him here. he agreed to come with his wife. we went to indianapolis and he flew to new york. he went on tv and mike wallace, asked him five times in the interview, and babies?

and mike was a very tough dude. at first they were just interviewing -- he began to tatalk and he said, stop, put on the cameras. and that turned the story. at that point, he is on television. it is not dispatch news telling story to everybody for $100. after that -- it was the third story i did. we had cbs news against the war. we had a network news agency that took a stand on something. i don't know what they're doing with the mexico thing, but i'm sure they're being objective. [laughter] there is not objectivity in this one. what happened was that sunday about 10 papers heather correspondents who've been to vietnam, telling the story of the massacre they had witnessed. dealing with self-censorship to agree. i learned a lot. i learned i could handle them.

i could run them. they could be mine. juan: i want to go back before my lai and talk about a section of your memoir, which i did not know that much about. your time with the presidential campaign of eugene mccarthy. you have this gripping account of you and mccarthy and robert lowell going from town to town drinking whiskey out of a flask while inbetween speeches of mccarthy. talk about what drew you to the campaign and why you resigned. >> i left the ap because my coverage of the war did not make the bosses happy. i got the message. i quit. i did what i did. late 1967, i hoped bobby would run against johnson. johnson was not going g to quit -- juan: bobby kennedy.y.

>> my next-door neighbor was a wonderful columnist. mary came to me and said, gene mccarthy is going t to ru. he was very bright. i went to see him. she said, you have to go see him, he needs help. i go to see this guy and he could care less about the press. i was finally convinced to listen to him give a speech. i was knocked out. do you know what he talked about? he talked about the constitution, what lyndon johnson was doing. then he said, this war is immoral. i'd never heard a politician say something that was so profoundly true to me. what is morality other than the mass murder that was going on. so i signed on. the staff hated the campaign, but i got along with him. i am smart. i did d a lot of wo. he liked me. he is an amazing man. whwhat happened that shaped my life,

he was from minnesota, farm labor. very conservative, anti-communist but very liberal. mccarthy was that way. he had been in a monastery. very interesting guy. i liked him a lot. there were a lot of guys hanging around. fellow irish catholic buddies. when i knew had been chief of stations for the cia. i said, why are all of these guys in the cia around? he said, well, he did favovors for jack for the cia. the best time i had was in the plane with him. here the wonderful daughter named mary. he was a very difficult man, very private, very, very smart. i would say, how is he today? one day mary said, alienated as usual.

he was just difficult. he did not like doing interviews. he did not think the kids supporting him, shaving their hair for gene, he did not think he owed them anything. he explained to me he was anti-communist. he would sometimes take bags of money down to certain catholic official, public leaders, particularly in latin america. what? i got to know a lot of guys in the cia through him. if you wononder why y when coby sayays that l little bit, the internal paper -- they didn't history of coby. i was doing domestic spying. amy: he said he knew morore abot the cia than the cia director. >> i got to know through mccarthy about the cia. the strangest sort of connection. gene -- anyway, a learning curve. a great learning curve.

juan: and why you resigned? >> we knocked out johnson. johnson quit in new hampshire because we got almost 42% in write-in, with the ballots that came in later. we beat him. that was enough for johnson. he quits. then bobby jumps in. they tried to hire me and it would not go there him because he didn't do it earlier. politics is awful. i went back to beingng a report. we're in wisconsin and he is going to win the election big. the polls showed if you stayed away from the black community -- amy: mccarthy. >> the ethnic vote would be higher. he would get 62% against johnson. but if he marched with -- there was a march schedule in the black community. if you marched, he would go down to 50%. they convinced him not to do it. i heard about it.

i'm running room with people like lowell and paul newman, bob ryan, all bright and committed. we were working out of my office giving speeches. i will come up at 6:00 in the morning. guys donon't like being woken up at 6:00 in the morning on the campaign. he said it is done of your business and i quit. he wasn't going totohange. i i thought hehe didn't know with the staff was doing. amy: so he canceled the speeches. >> we got noisy because someone told "the new york times" about it. i did talk about it in the book. it was a bad move to make. he was sure that bobby would win. yet given up. anyway, what a learning experience. i am barely 31, 32 and i have already learned all this about the world.

amy: talk about what you learned about t richard nixon that you did not report. >> oh, god. in 1998, i used to do -- go quite often to the newman fellows. the editor of it, a wonderful man, a tough guy. i loved him. he was the head of the newman foundation. for about 10 years i would go once a year and off the record i was asked with a bunch of these maybe 20 journalists from america and 15 to 24 journalists. even then, a considerable number of women. i was asked about stories i did not write. i said, god, i remember when i was at "the new york times" and i was pulled off -- i was hired to do vietnam by abe rosenfeld, the editor. he knew our coverage of vietnam sucked. i stayed away from watergate.

in late 1972 i was told i had to do watergate. i got going. i got to know the people in watergate. in 1974 when nixon left, about five days afterwards, i was well known for my watergate coverage, to come e in "the new york time" i got a call with information nixon had selected his wife a couple of times when he le and ca b back toto s celememte and within a week shwawas inhe emergcy room. amy: he puncd her. you havundersta e first oblem is if i wte it, i deroy a hoital beuse somedy violated- sosomeboyd didot le it the hostal, ew direcy what wasappening it wasmpiricalnformati. t charge t empiril informion. 1998i ias telli e newmanoundatioabout it

did not ow at to doith it. called jn ehrlican, e of theour peop indicte believe or not,hen you're coveri a storyike that ev though did jai d came o of jail stayed in toucwith the ys becau they kn more. i was -- i ote a loof bad stors about em and n calledhe nightefore d say, y'reoing to hatme againven more at least was straig about i no sanagging. we g along. i id, whats this aboubeating? and he said, oh, he did it a couple of times. when i told the students in 1998, i did not say and could not write it because it came from inside. what i said was -- i made a joke. i said i was totally insensitive to the notion of this crime. i was doing foreign policy. what i said was, w well, i figure if it have been one of those days and nixon

wanted to punch out pat, he could not find her and then bombed cambodia instead than i've got a story. i was just being a wiseguy. they published it the transcript and something called the newman reports. i wrote about it in my book because i was obtuse to the notion it was a crime. i thought this is something that was troubling for a lot of women. you could only see the#metoo movement coming. these reporters were mad at me. i did not get it. i did, but i didn't. you know what i'm saying? it is, to me, the real problem is i never could have written it because of how i learned how it happened. i knew more than a road even more than i told. you understand.

amy: you mean your source. who was your source? >> somomebody whwho has somethg to do with taking care of her -- maybe. amy: a doctor? >> you can't ask me that question. i have a wife that is a doctor and a's daughter that is a doctor. amy: we're going to go to break and come back to this discussion.  [music break]

amy: seymour hersh, pulitzer prize winning reporter, written for new york times and the new yorker. juan: sy, in your memoir, you have several chapters

devoted to your time at"the new york times." one of the most interesting to me was your account of the relationship of henry kissinger to keep people at "the times" and how he fed stories to "the times." >> i am hired in 1972 by rosenthal. i always wanteted to work ther. it is a great newspaper. i hate the coverage of trump. i wish thehey would get off ththe tweets into the kind of stuff they're doing now. that story was there to want to go. come on. amy: migrants at the border. >> and yemen. the american role is a much deeper than they know. anyway, keep on coming back to it. amy: tune into democracy now! >> i'm just minding my business. i get a price. hired may 1, late october,

when to the north vietnamese delegation in paris and wrote stories within 10 days of being in "the new york times" i'm interviewing this head of the national liberation front. i went back to vietnam and had coffee with her. a wonderful and amazing woman. anyway, i get back to the washington bureau and i rim randomly given a seat next to me a guy who did for policy. i minding my business. everyday 5:00 the secretary to the bureau chief would walk out. professional journalist. she would say, max is done. we're coming to you now. the next thing i know, laugh and talk and kissinger and you would write a story. i am watching it.

the story the next day would leave the paper that said government sources said so and so. about the third or fourth day i said, this is a pattern. every day kissinger would come to the bureau chief to bernie, the chief or in correspondent, and into the front page of "the new york times" about a hint of who. everybody sort of knew it was kissinger. i asked him about the third or fourth day. he is a very straightforward guy. i say, do you ever talk to -- i knew mel was against some of the policies. i said you ever talk to bill rogers? rogers was state and laird was secretary of defense. he would say, oh, no, if we did that, henry would not talk to us. amy: so a person i is getting a daily call frorom henry kissing, a regular call.

>> whehen there's a crisisis that involved -- amy: i want to read you a quote from anthony bourdain. who just took his own life. he was talking about henry kissinger. he wrote in his 2001 book a cook's tour -- "once you've been to cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat henry kissinger to death with your bare hands. you will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with charlie rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. witness what henry did in cambodia -- the fruits of his genius for statesmanship -- and you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at the hague next to milosevic." that was anthony bourdain who just killed himself. >> i did not know that quote. i wrote this long book about kissinger,

and i remember the next year at the white house correspondents dinner -- to which no rational journalist should go to. it is not our job. by the way, my complaint with "the new york times is we should not recognize america first. we are an international newspaper. but that is a more subtle issue. everybody would want kissinger at their table. what i said about kissinger publicly and again and again, when people have to come, they can't sleep and they count sheep, i think kissinger has to count burned and maimed enemies babies for life. amy: because of what he was just in charge of. >> and not just cambodia. come on. we're talking about, in any other society, he would be in the dock. he is in the hague with milosevic. these were war crimes going on.

the christmas bombing when there was a peace settlement and nixon wanted more? -- nixon wanted more? they do a christmas bombing that has nothing to do with the peace process. come on. what is that? that is murder. juan: i want to ask you about another of your many exposés that received international attention, abu ghraib. and you talked about how you got onto abu ghraib and the impact that story had, not only in the united states cannot but across the muslim world? >> there was nothing that i wrote that wasn't known in a been reported by humaman rights watc, amnesty international, doing reports talking about torture. it is the same thing i was reading in the 1960's about vietnam. church groups writing books about it i did not make the media. they were doing torture. i could not find --

in the fall of 2003 in december, wewon the war without quickly, but it turns out we did not win. donald rumsfeld, that man, called d dead-enders turned out to be the guy -- we're in a civil war ending chopped to death. in that december, i went to damascus and there was a two star general. we grabbed most of the generals who served in the iraqi army we grabbed. we either killed them or turn them around and put them in the units that begin to units.s. or use them for intelligence. this guy was missed. he was a linguist, two star. i got him to damascus. i think it cost $700 for him to take a car -- it was safe then. took a car from baghdad to damascus.

yet a daughter in med school that had to stay there because she did not know english and the medical school was in arabic. i spent four days with this two star general who was in signals intelligence. i am debriefing him. the third or fourth day said, let me type of the prison abu ghraib. he said, my friends wives and daughters are writing and saying you must come and kill me because i have been defiled. and that part of the world, they deal in shame and we deal in guilt and denial. they said they had been defiled. the gis had done things to them. i'm not sure to what extent. yes got to come and kill me because i'm no longer fit. i cannot be a wife and i can't be married. what is going on? i got into it. i knew then, maybe i could find a way. then i heard about photographs.

then i heard that cbs has some photographs. there is a secret report written. i got it. i got the report written by brilliant officer who was fired over it. rumsfeld thought he'd given it to me. i did not know him for two years. most wonderful man. i would go in a foxhole with him. amy: who are these people? >> he was a filipino. he got out of college. three times he asked the army to help pay for graduate school and they said, you don't even speak english well. you're some yellow guy. what happened is, i got the report and it is devastating. it was all because he had told me how bad it was. "the new york times published it. cbs s had the same phphotographphs i ha

and refused for two or three weeks to publish them. it was a terrible -- amy: these are the photographs of torture of prisoners. >> t they had a a for two wee. juan: and they did not run it. >> the reporters doing it, dan rather and mary mapes wanteded to but the suits stopopped them. i worked out a deal. they published it on 60 minutes before did a report on sunday. juan: the reporters who ended up being fired. >> not good to be good at your job -- amy: you wrote there was a widespread understanding those who died in interrogation were not to be buried, less the bodies be disinterred later but had to be destroyed by acid and other means. >> that is what i wrote. what am i supposed to say? yes. it was understood. this was early in the war. do you think it stopped? do you know how w many warfare placeses we're in right now? 76. the united states is conducting war in 76 countries now.

if you don't think assassinations are going on, just as much -- amy: you also wrote about the use of fire ants. >> i did not right. it was one of the fights i had with the editors. amy: the assassinations you're talking about and then we will do part two. >> we have the special operations forces operating all over africa if you think your r job just the telling the truth, it -- we're all over africa. nobody controls what they're doing. it is a big problem. this president does not know or does not care. there are people there. there are people behind him who do care. he will be a long process. amy: we're talking to seymour hersh and we will continue with a web exclusive at democracynow.org. pulitzer prize-winning journalist who has written for "the new yorker" and "the new york times." his memoir is just out simply called "reporter."

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