and fearful that it will upset, them, buel and ballard and hersh who runs the city field's foundation tried to either cancel or alter us. this is what was said. after the calls ballard said that the panelists were likely to insight the audience, we are not able to discuss the issues, the panel is for deeply bias had no issues of discussing facts. we are surprised that the common wealth club name would be attached to something that was so clearly hyperbolic. mark buel in a common well, coo greg dalton, i find it deflammatory. i would like to urge the commission to alter the title of the event to issues facing the park and ask the club to have a representative of the rpd be on the panel. buel was then subsequently added. >> city fields foundation lobbyist susan hersh wrote to provent (inaudible) i want to follow up on the phone message that i called you about the upcoming common wealth with the golden gate park. and to discuss this project and i am going to cut to point. the point is this was a public agency, going after a group of citizens. and then later, deleting all of the e-mails l

hersh. e started in journalism in 1959 at city news bower row in chicago, the news cooperative known for its hard-boiled reporters summed up in the famous advice: if your mother says she loves you, check it out. [laughter] mr. hersh's subsequent career led to important exposes; the killing of civilians and the military cover-up in my lai massacre, an illegal cia domestic spying program and the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib prison in iraq among many other things. hersh's my lai revelations won him the pulitzer prize for international report, and there have been numerous and regular national award recognitions since. those journalists who have so much as dabbled in investigative reporting, trafficking in stories that traveled narratives and make mincemeat out of sacred cows know that the work invites criticism, and mr. hersh has received some. one memorable jab came from a former defense official who called him the closest thing american journalism has to a terrorist. [laughter] the nixon a

michael hersh is chief correspondent for the national journal. in the days following boston, our mayor, michael bloomberg and his customary modesty, came out to say that we should perhaps think about changing the constitution in order to stave off future attacks like this. i would like to contrast that with a well known famous saying among lawyers that hard cases make bad law. in a case like this, with such extraordinary circumstances, around such an aberrant event, the best opportunities to pass meaningful legislation are not in the wake of these sort of crazy one off extraordinary events. what do you make of that? >> well, it is a real conundrum. on the one hand, holmes was right. you don't want extraordinary circumstances to create general law for average circumstances. but in another sense, this was not extraordinary. in fact, we've been living in something of a bubble. the fbi has done actually a fairly amazing job over the last decade of stopping many terrorist acts like when they occurred in other countries and europe and the middle east.

and saudi arabia in particular documented by seymour hersh with the redirection whereby basically sunni militias were to be equipped financed and armed by saudi arabia and qatar on behalf of of the u.s. in order to wage basically sectarian war against shia muslims with the aim being that this would weaken rein in influence in the region we can syria we can hizbullah and we basically just seeing the fruits of this policy this can be about six years ago if you think back to two thousand and seven u.s. and britain were facing heavy blows from iraqi resistance often from silly sunni militias israel had been ever saying global hizbollah the end of two thousand and six and with this failure to defeat his bowler in in levanon and so basically this policy about it had to be direct and these these attacks away from attacking zionism and u.s. and british imperialism and towards a kind of fratricidal sectarian war we're seeing the fruits of this policy now it was reported just last month in the guardian that one of these. sunni militias had a meeting recently in jordan where they met with the saud

in fact, the vice president of the senior class of hersh high school is here. judy, how are you, dear? i haven't seen you forever. be you notice, she's war wounded here. she was so taken up with the fact that i came to town that she ran down for a triple decaffeinated or caffeinated la today or whatever they sell right here in the coffee capital of the world and managed to take a tumble and went down. so she's injured on my behalf, i'm sure. but she sent her husband to the beginner last night which i thought was -- and he got away with it. anyway, we'll see afterwards. so having to go back and having to delve down has been a chore that has not been please santa. on the other hand, we've had some tremendous conversations with people whose sense is that that period or the periods of the nation's conflict continue to be important to us pause they're pivotal -- because they're pivotal in many how the nation continues to advance or decline. now, i would suggest to you that that's really bad shorthand. have any of you read thomas cahill's stuff? why the greeks matter

there is a couple of different stories that they had given her 36 hours notice to leave the call hershe son was 10 years old. the story is basically they were trying to get through a confederate territory and it was difficult because the confederate builders were calling out to them and saying different things to them that were not very pleasant. one of the stories was that one night they slept by the railroad tracks and it was rather cold. they did not have much food. they would go on various founding -- farming communities and ask if they could spend the night. it was an extremely difficult time erie it by the time they did reach nashville where andrew was at that point, eliza was overwhelmed, spent at that point. >> were their lives in danger tax >> sure. >> could you add some more color to their stories in this time of their life? >> she had taken refuge and as she said, we have a letter from charles where he talked about the cold and the rain and hunger. the danger to their lives. they were traveling with mary and her husband daniel stover who had been a bridge burner in the civil