Seymour M. Hersh | The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

welcome to the Free Library of Philadelphia my name is Andy kahan I'm director of author events here and I am truly honored to welcome our legendary guest Seymour Hersh has been called one of America's greatest investigative reporters and quite simply the greatest investigative journalist of his era you are here today because Hirsch is responsible for some of the most important reporting in the past 50 years he exposed the me lie massacre in Vietnam the domestic spying scandals in 74 and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses in Iraq for his work Hirsch has received some of the most coveted prizes in journalism he is a five-time George Polk award winner winner of the Pulitzer Prize as well as a national magazine award for public service and the National Book Critics Circle Award his latest book the killing of Osama bin Laden has caused a hailstorm of criticism throughout the media in the books separate essays Hirsch claims among other things that President Obama lied about the capture and killing of bin Laden that the u.s. is true involvement in the Syrian civil war has been hidden behind a diplomatic curtain then there's the White House turning a blind eye to Turkey's involvement in supporting Isis since we only have an hour we better get started please welcome Seymour Hersh let's see what I'm gonna do is we can talk about bin Laden perhaps in the question to answer I just want to try and I spent trying of trying to figure out what's going on because clearly Obama is very bright I would guess he's probably going to be the the brightest president we're gonna have for the next 50 years you know it's seen with the way the way we're going and so and yet on foreign policy there's so much he's done that didn't deviate from the you know the the track record of George Bush and Darth Vader the Vice President and unfortunately it's a it's a you know going to war against an ideas not a good not a good thought but anyway we can get into that but I'm worth we're talking about in the last three three or so years I've been writing a lot for the London books as some of the stuff that's here is but was published there and there's been a lot of written suffering about it but it hasn't really been exposed here so that's why it's sort of fun to do this to go around and talk about it here in America because it is we are in a different area era you know everybody complains about everything that's happened before you know what we did we always did better but I am a little a gas that how how much control this administration and I'm sure the next one to will have of the media there's sort of an amazing amount of sort of self-censorship I think more than anything else but so let me let me up in loud let me just say this of course Obama ordered the raid and of course the seals is you had murdered him murder being the operative word there was the orders were he he could not survive that attack for a lot of reasons we can get into but everything else is simply everything else you've heard about it you know the Pakistanis didn't know our helicopters weren't detected by radar etc said it was all a lot of Lewis Carroll you know one of his it's just a fantasy but that's okay but let me tell you about something that's more interesting right now to me no not not that the other stuff isn't but I'm just was thinking just just in the last coming down I drove down from Washington and just thinking which is a good way to think instead of watching traffic I guess one of the things one of this so I get four long pieces for the Eleni review and largely because I worked a lot for The New Yorker and I work for the New York Times and I'm very much a mainstream journalist and the near the London Review of weather is what I did these articles for and it's a great magazine and had the same sort of high standards of hiring in this case former New Yorker fact checkers for me and also pay me an awful lot of money which is what the New Yorker did but what the difference is just to be honest that I just had an editorial difference with with the management there because the stuff I wrote about Bush and Cheney I wasn't as welcome period that's all Obama was I think he'll do you know that it's you can rationalize almost anything and you can say that complaints I make about bin Laden are the normal fog of war stuff Obama not telling the truth about Mary at many aspects but let me go back to something else one of the stories I wrote was called I think it was a rat line and the red line it was a long piece about how we early in 2012 in the Syrian war and as you know this government my government our government has been very much against the Bashar Assad regime government and has maintained that the peace talks just let you read about in the paper I read the paper today they broke up the bombing started again and the peace talks collapsed there was never a chance to peace talks we're gonna get anywhere because the reality is and it's hard for our president and many in America accepted as Russia did a great job they came in their armies been much approved there's nothing - whether you like or don't like Putin he's put billions of dollars into the army the Army's much more effective they came in and he did exactly what he said he was gonna do he came in for a short while he bombed he also reestablished the Syrian army which had been battered right but quite badly and wasn't on the point of breaking as she kept on reading but it was a very damaged army demoralize you could argue but in constant combat with Isis and al-nusra and other groups for years and it wasn't going anywhere and what the Russians did is besides bombing and to support them they also retrained him and we re outfitted them they took one of their armies in particularly a fourth who had been battered they took it off offline for a month gave us some R&R taught him the gave him some training more weapons they all Russians not only would just bombing they have a port now in in Latakia near la Turkey in the Mediterranean there's only a small area of Syrian waterfront on the Med and the Russians have a big chunk of it a Navy base and now a big huge Depot for their flight missions and airfields they have made other they've picked up other airfields along the way so the Russians just did it if you remember in our Cold War return to the Cold War that's been pretty scary to me talk that goes on Obama said publicly it's gonna be a quad mire this we're talk about schadenfreude because of what happened to us not only in Vietnam we're now on year 15 of the war in Afghanistan you know and how's it going fellas you know how are we doing you know what's the prognosis and if you think we're getting the straight talk about how many troops there are I'll tell you right now there's more than 20,000 American American troops involved in Iraq in Iraq right now and that's not coming that the ones on the carriers because we're doing a lot of flying from carriers if they added the support the pilots and the support team it really a 25,000 and only I think they're announcing 3,000 so the the power of of the minute the bully pulpit if you were of this government is stronger than I've ever seen it and it is so I got them there's a lot of criticism about what I've written about Obama not so much in Europe in Europe as much if I just came back from a week in London and it's much different there Europeans are much more open to being more objective since they've had so much best leadership there Blair et cetera and the guy they have now then oh my god so anyway the a camera so in early 2012 so this I wrote this story about two years ago we began a ratline we began to supply the opposition what we called the moderate opposition which pretty much disappeared pretty quickly the powerful groups in in in against Bashar Assad right now as of course you've read about Isis but they don't really show up until about two years ago middle oh three two and a half years ago before that it was a loser and a couple of their other jihadist groups but essentially what happened very quickly there was a legitimate opposition to Bashar Assad I was in Damascus maybe six seven times since since 2002 and I can tell you that the amount of opposition to him by monk just because he wasn't delivering on a lot of promises he was also a despot I mean I don't think I would make the argument no worse than what you see in in Saudi Arabia Bahrain UAE no worse no worse than any despot under attack doing what he's doing war is hell and it's a horrible awful war and everybody's be you know there's beheading and brutality in all sides and a civilians always suffer in war just to give you sort of an example of where I come from Bashar is in a fight in which if he loses he's gonna end up like he and his wife and his pretty wife and his two pretty children are gonna end up like Mussolini hanging with their throats cuts in some square somewhere and he knows that so he's an award at a death and yes he does use barrel bombs but I know a country that wasn't an award to its death that used barrel bombs for seven years in a very dirty war the bombs that that were used in this war were full of napalm and an anti defoliant the Foley in called caca Dilek acid which has long standing permit effects leads to a lot of a lot of suffering children born without limbs it's called the United States of America we use barrel bombs so seven years why they're cheaper oil comes in at 63 cans it's a barrel bomb 63 gun a gallon can and you turn it around and packet so I always wonder when all the criticism about barrel bombs well towards Bashara it would have been better if you use 500-pounders which were five times as much weapons I don't know I just it's we just get into a war propaganda words yes war as hell so anyway at that point the original opposition to bashar pretty much disintegrated within a year what i'm telling you now is it was the finding of the Joint Chiefs and I also wrote a story later about how the Joint Chiefs the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time a general name well what the hell was his name and jumped out of my head I'll think of it a second he was the chairman before the current chair yeah yeah what's his first name that's what I can't remember general Dempsey anyway Dempsey joined came online in 2011 retired last year and it's hard to think about officers this way but he majored in English at West Point then took got a master's degree in fine arts at Duke and was a homegrown scholar on yours Yeats rather he was really big on Yates and unlike a lot of I guess other I would say generalist but a lot of other people he read a lot maybe if he walked into his office it would be amazed that you know particularly in the Middle East he Lawrence a lot of the scholarship and when he retired August 30th or 31st of September first he's teaching now at at Duke again he's teaching a bunch of courses he was just brought right he's just didn't joined boards he's interesting to me because he was he was the one that two and a half years ago began communicating over the without the president's knowledge presumably at least that's the way I wrote it but find no evidence that he ever informed the president he began dealing indirectly with Bashar Assad with intelligence on the ground that the White House wasn't getting it the option to Bashar Assad by 2013 any homegrown legitimate traditional opposition because of Bashar Assad besides being a despot didn't deliver didn't deliver on education promises he didn't deliver on human rights promises he improved conditions but he didn't deliver on everything and corruption was very big and stayed big so there's a lot of underlying resentment of him in a natural-born opposition which within a year was pretty much taken over by the crazies there's a Salafist and waha vez al nusra being the key one and and so we knew by 2012 what Dempsey simply did has started dealing with the Germans and the Russians who were there helping him and we just joined in I I wrote about his pretty amazing thing he did he retired the new guy is different much more traditional I don't think it's not a smart perhaps nothing wrong with him except that he you know if you notice we've been putting troops into we just announced we're gonna put Special Forces troops into Syria and I can tell you it's not legal he's sovereign the Russians are there legally because they were asked to be and the Iranians were asked Hezbollah was asked we're not asked and so it's very interesting to me we can talk about that later what Obama's trying to do and why why he's publicly make I think it has to do with showing Putin you know I can do it too who did was very effective he pulled out he left he left Bashar Assad in much better shape there's no way he could he's not gonna lose an election and the problem you had with the Geneva talks that collapse is because the opposition that was there the one requirement they had is yes Bashar were there we'll have talks but if there's gonna be election he can't participate it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen he's gonna stay in power I don't what that means eternal war I don't know some it's just a situation it's a fact of life he's he's he's sustaining himself in any case in 2012 in our effort to get rid of Bashar that was the target and by the way if you wonder why kids from mullah back in in Brussels the the the radical North African group that and the kids that did the terrible bombing and not the there was a bombing earlier in that you don't know about we paid much attention to their group of kids from from Malin Black that were involved in blowing up the airport in Brussels recently but a year before they did a smaller bombing and that's how people got on to them and the same with they had gone into Syria and the same with people some of the the even the group that was killed that was responsible for the horrible massacre in Paris the one thing they had in common at all some of them had gone into Syria in 2012 in 2013 and of course what you're not told is the authorities in both those countries are allies with us in getting rid of Bashar said great go go fight and they many of them came back very discouraged because they the the fanatics they're the Salafist and well hobbies is fanatic Sunnis treated him like dirt because they they didn't know Arabic they didn't know the Koran and they were ended up come back very discouraged and there's this sort of it I don't think we have that full story I just you Rishta Khalid think the idea that Isis is in every street corner in America that they're trying to prove a as long as you can convey if you can prove a fear in America you win politically and that's a little outrageous because the reality is there's a great deal of questions about whether these guys learned what they learned in jails in France and in Belgium and in the racism that they they they were exposed to constantly and so it's just it's just another thought but anyway so we started shipping stuff to them the CIA was involved and under the law a law that was passed I dunno Here I am brushing a lot of snow off my mantle I get tired of it but I'd done a story for The Times about domestic spying sort of a famous story in December 1974 that led to the church hearings and there is a direct line and in the hearings of course one of the things that emerge from the all the wrongdoing that was discovered was a congressional mandate when the CIA does a covert operation they must brief it to the Congress at least four members in each house the leadership Intelligence Committee Armed Services committees and there's a presumption that these people will protect the secrets etc etc they must share him there are loopholes one of them is if you're working with an ally it's a liaison operation you don't have to brief to Congress so the way they constructed it we decided we were going to start shipping arms Libya fell in 2000 or lato 2011 remember Qaddafi was killed arms were all over the place there was just huge bazaars available we ended up buying an awful lot of weapons we use the Brits as a cover and once we did that we could not tell Congress this was a operation endorsed by the Secretary of State is not running for president and by CIA director then at the time David Petraeus we still call him King David who was because when he was CIA director he begin every meeting and I saw at his office one of the things he would do is if he had all the ADA senior aides there and somebody was coming in from the intelligence be able to do a briefing on you know there's a lot of good the way I deal with my attitude towards the bureaucracy in Washington is the people that I deal with and that sometimes come to me are people that when they take the oath of office it's to the Constitution not to the president and you don't find that very often most of time it ends up being to the president and so there are people inside wonderful people inside who really they stay and they worry about what's going on particularly this all started with the Cheney Bush craziness after 9/11 and so people were anyway it's just the reality it's not all corrupt in any in this case to the horror of many people involved we began buying arms not using our money because that you might have held tell Congress about that the Turks who have been dirty all the way supporting Isis and why we don't talk straight about Turkey as a mystery to me it is a NATO net and a lie but everyone's right now he's massacring the PKK his opposition Kurds in the country with this they have a special police unit sort of a paramilitary police you to notice the gendarmerie they're doing massacres wholesale out of sight not in the major cities and he's locked up the press as you know over 200 military officers generals and admirals have been locked up over the years it's a real fascist country these days but we still don't call the spade a spade there and anyway they began the ship arms through Turkey into the opposition it was sold inside as we're supporting the moderates even though at the time everybody understood this and this is what this is I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt or what happened bin Laden as you know was a player in our war against the Russians the Russians took over Afghanistan in the 70s late 70s and Jimmy Carter and Basinski then the National Security Adviser decided we were going to take on the Russians we're gonna show the Russians and we're gonna start a talk we're gonna just start a war against them covertly a beginning was a covert war if you remember we didn't send we didn't participate in the 1980 Olympics etc etc and so there was a heightened Cold War we picked on bin Laden we found bin Laden very early he was fighting against the Russians we financed him we all know that story he had an army I'm one who thinks that I'm not one I know a lot of people who think that we don't know what happened in 9/11 most of my smart friends on the inside and a lot of smart ones think it had more to do with home and them and Mohammed Alta but anyway so we we did the war and he helped at one critical moment we we paid a lot of money for the most powerful intelligence service in the world right now the Pakistani ISI which has become a huge fortress it's like right now the ISI it's very - it's got the same stand and same standing and inside that country as the President as the not the president but the head of the army and it also is investing it's like like the like the officer corps in Egypt they have huge investments and they're generating their own money they're there they're involved in Australian projects they're building one of the largest real estate projects and office projects in Islamabad the capital huge huge big not very good development for us I think but anyway at this point we're still playing as much as we can ball with them and so the Pakistani is a came to our rescue they came in when we needed them and they helped fight the war for us sometimes taking on some elements of the Taliban the Northern Alliance and maybe you don't know what it's the other an opposition group also in Pakistan and Afghanistan and and so we drove the Russians out it was a big victory one of the things that happened while the Russians were there is that the Indians in the in Pakistan are like you know dogs and cats and men and woman I don't think so husbands and wives I don't know what's the analogy I don't know boyfriend and girlfriend something like that anyway and the Indians set up some an embassy in a consulate the ISI and their hatred of all things India actually and what I'm telling you now you could nobody bothered we publish it here but if you read the wire services and the Urdu press which we still don't read enough of we don't read the foreign press the Farsi press we just don't meet enough our correspondents I don't know why I mean we have people that know the language but a lot of stuff is reported there that doesn't get reported here the in the ISI also raided some consulates in the Indian set up consulates in various cities and in Afghanistan and hung some of the diplomats from the trees about 80 to 83 and this heightened tensions with yeah and at that time India we know by 1975 we estimate that they had weaponized the nukes Pakistan at that time had a reactor called Cohutta going an enriched uranium reactor and we knew they were in the way of doing but they hadn't weaponized so by the middle 80s if if and you've been there you know the the line from Delhi to Islamabad is it's about it's an hour's flight there's only one flight one or two flights a week now things are not very good and they are very good there but it's you know middle mid range you know meet missile we're talking five ten minutes and so they were very they had here India things were heightened tensions were great they didn't have the bomb yet India did and so we're the buddy so what do we do and I'm telling you this because it plays back into one of the elements of the bin Laden story which is the Pakistani radar detector our choppers they were stealth we built for them you can find it online Raytheon was the main contractor I stopped counting when I got to 900 million very it's called an 3d audible system its system so good you can't get rid of an image and it's a highway it's high and of course there are great allies oh it goes back some of you remember Gary Francis Powers and you know you old enough who's the guy who was of his u2 was shot down by the Russians and Eisenhower lied about it there's been movies about it and documentaries went back that far and so but still all in all even though the Pakistan's came out with a very strong relationship with us they were totally our buddies I mean they were doing it for money but so what they were doing it and so in 2012 of course we knew that the stuff it's a little about that the wonderful Tom Lehrer lied about Verner von Braun and v2 rockets I'm not responsible were they gone I send them up and where they come down we knew this stuff by the middle of 2012 we knew L knew Sarah Isis wasn't around yet but jihadist groups were and it was quickly whatever happened the the the groups that were really secular were eaten up and many of them which you don't always hear about many of them may deal with the government came back in particularly some of the army units because they saw that Sharia law and the crazies they were on the on the other side that wasn't their life they didn't want to live that way and Bashar Assad has tremendous support among the Sunni community in the major city simply because it's safer there this doesn't mean they like them but it's safer under his regime of Damascus is operating right now flourishing not all that well but two-thirds of Aleppo is pretty sane that's one third that the rebels had that's been bombed to death and yes that does happen in any case so the thinking was you know like Rena von Braun we're gonna send this stuff into Turkey and they're gonna ship it to the people they want and we know turkeys pro-pro Isis now is then Pro al-nusrah very close to it we knew in a in a in a very conscious way this was gonna end up in the bad guys guys that we really don't agree with in terms of their power their pilote their political philosophy their philosophy if any of those guys gotten got in control of the government they would kill the minorities they would kill all the Christians they would kill all the ala whites which is the ruling sect and it's a sort of a Shia with it you know Xie was you know celebrating Christmas she a group I just what I mean is not as quite as fervent as the other Shia groups the ala White's they do actually some of them actually to celebrate Christmas and and so they would just establish a jihad you know as a caliphate if you will you know them I'm a head of the word that Baghdad II wasn't around he came in who's now the self-proclaimed caliphate why did we do that well because we had seen at work in in the in the eighties with bin Laden bin Laden and the bad boys helped us and we did get rid of the Russians you could make the argument I think it's a pretty good argument there's almost a straight line between the horrible collapse of the Russian army in the disillusionment and glass knows even I would make that line what's wrong with that anything Reagan did it was a very disillusioning thing for the the people of Russia who have a great you know they have this great they lost 20 million in World War two and they justifiably thinking was their blood that won the war not necessarily ours you know the tremendous fighting they did they stopped well you all know that history anyway and so so the seeking was and I'm again I'm I'm thinking heuristically I'm giving the ravenna for the doubt our thinking was okay they're going to guys we can't deal with but let them take care of the shot overthrow that government and then we'll come in and we'll do our dirty working you know screw them to the wall or whatever gonna do we'll we'll come out with something rational but they can do what we can't do we don't want to go in we don't want to spend the money but the thing he was let them do it I'm and so here's what's missing in that picture about two or three hundred people who were working with bin Laden in the early 80s and we were very hot and heavy of them had come from Algeria they were Muslim fundamentalist they spend a couple years there I'm not telling you something that's that's not totally completely in the books this is not original thinking here and then they went back and they were radicalized and as you know there was a tenure war civil war between the mostly sell office in Algeria two hundred thousand killed before the army which got very violent to and destructive armies get with this kind of stuff there was huge murders going on but the Salafist would go into villages at their height they all wore black covered with scars and black that sort of frightening venue and they would go into villages pick a village at night going round up everybody killed I'm not exaggerating this kill the children in front of the parents then kill everybody but one survivor so he would live to tell the story it was really her if ik what happened in not only not so much in Algiers but also all the suburb cities it was a terrible war and then the army trying to feed him got increasingly insane and ended in in after ten years and now Jerry's reasonably stable now but what was the lesson then that unintended consequences but we didn't listen to that lesson so when we started playing around with these guys thinking that we'd ship them arms I'm telling you right now we are still shipping weapons there it's still in the belief that we can find some moderates that will overthrow this guy and do something against them it's just once you start a game and Obama hasn't ended the game he hasn't ended the game he's still in it he's still grieving why did he put 250 250 Special Forces troops across the border in this area I can't begin to tell you I know I can tell you what's a reasonably it's not my analysis of the analysis of people that first of all Dempsey's gone he retired last fall he stopped all this stuff as much as he could as a chairman he was you know he's chairman of Joint Chiefs can say to the president I disagree and if I'm called before Congress which I am about you know ten times a year I well if they ask me I'll tell him which is very powerful stuff if you don't have the chairman on board you can't fire him because then you might even go public more and Obama's attitude the best I could make is that his attitude was essentially the military guys who worked there the this is firsthand stuff but you know it's also you know very small pool a margin of error is 100 percent 1 percent 99 percent anyway like the polls they their attitude was he just didn't understand why anybody would want to have a career in the military he never listened to them very much he didn't always respect them oh he certainly didn't respect those who disagree with him so you learn not to disagree publicly that's why when I mentioned Dempsey went behind his back to support but Assad Assad regime is because he knew he couldn't get a voice you know I I'm assuming that but that's a perfectly rational assumption he wasn't necessarily thinking he was doing something it was gonna undermine the president he think that what he was doing was gonna was gonna it was more rational than the American policy and he couldn't get it changed I guess overtly I don't know how much he talked to the president about it and so so so where we are now is we're we still want Bashar going it's not gonna happen what happened I think were triggered Obama it's a perfectly rational explanation for what seems to be an irrational act 250 people aren't going to make much of a difference you heard about Palmyra and the Syrian army we took Palmyra what you which he didn't read about because reporters I don't know why didn't get into some of the foreign press on it the Iranians had some very good stuff on it was terrible fighting really brutal Isis was fighting to the death they're not very good fighters they're just kids that they throw up there and many of Justin there's there's not they're not trained into a serious army although they have a lot of leadership if they have any good leadership it comes from the the the Sunnis that we fired when we took over Baghdad if you remember no three we disbanded the army and dismantled the Sunni fire the bath party and many of the leaders of the army who were baddest are involved in El Baghdad Baghdad he and some were very good officers so there is some training but by and large the people they fought weren't well organized it was door to door hand-to-hand fighting and in the foothills of Alta Mira the Russians had to put in a special force unit specialists you know they were very good fighters just like we have very good fighters in our seals and our Delta Force and they fought hand-to-hand - and what turned it was the Syrian army was better trained and they had Russian advisors and the Russian Special Forces guys really showed them you know you you just can't stand off and fire rockets you got to go in there and flush him up by the way which is why nothing's gonna happen much in Mosul that famous city that was yet to be taken and in northern northern Iraq because there's it's a mean people and the the Isis is embedded the Iraqi army is one of the thing somebody remind me where I was when I said I don't I don't want to lose that thought about well I'll go back we might be to tell you something about the Iraqi about the armies we train so essentially Obama was sort of saying you know we know the special forces Russian Special Forces played a role even though Putin said he's backing off the army he he didn't say he was getting out completely he still has planes to fly missions he has a lot more helicopters there he still has a lot of troops supporting and so I think what he was I'm the the people I know their belief is the people who are involved in the intelligence and the high end military stuff their belief this whole thing was done sort of the show Putin you know I'm not done yet don't roll me over which is I guess I think it works in a schoolyard but meanwhile he's expanding you know what's the game plan how are they gonna get resupplied he's gonna resupply by air because you can't do it trust there's no there's too much ground too many people that could you know steal the convoy and shoot it up and the Russians you know the the logical thought is he's worked out some from the Russians they because the Russians control the airspace they have huge radars and they could totally dominate the airspace they can shoot down anything they want but he knows the Russians will not shoot down an American plane so he's playing a little gamesmanship but I don't know what happens with three guys Americans I hate to say this because I'm it's it's I don't want this to happen but one two three guys get beheaded what do we do that go bigger I mean what's the game plan why are we there he's got the Syrian army can do it the prize the last prize is the town called Raqqa there was once the de facto capital of the of the ISIS in the year for the last couple of years and it's a race the Kurds wanted but the Syrian army will probably get for their first and I think Obama would rather have some of the Kurds working with us get it and not and keep the Syrian army away from it I can't imagine any other reason he's doing it and it's not gonna make much of an impact and it's putting people at high risk and he's not explaining much about it except in a braggadocio way we got our guys in there it just makes no skid say if you really think that if you really think you've heard something pleasant and interesting you're all deeply into SNM because it's not this is not a little Mary sunshine here okay I'm interested to know what role or influenced the arms merchants have through all this mess what do you think I mean why would I have a different thought than you and that one business business business as usual which makes the Bernie thing really interesting because among other things I've been on I'm 79 older and crankier than Bernie I've dealt with him a little bit he's very cranky but what makes what he's doing among other things he's so a you know it's not only doesn't need to run around the fundraisers he's the first Democrat that I can remember since I've been watching politics I grew up in Chicago they install politics 60 65 years that has not gone to the Jewish community in New York to raise money which means that he's free in a way if he could ever he's not going to get there unless something terrible happens and or rational anyway oh you know we all have I don't know if the Democrats can hold his kids I was G McCarthy's press secretary speechwriter I was a reporter in 66 67 covered the Vietnam War and knew it was just a disaster I couldn't do it with the press and I and Bobby Kennedy wouldn't run and a friend of mine him a wonderful columnist named Muriel Rory who lived across the street instead of the Irish Catholic mafia she said Jean needs somebody go I didn't want to do politics but I went and talked to him and I started working for him for four or five months and you know he turned it around because what they call getting clean for Jean the young kids and they really were not there McCarthy was a Benedictine very religious by the way Mass every day I wasn't allowed even as the press secretary to say it and when I was writing speeches the model I had I could not write anything in tree ads like the Kennedys did you know asked not be not want oh I had to do his man was Charles piggy if any you know him 19th century French theologian who wrote the most of difficult sentences anyway but he he went around and what does he talk about he says something a word you never hear today and this is what want him to the kids he said this is an immoral war it's not moral and what I keep on thinking about is let's see we did we went to Iraq and then we announced we're pulling out and then we pull out in the middle of night if you remember that story we left units there we even middle night we were so embarrassed he pulled out over night the last day of the last day of 2011 I guess was when the bush actually redid the the cut out date and we left this country in complete disarray in madness would you I wonder what a five-year-old kid in 2003 I was like is like now I mean how psychotic can he be I mean he have to be psychotic to be normal what can we expect from a president - well you you you you reader you've heard her we came we saw he died you ever seen that just look it up on each email you know that's what you more the same more the same I mean nothing more of the same and that's what the kids are saying we don't want more the same you know you know she's you know the real answer is how the hell do I know okay I have a question about um your broader work for journalists who might not be affiliated with any mainstream news networks do you have any advice on how to cultivate the sources that you've been able to cultivate in order to do the reporting that you do to hold government accountable well you know in general I know I I do speak through a lot of journalism groups and by the way it's interesting I do much more overseas I mean I there's a couple there's an investigative reporting group I always go to their convention and give a talk but overseas I've gone twice to the Middle East to places where you would not expect investigative reporting to be in demand in Amman Jordan in Cairo and it's been very complicated for me because I'm speaking it was I've gone for three day seminar sort of close seminars and sort of like a a brushing a little snow off my mantle a masterclass take some of the stories I did and what you do trying to show them how you can get access to municipal and local officials some of the little tricks that I use I always watch retirements in the military and he any two-star that retires is pissed off you didn't make three so this if you give them a little time watch people leave Congress after 32 years after a couple months and particularly when they have access to information that they haven't talked about you know you can work it that way but I always say generally there's there's two big rules I have in journalism one is read before you write and that's the toughest one the other one is you know get the hell out of the way of the story there's no such thing as a fabulous story there's a story that when you tell it is fabulous and you just don't use the word you don't you don't say you don't get breathless you just do the work to make the story talk for itself and the implications of the story being clear but I would just say wherever you are locally anybody can get published now this is something that's new I'm my take on Twitter and my children do not allow me to tweet or read Twitter because a lot of bad things are said particularly my write stories by my peers sometimes anyway it's all usually when they start criticizing an anonymous sources that's just come on I wrote for the New York every story that I wrote for the New York Times so I went about 23 prices working for them I didn't I didn't name anybody when you're writing about national security are you kidding I would tell the editor and you know sometimes it was the head of the CIA and and sometimes it was people like presence key and I'm still talking to serious people but you can't name them and particularly this guy Obama has put more people into jail for leaking than any other president more than even Bush so he's very tough on this and guys are more he's frightened everybody a lot more my one of my good friends is Jim risin of the New York Times that was driven just half-man by these guys for years with subpoenas about money vote stories about wiretapping but I just think but the downside of the whole Twitter thing is I'll give you an example it's Saturday night early Sunday morning you're there's a bar called the old epic grill across from the White House you're then there drinking and you close the bar and you're going have another drink and you walk home you're walking past the White House it's you can't quite get as close as you used to there's a fence but you conceal still see it 3:00 in the morning you see a bunch of lights on and third floor the of the second office building right next to the White House or in the White House and your tweet lights on in the White House tweet what's going on why something wire lights up guys cleaning the floor stuff that's all it is so that's the problem with Twitter the other side of Twitter and the blogs is it's accessible to any they're accessible you can write for them you can find a blog that will take a welcome some they don't pay much they might not even pay you in the beginning but you can express yourself and here's the trick when I was hot and heavy at the New Yorker the one thing I realized I put our story and they put out the story and you know Monday morning was Sunday morning and buy a good story it'd be the internet did it and the same thing happens at the London Review when I wrote the story about bin Laden the London Review they within four hours they had a million hits people from all over the world hitting and tuning their computers broke down they had to bring in another one and they had just four days it was just like madness there but people picking up there so it's diminished the power of the mainstream press in a way and very much and also the mainstream press I I was a fanatic about you know my ritual used to be even when I was saying I went TV shows Chicago so the first thing you did is you got the New York Times and you had a contest to see who could do the crossword puzzle the fastest right while cutting classes and cutting classes was what you had to do to prove your manhood well you know when I got there I was a kid from the south side my parents are immigrants I got a scholarship but I didn't know what I was doing my father died when I was 16 he had a little small ghetto business really in the black community that I ran when I was 16 and so I was sort of an innocent and but somebody I got somebody took me to issue Chicago a professor so a friend and the first thing they asked you back there in this in the mid-60s make 50s you know in the days of Karl Marx and radicalism was that whether as Aristotelian or play tennis or a Maoist and I'm not kidding be honest what does it have to do with this I know just I was so out of it but but but so what did I learn at a good school that everybody can learn now critical thinking I learned to think for myself I learned a you know okay if you're gonna study economics you read Schumpeter and you read these you know if you're caught you read the people in original you you read enough so that you can make a judgment about things yourself and so one of the things you have to tell aspiring journalists is you've got to get into some of the stories that you hate arms control stuff there's a big story now in the nuclear we're spending a billion dollars modernizing our nuclear feet because we think the Russians are doing the same we're talking about modernizing nuclear weapons now at a billion plus I mean a huge amount I think it's more than what a lot of money that it's all being authorized it's not very much in the public domain what the hell you know we should be going the other way the last thing we need and which brings me to just something about the bin Laden's the reason I got into the bin Laden story besides the fact I had done a lot of work for The New Yorker particularly a story in 2009 work on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal it's the biggest threat we have we're in panic about it because it's controlled by a country that has a huge minority that for example love bin Laden that was you know he was a hero to many of the the hoi polloi you know the common people not that not the guys who went to exit an Oxford from Cambridge in Islamabad but for most of the masses there he's a hero and we're always worried about a fundamentalist taking over some element in the army that controls the bomb and that's why when we I'll just say in a minute about the bin Laden story it turns out I'm getting all these calls from really around the world more than here May 2nd is the end of her fifth anniversary I didn't even know that until I was I was driving today I got called by him all over South Asia in in Europe they're more sensitive to that issue what we did simply is we didn't know he had it bin Laden was living there and if you want to believe that bin Laden who was on the run from us from o1 and was in the Hindu Kush mountains those very rough mountain area between Pakistan and Afghanistan where we staged a lot of operations and where the Taliban sort of exists and if you want to believe that he figured out the best place to hide is in a resort town it's sort of the bottom aughts about 50 miles up i don't know what north but also up in the foothills of Islamabad the capital and that's where everybody runs to escape in this summer because it's cooler it's it's there Martha's Vineyard if you will and it's an upper-class place a lot of fancy houses if you want to believe he decided the place to hide was in a bottle bot you chose to hide there as the Americans tell you that we didn't know he was hiding there too we learned by couriers it's a man completely out of business very ill has had very advanced kidney failure there was a Pakistani doctor living next to him he's been captured by the ISA and he was surrounded by two nuclear in a circle there were two nuclei the Pakistanis now have a plutonium reactor and he was surrounded by a secret base that we use with the Pakistani intelligence service for operations CIA and is a a base where they trained the Pakistani stranged the security people for the nuclear weapons system they have if they have a hundred when I wrote about a no.9 they have 150 200 now weapons and we really don't know what your bottom all we do is we make nice to the generals and so it was very shocking when somebody walked into our embassy in 2010 and said we've we've been keeping it we offered 25 million for information about him it was living right there and he certainly was anything but he was a prisoner you know where he was was a mile and a half from the West Point Pakistan and two miles from a regimental headquarters and surrounded by five of the most important he actually a body part was important just if you look at a big map it's completely surrounded by some of the biggest facilities they have nuclear facilities a major airbase battalion headquarters a secret operational make the the coverage of that area is so intense particularly for attacks by the Indians or anybody else and so we learned it we were shocked it took four months we were very mad at the Pakistanis we thought we had a deal with him they went cheat on us these are guys were trusting to tell us where the bombs is and the deal we eventually worked out we were gonna come we wanted we wanted to get rid of him the Pakistanis didn't want to be connected to it they didn't want anybody know they were even keeping him they were keeping him because the Saudis they go to the Saudis right away Pakistan and Saudi Arabia like this and the Saudis paid untold millions probably in the hundreds of millions including oil tankers full of oil to the Pakistanis not to tell us they didn't want us and they didn't want us interrogating bin Laden etc and for the Pakistanis just for us to know about it would be a shame thing they would be there would be riots in the streets opposition the people like bin Laden that we were keeping him and so we came in the mission was to go get the guy the seals went in they were walked in by the ISA of course was complete cooperation with the is I didn't want to do at the beginning but they had no choice we cut off money we're mad at them these are guys we entrust on the nuclear issue and so they they killed them was a murder god I did talk to any of the guy I put in the first two daisies I know a lot about I know a lot through paper the debriefings they knew what they were doing if they were captured there they could have been tried for murder they were murdering a prisoner they went to bed because the Pakistanis would look the other way No and the whole purpose was get the body out of there nobody know nothing fly back to Afghanistan and a week later ten days later announced we'd we did a drone strike in the Hindu Kush mountains where we always thought he was found this big body did a DNA test and my god is he that's that was the plan we double-crossed him that night the president United States under pressure from his political advisors you can't wait a week ten days they were very worried about gates who was a Republican who replaced from Selden if you remember the president kept him on as Secretary of Defense but but three years later there was a lot of edginess gates was not on the team he wasn't one of us he was a Republican close to the Bush family everybody's worried that he would do something Likud it was all about reelection so he did what a lot of guys would do about reelection they do you know do anything you sell your mother down the river he didn't just he just went and he went public and and screwed the two guys they had two options Pasha and kiani's the two generals involved the two senior generals of the Army in the intelligence service then they could admit they they knew all about it and the Americans they cooperated with us and then they wouldn't be able to get home that night or their kids couldn't walk to school anymore because there'd be so much anger at them or they could say we didn't know there our radar system which if any reporter had bothered the work look at on the line you could find was a 900 million dollar plus system that we built our radar system then Ketchum so they went with that line and ate it and to this day to this day we're paying for that that like a trust and with it said you're engaged went bananas on the inside because of course the pack nuke will they give one to the Saudis in a crisis what will they do we supposed to know the count but as they say them in the intelligence service is one of the bombs in along the tall grass in the runway have they kept some bombs out of the count well I mean can we really trust them can they really trust us so what Obama did was much more serious I mean it's a vote for 10 11 thousand word article about the goddamn saying it was just and I got tremendous heat mostly for my colleagues because in the first week or so after 9/11 everybody overlooked all the contradictions and in the press because it was such a great thing we got him the war on terror is over and you know I'm not a cynic but 10 years later we're still in this war I mean I don't bin la but I don't know what bin Laden had to do with it no Qaeda there's copycats oh kinda what it's not the people in North Africa and in in Baghdad they're not paying piece of visa so he's irrelevant he was irrelevant after after a few months he was locked up hiding on the run anyway there you go just it's sort of a gruesome story and very hard for the press my old colleagues at the New York Times were particularly angry at me about it because they had written the story and they'd written the story for the first five or six days after that event everybody was writing about it and it's anything the White House told him one point they even one more there was a dog one of the seals snuck on a plane you know they have dogs they like dogs they snuck him on a plane if this dog apparently goes on missions and one of the stories was about the dog on how Obama met the dog and the dog was great because as you remember one of the choppers blew up in the head up blow it up no Fire Department no police in a very sophisticated City as I said a rural suburb of upper-class suburb and the dog they said and one of the stories that my favorite one was the dog they put the dog outside to keep any inquiring people neighborhood people it's in a big neighborhood he was right in the middle of an urban area keep anybody from from coming in and I thought oh my god a dog that barks ooh it's a do barking dog Wow I mean anything they just you've had a long and distinguished career do you think anything that you've written and exposed by your investigative reports has had any impact on the policy of our government has anything changed or is it just business as usual they just ignore you well they ignore me now pretty much their government I mean the I actually have friends inside I mean they've been pushing the the Pakistanis right now very hard to come out with a big statement attacking me but they're not gonna do it because they're still mad at us I would argue I think it's fair to say the me lie story impacted the Americans support for the war pretty much it was a devastating story don't remember a kid goes on TV one of the kids I wrote five stories about it and by the way taught me a lot about the press I was a freelancer at a time I'd been McCarthy's press secretary Walter Cronkite I used to play tennis a good guy I assumed I knew everybody I couldn't get and once I'm freelancing after I left McCarthy politics is you know I could do it for four or five months but then you get to assist overwhelmingly full of second-raters I'm sorry to say that at least that's what I thought he thought I was gonna end up anyway at one point McCarthy was doing great and in Milwaukee the Polar's he was gonna win the primary and Bobby was in that primary he was gonna win the Wisconsin primary he'd already done well in New Hampshire yeah he was ambivalent about being president you know you he thought the kids there were not really for him they were against the war and he was right about that I couldn't I wouldn't argue with him about that but at one point the guys around him they had two polls he was supposed to campaign very actively in the in the in the in Milwaukee in a in the black community of Milwaukee and the one of the polls showed that if he stayed away from the black community publicly and the he would get a four or five more votes percentage because the the ethnic groups the polls in the Ukraine you know Wisconsin's are very interesting sort of ethic would they would they would go for him more you know the racism card so they they actually decided to cancel an event in at a church in the black community of Milwaukee and I quit I said that's it he's now he's playing the same old game if Sanders tells the kids you got to support him he's gonna get fired back I think the only thing he can do is say I can't tell anybody what to do and I think if Hillary thinks he's gonna he's gonna do something I also think if you think Hillary is really gonna at the convention when she gets the nomination to worry very much about him you're wrong I think she's just gonna go ahead and move to the middle because she has no choice in the general election so she thinks and so we're back to conventional politics he's the only guy who could change it but so I thought that story there's no argument that story and the Apple grape story really put a dent in it too if you remember the pictures of G and woman G is pointing fingers at Arabs I have an Israeli friend who's it was in Mossad and I'm as an American Jew of course Israel fascinating to me there's so many great things about it but of course it just tries to be insane the treating the way they treat the Palestinian so you know this lack of understanding so the mimicking the whole German experience in a way I mean it I know I don't mean to overdo it it's just horrifying it's an apartheid world and but this guy calls me up after I write the stories about Abu Ghraib there were three stories for The New Yorker about the whole horrible torture murder things we were into and my buddy dudu who believed me was in Damascus long before Eichmann showed up in the 50s he spoke I never I was took him to the German restaurant one day in Washington and the waiter was German my friend saw it he knew Arabic French you know like a lot of sophisticated Arabs he grew up in the 50s and 60s and went to you know he was in the special units say Iraq Mach while he was in the there there there Dell SEAL team anyway due to new German and I said then when did you learn German and he looked at me I'll never forget this he said what do you think Eichmann was the first one we got in Argentina he said I know every alley in Damascus that's where many of the Nazis went whole history we don't know but anyway he calls me he's in he's in Tel Aviv and he calls me up and he says her she says are you nuts you guys this is after I started writing these stories let me tell you something I hate Palestinians and they hate me and I've done terrible things to them and they've done terrible things to me but you never never embarrass an Arab sexually that's the one thing you cannot do do you know what you bit off here as much as we go back and forth we're good this is the Israel of 2004 this is a hardliner we know we're gonna have to share a border with those mother efforts Oh sob is whatever he said we're gonna have to share a border one day you do not sexually humiliate him it won't happen they're not sharing the border he's wrong about that and actually he's become sort of a leftist which puts him in a minority now these days but that's I think that story certainly had some impact as for the rest you know I I'd like to think when I say my prayers at night did you know what Jack Kennedy that his what was his number-one factotum what a book is God his is no not Sorensen but it was one of Kenny O'Donnell what a memoir about my days of Jack and here's how he described night with Jack at night this is literally in the book at night when when she was gone we had the two of us that have dinner and after dinner Jack would have a glass of milk and and he'd lean by the bed I get his bathrobe and his night in his evening gown and get laid on the bed and he go and he'd say his prayers and say good night to me and go to sleep I mean this is what he actually wrote and so as opposed to the reality and so I'm in the position of Kenny O'Donnell I think that you know I when I say my prayers and go to bed at night I've done the world some good but I may be just as wrong as he was well I think the fact that we've got all these people here what's okay that you didn't have any effect ladies and gentlemen please join me in thanking our thank you

Channel: Author Events

Views: 6,617

Rating: 4.738318 out of 5

Keywords: investigative reporting, My Lai massacre, Vietnam Way, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Guantanamo, Gulf War Syndrome, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11

Id: kBLbeHRzJHE

Length: 58min 58sec (3538 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019