Society of the Silurians ~ Seymour (Sy) Hersh ~ June 2018

[Music] sy Hersh inhabited a very rarefied atmosphere where he called Abe well Abe unlike the rest of us who simply try very hard to interact with him not at all if we could possibly help it that was some dare I say it 40 years ago when I was a Tyrol foreign correspondent just barely 30 years old but I followed what he was up to then and four decades thereafter now for the first time we can get a peek under the hood to see just how those gears all worked and the magic got produced and it's all in his masterful new book reporter which we have praise the Lord only because he had to bail on a commitment to his publisher for a different book apparently on someone called Dick Cheney whoever care about him a hunter who couldn't even shoot straight but enough for me here we have the original source the original seymour hersh I'm gonna get close because I can't tell how many I can't I don't know how many places I've spoken to and when I was done people came up to me 80% of the people there and said we didn't hear a word so if you can't hear do what you just did scream I can't I must begin with a story about a because so many times people were here talking to me let's see my favorite ape story I marked some pages here it is here it is here it is here it is okay so I met I'm doing my little boy wonder thing I guess in New York in Washington and we moved to New York and 75 my wife thought of medical school at NYU and the first day of the job was right after Labor Day she had already started classes we had two kids and you know how New York is if there was there was a not only a garbage strike there was this teacher strike and so there was and so we were just moving into a place down in the village and so the first morning I was supposed to start after Labor Day I had a seven year old and there was nothing else to do in a five year old so I took him with me and so here comes we take the train I've got my daughter's got as a coloring book and my kid is seven he's got a ball and we take the train and we get into the the down this is on 43rd Street we get into about nine o'clock when Abe shows up with Arthur as they always did I guess in the morning and happen in the bathroom in the afternoon in the evening they were always together anyway and so that's my perception anyway and so I walk in with two kids an ape says very openly what's this and I said you know how it is a we're just getting organized and we do what I wrote my first day on the job this is in New York told me it was going to be a very idiosyncratic ride in Washington you're insulated a would come in sometimes and give me what became a Bill Murray no key thing and say how's my little commie today and then he would say what do you have for me he's always worried because I I was clearly anti-war because I worked for McCarthy it was did speeches and was a suppressed guy running against Johnson and so it made no bones I hate at the war in Vietnam which is not a political judgment with just a no JT Ajay were covered it for the AP anyway so I was gonna be idiosyncratic ride there were family issues I was the report for work after Labor Day teachers outside my ba Bob so my wife's classes that I took them to the paper okay they were happy writing what's this he asked if his new man from Washington I explained the situation I'm told the children take care of themselves why I took a day or two to get organized that's fine he said with a perfunctory not hello no small talk with the kids few hours later I'm ed an office behind a sports department next to Roger Wilkins other people it just was a fun place to be and by that time my little five year old was throwing in my room the office I had and the seven-year-old member Tony Cohen Arthur used to work for the times the seven-year-old is playing an intense serious kickball game with the sports department because they're all they're all seven-year-old errs themselves it was a lot of fun he had a great day so I was just a fun day I look up at the door and it's an unsmiling Abe and Abe usually called me sigh Seymour he said I tell you this is verbatim what do you think would have happened if on that fateful day 2000 years ago mrs. Moses had told her husband they'd had to take stay home and take care of the kids do you think the waters would have parted this is the guy totally on the side of women reporters no question to that Wow I just said I was I thought he was kidding but he wasn't frown and I said I don't know Abe we could do we could do I read you a couple footnotes because the thing about that I always say I was there in the halcyon days the times had money I joined the paper in 72 in May and I was at The New Yorker actually I remember asking mr. Sean Williams Sean who hired me I was tainted for the time sin post earlier I tried for a job after doing meal I'm winning you know ill all those prizes and stuff like that and doing a book with a wonderful editor Bob Loomis at random house and my the fact that I'd worked for a political guy running for president Mike gene McCarthy came to me and so I was a little worried about that even though The Times Magazine was was always asking me to write stories but not the paper so I I got a job at The New Yorker and I was happy doing it I will tell you the first story just how different it was I've been a AP reporter work for UPI worked as a police reporter in Chicago the first time I did a piece for him I had a project that I was on that he hired me for but I ran into a story and I ran to be 12,000 words and I remember calling him up a very slight slight but with intense sort of command presence and he he didn't blink when he looked at she was very strong anyway I called him up and I said Mr Shaw and I said I'm really sorry that piece ran so long and he said I kid you not for a newspaper guys listen to this Oh mr. Hirsch she said stories are never too long or too short they're too boring or too interesting how's that and on that piece that's amazing and when I did when I got a proof back for the first piece the first piece I did which ran at 12,000 words my editor was a guy named Pat crow a wonderful editor but he said Shawn wants to read a proof and those days it was mail and here I had never worked for a newspaper even I've been a wire service guy written a book written for magazines but I never worked for a newspaper and so I got a proof by mail about a week later from him and on nothing in the third page he circled a cliche and he had little small handwriting and there wasn't much room on the galleys on the side and he wrote he circled a cliche and he wrote mr. no dot mr. Hirsh - pls pls pls use words I did not have to go to Columbia Journalism school which is a good place to go but I didn't have to go to get a less some lessons anyway so part of the fun of being in those halcyon days we're at the New York Times and at that time the media wasn't seen the way it is now you're either for or against Trump there's no that there were there were newspapers the Washington Post's often and the network's there were people taken there taken the be objective and and fair and they're reporting meant something it's not it's now it's - and in a - now time it's a big loss we can talk about that I could talk about that all year I know it's even the New York Times are still does such good work and you know I and pays for the and the does investigative stuff and still tries to keep it going in a very down time I had a when you're doing a meme or the first thing he realizes your memory is lousy and I went back to a 1974 edition of The Sunday Times to look up a story was 574 pages including the magazine and the book section 510 page one I learned the trick is you either want to write more than 2,000 words but if you write 1500 words you could get a little bit on the front page but anything on the Sunday paper would always be one column was a column paper seven columns with display ads page after page and you have to fight to see an ad that is an institutional display is gone and so it's it's a different business but but at least then The Times wrote something even now but they came across with the lemme to issue but when it comes to the politics to the Trump politics there's no middle ground now no middle ground for somebody who you know we're a crazy country you understand the whole all presidential campaigns are run at what four and five percent of the independents so you've got Democrats and Republicans and you've got four or five percent who either aren't smart or don't read or don't think enough to know what party they're in and that's what the campaign is all about and it's amazing I think that middle ground so anyway it was a different world the paper was I did fine I was hired because it wasn't never quite said he wanted me to go write about Vietnam from Washington I think Abe knew that they were in trouble on the war and he wanted me to do to make whoopee on it so I did and one of the things that bothered me was interesting I was I joined in may 72 and I could just I just wrote stories about Vietnam none of them positive and in December Clifton Dan who became the bureau chief and I was told then on that day we had to do Watergate because The Times had done so badly and Abe was very chafing at Ben Bradlee in the Washington Post getting the kind of success that he wanted all the time and and the thing was I had no trouble writing for The Times about Watergate I'd asked Sean before I left because Sean I was on his staff and he was writing I did a 25,000 word piece for him later that in 72 and he wanted he certainly wanted me to stay and I said the Abe Rosenthal wants me to come and go to Washington and write about the war and I said and he said you should do it and I remember asking will I be okay and he said you'll be okay and he was right I was okay but what happened is I was asked to write about Watergate and for the first time I took me months to get going because that's what a terrifying experience he somebody caught I never I did I just read about Watergate The Times never chased Watergate because Henry Kissinger who had enormous influence on the on the Bureau at the time kept on telling everybody that there was nothing nothing to it and that was easy two times always was focused at the leadership and I got a lesson in it Harrison Salisbury writes about I forgot about it until I read his my more I did a I by January I found out that the the White House was still paying cover-up money to the people who broke in the Watergate I can mention this crowd you remember Watergate you remember Vietnam - I take it no I go to go to a college and you have to explain we had a war called Watergate but on the other hand but you know I remember in when I was in my 20s and 30s World War one was Oh Hemingway wrote some novels about it and Flanders field I mean we didn't know so it's not oh it's okay that kids don't get it don't know they have to explain me lie to kids when I give a speech it was a bad thing that happened I never had more trouble getting a story in then the first story I wrote which ran about seven eight thousand words in The Times it was a three-part series they made into one piece and the worry about it was because I was saying that the president United States was involved in covering up a break-in and the worry about that institutional and so in a funny way the story about my I've got three long chapters out of the times because I had so much fun and angst there it was it was it was it was a cultural change because they had a president that was clearly not able to carry the day we controlled the agenda for two years in Watergate we in the Washington Post in New York Times The Washington star the LA Times we were the arbiters the truth it doesn't exist anymore but it was an amazing time and there also was a difference in how we treated the bag we knew them we knew Mitchell and I didn't know hold him and I knew air Lichtman i got to know him we knew bud crow did that one of the plumbers I didn't know the other guy who worked with him on the plumb is David Young he went he went he went to Europe right away and didn't get into it you knew him and so I have to tell you as a footnote I wrote that says a lot about that it was just a different period and I'm writing about at one time Mitchell was the Attorney General who was just a bond dealer you know and and he would happen to be in the same law firm with Nixon and mix and made him Attorney General was never worse fit remember Martha Mitchell he stood by her all the time although he did say one good thing about being in jail he didn't have that breakfast letter every morning but that's but that was said privately that was said privately publicly you supported her so I have a footnote that's my favorite some guy some guy wrote reviewed my book and said just read the footnotes if I get the book he said anyway so I I knew Mitchell slightly having interviewed him a few times this is a during the height of Watergate this was he's the scream maybe you're gonna go to jail where you're gonna put your ass in the sling stuff like that but there was something about it I was very likeable so have an interview him a few times and was surprised when he showed up with two of his lawyers for a late lunch in downtown Washington in 91 the same time he was on trial he was on trial in that morning and went back that afternoon he was on trial for perjury obstruction of justice and conspiracy he got and ended up doing nine months I think at least that much so I not it when he came in because we had had our exchanges but left the group alone until the end of his meal the lawyers and by the way we knew the lawyers and we would talk to the lawyers now if you talk to the Ty Cobb I think is some reporter talked to him and he said something in politic he immediately does a tweet and there's a blog a files it for the paper the MSNBC and CNN do a cry cry Ron what's the call breaking news lawyer says this and he's on five shows that night at the front page of all the papers in those days we just sort of you know you shot your mouth off so what we let it go bigger fish to fry it wasn't this rat-tat-tat-tat things are changing now because of the border for her but before this border stuff I'm telling you this this orange man was winning he was winning the war tweets and yeah but you but I think too many people forget he ran against 13 guys with roughly 300 years of political experience ate him up destroyed a dynasty the bush dynasty took hillary down destroyed the clinton dynasty and you can write him off all you want is this gaping but i'm afraid i think now he's burned it he's either gonna quit this quickly or he's gonna hang up this i have no use for the guy I just think he's more dangerous in the next to 20 the next election cycle then you think he is I'm talk about the next presidential cycle anyway so Mitchell back to Mitchell the lawyers are departed midship and I waited to eat they left and I went and I sat down at his table and are you going John and he was signing the bill lawyers always pay right he was signing the American Express card and he tore off while I mean he said went like this and he he tore off the receipt and asked me for a pen and tore something on the back of it no yeah had a pen maybe I give him the pen earlier when he got the bill and he he he wrote something in back unfolded and he said to me it says and I remember the I just mean I wrote this down at the time just for myself I wrote it he gave me the note he said this will tell you all you need to know life kiddo he said and asked if I would he said wait till I leave so I did wait until they left the restaurant before looking at it and the note said next time take the fifth instead of saying I'm not talking he started talking he ended up in the hoosegow for that I just love that story maybe you don't like it as much as I do but I like it so one more story about a footnote about how you can be so dumb and what this is a sort of give me one of those anyway no I'm okay this is about this is about a world that still exists it's a world of America being up to his ears in bloody stuff today yesterday maybe you know post-war maybe there was a real justifications were into it much more but now so I wrote a series of articles for the New York Times I was out of the time so I had this wonderful relationship with Abe which is when I left the paper and it is so three places even at the New Yorker and three at the AP and and with the New York Times it's my belief that editors get tired of people like me you walk into their office with a dead rat full of lice and dump it on the desk and say I want to do this dead rat story it's gonna cost you a lot of money I may not get it may spent five months on it and then when I do get it you're gonna get sued you're gonna have five law firms talking to you you're gonna lose customers and nobody's gonna like it they do get tired of that turns out so anyway but in so when I left a paper in 79 I wrote four until a bleph 286 I had it wrong in the book somebody told me it was I had a later but um I did change the job I did change it alright and and but even after he left when my max was still there Franco I did I was writing stuff for the paper so in 82 I did a series I did a long two-part piece for The Magazine on two guys that were selling arms to Qaddafi guy named Ed Wilson and a guy named terpil Wilson was the next CIA guy terpil was an asset Wilson was a player okay so I did this series and after it's on it's published and I get contacted by another guy that said he was an operative he'd worked off the books with the CIA and he said the one thing you're missing is me I know that X the the the people that the story was about X see a guy selling arms onto the table to to Gaddafi this man calls me gives me his name we meet and he says there were also nuclear arms nuclear materials for weapons going there and I was in the middle of my book on Kissinger I did I did four years to do a book on Kissinger and the net impact was it did not diminish that came out in 83 and it was a bill of attainder if you will I just happened to believe he lies like most people think and anyway um and yet the next year every magazine and newspaper in America was trying to get Kissinger at his at their table at the you know the annual dinner of the Washington press corps so I didn't do any damage to him in the long run anyway so I was in the middle of a book and I didn't want to follow up on this and one of the guys had helped me a lot on Nixon kisser and his information tube inaccurate was a conservative guy named Richard Allen and Dick Allen was then the National Security Advisor in the White House for Ronald Reagan and so I did and Allen I don't know what to do I didn't want to do more on this I had to get back to my books I call it I thought okay I'm gonna do something I never do I'm gonna go talk to the government or at least password so I called dick up and and I he said I gave him the name of the guy I didn't have a serial number I just gave the name in some place he'd been and I said if he's really claims he's got something you guys ought to know and you know good luck he called back and he said the guy used to real bring him in I said I'm not bringing him and he said no come we're gonna we're having a we're laying on a meeting even now we're laying on with all the brass in the Situation Room and I'd never been in a situation room and it was a freelance writer if I've been at the Times I would have asked an editor if it's okay probably would have gotten that okay so okay so I go to the the I go to the I go to the meeting in the sit room you know you got those little clearance it's a series of offices reporters have been there since but it's a at that time was a very mysterious powerful place in the basement of the the White House and so one part of me when Alan inviting me said it's none of my business on the other had never seen it so I go to the meeting it was agreed my presence would be off the record another mistake at one point during the meeting I'm described in this way is senior official and told my operative in front of me that he understood there was nothing he had not done for his country the idiot I brought to the meeting said you said yes and add it there were many times he had done the absolute nothing for the country and it was clear to all that the two were talking about sanctions assassinations I'm talking about in the middle of White House I was I was I was appalled and angered by the exchange and the fact that it took place in front of me I was now a participant and not a reporter things were said that I could not and did not write about I walked a block after the meeting towards my office with the operative and just turned on and was so pissed off at him I said bring up that kind of stuff and then he said to me he said you you want to you want a copy of it you want the transcript and I said what are you talking about we've been searched and patted he'd stuck it in in a crevice he's not gonna tape recording he had he had a tape of it so I then had the problem I really I was so was just amazing I told him to get the hell out get the hell away from I got away from him call Alan and said he he had been trade he said Alan said not to worried and we maintained a friendship etc etc etc from that point on I have no idea what happened to this information couldn't care less off the record was anathema to me and I learned once again never allow myself to become a participant in government functions I was just asked in the last two days by somebody here in New York if I would talk to a very senior person about something they were investigating and I said I don't do that my guy was mad at me I said his don't do that and it's I don't use feet of information I'd much rather sneak and what I've learned in my career and we'll do questions because there you have better questions than that this then probably any group would all of you all so old-timers I learned that what you do is you look for those people in in in in the military and the intelligence agency I didn't turn off my phone it's all your fault not mine anyway I learned that what you want to find are those guys who take the oath in the office of the Constitution and you want to find those guys even in the CIA and they do exist who don't take an oath of office to their boss to the president but to the core to a general or an admiral but to the Constitution and those are the people I look for and those are the people that I do attract and so all that's not lost there are some of those right now in this government believe it or not and I think I think journalism may want to look at this whole experience when it's over and trying to figure out how how we ended up with it if you Trump is catnip for ratings particularly for the cable shows he's cabinet for the New York Times has more online subscribers than ever before and the number they want to get to I just learned this quite high and they probably will because you know the more bad news about Trump you get and so we're polarizing the whole the whole notion of journalism is being polarized in there easier for against the guy and there's something wrong with that there's something really profoundly wrong with that and how it'll play it I don't know there's no the people who like Trump absolutely will not believe anything in the New York Times or The Washington Post or MSNBC or CNN and the the vice versa that didn't exist and I'm not sure it's a good idea so let's do questions I I'm not running away anywhere how are we gonna do it yes go ahead are you gonna get a mic wow you guys are really sort of progressive all right Thank You Myron wait is it on yes could you hear me I can hear you came over here so the question is how are you dealing with the destruction disappearance and non compilation of data that the Trump administration is engaging in widespread throughout the government I never was a big you know the stuff I'm looking for doesn't get destroyed necessarily the secret junket but I will tell you that one of the issues I have is foking focusing so much on on his tweeting and all that stuff and I don't know much about it because my children absolutely have forbidden me to tweet or retweets because it's a really nasty stuff out there I what's what's what I would have done had I been ruler of the world you have no idea what some of the decisions that are being made about basic things like safety environment down the line and we focus on the guy running Pruett this guy who thinks like unfortunately a lot of people in public life that and you know that there's nothing wrong with spending you know forty three thousand dollars for a phone booth or whatever it is but some of the thing that's going on down the line I was at a journalism conference the investigative reporters and editors and here's something interesting I Ari has been a group that's been viable for about forty years and now we're in a downtime the convention they had in Orlando last week had almost 1,800 participants the third largest in their history and they started in now in the days when everybody was flush so young people are going in the journalism wanting to be in do investigative work going beyond the surface at a level that's quite amazing given the fact that there's no chance of real financial reward it's a very tough business so there's something very something good going on maybe Trump's inspiring that in a way you want to go report so here's some of the things I'm hearing that you could be you should be hearing about they're dropping safety requirements for things like among other things baby baby cribs so that the the requirements were so that a baby could push and fall out now they were lowering them because corporations wanted I mean you can find a hundred examples like this and so we focused so much at the top on the personalities I would have gone and just seen how it hits in various complex if I were the ruler of the world and I would have avoided getting into a tit-for-tat on tweets with Trump because until just the last few weeks he was going up he went up eight points he's now losing because of the madness down in Mexico and you do know it started two months ago you're only hearing about it because suddenly somebody got a tape recording and but it started two months ago what where was the press on this there was some but it never became an issue and if you let if you're waiting for the democratic party to lead the way forget it they're not doing it so here you have a guy running for president again he's gonna run and you got a Democrat a party that hasn't figured out yet what to do except to do what Hillary did which is the run again and run against them personally and lose and I'm here to tell you you can want to believe the Russians did it all you want but that's just that's that's not a case they've made yet they talk about it they keep on saying they have high confidence but I learned a long time ago high confidence the last time I ran into it we were told again and again in the Bush Cheney days after 9/11 we were told that they had high confidence that Saddam Hussein indeed had WMD that was high confidence high confidence means we don't know and we're gonna tell the boss we're gonna give it the boss the way of what they want it I have a memo in here I hike when the rum sells that wasn't relevant to my book in a way but it was it's a report done by an officer who never got another promotion intelligence officer that was his last promotion on WMD in nineteen 2002 when they were fighting the public fight to get support for going to do the bombing to attack anyway they're going Iraq we don't have to we don't we all know the history of that stupidity we were then in the middle of a stupidity fighting we are all fighting an all-out war against an idea war on terror who we fighting I'm anyway we can get into that that's another story but the memo was it's a it's a fall 2002 he asked a very bright guy who was a two-star general and intelligence give me a straight report and the report comes in it's a one of those things what do you call it when you put something on a board and you flash it PowerPoint PowerPoint and the first sentence says well we assess with high confidence they're doing their the first sentence says we're we gotta read it no I gotta read it says my editor John Siegel sitting there over there I mean I don't know why he's still editing me we're done but I'm but I'm but he's still editing me okay it's forever it says status of WMD programs this is dated September Oh - it was publicly released that as was released I only learned about it from somebody in the signal Signum world NSA world he told me you haven't seen this he said I can send it to you because they've released it but they haven't put in anywhere status of WMD reprograms Iraq and there's I'll just read the first page one reassess Iraq is making significant progress in WMD programs that's the that's the that's the TEL sentence that's the high high confidence second our assessments rely heavily on analytical assumptions and judgments rather than hard evidence third sentence the evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs make sense concerted Iraqi C DDD that since they mean Camelot can camouflage concealment denial etc etc whereas effectively negated our view in the large part of the WM pro WMT program and then there's a fox and in italics it says we don't know with any position musician how much we don't know so that's what that's what high confidence means so there you are so just yes sorry all right can you hear me all right I hear you but thank you it's not abort me over there can you hear all right they can't hear me ask that question but that's okay I'll go over to them afterwards anyway sigh I know I'm familiar with your Orlando conference you'd be surprised how many journalists and media people are down where I spend some of my time and Sarasota Florida the question I have for you is how do we bridge the disconnect between a younger generation number one we're preaching to the choir here we understand what you're saying and number two the disconnect between those people in the flyover States that just listen to and believe a Donald Trump I haven't got the answer to that I've asked this at any number of luncheons how do you bridge do you have any thoughts if I was on a panel at CNN or W MSNBC and I was asked that question I begin with the two most lethal words in the world I think the answer of course is how the hell do I know which nobody ever says and they always say what I what they think because they don't know anything I will tell you he's even getting a surprising amount of support for the immigration stuff from those flyover I keep on thinking the movie little Mary sunshine remember that went about it was a faint of a fantastic movie about eight eight nine years ago about a five or six year old beauty pageant and there's that world that we look at like wow but that's the world that exists so the question you have to ask yourself is are we gonna end up in a civil war of sorts between us in the south and the Southwest who are different than we are in terms of thoughts where he's very popular what's gonna happen we this is long before Trump this little Mary sunshine was really I think in a way a profound movie because he was making a point that was a direct he was talking about another world it was another world and Mamaki remember she did a striptease a little girl that was her shacked so he was mocking the other world but that other worlds out there there are people who'd absolutely buy into it and they when I say he he took down 13 politicians because there's a lot of people in that world that don't trust a politician don't want to hear him anymore and this guy seems to be talking straight so we're confronted with something pretty deadly and I don't know it says something that Hillary wasn't able to beat him and it also says something she spent the last two months calling people what was it irredeemable it was some other word deplorable I just did politics for four months I with with them and that was your team McCarthy III was going nuts I'd left the AP when they I was biting critically about the war for the AP I made friends that I have stoned that way but the the guy that ran it was going nuts because McNamara was calling him I will say this McNamara I got McNamara figured out as a psychotic liar about two months after being in that building he was lying about some about aircraft deployment I mean just some story I worked on I realized he so hold on there's no answer to that right now the way we're going it's more polarized than ever so we're not you know there's always going to be people in Chicago they read than you the New York Times or The Washington Post and look online but you're losing them the disconnect is huge and these are not the don't want you know these are the people that work in the factories they're farmers in Iowa that are going to be adversely affected by some of the tariffs he's putting on that may still vote vote for him how do you lose how do you not think about it when you lose Iowa by eight points and Ohio by ten what is that telling you for the Democratic Party and my guess is if you want my dark thought on it I was mad at hell at Obama he let her have the party Hillary had the party and she bankrupted it you know we all know from Donna Brazile but even some of us knew before she ran the party she was she was diverting money to her campaign that should have been done for local elections as you know and but Obama your what you lose over a thousand offices I think it's even more some number so the Democratic Party is not up to snuff and one thing that's going on there's tremendous number for example woman now running for congressional and local offices and that's amazing the woman in general are pretty amazing people and I have a son that works for vice news so I watch your vice news and they they have a completely different you know here's the anybody under forty knows vice news is pretty interesting and different than the network's they're going they're dealing with some of these they do running stories and some of these women running and and to a point where you get to know who they are and what they are and so there is some hope but it's not gotten to the leadership but you know things come from below it's gonna have to change that the Democratic Party is not going to be able to beat this guy unless something happens now he's falling on his face but all he has to do is figure it out and reverse it and he will my answer is my answer is the same as yours how in the hell do I know go ahead yes somebody way back there sorry you have found yourself not too long ago in the midst of a media firestorm yourself oh you bet and I wanted you to talk about that from your perspective being in the media bullseye in fact as one of the people whose most admired in journalism which one I mean I did I did a Kennedy book I did a candy book let me just say this I did a Kennedy book that caused me more grief I did it way too early for the Camelot lovers I mean now we accept that Jack and I'll tell you how I it was a book basically the I did a story for the New York Times you want to talk about you know I make fun of Abe but in this book one of the things I got was a history of the Watergate period that the CIA did was that was Declassified and I did a book on domestic spying that I did a story for The Times in December 19 December 22nd 1974 about the CI spying spying on Americans that led to the church hearings which was the first time this Senate and the Congress really looked at the CIA out of it came the first two oversights committee on intelligence it's all been wiped out now by the internecine warfare that's going on it's all room there's no more office Democrats in the Intelligence Committee is out there and Republicans want to kill each other it's all gone oversights gone that's a big loss but nobody's looking at it that way I am and so what happened is and in this in this CIA report I had learned something bad had gone on in the CIA in early 72 I knew there was some internal stuff that was driving him all crazy I didn't know what it was and I began asking questions just as I was going along working for the New York Times I'm Vietnam and then in Watergate I kept on nagging about this other story it turns out that they were copying me I'm watching me and every time I call people they would call it in they were watching me since early 72 before for two years before I wrote the story and before I told anybody in The Times about the story and to show you what it can be when it's good and I make I I always I tell stories lists about a but I could tell you me and more about Abe because you know he was idiosyncratic as I say as was gene McCarthy so sort of interesting anyway people that are high IQ as I may be anyway and maybe not just see the eccentric I've more than smart but anyway so what happens is I'm chasing I'm chasing I'm doing Kennedy and I knew from the church committee and I knew there was much more than they made public about Kennedy's desire Jack and Bobby to kill Castro and the motive was they have remembered the Bay of Pigs took place and Castro survived and the Kennedys are really tough Powell's and they believed in payback so meanwhile I start looking into Kennedy and before long I get a FedEx package this big from one of the senators on the committee full of stuff they didn't publish and it leads me into assassination stuff something called Zr rifle and it turns out that's a zr turns out to be the x's that are much broader than just castro anyway leads me into this stuff and so i can't figure what the hell is he doing cash till this cash to kill him kill him kill him so there's an old CI guy he's long dead who didn't like me at all his name is sam Halperin and he lives in virginia and i go see Sam and he agrees to see me he's still irritated at me but I'm seeing him and I said explained to me he said you don't understand he said how much pressure we were under Castro you think it was just us doing it I'm telling you absolutely not and I said well what was it about he said do you want to know about Jack Kennedy go find his Secret Service agents I know that sounds like something crazy but I did I found four guys who covered Kennedy and they loved him and also were terrified by him because there was one hottie at one hotty a date to a Dottie on trips when they went on trips campaign speeches the sheriff would bring in a couple of hookers and they would alert all the press shut up don't see anything and these guys talked to me about it their fear was that some one of those one of those off the street broads oh that's what they were would you know do something drastic to him well bite when they shunt or whatever and they would be before a congressional committee and they would be what they say The Secret Service you allowed to go in there and knowing they were and they say what else could we do so what he was saying to me was the recklessness about his sexual life was something that also took place in his political life and that's they viewed in the CIA his desire to get payback was the same sort of on the edge way he wanted to live so I did a chapter on that and and I named the agents they agreed to be named even though they were written out of the party the the the retired c24 agents went on the record on the record I went over the stuff I was gonna write with him eight times they didn't change stuff I still changed one died recently the other three I still talked to have we exchanged cards also I sent him a book and and so I lost that war I sold a lot of books but I really lost that war I got mom out by the Camelot crowd I got mom out a little bit by the Obama crowd too and some of the stories I wrote when I suggested that Obama treated the killing of bin Laden as a lone American he was the Lone Ranger riding up against bin Laden who was in a prison controlled by the Pakistani intelligence service when we killed him was all a done deal and I ran into a lot of trouble there too I'm of course history you know the problem is we paid a lot of money to certain generals in Pakistan you know how you give money to a general in Pakistan you get the Saudis to get a they've changed they made they've toughen the rules now just in the last four or five years in this you get a boatload of oil going headed for a port let's say in Singapore and halfway there Yuri flag it and it goes to the big port in Karachi outside of connects to Karachi and then they offload it and the generals have you know twenty thirty million dollars of oil to sell that's how you do it and I I didn't write that but I know how it worked and I've talked to people just in the last man named Durrani a former head of Pakistani is a published a book in which he alluded to and he I talked about it we all agreed you know he lives in a compound he's a subsidized compound in wallop Indy next to Islamabad it's all four four-star officers and head of the intelligence service beautiful golf course routine all the houses etc he doesn't want to lose it and so there's nothing gonna happen but of course Obama used it politically he's a black guy running for re-election I didn't even give him that much I don't blame him that much he wanted to be reelected and of course it had to be it you know a shootout at the OK Corral he did order him shot he did kill him but it was all done with the pack eight of the Pakistanis it's impossible not to have done it but I want to get into it but I got beat up on that and what bothers me about Obama as much as much as he elevated that office given what we had before that I include Bill Clinton in that is that in the second term he he didn't he let it go - he didn't he didn't push some things he should have pushed he didn't make the changes we never should we should have got out of Afghanistan everybody knew it it's a losing game he didn't do it he didn't push the buttons so I I I have a lot of problems and I think a lot of the stuff that Cheney began about which I couldn't write the book about Cheney because I have people who are still there they work there supernumeraries they still work in the national security and they still go to meetings even with the orange man and I saw I have to protect him but a lot of stuff that Cheney did we have the the Watson Center at at Brown University put out a paper about two and a half months ago but but ten weeks ago they did a study of where we are militarily in combat around the world seventy six spots many of them a significant percentage in Africa and the Joint Special Operations Command that was you know the boys that rode around in Afghanistan after 9/11 you know on horseback and covers and long beards and sandals those guys are still there it's a different generation they report remote many of them are zealots political zealots they are not exactly when I say they they see themselves as Crusaders fighting the Muslim masses onslaught in the 14th century a 13th century they really are strange and murder still goes on there's very little you you hear about what happened in Mali and you get a report that they write and they edit I don't I think that's a great story to be to be covered it's very hard I think getting control of those people is a real problem we are in 76 different places making war now and what we know very little about it and it's almost impossible to stop it we have a president it doesn't read so he's not gonna know what the report says and so I'm I don't see the next few years as being anything doing anything good for it'll be great for the newspaper it's the catnip is still there cable TV will get more ratings but the White House to conceal this White House could still call up have a the press secretary call up with somebody in cable news and leak a story and ten minutes later it's on there's no there's no analysis there's those somebody just earlier here today worked on NBC was saying there's no there's no thought about it there's no sec there's no research there's no second a story it's just on and it drives the agenda it does drive the agenda and it even a driver for the good newspapers because what am i right I'm sorry just tell me the shot this is a question that's been on my mind I've been wanting to ask you for years what were the Watergate burglars really looking for and did they find it hell do I know it's too easy no no I think they were trying to destroy the Democrats once and for all Nixon was I think you hear that word that means I don't know squat but but the best guess is they they thought Larry O'Brien there was something in his files that would discourage make it impossible for any Democrat to win the election in 72 don't ask me why Nixon ran scared you've listened to Nixon on those tapes he's Jekyll and Hyde you know he's on in in private and public life he he was very scared of reelection he was very worried about it he thought the anti-war self and he was these guys you know there's a horrible story in my book about about about President Johnson and the war you know but you know you know evolving disgusting stuff he was they get into a war they can't get out and they keep on thinking they're gonna win the one good thing is we used to have a show-and-tell where every six months a two-star Army General would go and testify to Congress how the Iraqi new Iraqi army is going to stand up against Isis or how the new Afghan army is going to stand up and how we're training we've got twenty they've gotten out twenty four combat ready battalions and meanwhile every time we would take any Afghan trainees and build a facility for them the next day all the plumbing was gone all of it I mean all the hard work was going I mean it's it's just so at least we don't have that spectacle why not claiming there's any solution in Afghan and I just I just know there's some guy there in Afghanistan we still have thousands of troops that's convinced he's going to be the last guy to get killed and that means that he's it's not just the question of shooting first he's just going to shoot i it's that we that were 18 years 17 years into a war we've never we never should have started the first place the taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 bin Laden did and I assure you the Taliban told us he's not our guest take him out I wish I could say who some a former high-level CIA man who ran you know the Taliban worked with us some of them in a previous incarnation against the Russians Jimmy Carter Brazil's he thought we can we can make the Russians have another a Vietnam War they're lost in Vietnam and we attacked the government by the way one of the best governments there was one the Russians put up the other ones were all puppets and so but nobody cares about such stuff my guess is the the the smart guess is it's not just mine most people think they were looking for something that would help them they thought O'Brien had something about money dirty under table money there was a lot of money going to Nixon you know I work with Jim McCarthy he ran for president Mary McCrory if some of you know wonderful columnist she lived across the street I in 67 68 I was a 67 I was the way the AAP got rid of me is they reassigned me from the Pentagon the Health and Human Services that I got to hint I got the hint I was always in trouble with Arthur Sylvester was the press secretary and you survived would file these stories we're gonna get you for this writ and they call up the general anyway didn't matter so I leave and I'm freelancing and by late 67 the Bobby Kennedy isn't gonna run I've got an office in the national press building next to Ralph Nader and I start my story on me lie here when I first got my meal I tipped by saying this is a pretty when I used to sometimes have lunch with Ralph Nader downstairs those little little cafe in the National Press building and I used to go for lunch at Ralph's and I order my tuna fish and Ralph would reach over he always ordered swordfish because it swam at the deepest part of the ocean little did he know that mercury was there too but that's okay well we didn't know that damn Ralph would take I kid you not Ralph this heart began to section I'm Eli funny way to begin it but this that's where I was he would take a piece of my tuna fish spread it out and say that's paper that's ratchet that's so and so really fun very it was a real upper anyway so I'm desperate because I I knew from covering the Pentagon from honest officers and I also had read I read there the various church groups that put up and putting out very critical reports about the war in 65 and 66 and believe it or not the truth the Russell Tribunal which everybody in America thought oh my god Bertrand Russell he had this anti-war anti-american he had a section which a bunch of American kids who were there in 65 and 66 testified you could find them they went back to their hometown and they talked about this as early as March of 65 when we first began to get operational and by the way I know the orange man lies but he lies about something he said to you five minutes earlier Johnson told the American people in 65 for six months we're not going to war there when he was putting troops in that's what I call a major league lie you know but that doesn't diminish what the old German does it just shows what a lying and corrupt incredibly corrupt person he was on the war despite the other stuff he did and Civil Rights I can't look away anyway the point of all this is that I know it doesn't matter I could I could go on forever about the war let's just do more questions one more question yeah because it's now four o'clock for 34 for 40 couple minutes all right look you're a great reporter you have great sources and you still have those great sources and I don't want you to say how the hell should I know - the answer to this but the question is given the media landscape which we know is strange and changing given Trump who he is can democracy survive this all right suppose I'll give you the site he is president you got to remember he's president we've had a lot of bad presidents and we've survived I would argue that Johnson and continuing the war when he when he knew we now know he was pretty sure he couldn't win it and you know the amount of boys he killed and that the secondary to re-election I mean he was always so we've had bad presidents before [Music] I'll give you things are changing now because of the the thing in the border and you know if it only took legs because somebody got a tape recording I'm telling you that the slowness of the mainstream media to get on this is unbelievable my wife a month ago gave a lot of money to some group that was trying to do something about it it's just there anyway he did it he did do today I said only way you can save himself is to do that I was saying that earlier he had to do it but let me tell you a couple of things he doesn't read okay he's in the second year as a presidency he's a child he does not read even intelligence this woman the torture woman happens to be among other things everybody knew about torture in 2001 and 2002 I wrote a piece in The New Yorker about something called the American Taliban who was shot twice and a kid an 18 year old kid who went and joined the Taliban when his parents divorced most kids just you know dude open and get laid but this guy studied I don't know what he did he studied Arabic and went to went to went to the Middle East that's nuts anyway he was not at the army the military and all they prosecute him he's doing he's got a year and a half left of a 20 year they never in no place did he barrack government every claimed he was in any way a fighter there's no evidence he ever had a gun and where he never was a fighter I'm just telling him what's in the court record so he would he was tortured he was left out to be tortured he they had two bullets in and they didn't treat I remember writing about it in The New Yorker nobody cared we were happy and that was the attitude so he got somebody this woman the only thing I know about her is you heard her testimony she's articulate and if Trump read he'd be pretty mad at some of the stuff she writes but having said that let me give you an example where I think the press screws up about Trump you can attack him for going to the Quarian and does he know about nuclear policy are you kidding Ronald Reagan didn't even know what the nuclear triad is era wards he didn't know it he didn't know you can drop bombs by three way you know nothing so forget that presidents they're not expected to know something what he did have what he did have was he got a briefing before he went he may be a child but there's a lot of smart people around the CIA does psychological profiles and they have a coterie of psychoanalysts doctors many in private practice that do work and they have it's really beautiful I've only seen a few there's one important that's very interesting but I can't do it I can't talk about it but it's very interesting it's less dark than you think anyway and the one on the there was all about this crazy kid this third-generation kid it's North Korea and it's a 200 engane into a number of pages but it's a large pot study saying the way to do this guy the thing he needs is money he's desperate desperate this is he'll go he'll make so he doesn't read it the way the president translates the briefing he gets usually says is a guy you've got beautiful beaches you can build so many condos there you know and do that but it works it did I mean there's business to be done so it's you could make fun of him and you should for the way he does stuff but there's a teeny bit of something there that's a little more than you know that's all I'm saying so until it's last thing I was going to say oh he's awful he is awful he wants to be loved by the New York Times to believe me as much as by Fox News that's what he really wants he wants the New York Times 11 he's the guy that couldn't get in the Wingfoot they wouldn't even begin the fancy Club up and let's just accounting he couldn't get her any good golf he's just been mistreated he wants to be loved and he's a three-year-old and he's a child and and so I know something about some meetings I know a lot about certain kinds of meetings and and and he does listen when it comes to national security stuff he doesn't comprehend much he'll screws it up but he's got one thing he wants to do it's not just 30,000 combat troops in South Korea nobody wants to talk about there's a couple hundred thousand support troops in the country we are spending billions in a complete idiocy there's no reason for anything other than a liaison detachment there there's hundreds of billions of dollars to save and that's the way he looks at it and I think that's gonna be a model he's not going after Bashar Assad they know nobody knows the Kurds have cut a deal it's almost over there and he we're pulling out we're pulling out slowly we don't make make noise about it and I think eventually he may be the first president since since 2001 who may actually say we've gotten us in the game by keep on killing people in Afghanistan we've got nothing to gain and we can cut a deal with the Taliban them out there mercantile beef the taliban before 9/11 we're dealing with they were dealing with an American oil company an Argentine brightest a Henry Kissinger was representing one of the companies that Alexander Haig was represented a competing country for a pipeline dealing with the Taliban I mean what I'm telling you is all factual and the fact there was even a congressional resolution praising you know the Taliban for agreeing that work on pipelines I'm serious of May of 2001 so maybe a circuit breaker if you I know this is heresy to say because he's everything bad there is and we should be reporting all the bad stuff that's going on in the bureaucracy but to understood that he's not going to be viable is a big mistake so you've gotta if you're the Democratic Party you better start thinking about things you're going to do for people that it'll make them think you have something to say to them instead of bitching about everything he does constantly and I just may want to think that way think positively and instead of calling or irredeemable whatever that word was under Vaughn whatever it is start going on something that's positive because the negative isn't gonna work I don't think that's my personal view and and there's things he's done that is so abhorrent to me to everybody you know I'm I'm a I'm a Cleveland Park Democrat I mean if I said publicly what I said here I have to have my wife stock the car for the next year BAM so but that's what I believe I really believe we're screwing up right now the the people that hate Trump are screwing up and the media is screwing up because they should focus more on the little things he's doing the down-the-line stuff he's doing the changes he's made down the line that we don't even report about we're too busy reporting his tweets and you were going one-on-one in a losing game I think this guy has been on public TV for twenty years we got to go goodbye before I would wait before we before we thanks I before we thank side 2 points first of all wait wait wait before we thank sigh first about 2 points first of all anybody here Michael before we thank sy the two points first of all Michael Bloomberg has just announced he is donating 80 million dollars to elect Democratic candidates to Congress this fall that's number one okay and number two I cannot think of anybody more worthy of becoming a honorary salary in which sy Hirsch now is thanks they were your thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Silurians Press Club

Views: 3,724

Rating: 4.9428573 out of 5

Keywords: society of the silurians, bernard kersh, david a adelman, syemour Hersh, reporter, kissinger, nixon, vietnam war, speliotis, award winning reporter

Id: kbYKLfwV7gU

Length: 64min 25sec (3865 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018