Andreas fault destroyed records at San Francisco city hall, earth and death records. Here is an opportunity for chinese in the bay area, San Francisco and oakland, to say our birth and death records are no longer existent. Maybe we can come up with some ideas and some plans and some steam to tell the government that we were born in San Francisco. Paper son the entire scheme that allowed chinese living in the United States to say that they were born here in the United States, and that they had children in china and they would like to sponsor those children in china and family in china to come to the United States. So a number of chinese came during the post1906 earthquake period, including my father. This weekend, watch cspan cities tour through oakland. And sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History on cspan3. Tour, workingies with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Now, several awardwinning war correspondents discuss the dangers of reporting from the middle east. With laura logan, international journalist, Matthew Aiken and a vanity fair contributing author. From the council on Foreign Relations in new york city, this is an hour. Ok, welcome to todays council on Foreign Relations meeting on the dangers of reporting from the middle east. I would also like to welcome the cfl Members Around the nation and around the world who are watching this on the live stream. I also want to mention that this particular meeting is held in cooperation with the livingston awards for young journalists which are a prestigious honor for young journalists under the age of 35. They have three categories, local, national and international reporting. And if you go back and look at the list of winners in the International Category historically it is people like , David Remnick and a lot of others. A whos who of contemporary journalism. The awards are supported by the university of michigan, the knight foundation, and the indian trail foundation. Today fromty here the indian trail foundation. We are lucky to have the winner of the 2015 livingston award in the International Category here with us today. He won for a story called whoever saves a life, a tremendous story about First Responders in aleppo, syria that you did last week. I recommend that you read it. It was in matter. It is a tragic story. These people are on the receiving end of bonds from the assad regime. He does a great job at capturing the humanity of these responders. It is a funny story in some sense. You kind of capture the gallows humor of the people who are living through some of this. He also did an amazing story for stone this year from yemen. I will ask him about that later. Yemen is under blockade. He took a 24 foot speedboat across the street straight from djibouti to sneak into yemen. It is an amazing story. We will talk more about that. He also won the award in 2013 for the 18 killings. A story about war crimes in afghanistan. Survived an ambush south of kabul to interview witnesses. He won a medal of courage for that story. He also won an award for another wartime story from afghanistan. And he is now a shell fellow at the Nation Institute and rights for all kinds of different places rolling stone, the , atlantic, gq. Sebastian younger at the end, the author of the perfect storm which was on the bestseller list for like five years. I think in 1996 you said you were going to afghanistan. You did a profile in 2000 that became a National Geographic documentary. More recently embedded himself on and off for a year in the valley in afghanistan with the 173rd combat team. Embedded along with the hetheringtonst tim who was killed in libya in 2011. He used some of the material from that reporting and for the documentary called restrepo. It won the 2010 grand jury prize at sundance. He has an interest in dangerous jobs for a long time. One of his early jobs was the guy who climbs the trees and cut the branches off the trees. He has been doing this sort of thing for a while. He is also the author of death in belmont. You say you have sworn off reporting. I want to ask you about that. He has interesting things to say about the safety of Foreign Correspondents. Laura logan, you know her. She is the chief Foreign Affairs correspondent at 60 minutes at cbs news. She is originally from south africa. She reported from all over the world, from the middle east, and zimbabwe, reported on ebola. She was the only journalist from an American Network in act at during the invasion in 2003. She spent nearly five years in iraq after that. She took some very dangerous assignments in afghanistan. You are in a vehicle that was antitanktitake test mine in 2005. And then later for in another ambush in a convoy along the afghanistankazakhstan border. That report 18 Dupont Columbia University silver baton. She has also won an overseas press club award and in 2011, covering the egyptian revolution, she was sexually assaulted by a mob and she talked about that on 60 minutes. She has since returned to middle east or zones. In september, you reported from the front lines against isis in iraq near falluja on 60 minutes. So thank you very much. Let me start by asking, what motivates you to do this job . It seems like some people who do it are adrenaline junkies, there are others who are motivated by humanitarian considerations. You said that your goal as a Foreign Correspondent was to be a radical obituary writer. What did you mean . Matthieu aikins that is a reference to a term that she talks about called greve ability in terms of, whose lives matter . She uses the obituary page functions as an instrument in ability are demonstrated. It is filled with the stories of the powerful, the famous and so, i think writing about the death and suffering of the ordinary people who are overwhelmingly the victims of these conflicts is a way of trying to alter the , equation. Kevin peraino you have said that it is a cause worth dying for. As a journalist are there really , causes worth dying for . Matthieu aikins i think any cause worth dying for is at the heart of our idea of reality. Morality. Say a soldier died for their country or a mother died were kids. In some cases, the same can be said about journalism. Kevin peraino what is the trick . You are talking about grief ability and you are covering nonwestern lives. What is the trick to getting readers interested in subjects with names that are hard to pronounce and live far from the u. S. . Readers and editors. Matthieu aikins yeah, i think we have all had the experience where he pitched a foreign story where they say, we need an american character in the story. That is one of the realities of the western media. Which on one level is understandable because western , readers relate to western characters. But the western press is not the local hometown paper. It is the global discourse of power that affects the lives and the Foreign Policy that affects the lives of people all around the world. So i think one of the ways to get people interested in the lives of nonwesterners is to write in characters. , because itof syria gets the interminable length of a thousand words, you get to tell the back story and you can make the characters relatable and funny and make people care about them. That is one way to do it. But it is not easy. It is something that i struggle time, just trying to make my work more representative of the majority of the people who are affected by the stories who are nonwestern. Lara logan i just did a piece on 60 minutes where the main character spoke no english. And then the Iranian Ambassador , he spoke no english. Printou are writing in and writing for a magazine you , cant fake what your character says. Take this sense of what they say and put it in a form that readers can relate to. You do not get to do that on film. It is a difficult thing. I was heavily criticized when i went to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic and did a story about ebola. How many journalists in the world are willing to do that . Did anyone want to go to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic . Exactly, so you come back with a story. Maybe 40erviewed libyans when i was there and no one in new york in the Screening Room could understand what they were saying. When you go all the way, one of the things you do, for me, universal stories are universal stories. They rise above borders and culture, about everything. As an african, it was my goal to find the african story that i could bring to the world that ofnscended the african ness them because i knew they would not make it on tv. So we looked for a good story. Honestly, my bosses dont care where the story is. They will commit to the budget but they cant do it on every story. What we did in liberia, we took the stories of those people and we put them in the hands of americans who had gone over not because we wanted to have americans in the story, but because it was a legitimate question in the United States. One of the nurses, she was in haiti in the earthquake, shes been out to nigeria, if there ever was a person who was close to being an angel in a human form, it is that young girl. She went to liberia and did hundreds of blood transfusions in a day to try and track down ebola at the source. So we use people like that, who care so much about the African People suffering through this terrible epidemic that they risk everything. And in their eloquence and their passion and their sincerity, we pay tribute to the people who were living and working and doing that in a way to make americans care. And that is not a perfect system. I am sure sebastian will tell you the same thing. I have sometimes spent four hours with an afghan man just trying to find out exactly when it was that they said that this farmer was killed by the americans who came in the middle of the night. Just to get a date. He would say tuesday, tuesday, this tuesday . Last tuesday . The language issue is a big is a huge thing and television. It is kind of frustrating when you are twisting yourself into knots and speaking to everyone you can possibly find, because that is what good journalists do. Its frustrating that people dont recognize that this is the medium. Television is not print. There are certain constraints you have to work within. It is kind of annoying to be criticized for that. [laughter] lara logan im just saying. Sebastian . Kevin peraino sebastian, can i ask you about how you said you were done with war reporting . I do not know if that is a temporary thing or if i misread it. Sebastian junger i started war reporting in 1993. I started in bosnia and sarajevo. And it was the most incredible career choice i could have ever imagined making. There were times i was very scared, that i was very traumatized, just about everything. War had never affected me personally. Until my friend tim was killed. I knew people who had been killed but nothing that went to the very center of my life. When tim was killed, that is what happened. Eventually, if you cover war long enough, it will cost you something. , butght cost you the life it will cost the lives of other people that you love and it caught up with me and him. At 30yearsold i would have made a different decision. If i had not been married, i would have made a decision. But at age 49 and being married, doing it for a decade and a half, suddenly war reporting, it suddenly seems like a selfish thing to do. Selfish to the people that i care about. I would not have thought that when i was younger, at all. But in my late 40s and 50s, it felt like, to the point where really have to put other peoples welfare first, ahead of your own. At age that meant not going off 49, for a couple of months. My wife and i got the news about tim through a phone call from someone in this room. So i realized, if i continue war reporting so every time the , phone rang in our apartment in new york, my wife would think it was the worst possible news about me. I might come home perfectly safe every time, but she would start paying more of a cost of my work than i was paying. That did not seem noble at all. It seemed selfish. Kevin peraino i think you are the only panelist with children . Lara logan go for the jugular. [laughter] Kevin Peraino my wife and i are both Foreign Correspondents and we have little kids. It is something that you think about. You have a sevenyearold and a sixyearold. A fiveyearold and a sixyearold. Im over when you are talking on 60 minutes, is that what was going through your head was the kids. Im curious about the process that you went to to get back to the front lines, and how you make that decision in the process. Lara logan it is an ongoing struggle. I wrestle with it all the time. I did a story about christians in iraq. Earlier this year my daughter , asked me if she could come with me. Five and she said mommy, can i come. And i said no, im working. But i want to come with you, why cant i come with you . And eventually i said because it is not safe for little kids. There are some bad guys. Its not a nice place for children to go. And she said, then why are you going . So and i said, because everywhere there are bad guys and there are also good guys. And i will be with the good guys. And she said, if you dont come back, that means the bad guys got you. And i said, i am coming back. But i have to say, not just going to war, try looking at your 5yearold when you are sterilizing every piece of clothing you are taking with you in a separate bag, and putting things in waterproof containers to cover ebola and one of the most brutal civil wars in history. Liberians told me over and over that ebola is worse than war because it is a silent killer. These things are very difficult and i have to say, matt was teasing sebastian and i because he was in high school when we were in afghanistan. So he is at that point that sebastian was at 10 years ago when he said, i would have made a different decision at 30. I is a hard thing to do, but feel like it is part of my dna. I feel like i missed the beginning of syria because of egypt. And people looked at me like i was insane if the word syria came out of my mouth. So i felt very constrained and limited by that. I think that there are smart ways to try to do these things carefully. And then you have to be lucky. And when your luck runs out, tim was killed with one of my very Close Friends on the same days in the same attack. And i was just recovering from egypt. I remember pulling my car over in washington, d. C. And i was unable to drive what i heard about chris. That was a crushing blow. But when you come that close to not and iit was was in egypt, i was not being shot at or bombed. I was just being raped by 200 men, those dangers are everywhere. Reporting on the middle east, it is dangerous to go. It is dangerous to be a journalist in turkey today. Two people were taken and the local iraqi people is still held being a journalist is more dangerous than it has ever been. And i have never done it before. Done it for the adrenaline or the thrill. I find it insulting when people say that because leaving your 5yearold at home and not knowing if you will come back so you can go and do something interesting. I believe you have to do it because you are passionate and they dont have everything that we have. Kevin peraino could you walk us through your syria story . The one that you won the livingston for . This was last year in 2014, you went to aleppo. I think people are interested in , how did you get into syria at this point . Isis had been driven out of aleppo. How did you make your way there . How did you report the story . Matthieu aikins the reason i was able to go back is because there was a split between the Syrian Rebels and isis. They actually fought a battle and drove isis out. Isis had come back and they were pushed out again. So they would go back and it is almost an impossible situation working in syria but the way that you do it is to have the right connections with the people on the ground, who are willing to protect you and who understand. And we went in with a rebel group. We stayed there with them, a group of First Responders who were living every day as a mass casualty event in the United States, dozens of people being killed. They pull people out of rubble. Under the constant threat of a double tax strike double attack strike. Usually the regime would come back and hit the same site 15 minutes later as they are trying to hit the responders. So we spent 10 days with them doing that and it was very intense. But they were doing such amazing work, it was something that you felt inspired by them. Which is actually kind of rare in these wars, to find the subjects who are straightforwardly inspirational and not Just Another Group of men with guns involved in a dubious war. These guys have deliberately tried not to take up arms and to try to save lives. There was a lot in them that, you had written about the brotherhood and war crimes. Even though they werent fighting, they were doing it for each other. They are in journal and junkies. ,hey actually joyed a lot of it a lot of them were young guys in their 20s. It was a very interesting psychological situation. Kevin peraino another interesting thing about the story is that you had a window of interaction between the rebel groups in syria. Theres a moment where you are and the First Responders the rebels drove by. You write about how the First Responders halfheartedly waved back. What can you tell us about the intersection of the rebel groups . Matthieu aikins yes, it is like when you hang out with good al qaeda and bad al qaeda is not around. This is a cherry red fire truck donated by the germans. The guys look out and they had gotten the fire truck and were running their own fire service. Totally, utterly confused. The overlap between these groups, and the way that these identities may seem clear here between this group and that group, the extremists and the moderates are utterly confused and blurred on the ground. Kevin peraino you wrote an oped for the New York Times around the same time where you said that washington and its partners want to push back against both president assad and isis at once, they will have to be less squeamish about picking allies in syria. That was about a year ago. What is the state of that now . In your view . Matthieu aikins you could arm these radicals against isis, but i dont think it is substantially different in their philosophical ideology. Kevin peraino sebastian, i wanted to ask a little bit about you have been writing a lot , about the process of returning home after war. Soldiers and correspondence come back coming back, and you wrote recently about your own acute shortterm ptsd. I want to ask a little bit about views about this in general. Maybe you could share your personal experience . Sebastian junger the first time that i really was deranged was in 2000. I had been in northern afghanistan and at that point, the taliban had an air force, artillery, and we got pretty hounded a few times and saw some pretty ugly things. This was before 9 11. The country wasnt at war and no one was talking about ptsd. I had no idea what it was. And it never occurred to me that you could be traumatized in any kind of enduring way. So i came back from afghanistan and im not a particularly neurotic person. I was really puzzled when i had panic attacks in situations that ordinarily wouldnt scare me. Like the new york city subway in rush hour. [laughter] Sebastian Junger all of a sudden i was having fullblown panic attacks. I did not understand it. Noise,mped and a loud maybe i couldve made the connection. I was panicking in small places, small, crowded places and i was sure that everything i was looking at seemed like a threat. The crowd of people was somehow going to turn and attack me. The trains were going too fast and they were going to jump the rails and somehow plow into people on the platform and kill everybody. The lights were too bright. Everything was a threat. Excerpt rationally, i knew none of that stuff was a threat. But i couldnt take the subway for a while. I had no idea that it had anything to do with my experiences in combat. I just thought i was going crazy. Literally i was like wow. , age 38, its finally happening. [laughter] lara logan that is what happens when you have babies. [laughter] Sebastian Junger years later, i was talking to a woman, a friend of a friend, and she was a psychologist and she asked me if i had had emotional consequences from covering war. And i said, i dont think so. But i do keep having these weird panic attacks. And shes like, that is called ptsd. This is 2003, right after we invaded iraq. She said, you will be hearing a lot more about that soon. So i wrote an article for vanity fair magazine about posttraumatic stress disorder and basically there are two , sorts. There is a shortterm reaction to trauma, which is adaptive. We evolved to deal with things that threaten our lives. The logic of darwinian selection, if you survive the threat you go on to pass on your dna. In ways that are adaptive and help us survive. It is a shortterm reaction. If you are in danger, that threat probably lasts a day, a week, a couple months. Of cowgillon is sort he did to get you through and sort of calculated to get you through the dangerous period in terms of our human evolution. In the long term, you are not in that case, you are not adapted to a shortterm danger. You are maladapted to normalcy, to life. And that is pretty rare. Wind up withpeople longterm ptsd. That is not good. So i wrote an article about why that rate is so incredibly high and the u. S. Military. It is way, way higher than in the Israeli Military or the british military. I studied anthropology in college. I did my fieldwork on the navajo reservation. They were all fighting like crazy when when when europeans showed up in north america, and continue to. I just had this idea. I bet the apache really were getting longterm ptsd. Ptsd is notngterm a function of the trauma you went through, it is a function of the society you come home to. If you come home to a cohesive, tribal society, you get over trauma pretty easily. If you come home to a fragmented, alienated modern society, such as ours, modern society has much higher suicide and depression rates than you find in the third world. It shouldnt be that way, but it is. Of thee it is a function society you come home to. And that was my whole thesis. I broadened that article into a book. I have a million questions about to that. It is 1 30, though, so i think i should open it up to questions from the members here. I just want to remind people that this meeting is on the record. And if you could raise her hand, someone will bring you a microphone. Speak directly into the microphone paid and plays microphone, and please limit yourself to one question. Yes, charles. Hi, i am charles. I have a question really for each of you and all of you together. How has social media changed the behavior reporting of war . When i was the last time i was in a war was in 2007, 2008 and there was really no there was none. There was no internet. Or media. [laughter] prehistory. A very remote outpost, so it really didnt affect the soldiers i was with. Is a perfect example of how social media has changed the coverage of war. There is a group of young people whose organization, their name is also their purpose. They want to draw attention to the world. And we can go there because it is under Islamic State control. Managed to get permission to go under Islamic State control. And another journalist who grew up with a lot of those guys. And they did incredible series about life there. But really social media has become, i think, the life led of much of the work coverage. It is very hard to know what you can rely on and what you cant, and that is what organizations are being so important because like any journalist, over time you get to know their work and you get to trust them. Crap on social of media, lets be honest about it. And a lot of people say social media is the answer. But social media is wonderful because they are not paid by any lobby groups, etc. , etc. Is that at the core of the Mainstream Media and social media . Those two things come together. Today, wecial media would not be in a good place. Frommean, also speaking very personal experience, i think it is probably increasing the amount of distraction and procrastination in the coverage of war as well as. As well. No, im just kidding. I do waste a lot of time on twitter. Im sort of divided. I have never been on twitter. I was wondering about that. I do enough travel without going on twitter. [laughter] i would say there are very few young freelancers who are able to ignore social media. It has become a tool and selfpromotion, if you want to call it to that. That is the less attractive side of it, right . And if slightly annoying side of it. But on the other side, the half brave people who are able to form a network and can talk about other cameras all over the city and get information out of there, and become something people go to them. The syrian war is probably really big. The secret program of some weapon supplies to the Syrian Rebels was uncovered through social media. It was elliott, who is a blogger. He noticed the croatian weapons were showing up in the hands of rebel groups. It turns out this is a saudi funded cia run of weapons. That was a social media informant. Yes, red tie. Tom, new york university. Has any of you ever been confronted with a situation in which you felt you wanted to become what you needed to become a participant rather than a observer . And how has your journalistic training help you in addressing a dilemma like that . Well, i have never picked up a weapon. I would shoot myself in the foot i dont know, i think your journalistic training is everything. And her commitment to the process of being thorough and being fair and putting yourself and everyone shoes and trying to understand it is what protects your journalism. If you just say i dont agree with this person, you are not advancing the conversation in any way, shape, or form. So it begins with understanding. That is why i do 5, 6, 7 hour interviews sometimes. It drives every producer i have ever worked with crazy because trying to understand everyones position i think maybe i learned that in south africa because i grew up under a parthian aparthied. Up despising the rightwing. And not wanting to have anything to do with them. Then i worked for a news agency and i realized every time an event happened, i had to provide everyones perspective. That was what our job was. And so in the course of that process, it taught me how to be open to everything. It does not mean i have to agree with it. I have been running a campaign with my guys in afghanistan for 15 years now. They know how i feel about it. I think it is so dishonest when journalists pretend they dont have feelings and they are not passionately involved. Wego and do stories because believe that they are important and they matter. I give 200 to everything i do when i walk out the door. But the practice of being a professional journalist and pulling all of your work through that process is what protects, i think, that is really what protects. And that is the danger of social media because you dont know how much of that is put through this process and how much of that is just rumor that is thrown out there anytime people like. How on the blogs, right much of a journalistic process right . How much of a journalistic process is there . When we looked into it, it didnt stand up. Also, i think it is unrealistic to think that journalists wont have a profound impact everywhere they go. Typically you are bringing in a fair amount of money and putting it into the local economy. Just right there, you are affecting the situation you are reporting on. Lets be honest. I am not saying it hurts the process, but you are certainly affect thing things. , have carried wounded whatever. There is a whole gradation of involvement. Just taking a ride on an american helicopter is making your part of the machine that you are reporting on, but it is the only way to get out there. I think it really comes down to it comes down to your intent. If you are if you are doing something that really, in a describable way, changes the story that you are reporting on, then it turns into kind of a circular drawing. And you dont want that. But the idea that there is some pristine way of traveling financially, morally, logistically where you never step off that you know that wonderful story where he goes back into the time machine and goes back a million years and dont step off the path and he does and he gets back to the present day and a different person just won the election. You think you can go through these situations and never step off the path is not realistic. Isis being a phenomenon that exists as much in media and social media is that journalists have become a kind of political pawn. If you think about the murder of jim foley and the weight that that had such a powerful political impact on americans perceptions of the war, we go into these conflicts already sort of being in the game. And can i just say dont forget daniel because jim foley was not the first person whose head was tipped off. Daniel was the first. And that tactic was not learned, it was not invented by these people. Our job as journalists, that context is critical because of a lot of people seem very eco eager to forget that context. And daniel what happened to daniel set the stage for the changing of journalism from that moment on. It was impossible for People Like Us to go and meet with zarqawi and different members of al qaeda. And that became the moment when we realized how little they needed us. They didnt need us anymore. They speak to their audience when they want to on their own terms in their own ways. And that is probably one of the most powerful changes in the world media landscape. In the front there. Hi. Joe from barclays. A question for all of you, what was your biggest misconception about the middle east or a particular country in the middle east that was changed by your experience on the ground reporting . You want to go for that one . It is a tough one. I think that i knew so little about these countries [laughter] but that made it part of it. I think that i think one of the things that i learned was just how radically different people over there perceive the world and the u. S. , for example. The way that the conspiracy. About 9 11 are so held conspiracy theories about 9 11 are so held. It speaks in the way they view this country as a sort of a villain in this world rather than a hero. So seeing the world and history through that lens i think with something that really changed the way i thought about it. I think one of the grave misconceptions for me was this idea that the cia trained Osama Bin Laden and he fought bravely on the field of afghanistan. There is only one afghan commander who could stand to have any arab in battle with him, and he is today in the afghan government. Osama bin laden only traveled once to the battlefields to afghanistan. His work was done in pakistan. You understand the role that pakistan still plays, and the fact that there are more terrorist groups on pakistani soil than any other place in the world, i think even syria does not measure up right now. It is a misconception to think that afghans and arabs are the same. They are two entirely different people. It is like saying spanish people are saying the same as mozambiquan. The afghans feel very powerfully about having had arabs come to their country and tell them how to worship islam and think about islam. My greatest misconception was not understanding how unique afghanistan is as a place and as a people. It took me a long time to learn and understand and appreciate who they are for who they are. I think afghanistan is vastly misrepresented in the rest of the world. Either it is this romantic thing of afghanistan being this great place on the nexus of all these fantasy things, and then killing, right . I was in afghanistan in the all of 2000, and back home in election was u. S. Sort of hanging in the balance, remember . With gore and bush. It went on and on, and it went on for so long that the Northern Alliance fighters actually heard that there was a sort of hung election in the United States. [laughter] and one of them asked me really quite concerned, sir, do you think there is going to be a civil war in your country, too . [laughter] state ized that a the sort of state of simmering a prettynd conflict is common thing in a lot of the world. And we think of war as this sort of dramatic, outrageous thing that sometimes happens. A lot of war is not that dramatic. Years,can go on for five 10 years, generations. It has the sort of slowmotion metabolism. And a lot of ordinary life happens inside of war. The first time i saw tracer fire was in sarajevo when i was having dinner with some people, very nice family, in the safety behind some buildings outside, a nice summer evening. And tracer fire was pouring down the street, but we were behind a building so we were safe. And we were having a really nice summer evening dinner. Ordinary, completely unless you are in the middle of the street, which we werent. So i didnt understand the sort of ordinariness of war. Dday is the exception. In a lot of it happens sort of weird, slowmotion way that people accommodate within their lives and they adjust to. And they think it is kind of normal sometimes. Interesting. Afghan soldiers in the war with the taliban, and we were being shelled monday. I had a cameraman for only about a week, and then he went home. But the roof of the house we were on cracked and it caved and gave way. And he went plummeting down. The afghans thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen. That is all they wanted to talk about when i had seen them for the next few weeks. They would mime the cameraman following two stories potential he to his death. But that was the height of wartime entertainment. [laughter] to see the foreigner. Lindy with the foundation for civil society. What role and what contact do have with american embassies and american diplomats and american envoys when you are covering these wars . I think it varies widely depending on how depending on the american diplomat and embassy. , andt came back from iraq it was hard to find anyone in that country who wanted that were covered. The American Military were unbelievably difficult to deal with. They did not give us access to a single base. We are not given access to a single trainer. I even had the benefit of living in iraq for a long time. I said to them i know you have guys out there, we will drive ourselves to the front gate. All you have to do is send someone to the front gate and give us some kind of background briefing, do something for us. I said is this the longest handover in the history of any military . Because we have given you a threemonth window. It was all nonsense. What we try to do is if we cant get an interview with the u. S. Ambassador, we try to get a background briefing from that person. I havehave never found never found organizations like that bending over backwards to assist her coverage in any part of the world. Assist your coverage in any part of the world. It is even physically difficult to meet with people. They cant talk and cant leave the embassy. And you get again through multiple layers of security is a hassle in itself. So that is another way the conflict has changed. It is difficult to see american diplomats anymore. I was evacuated from liberia during the civil war by the u. S. Embassy. I felt extremely grateful to them. I was in a lot of danger because the regime had sort of finger at me as a spy. And i sort of went into hiding. It was a very, very scary time. And i was very grateful to them. But they couldnt really leave the Embassy Walls much at all. I had been all over liberia and they sort of debrief to me about they wanted to know what kinds of weapons, really detailed stuff. Journalistnt, a becomes a spy for the embassy. I dont know where that line is, but you do have to be aware of it. Can become. It is really tricky. At what level of granularity are you really functioning in a different capacity that you never intended to . I will say that when i was attacked in egypt, obviously i was very grateful there was an American Embassy in your by that we could reach and get. At least there was somebody you can lean on. We didnt end up using them for a very much at all, but there were too embassy people who came to the airport two embassy people who came to the airport. In those circumstances, when you are that afraid, it can mean a lot. Page show. Beige shawl. Chief. The Bureau New York any diplomatic correspondent. I am just wondering, the relationship you might have being the war correspondence, being in the field with those who are on the diplomatic front. And in that light, what do you see coming for yemen, syria, iraq . What do you see coming if you were to think, what is next . Thank you. What is the next country to get horribly invaded and destroyed . [laughter] i dont know. I was in yemen this summer and it was incredibly heartbreaking. That has already been horribly invaded and destroyed. You are going to have isis, al qaeda is already rearing its head, the country is fragmenting. Libya, obviously. It is gone. You look for good people where ever you go. Theyou gravitate towards diplomats that you feel you can trust, the ones who can respect. And those can be in any government. Any government, anywhere. Mean, you say what is coming next . We are already in the middle of what is coming. Growing andnly spreading. That is not based on what i see, that is in front of all of us. Human is unresolved, and syria is escalating every day. Turkeys engagement is escalating, russias engagement is escalating. That mosul is just a bomb factory. There are tens and tens and tens of thousands of bombs everywhere. They use homemade bombs like landmines. So that is what they have used. When i was up north, they were still hundreds of these bombs just everywhere. They would take a jerry can and fill it with homemade explosives and put a detonator on it. They are using children to plant those bombs. Whoe were some children were working on Something Else at the moment. They said 40 ieds in a day. They are using 15 to 30 suicide bombers in one operation in one day. There are using more suicide bombers than has ever been witnessed in history. And there is no shortage of them coming to die. The iraqis have an incredible fight on their hands. Lebanon today just did a massive Prisoner Exchange with al qaeda. The good al qaeda. The good al qaeda, for now. And what qualifies as good al qaeda . I see those problems being widespread. A good friend of mine, a turkish journalist, he has pointed out that there is really a new axis of power forming with hezbollah,n, assad, and even china in their in some in some ways. And that is a really interesting development. Basically, it is it is being created as a counterbalance to western power. And if it is part of it is also connected to a shiasunni conflict. Other journalists would say it is also a counterbalance to a lack of western power against the saudis are leading a coalition in yemen. If you look at it through putins perspective, this is how you equalize things with the west. The only way i really want to he is a an opinion pretty sharp guy. So we have talked a lot about that. And i think he has a legitimate point. Yes. Thank you. Here is a question. You have all been talking about fragmented societies that you have worked in a lot. I would be interested to know what you think about the american fragmented society, especially visavis what has been happening with the refugees coming into the United States, or not coming. If i can just jump in, i think that plays a big role in the really high levels of combat drama that american troops experienced paired they are experience. They are in a platoon, very tightly bonded to each other. It in missions together, a tight space together. Recreates platoon our past, the way humans evolved to live. And then we come back to modern society. And the Political Parties are literally accusing each other of deliberately trying to sabotage the safety and the welfare of their own country. Race relations are terrible. The gap between rich and poor is getting worse. Platoon would ever treat itself that way. And soldiers somehow intuitively i think they understand this. And they come back to this country and the kind of cant believe it. A lot of the guys i was with, they saw a lot of conflict. It costs those guys a lot. And just about every single one of them misses it and wants to go back. If you are returning to a cosis of cohesive, healthy society, you do want to go back to combat. You are glad to be home. Ofd that to me is like the the illness of modern life. Exactly what you are talking about. And then you can see it in things like immigration. We do not have any kind of cohesive response to immigration because we cant. We are not a cohesive society. We are not going have a cohesive response to anything and still until we start to see ourselves as one country. We have time for one more question. Right over there. Joel from the committee to protect journalists. Lara, i think you have touched on this, but could you talk a little bit about the journalist you journalists you work with in these places . The journalists who are part of your team and the journalists who are a part of their broader ecosystem and form your understanding of these places . You just mentioned your colleague in turkey, for example. I dont think there has been anything i have done in my entire career that has not been because of the great local journalists. Been,hing a place i have an of my closest friends, iraqi did not even pick up the phone, he just got on a plane. I remember being on my in my house in washington dc and he brought me a necklace with my name in arabic. I was thinking how ironic the one person that was of the greatest confident confidant to me comfort to me was an arab man. These are not matches made in heaven. We have fought. All aroundsnipers and he was trying to get me to go inside and go to safety. It was beyond i could not imagine at the one moment i had been there for months from the end of saddam through the whole war. At the very moment when the city put me away to safety, im going, im not going. All he could say was, im a was,alist i could say im a journalist. There was a french journalist who reminds me whenever i see her, but those people are your knowlood because they theres no substitute for knowing every inch of ground and every street. They help you understand motivation, they help you understand history. They give you context. They risk everything. When we were on the jordanian border i do not know him very well at the time. Put his hand over my face and took me outside and said, dont tell anyone, but if you want to go back to baghdad, i will take you. He said, if they find you they will kill you first. He said, god willing, if im going to die at once to die in my country. Die, i want to die in my country. The ones who say they will take a bullet for you are the ones that you know are lying. Whoones who really will, know the place so much better than you and who can guide you no one has to and reporting on the taliban that reporter. Semi use of sigh. I understood that he knew better than i did. You cant go into syria if you dont have a good local network and some of that is local journalists, and some of that is local fighters, but it begins with local journalists. Behind every good for an story is a good texture. Us tok its incumbent on do more for fixers. There may be some parallels that can be drawn for freelancers. Been independent journalists working in conflict zones. Its pretty difficult being out the costsour own and of the war is covered by freelancers. Someone who actually put their money where their mouth is, this Amazing Program to train freelance journalists lifesaving medical skills that sebastian started up great a lot of my friends have been through it. Living stone award, for example, means a lot to the young freelancer out there. You feel like you are on their own out there, and it means a lot. Fixers, something for the martin adler award, perhaps the only one of its kind for fixers. [inaudible] fixers in that context, it is someone employed by other journalists, local journalists, they are working in the employ of other journalists. Remember the movie with hobby cartel where he was cleaner . It puts you in contact with local politicians. A runs down leads. It finds people for you. They help the way they translate sometimes. We have reached 2 00 and we are pretty strict about it right thanks very much to the panel. And thanks to the livingston awards. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] coming up on tonight ght, criminali justice and race. Panelists discuss the overcrowding, rehabilitation programs, and what happens to prisoners after they leave the system. Heres a brief preview. I have interviewed children from 17 years old all the way wantto 7, and they really to know i remember specifically this one young male interviewed in their bedrooms with the doors closed. I remember when it was his turn for the interview, he closed the door behind me immediately and he started to cry. He said, dont i deserve the respect to be told the truth . I know my dad is not in food cap because my cousin comes home during the break. He was upset and frustrated and i tried my best as a researcher to explain to h t