Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On The Assassination Complex 20160904

Targeted assassination of terrorist watch list and really violating peoples Civil Liberties and so thats why its so important that we do see this kind of work and really acknowledge those policies because for the most part they are happening in secret and under secrecy and so when people are uninformed, then they cant necessarily push back when they are far removed from these types of policy they become detentize. They make jokes about raining down bombs on people and thats why its important that this work is out there. Thats one thing i would like to say. [cheers and applause] also its so important that we have these journalists that are doing what they do. A job that puts journalists at risk and thats because aggressive policies and the freedom of speech should be very clear and its a rarity. I was in washington, d. C. This weekend surrounding the events of the white house Correspondence Dinner and its not the same people that you see there winning and dining here in brooklyn. I didnt get invited to the event. So thank you so them. Im fortunate enough to call these people my friends but also inspirations as journalists and the last thing that i will say is that with unlike Edward Snowden, the fact that there is a source tells you that transparency is contagious and that whistle blowers are not and being scared away. Let me introduce the first speak er, a lot of speakers tonight and stay with us there the whole program and editor in chief betsy reed. [cheers and applause] hi. So this book has origins last fall called the drone papers and that series was the product of a tremendous, you know, longterm effort by the practically the whole organization and, you know, its about at the heart of it our series of secret documents that were shared with jeremy by a whistle blower. This is someone in the Intelligence Community who was so so heavily weighed on his conscious that the outraging of was going on in this world in secret, the fact that we have a government that is carrying out assassinations with no transparency, no trial was, you know, enough to motivate this individual to risk to take huge personal risks to bring this to jeremy and i want to Say Something about the number of people involved in the intercept and a mass i have group. A whole list of people here and we really brought to bare a whole range of skills, multimedia. And also josh begley and we are grateful for the opportunity that we have to pursue journalism that is so hard in this day and age. We work digitally so its exciting to have a permanent artifact that you can share and read and since youre here tonight, its clear that youre motivated and you care and you actually regard this these revelations serious and important. As we can see in the Political Landscape today thats not why we share view and thank you for coming out and i hope that you read the book and share it and carry on. Thanks. [cheers and applause] sorry. Had to take a sip of my beer. Betsy reed, everyone. Yes, give her another round of applause and coming up next i would like to introduce peter. Im sure you know his work. Hes going to read an excerpt from the book. Okay. Hello. Hello. All right. Listen, you have to remind people, i have kids. I start off every story like that. Listen. Why i leak it had watch list documents, the following statement was provided by the source who leaked the march 2013 watch listing tbiens. Over the past few years weve heard a lot about president obamas secret kill list yet we still no virtually scrutiny despite aclu lawsuits some basic questions remain unanswered. How do you get on this list . Am i on the list, who put me on the list, how do you get off the list, can you get off the list. Some lists are closely kept, others spent multiple intelligence and local Law Enforcement agencies, their lists use to kill or capture highvalued targets and others intend today threaten or monitor a persons activity, however, all the lists whether to kill or sly lens originate from the terrorist identity data mart environment and maintained by the Screening Center at the National Counterterrorism center. The existences of tide is unclassified yet details about how it functions in our government are pleatly unknown to the public. In august 2013 the database reached a milestone of one million entries. Today it is a thousand entries larger and growing faster than inexception inception of 1993. Not only reserve the right to store your name, date of birth and other basic identifying information but stores your medical records, transcripts and passport data, license plate numbers, email, cell phone International Mobile subscriber identity, your Bank Account Numbers and purchases and other Sensitive Information capable of identifying you and using facial recognition to supplement any information missing from entries already in its databases or to add more entries, individual entries in the database are assigned a personal number, tpn. From osama bin laden, anyone who has ever been the target of a covert operation was first assign ad tpn and closely monitored by all agencies, all agencies who followed that tpn long before they were put on a separate list and extrajudicially sentenced to death. When governments tally enemy list they run specially when they consider their own citizens to be a threat, of the more than one million entries in the database 21,000 of those american citizens by leaking this information which is unclassified but by reverse logic consider too sensitive to be released. I hope to give the what is use today monitor everyday activity. For the first time the public has opportunity to gain inside of criteria that could potentially lead to their own trial by drone strike. In 2008, i shook hands with senator obama when he came through my town on his way to the white house. After his inauguration he said, transparency and the rule of law will be the touch stones of this presidency. I firmly believe they were crucial to society. If this administration lacks up courage to keep promise i and others like me will do so for them. Amen. [cheers and applause] thank you, peter. I hate to say it that a president Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump will make things any better. Again, lets just take to that that this happened under Obama Administrations watch. Lets talk to three people. Director of National Security and ryan, both reporters focused on National Security issues and human rights and let me welcome them all here. [cheers and applause] good evening, everyone. I want to begin by thanking the staff, you guys, everyone else as well as your source for the tremendous Public Service that you have done by shining muchneeded light on area in which there has been far too much secrecy. I think about what your source said about president obama said earlier and i counter that with transparency and accountability are hallmarks of the rule of law, yet, weve respected tremendously consequential programs and policies that have huge impact on the civil and human rights of citizens and noncitizens alike from the nofly list to select list to kill list, we have lacked both transparency and accountability. And this is something that the aclu has worked on for years now starting in the Bush Administration into the Obama Administration and we expect in to whichever administration comes next. With that there, i want to talk a little bit about the specific revelations that you and your source have been able to provide the public in in the book. I wanted to begin by asking you about the first article in the book which is by you and jeremy and its called death in the watch list and ask you about revealations in that piece. Thank you for the kind words. Its really the compilation of different stories that jeremy and i did, nofly list and the select list which you can get on that triggers and enhances screening and what we published was the sort of rule book that exists to govern these kinds of watch listing processes and its sort of rule book that people have fought to get in courses for years and years and finally appeared before us and once we started digging into it, you really saw a system that was so elastic that the rules could in many cases be meaningless. You could bend them to be whatever you wanted them to be an created a system thats bloated and overloaded and all kinds of questions about how effective it actually is and whether it is a real deterrence for terrorism and whether we are building something to make ourselves more comfortable, i mean, that was that was the guidance itself, the rule book, being able to see how these things were actually managed with and i think its been helpful for court case that is you guys have been fighting for years. Thats what it was. What the watch list stuff sort of is the ground work for a lot of other lists and talks about in the essay and it would be she worked on others that have consequences that go beyond not being able to get on the airplane are much more serious. One thing that i wanted to highlight about the guidance and what it shows and the importance of what your source provided is just how this country has embarked on when it seeks to blacklist people and prevent them from doing something that is as necessary to personal and professional lives as flying based on a future prediction of harm that they have not committed. How do you prove yourself innocent of something that you have not done . Thats one of the things that we are trying to litigate in court now, so thank you for that. I wanted to turn to you and your series of articles on information that youve provided and written about based on materials about kill list and how it more broadly applied. Thank you. So i worked on two articles that are featured in the book from the june papers, one of the documents that we received was an internal pentagon study evaluating the military drone program, targeted killing program, really, its not just drones. Its a program to target alleged alqaeda and al shabaab members and theyre evaluating it on their own terms and one of the revelations from the study was simply just a map of the fingerprint of the u. S. Military operations in africa, where the man planes are flown from and the infrastructure in kenya and et ethiopia over yemen and somalia and a second thing that was note nbl the strike was the administration talks about the strikes being against people. Eminent threat to the United States but this document showed the process by which the president approves people for targeting with lethal sprent and theres been a 60day window that the military has to target them. Thats a 60day which is not the common sense one. [laughter] and another thing that was revelatory results, but the documents contained quite a lot of data showing that are basically nonexistent and when they did happen, they were reliant on other governments probably in this case the yemani government that carries them out which raises a whole another issue of human rights and the so you hear a lot about drones as precision weapons but the story layed out the problems with whats called pid, positive identification of the targets that they lack the resources and the technological capacity to always know who they were targeting. And we know over two just two years in 20112012 there were more than 50 strikes in yemen and somalia. Some 300 people killed, at least 50 of them civilians and so, you know, the strikes are killing a lot more than the socalled highvalue targets who pose an imminent threat to the United States. One of the things thats so important about what youve written about and further reveal details about is that these are strikes being carried out in countries in which and with which we are not at war, the expansion of the notion of a global war paradigm without territorial or temp temporal limits, who will for next president be that claims the same authority, but even with respect to the use of drones and killing authority within traditional actual battlefields, you worked ryan on an article that talked about operation hay maker and if you can talk a little bit about what that reveals. So the story that i worked on the drone papers, this is one the documents about the manhunting basics thats stretched for a number of months in 2012 into 2013 and it was a targeted killing campaign aimed at wiping out the alqaeda andal man and what the documents reveal here is that in about nine out of ten of these operations, so not on the ground but air strikes, they werent killing the person that they were going after, they were killing other people. We dont know who they are but they get labeled as ekia, enemy killed in action and so that what its the statistic, nine out of ten statistics generate attention because its quite alarming and after spending weeks and weeks, months and months looking over the documents, it was really revealing is that the americans had gone in there with this idea that they were going to retake this province and they were going to do it through picking off highvalue targets and at the end of the day according to their own estimates they really failed at this and i talked to a lot of people who spent time in kunar working on campaigns, you know, conventional sort of military campaigns and the americans went into this part of afghanistan, not knowing what they were doing, not knowing anything about the people that lived there, not knowing about the history that listed and ended up getting duped and the way that the war in afghanistan has unfolded over the last decade and a half and this campaign to me became really sort of symbolic of this sort of convenient way in which this country has gone about war post 9 11 or seemingly convenient way that in the end doesnt really get us to where we want to be at all and has tremendous tolls. I think that hay makers example to look at when we think about going forward, when we think about who is going to be sitting in the white house in a year. Thank you, i think part of the story is a continuing one, what you have is despite repeated promises of transparency and accountability, repeated failures in official transparency and official accountability, so we still dont know the names, numbers, status of people who have been killed in drone strikes outside of actual battlefields, acknowledged as such officially except for a handful of western victims. And that is a shameful record. We are not as a public having meaningful debate that we need to about standards, about strategy, consequences, limitations, rule of law without official information and in that face comes necessity of that kind of information that your source has provided again. That im grateful. We expect a little more transparency, we will see how much comes in the aclu lawsuit which in the next month to six weeks the administration has said its going to provide its president ial policy guidance, the socalled play book for the rules applied to socalled targeted killings outside of hostile environments or active battlefields. Am i optimistic how much will be redacted or not redacted, well, long experience here. [laughter] but i think its specially important in the last period of president obamas legacy to push for meaning transparency, to push for actual accountability and limitations both with respect to law and policy because whatever this administration is doing now worst can come for the next one. Thank you. [cheers and applause] thank you all very much. And incredibly important words, right, about the dehumanizing effect. You see words like ukia. Dont forget that the book, the assassination books are out in the back if you want to purchase them, they are also a limited amount of the intercept tshirts so get them in you want. There will be a book signing later, but if you want to avoid the line and maybe you can pop out and do that quickly and just a reminder the books have been subsidize so only 20 and all the proceeds are going to go to the intercept and the work that these guys do. Thank you. [applause] this song is called i think i am ema goldman. Anybody know who emma goldman is . This is amazing. [music] i think i am emma goldman. [music] [music] [music]. Spee1 [applause] spread narrowed everybody gets their books. And now for another meeting this time in excerpt of the essays by a Edward Snowden featured in book. I have cut down this bit a little bit youll have to buy the book to read yourself. I was going to read the whole thing but one thing i want to say is when i was a kid living in Oklahoma City every morning, of redid the pledge of allegiance every morning blindly we would get up but it got into me and i consider myself not just a patriot but someone who really believed in the United States as the greatest country in the world. I really really felt that in my heart and as i became an adult was disappointment after disappointment that is what it means to grow what. When you are a kid, they are your parents you believe what they say you love the man to follow them and you do what it dash you grow up to have a mind of your own. [applause] the biggest adult among us is Edward Snowden. Elected by circumstance. I have spent waiting 40 years for someone like you. Those with the first words daniel spoke to me when we met last year. We felt an intimate kinship we both knew what it meant to risk so much to be irrevocably changed by revealing the secret truth. One of us challenges of a whistleblower is living with the knowledge just as you did to sit in that desk throughout the agency to see what you saw it to comply in silence without resistance or complete they learned to live not just with the untruth but the unnecessary enters the dangerous untruth the compulsive untruth it is a double tragedy. What began as a survival strategy ends and a compromise fought to preserve with the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice. I did not need to wait 40 years to break that silence with the pentagon papers to the New York Times Chelsea Manning provided the iraq and afghan war log church clap picture clap and that also with the leaks in 2010 i keyboard 2013 and now here we are with another person of courage and conscience has made available extraordinary doctor looked document a working. That bad policy shelters in the shadows the time frame that unconventional activities can continue before a day are acts of conscience and this is significance beyond the immediate headlines to learn about critical Government Action not par of the historical record in a way that allows direct action to empowers and inform citizens to send the democracy that is normally intended to support. 1c individuals to bring that information for word it gives me hope we will not always be required to look at the activities of our government as it was a constant test to approve that lawbreaking as we know the grass interestingly that is how some describe the remote and killing operations as killing cutting the grass that does not change the reality there are significant portions of the government that operate below the waterline. The secret activities will continue despite reform to live with the fear if they gauge and activities contrary to the spirit with that in justice the whey that this heinous is equality before the law. And to find themselves upon them. Moving from extraordinary acts of revelation to a collective culture of accountability that collective culture within the Intelligence Community coming here retake a meaningful step not all leaks are alike general david interest provided that favorable biographer information as a classification including covert operatives was but the trail is was not charged with a felony. What that out. [booing] [inaudible] he was a soldier of modest rank pulled out highly classified notebooks handing them to his girlfriend knowing many decades of prison and there are authorized leaks is rare for officials to explicitly ask to retaliating against her husband as appears to have been the case but it is equally rare of which a senior official does not disclose intimation that is beneficial to the political efforts off of the parties that is damaging to National Security. There is some good stuff in here i am going to skip. [laughter] i want to believe that when we hear this everyone in this room feels proud that this man is an american at the heart of this evolution is the self radicalizing event i dont mean extreme but in the traditional sense of the root of the issue at some point you recognize you cannot just move a few letters around on the page you cannot report the problem to your supervisor because inevitably they get nervous and think of the structural risk to their career rocking the boat and getting the reputation change has to flow from the bottom to the top. [applause] said in mecca as someone who works for the Intelligence Community you have given up lot to do the work happily committed yourself to the restrictions voluntarily undergo polygraphs you wave a lot of rights because of that fundamental goodness justifies the sacrifice of the sacred is a just cause such a patriot. When you are confronted not with peculiarity but the consequence of the program it is subverting uh constitution that he so fervently believe that the program or the policy is inconsistent that we swore to the society that cannot be reconciled with the program to which do we owe the greater loyalty . Now i go to the end. Here we see the double edge of our brand of nationalism. We are raised to be exceptional and. Destiny that some people will eventually believe this claim. To comport purportedly. Was not american but the act of assembling increasingly is an act of political resistance the whistle blower raises the alarm to inherit the legacy of a line of americans beginning with paul revere the individuals who make those disclosures feel so strongly about what they have seen their willing to risk their lives and freedom they know that we the people are ultimately the strongest and most reliable check on the powerful government the insiders have extraordinarily capability and resources with tremendous access to influence and a monopoly on violence but there is one figure that matters. The individual citizen. [applause] you are awesome. Thank you. Thank you peter. That was incredible. It is amazing to hear Edward Snowden words you can see he was inspired by others and he has inspired others and not surprisingly those people in power either think everybody should get off the hook or people like him are traitors and should be killed like Michael Hayden actually said suggested give you an update on what will happen. Coming up next we have the speaker then another performance then jeremy will speak then of book signing will begin to keep you uptodate. So now joining us from faraway an incredible journalist. [cheers and applause] author of no place to hide. [applause] can you hear me . Thankyou so much for coming out tonight. Times saree my scheduling issues prevented me from being with you in person and i am sorry for the creepy 1960s curtains behind me. Actually when i turned on the video when i saw them kylix like the dating game. I was worried day in a little bit but then i saw a twitter posting from one of you in the audience right before a came on people lighting up joints like this again. Saw hope realized people in the audience will be perfectly fine with whenever curtains are behind me which is comforting. One of the reasons i am so excited about this event and the release of of book and the recording of the intercept that he could do on this story is because it is a vivid expression of the distant division be had when we started the intercept. We didnt have every single detail not nailed down about what we wanted to do or how we wanted to do it but we had clear principles about what we wanted to achieve and one of the most important principles was to create an environment using technology, expertise, resou rces in order to create a safe and secure way that forces that wanted to be whistleblowers could speak to wes and provide information in a safe and secure manner as possible. There was a lot of focus during the debates of the surveillance state of the right to privacy and there was some discussion and debate of the surveillance state law of which is true but not much attention paid to the way that Surveillance Erodes the right of a free press. In order for us to do our jobs as journalist, is to shine a light with the most powerful people are doing in the dark. For those to have access to know what is going on and want to read feel that if the government can monitor everybodys communication activity it is extremely difficult or virtually impossible for a journalist to cultivate sources in any other way that is guaranteed on paper when that is combined with this vindictive mentality on the part of the u. S. Government to prosecute and persecute people who in good conscience expose one never should have been kept secret in the first place you can have a erosion of the free press though we want to find a way to devote resources that are needed to compete with the u. S. Government to counteract their efforts to know what everyone is saying to create a technological and human wall to enable forces to come to Media Outlets to provide information that the public should have had all along. So in that way that was a gratifying fulfillment of the mission that we think is of first deputy fortified that environment to have other sources, to us for consequential stories. The other way we wanted to make sure that when the sources did come to us it was from the beginning never to hesitate about publishing stories like this because of fear of consequences are judgment or scorn from government officials and the media it was the filling and gratifying to see from the very beginning the entire team led by our editor in chief with our warriors and editors never blinked never a moment of doubt if we should or should not pursue the story but how fast can we do with the serbs the public to protect our source and fill the promise quick settle think there are many institutions left that are equipped with the resources or the staff as well as the institutional egos in the unflinching and unhesitating way so finally the comes to fruition start to finish is also gratifying and indication of what we created. There is one other important aspect that was filled and a unique way was the revelation of bad words noted when he decided to disclose the information he ended up disclosing. There were a couple of controversial aspects of the story to say why did he feel the need to conceal his identity and another question was why is there so much focus on Edward Snowden . And as very capably interpreted if edwards noted was not a person who acted in that black coal to be this lineage by variety of other people over the last tune decades in particular to risk their lives for liberty or their careers. Had there not then a Chelsea Manning to influence Edward Snowden to spark his own sense of obligation to get them to think of his duties to see the possibilities of what could be accomplished, there never would be edwards noted it would not have the look of occurred to him or be emboldened enough to do it. So a big part of coming forward that we thought was so critical to push him into the spotlight was against his desire and instinct was to contribute to the line and the model so the government would hear Edward Snowden talk about why he did what he did and had no regrets my one regret is a would lead have done it earlier or should have done that sooner. We want to make sure people have the benefit to hear from him away he got to hear about the people that preceded him and inspired him. This story is the first tory we got what intercept was up and running to see it was a similar pattern where somebody gained material benefit obviously aware of what Edward Snowden had then and the whistleblower literally ripped everything of significance there is no reason other than to make all of us aware of what we should have always been aware of that is a threat to democracy and a complete disgrace of our government is targeting whenever it wants all over the world with no accountability or due process for execution. I think it is in just a fulfillment of a vision of the intercept that edwards noted had when he came forward and difficult the biggest part of his story was not the specific revelation triggered by the documents he turned over but the consequence is what inspired other people all over the world and what that would inspire them to do and that is one example of many that the benefits we will continue to reap way beyond the realm of the surveillance debate to enable us to have. The last point is about journalism more broadly. One of the of fascinating aspects of how information is stored is digitally and there is an expectation to keep things secret that uh transformation how information is stored would enable them to more each efficiently keeping secret and to put them in large amounts. And some ways that has happened when it is on the thumb drive protected by a password and with electronic barriers then it is not that difficult to access. But with this really great karmic way those that had the expectation to keep it secret created the weapon that is now most threatening their ability to do so. If you talk about the greatest challenge of the pentagon papers and was hired to leak 10,000 topsecret documents to the New York Times without people knowing that you are doing that . Just physically and logistically how do make a copy of 10,000 pages . To go to the drug store with a bag of times in to the xerox machine in front of the pharmacist . That was his big challenge and it was an impediment to getting them public but now look at how chelsea being leaked hers to download huge amounts of data on to a fund drive while she listened to cds to coverup bushy was doing you can see how easy it was to get the information to the public. Looked out of the releases to the Panama Papers or sony , this will be one of the most important and amines of how we whereabout with the factions are doing through massive amount of data that is more difficult to detect than ever before so to create a system that enables that and fosters that is one of the most important challenges of journalism and i am so of paroled the have the resources devoted to create more people in the future and i am glad we have journalists on our masthead have the skill and the bravery to what journalism is really about not to conceal things but if you see the benefits when networks really well and the light that we can shine on the Obama Administration world wide. With that thanks for coming tonight and listening in helping us to celebrate turcotte cheer clapper. [applause] [cheers and applause] my friends and colleagues i religiously would read his block years ago and now i think have been vindicated. A reminder books are on sale later im me will be signing these books and a lid plummeted number of tshirts made by the intercept. Right now to perform another song so make sure that used to around for that one. I just want to say it is crazy to get onstage after seeing land up there listening to the show every day and to do this is an honor were to me. Obviously you although. I just want to abolish what important even and we have to night and how special it is thanks for listening and coming out to participate. Give it up for the intercept one more time for this amazing work. We will switch it up and this song is a love song. This is not directed at the crowd but just might critique of blue shawl liberalism with these brave Russell Bowers whistleblowers to have the agency to fight back individually and personally and physically. [applause] as was the books being sold back theyre there is also music back there you can purchase from mc sole. Thanks for being here tonight and now all i would like to introduce our final speaker that is someone i am fortunate enough to call my friend i really have to leave inspired by this individual of any type of journalism that i would like to do a one to see what jeremy does so the cofounder of the intercept the author of blackwater journalist extraordinary. [cheers and applause] thanks so much for sharing this event with the us. I know of a lot of defense better done in very serious issues attracted older crowd but i am so happy to see seoul many young people here tonight. [applause] all you take your future so seriously that you want to Pay Attention to these issues. Except you. You have some gray hair but so do i. So something about our team at the intercept, when we started this journey we have a real origin that glen and i started to attack about working on stories together he was that the guardian i was just finishing up the dirty wars project writing for the nation bilking to do Something Different and our colleague was also looking to build up independent media and i had never bend to brazil and then met glenn once in person we communicated to live with an open chat channel but i had the story of wanted to work on with him but it required me to go to brazil aegis had a meeting with edwards noted in hong kong to obtain the documents i flew to rio after yemen and somalia sari. First of all he lives way at n the mountains making fun of the 60s curtains he had to go to Hotel Tonight because he did not have a good Internet Connection at his house he has to go down to the hotel in order to do this event tonight. But igo to inhouse it took me four hours to get there because no taxi driver knows where it is. I enter the compound canine planet of the apes 1 billion barking and actual monkeys in the trees eating bananas and then he would tease the dogs by throwing a banana peels that them. This is my introduction to his world laugh laugh then i guarantee i dont know why he wore a suit he is wearing a suit with a tie and i guarantee you he had shorts on. [laughter] i go there i have jet lag guy take the overnight flight he is there sitting on his porch with flour shorts flipflops sitting there with a bag of goodies of all of these in cryptic drives of edwards noted files this is the beginning stages his partner david was just detained at Heathrow Airport in london most of that with no access to a lawyer propulsive there was a very serious political context what was happening and he is out on his porch with the brazilian dogs barking Drinking Coffee wearing flowered shorts and flip flops and says all my guide you have to see these documents so were working on something with the joint special operations and the assassination improve gramm how the nsa was monitoring and collecting information from so phones used to track and black people as the california eight bledsoe coming not of this environment we start to work on these stories i was down there 10 days while i am down there he gets an email from a great Freedom Advocacy say you dont know if you have heard of this guy he is interested in starting a News Organization in but like the 108 persian blair dash richest person in the world. So glenn is an reading this email to you think a should respond . I said maybe laugh laugh at the time we are talking about forming a News Organization so in the midst of all of this surfer shorts flipflops dogs and monkeys and banana peels and killing it is a strange situation where this guy who is extremely wealthy and big fan of clans work because he was opposed to government intrusion on the privacy rights of americans say now would like to start a News Organization i considered buying washington post. [laughter] as one does so that is an idea into this crazy thing where by the end of that we were like were starting a News Organization funded by the guy who started ebay. And then the catholic worker i used to live and a homeless shelter one of my doing with this guy . Then the note attached commitment to fund the journalism we wanted to do so that is how all this started and youve made mistakes but the point was this started the process that created the ability to have the autonomous News Organization where pierre who finds this never tells us what to do or what to write or what not to write and when so many journalists are fighting to be so very blessed to be in this position. So now we started the intercept bringing in people like rye and and laura and other amazing Young Journalist and we didnt in a way we didnt know exactly where we were going but we have gotten to the point now where we have been incredible editorinchief this incredible leader she is quiet and humble but has an easing in sight in the kind of news it is not done anywhere else and we have the freedom to work on the stories that we are pursuing with regards to no hurdles in our direction we have great lawyers and others. But before i talk about the content of the assassination complex, we are incredibly grateful to the individual who risks of liberty and freedom and their life to lead these documents to us. [applause] we are living in a moment where a man in the white house right now who is a constitutional lawyer by trade and trading, won the nobel peace prize, portrayed as a transformative figure in american policy six and presiding over a global assassination program, the most intense persecution and prosecution of whistleblowers in u. S. History using the espionage act during his two terms more than all president s in u. S. History combined since signed into law. This president obama is viewed as a great liberal leader with support but yet dick cheney i imagine him flyfishing somewhere in wyoming having a good chuckle over how great this period has spent for their agenda that john mccain could never implement or mitt romney could never implement. [applause] barack obama uses his credibility as a popular democrat and a constitutional lawyer to seek to legitimize to a global assassination program. Every president since gerald ford has upheld the executive order that says the United States does not assassinate but yet the u. S. Congress has not only avoided legislating that issue or defining the term of the assassination but actively refuses to do so because if they actually defines assassination and said that is an executive order we will not translate into law that you would have 500 lawmakers responsible for this policy so we are told we are engaged in targeting killing no nono it is the globe will hit Squad Program we are the embodiment of Richard Clark was under clinton told congress in a secret hearing shortly after 9 11 reason that clinton did not want to do the things that we see now they did not want to give the perception to run the israeli style assassination program. Fast forward now we have a popular liberal democratic president has basically said it is legitimate for the United States to have a parallel judicial system where people are sentenced to death by a committee that meets on tuesdays to put the statistics on a Baseball Card to go up the chain of command and that the top is the president of United States to decide fellow live and die any given day because he says so. With all the liberals who supported this policy a 1. It was 70 percent who said they supported the drones strikes abroad. Fee, many with a defrays President Donald Trump kill list will still believe in the principle . There is no such thing as a democratic or republican Cruise Missile. Every nation has the right to defend itself. Not a question our also include native americans. [applause] what we are engaged in right now and i say we because youre a supporter if you pay taxes. Not in defense of four but preemptive warfare which is the cheney doctrine. What obama has done to endure for generations to come to make it possible for the next president the Cruise Missile liberal clinton or nanny as a fruitcake donald trone trone, whichever end up winning the election will continue these policies and for Bernie Sanders by the way many people i am sure are feeling the burn and a lot of things he says that are really worth supporting it is unusual to hear those things on the National Stage that he says but the reality of Bernie Sanders when the ground work was being laid for the future invasion of iraq in the 1990s he supported legislation of the iraq liberation active makers seem change and i racked the law of the land and endorsed a bill supported publicly with the signature drafted by Donald Trumps wealth Donald Trumps felt, Paul Wolfowitz and others he supported the legislation they drafted in the early stage that laid the groundwork for the invasion of iraq. Then he supported the most merciless regime of sanctions against the iraqi people and attempt to starve them to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein it did not affect them that killed hundreds of thousands of iraqi he rightly blast Hillary Clinton to be a regime change she is as hawkish as they come blasting her with reliance for kissinger and she should be. But as journalists we have an obligation to hold anyone in power or seeking power accountable if you think his sheets are clean they are not. [applause] Bernie Sanders was asked from ms nbc directly if he supports the calloused and he said as it is currently being administered psi do. No as is currently being administered is played out in this book by the way is a complete team effort of all of these investigative journalist. We poured over the documents to submit a counter narrative of what is happening around the world what they show is the Obama Administration is relying on the list that depends on mathematical formula for determining how many civilians are killed in the drama strikes basically is guaranteed to almost always result in the number zero so looking at that statistics and they will say a minimal number have been killed but they will not tell you in many cases they declare anyone killed in a drawn strike is an enemy killed in action until proven not to have been so in turning the idea of due process on its head. This type of reporting that the intercept is the result result, and Incredible Team effort of lawyers and Fact Checkers and incredible design team and try to visualize what can be shared and digestive and understood by one person 2. 0 is why amazing colleague roger former editorinchief of harpers magazine he edited this book with his own time in addition to being at the intercept. [applause] and the final feigning is were living in a time and moment with the war against journalism in the form of the targeting of whistleblowers. Of war to target their from records tomb surveillance of communication records this claims to usher in the era of Transparent Administration in u. S. History sends a message to those in government to blow the whistle on the unconstitutional activity extrajudicial killing we will pursue you to the end of the earth. So the killing of osama bin modern happens they can tell everybody lies with the shootout happening all the other stuff that they said officially those were acceptable with david various if you must make a self look superman in front of his mistress political antennae email would be an adder scandal if a private citizen doing that because the reasons of conscience or a Government Contractor who said i want to have classified material sent to my personal email address people would go lowdown on charges machine may be the next president of the United States. [applause] we live in a society so many people are at the bottom of the chain of command Chelsea Manning was servants sentenced 30 years because she blew the whistle on war crimes you watch the collateral berger video were civilians and journalists were gunned down to applause and laughter to the United States military the idea that chelsea many as serving 30 years to expose that illegal activity and David Pretorius is a professor somewhere ahead of the entire university of texas educational system which right to get those to apologize for killing people and now we live in a society , and of the lower command to blow the whistle to share classified information to slip sleepless someone is a second commentary on our society. [applause] i will end the evening by saying this. Will were trying to direct the intercept is flawed in your open to criticism we listened to people who have something critical to say. We are not arrogant about what were doing were trying to build Something Different vendors seeking different ways to Fund Journalism i have been at the other end of this were you beg for funding for three months to convince people what you are doing is worth it. We are not perfect. But we are trying to create an independent Media Organization when people come to our work and know where we come from the notion of objectivity is cnn is an Advocacy Network is not objective. We dont want to go to the White House Correspondent Association Dinner we want to be with people like you to live on the other end of the barrel of the gun. I want to dedicate this entire evening i hope it keeps this in your hearts and minds today to all of the whistleblowers known and unknown to risk life to tell us stories would not hear otherwise, those are the true heroes in our society. [cheers and applause] did not to this jury then publishing 80 if deals have worked here everybody involved in denver has come to a Tattered Cover. We have then hear about one year we had president jimmy carter and Hillary Clinton lots of all others. Owning a bookstore has ben the dream for most of my working life and christian and i have tried a couple of times looking at different options but nothing worked out right. So we figured go big or go home and Tattered Cover came into being the deal was announced in 2015 the lead story the number two story the next day the denver post ran the editorial about what a treasure of how she has meant to the of literary treasure to basically say dont screw this up so well come to denver. Officially started july july 1st choice informally retires july 1st 2017 we are exactly in the middle and it has then incremental every month we learn more to take on more responsibility to get involved in different departments at this point at one year in we are functioning as zero members of the Management Team here. It was built in the 1960s and ran about 20 years and was an abandoned building and we took over 10 years ago to turn it into the next location of the Tattered Cover. This is the room we have for bigger evens we can fit to hundred 20 c. Did people if there is no presentation and just a signing we will snake the line through the store to get as many as we can. We come in with a lot of publishing and book industry experience i have a Broad Perspective but still everyday it is like taking it from the fire hoses so much to learn that we are learning all the time it was started by a man i think 1971 joyce bought the store i think at the end the 73 or 74 at that time 950 square feet and joyce was a master book seller and quickly caught on an expanded and expanded and a lot of ways she invented the modern brick and mortar if you look at Tattered Cover you will see green carpets brass fixtures and dark wood the original barnes noble superstores were modeled on this. There are four locations three large format and one tiny store in Union Station also and a partnership have three stores in the airport airport, this is the flagship offices, receiving 20,000 square feet of selling space plus another four or 6,000 square feet depending on the time of year with the staff about 150 employees. Recently learned that every time i give a two word i say it is apocalypse of denver to be in this building and the last couple days i learned this building was built in 1950 and this is actually billed as the Fallout Nuclear bomb shelter. This is the best place to tom. The main offices are in the bottom level as well as Central Receiving all the books, here and then theyre taken to the different stores. American pewter team, in this open area where we do returns they have then on the books of have and sold resend them back to the publisher and that is where this happens. Theyre all ready to go. Have books that our ready to be of sale because tuesday is the release day we have cards waiting to go out of this is rather books come first entered into the computer and entered with a year going down in this corner a working and functioning workshop that has a big power tools to fix old bookshelves, a stain the wood of lot of tinkering happens here. And this area is opposite the door that leads to the events area behalf of the chairs, the microphone and it is easy in and out and very accessible. Every day is another challenge not connected to selling books. [laughter] whether dealing with the staffing issue with a pipe burst or maybe dealing with different kinds of customer issues we spend so little time dealing with the books at the ownership level we knew that but i really just want to sell books today