Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20151118

Saturday evening post, places that dont even exist anymore. So the new yorker had to invent a way to get fiction in the magazine. They discovered new talent, and that became part of the soul of the new yorker. Rose we continue with Billy Eichner, the star of billy on the street. Strangely enough, like a lot of actors, im normal to shy offstage if i dont know you. But people loved the street act. They loved the energy. I think a real savvy new yorkl. A. Audience who i was performing for at the time, before youtube, appreciated getting insanely worked up about entertainment. Rose miller, recommend nicremnick andeichner when we rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with continuing coverage of the paris attacks which killed 129 people. France has carried out airstrikes against i. S. I. S. Targets in syria for the third consecutive day. French Security Forces revealed today there might have been a ninth suspect to take part in the attacks. Questions have been raised about the ability of i. S. I. S. To commit similar attacks in the United States. Joining us is john miller, Deputy Commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism of the new york police department. Hes also a former colleague at cbs news and im always pleased to have him at any table and especially this table. Welcome. Good to be here, charlie. Rose lets start with your take on paris and could it happen here and how is paris or how is new york different . Well, it could happen here in new york simply because it could happen anywhere. What were talking about is redefining the common terrorist plot to be lowtech, lowcost and as we see now extraordinarily high impact. You dont need talented, sophisticated operators to walk into a crowded place with a rifle and start shooting people. On the other hand, the ability to launch that at multiple locations in a global city like paris is a significant external planning capability. Rose it also indicates this is a global struggle. Thats very significant, charlie, as i as it redefines wt i. S. I. S. Was two months ago to what i. S. I. S. Or i. S. I. L is today. How does it redefine it . I. S. I. L was a place running an infantry and taking land in syria and to some extent iraq. Rose to create a caliphate. To create the Islamic State take land, hold land, take more land. They put out calls with very slicklyproduced propaganda, stuff you would stack against madison avenue any day that had a promise of, you know, going from zero to hero if you were some person whose life didnt seem to amount to much. But what you see here is rather than kind of farming this out to anybody who was listening, it appears that a group was given an assignment to take down that plane and may have penetrated airport conventional Airport Security to compromise it. You see a complex attack in lebanon which is really interesting because who is the victim of terrorism there . Seems to be an arm of hezbollah so now you have one terrorist group attacking essentially another. Then you have the attacks in paris, multiple attackers, multiple locations, simultaneous. So that really speaks to an organization that went from being a selfpropelled prop tbanda arm propaganda arm globally to one that can launch a complex operation. Rose you said how they carried it out was simple but it was a complex operation. What do we know about i. S. I. S. intentions today . I think i. S. I. S. Is focused on taking and holding land and creating the caliphate and Islamic State. Rose and the president said that narrative is important for them to create the idea that they are creating a state. Thats right. Rose to recruit to it. The name is important to them. They could have called it a lot of things but they called Islamic State because, charlie, in the sophisticated marketing piece here, for you to go against i. S. I. S. , then you must be at war with the Islamic State, which translates in short to youre at war with islam, and i think that was constructed intentionally, when youre actually at war with a terrorist group called i. S. I. L. So there is some calculation. But the key is, to your question of where is i. S. I. S. Going with this, is they werent just concerned with the outside world when they were taking territory. Once the outside world outraged by beings and kidnappings and terrorist acts that were televised said were going to corporal a coalition and do an outside bombing campaign, i. S. I. S. Said, well, the outside world needs a dose of fear, and thats what theyre trying to do here. Rose how smart are they technologically . We hear about growing dark and the apps they now use. Explain that to me. Going dark is a catchall phrase for the fact that the aperture on the intelligence communities ability to collect on terrorist groups or the ability of Law Enforcement to collect against criminal groups is slowly closing. In the old days, there was the cell phone which you could put a wiretap on if you had a court order. There was email which was held on a server by a provider that if you came with a search warrant or a subpoena had to be turned over. Now theyre designing apps, telegram, a russian company, wicker a San Francisco company, a number of them that are specifically designed so that you can send messages that are coded and encrypted in a way that they cant reasonably be broken even by pros, that they selfdistrict at a time that you the sender send, so when i send it to you, i can program it so that a minute after you read it, it disappears forever. That means you can show up with your subpoena and court order to the provider and say, we found this cell phone on the dead terrorist and one of the apps seems to be the communications platform, we need to see what went over that leading up to this attack and where are they now, and the provider can say not only i wont turn it over but they can say i cant turn it over because i dont have it and i cant get it. Rose do you have a position on the idea of encryption and how much encryption and who should be allowed to have access to the encryption . So i think thats a question that we have to decide as a country, which is what do we expect in terms of privacy and what do we expect in terms of the governments ability to solve crimes, save lives, present terrorist attacks . I dont pretend to know the answer. I do know this, that the law is having trouble keeping up with the technology. There is a law called kalia phonetic really invented to keep up with the cell phone when it started and the idea if there is a communications device, the provider has to provide a way that they can assist Law Enforcement with a legal court order to get information. The interesting thing is as technology is excelled forward, Law Enforcement can get a subpoena but its not really a phone and these apps are for a computer and its not covered under kalia. Rose and also we dont know how to get access to it, right . Right. Apple is in a very interesting place now. Apple says we have a lock on the phone that you the owner of the phone controls and if its al capones iphone and you hand it to us and say we have a court order, crack it open, we can say we dont have the key. There is a case going on in brooklyn involving drugs where its the old iphone and apple says, in fact, we can open it but we dont feel like it because it mayer road the trust of our customers so were going to say no. So thats where we are. You can get into the debate about privacy, terrorism and national security, but what it comes down to, my guys are out on a kidnapping, there is a ransom drop, a child held and i grab the guy who picks up the ransom and he doesnt have the kid but i get his phone and say to the provider we need this phone opened, we need to know where this is going, and they say we dont know how. Rose you need to know where the kid. So this is an important debate and one that wont be decided by the police, wont be decided by the courts. This debate is going to have to be decided in congress. Rose tell me what john miller thinks is the wise choice. I think we have to be reasonable people, which is we have laws, we have search and seizure laws, search and seizure constitutional protections, and if entire criminal networks are going to be thriving on these devices i have a tape of a telephone call from the manhattan d. A. s office of a prisoner in Rikers Island saying to his compatriots on the outside which cell phone do you have, youve got to get the 8 because even the cops cant crack it. Rose the actual tape from a Rikers Island inmate. On the telephone to one of his compatriots on the outside about illegal activity. Rose right. So the bad guys have figured this out. The terrorists have figured this out. The question is how as a people do we want to resolve this . Do we want the law to cover this and rely on the courts and rely on people under oath or do we just say, look, there are some things in terms of our personal papers, devices, emails, that we just expect nobody ever to be able to open no matter what. Rose no matter what bothers you . No matter what bothers me depending on the scenario. But when you get down to the kidnapped child, to the child exploitation, to the person who is planning and executing gang murders in a Housing Project using these things and you can see them using them, you can watch them communicate and you say, we cant get into that, even with judicial intervention, again, its a question of people need to learn enough about to decide where to go. Frankly, charlie, not mincing words here, the companies are in it for the money. You know, you can rose the companies who make the smartphones . Who make the applications. When apple rose they dont care what the consequences of their app is or who benefits from it is what youre saying. Theyre in it for the money so they dont care what the consequences are. If i were them, i would say its not we dont care. Providing information to the police is not our business. Were in the business of making devising and ensuring privacy including from all the hackers. If youre looking at it from the Law Enforcement, intelligence and counterterrorism side, you need to say, we need a builtin solution. These companies will look you in the eye and say, you know what they want . Those spies and those intelligence guys, they want a back door into our system so they can paw through your stuff. Not asking for that. I think what everybody from the f. B. I. Director to my boss the Police Commissioner wants is they want an order and a way they can provide the material the way we would go into the trunk of a drug dealers car. If you have judicial process based on proper legal procedure, they have created an entire world of information that cannot be accessed. Rose a couple of other questions about things like this we know that, in paris, that these people who do this both with exear Charlie Hebdod this case, there were people who had contact and known by Law Enforcement for one reason or the other, some kind of contact. Is our capacity to monitor that sufficient and can it be sufficient . I think our capacity is sufficient to the extent that ill take it from the new york optic, which is where i sit in the nypd. There have been 20 plots against new york roughly since 9 11 that have been prevented or stopped and a couple were carried out. Four of those have been in the last two years on my watch, and they were prevented through good intelligence work, some undercover cases involving very dedicated officers, and this new wrinkle makes it more challenging because i can tell you this, in the last few cases that unfolded in june, we had information about who was being asked to do what in new york, but when it came down to communication on the players, we knew what they were communicating on but couldnt intercept those and thats the problem because it hampers your ability to stop it. Rose the question is if they are prepared to provide these kinds of glitches to cops and these belts that will destruct and destroy them, do we have any reason to believe that as smart as they are about technology and the apps we have been talking about will also not be equally smart about gaining the knowledge about how to make much more powerful bombs . The bombmaking recipes are on the internet. Theyre in inspire magazine. Rose we saw that in the boston marathon. We saw a recipe right out of al quaidas magazine. Rose and as they spread and these people begin to be global, whether they will have access to bittery bombs and things like that that are much more powerful in taking down a city . Charlie, i think they have decoded your question in the opposite direction. I think in the 14 years following 9 11, terrorist groups challenge themselves. This is the failure of al quaida. They challenge themselves to say how can you t you to you top th . In paris, a lack of sophistication. When using dirty bombs, et cetera, you can paralyze with fear and cause tremendous carnage and have an extraordinary impact with minimal preoperational sur saints and cost. 9 11 cost a couple million and year and a half of planning. The idea of turning over a plot in a short time with little money is a light bulb that came on in the terrorist world where theyre saying keep it simple and you will have more success. Rose your answer seems to be theyre not going to try to build bigger bombs and weapons, they want to keep it simple because they can make it happen in your likelihood of success and if not you dont get the same kind of attention, you get an approximate amount of attention for a smaller act and especially against soft targets. Especially. If terrorism is theater, which is to create drama where the plot line is fear, you want that theodore to unfold on a public stage with some regulator. That what sews the real fear it happened again. I think what were watching is the dumbing down of the defer to operation to something that can be replicated. Rose can you tell me anything about the ninth suspect . I know you guys are keyed in to the paris police and the paris justice department. So we have two detectives on the ground in paris, one is assigned there permanently. We sent backup when it started just because of the volume of work. But i want to be very careful to let the french authorities run their investigation. The intelligence is important to us but i certainly dont want to speak for it or from it. Rose can you tell me anything about the phone that they found . No. Weve gotten a good, steady flow of information, some of it in the form of questions heres a piece of data, what do you have on that and weve done our best to fill those in. But its still at a very early stage. And as time goes on, the volume of information theyre collecting is getting greater. Rose what worries you the most . Its a journalistic question. Sure. So i dont spend time worrying, and i dont mean to be glib by saying that. I find that if we take that time and we invest it in planning, which is whats the next tabletop operation going to look like that we bring the command staff for, how do we replicate that in a field exercise, what are we missing . What did we learn from Charlie Hebdo and the supermarket in january . What will we learn from this attack here . When the bartle museum in tunisia was attacked by a group of terrorists we believed were e world to tunisia and i saida walk through the museum, count the bullet holes, get the videotapes from the cameras and we took it back here and said what if this happened in new york. So this week we unleashed a force of 200 speciallyTrained Counterterrorism officers as part of a new program. There will be another 200 joining them next month and another hundred and something after that, you know, to build together a force of over 500 dedicated uniform counterterrorism officers who will be equipped with the heavy body armor, the long rifles, with the kind of equipment you would need to surge into a multilocation, active shooter attack as we saw in paris. It didnt happen this week accidentally because paris happened. We started planning this a year ago when we saw the shift in the paradigm and tactics of the teorists and thought object how to best meet that. Heres the only thing that i would add to, you know, what makes new york different from all other places is, if you take 500 Police Officers who are Trained Counterterrorism officers and you add a flying squad, a Citywide Task force called the Strategic Response group and you add the Emergency Service unit or s. W. A. T. Team, suddenly youre looking at 1500 officers who will be able to meet a terrorist attack, an active shooter incident with the proper protection, the proper weapons, the proper active shooter training, the proper tactics in very large numbers at as many locations as you could probably think of. And faster is the key, charlie. Its about time on target. The difference between three onemen going into a crowded place and having 15 or 20 minutes to go through there and kill people versus having five minutes because properlyarmed, properlyprotected Police Arrive within minutes and their instruction is to go forth and engage that target, thats going to be the critical difference. Can it happen here . It can happen anywhere. If it happens here, it should pe a much shorter duration if thats the model. Rose do you have powers you need that you dont have . I would say today in new york city, the relationship between the f. B. I. , the Intelligence Community and the nypd is as close as it has ever, ever been. Were coming up in a couple of weeks on the 35th anniversary of the joint Terrorism Task force. So thats saying a lot. Rose finally, youve taught me one thing about these kind of events and that is you need to wait and find all the facts, but do you have any sense, feeling, instinct that paris changes something . I accept the premise that its too early to come to conclusions but not too early to read suggestions. I think if paris changes anything, what it changes is it changes our view of i. S. I. L from a group that was kind of advertising on the internet to anybody who is willing to take up the the cause and kill somebody to a group that has now been able to field a number of external operations that seem to be exported from i. S. I. L and complex. And that means that when they have an operation like this, they will probably look to expand that footprint. Rose good to have you. Thank you for coming. I know its a busy time for you. Thanks for having me, charlie. Good to see you as always. Ening with our coverage of the a paris attacks. In the last two and a half weeks, i. S. I. S. Has appeared to show a disturbing global reach. Officials confirmed i. S. I. L is responsible for the crash of a russian jetliner last month. President putin vowed pay back and said he would ally with france. President obama is forced to reassess u. S. Military strategy to combat the terrorist group. He remained resolute saying the current approach is working. He said putting boots on the ground would be a mistake. The recent state of attacks have shifted discourse on u. S. President ial candidates, many of whom are looking to underline their Foreign Policy bon fides. Here with me is David Remnick, editor of the new yorker magazine, released a new anthology book called the 50s a story of a decade and the new yorker radio hour. Pleased to have David Remnick on this program. What kind of decade were the 50s . laughter we have a frozen notion of what that decade might be, see what maybe it took time to develop. So i understand youre an institution. Rose truman cay poddy, dwight mcdonald, mitchell, and goes on and on. Not bad. Lillian roth, who i wont give away her age, but she is in here with classic profiles of hemingway and john houston, she just put out a book of her own, collected journals and books and shes a revolutionary figure for the new yorker because there werent a lot of women on the staff till the Second World War came around and almost by necessity forcing the editors to fire, god forbid, women and she was one of them. Rose when was the first change of editors . Magazine began in 25, harold ross lasted 25 years. Rose so 50. 52, Something Like that. And william shaw stayed a mere 35 years, bob five or six, tina for five or six and my own goodself. Rose is it for you the Perfect Place for David Remnick to be . Well, its a thrilling place and i see my job this way, charlie every week we want to put out a wonderful magazine, every day we want the web site to be live to the events of cultural and political, but more and more ive come to realize that because of the revolution were living through rose the Technology Revolution . The technological revolution, i think that i ultimately you know, coverage of this and that, this writer, another writer, thats essential, but the big overarching job for me because of the time im given is to get the new yorker from here to there with its soul intact. In other words, we now have a radio program. Rose podcast. Program on public radio. Also everythings a podcast as well. We have a Television Program that amazon is going to do. Its going to start coming out in the beginning of the year. Rose whats that . A magazine show that alex gibneys workshop is doing. It will be terrific. Rose alex does documentaries. He does. Most are short rose somehow associated with the new yorker . Absolutely. Its a new yorker show. Rose okay. So television, radio, the web, apps, all the technological aspects. Rose youre just like jane smith. I am laughter but you have to be alive to all of this, but the key is that the depth, the accuracy, the soul of what youre doing cant be lost. It has to be enhanced. Otherwise, its not worth any of it. Rose demanding. Yes. Rose to make sure that its joyful work. Rose you have to make sure that its truly the new yorker in all its manifestations. Correct, and it changes every short period of time. For example, when the web began, i think its fair to say not every writer was alive to writing that kind of work short work, attached to the moment. Yet this weekend, when paris happened, you had brilliant pieces by ben taub, alexander schwartz, ben taub in brussels, dexter filkins, online, bam, and well have something in print. Im having conversation with George Packer tomorrow that will be broadcast. Rose you do interviews on radio . You bet. Im the charlie rose of the thew yorker. Rose good luck with that. laughter this must be thrilling to you because you get a chance to dance in a lot of yeah, even though i cant dance. Rose i cant imagine that. Im sure you cant. laughter rose take a look at. This recently i had dea had deag about you. When i look at people like bill and David Remnick who find time to write, i envy them, i barely have time to read. I cant pull that off. Rose nobody does it like David Remnick was. No, its remarkable. I think i hate him. I like him as a friend but i think i hate him now. Rose the amazing thing is because of that he gives people access to people. Your own phillip roth talks to david and david was a profile on muhammad ali and the range of people, bob dylan, all the people i would love to have at this table thats awfully nice, can we hear more . Rose how do you do it . I love it. Other things in life are hard. Im not saying its easy. Rose writing is easy no, its not easy, but its pleasurable. Rose youve learned how to do it. Yeah, ederive enormous pleasure from it. Writing is to different from editing and i do it relatively little, to be fair to dean and to you. I used to write a hell of a lot and in 17 years of being editor of the magazine, ive written one book in a very expressed period of time about obama. Im not sure if i could pull that stunt again and not even sure i would want to. It was a long book and if i had another year to work on it, it would be half as long. Rose does your magazine still attract the quality of writers because its a different magazine . I think its the place to go for a certain kind of writer and its a very broad category. The new yorker missed out on hemingway and fitzgerald because they couldnt afford them. Hemingway and fitzgerald were making their living on short stories more than novels, and there were so many places, commercial places in those days where you could publish you know, the saturday evening post, places that dont exist anymore, and the new yorker had to invent a way to get fiction into a magazine they couldnt afford. They discovered new talent, that became heart and soul of the new yorker. Katherine, john weaver living in a coldwater flat downtown and he spends his career writing into the new yorker. Rose we will learn about the decade of the 50s because we will see it through writers that wrote for the new yorker in the 1950s. Youre not reading this book to read a comprehensive account of the 50s like so many others. Certain things were great on, the cold war, the coming technological prerevolution. Rose the cultural revolution. Because certain writers were obsessed with different things. If youre looking for an Elvis Presley profile, youre not going to get it. It tells me i need to be alive to trends and Popular Culture and if i miss it, i will have not and the new yorker will have not done its job. Doesnt have to be that week or that album or that year, but if youre going to account for a decade, there are certain things that if you miss in the aggregate, you blew it. Rose okay. So tell me what in the decade that just passed that you take some pride in the fact that you discovered and took note of, wrote to. Well, i think, certainly, the magazine, since 2000, 2001, has been really good on foreign reporting, and weve hired into that and weve our investigative reporting has gotten also broader. I think we are much more alive in the broadest sense possible, race and gender both in terms of what those issues mean and the writers themselves. Rose think about the themes today. Clearly if you look at this year were in, race is a dominant theme of this year. Absolutely. Rose and especially the complex between race and police. Then there is terrorism. And then we just saw the latest expression of that. And its not going to stop, im afraid. Its occurred to me and it must have occurred to all of us that 9 11 was a freakish event because of the nature of its largeness, the ability that was, you know, to hijack airplanes and fly them into two adjacent buildings and the pentagon and to pull that off from afghanistan via flight schools and all the details, you know, immensely complicated, and it had to occur to all of us as it clearly must to all the security apparatuses around the world, its a lot easier to walk into a department store, a movie theater, a transportation hub, restaurants and a concert hall rose soft targets. Soft targets. And, you know rose the point of terrorism is its to scare. Rose its to scare. Its to get attention and scare and hopefully to create a retaliation that will then generate some support. Its interesting. I was talking over the weekend with somebody who studies i. S. I. S. Full time at princeton, and he said, look, this signals this comes within a couple of days after one of the main i. S. I. S. Figures is taken out by an airstrikes. Rose jihadi john. Jihadi john. It comes a day after a key road is taken by the peshmerga, the kurdish troops. So all the developments are happening. Its not lost on i. S. I. S. That raqqah can be taken at any moment if people are only willing to flatten it and god willing were not willing to discriminately flatten something. Rose because of collateral damage. Exactly. The fact much of of these operations are exported abroad is not necessarily a sign of strength, but its terrifying and the fact these people are willing to die in the act is part of the terror and makes it so much hard tore stop. Whether its beirut rose some killed and most by their own hand. And as i came to meet with you, charlie, the reports that there is possibly a ninth at large in europe. We dont know and will find out more as time goes by. Rose so whats the society to do . Well of course. Ht now. Where the and taking the outlandish suggestions that we stop all immigrations of syrians, which rose either that or we close down mosques just awful. This is just the worst kind of demagogue riiry in the middle oa president ial campaign one can imagine. Lets take the clown car and the ugliness out of it. Whats even more complex is right now all the parties involved have such conflicting interests. Russias interests in syria has an overlap with the west, but also wants to keep a foot in syria. Saudis have interests in enormous conflict with iran yet in the same room much thanks to john kerrys efforts. Rose in vienna. Youre about to go to turkey, the interests of the turks are radically different than the peshmerga. Rose and theyre all borders with each other. It is a titanic diplomatic mess. Rose in some ways theyre artificially created states. You hear a number of kind of now on the level of cliches but not necessarily theyre false, about whats going on. One, were at the start of a 30 years war with sunni islam which is meant to harken back to the period of the reformation rn which is horrible fighting that goes on for decades. Rose and rumors erdogan wants to create the ottoman empire. Then there is that. The iraqi were hangs over the american consciousness and over the consciousness of president obama who was elected not to repeat the mistakes and catastrophes of the bush administration. Rose has he overlearned it . You remember the conflict with Hillary Clinton when she said the first tiewty is not to do stupid stuff. Then Hillary Clinton came along and said thats not a policy. Shes right. Not to do stupid stuff is not a policy. I wouldnt think barack obama would think thats the whole of his policy. Rose but youre an admirer of his and you wrote about him and certainly no one can say american policy in syria has been a success. Rose well k he say that . Well, what he would say is its hard to prove a negative here because, look, how can you prove anythings a success in syria . The country is absolutely fractured. There are millions of refugees. I. S. I. S. Has grown up and has large portions of terrorist. Assad is winning rose with the help of the russians. And with the help of the effort against i. S. I. S. Rose well, yeah. So obamas argument, as i understand it, which is the following he said, yes, sure, we could send in 10,000 troops, 14,000 troops and take raqqah and mosul. But then what . Then you own raqqah. Then you own mosul, and where are we . Rose hello, israel, too. Hello west bank. Well, but you then rose occupation. Yeah. I mean, why do you want that . What are you gaining . Rose i think this debate has to take place. I heard the president and thought the president expressed his own view with some irritation that he felt the same question was being asked over and over. But the ultimate view of panetta and clinton is we had to be more aggressive. Rose in 2011. Over and over again. Rose this was to support what was perceived to be a modern element in that there was a modern element there. The president rejected that because he didnt believe they were there. Did he believe they were significant enough . Rose yeah. How do you prove that retroactively . People would argue they were support and safe havens would have provided sufficient safety. How do you prove that . Rose the question is what are our alternatives . Somebody who believes i. S. I. S. Has to be stopped and soon, you have to be able to go in there and find them and hold them and do that and then do whatever else well find out. I mean, i do think we ought to hear what the president has heard, and that ought to be part of the debate, because he says hes listened to military people and they agree with him. The other military people ive talked to who dont agree with him. Maybe theyre not advising him. We do want to understand the arguments and what the options are and ask the question, is it president on this issue . Because he came to government in this case, came to the presidency to take us away, and now its being demanded we go back in. Turns out the most consequential speech in the last, i dont know, ten years, 12 years well, more is barack obama being invited to a tiny rally in Downtown Chicago on the eve of the iraq war. Hes a state senator, coming from hyde park, which is like state senator from Greenwich Village or berkeley or something, and he gets up and gives this speech about im not against all wars just stupid wars, et cetera. And it establishes a position that won him the election in 2008. Over a longer period of times than we would ever rose if hes wrong. Well, i cant imagine hes wrong. I wish he were 100 wrong. As i watch the debates even with the serious candidates which is a smaller tribe yo than you woud hope, i dont see anybody with a counterargument. Rose that has to do with i. S. I. S. Not just i. S. I. S. I think in the absence of some kind of stability in that part of the world, meaning a cease fire, political settlement and the eventual, quite hopefully soon departure of someone you know well through interviews which is assad, in the absence of that, youre not going to solve much. Its going to take a long time. I think its foolish. I think its foolish to think that there was this thing in paris and now everything is going to be swell for a long time. You know, again, on my way over here rose no, but there are events that can so sear the conscience, whether this is one, i dont know. That can change history. And 9 11 did. Rose and fascinations with the first world war. And what impresses and depresses me so much charlie is the myriad its not just everybody is on the side of getting rid of i. S. I. S. Rose right. It comes with so much political baggage and so many Different Directions for the various parties involved and there are so many, whether the shia sunni skissu schism or thea sunni, call it 30 years or war. The interests of the United States and russia, that is a very, very difficult knot to loosen. Rose im not sure what well learn from the political campaign, are you . Im learning next to nothing from those debates, except when there is this terrible moment that happens very often with many of the candidates, theyre asked a serious question about Foreign Policy, and their faces take on that horrified look of the kid sitting next to you in class in college who hasnt read the book. This is a serious job and a in a really serious world, and for people to answer these questions with, you know, bomb the hell out of them and ill figure it out later is tragic. Rose this book is called the 50s. If you love good writing you always go to the new yorker. Thank you. Thank you. Rose Billy Eichner is here, the creator and star of the pop culture comedy game show, billy on the street. Tina fae, will farrell, David Letterman and Michelle Obama all made appearances. The guardian calls eichner a cyclone of snarkiness, pop culture and energy. Im Billy Eichner. This is billy on the street come together true tv this fall. For a dollars, spin in the circumstancefall youre excited for the new james bond movie. Keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning, keep spinning. There you go take it bye sir rob lowe is back. Rob lowe, who is he . I dont know him. You dont know rob lowe. Is he gay . No for a dollar named three clintons. Kennedy get out of here put yourself in sam in lo bados shoes. I dont want to. S this on brand for anyone . Were going to play blanchette or curious george. If you have trouble answer a question, we can ask or slip a tweet to an elderly person. For a dollar who this . Chris brad. You win Jessica Parker hi bill cosby i mean bill hater julian moore miss emma stone seems down to earth. What . Oh rose how did this come into being . Oh, my goodness. I am an actor first. Rose went to northwestern. Theater major. Rose colbert. Seth meyers, a lot of people. I was primarily a traditional actor. When i got back to new york at northwestern because i grew up in new york city, i started dabbling in improv and comedy. No one was hiring me so i did my version of a latenight talk show and took on this persona of someone who was just irrationally passionate about pop culture who brings urgency and anger to the most superficial matters i was generally interested in at the same time. At some point, i said why dont we take the persona on to the street. Rose you would play with the audience on stage . A little bit. It was a bit like theater in a way because i was a theater kid. I wasnt a tradition canal standup. Rose you still think of yourself as a theater kid . I do. When people first started to say comedian Billy Eichner, that it who are they talking about . Because i went to northwestern. That sounds so pretentious. I loved comedies and was always in comedies but in plays. I wasnt a standup. I didnt grow up saying i gotta go to a Standup Comedy Club and try out 15 minutes. I love theater, grew up in new york, went to broadway, worshiped nathan main and robert short. I liked people with an over the top persona. I was drawn to that. Rose it was natural for you to fall in that. Yes. Rose you grou grew up in queens . I did. Rose you came back to new york . I did. Rose thinking you would be a theater actor. Right be an actor. I was like doing telemarketing for the United Jewish Appeal Federation so it wasnt exactly what i was planning on charlie. Rose when did you after creation and other things, did you say this will morph right into billy on the street . We would billy on the streetshow billy on thestreet. The audience loved it. The videos got tighter. Like a lot of actors, im normal to shy offstage if i dont know you, but people loved this act, this billy on the street act. They loved the energy. I think a real savvy new yorkl. A. Audience basically who was i was performing for at the time before youtube really appreciated getting insanely worked up about entertainment, about the Entertainment Industry. So when the videos did well in my live show, eventually youtube came along, i put the videos on youtube and they went viral as they say, and funny or die, mike farra the production manager of funny or die, emailed me out of the blue and said i like what youre doing. If youre ever in l. A. , come see me, maybe well work together. I was broke, poor, no health insurance, nothing and i said to my dad im not telling this guy im going to l. A. Just to see him, im going to make up an excuse as to why im going to l. A. But im going to talk to funny or die because this could really be something. I did. I talked to mike and told him i have an idea of how to turn these videos into a half i hour tv show with a loose game element. Rose outside. All outside, and ill give out not big prizes or cash the way most game shows do. Ill give out a dollar or some terrible prize i bought at the supermanagemensupermarket. Rose was it an immediate hit . Sometimes people walk away, sometimes people dont. Rose a number of people who you contact, how many end up are good so they give you usable material . Half . Less. You have to shoot and shoot and shoot till you want to die, charlie rose. Im close to get the but at least popular. Rose yes. How does it work . You know what you want to say, you know its a dollar and you get people like David Letterman. Yeah, that became, as the show evolved, we started out on a smaller tv network called fuse and recently moved to true tv and cbs for our Fourth Season and hopefully a fifth season. As the show got more popular, it developed a following among celebrities and the Entertainment Industry amongst comedians in particularly. I did the David Letterman show and i grew up worshiping dave. At 12 30, im not as young as i look, i would stay up when i was 8 or 9 and watch carson before it was letterman. Rose was it his antic quality you loved. It felt fresh and still felt fresh years and years later when he had been doing it for a while. But particularly late 80s, early 90s, when i was coming into my own as a person, i was connected to what dave was doing and years and years, literally decades later, dave became a fan of mine, which was a huge honor for me, and joined me on the street one day rose did you initiate the call to him or did he initiate the call to you . I did a segment on the emmys, a billy on the street. I believe his team saw it and called me to have it on the show. Rose then he was on your show. Yes. Rose what makes elainea so funny . She is someone i ran into on the street. Shes from oklahoma but has the attitude of doesnt give a damn gal. Rose perfect for you. Perfect for me. She gives it back to me as much as i give it to her. I ran into her spontaneously on the street and she became an audience favorite. We played her against the first lady. Rose how did michelle work out . I had done a video with the president and the first lady wanted to do a video to promote the eat Brighter Campaign she was working on with sesame street and they liked the idea of a billy on the street segment for the internet which we did americas, big bird and elena. You will push me around while i read Gwyneth Paltrows shakespeare. Follow me flodus, this is the height of your career. This is it. I would like to thank the academy from the bottom of my heart, our casting true, i would like to thank donna giggly yoty stop, stop i didnt get to thank her earthly Guardian Angel stop, stop good rose great to have you. Honor to be here. Rose for more, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose on tomorrows pbs newshour, look at the future of europes openborder policy in the wake of the paris a kqed television production. Like old fishermans wharf. Reminds me of old San Francisco. Like jean val jean. Theeries and cholesterol and calories and cholesterol and heart attack. Like an adventure. It remind me of oatmeal with a touch of wet dog. I did inhale it