Transcripts For CSPAN Q A At 10 20141230 : vimarsana.com

Himself as a reporter. If he did that, my requisites of satisfied. Have been satisfied. You can see the funeral at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Speakers included tom brokaw and his children. Q and i is 10 years old, and work a decade of conversation, we are featuring one interview. Here is one from 2010. This week on q what are we continue q a, we continue our interviews from london. Dan reed, how would you describe what you do for a living . Im a freelance documentary director and producer. I also direct drama and im sort of at the moment im a bit of a gun for hire. But i tend to make films which you know, in the documentary field. I tend to make films which go behind a big new story or go behind something that has made headlines and try to show the more complex side of it and to try and kind of unpack the hidden truths. Who pays you to do this . Oh, im hired by channel 4 itv, hbo, pbs frontline right now, the bbc. Ive worked for all of the u. K. Broadcasters over the last 20 years. How many documentaries have you done . I must have done about 25 or 30. Ive kind of lost count. We asked you here to talk about terror in mumbai, which is two years old. Yes. What is it . Well, terror in mumbai is the story of the terrorist attack on the city of mumbai in on the 26th of november 2008, and its known in india as 26 11. Thats their 9 11, if you like. And what happened was 10 young men, they came ashore on a beach in mumbai, in the in south mumbai, which is the most prosperous part of the city, and they started killing, and they didnt stop killing for the next 57 hours. And so, i tried to tell the story of the attack, both through the eyes of the victims but also through the eyes of the attackers, the terrorists themselves. Were going to show a little bit of it in a moment. But before we do that, where were you on that date . Where was i . I believe i it was funny, because i was trying to remember the other day exactly where i was, and i think i was in a cutting room, cutting an episode of lewis, which is in the states known as inspector lewis. I direct drama as well, and sometimes i like to its an inspector moore spin off, and so i like to do a Police Procedural or Something Like that. Its a very its a contrast to all the documentary work i do, which tends to be quite fraught and serious and sometimes dangerous, although i do less dangerous since ive had a family. So youre here in london . I was here in london. Yes. Yes, yes. How long did it take you to get to mumbai . Well, the genesis of the film, you know, i didnt it wasnt an instant reaction thing because i didnt work for the news. Im not part of a Quick Response team. So im hired on a jobbyjob basis. And i do the projects that i like and the projects that for some reason turn me on. Now, i got a call, i think it was in january, from an executive producer whom i worked with before who i liked, and he said, dan, would you fancy going to mumbai . And i hadnt made a documentary for about four years, four or five years. Ive been making drama. I did a movie. And my the last documentary i made before terror in mumbai was called terror in moscow. It was also broadcast by hbo and it was the story of a 57hour siege in a moscow theater. The incident happened in late in october, 2002. And it told the story of a chechnyan hit squad with suicide women with suicide belts who took the hundred muscovites the 200 moscow 800 moscowuscovites hostage in russia. And it and it i told that story through the eyes of the hostages. It was really about sitting in a theater with your family, with your friends, powerless and waiting to die. And it was about events that unfolded. And i obtained a tape which have been made shot by the terrorists in the theater, during the siege, on one of the hostages video cameras, and i used this tape to open out the scene inside the inside the theater. And that was my last documentary for a little while. And so i went from i went on to do some fiction and but mumbai just intrigued me too much, and i had a hankering to return to the documentary world and to the, as you like, the real world. I you know, you after a while, talking to actors and living in a very controlled world of a drama, of a fiction shoot becomes you get itchy feet after a little while. And mumbai, although i didnt really know much about at the attack at the time and no one did mumbai seemed like a terrific story to try and tell. Was that an executive producer from hbo . It wasnt. Hbo came on a little bit later. This was an exec producer that id worked with in the u. K. , you know, years back, and sort of knew me of old and decided to try and tempt me back into a documentary. And, i dont know, the notion of mumbai appealed to me, and the challenge of trying to tell a story in a different way. This was a story which, to me, appeared very confused, very muddled. I didnt really understand what had happened in mumbai from my reading of the papers, from my reading from watching tv reports. There were a lot of conflicting views of what happened, a lot of conflicting information. And india is a place that intrigued me, and particularly mumbai, as a very dynamic, modern indian city. Had you been there . Never been to india in my life before i before i made this film. When did you touch down there for the first time . I touched down in march for the first time. In 2009 . 2009. Yes. So this is some time after so this is some time after the attack. When youre did you go by yourself . I did. I did. Did you have a camera . No. The way i approach a film like this is i would go, first of all, to smell the air. I will go and try and make friends, make contacts, try and understand try and absorb as much as i can and understand not by a sort of frontal assault but by kind of nibbling around the edges to try and feel my way into the story. Because this was a story that didnt really you know didnt it didnt surrender itself very easily at all. And my first idea was to try and contact as many victims as possible, people who were there, who were in the Railway Station when the gunmen started firing who were in the hotel, the luxury hotels, when the gunmen broke in and started shooting, and who were in the chabad house, the Jewish Community center. So it was a you know, i had the luxury of being able to take a little bit of time at the beginning of a project, and then it accelerates very quickly once you find what you need and you start putting together the pieces but so i go, im on my own, and i didnt know anyone. Ive never been to the country before. How long were you there the first time you went . So i spent a total, i think of three months overall, and the first trip, i think, was five or six weeks. Were you married at the time . I am. Yes. I was married. Yes. Children . Yes. I had a i have a son and a daughter, and i now have another daughter but how old are they . So theyre seven, three and three months. So, at the time, my children were little littler than they are now, and every time i go away for more than three weeks its miserable. Yes. How old are you . Im 45. Where were you educated in this business . Well, i never had any training in television or in film storytelling. I did a degree in i had a strange kind of academic career because i got into university to do math and physics, and then i changed before i started the course, i changed because i got in very young. I changed to russian and french. I was very curious about russia at the time. This was when russia was the unknown other, the, you know sort of beyond the looking glass. And so i did a degree in russian, i did a little literature. I spent quite a bit of time in russia, which was fascinating, and it intrigued me and it gave me a hunger to explore worlds which were unlike my own. And i, through knowing russian through being able to speak russian, i got a job at the bbc as a researcher on a documentary series, and kind of took it on from there. I saw your documentary in several places, one on hbo and its been available more than one time on video on demand. I watched it on the internet where it had a different moderator. Oh, yes. Different narrator. Yes. One, the hbo documentary is fareed zakaria, well known to american audience. I dont know who the one the other one was, and who the other have been for. In the end, who bought this documentary . Well, the documentary was commissioned by two broadcasters. One was channel 4 here in the u. K. , and the other was hbo in the states. Now, hbo felt that they wanted to have what they call a wrap around, which is an introduction and a and a sort of postscript by fareed, whos wonderful and, you know, a very eminent figure, so i was extremely pleased that he came on board. And he revoiced the commentary, which wed written. For the u. K. , so the u. K. Version was made before the american version. The american version was slightly longer, in fact, and hbo wanted more context and more a bit more detail. For the u. K. Version, we used dominic west, who, funnily enough, plays mcnulty in the wire, and this was his first ever voice over narration job and the wire on hbo. Yes. Yes, yes. Well, lets watch so those who havent seen this can get a sense of the feeling that you put into it. This is fareed zakaria, opening it up. And if you pay close attention all the elements of whats in this are in this opening couple of minutes. What you are about to watch is unique. All terrorist attacks so far have been reconstructed or recounted from the point of view of the survivors, witnesses, and first responders. This time, you are with the terrorists. You will hear the voices of the young men on the ground in mumbai. You will hear their masters in pakistan. And you will also see the victims men, women and children and hear from those who survived. It is the first 360 degree view of terrorism. November 26, 2008. An organization determined to surpass al qaeda as the worlds most feared terrorist group send 10 gunmen to mumbai, indias biggest city. Their mission was to kill and keep on killing, to stage a spectacle so terrifying that the world could no longer ignore lashkaretaiba, the army of the righteous. Foreign Language Foreign Language indian intelligence intercepted the terrorists cell phone conversations with their commanders in pakistan. Foreign Language they were really calm, not shouting, not excited. They were doing their job, as a matter of fact. One gunman was captured alive. Foreign Language Foreign Language Foreign Language Foreign Language for the army of the righteous, it was a test run for future operations, not just in india but perhaps elsewhere. Foreign Language their method of attack could easily be adapted to any american city. No hijacked airliners or sophisticated weaponry, just 10 young men with mobile phones and assault rifles, programmed to kill and die on command. There were a lot of elements in there. When i watched it, i kept asking, where did he get the video of them walking up and down the hotel . Where did he get the audio of the telephone conversation between pakistan and these 10 men . So lets just start with what we just saw there. How many people were killed in mumbai on that occasion . Well, the death toll i think reached maybe 170, and most of these were i think 52 or 53 died at the Railway Station, and the Railway Station was the biggest massacre, although its the least remembered, and the reason for that, i think, is partly because it was over so quickly but also because the victims were poor and not, you know, less important, as you like, in terms of the media and the visibility than the wealthy clients of the taj mahal or the oberoi hotel. Where did you get the video of the where did you get the video of the blood on the floor and all the clothes and all that . That was that video was that was camera phone footage, and that was taken by a guy who used to as a teenager, he was a beggar at the station, and hes quite an extraordinary guy and in fact i he ended up being one of our team. He grew up to be hes a successful young man now, and a politician, funnily enough. But he grew up as a as a hobo on the on the in the station, and so he had a lot of friends at the station, and when the attack happened he went in there and went looking for his friends and picking up the bodies. He helped to collect the bodies as well. And he filmed on his camera phone. Everyone in india is brilliant at using that these smartphones, you know . Its incredible what they do. Everyone has little movies and little things. So i he said have a look at this stuff, and so i bought it from him and put it in the film. Where did you get the audio phone conversations between brother wasi, who is supposed to be in pakistan, and these 10 young men that did the killings . The phone conversations were recorded by two intelligence agencies in india, to my knowledge. There was the Intelligence Bureau in new delhi, in the capital, and then there was a Police Antiterrorism unit that made the recordings in mumbai as well. Exactly how i obtained the recordings, i cant tell you because these are not recordings that were released to us by the authorities. So are the authorities upset that you got them . The authorities were rather upset when i got them and i mean, we didnt we i believe a summons was issued was issued against channel 4, some kind of legal action was threatened by the Mumbai Police chief, but it wasnt followed through, and i think, you know from the from the indian point of view, yes, it was upsetting that this material that wasnt supposed to be publicly broadcast have been given a worldwide audience. But, on the other hand, it demonstrated that pakistan was behind the attack, and that, for them, was, you know, politically useful, i guess and so they wouldnt i guess they werent too upset. How often were you solicited by people in india once they knew you were there and doing a documentary and they wanted to give you stuff . Nobody wanted to give us anything. It was extremely difficult to pry this material from where it was. It that was the hardest part of the production. It was very, very, very difficult. No one in the indian media and no one in the International Media has succeeded in getting the entire recordings before we did. Where did you get the close circuit video from the two hotels . Thats the oberoi and the taj . The close circuit video from the hotels, again, was obtained without the consent of the hotels. So it will they were recordings that existed that had been circulating within the authorities had them and other actors had them, but we did not obtain them, if you like through the front door. We consider that this material that was important for to for telling the story, and it was a very important story to be told. We didnt particularly see why the material was being you know, i thought i suspected that the material was being closely guarded because some of it may have been embarrassing to the hotel. It is it may be considered embarrassing if youre a big luxury hotel to have men Walking Around your hotel, machine gunning your guests. Thats not something that you particularly want to draw attention to if you are a luxury hotel. Have you been back to india since your documentary came out . No, i havent. No. No. Has it run in india . I think the film aired illegally it was in an unlicensed form on one of the local channels in mumbai. We tried to prevent that. Its been seen online. You can see it online now. Yes. You can see it online. But, to answer your question, i dont think its been broadcast in india to, you know, to nationwide broadcast, which is a real shame. Which is a real shame because thats where it should be. Last question on the material, kasab was the one fellow that you had on camera there. First question, how many of the 10 men were killed . 9 of the 10 men were killed. Within that 36hour period . Yes. 9 of the 10 men were killed or 57hour. Yes. And the 57hour period is time pretty much you know, to the end, when the last guy at the taj hotel was killed or burned to death, thats when the clock stops, if you like. Now, kasab was caught on the first night of the attack, and he had machine gunned a whole bunch of people at the Railway Station, killed men, women and children mercilessly. He then killed three cops and a fourth as he was being captured, and so the police really had every reason to treat him with extreme prejudice. And i was surprised at how gentle they have been with him. Whats happened to him since . Hes been put on trial. Hes been sentenced to death, but whether that sentence would be carried out or not is in question. The indian legal system is very, very slow in their appeals, et cetera, et cetera. So did you meet him . I never met him. How did you get the video . Again, the video was not released to us, and we obtained it, you know, through because we thought it had a huge Public Interest value. But it was very, very difficult. That was the most difficult piece of material to get hold of because that really was very closely guarded. How much of this video that you got did you have to pay for . We didnt we dont like to pay you know, we dont like to pay cash for material. We hire people who obtain it for us. And you cant just hire someone i mean, you have a colleague who then works to obtain it. You and you because its not as if you can walk into, you know, a newspaper or, you know some institution in india and say youll do, you know, heres two months work. Go and get me this. The obtaining a material like this is a bit of an art. It involves a lot of trust. You have to make relationships with people and they have to trust you and they have to believe that theyre doing something worthwhile and that the material is going to a good home where it will be well used and honestly used. Heres some more video of this from the train station. With the terrorists gone, the Railway Police rush out of hiding, weapons at the ready. Kasab and his smile had killed 52 people at the station and wounded more than 100. Foreign Language Foreign Language who was the young man . The story afroz, the little boy, a young muslim boy who was at the station with his extended family and six of his family were murdered by kasab these arriving three surviving gunman and his associate. Now, afroz was one of those strokes of luck for me. Those things that you dream about. I knew chasing that chasing up the victims of the Railway Station massacre