Marty, i, i am the executive editor of the Washington Post. The Washington Post is a charter sponsor the National Book festival since the beginning and we are happy to do it again this year. The Library Library of congress has been the festival toast since the festival began 16 years ago. We want to thank the chairman of the festival and the many National Book festival sponsors who made the event possible this year. You can make a donation to the festival by checking the information in your program, there is to be time for question afterward and this is being filmed as well. You should know that. It to her speaker, the Washington Post has gratified to have some of the finest National Security reporters in the country and a standout among them is it joe b warrant. When you read black flakes, the rise of isis youll see why. And the most revealing portrait yet offal zarqawi, founding father of the organization that became the Islamic State. As our country aims to destroy isis and as isis seeks to metastasize beyond iraq and syria, there could not be a more urgent and timely treatment of this subject. As isis and Terrorism Take center stage in a president ial race, this book offers a refuge in actual facts. Imagine that. [laughter] and in an absorbing history of our times and in a sober assessment of failures across the political and governmental landscape. For good reason, black flags this year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. The judges described it as a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of todays most dangerous extremist threat. All of us at the post were enormously proud when the pulitzer recognized the excellence of the work, and it was not, by the way, the first time they had done so. The prize for black flags is his second pulitzer. In the two decades since that work, joby has been a cherished colleague at the post. He is as soft spoken and gracious as he is diligent, determined and dedicated. So not just the superb reporter, but also a wonderful human being. Its a real pleasure and honor to introduce joby warrick. [applause] well, marty, thanks a lot for that. It is a pleasure to be with you, and it is an honor to be introduced by my boss. Ive been at the post, as marty said, for 20 years. I can tell you the post has never been in better hands than it is right now, and the fact that we here in washington [applause] and i know, you know, you must get mad at us at least once a day. I mean, thats part of our job too. But the fact that we have a quality newspaper of the caliber of the Washington Post, that it continues to be so ambitious and so energetic and just so committed to its mission is a reflection of the people at the top. So i feel privileged to work for marty, and i think you should all be kind of grateful to be in a town and in a country that has editors like marty barron, so thank you again for those words, marty. [applause] you know, book festivals and ive done my paperback tour now, so im used to this but typically, authors will tell charming anecdotes and funny stories. I wrote a book about isis [laughter] so the material doesnt lend itself to funny, witty stories. But the topic is important, and i think you all know that, and perhaps its why youre here. When i do travel the country, people are confused about this organization. Theyre afraid, and of course theyre afraid. I think our political leaders are very confused right now just based on the rhetoric on the campaign trail. Really my purpose in doing this book was to bring clarity, and thats my special gift as a journalist. I try to help take complicated stories and make people understand what theyre really about. Its what im going to try to do very briefly today. Im going to show some pictures. Were going to start with a video, photo montage boiling down the history of isis to three minutes. This is kind of a summary. After this is over, were going to talk about some characters behind isis, but this is my video introduction. Its isis, so its dark, its not the goth channel, but its nothing you havent seen before, i think. This is a little preview of our discussion today. I hope you can all read the subtitles. [gunfire] Allahu Allahu akbar [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] [background sounds] [speaking in native tongue] so my book, black flags, as i tried to explain, is a story of origin toes. Its a character sketch digging into histories of the men behind isis. And im going to talk about five personalities very briefly starting with zarqawi, the man whos probably the most important and most innovative terrorist personality of the last two decades, second only to Osama Bin Laden, and continuing on to other individuals who may not be as familiar to us but are important in understanding what were up against. We start with zarqawi, the godfather, he pioneered almost all the tactics we see isis using today including the beheadings of young men in orange jump suits. He was an original and dispensable force. Isis literally could not exist without him, and in a strange way, zarqawi could not have existed without us. So lets understand him as a way to get into our topic. Every terrorist starts out life as a kid, a cute little kid. Here he is in 1968 with his mom in jordan. He wasnt a cute kid. He was a bad seed from the very beginning. Not just tom sawyer mischief, but cutting kids with razors, using drugs, he drank, he was a violet, vicious youth violent, vicious youth absolutely headed for trouble. He was a high school dropout, he had tattoos, anything but a religious guy, extensive criminal record. Then he gets a bit of a religious conviction, and even more importantly like many other young men in his region, he decides in the 1990s to go fight jihad, and that means going to afghanistan. And this is really the cradle of the modern jihadist movement. This is where we get alqaeda and so many of the groups were familiar with today. He goes to afghanistan, he fails even there because he arrived too late to fight the soviets. But he joins the arab army, he gets involved in the civil war there, and then this giant young man violent young man discovers hes a ferocious fighter. And be his religious fervor is being pumped up because hes learning at the likes of Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants. Then the war ends for him, and hes back home. If you think about the experience of a lot of our returning veterans, its pretty much that way for zarqawi and his friends. They dont have anything to do, they want to keep this fervor going, so they start to look for ways to build their own little jihadist cell. What are they going to do in peaceful jordan . They start attacking bars and liquor stores, get the idea of attacking pornographic theaters. They send a guy into a porno house in amman with a bomb, the kid goes in, gets engrossed in the movie [laughter] if forgets all about the bomb which blows up at his feet. Nobody else gets hurt, but he loses both his legs. These are the kinds of knuckleheads were dealing with in the 1990s. Theyre locked up, a lot of his followers, and these guys, you know, who went off to war to afghanistan are trying to be contained and corralled in prison. But in jail they end up being corralled together because the jordanians are afraid theyll start to infect other people, so so theyre off by themself, about 50 of hem in one cell. And this becomes kind of a Jihadi University where they share ideology, they talk about tactics. It turns out to be not a good thing, and out of this environment, zarqawi emerges as a charismatic and capable leader. Heres where he gets a couple of incredible breaks. Hes supposed to be sentenced to prison for 15 years. Hed spent all those years in jail, we never would have heard of him. But in 1999, the king do have of jordan dice, and theres a tradition of am am necessary amnesty for political prisoners. So Parliament Comes up with a list of people to be pardoned. You know, the tribes come up with their own lists, and then, you know, about 2,000 people end up getting freed. And among them is czar zarqawi d his entire band of followers, and out they go in 1999, ten years ahead of schedule. So he goes off to the place he loves the most which is afghanistan and tries to unite with Osama Bin Laden, his hero. Turns out bin laden wants nothing to do with him because even for the mastermind of 9 11, this young kid, this hothead who doesnt know much about islam, hes not very smart, hes very violent, very crude, hes too bad even for alqaeda. So they reject him, they kick him out, they send him off to the other end of afghanistan to start his own little thing. So off he goes, and once again if he had stayed out there, we never would have heard of zarqawi ever again. But then the second miracle happens for zarqawi. In february 2003 the United States is getting ready to invade iraq, and were trying to make our case to the u. N. And other people around the world about why we want to do this. We offer two reasons. One is weapons of mass destruction. The other was the possibility that alqaeda could collaborate with this terrible iraqi dictator, saddam i hussein. If theres some kind of collusion between the two, they could be even more dangerous. So this is the pitch we make to the u. N. When Colin Powells making his speech, hes talking about this, and who does he cite as the prime example of this problem . Our friend, zarqawi, at the top of list. He seems to be the right guy. Hes in iraq at the time, hes living in the border area between iraq and iran, hes had contact with alqaeda in the past, so he seems like this kind of perfect poster child for this problem that the u. S. Is describing. So this is the case thats made. Turns out, entirely untrue. There was no truth to his connections to alqaeda. He wasnt in alqaeda, he wasnt, certainly, working with saddam husseins government, but that one poster made him a celebrity overnight. Suddenly hes receiving money, support, recruits from around the world. He becomes an overnight celebrity. He has this vision hes going to fight a superpower, its going to be the United States in the iraq. So he moves to baghdad in 2003 to wait for the americans to arrive. So when he gets there, he starts to build alliances. Heres this crazy guy that wants to start a terrorist movement. Suddenly, hes got all kinds of allies because the iraqi army has been disbanded, those colonels, generals and majors dont have jobs anymore, youve got the baathist party, suddenly all those people are looking for leadership as zarqawi moves into that and becomes the nucleus for this new insurgency we begin to see unfolding in 2003. Hes got a good head for strategy, and he starts going a after important targets, the u. N. Headquarters, he goes after ngos, the red cross, a all kinds of groups that would help the United States, that would give us the cover legitimacy, drives them home. And be then more portingly, he goes after the sunni shia divide in this country. Theyve been living together reasonably well for decades,but zarqawi decide cans deliberately to start a civil war. He blows up a mosque, kills their leaders and youve got, essentially, shooting back and forth between two groups who had gotten along together. He isolated us in iraq, then he sets off a civil war around us, and by in 2004 and 2005, were in bad shape in terms of our occupation and plans for iraq. So the next thing that happens, this is kind of background noise for zarqawi, because hes got bigger ammunitions. Ambitions. He wants to become an international star. He feels he has a destiny. So he develops this notion that no matter what kind of bombing or shooting you might be able to do, theres nothing more gripping, more viscerally horrible than watching a single execution. So he grabs a random american off the street, nick berg from philadelphia, takes him into his cell, sits him down with an orange jump suit, and he personally and thats zarqawi reading the script there, he personally beheads this young man. This becomes his calling card. The violence zarqawi unleashes tears up the country, and its too much even for alqaeda. And so thats not the only difference. Zarqawi begins to launch a new Media Campaign using social media platforms just becoming available. So youve got the great bearded osama bin ladin, you know, reading his sermons from behind a podium, very boring, and then youve got this jihadist action figure, killing americans with his own hands. Young jihadists around the world eat in this up. And then hes brash enough to make up his own rules. Hes not even a high school graduate. Hes not very smart, but he does understand theology, and thats liberate aring to him because he doesnt liberating to him, because he doesnt bother to worry about whether hes committing acts that arent islamic like suicide attacks. Then he begins to think about a really big idea which is the idea of restoring the ancient caliphate, the islamic theocratic empire of centuries past. He regards himself as divinely inspired to usher in this new age of pure islam, driving out western governments along with brutally destroying everyone else who stands in his way from corrupt governments to apostates like the shiites. And this struggle would end in a mighty battle, in an armageddon in which armies of islam would finally defeat the armies of christianity. This was going to be star e zarqawis role in history. I am the spark, he used to say. Zarqawi but now public enemy number one. We poured vast resources into efforts to stop him. It took us nearly three years to track him down, but eventually our intel, our ground forces, special operations teams found a forum for defeating him in his network. We found a safehouse in 2006, we drop a couple of bombs on it, and thats the end of zarqawi himself. We start dismantling the leadership, killing number twos and number threes, and just as we figure this out, other things happen. The iraqi sunni tribes revolt against zarqawis followers, and you have the anbar awakening. The u. S. Troop surge happens. And by 2009 all thats left was just a few hundred followers who were being driven deep underground in hiding. Alqaeda in iraq was essentially beaten. But not everybody thought so. Heres our second isis personality. We know him as albaghdadi, hes the leader of isis today. In zarqawis time, nobody would have pictured him as a leader. He was a scholar, kind of shy, kind of boring. His family and friends remember him as a kid who never spoke to anyone, carried books around on his bicycle, wasnt very impressive. He has a doctorate degree in islamic law. Hes on track to becoming a College Professor when the u. S. Invasion takes place in 2003. Baghdadi joins zarqawi because he feels obliged as a good muslim to fight the infidels, so he ends up going to jail for a while. Once again, he has the prison experience, exposed to these tough guys around him. Then he gets he starts to rise up through the ranks mostly because other leaders around him by 2010 are getting killed. And so in 2010 the leaders of this battered organization, mostly former Iraqi Army Officers by this time, decide they need a different kind of figurehead. And so they pick this guy, baghdadi. Hes an islamic scholar, he happens to be a from a tribe that can trace its heritage back to muhammad. It started to call itself the state, the Islamic State of iraq. The state parts kind of a joke, because even to these guys, they know theres no real state. One of them reacts with derision, wheres the state youre talking about . Were live anything a desert. Living in a desert. But history then intervenes again in isis favor. Just as bagging daddys coming to power baghdadis coming to power, u. S. Troops are leaving iraq. And as soon as theyre gone, the shiite government feels emboldened to start settling old scores with sunni tribes, kicking out army officers, and so much of the sunni population begins to rebel against the baghdadi government, finding more interests in common with zarqawis people, with isis, than with their own government. Be and then, a year later, civil war breaks out in syria, as we all well know. And this is a pivotal moment, because its an opportunity for these guys to start something new, to start their own Militia Group inside syria. They have a perfect incubator now with a lawless state awash in violence and weapons, and they have a new cause fighting an oppressive dictator, assad, a man whos stirring up passions all over the islamic world by slaughtering civilians. They rename themselves yet again, and now theyre Islamic State of iraq and alsham, or isis. And theyre extraordinarily successful almost immediately because theyre ballothardened battlehardened, and they start to attract foreign recruits by the thousands. By 2014 theyre ready to break out, and they do so in dramatic fashion, capturing the eastern half of syria, then invading iraq to declare the establishment of this islamic caliphate. By the summer of 2014, theyre a powerhouse, 30,000 strong, able to conquer major iraqi cities, overrun entire divisions of u. S. Trained iraqi troops. This is the isis were so familiar with today. And theyre also very rich, because after capturing mosul, they suddenly have become the wealthiest and best Armed Terrorist Group of all times. They own oil wells, banks, universities, resources that alqaeda would have only dreamed of having. But really beyond the wealth its zarqawis old organization. Zarqawi embraced violence for its own sake. These guys do the same thing on a grander scale. Be they also have this boldness to reinterpret islam in any way they want to. As baghdadis a religious scholar, so he goes out of his way to create theological arguments to justify whatever atrocity they do. Theres always a verse in the quran or a tradition in the text that can be made to justify, make themselves appear to be pious muslims instead of just barbarians. And just as zarqawi understood the horror could be amplified using the internet, isis did same and got better at it. Theyre extremely skilled at harnessing the power of social media for indoctrination, for training, all done at a distance before the recruit sets foot on syrian soil. But now instead of the shaky handheld videos that zarqawi used to use, they have editors, graphic artists working on products aim