My future and success but i will not tell you what to do. It is just me. This may tick off some people but i am just in the camp that says you do what you want with your body. It is fairly libertarian, too. Libertarian i thought was an interesting concept. I wish it would grow. I think it would bring in more young people where it is not as cut is dry as the far right conservative ideas. I like it a little but i like the core values and those are the core values i stick to here. One more . Right behind her. Thank you. I am a huge fox news fan and i watch it all of the time. But i never here and there could be a legal reason for this but never hear anyone talk about the possibility of president obama being impeached . The ship has sailed. He is just biting his time. In eight years . You might get Hillary Clinton getting impeached before she gets sworn in. Show of hands, you all fox people . Hands up . How about all the five . There we go. Oreilly stuff . Can we give tony a hand for cashing in . [applause] okay. We good. Where are we . Everyone is good. Where do you want me now . I guess i go over there. Nice to meet everybody. Thank you so much. [inaudible conversation] cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. After wards is next on booktv. National Security Center director Karen Greenberg discusses her book rogue justi justi justi justice she is interviewed by ali soufan. Host what do you mean by the term rogue justice . Guest rogue justice is the term i gave to the way in which had mechanisms that are supposed the to keep us safe from interference from the state, supposed to protect the constitution went off off the rails after 9 11 and have failed to really come back. So i call it rogue justice because it is out of control, it is outside the bounds of the law, and it seems like a rogue element compared to what we expected and were used to. Host you have a lot of very emotional and vivid scenes throughout the book. I know you love going to court and watching all of these proceedings especially when it comes to terrorism and prosecution. Why did you include them in the book and why do you focus on National Security courts versus other courts . Guest the book is about in the realm of National Security. There have been people that proposed National Security courts but i wanted to see what goes on inside the courtroom because that is where the issues of guilt and innocence, that is where the issues of the power of the law are most clearly shown and demonstrated. It is actually fascinating to watch the difficulties that courts have in National Security cases. That is where i wanted to go. There is all this talk about can the courts try terrorists . We cannot try the 9 11 terrorists. We never have in 15 years. Years ago i started going to court to see what terrorism prosecution looked like and i have been to many states and districts to see what the narrative of the defense is, what the narrative of the prosecution is and how it changed over time. I think it is important for the American People to understand that there are nuances to these cases, not all terrorism cases are the same. There is an entire specimen of cases for those accused and wanted to plot and found with evidence bike the subway bombers to those who are aspirational. And i wanted to see how the cases played out differently and if there was a way in which justice could be described as not rogue. One of the big takeaways from the book is the courts were like a deer in the headlights in National Security cases. There are surveillance cases, there are some secret course cases for the classified courts, there are terrorism prosecutions, there are hearings over foya requests. There is a whole realm of cases we needed to look at at to see how the courts deal with National Security and time after time after time many of the judges, the important judges in the country and important jurisdiction have said it is National Security, we dont want a part of it, we are not equipped to think about it, the president has told us this person is enemy combatant and they need the surveillance powers, the president told us we need to have this find of request denied whatever it is. And i wanted to see what the substance of this was and how the judges interacted with the lawyers and for the most part many of them took a back seat and by the time they got engaged and interested it was too late. Host so it interesting. You said courts and the judges, i think the term that you just used were like a deer in the headlights. But federal court was always used to prosecute National Security cases from big spies to big terrorists. The East African Indian bombers, many cia spies and different big National Security cases were also prosecuted in federal courts. So the court has a lot of experience and presence in dealing with this. Why after 9 11 was it different . Guest that is a good question and what i wanted to figure out. Why was there shyness in the face of these prosecutions. I think one of the easy reasons is there were not a lot of courts that did spy and National Security cases and were comfortable with classified evidence. As you expand and had 400 prosecutions in states across the nation where could you get the judges that feel like they have the compitance confidence to weigh in and the National Security division was established were the purpose of being able to manage, oversee, make consistent the argument that were used in the Legal Framework to prosecute these cases. It took a long time. In taking a long time there was a lot of political backlash to lets not use our courts. That is one of the saddest things that happened. The court was up to the task and by the way compared to the 9 11 trial who could have taken this long to try any trial within a federal court cysystem. I agree they are up to the task and many other jurisdictions are up to the task. The Brooklyn Federal courthouse has done numerous terrorist trials and is now one of the leading courts in the regard. The Eastern District of virginia as well. The d. C. Court same thing. Look, you have the boston case and the scariness factor of someone getting acquitted sets people off. Host lets talk about the beginning of the book with attorney general eric holder giving the case for the 9 11 defendents to the military. Interesting you start the book with that and throughout the book you go back to the scene again and again and again. What is the importance of the specific decision . And what was eric holders i im impact and the effect did it have on the United States when he sent the cases to Guantanamo Bay . Guest it was an unfortunate decision. He said when they were going back to Guantanamo Bay instead of being tried in Manhattan Federal Court what he said was i believe our courts are up to this task. I dont believe for a minute this is how it should be. But congress has taken the decision out of my hands by making it impossible to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to this country for any reason including prosecution. And one of the original impetus for writing this book was a memo to eric holder which was listen, it wasnt congress that did this to you. It was ten years of the deference by the courts to this idea of the National Security state. And after ten years it is not Just Congress that is able to do this it is the fact that the courts are not saying here we are, how many prosecutors came down on the side of congress, how many prosecutors said these are not cases we should handle, it is too dangerous, too much classified information, we dont want to run the risk of acquittal or run the risk of being responsible for war deaths in america. It is not our job. It wasnt just about the congressional ban on transfers from Guantanamo Bay. It was a very long narrative that started right after 9 11. The original military Commission Document came out as a president ial order in the fall of 2011. This was taken out of the federal courts right away and there should have been an outcry, an outpouring of no, we know how do this and are protecting our system of balance and powers. It didnt happen. After all of these years that is how i see the story and that is why it comes back and back to to me the 9 11 trial is an important misstep that we have not had it for americans. Trials are guilt and innocent, they lay out a narrative, trials are healing and bring closure. We have not have closure for 9 11 on some very deep psychological level that i cannot name and frame and put in a scientific category but i know it. I know that it is a lack of trust in ourselves that is fundamental. And a lack of trust in our courts. So i am glad you asked about the holder scene because it does matter to me. It is what inspired me to go back and say how could this have happened . What else went wrong with our trust in our judiciary . Yeah. Host another thing that goes hand and hand and we see this with Guantanamo Bay, every time there is a hearing, most of the fighting and discussions and Legal Proceedings have to do with the secrecy and it seems the secrecy is very important to you and again that is a topic that you refer to throughout this wonderful book. Cant we have secrecy at a time of National Crisis . I am trying to be the devils advocate here. Guest we need secrecy absolutely. Secrecy is essential to National Security. There is no question about it. But how much secrecy is really the issue. Secrecy that shuts down the courts in a way they cant function as they used to, secrecy that takes away from the American People as a right to know what is going on, lets remember when president Obama Took Office and issued a series of decrees on the second day he talked about transparency saying you will know what is going on inside this government. It hasnt happened. When you go to court, there is a tremendous amount of classification already. These cases whether before 9 11 or after have always had classified issues and there is a procedures act that gives guidance to rules, judges, prosecutors about how to handled classified materials. For the most part it has worked. That doesnt mean it hasnt been contested but it has worked for a long time. The secrecy issue at Guantanamo Bay has decked these proceedings. They can not get to the beginning of the trial even. It is all about what is going to be presented, what isnt going to be presented, what is allowed to be seen, what exists. And one of the problems with secrecy after 9 11 that is there is some suspicion on many that the secrecies of the things the United States government did that they should not have done and that cannot be the reason things are classified rather than sources and methods and information that would help our enemies. So for example, torture, the fact that we know these individuals were tortured. That is not a secret. What kind of torture . Who did it . We may not know but that cant be the reason we cannot have these trials. Host you mention torture and you and i have been talking about torture for a long time. Prom your experience, you have been looking into these issues for a long time. You looked into Guantanamo Bay and your book was about Guantanamo Bay and today it is about the federal courts basically. In your understanding, is there a lot of over classification in the federal system or in Guantanamo Bay . And how does the overclassification have an impact on the entire Justice System . Overclassification guest i think i am not the only person to think overclassification is an issue. The government is rstruggling with this. You can see they decided on a level that is no longer classified. There are number of federal judges that say when i looked at the classified materials i was astonished. If you give breadth to classification and you are the officer that has to decide whether to classify it or not why wouldnt you . Why take the risk you make a mistake about something that could be the needle in the hay stack down the road. So there has been tremendous overclassification and who knows what direction that is going to go in because all of this depends on external events. Between the media and rumor mongers, they found out this and that, and the snowden case, and we are entering a world where classification is actually harder because secrecy is harder, because the way the internet works and the way sophisticated hackers work, there is a sense of having deeper and deeper needs of classification and not just the first level of lets classify something. I would say it needs to be rethought within the context of 21st technology and a lot of people in government are doing that but we have a long way to go and it will impact these trials. Host some basic things. In Guantanamo Bay, i understand the term waterboarding is still classified. There are a lot of issues the u. S. Government admitted to publically. It is part of official investigations that have been released by these agencies, enities but are still considered classified in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom. How do you explain that . Guest it is beyond inappropriate. You have a number of individuals who have either testified in congress or have, you know, written or spoken about things that in one context they are classified and in another context they are not classified. There is a chill factor of not writing about this or that even though this is Public Knowledge and people can google it. This is dangerous because it diminishes the legitmacy of classification. It is not a good space to be in. It makes a mockery of what classification should be. Classification should be reserved for those things which are truly dangerous, truly secret, truly important, and there is a category of those things and what happened and this happened in a lot of areas, not just classification, is the government is so overreached people dont trust the decisions, dont trust the lines drawn between classified and unclassified and that is another thing i allude to in the book and that is the withering away of trust in the government to say what is real, what is right and what makes sense for us to go forward. Host and how do you see classification in federal courts . Guest classification in federal courts works well. Listen, there has been so many issues with all of these terrorism cases involving classified information and the judges have figured out a way to handle it. The Defense Attorneys are not in up and arms about it. There are cases where they wish things went their way but they worked it out. That is the judges role to say you can have this but you cannot have this. In the longest terrorism case we have ever had, look how they litigated what could be shown in court when you were dealing with individual torture and information that hasnt gotten torture notes which people may not know depending on when the case was and after trumend hazardous appeal to the Circuit Court, you know twice, they came up with a system. But they came up with a system that involved summaries of, you know, substitutes for the witnesses and the testimony verbatim. But they came up with something, and they had the trial, it was concluded. It took years but not 15 like the 9 111 trials. Even when the reason for classification is complicated they worked it out. Host so, what is the biggest fiphilosophical contract after 9 11 was the balance between liberty and security. A lot of people have been advocating it is fine to do all of these kind of things if they keep us secure and can prevent another 9 11. From reading the book and knowing you personally i know you are big on that balance. How do you see the balance, not based on your opinion, but based on your countless hours sitting in court, listening to National Security cases . Guest what i would say is that for the most part security has won in the balance. There hasnt been a balance since 9 11 and that security has overwhelmed courtrooms and juries and the media in terms of understanding, you know, what at stake andt tha that liberty has suffered tremendously. I will come back to how i think that is the case. What i think further is that we focus too much on liberty and what this book tries to show is while we were focused on liberty versus security we should have been focused on justice versus security. The liberty is interesting but we lost the strength and fiber and backbone of our judicial system in this context including our laws in this congress. When you think about the security versus liberty in the courtroom which is a really good question for this book and i say security, you see a lot of cases where the First Amendment rights are really an issue. Soon hard to tell in some of these cases when how many individuals and these are lower level cases, we are not talking about locations where people were caught in the middle of an activity or a plot or after a plot. We are not talking about the Embassy Bombings or the subway attempted bombing. We are talking about individuals between aspirational and aul rationale