Shakespeares death. At noon today booktv is live from the Folger Shakespeare library in washington d. C. That all begins at noon, and its followed with your opportunity to talk with shakespeare scholar ellen mckay and Folger Library director michael witmore. Also this weekend, sue klebold discusses her son, dylan, the columbine shooter. She traces her journey to understand the junction between violence and mental illness. Some of the other books were featuring this weekend on weeking tv booktv, why the rust belt is the next hot spot for global innovation. Theres two new biographies which examine the lives of John Quincy Adams and louisa adams. Plus, youll hear about the life of missionary john birch, the namesake of the john birch society. For a complete its schedule television schedule, go to booktv. Org. Booktv on cspan2, its 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Thanks for coming. Im with the local Amnesty International. Id like to thank you for coming for this presentation tonight. The use of drones is becoming more and more widespread, and theres a lot of issues related to this topic. Local, national, international. War and peace, privacy, you name it. Before i introduce our special guests, the moderator of the event is dr. Bill anderson. Im going to introduce him. Dr. Anderson a local peace activist. Hes the chair of the center for peace and justice. Hes been over 15 missions all over the world for peace. Hes a retired faculty from the university of virginia. As you know, Amnesty International is the Human Rights Group thats been working for more than 50 years. Our most interest in this local group is the [inaudible] so if youd like to work on people who are being detained illegally, unlawfully for the simple expression of their opinion, thats just like we do right to now here, please join us. We meet every month, and we work on a lot of activities for human rights. Without further ado, id like to introduce dr. Anderson. Thank you so much. [applause] its really an honor and a pleasure to welcome you to this event on behalf of Virginia Foundation of the humanities and the festival of the book. And im sure that host of you have gotten that most of you have gotten this brochure which you can get down at the omni and some other stories on the mall like the new dominion book stop. Weve got such a wonderful set of programs here today whats wrong, you cant hear me . You need to mic me . People cant hear . [inaudible] it just has to be many front of you. Okay. All right. Technical difficulties. Is this right . Is this the one . Okay. No, thats not the one. This is the one . Go both of them. Oh, both of them, okay. [laughter] but we really want to thank you for coming out for this event which is a very timely and very interesting one. I want to ask you all to, please, silence your cell phones. Ive got one that has a very irritating ring, so turn any kind of cell phones off, other electronic devices, turn them off now. At this time. And i want to encourage you to tweet to others about this event at hashtag vabook 2016. I really want to thank isham and the Amnesty International for bringing ms. Cohn here, and i really want to thank mississippi cohn for coming ms. Cohn for coming. I want to ask you also to remember to support the festival of the book. Its free of charge but not of cost. And you can either go online to give a gift of support, or you can make a contribution by picking up an envelope which these envelopes are available down at the only any. Omni. At the end ill remind you to, please, give an evaluation, because that also helps to strengthen the festival of book, and it will help it to endure. Those two things, the contribution and evaluation, will help it to endure for years to come. The topic for discussion today, as i said, is by ms. Cohn, and shes going to talk about her book, drones and targeted killing. Ms. Cohn is a professor at the Thomas Jefferson school of law in san diego. And shes the author of several other books which are related and which are very fascinating books. Among those are cowboy republic six ways the bush gang has defied the law, rules of disengagement the politics of honor and military dissent, and shes the editor of another volume entitled u. S. And torture interrogations, incars separation abuse. Todays book is really interesting. It saw starts off with a very interesting forward by archbishop tutu, and in it he asks the question, he talks about the problem of drones and how the valuable contribution that ms. Cohn has made in editing this book and bringing together a number of authors. By he says a very interesting thing that i thought we should ask ourselves. He did this in an early that he wrote in the new york timings. He says do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not the same, of the same value as yours . That president obama be can sign off president obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is american. Really want to tell human kind that we, like the shave dred scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are . I cannot believe it, he says. I hope that his disbelief is really true, that we wont tolerate this, that we will find ways to resist. But now id like to introduce ms. Cohn and have her say some things about this really, really interesting book which i found to be very revealing. [applause] i want to thank Amnesty International, charlottesville chapter and isham for inviting me and bill for his very nice introduction. Im delighted to be here. In his 2009 acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, president barack obama declared were forced and im going to go like this when i quote where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, i believe the United States of america must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. By the time obama accepted the award, one year into his presidency, he had ordered more drone strikes than george w. Bush had authorized during his two president ial terms. The Bush Administration detained and tortured suspected terrorists. The Obama Administration has chosen to ill rely illegally assassinate them. Often with the use of drones. The continued, indefinite detention of men at guantanamo belies obamas pledge two days after his first inauguration to close the prison camp there. However, obama has added only one detain knee to the guantanamo roster. This government has decided that instead of detaining members of alqaeda at guantanamo, they are going to kill them according to John Bellinger who formulated the Bush Administration drone policy. On terror tuesdays, obama and john been man his former counterterrorism adviser, now cia director go through the kill list to identify which individuals should be assassinated that week. Obama orders two different can types of drone strikes; personality strikes which target named highvalue terrorists and signature strikes which target Training Camps and suspicious compounds in areas control ared by militants. And we often see in newspapers like the New York Times a u. S. Drone strike killed four militants or ten militants or twelve with militants. Not sure what a militant looks like. In the signature strike, sometimes called crowd killing, the Obama Administration often doesnt even know who its killing. But, write jo becker and scott shane in the New York Times, some state Department Officials have complained to the white house that the criteria used by the cia sees three guys doing jumping jacks im sorry. The signature for identifying a terrorist signature were too lax. The joke was that when the cia sees three guys doing jumping jacks, the Agency Thinks its a terrorist training camp. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers, but they also might be farmers. As the news broke on march 7th, 2016, that u. S. Drone strikes had killed 150 people in somalia, the white house announced it will will reveal for the first time the number of People Killed by drones and manned airstrikes outside areas of active hostilities since 2009. The tallies will include civilian deaths. This is a critical towards muchneeded transparency, but it will not go far enough. The Obama Administration has been lying for years about how many deaths result from its drone strikes and manned bombers. In 2011 john brennan false hi claimed that no civilians falsely claimed that no civilians had been killed in drone strikes in nearly a year. The bureau of Investigative Journalism which and this is an anthology collection one of the chapters is written by a person from the bureau of Investigative Journalism which is a premier organization, Nongovernmental Organization that tallies civilian casualties from drone strikes. Theyre based in london. The bureau of Investigative Journalism and other Nongovernmental Organizations that calculate drone deaths put the lie to brennans claim. It is believed that of the estimated 5,000 People Killed on obamas watch, approximately 1,000 were civilians. But the administration has never released complete casualty figures. Plus, the numbers by themselves were not sufficient. Even if the white house makes good on its promise to publicize death tallies, it must also publish the policy guidance which has provided the legal justification for the u. S. Targeted killing program. In may 2013 responding to International Criticism about men starving themselves to death at guantanamo and his drone policy, obama delivered a speech at the National Defense university in washington d. C. For what american officials was a graduation or a prelude to an eminent attacks. We will take place in the immediate future. Third, there must be certainty that the terrorist target is present, but the fact sheet doesnt address the signature strikes where the Obama Administration where Obama Administration doesnt charge individuals but activity. There must be certainty that noncombatants will not be injured or killed. But the administration defines combatants as all men of military age in a strike zone unless theres explicit intelligence. Five, there must be an assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of operation and i dont like the word capture, people are apprehended but we will use their terminology. Its unclear what feasibility means, the department of Justice White paper seems to indicate that infeasible means inconvenient. It was feasible to capture Osama Bin Laden who was not armed at the Time Military as is nateed assassinated, well, osama ben laden was this evil man and took him out. After world war ii, leaders of victorious, churchill said, just take them out and shoot them. If we dont provide due process even to the nazi leaders we will pas a poison which he chellies to future generations. Number 6, there must be an assessment that relevant governmental authorities in the country where action is contemplated, cannot or will not effectively address the threat to u. S. Persons which is left un undefined. No reasonable alternative to threat to u. S. Persons also undefined. The fact sheet would include conditions when a president takes action in extraordinary circumstances which are both lawful and necessary to protect the United States and its allies. There is no definition of extraordinary circumstances for what would be lawful. Releasing the president ial policy guidance declassifying it, would clarify listed in the force sheet. In february february 216 the Bipartisan Task force on u. S. Drone policy gave the Obama Administration and f in three areas the task force had flagged for improvement. The first area is focus on the progress and releasing information on drone strikes. The second involved explaining the legal basis on u. S. And International Law for the Drone Program. The third is about developing more robust oversight and accountability mechanisms for targeted strikes outside of traditional battlefields. Regarding the first area, releasing information, the administration has made almost no information public about the approximate number location, which agent is responsible for what strike, the cia or the military. The organizational affiliation to people have been known to be killed by strikes and the numbers of identities by civilians to be been known to kill. Speaking about the second area, a few governmental documents have been made as a court order. One was redacted or edited, black lines through it, a redacted memo about the legality of the 2011 targeted killing of the u. S. Citizens without due process of law. This followed a successful New York Times freedom of information act request, the other release document was the department of defenses law of war manual with she short sections on the use of remotely piloted aircraft in war. The only qualifications it contained was that the weapons cannot be inherently indiscrime discrimnant. The administration continues to oppose any release of Public Information on the lethal Drone Program. The lack of action reinforces the culture of secrecy surrounding the use of farm drone according to reports. The skimson report note that had the administration as a rule been reluctant to public acknowledge the use of leetal force by unmanned vehicles in foreign country. After the discovery that two westerners had been who were held by alqaeda had been killed by u. S. Drone strike, the administration admitted the death, but provided few specific details. Note, that they were westerners that were killed. I want to say that when we hear about isis beheading someone we are outraged. Of course, we dont hear about saudi arabia, one of our closest allies beheading people on a daily basis, but we dont hear about or see the images of the babies whose limbs are strewn about after air drone strike. Interestingly one of the essays in the books, the only one reprinted was called the predator war. It was a 2009 piece by new yorker and it was First Comprehensive report program and major interviewed former cia lawyer nikki duval. People are a lot more comfortable the predator drone strike that kills many people than with a throatsliding that kills one. Lethal drone strikes have been reported in yemen, pakistan, libya, afghanistan and somalia. And against isis in iraq and syria. The report identified 12 countries believe to host u. S. Drone basis. That includes afghanistan, et former cia director michael mounted program in the 2016 new york oped, the targeted killing program has been the most precise and effective in the history of arms conflict, but claims are impossible to document without documentation, hayden also said we probably kill people when revealed the nsa was collecting meta data, they are supposedly not looking at the data, not looking at the content by just this meta. We kill people based on our meta data. The nsas program that identifies terrorists in pakistan, somalia and afghanistan, would result in 99,000 false positives. So what happens is that they target a cell phone believed to be carried by a terrorist, lets say give it to his mother, shes the one that get killed based upon this meta data. Obama said in an interview in the atlantic recently that he has no second thoughts about the drone strikes in the middle east. Arm drones are operated by pilots located thousands of miles from their targets. How many of you saw the film, good kill . Do you know who was in the that film . January jones and ethan hawks. Two very famous popular authors yet it never made it to theaters. I saw it in a tiny little venue in san diego. Good kill refers to people sitting outside of a little trailer after one of the pilots presses the button and traces ethan hawks plays a drone operator, even though hes thousands of miles from his target and can go home every night in suburbs of las vegas, he develops post traumatic disorder from what he is doing. You can see pictures of the strike zone and between the time that the button is pushed to release the missile and the missile deploys, it takes ten seconds. Meanwhile a woman and child walk into the strike zone and after doing this enough times, he got very, very ill. I wonder if that had anything to do with why it never made it into the big theaters. Before launching its payload, the drone hovers above the area. The drones were terrifying, observed New York Times journalists david rotty who was captured by the taliban in 2008 and later escaped from the ground it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buss of a distant propel or is a constant reminder of eminent death. Drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound, a drones victim never hears a missile that kills him. A second strike drops rescuing the wounded from the first strike. Thats called a double tap. A third strike targets mowners at funerals by thos