Host we talked about this earlier. Elliott emails in, she attackeds the Koch Brothers, what about george soros . Guest george soros put in some money to Hillary Clinton, the supposedly independent tack that supports Hillary Clinton, none of these super pacs are truly independent as far as i am concerned. Legally they are. It seems george soros is putting serious money back into politics. The idea that our political system would be so influenced by such a small group of people with that much money is disturbing on both sides of the partisan divide. I think most americans object to the idea that 400 or 500 of the richest people in this country will be picking their next leader for them, whether your democrat, republican, in the middle, whatever, it is not the same as the idea of one man one vote. Theres a lot to worry about in both directions. The reason i have focused, and i have to say this, focused on the kochs in particular and the republican right wing money in this book is when it comes to dark money, in the last election, 80 of the undisclosed money is on a right and that is where the money is and if you are a political reporter you follow the money and if you are following the money will get a Koch Brothers in this country at this point. Host the new yorker, december 18th, 2014, by jane mayer, the unidentified queen of torture. Who are you talking about . Guest i did not identify her. There is somebody at the cia, an officer who claims to the undercover cop who in many ways has fingerprints all over among the most egregious cases of what i regard as torture, having to do with antiterrorism program. We are not allowed to identify her because the cia says she is under cover. It is a long story. I tell it in the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals people have to realize the cia missed the threat of al qaeda right before 9 11. I hate to sound like donald trump or some of the leftwing conspiracy theorists but i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the story really is that there were many warnings that something terrible was going to happen to the United States and they were coming from some members of the cia, the white house was not jumping as it should have on those warnings and there were warnings the cia leaks that they dropped, the cia specifically had some information that some of the people who became hijackers on 9 11 were in United States and the c i a did not alert the fbi to the presence of two of those people who became those hijackers. There were a lot of things that were fumbled before 9 11. It is human, it happens, but there were reasons people in the scia felt bad. Some of them overcompensated and did everything they could to try to make sure they were not blindsided again, and part of what happened in that over compensation was they used methods that were i think unconscionable. The unidentified claim of torture in the story were talking about was involved in dropping the paul and overcompensating afterwards. The same characters run through the story before 9 11 and after an she is one in particular who has been singled out for her role in this behindthescenes. We at the new yorker did not decide to identify her because she was under cover. We dont do that. Host is she still there . Guest she is still there and in a major role. Before 9 11 at the cia, still involved. Maybe is not completely open kind of investigation of all of this. After pearl harbor was bombed, there were public hearings that went into great detail and corrections made right away. There was not the kind of hearing that took place publicly, there were the 9 11 hearings but didnt get into details about who dropped the ball at the cia and these names never came out. Host october of 1983, where were you . Guest i was in beirut, a young reporter for the wall street journal, i was filling in for another reporter and rocked out of bed by the sound of two huge explosions one of which was our Marine Barracks being blown up by a terrorist. I jumped out of bed and got there as fast as i could, followed around a reporter who knew more about what he was doing that i did, from the New York Times, spectacular reporter. Tried my best to cover what was certainly the first glimpse i ever got of radical islamic terrorism. It was a over to see, sticks with me every october 23rd. The Marine Barracks was flattened like a pancake, with layers of people between the floors that had fallen down. When i got there you could hear voices screaming from inside begging to be dug out, but a lot of them just died. Over 240, 250 young guys died in that explosion. It was a wakeup call for this country about islamic terrorism but when i look back at it now i think how interesting it is that Hillary Clinton gets so much grief over been gauzy, we had so much trouble during that period in beirut with Marine Barracks being blown up and the cia headquarters being blown up, we had great loss of American Life in lebanon during that period and somehow Ronald Reagan was never blamed for it but Hillary Clinton apparently doesnt have that teflon. Nothing like what she went through in benghazi. It sticks to her and sticks to her. Host november 1989. Guest november 1989 is also a night i will never forget. I was in berlin, again for the wall street journal. Feel a little bit like calamity jane. Being sent over to germany to cover what seems strange, demonstrations in east germany that suggested the iron curtain was beginning to shimmer of a little in some strange way and so i went over to see what was going on and a few days later the berlin wall opened. I was standing there when the first people came for you. I had been having dinner with a german family, they were listening to the radio and said they are opening checkpoint charlie. We drove over there and we thought it must be wrong because nothing was happening. As we were standing there people started to pour through. It was the most unbelievable sight. For someone interested in history, the germans were dancing in the streets popping champagne singing deutschland, i was dictating live on the front page of wall street journal. The next day, all the serious reporters who knew about Foreign Affairs said i felt really good as a general assignment reporter, editor at the new yorker, i give it to the front editor to get very few days early. At the wall street journal. To be there in time. Host thanks for holding, you are on with jane mayer. Caller thanks for taking my call and thanks for the great work. Donald trump just said he would break up dp, by which he meant to say that epa. I wonder if you feel the democratic president ial candidate should try his or her best to associate the republican candidate whether it is trump or somebody else with the environmental crimes of Koch Industries and the Koch BrothersRelentless Assault against environmental regulations . That is my question. Guest it is an interesting question because people think of donald trump as being not a koch candidate. The kochs said they dislike him behind the scenes, he is not reliable in terms of their point of view, but he does share a lot of their positions including about Global Warming and about environmental matters. Those positions are incredibly important to Koch Industries. Koch industries has a terrible record on environmental pollution, has the biggest judgments of any company in terms of pollution judgments. The biggest creator of toxic waste in the country according to epa statistics. It is not up to me to tell democrats how to run their campaigns, but to me as a reporter it is worth pointing out donald trump carrying but fossil fuel industry when he takes these positions and other polluters. I dont think it is a smart political position for anyone to take. If you look at coal in this country the vast majority of people care about the environment. They want clean water, clean air, and are concerned about climate change. The weather seems strange in extremes, they worry about polar bears that swam as the ice caps melt and Public Opinion is changing a lot on this issue and it is not where the Republican Party is on it. I am surprised donald trump is taking the position he is on it when you have to wonder why he is. He has been pretty good at figuring out where the gaps are between republican orthodoxy and the public. On this one he is not where the public is. Host a few legal violations could be understood as an unfortunate accidents, Koch Industries pattern of pollution was striking not just for its egregious this but also its willful that is from dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Rod in san diego text message, do you find it hard to stay dispassionate and if so how do you overcome those extreme feelings regarding what you have uncovered. It is important if you are going to be fair and credible not to get too personally invested some how. You have to be open to the possibilities the kochs do some good things which i think some of their philanthropy, the money they give away to science and the arts i have to say is good. You have to remind yourself they are human. One of the things i did, i was sorry not to have a chance to interview them because i find that process helps a reporter even if you are regarded as hostile, you begin to understand the people you are interviewing more on a human level. One of the things i did even though the kochs declined to be interviewed by me, towards the end before the book came out i went to which a top and interviewed some of the top people in Koch Industries, showed up at an event. It was a public event. Chamber of commerce event. This was. I bought a ticket like anybody else. I never hide who i am. I was with the new yorker magazine and covering it for a new yorker story about changing their image and showed up the next day, went to the speech charles koch gave and charles and david were speaking and next day i went to a public event introduced myself to the head of their Public Relations and their general counsel who was there. I think it was really useful. I got to sit down for a cup of coffee with the head of their Public Relations team, it humanized them a little bit. And it is important to realize they have a strong point of view, they have a right to have a strong point of view, there is a difference between doing illegal things like polluting which is something you cant condone it, but having a strong, extreme point of view in american politics, these are just people and so i was really glad to have a chance to talk to them off the record. It helped a lot and i hope it helped them on little bit. Very demonic since. Host cathy is on from santa barbara. Caller thanks for coming on. You are talking about the Koch Brothers starting campaign or investigation trying to get dirt about you. The idea is that if they cant find something they will make something up is reminiscent of nixons paranoia and dirty tricks. It is exactly the same thing. You mentioned that they worked in state legislatures and even City Politics trying to influence state elections, you are a pretty heavy weight journalist at the New York Times but what happens to a reporter writing for a small newspaper who is investigating these tactics that are going on at the state level. With the protections that they do. Are they doing that, just small newspaper reporters as well . What happens to those people . Guest they have been pushing back, they put out koch facts where they do things like publish private emails that took place between the reporter and a company trying to ask questions to embarrass reporters. And gone after a reporter on climate news, in a very personal way, you sense when you take them on that you are up against a very powerful bunch of people. With that much money they can bring lawsuits, a lot to cause trouble to reporter but i think reporters have something in their quiver that is very powerful also which is the ability to write publicly. So what i did in my book is to write about how they came after me and i got the information, confirmed it, called the president private investigator who was hired at the time by somebody connected with Koch Industries and expose it, exposing them is a very powerful tool, i quote somebody in this book who used to work for Koch Industries in the trial testified against them about their behavior and what he said was miss behavior by a them. I asked him werent you scared to do that . He said yes but we had something that was stronger, a weapon that was stronger than the kochs. I said what was that weapon . He said the truth. Reporters can tell the truth and that is very powerful. Host henry holt is Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right . Guest double day is my publisher. Fantastic editor. Host sorry about that. What kind of Fact Checking and lawyering went into a book like that . Guest a lot. At the new yorker we are proud of it too. I went through not just first of all fantastic, the editing by double day. They went through and fact checked. And at every level, in addition he hired an assistant who was fresh out of harvard. And and he did a beautiful job researching, who were spectacular. And i am married to someone named bill hamilton. Who is now the washington editor of the New York Times and was a heroic in terms of going through this too. And they went through every paragraph together. And describe something as happening, it was not the roman empire and the roman republic. And we will fix it, there are things that are not right put their i tried everything host dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right by jane mayer published by doubleday. Steven. Caller has a male editor who was doing his job ever been fired for being too abrasive . Would your boyfriend joe abramson who eyes and was doing her job, would she have been fired if she was the male . Guest her predecessor at the New York Times was pushed out before her. And partly what the it brief is, and there was something it would be a big issue. And reporting scandal took place. And according to them, you reach the top, these news organizations are struggling to survive. Theres a lot of criticism for everything they do the doesnt succeed they are blamed at the top. It is hard to have these jobs. I think is a shame what happened to jill, jill is really truly one of the most talented and smartest journalists i note and she put out a fantastic newspaper. The reporting was really really good. Are dont think anybody taught otherwise. I dont know. I just dont know. All i can say is it is up for everybody these days, journalism at the top. She is at harvard now. She has talked a little bit about it herself. She didnt listen enough to people who were around her at the time. Smart enough to realize none of us are completely perfect and bulletproof. That said, i still think at this point it is hard, i wont say in new journalism, but i think this whole issue of how women can be bosses without accused of being bossy is not solved. It is something we are working through and i dont think we have reached the other side on it yet. Guest marjorie in West Virginia, please go ahead. Caller i would like to go back to the issue of the republican domination in our legislatures because in West Virginia we have had what some of us believe is our own infamous corporate head named Don Blankenship and many of us believe he is responsible for the deaths of the 29 coal miners who died a few years ago. He was found guilty in a federal trial, could be facing jail time. In an event to stop families of minors from suing in the event of another calm mining disaster i recently elected Republican Legislature sponsor a bill giving immunity for these corporate heads where they cannot be sued or be held accountable by surviving family members. A few years ago we had our own water crisis in West Virginia where the chemical company, in the Drinking Water supply, democratically held legislators passed the bill but ordered inspections in these chemical containers for the first time in 83 years, they said it was too costly to pay for the inspection. They had a democratically elected legislature who became a republican the day after he was elected. He quit his job at the legislature to work for the and are a. Changing from democrat to republican gave the republicans that majority that they have had. These stories dont get out nationally, particularly the one about the immunity, this could spread to other state legislatures giving corporate ceos to are not responsible host we are going to leave it there to see if jane mayer has a comment. Guest West Virginia is a state with an awful lot of money from Koch Industries, the Koch Foundation is flowing. Of very big program they are funding in West VirginiaState University and they have a lot of money going into a fight right now about the right to work law that is being debated, something that makes it harder to join unions. I dont know whether their money is involved in this liability fight particularly, but it is a state where a very big amount of influence by the kochs and donor groups they have got and it is a great illustration of how superwealthy donors pack a big punch in a poor state. Money goes so far with state legislative races. It is interesting, they have a big impact. Host kevin gray posted on our Facebook Page couple comments, it goes to our issue of heroes and villains, shades of gray in between, given the money spent on our liberal programming, public education, liberal University Professors and institutions and liberal journalists like jane mayer and the new yorker is strange their opposition to the koch money would be worthy of such paranoia of psychotic proportions. Egos on to say Koch Industries employ 60,000 employees mostly blue collar and oh know, unionized. Are they still evil . Guest as your caller may be did or didnt hear, i dont use words like evil to describe these people. I described them as people who have views that are far outside the american mainstream where they are imposing their views on the american mainstream by dint of their huge wealth, spending their fortune. This is simplistic and cartoonish to be talking about evil like that. What can i say . Host john rights is dick cheney a criminal and should he be prosecuted . Guest there was there has been debate even serious debate about whether someone should be prosecuted for the torture of the 9 11 suspects. I dont think i am a reporter, a i am not an advocate particularly but i see these as political problems that need to be solved with political answers. These are policy debates to have, they are really important policy debates, i dont think i imagine after years of covering politics in washington, if somebody brought charges against Vice President cheney, and be back lashed would be so intense that everybody practically would be on chaneys side. It would not be a useful thing to do. Host this is mary. As a union state cant make a living from the arts i am extremely conflicted about koch support for arts organization. Guest a lot of people in new york feels that way because david koch has put a lot of money into Lincoln Center and the museum of modern art. I cant say i am against giving money to the arts. I come from a family of artists and i come from a family that gave a lot of money to the metropolitan museum itself. These are things i regard as the good side on the ledger here. I think it is great koch gives money to scientific research. On cancer. Giving money to Cancer Research is good. Causing people cancer is not so good and they dont talk about that side of what their business does. In the arts it is stepping back, a real shame the culture world has to wait for handouts in order to be able to provide culture. In europe they dont fund it that way. It is not reliant on rich people giving out handouts. The Government Funds a lot of the arts in europe and they have fantastic museums that dont seem to be struggling. There are other ways to do it this. I can see why the conflict. Host next call, connecticut. Caller my question to you is we the people of the united front can get rid of all the pomp and circumstance, i called then delegates and superdelegates, supposed to be socalled necessities, i give them quote before a nomination is decided . Where they have all power, this way if we get rid of them it will give Bernie Sanders a fair chance to win the nomination based solely on the popular vote. I thought about this, to me and inaction has to use the same analogy as when building a house. When you build a house you have to start with a strong foundation. If you want the house to withstand all the pressure it will undergo when being built to me the only way bernie is going to win the democratic nomination is if we the people, this election has to be based on solely the popular vote. I cant comprehend how we have let the parties convince us we need the socalled necessities to choose the right winner. I am talking about the delegates, superdelegates, endorsements, in a choral college, gerrymandering. Host i think we got your point. Jane mayer, any comment . Guest the book doesnt get into the subject of superdelegates and delegates. I do talk about gerrymandering and gerrymandering is something done by both parties. It has gone too far. It is distorting the democratic process and that is what the caller is arguing is true of the superdelegates. There are a lot of mechanisms that have crept in over the years but the Electoral College goes way back. I just think it is healthy to have this debate. Bottom line, good people are asking questions, Bernie Sanders brought up a lot of great question. In a strange way trump is even bringing up questions. In terms of whether the parties have lost touch with voters and are serving only their big interests, many interests and a lot of people feel that. Host in 2013 you sat with Columbia University oral history. How many hours guest i did not know it would go on for such a long time. I was not ready for it at all. My grandfather started the war History Program at columbia so i didnt feel i could say no. I wasnt ready for that much of an imposition. They were very thorough. Host is accessible to anybody . Guest is accessible to anybody. Part of a reason the oral History Program was started, with the country moving away from the u. S. Mail system and written letters, so many fewer documents, for historians to use and leave the documentary record to go through it. The Oral History Library is very accessible to help people use it. Host you are still on book tour at this point. Will you be doing the festival circuit . Guest what i want to do is get back to reporting, cover the campaign. This is the wild can pain. I have been covering politics along time but this is irresistible. I am anxious to get back in and do regular day job. Host have you thought about another book . Guest the thought of it is too waffle. This was a hard book to write actually. I felt because of the fact that the people came after me, it was an uncomfortable feeling. I felt i was taking on powerful interests and i am so happy to not be working on that right this minute. Our family has done the dark side, dark money, time to do something a little lighter. In this trilogy we are thinking dark chocolate. Host from your oral interview at Columbia University, it is an overwhelming thing to write a book of what i started with was, this is about the dark side the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals, i put together a chronology because this is a narrative. The chronology came to be 380 pages long. Guest i did the same thing with dark money the Hidden History of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right, a chronology. You have to and to stand these books are narrative history, stories. What i am trying to do is explain who the characters are but more how one event flows into the next. Things have repercussions, decisions people make in back rooms affect the entire country, so you cant see the causality of events until you put the chronology together and you do it and suddenly you think that is why they did that. I get it now and you see all these relationships you couldnt see otherwise. It is quite a fun exercise to do. It takes forever, but it is useful when you are writing a book. Host one more quote from that interview. This is about landslide landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988. I hope this is you speaking, i hope someday somebody that there will be a revisionists review in the midst of all the reagan hagiography, go back and look at this again. It could be that i was wrong, that you are too close to the president and his staff and you dont see the greatness, maybe. Guest that is true. Somebody has gone back. Of all people it is bill oreilly. He has written a book that uses some material, some of the most important material in landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988 wishy references landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988 in the back of his book, he doesnt have any actual footnotes attribute the material but we had a blockbuster opening. We had a blockbuster news break, doyle mcmanus, wrote landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988, president reagans top advisers looked at him at some point and thought that hed so lost it they considered invoking the 25th amendment which would take him out of office because he was incompetent. They were afraid he might be mentally incompetent. They had a meeting where they took a close look and tested him to see whether he could manage to answer questions in full capacity. They came to the conclusion that he was okay. The reason they went through that process was his own advisers were speaking about him as if he was out to lunch, that he wasnt interested in the job, he let other people sign his name on documents, you spend a lot of time in the residence, he was watching tv, it was a litany of complaints about Ronald Reagan from his own people that really scared the new chief of staff who was coming in at that point in the white house. That story is retold by bill oreilly in his book as if it is breaking news all over again. It shows you 25 years ago by and everything is reinvented. Who knows . It is a good question. Do we who were covering reagan in the white house miss something by talking people around him and did not necessarily regard Ronald Reagan as a god or even as a superq and president. They saw a lot of his flaws and so did we as reporters. We were right in there and no man is a hero to his valet. Maybe we were too close to being valets. He seemed highly human when we were covering him. Host sarasota, thanks for hanging on. Jane mayer is with me. Caller pleasure to talk to you. First, i was taken a while back when you mentioned some of these people worrying about their offspring becoming liberal. We had a little experience in that, my son in law was the director of the mellon clinic in haiti after dr. Mellon, the philanthropist, passed away, comparing him to another person in the family who didnt have anything to do with that. Other than that, on wanted to ask you, when you mentioned about the money being given by right and left, i noticed, was going to ask about that, you mentioned 80 was on the right. I am kind of amused because in the journalism of today we sometimes get this hand and on the other hand rather than facts. It makes it seem even when it isnt. That is what i hear when somebody brings up a george soros in comparison to kochs and everybody else on the other side. One is a little different than even steven. Finally, a question about donald trump. You mentioned him sick supporting Social Security but he like the rest of people running are all in for tax cuts, particularly with him, the inheritance tax. Anybody looking at those programs understand there are billions of dollars shortfall, and how you end up supporting Social Security, medicare, medicaid when you have that kind of a cut plus that he will have but military second to none, whatever that means as if we dont already have it. I dont understand the contradiction. That is why i referred to the republicans as the tooth fairy party. In any case, any comment you have i would appreciate. Indeed king it is interesting and i talk about how these families, these extraordinarily rich families whosetories i tell in this book all pushed for elimination of the estate tax. People seem to think that because you might be very rich you dont care that much about money because you have so much. That is not true of these families. They push in every direction to try to accumulate more money and protect the fortunes they have and they did it in many ways including trying to get rid of the inheritance tax. There is great information, good study about a coalition that fought to keep get rid of the inheritance taxes and includes the kochs and a number of other families. They have tremendous fortunes. I dont know where donald trump is on the inheritance tax. I havent followed that. Host ten minutes left in our conversation with jane mayer, the author war on american ideals, strange justice the selling of Clarence Thomas and landslide the unmaking of the president , 19841988, staff writer for the new yorker. Were those articles accessible . Guest all of the new yorker articles are. Even if youre not ascribe dirt. Guest up to western point. There may be a limited number you can get that certainly give it a try. Host mohammed in sandusky, ohio, good afternoon. I got a different line punch, i apologize. George in lowell, mass. I you with us . Caller i am. Host i am sorry about that we will get to mohammed hadi in just a minute. Goahead. Caller thank you to cspan. It is wonderful to see jane mayer on tv with her book. This book is a godsend. Many of us have been waiting to read a book like this for years. I did go back to school as an older student to the university of massachusetts at lowell and while i was majoring in sociology we read other books like the best democracy money and buy, when corporations rule the world as well as the excellent book by a conservative called who rules america, and it talks about the money. As Jesse Ventura would say, follow the money. I find it very interesting that your author today on cspan has written this excellent book about the dark money especially after citizens united. My question involves a greater scope of this money. We are all aware of the Koch Brothers and their influence and how they manipulate Public Opinion to further their agenda. My question to your author is on the greater scope, does she in her book talk about other groups, groups that william touches upon and some people on the fringe talk about, most people have never heard of. One group in particular that i am interested in knowing if she has done research on is the builder burger group. Does she talk about the influence that has . Host lets see what jane mayers answers. Guest i do not and i have only heard a little bit about that. I wanted to say some of the things i heard sounded overheated about it and a little conspiratorial about it. This is not a book about a conspiracy. It is a book about a very small group of people with very intense use it huge amounts of money that set out to change the direction of american politics, they didnt like where it was going in the 1970s. They thought america was too liberal and wanted to turn it back from where it was going, didnt like the Environmental Movement or the Consumer Movement for Public Interest law movement, they didnt like the expanding welfare state. It is not a conspiracy, it is a political movement. I dont know how i would define the difference except a lot of this was done in secret but some of it was in public too. I remember reading the other book and thought it was great. Ere really helpful book. You can never too much about the role of money in american politics. It packs a punch. Host from california, does the evidence supports anita hills claim of Sexual Harassment . Guest the evidence supports anita hills claim that Clarence Thomas spoke to her explicitly about it in ways that made her uncomfortable. When do that is legally a definition of harassment i dont know. I am not a lawyer. What we discovered was Clarence Thomas had a long history of speaking explicitly about sex, he loved to see pornography. Many people if you go to that book, fellows in school with him, he had a history here that supported what she said. I dont know whether that meets the legal limit of harassment or not. Made her very uncomfortable and other women and comfortable and there were other women who wanted to testify against him during confirmation hearings and part of the news of that was there were other women t