Transcripts For CSPAN2 Judith Miller On The Story 20240622

The book covers the long accomplished career in journalism nearly three decades of which was listed in the New York Times. She joined the papers Washington Bureau in 1977 and spent the 80s arrived in cairo and paris. Returning to washington to serve as a correspondent. Osama bin laden and al qaeda and others in 2001 and before and immediately after the 9 11 attack when the Pulitzer Prize for the financial journalism. During the runup to the iraq war after the 2003 invasion they wrote a number of articles about the wmd efforts and the articles later turned out to be based on wrong information. They were both inside and outside of the times in the reporting and in 2004 and 2005 she ended up with further controversy this time over the plain case with the rights to protect sources and refusing to testify before the grand jury. In late 2005. In 2008 she joined the commentator and also is now an adjunct fellow and a contributing editor at the institutes magazine journal [inaudible] everybodys a critic. [laughter] connect the story is where others have dealt with biological weapons and the first gulf war. She was just embarking and happens to take such. Judys story or stories on the practice of journalism between reporters and sources and editors and especially when classified or highly Sensitive Information is involved and that decisions about whether to take a nation to war are at stake. So certainly it is a lot to discuss. Judy will be in the conversations within old friend of mine who is a talented correspondent and editor after 20 years in the Washington Post and went on to lead the Transatlantic Center of the Marshall Fund in the council on germany. Series of mentors or inspirational people. I understand you started in journalism with the progressive publication out of madison wisconsin, at the height of the protests against vietnam. Larry stern was close friend and editor. Tell me a little bit about that early phase of your career. Back then i was a graduate student who had decided i was never going to be an economist because it was too boring even for me. Since i hated the sight of blood i couldnt be a dr. I thought journalism would be an interesting way to spend ones life. I had no idea how interesting it would be. But i started doing freelance stories at Woodrow Wilson school where i was graduate student. Sent me to the middle east for summer where many universities did. Where in the middle east . I went started out in israel and i got really hooked with the arabisraeli conflict. In those days, if, people forget we had to go to cyprus because there was no direct connection between israel and any arab country. So i flew to cyprus. I went to egypt. People told me there was going to be a war. This is 72. I wasnt reading that in the american papers. I was interested in that. Went to jordan. Met king hussein first time an interviewed him with tape recorder and didnt know how it worked and ended up starting it for me. That became beginning of a very longstanding friendship and i admired him enormously. And, beirut and syria and came back to princeton and decided i really didnt want to do economics. I wanted to be a journalist and woodward and bernstein were still kind of the heroes of the day. I came to washington try to get a job and found the progressive. A mentor of mine, early mentor was i. F. Stone. Izzy was nothing if kept call. He was mr. Skepticism. Would go to him with a problem or National Security challenge only government could solve, just remember they all lie, doesnt matter republican democrats, independents and they all lie and always will and only thing you can depend on what they put in their documents sometimes he said. He would go through them religiously. He was a great source of inspiration. So when i got to the times, i was hired at the New York Times because of affirmative action. The women of the New York Times three years earlier sued the paper and for sexual discrimination. I had to tell you their case was rock solid. There were no columnists. In there were no women, on and on. There were no women. Three women out 35 people in the Washington Bureau. All of sudden people like me began being hired. And, it was my good fortune to come along at the right time. But i always wanted to go back to the middle east and write about the middle east and in 1982 Abe Rosenthal sent me there, another mentor and inspiration all long with bill sapphire conservative columnist who i adamantly disagreed. We agreed on only one thing, which was the importance of journalism to keeping americans informed. On that we agreed. Something we share. Right. Since that was your first big foreign assignment, how did that change you your perspective as a person, your views about the middle east and also about the way to cover it as a journalist . I think, i had what i had discovered, when i was a student was that the story often times wasnt the major story that everybody was writing about. It was about, in israel this group were the first group of people to form illegal settlers, illegal settlements and yet i think i wrote one of the first early pieces for the progressive before i even joined the times about the importance of people who felt that the land was more important than the rule of law. And i saw great peril in this approach and wrote that. Then, when i got to egypt full time the first big story i had was not in egypt, it was in beirut. In 1983 when the marine compound was blown up and thats when i encountered terrorism for the first time in my life and i you know beirut being beirut rather than have a nice cordoned, with an area that had been a bomb site roped off, it was utter chaos. I had flown to israel because lebanon was closed. They had closed all of the borders. They closed the airport but i flew to israel and persuade adleb niece friend who went back and forth to take me with him. I just got there at dawn as they were digging out american bodies from the rubble. And that was the first time i understood what we were up against. No one we he all heard the story of smiling shiite driver in yellow mercedes who smiled as he drove through the compound doors. We didnt understand what that was all about. It would be a long time before we understood what jihadis believed about the after the life and how after life and how important it would be to do something memorable and important in their sense of the word. So from that, thats where my interest in islamic militancy began and that directed the rest of my reporting for the next three years actually, for the next 20 years. So if i recall correctly i think the, the suicide bomber was guided from tehran. Tehran, absolutely. It was i mean that was early days of hezbollah. Hezbollah was just being formed. And there was a lot of misinformation and a lot of us wrote stories that turned out to be partly true, not true. It was very hard to figure out what was going on in that very chaotic period but i knew, as i was standing there that day in the rubble that this was not going to stop with beirut. And lo and behold two months later i was standing in another rubble, the American Embassy in kuwait. Fortunately nobody was killed because the area that was bombed, where the suicide bomber had come through, was a place where the chancery where people stopped working. So we were hugely lucky that more americans werent killed there. I began to see it again and again and again. Different groups that we tended to lump together with one term islamic fundamentalism but i knew they were all different. They were motivated by some same things but all politics is local. I had to go to each country to figure out what motivated that particular group. So in your reporting you found the causes were different for this kind of suicidal maniacal kind of islamic jihadism . The goal was the same to establish the caliphate or the restoration of islamic rule. The methods, the grievances, the method of organization the way the, mo was different everywhere. For example people always said israel was really important factor in this. It was if you were on the west bank or gaza or in an area, in a refugee camp the immediate surrounding areas and if i went to algeria morocco tunis. They didnt really care about israel. It was not a factor in what they wanted to do. And so, i began to be enormously wary about these broad generalizations. That led to my book, god has 99 names. I always love that about islam. 99 names. There is actually 100, but one is unknowable, known only to god but, it was broad generalizations that frightened except there was one thing that critics got right. Do not think this will stay in the middle east. This will not be confined in the middle east. They were right about that. Must have been particular difficult as a woman reporter a western woman reporter covering the middle east . Or were there hidden advantages . There were many hidden advantages. Not only did i get my job through affirmative action but, in those days, when you were at risk, not only because you were tall but women werent kidnapped. And we werent killed. It was arab chivalry. Islamic chivalry. They didnt do to us what they did to some of you. And, there was also, the kind of what i called the saudiusc syndrome. Go to saudi arabia where women couldnt drive, had to sit in the back of the bus. I did that it is not fun because the back buts isnt airconditioned at 120 degrees. Cant really work with men. We all know the conditions now but. I an honorary man for the time i was there and the saudi trained americantrained saudi officials would bend over backwards to show how enlightened and western they were and, i had extraordinary access because i was a woman. So this gender thing plays both ways. Once again always a generalization that tends to be wrong. All right. What interested you in weapons of mass destruction . You wrote about germs, biological warfare. Happy subjects, brad. You seem to be drawn to grisly ways of dying. It is so crazy. Ive been so blessed. My life was really lucky. I had a wealthy, talented father. A brother who is a great musician. Grew up comfortable, but, i grew up part of the time in las vegas where my father owned night clucks and ran nightclubs and i didnt realize until the times sent me back to las vegas after 2001 to look at what we were using the Nevada Test Site for, to write a series of articles there. I didnt realize that i had actually that is when i remembered this. I had actually grown up during the period of there, for about four years of openair testing. And i remembered seeing one of the tests. I mean, las vegas remember is only 60 miles away from the place where we did most of our aboveground testing and, most of our underground testings too. And i remember the bomb very much being apart of my childhood, my, i write about this in the book. My mother, i begged my mother to take to us jcpenney which had just donated a set of clothing that was going to be used in the apple bombings. The pentagon wanted to see what would happen to mannequins who were dressed up in regular clothes inside of the houses they built which you can still see today, if you go out to the Nevada Test Site. They have tours which i highly recommend, once a month. And you is a you know, they detonate ad bomb. And you saw the mannequins, the mannequins are gone but they have pictures what was left and it is horrific absolutely horrific scene and the Atomic Testing Museum in las vegas actually lets you sit at a bench the way our soldiers did and feel the rumble of the earth. They have recreated that and what the sky looked like. And all of sudden it of came back to me and where i realized my interest in weapons of mass destruction had come from. Never mind the fact we were systematically lied to what the effects of radiation were. I mean that was i think part of the reason i wanted to write about this, i knew a lot of what we were being told was not right. So hence, some of my early pieces for the progressive were very skeptical of National Security justifications for some of the weapons we were developing neutron bombs. Things like that. And did you connect it in those days to your interest in the middle east and sort of asking yourself what will happen if suicidal religious fanatic gets his or her hands on weapons of mass destruction . Right. Yeah, that is when that occurred to me. In 1991 when i got trapped in saudi arabia, i wasnt chosen to be part of a team that covered the war but i was interviewing prominent saudis when the war broke out and the saudis closed their airspace so i was trapped there for three months t was great to be trapped in saudi arabia for three months because the men sent all of their wives and families to mecca, which saddam would never bomb they thought. I got to hang out with them. I finally had a chance to kind of really talk to saudis an unguarded moment where they felt vulnerable, they knew if saddam won they were in big trouble. It gave me insight into saudi arabia i had before, though i had been there many times but i remember one of them telling me about this mad saudi named Osama Bin Laden from a very wealthy family running around with his charts and graphs showing how we didnt need the infidels. We didnt need these people. Get them out of here. Theyre, you know soiling our holy land. We can fight this war ourselves. And then i encountered him by reputation again in, in afghanistan, when i went in as a guest of the taliban, to see what life under the taliban was like. And that would have been when . In 19, in mid 80s . 19891 was the war and i 1991 was the war and went to taliban afghanistan before 2000 before 2001. Afghanistan and bin laden, others where the mujahideen had been trained by American Special forces. Well, i dont know if we trained his group but we trained mujahideen like him. I remember having an argument with a great friend of mine who wanted to be here but she is traveling today. She is a superb diplomat. Ambassador francis cook. She had been given a tour of the taliban, sorry of the, of the mujahideen that the cia was training and she said boy these are my kind of holy warriors. I remember saying to her you know, im just really nervous about the notion of any holy warrior because they tend to forget that all virtue and wisdom is not on their side. This could be problematic for us. I encountered them in egypt because they were blowing up government ministries and government officials there so i knew how this translated and i was always worried about it. I badgered the times to let me do a series on this guy of al qaeda with my former colleague jeff kerth. We did the first piece in New York Times, im not sure, 1997, Osama Bin Laden bamming more than a finance ear but operator of terror. That whole phenomenon of blowback was very impressively reported in steves book ghost warrior. Wonderful book marvelous book. So then, on, for example, saddam, there was a period of time when he was actually considered a socalled friend of United States. I mean were you, were you covering him in those days . Yes. In the early 80s, i believe, Donald Rumsfeld went to baghdad and asked how we could help in terms of the fighting against iran and saddam was then touted as a socialist secular bulwark against the spread of islamic fundamentalism. Absolutely. Women were going to universities in baghdad. Right. What did you think in those days about that relationship. My first trip to iraq was in 1977 when saddam was there. He was consolidating power. And as much as i was suspicious of islamic militants i really didnt like saddam because every writer was under pressure or in jail. Any dissident any artist, even people with galleries were tear spied of the momarat they would come in and take what they wanted. Is it was a nightmare from the beginning. Each time i went back and i went 20 times to iraq because i had fortune of covering iraniraq war when i was in egypt, it got worse and worse. Sanctions went on. Children began to starve. It was an absolute mess. I, was one of the first series, another series of articles i worked on with the inimitable bill broad who was a great science reporter for the New York Times who wrote coauthor of my next book, germs, biological weapon. We looked at saddams pie logical Weapons Program and weirdly enough that was the program that he lid the longest t wasnt nukes. We didnt realize he destroyed them after israel had bombed his reactor but that they never were able to really rebuild the program but, the biology was very important to him. And so bill and i got to work with International Inspectors who had come back to rack and they were telling us about the program and resulted in another really interesting investigation. I, after watching saddam for so many years he could have told me the sun rose in the east and set in the west and i wouldnt have believed it. He was a monster just on human rights grounds alone i could not figure out why the United States was embracing him. What then led to you must have tracked his efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and particularly in covering the iraniraq war he was already using chemical weapons then. And eventually against his own people. I remember that he was, would be using insecticide against the besige coming across the marshes in the south. And finally against his own people the kurds in the north. In halabja, which was another massacre that covered. Tell us a little bit about that. Peter galbraith and others documented that very well. Great, great man for getting helping to get the iraqi official government documents of that massacre because the iraqi were kind of like the germans. They took exquisite records of everything. So they had these, they were proud of what they called, their campaign their Genocidal Campaign against the kurds and they had documented into detail, village by village, house by house. What was used where. How it was delivered. How many kills there were. It was just horrific. And, it, for me, i wrote a front page cover story based on those documents peter got me access to. The dia and Human Rights Watch were working together to translate these documents and get the word out about the iraqi genocide and i remember seeing pictures, i had left by then. I had gone to one of the sites in halabja. I remember seeing pictures of this woman who had been taken out of a, out of a gave and she was so still frozen, holding her baby both of them frozen in time. I thought, this guy is beyond the pale. There was resolution after resolution and after resolution. Saddam always thought could buy off the west, bribe the russians seduce the germans and europeanss with lucrative contracts. By and large he was right. He did it for a long, long time. 10 or 15 minutes i want to open up the questions to the audience. In interest of time i will try to group maybe two, three actually we have a little longer. I meant about 10 more minutes of the conversation. We can already start opening up. So please, ask a question and, and so we leave enough time for everybody to have a shot at this. Who would like to start . Somebody has a microphone. Right here. Okay. I actually came here expecting to hear more about your problems with the deceit and pressures that felt when you were trying to report on weapons of mass destruction. In other words its, its as important for us to understand ourselves and our own deceit and thats what i really was hoping you would talk about. One other part of that i would just ask if there is ever going to be any sense of proper operation and governing anywhere at anytime there has to be some higher level of openness and light into what is going on because were fed stuff and we can not make good decisions if we dont see whats going on in these offices and at those lunches and so forth. And that really, anytime of a governing person is dealing with governing matters that should be accessible to us and its not. Far from it. Youve touched on one of the big challenges for any journalist. Right. How to person trait the deceit gets from Public Officials trying to cover it up to protect their own record or, just simply too lie. What is your reaction . I one of the reasons i wrote the book this people meme. They lied, people died. It sits on bumper sticker. From exhaustive reports and Senate Select committee on intelligence, bipartisan and in this case, pretty nonpartisan the robbsilverman report from charles silvers exhaustive examination of wmd, it was worse than a lie. The intelligence agencies the 16 of them paid billions of dollars a year got it wrong and they got it wrong for understandable reasons. I think for the same reason that we journalists, some of us got it wrong, almost all of us got it wrong and that is because working in this area and in understanding a foreign countrys Weapons Programs is one of the hardest things there is to do. Because you have real live human, often times. I mean the sources and methods hides what is really going on here, which is people overseas putting their lives at risk to tell us things. They assemble this information and combine it with what satellites are able to collect and photographs from the air are able to find and detection of various kind and they make a guess at programs that follow someone were watching has. And it is so hard to do and they get it wrong so often. I think part of what happened, and part of what i write about this book is that. There was pressure on these analysts but not the kind of people think. No one was telling them to lie that saddam had wmd when they didnt believe it. They believed it. One of the reasons they believed it, not only what im talking to you about here, they knew saddam, they knew the program, they knew the history but beyond that they believed it because the last time they had been asked to do an estimate they had underestimated the threat. And so saddam turned out to be closer to a nuclear bomb than they had said. And they were not going to underestimate a threat again after 9 11. Now, i cant, you know look, these were people who i had dealt with since i first started writing about wmd. They were right about bin ladens programs. Very early but they were there. They were right about the, about biological and chemical. They were ultimately right about the soviet union and the fact that the cia had pretty much missed a program which was 60,000 people and dozens of institutions throughout russia, the soviet union at that point. They had not really understood the depth and breadth of the program until the sectors came out from the program and said this is really bad. So, if youre that analyst in government and so much depends on you after 9 11, are you going to underestimate or will you tell the president , wow, you have to worry here . I have, and because these people had been so right for so long and because they were often times some of the few people who said you know that bin laden guy, i think he is a real problems for us and they were laughed out of the room. I believed them and get really angry when people say, they lied, people died. Because they didnt lie. It was worse than that. We cant it is so hard to figure this out. We cant have a lot of confidence that were going to get it right, even now. Next question. Thanks. I guess theyre lining up. So if you want to ask a question just wait your turn. Yeah the question is about independence of journalists and, i guess, succinct statement of the question would be, how does a journalist avoid acquiring of partisan bias and the kind of, i guess my reason im asking that question is it seems timely now especially sort of a subhe question is. Is that notion of independence sort of obsolete or naive to what extent do you think thats the case. And it seems to me it is probably a bigger problem over time for a journalist rather than at any one point in time. That is, if youre gradually assumed to be sort of biased, even gently so, in one direction, that there may be some tendency for that to act sell rate or whatever. Any comments on that problem . And on the assumption is it an obsolete assumption . Well you know, it is get toking an obsolete assumption. Our American Press is becoming more like the european press. You pick up a european newspaper as bill and i are done for so long you know youre reading a left of center publication. You pick up in this country, you watch msnbc you think youre getting stuff on the left, fox news incorrectly in my view because im one of the token brunettes and liberals that works there. Were more than tokens. There is a broad diversity of opinion within the newsroom. But, but i among reporters there is. Among reporters there is. But youre not many, lets get to your question. But that that standard of objectivity is that of course we all have our biases and our prejudices and our beliefs. The New York Times model of journalism, the Washington Post model of journalism and journalism which was taught in our schools a long time you try to compensate for whatever personal bias you may have and driven by the facts by your reporting, by what youre finding out. Because of the explosion of social media in part but not totally are the mix between opinion journalism and factbased journalism pretty much all blended together and it is disappearing. And people who, we used to say youre entitled to your own opinion, youre not entitled to your own facts. Today you seem to be entitled to your own facts as well. And then you just get a highly polarized society and a politicized society politicized journalism. Another reason i wrote the book because i really want to explore that problem and look what happened at the New York Times. It is very, very hard. I still believe that striving for objectivity, knowing that youre not going to get there, that you ask a series of questions and editors ask you about them, the same questions will drive you towards the facts. But the most important thing about journalism is always going back to the story. My first story on almost anything, almost always contained errors of some kind. You have to keep going back and looking. What can you learn the first time, the second time the third time . The story evolves and the story changes and especially in the intelligence world. You get a little bit of information. You find out there is aluminum tube. Then you find out that the cia diverted this aluminum tube from jordan, and that they are now examining this tube in our laboratory. You find out that the president is told there is high confidence that this tube is being used or is intended uranium centrifuge program. Then you find out a few days or months later that there is a debate whether or not thats true. In other words stories unfold. And the real crime is not getting something wrong but sticking with your story when you know it is wrong. And that is happening more and more too. And that is another reason im very upset about they lied people died meme. We have three reports that looked at that thesis and says there is no evidence of pressure on analysts there is no evidence that anyone deliberately lied. And why americans want to believe they were deliberately lied to rather than the fact that their Intelligence Community failed them is a separate question we can debate but, the point you raised about journalism and how weve come to view it, yes, thats very much in flux and im very worried about the trend. I dont see americans as being better informed today than we were 10 years ago despite all of the fancy new technology. So yes i share your concern. Okay. Next question. I think im too short. I dont really microphone is too tall. Im sorry. I dont really have a question. I have a debate point. I was at the center of the debate on the iraq weapons of mass destruction. I dont know what, go like that . Feel like soupy sales. Does that work . In fact, there was enormous pressure. I am in the silberman rob report. I was on 60 minutes. There was enormous pressure. Pressure to do what . Confirm there were weapons of mass destruction, particularly the mobile biological weapons lab. I was person leading the, no, there isnt. I have 2 1 2 feet of paper proving, and it has been reported in classified that in fact there was a lot of pressure. So, im not going, im not going to let you get away with the intelligence agencies were wrong. It was politicized. Some people got it wrong. Some of us got it right. And people in the Knight Ridder or mcclampchy they figured out how to validate things. They went to oak ridge. I cant remember. But im going to stand up for my own can you identify yourself . Margaret henok. Okay. I thought some there was enormous pressure, the rumsfeld, wolfowitz gang, they want ad war. I dont know why they wanted a war but there was a lot of pressure, im not going to listen to somebody tell me there wasnt. I was there for two years. I urge you to read the commission and classified ones. Unclassified ones isnt correct. Read the declassified, three different reports and draw your own conclusions. There were always people who disagreed about intelligence. But we all heard the pressure. Some apparently werent convinced by that. Doesnt mean it wasnt there. You know, i guess, the question i would ask you is the question that colin powell asked in his wait a minute. The question that colin powell asked in his book. Colin powell would not talk to me for my book. And there were a number of people who wouldnt talk to me. Many of them claimed to have been doubters before. I didnt know about you. And i didnt write about the mobile labs before or i would have tried to talk to you. But, the people i did try to talk to, would either not talk or would not confirm the colin in the book called leadership said, around i found it very moving and disturbing he said he gets furious when he hears now about people who doubted the intelligence that he was given and president were given and he asked the question in leadership, where were these people when we were going to war . Where were these people when, dissent would have mattered . And that is that is his account. So what was chief of staff colin powell ace [inaudible] im sorry . I cant hear you. Larry wilkerson. I know larry. Chief of staff. [inaudible] Colin Powells chief of staff took out [inaudible] there were 36 actual fact all things that the chief of staff for the secretary of the state and the secretary of state decided were didnt come up with a fact all basis and [inaudible] in other countries as well. There were debates about the veracity of this intelligence. But they all came to the same conclusion. I mean, was striking to me when i went back and i interviewed english intelligence British Intelligence and Israeli Intelligence and some german intelligences, whether or not you wanted to go to war, whether or not their countrys policymakers warranted to go to war, they were not deeply divided about the presumed existence of wmd in iraq. What they disagreed was whether or not that was sufficient to go to war and people of goodwill could disagree about the second part without challenging necessarily the first. I mean i think that, there is a lot of rewriting of history about what americans were actually told. Before the mcclatchy papers wrote, very good very good article on aluminum tubes, americans already knew that the tubes, that there was an intense debate within the Intelligence Community about the tubes. They knew that not from mcclatchy but Michael Gordon and me in the New York Times because five days after i and michael and i wrote the story about aluminum tubes, we learned about the debate. And we wrote that story and put it in the New York Times and yes, i would have liked that story to have been on the front page but it wasnt. So you know, i think its i know if youre involved in the debate at the time, you feel strongly and you might have felt pressure but all people like me had to go on were, what we could get at that moment and subsequently the findings of these different panels that, you know getting it wrong was just as bad. Like the famous case involving curveball. Curveball. Which of course in the german intelligence was saying dont trust this guy. It is not not all the german intelligence, that is my case. They were not all saying that im not going to drag all the rest of you through something boring and painful. That is not accurate at all. Well also, once again being people have different memories. Tyler are who is an analyst, tyler drum heller, who was an analyst said tyler drum heller was an analyst,. Quiet. Let her finish. I think it is important that you should write an article or something about the classified part that we havent, you have written about the classified information . So you said there was only unclassified report . Where is your article about the classified report information . Okay. I would love to see it because i havent seen it. I, i was not, i did not report on mobile biological labs until we actually, the xtf, which was the group which i was embedded in iraq came across one of those labs, which turned out to be for rocket balloons. But, they were convinced the analysts that i talked to when i was there reporting on them as they were doing the measurements taking measurements were convinceed that these labs were for biological production. And bill broad and i wrote the first story about that. And then the cia issued a white paper saying that. We wrote that and put it on the front page. I werent back to iraq in june to talk to people, one of whom is now dead, so i can name him. He is was still in britain, david kelly, brittish biological analyst, who told me, was one of the people who told me the cia has got it wrong. David kay, who led weapons hunt, went on nbc this is biological lab assure im standing here, got it wrong. He didnt lie. He got it wrong. So we then did a third article that said, these labs actually appear to be for weather balloons for rocketry. This stuff look, what i wrote this book so i could talk about mistakes i made. I think it is really important to look at mistakes we make, Intelligence Community makes, so we can understand not make them again. But, when, when you stop doing that, when you stop going and asking the questions thats when you fall into convenient patterns of facts that fit your ideological, you know preference or something you want to believe. And it is really important every now and then for all of us to get out of our comfort zones. That is what i did in this book. I showed you how these estimates were put together. I went back and i talked to some of the people who wouldnt talk to me, who were presumably doubters and said why wouldnt you talk to me . At least one of them is in this room. And, i tried and go back and look at the story in the fullness of time. And i really hope that with your article, and others, 10 years from now someone else will go back and take a different look at it and well have even a greater understanding of what we got right and what we got wrong. The only thing we can all agree on i think, that the war as it was fought, whether or not it was justified was absolute disaster for this country and disaster were still dealing with. Why it is so important to keep looking at this issue. Right. We only have a few minutes left so im going to take three more questioners, if i could just group all of you with your questions and then well come back to judy to wrap. I just wanted to shift the controversy to valley plume case and ask you explaining what you did there and Valerie Plame. Yes. Did you also have a related question on Valerie Plame. Ill tell you what i didnt do. I never wrote about Valerie Plame. I never wrote a story about Valerie Plame. I dont believe my job as journalist is outing agents. Other people can do that. People who cover the cia can do it. I didnt think that is my job. I was told about her pretty early on but i was so consumed when i came back with iraq for how, about how we got this wrong, i mean, i had been out there with the xtf covering their search day after day, hundreds of places theaves ted. Coming up dry. We dug up everything from fighter jets to sofas. The iraqis hid everything of potential value and but i came back with a list of questions about why the intelligence was so wrong. And thats what i was focused on. In the course of my questions about that i came across a reference to Valerie Plame. Ill tell you how it happened, in the New York Times her husband had written a story an op ed page article saying basically that is where they lied people died meme began in earnest. He had gone to niger and looked at some of the intelligence and it wasnt what the administration said it was and the administration was pretty much lying. That was the piece so i began investigating whether or not that was true. I learned about Valerie Plame. I thought that i had learned about it when i was talking to Scooter Libby about the failed intelligence. It was only years later, after reading Valerie Plames book that i discovered that my testimony had been wrong because i had misinterpreted these very, very brief notes references to her that i had in my notebook. I thought, i felt horrible. I felt absolutely consumed with guilt. I had testified against Scooter Libby. I said i learned it from him. I probably hadnt learned it from him. I definitely hadnt learned it from him. But when i began researching memory and what we remember, what we dont, i learned what i had done which is called misattribution is one of the most common memory errors. It was part the Scooter Libby defense he was never her pitted to offer in any detail to the jury. Almost every witness who testified against him actually you can see differences between what these people told the grand jury, what they told the fbi, what they wound up testifying to. I am very open about my views about this i think the case once it was determined by the cia and it was determined long before the indictment of Scooter Libby, there was no damage to her, no damage to National Security. No damage to any source at home or abroad. As far as im concerned that investigation should have ended. Because there was a special prosecutor it didnt ind. It went on and on and on. It consumed a huge amount of newsprint but more than that government time. And because, i subsequently learned, through interviews that Scooter Libby very early on was one of the few people saying this war is going south. We are going to lose this war unless we shift strategyies and adopt the surge. Just as he was trying to make at that case he was taken out by the Scooter Libby investigation. It is a really interesting case. Armatige, the man who leaked her name, not once but several times, if you look at the conversation with bob woodward, he says, several times hey, that is quite a story. Dont think thats a story . Interesting story, dont you this i . This was not a casual reference. He was never indict flood why. I dont know. He was one of the people who wouldnt talk to me along with Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who put me in jail. Well wrap up at 8 00. Lets close out the questioning here. Offer two quick corrections. Four people leaked identity of Valerie Plame. Only one was indicted. Indicted for lying and perjury and obstruction of justice. Youre absolutely right. Second correction there was no one ever charged with leaking the name of Valerie Plame. Okay. Basically because they couldnt prove anybody knew she was in covert status. Speak into the microphone please. Second quick correction. Scooter will be by was not allowed to present memory loss defense, judge you will have to testify yourself to Lay Foundation for Expert Witness to testify. Libby wouldnt testify in his own defense. So my question to you is, your key testimony you said that when you met with libby on june 23rd, he was discussing what he called two streams of reporting on uranium and iraq yadayada. Second dream and at that point he said, once again this is a side mr. Wilsons wife worked at the cia subagency. So that was not correct . No. That was not correct. He didnt tell you that. No, he did not. No. Someone else, i had those references were in parentheses. I told Patrick Fitzgerald i use parentheses for two purposes. One, to remember to ask someone i was interviewing a question about information i already heard. And the second was to take note of something interesting, that the interviewer that the interviewee was saying that wasnt really relevent to my inquiry. When i saw, it is too in the weeds, but let me just put it this way. The reference the first reference was to bureau. Wife works at bureau. That was my question question mark . Wife works at bureau . If Scooter Libby had leaked the name to me of Valerie Plame and said she worked at agency he would never have said she works in a bureau. Why . Because the cia doesnt have bureaus. It has divisions. It has offices. But the state department, which was her cover, when she was a cia agent has bureaus. And the person who initially told me that she worked at the state department cia, used word bureau. And i remembered that only after learning what her cover was. Patrick fitzgerald knew that information all along. And never provided it to me. Never provided it to Scooter Libby which i think is more of a problem. That contradicts your other key statement. I have no recollection knowing Valerie Plame wilson worked at cia before my conversations to libby. Now you are saying you had notes before he did talk to libby. No. There were two conversations. The reference to winpac. June 23rd. Whole point of this book which is not that book, i didnt write. This is transcript. Nobody wrote this. Gene will be sticking around to answer let me put this memories are faulty even notes are faulty and one reason i wrote this book i wanted to tell what i now know and have learned about Scooter Libbys case. And i the more i learned about that case, the more i thought it was kind after travesty that it had occurred with so much going on in our country at that time. Okay. Final question and then well break it off and she will be around to autograph books. All right. A different question. A little off topic of your book but certainly related to conversation about getting it right, getting it wrong being limited to the facts that you have a particular point in time, im interested given your experience extensive experience in the middle east, how do you suggest we evaluate this accord being negotiated with iran . We might as well stick around for breakfast. Actually its a pretty short answer. With great skepticism. We think we know about the ayatollahs motivations. I dont. I dont know what he means when he says that he intends for iran to have 190,000 spinning centrifuges by 2020 or whatever the time is. I dont know what his real capabilities are. I know we found two facilities that he hid, that he lied about. That iran lied about all those times. I think, on fox news ive taken the position im not going to condemn an agreement i havent seen. And when i saw the i defended the interim agreement. I thought that was a very good thing. It was very much in our countrys interest. I think it worked out well. But i think we have to wait and see what the president comes up with. And you know, i dont know what that is going to be. I know at the moment the ayatollah and u. S. Congress are not making his life and that effort any easier. But, i just urge you once again, weve had many estimates of iranian capability. Im not persuaded given what i saw in iraq that we know much more about iran than we know about iraq. I hope we do. But i wouldnt count on it. And im not actively reporting that right now anyway. There is plenty more material in the book. We hope you will buy the book and buy it here in support of the wonderful work that brad and lisa today at politics prose. Thank you all for coming. Thanks to judy. [applause] [inaudible conversations]. This is booktv on cspan2, we want know what is on your Summer Reading list. Send us your choices booktv our twitter handle. Post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Send an email to booktv cspan. Org. What is on your Summer Reading list booktv wants to know. Next on booktv after words. Usa today columnist and Fox News Contributor Kirsten Powers while liberals were once champions of tolerance and free speech they are just the opposite today. She center viewed by sharyl attkisson,