The desert, 10 months after lockerbie. And that was 1988. All of our focus was on that whether it was the brits or the americans. Camethe french plance forgotten. It was not the same visibility except that this man who represented seven clients, seven citizens who were on that plane which went down killing everybody. Foughtthis search, he against the desert, he fought against the french bureaucracy and president ial rock was very upset by various activities of stuart newberger. So today, i want to leave you through a short presentation by him on his book and then a wonderful q a with david, correspondent for the Washington Post and now we are very lucky, a scholar with us here at the wilson center. I am sitting down and they are taking off. Ahead firstnt to go and give an outline of the book and then we will have a little q a here . Stuart newberger certainly, i want to thank diana and her was an Center Including the wilson press and counsel and all the folks here and ive been very involved with the center for a number of years and supporting the activities, which is one of the most, i think, respected, nonpartisan places left in washington mom made in the country. Washington, maybe in the country. It is always an honor to do any kind of program here but when there were kind enough to support my case to tell the story. I am a partner which is down the street, a few blocks at 1001 pennsylvania avenue above the restaurant which diana might recall. Differentdo a lot of things in my Legal Practice but predominantly, ive spent the last 20 years working in what i call the area of international disputes. That covers a lot of Different Things that one of the things i have done is represent victims of terrorism. I sue a lot of governments for all kind of things but in particular in that this area of my practice, i sued libya, i sued iran quite a bit for blowing up embassies around the world. About a case going on sudan about providing safe harbor to al qaeda when they blew up embassies. I am very familiar with this space. The one thing that this session today is about is one case against libya, i have handled several. I was asked to represent seven American Families lost their loved ones on the september 9, 1989 terrorist attack, a suitcase bomb placed by libyan uta, aon the plane by french air might. It is now bankrupt which took off from congo and landed in chad to pick up passengers, including the wife of the u. S. Ambassador to chad. Up to way to is daily run Charles De Gaulle airport to france, the worlds busiest airport, after it took off from chad and got up to cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, the bomb, which had been sent to a timer come exploded in the baggage area. Destroyed if the aircraft, the jumbo jet, there were over 170 innocent passengers and crew. Ecrashed into the desert its crashed into the desert over 40 square miles, one of the most inhospitable places on earth. The crash site is almost 400 limiters from the next village, there are no trees, no grass, literally nothing but sand. Down, i plane went remember, we are talking slightly Older Technology for aviation, it took a little while for folks to even know what had happened. And, eventually, the french maintained airbases in chad to this day sent up some spotter planes and they saw some debris in the desert and had a few paratroopers, rugged french paratroopers jumped out of the plane and landed at the crash site. And they found 170 people had been killed. It was the beginning of the biggest Murder Investigation and Terrorists Attack in french history. 9. 5, 10 months after the pan am 103 747 had also been blown up out of the sky seven miles above the earth when it was flying from london heathrow to jfk new york. Aat flight, which i carried large number of americans, particularly kids, college kids spending a semester abroad, comfort chriss break to see the familys, that, of course, was in the headlines in the news continuously. Christmas break to see their families, that of course was in the headlines and the news continuously and was the most notorious until at 9 11. While our attention was very much focused on the pan am which became known as lockerbie, tv cameras, people there all the time, investigators and like, the uta flight was a frigid african affair and was investigated only by the french government. One of the things about this book that i think you might find interesting is how the french investigators led by a dogged career investigator judge joan is after years of searching the desert for clues and evidence and on detective work and forensics just like on ,v, they found in the desert among the debris, a tiny piece of work Circuit Board. We are talking about what of the most inhospitable places on the earth. There is not so much as a cigarette butt or a discarded coke can because there is no roads. They found the Circuit Board on mother debris. Most of the aircraft is still there like a chevron. Like a ship wreck. The only thing they brought back is they real simple the baggage area its the only thing they brought the back is the baggage area to reassemble. This littlend Circuit Board, theres a picture in the book and after several years, they could not figure out where it fit in the plane. They went out to california, Mcdonnell Douglas now part of boeing and went to the engineers and said we cannot figure out where this goes, could you please help us . They said it is not from our airplane. There is nothing out of there, it has to be from your airplane. They said, here are the manuals. That is when the judge and his to realize they may have had a the key to unlock the mystery of who was responsible for killing all of these people. After a very long, i will call dogged investigation and the french had extraordinary human intelligence and other intelligence network, much better that we and the brits and many other countries and they used it. Eventually found that Circuit Board had been manufactured in a little oneman shop in taiwan. They found out when it was made in what down the street to where the Circuit Board went and went into a bigger piece of machinery and eventually it was assembled into a timer. By in German Company which had sold it to a libyan intelligence service, a few months before the explosion. They even have, it is in the book, a signed receipt from the head of libyan intelligence for these. It is one of the extraordinary detective stories and history. I do not even know this and i work in this space until i met with the judge at his office which i describe in the book and many meetings i had with him and the files we were provided. That is one reason to talk about the book. The other is how politics play a big role, not just with diplomacy that domestically here, the Bush Administration, george w. Bush had worked very closely with me on the case at the time. Very intense relations with gaddafi and we were taking him off the terrorism list and he wasterrorism list. He was cooperating, in a manner of speaking, with the war on terror. He handed over his Nuclear Program from the pakistanis. Someones husband was involved in this diplomacy at the time. At the end of the day, we know ,hat libya did turn belief and of course, gadhafi met his fate at the hands of his own people. One of the last things i will mention before dave and i have a conversation about it is what i call the human aspect of this. Not the policy, not the diplomacy, not the investigators, but just the fact theyng human beings are not just statistics. I describe the trial i put on libya defended the case, by the way. Partner came in and he knows all about it because he worked with me on this and many others in our team and we had a trial in front of judge Henry Kennedy right down the street. This was the first time the families had ever met each other. Ones who hadloved been killed were strangers to each other on the plane. They were just passengers. Thatpicked them to be on flight, including the wife of the u. S. Ambassador. Even though we tell the story and theres many aspects we might find interesting, we want to remember these people are affected to coast terrorism is designed to affect not just the people who are killed or injured, but their society. That is really the reason i wrote the book. Happyhat as a intro, i am to begin a conversation with you. Very much. U i was a middle east correspondent for the Washington Post. In 1985, the National Security correspondent back here in washington. Really had my eye more on lockerbie then uta flight 772. I want to make a few comments before we get into q a. The more i read this book, the more i see the same issues you face in your time that we are again facing today. Then, no oneback knew how you could make a theyase bomb, and then discovered it was being put along the edges and the plastic explosive was being put in inside the suitcase along the edge. And they unravel the mystery of petn, which is a very high, very deadly explosive. And everybody started looking after and worrying about suitcases and whether they matched with passengers, etc. , etc. Today, we have the same issue with ipads, which the israelis discovered, apparently the Islamic State had figured out how to put explosives inside an ipad. In the government today is weighing first, they have already for bitten ipads bidden ipads to be in the cabin den ipads to be in the cabin on flights for middle east, but they are weighing for bidding them on all flights to the United States. There are concerns about another type of bomb that could go off in our ipads. They could bring it on the plane and blow it up. The other parallel is the issue immunity ofeign government. No. 6, the bush clinton. Clinton administration got through a law that allowed victims families of these horrible incidents to sue any nation that had been designated a sponsor of terrorism in both iran and libya on that list and that was a crucial breakthrough for you. What do we have today . We have a law that was passed last september called the justice against sponsors of terrorism act, which is aimed at saudi arabia because the victims of the 9 11 the families of the victims of 9 11 have been trying to sue saudi arabia for allegedly supporting some of the among the saudis 19 hijackers back in 1970 17 years ago. Allows the families to introduce suits against the government of saudi arabia in american courts. Laterre we are, decades fighting the same issue with the same problems. So, this book if you read this book, a lot of the issues they are still alive and front and center of the problems justice for victims of terrorism. So that is my oh inning comments. Its instructing how these issues go on and on. Even to the extent, you know, you talk about congress. You have to deal with the white house. The u. S. Government has different interest in these issues and you had to deal with these and it is true today because obama opposed the bill i was talking about last september and congress pushed it through because they have different interests and you have to weave yourself through this when youre trying to get justice for victims. Well get to the heavy issues later. How did you put this book together. Did you keep a diary. You describe in great detail, the color you have, the places you wince, the people you met. How did you do this . Not easily. R i did not take off a sabbatical, which would have been very nice, by the way. I was very busy with my law practice that had me flying around the world and we do a lot of international arbitration. I was pretty busy with my day job. After we finished doing the work , not just on the case, but then after, as you will find from the story, president bush and colonel gadhafi with the unanimous support of congress decided we had done too good a job going after libya in this case and that judge kennedy had andded too much money to us some of the wikileaks we later isght said that gadhafi furious. He wants president bush to get rid of all these cases now. Too good a job and as a result, the president of the United States and all these others said this judgment will be gone. Pay a billiond to dollars to do that. Int was the lockerbie case all of these others. And then we had to spend time sorting out technical issues, which we did. That and ie finished had sort of finished working on the case, i had a big cart in my office with all of the files. I would thumb through them and think of something and say hmm. Eventually i would take some notes. Outline. I just kept fleshing it out and fleshing it out. I probably spent a year working on that outline and figuring out where in this egg file in my office were the original files in the case. I have a lot of firsthand information. I was able to start piecing it together and i did a little bit more supplemental research. I had almost everything there. So i relied heavily on the files i had already gotten to know so well, and thats really how the book came together. Eventually when i had a decent manuscript, i came here to didon center press and they two peerreviewed. That was very helpful. They brought in folks. People who had worked at the state department, cia, and the like. That was very helpful. I had the Legal Advisor go through the manuscript and he is, of course, in the book. Someone i had known since i was a young lawyer, and all those things together, it was a very slowmoving train. But then i find out from friend to write books that is how long it takes anyway. Something of interest to me, im not an legal expert or anything, but your case depended on what the french had found. You are able to into that into a u. S. Court or it isnt that unusual . Mr. Newberger oh, very. Probably unprecedented. Libya had a legal defense. They did not fail to show up. Delay,hole strategy was raise jurisdictional objections, never deal with the merits. Every time they would lose characterized as a jurisdictional decision they would make an immediate appeal to the d. C. Courts. Only sovereigns can do that, by the way. So, the yoyo in, up and down, dragging out a million legal issues, when we finally got to the point of trying to prove they were liable, the biggest piece of evidence we had, of course, were the files from the criminal investigation and prosecution, and in france, this files are not public, unlike here. Can the street here, you just walk in, a journalist can walk in and the Washington Post has a reporter that covers the federal courthouse and you cover the files. We had a lucky break. The victim organizations under right tow have a legal just paid in the criminal prosecution with the government prosecutors. As a matter of napoleonic law, and they have the full files and as i explained in the book, which i think is more than a wink and a nod from the french investigators who were not happy with how their own government had dealt with this, taking the results of this extraordinary detective work and throwing it under the bus to deal with gadhafi, we were given access to those books. They translated selected portions. We introduce that into the case with justice kennedy. , they freakedyers out. They said this is outrageous and judge kennedy bravely ruled, after a lot of legal maneuvering he would admit the criminal files and the judges findings in the criminal case in paris to the case down the road here. That was really the case. I am not aware of that ever happening before or since. There are unique. Very unique. Very unique. Very unique. Has that been followed up in other cases . Mr. Newberger im not aware of any and i would have been made aware of it. Congress has now twice lifted these sovereign immunity of governments of state not of governments, but of states in cases regarding terrorism regarding victims. How are governments reacting to this precedent of lifting sovereign immunity . It really is a violation of International Law . Lets talk about that. Theres a lot to that. There are many courses taught in law schools here and abroad about the subject. Simple subject. In 1976, congress did what most countries have done, which is they lifted sovereign immunity by commercial entities owned sovereign states. They have insurance companies, other Oil Companies, so Congress Really was doing what a lot of western European Countries had done and others around the world and said, if the country is acting in a commercial capacity, you can sue them. Because if they break a contract, there has to be legal or address in 1976, are country took a major step that was different than the rest of the world, youre right. The canadian government copied this. There are differences but we do not need to get into the technical differences. After we got an adjustment in an unrelated case, a case am handling against iran involving the 1983 bombing of the embassy in beirut, lebanon, i took that with my colleagues where we were told about assets that iran had and we thought we might have a chance to domesticate the judgments. After several years fighting when the arabians did show up because now the when the iranians did show up, because now the money was at stake. They have a habit of showing up when the money is at stake. The Italian Court said, please leave us alone. Take this case away. In the International Court of justice at the hague in another case involved with germany and italy unrelated to rtheir way they said those silly americans have this terrorism exception from 1976 which we clearly believe violates International Law, and so that convinced a lot of other governments they should not touch this issue. Today only the United States and canada have a law like this for terrorism, but i should add, remember the United States is the largest economy in the world. The largest, probably the most respected legal system on the whole, and our currency is in the swift banking system. Wantuntries like iran that u. S. Dollars. To it like, cannoe these judgments are a real pain meaning ourfor them government says, nope, these are legitimate under u. S. Law. You have to do with him. Last year in the case were not involved in, the United StatesSupreme Court ruled for the Marine Barracks bombings, which we are not handling, my friend issued some very big judgments they are they discovered assets, citicorp, a judge in new york have frozen the assets, and ultimately the u. S. Supreme appearing andan arguing against it said, nope, you can hand over almost 2 billion of these assets to the victims. Has sued the United States government at the International Court of justice because of that case. This issue is still out there. Going to say, i think it could well get more serious because, you know, im the unitedw of states and its war against the Islamic State in syria. We are dealing with the syrian kurds. Whom the turks regard as terrorists, and related to the the kurdish faction in turkey, which we have agreed is a terrorist organization. But for the sake of our war to do in the Islamic State, we are pkkng the syrian faction of i in syria and i am waiting for whether turkey is going to lift americas sovereign immunity and go after us and turkish courts. Where does this lead us . If you can lift these sovereign immunity of other countries, is it going to come back and haunt us . The reciprocity issue or comedy, which is the big word in International Law, has always the reciprocity omity, which is the big word in International Law, has always had to be careful about these. Present her to one in turkey has issues, including with us he did not have a good visit with President Trump last month. His own bodyguards are being criminally prosecuted and they probably are going to get sued to rid putting all of that aside, turkey would have to be very careful about lower about allowing those suits, because that might result in our own government saying, fine, people can sue turkey. I think that would hurt turkey more than us. Theres huge amounts of trade and banking, that sort of thing. As a lawyer whose firm is deeply into this, it makes for a very interesting day. I do not know where it is going to wind up. One thing i am very hopeful of is that more people will now be aware of these issues. Not just lawyers working on technical issues or a few sophisticated journalists who cover the cases. People need to understand these things. It is part of our world. It, the we learn about better conversations not just the lawyers can have, but politicians and diplomats and citizens and academics. That is another reason i wanted to tell the story. Think ittoric, but i raises a lot of issues that are very much on the burner today. Was my feeling. These issues go on and on and on with no resolution. With that, lets begin with questions. Who would like to begin . Diana . Mr. Newberger probably should do the mic, because we are doing the cspan thing. Thank you very much. When i first read this book i could not put it down. It was like a detective story. My question has to do with french practice as compared to american practice with providing a remedy for the victims. A lot could be resulted in familycant money for the of those who died on that plane. French culture on the other hand did not see the same need to compensate the families. Different culture, which i would like you to address. But also, the president of france reached a commercial deal with the president of libya for the benefit of French Companies and somehow you got that commercial agreement between two state hostiles. How . Mr. Newberger the power of politics, media, money. That is the short answer. As you see from the book, and diana is referring to a long history in france, separate from what we were able to do here when the french originally inducted their criminal investigation, which i mentioned, the french criminal six, system indicted including gaddafis brotherinlaw for murder, for murdering 170 people. This was their lockerbie. This was their 9 11. Without exaggerating. Sharadn president decided, well, this is all very nice but i would rather decided, well,c this is all very nice, but i would rather french Oil Companies were able to get in. We will not insist you send these six accused individuals, extradite them, to stand trial. Just pay us a couple of dollars for it was nothing. 30 million. Then you will allow billions of dollars of trade to take place. According to president chirac, that was how he was protecting the french people. Getting and before the americans and britt. As you know, french law and lawure, as most civil countries, not common law, do not like or encourage compensation for victims of anything. They think it is a silly american concept or common law concept. The brits are little closer to us because they have common law history. The political,is thel deal, not just for americas, but for the brits. Only americans were allowed to sue. Will includeaid we everybody and lockerbie and they agreed on a family payment, but staggered 4 million 4 million when the Un Security Council lifted sanctions, another 4 million when libya was taken off the u. S. Terrorism list and the last 2 million when the u. S. Economic sanctions were lifted. By the way, that last 2 million had never been lifted. After we got the judgment after a lot of political pressure, underent chirac said pressure from his own people, a french life cannot be worth nothing. He sent a delegation to tripoli and negotiated a deal. Eventually a Million Euros was paid in a humanitarian settlements with the Gaddafi Foundation if you will excuse the expression and humanitarian indeed. And that was paid by air france to the people who had died when the concorde crashed at charles heathrow airport. The french were like, we have some of our own precedent. Some of that money is ultimately how the french victim constructed who this extraordinary memorial you will see it in the book. It is so big, you can see it from outer space. I have pictures of it in the book. They have that money because my client did not dissipate in that settlement. We stuck it out in washington and got 10 times more than that by sticking it out and also holding it accountable, something that never really withned in france or lockerbie. That is the longwinded answer, diana, but it is a short answer in my world. Stuart thank you for your work in an and your ongoing work with the wilson center. Seats at a policy table dhs, commerce, treasury and you had an opening to make policy recommendations of things that should be considered today, what would two or three of those sound like. Lets go beyond the issues and talk a little bit about what we should be thinking about. Experience as an advocate there is a commercial aspects, but mostly the families. Certainly in our own legal system domestically, i think we have had some experience and some success recently trying to where victims to go to court to not have to fight with one another. My firm was able to get congress to establish the Victim Compensation fund at the department of justice, which my friend ken feinberg has been overseeing as a special master where they distribute moneys to people who have gone to court, gotten these moneys, but have never collected. Callsing money from what i that actors, it is not taxpayer money. It is money paid from International Companies from europe, asia, who have pled guilty in our courts to a criminal violation of sanctions programs. Telecoms and the banks. We just have the first fairly decent payments out of that. I would like to see more of that institutionalized. I think it is warfare and predictable. Our republican friends in congress were much more in a brick that for that reason. That is one thing that comes to mind. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] mr. Newberger that is correct. One fund, they just paid out approximately 1. 1 billion dollars. A lot of our clients from our firm who have judgments against iran for the Embassy Bombings in beirut and Embassy Bombings in other places, other folks, the coach of the Golden State Warriors is a client. His father was the president of American University in beirut. He was assassinated when it happened i was there when it happened. Mr. Newberger there you go. Steve, his mom, his brother, and his sisters have been clients of our firm for many years. There was the notorious terrorist attack killing probably the second most important american in lebanon after the ambassador in fact, the New York Times magazine did a big story. We were able to get payments. Steve is donating his share to charity, just to point out. Its just an example of how people from all walks of life in depth in this predicament. Sometimes we can help them. Sometimes we cant. Funds. E are frozen iran has money frozen inside the United States. Can you tap into that for the pavement . Mr. Newberger the real question is, do they have frozen assets or blocked assets . The answer is not much. Mentioned that they found in an account, actually in cities court in citicorp, but ,eld in an overseas account that was probably the single biggest pot of iranian assets paid even the u. S. Supreme court said it should be done. There is not much left. That is about it. Going after iran otherwise is very difficult. The case of Terry Anderson, where did that money come from . Terry anderson was a colleague of mine in beirut when he was kidnapped. Mr. Newberger Terry Anderson was the chief middle east correspondent for the associated knew when he and david each other. When he was kidnapped in 1983 1985. Mr. Newberger excuse me, 1985. He was held for almost seven years under conditions well, you should read his book to find out how terrible it was. Some pro bonooing work for him and Congress Passed this law and he asked us to represent him against iran. We did. They defaulted. We were tipped off there is a Foreign Military trust account at the pentagon of hundred 40 million which the shop shah had sent over as an advance payment. After the islamic revolution, the money sat there. Im going to tell you a story that gives me angry. We convinced congress and the clinton administration, eventually i touch on in the money to let us use that to pay the first there were a handful of judgments back in 2001 and terrys was one of them. There was a brandeis student from new jersey who was killed. She was doing a year in israel. To was doing a bus trip gaza. Her family was very prominent in suing it around. Accounts you may want to fast forward to the last days of the obama administration. We were always told at the state they were my client, so i have a long history with department. Right before president obama , president obama and particularly secretary john kerry, this was secretary kerrys plan was trying to help president rouhani of iran with and i he is moderate, put big quotes on that, italics and underline. Was returned to the iranians. Not even a check. This is the notorious palace of cash. It was shipped to switzerland. Ok, president obama made that decision because iran had sued the United States for that money. Here is the part that really got me. President obama authorized a billion dollars in interest i got paid to the iranians even though the decision had been made back i guess under Ronald Reagan or carter, then reagan, that they would never put it in an interestbearing account because that would look bad and look like we were taking it over. So we gave the ring is not only the 400 million that the iranians not only the 400 million that we paid, but over 1 billion in interest. Why was that money not paid to our people . What about cia Intelligence Officers and usaid personnel and guards at embassies . I say that because we represent those people. These are our people were killed by terrorism. Even though i voted for president obama twice, i have to tell you, that left a bad taste in my mouth. I think it was a major mistake. I think history will not become for that. But he was the president. He had the right to do it. He did after the election, by the way. Another question does your colleague at the end of the table have any comments . Mr. Newberger my partner he has lived through not all of it, but most of it. Cspan,eing filled for be warned. Can you explain why there is a difference between trying to when sovereign immunity you are protecting your citizens in a foreign country like where the embassy is located and a case like the saudi case where you are claiming terrorism within your National Borders . That is what we call a setup. My firm isare clear, not involved in the saudi part on either side. So, we dont have a stake in that all. One of the principles that allow congress and president clinton to enact this law in 1996 is ultimately the president and the secretary of state retain the legal, statutory, Constitutional Authority to decide what countries will be on this terrorism list or not. There is a long regulatory process and a fairly detailed set of technical and policy details that the state department, the treasury department, the justice department, in a c, pentagon have to go through in a very public way to go through this list or take them off. Involved process. 20 years ago there were, i think, eight or Nine Countries on it. It racked under hussein. North korea. Sudan, which is still on the list, although it is now kind of friendly. We are going through that. We we can have a case have a case against sudan, as i noted. Two but on. Obama took them off. When the president and the secretary of state retained that authority, they were the gatekeepers. By allowing the president and the secretary of state to retain that authority, it preserves, if you will, our constitutional balance of who really decides at the end of the day whether we bring these cases or not. But and here is the big but one of the reasons president obama veto the saudi bill was he objected to the fact that the president and the secretary of state would no longer have this authority. That is one of the most significant differences between that law and the law that we it ran, libya, syria, and the like. That is going to be heavily litigated in new york where the 9 11 cases are being led get it. The saudis and the other institutions they have hired the cream of the washington legal world. Legal mindse best we have in the nights states. All of these issues will be seriously litigated at the trial level, may be the Supreme Court level, and the lot itself is written differently than the law we have been dealing with in terms of how we feel this. Liabilityr to prove than we have in our cases. Families,ur client the 9 11 families, they have a very steep climb ahead of them. Out, thatner points was an attack inside the united dates. The most notorious we have had and ever will have. Yet, the legal rules, the that are factors that, very complicated and i think it will take several years to sort that out. My guess is at some point the Trump Administration is going to side with the saudis in the case. After all, what is the first country trump visited as president . Saudi arabia. And he said it was terrific. He did not say anything about the bill. Mr. Newberger not publicly. Im sure it came up. Other questions . Yes . Also comment in contrast to what you just said, the time when president george ofbush requested both houses congress, both sides, democrats to do billsans, without any discussion and you mentioned the prominent washington, d. C. Law firm representing libya at the time, were they involved . How did that happen . Mr. Newberger yes. I know you read the book because you told me before we started spoiler alert. , whiche got the judgment was very large, the government of libya hired a very distinguished International Law firm to come and help them out. Highly respected lawyers. They represent a lot of governments. Thats one of your specialties. While the case is pending in the court of appeals, the gadhafi regime and his lawyers and the Bush Administration which was nearing the end of almost eight years and the world on terror was not going very well in afghanistan, was not going very gadhafi was there and wanted to do deals. They had been doing deals. It was not just starting. We were not strangers to the process, obviously. But our judgment was so difficult for the gadhafi regime to deal with. And president bush had, as we say, other things, on his mind, that we simply found out the u. S. Senate had enacted the libya claims resolution act under unanimous consent in one minute. It was never introduced. It was never in a committee. Much becauseretty if it was in the senate, that wouldve stopped that. That was a decision that the president of the United States and the u. S. Senate made. As a result our judgment was wiped out. Our client still got what was called the lockerbie deal. 10 million per, plus extra money for the aircraft. There were other things. We were not frozen out. But the president of the United States made a political decision. Congress agreed with it. They thought it was the right thing at the time. We were obviously not very happy about that. The bushc thing is administration had been helping us get the judgment legally and in a very real sense, and by the have never seen any administration, ever do that , not even close. We described that process in the book. They helped us get a finding of liability. But once we got the damage award , things changed. Voila, as they say in france. Anybody else . Questions. I was wondering if there were Lessons Learned from this case about Airline Security . Essentially Airline Security as it comes to the middle east or as africa in general, if you had anything to say about that . Younewberger sadly, and are chu young to remember this, there was a time where pan am you are too young to remember this, there is a time when pan am was the premier u. S. Airline. Until lockerbie, really. The lockerbie attack could not have come at a worse time. The Airline Industry was changing so much. They eventually went bankrupt. During the case that was brought in federal court against pan am and its insurance carriers by the families and i mentioned this in the book it came out in discovery. Livia was not involved in the case. Libya was not involved in the case. Its very difficult to sue airlines, by the way. The law is very much against it to protect airlines. But as you see, when you read the books all of this comes from public court records. Pan am basically not only violated every receipt of security in allowing a piece of luggage to go from one plane to another without any check, they lied about their own Security System to their pilots. Because they did not want to make them this is the word they used they did not want to make the pilots jittery by telling them they were not xraying the bags. So they lied to their own pilots and then after the attack, it out thatt it turned pan am had received a warning that a bomb in a suitcase was going to be on this flight and it had got lost in the paperwork. And after the bombing, someone who worked for pan am tried to cover that up. So, the Lessons Learned certainly by the aircraft industry are dont do that. And as a result of the lockerbie experience, and frankly, the lawsuit brought by the families against pan am, pan am ended up paying for her 500 million to the families come separate from the libya situation. This is back in the 1990s now. Insurance companies, of course, paid a lot of that and pan am no longer exists, mostly because of their own negligence, which tells you a lot. This is the most prestigious, respected airline in the United States maybe the world. Very sad. All of those lives were lost because of stupidity and negligence. Any final questions . Is itu just end by getting easier to get justice for victims . As itit as complicated was, you know, 18 years ago . Do you feel you have made progress in this whole process of trying to bring these cases tosu closure and get money for e victims . We have made a lot of progress and weve certainly had a lot of success. We have also had a lot of failures. This is not an easy business to be in. We have had to turn down a lot of the ms and say we cant do anything to a lot of victims and say we can do anything for you. My firm has an obligation not to give them false hope. We have certainly done a lot of things that have helped us better understand how you can possibly have good results. We are still handling cases. We have a big case against sudan. Its very public. This is not secret or confidential. I think the lessons that we learn from the libya experience might help us there, maybe. We have other things we work on. But this is not a cookiecutter kind of practice, and you have to be creative and you have to be determined, and do have to like my law firm you have to be patient. Of these things take many, many years, sometimes with great investment that we never get back, and sometimes with clients who give up and think they are never going to get anything i should tell you the funds we mentioned that the department of justice, you know some of our clients were injured in Embassy Bombings 30plus years ago. Some of their parents or children were killed 30plus years ago. And we just got them checks. Its very gratifying to be able to do that, even after all that time. It is hope, but it takes a lot of work and a little bit of luck. , thank you very much. This is fascinating. You will be outside signing books . Mr. Newberger if anybody wants one. Looks are outside. Books are outside. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] interested in American History tv . Visit our website, cspan. Org history. You can view our schedule, preview programs, and watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films, and more. American history tv at cspan. Org history. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas cabletelevision companies and is brought to you today i your cable or satellite provider. Next on American History tv, Virginia Commonwealth University professor Kathryn Shively meier talked about jubal earlys experiences as a confederate general, focusing on his loss to Union GeneralPhilip Sheridan during the 1864 shenandoah campaign. She also analyzes earlys memoirs and explores how he attempted to rehabilitate his reputation after the civil war. This free fiveminute this 45 minute talk was part of a conference hosted by the university of virginias center for civil war history. Our third speaker we are thrilled to say is one of our shively meier, an associate professor of history Virginia Commonwealth University. Her Research Interests involve the evolution of Americas Armed forces from these 1630 late 19th century with a particular focus on the interactions of soldiers with their Natural Environment and mental and physical health. Her first