The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The kohlberg foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. As fears grow of a widening war across the middle east, here in our shop we find ourselves talking about another war. The great war, or first world war, as it would come to be called, triggered 100 years ago this month when an assassin shot and killed austrias archduke ferdinand in sarajevo. Through a series of tangled alliances and a cascade of misunderstandings and blunders, that single act of violence brought on a bloody catastrophe. More than 37 Million People were killed or wounded. In america, if we remember at all, we think mostly about the battlefields and trenches of europe and tend to forget another front in that war, against the Ottoman Empire of the turks that dominated the middle east. A British Army Officer named t. E. Lawrence became a hero in the arab world when he led nomadic bedouin tribes in battle against turkish rule. Peter otoole immortalized him in the epic movie, lawrence of arabia. Come on, men what, in your opinion, do these people hope to gain from this war . They hope to gain their freedom. They hope to gain their freedom. Theres one born every minute. Theyre going to get it, mr. Bentley. Im going to give it to them. At wars end, lawrences vision of arab independence was shattered when the versailles peace conference confirmed the carving of iraq, syria, lebanon and palestine into british and french spheres of influence. Arbitrary boundaries drawn in the sand to satisfy the appetites of empire. A hopeful lawrence drew his own peace map of the region, one that paid closer heed to tribal allegiances and rivalries. The map could have saved the world a lot of time, trouble, and treasure, one historian said, providing the region with a far better starting point than the crude imperial carve up. But colonial power prevailed, and lawrence wrote to a british major in cairo, im afraid you will be delayed a long time, cleaning up all the messes and oddments we have left behind us. But then and now, lawrences understanding of the ancient and potent jealousies of the people among whom he had lived and fought was ignored. In 1920, he wrote for the times of london an unsettling and prophetic article about iraq, then under the thumb of the british. He warned that his countrymen had been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Not for the last time in the mideast would disaster come from the blundering ignorance and blinding arrogance of foreign intruders convinced by magical thinking of their own omnipotence and righteousness. How soon we forget. How often we repeat. There couldnt be a more timely book than this one 935 lies the future of truth and the decline of americas moral integrity, by charles lewis, one of our premier journalists who has inspired many of us in this craft to aim high and dig deep. First and foremost an investigative reporter, chuck lewis produced some of 60 minutes hardesthitting stories. He left cbs news to found the center for Public Integrity, one of the largest, nonprofit, investigative reporting publishers in the world. He wrote this New York Times bestseller, the buying of the president 2004, and four other investigative books. As for his new one, those 935 lies in the title were uncovered in a threeyear study of the rush to war in iraq by the center for Public Integrity and the fund for independence in journalism. It is, lewis writes, a record of what u. S. Government officials said to cause most americans and their elected representatives to completely ignore facts, logic, and reason. Timely, too, for another reason 50 years ago this august, president Lyndon Johnson, at whose side i was then working, seized on obscure and unverified events on the other side of the world to rush congress into the gulf of tonkin resolution, a motion that he turned into a blank check for escalating the war in vietnam. As chuck lewis rightly says, it was a monumental misrepresentation. Welcome. Welcome. Its great to be here. Do you think george w. Bush lied about iraq . Do you think Lyndon Johnson lied about vietnam . Yes. I do. You know, ive i tried very hard. You know, in the case of bush, i actually was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Because if someone believes it, if its a matter of conviction and theyve persuaded themselves of something thats untrue, is that a lie . Or do they just have misguided beliefs that, you know. And i tried to give bush the benefit of the doubt there. But over time, each passing year, ive decided that i was way too generous. And the i look at flatly did they make statements that werent true . The answer is yes. Did they decide they were going to willfully do that over a period of two years . And was it an orchestrated campaign . And it was false statements. Those were not coincidental. If you look who said what, when. And the when, especially, is quite relevant. This was an orchestrated campaign. Which, of course, scott mcclellan, the press secretary to bush, publicly essentially said in his memoir after our report, iraq the war card came out, by the way, a and so i believe in both cases, Lyndon Johnson and george w. Bush, they knew what they were saying was not right. They knew it was not precise or accurate. And they knew it would mislead the American People but also do what they wanted to do. In both cases they had an agenda. Thats what i believe. Well, youve said that we should never underestimate the capacity for selfdelusion. Who was it who said that convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies . I mean, they can believe it so completely, be so selfdeluded, right . That wow, exactly. All the bush folks. Bush, cheney. No one has done a candid interview with them where they actually pin their ears to the wall and ask them the tough i have not seen anyone do that. Thats not coincidental. Theyve never been called before congress. Now what is that about . We used to have this idea of checks and balances. We dont have any checks and balances. The Bush Administration also destroys tens of millions of emails that no one could see. So, i mean, and no one said anything about it. They had 69 email accounts that were done through the Republican Party while they were conducting business, knowing thats a private corporation, not part of the United States government. So, all of this deceit and elaborate efforts to deflect the public from, oh, yeah, the truth, its pretty outrageous. And we dont and so well never see some of those emails, ever, i think. And that, to me, is tragic. But, i have enough, ive seen enough now to make a conclusion. Yes, we were absolutely misled. And yes, they did lie. And they maybe they were lying to themselves. Maybe they actually have come to believe what theyre saying. They probably, many of them, some of them, at least, probably do. But theyll never say it on television. And i dont even know if theyll tell their spouses. Who will ever say . I dont know. Your book traces from the gulf of tonkin right on through the vietnam war. And it traces from the buildup to iraq to the aftermath of iraq. And in both cases you clearly outline a pattern of deception that was continued over a long while. Its clear. In both cases those in power knew what they were doing. And those in power had a plan. And those in power orchestrated their plan. And the American People, in both instances, were completely in the dark. And thousands of lives were lost in both cases. And the fact that we did and its not a partisan thing. They were two different president s, two different parties, 40 years apart. But guess what, folks . It was the same basic thing. We wanted to do a war of choice. When the reports came back from the gulf of tonkin, know t. I was right. Right there by it. The tragedy is he acted before they could be verified and before right. He could get it right. And then he started telling himself that he did the right thing even though the initial information was misleading. And the more he told himself that he was doing the right thing, because there was this danger out here, and that he used it to get the gulf of tonkin resolution passed, he then felt he had to keep telling it. Yeah. Pretty soon then youre a prisoner to your statements. Yeah. I understand that dynamic. What have you learned about how washington goes to war . What i learned is that its orchestrated. They frame it in a way thats palatable to the largest possible audience. And theyll say it many, many, many times. Thats the most recent way to do it. Why is the press so complicit in helping them frame it . Well, they basically do the stenography of listening to whatever those in power say and reporting it. They see see their first duty wrongly i think to just report whats said with very little analysis or critical commentary. And theyve been doing that, actually, for a very long time. But theyve done it. Its gotten worse over time. The Washington Press corps is a prisoner of what theyre assigned to cover. And thats basically whatever officialdom tells them. But if you Say Something several times, hundreds of times there are scientific studies that show we will tend to believe it if weve heard it a lot, even if we actually are not clear at all whher itsrue. Trujust come to assume its why otherwise we wouldnt be hearing this, right . And so were basically prisoners of whatever folks tell us who are in power. The problem now is government has more p. R. People and Public Relations firms than journalists. And we actually have onethird fewer professional reporters. Thats a really rotten combination there. No wonder were easily bamboozled. So for the last two weeks you could hardly turn on the Television Set without seeing the architects and the cheerleaders of the invasion of iraq 11 years ago being asked their opinion now of what the u. S. Should do in iraq. So there was Abcs Jonathan Karl just the other day turning to dick cheney and asking, what would you do in iraq . There wasnt a bit of irony in his voice or in his eyes. Well, its an abomination. Theres a moral problem here. Theyre not telling the full truth. And theyre presenting themselves, the media, a false image. But i know, as a veteran from the networks, actually, i know exactly what that dynamic is. And you are rewarded for the gets you have. The people you big names that the interview you get. Yeah, the right. And if you rip them to shreds, guess what, theyre not going to come on your show. Ive noticed that, as Mike Wallaces producer. Youve lived in washington how long now . Boy, wow, its really scary. 40 years. So what did you learn in doing this book over the last nine years that you didnt know . Well, its possible i was in danger of becoming cynical before. But i have to say the extent of the lies. I actually didnt realize the pervasiveness. I just thought that occasionally some turkey would lie. I mean and but the it was the extent of this. This is a systemic problem we have here. We have an inability to get the truth in real time. And the media has complete inability to find out the truth in real time. And when its right in front of their face, they dont always report it. And so we really have a problem here because, if we dont know what the truth is in this country, we dont have a country. Its end of story. Its not our country anymore. This is fundamental. And if the public doesnt care about facts then journalists, frankly, are not terribly relevant either. I had a professional crisis. Like, why am i doing this if no one cares and false information is what they believe, not the actual information . You know james risen, the New York Times reporter, right . Uhhuh. He has refused to testify before a grand jury, under subpoena, and reveal a confidential source of information in his book, state of war, about the secret u. S. Campaign against the Iranian Nuclear program. The Supreme Court has refused to hear his case. And risen now says he will go to jail if necessary. What are the stakes in this case . Well, theyre very high. I mean, theres very theyre very high for jim in particular, obviously. He could end up in prison, found in contempt by a judge for not testifying, not answering some questions the government asks. If it gets to that point. There is a chance that the u. S. Justice department will choose to not proceed at this point. Theres been at least some indication thats possible. I dont know that itll happen. Im certainly hoping that happens. But theres a dirty little secret about National Security reporting. Theres only about 15 or so people that do that fulltime in the United States. In a country of 300plus Million People, only 15 or so do it for a fulltime job. And jim risen happens to be one. And as you know hes the one who coauthored the domestic surveillance stories that won the pulitzer back in 05. Today the dirty little secret in washington is that we have thousands of cameras. Every cell phone has a gps tracking device. And you also cant check into any Government Agency and sign in to get in to meet with someone because the government has that information and theyll know who came. And if you call them, their calls are potentially monitored. And there is a general belief widely shared that your emails are scraped, or at least accessed. And i know journalists whove been told privately by folks in the nsa and elsewhere that thats basically not untrue. And so you have a situation here. They know who his source was. They do . They do. And they have multiple ways in which theyve identified who it is. And thats why they brought a case and they have enough evidence that they hope and they think to convict this person. Theyve already they want to convict the source . They want to convict the source. And they want to have jim risen be the one who helps them do it. But they dont want to necessarily betray their intelligence ways that they found out may or may they may be legal, because theyre government employees, but theyre going to appear to be unseemly because they involved monitoring of employees and pulling all kinds of things. So we have a little another strange thing going on here where the government doesnt really want to go anywhere near this subject. And so they would like so were all looking at jim risen and whether he goes to prison. And the real issue is actually the government. What are they mad about . Well, he did a story and a chapter in his book, state of war, that actually showed that the cia sent Nuclear Information to iran. Oops. And they are livid. Something we might want to know about. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Right . Might want to know that the government responsible to the people was actually making these serious mistakes . Yeah. Its unbelievable that they were doing that. And its unbelievable. And so risen breaks that story in the book. And they are mad that he did this. And they, frankly, embarrassed them. And so theyre trying this is retribution. I think it has very little to do with anything but retribution. But i also think what is really disturbing now is the difficulty of doing this type of reporting was never easy. Now it is probably more difficult than its ever been in u. S. History. And president obama has used the espionage act against journalists more than any president in u. S. History. I think even nixon only used it once against right. Daniel ellsberg, who leaked the pentagon papers. And obamas used it how many . Eight times. Its unbelievable, and the espionage act. Right, the espionage act. And who wouldve ever imagined that . This is something obama never talked about in campaigns. He never publicly said he was going to go do this. And like a lot of things in his administration, hes trying to have it both ways. Hes supporting a shield law, to some extent, in congress for journalists. But on the other hand, hes criminalizing investigative reporting by going after sources. And so hes throwing a bone, or being accommodating to the National Security establishment in washington, which, you know, in just a coupleyear period, did 76 million classified documents. Far more than any time in u. S. History. And so hes a prisoner to that community to a large extent. And this is a fellow who didnt know anything about foreign policy. Was a state legislator in illinois and was a oneterm senator. And suddenly hes become more hawkish against reporters than george w. Bush. I dont know why anyone i dont know anyone who saw that coming. What does he know we dont know . That is really a peculiar thing. And its not been adequately ventilated. And journalists havent asked obama directly the few times they had direct access. So whats at stake if we do silence and punish whistleblow whistleblowers . Well, whats at stake is whistleblowers wont come forward. They know theyre going to be prosecuted. They know theyre being monitored. A lot of sources have dried up. There have been some panels in the last year, too, in the journalistic realm. And folks have talked about how its harder to find people to talk now because they fear retribution. They know that the surveillance has gotten incredibly intense. And the stakes are incredibly high. And they get that. And so a lot of folks who might be inclined to leak and leakers are wonderful. Because they tell reporters what they dont already have and they cant find in any document. Theyre very essential. If Edward Snowden had offered you the nsa documents, would you have published them . I wouldve liked to. He didnt call. But if he had . I would. I would have. You know, when i ran the center for Public Integrity, we posted the patriot two act. We were told by the top aide to the attorney general, dont do it. You will be sorry if you do. And we quoted them by name in our article, and we posted within minutes. For my younger viewers, whats the patriot two act . The patriot it was called the patriot two act, the domestic enhancement security act of 2003, to be precise. And they were introducing it just days before the invasion of iraq, perhaps hoping no one would notice. It took the patriot act, which substantially limited Civil Liberties for large number of americans and in general, upped the ante about security in america and it took it to a whole other place. The patriot two act was far more prestrictive. When you released this document against the wishes of the government, were there any personal repercussions to you and your organization . There werent any repercussions from that. But i, you know, i had other things happen. We were sued by russian billionaire oligarchs for a story we did about dick cheney and halliburton and their Business Activities in siberia. That suit went on for five years. It was dismissed. But, you know, generally, were not this is a fortunate country in that sense. We dont generally kill journalists or even beat them up, unlike other countries. Can democracy die of too many lies . I dont think theres any question about it. Youre usually the one who quotes scripture. But my only thing i could ever quote i may not even have it perfectly right but from proverbs. When there is no vision, the people perish. That happens to be one of the alltime, most interesting statements ive ever heard. And i think if you dont know whats going to happen and you dont know what is happening, how are you going to embrace any problem of our time with any seriousness . If all youre ever doing are two parties fighting over everything and everything is debatable, and you can never reach a consensus on any single thing, and you dont even have common goals anymore, what are we here . Starting to wonder. And so i actually it goes pretty deep here. I think this is so fundamental. And i dont i think the only thing we have that we can learn is i do believe that old saw, information is power. I think if we learn what the truth is, we find out what is actually happening, and we have the facts, we can act on them. But there are still Many Americans who wont. I reconcile that, myself to that. But there are a lot of americans who need to frankly, start paying attention. The book is 935 lies the future of truth and the decline of americas moral integrity. Chuck lewis, thanks for being with me. Thanks for having me. At our website, billmoyers. Com, well connect you to that iraq war card, a searchable database of the 935 lies that led us down the path to bloodshed and chaos. Thats all at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there and ill see you here, next time. Dont wait a get to more moyers. Go to billmoyers. Com for more essays and video features. Funding is provided by ann gumewitz. Carnegie corporation. Democratic engagement and the advancement of International Peace and security. At carnegie. Org. Ford foundation, working on social change. The herb Albert Organization to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. More information at mackfound. Org. And dedicated to heightening Public Awareness. The kohlberg foundation. Barbara g. Fleischmann. By our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. n . nosnc [old record scratches] [music begins] [edith piaf] it is love that makes you love. [woman narrating] when i was growing up, my father had this little box of recordings, and it was all these great french crooners like jean sablon, charles trenet, but there were a couple of records of edith piaf. And just looking at her, she looked so tragic to me, i didnt even want to listen. It took a broken heart, my broken heart, when i fell in love for the first time. It is love
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.