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Today I'm pleased to welcome Charlotte Bennett. She joins us tonight to speak on her book the people versus Bush One lawyers campaign to bring the president to justice and a nationwide grassroots movement she's encountered along the way. Naomi Wolf bestselling author of The End of America and give me liberty. Claims that the people versus Bush is an energized no holds barred account of her efforts to hold our leaders criminally accountable for shredding the Constitution. This is a woman who is not scared to call illegality by its true name and who believes in the rule the law the way the founders intended. The accountability movement deserves broad attention and deep support from across the political spectrum. And this book is an unmissable part of its story and fame prosecutor and author Vincent Bugliosi says in this very important inconsequential book Cheryl Dennen a true American patriot who has been on the frontlines of trying to bring Bush to justice informs all who care deeply about this country. What has to be done so that it never happens again. Author and attorney and attorney Charlotte Dennett has contributed to and fought for a wide variety of causes as an investigative

journalist she found herself questioning the nation's highest power after witnessing the unlawful actions of elected officials. As a lawyer she has represented her fellow residents of Vermont negligence medical malpractice and wrongful death cases and as a leader she ran for attorney general General with a promise to prosecute George W. Bush for murder. A proponent for the accountability movement Miss seeks to educate and enlighten the American public with a steadfast hold on her principles. We are thrilled to have her here with us tonight so please join me in welcoming Charlotte Dennett. I wanted to also say it's wonderful to be in Massachusetts. I grew up in Massachusetts I grew up in Winchester. I have a brother who teaches philosophy at Tufts and I went to college at Wheaton College in southern Massachusetts. So to sort of kick things off here means a great deal to me. And then there's the timing. My God how could I believe what would happen. And not

just because Martha Coakley lost but because Martha Coakley is in my book. And the reason that she's in my book is because she's an attorney general and when I was running for attorney general in Vermont that was the fall of 0 8. I was doing comparisons of how different attorney generals did their job. And she shown she I was looking at the big big issue other than prosecution and my campaign was to close down Vermont Yankee. And I know that means a lot to residents of Massachusetts who care about Pilgrim as well. And Martha Coakley it turns out received a letter from 35 different community anti-nuke groups praising her for the work that she was doing trying to make sure that that radioactive storage

was stored above was not stored above ground but was put in a safe place so it wouldn't be prone to terrorist attacks. And Coakley was always sort of taking the lead on this issue to make sure to protect the health and safety of the people of Massachusetts which is what the attorney general is supposed to do. Whereas I found that the incumbent in my state of Vermont was very laid back never took initiatives and I was looking on his Web site and that said that the attorney general is supposed to be vigorous in protecting the rights of the people whether it's from environmental degradation or also criminal behavior. He has played a very laid back role. He's a very entrenched Democrat. And so I just found the comparison very interesting. And so I feel like you know you're lucky to have her as your attorney general. I'm sure you're very disappointed in the outcome of the election

as I might. But you know it's it's really a sign of our times isn't it that that this would happen in Massachusetts that there would be such an upset. And having tracked not only a movement that began with impeachment and then morphed into prosecution because of frustration and frustration within the Democratic Party base that their leaders were not moving on holding the top officials in the Bush administration accountable. Their frustration is recorded in my book and I found myself being at once appalled.

The more I learned about what the Bush administration did and you know my charge was to prosecute for murder not just war crimes. And then the more I found out about Bush's lawyers and how they had crafted the torture memos. As one professor said at a conference the torturing of detainees is the work of lawyers. So as a lawyer myself I took that very seriously. But I did find also that there was a lot of confusion when Obama came in and many of us who track human rights were very happy to see that he had said he would ban torture and that he would close Guantanamo and that he would increase freedom of information strength and freedom of information and so we were all glad about that but then we started to see backtracking and flip flopping.

And I will go into a little bit of that in my talk today so that maybe you can come away and feel a little bit more like you've got a handle on the events of yesterday. But I can tell you honestly that a lot of people have felt very very let down by Obama and so far the what I'm hearing is comments from I guess their independence those are the people that came out in droves and voted against Martha Coakley and I kept hearing stories that it was partly that that Martha Coakley was was not a good candidate. She didn't take her candidacy seriously. I heard also that there was a there was a feeling that the Democratic Party was acting sort of arrogant or that it had assumed that it was in the bag the Kennedy's seat. And then this upset happened.

One woman said I think Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth and I can tell you in the human rights community that rings true. I mean what says it more than the famous statement that I prefer to go forward instead of going backward and flip flopping on whether to release the torture memos or not whether to release the torture photos. What were the reasons why he wouldn't release the torture photos. So what I found is I started with Bush on a whole issues of accountability and as I as Obama came into power and I was trying to trying to figure out where he was coming from. I found of course that some of the same policies that Bush had had implemented were now being adopted by Obama. And I wasn't totally surprised about that especially on the issues of foreign policy because you come into a presidency and you suddenly discover that you're not the most powerful person probably in the world but there are

others around you that are equally powerful in their own ways. That's certainly what John Kennedy discovered when he came into the White House and my husband who did a major biography on Nelson Rockefeller and how he built an empire in Latin America. The name of that book is thy will be done. We learned that when Kennedy came into office he was completely out of his league he was a new senator and he turned to the experts. And we're seeing the same thing happening now. You know what Obama has had to rely on a lot of Wall Street people he brought in people from the National Security team of Bush and surrounded himself around experts and then tried to act. And I think found himself oftentimes in a box that's giving the best reading. And I think that we still we still need some more time to fully assess where Obama is coming from. I heard somebody on the radio today say that the the the greatest achievements of

FDR were not in his first year they were in his second and third and fourth. But we're a different country now too. So that's also a factor. We are the largest superpower in the world and we have an empire to run with 700 bases so how much flexibility does a president really have. But the point I want to make about this book and the real reason why I wrote it is is the feeling that if we do not hold the Bush people accountable for their crimes in office then future occupants of the White House we'll repeat them and act with impunity. And we're already seeing a bit of that happening. That's why I can't emphasize strongly enough I start with the preface where I say many Americans consider it common knowledge that we have just lived through eight years of a rogue presidency. The question is have we set the stage for another rogue presidency in the future.

Many believe the answer is yes. And as you will read in the people versus Bush one way to prevent prevent that is by prosecuting high level officials for crimes committed in office. So this book is a cry for justice and accountability. Many Americans press by hard times are forgetting are forgetting that the epidemic of wall of lawlessness during the Bush era was a major cause of their of their misery. The right the Republican right wing is inflaming discontent. Dark times could happen again and they could be worse. And I think we're all feeling that a little bit right now. So this is this is a plea to take this accountability movement seriously. It didn't have a name when I started my campaign and it just sort of happened. I'm not exactly sure who actually gave it this name but it was very strong

by the elections of 0 8 so strong in fact that President elect Obama's national website had as the top issue wishless prosecution of high government officials. That was the number one issue. And within two months polls were being done and there was a Gallup poll that showed that the majority of Americans wanted some kind of criminal investigation or an investigation whether or whether there was going to be a criminal indictment or not. That's what they wanted. Now. My issue during my campaign was the issue of prosecuting Bush for sending our troops to war on false pretenses. In other words murder. How many of you have seen Vincent Bugliosi book or read it. Quite a few of you. OK. Very interesting book. This is the book that influenced me. I had

decided to run for attorney general in it before I was even put in my hands and I wasn't sure what kind of a role I was going to play. I am a member of the progressive party in Vermont. We do have three parties in Vermont. We have legislators sitting in the legislature. So we are a viable third party. And for reasons that you know if you want to ask me about it I'll tell you. But for the longest time we worked as part of the Rainbow Coalition and we just felt like there needed to be something different than the Democratic Party. We felt it had lost touch with its base. So our party formed in the early 90s and I hear I was being asked because I'm an attorney to run for this position and I wasn't sure what my issues were going to be and then a friend put the book in my hands and said You should read this book she said. And there's something in there about what we can do in our different states and I was wondering

what she would what she meant. So I started reading the book and I was first of all I read through his evidence that he writes as to why and how Bush misled us into war. And the crux of the issue is that he went before the American people in October. I think it was October 10th 2002 and told them Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and in doing so he was fabricating what his own CIA had told him a week ago a week previous to that there had been all the intelligence agencies had put out an estimate of what were some of the biggest threats and how how much of a danger was Saddam Hussein. And that report did not say that he was a threat. And then what happened is that the intelligence agencies worked with Bush and he put out

what's called a white paper which was a summary of their findings and they just deleted out all the reservations about whether Saddam was a threat. And so then Bush went before the American people and outright lied to them and it's on the basis of that lie and fabrication of what his own intelligence people had told him that we can hold him accountable for murder. Now I know I can get into the technicalities but consider it this way. Supposing he were to get on the stand and defend himself what would his only defense for a murder charge be in this case. Does anybody have an idea of what it might be. Yeah. That's right self-defense. Yeah. How are the lawyers told them to do it. That too that comes into the whole you episode which I will describe later on but. Yeah. And the problem is it doesn't work because we know that Saddam Hussein was not a threat. So therefore he can't

argue self-defense. So the whole argument falls around that. There are other issues many people want to know how could you do this in the state when actually Bush never dared set foot in Vermont. That's how strong the feeling was in Vermont. And in fact the wonderful little town of Brattleboro actually passed a resolution saying that if he stepped foot in Vermont he'd be arrested and which was something that that sort of struck me when I was trying to decide whether to take this up was you know Vermont What a perfect place to try this out because the animus against the war in Iraq was was huge at least 60 percent of Vermonters were opposed to the war. There was also an extremely strong impeachment movement in Vermont. They had some 37 towns passed a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney and then there was a very sad factor which was that Vermont has the highest per capita number of soldiers who have died in the war in Iraq. So for all those reasons I

felt like this is a this would be a good testing ground. And why did I come to decide to do it is because two sentences in Balios book one of them was that any district attorney or any attorney general in any state can actually do this can actually try to bring an indictment a criminal indictment for murder under state criminal statutes. And he lays out the entire legal framework of how that can be done. And so if you want to ask me during question and answer period I can tell you how or how you get jurisdiction in your state. You know we still haven't found somebody I lost. But and I sort of figured like there aren't going to be a whole lot of attorney generals or district attorneys that are going to step up to the plate on this because they risk losing their job. For one thing whereas I was just running for the office so I didn't have that much to risk. But he's Bugliosi is still working on this and he's got some irons in the fire. But until we get somebody who really commits to

it you should all think about your own communities and whether you know a district attorney and brings some of the evidence I have on my web site frequently asked questions for anyone who wants to really get into this. My web site by the way you can get to it by going to people the Bush dot com and that will lead you to my campaign and the book and so on. But in any event it can be done and it must be done. That's what we feel. You have to take the long view of this. And you know Pinochet Pinochet was the first head of former head of state to actually be arrested for the crimes that he had committed 20 years ago. And he was arrested in a hospital bed in London. And I was talking to Felipe Sands who is a famous international lawyer and he was explaining how during some extradition hearings because they were trying to get him out of London and into Spain Spain had wanted to

prosecute him. He he sat next to Pinochet's lawyer and Pinochet's lawyer said you know I had told my client to support the torture convention and never realize it which makes torture illegal and never realizing that it was going to come back and bite him. Twenty 20 years later so you have to take the long view on this. And one of the things that I always say is that what I did was just another step on the path. Everything is incremental. We got some surface from here who was ran the Northeast impeachment campaign did a fantastic job at the time when I got to know her. You had a you had a web listserv of like hundred thousand people. It's shrunk since then sadly it's shrunk and it is because of the Obama phenomenon. This is one thing that I document in the book. We find that

that's exactly true. You know people are just so relieved that Obama got in that their activism was seriously scaled down. But there's still the stalwarts out there and now we're hoping that we're resurgent again. And I'm hoping that my book can play a role in that anyway. OK. So let's talk a bit about what's happened with Bush's lawyers. I picked up John Hughes book and I actually bought it. It was hard to do but I did it just come out. You know he was on how many people saw him on Jon Stewart. None of you saw him. All right. It's on video. You can get it on video. All right John you are right John Yoo was the chief drafter of the infamous torture memos and he was in what's called the Office of Legal Counsel which is the elite powerful

office of lawyers inside the Department of Justice whose job it is to advise the president. And so he is now under investigation as is Jay Bybee and a few others for possibly not giving just impartial advice that a lawyer gives a client you know this is optional This is Option B This is LEGAL this isn't legal you could go this way you could go that way and that's what they have to do. You know President needs that advice but there's a very strong suspicion out there that that's not what John Yoo was doing that John Yoo was actually skewing the law to fit a preconceived policy. And what I do in my book is I did I develop the evidence. I believe that shows that that's precisely what he was doing he was Memling up and that the actual war crimes were already being committed

before he could write his legal memo trying to justify them. And what I do is I put all of this in a context that I don't think anybody's done. Bugliosi hasn't done it. None of the other authors on the war criminals have done it and it's probably because I have a background in the Middle East. I actually was a reporter before I was a an attorney. And if you live in the Middle East and you're reporting you're inevitably going to bump up against a three letter word. Anybody know what that might be. Oil. Right. So what I've done in this book is I've put it all in an oil context and basically that oil context is I have an opening statement but darn it. No I didn't I didn't clip it here but I'll give you the gist of it. It goes something like this that the minute

that Bush and Cheney came into office they had an overarching ambition which was to get the oil of Iraq. And that's well-documented now that's even been documented from people inside his own administration and even on the evening of September 11th he was sitting around with his advisors and the gist of that conversation was find me away find me a way to get into Iraq. And then of course then the next step is find me a way to get Iraq's oil. So they set to work. And the thing about John you that a lot of people may forget as one of his top lawyers to help him find a way is that his his drafting those torture memos came much later. The first thing he did is try to figure out a way to enhance the power of the president so that

he could just go out and wage war on Iraq. He could just do a preemptive strike. And that is John use expert expertise as far as I'm concerned that's why he was brought into the old sea. He's an expert. He is a he's an expert in presidential war powers and what he did is learn drafted memos to expand that war power. So they came up with some pretty interesting ideas right after 9/11. The first thing they tried to do is not only get a congressional war resolution that allowed them to go after anyone associated with 9/11 and the terrorists they wanted it to go to allow him to do preemptive strikes wherever there was a terrorist threat and it was actually Tom Daschle Senator a top senator that stopped him and said what this is crazy you can't go that far. You wonder why later Tom Daschle will

and my senator from Vermont we're the ones that got the anthrax letters. We can go into that if we want to but to people that were constantly up against the the Bush crew were Dashiell and Leahy and the way that Daschle said you can't do that. So what happens. John you crafts a memo in secret and basically says because the president as commander in chief he can do anything he wants and this book is now his effort to justify everything that he did. And you'll read here's here's the subtitle A History of executive power from George Washington to George W. Bush. So the case he makes is hey this has been happening since the days of Washington and Lincoln you know when you're in a crisis you got to say you know you got to stretch things a little bit. And and that's because you're protecting the people from national security issues. All right. So what I did when I picked up the book is I looked in the index and I thought well I'm going to see what he has to say

about torture. So I looked under torture. Torture is not in the index. And then I looked up waterboarding waterboarding not in the index. War crimes. No nothing on war crimes in this index. Ethics probe of you and by the. No. What does that tell you. Pardon me. And I looked up enhanced interrogation not there. I looked up interrogation. It's not there. OK. So what is this begins with w. it's a whitewash. I mean that's really what it is and here he is he's going around right now. He was on the Daily Show last week putting out his theory that everything he did was was kosher in the long view of history and not taking any responsibility for those horrendous official official

torture policies. It's never happened before in this country where it's the inner core that is actually authorizing it justifying it legally. We all know that our CIA has engage in torture in the past in many different parts of the world sadly. But it was never elevated to this level of official sanctioning. And the problem is that they know that they're in trouble you knows that he's in trouble. Gonzales actually who was the White House counsel and later became the attorney general actually wrote a memo saying this was an I believe this was in August 2002 which said stated that because he had removed al Qaeda and Taliban from the protections of the Geneva Convention that this would lessen

the chances of domestic criminal prosecutions. OK. So they know they are in hot water. And I've heard that you know Bush Cheney they're all nervous about this why do you think that Cheney is going around you know trying to say that what he did was right. Because I think they're worried and they know because there is this legal concept called the doctrine of universal jurisdiction that any country can go after people for our crimes of war crimes. And that's exactly what the Spanish are doing right now. There's two Spanish prosecutors that are hot on this case. And the thing that brought it out was the torture memos and this is one thing I have to say when Obama released the torture memos in April 2009 the cat was out of the bag you know he

actually anguished over this. And I think he anguish for several reasons. Number one was it legal yes it was a court order. He had to turn them over because because the court had ordered it it was through a Freedom of Information request. I think the ACLU was the group that had requested it. So he he anguish. And then he said OK let's do it. And oh my god. Well talk about the shit hitting the fan afterwards because it really the next thing you know the next day he had to go down and talk to the CIA and assure them that they wouldn't be prosecuted. And and I and I'm going wait a minute because at the same time the New York Times is saying you know this is really now focusing on the role of of Bush's lawyers. I mean this first of all what are these memos show. They show that it was OK to use waterboarding. All right waterboarding is a known crime it's known torture. It's even been prosecuted in our own country. And here we have

you and Bybee saying that it's OK to waterboard some of these top officials. So by the way here's the other element of the torture angle that I just want to touch on briefly because you know he's talking about murder and then once Obama gets into the White House the whole M-Pesa ships ships away to torture and it start to really annoy boyos. He kept saying torture torture was torture he said we send these poor troops overseas four 4000 of them died. And you know hundreds of thousands of Iraqi died which is the more serious crime he was upset for that reason. But when I started looking into the torture I began to realize that there was a way to tie in war crimes into the crime of torture and this is how it is and it's chilling. It's horrible. I still feel goosebumps when I talk about it. These people knew and I'm talking about the lawyers and I'm talking about Bush

and some of their close circle. They knew that the method of interrogation that was being proposed by the CIA was not designed to get actionable intelligence. Then what was it used for. It was used to elicit false confessions and they had learned about this technique from the Koreans. And there was a training called Seer's. It's a basically it's an acronym but it's how to evade how to escape such kind of torture techniques. This has been taught to the military how to evade this vicious torture techniques if it's done on you but not how to do it to other people. So then you have to ask yourself OK. So they implemented this. Next thing you know you has crafted a memo

about how the detainees seized in Afghanistan. These are the first people that were tortured seized in Afghanistan. What are you going to do with them. Are you going to put them in a regular court of law and be tried in a criminal court or are you going to put them in a regular court martial. If they've committed a crime. No. Their idea was to create the military commission system and they did this so early on after the invasion of Afghanistan that one attorney has even posited that you and Bybee had created these military commissions which have no protections right now no protections for the accused no due process. They they have literally been called kangaroo courts even by conservatives. The reason for doing it is because they knew they were going to torture these guys. They knew it and they set up the military commissions and then the next thing you know they start changing the definition of torture so they can waterboard. All right. So

start leading up to the war in Iraq right. And what is happening. They can't find a pretext. They can't find the weapons of mass destruction. They're getting more and more desperate desperate. So what do they do. They start torturing people to get them to confess that they had ties to Saddam Hussein and 9/11 when they didn't and we don't now how rampant this is. But the fact of the matter is there's an example where you're tying in the the crime of sending our troops off to war on false pretenses to the crime of torturing detainees to further your case to send troops to war on false pretenses. And you know the really sad thing is that Yosei was telling me that to this day when you have troops going into Iraq when they come up to the gates the entrance of a city there will be the pictures of the twin

towers up there because that's what the troops think that they're fighting for. And I noticed that when the cadets were waiting in in West Point you know when Obama came to talk to them there was a picture on the wall street journal and there was a young cadet reading a book called catching Obama. So they think that they're going in there to you know vindicate 9/11. But I think I just realized I got off the oil subject. So the point is the Afghanistan the war in Afghanistan in a certain sense became a stepping stone to the war in Iraq because of the false confessions that they got out of the Afghan detainees prisoners that allowed them to go and say see what these terrible people have done and now Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 so we've got to attack Saddam Hussein. It was a complete lie. And meanwhile as you

all know eventually the troops go in and what's the first place the troops go to. You know where it is. Tell you the oil installations in the first place that they're set to guard now. I'll give you one other angle and it is in the book. About regime change and what's behind that regime change getting rid of Saddam Hussein turns out as sort of developing my chronology I really as a journalist and as a lawyer I swear by chronologies because you can see all sorts of patterns starting to develop right after the invasion of Iraq. We hear that Benjamin Netanyahu the prime minister of Israel is exulting that within just a matter of weeks the oil of Iraq is going to flow to

Israel. And what the plan was and this is all documented the plan was that after the invasion there'd be a regime change. They wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein did not approve of a pipeline connecting the oil of Iraq with Israel because they'd been enemies for a long time. And you know Saddam Hussein knew it wouldn't fly with the Iraqi people. He was opposed to it. But if you had somebody else in there who did approve of it then everything would be golden and the person that they had in mind was Chalabi. He was an exile in Iraq and the whole plan was bring Chalabi in get that oil flowing and you see there used to be a pipeline connecting the oil of Iraq to Haifa. And one of the reasons why I happened to know this is because I've become sort of my own little expert on pipelines because my father was a master spy during the war two stationed in Beirut Lebanon which is where I was born and

died a mysterious death when I was an infant and his last mission was in Saudi Arabia and I knew from his last letters home that what he was working on was the root of the different possibilities for the route of the trans Arabian pipeline that was going to carry the oil from Saudi Arabia to an undetermined terminal point on the eastern Mediterranean and at the time of his death the whole question was what is going to terminate in Haifa which already had a refinery and was the terminal point of an earlier pipeline that had been built in the 30s the connected Haifa to Iraq or was the top pipeline terminal going to be in Lebanon or was it going to be in Syria. And so once I got onto the whole pipeline angle of things I began to realize that they had huge strategic importance. In fact they have had huge importance from World War One right up till the present. You know one of the great prizes of World War One was the oil of Mesopotamia. That's what the British wanted

and you just keep going. One of the great prizes of World War II was the Americans getting control over the oil of Saudi Arabia. And of course the great prize now in Iraq is seizing the oil and controlling it. And the thing you can't forget is that once you control the oil then what you've got to get the oil to market you've got to ship it. So anybody who is involved in the oil trade is going to look at pipeline routes. So that's just another little angle to the regime change that I do discuss briefly about the book Inside the book. Let's let's I'm going to end by being gone probably too long. I will. I will. I will simply end by saying that I can't emphasize enough how important it is that people keep up the pressure to hold these people account. I mean let's face it folks we almost lost our country. That's

how bad it got. And we we could have a return to that war very easily and very quickly. And so we in my opinion have to be vigilant in protecting what's left of our democracy. And I say what's left. You know it keeps eroding and being frayed the larger our our empire is. But you know we there's still some breathing room. And there have been other countries that have empires and they've survived and flourish. And so that's what we need to do. But I would maintain that the only way to do it is is to take a hard line here not truth commissions which my senator from Vermont proposed at the very time people were clamoring for prosecutions suddenly Leahy comes out with the idea of a truth commission which never had a chance of passing.

We found out that in the book. But that prosecutions are the only way to send the message we've got the infrastructure in there we've got all the information we've got tons of information in order to convict them. And I would just. Well obviously I would encourage you to give my book to people some of those people who may have voted against Martha Coakley and say look we understand that you feel like people aren't listening to you. And I really do understand that frustration. But you also need to know that if you get those Republicans back it's not going to be the people's seat. You know that was a very powerful catchy phrase that he used that the Senate seat was the people's seat. And on the one hand I understand there was this anger that was to be assumed that it would go to a Democrat to fill Kennedy's shoes. So I understand that anger. But when you got some Republicans that are

like him I guess Scott Brown he's quite conservative. I do think he said something about not wanting to give any rights to those terrorists you know or our money for their lawyers. So you see we should all be real concerned. And that's that's my pleade is to is to spread the word and help build a new accountability movement. You know it was always hanging on there during the the Obama effect and now it's got to start being resurgent again so I will stop there and answer your questions there's two things that we're aware we're waiting for. Number one is this internal ethics report on the lawyers and it's done by a group called the Office of Professional Responsibility which is inside the Justice Department and it's the first report came out in

December 2008 and it was a scathing indictment of the Bush lawyers and what happened is a former Attorney General Casey was was appalled and concerned and he actually said that the that the lawyers the subjects of the investigation should have the right to review the report and change it. And I didn't. I looked at the regs. I don't see anything in the regs about them having the right to do that. But that's what happened. And Mukasey even wrote a 10 page rebuttal. So I'm in that I'm with a group of attorneys and journalists we're calling ourselves the Robert Justice Jackson stere white the Justice Robert Jackson steering committee and we're a group that we've just filed a Freedom of Information request insisting that this report that's been held up for over a year be produced because in my humble opinion you is very key to understanding the

culpability of his superiors and we're all afraid the report is going to be watered down. So we put out the foyer a report will be will be writing about it and we will see what will happen. So that's one thing that's still ongoing. The second thing is is that is that Holder the attorney general did appoint a special prosecutor and the reason he did it is because actually the inspector general of the CIA had come out with a report that was also a scathing indictment of the torture policies the war crimes inside the Bush administration. And apparently he was. Holder was so disturbed by what he read that he felt that he had to appoint a special prosecutor and that was a brave thing to do. Again those of us in the human rights community were little concerned that he's not going to go high enough that is he's he's sort of dropped hints

that he's limiting it to just some CIA people who actually went beyond the guidelines that had been established by you and Bybee and had done things even more horrific for instance than waterboarding. And so that's what he's looking into. And John Durham is the special prosecutor who's brought been brought in. There's another horrific crime that's being investigated. I'm not sure if it's by his special prosecutor. I don't know if you heard about the the the the trucks of aft of Afghan detainees where they were suffocated. Did you hear about that story. They were driven to prison camp and they were allowed to suffocate inside. And there were American personnel that were in charge of this convoy to a prison camp. And then everyone when the doors opened like most of the people had suffocated inside and then they were they were thrown

into a mass grave and killed. I mean it's horrific. That should be investigated. And I say it should be investigated in this book. There is a third thing that's just come up. In fact Scott Horton has just written a piece in Harper's which states that. That's that. At least to date detainees who were called a suicide earlier. And I think it was 2006. Horton has with the help of Seton Hall which law school has determined that first of all the official report is full of holes and he's actually gotten guards to speak to him and they say that they were murdered. So how many detainees were murdered in Guantanamo. It's all. So that's why I say it's going to keep coming out much as the powers that be want it to and it's not going to end. And finally there's the Spanish. So Holder knows this. They've told him they've written him a letter.

They said we have the evidence. We know this goes right up the chain of command and we want to know what your intentions are because if you don't do it we will. And so holder has to worry about that as as for my run for attorney general. Actually I had to I had to handle a whole host of issues and it's just that the prosecution wanted it just became such a big deal that I mean that's what the newspapers focused on. Bugliosi was up with me when when I when I announced my campaign but like I say actually medical marijuana was not the issue then although it's so close to passing it's going to happen soon and I'm quite certain. But I had to deal with it. There'd been a murder of a young woman. And so domestic violence and how you deal with her. Her uncle who had just been released from prison and they were trying to draft a new law so he had to deal with

that. And I proposed a whole lot of different changes. Attorney General is actually a very interesting position. And if anyone in this room is an attorney you should think about actually you don't even have to be an attorney to be an attorney general. But the more I was studying it the more I sickened my God. I mean it's quite powerful because you have control over both criminal prosecutions and civil litigation and you can do really good work if you take it seriously and protecting the environment. And as I told you like Vermont Yankee was my my second biggest issue that I had to address and debate. But yeah I mean you know you have to do is look at the statute and just go to your attorney general's Web page and see all the things they do and what I have heard is that Coakley took on some pretty big characters. I didn't have time to see what she did other than on Vermont Yankee but she seemed to be more fearless in

trying to help people. I thought certainly than my own attorney general in terms of you know I think people are going to be debating the Coakley loss for a long time and it surely it must be a combination of things. But you know when she got before the mike What was she saying. There's a lot of anger out there she said and you know I don't think she mentioned the economy although certainly there's a lot of anger about that and I'm not even sure she said health care you know what she said. Does anyone remember. But you know what I heard her saying is people are very angry about two wars she said and they're angry that nothing's being done for the soldiers once they came back. Now I don't know why she focused on that. But that suggests to me that there are you know maybe a lot of anti-war people didn't show up at the polls. I have no idea. I mean legislators listen listen when I look at what happened with with

Senator Leahy in Vermont he here he was saying before Obama took office Vermonters said so what's going to happen about prosecuting Bush and Cheney and what did he say. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. Right. And then the Web site you know and then we'll see what was it it was the Web site and then there was the poll. They have to listen and now is the time. Now is the time they've just been sent a huge wakeup call that people are angry that they are not being listened to. And I saw it in in the people I talked to there was there was an aloofness. There was a I mean this truth commission thing I mean on the surface it looked like a good idea but then a bunch of us Romanos met with Leahy in private and we kept saying Why why don't you just use the tools you already have and just do a criminal investigation you

need a truth commission. And by the end of the conversation he told us he says I'm not going to happen. The truth commission isn't going to happen because I can't get any Republicans to back it. But I was told that he knew from the outset it wasn't going to happen. So the point is I think that it was sort of a maybe it was sort of like a containment exercise or an art. You know when you go to the highest levels they protect their own and I don't think that any senator was going to prosecute the president. I don't think they were going to do it. However we're just at the start of this. So what you need to do is think of where to put the pressure and as people of Massachusetts man it's the burden is really on you. I would I would suggest because everyone's talking about you now what does this all mean. So rather than just say you know like oh dear and wring your hands. Get proactive and I will. I mean once that

one place you can there's a look first of all. The back of my book has 10 pages of resources for the accountability movement and I'm still finding people. I'm still finding Web sites. And these are people like they're average people. They're people who love their country. They're people who cherish their constitution. There they are left center right. That's all they want to do save their country. And so you will find all sorts of resources in the back. You should have teach ins on Afghanistan. That's real people really need to know why we're in there. I have a pipeline story to tell you about that. But I don't have time it's in here. So here we are we're in the Athens of America. It's time for you guys to really step forward and save our democracy and take this loss and recover from it and move forward. But do I have qualms about the

fact that there could be foreign legal systems that are going to start messing around with what's going on in our democracy. And my response to that is my response to that is I have to tell you I'm glad the Spanish are doing what they're doing because they're keeping Holder's feet to the fire and it's really up to our government officials to do the job they're supposed to do and that is to insist that no one is above the law including the president. And by the way you know people think that's so hard to think you could prosecute a president. Well how come Nixon was pardoned. Hello. What would have happened next and if he wasn't pardoned. OK so it's you know there's nothing that says you cannot prosecute a president after he leaves office. He has no immunity. So it's really up to our government and I'll tell you that if other foreign governments come in and start doing it as they're already doing the investigation Well you know shame on us.

That's what I say.