Jeremy Scahill and Dirty Wars, the Movie, Covered Up Killings, Ed Snowden, and the Future of American Democracy

Broadcast 6/10/2013 at 8:16 PM EDT (300 Listens, 143 Downloads, 1420 Itunes)
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Bio: JEREMY SCAHILL is National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute.

Scahill is author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, 2007). Nation Books will release Scahill's second book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, on April 23, 2013.

He is the writer, with David Riker, and a producer of the documentary feature film, Dirty Wars, which won the Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival 2013. IFC Films releases Dirty Wars in theaters June 7 throughout the United States.

Scahill has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill is a frequent guest on a wide array of programs, appearing regularly on The Rachel Maddow Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Democracy Now!. He has also appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, BBC, al Jazeera, CNN, The NewsHour, and Bill Moyers Journal.

Scahill's work has sparked several Congressional investigations and won some of journalism's highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for his book Blackwater.

In 2013, Scahill was named one of nine recipients of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.

Notes from the interview (mostly my questions)

What is the message you want to get across?

You talk about the future of American Democracy. What does that mean?

Seymour Hersh, in a glowing endorsement for you book, says, "... what has been done in the name of America since 9/11." What does that mean?

Anwar Awlaki's son was killed by a drone a few weeks after Obama ordered the killing of Anwar Awlaki. You said he was killed for what he may become. Can you talk about that?

It seems like Obama has continued, intensified and worsened Bush's worse programs. Comments?

You report in your discussion of Gardez that JSOC (Join Special Operations Command) does 20 killing raids, like you detail in your movie, EVERY DAY? That works out to thousands of kills every year. How can Obama possibly assess each one?

How would like the book and movie to make a difference?

You say in the movie, "I didn't realize how much the journey would change me." How did the journey change you?

If the movie and the book are successful, what would you like to see happen? 

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