Transcript
Winning or Losing? An Inside Look at the War on Terror
Speaker: Michael Scheuer, a.k.a. Anonymous, author, " Imperial Hubris"
Presider: Nicholas Lemann, dean, Hubert R. Luce professor of journalism, Columbia University
New York, N.Y.
February 3, 2005
NICHOLAS LEMANN: So, welcome everyone. My name is Nick Lemann. I'm the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and I'm here to ask questions to, and sort of field questions from you to Michael Scheuer, who you all know. I will just read his bio for the sake of formality, but here's the book, "Imperial Hubris," which I am sure many of you read. And let me just read this quickly. [The] New York Times and [The] Washington Post bestseller, "Imperial Hubris" was originally published anonymously, as required by the counterintelligence. Its author is Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, who resigned in November 2004 after nearly two decades of experience in national security issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia. As Anonymous, he is also the author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America." Scheuer has been featured on many national and international television news programs, interviewed for broadcast media and documentary, and has been the focus of print media worldwide, and now the ultimately appearing at the Council on Foreign Relations. [Laughter]
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QUESTIONER: I am Richard Whalen. I'm a writer, and I'm working on a book that's looking at the preliminaries to World War II, when we last had a debate about whether we should go to war before we were thrust into war. I want to congratulate you on reintroducing some of the fundamental issues and questions that have to be addressed before you go to war in a democratic society. And you have particularly focused on the forbidden subject of whether the United States has any limits with the spoiled child of Western civilization, the state of Israel, which insists upon having its own way, to the extent we must read the Israeli press on the Internet and read [the Israeli newspaper] Haaretz so that we see real criticism of a policy that has gone too far. Now, you have taken some criticism for your approach. I'd like to hear what you feel about this subject.
SCHEUER: I always have thought that there's nothing too dangerous to talk about in America, that there shouldn't be anything. And it happens that Israel is the one thing that seems to be too dangerous to talk about. And I wrote in my book that I congratulate them. It's probably the most successful covert action program in the history of man to control--the important political debate in a country of 270 million people is an extraordinary accomplishment. I wish our clandestine service could do as well. The point I would make--the point I try to make basically in the book is we just cannot--we can no longer afford to be seen as the dog that's led by the tail. I've tried to be very clear in saying we have an alliance with the Israelis. We have a moral obligation to try to work through this issue, if we can. But I don't think we can afford to be led around, or at least appear to be led around by them. And I certainly, as an American, find it unbearable to think there's something in this country you can't talk about. That's really my spiel I guess on that, sir.
LEMANN: Gary?
SCHEUER: It was interesting to see the sheet suggested ways to review "Imperial Hubris" that came out from AIPAC [the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee]. [Laughter]
QUESTIONER: I'm curious--Gary Rosen from Commentary magazine. If you could just elaborate a little bit on the clandestine ways in which Israel and presumably Jews have managed to so control debate over this fundamental foreign policy question.
UNKNOWN: All you have to do is look at this landscape of American politics and see how many people who have raised this issue of the Israeli relationship.
SCHEUER: Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress--that's a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust. I find--I just find the whole debate in the United States unbearably restricted with the inability to factually discuss what goes on between our two countries.
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