Jane Mayer ("The Dark Side") on C-SPAN2 at 8:30am EDT

[Bozita]

http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=9723&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

Author: Jane Mayer

Upcoming Schedule
Saturday, July 19, at 8:30 AM
Sunday, July 20, at 10:00 PM

About the Program
Jane Mayer looks at the Bush administration's decisions regarding its war on terror and the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney and his adviser David Addington in enhancing the power of the executive branch following 9/11. She spoke at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC.

About the Author
Jane Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Prior to that she was a senior writer and front page editor at The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Mayer is the author of "Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988" and "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas."



http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Inside-Terror-American/dp/0385526393/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216469874&sr=8-1

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
A dramatic and damning narrative account of how America has fought the
"War on Terror"

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the country were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear, but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long held agenda to enhance Presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.

THE DARK SIDE is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world-- decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author, Jane Mayer, relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

THE DARK SIDE will chronicle real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained—or not—and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results. For instance, there is the stunning admission of one of the detainees, Sheikh Ibn al-Libi, that the confession he gave under duress—which provided a key piece of evidence buttressing congressional support of going to war against Iraq--was in fact fabricated, to make the torture stop.

In all cases, whatever the short term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself. THE DARK SIDE chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

About the Author
Jane Mayer is the co-author of two bestselling and critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books, LANDSLIDE: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT, 1984-1988, and STRANGE JUSTICE: THE SELLING OF CLARENCE THOMAS, the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Mayer was also awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in connection with THE DARK SIDE.

She is currently a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in political and investigative reporting. Before that, she was a senior writer and front-page editor for The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Journal's first female White House correspondent.

She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband, Bill, and their daughter, Kate.

[KharmaTrain]

1. This Lady Needs To Be Seen More

The stuff revealed in this book is probably not a shock to many here, but is a bombshell to many others...proving a lot of the war crimes and verifying them. It's yet another important work in documenting all that's gone wrong and getting as close to the sources as possible from a rather short historical time frame.

Most important, there needs to be a call to make public the secret IRC report that she cites that proves this regime has violated the Geneva Convention.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Mayer Is A Great Journalist

Uncovered the details of both Clinton's and Bush's torture programs. We owe her a debt of gratitude.

[NeoTheo]

3. Thanks for the Heads Up!

I have it on now.

[Bozita]

4. Here's the NYT's Frank Rich column that is frequently referred to...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

July 13, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008

By FRANK RICH
WE know what a criminal White House looks like from “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic account of Richard Nixon’s unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.

“The Final Days” was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book “The Dark Side” connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.

Some of “The Dark Side” seems right out of “The Final Days,” minus Nixon’s operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become “so paranoid” that “they actually thought they might be in physical danger.” The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.

The men were John Ashcroft’s deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House’s don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the “torture memos” and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won’t shut the door firmly on torture even now.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. “The Dark Side” is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television’s “24,” all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

more...

[napi21]

5. If you missed it, you can watch it on the cspan video.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=206397-1

There's a button for the Flash Payer video.

[Bozita]

6. Jane Mayer will be the subject of a BOOK TV "After Words" program with Dana Priest

No air date was given.

[oldskool]

7. she will probably be black-listed from M$M like

Vincent Bugliosi has been.

[dailykoff]

8. This is THE big enchillada.

Question: Why has torture SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO PRODUCE FALSE CONFESSIONS been systematically applied to "terrorists" in Iraq, Guantanemo and Afghanistan?

Answer: In case anybody hasn't figured it out, the only "terrorists" behind 911 were the guys itching to bomb Iraq back into Exxon's pocket. The pyrotechnics were for show.

[dailykoff]

9. Link to transcript and video of Amy Goodman's interview with jane Mayer yesterday:

"We spend the hour with New Yorker magazine investigative journalist Jane Mayer about her new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.

"In the book, Mayer reveals a secret report by the International Red Cross warned the Bush administration last year that the CIA’s treatment of prisoners categorically constituted torture and could make Bush administration officials who approved the torture methods guilty of war crimes.

"Mayer also reveals that the Bush administration ignored warnings from the CIA six years ago that up to a third of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake."

transcript and video links: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/18/the_dark_side_jane_mayer_on

So the Red Cross thinks the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes. Glad I'm not the only one!