The Obama administration has expanded the global war on terror by placing the first American citizen on the kill list. Chris Hayes talks to Jeremy Scahill about his new book "Dirty Wars" and the impact of the administration’s decision on the war on terror at large.
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The Role of The Boston Bombings In America’s War On Terror
Chris Hayes talks to Emma Gilligan and Congressman Steve Cohen about how the U.S. should react to the Boston bombings and how it factors into the larger narrative of America’s war on terrorism.
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Jeremy Scahill: The Secret Story Behind Obama’s Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen
DEMOCRACY NOW - The Obama administration’s assassination of two U.S. citizens in 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old Denver-born son Abdulrahman, is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield."
The book is based on years of reporting on U.S. secret operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why Abdulrahman was targeted in a separate drone strike two weeks later. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed "intentionally."
"The idea that you can simply have one branch of government unilaterally and in secret declare that an American citizen should be executed or assassinated without having to present any evidence whatsoever, to me, is a — we should view that with great sobriety about the implications for our country," says Scahill, national security correspondent for The Nation magazine.
Today the U.S. Senate is preparing to hold its first-ever hearing on the Obama administration’s drone and targeted killing program. However, the Obama administration is refusing to send a witness to answer questions about the program’s legality. "Dirty Wars" is also the name of a new award-winning documentary by Scahill and Rick Rowley, which will open in theaters in June. We air the film’s new trailer.
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Part 2 The World Is a Battlefield: Jeremy Scahill on "Dirty Wars" and Obama’s Expanding Drone Attacks
As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, we turn the second part of our interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield." Scahill charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, in countries from Somalia to Pakistan.
"I called it 'Dirty Wars' because, particularly in this administration, in the Obama administration, I think a lot of people are being led to believe that there is such a thing as a clean war," Scahill says. He goes on to discuss secret operations in Africa, the targeting of U.S. citizens in Yemen and the key role WikiLeaks played in researching the book. He also reveals imprisoned whistleblower Bradley Manning once tipped him off to a story about the private security company Blackwater. Scahill is the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and longtime Democracy Now! correspondent. For the past several years, Scahill has been working on the "Dirty Wars" film and book project, which was published on Tuesday.
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Recommended book:
Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield
by Jeremy Scahill.
Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Jeremy Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, he reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America’s global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Jeremy Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government.
