Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Today we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: book that has been getting a lot of attention and deservedly.
Speaker 1: It's about the disappearance and suspected murder of Jimmy Hoffa,
Speaker 1: a man who was at the forefront of the labor
Speaker 1: movement in America but also had close connections with the mafia.
Speaker 1: On July thirtieth, nineteen seventy five, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. The
Speaker 1: commonly articulated view is that Haffa was killed in a
Speaker 1: mafia related hit, and that his friend and longtime associate,
Speaker 1: indeed almost his son, Charles Chucky O'Brien, kidnapped him and
Speaker 1: drove him to the spot where he was murdered. My
Speaker 1: colleague Jack Goldsmith disputes this version of events. Jack is
Speaker 1: a Harvard law professor. He also used to have the
Speaker 1: Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and
Speaker 1: the George W. Bush administration, and Chuckie O'Brien is, in
Speaker 1: fact his stepfather. Jack is the author of a new
Speaker 1: book called In Haffa's Shadow. A stepfather, a disappearance in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and my search for the truth. I recently had the
Speaker 1: chance to talk to him about it. Jack. I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: that you could join us. This is a great opportunity
Speaker 1: for me to talk to you about something that's been
Speaker 1: very close to your heart, not just in the last
Speaker 1: six or seven years that you've been writing it, but
Speaker 1: in some ways your whole life. So congratulations on the book.
Speaker 1: First of all, thanks so much, and thanks for having
Speaker 1: me here. I want to start with something that might
Speaker 1: be relevant to the younger demographic of our podcast, and
Speaker 1: that is who is Jimmy Hoffa. Other than the fact
Speaker 1: that he disappeared, which I think everybody knows, of whatever age,
Speaker 1: his great significance for American labor history, as I think
Speaker 1: in the the laws, So tell a little bit about that, right, So,
Speaker 1: people under sixty don't really have a sense of Haffa's
Speaker 1: importance in American history, but he was a very consequential
Speaker 1: figure in American history. He was the president of the
Speaker 1: Teams Reunion from nineteen fifty seven to nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: but more importantly than that, for twenty years from the
Speaker 1: forties until the sixties, he was probably the most consequential
Speaker 1: and certainly the best known American labor leader at a
Speaker 1: time when, unlike today, unions were a large force in
Speaker 1: American life. And he led what was the most powerful
Speaker 1: union in the country, and the Teamsters Union, which was
Speaker 1: primarily or largely truckers. That's how it began. But one
Speaker 1: of Haffa's commitments was to organizing anything that boozed, as
Speaker 1: he put it, so he expanded the teamster's jurisdiction dramatically.
Speaker 1: And so he was this very consequential labor leader, and
Speaker 1: at a time when labor was starting to stagnate, the
Speaker 1: Teamsters were still growing. He was a labor organizing genius.
Speaker 1: And he held the promise, and it was a theoretical promise,
Speaker 1: but he held the promise of taking the labor union
Speaker 1: in a very different direction from the one it went.
Speaker 1: It's basically been in decline to early sixties, late fifties.
Speaker 1: The problem with Haffa was that he was basically a
Speaker 1: moral and corrupt by any conventional definition. He did not
Speaker 1: comply with the law. He was indifferent to conventional morality.
Speaker 1: He would do business with anyone on any terms that
Speaker 1: he thought would help him increase his power and his
Speaker 1: union's power. So he did a lot of business and
Speaker 1: made a lot of accommodations. For example, to organize crime,
Speaker 1: he paid off politicians and judges, and this ended up,
Speaker 1: among other things, ruining the promise that he might have
Speaker 1: had for the labor movement. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about that a moral categorization that you just suggested. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's possible to read your book and think that actually
Speaker 1: Haffa did have a morality of a sort, and it
Speaker 1: was a morality that put the union above everything, and
Speaker 1: on that view, he would break any law as long
Speaker 1: as he was doing it for his union. But there's
Speaker 1: an alternative view that says, well, his union and Jimmy Haffa,
Speaker 1: and he didn't really distinguish between those two. And I
Speaker 1: think that also sometimes comes through in the book. Where
Speaker 1: do you actually come down on that all of the above,
Speaker 1: I think I tried to say conventional moralities what he defied.
Speaker 1: You could say that he had a moral principle and
Speaker 1: that was enhancing his power and the teamster's power, and
Speaker 1: he saw those the same thing, and in fact it
Speaker 1: was the same thing. I mean, he had he was
Speaker 1: collecting cash on the side from so many sources from
Speaker 1: the union, loans, from skims he had with employers and
Speaker 1: the like. But he was not spending the money on himself.
Speaker 1: He was spending it to enhance his power, which he
Speaker 1: was using to enhance the teamster's power. So there's a
Speaker 1: story to tell that he was this truly principled labor leader,
Speaker 1: the principle being that he'll do anything to make his
Speaker 1: union better. He saw the state and management as basically
Speaker 1: being in bed with one another, and they were defying
Speaker 1: the laws. So he developed the view early on that
Speaker 1: law was something to be complied with when it served
Speaker 1: her interests. You say in the book that Chucky Charles O'Brien,
Speaker 1: Chuckie O'Brien was your father from your perspective, your stepfather
Speaker 1: in technical terms about your father, right, and that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hoffa was effectively a father figure to Chucky. Chuckie called
Speaker 1: him dad, and he referred to Chucky as his son.
Speaker 1: So in some sense, this is a book by the
Speaker 1: indirect grandson of Jimmy Hoffa, and a less likely grandson
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Hoffa could hardly be imagined. I someone who
Speaker 1: was like the younger academic who's looked up to you
Speaker 1: in my whole career, always thought of you as mister Buttondown.
Speaker 1: You know, establishment Republican rock ribbed commitment to the rule
Speaker 1: of law. Rule of law over everything, you know, no
Speaker 1: matter what, even if your career is on the line,
Speaker 1: you've got to stand up for the rule of law.
Speaker 1: So any lineage, however, indirect to Jimmy Hoffa, is kind
Speaker 1: of extraordinary. But that's the framework for the book, isn't
Speaker 1: it So, yes it is. I mean I never met Haffa.
Speaker 1: Haffa disappeared six weeks after my stepfather came into my life.
Speaker 1: But yes, Chucky was closer to him than anyone, and
Speaker 1: he met him when he was nine, and he was
Speaker 1: effectively Chucky's father. Chucky's never really knew his father, and
Speaker 1: Haffa became his effective father, and Chuckie revered him his
Speaker 1: entire life. And yes, Chucky was my father, and especially
Speaker 1: during the most important developmental period of my life, which
Speaker 1: was my teenage years, in which he had an enormous
Speaker 1: influence on me. And so the book is called In
Speaker 1: Halfa's Shadow, and it's really about Chucky being in Halfa's
Speaker 1: shadow as his son and the person who supposedly drove
Speaker 1: him to his death and then my life in the
Speaker 1: shadow of both of them, and in Chuckie's shadow. There's
Speaker 1: an important ethnic dimension to this book. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: almost like a male This book is a true melange
Speaker 1: of different American ethnicities. Are three main American ethnicities Italian
Speaker 1: Sicilian Italian particular, which is half of Chucky's heritage, and
Speaker 1: it's his mother, Sylvia's Neopolitan family, or at least Sicilian family.
Speaker 1: Then there's the Irish side, because Chucky's last name is O'Brien, right.
Speaker 1: Then there's Haffa himself, who I think a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially in my generation, imagine must have been Italian, just
Speaker 1: because his name ends with a vowel. Of course, off,
Speaker 1: it's not an Italian name at all. No name in
Speaker 1: Italian starts with a letter H. He was actually of
Speaker 1: a Protestant gotch Irish, I think. Yeah. So in Chucky's life,
Speaker 1: his Italians seems always to have been an important part
Speaker 1: of his cultural identity. But he must also have felt
Speaker 1: very intensely that he wasn't fully Sicilian and therefore could
Speaker 1: never be, at least, according to Lure, a made man.
Speaker 1: So he couldn't be a made man because he was
Speaker 1: half Irish. I describe a scene in the book where
Speaker 1: when he was a young man that his mother arranged
Speaker 1: with the Detroit senior members of the Detroit family for
Speaker 1: him to have something akin to an initiation ritual. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't. He never became an official member of the Maffi.
Speaker 1: He couldn't, as you say, because of his heritage. But
Speaker 1: even though he was half Irish and never technically a
Speaker 1: made man, he completely absorbed from a very young age
Speaker 1: his mother's identity. He listened to every word she said,
Speaker 1: and she taught him merta from the very beginning. Omerta,
Speaker 1: the Code of Silence plays a really fascinating role in
Speaker 1: your book. First, at one very basic plot level, it's
Speaker 1: the reason that Chucky won't tell you, at least not
Speaker 1: until the very raid of the book. No spoilers here
Speaker 1: exactly what he does or doesn't know about Haffa's disappearance.
Speaker 1: But Omerta also takes on the role of a kind
Speaker 1: of code of honor for Chucky, and that I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about that because one of the things
Speaker 1: that you say in the book is that you show,
Speaker 1: don't just say, but show, is how you and your
Speaker 1: different vicissitudes of your life and your feelings towards Chucky,
Speaker 1: towards your dad came ultimately to have some loving respect
Speaker 1: for his sense of honor. Now, how do you reconcile
Speaker 1: that with your own presumable non embrace of the idea
Speaker 1: of a code of silence in connection with criminal activity.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, your public career is all about
Speaker 1: refusing to adopt a code of absolute silence. Basically, until
Speaker 1: I started having conversations with Chucky for this book, and
Speaker 1: indeed after we started having conversations with this book, I
Speaker 1: viewed Amerta as self serving, corrupt, crime hiding and opportunistic,
Speaker 1: and in some sense that's what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a code that is designed to ensure, among
Speaker 1: other things, that you can break the law without being discovered.
Speaker 1: And so for Chucky this was a huge principle, and
Speaker 1: it posed a problem for writing a book for me,
Speaker 1: because I needed to know what he knew if I
Speaker 1: the main thing I set out to do, at least originally,
Speaker 1: the book became much more complicated as I wrote it,
Speaker 1: But the main thing I can't set out to do
Speaker 1: was to clear him from the charge that he basically
Speaker 1: was the person who picked up his basically father and
Speaker 1: drote him to his death. And I didn't believe that,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to clear him, but I needed him
Speaker 1: to be honest with me, and I said this it
Speaker 1: was It was the one condition I gave when when
Speaker 1: we agreed to do the book together. I told him,
Speaker 1: you have to tell me the truth. He basically said,
Speaker 1: I'll try, and he did try, but there was this
Speaker 1: constant roadblock because every time he got to the verge
Speaker 1: of telling me certain things, his mother's visage would appear
Speaker 1: in his head or Uncle Tony would appear in his
Speaker 1: head and he would stop. So over time he told
Speaker 1: me a lot more than I think he intended to,
Speaker 1: and maybe some things that he regretted a bit. And
Speaker 1: also over time I came to admire his commitment to America.
Speaker 1: And here's how I can explain it. This is a
Speaker 1: man who, for over forty years has been falsely accused
Speaker 1: of basically driving Haffa to his death. He lost everything
Speaker 1: because of the Haffa di appearance. He lost his job,
Speaker 1: he lost his otherwise, every other aspect of his honor,
Speaker 1: His reputation was ruined, his physical health was ruined, He
Speaker 1: had troubles with my family. He was basically destroyed by
Speaker 1: Haffa's disappearance. He lost you and some he lost lost
Speaker 1: me for twenty years. I'm not sure how much of
Speaker 1: a lost that was, but he thought it was. From
Speaker 1: what you say in the book, it was an enormous
Speaker 1: It was an enormous loss to him and something I
Speaker 1: didn't appreciate until later in my life. But the thing,
Speaker 1: the one thing he held onto throughout this entire period,
Speaker 1: was this principle. And for him it wasn't opportunistic and
Speaker 1: it wasn't instrumental either. It wasn't just self preservation that
Speaker 1: it wasn't something bad would have happened. If this wasn't
Speaker 1: about him worrying about something happening to him. It was because,
Speaker 1: as he said to me, I'm more than one occasion.
Speaker 1: It's just not right. And the reason I came to
Speaker 1: admire it when I was pushing him and pushing him
Speaker 1: to tell me what he knew and I didn't. I
Speaker 1: never tried to push him too hard. We had these
Speaker 1: strange lines that we both respected. I came to see
Speaker 1: how painful it was for him to struggle to tell
Speaker 1: me what he could and then but not violate his
Speaker 1: own code or his own principles. And I saw how
Speaker 1: important it was to him, and I saw that it
Speaker 1: was the only thing that he had really held on
Speaker 1: to successfully and they had given it. Sounds dramatic, but
Speaker 1: it's true, given his life sort of meaning and order
Speaker 1: during all of this terrible ordeal. And so at the
Speaker 1: very end, in our last conversation about half of disappearance,
Speaker 1: when I basically said to him, you know, I just
Speaker 1: really can't believe you're going to take the other things,
Speaker 1: you know, to your grave, and he basically said that
Speaker 1: was what's going to happen. And he was telling me
Speaker 1: this not for any instrumental reason. He in some sense
Speaker 1: he had nothing instrumental to lose and everything instrumental to
Speaker 1: gain by telling me more than he told me. And
Speaker 1: I was, as I say in the book, I was
Speaker 1: in awe of what I described as his eccentric integrity.
Speaker 1: And it was again, it's not a principle that I
Speaker 1: obviously adhered to. It's not something that I would have
Speaker 1: ever thought I would come to admire, but I came
Speaker 1: to admire his commitment to it. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about your own trajectory of feelings about him in
Speaker 1: connection to your own life, because this book is in
Speaker 1: part memoir written by someone who's probably never going to
Speaker 1: write anything more memoiristic than that. Ever you have, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly kind of idyllic in certain respects set of high
Speaker 1: school years where you are able to develop a relationship
Speaker 1: with Chucky, even though Chucky is the target of all
Speaker 1: of this extraordinary you know, national pursuit, really right, So
Speaker 1: to understand this, when Chuckie came into my life, I
Speaker 1: was twelve years old. I had never really had a
Speaker 1: father at that point. My mother had always been very ill,
Speaker 1: and I remember my childhood as believe it or not happy,
Speaker 1: but objectively it was not. It was not great, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have any father figure in my life, and
Speaker 1: I didn't realize any lack. I just dealt with it.
Speaker 1: But as soon as this man came into my life,
Speaker 1: Chuckie O'Brien, it was it was like Heaven sent and
Speaker 1: he showered me with attention and affection and love. We
Speaker 1: did everything together. I basically admired everything he admired, including
Speaker 1: the team series, union, the labor movement, what with the
Speaker 1: so called mafia as as he called it, and so
Speaker 1: at the height of the Haffa disappearance, and he was
Speaker 1: just being harassed unbelievably understandably, so there were good reasons
Speaker 1: for the government to suspect him at the height of
Speaker 1: the Haffa disappearance, when he was having all sorts of
Speaker 1: troubles in his life, both with the government and with
Speaker 1: his own job. I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: he did it. He was this amazing father, and I
Speaker 1: really think that during the kind of five year period
Speaker 1: in which he was who wish we were closest when
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, and I just think it but
Speaker 1: for his intervention, my life would have taken a very
Speaker 1: different course. Then. In the book, you talk about how
Speaker 1: you go to Washington and Lee to study, to go
Speaker 1: to college, and in a passage set of passages that
Speaker 1: I think is very meaningful to anyone who was once
Speaker 1: close with their father and then had some distancing, you
Speaker 1: really shift talk a little bit about that process of
Speaker 1: how you remake yourself from admiring the teamsters and labor
Speaker 1: unions into you know, I hope this is not this
Speaker 1: is not been a defensive way, but you know, a
Speaker 1: kind of model young Republican who goes on to Yale
Speaker 1: Law School and then clerks for the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: is well on his way to a career in mainstream
Speaker 1: legal academia and Republican politics. So I didn't know any
Speaker 1: of that was going to happen when I started to change,
Speaker 1: although in some sense I kind of laid the groundwork
Speaker 1: for that. I guess several things happened when I got
Speaker 1: to college. So when I was a teenager, I just
Speaker 1: had never questioned Chucky. I just sometimes a little bit,
Speaker 1: but not really. I fundamentally didn't question, like a lot
Speaker 1: of teenagers were there. And then I get to college,
Speaker 1: and several things start happening. First, education and learning starts
Speaker 1: to become important to me, and it was something that
Speaker 1: he just didn't value at all. Second, I started reading
Speaker 1: books about the half of Disappearance, and the kind of
Speaker 1: objective reality was that Chucky had been involved in lots
Speaker 1: of criminality throughout his life. I started to worry about
Speaker 1: whether he would have a dangerous impact on my life.
Speaker 1: And then the third thing was that I started to
Speaker 1: think about my career. I started to look forward and
Speaker 1: think about me could out from under his shadow, and
Speaker 1: even in college and before I went to law, school.
Speaker 1: I had a dim sense that being associated with the
Speaker 1: leading suspect in that Haffa disappearance would not be great,
Speaker 1: might not be great for my legal career, even before
Speaker 1: I started thinking about going for the government. But can
Speaker 1: I can I ask it? This is this is this
Speaker 1: personal question. But it's a memoir. So there was a moment.
Speaker 1: You know, there, you are, you graduate from the late
Speaker 1: Yale law school, You've had You're getting fancy clerkships. You
Speaker 1: even spend a summer at the law firm of Millercassidy,
Speaker 1: Larrocco and Lewin, very very famous firm, which, as you
Speaker 1: point out, was three of the foreign name partners were
Speaker 1: people who had spend time actually trying to put Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hoffa in prison. Which is why I which is why
Speaker 1: I went there. I thought at that point, let me
Speaker 1: just say, millercast day, as you said, was this. It's
Speaker 1: no longer with us. But it was a very prominent
Speaker 1: firm at the time, and it was run by people
Speaker 1: who basically put half in jail. But it was also
Speaker 1: a firm where there was some tolerance of big personalities.
Speaker 1: You could have easily become a famous trial lawyer. You know,
Speaker 1: the association indirect or otherwise, the Hauffam might actually have
Speaker 1: given you some notoriety and you would have been a famous,
Speaker 1: let's call it, democrat leaning figure in that in that world,
Speaker 1: but you very self consciously at that point turned in
Speaker 1: the other direction. You went for government, and not for
Speaker 1: democratic administrations but for Republican administrations. Well, I didn't I
Speaker 1: somewhere in there you became a conservative, is what I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I did. How did that happen? Yes? Okay, So I
Speaker 1: have a relationship between that in your life. So I
Speaker 1: learned about that in writing this book. So I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the story I told myself about that, and then
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I learned from this book. So
Speaker 1: I had always you know, Washington Lee was kind of
Speaker 1: a conservative place, and I became somewhat conservative at Washington Lee,
Speaker 1: but not terribly self consciously. So I went to Oxford.
Speaker 1: There I kind of had an allergic reaction to the
Speaker 1: anti americanism and kind of came to like Ronald Reagan there.
Speaker 1: Then I went to Yale. I was countercultural, Yes, it
Speaker 1: was countercultural big time. Then I went to Yale Law School.
Speaker 1: And the story I had always and I didn't enjoy
Speaker 1: it Yale Law School, but I just found it intellectually
Speaker 1: and politically stifling. And I definitely grew more conservative Yel
Speaker 1: Law school. And I'd always told myself and this is
Speaker 1: partly the reason that I was reacting to what I
Speaker 1: viewed as unpersuasive or stifling or intellectually closed minded viewpoints
Speaker 1: at the Yel Law School at that time, which were
Speaker 1: for the most part mainstream liberal, mainstream level right solow
Speaker 1: scho at that time was not it was not the
Speaker 1: far left, it wasn't, but it was definitely lockstep, mainstream, lockstep,
Speaker 1: mainstream liberal. And it was also it didn't have much
Speaker 1: tolerance for conservatives. I mean, there wasn't really anyone conservative
Speaker 1: on the faculty, and I just never really fit in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I became I was drawn to conservative jursprudence at
Speaker 1: the time, just because I also found liberal jurisprudence to
Speaker 1: be too free wheeling for what my views about law
Speaker 1: were at the time. But here's what I figured out
Speaker 1: writing the book. I also figured out and this as
Speaker 1: soon as I thought about this, it became obvious as
Speaker 1: to why I made these moods. Basically, everything I was
Speaker 1: drawn to in law school intellectual was anti Chucky. So
Speaker 1: I took a labor law class, and I was naturally
Speaker 1: drawn to the employers, and I thought the pro labor
Speaker 1: side of the arguments were unconvincing, both legally and otherwise.
Speaker 1: I was drawn to lawn economics, and a law economics
Speaker 1: view about labor unions is that they're inefficient cartels that
Speaker 1: are basically the mainstream at least, that the Chicago school
Speaker 1: of view is bad for the world. I was drawn
Speaker 1: to conservative jurisprudence in criminal procedure. Chucky had always, you know,
Speaker 1: referred to judges and prosecutors and the Justice Department is corrupt,
Speaker 1: but I was drawn to them, and so part of
Speaker 1: my political identity at the time, I now realized was
Speaker 1: part of separating from Chucky. And I was basically doing
Speaker 1: things and trying to establish a path that was my
Speaker 1: own path, and that was as much as I could
Speaker 1: figure out the opposite of the path from Chucky. And
Speaker 1: there's something very universal about that. I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: the first son to want to define himself very much
Speaker 1: in opposition to his father. So there you are doing that,
Speaker 1: and then comes the part where I got to know you,
Speaker 1: where you found yourself first in the Department of Defense
Speaker 1: in the post nine eleven period as an advisor to
Speaker 1: the General Council, and then subsequently, at a crucial moment
Speaker 1: in our country's legal history and in our history generally,
Speaker 1: in the Department of Justice. You touch only briefly in
Speaker 1: the book on your experiences there, but because you've written
Speaker 1: a whole book about it, right, but just say a
Speaker 1: word for the listeners about what, to you was the
Speaker 1: most salient feature of your experience there, and then we'll
Speaker 1: bring that around to Chucky. So I had a job
Speaker 1: briefly where we met in the Department of Defense for
Speaker 1: a year, and it was a job that didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility, and it was fun. And I
Speaker 1: worked there for a year and I was headed back
Speaker 1: to the Academy, and then I kind of accidentally was
Speaker 1: offered the head of the Office Legal Council in the
Speaker 1: Justice Department, which was this very consequential, very prestigious, and
Speaker 1: supposedly intellectually fun place to work. When I was offered
Speaker 1: the job, I took it. I thought it was great.
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be fun and interesting
Speaker 1: and important work that I believed in. I was very
Speaker 1: naive when I went to work at the also Legal Council.
Speaker 1: It was two years into after nine eleven, and I
Speaker 1: had no idea what was going on in secret. Some
Speaker 1: of the controversial things the Bush administration was doing in secret,
Speaker 1: stuff that subsequently come out, the interrogation and Black Site program,
Speaker 1: the warrantless wiretapping program known as Stellar Wind. I can't
Speaker 1: believe I can say those words, but I can now,
Speaker 1: and those two programs, especially when I got there through
Speaker 1: a very complicated set of events, I was required to
Speaker 1: address their legality, even though it had already been ruled
Speaker 1: upon and had been those rulings have been relied upon,
Speaker 1: and I could not find my way to signing off
Speaker 1: on them, and both of them. I had strong objections too,
Speaker 1: and took steps as best I could. It was a
Speaker 1: completely unprecedented situation from start to finish in terms of
Speaker 1: removing or withdrawing opinions that have been relied on in
Speaker 1: the middle of the war intelligence operations. So knowing what
Speaker 1: the right thing to do was was very hard. It
Speaker 1: was also just impossibly stressful because basically I was being
Speaker 1: told that if I do these things, people are going
Speaker 1: to get killed. All these people who were out in
Speaker 1: the world relying on these opinions to fight against al Qaeda,
Speaker 1: I would be undermining them. So it was a very
Speaker 1: very difficult time. And then, exercising your own version of
Speaker 1: eccentric integrity, you did what you thought you had to
Speaker 1: do as a legal matter, and then you resigned. I did.
Speaker 1: I resigned in June, basically ten months, nine and a
Speaker 1: half months after I got there. After I had withdrawn
Speaker 1: one of the torture opinions, I resigned, which led to
Speaker 1: some of the people who had seen you as a
Speaker 1: friend and ally seeing you as somehow a critic or
Speaker 1: someone on the outside, or someone who had let them
Speaker 1: down or maybe broken their version of the code of Vomerta.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it that way. But let's just
Speaker 1: say that I wasn't terribly I wasn't viewed well in
Speaker 1: Bush administration circles. I was viewed as some one who
Speaker 1: it was I was viewed very unterriably, someone who was
Speaker 1: acting politically, trying to cover my own bottom. These are preposterous. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the reason I wrote The Terror Presidency. I wasn't even
Speaker 1: going to write a book about my time in the
Speaker 1: Bush administration. But when people in the Bush administration started
Speaker 1: charging me with acting in an unprincipled way and being
Speaker 1: political and trying to cover my bottom. I decided, well,
Speaker 1: there's another side to that, and I'm gonna tell it.
Speaker 1: And every step I took I didn't I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if I was doing the right thing or not. It
Speaker 1: was very, very difficult. So then you emerge from this
Speaker 1: extraordinary public experience, standing on principle as you understood it,
Speaker 1: being praised by the people who were not your friends before,
Speaker 1: people to your left, who suddenly you were, that you
Speaker 1: were everybody's favorite conservative, not my favorite moment I had,
Speaker 1: not a favorite moment, and criticized by the people who
Speaker 1: you were friends and allies my favorite moment. And in
Speaker 1: just that moment, and I think this is just poetically incredible,
Speaker 1: you decide to reconcile with Chucky. Right, not a coincidence,
Speaker 1: Not a coincidence. This whole old thing in the government.
Speaker 1: It was entirely discombobulating. It was discombobulating to my view
Speaker 1: of the world, to my view of right and wrong,
Speaker 1: to my tendency to be judgmental when I was a
Speaker 1: younger man, to my religious faith, which had redoubled and
Speaker 1: strengthened it sounds like enormously. When I was in the government,
Speaker 1: it really deepened and went on in a different path
Speaker 1: for all these reasons. Plus, as I said earlier, I
Speaker 1: had two tiny little babies, and my affection and my
Speaker 1: love for my children and my vulnerability towards them caused
Speaker 1: me to rethink entirely what I had done to Chucky,
Speaker 1: especially since you know, basically when I was at the pinnacle,
Speaker 1: the thing that I had renounced him so that I
Speaker 1: could achieve in a way twenty years earlier, and I
Speaker 1: got to the what was supposedly the pinnacle, and I
Speaker 1: got there inside the Justice Department, this place that he
Speaker 1: had always derided as lawbreaking, corner cutting, self serving and
Speaker 1: the like. And lo and behold, if he wasn't in
Speaker 1: some sense which he he could barely articulate, but in
Speaker 1: a very real, concrete sense, he was right. So all
Speaker 1: of these experiences led me to be much more humble
Speaker 1: and about myself and judging others, and to really deeply
Speaker 1: regret the pain I had caused him. And my mother
Speaker 1: and my brothers had always told me what extraordinary pain
Speaker 1: I had cost him, But until I have my own children,
Speaker 1: I really didn't appreciate what that was like. And then
Speaker 1: there's this incredible, deeply Christian, though not in a doctrinal sense,
Speaker 1: but in the spiritual sense prodigal son moment in the book,
Speaker 1: which I alluded to earlier, where you go back to
Speaker 1: Chucky and you tell him that you're sorry yea and
Speaker 1: to me one of the most moving moments that I
Speaker 1: can imagine, tell me what to what he says. We
Speaker 1: were sitting watching Zeinfeld one night and complete and this
Speaker 1: was I had come down there, and it was the
Speaker 1: first time I had seen him. It was the second
Speaker 1: time i'd seen him in twenty years, and the first
Speaker 1: time i'd been nice to him. I just wasn't very
Speaker 1: nice to him. I was not nice to him. We
Speaker 1: had a great couple of days together. He was clearly
Speaker 1: very happy that we were getting a long after so
Speaker 1: long of not talking and not getting along. And we're
Speaker 1: sitting there watching Seinfeld, and I didn't really give it
Speaker 1: a lot of thought. I knew I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: for his forgiveness. And I turned to him and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry what I did to you and all
Speaker 1: the pain I cost you for those twenty years. I'm
Speaker 1: just terribly, terribly sorry, and I hope you forgive me.
Speaker 1: And he was not well at the time. He's not
Speaker 1: well now, but he was not well at the time,
Speaker 1: and he had had severe diabetes. And he looked at
Speaker 1: me and his face was ashen, and he looked at
Speaker 1: me with a puzzled look, and his eyes watered, and
Speaker 1: he looked both surprised and shocked, and he said to me, basically,
Speaker 1: you don't have to ask my forgiveness. I understand why
Speaker 1: you did what you did, and I love you very much.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's hard to imagine a better or
Speaker 1: a rich answer that a father could give a son.
Speaker 1: It was basically what he had written me twenty five
Speaker 1: years earlier, when I blew him off. He wrote me
Speaker 1: this extraordinary letter that I reproduced in the book, in
Speaker 1: which he basically said, you've hurt me a lot, but
Speaker 1: I can take it, and you have to make your
Speaker 1: decisions now that you're a young man. This is twenty
Speaker 1: years earlier, but I just want you to know that
Speaker 1: I love you very much. And it was basically the
Speaker 1: same thing that he said when I asked for his forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and he gave it, and he gave it without any qualification,
Speaker 1: without any I told you so, it's without any regret
Speaker 1: or rank or we just from that moment on it
Speaker 1: it was as if those twenty years didn't happen. And
Speaker 1: I think from your perspective, maybe tell me if this
Speaker 1: is right. This book is your second response to his letter.
Speaker 1: This is a loving response to his letter. It's a
Speaker 1: book length response to his expression of love. And I
Speaker 1: read the book itself as an expression of your love
Speaker 1: for him. There's there's objectivity in it, and there's judgment,
Speaker 1: and there's an attempt to come to terms with your
Speaker 1: father in terms of who he was, and with yourself
Speaker 1: and with your indirect grandfather. So there's honesty pervading it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's also a book written from deep love.
Speaker 1: It certainly was. I mean I I set out to
Speaker 1: write the book with the narrow goal of trying to
Speaker 1: give him a fair shake than history had given him,
Speaker 1: and hopefully to clear his name from the terrible state
Speaker 1: of having been the person who drove off. At was done,
Speaker 1: it definitely set out as that it grew to be
Speaker 1: so much more complicated in ways that I couldn't have imagined.
Speaker 1: And the reader will have to decide whether I whether
Speaker 1: it seems like an act of love. It certainly was
Speaker 1: that to me. But at the same time, as you say,
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to be candid, incredible to
Speaker 1: try to clear him. I'm an interested observer and so i'm,
Speaker 1: you know, in times in describing him in the book,
Speaker 1: I'm tough. I'm tough on myself as well. But yes,
Speaker 1: it was an act of love and really an act
Speaker 1: of hopeful atonement. The book is extraordinary, and even if
Speaker 1: a reader had never heard of Jimmy Off, I think
Speaker 1: it would be an incredible read. And I think somebody
Speaker 1: who also knows you and looks up to you, the
Speaker 1: book is really really profoundly moving. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You're very kind. Thanks huh. Jack Goldsmith's book is called
Speaker 1: in Half a Shadow, a Stepfather, A disappearance in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and My Search for the Truth. And now for our
Speaker 1: sound of the week. Those are airstrikes hitting the Syrian
Speaker 1: town of Rasslaine on the Syrian Turkish border this Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Those are the sounds of an invasion that certainly looks
Speaker 1: like the beginning of a war in which the government
Speaker 1: of Turkey will attempt to cleanse a large swath of
Speaker 1: territory in northern Syria of Kurds who see themselves as
Speaker 1: the enemies of Turkey and whom Turkey treats as terrorists.
Speaker 1: In one way, this is just another manifestation of a
Speaker 1: historical truth over the last century in the Middle East, namely,
Speaker 1: the Kurds almost always lose big powers that surround the
Speaker 1: areas where they live. Whether it's Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq,
Speaker 1: or ultimately, the United States as an outside actor, have
Speaker 1: consistently blocked the Kurds from achieving their dream of a
Speaker 1: larger and more significant country called Kurdistan. In that sense,
Speaker 1: the betrayal of the Kurds, this time by the United
Speaker 1: States government authorizing effectively the Turkish government to go in
Speaker 1: and clear the Kurds out of this part of Syria,
Speaker 1: is simply business as usual in the brutal history of
Speaker 1: the Middle East. What makes this instance particularly nasty, however,
Speaker 1: is how recently the United States was completely dependent on
Speaker 1: these particular Kurdish militias to fight the battle against the
Speaker 1: Islamic State. Remember, almost nobody in the region wanted to
Speaker 1: provide boots on the ground to fight isis The United
Speaker 1: States did not want to provide significant numbers of soldiers,
Speaker 1: and as a consequence of the slow process whereby other
Speaker 1: countries stepped up, it took years to eliminate the brutality
Speaker 1: of the Islamic state and reduce it to the tiny
Speaker 1: rump organization that it is today. The Kurds bore the
Speaker 1: brunt of the fight against ISIS, and now the United
Speaker 1: States has betrayed them, and done so in a spectacularly
Speaker 1: obvious way. Does this shock the Kurds? Probably not. Does
Speaker 1: it sadden everybody who thinks that the United States should
Speaker 1: stand by its allies? Yes, it absolutely does. The question
Speaker 1: that remains is is the immorality of the betrayal of
Speaker 1: the Kurds justified in light of real politique. That's a
Speaker 1: question that actually can't be answered with any great precision.
Speaker 1: Many people with good knowledge of the situation on the ground,
Speaker 1: including a good number of former US military generals, have
Speaker 1: taken the stance that the United States is shooting itself
Speaker 1: in the foot by siding with Turkey against the Kurds,
Speaker 1: because if we fail to stand by our allies, no
Speaker 1: one will stand up and fight with us the next time.
Speaker 1: That's a realist argument for why the abandonment is a
Speaker 1: bad idea yet it's also inevitably the case that when
Speaker 1: it comes to finding allies in the Middle East, everyone
Speaker 1: knows the name of the game. The enemy of my
Speaker 1: enemy is my friend. The Kurds had no particular love
Speaker 1: for the United States. They did deal with the United
Speaker 1: States to fight Isis because it was in their interests. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the United States acted similarly in that sense. Real politique says,
Speaker 1: betray your enemies whenever you want. You always know you
Speaker 1: can get away with it in the end. I don't
Speaker 1: think ultimately that the question of the morality of the
Speaker 1: American Act, which is unquestionably lousy, can outweigh the real
Speaker 1: politique argument in real world, hard nosed Middle Eastern politics.
Speaker 1: So we need to ask about the bigger picture consequences
Speaker 1: of this particular action by Turkey, which the United States
Speaker 1: has effectively embraced. And here is where the real politique
Speaker 1: arguments against the Turkish invasion of northern Syria become especially strong.
Speaker 1: After all, what's Turkey doing. It's not just ridding itself
Speaker 1: of potentially pesky Kurdish militias on its border. Turkey is
Speaker 1: also aspiring to create a substantial area that will be
Speaker 1: a haven for a couple of million Syrian Sunni Arabs
Speaker 1: who at present are stuck in Turkish refugee camps, and who,
Speaker 1: according to Turkey, will now live quasi permanently in the
Speaker 1: northern part of Syria that is not the part of
Speaker 1: the country where they traditionally lived, but is in fact
Speaker 1: the place where Kurge traditionally lived. Put another way, what
Speaker 1: Turkey is doing is trying to effectuate an ethnic cleansing
Speaker 1: and the replacement of one Syrian population Syrian Kurds, with
Speaker 1: another Syrian population, Syrian Arabs rite along their border. The
Speaker 1: history of such population transformations in the region is a
Speaker 1: long one, and it is almost inevitably a story of failure.
Speaker 1: Moving populations around creates new conflicts, angerish people, creates permanent resentments,
Speaker 1: creates a sense of permanent refugee status, places some people
Speaker 1: to the benefit of others, and doesn't even give all
Speaker 1: the advantages that one would hope for to the people
Speaker 1: who are in fact being settled there. It is a
Speaker 1: fake solution to the Syrian refugee crisis. That is what
Speaker 1: is pragmatically wrong with the United States government standing by
Speaker 1: and allowing the government of Turkey to engage in this
Speaker 1: transformation of the northern part of Syria. So when you
Speaker 1: hear that the United States has betrayed the Kurds, that's true.
Speaker 1: It's morally wrong. But on its own it's not enough
Speaker 1: of an argument to say that pragmatically this was a mistake.
Speaker 1: The true mistake lies in the naive fantasy that by
Speaker 1: putting a new population in a new part of Syria,
Speaker 1: Turkey can somehow solve the Syrian refugee crisis. It can't.
Speaker 1: The consequences will be eventually renewed civil war, greater violence,
Speaker 1: and more deaths. And that's why we should feel sad
Speaker 1: when we hear the sound of Turkish military attacks on Syria.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia Gene Coott, with engineering by Jason Gambrel
Speaker 1: and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm
Speaker 1: Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman.
Speaker 1: This is Deep Background.