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Amanpour
Interview with Former Representative, CNN Senior Political Commentator and Country First Founder Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); Interview with "Say Nothing" Author Patrick Radden Keefe; Interview with The Atlantic Contributing Writer David Brooks. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired November 19, 2024 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FMR. REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL), CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FOUNDER, COUNTRY FIRST: The Republican Party is no longer conservative.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: At a critical time for America, and the world, I speak to Former Republican Congressman Kinzinger about standing up for Ukraine and
against Trump.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would die for a United Ireland.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: -- "Say Nothing," the horrors of The Troubles. Acclaimed author Patrick Radden Keefe on turning his bestselling book into a hit series for
TV.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID BROOKS, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Increasingly, people with college degrees and people with high school degrees are living in different
worlds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: -- Writer David Brooks tells Hari Sreenivasan why he thinks the Ivy League broke America.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
1,000 days of war, and for the first time ever, Ukraine fires U.S.-made long-range missiles into Russia. The attack comes just days after President
Biden gave Kyiv the green light to use the American weapons, ATACMS, to hit inside the country. Russian air defenses said they shot down five of the
missiles and another was damaged.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, is escalating its own campaign against Ukraine, blanketing the country with drone and missile attacks. And Vladimir Putin
today updating the country's nuclear doctrine, which would, in theory, lower the bar for for the use of nuclear weapons.
Well, Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger is concerned about what Donald Trump's return to the White House could mean for Kyiv and for
American democracy. Kinzinger, you might recall, cut his political career short, calling his former party a cult and later endorsing Kamala Harris.
Adam Kinzinger joins me now live from Texas. Adam, welcome back to the program. It's always good to see you.
FMR. REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL), CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FOUNDER, COUNTRY FIRST: Good to be with you.
GOLODRYGA: Just first, I know for you, Kyiv, and this war in Ukraine has been a top priority for the U.S. to support Ukraine in over the two years
now, 1,000 days since Russia's illegal invasion in February of 2022. Just from your perspective, 1,000 days today, still so much up in the air.
Ukraine has been taking a hit over the past several months. News of the ATACMS. You think this could be potentially an opportunity for Ukraine to
change the course of this war before Donald Trump enters the Oval Office again?
[13:05:00]
KINZINGER: Yes, it's great to be with you. And by the way, yes, I think this is the opportunity to change the course. I mean, it doesn't mean that
all of a sudden, you know, Russia is going to be -- going to lose, they're going to be cowering. But what this does is this expands the distance at
which Ukraine can defend itself from where it's being attacked from.
You can talk about taking out supply nodes, areas of weapon storage, ammunition storage. They just, I think, about a month or two ago, hit a
massive ammunition depot that basically slowed down the amount of fire against Ukrainians from the Russians. So, that's why this ATACMS expansion
is so important.
And let's keep this in mind, because I hear people all the time say, you know, what's the goal? What's the end game for Ukraine? The end game, the
pressure is on Russia. All a defending country has to do to win is to keep defending. You know, this idea that a defending country has to somehow
reach in and I guess invade an -- invading country is not the case. You just have to defend. And the Ukrainians have defended themselves
unbelievably.
We -- I mean, the intelligence briefings I got, I was in Congress still when this invasion kicked off, was that this was going to be just a matter
of a couple days that Russia was going to be -- going to, you know, fight. And then there would be some kind of an insurgency going on from then on.
Ukraine has been amazing. And this is truly the most important issue facing our world today.
GOLODRYGA: And so, as we're approaching another administration, Donald Trump has kept no secret as to how he's viewed this war and U.S. support
and the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. has provided Ukraine. He has famously campaigned on saying this war will end on day one. We know his
past affinity and the comments that he's made about Vladimir Putin that has raised a lot of eyebrows.
What, if anything, do you see in terms of his national security advisers and military picks for his cabinet in particular? Let's talk about Pete
Hegseth, defense secretary, a decorated former veteran who served his country but has no experience running an organization the size of the
Pentagon. And then Tulsi Gabbard, who -- at DNI, who also has made some very controversial comments in what appeared to be blaming Ukraine for
Russia's invasion as well as showing sympathy for Bashar Assad of all people.
KINZINGER: Yes. I mean, let's think about this. So, Japan, I think, gave Ukraine a bunch of weapons at one point and Tulsi that day tweeted,
reminding the world that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in World War II. I mean, like, you can't make this up. It was like, OK, you are that much in
the -- on the side of Vladimir Putin that you're angry that Japan is giving weapons to Ukraine, so you're going to bring up Pearl Harbor, like it's
nuts.
And I was in Congress with her. So, I was actually friends with Tulsi up until the day she went and visited Bashar al-Assad. I mean, this guy,
obviously, as we know, is a butcher, a genocide guy, you know, special place in hell for him when he finally does meet his end. And she went and
met with him and gave propaganda to him to use to continue to hold on to power, gave -- gives propaganda daily to the Russian regime. They call her
basically their girlfriend.
Look, this is obviously very bad. She's a terrible decision for DNI, director of national intelligence. I don't know why any ally would
cooperate on intelligence with us if she gets this. Pete Hegseth, I think his knee jerk reaction would be correct, but he's so eager to please Donald
Trump that who knows, and really the same with Marco Rubio.
My hope here, Bianna, it is that in the end Donald Trump recognizes the damage that leaving Afghanistan did, for instance, to Joe Biden. It really
was when his approval rating went from 50 some percent to underwater and never recovered. If Ukraine was to collapse under Donald Trump, the
American people would be really upset about this. So, would the world. And I think that could do real damage to his reputation. So, that's how we
continue to get to Donald Trump.
But there's no doubt, I think he's the least best of the two people running for president to continue to help Ukraine defend himself, which is why
Europe has to step up. Europe has to do their job now in defending their own continent because, hopefully, we'll still be there with them, but we
don't know.
GOLODRYGA: You mentioned Afghanistan. I'm wondering how you responded to reports that there may be a committee that the president-elect is
interested in court martialing some of the military leaders that had been involved in what we all arguably -- I mean, not arguably, I think
objectively say was a disastrous withdrawal out of Afghanistan, no matter how people view the decision to leave Afghanistan. Would you support an
idea like that? I mean, court martialing? marshalling those military officials and generals who were involved throughout that time?
[13:10:00]
KINZINGER: Certainly not a court martial. That's insane. You know, answers to what happened, absolutely. You know, that we call it hot washing in the
military, which is, let's take a look at what happened, what we need to learn to do differently. We also need to look at that with the State
Department, by the way, in terms of what they've done with some of their visas.
But here's the best part about that whole thing. Donald Trump is the reason we left Afghanistan. I mean, I get it. Joe Biden was the president at the
moment we left Afghanistan. And he does own all of the tactical kind of embarrassments that happened in that withdrawal, but it was Mike Pompeo and
Donald Trump that set Joe Biden up for no win situation.
They basically made a deal with the Taliban that we would leave after 18 months. They had the troop number set so that Joe Biden either had to
increase troops in Afghanistan or pull them out. I think he should have increased troops in Afghanistan, but obviously, a tough decision for a
president. Donald Trump owns this as much as Joe Biden does. And so, this - - like, you know, it's Donald Trump. I mean, obviously, this guy doesn't take accountability for anything. This is his fault as much as it's anybody
else's.
GOLODRYGA: Donald Trump has also said and confirmed on social media this week that he would use -- to declare a national emergency and use military
assets to deport potentially tens of -- millions of undocumented immigrants. Can he do that? I mean, realistically, how do you envision that
happening? Is that something that you think Congress and with Republicans in control of both chambers, you think this is something that Congress
would sign off on as well?
KINZINGER: Yes. I mean, look, here's what Congress can do to stop it from happening. The president under insurrection acts or national defense or
whatever they put it under has the right to enforce immigration, and that can be at the border and that can be within the interior of the United
States. What Congress can do is pass laws to prohibit the president from using certain funds to actually do that. That's how you stop a president
from acting.
Obviously, with the makeup of the House and the Senate, that's not going to be the case. There's going to be no effort to stop Trump. So, he can do
this.
Now, here's where the question is, and this is -- I'm not convinced that once Americans start seeing people that are brown, you know, basically
because they're brown, being rounded up, checked for their IDs, put in camps, and deported to a country -- by the way, you have to have
cooperation from the country you're deporting them to. It's not like we can hostilely land in Mexico City and let a bunch of people off or, you know,
in El Salvador. You have to have cooperation from that country.
And I think once American -- look, I disagree with the election of Donald Trump. It was still a very close election. The American people though are
not savages. And when you start seeing families being torn apart, I think this turns against Donald Trump in record pace. I don't think he's going to
be able to do this. He talks about deporting criminals. We're already deporting criminals. This is already being done, by the way.
So, look, yes, he has every right to do it. He may try. Stephen Miller, the dark lord under him, probably will try, but the American people, I don't
think you're going to stand for what this looks like in actuality when it goes from theory to reality.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. Aside from the moral question, right, there's also a big economic question that looms, too. What does that do to the U.S. economy if
you start deporting millions of undocumented workers here?
Let's turn to a project that we'll see more of in early January, and that is a field film that you are the focus of, called "The Last Republican," a
new documentary, and it's really about your process -- a lonely process, it turned out to be, as a true and true Republican, as you have constantly
said you are, and you have agreed with the majority of the policies espoused by Donald Trump in his first term.
It was January 6th that changed everything for you, and in retrospect, perhaps naively, you thought the same for many of your Republican
colleagues as well. That turned out not to be the case. Let's play a clip from this film, especially as it relates to what you thought would have
been a turning point that day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KINZINGER: Naively, I thought there's no way people aren't going to wake up from this. I remember the day after January 6th. I mean, everybody was
kind of waking up at that point. The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts
require immediate action by President Trump.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No
question about it.
KINZINGER: I called it, it was like Saturday morning, when you had a giant party at your house Friday night, and now you got chickens flying around,
you have a bad headache, you know, you're only wearing a shirt, and you're like, what did we do last night? That's where I thought the party was.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[13:15:00]
GOLODRYGA: Adam, looking back are, you surprised that this is where the party is now, four years later, and the fact that for the majority of
voters, this wasn't the most pressing issue?
KINZINGER: I -- every day I'm surprised. I mean, I still, honestly, it's - - I can't come to grips with it. Because, you know, growing up as a proud American, as a proud Republican, as somebody that really believed and still
does believe in America, by the way, and, you know, went on to serve in the military, I always thought that like this George Washington, Abraham
Lincoln, kind of proud of our country, proud of democracy thing would just penetrate the depths of our soul.
And I thought everybody, Bianna, that I worked with, Republican or Democrat, had a red line they wouldn't cross, like some moral red line.
Some did, and they're not in Congress anymore. They got pushed out or they left or they quit. There are so many that don't. And every day it continues
to baffle me that there are people that are willing to literally go down this path to authoritarianism to be -- to have some proximity to power for
a short amount of time. I read my bible. This is everything that the bible warns against, by the way.
And so, yes, it does surprise me. And it surprises me that January 6th wasn't a bigger issue. But, you know, look, it's the American people's
right to vote how they want. I will sit here and continue until the end of my days to defend democracy as best as I know how, even if I'm the last one
doing it, because that's what I'm called to do. It's what the right thing to do is.
GOLODRYGA: It turns out to be a very brave and, as we noted, lonely thing to do, it appears from the perspective of your party. But, Adam, we
appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. We appreciate everything that you've done as a patriot of America, and I have to say,
it's a really important film. I think viewers should all watch and can continue to learn from and I've been, you know, just personally seeing the
birth of your beautiful son, Christian, was a wonderful moment in the film as well. So, I hope you're enjoying every moment with him. Thank you.
Appreciate it.
KINZINGER: You bet. Thanks.
GOLODRYGA: Well, next to the devastation of war and the price of peace. The Troubles of Northern Ireland seemed for a long time to be irresolvable
conflict. But the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries committed harrowing and sectarian atrocities with swaths of innocent people killed. Eventually, the
people said enough and the Good Friday Agreement brought peace in 1998, a beacon of hope around the world.
But the people of Northern Ireland have been picking up the pieces ever since. The acclaimed book, "Say Nothing," by Patrick Radden Keefe is a
sober and well researched account which looks at the conflict from the point of view of some of its worst perpetrators and its most afflicted
victims. Most notably, the family of Jean McConville, a widow and mother of 10 who was murdered by the IRA.
Well, now it's been turned into a drama series on Hulu and Disney. Here's a clip from the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We wanted to be doing what the boys were doing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What were the boys doing?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fundraising.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are liberating funds for the Irish Republican Army. Mother Superior.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Brits had a problem. They didn't know who was IRA. The one thing they could never get us to do was talk.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My whole family has suffered. I would die for a United Ireland.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: Christiane spoke with Patrick Radden Keefe about translating this troubling history from book to screen. And here is their conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Patrick Radden Keefe, welcome back to the program.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, AUTHOR, "SAY NOTHING": It's great to be with you.
AMANPOUR: Now, I say welcome back because we had a conversation about the book "Say Nothing" when it came out a few years ago. Now, the series of
that book is dropping. But how difficult was it to turn this book about essentially a history of The Troubles, essentially from one side, into a
series?
KEEFE: It wasn't easy and, you know, when I finished the book, it was not a situation where we shopped it around Hollywood and took it to anybody,
you know, kind of gave it to the highest bidder. There was one production company that I spoke to about this because they had made, "The People vs.
O. J. Simpson," which I thought was a very good limited series based on a book about a very vexing topic, race.
And so, on that basis, they came to me and said, listen, could we do this? You would come along. You'd be a partner in helping produce it. So, it
wouldn't be a situation where you just gave us the rights and we came back having made a television series. And so, I was there, I was kind of an
active voice in the room really for five years that it's taken to get this thing made.
AMANPOUR: So, that's really interesting because it is obviously a true story and the book is a journalistic enterprise as well as an amazing
write. Do you think that a series, which is inevitably dramatized and got all the sort of, you know, effects and brilliant actors and all of that,
were you concerned that there becomes less of a journalistic enterprise and more of a show?
[13:20:00]
KEEFE: Well, I mean, I think some of that is just in the nature of what it is, right? That I think, at this point, viewers are sophisticated enough to
know that when you're watching a television drama, even one that is based on a true story and says at the beginning, based on a true story, that
there's a certain amount of dramatic license that has to be employed by the people making it, that you're compressing certain stories, there are
certain places where you're kind of conjecturing about what might have been said in the room.
What was important for me as the author of this nonfiction book with 100 pages of end notes that was very scrupulously reported was not to be in
there with some fantasy that what we were making was a documentary, but to make sure that in the places where a license was taken, that it felt as
though it was a reasonable license to take. That, you know, if people were coloring, they were sort of embroidering, they were doing so between the
lines of the factual narrative that is laid out in the book.
AMANPOUR: So, I want to play a clip that we have. And this is Dolours Price. She is one of the main. if not the protagonist of the book and the
series. She had a sister called Marian, they were IRA, and there's also Brendan Hughes. These are the three main characters, if I could say. Here's
a clip of Dolours Price talking about kind of why she does what she does for the IRA.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LOLA PETTICREW, ACTRESS, "SAY NOTHING": But I would die for a United Ireland. I would die. If I thought it meant the Brits would hesitate going
to the grocers or sending their wee kids off to school in the morning, I would die. This is my whole family has suffered and I just want that fear
to live in their hearts too. You know?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, that's blunt, some might say it's radical, but this is what it was back in, I guess, the '60s and '70s. Tell us, who is Dolours Price,
and why did you choose to focus on her so much?
KEEFE: So, this whole project started for me, it's crazy to think, but more than a decade ago. That woman, Dolours Price, died in 2013, and I read
her obituary in The New York Times. And she was the first woman to join the Irish Republican Army as a sort of a frontline soldier. So, generations of
women had been involved in the IRA in the past, but they were always doing things like hiding weapons or helping injured men. They were sort of behind
the lines. And she essentially said, listen, I want to be out there carrying a gun and planning operations.
And that was very intriguing to me, reading that in the obituary, because on some level, for me, The Troubles had seemed like a very male story. So,
to learn that there was this woman who joined with her sister, Marian, and that the two of them actually went on hunger strike. They bombed London in
1973, they were thrown into Brixton Prison, and they went on hunger strike, which at the time, was sort of front page news, in 1973. That story to me
seemed so interesting.
And then the other aspect of it that I picked up in that obituary was that in later years, in middle age, Dolours Price looked back at the things she
had done as a young woman in her early 20s, and was really kind of reconsidering, you know, what was it all for? Was it worth it, the things
that I did?
So, what I was trying to do in the book and what I think we've done successfully in the series is really interrogate the nature of radical
politics and violence used in this kind of a cause, looking both at the allure of it but also at the cost of it, the human cost of it, for the
victims and also for the perpetrators themselves.
AMANPOUR: I will say, you're reminding us of the hunger strike, certainly in the book it was, you know, very graphically described. And how the Brits
are -- and the prison wardens, literally forced fed them in a very painful way. And this comes across very, very disturbingly, because it is
disturbing, in the actual series. That's a level of authenticity that you insisted, you know, stay in.
KEEFE: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that you have to take a hard look at this stuff. And I think that a subject like The Troubles, and I should
say it's hardly exclusive to The Troubles, there are other conflicts in the world before and more recently, where this is the case where you get a kind
of very vexed discourse with very entrenched positions on one side or the other.
This was a situation where I've spent a decade of my life now looking at this conflict, looking at these people, and I feel a great deal of
ambivalence about a lot of it. And so, part of what I was trying to do was capture some of the ambiguity. But I think the only way to do that is take
a really hard look at the facts themselves.
And so, that means both, you know, what is it that would give somebody the kind of ideological zeal where they would join a paramilitary organization
and devote their life to this kind of thing? What would drive them to go on hunger strike and almost die? And also, what would drive them to take up
arms, you know, plant bombs in public places? I mean, you have to sort of look in a pretty unblinking way at that.
[13:25:00]
The hunger strike is interesting because you can imagine for the British authorities at the time, there was this dilemma, which is we don't want to
let these young women die. If they do, it'll be a huge propaganda victory for the IRA. People will be out in the streets. And so, they felt, well, we
have to force feed them and keep them alive instead. The women said you're denying us our bodily autonomy. You know, if we want to die, we should be
free to do so. You can't force feed us.
And doctors who actually had to care for them were left in this bind, where you have this imperative, which is, on the one hand, do no harm. On the
other hand, you want to keep these -- you want to keep the patient alive. And so, we wanted to explore all of those dilemmas in a way that, you know,
is quite graphic and intense, but I think is also moving and really interesting.
AMANPOUR: And just a note, because I think IRA, hunger strikers, everybody remembers and associates it with Bobby Sands, who's also a big part of this
book, and he did die. But I just wanted to point that out because I think that is such a well-known name. But can we start with the beginning of the
book and the kind of beginning drama of the series, and that is the story of Jean McConville.
So, she was a widow of 10 children, and suddenly, she was -- she disappeared. And I guess she was accused of being a snitch for the
authorities against the IRA. Tell me about that story and why it was such a central part of the story of that time. And of course, the Price sisters
were intimately involved with her disappearance.
KEEFE: Yes. So, interestingly enough, in that obituary that I mentioned that I read in 2013, it mentioned the name of this other woman, Jean
McConville, and that was not a name that I knew at the time, though it turns out it's quite a famous name in Northern Ireland and had been.
So, Jean McConville was really one of the more iconic victims of The Troubles. She was a widow. She was Protestant, living in a Catholic area.
She was a mother of 10. And in the winter of 1972, a gang of masked intruders came in and pulled her out of her apartment in this big kind of
imposing housing complex in West Belfast. Her children were clinging to her legs. And this gang said, listen, we want to take her away. We just want to
talk to her for a few hours. We'll bring her back. But never did.
And those kids grew up eventually in orphanages, not knowing what had happened to their mother. They were split up after her abduction and
disappearance, and it emerged much later that she'd been killed by the IRA. And that Dolours Price, that woman, had something to do with this. That she
was somehow involved.
So, for me, that was the seed that started this whole project, was the idea of telling a story about these two very different women. One of them a
victim, one of them a perpetrator. And this act of violence that connected them. And that would really come to haunt all of Northern Ireland. Because
this question of what happened to Jean McConville is a sort of a shadow that continues to hang over the place today.
In the series, the first thing you see is the abduction of Jean McConville. It's a terrifying scene. You see her children. You see a really brilliant
actress named Judith Roddy playing Jean McConville. And there's a sense in which, you know, in dramatic terms, the series kind of starts as a
thriller. It starts as a mystery. What happened to this woman? And it becomes a tragedy.
AMANPOUR: And it's such a difficult, difficult story, and there was quite a lot of that going around at that time, but, as you said, she had 10
children. And really, the authorities visited horrors on a lot of them, in some of these so-called orphanages and care homes and things, and they
really, really scared suffered.
Yet, they did cooperate with you for the book, and you commend them, and you acknowledge their cooperation. They didn't, though -- they were quite
concerned about the program, about the series, saying you didn't reach out to them. I don't know. But anyway, they said, I don't think they should be
profiting out of someone else's grief. But, Helen added, she would support the series if they tell it right.
Have you heard from Helen? Obviously, I guess she hasn't seen it, but do you expect to hear from her? Did you mind doing this without the kids'
approval?
KEEFE: Well, listen, it's complicated. Anytime you're telling a story that is going to dramatize the most profoundly traumatic moments in people's
lives, of course those people are going to have mixed feelings, mixed emotions about the idea that you would do it. We have actually made a great
effort throughout the course of the production to be in touch with the families, not -- I should say, not just the McConville family, but the
families of other victims as well, in order just to let them know what we were doing, to be there to hear their concerns, to answer any questions
that they had.
I expect that when the families see the series, they will see that the story of these victims is told with enormous compassion and sympathy and a
real sense that there is a heroism in doing what they did, which is to experience this unimaginable tragedy and then come back from that. And
indeed, speak out at a time when there was a real code of silence in Northern Ireland and say we want answers. We want to know about what the
IRA did to our families.
[13:30:00]
That to me has always been a kind of rousing example what those families did, the fearlessness with which they demanded answers and some idea of
kind of historical truth and accountability. And so, my hope is that they will see that the series that we've made is very much done in that spirit
and following that example. And I think that the name of Jean McConville should be known the world over. And hopefully, this program will go some
way to making that happen.
AMANPOUR: So, Patrick the big elephant in the room is Gerry Adams. Everybody knows who Gerry Adams is. He was the famous Sinn Fein leader. He
went to the United States. He was the, you know, guy who went into the peace negotiations with Britain and America and the Republic of Ireland,
all of that. So, he's got a very, very huge political presence.
However, Gerry Adams always denied being in the IRA, and always denied knowing of or being in any way involved with any of these things like the
Jean McConville disappearance and murder. He denied it all the time. And I actually interviewed him about it, and I spoke to him in 2014. It's just
after he was released without charge for the murder of Jean McConville after a certain investigation. This is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GERRY ADAMS, THEN-PRESIDENT SINN FEIN: I'm never going to distance myself from people who I consider to be freedom fighters and heroes. Of course, I
disagree with many of the issues and many of the things that the IRA did, including the killing of Mrs. McConville and the way that her 10 children
were left.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, and at the end of your series, you know, he's asked whether, by journalists, you know, if he has blood in his hands and
he says, no, not at all. I'm perfectly at peace. Again, he denies it.
I was struck by the book, because I covered, you know, the end part of The Troubles, the -- towards the peace process. And I had not known the full
extent of what Dolours and Brendan Hughes and others say about Gerry Adams, that he was the officer commanding, he was IRA, and a lot of this, they
say, was at his orders, although he always was able to keep his fingerprints off it. What do you make of what he said to me?
KEEFE: So, it's funny that you should play that clip because I wrote about that interview in the book. You know, he hasn't spoken that many times
about this question in a public way. That was one of them. He didn't speak to me. He wouldn't speak to me at all either for the original New Yorker
article that I wrote or the book. And so, I really studied that interview and others that he had given.
Listen, I mean, I think that to me there is a fascinating story here, and it goes back to this idea of what happens when you take a kind of
longitudinal view of young radicals, you look at them over a long period of time. And so, for me, this is a story about people who were very, very
close, thick as thieves, in the early 1970s, when they were all young, they were in their 20s, and they were involved in the IRA.
And Adams today maintains that he was never in the IRA. There are many, many people who were in the IRA who would tell you otherwise. In fact,
Adams is really the only person out there who, with a straight face, will claim that he was never in the IRA. And you end up in this situation where
Adams becomes, I think, to his enormous credit, a peacemaker. He sees around the corner in a way that other people in the IRA were not able to.
And he realizes we are not going to be able to fight the British into the sea. We need to come up with a political settlement.
But when that happens, it's experienced by a lot of these kind of rank-and- file soldiers, people like Dolours Dulles Price and Brendan Hughes, as a great betrayal. Because what they say is, listen, back in the '70s, I did
some awful things. And I did them with the sense that this was a means to an end. That if you go out and you do these terrible things, you will
achieve what we've always wanted to achieve, which is a United Ireland.
Then you get the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which Adams brings into existence, and it's a negotiated settlement, it's a compromise, and it's
still part of the U.K. in Northern Ireland, right? And so, what happens to the people who did those things is they suddenly say, well, wait a second,
how do I justify these transgressive acts that I engaged in, the shootings, the bombings, the disappearances, when I was young?
At the time, I always justified them thinking eventually our destination would be United Ireland, but we never got there, and you've sort of changed
the game on us. And then, Adams, at the same time, says, well, personally, I don't feel any of that trauma, because you see, I was never in the IRA.
And that incenses them all the more.
[13:35:00]
And so, that's a story that we tell, I think, quite vividly in the series because we follow these characters up to recent years, up to, as you
mentioned, the arrest of Gerry Adams on suspicion of involvement in the Jean McConville death. And you see the way in which these people turned on
him with a real kind of volcanic emotion because they felt so betrayed.
AMANPOUR: And I actually need, to point out, at the end of every single episode of this series, there is a disclaimer, Gerry Adams has always
denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA related violence. You feel moved or the producers feel moved that they have to put
that in there.
Now, let me ask you this finally, because we talked -- you know, the political end was a United Ireland. It's not happened yet. Maybe it will.
But Sinn Fein is running very, very strong in the Republic of Ireland. There is a snap election being called for the end of this month, November
29th. And I wonder whether -- what you make of that. Even the British, apparently the police service of Northern Ireland recently confirmed that
their assessment that Sinn Fein is still overseen by the IRA Army Council still holds.
KEEFE: Yes, it's fascinating. The rise of Sinn Fein politically, on both sides of the Irish border, is a really fascinating story and part of what's
so intriguing to me about it is that with another political party in another place you might have seen more of a clean break with history. You
actually hear it in that interview you did with Adams, where Adams says, I don't disassociate myself from the people who were in the IRA in the worst
day. So, he's saying, you know, I wasn't in the IRA myself, but I'm not looking to distance myself from them in any way.
And I think that we find ourselves in this kind of interesting moment with Sinn Fein, where there's a sense that, you know, maybe we can kind of
whitewash the past. Maybe we can sort of move beyond it without ever actually disowning the worst things that happened. And I think it's kind of
an open question whether they will succeed as a really viable political party in being able to do that, in being able to essentially kind of, you
know, make no apologies, not actually revisit in any real open way the worst of the extremes of The Troubles, but instead, just kind of stick with
the talking points and become a different sort of party, right? Become a post-Troubles party that's more focused on housing and various other kind
of pocketbook issue for voters. So, that's a -- you know, I think it's a question that is very much alive one in light of this upcoming election.
AMANPOUR: It's really fascinating because, you know, for so many, the Peace Accord stands as a success in our terrible, fractured world, and
often is pointed to as an example, the Good Friday Peace Accords. Anyway, Patrick Radden Keefe, thank you so much. "Say Nothing," the book, and now
the series. Thanks for being with us.
KEEFE: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: Well, now we want to take a moment to highlight a story of extraordinary courage. Gisele Pelicot has become a symbol of strength and
resistance for women everywhere. A total of 51 men stand accused of her rape in a trial that shocked France and the world. Pelicot then husband,
Dominique, admits to drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020.
Throughout the court proceedings, Pelicot braved the public, the media, and her attackers, all the while using it as an opportunity to call out the
misogyny in our society and violence against women and girls. She should never have had to waive her right to anonymity, but by refusing to be
silenced, she offers hope to survivors of sexual violence.
In her final statement this morning, she said, I don't think I'll ever feel at peace until the end of my life. I'll learn to live with it. I'll rebuild
myself. And also highlighted how it's time that the macho patriarchal society that trivializes rape changes. It's time that we change the way we
look at rape. As this graffiti outside the courthouse shows, many are thanking her for her bravery.
Well, back to the U.S. The election here has highlighted a distrust in American institutions. Many working-class voters opted to vote Republican
due to the reputation of Democrats being the party for the educated elite. So, what's led this divide? For the Atlantic's December issue cover story,
Contributing Writer David Brooks argues that the dysfunctional system of meritocracy is largely responsible and needs to be redefined. He joins Hari
Sreenivasan to discuss further.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks, David Brooks. Thanks so much for joining us. Your recent cover story in The
Atlantic dives into how, essentially, we have created a system of meritocracy that isn't working. That's created a diploma divide in America.
You write, the meritocracy has provoked a populist backlash that is tearing society apart. Today, the most significant political divide is along
educational lines. Less educated people will Republican and more educated people vote Democratic. So, how did one lead to the other?
[13:40:00]
DAVID BROOKS, CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Well, the diploma divide, the political divide, grows out of a deep cultural divide. And so,
increasingly, people with college degrees and people with high school degrees are living in different worlds. People with high school degrees die
eight years younger. They're 10 times more likely to die of opioid addiction. They're much more likely to be obese. They're much less likely
to marry. They're much, much more likely to have kids out of wedlock. They even have fewer friends. 24 percent of High school grads say they have no
close friends.
And so, they're living -- we have created two different Americas. And we created that unintentionally, but on purpose. Over the last 70 years, we
created a world in which people who do really well in school, get to go to fancy colleges, marry each other, invest heavily in their kids. They get to
go to fancy colleges. They move to the same 10 or 12 cities, Austin, San Francisco, Washington, and they've created an inherited caste structure.
And 50 percent of America takes a look at this and says, you educated elites, you have too much power. And by the way, you're not all that
competent. So, we're going to revolt. And that's what Donald Trump is all about.
SREENIVASAN: You know, you kind of go back into the history of interest of the Harvard president almost 100 years ago. How does that translate into
this situation that you're describing?
BROOKS: Yes, the guy's name was James Conant, and he inherited a situation which was getting into Harvard was super easy if your dad went to Harvard.
Harvard and Princeton and Yale and schools like that were for the Protestant establishment. And so, the ideal in those days was to be a well-
bred man. And you didn't want to study hard. Academics were not important, but you had to be socially polished. And he decided, that's ridiculous. We
can't enter the 20th century governed by the dimwitted children of mayflower families. We need a new kind of elite.
And he had great faith in the power of IQ tests and in the power of GPA, getting really good grades. So, we said, we're going to pluck all the smart
kids from all across America. We'll bring them to places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and they'll run the society really well. So, inherently,
he was creating a new elite.
The problem with his vision was that, A, rich families learned to game the system. And the second problem with his system is he didn't have the right
definition of human ability. For him, it was all IQ. And IQ is important. It really is. If you want to be an astrophysicist, probably important to
have a high IQ. But those of us who, you know, live life know there are other things that are more important. Being curious, having a passionate
drive, being a good teammate agility, knowing how to move in life so it's you're graceful toward other people and decisive toward yourself. And so,
all these traits, which were hard to measure, got lopped off.
And so, we not only created these elites, this inherited caste system, but it's not that competent because it doesn't select on the basis of what are
the real skills in society?
SREENIVASAN: Is it OK to ascribe this current situation to the meritocracy and the amount that you do? Meaning, you know, are you, David Brooks,
giving enough credit to the social policies that multiple administrations have come up with that might have exacerbated the very, you know, dichotomy
in America that we're describing? Is it all the meritocracy? Aren't other things responsible for this as well?
BROOKS: I'm monomaniacal about this, so maybe I oversee it. But what I would say, I would put it this way, a lot of the social policies grow out
of the assumptions for the educated class, and I'm a member of this educated class. I went to an elite school, I teach at elite schools, I'm
deep in the system. But we decided that in moving to a postindustrial society, we need to create all Americans to look like us.
And so, you had a whole succession of presidents with education policies where the policy was designed, we're going to funnel all kids into college,
for your colleges because you need a college to get the, quote, "jobs of the future."
And then look at our immigration policy. Our immigration policy, we're going to relatively open borders. That creates cheap labor force for those
of us in the educated class, but a lot of competition for those more working-class folks. Look at our trade policy. We're very tolerant of free
trade, which is what the market wants. It's very efficient, but it meant a lot of the jobs got shipped overseas and not -- are not my job as a
journalist, that didn't get shipped overseas, but a lot of other people's jobs.
SREENIVASAN: You know, when I was growing up shop class was an option. And now, when I talk to younger people, they're just like completely flummoxed
by the idea of going to something that would teach you carpentry and welding at high school, right? I mean, but we as a culture decided that,
well, those were not really even tracks that we wanted to invest in for secondary or primary education.
BROOKS: Yes, we used to train a lots of things in schools. Shop class is one thing we had used to have more arts education. There used to be things
called the Courtesy Club where people are taught social skills. Now, we do a little of that through social and emotional learning, but not as much as
we should.
[13:45:00]
And basically, we just took one form of intelligence, the ability to do well in school. And we said, that's the thing that matters. If you can get
straight A's, you're the kind of person we want to promote. And by nine or 10 years old, kids know. They know either the school thinks I'm a smart
kid, in which case I get put into the pressure cooker, or the school thinks I'm a dumb kid, in which case I'm probably mentally checking out. And it's
just wrong to be sorting kids at that early age, especially by a very narrow and bogus criteria.
One of the problems with the meritocracy is it's based on a non-sequitur that doing really good at school is the same thing as really doing really
good at life. And that's not true. The relationship between your high school and college grades and your life outcomes, that correlation is
essentially trivial.
There was a study done -- somebody looked at thousands of cases where people were fired from their job. Why were they fired? In only 11 percent
of the cases, they were fired because they lacked intelligence or technical skills. In 89 percent of cases, it's because they were bad teammates. They
were hard to coach. They didn't try hard. They weren't calm under pressure. And so, these are things which the scientists call non cognitive skills,
because they're hard to count. But to me, they're the most important thing in life, and our schools have sort of shunted them off to the side.
SREENIVASAN: You know, what is the problem with this somewhat simple idea, and I think it's stayed around because it's a simple idea, that, you know,
number one people go to number one schools, that there is a purpose in having baseline standardized measurements where we can sort.
BROOKS: Yes. Well, it just doesn't -- number one people don't necessarily go to number one schools. You know, they -- having a high IQ, as I said, is
good. If you have the 1,600 in SATs, that's going to help you in life. It's going to probably lead to higher jobs. It's probably lead to higher
incomes. But there was a study called the term and study that looked at super smart people over their lifetimes and they did fine. They were
doctors and lawyers. These are like top 1 percent. But none of them were geniuses and none of them were creative. Intelligence is not the same as
creativity. Intelligence is not the same as good judgment.
Highly intelligent people are really good at persuading themselves. Their own false ideas are true. And so, eat a lot of other things aside from
that. And so, to me, when you -- and so, you look at a study of -- somebody did a study of students and they gave him a bunch of consulting problems
like as if they were in a consulting firm and the Ivy League kids did only a tiny amount better than the other kids.
And so, for example, Adam Grant took the results of that study and calculated that a Yale grad, in these consulting problems, did about 1.9
percent better than a grad from Cleveland State, and that's not a big difference. And so, the parents of high school juniors think that there's
an awesome difference between Princeton and Penn or between, you know, Penn State and Penn or between Williams College and some other college. But
these are -- this is a status system that really has no correlation in reality.
SREENIVASAN: Look, you know, I haven't met any college administrators in my time reporting on higher education who are happy with the U.S. News and
World Report rankings and how disproportionate that number factors into how prospective parents think, right? But there is definitely, you know, an
idea that has crept in and been established in the minds of those parents is that, look, this is the system that has created this American society
for good as well as the things that you describe, right?
BROOKS: Yes. I mean, I -- as I say, I went to these schools. I now teach at one of these elite colleges. I taught for 20 years at different elite
colleges. I find them awesome places filled with awesome people. And the people currently in them are not the problem. The problem is they are part
of a system that was established 70 or 80 years ago, and we're all stuck in the system. And most of us are not happy with the system.
So, parents. A lot of parents think there's too much pressure put on their kids in junior year, in high school, in senior year. But they can't
unilaterally disarm because the neighbor down the street might be -- being a tiger mom and making sure kids compete so that you can't unilaterally
withdraw. The admissions officers I know at universities, they don't like the system. They'd love to create a class that is based on a wide variety
of abilities, but they have to worry about their exclusivity, about rejecting a certain number of people. They have to worry about the U.S.
News rankings. They have to worry about what the media and SAT score is. And so, they are trapped in the system.
The teachers I know don't like teaching to the test. But standardized tests have become such a main force of this system that that they have to teach
to the test. And so, to me, the only way we're going to fix the meritocracy is to change the definition of merit.
[13:50:00]
SREENIVASAN: OK. Let's just take David Brooks' idea, run its course here. Next year, the admissions counselors at the top 25 schools want to say, all
right, how do I implement this, right? If I want to de-emphasize the IQ or the test score, and I want to start measuring for these things that Brooks
is outlining, right, courage and grid and a sense of purpose, and you know, how good of a teammate you are. So, how do we start to think about
restructuring the system and measuring appropriately?
BROOKS: Yes, first we need to make schools not the sorting system of society. You can't tell a person's potential at age 18. You just can't. And
so, you're creating a bogus system. The second thing is we need -- one of the problems is our high schools and elementary schools and middle schools
oriented themselves to feed into this system, where grades, AP tests and SATs are really what matter primarily.
But some schools have ways of doing education that's different. And one of the models I describe, and they're all out there, and I find most teachers
I talk to love these models, they'd love to transfer to this kind of model. So, for example, one kind of this model is called Project-Based Education.
There are no grades, there are no class periods, you're part of a team and you're given a big project to work on.
So, there's a school called High Tech High, which I happened to recently see a documentary about, and some of the students there were in a team and
they had to analyze why do civilizations decline. And then, they not only had to analyze it, they built this big wooden gizmo with levers and gears
and charts with all the different factors that feed into a civilizational decline.
So, they were thinking about a problem together. They were working with their hands on something together, and they were producing a product. And
that's more like life. And so, when you come out of a one of these project- based learnings, you may have grades and you have SAT scores, but you also have a portfolio. A portfolio of your accomplishments. And some schools
have a thing called a portfolio defense, where they get the students in front of a team of teachers, and they ask them, why'd you make this
decision? Why do you make that decision? And that's more like how the workplace works.
So, when you get that kind of school, then you're nurturing certain abilities, like initiative, working on teams, having desire, being curious,
being able to work hard through a difficult problem. And so, you're cultivating that, and you can't quantify it, but you can create a biography
of the person and then that can be sent off to schools and they can find the right person. We'd have a greater diversity of educational
institutions, which would cater to a greater diversity of human abilities.
SREENIVASAN: You know, we also had a conversation or multiple conversations with Raj Chetty from Opportunity Insights on the program too.
And, you know, one of the things that's intriguing is when you listen to the statistics of what the proportion -- how likely you are to get into
college, if your parents went to one of these elite colleges, it makes you just look at this and say, well, is this really that meritocratic system if
the -- if it's so tilted in favor of legacies or other external factors?
BROOKS: Yes. I mean, it's an inherited meritocracy. So, Daniel Markovits calculated all the in-kind contributions that educated parents make to
their kids, like not only private school tuition, possibly, but also like oboe practice, travel teams et cetera, et cetera. And he assumed over the
course of a childhood, such parents invest about $10 million in each kid. If you don't have the means, you just can't do that. And you can't compete.
And the gap opens up early.
So, by eighth grade, the children of the affluent are four grades ahead of the children left less affluent. By high school, their -- the Children of
the affluent have way higher SAT scores than the children who are less affluent. So, it's a system you can gain.
And so, one of the things Raj Chetty's work is so valuable at is reminding us the importance, like we're totally school obsessed, we should be
community obsessed. And Raj Chetty talks about how different communities create radically different levels of social mobility. And so, some of the
things -- and that makes total sense to me, because an American child spends only 13 percent of his or her time between ages zero and 18, only 13
percent in school. 87 percent of their time is spent somewhere else.
And so, the neighborhood really matters. And Chetty's research shows all sorts of unexpected things, at least to me. For example, cross class
friendships. If you have a friend -- if you're in one social class and you have a friend from a different social class, that significantly increases
your social mobility, because your friend may show you different forms of life that you don't see in your immediate experience. That friend may have
ideas for you. Here's how you get into that school. Here's how you pursue that career. And so, that super matters.
Are there fathers in the neighborhood? It doesn't even have to be your own father. If you live in a neighborhood where there are fathers around,
especially the guys, have a role model they can follow in life. And so, these neighborhood effects are just super important. And somehow, we need
to think not just as we think about who benefits from society, who has advantages in society. It's not just in the school. It's primarily in the
neighborhood in the family.
[13:55:00]
And those are the soft -- what they call the soft skills or the non- cognitive skills, but which are the important skills.
SREENIVASAN: You know, There's another through line in your essay here that's interesting to me. And you seem to be advocating for, you know, a
shift away from the me model towards an us model. You write, quote, "We want a society run by people who are smart, yes, but who are also wise,
perceptive, curious, caring, resilient and committed to the common good."
And I wonder in America in 2024, is that something that we can tilt toward? Because the cultural forces all seem aligned towards an idea of everyone
for themselves, and it didn't just happen overnight.
BROOKS: Yes, that's the culture of individualism we've had at the same time, I would say going back to post-World War II period. I happen to think
that we've had 60 years of hyper individualism in this country, and whether it was right-wing individualism, which is about economic individualism or
more progressive individualism, which about lifestyle individualism, we've had a lot of individualism. And we've created more freedom for ourselves,
which is great, but we've also weakened the ties between each other.
And so, my view right now, our political moment, we've -- right and left, we've decided we had a little too much individualism. We need more
community. But now, we're having a big fight over what kind of community we prefer.
And so, MAGA prefers a highly nationalistic, maybe patriarchal community. Progressives want a community built more on ethnic identity. Other people
have different versions of community, but we're in the -- the last three or four years, which have been so tumultuous to me are period of cultural
transformation. And we're chopping up that old system of individualistic mindset, me, me, me. That system of narcissism, and we're in a very messy
way, trying to move our way toward a different kind of communal culture, and we're searching for what kind of community can we build that will be
healthy.
SREENIVASAN: David Brooks, thanks so much.
BROOKS: Good to be with you, Hari, again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: And that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. Remember, you can
always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thanks so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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