SALON

Glenn Greenwald

Saturday, Feb 25, 2012 3:04 PM UTC

Interview with Sen. Russ Feingold

The former Senator talks about Obama and civil liberties, progressive silence, campaign finance, and his new book VIDEO

By

Topics:

(updated below w/transcript)

During his 18 years in the U.S. Senate, Russ Feingold was easily one of the most interesting, intelligent, and independent elected officials. He frequently deviated from and vocally criticized his Party’s orthodoxy, and was by far the most stalwart voice among Senate Democrats in combatting the influence of corporate money in politics and defending civil liberties, especially in the post-9/11 era. His courageous sole vote against the Patriot Act in the weeks after 9/11 — underlined by a vigorous speech on the Senate floor in October, 2001, warning of the “loss of commitment in the Congress and the country to traditional civil liberties”– evinced all of those attributes. Those are the attributes that led me to advocate for his 2010 re-election and for readers here, in response, to donate over $50,000 in one day to his campaign.

At the same time, Feingold — even as he voices often vehement criticisms of his Party and of Obama — has been and remains a loyal Democrat. He was just named one of 35 national co-chairs for President Obama’s re-election campaign. He argues that whatever flaws plague the Democratic Party — and they are substantial, he will be the first to tell you — the GOP has become so extreme that their defeat is imperative. To the surprise of many people, he gave an interview last week to The Huffington Post in which he appeared to support President Obama’s due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki.

Feingold has just released a new book, entitled While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era, which recounts his years in the Senate, especially in the post-9/11 era. Unsurprisingly, the book is an unusually candid account of many of the conflicts he had with both parties and is well worth reading for that reason alone. The book also provides his assessment of the current political landscape. I interviewed him this morning for roughly 20 minutes and was able to explore some of these issues and apparent paradoxes with him: we spoke about Obama and civil liberties, the relative silence of progressives on these issues (which he denounces as “embarrassing” in his book), his position on Awlaki (which is more nuanced than has been depicted), the state of campaign finance and corporate money in elections, and several other issues.

This was supposed to be a video interview, but severe technical ineptitude on my part (which ended up blocking much of the screen) has rendered this more of an audio interview (the audio quality is quite good). It is in three parts and can be heard by clicking the players below (note that Part III is an audio player, not a YouTube player: just click the play arrow on the small recorder under “Part III” to hear it):

PART I

PART II

PART III

 

UPDATE: A transcript of this interview, courtesy of bmull, is now available here.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 132 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of three New York Times Bestselling books: two on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses, and his latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of America's

two-tiered system of justice. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.




Continue Reading

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Latest Tweets

Recommendations