--:-- Aisha Roscoe: October 1st marked the first day in over 50 years that NPR and member stations began operating without federal funding. We are still here. We're not going anywhere. But it's challenging. And it makes me think about why I do this work.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And a story that I always come back to is a story that I did in Selma, Alabama, where I talked to one of the youngest people that were on the bridge on Bloody Sunday, Joanne Bland. And she gives these tours of Selma talking about the history of the civil rights movement that she lived through.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I'm grateful that I work for a place where I'm able to give a voice to Joanne Bland to raise up those people who lived through truly turbulent times and made the world a better place. even in this moment, I feel like I'm talking to people every day that are living through historic moments, right? Moments that we'll be talking about decades from now and that I'm able to bear witness.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I think that's what NPR does. I think NPR bears witness to what's happening, that we provide a place where we can provide a record of the truth. And as long as you are here, As long as you are tuning in, NPR will be here bearing witness, telling the truth without fear or favor.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Thank you. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: A few years ago, I was at an event for radio people where we were selling our shows to programming directors at member stations. One of NPR's major competitors was presenting.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Now, I'm not going to say which one. But when they got to the Q&A portion of their presentation, my colleague, All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, stood up and started asking them some really tough questions.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Fair, but challenging. And I have to stress, this was in person, live. This wasn't hiding behind no computer screen. This was up close and personal.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And she was, I could say, you know, giving them the business. I remember thinking to myself, and I kid you not, this woman is fearless. Don't mess with Mary Louise Kelly.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Well, some people have had to learn that the hard way. like back in 2020 during President Trump's first term in office when Mary Louise sat down with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for an interview.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The interview mostly focused on Iran, but at the end, Mary Louise turned to the topic of Ukraine, and Pompeo wasn't happy.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Change of subject. Ukraine. Do you owe Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch an apology?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. That's what I intend to do. I just don't have anything else to say about that this morning.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But Mary Louise Kelly, she did not back down. She kept pushing for answers. She was fair and fearless, just like at that event all those years ago.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I just want to give you another opportunity to answer this, because as you know, people who work for you in your department, people who have resigned from this department under your leadership saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The interview was eventually cut short by Pompeo's deputy assistant secretary. After the interview, Pompeo asked to speak to Mary Louise in private, an interaction she later described on air.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I was taken to the secretary's private living room where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, do you think Americans care about Ukraine?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He used the F word in that sentence and many others. He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He said people will hear about this. And then he turned and said he had things to do. And I thanked him again for his time and left.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Well, people did hear about it. The interview went viral, as did the public back and forth between NPR and the Secretary of State's office in the aftermath.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: What stood out to me about this whole situation was how cool, calm, and collected Mary Louise was throughout the interaction.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Even when she was being berated by a powerful member of the administration and how she kept pushing for the truth.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: NPR's public editor called it, quote, exemplary ethical journalism.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Now Mary Louise Kelly is bringing that trademark exemplary and ethical journalism to a new national security podcast from NPR that just launched last month.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It's called Sources and Methods. We'll be right back with Mary Louise Kelly to hear more about our new show.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Its temper material absorbs motion to minimize disruptions from partners, pets, or kids.
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--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Welcome to The Sunday Story. Aisha, I am so happy to be here with you.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Thanks for inviting me on. Well, I'm glad to have you here. I'm glad I'm on this side and not the other side.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Although you have interviewed me many times before. I'm joking. And you live to tell the tale. I've lived to tell the tale.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So tell us more about the podcast. Why is it called Sources and Methods?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Now, what is that, a spy thing?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It is a spy thing. Very common term in espionage national security circles.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And it speaks to how do they know what they know? Who told them? Who are the sources? By what methods did the intelligence, this secret information get gathered?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And, you know, people who work in U.S. intelligence and national security circles will tell you they sweat bullets to protect sources and methods.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: They don't want it getting out how they know what they know because then that source could be burned.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: They could be endangered if it's a human source or if it's a satellite or something else that that method of collection could be shut down if your adversary knows how you're spying on them.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So it's kind of a cool, you know, spy term. But it occurred to me it resonates in our world as journalists as well.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: We also work sources. We also work to protect their identity if there are people who are putting themselves at a position of risk to share what they know with us.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So it kind of there was a nice little double entendre there.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And the podcast is about how we reporters work our sources to cover national security stories.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And what made you want to focus on national security in particular, especially at this moment?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Well, it's my background. It's what I always wanted to do.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It's, you know, I've always started covering the State Department and then launched the intelligence beat for NPR back in the days after 9-11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It's such a fascinating beat because unlike almost any other one, including really important beats covering education, for example, or health or whatever, spy agencies don't tell you what they're doing.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: By definition, they want to keep it secret. And I found that such an intriguing challenge, starting out as a reporter trying to cover the CIA.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: There is no staff directory. You don't get a hard pass. You can't wander around the halls the way you can on Capitol Hill, for example, or the Supreme Court or other big Washington beats.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: They almost never hold a press conference. They don't tell you what they're doing. So how the heck do you cover them?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: You have to work sources. I found that really interesting. I still find it really interesting now, 20 years later.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And we have a great national security team here at NPR who's doing that kind of work every day.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And I thought if we could pull back the curtain a little bit on how they are doing it, what lengths they are going to to try to get stories out there that are in the public interest, to try to ask questions that could be really interesting.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Why don't we try it? What has been some of your favorite topics that you've covered so far? Or has there been something that's been really surprising to you that you've gotten at on the podcast?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So an example, I was in Alaska for the big Trump-Putin summit to try to figure out how do we start to try to end this war in Ukraine.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It was fascinating to be there in Anchorage. It was fascinating to hear the White House take on what was achieved and what wasn't.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: But we on the podcast, the first one that came out after that, we got our correspondents on the ground in Moscow and in Kiev.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I mean, this is it's extraordinary to be able to do that. There are so few major news organizations that have kept a bureau open in Moscow and kept a bureau fully staffed in Kiev all through this war.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: We do. We have them. And they're sitting watching what's happening in Alaska to be able to push them and say, how's that playing where you are?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Like when you walk to the coffee shop and get your morning cappuccino, what's on people's minds?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Yes. Greg Myrie, who was then in our Kyiv bureau when we were having this conversation, he and I had a fascinating exchange where he's trying to tell me how normal daily life often feels in Kyiv.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Yeah. Like there are kids in the street. There are people buying ice cream. People are getting their nails done. It's kind of normal life.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It's not like you see soldiers out and about in the streets all the time. You know, Ukraine did have a lot of troops in the city in the early days of the war.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: But now you can really walk around the center of the city, throughout the city, and not really see any troops.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Occasionally you'll see some here or there, but don't really have checkpoints or even just see troops walking around.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: That's fascinating. For a country that been at war for three and a half years you don't see troops regularly out about on the street.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Not in civilian areas. You know, I've been to three cities this week. Kiev, the capital. Dnipro, sort of south central. 60 miles from the front line.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And now Lviv. And you just don't see that many.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I had just come in on a train where walking through Union Station here in Washington, there were three guys with firearms strapped to their legs walking in front of me.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And Greg and I went back and forth and realized at this precise moment, you're seeing more soldiers on the street in the capital of Washington, D.C., then in the streets of Kiev, Ukraine, a country that has been at war for three and a half years.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Huh. Here we are. What do we make of that?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: When we come back, Mary Louise Kelly talks about how the national security beat has been changing under the Trump administration.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Support for this podcast and the following message come from Indeed. You just realized your business needed to hire someone. yesterday.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash NPR.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab with its original podcast On Investing.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Each week, you'll get thoughtful, in-depth analysis of both the stock and the bond markets.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Listen today and subscribe at schwab.com slash oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the Name Your Price tool.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it today at progressive.com.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, you know, obviously national security has been all over the news lately.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I wanted to get your thoughts on kind of the significance of some things.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Like, for instance, the administration's rebrand of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Obviously, that has to be officially changed by Congress, but that's what they are calling it right now.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: How do you make sense of like that as an approach to national security? What does it say?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I don't know how I make sense of that as an approach to national security.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I think it's fascinating. It prompted me to go back through the history of why the Defense Department was called the Defense Department.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Because it wasn't always. It was changed after World War II by President Truman, who said, look, we've had enough war.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Maybe we should focus on not having a war, on having some peace. So let's change it. And he changed it to the Department of Defense.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So it is interesting to me, knowing that history, why our current president, President Trump, who is fond of telling us how many wars he has personally helped to end and his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he feels he's earned, why he wants to have a department of war.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And we had a little bit of that conversation on sources and methods before they changed the name when we were just hearing reports and rumors that that might be where they're heading.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: So I think it remains very much a live issue, as you say.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: They're going to try to get this through Congress and then go about changing the name officially, which is a huge process in embassies and military installations all over the world.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And there also have been there's been a lot of talk about changes in how the Pentagon is trying to deal with reporters.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: The Pentagon has its own press pool, like the White House has this press pool, et cetera.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And they want new requirements that journalists not gather any information that hasn't already been authorized for release by officials, even stuff that's like declassified.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Declassified. And if they do, they risk losing their press credentials or being deemed a security risk.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So how do you think that impacts national security stories?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It will have a huge impact if this does come to pass.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: It's one of the subjects we're going to tackle on sources and methods because it's a big deal if it happens.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: You talked about news organizations having booths at the Pentagon so we can broadcast live when there's news or so you can get the official you're trying to interview and plunk them down in front of a microphone and go live.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: That has already changed for some news organizations, including NPR, which is one of the news organizations that was booted out of our Pentagon booth earlier this year.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Our correspondents continue to work covering that department in every way they possibly can.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: But this would be unprecedented.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And I say that as someone who's had a hand in covering the wars in Iraq, covering the war in Afghanistan, covering the wars currently unfolding.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I've reported from Ukraine. I've reported from the Middle East. Pre-censoring information before it comes out, that's not the way that the press works and breaks stories.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And I think back on how many stories on my time covering national security we wouldn't know from torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: That wasn't something the Pentagon was issuing press releases about. Reporters had to dig and work sources and try to verify what was happening and what wasn't.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: The black sites were CIA black sites after 9 Warrantless wiretapping was the original term for domestic surveillance.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And what was the National Security Agency doing With U.S. taxpayer dollars after 9-11, there were real legal questions that needed to be answered.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And they came to light because of reporting done by reporters who were working sources and bringing information to public attention that the Defense Department and other institutions in the U.S. government didn't want to be out there.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I would argue the country is better off because of that.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And I would argue that for the Pentagon in particular, which is sending people's sons and daughters to war to risk their lives, that tough questions should be asked and should be answered.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: If we lose that, then it will become much, much harder to bring stories that are in the public interest to light.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And that's even with stuff like Afghanistan, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which raised lots of questions from people who are now in this administration.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Like a lot of that was reporting, right? Reporting not based on just press releases and press conferences.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Absolutely. And it's not just roaming Pentagon hallways.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I mean, it's what happens with reporters who are embedded with U.S. troops who are out and about in the world.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Reporters go in and there is a good faith agreement that they will do their best to report things fairly and as completely as they possibly can.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And of course, we understand the security considerations and their agreements that can be negotiated.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Nobody's trying to put anybody in harm's way here. But it is important to be able to ask the questions that occur to you as an eyewitness to big events unfolding around the world.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And so is there someone who you would really like to talk to on the new show, like someone who's like your big get?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Ooh, that's such a good question.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I have interviewed many of the former, still with us, CIA directors.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I've interviewed them either when they were in the job or after or both. With a couple of exceptions, Gina Haspel, who was CIA director, never gave an interview to any journalist ever.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I would still love to interview her. I will say that.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: The current director, John Ratcliffe, has been very good at keeping his counsel and has not done a lot of press.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And I would love to ask him questions. Not in any kind of gotcha capacity. That's not how I operate.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: But in terms of what he sees as the priority for that organization in a moment where the global world order is changing and resources are not infinite, never have been, never will be.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: How's he thinking about how to prioritize things, what that agency should be doing, what its job is?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: That would be a really fascinating conversation to have.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Ultimately, what do you hope listeners will learn from listening to sources and methods?
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I think it is the reporting.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I mean, when we were thinking about launching this podcast, I will just say, I said, there are a lot of podcasts out there already.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Do we need another one? And there are plenty of national security and foreign policy podcasts out there.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Most of them, if you listen, and I do, are former officials or academics, really smart people with sometimes really fascinating views, but it's very much the armchair analyst approach.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And so what I wanted to do in launching this was say, let's do the reporting, because I think that's so central right now to public mistrust of journalism is there's all these people telling you what to think about something and giving their opinions.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: I want to do reporting where we go out in the world, boots on the ground and just say, here's what I see. Here's what I hear. Here's what it smells like.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Bring listeners along for that experience and let you hear the facts as best and fully and completely as we can describe them.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Let you hear all the things we don't know that are going to inform what we wake up tomorrow and try to get answers to.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: And make up your own mind what you want to think.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I would listen to that. Me too. Me too.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Mary Louise, thank you so much for talking to us today and for all the work that you do.
--:-- Mary Louise Kelly: Thank you. This has been an absolute delight. Thanks for having me, Aisha.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Shirazko, and Up First will be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases can lead you astray.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash financial decoder.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Schwab.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash podcast.
