Anniversary Programme One HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.

Some very significant people have lined up condemning what you have

done, or questioning you? Do you -- your wisdom has been questioned in

publishing the cartoons again and again, pouring petrol on the flames.

When you talk about frustration with governments now, at your whole

career looks like it has been spent at war. How do you feel as President

that you are going to go down in history as a president who presided

over a loss of a large part of your territory? We understood that you

wished to do this interview, and you wished to reply to questions that

we, in the name of the BBC, are putting towards you, is that not

right? Cheers! To the next 20 years! How come you all have water, and I

have wine's that is terrible. So go on, you need to take us back to the

first. We want to hear your thoughts on how it all started. The strangest

thing about starting it was that people did not talk about the

content, they were obsessed with what I might wear on sat. The ideas

were so bizarre, ranging from a normal suit, to a smoking jacket and

Azaz, at one particular time. Luckily, we got off that and got

onto the interviews. -- fez. We got onto the idea that if you are going

to do a 25 minute interview, it was then to have a different character,

and it was good to start drilling down and become more of a cross

examination and an interview, really putting facts to people. There a

net. Wang Yu obsession with what facts are. But 20 years ago, we were

clear with facts. -- there is a new obsession with what facts are. The

show about the human rights agenda, because people were interested in

that. I knew nothing about anything. Except that we got guests who did

know things and had cases to answer. But a lot of it was also about what

drove them. What drove them, but you had to come away after 35 minutes is

something new. You could not just regurgitate the same thing. No, but

I think that holding people to account, I still think they are the

best HARDtalks. I only have one that I really remember very vividly, with

the vice president of the Democratic Party two republic of the Congo. He

was found guilty of human rights abuses. I think that for me is the

best kind of HARDtalk, we have somebody who can really say... He

speaks French, and he did not like the questions that I asked. He kept

telling me that he did not understand what I was saying. He

gave it to do thanks. I think one of the signals as the feedback that we

get from our audience, particular as you talk with human rights agenda.

When we do those interviews with powerful people who are not held to

account in our own countries, we just get such a wave of positive

feedback from our audience, thinking of the promised of Ethiopia.

Wannasrichan, he was a strong leader. And he ruled his country was

something of an iron fist, but when I challenged him on the specific

human rights records, and abuses that we can put that his

government's tour, he found it difficult. And it was a very

contentious interview. Who presents the name of members of the election

board to the house of the people 's representatives for approval? The

President submitted the names to the Parliament. Now, if we were to

appoint new election members, it would be the Prime Minister which

would put the names to the Parliament. Where were you at that

particular time? I was the president of the transitional government. So

you still put forward the names? I think that is the point that a train

to get to. Afterwards, the reaction we got nudges from Ethiopians in the

country, but from Ethiopians all around the world, was thank you.

Thank you for putting the questions to our Prime Minister. Had with

being in the room, we would have put the same questions. I think the

leaders who submit themselves to a HARDtalk interrogation are

sometimes, in a way, almost respected for doing that. It is

those who just refuse... They want to take you on and they want to

submit themselves to 24 minutes of sustained questioning. And that is

often a selling point, I think, when I say to people which relate to do

the show? Who was your favourite? Is a favourite in HARDtalk that you can

remember? There is one person who brought me up short. I think

sometimes the interviews is apprising. The once you do not feel

I go to be good stain your memory. This is Denis Mack are. The UN

official in charge of displaced people. I was doing the usual thing

you do with UN officials, and at one point, he put up his hands and said

wait a minute, hold on a minute. -- McNamara. And I got this feeling

that the back of my spine, thinking, something is coming. Something I

might not like. He said, I can save millions of people, I have a small

plane. What I can, a flat into a war zone pick up as many women and

children as I can, pick them up, fly the plane, and landed somewhere

safe. He looked to be across the table and said, how many lives have

you saved? And I just went, good question. A little bit of humility

is not a bad thing. I know from the four of us, we are not necessarily

noted that quality, but a little bit of humility from journalists, we set

listed on the fence and criticise everybody else, is a good thing,

sometimes. We don't do the difficult things in life. But it is the people

who surprise you in interviews, it is not, and it was the runner are

not necessarily the ones that you expect. You can go into something

saying... Which ones do you remember? I think it is a Belgian

doctor that I had not heard of before. And it was ages ago. And he

was talking about how he was in central Africa and started noticing

something, this was a doctor who had identified that the AIDS was not

just restricted to gaze, but was throughout Africa. I remember

talking to many Heather Stanning back -- I remember the Heather

Stanning up on the back of my neck. And you have that moment. -- hair

standing. We do a lot of interviews were we to opinion formers and

people who influence people through their work. And I thinking of a

writer, and are to a do, and she had what are the favourite quotes of me

from a HARDtalk interview I had done. And she said the African

woman, she is not a downtrodden wretch, so when we interview people

like that, we are actually challenging perceptions and actually

stereotypes and prejudices, and so in that sense, you are sort of

dealing with material that is a hard topic that somebody might not grasp.

I think those HARDtalks are quite important. And what about you,

Stephen? It is a huge adrenaline rush to get an interview that you

worked on for months and months and months, that is difficult to

organise, that is frankly... The person doesn't want to do a comedy

and persuade them to do it, and that would include going to Caracas to

interview Hugo Chavez, which took a lot of persuasion are not just from

me, but bizarrely from Oliver stone, the filmmaker. I interviewed him for

HARDtalk, and he became... Your producer? While he knew Hugo Chavez

quite well. And he said Stephen, I think they can help. And one day, I

got this phone call, and all of a sudden was on the phone and he said

Stephen, it is on. Hugo Chavez was fronting the South American film

Festival, and it was a red carpet thing, and I was invited on to the

red carpet to beat him, and I said Hugo Chavez, we do need at this

interview. Peter Beattie come to the palace later. When that up as a

palace with Oliver stone, who came along, too, with the HARDtalk route,

and the Venezuelan film crew, and we recorded an hour with Hugo Chavez.

-- crew. He weighed his finger in my face, and said I suppose the BBC

said such an idiot. So that was an adrenaline buzz. But

the other one that was very different was the corrections boss

of the prison system in Georgia, the man who had to sign off on every

execution. A man called Alan Ault, who in essence push the button to

electrocute a series of prisoners on death row in Georgia. And he overuse

can to find this job was destroying him. I still have nightmares, not

every night, but often. It is still a very hard pill to swallow. And it

stays in your psyche I guess forever. It is the most premeditated

murder possible. The manual is about that peak, and the progression that

you go through to execute someone... Everytime I think it is behind me,

then something happens and it all comes back with a rush. -- is about

that peak. I was out at Lexington Avenue bought at the time I had a

flight. -- airport. This morning I was going somewhere on another

airline, are usually called Delta airlines. I checked in with all

these people, and the plane crashed and killed everyone. And I had to go

again. All those feelings came back, although spaces came back. All those

nightmares came back. -- all those faces. And just had to keep dealing

with it again and again. I remember a man called Hugh Thomson, who was a

US helicopter pilot during the event now more. And in 1968, he was

trained to divert Vietcong fire away from some of the American troops. He

flew low over a clearing, and saw something that state in his mind

until he died. He saw the picture of American troops massacring

villagers, unknown to villagers, and a little place that became known

notoriously as a site of a massacre. He brought the helicopter down and

told us then to train their guns on the fellow American soldiers, who

were garrotting, raping, shooting, and stabbing a numbed villages.

Vietnamese villages. -- villagers. He stopped it. It took 30 years

before anybody said thank you. But you ostracised awhile, won't you?

You would go to the officers mess and everybody would disappear.

Actually, when it first broke, people did not know the facts. And

they forgot all about it. Very soon after it happened. But personally,

you paid a high price in terms of depression, didn't you, over the

years? A lot of nightmares. There's been multiple marriages.

It's been hard for you to carry around, hasn't it? No, it's life,

you know? You have to do it, you know, life goes on. Can you ever

forgive the people who did that? No. Nope, I can't, I don't think I am

man enough to. I know the pain and suffering that was inflicted for no

reason, no reason whatsoever, there was no threat. There was no enemy.

They might have all grown up to be enemy, but that's not what a soldier

does in any country. It's just not. I mean, you think of those who

walked away from it, got on with their lives, had children, set up

businesses. They've got to live with themselves. I imagine some of them

don't have an easy time. I'm OK with what I did. I just, you know, I know

they're unnecessary pain and suffering, I know how fragile human

life is. We probably all have that experience of leaving an interviewee

and feeling incredibly emotional, possibly crying. The only time I've

ever cried in front of an interviewee was on HARDtalk,

thankfully it wasn't on camera, most of the audience would have done too,

it was the Yazidi girl. It was translated so it was extraordinary

sitting opposite someone who was speaking an opposite language to you

but we had simultaneous translation, very broken, and hearing this

extraordinary story and the most effective thing, often it's not the

most gruesome stuff with these stories, what sticks in my head was

her describing how in order to secure a minute phone call with her

brother she had to lick Honey off Vitolo of her husband, suppose it

husband -- lick Honey off the toe. I had one interviewee who... The

topic was so difficult for him, Egyptian, very wealthy Egyptian

industrialist, and the topic was so hard, it was when President Hamid

more sea was there and a lot of the cops in Egypt were concerned about

the mood turning against them -- President Mohamed Morsi. He stop the

interview after 11 minutes because the topic was so difficult for him

was life or death for him, he was worried about his family's safety,

we continue the interview but it shows you how difficult the subject

matter is. One thing I've done and I really appreciate the opportunity to

do it is take the show on the road, because to reach some of these

stories, some of these places as well, not everyone can come to the

HARDtalk studio in London. I can actually go on the road and do it

myself so the reportage becomes me gathering the information, some of

the case that we put, for example in Honduras to the President of the

country after we'd been to the city that has the highest homicide rate

in the world, which is being crippled by Gangnam, drug cartel

warfare. We could naturally talk to people suffering from that reality

before going into the corridors of power -- by gang.

To get an eyewitness account, I paid a visit to the home of Hilda. She

was on the boat which came under heavy fire. She took a bullet

through her thigh and remains seriously ill. Her son-in-law and to

pregnant women were killed. Hilder insists all were innocent victims,

not drugs traffickers, simply villagers coming back from a trip

downriver. -- Hilda. I think you put your finger on something that's

really important and has become more important over the years, we've seen

democracy rolled back considerably over the last ten to 15 years and it

becomes I think that much more important that we hold people to

account. When you think about the rollback of democracy even in

Europe, we're getting the growth of the free-market dictatorships and

people are accepting of this. Social media, which is obviously

something... Opinion has been elevated beyond facts. But human

rights has been downgraded consistently and it shouldn't be. We

still need to mention the names of the disappeared, the dates when they

disappeared, the dates their bullet ridden bodies were found on the

streets, the powerful people who were responsible. The producers, the

researchers that work on the team, we are so rigourous with our facts.

I don't know if you feel this as well, but a lot of the people we

interviewed over the years should either be in front of criminal

trials all war tribunal is warcrimes tribunal is but they weren't. The

only thing you can do in a free society is put the questions to

them. That was the strength I think of HARDtalk. My experience with Mrs

Milos Antic, Milos Antic's wife, who was a serial deny about the ethnic

cleansing that had taken place in the former Yugoslavia. Do you think

he will come home from The Hague Monday?

Thank you very much indeed for being with us on the programme.

No, I'm asking questions that are of interest to the public.

You reminded me of one another rather moment in my HARDtalk career

when I did an interview with former Nigerian President of passenger and

it was again quite a contentious interview and human rights and

corruption were two topics that came up in the interview, I'm sure that

was no surprise to him, but we gathered a lot of evidence, spoke to

quite a lot of people and it was seen as a forensic test of his

record when he was in power. At the end of the interview, we did the

normal handshake, because as we all know the hand Sheikh happens on

HARDtalk, and as the credits rolled and the lights dimmed in the studio,

he said with gritted teeth tomorrow, Stephen, you will be hearing from my

lawyers. A wonderful way a man, clearly not in power any more, felt

there was some sort of walk around him and some sort of intimidation

tactic he could apply. I met him, a charming man in his own way, at an

event afterwards and he could not have been nicer. I had eight, I

won't name him, a leading businessmen -- I had a. Go on, we

won't tell! In the world of finance, I won't say, he might sue me. He

said I have to think of a way to get back on you! Bodyguards, where are

you? That instant reaction when they haven't enjoyed it. They know when

they come on, they often have a sense of what's in store, they are

perhaps more prepared. I think the extra time we have really matters.

From the word go... And they haven't even give me a chance! I was kicked

under the table by one British politician, Mo Mowlam, former

Northern Ireland Secretary. After this interview, she was wearing

sharp heels and pointed toes, she kicked me under the heel macro bt --

date -- table. You might have deserved it! It is important that

you give the same treatment to everybody and this is how the

programme has lasted so long, you're as tough with everybody and you have

to be. I want to say, here we are all talking about HARDtalk and it's

funny, people might think there is competition between us but actually

what I think is nice is we are also committed to the programme that

anybody, any one of us who has done a great HARDtalk, I think great,

it's wonderful for the programme. There is a bond between us. We share

something. We've bonded over this meal but I don't think I'm the only

one who has done any eating -- I think I'm. The old BBC sausage

rolls. Times have really moved on! High pressure is going to be

the dominating force for the weather across the UK for the rest of this

week and into the weekend.