Jason Rezaian speaks at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication's 2024 Ruhl Lecture. Rezaian, who spent 544 days in an Iranian prison as a wrongfully detained journalist, discusses international policy, advocacy for hostages around the globe, journalists exiled from hostile regions, and the emergent use of visual forensics in search of the truth.
About Our Guest:
Jason Rezaian is an award-winning journalist and global opinions columnist for The Washington Post, writing primarily on international affairs, press freedom, and human rights issues. He has devoted his life to advocating for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and rights for journalists abroad and at home.
Formerly the Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Rezaian is the host of 544 Days, the acclaimed Spotify Original podcast series based on his 2019 best-selling memoir, Prisoner, about his time as a hostage in Iran and the extraordinary efforts it took to free him.
Rezaian was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership in 2023 and serves as executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Hostages and Wrongful Detention.
Find Jason Rezaian Online:
- Washington Post
- Linkedin
- Twitter
- Instagram
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David Ewald00:06
So I thought quite a bit about how to introduce tonight's SOJC guest Jason Rezaian. And whether it's listening through his fantastic podcast 544 days, or reading his book Prisoner, which is available in the back, or even chatting with him over the past few days, I keep coming back to this idea of choices. Our lives are full of big and small choices every day. And just over two years ago, a group of families from across the US united by the threat of a family member being held hostage, made the choice to work together to form an advocacy group. That group that bring our families home campaign was built and continues to elevate the stories of their loved ones, as well as many others around the globe. And I'm so thankful to make have made the choice myself to work with this coalition of families to learn about their lives and their stories. And I've learned that in this world of hostage diplomacy, there's many people involved behind the scenes. These are names you won't likely hear in public settings. They're out of the limelight by choice and by circumstance. But if you know, you know, and Jason is one of those people, these families are put in unimaginable positions often with no direct communication few if any diplomatic channels and no formal organizations supporting them.
David Ewald01:17
But in addition to tragedy, the story of American hostages is one of resilience and hope, because these families choose to fight to put murals of their families faces on walls across the country, to appear on countless news programs fighting for the media attention that's so rare and fractured right now. All of it to not forget their loved ones to make sure nobody else does, including their elected officials does either is a circumstance I know they'd happily change if given the chance. But fighting and having hope and finding a path forward. It's all a choice.
David Ewald01:49
And Jason was held and held hostage free and ran for 544 days, and in many ways his daily choices were moved by his captors, but he chose to remember himself as a person through those harsh circumstances. He recognized and navigated the gravity but never forgot his wit and his acerbic humor in Evin Prison, a place that's built to make you forget yourself. And I'm really thankful that Jason chose to never give up.
David Ewald02:14
I read that same fight in the opinion pieces he's written about the many hostages and families that are still deep in their own turmoil. Jason not only chose to share an honest and open version of his own story, but to use his experience to build relationships with these families, to use his platform to advocate and spread their stories. Making sure nobody forgets or mispronounces their names was just something he's quite familiar with. You should look it up. It's funny. I'm also thankful for Jason's patience when at the annual fully foundation dinner. Another name you should know, I made the ill advised choice to accost not only him but his entire family to ask what could be the most inconsequential question a stranger could ask about a music credit in his podcast. And while hindsight is always valuable, and I do it and do a different if I had a chance, that question let was that was the catalyst that led somehow to this evening tonight. And so I'm mostly thankful that he chose to respond to my follow up email a few days later.
David Ewald03:12
Through all of this, Jason has chosen to build on his platform at the Washington Post to illuminate the truth. You can see it in a piece that only Jason could write about Evan gross KOVITCH Paul Whelan and many others are in the visual forensics work that the post is doing, ensuring that we have truth at a time when it's a dangerous thing question. Or an executive producing a documentary aptly titled bring them home, and intimate look at the shaggy family who have thankfully been reunited. Jason is one of those people that if you know, you know, and I'm so thankful that we have this opportunity tonight to get to know him a little bit more. And to not forget that there are more than 60 other Americans being held around the world currently. And I'm thankful that you've chosen to be here tonight, and really excited and grateful to welcome Jason Rezaian to Eugene. So please welcome him.
Jason Rezaian04:06
Good evening. And thank you for being here. And a special thanks to my friend, David Ewald, to Juan Carlos and everybody here at SOJC for inviting me to deliver this year's rule lecture. And to all the students that have had the opportunity to engage with over the last couple days, your questions have given me so much to think about, and I really, really appreciate it.
Jason Rezaian04:29
It's been 30 years since I was last here in Eugene. That was a very different time for me. I was a freshman in college, visiting high school friends who studied at the University of Oregon. Some of them knew exactly what they wanted to do in life. I however, did not. And it's good to reflect every once in a while on how we've arrived to where we are the choices we've made. Things that have happened to us.
Jason Rezaian04:59
Sometimes I tell people I won the lottery of life experience. And a big reason for that luck is that I've chosen unfamiliar paths put myself in really uncomfortable situations, but never tried to avoid new experiences or new people who were different than me. And that led me to many, many unexpected opportunities, and later to some problems. I don't know if I make all those same choices today. It's very different world. And there are two threats, one to our personal sense of liberty, and the other to journalism that I want to talk a little bit about tonight. But first, I thought I'd tell you a story.
Jason Rezaian05:41
When I was in my 20s, I traveled a lot. I had visited 40 countries, by the time I was 25, the dollar was historically strong. And international travel had never been so accessible to so many young people, using my blue passport felt to me like a very American thing to do, to explore, push beyond what I knew. Engage with people of different languages, and cultures, and beliefs. It may not feel like it today, but those are core American values always have been. Now if my dad were alive in here today, and you had the chance to talk to him, you'd quickly notice that he had a strong command of the English language, and American idioms. But he also had a very thick accent. So people would naturally ask him, Where are you from? And he'd say, I'm Iranian, by birth, and American by choice. And I'm proud of both. In a world where we've been told that those two cultures in particular, are incompatible with each other. The idea that you could hold these supposedly conflicting identities simultaneously, became a kind of guiding principle for me.
Jason Rezaian07:06
In 2009, I moved to Iran, one of the least free countries in the world, the country where my late father was born. I went there to work as a journalist. And I was pretty good at it. Good enough that I got one of the dream journalism jobs as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Now, Iran is not an easy place to do anything. And certainly not journalism. There are so many obstacles standing in your way. But that never bothered me that much. It made me even more passionate to go and tell stories from there. I was completely undeterred. I did it for years. Until one day, my Iranian born wife and I were arrested from our home at gunpoint and hauled off to prison where I spent the next year and a half. It was a terrible ordeal that I wasn't sure how I'd survive. And I'm still honestly kind of surprised that I did. I was a hostage taken because I'm a journalist. And because I'm American, it's a unique kind of abuse of power that I was subjected to. And it's happening to journalists around the world, as authoritarian, and even some Democratic leaders show us just how thin their skin really is. Most Americans aren't aware of it. But right now, dozens of our fellow citizens, people just like us, are being held by foreign governments, not because of any illegal violation they committed, or any credible allegations against them, but simply because they're American, you might have heard about one of them. Wall Street Journal correspondent, Evan Grishko, vich, just yesterday marked 300 days since he was detained in Moscow. What Evan is facing right now feels eerily similar to what happened to me, in Iran back in 2014. Both of us are US born journalists with family backgrounds. In the countries we chose to cover. Those connections to the people and the places gave our reporting additional layers of perspective and nuance that most of our colleagues didn't have. But they also put bigger targets on our backs. It's not that Evan and I didn't understand those risks, but that we felt a responsibility to inform. And we believed there was something unique that we could bring the task of doing it.
Jason Rezaian09:38
Ultimately, Evan and I chose to do something that at its core, is very American. We went to parts of the world that fellow citizens don't know well, and tried to paint a picture of it for people back here. Why should you care? People have been taken hostage and used as leverage for 1000s of years. It's a problem the United States has dealt with since our earliest days. In his 1805, State of the Union address, Thomas Jefferson talked about negotiating the safe return of American sailors that had been taken hostage during the first Barbary war, off the coast of modern day Libya. In explaining the significance of their liberation, Jefferson said, quote, in a government bottomed, he meant founded on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting. It matters to all of us. When you hear about the efforts the US government is making to free Evan from Russia, and Americans held hostage and other countries, I hope you remember those words, the life and liberty of every individual citizen, must matter to all of us understand that foreign states do this to Americans, because they know our system of government, in theory, places the highest value on each of us to live freely. But I don't need to tell you that, in practice, it doesn't always work like that.
Jason Rezaian11:13
In reality, being American at home and abroad has never come with greater risks, which is why it's so essential that we push back against the threats that are happening to journalism, and journalists everywhere. At their core, these crackdowns on journalists are designed to eliminate the multitude of voices by muting them with the goal of focusing all attention on one single dominant narrative. Our job today and every day is to not let that happened.
Jason Rezaian11:50
One of the biggest current challenges to international journalism. And as a result, our industry's ability to cover growing numbers of countries around the world is the lack of independent journalists who are able to work freely in the world's Flashpoint societies. It's a problem that's facing international news organizations like the Washington Post, but also domestic news ecosystems in increasing numbers of countries. Iran is a perfect example. In July of 2014, my wife and I, we represented two fifths of the English language foreign press in the country. Until the night we were abducted from our home. Since then, almost 10 years ago, the Washington Post has not had a reporter in Iran for a single day. Back then, I couldn't have imagined that nearly a decade later, the Washington Post wouldn't have returned. That absence put serious limitations on our coverage. But it was and remains the right call. It's simply not safe for our colleagues to work there. But the effects on other journalists and Iran have been just as chilling. And the landscape has never returned to the relative vibrancy that we once knew in the void of our presence, and the healthy competition that it inspired the world's understanding of a monumentally consequential period in Iran, modern history is incredibly limited. And that's by design, not our design. But by Iranian leadership. Without international reporters able to tell the stories of a society and flux and shine a light on the repression of authorities, local journalists become easy targets. Same is true in Russia, China, and dozens of other countries. And don't think it can't happen right here. It already is, which is why we need to double down on our commitments to staying informed not to just having the ideas and beliefs we're most comfortable with, constantly reaffirmed back to us. But to go beyond what we already know, in the long quest to better ourselves. It's on every one of us to take that challenge of questioning everything, including especially our own ways of doing things. And that only happens when we engage in good faith and good humor. With people we disagree with. It's our best chance at surviving the assault on democracy. Thank you all for coming tonight for giving me some of your time to listen to me talk about issues and experiences that have informed my life and my work. Thanks so much.
David Ewald14:46
Well, thanks everybody for coming again. And Jason, thank you for being here. That was a great overview of a lot of different topics. But I wanted to start by looking back at your career with a roomful of students. Can you walk us a bit through your early days as a freelance journalist?
Jason Rezaian15:05
I did not take a typical journey into my journalism career. When I started about 20 years ago, nobody was encouraging me to specialize in Iran. And actually, at that time, no young journalists were being encouraged to really specialize in anything, we were taught to be sort of generalists to understand a little bit about everything, but not so much about any one thing. I think the landscape has changed quite a lot. And these days, it's much more feasible to make that decision that you want to be an expert on on one subject or one community and delve into it in your work. So for me, knowing that I wanted to go to Iran and report from there, it gave me the opportunity to shun that traditional path. But it also wasn't a clear path that was in front of me. So I had to get scrappy, and figure out how I'd be able to start. And it required a lot of cold emails, and showing up at events like this, and knocking on doors, and writing a lot of things that never got published until some started to, I think it was probably six or seven years of doing that. Before I finally felt that I was in a position to just do this.
David Ewald16:38
And at the time, right when you move to around you, and I've done a lot of digging into your past. Oh, that's right. Yeah. You launch the blog as well. Right. They ran solo,
Jason Rezaian16:49
Iransolo.com. I went to Iran, so you don't have to. Yeah, that was that was the tagline.
David Ewald16:53
But I think what was it what was interesting in it, and there's, it's it's not archived completely. But it's, there's there's a few bits out there. But you were finding really interesting stories that I think very few people, especially at that time, and especially in American and Iran, we're finding, and I'm curious how you sort of built those sources in those relationships to sort of find those stories.
Jason Rezaian16:54
One of the things that became really important really quickly, when I was traveling, and then living and working in Iran, was convincing people that talking to me wasn't going to be harmful to them. And sometimes, sources, sources would say things to me, that I deemed would be potentially harmful for them, if it were published in print. And I will tell them, so I've had always had this kind of do no harm attitude towards journalism, which is not necessarily, again, what's been taught, I don't know, you know, how it's taught today. But you know, 20 years ago, nobody was telling you to protect the safety and security of people that you talk to, on the other side of the world. It was more, you know, somebody wants to tell you something, run with it. So, you know, building a reputation, and, you know, Tehran is a massive city, but it's also, you know, interconnected, and their communities and I built a reputation that somebody that one was, was there on the ground, people understood that this was a long term situation for me. And to that was fair. And, you know, I think that, that that was sort of the core of why people continued to talk to me and, and would, you know, bring interesting stories to me. So I was able to cover things that nobody else was talking about.
David Ewald18:39
Yeah, and I remember an article about baseball in Iran. And, and especially, you know, you were you were sort of famously on Anthony Bourdain show at the time, when he came to Iran, and I'm curious, you know, it felt like a very, it felt like a kinship relationship as as an outsider watching it, especially after I started reading some of those early articles of trying to highlight different aspects of countries that, you know, we may not know a lot about, and I'm just curious what that relationship was, like, even as short as it might have been with with Anthony, but I think that it felt like a two sides of the same coin. And also, how did that how did that come to be? And when these people got in touch?
Jason Rezaian19:25
It's a good question. And actually, I want to say it was probably four years before they actually came to Iran. Before his show was on CNN, it was on the Travel Channel, the production companies called 0.0. And they're kind of the best in broadcast documentary entertainment at this point, but back then they didn't have a website. So I had to sort of guess at people's email addresses and I cold emailed a lot of addresses that I I guess that. And one day after about six weeks, I got a response. And I basically had said, look, I think it's time that the Bourdain goes to Iran, and an associate producer for the show responded and said, I think it's a great idea. He really wants to go, you know, send us a, like, a proposal of what a shoot would look like. And they did that and actually went to New York and had meetings with the husband and wife team that were his, his producer and director on all of his shows. And when push came to shove, I think this was in 2005, or 2006, the Travel Channel came back and said, our insurance won't cover sending him to Iran. So I was really surprised a few years later, when I get this email from somebody I've never met before, a different producer saying, we're coming into Iran next week. And we heard that you're the guy that we should talk to if we want to eat good food. And so I had some conversations with them and kind of fleshed out with really no expectations of any sort of interaction with them, when they when they came.
Jason Rezaian21:08
But I told them that my wife and I had set up a sort of very traditional nook in our home that I thought was quite potentially cinematic for their needs. And that I know, all sorts of really good cooks who would happily cook for Anthony Bourdain? And they said, you know, we only shoot with local people, and you're not local, and all this sort of things. Okay. And then the day before they were gonna leave, they said, Actually, would you and your wife come and shoot a scene with us? So yeah, of course, you know. And we had just come back from a trip to Dubai for my wife's 30th birthday. And She twisted her ankle on the last day, and the restaurant that they went to was up in the mountains. And she was like, Do we really have to do this? And I'm like, Yes, we really have to. And I'm so glad that we did. Because you're right, there was a special bond that we all kind of recognized very quickly. And when we were arrested a few weeks later, he ended up becoming one of our most vocal advocates in public and also behind the scenes. And then when we got out, he was an incredible friend to us. And we miss him dearly.
David Ewald22:28
I know I'm jumping around in time, a little bit here. But I'm curious if you'd be willing to talk about avocados in Iran.
Jason Rezaian22:37
So I started a Kickstarter project back in 2010, when I was still freelancing, with the idea that I wanted to crowdfund Iran's first avocado farm, because, you know, Iran is one of the, I think a lot of people who don't know much about Iran, think of it as this big desert country, you know, with camels walking around, and no electricity and all that sort of stuff. It's not like that, you know, it's, it's a, it's a huge country with a very diverse climate and, and landscapes. And, you know, probably the most developed agricultural industry in that part of the world. And, you know, you can grow anything there. But they just didn't grow avocados. And I thought that was really weird. Cuz I'm from California, and I wanted... I have taken part in guacamole competitions. I mean, like,
David Ewald23:31
the 2009 Marin County Guac-off, yeah.
Jason Rezaian23:35
You have done your homework. So, you know, it just became this, this thing that I thought was a good conversation starter. I had no plans to actually start a farm. But I figured if if I raised the $10,000, or whatever it was, I was trying to raise, I could probably plant a few trees. I, interestingly enough, a couple of weeks ago, I found on Instagram. There's a woman in northern Iran, who is now growing. Yeah. And she's very into it. And I mean, she's really excited about it. As a consequence, I'm quite excited too.
David Ewald24:16
We've talked over the past couple of days about getting in touch with people. I'm curious, have you gotten in touch with her?
Jason Rezaian24:22
I will. I haven't yet. I've been trying to think about, you know, the approach.
David Ewald24:28
Well, this is maybe she'll watch this video someday. And so around this time, though, and I know again, mixing time around. You arrested very suddenly, and I'm wondering and again, read the book. Yeah.
Jason Rezaian24:42
So you know, after we shot with Bourdain, that's the thing you have to know is that in 2014, when Iran and world powers, including the United States were negotiating this big nuclear deal, there was kind of an opening happening there was more people coming to Iran, both tourists but also media types to do different shows. Bourdain was 160 minutes came. Andrew Zimmern. You guys know Andrews inland Bizarre Foods. Was it like the contracting stage? Yeah. You know that they were about to come and do a shoot, and I was going to be their local producer. And, you know, food was always kind of in the background.
Jason Rezaian25:25
And the night that we got arrested, the, you know, I was taken to prison, and I'm blindfolded. I'm being accused of being the SE, CIA station chief in Tehran. And the port of lead interrogator says, you know, tell us about the avocados. You know, we know that this is code for something, we just don't know what. And then, you know, try and explain Kickstarter, even, you know, to somebody who's a little bit older than you in English, you know, that, let alone in a foreign language where, you know, the idea doesn't translate. So, you know, they were harping on this for the first couple of weeks. And finally, my interrogator said to me, Look, this idea that people that you don't know, will give you money to do meaningless things, not possible. So there's a whole website that's like, just dedicated to that.
David Ewald26:26
You've been building bridges in multiple directions, and maybe Iranian Kickstarter Sunday. So in those early days of captivity, did you what what was your perception? Did they ever talk about why you were being arrested?
Jason Rezaian26:39
Avocados, it was the avocados that they couldn't find! No, I mean, I think that they were very clear about their cover story that they thought that I was a spy. But it became clear to me as the weeks went on, that I was a hostage, a high profile, high profile in the sense that I worked for the Washington Post, high profile American citizen at a time that they were looking to have some leverage against the United States. And I fit the description really well.
David Ewald27:13
And so you were in the, in the first few weeks, you were held in solitary confinement, and but over time, maybe 544 days is a long time. And I'm curious if you can talk about just some of the relationships that are built in that sort of situation. And I think especially with you and your background, and finding people who were playing baseball and finding really interesting stories, but you're building relationships over time, and I, and I've listened to podcasts and read the book talk with you, you build relationships, and I'm curious, you know, with other other people who are being held, and even your captors to a certain extent.
Jason Rezaian27:54
Yeah, I mean, what's life, if not our relationships, right? It's everything. And I didn't know how long I was going to be held in there, I knew that I had a limited number of people that I could engage with, I knew that almost all of them except the people that I was sharing cells with more my adversaries, or at least represented my adversaries. And you know, I did the best that I could to cultivate relationships that would make the situation more comfortable.
Jason Rezaian28:26
I am sure you've all heard this idea of Stockholm Syndrome. As someone who's been through this, that whole concept was designed by people who haven't been through it. You know, when you're thrust into a situation where not only have no choice, but you have your survival is very much under threat. You find ways to ingratiate yourself to the people who hold power over you. It's just what you do. And I think I'm fortunate that I have, you know, powers of persuasion that not everybody does. And you know, I use them in that situation to make my circumstances make my time, a little bit more comfortable. And overtime, that meant, you know, making fun of my captors. You know, having laughs at their expense with them, and without them, you know, talking about them to you have to understand that the interrogators are true ideologues. And the prison guards are just guys doing a job. And once you sort of put yourself in their shoes and understand the, the limits of their own lives, I learned to empathize with all of them. And I'm not ashamed or regretful of that. I saw them as human people, flesh and blood that you know, we're born and are going to die just like me. And I think that was pretty helpful.
David Ewald30:01
And we've been talking about perceptions a little bit on the on this trip. And, you know, if you say Iranian prison, and then you listen to the podcast, there's a detail that you have in the book, all of the work they've put out. There's contexts and there's there's color that you add to what that means Iranian prison, I think some of the stories that are in there. And I'm just curious, you know, how, how active and how active you were in trying to capture those sorts of details, even while you were in it, knowing that you would someday get out, perhaps tell your story, maybe not.
Jason Rezaian30:39
It's very important for me, I'm a detail oriented person and have a pretty strong memory. So figuring out how I would explain aspects of it. I just think thought about the way I thought about any other reporting story, right? When I get out of here, people are gonna have a lot of questions. And I'm gonna have things to say. And the experience was horrible, and traumatic, and weird, but not for all of the reasons you assume. And that is a consistent line through all of my work, ever. And I think it always will be.
David Ewald31:19
And you mentioned earlier, you knew the semi knew the risks of being in Iran, as a reporter, in particular, did you have your own perceptions of whatever would be like, and then maybe what was different on the other side of it?
Jason Rezaian31:36
In the in the unexpected way, you try not to think about, you know, before it happens to you, to be honest, I mean, it's not something that you want to delve into mentally, too much. Solitary confinement is not something that you just can't imagine it. You know, in one of the classes, some of you were probably there today, saw an example of a VR, solitary confinement experience. It's not the same. You put on those VR goggles, you can take them off, you can walk out the door, until you're put in that situation. It's not something that I can explain to anybody.
Jason Rezaian32:16
The feeling of powerlessness, the feeling of helplessness, I would say it's the worst thing that you can do to someone's mind. And there's a reason that it's considered torture, because it is, yeah, I hadn't, I hadn't thought about what that might be, like, you know, you maybe imagine being incarcerated, but not by yourself in a tiny little box with fluorescent lights on you for 24 hours a day, for a prolonged period of time. Without knowledge of what's going on to what's happening to your wife, and whether or not anybody's trying to come to your rescue. designed to make you go nuts, and it fucking works. Sorry.
David Ewald32:58
I should say at the beginning of every podcast, you do warn that and warn you guys, yeah, this is a we should have done the warning. Sorry. So how did how did you maintain hope?
Jason Rezaian33:12
Hope is a weird thing. You know, it ebbs and flows, for sure. I think I came close to losing hope a few times. But I knew that you know, despite my my captors, proclamations that they had announced that I'd been killed in a car accident. And that nobody cared. I just knew that there are people out there that love me, knew that there are people that that would go to bat for me, knew that I had, like a core family, in my mom, my wife and my brother, who I had already been through so much with in life, that they weren't going to abandon me. And then you get little flashes of hope you hear something from a prison guard that, you know, makes it clear that you've been talked about in a public way. I remember, I had two different cellmates throughout the whole time. And one of them came to me, and he had a daily phone call with his family. And he hung up the phone and came and grabbed me by the shoulders and said, Obama talked about you last night, you know, and it was like a celebration. That was like the greatest thing he had ever heard. Right. And he said, You know that. That means I mean, just kind of know what he's talking about. Right? But that means that you're getting out. And it's kind of true. I mean, your presidents don't mean David Knight No, because we work in this space. When the President starts talking about you, you know, the odds of you coming home shoot up.
David Ewald35:02
And Muhammad Ali as well. Probably yeah.
Jason Rezaian35:05
I mean that that was, you know, all these years later still, sort of the greatest thing that I could ever envisioned then was the last thing. The last thing that Muhammad Ali did publicly was call from our release. And the day that I was released, I think, was his birthday. And you can see it on Twitter. I mean, he tweeted like this the burst best birthday present.
David Ewald35:30
That's pretty cool, you know, separate from your experience in prison. The second you were taken prisoner, people were mobilizing around to get you out, and I'm here and then that includes the Washington Post and includes your family. How aware were you of that both at the start, but over time, as well infor the first three or four months,
Jason Rezaian35:53
Not at all. And, you know, my brother was activated immediately. My wife was released after about two and a half months. And she was in constant contact with my brother and my mom, and my employers at the post. But my brother and the posts were not telling her about anything that was going on behind the scenes, because they knew that her phones were tapped, and that it wouldn't help her to have knowledge. So, you know, to be honest, she and I were quite frustrated. And, you know, the days and the weeks, months, pile up. And this is the sort of thing where there's no, there's no good news until you're on the way home. Right. Now. It just, it's levels of hell. So yeah, I knew that things were happening.
Jason Rezaian36:50
I had indications, you know, my interrogator actually had this problem. And they, they lie to you so much, that when they throw in nuggets of truth, you don't know what to believe. And I mean, it was around the time that this secret negotiations started for our release, he told me that, you know, we're going to do this big swap. And, you know, we've got some our guys in prison in Iran, and we want them back. And this is how this works. And timewise timeline, it tracks exactly with what was going on, I just, you know, didn't know that that little nugget of truth was, what it was. And when i On the day that I was released. He said to me, he said, you know, you have no idea how important you are. You've got 15 lawyers in Washington DC, working on just like, come on, can you cut the crap like, you know, there's no lawyers. And a week later in Washington, they take me to the law firm that has done all his work. And I recount this. And the lead lawyer says, Can we get a count on how many lawyers build hours on this? It's 24. Lawyers, hours, I mean, you kind of blush and you know, think about all of the efforts and expenses that went into it and wonder if, if you're worth it.
David Ewald38:21
So after you got out? A, let me start with, you know, how did you decide to sort of capture the story and tell your story?
Jason Rezaian38:32
I was pretty clear. By the time I got out that I wanted to tell the story, that, you know, if I was going to go back into journalism, that I would have to tell the story be kind of awkward for me to go back to work at the Washington Post, and be like, Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna tell you about that. That's for me. Sorry. But I knew I wanted I needed to take my time. And I had really good advice from a variety of people who said, you know, don't go on television and talk about this experience right away, because you don't know exactly how you feel about you. And that was really solid advice. And I, I just took the time to go back and report the story as I would any other story. So I interviewed lots and lots of people who were involved. And, again, I wanted to make, I wanted to paint a portrait of a really hard ordeal without turning the bad guys into, you know, one dimensional thugs, figuring out how to maintain the humanity of the bad guys. A lot of people don't like that, about how I told the story. But, you know, that's my story.
David Ewald39:48
What was it like, though, to report? What's it to learn about your own story from all of these things that happened without your knowledge and maybe you had passable knowledge of some of it? But the details that you eventually get to, that must be a strange process.
Jason Rezaian40:04
It's a strange process. Because, you know, you also find out that a lot of people take credit for things that they had nothing to do with. And other people who maybe did a lot. Don't really want to talk about. And there's a lot of you're checking one person story against another's. The one thing that kept coming up again and again and again, was, you know, I wish I had a brother like Ollie Rezaian. We're brothers. So I'm not gonna give him that much credit up here. But I kind of lucked out. I really did.
David Ewald40:43
Did you take some time off of I mean, you took some time off when you came back, right? Before you started writing again? How did you decide to start writing again,
Jason Rezaian40:55
I wrote, you know, from the second I got out, I was writing, I just wasn't publishing anything. Yeah, it became really important. And when I wrote, did my book proposal and, and started writing the book, I had all these Microsoft Word documents, of things that I had started. And I went back and read the ones from the early weeks, and I saw so many of them, were kind of repetitious, so I figured, okay, these are important things to build around. And then I, you know, I built a timeline and an outline, and realize that, you know, telling my story, in a linear chronological way, probably wasn't the right way to do it. It took me about a year to, to do the book. And people, you know, ask often, was that a cathartic experience? Absolutely not. You know, there's literally nothing cathartic about writing about your time in prison. You know, it, the catharsis and I think that's a weird word, but the, the value and the power in it comes from after the fact, when you do things like this, and you have a command of the story and the experience, and you know, the nooks and crannies that you don't want to go to. And there's real value in that for me, but in the process of writing, it was so triggering, right?
Jason Rezaian42:34
I think I wrote most of the book in for three to six week bursts. In during those three to six weeks, I would have nightmares, I wouldn't be able to sleep. You know, I wrote the book, mostly in a windowless basement. In a place that we lived in, in Washington, DC, we had a room with windows and stuff, but for whatever reason, that felt like the place for me to do it. And I did it mostly in the early hours of the morning, when there weren't people around. I still, if if nobody was here, right now. And I was in this room by myself, I spent so much time pacing, like in squares. And I can see a nice, almost square of chairs here. I spent hours just walking, it's like automatic muscle memory that just takes me back to that experience, and gives me a little comfort. So I spent a lot of time walking in circles or in squares as I wrote the book. But as I got closer to the end of that process, it's felt like a accomplishment. And if you've, I'm sure some there's some people who've written books in here before. If you do it once, you should do it more than once. Because the process you learn so much in the process, and it's so hard and so frustrating. And it seems like it's never going to end. And then it does and you'll you figure out so many things you wouldn't do the second time around. So I'm really excited to carve out some time, hopefully sometime in the next couple of years and read a book.
David Ewald44:20
And so when you started writing more post material, and when you look back at the timeline, and again, I've done my research, when you started writing again for the post your your work, did focus a lot on hostage topics of all sorts. And I'm curious, you know what, how I mean, I know loosely why it would happen, but like how deliberate has that been in terms of advocacy and just keeping these topics because there are a lot of hostages around the world.
Jason Rezaian44:53
It wasn't something that I planned on doing in the beginning. The first few pieces that I wrote when I came back, were Press Freedom pieces about journalists and other parts of the world who had been arrested or murdered. There just happened to be a spate of them right around the time that I came back to work. And my editors were really open to me writing about those. And I think that was kind of them. Because these are not the kind of stories that gets lots and lots of clicks, people don't care. And so over the last six years, I've sort of challenged myself to figure out how to get people to read these kinds of stories. And, you know, for me, to really unique beats that I know, more than most people in this room do about, about being a hostage and about the threats against journalists. And I learned that the best way to tell those stories is to make those people into human characters.
Jason Rezaian46:01
And now that I've moved to the opinion side of the Washington Post, I'm in a really unique space where, you know, whether it's Evan Grishko, vich, and, and Russia are Brittney Griner, and Paul Whelan are folks in Iran or Venezuela. I know that I can write toward the people in power. And they can't ignore it. Because they all work. And all people in this administration worked on my case. Right? So okay, did that for me? Why did you do this for this other guy, you know, with the community of people that you belong to, and I belong to, we've pushed this issue so far forward, with almost zero resources. We don't have a PAC or, you know, lobbyists supporting us. You can't see it. But David's got the flag that that Juan Carlos spoke about on his pin right there. Soon, you might see that at the post office or other places. March 9 is going to be the first.
David Ewald47:03
I think it's hostage remarkable detainee day.
Jason Rezaian47:05
Hostage and wrongful detainee day, it's like, you know, a really massive sea change and how we look at this issue. And I'm just glad to have been a tiny part of moving it forward. Because I know what a really egregious and nasty I mean, just imagine that you go somewhere in the world, and you're thrown in prison, because you come from here, and then the entire system of government all aspects of it. So their law enforcement, their intelligence services, their their lawmakers, their executive branch, their diplomats, their judiciary, their propaganda networks, all of them being abused and used to vilify you. And you're just a normal person. Right? It's a massive thing to face down. And no one should have to face it down. And the way that traditionally we've covered these stories in our press has been and you know, we did it even with Evan when he was arrested 300 days ago, was, you know, American reporter Wall Street Journal reporter charged with espionage in Russia. That's the headline. That's not true. Okay, that's the front story. But the truth is Wall Street Journal reporter taken hostage in Russia. And I will keep banging on that drum until everybody hears it. But fortunately, more and more people have caught on. And I think we're changing hearts and minds little by little.
David Ewald48:49
I'm also I keep looking at the time and I believe, okay, I thought this was the case. We are running out of time this evening. I felt like we're just getting started. But I do want to make sure that we have time for q&a. If people have questions.
Student 149:07
Can you hear me? Okay, thank you. Um, one is starting to say a couple of things. I am not mindful of time. But I want to say a couple things and ask a question. At an event talking about threats to press freedom. I think it's necessary to mention Israel's targeted violence on Palestinian journalists and award that's backed by billions and US military aid to 83 to 100 plus journalists who've been killed. The committee committee for protection of journalists has called it the deadliest conflict for journalists since they started collecting data since 1992. Whole families have been killed but of journalists and they've continued to do reporting. So I think it's worth mentioning that and in terms of hostage taking, I guess I wanted to say I think it's useful to mention that it seems to reflect unequal power dynamics due to US Empire. Why did this look like any add on you certainly know, it meant the overthrow of a democratically Did leader in 1953 by the CIA, installing a secret police and a dictatorship for 25 years, freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets of the government, helping Saddam Hussein launch chemical attacks on Iranians during the 1982 88 War? And so that leads me to that question, you know, in terms of hostage taking advocacy, wouldn't it be worth advocating for a change in how the US engages in the world and call for reducing hostility, hostilities and normally normalizing relations with Iran and other countries, similar countries, since hardline approaches and sanctions and threats of war have been counterproductive at best and harmful to Iranian people? And many other people at worst? Thank you.
Jason Rezaian50:44
I appreciate the comments in the question. First of all, I should mention that my wife is the senior Middle East researcher, the Committee to Protect Journalists. So I'm well aware of the dozens of journalists, probably many more than the ad that you mentioned, who've been killed in the war in Gaza so far. And I'm not really at liberty to talk about efforts to support some of those journalists and their safe passage to other countries. But rest assured, that's something that I support very deeply. On the second part, also, I mean, I've written at length about the need to normalize relations with many of these countries, and D. militarize, bring down the tensions. But I guess I would say that, it doesn't necessarily mean that I should stop advocating for hostages of my own citizenship, I have a unique position to do that with. And as much as I would like to see the conflicts of the world. And today, I don't have the power on those issues that I do on this much more specific subset of issues that we've been talking about here tonight. I wish I did. And I hope for a day when the kind of atrocities that are being met it out in Gaza and other parts of the world stopped forever. I just don't see an end to those insights. Unfortunately. It's a it's a short one. What do you think of the practices of Guantanamo Bay? You know, you know, who asked me that question a lot. My interrogators in Iran? And my answer to that is, you know, I think that they're abhorrent and deplorable. I don't think Guantanamo should have existed as a detention center and the way that it did, and I think, a lot of the ways that other countries like Iran, China, Venezuela, Russia, others, have treated American citizens is reflective of that period. And the ways that the War on Terror was used to suspend very basic rights. But my answer to my interrogator, back then, when I was in prison was that I haven't been to Guantanamo. And I don't think you have either. So I don't feel like it's my responsibility to justify or condemn, although I do condemn those practices.
Student 253:28
Hi, thank you so much for being here tonight. I was hoping if you could tell us a little bit about the Washington Post visual forensics program, how that's used to search for the truth, and how that can be used on a wider scale for investigative journalists.
Jason Rezaian53:43
Great question. Visual forensics, if you aren't familiar with is a sort of a new type of investigative journalism where the post the time was in a growing number of news organizations use open source imagery, film CCTV cameras, posts on social media, satellite imagery to reconstruct events. We've done reports on mass graves in various countries on protests on the killing of journalist Shireen, Abu Ockel, and in Palestine a year and a half ago. And you know, the amazing thing is, we're able to really get to the bottom of a lot of incidences, where we're not able to be on the ground. And I think that this is a really important type of journalism and a breakthrough in how we do reporting. The truth, though, is that it's really expensive. And it takes a lot of time. And so when you see something like a protest in Iran, or another country where we don't have journalists on the ground, and people are pumping out all sorts of raw footage on their social media feeds And folks say, Well, why can't the news organizations, you know, cover this in the same kind of way? Well, we don't have people there. And we don't have the ability to vet that information. The visual forensics allows us to do that. And I think it's gonna get faster and better and cheaper. But it's really, it's sort of a next phase of how we cover a lot of parts of the world where we can't actually physically be.
Student 355:28
Hi, there. I'm James, I'm a sophomore, you came into my section of gateway to media this morning, Dan Morrison, my professor went out and talk to you. Yeah. He came back in and he and he said, you know, who I was just talking to, and none of us really knew. And he said, that's one of the most famous journalists in the world. And he began to sort of explain who you are. And he said, Now I'll just bring him in. And after, after you left, he explained to you where and not two minutes later, I bought my or secured my ticket for tonight. Thanks for Thanks so much for being here. As far as the question goes, I'm a firm believer in the fact that a well informed electorate is the backbone of democracy. And I believe that it's journalists jobs to inform set electorate so that they can exercise their power over the US political system by voting. You're asked tonight about maintaining hope. How is it that someone like myself who wants to be a journalist? How are we expected to maintain hope that that fundamental change in our news system is possible? With the the massive spread of dissonant myths and disinformation?
Jason Rezaian56:43
It's a really important and grave question, especially as we go into this election cycle. When I talk to people in Washington I was talking with with some friends earlier today about this. There's this attitude that not everything's gonna be okay, you know, our system can withstand, you know, four more years of Trump, if that happens, know all this stuff. I think they're wrong. You know, you believe that an Informed Electorate is the backbone of, of our democracy. I don't believe that I know that. And the fact that we aren't informed that we're misinformed, and that we choose how to misinform ourselves, is really the hardest thing for me to swallow, which is why I try and engage in this kind of environment. I know. You know, I stared down many members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and had conversations just like this, about things that we didn't disagree, we didn't agree on. We had deep divisions on, but we're able to talk as human beings. And I think that that's the piece of the puzzle that's coming out of, of our political landscape and our news media. It's so much talking over each other, so much slandering of one another and, you know, separate sets of facts. They're not separate sets of facts there, there isn't, isn't there isn't isn't? And I don't have the answer for you. And I'm being very honest. But I do know that that for there to be any hope of maintaining of this, this thing that that has been around for the last 247 years. It's gonna require breaking bread and shaking hands with a lot of people that have ideas that you can't stand. And it's their right to have those ideas. It's not their right to impose them on everybody else. And I don't know how I honestly don't know how we re empower one another. But I'm glad that that you asked. And I'm glad that you're thinking about that. And I'm glad that so many of you I've engaged with today have come with really thoughtful questions and ideas it gives that gives me hope, as a slightly older guy. Hey,
Student 458:53
Jason, thank you for being here today. I just want to build up on something that you said. What are some common ways that we miss inform ourselves?
Jason Rezaian59:04
Well, look, I think we choose to believe the things that make us most comfortable, you know, when we talk about the crisis at the border, when we talk about the armed gangs that are invading our cities, of people that come from south of the border, I mean, these are all ridiculous things that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our homes, they're taking our everything. You know, this is a country that was built on immigrants. I think I can detect in your voice that you come from a part of the world that I know pretty well. And I'm glad that you're here. And I'm glad that you know millions of other people from there are here as well and from everywhere else, because that's what makes this place. What it is. It's not looking across the room and seeing somebody that's different than you and saying, I don't have anything to do with that person. It's really engaging. What does that guy know? That I don't know. And I think we've lost that. It's a really simple thing. And it might sound stupid to come out of my mouth. But I think that that's the thing that we've lost. And it's really something that we should aspire to bring back to make ourselves great again.
David Ewald1:00:21
Have a way with words.
Student 51:00:23
Hi. I saw you this morning. The you week. Damien. I wanted to ask you, I don't know if you answered this already. Or maybe in the morning, I missed it. But I wanted to ask you, you were the only one like not the only one. But like, in that moment, you were the only one that they were after. And that means that you have power, and that it's intimidating for them. So why do you think they only go after one person rather than maybe I grew up or journalist like, what do you think made you different to go after you and not arrest? If you're not used to like a group? Maybe that happens, but...
Jason Rezaian1:00:58
Over the last couple of years, a lot of journalists had been arrested in Iran, but I think they looked at the landscape and thought to themselves, okay, this guy's a, he's an American Citizen. Citizen, be he works for a major American news organization. If we go out and, and arrest everybody. That looks really bad. If we go out and arrest one guy, and accused him of things that, you know, sound plausible to our society, who we've been telling for the last 40 years that, you know, our country's overrun with spies. Maybe they'll believe it. Right. And I'll tell you, I've had a lot of people contacted me after the fact from Iran, saying, you know, on social media, when you read the messages, you can tell who the ones which are bots, which are kind of regime agents, and which are like real people who have an honest question, like, you know, where you were, were you not doing this thing, and I engage with them sometimes. And the security people at the Washington Post would tell me not to do that. Right. But sometimes I kind of want to pull it that thread and see what it is that that they think. And what I've learned is that the propaganda that these states impose on their their publics, even if people are skeptical, it seeps in, and it has a real impact. So, you know, I've met so many Iranians over the years, over these last few years, you know, who will say something to me like, well, you know, I was once detained when I was back home in Iran, but they let me go after a couple hours. Because, like, you know, I wasn't like you. I didn't do anything wrong. Right. And it's like, you know, over and over and over again, you know, it's part of the popular lore. And, yeah, I mean, I think they try and make examples out of singular people, and they continue to attack me, they made a 30 episode, television series, you know, like a fictionalized series about me, that was like the ultimate really trolling to me pretty hard. You know, it's also kind of flattering, but, you know, except when you see the guy that they had planned
David Ewald1:03:24
Okay, I think I think we have to cap it at that. Thank you. Yeah, I was gonna say thank you.