congresswoman barbara lee, and ben wittes. representative barbara lee has been democratic member of the u.s. congress since 1998,

representing california's wind the district, and she is the chair of the congressional black caucus. congresswoman lee graduated from mills college and received a master's of social work from the university of california at berkeley. she is perhaps best known as the only member of congress to vote against the authorization for the use of military force against terrorist act. she voted no -- [applause] she voted no because she believed that the legislation granted overly broad powers to the president at a time when the facts were just not yet clear. her book, which she will be discussing with us today is entitled renegade for peace and justice converse woman barbara lee speaks for me charlie savage is a pulitzer prize-winning

journalist. he's the washington correspondent for "the new york times" and the author of "takeover" the return of the imperial presidency and subversion of american democracy. and we have a copy of that here, and it's a wonderful book and you can see my copy is much loved. it is a hard book to put down. in 2007 when writing for the "boston globe" he won a pulitzer prize for national reporting on the issue of presidential signing statements. he writes about the supreme court, homeland security, united states detention and interrogation policies and bush's war on terror. a native of fort wayne, indiana, savage graduated summa cum laude from harvard in 1998 and a leader merck earned a master's degree from yale law school while on a foundation fellows fellowship at scholarship. ben wittes is a senior fellow

with the brookings institute. he's the author of "law and the long war: the future of jestice in an age of terror," published in 2008. his previous books include star a reassessment, which was published in 2002, and confirmation for preserving independent works in angry times, published in 2006. between 1997, and 2006 he served as an editorial writer for "the washington post," specializing in legal affairs. before joining the editorial page staff of "the washington post," wittes covered the justice department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at legal times. his writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including sleek, the newbak?v republic, the wilson quarterly, the weekly standard, policy review.

what i would like to do is turn to our panel and ask each to speak for five minutes to give an introduction to his or her book and we will start with congresswoman lee. >> thank you very much. i appreciate the opportunity to be with you today. this book which i wrote is a memoir was a very difficult book to write. it's not an expos eight and of course house this book having been my first book i wasn't quite sure whether or not i should write this because the one always believes a memoir is an expos es of your whole life. well, being a public official of course that is something that your life is 99.9% public any way but that .1% that's private

he want to keep private. right, congressman pete stark. thank you for being here. but as a result of the encouragement by someone who we all know as a great journalist and a friend, a woman who has covered i think nine or ten presidents now, helen thomas, she encouraged me to write this, and her point was one has to define themselves especially if you are in public life because others certainly will try to do that. i thought about it and started writing and chapter 1 actually starts with my purse and it was a very interesting process writing this because what i realized is that one's values and what you heard as a child, the stories you heard as a child drives a lot of what you do as an adult, and so i started with

chapter 1 as a really it's just basically to the birth. i was born in el paso texas in 1946. my mother was in labor, went to the hospital to deliver me. she needed a see section, but of course, then this was a catholic hospital where she was to be admitted. she got there and they wouldn't admit her because she was black and as a result of that it took quite a bit to get her into the hospital, which required my grandmother to raise a lot to get her in and my grandmother looked like she was white. and given the history of slavery and the unfortunate background many african-americans have in terms of race, you know, my grandmother was the product of race. she was, my great-grandmother was a domestic worker for an

irish household in louisiana, and out of that unfortunate circumstance where to children born and as a result of that, my grandmother was half irish, and so she looked like she was white. and so she came to a hospital and said this is my daughter, but her in. the kind of looked and couldn't see what was going on. my grandmother is beautiful, she's 84-years-old now. she had dreamed negative but she didn't look quite like my grandmother did. finally, after a lot of education to say the least, they let her in the hospital. but they didn't do anything except left her there as she says, a gurney and didn't provide the type of medical care that they should have provided so she could go into the operating room to have a section. well, sooner or later the dr. are light and it was much too late for the ec section. they didn't know what they were going to do at that point.

my mother was delirious and unconscious. it was a terrible situation and so as a result of that they rushed her into the delivery room, didn't know what they were going to do, finally made the decision that they were going to try this delivery that should have been a c-section, but try through natural birth and they ended up actually pulling me out with forceps, and i had a scar on the top of my eye until very recently as a result of that. now i start the book like that because that story my mother told me, i learned this as a child and i couldn't figure out why in the world what my mother not be admitted to the hospital, first of all. why in the world did she almost died? and in fact almost didn't make it into this world, and as a child i learned this story and it was very terrible, as you might understand for not only myself but many african americans who went through a lot

of experience is as i have, so i decided early on i had to do something to make things better for others. as a child i decided that is what i had to do and so the book starts with chapter 1 talking about that experience because i am writing this which was again a difficult book to write, i realized why i am such a fight for peace and justice, why my entire life has been about trying to correct some of the major ills that we still face in our country, and that is my reason for existence because if it hadn't been for the fact that i barely made it here i wouldn't be here. so the bottom line, i have to continue to fight for what is right and what is just and to try to eliminate all of the barriers that people of color and women and those who have been shut out and discriminated

against in many respects still face. thank you very much. >> i ask a quick follow-up? i was enthralled by your book and again the subtitle of this book, "renegade for peace & justice" seems to say it all, and i wondered if you tell a few words how you came to become elected to represent california 's my district in the house of representatives. i know representative dellums had a big influence on you and i thought a few words on that might be of interest to the audience. >> i worked for the current mayor, formerly congressman, i worked for him in 1973 during the watergate era between undergrad and a graduate school i was a capital in turn. ron halyard me out of graduate school and i was one of the first top staffers on the hill who happened to be a woman and was african-american so that was a major glass ceiling on helped

shatter as a result and rolm always new and we always considered him feminist on the hill that he gave me that opportunity to be a top staffer. i worked for him for e leffinge years, went back to california and continued to work for him the next four or five years and then i left his staff, set up a business and ran for the california legislature and served in the california assembly and the senate until 1998 and then when rahm retired i ran and the special election for his seat but running for public office or something i never had on my agenda. i actively major in psychology and psychiatric social work. i think i've taken one course in government. [laughter] but as a former clinical social worker, i realized during that process, and i actually talk

about mental health center in berkeley that many of the issues we see in therapy and counseling especially with women and people of color issues, yes you know for whatever reason, depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, all the mental issues kick in, but oftentimes there are economic reasons as a part of that so i decided i wanted to see if i could effect some change so that the circumstances, which people were finding themselves in that caused this depression and the unsteadiness, you know, the trauma in their lives, maybe i could do something, from a policy point of view, to help to address the systemic reasons for their difficulties. >> thank you. ben wittes, could you give us a brief overview of your book?

>> sure. when i sat down to write this book -- this is a fast changing world and relatively few areas of that have changed faster than the area i sat down to write about which was the legal structure of counterterrorism. when i sat down to write this book which was almost two years ago there was a working premise that was as obvious to me then as it is counter intuitive today which was a new administration coming in would be a conservative administration or a liberal administration has one of its obvious priorities of putting on a more solid footing of the counterterrorism authority that it felt it needed because these were so in contest

relatively easy and the second myth is that the laws we already have better system.

for example on the left is a these are easy question if we simply follow law and we don't violate the law then everything would be fine and we would, you know, our problems would go away and we would deal with terrorists in the criminal justice system and be fined. on the other hand you have wealth this is a war, there is a body of law that authorizes aggressive behavior and warfare. this covers the situation if we simply allow for that, the problems -- these are the tools requisite and available and the law provides for them so what is the problem? lets just do it. my work in premise is that these two basic methods, which have gotten more intense, not less, as time has gone on, have really very negatively affected our ability to stare at problems that are basically new and to think about how we might resolve them in ways that are essentially constructive. so the book was designed to do three things, two of which i

suppose are more relevant today than the first. the first was to kind analyze how we got to the current impasse. how we went from this moment of incredible unity after 9/11, and i say that with some awareness that i am sitting next to one of the very members of that unity. [laughter] the company accepted how we went from this moment of incredible unity of purpose and not just unity of purpose but unity of means and objectives to this, and by the way almost no partisan division either, to an intensely partisan division that is pervasive throughout the entire discourse of counterterrorism. so there is an initial analytical question how we got to the current impasse and second what would you do about

it if he wanted to brackett and have a different discussion going forward and the basic parameters of the argument are the most fundamental error, and they're some fanatic overlap between my argument and charlie's argument. the most fundamental error of the bush administration was not as we often debated the substance of some of the specific policies that have adopted but the means by which it adopted them that is it did ma seek to work with legislature and build the architecture for the policies and needed. so the first half of the book is kind of an argument, a kind of critique of the prior administration for the way it went about constructing its architecture. and the second half, the second third of the book may be is an argument for an affirmative legislative set of approaches to

problems i regard as essentially a new and essentially not governed or shouldn't be governed by our kind of models to pre-existing law either the laws of the war for the traditional approaches of the criminal justice apparatus. an argument for thinking about these problems as a set of new problems that require new institutions, new structures and new law. and the last third of the book which is really the part that is i consider most salient right now as you have an administration that has come in and is trying to ceo based some of policies and think about what it needs and how it might get them is an attempt to imagine across the range of caring as in political contest that is to say detention, interrogation, trial, to some extent covert action.

what a legislative approach would look like endows we sat down as a society and had a conversation about the very profound cost and benefits that are involved in counterterrorism and the risk allocations that were making when we adopt a policy it is sort of an attempt that almost a first draft of what a kind of comprehensive approach to that might look like >> thank you. charlie savage, tell us about "takeover." >> so, this is -- this will reflect some of what ben was just talking about. my work as a journalist and also in this book, "takeover," were culminating this book, "takeover," is an effort to explain and identifies the way in which as a part of a trend that goes back 50 years. the power of the executive, the

president, the white house, to keep information secret, to act unilaterally, to bypass treaty constraints and laws enacted by congress and to a certain greater centralized control over far-flung regions of the government within the executive branch has been ratcheting slowly but steadily the last half century and it's the sort of cold war context and over the last eight years it's dramatically accelerated. and i came to this question because i, like ben, was interested in legal policies that grows on the war of terror, the sort of detention, surveillance interrogation debates, and then it allowed me -- it led me to look at things on a more structural level so in 2005i was closely following the debate in congress over whether or not there should be a stronger more airtight torture ban being led by senator john mccain opposed by the bush

white house, and so sort of beyond partisan issue, and of course mccain was arguing we can't do this. this is an american. let's have an airtight ban on cruel treatment. the bush white house was saying no, we are going to veto that if you enacted. ginnie was going over to congress to lobby them to not pass or create an exception for the cia if they did pass but at the end mccain one and nearly every republican and every democrat and both chambers voted overwhelmingly for his tortured and so overwhelmingly even if bush had tried to veto it it would have been overwritten very easily so bush called senator mccain into his office and they had the cameras come in and he said he was accepting this new law and we thought was the end of something we've been covering for a year but as it turned out on the day bush signed the bill about 8 p.m. on friday night before new year's

eve weekend when a woman was in town he issued a signing statement which had gotten little attention outside the executive branch that had gotten circles until the state. it is essentially a set of instructions to the executive branch how they are to carry out or implement new statutes created by a bill. and it becomes contador skill when a president says -- uses this device to tell the executive branch some provision of that bill is unconstitutional so it doesn't need to be enforced and that is extremely controversy when the provisions are constraint on his power as president because they are not having to enforce the law means he doesn't have to obey the law so in this signing statement, president bush told the cia and military notwithstanding the words of the statute my interpretation of the constitution means as commander in chief i can interrogate prisoners how i see fit and so never mind this, obey your order is going forward and that was interesting. three months later when congress

made permanent the patriot act, it included as a compromise with the white house to break a filibuster in the senate new oversight provisions requiring the justice the apartment to tell the congress regularly and in great detail what they were doing with these new powers to search homes and seize papers and so forth, what they were getting out of it so congress could make sure the new powers were not being abused if not now in some time in the future. bush agreed to the compromise to get the bill through and have all the legislators who had worked on it come in for a fancy signing ceremony and then after the cameras left and the lawmakers had gone home issued a signing statement telling the justice department that if he wanted to, he could tell them not to obey the oversight provisions and withhold information from the report's going to congress because he was commander in chief and that was a power he had sort of written between the lines of article ii of the constitution. and so that, i wrote about that as well and that led me to spend a month to find all the signing

statements bush issued the first seven years. it turned out at that point he had already challenged more small, more sections than all previous presidents in history combined and this was a road map to the sweeping implications of the theories of executive power that we were seeing popping up elsewhere in the justice department and the administration as well. basically eliminating power of congress to regulate the executive branch of the end of the day. the president gets say over what the government is going to do between e elections. so that was sort of my nature, but as in the newspaper world as i kept asking questions i started to realize as interesting as that was as the sweeping constitutional implications were it was just kind of wanted of the iceberg, one tactic among many simultaneously in play which the administration was trying to set

policies and take actions that would establish precedents that would serve not just to achieve whatever policy was in front of them at the moment but to do so in a way that would permanently increase the power of the executive branch and president as the head of the branch for the long term. many of these issues came up in the context of counterterrorism debates but many of them went beyond national security matters as well. they had nothing to do with national security. the fight over cheney's energy task force for example, not in national security issue but had everything to do with what information the president could keep secret from congress and keep secret from the public. and the attorney firings and the justice department is sort of not a nationalization of the first essentializes greater control over what the government was doing at the upper levels ultimately inside the white house. and so, as i kept asking questions about where this was

coming from, why it was happening, the answer turned out to be not really george bush and his interest and his sort of policy goals and those that arrived with him but rather it had everything to do with cheney and his interests in the people in the government keep it there. i went back -- the questions took me back to the ford presidential library in ann arbor michigan where the national archives has a bookcase full of documents called richard cheney files which are his files when he was the chief of staff to gerald ford and watergate and vietnam and when you go through those files and the fights happening then and the memos back-and-forth to each other it becomes crystal clear that cheney had been on a mission since that period to roll back or fight the battle over executive powerr6t that had a re after w@vergate and vietnam when congress, after 20 or 30 years of being asleep at the switch

during the early cold war rose up and began performing oversight again and began passing what was called framework statute, statute intended to regulate how the branch goes about its business and efforts to rein in the so-called imperial president that had arisen from nixon. and the white house that hadn't looked like an delete commiserate direction. it looked like an outrage. the power was to stop it at the time, but flash forward to 2001 and suddenly they are in the position to fight those battles and wind in this time, not just to expand their own power while in office but read the office stronger than it had been when they arrived for all future presidents. so the closing thought on this summary is, you know, it is really essential to understand when a conversation like this that we are talking about in the context of the bush administration, republicans

using these powers to achieve conservative ends. the executive power is not a partisan issue. the same tools can be used by a liberal president to achieve liberal ends, and that's why it is in the interest of all americans regardless of their party affiliation or personal ideology to at least understand and have an informed debate about what has been happening to the structure of the system designed by our founders. that is a statement that was harder to persuade people of a year ago. republicans thought that any sort of criticism along these linesxñiñr was just partisan, democratic, liberal attack on their commander in chief and liberals who thought our guys would never do anything like this because we are good and they are bad. now that president obama has come into office and has inherited these precedents and some of them he has repudiated in the area of torture but others especially in the area of executive secrecy and the power to indefinitely detained terrorism suspects beyond the reach of court oversight and

other areas as well we are seeing that these powers are attracted to whoever is in ,ñ and possibly a broad question and to give a brief answer, and the answer about five minutes each, and then if we have time what we can do is ask the panelists to respond to each other and open the floor to a couple questions from you. i will start with charlie savage. this unitary executive theory, the idea that the presidency as one actor has implied power in

the constitution that allowed it to expand its role, this has been a central part of the conversation about the growth of the imperial presidency. your book traces how cheney has advanced this theory and my question i guess when i was reading the book is i kept wondering can congress reclaim any power? you sounded rather pessimistic about that but i thought i would ask you explicitly can compress reclaim any of its power and how can it go about doing so? >> but is certainly true in all this conversation about the aggrandizement of executive power the last 50 years and over the last eight years in particular, the decipher of congress, you know, congress acquiesces as, and i am sticking with a institution, structure over the last half century we have seen, chris acquiescing as its powers have been sort of siphoned away, and this has something to do with the sort of

national security fear that a rose in a new way starting with the arrival of atomic warfare and the fear of the early cold war sort of fever in deference to the executive that was revitalized after 9/11 four on the sort of same waves that also had something to do with partisan politics. ..

>> these are real politics and reasons why we are likely to say congress assert itself in the way we saw briefly with watergate. >> thank you. ben wittes this leads into your central these as you call on congress to call on suspected terrorists. you have a strong which congress to become more active. can you tell us why it is time portend for congress to take new action and whether you believe congress can do so? >> it is a very provocative question. i do think it is essential the basic rules be written by

congress, not unilaterally by the executive board to be more precise unilaterally and initially by the executive and over time in dialogue with the support it is how these rules get rich and in fact, it is the maximum position. we can old people forever without any review of any kind by anybody than the accord say no you can't and the executive says yes we can. least triple have jurisdiction and the detainee treatment act. we have that written mccourt says you cannot do that and it is a multi-year dialogue through which the shape of the contours of policy demerged. this is a very, very stupid way to design something as elaborate and complicated as a detention regime which is what

we are talking about actually. if they think of the third grade civics lesson of policy development it would be very different from that. the president would go to the legislative branch or the legislature being were we supposed to make laws and say i have our real problem which is a group of people we are catching all over afghanistan and some are turned over to us from friendly governments like pakistan and bosnia. i think they are wildly dangerous and will kill americans if read these. some of them i can make criminal cases against but some of them i cannot. and by the way, they are sorts

of combat since in a conflict which you have authorized the use of force it is hard to describe them as that. held be out what rules should i operate under? here are the rules i think i need. they will stay here are the rules that you can have then you would bring that system to the courts in the context of a judicial challenge and the courts would say those rules are good enough or they are not. that is the six model of how things get done then the real world that really bad is not what has happened to that is the one thing we have not done. we need to get back in touch with our inner fifth grader a little bit. [laughter] i believe we do in a noncriminal the tension regime. i think there is a group of

people and the administration, it will be interesting to see over the next few if they come to this or if they don't but there is a group of people that will be very hard for anybody who has sworn the oath of office that barack obama to read these to you cannot make a criminal case against. that is my hypothesis that those people exist. the idea that we've never really have sat down as a political culture and had a discussion about what it defines that group of people? what kind of evidence counts when you try to identify whether somebody is inside that group or outside that group? what rules or rights to they have in that process? who is the reviewing entity into has the burden of proof? they have never answer those questions and by not answering those questions, what

happens, initially as charlie describes, we give them to the executive branch to do what ever it once but in the long run this is where charlie and i part company i don't think what it in aggrandizes is executive power but judicial power is not the executive branch that gets to decide the contours it is the judiciary and specifically this is something you're not supposed to say but i will anyway, because we know of the division on the supreme court, it is one person, anthony kennedy so the ultimate question the way that we do this is what led anthony kennedy do? that is a peculiar set of questions for a democracy to ask itself i would much rather ask the question what can i get a majority in each house

of congress to pass that i am confident anthony kennedy will have confidence? that is a much healthier way. too briefly touch on the last component, is this something we can aspire to realistically? that depends on the new administration. they decided it would review two things one is the population of guantanamo on the individual basis they will review every single case to see if they can be released, transferred to another government or put on criminal trial or if not what else we may do that is lawful? secondly they will study the problem of detention going forward. if you imagine the results of

these reviews with the universe of people that we have hypothesized that are too dangerous to release if that group is small and the danger is unmanageable you will have no appetite for either the administration or congress on the other hand, that a group as i suspect it will be turns out to be substantial and very scary, then the administration has only two options to continue current policy which is under at -- told under the laws of war that has a bandages and disadvantages which i will not go into here and the second is to try something new and go through the exercise which in my opinion we should have gone through seven years ago and try to define fashion

consistent with our traditions and values. what are the circumstances we're willing to engage in extra criminal the tension? >> thank you. congresswoman barbara lee in a serendipitous moment recently i was reading your book. i put it down and turned on the television and a news channel was covering your recent trip to cuba. what struck me is there was a tone that suggested that when representatives are members of the house speak on foreign affairs issues, there meddling in what is problem today is probably the president's domain and i wonder if you can describes the role that you think congress should play in shaping foreign policy and what steps this congress can take to reprove of the balance

between the legislative branch and the executive branch. >> i was not surprised to hear those comments about my visit to cuba and from some quarters saying that is not the role of congress. less speaks to the fifth grade civics mentality or lack there of. many people do not understand what the nature of our democracy is nor the constitution. just going back to the issue of acquiescence to any administration i could not vote to give the bush know or at any administration congress is the only body that can declare war. so that type of hate mail and name-calling and unbelievable kinds of attacks that came to me as a result of my voting

against the authority to use force in 2001 showed me then that the base six central principle of our democracy in terms of the right of defense was not the basic if that is in our constitution and a democracy. i was not surprised hearing them say what is she doing trying to normalize relations with cuba a fifth year policy that has not worked? the administration and the executive branch serve on policy making i serve on the appropriations committee and the subcommittee on western hemisphere and subcommittee on africa. one of our responsibilities, identificati on and development of options for meeting future problems and issues relating to u.s.

interest in the region. congress has a direct responsibility to shape foreign policy to provide direction. i have been visiting cuba in many capacities since 1977 trying to look at ways to end this embargo. it has not worked. it is 50 years. it has isolated the united states every country in latin america has diplomatic normal relations with cuba it is a country, afro hispanic 90 miles from the shores of our country the u.s. chamber of commerce has long been supporting the embargo we do have key economic interests that would benefit us in our national security interest not to imagine the scientific exchange in the normal exchanges people to people travel americans have a right to travel anywhere they want

they could travel to china, vietnam why can't we travel to cuba? it does not make sense for i will continue to work hard i am proud of president obama to take steps subsequent to our visit to begin to relax some of the backwards policies and as a member of congress and the foreign affairs committee i will continue to work with the embargo but those who do not understand that congress has say role to go back and read the constitution and feel free to get in touch with my office we will show them the jurisdiction of the foreign affairs committee the ways and means committee the financial-services committee many congressional committees -- committees that have specific foreign policy shaping. i listen to those reports and think here we go again.

>> i am curious when you did it before under the previous administration committed the executive branch to make you check in with them or ask you to? what do they say about what you can say or cannot say or do they leave you alone? >> design and to stand there is a separation of powers this executive, legislative and judicial. we try to find common ground we do not necessarily a check in with each other prior to this visit i call the state department and wanted a briefing. we wanted a briefing and we talk to the appropriate individuals and agencies in the government for information they were well aware that this was a congressional delegation and officials delegation visiting cuba.

we do work together but we do not check 10 or necessarily have the same position all of the time. essentials is that there is the synergy and debate and dialogue we may not always agree. not all democrats agree on a given policy they may not agree with normalizing relations although 71% of the public agrees but we still have a debate it is important to that date this encouraged and not one pointed to be stifled because of whatever attacks that come fourth from people i after say do not understand the nature of our democracy? >> missing from your capsule summary account of your thesis is the military commissions and that we did have finally

in 2006 a debate in congress and statutory authorization for a comprehensive regime, which anthony kennedy mostly did not like and most of it is still there but the idea of congressionally approved and become patent status and here is to you appeal to and here to meet that definition and here is the rules is now in place on statutory level so did but we have that debate? what is it that you are calling for that is different? >> that is an interesting question but i do not accept the premise. to describe it as comprehensive i guess is an interesting starting place. i think of the mca and elaborate skyscraper built on a bed of quicksand. the the mca first what is fundamentally about trials not

about the tension at all it is assuming the detention system but that is not rigid and statues of the rules of how you determine whether somebody is lawfully held and therefore not lawfully subject to the mca at all is entirely a matter of regulation. and military order save the 41 peculiar thing which is the provision of the detainee treatment act that allows the d.c. circuit to hear the appeals. i don't think there is an analogy anywhere in the u.s. lot except ironically an article iii of the constitution was sets up a supreme court and any other court you feel like setting up. the only thing congress has said about the tension is whatever system you set up there can be an appeal to the d.c. circuit. that is nonsensical.

but there is not. what congress has never done has said here is what we think or who you are allowed to detain. that is a fundamental question not to answer. what is the definition of the the attainable category? >> no. >> yes where is that the find? >> it is controversial because it is so wide sweeping more than the administration for anyone that takes up arms against the federal government blah, blah, blah. >> the definition in the statute of of unlawful enemy combat stand for it mca purpose is is only for trial but being subject to military commissions it has nothing to do if they are entitled to detain you in the first place. in other words we're litigating over that question

right now. in a 200 habeas cases the government takes one view and this is the issue whether the new administration had to take a position about the scope of its mca and authority he had to decide if the wanted to stand by the previous definition of enemy combat and that is executive not a legislative we do not have vague definition except in the skyscraper built on sand. except ironically porpoises of deciding once we have would ever claim we have for purposes of trial. >> it is rooted of the decision that gives you the authority from congress to detain. >> is an interesting question of when you look at where the substance comes from.

you scratch and there is nothing and you scratch again and there is nothing behind them and i am not saying, i say that as somebody who supports a serious mca gin at regime per w have to have contour in order for us to have a serious debate. the mere fact to the obama administration can come in and change the definition of who they are entitled to hold is a remarkable thing. and in support of your thesis. >> i write a little bit about this in my book because the authorization to use force that i voted against in 2001 has been used over and over and over in many, many ways on the detention, and may come back and scar month -- enemy combat since and based on the

authority granted on that resolution. it was just that broad that i believe the weird discussing here can be justified based on that legal authority that congress gave an two the president and until that is repealed which i would love to do, there is a blank check to do all of the things that we are talking about unless we go back to the drawing board. >> we would like to have won a two questions from the audience if you have a question we have about five minutes. >> how do identify who is a

per cent to be detained? it looks to me as if it is almost like it was in the civil war with when the slaves did not have papers who was free to prove his freedom and was swept up and carried away back into the system. and some of those that were given to us, there was revenge and people submitted pokes and underdress and said this is one of the enemy. on that flimsy basis we do not know what to do with them. do any of you know, the basis on which we categorize these people? >> thank you. i can address that to some extent. first of all, let me be clear there is the attention of large numbers of people in