is primarily, naval and nuclear and electronic warfare, which requires long-range strike cabilities. the problem is the defense industry can produce in numbers or quality the required capabilities, they're having trouble doing that with nuclear capabilities as all the tests show, the only reliable weapons system coming out these days is the land-based icbm, which they can produce six to eight the year. the fact that that means the doctrine for one kind of war and russian defense policy is going for another. that is a common trend but not a lot of problems because we pointed o the the military/political stock is at variance from what they call the military technical doctrine, a lot of pressure on russia to reform which they did. furthermore, the government, by having bought the general

stf's predecessor in stock, has also essentially seen the fact that the government today doesn't work. it is a dysfunctional state, we have a conference last year, 30% of the 50% of the defense budget is stolen. ..

>> bewitched czars who constantly tried to impose what they called systemic government without fully realizing if you attempt to impose a system on the government, you undercut the principle which is at the heart of the system, that is the autocratic power of the czar or putin. yu end up with a government that is, in a sense, chasing its own tail. but this doctrine primarily the is not only aimed at the west, it is trying to shape up, trying to centralize controls, giving the security council the right to monitor, regulate, control, all verbs beloved of the russian bureaucracy system and to create what is understood as a police state. not what we think of as a police state, but in which the police in the state play a moral and regulating role in creating good citizens, public-spirited behavior, patriotic behavior and

an end to corruption and so forth. therefore, this document for the first time actually maps out indices about wheer every bureaucracy's supposed to send in reports as to how russia's progressing along this line. it's just another document that is going to fail, but nonetheless, it is a blue print for a police ste and a centralized bureaucracy controlled from the top in the sense of russian history. as such it incarnates this militaristic and securetizing trend and at the same time it creates tendencies in russian governance that are leading to even more curtailment of democracy. just let me give you three before i conclude. recently, administrative communications promulgated order number 65 which allows the ministry of ommunitions to read the mail of anybody in russia. private or electronic.

we have been now told that the next defense doctrine sections under legal empyment of the russian forces and on nuclear use will be classified. mr. medvedev has now called for curtailing or weakening the possibility of jury trials for terrorists and not only terrorists would be caught in that dragnet. furthermore, he has essentially sent the duma a letter saying that i want a change in the defense laws that would allow the rtssian army to operate outside of russia's borders without my having to go to you for consent. not only is this a retrospective acknowledge that in russian terms the war against georgia was illegal, but it is allowing the russian army to go abroad without any legal restrictions in the future. when we add the growing takeover of more and more sectors in the industry, continuing repressions

against diss dents, the murder of human rights activists and so on and we look at the civil/military relionships and many this doctrine we see that this national security strategy although it breeds hostility towards the west and a sense of threat also sees threats primarily from within russia. it is a society that sees itself at risk. in other words, it is a continuation albeit in nonsoviet terms, of a eleven inist mental -- leninist mentality. lenin's rivals in russian social democracy used to say lenin had introduced a state of siege into democracy, and he introduced that state of siege into the world'sffairs. unfortunately for russia, it still is laboring i that same state of siege. thank you. >> thank you so much, stephen. our next speaker will be -- by

the way, we have a couple seats up front, somebody needs to grab them. if you want to sit down, please, help yourself. the next speaker will be dale herspring who will speak about defense reform i contemporary russia. dr. herspring is a university distinguished professor at kansas state university and a member of the council on foreign relations. he's also a retired u.s. diplomat and navy captain. he's also very, very well known in the field, the author of a dozen books and more than 80 articles on civil and military relations in the united states, germany and russia. thank you. >> thank you. let me begin by saying that mary was my student at georgetown when she was doing her dissertation, and it was mary, frankly, who got me to recognize the revolutionary and military affairs, so i want to give her credit because she was the one that sort of dpoosed me -- goosed me into doing it.

i sent this paper, it was read by a senior russian official in moscow who's asked to be nameless for security reasons, and basically his argument was he's right, unfortunately. that was what i got back. what i want to try to do is to give the view from behalf of the russian military. i spent 40 years being around russian military and what's happening to them and where they see things coming. and i thought of the -- i changed the title of the paper to military reform in russia is for real, but -- and i'll go through the buts after what i talk about ha they've done. there are two reasons, my thesis is russian reform is real, serious problems with implementation. now, what is driving russian military reform? i see two ftors. the battle against corruption on one hand, and the war in georgia on the other. first demonstrated the

impossibility of rationalizing the military. 40 percent of the military budgetas being ripped off, i figured. second was red georgia if nothing else demonstrated how poorly the russian army was prepared for any kind of confrontation. i can go into detail, but i'm ing to try and avoid going into great detail for the sake of time. now, with the new minister cam in, it was a joke. he came from the tax service, and before that he had run a furniture store. and they started calling him book alter which is a derisive word for accountant. what does this idiot know about military things? he did two years as a reserve lieutenant, so in moscow there were jokes going all over the place. let me also say something people don't realize, having spent more than 40 years studying the russian and soviet military, the russian military press is more open than the american military

press. discussing problems, going into great detail about problems, why things aren't working, and it's not only retired analysts, there's serving officers. one i'll go into later has been very brul about criticizing. he said at one point if the idiots in this country cannot provide the stuff that i need, the simulators, i will go buy them abroad. that was before the whole thing started, he was in charge of training. so what he d was he said i've got to make a point. so he went to st. petersburg, and he went to oicer training school. and what he did was he went in the back doo not t front door. he found mold, he found unsanitary conditions, the place was a mess. so what happened? within a beak, the admiral in -- within a week the admiral in charge was both kicd out and retired. people began to say, well, gee whiz, you got to take him seriously. his task was to bring the russian military into the modern

age. and this is something that's absolutely critical to understand what theussians are doing, and they won't admit in a sense that they're copying the west, but in fact, they are. first, moving from a structure based on mass mobilization, forwd-based troops in 1941. that was the message they took after world war ii. we're not going to have that again, we're going to have troops deployed and have three different groups totop the offensive. what they said, they decided, though, after georgia was that we screwed up, we want a much smaller, highly-maneuverable, flexible and lethal military force. this is the idea that based upon using military force during peacetime, and they talk about that openly. you're not going to have a war, iraq is not a war in terms of a world war, but you're going to have to use military force on your prir try and in the future. now, how to do it. first of all, in the economic

structure what the defense minister did, he moved the military back from being involved in procurement process. the military comes up with we want x, y, or z, they then give a civilian group that decided what to buy and deals with the factories. yes, there'll probably be corruption, but there'll be fewer uniforms involved in the corruption process. so they've tried to cut back. first was cadre. bring in new blood. get rid of what the russians call the warehouse army. and these are officers who are sitting in places where the weapons are stored for mobilization in case a war comes. they've spent their whole career going from one warehouse to another. when it came to the war in georgia, the had to, they admitted openly they had to go around and find majors and

captains who had any experience, and it was a nightmare trying to find officers who were qualified to go lead troops into battle. so major surgery as of last december they have 355,000 officers on active duty. they were authorized 400,000, came up with 365. by the end of this year, they're going to be down to 150,000. now, if you're wearing a uniform, that's a hell of a change. the logic, in the past they had 2-4 or 3-1 officer ratio. they're now going to 1015-1 -- 10-1 because as they say, that's what nato does, and that's the ratio we're going to have. it's sort of an average. nato's not all 1-15, but they're going to duplicate that. massive cutbacks in areas like the medical that's being turned upside down, legal that's being ripped apart, and the media. they're keeping 20 officers on act i duty to deal were active

to deal with media. educational institutions, they had 65, and they're going to three medical education centers, six academies and one university being the general staff academy. general staff academy is being torn apart. they've gonerom 11 shares to two. and they've gone from 120 students to this year they have 16. they're all one stars, and they're working, they're supposed to go to division coand after they finish. first year, of course, is all miliry stuff. the second-year course involves civilian material. legal problems, accounting problems, logistical, all that stuff. they're bringing in civilian professors to teach it which n the russian military system is

unheard of. they've always been much more isolated from society than the american military. i had an officer living down the street from me. in the past that never happened in the military. they give you how it's going, the air force went from 340 units to 160. a tal of 35,000 officer slots are being cut. in the navy they tried to move things to st. petersburg. there was such massive resistance, and that reminds me of something that my late admiral sd to me when i asked him somethg in moscow about getting the budget, and he looked at me with a sort of smile and said, have you ever seen a picture of th high command? i says, yes, andike an idiot he says, how many blue suits do you see tre i said, one. that was the answer, one, you've got to be there to get something. the navy right there is getting 40 percent of the military budget. so few operational ships that

they're going to have to cut most of them. 40, 50 years old. ground forces units being reserved 1 -- reduced 11 times. the old military district army division regiment, that has gone apart and they have a big free-for-all. the argument is that the brigade is much more operational. if you read american military stuff, it's exactly the se thing. we can deploy an independent brigade. if that's beaten up, put another one in. put a division in, it's beaten up, it's a mess. so, frankly, you go out to fort riley, it's like they're taking notes exactly what they're doing and how they're doing it. tanks, they have 23,000 tanks, th're going to 2,000. and they're also going to have all t-90s. they say it's a nightmare with

t-72s, t-90s, getting mechanics to work on a t-90, they can't work on a t-72. when they went into georgia, half the tanks didn't make it. they broke down. and they said we're going to go back to a size that we can actually work with. they're creatg a unified command structure with the exception of the srf. district commanders are given command of all the units in their district. the airborne forces, the only ones left untouched, they're staying in division, and a lot of that has to do wh the general who i see as the future chief of general sta, a man who was in cher ya, and if you want somebody who eats nails and spits 'em back out, tt's him. he very bluntly says, and aye picked him up because i read the stuff every day. where was this guy coming from? somebody brought him back on active duty, and he was dhe first one who sd if we can't find the stuff in russia, we're going to buy it where we can

find it. because i need simulators to train people. the rear services logistics a the hardest hit. 40 percent of all officers have been dropped. control is now centralized into district december poes. -- depos. a lot of the bases have been militarized. -- civilianized. military's out of that. one size fits all. the railroad troops, same size cut as everybo else 45 to take. chaplains, political officers were taken out of the military, and there was a real problem. some of the political officers were very good, some were bad. but at least they were there so if there was a morale problem, it was there problem to take care of it. they took themut, they departmento much of anything, so finally they put chaplains in. the major resistance was not religious, it was worry about

radical imma'ams -- imams. now they're going to bring them in, and they'll be paid as deputy unit commanders. but the first time now that they're having the four groups, buddhist, jewish, orthodox and muslim chaplains will be in the services. that reminds me of 1989 when i talked to a two-star admiral who was in charge of the rhythm fleet political affairs, i remember his comment to me. he said in 1917 we destroyed the old gods and came in with the new ones. the one's collapsed, and now we don't have anything. we need something to get the morale because there's no system, and i think that's basically what they came up with. the military's response, no surprise, strong opposition. one general put hid resignation in -- his resignation in three times. finally,hey said we have no

objection to releasing him. and demands over 60 which means he has speal permission to stay in uniform, and he had it. he could serve another three years, and he quit so they could make the mark there. as far as i can tell, and there may be somebody that duds it more succe systematically than i do, all three and four stars are gone. everybody -- medical, legal, they've all been replaced. and the argument you hear, you get very clearly from the russia if they're not going to play the game, they're gone. and that game is to create this new military. in fact, it was so strong that the general staff, head of the general staff now sent out a thing silencing the officers, they couldn't saynything, and it turned into a joke because they said, well, we can't say anything, but -- and then you heard what they said. they tried to rationalize the process, anybody that serves

from 0-10 years gets a bogus -- bonus. if you serve for more than 20 years you get a bonus apartment and retirement. there's also something that i sort of laughed about because we used to think in russia you could tell how many stars a general had by his girth. well, now they've introducedt. first year -- what is it 26 percent of all younger officers failed it, and the argument is now, you don't find the pt test, you're gone. and i can see some of these generals i used to know, you know, have some problem. but here comes the other part of the problem, the other half of the problem they're having. creating an nco corps. they've decided they're not going to have officers, and we had a third class petty officer, and they asked what does he do, he said i man the missiles and prepare the missiles. theyaid repeat translation, we did, the analyst said in russian

navy that's two officers. he had been god knows how long in the ny, nd he was already doing it, they put two officers for it. they said that's absolute nonsense. critical problem they have is delegating authority. they have a very hard time doing that the way -- if you'd had a marine captain and the guy above him are lost, you expect him to figure out what the hell to do and how to get out of there. that's what they're trained to do. russians will s there and wait for somebody to give them an order. now, that's an challenge ration, but it's a -- exaggeration, but that's a difficult problem. inability to attract top talent. they need 250,000 ncos. they started a program at several universities where they would take people andeally train them in what they were doing, you know, in mechanics or transportation or whatever. they found that they had to postpone it. they couldn't find enough

candidates who could pass the test to do any kind of basic math, so they have a very serious problem with that. the people who go in and sign a contract to go on active duty for is certain amount of yrs, it's a long-time process that was started back in the early '9s, but it's got major problems. first of all, it attracts the dregs of society. 8,000 for a guy who joins versus 20,000 for an average bus driver in moscow. they've got a real problem going on. crime problems are rampant. not only the harassment's going on, but they're involved in crimes, they've talked about rapes, and they publish the statistics, exactly how many crimes occur, so it's not hard to find it there many leave as soon as they can. and this is, the idea was the contractors would build the nco core. but if anybody here who's ever been in the military, any colonel or bg thinks he runs the

military is a damn fool. seniorer is gents, chief petty officers, they make you look good or bad as the case may be. ficers' morale is not surprising, it's at rock bottom. crime, corruption, the ours corps has been blasted for having the highest rate of corruption increase in the entire military. technological lag, at present moscow is way behind. ten years was basically lost from 1990 to000 it was gone. nothing happened in that time. the navy has gten only four new ships. most ships are 40 or 50 years old. some fear they're tooar behind to catch up. the navy gets 40 percent of the missiles budget, and it's goi for the bulava missile. they've also had several other submarines, and it's not working. it's failing all its tests.

the army, rusan experts say tanks and bmps are superior to almost all nato equipment, and they're probably going to have to buy a system because that's failed in georgia. who knows what else. even rifles, medvedev was some place, and he asked as he went through the thing, he'd say these are great sniper rifles. they say, yeah, they're british. defense industry most of the staff are old-timers, it's very hard to try and get that to go again. my conclusion based on a budgetary breakdown, priorities should be given to reforming the military, structural chains, issues. they'll continue to modernize, but don't expect major weapons motizations for several years. the real question is whether russia can overcom the psychological barriers, the

ncos and the other officer corp >> all right, thank you very much. stephen, if you have any comments you'd like to make, or should we go straight to questions? >> let's go to questions. >> okay. if you'd like to ask a question or make a shnrt comment, please, raise your hand and wait for the mic to come, and then if you can give your identification and affiliation as a courtesy to the speaker. >> [inaudible] >> okay. can i hav a mic here in the corner for the ambassador, please? >> thank you, richard. >> is it on? >> is it on? have yeah, yeah. >> thank you, richard. i would like to address a question to professor blank. i've worked with the soviets

over many years myself --h, i didn't identify myself, sorry. tom graham, i'm currently with with -- [inaudible] and power, but i spent many years in the u.s. government working on nuclear issues, arms control issues, international agreements and so forth. many years negotiatingith the soviets. my question is, professor blank, as you presented russia's threat perception, it seems entirely -- or not entirely, but largely american-oriented. over the years i had the impression tt the soviets also considered as part of the threat out there the for lack of some other way to characterize it the afghan/al-qaeda/pakistan-type threats. is that no longer part of their threat assessment, or h it

been submerged? i remember many years ago in soviet times something was said to secretary james baker at the time that the west and the east have to stand together from the threat from the south. so i'd be interested in your comment othat subject. >> thank you. the natnal security strategy has nothing to say about terrorism. as a matter -- and this is striking. i mean, when you think, first of all, what's going on in the north caucuses because the north caucuses has been out of control for about at least five years, if not more. there are a quarter of a milli russian troops, regular army, administrative interior forces down there, and they're getting absolutely nowhere. all you have to do is just read our headlines, let alone theirs. but t doctrine says there is

nothing about terrorism. as a matter of fact, we true shelf who is the chairman of the security council which is the new, which is the organization that is tasked with being the monoer thing agency for the government that -- monitoring agency for the government which is making progress that i talked about said in '07 and '08 that the terrorist threat was reseeding. -- receding. now, i don't know if he believes that, i hope not, but it's certainly good for political consumption at home because it plays to this image of the putin government as being strong on terrorism and having eradicated the threat even though the threat is, as we know, alive and well. now, with regard to al-qaeda and afghanistan and pack -- pakistan, obviously, they're recognized as threat, but in this document there's not a word said about it. furthermore, they see pakistan as the great proliferation threat. or north korea.

not iran. medvedev publicly said recently he sees north korea as a bigger threat or problem than iran because north korea has broken free of any kind of international restraint, but iran is still connect today iaea, and at least we have some leverage on iran. that said, they don't see proliferation as much of a threat as the u.s. does, and i did a whole paper on this last year where we had a conference with the russis. oneame out and said the same thing, russians don't see proliferation anywhere near being a threat to the extent that the u.s. does, and that ere are people around putin who have publicly given that kind of statement recently to the press basically saying, you know, you people are obsessed with iran for no good reason, it's your problem, not ours. that said, the proliferation threat is real, privately they've acknowledged to secretary gates that they are

worried about iran's capabilities, but they won't say so publicly. the really interesting omission, though, in this document and i suspect you'll find it in the defense doctrine when it comes up, is china. because they are as aware as we are ant the chinese military buildup. we're going to talk about that in the next panel, but the china threat is the threa that dare not speak its name. recently, meeting people in the government said china's nuclear weapons are not a threat because they're not aimed at russia. laugh you know -- [laughter] those of us who have studied the issue know how long it takes to retarget a weapon, it's not long at all. the chinese weapons coming online now were initially built to deal with the russian threat. they're never going to say publicly that china poses any kind of threat except maybe

economically. so i hope that answers your question. >> microphone right here. hank. >> yeah, hank gaffney from cna. i read the national security strategy, too, did a lot of underlining and all that kind of thing, of course, you never mentioned any of the social stuff in there. but howo you reconcile this view that you take which i see as a personal interpretation with what dale has just said about the forces? here's a force which is an internal force, and you've got it aimed at some huge external invasion. >> i link it in the following ways. first of all, in the paper which just department have time to read -- didn't have time to read because it's a long paper, i go through and talk about the social issues that they have securitized education, health care, other times they've done this for religion.

they talk about the state needs to have a fertility policy encouraging people to have children. and to improve russian public health and so on. so all those issues, hank, are addressed in the paper which will be coming out just for reasons of time i couldn't go into the detail. i look at it in this way, the threat perception is a political one that on the one hand is there to try to give the government to give the military even more resources, and again reflects as i alluded to in the delivery of my presentation a problem that we've come across in the past in regard to soviet military strategy where you have a military political aspect of the doctrine or the policy that says one thing, but the army has confirmed or military technical aspects which points in a contradictory direction. my sense is that the ground forces and to some degree the

air, particularly the helicopter forces, the air assault capability are being confired for the threat of wars in and around the cis. that would include scenarios like georgia, or if you had some -- maybe even another chechnya or something like the hezbollah operations in the last three yes in the russian theater. but they believe that these kinds of wars could easily expand into the big one. and, therefore, the big one is a war that is fought by long-range precision strike capabilities. air, naval, and iw. the idea that a nato ground force is going to invade rush shah is not very -- russia is not very likely, and i don't believe it keeps them up at night. what keeps them up at night is a kosovo nature.

an ethnic problem breaks out somewhere in the cis or the russian federation itself. this leads nay to to put litary pressure or even to act on behalf of the opposing side, and that would mainly be air strikes, long-range naval strikes, maybe iw in one form or another, and there they are vulnerable. the enemy is not going to come in tanks, but in planes, that was said several years ago. the idea that -- i don't think that the scenario that energy ideases them is a large scale ground invasion even though a lot of people are still on accessed with 1941. they've not obsessed with 190 divisions coming across the plain. and for that the navy, air defense and, if necessary god forbid, the nuclear forces are the ones that are going to have to bear the bankrupt of that responsibility. the army will have to be able to defend the borders, obviously,

but it's being optimized to use the russian term at least they're trying to optimize it as dale pointsut to fight these kinds of wars in order to prevent them from going to a higher stage as well. because it's a russian belief that due to its possession of nuclear weapons, it is able to deter the west from intervening, for example, on behalf of georgia last yea that's not an unfounded belief, i think, either. so that would be the answer. >> okay. we have just to point out for the media, we actually have a separate room where you're welcome to interview people if you want on t sidelines. that said, are there any members of the media who need to leave and can't stay and would like to ask a question now? okay, then we'll proceed. anyone who wants to ask a question, please, raids your hand. there's -- raise your hand. there's a gentleman in the back. >> hi, david -- hi, david

comiskey. question to pose for mr. blank and mr. herspring. what importance do you attach to the recent attempts although now seemingly ended to the regional command that were established in russia's armed forces? >> you're talking about the switch from the division level to the brigade level? >> right. >> well, i mean, why is it important? first of all when i came out, people -- russian military are probably the most conservative in the world, and the reason why they put the new ones in is their brigades -- same reason we have. more deployable, they have all their assets with them, they have their chaplain, they have they are medical corps, and they're much more flexible and much faster to deploy, and that takes, you know, that makes a lot of people redundant.

>> a quick follow up. what -- >> mic. we need the mic, or it won't get reported properly. do you have the mic? okay, speak in it. >> were they discontued because of the reforms in the military? >> it's just simply part of the ones -- they've gone through, what they don'tave is a systematic plan, and that's what a lot of officers have been raising hell about. i think we're figuring out sort of what they're doing, but they've gone and done this thing piecemeal. they sold stuff in the middle of moscow, military assets, he sold them to put in infrastructure, and what you don't see coming out of moscow is some sort of a great plan. they just seem to be going through going, well, we're going to change this, change this. it's heading towards a much smaller, lethal military, but i don't have the great plan. i don't think you do. >> well, i don't -- well, they've studied contemporary warfare, and georgia was the icing on the cake. i mean, normally in russian

history when the russian army wins a victory, there's a great celebration. everybody says hurrah for the army, the army's great, it's wonderful, and, you know, nothing changes. this was unprecedented because two or three weeks aft the shooting stops they instituted all these reforms thatale has listed in his excellent paper and that he and other people like roger mcdermott and others in the profession have cataloged, and the chief of staff gets up and says the russian army is not ready for contemporary warfare. i mean, this is a shocking announcement under the circumstances, and it's been followed by other shocks. you know, the idea that they're going, of all maces, to iael to buy uavs is a scandal in russian military circles given their past record of relationships with israel. but nonetheless,he israelis make excellent uavs and are prepared to se them to moscow for their own political purposes, so they're buying them. they cut out two levels of

communication by getting rid of a whole bunch of people who were wear house generals -- warehse generals or dead souls who were pushing paper all day. they need anrmy that can be commanded in an efficient and effective way, and they department have it. they beat the georgians largely by incompetence and mass. and they know it. and, therefore, these reforms which started in 2006 -- that's when it was really started -- but it gathers a lot of acceration, they began these reforms in order to have an army that is more effective and attuned to the requirements of what they understand contemporary warfare to be. and they have learned from our experience and from the israelis' experience and from other people's experience as to what was required. >> think one of the most famous quotes i saw came out

from a russian officer. we went to war with georgia, and we won by maas. and certain people at -- mass, and c people were awarded a medal, and that has been blasted in the press. four airplanes shot down. the georgians had no plans. they shot down three mig 23s and a reconnaissance team, and how in the hell did they do that? the one thing that is very clear to me is the russian were not ready for that war, and i can give you the exact reason for it. number one, when that war took place, the chief of the operations direct rate of the general staff was not there, and, two, the general staff was in the process of moving from one building to another, and they didn't even know about it til they heard it on television. that's why it was all handled from the president's office. they had no communications system. >> i think there are some people

to your right if you could just pass, if you want to as the -- pass the mic to them there. and also for people watching on television, you'reelcome to e-mail me questions. we can't answer them now, but i'll be happy to pass them on later. >> i'm harley walter from georgetown, university, and, steve, i'm sure knowing you that this paper has a few pages of spring draft campaign, but we've heard a lot about, you know, what's going on at the top command doctrine. i'd love to hear a little more abou the social part, the people who are asked to serve in this military. the little bit i've seen suggests that the health of the people coming in has te deteriorat even further, not clear if that is to get a better

system or to make sure it doesn't get paid the bribes? >> or both. >> both. less than 40 percent of the people they actually took in were supposedly fit enough for full service, and in the next eight years the number of 18-year-olds is going to be cut in half. they've got to be talking about it. >> i'm sorry to disappoint you, but i didn't say a word about the spring draft in the paper, i figured dale was going to talk about manpower issues. but it's very clear that as part of the reform they wanted to move to what they call a professional army. now, their concept in russia of professional army and ours are very different, and for the old liners in the general staff, the term professional army means mercenaries which is not the case. but the problem you have is that, one, there is not enough money to compensate people adequately for their service if you do that.

secondly, you would have to institute some sort of uniform code of military justice that really was applicable. i use our term. i don't want to say that they don't have one, but where officers are accountable for their behavior because as dale pointed out, the figures on officer crime are through the roof. bribery, insertment of officers, that is puttinghem to work for you, and so on are still rife -- >> they're even bribing officers to keep themselves on active duty. >> you know, i've seenhat. and the health problems, which you alewded to and you know, are also rife. the problem, the health problems are, i mean, if we're talking about 18-year-olds, these are kids, young menho have been born, let's say 1991, '92 who grew up in the worst public health disaster in russian history. so it's not supprising that when they reach maturity that their systems are i some sense come

propleased. >> compromised. >> i need to say one thing about the whole consumption which -- conscription. to my way of thinking, if that was a compromise, i can't prove it, but it's a compromise of the general staff because there's a group who wanted the old, big-style army, and another group that says these guys when they get out, they're not knowing what they're doing. i think they're going to basically drop these people. the real problem is some of the units, the readiness units which is what they wanted are still 50 percent conscript because they cannot attract g.i. joe to come and serve in the military. it's 8,000 rules verse us are 79 in moscow. but who in the hell wants to go in if you're going to be paid that compared to everybody else? so i think they're going to

focus primarily on the personnel system. i see these conscripts as going away because the 40 percent they can get, they're talking about ones who can go into the navy, the srf, things like that. it's just a bad scene. and because you've been around the russian military, as i have, the training is brutal. that ship that, you know, disappeared, i don't know if you watched the pictures, but god pity anybody who was in the way. i've seen what they do. >> just to add to the issue here, again, gets down to the question of should our defense policy be oriented basically on what the military believes our military criteria on the basis of what russia can afford? we've heard this number, for example, of a million man army for ten years. you know, we've all seen these articles. next year we're going to have one million men and so forth,

and, you know, that mirage keeps receding every year. it's supposed to be the case now, but under the terms of the current economic crisis i doubt that they can afford to do everything they want to do. what they want to do, i think, is quite construct i have. it's the kind of thing we've been talking about for years in recommendations, but again, the money is not in. and what's more the social structures, for example, national health care has to support that system. as i said, the 18-year-olds coming in are victims of that lost decade. >> okay. the gentleman in the first row, please. >> my name is mark from save foundation. question both to mr. blank as well as to mr. herspring. number one, you've analyzed the russian strategy which has been put out as a document, and there's no reason fors to believe that that is not a misinformation document because

much o the good strategies are classified even in the united states. and so is it probably in the russian. so to analyze that are you providing free consulting services to them to talk about their problems? what are you trying to do? at's one question, and the second is, you know, the misinformation is put out by both side, i mean, the united states does the saee thing when we declared saddam hussein to be the greatest threat to the unite which was not true. so misinformation is used by all sides. the russians are not incapable of using that, so what do you think of that analysis that is very useful to us? >> well, i hate to disappoint you, but i don't think the national security strategy of the russia federation is a misinformation document because there's so much in it which is so geared towards compelling the bureaucracy to perform that if it was misinformation, they would just, you know, file 13 with it. this reminds me of a case i and

i believe tim thomas and jay kipp focused on. in '96 the russian military was really at the bottom of the ough, and we it should our presentations, and one fella came up to us and said don't you think this is all a disinformation ploy to lull us into believing they're weak? i said i don't know if you got the memo, but the soviet union disappeared five years ago. this is not, you know, the united states did not conduct, i don't think, a disinformation campaign that saddam hussein was a threat, i think it misinformed itself. >> [inaudible] >> so there's that point. and this is not a -- i mean, sure, everybody has classified documents. i mean, you should. you don't get up there and say we're going to attack on this axis and so on. but this is not, this is a political document that came out of a tough political struggle, and it was intended to give

concrete guidance to the russian state administration. >> [inaudible] >> right. this took five years. >> [inaudible] -- would you because napoleon and hitler both tries, and they finally got. >> well, you know, i've never had the idea of invading russia, although i've been called an enemy of the people. [laughter] >> let me say one thing about misinformation. i've spent most of my life reading the soviet stuff and trying to figure out what the he they were taing about. i get it every day, it's about 25 journals that come in, different thingses every day, this is not misinformation. they are actually blunt and open and talking about their problems because you see enough things happening enough different places, you don't ave to be a criminologist to deterne they're hurting and they know they're hurting. the fact is it has collapsed, and the '90s until 2000, they

were hurting. i mean, people selling goods in the streets, soldiers eating mushrooms for their diet. and their shoes, boots were given to them by another company because they department have any. and if youook at pictures of russian soldiers, you'll find all kinds of different uniforms about them. one complaint was they look le the ossetian militia. the only way you could tell the difference between the russian soldiers and the ossetia, the ossetians had a white thing around their arms. it's been complained about. so this is not mismanagement, this is a whole lot of incompetence, corruption. they went through and found, you know, they were no longer a superpower. it's hard for a country to adjust to that, and they talk about it. >> [inaudibde] thank you very much for your

personal insigs on the russian military. my question is actually using your experience with russian military, can you tell us why they even bother with this document? because knowing russians and the way they're doing business i really can't see the sense. >> it's, their feeng is that they need to have a doctrine and a national security strategy. first of all, they've been subjected to a lot of international pressure over the years to do it because other governments do it as well. and you need a document like this -- and we do it, you know? we have the qdr that's now being worked on, we have congressionally mandated national defence strategies that every administration has to put out. you need a document like this to inform the government what the

president's or administration's goals are and what the strategies and what we're doing here. moreover, this particular document, as i said, is primarily intended to give strategic guidance of a particularly centralizing stist nature to russian pure bureaucracy. >> what kind of weapons they're going to buy, what kind of training things they're going to go into. >> right. >> basically, one of the problems the russians have had is it's been this sort of piecemeal thing. and normally you have a defense dnck trip, and that gives them guidance, and i think it's going to be important to see if it's -- important to see if it's going to be different in the sense that it's focused more on a smaller, highly-lethal military. once they have that, there's more coheren. they don't know what the hell our doctrine is, and they've been much more along -- russian

military's based on the prussia militaryystem. the general staff's got to come up with a document, and then they know what they can do. >> furthermore, to give you an example of the struggles here, in the general staff the argument was made publicly that the general staff ought to publish a defense doctrine before the national security strategy comes out which would give them a place to define not on assessment, but the response. putin shot that down clearly. it's failed. ivanov stopped it also when he was defense minister, so there's a tremendous struggle. this inot just a doctrine written because somebody had nothing better to do on a sunday afternoon. this is a major political statement on the part of the government as to what it's all about, what the pure bureaucracy might be doing and how we're going to organize the pursuit of national security. this is a national security state. lots of functions to get back to hank gaffney's questn of the

state, of society, of being taken over by the state. and that's what i mean when i say this is a blueprint for the police state in that 18th, 19th century term. in ordero achieve societal and state goals. >> okay. let me, let's go in the back. i haven't been -- wait, can we start on the way back in the corner there and then, and then move to the guy next to you? but go right now to the person back there. raise yo hand. okay. >> tha you. dan gibbons. i am getting the message from mr. blank primarily that the russians are concerned about the regional, their regional protection, that they're concerned about united states

primarily encroachment is the word you used. and the united states is feeling that they are trying to establish a sphere of influence in the region. russia, is russia, pussia -- are we trying to, is our aim to make russia into a marginal power? i mean, russia wants to feel it's a major power purportedly, so i'm just wondering if there is a middle ground between when you talk about this sphere, this sphere, this spher over there that their strategy is focused on, is there a, is there an intermediary-aiding doctrine

that will integrate the united states' interests with the soviet interests in this renal that they're concerned were region that they're concerned with? >> thank you. >> yeah. >> i doubt very much that the obama admistration is rying to around ginnal -- marginalize russia. i really believe nobody can do that except russia. let me give you an example. one of the really best russian analysts whom i know very well just recently wrote an article where he said in the last 30 years when screw ping comes to power, state adminisation is in chaos thanks to mao's upheavals. they concentrated on economic development and internal order. they did not conduct a vocal and aggressive foreign @olicy except

where vital chinese interests were at stake. they followed the famous advice to lay low, bide our time, develop the country and so on. and today's china's economy is the wonder of the world, it's growing, rising 7 percent this year, it's a major power, it has to be consulted on all kinds of issues beyond east asia and so forth. russia, on the other hand, first of all, was in decline throughout the '80s and then spends its time screaming that it's a great power, they're constantly threatening and sphwim dating but did not develop the country, and as a result you see what the russian system looks like today. >> far too much has been made about the fact theyollowed some bombers around, they're picking the submarines up off the coast and going to venezuela. they're plying the same ships they were building in the 1970s and '80s.

i've been on a lot of those ships, and believe me, they're not the most modern things in the world. it's a way to say we're back, and when they send a nuclear attack submarine, my russian contacts say at this point they only have conventional cruise missiles. you know, yeah, it could ruin your whole day if you were in the right spot when it hit, but it's not the kind of big deterrence. i think what they're doing is very clearly the heart of their military scheme is nuclear forces. and saddam blew it when h thought we'd come and puck up his marbl. there are -- we went through that in the '50s and '60s, but they're worried about what happens in armenia and the united states sends troops in, but they want to send them

faster. i have spent a lot of time on the georgian campaign, that has to be one of the classic cases of ineptness, and they fired the general who was in charge. you know, it was just a joke in the way they did things. the only reason they got to the rocky substantial is because the troops occupied it or they would have never gotten it. >> so we're not trying to marginal i'd russia, but you have to understand that for the russians' government, they bought the military threat because it served their purposes which is also justification for their power and their policy. but they are certainly not planning on offensive war against anybody at the moment except maybe georgia, and i don't even think there. this idea that we are trying to marginalize russia is essentially a russian beef that has been -- belief that has been projected on to the united states. the longer you read russian

niewpt, the me you come to the conclusion, i think, that in point of fact whatever our crimes or follies are, they don't understand us at all. th project on to us their worst fears and paranoias, but it's a system that is built on the institutionalization of paranoia, that there's enemies out there. as i s the leninist idea that we still live in this state of siege is still deeply rooted, even if you strip away all the marxist, socialist aspects of it. but this idea of somebody doing something to somebody else al the time, that's their policy, that's their mentality rather. ..

>> now these things seem to prevent the russian military from ineffectively and 72 hours and eliminating georgia's military capability, their capability to wage war affectively achieving their military objectives. also, i don't understand why -- you talk about things like inscription and manpower and powers. but what about the credit, having achved a number of ings in the follies of the '90s, a total embarrassment of

1994. and in looking out for the russian military has come since then in terms of creating terms of readiness, downsizing forces, increasing training, increasing funding. all those things seem to be ignored in your presentation. and so i would like to have some more ballots and elaboration on that. >> if you want -- go ahead. >> just brazier had. to keep your hand up. >> a queion over here. i've got a question. is to follow up on hank gaffney's. a year ago the russians had a little more in georgia. they spent months preparing. those preparations cannot have completely concealed the failings and ineptitude that wereo shocking in the execution. my question is this. has that experience in the last

year mordirect confrontation with the deep decrepitude of the russian armed forces, as that in just any of restraints and russian foreign policies? younow, when i look at the pugnacity with which medvedev addresses ukraine, where you look at all the russian behavior and said he is supposed to foiled them for us fight, a fight that would much more likely escalate in the georgian scenario did, i'm wondering, you know, aren't there some voices for trouble avoidance, given e sorry condition of the russian military and the enormous resources and time it's going to require to correct them?

>> matthew, georgetown university. in your prepared remarks you said the russians and view them war fighting instruments. i know some of our no allies are concerned about what they see as the possibility of russian nuclear. i was hoping both viewed as an levit more about role of nuclear weapons and a new natnal securities. >> w may do further to the afternoon panel on that. go ahead. any other questions? okay. if you want to just make some remarks based on a question, whateter you want to say for a couple of minutes in and will break until 9:00 a.m. stomach with regards to the first question i don't think either day or i deny that they made a fair amount of progress since 1994. were not making up this argument about the decrepitude to use the fritz's term of the russian army. this is the chief of staff in the russian military press getting up there and lying out in exquisite detail all of the failings of the russian army.

when you're chief of staff gets up in public and said this army is not ready for prime time, that's a pretty damning indictment. it's much worse than anything i could have said. so we're not out to bash the russians. this is reporting what they see themselves about their own situation. and the corruption and criminality thing that dale has cited which i have read as well, are rushing to get there they are not cia or american figures. again, this is the latest from the standpoint. not mine. as far as the pugnacity of foreign policy, yes, i'm afraid they have not learned to bece more circumspect in their rhetoric and policy even though there's a major financial and economic crisis. and i'm concerned that this crisis might actually lead the to do something rash. you know, there's a famous line by a source statesman in the 19th century who talks about the new order of something erotic in the peripheries. that essentially empire gave

russian statesman a kind of like the now to have a sexual thrill. i think that power over the cis is the medvedev's a foreign policy, maybe prunes also. and they're determined to push this, according they think the reset button, this is one reason why we set biden, vice president biden there and saw. i'm concerned that the russians do not know the limits to their own power. or understand that it's their own policy that makes their enemies soulmate of their would-be partners. >> let me say to begin with, there are hopeful signs. the russian said they will not give the sa 300 to iran. and they are politically holding that back, strictly because of his. i think we can work with the russians. i think the whole question about in ukraine, do they want to do something. it reminds me about the report i

saw that started with afghanistan. and he very carty said don't do this. he said a stupid war is not a war we win. the military castanet in t u.k. and would look at him and say, you know, you are not. were not in a position to go into ukraine. it's too big. we don't have a facility's. the only way they got planes up in areas they used test pilots and training officer. they did not have regular front-line pilots. they are getting 80 hours a year training. nato is about 170, 180. one russian colonel said that's great. we're getting 80 hours now. you can check out happy officer to have the same amount of fuel available yowould get more training time. i would expect that he would say go ahead, and bluster the russians always talk most. there it are in no position to do this. what are you going to use?

you've got basically the airborne units, you've got the spits, and that's about all you have a 10 position because the reason why georgia worked because they brought in me airborne units. they brought the men and mostly the army is not very well-trained. they haven't learned. but i think there's more hope for u.s. russian relations. some of the things we've done have been sort of silly and i think that i am looking for -- for a trade off. what you do this on iran. we will do this in terms of the missiles in poland. they are trying to make that part of the nuclear agreement but i think washington would in a heartbeat would take that as a trade off. we won't put missiles in poland if you support us. what will happen i don't know. with the military, basically, come back in five years and will talk you. don't send us to war now. we've already shown you what kind of mess we are in.

>> thank you very much. we have got a question on by a c-span viewer. >> we will not incde the first session, and will resume at 11:00 sharp. please join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> now discussion increasing college andareer muddiness instance. and whether national guidelines should be implemented. we will hear from leaders of

education organizations and institutions. the educational testing company acp and the education consulting firm america's choice posts this 90 minute event.

>> [no audio] >> [no audio] >> [no audio]

>> and we were in the café couple of weeks ago as you heard yesterday. and linda lewis the works with us, we were talking about changes. she just noticed that i the paper that morning was another wonderful quote. it said, it was a cartoon and it says i'm all for change, asong as it doesn't affect the status quo. [laughter] >> and unfortunately, we know that's where many, many of the people, the wonderful teachers and school leaders and others that we work with our. because they are so focused on the great things that i have been able to do. and they are truly great. and sometimes it's a little bit difficult to open your and say,

what else do we need to d as we talked about yesterday, we understand the world is moving so fast, and the education of our kid is just about to catch up so they will be able to compete with their peers around the world. and so without doubt, we kw that change has to take place. now this morning we will talk a little bit more about change. i am sure you know that the bus had been in the air that we've got to raise the standards that we have. if you reach for the top, as i'm sure the secretary would say, you are more likely to get ere. and unfortunately, i believe most of the people around the country would say it's time for us to look a standard in a very different way. and as we know, a good chunk of them, more than 46 i believe, have signed on to a review to what the next generation of

standards should look like. we are going to start our morning by having scott and irentalked to us about where we are with that conversation, which we believe is just so important. we're expecting ilene to be with us and just a minute. scott assures us that if she is not able to make it bight on time, that he will be able to carry through the presentation. [laughter] >> and then we're going to turn our attention to john deasy. john is a strong, strong friend of a.c.t. and america's choice. and he's going to focus a little bit on that change, part two. is going to talk about getting it done. and what we need to do as a nation to make that happen. and then after that, we're going to turn our attention to, you know, st over the horizon. we know we are going to a reauthorization of esea.

and it's going to be very important for all of us to give them everything that we're doing and how busy we are to turn our attention to what do we need to do to make sure that we keep the things that have worked with no child left behind or with his reauthorization and then focus on what we need to have in place with a journey that is ahead. so having said that, scott, i'm going to turn to you. and scott is the deputy director of council of chief state school officers and he has been right in the just about every conversation in education for a very long time and he is going to give us a heads up in terms of standards. thank you. >> let's greet him. [applause] >> good morning. we had a power point, and it's

with ilene. [laughter] >> stuck on a trainer but actually as i talked to pat a little bit this morning i think going without the powerpoint may be a better way to go anyway. i think i would really get into a conversation with you rather than us talking to your. and giving you a lot of set and get. so i want to go back to the beginning, and every time i say that i am reminded, i live in fredericksburg virginia. so i took the train appeared this way. 's about an hour and 10 minutes did a great time to sleep in the morning and do work on the way home. at the fredericksburg city museum, and if you've never been to fredericksburg, the hub of history, george washington's boyhood hom numerous civil war battles that we have a great museum of fredericksburg history. i assume there is a mirror of that goes around the building, kind of tells the history of fredericksburg. and on the bottom at the very beginning of the story, i think they told the artist, you know, we want to start at the beginning. and he took it very literally. sought the beginning of the mural it says several billion

years ago the earth was formed. and i'm like, so we're not going that far back. [laughter] >>ut i will take you back a couple of years to where they started. this has really been a three-year project in the making. when gene wilhoit first came to the council chief state school officers as art director, his first addrs laid out about 12 different points that he thought needed to be changed in education. and one of them was standards. and we had a long conversation in our office about what that meant, did that meanational standards, did that mean we would look at common standards? what did i really mean. so we really focused internally for a good long time about how we would do that. we decided we didn't want to use the term national standards because as soon as you say that people think federal standards. so we came up with thi notion of a common core developed by and led by the states. including both the chiefs and the governorss the primary movers of this initiative.

ccs spent some time about a year and a half ago developing a paper called the international benchmarking report. there is ilene. youan pick up here any minute. [laughter] >> you would do the hard part out of the way. spend about sometime internally developing research paper called action, that many of you have seen on international benchmarking athe very first call to action was notion that states need to come together and develop common standards. in april, we had a meeting with 37 states, who we spoke to about a memorandum of agreement that they would sign, what the common standards, initiatives would be all about. and some of the key points that you probablyeard about that were really pieces of the discussion were that this effort would be different than others. others. it would be internationally

benchmark. meeting the standards would have evidence that other leading countries were using standards that were included in this document, that they would be researched and evidenced-based. and that really is, if you have had a chance to see the standards, you know, most of you know that they were leaked out before we intended to have them come out. that's not a problem. actually, it has bee a very good thing. we have had a lot of comments about those standards. but if you see the sndards, and there is a link on the english language arts document that has a link to our evidence-based on writing. it is an interesting dish if you look at that, each one of the standard has a very clear link to where you can find research that those standards are either college or career mehdi, or if they are used by other countries. and in their standards and what to expect from their own students. we have been very diligent. i know phil is here and i think sally was your. maybe she was here yesterday. i don't see her.

[inaudible] >> okay. have facilitated the math and english leg which art workgroups. they've bee very diligent about making sure that what's included in the standards documents comes from evidence, that there is idence there, that it is college ready. that it does promote career readiness, or other states or countries that use those standards, and not just any countries. but i mean we're talking hong kong, singapore, and the. high-performing countries that outperform the united states on things like these a. we have been very clear that college and career readiness is a key piece of this document. and that work has formed the basis for what we will do in the future. if you have seen those documents, a lot of times we have gotten a lot of comment that they are not specific enough. well, they are not meant to be specific at this particular point. they are the college age what we

expect all students to leave high school ready to enter college. and by college we need a credit bearing entry-level course without remediation. career, into career and technical training which as most of you know can be just as rigorous as entry-level freshman courses at the unirsity level. college and career mehdi, that they leave high school ready for that. we've always fully intended, in fact, we will start in earnest in the next couple weeks on building those college and career standards into the k-12 articulated standards. what those standards look like i think it still up for debat and how we discuss those with are working. had a great meeting in north carolina a couple weeks ago with a number of math researchers who spent sme time talking to us about learning progressions. and phil was there, and i think the conversation was a really good one. as we start to think about what are the great spans or great clusters look like it is a

individual great? well, kids cognitively don't develop in the little grade. so maybe they are one to two or three before. so i don't know the answer to the question, so to forgo any question in the future of what they will look like in k-12. we are still tried to figure that out. will have a long conversation with our working as we get into the development of what those standards, k. to 12, look like. i did want to spend a little bit of time talking about the process, but i think i will let -- do you want to do the process? i left your slides here. i wanted to kind of dvd overview of where we have been, where we are going. i don't know if publicly mentioned this, but the new standards after the second round of reviews will be out on the 14th of september. they will be out for a 30 day comment by the public. we hope to get an immense amount of feedback. the first round of feedback from

our own internal feedback group gave us about 60 pages of feedback. i think the mistakes we had another 300 some odd pages. we've also been reaching out to other groups. the council of great city schools, the nea, the aft. a number of groups representing practitioners to get their input as well. and that's all been very, very heful for our worki as they have gone back for a second version of the college and career readiness standards. that second version will come out in september. and we hope to get an equally robust amount of feedback on that. and we're going to leave the document sewhat open until the conclusion of our k-12 work so that as things progress on the k-12 side we might have opportunities to relook at that. that's kind of the overview where we have been and where we are going. i am going to let ilene talk about what the process looks like, some of our internal workings. and i think we would really like to open it up and get your feedback and your conversation and figureut how we can gauge you in the process and the work

that we are doing. ilene? >> thanks, scott. i apologize for my late arrival. when i got to the train station they told me my train was canceled. so i had to take a later train. so i apologize for showing up late. i just want to start off where scott left his conversation, which is what is the process for developing these standards? and in terms of timing, as he mentioned, our official public draft as opposed to the leaked public draft will be out mid-september. there will be a 30 day comment period. so that's an opportunity for anyone and everyone to give us their sense of what they think we missed, what they like, what other evidence we should be examining in order to bolster these college and career readiness standards. i also hope that that provides

an opportunity within states, within groups of educators, within districts to really take a look at those documents to say, is this a set of standards we really do hope that students have mastered once the exit high school. and certainly we would wish that many students will go even beyond this, but if students have accomplished this set of knowledge and skills, will they be ready to be successful in a kind of post secondary education and on a path to a successful career? so once we have released the standards, once we had reviewed the feedback, we will then begin our work on days we will then have one more round, perhaps

two, depending on the level of comment. we will then begin our work ascot mentioned on the k-12 standards with an aim of having those developed for a first public draft to be released in december. so let me back up and talk a little bit about who is at the table and what sort of process we are using. we have tried t build many checks and balances into this approach. so in designing the college and career mehdi ms. standards, we tap three groups that have what we think is the best research base and a lot of experience in doing this work. and that is a.c.t., i cheat and the college board. so they d individuals recommended on that very first standards development workgroup. we've also identified a pretty long list of expert feedback revers so as the standard development

workgroup has been putting draft together, they have sent those to these experts for pretty quick turnaround of feedbac in addition, ascot referenced, we have shared these documents in their development stages with the state education agencies, with governors offices, and a number of national and content organizations who we thought could provide some very rich, initial feedback and continuous feedback as we do our work. so, for example, we have been having conversations with the national council of teachers having the scum of the national council of teachers of mathematics, the nea, the council of great city schools which has fast brought together a pretty big group of about 20, 25 superintendents and other leaders within districts to provide us feedback. so we have been incorporating that as we go along.

we also have been working on some of the communications aspect of this as well. and so we have a national forum on common core of state standards, and man many groups, many acronyms you would know, are represented as part of his national forum. and we have had both some face-to-face meetings with his group as group as well is just e-mail communications to say this is what's happening, what are your thoughts, here's what's coming. because a lot of their members are key to making this work successful. and then finally, but quite importantly, we have an expert validation committee. and the role of this validation committee will be to validate, not only the connt of the standards. these are the folks are going to look at that evidence base and look at the final standards, and say do the same right.

but they will al be validating the process and ultimately ste adoption of the standard. . . >> and deciding if they want to take on this important task.

so that's the process. one thing i want to make sure to underscore here is scott and i have been focused in our presentation on the standards and development of the standards and getting the standards right, and thas important, and that' necessary. we want to have the right targets ajd expectations, but we also recognize that even if we have the most perfect standards document in t world, that is just the start. the real challenge is in the implemention of the standards. do the teachers have the instructionaltrategies that will help kidset to these standards? they have the supports that they need? do they have the resources that they need? are we training our teachers to help them be successful in teaching students to these standards? are our assessments keyed right? are we, in fact, sending the

right messages with our assessments about what's expected, and do we actually have a system of assessments that helps give us good information along the way and not just at end points about where stunts and the teaching and learning is doing quite well and where it falls short and how we need to improve? do we have the instructional materials that are going to be helpful in this effort? so i want to acknowledge that there are a lot of implementation questions, there are a lot of instruction questions that surround this, and we are beginning to have many of those conversations with a numberf groups we've mentioned plus others. for example, we've had meetings with some of the publishers, we've had conversations with folks about how to use open source to help support some of this work, so we're trying to be at this point as expansion i have and as -- expansive and as

creative as possible about what do we need to do in order to make this effort --ot just the writing of the standards, but helping kids meet the standards to be successful. so i'moing to end there, and scott and i are happy to take questions as well as thoughts. actually one other thing i do want to mention because i think this might come up is, as scott referenced, we had 46 states sign the memorandum of agreement. and that agreement was to participate in the process and to seriously consider adoption of the standards. obviously, the states have not adopted the standards yet. they haven't seen the standards yet. so the conversation based on both the -- what sort of structure we have in each state, who has to approve the adoption of the standards, that's going to look different in each state, and that is going to be an important conversation in each state as we get to once we have the final standards if they want

to adopt and what are some of the particular considerations to each state context. so now i really will conclude my remarks, and we're happy to te any questions or thoughts that you have. sure. >> one other thing you didn't mention is the philosophy behind the development -- [inaudible] >> do you want to take that one? >> judy, when you say philosophy, can you help me out with -- our own internal philosophy? >> [inaudible] >>eah. >> which is our mantra? >> so i think the fewer, clearer higher, we've spent a lot of time, and you all know, you know, mile wide and an inch deep, right? i mean, there is so much -- i took my middle school, my newly-minted middle school studentso orientation yesterday for the first time,

and i was overwhelmed. i had forgotten as, you know, it's been a long time since i've been in a middle school as a student. i'd forgotten what we do to kids at the middle levels, about how much stuff we compact at the middle grade, at the middle grades. there is an immense amount of curriculum that's taught k-12, but certainly w start getting into 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, i mean, we packed a lot in there. one of the things we've talked out, and i think our standards have been very clear, we said the parents needed to be able to understand what their students were expected. that students actually could not only articulate what was in the standards, but also be responsible for their own self-directed learning, that those standards should be able to be communicated to policymakers about what was essential for students to know about, in order to be ready for

college or career. and the thing that has led us in the higher, clearer and fewer is we said no state would ever have a reduction of current standards, that we needed to make these fewer so that teachers could actually teach the curriculum a opposed to having to race through and not really spend time going deep into the curriculum of what those standards really were, and then higher clearer and fewer clearer so that we could articulate what they were to participants and the general public. that kind of has led our work. if you've looked at the standards, they are very, i think they're very clear. they are fewer. i think as we get into the specifics of the k-12 we'll see an expansion and more specifics at the individual grade levels. but we wanted to make sure we were not only covering the essential content, but really getting deep and allowing teachers and administrators to think about what was essential for students. i think, you know, one of the

things that's interesting when you start thinking about the fewer aspect is it does allow teachers to think about much more robust and much more deep learning and knowledge that's built on a solid base. the thing about the standards, fewer doesn't simply mean we've tossed out a bunch of stuff either. they are evidence-based. we really have stuck to the mantra that they have to be evidence and research-based. when you look at what singapore does, you look at, you know, the first standard on the writing actually has six different countries, has a very similar stdard, and it's singapore, it's hong kong, it's, it's taiwan, i mean, you can go down, it's a very robust set of standards. so weidn't just throw out things that we department think were important. -- didn't think were important. we focused on the essentials of college and work ready, and i think that's really driven the philosophy of what's in there

and why. >> yes. >> [inaudible] we're going to be at this point in derms of national standards, so i commend you for that. are you also planning on parallel working towards veloping national assessments? because we do know as, ilene, you said thiss just the beginning. we do know that assessment drives instructions. so how hopeful are you that the ates will actually adopt these national standards understanding that they are going to have to then revise their state assessment to match these standards which is a very expensive proposition? so i'm wondering what is going to be the incentive and encouragement for them to be able to do this? is the federal government going to be supporting in terms of t development of these new, new

assessments to match the standards? >> when we had the meeting in chicago with 37 states represented, one ofhe things that particularly the state superintendents emphasized, we gave them a draft memorandum of understanding, and they said we don't see assessment in here. this is not going to be real unless assessments are linked to these standards. and on their urging we added to that memorandum of agreement the second phase of this work will be to develop a lined assessment. so i think that the state leaders recognize exactly what yore saying. in terms of support for this, we do have what arne duncan announced, the $350 million for the development of a common assessment, so i think that begins the conversation in a way with some resources on the table. we also know that if we develop

a rich and robust system of assessment, it's going to cost more than that. so i think that is the start of a longer conversation. there are a number of states who have done some good work, for example, on formative assessments. we want to feed that into the conversation, but the intention, yes, is to make sure that we have a strong and really thoughtful set of assessments that are linked to these standards so that we are sending messages to teachers, to kids, to school administrators about here's what we think i important, and we're measuring it. so -- >> [inaudible] >> you know, the timeline is conversations are beginning now, the timeline is we're all looking at race to the top applications, we're all looking at, you know, what are the parameters around the $350 million. i don't want to give a specific time because i think it's still

up in the air, but i guess my vague answer will beooner rather than later. but we also know that states and districts have assessment development and research, so this is not something that can be done overnight which is exactly why we need to start having these conversations right now. >> should say about a three-year time frame. >> yeah. st another clarification in terms of timing. the memorandum that the states signed does say that states will seriously considerdoption and that they woul@ do so within three years. so one of the things that we wanted, we were trying to balance we understand are all sorts of standards, developments and assessment psychs in -- cycles in states, and we want to respect that,n the other hand, we don't want to have states dragging their feet for 10-15 years before they really do adopt, so that's why we move todathat three-year marker. >> [audible]

and when would be the -- [inaudibld] >> that's a questionor you. >> so we've had a lot of conversations with both the department as well as hill staff on keeping them well abreast of where we're at. i think the secretary was here yesterday, the secretary's been very supportive of this effort. hill staff and key members of the education committees have been extrely supportive. we went up on the hill i think, i don't know, couple weeks ago before they went to recess and shared with a number of them kind of where we're at. they areery supportive and looking for ways within reauthorization to include suppt of the common corand figure out ways exactly to your point about ayp. what does it mean when you put a new set of standards in? are we going to give states a

wiow now to adopt? will there be an ayp window? will that even matter if we go to a growth statusnd go completely growth centric? i don't have the answer to that. i saw you kind of clap. i don't know what everybody else's opinion is. i think that the hill especially is thinking there's a growth mod ale component they need to start moving towards for everyone,o i think if you go in that direction, then the ayp question gets a little bit, they'll obviously address it there. so there's a lot of conversations that need to be had as it to how it pys into ayp, so i guess stay tuned is the short answer, but we've been very cognizant to make sure that they're in the loop all the way along so that we don't get blindsided and vice versa downstream when states start to move into the implementation phase of this work.

>> do we have time for more questions? >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. and we have already been talking with a number of the science groups. we want to get this right, but science and social studies are definitely on our radar, and we've already begun some of those conversations. >> [inaudible] >> i know. [laughter] >> two questions. first, i know on your first group and secondary group there were forms, but why was, like, the national school boards or any administrative group like the aasa and aasp, why with respect ey part of the secondary group? and were they part of the forums, and are they ever going to be involved? secondly, i guess the second question, we're from the wild, wild west, isn't there any fear as you move more and more towards federal entanglement

that we're messing with the fifth amendment? >> yeah. in response to your first question, i just didn't mention them. the national state boards of education, aasa, they -- the school boards, secondary school -- i mean, there's a really long list, and they have definitely been pt of it. we understand that those are important constituents to be part of this conversation. >> [inaudible] >>e have had them on the national forum and have shared, we've shared some drafts, shared drafts with some of those groups. and we've gotten written feedbackment not from all, but i know offhand that secondary school principal we did. i don't think we got written comments from aasa, but we have shared drafts with them. and sba we have gotten comments from them. in response to you question about state leadership for this work, we have tried to have very

clear from the outset that this is a state-led initiative. there is no federal money that is going into the develment of these sndards, there are no federal representatives sitting at any of the tables, we haven't asked them for feedback on the standards. this is truly a state-led initiative, and those are the 46 states on whose behalf we're doing this work. in fact, the secretary, i think, acknowledged this when he made his acknowledgment about the $350 million. he was pretty clear about saying this would not be something that is run by the federal vernment. we are putting the money on the table, but it would be for a consortium of states to do this work. so i represent the governor, scott represents the chiefs, we are in agreement with you that this needs to be a state-led initiative. >> i'll add one other thing to that realuick not to put too fine a point on it, but as part

of the moa that the states signed, there is actuall we are very clear to say this is a voluntary effort. at the end of the day when these standards come out, if state x and state y take a look at them and say, sorry, we can't sign on, there's no, there's no penalty or if you walk away. we hope nobody does that. we actually think that these will be significantly rigorous enough that states will look at them and say, ah, it's the right thing to do. but at the end of the day if they decide this is not going to move the b for us, then it is a voluntary effort, and states are free to say is been a nice ride, but we're outta here. i hope that doesn't happen. so i just wanted to make that clear that we've been clear all along, voluntary, state-led, and the federal money as it relates to the assessment, i think, is a nice bonus, it's a nice incentive for states to get involved and to adopt. so i understand how, you know, the comingling and potential --

one of the things we've also sa is long term we don't want this to be a one-shot effort, but on the other hand, we're not in the standards development game. i think this was an effort by our members. we've talked about what is a board or some kind of agency, public/private partnership look like that is the managing agent of this process long term outside of the federal government but also outside of necessarily our two purviews? so all those things are still up for consideration as we move, but clearly state-led and state-owned and voluntary, i think, is the issue. >> so if this is a state-led initiative in 46 states have signed on, what if you're one of the four states that have not? what opportunities will there be? >> that's a good opening because it's now 47 states actually. we just got -- >> [inaudible] >> missouri justigned.

d we'll -- >> [inaudible] >> the others are interesting. missouri just signed primarily because they were in a transition between governor, board, and their chief state school officer. nowhat everybody's on board, missouri's on. so we actually have 47 states and three territories, so 50. the other states who are not are south carolina, alaska, and texas. so in, in several of those states, two of those states, i mean, it's a political issue. in one, texas, it's really an issue of the board, and they didn't think that they could get the board to adopt. so i think there are, i mean, there are issues in each state as to why they have chosen not to. we've said all along if you want to come in this thing downstream, if you take a look at the next veron that's out and see the k-12 and say, oh, my gosh, we missed the boat and want to get in, we'll let you get in. to go a little farther, the

chief state school officer in south carolina is actually, was actually one of the members who helped select our validation panel. there are opportunities for both at the policy level and, i think, even in the development phase for folks from those states who are not involved in the actual work to b a part of the discussion of how this transpires. we hope at the end of the day they'll take a look and say, ah, we wt to be a part, but we won't exclude them if th want to mak that decision downstream. >> and just in response to your question about how could we be involved even if it isn't through the purview of the state, i think we have these documents out for public comment, and we certainly welcome comments and feedback from anyone. i think another route is through organizations that you may be a member of providing feedback if it's through aasa or great city schools. i think there are opportunities to weigh in and also get more information through some of

those entities if you aren't in a state that is participating in this fully at the moment. >> and ilene can't say it, but now that there's a new governor in alaska, maybe that changes things too. [laughter] >> yes. and i want to, you know, i want to thank phil darrow. the work, as you can imagine, the work of these standards development groups has been tremendous. they have been working very hard, they've been reviewing mounds of feedback and gearing up to review more. so i want to really just publicly thank phil for all the work and thd leadership he's provided. and if anybody has any particular detailed math questions, he's your guy. [laughter] [applause] phil, i don't want to put you on the spot, but would you like

to say a few words about your involvement? for those of you who don't know, phil is the fellow at america's choice and has been involved in the development of standards for a very,ery long time. >> it might be interesting to understand how evidence was used to construct the standards in mathematics, that's thenes i know. and it counts for ways in whi these standard do look different from typical state standards. in the big picture, tim's warned us that we have a bad habit of having a curriculum that's a mile wide and an inch deep. a.c.t.'s curriculum survey that you heard a little bit about yesterday was very useful, and i must say a.c.t. had more data and evidence that we could use than any other single source. they really do have a research base that's -, i recmend to

any state to use. but there the college facul we pretty clear if you look at what they thought was important, they wanted deeper understanding and more robust proficiency with th fundamental ideas of advanced mathematics. they did not want -- they were clear about this too -- coverage of lots of advanced topics. when they ask the high school teachers, this is the gap that cindy referred to yesterday, high school teachers think the colleges want ls of advanced topics, and they don't want deeper understanding and proficiency of the fundamental ideas. so this was consistent with what we saw from tim's. when you look at the actual standards from places like singapore and so on, you see it there too. less topics, more. depth.

when you look at the actual books, fewerages than days of instruction. there's no textbook in any of those asian countries that has much more than 150 or 160 pages per year. and a lot of them at 120ages. we have, what, 900 pages. so there's the same message, no tter where you look, you see the same message. when you look at state standards, compare those to singapore standards, for example, our state standards have far more in them. and be so one of the thing that when the states are looking at it, they have to get used to what fewer means. fewer means more focus and more depth. so how did we get our focus? one of the things that would happen is we would come upon a topic. see, all 50 states had it in their sndards, then we look at the data, the achievement data, and we'd see less than 20

percent of the kids in the country are learning it. so something's wrong. all the states are teaching it, bu hardly any kids are learning it. so when we saw that, we said this better be important because we have to spend more te on it if it's important. which meanse have to cut something else out. and so then we started looking on how important is it to college faculty? if they said it wasn't important, then that really became a strong candidate to come out. because it wasn't working, and people said it wasn't important, maybe we should teach it later. and then we looked very much at we weren't just cutting things out, we were looking for the cohereabouts. and the evidence helped us get that cohere reasons. sometimes thing are in there just because they're mathematically essential for the coherence. but all in all this was a difference process than what you typically go through to get to ste standards, and i really

want to complement the governors and the chiefs for setting up a process th was not political. we weren't trying to get agreement, we were trying to design something that would work for teachers, and they made it very clear what our mission was. itasn't to come out, you know, the assignment could have been can you come out with a set of standards that kind of the consensus standards of what states already have? in order, a grand celebration of the status quo. they department say that. they didn't say that. they said it's time to take the next step, states are ready to take the next step, we want the state-led effort to define what the next step is, andhat's what these standards are. states are departmenting to sew a value -- expecting to see a validation of what they've already done. and they understood what was going on and, for the most part, have been very positive.

so it's been, the working conditions we had aside from the timeline -- [laughter] ilene said, you know, that conversations are beginning. and i thought the way these guys work, that means they want to be done by christmas. these a short timelines. >> yep, yep. >> judy? oh, i'm sorry. earlier -- >> no, i was just going to say we spent time in her yesterday talking about the price that our kids in our country are paying and the achievement gap between the united states and other countries, and i'd just like to say that you guys are fabulous to be leading this effort. the governors and the chiefs, to be leading this effort to give our kids the same opportunities that other kids around the world, and i just tremendously want to applaud you for all of this effort. [applause] it's not easy.

>>hank you. ken turner from colorado. i'd also like to build on this idea and convey conatulations from colorado to the wor that's being done, the idea that we're working in a systemic way with many movin parts at once, and it kind of builds on jaime's point, i think, kping in mind the assessment end of it, and if the end game is to actually move the needle on the things we care most about which is to say how do w compare internationally, then some attention to how ayp will be reformlated will drive anwful lot of activity. what's the grain size? are we could be to individual student -- down to individual student? is it the growth th@t matters? these are huge questions. i mean, i know you deeply understand this, and we appreciate the thoughtfulnes it's just an atta boy is what i'm offering. >> and, you know, just to undersre that we've already begun some conversations with the national assessment governing board that runs nape to ask them questions about,

well, what will this effort mean for nape in the future? are there ways to embed international benchmarks into nape, some new assessments? so we don't have the answers yet, but i think we're getting really good at a lot of the questions, and some of these points that you made about, you know, what are we measuring, how are we measuring, are we able to see how not only states are doing internationally or the country on average, but can we get a little deeper into that information? so i think these are really tough but important questions, and if we can use a lot of this to leverage teaching and learning and giving more kids opportunities to be globally competitive, we're going to be in much better shape. and, you know, we owe it to the kids to do this work and take on this challenge. >> i don't want this to be a mutual admiration society, but, i mean, your crew in colorado

and your review helped us immensely in getting some of the discussions about assessment on the table. so thank you. ilene mentioned it briefly. one of the things we've said is assessment is a key piece. the other pieces, we also said in our moa we really want to make sure the work we do not only leads to new forms of assement, but also new forms of teacher training and bottom and curriculum design because without those twoieces, we can create the greatest standards in the world and align it to a terrific assessment that really lls us a lot, but if we don't have the resources on the ground with teachers in a classroom and a curriculum that really translates these standards, then we've missed another huge opportunity. so i think that's the other piece that we're still longer term thinking about, where all those alignme pieces come gether. but again, thank you for all your work. >> scott and ilene, thank you for being here. i think it sets some of the context in the room, also, in terms of where the chiefs -- you

know, four or five years ago when this conversation surfaced with the chiefs, i mean, it was -- and i'm going to talk internal, it was knock down, drag out. so to have this evolve to where it is today and to have 47, now, states and the governors and the state chiefs sign on to this process is a clear indication of how much growing has taken place across this country. because this was a heated topic as it first startedyou know, four yearsing a. i mean -- years ago. i mean, you could just cut it down the roomn terms of people who said, no, we don't want any part ofhis. so it's really evolved, and it's really exciting stuff, really exciting work. but to have that many chiefs and the governors sign on that this is something we want to do, and, again, it was strictly voluntary. if you don't like what you see at the end of theay, then you have an option of this. but theottom line is just to set the context more in how this

has escalated in four years is truly phenomenal. and when we met in chicago and saw the synergy in that room in terms of how soon can we do ts and, yes, phil, it is an extremely tight timeline, no doubt about it. but the states have to look at when they're going to do their frameworks and adjustmentings. in arkansas we had our english language standards to go on the docket this summer. we changed that and put that on hold until this hpened. and our teachers were very appreciative of that becaus there waso reason for us to go through and do that again and then have to come back a year and a half later or whatever and do the whole scenario again. but i just wanted to set a little bit of that context and thank you guys f being here. >> can i ask one more question? are the a.c.t. and s.a.t. standards aligd to what you guys are looking at, and if

they're not, why? because that's the big deal. if we're looking at kids who are going to go to college and we want all our kids to two to college, that tes is fundamental for them. and then why couldn't we use that a a national test instead of continued spending, spending, spending money and developing new things and not using the money for other things? >> well, as you know, the standards aren't complete yet, so the level o alignment we can't say. you know, obviously the college board and a.c.t. were at the table. they came with their data. certainly both organizations have learned a tremendous amount through administering those assessments over many years. so that feeds into what are we setting as theollege and career readiness bar? i think, as you mentioned, that is certainly as we open up the assessment conversation i think that your question is one that

is an important one to have on the table and discuss, you know, what, what is the assessment, how can it look, how can thicks that -- things that exist now change, be modified, so i think that is an important consideration that we should -- and one other thing i do want to ad is that i didn't mention but some of the conversations we've been having are with some of the higher ed institutions. and sething that is no rking well now for k-12 and postsecondary education is when students go through their k-12 career and they do fine on the state tests and then they show up a a postsecondary institution and need remediation, that's not giving them good information, it's not telling them truly how they're doing if they want to go to college or two-year technical school, etc.

so how can we send better signals to students and also to teachers in the k-12 system about what is expected in order for kids to go without needing remediatn? that's something we understand needs to be part of this discussion as well so, thank you for the question. >> and thank you, ilene and scott, thank you very much. this is just a very, very important topic of today. you know, what stands out to me from this morning's discussion is that we're virtually all in this together. and to me that says a whole lot. a lot of our questions this morning have been around the assessment part, and so that's a good segway to the next part of our discussion. we've asked charles barone who is the directer of federal policy for the democrats for education reform if he will kind of talk to us about acuntability systems and what might be in the wind as we move

forward. and again, the first part that we have to get done right is a clear understanding of what we want ourids to know and be able to do, and then the companion question is how do we assess that? charles. >> thank you, pat, thank you all for being here. it's always great to see all the folks who are responsible for doing all the things that, you know, policymakers set for them to do to be coming out and talking about this. so i want to leave time for questions justo get some feedback from you all. let tell you a little bit about democrats for education reform just brily. it's been up and running for abou two years. we're new york-based. it was started by some folks i

new york city who were invved in school reform there. primarily charter schools. and they had run into some political obstacles in terms of expanding their charter schools or getting public school space. and they saw that there were politics involved in this. and i'm probably going t talk more about politics than most people who have spoken here, but that was the genesis of democrat for education reform. but as an organization we're interested in a broader range of issues, teachers, assessments, standards, turning around struggling schools, data systems. so we're much broader now. let me just say what i've done sort of the last 15 years. i started out as a direct service provider to special

education children in a residential setting. i moved on and did some research, and then in 1993 i went to capitol hill and worked for senator paul simon, and that's wre i became aware of pat harvey. and then i went on to work for congressman george miller who's now the chair of the educati committee. and don't throw anything, but i was his point person on no child left behind,r as i've been calling it, the law that shall not be named. [laughter] bad brand now, so i'm pretty sure the name's gng to be changed. and one thing thate loved about pat when i worked for senator paul sigh morning -- simon. he was from illinois, pat was a principal at that time. we had people come in and say we can't do this with title i, and we'd say go talk to pat harvey. so pat harvey was yes, we c,

before it was even fashionable to be yes, we can. so it's so great we reconnect around this. i'm going to try for candor today just to get some discussion going. and you all can rct to that. but i've been doing this for a while, and so there's some political pit pauls to all this -- pit pauls to all this, and i think nga and these folks are headed in the right direction. it's very encouraging to see everybody coming together around this stuff. we think and we've been saying this all ear that with race to the top, this is an historic opportunity to really do some things that people have been talking about for a long time. the feds just put out $ billion to public schools, and a lot of cases that just filled in budget holes. in a lot of cases it was necessary to do that. in others, you know, there was movement of money maybe that

didn't necessarily have to happen, but democrats for education reform we kind of considered that the cost of doing business. and that the, that was generally to ex, and we see the 3.45 billion or if you take away the 350 million away as driving systemic reform. and less so generally to education because it's less than $100 per kid in the united states and more to build systems ofducation that drive other things. and a lot of these things are not necessarily going to cost money. they just involve better use of money that's out there right now. i think the $4 billion the way we see it is that it's venture capital. it's a voluntary program,nd i

think ou answer to folks is if they feel like this is going to compelhem to do something they don't want to do, don't apply for the money. i mea that's our answer to this. this is a competitive program, it is not supposed to go out and be a formula to states at whatever would be, $90 per kid in the united states, and i think we even see title i a little bit that way. it was never meant to be impacting, it was meant to serve poor minority kids, lep kids, neglected kid delinquent children, youth. so i think we're trying to reframe this a little bit to refocus it on the original program of title i that started in 1965. this is my thi round with the

assessmenttandards reform issue. when i came to the hill in 1993, it was a little bit like it is now. everybody was talking about health care. i came as a fellow, and every fellow in my pool pretty much wanted to do health care. and i had come from a setting where i was doing research and intervention in schools, and so i did education, and that's when goals 2000 got up and running. and then president clinton's esea which built on his 1989 charlottesville summit which nga was very involved in and helped get going and that was really all the things in federal law that people are aware of, standards, assessments, ayp were all in that law. they got tightened, to say the least, in 2001 but they were all in there. but i will tell you i was

cleaning out my office, honestly, last weekend not even looking for things for this presentation, and i came across a washington post editorial, 1984 which is when goals 2000 was passed, and it was all about how th was going to be the time when we were going to set world class standards and have aligned assesents. and it didn't turn out that way. i mean, i think it was a good start, probably politically it was necessary to start there and then build these efforts. all these things are iterative over time, but i think that context is important to keep in mind. and tn in 2001 we heard simila things from the bush administration and people on the hill. the bush -- there was no way that we were going to pass national standards or national assessmes. those things had been defeated before, and the who gist of everything was we're going to

have these state taxes, and then we're going to have nape, and we did require everytate to participate in nape. a few states had not participated up until then. we were going to compare nape, and it was all going to work out. we were going to have a check. i mean, a lot of people aren't even aware that these state tests have been rescaled to compare them with nape. soor me this is a race to the top, and it's the third time around. so -- and that's for me. there have been efforts before that. so i just think it's important to get it right this time. let me just say a couple of things about what wehink is important with regard to the comm standards. we really think that they need to beertical meaning the way ilene tked about not only the standards, but the teaching to back it up, good assessments. you know, it's another block we've been around a couple of

times. in esea right now all the things people want in terms of aaccessment -- assessments are in law. that they're not all multipl oice, and it hasn't happened, and we could have a discussion about why it hasn't happened. is it the mon? is it the political process? but just having those policies in place are not going to, on paper, are n going to necessarily mean that they happen on the ground. you need the teaching, you need the assessments, you need the curriculum, you need the support for schools to turn around, the money. including the $3 billion that secretary duncan and president obama put in raceo the top. i think they're going to put guidance out on that next week. so look to all those things. we're as much interested in high standards as we are in common stdards. and let me give you an example.

california has high standards, some of the highest in the country. delaware is somewhere in the middle. but if you look at black kids in delaware, poor kids in delaware and lep kids in delaware they do better than the whole population of california on average. if you look at the averages for black kids, the averages for poor kids, and the averages for lemids in delaware, they do better than the average for the entire state of a state like california. on nape. so we don't think that high, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. and so if you look at delaware, i mean, they have the advantage of being a smalltate, so it's easy to coordinate. i think california should be broke broken u into, like, ten

areas where they can do things locally like delaware does. [laughter] they're aligned like some of the people we're talking about here in terms of teacherraining, and they've got some really good people there, so -- so those, we talked about rogue states. we agree with ilene. somebody wants to break out of this effort, we're not going to be upset about it even though we hope everybody does it. but if somebody wants to do it their own way or move quickly, that's fine with us. we think in terms of college standards, absolutely necessary. you have states like new jersey that has pretty high standards, but they have two separate high school exams. which drive the curriculum in the schools. if you take algebra in camden or jersey city, it's not thal algea

that they take in month claire. and the assessment they take in 11th grade is not an assessment that's going to determine how well they're going to do in college. so like ilene was talking about, there's a different set of standards to drive things. california's the same way. the state mandates that you take a particular set of courses in high school to get into college. it's called a-g. in some schools there aren't enough classes for every kid to take them. they line up for them, they are closed out of them. i mean, you can literally go to a high school where you are unable to complete the course work. you need to get into scu or uc. -- csu or uc. so unless we line all this stuff up, it's not going to mean so much. we need to have the teachers in place and the curriculum in place, and there needs to be open accs for everybody so we're going to give everybody the same chance and an equal opportunity. and that's what, really, we're

about on all this stuff. i think we need to learn from past efforts to develop assessments. i think a.c.t. is really committed to looking at this and trying to do things differently. but in the past we've heard all this good rhetoric, but when it comes down to it, a lot of the vendors just sell people the same product they have on the shelf, and they repackage it. and that had to stop, and i think it was impressive that when secretary duncan spo a couple of months ago, he said i'm not here to subsidize the testing companies necessarily. i'm here to make sure kids have better assessments, and if that makes them mad, that's okay with me. i like some of the ope source talk that was her today, i wrote a paper in november that said, you know, maybe people can come up with items and they're part of an open source and then states can pick and choose what

they want from that and have a common assessment that's built from that, but if they want to pick off some pieces and have eirs be unique, that would be fine. so you would have, like, some overlap. state, common, and then some things maybe that they would want to do differently. let me talk about accountability a little bit and try to wrap this up in 5 minutes from now. congressman miller was the primary driver of accountability on nclb, so, again, don't throw things, but let me talk about what we think is important. one is compare about, and i'm not speaking for miller, but i think our aims are similar. it has to be common across schos, and there has to be disaggregation. and i think i don't agree with some people that say if you take out the federal role, that these things will necessarily happen.

in 2000 before nclb was passed, only six states disaggregated their data for poor students. only seven states disaggregated their data for english-language learners. eleven states disaggregated by gender and ethnicity, only 11. one state disaggregated for migrant students, and only one state that we know of actually had a goal to close achievement gaps. and that was texas. and that's how bush got some leverage. you know, congressman miller was talking about it before he was even a candidate. so i don't think that necessarily you can set the standards and then expect that the political pressures will work out such that you can narrow achievement gaps. i know that we were lobbied by california, a state that had a lot of interaction with oregon

in particular, they had expectations for poor minority children that were 80 percent of what they were for everybody else. i don't mean a growth model where they started and measured growth, i mean that they had one target for everybody, and the targ they had for poor minority children was literally defined as 80 percent of the rest of the population. and ty tried to lobby us to acce their structure under nclb, and we said no. so i don't think these things are going to necessarily work out. i think you need timelines. we can argue about what they're going to be, but i think you need to have a timeline because there were no timelines before, and on things like graduation rates where you don't have an issue about dumbing down, you don't have an accountability issue where schools are going to be sanctioned, very few states have any kind of timeline for graduation that' ambitiousr that involves closing achievement gaps. so i don't accept the argument

that because you have ayp that's necessarily only thing that's driving down standards or if you lifted the standards and said everybody figure out how fast you want to get there, that there would be a timeline because we don't have that with graduation rates, and it's vy different situation in tests. the measures have to be statewide so you can compare a kid and, you know, conquer lifornia -- in concord, california, with con concord, massachusetts. in a lot of places an a in camden, new jersey, is not the same as an a in camden, maine. i think we've moved in the other direcion since last year. i think that's what you'reoing to wind up with. and i think we really need to build support for everybody to

do these things. i mn, again, there's $3 billion going out now for school improvement, plus states under title i are allowed to set aside 4 percent of their funds for school improvement. there's a cap in federal law right now of $500,000 per intervention. i think it might make sense to raise that cap so there can be stronger intervention in some scols and a critical mass of money can be made. we think growth models and vue added are great, but we think there's problems with it. and let me just say one thing, i think we're doing as a service to the de-- a disservice to the debate by saying that the goal is014, 100 percent by 2014. i think everybody looked at the accountability system knows that it's not. that's the rhetorical goal, but the safe harbor provision in nclb is mathemacally

impossible to have your annual objectives meet 100 percent. you have to reduce this number of students who are not proficient by 10 percent. so if you're at 40 percent and this is for subgroups school level, you have to get to 46 percent the next year. if you're at 80, you have to get to 82. so each year you only have to reduce the percentage of students who are not proficient by 10 percent. d i'm surprised that seven years after the passage of the law we're still seeing newspapers at school saying i don't know how we're going to get to 100 percent by 2014. our school's going to have to close. i don't know why people say that. it's just not true. and i know people don't like to hear something that they believe for seven years that it's not true, but it's not. i challenge anybody in this room to get back to me with a mathematical scenario where they have to get anywhere clo to 100 percent by the year 2014. if you're at 90 percent, your

next year's goal is 91. you can go ad infinitum for 100 year the goal is never going to be 100 percent, and it's just not. i make people very uncomfortable when i talk about this, but i think everybody's doing a disservice to the debait when they -- debate when they talk abouthis. >> [inaudible] >> excuse me? >> [inaudible] have you ever seen school districts when -- [inaudible] >> that they have or haven't? >> [inaudible] >> states or schools. >> schools. >> yeah, sure. and again, you have to make more progress under safe harbo below where you are. so if you're at 40, you havto go to 46. if you're at 20, you have to go to 28. the higher up you go, the less you're expected to get. so if you're really low,amp up quick. we can argue whether that's too high or too low, that's a legitimate debate to have, but

that's what it is, andhat's where the debate needs to start before we even, you know, what is going to be acceptable in terms of growth? 1 percent a year? 2? 3? should it be differentiated for schools that are different levels? i don't know. but i think you have to start with the facts. and the last thing i'll say is about growth models, i wrote a paper for education sector in the spring on this, some of these growth models are problematic, and i won't get into all the technical things, but there's a huge transparency problem. and i think one of the things that's happened with da is that civil rights groups and parents have been able to take the data and look at it and have a discussion about what's needed in their schools. there's error in data, but i think there's error in human judgment that we've had before, and the data has made things a little -- it's drawn brighter lines s it's been more -- and it's been more decisive.

and in tennessee, texas, ohio and pennsylvania their growth model goes through a whole complicated mathematica structure, and instead of the proficient score you have something that's on the way that you derive through this mathematical model, but nody knows what the target is for any kid in any school because it's proprior tear information -- propry tear information. so if i go into a school in teessee and say, oh, the school made ayp, where's the, like, why did my kid make ayp if it wasn't proficient, they can't tell them because it's derived through a multiple regression. so i think growth models are great, but i think this transparency issue's going to be huge once people start taking a look at what's publishable. because the states that are doing it this way where they show you an equation that's this long, the kids some are on the

way between where they are now and proficient, they're going to be confuseded. when i was in school, we had sra. people are too young for that, i see some people that probably weren't, but we ha@, like, a color-coded -- [laughter] i know i'm probably in the upper 10 percent of age here, maybe 20, but we h a color-coded box, and i think it was, what, red on one end and purple on the other. purple was the highest. so i knew and my teacher knew if i was in red, i had to go to purple. here's where i was. and i think that's what you need with student progress. but you can't do that under the sanders model which is the value-added model or the texas model which is pearson. you know you're somewhere between red and blue, i mean red and purple, but you don't know where you are what color is my kid at in terms

of proficient? somewhere between red and purple. that's the answer. it ain't about me, i'm just saying transparency's going to be a key issue in all this. ..

>> and a lot of times you just hear what's not. so i'll wrap up.

>> the payment is usually a medicare reimbursement for mastectomy is usually between 650 and $750. >> patients have a tendency when they have a symptom to go to the internet and try to figure out what's wrong with them. now, without the medical background and grounding and experience that we have, they always get it wrong. and usually think that they have some horrible disease. so if there's anything i would say that patients should be trying to make their diagnoses on the internet.

>> next a congressional hearing on creating a commission to examine the bush administration's national security policies. senate judiciary committee chairman patrick leahy says he wants a nonpartin commission to investigate the treatment of terrorist suspects during george w. bush's presidency. we will hear from former government officials and legal scholars. from march, this is two hours. >> thank you all for being here, and a very distinguished panel. and i couldn't help but think, the wake of the tragic tacks of september 11, we all came together as americans.

party labels mean nothing, being americans ant everything. we need to do so again in these difficult economic times. regrettably, too many seem smerized by the sight of all the talk radio personalities and extreme special interest groups. and far from grasping bipartisan hand, president obama has exteed, many want to play out the conrvative playbook to obstruct and he laid. this is a timwhen conservatives, liberals, repqblicans and democrats should be setting aside party labels to come together first and fgremost as americans. we saw nothing to do more than damage america's place in the world than the revelation that our great nation struts along the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel treatment.

the last administration chose this course to try to keep its policies and actions secret. i think they did that because they knew they couldn't stand the scrutiny of an op public airing. how many times did president bush go before the world and say that we did not torture and that we acted in the course of law. there are some w will resist any efforto look back at all. others are fixated only on prosecution, even if it takes all the next eight years or more and divide this country. over the last month i suggested a middle ground to get to the truth of what went on over the last of her years in a way that invites cooperation. i believe that it might bt be accomplished through a nonpartisan commission of inquiry. i would like to see this done in a manner that removes it from partisan ultrix. such a commission of inquiry on what mistakes were made so that we can learn from these errors and not repeat them.

weather in this administration or the next administration. so today's hearing is to explore the possibility of i am encouraged that many have already embraced this idea, cluding several distinguish witnesses to testify today. these are witnesses who speak from experience about the need to uncover the truth and shed light on our policies for the good of our nation. ensure that we have strong national security policies. to ensure we do not repeat mistakes. i lookorward to the discussion. the supreme court justice anthony kennedy said in a recent supreme court decision restoring our greawrit of habeas corpus, the constitution is not somethg that any administration is able to switch on or off. at will. we shouldn't be afraid to look at what we have done or to hold oursels accountable. as we do other nations when they make mistakes. we have to underand that national security means

protecting our country by advancing our laws and values, and not by discarding them. this idea for a commission of inquiry is not something to be imposed. its potential is lost if we don't join together. today is another opportunity to come forward to find the facts and join all of us, republicans and democrts come in developing a process to reach a mutual understanding of what went wrong and did you learn from it. if one party remains absent or resistant, the opportunity can be lost. and calls for accountability through a more traditional means will then become morconsistent and compelling. i held early hearings exploit our detention policies and practices fromuantanamo has seriously eroded fundamental american principles of the rule of law. i think that we're less safe as result of the mistakes in the

lastdministration's national security policies. i also believe that in order to restore our moral leadership we must acknowledge what was done. week can't turn the page and the we push the pitcher qaeda not want to see us in a case where we are lectured for mistakes we made by tries who themselves have some of the worst and oppressive policies. president obama, attorney general holder and others in this new administration are already working on an policies to determine the best way to form effective and lawful national security policies. i think a commission of inquiry wouladdress the rest of the picture. th a targeted mandate that could focus the issues of national security and executive power, and a government counterterrorism efforts including the issue of cruel

interrogation, extraordiry rendition, executive override of laws. we've had successful oversight in some areas, and others we remain too much in the dark. people with firsthand knowledge would be invited to come forward and share their experiences and insight. not for the purposes of criminal indictments but to gather the facts. such a process could involve subpoena powers even authority to obtain immunity to secure information or to get to the whole truth. of course, it as in any such inquiry. it will be done in consultation with the jtice department and no such inquiry rules out prosecution for perjury. vice president dk cheney and others from the bush administration continue to assert that their tactics including torture were appropriate and effective. i don't think we should let only one side the fine historyn such important questions. it's important for an independent body to these

assertions. but also for others that were going to make an objective and independent judgment about what happened, and whether they did make our nation safe or less safe. and just as with the department of justice released more alarming documents from the office of legal counsel. demonstrating the last adnistrations view of the constitutional protected rights. the memos disregard the fourth and first amendment. justify war of the searches, the oppression of fre speech, surveillance without warrants, and transferring people to countries known to conduct interrogations that violate human rights. how can anyone suggest that such policies do not deserve a thorough, objective review? i'm encouraged that the obama administration is moving forwd. i am encouraged that a number of the things -- a member of the issues would've itallable on before are now becoming public. but how did we get do a point

where we're holding a legal u.s. resident for more than five years and a military brig without ever bringing charges against him? how did we get to a point where i would rabe answered? how do we get to the point where the united states government tried to make wonton mulrry a law free zone in order to deny accountability for our actions? how did we get to that point where our premier intelligence agency, the cia destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of evidence of how detainees were being interrogated? how did we get to a point where the white house could say if we tell you to do it, even if it breaks the law, it's all right because we are above the law. how do we make sure it never happens again? senator specter? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have reptedly sat on the senate floor that the period from 9/11, 0001, to the end of

the bush administration has seen the greatest expansion of executive power in the history of our country. and as chairman and a later rankg on this committee and on the senate floor, i have taken very positive steps to try to deal with that. for example, pressing for judicial review of the terrorist surveillance program. pressing the sixth ccuit and later the supreme court of the united states to review the decision of the detroit federal court declaring the terrorist surveillance program unconstitutional. offered amendment on the senate floor for votes to reinstate habeas corpus in the wake of action to deny habea corpus. led the fight to eliminate the

impact of signing statements to try to provide some balance with the need for the fight against terrorism, which i supported, managing the patriot act, try to provide some balance. when this idea of the so-called truth commission first surfaced, i said it was unnecessary because you had a change of administration. you could look in the front door, ask for directions to the relevant filingabinet, go in and open the drawer and find out anything you wanted to know. well, that's been done. and it's being done to a greater extent. you have some rather startling disclosures with the publicity in recent days about unusual, to

put it mildly, illegal opinions which were issued to justify executiv action. very curious use of the doctrine of self-defense. that they doctrine for justifiaeomicide, and it has been stretched to say for defense against potential terrorist attack a whole range of activities could be undertaken. well, they a all being exposed now. they are, in fact, being exposed. according to "the new york times" this morning, they are going further than just the exposés. but they are starting to tread on what they disclose criminal conduct. the times reports this, the office of professional

responsibility at the justice department is examining whether certain political appointees in the department knowingly signed off on an unreasonable interpretation of the law to provide a legal cover for a program sought by white house officials. well, if they did not knowingly, there's mens rea. i would have to search the criminal code. but it sounds to me like it may fall within criminal conduct. what we do in our society is we undertake those investigations where we lawyers use the word predicate. that is, some reason to proceed. we don't go off helter-skelter on a term which has been frequently used. i don't care much for the term, but inarticulate a fishing

expedition as to at we are going to do. so it seems e that we really ought to -- we are to follow a regular order here. you have a department of justice, which is fully capable of doing an investigation. they are not going to pull any punches on the prior administration. i would ask unanimous consent, i don't often inserthings into the record, and this is my first time for charting an article in political, but there is one in yesterday's edition which is a former justice department official hands a spot koskiho raes it ansa simply stated that we have never seriously indulged and criminalizing our political differences and asked that the point being the current

administration will have a successor. all administrations have successors. i would ask, mr. chairman, also to put in theicture of the chairman. >> i could care less about the picture but of course the article will be put in the record insofar as it is full of not only attacks but more strawmen than you would have in a hayloft. i wouldn't put a rponse to it in the record. >> while i have seen a lot of pictures of senator leahy. view as good as this. many that i have seen of him, there you are fellas, many of them i am in the picture to obstructing his handsome profile. but the substance here is i think worth noting. we've had the statements by

presidentbama wanting tlook forward and not backward. i think that's really the generalization, although i would not mind looking backwards if there is a reason to do so. if there is a predica, if we have evidence of torture. torture is a violation of our law. go after it. if there is reason to believe that these justice department officials have knowingly given the president's cover from things they know not to be right and sound, go after them. i think it underscores another issue, if i may say this parenthetically. any office of legal council ia powerful office, and some of the opinions they are now disclosed are more than startng. they are shocking. and we look back to prior presidentsost of them haven't been lawyers. president eisenhower, president kennedy, president johnson,

president nixon was. although he did questionable legal things. president carter wan't. presidt ford was. neither president bush was, and president clinton was. so you have president taking advice from lawyers where they n't have legal training themselves. we are considering office of legal council today. a very, very important position. and i think what we have seen office of legal council do in the past ought to give us pause to do a little better job, perhaps, in this committee on whom we confirm. i regret that i have other commitments. i'm going to have to excuse myself but i hope to return to participate in a question. >> i ambassador pickering also have to leave early because of a commitment out of the area. >> senator feingold is a chairman of the constitution

subcommittee which has jurisdiction over this matter. an ideal for a brief statement. >> senator cochran, why don't you move on down here with us, please. >> tha you, mr. chairman. i really do regret not being able to stay. am going to see the british prime minister in a joint meeting. but this is a terribly important hearing mr. chairman, i commend you for having this hearing and for your proposal to establish the independent commission of inquiry. long before the election it was good to me that one of the most important task for the new president was going to be restored the rule of law in this country. i chaired a hearing on this topic in september, and nearly 40 law professors, historians, advocates and experts testified or submitted testimony included one of our witnesses to date, mr. schwartz at the record of that hearing is the most deiled collection of analysis and recommendations of what needs to be done to reverse the most damaging decisions a actions of the last of ministration. the obama administration has already taken several enormously

important steps in the right direction. among them, order the closing of the antánamo bay detention center. reiring adherence to the army field manuals gdance on interrogation techniques. reinstating the presumption of favor disclosure to freedom of information act. ending the very possibly illegal dention ali omar and by indicting him in a criminal court in just la week releasing nine office of legal counsel memos that the bush administration insisted on withholding from congress and the american people. i am pleased and gratifiedt president obama and his advisers recognized the need to take these actions a actually took them quickly. it gives me great hope for the future. a crucial part of her restored the rule of law and edition is a detailed accnting of exactly what happened in the last eight years and had adequate administration came to reject or ignore so many of the principles on which thi nation was founded. i regularly hear from my constituents back home about this and they are absolutely right there can be no doubt that we must fully understand the mistakes in the past in order to

learn from them, dress them, and of course prevent thefrom occurring. at the same time, there should not be a focus on retribution or payback. such an effort should not be used for partisan purposes. that is why your proposal, mr. chairman, is so important. your proposal is aimed at finding the truth. not settling scores. the question of immunity, i think we should treadarefully. there are cases that may require prosecution, and they would not want a commission of inquiry to conclude that. those who clearly violated the law can be prosecuted, should be prosecuted on the other hand, the country will really benefit fromaving as complete a telling of this story as possible. so the ability of the commission to seek immunity for low-level participants certainly needs to be considered. how to do this is one of the complex questions that i hope will be explored in this hearing. i do support the idea of an independent fact-finding commission. as opposed to relying solely on the regular committee structure. i am on to other relevant committees, and to members of congress who serve on them are

very hard-working. there is much important investigative work that can be done in committee, but there are also significant time, staffing, and jurisdictional constraints. i think it was commissioned a the chairman has proposed is the best way to get a comprehensive story out of the american people and the world. one final point, mr. chairman. while a commission inquiry is the best way to get the facts out, congress, the justice department and the public should decida what to do with those facts. so i would be reluctant to cast the commission was coming up with detailed recommendations for action. we focused the commission on gathering the facts, there may be less wriggling about who is going to be on it which could then move the process forward a lot more quickly. i would rathersee investigative professionals on this commission than policymakers and partisan spirit so i am looking forward to reviewing the testimony later. and again, mr. chairman, i think you so mh for your very strong and important leadership on this issue. i think it was a opportunity to make my statement that. >> thank you veryuch. i know you are one of the judiciary committee members also serves on the intelligence

committee, and without going in some of the publicly, some of the briefings we've all had on that, you understand the need for a. our first witness, ambassador thomas pickering, currently serv as vice chairman at hilson company. ambassador pickering as a distinguished foreign career including under secretary of state for political affairs from 1997 through 2007 the ambassador holding personal rank of career ambassador. that is the highest in the united states foreign service. prior to becoming undersecretary, he served as ambassador to numerous countrie as well as ambassador to the united nations under president george h. w. bush. he wanted to sing ich presidential award the departments distinguished service award. he received honors of numerous universities, a membeof the international institute of strategic studies, the council on foreign relations, masters degree cum laude from bowden. member phi beta kappa, fulbright scholarship to theniversity of melbourne where he received a second master's degree.

on a personal basis i have ben with various countries and at the un by ambassador pickering, and i hold up as an example to new a masters that when the come there, we actually want to have briefings of depth and substance. he fulfilled that. we would have public briefings, and then occasionally briefings where we go into a secure place and when the bubbles were even more depth, and every single instant, answered every single question that was asked by both republicans and democrats. told us what was going right, what was going wrong and vassar, i just want to stay publicly how much i appreciated those briefings over the years. please, go ahead. >> thank you, mr. chairman very much. and thank you for you very kind introduction. and thank you, members of the committee for having here and affording the opportunity to

testify on this extremely important subje. i am honored to appear before you today, and to join and be a member of this very distinguished panel. i believe the questio of how we as americans should come to grips with our handling of detainees in recent years is critically important for our country. it is essential to have a full understanding of what happened, why, and the consequences of those actions in order to chart the right course for the future. i come before you today to urge you to support the establishment of a commission to examine the detention, treatment, and transfer of post-9/11 detainees there and calling upon the presidento create such a commission, i have joined with a number of other including a former u.s. army general, a former fbi director, resident of the united churches of christ, international respected lawyer and scholar, and others who ard experts on commissions of this nature. my support for the commission

stems from my over 45 years of service to this country in the military, and diplomacy overseas and is a senior official at the department of state. i believe that the commission on handling of detainees is vital for our country's future. is to its security, it's standing in the world, to our collectiveommitment as a people, to honor respect and remain committed to our founding ideals and all that we do. let me be clear as well. that i am not a lawyer, and am not qualified to address the technical legal questions involving the advice of trade council. i would like to speak first very briefly on the purposes of the commission, and then talk about some of its principal features. a commission of the kind we are proposing is needed in order to arrive at an in depth, unbiased and impartia understanding of what @appened, how it happened, and the consequences of those actions. by gathering carefully all the facts, the commissn can tell the whole story, not just of each individual agency studied

in isolaon. but of how how all parts of the u.s. government interacted in the handling of detainees. india, the interagency aspect is critical, as is how the various agencies related to the most senior officials in government. on the basis of physical and copperheads of review, the commission can then make recommendations which will help guide us in the future. this process is fundamentally about understanding where we have been, inrder to determine the best way forward. some might argue that such a commission is no needed. after all, president obama has issued a series of executive orders that chart a new course on detention and interrogation policy. as imptant as these orders are, i believe that something more is needed. it's not enough to say that america is discontinuing the policies and practices of the recent past. we must as a country take stock of where we have been an determine what was and is not

acceptable, what should n have been done, and what we will never do again. it is my sincere hope that the commission will confront and rect the notion still powerful in our midst that these policies were and are a proper choice, and that they could be implemented again in e future. such a commission will strengthen our credibility in promoting and defending our values, and advancing a better and safer world. as the 9/11 comssion found, the united states must enge in the struggle of ideas around the world. in order to combat extremism, and ultimately to prevail against terroris to do that effectively, mr. chairman, th commission found that the u.s. governmen and i'm referring to the 9/11 commission, should offern example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. it is far better for american foreign policy if we acknowledge

willingly what went right and what went wrong than to address by bits and pieces of the story, as they emerge over time on this particular questio it is far better for our country and our standing in the world if we examine critically our own record and take account of what happened. the extent that the guantánamo detention camp, abu ghraib secret detention sites and torture and abuse enhce the efforts of our adversaries to recit others to join their ranks and to make a case against us, we simply cannot quietly turn over the page. we must engage in a guine effort to take stock of these cies and actions. we are to acknowledge mistakes that were made, but we also want to commit not to do them again. it is a critical step up neutralizing our adversaries narrative about the u.s. abuse of detainees. onlyn doing so can we say to

ourselves by that date and to the world that we have not just turn a page on the past, but we have confronted it. learned from it, and strengthened our resolve to main true to our principles. only great countries, mr. chairman, confident in themselves arerepared to look at their most serious mistakes. to learn from them, and to lead on forward. the united states has been and still is today i believe that kind kf untry. let me conclude briefly byust reviewing a few principal feures of the commission. the question of what a commission should look like, it's most important attribute, is that it should stand above politics. it should report to an answe to the american people. to achieve this vital purse, the commission ought to be comprised of perso whose duty is to tru and to our nation's founding pranciples. second, the commission should operate in public to the maximum extent possible. public proceedings and reports

should be the norm. third, the commhssion should b a separate and distinct offsets from any investigation or prosecution of unlawful conduct the establishment of a commission would not, in my view, in any way preclude the possibility of criminal investigation or prosecution but the purposes of the commission would not be prosecution. that is the job of our national criminal justice system. fourth, the commission should have a subpoena power in order to gatheand tell the full story of what transpired. i would hope that the president would ensure as well that all government documents are made readily available to such a commission. and fifth and finally there is a difficult issue o whether the commission should hav the power to grant immunity, which is engendered and i know we'll engender a great deal of debate. i am not an expert on this technical legal issue. but i would hope that policymakers would consider it

very carefully. persons who are called upon o testify i am informed can invoke their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination. in my view, the commissn should not have the power to grant blanket immunity, meaning immunity to all who testify truthfully or full immunity in effect immuny for what may have been done rather than for just what is being said in the testimony being given. rather, the commission should grant immunity to witsses only in very limited circumstances. mr. chairman, i thank you again very much for this opportunity to testify, regarding a commission and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you very much, ambassador. next witness is retired vice admiral lee gunn. advocate is now president of american security project served in the u.s. military for 35 years, served as inspector general of the department of navy for the last three years,

his awards include the distinguished service medal, the fense superior metal, six legions of merit, to meritorious service medals from the navy commodation of, combat action ribbon, of course numerous theater and service awards. admiral gunn holds a bachelor degree from the university of california, los angeles. a master of science degree in operations research at the naval postgraduate school. admiral, it is good to have your. please go ahead, sir. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be a part of this esteemed panel, and to hav an opportunity to talk about this imptant issue. in addition to the other things you mentioned that i am involved in, i have been the member for the last three plus years of a group of 49 retired flag general officers have spoken extensively on the issue of detainee treatment, and it's important both to the men andomen in the military and for the men and

women in their execution of their duties. would like to talk a little bit about that, and in doing that, elaborate on the written testimony that i have smitted. i would like to say at the tset that my views of those of us had a sailor, conveying concerns about the serious problems created for servicemen and women by choices made in washington over the last seven years. so what are those problems? strain alliances comes first in my list, and in this day and age of the american military operates by itself almost never in the world. and the importance of being able to work with our allies and our friends cannot be overstressed. confusion about detainee treatment, never to on my list. means to me that we have provided unclear guidance. that his choices made in washington have resulted in guidance that was not clear,

that was many cases ambiguous and in some cases was flat wrong about the requirement to treat detainees humany. and in accordance with international conventions and the geneva convention in particular, an also with american law. third on my list is exposure to greater risk of abuse if those soldiers, sailors, airmen, rines, coast guardsmen are captured. no one is going patient we are not getting ourselves that our opponents, our enemy would be inclined to treat our people humanely if they fall in to enemy hands. on the other hand, it's important that we be able to mobilize international opinion in support of people taken by our enemy and the treatment of them in a humane way. we have, as ambassador pickering mentioned, first extremist with materials and extensively.

and that is a consequence that we should have envisioned when we made many other choices about how we were going to act and how we want to talk about how we acted. and finally, in the problems list is that we further damage the reputation of americans who are working in this new realm of winning hearts and minds and trying to convince people that america has ideals and ideas to which they should subscribe. and we had this advantage our military people ha been involved in that, and i would argue that we have similarly disadvantaged the other members of the amecan administration, other public service in that regard as well. we're not done. that's what i think we need a serious inquirynto the way we behave for the last seven years and the kind of orders we have given and decisionq we have made. the enemy and still be i a. the stress on our peop in uniform and out, who are charged

with dealing with this in the, will continue. the pressure on our cotry and her leaders will remain, and we need to understand the circumstances under which choices were made by leaders in the past in order that we can anticipate those same circumstances, or others, in the future, and avoid making wh we consider to be mistakes. so the question is to me what's happened to us? what did we do wrong? what did we do right? and i would like to mention that the military examines itself often and in depth. we do that with after action reviews and hot wash up, following excises and operations. we do it with in depth studies when those are called for. we conducted uniform code of military justice investigations, as i know you are well aware, mr. chairman. and the conduct aviation safety investigations and examinations as well. the last one is kind of an

interesting case in which the testimony seeking the truth and having lives depend on finding the truth, in which the teimony is generally firewalls completely from our legal proceedings that may eventuate from these investigations. but whatever the appropriate means, the services together have to find t what happened and be at a better position in the future to provide the kind of clear and ambiguous guidance that is necessary on the pressure build up online and in the detainee treatment arena. the outcome is that soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, coast guardsmen deserve and require that kind of guidance and those orders, structure is essential to you when you are under pressure, particularly in combat and also in the elevated tension of taking care of detainees. american guys have to be artest with regard to the application of those orders and that

guidance. we have failed american serviceman men and women over the last seven years and we have to stodoing that. we need to do better and we need to get on with it. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, admiral. next witness is john palmer. he is a partner, a former attorney general in new jersey. he created the office of inspector general, served as a federal prosecutor, adjunct professor at the lawbreakers. he lectured written extensively on terrorism issues. he previously served as special adviser to special jones regarding the lease issues. he was senior counsel and team leader for the 9/11 commission. he led the team that investigated the government, government response of the 9/11 attacks, included evaluating the response by the various agencies

of the executive branch, including the offices of the president and vice president of the unitestates and the department of defense. he served on a variety of other investigatory commissions. mr. farmer received his law degr from georgetown unersity law center, as did i., got his ba from georgetown. mr. farmer, glad to have your. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me go my colleagues in thanking you and the committee for the invitation to appear today. like my colleagues i've submitted for orval testimony, and my purpose in speaking out is simply to summarize and more abbreviated fashion what set rth at length in my formal testimony the obvio threshold question facing this committee is whether an investigation should be conducted of the practis policies tt have been employed considering the tension since 9/11. i want to emphasize at the outset that i've a lot of empathy for those who like president obama have expressed

desire to move forward rather than look back. when ias attorney general n new jersey i expressed similar sentiments when my department was under instigation by our state, senate judiciary coittee. and make no mistake about it, the time devoted to preparation, test would respond to such a investigation can be diverted. and for a time canisrupt normal operations. i' come to see however that there are some issuethat touch so directly upon our identity as a people that touch so directly upon the bags that we profess that no amount of internal bureaucratic review will suffice to let public concern about the way it gernment has been conducting itself. people will be left to believe the worst and a lack of public trust will ultimately undermine any effort to move forward. i have come to believe that our government handling of detentions since 9/11 is such an issue. why? at a turning point for me was the convening authority's decision recently that the allege 20th hijacker had driven to me at the airport in

orlando, florida, on august 4, 2001, but was turned away only to be captured on december 2001 in afghanistan, could not be tried because of the way he h been treated. she concluded he had been tortured. think of thator a moment. we have now reached a point where the tactics we hav adopte have come provide our ability to respond to the/11 conspiracy itself. in my view that calls into question exactly what we have done, to whom, w, when, and what basis. there are many other alleged examples but for me the dismissal of charges against him elevates the change to one of those issues that touch on identity of americans and a public accounting that what occurred wasecessary. assuming that there is eventual agreement on the need for an investigation of detention practiceshe next version of whatorm that investigation should take. one of the obvious option is a criminal investigation into by the justice department or by special prosecutor to this option has limited appeal in

this context in my opinion for three reaso. first, prosecutions are necessarily narrowly focused on proving the elements of crimes in specific cases bu whatever brought complexly provided incidental. second, in the absence of generally accepted neutral fact-finding, criminal prosutions by a successive administration may appear to be politically motivated. and third, it is not clear that criminal prosecutions will be advantageous in this rosses. targets may be able to invoke advisable council visited another would be congressional hearings are certainly congress is capable of conducting thorough bipartisan investigations as part of its oversight responsibility of the executive branch. in my view of the highly charged polics of conessional hearings on this subject would frustrate any fact-finding effort. in my view these considerations are in favor of establishing an independent body to conduct fact-finding with regard to detentions. such fact-finding beats out for close psecution in appropriate cases. indeed it m need to identify

those cases. structuring investigation ended detention policies and practices ilvolved in my view for interrelated considerations. composition, scope, powers, and products. with respect to composion, the commission should be independent and nonpartisan. bipartisan commissions can reach nonpartisan result. the 9/11 commission undercover and. enabling statutory commission on detention should spell out specific professional qualifications that went sharkn on artisan. the commission should also have a professional staff, a definite timetable for completion of its work and a budget adequate to its mandate. or have the most difficult pect of structuring such an investigation is determining its scope. if the mission is defined too broadly, it may not be achievable. and abreast of the mission will also drive the potential cost of the project. and the context of detentions, i would focus quickly on guantanamo bay would be to nero

while an open-ended mandate to investigate all tactics employed on the w on terror is much too broad. one liting printable the committee might consider would be a lengthy investigation of the facts and circumstances surrounding the intentions carried out pursuant to congress' resolutioof september 2001 authorizing the use of force to respond to the 9/11 attacks. the scope of the inquiry, once it is determined, will determine what powers e commissn will be to employ in conducting its work. and essential to any vestigation in my view would be the abode of the commissiol to compel cooperati. compulsory processes in these isgrigg it was vital to the success of the 9/11 commission and its lack can be a real handicap xo at a minimum the commissionhould be given subpoena power. a trickier problem is whether the commission should be allowed for immunity in order to obtain testimony from witnees who might otherwise aert the fifth amendment against self-determination. this inquiry for individual exposure may be an issue in every case of alleged abuse,

some form of limited immunity may be essential. the issue must be handled with care as the grant of limited testimony may be a jeopardy. stack that as potential trade-offs that st be considered by the committee informing the commission. finally with respect to the product. the enabling legislation should also set forth a suspected in product of the investigation of the 9/11 commission was given broad charge to investigate the facts and circumstances write the attacks. and also to formulate remmendations based on those links. in my view such a broad mandate would not be appropriate in a contexthere talking about the tragedy that the commission should be charged with writing reports setting forth facts and circumstances surrounding the practices and policies relatg to detentions carried out in the war on terror. bodily commission would be completely separate from any criminal investigation, it should have the power to refer appropriate cases if it finds into the justice department for potential prosecution. to the extent possible, reports

should be a strictly fact-based narrative and the rept should state the evidentiary basis for the facts and conclusions it reaches to the extent consistent with national security interest. once the facts are not legislators of policymakers can debate the broader implications of these tax. and the board with a good understanding ofhere we have been and what we have done. i look forward to answering any questions you may have and to working with you to address the difficult issues in the future. thank you spectacular much, mr. farmer. >> frederic schwartz, professor schwartz's chief counsel at the brennan center for justice at the new york law school. his legal career, he has a high level of private practice with a series of critically important public service assignments. mr. schwarz served as chief counsel of the church commission, has been a time when i came to the sate and when i think what first appeared hee has also served as chief counsel to the senate select committee on intelligence.

he chairshe board of either institute of justice. recently received the gold medal award for distinguished service to the new york state bar association. he received an a.b. magna cum laude from harvard university law degree from harvard law school where he was editor of the law review. mr. schwarz, it is always good to see you here. pleaseo ahead, sir. >> that was quite a few years ago when we first met. >> yes, sir. was. >> i actually had hair back and. it was a little bit darker. >> and i had solid black hair back then also. so thankou for convening this hearing. thank you for your proposal for the commission which i support. how wisely to handle counterterrorism is an ongoing issue for our nations future. how to handle counterterrorism is too important to sweep the past under the rug. the public, and not merely

siders, and need to what has happened. those who don't understand errors of the past are condemned to repeat them, and surely will. we all want to move forward wisely, but it is not possible wily to move forward unless we fully understand what we have done. the first step must be to know all the facts. beyond basic facts, we need to ow how were decions made, who was consulted and who was not consulted. we also need to know beyond the basic facts what we the consequences of our actions. and we need to know beyond the basic facts, what are th root causes of having gone down a path that was inconsistent with our values and seemed to have broken the law i would put excess of governmental secrecy and limed ovsight as among the most

important route theses. i personally believe and have testified before that our dissent and to tactics like torture abandoned the rule of law and undermine american valuesand that doing so made us less safe. that jesus needs to be tested. for it is true it is surely important to our country and its public as we consider what tdo when there is another terrorist attack in this country as there surely will be, hopefully not as horrible as the one before. but we surely will get it and we have to make sure that the next time we don't make mistakes of this sort that seemed to have been made in the prior year's. that the benefitof a nonpartisacommissi of inquiry go -- what you propose, go far beyond understanding the facts. such a commission can help bring all americans together.

because after all, issues like belief in the rule of law, issues like understanding and appreciating the basic american values do not divide the parties in this country. so a commissiothat pceeds fairly and is nonpartisan, actually can help to bring our country together. and secondly, a commission that investigated the facts, put forward a report that tls the country and tells the world what has happened, admits to mistakes when we have made mistakes, praises things that we did well when we did them well, that commission and its action and its report canelp restore america's reputation in the world, and thus increase our strength and does make us more safe. the bottom line is we only to ourselves and to our country to learn the facts about our government counterterrorism

policies. we know that abuses may have occurred, and that the perception of these abuses has undermined our standing in the world, and our fight for the hearts and minds of those who could beat persuade us to do us harm. we must not flinch from lening the truth. that is the only way to stay true to our principles, to correct our course, and to restore our moral standing in the eyes of the world. that in turn will make us safer and strger. for as has been true throughout our more than 200 years of history, america is at its best when we confront our mistakes and resolve not to repeat them. if we do not confront our mistakes, we will decline, but if we do, as it is commission can help us do, our future will be worthof the best of our past. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very, very much,

and six. next witness is david rivkin. part of a bigger and hostettler. mr. riin served in the department of justi during the reagan and george w. bush bush adminirati the p practicing their public international law. exct international arbitration, policy advocacy and a wide range of issues. he has ttied before this committee before. is a member of a council on foreign relations that he has published numerous papers and articles and a variety of leg foreign policy and other issues. he received his law degree from the columbia university school of law. his m.a. in a fares from georgetown university's. he has written op-ed pieces, saying why my idea is terrel. so mr. rivkin, will compare. [applause] >> mr. chairman, members of t committee, thank you very much. i would not use the word terrible of course. i would be much more judicious

or i am pleased to appear before you and testify as a part of a testing which panel. i doelieve, hever, that a commission of whatever variety to investigate the bush administration activities and its official is a profoundly bad idea. a dangerous idea. both for policy but even more important for me as a lawyer for legal and constitutional reasons. there's nothing wrong of course of creating be-ribbon commissions, provided to exercise constitutionally appropriate responsibilities. and on its face, the proposed commission to investigate the bush administration appears advisories and geared towards policy review. in my view, however, many of its advocates expressed much more. in this regard, i am somewhat discouraged by the ongoi discourse and purpose of this commison. far from seeking to establi a body to make rommendations and policy, as was the case for exam of the 9/11 commission, most commissions would want to support a body that would engage in what would that men should be a criminal investigation of the

bush of ministers. the target would be relatively small number of the bush administration, most lawyers and policymakers is not considered the fact that the subject matte areas which the commission will investigate and modem captured enemy combatants and some people suggest that gathering intelligence. ose areas are heavily regulated. ensures that the commission's activities would inevitably involve areas traditionally responsibly for the department of justice or congress of course can also constitutionally properly delve into these matters as part of its oversight. the proposed commission i said that you cannot. les recall that the wer to investigate if charges against individuals. as such, it is heavily circumscribed by the constitution and federal statute. in my view, any effort to outsource any aspect of this power to entities operating outside the structure of government established by

constitution is extremely troubling and must be strongly resisted by alconcerned in protecting the constitution center. the very decision to initiate what amounts to a criminal investigation of an honest designated by such is operating outside of the constitutiona prescribed framework of our national gernment did in thi regard i would like to remind the committee of it criticism which loosening by the fbi during the bush administration on the threshold of determination that had to be made before national secury investigations commenced. i also recall the indignaon which included the claims that the bush administration's justice department may have been seeking to investigate democrat leaning groups or elected democratic officials on the federal or state level for election fraud. in all candor, i fail to see why having congress passed a group of private citizens to investigate the former bush administration officials doesn't indicate exactly t same not

for civil liberty considered the fact that the number of people targeted for investigations quite small potentially makes commissions threat to civilitiestability is all the more acute. in order to compel people to justify such a commission would have to possess unit i would presume that to go to court to enforce it, particular cases they're given the nature of the commission's responsibility as well as its blend of law enforcement and policy investigations, i find it difficult to imagine how the federal judiciary would be such a reque that it is also the question of how to balance the constitutionally ptected interest of elected targets are the fifth amendment protection against incrimination. i am not clear by the way how the entity that is to grant immunity on its own such a respected to be in the future by federal and state law-enforcement officials back to the extent to grant immunity including the specific branders of the immunized testimony would have to be approved by the

executive branch. you again i am troubled by the difficulty coming up of the mechanism, meaningful review, as distinguished from the. and then there is a question of how the commission would protect the privacy interest of targeted the commission would go about essentially law-enforcement investigatory functions which are typically held despite inevitable and unfortunate leaks caused by the department of justice. an unusually public manner. not even setting aside the constitutional concerns and there are several more raisedy the commission discharge, what i really law-enforment disabilities. there is another large problem which looms in my view. the court recognized that the most dangerous impact would be to greatly increase the likelihood of former senior government officials being tried overseas while imports of foreign nations over tribunal. and the reason for it is because the matters to be investigated by the commission would also international law in which argued the subject universal

jurisdiction by foreign states. i have no doubt that foreign prosecutors would equally seize upon this supposedly advisory determination that criminal conduct occurred especially with its only for daa statement on a study by the body as a pretext to commence investigations that bring charges against former government officials. . .

it would be set in my view an effort to investigate these matters, the promise of the commission did not appear to care very much about the civil liberty of americans and i am perfectly happy to outsource functions to private entities and even to be practicing azoff farmer rendition in virtually inviting foreign courts to go after american citizens. i respectfully suggest this is a very bad way to proceed. thank you. >> mr. rivkin, jeremy rabkin is a professor of law at george mason university school of law and prior to that he was professor at cornell. in international. host: and recently confirmed a number of border directors for the united states institute of peace. professor rabkin is written

numerous chapters and books, articles and academic journals and essays. professor rabkin teaches courses on constitutional and international law, as the ph.d. in the department of government at harvard, and graduated suma cum laude from cornell university. mr. rabkin, professor rabkin will come and go ahead. press the little bright button there. there you go. >> thank you. i also will try to avoid simply repeating whawas in my writn statements and take advantage of being the last speaker here. >> the wholetatement will be made part of the record of course and also the transcript will be open after the hearing is over if you see things you wish to add to it, but not aying gotcha here. we want to learn from the senate will be kept open for that. >> thank you. i want to start by talking about the context of this, which i think nobody has mentioned and

is rather important. last summer, theirst time i met mr. schwarz, there was a hearing ofhe house judiciary committee which was called the pre-impeachment hearing and there were a lot of serious people including members of congress whoaid even in the last month of the bush administration he is going to be leaving office anyway, we have to have an impeachment because what the bush administration did was not just regrettable, deplorable, mistaken, but high crimes and misdemeanors. a lot of people are so wrapped withndignation, just go on the internet and you can find this in public columns people say the bush administration was guilty of war crimes. they are in the same category as notorious war criminals of foreign countries. i think that is just wildly exaggerated and really inappropriate but a lot of people feel that way. if you say we are going to have a truth commission people immediately think oh yes, that

is what he has done with war criminals when you can't prosecute them and so that is the first point i want to focus on. i don't think it is sufficient for senator leahy or other, senator feingold to say i view it ia more moderate way. i think thisould be taken as ratifying the background you that yes, these were extraordinary crimes. >> i don't disagree with you. i've had something like 65,000 e-mails and i have y to have one single e-maisuggesting we do this as a war criminal thing. i am not suggesting you are putting up a song man here. >> could i just say we seem to have dferent e-mail lt. when i said at the hearing last summer, come on now let's not be crazy, i got not 60,500 of people saying i saw you on c-span and i've not crazy and he is a war criminal and should be tried. a lot of people feel very vehemently about this. if you say tth commission people immediately think about

these famous, the truth and reconciliation commission in south africa, the commission on truth and reconciliation in chile and we are not rotely in that situation and those countries that have to have these commissions he callshe could not have prosecutions and they couldn't have prosecutions because the coies were so deeply divided and they had made promises in order to secure a peaceful transition. peace was reall in doubt in those countries so the had to back off the prosecution and say weill have a truth commission instead. we are not in that situation that people think there should be prosecutions, there can b prosecutions. i want also to just focus attentio on this part of the experience of those truth commissions, in other countries, they had some success. i think they had considerable success in focusing on narrow factual questions. one of the important achievements of the chilean truth commission was just to get an accounting. a lot of people had disappeared.

what happene to them? t@ey were able to come up with a less than they were also able to establish aumber which got t be readily, generally accepted, about 2,000 that the tanza political killings. it was helpful to come up with a number, names, some information about them. i don't think thais at all what we are talking about here. i heard mr. schwarz said and i am talking to mr. schwarz, he said it is not enough to get the facts. we also have to know the root causes and we also have to test e theory that this has made us less safe. we should all think about what that involves. to say that we have been made less safe is to make an assessment, which we are going to put out the country, that the world reacted to our torture and that made us less safe and that is not offset by information which we gained. how could the commission determine this and w would people accept that because the commissioner said it was true? if you can do it for debates

about bush policy in rard to detention why not for every act of every predential adminstration? the secretary clinton is now going to talk to iranian representatives, is what i hear, she is talking to people in the government of syria. it is that making us safer let's say? it is making us less safe because it is implying weakness. why i don't think that is silly but i tnk it is really a bad idea and i think we are going down this road delve saying if there's enough controversy in sufficiently intense controversy we have an outside commission which purports to tell us authoritatively what it all mean and what arehe causes and what were the consequences and we cannot do that. that is not a substitute for people making political arguments, which can be responded to politically. i want to say just briefly conclusion, i share many of the concerns of my colleague and friend, david rivkin.

if weo into this with the notion that this is a substitute for criminal trials, you are authorizing this commission to paint a particular individuals in the government as if they had somehow done something analogous to war crimes. something which uermines our values as americans, something which threatens our ideity as americans. this is a pretty serious charge. do these people get to defend themselves? i am su they get to show up but none of us would be tested for an ordar criminal process. you will have some people, maybe well-meaning people writing reports saying i think what john u it has undermined their safety and i think we shouldn't be authorizing people to make categorical judgments like that on behalf ofhe american peopl where you are naming nas and shenon people and they don get a chance to defend themsels befo a jury. i don't think that is the category we should bring into our country. that is something they had to do in totally traumatized countries

which could have process and we are not in that situation. thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate your testimy but i must say as i have said before and you'll have plenty of time to respond, that's most haylofts in farms i have been on in vermont could not make the number of strommen that you and mr. rivkin had brought up but we will, i know senator cornyn wants to ask questions and what i am going to do is to begin and yowill be given plenty of time to respond to that, but i hear you talking about hearings that apparently you were at, was noat and they are not the hearings were holding here. ambassadors pickering is going to have to leave but i wanted to ask him first, during your tenure, and i will make absolutely sure mr. rabkin yo

have plenty of time to respond. ambassadors pickering, 45 years officers all over the world negotiated with other countries you have worko implement american foreign policy. what impact you think the bush administration detainee policies had on our foreign policy and on our national security? >> thank you mr. chairman. i have thought a lot about it. hesitancy in my prepared testimony i listed a number of results of that. i think it is hard to contest of you that public opinion about the united states, not just in the muslim and islamic world by the around the world have falle to a new low. i don't have the polling data in front of me but i think we are all familiar with the polling data and it is n just one poll. ism demars polls. i think the second point to

drive home is that this, in my vi, provided a sense of ire, a sense of disturbance, a sense of deep concern among many people who began by not liking the united states, and so it heightened that. whether that resulted in recruitment to new people to al qaeda, and to the taliban, to other organizations that are in arms against the united states is hard fnr me to tell in a specific sense but i think it is not totally irrelevant to that point,hat indeed, individuals who were, and we have seen many anecdotal histories of this privy to the tape and pictures, where i think deeply-- were deeply offended, offended because of the cultural insensitivity and because of the

use force, offended because of all aspects of the treatment. so it is in my view a serious and real major point, that this certainly contributed to the americanism and probably was one of those things that helps recruit people to take up arms and to act violently against the united states. >> if the united states is seen as doing an open and honest review of what happened, setting the policies, if we find we did not follow our own laws and our own policies to make it a very clear, mistakes would not be made in the future, does that help or hurt his round the world? >> i don't know we are going to convince the most extreme people oriented against the because we have done this but a lot of people who are sitting o the fence who have admired the ited states over the years who were deeply disturbed by what they saw the united states wa doing which was so seemingly out of character with their background, our past leadership

and their principals would certainly be i think moved oss said in my statement great countries don't often go into deep introspection about their problems and difficulties and indeed move to cure them but in my view that is the essence of rational action and it is the essence mr. chairman i think of what our, what admiral lee gunn said about how the navy behaves under difficult circumstances. i admire people who are prepared to look carefully at their mistakes and to rectify them and i suspect that is a widely held belief around the world and i suspect that people expect nothing less of the united states. >> perhaps y saw something interesting in the news this morning about the tragic plane crash out on the west coast, and the review that was made of the mistakes that occurred there.

mr. farmer, get the impression from your testimony when you spoke of al-qahtani, the man who had been referred to as the 20 a hijacker and the fact that he could not be prosecuted because of the national security policies of the last administration, i got the impression that that was the turning point for you. it so, what you believe would be the benefit of a review such as what i have suggested in this inquiry? >> i said in my testimony, the fact that the tactics we have employed are now makin it difficult to deal with the 9/11 conspiracy itself come to me simply raises the question of how did we get here? what was done specifically, by whom, to come and what justification? as i say, as a former head of a major state department i

appreciate the need to move forward and the disruption that investigation may cause, but in my judgment, a serious compromises of our ability to deal with the 9/11 conspiracy itself elevates the detention is used to the point that, an independent investigation is warranted. >> thank you. my time is up. i will come back with further questions. senator cornyn. >> thank you mr. chairman. mr. chairman i ask unanimous const to introduce several op-eds and letters of opposition into the record. the authors are james woolsey, william webster, michael hayden, john deutch, james wessinger of former directors of the cia. >> thank you and i will also introduce he will keep the record open for this because of course there are equally

impressive people who take an opposite view and those letters will also be placed in the record but to both pro and con the record will stay open for 24 hours. anyuch records and any such letters. >> mr. chairman, thank you for having this hearing. i am on record as saying that this, the idea of creating an independent, and then not sure how independent it wod actually be, unaccountable, a truth commission is a bad idea. with all due respect. the suggestion that this subject can be delve into somehow in a non-partisan fashion, to me, asked us to suspend our power of this belief on those who ha worked here and over the last six years in my case, and ignore the fact that we have already

had 150 oversightearings on the subject. we have loved more than 320 hours of witness ttimony and unclassified settings, transcribe more than 3,200 pages of witness testimony in printed more than 17,000 pages of unclassified, publicly available reports. to me the idea that this so-called tritt commission but somehow resolved the good-faith disagreemes that i think many of us have had, and divided the country over this subject is i think just asking us to believe in the tooth fairy, that somehow this is going to settle the score. let me just give you one example in a statement accompanying the senate armed services committee release of the decembe2008 port on terrorist detainee treatment comment 11 report. chairman levin noted in the course of its more than 18 month-long investigation, the committee reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents conducted

extensive interviews with more than 70 individuals. the unclassified executive summary of the levin report totale19 pages and includes the same number of conclusions. i disagree with those conclusions. but i certainly don't believe a truth commission is necessary to somehow arbitrate the differences between me and 11 report. so, what i think with all due respect again, i think the seeking this commission is in fact an indictment of congressional oversight responsibilities. not at i think congress has failed because we have, as i indicated, extensively inquired into these matters. congress has legislated with the detainee act, with the military commissions act in response to supreme court opinions and other whites and so i am just not willing to join in the knowledge

matt of its failure of congress before me, its vigorous oversight responsibilities which i think a creation of such a commission wou amount to. if i can just, mr. schwarz i recently read jack goldsmith's book, and then here he said the church investigations of the 1970's and the iran-contra scandal in the '80s taught the intelligence community to worry about what the 1996 council on foreign relations that he decried as retroactive disciplhne. the idea that no matte how much political and legal support and intelligence operative guess before engaging in aggressive actions, that he or she will be punished after the fact by a different set of rules created in a different political environment. are you concerned about the possibility of this retroactive discipline and the unfairness of

changing the rules of the road after the fact, and its impact on our intelligence officials who may be persuaded that may be more passivity is to be embraced as opposed to aggressive gathering of actual intelligence? >> i don't personallyelieve that cia operatives ought to be accused or brought before a criminal court. i think they aed in good faith, because they had legal opinions, which sd what they were doing was okay and becse their bosses high up in the government told them to do what they d. now, turning to the actual record of the church committee, the director of the cia, said that what we had done by bringing the intelligence services into the realm of the law instead of being outside of the realm of the law helped the

intelligce services, and the general counsel of e cia, the famous general counsel, lawrence houston, said that the concept of congress before the church committee in turning a blind eye to what was going on actually harned the intelligence services. moreover, the church committee in its recommendations, way back in 1976, said this country should start paying re attention to terrorism. way ahead of its time. so, the people who said the senate investigation had anything to do with injuring as opposed to strengthening our intelligence services were flat wrong. >> do you disagree with them? >> no, they were wrong. i will give you one example. >> so,ou disagree with mr. goldsmith's statement that the church and pike investigations resulted in what

thcouncil on foreign relations that he in 1996 called retroactive discipline? you disagree with that? >> the pike investigation was not handd as well as the church investigation and-- >> would you answer my question? >> i completely disagree with that. >> i appreciate that you disagree but flat wrong is a statement it your opinion and not necessarily the fact. >> senator cornyn i don't mean to cut you off but i let you go over time. just simply because to want to finish so i'm besserickering kimley then i wanted senator subninth u.s. been here through the whole hearing to have a chance. >> thank you mr. chairman. let me thank you for your leadership and holding this hearg. there are very important questions that have been raised and discussed here today and you have assembled an extremely distinguished panel of witsses here to help us consider them. i appreciated very much.

as the son and grandson of foreign service officers i have some idea of what a career ambassador is so ambassador pickering let mehank you for your extremely distinguished service to our nation both in the military and ouroreign service. i would like to ask you first because i know you have obligations elsewhere and anybody else can chime in if they wish. the following question. we don't know yet what was done, and there has be considerable sentiment expressed by several of the witnesses here that's it is in our interest for a whole variety of reasons because it helps define who we are at the nation, because it rebuilds our cribility and our relationships abroad, because it is a return to the rule of law and so forth.

that it is distinctly in the public interest for this information to come out. let me ask you if you think there is eig-point where the conduct in question was so abhorrence to decent and civilized people in america and around the world, that at that point the public interest that you have described reverses itself and at some point if it is awful enough,oes it become in our public interest as the nation to try to keep this swept under the rug, or to use mr. schwarz' phrase that we must not flinch, irrespective of how painful this you will be for our country. ambassadors pickering.

>> thank you for your kind comments and i had the privilege and honor of working with your father. my answer to your question is very simply no. i do not believe that any degree of abhorrence, any degree of violations of values, principles, trusts, laws should swept under the rug because it is so devastating for the reputation of the united states that it must be kept the secret. in fact, the laws on secrecy don't provide for that in the first place. seckndly, it doesn't in my view, goldwater to believe that anything quite so notorious will efer remain secret i this town, orn this country or in this world. and thirdly, if indeed it took place, and was of such character as to put it into that category, then it is the duty and the

deed-- indeed the requirement of all branches of the united states, the government to do anything in theirower and to make sure that it never happens again, which is the major purpose for the commission that i support d the major purpose for my being here to try to support that type of commission. >> thank you ambassador pickering. attorney general farmer, i am deleted to see you here with us and i appreciate very much your career of public service. the issue that a commission is going to face as the former prosecutor and chairman of the former prosecutor and senator cornynas attorney general with us here ao,ort of a little reunion here today. there are obviously some hindrances to a prosecution based on this contract, reliance on the legal opinions of the olc is one.

some sort of theory of equitable estoppel might be another. what reliance did to intent might be another. t in each of those areas they are a limited protection. for instance a mobster can't paper over a racketeering conspiracy with his mob lawyer, saying this is a legitimate business and make their risk of prosecution go away. the doctrine of equitable estoppel is this favorite against the federal government, almost never applied, rigid and sparg i think is the phrase used about when its application is permitted and an intense as we all know is question of fact which is determined by the fact finder. so immunity is going to become. should we tr to build into assuminghat the commission should have some immunity and i think most witnesses agree, that

should have power to grant immunity, should, how should the relationship between the commission and prosecutors be described in any legislation that might establish such a coittee? should they be required to coordinate with the department of justice? should they be required to obtain the sign off before the grant immunity? you waed to steer clear oan active prosecution not just on the question of manatee but on the question of trampling the persecutive strateg how would you work that? >> i think the issue of hmmunity is one that will be driven by the previous issue, which is what is the scope of the investigation going to be? and i think that ireally i think the toughest issue that e committee has to address. if the commission is drawn to broadly, and i would argue the fed is drawn so broadly that it captures issues such as these

tactics make us less safe as opposed to simply finding what the facts are, i think the commission will lose credibility because he will end uhaving to prove a negative, but assing that, the mission and the scope of the mission as defined by the committee doe have the commission focusing on individual cases, it seemso me that immunity is going to be an issue that has to be dealt with and my suggestion would be that some form of coordination with the justice departmt would be appropriate. what the specifics of that court nation would be would depend again on how the scope of the commission's job is defined. >> thank you ambassador pickering. we will keep to our commitment and please feel free to leave, sir. you know, on the immunity, mr. schwarz, to follow up a little bit on the question you

asked before, you note in your stimony the church community d the authority to grant immunity. but, uncovered a great deal of thellegal activity over exercising that authority and and sort of stating in your testimony correctly? >> yes, you are. we have hundreds of witnesses, many of them admitted to acts that could have lead to prosecution. nobody asked for immunity. we had one witness who would only testify with a bag over his face because he had been an informer. >> i remember at one. >> noy yes for immunity and i don't know quite why. i think high-level people don't want to and low-level people, i think understand they are not going to be prosecuted and frankly, i think it might be in the public interest for the justice dertment pretty quickl to come to a conclusion

now about low-level people. ..

>> but i would like to know why we have people who felt that somehow a president can be above the law. we saw what happened when a former psident years ago, prior to my being in the senate, said if the presint does it 's not breaking the law. anhe reaction of this country by both reblicans and democrats to get such a thing, and the statement as any of us including the three of us on the other side of this table will having been prosecutors. we on't have any provision in our constution that puts some

people, elected or otherwise, above the law. are. -- none of us are. >> i discovered the values of this cntry abroad, you have expressed simir sentiments but you had a different perspective. you are a longtime military officer. you commanded ships. you aren the field. you were in combat. you lead large number of military men and women but you are also the inspector general so you have kind of seen it from all gles in the military. based on your experience and expertise, what do you believe has been the effect of past administrations justification of torture and other abuses treatment and on this country's strategic and national security interest?

>> i would have to refrain from spreading my experience too broadly and my answer to this. >> on the mility morale and the safety of our military men and women. that stays well withinyour frame of reference. what about their? >> gessert and i think the effect there has been found. we have depended over the years on important alliances, military relationship for decades in my personal experience. members of the united states military have invested their own time and credibility in building relationships around the world with the militaries of other countries. i was thinking, as you are asking the question, about the relationship that i established while i was in active duty having different jobs with the naval act as shays, allies and

friends. and when those atthes return to their home country, there are no more solid advocates american military positions, and there are no better fans of american ideas on how those are translated into the way we do business than those people are who go back to responsible positions in their governments. i can't think of '01 with whom i have stayed in contact who hasn't told me ove the last six or seven yearsow difficult it is in his or her country to be a friend of america. and that i think sows the seeds of a serious problem that has to be overcome. in terms of the effect on t people at the point of capture when detaineesre taken, the folks who are charged in the high pressure cauldron of dealing with a detainees once

they are within the custody of the united states, those kind of high pressure environment to which we ask -- in which we asked you americans to do their duty, require, in my view, and i think in the view of most military officers that there be this clear unambiguous set of guidelines. what's more, young americans don't join the military with the idea that they are going to be asketo violate their own principles and the principle of their country. and my personal view is that the things they were asked to do or allowed to do, wther ty were in uniform, whether they were military people or in the cia, violated their own principles in a way that is added dramatically to their stress and cause them to suffer many of the same kinds of consequences personally that people have been involved in street combat have suffered under. >> my youngest son is a former

marine, and we've talked about this at great length. and without putting him on the ot, he said exactly the same thing. it was built into him, and a lot of things were drilled into him, and it's a basic training. but that was one of the things. and again, when he was prepared to be deployed for desert storm. senator cornyn? >> thank you, mr. chairman. ther rivkin, admiral don suggested when it comes to the prect of a truth commission, that suc a truth cmission it's a byproduct like to improve coopation between us and our allies when it comes to gathering and sharing intelligence and feeding a common enemy when it comes to islamic extremism. do you agree that such a commission would improve intelligence cooperation among allies? or do you think is more likely

to have our foreign aies more skittish when it comes to these matters? [inaudible] >> i think it's the latter. i do not see how going through another self-referential a self absorbed exercise, that would not lead to any kind of national consensus but basically it would well at great lengt and by the way, i finally disagree with aarrative that has been the traitor of the bush administrations alleged. yes, mistakes were made. yes, some bad things happened, but compared with historica baseline of past wars, the conduct of the united states in the last few years, senator corn, has been exemplary measure by anybjective of misdeeds, abuse of detainees,

per thousand captured, excessive use of force per thousand troops in the field. so i don't see that at all. but again, to me, and i am taking the liberty of going beyond your question, it doesn't matter how you assess -- if we take the constitution service, take our political culture seriously. just like critics argue that some things you should not do in terms of torturing people, no matter what you catatonia benefits. you don't outsource law-enforcement. that is not the right thing to do. is a fundamentally wrong thing to do. to me there is nothing to do, even if all sorts of humongous benefits are going to flow from this truth commission, this is just not what we are supposed to do as a country. >> admiral gunn, to give you a chance to respond since i refer to your testimony. yu sa it's the responsibility of the commander-in-chief and the congress to ensure an

command that behavior of americans toward those in custody complies with the geneva conventions and with the highest interest dictated by international conventions on detainee treatment. i hope you would agree with me that congress is at least played some role in tryin to deal with the subject. for example, i mentioned the detainee treatment act which we passed and was signeby the president in 2005 in the wake of the supreme court's decision at how diverse are from selkirk of course, we also passedhe military commissions act to create a tribunal where some of these detainees could actually be tried. i understand that people may agree or disagree with the wisdom of those individual pieces of legislation. buwouldn't you agree with me that congress has been very much involved in oversight into these issues? and i'm just curious why it is the belief that it would not be

necessary for congress and the executive branch to in effect delegate our investigative function to an unaccountable so-called truth commission. >> yes, si there are a number of questions there, and i certainly agree that congress has been involved and has done things that have helped to ameliorate the situation. and in some cases congress has tried to do some things were the efforts were thwarted by the president. the 2005 amendment that senator mccain advocated, and actually was the nucleus around which our group of retired officers organized in order to support him in that effort was successful in congress and not successful at the white house. i think -- don't get it wrong when i talk about what i think the government as a unit, both

executive and legislative branch, '02 the people in the field. the collectiveffect of what is done he must be a the people in the field understand that their duty and their obligations entirely, and do so in a context that allows them when the utmost pressures apply to perform in ways that we are proud of and they are proud of. that has been missing in very important ways recently, to the issue of whether we should have a commission oa particular form or not, i am advocating not a special form because i have no informed legal opinion on the various approaches that might be used. and i am advocating that wget to the bottomf things, and at the end of the date we establish what wen wrong. and what sort of missing and the conversation is at the same inquiry could identify what went

right. that is a feature of the kinds of inquiries and investigations that i referred to in my testimony, and also as i spoke before. the military works very hard to understand what went well so at we can reinforce that. as well as what went wrong a how we can remedy that. and i suggested maybe more emphasis on the commission's ability to identify the good things. i bought some of the criticism and concern about it solely focus -- focusing on errors. >> thank you, mr. chairman. my time is up. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. rkin, you raised sort of a gallery of portables of the things that mhael wrong with

such a commission. leme ask you just to sort of narrow the poi. if you assume that the purpose of this commissiocomission is advisory and policy only, if you assume that criminal law enforcement is properly cabins within the executive branch as it should be, if you assume that we set it up so that its coordination with law-enforcement on issues like community isroperly coordinated so that it does not intrude into that function, and if it is not as you suggest, a private is the duty but delegated congressional oversight authority do you still oppose the commission even in the absence othe parade of

horrible that you suggest? >> thank you for your question, senator whitehous with respect, and this assumes too much, let me unpack it. to become a law-enforcement function has a variety of aspects, as you all know. having a situation where the ultimate decision to proceed of an indictment in the case before granger, preceding the prosecution, is reserved for the department of justice and i'm sure that would be the case. does not -- >> no one is suggesting that. >> but to me that's not enough. i can give you at least several examples where other aspects of law-enforcement function, namely, deciding as a threshold determination which is why i mentioned the conoversy about alleged loosening of a threshold determinations. the decision, whom to investigate particularly if you're talking about is bottom smoker. >> we do that in congress every moment. >> but you have a right, to

exercise that under legislative and oversight function. >> and we have a right to delegate it. >> no, i don't believe it. >> usually the congressional oversight function as a double? >> io not believe the function iseadily buildable. >> do you believe it is notable or not? >> i do not. you certainly can organize -- >> you just another headquartered 90s that private commission. that's not the word that i use. assume it is delegated to a public properly appointed commission that is exercising delegated appointed legal authority. >> appointments clause? >> that would make a huge difference. the president appoints a people, no. if you could configure commission in the way that makes an extension of an article one branch, i wld not have fundamental problems. i don't see how that's practicable or possible. and you can call it public but i don't see how you can delegate

your oversight responsibilities. but consider another question. if the real intent, and again, i hate to sound tri, but walk psychedelic, blocks like a duck, whether it's a policy or not, even today we have virtual times about the need to come up with criminal prosecution. with this commission is basically this comes up with a bunch of files, the kind of things at republican attorney's office does, on 12 or 14 pple. and it passes the buck to the department of justice and the public spotlight. i would submit to you that that fundamentally suports the most basic constitutional protections. with respect this was kind of late and different political context that ery law professor i know would be screaming about it. >> okay. every law professor you know would be screaming about this?

>> yesterday it was done in a context-based. >> f., i'm sure. >> if it was done -- spec i'm trying to get unhedged a phrase out of you. >> i will give you an example. my colleague in his prepared testimony, a hypothetical of the bush administration after 9/11 disaster, having a suggesting a private commissi to investigate organizations in this country charitable and otherwise to look at the nefarious influence. to the extent that is possible. possible procutions for appropriate channels. doou not think that most of the law faculties in this country would be up in arms about this? the fact that we are bush administration officialq are doesn't make any difference. they aren't out to a full panel of constitutional rights. and the fundamental point that i make about organized criticism of past administration officials as an offense against their civil liberties?

>> organized criticism dished. >> that is one of the things we signed up for what we took this job. >> of looking at the individual criminal culpability. >> no. there you go again. we just discussed that this would not be looking at individual criminal culpability. my assumption at the vy beginning was we had properly cabins, and i saidhat that assumes too much. >> pray tell how you're going to come up if youe a member of this commission of an analysis of, and i don't want to use names, but two or three members of the bush administration violated, for example, statutes against torture which is a criminal statute. how would you exactly write this up in aay that does not come to conclusions about individual? because if you said mp. aiken to torture, and by the way, if you say it properly and not only in terms ofcts, that reads like a document that a system as a u.s. attorney prepares to send his boss to get a decision whether or not to prosecute. hoelse would you write it up?

>> my time has expired. but i would suggest, mr. rivkin, until you know and we all know what was actually done under the bush administration, you not be so quick to throw other induration of americans under the bus and assume that they did worse. >> mr. rivkin, i spoke to earlier and i said if you want to take a minute or soo add to anything i had to say, please feel free to do so. you are invited by the other side of the aisle but they have all left. they have all left, and to the side othe aisle will give you a chance to say something further, if you want. >> just very briefly. i think one difficulty that we've had this point is we don't have a bill in front of us. so we are speaking about a hypothetical commission @nd we

don't have very clear notion. >> but isn't that something, one of the reasons you have hearings? >> i'm not criticizing anyone. >> at least in my years here that's the way we been doing it. >> i am not criticizing anyone for this. i am just saying it somewhat difficult to address a proposal that is at this point not well defined. and i wanted to just emphasize this before weekend, which i it's one thing to try to find specific facts. what was the worst thing done to someone in american custody? i'm not sure that a secret, but if that's what we're talking about i think it is a different thing than making an assessment of what were the causes of this, what were the consequences of this. then you are reall getting into a statement aboutow foreign policy should have been differently conducted. how security policy should have been differently conducted, and

i think that's almost certainly asking too much a commission. and putting aside whether there are constitutional difficult or civil liberties difficulty. is as yourself s it reasonable to think that any group of ehperts uld speak to the country, not on the specific findings of fact, but on how we should assess this and the country nods and says, that's right. i think we're not that kind of -- >> if somebody, if you think someone at the highest level of the white house, for exale, directs people to break the laws, and this is a situation with some wiretapping, various search and seizure matters, putting people's names into databases, secret databases where the jobs are then affected, their abilities to get on airplanes are affected and so forth.

and that is done in violation to specific statues of the constitution did you don't think we should at least ask that question, who did it and why? >> absolutely. and if you think there was legal violations, then i think there should be u.s. attorneys asking those questions and possibly filing indictments. i am not quarreling with that at all. >> would'v asked those questions. another course all of it was stonewalled. and we are realizing, especially with the olc opinion has been released, we are beginning to see why, why we were stonewall stonewalled. because someone might think by both conservative or liberal commentators looked in a said that they were completely a misstatement of the law. that's all we are asking for. who said break the law and why, and was it broken? i mean, the ramifications especially in the digital age are amazing. we have seen in just some of the things that have become more

publicized with a year-old ild, parents bother supersaver fares to take a child with them to visit relatives and the child can't t on the airplane because they are on a -- bachao, not the parents, the child i on a terrorist watchlist. they missed the plane and had to get a passport, filed for a passport. get a passport to prove that his year-old child is not some 45 year-old terrorist. the longest-serving member of the committee, senator edward kennedy, half a dozen or aozen times wasold he could not board a plane that he is taken for four years because he is on a watchlist that president bush even called him to apologize but he said he appreciated the apology but it wasn't the esident's fault. he just wanted someone to get him off the list and they couldn't. some of these things worry us.

and on illegal wiretaps, for example, yourame gets on this list, on the illegal search and seizure, your name gets on somebody's list. we are to at lea know who came up with the bright idea. >> could i just respond to this? >> of course. >> i think what you'd just been talking about almost certain they should be reviewed and reconsidered i'm not at all questioning the validity of your criticism or concern. what i'm concerned about is that you take one disputed policy or one series of mishaps, or even abuses of unlawful acts from this area. you take another example from ther you take a third example from the. what you just talked about seems to have nothing in all in common with allegations of -- let me just finish. allegations of torture at guantánamo. >> we haven't even got to the torture part. i'm going to a series of ings that are all -- let me finish. if you have -- if you violate

the constitution and wiretaps and specific statutes, if you violate the law and not using, something set up after the church committee hearings, if you then, if you violate the law on torture andondoning things that we have actually prosecuted other people for doing, if you then have people coming befo the congress and lied about it, they may be all individual things. but they are all prior to the same mix. and i want to do, as i just said, let's turn the page, find. but read t page before you turn it. it is a concern to me that some wa to ignore that. now i am well aware of hearings and investigations going on in other committees, andf course

we will continue to ask questions in this committee or that what bothers- but what only worries me and i want the american people to see something that's outside of the polical arena, like the 9/11 commission or others to find out what's going o >> if you bundle all of the together and in the different context, connect the dots, you can draw a very, very disputable picture because you are saying what was the root cause of all of these different things in the root cause wl come down to something like the general orientation of the bush administration was toward lawlessness, or they were obsessed with terrorism and when you get to that level of generalization, i think it's about to be extraordinari controversial. and the idea that this will reconcile the country, this will bring us all together, this was sabas consensus, but more general it is the more hopeless it is. >> mr. rabkin, and you say what the conclusion is going to be.

you have far more experience than i. i would like tosk the questions and see what the conclusions are going to be before with that, we'll go ahead, mr. rabkin. >> another one of these republic with his. i'm trying to be fair to eve though the republicans asked you to be here did want to bother to stay and listen to. please go ahead. >> is there and i appreciate. i wanted to sabriefly, the very examples you used to be clear that our tests that in this commission cannot fundamentally escape passing assessment, or making judgmes about criminal liability on a small circle of people. an with respect, that is what the executive branch can do for proper channels. that is what you can do a operating in the article. that is not what a commission can do. and even if we agreed upon the trail of the problem, that no matter how pressing or compelling to me, you cannot

proceed for constitutional and proper channels because there've been a case in american history where a commission was set up with this heavy of a prosecutorial burden. it wl be a fundamentally illegitimate. no matter how strongly you believe. >> was the 9/11 commission illegitimate? was the watergate hearing? spectacor sputters the 9/11 commission work at the worst thing that would've happened with some agency gustine. their budget got to pick bureaucratic chairs that sheltered the 9/11 commission had no mandate or interest in going after people. what? you and talk about how you analyze intelligence? would t@at ld to an indictment? the circumstances of how this dialogue has been driven, and driven, inexcusably make it a criminal process. >> mr. rivkin, i try to be fair to you. as i said the folks who invited you didn't stay to ask a question for type and try to it open for you. and they will have the last word. one of the advantages of being the chairman. and will keep the record open if people want to add to it.

if criminal conduct occurred, the senator wants to know about it. now i began my public career as a prosecutor. i am trying to give the ability to find out if criminal conduct occurred so it would not occur again. it doesn't necessarily mean there will be even prosecution for i but if crimes are commted, i don't think we sweep them under the rug. we stand recessed. naudible conversations]

>> good afternoon. i just wanto thank all of you so much for joining us. this is one workshop of about that we have done during the month of augt. and i wanto give you a tiny bit of context on it and the overall work that we are trying to coppers over the next few months here at the fcc on behalf of the federal government and then i will turn it over to jing to moderate and get your insights. but we are incredibly grateful for your potential patient a to those of you online, there are folks throughout this institution watching as i know on live cast and we've had people participating from the

far corners of the globe as well. d a number of these workshops. but primarily e goal here is to benefit from your insight and begino establish a public record about the ways in which broadband can address challenges that we as a nation face and job trning and access to job placement as well. so thank you. this session is part of plan we are calling national purposes. and congress specifically asked us taddress about 15 policy diaries, and think about the ways in which broadband could improve those priorities, further than. and job training and workforce development is one ry, very critical one of them. we're also looking at issues related to education more broadly, @ealth care, public safety, economic opportunity, generally speaking, government

operations, things related to improve efficiency and also civic participation. and several other areas. so this is extremely important as a first step,nd we're really looking forward to all of your insights. and it's a great pleasure to introduce to you jing vivatrat to my right who is leading all of the work on job training your and also elise at the end of the table who is our director of adoption on the broadband teen. so with that, i will turn over to jing, and thank you again for being here. >> thank you so much for bei here. take you, kristen. >> we actually have as kristen mentioned a lot of participants who are logging in through webex and also followers on twitter and people who are watchin live to the live broadcast. actually webcast. so if people want to submit questions and participate in the workshop, through twitter, you n go through twitter .com/at cc dlg dot gop. and you can als use bv wk a

hp. said during a workshop today we're really ing to focus on the potential impact of increased broadband access for job-training and job placement. so how can broadband bring about innovation and new technogy, the new ways to approach a job training and job placement? what roles should the government play for example in shaping a broadband enabled world wre we can have online, job-training. these are some of the questions that framed his workshop. the purpose of this workshop as kristen mentioned earlier i to develop this open dialogue with the public, and to establish public record on broadband potential on job training and job placement. we are actively seeking comment from everyone and ideas, and this is our initial phase of our research. of the national broadband plan. i am so pleasedo introduce all of our panelists today who have traveled here and every

scheduled vacations and who have come here from the airport to participate. so thank you so much. we have representatives from the u.s. department of labor, rutgers university, communications workers of america, the workforce alliance, presidium learning, monster and blackboard. and they are all thought leaders in their respective industries and we're so happy to be here with you. each of our panelists are going to present their presentation about 10 minutes long, and that i don't he had a chance to present, we will open it up to questions from the audience here and on twitter and webex. okay. then let's get started. our first panelist is heather mckay. ms. mckay is the director of innovative training and workforce development program at rutgers university center for women and work. as well as the director of the sloan center on innovative training and workforce development we are so grateful to have heather who traveled to d.c. to speak at the peptic

heather, you want to get started with your speech? >> thank y'all for having me here today. i am really pleased to be able to talk about ts subject. i am the director of the sloan center on innovative training and workforce development, which is housed at rutgers university in the state of new jersey. at the center for women and worker can we really as a center have been dedicated to assisting stat county and city government departments and workforce investment boards institutionalize online learning alternatives for non-college-educated workers throughout the nation. our work has shown and our rearch has shown that online learning offers a viable solution to the barriers that exist for adult learners and access and traditional classroom-based education and training. we believe it is a cost-effective method in order to train the millions of low skilled americans out there who need training in order to rise in the latter on the social economic scale and eet self-sufficient jobs.

delivering training by the computer a internet has really been successfully utilized throughout the united states. and incorporating high speed broadband and speed programs has improved the flow going and really enhanced the variety and breadth ofearning that is available and coursework is available online. it is also a affordable and flexible, and it really helped to democratize access to training and education for those who otherwise might not be able to get it. today, i'm going to talk about three topics. i'm going to detail some of the barriers that low skilled individual space. entertained skill training. via traditional education venues. and i'm going to demonstrate how online we can hp to really address these barriers. i'm going to provide examples of innovative online training programs for low skilled adults throughout the united states and i'm going to examine the obstacle of limited broadband access in the united states is acceptability of this online training. there's really a lot of agreement in theountry that moving up the socioeconomic ladder requires education and skills training.

it's clear that education and skills training has a positive effect on people's earnings in people's abality to reach a self-sufficient and to have an income that they can use to support thr families. the real challenge for many adult learers is that getting classroom education is a very difficult becau of roadblocks that may stand in their way. transportation, the cost of transportation, childcare, and other barriers stand in the way of getting education. many of these people who did education and trying to rise up the ladder are also women, and there are females with care and responsibility. so caring for elderly and children, family members stand in a way. of getting this training. and entry into traditional classroom education is limited because it's not flexible. you have to be in a classroom at a certain time to take a class, if you have a judge may or may not be able to get childcare. that childcare mayot be available. things like that in addition, many of these indivials have

irregular work hours. so that flexible learning via the internet provides a way for them to attend a coursework and still work and there may be waitressing hours wch may fluctuate as they may have hours in the morning or in the evening but if they have online coursework they can go on any time of day and not interrupt their cosework and training. so really many of these individuals who need education and training to rise up the ladder and get self-sufficiency are excluded by either design or default, participation in education opportunities. that could really help improve the economic qtatus. online learning offers a solution to these barriers. it successfully alienates the problems that i talked about. such as family demands, geographic location, wk schedules, racial and ethnic differences. financing and transportation and equities. the utilization of online learning is really most effective when it allows for flexibility and recognize that various roles for adult learners play. it really needs to stick within the lives of adult learners.

many adult learners may be students, workers, carivers and we need to work turning around and instead of asking them to fit training into their very busy lives. delivered online work is not a new concept at universities throughout the country have really successfully employed online learning for decades. sloan has done a great job in promoting online learning for universities and eventually become something that is pervasive throughout the united stes. but more recently this concept has beeadopted in the workforce system and i believe that it has a place in the workplace is to. this initiative to put online in the works began with arant of a nice state department of labor, women's bureau, to the state of new jersey. to pilot program in 2001 to deliver online skills and training to single working poor mothers in the state to participate in this pilot reseeded laptop to a printer and internet access for your. as well as online coursework for your. at rutgers university under the direction of eileen applebaum and mary data evaluating and

studied as part of the results of the study were very positive of the 121 in the initial program, 92% completed the program. 15 women went on to college programs, and a year out of the program the women experienced annual average wage increase of 14 the success of this pilot program demonstrated that distance-learning works for low income workers. and also that forhis population online to provide significant advantages that aren't available in traditional classroom-based education. in addition to pving benefits to the single mothers themselves, there were also familial benefits that were shown from the study. children deskilled on computers and the digital bible is really being bridged in these families. since in online learning has really been used as a workforce development two and a lusty spirits are about 21 states currently two are using this in some way. and it continued with different

populations besides the working including nativemerican, rural americans, though slevin incarcerated, domestic violence victims, and many, many other groups. many people may question whether online learning is as pespected as classroom-based learning. and you may have seen "the new york times" report yesterday that tk about the sri international study that showed that online learning on average student in online programs provide a better. so that is an interesting initiative there. there have been other interestg innovations on the program. the center for women work where i work has develed skilln for work this will be website are we available in the fall, and it uses the internet and contractual bassler and will provide a very intereing literacy workforce literacy programming. it will be available at no cost to learners will and is out there for the workforce development and the general literacy community.

its purpose is really to equip out of school adults and youth with putting the skills they need to prepare them to be successful in today's high skilled economy. it demonstrates high production die, a real deep understanding of how adult heart and is designed to engage adult learners wiphout a teacher or tutor. this is online learning that can be used by anyone at anytime. and the skills that are based on the national workforce readiness credential the equip for future standard, and a good academic and interpersonal skills. so programs like this demonstrate how online learning can be shaped to serve the needs of a variety of adult learners and can be utilized in creative ways to promote effective learning. broadbent is really essential to online education. without broadband, online education certainly suffers. research shows and a lot of my research shows that one of the major challenges to delivering successful technology-based education is the speed of internet access at high speed broadband access i really essential to the effective delivery of online skills

training and education. yet many americans still do not have high speed access. and it's not available to them in their communities. studies have shown that learners who have access to high speed internet can more easily navigate their crsework, can finish coursework faster and are more likely to finish. they don't have to connect to the internet if they don't have dial-up problems. their courses don't fall down and they can also get a wider breadth of coursework that there's more available to them if they have high speed internet. high-speed internet can not only offer better coursework but it can also offer more interactive coursework through voice, data and video sharing. it can facilitate a really successful online learning experience and can train people, careally improve the competitive of the united states economy by train to people who are working in the united states. asou know right now, the

united states kirtley ranks 15th among 30 nations in information technology and innovation foundation broadband ranking. other countries including china, the netherlands, japan and singapore all outpaced the night is taken broadband access and speaker can't really broadband policies are due to ensure that broadband access is universal, high quality, an important affordable. this agenda will benefit low income individuals and improve the availability and quality of education and training available to them. in conclusion i would like to say that using online learning to deler education and skill strength as a viable option within our nation's workforce development and education systems. utilization of the internet and personal computer and ability of such programs is interesting to the workforce to bum a system specifically becausef the ways that technology promotes flexibility and access to education and job training programs for low income individuals. this is especially important for the many low skilled americans who need to improve their literacy skills to get up in the social economic ladder and get to self-sufficiency.

the internet is convenient, flexible and high quality. and if it's offered with broadband it can deliver rlly wonderful training that can be available to all americans at a low-cost. as educational progrs continte to be developed and technology continues to be enhanced, the flexibility offered by onli dating will help to democratize access toraining and education for adult learners and helped to raise low skilled workers out of entry-level jobs ontoareer pathways for sustainable self-sufficiency earnings. thanks. >> pic is much, heather. for sharing your experience and pilo workforce development programs for low skilled labor. our next panel was is from the u.s. department of labor. mr. richard horne. he serves as the senior policy analyst for the workday signs are that he serves as a supervisory research analyst for the office of disabilit employment policy, and he is here after having rearranged his vacation. so thank you, richard.

>> thank you. is a pleasure to be here. yes, i would the u.s. department of labor here office of disabilitypon a policy, which was a new office in the department of labor. we've been around for six years like actually tell you i have created a federal agency within a large deptment and it's quite a chore. i appreciate everything that you said, but i think that when w are thinking about this particular topic, accessibility matters. it matters tremendously. individual learning styles matter. they matter tremendously and for people with disabilities, the internet is a blessing and a curse. blind employees do i supervise. we do not have one piece of software in the department of labor that is accessible that they can use that they can't even complete their own timesheet. they can't complete their own traffic forms, because the software is not usable by seen readers. online coursework does a l of

video, as the video, if it's not an caption than people who are deaf or hard of hearing may not be able to take advantage of it. if the flow of the content doesn't adjust for people's cognitive disilities, from mental retardation on, to learning disabilities, dyslexia, we're going to miss a whole population of folks who cannot take advantage of it. and it's usually the last thing bought about. so when you mentioned universal design, i have a concept of universal design that's kind of universal in that everybody really needs to take advantage of that. i also find that fenders think about this last and within the federal government would do a lot of procurement and we don't pay attention to the law that said that procurement must be accessible according to the five oysters of the rehabilitation act. everything from r., u., including our online coursework.

it easier to create it up front. and it's cheaper to create it up front than it is to retrofit it on the backend. particularly for coursework that uses a lot of the dealings, may link to an accessible websites, that are not 508 compliant, and translate materials from a lot of other virtual kind of networks. we have created a few online training mechanisms through research and grants that we have done at the office of disability employment policy. and what are the ones we took on very early thinking about broadband was telework. and we designed a program and we targeted folks who aren either federal or state workers comp programs, or interestingly returning service members are we found that onef e advantages for this particular subgroup of

people with disabilities is that the broadband and the tework provided a bridge for return to work. and that's anotherrilliant is that itot only improves work skills but it can also be that bridge and coming back into the workforce. and for many people with disabilities, who are either been entered on the job o returning from service overseas, this is a very critical a important stragy. but again, what we found with our initiatives was that part of the trouble again was the accessibility of the internet and internet providers don't really think about it. i think some of the other challenges that we face, and i'm sure everybody faces. what happened with the lot of the downtime, you know, the comcast connection goes out or something happens or the course gets interrupted.

i think the social networking and the group of learning that needs to happen for people with disabilities is not really addressed as thoroughly as it should be with online courses. for example, many people with learning disabilities tend to learn better in groups because their people there who comp about whether it's a visual perceptual problem or dyslexia or something else. so i think that there are many thingshat need to be built into the system. it should be universal. universally designed. it should be done up front and not retrofitted, but we are really challenged in that only getting this out to the workforce development system, which we bought a lot. something enjoy doing is saying yes, but. but then also really working with the colleges and universities to understand this at to make that connection between the content that they are delivering online training

and who their audiences are. so with that, i will put my plug-in and thank you all. and i will turn it back over to you. >> thank you so much, richard, for telling us about the challenges that disability citizens face and especially on the online learning were openly we'll be able to find solutions in the future. our next panelist is from the workforce alliance. it a national coalition of community-sed organization, community colleges, business leaders and local offials advocating for public policies that invest in the skills of american workers. american workers. mr. kermit kaleba is a senior policy analyst for the workforce alliance. kermit? >> great. thank you ve much for exciting and inviting as. about how broadband creates opportunities, particularly for low andiddle skill workers t also some of the limitations that we see with online learning

and just want to kind of like those in advance. sm as jing mention we are a national coalition of businesses, community-based organizations, community coeges and other education training providers advocating for federal policies and state policies that advance the skills of the america workforce. i think there's a broad agreement that has been mentioned that education and training is a key to economic competitiveness. it is also key to extending equity in this country. so it's something that we focus very carefully on. what we particularly focus on are the needs of folks that are often excluded om the policy conversations around education and training. so low and middle skilled working adults that tend to be beyond the reach of the k2 system that they don't necessarily connect with the traditional post secondary education system and the way that policy is designed. and so we really t to advocate for policies that help those folks get access to education and training. it's exciting to be talking to online education. it's exciting to be talking about technologies and learning technologies that can help these

individuals because i do think they face unie barriers and that there are some advantages to online learning. so i just want to a couple of quick facts, or just a couple of things that i know about online learning or things that are of interest. i think it's clear that online learning is here to stay. i think 10, 10, 15 years ago there was some question about unit one campas said this will replace classroom training completely, yet a campus still kind of existed as a use for the. it's a bch of junk. 's just correspondence courses on computers. but i think we now know there's been adoptn in the private sector, the american society for training to government, the industry report in 2008, indicated that about a third of private sector learning is taking place is the e-learning nowadays. there is report taking place at three-point 9 million college student are taking at least one online course in the fall 2007 which is up from 1.6 millionn

2002. so more than double. and i think you are starting to see that federal policies toward moving to accept online learni a little bit more. you had back in 2006 the higher education reconciliation act had a reputable is called a 50% rule which plays a lot of restrictions on online learning for institutions of higher education and the ability to access title iv financial assistance. and you have also seen the president back in july announced his community college initiati initiative, a major new initiati to expand to improve how community colleges serve americ part of that is $500 million investment and it's also in the house. there is no legislation called the student aid and fiscal responsibility act that wil includ$500 billion over 10 years for the development of online educati in high school and post secondary courses, free, education. we think that's fantastic. that's wonderful.

it's a wonderful initiative and i figure shows how far online learning has come in the last 10 to 15 years. the advantages of online learning, i am sure other people are going to talk about this as well. i mean, obviously we know that it works. otherwise the private sector and the higher education sector, we know that it works at sothing's farewell otherwise the private sector or the higher education sector wouldn't be adopted to the degree that they are. it's obvious a very effective method of information transfer. and as we get more sophisticated technology, more sophisticated models stimulati and the structur, so you can pick something right there, you kw, there's a lot of things about online learning that we know are effective. particularly for l and middle skilled workers, i think what a great guy who is this increased access to education and training. three quarters of today's college student are what we would call -- are classified as at least what we would call nontraditional doctor. so they are worng adults here

to have defended your definition of independent. they have delayed aerobic had to work full-time but they're only going to school part-time pic for those individuals, online arning i think it's a real boon because if you have to deal withhim as head of talking to come if you're dealing th kids, if you have to work full-time and you can only go at night. the flebility that comes from online learning to lower cost, self-paced, the removal of geographic limitation, the vacuum had to be sitting in a classroom with a teacher in order to get an education. i think that's very positive. so we would support any investmes that are being made that expand access to training and learning for working adults, particularly lower and middle skilled working adults. that having been said i think there are some limitations with online learning. just as a model, we know for exple that it's not necessarily good at replacing some hands-on training and education that has happened at a lot of the jobs tt we're talking about crting through federal investments in

infrastructure and health care, green jobs, a lot of those are jobs tt really do have a lot of hands-on experience. so while online learning is only going tbe a component and can and shoul be a component of how you should prepare people for those jobs, you can necessarily do everything through online learning. we need to be sensitive to the fact that online learning is going to have to be combined with on the job training and probably with some tditional classroom training, just to make sure that people areearning and that they are able to do the job. obviously, online learning is like any other kind of link if it contextualized to actul work experience, it's a lot more effective if peop can connect what they are going in the classroom or learning on a laptop to the job that they're going to do, that's always going to be more effective. and i think there's also just in general, i think they're still a little bit of, still not much clarity on what kind of credentials come out of online learning and whether or not those are being adopted by the business community. any kind of training in order to