activity that had capital holes that were in part therefore filled by taxpayer funds. we think as we go for the real goal here at the end of the day is to create a financial regulatory system in which firms do not pose undue risk and with the whole system in its entirety is well protected, and our view is that, having a banking firm that fundamentally subsidize their riskier activities in these areas, because they have access to the safety net, is something we can and should avoid as we construct a framework of going forward. >> but here is the challenge that you have here today i think in trying to move this committee in this direction. the challenge is this, when you say well i could find some places where they lost money, my response to you on that is, and you know what? i could find some places where they lost money on mortgages, on

commercial real estate, on residential real estate, and so what are we getting to hear? beith let me try that one. commercial banking as i said is a risky business. now the question is whether you want to in effect provide protection. when their lending to small business, when their lending to medium-sized business, when their lending to homeowners, when they are transferring money around the country those are important continuing functions of a commercial bank in my view and i think it is deserving of some public support. i do not things that the its activity falls in that range. they are not lending to your constituents. they are making money for themselves, and making money for their big bonuses, and why are we wanting to protect that activity? i want to encourage them to go into commercial lending activity. >> but, you see you are assuming

something about what i'm doing. i don't like the bailouts. i voted against heart, the second tranche of t.a.r.p.. quite honestly i don't think we should put the taxpayer in the position. but i also likewise think that if your goal is to try to wrestle risk out of the system, you get to a point where quite honestly you don't have a workable system anymore and that is what worries me about where you are going here, is because you are using this opportunity to put into place something that has some pretty profound consequences and i am not sure the circumstances justify that step. that is why i asked these questions. >> alright, it is a reasonable question. i am sorry i apparently can't get through but i don't want to restrict commercial banks from doing commercial banking in traditional business. i want to encourage lending. i don't want to encourage speculative activities.

>> let me just wrap up all. i'm out of time and i think the chairman really appreciates-- appreciate both of you i really do. we are trying to wrestle with tough issues, trying to understand them without damaging the economy, so is critically important that we ask these tough questions. i am glad you ask them. >> thank you. >> thank you senator very much. senator johnston. >> thank you chairman faulkner and secretary wolin. chairman volcker, one of the actions taken by the fed was transforming large nonbanks into a bank holding companies with access to the feds window. what should be done with investment banks that became bank holding companies if the volcker rule is adopted?

>> well, if the rule was adopted they would not have been engaging in some of these activities but they could still get in trouble. banks of had a history of this century's and getting in trouble, so that is why one of the reasons we have the federal reserve. they get in trouble and it seems to be a viable institution and a solvent institution, you have recourse to the federal reserve to handle even the rather extreme liquidity needs. and i think that is totally appropriate. that is one form of government support, given to the banking system. and i don't see that changing. i think it is important to provide that backstop. and almost every country in the world provides that kind of backstop to weech banking system so that does not change. >> secretary wolin, if the proposal includes a provision that gives banks the explicit

choice to accept the bank holding company regime, do you have any concerns that this would create new regulatory gaps? are there concerns that companies would go abroad where there are not proprietary trading decisions? >> senator johnson, i don't think we are likely to see regulatory gaps. our proposal would say whether you choose to be a bank holding company or a financial company that can do these other activities, you would still be subject to the overall consolidated supervisory regime that has strong capital standards, leverage requirements , liquidity requirements and so forth, so from that perspective, there are other pieces of our proposal which we think are absolutely critical that would still apply to those firms that shows no longer to be bank holding companies.

on the international dimension of your question senator, again i think we are working closely with our g-20 partners to make sure that the get a regime that works worldwide so that we don't have new opportunities for arbitrage. i think is the chairman said very eloquently, it is important for us to lead in that effort and we are leading and at the end of the day again, i think for us to have a strong regulatory regime is in some sense the most important competitive advantage that we could create because capital will want to flow where it is going to be protected and save and with the overall framework is one that can be relied upon. >> chairman volcker horse secretary wolin, it is my understanding that this thing-- federal banking regulators already have the discretionary authority to impose activities,

restrictions right now, very similar to what would be mandated by the proposal, the fed may require a bank holding company or a financial holding company to trim any activity or divest control over any subsidiary that has reasonable belief that constitutes serious risks to the financial safety, soundness or stability of a subsidiary bank on a firm by a firm basis. do you believe that the fed has this authority? are there specific examples in the last few years where you think they failed to use this authority? >> i have no doubt that they have further instruction from the congress to put it that way. i don't know. i have been too far removed as to what authority the federal

reserve would have. some of these activities, most of them are provided for in the plot and the boss says the bank can do so-and-so. i don't think the federal reserve can likely say i don't care what the law says, you can do it. they can have a general concern about safety and soundness and within limits i think they can say you are conducting a particular activity in a very risky way, and don't do it but i'm not sure they could say you can't, you can't do proprietary trading as the law permits it. i think they need further instruction. >> mr. wolin? >> i think the fed and regulators to have a broad set of regulatory authorities to act in circumstances where the thing safety and soundness is at risk. our proposal suggest those authorities ought to be clarified and strengthen but in these three areas, we believe that it shouldn't be left up to the discretion of the regulator,

that if you are going to get the benefit of the safety net that banks and banking firms enjoy you shouldn't be allowed to do these three activities which are riskier and would get the subsidized benefit and effect of that access to the safety net. so we think it is important for the regulators to have even stronger authorities to act in discretionary way to make sure that when they see something in a firm or that is broader, that they can take appropriate action, but this ought to be hardwired in our view. >> what are the benefits of restrictions of activities on a wholesale basis instead of restrictions on a firm by a firm basis? >> i think you would want some consistency over the industry is all i would say about that. i don't think you want to say from a and deal with this business and firm b can't.

dew mike, because of a particular circumstance have some reason to think firm b is taking extreme actions that are not creditworthy and you say stop it because they are going overboard but i don't think you can say they don't have the same authority to take action that another bank does. >> my time is up. >> thank you very much senator. center bunning. >> thank you both for being here. i appreciated very much. in your written statement secretary wolin, you said we should limit the ability of financial institutions to get bigger. it is in your written statement. chairman volcker comment you do not address the size of firms in your statement. do you agree with secretary wolin that we should limit the

size of financial institutions and if so, what limits would you point, or should we set? >> well, i have not been involved with these discussions directly but i think there is a kind of common sense feeling that at some point, a financial institution particularly a bank is so large in comparison to the whole market that it raises questions, not just of stability and failure, but the competition. and the united states is a very big market, and as i indicated earlier at one point we thought a 5% restriction might be appropriate. >> i was on the committee. >> now is becoming high-rises that. there is nothing magic about a particular number but there is some point where it makes me feel uncomfortable if it gets too big and but the point is i think you have to decide. >> would you like to--

>> thank you senator bunning. this is an important-- we do think there ought to be a limit on the relative size. that is to say proportion to the overall size of the system. what we don't want to do was constrained, or have this blind on the current size of the firms. that is to say firms do not have to shrink so it is from further growth, and in our view it does not and should apply to organic growth meaning like the 10% deposit capka.appliance circumstances where you jump over the size limit through acquisition. again we have to work on what that size limit should be, but at the end of the day it is our view that there is important correlation between size and riskiness of firms. it is not the only thing, but at some point firms get to be so big that they do impose a risk on the system. >> let me follow up on your statement because you said that

we need to stop larger financial institutions from getting bigger, and then you just have said that we shouldn't try to shrink them. is that correct? >> that is right. >> if these firms are already too big to fail, and the last two years have shown that at least in the judgment of the federal and treasury, that is the case, why should we not force them to get smaller in addition to stronger regulations? how does letting a firm that is already too big to fail stay big? how does it solve the problem? >> senator i think it is an incredibly important question. to basic responses. we do have another proposal a series of elements that we thing create positive economic incentives for firms to frank. heightened capital standards,

leverage constraints, liquidity requirements all of which will create economic incentives in the direction that you are talking about, so this is again a set of proposals that build on one another and no one of them is the entire answer so i think you know the other part of it of course is we do agree that it is critically important that resolution authority be adopted so that we don't have this horrible choice between having firms failed with tremendous consequences to the broader system on the one hand or having to make the taxpayer foot the bill on the other, so that firms are essentially put out of their misery or our misery in ways that accomplished that goal, but do so in an orderly fashion. i think those would be the basic answers. >> senator johnson brought this up. on regulations, you know, the congress has acted on

regulations. in 1994, we by regulation and by law gave the fed the authority to regulate banks and mortgage brokers. we gave them the power. we didn't force them to use it. so, for 14 years, they sat on their hands and did nothing. now, how do you propose in your proposals to force the regulator to act? >> well, i think senator that is obviously critically important. i think the statute should lay out that this is what the law should be. >> we did that. >> i think, you know, we have all learned a lot of lessons through this. >> i know, but 14 years is a long time before you we write

one rule, isn't it? you know, so all i am saying is that began to those wonderful things that you are proposing. we can't force the regulator to enforce it. and, i want to make sure, if we do overhaul our financial regulatory regime, that there is guts, in what we do. >> i think senator one of the ways in which you can have confidence that that would happen in the proposals we put forward and with which we are working with the committee is to have the council, to have a group that has political accountability including to the congress, and you know, i think that is the way to make sure that the will of the committee and the will of the congress overall is move forward. we certainly take that seriously. >> we also have to have really basic standards that the

financial institutions have to me. i mean, you know we talked about all the things that are non-bank activities. well, if they are non-bank, bank activities only non-bank bank should do them and when we get into proprietary trading and when we get into other tashman chairman one-- chairman volcker, and you said that it is okay for banks to package mortgages. wasn't that at the heart of our crisis? i know we are looking back and i want to look forward to preventing it. >> certainly the whole mortgage market was an important problem here, and the banks were participating in that and they were doing things that i think contributed to the problem of the mortgage market. but this gets into other areas.

we do want a mortgage market. we do want to make mortgages available to people. >> we are having problems right now. >> we want to prohibit people from making mortgages. i think one of the proposals that is in the administration approach, and i think it is in the house bill, when a bank or other institution packages securities whether they are mortgages or otherwise and sells them, in a package the key part of the package themselves which was a discipline i think that was missing. >> we think that is a great idea. then they share the risk. my time has expired. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you very much senator. senator re. >> thank you chairman volcker and mr. secretary. there are lots of institutions now the bank holding companies, investment banks seem to be a footnote in history but when you go on the street very few of

them are performing like banks, which is on the popular sense of the bank which is to take deposits and provide a safe return and also to make commercial loans, residential loans and consumer loans. my sense is that the essence of your proposal is not simply to prevent proprietary trading but more importantly to get them to start acting like banks again, which is to make commercial loans, to make consumer loans and make residential loans. >> i don't want them to be degraded from those activities. >> i wonder mr. chairman, and you have, but could you once again kind of stress of this proposal would focus them on those activities? >> well, i think the only answer that i have is i think it focuses on activities by removing the temptation to get highly involved in more speculative types of activities with immediate returns that should be very high and you have got highly paid people who want to keep that kind of activity

going. i think commercial banks would like to understand their basic role in the scheme of things that you just outlined in concentrate on them. one thing i might as the ad is a complication at this time. i apologize late in the afternoon, but there is a question about money market mutual funds. that they originated in the kind of regulatory arbitrage some years ago because they didn't have to put up with some of the restrictions that banks put up with and they have retracted trillions of dollars. more of those dollars were in the banking system, i think the incentive to land to businesses or homeowners or whatever would be greater. that is an area where the administration has made some proposals that ought to be taken seriously. >> i appreciate the point and it is well made. i think again returning to this issue, when i go and i think when my colleagues go back to

their homes people are saying i can't get a loan. i have got good credit. or, they have just cut my line of credit in have been raised the interest rates by tenor 12% at the time the course of the funds is close to zero and some of that this covering as you suggest the losses and other types of activities or i think some of it is because they can take that low-cost money and put it into these types of proprietary activities in making but-- much larger return. if you are a business person that is what you do. >> of course that reaction became extreme in the middle of the crisis a year or more ago and nobody wanted to move the money in a place. i hope that is changing some. there is a little evidence in a survey the federal reserve made that there may be less tight than they were, but this is partly a matter of the severity of the economic crisis and a lot of loans went bad in their courses, and we want to do what

we can to increase confidence. >> let me ask you if there is another way to approach this concept, which is to say to an institution, if your traditional commercial banking activities are less than 75%, then you don't have access to the fed window. i mean, essentially what my colleagues that said time and again we don't want to subsidize the rest. we don't want the bailout but the bailout comes as we have seen, particularly in the context of bank holding companies when the federal reserve comes in and takes whatever collateral they are willing to give them and gives them lots of capital. >> i must confess it is a reversal of many other ideas. thale lyndon knopf. the deputy secretary mentioned something as a kind of discourage growth and will encourage the hope lending but i would have to think hard about the suggestion of removing an

effective safety net from banks that did not act like banks. >> well, food for thought. >> okay, we will look at it. >> senator wolin the bethany comments? >> senator readed think we want to be careful. obviously this safety net is incredibly important related to this utility function the banks play for individuals or small business, for everyone so i think want to be careful about the unintended consequences and that would be something for us to work with do you want and give additional thought to. >> this is described variously as the fed put which as we can take some risk and then we go to, there is some way to put the rest off onto the fed which ultimately the taxpayer, but i think again, i think we have to think about a way that not only gets banks back into what we think is the banking business, making loans and taking deposits

but also, and my colleagues that said this several times, is something that doesn't require a battalion of regulators constantly making judgments about is this a proprietary trade and is this a proprietary trader etc.. again i think your proposal is something that deserves very thorough thought and also think of other ways that might be implemented. thank you. >> senator reid, thank you. a very creative idea. my experience has been over the years as we have this debate and discussion about what is proprietary trading and how you define it and limit it is that there's probably some 22-year-old sitting in the of some institutions that this figure in six ways to get around anything we can ride in. that has been my experience over 30 years, we will end up passing the law and there's a whole new creative idea. to create wealth and expand opportunity but we are talking about how to get around the

rules and regulations. your idea, the beauty of it is it achieves the goal without being fairly complicated. >> i grew up where the world this kiss, keep it simple and i think-- >> not a bad rule for congress. mike crapo. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and i want to follow up on that and the number of other questions asked in the hearing today and that is the detail. the administrations submitted a significant proposal last summer about how to approach reform of the issues of in the financial world. this volcker rule was not in the proposal last summer. i assume part of the reason we did not have it was because it was a legislative proposal that did not have, and that we don't have the detailed gad for the legislative language as to how to actually make the definitions. my question chairman volcker is, drawing bright lines between the permissible and impermissible activities on the market making

proprietary trading is going to be very difficult, and some people say impossible or and workable. if the government makes it too difficult for banks to take positions then there will be less liquidity in the market and corresponding impact on capital formation and robust economic activity. do you expect that we will receive some specific legislative language so that we can understand specifically what we are talking about or what the proposal is with regard to proprietary trading and the other details of what is being discussed here? >> i think that is mr. wolin's responsibility. >> so you give us a ferry ride and secretary wolin will give us the detail? >> senator crapo, important question of reciprocal like the other proposals we first articulated in tune in the form of our white paper we will send legislative, draft legislative proposals to the committee for you all's consideration.

i think on these things like on lots of other pieces of our proposal we will want to embed in statute the principles that we f articulated with some detail but again like an awful lot of banking law and a lot of the proposals, lots will be left to the regulators to implement in a very detailed ways so that is really the process forward. we are keen to work with you. we are currently working internally and with the regulators to craft language that you can consider, and that we would want to work with you on obviously. as you move forward. and then, inevitably on these kinds of things, making judgments at the margin, trying to figure out how to implement the principles in particular context is what regulators do in really the full range of banking laws that are on the books or that are being proposed in this current discussion. >> i understand the difference

in roll between policymaking in the regulatory interpretation although there's always a conflict there, a pushtan or a tug in terms of what kind of specificity we need but am i to understand you mr. secretary to be saying that you would expect congress to pass legislation implementing the idea, but that we would not really have a good feel for what proprietary trading means when we pass this legislation? >> no, no senator. i think we would want to specify it and haven't ruled that is clear that regulators could implement. but inevitably, in the same way is current with respect to capital standards or a range of other questions that exist currently, in federal banking law or that would be enacted and federal banking law in the proposals that the committee is currently considering, certainly a lot of the detail would be left over to specific

application in the rulemaking process or in the advisory process. >> so we can expect some significant further detail from the administration on exactly what is meant by these proposals? >> we would give the the same sort of language on these proposals as we have on the other proposals that we have put forward. at the same level of detail in specificity. we really think of it as very similar in those regards. >> if i may just interject please senator. >> go ahead. >> bankers know what proprietary trading is and what it is not in don't let them tell you anything different. >> i suspect that may be true to some extent although i also suspect we could find different points of view among bankers as to exactly what we are thinking about but i think the real question is what the law says and that is going to be pretty critical. >> i agree that the question is what the law says and i don't think it is that hard to set for the law that establishes the general principle and that is

fine to have to be applied in circumstances. the chairman-- a lot of fancy mathematical training and all the rest. the supervisors need a few 28-year-olds that that had the same kind of trading. >> well i can say, and i understand the point where making but i can also tell you i think this committee and this congress need some level of specificity. on which to act with regard to these proposals because of the get them wrong i think we can be doing as much damage as good. ..

the administration however, in its recent budget submission has not chosen to do that and has not chosen to bring the gses on budget. could you explain to me why that is the case? >> senator, i think, the gses are not ownedly the u.s. government. they were under conservatorship of the fhfa. i think there is some amount of discretion could be used. we tried to be transparent as we laid out the financial circumstances of the gses. certainly, the fhfa has been transparent i understand. they have sent a letter up to the committee as recently

as today laying that out. in our budget documents i think there's been a high degree of transehrensy and whether, whether or not it was consolidated onto the balance she of the federal government. >> well i understand that but we're talking about cbo's estimate of $291 billion. and that's a pretty big difference in the budget documents depending whether it is included or not. the only thing the administration said in the proposed budget was that the administration continues to monitor the situation of gses closely and will continue to provide updates on considerations for longer term reform of fannie mae and freddie mac as appropriate. so i guess, two-part question still. is the administration going to account for that $291 billion in its budget discussion this year? and, secondly, when will we get details on what the administration's proposal for the gse reform is going to be? >> senator, again on the first question, we've laid

out in our budget documents the transparency of the financial circumstances related to the gses. i think the question of consolidation is question frankly of whether we own the g see. es or don't. we don't own them. the fha, fhfa is conservator of them. that was the judgement made there. with respect to the policy, with respect to the gses going forward, honestly we're very focused on the stability of the housing markets. we are looking at, long term options for the gses and, as we said in our white paper, we have that, we will certainly bring forward our recommendations. clearly a critically important set of things for us to be focused on but want to do that in the context of stability in those markets and make sure that, especially at this critical moment we don't do anything with respect to their long-term future that would disturb that stability. >> thank you. i personally think we need

to see that $291 billion better reflected in the budget analysis we're going through right now and i do look forward to continuing this discussion on the details of proposed gse reform. thank you. >> thank you, senator. >> thank you, senator crapo. senator schumer. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for the holding the hearing. i thank the witnesses. sorry i've been busy with a million different things that i came in at the very end. better late than never i hope. want to thank you, mr. volcker, for your thoughtful proposals. particularly relating to the too big to fail issue. i remain convinced that the step the government took to save the financial system were absolutely necessary but, i suppose like everyone in the room would prefer we never be in that situation again and agree with the premise that at the heart of your proposal. the safety net provided by government put in place over the last century in response to multiple banking panics not be put at risk by financial activities outside

the core function ever banking system. >> that's the core. >> i would like to ask a few questions to help us understand and probe it. from what i'm told the questions here, there is still a lot of trying to drill down what exactly we're talking about. i would like to talk a little bit about canada and use it by way of contrast. they have a banking system, as you know, dominated by six large full-service banks but it was the only g-7 country where the government didn't have to bail out its banking system in the recent crisis. some people say it was cultural. arguing canadians are simply more risk averse as a society than americans and their bankers are no different. but others have argued the answer had more to do with their regulatory system. i tend to believe that. i don't know exactly how it works, culture, maybe with british more risky than the canadians? you know, culturally? who knows. but, this regulatory system,

and particularly its willingness to just say no to risky practice. so here are my specific questions and then general. consumer protection. canada has a separate consumer protection agency, and despite homeownership levels higher than the u.s., the percentage of canadian mortgages that are subprime is less than half of that in the u.s.. the default rate is less than 1% in canada compared to 10% in the u.s. what role do you think canada's consumer protection agency played in maintaining a safe and robust mortgage market and not allowing, you know, billions of dollars of no doc loans to be stamped, stamped and securitized. >> i can't answer your question because i don't know. what characteristic of the canadian market is kind of interesting to me. it is essentially, much more privately-owned market so to speak than the american market. they don't have the equivalent of fannie mae and

freddie mac and kind of volume that we have. they haven't had the pressure frankly from the government to push out very lowdown payment mortgages that. that market is pretty much dominated by commercial banks which is no longer true in the united states. >> right. >> and they have had, i think an incentive to, to stay with more conservative practices in their own interest. >> what was the incentive? why -- let me put another way. why would their banks have the incentive and your banks not have the same incentive. >> our banks were out of the mortgage market basically. all these mortgages were getting package and sold to fannie mae and freddie mac. there aren't so many mortgages left, residential mortgages left on american banks. that's. >> right. >> i think that whole thing deserves some kind of review because the, american mortgage market today is broken. there is no doubt about it. >> right. >> and you have to rebuild a strong mortgage market. i think -- >> you don't think the consumer protection -- i mean i think if we had a financial consumer

protection age wouldn't have allowed a lot of the practices that we saw that frankly came initially not from banks from you mortgage brokers. >> i just personally unfamiliar with it. >> i see. you're neutral on that issue. what about securitization? >> well i think -- >> 27% of canadian mortgages are securitized compared with 67% of u.s. morts. >> what percent in canada? >> 27 in canada, 67 in the u.s.. >> that's a reflection what i said. the mortgage market in canada is still the kind of traditional banking market. >> right. >> now their mortgages are in shorter duration. they haven't got all the favorable arrangements for mortgages we do. they're not, they have no tax advantages. >> right. >> they, have, prepayment charges and that kind of thing. so they have a different mortgage market. we ought to learn from them maybe. not maybe, i think we ought to. it's a different, it is less

government-dominated mortgage market. >> you think securitization is also related to the fannie and freddie guaranties. >> no question that freddie -- >> you agree with that, mr. wolin? >> yeah. >> if we didn't guaranty as many mortgages, there would be less securitization? i don't know about. that we securitize everything here. not just federally guaranteed stuff not just mortgages. everything got securitized. credit card loans got security advertised without any federal guaranty. >> that's correct. but i think it is fair to say -- >> my guess if you compared canadian banks on credit cards their rate of securitization would be considerably lower. >> i don't know but i suspect so. >> that would have nothing to do with span any and freddie. >> there is lot of differences between canadian banks and american banks. as you said they have only five or six major banks heavily engaged in retail banking. >> right. >> their life's work is retail banking. that is no longer true with some american banks but not of great big ones.

>> was it true of b-of-a -- >> that's right. >> before two, three years ago, right? >> that's correct. they have, because there are so few competitor situation is quite different because, it's a stable oligopoly. >> any other lessons you might draw from the canadian situation? >> i think they have been more conservative in regulation. that is my impression of supervision. they are the, central bank is not the chief regulator. >> right. >> and it is like the british. but some years ago, not recently, but some years ago they got in trouble when their major, two of their major regional banks did go bankrupt. >> right. >> and, the, at that point, people were not so proud of the regulatory system until canada. >> another question. the inverse of this question. leer you had canada, big, big, banks relatively secure. just because an institution is small doesn't mean it is not risky. i would argue these days, doesn't even mean they don't pose systemic. maybe one hedge fund

doesn't. if 50 hedge funds do the same thing, together, they propose a problem of systemic risk, if it is a risky activity. and with all of the counterparty risk, and the intertwined spaghetti-like nature of the financial system, i mean even back a while ago, you know, whatever the place was in greenwich. long term -- >> capital management. >> capital management. wasn't that large a company but if the fed didn't heavily intervene and get other people prop it up we might have had the whole system unraveling. i guess the question i'm getting at on both ends of this. neil: isn't it, i don't want to even put it that way. it is riskiness of the activities that financial institutions do as much as their size, that matters or would you not argue that? in other words, because, just take my example, a risky activity done by one hedge fund or one small

investment bank doesn't shake up the system but if 50 of them are doing it does, particularly with count party risk. that is my last question. could you each comment? >> i think multifact tomorrow. size is related. riskiness of the activity is related so some combination. i think our proposals are meant to address each of those things in ferrous combinations but, we do think that size at some level, above some threshold is an important indicator of risk to the system but it is absolutely true, senator, that there are other elements to that equation. >> you could clearly say, one large institution doing risky things pose as greater systemic risk than one small institution doing it? >> absolutely. go ahead. >> you're touching on very big question of contagion. that institutions who are not in trouble necessarily, and may be in a reasonably

stable position are no longer stable if other people are failing and it is kind of a panic. now the answer to that, in terms of hedge funds and equity funds and so forth is, they are less likely because of the method of financing. you don't withdraw a short term money from hedge funds and equity funds because they typically don't take short term money. they largely take equity money. that's a very different situation when it comes to the effects of kind of panic spreading around. >> that fateful week, and chris was there, the worry was these people with short term paper would withdraw it from all the large institutions and i guess that's right. it couldn't happen for most of the smaller institutions because their capital was longer-term. >> slow burn. >> very interesting point. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator. senator menendez. >> thank you, mr. chairman a great deal. mr. chairman and mr. secretary, thank you. mr. chairman i want to reiterate as you visited me

earlier today and i was looking at the pictures of famous new jerseyians on outer-offs i welcome you to send us a picture and we will hang it up in the outer office along with all the other fame mouse -- born in cape may new jersey. married a jersey girl. that is about as jersey as i get. >> depends how this legislation comes out whether i want my --. >> may you live longer. which state did you live longer? >> since he eating up my time you can -- [laughter] some other time. >> as an adult lived longer in new york. >> you wished you lived in connecticut. [laughter] >> i wish i lived in connecticut, exactly. >> all right. well, let me, the offer still stands. i, am reminded at the mantle

of the archives building says what is past is prologued. and it seems to me that, a lot of people want to dance around here but at the end of the day, if we don't act, we are destined at some point in the future to relive a crisis and that would be the worst situation per pep waited on the -- perpetuated on the american people. so i think this is incredibly important. in the wake of the financial crisis, the surviving banks have actually gotten, grown bigger, not smaller. and the volcker rule doesn't force existing banks to downsize. so does that mean, that you're comfortable with the current size of the banks that have still exist? >> well, i'm not terribly upset by it. i think there are limits. as we discussed earlier, common sense limits as to

how much of a concentration you want in banking. and i have sympathy for what the administration is trying to figure out, a sensible kind of limit that doesn't put a hard cap on organic growth of a bank but says look, if you're already very big you can't go combine with something else that is very big. i think these very big banks, they're able to take care of themselves. >> isn't one of the risks here, i pose this question throughout, sometime now at these hearings, if, if you're too big to fail, haven't we failed already? because it presumes that your consequences to the economy are such we can't let you fail. but that also produces the environment for risk-taking that shouldn't take place? >> senator, i think it is important, i think from our perspective the size cap that is one of the two elements of what the president announced a few weeks back is not the only piece of our proposals that deal with size. so, by, asking for higher

capital standards, liquidity requirement, leverage standards and so forth, we do create positive economic incentives for firms to shrink, and, believe that is done in the context of making sure that all of those standards are really focused importantly on making sure that firms individually, in the system in aggregate, is not overly risky so those things are tethered, economic incentive to get smaller and the buffers, the cushions, the extent to which the firm can be more resilient in moments of distress are interlinked. >> there's another point here if i may add to that answer. with the resolution authority, which, you haven't brought up, what seems too big to fail today may not be too big to fail tomorrow because you have a better arrangement for putting that institution to sleep without disturbing the whole market. that is the whole purpose of this resolution authority. to handle big failures.

>> now it seems to me that one of the, one of the, asking whether proprietary trading played a role in this crisis is missing the biggest lesson of this crisis which is, how do you avert the next one? and, we know proprietary trading can be dangerous, and contributed to the downfall of some investment banks and, mr. chairman, you talked about, not having taxpayer support for speculative activity. so, just seems to me that, we should be attributing that to commercial banks as well. so that we, at the end of the day, can insure that customer deposits, don't end up being part of the speculative nature that can create a crisis. so that is in essence what you're trying to do. >> in essence -- >> now with that. if we pass a law preventing

commercial banks from engaging in proprietary lending, one possibility, a goldman sachs or a jpmorgan will simply drop their bank holding company status and continue to engage in proprietary trading, hedge fund, private equity activity. if they do that, will our financial system be less system i canly at risk? >> i think, senator, whether they choose to be a bank holding company and engage in banking activities or whether they choose instead to engage in these riskier activities the full range of supervisory constraints and prudential standards we think need to be tough and heightened will still apply. and so from that perspective we'll still be, well-covered in the proposals we're putting forward. i think what we'll have additionally not having these risky activities be subsy diesed in effect in circumstances with are a

firm has, because of its access to the safety net, essentially a lower cost of funding and advantages that are in some sense, helping them it, focus on and engage in the activities that we're concerned about. >> so the volcker rule alone, if we're concerned about more broad systemic risk outside of even banking institutions needs to have it be augmented by some of the other proposals. >> no question about it the, absolutely senator. >> and finely, mr. chairman, you have said, mr. chairman that there is, quote, not a sled of evidence that financial innovation has improved our economy, and in fact innovative financial products, quote, took us right to the brink of disaster. why do you believe that financial innovation got so out of control, and can regulators, as we, as the chairman and the committee deal with financial regulatory reform, can regulators ever be in a position to keep pace with innovation? if not, are there steps we

should take to make banking and innovation, you know, subject to the ability to insure that it doesn't get out of control? >> there's no assurance in this area. but part of what i hope is the effect of what we're proposing is to reduce the capacity of the banks through imaginative financial engineering techniques to get way ahead of the rest of it, way ahead of the regulators. because the most fertile field for this is in the area of hedge funds, equity funds, and proprietary trading. doesn't mean they can't do a lot of complex things and, in more traditional banking area. at least you cut down to some extent, the risks of which you speak quite rightly. and i do think the supervisory agencies have to be better staffed.

i think some of them are pretty well-staffed now but they have to have the funds and interest and the capacity to attract some of the brightest and best financial engineers too. takes a thief to catch a thief so to speak. so there's a lot to be done in that area. >> mr. secretary, you want to comment on it? >> senator, thank you. i think financial innovation is incredibly important to our economy and to people and businesses across the country. the critical question from our perspective is that innovation happen within a robust framework of consumer protection, firstly and secondly, the taxpayer is not on the hook for when those innovations go sideways that the firms themselves bear the downside risk of, in effect sales innovations. so we want to make sure we have a system in which we have lots of innovation in this sector. that is hugely important. i think to all, to our entire country and to our economy. but, incredibly important that it be done within those

two critical frame works. >> so, innovation in which the innovator bears the risk? >> exactly. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senator. just a couple of thoughts if i can, picking up the question that senator menendez raised. some have raised issue supposing an investment bank using the examples where they would get rid of holding companies, so no longer at least would be defined accordingly, but since they were at least, one's covered by the safety net, should we worry about that it would still be viewed as being protected? and as such, or that would it would act as if it were? >> absolutely. i think's the big problem you face. having being protected once they expect to be protected again. more important, their creditors will expect it. >> that's what i'm getting at here. >> that is why i think you have to be very tough and, legislative language with this resolution authority. is the resolution authority,

is not a safety net. >> no, agreed. >> it's a -- >> i'm not going to write, we're working on the bill. as you know, and you heard for a number of months here to try to pull this together. let me, i'm hesitant to tell you what's going to be in the bill or not in the bill but one thing seems to be emerging you heard today is very, very strong proposal dealing with resolution authority. and, clearly, the next of too big to fail is, as i've said repeatedly should become historic terms. bankruptcy receivership is the way these things will end up and leave opportunity for resolution but that would be such a painful road to go down, there would be enough incentives to discourage from opting for that solution. the question i suggest as you suggested, i think an awful lot of that will do you have a full lot of what we're trying to achieve. the notion of being bailed out will be absolutely off the charts. to the extent, maximum extent possible.

so euthanasia to use your word, chairman volcker, that is not a legislative term that is exactly what we're trying to achieve here. that i think goes a long way. i'm probably minority of one on this committee but i for one have been always attractive to the idea of a principle-based civil rather than rule-based system. it gets to the heart of the matter in so many better ways and instead of writing specific rules all the time with the full knowledge every time you write one, someone is trying to figure to how to get around it. it is a game you never ever catch up on. i think a principle-based system is lot more leveraging authority to the regulators. that is separate debate for a later time. let me also suggest to i here and i say this primarily to you secretary, wolin and lesser degree chairman volcker. we've got to get something done up here now. we've had over 52 hearings this year. i can't tell you the countless meetings i had with members of this committee. this represents one quarter of the united states senate on this committee. and i have had endless

meetings with people on the various aspects of this bill. it's not a moveable feast. it is not one that i can add ideas to it on a weekly basis and expect to get this done. while i certainly have been familiar with the issue of dealing with proprietary trading and other issues, it does come up late and the idea that the administration made this such a major point a week or so ago, seemed to many to be transparent lenly political and not substantive. it is adding to the problems of trying to get a bill done. there are other ideas that clearly should be a part of this but there are tipping points. there is only so much that this institution will tolerate in a given point of time. been around long enough to know what happens, if you try to do more and bite off more than you can chew. we're getting precariously close to that. i don't want to end up with a day here, because, ideas, many of them, this is what i said to you, i like the idea. either this variation of or what jack reed suggested or something along these lines but i don't want to be in a position where we end up doing nothing because we

tried to do too much at a critical moment. so i want you to know that. because it is important from the administration's standpoint. getting late in the this game now. we need to do this right and do it carefully. i've been trying to do that and i want to do it if i can on a bipartisan basis. don't want to go to the floor of the united states senate begging for 60th vote. i'm not going to do that. i want you to know that as we go forward. if you have more ideas, let me know here. and, let me know in a timely fashion. also when you call down say how does it work and specifically what you had in mind i expect answers to the questions. we made the call and we're not getting good answers. >> let me just respond a little bit if i can. really important i think to get this right and, if you don't do it in the first round, god knows when the second round. >> i don't know either. but you can't add stuff every day to me. >> it is important we have a little chance and you have a little chance to see what direction the british are going in and the french are going in and so forth. the idea that this comes down to some party vote or

60 votes or something i don't think is right in this area because it is obviously not a partisan issue. >> no. >> let me just say for the record, i read all this stuff that the president's announcement was political, came after massachusetts. i know personally he decided this some weeks before, and he has been discussing what day to announce it. long before, before massachusetts. and it was just a sheer coincidence that this thing came out on thursday after -- >> you and i know that. members of the committee know that. >> just want the public to know it. >> but it doesn't, we also have, also, to say looks the way sometimes these things are announced don't help. >> i understand. >> i make recommendations and so forth how to do this stuff and it falls on deaf ears. so we end up in the situation where i'm grappling around here trying to convince people there is substantive idea here that needs to be tangled with. >> we'll convince as many as we can to help you out. >> i appreciate that. >> mr. chairman, let me just say, i hear you. working obviously to work

with you as you work through what you're doing as you say. and, this we believe is part and parcel to a lot of things we put forward. we understand that adding it at this moment, as to adds to your challenge and we hope to help you as you work through getting a bill from here to there. >> i appreciate that. senator crapo asked that i include a statement he wanted for the record, from that he wanted to put in for the financial services roundtable. i will ask concept that be included in the record as well. we'll have continuation of this hearing on thursday. coming forward and appreciate, mr. wolin your offer to continue to be helpful on this and we'll continue to move quickly. meeting will stand adjourned. >> thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> the national . . >> is that a medium right there? >> yes, ma'am. >> are you here at geneva convention or as a vendor of?

>> both. we've been to several of the functions. one of the things were very adamant about, we have american workers. we believe everyone should be united. >> have you been selling these at other events of? >> would also manufacturing for the government. >> this is like -- >> it became a passion and the company. we started going to marches and key party movements. that we start to see at all the movements,. >> are you actually, are you involved in your own local party? >> yes. >> when you hear criticisms and concerns about the tea parties coming out -- >> my feeling is, at kind of goes back to the old philosophy, i think it's good to see the people believe that they need to go back to the grassroots. the american made manufacturer,

jobs in the u.s., that's what we're about. that's what we believe in and that's why we got involved in a. we didn't plan on doing teachers for these functions until we start to seek imported t-shirts. and then it's like the autoworker, after he's striking, he goes to wal-mart and buys a bunch of stuff from china. >> can you show some of your bestsellers, teacher? >> they all are. we get a convention when. this is a good one. and then obviously -- since everybody keeps bringing this about, this one is always a good one.

>> it's really easy >> now a form on media representation of women and minoritiesfrom an all day conference hosted by the national urban fellows. it's just over 90 minutes.

>> okay. we are ready to rock 'n roll, as they say, and it is my great pleasure to introduce angela perry, our director of two medications. i wanted to give her a lot of opportunity to see you i die, because she has done so much for this conference, bringing together this great set of speakers and leaders. so i did want to recognize angela, and she's going to do the honors. [applause] >> and she's going to do the honors of introducing this fabulous group of speakers and panel. thank you so much. >> good afternoon everybody. this is all for you, so i hope you are really enjoying it. you will recall that our thing for this year's 40 anniversary conference is 40 years, leaders

of the past present and the future. and i hope you have been inspired by the echoes, the voices of the leaders from the past. i think you heard this afternoon with benjamin. i think you heard it was cory booker this morning. but i have the pleasure of presenting you this afternoon with some of the most amazing present and future leaders of media. and i know it's been hot in here all afternoon, but it's going to get hotter. [laughter] >> so i hope you're ready. i have the pleasure of meeting actually a member of our board of directors, jeff johnson. jeff is a washington, d.c.,-based award-winning journalist, a social activist and political commentator. from his celebrated conversations with marquis world figures in the political business and entertaining arenas to his grassroots trench work to inspire the next generation of leaders. he continues to be a trailblazer, a social entrepreneur, and an enthusiastic voice for change.

currently, jeff is a commentator on the nationally syndicated tom joyner morning show, tackling issues on politics, entertainment and social policy issues as well as a plethora of other issues. he is regularly contributing commentary and analysis about issues related to race, politics, popular culture and social economics. for as i said, many, many media outlets. in september 2009, jeff released his first book, "everything i'm not made me everything i am." he is also a ceo of jeff's nation llc. and he is a member of the national urban board of directors as i mentioned. jeff johnson. [applause] >> our next speaker, many of you saw yesterday. but she is an amazing new boys behind the camera.

she is doing a lot of interesting work. dr. defrancesco soto is an associate professor of political science at northwestern university and a faculty fellow at northwestern's institute for policy research. her research focuses on race and ethnic politics, immigration and campaign elections. her academic research has been lee published in scholarly journals and edited volumes. her current work examines how much of political candidates are evaluated by both latino and non-latino populations. dr. defrancesco soto has also brings public opinion expertise to understand presidential elections. presently she is examining how the 2008 presidential campaign ads shape public opinion and voter choice. and this announces she's applies an integrated marketing communications approach to understand how ethnically targeted ads influence political choice.

in the media sphere dr. defrancesco soto regularly contributes to national media outlets. in 2008 she serve as a primary expert analyst on cnn, and espanol 2008 presidential coverage. she is also a featured guest on the today show and npr. dr. defrancesco soto. [applause] >> as one of the new young voices in the world of political analysis. with an extensive background in democratic politics and international affairs, he was a strong supporter of barack obama's campaign and became a fixture on cnn's political coverage. what is entertaining opinions distinguished him as one of the freshest commentators in the

media. previously, he was a senior aide to several democratic political campaigns. his opinions have been featured in major national news outlets, including the "new york times," gq, and the politico. jamal simmons. [applause] >> the way this is going to work is each of them are going to talk to you for 10 to 15 minutes, and then jeff is going to moderate a panel with some really invigorating and provocative discussions on the media. thank you so much. >> good afternoon. i guess this is the invigorating part. [laughter] >> and it is an honor and pleasure to be here, give greetings to my other board members and to all of you, regardless of what role or class that you are part of within this fantastic organization that i am proud to be a part of. clearly in dealing with the

media, there are way too many directions that we could go in, but for the purpose of trying to create a focused dialogue, i think that we're going to target obviously news and public affairs programming and information distribution, via multiple media outlets. and so that we can have a targeted conversation and really make it a conversation, i think all of us are not going to speak for 15 minutes. but try to keep it a little more concise than that. and then begin to have a conversation with each other, and hopefully open the floor so we can all engage in that dialog. i think what's very interesting as we've looked at, potentially, the last month, we've realize more than ever how interesting it is that people of color are utilized within mainstream yet especially as it relates to news coverage. many of us are privately throwing parties for harry reid,

thanking him for saying something foolish that allowed us to be on air. because had it not been for harry reid, there would have been a large number of people of color that would not have been asked to come on cnn or fox or msnbc, that would not have been the wide variety of commentary that we saw in the huffington post by people of color. around a specific issue. clearly, when issues of race arise, that is when it becomes appropriate for certain faces to be able to be seen on a wide range of media outlets. what's frustrating about this is obviously there are too many academics and strategists and professionals that have the ability to speak to a wide range of issues that don't target issues of race. but those individuals are not called him. they are not called by bookers. they are not identified by producers. they are not made aware by host to be able to even be on the list of people that are

identified to be able to speak on these issues that don't specifically talk about how does obama -- how does the black community feel about president obama. and was even more challenging is, as i begin to look at this, is the reality if president obama was not president, how fewer number of people of color would be asked to be on the shows. now perhaps it would be women, because hillary might be president, and that would be a great thing. but it takes into consideration that even the naacp i think is very targeted attempt over the last decade in particular, to deal with networks, even more than cable stations, about blacks in the media, blacks behind the camera and blacks in front of the camera. and for those of you who are aware of the work that the naacp did under, challenging the networks, in many cases in successful ways about seeing

more african-american producers hired, more african-american latino directors like that more in developing shows. but this was primarily focused on sitcoms and dramas for the networks, not in network news. not in information distribution. this becomes problematic because as we know, so many people in this country define their reality based on what they see on cnn. or determine what's real or factual based on what they see on fox news. that's terrifying. [laughter] >> but regardless of what ideological position you find yourself on, i find that rather frightening. so the real question here is, do we just continue to have the kind of discourse that would normally have in these private sectors about what a shame it is not to see more people of color, not only as hosts, because

interestingly enough we saw just this past week msnbc attempt to do their of black in america posted by chris matthews, ironically. [laughter] >> who interestingly enough as i sat in the auditorium, and watched chris moved less strategically than he normally moves, allowing the conversation to go in directions it never should have gone in, i was at least encouraged by chris's sensibility of communities of color. when the issue of reparations was raised, and a very unsophisticated way, chris was really the only person that was able to address it by providing historical context, and talking about being an issue that should at least be discussed. not which direction it should be in, not how it should be discussed, but that was not an issue that could be glossed over. my concern was most of the

african-americans that were on that panel at the time did not feel comfortable enough addressing reparations, because they understood the reality that if they address to the wrong way it was the last time they were going to be on msnbc. and so how can i in the place, where it's sexy to be exotically ethnic -- [laughter] >> but not aggressively ethnic, and who defines that and how, it becomes more and more a walking on eggshells act when you already know that there are fewer and fewer of us there. i mean, if you look at msnbc, the only black face the easy primary is cameron all. and most of the other african-americans are there every sparingly at best. and those that were there are no longer there. cnn is attempting to be the newest version of b.e.t., since bt does not know how to be news.

[applause] >> high, c-span. [laughter] >> since they don't know how to do news. and have been at least courting an african-american, latino audience in a way that most of the other networks have not. however, that has not translated into more african-american or latino producers. and has not translated into them identifying new faces. with a level of integrity can talk about a broad number of these issues. some of that is ecstatic that it saved her career on cnn. but what does that say when we are not cultivating new faces and new voices? we had people like jamal who was on very consistently more finite period of time, but they are not looking to identify voices that are there consistently. and so the real question for us as those that are involved in this space, is how do we begin to engage the corporate side of what we see? how do we have -- i think very

pragmatic and focused meetings with executives that i think are open to the conversation of identifying races of color. to be in front of the camera and behind a camera. as jamal and i recognize, really even who are the bookers. because if you have a very effective booker who is either a person of color or a sensitive to the community of color, those are the individuals that ensure that those faces are on larry king or chris matthews, or any of these other plethora of shows. that throw out intellectual thought. and so as we have this discussion, i know that dick is going to talk a great deal about statistics, especially as it relates to the electoral process, and jamal is going to dive a little bit and to some of the issues i've already talked about. but i think what is key for us is beginning to talk in this space, not just about the reality of where we are, but what are some very tangible solutions that we can engage in?

at the local, state and federal level. what are some of the organizations that we can begin to tap to ensure that we are developing the kind of talent that can be in these spaces. how can we partner with organizations like unity, whether it's a national association of letter carriers, or others, other professional organizations that have those that are in the trenches but aren't necessarily prepared for a national media spotlight whether it's as a producer or book or someone in front of the camera. because if we're not having that discussion, then were essentially just complaining behind closed doors. and we really need to begin moving from that complaining and participating on the problem of strategic solutions. that have is partnering with organizations that can push this on a serious level with executives within each of these cable and network stations. and begin to have this conversation translate into jobs and opportunities, and internships. as opposed to just us being

angry that we don't see ourselves and complaining about the fact that we are not in spaces that we need to be. and so without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce jamal. i believe you will go first. no? that's what you told me earlier. [laughter] >> changing stuff on the? no, i'm kidding. victoria, if you would please come to the podium at this time. please give her a round of applause as she comes. [applause] >> thank you, jeff. all right, i'm going to start with a little many survey. how many of us here in this room are on facebook? how many are not? all right. vast majority is on facebook. not even counting twitter, myspace. so what we see in just this room here, about 80 to 85 percent ofe using social media networking.

social meeting networking is internet-based, without the internet you can't have a facebook. you can't tweak. you have to have this vehicle to begin with. so in talking about media, and this panel is entitled leaders in the media, i want to talk about the internet, because the internet is is one tool that can make us all potential leaders in the media by using this type of media that we can distribute so widely. media via the internet as we know today is unique. it's unique because it allows for a dialogue. cnn we're just talking about cnn, if you guys ever watch rick sanchez, and rick was kind of the pioneer in his tweeting and-or. now it's got no. everybody does it. but he would be delivering the news and at the same time people would be riding into him so he

would be engaging the people that were riding in, and addressing that. so it just wasn't that you are consuming media. traditionally, we consumed me. we sit on our couches and we passively digest the information that's coming into us. but because of the internet, now it's not just a one way street. but we are having a dialogue, and many times we're having these multiple experiences of media. you know, you're on your cell phone, on your computer watching tv, responding to what's going on on the tv. this is why it's so powerful and so unique, and something that is really not very old. not more than 10 to 15 years old. in addition to the dialogue, which i think in of itself is breakthrough, is the fact that we can be newsmakers. so it's not just the campbell brown's, it's not just the chris matthews. but it's you. it's you being able to generate your own blog, or made a group blog in the national urban fellows, and disseminating your

own information. so you are not dependent on what outside media outlets are giving you, are feeding you, but you have some agency in what the news is. with that, i want to take a step back and talk about this vehicle of the internet and talk about it a little more abstractly. because we just got done talking about how great the internet is. it allows us to tweet. it allows us to e-mail, with skype you can talk over the phone and be in connection with people from all over the world. but this is a resource that is not equally distributed. there is a vast divide in our country of the haves and have-nots. in terms of this media outlet, in terms of the internet. over the last couple of years, there has been an increase in broadband and internet consumption, but it has trailed

off in the last year and a half, in the last 18 months. and as you know, that has a lot to do with the economic recession. but what's most troubling is when we desegregate those numbers, and what we see is, for example, if african-americans from 2007 to 2008, you had about a 29% growth rate in broadband adoption. last year it was less than 7%. a really alarming statistic is that we see that african-american households are at about 48%, 46 to 48 percent of having broadband in their homes. that's compared to non-hispanic whites that are about 68%. so you see this of over 20% that's the first of i. the second of i've which is an extremely serious divide, is that among the latino community, among the latino community use the spanish dominant latinos having broadband adoption at

their home of less than 30%. so 26 percent of our dominant spanish speaking latinos have internet, compare that to the statistic i just gave you, 68 percent for whites. so here we have these two examples of the unequal distribution of this media outlet. so we are not able to access it. that means that we don't have a voice. this voice that we have is to the age newspaper, we don't have it because we don't have the internet. we don't have the power our capability to have that. the reasons i think we need to understand the reasons, why we have these two divides. and the first is pretty obvious. the cost. so our communities are very cost sensitive. they tend to be the minimum wage earners. and so when you're making $10 an hour, it is extremely difficult to pay your rent, clothes and

future children, and pay for other basic necessities, and then pay for broadband, which can range from anywhere the 50 to $80 a month. so that's the first hurdle, but the second hurdle, and this is one where i think when we step in, as activists, as members of our community, is that a value. and by value i mean that people do not see the relevance of the internet. and i have told the story a couple of times, but i think it's just the best way to illustrate this. i've a friend of mine who works in a restaurant. she's one of these dominant spanish speakers. and i asked her, do you have internet at your house? i asked her in spanish and she kind of laughed at me, and she goes, no,. [speaking in spanish] >> okay. that is true. so for those who don't speak spanish, she said, i don't need

the internet, because i work in a restaurant that i don't need it to make pork dishes. so it's this lack of -- the relevance that they don't see the application in their everyday lives. and i think that is a bigger hurdle than the cost. because it could be $5, $10, but if it is of no relevance to you and you can use those $5 go buy yourself an ice cream. so this is where we come in. i think i want to finish off talking, and i want don't want to take too much time, but in terms of mobilization, the political part of this is that in order to help our communities see the relevance, of the internet, we need a very low tech solution. and that low-tech solution is what we are talking about yesterday, direct mobilization. so we need to go out and touch people. we need to take it to the public

library library, set her down and show her how to use the internet. show her how to open up an e-mail account. show her how to use these resources. show her how to use web in the. in addition to that more direct mobilization, which we all need to do, because we all have friends and families that we know are not online, or not productively using the internet, is using our more traditional media sources of tv, radio, print, to disseminate information. a special using the experts energy many, such as the tom joyner or those in the latino community. we need to tap into those resources. and as you guys though, i am obsessed with voting and i can't not speak about voting. and i was having a conversation yesterday with this young woman over here, and she asked me. she said, well, we just heard about how the investment that is being made and is in the

national urban fellows, it's going to be a payoff for decades to come. but i want to see something more immediate. what can i do? what can we do? something that will be seen tangibly now? and so we were talking, when we were brainstorming, and they came up with the idea of why not have a page, and national urban fellows page, that you all tap into all of your networks, all of your facebook pages, all of your myspace is, all of your link in, and mobilize for the election to come. we are in an election year already. may seem like eons away, but it is right around the corner. 2010. you are the ambassadors of the issues were were talking about yesterday of social justice. you are the ones we are going to be able to exact a change. and i think, and conclude, i just want to reiterate the title of this panel, which is leaders in media, and i ask you, i pressure to be leaders in media

to mobilize your communities. thank you. [applause] >> all right. finishing up, the last man at bat. i know you all have been there for a few days, a couple of days talking about these issues, and around leadership and your work. and you've been here today, and this is the and. people get tied. you've had some phenomenal speakers. cory booker and jeff johnson, vicky, so i will try to be a little bit reef. i want to thank paul and angela to having. it is an honor to be here. i'm going to talk to you a little bit about the challenges of this leadership. not just in media but also in the queers and allies that each one of you are going to have as you engage in your career,

whether it's what you do in your fellowship, what you do after the fellowship, i know there are alumni partnership, but we all find places where we end up becoming leaders. and for those of us in the media, you face some of these things more directly. not long ago i was sitting in rooms like this usually on that side of the podium, and when attention comes to you, you don't have time to go through a leadership training course when someone comes and sticks a camera and federal face and asks you what you think. earlier you're sitting there thinking, what do i say, how do i say, when can i say? you can only rely on the training of ari done, up until that point. i've been very fortunate in my life to meet and work with some very phenomenal leaders, bill clinton, al gore, barack obama. i grew up in detroit. mayor jan. my grandparents, sort of funny, i guess i sort of didn't have a choice. when i was a kid my grandfather

was a big fan from the '30s and '40s who would give me these cards, my birthday with pictures of paul robinson on the front. i was five years old learning about the struggle against the american government. [laughter] >> so i'm sure i came by this honestly. i love politics. because of democratic politics i've got a chance to do some phenomenal things in my life that i have been on five continents. one of them that it went to that is sort of in the news today is haiti, where went in the mid 1990s with president bill clinton after we helped restore him to the presidency. i was a one quick story about haiti. we are on the island, in which they take up to the presidential palace, which actually fell during the earthquake. is sort of amazing to see us sitting there, the center sitting there after having visited it. they took us to one room. this room, on the way out, they look down, they shot holes in

the ceiling. and i have some pictures of this. but there was this one room which was interesting, this was the room when he was the dictator, his wife used to have tea parties at the presidential palace. what she would do is invite all the wealthy women from haiti over to the house and they would bring the for cause and they would turn the air conditioning as high as it would go so they could all sit in this room in their fur coats and sip tea. [laughter] >> so talk about excess. but the thing i learned about the people that was so amazing was there were these beautiful people there, who were there and they took care of each other. and as poor as most of the people were in haiti, there was no homelessness. not a single homeless person on the entire island. because if anyone had a place to live, everyone had a place to live. so its very heart wrenching to see what's happening there and them out of homelessness among this very proud and people people. so i hope we all maintain our

commitment. i know i gave money. i hope everyone else is giving money and time and anything else you can. so along the way i learned a few things about, i will finish up and be as quick about this as possible. i was sitting across himself out but i do want to get to a few important things. leaders listen more than they talk. those of us in the talking business sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's more important to listen and talk. some of the most important things that i've learned about, that influence my commentary i have not thought of on my own. there are things i learned listening to people, whether it's in bars or make up chairs or partners or talking to family at things getting. so you listen to people even when they don't agree with you. you must challenge yourself to grow and challenge the people who listen to you to grow also. and think about things that are different. one thing you face in public life is a temptation to play the crowd. it's a lot easier sometimes to just say things because you know

they will tender applause. you know you will get a bunch of good blog entries. people will write in. but from time to time, you have to say what you really think and risk the jeers of the crowd or so. than the cheers. sometimes i will show you my e-mail from some of those moments. it's not so nice. once i asked quincy jones what was the secret to his being a great artist. and he said to me, it's impossible to be a great artist and less you are willing to be truthful. and that's one of the things that i think about when i had the opportunities that i have in the media. leaders cannot be afraid of making mistakes. reverend jesse jackson once said to me that the only people are not straight denver's are the ones sitting on the sidelines. everybody down the field gets banged up. so the trick is to learn from the mistakes that you make, and get back up and keep playing. i have a sign on my wall i keep right next to my desk that says

no guts, no glory. sometimes you have to remind yourself about that. last story. i was in graduate school and i thought for a while, i thought i want to go and be a banker. so i finagle and got this interview at citibank to go work and their global trade finance through. when i was in graduate school i had been learning about economics and finance and statistics. you guys are urban filter i would to the kennedy school of public policy. so learning all this hard, parking work and want to go put to use. psycho to sit down in his interview and i'm sitting there across the table from this guy that i'm sure many of you are, have been are no of management consultants but one of the things that's funny, they like to talk and pictures. there's lots of arrows and circles, diagrams and imported beer midst explained their point. so this guy, he asked me this question that he said i want you to tell me about here at the banquet doing a national finance

work. tell me about investing in real estate market in china, how would you decide whether not we should do it? and here's a magic marker. feel free to use the whiteboard. so he has made this magic marker, and i'm sitting there. and i'm looking at the magic marker, i look at him and i look at the whiteboard. and i look at the magic marker and i look at him, and i look at the whiteboard. i got nothing. [laughter] >> so in the back of my head, i hear this little voice that says, put down the magic marker. [laughter] >> so i put down on the desk and i just start talking. and so as i start talking to him through this problem, have to address it and finance issues, the legal issues, the political risk that takes place, he starts getting into and. he picks up the magic marker and he starts drawing the circles and interdependent deadlines going back and forth. i am talking, he strong. it's a great conversation. he offers me the job. i hated it. i never went back to baking.

[laughter] >> but i did learn and in important point, which is you have to find your own voice, and whatever leaders that you're in, whether media or not, it's that voice that issuers that will be the convincing forced to people. if you try to do these things in other peoples framer, tried to do them the way other people do them, you will be a poor imitation of them. nobody can do you the way you can. you can't do someone else as good as they can do themselves. and the last thing i want to talk about before sit down is this challenge everyday, and i'm sure those of us who do this often, jeff can attest to this, i want to talk to you about character. i know it's easy to be sucked into the superficial. cable news, yeah, you are required to speak in 30 seconds of him -- glibness is a professional goal. but to be good, and have a long lasting impact in what you do,

you have to strive for something more than glibness. we live in a world where people are famous from wanting to date flavor flake or want to work with did he. or i think want to live in a house or the real world. we have facebook which i talk about where you can show the world your own vision of yourself or your vacation with who you work out. but remember in a rural where you can youtube says broadcasters sell to everyone. the test of one's character typically, when nobody else is looking. and indie media, african-american's are constantly forced and latinos are constantly forced with a choice of becoming a caricature, adopting a role so that you keep getting cast. how much to say, how and when do you say it. there's no right answer about what you do, how you do it, when you say, what you say that the

only right answer i know is, you have to be willing to do what it takes to go home at night, look yourself in the mirror and not cringe. so i'm happy to be here and to talk more about media and the role of those of us who want to be involved, or how that impacts our day-to-day lives, policymaking that we all live in. and if you have any questions, we will all be happy to take them a. thank you. [laughter] >> thank you both. to get right into this, i want to divide this into two sections. one if we can begin to deal with what vicki talked about, and that is the dissemination of information and how do we begin to use the tools that we have available to not only access that, but strategy to effectively use it. and then secondly, begin to merge i think what both jamal and i were talking about, amongst the multiple mediums that are available to us, how do we begin to see our presence

there more? many of you know that air america is closing its doors, and while i don't personally believe that it was the best business model for putting out progressive talk radio, it was one of the only vehicles to effectively put out some of the forces that were willing to do i think what jamal talk about, which is to be courageous in the face of some people that really just wanted to talk and the status quo. so i want us to begin to do with some of those other mediums, but let's deal with that, that how do we, regardless of what field you're in, because there are some of us that don't ever want to be a part of the media at all. in fact, we would love to stay as far away from it as possible, but we still understand how it affects our business, how it affects our policy, how it affects our lives, how it affects the very people we want to engage, how it determines what they believe and feel about themselves, and how it effects how they want to be engaged in some of the activity that we

find extremely important. and so if we can't begin to deal on the level that vicki talked about and using not just the internet, but the other mediums available to us, then we're going to be ineffective. whether we like it or not. i remember jim all having an immense argument, kind of nasty actually. with congressman -- who was it? conyers. it was interesting. and the argument stemmed because i started talking about how you mobilize young people. and his automatic assumption was that i had disrespect for elders. and so it was important that i enlightened him, the fact that i had a pretty good understanding of the history of african people, probably more than he. i didn't say that. [laughter] >> but there is an inherent problem often times with older

generations that they believe that a full grasp of their own history means that they have a comprehensive history of our broader reality. and that's not the case. and so i complained to him my place in the naacp and i valued all of the civil rights movement and those that were in it were able to achieve an effect it was so arguably the most effective social political movement in the modern world and why was. but he had to also admit that he did not run a campaign in 2004 the same when he ran it in 1965. when he became a congressman. which is problematic to me as well. but that's not what we're talking about. [laughter] >> excuse me for taking that liberty. but what is the two is the fact that we're continuing to use antiquated methodology to engage, not just an electorate, but engage communities that need

to be mobilized and energize an educated, and moved in certain ways, whether it is around economic issues are whether it is around political issues. if we continue to be antiquated and how we engage those populations, then we will be ineffective in moving them. i've sat for the last two evenings with a number of young people, both at high schools and college campuses, who are looking for leaders to be able to move them into a new elevation, a new evolution of social justice mobilization. they come in many cases, think it will be artists who do it. which is problematic on so many levels. but they do artists as the mechanism for that mobilization because artists are the ones who are most effectively engaging them where they are. they are the ones who most effectively utilizing social marketing media. they're the ones who are most effectively utilizing facebook and myspace and text message and twitter, telling them more than

anybody ever wants to know about what they're doing, why they're doing it where they are doing and where they are doing it. but they have found a way to -- it's interesting to me. i know celebrities. who try to find out where tmc is going to be, so that when tmc shows up they can accidentally be caught and surprise on camera about where they were and what they were doing. now, as frightening as that is, is ingenious because what they have realized is that now people are more interested in seeing celebrities surprised with the media show up, then an incredible you sophisticated publicist who knows how to strategically place you. they have been able to find tmz and accidentally be surprised. so that now they have another form of media that they can be used to get him in front of people, to talk about what it is they are doing, to put out some kind of scandal to strategically use to get people to buy their

cds. but why is leadership not using these same kinds of methods? i'm not suggesting we follow tmz around, but i am suggesting that we find out of the box ways to utilize existing media and emerging media to effectively reach those that aren't interested in receiving information the way that we have traditionally received it. and so, that the, what i'm want to ask you right off the top is, you begin to talk about some numbers about access to broadband and access to the internet. some of the things that i begin to see in the last few months are showing some different trends, especially within latino homes as relates to cell phones. and cell phones being a low-cost mechanism to engage the internet. what have you seen by way of that shifting, especially amongst the younger demographic, of access where it's not about do i have the box in my home, am i paying a 45-dollar, you know, the two had that come into my home, but i am carrying it

everywhere where i go and i'm preparing to do it. >> that's an excellent point. just about two months ago, the pew center for internet research came out with a study looking just at that, about these mobile devices. and what we found was that latinos in particular and minorities are making great use of this. so this is kind of a silver lining in this cloud, that we are seeing this population making use of this alternative medium. it can eventually be used as a bridge, but what jimmy is worrisome is that people might just rely on the. say hey, i can send e-mails and check my facebook status for as much as i like facebook, but that means that i won't have to get a computer at home. because a computer at home is what allows the children to get

online tutoring. it's what allows the parents to learn more about job transitions, about doing job training. about health information. so we do see minorities in using different types of media, but the most important type of media, which is going to later contribute to the economic and social mobility that we need to see within our communities is still lagging behind. >> but how do we justify that with a generation that use technology differently? i'm in, i'm listening to the latest drink a cd, and i hear bundy talking about the fact that he wrote these lines on his iphone. so there is a generation that doesn't feel like they need to have a lap top sitting on her lap, but then they have the ability because one, their eyes are better, and two, they have mastered the ability of typing with two thumbs as opposed to two hands. are we diminishing the ability

of these young people being able to use this and not focusing on the relevant issue that you talked about? so should we be spending more time dealing with the relevance and the ability for them to be able to expand their utilization of it? as opposed to saying, wait a minute, having a cell phone is not good enough. because we do make more sense for us to engage in people saying, look, why don't you use the cell phone for more than just going on to your facebook page, or more than just updating your status on twitter, or more than just texting? as opposed to making them feel like that device is insignificant. >> no, no. i think to be clear, i think we can use it as a bridge pic and i don't think they aren't mutually exclusive. i think the key here is figuring out how you can link one to the other and make it attractive. say hey, you are using this on your phone, your phone application. this will sync automatically to your laptop, and enhance you can do all these things that require

a more intensive use of this technology. so this is just the beginning of the technological revolution. right now it is cell phones. later on who knows what we're going to see? but i think it is a matter of having our communities, having all of the tools available. not an either or. not saying, well, if you don't have this at least have this. know, we shouldn't settle for one. we should strive to have all of the tools necessary to better ourselves, and especially better our children. >> so jamal, with that, and if we're going to accept that, then who do we begin to engage backs because what dick is talking about, it becomes a price point issue. if african-americans, latinos have direct access to cell phones and thus that is the mechanism they are using, but we want to use that as a bridge to want to have them utilizing other means, but they can't afford them, who are within

engaging on the policy side or the for-profit side to be able to begin to gain access at a lower cost point, to be able to see places where people are able to use recycled computers? who is out there that needs to be engaged so that before somebody can afford the cost of having that monthly payment, we're seeing people that can subsidize that caused. >> i'm going to take this from a bit of a different direction. i think that is important policymakers to make sure people have access to these tools. the one thing about technology is a developed so fast. this week we're winning on apple to announce their tablet, which is supposed to be able, may cause as much a seven or $800. that's a first version but it will be able to integrate your iphone, kindle, you know, the internet, everything. and it would be about as big as this folder. you can carry it around and work on it. so these things, some of these things will take care of themselves as technology

develops, price drops. we were -- so things, these things will change. i think there's a different, there's another component to this which goes along to act as a making sure people knows about these things. getting into our communities and motivating parents to value the impact of this educational force, this is part of what they talked about in her beginning, to recognize that this is an important thing for your children to have this access is important for them to have that paying attention to these issues and education is important to have. i have a colleague who is seriously considering adopting a little girl, because she went to the little girls home and she found -- it was a friend of a friend with a neighbor of a friend that she was visiting. and the mother was getting the logo, to euro, grape soda in her bottle. to drink.

and they were, just telling the story about smoking, illegal substances with their children present and not asking them to leave the room. some of the challenges that we have to face are not about government. some of these challenges are about making sure that the people in our communities and our children have the will to succeed. because government can give you opportunity, government can give you skills. the government can't give you the will to succeed. that will have to come from the the innermost that we have in getting them to engage. i have a brother who you know, my brother who is a principle of a junior high school in saint louis. we had a very interesting conversation about tattoos on teachers. and asked him, i said, well, do you let your teachers if they have tattoos, do you let them have been -- and they show them in school lacks he said no. and he said it cause trouble when i get a.

i said why did he do? i said because i want my kids to know this is a place of business. whatever they do in their spare time, they can feel free to do the. but when they come here, the teachers have to model the kind of behavior that it's going to take within to get employ. while some people may argue that i have been closing a standard on, the reality is we have a standard. we have to train them to be successful in the world that exist. so that is a long answer to a. >> that was. [laughter] >> let me interject. >> it's a long answer. >> i want you to follow up, because let's use that as an opportunity to segue to what these young people and pairs are actually seeing through the media that is out there. and so, because what i find interesting is we're talking about the inability of some parents to know how to parent window but he taught them how to parent. we're talking about communities that in many cases don't know what institutional

infrastructure means, let alone how to create it. and so win, and look communities that have forgotten how to do things that were inherently a part of what that culture was, once the media that we have to use, and/or the mechanism to help train that? part of that has to be media. so if that's the case, what do you believe are the mechanisms and the strategies to put those kind of messages out that aren't going to be spread across the country just because your brother is doing it in one school? or isn't going to happen just because it's on my facebook page. you know, what are you seeing are some strategies that grassroots organizations are using or individuals are using to do what you're talking about? >> one of the things that we figured out, one of things in politics we forget when talking to african-americans who are not traditionally engage in politics is we used to run these mail pieces, many people have probably gotten in your home and they say, something like rosa

parks sat down so you could stand up. go vote on tuesday. you know, that doesn't mean anything to most african-americans under the age of 50. they on her rosa park they thinks it's great that she stood up and she said it appeared that the going to motivate them. someone need to talk to him about things that impact their lives. so the same way after we talked about a little bit earlier, jeff, using the social media, using -- one of the reasons is because they do have this relationship and talking to people in a way where they are. so is requires those of us in the policy side to let go of some of the things that we think are effective and actually hear from young people are living in this culture about what they think is effective, and then use those tools to talk. >> vicki, and some of your research how are you finding the broader community, especially african-american, latino committee, are responding to those faces that they see within the media? who are those people that their most responding to, and how do

we begin to develop more of those faces the? a lot of my research looks at the effect of campaign ads on our political behavior and our political preferences. and in 2000, the latino case is the one i know best, we started seeing this explosion of latino targeted campaign ads. because latinos are now officially the biggest minority group and the kind of a swing vote. karl rove really zeroed in on latino. so we started seeing this huge increase in acts. so we start looking at these ads, ads in spanish, adds john latinos. so you're trying to reach latinos and use a latino base. to most of us in this room, it's like you have semi-that looks like me, talking to me, i think i'm going to respond a little bit more. so we did the official research to actually show that is in fact the case.

but that's the beginning. we need people to be messengers that look like us because i'm a very psychological point, we do -- that's a how our brains process information. we tend to look to in groups and we do that as an informational shortcut in the process of information. but together with that you also need to be savvy. you can't just have anyone out there. you have to take strategies from the consumer marketing world. you need to take strategies that are good at selling something. and so we need to sell mobilization. we need to sell the desire to vote and be active. and we need to be fancy, and you know what? we need to invest money in it. we can't just think that by asking somebody to go and vote and sending them little postcards of rosa parks, that that will be enough. we need to invest as if this were a nike campaign. so i think that is --

[applause] >> it's the combination of both, both factors. >> part of that is still who are the messengers? and so i want to do a poll of the audience, if i can. and feel free to shout out a name if you have one. what i found interesting, and even looking at this coverage of haiti is that the same thing that happened in new orleans is happening with 80. and that is from a media perspective, that there becomes a great white hope, who covers the humanity of the black savages. right? and so anderson cooper has filled that role yet again. and i am mad at anderson. like you know what i'm saying? >> he doesn't have to be a. >> no, in the end as a. and they have been on the ground grinding. great. and i appreciate it. and when you look at them, you

see how tired they are. so this is not an indictment against them and the work that they've done, the coverage they have done. what it is is to say, who is in the black face or face of color that you have seen leaving the story on what's happening in haiti? [inaudible] >> the only one. i wouldn't say leading. [inaudible] >> i'm talking about on the ground. i'm not talking about just talking about it, because i think is effective for us to be messengers on the air of what's happening as a result of what we are hearing is happening. but it is a very different picture when you are on the ground. it's very different seeing anderson cooper talking to someone on the ground, or sing songs a operate on a baby that it is tom joyner telling people to text to donate to the organization. is a clear difference in the. so the real question is, what is the mechanism that we are using?

and after this question i want to throw questions out of the audience. you all please began to chime in a. . .

>> ted kennedy there are people in the pipeline, i think --

before i was on primetime with anderson cooper. there needs to be more in primetime. there are other people who are out there. so it can't be just about someone's personal position. byron allen on the ground for cbs, ron alan on the ground financial nbc. there are people who are there. but they are not people who host national shows in primetime. so you need to have people at the place where they are the most visible to be able to do it as well. >> right. all right. go ahead. >> i just have a question here. because in haiti the correspondent have not been any haitian people, you are asking for african-american to represent haitian people, haitian people don't consider themselves to be african-american. my mom is from haiti, my family is still there doing a lot of

work. i would challenge you to think how do we prepare americans to accept people from other countries who are not, you know, trained to talk to them the same way we are. often that's why we have a lot of white correspondent. that's who we're accustom to see obvious travel. it's not as much of a people for training people, it's training the people to accept something different. >> right. thank you. >> y'all could do me a favor people, for the sake of c-span, if y'all could go to the mics so that we can ensure it's recorded as well. i'd appreciate it. thank you. >> from a perspective, you know that the q ratings are highest for asian females on television. the lowest cue rating is for a black male with a mustache. that's the reality.

>> it is. >> from a business perspective, all media companies are businesses. having had a seat in senior management and one of the largest media companies i will tell you the decisions are always becaused on business. we were faced with a decision of whether or not to support the expansion of a major mall. and the question was, the question was adamantly against it. we had editorials reflecting that. yet, from a business perspective, we understand that that edition would mean generated revenue for us. we supported it by saying this would be good for the whole community, reversing many editors against it.

so what i'm saying is with the changing of the guard, if you will, we will start seeing. because media is a business at the end of the day. if there are more hispanics and african-american who are consumers of the media, the build will start reflecting it. it's all about ratings. we saw what's with jay leno and conan o'brien. where the individuals. i think there are some in the room, lookers, because i've worked with bookers, the vast majority of bookers are all white women. 98% of them. so it's identifying those opportunities for the young people who want to get into those rolls. how would you say to them here

to get into those positions where they can have a say? >> sure, i mean -- and i'll let everybody take that. i think one is clearly, one the biggest challenges is that entrepreneurship like everything else in the media helps people get in the door. so for a lot of us that's not an option. because you are talking about giving of your time for free in order to get your foot in the door and obviously make your way up the ladder. that's how it happens so often more than other. i think the other people many that many of us who are already a part of the pipeline have to begin making recommendation. so, for instance, when we did this msnbc piece in houston on obama 2010 and i asked who are the people that they had invited to be a part of this. for the most part it was academic and strategist and one or two people that were -- there was an interesting selection of guests. but i said, you know, are you beginning to step outside of

that? would you be willing to have a hip hop artist on the panel? because i knew the booker, they did a preinterview with an artist who would never normally have the opportunity to be on there. the powers that be, made the decision. unfortunately, the date wasn't something they could fit into their schedule. i think that is -- one is encouraging younger students to look at these for entrepreneurships where they are willing to grind even if it means they don't get paid. the second is identifying those of us that have access to some of these places to begin making recommendation of others that can be there, that are not like us, that may have different views, but who have the capacity to be able to move through that pipeline. also it's about those who are a part of that business staying aware of the shifting trends and

employment and opportunity. there are a lot of qualified people that never know the job is available. whether it's production or booking, they are hiring in the small homogeneous community of who got laid off from someone else or who's a friend of my mine or somebody's cousin. we have to pay attention to those opportunities to spread them wide and far. i agree, it is the business. we need to be the ambassadors to those who don't have access. >> one suggest is ask. don't be embarrassed to ask those of us in the room, people at institutions, ask jamal, jeff, sometimes we want to be coy and the they they will ask us and we're all bright and

motivated. but you have to ask. >> so jeff hit the nail as well, you have to ask, but you also have to be willing to grind it out for little to no money. there are people walking around from degrees for yale and harvard getting people coffee that didn't finish a community college. there are people that you want to -- you have to pay your dues. i had to work every summer, so i didn't have the option to work for free. i worked for the first clinton campaign in '92. my dad gave me $200. that was all i had. i had to stretch it for about three weeks. we were talking to the women who was african-american who's in charge of the payroll. we're going to send the check

out do you want your check fedexed today for tomorrow or wait until the weekend to get it? no, i want my check immediately. this is a question -- i don't believe it's on. this is a question about a native american from the population. why is it they don't have their own network. they have enough people, economic power. in my opinion, you have all of the requirements you need. you have people who know how to do business, finances together, you have everything you possibly need to have your own network. why are you asking to be on the white networks like, you know? i was just wondering. maybe it's a dumb question. >> it's a great question. [applause]

>> fantastic question. i'll allow some of my copanellist to take that. there are two issues. the first that more than begging to be on, there are a lot of us -- i think the black community treats b.e.t. in particular like on abused child. we know that they ain't no good. we just keep hoping they'll stop beating us up. all right? i think that's part of the -- that's part of the problem. part of that is the networks we have were not created for news and public affairs. we've been asking to figure out

how to do news. they don't know how. because what makes them money is the entertainment. and diverting from that either for a moment hiring the hiring of legitimate staff and infrastructure to be able to effectively do news. not just throw news up. that's the challenge b.e. t. has since they stopped doing the nightly news. and i've watched from the inside. i think some very competent and well-meaning people. i think in many cases, we shouldn't be looking to that network alone, but really need to be talking about what it is what you're talking about. i know that j.c. watts had talked for some time about trying to create a news network. i think jamal can speak better

than i to what happened with that. the challenges to your point, i haven't seen the public will of those that are the capital and resources coming together to create a network of news and public unfairs, when news and public affairs makes less. i think you may have some other insights than vicky. >> i understand that they started with the idea that they were doing to do news. you can't do news all the time. who wants to hear the news 24 hours? they do. >> but the creation of network in 2010 is very different than the creation of a cable network in the 1980s. and so the amount of competition and capital that's required to be able to start that kind of network is very different than what cnn, b.e.t., and that matter found for what now seems like pennies. >> we'll wait before we go to

the next question. the other thing is america is the -- i like to call stew more than a melting pot. we are all still distinctive characters inside. but people watch even after americans catch cnn. they watch abc news, nightline, hispanic the same thing, telemundo. the first place you turn is the new channel. it's important to have the place where the country goes to get news. it's not just for african-american and latinos and everybody in america can learn somebody from me, you, jeff, vicky, or you. it's important to have those faces in the broad scheme of where the american population congress congress -- congregates. >> yes, sir. thank you for your question. >> thank you i'm class of 2006. i just had -- well a couple of comments and a quick question. one comment is that at -- just

-- really at the risk of just saying self- -- in the spirit of self-determination, i was haitian-american and i was born in the united states. i consider myself haitian-american and african-american. it's really important that a haitians speak for haitians. haitian-americans speak forker haitians. that experts speak. my question is why aren't the networks looking at the miles that sports network have used? they used coaches and players to be color commentators. they put them through a boot camp, teach them the rhythm of speaking in front of the camera, and they unlease them.

the journalist maybe anchoring a little bit. but they let the commentators, these sports experts, speak. and i think that's the model we need to be going in. not really -- i'm not really a fan of trying to use a journalist. because journalist are not the experts. >> i think when you look at any of the networks, when you find people coming on, normally they are professional research or economic focuses on that area. the networks and cable news are looking for experts. regardless of their race oreth nitansty, when the booker looks at who they are going to call and they are talking about foreign policy, they are not looking for a gardener. so they are looking for people who are experts in those areas.

i think the reality is what's the diversion of those pools of experts? because if you are talking about a medical issue, there are medical doctors or research in every color, ethnicity. why people of colored that are polled as much as we are others. i think to your point, that is happening. but it's still about broadening the pool of experts to ensure that all of those folks are represented. >> and just in terms of speaking of boys and with who speaks and who doesn't, if you can't -- also at the risk of being a little bit dated at this point, if you could all weigh in on watkins and what's happening with him and what that symbolizing for african-american who voice their own opinions? >> can you tell us what happened? >> pardon me? >> can you talk about what happened with mr. watkins?

>> he was a syracuse professor of finance and economics, and he made some comments that -- he criticized bill o'reilly and bill o'reilly and fax -- fox news asked him to be dismissed. he was refused tenure at university. >> well, and mr. watkins isn't the last person. look at mark hill on fox news being fired because he had a picture on his twitter page. the right-wing media began to attack him saying he was a supporter of a cop killer. i thought fox news invited him on to be the liberal. so i'm confused here.

but what we've seen, i'm confused here, the left wing having the kind of media machine, where it's in radio or television. so when we saw what happened to van jones, he was crucified for weeks. it wasn't something that happened over a weekend. it was day after day after day on fox news, right-wing radio over and over again. and i didn't see anyone on the left say this is who he is, this is why he was brought into the cap -- cabinet, this is why president obama thought he was viable in the first place.

and it really didn't give the administration anywhere to go. i was very frustrated by that. i didn't see left wing grassroots organization coming to his aid, or left-wing media coming to his aid. jamal or vicky, as you begin to see the political discourse of folks that have stepped to the plait and said things that were unpopular but have some segment attacking him, why have we not seen on the left wing the kind of mechanisms to be able to defend their own. >> where do we start? i want to throw one thing out there, you can contribute. i think we need to think strategically more, offense more than always defense. before this is coming out, acknowledging the fact of these activist credentials and literally owning it.

because if you own it, then they can't come and attack you for it. having a little bit more forethought than being strategic, having the same business that you would in other spheres, bring it to politics. >> i would say the one place where the liberal world documents is on the internet. we have been able to do on the internet what the right wingers were able to do on talk radio for so long. still there's another -- we can go at this for an hour. there's a difference from the right and left. people who are conservatives are structured environment, traditional family, the father as the head. you think about the things that they talk about, they are very

traditional. people on the left tend to come out of more things that are entrepreneurial, artist, activist, community organizizes. what happened when you come out of the traditional construct, you are much -- it's much easier to have a message and get people to follow even if they don't completely agree. try telling a bunch of liberals they have to say something they don't believe it. it's a lot of tougher. i've on the side. you end up spending two hours arguing about the message and not actually communications on what it is what you want to say. >> yes, ma'am? >> good evening to the panel. i am national fellows class of 2010. i wanted to bring up a statement that you made to johnson about antiquated ideology. i think when we speak education

and we talk about what we're going to do in order to prove our education system, we go based on the knowledge of how we were schooled or how our parents were schooled. our kids don't relate to how we were educationed. i'm in indianapolis at the greater education opportunities. i have told the challenge to my mentor who is the ceo as well as i'm challenging my classmates and the challenge to take a closer look at media marketing as a new forum towards educating our children. they are the number one consumer target audience in the world. they have nonresidual income. while we went through the economic downturn, the entertainment did not. the entertainment industry grew,

based on this consumer audience. they listen to radio more than we can ever listen to radio, clearly they have the time. they watch television more than we'll ever have time to watch tv. they know what's going on tv -- yeah, we can go on about that. but i'd like to say or ask how would you address the idea of education policy reform by making the classroom the ultimate social media marketing forum which improves economic achievement using the number one plead ya format for this p1 consumer audience. the format being radio, music television, and in the words of krs1, entertainment. also, while you are all on the panel as media specialist or in front of the camera as spokes people, do you think that model would reintroduce or invigorate

our children to want to be educated on media and having jobs and science, technology, engineering, mathematics. >> so where do we start? the new topic of the panel is -- vicky why don't you go first? >> when you were talking, i was thinking about mario armstrong from cnn who does the tech section, speaks about all of the new gadgets and widgets. i was at a conference and he told me about the new amazing program where they recognize the fact that this is the generation of the wii, video games of very technological intensive surroundings. so what he does is he says let's

accept the reality and build on it. so he will go to different schools, i think he's done a couple of these events in maryland where he takes all of the newest gadgets and some of the lab laptops and bring in role models and mentors of technology. so minority videogame designers, and some sports figures who appear in the video games. people they can relate to. he shows that, but at the same time, he link that is up to look how cool that is. you know why, because there's engineering behind this that gets you here. so in order to be able to play these video games, you need to know the equations. people who made the games are talking to the kids about that and showing them the link. not just saying you need to do math because it's good for you. go. do it. but showing them all of the neat

output when you link it up to something that they see tangibly. >> i guess what we need next is the barack obama of engineering. to go back to my brother who's the teacher who i go to a lot because he's my hero. he says in his school, it's interesting when barack obama got elected, he found that he had the first suit-wearing, proper english speaking role model that just as much creditability as his students with little wisey. than didn't solve the problem. they could identify something that was different than they identified with. we're going to have to try some creative ways to promote. if barack obama doesn't do a

single other thing, what he's already done for kids is incredibly important. but we're doing to have to find ways using media to highlight people who are in business, entrepreneurs, scientist, mathematicians and give them the same kind of sexy that the rest of the hip hop artist have. >> greetings, i'm from the class of 1999. as an educator, i have a serious passion for the disparity that exist in our schools. i'm a teacher in new york. some of the schools in new york, there are -- you might have two schools in the same buildings. but they are totally segregated. you have black school and white school. as a science and technology person, i sometimes have to deal with students in both schools. but the way they students are treated, the way that the black students or minority students are treated as far as technology is the bit different from the way -- and this is in my

experience, it's a bit different than the exposures that the other students have in the other school. one the last schools that i was at, i was told that my students could not use the computers because they might break them. so i said well, you know, i know how to fix computers. that's not a problem. if they break them, i'll be right there to fix them. did you hear what i said? they cannot use those computers because they might break them. so i think that the digital divide, i don't really see it in school as far as using technology in school. the children will learn gadgets. they don't have to be educated. they will learn the gadgets and links. i'm saying as far as, i try to use technology a lot. i was taking the children to the library when i was told that i couldn't use the rooms. so i think that's something as far as policy. after -- well, no child left behind, it's still so many

children left behind. i think they do need the expoa sure. i think that part of it too was policy. people checking up and seeing what's going on. are they getting equal x, y, z. why are there segregated schools in 2010 in the same building? the effect that it has, you know that you are going to hispanic school. you know you are not getting the same opportunity as the students in the white. i don't know to say, but that's what it is. >> those people in this room are here because they understand the importance of policy. some of that stuff is just criminal. at end of the day if that's happening and somebody is saying that to you, that needs to be reported on a serious level. but clearly, their policy issues that speak to equity of services and distribution of services that i think everyone in this room is concerned with that continues to be a fight that all of us are involved in and need to be more aggressive. i think many of us will aware

that i think as we move further into 2010, there is going to be a discussion about education reform and what does that look like and what does it consistent of? if we thought health care was bad, this is going to be a treacherous debate about what educating our children in this country means. and especially poor children and children of color. what they deserve. what we're producing, how, the reck anymores that we're using the technology that needs to be there. awful those things are going to be issue that is we're going to have to be involved in. >> if you don't as a child -- >> let me do this. i a finite amount of time. i want to go to the last question to make sure we move the agenda. >> hi, my name is ms. grays, i've worn many hats over my career. educator, media person, there was one point i wanted to make because i think it passed. there are number of trained

individuals who are generalist. and i think media does need generalist. they go through a lot of training, including the institutes, they can be found through the journalist, native african-american journalist, the gentleman that couldn't find people, they can be found. the question that i think a lot of the leaders will need to have answered is how can i work in my individual jobs and communities and cultivate media contact and be able to use them in such a way to carry on my particular challenges? one the things that you may need to realize, and these people who are the specialist can deal with it is that often times media is not your friend. you will come into situations where you will have ambush interviews. and these people can talk to you

about ambush interviews. you will need to know who are your friends and how to cultivate those relationships. and then you'll need to know who are not your friends and then you'll need to be able to develop relationships with people in smaller media organization and larger media organization. these individuals can tell you how to do that. so i didn't want this opportunity to go by without them dealing with that. >> absolutely. >> okay. will you deal with that? >> certainly. i think the first thing you request do is get jamal's card. you can hire him as your media -- no. i mean clearly to your point. i think dan mentioned something earlier where he said that media is and the business of media. media is really not anybody's friend. media is the bottom line's friend. how do we manipulate the media in order to get out what we want to get out as opposed to allowing it to use us.

if you want to chime in, this is your business. >> i'll give you three general points for dealing with the media in any situation, one, smile. because people who very often do not remember anything that you have to say, but they will remember if you look angry. very often people who walked past the airport. what did you any i didn't hear you. never put your hand in the camera, that will be on television as a press person that's trying to get a bad story, i won that day if the hand is in the camera. nothing is off the record. reporters will keep things off the record until you keep things interesting until they will find a way to put it on the record. we can do more that have. that'll cost you more money. >> real quick. as you talk about cultivating relationships, there are always reporter who's are looking for

stories. that's their business. a lot of times we only call them when we are the story. so the issue is how you can cultivate relationships by feeding them information. even if it's not about you. when it comes time to use them, you have access to them when where you are not begging. you've created a relationship with them to be able to provide them with voices, stories, information that has nothing to do with your organization, candidate, or employer. as you build that database and create those relationships, you'll be surprised how far they are willing to go for you when you've just gone a millisecond for them in making a phone call for them on their behalf. >> okay. i'm going to apologize to you, you'll get a last word some point tonight. [laughter]

>> i want to express it's your intellect but the passion for the doing the right things right. we are going to have an opportunity for closing with mayor harvey jackson. he's an alum. people give a big huge round of applause for our panel. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> the national tea party first convention is under way in nashville.

>> i'm playing the part of one of signer revolution from georgia. there were two. >> i take it you are from georgia? >> i'm from brunswick. yes, sir. i'm with the golden aisles tea party in bunk wick. i'm the vice president. >> why come here in why come to the meeting? >> we are here to unite the tea party nation and patriots and to

discourage big federal government and return to the constitutional principals which the nation was founded on. >> so when the weekend is done, what do you hope is the result? >> focus on the target for the 2010 and 2012 election. we're going to all give sarah palin a kiss for her stand and support of the tea parties on saturday night. then we're going to get out with the local individual groups and target all of those part of the political class that still things they are necessary. and we're going to get them all kicked out regardless if they are republican, democrat, independent, and replace them with new people that understand the constitution. >> when you hear some of the tea party groups, what are your thoughts on them criticizing the convention? >> that is what happens when you have large groups where center groups want to be front and

center. but this is a good thing. this is uniting. the tea party nation, patriots and those that want to criticize, they can. but i want have preferred we had this out in the field in the rain if necessary. but we're having it here. let's rejoice. have a good time. encourage the dissolution of the government and kick them autoin the butt come 2010. >> thank you for your time.

>> now we have c-span classroom for use in your classroom. you can find the videos organizized by subject, topics, latest in education news, plus the chance to connect with other c-span classroom teachers. sign up at the new c-spanclassroom.org. >> the british commission hears testimony by tony blair. they are examining british involvement in the war and the circumstances which led to the 2003 invasion. hear questions that focus on the legality, prepareness, and abu gray. this session runs a little under 3 hours.

>> good afternoon, everybody. welcome. this afternoon the iraq inquiry will be hearing again from tony blair, prime minister until june 2007. we still have much to cover today. the committee hopes we can go about our business in an orderly way and in fairness to all not b be distracted. as in all of our hearings, the right for the witness to respond must be respected. those hear today, this morning and now yourself this afternoon were selected through a free public ballot overseen by independent arbitrary. i remember everyone of the behavior expected to be observe ed.

welcome back, mr. blair. for the benefit of those who were not able to be in the room, may i repeat two things. we recognize the witness are giving evidence based in part of their recollection and we cross check what we hear against the papers that we have access. i have reminded each witness that he will later be asked to sign a transcript to the evidence to be effect that evidence is truthful, fair, and accurate. i would like to continue the proceedings. >> mr. blair, i'd just like to pick up a couple of points that follow on from where you left it before lunch. just to finish off the diplomatic and political decision that is you faced in the days before you had to take the decision that we should

start with a reaction. there's only two points that i want to ask at now. the first one concerns the position of the french government, which you did refer to before lunch. in your final speech before the conflict of the house of commons on the 18th of march, you told the commons that -- and i'll quote here, france said it would veto a second resolution, whatever the second stance is, close on the security council opposed to us, will not count any new resolution that authorizing force in the event of noncompliance. had the french be known to us after the interview of the 10th of march and the days after that and before you made that statement, had they indeed told

number 10 through the diplomatic channels that we were misinterpreting by misinterpreting the context of his statement to whatever the circumstances is. had they told us that in the view of the french government, that france would vote no against any resolution, he was preferring to this resolution at this time. >> i believe i spoke to him myself on the 14th of march. the french position was clear. it wasn't they veto resolution, it would veto a resolution that authorized force. the point was this, if we were going to come back to the united nations and get another resolution, it had to be a

resolution that said something stronger and tougher than 1441. therefore the idea was to say because we'd been through 1441, that was not in compliance. okay. if we come back for another resolution, this has to authorize action. >> you didn't feel that there was any possibility that pursued inspection to the point where the french and perhaps they were reporting that the process was exhausted. a that stage, the french would have been prepared to vote for a resolution authorizing military action? >> i really -- my judgment, we kept good lines and i was very anxious to make sure the aftermath situation that we came back together again in the u.n. security council. i wasn't trying to be in a position where the france and britain is where it fell out. but it was very, very clear to

me, the french, the germans, and russians were decided they weren't going to be in favor of this. there was a straightforward division frankly. and i don't think it would have mattered how many how much time we'd taken. they weren't going to agree that force should be used. >> in any circumstances at any time on this trek? >> unless there'd be something dramatic the inspectors, that might have made a difference. the mere fact that he was in breech of 1441, despite this being his final opportunity, my judgment, i have to say, i think this is pretty clear, is that there was by then a april divide on this. >> as we haven't gotten nine votes, the french veto, by using

it we were using it as an excuse to withdraw the resolution that wasn't going to succeed to meet the american timetable and go into action. >> the actual situation, because hi conferrings with the other leaders at the time, most of those president lagos of chile, he was in a tough situation as we all where at that time. what president lagos was saying is look, if you can get to a stage where you can losen the french opposition, then it's a lot easier for us to come along with you. so it was very bound up on what was then becoming in the permanent five. a disagreement. >> so you hadn't really reached a point in the week or so before

the resolution was withdraw where you to give up president lagos, maybe president bush could persuade the mexicans and decide that you have to plan an end game in which opposition was presented in the best way it could be? >> well, i think it was more than that. i thought it was worth having one last chance to see if you could bring people back together on the same page. so in a sense, president bush had to degree. what the french had to degree was you couldn't have another resolution and another breech and no action. so my idea was define the circumstances of breech. that was the test that we applied. get the american to agree to the resolution. that was the idea i had.

i thought it was possible to bring everyone back together again. it wasn't possible to do that. i wanted to try as far as possible make sure you didn't end up with as it were a really -- a political disagreement becoming an ugly situation in the security council. >> okay. i'll move on to my other point. it is a slightly wider point in a political moment, obviously a difficult moment in your life. you'd reach the stage where you weren't going to get a second resolution. military action was eminent. now you had been working intensively for months, indeed for a year, to try to create a supportive environment. we've discussed elements of that already. but you hadn't actually got clear and strong consensus for

this action. public opinion here in the uk was divided. no major process had been made which you discussed earlier. we hadn't got the second resolution. you were also, i think, by this stage, starting to hear warnings from people like tim cross who came to see you and mr. campbell, i think. that the postconflict pep rations being made by the americans didn't look at all good. at this point, you must -- i suppose have had some pause for thought. did president bush at this point when you hadn't really satisfied the preconditions he wanted to achieve offer to go at it alone and offer you way out? >> i think the americans would have done that. i think president bush actually one point before the debate said

if it's too difficult for britain, we understand. but i took the view very strongly then and it was right for us to be with america since we believed it too. but it was device in the sense that there was a strong group. there was a group in parliament who also thought it was the right thing to do. so, for example, in the european union at time, i think 13 out of the 28 members were with america. japan, south korea were with america, major allies lining up with america. >> i would hoped to have a united situation in which everyone was on the same page and agreed. sometime that is doesn't happen.

>> i mean in kosovo, the russians threatened to veto. you had much stronger support. there was pretty well universal. this was much more difficult situation for you. >> it was a really tough situation, yes. and in the end, as i say, what influenced me was that my judgment ultimately was that saddam was going to remain a threat. and that in this change, it was important to act, our alliance with america was important. and to put this very clearly, we'd been down a u.n. part that i genuinely hoped would work. i hoped that 1441 would avoid conflict. >> i think you said this morning, you weren't confident.

>> i did hope it would work. i wasn't confident about saddam, for good reasons. he had been defying the u.n. for years. i could see a situation in which you might be faced with the top choice. but i was doing everything that i could to avoid having to do it. >> now, jack straw the other day refers to a plan b that he floated with you. i think -- i don't remember his act words. but implying that he saw a case for it. which would have involveed any involvement by us but not the ground troops. what was your view of his advice? >> that was a possibility. as i think we discussed this morning. our own military and in a sense to the second credit to be river to be whole heart the. >> they are out there ready to

go. troops don't want to have to come back again, do they? >> this is back in october. i think if you look at the record in october 2002, the military was setting up the prefers. >> i'm now thinking of the last week before the action. >> sorry, i thought you were suggesting it was just because the troops were done there. they wanted to be a wholehearted part of this. i thought that was right as well as i discussed. it would have been a very big thing for us to have kept out of the aftermath as well. of course it was in the aftermath where things what happened. >> some are argued the opposite. some of our earlier witnesses who said that by going in with the large force we actually hoped we could take the fighting, combat troops out in a hope that other people would come and take up the aftermath. if we had not sent the force in

at this stage for this variety of reasons, we could then still have said in a very respectable way that we are ready to go in and do the sort of peace building, nation building that we have a lot of experience in the aftermath. it wasn't keeping us out of the aftermath? >> i mean exactly what you are saying sir roderic. as it turned out, it was the aftermath that was most difficult and toughest part. so have kept out of the aftermath as well as the initial action would have been very hard for britain. having said all of that, look, again, this is a judgment. you could have decided to do option one or two. in the end we decided to option three. i would say the consensus view.

just to say this, one the things that i had done i indicated as prime minister is the first thing i do is get a sense as whether they are committed. of course, they are. because that's the type of people that they are. they are fantastic. it was a conversation we had back in, beginning in july and building up in october. by the time we came to march, yet it's true. we could have been pulled back at that stage. i believe that would have been wrong. and i think it would have not indicated the strength of support that i felt was right for us to exit. >> let's change the subject now. if any colleagues have nothing further on this point.

we want to deal with all of the legal issues in one chapter. i hope it's easier for you, i hope it easier for us. and of course in the course of this week alone, we've had some 10 hours of evidence on this from the attorney general and from three senior civil service legal advisers who were involved in the question. for that reason, we don't propose to try to go through this as point by point again which would take probably another 10 hours. but we really would like now to focus on the questions that most directly concerned you as prime minister. and the committee of suggested that the easiest way of approaching the extreme subject would be if i tried to summarize first what we as a committee have heard and read on this subject. and if you will forgive me,

allow you to rest your voice far minute. this will take me a few minutes. i think it will also save us some time. if you are content, i will try to wrap up what we have absorbed on this subject in a number of points. >> then coming to a specific questions based on that. is that satisfactory to you? >> yes. so i'll go through the summary. if you're not content with any points in it, please tell me. i have one or two questions i'd like to ask arising from that. firstly, there wasn't a legal basis as lord goldsmith repeated to us the day before yesterday for regime change as an objective in itself. secondedly, lawyers in the u.s. administration favored what was

called the relieve argument. the authorization for the use of force during the first gulf in resolution 687 is capable of being revived as it had been in 1993 and 1998. however, the uk lawyers did not consider that this argument was applicable without a fresh determination by the security council. not only because of the passage of time since resolutions 678 and 687, but also because in 1993 and 1998, the security council had formed the view that there had been a sufficiently serious violation of the cease-fire

conditions. and also because the force that'd been used then had been limited to ensuring iraqi compliance with the cease-fire conditions. and even in 1998, the revival argument had been controversial and not very widely supported. so the british argument was that you needed a fresh determination of the security council.@@@ @ @b

attorney general up to november of 2002 that a fresh u.n. authorization under chapter 7 would be required for >> would be required for the military action contemplated against iraq, contemplated at that stage as a contingency to be lawful. such an authorization in our view would provide the only ground in which in the circumstances force could be used. and so the u.k. and the u.s.a. went to the united nations and obtained resolution 1441, passed unanimously. however, in the words of lord goldsmith, that resolution wasn't crystal clear. and i think you yourself this

morning referred to the fact that there were arguments that it didn't resolve the argument, i think was the way you put it. and the ambiguous wording of that resolution, immediately gave rise to different positions by different security council members. on whether or not it of itself had provided authorization, without a further determination by the city council, for the use of force. so up until early february of 2003, the attorney general as lord goldsmith told us in his evidence, was telling you that he remain of the view that resolution 1441 did not authorize the use of force without further determination by the security council, that it was his position that the

council discussion, the word discussion was used in the resolution, would not be sufficient. and that a further decision by the council was required. and i think perhaps as i'm about halfway through the summer, and i just reached the point before lord goldsmith gives you his formal, it might be sensible if i post, if to ask you up to now if i'd been right in your understanding? >> yes, i think that's a fair summary. >> if your content then, i will continue. and i hope to do as well with the second half. but i am not the lawyer you are. on the second of -- seventh of march 1000 lord goldsmith said that his formal advice to you, a document which is now in the public domain. and in that he continued to argue that, quote, the safest legal course, unquote, would be

a further resolution. but in contrast to his previous position, and for reasons which he explained to us in his evidence, he now argued that, quote, a reasonable case, unquote, could be made quote, that resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorization in 678 without a further resolution. but at the same time, he coupled this with a warning that, quote, a reasonable case does not mean that if the matter ever came before a court, i would be confident that the court would agree with this view. so that point, lord goldsmith had to a degree, parted company with the legal advisers in the

foreign and combo of office. also given evidence to us. they were continuing to argue that the invasion could only be lawful, if the security council determined that a further material breach had been committed by iraq that i emphasized the word for the, of course, because 1441 and established that iraq was already in breach, that many argue it was about the so-called with you to have a determination of further material breach. lord goldsmith told us that when it became clear that we're not likely to get a second resolution, a further resolution, he was asked if what he described as a yes or no decision, especially because clarity was required by the armed forces, cbs had put this to him, and by other public servants. he had received also an intervention from a senior

treasury. so having giving you bad advice on the seventh of march, by the 13th of march, he had crucially decided, and this is from eight minute recording, discussion between himself and his senior adviser, david, who is also given evidence to us and which is also on the public record. yet decided that, quote, on balance the better view was that the conditions for the operation of the revival argument were met in this case. i.e., there was a lawful basis for the use of force without a further resolution going beyond resolution 1441. there's one further stage in the process, and i will get to the

end. this view now taken by the attorney general still required a determination that iraq was, quote, in further material breach of its obligations. the legal advisers in the fco consider that only the u.n. security council could make that determination. but the attorney to view that individual member states could make this determination. and he asked you, to provide your assurance that you had so concluded, i.e., you would conclude that iraq was in further material breach. and on the 15th of march, which is what, five days before the action began, you officially gave the unequivocal view that iraq is in further material breach of its obligations. so it's on that basis that the attorney was able to give the

green light for military action to you, to the armed forces, to the civil service, to the cabinet and parliament. but it remained the case asks for michael wood made clear in his evidence, that while the attorney general's constitutional authority was, of course, accepted by the advisers on international law, and advice of michael wood, although she herself decided to resign at this point from government service, they accepted his authority but they did not endorse the position in law which he had taken. and it remains to this day sir michael's position, he said this in his witness statement, that, quote, the use of force against iraq in march 2003 was contrary to international law. now, my first question is, have

i given a fair summary of the legal background? >> yes, i think that is a very summary of the legal background. i would say, however, just one point, sir roderic, which is what was so important to me about resolution 1441, was not simply that it declared saddam in breach, gave him a final opportunity, i said also in option four, that a failure to comply unconditionally and he neatly and fully with the inspectors was itself a further material breach. this was excellent important for us to secure in that resolution, and we did secure a. and what we kept out of 1441 was an attempt to insure that we had to go back for another decision. >> i went through that in considerable detail, as you probably saw, with the attorney general. just to make sure that we clearly understood the different

positions and the weight that was being given to the evidence received from private conversations. so if you will allow me not go over all of that ground again, if you're content with the way that we discussed it with the attorney general. and i would really move on to my next question, which is going back to the first half of 2002, which we discussed right at the beginning of today, the period when your strategy was evolving away from containment from the reasons your spine, and towards the american position. and therefore, you are beginning to discuss the possibility or contingency of having to use force. in that period of the first half of 2002 when you're having these discussions, did you seek legal advice from the attorney or indeed, from anyone else?

>> we got a paper i think it was the eighth of march, paper which set out the legal position. and that set it up in the terms that you just summarized. i was obviously not just you're interested for obvious reasons but interest for this reason as well, that we hadn't taken action in 1998. and we've taken action on the basis of the revival of resolution 678. so it was very important to me because we already taken military action, and as you rightly point out, military action had been taken in 1993 as well. but we had that before us, and one of the things that was most important in us going down the u.n. route was precisely the legal advice we got. >> so you want to know the legal parameters. do number where that advice came from? was a from the foreign officers legal advisers? >> i don't, but i may be able to. >> if i put it another way, i

think from our discussion with the attorney general, it didn't come from him. it does if i'm not misremember his evidence, i don't think at that stage he had been consulted. >> it came from the foreign office actually. >> it came from the foreign office. could you, say why, this is pretty serious territory. you're beginning to get onto. you didn't think it necessary to consult the attorney general? >> i mean, we were in my view a long way at that point from taking a decision. and had we come close to the point of taking a decision, of course we would have needed to take in the formal advice of the attorney general's. indeed, we did. at that stage we had the advise of the foreign office, and the foreign office advice was pretty much in line with what lord goldsmith later advisory. >> he was one of percent from what we understand. so at that point building the

attorney general into the process of forming policy, having him at meetings, like i say to me that you discuss wasn't something you felt a need to? >> not at that stage because as i say, we were at a very preliminary point. but what i took from the advise, we were given, is we need a fresh resolution. >> yes. >> i do point out because this was wise later stage i became concerned as to what legal problem was, because we got a further resolution to. >> if i could just did a little bit for a couple of minutes of the attorney general's because his evidence is very fresh in our minds. i mean, in previous governments, it was quite frankly the practice for attorneys general to attend cabinet. and indeed, in some cabinets you didn't have a war cabinet before the conflict began here, but you had groups of advisers who met,

ministers and visors. attorney general's, sometimes in the past quite frequent in the past would have been there. now lord goldsmith does he only attended cabinet to discuss iraq, although as you said this point, the cabinet discussed iraq maybe 20 times. and it was clear from his evidence i think that he was rarely included in the other discussions you're having around this subject, and that he had relatively few face-to-face meetings with you in 2002 and the early part of 2003, particularly in 2002. to discuss the subject. which i think raise the question in our minds as to why you hadn't thought it right to include him more closely? >> well, he was very closely involved in this in the sense that he himself and on its own initiative actually and at that time we had a pretty close interaction. at the end of july 2002, wrote

to me about his legal advice. it's correct, and i think this is in accordance with tradition, he did attend cabinet until he got to the point where we're going to take the decision. but back then we were a year off military action in march 2002. now have been that close to the point of military action, of course peter would have been very closely involved and actually began to be involved i think it's right to say eight months before the military action began. >> you actually got to the point, quite close to the point, with them only having been to the cabinet twice, the second time being on the eve of the conflict. >> the question is not have a time he comes to canada. the issue is is he getting his advice to the prime minister and the ministers, and peter was. and just to say this about peter goldsmith, as you will have seen from his evidence, peter is absolutely lawyer.

he is somebody who is actually is a lawyer, is in the very top rank of the legal profession. and peter made it quite clear from the very early stage of this that if he felt the advice he would give it, and any sense you would get whether the people wanted or they didn't want it. but he was going to get it and he did get it. >> he told us he volunteered after a meeting on the 23rd of july when you're about to go to see president bush. and he volunteered red advice to you in a minute of the 30th of july. the text of which is not in the public domain. buddy commented to us that this advice he felt had not been particularly welcomed. we wondered why it wasn't particularly welcomed to take his advise. >> it wasn't particularly welcomed, but it was obviously i was dealing with, was already a difficult situation. and now i became aware we have to take a whole new dimension into again. of course we had an at in earlier stage of this, but it

was got into discussions with the americans, i was well aware of the fact from, really from march onwards, that if we wanted to be legally secure on this, we had to go down the u.n. would. and that was one major part of why we decided to do this. specs are basically you got the point you didn't need to be constantly reminded of its? >> no, but having said that it actually was then very helpful for him to do this. because he focus on mind quite right on the need to get the right resolution and 1441. >> so you got the vibes from the reaction of number 10? >> i don't know, but i know peter very well. he is someone i have great respect for. >> he made his remark, so indeed -- >> i think to be frank and to be fair to him, and he was deciding before i go to president bush, i

think he worried about statements that had been made by later minister. you want to make it absolutely clear that it wasn't really -- i think his point was it's not really going down the u.n. route, it's getting the right resolution. >> let's turn to that resolution. just after was adopted, on the eighth of november, resolution 1441, and on the 11th of november, lord goldsmith talk to your chief of staff, jonathan powell. he was a bit concerned that he was hearing secondhand use of his opinions and he wanted i think to get that straight. and he made clear to jonathan powell that he was not optimistic that resolution 1441 would provide a sound basis for the use of force. if iraq were found in breach at a future stage, but without a second resolution. and he suggested that it was desirable for him to provide advice at that point.

but he wasn't encouraged to do so. his response was, instead he should -- he could have a meeting sometime before christmas at downing street, and that meeting took place on the 19th of december with some of your officials. and at that meeting he was again told that he was a bit cold on to give advice at this stage. this stage being a stage at which he felt that 1441 would create a situation. but what he was invited to do was put a paper to u.n. draft of his advice, and he handed that i think personally to you on the 14th of january. now, by then we are into a period in which the armed forces had actually been instructed to prepare for military action. and in which you were moving along the track towards an

intended second security council resolution, though that wasn't able until late february i think about the 24th if memory. don't you think that it would have been useful, as he obviously felt, if you had the formal advice of the attorney general ahead of these now increasing the important developments? >> i think what was important for him to do was to explain to us what his concerns were. all the way through this, there was, as i know myself, different views of issues. and issues such as this, they were bound to take very different views. and peter was quite rightly saying to us, these are my concerns, this is why i don't think 1441 in itself is enough. now we have begun military preparations even before we got the second -- the first resolution, the resolution 1441. we had to do that otherwise we never would've been in a position to take military

action. but let me make it absolutely clear. if peter had said this cannot be justify, we would not have taken action. >> if you had known he would have say that, it would have known as it is possible. because it could have prevented you from deploying a large force into the region and having to bring it back. that's why i ask wouldn't have been helpful to know your options at this -- >> we did know our options. we didn't get formal in a sense legal advice at that point, but peter made it clear what his view was. and then it was a whole intermission because the whole of the legal interpretation really revolves around a bit like a statute. point for lawyers. always in the mind of the people, pass the resolution. and as you rightly said earlier, the resolution in one sense was unclear. and on the other hand, as to what people intended. on the other hand, i certainly

felt where it was absolutely clear was that there had to be immediate full and unconditional compliance, and a lack of that compliance was a further material breach. so in my view there had to be at least a strong facing these if you could show material breach. that justifies the arguments. otherwise you could have justified. >> before the middle of the february is no i can offer new options. they are saying you have to a further determination by the security council. later on, it turned out he was able to find an alternative option. in letting the policy, my point is, wouldn't it have been much easier for you to of known at this early stage that there was not an alternative option that didn't involve the security council resolution. you might have decided not to

make the huge effort that you then did make to get the second city council resolution. because by making that effort, and then not getting it, it could be argued that you and then actually weakened the argument that you subsequent, or the position you subsequently took on the revival argument that wouldn't have been helpful to know net art of? >> we did know. because peter made it clear. the best thing to do is to do another resolution. we were well aware that was his advice. the issue is really this. he was saying it's the only thing to do at the state. >> he didn't offer the alternative and tell after he'd been to washington on the 11th of february. >> it was two things to be fair to them. and i think it is important this is seen in its proper context. it all revolves around interpretation of 1441, and the question was what did the security council need? we were obvious they are doing very strongly that the security

council had agreed that it was in breach, and any for the breach was a material breach and he had to comply fully. >> but that had been determined by the security council. >> and the issue as to whether, because some people wondered, actually the security council had to take a decision. that was excluded. we refuse to allow that, precisely because we did not want to be in a situation where we were forced as a matter of law to come back for another decision. and peter had never the less i agree that 1441. that was why there was a powerful argument on the side of one resolution only. as there was against it. >> that's where you ended up in march, but until the 12th of february, you were not being told by the attorney or foreign office legal advisers, that you had the option of not getting a further decision out of the security council. they were telling you, both of

them, that the reading of that resolution, which as you rightly say was unclear, but the british reading of that resolution, unlike the american resolution, was that determination had to be made by the security council. >> yes, there was a disagreement between where i was a legal position was at the stage and the american position. i think i was at odds, suggestion actually that peter then went to talk to -- >> and was then in his position change. >> but it's not. he had a discussiodiscussion with the jeremy greenstock. >> after he wrote using his position had not change. >> it had been a very useful discussion and that moved him somewhat. >> he told us there were three things that moved them. sir jeremy greenstock i'm part of the way there. and negotiating his a further part of the way. going to washington talking to the americans, got in yet another stage. that was his evolution. >> and it is fair to say, because it's important, it was always a very, very difficult

balance of judgment. but the important thing was in the end that peter came to the view, and as i say anybody who knows him, he would not express this view and less he thought of inability. he came to the view that on balance, the breach by saddam hussein of resolution 1441 was sufficient, provided it was a breach of the obligations. smack he asked you to say was sufficient, but that's at the end of the game. can i just go to the point where he's given you his form of ice on the seventh of march, but that didn't give the yes or no clear answer that the chief of the defense staff and others wanted. that didn't come until the 13th of march, when he had a period of further reflection. and what discussions did you or others under your instruction, if any, have with lord goldsmith

between the seventh of march when you receive his formal advise, and the 13th of march when he decided that his position had evolved further? >> i can't recall any specific discussions that i had. or others would've had before the 13th of march. but essentially what happened was this. he gave legal advice. he gave an opinion saying, look, there is this argument against it, there's this argument for a. i think a reasonable case can be made. we had to have a definitive decision. and that decision is yes, it is lawful to do this or not. >> and a huge amount on that decision? >> of course, it did, a lot hung on that decision. and it was therefore extremely important that it was done by the attorney general, and done in a way which we were satisfied was correct and right. and that's what he did. if i could just point this out, if you go back and read

resolution 1441, and i think it's quite hard to argue as a matter of commonsense, leave aside the issues to do with the precise interpretation of some of the provisions, 1441, the whole spirit of it was, we had been through 10 years of saddam hussein breaching u.n. resolutions. we finally decided that he's going to be given one last chance. this is the moment when if he takes that chance, there's no conflict, then we resolve the matter. but if he doesn't take that chance, and starts messing around again, as he started to do, then that's it. >> so it is quite hard to argue what? quite hard to argue -- >> the further resolution was clearly politically preferable for us if you get everybody back on the same page again. is clearly preferable. but if you actually examine the circumstances of 1441, the whole point about this, and this is

the are you and i use with the american success with to get him to go down this route. and by the way, at the end of october, 2002 i remember specifically a conversation with president bush in which i said, if he complies, that's it. this is important. because people sometimes say, it was all kind of cast in stone. >> number 10 from the white house in january and february, even into march that it was essential from the british perspective because of our law, to have a second resolution to. >> politically. >> essentially. >> no, politically we are saying it was going to be very hard. >> weren't we sang it was legally necessary for a? >> what we said is that legally it resolves that question beyond any dispute. on the other hand, for the reasons that i've given, peter in the and decided that actually a case could be made out for

doing this without another resolution. and as i say, did so i think. >> it must have been a relief to you on the 13th of march when he told you that he would come to the better view that the revival argument worked. because at that point, he had given you a subject you making the determination, the clear legal grounds that you needed. >> yes at, and the reason he had done that was purely very obvious. which was the blix report indicated quite clearly that saddam had not taken that final opportunity. >> but he had done it in disagreement with the international lawyers, all of them, as we understand from sir michael. than from the governments employ. >> i seem to remember, but i maybe wrong on this. if i am, for giving. but i think that he also sought the advice of -- >> he had and we discussed it. and it didn't appear from our discussion that there were many other people outside government

arguing in the same direction that lord goldsmith eventually argued. >> or other countries, were having the same issues as well. and having to decide this. and it wasn't, rightly say, irrelevant that the american lawyers had come to a different view. >> clearly not irrelevant because it had a big impact on them. but with other countries in which, we've heard recently with the review has found us, but whether other countries in which people were arguing in favor of the revival argument? >> i think all countries who took the military action believe they had a sound legal basis for doing so. all i am pointing out is that actually when you analyze 1441, it's less surprising as a conclusion to come to than sometimes is made out of date. because of the fact is, 1441 was very deliberately constructed. it had -- it had a july, a certain sort of -- integrity is a resolution to it.

it basically said, okay, one last chance that one last chance for saddam to prove you had a change of heart and you want to cooperate that and he didn't. >> we're not lawyers. we simply listen to the views of lawyers. lord goldsmith, sir michael ward, mr. brownell, and look at what they told us about the balance of legal opinion on the subject. lord goldsmith obviously was not in a position in which he had wide support within the international legal fraternity within the government. indeed, any i think. in the u.k. when he made his judgment. but he is a lawyer of the higher eminence and accept his authority even if they didn't agree with the. so that was a final decision. >> all i'm trying to say is when you go back and read 1441, it's pretty obvious that you can make a decent case for this.

>> well, let me pass judgment on the. i am asking questions i don't have opinions today on a. i would just like to ask one final question i think to wrap up this legal chapter. this is really, you in the position ultimately where you had to give this determination. you have to go through the action, lord goldsmith was preparing with the assistance of christopher greenwood for the possibility of legal challenge. he knew that he had taken the decision that some others, many of us perhaps were arguing with him or were going to argue with. and yet the something to you that was described as a reasonable case, but nevertheless not one that he would have confidently put before a court. you then have to decide whether you were convinced that this was a strong enough legal basis to take a very serious action of participating in a full-scale

invasion of another country. how convinced were you at this point of that strong, that you had a strong legal case for doing what you get? >> i would put this we. what i need to know from him was indian, was he going to say this was lawful? had to come to a conclusion in the end, and i was a little muscle. i wrote many, many opinions for clients and they tend to be one-handed on the one at that which accompanied english and indian. and he had to come to that conclusion. and incidentally i think he wasn't alone in international law in coming to that conclusion for very obvious reasons. because as i say if you read the words in 1441, it's pretty clear this was saddam's last chance. that's what he had to do. he did it. as i say, anybody who knows peter knows he would not have done in less he believed in it and thought that was the correct thing to do. and that was for us and for our armed forces, that was sufficient. >> you were bored by him saying

that he wouldn't expect to win any court with this one? >> i don't think he said not to win. he simply said there's a case either way. and the role was there was a case either way. that's why would have been preferable politically and to remove any doubt to have a second resolution. but in the end, we got to the point in the middle of march. when frankly, we had to decide. we were going either to back away or we were going to go forward. and i decided for the reasons that i've given that we should go forward. >> when he described as the safest due course, but that was no longer available. and the other he said was if the matter ever came before a court, a reasonable case does not mean that it's a matter ever came before a court, i would be confident the court would agree with this view. but i think, and you have a

further, to me, i have finished i think with all the questions that i have on the legal case that i don't know if any of my colleagues have, otherwise i think we will move on to the next subject. >> i think that brings us into the question of preparations and planning with the decision having been taken. so can i turn to the barest to start off? >> thank you, chairman. this morning, you said that your decision to contribute to full division was driven by your sense of what proper negotiati negotiation. at that stage, did you way off the applications of that decision? for example, the time that would be required to acquire, if we moved in such like? >> yes of course. part of the purpose of asking for papers that describe the different levels of military commitment that you might get is precisely in order to be able to learn what is that you would be required to do. but in these situations, you are

very, very dependent, rightly, on the advice that you're given, and from the military. >> but a fundamental underlying assumption of the strategic defense review, which your government initiated in 1997, was that there would always be sufficient warning time for any operation at medium or large scale to build of equipment, storage and ammunition. and in the case of a large-scale operation, such a substantial contribution in any iraq, a necessarily time would be six months. and this was necessary to allow preparation reserves include medics and to take account of the industry's capacity to pull up stocks. now, on the basis of your governments planning assumptions, therefore, in order to prepare for the possibility, however slim, a large scale military action in the spring of 2003 that six-month clock would've started taking in

autumn 2002. but david manning had told us that you sought to delay the decision as long as possible, and also heard from lord boyce and of course others about the restrictions placed on the visible military preparations in the summer 2002. i mean, were you aware what the implications of that would be? anybody made you aware of the applications? >> absolutely what was important was to be very clearly that you could not do this unless the military were ready to do it. and yes it's true as i think i explained this point. at a time where what about the visibility of all the planning. we were doing a certain amount of planning, but reaching another level. when you have to make it very visible and very clear. and we didn't want to do that for fear of triggering an assumption that we were actually going to do military action, irrespective of what was going to be happening at the united nations.

however, when i think was the of october 2002, geoff hoon said we got to get on with it. i know mike boyce to do in his evidence that he was confident that the u.k. military was fully ready by the time we took military action to. >> but were assurance given to you because they wanted to give you a view of a can you approach? do you think? >> the one thing about military and my expense is they tell you very bluntly, quite rightly, what their situation is, what they want, what they don't want and what they think about things. and mike was very, very clear that they had the readiness that i think there was something like 250 different urgent operational requirements that went into this, all of them i think kevin tebbit told you we're probably not. and incidentally had anyone at any stage come to me and said

it's not safe to do this because of the lack of proper military preparation, i would've taken a very, very sexy indeed. but they didn't and they got on with it. and they did it magnificently, as they always do. >> they did, but i think you would appreciate they only actually had about -- it was in january i think that there was a formal approval given. so that was only about i think a couple of months. >> i thought that jeff would come to me at the end of october. there had been a lot of work going on. >> that's true, but there was no visible preparedness. and things like medical supplies, combat, boots, body armor, very important in situations where there could be threat of nuclear biological and chemical protection, including ammunition. as it happened that was the case. >> yes, it was very important. just let me emphasize to you, on these issues to do logistics and the expertise that the army has

on this, i needed to know from them that they could do and they would be ready. and that's what they assured me, and they were. >> so what you're saying to me is that nobody spelled out to the invitations of not being prepared in time, given the fact that the lead time needed for this kind of operation was six months of? >> we were absolutely spelling of the application which is why geoff hoon came to me answer we've now got to get this visible and get a move on a. we had a meeting i think with the chief of defense staff and others. and i just want to emphasize one thing. my attitude has always been i don't think i refused a request for money or equipment at any point in time that i was prime minister. and my view very, very strongly is when you're asking your armed forces to go into these situations, you put everything to one side, other than making

sure that they had the equivalent they need and they have the finance there to back it up. as far as i'm aware, and as i say i think this was evidence to you. they got it ready and they got it ready in time. >> but the point is, the formal approval did not come until january anyway. and in fact, we do know that that was the case even if it was late. >> well, i didn't know -- as i say, there were issues to do with logistics that they were far better able to tell you about. on no is that they regard themselves as ready, and what is more, they performed as ready. i mean, they did an extraordinary job. >> can i ask another question, because if the view was that you were going to the united nations route and there was a military threat, why we are reluctant to have any visible preparation? >> well, we changed, and we did have the visible preparation. >> that came later. that's my point. >> exactly. there was always a concern, if

you like, the middle part of 2002. because people were constantly saying, they made up their mind, nothing is going to alter it. we are now set on a military course. so we were anxious to make sure people did not think it was there was an inevitability about this. one thing i would emphasize he is there really wasn't. if the u.n. route had worked successfully, however many doubts he would have on the past behavior, but if it were successfully the whole thing would have been -- would not have happened. we would have taken the u.n. path and made it work. >> i now want to turn to the general aftermath planning. because on the 21st of january 2003, you were giving evidence to the liaison committee. you said, you cannot engage in military conflict and ignore the aftermath. in other words, if at this stage of military conflict would also have to get a very proper work

plan as to what happens afterwards and had the internet should community supports that well, and so on. several witnesses have told is that the planning for for the aftermath war was important, if not more important than planning for the war itself. now what happen? because you know, this was -- a lot of people have said it didn't quite work. >> first of. >> first of all i the web to divided into two sections here. and actually we did an immense amount of prewar planning. and i think mike boyce again said in his evidence that they spent as much time on a four as the other faces of the operation. we had the officials meeting obviously. and we had the ad hoc meetings. we've cabinet meetings actually that we are discussing these issues. the real problem was that our focus was on the issues and in the end were not the issues that caused this difficulty.

it wasn't in absence of planning. it was that we planned to certain eventualities, and when we got in there, we manage to deal with those eventualities, but we discovered a different set of realities. and they we had to deal with those. so the vast bulk of the prewar planning was focus on the humanitarian, number one. i think probably more than anything else. indeed, i think was the house of commons select committee report on the sixth of march, 2003, saying you've got to do even more on the humanitarian side. all of the focus was on that. >> we also have evidence and i think it has been declassified, that clare short was writing to you for a pretty long time on the level of involvement of dfid and she had. and she was trying to see your attention from a very early time. >> but i think you analyze those letters the focused especially on in humanitarian side. >> they do but what she was complaining about was the preparedness and the timing that was done.

>> exactly so. that's why we're trying to make sure that we doubled our focus, and when we went in there i was simply saying that at the humanitarian side, that was the main thing people were warning about. we didn't end up with the humanitarian disaster. in fact, we avoided that we avoided many ways because of the work dfid and others did. the other thing that she and others were warning about were the oil fields being set on fire. and the use of chemical and biological weapons. so there was an immense amount of planning going on. but we planned with one assumption, that turned out to be wrong. and then we also ended up with a fresh problem that i don't think people foresaw. >> that raises another issue, that how attica was the planning and had to ensure that planning covered all the full ranges of situations that you may face post-conflict and iraq? this is not the only issue might

face directly in a military action, but it's about security, political and economic challenges that you might face. had you plan adequately for these eventualities? >> yes, but what we thought we're going to encounter in iraq, i think we do plan. we actually had a perfectly sensible plan which was to make sure because i'm genuine on it was clear you had responsibly in the south. that we would be able for example to put together very quickly and a group of iraqi's, ambassador that would be able to take over great responsibility. but one of the planning assumptions, i was just looking this up now, and i think you have evidence to this effect. the planning assumptions that the m.o.d., foreign office and dfid everybody made, was that there would be a functioning iraqi civil service. in other words, that you would

remove the top level but you would have a functioning system underneath it. and i think one of the major lessons of this is to understand that where you have these types of states, in a case of iraq sort of a semi fascist state if you like. which really operated by fear amongst on the population from a small number of people. that assumption will be wrong. you'll be dealing with a situation where you probably have to rebuild the civil infrastructure of the country from nothing. and that's what we found. you have heard from the evidence that the general when they went into basra, contrary to what we thought, we found a completely broken system. >> we will come to the. i think you quoted lord turnbull. the decision that the substantial in force, i mean, we'll where that we would occupy the southeast iraq and that we

would assume the responsibilities as an occupying power under the geneva and hague conventions? let me finish. what lord turnbull said, it's very important that he said it had we stuck with option to we would have had warships and aircraft aluminum that a large number as a people, the special forces on the ground. and we would not have been the occupying power with everything that flowed from it. that's what i meant by implications. >> it's correct that i think from about early january on we knew we would be in a position we would have to handle the situation in the south. that was preferable to us originate from the situation which the u.k. came in from the north. that was part of a commitment that we are able to make their and we then knew we would be joined by the forces of other nations. >> were you aware when you made that decision?

>> i think continue onwards it was clear we were going to be in a position where we're going to be in charge of basha. but the whole section was, and you see this very clearly from the documents, is that you would come in for the first stage, obvious he the army would be the main people in charge. he would then bring your civilian people in behind that. you would then assume, as is possible turned over to iraqi disappeared the idea was to get an iraqi interim administration up and running very quickly. >> but that, that happened i think after we got the security council resolution 1483. >> yes, that was also in porton part of what once do. we wanted to bring the united nations back. >> why did we accept the status of the joint occupying power? >> because we were the key partner of the u.s. in this. we believe in it. we believed it was right to be there for the reasons that i

have given, and were prepared to take some responsibility and then putting the country right. >> did we weigh all the liability of the risk and applications, the resources required? >> absolutely. and one of the things we made very clear, and i think i made this clear on a number of occasions, is that we could not walk away from our commitment to people in iraq afterwards. but i believe for all the reasons i've given, that this was an important commitment for us to make. the whole reason why we then had a quite detailed and difficult discussion with the americans about the united nations, then coming back in for the aftermath, was precisely because we knew parcells come and get i think peter goldsmith was advising this, that we need that cover and that military cover. and 1483 effectively endorsed the coalition presence. >> but why is it that sony witnesses have said to us that the aftermath planning was deficient in? >> well, i think, first of all,

i think a lot of the criticism have been directed at the american system. all i would say about that is, i think, like you, and if you look at the rand report or the inspector general report, i think denon 2009, in america, i think it lays out very clearly the problems that prewar planning, the planning and postwar execution. i think for ourselves, you know, if we knew then what we know now, i mean, we would of course do things very differently. on the other hand, for what we thought we going to have, we had planned for and we met those eventualities. >> but you see, the americans, but what have you agreed with president bush about, about the aftermath? >> what we agreed was, i mean, the whole dispute really about the united nations, we were saying the united nations had to come back into the situation. in the in -- >> they were very reluctant.

and that is something i think which we wanted. and there was a resistance from the american? >> yes, that's absolutely right. but in the end the americans agreed what we call a vital or central. [inaudible] >> i think if you look at what happened with united nations, in iraq, i think resolution 1483 is really very important resolution. but i don't know whether you want to look at it now. >> i have got it, but -- >> let me rather than refer to, let me make this tree simple point. i think was around the 16th of april, or shortly after the military action begun, and i had a good and close relationship, had been in a very difficult situation throughout the last few months. he made clear the u.n. had to be

independent of the coalition. and he also made clear he wasn't are going for the lead role. what he was are good for -- >> not surprising? >> absolutely. >> a coalition led invasion and he did not want the full responsibly of reconstruction. that is not surprising. >> correct, but that is why when people say that, as it were, the u.n. should have been given the lead role. i'm simply pointing out the fact that he didn't want it. what he did want was a vital role, which is what we got the americans to agree to. and if you look at resolution 1483, it sets out the areas in which his special representative, which agreed to appoint, was was going to influence and say. and actually that special representative, was absolutely excellent. would have made an enormous difference to iraq in its future, but the terrorists killed him, a 7010 in augus

august 2003. >> i understand that want to go back to the point is my recollection is as early as september 2002, a number of very sensible questions will be asked of parliament about the aftermath planning. and that we also have been told that you are given rather an optimistic view by the americans, not that it will be all right on the day. >> the americans were making efforts actually, but i think as i say, if you read the inspectors general's report, you read the rand report, it is very clear. thing could've been done beverly. i think the american administration or the american system have accepted that. >> i understand you person became involved in the aftermath roundabout february 2003? was set to lay? >> no, i was involved in was going to happen before then. and as we came to the point of actually going in, it's true we had a meeting i think in february 2003, and in subsequent meetings. but the points that we're trying

to see, what are the lessons we can learn, is that unfortunately what we thought was going to be the problem didn't turn out to be the problem. >> that's true but i think i go back to my earlier point. it is the adequacy of the planet on a whole range of things. economic, political. because in a way they were in danger. it was information that iraq could have fashioned given the insecurity of the kurds, the sunnis, there is a whole range of eventualities for which you plan for. >> yes. >> for what wasn't done. >> i would say we mostly did plan for the problems in relation to the potential for a sunni-shia kurds but. and what we tried to do is to make sure that as soon as possible, we brought the sunnis and the kurds and shia together. and so what actually happened, and this happen in a. and just a few weeks after the

invasion, they brought together i think was called the iraq governing council, or the interim governing council. that had a membership of 25. i think there were 13 or i think it was 13 she or a and 11 sunni and one -- >> but before that, i mean, decision was taken, for example, the oral was actually replaced by cba. changes were made without any consultation with us. >> look, what actually happened was it came very close that they were not capable of doing this. >> but my point in terms of working together, if it were a joint occupying power, would we be good and consulted, would have and exerted a kind of influence we need to? >> i think we were consulted on the questions everyone thought would arise. but it's true, tim cross another coming back and sing this system is not, you do, it's not working the way it should.

and we were than interacting very strongly with the americans that the only thing i say, is that had we had even more focus on it, we would have still been focusing essentially on the humanitarian side within a section that we would inherit a functioning civil service infrastructure. and it was a bad assumption that proved to be wrong. and i think one of the reasons why we set up, and i know you have heard evidence about this, what's called the stabilization unit in 2004. was precisely, because we recognize in the future, and i think this is what the american system now knows, for sure if you're going to go into a situation like this, you have got to go in as nation builders and you've got to go in with a configuration of the political and civilian and military that is right for a failed state situation. that doesn't make you say you don't do it, but you need to be prepared for its. >> with appointment as our assumptioassumption was would get united nations to take a

lead role. eventually that didn't happen. but what did we have a plan b.? because any sense all i am want to get at is the ability to plan for eventualities. >> we did a plan for those individuals. the analysis of what they might become and we worked them out. what we didn't, we didn't plan for two things. one was as i say the absence of proper function civil-service and assertion that and the second thing the single most important element of this whole business of what happened afterwards. people do not think that al qaeda and iran played a role that they did. and we could have -- if what you ended up having was essentially an indigenous violence or insurgency, or the criminality and the looting and so on, get, there were issues to do with the number's of troops, the type of trips -- >> we will let you come to that letter later, and i will pass on. >> i just don't --

>> i just want to finish by saying, all of those are very important. questions. we could have handled the situation if that had been a problem. it was the introduction of the external elements that really caused this mission very nearly to feel. fortune in the end it didn't. and the reason why that is important, is that in itself in my view is a huge lesson. because those are the same forces that we are now facing. afghanistan right around the region. >> that isn't a we're going to cover letter. . . hearing this set of exchanges and reading a great deal, hearing a good deal of evidence, that the war in terms of the planning for the aftermath on the british side, leave aside the americans, and we've seen the rand report and the lessons report, there was a single set of assumptions, which regrettably turned out to be

very overoptimistic what we would find, but there appears to have been no real risk analysis looking at best case, middle case, worst case, and at the resource and planning horizon implications of that. what we did know, and i would not like to sound like donald rumsfeld, we knew we knew very little about the conditions of things inside saddam's iraq. not a natural intelligence target, in principle could have amassed a good deal of knowledge, but none of it sufficient. question. >> it ever safe to look at a single set of assumptions unless they can be tested quite rigorously against a worst-case k >> is it ever safe to look at the single set of assumptions unless they can be tested? >> i think that's a good question. the mod -- there's a whole

planning of assumptions, paper as you know. we really did focus and try to drill down on it. one the reasons why in early 2003 i was having quite difficult exchange of correspondent particularly was because rightly she was getting worried that humanitarian side was not going to be adequately advanced. i think in the future, your best to make this assumptions, actually that these types of failed states, i don't know where you describe iraq as failed state or semifascist state, whatever it was, if we are required to go into this type of situation again, you might as well assume the worst actually. because it's going to be -- you are dealing with states that are

deeply repressive, very secretive, power is controlled by very small number of people, and it's always going to be tough. now i think the real question in a way for us as a country, and because i think whatever preparations you've made, this was always going to be tough. always going to be tough. is are we prepared to engage in this? are we actually prepared to be in there for the long term on nation building in these difficult situations, fighting a completely different type of terrorist and insurgency threat? >> thank you. it may have turned out to be an expensive lesson, but one very necessary to learn. let's have a break. can i just remind the audience that people will need to be back here i suggest within 10 minutes to be certain of getting in and back through the security if you go out. you shall need to start on time. if you are are not in here, i'm

afraid that's it. thank you. well, let's resume this final start of the afternoon. sir martin gilbert is going to ask questions. martin? >> we've heard from a number of our military witnesses, there are requirements for trooped to be deplayed in a sustained period in iraq stretch the military regime beyond the limits of the military regarded it's sustainability. were you adviced about the british ability to sustain a significant force in iraq? >> i was adviced we could sustain it, but it was going to be difficult. sure. we obviously have the ongoing campaign in afghanistan. we will bring in troops from other countries. i think we had about 30

countries in the coalition. they brought in roughly, i don't know 15 to 20,000 additional troops as well. i think we have the troops we needed in the south. but yet it was -- it was all the way through it was going to be -- it was going to be difficult. if we were concerned at any point that we had committed ourselves? >> i was consider concerned to make sure we didn't. we had interaction with myself and the military was to make sure we didn't. >> in his evidence to us, general described the impact of the reduction of british forces in iraq in the summer of 2003. while he clearly accepted this was necessary in order to provide for the long term of troops to sustain our troops in the southeast, he did make sure that the constrained his ability to contain the emerging violence in iraq. what assumptions were made about the roll of british troops with

regard to iraq once saddam had been removed? what did you see and plan for their task to be? >> well, i think the idea obviously that we would not require the same number of troops for the conflict as we would in the aftermath. there was, i think, a time in the middle of 2003 when we were asked for more troops and gave more troops. and our issue really in the south was less to do with the numbers of troops. because, in fact, there was relatively low-level violence in the south compared with the rest of the country. our concern was how we managed to get the reinstruction going in the south. in circumstances where fairly early on there were groups who purpose was deliberately to stop that reconstruction. >> given the constraints, what did you see as the balance of the task of our troops. on the one hand it was seeking

out m & d which clearly at one point had to be a priority and the same time delivering a secure environment in which not only the iraqis could sustain a normal life. but also our british civilians who were there in reconstruction. >> well with, these are very much decisions on the commanders on the ground. i think they were conscious on the very early stage trying to make sure they don't with any lingering resistance. but also that they provided security for the local people. i've gone back over this many times. because i think it was very important this period straight after the, straight after the invasion. because in a sense what happened was that we very quickly toppled the saddam regime. what we found, as i say, was the situation was different from the one we expected. between, i would say, march 2003

and early 2004 during the period of time that hillary senate was there, you know, we had the situation more or less under control. there was some reconstruction going. we agreed, i think, a special claim on the reserve at end of march 2003. and what really happened? it was that another assumption that had been made, which was the iran would basically not be provocative. it might have it's interest. but it wasn't going to be provocative. that assumption also started to change. and what happened was that as hew tad da al stadda became more direct, that entered into a new mention. this iranian issue became much

larger. >> you mentioned it was the military you were of course advicing in terms of priorities. but what was your input at this time? what were you -- as it were suggesting and proposing to them? >> i think we were getting feedback as quickly as we could. we were trying to get the united nations back in with a vital central role. i went out then to iraq at the end of may 2003, i met jerey brehmer there. after that, i had meetings both internally, commissioning work and then had a very frank discussion with with with what was happening in baghdad. at that point, it's fair to say the issue really was i think john sort of described this to you as the baghdad first, in the end, unless you can secure baghdad, you were always going to have difficulties.

but i would say it's interesting that when i was getting frequent reports back, and i think as hillary told you, i was always very clear with our people out there. if you have a real problem, pick up the phone. and you started with get messed around with bureaucracy. come to me directly. i think when i saw him at end of february, 2004, when he left, he thought it was challenging, but, you know, there was some progress being made. we had to make sure the progress carried on. >> if i could go back to the the military funding issue, and perhaps look at it's wider aspect. we've heard from several military witnesses how effective the operational requirements for the military were addressed. but we've also heard, and jeff touched on this last week. because of the way that the process works and it's years two and three of the funding cycle, the continued use of hours over a sustained period let in effect

to the quorum requirements being diverted. was this something you were aware of? >> i don't think this was something that i was personally involved in no. i was more involved at the level that you like, and say, for example, in september 2003 they asked for additional forces and i was keen to get them going. i don't think i really -- i don't think the issue is to do with operational requirements really came to me -- or the fact that the operation requirements were diverting funds away under the strategic review? >> i think if anybody come to me and said there's an issue in the problem here ongoing discussion and so on and so forth within government. if someone had come to me and said i think this was a real problem. i would have been straight in there trying to sort it out. i wasn't aware of that particular issue coming across my desk. >> right. in terms of other defendant

departments, we've also heard from consumers and among others of problems. but essentially, they felt that funding was not being deviced adequately. for example, the rehabilitation in iraq, the fid requirements really required more significant resources. is this something that came to you? >> yes. it did. and one the reasons why we agreed a supplement to provision by the treasury, i think of 127 million pounds, rightly around about that, at the end of march was precisely because we were the way we had to ramp up pretty quickly. now there was a problem. the americans had made a huge allegation for, and the cpa up in baghdad. we were trying to get that money transferred back down. i even got involved at one point. i think there was a senior member of the power plant.

even though i got involved in trying to sort out the money being delivered for. my basic view, i think we spent 2003, 2004, iraq was the key country. i think we spent over 260 million pounds. it was a big commitment that we were giving. now much of that was humanitarian. it was also money for reconstruction. and had people come to me again and said look, we need to make an even greater commitment, i would have done so. but i think to be fair, during that period of time as people were then assessing a quite different situation, what blame clear in time was not a lack of resource but a lack of security. >> that brings me to my final question really. you touched just before the break in part on your answer. and that is the question of anticipating some of these problems in advance. i mean from what we've heard from the people on the ground, the military, and also of course

the dfid and the whole question of the detroiting security situation, are these not things which august, september, october 2002 should have been addressed after iraq was not an unknown quantity. >> absolutely correct. and we focused very much on what we would find and how we would deal with it. i raised the issue myself several times. how would the sunni shiite relationship work out. that was going to be a major part of the problem. you had basically three groups, up in the north, sunni, and down in the south, it was shiite. for that very reason, there was another reason why i wanted the u.n. closely involved. i thought they had a better chance of bringing those groups together. it was also a reason why very early on we put a lot of effort into getting a sense amongst the different iraqi groups that they

could come together. one the things that happened in iraq was the sunni who were 20% of the population had effectively ruled the country. so the majority population had been exclusions. this was going to be a huge thing now. they were for the first time going to come in power. by and large in one of the extraordinary things about this from 2003 onwards is the political process despite everything continued. it was in 2006 as a result of what was a absolutely wicked and deliberate act of bobbing the mosque. that was what then started to turn this into a sunni issue. now fortunate in the end we got back out of it again. in 2004, you know, down in the south, there are all sorts of issues. but we were managing them. was it then a weakness in the

discussions that somehow voices weren't raised and experts and knowledge wasn't put on the table that could be this massive deterioration? >> well, there was very much discussion of the shiite/sunni issue. we were very well aware of that. was there wasn't, it was vital importance, this is a lesson in any situation similar to this, people did not believe that you would have al qaeda coming in from outside and people did not believe that you would end up in a situation where iran and once as it were the threat of saddam was removed from them would then try to deliberately to destabilize the country. there were some very important lessons in that. what is important also to understand throughout the process, the iraq people as a people were not in favor of the violence. they were not in favor of sectarianism. as the people, they supported

and have supported throughout the the political process, indeed today in iraq, you've know got for the election that is are coming up, groups who are evertly nonsectarian standing for election. which was a huge thing for all of the middle east, and a great thing incidentally. so i think what we -- i think in the future you have to be aware of is that if you are dealing with the country where you are likely to get this -- as i say the diversion of the proper faith of islam, as a major element in the equation, you were going to have to prepare for that very carefully. your troop configurations have to be prepared for it, you're going to have to be prepared for quite a fight over it. >> there wasn't something for example, i think you mention twice in your speeches before the war, your meeting with iraq is. and how affected you were by that, but they weren't giving this sort of warning sign? >> no, they weren't. look, it was the statement of

the obviously. britain in a sense of iraqis remember were involved with all of this. everybody understand the history of how iraq came about. you have the kurds and the sunni and shiite. the consensus was that you have to watch. that was precisely why huh to construct the political process right from the outset. we tried to deal with that. i did something else, i think jack straw mentioned this to you in his evidence, i also sent jack to talk to the iranians. a very big lesson of this for me was that we tried with the iranians, tried very hard to reach out in a sense make an agreement with them to give them a strong indication that it wasn't the american forces were not there having done iraq to move through to iran or any of

the rest of it. and one of the most disappointing, but also i think most telling aspects of this is that the iranians, whatever they said from the beginning, were a major destabilizing factor in this situation and quite literal ly. >> i think lyne roderic, you have to beliefly follow through on that point and raise another. hindsight is a wonderful thing. with all of the wisdom, i suppose it seems obviously now that al qaeda would seek to exploit conflict and the iranians would as well. as you've just said, they had a destabilizing effect. they must have enjoyed putting pressure on us and the americans. it's time that we need to put them under pressure to put them with the nuclear program. that's all hindsight. but if there's been a really

rigorous risk assessment made before we went in, would it really not have shown that these risks existed? you've repeatedly referred to how these external factors destabilized and how this wasn't something that had been predicted. could it and should it have been predicted? >> well, that was a very, very good question. let me try and answer it. we did ask for an assessment on iran particularly. in fact, you'll see from the intelligence assessment in 2002, i am constantly going back and forward. is iran, i think i asked this again in february 2003, what's the attitude of iran going to be? the -- the conventional wisdom if you like at the time, you might get elements playing about. basically, the evidence was that

iran would -- more or less have a watching brief to see how it would play out, but it had no interest in destabilizing. >> despite the fact that iraq had the long war with it, they weren't exactly best pals. >> i know exactly. but that was the point because as it were, saddam had been their enemy and i think as i say, there were $1 million casualties. precisely because they would be pleased to get rid of saddam. we thought they would be more amenable. i had actually spoken myself to the president of iran prior to to september the 11th when we were trying to get the new resolution on sanctions. i had a television conversation at the time. basically, it's gone out of my way to say look let's have a new ripened so on. in respect of iran, that was the advice. we did go into this in some detail. in respect of al qaeda and in

retrospect, this -- this was difficult. at time, and, you know, we know so much more about these groups and how they operate now. but at time, the single thing people were most determined to prove was in the sense they were two separate problems. because the americans had raised the question of a link between saddam and al qaeda and really our system was determined to say, no, come on, keep the two things separate. we're not saying saddam had anything to do with september 11th. that was how i received. now i think -- and this is a very interesting point. because it absolutely goes to the 2010 point that i raised earlier. my view is if we left saddam here and carried on with the intent to develop the weapons and the know how and the concealment program and

sanctions had gone, i had little doubt myself, and it's a judgment, and other people may take a different judgment. today we may facing a situation where iraq was compete thing with iran and competing more important perhaps than anything else, competing as well as the nuclear issue in respect of support of terrorist groups. >> i think it would be very useful if we had time at the end to come back to this 2010 point. because you've raised something that other witnesses have not so far raiseed. at least not in that way. you've raised it binary question. whereas there are alternative scenarios where saddam might still be in a box. it wasn't a question if he got right out or not. i wanted one other question about the postconflict period, which is simply this. you said you went to baghdad in

may and met bremer, when bremer arrived, he arrived setting in which what everybody had arrived setting up in shambles. two important things that he promulgated in his first books on debathification and on the disbarment of the iraq forces. it wasn't that we disagreed with the principal, it was the extent, they were far too sweeping. the damage had to be undone. a lot of damage it turned out was done. again, based on what we've heard in evidence, my question is this simply, had we been consulted before this happened, by washington on these very important decisions, we were their cooccupying power. and if they hadn't consulted us, should they have done? >> well, certainly the moment --

i mean i don't know whether there had been any official contact on this. i know i hadn't had the discussion with the white house on in. i would however say the moment we were aware, john swords was in baghdad and on to the case. one the things that -- you know, that obviously you will do is to look at this debathification of the army and assess how big of a factor it was. >> we have done that to an extent already. >> i would say it's quite interesting. i am not sure in my own mind about this even know. i think in respect to debathification, i think john said this to you, it was going to be really difficult to prevent a certain level of debathification. >> yes.

>> now, all i would say about that was the pressure, because this is -- it's almost possible for us, i think, to understand how oppressed and repressed the population of iraq felt. sudden they had the freedom. they detested the people, i remember meeting groups of iraqi before the invasion, they would tell you of the torture chambers and all of that. i know we have the same problem with the nazi party in germany after the war. it's a very, very difficult situation, it is. and even know, because i got on to president bush pretty much straight away on this. >> it was kind of too late by then. effectively, we hadn't been consulted in advance. as soon as we heard about it, you and john got on to it. >> i think john was there at time of decision. >> my other question is do you feel we should have been consulted about that? >> i feel it's a decision of such moment that it would have

been sensible if it had been a major discussion about it -- >> so the answer is yes. >> but i would say to be fair to the americans, the moment that it happened, we raised these issues with them and actually they reacted to it. >> they didn't withdraw the decisions? >> they amended it. this is where i would consult quite carefully with the people that took the decision in the american side. i've spoken to people subsequent from this. i think probably it's true it would have been better not to have done the debathification in that way. all i say is that's a live debate amongst the people that were there at the time. as a result of the conversation i had with george bush literally days after this, they were scaling back. they scaled back further. and in respect to the army, they

were always intended to rerecruit and corrected the pension problem they had with the army pretty quickly. all i would say is i think it's -- it's something that you need to take a range of views on. >> thank you. we will now firmly into the postwar period. we've discussed before the isg report. and i really don't want to go back over that. i think we can agree it indicated that saddam had never lost his interest in wmd programs. but the headline for most people was that the actual stalks of wmd, the facilitied is discussed in the dossier, for example,

that had not been found. what was your -- when did you realize that was likely to be the case? >> well, obviously as the time went on through the course of 2003 and, you know, at the very beginning, and you know, this is taken some evidence of genuine belief about this. the very beginning, we were constantly, almost daily getting reports that there was this cycle, that side, and we were trying to direct the armed forces there. it was a major part of our operation, actually, after the 19th of march. but obviously during the course of 2004, it became very difficult to sustain this. >> general fry has told us, even as the troops were on the in addition, they became disaleutianed. even during the course of 2003. that's the fact that you have.

we've gone into this campaign on one assumption. maybe things have developed in the future. it could have turned out as badly as you thought it was. but it meant in a fact that the quality of postsaddam iraq was not going to be the major test of what we were doing. : briefly go back before the war. were you aware of the assessment on the american army and it wasn't just him saying this. were you aware of that? >> i was aware there was a debate with the american system.

did you use the doctrine of overwhelming force or have a smaller group of people and a smaller force? i think you can argue for the actual conflict itself. there were sufficient troops the question is should you then have changed and had different troops later. i think and that's a difficult question to answer and there are people that take of size. >> part of the debate was in the united states was the determination of donald rumsfeld and demonstrating it was possible to wage a campaign of the swords with comparatively few forces. it meant in that the under provided for the security situation that was going to

arius which was general shinseki point so in some senses the difficulties were going to be difficult after the war, there just weren't enough troops around. >> i think the key is a major parts of how any such operation can be done in the future. the forced to remove a regime and changed the government, if that's what happens, that's the only way you can secure your objectives and this is the decision we've come to, the only way we could prevent saddam being a threat was to remove him from office. the force that to require to do that is one function and there is one set of arguments that go on mad to and you're probably much more expert on this than me. however, what we now know it in in any of these situations should know from now on is that you will be nation-building

after that and that may require a quite different type of force and may require more, it may require simply different forces but it's a different task. >> indeed, there are different requirements. we've had evidence about the skill of forces in being able obtuse move quite quickly from this nation building world but as that is said and i don't think americans would disagree with us. that was not the way that they looked at it. that from rumsfeld point of view it was a war fighting role he was interested in and made very little provision in training, doctrine and numbers for the follow-on forces that would provide for a security. so in the context also of it disbandment of the iraqi army, the risk of a vacuum in the security situation is very high

in the. >> well, i think in respect to the disbanding of the army i think -- i think it was mr. slocum who was dealing with this on behalf of the americans in his view was that the army melted away and tried to recruit. >> it was the pensions points you mentioned earlier. it was true that it didn't exist as an organized force, but there was a basis to get them back together quickly which was lost. >> i think a huge question here because security is what went wrong. sometimes people say, if you had done the reconstruction quicker argon more under way or something it would have been a different situation. my view is the purpose of the people we ended the fighting was two stop reconstruction so every time we would repair electricity , they would comment, every time he got the oil production going they would try

to sabotage it. every time you try to provide better facilities they would try and track its so the issues are security issues. i think we have moved beyond what was a debate at the time which really when something like this -- and you probably recall this from 2003 in the early part of 2004, and that was a debate which said the americans are going to do more fighting but they don't do peacekeeping and the british can do both. i think if we are looking at our own capabilities now and what we will do in the future i think it is not as simple as that. actually and if you look at what general petraeus did in the end with a surge, it is correct that he had his political dimension and reaching out to the sunnis and so on but as the search began the american forces suffered even have her --

heavier casualties. and they were doing fighting and one of the things that i think -- i'm afraid we have to learn from this situation because we face the same situation in afghanistan, is that in these circumstances it's not a going -- it's not going to be easy. you don't move to peacekeeping because actually you are facing a situation where your enemy is trying to kill you. >> partly depends upon your ability to assert order and authority early on and i don't want to go into all the details, but that's clearly where things went badly wrong and we can remember the looting and so on and comments that were made at the time. let me pass toward and to what seems to me particularly significant month which is april 2004 appear in a lot of things happen in that month i won't -- one of them was spain left the coalition, but we will

leave that too one side. fallujah. you have it -- relations with the sunnis community had deteriorated. they felt they were being potentially disenfranchised. this was coming to a head in fallujah where u.s. marines were planning to enter the city with forced to take out some 2,000i think insurgents. how did you do that situation because it was potentially extremely dangerous? >> it certainly was yes and i was involved in discussions with the americans and the presidents and also allawi as well who was taking on in the interim administration in iraq. i mean, i think at the time i was worried the americans were going into hard and too heavy

and they made certain changes as a result of the conversations that we were having. if i look back on it now, i'm not sure i was right about it though. you see, i think the truth is we were reaching out to sunnis. indeed, when the other reasons why i could see as having a more challenging situation in the south through into 2005 and it was something we were discussing in the government, was bad to it would become as some point very clear that the purpose of what we were doing was not to replace sunnis dictatorship. minority dictatorship with dacia dictatorship. we wanted a genuinely inclusive governance so i thought at some point we might be able to persuade sunnis that we were the best chance of participating in the political process.

the reality is there were people who were quite determined not to allow that reconciliation to happen and. >> conwell this illustrates the dilemma you now faced. the coalition faced because, on the one hand, you had people who clearly had no interest in any accommodation with the coalition as a starting to cause serious casualties, developing their numbers and their skills, and not just an external forces and these were indigenous. but if you came down too hard on them, the risk was of alienating further. the scenes that would be out of algeciras and would be terrific. your concern i suspect about the impact on what could be done and, quite in the same row, their replacement. i'm interested in the dilemmas

we found ourselves in a iraq. either way it was going to be taught. >> it was and one of the central questions, my view is that the way these terrorists are trying to stop us doing what is right and right by the people of iraq shouldn't deter us. we should carry on and having been one tyrrany as one iraqi put it to me -- having beaten the tyranny of the saddam we should be the interior of the terrorists and i was certainly of the view that we carry in that endeavor. but you're absolutely right that was a huge problem and the interesting thing teen -- interesting thing to me if you look around the world is a problem for all nations dealing with this new type of terrorism. if you take because i've spent a lot of time obviously in the middle east with israel palestine question, is a constant problem for israel. they get attacked, they then use

great force in retaliating. believe have gone to weeks they are the people who have started it all. if you look at the difficulties that india has or russia or chechnya. >> it is undoubtedly true love that's the nature of the response to this sort of insurgency makes a difference to it and we can talk about these other cases. the problem and that you were in at the time is that the forces available to the coalition were insufficient to get a grip on eds and that the methods that they therefore would have to use in order to impose themselves militarily would be much more likely to cause civilian casualties than they would have done if you have had far more forces properly trained to start with. >> obviously this wasn't the issue down south but --

>> that's the other issue for april 2004 a. >> but i think you've gone to look at this question very carefully because i think i would put it in a different way. and i think if you look at how assurgent actually worked in the end it worked because you had it in practice it really worked for four reasons, the surge. >> i think the search work to in very different political circumstances than those obtaining in 2003 -- 2004. >> that's my point that if you analyze why it worked then 2007 and 2004 it wasn't working and that's the question -- what is the -- >> it worked because you can't force is trained for the job, you had a doctrine that was appropriate and the political conditions including the aspiration of the iraqis with the violence help but in 2003 and for it was different. you've also got the satirists

uprising. you have thought we had considered the shia areas more likely to be settled and give an indication of this as well so we are starting to find violence taking root. this must have been a serious concern to you because this is where the british forces were. >> absolutely and what was clear was this influence iran on the situation it was growing. we debated all lot of what to do with moqtadr sadr. did we try and reach out to him? i think we tried to make certain approaches there. did we try to wrest some? there was an issue there. with that provoke more violence? that's why these become difficult. sorry -- i didn't mean to take you advertise on but the reason i think it's important because it's a real lesson had of this is matt you are bound to take a certain amount of time to win

this battle because essentially what would happen deny iraq and i have tried to explain this to people before. you have one conflicts which was the removal of the saddam hussein a regime and that was over pretty quickly. you have the aftermath which was difficult but then what started to happen in 2004 and 2005 and in full on in 2006, the first half of 2007, is you have a metamorphosis into a different type of conflict where you were fighting yes, a certain amount of indigenous and served as a but with these external factors coming in. in the end of what did we need perhaps we needed for things to defeat this and to have them take time. one is we needed the political body in and the second is we needed to build up iraqi capability. the third is we needed it as you rightly say sir laurence the right trip configuration and the fourth thing is we needed to be

prepared to stick added into indicate clearly that we were going to stick at it until it was don. >> you have taken us again three, four years further on an indicated what happened in those three years. but final aspects of this month, april 2004, which was the revelation of what happens at abu ghraib. in what was your reaction when you saw the photographs of the conditions inside the prison? >> well, i was shocked and angry as anyone would be. shocked because it was on an angry because of the damage i knew it would do. you know, you mentioned earlier the media part of this and his era. the truth is we were fighting a constant battle against people utterly misrepresenting us our, our motives and of what we were

trying to do and obviously these pictures and the abuse of prisoners was going to be vital propaganda for our enemies. >> have you been given advance warning by the americans is revelations were coming? >> i think everyone was taken by surprise including in the white house. >> there was knowledge from january something awful was going on. >> hi actually appointed the human rights adviser and made an effort, in fact, to try and say these things are going to happen differently. so there are no excuses for its, it's completely wrong. the most important thing was it did damage to our cause. on the other hand, in its right to say this and i said this of the time, the activists -- the activities of the few within the american forces and, indeed, the british forces should take away from the fact that the majority of the forces were doing a magnificent job incredibly difficult circumstances and rich doing it for the iraqi people and protecting and helping them.

>> well, let's consider how much they were. we have covered some of this and let me summarize where we seem to be. the year after the invasion at the moment the coalition is on the table to provide security for the iraqi people and you have indicated without security, why can't get better. infrastructure is blown up, the life of people deteriorates, services aren't good enough. you can develop the economy and that leads into an awful situation. now, for the iraqi people at this time things are not getting better. is that fair to say? if you look at the promises that had been made to them, they might have some grounds where disillusionment with the coalition. i just want to give some figures

of because i find them tragic. we're in january 2010 now. these are just january monthly got a gears, the document in civilian deaths from violence and iraq. five and 78 in january 2004, 10,000 -- story, 1,042 in january 2005, 1,433 in january 2006. 200807 in january 2007. these are monthly figures, the documented deaths, they are not -- goodness knows how many undocumented. there are not for the deterioration in services, poverty, poor health and so on. the striking thing is they're getting worse each year. what did you feel at the time that you could do about this? did you -- what could you say to the iraqi people that could

explain why they must have wealth, a sense of letdown at what the coalition had been able to do for them? >> what we did with the iraqi people was to say first of all, we're going to carry with the political process because for the first time your able to lecture government and your officials. you are drawing up a constitution in a proper and decent way. the second thing was to say we're going to be with you in helping defeat this and the third thing to say in this is immensely important to this whole argument when people say there were people dying in a iraq in the figures i think the most reliable figures out there iraq body counts of 100,000 over this whole time. the coalition forces weren't the ones doing the killing. the ones doing the killing or the terrorists, the sectarian is, and they were doing it quite deliberately to stop us making the progress we wanted to make.

some my attitude and i took this very strongly with people when we say is it terrible that the death toll went to 2007 that high, yes, it is terrible but the first question to ask is who was killing them and this turned out to be precisely the same people that we were trying to fight everywhere and our responsibility was to stick in there and see it through which eventually happen with a surge with a charge of the knights down in by ezra and today, of course, the situation in iraq is different. in the people are better off and have a decent chance of a proper feature. >> let us hope so. >> i think that's the evidence given in. >> certainly better off than they were in 2007. >> or in 2003 or 2002 or 2001. >> having had some conversation with iraqis i think that's something that has to be -- i

don't want to get into that and we can agree and hope the position for ordinary iraqis only improves. can i just go back to this question of responsibility? there is no doubt that this was not the british troops killing iraqi civilians. this was violence on a major scale but is it to some extent to make considerable extent our responsibility if we have gone into a country, initially as an occupying power, and then unable to provide the basics of security? let me just -- this is evidence that we got from general assure raff describing the situation as he founded in may 2007. a single battalion commander responsible for a city of 1.3 million people told me that he can put no more than 13 have of platoons or multiples on the

ground, less than three -- 200 soldiers on the ground. you compare that with what i recall as a young platoon commander in west belfast in the late 1970's when there was a brigade on the ground. the results of all of that was when i call a cycle of insecurity. he goes on to make the points that we have made before. so that was made 2006 and the basic description was that the militias had filled the gap that we have laughed. >> by may 2009 that is a difference situation and why? because we then builds of the capacity of the iraqi forces themselves. actually in the end the british and i think we're particularly with the iraqi tenth division. in the end we managed it and hadn't been for the british forces there making sure that we were acting in helping keep this at the bay had the entire time, the charge of the knives would never have worked. but it did in the end if you

talk to people about it today there are real improvements there now is completely different situation in security. likewise in the rest of iraq. in the end we did stick with them and i agree with you it's our responsibility but here's the point i think we've gotten to give ourselves into the western world, if i can put it like this, or when we are doing these types of operations. yes, it is our responsibility, but let's be quite clear why we face the difficulty. we face the difficulty because these people were prepared to go and kill any number of completely innocent people in suicide bombings because as you know in the first half of 2004, i think we had 30, in the first half of 2005 that went up to 200. we should be prepared to take these people on and the fact that they are prepared to act

like this shouldn't be reason for our not being there of fighting them. >> i want to conclude because there are other questions that need to be posed to you. i suppose the final question is: this was a very heavy price to pay, was it not, for the lack of preparation? perhaps a cavalier attitude to planning taken, perhaps more in the united states than the united kingdom in 2003. >> we certainly didn't take a cavalier attitude to planning in the uk. what we planned for was what we thought was going to happen but you will consider this, but i just give you my view of this, because otherwise i think i think we will make a mistake in the future in such situations, however much to plan and what ever forces you have if you have these elements, thank you on the one side, iran on the other who are prepared to destabilize you are going to be in a tough long

drawn out difficult situation but my point is very simple, the fact that these people in breach of not just the rules of international law but humanity are prepared to do these terrible things in order to frustrate the will of the iraqi people, should not mean we back away from confronting them. we should be there with the iraqi people along side them as we did and were in the end in order to make sure that having been released from saddam they were released from the reign of terror. i do speak to iraqis and i spoke to one a few days back to said to me we have changed the certainty of repression for the uncertainty of democratic politics. he said it's difficult and challenging for the progress is extraordinary and nobody would want to go back to the days when they had no freedom and no opportunity and no hope. so i understand what you are saying, but -- and we do have to

take our responsibilities seriously in these situations but we're in exactly the same situation now in afghanistan and heaven knows where we will be in the same situation again in the future and the lesson in my view is you got to be prepared for the long haul and got to be prepared to stick it through to the end of. >> the long haul started in 2003. >> it did start in 2003 but i opposed the 2010 question earlier and i will pose again. >> at that point i think i had passed it over to the chairman. >> i think we would like to ask questions about afghanistan and its influence from the side of the iraq situation not to look at afghanistan in its own rights. >> just one really. you just mentioned it. in 2004 jeff lahood told us that he was against the idea of deploying into an more troops into afghanistan until we have reduced our commitments into

iraq. in the following year, we decided to take responsibility for helmand province in afghanistan and to deploy much larger troop contingent there in the effect was that by the end of 2006 at its peak we had over 7,000 troops still in the iraq and over 6,000 by then in afghanistan. weren't you concerned that this was stretching their resources both human and equipment resources of the army absolutely to their limits? >> well, i was certainly concerned we were fighting in two different theaters of operation of but again i think the decision actually to go down into hellman was taken or began to be taken in 2005. we were told and that we were able to do this and it was right that we didn't and was actually happening in iraq was that

unlike the rest of its, all happening in the south as opposed to the rest of the country, is that the problem in a way was that people were most of the attacks were happening on us, on the coalition forces so our concern was that over time we should be building up the iraqi capability and then that would allow us to draw down. but we were capable of doing the helmand mission and, indeed, we wouldn't have done it if we weren't. >> but it was a stretch in your form it would be stretched presumably? >> actually the suggestion they said it would be tougher on us but we should do it so in a sense of right at the moment it was difficult to deny iraq. we were prepared to make additional commitments to afghanistan. >> thank you. >> we would like, mr. blair, to ask a few questions about the strategic direction of

government, how one does that ended have a system in situations like iraq and i think the baroness' would like to start. >> thank you chairman. some questions, mr. blair. the meeting on july 3rd, 2002 that you chairman and chief of defence staff put forward a military options and according to alistair campbell you said you didn't want discussions with other departments at this stage in didn't want this swimming around the system. why was the participation of restricted to two cabinet ministers and not for example, the secretary of state for international development's secretary? >> we were discussing what was likely to happen in relation to the politics and diplomacy in relation to the military. now, at a later time as you know there were officials from dfid involved in the planning meetings. >> my understanding it came in late stage and after pressure.