>> she has definitely been a leader in dealing with nuclear weapons issue and nuclear power, and has done and not in inappropriate old fashion to support her laboratory which is in her district, but national

congressman. i give you undersecretary of state ellen tauscher. [applause] >> good morning. thank you very much, ed. i forgot that i was actually at your inaugural meeting in 2000. it just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished. that i am back here today in a different job. and a different role. but i want to thank you, ed, very much for your hard work and your commitment to these issues that are so complicated, intense, and opaque at times, and for your patriotism. i also want to tell everyone how honored i am to share the podium with my good friend, ambassador keslyak, of the russian federation. we got to spend a lot of time together. we do it for two reasons. one, because we need to because we're working on so many critical issues. but more importantly, ambassador

keslyak has the best chef in washington. [laughter] >> so it's always wonderful to be invited over to the ambassador's residence to have lunch or dinner, because he is a tag is host, and he is a great friend. so good morning to all of you. some of you know me from one of my previous lives. i've had three or four. my last life i was a member of congress from california's 10th congresscongressional district for 13 years. i was chairman of the could usual forces subcommittee of the house armed subcommittee. i rip into smart people in the world, the people in the 10th congressional district who, not surprise me, also with the people who work at the laboratory in san diego, california. and it was my honor to represent them for the last 13 years, and then be invited to come into the obama administration. about a year ago. so i'm happy to speak you as a former member of congress, and i'm also happy to speak you as a

current member of the obama administration. and i guess i'm really happy to see because this is not a healthcare town hall. [laughter] >> but i guess it's most important to remind everybody that is really great to work in the obama administration because we have a president who is so animated and so interested, and has talked about sword in his campaign -- in his presidency, the issue, the elimination of nuclear weapons. the president is not the first president to talk about these issues, but he is the first one to talk about it so early in his presidency. and he is certainly one that is truly animated about this. president obama didn't need to hear about this from a staffer. this was not a paper that was given to him on the campaign trail. this is an issue that senator obama and state senator obama cared about prior to coming into the presidency. something that he talked about a lot on the campaign trail, and

it's something that he has supported for a long time. and i think it's safe to say he truly understands the issue. some of you may know that last week, i was in paris, or actually the week before. i was on and a country, 10 day trip through the snow belt, which included paris and bucharest, and places that are supposed to snow, even include atlanta, georgia, where i had to go because i could get back to washington. so today i'm here to talk to you at the nuclear deterrence conference, and while these are two different audiences, the folks i spoke to in paris 10 days ago at nuclear zero and folks that are inside the industry and understand nuclear weapons and have worked at the nnsa and d.o.e. and at the labs and work in industries, as i said, while you are two different audiences, the nice thing is i can give you the same speech. my core message of out these issues isn't always the same.

the obama administration will work to reduce the role and numbers of nuclear weapons worldwide. while ensuring that our nuclear deterrent is safe, secure and effective. so long as there are nuclear weapons. there's nothing contradictory about decreasing the size and role of our nuclear weapons, and increasing our confidence and investment in our deterrent. our growing knowledge of the reliability of our stockpile through the science-based stockpile stewardship program enables us to safely continue reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons that are a legacy of the cold war. too many weapons of that era remain, even though the soviet union no longer exists. and even though we are moving from an era of mutually assured construction, an era of mutual stability. our primary focus today is no longer deterring a large-scale nuclear conflict between two

superpowers, but preventing the use of even a single nuclear weapon. that's why i'm working to implement the president's agenda and strengthen our deterrent. as the president said, we might not achieve the goal of a world without nuclear weapons in his lifetime. it may take patience and persistence. but the journey is perhaps more important than the destination. as i said in paris earlier this month, we don't do nuclear disarmament as a holy grail. instead, it's the concrete steps that we take to enhance our national security on the road to zero that will reduce risks and increase international stability. let me describe several of those steps. we are at the end again. we see the finish line of negotiating a start follow on treaty. our intent is to include an agreement that will preserve stability and predictability at lower nuclear levels than ever

before. while i won't ago she with myself in public or with sergey at lunch, i assure you that this treaty will be verifiable and will advance our interests. we will accelerate our efforts to transform our nuclear weapons posture through the nuclear posture review which will be submitted to congress next month. and we will continue at work to capable mobile nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists by preparing for a successful nuclear security summit in april, and the nuclear nonproliferation treaty posture review in may. i, at this point, i do not want to talk about stockpile -- i do want to talk about stockpile management as it is just starting to get the attention from congress and the media, even though it is something i know that everyone here has paid attention to and written about for years and years. and here's where i should you start by reading "the wall street journal" opinion editorial written by four of our

wisest statesmen. george shultz, henry kissinger, sam nunn and bill perry. they understand the importance of moving toward eliminating nuclear weapons, while making sure that we have a deterrent that protects us and our allies. they are absolutely correct in saying that our scientists and engineers at the three national labs deserve to be, and ipo, applauded for the success they have achieved and extended the life of existing weapons. their work has led to important advances in the scientific understanding of nuclear explosions, and i've needed the need for underground nuclear explosive tests. closed quote. they went on to argue that we will need to invest in our nuclear complex. and i couldn't agree more. i did my best as a member of congress to support the complex because i know like you do whether we have 2000 weapons or 20 weapons, we will need the personnel and infrastructure to

keep our nuclear deterrence safe, secure and effective. as you know, president obama's budget devotes $7 billion. that's a 600 million-dollar increase. that's a 600 million-dollar increase. over the next five years we intend to boost funding for these important activities by more than $5 billion. $5 billion. now it's up to congress to do their job and appropriate the money. we are fully funding stockpile management to increase the reliability, safety and security of our nuclear stockpile to reduce the likelihood that we might resume underground testing to achieve reductions in the future sides of this stockpile, and reduce the risk of accidental detonation as well as the risk of nuclear terrorism. now i'm not saying anything new. all you have to do is read the

2010 the fifth of that both chambers voted on and approved with bipartisan support and the president obama signed. it's the law. i hope that we can work together to make sure that congress does its job, too. members of congress need to know, and his audience includes some of the best messengers possible, that we must continue to attract, develop, retain, the best scientists, engineers and technicians who need to maintain our nuclear deterrent, whatever its size. the result will be a more credible deterrent. i want to emphasize again at this point that our rw is dead and is not coming back. but making a credible deterrent means having a sound nuclear complex that can confidently and safely extend the lives of our existing weapons as required. our military leaders responsible for the deterrent also support

the sensible approach because, as they like to say, they do not need new nuclear weapons capabilities. they just want to be confident in what we have. another thing a credible deterrent does not depend on is testing. this administration supports the comprehensive supports the comprehensive test ban comprehensive test ban treaty, not on because it serves our national interest, but because we possess sufficient knowledge and understanding on how our nuclear weapons work. we simply don't need to test to maintain our deterrent. as i said, by smartly managing our nuclear stockpile we can move forward on other parts of the present nuclear agenda. we can seek a senate ratification of the ctbt. let me return for a moment to the role of nuclear weapons and our defense posture. while nuclear weapons have a clear goal, our deterrent extends beyond nuclear weapons. it includes developing better

and more effective missile defense systems and strategies. it includes most of our forces, their precision and their reach. our improving conventional capabilities make it possible to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons for some targets and missions. as our conventional weapons have become more precise, we do not have to cling to nuclear weapons to accomplish our objectives. our military men and women operating on battlefields strive everyday to reduce collateral damage and prevent the loss of innocent lives. our strategic planner should be guided by the same goals and see culture as to nuclear weapons to hold certain targets at risk. that does not mean as some suggest that we should explore smaller yield, or more usable nuclear weapons, or anything of the sort. a nuclear weapon, no matter what its yield, is still a nuclear weapon. the firewall between nuclear and

conventional weapons must remain bold, not blurred. we are not in the business of seeking new nuclear capabilities. they are not needed to preserve a strong, credible deterrent. let me close as i begin just so that i am clear. this administration will work toward a world without nuclear weapons, and we will continue to maintain a safe, secure and effective deterrent as we proceed toward that goal. it's a pleasure to be here again today. i know that ambassador keslyak is going to be an enjoyable speaker. i thank you very much for your attention, and i'm happy to try to answer any questions that you might have a. [applause] >> questions? we have questions here.

>> any on the side? please up -- please hold up your hands we can bring you the microphone. >> you mentioned you expect the npr to be submitted next month. how confident are you in the march a first date that had been talked about? is there any possibility that the date could slip and could just kind of, you know, your opinion on that. >> i cannot say the date other than it's targeted toward the first week of march, and i know that the parameters are to deliver after the president made his decision. and so we're working both collaboratively and interagency with the state department and defense department, and others, to deliver those options to the president. so i'm not responsible for the day, but i said -- they said the first week of march and i expect

that will be when they try to deliver it. >> i am with you see us come how are you? again on the npr, we have been hearing rumors basically that the it will be a rather modest document, will be anything interesting, compelling. the present speech in prague last april was about changing weapons, the four horsemen started in their journal of op-ed's. unfortunate, i think you are one of the only people who supports that changing agenda. i think traditional old thinkers. but changing posture dramatically, what's your sense of that? can we help make this npr more transformational that i think it might be? >> stephen, at my age it is good to be known new is anything. thank you very much.

but i would say we're working very hard to deliver to the president the options that the president has asked for in his presidential review directed. i think because it's a classified document, i think speculation about it is what it is, speculation. but considering the president's prague speech and considering the presence energy and animation about this issue, i would say that this is not going to be a more abundant document. but we will have to see. mac anybody on the side? raise your hand. >> a link wasn't. i was one obama administration policy might look like in terms of dismantlement of existing stockpiles of nuke weapons that have been taken on deployment. are you looking to take a deeper cut or a faster rate of dismantlement? >> that's a question better

asked to tom who i think will be here later today. last human eyes in the congress i know, in the house we increased the amount of money for dismantlement. specifically. so i think that's a better question for tom since that is his responsibility and bailiwick. but obviously, all of the pieces, all of the elements from cradle to grave of dismantlement, disarmament need to be addressed and funded. >> another question? >> thank you very much for being here. my question is is anything you can tell us about the new start negotiations and when they might be done? second question, can you clarify the bulgarian missile defense situation for us that's been getting some play in the press recently? thank you of. >> as i said on start, our teams are in geneva. they are working hard to conform the treaty, the protocol,

technical elements and the technical annexes are very important because any verification treaty, all of these things are necessary to get the job done. i would say that both sides are interested in moving forward. i think we see the finish line. i'm not going to tell you that we have a specific timeline to get this done. both president obama and president medvedev have been very involved in this. they have instructed us to get the treaty done, but there are some principles and elements that are still yet to be finish negotiations. but i'm confident that our teams are working hard and that finish line is in sight. on bulgaria, the united states is not talked about very specifically about missile defense. we talked about it a lot. we have not made an offer to bulgaria about hosting any elements of the base and adapted approach. as you know, the face adapted

approach is the obama administration's plan for nato wising defense. there are four stages to. 2011, with the sea-based sm three in the mediterranean. and a radar deployed in the area of southern europe. 2015, sm three land-based block one a. and b. and romania. and 2018, sm three land-based block one a. and b. in poland. and in 2020, the opportunity as it advances, block 2 a.m. to be of the block system. this is a nato system that protects the indivisibility of nato. it is targeted against to deter and defeat short and medium range of threats coming out of the middle east. it is not targeted towards

russia at all. actually, we are hoping to missile defense cooperation with russia. but the countries involved right now that have agreed to host sites are poland and romania. >> any of the questions? one in the back of the room there. >> i have a question about the nonstrategic nuclear weapons that we have in europe. your colleague suggested at the stratcom conference last year that the united states may not be opposed to withdrawing the weapons from europe. and meanwhile, we have got some people in europe such as lord robertson said this will be a poor idea, particularly with drawn weapons from your. i would have it ministration tends to tackle the issue and respond perhaps to the criticism by lord robertson and others that. >> let me just say that the

nazis will do nothing unilaterally or precipitously without consulting our allies. and as you know, nato is going through a strategic planning exercise called the strategic concept. that is an over the horizon review that is being done and led by a number of different panels. one specifically by former secretary of state madeleine albright. so we're very interested in talking to our allies about this. it is clear that other 26 in europe that there are lots of different opinions, but as i said, we will do nothing unilaterally or precipitously. but in consultation with our allies over the next months and years to be sure that the deterrence that we have extended is as strong as ever, and works within the framework the agreements that we have. >> any other questions? we have one here.

>> is there any other question? can you hold up your hands we can get a microphone. >> matter secretary, does obama administration plan to revisit the clinton administration's anytime soon? >> well, as you know, every administration has everything under review. i can't even tell you what that is. do you want to -- is this a test? you want to tell me what it is? [inaudible] >> test readiness. as you know, over the years the congress has invested a lot of money to make sure that the nevada test site was within a range of months capable of testing, but the obama administration's commitment to ratify the test ban treaty is unabated. vice president bike is in charge of that effort, as he has said

we will engage the senate and we were to ratification, but not go for a vote until we have the votes. so that will be over the horizon, my guess is. but i think that, you know, there is a balance between investing in test site apparatus and infrastructure to make sure that we don't get surprised and also not tripping over the wire of looking like we're going to be testing in the next month or so. as you know, i think it has taken something like, we have never tested in something like 13 or 14 or 15 months, as long as 20 months. so the key is to find that bubble where we could make that investment. when i was in the house i had an agreement with the duncan hunter, who at the time was in the armed services committee to make sure we were investing to keep the test site in a reasonable set of readiness, but certain not one we're going to often start testing. but this administration's

commitment to the medication is unambiguous. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> we will now proceed to our next speaker, the u.s. nuclear deterrent partner. i bring you the ambassador to the united states from russia, the honorable sergey keslyak. [applause] >> thank you very much. first of all i'd like to thank you for inviting me to address this important conference. i do not believe that i expected to give you good advice as to how to manage your nuclear stockpiles. but i would like to say that the environment in which you discuss all these things, a way we discuss back home, same things. has changed immensely.

the negotiations that are being conducted, in geneva, are difficult but they are being conducted an excellent different environment than what i've learned during my arms-control career in career in the cold war. it's no longer a discussion between the folds. is no longer an attempt to manage the hostile relations between the two of us. it's more like dealing with the vestiges of the cold war that we have and that you have an enormous quantities. far beyond the necessary requirements of classical deterrence. so what i would characterize these new environment and new negotiations as a kind of responsible way of addressing the challenges that we all face retaining nuclear weapons in the way that wouldn't be leading to a confrontation, and a way that would be decreasing the chance

of confrontation. but still we live in world where it hasn't been and bows. so each government, yours and ours, has the responsibility to entertain the deterrent and a state that would be injuring the deterrent while we are working on the goal of reducing and hopefully abandoning nuclear weapons throughout the world. we do share the goal of abandoning nuclear weapons. moreover, i would say that even at a time of the soviet union, but nobody would take that seriously, and no meaningful discussions the type that are conducted now. have occurred. so we all understand that me to you, your government, nor us are willing to lead with that kind

of capabilities. we also understand, like your president said once, that is not going to be wished away. you need to deal with them in a responsible way. we need to move towards that goal we need to create the environment that will be allowing you to move down this path. and this environment includes many things. and i will go on a number. u.s. and russia, we are no longer in the cold war. and i would submit that i see no chances for the cold war to revive. because there is no ideological divide between the two of us. we have different strategic interest sometimes, we do have different tactical views on how to address the same issues. but there is no problems between

russia and the united states again that could lead to the revival of the cold war. if that is the case, i think the psychology of negotiators, psychology of the state men need to be addressing the issues of deterrence in a way that would be quite different from what happened indicates. is it going to be easy? i would say no. our relations have always been very complex. we have inherited a lot of stereotypes towards each other. and as far as i am concerned, i think that the biggest problem that still exist between russia and the united states, because when russia does something they're a lot of people here in this country who always try to interpret whatever russia does as a kind of doomsday scenario and the end of the relations. and i would say that we are not immune from the same type of

mentality either. it will take time. it will take a lot of working together in order to address that kind of problems that still exist in our relations. in arms control is part of it. both victim of the stereotypes and an instrument that can help to overcome stereotypes. we are working now on major project with the united states that is to follow on to start. i fully agree with almost each and every word that allen had to say about the renegotiations that are being conducted. we are trying to do it honestly. doesn't mean that it's easy. we have a lot of concerns that need to be dealt with. and mind you, the closer you count the in game, the bigger each and every small detail becomes.

. . if you compare the current situation and negotiations with that existed 15 years ago, where we started negotiating start, mind you we started it even in the cold war and ended it in the new environment, but we did

it in a light of a different environment, strategic environment. we had in an accompanying to ban anti-ballistic missile systems globally from both russia and the united states and that, kind of environment gave a sense of predictability as to how strategic offensive environment would develop. we have completed all the reductions that had been envisioned by the start treaty well in advance of the time lines envisioned in the he treaty, the united states also did. i think the treaty is one of the big success in arms control history between our two countries. but currently we work on a follow-on in a different environment. the united states chose to withdraw from the abm treaty, and the environment has changed. now we are working on the issue of reducing nuclear weapons, and the environment where the united states is introducing, capabilities.

this particularly has its own history. we're talking to the obama administration and we find a number of decisions that they have made now reassuring and giving a more sense of predictability about this but we are not sure that we fully understand how things were developed. we have yet to learn more what practically is, whenever things like reports from bulgaria there will be a new site in bulgaria, reports from, czech republic, there will be a flue site in czech republic. we are not hear that the story that weir we're hear something the story develop in the time span of the treaty that is 10 years. so we're working with the administration and i'm

extremely happy and honored, as a human being delayed to work with ellen, because it is always pleasure to talk to such a knowledgeable and person on nuclear issues. not only ellen and ourself negotiators. it is big government in russia needs to be reassured, yes they understand what kind of environment we're going to live in and, building down, the strategic capabilities that we are working on. as, person who has been watching the negotiations all these months on a daily basis, i would certainly agree we will make it and we'll make it soon. i can not give you a timeline neither the american side nor ours have established a kind of artificial deadline. we have satisfied that the progress is ongoing and having spent all my professional life in arms control i would say the amount of work that has been

done in geneva within four to five months is fantastic. when negotiations started i never realized that we would be at this point, somewhere by february 2010. having said so, i would not discount the remaining issues. as itch already indicated the closer you go to the end of more important ex-sy stengs small things become and, i'm very much satisfied about the environment at the table in again navy have and satisfied by the way our respective foreign ministers deal with the issue and in a profession and i would say honest way. honesty is also a new commodity in arms control that is a new feature in our relations. i hope it will sustain. but when we talk about nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrents and nuclear

disarmament, especially when you discuss, we all discuss the goal of going to zero, we need to also realize that we do not live in isolation. it is not only the united states and russia doing this having discussions about nuclear weapons. we have five nuclear weapon countries that are recognized by the non-proliferation treaty and we have a number of other who is are possessing nuclear weapons outside of the treaty. we have a number of countries that are considered to be aspiring or at least considering as the, ultimate option, to acquire nuclear capability as a demonstration of ultimate might and independence, at least in regional context. so when you talk about zero for us, u.s. and russia who today possess the biggest arsenals, you need also to address the question as, what you do with the rest of the world?

you can not go to zero unless you are, assured that the others are on board with you. if that is the case, and a new question will arise for the u.s. and us pretty soon, as to how we deal with other countries. how we engage them. because without them, in. david:ing us in the process, neither the united states nor russia will be able to go close to this year or anytime soon. while if you are successful to bring on board everybody, three additional recognized countries and the others, that is a formidable task, you also need to be assured that while all the possessive countries reduce the others wouldn't create weapons where they are not existing today. so the non-proliferation regime, it is more than just a treaty that is the --, more important as a one of the preconditions for our

ability, our collect tiff ability to. we are satisfied that the russia and united states are working very much together in order to ensure that the treaty not only survive but survive in a reasonable state and, continues to be kind of, global, code of conduct in nuclear sphere. by the way, even today the treaty is, i think the most adhered to treaty in the world, except maybe for the u.n. charter. it's, second after the u.n. charter in terms of number of countries that have adhered to the treaty. in the same context i would also address a number of other issues that need to be addressed if we're serious about managing and going down with the nuclear weapons.

ellen has alluded to issue and we treat with ultimate respect the willingness of the obama administration to ratify the treaty. because we are already a country that has already ratified the treaty. we are interested in seeing that the united states and the others join us and the provisions of the treaty are such unless all the countries that do possess meaningful nuclear weapons, the treaty would never enter into force. that in turns with a simple formula. if the united states doesn't join the treaty, we will have no chance, not only to get the treaty functioning, we will have no chance of bringing additional important countries on board, those who haven't done it so far. mind you, if the united states joined the treaty it is not guaranteed we will have all others on board

immediately but at least, we'll have an excellent team of nuclear weapon countries having joined the treaty, working together in order to make sure that the treaty works. it is of paramount importance because sfrs we're concerned, cdb is not just kind after political slogan, it is an instrument and an instrument that puts the cap on development of new nuclear weapons and proved to be sufficient at least in the way it existed now but by virtue of voluntary decisions by countries including russia and the united states, not to test. and, we see that from january 20, last year, the united states has started working more actively in geneva on the mechanism that are being developed for the treaty to function when it is in force. while we are talking about

nuclear weapons, i would like to address another issue that is of great importance when we were thinking and working on nuclear security problems. and i would say that it is increasingly important for us, and most properly for the united states and that is the possibility of nexus between terrorism and nuclear materials, let alone nuclear weapons. it is increasingly dangerous situation because we know that terrorists are seeking access to nuclear materials. the united states knows as well. we were the first to propose an international convention on combat nuclear terrorism at the u.n. and it was adopted by the u.n. and we are proud that then president putin was the first to sign it and the

american president, president bush was the second to sign it. it was a very important thing that we were pushing together and, immediately afterwards, both russia and the united states have launched a new initiative to combat nuclear terrorism. we, launched in 2006 at the summit, two of us, united states and russia. by the end of the g8 summit we had all g8 countries onboard. in three months, the co-chairmanship of the united states and russia, we had already 16 countries with us. currently we as a result 75 countries with us in the program that is not advertised too much but works well. we bring together countries that are important in order to building a firewall between nuclear materials and terrorism.

denying them access to the material. denying them tools. denying them knowledge of how to deal with the issues. it is based not only on the, it is not based on the kind of deals that have been nepthed for years and years and years. it is based on willingness of responsible states to get together and share best practices, to share knowledge. to establish links between law enforcement. it is new networking in addressing a new challenge today and i'm very proud that russia and the united states, not only launched together and even today we are two co-chair of this process, fully supported by all e.u. countries and a number of important countries in other parts of the world. our goal, and i hope it is fully shared by the united

states is to achieve full membership comparable with the non-proliferation treaty in the initiative we have launched. since we need to be cognizant of the fact it is not only about states that we need deal with when we talk about nuclear security. we have to deal increasingly with the problem of non-state actors as it is, in the international discussions. i understand that, i need so leave time for -- to leave time for questions and answers and would be willing to entertain them. summing up i would like to say that, i'm glad that i have linked to the time where we are working as partners both on issues that divide us and both on, and on the issues that, where we

see eye-to-eye, like on nuclear terrorism. i'm very, certain that we will succeed in arms control negotiations. i have no matter how difficult they might be for the negotiators because both the government of united states and government of russian federation want it and that is the most important. we are successful in achieving that on a equal basis, fully respecting the dangers of both sides and not only by one side. when the united states government will be able to bring it as a success, with advancing dangers and russian federation government and bring it to the russian duma as proof of success and document advancing russian interests, russian federation long-term interest, i think that would be a good achievement that would open up the way of moving further together. thank you. [applause]

>> hold up your hands. we'll bring you a mike for questions for the ambassador. we have questions. we have a very active side on this side. we have a question here. there we go? okay. yes. >> our countries are obvious -- >> could you identify yourself, please. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> our countries are clearly making substantial progress in reducing the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons. we have not had any substantial progress on controlling the numbers of non-strategic weapons. my question to you would be, do you see in the future a forum or a process to begin to try to control those numbers in the same way that we're trying to control the strategic weapon numbers?

>> first of all i do not agree that most strategic weapons have been the subject of mutual arrangements. not necessarily legal agreements but the arrangements have been adopted by two sides in the form of unilateral statements of the russian and the american presidents. since the times of the soviet union we have reduced our tactical weapons significantly. somewhere about, 3/4 of it have been already eliminated. at the same time certainly it's an issue that needs to be dealt with. one of the issues i think that can be easily done, something we have advanced as an idea for quite a long period of time is what we call, i'll try to translate

word for word from russian, repatriate all the tactical weapons. we have removed long ago all nuclear weapons including tactical, tactical nuclear weapons from couldn'tries other than the russian federation. each and every nuclear weapon that has been produced in the soviet union has been successfully repatriated to russia. it has been accounted for, it's there. so rush -- russia doesn't maintain any nuclear weapons, including tactical weapons. in territory of other countries. we have always insisted that if all countries do the same, that will be the first step to meaningfully address the problems that do exist with tactical weapons. as to the, dealing with them

like we do with strategic weapons, if you mean, can they become subject for negotiations? most probably yes. the question is, under what conditions we can go for negotiations on reducing them. can you do it today, tomorrow, day after tomorrow? i don't know, conditions need to be created. you need to be aware of the security situation, for example, for rush sha -- russia. in europe we haven't yet overcome all the difficulty and security risks that exist there. we see a significant dominance in conventional weapons on the nato side. and, the nuclear deterrents has not been abandoned. and that is going to be a factor in how you can deal with this issue.

so it is a complex issue but it certainly can be an issue that needs to be negotiated. but most probably we will have to discuss a little bit more than just this tactical weapons per se as a subject for further negotiations. >> a question on that sided. >> good to see you, then, ambassador. darrell kimble with the arms control association. as you've heard in some of your interactions here in the united states, there are some here who allege that because the ctbt does not specifically define what a nuclear explosion is, even though it prohibits all nuclear explosions, some states, including russia, they say that believe low yield nuclear explosions are permitted under the treaty. now, when ambassador steven ledegar was asked about this

in the 1999 hearings in the senate foreign relations committee, he made it clear there was an understanding among all states that the treaty bans all nuclear test, explosions. your government reported to the duma in 2000 that it was its understanding that the treaty on bans all nuclear test explosions. could you clarify once and for all russia's understanding about what the cbtb prohibits please. >> well, first of all you tried to impose the -- it is a little bit too difficult, once and for all, is the too big a statement. but i would say that we live in an environment of unilateral moratoriums that are exactly taken from the provisions of the treaty and we do not conduct nuclear testing and we do not conduct testing that lead to nuclear yield. we believe that is the same here in the united states,

at least it has to be. and that's the only reading of the treaty that i have. thank you. >> any other questions from? one back in the back of the room there. we have one up here also. >> miles -- from the james martin center for --. hello, mr. ambassador. i appreciate your remarks on keeping terrorists as far as from nuclear materials as possible. as you know, one of the, most dangerous nuclear materials in terms of terrorists is highly-enriched uranium. yet, russia has probably the largest share of research reactors that still use highly-enriched uranium in the world and done very little to either convert or eliminate those facilities. i'm wondering what you can say about what russia will do to move forward on those facilities? >> first, we are working with highly-enriched uranium, by the way we're working with the united states by removing it from other

countries together. that's a joint program and maybe one of the big successes, and joint effort that are not widely known. and we have been doing this for what, 10 more years? 10, 15 years together. we also, one by one, are working on our russian reactors. i wouldn't say we are the biggest holders of highly-enriched uranium but ours are well-protected and we're pretty much comfortable that there is no chance in any foreseeable future that those reactors can be a source of terrorist activities. but we certainly mindful of the problem and we are working on this. it is both a technical issue and economical issue. >> last question here. >> steven young with the concerned scientists. thank you, ambassador for your remarks. first question, tactical nuclear weapons there has

been discussion about a follow-on, follow-on start treaty might include tactical nuclear weapons, further cuts in strategic weapons and possible missile defense questions as well. can you give your take what you think a next treaty after this next treaty might best do and what would russia's goal be for the treaty? >> are you asking me to negotiate with ellen in front of the cameras. that is not our practice. we'll work on the issues. i think one by one we'll have to address all the problems including tactical and bmd and relationship between bmd and strategic weapons and bmd and the other weapons, conventional and nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons in possession of countries, around nuclear in possession of other countries. it is a process. as far as i'm concerned, after we complete negotiations and follow-on willing to be sit together and sort out what are the next priority items and one

of the priority items from us would be to decide how you involve on voluntary basis all nuclear weapons countries into this process because you can not afford to wait too long. you need to build a momentum that will be bringing all nuclear weapon countries on board. >> the very last question here. >> thank you very much, eel lane grossman from the national journal group. mr. ambassador, i wonder if you might share with us your thinking about confidence building and verification under the start follow-on treaty again without negotiating in public here? could you walk us through your sense of as to whether there might be in the new treaty some acceptance of sharing of data, or unencrypted tests that might be included as part of the that package? >> yeah. the basic philosophical concept that we have is we need to make best use of the practice and experience that

we have aaccumulated and in the 10 years of jointly implementing start and it's an interesting thing to explore because during 10 years we have created a culture, working on arms control and verification. some of the things were easy to do. some of the things were difficult to do within those 10 years but overall on the balance it was more or less successful. sometimes it was excessive. but these treaty, the start was signed at a time where we were looking at each other as adversaries. it was still management of hostile relations type of agreement. currently we need to be sure that while we are reducing, the united states do the same. we need to have enough access to information, enough access to the facilities for ourselves to

be able to tell to ourselves and to our parliament, and to our civil society that the treaties serves our long term interest. there will be verification and verification has to be efficient but it, has not to be as burdensome as it had a been the case in the previous one. it is kind of basic philosophical approach. what are the nitty-gritty is certainly to be negotiated in geneva and i can not negotiate here in this room. but if you ask me, do we allow for some exchange of data? of course. some encryption removal? of course. but this some is exactly what needs to be defined in negotiations. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause]

>> a program update for you. in just a over 45 minutes at 1:45 eastern, we'll return live to a justice department symposium on changes to the juvenile justice civil. we'll hear remarks from the chief justice of the alabama supreme court as well as the public defenders from philadelphia and miami. live coverage 1:45 eastern here on c-span2. >> with your wildest imagination if you were writing stick00 you. >> sometimes i think history is a series of accidents. it's like a pileup of cars in a snowstorm.

>> with the conservative political action conference underway in washington we spoke this morning to a "wall street journal" columnist for liberal perspective on the conservative movement. host this gentleman is thomas frank. he has not been on the "washington journal" since 2004. he is bit of unfamiliar face i went to want to spend a

minute telling you about him. he write as weekly column for "the wall street journal" he probably came in public view nationally with 2004, what's the matter with kansas? his latest book, 2008, is the wrecking crew. in 1988, his undergraduate friends and he launched a cultural criticism journal, called bachelor magazine. he has a ph.d in history from the university of chicago. and he was a born in kansas city, missouri. there are factoids about you. what is your view of the world that came out of all that. [unintelligible] what does it mean to you to be a liberal? guest: i was having fun with you there. what would i say? i identify with the labor

movement. franklin roosevelt, harry truman. i love the writing style of one person. that is what is most important to me -- putting together words and ideas. i write about domestic politics mainland. lately what has been fascinating has been the flowering of the conservative grass these days in the tea party movement. for a while, you go back to about a year ago and pretty much everybody i k

>> if you go back to about a year ago, pretty much everybody that i knew, all of the commentators and whatnot, thought we had turned some historical corner and we had entered a new era of liberalism. now it looks like that's just not so. but for a while there i was -- i -- you know, i wrote many columns, trying to offer and do the sort of typical d.c. columnist thing and offering various pieces of advice to president obama. by the way, before the factoids, before i moved to this dumb city, my state senator was barack obama. >> did you pay attention? >> oh, sure. i remember when he ran for congress against bobby rush and got beat. my wife and i moved here in 2003. he was still a state senator at time. he came and followed us, now he's president. >> in any of those house parties, did you see him and say

that man could be president? >> that was a common remark. he has the sort of charisma and electricity. when he enters the room, everybody knows it. he's elegant. i went to the community meeting, it was really vindictive, people were mad and yelling. it was a subject that i thought i knew a lot about. and barack obama is the first time i ever saw him in action. he got the microphone and stood up and talked. you know, i didn't know that he knew anything about the subject. and yet he did and he spoke about in a way that was so reasonable and was able to propose a sort of halfway point where the two sides could come together. and he did it in just the, you know, the beautiful style. it's very convincing, very compelling. he has that voice. and it was, i mean that's when the first time i ever heard somebody saying that guy could be president. he was just amazing. >> we will put our phone numbers

on the screen. you can also send us as e-mail and our twitter folks are already hard at work. i have running from twitter. here's sasha who says more murdoch, oh, boy. >> guest: yeah, that's right. >> host: how do you square working with rupert murdoch? >> guest: well, you know, it's a serious newspaper. i've read it for most of my adult life. i used to think i was the only person on the left that read their off bed page also. turns out that's not so. it's been a good experience writing for them. they do a good job editing my column and view. they never come to me and said you can't write about something or another. i'm perfectly happy with it. >> let's go to the tea party. what is it all about in your

estimation? >> guest: well, the tea party movement -- in some ways i'm hopeful about it. in other ways, it's a terrible, dreadful, awful thing. i guess i should way i'm hopeful about it first. we'll spend the rest of the hour running them down. but i'm hopeful, i'm in kansas, as you mentioned, maybe you didn't. that's where i'm from. one the historical moments that i look back to as a source of inspiration was the pop list moment in the 1890s. you had a third party movement that look over a lot of western states and a lot of southern states. it was pretty far to the left by today's standards. but it spoke this kind of language that today's tea party movement harkins back to in a lot of ways. and populism was particularly strong in kansas. we had several pop list senators, a couple of populist

representatives to congress. one of my favorite politicians, it's sockless jerry simpson. anyway, that sort of populist movement. the populism all fires the other direction. the original wanted to fee yacht currency, paper currency that can be adjusted by the federal reserve. the tea party movement, you know, they are all into the gold standard, that sort of thing. the populist wanted a serious regulation and the financial industry and railroad and this sort of things. in fact, they wanted national ownership of the railroads. of course, today the tea party are all into deregulation. which is such a brilliant idea. on down the list of populous really wanted a personal income tax, of course, the tea party

movement is against the income tax. the populous were very, very pro labor, as far as i can tell. the tea party are not too found of organizized labor. but to -- okay. let's move on to the next subject. what did i write about in the journal this week? it was about -- it was about the -- the d.c. leadership of the tea party movement. this is something that you don't often hear about. we're supposed to revere their populous bona fide. i pay them complements in that regard. like all social movements, we do have a d.c. contingent the. it was described in sort of great pain staking detail in the washington post a couple of weeks ago. as i was reading the "washington post" story that was describing the, you know, the d.c. leadership of this latest right

wing flowering, a bunch of names leaped out at me from the story. the reason they leaped out is because they are taking another step backwards. a couple of years ago, i did a lot of studying on the subject. the disgraced super lobbyist. i got to know a huge amount about jack's career and the things that he did. he started out himself as the grassroots leader, he was motivated college students all over the country. he was the national director of the college of republicans. so anyway, so i was reading the story in the "washington post" about the d.c. leadership of the tea party movement, this sort of right wing grassroots movement. all of these characters from the jack ray bra story are participating. that's who their leaders are. people that are represented very directly and sometimes related a

little less directly. but nevertheless, it's always the same, a bunch of guys. here they are leading this movement that's supposed to be the great rising up against d.c. and it's the same damn people. it's a remarkable -- what would you call that? when you have the came cost of characters that they never go away. they repackage themselves a little bit. then they are back. >> deja vu all over again? >> guest: that's right. >> host: we'll talk about american politics today. >> caller: howdy. i find it funny you talk about populous. i considerer myself the old-fashioned populous that you described. whenever i hear republicans and/or conservatives talk about free market i hear unregulated

greed. it seems like -- it just seems like the right side wants to get rid of all of the regulations. the regulations that would protect investors, protect jobs, protect, you know, the middle class. whenever it comes to jobs, it just -- whenever the government doesn't protect like from our own corporations, american corporations that take our jobs and give them to somebody else, just so they can have more money at the top. i just don't understand that disrespect. >> host: thanks. >> caller: that disrespect for the rest of, you know, the majority of the country. >> host: thank you. i'm going to jump in and have mr. frank respond. >> guest: he's a man after my

own heart. those are things that i think about myself all of the time. that's what the subject of the wrecking crew. it's my effort to try to understand this phenomenon non. look at the situation that we're in right now. you had open -- epic deregulation, doing back well into the 1970s. you know, the great crown jewel in the, you know, the deregulatory saga, i'm mixing metaphors. i hate doing that. when they deregulated the financial markets and in the bush administration, you had sort of defacto regulatory push who are in charge -- who basically came out of the industries that those agencies are supposed to regulate. you either do that or you defund the agencies. you take the security and exchange commission. there is the -- i guess it's unintentionally hilarious,

awful, really, report that came out about the sec. they couldn't afford to have photocopiers in their office. they had to do it kinkos, that's how bad the regulatory got. there's a lot of companies that were able to regulate and keep the nonsense. we either did away with the laws, like overturning glass-steagall, or we turned the agency or or defunded them so they were in capable of working. it should be no surprise that government failed. we have been elected for 30 years.

they made damn sure it failed. they wrecked it. they destroyed it. >> on thursday, we got the jobless numbers. the number of newly laid off workers applying applications surged last week after having fallen from the precious week. labor with suspect cede they rose from 41,000 and analysis respected a small decline. what is it going to take to start jobs? >> guest: it's going to take a long time. it's going to take mass iinvestment both from private sector and government. what's funny is this is just this is real simple textbook economics when private investment has been doing since the end that government has to step up to take the slack. this is incredibly controversial

to here. this is something like communism. it came sort of spending my the government. >> next call, this is bonnie >> caller: yes, good morning. thank you mr. frank for your brilliant writing. i think it should be mandatory reading in high schools now that our textbook is coming out of the monopoly in texas have eliminated any mention of the labor movement and david was on. apparently he's taken the nation. he thinks the response is fear. it's not fear. it's anger. you know, the republican, the right -- where it's democrat or the republican party has always

had destain from the working class. every movement, every legislation that was ever proposed that helped the working people for safety and working hours. it was opposed by them. medicare opposed. they serve the corporate dismaster. we're at a point that we might be able to turn it around. that have known given personalhood is a testify if iing prospect. we do certainly need a constitutional amendment as far as i'm concerned. >> host: bonnie, i'm going to

jump in. thank you. >> guest: another caller, that was very nice what she said about my writing. i'm always glad to hear that someone likes it so much. what she said about the working class and labor unions. this is a fascinating point. this is something that you don't hear a lot about in washington, d.c. this is a town that doesn't have a lot of industry. i mean by and large, there's lots of people in america that would like to join labor unions. they do polls on this subject all the time. you know? i forget what the percentage is. just a couple of years ago, it was over 50% who would like to have a labor union, would you like to be able to bargain with your boss over the terms of employment? everybody would like to do that. that doesn't happen in reality. there's all sorts of obstacles

that prevent workers from getting together and forming. we never talk about those in our political and in our happy talk here in d.c. all of those obstacles that make it impossible. the fact that an employer, it's ill illegal for and employer to fire somebody that's leading a unionization movement. the penalties against it are so slight. another gift of the reagan years was to dial the penalties down. it's basically deregulating that part of the economy as well. we call that freedom. we call that free enterprise. that's freedom. okay? so joining a labor union, you don't have that right. de facto, you still have it in paper, but freedom means you don't have that right. it's an interesting twist. >> do you want to comment on the supreme court ruling on campaign finance. >> i think it's a disaster. but i'm not -- i mean it's a disaster in all sorts of ways.

even people who are so far to the right. i think everybody recognizes that this is going to unlease the power of big money in politics. we'll see the evidence that this fall. on the other hand, i'm not a lawyer. i don't know. i think it's a disaster in terms of democracy. it's a disas never that respect. whether or not it's misguided, i don't know. >> host: a tweet. >> guest: a tweet? >> host: yes. it's not a noble word. we do a lot of communications from it. those labor unions really did a great service for the michigan industry. >> guest: there's lots of thing that is killed the auto industry. one of them was the sort of --

the race by the auto makers to get their plants to mexico and to other places. especially to the south where -- by the way, you mentioned my magazine, about detroit. about what's happened to detroit. in some ways, detroit is, you know, people like the tweeter or whatever you call them, the dude that just tweeted. [laughter] >> guest: they think of detroit, they got what's coming to them. this is the simple. this is everything that wrong with labor unions. look at it in a different way. detroit was 50, 60 years ago, detroit what was right in america. it was very working class people could have and often did have two cars and a motor boat the and they went on vacation and sent their kids to college.

they were working class people. that model was deliberately destroyed, of course, by management in the auto industry. they didn't like that. if you have to pay your workers that much, it eats into profits. >> host: edwards, missouri. richard, republican line. >> yes, first of all, i want to say thank you for c-span. it's a good thing to give people the opportunity to put in their points of view, you know, from all spectrums. >> host: great. thanks for participating. >> caller: i guess i wanted to comment on the tea matter -- tea party movement. it's a really good thing. i hope they stick to, you know, mainly fall in line with one of the two parties. we don't need the third party split again. i think the main thing behind is it like i said here, we get different view points where we can out put out our point of

view with democrats and republicans. they've gotten so partisan that they can't get nothing done for the people that they are supposed to be working for. i think that's the biggest gripe that i have with our system the way it is right now. they are like a bunch of spoiled rotten kids with their -- just wanting to go for their own, you know, yay republicans, yay democrats, this ain't a ball game. it's not our side and you're side, they are all supposed to be working with us. they have gotten so far away from that. i think we need some power returned to the people, i think we need more of everything that goes on. yesterday, i heard barack obama saying that his recovery has saved or recited 1.5 million jobs. and it's on track to save or create another 1.5 million in the next year. and educate it's limited as i am, on got on the internet about

what the census bureau says. there are 4.1 to 4.2 million births each year annually in the united states. i imagine there's somehow close to that entering the work force. if we keep it is up with the 1.5 million, we'll have a deficit of 10 million jobs. >> host: okay. richard, thanks. >> guest: i don't know what to say about the statistics in the end. i assume there's all sorts of jobs being made around the economy. plus anything is a good thing. now about what he was saying about the third party movements. you know, look, his expression of disgust with the two-party system. it's hard to disagree. you look at the newspapers, it's a horrible thing that these guys can't tackle the nation's problems. the one that drives me up the

wall, is the health care. every time they get in, they get in on the promise to fix this problem. it's an enormous problem. you know? for all sorts of people. basically, for everybody at some point in their life, they are going to run into the problems with the system. yet, they couldn't seem to do it. they couldn't seem to fix it. what he said about the third party movement is interesting. because, remember, how i was talking about populism before the movie in the 1890s. populism put a terrible scare into political elites around the country. after it subsided, awful these different states where populism, every state in the america with the exception of two or three, made the tactics that populism used against the law. you essentially cannot have third parties in america. you can try it. the two-party system is essentially an monopoly that en

shined in law. i would like to have third parties, provided they have a fair shake opinion the first thing of to do is over turn those law that is were passed early in the 20th century to make sure that populism never happened again. >> host: are they access? >> guest: they are against fusion. you take the state like ands, the dominant where the republicans still are. the populist would gang up with the democrats. they would do the fusion, where the candidate would be nominated by the pop list and democrats, and in the south, where the democrats are,s populist would fuse with the republicans. so the republicans could nominate the same guy. this was a successful strategy. it worked all over the place. it's now illegal. there's no good reason. it just is. >> host: next call. this is james, independent line with thomas frank. >> caller: hello, thank you for picking my call. i've been listening to c-span

for a long time. i like what you are saying. i'm glad there's a newspaper out there keeping an eye. because i don't understand that these guys are supposed to be working for us. every time you turn around all they are thinking about is their next campaign and their money and power. they don't care that everybody is out here struggling. and we're all trying to do the best that we can. we are patient people. and i think the poll legislation -- politicians think we are dumb. we are not. we see through your tricks. we have writers like you who keep the fire in their feet to make them do what they are supposed to be doing. that's all i have to say.

thank you again. i hope you have a great day. >> guest: that's a great call. this is a subject that i've written about a great deal. the transformation of politics which is supposed to be public service into an occasion for profit. i know that the caller has had enough of this town. let me just toss some facts on to the heap. did you know that washington, d.c. is the wealthiest, not the district, but the metro area? the three suburban counties, fairfax, virginia, and wellland are around the top if not number 1, 2, 3,. all of that is not because government workers, bureaucrats are paid principally sums. they aren't. they are paid much less than people doing comparable work in the private sector. it's because of the massive outsourcing of public work. we've provetized all of the federal, turned all of these things over to private contractors. when you cross the bridge,

you'll see all of these gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers of the various defense, homeland security, and the contractors that they will take contract from any branch. all of this was done, not just -- they make much more money on this man if we just had bureaucrats or federal workers. we do that for ideological and also for reasons of profit. that's one of the big scams. it's how the politicians make their money. >> host: if you go to thomas frank's web site. he had a video. >> guest: yeah, i almost got arrested. >> host: why is that? >> guest: they didn't want us. we were in the one the suburban development. i grew up wealthy people. i've never seen anything like new york city.

it's like the castle that you'll see in europe. they belong to some lobbyist. we were driving around in the neighborhood, where a lot of the defense contractors and lobbyist live. turned out, i guess it was a gated community or something. i don't know. but the people -- we weren't supposed to be there. somebody saw us with the camera in the car. yes, the police didn't like that. >> we have the video right there. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> host: that's me all right. >> host: yeah, you almost getting arrested. he's the case schiller indeed. he talked about the fireside chat, my question for you in a age with twitter, the dude that is twitter, the white house is

on facebook, all sort of social networking. is it possible to have the same public that fdr would create with radio? >> guest: yeah, there is. this is where i come back -- i love certain kinds of political rhetoric. there's something about obama. he's a great speaker. he's probably the best orator of my generation. i love listening. there's not a single sentence of his that i can really remember. whereas, i can remember all sorts of things. i can remember things harry truman said. but obama doesn't -- you know, he doesn't he doesn't come out swinging. he's really, at the end of the day, he really believes the stuff about bipartisan. i think he believe that is. he doesn't want to ruffle feathers and make enemies. the president has to make

enemies. vest relate chose perfect enemies. >> who were perfect enemies? >> wall street. you saw that coming. >> host: democrats line. >> caller: good morning. first time caller. i just want to say that in today's political climate, it seems the rhetoric of today is to divide and conquer. are you for or against, what is republican, abortion, gay rights. it's never anything that seems to be inclusive for people. it's always divide and conquer. mr. frank was exactly right. he does not want to ruffle feathers. i don't know why people don't want to say this, he's the first black president. he wanted to be inclusive. you can't do that. i have to take the bull by the horns and lead. that's what we are looking right

now from the democratic party and remembers of the democratic party. not just the president. and in this climate that we have today when i hear that people talk about the tea party and the good old-fashioned american values, let's go back to let's go back. it wasn't good for minorities. it was good for white men in general. >> well, that's for sure. look there's also sorts of examples of what the caller was talking about. one that i've written about recently is the problem of government failure. that's sort of what we've been talking about, this -- during this program. we've living in a time of epic government failure. the aftermath or rebuilding. the led paint in children toys, the toxic spinach, the toyota recall, the financial crisis where the regulators so completely and utterly dropped

the ball. everybody in america knows this. what's the explanation for it? what's the explanation for it? you ask some of the tea parties, they are going to tell you almost for certain that it's because government always fails. government can't do anything right. by it's nature, government fails. that's not the base. government succeeds all the time. government worked all the of the time before we started defunded and outsourcing the work. before we started putting lobbyist in charge. government used to work. but the problem is president obama who is in a position to make the argument, to give us an alternative alternation, government fails because it was basically sabotaged for 30 years. he doesn't come out and say that; right? and we need someone, you know, in a position of leadership like president obama to make that case, make it simply, and look, i'm doing violence to the argument mere. because there's a lot more nuance to it.

there's a lot of details and interesting stories. it's not just here it is. here's the explanation in a single sentence. but you have to be able to come back at that with your own explanations. and so far -- >> host: coming up next, two callers named george. first one is republican from georgia. >> caller: hi, i'd like to talk about the health care package. it's all they talk about. i'm on disability. i ain't 65. for me to get supplement insurance, it cost me $500 and some a month. this group, the rx group program, well, your body changes with the illness, now. the doctors have to change the medicine. you have to have the plan and all if the rx plan will cover that drug or not. they should have to cover every bit of those medicines, or not

cover none at all. get out of that business and now. >> host: george number one brings us back to the health care. glk >> guest: he was republican caller. it sounded to me the high cost of drugs, of pharmaceuticals. that strikes me as odd. the market choice those prices. that's free market in operation. it's not -- i'm sorry. i should. okay. walk away from that. yes, i agree with the callers. it's an abomination. it annoys the heck out of me, i'm a c-span, i have to say heck ; right. it annoys me that obama and the democrats didn't do something. they had years, they had 60 votes in the u.s. senate and didn't do it. >> host: actually, we're cable, you don't have to say heck. >> guest: that's right? [laughter] >> host: independ, second george. >> caller: my, thank you for

taking my call. seeing how i'm on c-span, i'll say heck too. but i'm a lot more angry than that. i just have a few comments. one on newt gingrich. he was on john stuart the other day. john asked him about the people that were being taken to court, the terrorists. and his explanation was that richer breed was an american, a bold-faced lie, okay? those guys can get away with it. they can get away with saying anything they want. they've been witnessing it for the last eight years. that's not the big point i wanted to make. the big point i wanted to make, you are probably aware of this. within the last eight years, the congress and senate have been fighting over 40 billion for the old people at $4 billion a year with $40 billion for ten years, do you remember that one? anyway. you know, it was too much more

than. it was this, it was that. my mother, the last few years has been on medicare. she said she never had better coverage in her whole life, okay, until she got on medicare. i don't know what the problem is on that. the other thing, the biggest thing actually. when bush came into office, the defense spending was $300 and something billion a year. i pay attention to that stuff. now it's almost $350 billion -- $650 billion a year. can anybody say bankrupt? the republicans do nothing but lie, lie, lie, and i'm not a democrat. but i'm not a democrat, but i know a lie when i hear one. >> guest: why do republicans do that? we always thought of the republicans as a party of fiscal

responsibility. the eisenhower, they would give you the dimestore, new deal, they'd do it all and cheaper. okay. that's not -- that's who they were. they were the party that wanted to cut spending. instead, in the reagan and bush and were the party that let all hell break lose. cut taxes and increase spending. said it'll work out in some magical free market way. the fairies of the free market will come down and give us fairy dust. pixie dust, i'm sorry, my kids like the fairy books. it has nothing to do with ronald reagan. they drove it up. why did they do this? you know, they are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. there's actual listen an interesting explanation for this. it comes from remember david

stockton, i bet you've had him here. we wrote one of the best political memoirs out there. but it was his recollections of the early days of the reagan administration. basically, he gave up on the theory of supply side very early on. he realized it wasn't going to work. instead of cutting taxes and increasing spending, it wasn't going to solve itself. what they were going to do is create the enormous deficits. he came up with an an altern nit justification. it would keep -- it would have the sort of permanent state of crisis. it would keep the liberals and congress for spending any more on their dumb liberal agenda. we would be in the state of deficits. it wasn't just him. you remember milton friedman, the dean at the university of chicago wrote an editorial, back in the '80s, when he said he

didn't like the spending that got us into the the deficit. the deficit kept liberal from doing all of their liberal things. it forced them into the state of crisis. that's why deficits hold this weird allure for the right. you think of them as people that are against. every time they get in, they run up the monster deficits. because it defunds government. it makes it impossible for government to have proper health care program, now the disaster, of course, is when you have an economic crisis and the government has to start spending money. guess what you've done. you've already thrown it deep into deficit. you see what we're getting at. >> our producer helped politics. >> guest: yeah, great book. >> host: another caller. another george. this is our george morning. you're on. >> caller: this is wayne, not

george. >> host: how about that? >> caller: and i'm a first-time caller. listen, i just want to just some solutions. so many times i hear people talking about the state of our situation here. i'm like the other caller, we're not dummies. i have the courage to watch c-span. i know what's going on. the solutions have to come with the average person. housing is what always takes us out of a recession. but there's some funny things going on. we bailed out the banks. if the banks were regular human people, they would have bad credit ratings. now that we bailed them out, the credit situation has been screwed, you have to have a higher credit rating to get a loan. we are going to the guys that have poor credit, allowing them to rate us and we're trying to borrow money from them. they are going to raise the interest rate on people with bad credit, bankrupt or because of the houses. let me go and give you the answers to this. we have to give back to the

people. remember when people should buy several houses and write off the interest on all of them. that was to benefit the average man. we have to go back to chapter 7 bankruptcy. see, they took that away. if i made a mistake, had bad credit, i would file and start over. that doesn't exist. now all of the average people are stuck in a situation even if you do give the communities banks more money, who's going to be able to borrow? because the people that we bailed out, the banks, the financial institutions wreck the system. >> guest: he's totally right. remember when the bankruptcy bill passed, was that 2005 or 2006 was done of course at credit card industry lobbyist and banking industry lobbyist. they wanted to crack down on

bankruptcy. welcome to free market. that's how it works. the banks get off of the hook and average guys go to the wall. >> host: this is thomas frank. we'll go to another caller. >> caller: yes, i'll tell you people are really getting upset. they have every right to. mr. frank has told us some valuable things here today. about the economy, our government, and especially the republican party. when i'm -- but i tell you what, there's a lot of corruption going on. i forsee in two years, 2012, the nation is going to break. what i'd like to say is two things, number one, the american government is not showing,

president obama came on not long ago in the speech that said, accountability and transparency. here they go we behind closed door and start doing all of the special interest group all around. anyway, that is part of the problem in america. i mean there's so much going behind closed doors. nobody knows what's going on. american people know basically what's going on. it's just greed and corruption. the other thing is the american people know that we need the health reform so badly, but them -- then both of the houses, well, the senate, has detrayed the american people. this is a simple problem here. when they had the health reform, people like bernie knew what was going on. he knew. he told it just like it was. >> host: i have to jump in. we are now over time. you said you're a republican, but you didn't -- your comment suggested otherwise. are you still involved in the

the republican party? >> caller: yes. both. i tell you what, this is the way it is. most people are so fed up with both parties. here's with where i stand -- >> host: i have to stop right there. >> guest: i was a republican once as well. it's a long time ago. >> host: he should be now if he's calling on the republican line. i wanted to use the comments, he thinks the country is going to break in two years. where do you see the electorate going right now? >> guest: i think you'll see, every single caller was angry, fed up, pissed off, there's enormous grassroots anger, this is the advice i've been giving for years and years and years, you have to speak to the anger if you want to be in the game. democrats should be the natural party of the discontent. the people have been calling and talking about health care

disasters, they want accountability and quote, they are sick of the roadblocks in washington. the democrats, the party of the left should be the one that benefits -- that profits from the public anger. they are not going to. the republican do a much better job speaking to the akari voices. all of the sense that's hard done out there, not just in any of my how many state of kansas anyway. this is -- because -- it's an annoying thing. but why can't the democrats get out in front of it? why can't the natural party of discontent speak to the discontented? that's the mystery of our time. isn't it? they insist on this, you know, way of speaking. they can never speak about the problems. they get the clock cleaned again and again and again. it's going to happen again this fall.

why is it? my answer is it's the power of money. you know, at the end of the day, politics runs on money. you can't run tv commercials if you don't have anything in the bank account. if democrats want to raise the money from the high net worth individuals and frankly wall street, you can't talk that way. someone on the left can't talk that way. they can't talk like the callers that we've been hearing this morning. they have to talk like, you know, in the nice, happy, bipartisan way. as a result, they lose. it's a very frustrating situation. read the wall street journal though. we'll straighten it all out. >> please don't let it be six years until you come back. >> guest: i'll come back any time. >> host: thank you for being here this morning. >> we'll take you back live to the mayflower hotel in washington for the discussion today on public defender system. it will be a symposium on

changes to the juvenile defense system. we'll hear remarks from the chief justice as far as the public defenders from philadelphia and miami. live coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. [inaudible conversations] >> just reading the good news is after this next session. we will serve you dessert, how about that? it'll be nice and quite wonderful. i wanted to again thank all of the folks. it's been a really rich day with some amazing involvement from a lot of folks. i want to repeat again, i want to repeat again tomorrow, all of you should have received this thumb drive that the shows how

much has been donated. on it, you'll have the attorney general speeches and many of the presentations from today. we also have one computer, and we can have more if we need it. if there's something from the office, from the agency that you think everyone should read or have access, it's okay to collect but to leave things as well. we'll like that work. this is a rare occasion that you will leave a conference with, with you know, 100 documents that maybe relevant to some aspect of what you do at some point in your lives. so take the thumb drive and see what's on it. but also go to the computers, and if you add things, we'll get them done. and i've drafted -- is kate clark here? kate? kate is also someone is going to help make sure it happened. so you have people.

i might as well as draft joann wallace, and try to use these for the information available for the organization and other things that might be helpful. the moderator is kristen heavenning. he's codirector at georgetown university law professor and actor with the juvenile justice clinic. she was there for a number of years. she's on the board of directors for the senate on policy and has

really looked into the treatment of children in a variety of circumstances including eight state ace cross the country. a graduate of yale law school, also with the georgetown law center. she will be moderatorring the remarkable panel of people who have a lot to say about juvenile justice. please handgun professor kristin heavenning. -- henning. >> when we with talk about the need for reform the conversation and strategic planning is often focused on adults, criminal justice systems. i'm very happy to do to be a part of symposium that recognized that there are a series of unique challenges that juvenile defenders face and that youth who are in need of assistance of council face. that are different than those in the adult criminal justice

system. i am even more pleased that attorney general holder has recognized juvenile in the defense reform as it's own independent priority. as we talk and meet over the next two days, i imagine that many of you will feel like i have felt. which is that large scale systemic reform is often -- seems to be intractable. it seems to be overwhelming. but what i hope we can do with this panel is talk about and showcase some innovations and some reforms that have happened. i hope that we can convince y'all that reform can happen with a little bit of creativity, a little bit of courage, a little bit of commitment and a change in attitude about the way we think about the right to council for juveniles. now, with this -- this esteemed panel, we are going to have a conversation in which we with

highlight innovations that have been initiated by juvenile defender across the country and we will discuss says in the judiciary and stakeholders request lead and support, and we will find ways the federal and state legislators can can advance and support the find of forms that we have to talk about. because of the structure and the challenges of each office, each defender location is slightly different, we recognize there's no one size fits all. we recognize the challenges they face across the country is largely the same. we collectively can behind to brainstorm about innovations. that we can learn from one another, and that we can build upon one another's successes. so to begin the conversation, we have invited a group of folks

who have really been thinking about and engaged in juvenile defense. so i am not for the sake of time going to run through their biographies. you have them in your materials. i hope you'll look over them. i do want to make the introductions, congressman, bobby scott who was introduced across the way. as many of you know, congressman scott among his many accomplishments and contributions have been leading the charge for a comprehensive legislation around juvenile justice and crime prevention with the youth promise act. we hope to hear about that today. we have next the honorable carlos martinez, i love the public defenderrer is the honorable in the miami.

we have the honorable sue bell cobb who is the chief justice of the supreme court. we have robert listenbee who is the unit chief of the defender association of philadelphia. we hope to have a targeted discussion about a few key areas that are particularly important to juvenile justice and juvenile defense. we hope that we can talk about basic questions of access to council, including the question of waiver and the presumption of indigence, we hope to talk about the ethical role and the confusion that surrounds that role. we hope to talk about the juvenile defense as a specialty. also to talk, at least introduce you to the notion of juvenile defender resource centers. and to talk to you about federal and legislative initiatives that might support the reform and move us into the position in

adequacy. let me be very transparent with the audience. that's a lot. i recognize that. it's a very short period of time. we hope the panel will be just a preview or trailer if you will for the workshops that are doing to take place after this. we have all agreed as panelist that we're going to really just introduce you, provide you with a teaser. joann wallace gave her panelist earlier. i'm giving them two minutes to respond to questions. we are going to have an interactive conversation, instead of individual presentations. so we hope that you will enjoy this conversation and learn a great deal from it. so i want to start the conversation by talking about one of the front end issues, one of the most important issues that we face in juvenile indigent defense, that is the issue of waiver.

attorney general holder introduced than. when i talk about this to audiences who are smart and intelligent but haven't thought about indigent defense. in 1967, there are many, many youth who appear across the country without attorneys. there's been a series of state assessment on access to counsel and quality of counsel across the country. the investigators have reported that in pockets across the country, there are up to 90% of kids appears without council. -- counsel. in other states there are more than 90 appearing without counsel. it appear that is youth are being encouraged to waiver counsel in order to save time, to save resources for the court, to expedite proceedings, among others.

children are often being told about the short-term benefits, but not told about long-term consequences of waiving counsel. what we are left with is children who are appearing in complicated legal proceedings without any legal representation at all. even if lawyers are appointed for youth, we are finding that the lawyers are being appointed too late in the process. and that the appointments are being terminated too early. so that means youth are appearing in detention hearings, arrangements, with probation revocations and the like without any lawyers. so what want we to do is talk for a minute amongst this group about how we can -- what is being done to address that issue of waiver. and so i want to start with mr. martinez and talk a little bit about what's happening in florida. what kind of innovations have been implemented to address the

situation of juvenile waiver in court? >> good afternoon. in florida we do have one success, if you are going to hear me at any of the other sessions, this is one of the bright lights. there's a lot of doom and bloom. eight years ago, they created the legal commission, there was and is no waiver of counsel in juvenile court, i had no idea about the problem until it was brought up at the convention. it was the number one problem where the commission addressed, it was the one only where they have a rule of practice in florida where if a child was going to waive counsel that child should have a meaningful opportunity to confer with counsel about waiving counsel. and i'm happy to say that the

florida supreme court after -- we had to fight it in the florida bar and juvenile rules committee three years in a row. it kept getting voted down. we finally got it passed 25-5. which was a miracle given that we had lost so many years. but then the florida supreme court took up the rule. and they ended up accepting it about a year and a half go. and then we had some more issues come up. they went ahead and tweeted some more. now it's a requirement in florida to have a meaningful to refer with counsel before waiving counsel. >> this is excellent first step. getting recognition from the court. what is being done and what has been done to implement the rule on a practical level on the ground? >> on the ground, thanks to the work of the juvenile justice center, the university, and in

part from the funding from the mcarthur foundation, they have been able to try to implement it. they've created with the southern poverty law center a brochure that parent and children receive that tells them the benefit of having counsel. it's a very good brochure. on the ground, that's being done. part of the study that's happening in florida, and the work that's happening in florida is they are going to be studying a couple of sights, jurisdictions, try to see how to make sure they get it implemented and implemented right. >> excellent. i also want to turn to alabama and really talk to you chief justice about what role can judges play in this? in initiating these types of reform around waiver of council. >> i'm absolutely convinced that judges should play a significant leadership role. and if the three legs of the stool, if it's not working that

judges should stake more than their share of the blame. :

>> should not have happened. it should never have happened. we were actually contributing to them getting into additional trouble. obviously we weren't having a significant role played by the board. as a result of the juvenile justice act we now have 90% of kids in alabama have counsel with them. the reason is our law mandates that if a child is in danger not they can or may, but they shall have a lawyer present. >> it sounds like an alabama in your jurisdiction top-down? >> well, it took us three years to get it passed through one

committee. that gives you an idea on the challenges that we faced. a lot of it as to do with public education. defenders and some key judges around the state. one of the key things that is very important, and i hope it is in there, the consequences. we rode up a p a list of, a doue sided list of the consequences to a child to gets convicted. i can tell you the argument that i used to have fled judges about living council started getting a lot shorter. the real consequences to children. there are some parents that have encountered that people will tell me, why should he have an

attorney. i want him to get punished. once you explain to the parents that it is way beyond what they wanted to see most parents, not all, most parents will be reasonable and say at least some going to give them an opportunity to have an attorney represent them. >> i can imagine that maybe not in this audience, but on the c-span audience beyond the four corners of the rump that folks lks are wondering is a juvenile court different? why does a child needs a lawyer in every case? are there circumstances in which we want to get the child treatment? why is this question of waiver so important? >> well, the issue of waiver is critical. even with a misdemeanor offense or even in some cases with a summary offense that kicked up in the juvenile court a child can end up in placement. juvenile court placement is

indefinite. you can get to placement on a minor offense and stay in placement for an extended amount of time. there are caps on the limits you're supposed to be able to stay in placement. a misdemeanor, no more than five years. you can go back and have that raised in court. that is what children need lawyers at every stage of the proceeding. >> the mistakes are getting higher and higher in juvenile court. sex offender registration. >> sex offender registration is a particularly unique issue. children who are 14 years old or older at the time of an offense can be required to register as sex offenders for 25 years to life. if you are required to register as a sex offender what will happen is your photograph will be placed on the internet and your address and the school you attend. children will be ridiculed in schools and sometimes run out of

communities. there are communities that have restrictions. if you are a registered sex offender your parents might have to move. there are some serious consequences. if you fail to register that is a new offense. these are serious consequences for sex offenders. but the consequences for juvenile offenders are just as serious. we are working on our checklist. we are up to 11 pages. eleven pages of consequences for juvenile. adjudication and delinquency is quite significant. with each child every time you come back to court their is a possibility you might end up and placement. one-third of our children in placement actually go into pleasant after coming back on a violation of probation. very critical that you have a counsel at every stage and particularly for violations of probation. >> and what i think i'd particularly like going back to

mr. martinez's initiative with the innovation and florida, the idea that you have to have a meaningful opportunity to confer with a lawyer. in pennsylvania and stand a lot of the waivers are being initiated were prompted by conversations with the probation office with the child. is that correct? >> as many of you heard, in goosen county there was a travesty of ty of justice. we had about 6,007, and the lever six dozen children whose cases have been vacated and the chief justice of the supreme court has ordered they be expanded. of that 6,000 54% waived the right to counsel. a large percentage of those children ended up in placement. we are very fortunate that we have had the supreme court act swiftly based upon

recommendations by the chairman of our juvenile court justice system and ordered the case to be vacated and the spines. this is a mass abuse of judicial power. i don't know of any evidence or any type of travesty has occurred and so many cases have been ordered to be a spy nest. we are trying to prevent that kind of thing from occurring in pennsylvania. we still have the opportunity for children to waive the right to counsel. there was an exception in 2003. at that time 11 percent of the children were waiving the right to counsel, 4,500. at present time that number is down to between one and 3%. we still have 500-1000 kids waving their right to counsel at the initial stage. we don't know how many awaiting their right to counsel at the late stage. we need a rule that says he cannot waive the right to counsel or if you can their must be standby counsel.

we are waiting park commission to speak on ak on that issue. >> i've wanted to turn to congressman bobby scott and talk about how defenders can collaborate with legislators around this question of waiver? what information do you need from the defense are what do you need? what packet of materials to you need as a legislator to move forward and began to talk about and act on this issue. >> thank you very much. i want to thank everyone for coming. i have heard of the new interest in indigent defense. quite frankly there had not been paramount at all. we have a choice and crime policy. that is whether we are going to try to reduce crime or play politics. we spend so much time quantifying centum minded inded slogans and sound bites we now lock up more than anybody by far. in the minority community it is

off the charts. ten states like of african-americans at the rate of 4,000 to 100,000. anything over 500 is counterproductive. most countries like a 50-200. most of it has been essentially quantified slogans and sound bites. some get a group like this interested in indigent defense is certainly a step in the right direction. you have got quite a group here. look at steve white looking at me right here. i thought i've saw barry, but you have got a lot of people who have been working on this criminal defense in the wilderness for a long time. one of the things that i think is important terms of what we need is people be refocused on the criminal justice policy. because if we wait until young people drop out of school, join a gang, mess up, get caught, and their entire focus is on a

bidding war with how much time they will spend in prison running up incarceration rate, we are missing an opportunity to invest in them early and get them on the right track and keep them on the right track. the present situation is what the children defense fund calls the cradle to prison pipeline. we could create a trail to the workforce pipeline so that we would not be talking about an indigent defense. that is one of the things that we need to be focusing on. the trend is more and more toward the slogans and sound bite. hopefully we can change that. so long as the trend is to lock up more and more people, waiting for them to mess up, and to lock them up a earlier and earlier there is a strong trend, notwithstanding the evidence, that increasing the number of juvenile tried as adults we will increase the crime rate. more violent crimes committed sooner. people still campaign on it.

put it in their brochure and bag about the fact that they want to expand the the number of childrn tried as adults. we need to make sure that however there tried that they did the attorneys because there are a lot ot of implications. many of them found guilty or innocent. he should plead guilty, maybe you shouldn't. you need legal advice for that. once you, if you are found guilty what is the disposition? there are plenty of alternatives. you don't have to be placed in secured detention. what is available? it is nice to have a lawyer walking through this. a lot of alternative dispositions. you could get community service if you hear that first you may not think you need a lawyer until you find that if you mess up on alternative disposition you have already waived all of your rights to trial. you might not have been guilty to begin with.

or you might have been guilty of a lesser included offense, not what the original offense was. you are and on the original sentence with no rights if you could revoked. it is just a matter of incarceration. we mentioned signing up as a sex offender. not only do you get ridiculed allows you are in school for 25 years, once you're on the internet it is fair to say you're not going to be able to get a job. you are an outcast. there is no, there is just no way back into society once your name gets on the internet as a sex offender. knowing that up front and you ought to consider that implication before you start pleading guilty were mounting a defense to whatever the charges are. firearms, whether or not you are designated a gang member. i can imagine the list of problems you get into with a

finding of guilty. in juvenile court it is a lot longer than people think. so it is important if you're going to have a fair process that you have legal advice so that you know that whenever you are doing during that process you are treated appropriately, treated fairly, and you don't wave rights that are going to come back and bite you next year, ten years from now, up to 25 years from now. >> so it sounds like for you as a legislator one of the compelling issues for those of us who are defenders and thinking about going to our state legislator, trying to convince them that this is an important issue. it sounds to me that one of, if you start cheering about the collateral consequences, helping them understand the long-term consequences. >> and how unfair the system can be of some have lawyers and some don't. the collateral consequences of a

conviction. what happens after the conviction? but if you get caught doing something later on the fact that you have this on your juvenile record can still be a pretty good defense for future convictions for enhanced punishment. they are rounding up gang members. if you have something on your record you might it rounded up with the rest of them. maybe you did it. maybe you didn't. whenever you do, however you define yourself in that process, you ought to be fully aware of all of the consequences, not just waive your rights and get into those situations. traditionally just from a political perspective there is very little concern for people in that situation. people just don't care. he should not have gotten in trouble. recognize that many of them aren't even in trouble. they just got roped in with the rest of them. so it is important if you are going to have a fair process that people have lawyers. what people need to here are the

problems that young people can get into and also you have to consider the obscenity ways of dealing with the criminal justice system. people with more money up front, a lot of these children wouldn't be getting in trouble to begin with. >> that me ask you what we should be saying and what we should be asking the federal legislators for. i understand that many of us know the juvenile justice delinquency prevention act is up for reauthorization. i'll understand that there is a provision specifically targeted toward improving access to counsel and increasing. >> one of the provisions is to encourage a public defense system rather than the private court-appointed system. when you have a private court-appointed system you have just inherently all kinds of

conflicts. the judge has a dockets that is usually too long and wants to move the docket. if you appoint someone who vigorously defends the juvenile and slows of the dog did that person is unlikely to get another another appointment. that is our livelihood. during a conflict of interest situation. that is an unnecessary conflict that you do not have with the public system. you have only your client's interests at heart. so the jjdpa will encourage the public system rather than the private system. the private system also, you don't know what you are going to get. you might could somebody doing real-estate and community service. they will take a court appointed case. somebody in the public service. they keep up with the law. they know.

they are experts. you get much better representation than the people who are doing just that work. >> and i definitely think we have heard a couple of times already to this conference the importance of the public defender system. a little later in the panel we will talk out how to support the private attorneys that are out there representing juvenile. before we move on completely i just want to ask one other aspect, and that is the question around eligibility for court-appointed counsel and indigence the determination. the study are showing that families and children with a very low income are not qualifying for court-appointed counsel. a couple of factors are contributing to it. we are also seeing that the indigence the determination in juvenile cases is being measured by the health come and not by

the child income, not withstanding the frequency between the parent and the child and notwithstanding the fact that their parents who are often expressing an unwillingness to pay for council. so i wanted to talk for just a second on this issue about the group indigence the determination for juvenile canter particularly from the chief justice, about how should indigence the be determined. >> very quickly indulgency by anyone's standards is simply a few are financially unable to pay. it is very simple. it is not a complex concepts. every state has a substantial hardship. my philosophy, which i dig is embodied, is that every child is financially unable to pay, even at tiles with a trust fund because they don't have the

legal authority over the trust fund. so that is why i would think it behooves all 50 states to move toward either state rule to indicate that children are indigent and eligible. >> one of the things that we are finding in the studies is that there is inconsistency from judge to judge heinz, a county to county, jurisdiction to jurisdiction. how do we get all of the judges to view the issues the way you describe it? a kid can't pay. >> there is not a question. they shall be appointed. really we have gone past the issue to simply say that a child must have legal counsel. the judge must appoint a lawyer. >> a statutory basis. >> right. even if the parents were able to pay they would be required to

reimburse some portion of that. they shall have appointed counsel. alabama is probably close to 90%. >> okay. >> i think it is also important to note how the attorneys are paid. the judge knows what the budget does. you may not have any money left. you would have severe pressure in trying to get people to waive counsel. in virginia we have a system where the costs of attorney is log in to the cost of court. you may not be able to get a licensed, a driver's license. you of the state money. your income state tax refund, you really don't get a free attorney. you can get an appointed. you can get the person

appointed. you're going to have to settle up. knowing that is certainly a disincentive to try and get a lawyer appointed. without the lawyer been all of the consequences may apply. >> that is exactly right. and we think about the goal of juvenile court these notions of costa accruing to the parents exacerbate the tension that already exists in the home. hoban what is happening in pennsylvania. >> and pennsylvania the public defender's allows standards. that is a present rule we have. he said that by juveniles should be deemed to be indigent. dreaded and present. i think that catches the idea.

that would make children who even have trust funds not be required. we are hoping to avoid that kind of ruling. we are waiting to see of our commission. >> so let's turn the conversation to another really important issue. that is the question of what is the role of counsel for a juvenile? what is the ethical obligation for counsel for a juvenile? when i have an opportunity to speak to audiences about this i hear from judges and probation officers and defenders and prosecutors, does believe that the role of attorneys and a delinquency case is more akin to a guardian ad litem.

just hear from you about how alabama, as i understand it, as quantified the distinction. >> we are very proud of the fact that we codified the difference between guardian had led them which is basically sically a bet attorney. someone who does not have to follow the expressed interest of the attorney. we have shown the distinction. and in alabama our code now says that a child's attorney is a licensed attorney who is representing a child to oppose the child the same undivided loyalty, confidentiality, and competent representation as one would tell an adult clients. we also went a step further and said that we have given our judges' authority and it in cases where obviously you have a child who is charged with a serious offense and has appointed council that is supposed to look out for that

sells legal interest, the juvenile judge can go a step further and also appoint a guardian ad litem. it is possible you might have two lawyers for a child. basically what we have done is it is a quality issue. we have been doing training, training, training. as a result of that we hope that we think we are moving to a place where we better understand that overnight are weak or two weeks experience in detention is not necessarily a positive learning experience. it literally puts them on a slippery slope, a slope of learning things and really being more likely to reinvent rather than less likely. of course as a result of that and something we all care about is that we are all less safe

when we enable that to happen. >> something that is so important. you notice that there is a theme. a statute. their is a statutory backing for these positions around the distinction. [laughter] >> when in doubt look at the law. >> but you have got to have the law. the question is how do we get there? and i understand that alabama may be the first states to clearly codify this distinction. woman. >> and we also went further. we tick the aba code form of representation and have now codified the distinct responsibilities of a child's lawyer, the child's attorney. when they sign their declaration form they have to swear that they have provided and met the

as delineations as responsibilities. even goes as far as disposition of. it is the full gambit as it doing what we think a child's attorney should do in order to adequately represent the child. >> and the panelists are doing a great job. give us a little bit more. the statute is quite compelling. in a very concrete and specific way it begins to talk about not just a general rule of counsel, but lays out specific responsibilities. >> in addition to those duties reference time the duties of a child's attorney include your respective prior to emergencies of significant advance impact in the child and is necessary to prepare for the proceeding. the child's attorney shall explain in terms understandable to the child what is expected to

happen at each stage of the proceeding. secondly to conduct a prompt, thorough, independent investigation of the fact, health, family, social history, and educational background, possible defenses, applicable law. you must attend all hearings no matter what they are to be present with the child and then finally to maintain familiarity with the disposition of resource available to the juvenile court and the community and recommend appropriate services to the child and family and advocate in the disposition of process to protect the rights of the client, meets the goals of representation, and ensure that the juvenile court is aware of any special needs of the child. >> the reason why i want to pause on that, this clear statement for all stakeholders was the role of defense counsel is. it is one of the most important steps. >> can i mention one that i left

out which add think is real important? based upon the investigation advise the jab in terms that he or she can understand as to his or her options for proceeding and the likely outcomes of the various courses of action and conduct the defense in accordance with the expressed interest of the child regarding whether to accede release, testify, and to a negotiated settlement, appeal, accept or oppose. so truly they are to be a client representative. >> and alabama they did it by statute. that is an excellent way to do it. across the country a number of folks that we work together with and collaborate, they have developed attorney practice standards instead the statutes. attorney practiced standards laid out the bare minimum, the

basic rule of juvenile defense counsel, the basic requirements in much the way this dusted dozens. let's get this in print. the consensus around the stages role of counsel. and we collectively then move forward. when the second major issue that we were drawn to is this notion. it is one thing to put it in writing, but it in a statute. but this notion that it has got to be backed up and followed up by training. so standards and statutes. there is going to be a workshop. there is going to be a workshop on this question. i am going to move us into some of the other more creative innovations' that are designed to build the capacity and enhance the quality of the representation. in particular i really want to talk about what it means to have a specialized juvenile unit. i am going to turn to bob

because he is chief of the juvenile unit of the defender association of philadelphia. what is special about that unit? what are you doing different and unique? >> i was a first of all that we have had tremendous support from the chief defender. i guess the message to achieve defenders and juvenile offenders, first of all, it is very difficult to be innovative and be a leader without the support of the chief defender. there is an awful lot the chief defenders can do to empower your juvenile leaders so that they can do something to move forward in your practice. i would like to point you in this direction. i have listened to statements by mahatma gandhi who said we must become the change we want to see in the world now. as juvenile offenders we have to change ourselves and figure out

what our strengths and weaknesses are. we have to become policy logs. we have to know all there is to know. once you begin the process of trying to innovate. i am thankful to represent the bodies that and other members af congress. our office has received more than two million dollars over ten years to use to pay for personnel and innovations in pretrial practice and post disposition practice. we are one of the few public defender offices in the nation. williamson peter's in los angeles and patty lee at in san francisco received some funds. but that is available from congress. very helpful if congress could make it clear that public defenders are supposed to have access. we use those funds were pretrial

training to get computers for our offices, to be able to ask lawyers at pre-trial practices to go forward an interview plants. that enhances our practice. we have looked at other innovations. with the adam walsh at hanging over the horizon which gets to figure out. with a lot of assistance we set up a special case section that and alzheimer's sex assault cases. we have one person in charge of that unit and another assisting. so that has been very helpful. to many children have delinquent issues. we have a judge, who is our administrative judge. he took us the issue to push as

in the delinquency crossover court where many of the kids who have primary dependency issues are transferred to a dependency court. those cases are subsequently discharged, and after 18 months we can have those cases expunged. you go in that direction. we were very fortunate also to receive a stimulus fines to pay for part of the cost for the attorney. when us we have moved in other areas as well. we looked at a drug treatment courts. creating a drug treatment court that has ever 200 youngsters. one of the largest of the country. we move also and looking at how we can collaborate in the area of representative bobby scott was talking about. we know at the initial stage a lot of problems occur with youngsters to encounter people on the street.

oftentimes kids that encounter law-enforcement run, get caught and beaten up by law enforcement. we know that to be a fact. we have forums with law enforcement. in a moment of pure honesty that is a running tax. we know that kids run and get involved in all sorts of situations. we set up a series of forums. and as a result of those forms with the help of michael lindsay who is here. we had to have a moderator who do could handle all the friction. we have moved from those forums to develop a curriculum for law enforcement which we now use to train law enforcement at the philadelphia police academy. we also have moved with the help of professional curriculum developers to take that direction and, codify its. we will be publishing it in another month to anyone across

the nation. so you go in and train. 105 law-enforcement officers the first time around. 160 the second time. he used the academy to do the training. we have folks in know what is going on. we think that is going to reduce the number of kids will come into the system because the friction at the point of contact is going to be reduced. we will be studying that and hopefully it will to show numbers that show that is working and reducing the number of kids. >> can we all just say wow. that was a very long listening. very good friends. i think one of the biggest takeaways from the list of things that he is involved in is that these are defender lead initiatives. talking about being at the table. the attorney general talked about that, having defenders at the table. they get themselves invited to the table. not only that, they create the

table. they launched the initiative that brings people to the table for reform. so i think we have a lot to learn. i hope he will have an opportunity to talk to him are with these two days about what the initiatives are. again, all out of the specialized juvenile unit. i want to turn to mr. martinez. their is a recognition of the importance ance of juvenile defn the miami as well. >> great. but me mention quickly, because i think a lot of folks who hear what bob is doing in philadelphia, a lot of you may be overwhelmed and think, we don't have the money. we can't even do our basics. the reality is that those innovations, you have got to make the choice as chief defender or chief juvenile offender to make it to is that this is important for you to do. i am going to read off and tell you some low-cost / no-cost

innovations. one of those is, we set out, as i mentioned, the two page consequences she'd. well, i talked to the chief of police at miami-dade county public schools. i told him i would like to be able to teach this to your police officers. he said absolutely. so over the summer when it is down we have police in the schools. i know in a lot of places they do not do that. in miami-dade county be used to have 25 kids at here are arrested in school. about 67 percent of the charges were for misdemeanor offenses like trespassing. at the academy with every single police officer existing with the police department, including the sergeant. some of the sessions were actually pretty heated because

they could not believe that the consequences were that bad. they thought i was making stuff up. but actually once they get the information, that the sheet, and then we gave follow-up information, they realized how much it was. i've been at educated the school board legal department because they were kicking out teachers and other schools employees because they did not know how to reach florida or they had difficulty reading the florida criminal records she. so those types of innovations actually save people their jobs more importantly it helps humanize the client and the situation. i have learned a lot from the police because they gave me some intimation that i was actually able to use an innovation number two that i want to tell you about, which is the play it smart program. play it smart. we created it.

we have a brochure. the naacp, allstate. their is a whole list. we have it on our web site including national association of black law enforcement officers. they came up with materials a long time ago to educate him people about how to interact with the police. the target of little further and we actually took it to the schools and we are doing it after hours. it is complete the volunteers. i don't have anybody on staff who can spend time doing this. our attorneys are volunteering. we do it on nights and weekends in different community forums educating parents and law-enforcement, there have been several times where law-enforcement were present. they like this so much. i found out recently that miami-dade police department, which is our largest police force has officers to go to the schools and are using our materials now. i did not know it. it is not copyrighted.

it is public. they are actually using some of the materials. some of these things may cost you of a bit in terms of what time you do. let me tell you the work of public defense is very difficult work. thinking about this stuff. it is kind of exciting because it is different from the regular routine stuff you're dealing with, particularly routine defenders dealing with the budget staff. it is not fun. this is one way to have more fun. the last low-cost innovation that i think is a must for every public defender office in this country is to make sure you team up, as a lot of you already, with law schools for free labor during the summer and not upon cases, but on actually doing an inventory of your state loss of what is wrong with the law, what complaints he had been hearing from the community about different parts of the law, and

then come up to proposal. we did that. it is called a juvenile justice cpr. charting a path to redemption. we have come up -- it is on our web sites. and you can go in there and see a list. it creates a very nice list. when you are talking to a legislature or anybody in the community if you can explain to them what is wrong with the law and what we need to do to change it. obviously it takes that money and time for you to actually try to get something drafted and make sure you get it pushed through the legislature. at least it provides the nice place for people to look at public defenders as people who are really focused on improving our communities. this is about legal reform. this is about improving our communities. it is also about saving money. voting kids in detention centers, those are jails.

i'm sorry. you can call the detention centers, they are kiddy jails. out of tom placement, and florida we call them juvenile jails, juvenile ile prisons. that costs a tremendous amount of money. just going back and retention for one day is going to have a huge impact on the likelihood that kid is going to come back. we are all paying for it. it's not like in my going to spend money? if you spend money wisely on indigent defense you may save that person you otherwise would end up victimizing you in your community and shooting you because they ended up in some program that did not help them. actually made them a better criminal and an angrier criminal than they would have never been. >> thank you. i think we have heard a couple of things that are worth reiterating. this notion of the chief defender being critical to reform around building juvenile

defense as a specialty. i am pleased that both of stock about that. the other thing i thought was really important was reaching out. mr. martinez talked about using the law student for free labor. there is also this notion of collaborating with clinical programs in your communities. if you have not done so already reaching out to the clinical program, is there a juvenile justice clinic? is there someone interested in starting a juvenile justice play? been there is a workshop later this afternoon, also on clinics. anchorage to get to that. the third thing i want to add before we move on, when we think about specialized juvenile defending minutes i could not stand here and not at least mention the incredible work that is being done in d.c. and i think about what it means to be a juvenile offender it means to be a defender plus.

it is a multi dimensional malta systemic multi disciplinary area of approach to representing juvenile. the juvenile offender has social workers, special-education attorneys. a fleet of investigators and the like. that is really important in thinking about how we provide holistic representation for juveniles. yes, that is not so much one of the lower costs innovations that mr. martinez talk about, but we, too, when we lost our juvenile unit started with a juvenile justice and delinquency accountability block grant. after two years or three years of demonstrating the value we were able to get that rolled into the budget for the d.c. public defender service.

again, that was an initiative of the chief of the head public defender. so it is really important to get your chief defender on board. apply for the grant. then bold innovations into the long term funding. ed then want to talk about. we have been talking about public defender offices, that there aren't public defender offices all over the country. that is very clear. what do we do in the meantime? even where there are defenders, are there additional support to maquette wanted to at least highlight the research centers that are evolving across the country, introduced and acknowledged early. as well she should be as head of the national juvenile offender center. a research center. a support center for juvenile offenders across the country. not only the national center, but there are also nine regional centers across the country that are providing technical assistance on a more regional

basis. some of our panelists have participated in the regional centers in some way. i wanted to start with chief justice cobb because she is the one who has benefited and has seen our research centers and her community have been of use. >> chris, i will be glad to. as we talked about the fact that some of the progress we have made in alabama has been a result of the passage of the juvenile justice reform bill, not all legislators are as enlightened as congressman scott. it just the very things that you were talking about, congressman scott, where we have not necessarily been smart on how we crafted sentencing options and the sentences, of course we have had more than our share in alabama. as a result of our collaboration with the loss center and specifically the seven juvenile offenders center, they helped get the data so that we

literally could educate the legislators and not just the legislators, but the juvenile justice. we were taking a sortie away from juvenile judges. we had to get the judges on board. they took 67 counties and they showed white, black, gray, and yellow what percentage of money our juvenile judges were spending. the old adage of pictures are worth the thousand words. it was dramatic the impact that you saw. the neighboring county was sending just a huge significant number of their children. we would not have had the resources to do that for the

expertise to do that. they did that. that along with many of the things paves the way for us to be able to come together with the and what we had to do to get the bill passed. >> you are highlighting the importance of research centers. >> marion is here. >> i don't believe she is here. >> to very instrumental players. talk in little bit about the northeast. >> the northeast regional center has worked to support the development, particularly in pennsylvania and new jersey of specific initiatives related to transactions. in pennsylvania the northeast regional center help develop the juvenile offenders association which is a statewide organization designed to represent the interests of juvenile offenders. we have in florida about 15 juvenile offenders to get it

together to develop strategy. our main focus from 2,004 to the present was to develop a training program. that training program has developed and now the jdas is in charge of that. the defenders association is charting a course for reform. we have before the commission examining what happened a set of proposals to develop a regional resource center or statewide a resource center. we have proposals about presumptions of indigents four representations', proposals for waiver of cancel and funding. juvenile indigent defense to the tune of at least 50 percent of the cost and several other proposals. we expect that during this year, 2010, that there will be major reforms in our state. have a net worth of people that we are connected to across the nation that we have drawn upon.

the collies and wisconsin and nevada who come to our state or were asking to come to our state. come and talk. interestingly we talk about these issues here. they're not past tense. we just had a series of intense human discussions about the role of counsel and guardian ad lighten. said to be able to come to this council and gather information and then share it with both the lawyers and judges and private individuals on our commission would be very helpful. then understand very clearly they must resolve the issue. there are many things going on. that is one of the things we have done. in the state of new jersey a lot of work was done on the issue of representation. as a direct result of that it is my understanding that the jersey is moving in the direction of of expanding representation. in many states lawyers stop after disposition and children are left on their own. as most of us know so many kids

in up in trouble. they get deeper and deeper and deeper. and in terms of cost secure confinement costs $140,000 per year per child. we are not talking about a small. the road that indigence defense can pay for itself. >> one of the things that is clear that i am hearing from all of you is this notion that you have got to have, sort of, this external supports for defenders who are in court every day and don't have time to do this kind of outrage, this legislative advocacy. one of the things they do is provide and identify some support. >> well, also, as was pointed out earlier there is a need for policy advocacy. you need a policy person because on a county level and at the state level you need someone who can articulate to the

legislators and the many other forms what is going on in juvenile justice policy from the point of view of juvenile defense. that is very critical. also you need to fans across the state in order to be able to develop uniform practices of appeals. without a strong appellate defense there is no way of maintaining balance in the system. the judges will become too strong and croats to believe they can do whatever they want. you need the appellate review. >> so, we are running out of time. i want to give the audience an opportunity to ask questions. we have been talking about these innovations. for those that cost money i would love to hear from you. we already talked about the juvenile deficit accountability block grant. i would also like to hear a little bit. i must say i was surprised to learn that there was a provision in the huge promise at that

directly directly addresses thes to counsel and the like. i would like to hear for a second about that. >> well, one of the things that the indigent defense, a small slice of the overall juvenile justice policy that you have to establish. what the youth promise act does is requires a collaborative approach. get everyone around the table that has anything to do youth getting in trouble. law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, the school system. after-school programs, everybody that has anything to do with children getting in trouble. first of all figure out, first of all figure out how much you're spending on social pathology today that can be prevented. the major drivers would be incarceration and the teen pregnancy related welfare. if you reduce crime the same things you do to reduce crime will reduce teen pregnancy. if you get many communities, particularly in those states

with an incarceration rate for african-americans of up to 4,000, they are already spending, anything from over 500,000 is overprotective. already spending $10,000 per address child per year. and all the money and one-third of the children and you could get up to $10,000 a year ar per child. so figure out what you are expanding now and then come up with an evidence based plan to do something about it. that is evidence based, embarrassing to have to put that in the bill. as opposed to slogan based, something that will actually work. so you come up with a comprehensive plan probably starting with teen pregnancy prevention so that fewer babies are born to dysfunctional families, prenatal care, learning facilities, mental retardation, nurse visits to reduce child abuse, which is highly correlated with feature crime. early childhood education.

after-school programs. a litany of things to get them on the right track and keep them on the right track. they have done this in a number of places. in pennsylvania they founded about 62 zabriskie stake, one under programs for $60 million. they saved over $300 million. they have done it in boston, richmond, virginia. the crime rate reduction is profound. and if you look at the amount of money you are saving you are saving money as you're reducing crime. now, it turns out politically that voting on a bill that reduces crime and saves money is a tough but. that is hard. there is no sloganeering involved. there is no press conference. all you did is reduce crime and save money. that is a hard vote. we need people to push politicians along. if you're not going to take this approach will have to consider the economic implications of a

draconian plan where you just wait for kids to get in a fight in school and send them to the juvenile court. there are a lot of things you can do informally. maybe the fight to stay in the school system. maybe you can get to the court and get diverted and have a peer review or something like that, something that isn't the formal court process. you have got to recognize if you're going to be in the court process that is an expensive process. that is why they have alternate to dispute processes because once you get into court it is expensive. one of those expenses is that if you're going to be in juvenile court you have to have lawyers on both sides duking it out. so you have to consider all of those expenses in terms of the overall policy. if you're not going to have a plan that reduces crime and saves money, if you want to have the most extensive processing have to consider the cost of the $140,000 a day. in los angeles it is a lot more

than that. you have to consider the cost of the juvenile court process and indigent defense is just one of those things that you have to do. there are a lot of other ways he can deal with juvenile crime rather than wait for young people to mess up and run them through the court system and spend all that money. there are other things you can do to reduce crime and save money. we need to encourage people to do that. >> thank you very much. we are very low on time and want to stay on time for the conference. we are going to move on. every one of the issues that we had raised in this plenary is going to be covered in more detail and the workshop. i hope this has been a teaser. we can list through the list of workshops. a number of these speakers are already speaking again later in workshops. i do hope he will follow-up. and that is going to come up.

let me just say thank you to the wonderful panel. [applauding] i learned a great deal in talking to them in the planning process. i hope the lot. he will follow up with them later. thank you very much. >> we are going to adjourn now to the workshops. the break will be on both the first floor floor and the secod floor. we encourage you to move quickly to the second floor if that is where your workshop is pretty will be coming back to later for the final plenary this afternoon. [inaudible conversations]

thank you. thank you. knock it off. a welcome like that almost enough to want to make me run for office again. but i'm not gonna do it. but i believe very deeply in something somebody said earlier. there comes a time when those of us of our generation need to move on and make certain that the younger generation has an opportunity to step up and take on the responsibilities that are so important, in terms of the

future of the nation. and i am enormously proud of my daughters. she said i could come with her, but i had to be arm candy. in all sincerity, one of the highlights of my years in public office have been the opportunities to come before cpac. dave's been kind enough to invite me time after time. i have deeply enjoyed it, partly because this organization is so important in terms of keeping alive the basic fundamental commitment to those principles that have been just essential in our 200-year history as a nation. so, the die dialect of the future, the developments we've seen over the last several

months are enormously encouraging. i think when we can achieve the kind of results that we've achieved in places like virginia and new jersey and massachusetts -- [ applause ] -- the sky's the limit here. i think 2010 is going to be a phenomenal year. and i think barack obama is a one-term president. so, again, let me thank you,

thank you for all of the time and energy and ef fot you've committed to our common cause. you've been fantastic. and as i say, there's some great years ahead of us. it's very, very important that we succeed and i'll do everything i can, but most especially i want to encourage that younger generation, all of you -- and that's most of you, who are younger than i am. it's a remarkable time to be an american. a remarkable time to be a conservative. thank you. good luck. >> former vice president still a crowd pleaser. that's from about 1:00 eastern at the conservative political action conference here in washington. it continues. take a look live at the should be under way for about another hour or so this afternoon. and our coverage continues on cspan. more tonight, we'll tell you about that.

we're also taking your thoughts on cpac online, twitter comments. some of the tweets coming in, a tough audience, good, yes, sir ee. very interesting. this one said laugh out loud. little slip there, mitt. talking about mitt romney. wonder what he was really think there. and one more. please don't judge all michiganders by what represent mccotter said. you can continue to send us your tweets if you want. it is cspan cpac 10, if you want to take a run at that an give us your thoughts. tonight cpac continues. their banquet is set for 8:30. little different time than we told you earlier. it's 8:30 eastern is when we will hear from conservative columnist george will. others speaking at that event include former tennessee fred

graham. live coverage on cspan at 8:30 eastern. here on cspan 2 continues on book tv primetime. two authors looking at the situation in afghanistan. we'll have live coverage beginning at 8:00 and your phone calls, tweets and e-mails as well. all of that here on cspan 2. coming into this weekend also here in washington, the governors are meeting. the national governors association winter meeting here at the jw marriott hotel in washington. they will be meeting through monday. we'll have lots of coverage beginninsaturday morning. and we understand a number of the governors will be sending out their thoughts at twitter.com, their tweets. you can access that, twitter.com/cspan/governors. and check out our website, too, for a complete coverage of nga this weekend and our coverage of the political conservative action conference. next, we're going to take you to a look at the obama foreign relation policy, where it stands

on key inte national law issues. the district of colombia bar association hosted this event with harold coe the state department's legal adviser. this runs about an hour and a half. >> it's wonderful that you're all here. we're all very excited. this is a very special event to have harold coe here and to hear john bellinger here and have the two of them together so we can discuss the obama administration's forward-looking goals on international law and foreign policy and have the reflections from the prior administration as well. this event is co-sponsored, as you noeshgs by the d. c. bar international section as well as the bar section together with the american society of international law. and arlen porter is pleased to be hosting this pip am lucky to

be affiliated with all three of those groups. i do want to let the president of the american society of international law who is here today with us say a few words about the society for anyone who is not familiar with the society. it's a wonderful organization. i think you probably don't need to know as much about the d. c. bar, but we definitely encourage you to join the international section if you're not already a member of that section. so, i'm going to have lucy read the president of the american society of international law. just briefly. >> thank you. thank you, nancy. welcome to everyone here on behalf of the american society of international law. as a co-sponsor of a most significant program, i want to thank the d. c. bar as the co-sponsor. this is one of several projects on which we collaborate with the

d. c. bar. really valuable partner in international law program. and special thanks to nancy and to arnold&porter for hosting today and for the firm's support of the society throughout the year. i will not go into any detail about the american society, other than to mention to you all that our annual meeting is coming up. it's premiere world event for gathering of international lawyers, well over 1,000 international lawyers will be here in d. c. from march 24th to 27th. and the meeting this year is convened on the theme of international law in time of change. so the program of the meeting will reflect throughout the issues that you have come here today to hear about. the obama administration, international law and policy and all kinds of international law and policy.

in fact, harold coe will be a keynoter at the meeting, so i assume that you are already drafting visibly to keep people interested there. and there will be a legal advisers alumny reception also sponsored by arnold and porter. dozens and dozens of other relevant programs for people who are here. so, if you want to stay in this debate and you are not unfortunately already a member of the american society, please do join. there is literature outside. you can meet with betsy anderson, our executive director. i see many government and former government attorneys here. we have a new interest group, just started, for government attorneys in international law. so i urge you to join that as well. now back to nancy for the introductions. >> thank you, lucy. our firm arnold and porter is thrilled to be a partner with the american society of international law in many

respects. and john is very active in that regard. i don't think he needs much introduction but these two gentlemen have such impressive backgrounds that i do want to give you some detail because you may not have gone through all their impressive accomplishments recently in any event. as you know, harold's legal adviser to the department of state. and he's one of the country's leading experts in public and private international law, national security and in particular human rights. he's serving in the obama administration on leave from yale law school, where he teaches international law and he also was the dean from 2004 to 2009. this is not his first service in government. from 1998 to 2001, he was

assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. and he previously served as the secretary of state's adviser -- secretary of the state's advisory committee on public international law. he is a marshall scholar, graduate of harvard, oxford and harvard law school. and he has received many as 11 honorary degrees and 30 awards for his human rights work, including columbia law school and the american bar association for his achievements in international and in particular. he clerked for judge malcolm richard wilke of the d. c. circuit and then for supreme court justice harry blackman. he also then served as attorney adviser at the office of legal counsel, department of justice and as a yale law professor

since 1985. he has not only taught courses, but also he has authored or co-authored eight books published more than 170 articles, testified before congress and litigated numerous cases involving international law. so, it's hard to imagine someone with a more impressive background. however, we have a close rival here in terms of acheeshmentes and that is john bellinger, who so arnold and porter is so lucky to have as a partner here. he's in our national security practice and he leads our international law practice. i have had the delight of working with john on several projects and i really look forward to many more. he was, as you know tsh legal

adviser for the department of state from april of 2005 to january of 2009. and prior to that, he was former secretary of state rice''s served on the confirmation process. and the state department's transition team between the administrations. he has a long career, actually, in government. before that he was legal adviser to the national security counsel at the white house under condeleeza rice who was then national security adviser. his service there was from 2001 to 2005. before that, he was at the criminal division of the justice department in the clinton administration under eric holder. from 1997 to 2001. and he was also counsel to the senate select committee on intelligence. john's a graduate of princeton

woodrow wilson school of public and international affairs, so he's got the full range of public policy and international law right from the educational background. and he has a masters in foreign affairs, also from the university of virginia, in addition to his law degree from harvard law school. right now john is an adjunct senior fellow in international law at the council on foreign relations, which many of you may be involved in. and he's directing a project on international justice there. so, i think we have two very eminent gentlemen to hear from and, without further ado, i'll let you hear from harold. we will have a question and answer session after they speak. this is being taped by cspan and so you -- i would ask that you not ask your questions until you

have a microphone and then say your name and state your affiliation. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. i'm very grateful to the law firm of arnold and porter with all of my friends here, the d. c. bar, the american society for sponsoring this event. i have been the legal adviser now for about eight months. and people often ask me how does your current job differ from your previous one at yale law school? and my usual answer is, it's simple. i don't ask anyone for money, nobody asks me for money and i have no money. [ laughter ] nevertheless, i have never been happier because i don't have any time to spend the little money i have.

and i'm doing a job which i'm finding truly extraordinary. now, in the audience here, not just john bellinger, but ed williamson, bob owen, all predecessors of mine in the position a number of illustrious deputy legal advisers, including judge schwebel, a whole range of colleagues in the room have a sense of what i'm talking about, what an extraordinary place the legal adviser's office is. i first heard of the legal adviser's office 40 years ago. it struck me then as the most interesting job in legal job in the government. and now that i have actually been in the job, that view has only been affirmed for really four reasons. first you have just extraordinary colleagues. i have 180 lawyers, the greatest, i think international

law firm going. and the air is extremely enjoyable. everybody in the office has finely tuned sense of humor and irony. and it's made it extraordinarily fun to fit into the mix. a number of my current colleagues are here as well. second, you have extraordinary clients. your job is to provide the president, the secretary of state, the deputy secretary with your best legal advice. in this case, they are all themselves extraordinary lawyers. secretary clinton, of course, a graduate of a fine law school, a brillian lawyer. jim stein berg also a graduate of a fine law school. the president, a graduate of a decent law school. but also a fine lawyer. and the job of legal adviser in the words of one former legal adviser is to speak law to

power. a third reason is that you're asked to play many and varied roles about which i'll say more in a moment. i don't doubt that there are other legal jobs in the government where you appear before important courts, where you give advice to important clients, but the legal adviser plays the role of adviser, litigator, negotiator, diplomat, public spokesperson. it's an extraordinarily rich and varied diet. and then fourth and finally, and i think this is the greatest reward of the job, every day you encounter questions that are among the most fascinating questions that an international lawyer can address. when i was a professor, or as a professor, you actually spend a lot of time trying to think of exam questions to ask your students. in my current job, exciting and mind-blowing exam questions come

into my door every day. like, can you attach a panda? birthed through artificial insemination and an international agreement. can qadaffi erect a tent in central part or move into englewood? i was looking at it very closely at the time. these are fascinating and enjoyable questions. you literally could not make them up. so, let me divide my remarks here into four. and they are first, what are the peculiar challenges of the legal adviser at this moment in history? second, what is the strategic vision that we in the obama

administration are trying to execute? third, what does that mean in terms of the roles, the concrete roles that our office is asked to play? and let me identify four what i'll call counselor, conscience, defender and spokes person. and then finally, what are the legal fields, the varied fields of law that will be the subject of our attention over the next period? and in all of this, these are no different from those of other legal advisers. for all the differences that you may hear between one legal adviser and the next, we have a deep continuity of experience, only the other legal advisers really know what i'm experiencing. i found the community of legal advisers and lawyers from the office to be extraordinarily supportive in everything i have been doing. and for that i thank you. so, let me turn first tot the question my peculiar challenges.

at this moment they could be summarized in two phrases. mickey mantle and two guys from gal way. let me just elaborate. mickey mantle was a baseball player of great repute. he was also known for being a carouser. a story told about him is he, on one occasion, got hurt, he was somewhat injury prone, that night he went out and got very drunk, thinking he wouldn't play the next day. he's sitting in the dugout and the next day's game and suddenly he's called upon to pinch hit and hung over, he staggers from the dugout and he swings wildly at the first pitch and misses by several feet. then he swings wildly at the second pitch and misses. and then on the third pitch, he hits a tremendous 500-foot home run and runs around the bases. and the crowd is cheering and they call him out.

he staggers out to the steps and squints at the audience and he says to his teammates, you know, those people don't know how hard that really was. [ laughter ] welsh obviously, you know, many people have news about what government should be doing, what government lawyers should be doing. not having the challenge of trying to address these issues within a large bureaucratic frame work, with political pressures, scores of agencies involved in interagency process. and so, therefore, while good ideas are always in short supply, in trying to address any particular set of tasks, large or small, is really hard to explain how hard it is to get something done. the distance from good idea to getting it done in the government is just much greater than you could ever imagine.

the second story is the story a shorter one about the guys from gallway making their way across the countryside. and one or the other says to the other, how do you get to dublin from here? and the other guy says, i wouldn't start from here. well, if we were trying to get to a particular place with regard to the u.s. relationship, the international law, i would not have picked a situation in which you have conflicts with afghanistan, iraq, al qaeda, the worst recession since the depression, difficult political environment, thorny carryover issues such as closing guantanamo, trying to resume multilateral engagement in a wide array of international forum, climate change, international criminal courts, counsel, as well as at the same time try to take on some of the new legal challenges of the 21st

century. whether global warming, changes in the polar environment, cyberspace, cyber crime, food security, global health, just to name a few. and then just to round things out, i'll throw in a 7.0 earthquake in haiti, four feet of snow in d.c. and it's harder than it looks. but, nevertheless, in addressing these particular challenges, we do have a vision, a strategic vision that we are trying to implement. each administration ultimately arrives at a doctrine, the reagan dock -- doctrine. seems after a year there is an emerging obama clinton dock therein that can be exemplified in many of the things that the president and secretary have said over the last year, which are, i think, set forth in four basic commitments. first, a commitment to international engagements.

not pulling back, but actually engaging. and that this is one that flows from a president whose father was from kenya, who spent several years of his life in indonesia, who emphasized in cairo that the challenges of the 21st century can't be met by any one leader or one nation. who committed his administration to open dialogue and partnership across regional divides based on mutual interest and mutual respect. and indeed, this is an effort to take a different approach than some. the thought being that engagement, rather than withdrawing from institutions. even if these multilateral institutions are flawed, helps us to shape those institutions and make them serve broader purposes than we consider to be important. the second is a commitment to what secretary clinton called at her confirmation hearing smart power. a blend of principle and prague

ma tichl, intelligent use of all policy tools, not just the military tool, not just hard instruments, but rather, diplomacy, development, promotion of democracy, capacity for entrepreneurship and innovation as a way of addressing a modern set of challenges facing u.s. foreign policy. a third is a commitment to values and the rule of law. mrs. clinton has said this repeatedly. makes it stronger and safer at oslo in his nobel speech he reaffirmed hearing international standards strengthens those who do, isolates those who don't. it suggests that following our values and the rule of law may lead us to some constraints but also legitemizes and helps

resume the leader shop position in global afairs. fourth and finally, along with these commitments to engagement, smart power, the rule of law and values, a commitment not to double standards but to universal standards. president obama reaffirmed the basic ideals of human rights and in her december speech at georgetown, secretary clinton said a commitment starts with universal standards, holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves. and this doesn't mean that we will always be perfect. but it will mean that we have a set of aspir ragss that we hope to achieve. now, i know that on the one-year anniversary of the administration, there's been lots of commentary. john bellinger i know wrote an op ed recently, the argument being somehow the last year was characterized more by continuity than change. now, i think anybody who's worked in the government knows that many of the policies don't change. you don't turn a ship in the

ocean 180 degrees. but, it seems to me that the key philosophy stressing international engagement, smart power, a belief of diplomacy can accomplish as mauchz harder tools, a commitment to the rule of laush living our values and the idea that global leadership will flow to those who obey these legal rules and will make a stronger and safer is a different kind of philosophy and one that i think we are attempting to apply as a strategic vision. so, you could point to all kinds of particular examples. i'm happy to explain how they fit within this broader frame work. but make no mistake, whatever continuities there are with regard to particular issues and in many of those things i think our predecessors, particularly john, played a tremendous role and i think reversing positions that were taken earlier in the bush administration and continuity with lawful

approaches it seems to me, to be applauded. now, within this, what other roles of the legal adviser's office, and i suggested them already. but first obviously is counselor. i'm a general counsel of a large government agency. we have an employment unit. we have a buildings and acquisitions unit. we have a management unit. in this sense we operate like any in-house counsel's office. it's just that our employment unit is talking about issues of contracting and afghanistan, our buildings and acquisition unit is trying to buy buildings in fiji. our management unit is managing data, disposition with regard to international matters. so, in this sense, we are essentially following a lawyering agenda, familiar to many of you. nearly all of you answering questions that your clients ask you. we have 24 offices that mirror

the state department's bureaus, functional and regional. and they answer questions that come to them from their clients. but there's a second function as well, which is that we are not just answering questions raised. we consider ourselves to play a role in being a conscience of the department and the government with respect to international law issues. my former professor at harvard law school, said it's the job of the legal adviser's office to hold the country to its own best standards and principles. or as herman phleger put it, never say no when your law and conscience say yes, but never ever say yes when your law and conscience say no. and the idea that the lawyer is in the room both to give legal advice and in a policy sense, to give policy advice, about which

of the available legal options make the most sense. and to identify for the client, if you want to do that, it is lawful, but it is awful. [ laughter ] then there is a third role. defender. the legal adviser's office appears for the u.s. in a whole range of international forums. i have had the good fortune already in my short time to appear before the international court of justice. we make submissions to all manner of international tribunals. just this past week, past two weeks, our office appeared before a nafta chapter 11 tribunal, john cook, an international lawyer was one of the osh traitors. with regard to a matter under the investment chapter of the nafta, the claiming tribunal. the u.s. also appears regularly on international issues before domestic courts and legal

adviser's office engauges on those briefs as well. so, in that sense, we are a defender of u.s. legal interests in these international bodies. and then fourth and finally, the legal adviser's office has traditionally been a spokes person for u.s. positions about why international law matters. it's traditionally been connected to learned societies like the american society, academic institutions, bar groups, and that's because of my own educational background, it's something that i'd like to continue and expand while i'm in office. so that brings me to the fourth area. what particular fields of law have been occupying my time? let me suggest first what i call the law of september 11th. the law of september 11th really began on september 11th, 2001. and the question is, how to formulate policies that get back

to both consistency with our values, our international obligations, and to our national interests. in many senses we have been tasked with unwinding practices that we would not have authorized had we been in office when they were first encountered. and the progress on this is hard. we all know it's a week after a snowstorm, it takes a lot longer to dig out of a snowstorm than it does for it to snow in the first place. and you can look at it two ways. a week after the snowstorm, why is there still snow on the ground? or is there a path emerging which we can follow? now, what has the president tried to do with regard to 9/11? he issued his second day in office three executive orders to launch processes of review of

the interrogation and transfer process, a task force issued a report, he has had an interagency group examining all of the cases, the individual detention cases on guantanamo. another group has been looking at questions of detention policy. he has committed himself firmly to the closure of guantanamo and freed has been appointed ambassador for the closure. has been working on this issue. detainees are moving out every day. president directed that guantanamo be investigated to determine that it complies with common article 3 of the geneva convention, that all future detentions and interrogations be conducted consistently with the army field manual. a task force recommendation making this policy permanent. the task force issue asset of recommendations to insure that individuals who are transfer ared not transferred to

situations where they face torture. the military commission pact was revised and amended. the biggest change being to bar theed a missability into evidence of statements taken as a result of cruel and human or degrading treatment. we have established more robust review procedures for detainees in afghanistan. they can now challenge the evidence on which detention is based. they have the assistance of personal representatives. the justice department has revised the state secret privilege to give a better balance between open government and national security. the u.s. has become a party to the convention on certain conventional weapons as of january 21st of last year, reaffirming our commitment to the development of international humanitarian law. and there are many other steps in the works and to come. now, is this the end? no. but i do not consider these to be insignificant achievements, nor do i consider them to be the status quo ante.

it takes a lot longer to dig out of a snowstorm than it does to have a snowstorm. but we are on our way. now, a second area besides the law of 9/11 is the whole area of international justice and dispute resolution. we are addressing these in a variety of settings. this past november, for the first time, we attended the international criminal court assembly of state party meetings. we're planning to attend the intersessional meeting in the united nations in march. in route to the review conference of the icc in 2010. we are supporting particular prosecutions at the international criminal court, and we've worked to support accountability before various ad hoc tribunals. sierra leone, lebanon, etc. in the business setting we worked on questions of the iran u.s. claims tribunal, now in its third decade.

the u.n. compensation commission, the nafta tribunal. and we've taken positions in a number of domestic litigations, most recently the brief that we filed along the office in the salmon tar case which will be ar gud on march 3rd. now, i think there's been a pattern over time. john bellinger noted this when he was himself legal adviser of the justice and state departments taking positions in many cases involving foreign policy issues, but not necessarily a novel or significant foreign policy interest of the united states. just to remind you, back in 1964, in the sabitino case, the supreme court famously said, often the state department will wish to refrain from taking an official position, particularly in a moment that would be indicated by the development of

private litigation or which might be inopportune diplomatically. in fact, if a private case raises a particular set of international law issues doesn't necessarily mean that the u.s. government ought to intervene. over the last few years, the sheer number of requests from courts and parties for statements of interest has expanded. this raises serious resource considerations, not just for us, but for our clients, in trying to work out the policy implications of a particular brief. therefore, ideally, we would wait until these matters reach the highest levels of the courts before participating. and i think that you should not then assume that just because your client has a particular case as an international dimension, that the u.s. government needs to intervene, needs to appear or needs to make a statement. in many cases the law or doctrine is well settled and can be correctly settled by the

courts without participation by the state department or the justice department. and we have filed a number of pleadings in which we simply say we will not participate, but no inference should be drawn from the decision not to participate. now, i know every administration comes in over time, says they're not gonna do as much of this as in the past, and then get drawn up over time. this is sort of hydraulic effect. but i do think that as much as i have heard about the taped letter, which was by a former associate dean of yale law school, the bernstein letter, which was by jack tate. two tate letters. at some point there may be a koh letter. it's not one i'm rushing for to send forward. a third field of law in which we are working in the area of international engagement. how to reach certain kinds of

accords and agreements with other nations. and here we're operating in the usual political environment. you all see the difficulty of getting 60 votes for health care. if you read the constitution, you know you need 67 votes to get a treaty ratified. and it's a long way from 60 to 67. i know how the treaty feels. i got 65 votes, 62 for my confirmation. if i were a treaty, i wouldn't have made it. [ laughter ] so i tell you, i know how a treaty feels. nevertheless, there are many areas in which we have been able to do treaty making. last year the u.s. exchange and deposited instruments of ratification on more treaties than any other year in u.s. history. already this year there has been one ratification, the french tax protocol, we're expecting the

senate to act on a number of other tax treat ys, the hague child support treat y the defense cooperation treaties at the uk and australia. we're hoping for action on bilateral investment treaties, resource treaties, etc. and we are considering a number of ways in which these international agreement processes can be moved forward. one area very much below the public radar screen at the moment is in the area of private international law. the hague convention on choice of courts will need to be implemented domestically following the supreme court's decision. there are a number of proposals on the table for exactly how to do this. by statute, by approach, which some are calling cooperative federalism. this will be an important dimension of my time, i think, as legal adviser. a fourth area out of five is what i call the law of the state

department. this is where some of the most intricate and difficult lawyerly issues of our agency come to us. one area of course has been the dramatic expansion of contracting, consular issues, visa questions, restrictions on foreign assistance, diplomatic immunities. this body of law will continue to evolve. and then fifth an finally, the area of law that i fine the most fascinating, that i struggle every day to get to is what i call the emerging law of globalization. there are bodies of law that are now emerging that did not exist even 10, 15 years ago. one such area is cyber law. and this has become a vigorous area of practice. it includes e-commerce. it includes issues about cyber crime, cyberterrorism and it's an extraordinarily important

area. another polar law, polar law, i don't know about you, but i never thought much about polar law. think about this. the global warming is occurring. the polar ice cap is melting. people are able to sail boats deeper into the polar ice cap. they can, therefore, investigate. and there's a possibility now of finding more fossil fuels below the ice cap, which could then cause more global warming. and the obvious question is, what should be the regime to deal with this question? some suggested it should be the regime of law applied in the ant act ka. but they are polar opposites. [ laughter ] antarctica is land, the frozen ice cap is water. there's a highly different regime, the polar area is

abutted by only a small number of countries. this area to the high north would be a subject of tremendous discussion and investigation in the years ahead. so, in conclusion, let me say that when all is said and done, there are basically two agendas. a lawyering agenda, which is answering the questions that come in each day, and the other is a rule of law agenda, which i think breaks into three. repair, resume and renew. one is to repair what we think are incursions to the rule of law that have occurred. the resumption meaning to resume our multilateral engagement in a whole array of diplomatic for ray, by which i mean the human rights counsel, international criminal court, the climate talks, revised regional discussions in the middle east, with north korea, the long ignored economic diplomacy agenda on issues like trade

santions, claim settlement, private international law. now, here's an important message. re-engagement is not easy. it doesn't always produce quick or perfect results. we need long term strategies to build coalitions of the like minded. we have to be able to stay the course to achieve meaningful outcomes. finally, renewing international law by reviving a workable treaty process and also renewing global legal initiatives in a number of areas. piracy, h1n1, polar law, cyber law, e-commerce, arms trade. and remember, that our laws and service on a number of goals. among them bringing to the end, the cold war. the diplomacy in north korea. our nuclear arm discussions. building networks, public, private partnerships. addressing new sources of global

insecurity. not just terrorism, but also disease, climate change, foods, security issues. and then finally, listing the world's bottom billion and particularly targeting problems of gender disparities and basic human needs. many of these issues are coming to the floor in the haiti crisis, which i'm delighted to talk about in the question and answer. now, it may seem taken together that this is a huge laundry list. it may seem that these are huge obstacles. one of my favorite sayings from yale chaplain, william sloan coffin liked to say, what looks like great obstacle, he said, are really brilliant opportunities. brilliantly disguised as great obstacles. and i think that for this administration, when we rise above the day to day, the most brilliant opportunity for us to seize is to treat these issues not just as a series of isolated

challenges, but as an occasion for articulating this strategic vision, this obama/clinton doctrine that i'm describing. and in that effort, we are aided by civil society. we are aided by the practicing bar. we need your help and advice. in my own time as a professor, much of what i did was to write and speak to government officials. we need your input and your ideas. too often those who are in the fray don't have the vision to get good ideas. and we need those ideas. and i think that there's not a day that i don't go to work thinking that in the 21st century, i have the good fortune to work for a government in a world where the defining image is not a world defined by a berlin wall, but a world interconnected by a world wide web. we need to think up the emerging

technologies and scientific developments which pose threats, as also posing brilliant opportunities. we need to think of them as toys, many people think of them as toys. i think we need to think of them as tools, tools for change. to coin a phrase for change we can believe in. and with that, i think that is our brilliant opportunity, with the help of all of you here, i hope we can seize it. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, harold. that's a hard act to follow. i see that i drew the short straw. i would have rather much introduced harold than followed him. i'm going to make very short remarks because you're here really to hear from harold.

so let me just -- i have got really just one question for you, which i'm going to come in to in a minute. let me first though say it really is a great honor to have harold here and to have him as the legal adviser. as he noted, there really is a great fraternity of past legal advisers and i have two of my predecessors here. i was very privileged to endorse harold as the legal adviser when he was being attacked by conservatives who suggested that he had the audacity to actually believe in international law. not only do i think really that any president should have his or her own nom niece, assuming that they are qualified, but that harold was particularly well qualified. he was perhaps the most qualified legal adviser nominee

in history for some of the reasons that nancy mentioned. so we're really very pleased to have harold as legal adviser. he was very supportive of me and my mission when i was legal adviser, not the least of which was sending me a whole lot of students from yale law school. both he and i and my predecessors had the great privilege to head up what is the largest and finest public international law firm in the world. it is really, almost everybody in this room is involved in international law in some way. and it is a wonderful job. no matter what the issues are that are thrown at you, it is just a great privilege. you work with the finest lawyers that there are. i'm actually privileged here at arnold and porter to have two alumni legal advisers office, jeff smith in the back, who heads our national security law practicing and paulo derosa who

heads our international arbitration practice. there are many others in the room. terrific lawyers. we work on fascinating issues. what i'm actually seeing more over time now is that historically, every issue that you see in the newspaper had a legal issue behind it. now, the international law issues are the issues in the newspaper. you just turned from page 1 to page 2 and those are the issues that the legal adviser is working on. you've heard harold mention just in the eight months that he has been in office, he's already appeared before the international court of justice in the kosovo case, filed briefs with his name on it before the supreme court, negotiated treaties, traveled around the world meeting with our partners. we have terrific diplomats who we work with, both he and i were privileged to work for outstanding secretaries of state and we were particularly privileged, both of us, to be really part of the inner management team where our advice was valued not just as a matter

of legal advice, but really for the policy advice that we would give as well, as long as we separated our policy advice from our legal advice. so, wonderful job. for the younger people in the room who may at some point be wanting to go into government, i encourage you to think about the legal advisers office. now, for my question. my presen here today reminds me a little bit of a time about three, four years ago when i was invited by the students at yale to come and give a presentation at yale. and i had been a legal adviser at that point for about a year, little bit longer than harold has now. and i gave a presentation about the things that we had been doing so far and that we wanted to do in the area of international law. and i began with secretary rice's personal commitment to international law. i talked about the fact that she had appeared before the american society of international law a

one of her first public appearances. the first secretary of state to do so in 30 years. she appeared again the following year at the centennial of american society of international law. i think it was the last secretary of state to appear before the american society. and i also talked about some of the actions that we were taking to engage in international law. we had already at that point begun to try to begin the process of re-engaging with the international criminal court after what i thought was the unfortunate, unsigning of the rome statute in the first term of the administration. we agreed to the referral of the genocide in darfur to the international criminal court under resolution 1593. and i personally gave a number of speeches saying that we would support the prosecutor. we began a process of quite strong support for the court in the second term that was

applauded by human rights groups. one of the first things we had also done was to take strong action to implement the decision of the international court of justice and the case involving the denial of counselor noted to 51 mexican nationals on death row. and the early part of 2005, the president had ordered the states to review and reconsider all of those death sentences. texas, the president's home state, actually challenged him. it was taken all the way up to the supreme court, as you know, and the supreme court reversed. and that case still lingers to this day. i mentioned the time of the treaties that we were working on, including the law of the sea treaty, the president had recently issued a statement calling for the rapid senate approval of the law of the sea treaty. of course, i talked about what we were trying to do to get out of the sort of the detainee

morasse, including changes that had just been made to the commissions act. the fact that we had transferred out by that point three or 400 detainees from guantanamo that the president said he wanted to move the day that guantanamo should be closed. so i emphasized all of the things that we were doing. now, sitting in the front row of the auditorium at yale was the dean of the yale law school. and harold, who really is a very good friend of mine, as i said, been very supportive of me, asked the first question, just as i get to do today. and harold then made a very trenchant dissection of all of the remarks that i had just made. not directed at me personally, but really harold has been a persistent critic of past administration. and essentially said, yes, you know, john, i know you're trying, but, you know, not good

enough. guantanamo is not closed. you really need to become party to the international criminal court. you need to work harder to comply with the rulings of the icj. you should not have pulled out of the optional protocol that allows the cases actually to be litigated before the icj. i have got concerns about military commissions. i have got concerns about guantanamo. you shouldn't just be trying on the law of the sea treaty. you should be trying on ctbt and a number of other treaties. so, harold really took me apart at that point. so my question for you, harold, is, you've been working hard now on many of these same issues, just as i did as the legal adviser. and i think you and i share a number of the same concerns. the problem is, is the legal

adviser is not a solo operator inside an administration, or even inside the federal government. there are bureaucratic politics at play, where the defense department and the cia and the justice department and the white house may not agree with the views of legal adviser. as harold rightly said, to get a treaty through the senate, you have to get 67 votes through the senate. it's also an election year, this year, although in any year, unfortunately, there is just not strong support for international law and international institutions inside the united states. many of our senators tend to believe the treaties are things that we do to be nice to other countries, to be part of the international club, and fail to see that the reason that we enter into treaties is because they're in our interest. not in the interest of other countries. so, harold, i assume, knowing you as i do, that you must be

frustrated with the lack of progress on a number of these issues. the policies of rendition and military commissions, indefinite detention without trial, predator strikes have continued, have continued to be criticized by human rights groups, the defense department has opposed any strong engagement with the international criminal court. and with respect to the icj's rulings, in fact, the administration's done nothing so far to even seek legislation while we've got nearly 50 mexican nationals still on death row. with respect to treaties, i have to just respond on one point. the reason that the administration was able to submit so many, or exchange so many instruments of ratification in 2009 was that in 2007 and twath, we had actually pushed

through more treaties through the senate than at any point in american history. 90 treaties in 2007/2008. i happen to know that because i testified in favor of a number of them. but the difficulty is that in an election year, it's going to be very difficult to get any of these treaties through, certainly any of the major ones that you and i have been concerned about. so my question for you is, given these difficulties for the legal adviser who is in fact hemmed in by the rest of the administration, by the senate, by domestic politics, how are you addressing these difficulties and what progress do you think you will make on some of these issues going forward, particularly in this year an election year of the united states? :

>> the workof people like john, those policies either stalled or stopped and started trying to move in the opposite direction. i have no problem in the continuity of policy with the things that are already recognized. there is a second area which is areas in which progress has not

been possible because it is not the executive branch acting alone. you know, this is a group of people that lives in washington. every single one of you has focused on one or more issues in the political environment in which we are living which make it very difficult to get things done through the lead such legie process. the regular legislative process much legislative process. john said the icj requires a legislative solution, i agree. that is why it has not been possible to get the problem solved. you can take another approach which is to say it does not involve a legislative solution. the risk you run there is to have a non legislative solution which is struck down by the supreme court.

i don't think we advance the interests of the icj to pursue a policy using the capital we have internally to receive a result which does not end up actually implementing our obligations under the treaty. i give john and secretary rice great credit for their efforts to try to implement the judgment through non legislative. turned out the supreme court in a decision i think was incorrect did not buy into that. so the second time we have to be even more careful about how to do it. about go into the details of things that we are exploring on this, but i think this statement that we are doing nothing is simply an acknowledgement that until we have an approach that is going to work we need to take our time. but i think that the third area to be pointed to, i have pointed to areas in which legislative

inertia makes it difficult to get the changes as quickly as we would like in areas in which there has already been a significant shift of policy. i do think there are significant areas of change. at the human rights policy, engagement with the human rights council. i think the process of -- i think john helped to move the relationship with the icc from hostility to some sort of a benign coexistence. i think that turned that juane uses is we accept the reality of of the court. this did not involve attending the assembly or state party's meeting. it did not involve engaging with the aggression conference, aggression issues. those are steps that we are moving forward. i think that a formal statement of recommitment to the geneva

conventions is something that we have done. we have taken different approaches on a number of domestic litigation cases. we have read engaged on climate change. our military issues are connected to the president's decisions with regard to withdraw from a rock and a new strategy toward afghanistan. i think our attitude toward the united nations has changed. john bolton is not our ambassador to the united nations. on detainee policy i have enumerated the numerous areas of change. the military commissions act has been amended and reformed. at this point it has been designated for a small number of cases. i disagree that the rendition policy is the same. we have had a detailed interrogation and transfer report which has set the terms

by which transfers are being done. and we are still in a situation in which we are in armed conflicts. our goal is that armed conflicts should occur within the framework of the law of war. the fundamental difference between the approach we are taking and that of other administrations is that we have of view of domestic law in which we are relying on the authorization of the issue of military force resolution as a basis for domestic authority. on an international level they are operating within the framework of the laws of war. that does not mean we are not still engaged in military actions, that we are not still engaged in defensive exercises. you are in serious conflicts. those require vigorous exercise . so i think that's a nuanced

response to your question, john, is in the areas where you started to do the right thing we are continuous. in the areas where both you and i would have liked for congress to be more forthcoming we are encountering the same obstacles. in those areas where we have discretion to modify and move the policy, we are moving it. [applauding] >> all right. i know many of you may want to pose questions. we very much want that to be a part of this program. i do ask that you wait for a microphone. have to microphone carriers year. when you get the microphone please do say your name and your affiliation. we will start with this

gentleman here. >> my name is joe hennessey. i have a question relating to the role of the administration. on february second dennis blair directed the house of representatives to draw up rules, the killing of american citizens overseas . [inaudible question] and the united states.

my question for you, can you share with us what those achievements are? and a minimum required the administration to present evidence and at a minimum required or allowing a person to contest the backs or allegations by the administration? >> i'm not going to get into the details. it does seem that the president made clear and said it in his nobel lecture that while we are confronting an adversary that is abiding by no rules we are continuing to obey the rules of law and the way that we fight. that is a deep commitment being carried out by the administration on an interagency basis. that means the commitment both to international law and to the specific laws of war.

now, your characterization of what the director of national intelligence said is not my understanding of how it is booked. i'd think there is an issue as to exactly how we are going to be conducting the kinds of military operations that we are engaged in with individuals with him we are in armed conflict. what was described their was a set of procedures that have been and are still being worked on as i understand it for the purpose of addressing this question within the framework of the laws of war. so i think that's all i'm going to say about it. i think the key of it is it is possible, it seems to us, to deal with the threats that we face within the framework of the laws of war. that is part of my job, and that's what i do every single day. that is both within the framework of domestic law and

the framework of international law. if it ever came to the point where i believe those rules were being violated that would resign. i have someone has served in democratic and republican administrations and have sued both administrations for violation of rule of law. more than that i have a lifelong job. to me obedience with the law is lam here. if i believe this administration were not obeying the law i would leave. since i'm still here you can draw your own conclusions. >> yes, sir. >> my name is mark. i would like to ask, talk in bill bit about questions of habitation. to what extent does this

administration, our troubles represent, the threat that we face from terrorists including terrorists to make ax in the net is states, our government by the rules of war and particularly ly interested to know whether the administration now, number 13 would suggest the potential for sending criminal justice substituted for criminal proceedings in cases of terrorist suspects. in the context i have not heard anyone in their debate say that

the prosecution in the military commission was unconstitutional. i tell my students that possibly, the broader question, how broad the mac domestic terr. i am very interested. >> you said for the framework of his response in the speech that he gave at the national archives on r chives on may the 21st. what he described was a combination of responses. military responses to military events overseas, the possibility of article three trials for

persons engaged in ordinary criminal activity which would be the shoe bomber, famously said when he got off the plane in boston, where are the television cameras. the sheriff arresting him said, you're just a criminal. this is repeated by judge young at his sentencing proceeding. there are offenses which are committed against u.s. entities on u.s. soil for which there are many eyewitnesses. a process of prosecuting someone through an article iii court this is a time-honored method for dealing with such individuals. hundreds of cases were done in the article iii courts against such terrorists, and that remains an available method of response. the president also suggested that military commissions could be used if there were an amendment of the military

commissions act of 2004, i believe it was, that was recently re-enacted in 2009. at this moment the proceedings are only just now resuming. and only a few cases have been designated for those commissions. so the full range of response, i think, well be determined over time. but i think the president made it clear that he wanted to pursue this in a way that he thought was consistent with our values. nevertheless addressing our security concerns. i have not heard anybody say that they'd think that the underwear bomber is not going to be convicted. i have not heard anybody say that they don't have the evidence against them. i have not heard anybody say that he himself hasn't given ample evidence. a time-honored way for gathering information from suspects has

been through an article iii process. the prosecution of mafioci, organized criminals has been regularly done by bringing prosecutions against operatives and getting testimony and evidence given against higher-ups. so i think the president made the framework clear. we are in an unusual situation. in afghanistan and in iraq we are engaged in complicated conflicts. we are also still under the authorization of use of military force resolution still addressing those individuals who attacked as on september 11th in a series of networks that are changing and growing. i think that this will call for this administration who cares deeply, there is nothing more urgent than the protection of u.s. citizens within the

framework of the law. that is exactly what the administration is trying to do. >> yes. here. okay. thanks very much. thank you for, mr. koh, your remarks. it is very much a privilege to hear from you and to hear your comments and vision. . [inaudible question] i would like to ask about the convention on the dissemination of all forms of discrimination against women. i would like to ask about the

issue. [inaudible question] at [inaudible question] >> i testified the ratification when i was assistant secretary for human rights in 1999. i testified for ratification as a professor the next time it came up, which i think was in 2004. now has a legal adviser i have

not changed my view at all. it is a national disgrace. my mother was born in korea. steve would be entitled. my wife's family is in ireland. why is my daughter born in the united states not entitled to the protection of this treaty? i don't understand it. nevertheless the treaty has a resonance in the senate that has made it complicated and difficult to address. as we pointed out getting to 67 is the critical question. when i put that to supreme court justice brennan

whatever maybe our core commitments the bottom line with regard to the senate. i think those who believe that we should ratify the treaty need to figure out a way to work with us to get to the number 67. now, you could not have an administration. secretary clinton has been at passionate advocate for a number of years. ambassador on a global women's issues. and so the vice-president joe biden was himself one of the architects of the violence against women act in the senate. so i think that the real challenge, though, is that we have a super majority rule. getting to a supermajority his difficult. i'll give you an example. robert bork was soundly defeated for supreme court confirmation.

he had 42 votes. now, to defeat at treaty you need 34 votes. in fact, you need to get a group of people together to get the treaty to the floor and then get 67 votes organized. it has been a major effort to find the sources of this issue. i think an even more egregious example is the convention on the rights of a child where now if somalia ratifies we will be the only country in the world that is not a party. a big part of the explanation is the supermajority rule. the united states has been slow to ratify human rights treaties. the genocide convention was first signed in 1949.

we did not finally ratified until 1986. i think there are five different fronts. over time this does end up happening. i would submit my own position has not changed one bit. in the legal adviser's office i see colleagues of mine who share exactly my views. i think the question, this falls into the sound was describing. john and i are both lamenting. it is part of our constitutional process. you end up with a treaty that has to be advised and consented to by 67 senators. >> we are over time already. we can take to questions. can you stay for two more? than we have to respect the fact

there are a lot of things to do. back there. yes. >> banks. i have a question. in 2008 the bush administration authorized the military commission trials for six 9/11 conspirators. charges against him were rejected by the convening authority in the military commission appointed under the bush administration. the reason she gave was that the evidence against him were obtained through torture. he remains at guantanamo bay, not part of the five new

attorney general holder has said to be tried in civilian court and is now perhaps reconsidering the decision. my question is under the torture convention and related to domestic law does the united states have any obligation to investigate the finding of torture by the convening authority of the military commission or not? it seems to me that under the tortured and mention when there is a reasonably sourced allegations of torture the state party does have an obligation to investigate and possibly prosecute. here it is not an allegation by an outside group or by a detainee. it is a finding by a military official of the prior administration whose job is to determine whether charges can lawfully proceed. and while she approved them for khalid sheikh mohammed and for

other suspects this one detainee the charges were rejected. secondly, if he cannot be prosecuted because of the finding what happens to this detainee? [laughter] >> presently do advice. yeah, i'm not going to discuss a particular case. i do want to talk in general terms about the issue you raised. you're right that after the reform of the military commissions their is a a review, interagency process. the detainee task force review process did an exhaustive review of the case by case. there is an extraordinarily detailed and careful process in which attorneys from my office participated. that led to a series of

recommendations. based on that different kinds of prosecutorial calls were made. you have reference some of them. the questions of mistreatment or importance in determining the way of the evidence against somebody and how they ought to proceed. now, we have in our system procedures by which allegations of misbehavior or improper action by government officials are investigated. those procedures are followed with regard to particular cases. the new military commissions act, as you said, doesn't permit admissibility of certain kinds of evidence. and so you can draw your own conclusion for the reason why that particular case has not gone forward before a military commission. what will be the future policy about this, you know, we have a complicated situation and that

the policies were discontinued. and so we have inherited a group of detainees who we hope are in a different circumstance from individuals that might be encountered in the future. as a result the president is still making a series of decisions about the forward-looking policy. the so called legacy issues are much more complicated because of these questions. at the end of the day they are being addressed on a very careful, individualized basis. you know, i have studied many of these files myself. i have examined the fax in particular cases. i know the names and numbers of extraordinarily large numbers of prisoners whose cases are before the review process. it is the kind of review that should have happened before.

i think it is being done in a careful, thoughtful, determined, and i think admirable way in recognizing mistakes that are made in the past and then trying to figure out who should address different issues as they arise in the future. >> all right. just one more. yes. >> thank you. one of the questions was our international trade policy. i wonder what you would view as the role with regard to negotiations that are in sicily part of the stimulus. i know about the significance.

this trade policy group. we had the state department class's. and so the business model. abiding by allegations. i wondered why the responsibilities to move the international trade which seems to be focused. the issue. >> well, peter, as you know, i

started my career teaching international trade in the context of what was a move. it seems to be at the time to develop alternative venues for liberalization bilateral trade agreements as well as what were called at the time pleural lateral discussions. right now i'm a lawyer for the policy makers in the state department to are pursuing that. one of the complications that we face, frankly, is a very simple one. it takes a long time for people to get confirmed, an extraordinarily long amount of time. the undersecretary for economic affairs and the assistant secretary for economic energy and business affairs, jose fernandez, came in quite recently. both of them frankly hit the ground running.

they have done a fantastic job over a very short amount of time. we have a group of lawyers who are advisers to them. what the trade policy will look like in the course of the next year-and-a-half obviously depends on a much broader set of questions around our global economic policies. probably the greatest change over the last year has been the new focus on the g-20 process. the question of how that process relates to multilateral trade rounds, the follow-on, i think remains to be determined. the trade offices, as you know, has traditionally taken the lead on these issues. i am sure you are very closely in communication with them. but i think that the state department will be an important player on these issues for the reasons that i gave. the secretary believes that the

economic dimension of our diplomacy is critical. she believes economic diplomacy and commercial diplomacy are a good part of what she is doing, in particular with some of our most significant trade partners, our most significant political partners, the trade and finance religious it is a critical aspect of it. addressing the problems and issues with of intellectual property will have to be addressed in the trade setting. so i think that we are in a funny situation where a number of issues have such high prominence that they have to be addressed. it is a little bit like the flood waters had such a high-level that until the flood waters start to drop we don't know what issues will emerge and get the next level of dominance. this might in time of would have hoped that we could have moved

on to issues with regard to immigration, financial regulation, et cetera. all of these are still in the makes. but as john said, it is an election year. there is an effort across a number of different areas to address these questions. i'm sure that question will be very high on the discussion last. >> all right. i hope you will all join me in thanking. [applauding] [inaudible conversations]

>> sometimes i think history is a series of accidents. it is leg a pileup of cars in a snowstorm. >> how did the u.s. end up in vietnam? sunday pulitzer prize-winning author ted morgan on the valley of death and the battle that ended french colonial rule in

indochina. q&a sunday night on c-span. >> president obama met wi the dalai lama at the white house. afterwards the dalai lama addressed reporters for about five minutes. [inaudible question] >> of course, indeed, i feel great honor the president of the great country. since much said i always admire america, not the economy or military power, but mainly as a champion of democracy, freedom, human value, human creativity, these things. so i am very happy.

as usual the first thing i mentioned was my three commitments. that is, as you know, the promotion of human value in order to bring peace to the world, piece to family, these peace to individuals. before that time also mentioned the female biologically more sensitive about other things. so he agreed that. [laughter] i wish you see the amount of leadership, more female.

leadership role. then second, religious harmony. keep one tradition, faith toward one's own religion, but must respect all major traditions. that is the basis of genuine harmony. so then third, actually, since 2001 we already have eligibility. so i introduced him as my boss in the political field. so since then my position is a bad position. however, i have more responsibility to speak on

behalf of by people and to issue calls for peace. so i mentioned the, of course the president and self inquired about these things. so the full commitment. this is very much supportive. and i think even before he became president, during election he telephoned me. after he became president he should genuine concern and including his recent visit to beijing. of the sorts of global issues. so i assess my thanks to them.

that is the main thing. >> happy to answer some questions after he comes back from his meeting with the secretary of state. if anyone is interested is a lance will take some questions this afternoon. >> thank you very much. some good questions. don't ask silly questions. [laughter] [inaudible conversations]

>> now the head of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration on the fiscal year 2011 budget request for her agency. the obama administration released its budget request to congress a little more than two weeks ago. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everybody.

welcome to the noaa fiscal year 2011 budget summary. my name is andy weiner. i am the director of external affairs for noaa. we want to welcome all of you to this session. we want to particularly thank you for your persistence and patience. this has been able bit of an extraordinary rollout which seems to have taken a lot longer than it probably does. we do appreciate all of you taking the time to be with us this afternoon to listen to what we can now tell you about the budget for noaa in fiscal year 2011 and also to be able to answer some of your questions. today we will be hearing from dr. jane lubchenco, the undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere as well as the noaa administrator. we are also joined by the undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere, and steve gallagher who is the noaa budget director. we thank you all for coming. we look forward to hearing from you and hearing your questions

and getting a chance to hear what you have to say. at this time i would like to call to the stage dr. jane lubchenco. thank you very much. [pplauding] >> thanks very much, andy. a warm welcome to each of you. i really appreciate all of your being here, both in person and others are joining us from bobbly. i know that with the weather disruptions last week it was a lot of back-and-forth about when river going to be able to do this. i really appreciate everyone being here. i also want to thank you and acknowledge your continued interest and engagement in noaa and look forward to the opportunity to share some progress that we are making as well as answer some questions about what is in this year's budget for fy2011. before i begin i want to invite

the senior leadership at noaa who is pretty much in the front row here, to just stand, so that you all can see them. these are folks that are, go ahead and stand up, you guys. these are the people that are really responsible for most of the programs are going to be talking about. i just want to thank all of you and invite all of you to help me thank them for what they do. [applauding] the president's overall fy2011 budget focus is squarely on moving the nation from recession to recovery and building a new foundation for a long-term success for america, long-term prosperity for american families. in particular the budget recognizes the central role that science and technology can play in stimulating the economy, creating new jobs, and improving the health and security of americans. the president's 2011 budget recognizes that noaa science,

service, and stewardship mission and the agency's record of accountability, reliability, and excellence do, indeed, support the well-being of the nation and the budget proposes some very timely opportunities to deliver even greater benefits to the nation. today's focus is on the 2011 budget request. by way of teeing up what is and that request of want to begin with some reports to you on our policy initiatives and progress towards key goals and then go through some highlights of the budget and open up the floor to your questions. noaa envisions an informed society that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of potions, coast, and the atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions.

now, this vision is not ours alone, but it reflects the importance of many stakeholders across the country including many of you who have participated in our next generation strategic planning effort. to achieve this vision we must continue to strengthen noaa core competencies and invest in a science, service, and storage s tewardship. when i first arrived at know i had a deep appreciation for the importance of noaa's mission, both on the ocean side as well as the atmosphere it side. and the one year i have been at the helm i have gained a much richer appreciation and understanding of the profound contributions that noaa makes to society and to the economy. i also have developed a vision of the ways in which noaa can be more helpful and more relevant. some of this value to the american public is highlighted on this slide. sparring science and technology

innovation to strengthen competitiveness, providing services benefiting the economy and ecosystems, supporting blue and cream businesses with the solid foundation of environmental information and stewardship, informing climate change, mitigation, and adaptation, and safeguarding public safety and security. now, all of these challenges exist at the intersection between science, society, and the economy. this is where noaa's mission has its greatest impact. the job that noaa does in collaboration with our many partners has a direct bearing on the nation's immediate and long-term concerns. shortly after coming to a noaa the noaa team in place and i've laid out a few key priorities that are really built upon our mission and our strengths that

focused our attention on key areas where we saw some immediate added needs are opportunities to make some significant progress. secretary lock is fond of encouraging the bureaus within commerce to stretch goals. many of these were, indeed, stressed balls. they were really taking as in some directions that we knew would be very challenging. these priorities responded to key initiatives that have been defined by many of you, our constituents, and by congress and they reflected the president's, the secretaries, and my priorities. so i want to highlight these for you because this was sort of a year rego. this was what we decided to really focus on. building and core competencies to ensure the continuity of climate, weather, and ocean observations both inside and very importantly from space, strengthening climate science and services, and proving weather forecasting and disaster

warnings, transforming fisheries, protecting and recovering species and habitats, promoting healthy, resilience coastal communities and ecosystems and strengthening science and stewardship. that is a pretty diverse portfolio. it, indeed, reflects the diversity of what we do at 38, and it reflects the the diversiy of you here in this room. there are lots of different interests and issues, lots of different things that we work on. i am pleased to report that we have made some very significant progress in many of these goals. none of them is complete, but we tackle some pretty tough issues and are on track to deliver. i am really, really proud of how of the team at noaa has really stretched itself to tackle some of these really important issues. i want to give you a brief sense of some of the things that we have been working on in these

four areas that are highlighted on the slide. from the very early days of my nomination it was pretty clear to me that one of our joint satellite program said some very significant challenges. given the critical importance of this program to the nation for the continuity of our climate and weather information and despite the difficulties previously encountered in trying to fix earlier problems fixing was a high priority of mind mind secretary loch's. over the last year and with significant assistance from secretary loch we have worked nonstop with ostp, the office of science and technology policy, the office of management and budget, with the department of defense, and with nasa to develop a restructuring plan for our polar orbiting satellite

program with the goal of ensuring continuity of these critical satellite observations. we believe that this plan with the support of congress will get this program back on track. i am pleased to report that our other satellite programs continue to go well. we cheered, for example, the successful launch of noaa 19, a polar orbiting satellite, in a geostationary satellite. these satellites are essentials 48 weather and climate missions turning to fisheries we have made a very important progress in rebuilding our fisheries that are so critical for a healthy america and for the livelihood's and communities that depend on fishing. we are taking concrete steps to build better relations with commercial and recreational fishing communities to better understand the issues and develop, solutions. we have identified some serious

issues in our enforcement program that we are committed to resolving. we began the implementation of shares for new england groundfish and issued a new catch share policy for public comment. with fishery management councils we have taken important steps to develop annual catch limits and in end overfishing. we have improved our data collection capabilities which were so critical for fisheries research and management. to this end noaa commissioned a fisheries service vessel which will be collecting information to support fishery data needs in the gulf of mexico and south eastern united states. that package of accomplishments and activities will be very significant progress. lots more yet to be done. i am pleased with where we are. on the climate front we have announced the intent to

reorganize within noaa. the office called noaa climb of service. we are engaging our partners from other agencies, the private sector, the scientific community, and many others. we look forward to working with you as plans for this reorganization take shape. we issued important studies and reports on the potential impact of global climate change. we worked to enhance our super computing capabilities to run high-resolution global and regional climate models and improved our capability and spatial density of climate observation. and just announced last week we have created a new web portal to make it much easier to find and access the wealth of

climate-related information, data, and services at our website. i invite to check this out www.climate.gov. give us your feedback. we want to continue to make it more and more useful. and finally turning to coastal communities and ecosystems noaa played a key leadership role. the result of this was the release of a draft national ocean policy and framework for coastal and marine special planning. the first time any administration has so clearly committed to the idea that healthy oceans matter. protecting and restoring coastal habitats is essential for healthy oceans and resilience coastal communities and ecosystems. noaa is working on this front. in 2009 over 4,000 coastal acres were acquired or placed under

confirmation easement by noaa conservation programs just to give you a single example. today is the anniversary of the signing of the stimulus bill. the president has announced that and highlighted much of the wonderful accomplishments of the bill today to. noaa has also effectively directed public investment toward economic recovery demonstrating that environmental improvements and economic growth can be mutually supportive. as you can see from the a raid of projects or categories highlighted on the slide lide or investments covered a broad array of activities from repairing ships to building new facilities. noaa distribution and management of our stimulus funds is a success story.

noaa has obligated approximately 70% of the $830 million that we received. we have met all of our planned milestones and expect to obligate the remaining funds in the coming months. i am particularly proud of our efforts to restore critical habitats. today we have awarded 50 grand for marine and coastal habitat restoration. for example, in north carolina noaa is using funds to hire an out-of-work watermen to restore 49 acres. so far no one has supported the hiring of 85 people to plan 41,000 bushels of oysters at sites on four separate coastal carolina counties. many of the restoration projects were located in areas of high unemployment and provide a vital resources to our coastal communities and economies that

they support. turning now to the president's f. white 2011 budget request. at this chart depicts the trends in the overall budget since fy2005 comparing the enacted budget in green to the president's budget and blue. you can see the noaa budget request in blue were exceeded by the enacted budget in green. however, even at the higher level the enacted amount r emained flat at 3.9 billion from 2005-20008. the increasing demand for noaa services coupled with the static budget created a major challenge for noaa in delivering on expectations. this pattern changed in 2009 and again in 2010 when noaa's enacted budgets grew 2.4 billion

to 4.7. on behalf of everyone at noaa we think congress and each of you for your assistance and continued confidence and support that got us those higher funding levels. the president's budget request 5.6 billion an increase of $806 million over the fy2010 enacted. this budget reflects our efforts to focus on program needs, identify efficiencies and ensure accountability. it also incorporates major congressional priorities as articulated in previous years' budgets down. we are, indeed, listening to congress. and it reflects the presidents and secretaries commitment to public safety, the environment, to science, and to job creation. here are some highlights. in terms of general highlights the budget supports new r &d

investments to strengthen our science mission and foster innovation, key investments to improve fisheries and the economies and communities that they support, targeted investments including a major restructuring of our polar orbiting satellite program, essential pathways to strengthen the climate research and services and tools to support a vibrant coastal communities and the stewardship. this budget trend slide shows the 2011 request of the 5.6 billion. while a significant fraction of around 800 million of this increase is new spending on satellites the budget also includes targeted investments in our operating budget. with our realignment of the polar orbiting satellite program our capital budget