you, lucy. in your view, as a journalist and a lawyer, under the first amendment, and a journalist ever be criminally prosecuted for reporting classified information disclosed to him by a government official? >> first of all, i cannot think of any situation in my lifetime where i think that such a thing has occurred. but, just as in my lifetime there was a situation i never would have thought of where a president of the united states was ousted for criminal behavior, i suppose there is possibly some situation where a reporter could be treated like any other citizen and charged with such a crime. i cannot for the life of me imagine what that would be. >> ok. so we have the idea then that the first amendment, absent the unimaginable margin, protects a

reporter who publishes classified information. now, that is certainly not the view that was articulated by the justice department prosecutors in our a pack espionage -- in our aipac of espionage case. the clients were charged with having discussions with government officials, having listened as the government officials shared with them information that was classified, and then repeating it. we raised -- there were charged with having done so under the indictment, although we were going to dispute that, knowing that the information was classified. and one of the issues that we raised, of course, was the first amendment. we suggested to the judge that the first and then it was an absolute protection, absolute protection at least under the circumstances. the government took a very different view, and i am going

to start picking on ken in a moment when it comes to the government. what they articulated, the prosecutors in our case articulated, was the disclosure of classified information is not properly thought of as protected speech. it is a criminal act. although it manifest itself in speech, it's like saying, "lets go sell heroin or go and commit a murder." it is speech that can decriminalize. so therefore the first amendment plays no role in the case. because the information was classified, the first amendment goes out the window. now i want to turn to ken and say, thoughts? >> i do not think you need to get to that absolutist position whether the first amendment applies or not. the espionage statutes definitely have their flaws, and we will talk about that more later on.

but they have been subject to first amendment law is. so i do not know you need to go to that point in order to -- are you against a reporter or person in the position of aipac in order to defend against a constitutional attack on the case. >> a judge denied a motion on first amendment grounds. on the other hand, he rejected the government house position that the first amendment was in applicable. the judge cut this down the middle, and he said the first amendment does apply, but contrary to misperception, the protections are not absolute. there are circumstances, if the government proves a relevant fact, that even though the first amendment protects, if the contact -- if the speech was so

egregious, so harmful, coupled with other elements we will discuss any moment, the prosecution would still be viable he said difficult but viable. he did not dismiss the case. we'll talk more about the decision in a moment as we catalog the many factors that create obstacles in the way of prosecuting a weak case. so we have now talked about the over-classification problem, we have talked about the first amendment. we have touched upon it. that is a discussion which can have for a month. the first amendment, two absolute views were the judge comes somewhere down in the middle. we need to talk about the statutes that you have been hearing about, this espionage act of 1917. it is a world war onei statute, not drafted with all of

the first amendment in mind. to ken,t i turned t where in his role as attorney general was responsible for this. i will ask him to read the statute to you. i do not for a minute suggest that you should understand it, but i just want you to listen for a moment, and even as a non- lawyer, you begin to see why the lawyers will have a field day when a case is brought before a judge under this statute. >> i am going to read one section of the main espionage statute. this is one of i think eight or nine different sections. it is subsection e. "whoever having access or control of any code book,

sketched photographic negative, the plants, or no relating to national defense or information relating to the national defence, which information is in the possessor has reason to believe could be used to injury of the united states or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully attempts to communicate, and our cause to be delivered or transmitted to the same to any person not entitled to receive it or willfully fails to -- has committed a crime." >> now that has to be simple enough for the ordinary person to conform his or her conduct with it. so contrast that with, say, the simplicity of "thou shalt not kill," for example. there is a complexity to the statute which has given rise to an enormous amount of litigation as to what it is that the government must prove beyond a

reasonable doubt before it can actually convict somebody. a few things to note -- it does not distinguish between journalists to non-journalists. it does not distinguished between government officials and non-government officials, although it distinguishes between those who are authorized to have the information and those who are not authorized to have the information. so in interpreting this statute, in the salomonic way that he did, the judge said let me tell you what the government has to prove. they have to prove that the information was national defense information. that means it was potentially damaging to national security, the judge said, and was closely held by the government. potentially damaging and closely held. plus, the government has to prove that the defendant knew it was potentially damaging and that it was closely held by the government.

the government has to prove that the information was classified. the government has to prove that the defendant knew that it was classified. the government has to prove that the defendant knew he was not authorized to receive it. the government has to prove that if the defendant -- the government has to prove that the defendant was not acting out of "salutary motives," the judge said. even if you violated the law but you think it is for the greater good, that is a defense under this statute. you know, the government can prove all of that, i am not going to dismiss this case. the government will have to prove all that at trial, and if the government succeeds, these defendants will be fairly convicted. so i think now you can understand yet another challenge that faces the government in prosecuting these sorts of cases, given his opinion as a

district court judge, if that opinion becomes law and becomes widely adopted, you have essentially another set of challenges that confront the prosecutors as they think about bringing these cases. i want to focus on another factor, and i am going back and picking on bill leonard again with the question. that is, you have heard that in government officials, when they talk to folks, state department folks have to interact, white house folks interacting with folks out there, they do so after having read a host of classified documents. do they get, in your experience, generated for him or for her, a non-classified set of talking points each time he gets a reporter pasquale?

or does he somehow -- a ?eporter's call >> it is clearly the latter. in fact, i refer to no less an expert and former vice-president cheney on this issue. if you take a look at the statement he gave to the fbi in conjunction with skimpy -- >> scooter liddy. -- scooter libby. >> i'm sorry. he was quite open about the information that he routinely disclosed to reporters would be very similar to information that would appear in intelligence reports, and in that particular case it was in national

intelligence estimate. he indicated he would purely allow those classified documents to inform his decisions and in for his conversation. as we heard from general hayden at lunchtime, what is often the issue is not the content, it is the thought. as long as an individual is careful not to disclose what is known as thoughts -- it is the source. as long as an individual is careful not to disclose what is known as the source of information -- >> let me interrupt and hand you which, as a lawyer, i have to say is exhibit a, ask you if you recognize the exhibit. >> yes, this is mr. cheney's statement that i was just referring to. >> and the special prosecutor there. you may want to read a few sentences in that paragraph where the vice-president talks

about how he relates to the public and discloses information publicly based on the classified documents that he reads. why don't you read a little bit of that. these are -- what bill is reading from is a document of an fbi agents who has transcribed or taking careful notes of the interview that the prosecutor, pat fitzgerald, conducted of the vice-president. >> "with respect to the information contained, the vice president advised it is possible to talk about something contained in the classified document without violating the law regarding declassification. the vice-president made numerous examples based on in some cases tractive reading classified information, including the national and intelligence estimate. he did not violate any relevant laws or rules in making the statements because he did not reveal the continental sources or methods involved in gathering the classified information." >> so, what that illustrates the

and i think is another challenge as we are cataloging the challenges in bringing these cases. especially when you have an oral disclosure, the mere fact that a sentence of third by a sentence uttered by a government official is traced back to a classified document does not end the inquiry. you don't necessarily know whether or not the person has disclosed classified information. let me put this another way with one more question to build. even in a properly classified document, bill, is all the information in the document going to be classified necessary? >> absolutely not. one of the requirements is that the classification, going down to a portion of a paragraph or sub paragraph, even within that sub paragraph, there will be information that in fact is unclassified. in fact, in the aipac case, one

of the many things i was chagrined at was that one of the things that the defendants were charged with, if you look at the source document, the lead in, even though it had classification markings to it, indicated according to sources. right in the document itself, it was saying -- >> so it was a classified paragraph that was marked secret, but the first sentence red, "according to open sources ." >> that is a classic example of how that to be the case. >> ok, so then let us now talk about a little bit about -- we have this complicated statute,

all of these obstacles to using the statutes. lucie, do we need any legislative fixes at all here, in your view, whether it is the statute, the reporters, some sort of reporter's shield law? let's start legislatively. >> based on the experiences i have had for the past years, with the shield law, the further you can stay away from congress, the best you -- the better you are. i would hate to go to congress and mess around with the espionage statute, because i fear what we would end up with. that said, we have been having a very long, what had appeared to be productive experience trying to get the shield law out of the congress, and we really thought we were going to get something this year. it is not completely dead, but the clock is ticking, and i

really believe that a federal shield law is absolutely essential to providing information to the public. and the versions that have survived the house of representatives and the senate judiciary committee have broad, broad, broad protection for national security information. and for the life of me, i cannot figure out why this thing has been stalled. >> let me ask you about the shield law because reporters are callable in two ways. one is if they publish information -- are vulnerable in two ways. the run at least some risk that they will be -- although as i think you indicated, it has not happened yet -- we have lobbyists but not reported. the other issue is not reporters who are reporting classified information, but reporters who are subpoenaed for sources' where they are not the subject or target of the information,

but they have information relevant to somebody else -- tell us about the shield law and how it relates to those two categories. >> when a reporter gets subpoenaed, it is almost always because the reporter is holding information that is believed to be relevant to an ongoing investigation, either by a federal prosecutor or by someone who is trying to pursue civil litigation. most of the time in recent years, it has been a former disgruntled federal employee who is trying to sue their the reporter gets brought into it and i want to know what the subject -- or who the source of that information was and sometimes the reporter has been given the ability by the source to reveal the information, sometimes the source comes for themselves and sometimes the

sources say you may not reveal my identity. reporters always thought for many, many years that they had first amendment protection for that part of those of you who are lawyers know that in 1972 there is a case where the united states supreme court said this is kind of interesting but it is a close call. we will not give you constitutional protection but you want to go to congress and the state to get statutory protection, be our guest over the years, we have had more than 100 shield laws introduced in congress. at the center out, we have a shield laws are other types of protection by court rule or common law in all but one state, that one state is wyoming where apparently nobody really bothers to go after reporters so it has never been an issue. what ever. >> the fact that is cheney's

home state -- >> i don't know. after the bush administration came in, one thing that i think happens with excessive secrecy is that eventually excess of secrecy leads to more government officials and employees leaking information because they see themselves as close eye-whistle blowers. that is the only way they can get the information out. they give it to the media. they need confidentiality. a very logical result of the incredible secrecy we saw after 9/11 was this increase in subpoenas of reporters on the federal level. we have been able to demonstrate this. we went to congress. we are caught in the is a very ng -- it is just

caught in committee. you cannot get anything for the united states senate these days unless you got far more than 60 votes because you need to vote on whether to have a vote. that is the situation we are in now. we know we have more than 70 votes for the bill if it actually goes through or comes to a we are hung up there. we have delays for two reasons. there were concerns that the national could -- national- security exception did not go far enough. everybody agrees that national security information is off the table if you are a reporter and you are protecting some unruly passions according information, you'll just have to go to jail. that is the way it is if you want to protect a particular source. then we were making a fairly decent progress over the summer having lots of good meetings and we had wikileaks i that caused many people in congress -- it

sucked all the air out of the room. they were working on amendments that set in case the national security exception is not clear enough, we will add this additional prong that says if anybody else out there who don't data over the internet, they are not covered either. i think we're basically running out of time. >> mike, i wanted to ask you whether you are -- in your work if you are reporting the fear of prosecuting for disclosing, the fear of a subpoena, do you think that has affected you in terms of the reporting you have done? are there things you have not reported because you thought it might lead to your prosecution or the prosecution of your source? have you been deterred or acted differently in any way because of the threat of prosecution out there? >> no, i do what i think my job

-- what i perceive my job to be. i don't worry about it. clearly, on some stories, you are aware that you could be scared into an area that could have legal implications and you tend to be very careful about how you handle that and try to avoid being in a situation where it is going to per and. what i withhold information that i thought was in the public interest and that the public needed to know about because some prosecutor at the justice department might take a different view? no, it might affect the way i reported it. by the way, as a backdrop, every time you are reporting in this area, if a government official tells you if you report that it

could harm the national security, you have a serious conversation about it. it is never something you blithely just brush aside for an >> is the concern for national security or your own neck? >> if someone tells you something that you are right -- it is not just a national security issue, it could be a public safety issue our law enforcement. somebody tells you that it will endanger somebody go or put somebody at risk or harm somebody, you take that seriously. you are a human being and that is not what we are in the business to do is to harm people. many, many times i will lippold information on that score, not because it has national security information's but if someone says you put that person's name in, they will face repercussions or their life could be in danger or their family could

have problems. that happens all the time. it is not because of the law. it is because you are a human being. we are not in the business to harm people. this is to educate the public. if i could go back to the shield law -- i should point out that as lucy did, when i last looked at it, the national security acceptance were so broad as to make it absolutely meaningless in this area. there is no -- that law will not do anything to protect reporters reporting on national security cases. anybody who thinks that it does is kidding themselves. it will not knowledgeable law one bit in that area. -- it will not nudge below one bit in that area. the biggest threat to reporters

is in the civil a rim. -- i read that. there has been some really bad rulings in the district. that gives license to litigants to subpoena reporters to identify their sources and help them advance a lawsuit, a privacy act lawsuit. you're not -- they are not suing the reporter but they want the reporter's information to help them make their case. unfortunately, the court of appeals in the district of columbia has upheld that. i have had some unpleasant experiences as a result of that. i think that is really where the threat to reporters' ability to do their jobs is. judges have ruled that litigants can get access to our sources are. i think that is a bad thing.

it is nothing to do with national security. it has to do with a litigant trying to advance his case. >> let's step back and go back to our growing catalog of the difficulties faced in prosecuting a classified information disclosure case. let's turn to a new topic, the classified information procedures act. let me turn to ken. this statute ties in with the concept of gray mail. tell us what that is. what challenges does it present today and the prosecution of cases? >> the classified information procedures act is known as cipa and it grew out of gray mail which is a term that was, by

prosecutors and it was defense attorneys representing people in national security cases like sci a person that disclose classified information. that person is being prosecuted. the defense attorney in the discovery process demand information from the government saying that this information is relevant for persons -- purposes of discovery. much of it would be classified. you had the government in a dilemma as to whether to go ahead and prosecute this guy who leaked the information and make an example of him, but if we do that we will disclose more classified information because this defense attorney has convince this judge that this is information they need to proceed with the case. what congress did is they came up with cipa and it is an overlay on the criminal justice process is says that if there is classified information packets

implicated in a criminal case, there is a process by which the drugs, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney can litigate the admissibility of the classified information and do so in the wake that the letter k -- do so in a way that is not going to harm the case. you have to lump of the information together. if you want to go forward with the case, you'll have to accept that. the judge's concern to the prosecution and asked if they accept that. if you don't, you have the right to dismiss the case. it might not be worth it to release the informationcipa has worked fairly well in practice. it was an attempted to allow this to be litigated in a way that you did not hammer to classified information. it is still not foolproof. you have cipa so why are you

worried about bringing national security cases. some cases will not be brought to us for that reason. there is still the defendant often gets exposure to the classified information in the litigation process and also it is used where there is a constitutional right to open the program very judges are reluctant to close a courtroom to shield discussions about classified information them u. >>." we employed a process you called gray male and it was interesting. i blame the bill for teaching enough about classified information and how it works that enabled us to do it. in our case and many other cases, the disclosures were all

oral. in order to prove that the oral disclosures or discloses a class of automation, the prosecutors gave us the pretrial discovery with traffic -- classified and permission from the government which had the same information that our clients had discussed contained in the classified documents. they wanted to reject everything out except for the warner to matching lines and say they -- they wanted to be able to say to the jury that the reason that you know that this conversation was classified is because we will now show you a classified document. the same information appears that they would reject everything else out. it appears in a paragraph that has a s for sequence. we argued based on the lessons i got from bill, we pleaded to the judge that not every sentence in a bill marked secret is not

necessarily classified. the fact that matches a sentence in a paragraph mark secret is a stark but maybe that is one of the on classified sentence says. if you look four lines down, one of the sentences that the government wants to rejedact >> it's say something, and i'm make this up, this information came from a bug that was planted in the ayatollah's beard without his knowledge or something equally amazing. and, again, i made that up. [laughter] so i would then say to the judge, your honor, how can they prove the information's classified because it matchesis sentence number one? that paragraph may have been classified because of the bug iy the beard sentence that was sentence number five. we were entitled to cross-examine their experts and show the jurors sentence number five because the jurors may conclude as we argue, they may believe us, that the matching sentence was not classified, it was the other sentence.

the prosecutors said, gray mail, gray mail. gra they're trying to bring in classified information that is not in issue in this case. and we said, look, you're trying to prosecute them for an oral statement. they never saw that document,us but you want to use theassi document.re we're entitled to the bug in the beard statement as well. so the cipa statute is an issue, but it doesn't eliminate it. it moves it into a pretrial stage two before the judge so you don't have a jury in panel, and you're not pressuring the--a judge to make these decisions when there's a jury sitting there in the jury room wondering, why is the judge keeping us. so the cipa process is yet another challenge, shall we say, to the prosecution as it contemplates bringing one of these and the gray mail issue is one. the prosecution has to realize that there is at least the

possibility thatth defense attorneys will be able to persuade the judge they need a lot more defense, excuse me, a lot more classified information that has never been at issue until then to prove their i defense case. okay. i think, i think this is a good time to pause to take questions from the audience with the caveat that we haven't listed alldi the challenges tonges prosecuting classified information. it would have taken us three ori four years to litigate the case if we could really summarize all the challenges in a one-hour session in the afternoon, but same ground rules as before. we've got two mics. anybody who's got a question?ro ah, mr. rosen. please, come on up u. -- come on up. >> i was one of the defendants in the aipac case. having made a comment in passing this morning that i think should really be brought out this

afternoon. it was pointed out that the costs of the defense attorneys in t the aipac case was $12 million. the prosecutors were able to force our employer to dismiss u and also to cease the payment of our attorneys' fees.nt we later on, thankfully, were able to force them, nonetheless, to pay a bargained-down number on the attorneys' fees -- >> significantly bargained down --ttor >> significantly bargained down> and we had the great fortune that our attorneys were willing to continue defending us for a period of i think it was roughlr two years while not being paid at all and running the meter. i wonder whether even such powerful institutionis as "the washington post" and the new york times could face a prosecution that cost 12 or maybe in their case $20 million? i wonder whether their board of directors in today's economics

of the media would tolerate suci a thing.ate and i wonder whether they couldn't find some other victimy who will be forced to plead out because they didn't have these advantages that we had. and my final comment, i know you want questions, is that a veryut high percentage of these costshh were imposed by cipa. the reason they cost so much was, primarily, four years ofly hearings for the cipa process. p we never got to a trial, in our case the case was dismissed before trial, and as itr understand it, the majority of i the fees that were run up were run up because of the meeting the requirements of the classified information -- >> let me say that although we're supposed to ask question , since you said nice things about the attorneys, you'll definitely get a pass on that, for sure. [laughter] the reason the cipa proceeding'' took as long as they did was because we had a very conscientious judge who took his

responsibility both to the government and to the defense very seriously. was and there was a lot of allegedly classified information at issue, and he went through it line bygi line. why do you need this sentence? why do you need this word? why do you need that word? what damage will there be to the government, what role will this play in the defense? and that was -- he was very conscientious about it.ous he didn't get paid any more or less doing this, but it did drive up the fees quite astronomically. that i would put as an impediment especially on thed defense side because the resources that are required to defend these cases are quiteases enormous. >> it seems to me that cipait isn't only a problem for the government because i don't think, as i recall from the morrison case, that the defense necessarily gets access to all of the classified information the government is trying to -- [inaudible] so i'd like to hear some k discussion of that. o >> well, let's -- i'm happy to

respond to that, t or i'm happye defer to ken if you want to try that or -- >> well, i mean, that's the purpose of cipa, to draw the line between those materials that might be classified that the defense, defendant should have access to and that they might then be able to put on ine open trial and those materials that defense should not have access to. t go back to, once again, the origins of cipa.of it was this practice, as i said, called gray mail. that's sort of has a pejorative sound to it, but the whole point was defense is going to ask for a large volume of materials, the larger the better because that's going to make it more likely the government's going to say, forget it, we can't give all this information. so the question is where alonght that spectrum is the line to whatet is relevant to the materl of the defense, possiblyex exculpatory that defense has toa

have, and what is it that defense is not constitutionally required to put on its defense. >> and can i ask you this? once you get to trial under cipa, the government does get to use all the secret stuff that the defense wasn't able to see, is thate correct? >> the government can't use anything that it didn't show the defense before trial. >> thank you. that wasn't clear. wha >> so what happens in cipa to follow up on ken is there is -- when there's information that's arguably relevant, the government has a few choices. sometimes there's one section that allows the government if io thinks it might be relevant but probably isn't to go to the judge, show it to the judge butu not to us and say to the judge, we want to be good citizensjudg here, we're going to show it tog you,oo we're not going to turnnd this over to the defense, but we're telling you that we're doing that. we want you to know that. and the judge might turn to the defense and say, i'm entertaining this information. i'm not going to let you see it just yet, but tell me confidentially your defense in

this case and what you want to y do, and then i'll look at the documents and see if you should get them. that's the first thing. then there are the documentsre that the defense does get which are clearly relevant but can't share with their clients. we, the lawyers -- john and iaw andye abby -- got a lot of stuf that we could not share with our clients, kind of odd representing your client where the most important information that relates to the case you can't talk to him about. and we would say, oh, by the way, i spent the past three months fighting to keep thise information out of the case.on what information? i c can't tell you, thank you v? much. i mean, it was that sort ofuch. discussion.hat >> can i just -- >> yes, please. >> -- pick up on that? the $12 million figure struck m me, but not to put ken on the spot, but i imagine that some additional multiple millions were spent by the government to bring that case.th and when that amount of resources and energy goes intodn

bringing a case that collapses, is there a price to be paid within the justice department for the people who brought the case to begin with or at least h reevaluation that goes on? at and i just wonder if there is, is that -- do you think that the current justice department is keeping that in mind in this current extraordinary spate of weak prosecutions that they've brought in just the last fewhe l months? is. >> very good question.go >> yes. well, let me sort of parse that out. first, you see a number of leakr prosecutions, and i just knowprs about them what i read in the papers. a, they're not reporters, they're not the people who are the recipients of the information, so they're distinguishable from the aipac situation. you know, the government has made the assessment that this was important information that was irresponsibly disclosed, and we need to make an example ofnsb people who are doing this n because weee are hemorrhagingng classified information. t are and, i mean, i can go through

chapter and verse the examplesan of things that i know that wereo released while i was in government because people just l wanted to talk about things,rnme wanted to show they were in the know. drove me crazy. i mean, it was compromising sources and methods. so i'm sympathetic to the new administration and to what they're doing in this area.mini to your question about what happens when a case like this, you know, collapses has to be dismissed, complicated question. a, i don't know. i was there for one sort of span for the case, i don't know exactly o what reevaluation thes did. not but i can tell you that it's, you can tell by our discussion about cipa and everything, these are complex cases in a prosecutorial decision to bring a case like that, it's based on. prediction. you're predicting what a judge is going to do down the road. i'm sure when they decided to try that case, they knew these cipa issues were going to be hotly contested, you're going te

be up very able counsel, and a you're sort of predicting we think we'll be able to prosecute the case. for example, whenever an agency comes to us and says, here, weo got this information that was disclosed, one thing they want to know is do you think it's is going to compromise further communication? if so, we don't want you to gouo forward. so we have to predict to them whether we're going to get cipa rulings in their favor.am s i'm just betting the rulings that came out from judge ellis, know, didn't play out withlay u that prediction which doesn't mean anybody was, you know, irresponsible or rash in their decision making, it might just mean that the ultimate decision or decisions by the judge didn't track what people expected them toec be. >> right. but just picking up on that, you quoted from judge ellis before, and you said one of the standards was to prove that the disclosure was not done, was not

done for a sal you story effectc --t. salutary effect. in other words, it wouldn't cover a whistleblower who thought he was doing the public some good, at least in the most prominent case that this justich department brought, thomas drake, it seems that he's exactly that. he was trying to get out w information about an nsa program thatto was being mismanaged and costing too much money and was being bungled. and that was his primary motive. and if standard that judge ellis set as quoted by baruch is the standard -- >> yeah, but he's not charged with espionage, and that's probably exactly why. he's being charged with bei mishandling the information, isn't that right? >> that's not the only charge. >> let me address that. first, from a technical perspective, judge ellis' decision is not binding. he was the first one to articulate this because he got

this very hard case. until this aipac espionage casea most cases where the government used was against a government official who when you get a classified document, you've already signed up for the classification process.e al you've undertaken nondisclosurer you've waived many of your first amendment rights, and the supreme court has really sot ri held. in other words, for the privilege of serving the public and for getting classified information, you have a heightened responsibility. for and so when you prosecute somebody who is a governmentnsib official who has promised not ts disclose classified information, the standards are not always the same that would apply to the the nongovernment official whoth receives it. this case called upon judge ellis in one of the first cases, not the very first, but it was really the first time he was called upon to decide what standard should apply when it'st a nongovernment official. a whether that would apply togove these folks who are government officials, whether his opinion will go beyond the eastern district of virginia where he g

decided there wasn't a court of appeals, there wasn't a supreme court, these are open issues ana from a lawyer's perspective, your opponent -- the justice department -- is entitled to bring another case and say, we think ellis got it wrong. we want the supreme court to decide. go ahead. >> just to play that out a little bit, i mean, if that were the rule that so long as you're doing this not to help the enemy, because you think it's it the interests of the united states, that means that everyted government employee has the discretion to decideat what's bt for the united states. and, you know, that -- i can't see a classification system working based on how manystem million federal employees, each of their positions as to what's good for the united states. maybe one of them thinks it's good for the united states if we allow al-qaeda an advantage over us. if they actually think that, demented though that view might be, that is a defense to it. a pure application of that prong. >> but the starting premise is the classification system isn't working, that's what we started from.ot and, you know, there's way fro

overclassification, and that's your basic problem in bringing these cases. you don't have a standard. >> can i just finish a thought here? >> yes, go. >> jim and i testified on the hill a few months ago about this very issue, about what do we do about government employees who want to leak, and particularly those who are well intentioned. people are doing this for all the right reasons, because they're trying to expose what they think of as mismanagement or misconduct, and how do you do prosecute cases and make it clear that people can't willy-nilly disclose information that is classified, but deal with the real whistleblower? >> i think the upshot is you need to have effective whistleblower protection andtion procedures where i'm an employee in an intelligence community agency. i see something that i think is problematic. i don't just throw it out there, i go up a chain where i'm going to be protected by doing it, it gets to somebody who's going to actually through user-friendly procedures going to look into it

and take some action whether that's the ig or thei t intelligence committees up on the hill. and as you know, there are several different whistleblower provisions including one that's specific to the intelligence community. that, i think, is probably your answer if you really want a system where people would bee able to, you know, blow the whistle on misconduct but notscn have full, unfettered discretion to kiss close secrets -- disclose secrets to the press.me >> you know, in some regards the matter's simpler than that. as we saw this this morning from the cheney quote, i mean, information is the coin of the realm in this town. that's how policy is made and things along those lines. and when i was back in theac pentagon, one ofk the things i had responsibility for in my portfolio was all the counterintelligence programs. and in terms of addressing the damaging leaks, one of the things that i wanted to do was, actually, set up a training program for senior-level peopleg many people who aren't used to dealing with intelligencese products, maybe come from academia, think tanks, whatever.

and actually give them a desk-side training in terms of, hey, when you're dealing with intelligence products that have sources and methods and you need to deal with the media, you need to deal with think tanks, here's how you do it, here's how you dr what cheney says you do. and you know what? when i tried to do that, i wasod ridiculed within the pentagon. it was -- the analogy i came up with was when people want toanal give condoms to teenagers to trs to prevent unwanted pregnancies. it was like, my god, you want t- encourage leaks by giving this sort of training, you know? that t was the one thing that i was left with in the aipac case was if government had just devoted a fraction of the resources that were devoted to that prosecution in terms ofs in educating the senior policymakers in terms of how to conduct the everyday business without damaging national security in the process, without disclosing the sources and or methods, that would haveld h addressed a big part of the problem. but to this day i don't think

that has happened.his i am totally unaware of that ever happening. >> oh, all right. >> this morning's panel my question is for lucy.ny baruch asked you under anyr v circumstances you thought n journalists could be prosecuted, and you couldn't recall any in your lifetime.al let me ask you long, long before your lifetime when "the chicago tribune" in 19 this 2 reveal -- 1942 revealed the fact that the united states was breaking jap japanese codes, would that, in j your view, be a prosecution, a viable prosecution even with the first amendment on the -- >> no. >> no? and why not? a disclosure that cost the lives of thousands of american soldiers, prolongs the war, makes us forfeit our valuable window into japanese militaryble movements? >> look, i told you i could

envision maybe -- i can't think of one. that particular thing didn't happen. and largely because of the context back then.back informs like that wasn't goingpb to, probably, because of technology wasn't going to make it to the japanese. is that potentially, maybe something? is i don't know. b i don't know. i'd be comfortable defending "the chicago tribune" for doing that. would i as ap editor have doneve that? no, that seems to me to be a bone-headed thing to do, it o really does, and none of the journalists i've been dealing with in my professional 35-year career would do something that a moronic. i'm a lawyer. [laughter] but there is a code of ethics that the society of professionas journalists has out there, and

it's the most common code of ethics out there. number one, it's, in general, speak the truth. hold the, you know, hold important people, those in power, accountable. and also in general, minimize harm. and in my experience everybody who is a trained professional journalist out there working particularly in this town is going to adhere to those principles. so that's really why i can't imagine that situation happening right now. >> for what it's worth, i think under judge ellis' interpretation of the espionage act articulated in the aipac case, a viable prosecution could have been brought in that situation, i think under the standards he articulated. and one of the reasons is that he made clear, and ined too, the prosecutors agreed with him on p this part that there was no w difference between our clients, the lobbyists, and the press both enjoyed the first amendment protection of equal strength.

so, therefore, i'm comfortable saying that the standards hesa applied in ouryi case he wouldap havepl applied in the case agaid the press, and that case would have, i think, satisfied if government could have proved it that this was potentially damaging, they knew it would bet potentially damaging, there was not a salutary mode of -- i mean, i think it would have gonn to trial. the government would have had the opportunity to try to prove that to a jury.ry. >> as a corollary to that, i mean, look, everybody thumps the table about the dangers that result from the release of classified information. in my experience, inevitably they're exaggerated. look at wikileaks just in the last few weeks. you know, all the harm that the pentagon originally said could come from the afghan war leaks and then secretary gates just last week wrote a letter saying, well, actually, there wasn't -- we haven't been able to identify any harm at all coming from that, that leak.

and, you know, on the other side that which people in government tend not to talk about is the real danger that results fromng overclassification, and, youerrm know, i could go on and on starting with the 9/11 attacksrn and, you know, how excessive secrecy within the government led to the restriction of information that had it beenha passed along might well have been able to stop the leaks,able information that the cia had but because they held it so tightly, they wouldn't share with the fb, that could have led to the identity of two of the hijackers who were in the united states.o >> that comes back to --in t >> and there are multiple examples of where overclassification, oversecrecy results in real harm to the national security, and that tends to get left out of the -- >> it's not, it's not just an impediment to the prosecution of the case, it has ramifications far beyond that. far beyond that.

any other questions? all right. well -- yes, sir. >> i've got one that meets, i guess, the criteria of today's discussion which is a nexus ofs national security and criminal law and first amendment but which is not in the mode thatndc we've been talking about.amen but i think it's still relevantg recently, there's been in the news this threatened burning ofe the koran which i guess could be described as an incendiary actrn in more than one way. and i guess i have questions of both the media and for both of the lawyers. first be, i'm curious -- first, i'm curious as from the lawyers, from the preacher's point of view if, if he were to go ahead, have gone ahead with this act and was posited, there have a definite cause and effect, and it would have resulted in some harm to soldiers, etc., would this be deemed free speech and

protected, ie, like flag burning, or might it be more akin to nonprotected free speech as in yelling fire in this a crowded theater? so i guess that would be my be question of the lawyers. and for the media the question, i guess, arose as to the what i would say would be the responsibility aspect of covering this story. certainly have a right to cover it, but -- and you'd mentioned the ethics of it and minimizing harm and so forth that was just mentioned by one of the panelists. covering the story versus what i'll call the professional orhe the social or the moral responsibility akin to coveringl it. thank you. >> okay.>> why don't we start with our press folks in terms of the responsibility many covering that sort of story -- in covering that sort of story. o >> i thought the coverage of>> that guy was way excessive.

you know, i would object to any restriction put on coverage of it, but it was, on the other hand, it doesn't mean we have to cover it the way we did.t it was offensive speech, and while it was probably a responsibility of the media's to take note that it was going on and becoming a political issuede and controversy, that didn'tdid obligate us to have the guy on the air every 20 minutes on cable tv. m and hadin he actually gone throh with it, if i, you know, i would have certainly minimized coverage as much as possible. >> i think he had a right of free speech to do it.i i thought he was an idiot, but e he had a right to do it. [laughter] >> uh-huh. and maybe similar to the case that's up in the supreme court

now about the protests at the military funeral by that church in kansas, i think, raises somewhat similar issues as well. and whether they can be prevented from, froms wh demonstrating protesting. yes. >> hi. my question is for mr. wainstein, and i was wondering if someone should evei be prosecuted because they did blow the whistle through propers channels, and hypothetically, would you ever be able to useabe those protected disclosures as evidence in this a criminal trial against them? >> okay, are you talking about through proper channels?re i guess what i t was referring o about the whistleblowers act ors acts, there are several different statutes that say, look, if you're a government employee, you have information about something in a classified area that you think needs to gea out. you can go through the channel to get it up through the office of the inspector general -- >> yep, and those are the channels i'm referring to.

>> you're not going to suffero. any, you're not going to suffer any criminal consequences for taking that up through the channels. so let's say you disclose to the inspector general, you're a ciae employee, and you disclose to that person, that's the way the procedures set up, that a, b and c is happening this this i classified program which is wrong.rong you're not going to suffer anys consequences for that because you're following the statutoryfl mechanism. same thing go goes with thegenc intelligence committees. they're all clear. they're entitled to hear thatthy information. so i guess i'm not seeing how you'd be facing a prosecution se for disclosing this information under the whistleblower statutes. >> so it would surprise you to find out that among the recent spate of prosecutions that were so quietly -- we're so quietly i whispering about around here that some of those prosecutions, they would be completely

legitimate if they're based on diss closures? p i'm very familiar with the whistleblower act, that's what i do for allying. b and -- a living. >> i'm not sure where theosec criminal violation would be if you followed the prescribed path in the statute. now, if youyo did that but also went and talked to your friend,a a reporter, over a beer and disclosed the same thing, then you have a problem. so -- >> under what provision? how is that a problem under the espionage act? i'm trying to understand. >> sure. i mean, possibly under the espionage act. disclosing classified information, you get into the very statutory elements ofet looking at it and seeing whethem it fits under the acts.s but i'm saying the reporter who's not part of the whistleblower mechanism. i a >> okay. i will leave it at that, thanksa >> thank you. okay. well, thank you all for attending today. thank you all on the panel. i hope you enjoyed our panel today, and i'll turn the podiuml

back to john.i >> one w thing i wanted to thank this morning and now i'm going to do now, jean and ashley hampton from the vanderbilt first amendment center that hase association here through thet freedom forum in the newseum. and also this whole forum started off with a short phone call with joe who's one of thel directors of the museum who put me and others in touch with the first amendment center.th so those threeen organizations, really hats off to them fore bringing us here, and thank theo for this locale.than and then everyone else for participating today. appreciate it. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> prime minister's questions is a weekly look at british politics. see prime minister david cameron as he answers questions from members of the house of commons. this week's session is live on wednesday morning at 7 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> this weekend on booktv's "in depth," jonah goldberg, best-selling author discusses the election results, the conservative movement and the next wave of leaders on the right. join our three-hour conversation with your calls, e-mails and tweets sunday at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv. >> in addition to all of the season's campaign coverage and archived debates, there's lots more at the c-span video library

including nonfiction authors and everything we've aired since 1987 all free and indexed online at the >> and we take you life, now, for remarks by former homeland security secretary tom ridge. he'll be talking about existing and emerging terror threats including last week's discovery of explosive materials aboard u.s.-bound cargo planes from yemen. this forum is being hosted by george washington university's homeland security policy institute. this is live coverage on c-span2. >> okay, everybody, we're going to get started in about two minutes. we're live on c-span2. when you ask your questions at the end, realize we're on live tv. thank you, we'll get started in

about two minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> morning, and let me welcome everyone to george washington university. we're in for a real treat today. as part of our policy and

research forum, we are hosting one of my favorite people in the world and someone i hold in the highest regard ask respect, governor tom ridge. working in that counterterrorism and homeland security field, i've been privileged to work for a number of devoted, dedicated and some of the most hard working people you will ever meet. that doesn't always get recognized outside of those of us in the field, but i would put no one above governor ridge. i mean, he literally has devoted his entire life to public service. he is the george c. marshall soldier/diplomat in that he initially served in this vietnam, combat experience, and did so valiantly. after, after becoming -- after

that he went back to dickenson law school, became the ada, the assistant district attorney in erie county, then ran for congress successfully five terms. from there went to two successful terms as governor of the fine state of pennsylvania. then 9/11 occurred, and a public calling came in yet a new form wherein president bush called on governor ridge to stand up at the time as the first homeland security adviser of the united states. that's when i had the opportunity to work for the governor. from there he became as we looked at the whole being less than the sum of its parts, governor ridge also was instrumental and, obviously, drove the creation of the department of homeland security. this brought together 22 different departments and

agencies and with a common mission, a unified mission, and secretary ridge served as the first homeland security adviser. so lots of firsts and all very successful. so it is a privilege to have governor ridge -- >> some people may think i can't hold a job. >> not at all. [laughter] and i might note, the last time he spoke at a very public event here was the first year anniversary of the department of the homeland security. thank you for joining us again. the purpose for today is to have a conversation, to get a sense of where we see the threat environment, where we see priorities that need to be addressed and where governor ridge sees the future, to a large extent, occurring. and he and i will have a conversation, but then we want to be able to draw upon all of you in terms of questions. and let me also welcome our c-span audience who is watching

live. we've got a number of television cameras here, so, governor, let me start with the first question. and, i mean, the last month alone you've seen tons of various cases that come to the headlines. first, the euro bots. a lot of attention focused on how the threat has metastasized and we're no longer dealing with simply al-qaeda senior leadership, but you've got al-qaeda's affiliates, you've got a jihadist threat in the united states as well in terms of home-grown terrorism, those that aspire to al-qaeda's ideology. what keeps you up at night? i mean, last week you had not only the aqa, the al-qaeda and the arabian peninsula plot, but you also had a naturalized citizen from pakistan who attempted to travel overseas but was also planning and plotting

attacks, farooque ahmed, on the d.c. metro. so it comes in various shapes, sizes, flavors and forms not to mention natural disasters. what keeps you up at night? this. >> it's very similar to a question i got from an audience several months after i was sworn in as the president's assistant for homeland security, and the audience, somebody sat up and said, what keeps you up at night? and i said, well, i don't want you to feel, take this wrong way. i sleep well, i just don't sleep much. [laughter] and i think the reality is that there are certain things that i believe this country and i know our professional security professionals are concerned about, but i accept a post-9/11 world with the norm, with the reality that the jihadist scourge is global, that we're going to be dealing with it for the foreseeable future, perhaps

many generations, and we ought to accept that reality and do everything we can to reduce the risk, manage the risk, reduce the threat and leave the worrying and the sleepless nights -- and there are a lot of those folks that have them -- to the intelligence community and the law enforcement community and the soldiers, brave men and women we have overseas. in terms of anxieties and concerns? i think you've addressed some of them even in your question. it's not just al-qaeda anymore and bin laden. it's al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula, it's the foreign fighters that are going from western countries to get their training in this pakistan and afghanistan -- in pakistan and afghanistan, sometimes then going to other places in the world to actually fight but often, as history shows, going back to the homes where they know the culture, hay know the environment -- they know the environment, they become assimilated, and they become the threat, the lone wolf.

i think from an operational point of view, vis-a-vis al-qaeda, i think we have to accept the notion that there are more sympathizers that would do not only us harm, but the western world harm. on a policy side of you, i do think we'll probably yet into this in -- get into this in discussion, there are some concerns i have where i think our response has been in a post-9/11 world, has lacked the sense of urgency that existed after 9/11. in certain areas i think the urgency still exists, and hopefully in the months and years ahead they'll get back to these issues which i suspect you and i are going to discuss, so i'll just hold off comment. there are some things that do worry me that we haven't done yet, and we'll talk about those, i suspect. >> to that point, if you had to prioritize the major areas of unfinished business and granted, homeland security as a discipline is a forever discipline, we need to

constantly be thinking ahead of our adversaries and base their actions in part on our actions. what do you feel the major areas of unfinished business are, and what have your successors done to be able to fact bill those? >> -- back fill those? >> i think there's a continuing challenge not only within the united states, but the broader international law enforcement and intelligence community to, again, sift through all the threat information to determine what is something. that information that is potentially actionable and act upon it. it continues to be a challenge and, frankly, i don't think we've quite got it, haven't refined -- we still haven't done a very good job in this country, i believe. we've developed processes, we've developed venues with where people are fed information that other analysts can access and to draw their own conclusions based on what they know. but i think at the heart of combating terrorism is information. i mean, we're going to spend a

lot of time, and we've spent a lot of money in this country and around the world looking for detection equipment, and we should always use the best technology available to help us whether it's in ports and airplanes, etc., etc. but at the end of the day the heart of combating terrorism is information relative not only to the weapons, to the ied, but information relative to the terrorists, potential perpetrators. and we, there's no reason for us to think that we've got that system refined very well or to think that we still have an ability to share it down to the local level. so i think that's a significant concern that this administration and future administrations and the broader global community's going to have to continue to wrestle with for the foreseeable future as well. >> well, looking back to -- and we spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with the information-sharing issues and looking at both the horizontal and the vertical, top-down, bottom-up especially when we're dealing with home-grown threats. it would be naive to assume that

we're going to glean that all from the central intelligence agency and overseas intelligence compassion -- capacities. what's your thought on the fusion centers? is. >> on the fusion centers? first of all, my personal thought is that we have a proliferation of fusion centers, but we haven't designed a model. i don't believe we have a model for a fusion center. so it's not quite -- sometimes i think we take wanty as a substitute for quality. and the protocols necessary to get the right kind of information in for decision makers and then the culture, the willingness, the attitude to share that information on down. i've said many times that the department of homeland security is a federal agency. but homeland security's really a national mission. so we need not only good fusion centers with standard protocol, this is if we have standard protocol in the our operation

centers based on the national emergency management priority we built when i happened to be secretary so that everybody operates the same way, but you also have to create an attitude that not only do certain people need to know, but there's also an attitude that you need to share that you need to disseminate. there's no way possible that there's enough federal employees to deal with all the information out there, and at some point in time it's the cop on the beat in the cruiser control, other folks in the community that have to be shared from time to time information as to what, what to look out for. so i like the idea of fusion centers, but i think a long time ago we kind of got confused. we thought we just threw the name out there, built a bunch of them and we'd feel a lot better. i, frankly, feel there's too many of them, we need to make sure they're effective. >> would you agree that there's still a need for a genuine intelligence requirement setting process? you still have the feds meaning well, but to an extent guessing

what the needs are at state and local, and you've got state and local outside of maybe nypd, lapd, miami, outside of a few real centers of excellence who collect a lot of information, but it doesn't really come together in a format that -- or in a contextual environment where you can siphon the signal from the noise. do we need to invest in people now? is it analytical capacity? >> i think it's analytical capacity. start with a notion that you have four or five urban centers of complens. these people have sent a lot of money to build that capability, but those resources aren't available to all. so what should the federal government's role be in that environment with these other fusion centers in these communities where they don't have either the leadership or the dollars to do what they're doing in new york and l.a. and places like that? i think the first thing you do is take the best practices and the protocols from those that

exist that are pretty much defined, framed, what's the kind of information we need to know, what's the kind of information we need to share. federal government can go a long way in providing certain not just technical requirements, but informational requirements so there's basically a template that everybody's operating off the same template, that everybody buys into. what do you think the state and locals need, and what do you want them to push up the chain to you in and i'd to you? and i'd like to think we're in the process of changing that template, but some conversations around fusion centers, i don't think they're there yet. >> i would probably share that. now, looking overseas and looking to friday's case in particular. highly unlikely, maybe you can disagree with me, that had we not been provided good human intelligence and good intelligence from an ally, we would not have been able to detect the explosives, the

ieds that were delivered -- >> i think the facts are undeniable, frank, i think you're absolutely right. the fact of the matter, two of those ieds were on the planes means that they managed to get through whatever technological or visual inspection system that existed. but i must say and, again, it's that question what keeps you up at night, i think the united states and the rest of the world, one, has to recognize that the forces of globalization that most of us think are very positive -- transportation, finance, commerce -- also become conduits for the terrorists. twenty million containers in and of themselves in the united states. hundreds if not thousands of planes flying in and out of the united states and around the globe on a daily basis. tons and tons of cargo. now, just think for a moment, be rational about it and think about it, we can talk about we need more technology, and i certainly think we do, and we

will find some. but do you really believe in the 21st century world that we'll be able to inspect every single envelope, every single, every single item that's placed in one of the large containers, every single item that goes into the cargo hold of a whether it's a commercial passenger liner or a commercial freight hauler? is we may get to that one of these days, but the reality is the globalization of flight just aids and abets the globalization of terrorism. and that's just a challenge we're going to have to accept as part of the new norm that we live in. >> and to continue to invest in our relationships, our intelligence relationships -- >> absolutely. i mean, this is an instance where actionable intelligence probably saved lives. i know there's some speculation as to whether there are a dozen more packages out there. what i miss not being in the

department of homeland -- i miss not knowing. [laughter] you get bits and pieces, and you have some friends working it, you miss not knowing it. good intelligence promotes aggressive action which prevents attacks at the end of the day. we've been lucky on many instances in this country so far. i don't know who said it, you'd rather be lucky than good, i'd like to be both, but i'd like to rely more on being good than just being lucky. >> i think that that's, that's spot on. and as we stay, sticking with overseas, are there any countries in particular that you've been impressed in with in terms of their own intelligence capacity, foreign intelligence capacity that, perhaps, we can learn from? i'm thinking maybe the security service in the u.k. or -- >> well, listen, since i never dealt with the foreign intelligence operations on a

day-to-day basis, frankly, as much as you do, frank, you probably have more insight into that than i do because of the relationship you have. but i do think there's historically been a great relationship with our friends in the u.k., australia, canada and the like. but i must say during the past several years when there has been quite a bit of international disagreement with certain foreign policy actions this country has taken, that even when those leaders were outspoken and criticizing the united states, their law enforcement communities and their intelligence communities were working hand in glove with us. and i don't think that has been abated in my way. i -- in the any way. i still think we're looking very closely together even though there may be public policy

differences in terms of our own foreign policy. >> i think that's a critical point. regardless of where countries may stand on policy, the relationships between our security services, law enforcement, public safety and homeland communities must never be -- >> and it just has to be. there's no substitute for it. i mean, i guess if at some point in time -- and i must say this, it was interesting about the recent alert vis-a-vis europe. and i must say this, there were some people in europe that in the early days of the department -- and i admit some people in the unite who thought that we raise -- united states who thought that we raised publicly the notion of a threat prematurely or we weren't properly, didn't have the sufficient information to do that, and they were concerned it was being overhyped. i would disagree on those few occasions we raised the threat level, but for the your -- europeans to express a concern and for that concern to go

public led me to believe that regardless of who or what the sources were, they were considered to be credible sources. and i think like anything else when we get into the warning system, i think americans would rather deal with the known than the unknown. you'd rather deal with the threat, if possible. the greatest fear is, i think, the dark. the greatest fear is the unknown. well, i think americans can deal with information if properly shared, and look what we found out about the bombers the other day. we got the information from the u.k., we knew they were ieds, we knew where they were coming from. not that there was any present or imminent threat because of those two idst, but i think -- ids, but i think the credibility and the trust associated with government asking citizens to do certain things is predicated over a long-term relationship that, when appropriate, they will be willing to share information and not keep a close hold. and i think that's an important part of how we begin to adjust

slowly, inexorably, but i think very positively to what i consider, again, a multigenerational threat of these islamic extremists. >> governor, you brought up the homeland security advisory system, risk communications in general and alerts. i've been very outspoken on when we have information, we have a responsibility to share that information, a vigilant public has, historically including two recent cases, feistal shahzad and abdul met lab over christmas last year played a role in preventing potential terrorist incidents. but you also not only communicate to our own publicses, but also potentially to the adversary which can be a disruptive kind of function. it can force them to east, we're on to you so it may either buy us time to roll them up, roll up

a cell, or it may force them to trip up. what do you think we ought to be going in terms of communicating risks to the public? >> well, first of all, i think the point you made with regard to the times square bomber, it was a vendor, a vigilant -- [inaudible] i guess he was a veteran. the president's talked about him. be alert, be aware of your surroundings. if you see something unusual, report it. the incident in the airline, a vigilant passenger. probably enjoyed most of the flight over, and he saw something that was really bizarre, an aberration, out of the ordinary, acted upon it. that's what we talk about when people say, be aware of your surroundings, be aware of your situation. and, again, i think the challenge -- i admit, this is a very, very difficult

responsibility for those who have first-line access to the information to determine what they want to share and to whom, with whom they want to share it. but in be -- my judgment you're a lot better off sharing some of that information even if it isn't actionable. let me give you an example. there were occasions when i was secretary when there were certain threads of information that came through involving, let us say, a city or two. and there was a recurring theme. and the threat, well, seemed certainly plausible, but there was nothing to suggest that it was imminent. on those occasions since it was consistent over a period of time, there were a couple people in that state that we advised what we were learning, what we had heard. not for them to take action, but so in the event that it was corroborated or for whatever reason we thought it was iminnocent, we'd be able to pick up the phone, call them and, hopefully, they would have

trusted us enough to say, oh, we know e you've been watching this for quite some time, be that's the case, we'll act now. and, again, it's the need to know versus the need to share, and i think there are times particularly now that we've learned the sharing of the information is sometimes in the our best interests, even the it's not actionable. because you build up trust and credibility that way. >> governor, on this particular theme having been on the inside where you say you miss having the information, but i think it's fair to say that rarely do we get the when and where. the reality is intelligence, they're estimators. they're not clairvoyant on the analytical side, and when we know when and where, we don't have a -- >> you have the when and where, you've got 'em. >> you've got 'em, exactly. >> i think probably the most difficult job in this effort, the global community has against the scourge, what's real, what's

unreal, what's actionable, what's not actionable? at what point do we share? this and it's not a science. there's no equation. it's an art. and those of us have to make those difficult calls are probably the ones that have sleepless nights because they're not quite sure they've got the art right. and i'm sure that by and large i think these men and women to a remarkable job, and if there's when and whering then you're going to have the interdiction, and that's not a problem. >> absolutely. let me just put to bed if you think this is a correct statement: i'm not familiar with politics ever influencing those decisions. >> no, no. it was very interesting how that security system was designed, and when i look back at my service as secretary, i say to myself, well, i always thought you were a fairly effective communicator, but you never quite got your point across.

and the point was this, for the first couple of months normally go over to the department of justice with attorney general ashcroft and fbi directer bob muller, and the three agencies and the cia and others, we'd take a look at this and really believed the threat was imminent. we talked a little bit about it, didn't have too much information to share, and then we'd walk away from the podium. after the third exercise of that sort, not only did we look at the bewildered faces of the journalists, i mean, we finally said to each other, we've got to do better than this. and i remember walking off the stage and turning to one of my terrific individual special operations guys, john, i said, we've got to do better than this. so we looked at def-con, and

he's where i think i probably failed in communication. the decision to raise the threat level was only based on a consensus among a majority of the president, the homeland security cabinet. i couldn't raise the threat level, the president couldn't, it was a consensus. but the real challenge is when the private sector and the state and local said, gov, you're telling us that there's a threat, what do you want us to do? and so, again, we didn't do a good enough job of articulating it publicly for, at the time, for every level. we used colors, could have been numbers, it could have been alphabet, but for every level there was a certain predetermined, prescribed level of security that you would go to or come down. that's why we used it, and that's why we tried to devise a program that we could use surgically as well. secretary napolitano had secretary chertoff in a few months ago and many others to talk about it, and they were

looking to try to make it, maybe to refine it to make some changes because i think we all believe that the most important thing is not only tell you that there's a threat, but that you in response to that whether it's national or local do certain predescribed security measures, put them in play. >> and i think that's some good advice, and i know we have some russian television stations here today, and they had just announced that they are rolling out a color-coded alert system. so i think tagging actions based on information is -- >> yes. the level of threat should determine your level of preparedness, your level of security, whatever the protocols are. and they ought to be predetermined. and that makes the system very effective. if you're just alerting the public, that's a good thing, but the other thing you should know is that we met more often, the president's homeland security council, and concluded that it wasn't enough to go up, number one. and number two, the cabinet agency that probably was the

least, was the most resistant and had the highest threshold in terms of intensity of security, accuracy of the security was the department of homeland security because we'd end up dealing with the governors and the mayors and the city police chiefs. so, again, i'd like to think there's some comfort in knowing that there was, it was always rigorous, vigorous debate, and we met more often not to raise and concluded not to raise the threat level than on the occasions when i would go and tell the president the recommendation was to raise it. ..

>> it did play a role in stopping faisal shahzad or times square bomber. it was a cpp officer who ultimately intercepted him at the airport in surveillance. if we're to put a plot made on threats to united states since nine 9/11, i think as i see is blinking red. this is al qaeda central, an afghan naturalized citizen who intended to travel overseas to afghanistan to commit to join the taliban with the intercepted by al qaeda. but went to a waziristan strain and was sent back to united states because he had familiarity with targets that all the sorts of issue. so you have the zazi case out and then have the david headley case that it has played a role in preventing and capturing

terrorist. what are your thoughts on the pnr agreement? >> first of all, i think the international aviation community should be encouraged want to set standard operating security procedures in airports to begin with, depending on where you travel. >> we've all seen very degrees of security. secondly, i think the pnr, this quest for records and liberation it should be universal. i just happen to think, if the world -- maybe if the world is willing to accept the risk associated with not sharing that information, but there have been so many instances where the jihadists have struck outside the united states, there's a continuing, continuing reference and use of planes either as a transport, perpetrator, carries. i don't think they will turn

into a missile potentially, turn it into a target for an attack, but i frankly think pnr requests out to be universal and we got to get them from anybody. i know that takes, it's a lot of heavy lifting for the state department, a lot heavy lifting for homeland security. but at the end of the day, if you want to come again, it's about manage the risk. it's about reducing the risk. no matter what you do, you will never develop the failsafe system but you want to reduce the threat and reduce the risk over a plate of time. i think it ought to be, this information out to be international. and by the way, we should not ask for what we are not willing to give. i remember having a conversation with my colleagues in the european union, about passenger name records. initially, frankly, i think we had asked for information. all i can say is where to set the standard. if we want universal passing

name information, what we would be willing to share with american citizens, and then ask it did because they would certainly have every right to reciprocate, particularly because we know that reasonably that you have not always sympathizers that american-born terrorists or legal residents have left the united states and going to be trained elsewhere, or going to actually fight elsewhere. similar information should be shared. >> and just underscore expanding the pnr process beyond the european union. and to just put a fine point on it, the ability to do travel and pattern analysis, so i think that is significant. >> it does make a difference where you've been. it's not about, everyone is concerned about the term profile. there's a certain pattern of travel, pattern of activities, whether it is custom port

protection in this country or customs in other countries, those officials, as officials of a sovereign country, when you enter into a country, it is a privilege. it is not a right. they at least have the right based on your pattern of travel to perhaps even pull you aside and makes an increase of you as you step into the country. >> this is me speaking, not you, but profiling is given a bad day -- name. we have done it every day and without it we would be blind. it's how it is in force, how it is utilized and how it is protected in terms of oversight. i don't think you can do this without profiling. >> it's all about taking that universe of potential risk, individuals, and try to reduce. chances are you may finally get that one actor or two actors, just trying to reduce, trying to manage the risk.

having access to patterns of travel is a way we begin reducing the risk, reducing your oversight of what might potentially be a risk. >> before looking inward, another general question, i mean, you've seen an escalation in uae and connectivity. in an ideal world, pakistan has a capacity or the intent of the political will, they would be the one striving some of these efforts. but time and space is what carries me. if you look at what is the file to a region or yemen or somalia, or, it's uncovered face. that's what this seeking so they can trade, so they can plot, so they can coordinate. would you support, and i've been against very outspoken supporting the connectivity, not because i want to, because time and space, time and space put them on the back yields. do you support the activity?

and in looking to yemen and somalia, which are very difficult situations, i was just light footprint, but a significant, the capacity doesn't exist indigenously by the yemenis or the somalia's. where do you think we go from here? >> it's been pretty clear that use of this, have been pretty effective. the challenge has been for the previous administration, this administration and future administrations, at a delicate, diplomatic line. when you're using somebody's airspace. i mean, it's interesting that there was a public report that there was a canadian fighters following one of the planes coming in from europe that we thought had packages, but it got over u.s. skies and it was handed off to the united states. so sovereigns, whether strong, powerful, known globally order

even failing or troubled states, don't appreciate violation of their airspace. but there comes a point of time we have to walk that diplomatic line. if it's about reducing the threats of this country to other countries in the region, reducing the threat towards soldiers on the graduate getting now with just the threat to america, but the threat to the world in general, then i think you have to address it diplomatically. >> tomorrow, people go to the polls your homeland security, nine years after 9/11, it doesn't seem to serve as a campaign priority. is that a sense of, are we being lulled into a sense of complacency? is a too difficult to address? what should voters be thinking about tomorrow when they pull the lever? >> i can't think of too many elections in my lifetime where

of america -- america's goal, productivity, particularly when it came to national security or military affairs, really drove individual voters. they are still driven more often than not i think by, they are driven by issues that's more economic. and right now it appears with the -- i'm not going to give the recitation that we all know what's going on in the country, unemployment is too high, certain initiatives undertaken by the government don't seem to work, blah, blah, blah. we will say that for the elected officials running against each other. what i found interesting is this thing get a few debates where they talk issues, that's another story we can talk about tonight, rather than one another, but maybe 2012 after we were reminded about civility and everything you're supposed to be doing and talking about.

and prosperity. you can't be a strong economically if we are not strong in national security point of view. there are plenty of anecdotes to explain. global economy, whether you're fired a global scourge, a much complicated environment these days, i would like to think that it's time we can convince most americans in order to be a security come you have to economically stronger to give you an example, an adult but i think it's telling. shortly after 9/11 president bush asked me to speak -- stick around for the morning meetings that he's a we did a good job with our friends in canada. >> we've got commerce at a screeching halt. and try to work out an arrangement with our canadian friends in mexican friends to build a smart border agreement recall. what do an assembly plant in flint, michigan, general motors assembly plant, they put the chassis on the front, eight or

10 our process, they put the chassis on, great. the pieces are made over in canada. good. just in time. somewhere along the line, these are made, probably put a computer chip on it, drop it down, into the truck and it goes across the bridge or in a tunnel after flint, michigan. well, you've got to our aid, our team, what if it is still stuck on the bridge or the tunnel because you've ramped up security? what happens in the plant? nothing happens. so i think we need to understand that in the 21st century world, and for evermore, security and prosperity intersect at our borders. and right now the economy is in trouble. i mean, there are people who are out of work who are worried about their mortgages. and even if you are safe and secure with your own mortgage and feel pretty good about your job, you do worry about your neighbor. so it's no wonder the economy is

the issue that seems to be driving, among others, but i'd like to think that down the road, we think more in terms of at least have that as part of the equation but i do know many people who vote for president of the ice is because how they feel about the ability to interact and in the geopolitical world, the affairs. i just don't think most people do that. i think we better start. >> sticking with that theme, high likelihood that we will have a different tone and agenda. potential opportunity for homeland security issues to be elevated. i remember when you were secretary, an awful lot of discussion on media committees are things that have some semblance of oversight on your day-to-day activities. and you think about it for a non-homeland security, imagine trying to run a company and have a g8 outside boards of directors

with very different opinions, trying to micromanage your operation, and did not have a lot of flexibility in terms of spending. some of that is improving. like washington, typical washington, since those ada, it's now proliferated into 180 pixel on measure a. keeps going up, bigger, bigger and bigger. do you like -- i mean, the 9/11 commission has been well received, and a number of the findings have been recommended, including the creation of the department and many others. yet congress has looked inside of themselves to be able if there able to reform. does this still bought the? >> i to you what bothers me is congress has long been a 9/11 commission right after the tragedy, long list of recommendations. and like a lot of other commissions and other studies,

congress pretty much ignored some of the critical recommendations. they ignored interoperable communications. they ignored the reality that we really don't have departments involved in not only planning and growth of department of homeland security, but for oversight. you can't possibly have oversight over, over a single department. in these early days, we need strategic partners. forthcoming, absolutely. it should be considered constructive, absolutely. but when you have 100 plus committees and subcommittees, you don't have that strategic partnership. i would love to see this congress go back -- i can say this because i was in congress. if you walked into the halls of congress today, or next year sometime and you see congressman running back and forth and senators running back from the hearings, they're all

complaining about committees, committees and subcommittees. it's all on the letterhead. them to give up jurisdiction or reduce the number of committees and subcommittees. i'm not saying that as a criticism. that's just a fact of life. if they really want to be engaged in this or other issues they're really out to streamline that process. the thing i would like a new congress to do, i still have not -- i still don't understand -- this goes back to an information sharing we had before, what happens at fort hood, and i still don't understand how abdulmutallab got on the plane. we talk about connecting the dots, the term we use right after 9/11. but from my point of view every once in a while the information

gets like a big red dot and flashes. somebody should be acting on it. so this question becomes whether or not congress has been well-intentioned and has build so much process in to information sharing that that process has been substituted for judgment, good judgment. and i'd like to see them begin to go back and see, believe as i do, information sharing is an important thing you do in the war against these jihadists, go back and see of that system works. it seems to me it's not working very well. >> i would underscore that. national security and counter speedy's i still don't know why they didn't yank the visa. we don't have a lot of intelligence, human intelligence. father comes in and says i think my son is radicalized by the way he is in yemen. we all know about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, blah,

blah, blah. we yankees these are the only country get go to is the united states. talk to his father. it's not even about being politically correct. is when you're certain pieces of information, should you not act on it independently? or do you hit the send button and push the decision-making at the chain of command? well, here pushing the decision-making up the chain of command almost cost us a lot of lives. maybe ask for forgiveness later. >> and it did cost us lives in fort hood. now, one of the challenges, and this is not only from homeland security perspective, but rearview mirror planning, we often march into the future backwards based on yesterdays wars. and one of the challenges i think is recognizing we've got a thinking predator as our adversaries whether it is al qaeda's leadership, whether it's al qaeda's formal affiliates, or

whether it is the stew that is becoming more and more difficult, taliban, cooney network. they are all describing to al qaeda's global ideology. the question i have is how do we go about doing prioritized plan in the future? take last week alone, and too often, washington treats these either/or proposition. last week you had the farooq ahmed plot to bomb the d.c. metro. and historically, we've often seen train and rail and service transportation as the target of choice. 77 in u.k., two major plots in the united states. this is another new yorker who traveled overseas to commit terrorist acts, came back and was targeting the long island railroad.

the same train i traveled everyday as young men. or faisal shahzad, this is another i would say al qaeda central. again, subways. but we had a reminder just friday that aviation as well. so these are either/or proposition. but how do we get to the point where we enhance some of our surface transportation, but not at the expense of aviation security? where to go from here? not to mention the big system and difficult not have a tsa the equivalent, we would never get to work. it would be five hours. >> i think public transportation has been and will continue to be a challenge because there's a certain level of security measures that you can embed before you can compromise the purpose and utility of public transportation. i don't know about any of you, or all of you, but i know i rushed down the stairs to get on

a subway and a lot of the cities around here. i'm doing a lot more rushing by myself. the fact of the matter is, it's a fact. so you say to yourself, you accept the notion that you cannot go back to having a discussion with my fellow countrymen and fellow citizens about managing the risk, understanding that it is impossible, regardless of the resources we would target two eliminating it, you only have finite resources because the government has so many other awesome responsibilities in this country, and so many different dimensions, that you say to yourself, have we done all that we can, these are the public transportation, knowing that it is not failsafe, have we done all we can without compromising its utility. so in time there may be more of

this kind of sectors, there may be more technology. you do have more surveillance, individuals, bomb sniffing dogs. but, ladies and gentlemen, it's not an assumption of risk. you're managing the risk as a country. i'd like to think that, god forbid something would happen, in july of '05, the bombings in the u.k. and i think they had their equipment within 24, 48 hours and it was business as usual. do it in israel all the time. so you have to say to yourself, do what you can to reduce the let the risk, as a country, we know that our professionals, well-intentioned, well resourced, even in a perfect system are not going to be able to avoid a terrorist attack. if one occurs, you deal with it. so let's just take operational security to a level that doesn't compromise whatever that public

transportation mode is. and then stop there. you have to accept some level of us. that is the new norm. >> no shortage of -- i would ask you to my questions and then open it up to the audience here. but coming closer to our backyard, i would argue, and please agree or disagree with this characterization, but i would suggest that mexico is, today, a full born narco insurgent, it's claimed 20,000 lives since january 2007. firstly, would you agree with that characterization? and secondly, you've got a dhs role in border security and other components, but there's a bigger role beyond just dhs. way to be go? >> well, one can say that columbia differs a little bit because narco insurgents some would argue they want to overthrow the government. others would say i like the

narco insurgency, i think it's a immediacy and the context and a woman nature of what the mexican government is trying to deal with down there. they might not try to so the government. there's only going to undermine. so i think it's an extreme situation that requires us to reach out and get everything we can to help president calderón is the challenge, there are several challenges. one, the relationships we have between the intelligence and law-enforcement communities on on both sides of the border. it's probably not as mature and in certain areas lacks the credibility perhaps the relationship we have with our friends to the north. now the president of mexico may not like me to say that. we have a lot of difficulty difficult, a lot of difficulty, corruption, et cetera. so understand, the extenuating

circumstances the mexican government is operating under that i think a couple of years ago that congress appropriate our past something called initiative. i've also seen estimates that all but two or 3% of that money has been expended. so the question becomes what are we waiting for? the second question becomes is the effort to help our friends in mexico stalled because of a turf fight between the three or four agencies who naturally oversee the relationship with mexico. state, homeland security, yes, you can name them. under the umbrella of the -- murray that initiative. just kind of shortcut this. put a czar in charge and have him start allocating the resources to begin doling the relationships i got to i think is going on in turf battles that

slow down the out rage and the relationship. after for equipment, training, et cetera. they need as much help as we can give them. [inaudible] >> i think have been reported martyrs on our side of the border, not american citizens yet, it will get closer and closer every day. there are millions and dollars that continue to fund. i'm quite accountable it -- comfortable calling it a narco insurgency. >> but had we not in a shaded the plan colombiacome and you thought of course, initially we were dealing with the media and cartel and the other cartel, and then you're starting to do with obviously mark laity, in essence a country within a country. but i mean that's the challenge with organized crime.

that's what you're seeing in mexico. >> they want to control their space. they don't want to run the government, but they want to control their space. space. to a certain extent they want the government to get out of their way. they may not try to top the national government but they don't want the government interfered with the illegal activity. and how they're going right along our borders is a recipe for continued unrest in greater drug smuggling and greater illicit drug trading and murderous activity on this side of the border. it's just a matter of time. >> and it's a matter of attention. and again, correct me if you disagree, but i mean, also in our neighborhood that hugo chavez, has some real challenges in venezuela. i would argue even a central unholy alliance with iran and ahmadinejad. why don't we pay attention to our backyard? and i fall victim of this

myself. i spend so much time worrying about the middle east, southeast asia. but it's close, isn't it? >> probably not as close enough to that issue to give you some insight excavation why historically administrations of both parties fairly ignored our relationship in south america. >> we've always had that relationship with mexico, a little bit in central america. but in the emerging economies, most democracies down in south america, rarely do we pay attention. the president may make a state visit or two, and that's about it. i think ,-comi'm a makeup we just talked about colombia. and if you believe as i do that america's future for prosperity reasoned and economic reasons is tied to our ability -- why don't

we have a free trade agreement with colombia? why do we create not only law enforcement friends and intelligent friends, but economic friends? a case going on with ahmadinejad and shabazz. chavez is boisterous and problematic. he is stirred the pot. you know, and does one wonder, if the imagination, that iran, venezuela connection can end up, could venezuela be a training ground for some extremists in south america? is it a leap of faith, given iran's support for hezbollah and hamas elsewhere? it's not a leap of faith. and so while those sovereigns, those countries are going to do what they do, build that relationship around energy and harassing and getting in, you become in a challenging america in every step of the way, is it

incumbent upon us to work not only security and military and military law enforcement to great stronger economic ties with other countries in the region. and i for the life of me can't get a good answer to your question. use the opportunities for relationship building. you've got to be there, sustain your presence and we have to be more aggressive in a public way and start with the white house. >> let me know, we neglected the soviet union so bad with missiles and our backyard. final question and then we'll open it up. and this is looking much closer to home. i've never had an unspoken thought, as everyone here knows. looking to one of the other big gaps, there's a lot of discussion, frankly so, interoperable communication of first responder. shame on us to think we're still talking about this today. might view. -- my view. the obama administration, to be

at odds with some of the spectrum related issues that could be devoted to our first responders. is this something that you share my concerns? >> it's worse than that. you know, the 9/11 commission, everybody hears the horror stories about the failure of first responders at the twin towers. further, there are other horror stories associate with other kind of incidents, not even terrorist related, the same concerns. the ability of the first responders to committee get in a timely way. and the fact that the nine 9/11 commission recommended it. the fact that broader public safety community has literally begged for it for nine years. the fact that an investment, dedicating spectrum, to a broadband public safety network,

would not only assist us in being better prepared for an attack -- by the way, not just for a terrorist attack, how about a natural disaster? there's a whole range for just a single horrible car accident, where the first responder community and emergency service personnel would be tied together with broadband. their networks stream video, voice data. i think it's unconscionable. i know there's a lot of folks out there in the private sector say we will let them use part of this, nonsense. playing out there for the commercial, in my judgment, the commercial world to use. they are looking for a piece of dedicated spectrum come and what they don't use they can lead to the commercial sector. i would rather go the other way. we have to at least start with some spectrum just for public safety community. and again, another 9/11 commission recommendation has

fallen on deaf ears. a lot of services and a lot of public tributes, to firefighters, first responders. we build memorials. we send contributions. i think that's great, but i say to congressman and a buddy who goes to those things, particularly, you know come if you want to do something really significant, maybe there will be fewer memorial services to go to if you build a broadband public safety network. that's the ultimate commitment to those servicemen, very difficult task. it's an investment that improves the quality of life in america, generally. we make it because of the problems that were so visible after 9/11, but does not literally improve the safety and security of our communities across the country, regardless of what incident requires it. >> that was a very strong. safer, stronger, better. let's open it up for questions, and if you can please wait for a mic and identify yourself as

well. >> hold up. please stand up as well. >> quick question for you. you touch on a few instances of this but i was 180 to make some comment on the interaction of private business sector in united states. there still needs to be some what of a tangle between this point of a can of information gets passed through them, how it's shared, et cetera. >> public-private partner. >> the government -- we can't -- the government is well-intentioned, is well resourced. we can't possibly secure america without the total engagement and participation and support of the private sector. and, frankly, a lot of that is happening without any public initiatives or public money. and again, it's, one of the challengebig challenges we made into when we first put up the

department, number one being a lot of the other departments didn't think we had a need to exist. and then we ran into, more important, almost a cold war mentality. i'm not saying that quickly. i'm guessing a mindset, the inertia that organizations have been doing business a certain way for decades and decades. and the old mindset, cold war mindset, was we will tell you if you think you need to know. and by large as one individual from one of the three alphabet agencies told a two star who is working with the, franco, i don't think you'll ever need to know much. the bottom line is that when we have engaged in the private sector, and shared information with you, you have acted upon responsibly, and that's where the continuing challenges of getting with the threat. we can expect you to repair for all potential tax. one quick example. we got the hard drive, out of pakistan, identified a surveillance tape on five

buildings in new jersey, new york and washington. and remember, we raised the threat level in august 2003 which in and of itself was a controversial -- i would do it again under the same circumstances. just to editorialize my own comments. i may regret that. what a surveillance tape showed and with the private sector had been two years later was entirely given. you avoid about your customers, you worried about your employees, you are worried about the business yourself to your critical and the administration continues to do that as well spent there's an opportunity from a building standpoint that if you look at the recent cases, friday's case it is a third party vendors, not ups coming out of yemen, demanding more down the supply chain. >> but at the end of the day again, we're talking about globalization of commerce and travel.

those companies who have begun even pre-9/11 but post-9/11 start putting security protocols to deal with theft and fraud and now terrorism, at the other end of the supply chain. so you are doing that. you were doing random inspections. some of you are actually in securing individual packages. in time, there's a lot of technology out there to secure containers. there's a series of things that you try to avoid a single point of failure in the system. and the private sector generally accepted that responsibility and is paying for it. >> i'm from the talk radio new service. my question is, in the aftermath of last week's terrorist threats, some people into their that president obama's statement after, it might've been politically motivated with elections coming up this tuesday, otherwise he would have said something to take such a stance on issue. i wonder if you agree with that characterization of his response, the administration's

response? and more broadly, whose goal is it just to how much and when you reveal to the public interest of a terrorist threats to? well, first of all, since i was the subject of the same kind of criticism on occasion when i would raise the threat level come a particularly right before the elections in i guess august of '04 rather than '03, it falls on deaf ears to me. i don't think that anybody, republican or democrat, will use the threat level to try to affect the political outcome. what i thought was interesting, not necessarily a commentary, was that the president made the statement rather than the secretary of the department of homeland security. but those are decisions, frankly, that they make in the white house. i mean, who shows up on sunday shows? this administration can operate however they want to operate. and there's another point of view that could be said that the president wanted to make that

statement to reassure everybody, from highest level, that they were doing all the can to track this down. i don't go there. i think it's inappropriate to go there. i don't think this president or any other president would do that. >> and al qaeda has targeted elections. >> it wasn't quite -- madrid. it didn't affect the outcome. the second part of your question, i don't know what the decision-making process is with regard to using the threat advisory system anymore. because other than being at orange come it hasn't been used. and according to the old system that we were involved in, that must mean that, that whatever they see coming across the transom coming across the david press reports hasn't generated the need to go public. i can only assume. >> i have a question about

fighting terrorism. the clinic ministers would primary on criminal law. the bush administration went more towards the rule of conflict and had some problems with the geneva convention. neither of them are a good fit. i guess we dig obama administration is some of the hybrid. we are using some of each. my question is should this be added evolutionary process? this that will have its way first century, what should we have a new international standard for dealing with terrorism? in 18th century we made new rules to deal with piracy. do you prefer the system we have now, or do you think we should scarcely look at a new system? >> i only heard part of the question, so would you please acted so everyone can hear it? >> sure. in terms of how we passionate and actually he wrote an opinion piece in "usa today" in terms of the court in proceedings, whether it should be treated criminal, or a hybrid thereof. so looking at the prosecution.

>> i appreciate the question, if i understand it correctly, because i do believe that terrorists are not traditional prisoners of war and they're not traditional criminals. i do believe that part of america's responsibility and the with global threats, these jihadists, however is to deal with what is consistent with our values. because, frankly, america's a product, our system is the brain and we don't want to diminish the brand. that being the case, i personally would favor, and had some on discussions with a coast guard lawyer who is look at this as will, almost a natural security court. i like the idea of -- due process is part of our brand. in my mind, guantanamo was the right thing to do initially, but the reason it's caused so much consternation in the global community is because the rest of

the world, including, couldn't believe that america was going to pick people off the battlefield and thousand in guantanamo and leave them there forever. it was inconsistent with the american brand with due process. so my judged was never about the location of long-term but education, how you going to determine whether people should be there or there, there in the wrong place at the wrong time? and have been cases where both have occurred. of this will probably pick up the wrong place at the wrong time. so how do you adjudicate? at the end of the day i think what to look at a national security court. perhaps presidentially appointed judges. nine courts, three judges, three-quart bell. let them deal with all of the applications. let them do with habeas corpus. have council, appeared front of the panel, have the rules of evidence, transparency is absolutely essential. render a verdict and move on. i think that's a we should do,

relative to these terrorists. i just -- i would sometimes include, little john, advice. i prosecuted criminals and i defended them. never that a criminal that wanted to get caught, never a bug that was willing to blow themselves in or to achieve a goal. so i don't quite fit in -- asymmetric enemy, tactics also different. i prepared to give them due process. rules of evidence, rules of evidence have to be different. they can't quite be as transparent. as long as anybody knows them, representation, panel rules of evidence, and adjudication, move on. >> if we captured bin laden today, do we read him his rights? >> if we capture bin laden, to we read him his rights? >> no. we throw him in jail and give them a lawyer and we move on.

is going to have the right to counsel. and he's going to be heard in front of an independent group. the rules of evidence are going to be a little bit different than it would be in a criminal court. bin laden might be -- some of these prosecutions in our traditional court might be teachers and others. but you still have to protect your sources. and i've got to believe the rules of evidence will be different. military tribunals don't quite make in my judgment because normally they were established during the course of the war. we need a quick resolution of an enemy combatants in order to deal with them at the time. military tribunals don't seem to be a good fit at this time either. >> good to see you again, governor. frank. you mentioned safer, stronger and better as what the departmendepartment of homeland security is building a safer, stronger and better america. and my question is, since we have talked about, we've talked about infrastructure and rearview mirror created policy. so whether or not you believe we

have the balance, the proper balance, between national preparedness, all hazards national preparedness, and physical security measures. >> well, the part of homeland security was design, that was embedded in homeland security to be the all hazard, the entity to deal with -- natural disaster, oil spill and the like, not necessarily oil spill, that's all a bit different. >> we've seen the federal emergency management agency, and candidly, i am not today privy as to the work they are doing in the area of preparedness. they have certainly moved that broader responsibility. the question is, are we giving them the resources, and again,

were poorly, the state and local government, the resources to build that, to prepare this infrastructure. a couple things, we ask county governments and state governments to get together and help us design and operational plan down to the county level. so to get into the disaster center, everybody operates, who's going to be there, what our roles and what responsibility we also designed a national response plan that i think was never given a good chance with katrina because we pulled off the shelf after katrina hit and it was designed to kind of put in place. so even in those important, before katrina hit but in those instances, i think you have to always be mindful that it is subject to change the modification and alteration, based on your relationship and experience that you have with again, back to the local first responders. so i think the apparatus exists, with a mindset to resources exist, i don't know. but to build on.

certainly help preparedness across the board if they have a broadband outlook safety networks. there's certain pieces of that puzzle that are still lacking. and i for one argued that we should be involved in inside the department of homeland security. i helped rewrite the laws creating the stafford act and what a bunch of tornadoes bounced around by congressional district in 85, so game is what belongs that you just have to make sure the relationship they have with the locals, what am i biggest disappointment, a little long winded and i'm sorry, was i really thought we had homeland security, a big structure in washington, break it down in region. i really thought regions would be helpful. and we had an integration team of people from all the agencies. and we had it down so that the feeling being that you had eight region in the united states, small ones in alaska and hawaii, built on traditional missions of

other agencies. fbi had other nationscome and been embedded in homeland security. it made a lot of sense. for me, it meant that whoever is in charge, reporting perhaps to the second ago you would have the relationship with the governors, the mayors, the big city police chief. you would help oversee the training exercises. you would help allocate -- it's still sitting on a shelf. a great disappointment. by the way, one of the reasons would have been, just think, if you had a region there for four or five years before katrina, had homeland security director of the region had a relationship with the mayor and two or three governors involved, had overseen the training exercises, you could have kept the levy some breaking, i think the outcome would've been still dramatic, but i still think it would have

been a better position if the federal, state and local government had been working together through the regions before it occurred. >> let me just second that. we actually spent six months writing a very lengthy report that i'm not sure anyone read, but it was basically looking -- i know you did. spent i like the health care bill. i read it. >> but building on the combatant commander, young men and women died and that's why we have the need to be able to -- >> and the response plan we had under certain circumstances, and this is an interesting, all members signed off on this particular piece to all cabinet members, something it was so dramatic that overwhelmed state and locals and fema, overwhelmed like katrina, this individual called on the resources everybody in order to respond as quickly as possible. spent we have time for a couple more questions. right there and then up front. please come and if you can just

wake -- wait for the mic. >> governor ridge, randy with touchstone consulting group. question for you, is are you surprised the aviation supply chain continues to be a preferred target? we are seeing some some, rail as being another target. does that surprise you that most 10 years after 9/11 continue to be the preferred choice because it has a global reach? just curious of your thoughts on that. >> it is not a surprise. it is a theme that has occurred in my three, almost four years there, periodically. in aviation. one of the reasons i think it continues to be a prime target is that it unsettles the entire world. because of how we live in the 21st century. it affects the commerce in a major way. with the downing of the airliner, with 9/11 9/11, the

commercial aviation industry with hundreds of billions of dollars, certainly, in the back of your mind, they understand completely and fully this is another incident involving a commercial airliner, whether it is passenger or not, a huge economic repercussions. and it would dramatically affect and disrupt economic activity around the world. so no, i am not surprised at all. >> and pan am. >> exactly. >> good morning, governor. james reed with the news. you are fortunate to express political aspect of america's security by serving congress, as well as the management perspective as you were secretary. you are your mentioned the red tape that is involved with many subcommittees in congress. how would you suggest to strengthen the link, the branches of government and america's security?

>> had a -- how to strengthen the link between the branches of government and america's and ultimately citizens. >> wonderful question. i said it's a wonderful question. i think it begins, we have been reminded from time to time of the ongoing threats, because of incidents, anecdotes, they are powerful reminders. i think in time, hopefully the political leadership of both parties, will have these public discussions about this, in a way to help americans better understand the long-term nature of the threat. we shouldn't be breathless about it. this is not a country that lives in fear.

we should remind ourselves that when we lived under a different norm, under the cold war when thousands of missiles were pointed at us and we have thousands of missiles on it at the soviet union, we had discussions about it periodically. we committed the resources indeed without threat, and we let the professionals in the military, diplomatic and others deal with the. and underneath a nuclear umbrella, we built the strongest, most diversified economy in the history of the world. and so i think our challenge for the foreseeable future is not only to continue to combat the scourge consistent with our brand and our value system, but to do it anyway and we keep the public engaged and we wanted vendors to pick out the vehicle in times square, we couldn't if they did. we want apache to explain to them in addition to just the anecdotes they read about, that we're going about this in a very methodical way. it becomes generally a part of

the dialogue. there will be priorities up and down now. right now the economy is driving everything, but it doesn't hurt from time to time to have a continued discussion about what we are doing to make ourselves more secure. it should become part of the dialogue, which it hasn't been for a long, long time. the only thing you worry about is being in place and. professionals or not. so i think elevating the other perception, a great way of doing it. i think we can do without alarming anybody. get back to life. >> we've got to do with it. >> we have time for another. please wait for the mic. >> good morning, governor. my question is with the freedom of speech that america enjoys, now we have the internet and all that information is out there. the terrorists are also using that, using like security communications and thing like second life, world of warcraft and things like that. what do you think we should do to help secure that? >> well, i think we've discovered it's pretty difficult to secure the internet.

but i think we've also discovered that they use, they have a public messaging campaign and a narrative, vis-a-vis, their activity that is much more powerful indeed with the radicals that we have a counter use of the internet and social networking, to undermine their ideology. so i view the internet as one of the tools we should, obviously we're going to exploit it every chance we get, but also a tool for us to beginning to debunk the ideology and the belief that is out there. one of the things, we get into a battle of nomenclature from time to time, we accepted that notion, many people still use that terrorism is a tactic that has been used for millennia. thousands of years. it's really a war against a belief system. and our java initially is an to have the muslim world are those who would be, to whom the

outrage of these radicals would appeal, somehow accept and embrace democracy, american democracy as we note that our first job is to undermine the belief in what al qaeda and their belief system and ideology stands for. day, al qaeda, elevates their murder bombers as martyrs. you know who the martyrs are? that men and women and the children they kill at weddings and funerals and that mosques and at the stars. so we had to stop -- start using these communication tools to remind the broader muslim world that most of the victims have been muslims, and that there's nothing in their ideology, nothing in their game plan, that suggests that anyone, that the muslim will enjoy a better life, better health care, better education, it's not transformative in human terms to them. and so i think what you just aren't using the internet as a

couple, to start undermining the ideology. before the key -- they can even embrace how the western world lives, we have to demonstrate to them that al qaeda's approach and what the extremists want to do and have done in the muslim world is inconsistent, not only with their religious beliefs, it is inconsistent i think in their heart and hence they want to live their lives with her family and security. the internet out to be our tool that we use effectively. >> the old political adage, we really have not addressed the counter ideological of those issues. and again, it's exposing, i'm packing, dissecting and help facilitate this and have it fall under its own weight. >> let him float. >> treat it like a child predators and keep or. it's not the jihadi website, it's the hand-to-hand where the

physical, the virtual become some point physical. that's why think we need to jump in. we have time for one last question. >> governor ridge, i'm with homeland security policy institute. the structure you talked about earlier as being good and being lucky, that's what's gotten us where we are today. as we all know there's a lot of really talented people who work really hard to try to keep america safe. having said that, looking at the infrastructure and the apparatus that we've got around this country, when the president spoke the other night, he emphasized again that the government is going to ensure that americans are safe. if you look across europe and other places where a lot of terrorism takes place, particularly in israel and places like that, they don't tell the people that. they tell the people terrorism is a fact of life. we have to live with it. we have to have you all engage. we have to have you help us prevent it. do you think we have lulled our people in the sense of complacency because we keep

telling them, your government is going to keep you safe, we are here to protect and serve? why are we starting a campaign that gets people engaged and involved and participating? >> i think it ties into question the young man asked just a few minutes ago about how we connect the government to the general public. and i do think that you've highlighted a concerned that i've had for some time your that's accepting the reality, go back to the initial question that frank asked, what keeps you up at night. well, probably the people in the intelligence committee worry about it being disseminated the right kind of information. this is a reality. we used to say it is the new nor. we presume government is going to do everything they can to keep us safe. we can presume after an incident or when we get an intelligence report that of all the resources, the country, the best we can, focus on getting the perpetrator or in this instance,

discarding if there are any other packages and giving them. that's an assumption. i think it's a pretty good one. but it's about engaging the public in that broader discussion. it's about saying to us as americans, we don't live in fear. we are a resilient country that it will probably happen again. if it does, hopefully there will be lessons learned that public a loss of life will be minimal. hopefully we can get the perpetrators. but it is something we will be dealing with so let's just face it, let's accept it, and do what they have done in countries all the around the world after a terrorist incident, and move on. be resilient that we are strong enough, we are tough enough. we don't live in fear. we just have to have our elected officials talk responsibly about the ongoing nature of the threat. and, frankly, this instance where you see the planes bounced around in the middle east and the u.k., the united states, reminds us it's a global scourge, a fact of life. we first accepted and support

those are trying to make us secure. let's just go out and continue to do what we do in america in the 21st century. but let's get more engaged overseas, economically, and not forget at the end of the day come america's future and security, future security and prosperity requires more engagement overseas, and not less. >> governor, on that note, thank you for a tour de force that you covered so much. please join me in welcoming -- thanking the governor. [applause] >> thank you for joining. and governor, thank you again. . .

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> the global world. and certain measures that we have taken, i'm sure we will continue to take to reduce the risk. and at the end of the day, at the heart of all of that, you play offense, go after the perpetrators, play defense. make sure you discover the weapon. it's that combination the united

states and allies we've been working on and we will continue to work on, i'm afraid. >> the yemen and the difficulties there. what are we facing here? >> well, i think i'm going to leave that decision to the president and the state department and foreign policy. they are in charge. but the bottom line is that when -- probably one of the most difficult decisions that any administration has to make. when it appears that the source of terror, or the source of the threat to your troops, the source of training, is in another country, and you first seek to get the collaboration and cooperation of that country. and if it's not forthcoming, and threat continues to persist within the borders of that country, then you have the challenge of determining whether you can take unilateral action or bilateral action. i'm going to leave that to the military and diplomatic members

of the president's team. it's a delicate balance. pakistan is a great example. great ally. but in certain areas along the afghan border, we've put in some of the drones. it's created problems domestically for them, and internally. and it's called for continuing sorting out. but at the end of the day, it's about trying to be as sensitive as we can to prerogatives of sovereign governments. the president has done well. he's elevated the number of threats. there's probably a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions and very appropriately so in a diplomatic challenge. >> what about the various levels of homeland security working against it? >> i think the bureaucracy within the homeland security, the right agencies have been integrated into the department. one the concerns that i have was that we have built into the

information gathering and sharing process a huge, huge infrastructure and sometimes i wonder if instead of people acting on decision that doesn't -- acting on information that appears to be actionable from the get go, you may just hit the 10 button and let somebody else decide. i think we have to be careful not to substitute process with judgment. one final question. >> yes? >> i was going to say tomorrow is voting day. >> they released the security plan saying they don't draw a line between the defense and homeland security activities. great britain. should the u.s. be moving in that direction, especially given the international implications? >> you know, i'd love to answer the question after i read from the brits said about it. it's been interesting. there hasn't been a point of contention here in the united states. but it's been a reason for the

more traditional military organization so sometimes from time to time to be integrated into homeland security protocols. it's using norcom, and working with coast guard to provide maritime, and working with dhs to provide the certain kinds of incidents that require military assets within the country. whether or not they will be viewed as one in the united states end considerate. i don't know. i do know since 9/11, there's been time and occasions and regions for the military to be integrated at times with the homeland security capability. >> thanks so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> tomorrow is election day. and one the most watched races in the 2010 midterm campaign has the ohio governors race. where the "washington post" reports incumbent democrat ted strickland has pulled into a tie. it shows congressman kasich at 49%. the numbers fall well within the polls margin of error. and join us live for election coverage tomorrow starting at 7 p.m. eastern. it'll be on our companion network c-span along with your calls, e-mails, and tweets. >> on the eve of the elections, what might a

republican-controlled house mean for technology. tonight on "the communicators" tonight on c-span2. in addition to the all of the season campaign coverage and archive debates, there's lots more at the c-span library, including nonfiction authors from booktv. the american story from american history tv and everything that we've aired since 1987, all free and indexed online at the c-span video library. >> senior pentagon officials and national journalist recently discussed the relationship between the military and the media at a panel discussion host ed by northwestern university medill school of journalist. the new york liaison, and pentagon correspondent both participated. this is just under two hours. >> good morning.

and welcome to those of you here and those of you following us on our live web cast. this panel on military and the media is the highlight of the fall events being sponsored by the medill national security journalism initiative. i'm ellen shearer, no director of the initiative and director of the medill washington program which is part of northwest university. medill has been a leader in national security journalism initiative since we started our unique class in 2003. in 2009, he opened the medill national security journalism initiative which is a long-term effort to help journalist and journalism students to report accurately and within the context on issues related to the defense, security, and civil

liberties. the initiative has four components, and received genuous funding from the mccormick foundation and carnegie corporation to pursue the endeavors. we have created a sequence of graduate and undergraduate courses in our main campus and here in washington for our students. we also are sponsoring an annual symposium in 2011. we've created six month research fellowships, and training for working journalist. which brings us to today's event. i want to thank the museum for kindly allowing us to use the wonderful facility. let's get on to it. because we have a very exciting panel discussion ahead. leading us in the discussion is josh meyer, who is the director in outreach. he joined our initiative in january coming from the "los

angeles times" where he spent 20 years doing investigative reporting and the last 10 years covering national security. josh, to you. >> thanks. first i want to thank all of the panelist for coming here. we have bios of all of them. as a way of quick introduction, i wanted to give special thanks to secretary of state public affairs douglas wilson. which, i believe, is the first time you are talking about media issues like this. hopefully we'll have a robust discussion. i wanted to also thank general paul eaton, his accomplishments are many. he's also been an advocate for more transparency in the media and national security network. major kirk luedeke, three people over in uniform. senior pentagon press liaison in baghdad, and also here at the

pentagon. he's much respected by the media, because he short of tells it like it is and has been helpful on mbeds and media and so forth. and elisabeth bumiller, who started the beat -- no, you started the white house beat on september 10, 2001. thinged obviously changed a lot the day after that. she expected, according to a bio that i read, or expected to be more of a domestic policy white house reporter. and then, of course, the next day became, you know, -- >> everything changed. >> everything in the world changed. as it did for me, i left l.a. and went to new york the next day. you know, i wanted to -- i think i wanted to keep my remarks report. even though we have two hours, we want to hear from the audience and the hear you talk. i wanted to touch on a couple of issues. you know, this is -- especially a good time to have the panel. because of the obama administration has now been in

for, you know, some period of time. and even though that secretary of defense is the same as it was in the last years of the bush administration, there's a lot of new faces in the pentagon and military. obviously, secretary wilson is one of them. and the obama administration has said repeatedly that it wants to inject a lot of transparency into government in all facets of it, that includes the military. i think the military has been trying to do more of that in getting people to the frontlines to report. it's also been trying to do more social media in terms of blogging and facebook and so forth. which is a complicated suggest, i hope we'll touch on it today. you know, there's also -- there's other issues as well that we want to talk about. you know, guantanamo, i know there are four reporters who it became a controversy that was kicked out. there was a sort of discussion over what happened and a resolution to that.

so that's, i think, something that we want to talk about. i think we want to talk about the rules of background. i think despite the administration's effort to make everything more transparent, there's still an institutional resistance to have been people give background and full names be used. we can talk about that. that's sort of part of the culture that i think you guys are working on. but it's still tough. you know, the counterinsurgency efforts in afghanistan and iraq, one thing i wanted to do is share an update on a tragic story. it's one that also shows the military and media relations has been a positive light. the veteran war photographer joe alsilva was seriously injured by stepping on a land mine. joe was injured by embedded with an army control in kandahar providence. they are occurring, and the

fighting is intense. also, that case shows that joe was not treated were quickly by medics on the ground, but medback to the air force and then in germany, and ultimately, he's on his way to walter reed medical center. i'm told that, you know, high ranking officials and the pentagon were instrumental in making sure he got the best medical care. on a broader level, general petraeus, another hold over from the bush administration, and a career army person, his coin manual allowed the media to mbed with troops. in july after the "rolling stone" article led to stanley mcchrystal being replaced, they issued media guidelines to make sure the rules were

followed and they had gotten sloppy over time. they would make sure that things were done according to process. some critics in the media say the new rules are more restrictive. we want to talk about that later, under the guidelined sent by robert gates, they must inform assistant secretary wilson prior to interviews or any other means of media with possible implications according to the "new york times" report on that. we want to talk about whether it's produced the bottle neck, we could go on and on. i'll try to weave that into questions later. i think with that, we should just go on. elisabeth, do you want to ask the first question? >> i'm asking a question? >> we have prepared remarks. i'm sorry. secretary wilson? >> i'm happy to do it. and first i want to thank ellen

and you josh, and the medill center by inviting me and my colleagues here. you do outstanding work. your introduction, josh, gave a number of issues which i've had to deal in the less than a year that i have been heading the departments office of public communications. but one the interesting things that i have found during that time, and i was at the pentagon before, twice before, in the '90s, under then secretary cohen. is that as i deal with issue after issue, i keep remembering new year's eve 1999. and i remember as we look towards the new millennium, and the advent of the year 2000, the major issue we were talking about was y2k. and i look back now and i think how the world has changed. end world has changed not just in a policy sense.

not just in a national security sense. but very, very much in a communication sense. and one of the things that i think that people make a mistake in doing is separating communication from policy. they think that reporters react that those in government proact, and that it is in essence, a kind of zero sum relationship, adversary relationship. when, in fact, communications has changed as much if not more than any facet in our lives. it's become integral to the making and not just the covering of the policy. it has become a cliche to say that technology has produced new tools of communication like the social media and cell phones and skype and others. and it's become a cliche as well to say the traditional avenues of media, the traditional print

in broadcast media, cell phones are losing audience and revenue in this new world. but it's true. and i think that as a result, we have some unintended consequences that have manifested themselves in a number of issues with which i've had to deal. guantanamo, journalist safety on the battlefield, "the rolling stone" article, wikileaks. in all of these, you now have to deal with outstanding men and women not just in uniform, but outstanding men and women like elisabeth bumiller who are at the top of their game and finding their own pressures and constraints in today's communication environment. you're finding the rise of celebrity status and -- a new importance on standing out from the crowd. that in my view, gives rise to

some sensationalism, some celebrity focus that wasn't there even a decade ago. you have lines blurred between fact and opinion between reality and image and even the determination of who is up and who is down. so i think in this discussion, i'm hoping that we'll have an opportunity not just to talk about the military versus the media, but how the communications environment has changed for all of us. and issues that we never thought we'd have to deal with before we are all dealing with often times without guidance or precedence. >> thank you. general eaton, would you like to? >> sure. i have a tendency to view in in terms of civilian military relations. and i'll tell you that our four-star generals are at the interface between policy and

military execution. secretary wilson and the men and women in this room, those of us that are reporters, are the interface between civilian and military. you are the conduit, very often, for commentary. and we can talk about this at any time. but i'll throw out a few incidents. craig and jeff. impeded with colonel fontenot. he's riding as fontenot is talking. i know greg fontenot, he's saying what every colonel, major, sergeant, and general agreed with, we were not going to be in bosnia for one year. fontenot in the course of the

discussion lays all of this out. jeff reports it. he had no malice whatsoever. but the system ground him off. at a level in military and in civilian arenas, fontenot was ground off and the assistant decided not to make him a general officer. then you've got a shift in process where i -- when i was at fort bening, i got 16 journalist to conduct the one week long embed training. it was fabulous. i loved it. they seemed to like it. we sent these journalist along with a lot of others to do what mr. rumsfeld called 1,000 soda straws to giving america feedback for what was going on in the ground in the iraq during the attack. wonderful, wonderful idea and

process for the sons and daughters of america who are committing to fighting are communicating back to their families and societies and communities. then josh touched on the "rolling stone" and mcchrystal event which pops up the question of civil military relations, certainly, and then we have the woodward book come out. again civil military relations. so i see it less about the military facing off with the media, but media as conduit. i'll end with two points. there's a difference between retired military and active duty military, and within the retired community, there's a difference between those who are paid by networks, and those who are not paid by networks. one. two, when i first came on active duty, i had a general tell me

after i asked him if he'd do a press thing, i didn't make general by talking to the press. and roll forward 35 years later. we have dave petraeus, who's a master at using media to communicate. and the change in strategic communications that we've seen coming out of afghanistan in the last two and a half months is not an accident. >> great. thank you. kirk? >> i just want to echo everyone's sentiments. appreciate you guys having me here. i want to salute those of you -- the students out there in the audience that are journalist at working towards honing your craft and becoming more skilled in what you do. i think that that is an essential career, and it's an essential part of the fabric of our republic. so i salute you. when i was younger, i had two

aspirations, to be a soldier or a journalist. you see which way i went. but being an army public affairs affords me the opportunity to kind of have the best of both worlds. through my interactions over the last five or so years with so many professional journalist, it's been a real pleasure to see the workings and as the general said, being that conduit of communications. i believe that soldiers have a very compelling story to tell. soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, but they have a very compelling story to tell. and our country wants to hear those stories. at the same time, my job is not to wave the pom poms and try to facilitate only positive coverage. i have a duty to the american people to tell it like it is. and i think you'll see as in just speaking purely from the

army public affairs stand point, we didn't maybe always do that. we are getting better. still a work in progress. just like everything. we always strive for improvement. i think we've made some good observations on how our sister services operate in the public realm. we are really attracting some impressive young men and women to the field. it's been a really rewarding time for me to go and shift from combat arms and go over and be a part of this career field in which it's still a very, very integral to what the combat arms and what our soldiers are doing in terms of accomplishing the mission. and so having had those experiences, i'm glad to be here and ready to share with you maybe some helpful tips and guidance to help you facilitate and set the conditions for

success when you move out into the world and possibility have your contacts with the military. >> thanks, kirk. elisabeth? >> thank you all for having me here. as the loan -- loan -- lone reporter on the panel, i'll talk about the day-to-day reality of covering the pentagon. tony and brian, you could speak as well. i covered the white house for five years, and then i covered the bush white house and the john mccain campaign. i didn't started covering the pentagon until 2009. what's it like? isn't it possible? : there? the possible reality is i find the pentagon and in many cases far more open, certainly than the bush white house was in terms of access and getting somebody to answer questions.

certainly more than the mccain campaign was, the late days of the mccain campaign. and you know, it's still extraordinary to me you can wander around the pentagon if you have a little building past come as a reporter, and i can on anybody's office. they got to come to the door talk to, but were free to roam. that's not the case at the white house or the state department. i have found there's certainly an effort as he bought a skirt to reach out to the press and realize there is this opportunity here. general petraeus has seen and number of weeks. i've had at least, in helmand the opposite experience. i was embedded in may and then in september with the marines in helmand and marjah actually in september. i was doing a story on a group of women marines but to embed with them you embed with the men because there are mostly men. and i had no issues whatsoever,. although i think embeds are,

and i think embeds are an amazing thing to do. i mean if you survive them, they're one of the most amazing reporting experiences anyone can have and i find that although i think the troops on the ground, the marines, soldiers on the ground are skeptical about the press, these are young, men and women, 19, "20/20" one years old, they're skeptical, nervous of the press. they have perception what the "new york times" is, to the extent they know "the new york times." but i think there are, there are, i think they're won over pretty quickly if you are don't make a lot of nuisance of yourself on an embed and follow the rules and deal with a lot of the very physical, the physical hardship and challenges of an embed. as far as the pentagon, these new rules, i always, i forgot that they were imposed but you now i recall

last july after they were imposed i was trying to interview someone, a fairly senior person and it was taking a long time to get it approved. last i heard was that the secretary gates still had to approve it. then i think, nothing ever happened. i got way laid by other things. i realize now that is probably the result of this new, these new restrictions. that said i also interviewed people in the last month or two where i have gone in the next day and nothing has ever come up about, it has to be approved. so it is very hard to tell, maybe, you and tony and brian you can tell me more whether you have encountered more restrictions. it is hard to tell. it is a big building. it is a big military. in terms of another briefing just last week, and this is endemic in washington. it is just the plague of washington reporters, the pentagon does put an awful lot on background. they have a big briefing in the briefing room with a senior official and they announce it is on

background. they did this last week. we all pushed back. it was a briefing on "don't ask, don't tell" and it got a little bit contentious because we were all pushing back. and finally i raised the question at the end, why is this person on background? if we could name the person, it would give a lot more weight to the pentagon argument. this is an issue with someone who was reviewing all of the legal ups and downs on it and the judge's decisions on "don't ask, don't tell". was just providing a lot of, was trying to provide clarity on the pentagon's position on all this. and i said, it would just be helpful to everybody here if we knew who this was. geoff morrell, said, you can say this person is also a lawyer. it is becoming absurdity point. i mentioned in the story we need a reason why this person is on background. geoff morrell said that is the way we say it is. i quoted geoff and he got upset with me.

i thought it was important to lay down a marker here because we got a lot of push back from readers when we do thinks like that. in "the new york times" a lot of times they attend the briefing and walk out. that is not realistic. i think pushing constantly on this just as bad at the white house. just as bad at the state department. >> right. >> anyways, those are my comments and i'm happy to answer any questions. >> i think pay cross the board covering national security, fbi, ci. a other agencies are like that too. i want to cover something basically and broad which are the new guidelines. work begun on it long before the uproar that led to stanley mcchrystal's firing or leaving. the incident increased the secretary's resolve to add more discipline with the defense department interactions with the media. secretary gates, said quote, i said many times we mice be strive to be as open,

transparent and accessible as possible. at the same time i'm concerned that the department has grown lax how the we engage in the media often in contravention of established rules and procedures. like i said before, this meant you had to approve a lot if not all the interviews. i wonder if you get any sleep? is that00s? i want to ask but the process how this works. before i do this though, geoff morrell, gate's spokesman said in subsequent interview the pentagon was not trying to restrict criticism or free speech whatsoever. he said, when a reporter said that's what is probably going to happen, whether you intend it to or not, more relinsisted quote, it is not going to happen if we do this right. it should not happen. we should empower people to make wise decisions. all we're asking for when somebody rises above one's individual area of responsibility we eventually get visibility on it so we can be aware of it and provide insight and perspective and advice

because the reality is somebody speaks to one thing they may may not know about and it could have a ripple effect throughout the rest of our operations including decisions that are being made in the national security council or other areas. i paraphrased it a little bit there because it went on. that being said, can you talk about how this has been working? >> sure. i don't get much sleep but it doesn't really have anything to do with this memo because we really -- i agree with elisabeth. i don't know if tony and brian will agree. hopefully this memo has not had any huge discernable effect how the media works. the media is not the enemy. we don't treat the media as the enemy. in fact we have gone to great lengths to try to reach out when folks in the media have issues that they want us to deal with. >> right. >> journalists safety on the battlefield and guantanamo are just two of those and we can talk about that in a second. but the memorandum preceded the "rolling stone" article

by several weeks. just hadn't been issued. it is a big building. takes awhile to get some of this stuff out. >> right. >> but the purpose was pretty much what geoff has articulated. the rationale was, seeing increasing comment on issues like iran, iraq, joint strike fighter, other budget issues. it came from sources where folks in the building said, who is talking and where do they get that information? >> right. >> there's a phrase in the pentagon which i'm sure journalists learn quickly because it is used a lot called situational awareness. in other words, what informs a decision? who has the broadest scope in being able to explain why a decision is being made and what the elements are? the purpose of that particular memo was to say, that, it was important that if you're going to engage with the media, that you know of what you speak and

that if you are going to engage with the media, that you find out what you don't know. we in fact have gone to great lengths after that memo was issued not only to make clear to the media that there's no iron curtain that is falling but to reach out into the building as far and wide as possible to say, we want people to engage with the media. this is extremely important to our society. it is important to the military. it's important that the facts be known, whatever they may be. we have a dual responsibility in our office which is to be as open, transparent and candid and timely as possible with the media. and also to make sure that our men and women in uniform are protected. it's a, it's a hard tightrope to walk, but we walk it. and this media, this memo was not intended in any way to be a zero sum choice between those two things.

it was intended to essentially to say to those inside our building, not the media, those inside our building, if you're going to engage, know of what you speak. i very rarely get personally involved in a particular decision billion whether to engage in an interview. i have a fantastic team of people and some of them are here today. brian cullen, who is former 6th fleet spokesman. now heads my office of communication and planning and integration and who in fact headed the task force about eight or nine years ago that led to the embeds. we have people like that. we have people like colonel dave lapan, who was the first person in uniform to head our media operations as a deputy assistant secretary since 9/11. we have men and women in uniform, civilians, political appointees, all working together on a daily basis, really 24 hour a day basis to deal with the media

to make sure people get what they want. out in on the battlefield, one of the things we made immediatelily clear, those on the battlefield, who are hosting embeds, this memo has nothing to do with your engagement. you engage with the media. they're there because they want to see and hear first-hand what is growing on the battlefield. it's really intended, josh, for those people who, who probably like anonymity better than accountability and we'll get to the point that you make in terms of on the record as opposed to background in a second. but, the point that we're trying to make is if you're going to give information, if you're going to give information as an official of the defense department, those who are receiving that information, writer and reader, deserve to know the full context of it. >> right. anybody want to -- >> so what is the reason for

the background briefing like last week? what's the rationale behind it? it doesn't seem to make any sense. >> let me address that. first i agree with you that, as many engagements with the press as we possibly can have should be on the record. we have no disagreement there. with regard to the briefing that was held on "don't ask, don't tell", it was very interesting, i read a story by one of your colleagues, ann flaherty, and we're well aware that you and your colleagues, many of the press, were not happy about this being on background. ann surmised in writing was because the official involved probably didn't want to wade into the spotlight at that particular moment on an issue where essentially the pentagon is not in control. this is an issue where the pentagon is not in control. and we are seeing now an extremely uncertainty time with regard to this legislation, with regard to both the courts and the legislature. the decision to engage on

that issue was made. we wanted to provide the press with as much context about what the pentagon was doing in light of the uncertainty as we possibly could. and we made the decision that this had to be on background because the individual involved wears several hats with regard to this issue. and in fact, was not the determiner of overall policy and direction where we're going on this. these are judgements being made by the white house, by the senate, by the courts. so, i think it is well within your right and we understand the criticism that was made about that particular background briefing but in all honesty, we felt that was an exception rather than than a rule and that was the context in which we made the decision. >> well, the bottom line is that the issue is too

controversial for you guys. this is life. life is filled with minefields. >> yes. >> that seems to be, but that seems like you could use that excuse for any number of briefing. i won't belabor this. i will stop at this point. you could use, that is good excuse for any number of briefing. >> it is a good cues for any number of briefing and we're trying our best not to make that excuse and have people on the record when it is an instance where we actually are determining policy, where decisions that we make, essentially are the decisions that are guiding the overall direction. we felt that in this instance we were not trying to duck questions. we were trying to better inform. we were trying to inform from our perspective and we thought that we wanted, we wanted to put out the person who was best qualified to do this. but we felt that under the circumstances, the choice we

had to make was, does the person go out publicly and therefore, risk unintended consequences about the issue itself? or do we try to address what, what the press is asking for. and we were well aware that the press was clamoring for information about this issue. we were genuinely trying to respond to that press interest and we let the chips fall where they may but that is the rationale. >> doug, does that we can look forward to more on the record briefing from top officials going forward from here? >> absolutely. that is the intent of all of us at the pentagon to be on the record and in fact, we have made a particular effort over the past several months to bring in briefers by television from afghanistan and at all levels to go on the record. we do this weekly. whether it be, general called well-or general clark

or, general rodriguez, folks who are working in the field, both civilian and military, nato officials, afghan officials. we're doing this on the record. so, there's no, in my view, perfect prescription for how to do any given thing but you are right that it is better to do things on the record and we strive to do that. that is the explanation for why we came to the decision we did. >> i can give you a contrasting historical perspective. in 1968 i reported to west point my window on the world because they didn't let you have radio yo, they didn't let you have it. v, was "the new york times." we plebes delivered "new york times" to every upper class man's door. we were expected to give a three-minute synopsys of the front page of "new york times" to sleeply upper class men. we go from that to my

retirement in 2006. it was, speak to the press if you want. stay in your lane. talk about what you know. and that was about it. and it was very late in the game that we got into media training where we actually tried to teach senior enlisted and officer components of the military how to engage with the fourth estate and it was surprisingly, and as late as 1994 the courses at the army war college were oversubscribed for the how to talk to the press media training, live camera training. so we've caught up with a little bit but i, obviously we've got ground to cover yet. >> in the last, i think, decade there's been a lot more emphasis on training too?

isn't there a special officer occurs on that? >> there is. if you don't mind following what paul had to say. we have a defense information school. and the best and the brightest men and women in uniform attend that school and they are deployed all over the world. people like kirk who have learned, who basically had basic training in dealing with the media. i would say though, going back to the points that i was making at the beginning about the changed environment, that it is time to take a new look and we are taking a new look about at the curriculum there. you have a new generation of communicators in the military. they are not just the people who went to our school, who are, you know, the officially anointed public affairs officers. they are the colonels, the majors, the lieutenants who have been in the field in afghanistan, in iraq and elsewhere who have had to, because of the nature of the deployment and the circumstances in which they

find themselves, communicate in ways they never have either thought about or been trained to do. that has had some really interesting unintended consequences. the most interesting in my view has been you had people come out of the battle field with new lessons learned that i think are very applicable and need to be integrated into the training that goes on for those who deal professionally with communications and in fact the first time i ever met dave petraeus, our conversation focused on how can we get some of those who have worked with you, under you, on the battlefield to do a stint in our shop so that we can begin to incorporate and integrate the talents on both sides. remove the stovepipes and produce what i think will be even better new officers. >> right. kirk, you want to speak to that? because i know you have experience both here and out there.

>> right. i think that's a terrific idea. i think he's absolutely right in that our primary communicators and spokespersons, if you will, are the soldiers and the people who are going to interact. it is not the public affairs officers. we facilitate and we are a conduit to linking the media to our troops because ultimately the troops are the ones that are going to tell the story and let their actions speak for themselves in a lot of cases. i agree that it's a good idea to look at curriculum at the defense information school. i will tell you as a brigade public affairs officer and a brigade is about 4,000 soldier formation, we did a lot of training, media awareness training for them. workshops and things that i was involved in not only for the leaders but for the soldiers as well because a lot of times embedded reporters they're not just not going to be around and

exposed to the leaders in a unit but they will be with the soldiers, the troopers, the rank-and-file and infantrymen as part of an infantry squad for example. those guys don't need to be forgotten. we owe it as leaders to involve them as well. the come -- comment the general made about staying in your lane is absolutely critical and that is something we reinforce time and time again. sometimes falls on deaf ears but this is all part of the lessons learned but i'll relay one, one aspect. i thought my media training program was growth, going swimmingly. we were out, i was out on a mission actually, was on a mission with our calvary squadron and we were riding in a humvee and one of the soldiers was kind of talking and bantering and carrying on and i was sitting in the back and we were heading

down route jackson in baghdad and his, the vehicle commander, who was a young staff sergeant, said, hey, shh, we have media in the vehicle. >> i said where? i started looking around. then i had to stop and explain to them that i was, i was public affairs officer. hey, i'm one of you guys. i'm not the media. but, it reminded me that as much, as much work as we had put into training our soldiers about media awareness we still had a long way to go because sometimes there is a disconnect. a guy in uniform with a camera to them, even though my rank was clearly on my, on my body armor and i had the unit patch and all of that, but to him, he was trying to do the right thing and he was trying to keep his men professional. he wasn't trying to censor what the guy was saying and he was using some salty,

calvary man type language. he was worried i would misrepresent the unit. those are the kind of things you see at lower levels, tactical levels. just a reminder we have to keep, keep with it and maintain that training posture. >> [inaudible]. >> sure. a small little-known fact that every year about 40 marine lieutenant colonels and colonels who are new commanders, newly minted commanders, spent two days at "the new york times" where they are exposed to the culture of journalism. >> right. >> to ride alongs with reporters, both print at "the times" and the broadcast. similar program is hosted by "the l.a. times" on the west coast. and it's a fabulous way for these marines who are headed

out to understand the culture of the people who are going to be embedded with them. that has been going on for decades. >> a big proponent of that program was walter anderson, the former publisher of "parade" magazine who takes great pride in that. >> arthur saults berger was a marine in iwo jima was the catalyst. >> this is drew davis by the way. >> thank you for that. that is great. doug, you mentioned time to take a new look at the curriculum and people in the military are communicating in ways they never thought about before. journalists are doing the same thing. we're learning facebook and twitter and linked in and so forth. the military seems like had aggressively resisted efforts to allow that. i think it was forbidden. more recently you come to embrace the use of this. in some cases actually even encourage it. one of the knight news

challenge winners this year was a pilot project like a unit in afghanistan would have an embedded reporter and doing social media, facebook, to sort of give some, some level of ground truth as what is happening on the ground there to the outside world and work with the families too which is a pretty innovative thing. i wonder if you talk more about that? we have generals now blogging and tweeting and so forth and and the press is doing it as well. that seems like a whole brave new world for both sides. can you -- >> i think it is a whole brave new world for everybody and i would say this. there are huge strengths to the social media but that nothing is a panacea in communication and social media is not a panacea in communication. >> right. >> social media is a tool which offers the ability to reach large numbers of people instantaneously and is terrific for many things. you're right, that the

pentagon within the last year has made it easier for people to use the social media. this is with the secretary's blessing. and in fact one of my colleagues who came to us from google, who had been the head of google's mobile division has been a real leader in helping us define and understand the ways in which we can effectively use social media and, i'll tell you here that we're going to be even doing one of the ted conferences. a ted conference. that having been said, the social media is the not answer to everything and i personally don't think the social media a stovepipe which you fit all the other parts of communication in order to figure out how you make it work for facebook, twitter and the others. >> right. >> facebook and twitter have

been superb tools as has skype for our men and women in uniform deployed overseas to connect to their families. i think that is maybe of the single best step forward in helping communication between families that i've seen. we also have outstanding ability to deal with those who are our adversaries, our enemies, on using the social media. i won't get into specific details but i will say that the feeling that those in a cave are outmaneuvering those at the pentagon probably is not a truth any longer. but i think, i will also say this. that we have some outstanding younger journalists who are coming to visibility as a result of blogs. and there are some really excellent military blogs. but that having been said, i don't believe facebook and twitter are their own

entities. they are tools, just like print and broadcast media and the internet are, to be used as tools of communication. and if we, if we pretend otherwise and think that, you know, this is, this is, completely and solely the way of the future, we're making an erroneous zero sum choice. >> i think there is also pitfalls involved too. it can be for lack of a better term, a double-edged sword. kirk, you had some run-ins in baghdad with a blogger, i don't know if you wanted to talk about that, where -- >> yeah, that would be a two-hour discussion in itself. what we had, you know, the cliff notes version, we had a soldier who was writing anonymously, a diary about his experiences in baghdad. there was some problems with that because he was in violation of the policy. you know, he had not disclosed to his chain of

command he was doing that that was only the the tip of the iceberg. what he was doing is was fabricating stories. unfortunately the publication wasn't checking those stories. so i soon found myself embroiled in a situation where that was two-fold. number one, we were trying to figure out who this individual was. number two we were trying to figure out what he was saying was actually truthful. we were talking about essentially war crimes. so we had an obligation to investigate that and make sure that what he was relating as fact, you know, did it happen? if it did, then we had to take appropriate action. what we discovered was, it was, it was not truthful. it was unfounded. and it just, it caused, it caused, it caused problems to say the least. so again, it's a reminder we're not there to, and what some of the questions i feeled with the media