now for eight years under president bush, more and more people lost their health insurance. the cost of health care health care soared, and our republican friends had nothing to say on health care. now that a bill has been passed which i am the first to agree is not the best bill that we could have passed, and i will tell you why. it has its share of problems which should be remedied, but to say right now when 50 million americans have no health insurance, when states all over this country are wrestling with huge budget deficits which no doubt will result in millions more being thrown off of health insurance, to say we should retreat to where we were is beyond comprehension.

health care, there are millions of families that now are beginning to be able to include within their own health care plans their sons and daughters up to the age of 26. goodbye to that. furthermore, in a nation which ends up spending more on health care -- almost double per person -- compared to any other nation on earth, we have put in the health care reform bill billions of dollars for disease prevention. we are as a nation very weak in terms of trying to keep people healthy, trying to keep them out of the hospital. we spend a fortune on people after they're sick. in this bill, we have made some significant steps forward in terms of disease prevention.

wellness, which is very, very cost-effective in terms of health care dollars, not to mention -- not to mention human pain and suffering. in that regard, i'm proud to have worked with a number of other senators in doubling in that bill the number of community health centers in america which was providing the most cost-effective primary health care that is provided in this country, keeping people out of emergency rooms, keeping people out of hospitals, giving them access to primary health care, dental care, low-cost prescription drugs, and mental health counseling. in the midst of an extraordinary crisis in terms of primary health care, where everybody recognizes we don't have enough primary health care doctors or nurses or teb nitions -- or technicians, we tripled funding for the national health service corps and it is already working effectively in getting doctors and dentists and nurses and

other practitioners into underserved areas. all of that would be undone and i think that makes no sense whatsoever. now, to my mind, what we have to do is not to repeal this bill but to make it a better bill, and i will give you one very specific suggestion that i have worked on now for over a year. senator wyden has worked on th this, others have worked on that and that is to say that if a state in this country, the state of vermont, the state of alaska, any other state, can maintain the high standards for quality health care and coverage, that the national health care bill did, then that state should be given significant flexibility to perhaps do it in their own way and do it more cost-effectively. and i should tell you, mr. president, that in the state of vermont, our new governor is

a supporter of a medicare-for-all single payer program. there are other states that to want move in a different direction, maintaining high standards but doing it, perhaps, in a different way than has been proposed by the national legislation. in my view, they should have that right. and if vermont is effective in doing what i believe we could -- providing health care to all of our people in a cost-effective way -- i suspect other states around the country can learn from vermont's experience. i think that is a positive step forward the beauty of our federalist system, 50 states, every state has a good idea. i think if we maintain standards that are high and give states flexibility, this can improve the health care reform bill that we passed last year. but killing this whole bill makes no sense to me at all. mr. president, i also wanted to

say a word on an issue which is getting more and more attention, and that is social security. in my view, social security has proven itself to be the most successful social program in american history. over a 75-year period -- and this is really extraordinary. we take it for granted but it is an extraordinary success story. in good times and in bad times, social security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible american, and it does that in a minimal administrative cost. mr. president, despite its strong record of success over the last 75 years, social security now faces unprecedented attacks from wall street from many of my republican friends, from some democrats.

and i have to be very clear that if the american people are not prepared to stand up and fight back, we could begin to see the dismantling of social security this very year. mr. president, let me just cite the facts with regard to social security. i know when we watch tv tonight there will be some guy up there saying social security has gone bankrupt. social security is collapsing. and that is absolutely untrue. there has been a significant amount of misstatements regarding social security. here are the facts that nobody denies, nobody denies. number one, according to the latest report of the social security administration, social security will be able to pay out 100% of all benefits owed to every eligible american for the next 26 years. you tell me how a system is going bankrupt. we've got a lot of problems in this government, and our country

faces enormous problems. but when you can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible american for the next 26 years, do not tell me this is a program in crisis or going bankrupt. and after 2037, social security will be able to pay out 78% of promised benefits. do we have to deal with that over the next 26 years? yes, we do. but it is not crisis. and this senator will do everything that he can to oppose any effort toward privatization, any effort to raise the retirement age, any effort to lower benefits. second point: everybody is concerned about the deficit crisis that we face, $14 trillion national debt. and how much has social security crypted to the deficit and the -- contributed to the deficit and the national debt? how much? well, not one penny. not one half a penny. social security is funded by the

payroll tax. social security has a $2.6 trillion surplus. that surplus will go up. and to attack social security because of the deficit crisis is grossly unfair. you want to know why the deficit went up? we're in the middle of a recession. we fought two wars in afghanistan and iraq, forgot to pay for those wars. gave hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthy, bailed out wall street, medicare part-d prescription drug program written by the insurance companies, all unfunded. those are the reasons why you have a deficit. social security has nothing to do with it. so i would suggest that in the midst of all of this financial instability that's out there, with the middle class shrinking and poverty increasing and people really worried about their retirement years, one of the most significant things that we as a congress can do is stand

up and say we are there. we're going to protect social security. we ain't going to cut it and we're going to make it stronger so while it has done a great job for the last 75 years, it will continue to do a good job for the next 75 years. with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor. mr. vitter: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: thank you, mr. president. i rise in strong support. mcconnell amendment 13 that would completely repeal president obama's, in my view, unconstitutional health care bill. of course i was an active participant in the debate in the last congress about obamacare and fought that tooth and nail. the day after it passed into law, i introduced a freestanding measure to repeal it completely. the first day of this new congress that i could file bills, i reintroduced that measure. and of course, for all those

reasons, certainly support this amendment that accomplishes that important goal. let me begin by responding to my distinguished colleague from vermont's suggestion. everybody who wants to repeal this law, including me, we don't want to do away with the idea that you shouldn't be shoved off insurance because of preexisting conditions. you shouldn't have portability. you shouldn't be able to meet those obligations. we don't think that at all. we are, however, for complete repeal for a very simple reason. what's wrong with this bill, what's wrong with obamacare isn't one detail here and one comma there. is isn't at the periphery of the plan. it's at the heart of the plan. it's the essentials. it's the core of the plan. we can and should and must pass significant reforms like protection for individuals with preexisting conditions.

that's why we have introduced those measures. we have advocated those measures in a targeted way. that doesn't mean we can or should or must preserve the whole of obamacare which has significant problems at the core of that tkpwar -- gargantuan bill. let me mention four of those core problems from my point of view. first is maybe most fundamental, most basic; that is there are important elements at the core of obamacare that are flat-out unconstitutional. and even if they weren't unconstitutional, they would be unwise because they are a dramatic expansion of the power and role and authority of the federal government. the most obvious is an absolute mandate in the bill. a mandate from your federal government that every man, woman, and child in the united

states must buy health insurance. now this is unprecedented. there has never been a mandate like that from the federal government or any level of government. there's never been this forced purchasing of a product in the private marketplace. some people bring up the comparison with car insurance, but that's not a close comparison at all. because at the state level, that's not a forced mandate. that is simply saying if you want the right, the privilege of driving a car, which is not some constitutional guaranteed right, then part of the deal is you have to cover the damages from any accident. so that's not a good comparison. so this absolute mandate that every man, woman and child in the united states go out and purchase health insurance, purchase a product in the private marketplace is

unprecedented. and for that reason, it is unconstitutional. and it's an unprecedented expansion of the power and role and authority of the federal government. in the last few days there have been hearings, quite late to the hour but there have been hearings in the senate in committees about the constutionality or unconstutionality of obamacare. of course this central question came up. i found the response of some of the witnesses at the hearings who favored obamacare, were advocates for obamacare pretty startling on this point. one senator in the committee asked them, well, if we can mandate constitutionally that every american man, woman and child buy health insurance, why can't we pass a law that says obesity is a real problem in this country, which it is? and, therefore, we're going to mandate that every man, woman,

and child in america eat certain vegetables and certain healthy foods every day. you know what the response was from this advocate of obamacare? well, i don't think you can mandate that they eat the food. you can only mandate that they buy the food. great. real reassuring. to me, that's not an argument for the constutionality of obamacare. that's a clear argument for the unconstutionality and danger of the obamacare federal power overreach. there are many other aspects of obama care which also pose serious constitutional problems. my point is that these are big problems, and they aren't minor details which we can tweak with amendments. they go to the heart of this gargantuan bill. similarly is the dramatic

expansion of government and the cost of that expansion. instead of controlling and lowering health care costs, obamacare is expanding government and expanding health care costs. the senate budget committee estimates the bill will cost $2.6 billion for the first ten years of full implementation of all of that new spending doesn't lower health care costs, and there are multiple sources affirming that. yet, president obama continues to claim that the act will -- quote -- "slow these rising costs." maybe he didn't see the c.m.s.'s chief actuary richard foster who said overall national health insurance -- excuse me. overall national health expenditures will increase by a total of $311 billion over the next ten years under the law. and when the c.m.s. actuary was asked directly if president

obama's health care bill would hold down unsustainable medical costs, just last week that actuary replied -- quote -- "i would say false close quote. last year the c.b.o. also confirmed our concerns about the bill's inability to contain costs, stating -- quote -- "in c.b.o.'s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure." close quote. in addition, increased costs for the government and present and future taxpayers, health insurance premiums will increase for americans and their families. in fact, the c.b.o. estimated the premiums will increase by $2,100 even though at least candidate obama promised to lower premiums by $2,500 per family. so that big expansion of government and costs, and health care costs including taxes and

partly cloudy premiums, is another -- taxes and health care premiums is another big problem. this isn't a minor detail which we can fix with a perfecting amendment, a few tweaks to the bill. this goes to the core of the entire plan. another fundamental issue which goes to the core of the entire plan is the fact -- and i think it is a well-established fact -- that the obamacare plan will cost us not just money, not just increased taxes, not just increased health insurance premiums, will cost us jobs. that should also be worrisome, but it should be particularly worrisome as we stand here today and debate this in a horrible economy, as we're trying to come out of the worst recession since the great depression of the 1930's. again, this isn't just any period of time. this is a time of prolonged

historic unemployment. and this bill costs us jobs. and this absolutely debt mates job create. the bill taxes jobs, places more burdens on job creators. the national federation of independent businesses, representing thousands of american small businesses, including many in louisiana -- my home state -- said that -- quote -- "if new taxes, new mandates and government programs in ppaca -- that's the obamacare bill -- remain intact, the law will stifle the ability to hire, grow and invest." close quote. in addition to the often discussed 1099 paperwork nightmare for small business, the bill also includes a pay or play mandate on job creators. this complicated new tax penalty imposes a tax on businesses with more than 50 workers if they do not offer coverage or do offer

coverage by workers elect to decline that benefit. again, this is a fundamental problem with the bill that goes to the heart of the bill, not the periphery. now, this aspect of the bill will have many dire consequences. first, because the $2,000 penalty for not offering insurance is less than the 6,100 average employer benefit contribution, businesses are actually given an incentive to drop coverage, so there is a concrete money incentive, a major money incentive for businesses to drop coverage and actually push workers off good coverage. many have right now. second, businesses that are able to grow and hire more workers may choose not create jobs and to stay under the 50-employee

threshold to avoid all of these disincentives and difficulties. because of all this the nonpartisan congressional budget office concluded that the bill -- quote -- "will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market" -- close quote, and it said -- quote -- "on net, it will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy" -- close quote. now, is that what we want to encourage in any economy?, but particularly in a horribly down comirks we're trying to come out of the worst recession since the great depression, and do we want to reduce labor opportunity in our economy? these are stunging conclusions that so many of us warned against during the debate, conclusions that the majority of americans feel. taxing american job creation,

sticking business with more government compliance requirement and cost is absolutely the wrong approach, particularly in a down economy. finally, madam president, there is another concern that i share with so many others in this body that, again, goes to the heart of the bill. it's not a minor detail. it's not something that we can solve with a perfecting amendment. it is not at the per river re, it is not changing a comma, changing a sentence. it is at the heart of the bill. and that is that the bill contains, at its heart, over $500 billion in medicare cuts. yes, over half a trillion dollar cut to medicare. and these cuts aren't invested back in medicare. they don't help medicare stay solvent. they don't help medicare survive

solvent for longer. they don't help fix the looming medicare challenge. they're stolen from medicare to pay for brand-new stuff for other people in obama care. these medicare cuts directly impact seniors, and one study shows that the massive cuts to medicare advantage will hit louisiana seniors particularly hard. a study by the heritage foundation shows that louisiana seniors enrolled in medicare advantage plans lose more than any other state in the nation because of the obama health bill. the report says that projected enrollment in medicare advantage will drop by over 125,000 louisianans, 62%. benefits will be cut by $5,000 per beneficiary. so this bill takes away benefits and choices for seniors, not to fix medicare, not to preserve medicare, not to preserve its

solvency for longer, but steals it from medicare, steals it from seniors for brand-new purposes for other folks. and this directly contradicts the president's promise that -- quote -- "if you like what you had, you can keep it" -- close quote. no, you can't, mr. president. thousands of louisiana seniors can't. in fact, c.m.s.'s chief actuary also verified that the promise will be broken, confirming that americans may lose their current health care coverage regardless if they want to keep it or not. so, madam president, i respond directly to my friend and colleague from vermont by saying, we want full repeal of obama care for a very simple reason: the big problems with the bill, the big problems with the plan aren't at the margin, they're at the core. and the big problems can't be fixed with a perfecting

amendment, the changing of a comma, changing punctuation, revising one or two or five or ten sentences. the big problems are at the core of the plan, starting with the mandate from the federal government, unprecedented, that every man, woman, and child in america needs to go into the market and buy a particular product. that's why we demand repeal. that's why we'll continue to pursue repeal until it hangars and that's why -- until it happens, and that's why we'll replace this huge, burdensome bill with targeted reforms like protecting folks with preexisting conditions, like reimportation, generics reform and other measures to reduce prescription drug prices, like allowing american citizens to shop for health insurance across state lines and to pool together through their small businesses, through other means, through

association health plans. thank you, madam chair. with that, i urge all of my colleagues to come together. let's repeal this really problematic plan, and let's start anew with focused, targeted reforms that the we are goingo discuss the

latest findings from nasa's hour and 15 minutes. >> additionally, we are detecting planets and can dates with a wide arrange of sizes and distances that we must better understand our galaxy. you can find out more information at www.nasa www.nasa.gov/kepler. we will open the phone lines and floor for questions and answers. first, we have douglas hudgens, national head quarters in washington. next bill, principle science investigator at california.

jack, and debra fisher, professor in connecticut. with that, i'll handle the discussion to doug. >> thank you, jack. hello there. on behalf of the astrophysics division, i'd like to welcome everybody here as we have the second annual release and announce the discovery of more planets than any other system discovered before, all clustered around their star in or bits smaller than the or bit of planet venus. kepler 1 the first -- is the first space telescope looking for other stars. that means that the milestones that kepler achieves with each and every discovery shape the course of all future exo planet

missions. they have been in operation for a year and a half now continuously monitoring the brightness of more than 150,000 stars in a single sky near the constellation. we all know that the holy grail of the kepler mission is the discovery of an earth-sized planet orbiting in the zone of our own sun, and believe me, no one is more eager to get to that point than this team. however, that's going to take time. kepler's been in operation for a year and a half, and it will require three years of data as well as pain staking observations from some of the world's largest ground based telescopes before those planets will begin to emerge from the data. however, in the meantime, kepler is absolutely revolutionizing our understanding of systems and

exoplanets of all sizes. think about it. the first 15 years of exoplanet searches from the ground turned up a little more than 500 extra solar planets. last june, we announced the discovery of more than 700 candidates in just the first half of mission data. today, when you add the next three months of data released this morning, the number of candidates jumps to 1200. now, you might imagine that with more than 1200 candidates, the -- well, the key thing is to remember -- you'll notice i take about candidates rather than just excoplanets. every time we see in the data the evidence of some sort of a

signal, that requires analysis and follow-up observations to confirm that that refers to a planet. now, you might imagine with more than 1200 candidates at this appointment, the kepler science team is trying to drink out of a fire hose. we are pleased to release this data at this time to harness the hours power of the entire community. now, you didn't come here to here a nasa guy bylaw -- blah, blah, blah end leslie. i'll conclude and the results that you'll hear today of tireless work by scientists, engineers, chief cooks, and bottle washers at the research

center, jet proportion laboratory, and institutions across the country and around the world, the success of the kepler mission is a tribute to those people, and i tip my hat to each and every one of them. i'll turn it over to bill now. >> thank you, doug. what i'd like to present today is the results of the first four months of science operations of the kepler mission. doug has, i think has well described the mission, and its objective is to find earth-sized planets in the inhabitable zone of stars. can i have the first figure, please? this is a sketch of the spacecraft itself in orbit looking at a transplanetting star, and that's how we study, we look for dimming of a star. the data that talk about is the

155,000 stars we monitor for four months. it's of the 1235 candidates we found. i'll describe those as well. i'd like to start out first with a family portrait of what we're coming from. can i have the next figure? this basically shows you our confirmed planet discoveries. they are not candidates, but confirmed. in the first season, we found the top row there for planets bigger than jupiter and spared to jupiter there, and planets the size of neptune, that's the green object in the bottom line. the giant planets were a surprise. we didn't think we would find that many. certainly the ones on the far left was an even bigger surprise. it's the planet with the lowest densities ever found. this enormous planet, bigger than jupiter, has the density of

foam. surprising. it's hot, and you would think that would expand it. that's not the case. another surprise. last year, one of the things that we were able to confirm was the star with three transiting planets shown in the bottom row. two of the planets, 9b and c, are planets the size of sat turn. one of them, that blue object is 1.6 times the size of earth. we're down in the superearth size. a few weeks ago, the start of 2011, we had another announcement. that is the first -- kepler's first rocky planet. a planet 1.4 the size of the earth with a density greater than that of the earth. it's obviously a rocky planet of types. we are moving in the direction from the bigger easier planets to the smaller planets that might harbor life.

let's talk about not what we found up to today, but look at the data itself that we released last night. next figure, please. well, we started out with our field of view. that covers 100 square degrees of sky. there's three yellow points. these are planets that were known before we launched. they were in our field of view. of course, we made measurements of them, but let's look at the same field of view. after looking at four months of kepler data. next figure, please. now, this are those 1200 candidates. we covered the field review with all sorts of candidates. let's look at the next figure. we measured the size of these objects. we can tell you which are earth's size, which are neptune's size, and superearth size. you see that in color. the blue dots a earth-sized. they are candidates. the green and yellow are

superearth, twice the size of earth, but planets that can have a solid surface to walk on. then we have the neptune size and the giant star size. it's a huge array of planets throughout this field of view. next figure. this gives you the numbers of what we have found. 68 earth-sized candidates. can dates up to 1.25 the size. some of these candidates are smaller, considerably smaller than the earth. here's the 288 candidates that are somewhat bigger than the earth. 662, 662 neptune-sized candidates. as doug mentioned earlier, in the 15 years of observation, the total number of known planets that have been discovered is like 520.

just this group alone of candidates exceeds that. there's an e enormous number of candidates we're finding, 165 jupiter-sized objects. some are bigger than jupiter. we don't know what they are. there's 19 of those as well. go to the next figure, please. one of the things we want to do when we find these candidates is find can cats in particular -- candidates in particular around stars like the sun. there's all sorts of stars out there. giant stars, planets, various, you know, stars that are burned out. we would like to find candidates around stars like our own. this figure shows that if you look at the earth-sized candidates, and supersized, and neap tune size, they are centered around the temperature of our sun so these stars are very much like our sun. there's a variety that you see there, but most of them are around stars like the sun.

of course, that didn't happen by accident. it happened because before we launched that mission, our coinvestigators led by dave at the smithsonian observatory used ground-based instruments to observe 4.4 million stars, and that allows us to view the stars that absorb isn't. we -- sunlight. we had good measurements to find the stars with. next figure, please. when looking at the candidates, broken into four groups. the blue group is earth-sized, then superearth, and neptune-sized, and jupiter size. there's the number of orbital period in days. it gets fewer and fewer to larger and larger orbital periods. this occurs because it's harder

to see planets further out. the chance of seeing them of the diameter of the star, it gets more and more difficult to see fewer and fewer of the candidates and planets. it gets more difficult as you look for planets towards the habitual zone. the other thing i notice it the peak. the peak here is between two and four days occurring for every one of the groups. what's happening is that when planets form, they form an acreation disk. that acreation disk peaks on energy from these planets and spiral towards their star. so if they come spiraling in and they orbital period masters the rotation period of the star, tides rise on a star and on the planet such that the star can transfer momentum to the planet and stop the planet from crashing into the star.

it's a storage bin of the planets. we see that very, very clearly in this day that. -- data. then you see there's a big dip for the periods shorter than three or four days. clearly, it's easy to see short period planets because we have transits. more transits, the easier it is to take text from. this is real. the implication here is that some of the planets that spiral didn't come in with sink newsed ora of the star. on the other hand, we see some that are still there, and that might mean they were lucky. they came in towards the star, and the star lit up, blew away the acreation disk, and now they are safe. maybe they are not safe. there's tides on the planets, and they may be on their way into the star yet. many areas of investigation

scientists will look at in the coming months and years. next figure, please. we started out, people had found planets around other stars, and people found them with a transsilt technique that we used, and here's an example of the size of the planets they found relative to the earth, so one is earth-sized, four is neptune-sized, and you can see the sketches of the planets along the edges there. the dots basically show what was being found from planets larger than jupiter with short orbital periods. we really want to observe not in the upper left corner, but the lower right corner where there's small planets at cool temperatures. let's look at what kepler's contributed last june. next figure, please. you can see all these purple dots and you can see most of them are smaller than jupiter. most of them are the earth's -- between earth's size and

neptune's size. further, they are not at the shorter periods, but longer periods. a movement towards the lower right hand corner. next figure, please. this is what we released yesterday. this is all the data from those 1235 candidates, those 150,000 stars shown here, and now you see again many more planetary candidates closer to the size of the earth. in fact, if you look, a lot of them are below the size of the earth. these objects are getting down towards mar's size, in fact. we are seeing smaller candidates. they are moving to the right to longer orbital periods. you can still see a little gap there that we want to go to in the lower right hand corner. we ought to talk about the temperatures of these candidates. if they are too hot for lifer, we want to know that. are they cool enough to have liquid water on the surface? could they have an ocean and an

atmosphere? we're going to change the horizontal axis. it's no longer the orbital period, but the temperature we use to calculate the candidates. next figure. temperatures here now are in fahrenheit. what we see again the size relative to the earth. we see what we saw before, some smaller than the earth, many between the earth's size and neptune's size. some are bigger than jupiter. the temperature is 1,000 degree, twice as hot as a pizza oven. they are molten iran -- iron orla that. let's expand that lower left. next figure, please. we're going to take this portion of that group of 1200 candidates and expand that out so you kepler mission see in --

see in detail what those look like. next figure, please. this is that expanded area. you see the temperatures are not in thousands, but temperatures we experience from 0 fahrenheit up to 200 -- i'm sorry, to 200 fahrenheit. these are colder temperatures as well. this is the region where we could have liquid water. at minus 50 fahrenheit, you have ice, but if there's an atmosphere, the temperatures come up. now we're seeing inhabittal areas of the stars. 54 candidates, one of which you can see that is smaller than earth, four of larger than earth, superearth size. there's many and some are even greater than jupiter. that's rather interesting. jupiter's big enough that you can have earth-like moons orbiting moons.

those moons are also inhabittal zones. all the moons of jupiter are inhabittal zones. some what are earth-sized could have atmosphere and they are close to each other. you can go from one moon to another and have a vacation on a different moon. it doesn't happen every day, but it's conceivable. once inhabittal zone candidates for us to follow-up on. clearly areas to work hard on in the next months and years to confirm. next figure, please. one of the great things that happened earlier this year was the confirmation of earth's -- of kepler's first rocky planet. the rocky planet is 1.4 times the size of the earth. we were able to detect, get the epoc, but you want to confirm it, some other method to prove

this is indeed a planet. the rate of velocity works here by a number of team members and other observers and telescopes, wind telescopes allowed us to confirm this as a rocky planet of greater density. as we talk about the planets we're interested in, the signal for radio velocity is very small. it takes a lot of time. this is in an orbital period of one day. it's year is less than one day. the signal is still large. moving out, 30 days, 50 days, 300 days, the signal is so small, we cannot do that for many, if any, of these small planets. instead, we need a method that supplements it. next figure. the accept leaptal -- supplemental figure is a method we have proved works.

it was released last year, and what we have here is a planetary system with three planets. they orbit the same star, and when they are close together and pass each other, they cause changes in the orbital period. when seeing when the transit occurs, we can deduce from the transit timing changes the mass of these objects. we don't need rood velocity. it is helpful, but in this case we get the masses very well by simply watching these changes. that means we ought to be able to at least for some of the earth-sized planets to get at their masses even if we can't get at them with the rate of velocity. what you need is multisystems. in fact, we now see in the data that we released, 170 stars that

have these multiplanet systems or candidate systems. sometimes with two, sometimes with three, sometimes with four. as many as six transiting candidates around these. that will be enormously helpful of the not -- not only can we get masses, but we can look at the systems and not the individual planets. a great deal of progress and encouragement. next figure, please. this is a summary, of course, of what we have found to be explicit. we do and have released the data to the public as the space telescope science institute is for everyone who wants to use it or get at it, data for 155,000 stars. 135 candidates with each of the transits, and their properties of each of the stars. we see 68 earth-sized, we're

seeing 662 neptune sizes, 54 candidates of habitable zones, and systems. kepler is making good progress towards its gales. can i have the animation, please? this is a field of view of kepler in the sky, about the 50 candidates in the habitual zone. you can imagine then we found 1200 candidates in the single field view. imagine that we had the field of view covering the sky, keep leer looks at a 400th of the sky. if we had 400th of the review, we would see 400 times that number of candidates. we would see 400,000

candidates. what that's telling you is the stars around us, that surround us have huge number of planets and candidates for us to look at. if we find that earth's are common or habitual zones of stars, it's likely that means life is common around these stars, and, in fact, kepler is the first step or a step in that man and science exploration of the surrounding galaxy to find life and the extent of life in our galaxy. jack is going to tell us about these very valuable systems of our stars that help us understand where the earth's are. jack? >> well, thank you, bill. so bill mentioned towards the end of his talk kepler-9. it is a system with three confirmed transiting planets. it is the only star known to

have more than one transiting planet. transiting planets are very, very valuable because that's the way we can get sizes of the planets, and all the other hundred transiting confirmed planets prior to today were orbiting one per star. kepler-9 had three. now, if we can have my first slide? this emphasizes the 170 candidate multiple planet systems that kepler has identified. the small dots are the stars with one candidate. the small blue circles and there

are over 100 of them, are the targets with two planetary candidates. the green -- the red try angle -- triangles, 45 of them -- excuse me, the 135 red triangles represent the 45 targets with three transiting candidates. the 32 pink squares represent the candidates around the eight targets that have four candidates. we've got a lot of stars with two, three, and even four candidates. if you look over towards the lower left, you'll see five pentagons.

they represent the five candidates around one star which has five transiting planet candidates. towards the center and a little off to the right in the figure representing mid-sized planets at medium to long periods among our sample that stand out are the green hexagons. the only target that we see six signals and those are no longer just candidates. we have confirmed that all six of them are indeed planets orbiting the same star which we've named kepler-11. now, in the next slide that

shows the position of kepler-11, this is a sun-like star. it's in the constellation, and it's approximately 2,000 light years from earth, so the light that kepler is seeing from this star left the star around the time caesar was making his conquest. now, if we could have the video. this is a kepler view of the system to begin. we see this target dimming like clock work, but like a very special clock, one with six hands moving at six different rates, and we interpret this as six planets orbiting very near the same plane.

now, looking at it face on, and these are very close in, especially the inner five, very close to one another, the most compact system of planets ever discovered by any technique anywhere. if i can have the next slide. we see these planets on the occasions when they transit the star. most of the time, none are transiting, sometimes one is transiting, occasionally two, and one time last summer we observed the signature of three planets transiting at the same time which is illustrated in this graphic. now, i've said that this is a very, very flat planetary system. it doesn't look so flat in this graphic, but that's because the

planet orbits are much, much bigger than the size of the star itself, so although they're not exactly in the same plain, when they go in front of the star, they look very similar to in the same plain, and, in fact, if we had a scale model of just the inner five closely spaced planets around this star, it would be as flat as a compact disk. now, the six planet is orbiting significantly further out. if we had a scale model that included the 6th planet, that could go into the attic to find this. it would be like one of these old vinyl records. let's move on to the next slide, please. this shows the kepler-11 system

at the same scale as the inner part of our own solar system. the five inner planets, the ones that are closely spaced to one another are all closer to the star than any planet is to our sun. this despite the fact that these planets are, well, they're not huge, they are not jupiter-sized, but they are not tiny either. they range in size from about twice the radius of the earth to a bit over four times the radius of the earth. that 6th planet is a little further out, but if it were placed in our solar system, it would be between mercury and venus. well, i've been talking about this as a system, and it is an amazing system. these planets are close in. we never thought we'd see this

many planets that aren't real, real tiny this close to one another, and the fact that they are close to one another means that they are tugging on each other's orbits, and we use the same technique that you use to measure two of the masses on kepler nine to measure the five inner planets in the kepler 11 system. if i could have my next slide? this diagram is a little more complicated, but it's really important. what we have here on the vertical axis is the size of the planet, and the horizontal axis is the mass. we've observed the size by the amount of dimming that each planet causes when it transits

in front of its star. we measured the masses, we've weighed, in other words, the inner five bodies by the amount that they tug on one another's or orbits retarding or advancing the transit times of another by 10-20 minutes relative to their orbital periods which are between 10-47 days. now, we estimate the planetary radius, and we're not exact, really we're not exact because we know that the radius released relative to the star very well, but we have an uncertainty of the radius of the star. in terms of the masses of the planets, there's an estimate on the amount they tug, but these are very small variations, so there's a bit of uncertainty, so these ellipses for the extra

solar planets, both the five that are around kepler-11 that are labeled, that are in blue and labeled by the letters which designate the particular planets, and the three around other stars which are ellipses of a different collar have uncertainty and cover a different range, but they still constrain both the mass and the size of the stars, and -- planets, excuse me. we compare them to four of the planets most like them in our solar system, venus and earth on the small side, neptune on the large size. these are an intermediate class of planet, and of these eight that we have that we know in

this range, five are around the star that we call kepler-11, they're the ones we're announcing today. that little red one is in the bottom is kepler-10 that we announced last month and bill mentioned as a rocky planet. now, the ones we found in kepler-11 that we're announcing today they are all higher up on this graph than the rocky planet. the rocky planet is really, really, really close to the star and really hot. these planettings are kind of close to the star, and they are warm, but not nearly as hot. we find that these are bigger for the same amount of mass which means they must be made of lighter material.

they are not superearths. they are not big rocks. the innermost two, c and b, they might be mixtures of rock and water or they maybe mixtures of rock, water, and gas, or even just rock and gas. we know the three more distant of the fivesome called d, e, and f are so big for their mass that the substantial fraction of their volume must be made of the two lightest elements, hydrogen and heel lee up gases. not only is kepler-11 telling us about planetary systems of a type that we had no idea existed, but right now, it's

providing our best clues on the compositions of these planets as individual worlds. if we can move on to my next slide in this is the family portrait, and we see the cousins that were found previously and bill showed you in the earlier slide. on the top two row and the new set of six siblings of the family, the long lost cousins we found and are announcing today around kepler-11 in the bottom row. if we can go to the next slide, i want to wrap up. kepler-11 is a surprisingly flat and compact system of six transiting planets.

the five inner planets are especially close together, something that we didn't think would happen for worlds of this size, and really forces us to go back and look at formation models of planets, and it also means that the planets are perturbing one another significantly enough that we can weigh the planets. we find out that they are low density. they are fluffy. they are sort of like marshmellows, but they are not all gasment they got to have -- they got to have something a little heavier there. maybe a marshmellow with a little hard candy at the core. [laughter] now, we really were just amazed

at this gift that nature, not the magazine, but nature has given us, and with six transiting planets, five so close to their star, and getting the size and masses of these five fairly small worlds, there's only one word that i can think of that adequately describes the new finding we're announcing today. the kepler-11 system of six transiting planets is spectacular. with that, i'll hand things over to deborah. we'll give you the outside

expert's view on what we've been announcing today. ..ll, folks, this, of course, is an amazing era of discovery for astronomy, but for exoplanets in particular. and there's no doubt that the search r planets is motivated by se for life. humans are interested in whether or not life evolves on other planets. 'd especially like to find communicating technological life, and we look around ourwn solar system and we see of all the planets there's only one that's inhabited and natully

amazed to sit here today and see that kepler is reaching the miles to discover these faster certainly banaa i anticipated. kepler has blown the lid off everything we know about the solar panel and that's and this week to me feels different than last week did and i will tell you summarized the three reasons that i say that so first of all from the planet surface we could see the gas giant planets like jupiter were less common than

the planets we could see on the mountainous rise towards the smaller and smaller were lower and lower planets, but our detection technique was through the wall just because of the precision of our measurement, and so we were at the point we were pounding away right now trying to shake out a few planets that are to come to become four, five times the mass of the tariff but the statistics are not so good and so what kepler has done is it is extended the bridge that crosses the gap in the knowledge of what kind of small planets formed. still, the amazing thing to remember is that the detection of large planets or massive planets is always sweet be easier and the detection of the small guys and so what that means is the statistics kepler has gained even on the planet candidates maybe 20% of the candidates won't pan out but statistically we can see that

the -- we understand the fraction, the rate of occurrence of the massive planets from jupiter all the way back to neptune. those numbers are solid. we can take them to the bank.am. that's pretty amazing. it's impressive that the number of small planets is growing. ren in a region of perimeter space a that theoreticians actually a predicted might be a planetmazih desert. is the second amazing thing is that there really is difficult to untangle this exit polls from the multiple planas systems.wor so it is worth reemphasizing shs that kepler now shows something like almost one in five of their stars of transiting planets posts at least one other planet kepler-11 that was just an presented today and is absolutely staggering result.in with five low mass planets in de

the system this discovery is as momentous as 1995. it shows the planetary systems with several small planets like our own seem to be common.lly rg different part of the milky way o galaxy. iqey the are more of serving wia doppler technique, our own athit nearby neighborhood and i thinke it shows that to the adjacent neighborhoods in the galaxy looe a lot like our own neighborhood yid that is encouraging and tr important if we are trying toexa make extrapolations about the ol formation of planets elsewhere and perhaps life.id so i cane actually provide some insight about the enthusiasm of the public for the data. saw at yale university we were excited when we saw that we team with the up with the citizens science alliance who hosts milky way galaxy zoo among other universe

isc to let the public participate in discovering planets at theplane. planet hunters got word.tarted e when we started the project, we discussedd among ourselves and e really thought there was about t 50/50 chance the project was completely floored becausetures galaxies zeus shows beautiful pictures people get to look at. we are showing brightnesseasuren measurementsts of stars. but in just a few short weeks, we have over 16,000 dedicated users and they send theirssia, greetings from turkey, russia, poland, spain, the canary islands, brazil, chile, oneanote country after another. it's amazing. mor they have made more than first 1.3 million classifications jus5 using the first release of 35 days of public release data. they've identified hundreds of transiting candidates and a binary system that were not, '

publishedre before so they are i eager to see the list that coul be coming out and see if they have any matches. excited we are really excited and appreciative that 12 hours ago nasa and the mission has poured the social the quadrupled the amount of publico relief tava on an excellent its visual. this is really wonderful. u we are hearing from teacher's daughter using kepler data for e having fun searching for thisys, needle in a haystack justayoff because they know the payoff is going to be so enormous.rs i had one of the planet hunters e-mail me yesterday and he or k, she said that they had fought for planets and they felt so wee proud. back to another person commented they've were going back to school nown n that the haved the seen the datd want to learn more and more.

the dominant recurring theme wee think off from the public is to they are excited because theyres get to contribute to realthey' research and they have a sensesr thaty. they are a part of histo. the understand the importance of the data, and i want to echo that and say that also i feel this is an incredible historicr moment and i want to thank the entire kepler team for the data that they have provided. >> thank you very much. okay.ided. let's check into the question and answer session a reminderst for everyone in the audience toa wait until you have a microphonn there said the two of them andr please s identify yourself and d your affiliation before u.s. your question.ect yo quest try to direct your question to panelists and help avoid confusion and for those joiningn you can push the star one key oe the telephone and a understand we have one question in thece. audience.

estimate the american geophysical union. can i wonder of the panelists caness comment on how the results mighe influence the emergingme researr efforts for instance change whas researchers areed looking for, w kepler is used, etc.. >> basically one of the things we are doing bethell to determine the frequency of the foll of stores because there will be followed on missions and fall and along missions need ths kind of i.nformation for the design.esig the designs of their onens is a graphic approach and the other half different areas of application, things we are doing is providin information required for the future missions that will go ou and find the planets in the nearest stars as well as going out and finding the composition

of the atmosphere of the planets, and that is another step towards our exploration of the galaxy. c >> let me just do a quick check. it looks like we have one moreh. here. >> hello peter ayaan witha ge canadian telneevision. a general question first of alli how much did this bring us closer to discover whether therw was alien life and second, how do you know find out of the five planets in the habitable so do have life? >> patients. that's how it's done, and lots of money. that's the reality. this mission is designed to do something and do it as well asi. can be for this first step. it finds the frequency of ther objects and theib distribution.e but you must through the otherud steps in some sense build then's cathedral. the first generation to build ai foundation, the next is to build a wall.

the third generation to the ceiling and the fourth on generation will initially it is we are sometimes the firstit. generation. the second generation is goingcg to build instruments far more complex than what we have to goa bed find these nearby ones and even greater demand will be madt to find the atmosphere is on th, planets. and of course, having done thatl our grandchildren have to decide what is the next step.th to we want to go there and sends a robotic system?this isnly this is only one step. it is an important step there are other steps that must the follow.on >> i would like to go to theesee phones no.ress i believe that sf is on from the associated press. go ahead. >> thank you for doing this. this is more for the bill. in the 54 candidates in thene, a habitable so and i think you sie said one was smaller than the earth and four were super earthh does that mean essentially the e

other 49 are more candidates of the satellites for the moons orp is there a group that is sort of in the range that might be rocky? the other question is by no for definitions for the habitable zones very. tem what is your temperature to definition? is it zero to 100 or slightly bigger? thank you. >> the temperature range wethe consider part of the habitable zone is extended and that clearly if you extend it down below the freezing point ofthats water that is what we calculate is if the planet has theif the atmosphere. of the oepslanet does have an atmosphere the temperature is wl going to be warmer. it may have liquid surface. its the habitable zone is a veryfuzc fuzzyep concept certainly otherb

moons are heated by the internal energy of the moon's. fe there's a possibility of life there as well which is trying to pick a region that has a higher probability of having a wife who is sort of a start in the search. does that answer your question? >> you asked about the other ones as well. we have these five that are small. the earth up to twice as fast. the group and a small number ofe half a dozen that are hit of tos jupiter sized and clearly all of those arewe interesting to us.f we want to urexplore them furthr but we don't know much about them and we have told you at this point we have a lot of woro to do to better understand them >> let's go back to the phones this time of the san franciscoom chronicle. go ahead.a >> thank you very much. i have a question for dale and u

guess and that is how do you define a candidate and when doee a candidate not be a candidate anymore when becoming confirmed? >> that is a tough question in that of course when we see a series of transports what you te would like to say is that is a, plan that.t. more than likely it is an eclipsing binary or something that hits your detector or a lot of other phenomena. one of the ones that have theph most troublesome are thewith eclipsing binary stars. eclipsig when we look at the galaxy we see of the stars in the back route lots of these doors thatn, are everywhere. the instrument seeks a great gre deal of effort for each of thes objects that looked interesting that are the analysis pipelinell

provides beautiful look samplee, of all the threshold that have a big enough signal to be interesting. it looks at these and asks is a there a secondary eclipse. a wat that is a warning right away. it looks at the shape and it's a warning right away that there is an eclipse that by mary.y. so the pipeline that the team has put together has built aysta system that eliminates most of these false positives and somey of the work they've done iseleg. absolutely public. nevertheless, after the process the data performance it comes ta the science team basically of all the servers and others, and we look at these and ask which of these can we go to the c telescope with and have a chancr of proving?opes and are we look at the ground based telescope and ask are there other stars that could explainco

this? we do their reconnaissance spectrum with observers to s what the characteristics of the stars are. o if you look at the size of thei store and the size of the planet so we make an effort to get to the size of the start to thespe. reconnaissance spectrum and if it is as good we want to confir, it we go to the biggest telescopes in the world and the optical telescopes and going anc measure the rate of the velocity fluctuations. so it is a series of steps thate generally triakes from when the data comes out to when we havect an announcement.e generally of the order of a year. of that is the kind of time that it required to deal to prove something is a plan -- planet. >> i would like to jump in and say you listen to both descriptions and should give yoe a better understanding of the j act of just how much work goesg into taking something from thent planet candidate to ranle

exoplanet. everybody wants to be able to, you know, just go through andbua rollout hundreds of planets.ese but each and every one of these requires this sort of, you knowd painstaking work to go through and confirm they actually arere planets and not something to they're trying to trick us into thinking it's planet.cripti build a good description to come to thin k about that it is an work by a lot lot of people coming into this. >> i would like to add bill dide an excellent description, and in all of the steps before the last basically doing for everyre candidate before we even consider calling it a planet. at but there are free different last steps because of those radio velocities, the doppler i it works for a big enough

planets around bright stars. but for kepler-11. they are not super close and they are around a faint star sod the second method is one that has only been used twice for kepler-9 and kepler-11 and that is as bill mentioned in his talk the transit timing variation to see what they areth exerting on one another, and you can't have that in the triple star system because they would say the stars are much more massive. so that's the second way, which like the radio velocity and if it also gives the mass. but it's only on systems where the planets are big enough or t.

close enough that it's possible so the third method we just used on a couple objects, the third planet around kepler-9, the sixth planet around kepler-11 is to look painstakingly yet the field right part of the start and look at it characterized ash far as muc h as we can and will get the details of the shape of the planet and showed that theil shape and the details just don't make sense for any falsereasablh positive model of any reasonable chance of occurring and we're therefore we are more than 99%la certain of the planet and we call the planet and that is better than the rights of things that have been called planets of

the past so we think that's pretty it's not at 99% at least. it's it's still just a candidate.nowe >> anything else to add? we have one more question on the phone. let me take that and then come back tou the audience and to the check to see if there's anything further. kelly, scotty and telescope. go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much. jack, assuming in concluding that some of these half i atmosphere is as understand you havebeen basically been workingn the model of their density, when you measure the transepts, ifti, there are atmosphere's how do they affect the diameter thatrin you tonight?es do the atmosphere's cause you to come up with a diameter that is artificially larger than the planet is all? >> you have a good question of

what is the size of the planet? for her if you generally consider the size of the surface because then the atmosphere is just so much more tenuous.ant but for the joint plans in our y solar system, we have to see wet what is to cut things of? these and we have to say that for these planets, too.urns and it turns out that the size h at which the altitude, the in te density and the atmosphere that causes the transnet is a little bit less dense or less higher,er so did a little larger than what we would clall the measurement the sizes of jupiter, saturn or neptune, but by less than 1%, ib may be a elittle more in these cases but it is a pretty small difference.audienc see spinet what we do a quick check from the audience a fndur see if

there are more questions. we will go to the phone line. fro npr, go ahead. >> caller: >> do we have him on the line? o okay let me just do one more th check and seeer if there are an more questions? a i know we have a question from the ames research center.ead, go ahead. >> caller: okay, hello. [inaudible] international television. could you elaborate a bit more on the five of the in habitable? what can the stars and how far what m away are they? what might they look white?

furthermore, these earth like m, planets, i mean what is the definition of these first likeli planets and when might theseanel planets pop-up when they exist?. >> that's a very, very hardre te question. detec we can measure these and we have yet to prove they are planets. many of these are small, so we haven't confirmed any but it'stg certainly going to be something that we will investigate in theg coming months and years.y but at this point i can't tell y you much about him other than the stars when they or that are stars quite a bit smaller than the sun in the order of sometimes half the size of the s sun. ve the temperatures are very much i lower. the sun is about 5800. t

these stars or almost half the f temperature in the order of some 3,000, 3500. s i think some of the slightly bigger objects are again cooler- than the earth but the temperatures i think from about, 44 to 4800 so they would be considered intermediate between the small, cool stars and the hotter stars like the sun but ws don't know much more about him as of yet.er we have discovered them ofy, vey course only very recently. it takes a great deal of work to find them to make sure that weee understand a little bit about the starst themselves. it's not -- it is difficult ton get the information on the sart, how big is it, what is the compensation comes of the ae reconnaissance spectrum and the interpretation of the reconnaissance spectra. the understanding of how old the stars might be which tells a little bit about how the mass

and size vary for the stars i think we still have in and out t of work to do so i am afraid i n can't give too much information other than many of them are around the cooler stars smaller than the son. spinach is to add a couple and y things, if they are planets and they are in the habitable zone, then a star of the sea in the sky is more red than the sun the reason to the smallt and habitable planet candidatesw we are seeing now are only around these smaller stores ism. that we just haven't had enoughe time. we are searching for planets trh that are true earth analogs around stars like the sun, but a that's going to take a few moref

years of data to find them. okay. we have another question. >> caller: you had four months of recorded observations out of i think it is a three year mission so you are really just t getting started. i am trying to get an idea ofou the results that you expect. you do you expect that they could bt linear in the sense of you have 1,203,500 candidate planets now or will your earlyted to observations where you start ton see enough of the candidatese that now you are getting into the falling grain detail and we won't see the results stepping forward as great as these have t been. >> i mentioned in my talk as yoo go further and further to the

larger or middle distance in tho larger. it's the chance of getting alignment falls dramatically. so, we see this huge number of candidates, but if we look at the following years we don'tkin expect to see anywhere near thai kind of increase. what we will see is fewer but more interesting. ones they will be the ones further out that are cooler. the other aspect is happening here is as we go on the analysis to correct -- the stars are no n easier than we expected, so it is harder to find this all signals, and we have a group ofk people at nasa ames that work te hard to correct the glitches and things like the data and as they do so the analysis pipelineore becomes more and more capable o. finding these small or objects so we are going to find in the year is going on that we are're

able to find even in the data data that we are producing right now more planets but smaller planets.cality or so it's a capable the leader of the mathematical analysis that allows us to find the small objects but we do not expect tot see the kind of a plethorahora increase that we see now.will b there will be many fewer as the years go on. er >> quality is coming up, notp, quantity.ay, let go okay let's go back to the phones and try now greenfield at npr. go ahead. >> can you hear me this time?yew >> caller: tecum >> this weekend. ok gtch >> caller: sorry about before. g thanks for taking my question. to do and to set the first habie confirmed planet in the habitable zone will be one ofi e thesean, candidates? you do you feel it is in the data waiting to be confirmed? and i know you talked about the

steps required for the confirmation that just to reiterate how long do you think the confirmation will take? >> i guess i can speak to that. again, no, i wouldn't expect the holy grail, to use the term that io used to be in this set becaur again, the holy grail in thebite earth's size planets are in the inhabitable zone and around the sun like a star.ut a obviously the orval period would be about a year. so in fact you would only come n if you were far away in the plat of the earth orbit looking at the transit across the sun you would only see the transit by that planet once every year so in fact it would take threel, years, welcome a first would yot take you two years before to e even small a second blip thatthu sort of stood out in the k middi of nowhere a year after the thef

first oneir came along and woulg be a third before you came alona and we seem to be getting this o every year and that period so a. this point with only a year andf a half worth of data we wouldn't have enough yet to identify it as a recurring event. j in that instance, no, i would say just on that standpoint thec planet candidate that could be, our earth like planet, if you will, or the earth size planet to be more precise wouldn't have emerged from the data.n b >> okay. we have allan boyle. go ahead. >> caller: hi. candidate there were some candidates that were held back for confirmation by the team 400. i wonder if there are with a number of candidates being held

back for similar reasons. t >> no, there are not. all of the data in addition to the 400 targets of the team hada extended exclusive use so they n could have a full follow-up observation were released actually just a few hours before all of the data of the 156,000 for the second three months of the mission so all of the datar. is out there and there are no targets that have been held back at this point. was >> we had an opportunity to take a look at those and candidates that were held back over the summer by the reconnaissance spectra of the thousands.e had t don't some of those that we have released and reserved false

positives that work by an areaut or whatever. that is all that we have a released malae and much more heavily studded we have a betted understanding these are good, or candidates and we are gratified planets and we haven't released all the data for this for d months. the date after the period of tes but we don't have anyandida candidates that we can show youo >> okay.l let's move on to mike at the state stockholm. go ahead. >> caller: a little press release that in kepler went intj safe mode and i was just you wondering if you could just tels what the problem was and if it's serious or if everything is going to be okay going forward with the telescope. >> yes. in fact, the kepler did turn out in a safe mode at the normalact.

contact and the team is currently working the issue. to it appears to be at this point,i and this is preliminary be information, it appears to be ae thult with one of the star sme trackers which is something we have experienced before. the data shows it is in fineghtt shape. in fact it's been broughoft oue a seafood and is in standby modt and even aste we speak they are doing a full download and a picture than what is going on and find a -- if we can design a way to a void this problem in tu future but this does appear to be a fault that we experienced and we do not believe it represents a serious threat totg the mission., >> let's go back to sethahead, borkenstein, associated press. >> yes, thanks, i want to if we s can focus on the smallest of the

planets first what is the smallest size in looking at the one the earth sized candidate in the potential that is on the sixth earth radii and i'm wondering how secure are youareu about that and because it is so small would eliminate usingity their radio velocity to get into wonder how overall how many have found that are smaller than earthquakes >> thank you. islamic mabey deborah can talk about controlling the smallking objects working on a system that may represent a significant step forward in the ability of thel rate of the velocity systems toe look at the smaller objects. >> i can certainly, it is extraordinarily difficult the detections our measurements errt right now about 1 meter per

second and we are to fight andal earth analog we would need to bo able to measure and amplitude ot the reflex velocity if 10 centimeters per second so that means we have to shrinkecon meter by a factor of ten. we have at yale a doppleroppl diagnostics facility where we are setting the procession as ay figure on the merits and reallyt trying to hammer down on the resources we canon a think of be are a ways away. maybe the best strategy we havew right now is if our errors are g random and not systematic, than sne way that we can shrink is bb taking many observations, to one measurement you get 1 meter perc second to take 100 reduce that precision or improve it by the square root of the number of nmf observations come so that's how you can get from one down to

ten. the problem is it doestnhe't rey go down that just because it isn't completely or normally distributed so it is a focus off work, and i think likeike evethg everything in this field we have to go one step at a time andtoo it's too bad b we can't just sop w leap to the end and see theeb answers but we are all doing thn hard ground wodwrk right now to make that happen. that >> i would like to add that if l we get lucky and we find some earth sized candidates in the inhabitable zone of stars with more than one candidate, and ifs the spacecraft is healthy, stayy healthy, the funding stays healthy and we can have ane extended mission, maybe we will be able to observe long enoughbe that we will be able to see

transit tiny variations that one planet causes of the other and confirm it that way even if they radio velocity confirmation isp. impossible for such a small plant at. islamic we are going to take the avst question and this is back d at the san francisco chronicle. go ahead, david. >> thanks very much and i have to follow up before bill, i am still not clear as to how e you define what is a definition of a candidate. dalia understand how you confirm the the dewaal were very helpful on that subject, but how do you mak actually did find a candidateyo that makes you then go and attempt to confirm that.is >> okay, let's talk about that from moment. we have a pipeline that goes

through the data in an automatet fashion and it finds any set of iransit's that have n a ratio ll seven. the probative getting something like that of random data is one lid 100 billion so the pipeline produces and it gives you a list of these things. this has such and such, threshold defense but thisd, period, this amplitude and itme makes some checks and spits itit out fatherhood, gives us a team report and it is a threshold evn crossing looks at the result of the computer output and thenthiw begins to think about it themselves. do they really think this is tht candidate? threshold crossing theat candidate? if the team says yes it is aheya candidate bkeecause they say itg a candidate they make that decision, a group of about eigha

or ten people meet generallyhat once a week to make that decision and it's that group rak that often puts the priority t rank on these and sends it to the group of people called the fall along of serving program ok group who look at what has beeno given to them and say here isat, what they want us to look at and they look and they decide fromts the available telescopes andthe instruments which of these is the most practical to do and they go forward with the validation procedures that we talked about. a but the conversion of aeven thresholdt crossing even to a candidate is tom bye at team, bk team members meeting in a group once a week to make thatking ath decision by looking at the data. >> bill has described as something becomes a candidate ce and is as a candidate until

leader it's confirmed as a plan that or we showed that it is a false positive.edia confence. >> okay. with that we will and today's meeting conference. just as a remiinndeder you can o out morerm information aboutunce today's announcement and keep up with a fully leasednasa.gov/kr. nasa.gov/kepler debate i would like to thank the panelists and you all for joining us. have a great day.

>> good morning, everyone. i'm sorry we started a few minutes late this morning. it is because of a technical problem that we are now ready to start the hearing. we should be hearing this morning from the honorable jack straw who served as foreign secretary from june, 2001 until may, 2006. we heard evidence from mr. strat

year and he also said the inquiry written statements in advance of each of those hearings. in preparation for this morning's hearings, we asked mr. straw to produce a further statement in response to a number of particular questions from the inquiry and we are grateful for that. it is now being published on our website. we are also publishing a number of other documents, including some which are relevant to mr. straw's estimate for this morning's hearing. now this morning we shall concentrate only on those areas where there are specific points we wish to explore with mr. straw. we are not addressing all the areas he was responsible as foreign secretary and we may wish to address in our report. as i say on each occasion we've recognized that witnesses give evidence based on their recollection of events, and we of course check what we hear against the papers to which we have access and which we are still receiving. finally, i would remind each witness on each occasion he will later be asked to sign the transcript of his evidence to

the effect of the evidence given his truthful, fair and accurate. with those preliminaries out of the way i will turn to search roderic lyne. >> has said, we don't need to repeat our earlier discussions, but i would like to seek clarification on a few specific points as the strategy towards iraq and evolved after the ninth of september, 2001. now, last year we discussed the policy of containment in some detail. and as you say in your latest statement, this was a policy the was difficult to sustain. is it right that, as we have heard from other witnesses, containment remained the government officially stated policy at least until september of 2002? >> well, it's right that in a sense depending what you mean exactly by containment, but if you mean by containment as i set out in my latest statement,

containing and of removing the problem of saddam hussein's failure to comply with the united nations obligations, then containment remained the overall strategy of the government right up to the time when we took the decision to use military action, because in a sense 1441 was a continuation of a series of policies by the united nations security council to secure the compliance of saddam hussein and to ensure that all his wmd had been removed, his programs and capabilities had been broken up. as i said repeatedly, and it was absolutely exquisite the time, if saddam hussein had done that, then he would have stayed in the post. the regime change regime was

never an objective of the british government, and if the 4041 had been complied with, which was my hope, then in a sense, containment issues within four to 41 would have been a successful policy. >> i think we will come back to one aspect of that later on. very soon after 9/11, there was talk in the united states him quite a lot of speculation in the british media that there would be a phase two of the war of terror and that the fees to might include as a priority target military action of some kind against some hussein's regime. on the 26 of november, 2001, president bush and a press conference made some remarks about iraq which boosted that speculation and then there was quite a lot of speculation following on from that in the of the british press about whether the military action against iraq

was being contemplated. in his recent evidence to us, the lord wilson who was the cabinet secretary at the time has richard nixon told us mr. blair had played an important part of the 9/11 in dissuading the americans from taking action against iraq at that time or from thinking of it, and indeed on the 27th of november, to those of one, the minister brad shaw told the house of commons that it was in the policy of the government to extend the military action to other states and that there was no evidence of the involvement of the state's other than afghanistan in 9/11. so is it right to think that in the autumn of 2001, and indeed come into the early part of 2002, that the government was seeking to dissuade the a united states administration from targeting iraq in the second phase of the war against her?

>> was certainly the case that at that period we were seeking to persuade the united states government to put off any significant consideration of the issue, because in november 2001, we were completely immersed in afghanistan. i mean, that was the overriding preoccupation for the british government and indeed for the americans. there was and remained a serious problem in iraq, but it was not one that we have to deal with that day, that week or that month, and that indeed eventually became the case. then if i can just explain, and to some extent this is brought out by richard willson's evidence, we have afghanistan going on. them on december 13th, 2001, there was the attack by islamic terrorists against the lok sabha

in delhi. that led to a series of events which over the following months led to a mobilization of conventional forces by india and pakistan and the possibility that they might begin to threaten each other with their nuclear forces. i got completely immersed in that. with colin powell, with his deputy, with david manning we were dhaka were sued for words to india and pakistan throughout the period to persuade and cultural the indians and pakistanis to pull back from a military confrontation. so that was our preoccupation. yes, iraq was there, but if you are asking me, sir rod, when iraq really started to come right to the surface, i can tell

you exactly as far as i was concerned, and that was the day that president bush gave his state of the union speech which was on the 23rd, 24, towards the end of january 2002. i happened to be in washington that the day and could sense the sort of came change that his statement led to. you made it clear in your evidence to us last year that you thought that patrician made what he called a profound mistake in the state of the union speech by linking together three separate countries, which you did not see as being linked. so in this period ought to at least the state of the union, the axis of evil speech, we are saying to the americans the priorities are afghanistan, this very serious situation in india. iraq is not implicated either and 9/11 for of course in the attack of the lok sabha we're

seeing that is not the priority right now. that is correct is it for the record? >> yes, if i could put it in a slightly different way we are saying it is a priority but we don't have -- we have to consider it now. we have much more -- >> like north korea? >> we have to deal with this, but we don't -- but there is an issue of capacity apart from anything else. from my point of view, it wasn't really possible to deal with them because we were dealing with afghanistan, and we were dealing hour by hour with the india pakistan issue to demonstrate what i mean by hour by hour, is a matter of the family record now that i was supposed to be cooking the

sunday lunch -- the christmas lunch and i served the first course on christmas day and the rest of the time was spent on the telephone talking to colin powell and others about the indian pakistan thing. so this was completely dominant. iraq was a problem, but it was a problem we didn't have to deal with there and then. >> may i sort of just if i may respectfully pick you up on one thing that you said i said about the access of evil speech? i had no difficulty about president bush highlighting the problems of iraq and north korea, although i wouldn't have used the axis of evil analogy because i didn't eat it was an access. i have profound objections to him bracketing iran with iraq and north korea because i didn't think it was justified, and because it undermined the reformist president khatami's

efforts to reach out to the west it profoundly damaged his standing within his own country. >> what you said to us last year was exactly that. you said i was concerned about the way that he had sought to link these three very different problems together. so they are problems. iraq is a problem, north korea is a problem and iran is a problem and they are not the problem some like the one interrupting your christmas dinner. there are other ones you have to deal with that particular moment. now, on the third of december in a letter that he was quoted in your latest statement to us and which is being classified call your office, you told us previously that he personally approved this briefing to the prime minister, your office replied to a request from the prime minister for a note of the options for dealing with iraq, and if i can to doubt four points from the advice that he gave in that letter your letter

said, your private secretary's letter said there are no interest grounds for the military actions against iraq. it said a strategy to deal with the wmd thread will require gracia to of containment and is a military intervention for the purpose of the regime change would be equal and of course you have consistently argued as you did last year the regime change couldn't be an objective of the u.k. foreign policy. finally, it concluded we should find out what the americans had in mind and test the viability of any plans. so you saw sir david manning's mission he was about to go to washington with sir richard as being an exploratory mission rather than one in which we were certainly are giving for the regime change, which you said

was illegal. were you aware that around the same time that you were offering that advice that jonathan paul was riding the pie minister anno about encouraging people in iraq to resist that and i know he described in his evidence. >> i don't think i was aware of that note to self because the private sector and jonathan powell are sufficient were entitled to their own private boats. my private secretaries did to me, sending the murder of the office -- sending them devotee office. i don't think that is necessarily inconsistent with a clear policy and legal requirement that the british government couldn't be committed to the regime change as an

objective and i don't like this regime if there had been a magic wand by which it could have been removed or replaced by democracy so you can have the wish and the desire to see a regime change may also within clear limits wish to encourage that, but it couldn't be and it actually wasn't an objective of the british government policy, and that particular briefing went to david manning on the third of december was obviously to get him back crowd, but also to set up what i saw it as the paralysis of any overall strategy and i actually think the deduce brothers stood the test of time. >> you were of course aware that number ten also commissioned a briefing in parallel at the same

time of the secret intelligence service, and you saw the peter's or use of the two papers that they sent to number ten. these papers of course have not been declassified, but they have been described to us and evidence sessions, transcript, of which have been published. the first paper that sis ret for number ten began what can be done about iraq if the u.s. heads for the direct action have we any ideas that could divert them from an alternative course? and that paper warned of the hazards, and as described to us it argued for caution, circumspection and awareness of what they have the matter iraq could prove to be. then there was a second paper from the same source from the same author which pointed in the opposite direction, at the same time or within days of each other, sent to you at the same time under the same covering

letter. the second paper discussed, and i quote, how could we come upon an objective of regime change in baghdad with the need to protect important regional interests? that second paper put a much broader case for the regime change than dealing with the threat of wmd. hope your office received the speakers and said he wrote to number ten if the papers or perceptive and that you hope the prime minister would read them. were you concerned that number ten was seeking advice of this kind from the sis? >> i think number ten were fully entitled to -- >> policy advice, is that normally what sis this? >> rac. sorry. >> this is not intelligence.

>> welcome if you asked me was i surprised, no, i wasn't, we were in a position where we were seeking the best advice that was available in respect of an issue which prior to my 11 -- 9/11 haven't had the attention that it should have been. so it was getting people to think about the "what ifs" of the situation. i apologize for this, but i have not refreshed my memory about the content of those papers and wasn't aware i was going to be asked about them, but i have a recollection of them. my view was that both were contributions to an important, if a very private, discussion which was taking place at the time about we did about iraq, it just as important, what advice

we gave the americans and i had been having some parallel discussions with colin powell about this as well as i recall. .. but with respect, in his private office, a secondary state they

would've read these papers. i would have scribbled on them late at night. these are very perceptive and that would have been transferred from an official note from a private secretary. that does not mean i endorse the policy within those papers. >> i was curious to get back to the second paper pricing regime change can't be an object is. of the prime minister. >> i was not only my view, but it couldn't be. >> you said that he would out in your own device. so your voice has gone to the prime minister, saying can't be regime change. and many see it paperthin yesterday exploring it. >> without seeing the documents and i'm perfectly happy since you a supplementary note, we were going to have a textual of

what they put on them. if you've ever seen how you've heard evidence from me on the issue of regime change. i don't think what point to a single occasion where it departed from the very clear view. >> that's precisely what the question arises. >> perhaps i can ask you. >> if you have expressed publicly his but if expressed privately that regime change was not a good idea for us to pursue. as an objective and in any event, it was publicly illegal and you will be aware from documents that have been declassified and quite a number which has been not on more than one occasion. >> perhaps i can ask you about

some other papers of that period, which i hope you will have a chance to refresh your memory of and which were discussed in the recent evidence given by mr. blair on may 21 of january. and these are the record of the conversation with president bush on the third of december 2001. the paper which he sent to president bush, which was dated the fourth of december and was entitled the second phase of the war against terrorism. and then, the record of the talks, which sir david manning and sir richard gere was held with their opposite numbers on the sixth of december 2001, when they delivered the paper of the fourth of december. the talks were held and there were these three records of

exchanges between number 10 on the white house between the prime minister in the president and made faces. these records are classified in the book we discussed with mr. blair on the 21st of january. have you had a chance to refresh your memory? >> i've read obviously the transcript of mr. blair's evidence. >> to want me to recall a paragraph in this document? >> no, we hope to get a chance to reread the documents before coming here today. >> i've spent a very large part of the last six weeks free reading all sorts of papers. i'll do my best to answer your questions. if i can't have an instant recall of her particular documents, i will send you a supplementary note on this. >> thank you. do you know if you saw the note that the prime minister sent to president bush by hand is sir

david manning before it was sent? >> i can't be certain whether it did. i think i did, but i am not certain at this stage. sometimes within a dashed the prime minister's note at the row, the personal ones he wrote to the president, a key should only i advance. so far as i know, i always saw them after they had gone and he would normally talk to me about david. the issue in hand and they were very personal notes which he wrote himself into an offense took his his own advice on. >> at these exchanges be described as the prime minister seeking to dissuade the americans from setting iraq as a target for face to action at this time? >> well, how i perceive it, with the prime minister was doing, he said publicly he felt profoundly

privately and so did we and his grace to stand shoulder to shoulder with americans after this deed, of 9/11. and he bluntly also wanted other things that have a close relationship with president bush, including those from the middle east peace process. we ran in the event part of the coalition in afghanistan, so working very closely with them, and the largest contributor to that after the americans. and what i perceive the prime minister is seeking to do was to get on the side with president bush on the issue is at work on some demanded to be done about iraq, but what needed to be done had to be very carefully thought through. and just deciding saddam hussein

needed to be taken out and taken out rather quickly, was not a sensible option for the united states and also not a possible option for the united kingdom. >> in on the side of president bush, but not presumably get ahead of president bush on this issue or encourage president bush to push it ahead out high-speed. >> certainly not as far as i can perceive. >> certainly not, because as you said earlier, the priorities at that time were dealing with afghanistan and dealing with its very dangerous situation in the indian sub continent. iraq was not today's problem. from your recollection of these papers was the endpoint, the strategic objective that mr. blair set out in his mouth, which was about iraq, was that the removal of wmd or was the removal of the regime?

do you recall that no? >> sorry? do you recall the note? >> not directly, but look, the prime minister note was no evidence to you and he was always clear that the removal of the regime is highly desirable. there's no question about that. but he also accepted that this is not a legitimate lawful objective for the british government. nor was it a practical one either. but his evidence was given a think on the 21st of january and you will recall it. if i may say so, what needs to be seen is that this was part of

what mr. blair said to president bush through the medium of that note in many conversations was part of a continuing process which had the good effects of persuading the americans in the late summer of 2002 to go down the u.n. route, which could easily -- that was my hope and everybody else has come easily have resulted in a full compliance by saddam hussein with these u.n. obligations at which point our involvement in the any military involvement would've been impossible. >> i like to come unto the u.n. route in a minute. what mr. blair said to us on the 21st of january was that this thing was going down a track to

regime change. do you recollect these exchanges and this note and what he said to the president on the third of december is arguing for a strategy of regime change, arguing for building of a strategy, working towards regime change in iraq? >> i didn't see the british prime minister on his fourth regime change. that was not. >> the way to write a note about it? >> he give you evidence. you have to ask him that question. but what i've tried to do is to describe the context if i thought it and which he was talking to president bush. and as i've said, if there had been some means by which saddam could have been replaced by a democratic card without military action, so much the better. and if you see now what is

happening elsewhere in the middle east, one of the things that all of us are looking at are the ways in which a popular uprising could be encouraged. why not? and the difficulty there with that many of the people in iraq felt they'd been encouraging to popular uprising post the gulf war and then they been left high and dry in many of them had been murdered and consequences. but i say all of this should give you it would've been great to see the back of saddam hussein in his vicious unpleasant regime if he was related to that. how did you achieve that and could we have a regime change? >> and you don't recall it the agreement in these exchanges set up a joint group tween us in the u.s. administration to take the issue of iraq forward? >> i think there was.

i say i can't directly recall. >> so in a situation in which in the letter sent by your private secretary, as we've noted, you've advised the grant for stage two military action against iraq. he advised the containment should be ratcheted up in the military intervention for regime change would be the legal. so affect lee, had to replace them followed in exchanges with the white house? >> well, this was part of a process of discussion in the end, my face wasn't to be followed. >> well, it's part of a process i had confidence in the prime minister. i knew how he was comporting himself at the president. and income in these two people

with -- representing very different parties and political traditions. the president bush had been suspicious of prime minister blair for his very close relationship with president clinton and our natural allies he was a democrat. so sir, i had confidence in what he was doing. he was doing it in his own way, which is what i ministers do. there wasn't a decision point on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth of 2001 berlin for regime change in for an extended position of containment. there is a discussion. i mean, this is part of a lengthy process. and you've seen something in all the records of the writ amendments, which i sent to the dirt. two things of which i am pleased. one was that we were committed

to the prime minister was able to use his considerable skills to get the americans to go down that route, which essentially the same hot containment. second was that the prime minister agreed that the decision on any military action should that be nice if they been made by the british house of commons, which was very significant and they welcomed moved. >> soaring to a discussion at this very early stage two and half months after 9/11 about iraq. he said part of it for discussion but not a decision. speaking of a slightly leaky. calmly said to us last year to regime change is the purpose of foreign policy was off the agenda infers the united kingdom is concerned it would not have gotten my support. but my question is, was regime change off the agenda -- of the

uk's agenda in these exchanges with the white house in early december of 2001, four months before the period in which he said it was off the agenda? >> yeah, i wasn't present at the discussions. it was david manning. richard dearlove -- >> juicing the record? >> i set out the position of the british government. i've set up my position. what is also the cases that when prime minister blair made his speech on the occasion of that visit, he was very careful himself, not to say regime change was an object to. i was struck when i was looking at a summary of the press, of the american press for prime minister blair's visit, that they too were very clear

distinction between what president bush was talking about, which was regime change and prime minister blair saying that his object to was compliance with security council resolution removal and disarmament of iraq. and i'm very happy to push that summary to the secretary. because what the prime minister was making clear that crawford did not go unnoticed, especially in the american press. >> what mr. blair said to us about crawford on the 21st of january was the issue is very simple. he, meaning saddam come either had a change of heart or regime change was on the agenda. i'm puzzled as to whether he said of his own agenda. you see off the agenda. >> i think we may be in different terms about the same thing. >> we were using coercive diplomacy. it was diplomacy that is a

threat the possible use of force. and the object it was a disarmament of saddam hussein and the iraqi regime. the first method was diplomacy. if that method failed, but with military action, consequence of military action was found to be regime change. that's how it works. the point we're trying to get across to saddam and his allies was that he had every opportunity to comply with united nations obligations, without his regime having to be changed. i may buy ideas, but he thought that was a very high incentive to come into early compliance. >> i mean, your objective as you told us last year, your final sentence to a slasher was the first of the action was not regime change. i hoped we would've resulted peacefully and we would just have to manage saddam after

that, but he would have been disabled. mr. blair said there were two views. there were those that thought iraq would be managed and he disagreed with that and he was discreet to view that iraq was in a situation which could be managed. we had to confront it. so, he is saying change of heart or regime change. and he wasn't expecting this change of heart as these made clear. and we have to confront it. your objective is getting to a situation where we didn't have to confront the military regimes. weren't you in the prime minister actually aiming for different strategic object gives throughout this process? >> look, we are different people. >> he said that. >> and far be it a secret that i came at this issue from a different perspective.

however, i ended up at the same point that the prime minister. but they make that clear that the decision ip in the cabinet and the house of commons made to take military action to miss the british cabinet that time with people who fought for themselves. and that's what i thought to do. and i thought to offer the prime minister i do. i guess it's true as a different of a difference between the prime minister, he was further out on the issue of what was most desirable with me. however, we were posed to the summer of 2002. and then when president bush made the important statement he did to the general assembly on

the 12th of september. and then again in 1441. we were down the track of the strategy, which i say listen containment. and at that point, it was up to saddam hussein as to whether he wanted that strategy to proceed or whether he wanted his regime to be removed. i have thought he was slightly naïve in thinking he is choosing easier options. he chose a much more difficult and ultimately fatal option for him and his regime. and had that been the case, sir rod, the consequence for the united kingdom was there as a possibility of taking military options. it's also matter of speculation to think that if there had been full compliance with the requirements of 1441 and

performance of the security council, it would've been extremely extremely difficult for the united states and the president to go to war because it would have been on the basis. it's hard to judge that, but i don't have the military action would've taken place. the overall complements consequences where i wanted to be. but given that your object is all along was to see the disarmament of saddam by peaceful means as possible and that you felt that afghanistan and india-pakistan with a high priorities in december 2001. when he saw the records of these exchanges with the white house at this stage, did she not think it necessary to take some action that the prime minister what the risks of the strategy heading towards regime change unlikely

military action. >> and the opening months of 2002 and going right forward to july. but you've got to take account of what else is going on at the time. just in terms of the practicalities of the, there was a real world going on. there is afghanistan going on and plenty else going on. soon after this exchange in the records came back of what was discussed. that then became the preoccupation that it was overwhelming for three or four months.

the issue then as i've explained was warming up in parallel. we had the axis of evil as the ministers of conversation when i got back from washington after that in expressing my reservations about the approach president bush is taken. which crawford were at any prime minister can be criticized for in that speech he made was intact says. it was getting president bush to go down the u.n. route. whatever query in december 2001, he and i were on the same page. and in the early months of 2002.

and he went to persuading the americans with great skill and determination and succeeded. and i think he needs to be given credit for it. >> in 2000 to come you certainly didn't seem to be on the same page as the americans. >> i mean, i was never on the same page as vice president cheney. both be clear about this. we have a kind of accommodation. >> you said the minutes which has been declassified in the eighth of july expressing particular concern that the americans were at the uk's conditions in the side of the middle east peace process at the u.n. from the legal basis, we can tell it in analysis, note that apparently given the day after scenarios, all rather important points. but you are concerned about the route to prime minister was deploying. you are concerned about the route the americans were deploying. >> look, there was a process of debate going on and i was

seeking to persuade the prime minister of my view, not least through the prison meant -- my criticism of the americans. anyway, there was a consequence at that time which i regarded the satisfied three -- the prime minister was on board for the u.n. resolution. he encouraged me to go and see the secretary. >> would discuss that last year. >> he was not reluctant about the u.n. he was very keen on it. >> i want to come back to bed at two seconds. one more point before we leave the subject. in this diary at the 10th of

may 2006, chris mullen recalled saying that your use of the word nuts in relation to a possible invasion of iran had been deliberate. and he was saying the one thing i learned in iraq was once the process start eroding, it is very difficult to stop. at what stage? >> no, it's not imply that because i think the action we took was justified and the circumstances were different. but the research and dead if you embark on the process of diplomacy, which we did come in the may work, you're left having to resort to manipulation. and i've want to remain clear

that in dealing with iran, a process of strong diplomacy, backed by a increase of sanctions is an essential one. i happen to believe the process is coercive to diplomacy with military action is not sensible. and i was extremely anxious to put my own lines in the sand on that. and in any event, this was a nuclear strike on iran remains nuts. i thought about the use of that term very carefully on the way to the studio because i just thought i need to make it clear that i disagreed with it. >> right. you talked about cost containment.

in may of 2002, we finally succeeded in getting -- and we let this process is smart sanctions resolution. it is one in which mr. beyers argued had no chance of working because the provisions originally anticipated for tighter monetary of iraq's borders have been dropped before the resolution was adopted. if the resolution wasn't going to work because it didn't have the monitoring, why did we go ahead with? why didn't we just pull it? >> you know, not trying to become second. it is something i've thought about a lot. first of all, in may of 2002, we didn't know what else is going to have been. the future was full of to be trite, full of uncertainties.

i think if we had not gone for the past security council resolution we could, inadequate as it was, then the message that would've been sent out to sydney and as we basically abandoned containment itself. bear in mind there was a lot of evidence, which is still available about the decay of the sanctions regime, the way it underlined in all sorts of respects and so on. one of these -- obviously we didn't know what was going to happen next in respect of iraq and much depended on trying to get an international consensus. in the end we did for 1441.

the two abandoned going for that resolution, we frankly would've been crazy because it would've set a message to the other p5 partners we never bothered about iraq. we were trying to get a really strong sanction regime, but we tried very hard in the previous year, but frankly got no traction. even after 9/11 we have to go in november 2001. but it said something to the frame for the international communities to come together to make out what we did we of course on how to develop that. >> if we make clear to the communities, the other members of the security council the alternative to the strong sanctions regime that they were resisting was going to be less likely to be military action, wouldn't that is given a summary of which? >> if i may say, assuming we had complete foresight --

>> we're planning military action by may. the mac with respect, that's very different. from being in a position where that could be deployed in knowing what the circumstances were. as of may 2002, we did not persuade the americans to go down the u.n. route. it would not condone the u.n. route, there is no prospect in my judgment on the british government being involved in any kind of military action and making the threat that we couldn't follow through. >> couldn't we said the only way to stop the americans going down the military refused to have early effect of sanctions? we had evidence from comrades who is an official in our nation at the u.n. coordinated, determined and sustained action to prevent illegal exports and target saddam's illegal revenues would've consumed tiny proportion of the effort and resources of the war and fewer allies that could have provided real alternatives.

isn't a valid? >> amine, trying to contain the leakage from sanctions was very, very hard indeed. in fact, i didn't agree with mr. ross on that. i mean, it was that easy, we would have done it. the problem was that up until 9/11 -- >> it would've been easier than going to work. >> while of course. >> what we got to them to them so far as i understand what you're saying is the point i.t. is seeking by the agency of fortune 41. and it would've been very easy for saddam to have complied with 1441. and then if he complied and verde has said he is complying, we would've then been down a path, which is laid out also in the may resolution of the gradual lifting of sanctions, that he would've state imposed.

yes, he would've been exposed to his neighbors or someone who didn't any longer have camelot will biological weapons. but he would've been there. and sanctions would've been lifted lifted rather quickly. so i don't think there's any consistency actually between what he is saying as far as i understand what he seen them what what we actually did. >> okay, i'll come back to 1441 later on. he said earlier you hadn't had a chance earlier to refresh your memory in december and might wish to write to us about it when you've had a chance to do so. and you know, i leave that out with you. >> thank you. you think would like to turn out to some of the cabinet discussions. >> sir martin, we'll come back

to later on. the actual operation of cabinet member to focus specifically on the meeting that took place in march 2002. luke wilson in a seven and two is described as seventh of march cabinet as a uniquely full discussion showing real anxiety about american policy in the need to keep the issue in the united nations. he also told us that it was requested by david lang kits and robin cook. is that juror selection? >> i think so. >> he also said that the prime minister concluded by saying that quote management has been going crazy and i think they quoted the press not long after the cabinet meeting. i do think he felt the need to say that? >> i think because there was a high suspicion by members of the

cabinet about the intention of the president bush administration. i mean, it seemed quite early days in the bush administration in the context that we had a right wing republican administration in the state. a new labor, but a left wing labor party here in the natural allies in the u.s. about the democrat are not the republicans and there also have been soft and cuddly republican administrations, but this is not one of them. there is great anxiety about the intentions of the bush administration. i mean, bear in mind really from the time of the access of evil address in late january, british newspapers were full of debate,

discussions, warnings about iraq. there is a context of this is slow. and every member of the comments was being constantly pressed, not only by colleagues in the house of commons, but by their constituents parties and public about what was going on all the time. that was the background. >> the united states hasn't gone crazy. >> i think being cited by members of the cabinet was the prime minister -- he was slightly less left wing than most members of the cabinet shall we say. had he decided himself to take a

different view from the prevailing sentiment in the cabinet, who let the discussion in the cabinet that day? >> i can't directly recall. we may need to look at the minute. what normally happens in discussions on iraq was that the prime minister -- either he would introduce a subject or i would or vice versa. i suspect on allocations he probably began on the night and there would be windups. >> do you remember what line you are tawindups. >> do you remember what line you are taking? >> i can't quote, that's why i'm asking you. >> i know what i was thinking of the time, but i would've been fairly certain that respect in

the context of cabinets. i mean, i wouldn't have thought about all the things. not least because i was concerned about the matter of the king underscored wilson pointed out sadly, a good part of the discussion at sadly, a good part of the discussion at sadly, a good part of the discussion at was the next day and never part of my style to say things, which could have been seen as this ablation to colleagues that got leaked. >> i mean, what sort of thing is rethinking the minutes would metellus? >> really i party set out in extensive in which an oral evidence to the inquiry, which was that we needed to enhance what we took in respect of iraq, that military action in each be very much a last resort.

i certainly never dismissed the idea of coercive diplomacy. not for a second. and what we above all needed to do was get the united states down the u.n. route and we were seeking to do that. >> robin cook's recollection of my cabinet meeting described for the first time i can recall in five years, tony was out on a limb. in the balance of discussion but strongly in the reverse direction to his intentions. is that your recollection? >> i think the point was made not by man or whatever it was, really reflect to that. and it may have been that debate firmed up in his mind the need to convince the united states to go down the u.n. route. and i think how much is getting the right, but i can remember

the exact dates and proximity to crawford. >> this was two or three weeks before crawford. >> there was a lot of speculation in the newspapers about what he would like to say. >> you speculate totally on the prime minister's mind. to think his approach to cabinet in the future as you realize we need to manage these debates? >> i don't think that it feared i think the fact that the leaking did and i was very depressing. and any prime minister faced with leaks like that is bound to take appropriate alternative action. that was the difficulty. i mean, as you said, there have been a lot in the press at that time and the members of the cabinet were picking up

anxieties that they had heard around. this seems to have been at the time developing strategy and on the presentational hacks of policy. how important do you see that not for the government as a whole, but in your own personal role? >> well, i mean, developing a media strategy with the capital and, s., i didn't pay a great deal of attention to it. i mean, my approach to the media on the whole was to work out what argument i was trying to convey and then to make it. i was tempted to believe if you've got the argument, then

people tend to follow you. and if you haven't, no amount of the media strategy is going to fill in that substantial vacuum. i don't recall at that time having the discussion with depo about the media strategy and they were aware that john williams, the press secretary apparently administered me in the summer and how discussion and early september 2002 when the whole debate was becoming more structured. but what i was seeking to do at that time was to manage both inside the parliamentary in parliament, which is one of the reasons we produce the brief to the parliamentary party. >> like to continue on to that. >> you mentioned it'd circulated

to your cabinet colleagues, this paper by michael williams had produced on the parliamentary labour party. at the time as you know, options paper was being prepared. you and your officials knew of the work of the options paper, which was the government document. why circulate the parliamentary labour party rather than a piece of work by the foreign office or by the office click >> there weren't alternatives. and the metaphor for the prime minister and that is being the case kind of forever. not for the agenda of the comet and controlled by the prime minister. one of the things i've been

trying to get across to inquiry is that the debates about iraq were very evident. and members of the cabinet were also members of parliament and i had to handle their parliamentary colleagues and having to respond to a very great turn of the constituent and inerrant constituency parties as well. so i felt that it would be good for them to have a brief which they could use publicly. they could send it on to constituents of labour party members who are concerned about it. that is serving a very different function from an options paper. >> this was not particularly to inform the cabinet discussion, but as a tool --

>> i hope to did at the cabinet discussion. as i said, i thought it put the background of the problems together rather well, with useful briefing i thought. >> without my paper there wouldn't have been anything else. i mean, there's a feature of a lot of these cabinet discussions would that be true of most issues of foreign policy at this time? >> it was a feature of the way the prime minister and cabinet, that most decisions were made on the basis of oral briefings, having been sort of precooked through the process of cabinet committees and a lot of government business. as richard -- i'm sorry, lord

wilson pointed out in his seven and, the structure was extensive and on the whole were. so that's where you've got to become a pre-decision. cabinets under mr. blair, less so under court in brown was used more for a briefing of cabinet colleagues and discussion of that kind, rather than for acute decisions. i mean, it depended on the issue. >> i think we'll talk about some of those issues that are on. now also as lord williams has -- williams or wilson? >> williams. >> yes, they all become words eventually. and as was noted in his statements, there was for some reason you say is very

assiduous. the text hadn't been cleared with the non-proliferation department. and there's quite an important discrepancy between sort of the standard intelligence line if it were and what was said. this revolves around the question of the five years in which iraq could get nuclear weapons in the parliamentary labour party statements paper it was stated that if it just happened, whereas rather critically in policy terms that could only happen if sanctions had been lifted. were you aware at the time of that discrepancy? >> no. i wasn't aware at all. >> there was also an article that you wrote for the time on

the fifth of march, a couple of days before in which you said quote there is increased efforts for nuclear related materials and technology of the nuclear research and development work at the can again. with an article like that, would that have been cleared to the foreign office process? >> yes. and the article almost certainly would've been drafted by the foreign secretary speechwriter. i can't be absolutely certain, but it would've been drafted almost certainly by the speechwriter and then cleared with officials and sir lawrence, i was never in the habit of putting my name to articles of any kind as a senior minister unless they're checked i had no

interest in saint kings and accurate or tendentious. the intelligence assessment, which is given the medium of the shortage newspaper article, the qualifications and the caveat can get lost. the gic assessment on the iraqi wmd, which was produced on the fifth of march said on the nuclear program, we do not know if our scared development work has yet recommence. so it's partly -- there's just a problem here about things move from the world of intelligence assessments to the world of public presentation, you can lose some of the qualifications.

>> yes, i expect that. the other side however is the overall context in which we were debating iraq, which was the record of saddam hussein who is the man who had organized these very extensive chemical and biological weapons programs and nuclear weapons programs and had ensured the use of chemical weapons and for example, as we know, had concealed the biological weapons program and only came out i had the chance within and he concealed it as part of the inspector. a man opposition they try to bring out in the first written statement that i gave to the inquiry was one of the profound could turn but also getting

across to what his record was. >> i'm just interested in the focus on the nuclear side because if you let that the assessment of the vindicated, there's a lot of constants at the time about chemical biological weapons in the serbian reconstituted. it's easy to see why ministers would've push that forward. but there's much more caution on the nuclear side. yet it's also quite a bit different. i figure to the weapons of mass distraction between a nuclear program in the chemical biological weapons program. so really, is there a need in public presentation to constantly warn people about the nuclear side as well click because that is what really

makes the difference in terms of being a broader threat to the international community. >> well, provided what was accurate was there was the need. and i think what cannot the results of the iraq survey, that it wasn't unreasonable to predict that saddam had left to himself would've been developing all of these programs without any question. quite clear about that. >> you discussed the cabinet options paper of the eternal foreign office meeting to the 18th of march and concluded that she should write to the prime minister on the 25th of march 2 declassified in our website. we also understand that this meeting -- also at this meaning

we understand the crunch are you pay for discovered iran, north korea, as well as iraq. should not just focus wholly on iraq? can you remember why you took that decision? >> yes, i can. and i just thought they were different than ird expressed to sir roderic by concern about the inaccuracy as well as the wisdom of lumping iraq, iran and north korea together in a single pot and labeling them the axis of evil. and i thought if we were to publish a four country analysis, how we would be seeing is just adding another country to the axis of evil.

instead of having one hand running, we'd have four heads running and he would become unmanageable and then we be asked for we've got to attack libya or north korea? i just didn't think he was going to add anything to a strategy for dealing with those problems. >> there is another argument. there is another argument which is the material on iraq would look thin by comparison on some of the other countries. >> yes, i understand that. i wouldn't use the word sin. it certainly didn't necessarily look stronger than the other countries. if you take north korea that has to be dealt with as was often at lord, the intelligent which

above all of that developed to be not as accurate, underestimating the scale of bolivians nuclear weapons program. we were in the event able to deal with that study. by the proxy of the war in iraq, but i didn't know that at the time. but i was in any event clear that whatever is the kind of relative position of iraq, but distinguished iraq from these other countries was iraq's record that you had these accounts, at least nine or 10 chapter seven resolutions to do things, which they probably

failed to do. >> at the time, the foreign office seems to be taking the lead on issues of publication of the dossier hasn't been planned over april. was your expectation to this. was that the foreign office would leave the department when it comes to these big issues of public presentation? >> as a general rule, the foreign office would be the publisher of documents. as you're aware, the third of dossier idea, now famous or notorious dossier took office in 19 in the summit in august and september 2002.

andy was in response to very great pressures. by then the prime minister had decided that he had to get right on top of the issue would be the person who has that word front of the document and i didn't object to that. >> and john williams statement, he told us that you and michael j. were opposites when it came to the drafting of the september dossier, that this should be a foreign office responsibility. so why was that? >> well, i prefer to do it in-house. i thought we'd have better control of the final product might have been a bit better, but there we are. >> anyway, there were however some practical problems about the timing, which was that the

key preparation. of the dossier coincided with the united nations general assembly and not just die, but john williams came to new york. that said, you know, it would've been better had it been handled by the foreign office. >> john williams appears to imply at least that this was symptomatic of possibly a general loss of control of the foreign office of the development policy of this time. >> you know, i read that. and i didn't feel there was a lot of control. what i felt was that as a matter of british governance, that as a

prospect of military action by british forces became more likely to be put on the table, there is bound to be a shift in focus from one side of downing street to another, from the foreign office to number 10 because the prime minister to determine a recommendation to cabinet about whether military action should be taken and not directly for the foreign effect. the thought always the pin. for the foreign secretaries in a very different position from the head of the domestic department. i mean, the same secretary and basically they have to get on with it. ..

but when do you feel there was a risk in all of that leaving aside your own personal position, the key people in the foreign office were not being kept as well informed. >> there was a risk of that, yes i accepted that. >> your inquiry about the reference worked. i think whether it were her to be a parallel situation, similar situation there is an important lesson about how you essentially

pull together both sides of the street and the related issue of what you do with the war figure and that is quite an important issue in my whole view in terms of how you run government. so the advantages as having people call in the downing street side of the door. but there are also down sides as well and something we want to look at. >> can i just ask you one more question finally on this period? >> in september while you were on leave the number ten commission, in 2002, while you were on leave the commission from your department before the prime minister's press conference which is the first or second and the timber --

september, the start of september was commissioned, the briefing your office produced has been declassified and was in the increase web site. in again in the earlier paper there are some areas where the briefing appear to be more definitive than the intelligence of the time suggested rather start to the answering questions posed by iraq to leave to iraq have wmd beginning with the words yes. did you review this at all? >> i don't think so is the answer. there is a huge traffic recent documents but it goes to our officials. i don't think it was polluted by special love visor's or people in the number ten. it came from 24 karat gold foreign office officials. the problem is, again, this

question of acknowledging qualifications and uncertainties and caveat. if the briefings appeared such as this turning back to the pressures on the public presentation for contribute to the iraq in wmd beyond a doubt what i think the problem was that of redefault and was beyond a doubt and this is not just a few of the british government, it was a few of the international community. 1441 would have never been agreed with that opening paragraph. about like iraq posed a threat to international peace and security on account of its weapons of mass destruction unless i did not been the prevailing wisdom of the prevailing judgment across the world with respect to sir

laurence we were in good company we couldn't have known then what we know now, and from my point of view and examining the record of seven saddam hussein and his activities after the gulf war, and in the fact he had effectively cleared out of the inspectors in fleet 98, leaving that 200 page final report in and adding all the circumstances together like to assume no doubt he had these programs and i never would have pursued the strategy which i did, but of course looking at it today it may look slightly odd, but from where we were at the time and where everybody else was, that's the crucial thing, when it came to the debate with of the

security council partners in september and october, november of 2002 is indeed the beginning of 20003 no one was saying he hadn't gotten this stuff having dealt with. speed i don't want to dwell on this because we talked about it before. just to pose one question to you which is going back into the intelligence assessments. the issue this time is on the presentation and how the big issue at the dossier is how you bring assessments made by the jic and publish them. is there another question that could have been posed to the jic given that we were not pushing very hard to get the issue into the united nations and inspectors might come back which would be are you absolutely sure of this case?

who did not have been sensible for the intelligence agencies to just go over what they knew and ask the question if the inspectors to get back what is it that may be there, hawken vince darbee of this? >> well, i mean, one of i assure the lessons for what you are going to see in your inquiry that if i were sitting on your side of the table i would be drawling that yes that is sensible is the benefit of hindsight, of course. what i am trying to do is tell you how it felt at that time which was that that further look wouldn't have been necessary if it had been necessary it wouldn't have been used in a different a result because a lot of times the inspectors had said anything about this offered a native -- authority it was a 98

cullom 99 and what they said was alarming. sorry to repeat this point but people think that we made up the idea that there was a wmd in iraq and that it was all sort of a confection to justify the military action and this wasn't around the world. but just looking at the , 1441, sorry, free, recognizing the threat iraq long compliance and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to the national peace and secure that's not saying we think this might pose a threat, but it does pose it. >> the issue isn't whether or not it was made up, it just goes back to the issue that we will certainly be coming back to which is challenging and testing some assumptions. >> could also just add this? rino -- i have fought about this a great deal, and you could meet the obligations, i don't, but we

were subject to groupthink. but bearing in mind that these discussions inside the government were taking place in a framework of a huge debate that was securing worldwide as well and others were coming with their own assessments of whether iraq posed a threat or not. now, for a simple, i think of the month of september, 2002, two weeks before the dozier, the british government was published, the iiss published its own assessment, which far from saying we don't think that there is a problem, actually went rather further than the british government's own assessment. so you had these other independent benchmarks which were not raising the questions which may be now with the benefit of million years of hindsight should have been raised. everybody was in the same place.

>> okay. i think we are going to -- >> yes, we will take a short naudible conversations] >> well, let's resume on to the 1441. i would like to pick up the point you're making earlier about the importance of the u.n. loud and less persuading the american for helping to persuade the americans to follow its. going down the u.n. routt is one thing that the question that really a rise is the end is where is that intended to lead? in july of 2002, a paper was produced which was entitled iraq conditions for military action but was a cabinet office paper, a version of which has appeared in the public domain. the paper asked ministers to

agree that the u.k. engage the u.s. on, a quote from the public domain and -- no, i don't -- i could come off from the public domain, now in the public domain -- i have to get these things right colin quote a realistic political strategy which includes identifying the the successions of saddam hussein and creating the conditions necessary to justify government military action, which might include an ultimatum for the return of u.n. weapons inspectors to iraq. on the 14th of september, use in the prime minister a paper in title iraq pursuing the ulin route, and tero in summary we should deliver a more intrusive inspection regime. so what was the purpose that we

were aiming for in what became resolution 1441? was it to ensure the return of the weapons inspectors to iraq or was it to quote in the cabinet office paper create the conditions necessary to justify government military action. >> the purpose of 1441 was as it is stated to secure compliance by saddam hussein with the obligations imposed on him by the security council. i mean, the resolution means what it says, sir roderick, it's clear. and as i have said probably to the point of tedium, had saddam hussein comply with the resolution, he would have stayed in the post. in the the very minimum it would have been impossible for any british government to have taken part in any military action, but i don't believe military action would have taken place because the cause would have gone.

>> the purpose was to secure compliance and avoid military action. it wasn't to be an ultimatum, as it were, that would then facilitate military action. >> it was of the there was an excuse of military action. certainly not. in my first statement to the inquiry in january of last year, i quoted kofi annan say in the words to the effect -- and i can find the except quotation if you want -- sometimes diplomacy has to be backed by the threat and if necessary, useful for speed is a well-known quotation a and it is true. you are familiar with this as an experienced diplomat yourself. it was coming to use the jargon, based on the idea of course of diplomacy, but its purpose, as i say, was to secure compliance, essentially the disarmament of iraq, and that is what we set

about achieving. >> i mean, you sit in your second written statement to the inquiry last year that you could see no prospect of cabinet or parliamentary approval for military action in the absence of the u.k. being successful wimpling down the u.n. routt, which makes it sound as if getting approval from a little reaction by going down the u.n. route was what we were trying to do. your office wrote in august of 2002 to sir david manning saying we have now done a further work on the possibility of a security council ultimatum in iraq. mr. blair said it was in his evidence the other day that instead of action immediately, the ultimatum first, by which he was referring to the period before the americans had agreed to the u.n. route for.

then he said the ultimatum with the given sanction. so your offices talking of an ultimatum. mr. blair, interpreting and to us last week, was talking of this as ultimatum with the u.n. sanction. so is this not actually seen as a step in the direction of military action, that being the object if that the united states and the united kingdom had been going through the u.n. route in the autumn of 2002? >> well, no, with respect. i think it is to turn on a parity of 1441 and to turn its head what i had said. this resolution contains, if you like, an ultimatum. i mean, it talks about the final

letter to the. it then op13 talks about the serious consequences, which has stephen patteson explains everyone knows means military action of the was in noncompliance. so it contained its own ultimatum, but the point about the ultimatum, sir roderick, is the offer the object of the ultimatum ": alternatives. there are two doors, and one is in the case of saddam hussein marked "survival of your government and a few but with disarmament,," the other alternative meant military action against it and the consequences which followed. the history of diplomacy is replete with exceed those of the final opportunities or ultimatum

of one kind or another. i don't see any of objection of that and indeed the whole purpose of the policy is it possible to avoid war and that is what i was seeking to do and what the resolution sought to do. >> we will come back a bit later on to the question of whether the timetable for the military action was constructed and handled in such a way and handled in such a way as to encourage him to go through the door to compliance with the other door. you talked earlier about your position, your teams on this and you set out very clearly last year the course of diplomacy and in the hope that he would indeed comply. we discussed earlier where mr. blair was coming from. wasn't it the case any way as a witness from sis put it to lessen his evidence that it was

clear that nothing short of decisive action in iraq was one to satisfy the americans? so in signing up to the u.n. route kuhl was about what was in their mind? and was about why they were determined that it was going to do nothing to fetter their ability to take military action or require a second resolution? >> i don't think you can generalize about the americans, not even about the american administration. indeed, to make a profound error if you do that. i think that there was, to coin a phrase, a gleam in the eye of some members of the administration about military action, but my experience -- >> including the president? >> no, i was about to see that. no. my experience with president bush was that she in the end when faced with the decision was

much more thoughtful than he is often credited for, and not -- and he was subject, of course, to very strong and conflicting pressures but there are also external realities facing even a u.s. president. whatever the wishes of richard perle or john bolten, these neocon a outriders of the administration to kind of change the whole world, there were realities and the reality was that of saddam hussein had complied with the 1441, the inspectors would have said that. it would have been public. the security council could of conceivably have had the debates it had in the early part of 2003. because we would have been celebrating a compliance. there would have been the inspectors all over iraq. as i say, but it is worth repeating, there would have been no responsibility of the u.k. being involved in military action at all and i don't

believe that even if president bush had been ill-advised enough to want to go to the war he would have done so. what would be the cause of the war in those circumstances? when he himself had said, yes, they didn't like the regime and in the legal theory the regime change was their objective, but he made this case for the regime change on the base of the threat posed by saddam hussein. if the inspectors were then saying by the route which he, himself, president bush, had himself led the endorsed, that the threat head-on, what does he then say? you know, he has to make the case of congress and to his own troops. >> there were many who were arguing, and it has been argued to us by some witnesses, that the threat would never have gone as long as saddam was there but

let's park that. ty presses. there are doing the threat never would have gone as long as saddam hussein was there. but let's -- we discuss the legal the aspect of the 144130 extensively last year and i don't want to go off of that again, but i do simply to ask you about certain points that have come out and evidence either the classified material or from which mrs. since we last met you. sir michael www.-- in a letter copied to the office a minute to edward it would have been warned that the resolution been in the draft wouldn't give authorization based on the

authority to use force in resolution 678. then on the 18th of october the lord goldsmith telephone you to make exactly the same point. this wouldn't authorize the force. on foot after the first of october, the lawyers also reiterated the advice of the draft then the contemplation did not authorize the use of force to repel the sixth of november michael wrote to your office, that's just two days before the adoption of 1441, to state that it did not itself authorize the use of force or revive the authorization to use force in the resolution 678. now, given that as we had started the negotiations come in and we have heard this, too, from witnesses, it was a central objective of the british government of the resolution should provide the authorization to use force in resolution 678 without the need for a further

security council resolution. what impact did this advice that we had not achieved that objective have one policy for concluding the negotiations and where did it leave us at the end of the negotiations? >> michael is a distinguished lawyer, but he wasn't going to be the person making the decision. in any event as i understand it, he was not involved in the process and wasn't aware foley of the negotiation history. it also is the case with the foreign office lawyer was involved, tom ian macleod took a different view about the effects of 1441, and as i now know -- i didn't know this when i was here before -- that ian macleod was

the only foreign office lawyer that took a different view from the elizabeth wilmhurst and michael wood and he authorized me to give you his name and private from the foreign office lawyer has told me he certainly to the same view as ian macleod and his view was that a significant number of foreign office lawyers also took the same view and i am not for a moment suggesting that the elizabeth wilmhurst claimed foreign office lawyers were the same as needed in the other good faith. but my information is different hers, and i believed this, that we were in a tent on negotiating a self-contained resolution.

and as peter goldsmith said in his own evidence, expletive i think it was last year in explaining why he had come to a decision that in the circumstances 1441 did authorize the use of force colin one of the reasons he said was that of fish he knew that the only red light of the americans is it should be a self-contained resolutions and they would never agree to a resolution that was a self-contained. i also just say that everybody else we were negotiating with took the same view as jeremy greene stock pointed out if we had been ready to accept the resolution that required another resolution we would have gotten it within a week. we wouldn't have to argue the conjunctions and the semicolons, but in my view knowing the history what he said was absolutely clear it did revise

that recalling its resolution. >> you were being given contrary advice by senior legal authority in the government, more goldsmith, the senior legal authority in the foreign office, sir michael wood. you said you subsequently heard that there were for an office lawyers and iian macleod to -- these were not the people of devising you. iian macleod listened advising you that the time. >> at indy 500 ebit we were seeking to get the best resolution that we could, and in my view we did, and as i say, it is -- yes, i knew what michael wood's to view was and i said that against the final decision the attorney general kalin when faced with a real situation was was to see the milledge reaction was lawful. it doesn't matter if anybody said it wasn't lawful but he wasn't going to be the arbiter. our view was shared by others

and significantly, our view that this was a self-contained resolution, which inappropriate circumstances had authority for the military action it was shared by the french. now the great industry out there which suggests just ignores the fact that not only do we think this coming to the americans but the french fought to this, too can you have on the record what the ambassador told the council of the foreign relations in late march, 2003. >> we have been there several times -- savitt but it is a non-trivial point, sir roderick. they knew that they put forward all sorts of alternatives in the draft to water it down a of the require ressa and resolution. and they also knew that we filled it unacceptable which is how we got to the conjunction of op4 ten connolly 11, 12 and 13. that was the central architecture of it. >> i am trying to understand the

situation of the tide in the light of a device that you are being given. in my right in thinking that when 1441 was adopted to told the cabinet a second resolution what did have the necessary? >> i.t. gib did, yes. >> but for goldsmith telephoned you of the 18th of october to see that unless the circumstances changed we would need a second resolution to authorize the use of force. how was it without the views having been reconciled you were just able to ignore florida goldsmith's edify seat to get different line of the cabinet? >> i didn't ignore the lord will smith's advice. if you recall from the records actually from the foreign office's record what his record, of that conversation. it was also, he accepted that external use we couldn't possibly start talking about the possibility of requiring a second resolution because it would have rendered the whole strategy worthless. peter goldsmith understood that. i can't remember whether he was or was bought at the cabinet. i don't remember him raising an

objection to the way in which i was putting the point or subsequently. i might also say at that time my feeling was one of the immense relief we had gotten 1441. i might be accused of naivete although it is not quite often an accusation made against me but i believe that we, because of the force of four to 41, the international consensus behind this, we were able to resolve this peacefully, so the issue of a second resolution or not wouldn't arise. that is my hope and my belief. >> thank you. >> let's turn now to the military timetable and inspections. lawrence will start. >> i will start of the question of the military timetable. lord term all told us that the cabinet was repeatedly promised a discussion about the military options but this never happened why do you think that was? >> i think it was two things:

one, it was the prime minister's style to use cabinet for breeding purposes more than for decisions. that had -- i know some say it didn't happen, but my reading is that happened to a significant extent to begin with a and margaret thatcher's cabinet. the second and related point was this concern about the leaks, that if you are looking at military planning, you have to keep the matter is pretty tight. >> understood. do you think that cabinet ministers were aware that for much of 2002, indeed some way into 2003, one of the options that was seriously considered was supporting the united states it came to the military action but without using land forces or a major land component? >> they would have had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be

aware of this. i mean, if i may say so, i filled stephen wall's evidence of this, it was incredulous. this was the issue. i mean, there were 100 people whose land in the early motion in march, 2002, we're reading about the prospect of the military action. if i may just think this point, over the summer of 2002 there was a buildup of concern about iraq. were we going to back the americans? were we going to back them without any united nations security council resolutions? because that was not resolved until president bush made his statement in the general assembly on the 12th of september. the consequence of that was that the prime minister decided to recall parliament. this has been the air rushed out of this as if the decision to go

to war was made by a couple of people in a sealed room. it wasn't. the parliament was recalled. it was a parliament that the dossier was presented and the debate was about the possibility of military action. >> my question was what the possibility of the latter reaction, it was the type of military action that we might take. >> i don't think that any member of the cabinet wasn't aware for a second that there was a possibility of the united kingdom being involved in very significant military action. >> were they aware that there was a possibility of being involved in military action, supporting the united states, but not putting a major land component into the field? >> i think they were aware of that, too. sorry. this is -- you would have to ask them if you wanted to get a precise assessment of their opinions. i know you have already had

evidence from margaret beckett and john reed, who said they were fully aware of what was the -- what was going on. and i might also say that subsequent to sir stevan will's the evidence i have had four members of the cabinet, colleagues at the time, coming up to me to express astonishment that he thought that they were unaware of the alternatives and were not briefed, an absolute astonishment. so they were briefed on the military options as well? >> yes. i think again he would have to ask them if the prime minister, because obviously i was completely in the loop on all this, but those who wanted -- my understanding is, and this is second hand -- those who wanted briefings on the intelligence received it. >> you got briefings on the military? >> i received that anyway. i was in it is very different --

i was aware of this. i was in a very different position from most members of the cabinet. >> mr. blair told us in a statement last month it was clear from the continuing discussion with the u.s. in late 2002/to those in three that march was the likely date for the military action. was also clear to you at that time? >> yes. what date was he talking about then? >> well, late 2003, -- fleet to listen to come early 2003. >> my recollection is that initially there was talk of military action, the decided the to be in january, and then it moved to february, i and then it moved to march. i mean, that's what happened, and we were trying to push it to the right. some of the that set a timetable within which the diplomacy -- >> but there was a time table. >> and we have also discussed with mr. blair and jonathan

powell pressure from the u.k. in early march about, as you put it, moving it to the right and some time was given. it was a week rather than more than a week that was being requested. do you recall words you part of that push? did you talk about this with colin powell? >> i talked about it too colin how will as i recall. and i happened to have a complete trust in him and his judgment. i was relying on the law only his diplomatic experience but also his position as a chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. my recollection is -- he said to be the could delete it, but you couldn't believe the start of any military action for too long. you either have to log on or to stand them down. there were anxieties, as ig were aware, sir lawrence, about the fact that the weather was going