>> in your countries contribute to economic development and growth and a more equitable society? but i will give our leaders five minutes to talk about their countries, talk about what they are doing in terms of democracy and economic growth, and then we will proceed to a more informal dialogue and discussion. president karoma, i'll start

with you. >> thank you, ambassador carson. let me use this opportunity to thank the president of the institute of peace of the united states. we are happy that you have invited us this morning, and let me use this opportunity to also thank the institute and america for the role they have played in restoring peace in sierra leone. sierra leone has a unique story in terms of peace and peace development, because as a country we have experienced peace after independence, and then we went into a period of civil conflict, and thereafter we are now bulling on our democracy -- building on our democracy and p developing the country again.

the story of the conflict in sierra leone is an open book. normally one should just move forward because we all know it. and what we take pride in is the fact that we have committed ourselves the moving forward. what we take pride in is the fact that sierra leone is an example of a country that that is emerged from peace and have quickly restored order, and we are now developing the country. now, for us to get to the point where we are today, the war was formally declared over in 2002, and since then the country took the appropriate steps that have not only ended war, have not only built on peace, but we have now positioned ourselves to

development. now, on issues like this we took the first steps of establishing a truth and reconciliation commission which was geared towards insuring that the communities and the people within the country are reconciled. because it is important for a country that has been through war to be a reconciled country, a reconciled community. to move forward. fully in that, we also establish -- following that we also establish the trc which was a committee chaired with the responsibility to take on those that have the highest responsibility for the crimes of the world. and some of which was organized in the country and we had an outcome of what happened in the hague which are still. but these are all institutions

that we have put together to end the war and reconcile ourselves. now, in moving forward, many building the peace, building the democracy and development, we have taken steps to put in place institutions that will insure that we move forward in a manner of peace and a manner in which democracy will be observed, and a manner in which inclusiveness will be guaranteed in the society. now, in this led us to the establishment of institutions of of good governance. we have established the political party registration commission that is charged with the responsibility of absolving and monitoring activities of political parties. we have the national commission for democracy is also an institution that is set up to

insure that we sensitize people and get them involved in the democratic process. we also have the institution of monitoring and maintaining the independence of the media, the imc. the national electoral commission was also an institution that has been established. we have a good number of these institutions that are established to guarantee good governance in the country. and in the process we have reviewed the security infrastructure in the country. the police and the military went through a security sector review process that has transformed them from security forces that are not democratic, but they are now security forces that are democratic and that respect the constitution. now, these are all institutions that we have tried to reform

including the judiciary. the role of the judiciary is very important to us. we believe that when the judiciary becomes independent and professional, it will play the role in which everybody will be, feel protected, and people outside will also feel protected. so we've created these institutions to insure that democracy is guaranteed, the human rights of individuals are guaranteed. and mostly that they have common language in trying to conduct their fears to the extent that our human rights commission has been granted -- [inaudible] the last year because of the effectiveness that we have -- [applause] we have also been through a situation in which because of the human rights record of the commission and also the political commitment as a government and as a leader, we

have of provided which has maid it possible for -- made it possible for journalists to express their writing. there's a freedom of speech, and there has been a new movement even after the war when we had anybody been incarcerated for expressing a political opinion. [applause] so we have an effective human rightses circuit. these are great achievements that have led the way for a democratic government. now, within it as a government we thought that we have to create an enabling environment for investments to come in many. and we have -- to come in. and we have affected a lot of changes in our law ares, a lot of strengthening of institutions and a lot of adoption of fiscal measures that have given signals out that we are sanitizing the economy, and we are getting it

for adequate investment. and this has been recognized by the war ban positioned as one of the ten top reformers in terms of -- [applause] we have also in the process attracted investments in the regions of hundreds of millions of dollars. these investments are now impacting on, changing the agriculture and mining sectors. so a lot of things are going on that clearly indicate that there is a need more us to -- a need for us to continue with the democratic process. and when there is democracy and stability, it will open up investment opportunities. and that is where we are as a nation, that is where we now believe that sierra leone is no longer a country of blood diamonds which it's known for in the past. [applause] sierra leone is now an

investment destination. sierra leone is the place to do business. this has been recognized by the world spank, the im -- bank, the imf. last year our economy was referred to as the hottest economy, the place to do investment. and we registered a very high rate of growth that is not comparable to any other african country. [applause] this is as a result of the measures that we have taken, the democracy that we are building, the openness of our economy and the structures that we are putting in place to guarantee that investment is not only attractive, but it is also protected. and it is also seen in the lives of the people. more implement, better conditions of service. and i believe that sierra leone is on the move. so let me, mr. ambassador, stop at this point and maybe you'll

react as we move on. >> absolutely. [applause] >> president karoma, thank you for those very rich thoughts. and we will come pack to some of thish -- come back to some of the issues that you've pointed to. let me next turn to our president from malawi, we'll start with president banda. >> thank you. thank you very much, indeed. ambassador carson, distinguished panelists or who are also distinguished presidents and prime minister of africa, allow me to take this opportunity to thank president obama and, of course, the institute for organizing this event. but more especially, for president obama to invite african leaders that he feels have done a lot in putting in

place institutions that have brought about pure and proper democracy that has also encouraged private sector with creation and growth. allow me to talk about malawi before i became president. in 2009 i stood for elections with the president of malawi as his running mate. i didn't realize at the time of elections that he was using me to get the female vote because i had spent 30 years of my life working with women at the grass roots. so i had that platform to bring to the table. two weeks into the office i realized that he wanted his brother the take over for me. what that did is that in the next three years it was about the succession process to insure that the brother takes over. as a result, as a nation we

diverted from the government agenda and focused on that succession. by 2012, last year, the economy add collapsed. there was no fuel in the country, there was no -- [inaudible] the economy had gone on the blood market. people were sleeping in the filling station. there was no food, there was no drugs in the hospital. i had been completely sidelined, in fact, i had been expelled from his party. and i had formed my own party, but the constitution did not allow me to -- [inaudible] he tried twice. but another thing that i learned is that truly the ship is a love affair between you and the people. [applause] and for 30 years you must fall

in love with the people, and the people must fall in love with you. when that happens, nobody can break that relationship. so for 30 years i had worked with the people and he miserably failed to get the people away from me. so that's what i had in 2012 by the time he passed away. and malawians decided that the constitution must be respected. the position was very clear. the vice president was supposed to take over when the president dies or becomes incapacitated. i'm starting from there so that you can understand that by the time i got into office, the collapsed economy and all that was going, i was not aware. but i must also take this opportunity to thank american people. because in march of 2012, i was invited to a conference in south africa organized by serving and

retired military generals. general meyers was at that meeting. i was meeting him for the first time. the general from sierra leone. these distinguished men and women were meeting to discuss africa's conflict areas, postconflict, reconstruction and reconciliation. and they invited me to go and chair the drrc case study. i didn't realize that in five weeks my general who was also attending that meeting would be deciding my fate. and i will forever be grateful for ambassador carson and all those who worked so hard in 48 hours to make sure that the constitution is respected and

that i'm allowed to take oath and become president of my country. [applause] in the past year, what we have done is to get back on track, because by the tomb i became president -- by the time i became president, we were off track. and so we had to work very quickly, go back to our ways, get back on track, strengthen government institutions, make sure that we get the level of comfort that we required in order for other donors to come back including the u.k. that had cut off relationship with ma malawi. in 102 days, we were able to get the level of comfort, we we were able to begin to get our donors to get back. we improved our relations with our neighbors, we restored our relationship with the united

kingdom. [applause] we also had to do several things, asthma law by government. one was to repeal all the laws that we felt were controversial and were against human rights and good governance. [applause] so in july of last year, i organized what i called the national dialogue on the economy. at this conference we chose five sectors, namely mining, energy, tourism, infrastructure and agriculture. those projects were chosen, those sectors were chosen because of the potential they have of to create wealth -- they have to create wealth. and within each sector out of the five sectors, we have also chosen three projects. at the end of 2013, we must face

malawians with three projects for each of those sectors. i want you, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, to know that why in 14 days -- 14 months our implementing a very, very unpopular reform program. in any normal situation, i should have given up and backtracked. why? because i must win the elections next year. [applause] but i am committed to stay the course. i am committed to stay the course, because it's the right thing to do. and even if it ends up costing me the elections next year, that's okay. that's fine. [applause] we also have immomented social -- implemented social programs to make sure that we cushion the shock of the

devaluation of the -- [inaudible] that we were forced to implement last year in order to bring our economy back on track. it also meant introducing austerity measures including setting the -- [inaudible] and reducing my own salary by 30%. poverty eradication is a top on my agenda, and we believe that we will only begin to change the situation of malawians when we begin to help malawians create jobs and create wealth. so we are talking about a private sector-led economy. i also introduced two presidential initiatives, one poverty and hunger reduction where we are mobile using women and youth to grow crops that have export potential.

in other words, diversify from the traditional growing of maize for survival. i also insist that women and youth must get support. i am talking about, yes, creating wealth, creating jobs, but also assuring that women and youth have special opportunities. and having worked at grassroots for 30 years, what has become very clear to me is that the situation of women and children in africa is only going to change if we address issues of income at household level. and helping women and youth of to have an income is critical and is a must. we don't even have a choice, because when you talk about population growth, maternal mortality, lack of education for the girl child, at the center of

all that is poverty. and until and unless we assist women and youth get income at household level for the poor, the situation of women and children, our economies in africa will never change. i have worked with women and children for 30 years, and i know that for me that's the only way we can improve the lives of people in africa. malawi is expecting a bumper harvest this year. malawians have worked extremely hard to diversify their economy, and even for the legumes that they've grown, we're expecting a bumper harvest. we are encouraging investors to come and invest in agriculture, in energy, in mining and in tourism. but agriculture is the easiest for palau yang -- malawians to

enter. malawi is a success story, because in the past year with all the efforts we have made, we are expected to grow by 5%, our economy, we have reduced maternal mortality from 675 to 470. we have added 7,000 classes going on at the moment. we have improved our position according to the more -- [inaudible] index. we are working hard to improve the lives of women. we have studied a very strong exchange program. a month ago she sent a delegation from liberia who came to malawi, and we sent a delegation to liberia from malawi. i believe that together if africa we are ready to help to

assist our people, but we also calling upon investors from the u.s. to come to africa. of the best thing that has happened to me during this trip is now hearing president obama and hearing -- [inaudible] saying what i've been trying for 30 years, that it is only when we assist our people on the continent of africa to do business, to have an income at household level, that's the only way we are going to eradicate poverty. thank you very much more your anticipation. [applause] >> president banda, thank you very, very much for those excellent remarks. you would now like to call -- i would now like to call on our third president, president macky

sall, for his comments. >> thank you very much. [speaking french] ambassador carson, president -- >> translator: i would like to express my apologies for it being late. in fact, we are talking about democracy, and democracy assumes the sovereignty of the people. yesterday after our dinner the people of senegal, people from senegal and the united states from all states wished to meet with me and, therefore, i had to spend some time and, actually, i was with them until four in the morning. and that gave me very little time to come here, so i would like to extend my apologies. ladies and gentlemen, i am the president of a small country by its size. we have 12 million citizens in my country, but we are an african country which has provided a great contribution to

universal democracy. senegal, indeed, has experienced in 1786, a date when fundamental, important things occurred in this country, in 1786, in 1787 we had a very torrent revolution in the -- important revolution in the north of the country which allowed us to rid ourselves of a traditional yoke, traditional power in order to consolidate a governance based not on birth, but based around the choice of the various components of the population at the time. and specifications were made up at the time, and we said we need to choose a leader -- north mali at the time -- based on these standards, your knowledge, your various standards of leadership.

and this was already codified in 786 and 1787. in 1860, long after these events can lasted more than a century, at the time when senegal was still a colony voting already started in senegal already in 1860 which means that a democratic process is neither the impetus of a single president, neither caused by a party. actually, it's the legacy of a very long process that took many years. senegal already many -- in 1914 sent its fist black member of parliament to the parliament, and he was followed by other members up until the time of penance in 1960. so it is this legacy that allowed us to have a stable

regime since 1960. we have never experienced variations or coups, and this in spite of political crisis such as the one that we had last year. we, nonetheless, remain on the right track, and we have understood that democracy is everybody's business, that democracy assumes free and transparent elections, and you must be held at specific deadlines, you must abide by the timeline, you must by the principles, the procedures, and you cannot change the rules of the game during the game. because if during a soccer game you change the rules of the game, well, you can imagine that the game will be of no longer much interest. [applause] and this, unfortunately, in this almost is what happened to us last year. so i'm talking about during this little deviation, the rules of the game were changed, and six

months prior to an election you cannot modify the rules of the electoral law. so i am the inher to have of this tradition. -- inher to have of this tradition. i'm very proud of it, because i do know that as president of the republic, there are some things that i cannot do myself. and the example is that we have a true democracy, standing institutions, and i fought against the former president who for 12 years was my boss. i was his minister, his prime minister, i was speaker of parliament. coming from a strong majority, we had a dispute. i left him. i founded my own party, and i defeated him clearly, transparently, democratically. [applause] and i came into office five days between the vote of the runoff and my swearing in of office, a country that does not have solid institutions cannot do that.

so senegal has democracy, that has to be mentioned. we've always had strong institutions. the power cannot have control over these institutions, you cannot choose new rules of the game, and that is what institutions are, good governance. good governance assumes the principle of accountability, therefore, you have to be held accountable. which means that those who are responsible for the public office, they have to -- everything that they do is accountable, and therefore, we have, we'd like to -- [inaudible] because i myself have a boeing 727 that i'm putting up for sale because, actually, it's for sale for one year now, but no one seems to be interested in buying it. it might have to be given to a museum. we have two aircraft, but senegal does not need two presidential aircraft.

this is to say that -- i told all these perks for their ministers and senior officials are no longer there. we're trying to improve senegal. we're seeking to gain investments at the national level, to strengthen the rule of law, to have an independent justice system. in countries you have to say things as they are, and even in many developed countries corruption is a fact. therefore, we pus constantly work -- must constantly work to reduce corruption down to a level that will be almost insignificant, and that is not easy because the traditions. and as long as we do not have the rule of law, as long as we don't have accountability, it will be very hard to fight corruption. but we're not losing hope. and i am convinced, i'll stop here because i don't want to go

beyond the time that was given to me, but in general i am in favor of a reduction of the term of office of the president from seven years to five years, and i'd like to tell you africa today is a continent on the march. the africa of 2013 has nothing to do with the cliches that are often expressed to talk about civil wars, where you talk about coups. but bear in mind, you have your own wars, you had the civil war, there were wars in europe up until 1945. people fought each other in europe. africa has just become independent for the most part since 1960, so it's normal there should be conflicts remaining here and there. ..

>> by sighing, that in order to have development it is essential that there be peace and stability and it is essential also to have democracy in the country. there is no development without stability. there is no development without democracy. that being said, i think that the most important thing that we can do for africa is to build capable

governments, capable states, states that can guaranty democracy and stability. a state capable of managing plurality, political plurality, social plurality. a state that can manage conflict and states in caffrey can that could -- africa, that can face the risks that are now presented in the continent and the risk that is the whole of humanity runs. i'm talking about, thinking about environmental risks, for instance. they are very important and very large but in africa we're also facing very serious social risks. for instance, i'm thinking

about an explosion on the part of the youth if we don't give them opportunities for the future. we need to train the young people for work so that they can have a better life in the future. so i think that we need governments in africa that can develop a clear vision of development. and states, governments that can develop strategies that will allow us to uply meant this vision for development to define a development agenda with very clear goals with strategies of

well-defiber-opticked and with clear paths to undertake. the nobel economic prize economy, development is freedom. in other words, when we will have higher level of development we'll reach our level of freedom and liberty and we will be in a position to consolidate democracy for good. another important factor for peace and stability in the future is of course good governance. good governance of course implies free and transparent elections, respect for the rules of the game, democratic game, that is. respect for minorities. it is essential to respect

minorities and to respect the opposition. the opposition must find its position in the political game and the opposition must also play a role in the political definition of the situation in the country and also the government must be in a position to respond to the demands and the aspirations of the population. a serious administration that looks toward providing services for the citizenry as well as the business community and if we are able to do that we'll have certainly created spaces that will take into account the plurality and the diversity of our societies and use that in order to put together very strong development agendas and in so doing also reach, or put

in place legitimate governments whose legitimacy will be of course defined by their own performance. governments that will defend the rule of law, democracy, which are all very important factors for peace and stability. but to conclude, i would like to say that africa is the continent of the future. africa can only claim to be the continent of the future because it has a very rich past. it has enormous talent, enormous capabilities and all we need to do is to really gather all this capacity, all this capability, all this talent

and make it work towards the development of africa. to use all of very abundant resources in the service of dignity for all africans and i think that presidents macky sall, president banda, are leaders that show that there is a positive africa, there is an ambitious africa out there. there is africa who can't democracy, peace, stability and africa that wants above all certainly development to insure dignity in the future for all africans, men and women. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. prime minister, very inspired remarks, very inspired remarks and we'll come back to those.

we've received a number of very, very good questions from our audience, and i would like very much to involve them in the dialogue that we're having here this morning. i will ask all of you to respond briefly to these questions and the first one is a combination of two questions from the audience and one is how do you keep your democratic progress on track and what are the challenges to doing that? and the second one is also in the same way. it says congratulations on your economies being a monk

the fastest growing in the world. what measures are you taking to keep good news moving forward? in other words, what are you doing to insure that your economies will continue to grow and that democracies will remain vibrant and alive? i will start with, perhaps, with president banda. is that okay? >> yeah. what i have done in malawi to remain a comfortable and transparent to the people of mali, is to -- malawi, to set up in my office what i'm

calling the, project implementations unit as a tool, as a center for interface with the public. they can call us up and find out what progress we're making and how implementation is taking place. number two, i helped set up a program where i interact with opposition parties. i invite them to the statehouse and discuss matters of state. rise above politics and just focus on issues that our of great importance to the people of malawi. i do the same with the civil society. i do the same with the media and i do the same with the faith community. thank you. >> could i ask president macky sall? >> [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: thank you, johnny. i think in order to maintain

a democratic standard my country must be able to continue to have a constant democratic watchdogs because the democracy does remain fragile in light of the exceptional events that occurred, our democracy was challenged. there has to be monitoring of a democracy. we are a country that is still free and independent but it is thanks to our justice system which asserted its independence. it took the right decisions. you have to have political actors who have accept free and competition. they also have to accept the outcome of the elections. the rules of the game have to be clear and transparent for all. we must also i believe, to insure that democracy sustains itself we must be fair and equitable in the distribution of wealth. to do so, we need to have a growth of that would be

inclusive whereby growth is reflected throughout society and we can give greater opportunities to each and everyone, allowing them to progress thanks to their own efforts and to improve their lives. that is a fundamental element and i'm trying to, we have various social programs. we have universal health care and we also have special family plans to give hope back to those citizens who are the weakest amongst us and to allow other people to truly develop themselves to create weflt. so it is a scale and balance that you must work with and this is what i believe to be a factor. [applause] >> prime minister? >> [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: you know i think that in order to assure continuity of a democratic state, democratic

rule, it is fundamental that we consider three different aspects. first to respect scrupulously the rules of the game. second, to build consensus as regards the principal national issues. in order to build consensus you have to have a prior strong political dialogue, bringing together the principle political parties and principle political actors as well as social dialogue with the different social actors, the unions, management, businesses, to build a minimal consensus on the important social issues of the day. the economic agenda and principally the creation of a environment seen favor by all for foreign investment and the growth for the economy. the third most important dimension has to do with the carrying out carrying out of

government and rule. governments become legitimate day by day. to the degree governments provide answers to social needs, they create channels, new channels of interaction with different aspects of society, coming up with a strong civil society. insuring that civil society have full room to grow and affirm itself. as to development per se in economic growth per se, the most important thing there would be to create factors of continuity, to create favorable environment, for business and create opportunities so that these businesses be carried out through strong investments from the private sector. >> president karoma? >> thank you. for me, maintaining the democracy is all about is

all about strict adherence to the rule of law. our society went through difficulties. in order for us to build the democratic process we have to create institutions. what is required now is situation where you have very strong institutions institutions that will regulate the whole democratic process. we have institutions for the human rights. institutions for the democracy. we have the judiciary and we have the many other institutions. when these institutions are strengthened and the capacity for, and allowed a space to run on their own without political interference i think we, with that pattern you will be able to insure that the whole society is regulated.

it is not just about people in governance providing leadership. it is about the protection of the rights of the individuals. it is about protecting the minority groups. it is about securing the vulnerable groups. and when you have in the country institutions that has the capacity to address this issue, i think sustenance of democracy insurance these institutions are given space to operate and government allows them to operate and there is complete suppression of powers with institutions of governance. now the economy, i believe it has to be an ongoing process. now we have tried to adhere to the review of our laws, creating mechanisms wherein

they will become interesting for investors to come in and invest. that has to be sustained. that's why i very much like the system of the mcc. i mean you're qualified for a compact. for you to stay you have to insure that you meet the parameters that are expected of you on a continuous basis. and by doing that you will be able to sustain the democracy. you will insure you have the opportunity to improve what you have done, to guaranty the status that you have. it is a question of continuing to do what is right, improving on it and allowing the institutions to grow and become very strong in our respective democracis. >> thank you very much. democratic institutions clearly are a vital

ingredient to any strong, stable, and vibrant democracy. but every good democracy is underpinned by a vibrant civil society. a civil society capable of speaking out. a civil society capable of, of organizing, of participating and being felt that it is being heard. let me ask a question in this regard from one of our audience members. and this person says, what is your response to leaders in africa who have become skeptical and hostile to foreign funding of civil society organizations? and how do you, in fact,

treat and respect your own civil societies? >> i will start with, with president macky sall. >> translator: thank you. thank you, ambassador carson. in senegal we have a very dynamic civil society and that civil society has played a major role in consolidating our democracy. it has done a lot in political terms to insure that elections are free and civil society in our country is very active in promoting human rights. the various national human rights organizations which work not only within sinegal but with neighboring

countries as well. with the ecowas countries. they are very involved in conflict resolution and peace, notely in the kasmov region. we have dynamic civil society organizations. we have civil societies that work on religious issues these organizations have a lot of freedom to do what they want and we can look at, we have to, if you look closely where they get their funding you have to make sure that funding provided to a lot of these religious societies isn't diverted into illegal activities, for example, terrorism. so you have to look very closely at funding, the funding these organizations receive but we give a great deal of freedom and a great deal of leeway to civil society organizations in our country.

they are active across the entire country and we have no particular objections to foreign funding for ngos and civil society organizations in senegal. as long as all this is done according to national legislation. as long as no laws are violated, senegal has no problem with foreign funding of ngos? >> prime minister neves? >>. >> translator:, you know, we think that, development of different african countries will be through a competitive integration of all these countries working together in the long run. obviously some countries that are in the process of transition. that there's a certain distrust regarding unknown investors but i think that

gradually continent-wide we're creating spaces where first work can be counted for in each country to create an ever more favorable environment for business and investment. the creation of new opportunities for firms interested in doing business in our countries as well as, i say, creating necessary conditions to go out and attract foreign capital. we're hoping that this investment, ultimately, hopefully will be for the true development of country, of the countries at hand. in cape verde we have a national investment law that favors the attraction of private investments as well as a fiscal incentives policy and law to create greater incentives for those that wish to take advantage

of cape verde investments as well as working to create competitive sectors so that firms can invest, that they can be more competitive and do business and make profits for themselves. investors can satisfy their own stockholders. >> mr. president, president koroma. >> thank you very much. i personally believe that the civil society play a very important role in the entire democratic process. i believe they should be partnered with government and the efforts of the developing the specific sectors that they represent. we have no problems with the operations of civil society. i think the difficulty is when you are faced with the

situation wherein you can not clearly define the role of the civil society. what are the objectives that we are trying to achieve. a professional civil society that's, becomes an advocate for the voiceless, representing the other side of the views that are not normally visible from a government point of view is acceptable but when civil society gets to the point of pointing out negative, only to attract foreign attention and foreign funding i think it is coupler productive. what i believe strongly that the civil society should be -- [inaudible] [applause] we consider them partners in

development. thank you. [applause] >> president banda. >> in malawi, civil society provides checks and balances. they are partners in any democracy. and i myself came from the civil society. so i'm a product of the civil society. i look upon them as partners. when there is a fight between the civil society and government, it only confuses the ordinary people, the voiceless but we're all supposed to serve. in malawi they're involved in voter education. they're involved in self-guarding the rights of disadvantaged people. and any leader that is a democrat should take advantage of the issues they raise in order to serve the

people better. right now they're having total freedom but i always say that the civil society in malawi and the international ngos that come to work in malawi have to forge partnerships. they have to work in partnership because it is the local people, that are indigenous in civil society in malawi are better to understand the issues that affect ordinary people. and when they forge partnerships they are better able to yield more for the benefit of ordinary people. it is really breaks my heart when the international community come in, international ngos come in and think they can do it alone and ignore the indigenous people [applause] we know what to do. we know how to get from point a to point b. we know how to get our people out of desperate situation, out of poverty,

or whatever issue you want to raise and it breaks my heart heart when international ngos come in and resources where they don't know where to start from. they don't know what to do. when they go into partnership with ordinary people, local people, local indigenous ngos then they're better and able to achieve more when they work on the ground. >> president banda, thank you very much for those remarks. two groups in africa that are essential to africa's well-being and future are sometimes neglected and overlooked. we've gotten several questions from the audience that asked, in many african countries african youth come

buys -- comprise the majority of the population. in many african countries women are over 50% of the population. what are you doing to insure that the youth of your countries are going to turn out to be the future leaders of your country who are going to continue to support democracy and strong economic development? what are you doing to insure the inclusivety of women in all of your activities in your countries? and we'll start, if we could, this time around with prime minister neves. >> well --.

>> translator: these are two of the more interesting matters that could possibly be discussed. first let's look at youth. . . >> translator: whatever type of training and education invests heavily in that to create conditions where they have the possibilities to be employed once graduated and to create the necessary conditions to support

their entrepreneurial spirit, that they have spirit and that they have space to build a business. that they can set up their own terms of employment, create their own businesses. we can create incubators within firms as it were, but also conditions permitting them to be hired, promoted, that they too have benefits from tax incentives. we already have many youths creating their small businesses where for the first three years they are able to operate tax-free. and we also furthered measures where the youth can have greater access, easier access to all levels of education. in the last few years, 2% of our full gdp budget in education we suddenly rose to 32% which is

one of the highest rates of spending on education in africa. now, in terms of women, women undoubtedly represent the future of humanity period. [applause] and so, and, therefore, it's fundamental to invest in the equality and equity that they deserve. and to give you an example, we have, i have budgets that include gender questions, gender evaluation. because typically, poverty is more frequent in female quarters. we have to reduce at all costs the inequalities in the distribution of power, in the distribution of wealth, and we have created an equality institute or a gender equality and equity institute to promote even more, even greater equality

between men and women. and let me tell you that behind -- i used -- it used to be said behind every great man, there's a great woman. we now wish to say beside every great man is a great woman. [applause] and that's the line we wish to further in the future creating many opportunities. and to give an example, even at the level of government at a given point in time and even to this date, we have full parity amongst all our -- in 15 ministers, we have eight women ministers. and these are an important and essential portfolio for government maintenance so that they can participate fully in the governance of the country. and this is not really a question of just numbers, but we support business entrepreneurial spirit by women, education for women to support women in the creation of small businesses.

their own businesses. and lastly, to combat a question which has been fundamental throughout, and that's violence against women. unfortunately, if africa we're well aware of the fact that this problem still exists, and we have to do everything possible, everything within our power to combat domestic violence, to combat gender-based violence. and we approved and with the support of the united states government and secretary of state hillary clinton gave us immense support in this regard, we were able to approve a law against gender-based violence which is having immediate and great results throughout cape very day. [applause] and let me wind up, these are very deep questions. i maybe have gone on too much, but they are two issues that are

of very deep personal interest to me. but let me say we have to have a full commitment by african leaders in terms of greater opportunities to be given to youth in the future and the equality and gender equality and equity to give ever greater opportunities to women. only in a society where equals coexist can there be people or that are free -- people that are free. only in a society with free people can there be greater equality. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. president? on the issue of the youths, as a government we have taken it very seriously because over the period the youths who are the most affected during the war and

others and, therefore, in trying to rehabilitate the country and move the country forward, we must pay attention on the youths. that is why we have established a national youth commission that is charged with the responsibility of coordinating all the youth activities as we engage them. additionally, recently i have appointed -- created a ministry of youth to really focus on activities of the youth. and we consider the youth factor so important, and personally i have committed my second term to developing the youths and showing that they are whats tated, they are -- whats tated, they are empowered with what it takes for them to realize the benefits of the new opportunities tar imagined -- that are imagined in the country. [applause] now, we have also involved a good number of them in a

position of trust. i have youths serving as full-time ministers in my government. [applause] giving them opportunities to be exposed to leadership. so it's not about leaders of tomorrow. they are already involved in the leadership process of today. [applause] and on the issue of the woman is also very important, they constitute a majority of our population. and, of course, we have unique complexities and backgrounds, most of it is customary and otherwise. but to address the issues to empower the women to insure that we position them alongside with men, we have enacted the gender act that have showed that the issues of inheritance, the issues of marriage regularize.

we have also enacted a censure of -- [inaudible] act, that makes any sexual act against a woman a crime against the state. and we have also given women positions that have not been provided them in the past. the chief justice of the country is a woman. the solicitor general is a woman. the commissioner general for the revenue authority is a woman. and we have a host of them. they dominate the supreme court. and we have a good number of them now being exposed to service, role models. and even in the military we are a country that has a general that is a woman, and these are examples of giving opportunities to women to take leadership roles. [applause] i think we have succeeded in

that. thank you. >> thank you, mr. president. president banda? >> yeah, thank you very much, indeed. more than 50% of the women, of the people of malawi are women. and those more than 50% give birth to the rest. [laughter] [applause] >> when we empower women, we empower a nation. when we look at africa, we look at the population growth. when you look, you find a woman with more than ten children and you tell this woman don't you

think this is enough, she'll look back at you and say you have wealth, i have chirp. so -- i have children. so until and unless we deal with the issue of income, churn will continue -- children will continue to be born. when you go in hospital, when i fight maternal mortality, when i go in hospitals, the women or that are dying giving birth are between the ages of 15 to 19. the reason why they're dying is because they're not going to secondary school, because they can't afford the $50. so a community then encourages them to get married. and millions and until we sort out the -- unless and physical we sort out the issue of income at household level, these girls are going to continue to die. because they're staying four more years in secondary school is not only about our future, but also her life. the health of the woman. therefore, it is imperative, it

is very important for us to sort out the issue of income at household level, particularly for the poor. so education for the women, number two, their position in leadership. we have -- [inaudible] and i want to thank all african men for creating space for women of africa to participate in leadership at this level. [applause] i've said in this, because there are some parts of this world that are still struggling to get woman into statehouse, so it's a fact. but in africa we have two women presidents, but we are -- [applause] the head of the african union, a woman. so it is our time as african women to seize in this opportunity, to get as many women as possible into leadership. [applause]

the third is education for the girl child. our girls must go to school. and our girls must go to school and must stay in school. the fourth is income for the women. the women must have an income. because when the household at grassroots level has an m in -- an income, the girls will go to school, the girls will go to hospital. the status of the family shall automatically improve. of in malawi what we are doing is grassroots for those that missed out on education, we are mobilizing women and youth and supporting them and helping them to grow crops that have export potential so that they can have an income. so we have mobilized the youth and women and provided them with farms to grow crops. and the good news is that this year we're heading for a bumper harvest. but i also think it is very,

very important for the youth to participate in leadership. and i want to agree with president karoma that the youth are not leaders of tomorrow. the youth, the youth are leaders of today. [applause] we participate -- we postpone their participation in leadership by telling them they are leaders of tomorrow. so perhaps allow me to introduce my minister of trade. i want to introduce my minister of trade. [applause] [laughter] thank you. i don't need to say more, i rest my case. [laughter] >> i think we're running short on time, and if i could i'm going to ask president macky sall to say a few short words on women and youth. [speaking french]

>> translator: thank you very much. it's quite difficult to say anything more after all these presentations, to say something that hasn't been said yet, but i'll just say that african society is a very young society. africa is a young continent, the prime minister said so in senegal, as in most other countries. 70% of the population is under 25. so just imagine, 70% under 25. so the challenge to our governments, these are major challenges. first of all, education which remains the cross-cutting issue be it for women or for young people. there's a proverb that says that if you train a man, you train a citizen. if you train a woman, you train a society. because a trained and educated woman that has her entire

family, her entire children benefit from her status. and this is geometrical, and this means that everybody if society will be educated and trained. so we must absolutely carry out these educational training efforts, empowerment efforts towards women, but also we must promote youth. because the youth is not taken into count, it will take its own affairs into its own hands by the street. so we absolutely need well-educated, well-trained people training the youth. it doesn't just mean having universities. yes, that's fundamental. today we have six universities, and we've created a brand new university which is in the center of the country. but above all we must provide vocational training for jobs, for skills. which means that people who do manual labor should be just as respected as people who conduct

intellectual work. and in africa we have suffered very much from that. [applause] we follow the french tradition since independence, we've always considered that people conduct manual labor are, in fact, at the bottom of the scale. which means that everybody wanted to become lawyers, doctors, engineers. but a society cannot continue according to that model. no, we need manual workers, we need baker, we need masons, we need everybody, we need everything to create a society. and we need to give value to that in order to give more jobs, more possibilities to the youth, to insure that the most productive sectors of the continent, namely agriculture, modernized agriculture should be able to occupy most of our work force. and finally, with respect to women, we have a law on gender equality which has been enforced for the elections which means a person who does not apply the

principle of parity if you're a candidate, you cannot be elected. and this is being enforced today. we see it in parliament, we see it for the upcoming elections, at the city and local election, and this this is a principle that will be applied thanks to a commission which means there have been some progress that have been made in africa. of course, africa is also the continent where we still have official polygamy, yes, we must acknowledge in this status, the situation of our societies. but this has to be a dynamic, a momentum, a thrust. polygamy, you see it in other societies, it's not just in africa. we accept it, and i'm not polygamist, rest awe sured. [laughter] assured. i have but one wife. [laughter] [speaking french] >> translator: i just want to say, just want to say that you

shouldn't get the wrong target. women's empowerment is just not equality of loss, but it's the living conditions of women in rural environments, the hard hardship of work, delivery, giving birth, as you said, madam president. that is what the government must take into account. we have to educate them, we have to give electricity in the villages, we must have wealth, health care centers to take care of prenatal care to allow rural women to give birth under better conditions to insure that the hardship of their or labor be reduced, and they become true citizens of the world. so i wouldn't want to see the evolution of women exclusively for intellectuals and in urban centers. yes,s that important -- yes, that's important, but we'll also

insure that rural women have better living conditions. thank you very much. [applause] >> and live this afternoon here on c-span2 the cato institute hosts a discussion on the oversight of federal boards established under two major pieces of legislation passed in 2010, the dodd-frank financial regulations law and the affordable care act. we'll have live coverage under way at 4 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> the sequester will reduce our grants by about 5% which roughly equates to $22 million or so which will be distributed among the various licensees and stations that i've described. and so we have, in fact, taken about a 13% cut in our overall federal funding over the last two years. and if the entire federal government had sustained the cuts that we'd sustained, the

budget would be $500 billion smaller than it is now. so we feel like we've made a significant contribution to deficit reduction and retirement of the federal debt within our own context. >> the impact of spending cuts on public television, tonight at 8 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> and on our companion network, c-span, an encore presentation of the first five programs in our series "first ladies: influence and image." that's just gotten underway. we're starting with martha washington, and then at 2:40, abigail adams, 4:15 dolly madison, and later at 5:50, a look at elizabeth monroe and louisa catherine adams, followed by our most recent program, rachel jackson, emily done ellison over on c-span. >> tonight on "first ladies,"

anna harrison dies. louisiana tissue shah tyler who becomes first lady as her husband assumes the presidency, but she passes away just a year and a half later, and julia tyler who becomes the president's second wife. >> julia i think of as the madonna of first ladies. [laughter] she loved publicity. she had actually posed as a model at a time when that was, needless to say, frowned upon. she was professionally known as the rose of long island. by all accounts was bewitching. she certainly bewitched 57-year-old john tyler. who married her. and she loved being first lady. she had the job for less than a year, but it was julia tyler who ordered the marine band to play "hail to the chief" whenever the president appears. it was also julia tyler who greeted her guests sitting on a throne on a raised platform with

purple plumes in her hair. it's almost as if she receded to that more queenly role that martha washington had deliberately rejected. >> we'll include your questions and comments about these three first ladies by phone, facebook and twitter tonight live at 9 eastern on c-span and c-span3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> award-winning investigative reporter seymour hersh spoke to journalism students in february at indiana university. about his experiences chasing stories. he discussed ethical standards and the use of anonymous sources. this is about 90 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. good evening. thank you for joining us. investigative journalists are described by the scholars james ed ma and theodore glasser as

custodians of conscious. investigative reporting, the craft of revealing important but hidden truths as thought by many to be the highest form of journalistic practice. and in the practice of investigative reporting, there are a few, if any, more prominent figures in last four decades than seymour hersh. he started in journalism in 1959 in chicago at the news cooperative known for its reporters summed up if your mother says she loves you, check it out. [laughter] mr. hersh's subsequent career of checking things out led to important exposes; the killing of civilians and the military cover-up in the me lie pass kerr, an illegal cia domestic spying program and the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib prison in iraq among many other things. he's won the pulitzer prize for international reporting, and there have been numerous and regular award, national award recognitions since. those journalists who have so much as dabbled in investigative

reporting, trafficking in stories that challenge official narratives and make mincemeat out of sacred cows, know that the work invites criticism, and mr. hersh has received some. one memorable jab came from a former defense official who called him the closest thing american journalism to a terrorist. [laughter] the nixon administration snooped through his tax forms, and even some journalists joined the attacks. in the domestic spying scandal, for instance, some prominent news organization questioned his work until it was borne out by later official investigations. mr. hersh has just kept reporting. one thing that makes that notable, i think, is that some of the best work has been done as an independent journalist, not backed by the clout, resources or legal defenses of a big media organization. lynn downey called him the scoop artist. a recent history of investigative reporting described him as a reporter known for his brains, brashness and badgering of sources until they gave him the information he wanted. and tonight the indiana

university school of journalism is delighted to welcome mr. seymour hersh. [applause] >> you won't be laughing so much or smiling when we're done, but anyway. here's what i'm going to do. i'm here for the journalism department, so i'm going to talk about chasing a story and just sort of do a narrative about it. make it, try and make it interactive. we've got some students here, i'm going to make you do something and try and talk a little bit about that oxymoron, journalistic ethics. [laughter] but then also, you know, there's a world going to hell right today just as it was ten years ago. i don't think we're really out of the woods yet in this whole sunni/shia/muslim who are they, who are we, what's going on, why are we bombing them, and why do you think bombing works when history shows it never because? anyway, we can talk about that,

i'll answer all your questions. but what i'm going to do first is tell, tell a little bit about journalism. i'll go back to the maine lie story, and i'm going to make sure i don't go on for a decade. i know you want to get to your parties later tonight. [laughter] bloomington. anyway -- [laughter] okay. so what we're going to do is i'll put you back in '69. a freelance kid, as you heard, i started at city news. i basically flunked -- i went to law school and hated it, sort of walked away, flunked out, say what you will. i didn't like it. and i went there at the university of chicago -- i'd gone to college there -- and i bummed around a little bit and got a job as a police reporter at the city news bureau where you basically covered crime because there was so much in chicago. and, but i worked with people that i really got a taste for some of the good journalists that were around. they went in the army, did the

army stuff which is boring. and it's before any war. and you just sort of played toy soldier. but it was okay. and i went back, and i eventually got to upi as a reporter covering legislature in south dakota. and the associated press -- [laughter] well, that was okay. you know, you learn something about cynicism because i spent a lot of time with the ogallala sioux, the sioux tribe because i was interested in tribal lands just sort of because nobody was writing about it. and mcgovern, the great liberal, george mcgovern, who was a very decent guy, but he wasn't doing much out there. he was the congressman, the only one from the state. so i ended up writing a lot of stories about them that got, like, the chicago tribune and other wire services, great, because you never know where a story's going to bounce. so that got me to the associated press which got me to washington, chicago first and then washington covering the vietnam war. and the about, oh, early '65, let's say. and it was like on the job

training for how to learn to hate a war because going there not that much, but mostly working in washington as a correspondent for the ap, and the ap has a lot of juice because, you know, every story you write is on every editor's desk, theoretically, or could be if it's a good one in a few minutes around the world. and the other thing was you get to know military guys. and i was saying earlier at dipper -- dinner, although i'm very critical of my government, i really am. i really am a hound about stuff. there's one thing that you find in the cia and all these agencies and particularly in the military what i, what makes the world work for me anyway as a journalist, you find people that you're a one-star general, you're not loyal to the two-star or the three-star or to the chief of staff of the army or to the pentagon or the president, but you're loyal to the

constitution. that's something that's drifting away more and more particularly as you see the erosion of congress in its oversight capacity, the growth of the executive. you all see those things. but there are still people deep inside. so i as a young reporter covering the building going and having lunch with officers who had been in vietnam, i would learn firsthand about what was really going on that you would, everybody you killed was counted as an enemy. the body count business, some of you people know antibiotic. some people here don't know anything about vietnam, and if you're young and you are, don't worry about it, because that's okay. i remember growing up in chicago as a young kid in the '40s, and for me world war i was, oh, you know, flanders fields and hemingway and fields of poppies. i didn't know much about it. so it's not impossible more students now to worry about a war. the thing that ought to be worrying about that war that's interesting to me always is that we fought a war in a country

about which we knew very little. we didn't know the history. i'm talking about at the top. the civilian top in the white house. we didn't know the history. we didn't know the culture. we didn't know the society. we saw them as potential commie adversaries, part of the cold war business. so we ended up fighting a war in a culture we never understood. one of the things that was always so horrifying to we as i go into the story was our soldiers would go over there totally unprepared for the primitive society, but it'd been a society for 2,000 years. and one of the crucial things was if you ever moved -- we were relocating people at some point. they were in bad lands. they were in areas controlled by the communists, and in order to bomb at will, we wanted to relocate villages. it was one of the great called strategic hamlets. we tried to relet candidate people who -- relocate people who had been on the same land for 2,000 years farming i. and

one of the things that happened in that society is women always crossed, mothers always crossed the threshold first before the children. that's just a cultural thing. and so our boys would come in, and we'd gather the people up, and we're going to relocate a village of up to 300 people. we're going to put hem in choppers and fly them out, and the mothers would insist and, of course, american boys, we put you kids on plane first. and the mothers would fight like hell to be there first, and the kids would think how horrible these mothers are, and they'd all talk about having to beat them off with the butts of machines, butts of rifles and beat them bloody until they can get the kids in first. it's just amazing stuff. so the only thing that's important about the war now is that we end up a couple decades later going into another culture in iraq about which we know little fighting a war against people we don't really understand x. then we go into afghanistan, and now the french have gone into mali. and i ashire you, that's not going to end well.

that will not end well. and so it's always amazing to me. it's always sort of breathtaking how we can just stagger from one colossal destructive mechanism to another. and the till in some way -- still in some way being america. so it's -- anyway, i worked for the ap, i became very disillusioned about the war. more than disillusioned. i got too edgy in my pieces, the ap was on my negative add -- attitude. and eventually i was pretty much pushed out. i was re assigned to an education beat, and i resigned and went to work for eugene mccarthy who was then running against johnson for the democratic nomination. mccarthy was a benedicting, brilliant sort of philosopher king from minnesota. didn't know much about african-americans. there were a lot of things he didn't know much about.

had played hockey in college and baseball. but a really amazingly bright guy who would talk about the vietnam war with as immoral. i mean, what? a politician making the notion that something is immoral that we do? talking about it, you know, is iraq immoral, the way we left it? is afghanistan going to be immoral? it was very breathtaking to see, you know, the hopeful period. so i moved on from that. politics is awful. [laughter] and after -- it is, it's just awful. terrible way to spend your life. [laughter] and it knocks me out. i read today that axlerod is joining nbc, and robert gibbs, his former press secretary, is joining nbc. and we know that george stephanopoulos, clinton's former chief of staff, is now at abc. and it's sort of amazing how -- and you wonder why the press really doesn't get going. anyway -- [laughter] my attitude towards cable it's

and all these -- television and all these reporters going on cable television is real simple. be you took away all these guys that are interviewed all the time, if you took away this clause "i think," none of them could say anything. how are you going to know what's going on in the white house? anyway, so from -- i'm there in '68, i'm freelancing, i'm off the of the ap, i resign. mccarthy, i do four or five months there. i did speeches. that was fun to do, but i would never go back. and i'm freelancing at '69. nixon's in. if you remember the great campaign slogan, he had a plan to end the war. it turned out his plan to end the war was to win it, but we didn't know that. [laughter] anyway, and so i'm minding my business. i'd done a book, chemical and biological warfare. i was a busy little beaver, but i was married, had a kid. if i made $8,000 as a freelance writer in 1969, that was a lot. but my wife was working. she was a social worker.

i was saying at the dinner, gas was, i think, $4 a gallon, four gallons for a buck, rather, it's $4 now. and heating oil was 18 cents. that was a lot of money then. and so you could live. in late '69 i've got a contract from random house who published my first book who paid me to do something on pentagon waste. boring, boring book, but it's money in the bank. and i get a call one day from somebody who ended up -- i can say who he was. his name was jerry -- [inaudible] and he's an educator, he became head of the voice of america for bill clinton. he was chairman of the department of journalism at the university of southern california, usc. but at that time he was an anti-war lawyer. and somehow he had picked up -- to this day he won't tell me, for 30 years i couldn't mention his name, but he called me one day and said there's an amazing story going on. some guy, some g.i. has shot up a lot of people, a lot of

people. it's a huge scandal, and the pentagon's trying to suppress it. and i couldn't say, he wouldn't tell me who told him. i only knew him through his brother who was a journalist for the village voice then, paul cow an. and i really didn't know him. but i had read all of these, i was saying it, you know, the advice i give journalists always, the simple advice is read before you write. i had read all of the various books that had been published by the american friends committee and the anti-war people who would come back from vietnam, and there was a series of hearings in 1968 in detroit, a bunch of guys stood up and talked about the atrocities they witnessed. i read that stuff and paid attention to it. and so i knew, and i also knew from talking to the young generals i met in the pentagon when i was there for a couple years, you know, you meet young generals, and i like babble, we talk about the redskins, and you get to learn thats, basically, a lot of them thought they were in the business of mass murder,

absolutely. the good ones. other ones liked it. so i knew there was something to this story, and i started working it. don't know why, probably because i was bored with my book. and so what do you do? and you're confronted with a rumor. so the first thing i did was because i had spent time at the pentagon, we keep very good records of any criminal activity. my, the tip was that he was being prosecuted. so i went to the legal office of the pentagon judge advocates' corp.s and into the bowels of the bureaucracy, and i just started reading all the files looking for a murder indictment or an investigation. finish i found nothing that met any criteria that suggested, you know, they were the usual a rape here, a murder there, this and that. and nothing, nothing that smacked of anything of improper or that grotesque as i heard. and this is instinct, and you just do it. and i'm going to tell this story

both a good way and a bad way. and i want some of you journalists to be -- or maybe not to be if you think about it, where's the jobs? you'll find something. [laughter] there's always, you know, there's always the 7/eleven. [laughter] anyway, it's a tough business right now. and so, and mined you, i don't have -- mind you, i don't have a lot of economic worries. you didn't have that much money, you could live on -- you know, we rented a little house for $200. you couldn't do that odd in the washington proper. and so anyway, i kept on poking. and i didn't go anywhere really for a couple weeks. about ten days later or so i'd read newspapers, i went back. most of the major things you learn about if you go back and read the papers, they're there, but you just don't see it because you don't know the context in which to read the paper. that's always what's so

fascinating about being a journalist, is you go back, and you can see what's there and after i did my lai, if you read the detroit account, there were so many accounts of what kids did in that war crimes tribunal that nobody paid attention to in the straight press. if you read that, you'd see the my lai story was told 50 times. but anyway, and just so you know what my lai was, it was a day in march of 1968 when a group of american boys who had no idea why they were there or what they were there for in a subliminal really sort of -- they were in a unit made up of people largely who were accepted, the standards had been lowered by robert mcnamara because, essentially, he wanted to get away -- he lowered the standards to bring more, if you will, hispanics, rural americans as a kid from indiana who mayed a big role,

the underclass, african-americans. he wanted to change, if you will, the color of the corpses, get rid of all the white corpses and try and get a little more color in the mix, because that would help out on the public relations aspect of the war. so he lowered the standards, and all of these kids were packed into a unit. most of them didn't have a high school or ged equivalence. and they weren't told much. on march 16th after being in the country for three or four months, they went into a village, and they were told the night before they were going to meet the enemy for the first time. they'd been in country for about 10 or 12 weeks, and they'd lost about 15%, about 15 people of the 100-man company to an occasional bullet, they would fall under booby traps, and you'd get somebody wounded that way, the viet cong, vietnamese communists -- we call them viet cong, most of them were just against the government and against us. but in any case, so they'd lost enough and they'd gotten

brutalized in the the weeks. they'd gotten, oh, these people, they don't have refrigerator, they don't know how to cross a threshold, all these things that made them convinced they were dealing with subhuman which is probably the way you get people to kill people at war. you, obviously, have to dehumanize them. in the army, that's the only thing -- the big memory was kill, kill, kill, don't think, think, think. anyway, and so they went into a village, and they were told they were going to meet the bad boys for the first time, a north vietnamese battalion, the 418th or something. i used to remember those numbers, 80th. and they did what kids did in that war then. the officers and enlisted men drank. and and officers and sergeants drank, and the enlisted men coked it up, and they got stoned. but, you know, 5:00, 4:00 in the morning came, they went, they took their weapons, and they got on choppers to go kill for america. they did do that, you've got to give them their due. they went there, and they found nothing but women and children and old men. and for some reason in the next

six hours they pulled together, put them in ditches and executed them slowly, just killing them random with bullet after bullet. they raped many of the women before killing them. they killed the children too. they were horrible, horrific seens. and it was all seen by senior officers and all covered up. and that's basically -- they exhumed 535 bodies, the vietnamese did later, subsequently. they came back to the village a few weeks later and buried the bodies properly. there's a memorial there. it was probably, i can imagine bad days for america, this was a pretty bad day. so i'm into the story. and i grew up on world war ii. the movies i saw, john wayne and errol flynn would fly around in airplanes, and the way our boys flew against the jalapeno -- japs, they'll always start the night before the american officers were in the bar, and there was a fight about a nurse, and two guys got if a terrible fight, van johnson and errol

flynn, for example, got in a terrible fight. and the next morning they were all flying together, and the nips, there was an air battle, and the nips always flew with the cockpit, the canopy closed, and they had these little hats your mother used to make you wear that you tied under your chin, ugly little things, they all had big squinty glasses and buck teeth. and our guys had, the canopy was open, no helmet, scarves going like this to each other -- [laughter] and flynn and whoever it was, and flynn and van johnson who had been fighting before, van johnson saw flynn was going to be attacked, and he runs to his rescue, and e pours a lot of bullet into the cockpit of the japanese plane, and we'd watch, and the bullets would come in, and you'd see the plane suddenly go like this. it was pretty crude stuff by the graphics we have now, but i remember as if i were watching star wars 18, you know? it was just as effective for me, which says something about how

old i am. anyway, the plane would go like this, and it'd start going down. and the noise -- that would be the noise -- and just before it hit the water, a trickle of blood would come out of the nip's, corner of his mouth, and we'd all start cheering like mad. and that was world war ii for me. i don't know if any of you or realize paul -- [inaudible] a historian at yale, he wrote a classic book about the censorship of world warii. and i know marines whose now their fathers were at iwo jima in which they lost something like 1600 guys. unbelievable bloodshed. the marines would just pile in in world war ii, and we never saw it. we never got a sense of how bad it was and how stupid some of the operations were just in terms of everything going wrong and not being needed anyway. but that's another story. that's always war. so a digression. so i'm at '69, and so i'm checking x. so i covered the

building, and there was one of the guys i liked a lot had gone to vietnam. he was a colonel, and in vietnam he'd caught a bullet, and when he was back, i happened to bump into him in the hall. i checked all the indexes and obvious places, i'm just doing -- i don't want to start asking too many questions because if it's real, i don't want to get them even -- that nobody should know what i'm looking at at this point. i told nobody about what i was doing. my wife? what does she care? anyway -- she probably did, but she had her own problems. [laughter] anyway, you know, after a meal it's pretty tough to be married to a guy who did mylai, take out the garbage -- i'm sorry, honey, but i'm saving the world right now. you guys put up with a lot, you ladies. anyway -- [laughter] it's probably true, what i just said. and so this guy had been one of the guys i clowned around with, you know? and we all have fun in america, you know? that's the thing about we

always, you know, people like us. we are likable. and so i'm having a good time with this guy. we go to lunch occasionally. and he comes back, and i see him in the hall, and he's limping. he'd been nominated to be a general, it's a big deal. he'd been nominated to be frocked. i grab him and i start saying, oh, man, look at you, shot yourself in the knee to get a tar, giving him a real hard time. and i said so what are you doing now? what's your assignment? you came back early because he was wounded badly. he lost part of his leg. and he said, well, i'm working for the chief of staff for general westmoreland. i said, no kidding? so i said, so what about guy that shot up everybody -- this guy that shot up everybody? he said, you mean cally? i. shrugged, i probably didn't say anything. and then he goes like this, he said, sigh. he hits his bad knee, and he says cally didn't shoot -- he

didn't kill anybody higher than that, not worth worrying about. and, okay, here we get to to a little journalism ethics. do i say, oh, man, you just delivered the package, i now have a name, i now have an idea that it's at the chief of staff's office and basically everybody is saying, you know, when you say that, that's just a way of dismissing it in a way. good guy that he is, but he's working for the chief. and that gives me a point of view that they're aware. it didn't take two and two, they're not anxious for this story to get out. and so did i say to him, general, you just made a mistake because you put me in a big story? hell no. should i have? probably journalistically, no, but it'll get more interesting, the question of what you should do and shouldn't do. so then i go to the library, and i do different spelling just as the judge advocates corps, and i go, and i find hot damn, there's in many late 1968, a year earlier, there's a first

lieutenant named william l. cally jr. that was held on allegation of killing an unspecified number of civilians, and that's all. and he's down at one of the -- not fort jackson -- yeah, fort jackson. he's out in south carolina. he's down there at fort jackson. and so i've got something. there is something here. so i call up, i just innocently call up the public affairs office for the army, fort jackson, and i say, i get some major on the phone, and i say, major, what have you got on this guy, cally? very quickly he said, oh, yeah, we know about that. he shot up a bar, got drunk and shot up a bar. he wasn't lying, that was just what he was told. but he did it so quickly, i know i have something. so, um, at that point i go back to my original source who i clearly knew more and i say,

okay, it's william cally jr. who's his lawyer? because i can't find any evidence that he has a lawyer. there's no records, and there's nothing. there's just a little -- and, actually, there was also a story in "the new york times," september the 18th, 1968, a paragraph about him. and i did the checking on him. he'd been a 19-year-old kid that went to junior college, didn't do well, went to work for a railroad, one of the southern railroads, and was fired after three weeks on the job because he forgot to throw a switch, and two freight trains collided. that was the only thing. there was a clip on him in "the miami herald". that's the only time he ever made news. so he was one of the 90-day wonders they were putting out to run troops, if any read the novels of vietnam, you know the contempt many of the soldiers had for their junior officers. finish rightly or wrongly. kim what's his name, who am i talking about? yes, right. he's amazing. he's actually described killing

officers in novel form. i mean, as a, as a fictional short story, that collection he did. anyway, one of the things that i learned about my lai is after i did the story about what happened in my lai, doctors in japan, american doctors in japan -- i mentioned this earlier at dinner -- they began writing me in care of wherever, i don't know how i got these letters. i was freelancing for a little anti-war dispatch. it wasn't anti-war, it just wasn't pro-war, which makes it anti-war in those days. and young doctors, surgeons in japan were treating nothing more than just first and second lieutenants with bullet holes from americans in the back. if you had a young officer that said to the guys you're not going to coke it up, or you're

not going to smoke it up and toke it up, or they cut out, they wanted to work harder on patrols, they would get it. there was a lot more of that that went on, it seems to me. he comes back with a name, latimer. george latimer turned out to be cally's lawyer, indeed. and e went back in the army, and i found them. latimer had been a judge on the court of mill -- military appeals. and so i spent, he lived in salt lake city. and so i spent the day in the library reading a bunch of his cases and, you know, army courts of military appeals it's complicated, because you don't ever have bodies. you have an allegation that somebody killed somebody, and you've got four guys saying it, and when it comes to the appeals section, judges like latimer would say we don't know what happened because we just have anecdotal stuff. so he was reversing a lot of the -- i'm sure he felt he had

no choice, but it was a lot of really disheartening decisions. and so i call him up, and i say my name is hersh, and i'm here, i want to talk to you about the cally matter. and he says, oh, yes. and i say, well, your honor, i'm coming to the west coast next week, and i'm on a plane that flies into salt lake, i think the next day. do you mind if i come and see you? he said, no -- you know, that wasn't true, i just wanted to be casual about it. i was going to see him, but i didn't want him to think i was making a big deal. okay, that's -- i don't have to say that last sentence to you, but that's the reality. you're not always totally wonderfully up front with everybody. in fact, it's called lying. [laughter] or misrepresenting. and so, which may not always be parking lot of the investigative reporting -- part of the investigative reporting game, but you have to understand there's always, again, let me just say this, again, something i said at dinner, i speak too

much: in 50 years of being a reporter, i've not only done more crimes, political crimes, organized crime, the most scary threats i ever had came from noriega. i wrote about him as a murderer once for "the new york times", and there was all sorts of hell to pay. and i did all these stories in 50 years of being, writing about nasty things, and i've never met anybody, anybody who ever thought he did anything wrong. you've got to remember this. it's just not where we're usually at. most people think they're doing the right thing, so that always makes it a little more complicated. i'm sure poor guy in new jersey, he probably thinks what did he do wrong? he just helped out a guy giving him money, wherever it was, dominican republic. anyway, not that i feel sorry for him, but there's a lot of this stuff that goes on in congress. and probably everywhere. so at this point i fly in to see

imthe next day. he's a partner in a law firm, he's a mormon, an elder or deacon. maybe deacon's the right word, is it? anyway, he's a deacon. big boss. and i go see him, and he's a very nice guy, and i sutt -- sit down, and the first thing i do is i say, well, let's talk about your decision in such and such, and we go over some of his cases, you know, that i've read and sort of briefed. i took my crim law in law school. he thinks i'm, obviously, the nicest guy in the world kicking around why he had to decide what he wanted, and i'm going at him a little bit. and he's making the case and telling me about the difficulty. he was on the court of military appeals for about 50 years after being a jag and a judge and then on the highest tribunal and then retires and goes into a practice. and, um, finally he thinks i'm the nicest man, i'm sure, that he's ever run into, what a nice reporter i am. so then i say, so let's talk

about cally. and he said, oh, this is a real mess. he said, oh, i can't believe what the army's doing to this guy. and he goes into his desk, and he pulls out a -- he's, obviously, prepared it. he pulls out one of those vanilla folders, you know, cardboard folder, you know, that you -- and he opens it up, and there's a series of documents. and we start talking for a minute, and then he says, excuse me, mr. hersh, he gets a phone call, one of those -- my father-in-law was a corporate lawyer and one of those partner calls when they're always discussing a bill or a fee, those painful calls, you know? and i remember hearing him do it. same sort of tone of voice. talking about money, but that's what makes the world go round. so he's having this conversation with a partner, and he says, look, i've got to talk with one of my associates, and i'll be back in five minutes, and he leaves. [laughter] okay. i want the reporters here. [laughter] what do you do? let's go.

what do you do? come on. what? yeah, go ahead. i want the students only. no grown-ups because you're wiser or dumber. [laughter] wiser or dumber. what do you do, students? >> [inaudible] >> you go what? >> [inaudible] >> you go through it, why? >> [inaudible] >> what? >> yeah. but how do i rationalize it? why do i think it's okay? anybody got an idea? say it, what do you think? what makes you think it's okay? he didn't put it in the desk, did he? right? what do you think? [inaudible conversations] >> some of you have to talk. [laughter] what? loud! >> [inaudible] >> what? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> [inaudible] , you know, you know what's interesting about that what she

said is he obviously leavitt it there because he wanted you to see it. there was a great oriental rug there, and suppose i'd rolled up that rug and thrown it out the window, was that the same reasoning? would that work in and there was a couple of, someone's artifacts from the various wars he did, you know? some ashtrays and stuff of like that. come on. but keep on going. i mean, no, that's easy. he wanted me to do it, right? he left it for me, right? anybody think i shouldn't do it? no grown-ups, no lawyers. [laughter] what about students? anybody think i'd be crazy not to do it? and by the way, if i was working for the "chicago sun-times", which i was trying to get on at that point, and i had not look ared at it and he'd come back and said i got that d i gotta go, and i'd said, oh, my god, it was on the desk, my editor wouldn't say you stupid -- he would say come back, you're going to go on rewrites or

obits, you know what i mean? [laughter] so it's okay if it's on his desk, right? anybody bothered by it? >> yes. >> who? >> me. >> you're too old. [laughter] gotta be young. you students got to do it. don't be bothered. there's only right or wrong, as it turns out. there's only wrong. [laughter] okay. let's go back to it. phone call rings, phone call rings, he looks pained, he has a conversation. oh, he puts -- he puts down the phone, he takes the envelope, puts the desk drawer, doesn't lock it and leaves. what do we do then? come on, students. let megive you the big three fs that are rolling through my mind. if you think i'm thinking at this time, oh, this is going to really hurt the war issue as much as i was against the war, i'm thinking of the great three fs, fame, fortune, glory --

two fs and a g. i'm thinking of fame, fortune and glory. i mean, oh, my god, what a story. that's what i'm thinking. i'm not thinking, i'm going to hurt the war. i'm thinking, this is about me and the great story, which is the way it works. so he puts it in the desk drawer. what do we do, guys? >> don't open it. >> who says that? how old are you? [laughter] no nonstudents. how about students? what do you do? come on, be honest. what do you do? oh, come on, you're all cowards. [laughter] where do you draw the line? suppose he'd taken that folder and instead of putting it in the desk drawer, he'd gotten up, and he'd walked to a file cabinet, opened it, put it in a file cabinet but left the door open? suppose he left it unlocked? where do you draw the line? why? why don't you -- what's the difference at looking at it from the top of the desk and looking at it from the drawer? is there a difference? ..

>> don't forget i am coming at you. that was 1969 and we are talking about 40 some odd years later. i was hungrier and let me put it this way there was a war to stop. we had to stop that war so we can put it that way. so, on, where'd you draw where do you draw the line? if you thought it's okay to get it in the top drawer why is it okay to give it in the drawer.

what is that? [inaudible] if you are rolling the rug up but you could do this quick. [laughter] you what? [inaudible] not because they wanted it? you are going to make this virtue is? [laughter] are you going to make it a virtue? okay, look. it turns out you can't do any of those. you can't look at it. it turns out first of all he has a right to a trial and the right as a citizen. but he has a right and i don't have the right to go into it. that doesn't mean i wouldn't have. i will tell you what happened. you can just see how floating it is. if this is a smaller less room, i haven't done this often but i

have done it particularly i like to do in journalism school and sometimes even in graduate schools because it seems the more lessons you learn in journalism the more committed you are to let's go for it man, let's go. you'd be amazed in graduate schools, 90% say go man, just do it quick. bring a camera. we didn't have those cameras we have now you no? and we didn't have tape recorders. i could've read the file. what happened actually was that he did have a phonecall and there was a few minutes there when we were not chatting and he would open up the front page, and i read it upside down. you don't remember it if you were young kids but the parents remember. it didn't matter which way it was upside down or not. if if you you are babysitters are little brothers and sisters and it's harder when you are

older but i sat there and i read it and the first thing you read was a classified. it was an army charge sheet lieutenant calley junior is found to be standing trial for the premeditated murder of 109 oriental human beings. that was the initial charge as if let's see, 10 whites equal one oriental, what's the number? how do you figure out what in oriental is worth or an african-american or a hispanic american? that was the initial charge. i copied enough of it and i had the same conversation. i never asked them for it because he wouldn't give it to me. he was a man of the law and the only thing i ask when i left ,-com,-com ma and i was very nice and he was very nice. he didn't realize i wasn't taking notes but copying and how would you describe that in terms of behavior?

it's probably necessary but you know this is a very -- business you are getting into as investigative reporters. the young lady who pre-staged my introduction, whatever her name is. when she starts, if the campus newspaper starts doing an investigation they are headed for the obvious place to investigate, athletics, money and how long do they get carried and are your professors going to use tenured? but anyway, if you start doing stuff in a major university and sports which is the only real story to do because it seems normal and you know very little but anyway the point is, so what happened is i've been, the only thing i said, i said this proceeding took place before jackson.

he said i can't say anything. do you know what? i'm going to for jackson tonight, and i'm going to leave here and get a plane and go there. the only thing you can say is i have wasted my time and he said nothing. i went to for jackson and eventually called cali, the long story about taking -- i will take a minute just to tell you. being in the army had thought cali was in the phonebook. i checked the phonebook and he was not there. the current phonebook did not have him so i started going, first i want to every prison and there were five prisons with a big training base, rangers, special forces regular paratroopers. i don't know what they call it, the prison there. they had a different word for them but i went to three or four of the little jails and i've put on my little suit and tie a tie and i would walk in and look like a lawyer. i would go up to the clerk and

said i want bill kelly out here now. they would say, who? after a little while that did not work out. [laughter] then i went to all the clubs. i went to the sporty clubs, the hockey any sport club, swimming. i went to every club. i went to the garages, a couple of private garages on base. i ran out of luck in what i did was i was -- i flew all night and i rented a car in columbia south carolina and i went on base. it was only a few miles away and it's contagious with the city of south carolina. about noon i was starting and i went through a px and i got a hamburger and i'm sitting there and suddenly i remembered something. this was september and what i remembered from what i had read in the lawyer's office and i had copied it was the charge in august, previous august or july.

they have the diversion of grand jury called an article xxxii proceeding and they held it up to make sure there was enough justification. 109 deaths and we are looking at a big story. top secret, whatever was marked, just secret. so i realized from my days of the pentagon that the military and its wonderful efficiency changes phonebooks every three months and cali arrived in may. he was not charged until august or early july and so when he arrived in may and registered coming back from vietnam even though he was being sent back he was in charge of anything and came back as a first lieutenant. that he might be good, he wasn't in a book published in june but maybe he would be listed in the new listing for the earlier book that was published in april. so i called up the operator in the base phone book and this is the day before homogenized voices.

mostly the accidents are sort of one big anglo-saxon combine. and so i get this operator and i say i want you to do me a favor. i want you to get me the old phonebook, the april phonebook and i want the last two listings and she said well, she checked with her boss and came back and she said okay i've got it. i am looking for a calley and jesus i've got it. he came in last week before we publish the new directory and she rattled off the unit he was at that then hung up and with his deep southern accent i couldn't understand a word she said. i found her. he was assigned to a unit that, a construction unit engineer battalion and he was an infantryman. i look all over for him but i couldn't find him so i went to

the unit. another operator read it for me carefully and i found it was in another camp and it was 20 miles away. i drive there and it was about three and a half hours, one of these modern army buildings, three barracks, as three story building separated by a one-story passageway where the company commander had his office and then there were three rows of eric's. i'd parked a couple of blocks away and i go into the side door and i say i've got him, he is here. i go up and down one side and all the beds are made beautifully. they were good at making beds. they were all made perfectly so then i went down and in order to get to the other side i would go down to a passageway and the office is one of those doors where the top was open so i crawled underneath.

sure enough on the second floor on the other side what we are talking about here is -- that is what it's all about. and how rational. i don't know, i was just doing it, was just chasing everything. the second floor there is a bunk and now it's 3:15 in the middle of the work day. what the hell is going on? it's cali so i give a big whack at the unhcr. a blond kid and he goes like this. he has a 16 letter last name. i said oh my god, because we are curious we journalists i said where you explain to me what you are doing sleeping here at 3:30? he was from ottumwa iowa and this was in the fall, october of 1969 a year and a half after the

incident. most of the soldiers were backed by them but i didn't know that yet. he said to me i'll go man i'm supposed to get out for harvest. a big farming area in iowa. and so he tells me this sad story about how they lost his records and he was being held over. he wants to go back and he is waiting for them to clear it. i said oh my god what do you do? what is your job? he says i'm a male clerk. you are a male clerk? [laughter] he said yeah. i do the mail in the morning but i'm done by 1:00. i said have you ever heard of a guy named callie? and you said you mean that guy that shot up everybody? >> i said well yeah. by said yeah. he said well yeah we used to get

his mail and i deliver it to schmedley all the time. that would save his mail and go over to see smitty. this is the company battalion headquarters and smitty was at the headquarters, the company headquarters and his company battalion division whatever it is, the next higher level and i said so schmedley, you delivered it to schmedley lexie said yeah my job was getting the mail to smitty. i said where is the headquarters it's pretty is pretty far away but i said okay, what time is that? 3:42. okay, it's eight minutes i said i'm going to pull up in a ford, gray ford on the other side in that car. come out in exactly eight minutes and take me over there. villa sure. no hesitation i run and get the car and sneak out.

i get the car and he is right there. he jumps any drives me to battalion headquarters which is 10 or 15 minutes away. i had to drive back. at least i knew the route so i drove back and it's one of these beautiful days in georgia and the battalion headquarters is a wooden building, a little small shack of the building and there's a sergeant leaning against the door, the open door of. the other thing he told me driving over smitty the clerk for the battalion got busted the week before. he had had lost three strikes and he was madder than hell and he had gotten to drinking. he was mad so i parked there and i'm going to play the authoritarian. i go there and i say sergeant i want to smitty out right now. what has he done now, right? mitty comes out and i said get in the car's committee.

i'm sorry kid i don't mean to scare you but i'm just looking for callie. he said well he lives off base somewhere. what do you have on him lacks i have this file in their. [laughter] i said get it. [laughter] and he said okay. [laughter] he goes in and takes it and gives it to me. i open it up and the first page is the same page i saw before the judge's office. anyway it's all about your luck and it didn't make it. i eventually found callie and eventually got a straight story from him. callie lead me to captain medina who was in charge and i've wrote what was the first of five stories as a freelancer. one fact on callie it took me a week and a half even though i had been press secretary for a guy running for president.

he was on assignment for life and the miraculous price of the dollar will work. i had been making it as as a freelancer not making a lot of money but getting tracks. the press secretary in which i met and became friendly with walter cronkite and played tennis with walter cronkite three years after that. old man tennis. it was fun. he was sweet. so i met all these guys and nobody would type the story. i had to sell it as an independent journalist which is amazing that it happened. that is the virtue of the press. one day, 40 newspapers collected the story and we talk to the editors. 35 of them made it their lead story, headline banner chicago philadelphia to new york post and the week after that "the new york times" wanted the story. i wrote five stories in five weeks and just kept them going.

i found the kids in the company and found more about it. i found this poor kid who killed everybody in indiana. that was the famous line. once i found kids in the company there was a lot of repressed memory. i had seen five or six in the company. they had been in the company and they knew it happened. some talked and some didn't. they were worried about the charge that some talked and i got a company. i saw the company roster and then they told me about the kid who had been doing all the shooting. a 30 bullet clip fired into a ditch of women and children and there was this horrific moment. this was a repressed memory. i went back to others. he had -- they put the 500 or so people into three ditches and somehow or other just shot into the ditches.

an m-1 if you hold the trigger down its a semiautomatic and you don't have the poet. i remember that from the army days. he shot six or seven clips mostly the african-american guys. no way. this is not our war. we are not doing this. some of the hispanics shot up a shot high. nobody wanted to call out the farm boys who did it, the white boys who did it. nobody wanted to call them out because they were afraid they would get hit later. that is the way it was. the next day some of the minority groups, i wrote a second book. it was all about all the officers covering it up. and so when i talk to my friend again later he was so successful with killing innocent people, it gets you promoted, i don't know.

the point of all of this is he had done all that shooting and in a certain moment they were being their lunch kp rations next to the ditch in this photograph. it was a famous photograph. ron have really was and army photography and he started seeing what was happening and he shot for the stars and stripes in black and white but then he shot a whole bunch of pictures with his personal camera that he sold to "life" magazine after he did the story. not because he had amazing photographs but he did tell the army about those photographs. the ones he shot in black and white really had nothing to do with what happened. talk about visual evidence. anyway while they were shooting they heard a noise and it turns out one of the mothers, as mothers will do, 2-year-old lloyd tucked under her stomach and he survived. they were shooting into the ditch and he was crawling his way up screaming as he got to the top.

as he got up you is all full of lead and he began to run across the rice patty. lieutenant calley who ordered the killing, the infamous lieutenant calley himself carolina, lieutenant calley said to paul who had been the most acquiescence of the soldiers, 16 years old then kept on and calley said to meatloaf and meatloaf couldn't do it. it's like why can you drop bombs on high but not go well -- makes philosophical or what you will of what is acceptable. he would not do it. he drew the line and calley had a smaller rifle called the carbine. callie ran up behind the kit and shot them in the back of the head so triumphantly. he then the next day stepped on a land i'm in blue off his leg

above the knee. while they were ready to medevac him he was chanting, god has punished me the 10 tenant callie that god punish you. everybody remembered it was this curse and they were saying get him out of here. they got him out of here so a year and a half later i am looking for him and i find meatloaf in salt lake city on a payphone calling 100 different different -- the kid lived below andapolis and i'm calling every phone company. he did not have google search. we didn't have it so finally i need this building. so i finally find the spelling with that name outside of terror hot -- terre haute. i called up in a white southern boys answered and its mother and i say hi i'm just wondering how

paul is. is he back? she said yeah he was back a long time ago. i'm a reporter and i want to talk to him. she said is this about the war? she said i don't know. can i come? she said i don't know i never know what he is going to do. i took a plane that night to wherever he was and they go to indiana and i drive up and have a hard time finding the house because it's this ramshackle wooden collection of dilapidated holdings of small wooden shacks a little bit like you would see in the pictures in plantation life in louisiana in the middle 1900s. my fictional memory of what they look like and there's a chicken farm in the cages were in disarray. the new there was no man around. they were wire mesh that have been broken and i pulled up in front and she comes out.

she is about a 55-year-old lady who looks about 75, hard scramble life. this is not a norman rockwell version of rural life. some of you remember those paintings that i grew up with, long long ago in another era. another planet. she said he is in there and i said is that all right? she said i don't know and then she said this little old lady, this little old lady that did know much about anything so i thought, she says i sent them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer. a long career to have a line like that. so there you go. fame, fortune and glory. he could no longer rally what he called middle america after that on which once calley was prosecuted and found guilty of

21 deaths nixon of course commuted his sentence. he was questioned in corridors. they all should have gone. callie was just one and there were six officers killing people but that is the story about getting a story. most of it is pretty good but you can see along the way there were a lot of times i wasn't particularly straight with latimer. i will tell you something amazing about latimer. i had a friend from law school in chicago who is a wonderful great lawyer, had a fancy practice in washington and me and my wife knew him way back. we were dear friends and when i wrote the first story i was obviously nervous about it. i went to see him and you is that a prominent law firm. i have to be able to write and i'm sending this to a newspaper. they don't know who i am and they really don't know me. this was reviewed by so-and-so, this fancy law firm and verified

not only for its accuracy but it's libel free. whether you are in montana or new york 100 ox is what we charged. except you had to pay the wire feed. and he said, you know you should call latimer. i was quoting calley. i found calley and he talked me own night and he pretended to be like this is a combat war but at some point i was in his quarters and i got his address. it was hard but i found him. he was tucked away in quarters for generals but that's all right, i found him. at one point during our compensation, it was him all on all night conversation. he went to the bathroom and i saw him throw up arterial blood. he was suffering but he was

masking it. he just threw up blood. so clearly he was suffering and so i quoted him about what he said which turned out to be something different than he had said in the army. my lawyer said, suppose -- you are quoting them but how do you know you were not going to put them in jail? so i called latimer up and the last time i talked to george latimer and i read what i said. he said oh my got a few write the story that way he is not going to get a trial. i think he ought to have a trial. citywide. i will make a deal with you hersh. read me a story and i will check it for accuracy and i will go through it very carefully. just say, instead of saying callie, just say according to what callie is known to believe or has said are according to what the sources said just mask the fact that you signed direct way.

i made a deal. i can't "what happened. he corrected the story down to things like the dates, when i arrived in what the official charge was. i didn't do it because i don't do that stuff. the army concluded from that first story that i had access to the inner workings of the pentagon because it was so completely accurate, they couldn't understand that maybe the judge made it accurate for me. never talk to me again but editors from the newspapers are going to publish it called that and he said i can say to you right now that story is okay. that was great. i walked away from an interview with him and i never wrote about the interview because i said i wouldn't. but it was all right. it turned out to be okay. look, there is talk now for three hours. and i think some of you students out to mull about the fact that

a lot of critical places about what i did, that is part of the business. i would like to thank i'd probably, i want to think i did it the way i should and the big question for me is, i do this fantastic game of what would happen if that was on the desk and all that. most students, if you lock the save someone would say get a low torch and open it, do you know what i mean? the first to say in the desk, and the out of the desk, good. officially he would figure out that wasn't the way to go because older and wiser know better. but that is one of the perils of what we do. we did get close to the edge and some of the things we do are less than marvelous but that is what we do.

i don't think you should misrepresent yourself. and you are not compelled to tell everything. the truth was, the question i always have is what if he had left his sealed? i guess i would have. i guess i would have. now it wouldn't but you know i have gotten my medals so like general petraeus. he had about 64 medals. i don't know how he could walk. he must feel liberated now he doesn't have to wear all those medals. [laughter] let's do some questions about anything but the story, about the real world and i will be glad to get myself in real trouble on this stuff. i think right now what you are seeing and what i'm seeing, i am seeing jihadist sunnis whether al qaeda or not. i don't necessarily believe there is a magical al qaeda over writing. i see us soon the fundamentals from north africa to the middle

east and not to south asia and pakistan going after shia. i have seen more violence in the last year than we have seen in many years and i'm not saying due to obama's policy or lack of policy, we don't know but something's going on and getting very ugly. my own guess is that we are going to see a big explosion in iraq this year. there is american intelligence and a lot of very good american intelligence that the saudi's who don't forget our fundamentalist wahhabi sunnis, radical hardline sunnis who have no use for the shia and this is a serious serious split in the middle east right now and always has been but it's really acute now. they certainly have funding. some of the old pro-saddam guys in a war against the malik government in iraq against the shia. there is going to the stec peace there. i think maliki will win but there will be a lot more blood.

iraq is not done with the torture we put it through so there is a truthful little statement. >> go to the mic and you are free to get your party. it's way past the time as far as i know. [applause] i will do 20 or so minutes so feel free. there is no plane out of here tonight, is there? okay, so i am here. scheme mr. hersh my name is david and i would like to express my tremendous admiration for the work you continue to do. >> do you know what i say to people when they do that speech? i remember the great joke in "the new yorker." it's a roach talking to a mouse and the cockroach says i love your work. [laughter] so it's all relative. some people won't agree with you but what is your question?

>> the question is you've written extensively about war plans against iran and chuck hagel was excoriated for using the word containment in hearings the president says a lot of -- run the table and president netanyahu is any more threatening way. what can you tell us about what the options are and what the consequences of the u.s. or israeli strike on iran means? >> will i will tell you as you know i spend a lot of time in 2005 and 2006 writing about iran and about the threat and the serious conversation in the white house. i'm doing a story on the cheney white house which is fascinating because it led back into the obama and in a minute, i will just say the question is about what did the president know and what did he know? now you have obama saying i went to the meetings and we picked

the guys. this is what we have devolved to if you will. i actually think, using the word think, i know there is a deal on the table. my guess is obama's going to israel. he is going to make this deal and it's a good deal. the iranians are getting certainly hit i sanctions but the problem with sanctions is the course that the sanctions, the economic sanctions we impose always start at the bottom rung. the elite don't get in trouble and i will also tell you as far as i know fidel castro has been sanctioned economically for 62 years and they don't see them going anywhere so i'm a skeptic about sanctions because people people survived and there's a lot of ways to sell oil. we are making it harder for the iranians to sell oil to china. they have had some currency deals where they have been playing games with the turks and

the lira and the changing of the gold. the deals have always been on the table because let me say again and again, there is no evidence in the american, british, swedish, german, empirically no evidence in their intelligence agencies that the iranians have actually done anything to weaponize. we can't find it. we would like to think that maybe it's because they are hiding it well but you can't believe how good we are at looking. we have done amazing stuff that i think about some of -- once bush was out of office i felt free to write about something else. so you know we are sanctioning them to stop them from making a weapon for which we have no intelligence in may king which is always a complicated situation. a deal is on the table i will bet by june there will be serious talking and i think one

reason he is going to go, going to see bb certainly the most rational, he is going to see bb in late march. i would guess one of the issues is going to be helping them climb down off the ladder and i also think the most serious issue we have going now is area. i will give you another guess. who is going to end up -- alpa shark? the israelis and i will tell you why. the last thing they want our crazies on their border and in 1982 some of you don't remember but there was terrible stuff that happened when it looked like the plo was going to take over southern lebanon at the border of israel. the israelis went into the camp. they will was bombing. they went with the prospect of having radical plo on their border even though i think they

misread the plo and misread arafat but there was more chance for serious agreement. the last thing the israelis want and some interesting little things you see, recently 17 wounded office of the army were admitted to israel for treatment and also the border, the israelis on the border and golan heights, there is a lot of reason to think the last thing the israelis want is a wahhabi salafist muslim brotherhood radical and their different degrees running this stuff in syria and to his credit everything i know or i think i know about obama, obama has been very skeptical of putting in -- arms into syria and that is because our cia which still has a lot of smart people in it and don't underestimate us. i'm lippe government that we can

do a lot of very smart things too along with an awful lot of things. we pretty much know and we have known for a couple of years that the trouble in syria is not just simply legitimate and there is legitimate grievances because he and his father ran that country and he was putting people in jail for saying bad things about him. he was better than his father but he had really enough. i think we are going to see israel being much more passive. the one guy who sticks it where the sun don't shine is putin. russia is more anti-americanism than ever. it's a reflection of a growing anti-americanism in russia and that is what we should stop because that is very dangerous for everybody. i think obama, if obama is -- enough to play golf with tiger he can do anything he wants now. [laughter]

if that's all you have got it will go home so come on. >> hello mr. hersh. i'm sorry you missed our class because we had plenty of questions to ask you. >> do you want my defense? i was never told about it. >> i'm sorry about that. >> so in my because you are waiting for me and i'd didn't know it. i must have been napping. [laughter] >> okay. so my question is, do you think think -- >> petraeus. >> is there a declining culture of the u.s. army? >> it's a one off anyway. petraeus was actually, he left because he left that he was actually interviewing at the

time and he was interviewing for his doctorate as he told everybody constantly. king david they called him and the army. he wasn't popular in the army and he was pretty much done. my understanding is he was told he would not be chairman and he was not going to be chief of staff for the armies of the the cia was a bad stand for him. he wasn't popular with the personnel there and you know, if every senior officer in america were to be fired because he had an affair we would be fighting the army with the sergeants. [laughter] so clearly there is more to it than that. there is more to it than that and the same with general allen. i don't know the whole story but let me assure you he was going to go but he wanted to go on his terms. he is smart. i always thought --

the report is he was tremendous at the one thing you have to be good at if you want to be a successful person in washington and he moved to the press. he was always going to lunches with people. i used to be asked all the time to go to lunch with him and i don't do that. i just don't. i don't socialize with people i report on. >> do you think, if you believe it's true, who do you think was the target assassination that came out with supposedly by cheney, the illegal op that was paid for with all that cash from iraq? >> what assassination are you talking about? >> supposedly cheney ran an assassination team. >> well, no. what happened is there was a gentleman by the name of mcchrystal who was running something called the joint special operations command.

one of the things about america that is interesting is the way we have devolved. it's really cool. the way you do it as you have your own army and you raise your own money. you don't bother with congress. the hell with congress. there is no oversight and you don't tell anybody what you are doing. it's a pretty cool deal. and we see this pattern. cheney was not the first to do it. he was sort of a copycat. what cheney was doing was they would find what they consider to be bad guys and they would authorize executive action. mcchrystal in the early days days -- you find a bad guy. you'd bring them to these lot prisons which i'm start to six is more than you believe. you just let them die.

so it's ugly stuff that we know a lot about that not everything about it. so it wasn't like the targets we were talking about were people that we believed al qaeda or guys against us and also we paid for the information which is really strange. most of the early guys i went to guantánamo, am i right it still exists? is the single biggest black or we have an bad and the drones and predator killings will make it impossible for us to ever come out of this war against terror in some reasonable way it seems to me until we figure out some other way of dealing with the problems we have other than trying to snuff everybody or put them in jail. the longer they keep gitmo they are, some people have been there for 10 or 11 years without due process. this is america. anyway there is nothing specific i have to say to you about that. i just don't know. there was certainly, cheney believed he had the authority and the unitary presidency and

the president had executive power. certain bad people he had the power to do with them and that is what he was doing. you see that. it's sort of in cheney's mantra since he was in congress essentially but i don't know anything about it. it's not like cheney said you know i owe this guy a lot of money from a poker game last night. although with the phoenix program in vietnam with the targeted assassinations often we forget names from someone who did lose two cards. we would go back on behalf of that and it was really strange. as far as he was concerned he was all for the good of america. >> he let them spend billions of dollars of cash there and that was money for illegal ops. >> you mean you were talking about the oil money? >> no, our government sent over,

we said it was too drive the humvees and things like that. he sent over a couple billion in cash. see what happened was there was a lot of oil money when saddam hussein after the war in 1991, there was a peace treaty and saddam hussein was under sanction. he still had oil to sell and a certain amount of that oil he could use the money for that to buy food etc. but of course a lot of it to wendell down. it wasn't dripping down the way we envisioned it. a lot of it, a lot of money to be held and it was some of that oil money. we had billions of dollars of their money and that is the money to are probably talking about. you have to remember one thing. 9/11 happened and at november, about two months after 9/11 congress authorized get this figure, 11.8 william dollars for the war on terror, 11.80 in

dollars. what i am telling you is just there in the book. it took me four years to get the accounting and an accounting out of the foreign aid program in the senate, the senate foreign aid subcommittee. i found it got a list and it would be $600 million. you didn't have to worry about going to congress for money. you have it all over the place and you can do anything you want. it was just a dream, it was a dream and oversight has disappeared in america. and here is cheney and here is renan testifying about the cia just having fun with them. what can i tell you? no tough questions. maybe they did better than they did in public that the guide is sitting with the president

picking who is going to win in who is going to die and you would think they would ask a few more questions. we should do a few more of these for four and then i will let everybody go to their party. >> i actually had one more question. >> one more question here be we have to cut. >> all right. i have given everybody freedom to move. i'm not holding anybody against their will. go ahead, yes maam. >> thank you mr. hersh. my question is a little bit private. >> was i supposed to be in your class too? >> yes. so as a reporter i am sure you certainly have heard enough bad things so i'm just wondering have you ever changed your religious beliefs? >> my what? >> your religious beliefs? >> you know, i am not big on psychoanalyzing myself. i am just not so i don't --

i have a family. i don't ever write about them or talk about them and i don't think my personal views are particularly -- i am what i am and i am not offended. it's a reasonable question. if you asked me if i had changed my belief in philosophy i might have a go at it but not about personal stuff. only because, actually for some very practical reasons. to let people know who i love with and what i do the better off everybody for a lot of reasons. >> would you comment on america's increasing increasing use of drums and countries where we are not at war? >> i did. every strategic study that is done about the use of airpower shows its death starting with

the study that mcnamara worked don, the bombing of the germans that concluded our massive constant bombing and all the bombing of civilian targets increased. there was capacity to produce weapons and support for the government increased. counterproductive. unless there is something specific you want to know. most of the actual operations are done by the military on this stuff and guys now are getting medals. they are getting combat models for sitting in nevada and dropping bombs by remote control. great powers don't like to lose people so it's a perfect way to fight wars against these little people. i always say, wanting to talk about racism in america.

i always say when bill clinton bombed yugoslavia in 1999, i'm just going to give you a fact and you can do with it anyway you want. he was the first american president since world war ii to bomb quite people. you can figure out what that means, maybe nothing. [inaudible] >> what? >> okay. and investigative journalism you run into a lot of situations where you have to -- anonymous sources? >> what? you are muffled. >> anonymous sources. anonymous sources. where'd you choke line on that? i know that is something you get criticized for. >> i would love to name everybody but -- >> when you are in a situation what types of interviews to use the anonymous sources for and what each other lined? >> i will tell you what we do

with "the new yorker" which is an amazing place to work is literally i'm not half kidding when you close a piece of "the new yorker" the final person invariably is -- can we talk about common faults. seriously. when is the last time anyone has talked to about parilla some? you have to deal with that eventually. anybody who deals knows they have to talk independently and separately to a new yorker fact checkers of the people i deal with are known to my editor and "the new yorker" fact checker. you probably read something about it. john mcphee the wonderful writer wrote a piece about fact checkers and wrote an homage in homage to them. the good ones are really good. they checked the monday and things you might miss but they talk to the people directly. often it's complicated and some of the people have fact

checkers. there is never any leaks or an abuse. yes they are anonymous but they are known to editors and believe me might editors are really skeptical of anything i say, think or do. particularly in speeches. and so, so that for me mitigates the issue. i am doing a book now that the lawyers will get a chance to talk to anybody they want to and also i have hired independent fact checkers so i don't make mistakes we all make with middle initials. we do that anyway. inevitable mistakes are inevitable. so why do better about it but i'm always amazed for example "the new york times" which i have worked there for nine years so i know. the new york times every day leads a story with the chinese are behind and all the cyberspying according to highly

informed officials. every day they do it. most of the time at the new york times because they have to cozy up to people eerie decamping antagonistic. the national security adviser or the president. if they want to leak something and if the new york times ran a story about how the president picked targets i'm sure you rationalize that one. i don't know how but he probably did. some hard-line mythology somewhere. anyway, so that leads to the "new york times" anonymous sources. this was before the election and the president was eager to the 5% that could make or break the elections and by the way what a society we are. here is an election for the presidency in the target area, 5% of the people are

independents who don't know whether they are democrats or republicans. in some cases they are charlie independent charlie independent and they give them their due but many don't know if they are democrats or republicans because they don't really know what the issues are. that is who they play to so they did that. the whole issue of the non-the man in monday -- anonymity is a horrible one. i actually have sources but i will tell you that it's a system of abuse because you can pretend that the anonymous source you are talking about is a high-level source and i know for a fact that "the new york times" if they named the person they talk to which they could if they would rather say an anonymous senior official because the officials i talked to us in lala land. i have written a piece about how he was using his position as head of a major defense, the head of the defense policy ward under nixon.

under bush and cheney a powerful group because he is such a powerfully bright guy. this man who spent much as his career being anti-saudi and pro-israel was in serious negotiations using credentials as an insider and on this ward, this defense policy board which he had to get clearances to try to strike a deal for a huge billion dollar project to build a fence between yemen and saudi arabia with the saudis and that is when he called me a terrorist. i take that as a compliment. i must tell you he is very very smart and quite engaging. the answer to your question is yeah. of course not for me since i have never done anything wrong in my life like everybody i write about but for everybody else it is. good hide. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] the sequester the sequester row reduce or grants by about 5% which roughly equates to $22 million or so, which will be distributed among the various licensees and stations that i have described, so we have in fact taken about a 13% cut in

our overall federal funding over the last two years and if the entire federal government had sustained the cuts that we have sustained, the budget would need $500 billion smaller than it is now so we feel like we have made significant contribution to deficit reduction and the federal debt within our own contexts. >> on our companion network c-span and encore presentation of the first five programs in our series first lady's influence and image is underway.

>> julia i think of as the madonna. she loved publicity. she had actually posed as a model which was needless to say frowned upon and she was known as the rose of long island. by all accounts was bewitching and certainly bewitched 57-year-old john tyler. he married her and she loved being first lady. it was julia tyler who ordered

the marine band to play "hail to the chief" whenever the president appears and it was also julia tyler who greeted her guests sitting on a throne on a raised platform with purple plumes in her hair. it's almost as if she receded to that more queenly role of martha washington and deliberately rejected it. >> last week president and ceo of united continental airlines jeffrey smisek talked about the airline industry and how it's currently undergoing a transformation period. that would benefit both consumers and the airline companies. he spoke at the u.s. chamber of congress aviation summit in washington. this is about 30 minutes.

>> airlines for america slightly blinded at the moment but anyway it's my great pleasure to introduce jeff smisek chairman ceo and president of united airlines and also the vice chairman of the board of directors of airlines for america. air travel has always been part of jeff's life. even before he took over the reins at united. many of you may not know it but he was an air force brat who lived on base in the united states and germany. nonetheless it was not the love of the smell of jet fuel and travel that lord jeff into the airline industry. he started out practicing law and that was his entrée into the airlines within continental ceo gordon bethune who asked jeff to join the then struggling airline. never wanting to shy away from a challenge if you know jeff he joined the team that led to the

turnaround of continental to the point where it was the top airline in "forbes" magazine, "fortune" magazine. the most admired companies. those efforts served him well as he worked and continues to work to integrate two distinct airlines with different systems, route maps and cultures. as the chairman of the new united. the goal is simple yet elegant and jeff has repeated it often. he wants to create an enterprise for which he is now 85,000 co-workers want to work. customers want to fly and in which investors want to invest. and it's working. united is beating its own operational goals which meant onus is for the employees and revenue is increasing. in his 18 years in the industry jeff has seen numerous changes.

probably chief among them orchestrating and major merger to create the world's largest airline yet much remains the same. the industry continues to face a regulatory tax burden which constrains its ability to be profitable on a sustained basis. just as the is the leader in the industry and realizes that the challenges. as such the local component of a4a campaign to create an international airline policy. jeff has been a champion of airlines for america, a-4a into an aggressive ad for the industry and over 10 million jobs it creates. ..

that this is the first time that i hope for this business. and when i say hope for this is, i need transforming this from an airline to this is. i was actually invited to speak at an industrials called as recently, an industrials conference as an airline. when i got there, it wasn't early morning speech and i went to get some food. a friend of mine was there, rent a chemical company.

chemical companies are doing pretty well with natural gas prices the way they are. he said just, what are you doing here? fassett at all about how people think of airlines. there have businesses. they're incredibly important to jobs, incredibly important to growth, but they're not a business and have never been a business since the wright brothers. airlines have not returned in excess of their cost of capital since the wright brothers. we are transforming the entire u.s. airlines. we are transforming ourselves into a business. western is not? consolidation, incredibly important. for far too long we've waged any business partners, price their product and tried to make it up on volume. that doesn't work.

we are now in a consolidation to have the second comes from consolidation, fewer business models. we've been in history of barriers to entry and high barriers to exit. also not good as you know. the capacity discipline has an incredibly valuable. what we've learned that united, i don't speak for my fellow ceos. capacity discipline as profit maximize. you put too much capacity against too little demand and you drive yourself out of business. capacity discipline is incredibly valuable in the efficiency of the consolidations have given in terms of revenue centers, but the cost of issues are very ports and a consolidated this is. also, airlines are now run by professional management. today we are very focused on earning returns in excess of our cost of capital.

for actually focused at getting to the point where we can do that for our balance sheets. we are to the point where it generated enough cash that ultimately will return the cash to its owners. the authors are not the airlines. our shareholders have been very, very good about holding our feet to the fire and as a result of the transformation of consolidation or capacity discipline records management who are focused on running a business and not running an airline. we do not have anymore of the mine family is bigger than your run blade management. it's gone forever. we have shareholders starting over in our business. used to be owned by auctioning spirit you could make good money on the airline business trading on volatility. many people had done so. we are turning over shareholders

from hedge funds and option means to the fidelity from the genesis of the world because they see what type name in this business. they see the transformation. they see the focus on delivering. d.c. focus for the future on capital return and return cash to investors. they see through capacity discipline and they are investing for the long term. nobody in his right mind ever invest in airlines for the long term in toll now. that it's an exciting place to be in the airline business. are there still remaining issues in the business? of course, many issues. we have huge burden from our own government. we have 17 different taxes and fees. before you get to income tax, we never had to worry because of 17 different taxes and fees

basically made it impossible to earn anything for income tax. if you think about it, 20% of the domestic ticket haystacks. so many are not in the airline business. can you imagine the kind of business he would have if the government to 20% of your top line before you saw a dollar of revenue? you know she'd have? you have an airline. we have a tremendous regulatory burden as well. we came out of the reagan native environment. we were deregulated in 1978, but the surrogate concept of the civil aeronautics board remains that our regulators and were subject to amazing amounts of regulation for deregulated business. i like to stay with us heavily regulated deregulated business known to man.

science-based safety regulations of course makes sense. but many of the doubt and many of them are burdensome. we are required to produce. we have legions of people producing rancid dataset to our regulators. much of the data is not used or understood, but basically it's a remnant of the old civil aeronautics board and the mentality of regulators need to think of as is the business, not a regulated business. those are very expensive than the cost benefit analysis is simply not fair. so you take the tax burden and regulatory burden and the factor government views this as a piggy bank. they are 19 willing dollars a year out of the u.s. airlines every year and not spending where it needs to be spent like a modern air traffic control system. we today have an air traffic control system that is safe. it uses the very finest world

war ii crown base technology. you have a better way of finding in your honda accord and the government uses to track our airplanes. that has got to change and it should change over time and i hope it will change. there is some progress being made, but if you think about value to our society of having a modern air traffic control system, let's take the waste peoples time, an enormous amount of time. think about the fuel burn alone come to think of the impact on our environment alone. in modern air traffic control system could reduce fuel usage by 10%. at united airlines alone, we've heard 100 million barrels of oil a year. that's more than one day supply in the world. let's pretend half of that was

earned in the u.s. 50 million barrels. 10% is 5 million euros. it's a lot of money. it's also a lot of pollution, right? so environmentalists should be supporting a modern air traffic control system in the environment. so we have a business today transforming itself. we made our government to assist us in our transformation. good for consumers. everyone wants a stable, modern airline system. it's good for us to make roddick's investing in our product come in our people, and technology, was good for the customer. in our facilities. it's good for the united states of america to have a healthy airline business because

together the airline and it larry johnson had 10 lan jobs. so we made our government should work with us so we have a national airline policy that furthers the interests of transportation. we are competing on a global scale and there are governments, which are far more in line in their approach to our airline and the united state and we are losing that race. we can do better. the national airline policy is very, very important to reduce the burdensome taxation and regulation. those are things that have tremendous benefit to our consumers and nation. i will shop and be happy to take questions.

[applause] my guess is this is not a shy crowd. >> since no one has a hand up yet, i get the first question. >> fire away. >> the first question is who did not talk about ownership of u.s. airlines, and import issue that has been around for a while. give us your thoughts on that idea. >> i actually don't waste my time on that because it's not going to happen. >> that's a good answer. as a matter of fact, those are the answers we need. not horsing around, but coming up with it isn't going to happen. i think if we were to ask lee mock and others in the room,

they would say the same thing. hopefully that has now given, here we are, a question right here. >> mr. smisek, one of the parts of our great schedule carrier business models is the city for each program will remove employees on whatever on our flight. the challenge is that the capacity utilization in our current environment. the seats come at a premium price and can be canceled last minute. do you have a feeling about your business model and whether we have to be more aggressive and raise the rates on those employees that have to travel around the country? >> well, you know, we fit into government programs from time to time and review those programs are similar to many other corporate customs. and it's a function of the

market we can effectively serve in the price we can get and the dilution that would occur if pricing were too low. so why don't you people flying on airlines who are government employees from any different than people who work for chevron. i don't see any difference. >> or must be some more questions out there. >> is hard to see. the lights are bright. >> scott may with "the associated press." was just wondering us airfares got to a point but the leisure traveler may not make as many trips as in the past? >> airfares are an incredible problem. they are 20% cheaper than years ago. the fact is if people got used

to the knob is an industry, people got used to the first-ever locomotor airlines are suffering loss on every single passenger. we were contrary to feel burned. so i would say airfare -- i can't talk about future for us because milers fivea when i do that, but i will tell you airfares are today an incredible bargain. which gets you from point a to point b. at great speed with reliability, unlike any other form of transportation. very efficient transportation. obviously it's very strange, they make decisions whether they make particular trips, but this is a business that remains brutally competitive. so i don't worry. >> here we go right here. [inaudible] >> almost, but not quite.

[inaudible] >> looks, alliances have brought enormous values nfc and others three major alliances. i think alliances change over time. i was actually meeting this morning who was telling me about his personal experiences. if you think on the chain, initially all the way to today has been a huge transformation in neighboring benefits to the airline and benefits to customers, otherwise we could keep alliances where they are. there will be change in alliances. carriers coming in and carriers coming out and is largely driven by consolidation. you could think of star alliance. what happens? i suspect that there's apparently some other merger in the works. someone was telling you about

it. and one of our partners is involved in a merger. that obviously will create a change in alliances as well. alliances bring value to consumers at airlines and even within alliances, very different relationships. they are not all the standard relationships. some have joint ventures or some of the partners. others have frequent flier reciprocity without cochairing. there's a mix-and-match, sort of like what we are doing with air travel. we are camping consumers more choice in the elements of air travel than we've historically done. alliances bring enormous value and are here to stay. the numbers of alliance or so changes can validation those in europe.

>> we have one right out here. >> i really enjoyed the opening announcements you've been doing underplaying. stories letting us learn more about united airlines. the interest is the kind of reaction you got from customers is a great mold is. i'd be interested to hear how you guys have come about doing that and the reaction. >> i don't want my competitors to copy us, so i'll tell you it's been terrible. the stuff we have in our airplanes don't notice you see much less of me. that's on purpose because they want to showcase our workers, my coworkers more. people are interested in behind the scenes stuff and that helps. we have one today on customer service because we have very passionate people. they want to deliver good customer service. but it's my job to give them the tools in the training and

incentive and make sure the accountability, which goes with all of that will deliver service. we're extremely focused on customer service because in a merger you bring these organizations together. nobody can airline business to do merger integration. nobody signed up for that. the merger brings terrific anaphase, but she can lose customer service in the interim. the coworkers want to give customer service and showcasing their passionate support for them to understand we have very good people who want to give good service. we are training 100% of flight attendants and agent and airport on the felon. including the people who have third parties in the united express. we are investing in our people and investing in things like

recruits. it shows respect to the coworkers were putting our vendor to prove the lot in life so they can get the tools they need to do their jobs. those videos help, but also than those videos, they showcase elements and you'll see more of them, elements that customers are interested, behind-the-scenes looks. not many people go into back rooms. we'll continue to do that. but you don't want to do it. [laughter] >> we have a question at the second window. >> my name is shaun cassidy, first vice president of policy association. i completely agree our president that we do need a comprehensive cohesive national aviation policy, though we talk about these if it turns and it almost seems like we have this relative condition that we can't figure

how to get from point a to point b. are there some constructive steps we can move forward to make some incremental steps in achieving the goal of the national policy? >> excellent question. in my view in nick may disagree, this is a multiyear process and part of it is education. these are people who are very interested in airlines and aviation. many people don't. very few people understand the power of airlines to gross domestic product. 5% probably shocks a lot of people. we compete on a global scale, that we do things as a nation that are curious. for example, will trade open skies with dubai. basically emirates can fly wherever in the united states and we have returned can fly in dubai. heck of a trade.

[laughter] would need to educate people about the power of the airlines for moving people, moving cargo, moving ideas. we are huge exporters. people don't know that airlines are exporters because when we sell a ticket, we are exporting a service. that's one of long lines are very damaging to the experts of the united states of america. you can imagine a few three and four hour race coming into the country, word gets back to the country and people don't want to come to the united states of america as a result. the first step is educating our own government about the power and importance of u.s. airlines. and making sure people understand the power of the modern air traffic control system. most people don't understand you fly straight to your destination. you are going like this.

you're wasting time and fuel. you are wasting old time. you're wasting group. you could use money there is supposed to pour in more concrete. we need an efficient control system. the process of education of talking to elected officials, and making sure they understand and exposing the burden we have. very few people another set of train taxes in ease on an air trip. they don't know they are paying 20% off the top. they don't know they are taxed more heavily than alcohol and tobacco, was generally people think this is thin. air travel is not a sin. i think we appointed make headway and i'll tell you, nick calio is on this. chairman shuster understands it. he understands were used as a piggy bank.

he knows how burdensome we are for this industry. so there is hope. >> i think there's hope for this country when we have ceos like jeff smisek. this is so exciting because he tells it like it is and you're really making a difference. >> my pr people are holding their ears generally when i talk. >> you're the boss. one more question right out here. >> there's been a lot of talk about the potential pilot and take action shortage around the world. cbc that it united and what steps you take to attract and retain these resources? >> that's another long-term issue. the answer is no. but over time what will happen is the express carriers will begin to see it because they

move up into the mainline and the question is where did he express carriers get their pilots? when you have rules like 1500 hour rule, which is related to quality, it's number of hours. that has a damaging effect on the skilled pilots coming into the business. so we look at a broad range at united. i'm not prepared to talk publicly, but we understand on the road we have issues. you could say initially it doesn't affect us because we'll drop the united states press carriers. we need the seat of our express affiliates. why would we have been afflicted need to feed? we are attempting to address it. there's a broad range from educating young men and women in the schools about a future in

the airline business has pilots because we cannot attract people because we are becoming a business and they can have stable jobs and retirement stake in relying on and have a business they are proud to work for. educating students all the way to the other end have an issue of training. it's an issue all of us need to address and will be addressing. >> let's get just a huge round of applause. [applause] >> sequester will reduce our

grants by about 5%, which roughly equates to $22 million or so, which will be distributed among the various licensees in stations that are described. so we have in fact taken a 13% in our overall federal funding in the last two years and if the entire federal government had disdain because we sustain, the budget would be $500 billion smaller than it is now. we feel like we've made a significant contribution to deficit reduction and retirement of the federal debt within her contacts. >> on our companion netware, c-span, and her presentation of the first spy programs in her

series. >> i think of the madonna of the first ladies. she actually posed as a model at a time when that was frowned upon and was professionally known as the rows of long island, by all accounts was

bewitching. certainly 57-year-old john tyler who married her and she loved being first lady. it was julia tyler who ordered the marine band to play hail to the chief whenever the president appears and greeted her gas sitting on a throne on a race lap or with purple plumes in her hair. it's almost as if she receded to the more creamy roll that martha washington had deliberately reject it.

>> this morning on the "washington journal," we started periodic series on the health care law, the affordable care act and its implementation. we will start by looking at whether insurance premiums are expected to rise. louise radnofsky is our guest. thank you for being here this morning. a couple headlines reported. secretary sebelius, head of hhs, said some could see premiums rise and we saw the headline in your paper, health insurance are warning on premiums. louise radnofsky, why the conversation on insurance premiums? >> guest: we don't right now but premiums will be, but the premiums in the insurance market are key to determining whether

they buy coverage and of course whether the marketplace work really with the working the way it was intended. there's a lot of anticipation around the question. people are concerned about it because they see it affects their pocket book and it's a huge deal. >> host: where is the implementation of the affordable care act? why are we talking about premiums right now? >> guest: they take effect january 1st, 2014. if you think what that might mean for state and local governments, they're influencing everything right now. the question of whether they'll be ready or not are really very close to becoming real. >> host: would look at some of the dates mentioned. in october we see the open enrollment period for the health insurance marketplaces. in january of 2014, the insurance market launches and we'll see more people getting

coverage. it's going to become a mandate. medicaid access will see benefits from being insured. also companies won't be able to refuse you for preexisting can -- and in answer companies can't charge more for your gender or health problems. what has to happen now for this to rollout in the next couple? >> guest: insurance rate was trying to figure out based on a lot of the restrictions they will face are really the restrictions of the people i could have been to premiums. if you're a young man come your premiums microware because they're no longer tied in some ways to the beneficial rejections of status. older people can see premiums go down. that's the secretary was getting up when she made her remarks. for some people they could go up in some people could go down.

>> host: if you'd like to chat about health insurance premiums and the affordable care act with louise radnofsky. republicans call 202-58-5381. democrats, 202-737-0002 two. independent callers, 202-628-0205. how did the insurance that raise on the federal level? to the states have any input or stay? >> guest: december the reject increases unreasonable. they ask insurance to justify race, but not to force them to change it. the federal government is putting its faith in competition and the exchanges where people are able to price shop and encourage insurers to keep prices at his level where they would be the ones people into choosing. >> host: when we talk about the potential for insurance premiums to rise for the wear,

are we talking about everyone who has health insurance, or are we looking at a specific subset of the american public? >> guest: were looking at the people who buy their insurance is a small employers for a small group of employees and these are related to market markets must affect it by the wolves, the premium changes that could result. half of americans get insurance through their employers and makes it relatively few changes and will continue to see relatively few including premiums. it's an indication that there's premiums they pay to participate in the plan could be in some small way affect the, the certainly not as likely to be as huge issue for the individual. >> joining us from indianapolis and the democrats line. good morning. >> host: hello. medicare part d premiums may go up as i understand it.

a lot of people got letters are sent out letters about the number of services. i want to know what that's going to do with the affordable health care act. thank you very much. i'll take my answer off the air. postcode i do care premiums are tied to an ss man each year as to what has to happen so they can get not directly related to the affordable care act, but medicare and the perceived cut the way the republicans discuss the democrats a strength in the programs but make it a key political issue in the money why people are wondering whether there's a direct connection. >> host: you write about the role of government subsidies. how does that come into play but what are you watching? >> guest: people will be

eligible based on income. is a fairly large number were of low income, which should put a family of four under $100,000 a year. there's quite a wide range of people, the subsidies are available. people around the poverty line could see most if not all subsidized, where people at the higher end may see a small discount. in some cases they could pay less. they could also be quite high. >> host: sounds like we don't know how that may even outer balance out. >> guest: subsidies are tied and could come in soon as early as this week in a few parts of the country what exactly it is will be speculating about. >> host: skoda n. stafford,, virginia. >> guest: good morning. two and a half years premiums

will go down. when he was running for president, he said for the first year and a half he was president. it's absolutely alive. it's not true at all. all the people in the administration have been lying to us. what you just got done saying is people cannot be charged more for preexisting conditions. was going to happen here is your going to raise my premiums up to a high premium, where it would be cool with someone who has a preexisting condition and then you're saying no one can be charged more for having a preexisting condition. the president told me my premiums are not going to rise and it's turning out to be one big fat lie. >> host: lets get a response. >> guest: the idea of mixing insurance pools were previously considered to be too high risk to ensure with the rest of the market certainly is sent in some

people have worried will increase premiums across the board for people. the administration is a couple of women designed to reduce the risk that is sure of ending up healthy people and that should stabilize things after a few years. the first couple years are critical because that's the moment insurers have anybody once to offset the risk as a fairly wide assumption people who are sick suspect they may become sick soon will certainly be part of taking the market. >> host: michael, independent caller, go ahead. >> guest: i am a 30-year-old male. i have been to buy my own health insurance because it's cheaper than that insurance my employer provides. i have trouble taking actuary tables. it seems fairly unhealthy. >> guest: that's really

interesting. i'm a little bit curious because it's a little different than what i heard before. the individual market where you are right now is the insurance policy you can buy individually is cheaper than the co-pay. this is interesting. it's true that doesn't sound like a lot of other places around the country. we do know individual premiums can be relatively low in some markets. i guess it depends on what the employer is subsidizing. >> host: michael, are you still on the line? >> caller: if after-tax money unlike my employer. >> guest: what would be the amount you are required to contribute? >> caller: 305 for a month for single and 100% blue cross blue shield with a minor co-pay is 172 months.

>> guest: out of curiosity, what are you planning on to do next year? >> caller: chances are i will pay for it. taking the insurers ability on risk seems bad for capitalism. >> guest: interesting. to be one of the people in individual markets and a lot of people are counting people like you. looking forward to which you think of the value over time. >> host: highway for tires january 14 double by health insurance on the open arche. nice job, obama. >> guest: this is one of the groups assuming the folks under 65 stand to gain a great deal further with a lot of fat. if they buy an individual market, premiums could not be more than three times those charged are you%. so that could well have the effect of premiums being lower than they would say right now.

of course the key question is will there be enough people to make the market work for everybody? certainly there's a lot to gain in the first couple years. >> host: were talking with louise radnofsky, health policy reporter for "the wall street journal." today is health insurance premiums and what they may do under the federal health care law. amarillo, texas, republican, go ahead, linda. >> caller: first-time caller in my concerned about the health care lies they want to do what the cadillac plan is. there's taxing on people with quote, unquote catalog plans. i don't know if i've got one. i also am on tri-care, a secondary interest for me because i am the widow of the military from the navy. i want to know what the cadillac plan is, if it affects me and how tri-care will affect me

also. just go the cadillac tax kicks in 2018 a few years down the line. as you know, it's applied to high cost is an expectation to change the way they're set up precisely so as to soon to say, mr. bully nothing to worry about this year. tri-care is interesting. try carries the program for members of the military and was largely on touched by the health care lot exit in a few specific areas such as dagon adult privilege tacked onto it. at the time, members of the military were concerned trachea would be negatively affected and largely to make sure that it wasn't directly addressed.

>> host: right wing radical right then and asked whether the penalty for those who don't buy insurance versus the cost of insurance. >> guest: we don't know what the cost of insurance will be. this depends on what the specific subsidies would be. the penalty in the first year starts in $95 for a portion of the income in goes up over the next two or three years. for people there is obviously a calculation will be somewhat specific for them to make and may well vary across the country. of course there is the value of the insurance product in and of itself. it isn't just a straight numbers game figuring out which is cheaper, especially for people who don't is the sharon so it is. >> host: cheryl joins us in enterprise, alabama. what is your name? surely, you are wrong with louise radnofsky.

>> caller: my question is i have a granddaughter and she's a single mother and makes just enough money to get by with her child. so they are saying to people under a certain income would be on medicaid. but our governor is not going to accept the extra money from the federal government. so does that mean she won't be a litigant on medicaid? how does that work? >> guest: i'm guessing she's been texas row and it's a good question and something people are wondering about right now as well. medicaid varies by eligibility, currently in each state is quite low. although it's primarily aimed at women in some states, particularly the south. under the law, this is to go

away and medicaid eligibility would be raised to avoid making 138%, which for a one-person household would be $15,000 a year and obviously this does very by family size. if the expansion doesn't go in a given state, there's options for people on current medicaid eligibility at 100%. i would hundred% they can go into the exchanges and get subsidies towards the cost of policies and will receive five subsidy. you can tell it's very specific to everybody's circumstance. folks below the poverty level working 30 or 40 hours a week, income and the imac category. >> host: are you still with us? where is your family member living? >> guest: enterprise, alabama. >> host: how much have you been able to find out in terms of information of what's going to happen and how the law

changing isn't what the requirements and eligibility would be a? >> caller: well, according to the obamacare law, she supposed to be eligible because she doesn't make -- she doesn't even take 20,000 a year -- under 20,000. but i don't think that's enough in our state to get on medicaid now. but once the laws went into effect, it should be if the government would accept it. >> host: i apologize for meddling alabama and texas. it has little eligibility for medicaid. that's one of the issues the governor and the governor's staff considered the daily take eligibility for medicaid. it has to meet the administrative cost and after three years contribute on a

sliding scale, raising 10%. because medicaid eligibility is so low, a labyrinth of this would be a large one to do in the jump overnight be pretty hard. obviously, this is still a matter of debate. were starting to weigh into it. >> host: here's a story our guest, trained for reporter for "the wall street journal." the medicaid expansion like the tennessean says the health industry pushes a move, but republican leaders have a reservation. battles are unfolded at statewide level. briefly tell us more. what does this map shows why is it relevant? >> guest: tennessee is an interesting position because it depends a little bit about its neighbors do. tennessee has eight borders, something people now know they cannot is of this story. for them, part of the concern is if they expand eligibility,

neighboring states might have an instance to move and receive care. i was one of the unexpected consequences of the decision. as we were talking about with alabama, this is a tough decision to make. on the one hand, there's federal dollars in the awareness that they don't take time, and other state well. some states have difficult times and i worried about the contribution they make in the federal budget. federal dollars come and don't necessarily see this as an entitlement. >> host: we can see states and red plan not to participate in the medicaid expansion under the federal health care law. those in blue plan to participate and you can see those leaning towards participating in that white undecided states. tennessee is now a stay somewhat understated. the governor has said he's not

going to cite medicaid right now. he wants to the third way approach of using essentially the money he would've got to enroll low-income people into private insurance funds. he wants to do that, but he hasn't yet convinced they have the insurance to go ahead with it. tennessee as they know right now, but still somewhat undecided. >> host: oklahoma, republican fine, welcome. >> caller: hey, yeah, you guys were talking about the comment that he was actually lower premium and all this and not because you have more people entering. one of the trends i see. i'm an insurance agent. is your older, less healthier people are really excited about it because i'll have access to it and are ready to buy.

your younger, were healthier people are saying it's going to be cheaper to pay the penalty go on. so what i am saying is you're going to have a lot of unhealthy people that are ready to buy because they're going to be cheaper. but younger, healthier people are not interested at all. and they're probably not going to be interested until they get sick or something happens to them. what's the answer for that? post to one of our earlier tweet says they will carry the penalty. >> guest: is that the worst-case scenario. that's the thing people here will happen to the markets. a counter to reduce states government, the support of our planning massive enrollment, publicity and get getting people uninsured to buy the product and

aimed at encouraging people who have relatively cheap insurance to buy more expensive and more generous coverage that would cover them for everything. the battle you will see play out over the next six months and the key question is why people like the children and young healthy people in the market decide to do, what value they place in the premiums are offered in subsidies they are eligible and what decisions they make. >> host: las vegas, nevada, carl, democratic fine, go ahead. >> caller: hi, how are you today? >> host: were good. >> caller: the insurance companies are being artificially raised. i think they believe in a market based country and they don't believe the government should have anybody and if you want to buy insurance, you should.

the truth is insurance companies are not honest. another paid insurance to an insurance company for 37 years. when she got lung cancer to the hospital, they sent her a letter and said they believed she had lung cancer for 37 years, a preexisting condition and they dropped her and let her die in a hospital bed. they take money from people and turn their backs on my she died. barack obama and democrats are trying to help the people. republicans are trying to hurt the country. this country is attacked by conservative religious people who want to burn the constitution and replace it with the bible and the 10 commandments and force their beliefs and they think if you can't say, go to a church in baghdad for money. people don't want to do that. >> host: karl, thank you for sharing the story of what happened to your family member. louise radnofsky, can you talk about the question of what

health insurers are more name and what incentives they have two be on it. >> guest: i'm sorry to hear what happened about your mother. his sound is a what you encountered is along the line of the dais outside a the affordable care i am essentially said insurers conjurer people because they get sick. this is one of the things they hear the president say frequently in one of the other things that sticks in my mind as much as the premium and people also refer back to. the idea is that this not being permissible anymore, it insurance companies have to adapt to the new market and it's not possible to price in a way that doesn't force them to rise across the book and the administration is saying if they want to stay afloat, they have to offer policies at a price that is credited and induces

people to pick rather than a can petted or make it federal credit and are able to look on their website like travelocity and from pair and have the option to go elsewhere. >> host: we see in your reporting the actuaries and nonpartisan professional association issued this report in march, when the cost of medical claims to the new individual market could rise by an average of 32% per person over the first three years to life in place. was the basis for the report and the reception to a? >> guest: is interesting in part because what i've found is the cost of medical claims is going to vary dramatically. could be an 80% increase in some parts. and it could be a small decrease in states like new york and vermont. essentially what they were doing was trying to team up with the changes would be with the beagle entered the market they've been kept out of for a while.

and some of the other changes is a broader package of benefits in people's behavior and my grammatical claims a sun demographic characteristics and i got a lot of pushback. medical claims are not the same. but they are worse non-quibbles about the methodology used in a couple stayed. there is pushback in the administration to dismiss that as a report created in some way by a group that had to see the health care fail. we don't exactly know what will happen with premiums just yet, but this is one projection this seems to have been based on statistical modeling that will discover soon enough as to whether his the case. edison said insurers are looking

at. obviously they work very closely and medical claims could go up and in turn have an effect on the housing decisions carriers make. >> host: edgewater, maryland, angelico, go ahead. >> caller: good morning. i'm the health insurance broker and vapor of health care reform. however, the premiums as well as out-of-pocket liabilities, you know, medical costs overall erasing much, much faster than everything else. one of the problems i have is i have to be born were created coming up with plans that people can afford and it's scary when you look at how much rates have gone up in the last two years alone, just implement part of the health care reform. the other thing is also the out-of-pocket. it is very common for companies to have about $10,000, $15,000,

$20,000 to that bull. one point the previous colonnade in regard to the insurance companies. the state of ireland gives products to people who can't fight in the regular market today and for a 58 euros and 63-year-old to get a cost, no cautionary or you go to the top for her hospital is $2000 a month. are you dare? >> guest: sounds as if the high risk pool with the state and federal high pools for a while is premiums have been very, very high because there's essentially no relatively healthy people to offset the risk, so that's why the state and federal government have

taken them on. the federal high risk pool had lowered element, around 100,000 people got to be perhaps a failure of the premiums are high, can shatter very straight and you had to been uninsured for six months. many people didn't want to do the administration sent earlier this year's working through the viability appropriation set aside pretty quick way that would close student loan relief to have enough money to pay out the claim to the end of the year. we know in washington the people who have preexisting conditions can be expensive. the question is what happens to the market as a whole as they enter that it has to be adjusted to take to account the risk. >> host: my insurance premium triple three years ago the company restructured. the data preparation for obamacare for the resulting

recession? >> guest: the last caller mentioned this as well. racer than going up up in the main provision having taken full effect. the cost increase associated with covering their parents plan to wear covering preventive services about a co-pay or is not considered to be really very high. it's not entirely clear whether insurance companies raise rates, if they have high claims or any other factors that they would say accounted for the rent receipt rate or that employees account for their increasing rates. there have been rate increases over the past two years that it made people extremely nervous. in some respects the attribute before the law has taken effect and that could affect premiums. >> host: louise radnofsky is that "the wall street journal." she's also an editor at london's

the guardian website, "the associated press." also a reporter for newsday. looking on insurance premiums and what may happen as the health care law. collar and plainfield, indiana. hi, rod. >> caller: i have a question. i was wanting to know what financial demands are put on the health insurance companies as far as health care benefits and to pay for the health care and why was the public option for analysis to? >> guest: there's a great insurance come to me, was passed as part of the love and the essential requirement is insurance come in his have to spend it to you 85% of what they receive in premiums in medical claims. and the difference to consumers in the form of rebates. what we've seen is the rebates

have been relatively small. the system thing the ratio been in a fat and encouraging insurers to set their premium to more reasonable levels with avoiding having to pay out the rebates. so that is what is going on there. ..

in the event that he is not able to make it he has kindly agreed as to take through the constable initio related to dodd-frank but he should be here shortly. today we are discussing a recent trade in lovemaking that may have significance on our protocol and economic liberty of as well as the rule of law. to give some background in context, the obama administration term was characterized by a large-scale legislative initiatives covering to in the united states economy. first, the patient protection and affordable care act also known as obamacare and the second dodd-frank wall street

reform protection act otherwise known as dodd-frank. aside from growth and complexity, these initiatives are largely not related. however, they do have a few in comment. both exhibited departure from the established principle that the congress should oversee and supervise regulatory bodies that an act of the rules and that the bodies should be subject to clear statutory parameters. dodd-frank stability oversight council and the consumer financial protection bureau. these bodies are tasked with far reaching powers that include the power to determine which private companies are deemed systemically important, how they should be resolved if they get at all bankrupting into trouble and what should apply to banks and financial companies that

interact with retail consumers. these are broad and wide ranging pal worse. the affordable care act creates the independent payment advisory board which is so independent that it doesn't have any meaningful oversight. to discuss the constitutionality of these legislative bodies as well as the impact the bodies are likely to have on consumers and the health care and financial services industry and on the market generally, we have a great lineup of speakers today. first, michael kamen is the director of policy studies here at the cato institute. he has been at the forefront of measures to challenge the affordable care act both at the federal and the state levels. he's the author of several policy papers on the impact of the affordable care act, including a paper on the constitutionality of the ipab

and is a commentator on health policy in the media. his most recent policy paper, and i have it here, 50 votes, how states can stop the obama health care law is available online. please welcome michael cannon. [applause] >> thank you luis and trevor and all of you for coming here today it's 50 vetoes help the states can stop the obama health care law because there is the law itself and the supreme court is keeping the provision and with that that isn't what we are here to talk about today. i would like to start actually a little off topic as well. i want to start my remarks the same way i began a radio show this morning which is to wish my father a happy 72nd birthday. he is supposed to be joining us today.

i think that he is on board a flight and so he will be here shortly. you might think i am a devoted son for wanting to wish my father a happy birthday. you may change your opinion if you know that on a previous birthday let me say that my father is already medicare eligible and on the previous birthday the day he became a medicare eligible im arranged to have printed the paper that my mother and father received at home. i used the occasion of the becoming eligible to talk about the medicare program and by the end of the op-ed i was growing both of my parents out of medicare. i may sound like a very devoted son but it's certainly bolsters and does make me a more devoted son because when the time comes if the congress took my advice

and the time came they had to move in with one of my children i know which way the other four children would vote. they would vote for my children to move in with me. i don't know that that makes me a very good husband but that is something people can judge. it's one of the most notorious features of the affordable care act. this is the new government panel called the and it independent payment advisory board. if you pay any attention to the date over the patient protection affordable care act better known as obamacare you've heard the term death panel. when people talk about the death hammill in obamacare, they are talking of the independent payment advisory board which i will refer to as i.p.a.d.. this is a panel of experts that will propose ways to reduce medicare spending and improve the quality of medical care for medicare enrollees, the elderly

and disabled. now the story of how it came to be is an interesting ones. shows how putting the government in control of the economy or a sector of the economy threatens not economic freedom but also political freedom and ultimately oral will fall in the constitution itself. so, i find ipab frightening not because it is a def panel but frankly i was on the fence on this one for a while but if we are going on the medicare program i am pro - panel. i wonder to be budget constraints. on one the government to say no to certain wasteful expenditures and medicaid. ipab doesn't frighten me because it is a def panel it frightens me because it is a legislature. in many ways it is the power to make law independent of congress without any accountability to the people that live under law and gets to impose law all the congress would never pass. in fact the patient protection and affordable care act which i will refer to as the ppca was written to make it as hard as

possible for the congress to stop ppca from legislating. the changes to medicare that it's going to submit to congress are not merely proposals. these are the law. they take effect automatically putting it under the constitution when a member of congress introduces a new legislative proposal, that legislative proposal has the approval of the house of representatives and the senate and the president accept the instances congress overrides the veto in order to become law. in all cases either chamber of commerce has the power to stop that legislative proposal. that is not so with ipab. when they submit one of their proposals to congress, it becomes law automatically. the statute requires the federal department of health and human services to implement that proposal. if the people's elected representatives want to block a

ipab proposal, the house and the senate and the president have to agree on a substitute for that proposals of the so-called proposals can then become more without any congressional action, without congressional approval or meaningful congressional oversight or even being subject to a presidential veto if they just become law unless the congress, the house and the senate and the president agree on a substitute and furthermore, citizens have no power to challenge the court because the ppca prohibits the judicial review. it gets worse than that though because fell lawmaking power is that just confined to medicare such as the power to change how much medicare pays for what services. it can actually ration care for patients in government programs. this is the aspect it can say no you are not going to get that treatment that you want.

the statute explicitly forbids ipab from rationing care. it can ration for government programs in spite of that because for one thing the statute explicitly authorizes the board to dictate prices for the covered services. price controls are very concrete albeit implicit rationing. ask any low-income mother who's tried to find a dentist that collects at medicaid coverage for her children to be even though it is officially forbidden, ipab can engage in explicit rationing and for particular services to medicare enrollees. now, the losses they cannot do that and i say that they can. why do i make that claim? because first the statute lets ipab define rationing. and ipab decisions as i mentioned before are exempt from

the judicial review. so, in other words, the authority on whether ipab violated the prohibition on rationing care is ipab itself. second, there is nothing else to enforce this or any other on a ipab's power. the statute imposes that on which it prohibits a to do is the same constraint that it imposes on that which permits ipab to do. manly the house and the senate and the president all have to agree on a substitute proposal. in other words, there is nothing stopping ipab, nothing in the statute stopping speech call from explicit rationing care. they can also rationed care of the government isn't paying the medical bills to recall what has to do is claim the imposing price controls on the private insurers to deny coverage for the services somehow related to the medicare program. that is the term the statute has. ipab can propose whatever it

wants as long as it is related to the medicare program and that is a very loose standard and even if it were not loose, it is related to the medicare program and is exempt from the judicial review. >> in addition, ipab can even increase taxes. again the statute says it cannot but the only constraint is the statute on that which forbids ipab to do and it's the same constraint that imposes things that authorizes ipab to do, normally the house and the senate and the president have to agree on a substitute proposal all of which means they can go ahead and propose whatever tax increases at once and if the congress doesn't stop them, then the secretary of health and human services can collect the taxes. it gets worse. they prevent future congresses from repealing ipab. the authors knew they were going to make unpopular decisions. they want to make unpopular decisions and so they knew that lots of people would want to get rid of it. they included language that prohibits congress from a pealing ipab outside of a seven

month window in the year 2017. even then, congress would have a 3/5 majority in both chambers to repeal it. if ipab authors had their way this would be the most of repealed in federal law. after 2017 the congress to repeal medicare, but not the board. conagra's along with the state could repeal the bill of rights if it wanted to, but they couldn't read heels ipab. even if congress defeated in retailing ipab in 2017, the ppca has power to legislate six months after congress has repealed. it gets worse. the attorney with the liberty justice center in illinois last year she and i published a paper, we offered a paper published by the cato institute we were the first to report on an even more disturbing feature of the ipab statute. that is this if congress misses

that narrow seven month window in 2017 in which the statute allows it to repeal, then the statute prohibits congress from ever altering another ipab proposal. they could go on writing laws free from interference in the congress forever, and as bad as that sounds, it gets worse because all of the aforementioned statutes powers can fall into the hands of a single individual. the statute requires ipab members be nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate. these are about to be controversial. think about the controversy that attended the president obama to run medicare this could be a def panel to ration care. he praised the national health service etc. the president had to reset the point because all the controversy. he knew that he would never get even a vote in the senate and even then he probably wouldn't be confirmed to be there of the

media reports about how nobody that is qualified to serve on the ipab even wants to be nominated because none of them want to go through the grueling and nasty confirmation process. fortunately or unfortunately we might say the statute provides such an eventuality if they proposed the proposals for any reason you because the president has not appointed anyone to the border because the senate hasn't come from anyone to the board or because ipab cannot agree on a proposal or because the members of the border just slacking off and not doing their work the way these things occur then all of the ipab powers that write the law without that take effect automatically to one person.

the secretary of health and human services who is then in power to issue her own legislative proposals that can ration care and impose taxes in her own department she would control the power of the purse as well as these other powers. now, if you are a democrat and you trust kathleen sebelius the secretary of human services, a few trust barack obama for the powers, that might not concern you very much. maybe it should because was present obama's advisers. the paul rye in style medicare voucher programs is an economist and named david without congressional authorization even if you're a democrat that should concern you. but, even if that doesn't, what if the next republican president

goes ahead and nominates paul ryan to be the secretary of health and human services regardless of your political persuasion, this sort of discretionary power should concern you. so not only is it unlikely that the senate will confirm anyone who will serve on his board, it is also unlikely president obama will nominate anyone. think about it, why would he clacks he's already got his person in there. this is why when president obama won that election i predict there is zero chance kathleen sebelius would join the exodus of the cabinet secretary and let us kerr to leave even though she broke the federal law that prohibits activity by executive branch officials and that is because kathleen sebelius is the one person who would not need to be reconfirmed as a secretary. she could assume all of ipab's powers without the senate examining her fitness to those powers. she is the only person in the universe that has ipab powers without that scrutiny having to face a senate confirmation.

saddam as you may have claimed, the ipab isn't just unconstitutional. it is absurd. article 1, section 1 says, "all legislative powers herein granted should be vested in the congress of the united states. ppaca delegates powers to the congress clearly reserves and the constitution. those are the powers to tax, the powers to spend funds and so forth. furthermore, they try to design the statute and a future congress is basically to set of powers. power granted in the constitution and thereby it attempts to diminish the congress constitutional authority not through the amendment process of article 5 but by statute. it's not just unconstitutional it is anticonstitutional. how do things reach this point?

how do things ever get so bad that 218 members of the house of representatives, 60 u.s. senators and one president would enact a statute that would have an unelected officials to becoming essentially an economic dictator holding dominion over one sixth of the u.s. economy? the reason is this for decades the congress has been trying to manage america's health care sector to engage what we call centralized economic planning. and congress has proven itself to be an exceptional failure in this regard in this area. conagra's gets involved in managing the healthcare sector in countless ways. one of the earliest and biggest ways is by creating a tax preference by the employer sponsored insurance into an employer sponsored plan. that's a private sector looks like in the united states but probably the biggest way the congress tries to plan the sector of the economy is the

medicare program. the medicare program covers the elderly and the disabled and the united states with 50 million people but the results of the medical services in the united states and indeed in the entire world so that a purchase medical services for its enrollees sweeping the regulatory power the congress has over the health care sector because doctors, hospitals, the calfee that the medical device and structures, pharmaceutical companies and so forth have to build their business models around how medicare pays and for what it will pay so after 47 years of centralized economic planning for the medicare when we've seen the results when we see how much congress plans the economy and

the results are abysmal. almost immediately after medicare was enacted, health care spending exploded. medicare spending has grown more than to plant five times faster than the economy for most of its history it has spawned about one tax increase at least one tax increase every four years just torian to keep up with that spending but the worst part about medicare is not the least even though the best evidence available would suggest that one a third does nothing to help patients. the worst part has to be the quality program problem that exists is not created then exacerbated by the medicare program. our health care researchers most of whom are left of center supporters of the program. they will tell you that the way medicare pays for medical services either create or

exacerbates most of the problems that we see in the health care sector. one of the biggest is medical errors. the best evidence available suggests we lose two and a half to three times as many per year for medical errors as we do for people lacking health insurance as we do from our other injured problem as some people put it. the medicare program actually exacerbate that problem because medicare pays on a fee-for-service basis which means the more services physicians provide the more fees they collect so if a patient is injured by a medical error and requires more services they get paid more. this doesn't mean that medicare are the physicians try to injure patient to collect the additional fees but think about how medicare treats the physicians practice if it adopts measures that try to reduce medical errors.

if they invest in those procedures and make those investments then they fall and the physicians collect fewer payments for medicare. some of only to the had the initial investment they also get paid less for providing higher-quality care. the same problem happens when it comes to the care coordination because doctors don't talk to themselves about a shared patient. the medicare fee-for-service payment is punishing the coordination of care in many of the same way as and the list goes on and on and on. what happens when congress tries to fix the problems when they try to weed out medicaid spending? the evidence isn't pretty when the congress tries to conduct comparative research to determine which procedures are benefiting patient sandwich procedures are not benefiting patients as much. over and over again whenever

congress charters' government agencies to conduct this research, whenever the contras does anything to try to improve the quality-of-care or reduce the cost of care those efforts come under a barrage of lobbying by the high cost loquat the providers whose revenue streams are threatened by those efforts flexible when the congress created agencies to do comparative effectiveness research, they routinely get. they met that in 1991 the council on health care technologies let that fade in 1999 and the office of technology assessment in 1995 and the agency for health care policy and research effectively met the same in 1995. congress is failing to weed out wasteful spending in medicare. other efforts reduce the prices

that medicare pays for certain services and episodes of care. according to the kaiser network news survey, quote, medicare conducted hundreds of tests for demonstration programs since the mid-1970s, but can't apply them to the entire system without congressional approval. one of the reasons for this or the main reason was one every pilot program proved successful reducing the cost of medical care they rarely do but even when they do, the pilot programs are blocked by sections of the industry whose revenue streams are threatened. one of the justifications for ipab is, chris has a medicare or another example this is conagra's has a condition called the medicare payment advisory commission that advises how to change fi for payment systems

and the congress routinely ignores these recommendations that would reduce medicare spending and eliminate wasteful expenditures. so, how did we get from here to ipab? it was explained well back in 1944 by a man that would go on for 30 years later to win the nobel prize in economics. this is he explained in 1944 with the road to serfdom that when legislative bodies put themselves in control of or set about the tax of trying to plan a sector of the economy that creates pressure for that legislature to hand over more and more power to more and more independent bodies and moved from being a democracy to the more authoritarian form of government. he wrote of these dynamics it may be the unanimously expressed will of the people the parliament should prepare a comprehensive economic plan.

of the people or its representatives need therefore to be able to agree on any particular plan the inability of democratic assembly is to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people would inevitably cause dissatisfaction of space institutions and come to be regarded as an effective talking shots unable to carry out the tasks for which they have been chosen. the conviction grows of the planning is to be done, the direction must be taken out of policies and placed into the hands of experts to be permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies. of course, he continued committee expedience publication cannot really remove the causes that make the comprehensive planning seven patient with the impotence of democracy. an agreement that planning is necessary with the inability of democratic assembly is to produce a plan or strong as strong demand is the government or some individual should be given power to act on their own responsibility to lead the belief is becoming more and more widespread if things are to get

done the responsible authorities must be freed from the space procedures and the cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement towards planning. and you can see everything that is described here in the the date running up to the enactment of the independent panel of advisory board and the complaint that supporters made about the medicare program and a government planning of the health care sector to a for example, tom daschle that is a former senate majority leader, prince event obama first paid to be his health reform czar had quote actual teeth. while there's a general agreement on the basic performed principles, the traditional legislative process failed to deliver. there is a strong argument to be made that appoint experts proceeding a deliberate sometimes plodding way would make better health care decisions than politicians after nearly a century of failure it is time to try another way.

as it turns out, ipab has even more teeth than that proposed because under daschle's proposal, congress could overturn his board's decision. another drexel is the university of chicago public health professor named harold, who wrote, quote comer reduced congressional micromanagement of medicare policy in favor of, quote, a more centralized approach, despite many reasons for caution on becoming more of a believer and an imperial presidency and domestic policy the congress is screwed up and fragmented to address the most pressing problems. perhaps the biggest proponent of the ipab type of approach is peter orszag who is the director of management and budget and a former director of the congressional budget office. he wrote in an article titled why we need less democracy, quote, what we need are ways around our politicians. as they approached the problem with the representative government is the representative part. "in other words, radical as it sounds money to counter the gridlock of the institutions by

making them a bit less space. we need to jettison the fairy tale about the pure representative democracy and instead begin to build a new set of rules and institutions the would need legislative and inertia less detrimental to the nation's long-term health. those roles include creating more independent institutions that can impose taxes and other laws without representation. he continues, quote, perhaps the most dramatic example is the independent payment advisory board. he writes that he wishes it were not necessary to invest so much power on in the and accounted of officials and certain aspects of the representative government can end up causing serious problems and so we might be a healthy democracy if we are slightly less space. as hayak predicted more and more pressure for that forms of government. if we look throughout the federal government we concede this happening as the contras has shifted more power over the

lawmaking process to the administrative state and i think that with the most extreme example of that is the independent payment advisory board itself. what they have to say to taking your questions. thank you to the [applause] >> so we are very pleased. they are a lawyer, diplomat and public servant and served most recently as the special envoy for european affairs and the special envoy for your asian energy at the mission of the united states to the european union. he served as the united states ambassador to the european union and prior to that he was the department of the law firm here in d.c. and also served as the council to president bush and the presidential citizens medal

in 1993. the presidential task force on of regulatory relief and president ronald reagan piffling his departure from the public state aggrandize to continue these commitments to public service and of much of the board member of freedom work in the consultancy associates when he focuses on constitutional and regulatory issues and most capacity's it's been one of the parties challenging the constitutionality of the various provisions of dodd-frank. please welcome, please join me in welcoming the ambassador. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. i was a special envoy in addition to being ambassador back in the bush 43

administration there were very few special envoy is coming and so special in fact that i was invited on my last night to go through a dinner given by the commanding general of the european defense force. you may scratch your head just a bit and wonder what is the european force, and i would have to respond there probably is no such thing. but he commanded how the senator and his staff and the guest to entice me, which of course i couldn't. but i was identified as the u.s. special convoy. the final paragraphs of your

previous speaker lead pretty well into the examples i'm going to get. i really don't have a better introduction into what you just heard. he took the words right out of my mouth the house what we see as the worst thing on the economic front. i think it is worse than the examples i would describe in a theoretical sense, but since it deals with taxpayer money by and large, i think i'm right about that on what medicare is going to give seniors. it is probably not inappropriate that the government have something to say about how that money is spent that on the other hand is your money or one with think it would be money so when

the government takes that in a summary way without any accountability is a little that different and worse. i think what's ours is ours until it is totally taken from us but doesn't recognize that. the two chief offenders are the consumer bureau and financial revolutionary authority, and number two for the resolution authority brought up as the bailout provision. but the first start with the consumer bureau. it's probably better known but it's probably been in the press more because the carrier of the senator that proposed in the the senate reporting it. but at the same time criticizing an interesting sort of split on

her part. but the concern s totally accountable the director for the term any influence over what he does the omb is concluded for the budget that congress is precluded exercising any review authority because it provides some of the money that comes from federal reserve which itself is concluded by law with what the consumer does with this money. and i am told now that the consumer bureau is stealing all of the best people out of the

fed system which is to seek revenge both the house and the senate are concluded from reviewing the budgets even though they couldn't appropriate any money they still can to the legislation any way. i don't have a fear of the sergeant of arms is going to arrest the chairman of the holding hearing but that is what the legislature actually says, and as for the courts, they are supposed to defer to the consumer bureau as the only agency that has anything to do with any of this and is given some 18 statutes to now monopolize at the expense of the agencies that have been in business grappling with ordinary

judicial reviews. now he sleeps in his grand and automatic difference, something the court made doctrine as you all know without any statute grants any agency difference to this interpretation. what the court can give in terms of deference the court can take away. and the doctrine for those of you will years in the audience if there are any is in the breach as much as the performance, but not under dodd-frank. it must be deferred to. so there is really no way to get into this garden to stop what it is doing. and it has therefore the clean slate on 18 different consumer statutes and it has everything to do with the credit, and it also has the authority to

interpret a new word that is abusive statute that it can stop anything it thinks is abusive. the current director who was there by the grace of the recess appointment which you can ask about if you would like that is not central to the case although it is part of its and i'm happy to talk about it because it is an enormous. but courtenay said the worst word effusive is a bit of a puzzle we will do it on a case by case approach and you will know it when we have told you it when you've done it. this is really quite extraordinary and throws out the window 60 years of development of the administrative law in the united states when unlike most of the countries and certainly

unlike the e.u. we have prided ourselves being transparent and open and predictive, telegraphing in very clear terms the political opportunity to comment or the agencies will tell you this is where we think the phrase means and you can appeal it after the dust settles you have a sense of what it means to be in this case he says i will let you know after you have gone to jail. this is a very big grant of power and i think it makes your point about where all of this stuff ends up. if anything else can be worse it is the resolution of for ready. the revolution of for the -- by the way, just to give you a sense of how helpful this is,

the bureau has unburdened itself of maybe a thousand pages of what is a good mortgage and that mortgage supposedly to make things clear for consumers, and i can assure you that they are reading a thousand pages of the federal register prose. this is not helpful. out the window basically unless you live in a very, very delicately describe definition of rural you can't get what the senator wrote, which is the relationship loan and with the community banks have done for 100 years or more to grant loans based on the credit of the debtor in the community they will look at whatever balance sheet information that might be. but there is no balance sheet

information. they will do their business based on the assessment the person's willingness, determination and ability to repay. the irony is that in their own while making papers there are citations to the studies which show quite clearly that the repayment reliability of the so-called character loan is far greater than what they are asking people to sign up for in the detailed rules that you have to check off, and basically to make a long term short with the vendor has to do is give the borrower his or her miranda warnings before making any money everything you say will be held against you. you have the right to a lawyer, no one will pay you one and that

is to be absolutely sure about the rights that you now have. the bailout provision throws out about 100 years of bankruptcy code of law and has a black box about what happens when somebody gets into trouble and the federal government. the executive branch is given the information from the political part of it, that is in the white house to any institution they want. basically any financial institution of any relevant size of the institution is in financial distress and poses a risk for the financial stability in the united states.

in reviewing this, the court can't look at whether the institution is or is not in financial distress but they are expressly prohibited from reviewing the question of the digit initial review of the corner drug store as opposed to the risk in the united states. the courts have lost control over this. the courts were only given 24 hours to respond to the reorganization plan put forth by the government anywhere in the treasury and the sec and no court in a complex situation is going to the will to respond in 24 hours, so basically the court is going to be forced to say we are going with what ever you put in front of us and it may be a thousand pages or 5,000 pages, and that then becomes what happens. the proceedings are secret and

to seek the release by linking it to your friendly reporter to the post or the times, you go straight to jail. you don't collect, when you pass go you go straight to jail. there are criminal penalties and jail for talking about this to anybody. congress of course has cut out the funding to keep the payoff for whichever creditors they feel like paying off, and that money comes from the loan and that is paid off over time by an assessment which looks pretty much like a tax which is on all financial institutions the would make some margin of sense if the tax were later limited to those entities, commercial banks that enjoy the deposit insurance but it's not for any financial institution. and so, the taxing authority is

divorced again over the funding authority from congress. now, these proceedings cover a great deal of what happens to the circulation of credits and money in the economy which is the sort of life blood and isn't possible to see over time these bureaucrats to the congress, the courts or the executive branch creating ms. can the congress straighten out? i don't know. i've gotten to the point where after spending many years in washington where i never thought that i would be so hopelessly dependent on a very few judges.

the backlash on the development, i don't know how else in this is going to get. to me it is very scary. how many more examples are there like the ipad and the consumer bureau, like the resolution the authority, and i don't know. i sometimes think that they have been like that most of my professional career. it certainly does whatever it feels like unless the courts put up which is quite frequently actually. so we have been lucky with the epa that the courts have been so at 10f and they have been bounced around a little bit, too

but to the terms for the career of the judges so why worry about what happens when they retire. i will stop there and i am happy to answer any questions. but the development of the trend is a good one. [applause] >> we do have a little bit of a time constraint and the ambassador has to move on to another event so i would like to take us to the q&a now. please wait until you are called on and wait until the microphone gets to you because we are filling on c-span and the audience at home needs to hear the question.

if you are participating online, you can send questions that #superpanel and we will answer them and read them. anybody have any questions? thank you. >> excuse me. as of late recall the supreme court held under the sarbanes oxley bill that it was in the county commission or some aspect that violated the constitution for a lack of accountability but was able to cure that with a relatively narrow fix. the boards created under dodd-frank and obamacare have

such widespread and serious constitutional problems that the boards of violate the constitution and put every assistance as unconstitutional. i'm wondering if any of the panelists have a response to that. >> there is the financial oversight board appointed by the fcc. the supreme court decision is that double insulation in the case as an example of the consumer bureau or the resolution authority, but the general point is quite right on that that case will be heavily

relied on it and it is a signal we hope that the court is looking at this very, very carefully and it did have other come currencies and defense. it's enough to suggest that we would be pressed not to raise the bigger issue as we are doing and so we take some heart from that case. the questions are being raised. >> fortunately, the provisions of the ppaca or so absurd and unconstitutional the congress has ignored them in that it has referred repeatedly to repeal the entire wall even though the statute says the congress cannot

repeal the provisions except for august of 2017. as for the court challenge, trevor might know more about this than i do. there has been a case brought in arizona. i think that we are not able to establish the standing. and so, that is on appeal at this point and trevor might begin to see more about this. >> that keeps coming out. the issue has a problem which is difficult in terms of trying to strike down the wall because right now the boards are not making the necessary enforcement and generally the rule is until you have an adverse action against you this might be a problem in the case particularly. it might be the case you would have to have your entire firm liquidated before you can bring a case and then it would be difficult to bring a facial challenge than as an applied challenge. but i hear of course is that when they pass the law they seek

to reform the entire economy. generally they try to have clauses in the case you mentioned, the board even generally considered to be a detriment to law if the board is unconstitutional but a subtle but because the consequences of striking down the whole law contains so much of the economy are too big for the court to deal with and that is what we have with obamacare for striking down oh-la-la so the benefit to pass because it is far less likely than it would be struck down in total. >> do we have any additional questions? >> i have seen one of the issues specifically with dodd-frank litigation is the issue of the substitute on what trevor is saying we are trying to

establish standing now. can you speak a little to that because it is really hard to until you have actually been affected by the law, and that creates this kind of catch-22 situation. >> yes. we don't think that you have to be destroyed before you can sue in which case of course who is actually suing and there is the standard question there. as a, we don't think that is going to be the result. so we will give you a blogging background about letting just anybody in to challenge the statute, so we have to show a pherae the supreme court deals with the cases of controversy and doesn't render the advisory opinion and so they have to have a real case before then if they are resulting. in the case of the consumer

bureau, the argument will be made and has been made by the government that well there is no rule, no specific rule that you can show this really puts you into harm's way. and there is a lot of case law which says you don't have to be severely damaged before you can. it is enough if you have had to spend enough money to find out your rights and obligations of a sister tory regime and we have one little community bank in texas this is not -- this is not a destination spot for anybody is engagement or wedding.

but it is a mainstay of the community as most community banks and it has tens of thousands of dollars to understand what it can and cannot do under dodd-frank and little institutions like this do not have a huge overhead of the way some of the biggest banks do who can absorb reviewing the federal register and law firms of course. i'm happy always. ayman business. but the liberal banks don't have the money or the staff to do this. i am told that jpmorgan while it has its own staff, when this was happening in london, they had two or 300 regulators in bed in the institution itself. little banks don't have the

benefit of the federal reserve board regulators and staff that can help them figure out what the regulators are trying to do with them. so, we think of the expenditure the bank has had to make to make sure that it isn't cut out of business we think that is strong enough to be on the question of the revolutionary authority, we think that before the law was passed in the state, in this case 11 state attorneys general's suing on behalf of their pension funds or other assets, which are up in the air. you don't know anymore whether you have rights in bankruptcy. you know you don't actually. but you don't know where you come out. so they are saying we don't have to wait. we have lost the right which we

had for a hundred years. it's been taken away from us. we don't know what we have now. there is no right to seek redress under the act which is a backdoor way of saving the reorganization cases but in the 70's the supreme court rules in the claims to the taking the that's been cut off by the legislation and we make sure there is no way that you can question what is happening to you. and we think that this is going to be sufficient to get the court's interest. i don't think members of the supreme court are going to like being told of that certain aspects of the case and excluded from the review. congress can define the jurisdiction of the courts but in a rational way.

we're pretty confident we are going to win this case. i've never heard anybody in the government actually defend the constitutional structure. no one has said this is a really good government. what they say is you haven't been heard yet. >> a point that i would like to add to that i think of was also dodd-frank on this idea that it was aimed at the largest institution that it really wasn't an act that affected any other than of a handful of potentially who use a would be destructive to the economy. but that isn't really the case. with the consumer financial protection bureau a lot of this stand for example in the new.