conflict of interest. i was cleared indigent before the court and i had federal public defenders appointed to provide my defense. .. >> i would have the blood of american soldiers on my hands. the level of classification of the docs i had given, retained

for the purpose of disclosure to a reporter caused exceptionally grave damage. the highest level of damage to the national security of the united states. i was painted into a really, really, really dark corner. i knew i could not prevail in the federal court system. i knew i would have to find a way to influence the court of public opinion, and i knew that would require me to engage the press. not just mainstream media, but alternative press. it was crucial that the truth about my case get out there. but i couldn't -- no one, all -- you would think your natural allies, you would think that organizations like the aclu would have come to my defense in a minute. they didn't. in fact, the only organization that actually stuck with me the

whole time was the government accountability project. and why is that? well, see, when you're charged with espionage, i even had family members say, well, jeez, you must have done something. why would the government charge you with espionage? of course, i was reminded of dan ellsberg, the first american charged with espionage for non-spy activities. i did remember that. there's an extraordinary human being sitting next to me on my left. she wrote an amazingly powerful op-ed in the l.a. times. go read it. speaking of the press. i read that and realized here was finally, and this was just a few short days after i was so publicly indicted. lanny breuer, who was the supervising official in my, the

criminal prosecution against me, had made very public statements. i read that article, and i knew that she got the case. and she recognized the absolute crucial distinction between leaking which is not in the public interest and whistle whistleblowing which is. and i contacted her. and under her extraordinary leadership, she defended me in the court of public opinion when no one else would. and she engaged the press, the full story has not been revealed to date. we're actually writing a book, just can't find a publisher. [laughter] detailing all of this. there's much here beyond what i just shared with you. for the next 14 months, i

withstood the best the department of justice had to throw against me. they had an extraordinarily aggressive prosecutor doing everything he could to paint me into a really dark corner inside the courtroom. and, of course, they themselves were strategically leaking certain information even to the mainstream press about my case. after all is said and done, i did plead out after -- on my terms. they dropped all the felony count toss a minor misdemeanor for exceeding authorized use of a government computer. my act of civil disobedience not involving any classified information or unauthorized contact with someone not authorized to receive classified or national defense information. because that was the truth of my case. but it didn't matter. but i was free. do you know what it means to be free? it means an awful lot.

the press was instrumental in my case because jesselyn was providing both in the front and in the background critical information, critical information, about this case and what it represented. and she got, as dan got himself, early on that this was more than just somebody who apparently violated the espionage act. this really was the obama administration far beyond the bush administration sending the most chilling of messagings x. it was actually a -- messages. and it was actually a laser beam focus using me as the cutout to say, press, we're on to you. we know who your sources are. see, there's one thing i didn't tell you, and this hasn't come out fully either. there was a special secret

program at nsa after 9/11. it was originally known as first fruits. guess what it was designed to do? spy on reporters and journalists. find your sources. and if we can freeze out your source, guess what? we already have the other mainstream media reporters in our back pocket, because we give them privileged access to what we want them to hear. >> just so we don't get too despairing here, can you tell what the judge said? >> fourteen months later the case collapses on the eve of public trial which, for history, was scheduled for june 13th, 2011, the 40th anniversary to the day of the publication of the pentagon papers. dan ellsberg himself had already made plans to fly to baltimore and sit, stand on the steps of the federal district courthouse

in downtown baltimore and give civic lessons on why what was going on inside the courtroom was so important to the nation. he had the perspective. he knew this was really serious stuff. and if the government prevailed in my case, it would really set bad precedent. and i knew that. this wasn't just about me, it was about the future of the first amendment, it was about the future of that extraordinary experiment launched over 225 years ago called the constitution of the united states. the judge during the sentencing, the judge -- because the chief prosecutor continued to make his case in spite of the pro forma sentencing that was agreed upon before 15, july -- he said, this

is unconscionable, it doesn't pass the smell test. you put mr. drake through four years of hell. you know, we did have an american paraphrasing the judge, an american revolution. you don't take two and a half years to find a way to indict an american. >> the judge was a bush appointee. >> bush appointee. judge richard bennett. i actually came out on the courthouse steps and said, hey, there is a third branch of government. >> so because we're going to run out of time for this session, we have mics, can we get questions? how are we doing this, gang? anybody got a question that you can shout out? >> [inaudible] >> over there on the side. so why don't some people line up, and we'll try to get you involved. yeah. >> hi. my name's karen lowe, i teach here at annenberg. i think you all have sufficiently scared all the journalism students who wanted

to be investigative reporters. my question to you is twofold. one, how as a journalist can you assure a source that they won't be outed if, as you say, the journalists are being spied on through their phones, their computers, their laptops? how do you do that? and if reporters can't do that, if they can't protect their sources, have they abdicated tear role to whistleblowers? >> i'll take a stab at that. i think a big step in protecting sources which hardly any journalists are taking is using basic encryption. how many people in here are using encryption? okay, i see three hands. i think encryption should be a requirement for journalists, particularly if you're dealing

with high level sources. >> do you realize how astounding this statement is? not learn to think, be logical, get the facts. encrypt your material so your own government will not destroy you. that's an astounding statement. i mean, i agree with you. but think about that. these people have all taken a vow, right? i sat in this room when almost everyone in the room had voted for obama. right? >> i campaigned for, contributed to and voted for obama. so this is not an anti-obama -- >> no, but i'm just saying -- >> i know. >> -- it's astounding that the advice you would give, and i agree it's advice you need to hear, to a young journalist is to learn encryption. >> you have to to protect your source. >> you're not protecting them from stalin, you're protecting them from obama. >> that's -- >> correct. >> -- the day and age in which

we live right now, unfortunately. >> and, i mean, there are other things you can do as a lawyer in terms of protecting my clients, i joke about using my drug dealer tactics; meet in person, pay in cash, throw away cell phones, encryption, underground parking garages -- >> video cameras, though, so you have to be careful. >> that's true. true. [laughter] but seriously, protect -- source protection has become a huge issue as we see whistleblowers being thrown in jail and prosecuted for espionage. i mean, there's no guarantee, but you can certainly take precautions. and then the other one is at least for the level of whistleblowers i'm representing, my test is are you willing to go to jail for your source? and i can tell you, that's why there are fewer than ten reporters in this country that i take my whistle lblowers too. jim reisman right now is facing

jail. he's a new york times reporter, and he is facing jail for not testifying against his source, another whistleblower who's being prosecuted for espionage named jeff sterling. >> other questions? yeah. >> we're talking about whistleblowers and -- [inaudible] i'll just be be really loud. [inaudible conversations] >> could folks just line up or get mics? hopefully, we have some questions. >> hello? so you're all whistleblowers, and we kind of touched on a journalist and how my question is, you know, how do you -- the logical progression, you know, first you prosecute the whistleblower, and then you're talking about james reisman

being prosecuted for refusing to testify, i believe, in front of a grand jury. the logical progression then is like what's happening with glenn greenwald, the threats to actually prosecute journalists for espionage. is that something that's a possibility in this day and age? and is that something that you guys can just expand upon? thank you. >> i can say that i think the effort against julian assange and wikileaks in a grand jury -- still going, as far as i know, in virginia -- pursuing, they say they don't have a sealed indictment or that's leaked out. they may or may not have one. but, certainly, i think they've been going after assange as kind of a transition case where some journalists are willing to say, well, he's not a journalist in any way that i can recognize. clearly a preparation for cutting themselves loose, in effect be, for assange if they went after him for wikileaks.

but that would be, i think even drew keller drew back from that position saying he shouldn't be prosecuted, realizing, i think, assange would simply be a test case in that case, and they would go after him. risen, by the way, what's the status of that? >> he won in the district court which recognized a reporter's bring, but in the circuit court they ruled against him, and i assume they are petitions for certiorari before the supreme court. and on the note of assange, interestingly in the bradley manning court-martial -- which the new york times did not attend until they were twice chastised by the public editor -- there was a pivotal moment when the judge asked the prosecution if chelsea manning had gone to "the new york times" rather than wikileaks, would you still be bringing this case? and you could hear a pin drop.

and you could see the wheels spinning, because these prosecutors didn't know how to answer it. and they said yes. so that means that "the new york times" is just as vulnerable to this kind of prosecution. >> well, that's still the source. that's still chelsea manning. but what he's asking, and i think is right, is that i think the movement is definitely to move in the direction of going after the press directly. by the way, i think the word has sort of leaked out around the rosen case, they're saying his testimony's critical, and that's why they have to demand to find the source in his case. but i think they're confident now with the electronic surveillance that they do, the digital surveillance of everybody, they don't really need to go after the press so directly anymore. they feel they can find the source even beyond a reasonable doubt by sur couple substantial evidence -- circumstantial evidence of who called who at what time, exactly when.

that's how they got a guilty plea bargain out of stephen kim of the state department who has pled guilty now that he had given information to a guy named rosen of the fox news. and the key thing this was to get the exact metadata of when kim had called rosen having just read a classified document of some sort, so forth. they put the screws on him, that they would give him a higher sentence if he didn't come out with a guilty plea at this point. so i think the press has not yet been directly prosecuted, but that with the -- if these various cases succeed that go along, there's every reason to think, i think, that that would be the next step. >> and james clapper, the director of national intelligence, said that people like glenn greenwald were aiding, abetting, conspiring and that anybody who's helping snowden in any kind of way --

that would include the lawyers -- are subject to, could be subject to criminal penalty. and that's an incredibly frightening place to be in. >> we have a question here. >> yeah. i was just wondering what do you guys think makes a good whistleblower? because i know a lot of whistleblowers, obviously, receive a lot of retaliation, but what do you think helps people avoid prosecution? >> she wants to know what makes a good whistleblower. how'd you guys get to be -- you know, the most amazing thing is, and we discussed this before, is not that you guys have done what you've done. that should be the norm. the amazing thing is where are all the other people who knew people were dying in wars that made no sense, right? public the being spied on. how many people knew what was going on in the nsa? >> several thousand. >> okay. where the hell are they? where are the several thousand that knew their neighbors and

everyone else, their children are all being spied on? >> they're just following orders. >> they're just following orders. >> right. you know? decisions were made by people above them. >> so i guess your question, if i understand it, is how do we get more people like you, is that it? >> i think -- >> self-serving -- [laughter] >> i think you need to have -- look, president obama says he wants no more leaks. there's a very easy solution for that; enact meaningful, effective whistleblower protection for them so people like edward snowden have some realistic place to go. the whistleblower protection laws including the enhancement act and the own executive order obama bragged that snowden could have used specifically exempt national security and intelligence whistleblowers inclauding those from the nsa -- including those from the nsa, fbi, cia, dni, the people you would most want to hear about

about the biggest scandals in our nation, at least in my generation, secret surveillance, torture and drones. those people are completely unprotected. >> edward snowden himself, to answer your question even more directly, is someone who i had always hoped would come forward, that someone would stand on my shoulders. seeing what happened to my case, he obviously followed my case very, very closely as well as others, that would actually come out with a much larger set of documentation regarding how far the u.s. government had gone in terms of secret surveillance and beyond. and so i have some hope because edward snowden himself did come forward that there are others who may come forward as well. >> i'm not a whistleblower, but i think they don't want to toot their own horn, but it's courage. that's what it takes to be a whistleblower when the full force of the state comes down. they're too humble to say that.

so my question is to thomas drake. can you explain if you see a correlation between hactivists and whistleblowers? >> yeah. there's a direct correlation. you all live in the digital age. edward snowden's a product of the internet age. that's all he's known. it's a time if which i used to spend a lot of time in front of a computer. there is a clear confluence of being hactivists who are dedicated to making information free in the public interest and whistleblowers who are in the inside of these government institutions and corporations coming out and disclosing information in the public interest. one advantage that the hactivist has, they're very very much mass in their own domain of the technology. and it's one of the things that i have actually, i've laid down an extraordinary challenge to those in this space, that we

need better encryption, we need better autopoising environments. we have got to protect because people are actually hot not just losing their jobs, people are being incarcerated, people are ending up in prison. people like brown, people like hammond and any number of others. these are all, all of these examples, this parallel whistleblowers and shack vises, the -- hactivists, the government is deliberately going after them to send, they're targeting individuals like they targeted me to send a much larger message to anybody else that might dare come forward. but ultimately, what are they really shutting down? they're shutting down the free flow of information that informs the public with what is actually going on. >> and legally they're also overprosecuting in the hactivist community using the computer fraud abuse act and cispa and laws like that the way they're using the espionage act to go after whistleblowers.

it's a war on information more broadly that can be seen through the war on whistleblowers and journalists and hactivists. and in the parallel to thomas drake's case, you look at someone like aaron schwartz where they were also seeking to put him away for 35 years, and then once he committed suicide said, oh, we would have settled for three months. overprosecution, it's completely, it's sick. and, but it's meant to send a message and make an example out of people like that. baird -- barrett brown just pled guilty the other day, and i can't get into the details of that, but the major, major heavy-handed extra-bogus charges ended up being dropped because he had been so -- >> i'm humbled to be in the for presence of the three of you. thank you. >> it's important to remind you all -- >> she's humbled to be in your presence. >> well, could i --

[laughter] could i make a -- >> go ahead. >> i just want to ask a question because snowden's name keeps circulating here, and you have been presented as the un-snowden. you're the good guy. you were willing to take your medicine. you were willing to go to jail for a hundred years, right? what were you facing at one point? 150. only 50, okay. yeah. [laughter] so you were prepared. and if it hadn't turned out that the judge was offered a bribe, basically, by the nixon administration to be head of the fbi, who knows where that case would have ended up. nixon overreached and fixed the judge. i remember being in the court when that happened. so why didn't snowden do that? now, you're a lawyer -- and then you're presented as a good guy,? you were there in your house when the fbi broke in, and you have your five kids, you know, and you end up working at apple,

at an apple store trying to support your family. that's the good -- take your medicine. be prepared to go to jail for a hundred years knowing damn well that's not what we teach people to do, that's not what we're going to do. now you're snowden's lawyer. what is your view about people saying, hey, you know, he cut and ran? >> my view is that it speaks volumes that the only safe way to blow the whistle right now if you're in national security or intelligence and know that level of information as snowden did, the only safe way is to blow the whistle from another country. and that's a really sorry state of affairs for this country to be in. my other nsa whistleblowers right after snowden revealed himself had a press conference to say that they all supported him and understood why he had to go to another country to make those disclosures. in terms -- you can go ahead -- in terms of the penalty.

>> well, i was going to say that snowden, i believe, looked at these examples, looked at tom drake's example, looked at chelsea manning, looked at assange, what was going after him, and realized that he had to be out of the country if he was going to put out this amount of information and be able to tell what he had done, why he had done, to comment as he has been doing, to speak now. i was personally, 40 years ago, able to speak. i was out on bail, on bond throughout my trial, and i was able to speak to demonstrations, to lecture, to do this and that. there isn't a chance in the world that snowden, i think, would have been allowed to do that as he knew from looking at chelsea manning. he'd be in an isolation cell like chelsea for the rest of his life, essentially. no journalist to this day, three and a half years, almost four years after this stuff came out, no journalist has spoken to chelsea manning. no journalist has spoken to chelsea manning. not in four years.

no interviews, no nothing. and they won't either. you're not allowed to speak to him in prison now. so snowden more or less had to be out of the country. he learned from that. he also learned that you need to put out a lot of documents, they should be current documents and all the more reason he had to be out. but one reason you were saying earlier what makes a whistleblower, it turns out it's pretty hard to do, it turns out. we've all been saying dozens, hundreds, thousands in some cases of people knew the secrets, knew the truths, and many, many of those -- perhaps most of them -- knew that these involved life or death matters on which major lies were being told and that where the truth could make a great difference, and yet they didn't speak out. i think we have to change the culture of secrecy, the cult of secrecy in this way, change the benefit of the doubt that's given quite wrongly to politicians and to the president in terms of what the public

should know and should not know to allow, to even think of, for example, clapper or keith alexander or the president should be the last word on what the public should know about what they're doing in our name represents a kind of culpable ignorance at this point unless you're 16 years old, something like that. if you've lived through any of these things, these people do not deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point. behind the veil of secrecy, extremely bad, disastrous policy making goes on. without accountability. as we learned from the pentagon papers, we learned from the documentation, we learned from snowden. we learned if we got the iraq papers which we still don't have, but there have been a number of leaks, authorized leaks in some cases. the decision making is actually very bad. it's not only criminal, stupid,

it's also stupid and ignorant to a large extent. it's not subjected to a larger debate even within the government. or the congress or little known within the public. and the reason that the constitution that tom has been a talking about so much -- has been talking about so much is not, indeed, obsolete, it was a good idea then and it's still a good idea, has to be defended against people starting with two presidents and their minions and many people in the press. that after all, after 9/11 we have a new kind of threat here for which the constitution 200 years old was not instituted. and -- suited. and we really need a different form of government in which it is true, as nixon said, that if the president does it, it's not illegal. we have no choice but to leave it up to him to decide what to tell us. what we get with that kind of judgment is the kind of judgment

that george iii had rate well in continue -- pretty well if in continuing the american revolution. you get, as i said, vietnam, iraq, and i would say very much more seriously the possibility still to this day, outrageously, of nuclear winter that could come from the alert forces on both sides that have absolutely no excuse whatever for existing thousand and putting the entire -- existing now and putting the entire world in jeopardy. you have, i'm sure, a great deal more information about climate and what confronts us within the government than they have yet told. that's why james hanson, i think, left the government recently having been sat on and squashed at nasa for, since 1988 trying to warn us about what was come anything climate. the point -- coming in climate. the pointing that we need more oversight, we need the independent branches, and we need whistleblowers. and one thing that would change in this culture, for example,

is, well, i was complaining to bob about the title of this talk which was "patriots or traitors ?" [laughter] now, not too many people like to be called, have the opportunity to defend themselves against being a traitor. not many people think, oh, thank you for the chance to explain to my fellow countrymen that i don't really feel that i'm a traitor despite all appearances here and so forth. [laughter] a lot of people gave me that opportunity 40 years ago, and i was thinking, now, why am i so sensitive to that title at this point in my life? it paid me realize, it took me back 40 years. i identify with snowden completely, and i identify with chelsea manning. with all the differences in our background. and in our personalities and whatever. i identify with them very strongly. i feel that they went over the

same trajectory that i did. they acted for much the same reason. they did what i would have done in their circumstance and so forth. and so when it's patriots or traitors, i realize i'm back explaining why i don't think i'm a traitor. if they're not a traitor, if they're a traitor, where am i? i've been saying for three years now chelsea manning and now snowden is no more a traitor than i am. and i find and i have to say, and i'm not. [laughter] to make that very clear. the fact, it's taken me back 40 years. i kind of kind of got out of hearing that question all the time, but i did hear it a lot at the beginning with reporters asking me and saying how does it feel to be regarded as a traitor or to be seen as a traitor? which, by the way, i was not charged with in court because it so happens that the constitution narrows the legal definition of traitor very significantly compared with what was under or

george iii. because under george iii, every one of signers of the declaration of independence was a traitor. and four of them, five of them, i believe, were hanged out of the 56. as traitors. and they all could have been hanged if they had been found. so our country was founded by traitors, in other words, to the country they were born in or this colony they were born in. and they discovered a different loyalty, a higher loyalty to a country that had never yet existed. a large country with a constitutional basis, a bill of rights and the notion that you could not criminalize telling the truth. about the government. that was the country they decided they were loyal to, and it made them traitors to the other. i remember the first time somebody called me a traitor on -- i've never mentioned this that i can remember. it was in 1971. i had just been indicted, and i found myself on a program being

out on bail, and somebody at the table, there were three of us there, said, well, you're a traitor. and i was so startled and shocked by this. i looked to the moderator to say are you going to let this happen? do you invite traitors on your program? [laughter] no, no, no problem. and i took off the microphone, and i left. i thought i'm not going to sit here and discuss whether i'm a traitor or not. this is ridiculous. well, the camera followed me out of the room on the news -- [laughter] all the way out, and people at my trial said don't do that. that was a mistake. don't do that again. it doesn't look good. so television informed me is very cool, i looked a little too hot and defensive and so forth. so i had to sit there and answer the question about being traitor, and i can tell you, it is not -- there's nothing pleasant about it. well, the fact is if you're not willing to be called names like

weak, i think millions of people have died in vietnam and in iraq. millions. because democrats, my party, were unwilling to be called names. that they knew were false and slanderous, but names like weak, unmanly, unpatriotic and weak on communism, weak on terrorism, what not. and rather than be called those names, they sent people to be killed and to die. snowden said there were things worth dying for, and the truth is most people narrow that unless they're in the military or conceivably in policemen, some firemen, something, where it's taken for granted that with the team and acting on authority

and doing your function as assigned by society you should risk your life. and then people do it very courageously. and you see in combat, you see this courage all around. be very routinely. and then get the same people like apollo who was a battalion commander in vietnam and put him in civilian clothes and others like that and put them in a situation where they would risk their career or their clearance or their job, their careers and their marriage and their children's education. serious risks. but risks, not certainlies. and rather than -- certainties. and rather than take any risk at all for strangers, for people who aren't on the team, i've had to conclude most people are willing to see nearly any amount of harm done to other people to avoid that risk without lifting a finger for it. well, if we can recognize that the snowdens and the mannings

are doing an essential job and one that we need done a great deal more than it's done with the help of journalists, and the journalists have to be probing for it and looking for it, we don't have the democracy, we don't have the country that our founders risked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor for 220 years ago. we have something worse, much worse and more dangerous. so it's up to you out there, and it's up to your sources. >> it's interesting that the founders -- after 9/11 this argument, well, after 9/11 nothing matters, right? the fact is most people in the world live in nations that have had tragedies as 9/11 or much greater. and our founders actually faced far greater risks than 9/11, as you point out. if it had gone the wrong way, their families and everyone else would be hanging from some tree. and yet they put these very provisions in the constitution

that these other people after 9/11 wanted to throw out, right? they didn't guarantee free press because they thought the press would always be on their side, right? they didn't guarantee any of the right to assemble thinking there wouldn't be angry people assembling. and the message, and it's interesting how we teach history, but i've said this before and it just drives me crazy, if anybody reads george washington's farewell address to his country, there's an incredible indictment of what he called the imposters -- these are his words -- the imposters of pretended patriotism. george washington. you referred to eisenhower, another great general, who in his warning about the military industrial complex and warning about the loss of civil restraint. and i'm going to call on another person, but i do want to pick one statement about the non-whistleblowers. you mentioned the gulf of tonkin. a thoroughly decent man, william fulbright, right?

the gulf of tonkin resolution which meant we were now in this full war in vietnam, okay? twenty years after the fact, and this was a fact known by many whistleblowers, there had never been the second gulf of tonkin attack. it was a phone tony. phony. we were not given those documents until 20 years after the fact. so they were not present in debate. we were given the fact that an american ship had been fired upon on the high seas by the north vietnam and, there are, we had to go to war. our own government, our president, our secretary of defense, all of these people when we got these documents, we realized knew in realtime that there had not been an attack. and i forget the particular exchange you and i had, but i remember when i got these documents i was at the l.a. times. i went down to tom johnson who was our publisher, a marvelous guy. i have great respect for him. but i went down to tom johnson,

and i said you were in the white house. you were with lyndon johnson. did you know this? you know? bill moyers was in that white house. i'm not talking about the devils out there. i'm not saying they all knew every detail. but going along to get along. not challenging it, not becoming a whistleblower when there had to be many people -- and i don't know whether those two that i mentioned, they really knew -- but there certainly were plenty of people. when i finally interviewed all these people, they scratched their head and said how'd you get that? well, the government released it. just came out. oh. i was thinking that myself. but they never told us. okay? so you raised the basic question is what is the meaning of this democratic experiment if you are, can be lied to with such impunity? and there's no restraint? it's not a marginal issue, it's the ball game. yeah. >> hi. thank you for this panel.

it's really great. after 9/11 we basically went through a couple changes in my mind at least psychologically. there was this issue of now we only to follow orders, as you pointed out, and technologically with the boom of the internet and rival of smartphones -- arrival of smartphones, the nature of espionage changed there, the nature of espionage also changed bureaucratly with the reorganization of the united states intelligence community, and there it seems stem the problem this panel has so clearly identified. i'd like to ask how with that framework in mind the fourth and fifth estate can catch up or, in other words, affect change themselves? to address these problems? >> well, a brilliant question. do you want to -- >> yeah. >> yeah, i would be glad to speak to that in terms of what the fourth estate can do and journalists can -- >> [inaudible]

>> -- to stop. well, a multipart question, but what journalists and what whistleblowers can do to try to stop the current state of affairs. and for me, i feel like during much of the decade following 9/11 that at least in the mainstream media a lot of journalists were behaving as government lapdogs rather than government watchdogs. and even today i get very frustrated when a journalist says, uh, yeah, i can't hit the government too hard in public because i'll lose my source. and that's a very real issue. i mean, after the warrantless wife -- wiretapping story, one had his white house credentials pulled. but to be a true journalist, i think you need to be able to value your civilian sources as much as your government sources and not just be a stenographer who copies down government

talking points. >> i have a thought on that, bob, let me try it on you too. oh, sorry. >> did your question go further than that to the technology? >> my question, basically, the problems that far arisen in terms of these infringements in the name of espionage and intelligence gathering really relate to, you know, the changes in technology since 9/11 and the psychological changes which you have identified just now. you know, it's great to identify the problem, but i'm asking you what you see as potential solutions to these problems. within these sort of realms. >> at the strategic level, you have to bind the government down again with the change of the constitution. that's what you have to do. this government mean just because of advances in technology, that somehow that gives them a free pass. that's not true at all. the constitution is more than flexible enough to accommodate all of modern society.

you still are a sovereign individual with rights. they just chose because of technology -- it was a lot easier. in fact, real intelligence, actually, has largely disappeared because it's so easy to collect everything, and we'll sort it out later. sort of the seize first, search later mentality. that completely flips the paradigm. so when you're faced with those decisions being done in secret, it doesn't really matter. the technology is just a means to an end in that regard. so you actually have to protect. it's still the same. your cell phone, that's one of your effects that you have as an individual. if they choose to say it's not protected, well, yeah, the technology does make it easier, but the technology in that regard is simply enabling a choice they've made. that's a choice that violates as an american, u.s. person, legal citizen, violates your rights. because they choose to do so?

catch 22? i absolutely resist that mindset. i absolutely resist the notion that somehow they're the ultimate protecter, and it doesn't matter what your sovereign rights are at all, that the sovereignty of mass security trumps everything? look, i was going to say this, i'll say it now. do you know that the traitors of this country, the traitors that founded the united states of america met in secret in philadelphia to hammer out the constitution of the united states? and they made a pact that nothing would come out except madison took notes, and in 1843 they were published. so at least we now had documented evidence of what debates took place inside the constitutional convention. benjamin franklin exits the building that long, hot summer, and history has recorded that a woman reporter, right? came up to him and said, hey, what'd you guys create in there?

and reportedly he responded saying a republic, if you can keep it. they knew there were no guarantees. and they knew that an executive would do their darnedest to centralize power and gain under themselves what they thought they could take. so they bound down the executive as hard as they could, and they made congress the central portion of our three, our triparty government. so watched after 9/11? it doesn't -- the technology here, yeah, you know, we had horses and cagers back in the 18d carriages back in the 18th centerly. that doesn't matter. it's the living constitution in that regard. but it's an idea of how to govern ourselves and the fundamental question we have to ask if it's no longer sufficient, if the constitution is no longer sufficient, the same question i point-blank asked the lawyers at nsa, the

same question i asked congress when i went to them with my disclosures, if they're saying this doesn't work, you know, there is a constitutional means in the country to change the law. you know what they told me at nsa? they said, say no. if we go to congress with what we want to do, they'll say no. they'll say no. >> the question really arises you said a republic the if you can keep it, question. have we kept it? and the answer is, no. no, we have not kept it. since 2001 we have, in effect, an elected monarchy. and meaning a country in which nixon's view if the president does it, it's legal. if the president says it, it's not illegal. that's the attitude long after nixon of the adviser to george

w. bush, david addington, cheney's adviser. essentially, there are no limits on presidential power except those he chooses to put on himself. obama, following on, has in effect decriminalized torture which is as illegal and criminal as anything can be under international law and domestic law, a number of domestic laws and international laws which we are sworn or rat -- ratified to investigate and follow be up if there's any credible charge. obama has not chosen to investigate or indict any higher-up for that process of torture. take right now the 6,000-page, what was it, two years or was it four years? >> torture report? >> for how long, two years? 6,000 pages. they're arguing now, well, in a way it's kind of worthwhile to see this argument go on for a month now to see where obama

comes out on it when they send it to him for declassification. what if obama says, no, mix -- public interest does not allow this? obviously to, that report should have been leaked, and it should be leaked right now. and we need this to understand, for example, what the report is reputed is leaked to have revealed which is that there was no necessity this that for this torture and that there was no effect. far from being essential, it did not contribute in any case to preventing terror attacks and what not. now, why does that matter, after all, if it's illegal is and unconstitutional? what's it matter whether it works? well, the whole issue that was put before the public implicitly was the constitution is obsolete, it was overtaken. we have a -- by 9/11. we have a state of emergency now which is formally declared in which obama has reinstated

several times now in office which how many people actually knew that in this journalists' office, that obama has formally reip stated every six months or so that we're in a state of emergency? how many people knew that? let me see hands. don't be shy here. i see about four, five. how many did not know that? okay. well, what's the state of the press that it's not made you aware that we are living in a state of emergency? now, what does that imply exactly? what regulation does that mean the president is free from in a state of emergency? well, the house, a member of the house committee over homeland security asked precisely that question. i see that there are, he said, classified annexes to the continuity of government regulations and to the state of emergency regulations. can we see those? and the answer was, no, they're

classified. so he got the chairman of the house committee on homeland security to ask directly for those. no, they were not able to get them. now, this is not a constitutional republic that you're talking about here now. and if the report says, as it does in 6,000 pages, in this was not necessary, in other words, it is criminal, it is not justified by an argument of necessity because it can't be necessary if it didn't work at all over years after years. therefore, it's criminal. absolutely criminal without any question about it. as i say, just as some people want to decriminalize marijuana in this state and others, obama has effectively decriminalized torture. how could an ex-president bring prosecutions for torture after last eight years, after the last 16 years? i don't see how he could. >> it does remind me, dan, does anybody listen to jackson brown?

one of my favorite songs, out into the cool of the morning strolls the pretender? there's a lot of pretenders. and on stage here there are no pretenders. we're extraordinarily -- three whistleblowers are extraordinarily fortunate. we never ended up in prison. there are whistleblowers in prison right now. there are whistleblowers facing prison right now. there are hactivists already in prison and those facing prison or already incarcerateed. that's the reality in this country. and so here's, here's another truth. the two biggest scandals of the bush administration that have been immunized by obama were secret surveillance and torture. the only -- currently serving 30

months in a federal penitentiary in laredo, pennsylvania. why? because he actually blew the whistle regarding state-sponsored torture and the name of a torturer, and he's in prison. those who authorized the program, those who approved the program, those who implemented the program, those who managed the torture program have immunity, secret surveillance. i'm the only one prosecuted, indicted, convicted. i had nothing to do with surveillance. i resisted with everything i had. and yet all those who authorized surveillance, approved

surveillance, managed the surveillance programs all have immunity. in fact, if i had committed surveillance, if i had engaged in surveillance, i would not have been prosecuted. john, if he had tortured, he would not be in prison this day. what does that tell you? the press has been complicit in the war crimes, in the wrongdoing and the suspension of the constitution since 9/11. it's high time, and you're faced with the stark reality of you are going to be in this venue. you need to question. in this queue here is question authority. it means question everything, but i especially question authority. how else do we know what's going on without being informed? this is a fundamental and even some suggest the fatal flaw in any democracy no matter what form it takes including a constitutional republic. it's ultimately about keeping the public informed, and the

public having the responsibility to inform themselves. what's the primary means we cothat in -- do that in this country? the ultimate question we have to face, the ultimate question that must be asked is what future -- given there's no guarantees -- what future do we want to keep? >> we're going to end, but i don't have the counselor not to call on my -- the courage not to call on my wife. [laughter] and i do, but i want to call on her not just, as jeff pointed out, she started the book festival, but she did an important book with mary tillman, the mother of pat tillman. why don't you talk about that. [laughter] >> how much time do you have? >> no, because i watched you for two years reading those documents. >> we read, i read 3,000 pages of investigative documents that were so full of holes, government documents so full of holes that you could drive a humvee through it. and we came away with no satisfaction at all about how pat tillman really was killed and what the circumstances were.

and to this day i still talk to her practically every week to see, you know, what else we can do. it's been very frustrating. but i have just two quick things. one is, first of all, you've inspired so many young people. i know you've inspired me, and i was a lifelong journalist and still am, i guess. you've inspired a lot of young people in this room, and i hope that you can, jesselyn, before we go tell the 99% of this room how to do encryption. but my real question -- how to do encryption. yeah. [laughter] my real question is can you actually put this geeny back in the bot -- yesny back in the bottle? i remember a few years ago dennis kucinich was in congress, before edward snowden, and he was part of a group of congress members who were trying to get the nsa aboll bished because it was -- abolish z baud it was seen to be -- because it was seen to be duplicative.

why do you need this sort of renegade agency? is it possible to accomplish that now with all these revelations? and -- yeah. >> yeah. i, i hope it's -- i guess i still bereave -- believe it's possible to rein in the national security surveillance state that we are becoming. if i didn't believe that, i would not be out on the lecture circuit every weekend talking to students like you. i would have given up. so i guess i still believe that we can recover our democracy from the police state that it's becoming. in terms of encryption, i am not a technologist. but even i learned how to use pgp; pretty good privacy. it's easy. you can install it as an app on your phone, and you can put it on your computer. that's just one of many encryption mechanisms, adm, otr, tour, tails, others get more

sophisticated. but pgp is just pretty basic encryption that is not too difficult to learn and doesn't take that long to learn. have some crypto parties. no, seriously, that's what their doing in other -- they're doing in other countries. i really do believe every journalist should know how to use basic encryption. >> by the way, there is -- i'm on the board with edward snowden on freedom of the press association. if you look at press freedom foundation.org, others on it have made available now encryption methods for journalists like those at wikileaks in a way which can be picked up free and used and -- >> they'll walk you through it. they have secure drops so that people can blow the whistle to news outlets in a secure way. so i think, i think tech can

actually really help in this endeavor. >> are and while you're doing that, you should get the wording of the fourth amendment, carry it in your pocket and pass it out to people to remind them that we had other means of protecting our privacy. sandy, you were so instrumental, and i want to thank the government accountability project and a lot of people really helped an enberg support both -- annenberg really journalism and -- i mean, the school is really great. do you have some closing remarks? >> well, i wanted to ask one question, and i want to echo what you just said, bob. we thank you all for coming. it's been a remarkable evening and early in the day, and it's going to go on tomorrow with the institute of politics at the tudor center at 11:30. but it's, i think room 227. but i wanted to ask one question just there was a piece a few months ago in the new york review of books by noted civil

libertarian david cole in which he made a distinction in his opinion citing others that all leakers are not the same. he basically defended snowden but was more critical of assange and especially of manning in some cases. and this is what he said in his piece. he said while some specific war logs and cables may have revealed illegal conduct without disproportionate harm to public safety, manning's dump of several hundred thousand documents was not narrowly tailored, and e said the leaked state department cables outed many individuals who put themselves at considerable risk. and so i just want to ask you, do you think that there are distinctions to be made, and are there times where leaks should not be made? >> i would say, obviously, i don't think source -- i don't think all secrets should be out there. i think sources and shed --

sheddeds should be kept -- methods should be kept secret. troop movements, things like that. the problem with the argument cole made is that a lot of whistleblowers are accused of either overdisclosing or undies closing. bradley brookenfeld held some of it back. ful chelsea manning gave -- chelsea manning gave way too much information. but legally, the law does not turn on the quantum of how much information you disclosed. it turns on whether or not the kiss closer had -- discloser had a reasonable belief that what he or she saw evidenced fraud, waste, abuse or illegality. so i think cole misses the point by trying to make the analysis turn on that. i think we can all agree that the collateral murder video alone is, was definitely, definitely whistleblowing.

and a lot of the other stuff in terms of all the phantom harm that the government talked about as one of the few people who actually did go to the parts of his court-martial that i could, her court-martial now, and the government cried damage, harm, the way they are right now with snowden. ..

are there secrets that are legitimate seekers that should not be told quite we mentioned earlier giving gallery please been was not just unnecessary, it was not whistleblowing. it was wrong. it should have been leaked. i couldn't imagine doing that. i don't think anyone one who would give an agent who is doing something worthwhile, which is not true of all cia covert nations. she was running anti-proliferation efforts, which worried injured by putting up that name. >> yeah, i want to object to this in a way because we get into this great argument of whistleblowers should or should not do. whatever raises the argument about the 99.99% of information select blue leaked in power,

whether it is deputy sheriff or defense department. i looked at my own profile and there was really nasty stuff that was made up decorative certainly lost jobs. so if you look at what they tried to do to martin luther king for god sakes, the fbi, you look at the whole record of destroying people and no one ever occurs the argument back. let's sold bradley manning, who told us we were killing civilians were killed in our name and we made a game of it in iraq. let's question him or her. let's challenge that. but they have been trying to call attention to this evening as the normal way weight is discovered about national security and foreign policy is by the government on either side of the story at cali until they get to year.

and they shape the debate. so that's the standard. you pointed this out the other day. you look at what was her teammates had right now. finally, feinstein admitted that their study shows it does not make us safer in any way, that there was no defense of torture in any way. with select deletes from the government. if you look at the story of how that movie was made, "zero dark 30", hot they were in a meeting where they honored cia people within a secret meeting to talk about their missions in the most secret thing to get bin laden and movie producers are thought to be making a movie that will

make the cia look good are brought in and are given this information. in fact, we pass on the lies. this is the routine. this is been going on ever since we've had forced. but we have to get over as we are so different that all these other countries. we had this whole thing about china. they do up a cyberstaff. they do all this that, china. and of course putin is the most evil thing. >> russia is so much propaganda. the fact of the matter is all these governments use the same jury argument. national security. they all say they are making people safer. they all said a peep or telling the other side are traitors and that people and so forth and what you got to get back and i know they were flawed and all the ways my wife will tell me on the way home, but the fact is they were incredible group of people. what was is incredible is famous in basic truth. you cannot have an empire in republican essay moment. that is the key.

the whole idea of limited government is if you are going to conquer the world and you are going to have power, you're going to lie and you're going to engage in messing around with people's eyes, you become a responsible and you have to torture. said the ways to have a notion of limited government, restraints, right of the individual and that is why you find the opposition to this thing is not liberal or conservative or democrat or republican. i've been told snowden is a libertarian. but what i see in the people on this panel are unique individuals in that they care about individual freedom and the integrity of the individual above paying allegiance to some notion of state power. that is the core of the u.s. constitution and sent and we should honor. let me close this evening by taking a people.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the mac used a look at a portion of what you will see. >> women of my generation had to

overcome certain obstacles. by then it was okay. it was not okay to make intelligent jokes about race or religion. but i'll give you one example of that. i was arguing before a federal court in new jersey. we had three judges on the court and nice and i understand that women have made great progress. they even have equal opportunity in the military. and i said women are not allowed to have flight training and just responded my dear, don't donate that. women have been in the air always.

so one thing you don't say is the sexiest pic. you want to win the case. [laughter] so she got angry, that would be self-defeating. the best thing is to have a sense of humor. so to say i have met many men who don't have their feet planted firmly on the ground and then raise it to the next line.

>> now, conversation is in obama's record on immigration policy and order security and on the prospects for immigration legislation from congress. from the d.c. based think tank ndm, this is in our 20 minute. -- and our 20 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> hi, welcome, everybody. if i can ask everybody to make sure you turn off your ringer on your phones, that would be terrific. we have a wonderful event today, one that is both very timely and also very informative and i hope eye-opening too many people here. it is on a very hot topic here in washington right now on the obama immigration and border enforcement record. this is an issue that is striving to immigration debate right now. republicans have said they won't work with the president to pass immigration reform this year because the president has not followed the law and in the way he's enforce the immigration system has given them pause that he is a trustworthy partner and passing immigration reform and will stick with the things outlined in both the house and

senate immigration reform bill. the issues we are discussing today are central to a republicans are approaching the next few months and whether or not we will actually have an immigration bill or not. second is clearly on the centerleft where i come from, the issue of deportations and the president's record on this is a hot topic. in fact, just down the street in front of the white house right now, there are dreamers who are demanding that their parents get returned back to the country. it's gotten a lot of press today. the issue is what is really happening. this border and immigration or cement is really the single most important topic in the debate about comprehensive immigration reform in washington right now and we are really pleased to have with us today at three experts from across the political spectrum. people who are well regarded by people on all sides.

independent thinkers who have done a lot of work over a long period of time. these are no newbies here to this debate. what is new is we have a lot of new data. frankly, ghs, let's all acknowledge is not always been the most transparent and easy to understand institution in washing 10 and recently they have been putting out new data cut in the race, which has helped us get a brand-new window perhaps the many issues we've been talking about and we'll talk about today to give us a fresh perspective and a new look at some old topics are not as part of what you are going to hear about today. so in the order we were here first or a marc rosenblum from american policy institute. many of you know mark's work well. he has been a longtime anchor and later in this arena. in fact, next week npi is publishing what will probably become sort of the definitive take on many of these things were going to talk about today

and mark is going to preview a little bit of that paper. but not all that because he he has to save some fun stuff for next week for his own event on tuesday which i encourage everyone to go to. you will be followed by ted aldon from the council on foreign relations. ted has been working on these issues had been a great collaborator. whenever we have questions we call ted to make sure we are getting things right. to publish this pamphlet last year on illegal migration on the border and he will be offering his thoughts, complementing up markup for. and finally, jamar jacoby -- tamar jacoby, someone who comes from a slightly different perspective, the leader of the center-right for immigration reform and for that alone i want to applaud your for her courage and steadfastness in trying to bring along a part of politics that is not always anxious to move in some of the directions

we want to go when. so they weren't immigration works from a network of small businesses advocating for a sensible solution to our broken immigration system and we are really glad she's here today. she will bat cleanup and then we will open it up for q&a to all of you. so marc, take it away. >> thanks, simon. thanks for having me and everybody for being here. so i went to preview the finest in the report released next week and i curse you to, check out the full version later. i'm going to focus mostly on three key trends that have occurred in the last couple of decades in the deportation system. first-round is the deportation -- u.s. deportations , the system have moved from one that focuses mostly employs informal returns to one that mostly employs formal removals.

let me explain what that means. when enough authoress immigrant is apprehended in the united states, they can be deported in two main ways. one way and informal return is going is the person is put on the plane and sent home in the alternative is formal removal, a more formal process obviously has more sick to forget long-term consequences for the individual and in particular means they become ineligible for a visa for at least five years and in most cases longer than that. and if you take apprehended in the u.s. in the future, they can be subject to criminal charges as a result of that removal. so previously, before the mid-90s, 95% of everybody apprehended in the u.s. was supported through informal return, put on a bus and sent home. last year that was 33%. so we've gone from 5% or more removals to two thirds formal removals. so that is a big change.

that all by itself explains a lot of the confusion about whether this administration is setting new records on enforcement because we are talking about deportations on one hand and formal removals on the other hand. in terms of deportations, the overall numbers are down and the reason is there is a lot fewer unauthorized democrat coming to the united states. there are fewer people apprehended at the border and fewer overall deportations. but because such a higher share are getting formally removed, the formal removals are setting all-time records. more formal removers that matter, but not more deportations. so that is what a lot of the confusion is about. but that difference matters a lot. more formal removals than a very significant. second trend is previously, just focusing on those formal removals, previously almost all

formal removals involved a judge, an immigration judge. and above peter the great going before an immigration judge in having a chance to seek relief and judges have discretion to offer relief from removal. now, most formal removers are in the strait of removals handled exclusively to dhs. in 1995, 95% went before a judge before they were moved and had a chance to seek relief for 25%. so we've gone from 3% nonjudicial to 75% nonjudicial. the third trend is that a lot or unauthorized immigrants were apprehended at the border are being charged with criminal offenses, immigration related criminal offenses. there has been a law on the books since 1952 that crossing the border without permission is a crime and been in the united

states following a removal order is also a crime. but those are rarely prosecuted in the past. when i say rarely, in 1997, about 1% of people apprehended at the border faced criminal charges for it. last year the number was 25%. obviously these criminal charges matter because when you work they could have a crime, you go to jail. you can incarcerated in a federal penitentiary. you have a criminal record and become the rest of your life to criminal. so let me just recap quickly. three big changes. one is that we've gone from overwhelmingly informal returns to mostly formal removals. we've gone for mostly judicial removals to mostly nonjudicial removals and was gone for mostly not facing criminal charges to increasingly facing criminal charges. so those are all three long-term trends that go back to the mid-90s. the obama administration inherited programs in funding

that supported those and he kept all of them in place. so while those trends have continued and really all three of them have accelerated under the obama administration. so that is the sense, and a broad sense in which the administration has been very tough on immigration enforcement. the other thing the obama administration has done is create these new explicitly articulated enforcement priorities and guidelines for prosecutorial discretion. what that is done as while keeping in place those high consequence enforcement tools, this administration has focused enforcement on its priority cases. you know, just sort of cutting to the bottom line, that has resulted in very different systems at the border and within the united states. let me just mention that the priorities that dhs has identified. there's three priorities.

one is recent illegal entrants, including people across the border. another is repeat immigration offenders, people who get formerly removed and returned. the third is convicted criminals. the read reason this has produced at the border and interior. at the border by definition cannot virtually everybody's apprehended falls into a priority category because they all recent illegal in turns apprehended at the border. almost everybody at the border gets put into one of these high consequence enforcement pipelines. they get formerly removed or face criminal charges or both. in the interior, many people get identified through programs like secure communities are not viewed as enforcement priorities and they are not getting put into these tough consequence pipelines. so this set of priorities and these tools for prosecutorial discussion have really played out very differently at the border are virtually everybody who gets apprehended gets the

book thrown at them versus the interior, or a lot of discretion is exercised. so that is our broad overview. i can talk a lot or in q&a if we want to. [applause] >> great. it's great to be following marc. thank you on assignment for having me here. what to focus on the issue of border control, which is the ability of the u.s. government to prevent illegal entries, especially the southern border with mexico. pretty much all of what i talk about here comes out of the paper signing matching. there's some copies cowritten with brian roberts and john whitley. john was the head of program analysis and evaluation for dhs and a second term of the book administration and brian is a fine economist who was working on orders security issues. so these are people who spend a lot of time thinking about how do you measure the effectiveness and enforcement efforts. first, there is no question that

border enforcement today is more effect than any other time in u.s. history. fewer people are trying to enter legally than anytime in the past four years and a higher percentage of those who try rb hot and as mark said, they seem much more serious consequences when they are caught. my second point is that the numbers and measures needed to make that assertion are difficult to gather and explain, which is why there's so much controversy over these issues. the problem is exacerbated because administrations tend to want to have it both ways. they want to thanks attention. one is they want to gather and report credible measures of progress but on the other hand they want to claim constantly to beatnik in progress. what do you do if the measures don't seem to show progress? that is the real problem not only for this administration, but others. fewer people trying to cross the border the "glee" and anytime

since the the early 1970s. our research suggests that the odds of being apprehended and much higher than they have been in the recent past. if you go back to the 1980s and 1990s, he probably had a one in three chance of getting caught if you're trying to cross the southern border illegally. you would probably get taken back to mexico. today is probably at least 50%, perhaps higher depending how you measure. much of that is an economic story. a weaker u.s. economy, fewer people trying to cross. somewhat stronger mexican economy. but there's little question that robust border enforcement, which is steadily building up since the 1990s is making a difference. it does matter with 21,000 border patrol agents now compared with 10,000 a decade ago or 3000 in the early 1990s were there with 700 miles of fencing that we have aerial drones monitoring much of the border 24 hours a day, on the ground surveillance. that stuff does have a real

impact. so why do we still claim the border is hopelessly porous? some of this is politics. tamar will talk more about the politics. senator certainly places along the border but there's still high levels of crossings. you go down to the far southeast corner of texas, for instance. if you are landowner can you don't feel secure. a lot of people tried to enter legally or people smuggling drugs. most of the problem is success administrations had done a poor job of gathering in explaining the evidence. so take one example. when president obama came to office, the established measure of enforcement effectiveness is something called porter myles under operational control. cheap regular is your summer and responsible for many reports on mouse under operational control. this is largely based on the judgments of the border patrol sector chiefs and measured their capacity to respond quickly and effectively to incursions in different places along the 2100

i'll border. it was a problematic measure for many reasons. partly because he relied on the subjective judgments. but more because operational control simply wasn't an appropriate standard for all parts of the border. there's still very low price they receive very few incursions and you really don't want to be placing border patrol agents to respond quickly in those areas. it doesn't make economic operational expense. the problem for the administration if it did tell a good story. in 2011, for instance, gao came out the report is that only 44% of the southwest border is under operational control of that became a headline statistic and fed into the story that the border is out of control. so the former dhs secretary, janet napolitano decided in 2011 to stop using the operational control master. i supported that decision. i thought it was a good idea because i don't like the operational control. their effort to find a replacement was badly mishandled.

she promised to develop something called the border conditions index, which i'm not sure if any of us has ever understood. it was designed to throw together low crime rates in the u.s. cities on our side of the border of a real estate guide us along with traditional for st. patrick's in, put index out of 100. border patrol last year was 73. those of us who -- i never thought this is a good idea. fortunately, never saw the light of day. the result was we didn't have a set of measures to tell the story and what it fell back on was what they call the apprehension state, which is simply a measure of the number of people arrested by the border patrol. but they were free fat. the number of arrest by the border patrol in any given year. so there are individuals who are arrested multiple times. it's a very old data set that goes back to 1925. since 2000, border control has been taking fingerprints. what we call recidivism, the

apprehension of data are very good, but hard to interpret. if border patrol is making more arrests, is that a measure better enforcement? besylate drug seizure data is reported. more trucks seized is better enforcement. but on the people cited for logical to read it the other way. ..

the problem is a started to pack up. the economy has done a lot stronger, the numbers have risen back up over 400,000. most of the central american coming to that texas court are. makes it harder for the best ration to tell the story of consistent progress. just to conclude, what a brand, john, and i argued for in that paper is that this administration and future administrations should be gathering and reporting a far larger range of data. estimates of the apprehension rate, the percentage of people, to five people try to get through the legal ports as well. the number of these overstays. that is information we can track that is not regularly reported. all of these should be part of the annual performance report. there are challenges, but it

definitely could be done. it just a note in closing, a pretty good model for how to do this. the border security results act that was passed last year by the house homeland security committee, chairman mike mccall texas, who is no softy on this issue, the bill sets out achievable goals for border security, how the administration should assess and evaluate progress toward those goals. just in case england thinks it is impossible to find a consensus, that bill passed the homeland security committee in the house unanimously. every single democrat, every single republican on that committee who voted in favor of the bill. there is an approach to the weakening real. the. [applause] >> hello, everyone. thank you. i'm going to talk a little bit. these guys have done a good job talking about the numbers.

i'm gonna talk a little more about up the political ramifications of the debate. so the first thing to understand about this debate is one side saying we're not doing enough. the other side saying or doing too much. the truth is, the reason debate can get resolved is the reality underneath it, think of it as a riptide. they're is a tide going one way, and in some ways the obama of restoration has gotten tougher. there's also a tide going the other way. it's hard to sometimes tell when people look at the data conflicting crosscurrents is what they are reading and what the numbers are the results of. so on one hand there's a big spending buildup, secured communities, employer i-9 on its , on the other hand there has been i calling off of workplace raids and the calling of of a supporting workers who are caught in raids.

there has been a move to much more targeted approach is. to me the most important -- that is what is hard to understand. the data i am seeing in the results of the data. but the most important changes the one that both of our -- my predecessors have talked about this change on the border from the formal, informal sending people back on the boss to apprehending people, fingerprinting and putting them in the system, calling it a formal the fence so that the next time they come, if you get caught the first time because you were sent back in a different way when he tried the next time you are committing the same crime all over again and it -- the ticket much more seriously. you're then committing a real crime and the consequences play

out the way they are playing out and in my view the ultimate point is that the border, there is more of a deterrent and the border is more secure. ultimately that's a good thing. we want a system where there are ample and relatively easy ways to come and go, but it's extremely difficult to come illegally. that is what the obama administration, all these changes, that is one of the consequences. i want to take a minute and speak in defense of enforcement as someone who is a long time immigration advocate working to advance immigration reform, i am also somebody believes that strong and effective enforcement says is necessary. it is may be worth explaining, maybe isn't. we live in a globalized world where workers, high and low-skilled workers, families are coming and going.

kids are coming and going, was so workers produced in percent of all mexicans work in the u.s. silicon valley would never have happened without immigrants. the economy would come to a screeching halt. the point is, the american people are not going to support that kind of interconnectedness and coming and going no matter how good it is for us economically and in other ways unless there are rules and unless people feel in control and unless they feel that the people who are coming in our people that we have decided to let come and. they're not going to support immigration unless there is an immigration system with integrity which means rules. good rules are the foundation of a good system. today we live in an air with battles and their living with the consequences of decades of bad rules, and realistic quotas and that sort of thing. today we're living in an era that is like prohibition where the rules are totally

unrealistic. enforcement's seems onerous because we have these battles. button when we have a good rules and meaningful enforcement. and even in a climate like today, a prohibition climate, you cannot expect people to say a total flooding of the rules as a caribbean. reasonable people can disagree about where the lines are, you know, what the obama administration discretion should be. should he decide the target criminals or border crossers or rust never want? there are republicans, senator sessions says there should be no discretion and we should be doing everything. i think that is an unreasonable position i think more effective border control is a much better use of resources than the old republican policy of attrition to reinforcement, basically self to partition. but i also think there are

emergency situations -- there are murky situations where one side can say that's an unacceptable thing in the other side can say it is susceptible. there are some circumstances that pretty much this seems to me at least most of the american public agrees supporting violent felons, there are not too many people that think that is a mistaken priority. not too many people who think -- the situation on the border is important because once you done something once, it's called a crime, he had been sent back and then do it again, most people think that is unacceptable. wanting to cross once, but to make it a way of life to my think a lot of people say, known and looking the other way does not really pass the laugh test. so bottom line, if you think immigration is good for america and want america to remain a nation of immigrants you have to believe and enforcement. so in closing i want to step back and talk about the political ramifications and congress of these ideas that and

talking about. you know, our republicans giving obama enough credit for what i'm standing here saying? now simon says they're not giving enough credit. he's -- we are doing much better on the border. and i would like to put that in context because i think there's a difference for many republicans between the president having some priorities and making some allocation of resources and i know senator sessions and others complain about that, but that's one thing having priorities, having an allocation of resources and is totally another to take the law and your own hands. that's what republicans in congress feel the president is doing, not just making some priorities, criminals instead of mothers but just taking the law and is on hand. we are seeing is not an immigration, but in lots of areas. republicans call this executive overreach and imperial presidency and they see a whole

pattern of it. this is about obamacare, the national labor immigrations board and the epa and drug sentencing. they have a whole long laundry list. mr. kantor has 303 issues were he feels the president has taken the law into his own hands. the point is when -- and we can talk about something where the president -- singh arubia was proposing a proposal much like what the president did. instead of going insane let's work together he did a unilaterally. the point is, this is infuriating. i think in some ways justifiably so. i don't buy the argument -- and it's good to be here, but this is where we disagree. i don't buy the argument that obama's record is good and the problem is that republicans don't appreciate. i just think there is of complexity to that. but -- and even if i like the outcome focusing on interior

enforcement and criminals and adding to deterrence, that does not make obama trustworthy and it does not make him out trustworthy, billing partner for republicans to make a deal with. just to be clear, in case anybody has any doubt, the road to a permanent fix on immigration runs through congress. there is no fix that does not include legislation. obama can't do it alone. he can't do -- he can to our real reform pixel on. and any further unilateral action on his part is going to be a kiss of death for getting bipartisan action, passing legislation in a republican controlled house. we will be the kiss of death for this year and the next two as well. it obama acts alone on immigration it's over. and you have to try to see this from our republican point of view for a few seconds. basically they see this as a trade. they are going to accept

legalization of some kind and get enforcement, but if they feel like they're not really going to get enforcement then they're not going to want to give up with they don't particularly want to do anyway. serbs you can -- and you can say and maybe some will say republicans don't look like it will act anyway. why should the president's tax? i guess we can have a long discussion about that. i believe they're getting closer the leaders want to act. more and more republicans understand we need act. the question really is about when, not as if. that is what we ought to be fighting for, not pressuring the government to do things that will get in the way of a possible legislative or eventual legislative fix. under the long term there is no solution. we ought to keep our eyes on a price. [applause] >> we are going to take a quick

intervention and move the chairs around a little bit. hang tight and we will have q&a. i no there are a lot of people who want to weigh in with comments, thoughts, suggestions. you not only will be on c-span, but our internet feed for ever since. so make sure that when you weigh in you do really well and really in a pit the fashion. give us about 90 seconds and we will be back with you. thanks, everybody. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] site. >> i'm using my mike. c-span2 me to use your head wire? >> this is fine. >> it's good?

>> your good. and before we go, i just want to also think in the put this event together for us and andrea who is here today, real-estate. she has been an amazing in turn. done a lot of the graphs and charts and. it's his birthday today. sing him happy birthday on c-span. happy birthday of there. i want to start with one question, and then we will open up to the audience. in all research one of the things that we have concluded from looking at the way we have a graph of pier showing the increase and border removals and a decrease in interior removals'

and in the latest i stated that came out at the end of 2013 there are only 10,000 people deported from the united states that neither had a criminal record or a border crossing, meaning that of the 370,000 or so people deported in 2013, only 10,000 fell outside of the priorities meaning that if you were -- the question of going to ask is, do we believe it is true now that if you are an undocumented immigrant in the united states, do not have a criminal record and only the country, is the chance of your deportation essentially eliminated? >> it's a lot lower in that case then if you are a border crossers or if you do fall into one of the priority categories. i would just -- i would say -- boat not quite used the word eliminated, but very much

reduced. i would put too little asterisks on that. one is that many of the people likely have roots in the u.s. because we think casual crossing has gone way down. there are people who are affected by border enforcement, who are definitely tied to u.s. immigrant communities. the other thing is that i think, you know, would secure communities in particular which is the programmer when people are left in every jurisdiction in the country now when their fingerprints are sent to the fbi for background checks they're also said to be a chess, and they use that to identify people who might the removal. even though the program does not purport a lot of people, because it is so seamlessly integrated and in every community in the country it has a broader fear affect. i'm not sure people understand how narrowly focused it is.

it has had a much bigger impact than the numbers suggested should. >> i would agree with your general conclusion, certainly your odds of facing deportation site. the border is a big region, 100 miles. these interior checkpoints. there are people who could get apprehended and fall into that priority category. my point about the border crossing and actively from talking to people who work on the border and looking at some of the data, lot more of these people are people who have lived here before, may have been deported or returned voluntarily and i think all of us would look at those differently. we would not necessarily think of them as priorities in the sense that they're trying to reunite themselves. if you look at the senate bill all of those people would potentially be allowable to of eligible for legalization. there still are real challenges. you have a fundamental dilemma.

on the one hand you have to show serious, credible enforcement systems to address the republican concerns, but on the other hand, a fair number of people are targets, who the democrats ought to be eligible for legalization. is it appropriate? so i think that the administration has moved in a good direction. there are still real issues. >> i don't work with the data like these guys do. and i only know when i read the newspaper, but i would agree with the assessment. where i would--- push back is on the notion of these people who are called -- caught the second time crossing the border. people went back and forth repeatedly evaded kind of was a way of life. we basically treated the border for as many as during a barbwire and probably not even that. the sole crossing repeatedly had one kind of moral significance. once you start to say we will

apprehend you and fingerprint you and put you in the records and college in offense. and you keep doing it over and over. it has a different moral significance it is one thing become the first time to feed your family and another to make a way of life. i'm not saying these people are evil but it has to have a different weight. am sympathetic to these people, but it does have a different moral weight. >> you and i would agree in a post immigration reform world a few better legal channels to come and emigrate or work temporarily and if he had legalization. you deal with a lot of these people who are tied to a dysfunctional system. we have this problem of trying to establish the credibility of enforcement without having made some of the changes to the legal system that the unnecessary six.

>> certainly one of the things that i heard today was about in our research we have seen one of the messages to the undocumented and immigrant community is that you shouldn't leave the country. the consequences of the chance of you getting caught re-entering is much higher than they used to be. there has been a significant change. enforcement mechanisms are working much better. the second point is that when you get caught the consequences are much greater to the point where you may not even be eligible for legalization in some cases when there is legalization. that could actually where move your ability to become legalized i think one of the things we have learned from this process is that for those advocates who are talking to the immigrant community, we have to be more honest about the fact that leaving the country now is far more dangerous than it used to be and that it can end up wrecking appear family, as ted

talked about. if you have been here for 20 years, went back and forth and saw your cousins and now you if you get caught would just be returned on a bus i could try again a few days later. those days are gone. we have to be more honest about the real consequence of leaving the country for all the undocumented immigrants that we care about some much. >> and i'm not saying it's good. say again, i just think it's finding its reality. >> it's a reality. >> let's open and up to this wonderful and the people. there are a lot of folks. we have a microphone. if you can identify yourself and speak into a microphone, that would be great. >> i am ted harrison from fusion my question is for ted, but really anyone can answer. if there's a lack of good data for homeland security on things like apprehensions and who was crossing the border, how can we

get those numbers and what can be done factually to make vhs more accountable? >> well, actually i think the data has been improving. i want to give vhs and credit. one of the big pieces of data that was released a year and a half ago was the record that the border patrol collapse on a sector by sector, station by station basis on apprehension, what they call turn back which are people who are seen trying to enter the united states and change their mind when they see the border patrol and go back to mexico. and then what they call got a ways, people they think they missed. people who were cited visually. more commonly through what they call sign cutting which is footprints and other things. very good and saying this was probably a group of 12 people. all of this data was released to the gao for really important --

2012. rebecca gambler. and that gave us pretty good data on apprehension rates, turn back, got a ways. the border patrol date is a little too optimistic. in our report we use other methods, including survey data and what they call the recidivism not the. by looking at people who are called multiple times and making assumptions you can bacchant apprehension numbers. most recently what we have is the result of the aerial drone. you can do observation in the desert, fly over region for a month and watch the people across. if you are not actually communicating you could do a proper scientific experiment and say this was the percentage we caught. there have been press reports that this is been done and suggests an apprehension rate of about 50 percent which i've never been able to verify. but the data is there. it is not perfect, but it's a lot better than it used to be.

i do see in cdt in particular i see a real commitment to improving data gathering and reporting this in a more regular and systematic way. i think that will be a big step forward. >> okay. let's just go with this. at any point if you want to jump and. >> my question for you all, i'm an undocumented immigrant. my parents brought me here when i was a year-old in 1989. originally from brazil. my dad was deported a few years back and passed away last year. i was not even able to bury my father. my question for you all today is how is it that your numbers if you have been talking about today reflect the actual reality of the pain that families are suffering on the ground, the

separation of families. how these numbers reflect my father situation or that i could not bear my father? >> also something about the. starting with, i'm sorry. i mean, i -- the answer i would give it the administration has been pretty successful at focusing enforcement of the people that they say they're going to focus. they have also been the importing about four repeatable year. that's a lot of people. even now says those categories exclude a lot of people, they include a lot of people. most people have deep roots in the communities, families here. you really can't have it both ways. you can't do robust enforcement and not have a major impact on these deeply rooted longstanding emigrant communities. your story goes to that point. i don't know the conditions under which her father was

deported, but most people who are deported have lived in this country for a while and many of them have families here. there may also have been previously removed or convicted of a minor crime or convicted of another crime or be apprehended at the border in which case they're defined as a priority. there are a lot of people who fall into those categories to have deep connections to rebuild story lines are true. it's also true that that is having a huge impact on average in communities. >> i am somewhat surprised i ended up doing this kind of work because i didn't really think would. and the situation is one where what a lot of us in this remark which is a sensible legalization program that would have allowed you to go back in barrier father , the only when l.i. happen is if congress acts. and there are a lot of people and congress to have insisted that there will only act if they

believe that we are not going to end up in the situation we ended up in 1986 where we legalized 3 million people with the promise that this will be a one-off and a decade later we have 12 million did he have to be able to say, we do have a credible enforcement system. my hope is ben that as some point the republicans would beepers winnable. i don't know any more. i am not sure. and then the logic changes. but a lot of the reason i do this is because i think the way to make this right is with the proper legalization program, and the only way you do that is with credible enforcement. sadly, the timing is a big problem. these things need to go hand-in-hand and they have not. >> i would say a version of what both of us have said. it's a terrible story and it's awful and everybody can understand your pain. but we do -- i think, and any metaphor is inappropriate, but we live in that time that is like prohibition.

rules that are realistic and are wrong. that is a situation you are in in a way is not to say no rules matter and that we don't believe in rules. in order to get the better rules we have to say we do believe in rules which is kind of the stage we are in now. in some way your family and many other families are suffering for the. people think we're in a system where no rules apply. >> one of the point. we have to recognize, if this graph is correct, which we think it is, government data, there is a lag going on between the sense and reality of what people are experiencing and what the system is doing today. in many cases and if you have read the new york times piece about the backlog in immigration

courts, there are people who are coming for deportation today who are originally apprehended 67 years ago under a completely different system we have now. what you saw in that data was that far fewer of those people are actually being deported. the courts themselves are implementing the prosecutorial discretion standards and letting far more people go because they were not apprehended at the same set of standards that we are applied today. that was the whole thrust of the really powerful piece in the new york times using a lot of new data came out of the doj. the key thing is that the ag total stories to million know, many of them are things that happened two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago under completely different system. i think that both of these things can be true. your story can be true while also this can be true. the system is also changed, and it is my basic contention that the president deserves far more

credit from the immigration advocacy community forever been responsive to their concerns and change the system are virtually now is almost impossible a few live in the interior of the united states and do not have a criminal record, virtually impossible for you to be deported. that is a completely different system than we have in 2009 when all 11 million undocumented were on the imminent threat of deportation at any time of day and a completely different system of the republicans passed and hals. the house republicans have wanted to roll back and make sure that ice reestablished as the eminent threat of deportation for all people. the republicans in the house on record during the amendment voting for the in 2013. the contrast speaking as an obama supporter between somebody who has only a reported 10,000 people or noncriminal border crossers and 2013 being responsive to your concerns and a republican house leaders who want to undo all those reforms

and put the threat of ice imminent deportation back into the system immediately, there is an enormous contrast. i think this is something that we have got to sort of honor. this is, again, very different and where we were a few years ago which is why i think we're having events like this to honor of the new data that we have and don't create a clear picture of where we are today. >> i'm not going to rise to the bait. i could. i live in your house. i want. maybe later in the conversation. >> the devil's den. >> i enjoy it. i want to get to a couple of reporters in the room, and then we will get back to some other folks. >> thank you. financial magazine. this is a very important issue for our readers. the question i have is, is this purely a republican versus democratic