to. we have defined windows as to how long we can retain data. once we complete the data we remove it. we don't hold data forever. we also are required to ensure that we maintain protection of the data from the moment we collect it to them a week purge it so we don't sell data. ..

interviewed by the american-led project and a majority of the technology experts set experts said they be leaving major cyber checks will happen between now and 2025 which will be large enough to cause a significant loss of life or property at the levels of tens of billions of

dollars. why or why not ask >> i fully x. that during my time as a commander we are going to be tasked to help send critical infrastructure in the united states under attack by a foreign nation or some individual group. i say that because as you've already highlighted some individual groups that have the capability to engage in this behavior we have seen to date this behavior as you saw we've seen this destructive behavior acted on them executed. we have seen individuals and groups inside critical u.s. infrastructure that has a

presence that suggests the vulnerability is in areas that others want to exploit. all of takes me to believe not only if we are going to see something dramatic. a >> is the u.s. government cyber networks. spinnaker they would be attempting to steal and manipulate data. what you're saying is they can get through between 2025. a >> i just wanted to thank you

and the ranking member for holding this important hearing. as the committee has spent a great deal of time on this issue i think that the admiral who are compelling testimony makes it clear to the american people that we need to redouble our efforts on this area and make sure not only are we paying attention but we are taking direct action to protect the american people and our economy from a cyber espionage as well as our military espionage. i had the occasion to travel to china in august and it was clear the chinese saw no difference between cyber attacks on military versus espionage and they were open to giving both of them. thank you for this information that you're putting out. people have fears about the area

can you talk to us as a follow-on to the ranking members questioned are there bad actors that you have detected and i don't if notice this is classified information or not. are there bad actors in the mobile and cloud computing and how does this advance into the cyber attacks went forward recorded the private sector as well as for the government. a >> we have observed both the cloud of you will as well as the digital devices becoming being attacked and being exploited.

the insiders one of the top three that i would highlight is a look this is becoming a trend in no small part because if you look at the proliferation of the devices to greatest growth these days is not in the traditional corporate fixed large network structures. it is the same phenomena in government. we are all turning to the mobile digital devices as the vehicles to enhance our productivity, the ability to look whatever we want, whenever we want. with the ability to spread the south side of the secure spaces and the ability to use it and all sorts of environments almost universally in any place that also represents an increased potential for vulnerability. a >> can you speak more specifically to that is mobile and cloud computing in your

opinion are the american people more vulnerable or less blacks tax >> my idea is one of the challenges to defense is the daughter if you will of the structure you have the more you have to defend at the greater the probability of people penetrating. one of the things i find attractive about the cloud is that it collapses if you will do service down to the flip side though is where people who don't like it would argue when someone gets into the basket they get all did all the eggs. that is certainly true. having will double baskets with the eggs spread around as it were and i apologize i never thought i would be asked about

the baskets and eggs. [laughter] i am supportive of the cloud. a >> it is going to be problematic. part of the whole idea of mobile -- >> and it doesn't matter which device >> the way it's structured and that you're going to pull down which application you like i am a highlight those applications have a lot of potential voter abilities. spinnaker i appreciate that. i see my time is up so i yield

back. thank you for your service to the country. you have not only the most difficult job in the united states and we are grateful you took it on but i want to ask a couple other questions one on the cyber bill and then the senate proposals involved the sharing of information between the government private sector would require mentally place on the private sector to remove private information before sharing it and last month in the comments before the chamber of commerce you mentioned that the nsa doesn't need or want this as part of the information and receiving that makes your job harder. given that doesn't make sense to the gig at face efforts to strip the identified information before sharing the cyber threat information with the government or other entities. as you solve a freedom act

failed to get the votes moved forward this week which pushes that into next year we have to start all over again. is the nsa moving forward but looking at the telephone companies to prepare to launch their new data actually requires the government to catapult the data so you can move forward on your own making to technological changes so we don't have to wait until next year. we make the progress on the technical actions that we need to make. >> so the first part should we attempt to filter before the data is pushed the removal of any privacy?

>> we've asked the companies to make reasonably good faith efforts to remove the information before they are given to the government or shared among the private sector. a >> that is part of the point i was trying to make about the final of the front so we are not just pushing information for the sake of pushing we should define exactly what the companies are going to provide. we should build this up front we should have cleared the delineation of your brain to be sharing with the government in terms of the second question could you refresh my question. a >> looking with the telephone companies to make whatever

technological adoptions have to be made so they can maintain their own data rather than the government collecting it in bulk since both support moving to that model and there's nothing that prohibits you from doing that and you don't have to wait for the freedom act are you moving forward with those technological changes? >> the corporate side indicated we would rather wait and see what specifics are going to be of the requirements before we start getting into making changes or start having discussions about the specifics of making changes. part of the reason for that is the hope that we will come to a solution. one of the questions i'm trying to consider is if we are unable to obtain the consensus were the implications that we need to start to reach out and have some discussions now.

a >> there is no statutory mandate of any kind for the government to collect the administration said it's no longer necessary that the telephone companies can hold onto the data. the only reason that it exists. we are going on an individual case-by-case basis in doing so so there is no reason if you think this is the correct policy that you have to wait for the congress to mandate. a >> that is the current policy perspective we are acting on right now. the remarks of the 17th of january directed us to use the legal court construct. we've been doing that as he would return to the congress to enact the legislation that makes the changes that you think are appropriate. but we've already been directed to use the law and we have to go to the courts to access the data. a >> is the government no longer

collecting? >> we now access the data and go to the courts to get permission to access the data. a >> why continue if the administration don't think that this is the best approach? i guess i'm confused because i haven't heard them say that access to the data is not of value. but i think i heard is the question gets to be who should hold the data. we will continue to implement the program while the congress works through how we will make the long-term changes. we will do that in a 90 day interval so every 90 days the have to ask for continued permission. the >> if they understand that the

model is to go to a paradigm that companies hold onto their own data it doesn't make sense for us to continue the data we are not legally required to and there's no reason not to move to that model and transition now. >> admiral thank you for being here today and the work that you are doing. it's important work to the country. we had a discussion about what we are seeing in terms of the cyber intrusions and the american people have seen a disturbing number of cyber related incidents including the state department, the white house, the atmospheric administration and the industrial control systems in the critical infrastructure and

the scum on these come on the heels of other major attacks such as j.p. morgan chase, target by the south korean banking attacks. the director said there are two kinds, those that have been attacked by the chinese and those that don't know they have been attacked. the other states are doing this so to date we see the the incidence is being focused on the data breaches and industrial espionage but what keeps me up at night and i'm sure you as well the worry that we could face a true cyber attack that

causes significant damage to the same facts that traditionally you see through the use of kinetic weapons. we know that technology is out there as you know. we know how we would respond if we saw an attack using the weapons or missiles how they would respond to protect us in those cases but what confidence can you give to the american people to say that would give them confidence that we have a plan in place and we know how to respond if either we saw the

planning stages ready to be executed or if it was being that the order was giving and was underway that we could stop at this point is there a sufficient mechanism in place at the presidential authority or it would require its own to step in and order for an intervention that we could prevent that attack and protect the country and our critical infrastructure etc.? have we had the bridge in place to deal with the bureaucratic and legal hurdles or does it take presidential authority at this point? spinet i'm pretty comfortable that we have a broad agreement and abroad sharing of how we are going to do it. if i go back to years ago, 18 months ago, we were spinning our

wheels about who's going to do what. we have good delineation and the federal government as to who has watched responsibility. we have good brought agreement as to how we would go about providing that capability in the scenario you talked about with attacks against critical infrastructure. the presidential authority is required for me as a dod entity to provide support in the u.s. for others to partner. that's required is part of the response gets i would need approval to do that. we've got a broad agreement that the challenges we have to move beyond the moved beyond the brought agreement to get down to the execution of. camilla camilla terri culture teaches us you take those broad concept of agreements and train.

a >> one could certainly argue that the hundreds of billions of dollars lost to cyber crime and espionage some of which is symptomatic is a massive threat to the american economy and competitors. when does that become economic warfare and how do we respond? >> first of all, we are trying to come to grips and does it become economic. we've tried to make the argument that we try to differentiate between the capabilities of the nationstate and understand the world around it versus the capabilities of the nationstate against the private sector to generate economic advantage. that is the major difference among the major differences between us and our chinese counterparts where we have argued we don't accept that and we don't use our capabilities to

go after private industry and other nations to use that as a vehicle to gain economic advantage. that's not what we do. >> the shorter answer is we are trying to work our way through those issues. we tend to treat it right now you talked about criminal actors we treated as a law-enforcement issue. so the primary i would argue that approach is not achieving the results that we want. we are spending our time dealing with the repercussions and what i would like to do is how can we forestall those in the first place and as we've already talked today about the norms and rules of behavior and those ideas of deterrence there is a lot of work to do. >> i appreciate the work you're doing. my time is expired.

but thank you for what you're doing. >> there is about one minute and 15 seconds left. >> i'm going to be brief. what can you do to ensure the american people in the absence of legislation would address the concerns over the collection of metadata and concerns about privacy that despite the failure of the congress to pass legislation but you may be doing differently that would ensure their privacy is protected? q-quebec what we are doing differently as you heard in the remarks on the 17th of january he said while i haven't seen them violating the law were attempting to undermine the rights of the privacy of the citizens i am concerned about the potential therefore am going to overlay a couple different requirements, so for example on the metadata i want you to know

go to the court as the director so to speak and go to the fisa court. we didn't use to have used to have to do that. he also directed we used to be able when we went into those incidences in the data we used to do three hops. the prison and came back and said i told you what i want to put another level of protection i only want you to do to hops. so we are not authorized now to follow as we used to be able to do. those are probably the biggest changes that we've dealt with in addition to provide a broad guidance that the government has generated in a very public way

that outlines the general principles we want to make sure we apply in conducting the intelligence and commission. so we are putting those principles in place and in addition we have completed over the course of the last 15 months or so a fundamental review of what we collect against so that we ensure that we are comfortable from the policy perspective. >> most of what the admiral said is in our bill and you are part of putting that together. >> just quickly i think that there was some confusion when you are obtaining the information under this section don't you have to go to the court lacks >> i thought i indicated every 90 days we have to go to the court gets permission

>> so the court oversees and continues to look. it's their content on those phone calls and are you taking and collecting and storing the content? and the information that you get doesn't contain and do you store >> the challenge we get the number bought a name. >> so there's no names or addresses on the information and you use that as an analytical tool. do you beat me to that information is valuable in any counterterrorism efforts that the united states undertakes and do you have personal knowledge that information has led or assisted in any counterterrorism investigation to help defend the united states?

>> as any value in our assistance. >> this is important no content is collected on the phone calls under section 215. you get a review by the court every 90 days meaning you have to go back every 90 days with what you've done with it and how you processed it and how you handled it and if you want to go for another 90 days you have to make the case. there is some notion that we shouldn't be participating in this. i think it was a bit confusing. we were trying to get this right by the end of the collection of the government putting it all in one place even though those protections were in place the general conscience that it was legal and constitutional.

fixing that would be my caution as i know some others have called for something different. and second, from the companies don't you have the capability to strip pii from information and the nsa >> we could do it in an automated fashion. it's one of the reasons why i would want to have a discussion about what kind of information we are talking about and then i could also build into protections. >> that was an important part missed in that conversation even if they don't have the capability today that says yes i have this source code you would have the chance before it ever got in the data. >> in the past conversations that is what they told us. my only fear and despise the biggest debate he wants

companies to participate because this is voluntary. and if they are in good faith trying to provide the source code they are not held to a different standard when accidentally it could happen so you want to companies making some effort and to have a system before it got into the analytical database which is easy for you to do than the multitude of thousands of companies trying to share the source code that may have originated in russia or china or iran or north korea or some international organized crime. i just want to make sure we have the full and open discussion about what that looks like and why there are concerns about limiting the number that could participate. it just adds more vulnerability to the whole system. i just want to make sure they made that clear we made that clear and that it's on the record. admirable, you are off the belt.

thanks for stepping in a difficult time and improving the morale and i hope that you will take back as a committee that in a bipartisan way does pretty tough oversight i think that you have seen it already. >> we have the most respect for the work they are doing and thanks for their petri into some despite what the they might read in the newspapers or think you to the men and women of the security agency. >> [inaudible conversations]

on the nuclear program. as the deadline passed for the negotiations yesterday the group agreed to extend the deadline for another seven months. it will be starting their meetings in december and included the u.s., the united kingdom, france, china, russia and germany. this is expected to shoot -- started shortly. [inaudible conversations]

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good morning everybody. i am from the brookings institution and i would like to welcome you to this panel discussion on the iranian nuclear program and on recent developments in the last few days in vienna. as i'm sure all of you know yesterday iran and the p5 plus one countries reached an agreement to extend the nuclear negotiations for a second time. they agreed to seek a political arrangement, political agreement within about four months and they agreed to try to finalize

the details of any political agreement within seven months or by late june. during this period the interim arrangements that were worked out in november, 2013 will remain in place. these are the arrangements made under the joint plan of action so the nuclear program will remain frozen in all critical respects and the modest sanctions relief that was agreed back in november 2013 will continue including the incremental repatriation of the small map of restricted oil revenues that had been held up and restricted banks mostly in asia but during this period the

most impact of the economic sanctions goes on banking and oil will remain in place. the secretary of state john kerry had a press event yesterday indiana -- in vienna and he said real substantial progress has been made even in the past several days new ideas have been put on the table. what he but he was advocating is that for the first time in a while there was some momentum in the negotiations. the talks were not the dead dead in the water and i will quote him. he said we now see the path towards potentially resulting some issues that have been

intractable. he went on to elaborate how the deal had become strained iran's nuclear program and how the world was safer today than it was one year ago. he indicated based on reports by the international atomic energy agency that iran complied with its obligations under the interim deal. and that they provided continuing incentives for iran to come to terms on a comprehensive agreement. in general he made the case that the continuation of the interim deal was very much in the interest of the united states and he said that considering how

far we have come in a year and given the potential for the comprehensive deal of the next several months ago would have been a terrible mistake to walk away from the negotiations by the time of november 24 deadline other parties in the talks have expressed similar views. the president of iran indicated yesterday that he was more or less pleased with the extension. he expressed confidence that a comprehensive deal could be concluded soon or or later. other partners in the p5 plus one express similar views and even the israelis expressed relief that a hasty ill-conceived agreement hasn't been reached and they seemed

content with a continuation of the interim deal at least for the time being. but at the same time, while indicating that the progress had been achieved, the secretary was very frank indicating that significant gaps remain in the negotiations. and not on secondary issues, but on some of the fundamental issues and he made it clear that he considered success to be far from an affordable and subsequently the administration spokesmen had noted that while the iranian negotiators demonstrated greater flexibility than they previously demonstrated that iran had yet to demonstrate the realism required to close a deal.

anticipating the critics on capitol hill, former colleagues of his secretary called on them to give the obama administration benefit of the doubt and to hold off on additional sanctions. the spokesman reiterated his belief that additional sanctions would not be necessary, would not be helpful and in fact could be disruptive of the further negotiating process. congressional reactions have been mixed. so far some have indicated that they are prepared to give the obama administration the benefit of the doubt and to hold off and others have indicated that no deal has been achieved in a year if we have any hope of achieving a deal in the next several months it's important that we

obtain additional leverage and we can only do that by enacting additional sanctions. we are calling on the new congress even the lame duck session but more likely in the new congress controlled the senate for the imposition of additional sanctions. in the coming months the comprehensive deal will be achieved. what are the gaps that need to be closed but what kind of deal would be in the best interest of the united states and the partners. to the extension how would the obama administration respond on

the hill for a additional sanctions and how would this potential clash between the executive branch and legislator branches. we have an excellent panel to provide answers to these questions. we have on my right gerry the executive director for research at the harvard center. until a while ago he was the most senior responsible for weapons destruction and intimately involved in the iran negotiations. to my immediate left is david albright the founder and head of the institute for science and international security isis, that's the other isis, the good

isis. [laughter] as you know it is the go to place to understand the technical side of the issue as well as many other issues. we are happy to have david with us and we also have added who i've known for many years but as the former senior staff member of the senate foreign relations committee and how it approaches the sanctions issues better than almost anybody else. so i'm divided that he is joining us today. without further ado i'm going to ask each of the panelists to make some opening remarks. i made and ask a few questions and provide a few comments of my own and then we will open up to the audience because i know you have many questions.

why don't you start off. >> thanks everyone for coming today. secretary kerry and his negotiating team for managing a very difficult and complicated negotiation which has included maintaining unity in the p5 plus one that involves counseling the middle east allies and most difficult of all the negotiations with the iranians. the failure to reach an agreement is iran's fault that they put forward a very reasonable offer that would have allowed them to retain the capacity and build up part of

its clear power program and to deter coming to terms on the question of the past activities. this is in exchange for graduated sanctions relief. but the iranians as far as i can tell have continued to take unrealistic and extreme positions. a big refused to give up a single one of their centrifuges and if they insist on a rapid buildup to a much larger enrichment capacity and they insist on the media sanctions relief. maybe this is just bargaining tactics as we neared the new deadline we will begin to see the iranians recognize the need to begin to show more flexibility and come forward with some changes in these positions but the other possibility which i fear may be true is that the supreme leader does not feel compelled to make

fundamental concessions were made to acquire a nuclear weapon capability because in his view the economy has stabilized under the joint plan of action and under the president's much more effect of economic team into the supreme leader maybe leave the geopolitical developments like the crisis gives a stronger bargaining position in the exit more able to withstand the consequences of the joint plan of action. if that's the case in seven months we will be exactly where we are today so what can we do to put pressure or persuade to actually negotiating change on some of these extreme positions? >> one thing is not to offer any new proposals on told the

iranians make a serious counterproposal. i'm sure that the negotiating team understands that. second, we need to begin to talk to our allies who but will consumers and producers about the need to prepare for the possibility that the joint plan of action may collapse and we will want them in the case of legal consumers like japan, korea and india and we will want oil producers like the saudis to maintain high high productions of his alternative supplies available. of course they will know we are beginning to make those preparations and they will know they need to make concessions. we need to recognize that getting russia and china on board with him and within and to these negotiations and returned to sanctions is good to be very challenging and probably not

possible especially in the context of ukraine but up until now the most important sanctions that really bite are the ones that the u.s. and its allies have imposed and i think we need to begin making preparations to go back to the sanctions track. third i would like to see the white house and congress work on legislation that would increase the leverage by authorizing the president to impose new sanctions without at the same time giving the iranians an excuse to walk away from the talks and blamed the united states and of course it is going to talk about this in more detail. will this work i honestly don't know. it. it may be the supreme leader just determined not to budge. and in that case i think the prospects for extending the joint plan of action past july will become very difficult and that would be unfortunate. i would return us to the status

quo where they would presume all of that nuclear activities but it has frozen. the u.s. would resume its sanctions campaign and i think we have to accept and recognize even if the reason the campaign this isn't going to immediately force them to capitulate. maybe over time it will increase the pressure in the day may come back to the bargaining table they will be creeping forward with their nuclear program. i don't think iran is close to getting nuclear weapons but the options are constrained by the fear that would provoke a military attack that they can build up their stockpiles and centrifuges and so forth. i don't think that are close to attacking iran or israel as long as they continue to observe the constraints that the collapse of the joint plan of action is obviously not in our interest and the chance of keeping it going is to show iran that is necessary, we are prepared to go

back to this sanctions campaign. >> thank you very much, gary. perhaps, david, you can focus on the remaining gaps in the negotiations and what might be required to close the gaps. what might make a deal were good deal lacks >> first i would like to say i agree with gary. iran hasn't been warned of concessions and the u.s. has been willing to go too far and i will talk about that in order to try to find him acceptable deal. unfortunately that was true in july. i was indiana at the end of the negotiations in iran wasn't willing to make an exception. they didn't seem to have the kind of instructions that would allow stability on the negotiations and the same appears to be true over the last weekend so i don't know what it's going to take that i think

that from my technical point of view it's going to require a high-level political decision in iran in order for this to work. what i would like to do is go through some of the particular provisions in any deal. i would like to start with the interim deal itself. we've been scrutinizing the reports carefully for years and it became apparent about a month ago in the last report that there is a there's a little bit of fraying on the edges of the concessions iran made on the interim deal and they started lawyers can debate whether it is in isolation and we would say certainly it is iran pushing against the envelope or a loophole in the deal and i think that current figure she is in on

the deal i don't know if they are finished or not with me that there has to be better defined to centrifuges in the interim deal and these things need to be clarified. it also makes sense there is more blending down of the 20% or as it is pioneered in the july deal that the 20% and set in the fuel for the research reactor and that hasn't gone that well as expected. i expected that it would have 25 kilograms of the enriched uranium and the actual fuel of some of these. it's not much more than 5 kilograms because of the ambiguities and what it means to use the 20% of the fuel. as it turns out of water doesn't end up in the fuel assemblies so that's another thing where you could strengthen the constraints of the program through the concessions iran would make on the interim deal to get to $700 million a month.

one of the core issues of the nuclear weapons program is that parts of the program possibly continuing what they build the clear weapons in the future i think i was a little disappointed in this idea and to be fair they would be linked to the sanctions. iran wouldn't be given a pass. they would have to settle the issues and that's what i've always heard. they would have to set aside in order to get the sanctions relief but in a sense it would be deterred and i think now that we have seven month us it's important to return to the position that iran should satisfy the concerns before there is a deal and i think it is hard to argue that seven months isn't enough and i would say that it's dangerous not to do that. i followed the activities and i worked with them during the

inspections in the '90s and history matters. you have to know the history in order to know what's going on now. i think that's true in any area you will be limited in their ability to understand what's going on if you turn your back on the history that it's important in this case because they suspect some of these activities may possibly be ongoing so it's not just a history question that a question of what could be happening today and it gets right to the issue of the verifiability of the deal. if the concerns are not addressed, one of the things iran would learn is that ken stonewall and get the p5 plus one proposed. that's going to undermine the credibility cummings at the would be the principal mechanism to verify any long-term deal so it doesn't make sense to

undermine the credibility and two in a sense encourage iran to be fired him after the deal was signed so there's plenty of time to settle this but i do think it's going to require a decision in iran to do that. some of the other issues that are publicized it is well known and they differ on a number of centrifuges. creative ideas to ship out of iran and reduce the stocks that i don't think there's been an agreement on how far the stocks would be reduced. if you have an impact to strengthen the limits on the centrifuge numbers you've got to drive those numbers from seven or so to three and a half% down to a few hundred kilograms and i don't think that is by any means so also the primary goal has to be getting the number of centrifuges down into the u.s.

put on the table to consider the centrifuges and that isn't that far from our position as we stated since last january but they want to strengthen that by having the stocks come down significantly and it's a very important part of this. another is they would be declared excess. they've rejected the structures and how did you deal with it if it's 4,000 centrifuges were talking about 15,000 or so but stay in place so how did you make sure those can be operated or started quickly and it remains a difficult issue on experts we don't have a good answer if you want iran to need to six six months or more to

restart now and i don't think that the u.s. has a good answer and iran doesn't seem to be willing to go down the path to discuss that in much detail so i think there's quite a few issues and let me end on the verification side. they not only have to have the credibility intact but it has to be doing a lot more than i would normally do. iran has spent 20 years in noncompliance and in those cases they have to do more to assure the facilities and on those issues and on hasn't been willing to engage on these measures that would be supplementary to the what's called the additional protocol support me stop there. >> of the congressional angle? >> the members of congress probably approach this issue

roughly the way you are the first two speakers approach with a fair amount of concern, sometimes cynicism, not really believing that iran in the end will choose to make a deal, but they have a problem. the problem to the members of congress face is that their options for legislation aren't very good either. and so if you look at most of the proposals that have been made in the last year or so, they've died in the subcommittee. they haven't even even gotten to the full committee. even on the house side under the republican control. so when you hear people say that harry reid has bottled up

sanctions, don't believe it. everybody has bottled up sanctions bills. and the reason they bottle them up is the bills that have been put forward have been legislation rather than really helpful legislation. it's very difficult to be really helpful and it's much easier it gets much better publicity to come out and say we need to have the iranians and all enrichment and we need to destroy or dismantle all of their illicit infrastructure. >> if you could get a complete surrender on the issues by iran, that would be very nice. it's just that literally nobody

is predicting that iran is going to do that. and so if you want a piece of legislation that would help our negotiators rather than antagonizing our allies and ending to the negotiations, you have to come up with something else. ..

they can always do that. the difference is that under those other two bodies of law, congress sets up expedited procedures so that they actually came to a vote on a resolution of disapproval, and they don't allow implementation of an agreement to begin until congress has had 30 or 60 days in which to try to pass one of those resolutions. of course, such resolutions can be vetoed, and so congress would still need to have two-thirds majority in both houses in order to impose its will on the president, but you could imagine

giving continued iranian unwillingness to compromise, that eventually would get that two-thirds majority if they had something good to propose. so what is it that they could propose that might actually be useful? and here i'm talking only for myself. i may talk with others but i haven't found others willing to get down to this level of detail, just perhaps our negotiators haven't found the iranians willing to get down to this level of detail. you could imagine a sanctions bill that was tailored to what we are offering. so that the bill would say we

won't invoke more sanctions unless we cannot get some of the things we are willing to sign a deal with iran. that would be a very difficult piece of legislation for congress because it would involve giving up our more maximalist goals. excuse me, my voice does sometimes give out. it would help the negotiations if we backed up our negotiators to the extent that they could say here is how far we can go, and we can implement the deal that goes this far. but if it goes further we may not be able to get congress to support it.

right now our negotiators are able to say that in principle. you could imagine negotiations -- excuse me, you could imagine legislation that would enable them to say that more precisely. the problem with that legislation would be that it assumes iran wants a deal. if iran doesn't know whether it wants a deal, then all of that legislation will go away. but it's a possibility. other possibilities, you can beef up verification. you can give more help to the iaea. you can get more direction to u.s. intelligence and other agencies. you can set up reporting requirements that require the

executive branch to report to congress on a regular basis what's going on. you can set up exceptional reporting requirements that say if iran does acts, the administration has to report to congress on what it's done, what we're doing about it and why we shouldn't give up and just cut off the money that's going to iran. there are precedents for legislation of that sort, largely in the realm of resolutions and advice and consent to arms control treaties. so congress knows how to write provisions of that sort if it wants to. beyond that, you could give the president, and here i am

stealing from gary, you could give the president more sanctions authority without necessarily requiring him to use it. and so you would give him more swords to hand over people's heads. but it would still be up to him on whether not to cut the head. so there are things you could do. i don't think either in congress or in the administration anybody has sat down and said let's work together on what we could come up with. i think it would be very interesting that the staff exercise to have to work on that and see if they could come up with good legislation that might be enacted sometime in the spring time. my friends tell me that they

don't expect anything to happen in the lame-duck session. so we are looking at next year rather than the end of this year. stop for now. >> thank you very much, ed. i'm going to ask the couple of questions and then open it up to the audience. first, i agree with gary at the main reason we don't have a deal yet, a reason the outline for the deal, it's because iran has taken a rigid position, and unrealistic position. it hasn't been prepared to reduce its operational enrichment capacity, and its insistence on very early lifting of sanctions before it has even demonstrated compliance with its obligation to the satisfaction of the iaea.

buperhaps they believe the obama administration needed them on regional issues to defeat isis. perhaps they thought the president was in a weak position. perhaps they thought they could muddle through with the economy, a number of reasons, but it's interesting that senator kerry has indicated that he has seen some movement now, but there seems to been a difference. i wonder what you think, gary. what is the likelihood that president rouhani and his negotiators will go to the supreme leader and say, look, boss, this hasn't worked. the americans are not going to cave. we need to show greater flexibility. do you think the domestic politics in iran would permit that? >> that's really the key question because it is the

supreme leader that is giving you instructions to his negotiating. and it was his public red line that iran won't give up any other existing capacity and insist on building up to 190,000, that's like 20 seconds what they currently have by 2021, which is negotiators are operating with. so you're not going to get into unless the supreme leader authorizes more flexibility to foreign minister zarif. it's hard, i obviously disagree with her hasn't whispered in my ear whether cashman what his views are but i believe based on iran's behavior over the last couple of decades since hominy has been supreme leader that is deeply committed to acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. both because he sees as necessary to defend iran against enemies like the great satan,

and as well to assert our bands dominance in the region and its ability to intimidate its neighbors. but at the same time he has shown sensitivity to the west of pursuing a nuclear weapons program. and we know from history that when the threat and risk has been hot enough he has been prepared to accept limits. so he froze most of the enrichment program for two years, and 2003 after the u.s. invaded iraq and afghanistan. and didn't unfreeze the program until it became clear that the u.s. was bogged down in both theaters and he calculated, khamenei calculated that iran was set to resume. most recently i think that president obama sanctions campaign has been very effective in compelling iran to a least expect a freeze even though they have been willing to make more fundamental sacrifices. so it really comes down to supreme leader khamenei's calculation of what the balance of power is.

i'm sure that rouhani and zarif would very much like -- president rouhani campaigned in getting the sanctions lifted but if they recognize the only way to get the sanctions lifted is to meet some of the american demands, they will make that case to khamenei but khamenei has also been lobbied by the ioc and hard-liners who will say we don't nee need to make the secen spirit the americans are weak. we are strong. we can afford to stand firm. up to now the supreme leader has tended to side with those hard-liners. so we will have to wait and see what happens in seven months. my main argument is to the extent that we can influence khamenei's calculation, i think we have to convince him that we are prepared to walk away from these negotiations, go back to sanctions. >> kerry's answer touches on the issue that i want to come on briefly, and that's the issue of

whether iran is bound and determined to of nuclear weapons, to build nuclear weapons. i think it's clear that at least until 2003 they had was the iaea calls a structured program to do experimentation, procurement, research directed at the design of a nuclear weapon. but something happened in 2003 and ethic with a pretty good information, the iaea does, that they suspended a critical element of that. weaponization component, the actual design of a nuclear explosive device. the u.s. intelligence community has held ever since then that while iran has insisted on keeping open the option to acquire nuclear weapons it has not yet made a decision to proceed.

my own view is that it is not inevitable that iran will make that decision to go for nuclear weapons. and i think the purpose of an agreement needs to be to deter any future decisions i iran's leaders to make that choice, to decide to go from a capability which they have and will never get rid of to the actual acquisition of nuclear weapons. and i think an agreement can do that. by making the process of acquiring nuclear weapons very lengthy, increasing the breakout time, making it very detectable by having very good monitoring arrangements and making it very risky by making it very clear that if they are caught breaking out of an agreement, they will pay a very high price. so in my view, an iranian

decision to go for nuclear weapons is not inevitable and i think we can affect that choice. selecting move on to the question. and that has to do with this question of breakout time. this is not the only criterion the u.s. administration uses to judge the valley of an agreement but it's an important one. it's important in large part because david albright has written so extensively and persuasively on the issue, and that is to increase the amount of time that it would take iran from the time it makes its decision to break out of an agreement, to the time it could produce enough highly enriched uranium actually to fabricate the first nuclear device. and in the past david has written that we should seek a breakout time of summer between six and 12 months -- somewhere between. the administration has said

publicly that it's looking for a breakout time of around 12 months. my question to david is whether we are headed toward a breakout time, in that ballpark. one of the recent developments that has given people some optimism in this regard is the report that iran seems to agree that it can send a substantial amount, even most of its low-enriched uranium out of its territory to russia. and according to david's analysis, although i let him speak for himself, if you reduce the amount of enriched uranium stocks, this gives you some flexibility to agree to a higher number of centrifuges and still maintain a sufficiently long

breakout time. so my question to david is, how do things look like they're shaping up? if you think your benchmark is something that is achievable? >> i think it is. we don't feel the isis, i guess the good isis that were our regulars of this idea, has flowed from discussions with gary and others that really centered down on what kind of reaction time do you need in order to respond to an iranian effort to go for the bomb? and i think wendy sherman captured it best incidental when she said we must be confident that any effort by tehran to break out of his obligation will be so visible and time-consuming if the temp would have no chance of success. and so if you can start saying okay, what does that mean in terms of things like a centrifuge program? then you come up to this concept of breakout. breakout essentially allows you to do is convert a desired

reaction time into the number of centrifuges. that it involves some fairly sophisticated mathematical modeling and/or to try to be more realistic, and you end up with numbers if you want reaction times of six to 12 months ago and you end up with numbers that you want to get down to the two to 4000 ir-1 levels. those are driven by limiting the stocks particularly of 20% because again it is still there, quite a large stock of 20% enriched uranium. people often mistakenly say we get rid of the 20%. what's happened is you converted, the deal converted the 20% to oxide for. it's still there. there's been some amount and it is blended down and that's gone. but more than enough for a bomb in terms if you think of netanyahu's way of thinking

about this. that amount is still there. it's just in oxide form, not accept chloride for. therefore, takes longer and that's good. had to go back to hexafluoride. but how much will be there any final deal? we think there will be some. we look at 50 kilograms and that can affect breakout. but you do want to drive down the about. driving down the amount to 3.5 as effective a very positive impact on the breakout times and it gets, i think it's one the reasons why the u.s. raised their number from around 1500, to 2000 up to 4000 because they feel if they drive down the stocks of significantly, then the breakout time will remain at 12 months, but they can go to a higher number of centrifuges. i think we and my group and u.s. government agree is that you can't let it go up to

10,008,000. because again the centrifuges are making this 3.5% overtime. so these limits become somewhat meaningless when you get to numbers like 10,000 either ones because they will be making so much every month it would take and want to stockpile enough to be able to have enough for a much more rapid breakout. but again i should also say that there's a debate under this, why focus so much on the program? going back to what wendy says, said, part of the reason is you want to limit them across the board but, of course, we're worried about a covert breakout we think there's an interrelationship. they have lots of centrifuges, 10,000 such features are more. to have a robust centrifuge manufacturing complex. hard to monitor that even with these additional supplementary measures, which is expected to get under a deal. you could have a hard time

knowing that is not secret production of centrifuges that could then go off to a secret site. you want to limit it across the board. reaction time is a fundamental driver of and then you translate that via breakout into limitations and reducing stocks, strengthens what were you get. >> thank you, david. ed, you suggested some very constructive ways that the congress could contribute to the negotiation through additional legislation. that's not going to be the initial incident of many members of congress, especially in the new congress. i would assume that a number of senators would want to introduce some legislation that they've introduced before that would

require the administration to achieve some unrealizable objectives, and failing that to impose sanctions that are very far-reaching. based on what secretary kerry suggested yesterday, that the administration would strongly oppose any further sanctions on the grounds that it could be disruptive of the talks and that it could lead to divisions within the international sanctions coalition, which is necessary to continue putting pressure on iran. so i think that might be the initial confrontation, draconian sanctions versus no new sanctions. what are the chances from the initial confrontation will come a real negotiation over trying to get the legislation that

serves to reinforce rather than to undercut the negotiating process? >> notice, everybody, what we just switched to. from the question of negotiating with one foreign country, iran, to the question of negotiating with another foreign country, congress. [laughter] they are not that dissimilar. i would say that you are correct, but, in your guess as to what will happen first. and that is perhaps a kabuki that must be played out and it will put pressure on the administration to marshall democratic forces in the senate to prevent the passage of a

draconian bill. now, all of you who are used to complaining about republican obstructionism, remember in six weeks it's going to be democratic obstructionism. the democrats will have a lot of ways to block legislation if they choose to use them. what the administration has to worry about is a situation in which democratic senators give up on the administration. not so much giving up on iran but losing confidence in the administration's ability to negotiate well. o.r. to handle them well.

assuming that the administration is able to convince democratic senators that it will do the right thing with iran, but it probably also i would think should do is say to democrats, look, you have to work with us until the bad bill. we will work with you in private to see if there is a good bill that you could come up with afterwards or that you could come up with to pull out of your pocket when you're in floor debate, but in some ways to show that we are not adverse to any deal with congress if we are merely a verse too bad deals with congress. so i would think they would be some pressure to talk to explore

possibilities for useful legislation. as i say, they won't be easy. but it is amazing how if you tried can come up with something. wanted things that has been impressive about u.s. negotiate with iran is how many good ideas they have come up with. and i would simply note to our audience that even david has come up with very interesting ideas that he slips in in the middle of paragraphs in his testimony. for example, when he testified last week before the house, he said a sounder strategy involves including disabled steps with the destruction of a limited but

carefully selected set of equipment. for example, the deal could include the destruction of certain key cascade equipment such as valves and pressure or flow measuring equipment. what he was saying to the house committee was that if you want to reach a deal with iran that lowers the number of functioning centrifuges, that doesn't mean that you have to destroy the centrifuges completely. rather, you can destroy some critical parts of the centrifuges while leaving the shell and much of the innards still standing. that was the very interesting proposal. it's the kind of thing that i would guess, although i don't

know, our negotiators have been discussing with iranian negotiators. and one of the things i would hope for in the coming months is that if iran does not show more willingness to work out a deal, that secretary kerry would relax his determination to keep everything secret, and would instead be a little more open about how creative the p5+1 has been in the offers it is made to iran. so that iran will realize that if the negotiations fall apart this spring and summer, it won't look good for them. and i think we have to prepare

the world for the possibility of accepting that we are the good guys. >> i agree, especially with that last point, ed. if talks break down it's going to be a blame game, and what we've seen over the past year is the current iranian team is very good at public diplomacy. many of them are western educated. they speak very good english. negotiations are carried out in english these days, and they're going to make a strong commitment. they have been making a strong commitment and even the reasonable party. i don't think they have been the reasonable party but i think much of the world has the impression that it's the p5+1 and the u.s. in particular has been intransigent party. i really do think it's wrong, and i think it would behoove the

administration to begin getting the word out, especially if the iranians continue to be rigid, but so far the administration has taken the understandable view that we don't want to negotiate in public, so let's not put all our ideas out there. even if they are reasonable ideas that the iranians should have accepted. so this is a problem potentially in the future, and i think the administration need to develop a good public diplomacy strategy. i think our panelists have put some interesting material before you, giving you plenty of thoughts for questions. so let's open it up now. please wait for the mic, identify yourself, and ask a very concise question. your hand was up first. >> thanks very much.

i'm garrett mitchell underwrite "the mitchell report." more on dr. albright's suggestion that strikes me as sort of a parallel to andrew patrick moynihan's way of doing can control. let them keep the guns and stop producing bullets. i wonder if, there are two very quick questions i'd like to post because of want to make sure i hear the answers. the first is, has anyone actually ever seen and read the alleged fatwa from the supreme leader? and second, given that the supreme leader has spent the last quarter century creating a foreign policy that is focused on america as satan, i has there

ever been consideration given to having negotiations as they get to this point between iran and others take place without u.s. at the table so that he doesn't have to give in to satan? >> does anyone have anything to say on the fatwa? >> my understanding is nobody has seen a written version of the fatwa but i'm sure iran will produce one for you at the right time, if it's part of the do. on your second question, the only way this negotiation will succeed if there's a deal between washington and tehran, there is no other possible formulation that will lead to an agreement. because those are the principal antagonists on this issue. there's no proxy for the u.s. to

step in and negotiate a deal with iran. so i think one of the positive developments since the joint plan of action was agreed is that we see more and more that most of the real negotiations are taking place in a bilateral contacts with the u.s. representing the p5+1 and convincing the other members of the p5+1 to support american initiatives and ideas. but you can't negotiate at seven or eight, it's simply impossible to sit on the table with all those parties into the kind of give and take that's necessary for negotiation. the one positive, if you're looking for positive signs, one positive sign is that the iranians have finally got over the hurdle of meeting directly with the united states expert to expert and working on text for most of president obama's first term when bob and i would record involved, the iranians refuse to meet with us. we offered me time to sit down

and actually negotiate or discuss the issues and they were under instructions to not meet with us. ron is at least persuaded the supreme leader to allow that direct discussion to take place. of course, ahmadinejad says in public that i'm very skeptical that it is possible because i don't think the americans will accept our nuclear program. you know what? he's right. the united states won't accept iran's nuclear program. >> i am told they were even secret bilateral u.s.-iranian talks even when ahmadinejad was president. >> yes. >> and also you probably remember between 2003-2005, so-called e3, britain, france and germany had talks with and without the united states. those talks didn't get very far which supports i think gary's point that the u.s. needs to be a key player.

>> i must admit that reading today's post that matters are optimistic about the next seven months as people on the panel might be, but given that, if during the next seven months nothing happens further than what has happened so far, what does the panel think, beyond the u.s., and you can talk about sanctions and so on but there is another party, namely israel, who could take some sort of action. and what does the panel think would happen if we progressed to the next seven months, have not gone any further? and what would the u.s. and what

would israel be doing at the end of that the seven months? >> i want to make a point that applies not only to your question but some of the comments of my fellow panelists. and that is, the best answer to a lot of these questions is we don't know. we are operating under conditions of uncertainty, and we would be better off accepting that uncertainty then trying to make predictions when, frankly, we don't have the basis on which to make them. but your question raises an interesting point that we haven't quite covered, which is good the joint plan of action

become a steady state that exists into the indeterminate future? and would that be good or bad? my guess is that my colleagues if pressed to the wall will say, we are not sure. [laughter] and it's certainly a better state than we had before the joint plan of action, but there is the risk that it will impede progress to a real deal because it's such an easy second best solution. and i think that some of our talk of increased sanctions is looking for a way to force a

decision on iran's part -- tehran's part that will move us off is surprisingly comfortable dead center. >> gary, you wanted to say -- >> i would say most of our partners in the p5+1, with the possible exception of france, are quite comfortable with the status quo. because we have succeeded in freezing most elements of iran's nuclear program and yet we preserved the overall sanctions regime. and i hear the same thing from some of our israeli friends. he recognized that the status quo while not solving the problem at least it's stopped the clock or slow down the clock on iran's nuclear program. so i think there's an argument to be made that an extension of the joint plan of action is at least holding the issue steady. but my sense and ed can speak to this as well, my sense is that in this town there's no patience for an endless extension into the indefinite future, unless

you can demonstrate that you're really making progress toward tackling some of these tough issues. so i think the obama administration is operating in a political climate where it's got to show forward movement. it can't just point out the clock for the rest of its administration. [inaudible] >> as i said, i think many israelis would not be that adverse to continuation of the status quo. >> i don't think it's an edible israel will strike militarily. you hear these comments that if a deal breaks down its war. i don't think those are true. the deal has some benefits to both sides that both sides have some new incentives not to see the escalation getting out of control. i think it's more likely things will, the deal ends, they'll be

something that replaces it is neither war nor a situation with extreme sanctions. i think israel, you should look deeper into the israeli government and netanyahu to see what they are really thinking. i don't think they want to go to war. they know that if they strike, they can strike once and that's it. and iran can simply build back. they know the dilemma that if you are going to pursue military strikes has to be part of a strategy that ends the program. they can't deliver that. i don't see a great incentive here in this country to back them up. >> i will chime in. if talks break down at the end of next june, this continues, what would the israelis to? it will depend on what iran does. if they ratchet up their program

aggressively, the lead to a lot of israeli concern. but if they played smart, which i think it will, the iranians have given every indication of playing smart, they will be very slow, maybe they will turn on some machines that haven't been fed with the gas. maybe they will increase at the margin, but i think they will avoid highly provocative action. and if they do, if they are smart enough to do that, i think the israelis will be frustrated, i don't think they will see a compelling need to launch a military attack. >> stephanie cook, nuclear intelligence weekly. i have two questions. first, i think for you, bob, how much attention do you think the

united states might take toward working with the russians to try to work out more detail of their agreement with the iranians? if we are assuming that the goal here is to try to regularize the iranian nuclear program and give them some justification for some sort of commercial enrichment going forward. that's number one. and then both the reactor to but more importantly the fuel deal, which is pretty vague and the announcement was made. and secondly, how much scope is there, in your view, to the united states if the iranians, i mean my own opinion if they were smart they would kind of look, we have a terrible machines, we need to get better machines so let's focus on r&d. we don't meet the capacity right now so given that and look

further into the future. but this become such a point of symbolism that is kind of hard for them to do it. but let's say they were willing to finally concede on capacity. how much scope is there for our side to concede on the duration of the agreement? >> i'll take a quick whack at it and the others will try. i was in moscow last weekends i had an opportunity to speak to the russians about this. i think despite the real difficulties u.s. and russia are having in their bilateral relationship, the russians have played a constructive role in the iranian -- iran because she's but it's been in their interest to play a constructive role. the russians don't want the iranians to develop an industrial scale enrichment capacity.

russia would like to provide fuel for whatever nuclear power reactor that it sells to iran. in fact, this recent deal, a couple of weeks ago a the russians strong belief is that for any additional reactors, russia should provide the fuel, and if that is to be agreed by a red this would seriously undercut the iranian argument that it needs to have a large-scale, indigenous enrichment capability. also you've seen reports, i mentioned it earlier, about a ship from iran to russia of most of iran's low-enriched uranium. if that material boxes, and my understanding is that details have not been worked out, quarters and so forth but if it does work out then this would be very positive step because as we discussed to lower the amount of

enriched uranium stock, the more leeway have to accept a higher number of centrifuges. so i think the russians have played a constructive role in their own interest. [inaudible] >> yes, i think, well, this is to be worked out. they have to figure out, there will be costs associated with. it's with the transport them into to russia. the question whether it is suitable to be used in a production of to handle the additional costs associated the. us the details have yet to be worked out what i think the russians have played a constructive role in will continue to play. in terms of whether if nothing else works out to u.s. will be more flexible on to ration of an agreement, i believe the duration is very, very important. i think that's one of the issues with the use has three main very firm. the iranians have talked about a

pretty short duration, five years or something like that. becaus they would like all constraints to end so they can ratchet up quickly to an enrichment, to industrial scale enrichment capability. but that would drastically reduce their breakout timeline and this would be unacceptable. i think the constraints have to last a long time. my preference would be 15 years or so. and this would provide sufficient time for iran to demonstrate a track record of compliance with its obligations and begin to restore confidence in its peaceful intent. >> i think the centrifuge argument is a separate issue but there's a trade off for the basic number of ir ones that would remain. the problem posed by centrifuge r&d is that if they have breakthroughs and have much more

capable machines, able and so they could get by with fewer machines if they did decide -- [inaudible] but that doesn't mean anything. it matters but the iranians try to play or played out this summer into unproductive ways because you can lower the speed of the machine. so that like lift off your foot off the accelerator. accuses quickly you can put your foot out again. so i think this wounded number that they discussed the anything and so you're forced back to okay, here's the number of machines given the amount you are producing in these machines, and, therefore, we can make a conversion but for now it's a so existing machines with existing capabilities. and it's a problem in the centrifuge r&d because they won't reveal very much about

what those machines do but they don't reveal it to the iaea at the pilot plant for example. >> you can speak to david afterwards on this. yes, greg. >> i want to fault a little bit, bob, on the russian iran deal as you mentioned. clearly iran signaling a willingness russian own to build its additional reactors but also for russia to supply fuel to those reactors as well as to the spent fuel, they are weakening the argument for the practical need to support large number of centrifuges in the future. and my question is given the way the supreme leader has been characterized and his hostility to really limiting the iranian

capabilities, why would the supreme leader approved this deal with russia? >> well, i mean, i think inherited an event that they need to have an independent capacity to produce fuel for the power reactors because they can't rely on the russians are in an outside supplier, that's a very appealing inherited. there's a lot of strong public support for that narrative. so i don't see this deal with russia as undercutting iran's argument that it needs to eventually have an industrial scale enrichment capacity to provide fuel. and, of course, that's capacity would also give them a nuclear weapons option, either covert or overt. >> they want their cake and eat it too. they want to agree that russia can provide fuel for new reactors but they also want to have a standby capability in place, told at about to operate in case the russians reneging,

in case something happens and they don't have the tools. so they want the capability anyway as well as the russian commitment to provide fuel. >> thank you. i'm a visiting fellow at brookings. i to question for dr. albright concerning the potential dimensions he talked in his initial presentation. i was wondering if you could tell us something more about what is the pmds post-2003 because the report of the iaea of november 8, 2011 was pretty much concerning the pre--- -- [inaudible] some of those military related activities have actually been going on.

and going back to your point, a sum that issue is for closing the deal, i do follow your logic, i understand the logic, your argument but my question is will you be willing to really undermine agreements on iran enrichment capacity on the duration of the deal on sanctions relief, on verification measures just to fully clarify an issue which was substantial in 2003 but perhaps it is no longer so now. >> i think the resolution of the pmd is fundamental to the agreement. its core. and so i think there's ways to deal with it. i've written things where we have suggested compromises on this but i think it's core in agreement. if you don't settle it you'll end up with an agreement that

risks being unverifiable, and hurts the credibility of this very valuable international institution, the iaea. they have learned in other cases that if you turn your back on the history, they will fail. all you have to do is look at iraq in 1991. they also in south africa in the early 90s when south africa wouldn't talk about history. they could not verify that south africa had given up its nuclear weapons program. they learned the hard way that history does matter if you're going to build a credible verification regime. on the pmd is, it's been fairly circumspect. what we have seen is the issues about calculations related to nuclear weapons. there was a recent sanctioning of an iranian entity a u.s. u.s. government where the city was started in 2011 but it's headed this but it involves work that is related to nuclear weapons. i think the view is, appears to

me, fairly widespread that there's ongoing concerns about what some other people are doing our end is pretty 2004 program. >> -- pre-2004 program. i think pmd is important largely for its impact on verification in the future. and he made clear what he wanted to see in the deal, which was access to the facility, access to personnel, and access to information. access to facilities is something that we've been used to and the kind of verification provision that people have talked about what essentially guarantee that kind of access.

when you talk about access to personnel, and the question is who are you talking about? well, that's where it gets to be important to know what was done in the past. because you want to include in your future personnel list all of the people who were involved with the program in the past. so that you know who to talk to on a regular basis, who to watch closely. and when you talk about information, you are really talking about, all right, that was the structure of your program? how were things done? what organizations were there that we want to follow through time and make sure we understa understand? what new ones are you creating with the same old personnel to cost us further worries?

my view is that much of that could be done, could be set forth in agreement even without iran satisfying the pmd issues before an agreement is signed. but you would certainly want to have future major sanction relief, contingent upon the iaea saying we have solved three of these issues, six of these issues, nine of these issues, whatever. you would want perhaps to keep those solutions secret, because iranian personnel have an understandable fear of being assassinated. and so you would want to force iran to come clean with the

iaea, and maybe with us and our p5+1 colleagues, but not necessarily with "the associated press." >> okay. we have only a few more minutes to go. we will take a few quick questions. take them very concise and the panelists will give some concluding remarks. this gentleman here first. >> i'm from universe of maryland. back into those is at present ronnie wrote in "time" magazine -- the west is asking us to take concrete steps in return for promises in which we do not have much confidence. today, the critics an event are basically saying the same kind of concern. what do you think the united states should do or not do to

basically sure the iranians that does have the will and ability to lift, to live up to its part? thank you. >> others? right here. [inaudible] talk about the issue of congress, but i would still like to get the opinion of the view of gary samore. because i more skeptic than dr. levine is about the role of the new congress. i want to know how comfortable if this extension doesn't work by end of june in this new congress and environment how they can convince both republicans and democrats that we have -- as you said,.

[inaudible] >> the woman in the back. >> would members of the panel support additional sanctions on iran at this time as has been suggested, and why or why not? >> thank you for being so concise. >> i am from russian news agency. my question, you have been talking about the need for more concessions from iranians. the question is do you think there is any room for more concessions and flexibility on the negotiations from p5+1, taking into account each

country, the political situation and -- [inaudible] thank you. >> and the last one over here. >> how close do we think iran got by 2003, to approving technology needed to produce a nuclear weapon? is it possible they prove to their own satisfaction? >> okay, why don't we just go down the row and do with the remaining questions in any concluding remarks you want to make. >> several people asked questions about sanctions relief so let me address those. i think one of the big problems for an agreement is exactly as the professor said, iran's

concern that u.s. won't be able to deliver on sanctions relief. and clearly the president is not going to be able to convince congress to repeal all of the sanctions against iran. but the president does have the authority to waive the sanctions, most of the sanctions, the ones that really count, the oil and the financial sanctions, every six months. the protection iran has is that within any agreement if obama can deliver, for example, if congress overrides the president when he was the sanctions, then the deal is off and iran is free to resume its nuclea nuclear ac. and the fact of the matter is iran is at a point in its nuclear program where it's not going to be able, it's not being asked and could not permanently give up its ability to resurrect its nuclear program. so i actually think the question of sanctions relief is one that can be addressed in a deal. the more difficult problem as we've talked about is that iran

is simply not willing to come even close to meeting the p5+1 demand on lifting its nuclear program to the judgment as to further extensions. my desk, and ed was his view on this as well, my guess is congress is unlikely to overturn the current extension, the current seven-month extension. mainly because as long as it continues to comply with the joint plan of action we have frozen the program. ..

knew enough to build at the end of this 2003 period. it was working on a miniature design which was going to be about .5 meters across that it had a long way to go to finish back but the group felt if they picked up at work again they would succeed so i think they made substantial progress on this question to produce a bomb and that is what causes the concern. just as a final comment i think hope is there for a deal but there is a lot of parts to it and that can be a curse and a blessing. there's a lot of places they have to make concessions and consider its possibility that

there is also trade-offs among these parts and so when you look collectively at this there are i think i'd remain hopeful that the u.s. can be creative to construct a deal both can live with. >> on the question of whether we are for war sanctions, speaking for myself i can imagine being for sanctions authority but not for more sanctions per se at this time and i am wary of sanctions with triggers i would much rather discuss with the administration what they might need in the future and give them

the authority to take step this if they decide they need it but congress is not a very effective institution and i used to work for republicans who believed in a strong president. now on the question of whether we have any more give, we don't know because we haven't been told how much we've already offered in the negotiations so it's very difficult to figure that out. but i do think might interest them is the extension of major sanctions relief they would get real benefits from foreign

commerce and international acceptability being welcomed back into the international community. to that extent, that isn't a matter of giving them something in the negotiation, is a matter of making sure how much they have to gain and to make compromises that we think are reasonably within their overall objectives. >> nobody here knows whether we will achieve a deal. i think it's going to be very difficult. i think there is a reasonable prospect that we won't be able to come to terms if we do it's not going to be a perfect deal.

we will not have achieved everything that we wanted to but that is the nature of the negotiation but i think it's important for two things. one is to look at the deal as a whole and not just focus on any one particular element. the second point to make, one needs to be realistic about the alternatives of the deal. a deal may not be perfect but look at what the realistic alternatives are. one is to try to ratchet up sanctions in the hope that they will have more flexibility eventually but they've been under pretty harsh sanctions for over a year now and this hasn't moved them sufficiently so it's going to be hard to do that and the effort of trying to do that is going to raise concerns in

the coalition that we need to continue to put pressure. another is the use of military force. military force can sit back the program but it can't prevent iran from succeeding in its objectives and it could give additional incentives towards building the new clear what his. it's called rather play ended to make up your mind. annie -- anyway, want to thank you and gary and ed are giving us an illuminating conversation. thank you. [applause]

more than 80 people were arrested in ferguson overnight. protesters set fire to buildings and cars and businesses after a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot unarmed teenager michael brown. on c-span facebook page you can share your thoughts about the decision and relations in general. here are some of the comments you've posted so far. guess i'm the exception. i was surrounded by five police cars with spotlights and guns. i've never been in trouble with

the law and could have been killed on the spot. it's dangerous to be breathing while black so unless you've lived this life keep your mouth shut you do not know the struggle. folks trying to make it up as they go go, improve your station in life instead of prevailing either victim even though i'm not really about mentality. that not mentality. that is dangerous estrogen a police officer and trying to take his weapon because you have the idea that you are somehow above the law

get rid of the filibuster on the nominations. but on the other hand, i've often said they do have a legitimate argument either way in that they are not being allowed to offer amendments. they are not being allowed offered amendments because they filibuster bills because they are not allowed to offer amendments. it's a chicken and egg thing. the best way is to get rid of the filibuster but at the same time guarantee to the minority the new rules in the senate that it will be allowed to offer to remain a amendments amendments to any bill that on the floor with reasonable time limits for

debate. if you do that, then we can move the legislation into the minority will have the right. so the minority doesn't have the right to prevail. said to have votes on those amendments i think the senate would begin to offer it very well. >> the legislation was a passage in the americans with disabilities act and we will hear from the congressman elected in 1984.

republicans do have a legitimate argument here by the way and that they are not being allowed to offer amendments. they are not being allowed to offer because the filibuster bills. they filibuster because you're not allowed to talk for bills. it's a chicken and egg thing. get rid of the filibuster and at the same time guarantee to the minority in the new rules in the senate that the minority will be allowed to offer germane amendments to any bill that on the floor, germane amendments to that the legislation. with reasonable time limits for debate. >> i won't even qualify to say mostly the most eloquent order of the congress. he told me one time he said i'm not wild about this but there are 23 americans serving for having committed perjury.

he said how do you justify that and turned a blind eye to the president. he said i can't do it. relations with russia we will hear from the former national security adviser stephen hadley and former deputy secretary of state strobe talbot. they talked about russian

president of the latitude and strategic ambitions in europe and the ongoing conflict in ukraine. this was hosted by the aspen institute about an hour and a half. it's good to see you. i'm walter isaacson the president of the aspen institute and one of the joys of being president of the institute is that occasionally you get invited to sit in with the strategy group with my friend strove and angela and his deeds and of course run by nick burns. the crisis with russia every day takes another step back and these are the people best at is dealing with it in fact the group was started 30 years ago with the crisis in russia in mind. so with that i would like to

turn it over to nick burns the director of the group and a professor at the kennedy school of harvard. thanks for doing this. >> good afternoon everyone. it's a pleasure to welcome everyone to the aspen institute. this is the idea roundtable series and the first thing i want to do is thank michele smith for thinking this -- making this possible. i also want to recognize important guests in the room you have four ambassadors from allied countries into the ambassador of finland and of estonia and latvia. we have three former members of congress and it's always perilous in the room like this to recognize special friends but

we have two special friends given the topic which is the crisis with russia over ukraine. in research and collins who has extraordinarily effective ambassador to russia long time specialist to all of us on the panel. he was the ambassador to ukraine long time specialist and i think all of us have worked with steve as well and so congratulations to both of them and thank you for being here. what we are going to do today is talk about one of the major strategic challenges in the united states in 2014. president putin's invasion of crimea, the annexation by the russian duma, the consistent efforts by president putin and the government to destabilize eastern ukraine over the last nine months and the reaction by the west by the united states, canada and the nato countries, the sanctions for building up

the american and nato power in the baltic countries in poland and romania and the standoff that continues to this day. we do that based on a book that we are publishing today and i think all of you have copies and for those of you on c-span come into c-span is televising of this event is published by the aspen strategy group about the crisis. the strategy group and its 30th year met in early august and aspen colorado as we do every year to take on a big subject and this year this nonpartisan group republicans, democrats, independents, mostly americans that joined by several european and asian leaders met to discuss what the west should do in response and i do commend this book to your image contains a lead essay by strobe talbott i want to introduce him in a minute to give the earnest by mario lecture he tried to frame this in historical terms in terms of the evolution of

russia's path since the fall of the soviet union in 1991. it contains essays by many others. where president putin's motivations and strategic ambitions have the west reacted significantly and effectively what are the implications for global energy and for china and the relationship with russia and the west. so, we will talk today about these issues. i would ask you if you have an interest purchase it on amazon that hopes to fund the expenses of this nonprofit organization. our leaders are brent scowcroft who doesn't need an introduction to this room, and joe and i. they've been of the opinion that americans should be able to have serious discussions about the international challenges in a

nonpartisan environment and that is what they created and that's what we celebrate today. we are going to have a discussion for about the next 30 to 40 minutes with three panelists. strobe talbott, president of the brookings institution, and as all of you know served as the deputy secretary of state in the clinton administration lifelong expert in russia has been interested since he was a very young man and he asks a series of questions how he sees the crisis with russia. angela to my right professor at georgetown university. finally steve hadley has worked in the ford administration and george h. w. bush administration steve has dealt with the soviets and russians since the 1970s

and so has a long perspective as to angela on all these issues who was a big part of our discussions and he knows a lot about russia to serve with great distinction now vice president of the ford motor company and i want to thank steve for all of his support intellectual and others to make it happen. so without further ado we will have a conversation and go through questions. once i finished i want to invite you to offer a point of view and ask the most challenging questions you can think of for this distinguished panel. with research perhaps if you. you picked off our aspen strategy group for days together in colorado and try to give us a historical framework so we could understand the motivations of president putin and the russian leadership. both of their relationship with us and also more importantly the relationship with ukraine and

the other former republics of the soviet union. now that we have seen at the end of 2014 how shaken the confidence is between the left and the rest russian leadership and the impact it has had negative on the relationship of serious a crisis is this entity you believe we will be apple to contain it lacks >> very serious in three dimensions. with russia itself there is an all too plausible scenario whereby what we have seen particularly over the last year and also in the run-up to adjust to the annexation but the virtual occupation into pseudo- annexation in much of eastern

ukraine. they may be a catalyst for a process over time that will greatly weakened the russian state and could even lead to the russian state going the way of the ussr which is exactly the opposite of course of what the president putin has in mind. and what he regards as western weakness. it is essentially a resurrection of the policies that have caused the ussr and cuba may recall that was a large state called the ussr to end up in the trash heap of history and that would be an ironic and by the way very

dangerous outcome for the whole world. this isn't to wish for something bad for russia it is to peer something bad for the world. it is unquestionably the crisis for the western community and the atlantic community which up until a few years ago was moving in a direction that involves integration of the russian federation itself as well as its neighbors into an expanded international community that would be playing by the same rules and that would have certain norms in common and that leads to not just a peaceful 21st century that the 21st century in which russia would be not just have a seat at the board of directors of the world but with the a collaborative and a cooperative power. and what we are looking at now is i think a nontrivial set of

conflicts and potential conflicts including on the periphery of her then ukraine itself that could lead to armed conflict and here i am particularly concerned about three made a member states that that have been constituent republics of the ussr and others in the west have never accepted their annexation. and it is very for a positive future for the process of globalization. we cannot have a salutary system come international system if russia isn't part of it and its

clout and its ability to be either obstructive or helpful in dealing with the big issues of our time. i can ask the same question but you were a longtime putin watcher and you've written about the motivations. what does he want and what is he trying to achieve strategically? in this move into the crimea and to destabilize the central part? >> what does he want to achieve, but really when you listen to him and when you see what russia is doing you see what they don't want to let me just agree with what he said i think that this is the worst crisis in relations since before mikael bischoff came to power. this is the culmination from his point of view for at least 22 years or 25 years of frustration and feelings of humiliation after all we remember he was in

the gdr serving the officer in breast and when the war came down. seeing all of that, to the soviet union having lost his country and and feeling if one is to be made what he says that where the past 22 years russia suffered a series of humiliation. so i sat there a few weeks ago when he delivered his against the united states and then was also president with other officials. and it is quite clear the message they want to convey is that they would no longer accept the rules of the world order that they claimed were designed by the united states in imposed on them and do not take their interests into account. russia or some people in russia at least the president himself believe that russia is at war with the west is behaving like a revisionist power calling into question the postwar settlement

and making legal arguments by referring back to other things that happened in the past 22 years but again saying they are double standards and we need a new world order. now i am not sure that the russians actually know what this new world order should be but i think that we have to take seriously when we look to the future there will probably be other areas they will believe that it can reinterpret the rules. we already see the presumption of a lot of the cold war tactics in terms of harassing the long-range flights in mexico and all these kind of tactics that look as if it is the cold war although it isn't but i think that this is a broad question of the process of globalization. >> thank you very much. steve you were present at all or

nearly all of the meetings george w. bush had over eight years with president putin and there were times just after 9/11 he was a friend to the united states and the of the iraq war when he was opposed to it. knowing him or getting a sense of his worldview do you agree about what his motivations are and how do you see the crisis that's developed? i think putin has moved over time. it was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century i think he meant that sincerely. early on when he came to power he thought that there wasn't much he could do about it. he had a small economy and not the great prospects and i think

we also made a pitch during the first administration to convince him that his legacy would be to move russia permanently into the west to integrate where russia should have always been and we spent four years trying to find various ways to convince him this was his calling. we had a strategic dialogue that i managed with my counterpart and the word we got was yes this is his historical opportunity but there are dark forces that you have to let him do it his own way. to make a caused with the german and french as they made some smart fiscal decisions in their administration is the price of oil went up he became stronger and decided he had perhaps more

options. i think we don't really know and one of the things we learn is that he is a real opportunistic person. if he succeeds and has not resisted his objectives grow and that's what we face here. he's already wrapped up the post-cold war consensus on europe that is to say borders would be respected some of sovereignty would be respected and that the force would be used if they could choose their own alliance. i think that his objective is to keep ukraine weak and divided on the hope that it is not permanently lost but after a period of time after a lot of pressure and failure ukrainians may be able to decided they were right and maybe it's better if

we move east and southwest. i think that on his agenda. the question is whether if he succeeds in his objectives become more extensive. he's already doing a lot of things to try to put provisions to weekend that you and i think if he does this as mentioned this kind of destabilization campaign in a place like the baltic states it will be to show the defense commitment doesn't mean anything which will be a blow to the willingness of the countries in europe to stand up with him and the bottom line would be if he could reestablish russian influence in the former soviet space and in central and eastern europe comparable to what the soviet union did this isn't sending in the troops and

occupation this is influence. so these states have to take into account and do take into account russian interest and russian desires. to me if you ask what is his dream that might be it. and that is a kind of europe that would be bad for europe and bad for us and ultimately bad for russia because it would indicate the nationalism and feed their ego that isn't sustainable over the long term and it takes them away from what the objective should be which is to become part of 21st century. we want to get to whether or not the west, europe, canada is evicted and try to counter putin but there are two questions to put on the table very briefly at first is this when you encounter

the russians and i have the last seven or eight months sometimes the line is you drove us to this. it is the expansion of nato when you took in ten countries three of which had been constituent parts of the line. you drove us to this. it was your aggressiveness. i don't agree with that at all but i wonder how one should respond to that. we've all had this question. any misgivings that we were involved in in the clinton and bush administration. [laughter] >> it's passing strange that the debate over the expansion of

nato would be once again in the forefront of controversy, not just between those of us in the west which by the way is a geographical term that we thought was expanding many in the east but it's also back as a point of controversy here in the u.s. and particularly among those of us "what you eat, the foreign-policy elite. the original rationale for expanding nato to include countries that had either been released from the prison house of the nations by the reformists of the government of gorbachev were released from the prison house of the nations which was the ussr, not by some plot from the west but by reformist

leaders driven by public opinion inside of the ussr that would end the bifurcation of the world between the free world and of a communist world and there could be institutions that among other things would provide security. and for the republic of the ussr and former members of the warsaw pact. there were some very significant episodes ending the mayhem in the balkans that might not have happened happened would have been more difficult and taken a longer time if it hadn't been for the russian participation.

and the movement towards which that has now been not just stopped but put into reverse. bill perry the secretary defense at the time called ahead chapter and that is it was possible that russia might break bad. that was the reason why all of the countries. 100 million europeans now have the protection of nato. before we get to the complaint of the notion that the west created this problem returning the facts on their head.

i would guess the baltic states and not the member states of nato you wouldn't have just little green men creating mischief in the countries. let me just stop with the bat on the one point. >> we worked together on this when we took the seven countries at the summit in november of 2002 the russians were very unhappy but we had lots of conversations and we created the council subsequent to that and we began to work with russia at the brussels and we tried to work with him so we didn't try to exclude russia from security conversation. it didn't work out so well. i want to ask angela and steve.

do you think they may intend to confront nato in the baltic states you mentioned that he's theoretical possibility. would you try to -- would he try any initiative to weaken the commitment is it possible? >> i could depend on his calculation of the risk reward trade-off. we should have had him in ukraine so he wouldn't be tempted to try to do something in the baltics because i do think that they were in europe. who would have thought we would have been talking about it in europe. that's why it's needed to be strengthened so that's why we focused too much on the sanctions. i understand why we have done that but they have some unfortunate effects. they encourage the russian

economy and you can decide whether you think that is good for the russian sense of itself and its foreign policy. it also encourages that europe and the rest of the world i don't think that is good for russia or the stability over the long term and the russians have made it clear that they are prepared to accept it historically come to accept the economic hardship in the interest of the dream of russian greatness. so i think we are under playing other elements of our influence that we need to get in place now. we talk about strengthening nato i think that we have to give the troops different on the ground of the baltic states and poland and in the balkans so that putin understands and there is a risk of a direct delivery

confrontation. i think we need to strengthen the capacity of the states to defend themselves not because they are going to defeat the russian army but because they are going to raise the cost to russia if it does do something. we know from the reactions in ukraine that there is sensitivity a sensitivity to casualties and that it is a problem politically. you have to make it clear that people are going to fight. then you need to reduce leverage over the long term. we have to get a new energy policy that reduces the reliance on russian energy thereby reducing the leverage and we have to get the trade and investment pact in place to tie europe into the prosperity in the united states and i think these are a number of things which in the short run raises

efficiency and that this kind of adventurism. that said i think at the same time i'm sounding very hawkish on russia we have to recognize that ukraine is a historical and economic problem for russia. and we have to leave the door open for an arrangement which the best arrangement would be in the united states and ukraine and russia were to get together and talk about how to stabilize the economy and get it moving in a positive direction that would be a better neighbor for russia actually that putin has to be willing to engage in the kind of conversation for the moment. did we miss the opportunity in the discussions about joining the eu and the russians said can we be in on this conversation and he said no. was that a missed opportunity, we don't know. we should leave that door open but for it to work he would have

to walk through it and at the moment he does not seem to be inclined to do so. >> what is the proper way to respond i want to turn to you and bring you in here. chancellor merkel has been a very important figure made a decision very early on that we were not going to fight for ukraine. there was no legal or ethical complication to fight for ukraine but instead we try to isolate the russians politically, we would try to build up as steve just described the nato position of the baltic states as a deterrent device and that we would drive up the cost of the economic sanctions. we had a couple of rounds of sanctions that were quite weak and that would slow the development to the airliner in mid july and then a fairly significant sanction you and nato put forward the second week

in september but since then the russians have put more men, more tanks across the border in ukraine and they are clearly intervening in the charter inside ukraine. is it now time for them to say they need to raise the strength of the sanctions lacks >> that challenge is how do you deter and contain in its own neighborhood. you have to start in the premise that ukraine is an ex- essential question. they've defined it as such individual's west this is detrimental to their own security. it's not an ex- essential threat to the united states and so we would be faced with this asymmetry from the beginning then the question is into this asymmetry and since they are going to care more about this than we do how do you deter them from going further.

so we have several rounds of sanctions. people in the room followed the story very closely the economic situations, the fall of the $28 billion in capital just in october. we could go on and on. so that's a it's very ditch or mental but instead of leading the russia to step back its redoubled its efforts. the cease-fire agreement of september 5. in the sanctions again on energy and on the banking system whether that is going to alter the russian policy. you have to build up a credible military posture for those

countries who are our allies and to make sure that russia doesn't think that it can go any further. it's also i think we have to think twice about whether we want to isolate russia more than we have now. there's always this calculus if you isolate particularly the leader like vladimir putin in the situation now where he appears to feel beleaguered we can argue about that is that going to achieve the goal that we want in other words we have to think about what it is we want immediately or we would like russia to step down in eastern ukraine to get its separatist allies dare to step down as well but it doesn't even seem to want to do that at the moment. so i think -- i'm not sure the tougher sanctions are going to achieve that goal. i think that we probably also need to think about however difficult it is opening some

kind of back channel if it is possible to have someone to talk to people in the kremlin. i know that we've been in discussions recently who would've a bad person be. it's much more difficult now. certainly in the gorbachev era and then the question of whether we step up our military assistance in ukraine so i think we need a mixture of policies going forward but we have to be very careful in the assumption that if we isolate him further that this is going to achieve what we want in the longer run. >> let me ask just following up on what angela said half the sanctions then in effect if. >> do you think that president obama should offer military assistance to the government so

they can defend their territory? they've been effective in taking a worsening economic performance in russia in the state gap so without a doubt the russian economy is feeling the weight of the sanctions. has it been effective and has it changed the behavior, now it has not. it depends what the measure of effectiveness is. it's a sovereign democratically elected government in europe and they have the right to arm themselves and to defend themselves. at the same time i would discourage them from restarting hostilities. they have to defend themselves but to initiate hostilities i don't think that they are in the position to achieve any success on the ground.

yes they should have access to all material necessary as a father and we democratically elected government but i don't think the hostilities are helpful. let me touch on a couple other things we have to put in here. there is a group that has to complete this picture. one i agree with the point of the deterrence with nato members. if anything were to happen, one of two consequences result. there is a worsening crisis or we don't and we see the end of nato so there is no good choice for there to be in a iota an iota of doubt about what happens if the member is in any way, shape or form. there is an article five guaranteed by the united states

senate that it will meet that commitment i'm confident. but that doesn't answer the question which is that the state started in nato. we need to engage these countries because this is where the highest likelihood of the destabilization occurs. we have to redouble our efforts in the european union to strengthen the economy and the political stability of ukraine without the stable ukraine none of this is resolvable as long as there is a question about the survival as a sovereign state there will be a town station to affect the future. so we have to get him more closely and resource those policies. one thing i don't want to leave

unspoken, we have to deter more problematic behavior and yes we have to discourage and avoid any reward was happening. but we have to engage in every possible level. we have to remain engaged in the russian economy through the trade and commerce committee strengthen the interdependence between russia and the outside world and also above all people to people contact. we have to do everything we can to promote exchanges and continue to the contact. isolating russia is not an option for us. it's too big of a country and important. isolating the behavior from the russian government may be a foreign-policy priority but we have to stand the chewable with -- mutual with russia. >> all of you have talked about how we construct the containment regime against president putin and his expansion.

i think that we are struggling to put all the pieces together but is it fair to say on the question of the lethal assistance to the ukrainian government, greater economic assistance that they talked about and reinforcing nato and the position particularly in estonia, latvia steve hadley talked about that, does he now need to go into a new phase of the conflict and to do more to build up the policy i believe i just ask you all as a concluding question then we will open up to everyone else. >> let me just pick up on something angela said. ukraine is the next essential issue for russians and that is largely a very human level. the two cultures come of it populations are interwoven in a way that leaves many to feel

that the independence of ukraine at the end of 1991 was like having a limb severed and that they still feel the pain. we do not have the feeling is we are ukrainian for that kind of thing. but alongside of that committee independence of ukraine. that includes many, many russian speaking ukrainians. steve pfeiffer of course of course while he speaking in the remainder of the conversation. so, that leads i think into the point that steve just made. it is almost an imperative that friend i ukrainians say to us we

need help in defending ourselves and our state and our forces. they are fighting the mortars at us and killing us. you've given us coming into this is according to the press reports, the means to identify where the mortars that russian forces are using are that they are not to knock out the mortar installations. that should be a no-brainer. it is under debate and i completely agree with steve that debate should be result in favor of the assistance. the argument against it is that if we give the so-called lethal defensive assistance to the ukrainians that will provoke the russians. they are already rolling into the argument should be just the

opposite. we don't give them the assistance of april confirmed that they are weak and are going to put him do whatever he wants. >> if we do give them lethal weapons that could also be an excuse to redouble their efforts and to increase the presence there and you've already heard hints of that and i think therefore you have to be very carefully and to think about exactly think about exactly what kind of equipment it is that you are getting. i would just say one more thing. going forward you have to remember that if we don't have our european allies with us on all of this, our own policies will be less effective. and you know, it has been amazing in a way to see the change in germany are particularly from chancellor merkel and her party and she has taken the lead in all of this

training to get the europeans behind it but as somebody already said if you look at hungary and some of the central european countries, they are softening up on some of this and i think that if these facts on the ground continue, the ones in eastern ukraine, and if you have this -- i mean it's not a successful cease-fire but if you don't have the large-scale hostilities come it would increasingly be used as an excuse in some countries to see how, things have stabilized maybe not a way that we wanted it, but let's go back and we need to engage russia russia and you know, our businesses are suffering. our people are suffering from the sanctions and europeans are. and let's get rid of the sanctions because they have an expiration date for the europeans at least i believe next july. so i think going forward, we need to deal with this undeclared warfare and i think that maybe this is a final thing i will say. one thing that is very clear in this conflict as there is an information war between russia and the west.

there is no agreement on any of the facts and in fact you will hear from the russian media saying there is no such thing as facts. you have your facts and we have ours. we are at a disadvantage because russia the television channels are mainly controlled by the state into people get one message. i would just say i did a two-hour joint video classified georgetown students and we were polite but we have totally different understandings of what was happening and we need to do better. we in the west to tell the tv channels what to say. we need to do a better job of countering the steady stream of that coming out of russia. >> your thoughts on the way forward?

>> europe today and the administration have so many problems and challenges they just wish this one would go away we have to do something so its distinctions. we've been in the business everything seems to be more sanctioned. we are not taking the integrated into just a strategy we need to solve the problem the problems are getting much worse. and that requires a lot more than just the sanctions. and and we haven't done is integrated into a strategy that would be effective over the long term to cause the are going to be with us for the next ten years. it's good to be a long-term challenge and we need an integrated strategy that would be robust over time.

i think most of the elements that we've talked about. but they say three things quickly. angela is exactly right there is an information war going on. we lose it every day. putin has a great propaganda operation. he's got almost exclusive media control in russia and he's doing very well thank you very much you have seen seen at spreading the view around the globe. we have to counter it is is truth in a systematic way. we are not even at the game in the moment. if i were at my old job. we wanted it exclusively and send the message to putin or do we want to do it covertly. i think that now he tended to talk we tend to talk too much and act too little. sometimes it is good of the weapons just if the weapons just started showing up on the

battlefield. putin is doing this fairly well. stuff happens, he denies it. i am all in favor of the truth that sometimes doing things without talking about it is a more effective way to achieve the objectives. i think we have to find a way that we defeat putin's strategy in moldova and ukraine that freezes the the states in the netherworld between the west and europe and russia. we've got to say that actually that's not going to stop us and we are willing to continue to bring these states into the west even though they have these unresolved conflicts. that i think is important. now, we have to do that in the right way. we have to show that we can bring countries last economically and diplomatically without suffering economic ties to the east. we haven't thought about it in those terms and i think if we can stop this crisis down it

might be a way over the long term to find a way out if putin at some point decide he wants one. >> your final thought before we move to the answer. >> two last things. one is we should inventory with our own strengths are here. you've heard some of these here. we have a strong alliance that could be stronger but we have a strong alliance. we have an economy that has faced its own challenges but we still have the wherewithal to lead a significant economic effort to stabilize ukraine. we have the attraction of the rules-based mechanic society that uses the market to deliver economic opportunities to its citizens. these are our strengths, and we need to fall back on our strengths. so that's the first thing. second, and by the way, patience

we cannot delay and we can't wait. i suspect having served in the administration that has more than its share of national security challenges around the world but there's a certain fatigue at this point in the obama administration. ..

>> as we can, we've got, you know, 37 minutes left perhaps. i want to bring in first steve pifer and jim collins. steve, i want to talk with you, and the question i have for you is, can ukraine be helped? it's what steve beacon was talking about. if there's a major european union and north america and canada will be a big part of this, here's a country with massive corruption. almost a failed state. poor governance. most of us on this side of the table have been dealing with us since december '91, and they're hard to help. based on your personal experience, you were american ambassador, if steve beacon gets his way and we get a major expansion of aid, will it do any good? >> thank you, nick, and thank you for a very good panel which

i think have outlined some of the parts of the solution and the policy response. let me take a crack at that question and offer one other comment on vladimir putin and russia. i think if there is going to be a solution to this crisis, ultimately, you've got to find a way to get ukraine economically stable. and that's going to require additional credits and resources from the west in large amounts. but i think before the united states and the european union consider that, they need to make sure that the ukrainians do the necessary steps in terms of adopting the necessary reforms in the energy sector, the economic sector, anticorruption. ukrainians have to take the steps they have not taken for the last 20 years to get their economy right. and if they don't, you know, we can throw lots of money at it, and it's not going to fix the situation. and i guess i'd come back to say, you know, ukraine is in this very weak and vulnerable situation.

the single biggest reason that ukraine is in this situation today is for the past 23 years ukrainian leaders have made bad decisions. they've avoided reforms because they've been fearful of the political consequences, understandable. you're going to raise the price of energy for everybody in the country, that has a negative political consequence. they have a completely crazy energy system now which is just, creates huge opportunities for corruption, and it's put them in this hole. and in some cases, unfortunately, you've had leaders who put perm interests, i think -- personal interests, i think the previous president, yanukovych, was a perfect example. but ukrainian leaders have to take the decisions now, and if they don't, you know, it's going to be a country that will be beyond the ability of the west to help. the second question, i guess, point i'd like to make on vladimir putin, and i think the panel's made really good comments on both his sense of grievance, the idea that now that he has resources he can

push back, but i wonder about his understanding of things outside russia. and what triggered this was steve hadley's comment about this idea that maybe putin thinks that somehow he can get ukraine back in three or four years. i think, actually, putin at one level may believe that. and that's totally divorced from reality. i was in kiev about two months ago, and the most stunning thing, the biggest thing that has changed since i was there back in the 1990s was this sense of a ukrainian national identity. ukraine and kiev is awash in blue and yellow, flags everywhere, people painting the national colors everywhere. and an unfortunate part of this national identity, though, is i think putin has lost a generation of ukrainians, and it's not as one ukrainian said to me, it's not just anti-putin, it's anti-russian because we've seen for the last seven months what the russians and putin have done, and the russians haven't spoken out against it. now, in the long term i don't

think that's healthy because russia and ukraine are neighbors. that's not going to change. it gets to this question, though, i mean, if putin, everything he's done in the last seven months has pushed the ukrainian people away, but this idea that somehow he thinks he can get them back in three or four years, it really does raise in my mind does he understand what's going on in ukraine and outside the borders of russia. >> >> steve, thank you. i want to turn to ambassador jim collins who was the american ambassador in russia but also a longtime russia expert. jim, the question i want to ask you is angela's suggestion that in a time of crisis that the united states should have some kind of effective channel to putin so that we can talk and we can listen. and i ask this because at our aspen strategy group meeting, and if you read the book, i think all of us to a perp agree we had to -- to a person agree we have to oppose putin on ukraine but keep a channel open on afghanistan, counterterrorism

and the middle east. do you agree with angela's suggestion for a channel, and how do you view sustaining a relationship with russia on all those other global issues where it is an important actor? >> well, before i answer that, let me just underscore my agreement with steve. that one -- if we really look at p what's at stake with ukraine at the moment, it's going to be economic. they have, anders can perhaps speak to this better than i can, but it's certainly my impression that there is a massive requirement for funding them to get them through the coming year or two, and that is only going to be effective if they get their act together politically, frankly. now, i think the second point steve made is a very good one. the great thing putin has done for ukraine in the last year is, essentially, to unite ukraine at least in not accepting what russia is doing to them. now, maybe that gives hope that we will get a better result this

time than we have every time we've had this problem for the last 20 some years. i have my fingers crossed. but it's going to mean serious money from the european union and the united states if they do the right thing and get, then have the where wut all to make something of themselves -- wherewithal to make something of themselves. so far as mr. putin is concerned, a couple of points. number one, i find it very unfortunate that we have so personalized all of this. you know, i've been back and forth to moscow quite a bit, and one of the things i have to say is that not just mr. putin who is thinking in these terms. and, therefore, we can't delude ourselves that simply talking to mr. putin is going to solve the problem. and the problem basically, forget about who's guilty and what we didn't or did do right. the problem is that the

euro-atlantic security system isn't working to resolve this issue at this point. and so whatever we may think is right, wrong, indifferent or whatever, the question is how do we get ourselves out of this mess? now, i happen to agree very much with steve hadley in this. i mean, i think there are things that are within our control, if you will, as the alliance or the united states. that we can do without really having much recourse to thinking through how we deal with the other side in this equation. so we can strengthen the forces in places like the baltics or in poland. we can do other things within the alliance. we can take measures that in some sense give confidence that we are not going to be pushed by the russians, and there is a line they'd better not cross. he gets that. putin is no fool.

and he knows he's playing a weak hand, frankly. the second thing, it seems to me, is i do think we need to find a way to engage him. the real problem here is we largely are not asking the right question, in my view, because i think we need to go to mr. putin and say, look, we have a mess on our hands. what's your idea about how we get out of this? because i don't think mr. putin has the answer either of how he's not going to lose or how he's going to win at the moment. my sense he has a tarbaby on his hands in eastern ukraine at the moment. you know, does he go all the way to kiev? i don't think that's a viable idea, frankly. i don't think he's got the capability, first of all. and so there's a lot of bluff in

in this. but it doesn't seem that east ukraine has ended up sort of producing the groundswell of support for his idea that i think he thought was going to come, just as he thought it did in crimea. so now he's got a problem. and i'd say the tomb to talk to him -- the time to talk to him is when he thinks he's got a problem, and i think he probably understands he does. so, i mean, my suggestion would be to find a way -- and i think it has to be from president obama -- to go to him and put on the table the question, well, what are we going to do to get ourselves out of this mess? it's not in your interests, it's not in ours, neither of us can afford to see ukraine go belly up economically or in other ways. it won't benefit anybody. so what do we do? and the second thing i think that i would say about our policy that really is very troubling to me is that in many ways the sort of mood that's

taking hold in the united states and in much of europe about isolating russia is precisely playing putin's game. putin's narrative is we are under siege, the forces in washington orchestrated by president obama are trying to destroy russia, weaken it, isolate it, undercut it. and what you've created is a sense that we're validating his line of argument. there are tremendous numbers of russian institutions, individuals, groups in society and the private sector who want none of this idea of isolating russia and piewten's i'd -- putin's eyed that self--- idea that self-isolation is the

answer. so when we don't encourage all those people who have a stalk in the relationship with the -- a stake in the relationship with the united states and europe by cutting off their own capacity to conduct that relationship. and unfortunately, we've done too much of that. some of it's budgetary, some of it's political, some of it is just because people are smelling the way the wind's blowing in this country as well as they do in moscow. i think we need to find a way to encourage, as much as welcome, the -- as much as we can, the building of the ties among those who see the relationship with the united states and europe as a central part of russia's future. >> jim, thank you. i think what i'd like to do is have a few more people offer thoughts or ask questions and then ask our panel to respond to it. madam ambassador, i know that you'd like to speak. if any country understands russia, it's finland. and a finnish perspective would

be welcome. and after you speak, ambassador, i was going to ask marvin kalb to offer his thoughts as well. >> thank you very much for giving me a word, and thank you very much for very, very, very, very informative -- [inaudible] also and thank you for including us. a couple of things, actually, that i would add to the issue. i have a feeling that putin is always listening at u.s. sort of wanting -- [inaudible] as you were, ambassador collins, you were mentioning that president putin is obviously listening. so and in a discussion that, actually, this government is at the moment sort of -- [inaudible] maybe on the issue. so how would you make it that your president is sort of having

a dialogue with president putin on that? and then what would be the agenda? because i think that we have, if you really closely read putin's agenda, you know it much better than i do, generally speaking, that he has been repeatedly saying his agenda also. that includes very much of the sphere of interest, the sort of kind of dominance in some of the areas he feels still very much lost. so what would be -- i would imagine that when you have a dialogue, there is always -- [inaudible] to have compromises on some of the issues. what would be those compromises? and then the other one is that

maybe i leave here, actually, because the article v, i think still the article v issue for challenging the nato, actually, at the moment and the -- especially the article v is something which needs very close attention -- [inaudible] and we have seen several activities, of course, increased activities globally also that we are not only the nato members, but also active partners with nato are challenged. >> thank you, madam ambassador. one of the questions that we worked on in the bush administration was trying to draw closer to sweden and fin land. not members of nato, but certainly partners that have a big interest in stability in your part of europe. marvin, sups i've read your book -- since i've read your book, i know that you've been watching the russians for at least 50 years. i'm sorry to date you.

[laughter] how do you see all this, and what's your toughest question for this panel? >> well, i want to pick up a thought that angela started with and strobe supported, and that is that for russia ukraine is an existential problem. for the united states, it does not appear to be an existential problem. therefore, when you talk about sending, as senator mccain has begun to talk about as the new chair of the armed services committee, about sending lethal weapons to ukraine, the question then comes up over many cause now that the -- many decades now that the united states has been involved in one war after another without a clear definition to itself and for itself about in what way does an american military involvement satisfy the direct national security interest of this country? when ukraine and the support of ukraine can somehow address that

central issue, how is it in the direct security interests of this country that we go to the extent of providing lethal military assistance? that would be my question. >> let me ask the panelists, how do we -- who would like to respond both to the ambassador, but also to marvin? steve? the question from the ambassador of finland is if president putin and president obama were able to achieve a consistent dialogue, what would be the agenda, and what's the purpose of that? >> it's very difficult. one of the problems is president putin's information sources. you know, angela merkel said he's living in a different world, and some people read that to think he's sort of lost his mind. this is a very shrewd, tough guy. but i worry about his information sources which are very much in the hands of the intelligence services, and i'm

not convinced they give him a accurate and true picture of what's happening in the world and that they feed a lot of instincts and biases. and one of the things you have -- when you serve a president, you have to be careful about feeding his biases rather than giving him information. so one of the problems is how do you get through them. president poroshenko was here, and he says, you know, it's a problem, every time i talk to putin, i'm talking to a different putin. and i have to sort of spend -- after two or three hours i can get him to begin to understand, and then maybe i can get some movement out of him. but then when i don't talk to him for a week, you know, it's back sort of believing his own propaganda. so this is a very difficult guy to manage at this time. second, why do we focus on putin? one, it's because he's so far as we can tell really the only decision maker. he's not talking to anybody. he's not listening to lavrov or anybody else.

and, true, he's reflecting opinion, but he is also manufacturing opinion in russia through propaganda and all the rest. so that's why we keep talking about putin, because he is, i think, a key to doing this. third, what is the agenda? you know, gotta be careful about this one, but someone said to me once that one of the problems with putin is putin would sit with american presidents and explain things, and an american president would say, great, you know, we're the americans, we fix things. i'll go fix things. and putin said to this person, i didn't want the president to fix it, i wanted him to understand. now, that's a very interesting comment. and so i think what we need is if there is an envoy, it's not to talk about how to retain cooperation in iran and other things. they'll do that, i think, for their own issues. i think it's a special envoy who

can go to him and sit down and say i'm prepared to sit here and hear everything you have to say, because i want to try to understand where we are because this is a problem that needs to be fixed, and we need to see if there's a way to fix it. that's how i'd start. it would be a very unfocused agenda. it would be spending a lot of time and doing a lot of listening. i went to ariel sharon in 2005, 2003 and said the president sent me to hear everything you had to say about settlements, and i'm supposed to stay here until you've told me everything you think he needs to understand to know your view about settlements. and he said, interesting. no one's ever asked me before. and we then spent four days and 13 hours with him. and at the end of the day, i knew a lot about what he thought about settlements. [laughter] but it began to build the basis

of trust. we're late in the day with putin, but i don't see any other way to do it, and i think that's where you start. >> just one briefing on the agenda. i mean, we all know ultimately, it's already been said, the euro-atlantic security architecture that was created in the 1990s was created in such a way that russia does not have a stake in it and really never had a stake in it. and that's something we do have to address, right? that's the fundamental issue, and, therefore, if you take away everything about new world order, it's not a new world order, but it is a question of how do we regular gate that -- regular gate that better so we don't have russia deciding it can violate the sovereignty of ukraine. but in order to get there, right, you have to take a number of smaller and larger steps because, you know, the last time this came up when president medvedev in 2008 presented his plan for european security, everybody said we don't want another helsinki-type conference, we've had one of

those, we don't need it. well, i think now we need something else. so i think that's -- that's not the end of it, that's the bigger agenda item. but in order to get there, obviously, other steps have to be taken including restoring at least, you know, what's left of ukraine easter to have y'all integrity. -- ukraine's territorial integrity. >> i'm going to take the priority of the chair just briefly to drinks agree slightly -- disagree slightly with angela. we created the nato-russia council in the spring of 2002 to bring russia into the heart of nato in brussels. and i know that president bush was serious and secretary colin powell at the time were serious about giving them a stake. let's plan strategically for how to safeguard security in europe, and let's bring you, russia, into some of our peacekeeping missions. and i can say it, because i'm outside of government. it was turned into a debating society. he wasn't serious. so i just think we gave them their chance at a critical

moment post-9/11. >> i mean with you, and they never took it very seriously, but we probably need to give them another chance. it doesn't mean that they're going to take it and, you know, but i think we're at the point now where the system is broken. >> i just wanted to come back to a couple of comments that jim collins has made. by the way, jim collins has not just one of the best colleagues and friends i've had, but also a mentor in my own interest in russia over the years. and i think the most important thing he said was to underscore the stupidity of isolation being the overall goal of u.s. policy. it has to be a nuanced combination of, guess what? containment. containment is the right word. and engagement. and including a diplomatic

engagement. where, jim, i'm a little bit skeptical is on your pushback against the personalization of this around putin. i think it deserves to be personalized. i think it's a defensible proposition that putin is the most powerful kremlin leader since josef stalin. he's not as powerful as josef stalin. josef stalin had some administrative techniques at his hand that put him in a whole different league. but every kremlin leader since then has either had to report to a politburo as kind of a board of directors that could fire him as they did with khrushchev or yeltsin who had political weaknesses of his own. and my guess is if we could find the perfect envoy, like maybe you, to go talk to putin, what he would say in one word is let's do minsk.

and what he would do, in one word, is let's do done yetsing. in other words, he is playing a double game s and he's getting away with it, and he will continue to play the double game as long as he gets away with it, and we've got to keep him from getting away with it. >> okay. if there are two front line states in this conflict, they are latvia and estonia. two nato allies who deserve and have the protection of article v. and we have the two ambassadors here, and they both want to speak. so maybe i'll start, mr. ambassador, with you, the estonian perspective and then, mr. ambassador, the latvian perspective. >> thank you. thank you, nick, and i want to thank all panelists. i think you have contributed a lot personally, all of you, to the achievements of these

hundreds million people in the region. we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall, and i want to say a word of appreciation to all of you. and i know what you have done. so, and i appreciate your thoughts today as well. i think that -- i have two comments and one question. i think where we are today, it's not just bad weather, it's climate change. so it's really difficult to reverse the climate change. as we all know. we have bad news but also good news, i would say. the bad news everybody knows. i'm not going to repeat those. and the question is really, you

know, what are the important issues that we have to tackle right now. and i think few points that are important from our perspective, probably first and foremost is transatlantic link. the synchronicity of the united states and europe. it's not only european allies, nato allies, but also european union. i think we see this really, the effect of that transatlantic unity when it comes to the sanctions, and this is one lawyer where i probably disagree with the sense that i got from the panel that sanctions are not working. i think they are working. they are really changing the

whole atmosphere inside russia, inside the leadership. we need time. and it could be long tomb. but we should -- it could be long time. and we should be ready, and we should continue with the sanctions. i think what really came as a shock to the russian leadership was the very united front that the e.u. had in august and september while putting forward the sanctions. so long term readiness to continue. one issue that was brought up, energy security and kind of getting the, getting us or the region -- actually whole europe -- out of the russian energy influence. i think we see lots of things

happening in this regard. but that takes time as well. it takes probably five to ten years to see real results. but this is very important issue. so that in ten years' time, you know, we can diversify from russian gas and oil and say, well, you can't use this as a political tulle anymore. tool anymore. thursday point or fourth point is the presence of allies in the territories. and, nick, you said the front line countries like us is very important. and we have good news here too. i think that, you know, the united states sent troops to the region three days after crimea was invaded. now, what has happened in the past six months in that sense, the american engagement, nato

engagement, also european allies in the region is more than we have been waiting for for the past six years since georgia crisis. now it's happening. we have first cavalry division in the region. we have a very, you know, we have -- we see that the administration is working on the european reassurance initiative that will go to congress soon. we want to see that to become sustainable and long term, not just one or two financial years' issue. we see that nato is really thinking very, you know, deeply on what to do in the region. the wales summit results you all know. now we have to implement those. and i see very clear political willingness from also european allies to implement the

decisions set forward in wales. but my question really is -- and i think this is crucial -- that what we lack is the strategic vision. and that was, that was little bit talked about here too. my question is what -- how do we achievement and that strategic vision -- achieve that strategic vision and what that strategic vision should contain really. because what we talk about here is the -- what sometimes we lack in our debate is that what do we really defend? it's not the specific countries or people that nato is defending, but it's the values. it's the western values that we defend. we have to be very straightforward in defending these values. and i feel that sometimes that debate is missing when we talk about what the western strategic vision should be. thank you. >> ambassador, thank you. what's going to happen, we don't have a lot of time left.

i think we're going to go into extra innings, if you're a baseball fan, or extra time if you're a global football fan. so if i could just ask maybe just a couple of people to weigh in, starting with you, ambassador, anders, mike, and then if there are brief comments and questions, i could ask each of the four panelists to answer whatever aspect of this they'd like to answer, whatever final points they'd like to make. and, ambassador, i know that nato put on a great air show yesterday when the secretary general substituten berg visited talon, there was a significant display of air power. "the wall street journal" covered it on their front page today. does that help, that symbolic show of support? >> well, thanks so much, nick, and thanks so much, organizers, for this discussion, strategic discussion. i think we are missing these kinds of discussions in washington a little bit, especially when we try to put somehow together good agenda for

next e.u. partnership summit in riga in may. neither you, nor perhaps here in the u.s. we have kind of strategic creative vision how to act, what to do in our region. i fully support what eric just mentioned on, well, we have, of course, symbolism, but besides symbolism, there is very practical stuff going on right now and very serious stuff that we haven't seen since perhaps peter the great opened the window to europe in our region. but it's happening right now. and that keeps us, i think, more or less calm when it comes to developments in our region. i just wanted to say that very short point and then a question, i think ukraine definitely, to my understanding, is extremely

important strategically. either we fail or we do more or less things right. i still believe that it's possible to do things right in ukraine, but the way i'm missing three points in ukraine today. one, ukraine doesn't have a chance to defend itself. i think that's important that ukraine has this ability. the second is that ukraine economically is very weak. of course, ukraine needs assistance, but ukraine as well little bit reminds me of a failed state today. if we provide the assistance in very fast way, it doesn't mean that it will help. but it will be, i think, a mistake to wait until ukraine goes through the reform process and then provide assistance. i think those two parts should go somehow hand in hand, something which we have seen during '90s when we approached

e.u. membership. and the third point is one very important piece which ukraine is missing in current situation. it's your perspective. when we went through the process of joining e.u., these reforms really are very painful, very costly. politicians were afraid of them. public, they often didn't understand, didn't have a crew what -- [inaudible] have been doing for ukraine and government to prove that these reforms would really make a difference without, well, kind of strategic clarity. it's a problem. for that i hope we'll be able to do something at the summit in riga. but, well, perhaps for russia ukraine is existential question, but developments in ukraine are unfolding as well as developments what we can see in

europe. growing nationalism, it's not only the problem of russia today. what we can see are things are little bit happening as well in other parts of europe, and at some point either we fail or do things right in ukraine. might become as well existential for one or another european. not necessarily baltic states. just a few days ago angela merkel, she, well, stated that ukraine is a problem for europe in general. it's not only regional problem. and my question goes to the point what angela said on information warfare. apparently, we are losing here. what we can do not to lose? >> thank you. mike and anders, if i could maybe just ask you very brief questions so that the four panelists can then sum up. >> well, thank you, nick.

i'd like to get straight to the information warfare and to stress what other people have said, that the historical revisionism that putin first enunciated at the meeting in munich in 2007 just simply doesn't hold up for most of the 1990s. and here i'd like to underscore what strobe said, but from a congressional perspective in this case. after the first war in chechnya, the russians asked for a revision of the so-called flank document. this is esoteric today, the russians have withdrawn from the cfe, but the fact is this was after the war, and we wanted to strengthen the incipient democracy, let's say, of yeltsin. the vote in the u.s. senate, because it was a treaty ratification amendment, was 100-0. i mean, this is, you know, it was very, very significant. second, very quick point. in march of '97 then-senator biden and i went to moscow on a

fact-finding trip having to do with nato enlargement, but we went to russia first, which tells you something. yeltsin had been at the summit in helsinki just the day or two before he was described as indices posed in the suburbs, but we met with just about everybody else we wanted to including the most important meeting was with his national security staff in the kremlin late at night. we talked about details of possible enlargement, poland, czech republic and hungary. wherewere they happy about it? no, they felt wounded. were they the slightest bit worried? not in the slightest. was there any talk that there had been a promise that we would never do this? no. by the end of the discussion, we were talking about if russia continued on its current trajectory, could it someday join nato? so that's it. one last final, very final point having to do with the lethal defensive weapons in the crew crane. ukraine. this is going to, the decision's going to happen sooner rather

than later. there are at least two bipartisan bills in congress right now, and unless i speed read incorrectly, at tony blinken's confirmation hearing yesterday for your old job, strobe, he said that the administration felt it was about time that we furnished them. so i guess my question is, what are the implications for our relations with russia and with our european allies if that does go through? >> thanks, mike. and, anders, if you can ask your questions in 60 seconds or less, we'll get two extra copies of this book. [laughter] >> thank you very much. i'll be quick. ukraine, of course, is -- [inaudible] and i wanted to add a sense of urgency here, simply. the ukrainian economy will melt down within four months if nothing seriously is done very fast. what ukraine needs to do on its side is to unify the energy

prices and -- [inaudible] 10% of gdp. what both countries did in 2009. it's a serious reform. and what the west needs to put up is the package in order of $30 billion on top of the $17 billion of ims money for the next five or six years. thank you. >> well done. we'll deliver the extra copies. [laughter] to your institute. let me ask each of the panelists to wrap up whatever they'd like to say on all the issues. steve, we'll start with you. and anders' comment about a $30 billion western assistance package speaks directly to what your major point was. >> yeah. i completely agree with anders. in fact, anders has written two pieces in the last two weeks which lay out what the ukrainians have responsibility for, and i commend him for these excellent pieces. they're available on the peterson institute web site, so let me just say i agree with every word that he's written. i do want to answer marvin kalb

and mike's point about lethal military assistance. first of all, with the caveat that the less this is talked about, the better. but here we are. second, there are the how, the what, the through what means. steve hadley suggested some things. are we talking about the grant of military assistance? are we talking about licensing, sales? a whole variety of policy questions therein. but let's just take it at its most basic level, helping ukraine strengthen its military capabilities. now, if the united states is engaged in that process, we will have more influence with the ukrainian government on what exactly they do with those capabilities. but let me take the counterfactual which is to lead the ukrainian weak whether it's economically or defensively does not, to me, suggest an outcome that's going to be better. so to marvin kalb's question that we have to think long and

hard over whether we want to go to war over it, i can answer that question. we do not. the question is what makes it more or less likely that we get drawn into those circumstances, that a sovereign, democratically-elected government in europe would be denied the means of self-defense, to me, is an extremely suspicious presumption, and it's one that the united states should certainly not support. >> thanks, steve dee gant steve hadley. >> i'll make some quick points. there's what i call the vietnam conceit that if only the united states had the right policies, all would be right with the world. we don't have that kind of power and influence. and the truth is, russia is different today because of its own internal domestic realities,

largely independent or in some cases in spite of policies we pursued. russia's a different place today than it was 10, 15 years ago. it is true that there is no military solution to these kinds of problems, but there's also no solution that does not have a military element. and that needs to be nato and u.s. forces, not air forces, but ground forces, people on the ground. that's what gets attention. and it needs to be assistance to these countries to help defend themselves. i would do it covertly rather than overtly, but it needs to be done. on the economic piece, the problem that came out in our aspen strategy group is for every move we make economically, putin has two counters. russia has two counters. they have much more influence. and this is what is tricky. how can we make ukraine an economic success if actually russia is working to make it a

basket case? this is tough. steve pfeiffer may be right, i hope he's right, but i i sometimes wonder how far kiev's writ runs in a country and whether at some point it might break up under the kind of pressure it is under. i love this it's not bad weather, but climate change, and it's hard to reverse climate change. i think we need to find a way to get some people talking about what -- stepping back and look at how russia's changed, how europe has changed and what is a vision going forward. because we're in new territory. and i worry that we're doing too much tactically and not stepping back and trying to really look strategically at where we are and where we want to be and how to get there. thank you. >> thank you, steve. angela? >> thank you. i'll just address two points. um, you know, on the question of information warfare, i mean, we're always going to be at a

disadvantage in any democratic country because we don't speak with one voice is. but i i think we should do a better job in europe and the u.s. of just putting the facts out there. there's still too many news outlets that say, you know, people use the word incursion of what the russians are doing, or it's alleged that there are russian troops there, it's alleged there are russian tanks and -- we know this stuff, we have the proof, and we should be, you know, and i know there's some people who don't want to do that because then you get into the question of how you know that. but we have to, i think, be more up front about undeniable, incontrovertible facts of which there are some, and i would include the mh-17 crash because if you have the misfortune as i do sometimes to read the russian blogs and see all the stuff they put out about that including, you know, just very recently, i mean, you know, we understand what happened. and i think that that has to be, to the extent that it's possible to have that out there with no ifs, ands or buts. so that's where you start there.

and my second point sort of goes to the longer term question of, you know, some of my russian colleagues have said what you're seeing now in russia as part of this reaction to what's happening and the things that putin is saying, it's not only that russia's putting itself forward as a model, the new conservative international appealing to traditional states with, you know, traditional family values, but it's almost, it's a revolt against, you know, modernity. and, steve, you said, you know, obviously we all understand that what russia needs to do is to build the institutions of a modern 21st century state. what putin is doing and a lot of what he's saying is appealing to those people who are actually afraid of that or who fear it and who sort of don't want to be in the 21st century. so if putin's in power for another ten years -- as is quite likely -- we have to think about who are the next generation, who are the people who are going to be coming into power at some point when he's no longer in the kremlin? we don't really know those people, and it's hard to see, but we have to do everything that we can while we're still

dealing with this particular crisis to build up, you know, longer term and continual contacts with, hopefully, the next generation of people who do not fear modernity. >> thank you very much. strobe? you get the last word. >> no, i think, actually, ambassador is going to get the last word because his climate change wisecrack, which was terrific, is going to be out there trending. [laughter] i'll bet it's already trending in the twitter verse. i can't wait until i can get at my iphone and help that. i just want to pick up on something that angela just said which i think goes to the metapoint here. she or i, we're together almost every day, it seems, on this subject. she made the very good point that the russian word for security means absence of danger. so what -- if we want to empathize, if we want to be putin understanders, we need to

understand where he sees the danger coming from. he sees the danger coming from the west. that's the only point of the compass from which the danger is not coming to russia. what russia needs and what we want russia to see that it needs is basically the following: a modern economy, a modern, globalized economy. and not being the poster child for the resource curse. a healthy population which it doesn't have. an open society, which it doesn't have. and, since it's got 14 contiguous neighbors, it should have 14 friendly neighbors. in fact, what putinism is doing is inspiring or engendering fear and loathing in 13 of those 14, and as for the 14th -- and we know who that is -- loathing,

but aspirations for russian for story. that's what these future leaders, we have to hope, will recognize, and he doesn't and probably never will. >> thank you very much. i want to thank everyone who is here. i hope that for all of you in the room and, certainly, for those watching on c-span people believe they've seen an objective, serious, nonpartisan discussion of important issues, because that's what the aspen strategy group is about, nonpartisan discussions. and if you'd like to know more, i would say to the c-span audience, the crisis with russia, the book available on amazon.com. thank very much to all the panelists, thanks to the ambassadors of finland and of denmark and estonia and of latvia. thanks very much for being here. ms. . >> and live coverage coming up this afternoon at 3:30 eastern

time with a discussion about china and how the government handles corruption and control. it's hosted by the wilson center. before that, though, a look at the recent supreme court oral argument in two cases challenging alabama's congressional redistricting plan. opponents say it relies too heavily on race and racial gerrymandering and that the new plan packs black voters into existing black majority voting districts, diluting their overall power in the state. this is the first voting rights case for the supreme court since it struck down a key portion of the voting rights act by 5-4 in june last year. the oral argument is just over an hour. >> we'll hear the argument in case number 13895, alabama legislative black caucus and alabama v. alabama in case 131138, the alabama democratic conference v. alabama. >> mr. chief justice and may it please the court, alabama employed rigid racial quotas,

rigid racial targets to design all its black majority districts based on mere racial statistics alone and then used only racial demographic data to meet those targets with astonishing precision. these targets were not based on any consideration of what's required under current conditions in alabama as section five actually requires. racial quotas in the context of districting are a dangerous business. they can be a way ofgiving minorities faced with racially polarized voting a fair opportunity to elect, but they can also be a way of unnecessarily packing voters by race in ways that further polarize and isolate it us by race. >> so you want on the one hand, they obviously had to move new voters into the majority/minority districts because they were all underpopulated, and they need to move enough so that the minorities have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, but they can't move too many because that would be packing. correct? >> your honor, we understand

that states are in a bind in this situation as is true under title vii and under the voting rights action of section two. >> so but they have to do that, they have to hit this sweet spot between those two extremes without taking race predominantly into consideration. >> they don't have to hit a sweet spot. this court has laid out a path that states can take and must take with their equal protection obligations not to use the excessive and unjustified use of racial -- >> section fife obligation -- phi obligation, gee, it used to require that there be no regression in majority black districts, so if a district went from 69% black to 55% black, you would be in trouble. >> your honor, section five has always required no retrogression based on the ability to elect under current condition. >> right. >> so if there's no

racially-polarized -- >> and they're saying that's all we did, you know? these districts were underpopulated with respect to other ones, so we had to move new people in them, and is we had to do it in such a way that there was still the 69% black population that there used to be in order to avoid retrogression. >> your honor, retrogression has never meant merely reproducing racial statistics purely for their own sake. it's meant preserving the ability to elect -- >> oh, you can say that, but the only way to be sure you're not doing that is maintaining the same, the same percentage, and that's certainly the way the justice department in the bad old days used to interpret it. >> it may be in the first decade or so of the application of section five doj employed various kinds of practices as you describe. as our brief documents in detail, the department of justice has routinely precleared plans that reduce black

populations as long as they don't reduce the ability to elect. and, indeed, in alabama in the last round of redistricting if you look at the blue brief of the black caucus at the chart at 8a, you will see that alabama dramatically reduced black populations in all of its districts in the senate and is in virtually all of its districts in the house. and if you look at that chart, you'll see numbers like a 12-point reduction, a 19-point reduction, a 10-point reduction, 16-point reduction -- >> why is that? >> down to 56%. >> why is that? why do you no longer need as high a percentage of minority voters to maintain a situation where minority voters can still elect their candidates of choice? >> for the reasons that this court add accelerated to in shelby county. black turn and black registration rates in alabama now routinely equal or even exceed white registration and

white turnout rates. >> you realize, i assume, that you're making the argument that to opponents of black plaintiffs used to make here. they said, you know, by requiring packing of minorities into certain districts, you're reducing their influence statewide. so representatives in other districts can ignore what the minority wants because they're all packed into -- that's the argument the other side used to be making. >> yes, your honor. and when the voting rights act legitimately requires the use of race in the face of polarized voting, then there's a national political judgment that reflects the trade-offs and the benefits as there are to designing these districts. >> suppose, suppose there are a party a in 2001 takes minorities

out of heavily minority districts and puts them into opportunity districts for political purposes. it's for partisan gerrymandering purposes. assume that. >> uh-huh. >> party b then gets into power ten years later. it wants to undo what party a did. and it puts them back into heavily populated districts. is there a violation when party b does that? >> there's no -- >> and we'll stipulate that its motive is simply to help its partisan balance or partisan imbalance? >> if they do not use racial classifications, if they do not -- >> no, no, they do. they put minorities back into heavily-packed districts just as they took minorities out ten years before. >> right. but the line this court's precedents have drawn is precisely the line between partisan motivations in districting -- >> in both of my hypotheticals, it's partisan.

in either case is there a violation? >> if it's purely partisan in motive and they don't use race, then there's no problem. >> no, but they do use race. but it's purely partisan. the hypothetical is case one they find minority voters and put them into minority opportunity districts. unpacking the very heavily minority-populated district. then the next party comes in and simply undoes it. and it uses the same calculus, race. >> your honor -- >> you going to tell me, is it your position, i think it may be your position, that in the first case it's permitted and in the second case it isn't? >> no, your honor. our position is race can't be used excessively or unjustifiably in either case. >> was it unjustified in case a when they were trying to have more minority opportunity districts? >> if they exceeded their obligations under section two and section five, if they went beyond the limited leeway this

court has said they have, if they have the strong basis in evidence that's required, they properly interpret the act, that's the legitimate -- >> they do this for partisan purposes. >> your honor -- >> and i'm asking if party b can then undo it for partisan purposes. because i sense that there's a one-way ratchet here. >> i don't think that's correct, your honor, and i understand the concern. if for partisan purposes a legislature passed a race-based barrier to voting, that would surely be unconstitutional. they can't use race in the way this court's cases in the shaw line of cases indicate are beyond the parameters the states have. they have to have a strong basis in evidence. in this case alabama didn't even ask the relevant legal question. alabama didn't ask what is necessary to preserve the ability to elect, what might be necessary to preserve the ability to elect. they just reproduced numbers, statistics. and the way they did it is they

just used racial data. >> well, you began by criticizing alabama for supposedly imposing quotas. but listening to your argument, it sounds to me that you are just as interested in quotas. you're just interested in lower quotas. >> your honor -- >> is that right? so if they want to keep it at 70%, that, that may be illegitimate in your view. but if they take it down to the minimum that would be required in order to produce the desired result, that's a permissible quota. so why are you using this term "quota" at all? >> we don't have to use -- >> well, why did you use it? >> i actually meant to use the word "target." >> do you think there's a difference between the two? >> there's a lot of inflammatory power in the word "quota." but, your honor, the point here is there must be at least legitimate basis -- >> so that's to justice kennedy's question. i thought your answer would be there isn't a one-way ratchet. it's cromartie ii, isn't it?

doesn't cromartie ii say if you're doing this for political reasons, because many, many african-americans vote democrat, all right? and so what they're doing is trying to help the democrats. yeah, we're trying to help the democrats, okay? if that's what you are doing, and they can't really prove the contrary -- the burden's on the one attacking the district, whether they're doing it by removing african-americans from this one or putting more into it, it's the same issue. am i right? >> yes, you're right -- >> then it's not a one-way ratchet, it is a two-way ratchet which -- >> and it's valid in both -- >> yeah, right. >> -- in both cases. >> that's your problem. >> that's not our case. because our case they don't try to defend on that ground. >> your answer is exactly the answer i was trying to give to justice kennedy which is parse san manipulation -- partisan manipulation this court has said may be fine and constitutional, but the one thing you cannot do is use race as a proxy for

politics or political affiliation, you cannot use racial targets that don't have a legitimate justification -- .. because we assume blacks are overwhelmingly democrats. >> your honor, in this area at the port headset assumptions like that cannot be the basis of

the way district lines are drawn. the night your time is running out. in your presentation, you are saying we are attacking. we are not in one district or the other. and you have been on that point. it is your claims have to be district by district. it cannot be statewide. so i would like your answer to that question. it hasn't been as far as i know statewide. >> your honor, our claim is the exact same policy was applied in every black majority district, which is we will use racial data to repopulate as close as we can possibly do it to the exact same lack percentage. that is the policy applied in all 36 districts. >> and how are your clients hurt by that? it seems to me you have to come up with a client in one of the

other districts that would have been, as you put it, more competitive had this tacky not occurred. i assume that is the harm you are alleging. >> your honor, the record demonstrates that we have plaintiffs are we have members in many black majority district that issue and that is sufficient for us to challenge that policy to provide in those districts very >> for the record, show you named your plaintiffs by county rather than district. >> many other districts are wholly contained within the county. if we demonstrate in our brief and house districts. >> your district by district challenge? solely on the statewide point you make? the >> by statewide, we simply made a common policy in the state. mr. chief justice if i may

remain balance. >> thank you, council. >> mr. chief justice, may i please the court? this quart charger with prudence channel a conversation we are having today. this court has identified two constitutional claims that could be raised with regard to the use of race in district team. one is intentional dilution of minority votes for the purpose of minimizing and of minimizing their effectiveness. the second one is shot. >> you lost on the dilution. >> we did. we did. the fact material were not disputed at trial. the question is whether they fall within the concept of

predominant in the escort fighter positions. >> did the district court understand you to be understanding a district specific claims? >> i think it would be challenging each of the districts. >> where'd you find that in the opinion of the district court? i thought the district court interpreted you not to be making that claim. >> we advanced evidence as to the motive that was a mode of common to all the districts and then we offered evidence about particular districts to illustrate how that was played out. but there is no conceptual difference between challenging all 36 districts and challenging 36 districts. it is the same claim. >> specific in your proposed findings, you dealt specifically

with searching districts and not specifically with others. >> the specific information dealt with many of the districts. but the claim was that all of the districts would result of a common purpose comment that in the common purpose of race was the predominant and overriding. >> districts were unchanged. the percentage was exactly the same as it was before. >> these are the only districts your clients were from. how have they been harmed by >> we have members in all the districts. the theory of harm in the case is, was not established in the district court? >> that was the finding of the district court. because this concerned -- >> the finding of the district court was you have members -- it said virtually all or all. >> are standing was in dispute,

but the concept of energy in the case is is not injury to the individuals in the districts that become wider because blacks are no doubt. those are people that don't have standing. in hays, this court made appear if individuals and the districts into which blacks are put for the predominant racial purpose for predominant racial purpose, that is the doctrine this court has announced in most cases. predominant involves, under this court's decision. >> i don't understand what you just said. >> blacks in their district? >> no, not about the number. the theory about the court hinshaw is if race is the predominant purpose in putting blacks into a district that will likely result in representational harms in terms of the way the elected officials will act.

that has been the theory of the claims ever since. >> and you think it is possible for the state to navigate between not enough members in the district into many minority numbers in the district without taking race into account? >> no, we do not. someone doesn't say it raises the constitutional amendment. this decision made it clear when it was an initiative kicked around for some time that the fact that race was a factor in trying to district doesn't trigger. the majority held very bad for shaw purposes, the plaintiff would have to show predominance. the predominant overriding purpose, meaning it was the criteria to which they couldn't be put aside for any others. >> so they have to navigate

between too many and too few without race being the predominant consideration. >> in terms of the constitution, if race is predominant, then there is no constitutional claim. with regard to section five, i think it would be helpful to understand the government interpretation is and has been some time about what section five requires. this is reflected in the government's brief at 22 and 23 and the 2011 dialogs. this has long been understood that the black proportion can be reduced to the point where blacks no longer have the ability to elect the candidate of their choice. until you get to that point, changes are not retrogressive. and that is not the way -- >> what do you think? >> it is speculative, but i

think if alabama had reduced the number of minority voters in majority, minority districts in any significant way, the attorney general would have come down on them like a ton of bricks. >> that is not correct, your honor. >> he also precluded the plan did precisely what you describe. the government's view of this has sat out in some greater detail in georgia versus ashcroft and in the argument of mr. stewart at the time. as they explained to them and this remains -- consistent with the way the department has operated, and so the numbers can fall, and delegates to the point where the ability to elect event question. >> can i just go back to your shaw not shaw. basically her thing i don't have a shaw challenge. >> i have a shaw challenge. >> you don't have to describe the injury. it is ephemeral and jury of race

played a part in the overall plan. without an effect in a particular district. if a particular district -- if they stay potentially the same, they didn't move the boundaries much, they obviously -- it is the whole white history. if they move the boundaries, it was good to include more blacks or anything else. it was just because geographic divisions. so explain to me why you don't have to prove that you were harmed specifically by the application of this policy. >> two things in response to that. first, the theory of shaw is that it? voters are for prudhomme ali racial reasons moved into a district. for predominant racial reasons that would require strict scrutiny. >> but that isn't true.

>> as it is, your honor. the court said the district has to change. what he meant is the black percentage hadn't changed. all of these districts changed. they were underpopulated by an average about 15%. as an average of 6000 voters in every house district. 20,000 in every district. >> now that you are talking about districts, can i come back to the question asked at the beginning so i understand what we have to decide you're on page 128 of the joint appendix, there's a paragraph on the district court opinion that explains what the district court understood to be before it on the issue of intentional discrimination. i see nowhere, any indication the district court construed your pleadings and your other submissions to raise the claim about any specific district. >> their claim as we construed the filing of the democratic

conference plans as arguing that certain scents and districts constitute racial gerrymanders. there is nothing like that with respect to your client. maybe i am missing something. >> if that is how the district court understood your position, then maybe it was wrong. but that would be the special question we have to decide, wouldn't it be? if you have to be district specific, we would have to say the district court misunderstood the claims you are asserting. >> i think in the context of the way the case was litigated been tried in the breeze that the time, everybody understood the plaintiffs were challenging all of the majority black districts. >> the district court understood that? why did include this paragraph and why to did not go through any districts that it saw u.s. challenging? nine with brief back to you.

>> we think in the context was litigated, there is no conceptual difference between challenging 36 districts and 36 individual districts. the reasons the opinion reads the way it does and we didn't contend district specific purposes of foot. safe account of various, whichever one accepted as the state had a common purpose the district was to and the black percentage and the common law. >> mr. schnapper, is that right when you proposed conclusions of law, in fact you did reference particular districts. you reference senate district 18, 19 and 20 and another place he talked about all the majority black districts in the state's

black belt and you explain how your theory is the case related to each one of those districts. >> we did. this is somewhat in alias to the teamsters decision back in the 1970 with the government to prove racial discrimination and promotion made out a pattern practice case by offering evidence that was classwide, that affect at all the individuals and hispanics and offers an individual stories. but the claim was for all the individuals who worked in those facilities. >> to get there, you are talking about we construed the filing of the black caucus plaintiffs as arguing act as a whole constitute racial gerrymandering. so we have to say that was wrong. we didn't get the template right, send it back. so we have to send it back. i guess, would there be anything wrong with saying this: tell the plaintiffs please.

the point district by district to the fact that the primary motive here was racial? i don't and i would be too hard. loads of evidence of that. now, this is the crucial part, dave then to justify this, have to show that they are making a -- i don't know what word, we miscible attempt, good-faith reasonable attempt, some other word, to comply with the old section five requirements. now they have to do it over again anyway. so they do it over again and if in fact some of the questions suggest that is what you were trying to do and you would have evidence there and say no, no, they didn't even read the guidelines of the attorney general. they didn't even look at what

happened in the past and they made no such attempt. from your point of view, would there be any thing wrong? >> your honor, with regard to the question of justification, to send it back, the court's decision makes clear there are three parameters to the way you assess this. worse, what they did is to be judged by the correct interpretation of the statute. not what they might've thought in good faith it meant on a number of courses. and second claim the purpose to comply with the direct interpretation has to been their motive at that time. and secondly at the time, not at trial, but back when they did this, and they had to then in 2012 have a strong base of evidence for concluding that not using all of these different

numbers would have violated the statute. they can't satisfy any of those things. you could send the case back to the district court, but not back to 2012 and have them change the purpose or change the evidence. so unless you change the standard of strict scrutiny, and whether affirmative action cases you could not do that. it is years too late for them to dissolve those problems. >> i am still having a psychological problem with your point. there were three reasons. you are saying merely because it was one among the three, it necessarily was predominate as to each district created. the example of hypothetical i posited for you was the primary reason above all others that they said 2% district and they may be districts among 36 that

as i indicated had continuous populations that didn't make a difference about race. so they are not effected by this policy. why should we undo to? >> if i can just answer the one last question. in fact, as the analysis of the precinct splitting shows, with perhaps two exceptions, there is race the precinct splitting on the border of every one of the majority black districts in question. it was in a situation where they took the neighboring districts and turned out to replicate to be just the ratio they wanted. it was very, very calculated and race-based. >> thank you, counsel.

>> mr. chief justice, may i please the court? the key point is key point they shall require district specific analysis. the district court departed from that principle and in our judgment the plaintiffs made. also departs from that principle. >> i don't understand why that is so general. what the plaintiffs are saying is yes, we have comment avidin, not altogether usual, but here they have evidence. it is a policy statement that retrogression was going to be a very main priority. i think it was number two and retrogression was defined in a certain way as requiring the maintenance of black voting age population and that was going to be taken into account in every single majority, minority district. the fact that there is principal evidence indicates that relates to every single district. so in a sense, the evident

statewide does not make it any less a district by district case. >> that may be right, just if kagan, but that doesn't prove a shot sense with respect to reach specific district. but me explain why. the test under shaw is whether race to the race criteria. it may be in some districts be absurd to maintain the same african-american population resulted in judgments that to draw the district in ways that derogated from traditional districting criteria such as compactness and making communities of interest, but it may be other districts i didn't and i can provide specific examples of that. >> i guess i would appreciate the specific examples because it seems to me that when you say this is the most important thing except for the reynolds inquiry, this is the most important thing

that does this airily is going to be fact the way you redraw or who do you put into the districts. you might not reach the target in every single district, but necessarily, you are saying we are prioritizing this race-based saying, criterion in a way that is going to affect every judgment remake geared >> but the question under shaw, your honor, is whether that is done interrogation of traditional districting. >> if you have three priorities for three criteria and say this is the absolute most important criteria. the natural effect that is going to be to minimize the other two criteria. >> that is not necessarily true. sometimes they conflicted sometimes the ball. i can give you examples that illustrate that for the record. for example, there were specific findings about these districts in the district court opinions,

so i'm not trying to say this is what the district court found by son house district, for example, house district 67 argues that with a district in which you were going to have essentially an african-american percentage at the percentage the district was drawn out no matter how you drew it and that was because the surrounding populations around that district were all comparable african-american percentages. whatever choice you make in order to get to 2%, 1% threshold was to involve african-americans and we submit that situation in which race predominated over redistricting criteria. it is the situation in which criteria drove the decision. there may however be districts and senate district 26 is one that comes to mind in which you had the movement of 14,500 people in the district and the city of montgomery and surrounding areas. all but. all the 35 of home were african-american.

if one looks at that map and it's very difficult to determine the small maps in your materials, but what you will see a map map is the so-called crab claws that the party described that extend out from the district, capture african-american populations. what they do is carve out the way part of the city of montgomery and attach it -- >> suppose they did that based on economic data. >> then i think it would not be a problem. >> but a result of the same thing. >> a would-be race predominated. i will go back and answer the question your honor posed earlier about when partisanship can be a justification and when it isn't. it is a technical answer, but if a state were to move electoral precincts from one district to another, the entire electoral precinct because you would have to data on how people voted. that would -- that would not raise the problem under the shaw

analysis because you could be making a decision for partisan reasons. but when you split a precinct and you move on census information, there you don't know how people in a census block voted you what you know was their praise. if you are using race as a proxy, when you are using race as a proxy in that circumstance, that would violate what this court has said it all the cases is the constitutional bar at stake here because remake an assumption. you are stereotyping in that situation. ..

you address that issue. >> i'm happy to address it now. i think this is quite a murky question. we agree your honor is quite right to support it appear and jsa 128 is the place where it seems clear that they did to appear, to some of this was a statewide going. basic theory is that the motive influenced every district and it did educate the case on that basis. so would seem to me that one out, would be to say a proper understanding of shaw is a concept made on a district specific basis at that the plaintiffs here didn't propound

cognizable claims under shaw and that would be one resolution. the record is somewhat murky on this. judge thompson did say that the claims were district by district specific. us is getting has identified some information. another option might be dorky to the correct standard en route to the district court on remand to sort out whether the plaintiff -- >> but you don't deny that is the what policy can refer to every district where every majority-minority district in the state? >> no, we don't deny that what our point is that's not enough to trigger strict scrutiny. you have to look into what it's ever been in a manner that is interrogation a tradition districting criteria district by district. >> i do want to present if you give them your best answer to. if the policy says we are going to prioritize this particular criteria, which here was the mistaken understanding of retrogression, if the policy says we are going to prioritize this over everything else, it

seems to me that's pretty good evidence of the violation. >> i guess i am just going to repeat myself, but if it's in derogation of traditional districting -- >> the policy says it's going to corey torres isotopic being desperate over everything else. sometimes they might fail. sometimes you're not going to be able to prioritize it over everything else, but the intent is still to prioritize it over everything else. >> let me take a step back because i think it might help to put in this context. a challenge, a shot challenge, is the challenge is a challenge to officially neutral government action. those lines are usually neutral. they may infect reflect the violation of the constitution under shaw if please predominate in the placement of those lines of derogation of additional

districting cry too. that's what you got to prove. the mere existence of this motive doesn't prove it for each district and that support. i would like to raise one point in my remaining time going back to the question of what section five retrogression required. >> when you do that, will you also tell us what effective in the preclearance should have. >> yes. i think mr. pildes referred you to this charge, but the key thing is to look at but the difference between 2000 the complaint but the difference between a 1993 plan and the 2001 plan. the justice department cleared the 2001 plan that alabama submitted and you will see for every single district listed there with maybe one exception there were significant reductions in the minority percentages in this district. so alabama knew perfectly well that it was completely consistent with its obligations

under section five to reduce the districts. >> you asked for a remand. the result that will be all of them has to redistrict, is that right? >> yes. >> that would not be subject to section five? >> that is certainly correct. >> that's not a concern for you? >> it's not a concern for us. but it is what it is. if on remand the district court concludes that some of these districts violated the constitution, then alabama will have come the legislature will get its first chance to legislate a fix in section five won't be a basis for them to taking action. >> thank you, counsel. mr. brasher. >> thank you, mr. chief justice, and may it please the court. i think the court should begin with the district court's fact-finding because the

district court expressly found that race did not predominate and the court can affirm on the basis and avoid addressing questions about section five and unlikely to arise again because of this court's decision in shelby county. on page 144, the district court expressly found that we did not impose a quota. the courts as we imposed quote no bright line rule. with the corvette was we preserve the core of existing districts, we followed pre-existing district lines, we followed roads, we follow county lines, municipal lines. we met the needs of incumbents. the plan that we passed is a status quo plan. the whole point of this plan was to preserve the status quo because the republican party had won a majority for the first time in 130 years. >> the other side says it was impermissible for you to preserve the status quo because the opportunity for minority voters in the majority-minority districts to participate in the electoral process had improved to the extent that maintaining

the status quo would be characterized as packing. >> well, to response to that. the first is that if you look at the amicus brief filed in support of me the part of a political scientist, they showed a black voter turnout and white voter turnout and registration actually equalized in 1998. so there actually is some difference between the districts and the new ones that we propose with respect to this country. the second point i guess i would take is our districting criteria, our nonracial redistricting criteria were coextensive with the objective here to preserve these majority black districts as they have been. the objective of his nonracial redistricting criteria was to preserve the status quo. that's what the united states solicitor general was getting at is that it's difficult to disentangle the notion that we should preserve the status quo with a majority black districts. >> is it fair to read the

pleadings and the submission in this case as saying that the state did not defend this plan on the basis that it was for partisan purposes, but that it was to comply with section five? >> i don't -- >> is that a fair reading of the red brief and about the district court found that? >> i don't think it's fair reading of either and this is a reason why. with respect to specific districts when they were challenge, we were able to respond and say this was for partisan political reasons. one of the statistics was senate district 11 which was challenged by the alabama democratic conference and the court held that the changes to the district were based on politics. with respect to the plan as a whole, our responses been there's a lot of factors that e needed on the plan as a whole and what it's going in the specific issue. it's important the planets have never proposed a redistricting

plan that meets our race-neutral redistricting criteria especially the 2% deviation in population to legislature adopted. that's important for three reasons. >> are you saying that is a pleading requirement, that they had to come in with a plan that meets all the rest of your criteria? >> i do not believe that is a pleading requirement. i think it's important for three reasons. first, the legislature adopted a 2% deviation to end of the previous partisan gerrymandering that the democrats adopted into those one where they underpopulated the majority black district and overpopulate majority white district and republican face of the state. state. that's why the plaintiff brought to partisan gerrymandering claim in the district court below. the second reason, in cromartie the court held the first step is to show there some conceive a way to do this differently that creates greater racial balance. the fact they've never produced a plan that does that is a serious problem. that makes sense because he

going to see if race was predominate, you to grace out and then you run it again and to see what happens. >> let me give you some numbers from some of these districts. 52 company needed to add in a manner 45 african-americans in order to maintain the percentage of african-american voters which was your number two criterion. you added 1143. you missed it by two. 55 you need to add 6981. you added 6994. s.b. 23, 15,069. you hit it at 50,185. those numbers speak for themselves, don't they? in each of these cases were determined this regarding other criteria to maintain the black voting age population. >> i don't think that shows that for two reasons. i agree with you that states solicitor general the question is whether we supported race-neutral districting

criteria. >> that was just a coincidence? >> no, but that goes to a second point. those house district you're reading off are over nec birmingham. >> you hit that 73% exactly. >> that's my point. there are at least going to be some of those districts in birmingham dollars 73% black. i don't believe in a place where there's more than two or thousand people and 73% them up like you need to supporting race-neutral redistricting greater to draw a 73% black district. >> i think you kind of you actually because you are trying to repopulate these districts, and many of these districts, there are many, many, many can d americans. as you suggested there are also white people. you did it so you completely replicated the exact percentage figure. >> i will give you another example of what i mean. house district 67 which we talk about is a single county district. it's always been a single county district. it's always going to be 70%

black because that county is 70% black. i think the same thing could be said about many of the neighborhoods in birmingham, is that these neighborhoods are 73% black and that's how we hit those numbers. they haven't proven otherwise. the failure to proposing 2% plan is important because it can% plan are drastically different from a 2% plan. it's like comparing a plan with 100 districts to one with 180. they are senate districts can vary by 14,000 people and ours can only vary by around 2000 people. even though these plans are different with respect to the criteria that the legislature adopted, many of the districts have the same black population percentage as our district. this is clearest if you look at page 36 of our brief were really out the senate districts. you will look and see senate district 18, 19, 20, some of the district just in getting was

talking about are almost exactly the same and all three points. if you look at district 33 it's exactly the same i in our plan n the black caucus of proposed win. the evidence was the only we could draw senate district three with a different black population -- >> what about senate district 26? >> it was about 70% black in the previous plan at its about 70% black and our plan and in the black caucus is plan. it's not exactly on target but the plaintiff testified that the area of montgomery city were talking but here is 99% black. because that was one of the senate districts the actually challenged, we have good-faith credibility determination from the trial court because the drafters of testified about why they made the changes to senate district 26 and they said because of the way population shifted had to change and a join district, senate district 30 which require changes to all the rest of the district.

that left a rural county south of montgomery. they explain what they did is they took part of former senate district 26, took out to make a way to connect the rural crenshaw county to the rest of senate district 25, which is already predominate in rural. >> a solicitor joseph you look at the district it has a bizarre shape. it's to pull in predominate african-american areas and exclude predominantly white areas. is the correct? >> i respectfully disagree with you about that. if you look at the comparison map, you can sit comparison between the former district and the current district. what people see is up at -- i'm sorry, let me try and orient myself to the left part of montgomery county is whether former district used to be. it was part of district 25 it came into the middle of the district, came in the middle of it. what the drafters did is they do the lines closer to the city of montgomery and to preserve that part of senate district 25.

everything they did was they took some precincts in of along those lines and remove them from senate district 25 to senate district 26. i want to correct something that my friend of the solicitor general seth. we didn't just move black voters into the district. we also that hispanic voters into that district. we would like voters in that district. >> usually in these cases you're looking at the funny shaped districts and are trying to figure out from the shape and some other matters where the race has been used instead of traditional districting criteria. this is a very sort of sweet generous shaw claim because the principal evidence in the case is not all that circumstantial stuff that we usually do. it's a policy statement from the states that says raise non-retrogression is going to be our principal criterion except for reynolds, and then include

testimony from the people who are applying that policy statement that they thought that meant maintaining the black voting age population, something which is a mistaken understanding of what retrogression and tales. you don't have to look at all the circumstantial evidence about the shape of districts when you have a policy statement from the state saying this is our number one criterion except for reynolds and this is how we understand it in such away that it's going to ensure that a 60% district stays 60% district, and the 52% district stays at 52% district and so on. >> just two quick responses to that, justice kagan. the first is that the state is always going to say that comply with federal law was a top priority because federal law is supreme. >> this is much more than that. this is very specific saying where the two legislators

principally in charge of this said this is what we understand the requirements are, that we're going to maintain the black voting age population in each district. >> that brings me to my second point which is that imagine had we done the same thing that the planes are suggesting and we had hired a political scientist to tell us that 55% should be the target. i think they are bringing effectively a circumstantial case. they have the fact that we have said this was our objective under section five -- >> justice kagan's question points up the fact that the defenders of this plan did not rely on the fact that it was a political gerrymandering and, of course, they said was the 2% call, but the basis was raised in order to comply with section five. >> and my point about that is certainly with respect to specific districts, they were based on partisanship and so had

to challenge specific districts, we would have responded in kind with respect to those specific districts. but they never challenge specific districts below. below. i think you and to justice alito's question, to my friends on the other side, i think you should look at document 194 was is the black caucus posttrial break. although they mention an occasional specific district have any evidence. this is a circumstantial case because -- >> considerable evidence on the senate district 26. >> senate district 26 which owned by the alabama democratic conference which has now brought a shaw claim with respect to district 16. because the challenge that district you have a credibility determination by the district court about the testimony with respect to that specific district. >> me ask you about this section five mistake peak isn't it so that both the district court and alabama were laboring under the impression that retrogression and you have to keep the same numbers?

>> the district court made an express fact-finding here that our goal was to prevent substantial reductions in black population in the pre-existing majority black districts. >> and it is a misunderstanding of what section five requires, then the whole thing is infected by that mistake. >> i disagree with respect to about it being a misunderstanding because i think in 2006 congress told us we could not diminish the ability to elect a black voters in a pre-existing majority black district. my friend professor pildes testified against inclusion of the language in congress and he said it includes that language it would lock into place the majority black districts in the south. vicki kennedy me speedily to elecelect that means if there'sa safe majority black district with its 100% chance that black voters can elect the candidates of choice, you cannot drop that to would have a 50% chance of 60% chance. that's what we're setting out to do.

>> mr.rsher, i guess i trsnd ree ginsburg. there are different interpretations of what those 2006 amendments mean, right? under one interpretation it was basically a codification of justice souter's opinion, and so majority-minority districts could be transformed into influence districts. another stricter interpretation perhaps no majority-minority districts had to stay majority-minority districts. >> well, this is what justice souter said in his dissent. he said if racial element in sicily vote in separate blocks, which is conceded they did in alabama, decreasing the

proportion of black voters were generally reduce the chance that the minority groups favored candidate would be elected to the majority opinion agreed with that as well. the district court in georgia versus ashcroft what you think that congress will think that congress was critical that you said if existing opportunities of minority voters to exercise their franchise are robust, a proposed plan that leaves those voters with nearly every's welfare chance of electing a candidate of choice may constitute retrogression. attest to from the plane its own expert was majority black districts in alabama that are 55% black would only give those voters a reason will opportunity to elect. >> i want to know what you think about the practicalities of sending this back. assume in the back of my mind just rely on state policy is this. a state legislator gets up and says, in our state there's a history of discrimination against black people. there are very few black represented in this body.

i would like to find a way of drawing district lines so that we have a few more, okay? that's the norway this case comes up. this doesn't offer us an odd situation. i don't know that sydney should automatically disqualify his plan. maybe we should look a little further into it and see what they actually did. suppose i start there. and then i say okay, you go perceived district by district. i suspect they will be able to prove that at least in some districts, at least in some, the statement of the legislature here did prevail and it make a difference. now, if that's so they don't have section five to rely on as a difference. i don't know what the defense is possibly going to be. it seems we can't even think what the defense is, why don't they just redo this point over and the legislature and sector but a lot of time and trouble? >> is a couple of responses.

the first is -- >> i thought it was a lot of trouble to redo a plan. isn't not a lot of troubled? >> it is a lot of trouble. >> so my point of my question is you want to go to the a lot of trouble before a lot of extra trouble in court proceedings, or you want to go right off up and get over with? i expect to have attached to that and i'm not to get one of you. i want to know what your responses. >> to respond to a pointed question, this plan was passed after 21 hearings held throughout the state of alabama but it was passed after extensive legislative extensive legislative negotiations it was passed in a special session that was called for purposes of enacting a redistricting plan. we do not want to go back through the process -- >> of course you don't but my question is, is there going to be a difference left that could stop you from having to go back to? >> yes. i think the training agrees that the question is whether there's a strong basis in evidence for us to believe at the time would

pass this plan american progress action fund. i think we have that defense even if we're litigating district by district. >> what does it mean to comply with section five? that's where you can say it strongly, everybody agrees that counts, compliance with section five, strong interest in doing. but if you think section five means you've got to preserve the same numbers and that's not what section five means, then the whole premise on which the district court based its decision was wrong. >> i don't think so because i think the district court's decision was premised on the fact that race was not the predominant factor. you go to the question of section five. we adopted a reasonable section five preclearance strategy. it was the exact same thing george did in 2005 and that congress had in the house report to reauthorize section five -- >> if that turns out to be wrong, i guess you're still not guilty of using race. you're still trying to comply

with section five as opposed to being racist, right? >> that's exactly right. they did make intentional discrimination claims in the district court. >> if the district court said that race was not the purpose, what in the district court he was the purpose of the player in? >> i don't think there's a need for this court to identify one specific purpose. >> i'm asking in this case, what do you think? was it the presumption that they want to assure preclearance under section five and for that reason use race? so when you say the district court said race was not the purpose, it was close to the purpose because they were trying to use section five and use raise for that reason. >> it was certainly -- >> that's a very fine distinction. >> it was a purpose that went into the majority black districts, but it was not the predominant motive in the way these lines -- these laws were

drafted. >> don't you have to use raise to comply with section five? is there any way without using race as? >> there is not. >> you don't use raise in this way, mr. brasher. nobody was a section that required you to maintain a 78% district and 70% district was no longer needed with respect to the group's ability to elect a candidate of choice. >> i respectfully disagree with that. we followed the same pre-current strategy that georgia filed in 2005. congress made a record in 2006 to try to reauthorize section five. part of that record was saint george's plan which kept all other majority black districts exactly as it was a good thing. we did the same thing in this cycle that other states did in this redistricting cycle did but we did the same thing the players did when they were in charge of the legislature in 2001. the only difference is they try to hit targets from the 1983 plant as the war in 1983 and we try to keep districts the same from 2010-2012.

>> could i follow up on justice breyer's exploration of what would happen if this was done over? i assume section five would not be a consideration so long as a new coverage for them is not adopted by congress, is that correct? >> correct. if the legislature were to pass new plans i do not think he they would have to comply. >> to legislate to do whatever it it wants it applies to abortion rather than on race. >> is correct. >> what degree with the legislature be justified in doing, and what degree to would be required to take into account the degree if any to which section to impose a something like a retrogression requirement? and do we know what that might be? >> i really honestly do not know how section two witnesses to apply in this circumstance because by complying with section five, we necessary complied with section two because it's a lesser standard.

the fact we could have done, if the plans are vacated, they are very likely to just be the same plans. >> what would happen if on a do over, the objective was to produce maximum republican representation in both houses of the legislature. and in doing that there was a drastic reduction in the number of african-american senators and representatives. would that be a violation of section two? >> not necessary. they would be a lot more that would go into that an axis whether the violated section two. you would have to look at each individual district and see if they can make a section to claim. one of the issues is this plan actually does proportional representation to black voters in alabama. there are about 25% black voting age population in alabama and have about 25 majority black districts in the house and about 25% madrid a district announced in 25% madrid like district in the senate.

i do not know what would happen quite frankly if the court were to vacate these plans and the legislature were to just do a do over. to go back to the 2% deviation, these are sophisticated parties on the other side in this case with a sophisticated council. the reason have never posed any way to do the own our own race-neutral redistricting criteria is because they know the 2% deviation prevents them from gerrymandering districts to a white democrats get elected. at 2% deviation was adopted at the beginning of this redistricting process of applying to study while there on the committee to come up with her own 2% plan. they just propose these 10% deviation plants in the legislature. we had a year of litigation to come up with her own 2% plan. they didn't do that. that's what the district court was getting at when it said, said race did not predominate. in addition court suggested you

know what this case is wrote about,t's about the 2% population deviation. >> you're suggesting that some necessity for 2% plan but there is no necessity for 2% plan. states have gone up to 10% without getting into trouble under reynolds. that can't insulate your plan from this kind of challenge, can't get? >> i think it can't. and for this reason is because we're in charge of accounting our criteria. and under easley is the under easley is a place what you can raise predominate in the plan, the first step of that and ease his way is to propose some other way of meeting race-neutral redistricting criteria that provides greater racial balance. they have a propose any way to do that. so not only have been that proposed a 2% plan that set of criteria, but the actual complaints in the propose are not that different. i think of the release of fact

the police have never proposed any way to do this redistricting that actually meets the states race-neutral redistricting criteria finds you cannot find this was erroneous. i think the core sure from on that basis. let me address a question of remand. united states has said that the court should remand this case. but the united states' position on that is internally inconsistent because the trainee decrease the population percentages alone in the districts are not sufficient for the post of met the burden of proof to show that raise predominate. that's the only evidence they introduced about these district and that's what the district court said these are statewide challenges because the only evidence in the record, whatever they may have said, the only evidence in the record about these district was just opulence and statistics. >> you'd look at the complaint, when i look at the complaint i suspect i will find something about districts. it's sort a true sort of taking the u.s. point of view, it's

quite clear to me anyway that the court decided on the basis of a statewide plan. so if it's wrong about that, then out to have a chance to go back and make their claim district by district and have a decision on that basis. >> once again, they may have brought claims with respect to each individual district. i don't think you do. i think you look at the complaint you won't find it. the only evidence to introduce about any of these district are the statistics alone. the united states agrees that's insufficient for them to met their burden of proof. iosa you could reverse the district fact-finding as chlamydomonas that race didn't predominate given to all the editors was statistics. i think the court should affirm the basis of the fact-finding and not reach questions about section five. >> thank you, counsel. professor pildes commute two minutes remaining. >> if i can't i would like speakeasy right on that last point? earlier one of the did you say

that if you look at the division of precincts and it was done on the basis of this policy. in almost every district. as that shown below? >> we introduced all of the precincts split information below and in our proposed fines of fact, document number 196, some of which is reproduced in one of the breeze. we made exactly this point. >> besides the statistics what other evidence did you present? >> your honor, we speak i can go back to the joint appendix but i just want a summary of it from you. >> the key fact we presented i think that hasn't been discussed here is that the alabama constitution prohibits the splitting of counties. they say they had a supremacy clause obligation to meet these racial targets, and that meant they could override the alabama constitution's protection of

county boundaries and all other state traditional districting principles. in the 2% will work the same way. if that's actually a federal constitutional requirement, they can also override the key protections against partisan gerrymandering. the very few that exist, the only hard constraints, the county boundaries are political subdivision boundaries, and it means they can when they play the all important county delegation in the alabama legislature by breaking counties into multiple districts and then decided who runs the county by putting their district in there. there. a second question with answers that i think it's been very important in this discussion, and by the door to lose track of the fact that on remand, the alabama legislature will have to comply with the whole county provisions, or at least they can't use this federal excuse to split them. the way most states do this is they either start with traditional districting

principles in the court of existing districts and advocacy at the end have maintained the same number of majority-minority districts, all or if they start with the number at the beginning which do not require two, they ask what's necessary in current conditions to preserve the ability to elect today. ..

good afternoon and welcome to the wilson center, all of you who are with as any other twin and those were watching on c-span or on our webcast. the wilson center for those of you have not been here before is the living memorial to the 20th president of the united states. i direct the kissinger institute on china and the united states here at the wilson center. we are glad to give his program

on corruption, constitutionalism and control. implications of the fourth plenum for china and u.s.-china relations. the second talk brings together two topics which are often treated separately although they belong in the same program which are corruption and china's attempts to carry out a further round of legal reforms. no doubt all of you been following the corruption story from china over the past few years to give her to xi jinping's willingness to take on both tigers and flies, you probably followed the sordid tales of -- xi jinping's attempt to combat corruption is often an american media characterize as a campaign but it seems to be a state of affairs. it's part of president she's governance rather than a campaign in the usual sense. combating corruption is been one of the major factors leading to xi jinping's great popularity in china.

as evidence of his popular and you need look no further than the second line of the new viral song in china called -- i don't know if you heard this or not. it is covered in today's "new york times." if you haven't seen it i urge you to give it a close listen. the first two lines, china has produced an uncle xi. he testified the tiger. notice in this song which it's very catchy. it's like a lot of chinese songs but it has albums of march. it's hard to get out of your head. that line -- china has produced to harken strictly back to the deep sea red. which begins -- the sun has come up -- china has produced. there's a link to mao and his popular song about how ardently xi and his wife love each other. so xi has been very close

associated with anticorruption, the china dream, continued economic and socialist reforms. this all seems to be of a piece for his governance and, indeed, for china. it is sometimes difficult for us to discern how these different features fit together and to be tough to figure how we can respond to rapidly changing china. the difficulty comes even as the logistic level if you try to wrestle chinese or english with recent documents about legal reform in china. they are full of socialism in chinese characteristics and continued reform. different uses of phrases that seem to have something to do with law but it's not quite like our own but even the phrase corrupt, one of the questions will be asking today is whether the anticorruption efforts of xi's government our principal

are primarily political. what does corruption mean? the documents that were released after the plenum, a big meeting of the congress party in october, takes these efforts to improve governance. this was the first plenum to focus on law, or uncovering in accordance with law. i was struck in reading american breakdowns of this plenum, a 13 let you come many but is focused on what wasn't in these document. from an american point of view the chassis was criticized for the things that americans wish would be these doctrines that were not there. often you didn't focus on any proposals for change that were in these document. i think we need to begin from a chinese point of view, the wilson center is committed without china sees itself the it may not enter because the part

of analysis. the documents out of this plenum were very frank about the depth and breadth of the problem china faces in its legal system. it is almost a confessional quality to it. it raised expectations extremely high. so to understand the vouchers, the primaries, the policies of xi jinping we want to start when china started with corruption and the legal question. entity that i think we can have no better pair of scholars then andrew wedeman and donald clarke. ..

where he was from 20 of six 06 to 2008 and i would also like to welcome maggie who was also at the center and is now studying at george washington. and he is now working on a new project on social unrest in china and is the author from mao to market seeking protection as i'm in china which was published by cambridge university press in 2003 and the paradox of the rapid growth and in china brought up by the university press in 2012. i should also mention that when we were at the center together, and he caught me singing loudly

the rolling stones wild horses and what i thought was the abandoned underground garage where the acoustics were excellent but i wasn't alone and in that small community to do is to my knowledge you never told anybody so a man of discretion as well. so i want to thank you for that. donald clark is the research professor of law at george washington university where he's been since 2005 and a leading specialist in chinese law. he was previously at the university of washington school of law in seattle and at the school of international studies at the university of london. before that, he practiced law for three years of the major international firm that handled large chinese practice and he is willing to -- fluent in chinese. he's in the quarterly, the law on subjects ranging from chinese criminal law to the corporate governance. recent researches on the

institutions and legal issues as they relate to chinese economics reforms that is the topic of the third and fourth. he is also founded and maintained china law which is the leading and he writes the law blog which i have bookmarked whenever there is a legal issue to get a good explanation of what is going on in china. he's a member of the new york bar and council on foreign relations so we will start first from andy and then have time to answer questions and then we look forward to hearing. thanks again. >> thank you very much, robert. i did not ever share but now that the cat is out of the bag that you will longer obligated to be discreet. welcome to all of you and to the viewers of c-span. let me begin with the question

that robert raised in his opening remarks. it is one i get frequently about the now 2-year-old anticorruption campaign. is it principled or is it political. i think if you look at the way that it unfolded it is easy to say this is pure power politics. when they turn up dead in a hotel is swiftly cremated and it looks like he will be simply forgotten and then later in 2012 the former head of public security attempts to defect to the united states in the wake of which we discover the life wife

purply secretary and she has apparently been collecting money from the variety of sources. we moved to the former standing committee member head of the internal security apparatus. from there we move on to a series of what i would think of as clusters of corruption cases. we have before head of the chinese national petroleum company and a whole mess of cases. we have the former secretary, people that would work particularly went on to the whole networks of corrupt businessmen. we get evidence that some of his former in the ministry of public

security has been involved in him on other things money laundering and also arranging dates for senior members of the leadership with the staff of the chinese central tv. finally his son is implicated in a series of schemes most of which involve looking at the state assets because that would get a hold of them on behalf of other businessmen and then resell them and i'm on those that he was connected to a man named leo hahn who is a major figure according to the government in chinese organized crime. we also get to the earthquake in which a whole host of people in the province, most of them in some way involved in the occult

sector are implicated in a series of various deals. whose brother happened to be hu jintao right hand man and his nephew plowed a $300,000 porsche into a bridge at 4:00 in the morning with two scantily clad coeds. if you look at that and most recently of course. the generals are caught with trading promotions and most recently his house was searched and they found bitterly a ton of cash. it took between ten and 15 military trucks to take all the evidence and loot out of his

20,000 square foot house. you look at these scandals and the easy conclusion is that this is about power. if you look at the various reasons he sets himself up and becomes the entry way and has always been something of a rival it is an opening that allows them to go after a wide swath of people at a fairly senior level and to land to clear them out and obviously replace them with his own people. at the same time, you can look at it as a very clear effort to consolidate his own power. by going after the big tigers

and showing that he is willing to take on anybody regardless of how high up they might be and how sensitive the case may be he is trying to demonstrate so when you look at it on that level is this principle or political and i think the easy conclusion is to say looking at that level it is political. i think you have to go out and look at the bigger picture. we were looking at what constitutes a big tiger in terms of the rank and importance. it's not as important as it might appear on the service. when you broaden out and look at

the bigger picture that this campaign began two years ago in november of 2012. the numbers are incomplete and unfortunately the chinese give numbers in year increments. we don't know how many people got taken out during the first months of 2012. we don't know how many people will be taken up this year because the year isn't over. having looked at this for 18 years i know the partners that are often meaningless that you really have to have. the best we have is for 2013. the judicial branch which has the power to indict an individual than and bring them to court for trial in the

chinese terminology terminology terminology of the final but he's basically to hand out the indictments they have the 30,551 people, so if the number was 60 or 130 it is a tiny fraction of the total number of people invited. that number, 37,551 was almost 9% over the previous year. that bind present might not sound like a tidal wave of anticorruption but if you go back and look at the number of people invited its gone it's gone from 40,000 down to a trough of 4,202,011. it was up a little bit in 2012, but up 90% in 2013. the number may well be up on something of the same order this

year. it's hard to tell because you don't really have any partial statistics. they don't give the numbers for people that are higher up the food chain. for people that are holding leadership positions at the county and the departmental level, they invited 2871. that was up 12% from 2012. more significantly at the bureau level, the number jumped from 188 to 261. so, when you look at the top if you follow the campaign in the media, the media campaign or focus is on the big tigers and the big tigers are important, but the bulk of the campaign is at the next level down. it isn't so much getting supplies against the people who are at the fairly low-level

officials etc.. it did this leadership level where you get this huge almost 40% increase. to me what that suggests is that the answer to robert's question is if it's principled or political is quite frankly yes. it's both. they are trying to do two things at once. try to consolidate the powers, trying to go out and take out the tigers and at the same time he is as best i can interpret he is serious about wanting to fight corruption. i think that there is a realization and this comes out and i will talk about it in a minute when we look at what this campaign has revealed, corruption has gotten considerably worse over the past decade. when i wrote the book back working on it in 2008, 2009 i

looked at all the data and i couldn't see any real evidence of a worsening or deepening or intensification of corruption. when i look at this campaign and i look at what has come out, corruption is worse than i had thought. you can look at people like general who is in charge of logistics construction and other things. he's in real estate collecting 2%. one deal allegedly involved billions for the real estate. when they raided his house he literally had a tunnel for expensive liquor and a 3-foot tall golden statue of mao, plus considerable cash. as i said earlier when they raided the home they found a

match retirement cash. in some ways they are quite interesting. why would you sit on a match or come of cash? the answer is interesting. he didn't have anything to do with it. he couldn't get out of the country. apparently he couldn't come and he really couldn't spend it. we are being revealed in this campaign and it's not millions, it is tens of millions and even hundreds of millions which these are some that we haven't really encountered in the past. but what also struck me as this cover those two cases are real tigers and senior generals. but there was a man who was

arrested in the province recently who ran a local water company, not exactly what i would consider a high-powered position. when they raided his home, they found 80 million in cash. $425,000 u.s., plus 27 kilos of gold certificates for 68 properties. so, not only do we have evidence of huge sums of money on the part of the tigers, but we have some extraordinarily down at the bottom is a man whose basic job is to provide you with water and sewage to collect was either have to quickly do my math and multiply 100 million.

if you can extract for tap water that's quite a fly. early on we had all these cases. she had 35 properties, 19 properties coming into these are low-level officials so when you look at what the campaign has revealed, it is not just a problem of big tigers on the economy. the flies are also stalking a great deal of blood out of the economy. what are the prospects looking at all of this? he's racked up a pretty good record. he has some pretty impressive as robert said his campaign is popular. do i expect to see change in corruption, do i expect to be

looking for a new topic after nearly two decades of sliding through endless stories on corruption? absolutely not. what he is going to do as best is down some fire. he's going to get people talking. he's going to get people to be careful. they are going to take the 50 million that they have stashed in their basement and they are going to hide it really good. everything that i've heard out of china recently, people are petrified, they are worried you know, there's a lot of fear and anxiety. how well that lasts is hard to tell. this campaign is 2-years-old. for two years i keep expecting it to wind down. and for two years i have been wrong one time after another. suddenly it suggested the campaign is now a new normal and

that that in fact this campaign will just keep going on and on and on. if it does, that maybe has positive effects because the pressure will be kept up in officials have to be careful and therefore they will avoid accepting bribes or do they put a great deal. the other danger is after a while when the inspectors don't arrive and you get away with it you become emboldened. so i don't expect to see dramatic inroads into corruption or expected to go away anytime soon. but having said that, i think it's important to keep in mind in the united states when you go back and read american political history in the 19th century in the era around the civil war, it may shock some of my american comrades but we had a problem with corruption. we had the hall and in fact if

you look at the municipal history in the u.s., the political machine was the more moderate was in new york or omaha nebraska or chicago, etc.. the u.s. seriously begin fighting corruption in about 1870. guess what, we are still fighting it. just a few months ago the governor of virginia, robert mcdowell and his wife were convicted and will face prison time for corruption. so, if we turn around and we say if he really serious in fighting it and we then say are we going to see victory in the war on corruption? i think not. the current war on corruption began in 1982. it has continued for over three decades at this point. i would expect that it will continue for quite some time.

it will flow sometimes it will be more adverted politically and sometimes it will be more principled. he's made some progress and i don't think that you can make as much as most people would like. >> thanks very much and good afternoon everyone and thanks for coming up this afternoon. those of you going away for thanksgiving tomorrow you will regret not having gone away today. but i hope not. okay so robert has asked me to talk about a fourth planned on the legal reforms and implications for the u.s. china relations, so i'm going to start off with a sort of airy broadbrush picture of the fourth plan of reforms and then talk at the end about the possible

implications for the u.s. china relations although it i don't think there are a lot of implications. the big picture summary of the fourth reform decision i think is that it contemplates no fundamental reform in the basic relationship between the legal system on the one hand and the sword of party government on the other hand. so it seems pretty clear to me that institutionally speaking, the party is going to remain above the law. at the same time though i think the decision does contemplate some genuinely meaningful and in my opinion positive reform and so i don't think that it would be correct to look at the decision and say it is not advancing towards some idea we have in the rule of law and therefore it is meaningless, so there's a lot of stuff going on there and much of it is positive. so i guess first of all ages 20 to emphasize that the decision

still puts the party for a lost second and literally every time the party and the wall appeared in the same sentence the party always comes first. so for example, section one of the decision starts off by saying several important principles that must be upheld in order to achieve the goal of ruling the state according to the law and the first one is the leadership of the party so that is although it doesn't have any substantive content to it it is purely an institutional goal which is the party must be in charge. later on, the decision talks about what judges should be loyal to and it lists for things, the party of the state, the people and the law and you will notice which comes first and which comes last. obviously grammatically speaking there is no particular reason why things at the front of the list to get privileged over things at the end of the list in

chinese or english but nevertheless, we all know that any documents like this nothing is accidental and so when we see the same pattern repeated over and over i think we have to conclude that it is there for a reason. some of you may have heard about the three supremes, and i'm not referring to the music group i'm referring to the slogan long associated with the former president of the supreme people's court. we didn't hear about these for a while and now they've been kind of resurrected in the fourth plaintiff decision and they are the three things that again they should at the forefront of their work and to get the first priority is loyalty to the cause of the party in and the second is the interest of the people in the third the constitution as the party comes first and goal

comes last. in general what we are presented with is an admonition to officials to a beta law so they are told they should obey the law. they are not told that they should obey the law. but nevertheless one gets the feeling that this is kind of an internal goal of the party talking to itself and officials say you shouldn't have a mentality of special privilege you shouldn't hold yourself above the law. you should obey the law but nevertheless it is not proposing the institutional changes to take that choice away from officials that in the sense still have the choice about whether they want to obey the law or not. one of the symptoms of that might be the system of the double designation system which is the informal system or the

extralegal system of detention for officials who are being put under even though the entire legal community but most people who look at this institution in china would agree that it has no basis in law and legally speaking it has to be considered unlawful. so what about meaningful reform, there are some major reforms in the main one i think is quite welcome is the system calls for some significant reforms for managing judges so there were some words about protecting the judicial tenure but it's not clear what they would amount to until we see what goes on in practice. what is a kind of career civil service model.

so the junior judges would be selected by the provincial level courts and then would start their career at the basic level courts and so he will have at the provincial level is actually a kind of judicial bureaucracy that will be looking at the junior judges and assessing them, monitoring them, trying to pick out promising ones and the skillful that gradually promote them up higher and higher. the decision doesn't exactly say who will do the promoting that i think that it's clear that it's supposed to be in the hands of the provincial court. this is a very significant reform because the model does not exist at the moment. the way things work now is the courts are still basically slowly working their way out of the kind of model. so the main way to become a judge of the high-level court is to start out as a junior judges the same high-level court.

the classic story of the business success as you start in the mailroom and the hard work junction and the scheming you work your way back to the ceo office and so so that chinese courts kind of work on that model. you start off slow and work your way up into the way to become a senior judge of the high-level court how do you get there you go to a fancy law school and do well. but if you start off at a low level courts then you probably are going to stay there. so there is not now a good system for identifying promising judges at the lower levels and promoting them to different courts at higher levels.

it's in the countryside japan and germany do have civil-service judiciaries like that. so at the same time there is a bit of a problem because the decision and endorses another good thing which is to say we should have a system whereby people from outside of the judiciary can move into it and you they are looking at this sort of american model where you have the senior experience lawyers for example who at the peak of their careers will then get a federal appointment and move sideways into the federal judiciary so there's a lot to be said for this idea that the problem but the problem is that it contradicts the idea of having the kind of civil service model where you start off as a junior person and the lowest court into the whole point of having these experiences dignified people is that it's going to start at a higher level and they are not going to want to start off at a low-level court between 5,000 a month.

okay. there is a contradiction that needs to be worked out. the decision also calls for a significant reform in the court system and both of these are designed to address the problem in the local protectionism. courts at a given administrative level tend to be answerable to the political authority at the same level because they are person personnel appointments are controlled and the funding is controlled at that levels of you are not subject to any meaningful control from the superior court. and again, that's different from say japan where the court operates not only as a court of the final appeal but also as a kind of general body. so naturally because of this system of local authority of the courts tend to protect any party that the local political authority wants to protect for example the prominent local businesses. and the chinese legal community has for a long time thought of

this is a big problem and proposed various ways of addressing it. one proposal that came out of the fourth decision is for the supreme court to establish what they call the circuit tribunals with jurisdiction over several provinces. so at the moment the court is the supreme people's court and immediately below that of the provincial court so there is a proposal to establish some courts that will cover several provinces. now there is a misconception about this which is that these are similar to the circuit courts, that is that they would be a level of court below the supreme court and above the existing courts. that is not what is contemplated. they don't even use the word court. they use the word tribunal which tells you that that is really going to be a branch of the supreme court and therefore any decision of the court is going to be a decision of the state court and off the sort of lower-level court.

then there is to establish another layer of the court and a fifth player that would cost jurisdictional boundaries and try the cases that are cross jurisdictional said it is important to keep the different reforms straight. now, one thing that is interesting about the communiqée is again one of the things that it doesn't say this thing in particular is very interesting and that it doesn't talk about and that is a proposal to centralize the court appointments and financing up to the provincial level bath beyond the least of two the provincial level so that within any given profits would be at the provincial level in the appointments and personnel and finances and again this is very explicitly with the idea of reducing the problems of the local protectionism. as of again if it happened at the provincial level of course

it isn't going to get rid of it but i think a lot of the local protectionism takes place at the local level and not the provincial level. so, there was a proposal for it to happen, there were exploitation about putting this into practice and not a peep about the proposal in the fourth decision switch her to know why. it's popular among the legal academics but i'm told about among the judges. one reason that the judges fear the system of authority in general will increase the power of the court leaders maybe now they feel that they're in the visual cover is enhanced by being able to move sideways when they have sideways connections and therefore they can kind of sometimes talk back to the leadership of the court. i am not sure about that. the other thing that brings much more, seems more plausible is that the judges fear putting the

court finances under the higher administrative authority would mean a kind of leveling out cause of a unified scale for all judges within a given profits is going to be neither raising the salaries of the judges in poor areas or lowering the rich areas and they are afraid it will mean lowering the salaries of the rich areas. so it is certainly odd that the reform seems to have stalled and that's unfortunate. finally, the decision announces to interfere with court cases as a problem and it calls for the establishment of the system for keeping track of such attempt. this is a meaningful ambition but the meaningful ambition but not so much an implementation because they haven't changed the system of incentives for judges judges and so the same system of incentives for judges that makes them responsive to these attempts by officials to interfere is going to make them reluctant to report on these attempts to interfere and record

them in the book of interference. so without a change in the system of intensive basic judges it is hard to see how any of the attraction would be achieved on this reform. in the same decision elsewhere stresses the importance of the legal political legal committee and that is a party body that exists at all levels that supervises the dictatorship, so the court and i guess the justice of euros as well. so it calls for the party organization and all bodies that includes court to report important local matters to the local party committee. for them on the one hand, you are saying let's enhance the party control over the courts. let's enhance the control of the

political committee and on the other hand you're saying let's minimize the interference of the operations of the court. okay there is kind of a contradiction. and it isn't clear how that is going to be result. certainly one would have to be incredibly naïve to think that the case was decided solely by the judges who were decided at the tribal or that nobody in the standing committee of the bureau is touching that. they are going to let it all be handled by the judges and the court as the evidence of the trial. i just don't bb that is going to happen. so one has to doubt the sincerity of those. okay. there are a couple of minor reforms but i think i will skip over them just for the purposes of time and talk a little bit about the implications for u.s. china relations. the way to think about this is what is related to the legal system that might be affected? intellectual property

protection. the fourth play of the reforms showed an effort even to professionalize the court and reduce the influence of local color holders in their operation. i should say another thing that does not appear in the fourth plan of the report is a lot of populist language that has appeared recently in the discussions about the legal system. criticisms of judges being too professional for applying the law, and again a little bit mysterious mysterious and that language is not in the fourth plan of the document so i think perhaps it is a big pda share of the recent turn to the populism and may be returned to the value of the professionalization and the courts which i think is probably a good thing. so i think this reduction in the local protectionism and increased professionalization has got to be good in general

the intellectual property protection. since in the any cases the violators are enterprises with influence at the local level but not necessarily the higher levels, so you have a particular factory producing pirated dvds. okay they are are employing local people into paying taxes to the local officials perhaps writing the local officials but that isn't going all the way up to the provincial level that is just a small-town level. and so if you have control over the courts elsewhere than i think it is much more possible for people to move against the intellectual property violators. so, obviously none of this is going to make a difference if the infringement rises to the level of the formal state policy in some areas, but that isn't all the cases in that kind. there've been some complaints about the spread of anti-monopoly against the u.s. and other businesses.

the u.s. chamber of commerce recently issued quite a detailed report on this particularly talking about the acts of the national development reform commission seems to be the main target. add so i had a long summary here but i don't have time obviously to go into at this point. but i guess that i would just say that there's not much that would address this because the selective enforcement and perhaps that it was the even the right word since many times the companies are being told don't call your lawyers. so they are not really interested in the legal analysis. it's more the sort of approach of how much do you have. so not much of of much in the plan of addressing this problem because the fourth plan isn't really about enforcement of the law through the administrative agencies. a lot of it as the measures that they are talking about for the

legal system reform center on the court system and not so much about the kind of everyday actions as the administrative agencies in enforcing the law. another area is the extradition of official charges of corruption that led to the u.s.. china says why would you want these people, why does the u.s. want them? they don't. canada the canadian, the canadian government tried for a long time to get rid of him and get him back to china and the canadian courts that in the way for a long time so a lot of times we have the different branches of government, we have genuine separation of power so even the executive office can't always do what it wants to do. the problem here of course is that china and the u.s. don't have an extradition treaty and they are likely to never have an extradition treaty and it's highly unlikely that anybody would be extradited without a treaty. some of the problems are well a

u.s. justice system feel the defendant will be granted adequate due process in china and in addition, you have the problem of the un torture convention which permits them from extraditing anybody to a place where there is a language that is a substantial grounds for believing that there is a danger that they will be tortured. now this is the problem in the chinese legal system. official sources have themselves characterized torture as widespread, deeply entrenched, stubborn albus and malignant. there's all sorts of language like this and and there is a recent report by the special reporter to the un commission on human rights and no act to look at this issue is that there are some serious problems there. and it makes it very difficult to extradite people. nothing in the fourth agenda that addresses the problem of torture by police. and so i don't see any prospect for the reduction in that area.

finally with a look at the human rights in general, again i don't see much in the way of the prospect for improvement in this area area in the fourth plan of the decision. there may be things happening outside of the decision but not in the fourth. we do have proposals to make the judiciary more professional. you know, less subject to be influenced in the local power waters and those are all a good thing. but i don't think that they really have much in the way of implication for the issue of human rights and the decision makes it clear that the loyalty party. so i will start their. >> having these questions now for about 30 years and many chinese friends with some of the

things we criticize them about all officials gained the ways that are now legalized through mechanisms mechanisms so that children can go to top schools because they are not legacies and they have ways of protecting their wealth and part of the story is going from the age of the best have been easy finding the legal mechanisms and when they do the same thing they tend to be corrupt and i was thinking about in light of something that jeremy recently said in the anticorruption campaign he has not yet gone after any. either the second generation of the original founder of china or the leading officials from the early stages of the people's republic. do we see in tandem with the campaign do we see any way that

the group of families are actually protecting or legalizing is there any process of that sort on going? >> i just blindly jump on. i think that when you look at china more generally on the anticorruption campaign, china faces a real challenge in that a generation ago there was no wealthy class in china. one of the byproducts of the economic development and the fact is either as big or bigger than the american economy there is a whole new strata of wealthy chinese many of them are linked through blood or marriage to the political delete.

now, one popular response is to assume that they all got there through the various ways of inside connections etc.. well, maybe i am a cynic but we get a whole strata of those in the united states and it is no criticism of chelsea clinton per se but i'm pretty sure when she got a job at the hedge fund it wasn't three weeks into the job someone said your dad is who? we have a similar situation where they allege they have advantages getting into top schools. they are often very bright. they often work hard. for us this is normal. they go to wall street, they become investment bankers, etc.. for china this is all new. and i think that the more general thing china needs to be

sorting out is not only the problem of corruption but also the relationship between cover and 12. they are not separate in most economies and yet in china the merger is messier by the separation is more imperfect and now i hope don has a good legal answer to the question that i tried to struggle with on the fly. that is an excellent question and it's worth thinking about is there some way that the kind of second generation has figured out to have their privileges in a mosque so obvious way. >> so i do not have an answer to that. but i do want to address an earlier point of yours which i think is quite -- is a good point that i think if we look at any society we will find a rich and powerful find ways to transmit their wealth and

comfort to their offspring. and so i think if one looks at chinese corruption as a way of saying and answering the question is china uniquely bad than that silly because that shouldn't be the question. i think really it's the issue when i look at corruption from the legal standpoint what is the government doing about it, what is the government allowing other people to do about it so for example if you think about the corruption in the united states, who was it that exposed the hall was a corruption effort by the government? one has to ask whether those institutions are allowed to exist such that they can make their own informed decisions

about what kind of privileges do they think are okay and what kind of privileges do they not think are okay. >> i would add one other thought. the people that have a vested interest in creating legal protections might well be because they don't want to be subject to arbitrary confiscation just because their father or their mother on the political political side have often befuddled. so if you look at the pressure for the property reform it may well come from the top down. in a strange backward manner. second question you mentioned human rights concerns. and i was struck listening to the presentation that in general it seems to me that when americans hear about what happens to any number and we get the legal claims that debated

this following thing that was provoking sedition and then these people people go into a sort of non- legal disappeared status, this is horrible, this is false, why aren't they getting due process but when the same say that somebody has a gold statute or several tons that's pretty bad and we seem to be more inclined to take those claims at face value and then many people are subsequently disappeared in the extralegal system. is there any kind of a double standard at work or what criteria should we look for when we are judging the claim about the evidence to come out of the chinese government in the use of various cases because we seem to look differently at the claims about corruption and the kind of claim is that gets leveled in the human rights cases. >> i would like to point out that before you said that i had already blown the whistle as a

legalized kidnapping. well actually unlawful detention under the law is extremely problematic and that is what is used against the corrupt officials but it's a huge problem because of course not everybody allegedly corrupt is actually correct. and the people who run the internal party disciplinary system are not necessarily well trained in the investigative techniques. they don't know how to trace the trails of assets from people who have been hiding them and so you resort to the next best thing which is the rubber co.'s. so i think that accounts for a lot of the treatment that takes place within. but in terms of how to look at things, sometimes we could have an idea about the substance of the charges and whether they make sense or not and whether we

-- is it fair for example one of the current charges against the lawyer is stirring up trouble and provoking disturbances and actually that isn't as bad as it sounds because that is just the name of a crime but when you look at the criminal law there are actually some conditions that have to be met and the second court document makes it even more what has to be made to commit the crimes of the government cannot just say you are just stirring up trouble. they have to do a b. or c. and it's impossible under the fact to find out that debated a, b. or c. because they list them to have to be met. so we are not necessarily going to know those facts but i think that we can look at the procedures, so for example has the government made the trial opened provoking disturbances

there are no secrets involved in that. the supreme court and the chinese law has been saying all trials should be open but everybody knows you can't just walk into the chinese court even though they are supposed to be open. so if they don't have any plausible reason to be closed or are open, that's reassuring. if people are allowed to be represented by the lawyer of their choice which again is allowed in the chinese law. if the witnesses are required to testify in court which again is required under the chinese law basically never happens, so i think that we could look at a way of avoiding this issue of can we really know what extent are they guilty and we can look at this other question and say if there is a good case, why can't the government followed these procedural rules and i think that one could ask at least that much.

.. >> and i know from reading some of the confessions, you get the impression six months, eight months,