more about him. i think that such a fascinating story and there's this these great old pictures of him holding his ole miss student id card and so i would've loved to have delved more deeply into his store. so that's just one example of a lot of stories that i just had to mention very briefly but would have loved to say more about. so thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you all very much, thank you. [applause] >> don't forget there's a book signing one level up in the archives bookstore. >> you're watching tv in prime time. a reminder that every weekend booktv features 40 hours of nonfiction books beginning at 8 a.m. eastern on saturday. we invite you to fight and unlike us online at facebook.com/tv.

>> we've partnered with cox to communications to learn about the history and literary life of tulsa, oklahoma,. >> woody guthrie is the most famous for his writing of this land is your land but he was very much more than that. he was born in 1912, and so we're very proud to have his work back in oklahoma where we think it belongs. he was an advocate for people who were disenfranchised, for those people who were migrant workers from oklahoma, kansas and texas during the dust bowl era who are found themselves in california literally starving. anti-saw this vast difference between those who were the house and the house not and he became their spokesman through the his music. >> he recorded very key songs of his own -- very few songs of his own. we have a listing station that

features for six of his own song in his own voice. ♪ this land is your land this land is my land ♪ ♪ from california to the new york island -- >> watch all of our events from tulsa saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv and sunday afternoon on american history tv on c-span3. >> coming up this morning the conversation on biological and chemical threat preparedness. we'll hear from former homeland security secretary tom ridge and former senators joe lieberman and tom daschle who are part of a study group on biodefense. live coverage from the hudson institute begins at 9:30 a.m. eastern. >> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and key public

policy defense and every weekend booktv now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2 created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook can follow was on twitter. >> up next the conservative watchdog group judicial watch looks at hillary clinton's use of a private e-mail account while she was secretary of state. this is one hour 40 minutes. >> [inaudible conversations] >> okay, we're going to begin now. if i could speak, remind our speakers before we begin if you

cannot hear yourself on the speaker like this then our audience on the internet and on c-span can't hear you as well. so welcome to judicial watch. i'm tom fitton, resident of judicial watch, and we are a conservative nonpartisan educational foundation dedicated to transparency, integrity and accountability in government politics and the law. through educational path to these would advocate high standards of ethics and morality. we seek to ensure that public officials don't abuse the power entrusted to them by the american people. we strongly believe in the rule of law and to that end a government that adheres to the limits imposed upon it by the constitution. our panel today is entitled hillary clinton's e-mail scandal, and it's designed to educate you about the facts and legal issues behind the revelations that hillary clinton immediately upon becoming secretary of state created a

secret e-mail account, or accounts, to conduct all of her government business that no one knew about this supposedly at least publicly until just earlier this month. from judicial watch's perspective we have seen this story before. back during the clinton administration it came to our attention from a white house whistleblower that there were 1.8 million e-mails that were not being records managed properly in the white house. as a result of those records were not being searched in response to subpoenas and document requests, our requests for information at the white house at the time were focused on, as part of our litigation over his handling of fbi files. and it turned out our office of independent counsel

investigation were being impacted by this failure to look at those records, and it was a big mess. because the whistleblower told us that when they raised this with white house officials this gap, that they were told if they don't and what about if to jail and lose their jobs. and so we have a monthlong hearing before a federal court judge that saw the testimony of white house officials, including john podesta, who was i think then chief of staff, charles robb who is now deceased but then was white house counsel. and cheryl mills who was the deputy counsel of the white house. and was later became chief of staff to mrs. clinton in the state department. the court unfortunately did not find any obstruction of justice but judge lambert said this

about ms. bell's participation in it. she called the loathsome and he further stated that she was responsible for the most critical error made in the attack at the entire fiasco. her actions were totally inadequate to address the problem. so in a sense that she was responsible for the failure to disclose to the investigators and the megan people about these e-mails, she had been highlighted for special calling out by a federal court judge back during the clinton years. back in 1990 -- i guess the whole scandal took place in the late '90s, and the courts ruling was a bit more recent but i can tell you she was under oath over the e-mail scandal back during the clinton administration. i don't think that's been well understood. so i disagree with the current administration official

washington is a active in area of freedom of information act. we filed over 160 requests for instance with state department under the freedom of information act. we should approximately 20 times under the freedom of information act on issues ranging from mrs. clinton's ability to raise money through her husband and her husband confidence interest potentially at the state department. we report on at first with the "washington examiner" about all the money that she was racing and all the conflict of interest checks that really were not being done. she was able to get or her husband was, to her benefit and to the benefit of the foundation i think $48 million in money while she was at the state department from virtually everyone who wanted to get influence with this administration or perhaps influence with the successor

president to president obama. that litigation by the way is ongoing. also we were involved in much litigation over the guys who scandal to mrs. clinton of course notoriously have put out their along with esther obama and susan rice, per employee, the fake talking points that the benghazi attack was in response to a spontaneous demonstration caused by people upset by internet video no one had seen. and despite all the evidence to the contrary, publicly, they continue to put this one out. and it was designed in my view develop two presidential campaigns, the president's election came in at the time and her nascent presidential campaign. and so our document request and subsequent freedom of information act lawsuits did much to uncover facts about

benghazi, about the security mess there, about the intelligence that the administration and mrs. clinton and the state department actually was getting as opposed to intelligence they pretended they were getting. and intelligence they were getting shows it was an attack and they knew it was an attack from the get-go and yet in the middle of this attack mrs. clinton put out a statement seemingly to blame it on a video. that information just came out over the last few weeks, a result of one of our freedom of information act lawsuits. but the lawsuit was a follow on to another lawsuit we have filed that really blew the guy who scandal wide open last year. it was in that lawsuit -- the benghazi scandal -- showing the talking points of susan rice used to get out to the american people on the sunday after the attack on all five of the talk shows, sunday morning talk shows, but again it was a it wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was a spontaneous

demonstration resulting from the internet video. the administration said we are basing this on what intelligence folks were telling us. we have been investigating this and getting tight but after doctor from the administration. we got him talking points but they were for congress. they were false but they were for congress or and finally we get the documents as result of our foia lawsuit that shows it was the white house that send out the talking points to all the folks in the white house who are part of a political message regime of the administration and the plane he was out of the white house for what susan what race would be saying on been especially susan rice would be saying on benghazi that sunday. the white house have not lived in lying about what was behind the attack, but they been lying about their involvement about

that misleading information put out in the midst of the presidential campaign. and that caused speaker boehner that document had been over to judicial watch and there are foia lawsuits despite five investigative committees to the congress not being able to get it. that caused speaker boehner who was resistant to say thanks to judicial watch we're going to avoid a select committee. the history of that select committee resulted in some ways in the disclosure of this material. but let me just say this. when we got those materials out of the state department about the white house, those white house talking points, that smoking gun we were curious that no white house that no hillary clinton e-mails were produced. of course, with thinking maybe we did something wrong. maybe we didn't ask the right way or maybe we allowed the state department to search only one part of the agency and not

mrs. clinton's office. but just to be safe we filed another foia request asking for records from her office about this issue of the white house talking points. typical for the administration they told us they didn't respond as they are required to under law. we filed again and they gave us some of the documents we've gotten last time. so we asked what did you get? where did you search? and when we asked what did they search, that's what we got the justice department in the simper essentially telling us there are some other things, we may need to look at. and in february they told the court in a filing in that case we gave judicial watch everythingeverything we could act with such a there may be other things we need to look at. they didn't tell us or the court

something they knew at the time was that they had not searched hillary clinton's e-mail accounts or any e-mail account of other employees that were on this secret e-mail system. and by the way when they told us and gave us a list of the records they were withholding in an index a few days before they got that those e-mails from mrs. clinton, those 55,000 records, and then they give us this document and they never told us they had not even looked at these records. i don't think it's any coincidence that a few weeks after they kind of him and talk to the court that they may have to be of the records they have to search. but these records became disclosed via "the new york times" and what i believe is a friendly leak to "the new york times." it didn't help any of the courts this. i can tell you given the number of lawsuits we've had, we have close to lawsuits based on

representations the state department made that hillary clinton's records had been searched. so not only did they gain additional watch but they gained the courts whom they also assured that conducted a diligent search. now to be clear mrs. clinton began this cover up the day she came into office, and the seven-year cover-up ended this month. but when you're the head of an agency and you coming and you create e-mail solely in a secret way, solely to conduct government business, we just have to assume you're up to no good. i will defer to the lawyers here as to the nature of violations of the law. but think of the disruptions to judicial watch is 20 or so cases in federal court. we've got initially to one court asking for another hearing, another one to be opened, one of the cases that have been shut

down. we are just one litigant. think of all the litigation the state department is engaged in every year. pic of all the foia requests the administration gets every year. all of which have been distorted and unstructured. thing to the congressional requests for information subpoenas, that the state department had gotten over the years that have been related to mrs. clinton's e-mails would require a search of those records. in my view, there are significant criminal liability for mrs. clinton, if it was an honest justice department. congress is unable, it's shown it is unable unwilling to enforce its powers to obtain these records and overcome repeated obama administration obstruction as most recently evidenced in this state department/hillary clinton scandal. now we see the president himself taking steps to protect his e-mails from public disclosure

about questions from him being asked to his office, his administration which for 30 years prior to court action by both the bush and obama administration had operated as if it were under the freedom of information act. and george bush decided he didn't like the questions is getting about e-mails so he asked the court to say hey we are not covered anymore. the obama administration continued the argument and successfully, with successful at least in the appellate court in getting that done. so the administration still has these regulations out there've been six years after that ruling saying they were subject to foia. why after a few days later, why after only a few days later after, why after just a few days following president obama's disclosure that he communicated with mrs. clinton on the secret e-mail account and that frankly

first people first understood that he is e-mails too did the office administration of general counsel issued a set of regulations carrying of all the foia regulations that may or may not apply to the office of administration? why is the office of administration important? that would be the agency under the freedom of information act that he would be asking questions about in terms of how white house e-mails are being maintained and organized. so they cut off any possibility of any questions at least under foia as far as they were concerned of questions about the way mr. obama kept his e-mails. and by the way, we never received obama e-mails in any of the several thousand freedom of information act requests response we obtain from this administration. so there's some questions there. this is a scandal not just about mrs. clinton, it's a scandal about the state department, about the justice department, about the obama white house about the finish of congress to

conduct effective oversight. and it's a scandal about the lack of interest in the media and in the institutions, the government institutions that are charged with enforcing the law in making sure that there is at least enough of an element of accountability that secretary of state wouldn't dare do with mrs. clinton had done. so with that background i think i am going to turn over to our guests. we are very lucky because we've got a former foia official who has been in the justice department for many years is arguably as influential in setting up the foia system as much as anyone living today. a former prosecutor and a council who knows what it's like to ferret through prosecution and overcome obstruction and we have our judicial watch council

here, paul orfanedes, who is i don't know if he will take this as a conflict but probably the number one foia litigator in the country. but i'm going to go by order of appearance. i'm going to do backgrounds of all of our guests and then we will get their presentations and then allow time for interaction with our audience. dan metcalfe, in the center. dan joined the faculty of washington college of law in 2007 as a faculty fellow in law and government. upon retiring from a career in government service that begin the department justice more than 43 years ago, he now heads the law school, it's collaboration on government secrecy and nonpartisan educational project devoted to openness to government, freedom of information, transparency and the study of government secrecy in the united states internationally. but for more than 25 years he

served as director of the justice department office of information and privacy guiding all federal agencies on the interpretation and governmentwide administration of the freedom of information act and to supervise the defensive more than 500 foia and privacy act lawsuit in district and appellate courts. i don't want to know how many times you're on the other side in our cases. he also served as advisor for numerous other government agencies including dhs the office of director of national intelligence and the national security council. he testified on behalf of this group, the government, the collaboration on government secrecy before the house committee on the oversight and government reform. and the senate judiciary committee. i had the honor of testifying next year i recall. also joining us all the way at the end is joseph digenova it

was a founding partner of the washington, d.c. law firm which represents individual corporations and other entities for the federal court, congress, u.s. cabinet department and agency so criminal, civil and other investigative matters and he and his wife have done great work yeoman's work often pro bono on behalf of government whistleblowers. so you should be commended for doing nonprofit work in the key sense of the word. he possesses extensive experts both as a litigator and investigator having served as both as a u.s. attorney for the district of columbia what he managed more than 400 federal attorneys and as an independent counsel into clinton's passport file search manner. if i recall that was investigation the bush administration appointed officials over the rifling of mr. clinton's passport file. in 1990 said 1997 he was named special counsel by the u.s. house of

representatives probing international brotherhood of teamsters, it can usually have retained by the state of new york to investigate then governor eliot spitzer and the trooper gate matter. he also has extensive experience on capitol hill having served as chief counsel and staff director of the senate rules committee and counsel to the senate judiciary government shall affairs and select intelligence committee. so again we can't do better than joe's expertise in matters of investigation and prosecution, issues of government corruption. and paul orfanedes right next to me, he heads judicial watch's litigation department and has been with judicial watch says its inception. paul is a distinguished civil litigator, has argued in front of the supreme court and in appeal courts on behalf of judicial watch and its clients. is a director litigation, has been a spokesman for judicial watch is as well with legal commentary appearing in major media and print publication. in addition to managing the

day-to-day operations of the legal department, which those of you who are lawyers understand always an interesting thing paul is a member of the board of directors of judicial watch. he is as much responsible for the good work we do like folks like me who have the joint is coming out and talk about all the work paul is doing but without paul's legal expertise all the success that you read about we would not have. so he and his legal team deserve so much of the credit for our good work. paul graduated from the university of illinois in 1986 and received his jv from au another au connection, 1990. so our guests will speak for a little bit and then we will collaborate a little bit up here and talk amongst ourselves until we get some questions from the audience if we have done. i will turn it over first two

paul metcalf. -- dan metcalfe. >> the first is i became involved or in analyzing this current fact pattern with respect to secretary clinton at the request of some journalists who have purchased it in my academic programs, as has tom over the years. and i felt an obligation of reciprocity to try to look at things and apply my expertise. the second is that the expertise i have is under the freedom of information act and secondarily, i know a good deal about the federal records act, i don't claim to any expertise whatsoever with respect to criminal law and whether something is a violation of law or illegal in the way the average person on the street thinks of those words.

so when we talk about or at least when i talk about something being unlawful or in violation of law, i'm speaking about civil statutes, not criminal statutes for which there could be a criminal sanction. i will defer to former u.s. attorney joe digenova with respect to those things. as -- i'm going to base my remarks very heavily if not exclusively, pun intended on what has been admitted either by secretary clinton publicly at a press conference on march 10 or on her behalf by her counsel and her office and statements that have been issued. i'm going to suggest at the starting point for looking at all of this would be the first week that she was in office in january of 2009. at least four times one when she began to does not a second estate, too when she departed

for years later in 2013 three, when she did whatever she did do in 2014 in response to the request that came from the state department, and for, currently what she is saying or not saying after press conference and any other remarks that i made on her behalf. but at the outset in january of 2009, she would have, as a new secretary of captain agency, or even as new agency had more generally, have a briefing with the top administrative people at her agency. very likely although i don't know this for certain on personal knowledge, it would've been the undersecretary for management department of state perhaps others and they would've covered the basic use to send those, the ins and outs of administrative things like federal ethics standards, the requirements of the federal records act the freedom of

information act, the privacy act and procurement matters and things that are like that. and evidently out of that meeting or series of medications again, i don't know for sure exactly how that went it was it developed, will put it that way, that she began to use a personal e-mail account exclusively for all of her official business. that's something i will say right there is a -- is atypical to put it mildly because the rule and the long-standing practice under the statute the national archives and records administration implement a policy and practices is that it is not absolutely prohibited to ever use a personal e-mail account in the conduct of official business. yes, if you're a busy suggest

that you are responding to crises around the world in the middle of the night and to reach for your device or a device, and it's a personal e-mail account or that's part of that device no one is going to come and tell you, stop you can't address the problems of the world and represent the united states because you're holding the wrong piece of equipment in your hand. and,and they did the national archives and records administration recognizes that. the federal records act as a practical matter allows for occasional use of a personal e-mail account under exceptional circumstances. and it does say beyond that but when that is done on an exceptional basis, then the official or a staff assistant as likely would be the case, has the responsibility to take that the communication and transmit it is a good forward it i think in the form of electronic mail into the state department recordkeeping system where it would've been located otherwise. however, secretary clinton says

quite clearly that she did not begin to use or ever use and unofficial gmail account, an official state department e-mail account. she used only the personal e-mail account. and moreover, she never during her tenure took the additional step in any instance, as there as i can tell from the public record, with respect to any of her communications. in the next aspect of it distinct but related, is that rather than have her personal e-mail account be handled, for lack of a better word, through an internet service providers such as say google or yahoo!, she instead made use of a private server at her home. so that meant that during the four years of her tenure, all of her official communications were

outside of the official channels of the state department, at least at her and as the sender or the cindy, the recipient, and recited purely in her personal control over property ownership, if that's the correct legal word. and then when she left the department in 2013 it's commonplace for government officials, especially high level ones, to special attention paid to them particular attention paid to them for purposes of records management and archival activities. i had it even when i left as a mere career appointee at the es five level so that a proper elimination is made between what's personal and what's official, come and then even within the official category

what is a record and what is a non-record. the whole point being, somethings will be preserved for posterity the archives and some amount. that apparently did not take place. then what happens in 2014 according to secretary clinton and statements have been made on her behalf is that she was responding to this special request by the department of state, and it's a little bit fuzzy perhaps exactly what that was all about but nevertheless she undertook the step of reviewing or analyzing or dealing with they did that's a better phrase to use the e-mails that were on her personal server. and i'm going to use round numbers here. i think she says there were roughly 60,000 e-mails, not to be confused with pages that different unit of measurement. we could have an apple or an orange on the roughly 60,000

e-mails, and of the 60000 it might've been 62 roughly 30 or 31 were deemed her to be personal in nature and 30 or 31 were deemed by her to be official in nature and that she then took action with respect to what was still on the official site of her elimination and if that amounted to 55,000 pages from roughly 31,000 e-mails, and she produced that document in electronic form with any metadata that might surround that, or ability for it to be searched sufficiently for for your purposes, for example, but she sent that and he perform to the department of state leaving the remainder, which she said at her press conference on march march 10, were destroyed or deleted, probably the better word she used, and now the question becomes well, there's deletion, there's deletion.

with a completely deleted or were they completely destroyed? anna eshoo is a fairly saying or it is said on her behalf of a house committee or subcommittee that they were indeed deleted in their entirety. now, what this amounted to is a founding is not an outright violation of the federal records act requirement, because the federal records act basic access to all agencies and all federal agency employees, hey you have an obligation to take some steps to preserve things for posterity, okay? and you can't preserve something that doesn't exist to begin with, so the first obligation under the federal records act is to memorialize agency action. back in the day memorialization meant creating a piece of paper and the question was would

something that describes action that took place would it be reduced to writing so it could become a better record and possibly would be deemed appropriate to be preserved for posterity by the national credit card archives of administration? nowadays with electronic now that is himself the very vehicle of agency action. it's not just the memorialization one step removed. it's how in part business is done. and what she did by not just using her personal e-mail account in an exceptional case on top of the official account but when not having an official count at all, she acted utterly contrary to the federal records act. and, frankly, when i first looked at it i couldn't tell for sure, i had no personal knowledge, just what i thought made sense, as to whether the

state department had contacted the national archives folks, the experts of governmentwide responsibility to oversee the implementation of that just as i had at the justice department with respect to the for you. but i have since learned that no such conduct was made. and conduct the archives have sent a formal all use the word request to the department of state asking for a report on the lack of a better phrase, how the hell did this all happen. i don't believe there's been any response to that but i understand why the archives has me that quote-unquote request. now we come to the freedom of information act. as you may know it's not unimaginable that there could be requests made to the department of state under the freedom of information act that could be subject to a request that by their nature could logically encompass e-mail communications at that high level of the

department. or, and that's probably, this is probably more to the point for present purposes request a specifically asked for her e-mails quote-unquote, which, of course, could mean e-mails farber as the sender or two for as the recipient. and from what i gather there's been a resounding silence with respect to focus on or attention to that, which is consistent with the fact that if you were the foia office of the state department and you're trying to respond to such request in 2009 10, 11 12 13 to go up to the sector's office and said we had this request and give it its nature we need to search through secretary clinton's e-mails. the answer would be that won't take very long because there's nothing to search through. we don't have any of them as sender or recipient at the most would have is if she said something to so else at the department that person as

recipient would have that but as a practical matter, that's not a search that is least viable under the freedom of information act. so that's what i prefer to her regime so to speak as a prescription for blatant circumvention of the freedom of information act. i suppose the other ingredient i should add on top of that i've been very careful in how i phrase this publicly, is because i worked on some quote-unquote scandals during the administration. i stopped counting at number 23 more than 2000. anything that is regarded as a scandal or controversy has records pertaining to that. so then becomes a legal issue a legal policy issues to what will happen with respect to those records. will they be given to congress? will they be made public in any other way? will they have to this update to subpoena from disclosure and civil litigation? and having worked on of those and i don't profess to have

don't every last bit of every last scandal or alleged cover up, i know enough to know that secretary clinton indeed had knowledge of how the freedom of information act works. i worked with folks in the white house, including briefly cheryl mills on related matters and there's no doubt that she and my mind at least based upon my firsthand experience that she knows full well, knew full well exactly how it all worked and what she was doing. now, i'm going to suggest to you before i talk on too much longer out a way of looking at this consistent with what i said about the old-fashioned paper form and then the e-mail form is to imagine that would the corpus that everyone focusing on here is, isn't he perform. just for a moment imagine all of these e-mails, every e-mail that

she either sent or received including attachments, during her tenure, that they were piles of pieces of paper and they were there on this desk right here. i'm going to suggest that are at least eight files on this desk. the first would be the outgoing e-mails that she sent to people in the department of state. and, indeed they would exist at the state department at the recipient level, so to speak and the subject to foia request that could never adequately searched given the practicalities of trying to figure out what's what in that respect. the others would be teaming occasions from other people in the department of state. snores state department people piles one into. the next file would be people who would be better of with but not in state. she's fast and loose on that at her press conference. she had attended both ways but

she did say there were other federal employees at other federal agencies save the department of defense who at least recipients, if not centers, cuba. so that is piles three and four. sender, recipient, federal nonstate. then the third set of files would be recipients or senders from her, people exchanged e-mails with her or at least send something to her or received something from her who were other people, not feds state employees, u.n. employees, other people, whatever that means. when she had a press conference she placed emphasis on the fact that the vast majority of her recipient can her correspondence world within the state department. well what about the minority? that's piles five and six right there. then i'm going to suggest that

seven and eight are what she is determined to be personal. things that she sent, one file. things that she received another pile. i don't think anyone doubts or doubts there are some things are that are properly in that category. it's unfortunate that it was on a personal legal account that also handle official business but that is entirely legitimate. it is nothing per se suspicious or bad about that. although one could say that perhaps if 50% of her e-mails were personal, i know when i was a government official and i would have some personal e-mails, my wife would say, are you going to be late again tonight? get him a case about that when reading some of her lunch, that was not about 50% of my e-mails. how it got to be 50/50 in her case, would provide some basis for suspicion right there. been there's what i call the mysterious ninth pile.

i will just leave you with that thought. what would the ninth pile be? well, reportedly commented on going to be clear say what i'm about to tell you, i don't know firsthand. i only know what i've read online and lord knows you can't believe everything you read in newspapers. that's even true about reading everything you read online. but it has been reported that her three top aides especially cheryl mills, use either her personal account, and i don't know this for a fact at all or their own personal accounts at the state department where they communicated with one another. and i would suggest that that is a distinct potential pile that ought to be a matter of distinct focus and concern in this case. and i say this by the way just by with concluding statement, i have no ax to grind with respect

to hillary clinton. i'm a registered democrat. i'm a self-described liberal. i don't even use the word progressive. i didn't get the memo when that change. i'm a liberal, okay? i have amazed some people saying if she's a democratic nominee i'm going to vote for her i'm not going to vote republican. i'm just calling it as i see it under the law. >> well, thank you, dan. it's good you're retired because i'm sure the justice department would be unhappy with your analysis if you are a current employee. >> i was somewhat constrained in the past that you would be surprised a candid i was even before i retired. >> thank you. we could do i did that it would do much better in that very careful analysis and very informative and accessible analysis of the issues you. joe digenova is them as i said,

in my introduction, he is a force to be reckoned with on these areas of law and scandal in the sense of how our institutions of washington respond to evidence of violations of law by high ranking government officials? the -- his experience is hard to match in that area so we are very lucky to have his presentation. >> thank you tom. one hardly knows where to begin in this matter. the vast array of targets for legitimate inquiry is truly astounding. after 30 years of increasing accountability transparency and openness this incident

involving the secretary of state e-mails have stopped the clock on accountability. this is the end of the road for all the people out there who care about getting information from their government. as someone who has investigated organized crime, espionage, insider trading and a host of other things and conducted congressional investigations of the teamsters and other things the basic facts in this case try out for a formal investigation under the law. not just by congress, but by the department of justice. let us take a look at what dan just said.

what you have here is a brazen, brazen decision to prevent the disclosure of public information to the press the congress, the courts, and the american people. it was a deliberate planned legal strategy from the beginning of her tenure as secretary of state. and i will ask this question to both hand and pull as a rhetorical question -- dan and paul as a rhetorical question but i don't think it will be. what if, in fact the department of state from day one was the one that put the server in? and i think they did. and they have known about this before they ever told anybody about it.

i believe that will be proved, and i believe it to be the case but i don't know it yet. now investigation and they do them in the process of it. i'm going to come back to the department of justice in a minute. .. to make mistakes. you give them a rope.

and one of the ways do that is, you issue subpoenas. you don't send letters asking for information. you send subpoenas which have the force of law. in a minute i will explain to you why that's important and give you an example from our teamsters investigation in the 1990s. the reason you send a subpoena is that it creates a legal duty. an obligation to comply, whether it is to a committee to a court, or to a grand jury. or in a civil case. where you are asked to produce evidence in a civil case. we'll get to that in a minute. the house committees, with the limited exception of the house oversight committee armed services committee with buck

mckeon, ed royce, foreign affairs, mike rogers, intel conducted, three of the most incompetent, unsuccessful, and unproductive investigations of a major public policy question in the history of the house of representatives. it is hard to describe the incompetence incompetence that led to the fact, which we now know to be true that none of them not a one of them knew that hillary clinton had a private email account from which she conducted all of her business personal and public. can you imagine three committees, and a fourth conducting investigations over a year-and-a-half period, and none of them knew that she had that server. you can not imagine the

conversations that are going on people in law enforcement and outside of law enforcement and people who used to work on permanent subcommittees in the house and senate about the incompetence of the republican investigations. it is staggering. it is also the reason that mr. gowdy's committee exists, because the speaker finally discovered that things were, i will be kind amiss. in the digging that was going on. now i'm going to tell you something about this server and the attempt to get it and what you do. when you're a prosecutor, you don't have a problem. you have search warrants, you have subpoenas, you can get stuff. when you're in the house, it is not same. you may be a public grand jury in sense of any investigating committee. you can not arrest somebody. although the house does have authority to arrest someone and

put them in the well for contempt but that hasn't been done since the 1800's. i may urge them to bring it back. the powers to exist to investigate, generally are pretty powerful. you can go to court and get contempt, you can litigate the issues but it is not the same as a federal prosecution. now, you do have options though. and you can make a problem exist in a bigger way. first of all, you have to issue subpoenas which those committees didn't do until the very end of their investigations, which was an embarassment and a mistake. i will tell you what we did in the teamsters investigation in 1997. we were investigating a corrupt union from top to bottom, run by ron carrie. it was outrageous what was going on. so the congress decided to hold hearings. we were retained to be special counsel to the house of representatives by speaker gingrich and we began an

investigation. by the way, the process ended with carey being thrown out of office actually reform president, james hoffa being made president of the union by election and he has been reelected several times. in the course of our investigations we discovered that the teamsters had recorded their meetings of their board and we wanted those tapes. so we subpoenaed them. at the same time, we were conducting an investigation the u.s. attorney in new york, who was then mary jo white was conducting a criminal investigation of ron carey and the teamsters. the teamsters general counsel called miss white, said she had gotten a subpoena, he had gotten a subpoena he, the general counsel of the teamsters, had gotten a subpoena from the house. and for their board tapes and i

wondered if he could deliver those tapes to the u.s. attorney in new york so that we couldn't get them. and she said that would be fine. and, they did. they delivered them to new york all of them. several years of tapes. when we discovered that, we called the u.s. attorney in new york and said, you do realize that those tapes which were handed over to you were under subpoena by the house of representatives? they said yes, well, that doesn't matter. i said would you please turn over the tapes. and they said no. all right, we'll be back in touch tomorrow. went back to my office. we had two former fbi agents, sent them to new york with a forthwith subpoena. what is a forthwith subpoena says, give it to me. it means you turn it over right now. it is not a search warrant but it is just as good under the law, because if you don't comply you better have a good reason.

a forthwith subpoena in the house of representatives, first one ever issued by the house in history. it was delivered to new york. the two agents delivered it. called the u.s. attorney and said will you turn over the tapes? they said, no. and i said, here are your two choices. you can turn over the tapes, to the two agents who are in the outer limits of your office, or tomorrow morning on the house of representatives, you will be held in contempt of congress. you make the decision. you have five minutes. we got the tapes. what in the world is at that the house not doing about this server? the notion that they have to wait the evidence theoretically has already been destroyed. according to the secretary and her es timable lawyer, david kendall, all the emails, she deemed personal, whatever that means, have been permanently

deleted. now, when i began this, i said this was brazen. you bet it is. just think of what they have admitted publicly. she has admitted that she destroyed theoretically government documents under subpoena by the house of representatives, and under subpoena in civil litigation all over the united states. who says that the deletions were personal? her, her staff and her lawyer, based on her representations. that's not good enough. and what is going to happen now is, not only up on the hill, but in the case of all of the freedom of information act cases pending, ap, you name it, there will have to be affidavitted filed underwrote, by people involved in the process of responding to those subpoenas. these will be doj lawyers department of state lawyers

people who do records management at the department of justice and at the department of state cheryl mills and a whole bunch of other people including mrs. clinton. mrs. clinton, she will testify in a federal court. she is going to have to testify in a federal court. and so is cheryl mills. and i don't know whether or not any judge sitting in those proceedings will say that cheryl mills is quote unquote loathsome like chief judge lambert did about her. but there will be keen interest if judges are what they used to be why no one was ever told that a private email system was the sole basis upon which the secretary of state conducted business. let me say this once again. this is the secretary of state. this is not somebody over at epa who is working in a bureau on

trying to figure out carbon dioxide problems. this is the secretary of state an historical figure in terms of the operations of the united states government. if you go back and you look at benghazi, going to go there just for a minute, because i don't want this to be about benghazi. when the accountability review board did it, quote unquote investigation of the benghazi slaughter, they made it their business not to interview hillary clinton. really dig, weren't they? really digging. no, on their exit they gave her a report. mr. pickering, who was the head of that accountability review board along with the pathetic admiral mullen, said that they didn't think it was necessary to talk to the secretary. i think some federal judges, and

clearly congress are going to think it is necessary to talk to mrs. clinton. her news conference and representations of her lawyer both in writing and in verbally have now set the stage for a major constitutional confrontation. she has destroyed history, for anybody who cares about government, whether you're a republican democrat, you're an independent, you're tea party left or nutso she destroyed history. she destroyed history with no supervision, with no accountability, with no transparency. she had no right to do that. and there should be a federal criminal investigation going on right now at the department of justice. they don't have to impanel a grand jury. they can start what is called a preliminary inquiry. the evidence on the record at this point makes it very clear that in pending proceedings she took it upon herself, used her staff, apparently with the advice of counsel cheryl mills destroyed evidence.

nobody knows whether what she has was evidence until somebody looks at it. if she's right, and everything that she had that's personal and i bet you the clinton foundation is considered personal, has been permanently deleted, she committed a crime absolutely unequivocally committed a crime. if there isn't a department of justice preliminary inquiry, it is a disgrace. now, i'll just say this. all of the people who were lawyers involved in this who will have to produce affidavits and probably testify in court they better get themselves some good lawyers. this isn't going to be pretty. thanks. >> thank you joe. just if i could clarify mrs. clinton said there there was no classified information on this server in my emails although yesterday in a court filing the agency seeped to suggest they would be reviewing her records. a lot of people in the agency had to review her records and

reading between the lines was pretty clear they would have to review their records for classified information, which is only sensible. which raises other personal criminal issues as well for mrs. clinton of mishandling classified information. paul, we've had some really special testimony here from mr. did i again owe have. i thought it would be appropriate to close with, paul. however important joe's remarks are, in terms of what ought to be done, we generally know what will be done and it is going to be up, i think fair to say judicial watch to get to the bottom of this given the justice department's conflicts of interest here. congress's political hapless political lack of interest in doing the hard work that joe is suggesting. and put it charitiably incompetence and judicial watch

proved itself time and time again being able to get information and sort of accountability that joe has been imploring other entities to engage in and it is all through too often all through judicial watch's work here, if you could bring our listeners and participants up-to-date where we are, where we're going and your view as to and your view of mr. metcalfe's and mr. digenova's comments. >> sure. i thought it would be good to talk about some of what judicial watch has done in response to the may or march 3rd revelation about senator clinton's emails. we did what we always do, start our foiaing. we served at least 17 new foia requests in the last four weeks on the secretary, on the state

department foia requests about the server. what the state department knew about the server. if in fact the state department knew about the server. we have requests into the secret service about the server. they are responsible for the security at the clintons residence in chap pa waa. -- chappaqua. we sent out foia requests about the secretary's blackberry usage, iphone usage. separation statements. there have been reports whether she didn't do one. we're waiting on records for that. if there is no records response, that might indicate she didn't do it. we asked for all 55,000 pages of records. we asked for records about who knew what and when. so woe have about 17 requests outstanding, some who are in the hopper. some of those requests will start coming due in early april. you can bet there will be some

lawsuits filed in early april. we went back to our database of pending foia requests to identify requests that implicated mrs. clinton's emails. we filed one new foia lawsuit within two days of the revelation on march 2nd. we also, we file hundreds of foia lawsuits over the years. so one of the things we had to do was go back through our databases of pending and even closed foia lawsuits to see what this revelation might have, might, what effect it might have had on either pending or closed cases. we identified at least nine pending cases that could be impacted. and eight closed cases. now with respect to the pending cases, we've asked courts for status conferences. we reached out to opposing counsel to get information on what the state department is planning to do. one of the things they say they're planning to do is they're going to process all

55,000 records in response to, and make them available through foia. >> pages of records. >> pages of records. >> precision is important in this area. >> that's right. it is pages of records. but more importantly we've also asked the court to open some closed cases. we the state department had represented to us in some cases that they had searched the office of the secretary and, what is called the second secretariat. which is executive office for high level state department officials correspondence and records including their email. in some of those cases we were told that those offices were searched. now at no point were we told that secretary clinton's emails were not captured or that other high level state department employees like miss abidine were

not captured either because they were using this private server. we moved to reopen in one case. we're in negotiations with the state department about reopening a second case. we have others we're looking at for reopening. interestingly, the federal rules of civil procedure allow to you reopen a case if there is new evidence is discovered, if surprise, i think surprise is great fun. i'm not sure what it means. but also, for fraud, misrepresentation or misconduct. we moved the first case we moved to reopen, we moved under the provision that authorizes reopening cases for fraud, misconduct and misrepresentation. the state department didn't oppose that. interesting. now they claim they didn't realize we were moving under fraud and misrepresentation but it is plain on the face of our papers. but they seemed to be at least open to reopening cases to go back and revisit how these foia

requests were affected. that's just sort of a hands-on practical approach to what a group that uses foia, how it has been impacted, and what it has to go through in order to try to figure out how its efforts have been affected and what can be done about it. i'm sure we spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours since march first working on this problem. it has been a tremendous drain on the organization just to respond to mrs. clinton's decision she didn't want to follow the public records follow the federal records act. >> let me ask you start the questioning with the i've always said, if, catch me if you can presidency and the shell game that has taken place with these records. and seems to me the legal position as best i can tell there is a legal position is that well hillary clinton took these records out of the state department or she didn't have

them within the state department. they weren't in the custody control of the state department. so too bad if we didn't search them. we searched everywhere we thought they would be. foia doesn't cover this. so we have these now records we'll look at those and may give you some info but anything before that, we didn't have an obligation to search those records. what is your response given your experience into foia about that extraordinary claim the head of an agency can evade foia by simply removing records from the office? >> well as professor metcalfe referenced the federal records act applies to these requires records be kept, that document official government actions. those records, after they're made, they have to be processed stored, be available to be used. it is the head of the agency's responsibility to do that, to make sure records are being kept they're accessible, they

can be used, they can be requested. this notion that the head of the agency, the secretary, secretary clinton could con conduct this scheme where she would thwart all her obligations under the federal records act is not a acceptable response. the yes is -- question is what remedy foia allows? there could be other provisions that allow remedies. there could be criminal provisions. one criminal provision makes it a crime to remove a federal record from a federal agency without permission of the archive it. our position is these were federal records. they were removed when mrs. clinton concocted this scheme to make sure all the records were on a private server, not on the state department server. it's a theory we'll have to test when we get into the stage in court where we're talking about remedying. >> might depend on what the meaning of removed is. >> certainly we are dealing with the clintons.

>> ordinary one would think removed, once it was here at point a then something happened and it was taken to point b. here, it was not created and ever existing at point a. it came to exist only at point b but it arguably would be assumptional removal in the same sort of way. >> i think it existed at point a. it was on the computer, at least until it hit the send button. >> not if it was her private device and her personal account. not on any state department computer i'm afraid. >> those are great fact west get into discovery and foia requesting. right, depends on what the definition of remove is. it is not as clear as sandy berger, another clinton administration official, sticking records in his socks and walking outside of the archives with them. but it is analogous glories of old-fashioned paper copies as

opposed to electronic impulses. >> what strikes me, given my layman's understanding, with if you're head of agency and you set up a system to conduct all government business, that is a government account. and you may pretend you have personal emails on that but many folks conduct personal business on government accounts. not atypical in federal agencies. it is frowned upon, frankly it shouldn't happen. but, as mrs. clinton said, hundreds of people within the agency knew she had this account. as head of the agency everyone knew what was going on. so the idea, that she quote removed this any substantial way prevented them being subject to foia i think it is fair to say our goal is to recover any emails that have been deleted preserve those still out there and, make the make them subject to disclosure as the law requires. the justice department is conflicted on this. we have justice department

lawyers who i believe knew what their client was doing in the foia litigation in terms of keeping this material from us. they didn't tell the court. and, you know, we ran into this story with the lois lerner emails. that was foia litigation that i'm convinced by judicial watch that forced disclosure of the lost emails. they wouldn't have told anyone but for i think the foia process requiring that disclosure. and after those we were told those emails were lost, we pushed harder, against the justice department and in my view they continued to mislead the court, but, it became, especially since the court wanted more explanations they fessed up, well, they may be on email servers that are backs. there. >> there are other emails out there, and learn's lost emails became unlost very quickly. >> let me say this and i'm embarrassed that i didn't say it at beginning of my remarks, i am

absolutely astounded what judicial watch has accomplished in this arena. it has been truly wonderful to watch public interest litigation be conducted the way it should be. excellent lawyers good arguments and obviously uncovering some of the most important facts that have been revealed until now. but, i want to sort of go on top of what dan has said. when mrs. clinton decided, from the beginning of her tenure as a constitutional officer she is a constitutional officer that she would procure a server, and i now believe with the assistance of the department of state and with them installing it, in her home in chappaqua that when she did that, chappaqua became the department of state. those records were in fact in the possession of the united states government at that point. i am going to be fascinated, by

the argument she is going to make that they were not. she moved the secretary's office from foggy bottom to chappaqua. there is simply no disputing that. she made a decision that her business would be conducted on that server. that was her decision. it wasn't anybody else's decision. when she did that, she transferred federal records into that house. and into that server. they may very well argue, whatever they want to argue about it but i think they're going to a really tough time convincing anybody that those weren't government records from day one in her possession in that place and when she ordered them to be permanently deleted and nobody knows what she ordered deleted nobody knows her representations are irrelevant. they mean nothing. they are of such limited evidentiary value given the scheme that was worked out here, to deny access, and to deny

information, that this is going to be fun to watch. >> so that line of reason something basically twofold. that when she established or began using her personal email account, that was functionally an official email account and that when she involved her private email server that was functionally a government email server as a practical matter and there is some basis in law not to presume to add to your legal analysis and how you handle your cases, if you look at footnote 10 of the kissinger decision asking the court not only to apply footnote 10 but then to perhaps expand upon it a little bit, extend it a little bit further on this ex in this extraordinary fact pattern that would be supportive of what what i was saying. >> you raised a people

interested in this area argument. >> so the kissinger decision was essentially a decision, based my understanding, is, how the government could get records from a former official who has arguably government records. my understanding of the kissinger decision, i don't know if this is the footnote you referenced is that it is kind of tough sometimes but it is not to say the court i think gave itself an out, that the head of an agency taking all the record of government activities, keeping them off campus, means the government, or even a foia request hears no recourse under law, am i right? >> footnote 10 basically identifies the particular fact that happened to be the case in kissinger, that the foia request filed by reporters committee for freedom of the press was received by the agency after the quote, unquote removal. >> right. >> and that raises the question which the court did play with a

little bit, for lack of a better phrase, as to what the outcome would have been had not been so. >> right. >> had the foia request been in place and perfected so to speak prior to the removal. >> let's remember what kissinger did. when his term was over, he removed his official documents. when his term was over he removed them, all of them. mrs. clinton started her removal of documents at the inception of her secretariat. she began with a purposeful action to conceal and eventually, according to her, and her lawyer, delete information which is presumptively public record. it is, in my view, what kissinger did is normal. he wanted to write his memoirs. he took the papers.

he gave bunches of them back but they existed. the difference is he didn't destroy any. she admits she destroyed more than 50% of everything that was on that server. if anybody thinks that everything that is official has been turned over, you're living in a dream world. >> well, just, you know, i don't know what the facts will show. i suspect she said the secret service is protecting this server, she was not so naive that physically protecting a server from being stolen out of her house was sufficient. and that if that was an accidental truth that this the secret service was maintaining this server and if it indeed was a state department server whenever she deleted those records, who in the agency knew that they allowed mrs. clinton to delete those records from a state agency server? who, the white house knew about this issue. why did they allow her to delete those records? implications here are somewhat are really staggering.

i can you can see why there you have the sensitivity and initially, smart democrats on the hill, not really knowing what all the facts were, they have been around the block people like senator feinstein and, i think even dick durbin came out and said just tell us what happened. mrs. clinton didn't read between the lines. decided to be truthful to those requests but, i think folks on both political parties understand there is a big issue here. we've gone over but i want to leave some time for some questions at least before we go. mark of "washington examiner" up front here. i think we have a microphone so folks can hear. so we'll take one of the microphones from here and dan and joe could share. >> we're fine. >> i want to go back to this, the meeting, the briefing that clinton got presumably at the outset. if i'm patrick kennedy, in that meeting, the undersecretary for

administration, and i say to her, you used the government email, and she says, no, i'm going to use my own what is, what are my legal responsibilities and obligations at that point to the attempt to insure or at least to memorial ize what happened in that meeting? >> well, this is a civil matter, so i will take it. and -- >> at the moment. >> for the moment, right. and i can only speak in comparison so what i know happened at the justice department every time there was a new attorney general routinely this sort of administrative meeting would be held one form or fashion sooner, rather than later. and i would dare say that the top administrative career official of an agency has the responsibility, a, to make it clear what the law and policy requires to, be more refined and say well, just because

you're not flatly prohibited from ever using a personal account doesn't mean you can always use a personal account. there is a lot of daylight in between the two. and, assuming the worst for this purposes of this question, that he learned in that meeting if he in fact was there and we're speculating okay? that she did not intend to do that then, i believe he would have had an obligation at a minimum to contact the people at the national archives and records administration who hold the statutory responsibility for overseeing and properly implementing the federal records act, up to and including the archivist of the united states, with the idea of the archivist, learned this development and would call the secretary around say, miss secretary clinton you just can't do that. it's not consistent with indeed flouts the federal records act. if on the other hand, he didn't

learn that or no one learned that, it was just stated to be should be done. she went away and did what she did on her own then the question would be, well, when was that learned and wouldn't that same obligation arise? >> which is the next part of my question. at some point it became obvious amongst people that she was using a non-government email. is there obligation at that point? >> i will cut them, those people, those anonymous people as recipients, i'm going to cut them a bit of a break so to speak because they don't know, as mere program people, they're not, they're not administrative people they don't know what took place in the meeting. so maybe they can assume, they're not supposed to be experts in the federal records act, they can assume it is okay. they don't have obligation to do otherwise and take action. it is really on the administrative people who have the delegated authority from the

archivist to make sure the federal records act is followed at that agency. if the records management people learned thereafter, yes, they indeed would have that. but if the assistant secretary of state for far eastern affairs learned that that would be a different matter entirely. >> let me add to that, if i might. your question is actually at the heart of the matter. mr. kennedy is a very important person in this entire scenario of records production and of policy issues related to record production. mr. kennedy is, one tough cookie he ruins peoples career for a living. that's what he does. he is an aparachik in every sense of the word. when and if he was the person who briefed mrs. clinton what her duties were, i can assure you it would have been a groveling presentation. the bottom line here is, is it whatever the duties were of a

whole bunch of people at the state department, they didn't perform them. i agree with dan you can't put the onus on this on the people inside the state department getting emails from hillary. they don't know -- as far as they're concerned, that is one email. they don't know where she is or what she's doing. at a certain point the information management people at the department know that she is not using an official email account, they know that for a fact because she doesn't have one. it doesn't take a lot for somebody to start asking questions like excuse me, madam secretary, but just how are you communicating with people in the department and where are those records? this is so staggering, in the brazenness of evasion of legal duty by everybody, at the state department, and especially the secretary, that it is, it is simply staggering. it is unbelievable.

and with a straight face, she stands up at the u.n., and talks about yoga lessons and laughs about it before a media group recently, and make as joke about her emails, and of course the media in the audience laughs uproar russly at this wonderful event. what she has done has undermined people's confidence in the ability to get valuable public records. her records were valuable. whatever you may think of her she was the secretary of state. that's a pretty big job. and she took it upon herself to change history. she does not have the right or the authority to change history and she did. >> and mr. kennedy is still at the agency, still is responsible official for records searches

and managing records and that separation agreement and the idea that there is a distinction between mrs. clinton personally, she is the agency for legal purposes here and there is no daylight as far as we're concerned between this current state department and mrs. clinton. this is state department responsibility and the folks there are as liable, potentially as joe points out as others. >> could i make one minor little point? because there are a lot of facts here that are undisputed, they come from secretary clinton herself or people that speak on her behalf but i don't know that for a fact patrick kennedy was in such a meeting. all i know for sure he might have been having surgery that month, could have been a deputy or two deputies or something like that. we really do not know for sure but the responsibility is in his office for somebody to take the lead on such an important matter. >> there have been several court

filings since this litigation, since this scandal broke and, i think we have all the lawyers here from judicial watch who have been involved. and i think i'm correct in saying, the state department has yet to disclose to us, when they became aware of these accounts of mrs. clinton. >> also, i agree completely what dan said about not knowing who it was but here's better question. how about if she didn't get a briefing at all? i'm going to tell you something she didn't. she didn't get a briefing because they treated her exactly the way thomas pickering of the accountability review board treated her, you don't touch her. you don't get her angry at you and cheryl mills angry at you by asking tough questions. you treat her like a queen. she get as pass. she doesn't have to do anything. i would be amazed if she got the traditional briefing that other secretaries of state have gotten when they came into office. >> right. >> they probably would have given it to mrs. mills. >> i'm going to agree with your

speculation in one respect. i happen to know first-hand there was an attorney general at the justice department who was treated not unlike that. so that makes it a little more plausible it might have worked there and that was alberto gonzales fonz. when i deposed him for six half hours in lubbock texas on his knowledge of the public records act, that became painfully clear. >> one last question here. >> seem to remember the department has category for lu, limited to official use something like that. it is above unclassified but elow classified. -- below classified. i'm wondering, some of the daily emails, with the department if they're not classified, they would probably be this lou category like official use only. i'm wondering does that, does

that make some difference on the security or lack thereof of this server up in new york? >> well, having some fa lam lairty with classified information that i wrote the memo in 2009 that started off on all that, i do know the state department uses at least two such designations, what is known assad dough secrecy realm. one is, called no form. the other is no dis. might be for official use only or something like that as well. what it has to do with labels that are attached to records most easily in the paper realm that call for safeguarding and special handling. your point i think is a good one. i touched on in the "politico"

magazine article i wrote a couple weeks ago. even if nothing on her server was classified, which is what she said, for all any of us in this room know is entirely possible, it was not reviewed for classification, which is another matter, but even if that's so, it is very, very hard to be believe at least some sbu sensitive but unclassified information of that level that was there for which a special handling requirement would have been warranted under how the state department ordinarily operates. >> well, if we take mrs. clinton at her own word, that this server was private, it didn't have the security requirements that state departments servers were, imagine the types of information that would be left on equivalent of a internet park bench by mrs. clinton as a result. you have classified information potentially. personnel information potentially. personnel issues are presumably part of her handling, part of

her day-to-day duties. some of her personnel files are on internet park bench. some of unprotected files are internet park bench. some information from abroad are on the internet park bench. maybe sources that need to be protected are on that internet park bench. maybe private information of corporations doing business with the state department are on that internet park bench. maybe security concerns about benghazi and or security issues related to other diplomatic facilities are on that internet park bench. you can imagine those who would be interested on that. so you have all this information that is the agency head, she is supposed to protect. and in protecting that information she is protecting other people in the agency, and citizens outside of the agency. and, other government officials outside of the agency both here and abroad. so there are a lot of people that have been harmed by this misconduct potentially if this was not secured as it was supposed to be.

so this is a, this is why you get the reaction that you're getting from joe digenova. as paul pointed out we've been gamed as well but we have access to the courts. we have got great lawyers. there are a aot of people who know they have been gamed out there who don't have access to the courts and probably never get justice by this i will close on this note. you know as i said i think this whole case was broken open because of our insistence on getting information from mrs. clinton and her office about her involvement in the benghazi scandal. and we talk about the benghazi scandal as if it is just a political issue. but it's about whether or not four americans were died unnecessarily, as a result of decisions made by mrs. clinton and the obama administration, both in terms of refusing to provide them security that was requested, security that was pulled out eventually, and then once the attack began not going to their aid.

so there are people who have died that need to be vindicated. that is why we are investigating this. and the lack of, the failure to go protect those people, the failure to provide them security, and then lying about what happened for political purposes, has really decimated the morale of the military and other civilian personnel deployed overseas. because the compact has been, that if things hit the fan the government will be there to save us. we were investigating why that compact was torn asunder by this administration. this is what we uncovered. and in the light of, even after all of that, even after all of that became public and controversy, a select committee asking questions, this person hillary clinton, deleted all of her email by admin mission of her own lawyer. really incredible this is not the typical political scandal. there were no dead bodies in

watergate. >> can i touch on one point with respect to the word delete. that is recent development of friday of last week, when i believe the phrase used by the gowdy committee or subcommittee is that he he heard from david kendall, that it was wiped clean. i'm told by my technical experts, which are largely my computer security daughter who works for google in california that traditionally, in the olden days to wipe something clean you would degoes it. electromagnetic fix. or mechanically take a hammer to the darn hard drive but that now adays, there is software, especially something called kill disk, aptly named perhaps, whereby it is approved by nsa if you run it three times over, it will sufficiently overwrite what is there and i'm told that is everything, not just the text of the email itself but the

metadata surrounding it and server logs. if she did that, if she took the extraordinary step, perhaps it would all be gone but then the very taking of that step, might be a basis for inferring intent that would be more in joe's area as to what she was taking great -- >> i hope you didn't give her any good ideas dan, with that. >> let me say one thing factually about benghazi. really important for people to realize this. this is why patrick kennedy is such an important person. remember who he was. all of those african bombings during the '90s, he was the guy in charge of security. he got promoted after those disasters. on his during his tenure to this day, during benghazi, ambassador stevens wanted security increased. he would get 38 people. he wanted more. the country was a disaster. you know what kennedy did? he reduced it from 38 to nine.

there were nine security people in country. that's it. >> as i said, we were just obtainedded these records about mrs. clinton's top staff cheryl mills, her executive assistant which is an ambassador rank in the state department. it is not what we traditionally understand an executive assistant to be. he is given he had the rank of ambassador. what did they know about these emails? and there is no doubt mrs. clinton was, her top people were being updated about the truth of what was going on in benghazi as the attack occurred, yet they put out that false information. so i think there is, what is there to hide? there is a great incentive not only on benghazi but on her abuses her office to raise money for her political operation at the foundation, basically to launder money into, for her personal benefit. is something that would be of

significance. as i said, this idea of personal versus official records i think is one that you have to take their explanations with a of salt. i'm pleased to say, that paul and our litigation team here at judicial watch are going to be, raising these issues with the court. and various courts. we're set we're already before two federal court judges. we'll be shortly before a third. and we're prepared to go to other court judges. there has got to be accountability here, and i would encourage those of you listening to ask their members of congress, why aren't they doing what judicial watch is doing? why aren't they hiring judicial watch or joe digenova do a special prosecution of this scandal? why is the justice department continuing to do nothing and arguably impede further information gathering about this scandal and acting as a

co-counsel, it looks to us, for mrs. clinton personally in the litigation we're currently involved in? it is getting worse, not better for mrs. clinton. the media will try to move on to pretend it all politics as she announces her run for presidency, but running for the presidency shouldn't make you be immune from any serious accountability under law. that seems the way it works in washington and we're going to change that through our litigation. that running for high office, doesn't place you above the law. and, mrs. clinton should learn that and certainly the agencies at the state department shouldn't, both at state and within the white house itself, need to start paying attention to their obligations to the public interest as opposed to political future of the democratic party which is where i think i fear it's going but i just hope there's an honest man in the administration or honest woman says we're done.

we're going to let it all hang out. there is no harm in coming forward and being forthright to the courts and to investigators but to what the continue the cover-up which is ongoing in my view really, shows you what we're up against. and, going to be, if congress gets its act together, if the justice department finally gets its act together. hopefully a federal court judge is one upset to bring some of these folks before him or her and ask them questions or allow to us ask questions really could, work wonders, so, we're prepared to work hard. we appreciate the work here, paul obviously at judicial watch. mr. metcalf, who tried to provide honest analysis of what the legal issues are and what the facts are based on its experience. >> i only care about good government, rule of law. that's where i come from. >> he is available at the washington school of law's

website and is collaboration of government secrecy. joe digenova has been doing yeoman's work in this area as well. i hope more people pay attention to his analysis and congress's needs to really refigure and restructure their, their investigations and how they go about and conducting oversight because, although we're happy to do it, really outrageous we're doing the job of both congress and the media just one little old judicial watch taking on the $4 trillion federal government. my gosh we need the help and congress needs to start doing its job. thanks for everyone participating. learn more about this and track the scandal at judicial watch.org. google joe and mr. metcalfe at au. joe, what is your website if you have one? >> digenova and sons.com. >> find out about their great

work. dan if you want to throw out the website, dan this is the opportunity. >> go on to google, my family's favorite website. my daughter works there. put in my name, metcalfe, with an "e" on the end and one more word secrecy. that will get you to my page among other things. >> thank you for your participation in the educational panel today. >> coming up this morning a conversation on biological and

chemical threat preparedness. we'll hear from former homeland security secretary tom ridge and former senators, joe lieberman and tom daschle part of a study group on biodefense. live coverage from the hudson institute begins at 9:30 eastern. >> this weekend the c-span cities tour has partnered with cox communications to learn about the history and literary life of tulsa oklahoma. >> woody guthrie is most famous for his writing of "this land is your land." he was very much more than that. he was born in 1912 in okema, oklahoma. so we're very proud to have his work back in oklahoma where they think it belongs. he was advocate for people that were disenfranchised. for those people who were migrant workers, from oklahoma, kansas and texas during the dust bowl era who found themselves in california literally starving. and he saw this vast difference

between those who were the haves and the have-nots and became their spokesman through his music. woody recorded very few songs of his own. we have a, listening station that features 46 of his songs in his own voice. that is what makes the recordings that he did make so significant and so important to us. ♪ ♪ ♪ this land is my land from california to the new york island -- >> watch all the events from tulsa, saturday, noon eastern on c-span's booktv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. next scott stossel after the atlantic interviews authors joseph o'neill and gary steinguard about their writing. this is 15 minutes. >> thank you, steve. thank you all for coming.

this is a huge honor for me to be up here with joe and gary because they are two of truly the best novelists working in english, maybe any other language today. i'm a huge fan of their work. gary you don't even know this, actually i was at southern festival of the book couple weeks ago in nashville and i saw you walking through the hotel lobby. i contemplated going up to you and talking to you but i was a little bit star and shy realize, i thought you would run away. >> no. i would run toward you. >> now i realize you're a captive audience, if you try to scurry away i have the whole audience that could tackle you. i want to get down to serious business. we have a lot of ground to cover in short period of time. i want to begin on couple lighter notes. gary, i was reading in new yorker, a piece you did in the last couple weeks about your book tour for the paper back of little failure, which i highly recommend to everyone. you noted in that you packed i believe 46 at at this van

tablets for your tour to combat stage fright. which anxiety i relate to. how am those tablets on your tour did you taking? do you have any left? and how many have you taken before today? >> today half a milligram of ativan i feel comfortable in washington. i think people are nice. most of you yourself are on drugs as well. [laughter] >> one other note of non-seriousness before we get down to serious business. i'm cognizant it has been a long day through all of you you sat through a lot of heavy-duty stuff. i want to make sure i keep you fully awake gary you written many times both in your memoir and some of your novels about the excessive hairiness of you or furriness of some of your protagonist. this is self-conscious preoccupation of yours. i will just say for the record, and maybe afterwards we could have a short list competition, i

would think i'm hairier than you. >> oh, my goodness. >> i have a full body, when i shave, become arbitrary where i stop. >> get it on in the green room. >> if we did that, probably the national zoo would turn up. >> i can't believe you're having hair-off an keeping me out of the conversation. >> so at end of this, we will have a hair-off and the national zoo will capture all three escaped chimps and take us back where we belong. anyway getting down to more serious business, i would say with regard to your respective writing styles and sensibilities, extremely dissimilar novelists. if you're looking for analogs from the pantheon of american literary greats. joe moore in the tradition compared to, particularly with never land, f. scott fitzgerald which is heady company to be in. narrators of both your novels,

particularly neverland have a nick care owe way voice. i put gary in tradition of saul bellow and early phillip roth. not because of your preoccupation with jewish themes but carnivalesque exuberance and wit of your writerly voice. >> i will take it. >> put in the russian tradition i would say, gary, you're probably more in the tradition of satirical absurdist gogel. joe with your restraint kind of writerly precision, more check could have or nabicoff. one place where you really do overlap despite stick shun and non-fiction, writing about immigrants and expatriates and what you call the immigrant identity crisis. in your debut novel, you have the main character of vladimir working in new york describe the immigrant's immigrant

expatriate's expatriate. enduring joke late 20th century unlikely hero of our times. characters in your book, books are expats and american in dubai, in your latest book the dog, a dutchman in the u.s. netherlands. i saw you quoted in a interview somewhere, joe, you don't have a home turf. so you have no choice but to float around on these post-national currents. . .

there i was trying to convince a jewish kids i was a german. [laughter] but what 10 years later i showed up at oberlin college a small college in ohio and being an immigrant was the coolest thing you could imagine. nobody wanted to be the heterosexual white male. so i got as russian as could be. i were the whole cossack thing. i tried to annex another college. [laughter] it was a really, productive. >> you have not annexed any other colleges? >> now, i have been. >> you came to america from

holland via turkey if i'm not mistaken. >> i am a permanent migrant. i was born in ireland. my mother is turkey. i grew up in africa and in holland namely. i speak french with my mother. in other words new york was there a good fit for me. i felt at home there. >> we are in washington, so it's a perfect place to ask this question which is what's the relationship of the novel to politics? you have both in different novels gavel in satire which is political go back to jonathan smith. in your book you, i saw you quoted in an interview it is i think speaks to your own political sensibility obama famously bought your first novel i think we news on martha's vineyard -- >> did he buy it a?

>> maybe they give it to them. just a couple of months ago someone asked you how did you feel about that? you said i felt uncomfortable with the whole obama thing. i'm sure it sold books. he's been in office six years and they're force-feeding people in guantánamo bay. it's automatic to have that name obama under book jacket. what bearing or relevance to novels have on politics? do you see yourself as a political novelist? >> you go. >> yes. i think novels are inevitably difficult but political content depends on the reader. asking political ethical questions than practically any text comes loaded with physical meaning. but i certainly feel like my most recent book this book is

set in the viacom is kind of an investigator, all sorts of physical things, how countries are structured and what that says about the job of american society as well. >> i think being from the former soviet whatever you get political. i just want to capture sort of the feeling of what it's like to be in these two giant countries, america and russia. i was privileged people born in one superpower the collapse and then superpower that is doing great. so if you like everywhere i go whenever i land in beijing they are like okay. [laughter] it's a very 20th century kind of experience that i've had. but apart me wishes i was just working in a burger king in denmark, and having a decent life instead of --

>> that's a good segue because the prospect of you both may be and all novelist someday working in mcdonald's in denmark. what do you think the future of the novelist is? >> philip roth a few years ago called the novel quote a dying animal anthony elaborate. he said maybe a small group of people be reading it. maybe more people will read now and now could read latin poetry but probably in about that ranged. elaborate and that it's because of screen time destruction. i was googling fff is a great probe but i found an interview you did gary coming decide who knows, maybe literature will come back some day. it sucks to be in the pothole of it all of the sudden. what is the future of the novel and doesn't have a? >> you have to take everything i say with a grain of salt. nothing to me looks good looks up. but i think we're at the end of

the. i think this is coming to an end. [laughter] writing novels, i mean. and long form text in general but i don't think, i know professors of english have told me i haven't read a book in a while because i don't have done. i read parts of books or reviews of books or text of books but it's hard to read an entire book. that's why the sopranos or the what has caught on so much because it provides a narrative that we all need. we still are wired for narrative of the watch it passantino instead of trying to absorb inside of the. reading a book is i have to into the consciousness of this guy and he us to do the same as men that takes effort although it's a mind meld technology. it's almost over. >> do you a great? >> i'm still try to get into the entering into gary's consciousness. mind meld. it's such fun to i know i agree

with all of that. i also think questions of money come into it which is to say it's just not lucrative for anybody to read at length or to get people to read at length. there are other technologies that means other technologies are overtaking that. all human activity is so connected to profitability now into what it just wasn't the case in my childhood, for example. it just seems to be kind of strange, become something invalid about reading a novel or a lengthy text. it's as if everything has to be sort of reduced to bullet points. >> so was the novel just a contingent time-limited thing from early victorian area to 15 years ago? what's next? >> i think the novel is contingent with the licensing. i think now especially coming to

the enlightenment or to a new phase of the enlightenment where information, depends on this. so, for example, news information now doesn't depend upon its actress of the it depends on his cell ability to ability to the market to the grieving novelist how to offer its contract with reality into the that's what goes on. that's not particularly valuable commodity anymore. i think that's where we track it in relation to enlightenment. >> it's nice when people made in the humanities every once in a while. that used to be a major part of this country, the liberal arts at the g.i. bill millions flocked to the universities. it meant a novel could sell millions of copies is to be difficult to read but that's over with now. >> if and when the novel dyes, you have a background as a barrister. you can go back to being a

lawyer. you say buy circumstances what else could you been but a writer? what will you do next? >> i like air-conditioning and refrigerator repair. >> with climate change? >> i'm trying to develop my sons love of refrigeration. >> i think i will join his company. >> if you need repair -- >> this relates to the political question what is the function of a novel? famously and over quarterly said poetry makes nothing happen. the same could be said of the novel. it's a question, is your aim when you're writing to entertain, to enlighten?

what's the function of the novel and what function can it serve that breaking bad cancer of? >> tough because breaking bad is really good. [laughter] >> and it's incredibly novelistic. the way these things are structured a really good show like the sopranos would delve into this maze of characters and then it has its own elements of war and peace. this is good stuff but the novel like a said before when you buy a book from one of us you're entering us for a while, living inside here for a while. that's a whole different technology. to see the completely destroyed to see play a minor role as it has been for us to take it is okay with me. half of brooklyn will come and it will be nice. >> i think specific technology that a novel offers insight into

subjectivity of human consciousness that we enter people's minds and tdk to the. i think even smart as television and i watch -- there always comes a moment where you think that's just stupid. that's just stupid. they have to move the plot has ago, they have to do something stupid otherwise the plot gets going. we're in a novel a literary novel, there's no real payoff for being stupid or pressure for being stupid. and, in fact you are penalized for it or it doesn't reward stupidity would even something as smart as breaking that you all these moments are taking place. kind of entertaining i suppose. >> does holding this make you feel better? >> it does. thank you for my need to share that.

>> would want to make you feel -- [laughter] this is a good year 2014. [laughter] >> we are running short on time and people always are interested to know trying to forget how to frame this how do you get your ideas for your novels? how do you develop your characters? what is your writing process and there's people, many writer friends who are, they write seven words a day but they are all perfect and there are those who spew out thousands of words. i'm a complicated one which is the worst of all. how do you guys work? >> just the whole work thing is not my forte. [laughter] you know, i actually think that

idleness is what i do best. in fact, if you look at my life as a novelist, if you spent a lot of time lying around going to the fridge. not even incidentally none of the stuff like on tv. barely happens. so i just sit there thinking and mulling, not mulling things over for a few years and often go away canada usually and write in two-week bursts and get the most done like that. >> and very briefly, you? >> and exciting incident that happened in the last book, i was in a cab and -- cab and the cab driver was drunk out of his mind and he was crying saying i can't feed my fellow, i've got to do america. i said you know what country is much easier? candida. and it was like if i could only live in a superpower. there's a book. >> thanks to both of you. thanks to all of you.

i highly recommend both of these books and all their previous books. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> more now from the washington ideas forum a from the atlantic. up next we'll hear from when a university president david skorton. >> well good afternoon. it's a real pleasure to get to know briefly but i hope a longer process david skorton from cornell. the announcement that you'd be the 13th secretary was made back in march. you won't assume the position until next summer, but has your thinking clarified at all since that announcement was made about trot adjectives you'd like to realize while you're there? >> not really but it's a fair

question. i am enthusiastic about it and very excited about being able to work at the intersection of culture and science. i am a doctor. sent my life in science and medicine but i think the humanistic disciplines art and culture, are unbelievably important and we are living in a stem oriented age because of it's a fabulous opportunity to work at this institution. that's a way of sidestepping a question but i really do not have specific ideas of what would happen yet i'm still going to the learning curve which is pretty steep for me. >> one of the things you did say which gave some of the in washington a bit of a pause was i think you're asked by one of my colleagues about admission fees at the smithsonian biggies at something i'll just recommit story to be pinned down on a specific question but i'm not aware of any aspect of a nonprofit or for-profit role that and have to take another look at the business models. that sounds like a door might be open. is, in fact, the door opened the idea of charging admission to? >> not as far as i'm concerned

but let me say that over again and try to be more clear. i think one of the factors aspects of the smithsonian is the fact that everybody can get in there, and, in fact, these digital inept enough to come to washington to do it thanks to the work on digitizing of part of the collections. i think that i decided to make it more accessible, but in washington one of the beauties if you can come and it's a very populous id and a very populist ideal. what it gets it and responsible maybe my fault, two different thoughts got conflated, was that business models of everything that depends on government funds i will have -- will have to be more creative. in universities we are in private public partnerships are springing up because of the reality of revenue. but now i have no intention of making those institutions less accessible. >> fundraising may be more difficult perhaps than for cornell. the bbc had a piece saying cornell was number six when it comes to the number of its

alumni who are billionaires. the smithsonian i don't think is billionaire alumni's. under the tenure, there was debate about where the line should be drawn when it comes to entering into private or commercial relationships for the smithsonian. in one case in particular was an arrangement with showtime that would've given the apparently exclusive at least first rights right of refusal over the usage of archival materials and objects. a lot of people complain about that, that it seemed to be taking a public resource and privatizing it. any sense from your work in the university where the red lines need to be for something like this smithsonian when it comes to those sorts of arrangements in the future? >> yes, a great question. let me talk about fundraising a little bit. the way fundraising works in most organizations, everyone i've worked out and i forgot a bunch of them is a parameter structure were many, many people give amounts accountable with

more modest amounts and fear give more and fewer give more and as you mentioned sometimes you're able to get these enormous breathtaking breath taking gifts from people with the capacity to do it. and i think the kind of gift. it isn't true for every nonprofit that raises money. and i'm hugely impressed hugely impressed that a system he has already raised, it was announced 10 days or so ago $1 billion toward the pain came -- the campaign goal of 1.5 billion. anyway, i think the fundraising will be different but i think it will be doable and i think a lot of people are supportive of it. but despite the fundraising and despite the very generous of money that comes from the u.s. government, there will be a push to find other what i will call enterprise type of funding.

and every nonprofit that i know about thinks about this broad range of revenue streams. i can't comment on the showtime contract. i never looked at it. i would become familiar with it of course when i'm in the subtle but i will say that defining where the line is legally and ethically in terms of what fits the feeling the ethos of the institution is unbelievably important. that will be part of much of. i will try to be open about and hope that people will comment on where they think the line should be gone. i can't say much about the showtime. i do think it's important to think about enterprise functions and public-private partnerships but it's got to be done in a way that everyone feels good about. >> the episode of controversy the smithsonian seems to be wandering into of course is cultural art issues. not so long ago there was an exhibition at the national portrait gallery called hide and seek that cut the current sector and a good deal of hot water. this was an exhibition of gay

and lesbian themes in portraiture. one i did in that exhibition was deemed offensive by a fairly small number of people but fairly loud protester raised and the secretary decided to pull it from the exhibition. i know you don't want to second-guess your predecessor but coming out of the university context where you've been quite strong about stressing the free speech as the over the civility question, do those issues will the transfer? can you run this smithsonian with the same emphasis on free speech as you try to do at cornell? >> well, yes, i think it's very important to do so. and i think in general the smithsonian does that. as you suggested i'm not going to second-guess what i'm sure was a very hard decision. i'm not going to second-guess my predecessor i-9 decision. i will say that as we talked about a few minutes ago as we

were getting ready i think creative activity of any stripe tends to foster controversy. recently the smithsonian came out with what i view as a bold statement on climate change saying that based on a lot of data and logical data, the kind of data that it looks as if the warming that is going on -- anthropological data -- that you can argue that is due in great part to human activity. it wasn't a logical a stable and that would've been wildly controversial, may still be in some quarters. i think whether it's science and certainly arts and in my point of view of the humanities very frequently foster controversy. so i think that we need to be able to embrace that controversy and be part of the cultural world and the science world and a way that makes sense, in a way that's done carefully, thoughtfully, but necessarily back away from controversy. but honestly i can't comment. >> at cornell you've been

willing to track a bit of controversy with your positions on immigration reform and other issues like that. when it comes to kind of cultural controversies let's say humidities, as the secretary of the smithsonian did you think you can say we need robust funding for the neh? can you be a public advocate for the humanities and that since? >> i've been pushing very hard as you are alluding to for neh funding for years and years. i've been very successful. feature i've worked on it the funding has gone down a little bit each year. got to the point where some of my colleagues at the neh said why did you go work on some sites on it for a couple of years so we can catch up last night i think it's a very important. exactly what i advocate for i think is going to be less important that i think calling attention to the fact that the humanities and the arts as well are very, very, very important. and begin the student oriented

age which is very understandable in a recession, and even though some parts of the economy has bounced back a lot we don't know the economy is not totally bounced back. i think it's fair to import we don't lose track of these disciplines. so yes i think it's important and i hope to go to work with and learn from the other leaders of the cultural institutions in washington who know many many times more than i know about the washington scene and about what flies and what works. but i think that the bully pulpit if you will the platform of the secretary should be used to point out the broad needs of the country in a way that's reasonable. and since i've garnered a chance to comment on it whatever public positions i've taken in higher education have been linked to higher education and link to something that i have some familiarity with. and as i've said again and again, you won't hear me talking about things in washington that i'm not correctly involvement and don't know anything about but i think arguing that the country should not turn its back

on the social sciences communities -- humanities and arts is important. i'm proud to be one of the authors of the report of the american academy of arts and sciences called heart of the matter that was released a couple of years ago. and that argues that the broad range of disciplines needs to be pursued, no matter what we are talking about whether we are taught the economic competitiveness, whether we're talking a placement for our students at whatever level. we have to think broadly and not just about the stem disciplines. this is a stem guy talking to you. >> in several interviews since you announce you become to to this and sony and usage this and sony in usage or chris regret regret at what has been about the cost and affordably of tuition at there. it also been a remarkable fundraiser fiscal year 2014 i think $732 million came in, of which only 30 million has been a marked specifically for things like student a. is the right balance is the real problem facing institutions like

cornell is affordability? >> this is a terrific question and don't you like how i crave your question? >> i will try to ask some bad ones. >> you already assess some bad ones. [laughter] in any case, in any case, i want to you that the broad abroad -- let's see how to put this exactly to tell me the last little phrase you're asking. >> look, 30 million is about -- >> disconnect between the rhetoric and the amount of money you raise, okay. i was looking for that. so let me think about it from two different aspects the first of all it is true and i've said many times in public and i'm glad to see begin in public now that my biggest single regret from two universities presidencies at the university of iowa and that cornell university is that i was unable to change the ballots were effectively between access and affordability are and at cornell

just an unusual place because a place with a big endowment, very few american institutions, about 100 of the 4000 colleges have substantial endowments. a little tiny piece of american education, of course an important piece. we are able to come for half the families in america half of the families in america can go to cornell and have no parental contribution and not borrow any money from me student loan. then at the other end of the spectrum there are people whose salaries or assets permit them to pay cash even for a very expensive education as an ivy league education is. but between this aspect of the socioeconomic spectrum between those that have the families in america we can help people who make too much to be considered need in that sense but don't make enough to pay for this especially if they have two or three kids in college, i didn't do a good enough job of

organizing that. it takes to parts. it takes some serious change in the cost matrix of the university, so it costs less to run. during the recession at the beginning i a limited two vice presidencies, took my salary down, did other things to reduce costs but that wasn't enough. the other end was to increase revenue. a lot of it was to wish and some was financial aid. let's talk about the other and that is the imbalance and how much was raised. if it cost roughly $50,000 in tuition and fees to go to institutions like cornell, let's call it 50 if a person wants to donate a scholarship in an endowment that would last for ever and in perpetuity allow a student one at a time to have a free ride through cornell, that's $1 million contribution that will yield now the earnings of about 50,000 a year and that's about the cost of going, a million dollars, a huge amount. but if another contributor wishes to contribute to a

capital project, construction project, and were fortunate enough to get $18 million or $100 million, or $200 million get that greatly outweighs the balance. the bottom line is that i'm guilty as charged. we somehow should found a better way and still need to balance shrinking the cost matrix and some of bringing more revenue in. and not basing a revenue increase so heavily on tuition which has been the most obvious lever to pull for revenue. so yeah, we need to keep pushing. when i went into people who want to contribute and don't have a specific idea what they want to do, like top priority is always student aid because of my own background. i didn't do enough either on the cost matrix side or on the revenue enhancement side. >> before we leave i just have to ask this is have to ask is visited who plays the flute and has done so on stage with billy joel and he said you don't have stage fright. >> i'll tell you the problem with all billy joel and since

were bragging about me which i like i've also sat in twice with winston marsalis. both apparently have lost my cell phone number. [laughter] and when i saw mr. marsalis recently i said, as people my age do call you don't write, i don't hear from you. i was going to be a studio musician growing up in l.a., and it turned out, much to my disappointment and chagrin everybody in l.a. was a better musician than i would. but i still do it as fun. i enjoy it a lot taking a video course from james galway which is very instructive. playing a little tiny bit as you were talking about classical music slowly, and i will make it very hard for you to ever hear what that sounds like. >> it's on youtube. [applause]

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