festival to hear from alan thorpe who wrote soldier girls the battles of three women at home and at work. and from and from the la times festival of books at 11:00 o'clock eastern viewer colin with ben shapiro. ..

very resilient country, and i think a much stronger country than any other major economy. and if you look at the challenges we face the country they are pretty stark challenges in the politics are terrible but i think that he would rather have our challenges than the challenges of really developed economy in any major emerging economies around the world. >> sheryl sandberg also talked with former treasury secretary paulson after the militant institute conference you can see the entire event at eight eight eastern overrun c-span. on c-span three

next, former capitol hill staffers that worked on intelligence oversight for lawmakers look at expiring provisions of the patriot act. the u.s. senate meet sunday to debate those provisions read from the center for justice in washington d.c. this is an outward and a half. we have two incredible panelists. i know that we covered a lot of the congressional oversight issue with the vice president. so on this one we are going to try to go a little bit more in-depth. my first panelist as doctor johnson who was a committee staffer and is now a professor of public and international affairs at the university of georgia. he served as the special assistant during the church

committee investigation and later the stuff the rector to the house intelligence oversight subcommittee in the first house and the budget committee set up after the church committee. he's had a career in both other staff jobs on the hill and was also the staff director of the commission. assistant to the chairman and the role and capabilities of the intelligence community in 1996. you could also say that he's written a book on intelligence that would be but that would be wrong because he's actually written these books, more than a dozen of them so we are very pleased to have you here with us. we also have diane who worked in the executive branch position at the department of energy department of defense and national security council and then spent 17 years as a republican staff member to the house select committee on

intelligence where she stayed until she retired in 2002. and many of us probably would not know her name but for a "new york times" article in 2005 that revealed the warrantless wiretapping program that president bush authorized after 9/11. diane was targeted with a very aggressive fbi investigation and threats of prosecution but i will let her get into more details. why don't we start a sort of from a higher level. some have argued that national security and foreign-policy or the foreign policy or the domain of the executive and congress should let the executive have free reign in those areas. what is the appropriate role for the activities and how does it perform a natural? >> this is a complex topic and i approach it with a great deal of humility and some of my

colleagues rely on me from time to time that the humility is well deserved. [laughter] i would begin by putting out we have teachers and a government that do not work and people have a picture in their head that power is most important and efficiency were the uc berkeley with john yoo mac. a belief in the national security the president ought to be the sole organ of the government basically. i much prefer and i think many panelists do with the model projected in the founding fathers convention that is often called the madisonian model, which believes that efficiency is not unimportant, but there is a higher value and that higher value has to do with preventing' from taking over the country.

so if you read the federalist papers 51 it is a printer on how the government should work when it comes to accountability. and if you walk into the library of congress wing named after madison, you will find on the wall a quote from him coming off the federalist papers that another document in which he says power as it must be in human hands is ever liable to abuse and that is what animated the founding fathers in 1787. they were not power oriented they were anti-power oriented. they understood the danger of power. today i think that most people who study this carefully adopted the madisonian model also there are certain people out there that believe the imperial or the unitary model. but those that adopted the madisonian model point out the

reason we need accountability is because it is not enough just to pass the law. congress has an obligation to show it being carried out properly. lee hamilton once said to me that accountability is all about keeping the bureaucrats on their toes. they served on both the house and senate intelligence committee and the senate intelligence committee and said that accountability is all about keeping the bureaucrats from doing something stupid. and there's a couple ways of doing that. one can review programs that have a kind of ex post facto review to it and looking at programs before they are actually implemented i think that's what we talk about when we discuss the commission of accountability. and to wrap this up quickly, the pattern over the years has been highly uneven. this pattern when it comes to

intelligence accountability to use the metaphor from political science about patrolling and firefighting. i mean wall make her his checking the light on the door monitoring on a regular basis. firefighting hiking to be coming when things really go wrong when there is a train wreck and you have to go to the rescue and put out the fire. and what i see being the pattern is police patrolling much of the time and i guarantee the difference is night and day but still not as energetic until what i call a shock to the system and by that i mean a scandal of some kind, iran contra were a terrible intelligence failure.

then suddenly lawmakers become very energetic, they jump on the fire trucks, they conduct the investigation, and this has happened five times, it happened on the church committee, it happened on the iran contra scandal and happened on the counterintelligence case and the mistakes that occurred with the wrong hypothesis in iraq. those have been the main things we've had. what concerns me is what happens in between the fighters and how we can avoid them in the first place and what that points to end the only time you've tend to have energetic police controlling is after the firefighting and they are aware of the importance of the accountability that then you go back to the gandolfo level, low energy police patrolling until

what madison would have predicted, the agency's abuse their power. they make major mistakes or they are engaged in a scandal and we have what i call more genuine accountability. so the question we need to address is how we can sustain the police patrolling in order to avoid the problems that eventually breakout. >> you sent your time on the executive branch and came over to the intelligence committee. how did you see the role and you changed from being in a community to being an overseer >> anybody that says with a straight face that the executive branch is extremely efficient has never served or isn't being honest. my main issues while i was at the national security staff were verifying compliance with arms control agreements and

counterintelligence issues related to diplomatic reciprocity in the soviet union at the time. the bureaucracy -- story in my career basically both in the administration and the legislative branch as they struggle with theocracy. basically do not want any oversight from anybody including the executive office of the president and they certainly don't want it from the intelligence branch i ain't from the legislative branch either and it's much easier for them to put off the legislative branch but we do the leave as it was said and the separation of powers it is fundamental and the founders did not say that foreign policy was exempt. you couldn't get approval in the

congress, but they didn't exempt foreign policy in general. i have to say that i came to the legislative branch determined to do significant oversight as i had been in the executive branch and the stuff in both places. i was known as a pretty aggressive oversight once the republicans can take our eye had the account first and insisted that they should compete for contracts and the questions were the way they were going in a number of areas it was very unpopular both. then i was assigned to the nsa. when i came to the nsa the general perception is that it was in good shape. after about three months i was

totally depressed. i thought that national security was at risk because they hadn't even begun to adapt and they had no real plans to do so. and that's when the telecommunications industry was changing extremely rapidly, communication security was also becoming an issue at that time. the time. and both of those are nsa accounts. so i was really worried and what became even more important was a cultural problem. focused not on the operations which both people had done on development and there was a considerable lack of engineering discipline, they were not used to building big integrated

systems anymore. they were one off little garage projects. and we had an enemy previously, the soviet union did change the telecommunications much. >> this is the irony for some of the capabilities that were related. [laughter] but anyway, so the other big issue to me was the complete lack of objectivity and evaluating the various technical approaches to modernize and these became in orbis issues. >> host: to be crisp and how did it work. did you go to the nsa or how was your interaction with the agency trying to get them to understand the problem is trying to get the

members to understand the problem? >> i was always at the nsa at least once a week or more. and other staff became concerned also. so both the democrat and republican staff were on the same page and we both began telling our members about this quickly >> and how was it received? >> i think one of the issues

here is the staff can have an awful lot of power. they were willing to go along with me with some marks as long as they were not too ambitious and didn't cut major programs and if they were willing to let me put in really tough language which didn't embarrass the agency much. but i was warning that the program was doomed from the start. i took one look at it when i finally came up with a proposal for the modernization program i asked them for their decision and they sent it to me and i read it and i called them and i said i want to understand this in my correct in seeing from

this paper what you want to do is take your own analog system and modernize it once again that is absolutely correct. it will never work. they can't believe it. first of all the old system was completely inadequate and how you build on the system that's already inadequate and taken into the digital age is just ridiculous. >> did you have a technological background? how did you come to understand the technology? >> crash course. >> and does the committee have an expert that it can rely on? or do they rely on the expertise? >> the senate did get some technical experts on board and some auditing people that they used. there is a problem with this because the real experts in the

system tend to be from the agencies that the problem is they of course have an agency perspective often if they want to go back to the agency that is a big issue because they don't want to antagonize them. if they want to go out in the contract world afterward, they also don't want to antagonize them because -- absecon it becomes -- there is sort of an often contentious even background to go along and get along. where do you get the expertise? >> one of the reasons i really wanted to have you on the panel is that i think that it's very important to understand these agencies are not monolithic and there are people in the agency's trying very hard to reform them from the inside and i know with intelligence oversight you've written quite a bit about personalities in how oversight

gets done. >> i really think that's true and if you look at these oversight committees, you will find that devotion to accountability very is according to the personalities. it's referred to for example he became the hero of the church committee staff because we would give him a thick briefing book and get them back at the end of the day with notations in the margins of things underlined and that was inspiring that someone was so interested and so dedicated to preparing for the next hearing. i would say generally speaking the first one i call the cheerleader and this is the person that has nothing but constant praise for the intelligence agencies and i personally think a lot of the praise is warranted. it's extremely important. they do a lot to help protect us. we couldn't do without them. so the cheerleader is involved

in devotion to the agencies. and again the american people need to understand why we are spending 50 to $80 billion another type is maybe the worst type of all. this is the person of his or her head in the stand beneath the sand that doesn't do anything. and to put a couple of names to this if i may come up with i think of as the ostrich, forgive -- forgive me for saying so but berry goldwater with the creation of the senate intelligence committee to begin with and one of those twists in history became the chairman of the committee and did very little until he became angry with william casey who misled him and that became a matter of institutional pride.

the cia was misleading the senate intelligence committee and he was not happy about that and then it became very energetic. put a name to cheerleader and i would estimate that about 80% of the members of these two intelligence committees are purely cheerleaders. one thing, for instance in his early stages he once said to me calm down about the oversight because we have had a lot of trouble having good relationships with the intelligence community. we've gone through the experience so we are going to be partners for a while. calm down. and so for a while i think that we have engaged in sort of cheerleading. a third category on my list is what i would call the -- i take this from bill clinton he said all economists are lemon suckers.

they would have nothing but bad news about the economy. in this case they see no value whatsoever in the intelligence committee and i think a little bit of daniel patrick moynihan who all of us admire in many ways. he was really over the top akin to his criticism in the cia. and then finally come and here is the model that i try to espouse, the guardian. this is the person that combines some skepticism that one might find in the lemon sucker category balanced off with some cheerleading as well. so many strikes a balance between the two. in raising children we try to complement and every word of them when they do well. if we are good parents they also criticize them when they are doing things they shouldn't be doing and this is what the guardian tries to do. an example of the guardian i

think of lee hamilton who played that role very well. so yes i think that personalities matter very much into the energetic guardians tend to be the police patrollers trying to prevent the crimes from breaking out. what we need on capitol hill on a lot of different things, but one of the things we need on the intelligence committee is more guardians and more police patrols. >> and your worst fears, through that they are not prepared. what happens next? >> i retired in april of 2002, but before i retired i found out that the nsa domestic surveillance program which of course they were not supposed to know about only four people in congress on the intelligence committees were supposed to know about it. so i immediately wrote memos to

the chairman and nancy pelosi explaining the whole thing to them, indicating where it was going which to my mind was very serious. it became clear to me that this was not a temporary thing it was to be a permanent thing. and also indicating that it was expanding in terms of the data to be covered. it was expanding rapidly. i found out that they had already approved it. it had taken off the civil liberties protections that initially had been built into it

and that was the u.s. person named until there was probable cause. then second, equally important, it was automatic tracking to the database and what was done with the data. obviously this would be a huge boost which is precisely i think why they didn't want it. so i argued above the minimum they could do. it would still be unconstitutional but at least we would still have some protection. and i went when i got nowhere on the intelligence committee i then went to other people in the executives were attempted to with whom i knew probably were cleared into the program and

they would say yes and nothing else usually that they would listen and i made the same argument to them. of course i knew it was originated at the white white house, and this was a big problem because there was nobody that could overrule. it went all the way to the top and therefore there are a lot of the avenues that you normally could take were cut off. i tried to meet with david addington who didn't return my phone calls. >> to the vice president cheney. >> and the one i was writing up the wall. and i had to wait for him for years. so anyway, so nothing worked. i did everything i could including a few months into retirement. i met with general hayden twice. he became concerned about my constant agitation and actually

called me and with the in with the obvious purpose of trying to shut me up and in doing so, he said i want to run this as long as i can. he said you can yell and scream and raise your arms all you want after if leaks and by the way every single person i talked to knew it would leak because it was so obviously contrary to all of the training that they had received and what they could and couldn't do. >> and the nsa there was kind of a mantra. >> every year they had to review the legal standards and to sign off that they have reviewed them. >> and it was due not do not spy on americans. >> right. >> said, you make all of these extraordinary efforts and then realize they are not -- there is not an option to go through. >> i tried to see chief justice rehnquist because there was a

hand from hayden that they may have gotten to him. i tried but i had the court who ironically told me she could not talk to me because it might prejudice her consideration of a future case. and in retrospect she was already breathed into it and of course a case in which only site has received anyway my main issue with her was going to be also -- and i think that if she had listened to me and had done it, but the capability is there do the automated tracking and give it to the court. i have a court review of that. i think they would have given a lot of power and we could have

avoided a lot of this. but anyway, everybody i went to listened silently and did nothing. so so i then retired myself as well as some of my own cadres including tom drake, who is here today bill denney and kirk ready decided that we would at least try to address the fraud waste and abuse that had appeared to become rampant at the nsa. the waste of money and the modernization process and the killing of programs that were much more advanced and appeared to be much cheaper, and more privacy protective. so we went to the department of defense and it wasn't independent and it was also

heavily involved in the modernization effort and used a hot line for the protection of our reputations. tom didn't sign the letters of find the letters that he sent, but he helped them from the inside. he gave crucial help because nsa did what eventually became an audit that went on for two and a half years. and it was so devastating that they still put forth the end all these years later it isn't a black hole. >> at the program does eventually leak in 2005. tell us about the fbi contact with you. >> while i had warned everybody that it would leak and they all agreed. and i couldn't be the power want it lasted and so i finally decided maybe i was wrong and the next week i opened up the

paper and there it was so at that point i was free my objections. when the administration started stonewalling the court and trying to get the whole thing taken out of the court that was basically my trigger and i wrote an op-ed that i passed through and they said no it's not classified and so i came back with nothing left. i contacted the committee and they claimed they could take the suit and i contacted the committee and i asked them for my nondisclosure agreement for a copy of it and i didn't get an

answer. now, one of the reasons may be because it was a very flattering to the committee. but i think from that time on the committee was completely in the league it appeared to me with the fbi and the administration. but anyway, so the op-ed by and then a reporter contacted me from baltimore and wanted my comments on this and so i told her what my objections had been and that they should be restored. this apparently was another nail in my coffin because when the leaks occurred in 2005 in "the new york times," i was immediately targeted as the likely weaker. as i said to people how dumb do

you think i am? do you think i'm going to go to everyone that i know and then leak it it is counterintuitive. then as it was revealed in the sentencing hearing, they never had any evidence. they pursued the investigation for five or six years with no evidence of motive or fact. they raided my home in 2007 at 6 a.m. in the morning at the same time they were raiding bill and kirk and add and later tom as well. and they were attempting to invite tom and or i. they eventually decided on tom because he had been much more involved. both of us by the way dave only unclassified to the reporter. and tom basically as i said

earlier wasn't a good government kind of waste and abuse category. >> and that investigation you said is gone for five years. do you have some idea that the investigation is no longer moving forward? >> the other four were result but they deliberately left me hanging so finally or initially all of us to try to get our property back because they told us they were not giving it back on the delete it or not, you are found innocent, and one of the many covers they claimed that i didn't realize before is that they can basically sees everything on your computer, all of your papers. >> and this has become unfortunately it has reoccurred. we saw during the torture report debate that the cia actually made a crime report to the department of justice accusing staff members have violating

criminal law. in some of and some of you are writing you discuss different areas of oversight. explain those and how would you describe this new era where there's such an attack on staffers? a >> i think if you look back from 1787 all the way up until 1974, which is the wide sweep of the country's history you find that intelligence is treated as an exception to the madisonian rules. that was going to be a special case because it is too delicate and sensitive for the normal accountability. but then with the church committee, we entered a new era which i call the uneasy partnership where congress and the intelligence community were going to work together.

and that lasted altogether with a bumpy road along the way until the iran contra scandal which is a bit chilling when you think about it because we had all of this oversight regulation to guide this partnership and yet it all fell apart. and again it shows you the importance of personality and towed. when jimmy carter was in office he said we are going to follow these regulations and obey the law. and i would argue when the ronald reagan administration came into town it was a much different tone embracing before cheney made it popular, the unitary presidency into that particular model we talked about before where congress doesn't really matter that much in their point of view. so we had a brief period that i labeled the era of distrust starting in the iran contra scandal in 1987 going up until

1992. so i called up the era of partisanship where the house and senate intelligence committee on every voter they have was strictly along party lines. that didn't happen in the earlier era with the exception to nicaragua goes the purpose as well but now everything became partisan. and then with 9/11, we entered into another which i call the era of ambivalence because even now republicans which tend to be for the community during these earlier areas they were becoming more skeptical about the effectiveness of these agencies. they couldn't warn us about the 9/11 attacks. they got to be wmd hypothesis from iraq so now you have some criticism coming from the republicans as well. and this latest area that you referred to which i think dates back to snowden i'm calling the

era of free balancing where republicans and democrats and the like are saying wait a second abb gone too far in the security side of the equation and maybe we need to move back towards the liberty side. you see that most vivid and the boat on the freedom act. i made two overarching comment to accountability. first of all i think you've got to have the accountability committee got to have the executive branch willing to share information and all too often that hasn't happened so you could analyze the administration one from another by looking at the people at the highest level to work with congress and i've interviewed every single and most of them understand what i call the new oversight. they realize the importance of this.

one of the reasons is they tell me it allows them to share responsibility. you have a blowout like the bee of pigs episode and say i told them about it. they were with me and that takes a great burden so even most of them are realizing that the accountability is a good thing for them with the exception and you all know it william j. casey. i had dinner with him once and i asked him what is the role of congress when it comes to intelligence and he said the role of congress is to stay the blank out of my business. you can insert your favorite sailor word if you want to do. it's a very negative so a very negative attitude, the unitarian and it got him into trouble. even ironically, the quintessential cheerleader, maybe it was a combination of barry goldwater who became very

anti-casey when casey was so disdainful of the senate intelligence committee as to the actions in nicaragua. >> and even when the executive does share information with congress or at least a limited number in this case it was just the two two on each side how can those be assured they are actually getting truthful information and how did you get information about these programs that perhaps wasn't being briefed to those? this is when you get into the whistleblowers i think. in my experience with oversight it is absolutely essential that any staffer has to develop informal sources of information from within the agencies. they hate this they absolutely

despise it. there are rules that nobody can talk to congress except through the pr people or the legislative affairs. nobody can talk to the press except through pr. so, the agencies hated it. i heard at one time they threatened to tap all of their phones to find out who was talking to me. and the nsa was really upset also to the extent that finally general hayden sent around a notorious directive to the entire workforce telling them that once they have made a decision they were not to tell anything to congress. so, oversight is not really accepted especially when it's a serious. they are quite willing to share the responsibility when something goes wrong.

[laughter] that often, i have to say in my career often we found out that something today that it was appearing in the newspaper. it's absolutely essential. >> i got the other side of the equation on the table. you've got to have an executive branch and you share information and on the other side you have to have a legislative branch willing to take it seriously and get involved and read the information and go to the hearings and that can be a problem as well. i think one of the most important development is the establishment of mandatory reporting requirements. in fact it occurred before the committee about two days which requires a finding for the covert action. and now when you have any important covert action that it can cost a million dollars or so you have to come up in the greeted the two committees. the act said, and this is if you

can get thrilled by the intelligence committee this is in the sense that it required him to factor reporting on all and portent budgets related activities. even in the domain of executive agreements if a game 90 days in the report but the oversight act says you will let us know in advance of any important activities. but any of the operations, counterintelligence operations. as you recall there wasn't a them a skate patch to because p6 east cape. but then if you take it seriously which i think that we do come you have to tell the full committee within two days both the house and the senate. so these acts are important for the hasn't always been honored by the executive branch.

>> what protections exist for the agency whistleblowers talking to the members of congress and how does the congress and in particular the members of the committee protect those whistleblowers? >> i believe it was pretty much up to the individual staff to protect their own sources. my staff director would say where do you get that stuff? and i would say i'm not telling you. i didn't tell anybody who my sources were. it's just a lot better for everybody if they don't know. and so i really tried hard to protect them. but the committee as a whole seems to be uninterested in protecting whistleblowers which are their lifeblood. they absolutely are. tom was one of them.

he was talking to me about problems before 9/11 and i think that's one of the reasons he got it. he got the treatment and so did then he. and i think that you have some experience in this that the intelligence committees didn't sign onto the whistleblower protection. they did not include national security information and so for a long time, they were hung out to dry and there are still an adequate protections and i think it's also my case i don't want to use this about myself out myself but my case indicates a lot of problems and dangers that face us today. one was the fbi did finally contact me about eight months

after and asked if i would voluntarily cooperate with them and i said yes i will accept i won't tell any of my sources. i will never tell you my sources and of course that's what they wanted. so i went to the committee and i asked them if they would support me on this and i did this a number of times and never got an answer. went to meet with the fbi some of this later umps later in february of 2008 and found to my surprise that it was not a meeting it was an interrogation. and it became clear at that point that i was a target and it also became clear at that point the committee had thrown me under the bus and they repeatedly asked me for my sources and i repeatedly told them i will not tell you my

sources and i said i wouldn't tell you otherwise, but how can there be a more important issue than this? if i set the precedent in this all-important issue, the committees are worthless and they will have no sources whatsoever. jumping forward to the present time anybody who goes to the intelligence committee at this point as a whistleblower is out of their mind. they will do nothing. they will do absolutely nothing at least on the post-9/11 nsa issues and they will not protect you. after i was raided and my items were seized just what they seized, my telephone logs and all of my needing books for the entire time that i had the account. so potentially, they had access

to every person that i have talked to. and the committee decided they also wanted to search my computer and all my papers and so they did a separate keyword search for them. all these searches illegal by the way and they also told nsa they could keep all of my telephone books -- this is a separation of powers issue. >> absolutely, yes. >> that the congress is allowing the executive branch to gather information about their oversight activities. >> not only allowing but facilitating in my view and i think the big issue was by that time all they cared about was stopping leaks. on the public agenda that was almost the only thing you read about and so when the fbi comes

to them and says we think she is seeking "the new york the new "new york times," they dropped like a rock and all the sources and all the committee prerequisites and legislative privilege as well. >> and again, as we have seen this happen in a similar way with the senate intelligence report are there tools congress has to better protect? in that case at least to her case senator dianne feinstein came out and made a very big deal of the fact that the cia was going after staff members that that way but are there tools other than that sort of public appeal congress has to protect its staff and its prerogatives? >> i think that you are lost on these committees unless you have some champions among the members. members who are willing to go with the executive branch and i

can think of mr. mondale and others getting into a bit of a struggle in the ford administration during the inquiry on some matters threatening and sometimes using subpoenas. i think we went to court on a couple of issues, so you have to be a fighter and unfortunately the cheerleading species is spreading rapidly. >> they have to defend the fighters within the staff as well and if they don't do that -- >> that's what i really meant if they don't have these champions on the law. it becomes taboo and it begins to revolve around a couple of key people and that's all it takes. i remember on the house intelligence committee where the admiral came up to present the first covert action notification on the act and we had a reporter

there who had a mask over his face and was taking things down verbatim and he looked at the fellow and said what is he doing here and he explained and he said i don't want him here this is a breach of security, so during his peaceful loving period in the committee said okay we will get rid of him and asked -- he said he was number two on appropriations, the best friend of tip o'neill. that's probably not healthy for your career as a house member but he was a very smart guy and he said i would like a roll call vote on this i think it's important that we have a verbatim record and his face turned crimson red he was so angry that any member of the

committee has the right for her role call vote so it was called upon and the final tally was 7-6 among the members in the room and in favor of keeping the reporter there. he was curious and remained so for many weeks. but the importance of that cannot be understated because the house intelligence committee had a verbatim record of the covert action briefing at all five questions and answers that came after so that in a years later when the memories began to fade we could go back to that record and have the admiral come back to. say is this what you've actually done. very important and is spread over to the senate intelligence committee and they demanded to have a reporter as well. one of the most important moments i think in the evolution of the intelligence accountability. stanek and i think one of the interesting things -- i wanted to say something in terms of the problems with the monitoring.

iab lead after the way that i was treated and there was no reaction but instead accomplice of the eye think that invited what happened. and i also would say i'm glad she did her one-hour speech and presented all that information. i still think that the reaction was less than it should have been. first of all this wasn't the first time that they had done it to me was the second time. the first time she tried to keep it all quiet and was unsuccessful getting them to back down. they've taken documents off the staffers computer that they had been given and had sequesters.

she went quietly to the white house counsel who got them to agree that they would never do that again and there is no indication that the documents were ever returned. then it just happened again and they had the nerve to go on the offensive thinking apparently that she would back down. she had shown weaknesses again trying to resolve it in order to prevent the staff from being indicted. but instead what she should have done is gone to the general counsel and say we will back these people in court. >> how do we reform the system, do you have any thoughts on what the committee can do or what law can be passed? obviously passing the whistleblower protection act it

applied in giving them rights to enforce those rights. >> i have many ideas. i don't know that they will be palatable to a lot of people, but if it is pretty clear we are so far gone. i think most people do not realize how far down the road towards the complete overturn of democracy that we are. i see this as population control, bottom line. that is the only way that it can be justified. it cannot be justified by terrorism. it isn't helping terrorism that much at least some of the domestic surveillance programs. there hasn't been a single tip yet from this program because they are drowning in data. if they were doing a targeted approach instead they would have been far more successful.

why do they still say we have to have it all? we want to own the web? that was a big thing earlier. why? its because all this information contrary to what they said all this information is immediately filed under the identity as soon as it comes in. that was the competition to the system in a very good database and with all of your social circle and connections. people don't realize how much is involved. the so-called metadata is a tiny percentage. i am not saying that this is a very significant thing trying to take the database away from the nsa and cia and fbi and

everybody else which most people ignore. the program is so massive that there is no way come anywhere for any terrorist to go to hide. i know. i've been trying to find a shred of privacy since 2006. stanek and i will attest to that as well. [laughter] >> i want to put this out because this -- do think this phone metadata which is that the administration has basically focused everything on this as a red herring to keep you from looking at everything else they are doing. everything that he has revealed. there was e-mail metadata which they also claimed now that they stopped even though it was the most productive program. while my contention is that they have not stopped it.

they almost certainly moved it out of the courts because the requirements were too expensive. it was too expensive to do with the way the court wanted them to do it and they moved it into the section to the overseas collection of the databases. ..

>> you know the democracies around the world look to the united states and its postchurch new accountability as something they want to emulate. and slowly but surely you can see holland and germany and england and france and new zealand and australia adopting serious parliamentary oversight committees. they still haven't gone as far as we have. most of those countries don't give those committees subpoena power, for example. so we're widely admired around the world for taking the dogma out of government and bringing some modicum of democracy to it. i'd also point out that before the church committee, the idea of having a five year study of torture carried out by the cia would be unthinkable. you'd never have that.

so there have been examples, i think, since the church committee of really rigorous oversight. and i've been in the room on the house intelligence committee where members have changed covert actions through dialogue with the dci. this is stupid. this costs too much. what do you really want to achieve here? and as a result, the dci will go back to the white house and say the house or the senate thinks we need to make these modifications. and let's never forget the importance of the power of the purse. eddie boland in a later stage where he went from cheerleader to guardian turned off the spigots for covert action in nicaragua. as we know, that had terrible negative effects as people end underground in the administration and decided to carry out covert action regardless, but it's a good example of the ultimate power congress has in it want -- if it wants to use it. >> but, could i reply? >> sure. >> i would having -- i would

have to say there is no physical oversight today post-9/11. i see there may be things that they do on asides, you know that aren't publicized. there is nothing on this big issue which is our freedoms. and the bill of rights. and the very purpose these committees were established that they are now ignoring. i just don't see it. i think -- i agree that the feinstein report on torture was long overdue and probably deliberately delayed by cia by doing a huge data dump and then trying to take some of it back when they found out some incriminating things were in there. but why -- let's look at that. there is nothing done that is contrary to the administration in power at the moment whether it be republican or democrat. in this case, the democrats felt that they could do a torture

report because obama had already stopped it and opposed it. the republicans, unfortunately, did not support that because they felt it was aimed at bush. so this was a highly politicized thing. it was the only thing really that i have seen that was done that made waves. and it was because they had permission from the president. that's why. so i just i am, i'm -- to reform this one has to, first of all, get rid of the democratic and republican leadership in the house and senate. [laughter] there is no hope otherwise. because they are pulling all the strings. and why can they pull all the strings? number one, because this is these are the only committees on which they appoint the membership. so they have appointed almost all of totally membership that is supportive of this program. and then they manipulate the

whole process the whole legislative process, the whole process behind the scenes. and so everything goes through the intelligence committees. the judiciary committees if they have any independent views at all, have to accommodate the intelligence committees before anything emerges. this is a ca -- kabooky dance. the only thing that gets out is what the administration has already agreed to do and what the house and senate leadership agreed to. and mr. boehner said recently we don't mess around with this, it's very fragile. >> as mr. mondale has suggested, in the crucible of fear, the constitution can take on malleable proportions. but then we're a resilient nation and i think we begin to bounce back. i think the times are changing. i think we're experiencing we're in the middle right now of something of a sea change back toward the liberty side in this balance between security and liberty. and, again the house vote is good evidence of this.

and i would imagine i certainly can't prove it, but i imagine the comments made publicly by ron wyden and udall of the senate intelligence committee very critical of the metadata program has helped feed into that change that we're now seeing. so i'm a little more optimistic. >> could i reply to that, please? [laughter] >> sure. >> get a dialogue going here. good for you to hear different points of view. i guess i'll take on the brennan institute -- >> sure. >> -- on this. i believe the usa freedom act is a red herring. and it is pretty much crafted by the administration to distract attention from everything else that they are doing. they're giving up what admittedly is, in effect, a program and still maintaining ties into it. the bill is riddled with problems that gradually

increases transparency it actually can decrease transparency. if you want to look at all this stuff look at -- [inaudible] we keep giving it to them over and over and over again, the same thing. and this bill is one big example of that. again. i just don't, i just don't -- i agree that it's great to have that metadata program ended in the administration, but look at what else there is. i mean, as i started before, we have e-mail metadata probably. we have things that are going on outside the fisa court. we have an enormous mail program many which they photographed the front and back of every letter

so don't put your return address on okay? but, you know, we have everything on your computer. everything is collected. you know? your e-mails your chats your -- it goes on and on and on. and -- let me finish. i'll get -- but i and there are many other aspects as well. and i just think that this is as i said, there are no options. all the browsing, all the web sites everything is collected. you can't escape it. there is nowhere you can go for electronic private. privacy. and every potential terrorist, now, this is the same for them. i think we can impede it if only

by -- they become very inefficient if they try to elude all of this. and basically, i think the other thing that has to be done is that people have to be told there is no perfect security. there is nothing we can do that will absolutely give us protection against another terrorist attack. and we have already witnessed that. and there is no amount of intrusion into your privacy that will do this. >> and i think the president's review group that looked at the program actually put it very well that part of security is security from unnecessary government intrusion into our private lives. but i've been terrible at time management so let me just get some questions. john. john. >> is there a mona we're supposed to -- a mona we're supposed to use? >> go ahead, and i'll repeat your question. >> okay. i have a question for loch. do you remember in 1981 when

barry goldwater insisted that bobby inman be the deputy dci and when barry goldwater insured, directly with the white house, that there would be full consultation on the revision of the executive order on intelligence with the bipartisan senate intelligence committee fully staffed to be able ore view the white house -- to be able to review the white house executive order? and do you recall, does that adjust your view of barry goldwater's role? >> these are not pure types, john. there's no such thing as being a -- [inaudible] cheerleader. as a tendency no, it doesn't change my mind. what changes my mind about him is when he finally got into a tussle with casey over the miners in nicaragua, then he became a true overseer. but i grant you your example there. >> and diane, to complete the record of the story can you explain to people what we now

know about the source of "the new york times" leak that was not you? >> well, actually, the russell tice had already admitted that he was one of the sources. as i understand from reading i believe james risen has said once or twice there were about a dozen sources. but none of the other ones have been revealed. and risen took the unusual step of saying publicly on a number of occasions that it wasn't the five of us who were targeted and that he knew -- he didn't know any of us and had not received any information from us. >> and who was this person who came forward and said -- >> russell tice. >> and who was he, where did he work? >> russell tice was a contractor at an nro ground station, and if i want to depress you more, yes the satellites are collecting on us too. [laughter]

but, and he said that he had high-level clearances and i think he was working nights, and he went there once to put a piece of paper into a burn bag which are usually bags about this big, you know? paper bags in which they collect classified that is supposed to be burned. and he saw something in a bag that he thought was very unusual. he took it out and he read it, and that was his first insight into this program. and it appears thereafter he educated himself further from the the burn bags. >> do you recall there was a justice department lawyer who also -- >> thomas tam also came forward but he didn't give any content. all he told "the new york times" was that there was an illegal program and he was also persecuted. he was an fbi agent from a long line of fbi -- >> and again, shows there are a lot of conscientious employees within these agencies that are trying to get the information the public deserves to know. >> very quickly, one thing diane

and i would certainly agree on is the hubris at the nsa. the attitude a that if we we can collect it, let's collect it. >> may i also add russell tice is one of those who has stated that there are numerous, very highly compartmented programs that target the elite in the u.s. which he has said include all three branches of government, congressional staff congressional members, judges including the supreme court, attorneys, white house staff. apparently they check loyalty. reporters, first of all. if this isn't population control, what is? >> greg. >> mic. >> i'd like to shift ground a little to what i think is a central question that really hasn't been touched on. there's been a lot of very

important information about how the executive branch does oversight of the congress and valuable insights about members and different orientations of members on the committees. but as to the core question of how can these committees and especially staff really do oversight's effective and penetrating of the agencies, there really hasn't been much discussion. so i'd like to ask a question of all three of you. i've been trying to do that for -- after the church committee -- for house and senate intelligence and at the white house under carter for the iob. and i've evolved four or five basic rules for how staff or committees can do effective intelligence. and i'd like your comments on them. it's not a letterman list, and

i'll be brief. one that was touched on by diane is that -- and there's some expose, and they say you got us, and here's the stuff. that means you've got to look for what they're not pointing to and what they don't want you to get into. and diane indicated that. the second thing with regard to the briefings, my second rule is that when the agency head and his top aides say there are no more records, they've all been destroyed, we have not -- there's nothing left for you to look at, they're probably telling the truth as they know it. you have to go into the bowels and talk to the people who were involved and you'll probably find out that there are files somewhere. that's how i found the lamumba assassination and the drug testing for the church committee. but the most important rule is the following. i think at the end of the day the only way to have effective

oversight, especially of operations that impersonal injury on u.s -- impinge on u.s. citizens, is for the staff on a random basis to have full access to the file on an investigation or an operation. and to look and see whether it complies or whether they complied with all the rules and executive orders and statutes. and if they didn't what is to be done? and if they did and it still shows problems, what indicates about how those rules and statutes have to be revised? unless that's done, i think it's been done by the committees sporadically. but to me, unless that's done, you don't have effective oversight, and i'd like your comments. >> oh i think all the rules you mention are excellent, and as i look at people in the first two rows here, we have some masters

at ferreting out information from the executive branch. the church committee was one daily struggle after another to get access to information. and you and others became quite effective at it. i think a lot of it is done informally most oversight is done informally with staff developing a relationship with people in the executive branch you know going to breakfast, going to lunch, being on the telephone going overseas and visiting the u.s. embassy, and you've got to do all that without being co-opted. you've got to keep your distance so you don't become part of the organization you're studying. so it's dialogue, by and large. >> can you do it without looking at random cannily, at files -- randomly, at files of operations? >> i love this word, "randomly," and i think it's extremely important. we don't do enough of it. in canada, believe it or not, they're much more effective of these random searches of intelligence files, and we need to do more of that. >> could i say i agree with all your points, and regarding the one that's most important, i

think we have to go even further. we have to have a technical i.t. team that goes and gets into all their computers and has systems administration rights and so on to find the stuff that's buried. and if this ever comes out there has to be a law immediately passed that if anybody destroys evidence they will be hauled before a court. >> and i think one of the things that's key as well is, you know, we talk about the section 215 telephone metadata program which, when edward snowden leaked the scope of it, became a topic, and we were all talking about how it was used for terrorism and how it came into being. only to much later find out the dea had been doing something very similar for decades. so unless you're doing something that touches all the agencies, a comprehensive investigation, you're not really going to understand where there might be other activities that are equally -- >> could i also adjust one sentence here? -- add just one

sentence here in regard to what you said, the nsa program started no later than 199 and was hidden from congress. and this is, this was a program looking for an excuse, and they found it. >> [inaudible] how can we have effective oversight if you have secret records and then you also have record destruction? responsive to the comment you just made. and let me give a specific example which i admit is a historic example. when judge green orders the preservation of -- ordered the preservation of fbi records in 1980 established the national archives special fbi record task force and that task force invited historians to make recommendations as to times or records that should be preserved permanently because of they were

art value. and i served as a consultant to that task force. and in my own research i had come across the fact that there seemed to be the case where fbi officials maintained separate office files. and the specific discovery i had was in a 1946 memo where the fbi director was briefed about the -- accessing certain records, and he asked the questions where were these records maintained and the response was the tolson file. so one of the recommendations i made to the archives force was to seek to insure the preservation of fbi officials' office files, but specifically the tolson file. in response to that, there was not only the disclosure that there was a tolson file, but there was this memo that was created in 1975 that was responsive to the letter sent by senator mansfield to all the intelligence agencies to abandon their normal record destruction

procedure and preserve all records. and this created a certain problem because what fbi officials discovered was that in violation of hover's march -- hoover's march 1953 order that fbi assistant directors insure the regular destruction every six months of their office files, that tolson's file was maintained for the period '65-'72. so what we find out is that, in fact fbi officials were regularly destroying office files, and clearly there were sensitive records, and that for some peculiar reason -- maybe it had to do with the fact that hoover reached the mandatory retirement aim of 65, there was a decision made to preserve this office file from 65-72. so my question is how can you have effective oversight if not only is the case that intelligence officials insure that records are secret records

are maintained but also to insure against discovery destroyed on a regular basis sensitive records? >> yes. and the obvious example was the torture videos is another one. that's why i think that you need a technical team that will -- all these files now are electronic. they're all on computers. and so you need a technical i.t. team that goes in and searches. it has full range of a search to find this stuff before it gets destroyed. >> i once asked bill colby what can congress do if it's lied to by agencies in the intelligence community? and his response was when you find out about it, as eventually you will, come down hard on these agencies and shame them and cut off their funding for certain programs. there are tools of retaliation. >> i agree. the budget is the biggest power

that congress has and i think if we would have the nsa budget we'd -- if we would have halve the nsa budget, we'd have a lot less trouble. >> go ahead. sir. >> [inaudible] steve winters of washington-based researcher. i've been following the investigation in the german parliament where they have an intelligence committee and, of course, bill binny gave extensive testimony there. he told me, it's amazing, over there they want to hear my story, they want to hear what happened. but i don't see that here. and also because of the obviously, the connections between the -- our intelligence agencies and their intelligence agencies, in essence their investigation is as much an investigation of certain practices at nsa and it's really heating up over there. so what's really striking to me is that there's so little come anything this direction from that investigation because being as old as i am, i can remember the church committee and the

spirit and the spirit of this committee in germany. a lot of those people, it really reminds me of the church committee. so i think it's worth being aware. there is an investigation, there is a very active investigation going on right now in the spirit of church committee, and we -- why don't we invite some of those people over here and get a little bit going back and forth? >> thank you for that. >> comments on that? >> i can say i've been in touch with that committee, and they're doing a good job, i think. let's keep in mind that in germany you have the memory of the nazis, gestapo. and you also have the memory during the cold war in east germany of stasi, and they find intelligence organizations potentially highly toxic. and that's one of the reasons they're very agitated. >> they're agitated but what the germans want to do is join the five is and make it six is. [laughter] >> this has to be the last one, i'm afraid. i'm sorry. marty. >> this has been a fascinating revelation.

your experience. in 1975 and '76 with the discovery of the capacity of nsa and other agencies to acquire information not only about individuals, but about every subject that affects mankind the question immediately arose what do we do with this mass of information? how do we make use of it? how do we prevent the kinds of abuse that you've indicated? we wrote a report that's contained in volume four of the supplementary documents that we

published on intelligence. it was written by dick garwin one of our country's most prominent physicists, a member of manhattan project and an extraordinary can-do sort of person. we asked him to look into the future and the future that he foresaw. as bobby and -- as bobby inman foresaw which was an ability which would be exponential in acquiring data. the problem was addressed about massive files, what do you do with the discrimination of information on massive files? increasingly massive totally --

the electronic world is accessible now. the answers that were given at that time by us as well as by the technical people of the quality of dick garwin was minimization. you have to work on the question of minimizing the files what's kept what's what's distributed. you have to be very specific about who has access and why. this is the's is sense of the -- this is the essence of the warrant procedure. and in the world of mega information, the problem is still same. >> right. >> and the answer is still the

same. make rules and regulations about who has access and why. >> but could i add to -- >> and how long. >> when i went to see general hayden in july of 2002 he told me we are not in the business of minimization. >> well that's a crime. >> they have claimed since then that they are but it is basically a joke. if today really wanted to -- if they really wanted to minimize, they would encrypt u.s. identities and they would keep track. but they deactivated that code. and it's still deactivated. and that's the -- if the congress wants to know what they can do, that's what they can do. they can demand that. >> so i'm afraid we've run out of time. this has been a fascinating panel. please give diane and loch -- [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> tonight on booktv prime time, some of this year's book fairs and festivals. at eight eastern from the tucson festival of books a panel on concussions and the future of football. at 9:05 eastern, a savannah book festival discussion with lynn scherr, author of "sally ride: america's first woman in space." at 10:10, we go the san antonio book festival to hear from helen thorpe who wrote "soldier girls: the battles of three women at home and at war." and from the l.a. times festival of books at 11 eastern your call-in with ben shapiro, author of "the people v. barack obama: the criminal case against the obama administration." on c-span tonight, three former treasury secretaries talk with facebook chief operating officer sheryl sandberg about the state of the economy. she asked all three what issue in the u.s. they would fix or change. here's their answer.

>> if you could make one change in u.s. policy unilaterally, one topic, what would it be? one change. >> fixing our retirement system, was that will save our -- because that will save our policy. >> go. he did it. >> fiscal foils -- policies that make -- >> i'd try to get more americans to want to work for their country. >> put your forecasting hats on. when will the fed first raise a rates? [laughter] you can pass. >> when they think it makes sense. >> oh. [laughter] >> hank, do better, do better. >> if you ask an english major, i'll say early next year. >> bob? >> i think i'm going to say another version of what tim said. i don't think it matters when they raise rates what matters is they do it at the right time in terms of economic circumstances, and i think it's going to be very difficult to do. [laughter] >> all right, all right. one word. who is our biggest global economic competitor? >> ourselves. >> yeah.

>> i agree. >> i concur. >> all right. look at that. >> the three former treasury secretaries participated in the milliken institute's annual global conference. you can see the entire event tonight at eight eastern on c-span. a number of patriot act provisions including bulk electronic records collections expires sunday night at midnight, and the u.s. senate is meeting sunday afternoon to see if they can change that. the senate gavels in sunday at four eastern. votes are possible starting at six. efforts to extend the expiring provisions failed before congress left for the weeklong memorial day recess. follow live senate coverage here on c-span2. >> president obama comments today on the senate's work on nsa surveillance. here's a look. >> but i thought this would be a good opportunity before we break for the weekend to just remind everyone that on sunday at

midnight a whole bunch of authorities that we use in order to prevent terrorist attacks in this country expire. fortunately, the house of representatives was able to put forward a piece of legislation the usa freedom act, that receiveed overwhelming bipartisan support. and what it does is not only continue authorities that currently exist and are not controversial -- for example the capacity of the fbi or our other law enforcement agencies to use what's called a roving wiretap so if we know that there's an individual who, where there's trouble cause that that -- probable cause that individual might be engaged in a terrorist act but is switching cell phones, we can move from cell phone to cell phone not a

controversial provision -- those authorities would be continued. what the usa freedom act also does is it reforms the bulk data collection program that had been a significant concern and that i promised we could reform over a year and a half ago. so we now have democrats and republicans in both the house and the senate who think this is the right way to go. we've got our law enforcement and national security teams and civil liberties proponents and advocates who say this is the right way to go. the only thing that's standing in the way the is a handful of senators who are resisting these reforms despite law enforcement and the -- [inaudible] saying let's go ahead and get this done. so we've only got a few days. these authorities expire on sunday at midnight.

and i don't want us to be in a situation in which, for a certain period of time those authorities go away and suddenly we're dark and, heaven forbid, we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who was engaged in dangerous activity. but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the senate. >> you can follow the senate live here on c-span2 when lawmakers gavel back in at 4:00 eastern time sunday to consider the expiring usa freedom act provisions. >> this summer booktv will cover book festivals from around the country and top nonfiction authors and books. this weekend we're live at bookexpo america in new york city where the publishing industry showcases their upcoming books. in the beginning of june we're live for the chicago tribune printers row lit fest including

our "in depth" program with lawrence wright and your phone calls. near the end of june, watch for the annual roosevelt reading festival from the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library. in the middle of july, we're live at the harlem book fair the nation's flagship african-american literary event with author interviews and panel discussions. and at the beginning of september, we're live from the nation's capital for the national book festival celebrating its 15th year. and that's a few of the events this summer on c-span2's booktv. >> we continue now from the brennan center for justice with a symposium on intelligence oversight in washington d.c. former senator gary hart and former vice president walter mondale talked about their work on the church committee one of congress' first forays into major reforms of the american intelligence community and its oversight by the legislative and judicial branches. this is about an hour and 20 minutes.

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone. thank you so much for coming. my name is mike german, i'm a fellow with the brennan center for justice at new york university law school. i welcome you to today's symposium on strengthening intelligence oversight. this year marks the 40th anniversary of the creation of the senate select committee to start -- to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities, more simply known as the church committee after its chairman, senator frank church. it was the first and only comprehensive investigation of secret intelligence activities within the united states. this is one of a series of activities the brennan center has undertaken to recognize this anniversary. we published a report called "what's wrong with the fisa court," written by our co-directors. they will be leading a panel -- two panels this amp on judicial and executive branch oversight

of intelligence activities. we also published a report on strengthening congressional oversight signed by 18 church committee staffers many of whom are in the room with us today and you'll notice that they have name tags on. so feel free to talk to them throughout the day. it also contains a forward written by two church committee members. the senator from minnesota and then-vice president walter mondale, and senator gary hart of colorado. finally the brennan center chief counsel rich schwartz -- who was chief counsel of the church committee -- has written a new book called "democracy in the dark: the seduction of government secrecy." the purpose of today's symposium is to examine how the intelligence reforms studented as a result of the church committee investigation 40 years ago have fared and how they might be improved. when the church committee issued its report, it warned that its recommendations for reform would be tested over time and that new

national security threats would arise that could be used to justify new departures from american values in the rule of law. and so we have it that chaos and co-intel pro and shamrock and minaret were replaced by stellar wind and x key score, by talon and the fusion centers by black sites and enhanced interrogation techniques. we're hoping that a new generation of intelligence overseers can benefit from the wisdom generated from the church committee investigation and be inspired by the decades of public service our guests have dedicated to strengthening our democracy. it's my honor and privilege to welcome vice president walter mondale senator gary hart and brennan center counsel rich schwartz. [applause] >> thank you. thanks, everyone for being

here. i thought that i'd like to start by kind of knocking down some of the myths and one of them that i think was persistent during my time in the government as an fbi agent was that the church committee investigation took place during a period of tranquility and that in our current situation the threat is so high that we should put off any kind of comprehensive investigation so as not to distract those who are working to protect us from their important mission. but here are just a few of the things that were going on. the united states army had withdrawn from vietnam and the north vietnamese army started its final assault on saigon. the ca myrrh rouge took over in cambodia. the king of saudi arabia was assassinated. the red brigade's red army faction and japanese red army engaged in bombings throughout europe the middle east, ira and

the volunteer force were killing dozens in northern ireland and britain. a twa flight was bombed from tel aviv to jfk killing 88 people. cia station chief richard welch was assassinated two fbi agents were killed at pine ridge indian reservation, a bombing of croatian nationalists at laguardia airport killed 11 people and a bombing in downtown -- [inaudible] and so with this dynamic threat environment going on, how is it possible that the investigation began, vice president mondale and whiestles it necessary -- why was it necessary, and why did you want to be a part of it? >> i think you begin by looking at seymour hirsh's story, got an explosive headline in "the new york times" that contained the list of abuses and dysfunction

in the intelligence agencies a list made up by the agency itself that had leaked and told the nation that we were really in trouble. and if you look at these problems that you've cited, one of the reasons why we had to reform and make the agencies more responsive was in order to deal with the threats that were apparent to the security of our nation. and i would say that there was a general agreement to to that. i remember i was on the floor when john pastorly stood up and moved the creation of what is now known as the church committee on the grounds that this couldn't continue. i'm convinced that mike mansfield saw right away that this had to be dealt with. so i think what we did could be explained because it helped prevent symptom of the abuse -- some of the abuses in the past

some of the mistakes of the past that cost us dearly but also because we had to straighten this out. and only an outside committee within the control of the senate could do it. >> and why did you want to be on it? >> wow. [laughter] well, you know, i had followed this stuff as a senator. i had been attorney general in my state. i'd dealt with some of these issues. i sensed that something was really wrong without being in on the inside, and when i heard john give that speech, i went to mansfield, and i said when you're setting this committee up, would you look at me? and he said, yeah i will, senator. >> great. and, senator hart, you were a freshman senator, only three weeks on the job at that point. how did you handle this kind of -- and given a prominent role as well as a drafter primary drafter of the report. how did you handle that kind of responsibility so quickly?

>> well, i was not only a freshman senator, it was my first month in the senate and i had barely met the other senators by this time. the answer to your first question is why do it now, is why hadn't we done it before? first article of the constitution requires the congress of the united states to oversee the operations of executive branch. all of them. it does not exempt national security. and from 1947 and the passage of the national security act, beginning of the creation of what's been called the national security state which then incorporated this -- began to incorporate cia and expand very, very rapidly there had been not only virtually but had been no congressional oversight. so historically the question is between 1947 and 1975 why hadn't

congress done its work? and we could spend a profitable hour discussing how most members of congress didn't want to know, in fact, said -- senior members of the senate had sate i don't want to know. well, that's not what the constitution says. you have to, you have to know whether you want to or not. so this was all overdue. >> and what did that experience teach you as a young senator about how the government works? [laughter] >> well, i still tell student audiences that i'm the last islist. so when -- idealist, so when i'm gone, there are no more. [laughter] and it was a hugely disillusioning experience, i would say particularly not just the surveillance that went on under particularly the previous administration, but what came to be or what we discovered as the

assassination plots. and then even worse, the use by the cia of the mafia to carry out or try to carry out those plots against fidel castro. well, this opened up so many dark currents under our government. i characterize it as a sewer under the city on a hill. and for a 37-year-old first-term first-year senator, this was a great disillusionment. but i think what -- in a way the work of the committee and a willingness on a bipartisan basis to make fundamental changes in the broadly-defined intelligence sector was a triumph of democracy. and a tribute to the 11 members of that committee and probably one of the best congressional staffs that's ever been put

together in the history of the republic. >> and fritz, you were the chief counsel of that staff. but you didn't have any intelligence background when you were asked to do that job. how did you gain the trust of the intelligence agencies? >> well, how did we, and i don't think i'm very important in that. but we got it by, first being determined. that was absolutely necessary, and senator mondale had a great remark in which he said, you know, we'll just get extensions so they can't outlast us, and then showing the bipartisan nature of the committee, john tower said something like hallelujah god bless you or something like that. and then also so in addition to being determined show that you can reliably handle secrets, because there are legitimate secrets. and i think our committee did that extraordinarily well. we had essentially no leaks.

and we made reasonable agreements with the executive branch about keeping certain things keeping secrets. and in contrast the house committee foundered and faltered and failed because they never were able to reach those -- refused to reach those accommodations with the government. >> and, vice president mondale, it's always hard to keep politics out of politics, and this was an investigation by politicians. what did you do to relieve any concerns that there was going to be politicization or partisanship in the investigation? >> you know, i think there ought to be a separate study of how this committee worked and how it was established and how it approached its activities because we did achieve, i think, a general acceptance as a committee that was truly bipartisan and was working with everybody to bring these results

about. and i would start in that study by realizing the following names -- reading the following names: frank church, chairman john g. tower vice chairman. phillip hart, walter hugging son, bob morgan, gary hart, howard baker barry goldwater, mac mathias and richard. >> liker. and as staff bill miller fritz schwartz, kurt smothers -- who i don't think is here. how did you get a committee like that? and my answer is mike mansfield. he wanted this to succeed. and he wanted to set up a committee that he thought could go through this huge, explosive hearing this process, and do what he knew would have to be done to work together and

sustain bipartisanship. and that worked. this committee was working together. there was a single staff. we didn't have a republican staff and a democratic staff. bill miller came off the staff of -- >> senator cooper. >> john sherman cooper one of the saints of the senate and also a republican. and he had enormous prestige in that senate as a gifted staff member. and he was able he knew exactly what had to be done. he was an old hand. and then i think you'd have to say that the executive branch -- maybe with a little time -- but they ended up, in effect supporting what we were all doing. you have to give some credit to president ford who was not an idealogue, probably a little

afraid of the process but wanted i think, to succeed. he had attorney general levy -- levi -- levy from the university of chicago who became a tremendous supporter as head of the justice department in shaping regulations and rules and became a believer before it was over. and so the contrast of this committee that worked together excellent staff that provided that same background and then cooperating not perfectly -- the executive branch cooperating not perfectly, but when you think of what we asked of them and what they delivered, one of the jobs i had as chairman of this committee domestic task force we called it, was to look into

the fbi records. some of them were -- [inaudible] on the process. well, we were seeing stuff that had never been seen before. we were seeing a pattern of abuse. we uncovered, for example, the fbi -- it was really hoover's -- antagonism toward martin luther king. he was convinced that martin luther king headed a black hate group as they put it. he had agents all over the place trying to find something on king to knock him off his pedestal, as they put it. they tried to break up the marriage. when king was picked to get the -- go to see pope to get high international awards

bureau tried to block that. they tried to, in effect, corrupt the public process and undermine and destroy one of the great leaders america's had. and i think when this came out and we realized that this was not a process that let the public democracy work but in fact was a process that was corrupting one of the most essential elements we knew we had something. and i think that carried the day. >> let me -- in the panoply of my heroes certainly important figures, i would add what fritz has said, vice president mondale said director colby a very controversial situation toward him. he was under enormous pressure from the cia not to reveal some of the worst excesses or just

say excesses. but he made a decision to disclose to us in a highly intense session, long session what came to be called shorthand the family jewels. and it was an inspector general's report that pretty much covered the water front of things that might be controversial or illegal, unconstitutional. and he made a decision to reveal those to us. and it was a monumental decision, and it made an incredible difference in our ability to address the reforms and propose the reforms that we did. and he had -- he left the agency eventually under great criticism from people who thought he should have stonewalled and chose not to. so i've always felt that he was a very, very important figure. >> and another factor that was really important was the

structure of the committee because as mansfield set it up, it was six democrats to five republicans instead of what would have been normal, 7-4. and john tower was a vice chairman and not a ranking member. and then the committee in its reaching bipartisan conclusions in a way our most important finding was that every president from franklin roosevelt through richard nixon, six presidents -- four of whom happened to be democrats and two republicans -- had abused their secret powers. and i think it helped us enormously internally and externally to show that we were not being partisan in our major findings. >> and, senator hart you worked more on the foreign intelligence matters, and in a recent remembrance you wrote that the church committee experienced -- of your church committee experience, it's important that we recognize the extraordinary

power the united states has in the international respect for our constitutional principles. but it often seems in times of crisis we forget that power. why is that? >> i think the phrase "in times of crisis." we cede -- "we" being the other branches of government, particularly the congress -- cede to the executive branch great powers if we are under assault or perceive ourselves to be under assault. the problem is that then encourages administrations to i wouldn't say generate crises, but to elevate a crisis to acquire power. and this is where congress is most under pressure to do its job and to ask questions. not to undermine executive

authority, but to defend the constitution and protect the american people. and, again, as i said there and i've said many times in other places, the -- those of us who have had a chance to travel the world know we are being watched by not only leaders in foreign governments, but people on the street. and they watch us not only for the kind of comical excesses that we exhibit -- [laughter] but degree to which we live up to who we claim to be. the american people and their presidents and others claim high standards for this country. and then when we don't live up to those this isn't missed by people around world. they see that. and it's not only a kind of hypocrisy, it's used by our opponents to say see they claim one thing and do another. >> and fritz, you've now

written a book on secrecy. how does government secrecy undermine the power of our constitutional structure and our democratic process? >> i can pick up on exactly what gary said. the heart of american democracy is that the people should be involved. that's what we're about. james madison said in a democracy public opinion is the true sovereign. and the problem is that we have over last 60 years, 60-plus years, we've gone into a secrecy society, a secrecy culture where the norm is to keep it away from the people instead of striving to get it to the people. and that is totally inconsistent with the values upon which this country was built. >> another one of the myths that i think has developed is the idea that the church committee investigation or another type of

comprehensive investigation is about playing gotcha. it's only about trying to find the abuses and wag a finger rather than about trying to improve the functioning of intelligence. and vice president mondale -- >> i think one of the greatest strengths exhibited by the church committee is how that report has endured. no one has challenged the accuracy of our findings. i haven't heard one serious scholar say this is not right. so we got our facts right. and it wasn't just a gotcha disclosure, it was, it contained a range of remedies that were designed to prevent recurrence of these abuses. the two intelligence committees which hadn't been there before, the foreign intelligence surveillance act, the fisa court, the new regulations and rules issued out of the white

house. this was -- this was not a passing effort to move on, it was an attempt to bring about a fundamental change in how we dealt with intelligence so it'd be more efficient, it'd be more responsive and also adhere to the laws and the constitution of the united states. >> and did the heads of the intelligence agencies at the time recognize that as a -- its purpose at making the intelligence agencies better at what they did? >> some of them did. you know, one of the underlying themes that i picked up and i think several others did is when you talk to people like colby, talk to some of the people in the bureau, talk to some of the people elsewhere in the agencies, they were complaining about how screwed up their agencies were. ..