on c-span2. >> television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago our mission continues to provide an unfiltered view of government, already this you we brought you a primary election coverage, the presidential impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. you can watch all of c-span's public affairs programming on television, online, or listen on a free radio app and a part of the national conversation through c-span's daily "washington journal" program or through our social media feeds. c-span, created by private industry, america's cable-television company, as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. >> next, pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist david rohde on the deep state during a discussion about his book "in

deep: the fbi, the cia, and the truth about america's deep state." >> good evening, everyone. i'm candace, where the event management townhall. it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight live stream with investigative journalist david rohde in conversation with podcast radio host. as a get and where electric knowledge our institution stands on the territory, we thank him m for continued use of the natural resources of the ancestral homeland. thank you all so much for tuning in. were thrilled to present this event virtually. we're proud to be a community focused organization. i'd like to thank david and steve for appearing tonight to help make that happen.

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and if you're interested in supporting local book stores by buying a copy of the book. you can watch through the button at the bottom of the page. tonight's conversation is going to be about 45 minutes followed by a q & a portion of the our moderator will select questions from those submitted in ask a question field in the bottom center of your screen. you can also vote on which questions you'd like the speaker to answer first, clicking the arrow next to the question to up vote it. we can't guarantee we'll get through all the questions, but as many as we can. please keep your questions concise and in the form of a question. thank you for your support and support of our sponsor. supported by real networks foundation, the true foundation, and wincoat foundation. and town hall is a member organization and like to thank

the members watching tonight and now on to our speakers. david rohde is an executive editor of new yorker.com. he is a former reporter for ruthers, the new york times and the christian science monitor. he was awarded a pulitzer prize for international reporting in 1996, for stories that helped expose the massacre during the war in bosnia. and in 2009 he shared a pulitzer prize with a team of times reporters for the coverage of afghanistan and pakistan. he's the author of "beyond war" reimagining america's role and new ambitions in the middle east and also "a rope and a prayer", a story of a kidnapping co-authored with his life and "end game", betrayal and fall against europe's worst massacre since world war ii. steve shore is a podcaster, writing, interviewer and the

host of weekday and taught at university of washington since 2009. his end up interviews with award wink authors, political leaders, artists, active citizens are most noted. s' a part of the social movement that's democratizing access and chief correspondent of town hall's chief podcast at the moment and steven is the host of the podcast series at links. rohde's book "in deep", the truth about america's deep state is the subject of tonight's talk. please join me in welcoming them. >> thank you. very nice, good to see you,

david, through technology. >> and there was a message that said steve rocks. we're off to a good start. >> that's my friend and neighbor and former journalists, former journalists chris. [laughter] >> we walk our dogs together when we can. i guess not right now. we're not walking our dogs together right now. >> got to take any support you can get anywhere. >> amen. where are you right now? >> i am in my parents in law's house in kennebunkport, maine. usually live in new york city. my wife has asthma and reduced lung capacity so we left the city as the covid outbreak was spreading so we're here in maine and safe and well. i talked to a lot of my friends in new york who are still there and i'm very worried about them, but things look like they're getting better. seattle set a good example of the country in flattening its

curve. >> in many ways it has, that's true, i'm glad you guys got to be in a place where you're more comfortable in all the ways that you need to be more comfortable. >> yeah, we're lucky. >> it's funny what you said about seattle because here is what i was thinking and we could start with this. when the protesters yesterday, day before yesterday came to olympia to complain about the infringements on their personal freedoms because of the restrictions from social distancing and others, one of the signs, more than one of the signs that they were holding up as they gathered together much closer than six feet, was no more from the deep state. how do you suppose in their thinking the response to covid-19 is a symbol or a--

not a symbol, but an action by the deep state? >> sort the conservatives sort of have-- we'll talk about this, different people use deep state in different ways. so the conservatives and i'm guessing those protesters, their view of the deep state is sort of term i use is the administrative state and that's this kind of ever growing federal government, state government, that's relentlessly encroaching, they feel, on americans' lives, to their rights to vaccines, gun control, education, you know, curriculum and so, they feel the deep state, the reports of coronavirus are exaggerated and unelected government officials and elitists in washington dictating how americans should live their lives. >> i see.

well, let's define it. let's take all the definitions of the deep state. when did that determine first come to be prevalent? >> so, one of the reasons i wrote the book to try to come up with a clearer definition of the deep state and i've actually come to the conclusion i don't really like the term. it's used in a lot of different ways, it's pejorative term, but it's a term that political scientists used to talk about the military in the country of turkey and the dynamic in that country of the military intells against services blocking the emergence of democracy in turkey, and same with egypt blocking emergence of democracy there. and i found it was a book written in 2007 by a university of california berkeley

professor, and i tracked him down and interviewed him for my book. his view of the deep state fits more of another, i mentioned this earlier, another view of kind of an oppressive government the way that liberals view it. they don't talk about the deep state, but about the military industrial complex, that would be generals and defense contractors who push the country into endless war. so peter scott's 2007 was more along those lines and defense contractors, he was suspicious how 9/11 came about, but also very suspicious of wall street and their power. until 2007, you know, he did some interviews on info wars, alex jones' show, the left and right coming together in their suspicion of the federal government, but before 2016, you know, the term deep state really wasn't, i don't think, widely in use among average americans. >> did you talk to any

conservatives, deep-staters, i'm going to use that, who saw -- who recognized the concern of the military industrial complex? historically or currently? >> i mean, there is unity. one person that, you know, has brought this up and comes to mind is senator rand paul of kentucky, the libertarian republican and he's, you know, very nervous about the u.s. being dragged into wars overseas, extremely skeptical about, you know, the national security agency and surveillance, and then his kindred spirit is senator ron wyden, a liberal, concerned about eavesdropping and too much spying going on in this country. so there is growing distrust of the federal government. there was a poll i read in 2018 that set me off into writing the book, 70% of the americans think that there's a group of

unelected officials and military officials who secretly manipulate u.s. government policies in washington. >> you know, i always think about when-- the run-up to the xap-- campaign, donald trump was asked about russia and the things that russia negative things they did in the work and his response to bile o'riley, we're not so great and we've done a lot of things, too, i thought that was an interesting response and i wonder, do you think that resonated with some of the people who came to support donald trump? >> i think it did. and i think, you know, there's people who mock donald trump and question his mental stability. he's extremely good at messaging. he's very, very good at consistently, you know, presenting a narrative that appeals to people and in terms of, you know, what the u.s. has done around the world, he's right. i start my book in 1977.

there was a huge investigation by the senate, it was called the church committee, frank church, senator from idaho chaired it and they investigated, you know, fbi and cia activities throughout the cold war and they exposed, you assassinations, and the cia was spying on americans in this country and he was surveilling john lennon protesting the war. and j. edgar hoover had a list of 26,000 americans who were subversives in his view, that would be rounded up if there was in case of emergency, norman mailer was on that list. anyway, it was an amazing number of scandals, but what's changed and trump didn't mention was there's this whole system was created in the late '70s. president ford did it after watergate and president carter as well to try to control the fbi and the cia and you know,

current member-- i talk to a lot of current and former members of the fbi and cia and they've claimed they've operated differently since all of these protections were put in police in the late '70s. >> i guess until abu ghraib and watergate, the iraq war. >> well, you got me. [laughter] >> that's true and so there's-- >> well-- >> go ahead, keep going. >> well, did you interview rand paul for this book? >> i did not. i tried it speak with him, but he declined to speak with me. >> i wonder what he would say. i mean, would he-- in some ways his politics might look back on the '70s reforms and say, yes, these were concerns. i mentioned that-- i grew up in chicago where a bunch of black panthers were killed by, you know -- through very, very underhanded means,

how is that? so i wonder what -- you know, do we come around? you said alex jones. >> yes. >> i don't know if he ever goes around like this, but does he-- there a coming together of the concern about the deep state? i was going to say state-- >> not among mainstream republicans and mainstream democrats. there was a lot of -- look, these systems were put in as a federal court that's supposed to-- the fisa court, foreign intelligence surveillance court which we'll talk about that's approved warrants for eavesdropping. there's new committees that were created in congress, intelligence oversight committees, ron wyden is on them and the idea was to have courts overlooking eavesdropping, that you had to have a warrant to do that if you were a member of the fbi. there was a ban on assassinations abroad that -- for the cia to carry out a

covert action in the country and it had to be written and the sign of covert findings and copies went to leading members of congress from both parties, cia directors were supposed to serve no longer than 10 years to prevent j. edgar hoover from emerging and all of these congressional committees have subpoena power and they can demand to see any documents and this is much more extensive than what other countries have. there aren't committees in the legislative bodies in england, germany or france that can subpoena those countries and intelligence services. all that said, i know there's a bunch of people who say this is a joke, they're out of control. just to go to 9/11, the detention and torture practices that went on were approved by the push administration, the justin department wrote, you know, famous legal opinions

saying that this was legal. the cia officers who, you know, were involved in that said they were, you know, following the orders, they were lawful orders by a dually elected president. it wasn't rogue operations, that would have been the differen difference. the cia and fbi were doing things in the cold war. i get it, people don't believe it in terms of assassination, barack obama, a democratic president carried out a record number of drone strikes that were in essence assassinations and there was even one of an american citizen anwar alaki was killed in yemen and a u.s. citizen was killed by the u.s. government. >> pretty remarkable numbers on that reading in your book. we'll come back to that and let me circle back to the beginning. these 1970 church committee reforms, post-watergate reforms

more broadly, did they curtail presidential power? did they shift power from the executive to congress? >> they did and then the kind of broader question in the book is how do you control the cia and fbi and also prevent them from carrying out abuses and then how do you prevent presidents from doing that? there's a cool of thought and when they look at the changes, two members of the staff was actually dick cheney and donald rumsfeld, and both worked in the white house opposed this. antonin scalia, was a scholar and then went on to the supreme court, the watergate oversight committees and creators of the inspectors general and that's a lot in terms of the emergency spending funds for coronavirus. those were independent, apolitical positions created by congress and they were supposed

to investigate spending and abuse and corruption in the executive branch. and there was a school of thought and bill barr is a big member of this that essentially the presidency was being weakened too much. there was too much oversight by congress. too much subpoenas from the congressional committees about what the executive branch was doing and then bill barr ga i ha have-- gave a speech about this and felt there was too much activism and he's an opponent of abortion rights and saw that as going too far. in terms of the president's power he felt, he complained about just recently under president trump, these immigration orders that would be stopped by federal judges, there were several on the west coast that stopped things trump was trying to carry out. i think the muslim ban as it was called. he said that's overreach. we need a strong presidency to protect this country in moments of disaster and moments of war

and barr argued the presidency more than the legislative branch and judicial branch performed the best when the country is under threat and he favors a strong presidency that can't be, you know, encumbered or slowed down in its actions by these other branches. >> questions on that, one, is there any evidence, in your reporting, in the world, that we have seen -- this is a little bit like evident by dd we don't really have the example, but is there any evident that a strong president has done a better job than the legislatures or the legislature here in congress, over during times of crisis? >> you know, barr would argue that post 9/11 that the president needed to detain suspected terrorists and put them in guantanamo bay. that was the president opening up the prison and running it as he liked. the bush administration, you know, they ran a warrantless

wiretapping program. they did not go to the federal court and asked for warrants and felt they needed it and most americans supported it after 9/11, but this is a big debate and you know, if you fast forward to today, you have this, you know, belief among barr and other conservatives in, you know, the strong executives and then you have donald trump who welcomes that power and you know, says he wants it at times and we can get into the coronavirus response, but he's sort of gone back and forth, i am the ultimate authority on president to it's up to the states to decide. these are central questions about, you know, how should our democracy function. should all three branches be equally powerful or do we need a strong presidency. so we're sort of living through an amazing moment in american history. >> well, i thought that the founders who wrote the

constitution in such a way that they were three co-equal branches of government that would put checks and balances on one another, what would bill bar say to that? >> it article two of the constitution, and describes an executive branch, full authority, carrying out and executing the laws and running the government as the chief of the executive branch sees fit. that's his view of the constitution and there are conservative scholars who agree with that. and to be fair, congress has really struggled. you can't-- it's so divided politically. we're so divided, i can't think of a legislative package that kind of emerged from congress in the last few presidencies where congress is sort of leading the way. anyway, since 9/11, the president has kind of regained whatever power it lost post watergate. >> so when donald trump says i'm the president and i can do whatever i want because i'm the

president, that they-- and they point to article two, there's nothing else in the constitution that i can point to that says, oh, weather maker -- wait a minute, i can put into play. >> and barr's that the president will be held accountable and impeachment are the two main mechanisms. >> i can hope they'll always respect the outcome of any election or outcome of any impeachment. if they say their power is all encompassing, they can also say this impeachment proceeding is a fraud and we won't comply with this because we don't have to because we're the executive. isn't that part of the argument they make? >> that's part of the argument and that's what happened with the recent impeachment proceeding, a political proceeding.

to be fair to bill barr, there was a period recently where trump was pushing him to go easy on roger stone's sentencing, and barr gave this very unusual interview with abc news where he said the president tweets and demands the sentence that roger stone receive be less was making it impossible for bill barr to do his job. so i think there's a red line. one of the things that came out of the watergate things and these scandals from the past is that the attorney general under nixon, know, john mitchell as attorney general was punishing the president's enemies and helping his friends. so attorney generals are supposed to apply the law equally. a good explanation i heard and i didn't understand this before, was that if the president wants to say let's go crack down on pharmaceutical companies, that's my priority for law enforcement and the justice department, the

attorney general should do it, that's the president's prerogative. and emphasize that presidents are elected they have democratic mandates from the american people to carry out their policies and government servants should carry out those unless they're illegal and improper. what is improper if the president says to the attorney general, hey, i don't like that one pharmaceutical company's ceo because that person didn't give me a large campaign donation, go criminally investigate them. you know, that is improper and barr has signaled that that kind of activity is improper, but, again, it's all extraordinary what he is happening today. >> what about his own approaches to investigating ukraine on investigating baidu, investigating the fbi, whether they are their decision to investigate trump was legal? are those political or are -- can they be seen as the dually

responsible efforts of an attorney general? >> and this is where i think there's more problems with barr's record. so just today the republican-controlled, i want to repeat that, the republican-controlled senate intelligence committee ruled that the cia assessment that russia intervened in the 2016 election to help donald trump was correct. that is -- that's based on the evidence that, you know, the intelligence community collected and that all of these republican senators saw, they agreed this wasn't some fake story to discredit donald trump. it wasn't some plot by the intelligence community, by the cia to make up that russia helped trump. russia in fact did help trump and right now, as part of the probes that you mentioned, bill barr has had a u.s. attorney, john durham carrying out on the

analysts, and on the part of the fbi, what they did and we can talk about that separately. but it was a big boost for these intelligence analysts who find it very extraordinary that they're being investigated by a u.s. prosecutor for, you know, a report they wrote. it was their assessment of what russia did and so one of the most puzzling things, and concerning things, is this pattern of sort of investigate the investigators. anyone who kind of comes out with an intelligence assessment that the president doesn't like, you know, faces a criminal investigation. and that's had a real chilling effect on the intelligence community. we can talk more about this, but the head of the fbi, chris wray and gina haskell, the head of the cia are testifying less and less in public today because when they do, the senators will push them or journalists into saying things that contradict president trump. he'll tweet at them, he'll attack them.

dan coates the director of national intelligence he says the assessment of the communities, that north korea wouldn't give up nuclear weapons and trump mocked him and he was forced out of power. and ratcliffe is much more -- to be aligned with the president's messaging. >> it's difficult because the line between political and neutral which is what we're supposed to see these folks as being is difficult. >> yes. >> so you mentioned the bbc comedies "yes minister", and i forget what the other one is called about the permanent secretaries of departments who manipulated and maneuvered around the ever-changing cast of political appointees and the

prime ministers in the u.k. and they were the power in that tv show, anyway. how much truth do you ascribe to that notion of -- with the sitting, you know, people in power in these various departments today? and then we'll get to the political point because that's part of it. >> they have large amounts of power, there's no question. there's about 3 million american civilians, the uniformed military separate. but civilians spending decades working for the federal government, that would be from the park service to the department of education, to social security, to the cia and fbi, and look, they have biases. they, you know, every president who has come in office has complained about the federal bureaucracy, again, they are elected and they have a mandate. this new administration comes

in and they feel that sometimes certain parts of the government are against their policies. when ronald reagan came in, he said he felt the state department was sort of too liberal and wouldn't carry out his agenda in terms of countering communism. barack obama felt that generals in the pentagon were floating numbers how many troops, and he felt he was getting boxed in sending more troops than he wanted to. no president has accused career civil servants of carrying out a coup against them. that's different about the trump era. they have biases, they want their turf, their organization to do well. they might be slow to implement programs they don't like. you know, they might want the budget to grow for their organization, but are they, you know, actively sitting in basements and secretly plotting to undermine democratically elected presidents? no. there's a ton of congressional

committees that would love to catch government servants doing that, they all have subpoenas and they can send fbi agents, they can wire tap government servants if they want. and there are federal agents barred from political activities. every federal civil servant takes an oath of office and swore to uphold the constitution. i spoke to many and they adm admitted some colleagues aren't that great, but you know, joan dempsey was one of the characters in the book and she worked in the intelligence community throughout her career. she was one of few women in the community and she wrote the number three position in the cia, you know, in the intelligence officials of their generation and they say do-gooders, and cautious instead of rule abiding and people who like to work for government. but that's her view.

again, i know, many people are cynical about government workers. >> well, given trump's-- just setting trump's rhetoric aside. is there any evidence that the last four years have seen more activity by these supposedly neutral parties to undermine the policies of the trump administration? administration? >> i would say no in most parts of the government. i think that many people have left. there's a lot of departures at the epa and michael lewis wrote about this and the other departments. i think the biggest question focuses on the fbi and the trump russia investigation. james baker, this is not james baker, the former secretary of state, but there's a james baker who was the general counsel at the fbi. he worked with jim comey throughout the summer of 2016 and as the trump administration

was carrying out the russian investigation. the big question, was the fbi undermining trump by investigating his campaign? i, you know, kind of agree with the findings of this, again, an inspector general, an independent position that was put together, so the inspector general for the department, michael horowitz put out a 5,000 pages about this, interviews and records and found there was a legal justification for the fbi trump-russia investigation. it was not based on the dossier full of untruths, we can talk about the dossier separately, but when it was launched during the campaign it was justified. after 9/11 the fbi with lots of support from democrats and republicans lowered the amount of evidence you needed to carry out an investigation. that was to stop terrorism so that the fbi could quickly investigate anyone they wanted.

they didn't have a tremendous amount, but the other point i'll make is the biggest thing the fbi could have done to undermine donald trump in the summer of 2016 was to leak the fact that they were investigating trump and russia. that would have sabotaged his campaign. they didn't do that. we asked endlessly. i asked questions to justice department officials about the dossier, was carter page, we can talk about meeting russian officials, they refused to comment, wouldn't give me anything, one specific anecdote. i was around the fbi, and i interviewed john brennan six weeks before the election. we were sitting in the director's office inside cia headquarters and look at the windows there and there's this sort of canopy of green trees outside. and i asked him, mr. brennan, can you tell me are there these

videotapes that russia has that are compromising then, you know, republican candidate trump? and brennan paused, you know, sort of seemed surprised and he said, i'm not going to comment on this one way or another. i'm not confirming this, i'm not denying anything like that. he said, look david, i just want to urge you, you're going to hear a lot of crazy things about donald trump in the last six weeks of the election and a lot of crazy things about hillary clinton in the last six weeks of the election and he urged me not to write about these allegations. only write about things you can proof definitively and know are factually correct. so one of the conspiracy theories was that john brennan was running around giving the dossier to everyone. and the last plug for journalist, we all had the dossier and we got it from glenn simpson head of fusion. and every major news organization had the dossier

throughout the 2016 election, none of us could prove it. i worked for reuters then, we didn't print a word of it. i think there was one oblique story that ran in the last days of the election that maybe mentioned it, but if the press were out to get donald trump in 2016 we all would have been writing about the dossier and none of us did. >> no, we were writing about hillary's e-mails and james comey's decisions to talk about it the whole time. >> during the campaign, if, you know, the fbi hurt anybody it was james comey reopening the investigation days before the election. and i talked at length, you know, jim bakker, the general counsel. he felt they had to do that, they had to be honest with congress, honest with the country and you know, but again, that's another example of this idea of the fbi trying to sabotage trump, you know, being questionable. there's questions about what happens after the election.

go ahead. >> and also murky. >> yes-- >> it's also murky, right? >> yeah, yeah. >> just to be fair-- >> what happened after the election? >> i mentioned carter page earlier, but what was found in the inspector general's report is that there were four warrants to this surveillance court i mentioned the one created in the 70's. the first two warrants were proper, they were sufficient to surveil carter page and the last two weren't. carter page should not have been surveilled as long as he was surveilled. and a fbi lawyer changed an e-mail-- the reason they were suspicious of carter page, he had left the campaign, but he was meeting with russian officials and this fbi agent had an e-mail that said, page was talking to the cia as he was meeting with these russian officials.

and they changed the meaning of the e-mail to say that page was not cooperating with the cia. i heard from someone sort of close at that that lawyer, that was a mistake and it wasn't a nefarious thing. he misunderstood what page's status was with the cia, but that lawyer is under investigation and should be. you know. he-- those were improper surveillance warrants, the last two. there's a new report by the inspector general that sound systemic sloppiness that the fbi put through to the surveillance court. and the surveillance court has become like a rubber stamp. so i would say of all the institutions created to control the fbi, the fisa courts is the least effective. it's too secretive. the public should know more and they should be rejecting many more applications to surveil

people. but it wasn't simply-- trump tower wasn't is your veiled. it wasn't only donald trump. this is a problem for many muslim americans after 9/11 were improperly surveilled and it's just a pattern i see of the president exaggerating things that happened and things that went wrong. that's not a coup. he shouldn't have been is your veiled that long, carter page, but that is not a coup. >> why is the fisa cohort not doing a better job at balancing its role? >> i don't know. i'd call on those judges to do better. it's not an add vversarial process. it's government lawyers and the fbi put together about why they need to surveil it. they're primarily surveilling foreigners and they're in the process, they'll pick up americans and they'll see why the americans are hanging out with these russian diplomates

believed to be intelligence operatives or chinese diplomates. so that system needs to improve. having these one-sided presentations from justice department and the fbi, this is not working. >> is there a reform that somebody might have in mind? ron wyden or rand paul or somebody to-- >> bill barr said this should be a higher level of evidence needed before a political campaign could be carried out. i fully support that. i think that would be a great reform that would change. again, under the standards of evidence that existed in 2016, it was a legally open investigation. so there's problems with just kind of the exaggeration that's gone on, you know, by, to be frank. frankly, by the president, that, you know, he called the fbi agents who investigated

him, his several, you know, of his aides lied to the fbi and were prosecuted for it. you know, it's -- he called the fbi in that investigation human scum. that's a gross exaggeration and you know, we can talk more about his use of the term deep state to kind of discredit institutions and people. >> well, how about that? for all our concern, it is just trump's political rhetoric. this is how he operates and how he gets his voters to stay in touch with him. so is the deep state that he talks about a lie? or is it, as trump supporters say, it's just his way of talking? and he's trying to make a larger more metaphorical point? >> i think the coronavirus this moment shows us how dangerous

this is and we sort of have to have a basic agreement on facts. so, is the coronavirus, you know, how dangerous is it? how -- what is the infection rate, what's the mortality rate, is 16 enough, is it not enough? is and we have to rely on some sort of government experts, scientific experts, medical experts. if we as a society and as a democracy going to effectively respond to these challenges, so we're in such a sort of fierce political era where it's winner take all, you know, and constant attacks on trump, people say that, you know, i have relatives who are big supporters of the president and they feel he's just savaged by the news media and the democrats. but i just feel this sort of cycle of disdain and division and kind of conspiracy

theories. that donald trump is a secret russian agent. robert mueller didn't find collusion, i think it's important that we accept the mueller report and that trump didn't collude with russia, and russian collusion. it's dangerous theories and where we don't agree on facts and you saw it in terms of the demonstration recently in washington. >> okay, well, two last questions for me and then we'll open it up to what you folks are thinking, but one of them, a little bit on ukraine and what we learned from that because if i'm not mistaken, isn't bill barr even now investigating some of the folks who pushed for the ukraine

impeachment proceedings? that's wrong, they weren't the impeachment proceedings, but pushed for an investigation into the ukraine events? >> he's talked about it. he's much more aggressive on -- he called-- he's much more focused on the trump-russian investigation launched and he recently called it a travesty or one of the largest travesties in u.s. history. maybe the prosecutor is going to find an astonishing criminal conspiracy that horowitz, the inspector general in dozens of interviews and thousands of, you know, pages of documents did not find. but i -- there is a pattern with the president of sort of using conspiracy theories to sort of discredit his enemies. he's a very effective communicator and kind of keeping what he's doing secret. so you mentioned the

impeachment. what i worry about is that the president is, you know, thinks he's surrounded by enemies, all of these congressional committees want to know what's going on and he's sort of forming a parallel in the white house and not allow them to testify against congress and rudy giuliani kind of carrying out a private foreign policy on behalf of the president so ironically and this is sort of one of the concluding thoughts in the books, under the guise of stopping a coup that doesn't exist, trump is sort of creating a shadow government of his own, filled with loyalists, and no transparency, no public proceedings, they don't know what's going on inside of the white house. ironically trump is creating a deep state of his own. >> didn't i read, i guess i read in the new york times about presidential findings that may exist, i believe the

times is a little vague on how much they actually saw, but may exist that essentially again gives the power-- that the president has given himself the power to do whatever he deems necessary for the public good or his own, his own system, his own position. >> executive orders or-- >> yeah. >> so covert actions findings are different. >> they're executive orders, i guess, but we haven't seen them. they're secretive executive orders, i guess, then? >> yeah, and there is certain-- and now i'm getting outside of my depth here. i would think at some point they would have to be made public, but i don't know. i do know and this is again, for covert action, you know, they have to be written findings and they go to both parties. the chair and the ranking member of the intelligence committees, they go to the

speak offer-- speaker of the house and the democrats would know if there are written filedings about covert action, but i would think that executive orders would eventually have to be made public about you a lot of unprecedented stuff is having and there has never been an impeachment where the president successfully said i reject your subpoenas. you cannot speak to mick mulvaney white house chief of staff what he knew about ukraine. you cannot look at any e-mails or documents related to ukraine and this is-- the theory of bill barr's that the ultimate power is election or impeachment. to have a president say i reject your impeachment, this is shifting the balance of powers as we were talking about earlier. again, it's an extraordinary moment in american history how-- it's a question i asked in the

book, how powerful should a president be. >> all right. we should be up and running again. go ahead, david, wherever you left off or the question. >> let's take questions, no, no, i can talk about the press anytime. there's bad reporters like in any profession. let's go to questions. [laughter] >> what are your thoughts on erik prince and his relationship to betsy devos with this current administration. does that come in your purview? >> it does. there were early proposals by devos to try to use private security guards to kind of secure afghanistan. there were career officials in the cia and the military said this was a terrible idea given na some of the blackwater guards in iraq had killed civilians in a famous shooting

there. one of the main characters in the book is actually a fbi agent who investigates the blackwater shootings in iraq. his name is tom o'connor, an amazing guy who spends decades of his life, he says investigating evil and all forms. he investigates al qaeda, blackwater and white supremacists. and that was proposal was blocked eventually and stopped. again, is that the deep state or are these people that spent a lot of time in afghanistan, intelligence and military officers stopping a bad proposal. from my time in afghanistan that seemed like it was not a good idea. blackwater was sort of despised around the islamic world because of what happened in baghdad. >> what about the deep state being the powerful lobbies of which the industrial military complex is part and wall street? what's the evidence for that?

>> i think that, you know, there are very large defense contractors that have sway. one of the things about trump and i spoke to one aid aide, he's now a very senior official in the administration. trump personally is opposed to getting the u.s. embroiled in more wars and so if, you know, depends on the perspective of the person, but i would say both obama and trump resisted the pressures, famously in syria, wouldn't go any-- he pulled troops out of michiganing. he did have the such, but president obama ended that surge and an isolationist, if there are corporate or defense contractors. he's spending a ton in the military, but not engaging us in war. this is my kind of schtick as a journalist, the neat kind of theories don't always kind ever

work out. you know, ie, donald trump in the pocket of corporate america and big defense firms and he has fnot gotten us into a large war as president but the military contract not about the money being spent and-- >> correct. and at least young americans aren't dying and when, you know, anyway, point taken. >> yeah, yeah, but we live in a state where there's a big military contractor that lobbies incessantly for its contracts and gets pushback from other places and other companies sometimes, so maybe they don't have the sway as we think. >> barack obama, donald trump,

post-bush presidents, gw and dick cheney had powerful tools. was barack obama continuing to expand that power using at the same level or given what you said about the drone strikes, or was he seeing ways to reduce the power of the presidency? >> he ended up-- he was much more focused, obama, on obeying the law, so i think as i mentioned earlier, i will just jump into the snowden example. what snowden revealed every program he talked about had been approved by the federal-- the foreign intelligence surveillance court, the fisa court. the obama administration-- and a lot of it was secret, and people didn't understand the extent of it, but obama was

very careful about, you know, following these guidelines that had been set up in the '70s. and the problem was that he realized he did not want to get u.s. troops forever in iraq and afghanistan and so he embraced drone strikes as a way to protect the country. he would be vulnerable politically if there was another attack in the united states and then he felt deadlocked in terms of congress. when he was president the republicans were seen as an out of control congress seen as obstructionist carrying out too many investigating obama. ap if he didn't have the votes to carry in congress. each president faced with this kind of deadlock as we get more and more divided and more and more partisan. they are using executive orders and they would use kind of covert actions overseas to just, you know, try to get

things done, but obama did, you know, he stopped waterboarding, he stopped torture and he tried to close guantanamo, but it was a more lawful presidency, i guess, but just as powerful. >> and has trump has expanded or has he just continued at the level of gw and obama? >> oh, it's a much more expansive interpretation of executive power, there's never been this refusal to just flat out deny all kinds of congressional investigations into what his administration is doing and they're just stonewalling congress. it's a much more sweeping thing, because again, this i have ultimate authority and i'll decide when the states reopen. you know, george w. bush never said that. the using funds that were appropriated by congress for the pentagon, shifting, you know, the use of money that the legislative branch, the power of the purse, you know, taking

that money and using it to build a wall along the border with mexico, which congress did not want that money to be used for, that was the democratic vote of congress. the democrats, small d, and to have a president say, no, i'm going to take that money and spend how i want, no president has done that, no modern president, no president since nix nixon. >> did nixon spend money that wasn't authorized? >> slush funds and famous money. >> watergate. >> money that burglarized the watergate stuff. but it's a very, very sweeping-- firing the inspector general that's going to overlook the economic, you know, the support funds in the wake of coronavirus and appointing to replace him a white house lawyer who's, you know, seen as a real loyalist versus an independent figure. again, this is all getting rid

of these powers that were created in the '70s to restrict presidents. or it's a cumbersome system, all of these branches and it's hard to get stuff done in washington, but it was designed that way and we've seen that when you concentrate power, when there isn't transparency, it can lead to abuses and corruptions. >> around the world. i mean we american pride ourselves having a democracy that didn't fall victim to strongmen, but apparently we don't have as much control over that as we thought and the bill barrs of the world say, no, not until you have an election. >> the argument is that it's paralysis and it's too messy and you need presidents who-- you know, again, if you just go back to the obama administration, there was a sense that mitch mcconnell was blocking everything. and that was an abuse of congressional power and now

it's seen as goods, the democrats think it's good that nancy pelosi and schumer of sort of fighting back, but, anyway, this is an enormously important moment in american history. trump is setting precedent for future presidents whether they're republicans or democrats. >> right. another question, what happened to the quiet resistance group na had the aknowen must op-ed in the new york times? >> do you think there are other groups to push back against trump's crazy neiness, anonymou. >> i don't know who anonymous is. i've worked for 15 years and i think there's an anonymous and i think it's a fairly senior official. i think that people are gradually leaving government. just an anecdote, i mentioned tom o'connor this fbi agent, he was a police officer in western

massachusetts. he joins the fbi, he investigates the u.s. cole bombing in yemen and he recovers the bodies of the sailors from the cole. 9/11 he's in the pentagon, you know, he and his fellow agents recovered 2000 bags of human remains from the pentagon. so tom o'connor recently retired on 9/11 and he and his wife were both fbi agents. he retired on 9/11. he fought for these first responders to get more awards as they're getting different cancers and he was with jon stewart and jon stewart testified before congress. and jon stewart was angry why he think congress wasn't supporting these workers and so was tom aye connor, and i asked him would you ever want to run for office, you were so angry at congress, could you go in

and clean things up? and he said no, i'd want to do something that, you know, has some honor to it or some meaning and that's a really dangerous thing for me to hear, that someone who is, you know, worked, you know, i think helps people, again, there are bad fbi, no question, but this guy spent his career investigating, he called it evil in all of its forms. and i sentenced from him and others, a kind of disgust with our political system. a disgust with both sides that the cia and fbi are divided like the rest of the country. a chunk that like president trump and some that don't and i worry that the long-term government officials are not great, they're not bureaucrats, but we need a lean effective government we see with coronavirus that they're going to get sick of the scrum and the constant attacks and media

attacking them and we won't have people interested in public service anymore. >> are we seeing it? are we seeing a decrease in applications at the federal level? >> at the fbi, they say they're consistent. during the shutdown which was about so the wall. a lot of fbi were angry, they didn't get paid for two months, longest shutdown in fbi history. and they set up food pantries in fbis around the country and staffers of fbi coming in in tears and asking their supervisors for help. some agencies were afraid they wouldn't be able to make a credit card payment and they'd fail, if you have a bad credit history you're saying as --

some were angry at donald trump and some kang gri at the democrats. from the democratic prospect i think is crowsive and dangerous for this country in the long-term. >> corrosive and dangerous enough to say that these elections are false, i'm not going to abide by them or we're not going to have them? >> i would just get back to your media question. for conservatives or liberals, how do i want to put this. if you're a conservative and seeing the things on facebook and on-line and not reported in mainstream media. i'd use this, the wall street, news section, not the opinion section, one thing about newspapers and the new yorker where i work and, when we publish a sorry, a lawyer reads

it. there are libel laws for putting to go on that's false, true for "the washington post," new york times, many, many outlets. ... from the libel laws that exist for the rest of the media. and again if you're on the left and you hear something about donald trump is a russian agent, and it's not in the "new york times" which links left, it's probably not true. i would ask people to be

skeptical about what you're reading online, if you can be a skeptical as you want about the mainstream media but the equally skeptical about everything your reading online. >> david, i'm looking for the page, some are in your you say, you talk about president trump's, his lies and use the "washington post" as the example of the media that is counting his lies and misstatements. donald trump looks to the "washington post" and says look, there's the example of -- >> the amazon "washington post." >> the jeff bezos amazon "washington post." there's an example of the reporting about things that are a disservice to the country and not true about me, i believe he says that. why should -- i can see why somebody would say why should i read a paper that tells me the

president lies. counts the lies the president tells everyday. they claim that relies. >> i'm biased because i'm a journalist. there's hundreds of reporters who cover the white house. the "washington post" fact checker is edited and there's all these checks into the work. either the president is telling all these lies everyday that sort of all the fact checking organizations, i do think the post agree that is making false or exaggerated statements. i believe reporters. i believe in journalism. i didn't get a memo everyday telling me what to write. it's not fair to invoke him. at new yorker, ronan farrow, a very proud story we did about harvey weinstein. he could it sit as but i believe in journalism. most journalists want to get as close to the truth as they can get. they make mistakes. people of personal biases.

i trust the "washington post" fact checker. i'm biased as an establishment journalist and they have the president having made 15,000 calls or exaggerated claims since he came to office. it's increased every year he in office. if i have to guess is a problem hundreds of journalists all being part of a plot to undermine donald trump? or is the problem donald trump repeatedly lying and exaggerating? i am going to believe those journalists. i have a bias. there is that journalists but i believe in the processes we follow, if you have of lawsuits in slander. it's embarrassing if you have to run a correction of your story that really matters to people professionally, and so that's where i stand. people can choose to believe the president over us, but i did in my his claim that there is a a deep state that is carrying out

a coup against him, i did not find evidence of it. i had members of the trump administration tell me that was an exaggeration. the agreed there was not a deep state coup against the president. again, it is a savvy political operator donald trump using conspiracy theories and this is what he has done to discredit his opponents. birtherism and barack obama, using his conspiracy theory to discredit your opponent and yet he simultaneously, he controls information by blocking collects from getting information that prevents congress from being able to do its job correctly. by calling the media fake news, it discredits as, , confuses people and then he limits access to who he's meeting with in the white house, who he's calling, less and less disclosure about those kinds of things. it's very effective. it's a strategy. he knows what he's doing. he's a brilliant at messaging

but i come down on the side of those journalists come at a think the president has a problem in terms of exaggerating facts and making claims that are exaggerated. >> another question is president trump's complaints about the deep state due to is not replacing enough of obama's staff with his own people in 2017? >> again, at this point he's been president for three years. he can fire -- he did fire the director of the fbi. so all this talk of hillary clinton and the russia uranium deal and all her illegalities, republicans at full control of the house and senate for the first two years. they still control the student. the president has full control of the justice department, and so if he doesn't have control of the government after three years, he should be more effective in placing people to

run these departments. to his credit he's done a tremendous amount of change to the immigration system. he has enacted sweeping environmental changes. he has a lot of power. he is one house of congress, so i question, i would just -- in the first year yes, but he is that plenty of time to clean house at this point, in my view. >> were, are jim comey and bob mueller part of the deep state or part of the solution? >> good question. i don't like the term deep state. so i didn't find the deep state. bob mould and jim comey part of the permanent government, career government servants? those are more neutral terms. yes. did they work in government --

bob mueller spent his whole career as a federal prosecutor and is fbi director picky did some things that were question after 9/11 9/11 in terms of surveillance of mosques and other things. so i think they fit in the category of career government officials who may be of a pro-washington viewpoint but they were not acting and caring out plots against president george w. bush or president obama. they operated within the confines of the system that was again created in the '70s. the book started out with a former cia operative, a character in a book, who complained to me also. he said we didn't write like as oversight and all these roles when they came out in the cia but they came to accept them because there was like like a s of the road. if you're going to go spot on a foreign country, if you're going to detain someone and how you

interrogate them, have ways to do it because cia operatives feared what happened after 9/11. they carried out these enhanced interrogation techniques, these torture techniques, a new president was elected and was an investigation that obama carried out. it's by john durham, the same person that bill barr has investigated in the fbi but john durham look at the torture that went on and decided that were not criminal charges to bring because the sitting president at the time said it was legal. basic it's the political class, a lifelong justice department workers, a lifelong fbi people, lifelong cia people. they claim and i know people roll their eyes that are abiding by these rules. they manage congress but clearly i'm not saying they do everything they claim it's the political class that is not exaggerating intelligence or bearing intelligence depending

on what helps them politically. it's the political class and the president alleging these conspiracies, and they claim they are not true and it's just become score a lyrical point in any way you can, scorched earth, and it's damaging these institutions. it's damaging the publics view of these institutions and so the members -- sorry, long answer -- these career people, diplomats and others say the political class has, in the meeting has got to turn down the temperature and stop this cycle of attacks. >> that reminds me when you brought up in the book about shifts and when he was proceeding with his charges, he heard the republican representative from texas, he thought schiff was -- aggregate data words that you used, that he use, , i didn't think schiff was fair in his presentation.

>> yes. during the trump russian investigation, and want to get this right, i think schiff said there was beyond circumstantial evidence of collusion between trump in russia. robert mueller didn't find it. in fact, as robert mueller ---robert mueller be at member of the deep straight who is betraying fellow donald trump d robert mueller is essentially exonerated donald trump of collusion with russia? there was the issue of trump trying to interfere in the investigation, but that's this idea of is bob mueller this kind of straight shooter? is tony fauci doing the level best he can with information he has to try to come to conclusions about coronavirus? neither are perfect but i think if we think that no one is -- if we don't have some kind of a political expert, simply from basic facts whether it's the reported peace, you see on the newspaper or the book you read

or a government report, how do we govern? that was the allegation from will hurd against adam schiff, that the democrats knew that wasn't clear evidence of trump colluding with the russians but schiff kept adding and had on tv every night and it was powerful. just lessing will hurd. he was a cia operative for about a decade, ran for congress. he's a moderate republican, what if you african-americans in congress that are republicans. but when it came to impeachment, he came firmly down. he talks about, it was amazing come to meet adam schiff and adam schiff is getting death threats but adam schiff rescinds the president, thinks he's a tremendous threat to democracy and the existential threat to the future republic is enough. you talked republicans like will

hurd and they will say look, trump is unorthodox, he's amateurish trip that was a term will hurd use for the call with ukraine's president, and he thinks there were many moderate republicans feel that democrats are just overreacting to trump, this trump derangement system. it's just amazing again and it's dangerous the gap in the two realities about what is trump represent. >> where are you? where are you in this pendulum swing? >> i don't want to go too far. like, i think it's really important for journalists to not, i'm not going to cedar and say that people should vote for. a lot of journalists, there's plenty people trashing the president for saying the president is great. maybe i'm sure people will say since i said i didn't find evidence of the deep state, i am therefore anti-trump. but i'm just trying to present my honest effort in dozens of

interviews over about an 18 month period that it did not find, again, every president has been frustrated with democracy. minister was a great television series. we have to be on the fbi and the cia. they are very powerful. the digital age, it's easier to survey of us than ever. it easier to violate our privacy but what i found is the most proper way to do that asap all three branches of the government all over the fbi and the cia, two of the press all over them to force more transparency. it's cumbersome, chaotic, but rather than secrecy and concentrating power, that's what's led us to abuses in the past. i found what i found but i'm not going to sit here and read the president's mind or call him names. enough of that is going on, or call adam schiff minster and support for journalists to keep their mouths shut at certain

points and talk about the facts that they know. maybe you enter this but at such a threat to democracy or even, are the policies that have unfolded an existential threat to democracy? >> i worry about, it appears to be the appointment of, again, let me step back and say, i applaud every member, every senator on the senate intelligence committee and the chair, richard burr of north carolina, that sat there and voted for this report that affirms today that russia russp donald trump in the election. that is the opposite of the messaging, the political messaging the president wants. god bless them for doing that today. so do think the appointment of john ratcliffe who's a member of the house who insists that that's false and another was any help in the real issue was that ukraine was interfering in the election and that russia. that makes me nervous that you

are putting -- there has to be people in government positions who are trying their level best to get basic facts across. there have got to be journalists doing that and you can't get every single position filled with a political player who will twist the facts. again, we can't function as a democracy. i'll say it again and again, coronavirus shows we can't help each other survive this pandemic if we can't agree on basic fact facts. >> here's the last question from a viewer. have you heard of three felonies a day, the idea is that the typical american commits three felonies per day and they can be prosecuted and imprisoned for them if the government decided to. the point is that criminal law and regulations have gotten so vast that anyone can be got through selective enforcement. any thoughts on this? >> i don't know if that is true,

but i think that again shows how we need more transparency. i guess i would just say i would hope we would each get a trial by jury. this goes back to our constitution, and it would be wrong if prosecutors could bring you or me to trial. they have the power, but we can't go to jail and less a jury of our peers, and maybe they can take the evidence from the trailer, i think the judge would help us, so i think that's possible but that's why we need a divided system where there are not just prosecutors controlled by an executive branch, and then there's juries. there's legislators who will want to expose that, that that is happening. there's a press that wants to expose it. lots of divided powers, lots of fights, chaos but hopefully that protects all of us. that was a great question. >> i imagine there are some

people who have experienced part of the mass incarceration of the last 20 years who would say that's already taken place. >> that is true. i just, it's true and that's one of our biggest problems but it's true. i guess at that rate i would, i don't have a good answer to that one. that's really a cultural problem, a problem we've all had as a country for generations. it's an excusable -- inexcusable, versus applaud that was carried out secretly by government officials, if that makes any sense. >> it does. >> it's a core structural, psychological bigotry that runs up and down throughout americans versus a secret organization was carrying this out without all of us knowing. it's a horrible problem and that

continues today. >> so we're going to have probably a pretty rambunctious election, and a campaign and an election. it may be partially like this. does that concern you in any way, shape, or form? do you feel there's still transparency and still access taking place throughout this pandemic? >> i worry -- i mean, one of the big changes is the dark money in elections and the changes that happened with the supreme court decision in citizens united. as journalists we don't know what all these people are doing. the campaigns being waged online. i would ask people to be more skeptical what you read online and what you're seeing in your newspaper or websites that you trust that are sort of established journalism. you can begin read to the right or read to the left but tried to

be skeptical about where your information is coming from. there's a ton of misinformation out there. that is misinformation that is that information is spread by people who don't realize it's bad information. this information is intentionally spreading false information to cause discord and fear -- disinformation. i think americans are seven i think the pickup the selection, a lot of yelling and screaming. the happen and it's healthy for the people we have an election coming up and we should all except the results of the election. we have this incredible system where local counties are tearing up the elections across the country. i don't think there's some vast plot to change the results of our elections. i could be wrong. again, we have to believe in some basic facts and truths, and vote. yell if you want. not violence. vote and use your voice but no

violence. >> all right, david rohde, we believe that as the last word. that's a a good way to go up. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> "in deep: th e fbi, the cia, and the truth about america's deep state." thank you, david rohde. >> thank you so much, steve, and candace. >> thank you, folks. >> thank you both so much for coming out tonight and talking to us. journalism is so important so thank you both for your work. and thank you to the viewers all for joining us. your interest in upcoming programming you can follow us by clicking the follow button at the top right corner of your screen. again please buy the book. if you are able and interested in more townhall stuff, please donate if you can. but thank you so much to both of you again and have a great night, everybody. >> sunday night on booktv on

"after words" author tara westover talks about growing up in the idle mountains with survivalist parents. >> i think that my mother did a pretty decent job of homeschooling. by the time i came along she had seven kids, she was a midwife, and herbalist, there was a farm, the was a lot of homeschooling going on. i never took an exam pictures never anything like a lecture. >> then at 10 p.m. eastern former u.s. surgeon general. >> i had many experiences of talking to people on phone but then find myself mindlessly scrolling to my e-mail or refreshing my social media feed or ruling on the question became a period i don't need to do that because it's right there, i follow the to it but it does dilute the quality of our conversation ecocide tells us very clearly we cannot multitask what we do is were actually task

switching between one thing and another very rapidly. this is why i think it's important for us to ask the the question hi how do we get the quality of time? >> watch booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> , the book is america's expiration date and you say based on the findings of soldiers, scholars that great empires on the last about 250 years which means america's time could be up on july fourth, 2026. really? >> guest: i'm not a prophet or the son of one but don't thing we learn from history is we've heard the clichés we learn nothing from history. this is an expiration, this book, abate in part and great nations. the average length is 250 years. some lasted longer like the roman empire but all follow the same pattern to