first. if i remember correctly that following the discussion with the committee in washington it reconvened. that was the committee that took the final decision on the rating action that was then published. >> that was the committee meeting that took the final decision. that was the committee. >> confirm that to us in writing. i'd g grateful if you would. one other question that's come up quite a bit and the evidence we've taken in the march session. perhaps i could go to you mr. wilson for an answer. a great deal of detail work you're int mating lies behind each of the ratings for the major countries. that research is used to apply

the methodology that you have built up, that applies across countries. why not publish all the research? whenever we take a rating action, we will publish a press release which will contain substantially all of the analysis that has gone into -- >> why not publish that? will that make the credit ratings making well available, wouldn't that focus -- it's a point that you've all been making to us? >> the full range of research is available. >> but it's not. you meet behind closed doors on

the basis of a heap of detailed research. most of which is not published but only the key points as you see it are published. those are subsequently within the press releases, that's correct? >> we will publish -- >> that is correct. >> by publish we put on our website we have very detailed anl cease. we issued quite a detailed comment setting out our views on the ratings. setting out the views on the factors we take into account. on determining the uk's rating. the intention in that it tries to be readable, but detailed information to provide an understanding of our analysis. the intention is to achieve this site to be transparent and open and why we've reached the diss

we've reached. >> why not publish all the research and views? >> we have a moody's rating. it needs to reflect a moody's view. what's most important to us is what we publish makes very clear what the rating is and why it's where it is and what the moody's view is. in the risk of the clarity if we published a range of preliminary research which wasn't necessarily consistent with that rating. >> i have to say people will find it very bizarre that -- that publishing more material would lead to --

>> much of the research is freely accessible. the special reports that we publish in the united kingdom, the u.s., iceland in the past we would certainly review and be sympathetic to the potential of providing our sovereign research free of charge. though ultimately that's a commercial and upper management decision. >> i don't want to know about -- >> i am sympathetic. >> currently we would view our current press releases essentially as key judgments

reached within the rating committee. they should broadly reflect -- >> but it's a consensus after the debate's been had. what i'm suggesting is you set out the debate. >> i think that's something which we can look at and consider. i think there are some difficulties with, with that because when we have debates within the rating committee, first of all, we do sometimes have confidential information which we wouldn't be able to disclose into the public domain through minutes of other research. >> provided by the sovereign. >> provided by the southern authorities that we may disclose sort of feed back we've had in discussions over policy scenarios which again is sensitive for a disclosure. and we want to encourage a rigorous dialogue and debate within the -- within the

committee. so potential danger is the publication of minutes. potentially that discussion less rigorous and robust than it currently is. you could do what the policy committee does in those situations redact slightly the material. >> have you got views on this? >> yes, i do, mr. chairman. i think two-pronged answer. i think most of it is there. we publish twice a year an all data set that goes into the sovereign ratings. if you look at the methodology and combines of the data that is published by us, which are all our own forecasts which we use as a basis for our decisions the

criteria i think an informed observer should be coming pretty close within a notch at least to a sane conclusions that you can make your own assumptions about what you think the indicators would change and what that would mean for the rating going forward. >> in terms of the minutes, i would echo, it's actually an excellent question which we're asking ourselves repeatedly and discussing internally. it is currently our view and it has been our view for some time. especially in times like these that it might lead to -- if you have the participants -- >> you can anonmiez you said what? >> you could do that. if you publish all the scores

and the methodology. >> were deployed with respect of keeping a high degree of confidentiality and discussions prior to interest rate changes and we've discovered that we can live with a very high level of transparency and in fact we're much better off as a consequence. thank you very much for coming to see us this morning. it's been extremely interesting. we've picked up a lot. we may need further exchanges in written form. we're very grateful. thank you very much.

>> thank you. live tonight on our website booktv dwork journalist and former news anchor dan rather recounts his broadcasting career and dismissal from cbs news after 44 years. we'll have that at 7:00 p.m. eastern on our website. with congress on break this week, we're featuring some of the programs from american history tv seen every weekend here on c-span3. tonight lectures in history join students in the classroom to hear lectures on campuses around the country. beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern, university of michigan history professor kevin gains plays and mines the movement of the civil rights and brack power music. at 9:30 donald rumsfeld talks about the bush doctrine, compassionate conservatism and the bar on terror.

he's at the citadel military college in charleston, south carolina. at 11:30, urban america in the mid 1920s. a bowden college professor teaches a course on the social, economic, political and cultural dynamics of u.s. cities that's after world war ii. american history tv in primetime beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern all this week here on c-span3. the military academy at west point published 17 declassified documents from osama bin laden's compound. the documents total 1 5 pages. we have them available on our website, go to cspan.org. and right now a discussion on the one-year anniversary since the death of osama bin laden. this is from the potomac institute. it's about two hours.

>> ladies and gentlemen, it's my privilege to welcome you to the potomac institute for policy studies today. we have for a long time here at the potomac institute been privileged to be the host for a series of seminars, studies and in fact publications on a variety of issues surrounding terrorism. the potomac institute for policy studies is not for profit think tank in the washington, d.c. area that focuses on the issues of science and technology and how science and technology affect our governance and our society, our health, if you will in the world that we live in. we begun focussing on the issues of terrorism in the mid to late '90s mostly because it became

very apparent that this old form of warfare, terrorism which dates back in fact was in fact being reborn in the modern age due to the use of technology. and in fact, since we began studying terrorism in the late '90s, it became very evident that the terrorists of today found very novel ways of using technology first airliners as weapons against us. now the issue is how can we use the technologies, the sciences of today to counter this old scourge that we're still dealing with even today as we celebrate the first answer versery of the death of osama bin laden. at the potomac institute we were very fortunate to be able to attract and keep at the institute a professor alexander who heads the center for -- for international center for terrorism studies here at the

potomac institute. he's also affiliated with the center for legal studies and once again i'm very, very privileged and happy to have co-sponsor of this event professor don wallace at the end of the table who has been a very long time partner of the potomac institute in addressing these issues and making sure that we address not just the technical and policy aspects but the legal aspects as well. professor alexander put together a book in 2000 that was published in i believe january and february of 2001 that profiled a network known as al qaeda. this book was published nine months before the events of 9/11 and i'm proud to say that before 9/11 we sold i think 340 copies. after 9/11 between september and december we sold about 150,000 copies. today it's available in i think two dozen languages and around the world as one of the first

volumes that articulated what this network was and who were in it. one of the things that that book featured most was a set of pictures that were obtained publicly on the members of al qaeda at the time. the famous original 53 which became the targets of the last couple of administrations. in fact, it's been the policy of last couple of administrations to target al qaeda as a set of individuals that we need to take out. today, i think many people as you've heard in the last day or so are claiming great success in that mission to target al qaeda. there are very few members of the original organization left. some say one or two. there's only a few members of the organization who joined since 9/11 left and those that are left are certainly driven into hiding. i think the question today on

whether al qaeda is defeated or not is a question of whether targeting the individuals of the organization and succeeding in taking them out is in fact winning the war. frederick hagen wrote in 2003 in policy review an article called "war and aftermath." it's a fundamental mistake to see the enemy as a set of targets. the enemy in war is a group of people. some of them need to be killed. some of them captured. some of them driven into hiding. the overwhelming majority, however, will have to be persuaded. i think the question that i would throw on the floor today is not whether we have successfully targeted and killed those who associated themselves with al qaeda over the years, but whether we have successfully addressed and countered the message that caused those to join the organization in the first place. i think it's an open question and one that i hope each of our speakers will address in their own way as we talk to them

today. but i'd like to start that discussion off with a gift to them of the tenth anniversary book that has been produced to articulate all of the activities of the last ten years against al qaeda. so with that, if you'll help me. good luck to give to each of our speakers each a copy of the book. go ahead and pass it along. if nothing else, it's a really good paperweight. and a good symbol of the tremendous work that professor alexander and the international center for terrorism studies is responsible for here at the institute day in and day out. i'd like to personally thank him for his dedication to all issues of all issues of terrorism and doing it in the most

professional academic way. most of you will agree that professor alexander is absolutely a world treasure when it comes to these types of issues. we wouldn't be anywhere near as deep in understanding them without him. please join me in welcoming professor alexander. [ applause ] >> thank you very much mike for your generation introduction. i would like to thank the broadcast of this event to bring it to a larger audience in the u.s. and abroad, if you could kindly turn off your cell phone, if possible. we like music, but not now.

now we want to thank c-span again. we want to thank the recording of this and make it -- making the seminar available i think almost immediately. now i would like to make a few footnotes like an academic very brief because we have a very rich panel. and we would like to develop some discussion. now mike mentioned some of the work in studies again to provide some context obviously nothing is new under the sun as we know. and for decades we tried to academically again to chief two

aims. one is to learn the best lessons and to try to anticipate the future. we had last month here in the same way a seminar on nigeria. and in fact, it is interesting that going back to 1980 since it was too time at the csis i mentioned that we developed a research project on international violence we didn't want to use even the term terrorism at the time because we worked together with a university in nigeria. and now we're discussing affiliates of al qaeda. also we tried to learn about

state-sponsored terrorism. we published the first study on iran together with the congressional research service in the library of congress at the time because of the request of some members of congress and we continued over the years. we just published a report related to north africa from 9/11 to the arab spring and i would like to commend our team also riechers who are sitting in the back there. we are very proud of them who contributed the research to this study. finally i would like to mention that we're trying to cooperate

with international organizations such as the united nations and nato and one of our recent activity and publication is a journal called partnership that is being published in ankara, turkey, because of the mission of turkey to combat terrorism working very closely with nato. now i recall very vividly that jane woolsly after the cold war he made a statement before congress related to the nature of the threat the instability and the he indicated that during the cold war it was very simple

in a way they were a big dragon. but in the post cold war we have to deal with a situation of many snakes in the garden that we cannot identify. this obviously brings me to the question of the al qaeda and the challenge of al qaeda basically in terms of the short-term and the long-term aims and goals and what direction al qaeda is taking. i would like to mention now that we do have a very distinguished panel, you do have basically the cv. i'm not going to read it this time except to indicate that

each and every one specialized in this particular area and because of the time factor and some have to leave earlier, i would like to invite first mark levitt, matthew levitt who is as you know the director of the terrorism program at the washingtonian institute on middle east policy. >> good afternoon, thank you. and thanks also for accommodating my teaching schedule. the students aren't very understanding when you arrive as late as maybe i did here this afternoon. it's a pleasure to be here.

thank you very much. if you read the papers this weekend, you might come to the cob collusion that we're done. that al qaeda's all but over and we're on the right trajectory. i might agree with the second half. we're on the right trajectory. but we're not yet where we need to be. we will be i believe at some point in the not too distant future where people won't be talking about al qaeda as such. maybe the al qaeda core as such. but the global insurgency that bin laden created. he was far more successful than he dreamed he would be in creating a movement that's an idea is something we're going to see for a long time. i don't lose sleep worrying if it's al qaedaer an affiliate as much as i worry about what are the cape i believities of those that are intent on doing us and

our allies harm. across that spectrum we have a lot we have to deal with. the fact of the matter is it has been a fantastic year for those involved in counterterrorism. we're about to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the takedown of bin laden. that cannot be stressed enough how important that was. first of all many of us including myself were wrong when we thought bin laden wasn't as involved. we now know from the treasure-trove of intelligence the man was very involved. not in a day-to-day basis. when you engage in secured communications through a courier that takes time. he was reaching out to people and coming up with ideas and giving okay for ideas. we know now thinking about plots to target the president of the united states and think about plots targeting trains, et

cetera. taking him out was important because it removed the face, the man, the foot soldiers and those that seeked to radicalize others to follow in his image. he left in his place al zarqawi. not a pleasant individual. he doesn't have that magnetism that bin laden has. if anything there's good reason to hope that he will push some people away. it might create some fizz shurs within the larger movement. and that might be successful. something might breed more success as well. perhaps the biggest chooefl was capturing that treasure-trove of intelligence. we had a conference it's the

first time that anyone said likely that the amount of information collected was the equivalent of a small liberal arts college in the united states. we're talking about hundreds of pieces of information. audio, et cetera. going through that again which is something that's been ongoing throughout this year and the triage appears to be complete. that is something that people will continue to go through and you're getting more bits and pieces of that coming out. which gets us to this weekend's press. i think what you're going to be hearing a lot and you'll be hearing more is a lot of politicking. noert party has a mo knopp ply on that. which means you're going to hear from both sides. we're going to hear about how much more needs to do. all of that needs to be take within a grain of salt. i'm much more interested in what the career people have to say than what the set stair of defense says one day and then

restrakts the next day in terms of where we are. the much larger story is the arab spring, which some call the islamist winter. it's a huge shot to al qaeda's ideology. the simple fact that al qaeda through years and years of bloody violence maintaining that the only way to take down regimes like the mubarak regime was through violence and you could only engage in the near jihad against egypt, you had to engage in the far jihad with the united states. all of that turned out to be bogus. in the end a small group of liberal minded moderate minded arab and muslim youth, college kids armed not with weapons, but with iphone took down the mubarak regime. in other words, there is an

alternative. and i wish that we in the west would do better at promoting that or otheralive messages. i think na is as you heard in the opening remarks where counterterrorism is going to go in the future. i worked at the fbi in counterterrorism, i led or was one of the deputy chiefs of the agencies. one of the smaller ones, but one nonetheless. i'm convinced that we do tactical terrorism, counterterrorism really well. there's no such thing as 100%. there's always attacks that get through. we are increasingly good at disruption. at taking on those trying to carry on the next attack. where i worry is that we are still pitiful and strategic counterterrorism. at throwing a wrench in the process by which people become radicalize. to thinking that carrying out an act of political violence, terrorism