the oversight. share their ideas with different committee heads. come up with plans and maybe that circulated sometime in the fall and then new members would vote on it in january and maybe there's a way to hold new members accountable on something like this. it's a national security battle. not just simply about how congress is organized. >> and what do you sees the role of the executive branch in pushing ahead on this issue? >> i think as i tried to articulate, the executive branch has a strong interest in having a rationalized oversight program. i know jay johnson, his folks are spending a lot of time at hearings they think are probably duplicative and not necessary and would love to do something about it. i think it is incumbent on the administration to make this a priority and use this to push congress. leadership congress has to

embrace it. the less the leaders in congress recognize publicly that this is an important issue it's not going to happen because they're going to have people pushing back real hard so it's got to be a public effort. they have to be armed with a push from the president and the white house to say -- this is important. so i'd like to see the whole national security apparatus from the president, nfc on down, making this top priority in all the conversations. >> tom, you had mentioned the role of the congressional leadership in pushing this ahead. what should they be doing? >> it is -- i think my colleagues brought up two very important points. one, it is a national security issue. it is a national security issue. i don't think anyone would argue the restructuring of congress after world war ii and subsequent restructuring from the department of war to the department of defense were more

aggressive about the oversight of dod. that needs to be understood. this is not a management and organizational issue, this is a national security issue. number two, no one is arguing from my perspective in the executive branch about the need for oversight. we all believe that the oversight should be comprehensive and would be a lot more effective if the prison was narrowed and you developed some subject matter experts who could help the maturation and development of this fledging and new department. finally, at large, i would wager that if you took a private poll, 535 members of congress, and asked them in their heart of hearts, if they truly believed that committee structure

vis-a-vis, as effective as it should be, given the range of issues and the size of the government, i have to believe most would say, no, with with it's not. we're just kind of going along to get along because that's the way it's been. and so we're here to say if you want to begin to make changes in a 21st century infrastructure overseeing a 21st century government that is far more complicated and complex with regard to the threats and charge then you need to think about your committee structure and we're simply saying to the leaders, it's a national security issue. deal with it in an effective way and that's changing the jurisdiction. i like that notion. it's not a vote on reorganization. it's a vote on national security. republicans and democrats are all strong on narcotic security but you wonder whether or not whether they are incapable or unwilling to do this. it's going to call for leadership from the white house and leaders in both chambers and

both parties. >> i want to take a moment here to not refine a point because tom's made it much better than i could ever make it. his eloquence really, i think, driving home the point. when we look at the department of defense, in our special forces, army, navy, marines, coast guard, all the special programs in defense and we have armed services and defense appropriations and a handful of committees overseeing, what, roughly a $500 billion budget. and then we have the department of homeland security with a 60 or 70 or $80 billion budget. >> now. >> i wish i had had that. >> you didn't but now it gone up to that, with 92 committees overseeing it. so you're telling me that the department of homeland security should have eight times the number of subcommittees and full committees when we're both dealing with the national security of the united states? and furthermore, the department

of homeland security is ask dealing now with issues radicalation and people coming into the country and some that are already here that are home grown terrorists. something to the effect of what happened in the boston marathon bombing. they have a specific way to help protect us from those. but yet congress doesn't really know what's going on because they're so many people up there that are fighting for jurisdiction and oversight. that has to change. >> and you had talked some about the costs of all of this sort of excessive oversight. i was wondering if you could sort of rate the call quality of the oversight of homeland security at this points, give a report card. the commission didn't do a report card this time around so now we can. >> there we go. i mean, i'll look at it by comparison with my experience. i think the oversight of the justice department was quite

effective at the time i was there. 18 or 19 years. spend a good bit of time working with congress. as i said, judiciary and intel committees. there was vibrant, strong, aggressive where it should be. and it was knowledgeable. and i think you don't see that when it comes to dhs. i was dealing with it when i was homeland security adviser and it was not any of those things. and not because there were not good people or members that cared a lot but it was a part-time occupation and not the focus of the staff or the exclusive focus of the staff or members and that's an important point by the way, the knowledge not only the members but the staff's up there as well. and as a result, really, it's the sort of watered-down oversight you get which is not proving. and i think we've all been there. all of us have been up there to testify know that you can give a sort of standard answer to some questions without worrying about the follow-up. and that is, i think, that's the

particular exchange but that also typifies the whole relationship if you don't have somebody just really on the case on congress' side. we don't have to worry too much but keep in mind, jay johnson has a few balls in the air. john pistol has a few balls in the air and oversight is one of them. unless that ball makes itself really important in the eyes of that principal, that official, that oversight is going to get short stripped so there's a real cost both to the the oversight service that congress is providing the american people but to the quality of the introspection that agencies are forced to do by that oversight. >> tom, how would you rate it? rate the quality of oversight of other by congress at this point? >> i think they confuse quantity

with quality. i think the point my colleagues have made is a legitimate one. listen, there's a lot of talented people up on the hill on both sides of the aisle. i believe that my colleagues with whom i served and those with whom i'm serving now, to a certain extent would rather develop certain subject matter, expertise and try to be all things to all people when you go to multiple committees and multiple subcommittees. at the end of the day, while i admit other is one of those agencies that's multitasked, it is a border centric agency. you worry about goods and people going back and forth. across the border. you also worry about immigration and you also worry about natural disasters. you also worry about cybersecurity. you better worry about critical infrastructure or an ongoing terrorist threat. all related to the border so there's an epicenter of focus

that i think lends itself to the aggregation of all of the right groups within that department. but when you suddenly diffuse the oversight across multiple jurisdictions you lose a sense of both urgency and my colleague's point of view, the notion that on a day-to-day month-to-month, year to year basis you begin to develop the expertise to ask the tough follow-on questions and that only comes from experience and you don't want to turn it over to a staff member and i'm speaking very respectfully of the staff and the point you made. we need aggressive oversight and the executive branch welcomes it. the constitution requires it, at least demands it, suggests it. but you don't get that so i think, again, if the end of the day, writ large, the oversight of the executive branch is antiquated. we're here only talking about homeland security but i think congress in the aftermath and 9/11 confused 115 with quality. its turf, it's tough to get

people to give up jurisdiction that, my god, there's plenty of jurisdiction up there in a lot of other areas to make the committee chairman happy although that should not be the function of leadership to make committee chairman happy. it should be to construct the oversight capability to make sure your country is safer and more effective. >> tim, your assessment of the quality of the oversight of homeland security. >> i would agree with the criticisms and the evaluations that both my colleagues have made. as a former member of congress and someone who loves the institution of congress and deeply respects the first branch, one of my dreams is a fifth grader growing up in indiana was to some day run for congress and represent my hometown community in this wonderful city. and having lived abroad to represent our country to a billion people in india and so proud of our country, it is an

exceptional place. and, yet, when we look down the road and we think about what their jobs are to make some, not even that difficult decision with to give up some turf, and to serve on one less subcommittee or full committee and move from serving on 6-5 or 4-3, for our national security, that shouldn't be a tough call so i think our oversight when that doesn't happen, suffers. our security suffers. our safety as a country suffers because they are not acting on these things. and our report goes into many other areas of congress needs to act on in addition to the oversight and the reorganization of oversight of the department of homeland security. we talk about the developing a new authority as to how we send our troops on men and women to

war. and updating the 2001 resolution. so that that decision reflects the american people's interests and their opinions. we talk about congress passing a cybersecurity bill. that will better protect the country. there are many things we talk about that congress should be doing and they're not. and i think what we in the 9/11 commission decided was we are past frustration on this. especially when it's a national security issue. congress must do something and do it soon. >> one of the other areas that the report covers on the congressional front is an area where there may not be enough congressional oversight and ken, you alluded to your experiences working with the intelligence

committees and i was struck when i was talking with congressman hamilton a couple of days ago and he said that, you know, having seen the follow-up notes and revelations he concluded that congressional oversight of these surveillance programs have not been robust enough and i was curious what your sense of that is. >> obviously that's an issue that's come to the fore, thanks to the disclosures. you have to look at the fundamental problem that points out was this. the intelligence committees are tasked with a very difficult job. they're tasked with being the ones who day-to-day, look at these highly classified programs. assess those programs. and do so without those programs beingclosed to the rest of the world. if you look at the some of the programs that have been very controversial in the wake of this snowden disclosure like the

telephone metadata program where the telephone data was gathered, put in one place and held in one place and searched for indications of terrorist activity, that's if one that's really caught the most controversy and that's -- it was completely classified. you had members of the intelligence committees being briefed about this on a regular basis. in fact, i guess all of congress was allowed to be briefs but the intelligence kwoms themselves focused on it but not able to talk about it more broadly and i think senator wyden raised that concern before. the least amount. and that's a problem. there's know way around it, frankly, because there are large parts of our surveillance, if not most of our surveillance activities need to be done in total secret. they can't be disclosed publicly. but it does raise the concern. how does the public have confidence that that oversight is being conducted effectively when think can't see what that

oversight is? they can't see whether the tough questions are being asked. they can't see whether congress in the body of the intelligence committees are asking how are we cal bralting the balance between liberty and privacy and between security and privacy. so i think that's the intention that's always there. but i'll say i think that one of the lessons of the whole post snowden situation is that it's incumbent on the executive branch to disclose more if they can when there's a programming that be disclosed in part to do so and not have what is young is a reflexive reaction on the part of us in the intelligence community. we have to be careful. if you let one piece of information out that might lead to more. that argument is viable but sometimes that has to give way to a recognition that the more the public can know about these programs, the more basis they

have that they're -- they have confidence that it's been done appropriately. in the absence of that knowledge, there's an absence of that confidence and an absence of trust and then doubtbility the ovabout the oversight. >> having sat on the intelligence committee do you agree with congressman hamilton it's not robust enough? >> i always agree with congressman hamilton. he's always got that wisdom and insight. i always associate myself with the gentleman from the home state of indiana. when we talk about oversight, we're talking about condensing, reforming, streamlining on the department of homeland security, the oversight in congress. it's a very different issue from the intelligence committee. one, it is finding members. this is called a select committee. it's not called a select committee because hopefully, members select it.

it's hopefully called a selected committee because the leadership goes and picks specific people that they know have an expertise in national security that are going to devote significant time before committee hearings and after committee hearings, that these people are going to travel, not just to langley or to the farm or nationally but internationally. and see what issues they're dealing with overseas. these people are going to serve on these committees and develop a sense of expertise and devoerd devotion to issues. they'll penetrate and ask tough questions about issues. why is there this problem with overbudgeting on this particular set of systems that we're buying for space, is a hypothetical? why is that happening? who do we get up here to have

accountable answers given? how do we are do staff work to make sure that the right questions are asked and followed up with after we have a secret hearing? and i don't get the sense today that that kind of is taking place by all members of the senate and the house committees. and i would further state -- >> you mean enough of the members? >> i would like to see more members participate in that kind of dedicated fashion and that's, again, why you can't have six or seven different committees. that you think you're serving on. if you're truly serve on a committee you're going to be on probably two or three or four to devote the time necessary to travel, to study the issues and to oversight. and i would say, you know, lee and i have talked about this. we both served on the intelligence committee. it's not only a function 06 what we just talked about, getting the right people, bipartisan

staff working on these issues together. but it's also you know, terribly important that the executive branch briefs all members of the committee. and they don't keep narrowing down the briefings to the gang 06 eight. to the gang of four or the gang of two. and members on these intelligence committees which are supposed to be selected 25 members out of 435, or a dozen or 15 in the senate of 100, they're picked because there's confidence in these people that they represent the entire body. this very, very top secret kinds of information. >> you feel they're currently representing the entire body? >> lee, do you want to answer that question? we'll bring you in on that one. >> i think on the homeland

security security side and on the intelligence committee, we need to vastly improve our intelligence oversight capabilities. and change them. >> i just want to make a quick comment here on behalf of the department which i was privileged to help form and lead. homeland security is not generated its own intelligence, folks. they can be held accountable for intelligence failures and they have been blamed from time to time when those things have happened but they rely on all athe alphabet agencies to get them the information that they either act upon or disseminate and i just wanted to make that known to everybody. this notion that somehow the secretaries have their private -- they had a little bit of competitive intelligence capability, but by and large, they have to rely on the alphabet agencies in order to make decisions in terms of disseminating information or acting on relevant and timely

information. i just throw that out there as an anecdote. i could make a pretty strong case given the nature. again, the world we live in, 20th century structure not good for a 21st century world or a 21st century set of challenges. the argument could be made that select committees on intelligence might be the only committee you sit on where your burden to serve other committee could be substantially reduce. that's the nature of the world we live on and there's probably, everybody can argue about there being important jurisdictions. one could argue if you accept a committee assignment on the intelligence committee perhaps that ought to be your reason for existence for the four or six years you're on it. just a thought. i just keep going back to 20th century government and 21st century oversight. 21st century government, much bigger government. more complexity and challenges and we still have jurisdiction

the same way. doesn't make any sense. >> let's open it up to questions. >> how you doing? i lost my leg in afghanistan in 9/11. i -- not related to the oversight but i believe oversight and transparency go hand in hand. having to work the army intelligence for three years, i think we tend to loosely use national security, classified documentation when they shouldn't be classified. a perfect example, 9/11, we've had a number of documents classified which caused family members not to get a complete

picture of what happened on 9/11. i would just like to ask congressman tim roamer from the 9/11 commission, how would you rate the classification of the documents during 9/11 and i also ask the two gentlemen from homeland security, how would you rate the transparency of homeland security? thank you. >> thanks for your question. and nice to see you here and thank you for all you're great work. not only helps in the 9/11 commission but on the pentagon memorial for 9/11, too. i think you bring up some great points. first of all, i think one of our recommendations, i know one of our recommendations in the report today is about transparency and encouraging the national archives and the executive branch to release more and more of the documents from 9/11, to have this transparency

and this openness so that the american people have even more access to what we found and so we make a very, very strong set of recommendations here to change that process. and open up the system. secondly, the classification,'ve seen that there's a tendency in our government to you've classify all kinds of different information and that really hurts us in many ways. when we talk about sharing information we talk about sharing information across government horizontally and between the federal government and departments and breaking down the see lows but vertically, through local and state officials and making sure that they get information and that they pass it back up to the federal government. and when we yooefr classify information, when we say it's top secret and it probably isn't, then those local

authorities oftentimes maybe they don't get access to a critical clue or something that they can pick up. i think that's improving but i know and our recommendations that we continue to recommend changes there. >> in spite of what happened on 9/11, you still have am institutional bias based upon a cold war mentality on -- we'll distribute information on a need-to-know basis. and by and large, a lot of these entities and my judgment have decide that you don't need to know until we're ready to tell you. which is not exactly the barometer that i think is appropriate. overclassification is a way to shield information. it's a reason not to share it. and even in my time in government and i would denvdefe

colleagues i've sign secret or top secret on documents if it was redacted in such a way the information could have been shared with regard to transparency without divulging the sources. so we look at the whole system of overclassification is critically important going forward. secondly i would say this. there's a word missing in this conversation between the federal government and the rest of the country. the word is "trust." and even if you have secret and top secret information it is beyond belief that somehow, we can't figure out a way to share it with the governors or the homeland security advisers or other people out there on the ground, because you can't secure the country from inside the beltway. and unless we're willing to share more of the information, even if it's secret or top secret and trust people who get it, that they won't leak it, and not necessarily act upon it, we'll never maximize our ability to defend ourselves. and so i just wanted to inject

one more word into this conversation. let's take a look at the classification system. we got to look at that. but don't use it to with hold information and don't be so reluctant to share that kind of information and i don't want to hear about leaks. there's no town that leaks more than washington, d.c. so don't tell me you're worried about people out there who have day-to-day responsibility for the safety of their friends in their communities. the folks in this town have to be a lot more trusting who wear the same uniform of public service whether it's law enforcement community or homeland security. we have to trust each other. with all the intelligence we have to put us in a position so we can be pre-emptive rather

than reactive. >> thank you for that question. i think if there's one thing, unissue that's less sexy than congressional oversight it's overclassification. but i'm actually on the -- one of the things she rattled off at the beginning i'm on the public interest declassification board which is devoted to addressing this issue. we consider ourselves sexy but it's not a very sexy topic and the problem is one of human nature. it's that when you're writing a document, you're in the executive branch up concerns about whether it might have some information that could be -- that whose release could be damaging to the national security. people tend to err on the side of classified. and so it really requires a comprehensive sort of all-out effort by the executive branch. to push back against that by human nature and the president, when he came in, he issued

executive order addressing this issue and there's been a lot of talk about it. but it's a tough nut to crack. and i think as much as we can generate by your reports and by public discussion of the issue of the need for making sure there's not overclassification, the better. you're going to need to get a groundswell to really push back against this. it's sort of a function of human nature 123450 we need to go from need to know to need to share. it's another world. it's a different world. we need to go from need to know to need to share. >> and we'll go to commissioner over here. but i wanted to really, one thing that governor cain mentioned a couple of days ago when we were talking about this report and he mentioned that there are a lots of the commission's documents and papers that still remain classified including a chunk of their report on the national security agency which people may find interesting today. and he said he didn't believe any of them needed to be

classified today. >> so this is been an extraordinarily articulate discussion by my pals here on the myriad of reasons why we need to reorganize and reform policies. ten years ago, we saad when we made our recommendations, that it would probably be the hardest of all of our recommendations to realize. and we were right. i'm not being smug about being right. we're being unhappy about how right we were. so the kquestion and i'll direc it to governor ridge. in you're extraordinarily candid and articulate exposition of why

turf is the primary reason of -- for the resistance the national security component to why we are not only wasteful but are counterproductive in the current regime, can you unpack for a system that seems to be resistant to reforms. and how we are, as citizens, can force force accountability for the refusal to accept these recommendations which we have made and reiterated and reiterated again with support from all the different avenues we talked about over these past

ten years. >> thank you ben for your kind words. when i think of terms of turf i think in terms of almost historic am inertia up on the hill, over decades. and we've always had jurisdiction over these and the natural instinct to preserve it. i don't think the institutions of government are any different has been the institutions of the vat sector and the institutions of us personally change is difficult. change is very difficult. particularly when it's a fundamental change in your life, your company and now in the committee structure. having said that, that explains that it doesn't justify it.

regardless of affiliation or regardless of the chamber, who are willing to surrender jurisdiction that they've had for years, in not decades, it's at that point in time and i think this is where when you go with the question, how do you activate the political the body politic to e6k9 a change or want them to be responsible? i can't think of anything better than we're doing now than these multiple agencies and groups and think tanks that continue to put pressure on the congress of the united states but ultimately i think it comes down to five people, maybe four. the leaders in the house and senate on both parties. it's at the caucus level. ladies and gentlemen, we've met. we're in bipartisan agreement. it is a national security issue. we're going to effect a change. easier said than "dont ask, don't tell" but i'm not sure you have to get a consensus among 535 people.

it's a leadership issue. that's the way i see it. as i said earlier on, i think most men and women in the house and senate would tell you. it spread across multiple jurisdictions and they are doing their job as an effective uway as they like to do it so i think though need from the white house. four people need to effect these changes. post november, before january. >> we know how much time is spent on fundraising in the congress. by individual members. it's a constant demand on their

time and energy. is there a fundraising component that's associated with the failure to reorganize? and on homeland securitynd let me add a second question, coming from the families of 9/11 victims, and that is -- whether if the 9/11 families could, again, be active proponents for change on the congress if they were to organize and, again, rededicate their effort to this issue? >> couple of quick short answers. one, i don't think and i understand where you're coming from with regard to the fund raiseding component. i don't think that would have an effect. i think galvanizing the 9/11 families around this important issue would have a far better

and greater effect. i like that a lot. >> hitch charrrichard, i think fundraising effect because of the band width on everything that happens up there. and if a member out of the 24-hour day is spending six hours a day fundraising at oversight hearings, is that the right ratio that we need to protect our country today? it would be interesting for some of the media to do a survey of members of congress. how much time do you spend in your committees? not just in a markup of the bill when you have to be there and your votes are recorded on amendments and final passage of the bill, how many hours are you in that committee when they're doing the oversight of and what problems they're encountering?

do you have three members in that committee for the entire time or 20? that's very interesting to look at that but let me go back to your first question now. i think three things need to happen for this to pass and i think it's possible. it's hard, but it's not impossible. first of all, it needs to be defined as a national security issue. it's not a reorganization of congress issue. it's not about solely turf. it's about what do we do to try to make sure that our committee structure is appropriately aligned with the threat and with the solutions in america today? and 92 subcommittees and committees does not do it. way too many. it's wasteful. the second thing is third party involvement.

the 9/11 members should be involved. there should be groups that will reach out to the leadership and tell the leeshdship and our congress, ms. pelosi and mr. boehner and mr. reed and mr. mcconnell, we want this to happen for national security reasons. i think tom is right that it needs to be focused on the leadership. if the leadership is hearing from other members in the senate and house, that they would give up jurisdiction. they give up one subcommittee and tell their leadership that their they've willing to do that, this may happen. this has a better chance. lastly, i would say the great thing about america in our system is when people weigh in. the people. c-span viewers and if they call and say -- we're not going to take this anymore. we want congress to do its job. we're not going to re-elect 90 or 95% of the congress women and

men if they're not doing their basic national security issues and they do their call-ins and call the hill and they weigh in, that's probably, if they'll do that, then i think you'll see a bigger chance for this change. >> those are great thoughts to end on and thank you. i'm sorry. we've run out of time. >> i'm sorry and we'll be happy to take your question you've line. we have to move on. mostly because i know many of you are probably very hungry. before we do so i want to make a few comments. i understood. i apologize. i can talk to you offline but i need to wrap up so everyone can have food and we can continue the program. >> we're happy to talk to you. i didn't know you were a family member until you showed me the sign. we'll be happy to talk to you

offline. >> i appreciate your patience and i understand not everyone is getting an opportunity to speak. thank you, richard for volunteering all of us 9/11 family members for a new job. i think we're probably all happy to participate alongside our 9/11 commissioner friends. with that said, i wanted to recognize just a few people in the audience who have made all of this possible. first of all, i want to recognize jerry manion of carnegie corporation for her support for the homeland security project. without her we wouldn't have this project and we're very grateful for all her support. ooird be remiss if i didn't talk about all the people who made todaynd this report possible. in the room we have jacob clark, ashley mccormick, jocelyn fell 's and jonathan you juan and jessica, we thank you all for all of your hard work. the homeland security program summer fellow, michael garcia has been invaluable throughout this process. thank you very much. and, of course, i have to thank ashley play, our director of

communications. and her incredible team. alyssa who pulled this event together. abby brandon who has been communicating with the press to make sure you all knew about this and lindsay who put together in report and made it possible for it to be here in front of you. so at this point i'm happy to break for lunch. it is directly behind me. you have doors over here and over here and we're going to be coming back together in about 25 minutes to begin our next part of our program. thank you all.

good afternoon, v. it is my pleasure to interrupt your conversations for the last conversation of the day. i'm jason, the president of the bipartisan policy center and it's a pleasure to be here today. when we founded the bipartisan policy center seven years ago with the leadership and support of senators daschle, dole, baker and mitchell, this was our imagination. our goal was to create the kind of infrastructure and expertise that could support work and events like today. i want to thank again, our terrific partners, public policy center and the carnegie corporation both for the substantive and intellectual engagement and the financial

support to make the day and report possible. when i'm out on the policy center constructive partisanship and our efforts to restore principal collaboration i tend to get two responses. some combination of -- sounds like tough slefding and at least you have job security. and it's a fair understanding. you know? we have deeply dysfunctional government and what you can only describe as a target-rich environment for very big problems. one of the great facts of this work for me is i get an opportunity to work with a variety of different fascinating people, tremendous issues and terrific leaders. but i can say in my seven years, there's really been no more compelling effort than the opportunity of last year to work with the 9/11 commission. and i really, obviously, want to thank lee and tom. and you unique aspect of working with lee and tom is that everyone wants to talk to them.

that's a report we released today as i think we mentioned was informed by literally dozens of interviews and reflections from experts inside and outside of government. most of those interviews were not retribution. but there is one reflection that i'm pleased to share with you now. >> congrch laceses to the 9/11 commission on the tenth anniversary of their release of your historic report. aas you gather here in washington i no you're paying tribute to the leadership of two great americans. tom cain and lee hamilton. ten years ago, the 9/11 commission came together on a bipartisan basis to help american people understand one of the darkest days in our history. and to provide recommendations about how to keep our country safe. the power of your report, your commitment to trains parn si and your dedication to preventing future attacks, brought our country together.

from leadership of the director of national intelligence and the analysis of the national counterterrorism center and coordination of federal, state and local agencies i rely on your recommendations every day. none of that would have been possible without the leadership provided by tom and lee. they come from different parts of our great country. tom is a proud citizen of the garden state. and lee is a quintessential hoosier who made hit name on the basketball court. both of you embody what americans want in their public servants. integrity, humility, intelligence and a commitment to put the interest of our country before any partisan or personal agenda. and the state house and the halls of congress, you have u made your mark and i speak for many americans when i say our country could uss a lot more publicer is haven'ts lying tom cain and lee hamilton and you're also tireless which is why today you're still providing recommendations to my administration and congress about how to protect our country. so thank you. to the 9/11 commission and to

two men who have provided such extraordinary leadership you made our country safer. and you had not only my thanks but the thanks of a grateful nation. as you can imagine, it's a real honor to be sharing this shaj with two leaders who have demonstrated bipartisanship can provide. there's no question that our nation is deeply divided today. but it would be a gross misrepresentation to suggest that 9/11 commission was operating during a gentle time of bipartisan constructive agreement and members of congress holding hands and national interest. but still, amid the political times and incredibly high stakes. tom and lee united five democrats and five republicans in a consensus report that obviously resulted in dramatic policy change and helped to heal our nation from the tragedy of

9/11. so having spent the morning focused on policy discussions we'll close today with a reflection on the commission process. a little bit of behind the music review. what we can learn about functional partisanship and understand the processes that have guided us successfully through most of our nations 230-year history. so i'm enjoying -- i'm going to join -- i'm going to join these two leaders and pose a couple of questions. so first off, i think it's been mentioned in a few different ways today that the fundamental essence of politics is some amount of trust. now, you two have worked so effectively together a lot of people thought you knew each other before this process and you would have been intimate and trusted friends and my understanding is that's not the case. so i thought it would be useful

to share and how did you meet each other and what were your first impressions if you would be so kind. lee, do you want to -- >> well, jason, you're correct. i had known about tom cain as governor. not a lot about new jersey. he was always recognized and thought of as one of the more successful governors in recent history. so i knew him by reputation. i may have shaken his hand once or twice before we met. to head up the 9/11 commission. it's worth remembering that both of us were substitutes. original nominees were henry kissinger and george mitchell. and both of them had to step

aside because of conflict of interest. so tom and i were second stringers. tom and i met and told the staff last night that the almost the first thing he said to me substantively was, lee, we're going to make every decision jointly. well, having come from the congress where the chairman has all the power and the ranking member has none of the power, and where partisanship is very strong and staffs are chosen on a partisan basis, i was somewhat flabbergasted. it was an extraordinary gesture on tom's part. just extraordinary. and i look back on it, as one of the most important decisions in government that i have encountered. when you think about all the

things that have flowed on the fact that we had a unanimous report and were able to work together and all the legislation passed and all the institutiona structure of government. of all the budget changes. all of that flowed from tom's initial offer. and i came -- i became acquainted with a man who had vision of where he wanted to go, and how to get there. he taught me patience, which has never been one of my great qualities. he taught me how to listen and the most important skill in politics and government, which is the ability to build a consensus behind a solution. it's a very -- excuse me for wandering around a little here jason, but it's a very easy

thing to go into a room where you have differences of opinion and blow it apart. i know it's easy, because i've done it on any number of occasions. what's really hard, really hard is to go into that room and get people to work together. it usually takes a lot more than one meeting. tom has that skill to an extraordinary disagree. and so he deserves the credit for putting the commission on a consensus building posture. >> some early memories of the process? >> yeah, i remember that meeting myself. the thing about lee is, his reputation launches before him. i knew a lot about lee hamilton, everything i knew about him was good. i talked to republican friends of mine in the congress. i said, he's a wonderful guy to

work with. i talked to people who are usually very partisan, he knows how to work between the parties. he's made accomplishments in that realm. i'm not sure i would have said that to many other people. your reputation was so good in the area of everybody trusting you. and very few people trust anybody in this town. but they trusted lee hamilton. when i walked in and said, we're going to work together. i had an understanding this was someone i was going to have a great deal of pressure, woulding with. not only that, someone who filled in so many gaps i had leading the commission. i was the outsider, i came from new jersey. i had never worked in washington. and this was a washington institution dealing with washington problems of the government and the congress and all of that, so lee's long experience in both

administrative and in the congress was something that i totally lack. without lee, i wouldn't have known what i was doing. i could go to him with total trust and get his opinion and know it was based on intelligence, experience and absolute integrity. and so that wasn't hard. to answer your question, really. lee and i worked on it hard. we worked on it very hard to be bipartisan. it wasn't the first time he asked me to appear, i'll appear if you have lee hamilton with me. he basically said, we don't let guests pick guests. and i said, then get somebody else. about two hours later we called back, i said, i'm delighted to have you and lee. and then the way the other

commissioners, with their own dedication of bipartisanship starting on by like noah's ark, two by two. we got known throughout the county as people who were working together in a bipartisan manner. we worked everything from the seating arrangements, from the hearings, in private, republicans and democrats didn't sit next to each other. just everything we could do to emphasize partisanship from the beginning. the other thing i would say by the way is very important. you can't be bipartisan unless you get to know each other. and recognize each other as people. people who are there to do a job and care very much about what they do, it was the same motivations you are. so the idea we would meet for dinner, even with no agenda

sometimes -- the idea that jamie was kind enough to invite the commissioners to our house, john layman did the same thing in new york, that we got to know each other as people and gradually those r&d's started to disappear. but you know, the answer is lee hamilton was enormously important in the process, he came from a background of dealing with people in both parties. it was rare in this town. >> i think that's really a tremendous reflection that embodied our experience in almost every successful effort we've undertaken. also very important that you had that kind of immunity at the outset. as a number of people mentioned, it wasn't all rosie when this process started, and in fact, tom, i ride you said at one point the commission was set up to fail. so if you would think back 12 years and talk a little bit about how did the rest of the world embrace your commitment to

collaboration and do you actually feel like you had to overcome frameworks that were designed not to be successful? >> i made that comment, and i think it was true, because the congress voted for us to be set up, a lot of members of congress didn't want us at all, and the families know that better than anybody else, they had to fight for the commission. the president didn't want us to do an investigation in the administrative branch. they didn't give us enough money. less money than any other commission had gotten. they didn't give us enough time, and it was in the year of the presidential election. so it was the most partisan time in washington. i looked at all of those factors and figured, we've been set up to fail. and so it was -- we had to fight. we had to fight to get more money, fight to get more time, fight to get access to documents

we needed. we had to fight to get people to testify to make our cases. nothing was easy. without the kind of bipartisan group we have with us, without the work of all these commissioners, we would never have been successful, i think a lot of people thought we had been set up to fail, and it would have been sad if we had. >> i would simply add that there's no such thing as instant credibility. we didn't have credibility when we started as a commission. commissions are a dime a dozen in this town. and you have to overcome a certain amount of skepticism about commissions if you're a part of one. you have to work and earn credibility. and it took us months, maybe a year or so before we had credibility. but people began to understand that we were serious, that we

were not a highly partisan body. that we had an enormously important mandate given us by the families of the victims. and an important mandate from the congress itself. the individual commissioners, their reputations, their credibility as professionals was enormously helpful to establishing the credibility of the commission. as we performed our job and people began to understand the importance of what we were doing, our approach to it, our credibility began to build, you could just feel it, i sensed it as we did our work through a period of maybe better than a year. we were building credibility as

we went along, so that when we got to the end and issued a report, we had standing among the american people, and among the media, this is a tough town, the media people are tough politicians. i can give you a lecture on that, but i won't. we had earned their respect i believe in the process. and they began to see this commission as unusual. >> one more question reflecting back to the process. >> we often find in our negotiations that there comes down to a small number of issues, often not the most important issues, that become essentially the crucible of the debate, that the group has to work its way through that issue, once it breaks through that issue, just about everything else feels possible. do you remember issues like that? i know these were private discussions, so obviously share what you feel comfortable with.

were there moments you felt like things hung in the balance and issues that drove the larger discussion? >> yes. a number of them, and lee hamilton had a mantra, we would get into some pretty heated discussions about the language of the recommendations, and then there would be a hesitation, at least say let's go back and look at the facts. and you got out of -- and then gradually we started moving the adjectives from the report. and just stating the facts. and if you look at that report, there are not a lot of adjectives in it. it's just a report with plain writing and clear writing, because we got rid of the adjectives. the adjectives are what people got excited about. you were the one, every time, let's look at the facts, that was an enormous contribution. you get rid of the adjectives, the -- we found agreement.

>> that's a key point. i'm sitting here looking at the washington monument and outside the window, and it brings back a memory of mine, i drive home 2:00, 3:00 in the morning sometimes across the 14th street bridge into northern virginia, and on several occasions i remember thinking to myself, we're never going to get an agreement on that issue. we've been talking about it for several hours and hadn't reached it. but we've come back now, here's where tom's patience paid off. we come back and start all over again. and what came to me very strongly was, that consensus can be reached on most issues, not all issues. most irk us. if you approach it properly, you have to have time. you have to have patience.

you've got to try to understand the other guy's point of view. you've got to ask yourself, what are the commonalities in our views, and what are the dissimilarities in our views? and how can we reconcile those views? and that was the approach we tried to take. jason, you asked specific issues, i'm not sure i can answer that. i don't have a specific issue in mind that really hung us up. >> i think the intelligence community was one of long discussion. and we looked at every point of view. we had people come in and testify even from great britain and how they did it. and that took a long time to get a consensus, i think on the dni, and how to do that. >> you're probably right.

we had an extraordinary access to good judgment from all kinds of people. i don't know how many we interviewed, we interviewed scores and scores of them. and people wanted us to succeed. that became an important factor too. the country -- this event of 9/11 was the most tragic day in our history, probably. and it had a huge impact on the american people. so early on we sensed that they were rooting for us. and that made a big difference. they wanted us to come up with something that would be useful for the country. when you have that kind of support behind you, you feel it, and i think the commissioners

understood that the country was depending on us. they really wanted us to succeed here. and they fully supported us, it was not just a matter of the families, the families led the way. but they captured the attention of the american public. the politicians incidentally that led the city were not initially enthusiastic about us. >> it's only after the people became enthusiastic about us, that the politicians began to change. >> another new dynamic in democracy. >> one more thing, the staff. i mean, we had a very short time to hire a lot of good people. but a lot of good people wanted to work for us, because of the trage tragedy. and we had one common -- we didn't care whether somebody was republican or democrat, we only

asked that question -- we did not want somebody who had been a heavy partisan for republicans or democrats. and so we went through resumes pretty carefully, and say no partisan, we didn't care. if you've been very active, very active in campaigns and very active in one party or another, we didn't want you, we didn't want that kind of partisanship seeping into our deliberations. >> i don't think we ever asked anybody their political affiliation. >> we didn't. >> we had excellent supervision in that staff. the director and deputy director were outstanding in the work they did for us. dan marcus, i think i saw earlier, he was the legal council, and the top straight of the staff were really outstanding people who shared, i think, our vision of the importance of what we were

doing. and tom and i relied enormously on them throughout the process, and i think the rest of the staff did too. >> incidentally, one of the things that commissioners called upon us to do, which we refused to do. i won't name any names of the commissioners here, but i could, who came to us and said i want you to assign a staff person to help me on this issue. tom and i refused that order. we didn't want to give up any staff people to others, i guess, we were a little selfish at that point, but the staff worked for the commission, they worked for tom and me. they were totally nonpartisan, and they had a high degree of technical expertise. we had about -- 70 members of the staff. if you look at the way they were allocated, you have a lot of

expertise in different areas of government. we looked at a lot of complicated stuff, technical stuff. and we had to have highly qualified staff to guide us through it. >> you referred to the report, and it's clean pros. one of the most unique things about this commission is that a government report as you all know was a bestseller. if i can quote updike who knows a little bit about writing. when reviewing the report, he says the king james bible was our language's lone masterpiece written by committee. at least until this year's 9/11 commission report. that was a pretty significant and consequential choice. and in addition to just removing the fiery adjectives. how did you decide to write a report that was designed for the american public? and was that a hard decision?

>> you know, we had a -- right away a decision to make when we picked a staff in that regard. and a bunch of people recommended to us, and we picked to lead a historian. i got a call from the white house. they said, we don't want him. and i said why not? they said, because he's a historian. i said, well, this is history. no, we're going to tell you everything, we're just not going to tell you where we got it. an historian's footnote. and i said, i think we're probably going to pick an historian. we already picked one historian with three on the staff. as well as some wonderful writers like john farmer and a writer like that. we had on the staff, people who

could write, and who knew how to write history, because that's what this was. in addition to that, all the commissioners went over every sentence of that report and made changes. >> more than once. >> yes. the idea of 10 people going over every word of report and making changes and still having something come out that is readable, was to me absolutely remarkable. >> i think the first chapter of the report is a classic. an absolute classic. it just tells you the story of what happened on 9/11. and it was put together by very good writers, simple, direct, candid and i think it's going to be a long, long time before you

see another government report on the bestseller's list. that's among our more notable achievements, i believe. >> lee, i think it was one of the commissioners, and i don't remember which one. the original report we were starting with the history of al qaeda, and one of the commissioners, i don't know who it was said, you know, we shouldn't do that. we should start with a history of the event and how it happened. it was absolutely the right decision, a suggestion made by the commissioner. i will give them credit if i remember which one it was. but it was absolutely the right solution. >> and that factual recitation of what happened on that day -- we all know that 9/11 will be

looked at for centuries to come in this country. we're quite a ways away from the writing of that report. but it's held up pretty well. in deed, i think factually we got the story right, basically. and that was one of our mandates, we had a double mandate, number one, tell the story. number two, set out the recommendations to make it safer. we've had a lot of people challenge. i still get a call probably once every couple weeks from people who disagree strongly with the report. and if i speak on a college campus, i can absolutely assure you that there will be people in the audience who have conspiracy theorys about what happened on that day. some believing for example that the united states air force maneuvered the whole thing and flew the planes into the tower and all kinds of stories.

they even had a convention on this in los angeles attacking the 9/11 commission report, and it drew 3,000 people i'm told, who thought we were nuts, and so you run into that element, there's a large segment of the american people, larger than you might think who believe that anything that comes out of government is wrong. and we encountered some of that as we issued the report. >> there were a lot of unique dynamics that you all were affected by, but one was clearly the roll of the families. it's been terrific yesterday and today to have leaders of the families here with us today. talk a little bit about how you engage the families and what opportunities and challenges there were. because of the depth of emotion from this tragedy. >> it was -- that was one of the

most humbling and one of the most to me, life changing experiences working with the families. i was -- i think maybe the only commissioner who lived right in the middle of the area where most people lost their lives, and so i knew the number of people who perished that day, i knew their families, i went to funerals for months, six months maybe, as people recognized loss at different times, i was on the board of a company that lost 80 or 90 people in the towers. i think i was -- for that reason, i think i saw more of the families than almost anybody el else. their passion, their righteous anger, even their irration ailty sometimes out of the deep grief

in other problems, was a driving force in our work. as we moved along, every time we hit a huge bolder, not enough money, the families were there to push for more money. not enough time, the families were there to push for more money. the president and condoleezza rice didn't want to testify, the families pushed for them to testify. they were very important. >> there wouldn't be a 9/11 commission report without them. it's as simple as that. they had the credibility and the standing, which we did not have to put this forward. keep in mind that neither the executive nor the legislative branch was very anxious to do this early on. congress looked at it as an

intrusion. we were doing something they were qualified to do. the executive branch had deep reservations about it. what changed the politicians was not tom and me. but the familyies. and the other lesson of these families for me was -- and i often cited when i talked to people about citizen participation in an amazingly short period of time, they learned to be very sophisticated people in dealing with government. this place is a complicated city, but very complex place. the levers of power here, people spend a lifetime trying to understand it. they picked up the rudiments of politics very quickly to push

forward their ideas. and it's about as good an example of citizen participation as i know what they did, i don't think any of them would claim to be experts on the american government prior toll 9/11. all of them can claim to be experts now. they got results, and there are a lot of lessons in their activity. i hope incidentally and maybe it's already happened. i hope that the academics delve into what you all did. because i think it's a marvelous example of civic participation. and the details of it would be very instructive from the future. >> as you can tell, these are tough guys to moderate. and i could ask a lot more questions, i want to see if we can open this up. i'm going to ask one more

question. and we're going to take as many audience questions as we have time for. my last question builds on a lot of this conversation. you have identified a number of the themes that are essential to functional government, trust, the ability to have private conversations, the commitment to facts. the outside pressure from an engaged citizenship. one of the reasons we were so enthusiastic about helping to bring the commission back together is you're just existence proof of how it can work. my question is, what do you see as a legacy of the commission beyond its recommendations? >> well, you know tom brokaw said to me that you wrote a great report and important recommendations. i think the aren't american people embraced you, it was the first important bipartisan thing that had been done in this town in a long, long time. and it was unanimous.

that's got to be an important part of our legacy. the idea that republicans and democrats can come together. when i first learned about lee, and the idea that he had been working with republicans and democrats, my history was -- i was speaking of a legislature in new jersey that had no majority. and i had to maneuver that. making some pretty good accomplishments. i was governor of a state as a republican that didn't have a democratic legislature. and had to learn to work with them. out of all that, i got as lee did, a deep respect for a number of people in the other party. the idea that their views were legitimate and it's better to work with them than against them. i don't know if we lost that in this town. the idea that people who come to washington come for the right reasons.

these are people that really want to serve the american people, and just as much as you do. and there's no reason therefore that you can't value that and work with people and come to bipartisan resolutions and i think it's -- i hope that's -- i hope that's a lesson that we get from the commission. >> i think one of the greatest ideas in the history of mankind, to be very modest about it, is representative democracy. but no one ever said that representative democracy was easy. it is very hard work. and i think what the commission achieved was an example of representative democracy working. not perfectly, we had a few bumps and bruises along the way. several of our recommendations were ignored.

but a lot of good things happened because of it. so i think the ability to develop a consensus behind the solution, which is what government is all about, government is really about a search for a remedy. that's not my phrase, some scholar said that. that's exactly right. there's a lot of politics. there's a lot of noise. there's a lot of diversion out here, which we focus on a great deal. but underneath it all, what you're really trying to do in the political system is to find a remedy to problems that are enormously difficult to solve. when i went to high school, many, many decades ago. we had 130 million people in

this country. today whatever it is, 315 or 20 million. so in my working lifetime and tom's, we far more than doubled in size as a country. and, of course, we've also become much, much more diverse. so the consensus building process has become much harder. and it takes terrific energy and skill to make it work. this is an example where it did work, representative democracy can work. not easily, but it can work. >> i'd like to open it up to some questions, and we have mike runner. i think we're going to start -- >> matt. >> fair enough. >> my name is matthew. my son was on the 105th floor in

tower one when it was hit and we lost my son matthew that day. i was asked by the commission back in the beginning for my wife and i to be part of the families that the commission could use to bounce off information before they went to the public. i remember back then that there were 28 pages that were classified. the commission did not want these pages to be classified. but the executive branch of our government kept them classified. going-forward, former senator bob graham, representative lynch and representative jones tried to get them declassified and they even brought hr 428 and

tried to get a ruling to get them declassified. to this day, they are still declassified. they're still classified, i'm sorry. they are still classified. i'd like to know from the gentleman on the dias, what are your feelings to this day, and do you think they should be declassified? >> well, i -- yes, they should be. i'm embarrassed that they're not declassified. we emphasized throughout, transparency. and when i assumed incorrectly that our records would be public, all of them, everything. and then when i learned that a number of the documents were classified or even redacted, i

was surprised and disappointed. i want those documents declassified. i'm embarrassed to be associated with a work product that is secret. >> very briefly, in this democracy, very little ought to be classified only the most seriously important national security issues and there are very few of them. my experience, i think almost every other commissioner had access to classified information before under a security clearance. i never had, i was the outsider, so i was very excited when i got my first shiny right to look at secrets. i was amazed in reading the stuff that it was stuff i knew

already. the first time i read the whole report, i turned to the fbi guy who was watching me and said, i knew all this already. he said, yes, but you didn't know it was true. that is not a reason for classification, i would say 60 to 70% of the stuff we saw that was classified in my opinion, should not have been. it should have been available to the american people, this is the kind of thing that should are -- as i remember that particular section, it's been updated, because i think we did research on that particular episode in san diego with saudi arabia, and i believe if you read the 9/11 report, you'll find anything you want to find about that particular section. there's no reason to classified any more. even if some of the facts are wrong that can be pointed out. i don't believe in keeping things secret -- we're not a strong nation if we keep things

from our people, i don't think. >> question in the middle. can you please introduce yourself before you ask a question. >> i'm a student. i have a question because recently i visited the 9/11 museum, i saw saudi passports right next to the 9/11 attacks. do you think we have the right to show the passports of those people as the individual and not the country? by showing the passport, you're accuse i accusing millions of saudis of being terrorists. i don't think that's right. i'm a saudi, i almost lost my father in the al qaeda attacks in the capitol of saudi arabia. the building he was working in

got bombed by al qaeda, so just my question is, i don't think that terrorists is about a country or pointing out a country. it will only generate maybe anger and hatred toward a country where the majority of those people are innocence and not terrorists. thank you. >> i think the question is about the museum exhibit that is associated saudi passports with the attack and whether that's an effective way to talk about the issues or build the conversation going-forward. >> i think we have to make it very, very clear, that these are a violent and unusual segment of a great religion, and that actually, if we're going to continue to fight terrorism as we are, that the muslim

community are our best allies. because they resent these people as much or more than we do. their families have been harmed in many cases. if we realize that, and recognize that working with the muslim community is the best way to root out the terrorism, and at the same time, having tremendous respect for that community while we do it, we're all going to be better off. >> the only thing i add is, you understand we are guests at the museum, i can promise to convey the concern to the folks that have that kind of authority to make sure they're aware of your views which i think we take seriously. >> all right, we have a question far back in that corner, and then back toward the middle. >> thank you. leanndra bernstein. with the impact of 9/11, it set into effect a whole series of

wars. almost an american jihad in terms of our foreign involvement. much of that, the consequential policy of the united states with these foreign adventures has not been discussed. a number of the panelists said that the recommendations of the commission put into effect, prevented a lot of terrorist attacks. but without the transparency, how are we to believe that? we're expected, the american public is expected to take officials at their word. so these attacks have apparently been prevented, but at the same time panelists have stated we're in a much more dangerous world. so how can we claim a success in these policies if we've created

more dangerous environment and i do believe it's very important to be critical of american policy in general and not just focus crisis to crisis. but the general trend that has taken off in the past ten years. >> well, i don't think it's correct to say that we created a more dangerous world. what has created a more dangerous world for us has been the activities of others, not our activities. now, i guess you could argue that some of our policies have angered people and caused them to want to attack us. but i really do not accept the idea that we created the more

dangerous world. look, there are a lot of things happening in the world today that we don't control, and that come about not because of the united states because of what's happening locally in a given country or region. so many of the problems in the world today arise from the arab world. and the arab world is going through enormous turmoil. we're trying to deal with it as best we can. it's a challenge for our policy leaders. your reaction however is quite understa understandable. we have put an enormous amount of money into counter terrorism. we have put restructured our whole government. we've learned a lot i think.

a lot of people have thought about this a lot. and many have given their lives. and still we haven't wiped out terrorism for sure. but the insight of the commission was, that terrorism was a generational challenge and it will continue, so we have to keep the sense of urgency up, and the complacency avoid ed. >> i'm sorry, i think we only have time for about two more questions. >> if i may get to your point here, we didn't get into foreign policy in the commission report, but there is a section of the report that deals with our relations with other countries, and what we asked for in that report was a policy that took

more into account promoting education for instance in that part of the world, promoting the rights of women in that part of the world. >> an agenda of opportunity. >> that's right. and using those kinds of efforts and foreign policy. we're deeply unpopular and have been for a while in the arab world, rightly or wrongly. the most populous muslim country in the world is indonesia, in indonesia we were just as unpopular until the tsunami happened. when the tsunami happened as you remember, former president bush and clinton went there with packages of food, aide, sanitation. after that, the popularity of the united states went from 17% to 70%, and it's still the highest. you know, that's a lot cheaper than war.

and i think the point of that section of the report that has been ignored, people haven't read that much of it, is that we should have a foreign policy that also doesn't just depend on troops on the ground but depends on heart to heart work and helping with education and women and all of that. >> we have time for two more questions, we've been ignoring this side of the room, anyone here want to -- i know we had a question at the -- >> i'm nancy aaronson of families of september 11th, we lost my sister-in-law on flight 11. just two things, one i was a part of the family conversations at the 9/11 memorial museum, and we -- i wanted to comment

briefly to the saudi lady, that we struggled at the museum about how to pore fray the terrorists. and with trying to be extremely sensitive, to mention that those people were a very limited -- a very, very, very small group of a large and comprehensive and loving religion, but my question to you today is, as families, what's our next step? how can we help move forward with the -- the homeland security, perhaps the -- some kind of pressure to fund congress about dealing better with homeland security. how can we make ourselves safer? i see this scary, like the flight 17 thing. i'm hearing about the plastic bombs and stuff.

what can we do? what's our next step? thank you. >> my we action to that is the most important thing you can do is to convey what we tried to convey in this report, and that is just the urgency of dealing with the threat of terrorism. the thing that really worries us as reflected in the report, is that the american people have turned their attention to other things, understandably. a lot of things happening in the world and in this country, and if they turn their attention away from terrorism and the possibility of terrorist attacks, then the politicians will turn away from it too, and you heard director clapper this morning say he's worried about cuts in the appropriations

bills, so all of these things go back to urgency. getting rid of the complacency. i think the families could be quite helpful if they focused on a public relations campaign to let people know it is a dangerous world, and that counter terrorism efforts need to be supported. now, you can get into a lot of specific things that may attract you. you can go through our recommendations. maybe you have some views of your own on our recommendations and plug those things. you heard a lot of plugs for correcting the oversight of the congress. whatever moves you, i would say, move in that direction. but overall the huge challenge is to keep the eyes of the nation on the prospect of the

terrorist attack. and what might come from that. >> i just said briefly, a long extraordinary history of this country. i don't know of any group that has taken tragedy and tried to use that tragedy to teach other people and is persistent in trying to make this country a better place, and is persistent in making sure it never happens to other families. you have never ever stopped and i think it's extraordinary in the history of this country what you have done and what you continue to do. my advice would be to continue to do it. take these recommendations in the security of the country, you will continue to be a great help. >> i'd like to ask you in joining me for thanking lee and tom for decades of proud public

service to the country. >> as we are thanking them, let me thank all of you. you are experts who have been deeply engaged in leading this work for a dozen years. we thank you for that and hope we have the opportunity to work together. thanks. barney frank testified about the financial regulations bill he co sponsored. the dodd frank act was implemented four years ago as a response to the financial crisis. barney frank retired from congress in 2013 after serving for over 20 years.

here's air porti here's a portion of his testimony from today. >> you are now recognized for your testimony. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i apologize that my written statement was not in the form -- it was a last minute thing, and i -- on the other hand, i think any problem with the element of surprise is probably -- not a problem here, i don't think any of the members of the committee will be surprised by what i say. i want to begin with the too big to fail question. and the issue, i think, is an interesting one, first of all, as i said, and what i did write, i thought -- i was surprised myself, at how bipartisan the committee's report was. for instance, in saying that this whole problem started with ronald reagan in 1985 with continental illinois, the committee reports this began with ronald reagan in continental, illinois and it was

continued by bill clinton with alan greenspan. but the report clearly puts most of the blame on george w. bush, and his aids. mr. paulson and bernanke, this really became a problem with bear stearns. while i recognize that's a bipartisan thing for a republican committee to do, to put major blame on those two presidents. i think you've been a little unfair to them. and i think there need to respond there shows there was a problem that had to be dealt with. i was struck by your bipartisan effort to replace tim gater in, i think you got it wrong. you misunderstood mr. indicter in in that report. we have a too big to fail problem. the problem he sees is exactly the opposite of what most republicans think. there was this argument that we're going to have bailouts. tim gater in's explicit point is, we did too good a job in preventing bailouts. i urge people to read his book. he objects that we shut down too

many of these ways to do it, indi geithner understands -- too big to fail. what geithner has said is given the size of banks. and everybody understands that, from ronald reagan to continental, illinois, how do you deal with that? as long as they are that side? he believes inevitably there's going to be the need for federal taxpayer intervention. and we did too good a job in shutting that down. so when you cite geithner, you want to understand that's what you're citing. why do we not do too big to fail? one, that we are designated a systemic institution very attractive. that is interesting, every institution which had been threatened with being named has been threatened vine thely and negatively. for people who tell me you're supposed to listen to the

businesses, how come you haven't heard that the businesses hate the idea of being designated. instead of it being an advantage, they think it's a curse. when you talk about oh, this is a great advantage and you ignore what the businesses themselves say about this, those who could be designated, i think that's a marxist analysis. the mark in question is chico. who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes. who are you going to believe, the viewpoint or what the financial institutions tell you? the other argument is, even though the law says the feds should not give money to insolvent institutions, and the secretary of the treasury should not do what we've done in the past, give them money, keep them alive to pay their debts. they'll violate the law. political pressure in this country will force the secretary of the treasury, the president, maybe the head of the feds to violate federal law by advancing money to keep these people in business. the law says you may have to pay

some of their debts as ronald reagan recognized in 1984. but first of all, you put them out of business, you put them in a receivership, secondly, you get the money back. finally, i am struck by the schizophrenic approach that the majority seems to be taking on sub prime loans, i was astonished again. i get astonished these days much that there's a criticism that under the bill fewer loans are being made to low income people. yeah. that was part of what i thought everybody wanted to do. i thought there was a consensus that too many loans were being made to those people. and then when you blame the community reinvestment act, i would like to cite the testimony of our banker from texas who says, community nk about as didn't make bad loans, i agree. guess what, they were all subject to the community reinvestment act. if the act was so distorted, that's a problem. 2350i7bly, i would say i look

forward to congratulating you mr. chairman on the fourth anniversary coming up. i know this committee passed a bill on fanny and freddy, but it hasn't passed the house even. we're about to see the fourth anniversary of your party being in control of the house, and not doing anything about this problem that you say is such a serious one. >> you can watch this entire house financial services committee hearing and all of our programs at our website. go to c-span.org. up next, a discussion on military personnel costs, posted by the bipartisan policy center, this is just over an hour.

>> did not come here to hear me, i wanted to remind everyone in front of you, you have a joint product of the american enterprise institute, and the bipartisan policy tener. this is a chart book that is designed to simplify what we think has been a misunderstood issue namely personnel costs. we have a excellent panel today, we're lucky to have andrew tillman who is the bureau chief at the pentagon and a reporter for the military times. andrew started his military defense reporting in iraq for stars and stripes. he has won a number of awards, including last year being named a kiplinger fellow. even though he started with the houston chronicle, he ended up in new york at the columbia

school of journalism, and -- which is pretty good for us guys in texas. one of the reasons we wanted andrew was his story july 1st of this year, in which he featured bob heal the comptroller, saying the personnel costs were declining. and since that was opposite everything that us budget analysts have looked at over the last 25 years, except in the most kind of -- constrained way, we thought this would be interesting to have andrew come here and tell us what his view is, after all his reporting. our view is, that per capita costs have gone up dramatically, that has led to obviously reduction in forces. that is continuing to lead to further reductions. slowness in operations and maintenance, readiness and decline in modernization. we hope to begin to show you with this chart book, which is a

first in several things both aei and bpc will do, we hope to show you why we will make those contentions. i will remind you all that in 1985, we did something where i was staff director. bill hogland was my deputy da. we invented the sequester, but we never wanted to use it, don't blame us. i'm going to leave it at that and turn it over to andrew. >> thanks a lot, appreciate it. i think this gives a good summary of the basic issues in personnel compensation today. i also want to thank them, because i had two main compensation reports in my inbox this week. this one and also one from the military compensation commission, which was 450 pages.

this was much easier to digest. with that, let me start by introducing our panel. to my left here is professor linda bilms who teaches at the harvard kennedy school. charlie hoy, who was a -- now retired but was the staff director at the senate appropriations committee. scott lily to his left was a former staff director at the house appropriations committee. and on the end is ann sour who was a staff director with the senate armed services committee. we have a lot of good perspective today. i just want to start before i turn it over to some of them and say i've been covering this for many years and i want to start with a little bit of historical perspective. we're going to talk today about the runup in personnel costs from 2001 to 2000 -- to the

present, which is the window we frequently talk about, but just a little background. as many of you know, the all volunteer force is about 40 years old, in 1973 when it 1973 they basically just ended the draft with the stroke of a pen and they didn't make a whole lot of changes to military. so a lot of these structures are carried over from the '50s, second world war, even before. when reagan came in in the '80s, he told them to tear down the wall and threw a lot of money at the pent gob gone. pentagon. mainly, it was hardware. there was not a whole lot of money thrown at compensation. that's why when the clinton years came around, there was talk about a pay gap. the pentagon was starting to worry about having a retention and recruitment problem. so in the late '90s, there was a

number of efforts on the hill to begin to close that pay gap. although we begin to talk about the window of 2001 to the present, a lot of things we talk about really began in the late '90s, in terms of pay increases that exceeded the normal employment cost index, improvement of tuition benefit assistance and things like that. i'll also just say i talk to a lot of service members over the course of my job and this is a deeply personal issue for them. this is not just their families financial security now and maybe in the future that they're thinking about. but, also, it really gets to thehearted of whheart of what t feel is the social contract that they have with the rest of the country. this is causing a lot of angst in the rank and file of what may or may not happen.

all they want to know is all of these things are on the table. >> if i can start on the end with anne sower. starting in 2001 to the present, as the chart book shows, there's been a massive increase in the per-troop cost of compensation. it goes far beyond pay increases. >> better? great. thank you. thanks, andrew, very much. i'm happy to be here and thank you all for showing up. i want to say, before we get into any of these issues, that i

think all of the panelists share the view as andrew mentioned, the angst amongst the active duty military, that this is a broad, bipartisan issue: one of the few bipartisan issues in washington. and we all strongly support the war fighter, our military pirs nel and understand that their job and their sacrifice is nothing that we should take lightly. however, in the longer term, i think we feed to look at defense budgeting as having sort of four levers, if you will, four ways of managing defense budgeting. there's four structure cuts, which, again, can be very political. those can be dialed up or down. tuneable. modernization, another tuneable lever of defense budgeting. readiness? again, adjustable up or down. compensation, especially in the

last 12, 13 years, has only been a lever that tunes upward. grant it, we're happy to be in the midst of extended wars around the world. and i think that the congressional and administrati n administration's approach to making sure that our wounded warriors and active military are well taken care of is, again, broadly bipart san well supported. we need to look at this in the tune of the problem. one solution is increase the defense budget and allow these costs and the programs and the benefits to stay the same. >> the other way to approach this is to look at broad

structural reforms in military compensation. again, in the near term, because of the angst with our all-volunteer force and because of the requirement, for example, that was put before the military compensation committee -- commission, rather -- to grandfather in all active duty member, even if we enacted tomorrow broad structural forms and a lot of these benefits, particularly pension and compensation, you wouldn't see any near-term savings. it would be 5-8 years before you saw anything significant in terms of savings. before you want to accommodate the desires of congress and ensure that our military are well compensated and are well taken care of, their families, in particular, also, i think that the next step in this approa approach, and it's even mentioned in the military compensation commission, is to look at domestic entitlements.

i think politically, the only way you can start to address, and i don't mean that in a negative sense is to have a similar look at the domestic benefits that people are entitled to. the mandatory side of the federal budget. with deficits increasing for krrksz cbos almost doubling the shared gdp,both of these areas need to be looked at. i think that's a potential solutions or a potential solution in a bipartisan way and manage those issues in a fair and and equitable manner. is that going to happen? talk to me in november or may believe in january of 2017. we'll see. >> okay. thanks. let's look at this for a few

minutes from the pentagon perspective and talk about the levers that we have to change some of these things. and, right now, obviously, with sequestration, the budget appears to be capped. and although military personnel costs have been a relatively steady slice depending on how you want to count them for the past 12 years, everything's grown. scott, can you tell us how -- the university obviously has to work within the law if they're told to continue pay raises and continue to provide retirement accruals and that sort of thing. yet, their topline budget is capped. what do they do? where do they find that money?

>> well, i think people assume that there's a lot more -- there's many more options than there really are. and as anne pointed out, modernization procurement is seen as something that you can go up or down on. and that's true. but the problem is we have so many legacy weapon systems right now, you can dial that down but you will end up more in maintenance on those old ships and planes than the cost of replacing them. there's a point in time, just like the family car, if you don't replace it, you're going to have big costs associated with it. and there's an assumption that you can do something on readiness or operations and maintenance.

that really is a function of your pace of operations. >> as the past few weeks have shown us, the congress really doesn't have anything to do with that. and so in many respects, as attractable as this issue of compensation and personnel costs seem and i don't -- i haven't seen one proposal in this area that looks like it's got a gost of a chance getting through either house right now. but the only thing that leaves us is reducing the flum beryl of people that we have. and that's fine, as long as we live in a peaceful world. but we don't.

so i think we're faced with a situation where we have very unre unrealistic projections about how much we're going to have to spend on both the defense and the nondefense side of the budget. and as anne points out, i think it's the entitlement programs in both defense and non-defense that are driving the increases. so we have to raise the taxes to pay for those or we have to find some way of cutting them back. i don't think they're going to get cut back too much on either the nondefense or the defense side. it means at some point, we'll have to face the taxes. okay. as you point out, there's the