make sure we're successful and then of course, two, to use those studies to help inform any final recommendations they may make to the secretary. >> i'd like to address the training and communications piece which is key. so thank you for keying in on that. that's a key part of the implementation plans. the services need to bring forward for every one of the specialties, and i say that because, first of all, as we spoke about, all the standards are going to be gender neutral standards. that's just not focused on the occupations that are closed right now but all of them. so as we produce those by the end of september each serviceman and woman has to be trained to that standard, and they will help us better identify where the special areas are where people may need preassessment training like the ranger schools where we do preassessment work to make sure that folks understand what the physical activities of the course require so they can be more successful when they

actually come to the course. so that's a key part of that piece, and then when it comes to the communications, clearly a communications is a big part of our trust. we need to explain why the gender neutral standards, how we're going to ensure that everybody meets those standards, both men and women, why they're necessary for the occupation in the first place because there's some question as to is it really the right task that should be done in these standards, in these different moss, and then that -- by communicating that a little more effectively than we have, this is going to help us build the trust for both men and women to want to continue down that pipeline for those different areas. that's an important part of the implementation plan. thank you. >> thank you. yes, please. >> sue fulton, i'm the chair of the u.s. military board of visitors. former signal officer. obviously, we are dealing with a question of critical mass too and i want to go back to that because i want to follow up a

little bit deeper. we talk about critical mass or sufficient dad ray, i was surprised to hear you say you thought it would be different if you thought it was on a ship or infantry platoon or submarine or the unit. so how do you define what critical mass would be? is there a common definition where you say all right, this is the best operating capability of the unit? and sufficient cadre is, of course, a different question. in both of those i guess i would want to understand how we're going about defining those. i have a better understanding how we're going about defining standards, standards for the mission versus standards for the men, even though there's work to be done, at least we have a way to define that. but i'd like to hear more definition. thanks. >> sure. >> well maybe -- >> please, go ahead if you want to. >> so maybe to expand on what was already said. we believe it would be different based on the requirements of the services and based on the requirements of the units. for instance, what works on a ship may not be what's needed

for an aernlrmy unit for for a marine corps unit or a small special operations unit. we think it's important to allow the services to define cadre. the important thing is, as you said, leadership at the point of insertion and ensuring we have the right support structure there, but there isn't going to be a singular definition, a one-size-fits-all definition that works for all units and all services. >> let me also add that, and i probably wasn't clear on first go we will -- we're going to watch this very closely to see if in those different specialties they've done the right things the right support structures, and we're going to measure the support structures and if it's sufficient grade, if it's not sufficient we need to make changes. just because they say it's going to take two females on a sub today doesn't mean that that's going to hold a year from now. so, again, this is not going to stop on january 1st. we're going to continue to do in stride assessments.

it's a great question. we want them to succeed. >> any other questions? yes? let me ask you a question, and i think then afterwards you will have to go. but with the studies that have been done thus far, what has been some of the biggest surprises, positive or negative, and what do you see as some of the biggest challenges moving forward? >> i will let you go first. >> sure. well i often use -- a biggest surprise. so we were reviewing and validateing the standards. we said we have standards right, so why do you have to go through all this? and again, it was to review to make sure they're current and i used the often -- there's historically the weight at airborne school has been a 45-pound pack weight. he always thought that's 45 pounds since world war ii because that's the weight of the ammunition or how much water or

what an airborne soldier had to carry in world war ii. but when the army and training and doctrine command started to pull that spring and look at behind what was the standard and why, what they found was 45 pounds was the minimum weight that a soldier needed to have below them or as they were jumping out of the airplane. anything less than 45 pounds would fly up and get tangled in the risers and so that was a classic example of that 45 pounds had nothing to do with being an infantryman or being an airborne soldier and had everything to do with falling out of an airplane. as an example of a standard that we had had for many years that everybody accepted as the necessary standard but perhaps it wasn't the right standard. >> do you have a good example like that? >> that's a great example, and that's the reason i don't jump out of airplanes, by the way. but i think that one of the challenges to address that other half is that all throughout this

process we've got to maintain the trust of not only the service members but of the public and to do that we need to just continue our communications. we have to have the right implementation plans and we just need to -- you know taking our motivated volunteers and helping them be successful, not that they need a help up or hand out but we need to make sure everything is in place for them to do what they do best, and when you hear the interviews of the ladies both out of the marine corps school and the rangers this weekend, i am so inspired that despite all this, they're excited to be there. they will make a difference. they are paving the way, and our job is to cement in the right policies so that they can continue down a successful career path and become our senior leaders of tomorrow, and that's our biggest challenge. >> thank you. i think, indeed, communication is going to be key both for, you know future soldiers as well as

the public at large and in that sense i think it's also going to be crucially important to have some of the studies and reports being published, and so that is a transparent process. i was also very happy to hear you say that the presumption is that every position has to be open, and i think on that note i would like to thank you for coming here. i hope you will join us for maybe a next event and tell us how progress is going on this arena. thank you so much. please join me -- [ applause ]

okay. i think we're ready. i'm nancy campbell from the national women's law center and i, too want to thank our sponsoring organization and all the co-sponsors for having this important conference and discussion today. our panel is to talk about gender neutral occupational

standards, and i think we heard two important pieces from the previous panel that it would be wise for us all to remember. one is that the standard setting process is for all the occupations in the services, not just for combat positions and not just for ground combat positions. the second is that the purpose isn't to lower standards or raise standards, but to get the right standards which, of course could involve some different standards and attacks from some people that they have been lowered or raised. so it's important to as our previous panel said, get the standards right, and that's what we're going to talk about today. and i'm going to just start with a little bit of the sort of legal background on standards setting in our country because i think that secretary panetta and chairman dempsey when they issued their directive in january of 2013 which said that

there had to be validated gender neutral standards before integration proceeded were doing so against the backdrop of the law in this area and were recognizing not only that integration wouldn't and couldn't be a success unless you're measuring everybody by the same standards and making sure that those were the right standards so that it wouldn't be appropriate, for example, to measure a woman's ability to participate in any ground combat occupation or position against a standard that hadn't been validated even for the men who were currently holding the position. so in the civilian world, most of the law in this area has been made under title 7 of the civil rights act which is the law that prohibits discrimination employment on the basis of sex

as well as several other classifications, and the important point that has been made in the case law under title 7 is that any standard that has a differential impact on women and men must be shown to be validly able to predict job performance. and this has been true in many occupational situations including many nontraditional occupations that have certain similarities to the military such as police departments and firefighters. and turning to physical standards, since that's where a lot of the debate is concentrating now even though, again, i repeat that the directive from the secretary was that there must be occupational standards for every mos and that means not just physical but

mental or any other standards that are validly related to the performance of that occupation. and what the courts have looked to under title 7 is that there has to be a pretty stringent and rigorous scientific process in establishing what those standards should be. for example, they've invalidated physical tests for personnel selections when the required task just measured general physical ability. for example, and i'm quoting now from very specific cases, push-ups sit-ups and pull-ups have generally not been sufficient to show that that is an appropriate test for a particular job performance, and instead, they have required that the test that has been articulated be established to have a sufficient content

validity, meaning that it has to be actually representative of actual job behaviors. for example, there was a case that invalidated a test of a police department that required people who were trying to qualify to be a cop to run around a track for a mile to see if they could complete it within a certain period of time. that was invalidated because they couldn't show that that was something that most police officers had to do. instead, most police officers when they were in pursuit of a subject, that was what the subject was argued to be the validation for only had to run short distances. running a mile was so unusual that they said that it wasn't an appropriate test for determining the qualifications for that job. so generally to pass muster what an organization that is employing a test has to show is

usually that they've actually gone out looked at what people do in the field in that job, and determined what the tasks are that are part of the actual recurring tasks that one has to do under that job. so if it's an outlier test, like running a mile, that's typically not sufficient. and then after they've done the observations in the field, they generally have to show that they've developed the measure something to measure these tasks by that is representative of what the individual has to do in the field. so it's okay to have proxy tests, but the proxy tests have to be ones that do fairly predict what the individual would have to do in the job when she or he had the job and usually they have to have some kind of a scoring system that shows that there's a certain neutrality to how people are measured and that can fairly and

reliably assess how one -- whether one is passing or failing, and for example if you have a pass/fail test and you say that anybody below a certain score can't get the job, then you have to be able to show that that lower score is related and is very consistent with the minimum requirements that you have for the job. so it's a fairly rigorous not only in how you set the standard but then in how you define the task that is can be used as a proxy for the standards. now, having said all that, the sort of final step is it obviously that you have to measure people individually. you can't measure people as a group. you can't say that as a group these people can't do the job as a gender these people can't do the job as a raise thesece these people can't do the job, but rather you

have to measure people individually and determine their qualifications for the job on an individual basis. now, having said that, title 7, of course, doesn't apply to the united states military in terms of its military jobs so why am i even talking about all this case law? i'm talking about it for two reasons. one is that i think that were there to be a legal chal wleng to a standard or to the fact that someone was disqualified from a job because the standard wasn't the appropriate standard, i think that the courts would definitely look to the law under title 7 because that's where most of the standard setting law has been developed in this country, and so it's highly relevant as to whether that standard has been set appropriately or applied appropriately to a particular individual. and there's a second reason as well, and that is that as many of you know, in the ndaa for

fiscal year 2015, there was language included on the standard setting process specifically in the military and specifically under the directive of secretary panetta and chairman dempsey and that language says that the secretary of defense must ensure that the gender neutral occupational standards, and here i'm quoting, accurately predict pmption of actual regular and recurring duties of a military occupation and are applied equitably to measure individual capabilities. so we have law in this area as a backdrop under title 7 where there has been a great deal of experience in setting occupational standards and applying them and we have a specific directive in the ndaa which essentially replicates

what is the title 7 standard. so now against that background we're going to hear from our terrific panel here today to talk about what is happening in the standard-setting process, what should be happening in the standard-setting process and what has happened as part of the standard-setting process and i assume is ongoing in canada where they have very successfully integrated women into their armed forces and have a great deal of experience in this area. we're going to start with -- i'm going to introduce all of you and say what you're going to do so i can stop talking for a while. we're going to start with hearing from ellen harring, who is a retired army colonel and senior fellow at women international security, and as you heard been very actively leading its combat integration initiative. he's going to talk about the army's and marine corps' efforts

to set standards. and then we'll hear from sue janeen. and everybody's bios are more complete so i'm going to summarize. she's the manager for human resources for the canadian special forces command and a former member of the canadian armed forces. she's been very involved in the development and ongoing implementation of canada's occupational standards and the tests to measure those standards. and then we're going to hear from carolyn beecraft who many of us have known and worked with for a very long time, and she has a particular perspective here from her time both in the army and in -- as the assistant secretary of the navy for personnel and readiness in a former life, and she's going to talk about -- give us a little bit of her overview of what the process should be, not only

right now but going forward. so ellen. >> thank you. so as always, the devil is in the details, and certainly it's definitely in the details of standards setting in the military and of course all the services, but i'm going to talk about the army and the marine corps simply because we have the preponderance of the positions and i can't talk about so com because i have no idea what they're doing. i would love to talk about them or have somebody up here to talk about their standard setting process but haven't managed to crack that nut yet. what's the army doing? the army had -- has take an very deliberate -- charted a pretty deliberate course. they assigned tray dock to lead the effort. they then reached out to

subordinate organizations,. they brought in their research scientists and they tasked them with setting the standards, and i believe that the majority almost all their focus, has been on the closed occupations. i don't think they've gone back and looked at all the other occupations that are already open even though that has been previously -- they were supposed to do that. so the research team started out by going to the proponent's school. they asked the propennant schools, okay tell us what your standards are, and they got sets of standards from the proponent schools. they conducted a number of surveys, interviews, focus groups, and then they took those occupational standards to the field across the u.s. they went to a number of units, and they tested the units with the standards that they had been given, and what they found wation that only about 60% of the solers in these units that were out there and supposedly qualified could actually pass the standards that they had been told were their standards. so the research team came back and said these can't be your

standards if only 60% of the soldiers out there are meeting the standards. what they did, my understanding what they did, they said you've got to have -- show us standards that 90% of your soldiers are actually meeting. they readjusted the standards. the research team also did some research -- field research, watching soldiers actually going through their missions, and readjusted the standards to the point where approximately i understand now 90% of qualified soldiers can actually meet those standards. and last month they opened combat engineers. so it's the first of the occupational -- ground combat occupational standards to be open. combat engineers was opened last month. field artillery is supposed to be opened next followed by armor and infantry. now, combat engineers is -- we're about six months behind. we're supposed to open in the fall. artillery was supposed to be opening this spring.

so everything seems to be a little bit further behind, but hopefully if standards are set now, they can happen on a rolling basis. having said that there's some problems with even the approach we've gone to with this 90% can pass the standard. first of all, it's a normative standard based on men that are out there in the field. it's not really a gender neutral. they haven't gone back in the way i would like to see the army go back and examine every single one of the physical requirements that an occupation might require and do it with both men and women involved because women often accomplish the same physical requirement in a different way than a man might. so we've got -- what they've done is provided normative standards to what men do and 90% of men can do and that's the standards as i understand it today. now, if the research team were here, maybe they would say something different, but i watched and listened to the research team lecture on this

and i think that's pretty solidly what they've done. >> so they lowered standards for men. >> now, what they haven't talked about -- what the army hasn't talked about is special forces branch. special forces branch is an army branch. it's not special operations command's branch, but what the army has done is given responsibility -- i wouldn't say the army has done that. it was dob in the original implementation plans was to sell so com so com's responsible for determining when the special ops community occupations will be open and how they'll be opened. so i have no idea when special forces, who is setting their standards, how they're being set, and when they will be opened. however, one caveat with that is what we've already heard today which is army ranger school. the 75th ranger regiment is a

unit within so com, but we are -- the army has moved forward with this one-time assessment of women at ranger school. we have many ewe sitsunits in the army that have rangers. so we have -- we, i say because i was in the army for 30 years. we've gone forward with doing this one-time assessment of army rangers with the kaf gnat saying but they won't be assigned to the 75th ranger regiment because that's a so com decision at some point. and as, you know, everybody is watching this very closely. the eight women have finally made it through the first week, the hardest week of ranger school, but the question that i have is what's the assessment and i think this was kind of gotten to in the last question, what's this assessment for? will they determine if none of these eight women in this small select group makes it that we're going to keep ranger school closed to all women forever? so i don't understand the assessment. what i would have liked to have

seen was maybe the assessment was to look at gender neutral standards for ranger school but i think that the women are just being expected to meet the existing standards which are very high and well set and clearly published so that's not necessarily problematic as long as the standards that were set are actually job related. so that's the army. now, the marine corps and the army have taken very -- kind of charted very different paths. they're different services and they have approached this i think with a different mindset, but i don't want to evaluate -- i'm just going to tell you what they've done and i'm going to try to keep any kind of evaluation out of this. so the marine corps has done a bunch of different studies and research. they began with a -- actually, they began with the infantry officer course which they opened to women in 2012 and asked for volunteers. women, if you want to come to try out the infantry officer course, you're invited to attend. at the same time that they were doing that, they also began developing a set of combat proxy

tests. the combat proxy test, they were six largely upper body based -- i should say upper body strength based proxy tests that they evaluated the pmption of 409 women and 379 female marines against and what they found from this combat proxy test was that about -- well not about, but 66% of the very good performers were men and 34% were women and then the highest performing categories, it was 92% were men and 8% were women. so this initial screening test that they developed showed that there was certainly a percentage of women that fell into the good and the very good category but -- and i thought that would have been the measure to open some of those combat branches to women in the marine corps, but it wasn't. in fact, i don't even know what they're doing anymore with the proxy test. they seem to have been discarded, but perhaps not.

the second thing that they were doing, as they were doing the infantry officer course they decided after a year into the officer infantry course, they were going to try it with the infantry training battalion for enlisted women marines. they would more than 330 women volunteer and they were very successful -- they were fairly successful in that now 120 women have graduated from the infantry training battalion course. unfortunately at the same time that women were graduating and being successful at itb they were not successful at the infantry officer course. the marine corps had hoped to get 92 volunteers but that has not transpired. they only ended up with 29 women volunteers and none of the women were able to graduate from the course and last month they closed that research project and said we're not going to take any more women volunteers for the infantry officer course. about a year ago it was a year

ago just about this month, they launched a very ambitious -- initial it was called an experiment, then it became a research project. it's the ground combat element integrated task force and the reason that i was told they were doing this, and i went down and i sat down with the marine corps. they've been very generous with a lot of their information. why they were doing the ground combat element integrated task force was because they believed although there were women now graduating from itb they didn't think that itb might necessarily have been the best measure of future performance or long-term performance because what they know is that some marines get out into the fleet and they aren't very successful even if they've been through itb, so they said we really need to be able to measure or examine women over time, and so they created this task force. they actually recruited and trained a bunch of marine women

to do all these combat branch requirements and then they assigned them to this task force and they're training them for about nine months and they're examining how they progress through this nine months of training. one of the problems with the training though is that they quickly discovered that some of their collective tasks were not very well defined. so how are you determining how well or how suckcessful women are against collective tasks if the collective tasks aren't well define defined? they said we're going to set collective tasks at the same time we're studying women because then it will be gender neutral. but as they progressed down this path, what they've done is actually peel out groups of all male teams and then varying groups of mixed gender teams and they're comparing the performance of these teams against each other which to me looks like a competition of all-male teams against varying

levels of female teams, and the problem with that is that these women are brand new to these occupations. they were just -- they're right out of the school, and the males in the teams may have had -- likely have had a lot of time performing in those occupations so it wouldn't surprise me at all if teams with women aren't going to perform as these seasoned teams of men. they were going to try to mitigate against that by assigning newly trained men to these all-male teams and hopefully they've done that and the results will be fair and they will actually measure or set some gender neutral standards. so that's been the army's approach then the marine corps' approaching and now i will give you the experts' approach. >> just before we move to sue for a moment, one -- as ellen said, one of the things -- one

of the issues has been the transparency with what they are trying to measure here, and as the reporter from "the christian science monitor's" question in the last session noted when you go down there and watch it it's not exactly clear. so, sue, please include within your presentation a little bit about the transparency of the canadian process as well, if you would. >> sure. well in canada we've moved for quite some time towards job specific testing. so just so we're clear on what job specific tests are, they're work -- >> move your mic maybe, maybe move it up your lapel. >> can you hear now? >> do you want to use mine? >> do you want to try this? >> it's on. >> testing. >> it works. >> well then maybe i just need to move it right up. can you hear now?

no? >> speak a little louder. >> i'm just going to hold it. so in canada we have moved towards job specific testing for quite some time. employing -- job specific tests are work or task simulations meant to be representative of the major aspects of work duties or tasks performed on the job, and these can be mainly divided into two groups. discrete tasks to evaluate critical job elements or those that are applied as a circuit and in canada we actually employ both methods, so our common military fitness standard that all service personnel must meet are comprised of four discrete tasks. there's a sandbag lift, intermittent loaded shuttles, 20 meter rushes and a casualty drag. in contrast if we're assessing

the annual fitness levels of some of our more physically demanding oupthss we tend to move towards circuits. so an example would be how we evaluate our firefighters on an annual basis. they are required to complete ten task based circuit of simulated work tasks done in a continuous manner in full firefighting gear while breathing through a self contained breathing apparatus because that's reflective of how the job is performed. the standard would be the time take ton complete the circuit which would be representative of the body of work that's performed on the job. so how do we set our standards? well, we certainly do not use a normative data approach and for quite some time we have been using subject matter experts who view test performance either through videos that we make or during standardized work samples, and having them rate

performances either acceptable, minimally acceptable or unacceptable unacceptable. this is recognized in the scientific literature as being an acceptable approach because they're familiar with what constitutes effective job pmption and also critical job behaviors. so using the context of the canadian law which is a little different, it states the standards must be set at the minimal requirements for the safe, effective and efficient performance of the job. so standards is set where the rating of pmption and transitions from being minimally acceptable to unacceptable. we have very clear definitions as to what constitutes acceptable versus unacceptable. acceptable is working at a rate consist went the successful completion of the essential job components. important elements are safe, it's working in an efficient manner that does not endanger one's self co-workers, or the public. performed with a sense of purpose consistent with accomplishing the task and does

not require intervention by a supervisor. so then on the other hand if we're talking about unacceptable performance it would be a rate of work that's not consistent with the successful completion of the job task, unsafe either working too fast or too slow which would endanger one self, a co-worker, or the public, and task performance requires intervention by a supervisor. if we talk about minimally acceptable work, it's a rate consistent with the successful completion, however any slower rate would be considered unacceptable, and in this case case -- we try to get as many

job incumbents to complete the job specific tests as possible so we get a really nice range in distribution of scores. when we're taking a look at the general military population we see a very normal distribution. we have less fit people that perform poorer, and they have fitter people that obviously are going to perform better on the fitness test. but as we move towards more physically demanding occupations, we see that the performance scores are more homogeneous. these physically demanding occupations have high fitness standards to get in so you're cutting off part of the tail of the distribution and so your performance scores are a tight bend. we need to take that into consideration when we're developing these videos and showing these void yos to subject matter experts to ensure

we have videos of performances that are outside this narrow band because it is quite possible that the minimally acceptable performance could be outside the range of scores that the job incumbents are performing. so i think that's a really crucial step. so now when we go about developing these videos we tend to do so under the guidance of a senior and very well experienced subject matter expert that is not only well versed in the task performance, has performed this task very recently either as part of a mission or operational training but also has experience in a supervisory role so they know when performance would require an intervention or not and that's a key point also. so during the actual filming, this senior individual or subject matter expert also provides guidance to us to ensure that the tasks that are

being incorporated in the video are being performed correctly because the last thing you want to do is create a video and then have one of the tasks being performed correctly and then our subject matter experts are saying we'd never have performed the task that way and they lose focus of the working group which is to set the standard based on minute naly acceptable performance. we send to use an actor. this way if someone that's on the subject matter expert panel, if you were to use a job incumbent, there's the potential that person could be recognized and then you're already bringing in an inherent bias. either you like the person or you don't or you think they're a good performer, poor performer and that can influence where you set your ratings. we use an actor that no one knows and we try to ensure that the same -- that we have the -- the actor has the same an throw

more fixes of the incumbents. you wouldn't want to put someone 4'11" in your video because it would be a distraction. we produce multiple video was a wide range of cases and we utilize our subject matter expert or senior subject matter expert to clearly incorporate in our videos unacceptable pieces right? so that at some point you have that variation of rating and also to ensure that we have a wide range of paces and not just the paces that the incumbent population would perform. the changes in pace must be clearly detectable and so again if you had a fitness test that was completed in 6:36 your next video couldn't be 6:37 because a

one-second change in performance time is not going to be perceptible. you will not be able to perceive that. again, your subject matter experts can help you in that area. once all of the videos are compiled and edited, we establish a working group. we usually bring at least 10 to 12. we found that there's diminishing returns after a certain number of smes on your panel, so that's something to keep in consideration, and we qualify all the working group members as actual subject matter experts, so we do this through verification questionnaires to make sure they have experience performing the task in either operational or mission setting and that they have completed this task or these tasks recently and also because they're going to rate performance as either requiring the intervention of a supervisor or not, they have to have been

in a supervisory role. so then what we do is we bring all the subject matter experts in, we give them individual computer stations and we show them the videos independently from start to finish, from fastest to slowest and then backwards from slowest to fastest so you do this independently. again, at individual workstations to reduce the potential for biases. on the way back from slowest to fastest, smes are instructed to place their bookmark where things went from unacceptable to minimally acceptable. we use option finder. it's an interactive keypad which permits the working group members to respond anonymously and have the responses compiled and projected instantaneously onto a screen. no one else will know how they voted but at the end of the day

our panel members will be able to see how the overall group has rated these performances. so once this first round of the process is completed, then we facilitate respectful and meaningful discussion with the group members and we ask them so if we have one person that's rated performance on one end of the scale and sometimes this does happen, then we get them to explain to the group why they would have rated that performance as they did, and then others can discuss back and forth and then what we do is we go into after this discussion into a second and third rounds where we complete these processes. and typically after three rounds experience has shown us we get consensus among the working group members. although a strong level of consensus among subject matter experts may have been reached, we still account for the variation in ratings amongst the smes and the developed standard.

to accomplish this the var ant in ratings is -- it's incorporated in the developed standard. we take the standard error of measurement and apply it to the mean time of the sme ratings. by establishing a standard, it's expected that if we were to go out and show these videos to the entire population, then approximately 95 to 97.5% of the population would rate that performance as being minimally acceptable or faster than the standard. so what this allows us to do then is by accounting for variability in sme ratings a more robust and legally defensible standard may be established. so that's kind of the canadian perspective as to what we do and how we approach it. >> carolyn? >> well, i first want to say

that i started as a women's rights advocate for military women, and i'm very indebted to the lawyers of the group, and i have been fortunate to have had three mentors in that area. i will name them jean adkins pat kormly who was a navy can't who was brilliant, and another brilliant lawyer duffy. and i think duffy gave an excellent overview of standards and what they mean. i was asked to give how would i set it up if i were queen? i'm no longer queen, but looking at the memos, i would have approached it with general counsels and u.s. -- pardon me,

the secretary for personnel and readiness to develop the guidance from the services. what seems to me that is lacking in all of this is consistent guidance to the services. a consistency on how to develop the gender neutral standards and the job standards across the service. i was being flip earlier with the army presentation saying that they lowered the standards for men because that could come back -- they're always looking to -- some people they lowered the standards. well the standards weren't correct, which they weren't. that is the important part, to measure what the actual standard is. and i think duffy's point about the established case law in title 7 will be used as challenges come for the military. the military is in title 10. a whole different section of the law, but there are specific and

long-standing case law in title 7 that i'm sure will be applicable and so it would have been prudent by my estimation for the osd general counsel in coordination with the joint chiefs of staff to set out the legal framework of how they should be doing this as opposed to a hodge dodge of everybody make making it up as they go along. that might not be quite right that's pejorative but a consistent standard to you're measuring apples to apples. i also would have thought that on the presumption of co-location, because these are joint jobs now. the military operates in a joint environment, and if one service co-locates women in say the infantry and combat arm, i would presume all services with similar setup would open those position. this is primarily an army and a

marine corps issue because we're talking about the infantry, but they are co-located together and in joint operations. i also would have wanted to see more specific guidance on what it would take to close an mos, more specifically. now, how does this work? for some of you, many of you know but many of you may not, as you know, we have civilian control of the military. the secretary set out the guidance along with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. the office of the secretary of defense then is the oversight civilian organization that oversees the military policies. so the under secretary for personnel and readiness would be the overarching person and julie was here representing them in the list of personnel division. what it goes down into the

services, the assistant secretaries of man power and i was man power and reserve affairs, and man power and reserve affairs for the army, man power and for the air force -- but they would have the oversight role to oversee the services in accordance with the policy. that's the way it's supposed to work. then reporting back regularly to the osd on the progress. the osd goes forward to the congress and announces the opening of positions. i'm not sure that some of that has not happened, but it hasn't been clear to me that there is a process in place that everybody understands. this goes back to the questions earlier about open transparency and of studies, of the methodology in what is going on. it doesn't appear -- i

understand why they want to keep some of the results close, as they're readying, but how they're setting up the overall framework, i think has not been clear. finally, because i know there are researchers in the audience there are things that once we get past this, and we will to consider. for instance, and i'll just throw one out, the path to senior leadership in the services is through the combat arms. the three-star four-star. there are some non-combat arms but most it comes that way. i think there needs to be work on, what are the valid leadership skills you need in those positions, in a three and four-star level positions. as combat arms, is that the only route to get there? leadership skills are leadership

skills, and the people today, and those coming up pebehind, will have had more theater experience, combat experience. they will know what operations are. they will have gone to the same schools. i think looking at leadership in that would open up, i would believe, opportunities for women. because in the leadership literature, women are very good leaders. i think there needs to be some work down in that area. then a third rail but very important is work on women's health issues for the military women that are in the services. so for you future researchers go forth and do good work. >> okay. thank you all. thank you to the panelists. now, we'll take some questions from the audience. yes? >> so i'm not [ inaudible ] with the army civil affairs in fort

brag. my question is about the research. we've talked a lot today about physical demands, whether or not women can do some of those rough marches and whether or not, as we're saying the men can even do it at some of the stuff. what kind of research is out there right now about the right type of people that are needed, the mental part of it? are these people even supposed to be there? are they good at it needed to do it? not just the leadership piece either. i don't know if -- we were just making a comment about if i want to command the 25th id where the majority of the people are, the ground combat. not the leadership piece but what are the characteristics that fill in the jobs? i've seen some of them. i've seen women come across in my career that are filling those exceptional roles. they were engineer of commanders, the first ones out

there before it was not command sup -- supposed to be a commander until next year. we see the women filling out the positions, and they screwed it up for the rest of us. i'll be honest. they weren't meant to be in the roles. i don't know if the research for that is happening. >> i'll start on that. my comment would be, the leadership qualities are the same for men and women. i don't think the women screwed it up necessarily than any bad male commander would have screwed things up. there were so few of them that a woman sticks out when she does poorly. her mistakes are attributed to all women. it sounds like that what you're doing, is blaming a woman -- or attributing a poor leadership quality to a woman that then made it tough for you coming along behind her. as far as evaluating people, what research do we have what

are we doing? that's a good question. that's one of the things we haven't studied well in terms of screening people for the right positions. the focus is on the physical. it hasn't been on cognitive or emotional. we haven't done that screening. i believe special forces special ops does screening. but not the traditional ground combat units or even the support and logistics branches. we screen for -- do you have the basic cognitive abilities to get through the schools? that has to do with gt scores. then do you have the basic physical capabilities to pass pt tests. that's been the screening. >> the research though you haven't seen so far any research as we were opening up positions to look at that cognitive, emotional -- >> for women in particular or just soldiers in general? >> i guess both. as we're going through the process of opening up positions,

there isn't any research out there right now, or not happening? >> not that i've seen. >> first of all i think research obviously can inform this. but the process is that they're supposed to be setting standards for all the jobs in the military. that isn't just the physical standards. it should include cognitive standards, emotional standards, whatever they've determined in a valid process are the appropriate standards. one of the things that's confusing about the army ranger effort and the marine corps efforts is by saying we're putting women in and seeing if they can do it that's not really a valid way of doing it. you're supposed to say what does it take to do it and then yes, you might want to look at men and women doing it because they might be -- there might be different ways of using it. a women might use hips for something a man would use arms for. that's fine. you can't end up by saying -- my

view is, they can't have any exceptions. not just because of the group, no exceptions that's a sponsor here, but you can't have any exceptions. pause what would it be based on? if you say, we tried 400 women and nobody did it, what about the 401st or 402nd? if you have valid standards, and you've set them fairly then you let the chips fall where they may. maybe no women can do it and maybe a lot of men can't do it, but it's open and you can try. >> i would ask, has canada done anything with cog anycognitive? >> not for the general military population, but acceptably for special forces or some of the more elite occupations, such as search and rescue, for example. where there is a high cognitive load. what we do is work as a team of researchers. we have clinical psychologists industrial organizational behave

ris -- behaviorists that come in. you decide what the qualities for the job are and assessed by that. i don't deal with the organizational or the cognitive side of it. we do work in a team and then we establish that. >> over here. >> good afternoon, ladies. i'm a major just came off active duty in september of 2014. i'm a reservist, a major in the reserves. i was a candidate at the march ranger training assessment course. you asked, why did they open up the course? i like that because as you know, it's not a course that's required for promotion. it's not a course required for an occupational specialty. so i wonder, do you think at any point was this integration about maybe measuring the command climate or the organizational culture for those not only going through, but maybe senior leaders or instructors that were

charged with this really historic effort in the army? thank you. >> so i've tried to give the benefit of the doubt to the army and the marine corps, in that maybe the studies and the research that i see as problematic, because we're basically doing what duffy just said, looking at a small amount of women and saying this is going to determine whether all women can do it. but what may be worthwhile in this one-time assessment, or the marine marine corp's research, is it begins to allow the culture to begin to accept the future of women in these different organizations. so this ranger school assessment, i don't believe this is the end of it. i think this is the first time and it's going to keep going. but this, calling it an assessment and seeing how women do may allow the culture to open and begin to accept women in a way they might not have had

it been a directed thing, open it up now and we don't care what you have to say. so i hope that's what's happening. what was your sense while you were there? >> i'm glad you asked me. i wanted to share. [ laughter ]. >> it was incredible. in fact most of our peers, and mariah and i were in the same class together, interestingly enough, all of the candidates there, our male counterparts, i found to be extremely welcoming. there was no difference in terms of our training, the way we responded. the things we were expected to do. they didn't treat us with any exception, good, bad or indifferent. it was really actually the senior leaders leading up to making the request to go to the school. a lot of the questions i personally was asked is, why do you want to do this? why now in your career? because i was definitely -- we were the more senior candidates there, being that majors were the most senior candidates allowed to attend. then the ranger instructors, the ris that were there they

trained us the same. i don't think they saw any gender difference at all. early in the class, there was remarks made about hey, there are women in this class. that's the obvious elephant in the room. then we got over that, and it was not discussed after that. very awesome experience. thanks. >> thank you. thank you for being brave enough to do that, too. it's women like you that really make this happen. even women that don't make it through, you guys are incredible. >> heros. [ applause ] >> other questions? >> yeah. >> i'm captain perry foster, a brand new civil affairs officer formerly military intelligence office. i was osc for the direct action side. my question is twofold. dealing with women in combat and the role they fill as a cst. whether or not there's been dialogue about the creation of a

new ios with the role women fill. not just in infantry or women in field artillery, but whether or not there is a possibility that something is created for women that has to deal with the human engagement piece that, to me seems so important for women. as we see, i think, this war changing, we see the lines of combat becoming blurred i see that the engagement, the human engagement and the, i guess it would be, the vagueness of what is combat is going to be hard to define. it seems to me that creating an entirely new mos that would therefore be fielded out to ranger regiment or special forces in which the women specifically dealt not only with human engagement but were trained effectively combat wise so the men they're with could trust them. >> explain for the audience the cst. >> the cultural support teams

was an initiative in 2010/2011 to embed women on small special operations teams. we have quite a few women here who will talk more about it later this afternoon about the cultural support team program. so i personally my personal opinion, is i hope not. to me, i don't want to see any teams of just women because i don't think -- we're people. so men and women together make a more powerful team. i don't want to see women ever segregated or separated out, as though they're a unique or distinct capability that only women have and only women can address. i think the cultural support teams were initially -- the reason they're called cultural support teams and not female engagement teams was it was envisioned to be a capability that could address populations at large not -- of course i think civil affairs should have been able to do that to begin with. anyways, that's another debate.

cultural support teams should be able to do the same thing that these -- i'm sorry -- civil affairs should be able to do the same things the cultural support teams were identified to do. i don't want to see any separate women's teams, women's only moss because that says we're different. we're largely not. >> i do agree with that but i think the problem with civil affairs is they were as a branch fielding out their [ inaudible ] units. that's the problem a lot of women run into. restrictions placed upon them by the respective branch. having the capability to continue to support these while retaining the mos in training. >> i understand. it's a problem they need to wrestle with, between the civil affairs and the community. >> hi. colonel kelly martin active

duty air force. two questions. one is you talk about standards and completely off on the way it's described here. in these training courses it's not just the ability to do the job, it's the ability to do the job under stress. so quite often we use physical the physical aspect to make up for things we can't do in training, ie shooting someone. being in that life and death situation. i'd like to get your perspective when you add that into this aspect of training. my second question is we are an all volunteer force. you do volunteer for the different moss, up to a point. because when you get to the point you need to fill infantry spots, you just take the bottom of the classes and fill up the spots. >> right. >> unless you're a woman. if we open it up for women should women be forced to go

into infantry? >> you want to start? >> i absolutely think that's good for the goose is good for the gander. if you're going to force men into these -- qualified men into the positions, then absolutely, women should be treated exactly the same. to your earlier question, point about -- what was it? >> stress. >> stress can be created in a whole host of ways. it doesn't just have to be done through exhaustion or tired. you can create stress through low sleep, not much food, unexpected environments. that's what the ranger school does. they tell you what their physical standards are. they make it very clear. six pullups, this, this and this and then they load stress on by you never know when you'll be woken up when your mission will end. stress can be added in a host of ways that aren't just physical. they're psychological. the series school does it. a lot of different courses create stressful striermtenvironments

without it just being a lot of pushups. >> i agree. you can use sleep depp vationravationdepravation restriction of food, water. there are different ways to impose stress. >> and i should also say that this is not only in the military, where these kinds of things occur. if you think about the training that physicians get interns get, being on long shifts, lack of sleep, et cetera, there are all kinds of ways to be sure that somebody can react fast in an emergency. you can question whether they're the best ways perhaps but it's not -- this is all part of the setting of whether somebody can pass what is a standard. >> few more minutes here. >> good morning. i had a question about the research behind the process. it sounds like there's a very

in-depth research-led process to ensure the standard approach to enforcing the letter of the law or the regulation when it came to the physical elements. i was wondering if there was the same amount of research and forethought that went into the consideration for normalizing the new social recognition of the spirit of that same regulation, or would you rely mostly on the existing social structure, which would be chain of command? >> do you know what she's talking about? >> yeah. >> could you clarify what you're talking about? >> so, for example we've discussed and it sounds like there was a lot of thought put into ensuring that no matter who was taking the test, all of the evaluators and instructors would know precisely how to score that particular assessment piece. when it comes to the actual integration piece, how do you ensure that the mindset behind that enforcement and behind the unit, because it would be a new social situation for the groups

not to speak poorly of the people already in there but we have to recognize that it's a new situation is there the same body of research behind the social element of it? >> i think what you're asking about is bias. how to guard against bias. to me it's a leadership issue within an organization. so leaders who know that subordinates are unfairly biased against certain groups and they're treating them differently, they need to be able to get rid of that in their organization. identify it and eliminate. i would suspect the women who went through ranger school could -- do you have that experience? did there seem to be any bias? if there was how did they deal with it? >> interestingly, within the class itself, i think via -- our class was primarily infantry lieutenants coming out of obc. to them it seemed natural that there's women here. it's all they've ever known.

or they went through rotc and ranger challenge with women in their teams. hearing this debate as they were ka dent cadets. we didn't see any bias among our classmates. if the leadership felt any bias, they did a good job of acting professionally and treating everybody the same. i don't know what discussions happened prior to implementation, but they certainly did a good job as leaders of making us all feel included. i would think that most units would be capable of exhibiting that kind of leadership. >> one thing is that -- i mean, one of the things said in the last panel in response to a question about what are they doing about the cadre in general, the department and chairman dempsey's memo making sure there was a sufficient cadre when they implemented any of the units, and the issue of cultural studies why are they

doing cultural studies and how will they use them? although i don't think we got totally satisfactory answers from the earlier panel, what they're saying is that both of those are supposed to be helpful to the actual integration process. we also know of course, from the experience of don't ask, don't tell, and the repeal of don't ask, don't tell that the military argued for and got from the congress a specific implementation period, when they said they were going to go talk to the troops and make sure everybody understood, this is going to happen. you all have to accept it et cetera. i didn't think we needed that process then, and i don't think that we need that process now. but they are at least saying that what they are doing is looking at these cultural and other factors so they can begin to see where the problems are, and then can address the problems as they integrate. we have to take them at their word now i think, because we haven't seen any of the studies

and we don't know what they're doing in response. i don't know if you have anything to say? >> it's a leadership issue, pure and simple. i mean the leadership sets the tone. it's a leadership issue. i don't know that you -- i'm always leery of studying cultural stuff because i think you get -- i'm too old. i've been through too many of these things. but it's a leadership issue. the leadership sets the tone. the leadership sets the standards. it's up to leaders to hold their subordinates accountable. it's up to the leader where you are, and the leader above them to hold them accountable. >> sue did you want to comment on that? >> that's kind of outside of my domain. we do have researches that go in and do culture audits and report

those findings back to the leadership. but that's clearly outside of my domain. >> do i need to close? need to shut it down? okay. we need to stop. sorry. i know people have questions, and i think the panelists will be around for a while. please talk informally. [ applause ]

we'll be back with more live coverage as they continue the discussion of women in combat. at 2:45 the unit will talk about leadership and training in developing the group's identity. live coverage will be conchtinuing on c-span3. on capitol hill, the armed services committee chair in the house has released the defense department budget, the proposed budget for fiscal year 2016. the pentagon spending will be marked up on wednesday and look for live coverage of that markup session on the c-span networks. the house also this week be take up the military construction spending measures as they work

on 2016 spending bills. live coverage continuing here on the conference looking at women in combat. we'll be back live when they continue. until then, part of today's "washington journal." >> discussion on federal whistleblowers. return to a man with a unique and personal perspective on the subject. daniel elsburg. before we talk about this administration and how whistleblowers have been treated, for those who aren't familiar with the history of it, can you explain what the pentagon papers are and your role? >> my unique role is, unfortunately, no longer unique. i was the first person prosecuted for leaking information to the american public. classified information. in 1971, i gave 7,000 pages of top-secret information actually first to the senate in 1969. then 4,000 of the pages, excluding some i gave only to the senate, i gave 4,000 top secret pages to the "new york

times." when they were injoined, i gave some to the "washington post." the newspapers were told to stop the presses for reason of national security. i gave it to 17 other newspapers, 19 in all. the supreme court finally ruled that those injunctions were invalid, that the papers the "new york times" and others could print to the public. i was indicted facing 12 felony counts, a possible 115 years in prison for the -- actually for copying the papers. there was going to be a later trial on distributing them, which would have involved the "new york times" as well as others. me and my co-defendant, who helped me copy the papers for the next two years were under indictment. facing 115 years in my case. eventually, all charges were dropped when it came out in the courtroom that a president,

richard nixon, conducted a number of criminal operations against me. operations that were then criminal and now legalized since 9/11. getting information with which to blackmail me into silence about what i knew about nixon's operations. the pentagon papers ended a study of u.s. decision making in vietnam from 1945 to 1968, top secret. 47 volumes. that ended in 1968. it didn't implicate president nixon. he feared correctly that i had information on measures he was taking then in the war, and what he claimed was ending the war, trying to win it which included nuclear threats, secret from the american public, but well-known to the targets, north vietnam and their allies russia and china. he was afraid i would expose those threat, which he hadn't yet carried out, and might lead to heavy operation to expanding

the war in that way. he tried to stop me. eventually, he brought 12 cias sets up from miami to washington to assault me on the steps of the capital. the words were, to incapacitate him totally. i remember asking the prosecutor, what does that mean kill me? he said, the words were to incapacitate you totally. then he said you know, these guys never use the word "kill." they were cia assets. talked about neutralizing terminating with extreme prejudice and so forth. when these facts came out in the court, my charges were dropped, but more importantly nixon was faced with prosecution or impeachment, first. had to resign. that made the war endable. nine months after he resigned the war ended. >> in all that experience, all your years on this topic is it easier or harder to be a whistleblower in the federal government today than then? >> it's much more subject to

prosecution. i was the very first to be prosecuted for that, and there was a reason. not that i was the first person to leak information that happened every day essentially and always has and still does to some degree. most of it favorable to the administration or agency. serves their purposes. occasionally, serving an invest investigateive journalistic purpose. no one had been prosecuted. having a first amendment and revolution we don't have an official secrets act like britain does. the experiment in my case was to use the espyionage case that was used against spies and still is, and designed for that purpose, to use it against someone who had given information to the american public. only two people after me after my charges were dropped were tried under that. until president obama. you ask, how is it different now? president obama, who i supported in two elections by the way

president obama has indicted three times as many people for leaking as all previous presidents put together. ten ten. >> to give a visual of that, here is the prosecution of you for leaking classified information under nixon. under bush franklin. the rest of those on this list have been prosecuted under the obama administration. names that viewers know well, including bradley chelsea manning, edward snowden as well. >> i'm giving a press conference on this subject to the national press club as we end here. i could use that chart if you don't mind. >> i'll let you take it with you if you want to talk about why you're in town today. >> usually -- for this press conference. it usually is mentioned that he -- frequently now, i was the first to make the point -- that

he was prosecuting more people. of course, at first, it was three, four, five. he prosecuted three times as many people as all previous presidents. it's not easy to explain why. i don't have an easy explanation. all presidents hate whistleblowers that help investigative journalists. why he decided to use the espionage act which is unjust against leakers, and we can go into the reason. no whistleblower trying to inform the public, who a jury might not agree had done the right thing but no whistleblower should be tried under the espionage act. that's the act on which they have been tried. >> this is an act dating back to -- >> it's for spies, not people who in their hearts and efforts are trying to inform the american republic so it can better exercise its rights. >> someone seeing something wrong in the federal government, what questions should they ask themselves before they go ahead and become a whistleblower?

>> good question. when they're looking at secrets, which i did for a dozen years, with high clearances higher than top secret i wish i had started asking myself much earlier than i did in the government, do i have a right to keep this secret? naturally, the burden of proof is on the government's -- on the idea of going against your promise to keep secrets. the burden of proof is to let the president decide what should be known and what should not be known. by now, anyone who is over 30 or 40 been in the government, should know the president often conceals material that the public should know. it's wrongly withheld because it reveals crimes, misjudgments, reckless wars. when people see that which they often do consciously, i wish they would ask themselves do i have a right to keep this secret? should i to fulfill my promise

or is my oath to the constitution? to support and defend the constitution. overriding in this particular case. i didn't ask myself that until late in the game. edward snowden and chelsea manning consciously did ask themselves, and i believe they took the right choice. >> if somebody asked themselves the question and said the answer is yes, what is your advice? you tried to go to congress. >> i gave it to the senate and wasted i believe an inclassified form, and wasted a year and a half. they were afraid, not that they'd be prosecuted, no chance of that, but that he would lose access to classified information in his job of ruling on foreign military aid. it would go to the more friendly right-wing senate services committee, instead of foreign relations. he didn't do what he promised me the do bring out this material in hearings. in the end i had to go to the newspapers. i wish i had done that a year earlier. i would say right now in advice

to people, do it if there is a lot of material. as often it should be. how often should a large amount come out like the pentagon papers? once every 40 years, which is the current standard? i would think not. about every year. somewhere in the world every month, some expose like that. it doesn't happen. i waited 40 years for a comparable leak and that was by chelsea manning. manning made the mistake of leaking it to a government informant, so she's in prison, serving 45 years at this point. totally unfair. edward snowden did it right under current circumstances. he had complained to colleagues about this. had he gone to the inspector general of nsa or of the dod at that time as senator kerry, secretary of state kerry, and former secretary of kerry clinton said he should have done, he would have suffered the

same fate as many others who went to the ig and later went to congress. both cases did nothing but infurious their bosses, lose their jobs and be fingered for possible leakers later, so they were suspected of leaking when someone else did what they should have done in the first place, and that is go to the newspapers. i would say right now, snowden made the right choice. he went to the press. went to greenwauldld. from the moment he did that he would be in isolation, like chelsea manning for 10 1/2 months. never talking to a reporter. chelsea manning was arrested about five years ago has never been interviewed by a reporter to explain why she did what she did, what it was about, to explain. the idea that kerry and clinton both said you should make your case in court and in the public

neither of those is valid. they're talking through their hat. they would have no chance to do it. >> daniel elsburg is with us on the "washington journal"." he's here to speak at the international press club. he's the author of the pentagon papers. our phone lines are open. the phone numbers are on the screen. we'll start on the line for democrats. owe is joe is waiting in fort washington maryland. >> caller: i would like to speak on espionage. it's always been a serious crime in this country. >> sir, we'll get you some more volume. concerned about espionage being a serious crime in our country. go ahead. >> caller: mr. elsburg i

appreciate and thank you for your services and all you do but you sit there and represent snowden, who shouldn't be up there with whistleblowers. he should be up there with espionage. >> people are concerned snowden is a traitor. >> i'm certain that edward snowden is no more a traitor or a spy than i am, and i'm not. i think accusations of that sort, which many people can suspect what they want but i've met snowden, talked to him, followed his case thoroughly. he may have done things he shouldn't have done that i don't know yet that haven't come out in public but as far as i know he's an extremely patriotic american who, like chelsea manning, was willing to really go into exile and face possible assassination, as i did, under the white house in 1972. i regard him as a very courageous and patriotic

american. now, the question of espionage, of course it's serious. i don't condone espionage. secret giving of information to a foreign power, especially an enemy, especially in time of war, i don't criticize any use of the espionage act against such a case. no prosecutor has really suspected any of these leak cases as being in that category any marore than general patraus recently. he wouldn't have been tried under the espionage act any more than i. the espionage act is designed for people who give secrets to foreign powers for the interests of the foreign power to harm the united states. it doesn't allow for any argument in court as to your motive in doing that. it's assumed the motive can't really justify what you did. i would agree with that. someone facing 18 usc 793, the

charges, i can role it off because i was the first person charged on those for a non-espionage case allows for no one in court to say why i did what i did, what the possible damage was i was risking, what the actual damage was, what my motives were and what was risked by keeping it secret. it was wrongfully kept secret. no argument can be made. i wasn't allowed to nor are any of the other people. petraeus wouldn't have been allowed to. if the fbi gave him the charges they wanted to give him under the espionage act. i'm not condoning what he did in the way of his leaks. i'm saying the espionage act is unjust, as an application to someone who is clearly a leaker or a whistleblower. the congress has the ability to change that by changing the law,

by allowing for what's called a public interest defense or necessity defense, so that the public interest defense, so that any of the people charged of the ten that have been charged there, could present their case to a jury, as to their motives and why they did what they did. in the absence of that, it's really the use of the act is unconstitutional. >> a question from our twitter page from rick, who writes in so what is the current president's motivation to silence so many whistleblowers? your thoughts on the obama administration? >> i've asked that a hundred times of people who i hoped would know better than i what it is. it is mysterious. i know of no one who expected president obama, republican, democrat, left, right or whoever, really foresaw that this particular process. i really don't know. one hypothesis is that he

depends very much on mr. brenen who is a hard lined cia person and advised him the use the act this way. another came out recently i saw, that he had -- was angry about one particular leak. indeed, all presidents are angry about all leaks that make them look bad that are embarrassing. they live -- or give leaks every day that make them look good. if it looks bad, they're all angry. in this case apparently they asked the justice department how many people have been referred to the justice department for possible prosecution in the last few years? the answer was, 150. how many were actually indicted? zero. that is rather striking, of course. any other president could have said the same. the reason for the zero is we don't have an official secrets act. congress passed one once, and president clinton -- this was in november of 2000 -- clinton

vetoed it on constitutional ground. we don't have one, and that's why no indictments. however, as in my case the language of the espionage act is there to use unconstitutionally really, against it. so apparently, the justice department said, okay start using it in a way that hasn't been done before. that's, in a way, giving the benefit of the doubt. that's the least incriminating. another would be, i don't know what else to say. he's angry at people but of course, all presidents were. he does have more surveillance of meta beta to show as in the case of james risen and jeffrey sterling, to show what the context were even if they don't testify. how long they talked, when they talked. actually, george w. bush had the same though, and he didn't use it. i'm left with a puzzle. >> you mentioned jeffrey sterling. currently awaiting charges that he leaked information about efforts to sabotage the iranian nuclear program on that list.

the title of the list obama in hot pursuit of leakers. talking about those government workers who have been charged for allegedly leaking classified information. garland is waiting to chat with you in courtland ohio. line for democrats. >> interesting to note, the case of the jeffrey sterling case, all the facting were ings were leaked to george w. bush's term. he was indicted under obama not bush, and not been employed for five years. somebody under charge of the espionage act has trouble getting adjustments. a thrilling panel coming right up. i think this next discussion gets right at the heart of everything we're talking about, to a great extent. my name is mike, the executive director of the truman center. we are proud to say no exceptions is an initiative and led by a remarkable group of

women, including combat leaders in or organization, and supported by a larger number of men in the truman project and center for national policy who also have combat experience. myself included. i was a combat arms officer in iraq and afghanistan. to me, i don't know when this issue was settled for me probably i'm supposed to be an objective moderator, but to put my cards on the table, my sister is currently serving with dis distinctdis distinction as a gang unit in the new york police department. she can kick my ass. i can tell you that for sure. you know, over two years on the sharp end, on the battlefield, i've seen more than enough examples of women distinguishing themselves including in the close fight, providing the fire support, whether it's from a cockpit or another platform we desperately needed at various

times, defending their convoys when they came under attack. for many of us who have seen this movie out on the ground, this is a debate that was over a long time ago. so those are my cards, and they're on the table. any pretense of objectivity, i will abandon now. out of curiosity, how many currently serving or former members of the military u.s. or otherwise, do you have in the audience today? i should have asked how many civilians were in the audience. yes, excellent. it is no exaggeration to say there is a wealth of knowledge and experience in this room, and that's why we're going to try to make this more of a conversation than a series of presentations. we're looking forward to that. this discussion is really about the central question of unit cohesion and leadership. in the battlefield, elsespecially in the close fight. we have with us four people that i think provide a great perspective across the board. dr. megan mckenzie from the university of sydney. she's a senior lecturing in the

government. the center for international security at the university of sydney. research crosses gender studies and international development. she's published in top journals, including security studies. her first book "female soldiers in sierra leone," and the newest book beyond the military and myth women can't fight debunks ss the belief that women can't fight. it is one of my favorite mini series, but i'm willing to see that happen. we have dr. robert, a visiting professor and director of teaching with the security studies program as well as a senior faculty adviser for the georgetown institute for women, peace and security. he's currently on leave from a position of associate professor at the swedish national defense

college. he's the founding director of the stockholm center for studies. the think tank created in response for non-governmental research and policy advice in the swedish and international context. we're joined by my friend captain john of the u.s. army national guard. he's a 2015 herbert peace fellow who works with me at the center for national policy. served six years as an army infantry officer, includeing a deployment to afghanistan. that place will mean something if you look it up. i had the privilege of spending time there at a different time. john provides an incredible experience. the sort of infran triantry unit in a daily grind fight. we're happy to have him. he's a member of the maryland

national guard and has worked as a national security intern focused on human rights complaints and security policy. we're joined by mary beth. i should have asked you how to pronounce your last name. >> you got it. >> graduated in 1999 and commissioned to the marine corps corps. she had a deployment to iraq. she was combat arms. is a combat engineer. after trang sigssitioning from activek duty she developed robots to marines. she's the executive director for the mission continues. this is a great panel. i'm going to start it by turning to dr. mckenzie and asking her to replace me at the podium. what did you find as you were

researching the book on the question of band of brothers, and what does it mean for the combat integration? >> thank you. i am the out cider. i'm a researcher and spent years researching the topic of women in combat. i started by research in sierra leone. what was interesting is i found some of the arguments, so there was a high percentage of women who par tas pateticipated in the conflict. even though i present women said they weren't really soldiers. they were just following. i found some of the arguments were similar in the debating happening around the combat exclusion for women in the united states. that's how i made that shift. i spent the last three years really sifting through all the research i could find on physical standards cohesion and women in combat.

so i'll talk about that. first of all, i want to say, thank you for inviting me. it's a real honor to be here. focusing on cohesion one of the most common arguments used to justify the combat exclusion in the u.s. and elsewhere has been the position that women undermine the types of bonding necessary for combat troops to operate efficiently. so the cohesion hypothesis, as i call it, presumes that all male combat units are more cohesive and, therefore more effective than mixed gender units. this became the dominant argument along with physical requirements for exclusding women from cam bat up to the decision to remove the decision. it remains across militaries around the world to retain the exclusion. i want to talk about the role of myth emotion and gender bias in

shaping the debates around combat cohesion. two points i'd like to make. first, there is an extensive amount of research on women and cohesion. the question of women's impact on cohesion is addressed in actually a staggering amount of well-funded studies conducted both within the u.s. and abroad. at present, there is a greater need to reflect on the results of these findings, which i'll get to in a minute rather than call for another study on cohesion. second, in my book, i argue that all male units have been central to military identity and national identity in the u.s. for a long time. there are deeply embedded assumptions associated with the band of brothers. from my perspective, cohesion arguments, rather than simply focusing on mission effectiveness, can sometimes be code for preserving the band of brothers. while cohesion is often treated as a group dynamic that can be

objectiveness measured, much of the debate around cohesion is driven by emotion and stereotypes that serve to reinforce the perception to camaraderie and bonding is exclusive to men. let's start with the evidence related to combat cohesion. the first point to note is studies show the need to dissegregate between social and task cohesion. social cohesion is the bonds feelings of trust and camaraderie. by contrast, task cohesion is defined as the commitment of a group towards a shared mission or objectives. put another way, social cohesion refers to whether the group members like one another. task cohesion is whether they can work well together. despite the important distinctions between task cohesion and social cohesion, researchers measure them together ignoring the difference. this is important because indicates show women impact social cohesion.

this makes sense. many workplace studies found we tend to want to work with people who are similar to us, in terms of race, class, gender, ideology. so to learn that men tend to feel more socially bonded to male colleagues in the military is no surprise. but those studies that isolate that found that task cohesion is linked to mission effectively than social cohesion. in fact one major study concluded simply quote military performance depends on weather service members are committed to the same goals not whether or not they like one another. knowing the task cohesion is a greater indicator of true effectively is significant. when we focus on task cohesion, women are not a factor. leadership is. here there's room to learn from other militaries that have integrated women into combat. for example, research on the israeli defense forces found that cohesion can be inspired through shared commitment to a

mission, irrespective of previous social or personal interactions. a canadian report on gender diversity determined the cohesion of a mixed gender combat unit was primarily a leadership challenge. in turn, research that conputs these together overemphasizes the social dynamics and not task cohesion. now, getting to the heart of the matter, there's actually quite a few studies that indicate that -- that have been conducted domestically and international that find little relationship between the integration of women and various understandings of cohesion. as early as the 1970s, the u.s. military conducted tests that determined that women did not have a significant effect on operational capabilities. 1970s. we're still having similar conversations. these conclusions were supported

by a 1993 report that found that gender was not listed by focus participants as a requirement for effective unit cohesion. a couple of excellent studies found in the 1990s, that the real cohesion story was one of leadership. so something that is often overlooked here is the fact that similar cohesion arguments were used and then put to rest when it came to african-american troops and gay and lesbian service members. we tend to ignore the negative effects of social cohesion. in various workplace settings, including the military, overly cohesive or homogeneous groups are associated with group think and diverse groups enhance intelligence and problem-solving and decision making skills. moving on to my broader point about gender and cohesion. i think there's two main

indicators that there may be gender bias in relation to discussions on cohesion. first, cohesion is often referred to implicitly or explicitly as male bonding. second, evidence indicates that the main impediment to cohesion may be men's attitudes, not women themselves or their ability to perform. this first point, cohesion is male bonding. when we're looking at the public debates and the broader literature around cohesion, some de descriptions assume cohesion requires segregation. it is the masculine nature not the bonding itself that's essential. king acknowledges that sociologists prefer informal masculine rituals in cohesion. brown, former u.s. supreme court

clerk, made the following observation. quote, men fight for many reasons. but probably the most powerful one is the bonding. male bonding with their comrade comrades. perhaps for a fundament ralal reasons, women don't invoke the follower ship and bond ship that men do. linking national security to all male units makes it difficult for those trying to integrate women into combat units. defining military cohesion and troop effectively by masculinity places women as outsiders and as a threat by the nature, irrespective of their performance. this perspective can want't be countered with more research. it requires a change in perspective. this is why attitudes matter. the second indicator. i mentioned research earlier that shows little correlation between women and reduced cohesion, but there are some

studies that actually show -- that find the contrary. if you dig deeper into the studies, you can find interesting conclusions. let me explain. one study found that units with higher numbers of women may report lower levels of cohesion because women, as a group, tend to report lower levels of cohesion. the more women you have the lower levels of cohesion because women report lower levels. another study found that women that negatively impacted cohesion found that men's acceptance of women impacted the cohesion. the more men were accepting of women, the higher the rates of cohesion in the group. here, you have a separate factor, attitudes that impact cohesion. this has been reproduced in international studies on mixed gender units which found that men's acceptance of women positively correlated with horizontal cohesion and combat readiness. this is really important, because it means that men's

attitudes toward women and their acceptance of women, not women themselves, might be the key factor in levels of cohesion. it's also important because it seems that irrespective of women's performance,important, negative attitudes about their place in the military persist and impact how a group describes its cohesion. just a couple of weeks ago, the results of a survey given to the american special operations forces were reported. and this was a survey just to gauge apprehensions that troops may have in relation to women in combat in order to preemptively address them. and the results did show several misgivings and concerns including concerns about sexual assault. so we need to understand how these types of misgivings and reactions to women in combat might impact group dynamics and reported levels of cohesion. we also need to acknowledge that sexual assault is not a gender integration or cohesion problem. it's a sexual assault problem.

again, the main issue may be men's attitudes and perceptions. we may want to focus on cultural change rather than future studies on cohesion. debates around women and cohesion particularly those focused on women in combat leave several important questions unanswered, including why does there seem to be more concern regarding women and cohesion with regard to combat units? do women only hinder cohesion for combat troops? do combat units require different types of cohesion from other units? are we suggesting that the training and military leadership are unable to foster task and social cohesion amongst the soldiers soldiers? i would argue it's not a gender neutral concept.

an essential element of the band of brothers myth is the unexplainable or indescribable bonds of the all male group. this representation of cohesion can make it really a moving target. that's impossible to pin down and measure. and therefore it's very difficult to counter with research. irrespective of the vast research indicating that women don't impact cohesion, ideals associated with sacred or special bonding between all male units are all too often treated as fact rather than narrative. it implies that men cannot be professional and serve alongside fellow service members. and it assumes that women are not as trustworthy or dependable comrades as the male counterparts. evidence indicates these claims simply aren't true.

women staying behind in support roles is over. stories like ashley's war are stories i'm hearing over and over again not only in the u.s., canada, and new zealand. women are on the front lines and play a major part in modern warfare. speculation about cohesion can actually reinforce myth rather than make women's jobs easier. i think we need to move forward and we have the research we need to. now we need to consider how military culture needs to catch up with the reality of women's participation in war. thank you. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you for that overview of the landscape. can i ask you sort of the straightforward question?

based on your experience your research, do you feel that the evidence and the experience of international military supports the idea that introducing women into combat units will degrade performance? or do you not feel that way? >> we'll see. i'll come to the answer at the end of this. first of all, thanks for a brilliant presentation there. i was desperately flicking through my notes wondering what i could possibly add. i'd like to go back to the quote. i'm an academic. well, i'm slightly -- and i'm a foreigner, i don't have to be nice to anyone in here. so he said, we will extend opportunities to women in a way that maintains readiness, morale and unit cohesion. we'll preserve our war fighting capability to defend the nation. and that sounds good, but when i unpack that, there's a lot of really problematic assumptions

and negativity baked into that one. it's about maintenance, about preservation of the existing order. that to me, is an assumption that the existing organization is perfect. and whatever we do to change it can only have negative or no impact if it's done really, really well. that to me is the wrong starting point when it comes to the inclusion of women in combat. i just wanted to put that out there. i think it's horrible to join an organization and feel that the only way i could impact is negatively or not at all. let's think of this more in terms of increase combat effectiveness or maximize combat effectiveness. those are the right measures. those are the right topics to talk about. we have military organizations for those -- for very specific

purposes. the army calls it fighting and winning the nation's war in order to defend the nation. i should probably add that military units do a lot more than just fight the nation's wars or that fighting the nation's wars these days entails a whole host of very complex tasks beyond tactical level engagement with the enemy. but those are two critical factors. it's absolutely right we're focusing on those things. that's where you hear most of the complaints or the fears about integration of women. so we have to tackle them on their home court, if you will. i think we've done a pretty good job of the physical fitness. and at this point, i would just say get over with it. just do it. let women compete with the existing standards but then also work with those standards to make sure that they are not only

gender neutral because that's a term that quite often hides gender blindness. we assume just because it's the same for everyone, they're neutral while actually they're part of a highly masculine tradition, highly masculine view of what war is and it means and how it's conducted, et cetera, and tradition, also part of a masculine such. so we have to be aware there and create gender aware standards for all rather than gender neutral or slash blind. effectiveness since we have, not exactly come out of 15 years of almost continuous war with great success and category. there's been tremendous mistakes, most of them at the strategic level, but also at the

tactical level. there's all reason to try to improve the way we fight. the way we train and organize. and i think we should view this issue as part of that ambition to always try and improve and maximize the effectiveness of the armed forces. something really interesting that came out of iraq and afghanistan are a number of organizational innovations. we have the lioness teams were the early versions. the female engagement teams, gender focal points, cultural support teams, et cetera, et cetera. lots of interesting innovations going on. those were not ordered from the political level and imposed on the organization. they were attempts at dealing with tactical level challenges or units we're facing in the field. again, let's not just look at this in terms of maintaining

effectiveness. let's look at it as a way of improving it. these were necessary measures. and i'm going to come back to them in terms of what are the most appropriate ways of integrating women or creating female engagement teams, et cetera, et cetera. but, remember that they were responses to tactical challenges, not imposed on units. there's a number of fields of research. and megan did a great job of covering them. you often hear this argument. we need more evidence and there is quite a lot of evidence out there. the challenge is that we are up against what is considered common sense within the armed forces. a feeling that what we have really works. and we know how to train a good infantry unit. we've done it for centuries in the same roughly way. and our drill sergeants know exactly how to push or recruits

very hard, and they know they should encourage the weekend activities that men do, as well quite often hard drinking and wooing the ladies down at the local pub, et cetera. those are all ways that we know work. and we're comfortable with it because we assume that it is the way we do things. and it you know, if it worked for centuries, why should we change it? but there's research that shows that these kind of masculine cohesion units or constructions, if you will, can quite often lead to some extreme and very problematic cases of hypermasculinity, abuse, now i don't know if it's directly related to sexual violence within the armed forces, for example. but it seems to me pretty obvious connection. there's also the