captioning performed by vitac >> okay. do you basically agree with the primary purpose of that act, which i read earlier, basically to ensure the freedom and prosperity of the cuban people and certainly enhance the national security of america? do you think that's the two primary policy goals of this country toward cuba? >> certainly, the president's made clear that what we want is a democratic prosperous and stable cuba, which i think is similar to what's in that act. question of our own national security should always be paramount in our decision making. >> ambassador shannon, i was struck by your comments about your attitude that democracy and freedom is flourishing in central america.

certainly we have good examples, colombia, because of courageous leadership. i'm not seeing a lot of democracy flourishing in venezuela or cuba, from that standpoint. can you help me out in terms of what you're talking about? >> there's no doubt that democracy's not flourishing in cuba. and it's part of the president's effort to pursue a new approach to see what more we can do to help the cuban people begin their own political opening. as we look back over the last several decades, what's important to remember and acknowledge about our hemisphere is this was a region that was largely ruled by authoritarian government, some military, some not, but which has found through its commitment to human rights and its ability to organize and use inter-american solutions like the inter-american human rights court and the inter-american court of human rights to develop civil societies around human rights issues and use that to build democracy. whether it's chile in the 1980s,

our work in central america to face down insurgencies and move military governments to allow elections to take place for civilians to take over, whether it's what we've done in colombia, whether transition to government in argentina, brazil, i think this hemisphere has distinguished itself over the past three decades -- >> i'm running out of time here. seeing as the primary purpose to continue the national security of america, is it -- is anybody going to make the case the castro regime has been helpful in promoting this in the hemisphere? is it not true they are still supporting farc in colombia, supporting the repressive regime in venezuela? isn't that true, secretary jacobson? >> what the cuban government has done and what we asserted in the report we sent to congress is the support for the farc that we

have seen recently is support for the peace process that's going on in cuba between the farc and the colombian government. obviously that was not always the case in the past but this time we think they're playing a constructive role in the peace process. in venezuela, it's a different issue. i think in many areas, we -- we do not see cuba in national security terms, we believe the engagement with cuba through diplomatic relations will be far better for our interests than the previous policy of isolation. >> the other purpose, to assist the cuban people and regain freedom and prosperity, as senator rubio's pointing out, u.s. is basically the only country engaged in embargo. cuba's been able to trade freely with the rest of the world. i'm not seeing the flourishing of prosperity as a result of that engagement? i mean, how in the world do we think being able to trade with

with the u.s. is going to improve their prosperity at all under the repressive regime of the castros? >> you're certainly right their economic system has not made them a magnet for the trade and investment of other countries that they're able to have. in other words, other countries could have invested and been trading with them more than they are. but cuba has to change to make that possible. but they have been able to promote a narrative of the u.s.' embargo and isolation from them as the reason for those economic problems. we have now taken that excuse away. it will be obvious that the problems are the lack of movement in their system. >> thank you, madam secretary, vice chair. >> senator menendez? >> mr. chairman today is the 113th anniversary of cuban independence day. it is a bitter-sweet date given the cuban people's languishing for more than 55 years under a dictatorship.

as assistant secretary jacobson opens negotiations between cuba and the united states tomorrow let me be frank, i have deep concerns that the more these talks progress, the more the administration continues to entertain unilateral concessions without in return getting agreement on fundamental issues that are in our national interests and those are the cuban people. so i know you said in response to another question, these are things we did not negotiate, these are things decided unilaterally. i can't believe that. the cubans said, you want a relationship? you've got to return the three convicted spies, three convicted spies of the united states, including one who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, of three u.s. citizens in international airspace. check, we gave them the three spies. you want a relationship? take us off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. check, we gave them that. you want a relationship? stop or change the democracy

programs that we do throughout the world because we don't like those democracy programs because they're interfere to our totalitarian regime. i wake up to an article from reuters, u.s. signals it could change pro-democracy programs in cuba that havana objects to cuba has long objected to the pro democracy program, which includes basic courses for my friends sitting in the press in basic journalism and information technology to the u.s. diplomatic mission in havana. check. bring us to the summit of the americas. even though cuba violates the democratic charter of the oas and one of your people say doesn't matter who's invited to the table, it what's talked about. guess what? the democratic charter, the message counselor shannon sent to the hemispheres, you can violate the democratic charter and still be part of the club. why not violate it if you think you're compelled to do so? pretty amazing.

i have not seen any movement at all towards greater freedom. as a matter of fact, i would like to commend committee's attention to someone inside of cuba, a cuban blogger peres, in "the daily beast." cuba's 12 most absurd prohibitions tourists will never see. i'll read a couple, mr. chairman. cubans can't access internet from their homes or on cell phones. not because, in fact, even technology infrastructure is not the case. they can't access because the government won't let them because information is a problem. so, yeah, they want to perfect greater infrastructure but for them to control it. you can't live in havana without a permit. the blogger goes on to say, can someone from l.a. live in washington, d.c.? the answer is obviously yes. but you can't live in havana without a permit from the government. no public demonstrations allowed. imagine that. no political parties are allowed except the cuban communist

party. no investment in media and large enterprises, no inviting a foreigner to spend a night without a permit in your own home. among many others, you can't bring 25 fingernails. in violation of the law. i ask unanimous consent that the full article be included in the record. >> without objection. >> so here we are, human rights abuses continue unabated with more than 1600 cases of arbitrary political arrest this year alone, only five months into the year. so, president obama may have outstretched his hand but the castros still have their fists real tight. you and secretary molinowski came before the committee,

we're skyrocketing back up in human rights violations and including the rearrest of the people who you negotiated to ultimately be released, several of them rearrested. now, despite the desire to move into different direction, i see we get nothing in return. we still have -- you have taken cuba off the terrorism list. well, joanne on the fbi's ten most wanted terrorist list for murdering a state trooper, charles hill wanted for killing a new mexico state trooper, and hijacking a u.s. civilian plane, both living in cuba, protected by the regime. the regime says we'll talk to you, we'll talk to you. even though your counterpart already said she got political asylum and she's not going anywhere, because we'll talk to you about it. we'll talk to you about it. talk ad infinitum. i hope my colleagues who are so passionate, and i listened to

them about democracy and human rights in many parts of the in burma in vietnam, but almost silent when it comes to cuba. somehow democracy and human rights is not as important as other places in the world. i hope we can keep the same standard. let me ask you, madam secretary, to your knowledge were you or any member of the state department told not to push for sanctions on cuba in violation of sending migs and missiles to north korea in violation of the u.n. security council resolutions? the type of missiles that in fact were in hull of a cargo ship full of sugar being hidden where the migs of cuba were taken off to try to hide it? were you told not to push? was any member told not to push for sanctions. >> not that i know of. >> did the u.n. sanction cuba? >> they did not. >> they did not. let me ask you this, in the list

of state-sponsor terrorism you got a letter that says that, in fact, cuba has not, never did, oddly the castro regime's assurances asserted the government of cuba has never -- this is in their letter -- has never supported any active international terrorism and the cuban territory has never been used to organize, finance or execute terrorist acts against any country including the united states. do you intend for members of the committee to believe that the castro regime never supported any acts of international terrorism over the last half century? >> senator, i think what's crucial -- >> not what's crucial. answer my question. >> sorry. >> do you believe, do you want the committee to believe the cuban government has never sponsored any act of terrorism over the last half century? >> i -- i can't say that i would urge you all to believe that it has never occurred, no. but -- >> i hope you don't mean to

suggest that the historical examples of providing support to former armed insurgents in the 1980s including the n-19 in colombia, the fsl in nicaragua, or that the fact that cuban military didn't shoot unarmed civilian planes carrying american citizens over international waters for which they are pending indictments from a united states jurisdiction against several individuals in cuba, i'm wondering are you pursuing that in your negotiations with cuba about them answering those indictments? >> that is why we're going to have the law enforcement conversation for the justice department to be able to pursue -- >> do you realize some of those indictments are against? >> yes, sir. >> and do you think you're going to engage in a conversation with them responding to justice? do you think the castros are going to say, yes, we're going to appear in a court? i don't think so. let me ask you one last question, if i have the chair's indulgence.

you know, you all came here and said that, oh, there's a reduction of political arrests in january. as a sign that the administration's cuba policy was achieving results. not surprisingly these numbers climbed dramatically in the ensuing months with more than 450 political arrests in february, more than 600 in march, more than 1600 political arrests in total during the first four months of 2015. 1,600 in the first four months of 2015. now, as i'm sure you know, this past sunday, more than 100 activists in cuba were violently arrested including 60 members, following their attendance at a church service. so i guess bertia was right when she said the cuban government will only take advantage to strengthen its repressive machinery. all these women were doing was

marching in white with a gladiola to church. and the result of that is to be beaten and thrown into prison. that is not success. i don't get it. the final thing i'll say, mr. chairman, i have a lot of other questions, but in deference to my colleagues and i appreciate it, this is a one-sided -- i don't know what we've gotten in return. we've gotten nothing in return but the cubans have gotten plenty in return. if that's our way of negotiating, then we have a real problem on our hands. and the message we send in the western hemisphere, in venezuela, where we have -- i don't see your partners engaging with us because we change our cuba policy, this opens door towards promotion democracy. we're not seeing democracy in venezuela. i'm not sure about it happening in other places in the hemisphere for which we have challenges as well. so i think that that is a hollow promise based on what we see. i appreciate the chair's courtesy based on my interest in the subject.

>> thank you. senator purdue? >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you both for being here today. this is an important topic. in my career i've watched and seen the u.s. strategy of engagement in china, vietnam, the dominican republic, haiti, to mention a few. it's worked in some, it's not in others. i echo what senator menendez just said about venezuela, we buy $32 billion of oil a year. we haven't affected their regime one iota, that i can see. i have three concerns about what we're talking about today with regard to our changing our relationship with cuba. one is their continued support of terrorism. two is their human rights record that continues today. and, three, their activity in armed smuggling. we'll get to those in a second i have a very short question i hope you'll be brief. 2003, cuba allowed iran to operate on their soil, we know about the attack on u.s. telecommunications.

cuba's reported to have supplied intelligence services to venezuela recently in its allies. cuba provided assistance in safe haven to terrorists including members of farc and the bask eta. they continue to harbor fugitive including one listed on the fbi's most wanted terrorist list. helping member of hezbollah slip into north america. a cuban state owned enterprise provided venezuela with advanced tennell used to provide illicit documentation to 173 individuals from the middle east between '08 and '12. that's ancient history, according to the administration. talk about recent history. just sense president obama started the secret negotiations with the castro regime june 2013, a report of 15,000 political arrests, 2500 such arrests since the president's speech on u.s.-cuban relations in december. to make it even worse, between

february and march of this year alone cuba increased the number of politically motivated arrest by 70%. as troubling as that is, i'm more troubled by cuba's continued nefarious activities with regard to arm smuggling. we know about the shipment of 240 tons of military equipment confiscated on the way to north korea but we are talking about february 28th of this year, 2015, chinese flag vessel was intercepted, over 100 tons of explosives, 2.6 million detonators, over 3,000 artillery shells, bought by a -- bought from a chinese arms manufacturer, on behalf of technoimport a shadow company from the cuban military. the question is, with this type of activity, what assurances can you give us, mr. ambassador, i'd

like you to take a shot at this first. with this continuing and current activity, why should we be optimistic that just by opening up economic relations with these people this regime, that this type of activity will change? >> thank you very much, senator. i can assure you that just by opening up economic activity we will not necessarily change behavior. it's a longer process in this. but in regard to the larger diplomatic environment and assistant secretary jacobson can address more specific issues, in regard to a larger diplomatic environment, the fact that these ships were stopped was significant. the fact they were inspected was significant. the fact that these items were found was significant and shows an ability to cooperate with our partners in the region to control and monitor this kind of activity. and this will deepen with time as people understand that the broader purpose of our diplomacy is not simply to normalize

relations with cuba and build a relationship with cuba that will change how we try to promote our interests in democratic values but that it's also about how we enhance the integration and cooperation inside the hemisphere and partners of our leery of working with us around cuba issues because they do not want to get cate into the vortex of the very powerful and historic animosity are going to be more open to engaging with us on this kind of activity. so i believe we're going to be able to do more in the area of security, we're going to be able to do more in the area of nonproliferation, more in the area of fighting drugs because of this. >> i ask a follow-up on that, mr. ambassador. why wouldn't we make that a prerequisite that better behavior would lead to open economic relations? or madam secretary, either one. >> i think, senator, if i could,

we all want the same end. it is a question of how we motivate that behavior or how we -- how effectively we can help support change. the president believes firmly that the efforts we made in the past, which were in fact to say you must change first and then we will engage, just didn't work to make the changes inside cuba. >> can i ask you a question on that? >> certainly. >> we have evidence, cause and effect of several other countries, britain, canada, others having open trading relations with cuba. we're the only one embargoing and yet that engagement has not changed behavior. what makes us believe that today our opening up of economic relations with cuba will have that effect? >> i mean, i think that's a fair point. we don't know yet what the effect of this policy will be on the cuban government. we do see already the effect,

the beginning of the effect on the cuban people while we decry the detentions of the activists, we know there are cubans benefiting from this new policy in their independent businesses and in their belief that they're going to prosper and have a better life because of engagement with the u.s. the other thing i would say is, i'm very engaged with my eu counterpart and with my counterpart in spain in working with them so that we can now work together, and when we work together, not just with our regional counterparts but with our european counterparts, that is more powerful. i think that could have a more galvanizing effect but it will be slow, i don't deny that. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator kane? >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the witnesses. my colleagues have asked great questions about particular of the u.s.-cuba discussion.

i want to talk about the region. american and the caribbean 35 nations by the general count, nearly 1 billion people. i do my kind of back of the envelope math, 35 nations means 600 bilateral relationships between the nations in the region. some of the bilateral relationships are strong and friendly, some are weak, warm, cold, change over time. is there any other bilateral relationship in the americas that does not include normal diplomatic relationships other than the united states and cuba? i'm not aware of one. but you guys are the experts. >> no sir. >> this is the only one of the 600 bilateral relationships in the americas that does not involve a normal diplomatic relationship. let me ask you this, i'm not aware of any war between nations in the americas, our two continents right now, between nations, am i right about that? >> you are correct. >> the only civil war, there are security challenges, obviously

of many kinds because we're 35 nations and a billion people but the only civil war right now in the region is the war between the colombia government and farc and another smaller terrorist organization that is currently subject to a negotiation that cuba is hosting where the u.s. is playing a role accompanying the colombian government, correct? >> right. that's correct. and we're not accompanying but have this special envoy now. it's also the longest running civil conflict in the hemisphere. >> i don't want to get ahead of myself, but if that negotiation works out positively, and we are then -- we have the ability to be too two continents, all americans, without war, without civil war, without war between nations that would be pretty unusual in the history of these two continents, wouldn't it? >> it would be an historic achievement. >> it would be pretty unusual given other continents, wars or civil wars in asia, wars or

civil wars in africa, sadly, wars or civil wars in europe. you talked in your opening testimony about the increasing trade in the americas, the majority of the american trade agreements with nations in the americas there's more trade between the nations in the americas. there has been a move in the last 30 years from governments that have been autocratic or military towards democracy, not that there aren't challenges, not that there aren't problem children, we're human beings, after all, there are going to be challenges. you each have spent your entire professional careers working in the western hemisphere, is what you've devoted your professional lives to. tell us what it means to the united states of america to potentially be the anchor and the leading nation in two continents with no war, no civil war, complete diplomatic relations and ever increasing trade in interdependence.

talk about what that means to the united states of america. >> senator, i think those are incredibly important points. and for me, one of the things that i see in this hemisphere is not only the hemisphere's importance to the united states and to our people daily, whether trade, familial ties growing influence in culture we share and the way in the values in this hemisphere are the same as ours, but i also see this as a model, with so many flaws that still have to be overcome, and challenges that we all face and inequalities of, you know, systems and democracies even where they exist. but remember that in the transition from military to civilian government, truth commissions, and the process of that was first done in this

hemisphere with argentina, a model that south africa looked at and eastern european countries looked at and others have looked at in the arab world now. remembering also that the terrible adjustment of the '90s on macro economic issues were things that this hemisphere went through first. now with the free trade agreements the broadening of those economic changes to be greater social inclusion and ensure that everybody's included in those benefits is taking route here first. i think it isn't just what we do for ourselves, it's what we are then able to do elsewhere including working with these partners increasingly capable on global issues that matter to us from climate change to the middle east to peacekeeping where uruguay per capita is the largest contributor of peacekeepers in the world.

it not just a phenomenon we will be proud of here but one that is projecting outside. >> if i could add briefly, as we look out on to the globe and see some very demanding and some frightening security challenges, to have a strategic enclave in our own hemisphere, where we're fighting no wars, facing no significant insurgencies or terrorist groups, and we are able to have commerce both in manufacturing in services, but also in political dialogue is a remarkable thing and remarkable accomplishment. to have examples of societies that have moved from authoritarian government to democracy, have moved from closed economies to open economies, as i've noted, is a confidence builder for other countries around the world who are facing similar challenges because our hemisphere has shown that the democracy is not a status quo power structure.

it's not about preserving privilege, it's addressing profound social problems and doing so in a peaceful way, in a transformative way. so i think we have a remarkable platform in the western hemisphere from which to engage the rest of the world. as assistant secretary noted, and as i noted in my testimony, this is a region that's moving from global isolation to global engagement. in many ways one of most interesting stories of the first half of the 21st century is not going to be interamerican relations, it is how america relates with the rest of the world. we have four of the free trading partners part of the trans-pacific partnership looking for ways to transform their own economies by reaching across the pacific into asia, doing so as democrat countries that support open markets, support free trade and support the international institutions that regulate trade is a dramatic accomplishment. and we'll have an impact on the

larger economies in south america that have yet to sign up for these larger agreements. we are at a moment of strategic momentum. and if we are able to show that this hemisphere can function hemispherically around establishing priorities and building approaches to those priorities, and if we can show that through our dialogue we can present a consolidated face to the rest of the world, we will have done something remarkable. >> i thank the witnesses for their testimony. thank you, mr. chair. >> thank you, sir. >> nor senator flake. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the chairman and ranking minority member for scheduling this hearing. this has been very informative and obviously an area where there's much interest here. i want to thank the witnesses and i want to thank them particularly for explaining that this new policy is not a reward for good behavior on behalf of

the cuban government. obviously, there are concerns, huge concerns in terms of human rights that need to be addressed. but i appreciate clear-eyed vision of that, that the administration holds. if you can just explain, miss jacobson, is it easier to have those discussions with regard to human rights or perhaps negotiating with fugitives for american justice if we have diplomatic relations or a better relationship and better contact than this situation as it has been? >> it's only possible, really, with policy of engagement, those were things we couldn't do before. >> all right. thank you. that's -- that's important, i think important in this discussion. we often think well you know, is this a guarantee now that this greater ebb gaugement that any improvements will be in the

offing. that assumes that we're -- we have a good policy now that is yielding benefits. we haven't. we haven't for about 50 years now. and and now at least there's a possibility that we might be able to make some improvements and see increased freedom for the cuban people. so i applaud the administration for taking this position and for pursuing this. let's turn to travel for a minute. it was said before that when people traveled some do stay in the hotels owned by the government and therefore revenue will flow to government. there's no doubt that will happen. but it's significant, as was mentioned by senator boxer, that companies like airbnb have gone into cuba now a company that has a website that books travel, mostly bed and breakfast for people in their private homes. i was looking at it while we were here, if you just scroll

down, they have now i understand more than 2,000 listings in cuba. a bit of perspective, it took them months -- sorry, years in some of their other markets like san francisco to get up to 1,000 listings. you've got 2,000 listings. i think this is just, i think, a thousand over just about 50 days. so it's very significant. and for the most part, or virtually all of these listings are people in their homes, people who will benefit from visits by americans and others and there's less of a chance that money will flow through the government. increased travel will go to the cuban government but what cost to the cuban government? i always felt if we lift some restriction the cuban government may seek to impose some of their

own, because on obviously they want revenue but fear -- they fear what else the freedom that might come with the increased travel. but i've often also said if somebody's going to limit my travel it should be a communist, that's what they do. not our own government here. that's not our purview. that's not our prerogative to limit the travel of americans. so, with regard to cuban-american travel i think it's sing the president lifted some restrictions a few years ago. miss jacobson, can you tell, or ambassador shannon, what has happened in that regard in terms of increased travel over the last couple of years with the policy changing with regard to cuban-american travel? >> thank you, senator, very much. i think that it's clear that in the regulatory changes that the administration has made over the last few years, to increase the ability for families to see each other, for cuban-americans to go to cuba, as well as the changes most recently in december, there

have been many more cuban-americans traveling, there have been certainly it's been critical to us, i think to ensure that remittance amounts go up and they did dramatically in the most recent regulatory changes because in many ways, they have been the capital that has founded some of the most important private sector emergence. almost certainly continue to do so including some of these private homes that are serving as on airbnb. people who want to run their own businesses who are allowed to in areas that the cuban government will permit but don't have the resources to do so and can be helped by folks in the united states. >> well, thank you. one who traveled frequently to cuba over the past 15 years i can tell you for several years there, it was tough to see any

change or progress because the cuban government, it seemed they would loosen controls when they needed to and tighten them again. but traveling there over past couple of years has been a significant difference. and i think it's because of the increased travel, particularly by cuban-americans that you see the type of entrepreneurship that has been allowed but will likely continue now, much tougher to turn and reverse, that certainly is the feeling that those of us who traveled down more recently have gotten and i think that will only increase with increased american travel. there are, like i said before, no guarantees that anything will happen but change is more likely to occur with increased contact from the u.s. let me touch on diplomatic relations and the appointment of an ambassador to cuba. how will that help with regard to those who do business legally, american whose do

business legally in cuba under the new reg and and increased number of americans who travel what benefits will they have if we have full diplomatic relations that they don't have now? >> obviously our intersection in cuba already provides some services in both of those areas. but i would say that having a u.s. ambassador, having full diplomatic relations is always much better in terms of being able to engage with governments at a highest level, the representative of the united states -- of the president, and being able to advocate for those businesses, u.s. businesses, that can operate legally, being able to advocate for them against competitors, being able to support americans while they're there, it also critical to us that we have sufficient staff to be able to support the influx of people and americans who are going to cuba so we can provide those services. we can only do that with full diplomatic relations. >> thank you.

in close, i want to thank rank minority member for mentioning freedom to travel act that has sponsorship of the majority of the committee, 10 of 19. we look forward to pushing that forward. >> thanks for your interest in this issue. senator udall? >> thank you, mr. chairman. really appreciate you holding this hearing and doing it, you and senator cardin, in such a balanced way, very much appreciate that. i'm honored, senator flake, to be on your freedom to travel bill. i think one of the things that is so important is opening cuba up to travel and there couldn't be better ambassadors than our citizens going down to cuba and visiting what we're all about in terms of democracy and human rights and those very, very important values. and i about, at the beginning, want to say, i very inch support this policy of normalization. i think we're turning the page

on a failed policy that's been going on since the early 1960s, we're moving to empowering the cuban people, empowering cuban entrepreneurs, and i really welcome this new chapter of normalized relations. it was mentioned earlier about -- you were asked several questions, really appreciate you both being here and all of your hard work over the years in this area, about the private sector. and i have looked for reports on what's happening down there. i think it's fascinating, in terms of the growth, dramatic growth in the private sector, 2013 brookings report -- there are probably more because that's an old report -- looking at close to 1 million classified as private sector. you have 500,000 legally registered to self-employed and you have another 570,000 farmers who own or lease private plots

working solo or in cooperatives. and as i think is mentioned in your testimony, there's an organic sector also working there, organic farming and organic marketing. in addition to that, there's another estimated, from this report, 600,000 to 1 million labeled private sector but they are considered illegal by the cuban government. so there's also a sector there that's growing. so you have these two large sectors which could be in the range of 2 million. i think that's what, when we travel down there, when we engage down there when our commerce is -- these are the folks that we're helping. these are the folks that we're helping grow. these are the folks that we're

empowering, and i think that's a very very good thing. now, this -- one of the areas that i think is critically important -- and is increasing our agriculture interaction with cuba -- so i am also proud to be on senator -- in addition to senator flake, senator heitkamp has a bill to increase sales, i'm on that. and this week i'm introducing the cuba digital and communications advancement act, also known as the cuba data act, with senator flake, senator durbin and senator ensy. the goal of the legislation is very simple. give u.s. telecommunications companies the opening and certainty they need to invest and hope cuba open to the world and and give the cubans the into tools they need to engage in a 21st century economy. share information and communicate more efficiently with each other and the world. secretary jacobson, both you and the president emphasized access

to internet is a cornerstone to the new cuba policy. for those who have not been to cuba it's one of the least wired countries in the western hemisphere. things we take for granted, such as e-mail on phone, basically nonexistent in cuba. what are the major challenges cubans are facing to access the internet and what can u.s. companies and the congress do to open up cuba to the global internet? >> thank you, senator. thanks so much for your interest in this and the conversations we've had. i think obviously a huge part of the obstacles to the cuban people right now are sheer access to internet connected devices, whether it's computers or whether it's, you know, smartphones. when they have access, that access is expensive, it's also prohibitive, even when the cost came down for the public to

access internet it was still extremely expensive. for most cubans it was a half month's wage. then there's a question of whether everything is accessible once you get on the web and whether there are things that are blocked. so there are huge challenges for the average cuban. i think there is a combination of reasons for that, but the cuban government fundamentally has to make decisions and we obviously want to encourage in every way possible that information and access to the internet be made easier, cheaper, you know, available, and open for the cuban people. that will take a variety of decisions by the government that we're encouraging them to take by encouraging american businesses to have those conversations with them and these are the means to do so.

>> the goal, as i think you said in your testimony, madam secretary, of the cuban government is to have internet access for 50% of its population by 2020. so they have stated this goal, we're trying to move there. this is the goal that u.n. has made for developing countries around the world. is this goal achievable by cuba? if the united states telecom companies were allowed to invest in cuba, how long would it take to completely wire the island? >> that's a great question, senator. i'm not the best of tech experts but i will tell you that the tech companies that i speak to had conversations either with cuba or about cuba believe it is absolutely possible. and in terms of how long it would take a lot depends on what the cubans decide to do what kind of infrastructure they put in. >> thank you very much for those answers. mr. chairman, just a final comment, i know that all of the

things that have been mentioned here that are problems, that we don't agree with, problems as challenges in cuba, we just have different goals to try to go those things changed. and as the last note, i'd like to express my support for the extradition of charlie hill. extradition of criminals, i think, is an important part of any normal relations between countries, charlie hill, who allegedly murdered a new mexico state police officer and hijacked a plane must be brought to justice and i know the state department shares this objective. i hope we continue to make this a priority until we get it done. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. my sense is there may be additional questions, and i'll defer my time for others who may wish to ask additional questions. senator rubio? >> thank you. a couple points i wanted to touch on. this internet thing is important. i've talked about it extensively in the past. as i listen to the conversation

there's a perception the reason why there's no internet infrastructure in cuba is because the u.s. hasn't gone into build it. the telecom industry in cuba is run by the cuban government and it is a holding held by the holding company run by the son-in-law of raul castro. the bottom line virtually every telecom company in the world -- there are dozens of advance the companies in world not in the territory of the united states -- have had access to the cuban market and they have not been allowed to build out or dropped out of joint ventures. the fact that american infrastructure will be allowed to come in does not mean the cubans will allow it. here's why, they don't want the cuban people to have access to the internet. china they have the great fire wall. they have access to internet in china. china has both nationally owned and private companies in china offer telecommunication infrastructure but the people do

not have access because the government places filters upon it. this is a government that won't allow you to bring certain books on to the island. a government won't allow you to read certain newspapers on the island. this idea that they are going to somehow allow at&t and verizon to say, yes, come in, build all of this infrastructure, unfetterred access to the cuban people, is absurd. they cannot survive an internet opening. so we can pass all of the laws we want, the cuban government is still going to place filters and you still have to work through their telecommunications company in a joint venture in order to build infrastructure on the island. as far as travel is concerned, i think airbnb, fantastic, they're building this up. the point, number one, even private operators on the island, bed and breakfast, whatever you call them, still pay an exorbitant fee to the government for the right to provide that service.

they gamed that system to get their hands on money. that being said the vast majority of people that travel to cuba will not be staying at one of these facilities. they will be staying at segregated tourist destinations where tourists are brought in, experience that facility, and and then leave. and the money's going to the cuban military. i've heard discussion about vietnam, china. look, we have full travel to china and vietnam, they're not any more democratic than they were when all of this started. so i think it proves my point, economic openings do not lead to political openings by evidence of china and vietnam. the point about the cuban military, in addition to the fact that the castro regime stole 6,000 properties owned by u.s. citizens or companies of which zero dollars have been compensated this is the cuban military that has four, four senior officials, three senior officials indicted, for the murder of four floridians, indicted in u.s. courts.

that's the cuban military. this is the cuban military helping smuggle heavy weapons to north korea without consequence. they were caught, no u.n. sanctions, no u.s. sanctions. this is not just the cuban military. this is a cuban military that uses access to funds to carry out the sort of grotesque activity. we're not doing business with the cuban people. you may eat at a home somewhere, but this is still a very small part of their economy for the vast and enormous majority of americans that travel there, and that includes congressional codells, journalists, everyday american citizens you will stay in a government-run facility, every dollar will wind up in the hands of the cuban military that sponsors terrorism by smuggling arms to north korea, and cuban military that uses every access it it has to funds to enrich themselves and repress the cuban people. so there is no economic opening

to cuba. there is an economic opening to the cuban military-run holding company. >> thank you. senator cardin? >> let me briefly, then i'll yield to senator menendez, in regards to some response here, 2 million cell phone users in cuba. when i was in china they do block full access to the internet, although the u.s. embassy site on air quality is one of the most frequently visited sites by china nationals, the only reliable information they can get about air quality. our engagement will bring faster connectivity and more quality connectivity to the people of cuba, i'm convinced of than the technology is there, senator rubio points out. it's a matter of making it available and the people of cuba will demand that. and let me just also point out

in regards to the libertad act, it provides for licensing authority by the administration, which is common in these types of administrations there are certain only reliable information they can get about air quality. our engagement will bring faster connectivity and more quality connectivity to the people of cuba. i'm convinced of that. senator rubio points out it's a matter of making it available and people will demand that. let me also point out, in regards to the act, it provides for licensing authority by the administration which is common in these types of legislation. there are authorities included in the act. i look forward to a robust discussion. chairman, i would yield the time to senator menendez. >> senator martin. >> thank you. mr. chairman, very much, welcome and thank you for all of the good work which you have done. over the years there's been a clearly an isolation from our country that cuba has had to live with. and i very much appreciate this administration's attempts to normalize relations. i think it is important and step

in the right direction. and i think the actions which you're taking beginning to make it possible for us to envision a day where we truly have normalized relations with cuba but it's not going to happen overnight and clearly cuba itself has to deal with behavioral changes that are not going to come easy. but that said, i think the process has opened and i think we're going to head in the right direction. i know senator udall has already talked about this and it's important to focus on it, the relationship that exists between information and freedom. i think there is a huge cultural compatibility that we have with

cuba otherwise the red sox would not be paying all this money to sign cuban players. they have mastered that part of our culture. and hopefully we'll be able to be able to broaden that even further. talking about internet and talking about telecommunications, can you just outline a little bit for me -- i may have missed the detail that you gave to senator udall, but what is your hope in the terms of transfer of sale of telecommunications technology into the cuban market place? >> thank so much, senator. obviously the regulatory changes are fairly -- they are fairly broad in terms of what can now be sold and provided to cuba in the telecommunications and information area. that could be hardware, whether cell phones or other forms of computers that can now be sort

of not just donated as they could be before but sold to cuba. people in cuba, and it also is services that are providing information such as the phone card and phone service that idt recently in new jersey signed with the cuban government to do other forms of telecommunications work. i do want to be clear, it's true that all of this takes a decision by the cuban government to move forward with modernization in their telecom sector. that is certainly true. american companies can be able to under our changes participate in cuba but the cuban government has already said it wants to modernize and said things to the u.n. and we have to see if they really take those steps. we want to be part of it if and when they do. we want to encourage them to do so. i think as others have said, we

think the cuban people want that as well. >> i think the more that we have american tourists down there, the more that we have a cultural exchanges and students in cuba, the more normalized to that extent is more likely that the cuban people, cuban students are going to be saying to themselves, why can't we have that technology? and it's -- it's a resistance by the way that existed in our own country. our own country did not want to move to the digital revolution. our cable and telephone companies did not move to it. there wasn't one home that had digital in 1996 in america until we changed the laws. we had to incentivize those companies. we were going nowhere. same thing with cell phones, in 1994, it was the size of a brick, and we didn't have one, ordinary people, some wealthy businessman

gordon gecko had in wall street had one but not ordinary people. in 2001 in africa, only 12 million people -- 12 million people had cell phones, wireless devices. today it's 800 million. we move to these devices rapidly in america but they are doing in africa as well. the more it insinuates itself into the culture of individual countries, it changes the culture, and it changes the business relationships, and we can see it. it's not uniform. no question about it, but you can see it, where it works. it works big time. i think the same thing is going to be true in cuba. the more we can move these devices in and the more the people in the country demand they have access to it so they are not the last country in the world without access to modern

technologies, i think we're going to see dramatic telescoping of the changes that we're hoping that will happen in that country. and so that's why of all of the sectors, that's why radio and tv were always focused on by the reagan administration. they understood the importance of this. and the openings which you're talking about here, kind of puts it in the mind of many cuban ordinary citizens, why not, why not us? so what is the level of negotiation or discussion that is going on in terms of these telecommunications technologies? who are we speaking to? who ultimately makes the decision inside cuba? >> all right, thank you, senator. we had -- there's basically two tracks if you will, one is government. that is beginning of conversations with the cuban government about telecommunications and the other obviously are many, many private sector conversations with the cuban government to which we're not party but we obviously know

about that they are taking place. on the government side, we had our ambassador for international communications policy danny sepulveda two months ago now, that is the first time we had that conversation with the cuban government at an official level meeting both with their telecommunications ministry as well as their telecom provider, which is state run, to talk about sort of what kind of infrastructure they are interested in and how we have done things in the united states in terms of the regulation and access issues as well as obviously many, many u.s. companies have had conversations with the cuban government and they are beginning to think about the request for proposals if you will of their own telecom sector. >> the quicker we can move them in that direction, the quicker their whole society changes and

it's happened all over the world, they will not be immune to you. thank you both for your great work. >> without objection i would like to enter into the record on behalf of senator rubio a letter to him dated february 18th. from the u.s. coast guard and if there's no objection i'll put it in the record. senator. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just wanted to clarify a few issues, we talk about telecommunications, saying the cuban government may not allow this and it's up to them and we may not control them, that's true, they will allow what they will allow. but we've had a policy for decades that has not yielded the results we want, and the question isn't it's this policy in a perfect world. it's this policy compared to

nonengagement that we had before and we know what nonengagement has yielded. the cuban government may or may not keep their promise to make sure that 50% of the cuban people are wired by certain time. we have no control of that. we have control of what is in our national interest. and i think it's more likely that it will occur than under the former policy we had. also, with regard to a statement made that whenever an american traveler goes to cuba every dollar ends up with a cuban government, that simply is not the case. that may be said by those who haven't traveled to cuba recently. but many americans travel to cuba. and it is true that you can't travel to cuba without some revenue going to government. that is certain. but the notion that every dollar spent ends up in the hands of cuban military is not the case. you have the a best of your

knowledgening -- burgeoning entrepreneur that is a testament to the fact that some money does flow to ordinary cuban people. that is then particularly the case with the travel of cuban-americans over the past couple of years. i should mention, when that policy was announced a couple of years ago the cuban-americans could travel not just once every three years but as often as they they would like, and remittance levels were increased. there was talk here in congress about reversing that, you can't have that, that's not good for the cuban people and not good for america. i can tell you there is no serious talk today about reversing that because why? because when americans get more freedom, we tend to enjoy that and we tend to want more. and i would suggest that a year from now, the notion that we would reverse this policy that has allowed more americans to travel to cuba and to help cuban

people have access to more technology, more capital, more values and more contact with americans will seem as absurd as reversing the changes that were made with cuban american travel a couple of years ago. so again, i applaud you for what you're doing and look forward to working with the administration as this policy unfolds. >> thank you, senator menendez. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me ask you when a cuban-american sends or visits their relatives in cuba and give them a little money the only place really to buy something is a dollar store isn't that true? if you want to get something? >> i believe certainly there's -- there's more in those stores to buy. >> by the way, who owns the dollar stores? >> they are state run. >> okay. >> the government. and so if i want to send a remittance to my relative in cuba, the cuban government takes a slice, right?

>> they do but your relatives probably want a part of that anyway. >> so the cuban government gets a slice. >> yes. >> let's not deny the cuban government is greatly enriched by these resources, which is why it has been its number one foreign policy objective. let's talk about what full diplomatic relations are. you're going to having this discussion tomorrow i understand. what my colleague senator marcus said normalized relations are. after the summit of the americas the "washington post" ran a story suggesting that the talks to restore diplomatic relations were held up because they were unwilling to allow unrestricted travel to our diplomats unwilling to allow us to send secured shipments to a secured embassy and number of staff necessary to operate a future embassy and unwilling to remove the military presence around a future embassy. let me ask you would the state

department actually agree to establish an embassy in havana if all of our diplomats aren't able to travel freely throughout cuba? >> senator, what i can tell you, we have to have an embassy where diplomats can get out and travel and see the country and talk to people. we have restrictions on the way our embassy personnel travel in terms of notifications to governments in many countries around the world that range from 24 hours to ten days. we are going to do everything possible to make sure that we have the least restrictions possible but our embassy officials -- >> we will accept restrictions that all of our diplomats and embassy would be able to travel throughout the country? >> we will make sure that the embassy is on a par with the way we operate in other places that

are restrictive environments but -- >> would you agree to conditions under which we can't send secure shipments to supply a future embassy without the regime rifling through them? >> senator, i'm not going to nellie lay -- necessarily lay out all of the negotiations for -- >> why not? wait a minute. >> senator, let me -- >> do we not have a united states congress have the right to understand how you are trying to establish diplomatic relations? >> you absolutely do. >> i think the nation needs to know in what conditions we're going to have or not have relationship. are you going to allow the cubans to rifle through your diplomatic pouches with impunity or are you going to insist you can send something to the embassy as we do in other places in the world. >> we believe in the viability of the diplomatic pouch and it's critical to resupply a future embassy and important to supply the building now that has maintenance and upkeep issues.

that's a critical part of our discussion. >> will you accept conditions less than that? >> we won't accept conditions in which we can't securely supply our facilities. you have to be able to do that. >> would you agree to open an embassy if you aren't granted a number of staff you need to operate it efficiently? >> not if we can't have the number of staff we believe we need, no. >> are you willing to open an embassy if the castro regime doesn't remove its military cordon from around the building, which is basically a way to intimidate average cubans from approaching our facility? >> we will not open an embassy unless we believe that the security outside the embassy is appropriate to protect our installation but we will also make sure that it is welcoming of cubans into the installation as an embassy, the way we do around the world. >> let me ask you, you agreed with me ultimately that the

castro regime statement as it relates to that they have never supported, never supported any act of international terrorism is not true. so if you agree that these statements by the castro regime are categorically false how can you explain to the committee why you would think you can believe any assurances about the regime's current or future conduct if they bold-faced lied in the first place? >> what we were looking at in the assurances is not necessarily whether or not their assertions on behalf of all recorded history for the cubaen government, we agree with every statement of the past, what we have to look at is what the requirements are under the law, which talk about the rejection of international terrorism, which they have made and the lack of any support or any evidence for support for

international terrorism. >> partially lie to you but not fully lie -- >> senator, we have differences in what we -- they do not believe they have ever supported international terrorism. >> they sent you a letter and the state department quoted that specific section which if you buy into it, it's incredible to believe that section you buy into. let me ask you this, the red cross under the president's announcement was supposed to have access to cuban jails. has that taken place? >> we do not say the red cross would have access to the jails. >> what -- you announced they would have -- i understand it was access to cuban jails. what is it that they have access to? >> i don't believe we ever said that the cubans had agreed to that. what we said was that we were hoping that international organizations would renew their discussions with the cuban government about those issues, including the red cross and u.n. in other words, we -- >> has the red cross been able to get in freely? >> not that i know. >> not that you know of. okay. last question. we talk about telecom access and

a lot has been discussed about that. in late february, the first vice president who senator boxer referred to as the -- looks like he would be the next heir in the election. first of all, there's no election in 2018, right? it's a selection. there's no election. can we agree on that? >> we can agree that what the cuban government calls an election is not what we believe meets international standards. >> it's the cuban communist party and that's it. so it's not an election. i don't want anybody think we're working on an election in 2018. he gave a long rambling speech, the second highest official in the cuban government about the internet in cuba. one of the most revealing statements was the affirmation that the regime's internet strategy would be led by the communist party. given the communist party's half century long effort to deprive the cuban people of the most minimal standards of freedom of the press and information, would

you have the committee believe that the communist party won't make every possible effort to block access to all content that it deems undesirable similar to what we have seen in other closed societies around the world? >> senator, what i know is that when more people have access to the internet, even if governments try to prevent them seeing things they don't want them to, they are remarkably inventive in finding ways to do so. >> okay good. so then let me ask you this. can we have your assurances that the state department and the united states government will take all possible steps to ensure that the cuban people have access to circumnavigation technologies that would be able to get around regime censorship. if we're going to say we want u.s. companies to develop this infrastructure in cuba, certainly we could have

circum circumnavigation technologies so the cuban people are truly free to see any site they want. >> certainly i hope that the majority and vast majority or all of the cuban people will be able to have complete access to the internet. >> hope is not a public policy achievement. i'm asking you if we're going to license companies under the libe rta d act, can't we make a condition of that license that they have circumnavigation technologies so senator flake and udall and mark, everyone who wants access to the internet, for the cuban people, we're in common cause on that, actually can get access to the internet? what's so difficult about insisting on circumvenction technology? >> i don't know we can do that but i know -- >> any condition we want as a condition of sale. >> i wrote that section of law when i was in house of representatives. i know what it says and you can put conditions on it. i hope to hear back from you

whether you will insist on that as an ability to have u.s. companies -- if we want access for the cuban people to have the internet, which i do. >> i do as well, senator, but i also want them to be able to have those deals go through and to make it the most effective way that more on the island can have access -- >> a deal without full access to the internet is a deal to an end without access to the critical information that we think can help liberate the cuban people. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. any other questions? i want to thank the committee again. i know there's a lot of diverse views about this proposed new policy. and actually a policy that's being implemented and i want to thank the witnesses for being here. if you would, the record will be open without objection to the close of business thursday if you'd answer promptly, we would appreciate it. we thank you for your service to our country. with that, we're adjourned.

our road to the white house coverage continues with two more candidates joining the presidential week this week. today on c span, former new york governor george pataki makes his announcement live at 11:00 a.m. eastern .

saturday, expect another entry for the democratic bid. former maryland governor and baltimore mayor martin o'malley will officially declare his candidacy. see that event live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c span. presidential candidates often release books to introduce themselves to voters. here is a look at some books written by declared and potential candidates for president. former secretary of state hillary clinton looks back on her time serving in the obama administration in "hard choices." in "american dreams" florida senator marco rubio outlines his plan to restore economic opportunity. former arkansas governor mike huckabee gives his take on politics and culture in "god, guns, grits and gravy." and in "blue collar conservatives," rick santorum argues the republican party must focus on the working class in order to retake the white house. in "a fighting chance," massachusetts senator elizabeth

warren recounts the events in her life that shaped her career as an educator and politician. wisconsin governor scott walker argues republicans must offer bold solutions to fix the country and have the courage to implement them in "unintimidated." and kentucky senator rand paul, who has also declared his candidacy, calls for smaller government and more bipartisanship in his latest book "taking a stand." more potential presidential candidates with recent books include former governor jeb bush. in "immigration wars," he along with clint bolek argue for new immigration policies. in "stand for something," ohio governor john kasich calls for a return to traditional american values. former virginia senator james webb looks back on his time serving in the military and in the senate in "i heard my country calling." independent vermont senator bernie sanders recently announced his intention to seek the democratic nomination for

president. his book "the speech" is a printing of his eight-hour-long filibuster against tax cuts. in "promises to keep," vice president joe biden looks back on his career in politics and explains his guiding principles. neurosurgeon ben carson calls for greater individual responsibility to preserve america's future in "one nation." in "fed up," former texas governor rick perry explains government has become too intrusive and must get out of the way. another politician who has expressed interest in running for president is former rhode island governor lincoln chaffey. in "against the tide," he recounts his time serving as a republican in the senate. carly fiorina, former ceo of hewlett-packard, has recently declared her candidacy. in "rising to the challenge" she shares lessons she's learned from her difficulties and triumphs. former new york governor george pataki is considering running

for president. in 1998 he released "pataki" where he looks back on his path to the governorship. louisiana governor bobby jindal criticizes the obama administration and explains why conservative solutions are needed in washington in "leadership and crisis." and finally, in "a time for truth," another declared presidential candidate, texas senator ted cruz, recounts his journey from a cuban immigrant son to the u.s. senate. up next a discussion on balancing government surveillance activities and trans sparns si. a panel discusses it. a panel also discussed a recent appeals court ruling that says the program is illegal. this event was hosted by the

sunlight foundation advisory committee on trans sparns si. >> so, i'm just going to open now. first, thank you to c-span for being here. and to the committee on oversight on government reform for providing the room. this is an event on surveillance and transparency, sponsored by the sunlight foundation. this event, who's watching the watchers is focused on educating policymakers on solutions with regards to surveillance. my name is sean vitka. i'm the federal policy manager at the sunlight foundation. i had a joke here but it turns out i'm not funny. our goal is to ensure that

congress and for the staffers in the room, you are all best able to do your jobs and your jobs are complicated. this issue surveillance, pairs it with the goals of civil liberty and transparency. we're going to talk and then have a "q" and "a" session. and then we're going to do a that. and to do quick introductions, to my left, bob litt, the general counsel for the office of the director of national intelligence and has been since 2009. so his right is fritz schwartz, chief counsel.

and to his right, patrick toomey, on staff at the aclu national security project. i will note that the decision yesterday, that and he was one of the litigators working on the decision yesterday. and to his right, mika oying, who has had a long career on the capital. she was the chief of staff of represent choo. and also spent four years on the house intelligence committee. >> with that i'm going to invite all the panelists and i'll start with mika i suppose, just do a two-to-four minute introduction and i'm hoping at least one thing they think staff should know that they do not know. >> hi, i'm mika eoyang. i'm director of the national security program at third way. i spent most of my career doing oversight of national security programs before i got to third way. i just want to say a few words about how congressional oversight works in the current context.

predominantly one of the things to keep in mind is that oversight of intelligence programs by congress is hampered by three different benchmarks. one of it is hampered against public oversight. by necessity, the programs need to be secret for national security reasons but that means you are deprived of all the tools that you would have in other places. you have to forego that, and people take their responsibilities very seriously on other committees. but with congressional oversight, it's hampered compared to some of the other committees in its access to gao, cbo, crs, and also its access to whistle blowers. those authorities are different and the way they use them are very different or nonexistent

compared to the other national oversight committees. that's the challenge. congressional oversight on intelligence between the house and senate. house members, unlike the senate counterparts, they don't get to hire a staffer that works for them to help with their security business. the house members do not or at least when i was there did not have access to a technical support working group. which would help them understand the more technical aspects of the programs. and the house intelligence committee has much greater control of the dissemination of information in the house. very different in the senate. and you saw that in the second circuit opinions where they acknowledged that all senators had been given access to a document whereas the house had not been. so, there's a difference between house members and senators. i feel like that's a lot of things, so i'm going to stop

there. >> thank you. patrick? >> sure. so my name is patrick toomey. i'm a staff attorney. i work mainly on surveillance cases. including the case decided yesterday, and wikimedia versus the nsa, and other cases where surveillance authorities believe they have been acknowledged or dlefts believe they may have been used, including a case in colorado where the first defendant who got faa notice is litigating that authority. and i start by saying that the decision yesterday shows that a little sunshine can make quite a big difference in how these programs are evaluated. that's a point that the second

circuit expressed in the main opinion and that judge sack expanded on in the concurring opinion. the type of robust judicial review in that opinion is certainly welcome. but i would say to everyone here today, that unfortunately, that type of review is not reflective of the broader reality, when it comes to these surveillance programs. there's three ways there can be adversarial review of these programs, one is through civil challenges in public courts, another is criminal challenges, with a motion to suppress, and a third, when providers who receive orders under these surveillance authorities bring challenges. and each of those avenues is currently broken. in the civil context, the government has used the standing and state secrets doctrines to

prevent challenges to these authorities from going forward. in the criminal context, the government uses parallel construction and the strict rules around disclosure of fica related content. to prevent defendants bringing informed and meaningful challenges to these authorities. in the context of providers, such as telecommunications companies, it's very clear their interests are not aligned with the privacy of their customers. and in fact, they've been granted immunity in many cases when they comply with court orders seeking their customer information, and in order for there to be more review, more adversarial public review like we saw yesterday, those mechanisms need to be fixed. >> fritz? >> my name is fritz schwartz, and i'm chief counsel at the brennan center for justice. and 40 years ago, i was on the church committee, i was then 39,

i didn't know a single senator. what would i say just to pick out one thing that may be interesting to people not around at that point? in my new book, "democracy in the dark," i have a chapter on congressional investigation that might be worthy of your looking at. but the one thing that i would single out is that the atmosphere on the church committee was extremely non-partisan. our most important finding probably was that every president from roosevelt through nixon, four democrats and two republicans had abused their secret powers. that helped with internal cohesion and exterior credibility. the committee, mike mansfield who was majority leader and leadership of the body is important, he had called for a

major investigation of the intelligence agencies 20 years earlier as a junior senator and nothing happened, and then circumstances changed, and he was majority leader. he constructed it to be nonpartisan. given the balance, it was 6-5 in the senate, and instead of the leader of the republicans being called the majority, the ranking member, and not having really any power at all, senator tower from texas was the vice chairman, and had the powers of a vice chair, and presided often. and mansfield, he picked senators that were not people that had supposedly overseen the fbi and cia, although in both cases, they said please don't tell us what we're doing. he picked people not tainted by

that and people that he thought were going to be capable of working in a nonpartisan way. so nonpartisanship is extraordinarily important if you're trying to oversee and change an intelligence body. >> thank you. bob? >> i would just say i think that, as i said before, sorry, i'm bob litt, i'm the lawyer for the director of national intelligence. that does not mean i'm the chief lawyer for all the intelligence agencies, but it does mean i'm the lawyer for the director of national intelligence. one of the things i think the entire intelligence community has learn over the last couple of years, is that we do need to be more transparent if we want to maintain public support for our commission mission. my view is, frankly, if we had been able to be more transparent about some of the things we do, in advance of the leaks, they

would not have been nearly as controversial. if we had been able to inform the public as we went along what we were doing. i think some indication of that, the fact that members of congress who did know about these programs with one or two exceptions were not particularly troubled about them, with a few exceptions. i think that in general, we can be a lot more transparent about how we interpret the laws, and the procedures we use and the oversight mechanisms we have. we can't be more specific about the intelligence we gather. specific sources and targets. there are risks of transparency. intelligence has to be conducted to a great dein secret.

if we advertise everything we do, we wouldn't be able to do it. i can tell you, terrorists are looking at articles in newspapers, passing them to each other, and saying things like, and this is close to a direct quote, stay away from "x" service, because we know the nsa is on it. with an excerpt from a press article about it. so, there are definite risks to transparency. and it's a careful balance that has to be struck with how much we can inform while still protecting our ability to protect people. >> thank you. so to start us off i want to give a little bit of recent context, then i'll pitch it to fritz for a little bit more. the supreme court ruled that a set of human rights advocates didn't have the right to sue the government. under section 502 of the fica act.

the court held their fears were too speculative. a few months later, the world learned who edward snowden is. and yesterday, the supreme court ruled that collection of phone metadata of all americans is unlawful. this isn't the first time that something like this has happened. this is discussed in the opinion. it's directly compared to the church committee. fritz, how did the country get to the need of the church committee? >> the climate of the times is vital to understand. after world war ii, there was for 15 years at least, and probably more, a general acceptance that the government was, knew what it was doing, and the press and people should kind of stay away. then there was a lot of frustration over vietnam which got people concerned about is

the government being fair minded and the pentagon papers brought out that it hadn't been fair minded in what it was saying publicly. watergate made the public worry about even president being involved in improper illegal conduct, including illegal surveillance, and break-ins to psychiatrists'sr' offices and things like that. j. edgar hoover was dead. that made a big difference, would the senate have been courageous enough to look at the fbi had hoover been alive? i'm the not sure. and nixon had tried to use the cia to shut down the fbi investigation of watergate. and there had been a series of leaks. there's an interesting comment in the opinion that the

word leak isn't quite the right word. and we can come back to that. but there had been an interesting series of leaks about programs that were troublesome. seymour hersch about the mailai massacre. and also about the cia doing domestic surveillance when it isn't really lawful for them to do it. and all those factors led to the church committee being founded and going ahead and doing the most comprehensive investigation ever. and i want to join in something both bob and mika certainly both said. you have to recognize that some secrets are legitimate. and we succeeded -- the church committee succeeded in part because we did recognize that some secrets were legitimate and let the government see them

so they could argue that it would reveal something that shouldn't be revealed. and the parallel house committee, which could have potentially done great good, because it was concentrating on the quality of intelligence that was coming out but it foundered and ultimately just failed because it did not accept that there are some secrets that are legitimate. >> fritz, a number of things were obviously unearthed by the church committee and the leaks. can you highlight some of them? >> i'll give three. one, martin luther king, we uncovered the document sent to him by the fbi after bugs, which, by the way, they were able to put bugs without even the approval of the attorney general because an earlier attorney said to j. edgar hoover

said i don't want to know. you do whatever you want to. so they put bugs in his hotel room, and put together a tape which was designed to humiliate him to the extent that he would commit suicide. and the other thing about king, investigations as in lawsuits, you have to use facts that are illustrative. the afternoon of martin luther king's speech, i have a dream speech the fbi resolved, we have to destroy martin luther king and we have to find out a new black leader. they came up with another one, he didn't know he was their choice. that was one. the cia, that was particularly terrible. the cia, hiring the mafia as part of their effort to kill fidel castro.

the leader of cuba. and the nsa getting every single telegram or almost every -- the content, not just the metadata but the content of every single telegram that left the united states between 1945 to 1975 when it had been nsa for quite a while. and just to add something that i think you probably would agree with me, this would not be the attitude today. bob, i assume you would. the general counsel of the nsa when i was talking to him about why we were going to expose the program of getting every single telegram that left the united states and, i said you know there's a fourth amendment problem with doing that, he said but the constitution doesn't apply to nsa.

>> i agree that i would not agree with that. >> i gave you the opportunity there. >> and let me follow up. i think the description is a good metric for measuring how different what's been revealed in the last couple of years with what was revealed by the church commission. the fact is, the program we're talking about were all authorized by court order. there's disagreement on whether that order is valid or not. but the government got an order authorizing the program, and operated within the order. and these were fully disclosed to the relevant congressional oversight committees. it's legitimate to have a policy debate whether we should be doing this or not but to compare this with what was going on with dr. king, this shows how far we've come in terms of oversight, and a lot of it is due to what the church

commission did. >> but most of these programs started with stellar wind, correct, which was not authorized by court order, and it was several years before it came under any type of court supervision. >> right. that's ten years ago and has been replaced with court supervision. >> i think this highlights one of the confusing elements of the current reform debate. we had in the past, let's say pre- 9/11 a review, a congressional inquiry, perhaps, that then turned into legislation or reform. so, bob, the intelligence community may benefit from an ex-cull pa tory investigation that finds unequivocally that this is not the case. instead, the lack of transparency around the issue leaves it open to the second circuit comparing it, the current day, to the church

committee. >> i'm not sure what lack of transparency you're referring to. >> well, i this a congressional inquiry like the church committee might change people's perspectives. the concern that hipsc or the house intelligence committee or senate intelligence committee is in some ways broken or co-opted, we can replace that distrust with an effective committee. so, the question is, is it time for a new church committee? i would invite fritz first, but then i want to hear everybody's answer. >> could i just say two things in sort of footnote to most of bob's points, i think are okay. but torture was never blessed by a court. it was blessed by a grossly inadequate legal opinion. but it was devised in white

house meetings, in which they listened to no history, the state department the fbi and didn't recognize that both george washington and abraham lincoln had both gone against torture. and i have trouble taking all of what you say and accepting it in light of where mr. clapper was asked a question that clearly was looking at the metadata program. and he says that the question is, is the government collecting data on millions of americans, hundreds of millions of americans, and he said no. and then he said not wittingly. and that was not a truthful answer. what he should have done, i don't know. but i think you have to worry about whether in the new system,

the government is sufficiently candid with, when it testifies. >> you'll have to forgive me for taking this back. first of all on the issue of the cia's program. we're speaking of surveillance, i think the president has admitted it was wrong. there has been a considerable congressional investigation on that. i'm a bit of an expert on mr. clapper's testimony, as i was a witness on it. i've written to the "new york times" and the new yorker about this. when you say his answer was not truthful, that's not quite correct. as a lawyer, you know the difference between an untruth and a mistake. when director clapper was asked that question, it was at a hearing, a public hearing on the threat assessment and director said that for him, he likes public hearing about intelligence as root canals and folding fitted sheets. he had two huge notebooks to prepare for that hearing.

neither of which talked about surveillance activities. we were notified the day before that senator wyden was going to ask this question and we did not -- he did not get a chance to review it. he was hit unaware by the question. if you read his answer it's perfectly clear he's thinking clearly about the 702 program, he's talking about the incidental collection. so, after this hearing, i went to him and said, you know, you were wrong on this. and it was perfectly clear that he had forgotten the existence of the 215 program. this is not an untruth or a falsehood. this was just a mistake on his part. we all make mistakes. and i made a mistake that i did not think to counsel him to send a classified letter to the committee correcting the record. i wish we had done that at the

time. his lawyer let him down in that regard. but people make mistakes all the time. and that was just a mistake. >> all right. so, just to get to the yes or no, i guess, here. yes on the committee or no? >> yes, i think a new church committee would be useful. not necessarily to come up with new dr. king stories. i agree. i doubt that will happen. but i think to assist how well the systems are working how well the fisa court, the congressional oversight is working. and what it is that we don't know and i'm sure there's a lot, that the public should know. there are things we should know that we don't know. >> and i might add, things that people may have forgotten. mika, please. >> on the question of a new church committee that is separate from the existing intelligence committees, i would say this is something the intelligence committees themselves could do if they were

properly resourced to do that. i think the kinds of staff that they have on board or the number of staff would not be sufficient to the task. but i think the question you're asking in this context is very different. bob is right, the members of the committee knew the contours of most of the intelligence programs that edward snowden revealed. without speaking to specifics of any particular one. but their level of knowledge was greater than the average person. i think there's a separate question that would be useful for inquiry, which is that as we take a look at these surveillance programs, can we make an assessment about how effective they are, and make some judgment about the level of outrage that could occur if the programs were subsequently revealed or the level of outrage that exists based on the knowledge of programs now against the benefit to the nation, in terms of national

security? because i think that the intelligence community would value the programs very differently. and given the outrage, maybe make a different calculation about whether there's another way to do what they need to do to protect the nation without collecting or acquiring the communications of millions of people potentially billions of people unrelated to any national security interest. >> this gets, i think, significantly, to the question of access to information for representatives that are on hisc or the senate intelligence committee versus representatives who are not or senators who are not. can you describe the difference there, and do you think it's the appropriate line? >> yes. well there are some -- the fact that most intelligence programs

are overseen by a smaller group of people i think is right. there's significant risk to the national security if some of the programs are revealed, how we target al qaeda or people who are trying to do the united states harm. we don't want that out there and you want to keep that limited to a small group of people. but there are questions not about particular programs, and whether or not you can share that, clearly the senate made a different calculation than the house in sharing information with its broader membership. let's take a particular example. we know of instances a representative claims to have been denied access to information, in light of the snowden leaks. should a representative be able to get the information that hipse sees? like the representative him or herself. >> i think in the senate, if a senator had demanded that

information, the intelligence committee would have given an individual senator access to the things. i'm not quite sure what the rationale is for drawing a distinction between the house and the senate. >> to be clear it's an operation of house rules. >> it's a congressional limitation. >> and it's worth exploring, it builds consternation with members denied access, reasonably so. on a similar note, you talked about staff designees. for example, you know, one thing i've heard is a problem for a number of staff is clearances. can you explain the difference between the clearance system, which is necessary to access certain information, and i can jump to the chase here, but by your estimate, how many staffers outside of the house

intelligence committee have clearance to view this information? let's say, sci, necessary for the level of disclosures we've seen from snowden? >> well, not all sci is created equal. it's compartmentalized for a reason. >> so on the intelligence committee they would have access depending on the jurisdiction and the agency running the program, access to broader swaths of information on the staff, generally speaking, with sci clearances that entitle them to deal with defense programs that the military needs for its war fighting capabilities. there are a few sci-cleared staff on other committees, but for the most part, most members of congress don't have someone cleared on that level to assist them with doing oversight of these things. >> fritz, does this strike you as a problem?

from a historical perspective. >> well, i do think -- it wasn't a problem for us. as i read about it, members of congress have a limited amount of time, and they can't have a staff person who often is more broadly knowledgeable, and i think that's a problem. and my guess is, the intelligence community ought to be able to decide if staff people are deserving of high-level clearances and then they could get rid of this rule that seems to say to senators or representatives, you have to do it all on your own and you have a limited period of time. but why can't they clear high-level staff members on committees or elsewhere on the congress? >> and can i say why it's so important that congress members aren't left on their own?

without assistance in this. because your average congress member, comes from a walk of life where they may not necessarily have specialized expertise in the law or in technology, so without someone else to explain to them how these programs work, they may not understand what the aggregation of metadata can do in term of a privacy infringement. members of congress, i think for the most part, are looking at programs and asking themselves is this helpful to secure our nation? and that's an important question and it's a threshold question but beneath that there are other questions where they will need help in order to frame the question appropriately and understand the answer that comes back. >> i would like to get bob's thoughts real quick. there was a piece in the intercept this had a video of a representative who was then on

hise saying in response to a question in a town hall meeting, saying effectively that representatives couldn't have access as they wanted because they were potential security vulnerabilities which seems a intelligent committee by any means. that is a political actor with a political statement. bob, from your respective, recognizing there is a level of transparency that is too far and recognizing there could be more transparency, access to classified information for at least one person in the 435 offices in the house, do you think that that is too far? >> i do not have a particular view on that. when the church committee made its recommendations, there was a need to strike a balance between congressional oversight and secrecy of intelligence operations. the balance that was struck at that time in both houses was to set up an intelligence committee by statute, we are required to

keep the intelligence committee fully informed of all intelligence activities and by large part we do that. and they have got ample staff, and not all of them are cleared into every compartment. the same is true for my office. there are programs on which i am the only person in my office, and there are programs i am not readied on. some of these are very tightly controlled. but the essential compromise that was made is that we would be open with the intelligence committees and they would be stand ins for the rest of the congress. question is whether the congress wants to modify that and how effective the oversight is going to be when it is oversight by all 535 members. i will tell you that in advance of reauthorization of some of these provisions several years ago we offered briefings to all members, few members bothered to show up including some members who are now complaining they were never informed about these

programs. >> doesn't that go to the point of an incredibly overworkeded office? >> with all due respect, if these matters are the importance that people say they are then members of congress can take the time to come learn about them. >> are they allowed to take notes in the meetings? >> i think they are if they leave them with the intelligence committees. i don't know that for sure. >> they can leave notes there a enreview them later. they couldn't take them back to their office, for example. >> could they talk to other representatives who did not make it about what they learned? >> bob and i might differ on this question. but i think the speech and debate clause in congress would protect members from talking to each other. if they're talking, speech and debate clause protects speech on the floor of the house. if they were talking to each other i don't know how the executive branch would say to a member of congress you can't do

that. the classification limitations are an executive branch by regulation system. it has never been tested as to whether or not they could actually bind members of congress in the ways they communicate inside the legislative branch. >> that seems precarious to me, but i do want to move on. the usa freedom act is going to be in front of most staff very soon. certainly in front of a lot of staff. one of the things we have seen lost between last year and this years and the various versions of the usa freedom are transparency provisions. these are not provisions designed to rein in or curtail surveillance. as an advocate, it is confusing and alarming to see transparency on the bargaining table. for instance, in the current version of the usa freedom, there is no longer a requirement

to state how many u.s. persons are affected by collection. why are we having this fight? why is transparency the thing we are willing to give up? and i would add and this is to the intelligence community's credit that one of the things that we lost was a top line of 702 effect. the odni voluntarily reports that now and the freedom act has lower standard for 702 searches. i could be mistaken, but i am curious why is it that the transparency is on the line as this moves politically? maybe this is a political question for mika or something that the intelligence committee is actively opposing which bob may know more about. >> i cannot speak to what happened on the negotiations of 215 and since that is primarily that is a law enforcement program related to title 18 authorities it's not my expertise. patrick might have more sense of where that was in negotiations.

i don't know that i have a good answer on that. >> i can only speak of what was on the bill at one point and what is not in the bill anymore. and what i would like to see or expect in terms of transparency. previous versions of the usa freedom that were put forward last session provided certain transparency figures around the number of u.s. persons who are affected by 702 surveillance and other figures about the number of u.s. persons affected by the other authorities that are addressed by the bill. a number of those provisions have been stripped out, and that is concerning in my perspective because the logic behind the bill that was created was that there was some necessary or

predictable ambiguity about how the bill would operate on the front end in terms of structuring the specific selection term and what the scope of collection might be afterwards. but because of that uncertainty, because of that ambiguity there were back end protections built into the bill that were designed to protect information of innocent americans when it was collected and ended up in repositories of the corporate store of 215 phone records and to provide the public with information about the scope of collection down the line. that came by the transparency figures. now in the version that has been proposed this session, a number of those key figures, the very figures that would tell you how many americans are ending up in these databases are subject to collection under these orders have disappeared. not only that, but the fbi has extra exemptions. the agency that's engaged in law enforcement in the u.s. and that

may seek to make use of this information is exempted from providing information about backdoor searches of 702 data, searches through -- for certain types of 215 information and in a way that makes it impossible to understand how authorities that are being justified on the grounds of intelligence are being used in the course of ordinary criminal investigations. >> to go into the fbi exemption, bob, i'm curious if you had thoughts on this. in theory -- well, in your introduction you said that transparency could be improved. it could be improved right now, couldn't it? >> as i also said, there is a balance that has to be struck between transparency and impact on security. i think that while -- and i'm not an expert in the details of the transparency provisions, frankly. but it's my understanding that some of the provisions were taken out and some of the existing provisions were strengthened. more detail was provided, and more transparency in some areas. the fact of the matter is, the more you authorize release of

information about specifically what we're doing, the more you enable people to evade what we're doing. and that is the balance that has to be struck in any kind of legislation like this. >> i would think the most informative part there for policy makers would be the number of americans who are affected, and i do not mean the numbers who are targeted, that would also seem to indication a pretty broad number that wouldn't drive down to something that would compromise surveillance operations. bob, is that the case, or am i mistaken? >> it's difficult for me to answer that. there are other considerations that go into the issues of

exactly what we can and cannot report beyond is it a good idea to report this or not and those are the kinds of things in many instances that i cannot talk about in this kind of a session. >> would you agree it would be exculpatory for the community to be able to say that 100,000 americans were affected versus 300 million americans. >> i am not comfortable with the word exculpatory. obviously, people would be happier if were smaller numbers than if there are larger numbers. >> one thought i have is that i think it's important to distinguish between transparency in the existence of a broad program versus which i think in general there should be more of -- versus transparency with respect to how decisions are

made on who to target, where i think that is something that there should not be transparency on. and to me, the founding error in the metadata program was that when president bush instituted it and president obama continued it, they didn't have an open discussion about whether the country should have such a program. and actually that seems to run through a little bit of yesterday's opinion by judge lynch. even dick cheney. this is something that i discovered in writing this book that nobody had ever seen before. when he wrote his dissent in the iran-contra matter, he said if you have a hard foreign policy or national security issue, a wise president first would not engage in excessive secrecy, and, second, a wise president would have a full and open democratic discussion in which he would attempt to persuade the