define features, that has all been pulled through into the ohio replacement. we're on track to reach our objective cost of $4.9 billion per follow on submarine in 2010 dollars. in the end, the procurement of a higher replacement ssbn will cost less than 1% of one year of the dod's budget. when you consider that it will carry 70% of the nation's accountable nuclear warheads and be on patrol preventing that major power war we talked about through the 2080s, that is a tremendous return on investment. second, we have to reduce the number of ohio replacement submarines to the minimum. and we have wrung out every ounce of efficiency from this program. we have gone from 41 ssbns to 18s sbns to 14 ssbns and now we're headed to a force of 12 ohio replacement ssbns.

as i mentioned earlier, just going from 14 to 12 alone saved $40 billion in life cycle costs. add to that the ohio service life extension from 30 to 42 years and the fact that the ohio replacement will be designed for 42 years from the get-go i think we've clearly demonstrated our desire to decrease the number of submarines to the minimum. the third way to reduce the impact of ohio replacement on the rest of the navy is ensuring we fund it in a manner that does not impact the navy's already stressed ship building budget. every day you can read an article talking about the navy ship building plan and the associated fiscal realities. allow me to share some additional perspective with you. i spoke earlier about the short-term churn of the 24-hour news cycle and how it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain perspective on the long-term nature of nuclear deterrence. likewise, if you only take a

short-term view so my point about not taking that short-term historical perspective is you got to make sure you go back far enough to get the full history included in the conversation. you can't go back 20 years. you can't go back 30 years. you can't go back 40 years. you got to go back 50 years since -- because of that -- i

talked about that patrol period between the two. our naval strategy has always required is force capable of deploying to where it matters so that we can be there when it matters. without the plus up during those times of ssbn construction, the force size required to execute the rest of our naval strategy would have been jeopardized. today we put at risk our strategic commitment to the country and to our allies if we adversely impact navy ship building as a whole. i view that as something that would be unacceptable. taking an even longer term view, sequestration is the real threat to the long-term capability of the navy contributing to u.s. and global security. during his confirmation hearings secretary of defense carter made it clear that our nation's defense strategy is not executable under sequestration level budget caps. the cno's recent testimony to

the senate armed services committee explained that two years ago back in fy '13 when we had the sequestration period that we were able to reprioritize within available resources and continue to operate, but this is not a sustainable course for future budgets. with a stable budget and no major contingencies for the foreseeable future, the country will recover the cno said, but approximately five years after the first round of sequestration, so in 2018 in his remarks he was saying that's when we would fully recover from the fy '13 events. he went on to say that with a return to sequestration, we will be unable to mitigate the shortfalls like we did in fy '13 because prior year investment balances had been depleted during sequestration. in short, the cno said the same thing that secretary carter did. a return to sequestration will require a revision to our

defense strategy. it is missouriore important than ever to work together to fine a sustainable long-term solution that balances what we need today with the required capabilities needed in the future and do so in an affordable way. so to wrap up we must remember the vital importance of maintaining a robust nuclear triad and ssbn force. we are taking some risk today and are working to restore the margin needed to keep the ohios at sea and to assure the ohio replacement shows up on time and on budget. maintaining a safe secure and effective nuclear deterrent amidst a complex global threat underscores the requirement and justifies the budgetary expense to sustain and modernize our nuclear weapons deterrent. in situations like this, we could always expect to find a

relevant dose of wisdom from winston churchill, and this is no exception. he said, it is not enough to do our best. sometimes we must do what is required. thank you very much. [ applause ] so i got about 20 minutes. i have a hard stop at 9:00. i can take a couple questions. i have to leave at 9:00, but lieutenant rob myers raise your hand, rob, he'll stick around and -- he'll forward any other questions to me. he'll forward any questions to me so we can get back to you. yes, sir. >> bill sweetman from aviation week. one thing that interests me is if -- given the ohio replacement has a smaller missile load than the ohio, why is it that all the documents show it's a larger submarine? surely that drives the cost upward. >> the question was about since the ohio replacement has fewer missile tubes 16 versus 24, and the question was about the size

of ohio and ohio replacement. so you said that the ohio replacement was larger. it's not. it's about the same size. a couple things. one, the ohio replacement has a propulser so it's just bigger than the propeller, the screw, that is on the ohio. so that right there, there's a certain amount of size just associated with that. the manufacturing techniques are such that we can do -- things that are going to allow us to build it in the same amount of time as the virginia is part of that, so there's just some size associated with the way we're building it, but that is a significant part of keeping the cost down and keeping the schedule down. so the construction process adds to that some. and i would say that's probably the two biggest things that come to my mind. you know the bottom line is i can assure you it is the right

submarine from our requirement standpoint. there are certain things about submarine construction that you have to do at birth. one of them is stealth. and so that would probably be a third thing i would add to that list. because of certain stealth requirements, again, we're building a submarine that has to be around to the 2080s and the ohio just couldn't -- we would not be comfortable with the ohio in the stealth that's associated with the ohio, you know, projecting that into the 2080s. so there's some additional things with electric drive, other aspects of the design that are also part of that. so it is unquestionably the right submarine. it has the right requirements, and we're going to be able to do it, like i said, in the same amount of time as building a virginia and that's huge. sir? blue shirt. >> michael bidner air force

declassification office. we currently have four ssgns. as those boats age out where will their missions go? >> the question was about the four ssgns and when they go away where does their mission go. you are correct all four ssgns retire in '26, '27, '28. that's what the virginia payload module is all about. that's another big part of my portfolio. so for those of you who aren't familiar, you take a virginia class submarine during construction and you cut it in half. you can't do it after you built the thing. and you put in a plug, a section that's about 90 feet long or so. it has four big tubes. it looks and smells a lot like a d-5 missile tube. we know how to build those. we already have them on ssgns, so the things that we do for the ssgns and the mac canisters that

gone owe the gns that has the tomahawks in it, that can totally transport into the virginia payload module seamless. in addition on the block three virginia classes and beyond, so we just have the first block three is just now in the water north dakota, those submarines up forward don't have the 12 individual vertical launch cells like blocks one and two of the virginia have and all the 688 has. they still have 12 tomahawks up there, but they're in the form of two, again, 87-inch diameter tubes. those are called the virginia payload tubes because they're not in a module, but the point is we've derisked all of that. you know, we've done it on ssgn, we're doing it on vpt in the bow of the virginia block three, we're going to do it in dpm in

block five of virginia and on. it all works together. all the systems are logical and the same and there's great synergy in that. and there are other things that we'll be able to do with the virginia payload module as well future payloads that kind of thing. yeah, thank you. that's great. sidney sidney? >> hi. sidney freeberg breaking defense. first of all, i'd like to ask you to elaborate on the more economical construction methods, meaning the sub ends up being larger volume. that's interesting. i hadn't heard that before and you would think that would not be so great for stealth. and, two since you are about to change jobs, the common thread is keeping those ohio ssbns functioning at this unprecedented age. you have seen it from the '97 president-elect, from sub group ten, and as com sub land. what are the things you're most worried about in keeping those old ssbns going for the period

are ird? what are you worried about breaking first? >> you know, the question was about submarine construction techniques and readiness of follow on submarines and the readiness of ssbns, what do i think is going to break first. i don't know i can comment on what i think is going to break first. as a submariner, you know you're at 300 feet, you got high pressure hydraulics, a nuclear reactor, nuclear weapons. there are a lot of things that you think about that you make sure are -- all have to work together. there's no margin for error when you're -- i don't care if you're in an aircraft, spacecraft, or a submerged craft. you have to worry about a lot of things, and you worry about all of them equally because any one of them could be the end of you. so i don't know that i necessary think about, you know one particular thing.

i guess, you know, some of the nonnuclear systems which -- think about your 30-year-old family minivan that you probably take care of the engine and the tires and maybe even the radio but the floorboards, those kind of things. it's all the other stuff after 42 years. i mean that's a long time right? so i guess that's the kind of stuff i think about all the other things that are just part of the day-to-day routine that you got to get right. constructionwise, so one of the big things on the construction for the ohio replacement is that our target is 83% of design completion when we get to construction, and that's significantly more than we had in virginia class. that's one of the big ways that we're going to be able to

achieve -- stay on schedule, stay on track, and be able to make sure that we can build a submarine that's 2.5 times the size of virginia in the same amount of time. anybody else? yes. peter. >> my question has to do with the proposals to go to eight submarines from 12. take the warheads on boats 9, 10, 11, and 12 and put them on the first 8 and this would delay construction of the new boat by four years and take four out of the service early. i know that admiral benedict and others have sent to congress a memo on what this would do, but would you explain how this affects the stealth and operational capacity of our fleet, what it would do to stability and target coverage? because i really think it's a proposal that's out there that needs to be analyzed objectively. >> so the question was about again, the eight versus ten

operational issue. i totally agree with you. that's why i tried to kind of address it in my remarks. you know you can't -- if you put the other warheads on the other submarines, so now you have, you know, more eggs in those baskets granted you have the same number of warheads but the sentry analogy doesn't apply. you've decreased the number of sentries needed to guard the perimeter of the fort. the combatant commander says that number is ten, ten operational ssbns because the number of ssbns is not a function of the number of warheads regardless of where they're distributed. it's the number of ssbn. that force structure needed is about geography where you are, overflight concerns those kind of things survivability. they're of no value to you if the ssbn is hitting with more warheads on it next to the pier.

that's of no value. it's not survivable, so it has to be out there, so you need a certain amount of force structure to be out there. and then the target coverage piece, and so that gets to, you know, who your friends are, who your potentialed a ver tears ed a veradversaryies are, what are your overflight restrictions. that's where the complexity is and the analysis there given a two-ocean approach that the number is ten. and eight just wouldn't do it. yes, sir. >> charles faulkner from bgr group. could you speak to the expansion of other partner allied militaries and their submarine forces and what coordination exists between the united states navy and say australia and great britain? >> sure. the question was about other submarine forces and cooperation. from an allied perspective, you

know, we have great allies in the uk australians, canada, japan, all those -- great submarine forces that contribute tremendously and we work with them on a daily basis. our connections with our british partners is extremely close. so close that we are building a common missile compartment with them for ohio replacement so that couldn't be a greater example of that. from a nonfriendly standpoint, potential adversaries, i tell you, just take a look at the countries out there that are looking at buying submarines or improving their submarines. every day you can read in the paper about another country that's taking another step at doing that. it's a tremendous force multiplier. you know, if you only had $1 to

spend, i'm obviously pretty parochial but i'd spend it on a submarine. it allows you -- you know the submarine is the anti-force. it's the force that allows you to get under that a2ad umbrella and envelope, be there take action at the time and place of your choosing. be the force that unlocks the door for the rest of the joint force and other countries see that. and from a return on investment standpoint, it's a great place to spend your last dollar maybe even your first dollar. so there's definitely a were life ration in other countries and between our friendly nations, i would say the relationship hasn't been stronger. it's really great. yes, sir. >> jack clark from the aerospace

corporation. i'm very confident ohio replacement is going to be a great technical system, but with the less numbers and your sentry analogy, what are the stresses that the crew force is going to have to pick up with less ships to cover this mission? >> yeah. you're absolutely right. the question was about stresses on the crew given fewer numbers of ssbns. you know, i'm not going to deny there's going to be some additional pressure there. i can tell you that because of the pull through of a lot of the technology, the d-5 weapon system, for example, pulling that entire thing through, that decreases -- there's no new training requirements, there's no new infrastructure in king's bay or bangor to spoupport that. the churn that would be associated with that kind of newness, that's a good news story. my name is ray and i want to

welcome you to the first meeting of the iran task force. it's hard to welcome you to an inaugural meeting of a group that has been around for a year now, but this group came together in about a year ago and its mission at that time was primarily to advise congress on an entire range of issues on nuclear matters, economic sanctions, and essentially parameters of a good deal and how to get a good deal. during the period of intervening year, we have produced ten memos. the copies are back there. it's a distinguished group of individuals who are members of the task force. the task force is co-directed by me and mark. the best way to introduce him is to have a boxing analogy. muhammad ali once said about joe frazier, if god ever called me to holy war, i want joe frazier with me. if god ever calls you to holy war, you want mark with you.

of course, john and i will introduce john in a second who is essentially a member of the task force and will preside over today's meeting with the task force co-chairs to be distinguished from task force co-directors and the distinction is they're much more distinguished. so i will turn it over to john now for conducting the rest of this conversation. thank you. >> can you hear me? are we on? okay. thanks, ray, and thanks to everybody for coming. great turnout is test am not only to the importance of the subject matter but i think to obviously the stellar panel that we've assembled today. if a final deal is reached with iran over the next month it almost certainly will constitute the single most consequential national security agreement that the united states has concluded since the end of the cold war. not only implicates the vital interests of the united states it touches issues that many of our closest allies in the middle

east view as nothing less than existential, literally questions of life and death for the security and well-being of their nations. of course, one of the more notable features of our policy with respect to the iranian nuclear issue has been the absolutely critical indeed i'd say leading role that the u.s. congress has played over the last ten years in the development of that policy. absent the kind of bipartisan majorities in both chambers that pushed relentlessly year after year on the need for increased economic pressure to get iran to negotiate seriously, i doubt we would have ever established the extraordinarily effective sanctions regime that we now have. and without that regime of course, the possibility of achieving any kind of satisfactory diplomatic resolution to this problem would automatic certainly have been close to zero. as someone who worked in a former administration that did at times actively resist the

congress' push against iran, i think there's no doubt in retrospect that congress more often than not got this issue more right than a lot of people in the executive branch and consistently so. it better understood the urgency of the issue. it better understood what it would take in terms of u.s. leverage to make serious diplomacy possible and it was also frankly, consistently a better judge than a lot of other people of what the international traffic would bear in terms particularly of the reactions of our partners in the p5+1 to any kind of determined u.s. effort to escalate crippling economic pressure against iran. so with that important history in mind, i hope today that in addition to the discussion of the emerging deal itself, we'll also be able to talk about the role of congress in the crucial days, weeks, and months ahead. another important feature of the iranian nuclear issue is, of course, the role of intelligence, our ability to figure out what's happening in the iranian program has always

been vital, but under this emerging deal with iran it looks as if it will become even more so. that's because an agreement that a lot of us once hoped would have at its heart the dismantlement of much, if not all, of iran's critical nuclear infrastructure has now evolved into an agreement that looks like it will be more about monitoring that infrastructure, and that's going to impose a very big burden on the u.s. intelligence community for years to come to act as the early warning system that will be able to detect iranian violations with high confidence and in a way that provides decisionmakers with ample time to mount an effective response. let me go ahead and introduce our distinguished panel briefly. most of everybody here knows them well and, as ray said we're very honored to call all of them co-chairs of the iran

task force. senator evan bayh of indiana served two terms in the u.s. senate following two terms as indiana's governor. in the senate senator bayh sat on several key committees including banking armed services and intelligence committees. welcome, senator. it's great to have you. senator joseph lieberman -- excuse me. senator joseph lieberman from connecticut served in the u.s. senate for 24 years including as a long-time piftal member of the armed services committee and as the chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee. no exaggeration to say that senator lieberman was a truly pivotal voice in virtually all the major national security and foreign policy debates that the united states engaged in since the end of the cold war, including the iranian nuclear program. so it's an honor and privilege to welcome senator lieberman. finally, we also are pleased to be joined by retired air force

four-star general mike hayden at the pinnacle of his long and distinguished career general hayden served first as the head of the national security agency for almost ten years, and then as director of the cia for nearly three years after that. he was a major player at the highest levels of the u.s. government in all of the historic events and policies that took place in that difficult decade that followed 9/11. i was lucky enough to have a front row seat on occasion to watch him at work in those days. he's really an amazing professional, great public servant, so thank you for being here, general hayden. the way it will work is that i'm going to pose some questions to the panel in hopes of getting a number of good issues and insights on the table. that will go for about the next 35 to 40 minutes and then we'll open it up to the floor for perhaps another 30 minutes or so for questions from the audience. so let me dive right in. i'm simply asking all of you for

some initial thoughts about the emerging iran deal at least what we know of it coming out of the luzon framework that was announced in the beginning of april. assuming the deal does get done and i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how likely you think that is, but assumeing it gets done, what's your assessment? good deal, bad deal, too soon to tell? senator lieberman? >> thanks, john. great to be part of this fdd task force and honored to be co-chair with general hayden and evan bayh, senator bayh. everything that i have heard about what's happened in the negotiations tells me that this will be a bad deal for the united states of america and for our allies. if it comes out otherwise i'll be pleasantly surprised but i think the odds of that happening are remote and just to state is succinctly and you touched on it, john in your opening comments, what i thought -- i'm

not against negotiations. you want to negotiate with one's enemies often to try to reconcile differences but what started out i thought as a negotiation that intended to remove step by step the very difficult economic sanctions on iran in return for iran essentially terminating its nuclear weapons development program has now become something quite different. notwithstanding the fact that we went into the negotiations with the advantage that the iranians were suffering from the sanctions, these economic sanctions, and what we seem to be talking about now is a serial suspension of most of the economic sanctions in return for

not the elimination or end of the iranian nuclear weapons program but a kind of dialing down temporarily with some hopefully monitoring, how extensive it will be, i don't know. and on every level this is a disaster. we're dealing with an autocratic repressive regime that openly states its antipathy for the united states, for israel, and not so openly expresses its antipathy for most of our closest allies in the arab world and they know it. as a result of the agreement, they're going to end up having an enormous flow of capital come back into them with which -- what's startling to me i'm going to control myself because i want to give my two co-chairs some time to speak, but these negotiations have been going on as if they were in a bubble and there was no -- the negotiators had no awareness of what was happening outside. the iranians continue to kill

and jail their political opponents. they're tremendously repressive of dissent and of their people. they put this "washington post" reporter on trial and they have gone through -- we used to talk about the islamic republic of iran as an expansionist hegemonic power. it has expanded during the time of these negotiations throughout the region to the great detriment of our values of our allies and of ourselves. so i'm very pessimistic about this and i think there's really at this point only two things that can save us from a very bad consequential agreement. john, i want to pick out something you said because i think it's really important. this is in my opinion, the most serious consequential international agreement that the united states has entered since the end of the cold war. it has that much of an impact on

us. and there are only two things at this point that i think can save us from this terrible agreement. one is the intransigence of the supreme leader of the islamic republic of iran who indeed, may not allow robust inspections, and i don't know how we can accept an agreement without that. the second is the congress of the united states thanks to the bipartisan legislation that bob corker, bob menendez ben cardin and others introduced and enacted. i'm going to stop there. i'm happy to talk about congress' role but congress' role is unique and critically important in the days ahead. >> thank you. senator bayh. >> well, john -- thank you john and let me echo my friend and colleague joe lieberman's remarks about it's a pleasure to serve with general hayden and senator lieberman. i think it's highlilike lyly likely

we'll get a deal unless the iranians are just completely intransigent. i think it's likely in the senate you would get 60 votes. i think a significant level of skepticism about the efficacy of the deal will be in order. it will be very difficult to verify their compliance. it would be very difficult to have sanctions quote, snap back, close quote, into place following their loosening. i think you will even get interpretative differences, john. we saw some of this after the announcement of the preliminary agreement where both sides took differing interpretations of what the words actually meant. it's difficult to verify and enforce a deal where they may have sort of superficially papered over fundamental disagreements but immediately retreat to their respective positions shortly thereafter. so i think it will come to a vote in the senate. my own guess is there would be -- as all of you are aware,

the senate has to act affirmatively, and so there may be a filibuster against that. my guess is there would be 60 votes to break a filibuster. to get to 67 to actually override a presidential veto, that would be a very difficult matter, particularly when you get up to 65, 66, 67 votes. but regardless you can have an agreement going into effect where two-thirds of the american congress about roughly, a little less than two-thirds a clear majority, would have expressed significant reservations about the agreement, and that's a very difficult position from which to be operating internationally particularly with another presidential election coming up, the iranians are going to wonder what does this mean? do we go forward now and try to push the envelope on the agreement or do we hold back and wait and see who the next president is going to be? our allies in the region, we

have a real risk of this touching off nuclear proliferation surely in saudi arabia possibly in egypt and turkey, so that could be an unintended consequence of this that would be really destabilizing, and the other thing that it's difficult to disaggregate here, as hard as we might try, is the other behavior that iran is engaged in outside of the context of their nuclear program. as we're all aware, they do fund hezbollah. they're deeply involved in the civil war in syria deeply involved in destabilizing yemen, and to the extent that we -- you know, they're clearly going to be pushing for as much immediate sanctions relief as they can get, that's a fancy way of saying as much money as they can get their hands on. you know some of that would support activities that are not in the national security interests in the united states.

you have to balance that off against any potential good the agreement might accomplish. that's a worrisome fact. the ongoing ballistic missile program. they can only be designed to hit western europe or the continental united states eventually. i think we need to be clear-eyed about what's going on with that. the final thing i would say is when you kind of drill down through all of this, we have to have a national debate about what is the essential nature of the iranian regime? are they a normal nation state essentially that -- we had very difficult relations with the former soviet union during the communist period but they weren't suicidal, weren't a radical theocracy and we could deal with them but is there something about the iranian nature short of committing national suicide that will continue to have them be an aggressive regional power working actively against the national security interests of the united states undermining our allies and quite possibly not living up to the agreement that they've signed and eventually getting a nuclear

capability? surely after ten years under the agreement, possibly sooner if they're willing to cheat, and is that something as a country that we think is consistent with our national security interests? my own view is that that would not be consistent with our national security interests, but i think therein -- answering that question, what is the essential nature of their regime, how are they likely to move forward, and there's an abundance of evidence suggesting what they're trying to do here is get what they want and pay as small a price for it as they possibly can. and at the end of the day that's not good for us or for our allies. >> general hayden? >> well, i get to say i'd like to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished senators from connecticut and indiana, and i really mean that. let me take a little more narrow view, although i totally agree with senator bayh's characterization. we were chatting about it over sandwiches. we're kind of focused now by the

national debate but the problem is iran with nuclear weapons. i'd suggest to you that the problem is iran and the nuclear weapons question is an important but a subset of the broader question of iran. and we need to be very careful that an apparent resolution of the nuclear question is then allows us to mislead ourselves that we've suddenly solved the iran question which i think lingers for a very very long time. i also need to mention that, you know, in the executive branch in the last administration, we left this as an ugly baby for the new guys. this was not a problem that we all went if you'd only done what we just laid out, this would have been finished in your first term. we didn't have any such plans. i fully recognize how very very difficult this is. all that said to answer john's first question, i do think we're trending towards a deal. i think the dynamics of a negotiation as many of us feared

have croateated its own energy in the direction of a deal. the dynamics being so strong i think that we've gone from if we were ever at no deal is better than a bad deal, i actually think the circumstances under which we now operate because of the energy and investment that's been put in this is any deal is better than no deal, and i fear that's what we'll get. senator bayh mentioned interpretative differences and i really would call your attention to that as we go forward. we cannot allow either government to paper over what remain our significant differences in terms of what has been agreed. i got asked after the four-page white paper that we put out what did i think of what the white paper contained? and, frankly, after only a day or two and watching the responses from tehran, i have to say i don't know that we've agreed to anything and one

needs to be really really careful about this particularly in the most narrow lane i will talk about which is the intelligence lane which is the verification lane. we have really got to hammer unarguable verification procedures into any agreement because i am here to tell you that unilateral american intelligence will be insufficient to build up enough confidence in my view that an agreement is being honored. in other words, american intelligence is good. in other words, american intelligence is going to tell you a lot, but to get to the level of confidence you will need to legitimate action will require an invasive inspection regime that must be negotiated before we agree to any such treaty or arrangement. let me stop there. john, i know there are a lot of other questions but we'll get to

them. >> general let me just follow up quickly with you on this question, the nene tour-- nature and scope of the inspection and regime and the ability to access and talk to iranian scientists if not iranian decisionmakers involved in the nuclear program. when you put on your cia director's hat i wonder if you could sketch out for us just do you actually need what everybody has called anytime anywhere snap inspections that include military and qods force sites? what kind of interviews? how far would you want to go into the iranian nuclear weapons bureaucracy to get answers to your questions? and what would -- i mean because it seems to me the president is asking our intelligence community via the iaea i suppose to have an ability to almost instantaneous instantaneously detect iranian

violations. so i wonder if you could expand a little bit. >> i think anytime anywhere inspections are absolutely essential. i was president obama's cia chief for three weeks while we were waiting for leon panetta to get confirmed and i attended the first ncs meeting he had on iran and the president turned to me and said general, how much leu and heu do they have, orm eu. i said mr. president, i actually know the anticipate to those questions but for a moment let me give you a different way of thinking about this issue. and what i said to the president was, sir, i don't think anybody in my community thinks that there's an electron or a neutron that is ever going to end up in a num lar weapon, but they're building up facilities and confidence in technology and to go ahead and move to heu requires them to cheat so badly it would be detected or to kick

the inspectors out and, therefore, what we believe would happen in a breakout is they would simply take the technology and replicate it at a secret military facility and it's there in that facility that the heu for a weapon would be enriched. now, at the time i told the president, we knew, a, secret nuclear facility. we knew that one was under construction. they didn't know that we knew, right? but that's the scenario we always pictured john, and so how do you -- and so i'm an american intelligence officer, right? and i'm going to go into the president with some really bad news, all right? we actually have a name for this. we call this the dynamic of the unpleasant fact, okay? so, you know, when jim clapper, whoever is in jim's position now gets to walk in and says, mr. president, do you recall that war you promised to start in the persian gulf? well, guess what? today is the day.

what is the burden of proof on the american intelligence community? number one, to come to that judgment. number two, to get the american political leadership to accept that judgment. and, number three, then to sell that judgment in one way or another to a broader international community without giving up critical sources and methods. this is really hard, john, and so the presence of inspectors, the ability to go anywhere at any time i think is absolutely essential. >> even with all that, i mean how do you think about this one-year breakout time that the administration has put so much focus on not only the ability to detect but, as you say, the ability then to mobilize an effective and quick response within the scope of a year perhaps getting the rest of the international community to come along to something that could include a military attack? just based on your experience --

>> we try to show how you can use up a year pretty easily actually. first of all, you know, the clock doesn't -- the clock doesn't start when you detect it. the one-year clock starts when they begin to violate the agreement. so there's a gap between the violation and the detection, and then all of that dynamic i suggest to you has to take place before you get to a meaningful political decision. then happens after you have detected it and built up enough personal confidence that you want to take to the president the worst news he's going to hear in his entire administration. and so number one, i think our estimate that we've got them more than a year has got an awful lot of kentucky windage in the estimate. and even if it was provable it may prove insufficient. >> okay. senator -- >> is that a technical term, kentucky windage?

>> i have been very fond of senators from kentucky over the last 24 years. >> senator bayh one of the other big issues outstanding in the talks appears to be this issue of the pace and scope of sanctions relief that iran is going to get under this deal, and there's also a related question of how quickly you could revive that's sanctions. the kind of term of art everybody has latched onto is snap back sanctions. you and senator lieberman were heavily involved and watched how long it took to actually get in place the kind of effective sanctions architecture we have now. so in looking at this how realistic do you find this idea of snapback? >> well john, as i indicated in my opening remarks i think, you know, it would be very difficult to achieve a snapback once you've significantly reduced the sanctions regime.

as you pointed out, it took a lot of time and effort to put it into effect. we made them progressively more stringent, and they have exacted a real toll on the iranian economy. we backed off some but the sanctions were in significant degree responsible for slower economic growth, a devaluation of the iranian currency, very high level of inflation within iran and the regime has been very concerned about that. once we back off of that, clearly what they're going to want is as much relief as soon as they can get it and so we'll have to negotiate over all that. but once you have backed off, once the europeans, the chinese and others have begun to re-enter the iranian market, signed a variety of economic agreements, you know money flowing back and forth it is very, very hard -- let alone the russians, very very difficult to put humpty-dumpty back together again.

realistically if you want to be practical about it practically impossible to accomplish. and so the real answer to your question is if the decision about reimposing sanctions was going to be made solely in washington, d.c., that would be one thing. but without all of our allies and even those who aren't our allies who would be important to any sort of meaningful sanctions regime coming along it's just not going to happen and they're going to be highly reluctant to go back once they have really re-established meaningful financial and economic relations. so it's just not practical i think. >> senator lieberman, do you want to make a quick comment on that? >> yeah. i agree with everything evan said. there's a danger in this next weeks of negotiations that the u.s. will agree to suspend a lot of the sanctions on iran and the reassurance that the administration will give us is

that they'll be prepared to snap them back, but as etch said,van said, it's not going to be so easy. so really in my opinion we ought to be halting and demanding in our lifting of sanctions until we see that the iranians are substantially complying with whatever promises they make as a final agreement because a backstop that you're going to snap back after you suspend a lot of the sanctions early on before the iranians have proved anything to us about their behavior is really not much of a guarantee at all. i would add here, there's a natural sort of rhythm to congressional focus as we and probably a lot of other people in the room can tell you. congress did something extremely important and quite unique in adopting the corker/menendez

corker/menendez/carden, et cetera, legislation. in my time i don't remember quite anything like it. if i may digress for a moment. one of the wonderful opportunities i have had is that i taught a course at columbia law school and one of the few legal subjecteds i know something about, the role of congress in american foreign and defense policy. there's a wonderful quote from a political scientist edwin kor corwin corwin, who said the constitution invites the president and congress to compete forever for the privilege of determining american foreign and defense policy. in this case, first with the sanctions and then with this extraordinary requirement that this agreement come to congress for review and possible rejection, congress has done something really significant, which is a measure of the broad

bipartisan anxiety about the direction of these negotiations and i think what members of congress in both parties are hearing from their constituents which is also anxiety about what's happening in happening in the negotiations with the iranians. so coming back to the rhythm of congress, there's a natural way in which congress will now step back and wait for the agreement to occur. i wish as a logical corollary, or a follow on of adopting the corker legislation, that congress could get together on a similarly bipartisan basis and essentially say to the administration and iran, by a letter, joint resolution here are conditions that we consider minimal for us to accept and not reject an agreement that you reach. i don't know that that's going to happen, but i think that would be important. >> if i could add just two other

quick points john. the interpretive differences that i referenced and general hayden spoke about, it's important there be a meaningful period for verification. if we allow the iranians to get a significant amount of sanctions relief until we can ensure ourselves that we actually have a quote, unquote, agreement. not just -- and that both sides have a consensus on what the words on the document mean, it would be folly to grant relief. you'd be granting relief only to discover possibly fairly quickly that you don't have a meeting of the minds. you need a period, meaningful period, to verify that a, you have an agreement. second point, refresh my memory were the french being hard nosed? was it about any time, anywhere inspections or the sanctions? >> inspections. >> you asked me about sanctions

relief. i was just going to say it should be a matter of some concern to us if the french are being more hard nosed than we are in the course of the negotiations. might be a sign that something is amiss. >> >>senator lieberman i want to come back on corker but i want to probe you on this. the anomaly we face, where the united states led a negotiation on the deal, two of our primary international rivals for power and influence china and russia. they seem to line the deal and will sign on. on the other hand, some of our best allies in the region seem to hate this deal. despite what president obama said in a recent interview that no one will have more at stake in this nuclear deal than himself, i think some of our allies might dispute that. how should we think about that, that

saw die s saudis, some of our allies feel threatened. how do we wave that in the balance of whether or not this makes sense? >> me, the united states, should weigh it heavily. weigh the reaction of our allies who are in iran's neighborhood heavily as we consider going forward. because they're in the neighborhood. they're the target of iranian hatred anger. we've all talked to them. talking about the israelis and the arabs. they can't believe that we're negotiating as wholesomely as we are with the iranians. they say this regime, since 1979, has given us reason to trust them. you'd have to have a very demanding agreement, with really

any time, anywhere inspections, that ended the iranian nuclear program for our best allies, israel and the so-called modern arabs, to feel unthreatened by it. so it has -- the fact that we've gone forward has really diminished our credibility with our allies in the region. and our influence with our allies in the region. and i think it will diminish our ability to keep the region peaceful. colleagues talked about the fact that the saudis will definitely -- they've said it. they'll definitely match every step that they know that the iranians are taking to develop nuclear weapons. the israelis reserve the right to take military action, to disable the iranian program because they think it is that much of an existential threat. and beyond the immediate region,

this is the age of instant global communications. our allies in the rest of the world, beginning with asia go to eastern europe, particularly, go to africa go to latin america, they're watching this. part of what they're seeing is that we have not involved or listened to our closest allies in the middle east as we've done ahead with these negotiations. that makes them anxious that we will pay as little attention to them if the hegemonic power in their region begins to move on them. i know the u.s. may feel that we can sell more arms to our allies in the middle east. we can promise that we'll put an umbrella over them, should the iranians go nuclear. i'm afraid that as a result of the way we've conducted ourselves, including in these negotiations they don't trust

that promise of american guarantee of their security the way they used to. >> general hayden, i wonder if i could ask you on israel and the question of the viability of an israeli military strike to set back the iranian nuclear program, either with a deal or without a deal, but how viable as a technical matter do you think that is? >> john, my consistent judgment has been that it's not all that viable. that's not to discount the iaf and the professionalism, the excellence of its intelligence. physics enter in here quickly. it's far 1,000 miles. the air force is small. the target base is dispersed. the targets are numerous. many of the targets are hardened. frankly, neither we nor the israelis are sure we know where everything is. if the israelis do this it's a raid, not a campaign.

they get to do it once. because of the great distances involved, even some of the fighter aircraft i suspect would have to buddy refuel the weapons carriers in order to get to the target area and have enough time to maneuver safely and get home. my judgment is this is a really hard do for them. i don't think there's anyone i know in the idf or israeli intelligence who thinks it's a good idea. they'll do what they're told and do it well. the strategic question becomes, john, would any israeli government put the only strategic relationship on which the survival of the israeli state depends on a single raid if success fulful will set it back three to six months. my guess is no. >> let's talk about the benefits in the aftermath of a deal that

the united states might provide some allies. talking about israel in particular and some of the questions that general hayden raised. there's been a little talk, i don't know how realistic it would be, that we ought to provide israel with the capabilities, specifically something like the biggest massive penetrateor and a plan to establish the credibility of the israeli option. to make sure the iranians have to at least worry about the israelis in terms of violating any deal. can i get your views on whether you'd be supportive? >> i would. i'm a little distant what what is being discussed on capitol hill or between the israeli and u.s. governments. there's great bipartisan support for israeli security. great concern about the impact of a nuclear iran on israeli security.

it's possible the discussion will get to that. it does have a -- it should have a deterrent effect on iran. incidentally and no one in israel is really talking actively about a military strike but for it to happen, it seems to me the israelis would have to have intelligence that there was a breakout occurring. in other words i don't see how plausibly, for the reasons general hayden said, the israelis could say this is a bad deal. they're going to get nuclear weapons in ten years so we have to stop them now. there would have to be evidence that there was a breakout intelligence. tough decision for any israeli government at that point to share it with us as general hayden said. the israeli ss strategic ally, and challenge the united states to take action or take action yourself. of course, the general is right about the relative capacity of

the israelis to do damage. i believe they could do some damage. they might have some surprising allies along the distance from israel to iran who would help them refuel, et cetera. but it's still a very difficult mission. the iranians have been preparing for this for a long time. they've been acting defensively. unlike the iraqi nuclear facility or the syrian facility this is really a dispersed operation. a great man i respect greatly who used to work for the iae said, there's not been a time in the last 25 years where there hasn't been a part of the iranian nuclear program that we haven't known about. you have to assume that that's probably true today. >> senator bayh, one of the big icisms

the administration ticks of the deal is why it's not perfect it's good enough and better than any alternative that the opponents of this particular deal have put forward. that nothing that has been put forward as an alternative is in fact, particularly realistic. it tends to be idealistic i think, the administration would say. i wonder what your view of that is. was it ever true? is it true now? if there is an alternative out there, what do you think are the outlines of it? >> ñirst with regard to your last question, john, i would be for all forgiving the state of israel any weapons they need to defend themselves. with regard to launching a preemptive strike against iranian nuclear facilities, i think we'd need to think about that. the reason for that is not that i would be reluctant to have the israelis have weapon systems.

it may be a distinction without a difference. if they attack the iranian sites, there's no way the iranians wouldn't think we were involved. they'd react to us the way they would if we did it ourselves. we need to think through the idep of preemption and by outsourcing it to the israelis, do you really have anything? i don't think so. the general knows more about this, but my understanding is to do this right, it would take a longer period of time. you'd need to ensure yourself. take all the downside of going through a course of actin. the downside would be significant. you'd need to maximize the chances you're actually going to be effect iive. bring down the iranian air capabilities. revisit the target from time to time. it's a bigger undertaking that probably we and we alone are

presently situated to do. "táhat's with regard to that. i'm not sure what you bought yourself by doing what you indicated. with regard to is a better deal possible? "t(p'didly, in countersituations in life, there are not great alternatives. this ay be one. this is a difficult situation. if it weren't it would have been solved a lo one of the reasons it's so difficult, it does deal with the essential nature of the iranian regime. are they willing to essentially change themselves and their aspirations in significant ways. you have to be a little skeptical about that. in terms of alternatives, john i would say if i were still voting on these things i think the status quo is better than a bad deal. the counterargument against that is the iiranians will try to breakout and achieve a nuclear

"t(p(ability. if they can't get some sajss s sanctions relief. well, then you know who you're dealing with. if that's how you think they're going to behave then what does it suggest about their good faith in complying with any agreement you strike with that? their economy has come back some. the sanctions have been relaxed some. it's still not great there domestically right now. i think a he yitlegitimate alternative would be retried and tried. to put it back on the iranians and say, you haven't been willing to come far enough in terms of meaningful inspections in terms of a reasonable period where each side can verify the good faith of the other. we just can't get there. to maintain the status quo and see how they behave, i think that is a perfectly legitimatale alternative in a situation where there are no perfect or great

ones. >> senator lieberman, i don't know if you want to comment on your idea of an alternative. one thing you suggested that could in theory happen, although i'd like your assessment of the likelihood that congress gets the 67 votes to disapprove this presidential veto but what would be the consequences of that, do you think? the administration talks a lot about the iranians either racing ahead. this will be either an iranian bomb or war, and the collapse of our position with our international friends who have signed up for this particular deal. is any of that realistic? >> let me start with the -- my own prediction about what happens, assuming there is an agreement and assuming it's as bad as i believe it will be. it's still -- i believe congress will reject the agreement. as evan said before, should not be minimized. it was a remarkable statement to

the world. the president has negotiated an agreement which bipartisan majorities in congress will reject. then really, it is his agreement. then the question is, he vetoes it presumably. is it possible to get 2/3 in both houses? it's difficult. it really is. i think it's doable. i think you need about 1/3 of the democrats to join most of the republicans.o cf1 o i don't know that all the republicans will vote to override a veto. i believe at that point, there's going to be a massive mobilization of people who feel that we're at a turning point in history. that if this -- if a bad deal goes forward, and the irani9m are on the road to nuclear weapons, it compromises the security first and foremost of us, our children and grandchildren. as evan said i'll say it a little differently, they're

working on these ballistic missiles not because they want -- the iranians, not because they want to be in range of israel or saudi arabia. they already have missiles in range of their regional antagonists if i can put it that way. these are missiles long range that are -- that have europe and the u.s. in mind. potential cold war or hot war situation. i think it's possible. bottom line, hard to get 2/3 in both chambers, but possible if the deal is as bad as i think it's going to be. i forgot thexsecond part of the question. >> no, no. i think that doej it. >> what happens then, real short, tougher sanctions. i know we're going to lose some access to the u.s. banking system is still the -- i was about to say the gold standard. a little mixing of metaphors there. it's what you have to have in

world business. if we stick with it and add to the sanctions, we still have the capacity to hopefully bring them back to the table for a more reasonable negotiation. >> if i could add two things, john. well, the first of which involves congress. i do think this very intense debate we're having about fast track for potential trade agreements has required the administration to spend a signif1á amount of political capital. coming just a few months thereafter to have another difficult heavy lift in "t(jj here there is significant substantive skepticism and concern would have even more difficult. i think the 60 votes would be there to get to 67. that's hard. i think you'd be within two or three votes of such a thing. maybe a vote of such a thing depending on how it played out i think this trade debate that's

taking place and the internal dynamics particularly in the democratic party over that, affect this to some extent. the other thing i'd say is i think the most effective % argument made by the administration and their allies is something along the following lines. look who are we kidding here? the chinese and the russians and possibly some others are about to head south on the sanctions regime anyway. whether we want it to or not. they're just going to head for the hills on this thing. ut may as well try to get whatever we can, even though kind of we won't say it publicly, but even though we know it's not really what any of us would like. i think the counterargument to that is, you probably -- that's why i get back to the status quo. the economy is not good in iran right now. my guess is, you havq a better chance of convincing those countries who are perhaps contemplating taking themselves out of the sanctions regime, a

better chance of getting them to remain in place for some period of time than you do at this moment of really hammering out an agreement that the majority of congress would look at and say, that's a good agreement. we can verify it. the sanctions. i think your chances of maintaining what we currently have are better than getting an acceptable agreement. i think the better counterargument to that. >> all right. thanks. i'm getting the notice that we need to move to the audience q&a. i think we've got some microphones out there. why don't we go first to here in the second row. can you please state your name, any affiliation, and please state it as --@))q form of a question as best you can. >> my namq is jim, a portfolio manager with west shore funds. i have a question for general hayden. general, the effectiveness of the sanctions depended upon u.s. control of the dollar payment

system and by extension control of the allies with the swiss system. in addition to acquiring uranium, iran with russia and china have godz and are building an alternative payment system. my question is talked about how snap back may be problematic. even if you did snap back is it possible it would be ineffected because iran would have extra kate kated itself before the dollar happens? >> it's out of my lane. but at the geopolitical level the point is serious. senator lieberman talked about the banking system being the gold standard and we know that. frankly, targeted sanctions and what we're able to do with regard to global finance, i would say become the precision guided munitions of the 21st seb century. the more you use it, the more you motivate othezs to build an

alternative system. i don't know that the chinese are doing that because of this.% i think they're doing what it is they're doing because of their own economic self-interest. these kinds of tools more challenging in the future. exhaustive. i don't know that it's in place quickly enough to do what you said for this problem, but it certainly is something thañ's facing us. if not over this ridge line, over the second or third out there ahead of us. >> i just put in a quick plug for fdd's center for elicit finance and sanctions, which is actually looking at precisely this kind of threat in economic warfare warfare. right here in the fourth row. >> hi. rachel oswald, cq role call. i have a hypothetical and apologize for that. assuming there is a nuclear deal that broadly follows the preliminary framework of april 2nd and assuming that congress is not able to overcome a veto

of any resolution disapproval what would the panel like to see happen in 2017 when there is a new u.s. president? >> anybody? >> when i was in elective office, my staff told me never answer a hypothetical. now that i'm out there, you know born free again. so that's a really interesting question. assuming there is an agreement, it's rejected, president veto is not overridden, what happens. well, first question is, does the new president in 2017 continue to abide by the agreement? there's a real pressure on any administration not to break an o cf1 o agreement that a predecessor made. this will be pressure on that. a new president, whoever it is, might, i should say, whoever he or she is might be tougher on

the details and the implementatrjrju$e agreement. the other thing that probably would happen up here on capitol hill, is that there would be -- i hope áhere would be, first, an aggressive oversight of the sanctions and the lifting of sanctions that's occurred after the agreement is implemented. and there probably would be, particularly with regard to israel, an attempt to mandate that the administration hopefully with the support of the administration, provide weapon systems to israel with which they could defend themselves if the circumstance arose, be more effective in an initiative against an iranian breakout, nuclear breakout. all hoping that that would be a deterrent. i'm really blue skying there.

because i think we'd be in a very bad situation. the real guts move would be for a new president to say, this is a bad deal and find a way to get out of it. not easy. >> right here. here and then we'll go to the back. >> thank you. my question is for sq'ator leeb lieberman lieberman. >> identify yourself. >> conner wolf with the daily foundation. >> lindsey graham positioned himself with having a lot of experience with foreign policy and that's why he should be president. in your personal view does this experience, would this experience be good with this type of deal, in maintaining or helping future deals? is he the leader we need? >> ready for an endorsement in. >> he's a great friend. i'll answer it quickly because i know the others want to talk

about the negotiations with iran. i mean, lindsay is extraordinarily experienced and informed on matters of foreign and defense policy. and is capable of making tough decisions. so i have a lot of respect in addition to affection for him. he has been quite outspoken on the question of these negotiations. probably as

allies in the region. >> fred in the back. >> fred with the center for security policy. i have a lieberman. a member of the panel said that iran has yet to provide a convincing explanation for why it is enriching uranium. prime minister netanyahu said there's only one purpose, to make nuclear bombs. the center for security policy believes there's no possible reason for an agreement that allows iran to operate thousands of center fujrifuges during an agreement. do you think it is possible senator, to have a meaningful nuclear agreement with iran that allows it to continue to enrich uranium? >> simply and clearly, no, i don't. i thought the original purpose

of these negotiations was to stop the iranian nuclear enrichment program in return for the sequential elimination of all the economic sanctions which is quite significant for iran and quite significant when you think about it that it has unfortunately nothing to do with its terrible human rights record. with its expansionism in the region, with its support of terrorism. but to let that enrichment go on, to me just shows that the -- as was said last fall, the americans obviously want this agreement much more than we do said he. that's never where you want to be in a negotiation. >> thank you. jessica with the huffington

post. general hayden this is talk about how the deal would put a burden on the intelligence community to detect violations in time to give the president enough time to react. can you sort of explain to me why the proposed deal would require iran to follow the additional protocol which would expand inspections. does that put the intelligence community in a better situation than we are now to detect breakout? >> anything that adds to the ability of the iaea to visit quickly where they believe to be suspect activity would give me greater confidence in our ability to verify the information. american intelligence is not without tools here. frankly, i don't think i'm giving any national secrets to saying the iaea is open to suggestions from member states as to issues that raise concern, which they want to share with the international body. there could be in a positive and open way, a cooperative

relationship here that gets us to the level of confidence that we need. if iran is not cheating and if iran is truly serious about this agreement, that sort of thing is precisely the thing they should welcome, in terms of -- the term we use when we negotiated with the sosoviets, confidence building measures. >> go to the back here. >> thank you. chris from the federation of american scientists. thank you all for great presentations. informative. i want to talk about something senator bayh talked about. the issue of going with the status quo. if we go tot status quo, somebody probably walked away. how significant is it for the continuation of sanctions policy if it's the iranians who walk away versus the u.s., and especially if the other p 5 members might want to stay with a negotiation? >> i think that would be a

relevant factor. certainly would affect public opinion about how the american people and possibly other publics perceive such a thing. it may be also why it's conceivable we'll get to a deadline and it's not unknown in these situations for the deadlines to be extended again. i know we said june 30th is the final, drop-dead deadline but it might be that we achieve the status quo by both sides realizing that it was not in neither of their interests to be perceived as, quote walking away. so the talks went into a hyattighatus and would give each side a way to spin why the agreement was not reached. it would be in our position to say iranians were walking away from the talks. >> evan said earlier and i agree with this, too, the status quo is better than a bad deal.

unless we're all schockhocked by what comes out of the negotiations, it's going to be a very bad deal. probably in some ways, the best of all if i can put it that way, barring a really good deal would be that the iranians walk away. that their stubbornness stops a very good deal for them. then i think you have the possibility of increasing the economic sanctions on iran. having that be done by more than the united states. that would give us some small hope that sometime in the future iran would return to the table for a better negotiation. >> just to follow up. i'm expecting a deal. i'm not expecting the situation that you're depositing. i also wouldn't expect us to announce well we've given up and are walking away. i don't think we'd put ourselves

in that posture. that wouldn't be smart. i think we'd say, we haven't given up hope. we haven't gotten there by the deed deadline. both sides need a period for reflection to see if there is more they can do to reach -- something along those lines so each side can avoid being perceived as the cause of an agreement not being reached. >> i think we had a question over here in the front. >> hi. ed former u.s. treasury. i wanted to see your -- any of your gentlemen's comments on the economic sanctions. whether in the context of status quo or in the context of a snap back, if we're seeing on the very real impacts on iran broadly with respect to economic sanctions. if the goal for sanctions is to change behavior, you're still having real impacts to retail, commercial in iran, how does the

context of snap back achieve the goal? >> first my hats off to the people in the treasury who did great work on this issue over an extended period of time. >> that's true. >> repeatedly coming up with more effective ways to put sanctions in place. the treasury department did a great job. look, the history of sanctions is that they're not perfect. there was a previous question about the iranians finding ways to work around them and so forth. they are imposing a real cost upon the iranian economy, which the regime is not entirely impervious to. they're willing to see their public absorb a fair amount of economic pain to pursue their objectives. there is unrest in their society. to the extent the iranian economy is not growing as robustly as it otherwise might, by definition, that means they

have less resources with which to pursue their other objectives including in syria, yes, ma'am yemen and elsewhere. it's not a perfect instrument. there are other countries you're familiar with, i'm sure that we imposed sanctions on and they're willing to have their publics imposed on them a fair amount of economic hardship. that doesn't mean they're oblivious oblivious. i don't think they'd be at the table talking today if they weren't feeling some urgency about getting the sanctions removed. which in itself is probably an argument for trying to maintain a meaningful sanctions regime for as long as we can. >> i agree with that. as you know, there's billions of dollars being held now, which will be -- some has been let go for every month. since the interim agreement. but that'll be a tremendous infusion of capital into iran. they've been hurting. while there are totalitarian

government in that sense they're not a popular government. from everything we know in their own country. to the extent that there's ex economic depravation, it creates the possibility of instability and an uprising. i think that incidentally, i want to pat congress on the back because we were patting on the back i apologize for that but going back to teaching experience, this has been a case where congress inserted itself into foreign policy. going back to what john said it didn't matter what the party of the administration in the white house was. they didn't want congress getting involved in this. for a lot of reasons. they had a broader range of issues they were dealing with. bilaterally, multilaterally. but congress was focused in a

bipartisan way adopted the administration through the treasury department, last two administrations did a tremendous job of implementing. i agree with evan. that's the only reason the iranians came to the table. what agitates me is they're going to walk away from the table with the sanctions being removed and they're going to have given us very little in terms of the elimination, there won't be elimination. they'll dial down a little bit on their nuclear weapons program enrichment and all the rest. that's why i keep saying i'm fearful it's going to be a very bad deal. >> can i add one point with regard to capacity. there are multiple purposes for sanctions. there's punishment, changing behavior and reducing capacity. you've all got our view on whether we're getting a good or bad or no deal. we think likely a deal, not good. let's assume for a minute.

let's fantasize for a moment that we get a good deal. you still have to live and i think that's what senator lieberman was suggesting -- you still have to live with massively increased iranian capacity. because you now have relieved them of sanctions and allow them to gather resources to use for all the other activities, about which they're unrepentant. >> one final thing there are no great alternatives here. you're running risks no matter what course of action you take. one of the risks we could be taking under a quote, unquote, bad agreement would be the iranians at some point, in their view sooner rather than later will get their hands on additional billions of dollars that piled up in banks they don't have access to right now. if they're allowed to export their petroleum once again, reduce the price of oil a little bit, but it'll be an additional

tens of billions of dollars flowing into the iranian treasury. if we have not given ourselves a grace period to verify their good faith that they're complying with the agreement, if we don't have in place strict inspections to assure ourselves they're abiding by the agreement, these will be additional resources for their ballistic missile program, what they're doing in syria and yemen. if they have it in their hearts to not have given up their nuclear aspirations, possible covert activities there. we're empowering them with the potential to do a lot of things. this is outside the subject of this conference and these negotiations, but clearly, they are a state sponsor of terrorism. giving someone like that tens of billions of additional dollars will lead to adverse consequences. >> i wonder if i can impose on our two senators here to give us

some -- a peek inside. come july, say we have a deal as problematic as you all say. you're a democratic senator. >> yeah. >> what is it like? what kind of -- we saw the administration the president earlier in the year, i think, call critics of the deal warmonger warmongers. we saw them accuse certain members of maybe being political opportunists who were paying more attention to a domestic constituency than u.s. national interests. he is a lame duck president. what are the pressures and calculations that you face that make it so difficult to get 13 or 14 or 15 democratic senators to say, this is not a good deal. >> this is all about what the democrats do. i assume the republican leadership will try to keep all the republicans, which will be the moment of truth here, on the vote whether to override the president's veto of a rejection or not.zi &háhp &hc%

the president is head of the democratic party. a lot of democrats like him, feel a responsibility to him. the president hasn't done this a lot, what i'm about to say, but he probably would in this case. he'll meet with people. he'll call people. there hasn't been a lot of that personal outreach. the democratic leadership will make it a test of loyalty. on the other side, there will be i believe a very substantial organization of people in the districts of the swing democratic voters in the senate and the house. the undecided. the members will have to put this together. part of it will be -- i mean in some sense, not this simple really loyalty to the president. maybe some of them will agree. well, the ones who agrae it's not a bad deal and a good deal will be in the category of those who will not vote to override a

veto. but that group in the middle will be affected by it. evan said a fascinating thing which i think is really important to remember. which is that the democrats in the house particularly are going to be squeezed in the coming days and weeks about the trade promotion authority. therefore, they're going to come to this vote if it happens over the summer with that kind of feeling in their minds. forgive me for a moment this is old war stories. you took me back to a point i guess it was 1997 i think. in the clinton administration, we had been through the balance budget act. the clinton white house had to really work on democrats to support it. this was bill clinton and newt gingrich coming to this incredible agreement. it had stuff in it that democrats didn't like but ended up creating a surplus in the federal government. anyway, a short period of time after that, by historic irony,

comes the trade promotion authority bill as in right now. pass the senate goes to the house. i get a call from the white house, john and i are active in the democrat leadership group. moderate democrat group. more moderates in those days. they said the president is inviting about 30 of the moderate center left democrats who are undecided on trade promotion authority to come down to the white house tomorrow. will you and i forget who else came. maybe you were there. to join us in the pits. the president came out and spoke movingly. we spoke from our guts. i thought it was going really well. john podesta was the chief of staff to the president then. as they all left i lingered and said, john i thought that went well. what did you think? he said, a lot of these people

are not happy with us about the balanced budget bill we just passed. he said, you and everybody else, president, were really fantastic today. here's my prediction. tomorrow, they're going to feel really badly when they vote against us. long story, but it shows the human dimension to really enormous national security and global issues. i think evan may have had a very good point today. many good points but that one struck me. >> first time for everything. >> any other questions from the audience? >> thank you. adviser to apec. to my question advanced to senator lieberman. you suggested it might be a good idea for the legislators to lay

out the minimum criteria for an acceptable deal. could i ask for what would be the list of minimal criteria for good deal? >> thank you for asking that question. i think this is a critical interim period. probably it's going to be hard to get time on the floor for this. it's possible somebody could put it on the national defense authorization, but probably not. it may be -- and it's just as effective -- may be expressed in a letter i'm thinking. we did this -- congress does this all the time. a letter to the president, to the secretary of state. basically saying here we are, corker legislation passed. now -- and this will presumably if there is an agreement, come to us. we want you to know, mr. president and secretary kerry, that we will have a rotevote. these are our minimal terms to accept an agreement. it's up to congress, what they want to say. i would certainly say, first,

any time, anywhere inspections. bottom line. second to the extent that you can state it that sanctions be -- not be removed until there is some real proof, evidence, that the iranians are keeping their part of the par begin.bargain. others in congress may have different points of view. it's an important preface to the ultimate votes. now congress set up the procedure in the corker legislation, frankly, in some ways, in fairness but also to make a point. they ought to express themselves hopefully in an equally bipartisan agreement as they voted for corker's bill about what standards they'll bring to the vote they will cast on the agreement. >> anybody else in the audience? one more right here.

>> mark? >> yeah. >> thanks very much. thank you for much to the co-chairman of the task force to john. i want to ask a question that actually hasn't been touched upon. two dimensions of iran's nuclear program of concern to the task force. one is this issue of the sunset provision. this idea, and i think you've all eluded to this, this nuclear deal, regardless of the restrictions, many are going to be sunsetting, disappearing, in ten years. most will be gone in 15 years. in fact, iran will emerge on the industry-sized nuclear infrastructure not with one year breakout but with zero breakout. undetectable breakout. it may happen earlier according to president obama. year 13. the sunset provision, this temporary nature of the nuclear restrictions in exchange for sanctions relief. the second key element, verification, inspection, but the iranians have been stone

walling the iaea for years on the possible military dimensions of iran's program, pmds. can you have a proper verification inspection regime without full disclosure on pmds and the ability to actually talk to the scientists and get the documentation to determine what iran has actually done in the past and what it may still be doing? >> i think all of us will have comments but i'll jump in quickly. i want to talk about it. >> can you say who it is? >> he's the onpenheimer of the iranian program. they aren't going to find anything there. it's been destroyed and paved over. they still can't get there.

if you look at the four-page white paper, about what it was we think was agreed, pmds, previous military dimensions remain a hope to the resolved at some point in the future. they are not a prereq weuisite to signing an agreement. going back to my narrow intelligence lane, it creates an increased burden on verification if i don't have high confidence in where the iranians actually are. not just in material development but the weaponization program. we have intelligence estimates, but they're estimates. for a country that says that's not our objective, they've refused to come clean on their past. i realize mark, that if we insist on that, it's a deal breaker for the iranians. i don't know why we have to accept that that premise.

how can we know their intent, how can we know their capacity for breakout or sneakout without high confidence in where they are right now. >> absolutely. i couldn't agree with you more. i would add that as another element to the whatever expression by members of congress on the pmd particularly. it probably is a deal breaker. how can you make a deal with a country that won't agree to that kind of reasonable term and has still armed the iaea, which i need not remind this audience is not a branch of the united states government but of the united nations. with apologies, i have to go. thank you. it's been a wonderful discussion. [ applause ] >> with that, we're going to close it out. mark has a few final comments.

people can -- >> thank you, senator lieberman. general hayden. evan bayh. i want to thank ray from the council of foreign relations who was the originator of the idea behind the iran task force. ray, thanks for inviting me to be your partner in this. the task force has ten memos we put out. ten reports. 11th will be coming out in the next week. i want to thank a great participant in the task force and brings extensive experience with the iaea. one of the few people in washington who had to spend a lot of time negotiating with the iranian nuclear scientists. he has a lot of expertise and war stories about that most pleasant experience. task force on iran.org is where you'll find the materials. look for more memos and reports coming from the task force. we welcome a vigorous debate on this issue over the coming months. again, look forward to seeing all of you at future events. thank you again.

[ applause ] >> thank you. appreciate it. our live coverage continues at 4:00 eastern on c-span3 with a hearing on veterans care. in recent memo a senior official in the department of veterans affairs alleged gross mismanagement for contracts of veterans health care. a house oversight subcommittee hears this afternoon from va executives including the author of the internal memo.

live coverage begins at 4:00 p.m. eastern again right here on c-span3. this summer book tv will cover book festivals from around the country. top non-fiction authors and books. this weekend, live from the chicago tribune fest, including the three-hour live in-depth program with lawrence wright. your phone calls. near the end of june watch for the roosevelt reading festival from the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library. in the middle of july live at the harlem book fair the african-american literary book event with panel discussions. at the beginning of september, live from the nation's capital for the national book festival celebrating its 15th year. that's a few of the events this summer on c-span2's book tv. a group of reporters now discuss their jobs covering the white house and the changing relationship between

presidential administrations and the press core. speakers include correspondents from the "new york times," abc news, the associated press and npr. this hour-long event was co-hosted by the national journal and the white house correspondence association. >> everyone else is going back to work. i hope that doesn't make your competitive anxiety set in. this is a great group. thank you all for coming and taking time out of your news day to be part of this conversation. this is, of course, our annual scholarship panel. we have our 17 scholarship winners sitting in the front. they'll get a chance to ask a few questions as we go along here. i hope this will be valuable for everybody. the practicing journalists in the room, too. even if you're been covering the white house for ten years or 20 years. there's always something to learn from your colleagues who do it well. that's who is on the panel today. these are the four white house

correspondents among the winners of our whca excellence in performance of journalism awards this year. i'll introduce them to you by name. and then we're going to -- they'll tell stories for us and give us some of the tricks of the trade. i'm co-hosting this with carol lee, the vice president of whca. she is the white house correspondent for the wall street journal. she breaks a lot of news at the white house. does domestic foreign. we chase her all the time. it's great to have her perspective on the panel too. immediately to my left is josh letterman of the associated press. he works at the white house booth of the ap. jim ovala works for abc news. my old colleague from chicago. he covers the white house for abc. scott horsley is white house correspondent for npr and a member of the whca board.

peter is a correspondent from the "new york times" and, of course, carol lee. let's give them a hand. [ applause ] >> i really love the range of winners we have this year because when you put this group of four people together and look at the way they've covered the beat, they really show a diverse approach to covering the white house. each has excelled in a distinct way of doing their job. i want to start with josh letterman, who did some classic beat reporting on the secret service. has everybody heard of the fence jumper? you know what a fence jumper is? a person who climbs over the fence of the white house and, typically, gets tackled before making it across the north lawn. one night, that was not the case. josh letterman was standing his post at the ap booth. why don't you pick it up from there? >> i think it was around 8:00 p.m. or so. most of the correspondents at the white house had already left

for the evening. the news day was basically over. there were a handful of us from the wires and from a few of the television networks who were still in the building. started to hear a commotion outside the doors of the press briefing room. a few of us ran outside to see what was going on. it seemed from the flurry of activity and the secret service, there was something going on. now, those of us that are spending time at the white house know that lock downs at the white house are relatively routine. even fence jumpers have been, you know three four times a year. it's an event but not particularly remarkable one. there seemed to be something, a level of alarm that the secret service was displaying that suggested that this may have been a little bit something out of the ordinary. i headed into the press area of

the white house which is sort of at the entrance to the west wing, for those of you who haven't spent a lot of time there. to try and figure out if i could figure out what was going on. nobody had any -- they said, no everybody is fine. we would have gotten an e-mail if something had happened. nobody happened. right about that moment, secret service agents came -- stormed in from the west wing with these really large semi-automatic weapons. you've seen the secret service carry them around. their tactical teams on the grounds of the white house. it was the first time i'd ever seen one of those out and sort of in shooting position inside the actual west wing. they immediately pulled us all, those of us in the press

offices, down into the west wing and into the basement. so it ended up that i was down in the basement with most of the white house officials, you know, obama's senior adviser and communications director also being evacuated first into the basement and shortly thereafter, outside into this middle ground between the entrance to the west wing and the eisenhower executive office building. this is another one of the indications that something was happening that might have been a little different than the usual fence jumper who hops over they get him and it's end of story. game over. the fact that they had evacuated most of the white house. in my two and a half years at the white house, i could not remember any time there had been an evacuation of the white house. you could tell from the way that

they were -- the secret service was first trying to make sure any foreign nationals that had been in the building were out and escorted out to the street. just from their general behavior something more to this story than what -- a usual fence jumper -- >> how were you able -- you put something on the wire like before midnight that night, how were you able to confirm something enough to start the wire reporting? >> the first report that i filed came actually from a uniformed secret service agent who was not supposed to be talking to the press but was sort of in this fray of people running around. and basically told us there was somebody that hopped the fence and that's what we're dealing with. so we moved from my phone i filed a quick story that hit the wire probably around 8:33 about that smgzituation. the secret service went on lock down. they wouldn't talk to anyone. they told us they were scrambling people to come down

to hair their headquarters. they were getting their ducks in the row. around 10:00 p.m. they kicked us out of the white house as they do in the evenings. i relocated to my apartment and we continued to just hammer all-oour sources to try and figure out what exactly had gone on. and right around midnight we found out that yes there had been a fence jumper, but not only that but he had actually made it inside the white house which was an unprecedented security breach that raised all kinds of questions about whether the security protocols that they have to respond to fence jumpers is really adequate. we knew this was going to be a big story. so we popped out an alert. just around midnight and from there, you know, started building a breaking story, you know trying to wrap in both the details of what had happened and this one incident and sort of the broader implications for the

secret service. >> you did some reporting by twitter that night, is that right. >> this was a friday evening, very late and there was no one around. and the kind of flurry of reaction you would start getting unsolicited on a thursday afternoon or something from members of congress and 30 interest groups that want quotes in your stories were all asleep or drunk or at their parties or doing something else. i happened to notice a tweet from congressman jason chaffetz of utah who was going to be the inm incoming chairman of the house with jurisdictions over the secret service saying something about how alarming it was. i made contact with him through twitter only to find out he was on a plane flying home to his district and was not going to be landing until you know, something like 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. d.c. time. but was able to get him to agree to do an e-mail interview over

his -- using his in flight wireless while he was on the flight. so through that process we were able to learn that there had been another series of other security breaches that he had been investigating for more than a year, to be able to get that context and his reaction into the story as well. >> that is shoe leather reporting in the digital age. i want to pause on that story right now. i just want to make this comment for the young journalists in the room, this is, to me this speaks volumes about the importance of beat reporting at the white house. if the reporters hadn't been there the statement from the secret service would have been nothing to see here don't worry about it. if josh hadn't been there on a regular basis and understood the rhythm of the white house and realized something really important was happening and sort of being able to pinpoint where it was happening that's all part of the beat reporters' tool

kit. let's pause there and go to a beat reporter who did something totally different when the story started to break about the warming relations between the u.s. and cuba. he reported at the white house and then got on a plane. tell us that story. >> this is about the release of allen gross who was a hostage in prison in cuba for five years. how it started is it's really a combination of sources at the white house, sources in cuba. i have been covering since the pope went there back in '96 intermittently. i had sources there i was there during the elian crisis too. i had sources there and worked them as well as working the white house sources and also some sources in town who represented to allen gross as well. i first started getting interested in the story because i wanted to interview allen gross.

that was the impetus of it. he was in prison i wanted to go back to cuba. i thought it would be a good way to do it. as i started making inquiries about that to the cuban government, they said, well, you know, we don't think that's going to happen. allen says he's going to die at the end of the year by starving himself to death. we're not really going to give him any interviews. so that was sort of the start. then i went -- we found out who his attorney was we started working him about can we get in there, get some video of him, can we do something. and we started getting hints from sources that something was in the works. that perhaps he would -- that neither cuba nor the united states wanted this man to die in prison. neither side did. but there was the issue was that there were five cubans who were in the united states in prison and three of them were still in prison two of them had been released and the cubans wanted a

prissieresh change. the united states didn't want to do a prisoner exchange. they were debating about it they were talking about it. i started working my white house sources. and trying to find out what stage they were in. at first it was just sort of well -- the word i remember clearly was a very high up source in the national security council telling me that something was perculating. and that was about two months before the release, i think it was. and it's interesting where this happened, too. i will say that one of the things that we are getting away from or the networks especially and i think some magazines and newspapers as well trying to get away from is traveling with the president all the time. and but one of the -- we keep pushing back to our bosses about, at least the network level, is that yes, there may not be huge stories that we're going to break on these trips

with the president when he goes places. but we have unusual access during -- my colleagues know that. we have unusual access to the people who normally had -- may not return your call when you're in washington. but when you're in china or you're in burma or you're in hawaii for two weeks with the president, there's a lot of time to talk informally with people who are your sources. and it was on one of these trips where a very high up person told me before the end of the year. so we had -- we sort of knew -- we worked, focused on that. all this time we weren't doing any stories about it. this was all groundworth work. we didn't do an occasional piece how allen gross was and what his physical condition was. in general we weren't doing stories every day on it. i was going about my other work. then we actually nailed down the

week it was going to happen. when i nailed down the week it was going to happen from a source not at the white house, i went to the white house. and i said look, i'm about to report this. is that going to -- this was an interesting question for you guys to talk about as students about how, you know, my colleagues as well. we went to the white house and i said this is what i have. i know it's going to happen this week before he goes on his vacation, if i report this is that going to jeopardize allen gross's life because he had threatened to kill himself he didn't get released. the white house said, well, let me get back to you. they did, to their credit they did get back to me. they said, okay you have it. it is going to happen on that day. here's the deal. if you don't -- if you wait and we'll -- you can report it first, and then we'll verify it with everybody else afterwards immediately afterwards. as soon as he wheels up and out of cuban airspace and therefore

he's safe. and so my producer and i who is here flew to miami and waited for a call from josh earnest. and i was -- in front of a live camera, i got a call from josh earnest and we went with the story and broke it on good morning america. part of the deal also was that our anchor, david muir would get an interview with president obama about the -- this was not just about prisoner exchange but was in fact the beginning of a new era of relations between our two countries and david muir was able to sit down with president obama and talk with him about that. i went on from miami to cuba and reported that evening on the evening news about the reaction kine cuba. >> i would highlight one point he made in all that. which is an incredible story. that is he did not get his very solid information from inside the white house. that is most often the case the

best stuff comes not from them. and, you know you -- so often you have something from somewhere else and then you go to them. if they want to play ball which they clearly did with you, then they will. if not then you have a choice to make to do your own story either way. the question for you is if you did -- they make his life is threatened case to you or did they say, no but if you wait, we'll do this? >> the case they made was if we were to -- what they were concerned about i have to be careful a little bit because some of it is off the record conversations. in general what the white house was concerned about was inflaming miami before it happened. and in some way, that would cause some kind of incident that would stop the negotiations. and, therefore indirectly put