society and supreme court justices. they're not seeking those warrants and hopefully, they're not wiretapping those people. so it's a little unfair to call it a rubber stamp just because they approve at the end of the day most things that do come before them. now the question is, judge robertson, you said you thought -- i think you said you thought the reason counters are reluctant -- have been reluctant, pat wald said extraordinarily deferential in foia cases where national security is claimed and in state secret cases is because they felt they weren't expert. but courts handle all the time questions where they don't start out as being an expert on this subject. i thought it's more -- it's because they're afraid of being wrong in the national security

context. and it does help lou oberduffer used it where someone was agreeing 5% of the cases and they ended up agreeing on 80% of the documents. so the question is what can we do to make judges feel more confident in taking only -- taking on national security questions? >> i think burt wants to make a small intervention before we turn it over to the panelists. >> in response, in 1975 phil hart got an amendment to the foia act which said when is a court appeal from an agency denial, the judge is directed to make a de novo determination of the claim of national security balanced against the purpose of

foia. unfortunately, in the conference report language they put in some stuff about deference, so most judges have treated it as a dead letter. but it's already statutory law. >> so i want to give our panelists a chance to make some last remarks. want to start there? >> again, i think the institutional challenges and in the courts in terms of classified information, deference to the government, but i think we have seen the second circuit and hopefully more circuits soon standing up and boldly expressing their views in favor of civil liberties and the compliance with law. so i guess i remain optimistic. i do think that it's critical to reform the fisa court outside of the warrant functions so that it performs more effectively and i think u.s. freedom act goes a long way toward doing that. >> after you. >> you're next in line. you know, just on the freedom of

information act, fritz, i think there's some greater hope than perhaps i started off with. i'm thinking of the d.c. circuit and the second circuit both in foia seeking information about the use of drone in the targeted killing policy. one circuit said it was implauzable that the cia does not have an intelligence interest in the program and that the cia could not invoke a -- you know neither confirm or deny response. i think it's very encouraging that the second circuit ruled as it did last year where it recognized that when administration officials campaigned to convince the public that the program is lawful and effective and wise and seeks to justify that, they cannot seek to withhold the bases for their decision and ordered the release of a memo that justified if -- the targeted killing of the u.s. citizen. and i think far more needs to be done. i think we need just not only

the legal memos we need the facts and the same kind of reasoning might apply in other contexts where i think there's room for the judiciary to be more skeptical about national security harm which is what the cases down to in the foia context. you know, with respect to usa freedom i think, you know, there are opinions that are genuinely angst ridden and i think there are significant reforms that need to be made to that statute. the aclu has not taken a position against it and it's a step forward, but much more needs to be done and our thinking is that probably on balance that it should sunset and we should have a conversation that starts out from basic premises given where we are now, knowing as the pclob

and the presidential review group and the doj's inspector general has said that section 215 authority has not been critical for stopping any kind of terrorist attack and that perhaps is where we are able to have more of a reasoned and reasonable and less emotional debate about these kinds of issues. >> i'm back with fritz schwarz. a question of whether it's lack of knowledge or fear that makes judges -- fear they may be wrong that makes judges defer the way they do and i see that actually as sort of two faces of the same problem. i may not be smart enough, i may be wrong, i may get somebody killed. all of that goes in to the algorithm that goes through the judge's head when the judge is making a decision.

i -- i like the idea that the confluence of the left and the right on civil liberties is going to make judges -- is going to make judges more skeptical and make -- and give judges a little more room to speak out than they have felt they should. you know the truth is and maybe it's just the generational thing. but the truth is that when you get an article 3 appointment for life you take on a heavy responsibility to everybody. and it isn't just you out there swinging away at whatever targets you want to swing away at. there are all kinds of -- there are all kinds of other forces operating on you all the time and judges do certainly at the district court level, they tend to be perhaps overly modest. a few -- if you have the guts to

speak out, god bless them. judge lynch on the second circuit, god bless him. that was a great opinion and it's not going to be every judge all the time. it's just going to be a few. >> well, thank you very much. and i hope you all join me in thanking our panelists. a great session. tonight on american history tv, this coming august will mark 70 years since the hiroshima and nagasaki atomic bombings. the manhattan project produced the first nuclear weapons during world war ii. at 8:00 p.m. girls of the manhattan project. then at 8:40 espionage and the

manhattan project. 8:40 remembering the director general leslie groves and physicist jay robert oppenheimer. that's all tonight starting at 8:00 eastern on american history tv here on c-span 3. well, the supreme court today finished up its term issuing three decisions and starting just before 6:30 we'll show you oral argument from the cases. we'll begin with the justices overturning the obama administration's land mark air quality ruling deciding 5-4 that the environmental protection agency did not properly consider the costs of the regulation. and in another 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that states may use a drug in executions. that's at 8:00. and then the justices approve the use of the independent commission to draw district lines in arizona. steering clear of a ruling that could have created upheaval for 100 congressional races across the country. that oral argument airs just past 9:00 tonight.

tonight on the communications, we visited microsoft's washington, d.c. office to hear about their lobbying goals and current research projects. we will talk with the three about it. >> i'm hopeful that congress will take on high skilled immigration, because you know h 1 b is still very much important. and frankly, i don't know the exact number but when we have some of the -- you know, innovator innovators, the researchers that are here, you know we have people from all over the world. they made contributions at microsoft for the science and engineers and it's for other companies as well. they're still in need. when you look at it from a job perspective. >> the application of project premonition is actually to

collect mosquitos that have bitten people and to determine what kind of viruses might be around. what kind of diseases might be around. through taking the blood samples of the mosquitos and figuring out the genetic code of some of the constituents of their blood. >> the premise of this research project was around what we were -- what we would be able to do with data freely available to the environment today. one of the things that we have noticed is that there are a lot of aircraft flying around in the united states that could be considered censors. they have data on them. they're providing information and it's relatively freely available. provided by the faa and there's companies like flight aware who use that information to provide information to the community about what airplanes are doing. so we decided to take that information and see if we could use that to help us predict a

more accurate winds aloft forecast. >> winds aloft? >> winds aloft. what the wind is doing in speed and direction above the earth. >> a visit to microsoft's washington, d.c. office tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span 2. new jersey governor chris christie is expected to make a presidential campaign announcement tomorrow. yesterday, he released this preannouncement video. >> i get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and say what's on my mind just a little bit too loudly. i have an irish father, and i had a sicilian mother. now, for those of you hooting, you know that that means, right?

my mom was the one who set the rules and set the tone. no suffering in silence. you've got a problem, tell me. she would tell us every time she had a problem. to the point where it was like mom, do we have to hear this? and she would say, yes, i need to get it off my chest now. there will be no death bed confessions in this family, you're going to hear it now! in 2004, my mom got diagnosed with cancer. and all of you have lost a family member to cancer. you understand what this scene is like. she grabbed my hand and said, christopher, there's nothing left unsaid between us. it was an incredibly powerful moment in my life. and that moment was created by her. her whole life. i knew she loved me and she knew i loved her. when people wonder why i do the things i do, that moment affirmed for me forever that i'm going to be this way. i know if my mom were still alive she would say to me, i taught you that in a trusting

relationship you don't hold anything back. and if you're going to run for president of the united states, and you're going to ask these people for their vote that is the single most trusting thing they can do as a citizen is to give you their support. so you better tell them exactly what you're thinking and exactly what you're feeling. and when you ask about my moral compass, that's it. that's it. >> and we'll carry governor christie's announcement tomorrow when it happens on the c-span networks. you'll be able to see it again tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. we have more now from a forum on intelligence oversight in washington, d.c. and the current oversight of the intelligence agencies and what's ahead. this panel focuses on the role of the executive branch and internal checks and balances. former congressional staffers

who worked on intelligence oversight are among the speakers hosted last month by brennan center for justice. >> all right. welcome back. thank you for hanging in there with us since we moved further into the afternoon. i'm liza goitein. i'll be monitoring the discussion on oversight within the executive branch. this panel moves us from external oversight to internal oversight. which is a real -- one of things is not like the other kind of shift. to begin with the constitution creates a system of checks and

balances among the three branches of government. precisely because the framers didn't think they would do a good job of checking themselves and the federal government has grown so massive and the information disparity between the executive branch and the other branches has grown so great that it's not impossible or desirable to leave it entirely to the congresser the courts. in the intelligence area in particular there's substantial reliance on internal oversight. that's in part due to some of the limitations on congressional and judicial review in the national security context. which we heard about on the earlier panels. and in fact when administration officials talk about some of those limitations on external review, they often invoke the level of oversight that happens from within. so this tells us that this internal regime is at least in part being used to compensate for a lesser degree of external

oversight as well as to complement that oversight where it exists. and the panoply of overseers within the intelligence community is inmpressive. the nsa is overseen by no fewer than 12 executive branch offices. to name a few of them, the nsa's director of compliance the general counsel, the inspector general, the nsa civil liberties and privacy office. the inspecter general for the intelligence community. the civil liberties office and the privacy and civil liberties oversight board. but of course the existence of oversight mechanisms doesn't guarantee their effectiveness. quantity does not ensure quality. in the last couple of years, a couple of -- a series of fisa court opinions were released showing that the nsa had

routinely failed to comply with court orders in each of three major collection programs. on the one hand, it was internal oversight that cause these problems and led to the correction. on the other hand, these violations were numerous, significant and widespread. and they continued for years before the government detected and reported them. the effectiveness of oversight can of course be impacted by the rules that govern it. so for example, congress has authorized the heads of intelligence agencies to block inspector general investigations involving sensitive national security matters. and these kinds of rules and constraints can in theory be changed. there are some more difficult questions potentially surrounding the dynamics of internal oversight and in particular, how an internal overseer that exists within an organization and within the organization's culture can maintain the necessary objectivity. we have certainly seen some

courageous and thorough and rigorous investigations and one example that comes to mind is the reviews of national security letters that were performed by the justice department's inspector general the former inspector general glenn fine. we have seen reports that outsiders have described as whitewashes and we recently saw the cia inspector general step down after antagonizing cia leadership with a critical report and that was the report on the agency's monitoring of senate intelligence committee members investigating the torture program. this raises a number of questions that i'm hoping we can touch on today. can internal oversight on which we are increasingly reliant perform the same functions as external oversight? what are some of the advantages as well as the limitations of oversight from within?

and perhaps most important, what changes can be implemented to improve internal oversight? i cannot be more enthusiastic about the group of people that we have put together to discuss these questions and i'm going to introduce them very briefly, but there's much more information on them in your programs. first, michael horowitz is the inspector general for the department of justice, a position that he's held since 2012. i'm going to skip over some of your background. he's held many positions within the department of justice. starting i believe as a prosecutor in the southern district of new york. and went to harvard law school, but i'm still glad he's here. nobody got that except you. margot schlanger is a professor of law at the university of michigan and her teaches focuses on how to induce large and complex organizes to respect them, and she importantly served in 2010 and 2011 as the

presidentially appointed officer at the department of homeland security. next we have shirin sinnar, an assistant professor of law at stanford and her scholarship focuses on protecting individual rights in the national security context and has worked as a public interest attorney in san francisco. and finally, we have alex joel who has been the civil liberties protection officer for national intelligence since 2005. ten years. in that capacity, he leads the civil liberties and reports directly to the director of national intelligence. so i'm going to start right in with questions for the panelist. the first for michael horowitz. what has your experience taught you about the advantages and the challenges of oversight from within? i'm sure we all love to hear actual examples if you're in a position to give them. >> i certainly learned a lot in three years now on the job as

inspector general. spoke at length with glenn about his experiences at ig and some of the issues and challenges he's face and now seen it up close and directly myself. you know, released a 215 report a follow-up report on nsl, follow-up report on some of the other authorities out there. we talked to the 702 report. unfortunately many of those are not public. and in the full way we'd like it to be out there. we talked about this a little bit as well. but there are a number of challenges but i think a number of very positive reasons why an ig's office can have an impact. i think you have seen some of that over the last ten-plus years with what our office has done. we are of course within the agency. and one of the things we have to make sure we keep in mind in everything that we do is what

the i g expects of us which is to be independent. we may be in the agency, but we're independent. if you look at our reports you see us referring to the department, the department of justice and then us, and we try to keep the two separate. we -- we'll talk about this further about access. being within the department, we should have complete unrestricted access to all the reference we need to do our work. that has been an issue over the last five years for our office, i testified at length about it. it began before glenn left and during the acting ig's tenure and continued for the last three years as i have been ig. we have been able toette get all of the records that we asked for and it's been an issue and some of the national reviews we have done. one of the advantages in the way we are set up, we should have complete access to all of the

records in for example the fbi's possession as we're doing these reviews of their national security. another advantage is we have the staff that we have that has done this work has been with us for many years. they have developed an expertise. we understand the department from being within the department, and that continuity is very important. the folks that have worked on the most recent 215 reports worked -- most recent 215 report, worked on prior report, worked on 702 on the other reports. we have a continual knowledge base that i think is a significant advantage and we have an understanding of the organization. and the culture of the organization. and we have some ideas going in of the struggles we're likely to face. the substantive and the procedural level. i think we bring that as well.

we also have access to people. which is a very significant part of what we do. we have the right to interview and to compel if necessary the interviews of all the doj employees. and we generally have not had difficulty getting people to speak to us voluntarily. we haven't had to use the authority to compel. we have had difficulty getting those who left the department. we don't have the ability or people who left the department of justice, to compel them. we don't have, for example testimonial subpoena authority. although that in one of the -- in both ig reform bills that are pending in congress. so there are limits to what we can get in terms of testimonial information from individuals who left the department. but for staff that are still within the department and employees that are still within the department, we have a right of access that has to speak to

us. we can compel their testimony if they refuse to speak to us, it's a termination offense within the department. >> before i go on to margot, i want to ask you more about the access issue that you mentioned. i think that's important and i want to give you more time to flesh out what that issue has been. >> so what occurred back in 2010 is the fbi office of general counsel took a completely different real position that it had taken in the eight years prior to 2010. in 2002, just to rewind, in 2002, we first got authority over the fbi and the dea. when attorney general ashcroft extended our jurisdiction to cover both organizations. in 2003, congress codified that decision. and during that eight-year period, in the various national security reviews we did and other reviews that we did of the fbi we got access to documents.

we had -- there's always attention, there's always a back and forth about volume, scope, all the things that occur in any process that involves requesting large-scale -- large amounts of documents, but we never had interposed to us a legal objection. it was all based on sensitivity, security issues, how we were going to maintain records. whether we needed 50,000 records, is there any way we can refine the request, those sort of things. it was never about do we have the legal authority to get the records? that changed in 2010. the fbi office of general counsel took the position it was with regard to a variety of categories of records. well, specifically what was at the issue the wiretap information and the fair credit reporting act information and we were not entitled to get access to under the ig action which section 6-a provides the inspector generals -- i'm just

paraphrasing now, should get access to all records that it requests. it is pretty clear. the fbi's position was that because the three statutes were post dated and they were overruling or limiting the authorities in those, the limitations that exist in those other statutes, those other provisions apply still. the ig acted to override it and therefore we were subject to the same limitations that others were on the grand jury title 3 wiretap and fair credit report information. that seemed to glenn, the interim and the acting ig and myself, and interesting novel change in position. when if you all look, you will find in 2010 nothing happened to the law. the law didn't change. no regulations changed. no policies changed.

so even though for eight years we had gotten wiretap information and grand jury information and fair credit report information all of a sudden the fbi decided that those decisions that previously had been made were wrong. it's our view, remains our view today that nothing had changed. the law remains as clear today as it did in 2010 or 2002. and in the intervening years when we got all of that information, yet the fbi changed its position. to give you an example of how that affected the work we did, we were in the middle of the nsl review we released last year. and in 2009 when we began that review we asked for fair credit reporting information and we got it. in 2010, as we were doing a field visit, we found out when we arrived in the office that they weren't going to give us the information.

that we had seen a year earlier because their legal position had changed in the intervening year. that resulted in -- you will see this in our report if you look in our report because we have made public all of these issues. that resulted in a nearly year long delay in our work while this issue was pending and remains pending to this day. >> but what i find interesting about this dispute is that there were i think 47 inspectors general who signed a letter to congress, not only supporting your position, but also sort of intimating this was a more of a widespread problem. there were issues with access to information that inspectors general more broadly had. is that a fair characterization of -- >> it is. and i think what we have seen as a community most igs have not faced the argument that the law prohibits them receiving information. what most igs -- i mean, what they have struggled with including us and other areas is

getting timely access to records. dealing with all the frivolous, baseless arguments that we can face sometimes in getting our work done and getting access to records. >> so margot, jeff goldsmith the former head of the justice department's office of legal counsel wrote a book "power and constraint" and in this book he argues that intelligence oversight is actually at an all-time high. particularly within the executive branch. because of the sheer number of lawyers and compliance officers and others who are devoted to internal oversight. is he right about that and if so, can we all just relax and go home? >> well, as a matter of basic fact, yes, he is right about that. there's no question that there are more people inside the executive branch now whose job is to check up on their

colleagues than there have been before the igs offices are bigger and there are more of them. the offices of compliance are -- they exist now and they didn't used to or where they did used to, they have moved up in the organizational chart. in the ic in particular there's a minitrend of the offices of civil liberties and privacy like the one that alex heads and the one i used to head. so there have been new people whose job is in part internal check. most of them are less independent than the ig's offices. the ig offices have unique independence, but the answer is yes, there are more people doing that. the thing about lawyers mostly and even in the offices where they're not explicitly practicing law they're mostly lawyers. this is good for law, because lawyers are good at reading laws and understanding what they

require. and so if you have an agency that's interested in following the law, that agency is going to have to some lawyers unless the law is really simple which it is not. >> right. >> so this is a necessary change it seems to me. so -- and agencies where the lawyers used to be banished to out buildings, they're now in the headquarters and so on. you can read about that in various memoirs and so on. or there's a passage in the church committee reports where i can't actually remember who this was. who was this? it was senator mondale asking the question, but i don't remember who he was asking. he said did it ever occur to you this might be illegal and the answer was what? seriously, that was the answer. what, illegal, like against the law and the answer was no. i don't remember us ever discussing that issue. it wasn't -- so i don't think you'd have that conversation any longer.

that's the reason. lawyers, i don't mean to say that lawyers are unmitigated good. i would be interested to know how long of us here are lawyers but we are not an unmitigated good. we can use our lawyerly skills against rule following too, right? so lawyers there's nobody better at interpreting rules out of existence than a good lawyer. there's nobody better at reinterpreting what look like plain english words to discover that they contain unfathomable ambiguity that we didn't see when you read them the first time. lawyers have excellent not following rules skills too. i think that those things are somewhat in bad faith but when lawyers operate in good faith it is a core commitment of the legal profession that you're counseling your client as opposed to your own ideas about what should happen. one of the things you do as a lawyer is you create and then

explain the space that is available to your client. that's good faith. that's before we get to interpreting rules out of existence and finding ambiguity when there is none. so lawyers lawyers are professionally predisposed i think to talking about floors. they want to give their clients as much space as possible in which to carry out their client's mission. that's actually their job as lawyers. i'm not talking about bad faith lawyering. i'm not talking about finding ambiguity where there is no ambiguity, but where is there some. have you read, fisa, for example? it's a tough, complicated statute, you know? so what i have -- what i think is true is that all of those lawyers do a lot for creation of a floor of rule following. i'm on the optimistic side of

this. i see people in the audience right here who have told me i'm crazy, but i don't think i'm crazy. i think all the lawyers create a floor for rule following. i think they depress the floor a little, but they create a floor and that's really important. but i don't think we should fool ourselves. they don't do more than that. the lawyers are not about achieving the right balance between liberty and security. that's -- you know? it turns out that you know, laws sometimes do that and sometimes they don't. and lawyers don't reform laws. lawyers are about implementing laws. the fourth amendment itself is not -- the fourth amendment when adjudicated there's a lot of signs, a lot of opinions that talk about, you know, deference. so if what we're interested in is not near compliance, but the right balance, the right -- the right policy, the right

operations, i don't think we should expect that from lawyers alone. although i do think we can expect you know, enforcement of a slightly depressed -- >> is that a role for overseers? because what you have just described finding a right balance is to me an interesting concept of oversight, and people would look at that and say, compliance is what you're looking for. you're looking for the floor. do overseers have a role also in sort of looking to see whether they're at that right balance is being struck? >> so i think that some place, somehow there have to be a lot of people whose job it is to figure out what the right policy is. a lot of people. so let's think again since this is a church community day let's think of the church committee. the church committee didn't stop i be saying, there's no statute that bans assassination so i guess it's okay. that wasn't the way that the conversation happens, right? the church committee proposed

drafting of, implementation and enforcement of a set of -- maybe i shouldn't have started with assassination, but a set of new rules. i think that's a crucial part of an oversight function and i think and i have written as you know that that has to happen both within the executive branch, between the executive and between the executive and congressional branches. i think that the congressional branch can only be expected to rejigger the rules every once in a while in sort of a spurt of attention. i'm just -- maybe this is a sign of the age that we currently live in. i mean, a different age. i would have different ambitions for the congress. but these are -- that's my ambition for the congress. that every once in a while, something will startle it into you know, passing a statute. >> maybe on sunday. >> maybe on sunday. >> for example.

>> and reconfiguring the rules then. then in between and maybe in addition, i think it is the job of the executive branch to not only faithfully execute the laws but to do so in a way that is as effective and civil liberties protective as it can be consistent with carrying out the laws and carrying out its obligations. so i think there should be policy shops within the executive branch and they could be call things like offices of privacy and civil liberties that do some policy work. you're going to ask me other questions later where i can elaborate on that, but they could be called other things too. they could be called policy offices and lots of stuff but somehow inside the executive branch the downside of lawyers is that sometimes the lawyers say, yeah, that's legal. and that's legal which i call the can we question, substitutes for that's a good idea which is the should we question.

and can we and should we are not the same question. this is something that i tell my 15-year-olds often. and i think the executive branch needs to act on that insight and needs to know just because something is legal under current law, which may well change if you know, congress passed laws but just because something is legal doesn't mean it is good. and they should ask often, is that a good idea? and is that a good idea entails taking very seriously both the effectiveness of the proposed course of conduct and the downside negative impact of the proposed course of action. as far as both intelligence and civil liberties. so i think that -- i don't know if you'd call that oversight exactly but i do think that there is a really important role. that in order to get that kind of activity in congress, in the

executive branch we need to create an ecosystem where there's a lot of people ginning up a lot of information and a lot of ideas that are kind of cross fertilizing and communicating all in secret. no, not all in secret, but mostly in secret because i think that's inevitable. where they can talk to each other and sometimes the should we question gets asked in a really rigorous way. inside and outside the executive branch. so some of the offices that you're calling compliance offices i might call them policy offices instead and say that's their unique role. i think the igs do some of this. i think the igs do more compliance. >> and i'd like to turn to the example and combine the functions. >> so that's the ecosystem idea and what it does is i have kind

of written about this idea of intelligence legalism which is an idea that as a result rule following substitutes for virtue. and, you know, rule following is not bad. i'm in favor of it. it has some down sides but i'm in favor of it. but it's not the same as virtue or if you want to sound less you know, greek. maybe it's not the same, the should we question is not the same -- i'm sorry, the can we question is not the same. >> i think we'll come back to in a little bit. shirin i wanted to ask you another question about the book, i want to say i did invite him to be on the panel but he had another commitment. but in the book he says that the presence of inspectors general and other internal overseers has actually had the net effect of expanding rather than constraining executive power because congress and the courts and the public feel more comfortable and trusting the

executive with broad authorities when the overseers are there. do you think that's right and if so, you know, is more power but more oversight a worthwhile tradeoff? >> so in a sense the question is an impossible one to measure. right? this idea of whether on net the effect of internal -- to increase or to moderate executive power. clearly there are two dynamics at play. one dynamic is that internal oversight can and i think in notable instances has led to limits on national security accesses and in fact increased and reinforced the stringency of external review. we mentioned the national security letters review by the ig by from 2007 to 2010. i think that's a good example of that, where first, the reviews exposed the practice that had

been essentially unknown outside the fbi. this practice of using exigent letters to obtain phone records under false premises and outside standard legal processes. and in doing so it not only led to a curtailment of that particular practice, but also led the fbi to adopt more stringent internal oversight mechanisms so to make a more robust and internal compliance program and so forth. as well as triggering a more extensive public debate around those issues. similarly internal oversight has led in particular areas to an increased willingness on the part of courts to move forward with civil rights litigation. we see a number of examples where in you know responding to motions to dismiss constitutional challenges, courts have looked extensively to information that's come out of ig reviews to say look there's actually quite some

evidence that policies have not been implemented and, you know, in the way they should and encouraging them to -- to go forward with constitutional review. so i think there's that dynamic of auditors having incredibly important role in both public transparency on these issues and then in promoting this broader dialogue and reinforcing external oversight and of course at the same time, we see that the presence of internal oversight is used by both courts and members of congress to say, well, it's okay to delegate broader discretion to the executive and that the fact that we have ig oversight, you know, or other forms of internal control is a reason for us to be less concerned. we have seen that in debates oh ever the year. you look at any major piece of legislation, the fisa amendments act, the patriot re-authorization act and all of

these debates you know, there are plenty of comments from legislators saying, well, look, we're inserting this provision for ig oversight and it makes acceptable this broad delegation to the executive. so i think at the end of the day, in response, you know, to the question we -- there's no set answer. you know, what it means is in my mind at least two things. first that paying attention to what these internal executive institutions are doing and holding them accountable and showing that they're effective at what they do is incredibly important. for every example of the ig that sees its role as staunchly independent and you know, frequently looks -- looks to civil liberties and rights there are other examples of igs who see their roles in less of an independent term and end up coming across as more defenders of the agencies rather than as

offices that are taking a very critical view. and some igs who say quite directly that you know individual rights concerns that's not part of what we do. that's not part of the core mandate. i heard that from the igs in part of my research. so holding the institutions accountable and making sure that that you know we are not just establishing organizations without seeing that they're actually being able to be effective is crucial. the second part -- the last thing i will say is that i think it's important to distinguish between what these offices can and can't do. i think margot's comments go to that as well. some are about compliance and looking at the implementation of policies. others are particularly useful in pushing back against claims of government secrecy. but to my mind none of these institutions can really compensate for -- i mean, what margot says is a lack of

constitutional floor setting. that congress is not legislating, that floor does go quite a bit do you know and, you know, maybe we can talk more about this afterwards but i have some skepticism about the ability of very internal, sort of subservient offices framed, whether they're civil liberties offices or policy shops to affect substantial policy change where they can't leverage the public discussion or be in greater communication with the public. so i think there are some real concerns about that and additional concerns about cooperation of offices that are ensconced in the structure. >> and it goes back to some of the battles about what he's had to get reports declassified and available to the public. >> absolutely. >> alex, your turn. the intelligence community exists for the purpose of

gathering intelligence, often through surveillance or the exploitation of human sources. this is an undertaking that's inherent secretive and your job is to promote transparency. it seems the decks are stacked against you. why should we nonetheless expect you to succeed? >> first of all, thank you for inviting me. thank you for inviting me. i'm a personal fan of the church committee report. i have a photograph of senator church and senator tower on my desk. the famous one where he's holding up the pistol. and i have read through key volumes several times. i have learned to be careful about saying which ones are the key volumes. there are authors who will argue about which ones are the key volumes and we teach it. you know, we have training that focuses on the church committee and the lessons that we have learned from the church

committee, so the framework we have been discussing at least in my opinion is an outgrowth of the lessons we have learned from the church committee. i was mentioning to lock johnson, the director of national intelligence has strong and vivid personal recollectionbes. very concerned that we don't repeat what was uncovered by the church committee. thank you for this opportunity. it is very important. so why should you think i will be successful? well, you shouldn't base it on me individually. as it's very evident by the fact this is a church committee event, congress didn't suddenly invent the idea of civil liberties and intelligence when they created my position in 2004. it was very much embedded as i just described in the lessons that we learned and those lessons are not manifested in a lot of the institutions that you

guys have been talking about. we're a new thing, but obviously we have had lot of lawyers and the church committee report said i'm sure the office of general counsel took that and ran with it and said we need more lawyers. these things are very well lawyered. we have inspectors general, i guess they have different -- you perhaps have spoken more directly to them, some of them about how they view their roles than i have but it's been my assumption they are an integral part of this framework. you need inspector general with access to information to do their jobs. that's another piece of the puzzle. we of course have other agencies outside of government. we have a privacy board. we heard from david, we work closely with the civil liberties privacy board to make sure they have all the information they

need to do their jobs. we've heard a range of things about congress and intelligence committees. i meant to mention the department of justice is very, department full of lawyers and very focused on make being sure we're doing things the right way in the intelligence community. we also work closely, of course w-the ledges committees and the judiciary committees when called for by the various reporting requirements. in my view that level of oversight has been granular. i know there's a range of opinions about how effective the oversight is from the intelligence committees and what more could to be done and a lot of people have a lot of different views on that. in my experience having done this for a decade we feel very closely overseeing by the intelligence committees people

are up there all the time with briefings, we're providing all kinds of information and reports and they are weighing in making line item by line item decisions on budget matters and things like that. then of course the judiciary it was great to have judge robertson up here on financial. other judges have been speaking out about their experience and i've said this before. i know other people have said it. in my experience it's by no means a rubber stamp. they are rigorous. they are careful. they have a staff that asks a lot of questions and we spend a great deal of time keeping the foreign intelligence court informed. if there are compliance incidents those are promptly reported. if the court gets concerned about a compliance incident they will write a blistering opinion some of which we've released and people can see them. so in my view they are a very real tangible presence that we must respond to and we are required by law to respond to and we feel a very important

part of the system. for me personally one of the thing i focus on is making sure i have a seat at the table. i'm there with director clapper and other intelligence leadership to make sure they are provide the civil liberties and privacy perspective. where i do get it? some from reading. some i talk to advocates trying to arrange for session where advocates can talk to intelligence professionals which i think is the most helpful to have that engagements. i'll close by saying i recognize that even though we have this system of many layers, what i call many layers and many players and it's very complicated it's not a perfect system. there's things we can do to improve it. administration supports the freedom act and nipt clouds changes to the fisa court and includes additional transparency requirements. we have been doing a lot to create transparency. i am coordinating the intelligence community. we need to be more transparent. it's inherently difficult for an tension community to ingrained within their culture the need for greater transparency. the whole culture, the whole system is structured around make being sure we keep our sources

been significant. so -- and i don't want to put words in your mouth, but do i hear you saying that we should expect you to succeed because there's no just view, there is an oversight that you heard of? >> very well put. can you put those words in my mouth and i'll accept those. yes. >> i want to make sure i was understanding you. okay. i'd like to go back to michael and go back to fundamentals here. the constitution. as i mentioned, as we all know, the three branches check one another. by allowing ininspector generals to do their own checks, are we putting our constitutional negz one basket? are you performing a role that congress and the courts should be providing?

i think our roll is very different. we're there to be for the organization but independent of the organization. we have the doj 450 people working for us. we have about 30 lawyers or so doing the oversight. much of it is in the intelligence community and space the reports that we've put out, those are the ones being done by the 30 or so lawyers in our oversight and review division. we're not there to substitute for judicial oversight. it would be a mistake to think that's our role. we also report to congress. i'm regularly briefing members of congress. i'm regularly testify brg congress about our work. and making sure they're well informed about what we're doing.

we have reporting responsibilities. we have responsibilities to report to our leadership and to do a report to our congressional oversight committees. but we're independent of those. and we have to absolutely both in practice in perception in reality make sure that we've kept that independence. >> does anybody else have any thoughts on this question of how we should think of internal oversight within the sort of constitutional scheme of separation of powers? >> you know one of the metaphors that is used often, and i think johnson used it is this idea about oversight as the police model. police on the beat kind of model versus the fire alarm model. one of the things that congress needs if it's going to do an oversight job is it needs to know who to ask. now one method is internal secret sources that we also heard about this morning. another method is there for

there to be offices within the executive branch that congress asks to report to it. and particularly to report triggered by certain things. so when i was at hhs -- i don't think you have the same statute but when i was at dhs one of my requirements under my foundational statute was that if i gave advice to the secretary i had to report, not -- hit to reach a certain level of formality but certain kinds of advice had to be reported and the agency's response had to be reported. that's useful to the congress. it's intimidating to the person in the role which means if you give advice you have to report it to the congress. and so it has a complicated kind of reverb. nonetheless, it is useful to the congress that wants a fire alarm they can say wow is this the kind offish thu somebody gave advice on?

so you get sentence that's said even the internal office of whatever said they shouldn't do that. en that actually turns out to be quite useful to congress. so i think that -- i think that, you know, congress is a they, not an it. the executive is a they not an it. everybody, it's all about this complex web that, ecosystem of action and reporting. the idea is real but it's not an either/or. it's a both/and. they help congress do its job better. >> michael? >> i was going to say. i think something to understand and appreciate is how different alex's office and my office s we're both in our agencies. but, for example i don't have a

seat at the table. i don't want a seat at the table. i have monthly meetings with attorney general and deputy attorney general. but it's just the oig and deputy or the attorney general. i'm not in management meetings. i'm not part of management at the justice department. we've purposely not gone to regular meetings at the department. i'm not there to give advice, informal. when we make a recommendation, it's in a report. assuming it's not classified it's public. that's how we work. and, yet, we're both within structurally on the chart of the executive branch. >> if i could just as a point about institutional design i think there are these different roles of internal institutions. so when we're talking about oversight mechanisms or internal execution organization, there are those that have more internal advice and those with an externl review function. i think what is really

interesting is when you put those two together within the same institution and you might be interested in hearing david's view on how that works, there is tension between the two roles. so you release the public report that is very scathing, plaf programs within the intelligence community. and then you're also involved in meetings with the same agencies to pro actively design policy on a set of issues. and so the dynamic of putting those -- both those functions in the same institution i think creates interesting challenges. >> so if i could just piggyback on that. i think -- i absolutely hear what you're saying. it is a challenge. i won't speak for david. he can talk about the board as much as -- or as little as he wants on that topic. but from my perspective, it's very helpful to have an institution like the oversight board and provide advice and oversight. that due alt of function can be very, very helpful. they're brought from outside

primarily who are -- or entirely outside who have a capable staff. and we can consult them and n. a classified setting, a setting that the intelligence officials trust for advice to make sure we avoid problems. ultimately, we want to avoid those problems from happening, to get to the policy function which is how do you structure and design activities so that they are, in fact appropriately addressing all the private and civil liberties issues? you can only do that with people getting involved early and giving advice. i understand what you're saying about keeping the functions separate versus together. i just want to say in this particular case, i think it's helpful. the other thing i just want to point out is that a lot of times the executive branch function as it responds to oversight from congress or the need to keep the court appropriately apprised of all the issues that might arise with their orders is a resource -- is a resource demand on the executive branch. it takes particularly in -- for

the intelligence community, the people who are most knowledgeable and have the greatest expertise on a particular activity that somebody might be reviewing, be it the board or the court or the committees, they're the same people who are actually implementing those activities from a national security perspective. so you're pulling them away from that work in order to provide, you know, information and briefings which in my experience, i know that you have different experience recently. but my experience they're willing to do. but we just to recognize that there is a requirement, it's a draw on their unlimited resources. and one function that offices like mine can serve is to help you know, manage that help structure it so can you find ways to provide the information that's needed while still allowing the subject matter, experts to do their main jobs. >> okay. i have a question that i want to throw to all of you.

generally we're trying to have an inquiry on thou strengthen oversight in various different areas. the question i have is where do you see it as and what can be done about that. where are short comings in internal oversight? but then where do you see the potential to really strengthen internal oversight? and anyone should feel free to jump on in. >> go ahead. >> yeah a few things i would throw out there one is in a so we mentioned the differences among igs. some differences are just you know, due to individual leadership or culture of institutions and so forth. but the fundamental and statutory legal distinction remains is some are not president shi appointed. nsai nsaig is not appointed by the president. we're looking for specific things we may want to consider a change could be something to do. so in the past when there was pint at which cia had an internal ig, then there was a

push for making that position presidentially appointed. simly, when you're not reporting to. nsa head but to the president, that might create at least more of an opportunity or you know, for that position to view itself in more of a staunch independent fashion. so they've done some wonderful work. but when we think about capacity and the fact that this is, you know, an institution that has one full time person four part time board members a budge that i think is now a little bit above $3 million which is where it was a few years back. just thinking about that in comparison to the $15 billion in the intelligence community, we're still talking about a very striking mismatch. i'll mention one final point

where i think there is something to be done. i think it's important when there are statutory mandates for igs to conduct particular reviews. or have an on going role of reviewing questions of individual rights and because many igs do not see that still as something that's sort of within their per view, there is some that say, you know, fraud, waste and abuse. that's a number of things. i think to the extent that congress -- they would be there is a role of reviewing issues that we have concern. that is an additional area of improvement. >> i'll speak to one more layer away from the igs. the issues in internal compliance kinds of shops or

policy shops and how they balance that role. what they have to do the challenges are a combination of expertise, commitment and influence. the expertise one is relatively easy, actually. that one is relatively easy. but commitment and influence, the more committed to value that is a constraining value like the -- >> so privacy versus surveillance. >> yes, for example. >> the more committed you are to that constraining value rather than the primary mission value, the moraning to onistic it is possible for the relationship to get. and so there's two ways for an agency to deal with that kind of idea. one, they can hope and help to -- that commitments arose. so the people in the office -- it's the equivalent of client

hiatus. or they can lose that -- the very reason why we have them which is they're supposed to represent the different slightly different values than the agency has a whole. and so they can lose the commitment or lose the influence and they can be tamed by having no authority and no influence, right? so if you're going to maintain inside an office like that both commitment and influence, then that needs to really be carefully considered. i think there are a set of policy tools that offices like that can be given. they can be mandated certain kinds of roles access to materials, access to information, not in the same way that you have it. not in an investigation kind of a way. but in a, you know, sort of what they need kind of a way. they can be mandated to have clearance functions of various types. that if the office objects to something then it goes up a level before it can be decided that kind of thing. >> so not security clearance,

but to clear documents. >> security clearance is their toast. they have to have security clearance. i'm talking about clearance within an executive secretary and kind of a functionality. but clearance. they can be authorized to do the things that alex is talking about where they have a set of -- a fairly structured interactions with folks who share the assigned commitment to kind of keep it in there right? to keep it sail yenlt for them. it's very easy in the ic to just kind of be in the ic. i mean you walk into a building that nobody else can come into and do all of your work in this xif, you know? and it's very easy to get clientitis. it's very easy. so if you think of the offices as boundaries instead and you think it's actually part of their role to have significant

advocates and bringing the advocates into the agency into ways they can be managed and other ways too, offices like that hire from civil lert erts organizations or if they share across governments, that's another way of reinforcement commitment. you're trying to create a reference set for people inside offices where most of their colleagues are assigned to a different mission. it's important to think about influence and commitment all the time. how can we reinforce influence and commitment? >> there is a wonderful article on this. it is called offices of good -- what it is called? >> the one about the ic is called intelligence legalism and national security agency

civil liberties. >> the offices of goodness. >> that's good. >> influence without authority in federal agencies. that's what it's called. >> influence without authority. >> but it is quite optimistic. >> it is. it is possible to have influence without authority. so, yes. i think that that needs to be really considered. no fooling. in the statutes. >> what do you think alex? what are the gaps that you perceive? what could be done to make you more infective at your job? what tools would be helpful? >> i have to think about that one. so it's a very complicated ecosystem to use her term. there is a lot of players, a lot of different moving parts. a lot of people focusing on different aspects of the issue. so that complexity is something that we have to manage.

and there are a couple ways of going about it. one is cut through it and simplify it. impose a new structure. this is too complicated, let's figure out a new way to do it. another one is to recognize that the complexity exists and serves important purposes. it's good that our ostss are different. i'm different from the lawyers but i'm not the intelligence person. how do you carry out all the work that we have to carry? how do you find how to main tan that balance between national security and protection of privacy and civil liberties in a complicated environment? there are a lot of different rule sets for dealing with that activity activity. the oversight structure is also complicated. one answer that some people tend to have is let's create a new entity. let's create something new. and that's fine. you know like if we support the idea of a adversarial voice to bring diversity of views to the court. but let's think through what it would be very helpful to me personally if people thought what are the down stream

implications? they have to get clearances. they have to have security space and staff. are they? i don't know. we have no think throw all the issues. that's just an example. how are they going to interrelate with all the different players? so if people start proposing different things, that is very helpful to me. if they enact a new rule if it's a clear statement whast rules should be that is also very helpful. the transparency effort that i'm working on is very important and good. but it's competing in a world of limited budgets with other priorities. so if you add for example, more reporting requirements to more committees, someone's going to have to write the reports. we'll have to tax the people working on the stuff to prepare for those reports. that may well be well and good. i want people to recognize that

that's the down stream effect. we have to make sure that resources are appropriately allocated. if you want more people working on these other oversight efforts which is actually what i think is you know, certainly fine. i'm happy to get more staff and other people cutting more staff. it's either the total pie goes up or limited pie, you know, those resources get shuffled. so what are the trades? those are the kinds of things that i to me what is most helpful is greater recognition of all those issues as we go forward. >> did you want to speak to this? >> the access issues, not only the legal issue that i mentioned before and having that resolve and being able to move forward and get records without lawyers jump in with all the legal objections they want to raise. but timely access to records. getting them promptly. if that means us getting direct action ses more systems are electronic, we got to think of ways to get access to more

timely fashion. so we can do our work. there is nothing more debilitate debilitating to our staff than spending months trying to do the work and plow ahead and ask the hard questions than not being able to get the records so they can ask the questions. resources are an issue. we have 450 people in our oig. that sounds like a lot. the justice department has 100,000 plus employees. a $20 billion budget or so. and we look at everything within the department, almost everything within the department. so there are always resource constraints. always resources before us. i think the other thing is we try very hard to follow up on our recommendations. not just put them out there and hope they get implemented. the reason you see the next nsl report, the next 215 reports, all the other follow up we've done in the national security area and all the other areas we do those is so people don't forget and the fbi and others in the department know we continue

to watch over them. but having the follow up that occurs with oversight hearings from congress, whether there is followup through the administration, that will be obviously very helpful for us. and then finally, there is the bill in the congress and both the senate and the house that would give testimonial subpoena authority. much like we have documentary subpoena authority. that would help us with former employees who we can no longer reach if they retire or just before we want to question them. >> and what if anything can be done about the ush u of getting more declassified in a more timely way? >> and that's a very significant question. one of the challenges we face is we don't have the authority to declassify. it goes through the intelligence community. and usually and frequently there are reports touched on agencies beyond the fbi. so we're not only dealing with the fbi, we're dealing with

other intelligence community agencies oench which we're not the inspector general. it doesn't help us often with the fbi even. but we at least have that relationship. and we work with them and we sit with them and in the sense of i say work with them, trying to get things declassified. the biggest challenge we have in this area is often getting to the final stage. it's almost like there's an effort to -- for it to be a negotiation and it's not going to be a negotiation from our standpoint. we try and take a very principled approach to what should be declassified. and what we end up with is oftentimes the first version coming back to us of proposed declassification being classified at a higher level than some of our earlier reports

that were public. and then us, our shop is having to be the ones that go back, marshal the evidence marshal the information and say dp you know that the cia director or the dni or the fbi director others testified about the following? and here's what is already out there. or here's what has been reported publicly. and it's that process that takes months if not over a year. >> such a waste. >> it's a significant challenge. and there needs to be and we've been talking with the leadership at the department about how we can move this along better. this cannot continue. >> all right. i'm going to interpret the mood lighting as a sign as i should move on to questions from the audience. i believe dave is still here. i want to give him -- is he? there he is. hi. i did want to give you the opportunity if you'd like to talk a little bit -- you know i consider you and if you have three branches of government, you're closer to internal

oversight than congressional oversight even though you are an independent office. what can you tell us about your experience? whatever you have in mind. one thing i would address is the different twefrn oversight and advice. we only have two mandates. i think as alex said hopefully our advice is valuable to the agencies as they develop new programs. we have something in our statute that requires us to notify congress if an agency comes to us with the proposal and say don't do it they do it anyway. so we're working out the relationship. we can oversight and we have to create an atmosphere where they want to come us with. we're working out that dynamic. i think where we're going to end up is just because we give advice doesn't mean we can't do oversight on that same area or

that same project. but the thing we would not do oversight on is why didn't you follow our good advice? but oversight will be looking at the law and policy and so forth. did you end up with a good solution despite our advice. but as we build advocates and the intelligence community i think we can provide value on both sides. >> any questions? >> i wondered if the panel thought there were any lessons that could be drawn from this come of decades of experience with the freedom of information act. there is a school here in d.c. that has very good program to trace how that works and n. practice or doesn't work in practice. and there you have the sort of

internal situation too. each department has to have a point for compliance officer and apparently the experience is some branches of government just don't like to respond to these things particularly well. you get a very bad experience and others are are much more forthcoming for whatever reason. so is there any lessons to be drawn from there? that program probably hasn't worked out as originally conceived. >> i think that the way the system is really important part of -- i keep calling this an ecology or ecosystem, but i think it's a really important part of it in a few different ways. one, it enables the public to be a part of the system where otherwise you'd have to sue somebody. i mean you already have to sue them because you have to sue them to get them to answer the foir request but it's a different lawsuit. so a function where in the

closed world of the ic which used to be more closed is less closed now. so just a couple weeks ago the cia-ag guidelines were released. that's pretty cool. and that means that people can read them and then can then say hey, we think those are great in these respects but kind of pathetic in the other ones. and wouldn't it be a good idea since you're redrafting them anyway because everybody is on everybody to redraft their -- wouldn't it gb to change them in this way? it enables a public conversation that couldn't happen. one of the interesting sets of the materials are are the iob reports. >> intelligence oversight board. >> yes.

inside the executive officest presidents and there is a set of -- there's a sestt of reports that are routine and reactive both that have to go to the iob. and so various kinds of noncompliance not with fisa as with 120003. some of those go to the iob. and those reports have been moved and there is a lot of information in them. there is an oversight office that generates the material which gets released into the public by the way of foia. >> i think your point is it's not working very well, right? sorry. go ahead alex. >> so in some ways you should ask that question to the people in submitting the request. but foya is an tenl part of how we're going to deal with enhancing transparency. it's challenging to the

intelligence community. so we've been work veg close with the officers and trying to figure out how to manage their set of issues and also working with external open government folks that want to do that some more. but there's a couple things about foia that are importance. it's a four seam mechanism. so with limited resources, you're on a treadmill to answer the next litigation. so when i come in and say wouldn't it be great if we had greater transparency? i said that's fine alex, as long as you take care of these requests in our cue. those requests have increased post last couple of years. you can all imagine. so that has grown longer and the people are running harder and harder to release the documents. the other thing about foia is

that it is, you know, you look for records. you look for government documentation that already exists. i can't create an explanation that i think would be transparent and understandable. so as a result you get a lot of technical documents redakted texts inside of them. they can be very difficult to understand and context and oftentimes the requester is a subject matter expert. they may understand it because it fits in the prior releases. but if it's posted for the general public it's hard to make sense of it. what does this mean? it's a document sort of in isolation. we have to figure out ways to better explain ourselves in context in a way that is more understandable to the public. >> i don't know whether to comment. you take turns. do you have a microphone? >> there is a mike up there.

>> okay. down here, please. >> i'm going back up to these guys and then to you. >> can i ask the panel how they would respond to the previous panel in which they -- a case of agency abuse was very graphically described? how you would help her? >> so to me when somebody has a concern about the legality or appropriateness of a program, it's essential that we have a mechanism in place to give that person -- i'm not speaking about that situation specifically

because i'm not familiar with ut. i'm not trying to address the specific facts. i'm going to give a more general answer which is it's really important for us to put in place trusted mechanism that's employees can rely on to bring their concerns to the appropriate folks. so the two things that we are focusing on internally are making sure that people understand what those trusted -- awhat those mechanisms are and making sure we have safeguards against dosh protect that employee from possible retribution. there are challenges making sure that works correctly. it's important to understand that in some cases if the person who is the best person to receive the information, the concern of the employee, already has already knows of the program and approved of the program. it's unlikely that person is going to change his or her mind.

so the other angle that i was -- that we are going to be pursuing is to what extent can transparency help in that regard? to what extent can an employee request that this information be made public in some way through authorized channels? so there is a mechanism in the executive order for declassification review. this is the classification order on -- the executive order on classification. so we're looking at that exploring that. is there a way we can streamline that process so that an employee who has a concern about something and says i want this to be transparent, i understand all the people involved have already reviewed and approved it. i think the american people should hear about it. to what extent can we put in class a review process with that? >> i'm curious to know if any of new your research or own work or maybe by looking at other countries and trying to look at

this comparatively, you have ever seen another country that strikes a better balance in your opinion between civil liberties and security than the wonderful security situation in terms of homeland security but have more expansive civil liberties in terms of strengthening oversight maybe can you talk about a group of countries and that can be something that america can aspire to. >> i think it would be lovely. we could learn to strike that balance better. and there may well be countries that in their operations strike it better. i don't really know how i would know that, honestly. i don't think they're countries experimenting more than we are the oversight mechanisms. when you talk to people from other countries, they're somewhat -- we've all been

talking about the failings of our system. but they are somewhat astounded at the -- the levels and variance -- variations of oversight. and so no. the answer is no. >> we know less about the other side. i'm not talking about that surveillance, necessarily. i'm not talking about whether human rights are protected or anything like that. but in terms of capability. you know, try to build back doors and that kind of thing, i think, you know, my understanding is that the intelligence community and the united states is better resource than the intelligence agencies of the rest of the world combined. so it's a little bit apples and oranges when you try compare to other countries. i realize that question was not posed to me. let's see. there is lots of folks. back there with the peach shirt.

>> i'm laura bell and i'm at the state department. i work with some of the guys. agree to your answer to the last question. comparative surveillance laws. it's something i'm looking into and studying. i say germany is comparable. germany was also -- germany's laws were inspired by ours starting with the national security act of 1947. the question i want to ask you because we can always make our berz with, regard to internal oversight is we talked a lot about the challenges of oversight with respect to the need to handle classified information responsibly. but nobody has really drilled down on the substantial differences in hand thalg isling for top secret versus secret. this is something i run into. i'm just a person who is normally part of these policy deliberations if there is a broad based policy delivery. it is somewhat broad. but, you know, i have a top secret clearance. i had one for many years. i have two computers at my desk. one i can process information from unclassified up to spu.

i can e-mail alex and we can exchange ideas and stuff. i can switch over to the other computer and go up to secret but if i want to process top secret, kint do that. so if i want to handle top secret information, i also have to keep it in a special safe. i can only discuss it in a special room. so i'm often going over to inr which is our intelligence bureau. you have a weekly reading session and they bring out a few hard copy thinks of interest to you and most are really boring. but if did you happen to take notes, you have to leave the notes in the room. i'm wondering you know, to what degree does that create sort of a separate ecosystem for policy deliberations? and to what degree does that present a particular challenge for oversight going back to alex's concern about the sort of down stream effects? if you're going to set up a bunch of people to play an adversarial role in this process handling top secret information, it's actually more logistically challenging than you might even

think. >> so one of the lessons from 9/11 is we need share information better across the intelligence community and we have been working very hard on that. one initiative under that is right to release. you try to write things to a lower level of classification so more people can see it. can you have one pa are. a gs graph in a larger document. that means that entire document has to stay in the appropriately certified and accredited systems for that document. so hopefully one of the things that we'll work on in our transparency initiative that is certainly would help address that is to really take at look at these existing policies we have for information sharing and find new ways to make sure that people are actually implementing the policies so that the situation that you described

doesn't come up as often. we have to recognize that people talk about secrecy, we have to keep secrets but do it appropriately. it's human nature to try to avoid risk. the risk that somebody else mentioned is a risk of not properly classifying a document could mean you have given away some secret and that's a big problem and all these kinds of issues you're talking about in other forms would come about. toyou're erring on the side of working on the document that's are classified and there is a more legal reason -- if i'm trying to protect this as a core secret and i give everybody information all around in this particular area, a large circle except for that hole, then it's more likely that an adversary will infer that what you're secrete is. so therefore there has been a

strategy and approach that you prevent that sort of gaming by add an add sayery so they can infer what the secret is. that is something we're going to also address. but the bottom line is that it's an important issue. we have to figure out how to find ways to appropriately classify the information. >> this is the benefit of the oversight technique. you get everybody cleared. you give them access to a sciff. you put a computer there. then they can do their job if the right environment and they can do it. one of the i think really major obstacles to congressional oversight is the sort of only in a skiff only in person. you can't bring any staff. you can't take any notes.

it's a way that congress actually functions. they're not inconsistent with the way that people in executive agencies function. people in executive agencies work in, you know, buildings with no windows without strenuous complaint. there is a push in these offices. >> that is certainly the case with us. >> dl are no issues with internal overseers being told they don't have a need to know and being read to. >> i wouldn't say no need to know. i would just say it's manageable. >> the irony of the access issues that we've had beginning 2010 is we've had access to among the most sensitive documents in the fbi. we did the post 9/11 review. we did the president's surveillance program which at the time was among the most classified programs in

government. kit cause other issues. it's not really a core problem that we have. >> we have time for one more question. okay. >> thank you so much for this panel. i have a lot of pressure because i have the last question. i really enjoy just sort of hearing a bit about the different, frankly, what we have is different models represented on the panel and with david shop in termed of executive internal oversight. i guess my question would be or i ask you to imagine you have a magic wand.

and based on your experience if you could share with us what you think are the core elements in terms of institutional design of a strong oversight mechanism for the executive. and based on the perns what are the sort of oversight mechanisms in your shop that's have been set up that are frankly challenges to be in an effective internal oversight agents. it's too high a bar. there is no magic wand. but that said, to my mind, the -- some of the reviews that we know have been incredibly important. and so this is not -- imagine

not answering how you do that. but you know certain features, for instance, you know if independence, the idea that you do not need to go through the white house are before you testify to congress on a particular issue or submit your reports for clearance. those kinds of elements, i think that can whistle blowers and i think the whole basket of mechanisms can improve transparency are crucial. for me that, goes back to the idea that at the end of the day we need congress ports the public to be more informed in order for them to have a role in setting what the rules are to be in the first place. so the other thing i want to say is i feel there is much more that public advocacy organizations, civil rights transparency minded organizations and outside can do. i mean we talked about the need for police patrol, continuous oversight. and i think that applies as well to the civil rights advocacy

community that to the extent that external organizations are watching continuously what are -- what the internal institutions are doing rather than just reacting when you know the cia-ig steps down because of problems with -- or so forth. i think that level of external accountability on the overseers is incredibly important. >> alex? >> we're watching you. >> i agree with. that the closest thing to a magic wand is public discussion and so as much public awareness on the level of sort of policy as we can create is good. and then the public which is really channelled through organizations that, you know, develop expertise and contacts and attention and so on. they can really pay attention to what hopefully are the allies within government and what those

people are doing and hold them to account and hold their feet to the fire. the other thing that i would say and is that we need to not allow the executive to substitute legality for virtue. and i think that's really, really important. we need to -- when somebody stands up and says i don't know why you're complaining, it was legal. you need to say you didn't answer my question. it was legal, that doesn't mean it was good. we need to hold the executive branch to account for doing the right thing, not just the legal thing. and those two things are for me what i would say. >> just briefly, in terms of internal watchdog i think you've got independence, for

example my position i cannot be removed about it attorney general, i can only be removed about it president. you have to be able to be transparent which in some instances is harder than others. that is a principal we stand for and strife for and continually try to accomplish. we have an independent budget line. we can't have our resources taken away from us by the agency because they don't like what we're doing. so we have that ability. even if we might need more resources, our budget line is separate from the department's budget line. in addition to access to information as i mention, we need to and mention whistle blowers. we haven't really talked much about that. but we need to have employees be comfortable within the justice department and i'll speak for my agency coming to us for information. whether they call themselves whistle blowers or not, we need people to come to us with information if they operating, whether they're in

compliance with the rules, regulations, practices, whether they're being abused. that's something that's very important. something we've worked very hard to do before i got there. i certainly tried to double our efforts in that regard. it's very critical employees be willing and able to come to us. it is one of the advantages of being internal. because if you look at study after study on individuals employees whether they are nongovernment agencyors government agencies, what you hear over and over again is they want to get it right within the organization. they want to go to the supervisor and get it right. if they can't have that happen then the next step if they keep going up the chain but they can always go to another entity that is within their organization that's independent but still isn't going outside. and they need to know that they can come to us zbhchlt and you already have the stronger protections. >> yes. >> awesome. okay. so are you good or do you want to say --

>> i'll just say. in my view if, i had a magic wand we would be having more appropriate, more transparency with the caveat they protect secrets. so that public debate that we're having here and that we've been having over the last couple years continues and is better informed and focused and nuanced on the things that we are actually doing or considering doing. rather than some speculation about what we might be doing. or concerned. it's certainly a appropriate to raise the concerns. i agree the civil liberties engagement is important. we should make that an on going process to that we can have a better dialogue about what it is that we're kerntly doing and what the concerns are about those actions because opposed to speculation. >> so we have a little more time. we're not going to take a break before the next panel. i want to make sure you all know that.

so sorry to push you through. but i just want to thank the panelists for being here. [ applause ] >> tonight we have more. this coming august will mark 70 years since at tomic bombings. the atomic heritage foundation host az project which had the first nuclear weapons. girls of the manhattan project. then at 8:40. espionage and the manhattan project. 9:35 remembering manhattan project director and physicist jay robert oppenheimer. that is all tonight starting at 8:00 eastern on american history tv on c-span3.

the supreme court finished up their term and starting just before 6:30, we'll show you oral argument from those cases. we'll begin with the justices overturning the obama administration's landmark air quality ruling, deciding 5-4 that environmental protection agency does not properly consider the costs of the regulation and another 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that states may use a drug in executions. that is at 8:00 p.m. and in a third 5-4 decision, the justice as proved the use of an independent commission to draw district lines in arizona. steering clear of a ruling that could have created upheavel for 100 congressional races across the country. that oral argument airs just past 9:00 tonight. >> tonight on the communicators we visited microsoft's washington, d.c., office to hear about the lobbying goals and

current research projects. we'll talk with the vice president of government affairs corporate vice president of research, and research engineering manager. >> i'm hopeful at some point congress will take on high skilled immmigration. you know it is still very very important. frankly, i don't know the exact number but when we have some of the innovators that are here, the researchers that are here, you know we have people from all over the world that make consideration contributions at microsoft. it's for other countries as well. still in need. when you look at from a job perspective. >> the application of the project is actually to collect mosquitos that have bitten people and determine what kind of viruses might be around what kind of diseases might be around

through taking the blood samples of the mosquitos and figuring out the genetic code of some of the constituents of their blood. >> the premise around the search project about what we are able to do with the data in the environment today, one of the things that we've noticed is that there are a lot aircraft flying around in the united states that could be considered sensors. they have data on them. they're providing information. and it's relatively freely available. it's provided by the faa and there are companies like flight aware that use information to provide information to the community about what airplanes are doing. so we decided to take that information and see if we can use that to help us pro dikt a more accurate forecast.

in terms of speed and direction at various altitudes above the surface of the earth. >> a visit to microsoft's washington, d.c., office tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> when congress is in session, c-span3 brings you more of the best access to congress with live coverage of hearings, news conferences, key public affairs events and every weekend it's american history tv. traveling to historic sites discussions with authors and historians and eyewitness accounts of events that define the nation. c-span3, coverage of congress and american history tv. >> new jersey governor chris christie is expected to make a presidential campaign announcement tomorrow. yesterday he released this preannouncement video. >> i get accused a lot of times

of being too blunt and too direct and saying what's on my mind just a little bit too loudly. i have an irish father. i have a sicilian mother. [ applausemother. now, for those of you hooting you know what that means, right? my mom was the one who set the rules and set the tone. no suffering in silence. you got a problem tell me. she would tell us every time she had a problem to the point we were like mom, do we have to hear this? she would say, yes, i need to get it off my chest now. there will be no death bed confessions in this family. you're going to hear it now. in 2004 my mom got diagnosed with cancer, and all of you have lost a family member to cancer, you understand what the scene is like. she grabbed my hand and she said christopher, there's nothing left unsaid between us. it was an incredibly powerful moment in my life. and that moment was created by

her, her whole life. i knew she loved me and she knew i loved her. when people wonder why i do the things i do, that moment affirmed for me forever that i'm going to be this way. i know if my mom were still alive she would say to me, i taught you that in a trusting relationship you don't hold anything back. and if you're going to run for president of the united states and you're going to ask these people for their vote, this is the single most trusting thing they can do as a citizen, is to give you their support. so you better tell them exactly what you're thinking and exactly what you're feeling. and when you ask about my moral compass, that's it. that's it. sgland >> and we'll carry governor christie announcement tomorrow when it happens. you'll be able to see it again tomorrow night at 8:00 eastern on c-span.

we have more now from a forum on intelligence oversight in washington d.c. and the current oversight of the intelligence agencies and what's ahead. this panel focuses on the role of the executive branch and internal checks and balances. former congressional staffers were among the speakers of this event. committee on oversight and

government reform will come to order. without objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. we appreciate all of you being here for the third panel of two-day hearing ensuring agency compliance with the freedom of information act. the president has quote committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government, under quote. those were his words. that is not the case when it comes to filling foi ya requests. the backlog has more than doubled since the president has taken office. in march 2014 the associated press reported the obama administration more than any other administration had censored government files for outright denied access. last year the administration used exemptions to withhold information more than 550,000 times. agencies must consult with the white house on quote, all document requests that may involve documents with white

house equities, end quote. just in the last year the government fully denied access or censored records in at least 250,000 cases or roughly 39% of all requests. this is the highest number of denials in the history of foia. yesterday we heard from individuals who waited years to get public records they requested. these requests came from the media, national reputable media organizations, as well as individuals. the witnesses yesterday told us the foia system is broken and probably broken by design. in preparing for this hearing the committee received numerous examples of delays unreasonable redactions and abusive fees, all of which behindered transparency. for instance, the epa strategically avoided disclosure when discussing the development of the pebble mine in bristol bay, alaska. documents obtained by the committee show that the epa employees advocated for a

preemptive veto of the project well before the petition was submitted to the epa. the irs requested one person colin hannah on four occasions and said it needed more time to respond to the request but after two years they closed the request saying he reasonably failed to request his documents. gfa identified 70,000 documents on its green buildings initiative and used a number of records as a reason to close a request from the taxpayer protection alliance. a requester waited ten months before the dea told them that his request for 13,000 documents related to the capture of mexican drug lord el chapo would cost $1.4 million. one 26-year-old freelance journalist wrote the committee about his first experience with foia saying, quote, i often

described the handling of my foia request as the single most disillusioning experience of my life, end quote. the responses are enlightening and continue to come in. they seem to be numerous bipartisan across the board, consistent, and just absolutely frustrating. we also saw unreasonable and inappropriate redactions including many from the fcc. unredacted documents produced by the committee show the fcc blacked out the chairman's initials on every e-mail he sent or received, blacked them out. in doing so the fcc claimed a personal privacy exemption that isn't permissible for use even with lower level staff. the fcc also claimed that staff commentary like wow, and interesting were deliberate and redacted them under b-5 exemption. the time and expenses that it takes to go through to do such silly, silly things is so

frustrating and ridiculous. it gets frustrating to hear anybody claim we spent this exorbitant amount of money to black out wow and interesting and the name yesterday -- one of my personal favorites is blacking out the name of the department of defense person who sang the national anthem as if that's some state secret. in one instance simply quoting an attached press release qualified for a redaction, while the press release itself was released in full. it's amazing how many instances we have of publicly available information on the department's website comes back via foia as redacted information. and a press release? it was publicly released is something that you have to hold back from the public? it makes no sense. how can we trust the government's redactions when we have examples of such unnecessary and in many cases inappropriate redactions.

despite significant corruption within the agency in recent years the irs is still obstructing the witnesses efforts. just getting them here today required a subpoena. the others all showed up. not the irs, nope, not the irs. we can't have that. only one person at the irs out of 90,000 that can testify. how wrong he is. miss howard, we appreciate you being here but i should not have to issue a subpoena to get your presence here. we're talking about openness and transparency. we want to hear from you. you've dealt with this for years. but yet, we had to issue a subpoena in order to get it. and, when we sent a letter to all five of the departments and agencyies asking for basic information, anywhere between two and eight examples that we wanted information, the

department of justice at least they sent us a letter. at least they gave us something. it was terribly incomplete. the irs, no letter. nothing. we sent a request to you. i sent a subpoena to you and you give us nothing? these other four did. i'm telling you, we will drag the irs up here every single week if we have to. you are going to respond to the united states congress. you are going to respond to the american people. you work for the american people you're not going to just drag us around. if it was the other way around, if the irs went after an individual, you wouldn't put up with it. there's no way you would put up with this. we expect you to respond to requests from the united states congress. we have a right to see it. we have a constitutional duty to perform our oversight responsibilities. for you to not respond to this committee in a timely fashion by giving us an electronic copy

which is what you were supposed to do which the other four figured out, is not appropriate. we don't have that material and we wanted it before the hearing. i had to get a subpoena to drag you here, and it's wrong. i've heard personally from multiple foia requesters that they wait and they wait and they wait. when they finally get a response, the request is either flatly denied or the pages are blacked out. we saw examples of that yesterday. so why is this necessary? there are some cases where you do have to redact material. i understand that. i appreciate that. but the lack of consistency is just stunning. the time that it takes is just unbelievable. the department of justice is the foia litigator and the provider of agency-wide guidance ought to be the model agency but we know it is not. the department of justice denied approximately 40% of its foia requests in the fiscal year