4. >> my colleagues willcy i saw you on c-span. >> there's so much more than c-span does to make sure that people outside the beltway know what's going on inside it. >> also from washington jury room, a conversation with mike pompayo from kansas, as well as the select intelligence committee. this is about 40 minutes.

>> i want to begin with north korea and what happened there. do you see that as a serious threat, the headlines from the national. north korea tops the worldwide threat list. >> we have lots of threats around the world today. north korea certainly right up there. just rekrntly, both conducted a nuclear test. and a missile launch that has significantly advanced the capacity to attack places that they could not previously reach. the senate passed this version of a north korean sanctions bill. the house passed one before that. we we'll get it back i think today or tomorrow. we'll vote and send it to the president. i hope we sign it.

we deliver the weapons to the west. first step along that there's a lot more to do to contain this road tyrant. >> is it alive for china and pressuring china? >> certainly the south koreans are very concerned about what's taking place. we need to ensure the chinese do everything they can to put this leader back in the box. >> would it be they attacked this year in 2016. on a scale of 1 to 10, how serious is that threat.

>> it's hard to put a scale on things. i saw the testimony yesterday from director clapper where he's quite right. our intelligence community has done remarkable work to keep us safe. this threat is real. sometimes they're directed, sometimes they're inspired. but at the end of the day, these are isis, radical islamists, the premise, attempting to attack to destroy the west. we need to ensure the intelligence community has resources and tools that they need so that they can stop these plots. >> how is it with syria and russia being involved and being on the side of assad that that

could be, or is a breeding ground for isis. and then you've got this heed line in "the washington post." turkey won't open its borders to these refugees. >> all of that is accurate and very problematic. a little bit problematic for turkey, a lot problematic for syria. i represent kansas and care about itself impact here in the united states. a 9/11 risk threat. we 123450ed to respond in kind, we need to lead. it doesn't mean we have to put 50,000 or 100,000 soldiers on the ground. >> i want to go to hillary clinton with the private e-mails

and the private e-mail server. she was asked about this at the last debate. she said she didn't do anything wrong. take a listen. >> america, this is not the behavior of our islam or our prophet. although i didn't have the privilege of meeting sean smith personally, he was a valued member of our state department family.

tyrone woods and glen dougherty worked for the cia. they were killed by mortar fire at the ci a's outpost in benghazi. >> you were there for all 11 hours. >> before it was e-mails it was benghazi. and the republicans were stirring up so much controversy about that. and i testified for 11 hours, answered their questions, they basically said yep. didn't get her. we tried. that was all a political ploy.

now you have these people in the government who are doing the same thing to secretary powell and secretary rice's aides they've been doing to me. i agreed with secretary powell today who said this is an absurdity. i think the american people will know this is an absurdity. i have absolutely no concerns about it whatsoever. >> let's start with the facts. on the private e-mail server.

we now know the intelligence committee has classified at least 32 top secret level e-mails and over 1,300 classified e-mails on those devices. we node those were not retroactively classified. many were classified when they were originally sent. and, in fact, we know that secretary clinton's own state department today deems at least 20-plus of those so serious today. they refused to release the e-mails in any way. these are serious matters. her statement about powell and rice, what i find oddest is the difference between a car intentionally drawing into a crowd multiple times, she set up a system that was intentionally designed to circumvent the normal process. that is, those others had dot-gov caccounts.

they conducted most of their business on official systems. there may be classified information on other folks that slipped over or inherently came across. i think the number is 12. there was no intention to handle this information in the appropriate way. >> was it, though, illegal to set up a private server and e-mail. >> had you done it or had i done it, my classification would be removed. i'm confident the voters ins can ks wouldn't re-elect me and properly so. each of us would have hired a high-powered criminal defense team to ensure that our risk was minimized as a result of the actions we had taken.

>> what law did she break if it's proved classified information was sent? >> several. all of them deal with the proper handling of classified information. i will comply with all of america's laws with respect to the handling of classified information. there's rules about intent and negligence and lots of complexity around the law. but suffice it to say it's a pretty simple proposition. if you have classifieds information and i've heard folks talk about whether it's marked or unmarked, completely irrelevant. >> those words won't be stamped controversial, the highest level

of classification in the government, i would have violated the law. >> do you think she violated that law? >> the handling of this information violated multiple laws. >> did colin powell violate that law? >> what's important to understand is errors are made. people accidentally permit classified information to move from the proper setting to the inappropriate setting. there could be great debate. if she had said turn that into nonpaper and send that information. >> the house science committee

issing looing into this issue of whether or not she violated the law with her e-mails, correct? >> i'm not sure if that's correct or not. i hope that this will stay on the right channels. the right channel for law enforcement activities in my judgment are the fbi and the justice department. >> we're looking to things that relate to the death of four americans in 2012. it is the case that it was our committee's work that ultimately concluded when we had asked for a document from the state department that there wasn't an official account. that is, it was known there was a private e-mail account she possessed and many government officials have them. and we learned there wasn't an official e-mail account in existence. >> since she testified in

october for those 11 hours, have you found any evidence that there was wrongdoing on her part that led to the death of four americans? >> well, under the guidance of chairman gaudy, we're not talking a great deal about the substance we learned today. we'll issue our report before too long. we've made a lot of progress since then. they haven't provided the documents after almost two years of requesting them. we'll get complete and write our report. i'm confident the american people will find we did a professional job. our effort was fact based to get those answers. no politics, just facts and law. a lot to talk to you about this

morning. a lot of different topics for our viewers. go ahead, norma. >> caller: i'm not from florida, i'm from virginia. i'm a democrat. i'm voting for hillary. i'm into politics. i watch it every day. bernie sanders is good. i like him. he and hillary have the same, almost the same idea as what they're going to do. we need somebody with experience. this isn't her first rodeo. she's in there. she's dealt with foreign policy and everything. >> our last conversation, what

do you think about her experience and tenure as secretary of state. >> it's important for every citizen to be engaged. i hope rubio will be our next president. i'm happy to talk about that. >> we'll move on to carl. >> i would like to know, has anybody ever asked the president what orders he issued the night of the attack.

there was no help sent for those people. one of the reasons you haven't seen that questions asked is all but one of the hearings has been conducted behind closed doors. we've had a single public hearing with secretary clinton. the remainder have been done in a setting that we find very conduci conduci conducive. they're long days, they're questions that are complex. and i can assure you we will account for how the president behaved that night. we'll talk about what they did and what they did not do.

we'll see how the administration it wrong after the event as well. >> have you interviewed former cia director david petraeus. >> yes. >> and that was in a closed setting? >> that's correct. >> as well as other cia people. >> that's cent. >> but you can not tell us what you learned? >> i can't. we have done our best to keep those conversations out of the public. >> why was there a public hearing for clinton and not petraeus? >> she demanded it. five minutes, rotating to the

next one. interviews were the best way to get facts for the american people. on the e-mails, the hill and others report that the judge in this e-mail vgs ordered 550 clinton e-mails over president's day week. there are more to come on that. >> i have a question and a comment. these committees spend entirely

too much time when they should be working on the important things. >> she said when she left the white house they were broke. and second of all, she had too much baggage. and bernie sanders is on the right track. there has to be a revolution in this country. >> whatn't a the money sent on this investigation? >> we still have younk men and women serving in dangerous places across the world. wurch of the core functions of

this committee is to get those answers. to find out how this could happen. senator feinstein, a democrat, said this incident was preventible in her report. i agree with that. what would the tools have been we would have been derelict in duty if he had not taken this task and completed it. democratic staffers on the committee received bonuses while democrat lawmakers have been critical of the costs. these republican staff receive bonuses? >> i don't know.

i watched the democrat behavior coming up on two years now. and i can tell you how disappointed i am. i understand they are almost all uniformly supporting hillary clinton in her effort to get reelectriced. i get that. this committee has conducted one interview with secretary clinton and spent scores of hours talking to other witnesses. many names no one watching your show today will ever come to know. we get around the facts surrounding this event. i know they have not performed their duty to their families in a way that i think dignified what elected officials ought to do. >> are they planning to do their own report.

>> bruce is watching us in florida. a democrat. go ahead, bruce. >> caller: if those e-mails were on a government dput computer, would be in russia right now with edward snowden. now the other thing, benghazi was a cia operation run by general petraeus.

the mrn people need to hear what that adulterer has to say. >> we asked petraeus what he was doing, the ambassador wasn't at that. the question is how and what should they have done differently. it's the case that we have not been able to secure the case that we have needed to.

the proper outcome would be that he would be a death sentence. for having put friends of mine, friends of yours who serve in the military today at enormous risk because of the information he stole and released to foreign powers. but i can't let that go without saying, i can assure you, that information was a lot more secure in the hands of the secure system rather than on a private server of hillary clinton. it's not a close call. there's a reason we have it set up that way. they transfer information in a secure system to a nonsecure system is almost impossible. there's no connectivity between those two systems. someone chose to take them from one place, the place where the classified information was created and transfer it to

secretary clinton's private server and i'm sure the fbi is trying to figure out exactly how that happened. >> the reclassification he brought up as well, does how information is classified need to be looked at and changed. >> it's been looked at for an awfully long time. she had material for your viewers, these are special access programs. these are the crown jewels of american national security which we keep a very close hold. we share it with the fewest number of human beings we possibly can to keep the risk that it exfiltrates as low as humanly possible. we're talking about sources and methods, folks who are working on behalf of our government who are clandestine and who we don't want the bad guys to know are on our payroll because they'll be killed and have americans killed.

one could debate whether that ought to be classified. this is not that. there is no way that someone with the experience that secretary clinton had. there's no way they could possibly stare at the information that i have now read and not understand this should be classified. >> you want the viewers to know this because you serve on the intelligence committee. >> were you given access to the e-mails to the inspector general is that how it's working.

>> we have the oversight responsibility of how we keep our secrets safe. how is our classified information stored and handled. and we were given it in connection with that. >> how do you respond to her saying these have been leaks that are intentionally aimed at damaging her career. here ambitions to become president. >> the fbi conducted this investigation. the icig is an obama administration employee. the state department which she ran for years, now under another obama appointee has deemed 22 of those e-mails of such a level of risk that they won't release them now even years later. these are government officials, civil servant, do doing their best to say we have soldiers

today in the field, fighting to protect classified information from getting oit tlp -- out. marines have the duty, they'll risk an awful lot of their lives to keep that information safe. secretary clinton handled this in a very, very different way. >> luca is next, a republican. >> caller: good morning. >> how is pratt doing today? >> caller: congressman, i am very intrigued how the government operates. there were so much, and there's so much public information. so do we have a kind of government, one is for people and one is for the government? >> great to get a call from my district.

a lot of good friends out in pratt. there's not a double government. >> there are things that we want to make sure that the bad guys don't get access to, rather to keep this information, things like the way our submarines transit bottoms of the's and our technology, that is how good our missile systems are. we could go on and come up with a list of things that we truly don't want the russians or the iranians or the chinese to have access to so that we can keep america safe. is it the case that i read things sometimes and think thank goodness that's not classified. there's a certain set of information that is not made publicly known.

>> caller: two points. everyone knows isis does not exist for the country of iraq. and the second point, which i think is more important, do you think investigating george bush would be beneficial to the country because everyone knows the invasion of iraq was illegal. there was never one weapon of mass destruction ever found. >> i think if the government deems that appropriate, they ought to do that. the issue of what was known and wasn't known, frankly our intelligence community got that wrong and frankly still make mistakes as well. our intelligent committee does not get it right. i think they admit that. we've litigated a lot about

whether the decision was the right decision to move into iraq. i'm not sure we can deal with that this morning. >> thanks for taking my call. >> i don't care how much money it takes. keep this investigation going. democrats and other people in this country need to realize they have to avoid by the same laws that i do. if i did what hillary clinton did, i would be under the jail, sir. and i want something done about it. >> two thoughts, i suppose. fist is with respect to benghazi, this investigation has gone on for a significant period

of time. we certainly hoped it would be complete much more quickly than this. we have had a time getting documents oit of the white house and out of the date starmts to answer questions that the american people want us to answer. >> we'll write a complete and thorough report. >> not sure if he was referring to benghazi or the e-mails, if he was someone who set up e-mails. are you concerned at all that the longer it takes to put out a final report, it feeds into the narrative that was put out there by kevin mccarthy in your leadership, that this is political. because we're in the height of the primary nominating process, and we're getting closer to november. >> i'm not naive about the fact that it's political season. it's democracy in action. we can see it in iowa and new

hampshire and south carolina here in a week from now. i do get that. all i can say is i've watched my colleagues aerch their service. the hours they put in and the staff has put in, trying to get the right anxiouses on benghazi. we wow loved to have conducted these interviews a year ago. we asked for documents about secretary clinton's communications that night and we were first told we had them all. we had them. and, in fact, i think the people who told us that believed that we had them. the statement department didn't know that she didn't have an official account. it's incomprehensible to me that you could run an organization and not understand that your leader, the senior american diplomat isn't working inside the system. and so we finally said, hey, you know, we haven't seen any

dot-gov e-mails and they began to scramble. they began to go scramble and say oh, my goodness, and they ultimately determined that there was no dot-gov account for secretary clinton and, in fact, 100% of the e-mails related to the state department that she sent, 100% of the e-mails she sent during her time in service that were led into the state department are on her primary server. the day i release it will have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with we're done. >> boswell, indiana, ron is watching us. he's a republican. hi, ron. you're on the air with the congressman. >> thank you, c-span for all that you do for us. congressman, appreciate your service. i've been watching this since '91, '92. these people are just ridiculous. and anybody that could find a way to defend what they' done over the years has got to be an idiot. just like the independent guy said before, it's just one after

another after another after another. i don't know why people do not wake up and demand that these people -- not only come before your try punl, come before people, those poor people executed over there. it's ridiculous you sit there and try to say after that, it was a video and at the same time, you're e-mailing your daughter or some other leader in egypt or something. it's so sickening. >> we' get a response from the congressman. >> americans get to make a decision.

it's clear i won't be supporting secondary clinton. she's demonstrated at the very least enormously bad judgment. but i do want to get into something you said, americans ought to be treated equally. i think the fbi is going to conduct this investigation in a way that does america a really good turn. i think they're going to complete their investigation and present these facts just as law enforcement officials ought to do. and when they do, they'll come to a conclusion about whether this behavior comported with the legal way that would happen to a president of the united states or the least amongst us. >> so the fbi is investigating the e-mail server, the private e-mail address. and vivienne has this tweet, has

the committee interviewed colin powell who also had his e-mail from his private account reclassified. you're getting a report on this investigation, but the intelligence committee itself is not conducting an investigation. >> that's correct. >> because i sit on the benghazi too there's a con flags of the effort. the committee hasn't asked any of our witnesses about anything that didn't relate to benghazi. so secretary powell's time in service would have predated the incident. so there would be no reason for us to interview secretary powell in connection to that. >> then on the -- on the intelligence committee side, where you sit on that panel, talk about your role, i guess in the e-mail. >> so our role as a recipient of information from the inspector general for the intelligence community who himself was given the task of reviewing the

information that was on secretary clinton's private e-mail. the inspector general said i looked at those e-mails. this is what i found. along with the e-mails that he thought were classified and has now judged reclassified. we may get an icig report related to ms. rice or mr. powell's work as well. when we do, we'll conduct appropriate oversight of that process. did you have to read them and give them back? >> yes, ma'am. i can't talk to you or your viewers this morning about the contents of those e-mails in any way. and they were presented to me in a document, and then it was returned to a safe.

>> no phones. >> i'm permitted to take notes so i can help myself understand what's going on there and ask questions about it. i don't have them this morning. >> anthony miller, you're next. a democrat. >> caller: thank you for the opportunity. is as i listen to your scrutiny benghazi occasion, i asked c-span what we investigated for 9/11 and what you have now spent investigating benghazi. i can't lep but feel it's most certainly -- we have a serious problem in our government. as far as i remember, the last three or four speakers of the house had had to resign in some serious form of dubious distinction. there were interoffice e-mails between the bush administration

that was supposed to have been turned over. and they waited until the commission expired and they never revealed the interoffice discussions between the bush administration, which was a huge convict of interest to allow the energy sector to rise to power in our government creating an extreme conflict of interest that brought about an invasion of a country that did nothing to us other than comply with 12 years of sanctions. >> i'm going to leave it there. >> my only comment is every government official myself and anyone who serves s at the pleasure of constituents or supported by the president has the duty to apply to every law to the best of their ability. you identified other place where is there may well have been noncompliance or illegality. both the justice department and congress have a duty to ferret that out. identify, bring it to public so that we can form good judgments. so that democracy can truly be

had. absent the ability of congress to conduct its important overnight function that the constitution require, the american people won't know things they ought to know. whether it's a republican congress or democrat congress, to get congress, get answers for the american people so that that information can be provided to them so they can make good judgments when this he go to the ballot box each november of every even year. >> congressman mike pompeo represents the 4th district, former military. graduated from west point. served in the army and now sits on the intelligence committee as well as that select committee investigating benghazi and also energy and commerce. thank you as always for taking the questions and talking to our viewers. >> yes, ma'am, thank you. >> "american history tv" on c-span3 features programs that tell the american story. and this weekend, we kick off a three-week special series on the 1966 vietnam war hearings, 50

years later. senate historian emeritus donald richy. >> they were probably some of the most extraordinary hearings held by congress, an investigation into a car that was still being fought that the congress and particularly the senate wanted to know why we were in vietnam, what the administration's policies were, and they wanted to hear from opponents of the war. threw gave equal status to critics of the war as they did to supporters of the war. it was a real debate. >> this weekend, two witnesses who opposed president johnson's vietnam policies. first a february 1966 abc news special report that includes the testimony of former ambassador to the soviet union george kennan then retired general games gavin followed by questions fres senators including comarman j. william full right? in korea we learned air, naval power alone could not win a war.

it was incredible to me that we had forgotten the bitter lessons so soon that we were on the verge of making that same tragic error. well, general, as far as you know, are the conditions in indochina any different today than they were at that time? >> next weekend, we'll hear everywhere special consultant to president johnson, general maxwell taylor. and on saturday, february 27th, secretary of state dean rusk gives his testimony defending johnson's vietnam policies. for the complete "american history tv" weekend schedule, go to c-span.org. >> the reality is the best presidents, the greatest presidents have ever been willing to recognize they weren't the smartest person in the room. and to surround themselves with people they thought were smarter than themselves. >> sunday night on q & a, former

secretary of defense and director of the cia robert gates discusses his book "lessons on leadership." mr. gates an served under several president, most recent ris presidents george w. bush and barack obama. >> at end of the cold war when i was director of central intelligence, i came to believe very strongly that the american peopleing had given cia a pass on a lot of things because of thut existential conflict with the soviet union. i believe that after the end evident cold war, we were going to have to be more open about what we did and why we did it and even to an extent how we did it to help the american people better understand why intelligence was important to the government and to presidents. and why presidents valued it. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q & a.

>> now vermont governor peter shumlin gives his state of the state address and discusses financial assistance for students attending college, sick leave for vermont worker, investing in renewable energy, attracting new jobs to the state, and combating drug abuse in vermont. this is just under an hour.