symposium looking at how journalism has changed since the pentagon papers of 1971 and the implications for national security leaks and sources in the digital age. we saw "the washington post" bob woodward in the first panel. "the post" executive editor martin barron will be on the second panel. we'll have that for you in about 15 minutes here on c-span3. in the meantime some news to make awe ware of senate republicans plan to confirm president trump's nominee to lead the environmental mental protection agency. scott proulx pruitt is closely aligned with oil and gas companies democrats say and they want a delay in the vote. senator susan collins is the only republican voting against mr. pruitt and a couple of democrats said they're voting for him. watch that vote live on c-span2 starting at 1:00 eastern. also this news, former republican house leader bob michael has passed away. he served as minority leader for 14 years, and he managed passage

of many initiatives by two republican presidents through democratically controled congresses. mr. michael retired one election too soon to be a part of the republican house majority that swept into power in 1994, former leader bob michael was 93 years old. and here are the results of c-span's survey of presidential historians ranking every past u.s. president on ten leadership attributes, a cross-section of 91 historians ranked the former leaders and the results are on the c-span website. the top five presidents, abraham lincoln, george washington, franklin roosevelt, theodore roosevelt and harry truman. see the full list on our website at cspan.org. also coming up sunday historians richard norton smith, edna medford and douglas brinkley will talk about c-span's o25017 presidential historian survey. this is the third survey that c-span has done on the subject, starting in 2000, we did it again in 2009 and then this

year. you can watch that discussion live on "washington journal" and that's sunday morning starting at 8:00 eastern. watch c-span as president donald trump delivers his first address to a joint session of congress. >> this congress is going to be the busiest congress we've had in decades. >> reporter: live tuesday february 28th at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and cspan.org and listen live on the free c-span radio app. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday evening at 6:00 eastern two days after president lincoln's assassination and a week after robert e. lee's surrender in april of 1865, generals william sher man and joseph johnston met to discuss the union army's future. naval historian craig simons and history professor john marzolette look back on the historic meeting. >> once they were inside, sherman took out of his pocket

the telegram that he had been handed just as he was leaving for the meeting, and showed it to joe johnston. so far he had shown it to no one else. it stated two days before abraham lincoln had been assassinated in washington, d.c. johnston looked up with sherman with horror and declared it was the greatest possible calamity for the south. >> at 6:50, lynn downey discusses her pieography of the inventor of blue jeans, leeshy strauss. >> here's a lovely copper rivet, and the patent was awarded after three tries with the patent office, on may 20th, 1873, for an improvement in fastening pocket openings, which is really boring lapping wanl for basically the invention of the blue jean. >> sunday at noon on "oral histories" we begin a series of five interviews with prominent african-american women from the explorations in black leadership

oral history collection. the late gwen eiffel discusses her life including her experience with racism in the newsroom. >> getting in the door because i had survived this, behave in a certain way was one thing. when i got in, i had to prove that i could write, meet a deadline, be a good colleague in a newsroom environment where once when it i was one of very few people of color. so just getting in the door isn't enough. it's what i always say about affirmative action. it's nice the door opens. what do you do once you walk through it? >> for our complete schedule go to cspan.org. and once again we're live at georgetown university, where coverage of the symposium this morning, examining how journalism has changed since the pentagon papers from back in 1991 will continue a little bit, in just a couple of minutes. "the washington post" executive editor martin baron will be on the second panel of the day, and

we do expect it to get under way here in just a couple of moments on c-span3.

while we wait for the second panel to get under way we'll show you a portion on this morning's discussion on journalism and national security. >> -- if you have ever seen this volume of leaks coming out in an administration. is it unprecedented or not? bob? >> well, i wouldn't use the word leaks. i think it's aggressive reporti reporting, and it's the transfer of administrations that has created the environment in a

good deal of this is coming from former people, but i agree with ellsberg, more leaks. and i think david would agree on this, there's this sense that reporters just sit around waiting for somebody to bring in a grocery cart of documents, like ellsberg did, or to call and i think the best sources are not volunteers, somebody who comes to us, but people we recruit and go to and say we want to understand what's going on. >> sounds like spycraft. >> well, no. it's reporting. and it's quite basic, and so i also, i mean, there's a lot that seems to be coming out. i think, as is always the case, there's so much more that we don't know about, the whole

general flynn issue, where he came and now is departed. i think you could probably spend part of your life trying to untangle what really is going on there. unangle what is going on there, and so many of the issues that we don't know, and we don't know the answers to a lot of the key questions. >> do you think that we will get the answers eventually? >> you know, as ben brad uly the former editor of the post would say, the truth e mejs, and sometimes it takes decades, and sometimes it comes out rather quickly, and i think that there should be a kind of are repatorial. >> and what you see, david? >> it is unusual to see hit the

early in the administration. you have to understand that when there is a transition, the people coming into the administration have come out of the campaign, and they believe that the candidate, the new president walks on water at any moment, and loyalty is sort of at the highest. and so, i have not covered as many administrations as bob has, and didn't mean that as an age issue, but it is just -- [ laughter ] >> and i went to talk to some students recently and one of them asked me what calvin coolidge was like. [ laughter ] >> it is the time that coolidge met you in the parking garage that i thought was really great. >> and he didn't even have a parking garage and i'm not sure they had cars. >> so, but, it has been my experience suns i got back from the happy life as a foreign correspondent, and entered into the three-year assignment into washington that has stretched into 22 or 23 that usually, a

administrations begin leaking after the first crew is sot of gon gone, and a group has come in to sort of undo whatever damage the initial crew did and they want to explain to you how much more brilliant they are than the people they replaced. that process takes about three years into the administration. we have gotten this starting in, you know, week one, two, three. and that reflects a different phenomena underway here, and first, the executive orders were the first thing to leak, and the first thing to leak were put together by a very small group of people. who did not consult broadly, and because they did not consult broadly, they made a lot of early mistakes. and so we saw in the immigration executive order that nobody had thought about green card holders and nobody has thought the about long term visa holders and

nobody thought the about the promises that they made to interpreters in iraq and so forth, and then there was an order which we still have not seen on detention that called for the are reopening for black site interrogation centers as if there are countries around the world that are willing to get our black site detention center s reopened. those leakser were intended to go up as a warning sign to other members of the trump administration who may not have seen the early drafts to say, hey, you are about to go walk off of the cliff, and you better read these drafts. in fact, when the second and the third versions of them missed, they were missing the black sites and so forth, and so part of this was to create a new circulatory system, because the old regulatory system was not working. that is group one. and the second set of the leaks that you have seen have been about the inner turmoil within the administration.

and i the think that is in part because you were watching a group of professional people who have been through these transitions before and are career and they know what things are supposed to be operating like at this point in time, and recognize that process has fall en apart. and you know, if you want to look at the prime example of this right now, look at the national security council, and having just gotten rid of general flynn and i agree with bob that there are a lot of things that we don't understand. >> for those newly arrived, i'm sanford unger, and i will wait for the people to -- find your seats. i'm sanford unger and glad to welcome you on the second leg of the symposium on the pentagon papers. some of you were with us last night as well as early this morning. when putting something like this together, one of the best source