damage to the republican party. i did not say that liberals are fascists. i said that liberalism is really progressivism and has some resemblance to fascism. i will stand by that. i wrote a whole book on it. in terms of lobbyists are writing bills being fascism, the greatest example of that came under woodrow wilson and fdr. the trade associations and industry representatives wrote all the codes that covered themselves. it seems that american liberalism remains a cult to the new deal. people forget that the new deal was the greatest single instance of corporate fascism in american history. you still have the left worshiping it and trying to repeat it again. host: the book is now in paperback. this is also his recent cover story. thank you for joining us.

we hope to have you back again soon. we have a full weekend here this july 4 weekend. here is what is coming up over the next couple of days. tomorrow, we will be joined by the washington editor for harper's magazine. he looks at the lobbying efforts against the employee free choice act. we will also have the managing editor of the editorial page of "the washington times." matt lewis will also join us on sunday morning. on monday, congressman henry waxman it will be with us for a full hour. he has a new book. he is also the chair of the house energy and commerce committee. he will talk about global warming and health care on capitol hill. thank you for joining us on this friday morning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] . . . >> here is a look at our schedule. coming up next, u.s. relations with iraq leading up to the invasion. that is followed by a discussion on lessons of history from president obama. then a hearing about the rates charged for cell phone carriers.

then governors from western states on renewable energy. >> tonight we begin our look at white house policy advisor is. from richard with -- from richard nixon to george w. bush they will discuss topics. their experiences to try to sell their policy agenda is to the public tomorrow. they will wrap up with lessons learned from seating under -- from serving under chief executives. our guest is walter kern on his new book on q &a." he tells the story of his years at princeton university. this sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. now a former cia intelligence officer on u.s. relations with iraq and a decade leading up to the war.

you will hear from charles duelfer. this was hosted by the world affairs council of northern california. >> from 1993 to 2000, he served as deputy chairman of the united nations weapons inspection team in iraq. by virtue of this position, he was the only senior american to have regular contact with top members of saddam hussein's regime. you may remember that at this time the u.s. embassy in baghdad was closed. trade with iraq was forbidden under terms of the un sanctions. charles duelfer and his arms inspectors were among the few people entering iraq from the west. in 2004, president bush and george tenet entrusted him to lead the investigation of the regime and its wmd effort to

find the truth behind the administration's assumptions in declaring war. the iraq survey group directed by the cia and 1700 strong produce the definitive work on the relationship of saddam hussein's regime to wmd's in its final report to congress, now known as the duelfer report. here to discuss his new book, please join me in welcoming charles duelfer. [applause] >> thank you nancy. i appreciate the opportunity to speak here in san francisco with the world affairs council. i want to make a couple of points about the key themes in my book, but first i want to say that in no way does my books shade, spin or otherwise affect

what nancy referred to as the duelfer report. while my name is on that report, it is the product of a lot of work by a lot of people. a lot of sacrifice is involved in assembling that data. it was extremely important to be able to record the data and record what we had as an historic opportunity to look inside a very unique regime. and we laid that out in an unclassified way so if you did not like the conclusions we attached to it, you can draw your own. i want to make very clear that my new book is not meant to affect the conclusions or in any way interpret that earlier work. however, i did feel there were certain things i experienced in my work with the intelligence community and with our counterparts in baghdad come up where i wanted to lay out what

the underlying -- counterparts in baghdad, where i wanted to lay at the underlying dynamics that led us to this point. the intelligence was wrong, that the interpretations, the expectations, at the predictions were wrong, but they were wrong on both sides. they were wrong for many reasons. there was an accumulation of misperceptions, that there was an accumulation of biases overtime, both in baghdad and in washington. this made these mistakes much more understandable, not necessarily excusable but understandable. i want to take a little bit of time to lay out what i mean by that in terms of background and history. i find i often had the opportunity to speak to incoming

analysts to the intelligence community, and history is perhaps not their strongest point. if something happened before the advent of the internet it may have not happened. that may be a bit overstating the case, but what i find is to understand and to get american analysts to understand how the world looks from another capital is not necessarily a natural act. it is difficult, and i learned this myself. i learned this often by the contrast of rubbing shoulders with the iraqis when we were trying to debate certain points. i learned a lot about my own assumptions. this is not surprising, but it is an important factor. let me carry on that point a little bit further. the assumptions, the mindsets

and biases that accumulated in baghdad began in 1979 when saddam hussein came to power. in 1980, a lot of things were going on in the world. jimmy carter was president. there was a revolution in iran, the u. s-soviet balance was the dominant feature in american national security calculations. -- the u.s.-soviet balance was a dominant feature. this is where all the bright eyes were focused. everything else was considered out of area. the saddam hussein's regime was new at that point and there was a lot of tension. there was a group called the party which attempted to kill someone in 1980. he is to tell me regularly about this story.

they threw hand grenades at him and i never fully appreciated the resonance it had inside him. to me it was another fact from him if he did not kill you with his cigar smoke -- he always had a point with you. but that rattled him, so they began taking a lot of preemptive steps because from their perspective, iran was a major threat. from their perspective, iran was weak but it was only going to get stronger. it was going to resonate with that part of the place where saddam hussein felt vulnerable. and the people were attacking that party were shiite and seen as having connections with iran. he needed to act preemptively. over the course of the following summer he expelled thousands of

shi'ite i iraqis and decided to invade iran in september of 1980, and thus began an eight- year war. from saddam hussein's perspective this made sense. he was facing his historic enemy and they were mounting an attack inside iraq, from his perspective. he saw the u.s. would be on his side because the iranians had taken over the american embassy. the u.s. in april of 1980 had failed in an attempt to rescue the hostages. you may recall desert one wendy's helicopters broke and they became delta force. -- when the helicopters broke he miscalculated in one grand way as he often did, but he miscalculated the potency of the

demographic imbalance. there were a lot more iranians and their were iraqis. what transpired was a costly eight-year war were hundreds of thousands of people were killed. but during that eight years the u.s. was faced with a decision, what would its position be? we could not afford to allow iraq to lose, so the policy began one of tilting toward iraq. support was provided to iraq through financial, food assistance and intelligence. intelligence was provided to iraq on iranian troop concentrations. what did iraq do? iraq was faced with a tax -- they were faced with attacke. the most effective way was to use chemical weapons.

they use 101,000 chemical ammunition to great effect. they used american intelligence to target these. occasionally, the u.s. would say chemical weapons are bad, but if you are saddam hussein, who had an exquisite use of the sense of power he said look at actions. but they are providing me with intelligence. they don't want me to lose. they are assisting the shipment of oil through the gulf at that time. the message that saddam hussein got was not don't use chemical weapons. it is we don't want you to lose. that is building up his mind set. in 1990, the war with iran ended in 1988. two years later saddam hussein was contemplating his next step.

he is killing at that point that those who had helped -- he is feeling at that point that those who have helped him in the war, those whom he helped defend were not helping him out of his economic problems. the russians had loaned or sold on credit lots of weapons. the uae, saudi arabia and kuwait had loaned money but were not for giving these debts. they were keeping the price of oil down, which from his perspective, was the equivalent of war. as an american come up when i would hear the iraqis say that -- as an american, when i would hear the iraqis say that it did not resonate. to me as an american, war means things have to blow up come of buildings have to be destroyed. -- things have to blow up,

buildings have to be destroyed. but in their mind it had the equivalent of war and the attack against their pride and their prestige. this is their perspective. with that as a background, and saddam hussein -- some of you who are versed in the history will remember that he called and the american ambassador and said if we are not able to satisfy or sort this out peacefully, what do you think will happen? at one point in the dialogue, if you look at the transcript from each side, it is interesting because they are pretty close. he said if things went bad the americans might be forced to launch air plants -- airplanes or rockets. the body language was sort of.

airplanes and rockets are one thing but the other messages he was getting prior to bad, president bush had sent him a congratulatory note on the anniversary of iraq nacional de. donald rumsfeld -- iraq national day. donald rumsfeld had stopped by baghdad. he was not getting messages that there was some red line here. if you had been saddam hussain's intelligence analyst and he said what you think the americans will do if we solve our economic problems and solve some of the issues in the gulf region by taking over this piece of land that thinks it is a country called kuwait? and we will call that our 19th province. if he were the intelligence analyst there is no way you would have predicted that the

united states would deploy hundreds of thousands of troops, aircraft carriers, and dozens of aircraft in response. i doubt if an american intelligence analyst would have predicted that. as any intelligence is, you look at the world in a rear view mirror. if you are driving down the highway you can steer by just looking in a rear view mirror. i recommend that you try this. [laughter] if you pick a point on the mirror and you watched the lines go by anti -- and you can go well until you come to a toll booth. that is what intelligence analyst still whether they are in baghdad or washington. the world had changed radically. there was a toll booth ahead and saddam hussein did nancy it. what had happened is that the berlin wall came down. -- and saddam hussein did not

see it. in fact, we were looking for an opportunity to do something with our former opponents, the russians and the soviet union. when saddam hussein walked into kuwait all of the sudden the u.s. could stand on principle. it was an opportunity for the u.s. to do something in coordination with the un and including the former soviet union. saddam hussein did i get that and we did not either. he goes into kuwait and loses. he is expelled from kuwait, and as part of the cease-fire resolution the un security council passed a resolution which said we are going to keep the sanctions we put on iraq when you went into kuwait. we will keep those on until it

is verifiable you have gotten rid of your weapons of mass destruction and there is a monitoring system which will ensure you do not rebuild these things. that was a bit of course of disarmament, it was not arms control. people tend to think of it as the same way it but this is coercive disarming. iraq did not sign up for this. it is like germany in world war ii. inspectors were imposed upon germany and meant to ensure that germany got rid of weapons. it lasted about the same length of time. the inspectors went in and there was a very early lesson that saddam hussein's troops from that experience. in 1991, inspectors had grant authority given to them by the security council. you can bring stuff and, it do

what ever you want so long as it was associated with verifying wmd's. saddam hussein's mind -- he said my highest priority is to get out of sanctions. i know about these un inspectors. they will poke around. they know we have scud missiles come and give them those. this other stuff, let's keep it simple. -- they know we have missiles, give them those. thus began a seven-year process of partial revelation. in that first point when the inspectors went in to a place that was contentious, the iraqis blocked them. this became a crisis and it went to the security council. saddam hussein got an important

lesson at that point. all the american forces are still in place. the war had just ended as a cease-fire. the aircraft carriers are there. all you have to do is save launch and it starts again. -- all you have to do is say launch. they sent two swedes to baghdad. if you are saddam hussein, a guy who calculates tangible things, he said they did not send aircraft carriers or bombs, they sent two swedes. these two men can be pretty devastating swedes, but this is a message that saddam hussein got that the security council is not necessarily an evil force.

saddam hussein were very -- this is not necessarily an immutabel force. a couple other points in that history, i am building us up a bit. i know we have to save time for questions. in the kuwait war, i had a discussion with the iraqis later on in 1995. the iraqis finally agreed to discuss what they had done with wmd's during the kuwait war in 1991. they told me it was a late night meeting in one of these rooms in the middle of the night in baghdad. they said, i ask them why did you not use them? they said when the secretary of state met with someone before

the war in geneva he made a clear statement. he said if you use non- conventional weapons our country will demand a regime-and in response. so the iraqis said -- a regime- ending response. but that did not stop them. they said, and this is a senior level, they said you did not go to baghdad in 1991. they saw me as a divided person. they saw me with the un have on but also as the american they could talk to. -- they saw me with the un hat on. the goal was to expel you from kuwait. they said i would say that to if i was in your shoes. you did not go because of the wmd's.

they went on to explain that before the war we loaded aerial bombs and scud missile warheads with chemical weapons and biological ones. we delegated the authority to use them, and that was frightening to hear that. if the u.s. went to baghdad they would use this. they concluded that that deterred or contributed heavily to deterring the u.s. from going to baghdad in 1991. there are three things i have talked about here, the wmd's saved saddam hussein. they believe the wmd saved them from the war in 1991. and we have a background from 1991 to 1996, there is very reluctant cooperation with the un inspectors. even after they basically have

given up everything, we did not know that, so if you are an american intelligence analyst in 2001, and one other point is that in 1998 the inspectors left finally from iraq after a crisis, at which i will not go over here. i will be happy to discuss this crisis that ended with bombing and the end of inspections. but from 1998 the intelligence community had no window into iraq because the un inspectors were everywhere. we were all over iraq. but if you are in washington all of the sudden you go blind in december 1998. you would have no real sources of information. policy-makers still want you to make a call. does iraq have wmd? you are trying to draw a line forward with very little information coming out but you have this background where

saddam hussein thinks wmd save 10 ind two occasions. -- saved him in two occasions. what happened was we only had one hypothesis, the intelligence community had one hypothesis. when you only have one hypothesis ec data which fits into that hypothesis. -- you see data which fits into that hypothesis. he must maintain two or else you will not see things. you will not see data. there is a question i like to ask the analysts, can you see something you do not have a word for it? but it is important. the mistake on calculating wmd in 2001 is understandable. it was wrong, it was a big

error, but the most costly error was nine the mistake on wmd calculations were the administration chose to use and believe the intelligence community's judgment, but the most costly mistake was the choice not to use were believe the intelligence community's knowledge about the internal dynamics of iraq. whenever making the decision to go forward with the regime and making plans for the follow-up, they intentionally did not include cia. they did not intentionally include state department, they have only external information. cia had knowledge of what was going on, knowledge which would have vastly improved the decisions that were made. i think where we are now in iraq in 2009 is at a place where we could have been in 2004

without all the intervening costs. that was the real tragedy of the american decision. i will stop there if that is appropriate and ask questions. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> is a better if i sit here? >> you have a fascinating chapter in the book on saddam hussein. after he was captured on december 13, 2003, you arrive in iraq to head of the iraq study group. he was debriefed by a special agent. what are your comments about saddam hussein himself? a controlling presence.

>> it is very difficult to say anything positive about him without getting in trouble. we just had a very cartoonish image of him and his regime in washington. saddam hussein ruled in a way where he had an uncanny instinct and understanding of what motivated people and countries at their basest level. we had no concept of that in washington. the ability of saddam hussein to lead and one of the important features that was not visible to us was he led a lot bind

implicit guidance. when we would go -- he led allied by implicit guidance. if you were around saddam hussein, there was almost an aura. you did not want to be in a position six months from now to answer no to him if he asked you a question. there was this anticipation which caused action. that does not happen in a country like ours. it is not something which analysts will recognize. but it is that type of understanding which is necessary if you are going to observe their behavior. it is very difficult to get that kind of insight. for our analysts in washington, we have leadership analysts. they work very hard, but much of their knowledge comes from a computer screen.

that is a bit like plato' cave. you wind up with a very 1- dimensional picture. the tendency is when you see data, you apply your own logic. the same thing also happens when they are looking at us. they think we are smart. they think we know everything, so when they see our actions they think we know all about their wmd program. therefore, there must be other motivation. if they see a leak in the newspaper they think that is by design. when we observe their behavior, it is in response to their misperceptions of us. saddam hussein, for all of his instinctive grasp of what motivated people, he did not understand the u.s.

this played out in a way in the 1998 time, because they kept making injuries to the united states. we said -- they kept making treaties to the united states. he says it is natural that the u.s. and iraq work together. iraq is the builder in the region, secular, westward- leaning. it is natural that the u.s. has a good relationship. what he did not get was that it was impossible for anyone in washington to do something with saddam hussein. it was political suicide, but he was a very crafty guy. he did have that compelling presence that people were quite afraid of. >> could you comment on saddam's

celt of session on -- the self -- his disdain for kuwait? >> saddam hussein saw himself as the latest in a long line of great arab leaders. he really did, he was narcissistic. in a way that is hard to imagine. he saw that his legacy would be hundreds of years into the future. he firmly believed in the historical vision of iraq that the i iranians were in much bigger presence in his mind and we appreciated. the historic animosity between the arab nation and the persians, and he would almost

spit when they say that. it was a very potent feeling, but that was his sense of green your. -- that was his sense of grandeur. he saw the other gulf states as lazy, nonproductive, by the accident of birth they had been born on a pot of oil. they did not build anything, they did not -- they were not engineers. he thought there should be a natural -- national allegiance to him as the person who embodied this great iraqi spirit. this is the way his mind worked. this is a derivative of debriefing him over many months. he also did build a lot of good things in iraq, a good educational system, a health system.

women did pretty well in iraq under saddam hussein. there were a lot of women professionals. it is odd to say anything positive about saddam hussein because he did rule by terror, but he also built a fair amount. >> why is so little attention paid to the very useful work done by the inspectors? shouldn't they have remained? >> it is important to remember that in 1998 there was a box that the world community was in. in the middle of that box was inspectors. we could not verify iraq's declarations they had gotten rid of their weapons. we could not verify it. we knew we could demonstrate

that some of what iraq had said was wrong. they blocked us in many cases from going to various places. when you look at all of that, and when you look at the discrepancies of what we were able to account for, and you look at the history that the wmd had been useful to saddam hussein, it is not an unusual leap to assume he still has things but we were not able to verify that he did not. iraq was charged with proving a negative. that is pretty tough to do. and they are faced with the u.s. to have a policy of supporting the inspectors on the one hand, but also supporting containment in regime change. that did not originate with bush, the younger. that term had been lingering out there for some time.

if you are saddam hussein you think what is in this for me? in 1998, he said we came to a conclusion that we can have sanctions with inspections -- sanctions with inspectors or without. thank you very much. but from 1998 until 2001, the sanctions were crumbling. saddam hussein was a student at saying to other businessmen in the oil companies -- he was very astute at saying you better be my friend now. this was teeming with western businessmen falling over themselves. money was flowing into baghdad very rapidly. that tool for containing saddam hussein was falling apart. sadly, it would not work forever. the last point on this is that in theory, the resolutions that

once they have verified iraq got rid of its weapons and there is a monitoring system, then the sanctions will be lifted. no one ever really believed that saddam hussein would rebuild his weapons or kick the inspectors out. no one really believe that if he did that the sanctions could be reimposed. there was an element within the security council that they understood their own resolutions, a kind of like the emperor without clothing, but that was not articulate and well. but the notion of course of disarmament sustainment forever -- the notion of coercive disarmament sustainment forever does not work. >> we are stopping now for a 30- minute advertising break. did you think in 2001 that iraq had wmd's?

>> i did. not to the extent that the intelligence community laid out. they did a national intelligence estimate in october 2002 which was famously wrong. but if you asked me or other alumni of the un inspectors, we had been trying to dig into this for seven years. my judgment at that point was i thought iraq would probably have some small number of ballistic missiles that would serve as a preserve a form. because we could not quite account for all of them. the russians had sold them and we went through enormous detail. then i thought that saddam would have the ability to produce it on some period of strategic warning, because they had the

capacity to build a biological weapons, so what was needed was the infrastructure to do that, of which is actually very small. a microbiology lab and a university could produce some amounts. their normal industrial infrastructure could produce this. my judgment was not that he was compliant and he had -- but i did not think he had significant stock. that part turns out i was right. when i went and i did not get the shots. >> did saddam actually have wmd that he shipped to syria before the u.s. attack? what happened to the iraq airforce that went to iran? that is a good question. saddam was in compliance, but he

was not. he had ballistic missiles which exceeded the range permitted by the un. there are many other things that were contrary to the un resolution. they were not the kind of things that people think was worth going to war over and not something that would create a mushroom cloud. the question about syria, and that is one of the lingering issues where if i had a little bit more time in iraq, i would have tried to run it down further. i am convinced wmd did not go to syria. there was a guy -- we had saddam hussein in custody and his number two. i knew him from before. before i went out to baghdad i met with the president and said i need the ability to affect some of these characters future, because if i don't get any other

information, if i can get not necessarily saddam but his number two. if i can get him to be candid with me, that will give me something that i can have some confidence and. i had that authority. -- then i can have something i can be confident in. he could have said everything about wmd. i asked him about his relationship with syria and he detailed them all. there was a lot of smuggling going back and forth. they were doing all kinds of deals in violation of u.n. resolution. there were some ports about trucks going back and forth and aircraft moving. my suspicion is there were

valuable materials that were used to syria, things like pieces of equipment that were brought into iraq against sanctions which had great value but not wmd. my guess is a lot of that equipment just went missing. it looks like the place was picked clean when we went inspecting. some of these mysterious trucks carried things like that. that is my hypothesis. i don't think it went to syria. >> one of your book chapters is one of the most fascinating. this is saddam's presidential secretary. you used his debriefing partly as an example of what you call the inn at handling by the americans of -- would you call the inept handling by the americans of the detainees. can you talk to us about that? >> all of these debriefings, and

none of this was coercive. this did not get into any of the types of enhanced interrogation. you're sitting down with senior government officials or scientists and walking through them what went on. but the -- you would think this would be done in an organized way. again, we are not as smart as they think we are. the detainees were kept in one place and they all intermingled. this one fellow who was walking around as though he was still the number two man in iraq. every time we spoke with one of the ministers he would then the brief that guy in the prison yard. -- he would then debrief that guy in the prison yard. i asked at one.

to build a wall down the middle. they said that is -- i asked at one point to build a wall down the middle. this was not a well-structured approach. the way that we had analysts come out, i don't know why but people seemed to want to spend a lot of time in baghdad. i loved the place. i like being there but some people say we are out there for 30 days and then they go home. the way our system works in light of these intelligence reports, if you write to an intelligence reports that is good. people run in and go in and debrief people. they asked what is the difference between boeing corporation and the congressional research service. then they would run out and right at the answer and wrote an

intelligence report. two weeks later a new guy comes out and asks the same question or the equivalent. we accumulated a lot of intelligence reports but not a lot of understanding. these high-valued detainee's worked out that these guys are not well organized. what i tried to do in my team is bringing out those people who did have long experience, which were very few. then i try to accumulate in this report to register that understanding in a continuous way rather than these segmented intelligence reports. to emphasize the point, this was a cooperative debriefing process. there were moments when people said are we being too easy on these guys? they wanted to help us. they did not have any longer a

reason to lie on a lot of these things. >> you mentioned that the state department and cia were excluded from the decision making prior to the war. a member of the audience wants to know what did the cia know in 2004 that was not considered? >> what was blocked, there was a process by which cia activities are approved and blessed by the white house. and there was a proposal of a number of activities prior to the war that the cia would do to include things like sabotage, those were approved but what was excised from that was any rule for the cia in planning for the post-saddam political infrastructure.

it was blocked. that meant that those of us who knew i iraqis in iraq -- who knew iraqis could not make use of those contacts. what i think the reason was is that those who were making decisions who were largely civilians in the department of defense came to rely upon iraqis outside of iraq such as the iraqi national congress represented by a very bright and articulate it person. but he had no support in iraq. anyone who had been in iraq knew he had no support. in fact, they hated him. to me, that was the most costly mistake because it was my view that if we had stuck to what the iraqis in iraq thought we were

going to do, which was moved saddam and his top few people, the president and donald rumsfeld said that was a goal before the war, because the iraqis heard and they said they will get rid of saddam. my interests are no longer aligned with saddam's. you could be someone who is a leader in the military or in the security services, so that statement detached saddam's interest from yours. but then they did a bait and switch, they did not follow through. we could have passed messages to keep people and said keep the lights on and we are coming in, we will sort this out case by case. there is any one of a half-dozen people who can be a temporary leader. there are well-respected military leaders who we can put in place to hold the gravity that we pulled out by pulling out saddam.

it did not need to be this bad. to illustrate this point, we did protect the oil ministry. [laughter] and that worked very well. there were good, solid brilliant technocrats running the oil ministry. these guys were the best and the brightest in iraq. if we had done the same thing in all of the other key ministries, my argument would be all the chaos which erupted at the end of april would have been avoided. first of all, we told everybody with a gun that they were our enemy. we don't want any ambiguity, if you have a gun you are our enemy. what genius thought of that? i was dealing with my friends and people that i knew. they could not believe it and we

could not reported. we could not say that there was going to be an insurgency in iraq. that was the wrong message, but it was clear to anyone who knew iraqis. >> are all wmd equally dangerous? prior to the war i assume most intelligence agencies the same iraq had chemical and biological weapons, but did the intelligence agencies feel as confident about nuclear weapons? was it somewhat misleading in the run-up to the war to use the usewmd when nuclear weapons -- to use the term wmd when these are the most dangerous? >> that is a very good question. it touches on a number of aspects of this whole dynamic. all wmd are not created equal.

a nuclear weapon is obviously much greater concern than chemical weapons or biological weapons. nuclear weapon is useful and potential. if you ever use that, is suicide. chemical weapons have battlefield utility. in the run-up to the war, and i may drone on a little bit on this point. the reason we got in snarled with this wmd debate is because the president made a decision after 9/11, and you have to step back into that context. we had been attacked. he concluded we are at war and that we cannot afford to give up the first punch anymore. if we wait and react to an attack, it is too costly. when he looked at the iraq

problem with that newly-formed mine said, he said i cannot afford to allow saddam to strike first. -- with that newly-formed mine d set. he was counsel by secretary paul and tony blair -- by secretary powell. you can get your desired outcome but you don't need to go alone. if you go through the un you can bring along the international community. the president was persuaded to do that because the common knowledge was saddam could not comply with the un resolutions which were all written in terms of wmd. so the way he could bring the international community with him, his objective is this is a threat that goes beyond wmd.

he was channeled through the un. un -- he had to show that iraq had wmd. for those of us to work in the inspection business, that is a tough thing to demonstrate that, and he is good at slicing his complaints in ways that you did not have a response to. if the security council is faced with a choice about are we worry an inspector can get into the headquarters or go into war because iraq is blocking them, we did that have those options. being tied to this debate on wmd was a consequence of a decision to go through the un. the president has to bring his population with him. he does not have the luxury of saying i will do this and everybody says yes. he had to make a concise bumper

sticker-type of argument. he said the statements about the next cloud uc will be a mushroom cloud. they did overstate the case. -- the next cloud you see will be a mushroom cloud. the president did not have that luxury. i am not accusing him because the public case they made was not supported even by the incorrect intelligence assessments. >> at the beginning of your booking make the comment, the costs to the u.s. of severed relations with baghdad for more than a decade was extraordinarily high. several of you in the audience have asked charles duelfer to comment on how his experiences with iraq give us insight into

our current situation with north korea. >> i never thought of myself as an iraq expert. i am not iraqi, but you're of the 1990's i spent a lot of time there. -- but throughout the 1990's i spent a lot of time there. by 2003 it turned out i was in iraq genius simply because i had been there and i knew these guys. the cost of not having an embassy or an interaction with senior members so that they learn from us and vice versa, so there are people in washington who do have a tactile feel for the next -- for things, that did not exist. that contributed heavily to some of these ill-informed decisions.

it allowed the external iraqis to have enormous influence over the decision making process. it was convenient to believe certain things because they had no contrary information. that was a big price. i think it applies not just to north korea but also iran. i realize that it conveys a statement to have a relationship with a country, but having a dialogue does not convey approval. it allows you influence and allows you to learn something. senior iraqis came to me after the war in april and said why did you have to go to war? they said you know us. why couldn't the great united states have talked to us and set up a way for us to maneuver saddam hussein out and replaced him. that would be nice but the united states cannot do brain

surgery. we seem to have three things that we can do. we can't throw money at problems, we are pretty good at that. we can build bureaucracies, we will build a new dni or something else. and we can blow stuff up. what i am trying to say is a serious point. we have to know our limitations. even if we can agree on something that should be done, sometimes it is better to check that natural inclinations of americans to fix stuff, because we don't have the nimbleness to do that, although we are getting better at blowing things up. but i am not sure that is the best of the three tools. >> as a final question, we have a question from a trusty of the world affairs council who is

generous with his time as head of our marin chapter. the famous yellowcake document was labeled a forgery. can you tell us why it was taken seriously for so long? the fbi and cia maintained skilled specialists who could have exposed this fraud after analysis. why were they not consulted? >> this gets to the point in the earlier question on wmd been equal. the nuclear aspect of this, there was limited data but there is enormous consequences. because nuclear is so important, and given the history that meet at the nuclear case wrong, we underestimated the iraqi capacity. -- given the case that we got the new clear case wrong. the political leaders were predisposed to see data which

fit the hypothesis that they have a program. i think that biased affected how in the u.s. there was a document to which came to the u.s. through the italian intelligence service. it was leaked to also be "lond ton times." .

ambassador joe wilson was sent on this mission to run the data, see what was going on. it was one of two or three datapoint that people who were charged with following the barack nuclear capacity really latched onto. the other thing was -- the erotic -- iraq nuclear capacity really last onto. the other thing was the use of centrifuges. it could be. the more logical explanation was the use of artillery rockets. it was wrong analysis. it was clearly wrong. i do not know why it took so long. and i do not know the technical -- i do not know the procedure white it did not go to the forgery experts in the fbi and cia earlier.

i do not know the answer to those questions in detail. there was a tendency, a political tendency, to want to believe that was true. >> unfortunately, we are out of time. i apologize to those whose questions we did not address. i want to thank paul gardner from c-span. on behalf of the world affairs council, i would like to thank our guest for his service to our country and sharing his insights with us tonight. he will be staying to sign books, which are to our left here. thank you very much to each of you in the audience for your attention. good night. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> you are watching c-span. coming up next, a discussion on lessons learned from history for president obama. that is followed by a hearing on the rates charged by carriers for cell phone taxing. and then a conference on renewable energy. tonight we begin our look at white house policy advisers. from richard nixon to george w. bush, they will discuss their relationships with chief executives. tomorrow, their experience is trying to sell policy agendas to the congress and the public. and they will wrap up with lessons learned from serving under chief executives sunday at 4:25 eastern here on c-span. here's a look at upcoming guests on "washington journal." tomorrow, the managing editor for harper's magazine on the

employee free choice act. and the washington times contributor richard miniter. and coming up, henry waxman on the clean energy act and the current debate on health care. that is 7:00 eastern here on c- span. >> these places remind me of modern cathedrals. >> walter kirn, princeton class of 1983, would like to see changes to modern education. >> i think that these wonderful concentrated islands of talent and well -- wealth and area edition should be opened up to the larger society -- and learning should be opened up to

the larger society. >> the education of an over achiever, sunday night at 8:00 on c-span. you can also listen on xm like radio or download the podcast. >> and now, lessons president obama can learn from history. three academics take part in the discussion. this is one hour and 20 minutes. >> thank you very much. what a great lunch we have had. we have lots to think about from a wonderful panel this morning. i hate to up four excellent papers -- i took for excellent papers this morning. great job. [applause] the first panel set the bar high for the second panel. again, gleaves whitney, delighted that you are here with us this afternoon. we now move to our second panel -- the founding fathers and the

lessons of antiquity. there are three very distinguished scholars whom -- who will be presenting. i am delighted to be joined by jeremy mcinenerney, and he will be the chair of this panel. he is a professor of classical studies at the university of pennsylvania. he also chaired a group on art and archeology of the mediterranean world. he earned his ph.d. at the university of california berkeley. he was a fellow at the american center of classical studies and has excavated in israel, corinth, and on crete. he served on the managing committee of the american school of classical studies in athens, greece. he has a number of interesting publications. i have a feeling you will hear about those as well. please join us. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you, ladies and gentleman. may i begin by expressing my deep -- my deep thanks to hauenstein center for hosting this a vet. and congratulations to my panel. this was glorious before lunch. i think we are still feeling the effects of the roast beef sandwiches. i am hoping that the audience will be as quiet and courteous as they were in the second half. [laughter] earlier this week, we receive the joyful news that captain richard fell seven released from captivity after successful intervention by u.s. forces. this was merely the latest crisis that the obama administration has had to face in its short time in office. i could have begun, of course,

with a north korean rocket -- excuse me, a satellite. or the collapse of the economy. because the pace at which crises lola and flameout in our media-saturated world, makes it difficult to concentrate on such weighty matters as the lessons from antiquity and the current administration. the president is going to face four years of continuous crises. will there be time for sober reflection and consideration? when first approached to for debate today, i was primarily focused on the first great the duration of society and human nature -- thucydides, who you of heard described in papers this morning and last night. the athenian general whose work begins in a tradition that includes machiavelli and hogs --

b hobbes. when i was considering the obama administration, i was thinking of full-scale wars. the cities provide insights the desert -- thucydides provides insights that deserve attention. for example, he describes an outbreak of violence that in his description looks remarkably like the hutu/to see violence in rwanda. -- who 2/ -- hut / -- hutu/tutsi violence in rwanda. war is a harsh teacher, thucydides says. it gives people the impulses that are as bad as the situation when it takes away the easy supply of what they need for

daily life. think about this for a moment. the idea of war as a harsh teacher. if you believe that, as i do, then it follows that demonizing the enemy, any enemy, represents a failure of imagination. a failure to recognize that under the right circumstances or i should probably say under the wrong circumstances, even the best may be reduced to doing the worst. civil war is surely not the same as our campaign against somali pirates or the taliban in afghanistan or insurgence in iraq. is there anything to be learned from reading to cities? let me preface my answer. it thucydides was reacting to a style of history writing such as you find in the work of his predecessors. people were listening to a nice

crows story with romantic and dramatic elements, including the story of croesus. on his deathbed, shaking his fist at apollo, and saying why did you deceive me into attacking the persians? it was your destiny, replies the god of prophecy. to expiate the sense of your ancestors five generations earlier when they acquired the throne through the a moral perceptions of a woman. the history that was going on in thucydides' day which is essentially like tv -- the sunday night movie. a wonderful story in which you are asked to believe the fate of an empire depended upon something that had happened to your great great great grandmother. and because she was a naughty lady, you end up on a funeral

pyre, punished by a god. thus thucydides reacting to the romantic version of history. that is not what history is about. my history may not be the most delightful to hear, since there is no mythology in it, but those who want to look at the truth of what was done in the past, which given the human condition will worker in the future, either in the same fashion or nearly so -- those readers will find this history valuable enough, as i have composed this speech not to win a prize today, but as a possession for all time. the most arrogant piece of greek ever written. [laughter] and yet, ironically correct, because we are still reading it today. here is the ground zero for the basic notion, the notion this conference has returned to on several occasions over the last

two days, that the core of human nature is the same. human history will always played out along predictable lines. this is a favorite view among those who, for example, will always return to nazism as the case of how to behave or how not to be paid. we cite the case of hitler. do not appease osama bin laden. do not appease the dear leader, pol pot, or whoever else happens to be on our hit list. i want to ask a basic question -- are there lessons in history? and i am not referring here to the subtle reading of history that we were given before lunch, but are there lessons of history based on the idea that history always repeats itself since it is based on human actions and we

are always the same? large, broad rules of history as they are sometimes called? is human nature unchanging, and doesn't always produce historical trends that are predictable and it therefore knowable? the alternative you might postulate that hitler's dreadful rise was contingent on germany's humiliating defeat in the first world war, the allies' decision to saddled germany was crippling debts, and and one might add that the virulent anti-semitism activated by the nazis, while recurring at various times in europe's history, can hardly be seen as an on varying confident -- constant. thucydides' might say you are missing the point. it is not a question of

specifics in germany in 1933 or 1941 or cambodia in 1975. it is the fact that atrocities occurred in each of these places and that the absolute underlying cause of these was in each case the same. if so, what is the truth as cause of these dreadful events? one we have already seen. war is a harsh teacher. one can hardly prepared for that. it is not a lesson that you can actively use. no matter how many heroes -- no matter how many heroes there are among men and women, there will always be those sad pathetic few who simply do not have a moral compass or rely more on the chain of command than their own conscience. there will always be people of that sort. all right, that is about individuals. what about the level of the states and when it comes to policy, which is what we are

really talking about here? in 416 bc, during the polynesia more, the athenians went to war with an island -- best known for the statue of the nest. venus de milo, the one with no arms. it is not especially important for any resources. nice beaches and a lot of rocks. it's a mistake was at the end of the fifth century, the island had decided to remain neutral. the athenians sent forces to subdue the islands and began by opening negotiations with an embassy. they spoke with representatives. the athenians, dispensing with diplomatic small talk, get straight to the heart of the matter when they say -- let's work a lot we can do on the basis of what both sides truly accept. we both know that when people

have discussions about justice, decisions can only be made when necessity applies to both sides equally. they have to be comparable. when one side is stronger, each -- it gets as much as it can, and the weak must accept that. when a superior power it uses its purity as the most compelling argument for strengthening power, it is difficult for the weaker power to muster a at counterpart argument. fortune may favor us as much as you -- good fortune, good luck. things might work out. so we can still hope for the future. we have powerful friends and allies, such as the spartans. we have faith in heaven because "we stand innocent against men who are unjust."

the athenians say do not be seduced by words like honor. many have been overcome by the seductive word honor. even when they foresee the dangers to which it carries them, they are drawn by a mere word into an action that is an irreparable disaster. and so intentionally, they fall into a dishonor that is more shameful than mere misfortune since it is due to their own foolishness. the polls of this debate, whether to use power aggressively -- basically a bully -- or to use strength and to face appearing weak, a very real and very familiar problem. they are real in this sense. when the island excepted -- refused to accept a fenian control, the athenians laid siege, and upon capturing it, they killed all the men of military age and made slaves of

the women and children. in appropriating a delicate law -- i am appropriating delacroix, but i think you understand why. negotiate with a nuclear iran or bomb its facilities? offer food and aid to north korea, or seek its further isolation from the international community? pressure israel to stop expanding settlements or pressure hamas to stop firing rockets into gaza? condemned the state as violating international law by materially participating in the assassination of the head of state of another nation? you all know the issues that have occupied this administration and every other as long as america is the world's superpower. it is the dilemma of diplomacy or action. the latter eloquently summed up

by the poster on the right. and i do mean on the right. bridging the gap between the athenian general, the voice of real politik, and historical actions is no simple matter. last sunday, the times -- the "times" of london reported on the taking of a ship in africa. it was suggested that this might be useful advice for world leaders to consider in implementing a new solution to somali pirates. we are addicted to this idea that you can control -- that you can troll the past four lessons on how to act now. you can go to cities for such

advice. it will result in conclusion such as best -- do not start a second campaign law you are engaged in a first one. the athenians took on sicily while still at war with sparta. bad idea. they lost. conceivably we might say to the president, do not escalate in afghanistan until iraq is settled. equally considerably, the president might say we are already in afghanistan and a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. a dangerous but so far successful feature of this administration's approach to just about everything. other policy advice based on the athenian experience is going to be at all less helpful. we have to be wary of this kind of one to one analogizing. for example, pericles says do not worry about having your

territory invaded. as long as you have a navy, the city will be well supplied. you have walls and the navy. the walls protect. the navy comes in with the goods. conceivably, this might lead the president to abandon passport checks on the border, opening the floodgates to invasion from canada by people who are very polite in two different languages. [laughter] the real difficulty -- here is a point -- the real difficulty in applying thucydides is the most dangerous power in his view was not the little guys, the neutrals, the renegades, the canadiens -- the canadians. it was the athenian empire itself. if the most powerful nation in the west truly wishes to gain

lessons from history, my advice would be be very careful what you wish for. your empire is really like a tyranny, says pericles. it may not be just to a pirate. it would be dangerous to give it up. you fail to see that your empire is a tyranny, and that you have unwilling subjects who are continually plotting against you. the two leaders who are about as far apart as president bush and president obama. two other offices, republican and democrat. both saying essentially the same thing. i think we can take this as the interpretation of athenian power by thucydides. believe it or not, there is a school of scholarship that has maintained the lessons of thucydides, the citizens, the

realistic view of the world's so ably explained earlier this morning -- there is a school that says that can be married to the kind of distinctive quality of american exceptionally some -- exceptionalism. how you marry the idea that america can be a force for good, a crusader, with the notion that there are these lessons that state's only act in their own self-interest? the godfather of this interpretation is leo strauss. we have been talking about him for the last two days. teaching at the university of chicago, and he viewed the u.s. as an instrument of -- the instrument of a strong statist tradition. it is a powerful state that should act aggressively in the

world. he advocated a vigorous american imperialism. i am going to try to make the case that this was the author of one of the strands of american served as some in the last 30 years. religion and faith, as representatives of moral absolutism, should be put back into politics, even though strauss himself believed religion to be a pious fraud. it was useful to exert social control. he was not a believer. liberalism and moral relativism have to be rejected and replaced by a form of moral absolutism, a strategy of permanent confrontation of what is perceived as evil. find the bad guys and always had the mark. strauss rejects individual rights and favors state power. individual rights are not that important to him. it is the power of america as a collective. excuse me. he argues the classical and christian natural law did not

impose strict limits on state power, but the exercise of such power or was better -- was better left to the idea of a philosopher king who will rule the state wisely. a strong central presidency would express that. he proposed a "farsighted imperialism," and the adoption and military policies. go after the bad guys aggressively. the last position -- the political philosophers -- and presumably the politicians following their lead, that they could lie to their audience is disturbing. this idea of a noble lie -- and explains that philosophers believed that the gulf separating the wise and the boulder was a basic fact of human nature. there are those who know, and

there is you. we know. do not worry. we will could you please infections to make you feel as though you are participating in decision making -- we -- we will give you pleasing fiction's to make you feel as though you are participating in decision making. ok. you may read this and think it is nonsense and you may say it has nothing to do with actual political life. what are we worried about? you are right. he was read and cited as an influence by some conservative thinkers who felt an increasing revulsion from the 1960's on words in what they felt as the drift of american policy abroad. the hero was president reagan, but there godfather was leo strauss. a number of new conservatives have openly acknowledged his restores. for example, william kristol has

written as much. for strauss, liberalism produced a decent way of life, and one he thought was worth defending, but the debt and for nothing could be said to be true. one had no guidance on how to live. everything was relative. strauss suggests that maybe we did not have to sit there and accept that was our fate. politics could help shape the way people live, to some lessons about living noble lives, and can we think about what cultures and politics produce more admirable human beings tactical question is back on the table by a spouse, i think. conservative policy-makers took up these notions that america represented the preeminent moral force in the world and that that moral superiority constituted a mandate to act internationally. one of them was ronald reagan's

advisor who stated -- this is a radio transcript, by the way. you will see why i point that out. it was a small group of people and yes, we did have a plan. everyone thinks the reagan doctrine, the reagan administration like everybody was for it. it was a small ball within the east sober -- within the reagan white house. [laughter] what united the small group was the vision of bringing more freedom to the world, more security to the world, to get rid of the soviet empire itself. if one follows both the writings and the oral pronouncements of the leading new conservative thinkers, you find echoes of strauss and his world view. for example, the summary of while wheat fight. we want, you know, down with tierney. we want free countries. we think america is better off if we live in a world primarily

populated with free countries. we think that if the whole world were like that, we would be much more secure, and that typically we are a track -- we are attacked by tyrants. i think that is america's destiny. i think our only chance is whether we will lose, and what circumstances will we fight under? we are going to have to fight. they will come after us. new conservatives have been very clear about attributing their inspiration to strauss. these are not abstract notions from philosophy 101. the people reading these ideas are the men who proceeded to make policy. where is the transition? look at william kristol. the wisdom of regime change, the merits of promoting democracy, the desire believe american power and influence -- these

issues extend well beyond iraq. surely is not too much to claim that the ideological underpinning that the war in iraq and the thrust of the bush administration foreign policy, it bore the unmistakable mark of two generations of conservative thinking. and while american policy has been shaped by these ideas, the tragedy is immense itself to a fundamentally undemocratic believe is some common sense is based on a spurious notion that only a select few -- those of us up here -- can ever understand the secret wisdom of the intelligentsia. all the rest of you can spend your time at the mall. america is a powerful nation. it cannot be a great nation is to realize on the false proposition that because it enjoys a sense of moral purpose that it is therefore obliged or

entitled to project its military might abroad. the really profound tragedy of the new conservative reading of the cities is they did not read him closely enough. had they done so, they might have seen an aggressive militarize foriegn policy does not increase security. the lesson is there for it either read the classics more carefully, or better still -- do not read. lead. that is it. [laughter] [applause] now we had a slight change of format for the afternoon, and we

have moved the order around a little bit. we will hear two more papers. first from tracy lee simmons, and then later from professor karl richard. i want to introduce tracy lee simmons who holds an m.a. from the university of oxford. most recently, he is the author of a new book on greek and latin. his new book is entitled "thomas jefferson and classical education." [applause] >> thank you to the hauenstein center, and this conference has been about lessons and the lesson i am taking rain now is if you have as a speaker no audiovisual aids, do not follow

someone who has. [laughter] lessons for president obama. i would like to start with a suggestion, which is he should get rid of the teleprompter. instead of having those awkward pieces of glass in front of him, instead, he should have this unit in front of the lectern two grecian of vases with shrubbery in them. [laughter] i would like to set aside my classical trading -- training for a bed, and talk about what has been touched in at these talks -- classical human some. let's look at one of the founders, thomas jefferson, who exemplified that ideal most perfectly.

i always have to begin any talked about humanism by doing a little reformation on the word itself. we usually hear it today with that barnacle attached -- secular. it is always used pejoratively. i do not deny something called secular humanism exists, but that is not what i mean when i talk about humanism, and it is not principally what jefferson meant by it. we live in a world where, of course, we pay a lot of lip service to the founders, and they deserve it. i want to concentrate on how they got to be who they were and how did they get to know all these things. we have heard references to plato and thucydides and others. most of the founders had read these works. they had read them in school, often before they attended college or university.

i want to talk about that, the world became from. to talk about thomas jefferson and the light of the reflected glow of greek and moment -- greek and roman antiquities may be a superfluous exercise. perhaps it is in this room. i have found in my travels that many people, and i mean good, intelligent, curious citizens, seem to think the man arose fully equipped from birth with the will and the massive intellect he would later use to put himself on the nickel. to these people, he might have been a force of nature. he does not need explaining. he simply is, sui generis, a phrase he would not have needed a crib sheet to understand. others think he was solely a man of the 18th century, and leighton's. and therefore, so this popular

notion runs, willing and eager to throw off the past as if it were a set of shackles blinding us to the dungeon of tradition. this is the fellow, after all, he said a revolution every once in awhile would not be a bad thing. these people here that lovely sentence -- he once wrote a letter to john adams about preferring the dreams of the future to the history of the past. and they conclude that here was a man who lived for the new and the untried and inhabited possible alternative worlds of the mind, but not the real one. and so now the cents many people have that he was more a man of the future, and the past comes with handsome and munificent support. jefferson was certainly no hidebound traditionalist. anyone about to make him out to

an impressive monument to conservatism would be doing some violence to the truth. the founding fathers were, as we would say today, a fairly diverse group of people. certainly in personality. they had no lack of disagreements which could and did disintegrate into vendetta. on closer look, the popular copybook idea of jefferson as the liberal does not hold up either. he was not -- while he was not very conservative in most modern census of the world, neither was he a ruthless radical, as i heard him once described. when you put those words together, it is a contradiction. he could perpetrate strange and rash and silly ideas with the best of them. i have come to look at him

differently. i would say that he felt free to cast his mind so broadly, and sometimes wildly into realms of the ridiculous, simply because he was so well grounded in the western tradition. no matter how high he would fly, he always remained intellectually within sight of terra firma, another term he did not need help with. he was a student of that tradition. who was a student of law and statesmanship. just as much a student of the wider tradition of learning. the restless quest for knowledge that we find with such a breeze the freshness in the greeks of the fifth century and fourth century bc had there been no socrates to ask the primary questions and stir up the still waters of

mental, spiritual laziness, jefferson might not have had the intellectual boldness to joust with montesquieu and risotto and lock -- rousseau and locke. he did not have participated in the great conversation of ideas otherwise. true conversation requires a large measure of equality. sometimes you need leaders. sometimes you need followers. mostly, and you need colleagues. that is what his education, certainly his formal one, had prepared him to do. to break bread with the dead. and how much more conversant can we expect to be with the past and then to be able to parlay with its major players? indeed, jefferson used to describe his reading of the

classical authors in their original greek and mine as a direct conversation with them. thomas jefferson was a humanist. by which i mean the kind that's a rose from the renaissance, who sought to pull back the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world. here is the point and the trick. also to keep that treasure always before his mind. it is not simply something -- i degree he earned a onetime and forgot about later. he was not a dry as dust scholar. for the humanness, -- for the humanist strives for an ability of seoul and knows this can only be achieved once sold at a time. it elevates the individual, not the collective and is therefore not the stuff of government

programs. the classical humanist deems history as a long caravan of men and women, human beings, not massive shifting plates of ideology, and he tends to devalue the idea of retrospective moments in history. the humanist view was in viewed with the historical sense -- people thought his starkly -- fought historic plea -- his story -- historically. jefferson himself could engage in ideological fancies. he was far more of a philosopher and historian than an ideologue. he was too much and historian to be carried away too far from -- too far by ideology.

everything must come from experience. he meant historical experience, as well as personal. we must remember what virginia was like in colonial times when he was born and grew up. it was an anglican commonwealth. aristocratic aspirations, desire for the best, they ran high, even for the young thomas jefferson. while jefferson with the one to rhapsodize the common man and the rights and dignities he sought as inherently his, jefferson's intellectual and aesthetic patterns were not of the common sort. look at his house. it is on the back of the nickel, at least to the old nichols, if you have one. his aspirations and higher. and if i may say so, more exclusively. a classical education of that day was not the stuff of simple the near or ornament. it was of the essence.

one story out of colonial virginia has said that a young man had hoped to gain at the hands of a prominent role in marriage, but her mother objected saying in a letter that until he understands latin, he will never be able to win a young lady of family and fortune to be his wife. if you are a young man here, wanting to remove to virginia, i can assure you the standard no longer attains. [laughter] old william byrd of virginia proposed to his wife in greek, though he kindly invited her to reply in english. this was a man whose library contained 3600 volumes, many of them classical texts. george sands is shown lying on a

virginia beach and reading ovid. go there now. read the legal briefs, the invoices, the diaries, even the advertisements, and you will find what seems to many of bizarre fixation on all things greek and roman. and of course, up in massachusetts, which would produce atoms of course, cat another -- which would produce adams, of course, cotton mather wrote a book of latin verse. that is the way educated people conducted themselves at that time. that is the world out of which thomas jefferson kaine. you'd almost think the colonial world was more classical and christian. it was perhaps more than

provincial patriotism that had jefferson boasting that compared to the ignorant farmers of the old world, the farmers of the new world can read homer. whether they could or not, and used to be skeptical, but now i see there is ample reason for believing they could, that we can say was the ideal. one more thing to say about humanism. it was a pragmatic. it was not -- it did not set itself up to promoting what we would call useless knowledge. no heads up in the clouds here. the horizon from the humanist pursuit was a most in supremely useful. not merely useful to the experts. that is our word, of which there were none in that time. there were simply men and women of authority and learning. it was useful to the general

citizen. the true signs of success would be the knowledge worked and strain for did more than simply furnished the mind. it change the personality of the learner. the lerner became a new man. for jefferson, and his better educated countryman, a knowledge of classical antiquity, knowledge of the classical languages, history, literature, architecture, archaeology and so forth -- this was simply a preparation for intelligent living. and is sustained intelligent living. it was what made in defined living intelligently in that day. when did not graduate from the antiquarian -- one and did not graduate from the antiquarian pursuit. one graduated into it and stayed there. this was an education of

virtue, and education of taste, and certainly an education of social utility. it made the people better. quantitatively better. and what more useful can we say any knowledge to be? it is all summed up in a sentence. [reading latin] that man is most successful who combines the useful and the pleasurable. not a bad idea, that. this is the world in which the declaration of independence is born. we do not have time to delve into his formal schooling, but we can say is father, peter, who had made himself a successful man of affairs, had not had a classical education. he made certain his son would have one. contrary to what some believe,

the american frontier at that time -- not talking about 1740's -- was rife with classical teachers. practically every minister knew enough greek and latin to teach the grammar competently, so many of them women might as schoolmasters. then their sons would take over and schools would proliferate. jefferson began learning classical languages, we think, well before the age of 10. after attending another small school under the tutelage of what he called "a correct classical scholar," he went to william and mary to study under more remarkable men. then he went to study law. back then and there were no law schools. he would learn the law the way you learned to make boots. and then he was on his way to

becoming the man he became. but before he even got to college, while he was still a teenager, like many in this room are, he had already read deeply among the historians and in their original languages, folks. we have evidence that he read herodotus, plutarch, caesar, tacitus, and among philosophers and coeds he read several of cicero's orations, homer, virgil, sophocles, euripides, and a kreon -- anacreon. if you arrive at college with that kind of training and personal culture, the professor should be paying you. [laughter]

that is the way they arrive at college. that is what was required. now there are classics majors and they do not speak against them -- and i do not speak against them -- who have not read all of that. i am not sure progresses' there. this is my major point today. this is still possible. perhaps what many of us would find unbelievable is the fact that jefferson kept up his reading and study, not only through his tenure as secretary of state and president, but until the end of his days. as we see so abundantly in his late correspondence with john adams. when we hear these two men dilating upon pronunciations of ancient greek words in their letters, one man in his 70's, the other man in his 80's, we might be forgiven for concluding that ex-president's are not likely to carry on such

a course on this ever again. so what did all this reading, this hard in tedious work, do for jefferson? quite simply, it changed who he was. he said so. he is one of the best examples of the humanistic ideal. his learning altered his personality, and not just his mind. this cannot happen if one takes such acquisition of knowledge as a mere chasing after information. because it is not information that is wanted. i think jefferson would shudder at the idea of information and the idea of self-sufficiency, that that is all we need. that is not all need. when in understanding -- we need understanding. need to make that knowledge of part of who we are. not simply something we put on a database and call up with a few buttons.

that is not culture. that is not education. that is collection, nothing more. we need a broad and farseeing grasp of human nature and human life -- not as we hoped it would be, exactly, but has -- as it has been live. classical antiquity has been served us so long, altars and enhances the american mind in just this way. jefferson said once he was bred to be a lot and i gave him a dark view -- bread to the law, and it gave him a dark view of humanity. then he read poetry. and between the two extremes, he has continued to draw the idea. this is the tone and tenor of a humanist mind. acutely aware of its shortcomings, its weaknesses, its temptations -- it

nonetheless strains toward idealism and hard reality. it is something of a self correcting pursuit because it comes from humility. quoting montaigne, jefferson once said that ignorance was the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. for jefferson, there's nothing blissful about the ignorance. he was a man of this time, yes. intellectually, spiritually. he wished to be a citizen of wider views, one on intimate terms with the history of this civilization, and not possessing the arrogance of those who do not see the relevance of the past to their own day. that appreciation for the full life -- it can be approached only by someone out to be simply

a man of his own time, but a man of all time. that is something that can begin in our own classrooms and living rooms. thank you very much. [applause] >> the third speaker this afternoon will be prof. karl richard -- carl richard. he is a professor at the university of louisiana at lafayette. a number of his works bridge the gap between the classics and the modern world. today, he is going to give us a short presentation on the founders and their stories. [applause]

>> yes, they asked if i could speak of the top of my head for a few minutes. i said, i am a professor. [laughter] my remarks, because they are unprepared, will be fortunately for you, brief. an informal. hopefully, of some use, because they can serve as a bridge to my more formal presentation in the next segment. i thought it would talk about something that is very important. i think the importance and power of stories -- i think that the human mind is hard wired to love and appreciate good stories. we tend to remember story is much better than we do other forms of information. as teachers, those of us who are teachers know this -- a suitable

remember of the story long after they have forgotten -- of good -- a student will remember a good story long after they have forgotten everything else. i remember a story about how martin luther became a monk. and then this one on for 20 minutes, a professor talking about luther's doctrines and distinguishing them from catholic doctrine. i have is to raise her hand and she said, if we get martin luther as a term, what should we write? she said all i have in my notes is he was struck by a bolt of lightning. [laughter] the student could not distinguish martin luther from lee trevino or a park ranger, i guess. but she remembered the story. did not remember much of anything else. that is where we are.

we tend to remember stories. that is why jesus told as many parable's, which illustrated his point. stories tell us a lot about ourselves. the stories that society tells tells us a lot about society. the concerns about society, the principles of that society. we can discern those from the stories. you know, we get a lot from our stories. we get our heroes from our stories. our balance. our lessons. -- our villains. it has become a trend in academia to downplay the idea of learning lessons from history. there is good reason for that. it has been abused, as we talked about here. sometimes people will act as though history repeats itself

exactly, and therefore you can take a lesson from one time and apply it to another. of course, that is not true. but still, you are learning at least general principles from history. i think it is very doable and important. so we get all of these things from our stories. where do our stories come from? for centuries before television and film and radio, they came from books. that is where stories came from in the west, at least. stories were very popular and people knew -- those that shared information. bible stories. as tracy pointed out with the founding fathers, there was a whole different source of stories. maybe the most important source of studies -- source of stories, at the greek and roman classics. why is that?

tracy touched upon this. their educational system was heavily classical period emphasized greek and latin. this began at a very early age. six, seven years old. it would begin under a private tutor or at a grammar school. . . so it's from the very early, impressionable age, the founders really embodied this whole history and culture as though it were really their own, even though it was several thousand

years old. that is where they got many of their stories. many of them went to college, where they're training was even more rigorous in greek and latin. -- where they're training -- where their trading was even more rigorous. you asked the ordinary person today what they know about rome, and they will say, "i think they walked around in bed sheets and have british accents ." that is what they get some film. our stories are not the founders stories. the ironic thing is that the founders are partly responsible for this because they gave us something that they themselves did not have, which was a set of national heroes and stories associated with those heroes. we speak of washington and the cherry tree. by giving us themselves as a set

of national heroes and stories about themselves, they, ironically, did something they would not have wanted to do at all, which is to partially displaced the ancients. but i think the main reason why their stories are not our stories is because of the dramatic change in the education system, which began in the late 19th century for a variety of reasons that i will not go into. and it was gradual. even well into the 20th century, high schools typically taught latin. even today, of course, we have academies that still teach latin. home schoolers, many of them teach greek and latin. it is a relative thing, this decline, but it is definitely a reality. certainly, we are not living the days of the founder, where almost every child was taught greek and latin, so there has been a significant decline.

i think the source of our stories today is mostly film and television. i am not here to put down film and television. i think they can be very powerful media. the visual image can be very powerful, and there are certain advantages to these media, but there is no question that by their nature, they are inherently more shallow. a two-hour film is inherently more shallow than a book. you cannot go into the same level of detail. i think that is the troubling aspect. we still have stories. we still have very good stories today, but they tend to come from media that i think are inherently more shallow. i think that is the challenge for us today, to least partially try to return to a richer media

for these stories because every society has to have them. they are vital. i think my advice, since we are all giving unsolicited advice to president obama -- my advice -- but also for my fellow citizens, not just the president -- is to do what the founders did, return to stories that were rich in meeting, that were first told -- versatile. these were deep sources that they tapped into, and i think that is what we need to do. i think we need to once again mine these rich veins of the classics. now, we can do it without knowing greek and latin. obviously, it is much better to new greek and latin, much

richer, but we have wonderful english translations today. they did back then, too, but not to the extent that we do today. that makes it easier for us to go back to the sources that these rich veins i think need to be tapped into. after all, why are the classics? they are classics -- we call them classics because they have survived a very rigorous process that i called literary natural selection. i do not use the terms frivolously. i really mean it. how do these things survive? for centuries before print, enough people, many people decided that these things are so valuable that they would devote years of their lives to copying them laboriously by hand. these were societies that were

centuries removed from greece and rome, and yet, they felt that these classics are so valuable that they devote their lives to copy them. that is why they have survived. that is why we tend to look at greece and rome and see the excellence. there was a lot of trash. they produced a lot of trash, just like we do, but it did not survive because a month would not spend his life copying trash. that is what i mean. -- a multi -- a monk would not spend his life, being trashed. not 100 percent of the things are great, but a lot of them are, so that is why they survive. i think we should take them too hard and rather than simply dismiss them because they are old, we should look at them and ask what they have to teach us today. obviously, these were texts that were universal in application. that is why they survive for so many centuries.

they were rich and deep, so what is it that they can teach us today, and i think they can teach us quite a bit today. i can give many examples, but let me give you just one. shortly after 9/11, i reread "cattle lines war." carl was really struck, almost as though this book have been taken from the headlines of the day. -- i was really struck. it was about a corrupt aristocrat who decided he was going to overthrow the roman republic, and he had many conspirators -- code- conspirators -- co-conspirators. they were what we would call today terrorists. they have plans to set fire to the city, which was a wooden city. that is terrorism. the basis form in those days.

2 murder senators, almost randomly, just to create chaos. this would allow him to return with his army to take over the city. cicero, who is the consul, sort of the executive at that time, discovers this plot, and they capture some of the co- conspirators. there is a big debate in the senate. "what do we do with these guys? they basically confessed to being terrorists. plus, there are more of them out there. we do not know how many." does that sound familiar? well, they have a big debate in the senate about it. on one hand, you have cato the younger, who argues for security. then, we have -- this is very ironic, but we have julius caesar -- ironic in view of his later actions, but he is arguing for law and liberty.

what do we do with these guys? there is no guantanamo we can put them in. the idea of permanent presence is a very modern idea because it is very expensive. they had a few makeshift sales to keep people until you actually did the punishment, which was usually physical. -- a few makeshift of jails. katie does this very elegant and impassioned speech for security. he says they do not know how many took the spirit is there are out there and they cannot afford to go through due process of law. and if they keep them in some makeshift jail, they're buddies would come and break them out, and then we would be in real trouble. -- their bodies -- their buddies. caesar says he does not like the terrorists and more than anyone else and would just assume they be killed, but there is law. there are roman citizens.

they do deserve a trial. furthermore, sees are always being a pragmatist, gives a practical argument as well, which is that after the crisis has passed and the danger has subsided, people would blame you if you violate the law. does that sound familiar? so we have this wonderful debate, and it is not one-sided. there is security on one hand and walk, liberty on the other hand. this seemed to be stripped from the headlines of the day. because every republic has that conflict between security and liberty of law. how do you reconcile those things? there is no easy answer, and yet, this text that was written over 2000 years ago deals with this very same issue. i think things like that are

worth studying. not only for the president, but for all of us, as we struggle as citizens with these questions. and it really shows why the classics are the classics. because they deal with universal themes, universal subjects, and they do so in a very deep, rich way, not in simplistic fashion. so i think the lesson for president obama and for the rest of us is that maybe it is time after all these centuries to return to the fountains of western civilization where the founders build their own buckets. -- filled their own buckets. [applause] >> we have about five minutes before our scheduled break, so if you would like to come and ask questions of any of the panelists, please feel free. i would ask you, though, to

approach one of the microphones. >> gentleman, we want to thank you. we are enjoying this. i have a question i want to ask you. when our three departments of our government conflicted. back in 1830, we had some problems with the cherokee indians, and it is in the news today and tomorrow, they are having a convention back there in that section of northern georgia, 7 tennessee. -- southern tennessee. the homesteaders, our relatives, came, and wanted to push them out of it. president said we would push it out of there. congress said they would push them out of there. the supreme court supported the indians. but our president then carried it out. his name was andrew jackson.

what would you fellows have done the you were in the senate or congress at that time? how would you have handled it? >> i would have done exactly what you wanted me to do. [laughter] >> obviously, you are referring to the separation of powers and the conflict between president and congress and the supreme court. the idea of the supreme court as the final word was a very controversial proposal. when the supreme court claimed that it had the power of judicial review, many people did not agree with that. that is why the court used it only twice before the civil war. the other case was said scott, which was a disaster because many people did not believe they have that power.

obviously, jackson was one of them. >> i want to answer something that is sort parallel to your question. i do not know the details of american history in the 19th century, and i would not feel equipped to answer that, but you might be interested to know that in my country, australia, where land was dispossessed from the original population, the legal justification for this actually went by the latin tag of no man's land. it is an interesting idea because for european settlers who believe in property, the idea of a nomadic population who roamed over the land without staying in a single place and falling property meant that in the legal sense, they had no existence. therefore, white settlers were permitted to take any land available to them, driving off anyone there. the extraordinary thing that i think you might be interested in is that the high court of

australia over through that as a legal justification for the seizure of aboriginal land in 1994. >> as a student in ninth grade, what would you recommend as a classic to read? as a good one that would be worthwhile for ninth graders to read. >> is a lovely question. >> home. start with a homer. have you read it? >> [inaudible] >> ok, well do it again. >> i have read it in a lot of times, too. >> carl was talking about the nature of a classic. why do we call it a classic? because it keeps replaying. -- repaying. most of what is not a classic, including the e-mails we wrote

this morning -- that stuff is not going to live. you read it first of all, i think -- and some fund is counterintuitive to say -- i say redeploy entertainment first. it repays and you have to read it more closely, but once you do, he gives you a great deal more satisfaction and entertainment. it is delightful to read that sort of stuff. so i would read -- i would just go to the standards. read homer and virgil. translations are fine. they have a lot to do. >> i'm partial to a blue tarp. he is a wonderful storyteller, and his biographies are not very long. -- partial to blutarch. he just tells a wonderful stories. >> in "the indian -- the aenaied

," classical literature gives us a statement of what classical literature is all about. they're told that other people will bend the molten press better than a lens and other people will track the movement of the stars better end of the people can mold marble into more beautiful sculptures, but these rooms -- these shall be your arts. to throw down the proud and despair the conqueror. if that does not meet the hair stand up on the back of your neck, nothing will. >> thank you for your presentations.

this question is about the way america wages war, especially now that we operate on casualty's of how much money we spend. it seems like at least since the end of the cold war, we go to war by trying to hide casualties and the cost from the public, so recently we cut taxes and increased spending and high casualties by outsourcing the casualty steve contractors and third world nationals. >> that is a great question. there is a great deal to say about the cost of war, but the more important passage that i would refer to would be in the second book of the city's when he is giving the funeral dedication. at the end of the first year of the war, the athenians meet as a community to bury the dead.

at that public meeting, the bodies of the dead are there laid out in front of the athenian audience as they elect a speaker to stand up and eulogize these men that have died for athens. so that when someone says they have paid the supreme sacrifice in you, too, should be prepared to, he is speaking with a certain degree of authority, since he has fought, has led men in battle, and since the athenians are utterly open-eyed about the cost of warfare. when he turns to the women and says, "you who remain, i will offer you some of vice", he is talking to the mothers, sisters, and wives of the dead. when he jesters in says every day you should cast your eyes to the glory of athens and points up to the acropolis, to the parthenon to show them what their empire has built them to -- who spoke of the language of

love earlier today? he says the same thing. you must look upon the beauty of athens and when love of her has filled your hearts, when love of her, yearning for athens has filled your hearts, then you must have to make yourselves as were the of the city as these men here. so if you are asking about what thucidides, have the decency to of knowledge that publicly and openly. >> i would also like to thank you for all your presentations. i just wanted to ask all of you, how do we approach teachers and educators today who are allowing their students to experience the classics in the distilled form. reading the spark notes, or only

reading a chapter in the class or hearing a lecture on it. how do we approach them in light of our founding fathers who could speak the languages and read it all before they came to college? how do we really make the case for contemplating the classics in a full sense? >> i think it is being done already more than it was 10 or 15 years ago. the home schooling movement is bringing back classical education in a very big way. plus, you see these academies popping up all over the place. i just heard from someone yesterday morning in minnesota about to start a school, and she wanted some advice. i had none because i had never started a school, but she wanted some advice for curriculum and so forth. i just said, keep it simple.

keep it direct. not all but a theory. i think jefferson said, and this would sound amazing to us, that until the age of 13, you really have no business learning anything but languages and math anyway. i think he would have concluded geography as well. the point is he wanted something to exercise the mind. a lot of memorizing because it is good for you. it is good to exercise the month. c.s. lewis says this, too. anything that makes you exercise the mind when you are very young is a good thing. so the prospects for a classical education in america i believe are bright, but they are diffuse. these prospects hang on slender threads because for home schooling, you have parents who have never studied languages, and they are learning along with their children, and that is great, but they can take that

only so far. the day comes when you are going to need somebody who is knowledgeable. but usually such people, if they are living anywhere near a college or university with the classics program, they will get some college junior or senior to teach them, so they will contract out of work, and that will usually do the trick. but the only warning sign i see with these academies is that people like the idea in theory of what a classical education is, but once they get into these situations, many of these parents, they take it upon themselves to define for themselves what a classical education is. and there is a book out there called "and thomas jefferson education." sentimental perhaps. but once they start working with their own children, they say

this is what i think is classical. they have full legal and moral right to make those decisions for their children, but already, the idea is being watered down. still, i say that the prospects are better than they were 10 years ago. >> i do not think we should be contentious of the classics in a distilled form, because i think very often, that is what leads people to do further study. that is where they first inspired, when they first get interested in greece and rome and its culture. and you have to start somewhere. unless we go back to what the founders had, which was required greek and latin, which i do not see happening, that is the only way, to start with it in a distilled form and hope that the eloquence and substance of it inspires people to do more. >> i think we may have time for just one more. >> i would like to thank all of

you for your presentations. they were all very interesting. but i would like to know, when you were talking about leo strauss, i was wondering if your criticism of his ideas was a criticism of his interpretations of the classic works of homer and plato, for if it was a criticism of the new conservative movement in general. >> it is a sign question. definitely the latter. --. a -- it is a fine question. there are many conservatives who distanced themselves from neo- conservatism because they see as being an activist version, so

there are people who criticize both on the left hand on the right. as for your first part, was i criticizing his reading of the classics? definitely. unfortunately, i cut for time constraints some of these specific quotations in which he talks, but there are moments in which he says essentially that thucydides has to use a language that conceals reality in coats it in a new exterior because ordinary people are incapable of understanding his grasp of reality. to me, that is like saying if you can understand strauss, he might teach you the secret handshake. i do not believe he understood it at all. it is a difficult texts to read. there is no doubt about it. many people point out that you can read the report and what he says about a particular battle, and you can read the editing, who was trying to lead to force

a judgment of what we would call a little sign. sometimes, you have to read them against each other. it is not simple by any means. the way it has turned up in three or four different talks in three days, but i do not think it helps to maintain that i had a secret knowledge that none of your share. that to me is simply beyond the pale. i am criticizing his reading and also a rather poor application of that once a fairly bogus policy. >> should we take a break? [applause] >> president obama leave sunday for a weeklong trip to russia, italy, and donna. among the highlights, monday and tuesday, the president will be in moscow. the president will be in italy from wednesday until friday for the g8 summit in meetings with the italian president, is president, and the pope. and ghana will be the last stop

on the president's trip for a series of meetings on democracy. check our web site for the latest information on the president's trip and upstate -- updates on c-span coverage of the president's stops. >> you are watching c-span. coming up next, a hearing on rates just a cellular phone companies on testing. followed by a governor's from western states talking about renewable energy. later, a hearing on the violence against women act. >> tonight, we begin our look at what has policy advisers. from richard nixon to george w. bush, they will discuss their relationships with chief executives beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tomorrow, their experience is

trying to sell the policy agendas to congress and public. and they will wrap up with lessons learned from serving as the chief executives. that is sunday at 4:25 eastern. and on "q&a" this weekend, our guest is walter kirn. in his first nonfiction book, he tells a story of his years at princeton university in the 1980's. this sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. the senate judiciary committee held a hearing on june 16 to discuss the rates fell in companies charge for a text messaging. witnesses include witnesses from verizon and at&t as well as consumer representatives. this hearing was chaired by the antitrust competition policy and some committee. it is just under 90 minutes.

>> good afternoon. this hearing will come to order. today, we will examine the state of competition in the cellular- phone industry. the enormous growth in their views means that maintaining competition in this industry is more important than ever. with more than 270 million subscribers, cellular phones are a vital means of communication for the vast majority of americans. cellular phones enable instantaneous communications for millions wherever they are located, whether at work or at home, away from home in their car, or anywhere in between. many americans have discarded traditional land line phones and depend entirely on their cellular phones. the ease, convenience, and universal nature of today's cellular phone service would not have been imaginable just two decades ago. for many years as this industry developed, it was a competition

and success story. with many rivals and vigorous competition. in recent years, however, the picture has changed. consolidation has led this industry highly concentrated. four national carriers now control over 90 percent of the market. two of them, today's witnesses, combined to have a market share of 60%. so choices have become quite limited, and price wars seem to be a thing of the past. american consumers pay more for wireless phone service than most other developed nations, an average of $506 per year, in the year 2007. aware is the market for cellular phones more nervous -- more noticeable than in text message service. these short instant messages have become enormously popular. in 2008, more than one trillion text messages were sent, more

than triple the number of just two years ago. as their popularity has grown, so has the price charged on a per message basis. from 2006 to 2008, the price of sending and receiving a text message among the four largest cellular phone carriers, increased by 100 percent from 10 cents to 20 cents a message. within weeks or months of each other, they increased prices. these lockstep price increases occurred despite the fact that the cost for the phone companies to carry text messages is minimal, estimated to be less than one penny per message and has not increased. the phone companies defend these increases by asserting that they have of a coordinated in any respect. they also point out that the majority of cellular-phone customers do not pay for text messages on a per message basis but instead by plans for buckets

of text messages, typically starting at $5 for 200 messages. nonetheless, these sharp increases raise concerns. are these increases in results of the lack of competition in a highly concentrated market? with consumers continue to see similar price increases for this and many other wireless services that they have become increasingly dependent upon? such as internet connections and basic voice service? the text message price increases represent a warning sign for the state of competition in the cellular-phone industry as a whole? the concentrated nature of today's cellular phone market should make as wary of the challenges to competition in this industry. for example, while our competitors raise serious questions about practices that present them -- prevent them from being able to fairly compete. these represent exclusive deals that deny competitors access to the most exclusive cellular phones, limitations on the ability of new competitors to rome on other providers'

networks, the difficulties in obtaining needed spectrum. it is imperative that we remove under various to competition to ensure consumers the best rates and services. we therefore urge the fcc to take all necessary action to remove these barriers to competition. removing these barriers will ensure that the cellular phone market is open to competition and prevent the large carriers from gaining a stranglehold on this market. we also urged the justice department to closely scrutinize future mergers and allegations on competitive practices in this industry. today's hearing comes at an important time for competition in the cellular-phone industry. we are looking forward to the testimony of our panel of witnesses on this important topic. now, with respect to our panel, we will introduce our first witness, senior executive vice

president and general counsel of at&t. previously, he served as vice president and assistant counsel for sbc communications and worked as an attorney at southwestern bell telephone company. he will be followed by the executive vice president and general counsel at verizon communications. he has been with the company since 2000 when he was appointed senior vice president and general counsel of verizon's domestic telecom business. next, we'll be hearing from a professor at the school of computer science at the university of washington since 2003. he has done research on to other lists competing, including wireless s. munson devices, and he has received a number of awards for his research and publications.

next, we will hear from the director of government affairs for cricket communications. prior to joining cricket, she managed government relations for sprint and served in telecommunications policy advisor to the governor of oregon. we will be hearing from and federal and international affairs policy analyst for consumers union before joining consumers union, he worked as a new york city of liege director for the new york public interest research group. before joining consumers union. we thank you all for appearing. after each of you give your testimony, we will proceed to ask questions. now, would you all rise and raise your right hand and repeat after me? do you affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help

you god? >> i do. >> we will start with you, mr. watts. >> good afternoon, and thank you for the gracious introduction. i appreciate very much your opening comments. the subcommittee's concern i believe is unduly based on the single charge for individual text messages that customers purchase on a single message basis. our current price is about 20 cents per message -- is 20 cents per message. that rate increase in little over a year ago in march of 2008 and prior to that was increase in january 2007, so it has been quite a while since rates have changed, but the vast majority of at&t customers do not choose that pricing option. so it does not apply to the overwhelming majority.

in fact, less than 1 percent of at&t postpaid text messaging volume is handled on a ppu basis. instead, the vast majority of our customers take advantage of at&t's packets pricing plans, including those that provide a package of messages for a flat monthly rate. 99 percent of our messages are handled under these plans. these include 200 messages per month for $5, 1500 messages per month for $15, and unlimited messages for $20. clearly, the price of messages under those plans are far below 20 cents per message. in fact, at at&t, for $30 a month, a family of five can enjoy unlimited text messaging for the entire family. clearly, very low rates per message. as a result of this country -- customer interest, in the last

two years, the price of text messages has fallen dramatically. indeed, at&t's average price for a text messaging has dropped almost 70 percent in two years. the suggestion has been made that our prices for a text messages has gone up. at the same time, the volume of text messages have by at&t has grown exponentially. in january 2007, at&t process 4.5 billion text messages for the month. in january of 2009, we processed a stunning 31.1 billion text messages. that is nearly 600% increase in just two years in the volume of messages sent by our customers. among the reasons for this dramatic increase in usage is an equally dramatic drop in prices paid by the overwhelming majority of our customers. best comedy ppu price, which -- thus, the ppu price has

increased, but overall rates, the rates charged for 99% of customers text messages, have dropped dramatically. the background is very instructive. in making these package plans, we are delivering maximum choice in value to our customers. in our experience, the ppu pricing option often results in large and unpredictable swings in a customer's total bill, leading to a significant customer dissatisfaction and complaints to our customer care line. package plans, on the other hand, which i believe are increasing in importance to the customers, as they find more and more the need to budget their expenses, ensure extremely low prices, choice that we offer so many different plans, predictability, and easy to understand bill's and thereby greatly improved the overall customer experience. our customers have voted with

their pocketbooks. as 99% of the text messages sent or received by at&t customers are billed under one of our private plans. it should come as no surprise that the price of text messages has fallen off, given the dynamic and competitive nature of today's wireless industry. more than 95 percent of the u.s. population lives in census blocks of at least three competing wireless carriers, and more than half the population lives in census blocks of at least five competing carriers. for these reasons and many others, the fcc has confirmed time and again that the u.s. wireless marketplace is and will remain effectively competitive. indeed, a recent merrill lynch report shows that the u.s. enjoys the least concentrated wireless industry of 26 major industrial companies. finally, against this backdrop, i have to pause to put to rest an underlying implication of the inquiry into this matter, and that is whether or not wireless

providers have somehow conspired to fix prices for text messaging. as you know, a great deal of litigation has been filed as a result of these hearings in this particular issue, and i want to make it perfectly clear that at&t sets the prices for all of its products on a unilateral basis based on independent analysis. there is no evidence to support an accusation that any one of at&t engaged in any inappropriate, much less illegal behavior as alleged in all of these lawsuits. there simply is none. i trust that this picture puts to rest any concerns you may have about a single pricing option, and i as always look forward to your questions, mr. chairman. thank you. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, and it is a pleasure to appear before you today on behalf of a rise in wireless. we were brought to discuss

prices in the text message market. your letter last year concerned pricing similarities in the so- called pay-as-you-go segment of the market, which involves only 1 percent of all the text messages our customers send and receive, so let me respond directly to the underlying issue. verizon did not collude with its competitors on setting pay-as- you-go prices for text messages, and i believe all the evidence shows any suggestion like that to be baseless. indeed, the evidence simply confirms that the wireless industry is robustly competitive in all its aspects. let me go through this with a little bit more detail. first, the tiny nature of this market makes any suggestion of collusion in plausible. only 1 percent of customer text messages are paid for on a pay- as-you-go basis, and customers in this category on average send or receive 21 texts per month. the other 99 percent are covered by various bottles of services with the average price is less than one penny per text.

in contrast, uses in bundles average almost 1000 per month. because of this greatly increased usage, the overall price for text messaging has dropped precipitously. in december 2006, the average price was about 3 cents per message. since then, we have cut the average price by almost two- thirds to about 1 cent per message. second, i have provided suntrust with my testimony, and those show that there is a wide variation in carrier testing prices overall. pay-as-you-go prices vary widely. at&t's prepaid customers pay 20 cents a message. sprint's prepaid customers pay 10 cents per message for have all text messages included at no extra charge depending on the plan, and t-mobile 8 5 cents on

incoming messages and 5 cents on are going messages -- paid 5 cents at incoming messages and 10 cents on the outgoing messages. there is no suspicious coincidence in the timing, mr. chairman, for these price changes. in a competitive market, you would expect there to be some geing up a competitive prices over time. evidence shows fierce competition across the market. the fcc reiterated the u.s. customers are seeing will prices, new technologies, improve service quality from all the competition in the marketplace. using the most recent information available, fcc found that the industry average revenue per minute fell in 1994 to 6 cents in 2007 or a decline of 67%. while minutes of use have increased many fold. american consumers fare far better than wireless consumers

across the globe. a recent study found that the average price per minute of the u.s. is lower than the 26 oec countries, the u.s. customers have the highest use per month and that the u.s. has the highest competition in a market. i propose that americans pay more for wireless usage only in the sense that they have more by -- to buy. finally, all of this has been accompanied by increased satisfaction. "consumer reports" has given rise in the highest rating among service providers. the rate for complaints for all customers has been about eight in every 1 million customers, a rate of only 0.0008%. at the same time, the entire industry is doing better. last month, a press release was issued finding that customer

service satisfaction with wireless telephone service reached a new all-time high for the third consecutive year. for a rise in wireless and the whole industry continue to move in the right direction. the american wireless industry, i suggest, is and continues to be an american success story. the wireless industry has been blessed by light headed regulation, and i suggest that it is in the best interests of american competitive telecom industry for it to stay that way. thank you very much. i look forward to your questions. >> good afternoon. my area of research is computer networking and, more specifically, mobile and wireless networks. i have been studying for the last five years. i was asked by your office to give my opinion of two questions

here first, what is the cost to ikaria to transmit a text message? second, on the recent price increases for text messages for consumers who do not subscribe to a plan justified? based on an analysis that is detailed, my answers are as follows -- first, i believe that the cost to a carrier to transmit a text message is very unlikely to exceed 0.3 cents. second, the price increase is not cost justified. let me justify my conclusions -- i will first address the cost of a text message. the average revenue a carrier makes on a text message must exceed its cost. the presenters from both at&t and verizon indicate that the average revenue from a text message is of around 1 cent. 1.0 4 cents for verizon and 1.5 cents for at&t. so the maximum cost for a text

message is around 1 cent. have come to the same conclusions using independent evidence. the second wicket estimate the cost of a text message is the cost of each component of the technology. to carry a text message requires many resources such as a wireless channel, in network backbone, billing systems, storage systems, and special control systems. each of these cost money. in my recent testimony, i estimated the cost of each component. my analysis indicates that the two dominant costs are the billing systems and wireless channel. i estimate the cart because of the wireless but to establish that in one minute, and wireless past can carry one voice call or about 80 text messages. the price of about one voice vote is about 7 cents a minute. this means the cost of a

wireless have for a text message should be 7 cents/80, or roughly 0.1 cent. estimating the billing process is difficult. the billing cost for a voice calls should be of most the cost to carry the call itself. as a conservative estimate, i therefore presume the cost of filling a text message is twice the cost of actually carrying it. that would make the cost of a text message to 0.0 3 cents. i should point out that this portion of my analysis is a strong assumption about billing costs. -- that would meet the cost of a text message 2.03 cents. the cost of a text message is certainly smaller than 1 cent. in my opinion, it is likely to be smaller than 0.3 cents based on the analysis that you can find in my written testimony. i now turn my question to the second question, and that is are the recent price increases cost

justified? i believe that the only possible technical reason to raise the price per message would be if the amount of radio spectrum used by the text messaging traffic was so great as to cost more. in this case, the price increases would dampen demand. however, the total traffic of 3.5 trillion text messages carried a 2008 account for the radio spectrum available to just a few hundred cellular phone dials. in my written testimony, i estimated 28. i was off by a factor of 10. was actually 280. 300,000 such dollars were sold in 2000 alone, so it is very unlikely that text message traffic is contesting the network and available spectrum. therefore, the price increases cannot be cost justified. to sum up, i have tried to answer the questions to the best

of my abilities. my analysis has made use of publicly available data as well as a few clearly stated and conservative positions. i would like to thank you for giving me a chance to present my conclusions and also welcome information from technical experts that help me find my analysis and correct my mistakes. thank you. >> thank you for the invitation to testify today. for the record, i am with for good communication. cricket has been around for about 10 years, and we have grown to become the seventh largest facilities-based carrier in the united states. that means that we have invested billions of dollars in building our own network. we currently have over 4 million subscribers in 32 states. cricket serves consumers who have been left behind by the larger carriers. our customers tend to be more ethnically diverse and lower income than the larger carriers.

cricket pioneered the unlimited flat rate all you can eat service with no long-term contracts, no credit check, and most importantly, no early termination fee. our customers talk in text much more than the industry average, and i think that is what happens when you offer all you can eat pricing. for example, our $40 plan includes unlimited local and long-distance calling and unlimited incoming and outgoing text messages. i also really want to state that i believe that cricket puts pricing pressure on carriers in every market we enter. i am pleased to announce that next week, cricket will be launching service in d.c. and baltimore. the subject of this hearing is text messaging, and i think we can all relate to the story of a hearing a parent's shock as she opens up a wireless phone bill to see a $600 charge when her adolescence of has discovered

text messaging for the first time and goes into a frenzy. we also have heard of consumers that are concerned that they are receiving unsolicited text messages, called a span -- called spam, and they are forced to pay for this. these situations would never happen with us. since our inception, we have never charge consumers if any to receive incoming text message. cricket believes the best way to regulate prices is a competitive marketplace. despite our rapid growth in, as you stated in your opening comments, we are still a very small carrier in comparison to the four largest carriers who control 90 percent of the market. so the question is -- how do we create a robust competitive environment nationwide so all consumers can benefit through innovation of new entrants like cricket? what is preventing that dynamic from occurring? we think there are two policy issues that need to be addressed

-- spectrum constraints and rolling policy. first of all, we need more spectrum. the wireless industry needs more spectrum, and i think every panelists here today would agree on that point. the problem is that the two carriers sitting to my right have won the lion's share of spectrum in fcc auctions over the last few years and have also gobbled up smaller competitors. mr. chairman, cricket shares the concern you articulate it in your september 2008 letter to the ceo's of the four largest carriers when you stated that you were concerned regarding "consolidation and increased market power by the major carriers." are concerned with market power is that it gives carriers the ability to engage the anti- competitive practices, such as we are facing with roomy. no wireless carrier has ubiquitous coverage. we all have to use each other's networks to provide seamless coverage to consumers.

cricket's experience is that the rates that carriers charge for roaming minutes is directly correlated to their size and market power. one particularly anti- competitive practice that cricket faces in many areas of the country is that one large carrier prohibits cricket customers from roaming at all. with all the consolidation, cricket has fewer and fewer roaming partners available. in many cases, our customers are stranded without service in cannot use their phones at all. i ask you -- how can that be allowed to happen when service is available? so i will close by saying that there are currently three proceedings on roaming pd at the sec, -- at the fcc and i would be happy to go into detail. we believe spectrum and rolling policies are the foundation for national competition. all consumers, regardless of where they live, work, and travel, have access to affordable and innovative options for service, such as the

value rich services that cricket provides. thank you. i will be happy to answer questions later. >> thank you very much. >> thanks you for the opportunity to testify before you on behalf of consumers union. i plan to cover four areas. i would like to give the consumer perspective on text messaging. i will then talk briefly about the consolidating market structure in which we see this behavior occurring. third, i would like to cover briefly some of the limitations we see consumers facing in this marketplace, and last, i'll offer a few solutions that we believe will help introduce more competition to the marketplace and ultimately help lower prices. since 2005, every major carrier has at least doubled its price for text messaging. but this is a head--- to consumers because these rising costs are not at all related to the price incurred by the carrier. -- this is a head- scratcher. to put it in perspective,

consider that it would take 600 text messages to equal one minute of voice. at 20 cents per text, that is $120 data equivalent of a one- minute phone call. we believe the purpose of high individual text messaging is to hurt or price consumers into large monthly plans with more minutes or text and a consumer will need or use. if they go over that allotted number, they are back to paying 20 cents to send and receive. no matter what the cost, these plants are protection money that consumers pay so they do not have to pay sky-high text message rates. this is not the bellwether of competitive market. rather, to us, this represents palo behavior among four national providers that seems to indicate inadequate pressures in wireless world. -- parallel behavior. collectively, as we have heard,

the four national carriers represent over 90 percent, and the two largest, represent over 65%. the two largest providers have been able to capture much of the spectrum in this country, the air waves that make communications wirelessly possible. these holdings, combined with their ownership of the wireline structure, allow the two top provided to control the on ramp to the internet. they used to set high barriers to entry and charts their competitors absorbent special access fees in order to offer mobile access fees. consumers are paying the price. u.s. mobile phone subscribers pay more annually than customers overall in most other developed nations. the $506 a year figure that you mention in your opening statement compared to the united kingdom at $374 or consumers in spain at $294. in this context, we continue to see questionable behavior locking consumers in and flocking competitors out. here are threemp