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tv   C-SPAN Weekend  CSPAN  October 16, 2010 2:00pm-6:15pm EDT

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this way, you have a spacer between the. once the spacer got above the well head, then you would shut annualer. -- upper then they do the negative test. and that is what they did. >> i would like to also show the witness the temporary abandonment procedure. the first page of which is here, and direct your attention to the first line. . the first line says negative test case into the sea water gradient equivalent for 30 minutes
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e depth of the ocean or in other words the mutt lange? >> nope. >> explain to me why that doesn't imply that. >> said in the context of the negative test is going to be done ith seawater and it's going to be moderate on the killing. there is no depth preference, so you trip and told to the '67 and displease the sea water for 30 minutes. >> that's my interpretation. >> thank you. i would like to move now to your previous testimony to clarify that you said that you had been involved personally in the set of 17 blocked on fleets and those all a messy water. had you ever been displaced kuwait before the negative test to set the lockdowns? >> [inaudible] you know, we've got extensive
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examination. we will roll out beyond the scope of the examination. and where that is the case it doesn't mean there is an interest, but the board has examined the data so our judgment at this point in time is additional time on that doesn't seem to be helpful. >> i have one last topic. >> thank you. was bp trying to save money by hurrying the temporary abandonment of the mcconnell bill wells of the the rigs could get to the job and then do the isp before the hurricane season? >> no. >> what is a and it? >> it's great to be in integrated field test or float test if you're going to float on a project the was in the play
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over in the western part of the gulf of mexico. >> would you agree that is a complicated operation to conduct an ift? if you got interrupted becau the tropical storm or hurricane that could be a costly interruption, couldn't it? >> it's the chance to take in a hurricane season every year in the gulf of mexico regardless of the operation. >> but if the deepwater horizon finished the macondo well, it could have done the ift before the hurricane season started and in fact there was the goal, wasn't it? >> i was not aware of any goal like that. >> in that case, may i show that witness and e-mail with his name on it about the plan for the well and it starts with bp hs
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iain em nbra (001)232-5657. >> now this was an e-mail from david sims on april 9th, 2010 and you were copied on it, is that right? >> yes, ma'am. >> do you need a minute to read it? it's two pages. islamic are you going to ask about details of it or i assuming that outlines the plan the you just outlined. >> it does say right at the very beginning the plan remains the denial operation following feed macondo there's the risk of not getting the ift prior to may 16th. >> so the question is do you
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recall reading and thinking about this forward-looking plan? and if so did it have any being on the decisions that you made? >> i remember seeing this and no, it had no bearing on the decisions the were made. >> on page to a few would look under the delay could you read the first entence? >> okay. says problems when we started back on macondo in february following the drilling of the first section's by the being damaged by hurricane ike. we thought we would be finished in early april which would announce the operation to complete its after delivery of the wellhead equipment but breyer to the operations date of may 16th. growing problems in the sections have caught in delays and
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extended the expected completion date into april. >> one other document i would like y to get on the ubject is bphzn0206 and this will be my last set of questions. this is an april 13 the e-mail to brian morel sallai recognize you did not receive a copy of this but i would like to ask you if you understood the rig was under pressure inner to finish macondo so they could get it moving and not jeopardize the well and get it moving. >> [inaudible] >> sustained. he testified he did not feel any
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operational pressure due to the fact that the rig was going to move on. obviously the board has concerns about that and will look at lots of things like reality besides of the realities besides the witness's testimony. but i don't think your testimony -- we plan now to everyone aboard those with the schedule of the rig is or was. >> those are my questions. >> thank you for tolerating me. okay. douglas brwn. >> no questions.
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>> schonkas? >> there was to a mention of a software program called in sight. are you familiar with that? >> yessir. >> has anyone attempted to retrieved the metadata related to access to sight before the explosion? i will rephrase it, say it again? tuna what metadata is? >> it means that data that sows who looks at information on a computer at what time. >> i don't know. >> you have not made any effort to you know if it is retrievable? does the system reflect who went on line and look to the information at what time? >> you would have to ask berry song. spent with respect to the notes shown to you by the marshall islands, they appear to be in a
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linear fashion if you look at the first page and the second page, but in the appear to be notes in the margin kind of off to the side. do you see that? i am referring to the first page that says on the right-hand side on the floor during the displaced. do you see that? >> yes, sir. >> my question is as that note to add it at a later time or ca you explain to me why does it appear in sequence? >> it wasn't added that later time and it's unfortunately i am a lousy note taker. >> the same with of the notes on the following ge as well that appear to be marginal notes. >> i took all these at the same time. that's all i have. if i could ask the board to request the bp to attempt to retrieve the information would be helpful. >> my understanding is that is
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under the control of halliburton. islamic i can't hear you. >> for the record our understanding is of that information and is under the control of halliburton, and i would like to see it as well. >> [inaudible] >> but you don't know this is a bonus [inaudible] so that he wouldn't even have to come back from florida. >> [inaudible] [laughter] mabey. that's what he told us. >> i want to give my time to the captain because i went to the coffee room before he asked questions so he can have mine. >> no questions. >> any questions? okay. this is for michael who is here to tday. >> on behalf of mike williams,
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mr. guide, were yo aware that the crew of the deepwater horizon was undergoing training for the project on te sunday before this casualty? >> i don't know if it was the sunday before. if you are speaking about the crew engagement that we had in lake charles i think that was in the 30th or something of march. >> i'm talking about aboard the deepwater horizon were you aware of that? >> no. >> were you aware of any other projects the crew of the deepwater horizon were undergoing while they were dealing with his well? >> no. >> is it true that prior to this particular macondo weld project that bp regularly on a daily
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basis maintained and h. essey safety man aboard the deepwater horizon, two of them in fat? >> we never had to. we took the full time individual off buy unfortunately i don't remember that except time frame him. >> but it is true that it was after september of 219 and before the deepwater horizon went on sitein february of 2010; correct? >> i d't remember the date. >> but that did happen? >> it did happen. >> and was it only the deepwater horizon or the company wide for bp those positions were eliminated on the reagan? >> they were not eliminated, they put the individuals and a rotational basis instead.
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>> so what was that rotation, how frequentlwith a safety man visited the deepwat horizon? how many times did a visit the deepwater horizon during its time on site? in a particular site? >> on this site whe it is today. >> i don't remember. >> how often would the have rotated? >> every couple of weeks. >> for a period of how long? >> a week. >> were there any reports generated from that? >> yes. >> how about transocean, did they likewise terminates their safety net on the deepwater horizon projt? >> not that i'm aware of. >> thank you. >> pat o'brien? >> robert? any more questions -- we give bp
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another -- any more questions? >> [inaudible] any questions from the board? >> i do have a couple now and then we have these moments it doesn't mean i speak for everyone here we don't mean to be disrespectful of the families of the people what are still missing and the other thing is when we of the extension between the board members respect each other and understand each other and i ju want to make that clear. mr. fannin told me when there's an accident he wouldn't want to be the middle manager, the people above point out him and people below point at him, so i think you are in that position and we haven't heard from mr. mrkaoza. i know i asked these questions
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during shorter success of a leader. what information should be provided to the leader for ensuring that full awareness of ongoing operations? you say you didn't get the result from the negative test. was there other information you would like to have said you can do something about it? >> i would love tohave all the information i can possibly get. >> is their information that y need the you currently don't have access to as a leader that you need? >> i faxed all the information and obviously since you can't stay awake 24 hours a day you don't have access to seeing the actual operation the way it's set up is there is an issue that they give you a call. >> but doing that on the day of april 20 if, it happened around
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2200, so you were awake during that time, is that right, sir? >> i went to bed around 9:30 come i am an early riser. >> should they have communicated -- why did the -- you didn't receive the results of the negative test because why? didn'trequire two or the test was no concern? >> all of our tests are of concern. we -- everything is critical. usually the protocol has been the people to negative tests on a regular basiacross the gulf. if there is an issue call, 247/ 365. >> so the people on site didn't feel that was a problem to contact you? >> that's right. >> should the leader be given additional authorities, do ou have the authority that you need?
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>> yes, sir. >> should the weld team be given additional resources to execute a drill and execution project? right now people get moving around and you might not have the people you need to respect i would take all the resources they can give me. >> any other board questioned? is their anything like t add to what you've given to us in your appearances here? thanks for coming back. we will stay in touch with you might you be available again if we have another -- [inudible] >> i am sorry. >> thank you very much. mr. guide, you are dismissed. we will convene and reconvene tomorrow. [inaudible conversations]
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[inaudible conversations] >> the facts collected at this hearing will be forwarded to coast guard headquarters and boem for approval. once approved, a final report will be released to the public and the media. it is expected that there will be at least one more session of this joint investigation. in related news, the judge presiding over more than 100 lawsuits from the gulf coast oil spill said the first federal
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trial for damages could start as early as june, 2011. taking a look at some campaign news -- early voting stations open a day -- open today in nevada where the senate leader harry reid is facing sharron angle. it is estimate that about half the voters there will vote before election day. in doubt for now, state attorney general and democratic candidate jerry brown is leading his -- in california, state attorney general and democratic candidate jerry brown is leading his opponent meg whitman by 6 points. tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. eastern, the kentucky senate race between brand paul -- rand paul and jack conway. at 10:00 p.m., the washington senate race. let's now look at the missouri
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senate race between congressman roy blunt and the democratic candidate secretary of state robin carnahan. >> in the meantime, the c-span digital bus is in st. louis where jake wagman is joining us to talk about this missouri senate race between roy blunt and robin carnahan. who are these candidates and what do they bring to the table? what case are they making for the voters? voter? guest: really compelling race in missouri it's a battle of political heavy weights. the missouri secretary of state. many folks may recognize the last name of her because it was he father. exactly 10-yearsing a today that was mpaigning for the united states senate and was killed a plane crash and of course, he won and his will was a pointed a seat and she later lost but now
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the doubter is running for the seat in her own right and she's vying for a ple. retiring republican senator up against her is roy blunt who is a congressman for southwest springfield, miouri. at one time this was perceived as one of the democrats best chances for turning over a gop seat. now the polls have gone in the other direction. the economy remains sour and it oks like for the moment, it's roy blunt'sampaign to lose. host: what's the money? what's the advertising been like? guest: um... it's been every second. every show you wah, you're going to see not only advertisements from the campaign. not only advertisements from the party, but also these third seat advertisements. these groups. american crossroads. chamber of commerce i believe is
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running ads here. they're in the news lately. also we recently had annra ad tar ge targeting robin. you can't turn on the television without seeing 1/2 hour blog where each going out. sort of made no pretense about not going negative. there's negative campaigning and robin is hitting more for being a washington insider in congress 14 years and roy hitting robin in on the fact that he thinks she dealt with pelosi and obama. interesting because robin never serveed washington, just in jefferson which shows the republican strategy is if they're democrat even not passed they're going to vote with the current leadership ther host: touched on money there.
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we read this week the democratic senatorle committee is scaled back a bit for robins. that true? guest: they're very sensitive about whether or not they're scaling back. the reason is not they don't only want to be seen as raising the white flag but also don't want to discourage their candy kate ir they're not funding adds as previously. of course ad buying is fluid but it's a level of confidence that you want to spend less close egg closer to election day. they have to scale back with the spending in missouri at a time when robin is struggling in the polls and they're looking at other races. most noticeably in the desert. so the whole map plays - there's
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a dynamic that has to do with missouri. each if nevada is on the other side of the country the money democrats spend there will effect here. host: talking about one of the senate seats in play. one of the many seats in play. jay wag maybe is political reporter for the st. louis dispatch. one of the reisn't debates here on c-span. social security and medicare came up. we'll look at a short bit of that and talk to you for a second or two more. >> someone said over and over again you thought medicare should never have been created in the first place. you said it ngressman. i didn't make this up. you said more than once so to come in missouri a say you're a defender of medicare you'r the only person i know that's bragged about cutting medicare. you need to stand up on your record. if this is what you believe,
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talk about it. >> her comments are just like thes. phoney and misleading. i've never said i was not for medicare. i've never said i was not for protecting medicare. >> you said it shouldn't have been created in the first pla. >> you do not have me on tape saying that. >> we'll roll it later. host: what issues resonate with folks in missouri right now? guest: well, you know on the ad both sides have one arm misleading advertisement. the republicans say, well robin will vote with - well the democrats have taken extrapolated things and they - the - they might not get, despite all that back and forth there's three issues. economy, economy, economy.
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and matt said, st. louis now. the analyzer state through ri. last year was purchased and an acquired by a o ko company, bel brewer. state that's slowly seeing this erode and looking for solutions in the new economy. we're not as hard hit but we're struggling and that's the key issue. people will vote with their pocketbooks. he was sc she was viewed as a sharp candidate. no candidate seems to be able to drum the enomic atmosphe so, i think they may score points with the medicare and social security, but you know that's just on chatter to the real issue of the economy. and in the voters mind it's the economy, not doing well, the democrats are in power and
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that's who they're going to take it out on. everything else a distraction. host: as we wrap up. any big name visitors either from the white house or from gop leader? what will make the difference one way or another in this race? guest: i was surprised so see any big name democrats. joe biden was here but when the president came in earlier this summer he did a fundraiser and roy blunt used that ime in the commercial against her. i continue think that will happen. roy blunt will run the clock i think and i don't think he'll risk attracting attention by bringing someone in. it's going to come down the only way i they ron can overcome the deficit in the polls is if she has a sprint to end all sprints and perhaps roy blunt has some type of stumble down in the end
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or the - something happens nationally. the so-called october surprise. this does not look like democrats should be able to take this seat. host: political reporter for the st. louis >> you can see more reports and videos like this one at c- span.org/politics. we go now to a discussion of terrorism and u.s. foreign policy. remarks from brian baird on the psychology of terrorism. we also hear about the terror suicide database. we also look at video clips from suicide bombers giving their last statements. the university of chicago project on security and terrorism and the new america foundation co-host of this
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event. it is an hour and 25 minutes. >> our marathon now begins. i would be remiss -- there are many of you who are distinguished people. i do not hold this against you. i do want to pay special note how honored i am not ambassador thomas pickering, our country's leading servant in foreign department, it is a pleasure to have you with us.
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he has become a close friend of the new america foundation and mind. he has worked on everything from big question someone is going on in the economy to how the country needs to rethink its foreign policy portfolio and national-security questions. he is a brave person. he has gone to areas of the world that we would just say were on the edge. he was one of the purse people into gaza activist israel-gaza -- first people into gaza after the israel-gaza crisis. he has tried to bring intellectual challenge to some of the important debates the congress has had. he played a vital role in the health care debate, in which he was one of the leading critics of the health care plan and
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ended up supporting the president's plan. he is used his position honorably and the way a congressman should, which is to really wrestle with the great ideas and not get swept in one current or another. without further ado, please welcome congressman brian baird. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. steve, thank you for that kind introduction. one of the most exciting developments in this city in many years has been the new america foundation, especially on topics relating to the middle east. if you name the topic, some of the most out of the box, innovative thinking is coming to a new america, and steve is at the forefront of much of that. i think you're right on the money with this effort. as a former psychologist -- and i will speak about that today -- the idea that we try to understand what motivates people makes a lot of sense. i want to share with you a funny
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thing -- a funny thing happened here -- on the way here today. i bumped into my dear friend donna edwards from maryland who is a fantastic member of congress. we served together on the science committee. along with peter welch and keith ellison, we traveled to gaza. she shared with me the following story. she has been asked to speak to a group that has policy that supports a two-state solution in israel and palestine but has also said if two states does not work, we look at the viability of a one-state solution. she has been asked to talk to them and she then gets a flurry of e-mails st., no, you cannot talk to those people. if you talk to those people, then we may not be able to support you anymore. she says, with a minute, the other group in town does that. why are you saying i cannot talk
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to people? i may be speaking out of turn here. this was a conversation in french -- in front of starbucks, literally 10 minutes ago. it is indicative of the problems we face. the town imposes group think with the ferocity -- i think it was irving janice wrote that book -- it imposes its true financial contributions, a host of ways that limit how we think. i want to challenge that a little bit today. then we will hopefully have a bit of q&a. one of the fundamental problems is how we define the problem at hand. terrorism, in most of our minds in congress, it is often implicitly -- interestingly enough, we do not actually stop and say, what is it remained about this phenomenon that we're waging war upon?
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the implicit, assumed definition, i think, is something horrific and unjustified that happened to us for no good reason. there are so many limitations in that definition that prevent us from saba and the problem -- prevent us from solving the problem. you cannot say that. you cannot say that it is worth asking is there averred justification for the terrorist acts. i do not think there is justification for a terrorist act. but the people who engage in them certainly do. it is worth us asking why they do. happens to us -- what about all the things that happened to others, including some of the things we do? we're not allowed to ask that in this town either? six years ago, senator patty
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murray, who is up for reelection, was talking with a bunch of schoolchildren, post september 11, not long after, and the aft -- and they asked her, why do people do this to us? and she said, here are some of the differences. she tried to give those young people the perspective of the other side. what happened? someone had a video camera in the room. patty murray became an apologist for terrorists and this became a major issue because she was trying to help schoolchildren understand issues in a different way. we will not solve this problem if we continue that way. challenges members of congress, again, have groupthink enforced. if you go to certain countries, you get demerits. if you say certain things, you get demerits. if you meet with other groups, you get demerits. the idea that we would have about an irrational, thoughtful, intellectual discussion is prescribed.
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we're supposed to march lockstep with administration policy or something else. it is not going to work. there is a comedian of arab descent who i am told has a joke where he is asked, where do you get suicide bombers? he said, oh, the suicide hot line. it is pretty funny actually, if you think about it. you call up and use it, i am thinking of killing myself. he says, you know, that is not such a bad idea, but let us recommend a methodology. it is a funny joke, except that, as so many jokes, there is a real grain of truth to it. here is what i take from it. as a psychologist, i can understand that behavior makes sense. i may not always agree and it may not always have desirable consequences, but in some way it makes sense to the person engaging in it. part of the job of the
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psychologist and our foreign policy must be to create conditions in which alternative behavior makes more sense. there's a famous psychologist who reversed the direction of how we look at child abuse. as the parent of five year-old twin boys i understand this very well. he said the more we look at child abuse as the anomaly. -- anybody who has had children has had at least more than once wanted to throw them down the stairs. of course you cannot say that, because they are always angeles. we never get upset. his point was this -- the amazing thing is not that there is child abuse. the amazing thing is that it is not rampant. anybody who has had young children gets it. at about 3:00 a.m. when they get up and you are exhausted, if you have not occasionally had the desire, you're either far better than me -- which i will grant is likely -- but maybe you are not
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also being honest. that is a mild example. in the case of tourism, here is something you can never say -- terrorism, here is something you can never say, in some instances, we contribute to the creation of -- the third question is, what of the response would you expect? -- a fair question is, what other response would you expect? when we engaged in activities that create indignity, that imposed suffering on civilian populations, that deprived people of freedom, but supported to todd tehran regime's -- that supported totalitarian regimes, some responses will occur. ironically, we say there ought to be an alternative. we ought to promote non-violent
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alternatives. take palestine. why why is this guy talking about terrorism? i spent an awful lot of time in gaza and in palestine, to my knowledge, more time than many americans. what else would you expected to see the conditions on the ground there? the amazing thing to me when i visit gaza and some of the town's encircled by walls on the west bank is the dignity, integrity, passion for compassion that many palestinians manifest. they are dead set against allowing their children to fall into the trap of desperation that can lead to terrorism. they are courageous, heroic people. psychologist, teachers, doctors, political, social leaders, business people -- all working their hearts out to say, we have to give these kids another alternative. i talked to a political psychologist who was working --
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driving with his 8-year-old son and the car in front of them was vaporized and passengers spilled out in front of them and died right before their eyes. the sun looked pretty despondent -- a few weeks later, his son looked pretty despondent. he asked, what is going on? he said, daddy, i want to be a suicide bomber. he said, why? because we're going to get killed anyway, i want to take somebody with me. this was not a child raised in the a cult of death, except that which as been imposed upon him. it was not a child who was raised in a map -- and the radical madrasah -- in a radical madrasah. his life experience had given him such an experience of desperation and hopelessness that this seemed to be a viable alternative. we say you should look at nonviolence.
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a month ago, i met with a man who some of you know, a palestinian leader whose advocate for nonviolence -- he is a champion for nonviolence. what is happening to people engaged in nonviolence? they are being in prison without trial. they are being beaten. and the world is largely ignoring it. and if you want to change behavior, you have to have a viable alternative. if you suppress a viable alternative, what else would you expect? what i would suggest is that we need to make sure that we first address the conditions that can contribute to the desperation, second, that we support alternatives, and third -- on the other side, cold, hard reality is also necessary. what i have said so far is what you might expect from a psychologist and a democrat. there are also really horrible
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people in the world who, ideologically, pathologically, enjoy killing other human beings. they have to be killed. i am sorry. but i think it is true. we probably have to be prepared to cope with both realities and we're terrible, in congress, and as a public, at dealing with both realities. it is much easier to say, everybody who engages in terrorism is of the latter sort, or they are only fighting is because we are all bad. there are people who are terrific human beings with destructive, pathological ideology and they seek to impose that on us and the rest of the world. we have to stop them. they do not mind terrorism because they think it is part of some personal or divine or political mission. we have to confront that reality as well.
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to the degree that we can address the first set of issues i described, we will be much more effective addressing the second, because far fewer people will fall victim to the second. let me open to some questions by referring it back to the institution i served in -- the congress. increasingly, i am afraid, it is harder and harder and harder in political life to engage in this kind of dialogue. those of you with flip phones, i am thankful not to see -- i think she's been is covering this -- c-span is covering this, so i am toast anyway. and if you read my book, i am definitely toes, because i am way out. you have to be -- i am definitely toast, because i am way out. you have to be able to see things objectively. i may not agree with this
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person, but i am glad they are asking questions. i am glad they're not afraid to make me think in new ways. instead, what happens is people pander incessantly. the best way to get the media is to pander more than the other guy. i think newt gingrich has engaged in that in the mosque issue, to name names. it is a perfectly fair question to ask, if we're to allow a mosque -- which i believe the first amendment says we should -- is it not fair to ask other countries would they allow synagogues or christian churches or baha'i faith? it is a perfectly fair question and an essential one. how and why you ask are important. so, too, i think it is silly and daughter productive and counter to our first amendment -- counterproductive to our first amendment -- what can my wife
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not walk down the streets of islamabad without being spat upon? it is a fair question and responsible question. we need to ask both sides. political pressure is to only go with one side. on the left, they talk about how awful it is to fight against the moscow, but it is -- against the mosque, but it is fair to say that there are other countries that are more intolerant. we need to confront that intolerance even as we confront our own. the challenge is -- the last thing is this. terror is not something just that happens to us because external people impose it. terror is a psychological response. back to the palestinians again,
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what astonishes me is how they refused to be terrorized. they just will not let it happen, by and large. their leaders have been through hell. they are hanging in there. we need, i believe, to internally adjust our mindset to this reality -- for some time to come, in spite of all of our efforts and our massive defensive abilities, we will get hit from time to time. this city will get hit again. some of us may die. whether that creates terror is up us. and we have to address that. we have to not promise people that under no circumstances whatsoever with somebody ever slip through, because they will and they will kill some people, but how it affects us is under
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our control, and we need to think very soberly and maturely about that, because, otherwise, the terrorists will not win, but they will succeed in disrupting our way of life and the very values that we hold most dear and that distinguishes us from them in the most constructive way possible. >> thank you very much. thank you for your candor. [applause] i will not say that you are toast if you run again, but it is nice to hear someone talk about resilience. i will open the form. i am of the lager -- open of the forum. i am a blogger. i have noticed a tendency, whether you are on the left, the middle, or the right, for folks to engage in something that has bothered me a lot when i travel in the middle east. what i have seen is a kind of currency in conspiracy theories.
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the use of conspiracy theories to rationalize what people may see, trying to explain what is going on. there is an awful lot of effort in some places to research, organized, or filter what they see. i see this coming to this country and becoming part of our own dialogue and discourse in a way that is almost a rejection of the empirical, a rejection of an enlightened approach at looking at things. i'm wondering if you have thought of that, as a politician who has been knocked around a lot for some of the things you have done. maybe we need another book for somebody to study what this is rather than talking about it. i am writing about this now -- conspiraci andsm in the united in the-- conspiracism united states. you may speak on the podium with someone and it is becoming
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dominating in more of our political discourse. i will then open it to the floor. except you hit on a real problem. it is true on the left -- >> you hit on the real problem appears it is true on the left and right. -- you hit on the real problem. it is true on the left and right. i have been on the receiving end of both. there is a qualitative difference. is he secretly trying to turn america into a moslem socialist nation? why can we just say -- cannot we just say, i disagree? there has to be something more deep, more pernicious, because that justifies the craziness. if you just say i disagree with the man's policies, fine, engage in political activism. if you believe in this darker course -- here is a fundamental
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-- i think a fundamental human need among many of us to be heroic. you want to be a hero. you watch movies. they're not about average guys predict are about heroes. there is a desire to save something. there is a desire to do something big. terrorism is a big way to fulfill that need. you can put it all on the line, quite literally, and yourself up. but it is even better if it is a big cut evil conspiracy you are fighting. it is just -- big, evil conspiracy or fighting. if it is just a guy you disagree with, then that is something else. but if it is a conspiracy, that is a better fight. >> we will run the microphone over to this gentleman right here. >> by the way, that group think i talk about reinforces that
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paranoia. the i did you look at the other side and see what they would have to say -- the idea that you would look at the other side and see what they would have to say is anathema. >> and the editor of the new publication that intends to have multidisciplinary and international debate and dialogue. it is being set up by a bunch of us who hope to bring that dialogue that you talked about. before i ask my question, very quickly, i did special ops against the taliban pre not -- pre-9/11 and i appreciate the comments you made. from an international perspective, a lot of the h ate that is spoken and representative of america -- my question is, how do you mitigate that, considering its international ramifications, especially to people who do
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propagate these conspiracy theories and run these suicides schools? >> thank you. a couple of ways. we do not get enough credit for the good things we have done. this is a personal example. during the balkans war, my wife and i had a young bosnian student whose leg had been blown off by the serbs who lived with us or three years. i did not say that for personal appreciation. united states stop the genocide there was the europeans look on. the genocide was directed at muslims. we get almost no appreciation for that. we did that at a marginal use -- marginal loss of u.s. life. the work we did in indonesia. the pakistan earthquakes. the list goes on. in afghanistan, the amount of effort u.s. soldiers and leaders put into trying to avoid civilian casualties is
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astonishing. i have seen classified images of the droned strikes where they have the guy in their sights, are really bad actor, and it did not pull the trigger because a child was somewhere in the possible range. we did not do it -- a guy who killed hundreds and hundreds of people. we do not get credit. contrast that to the soviets who killed millions of people, literally targeting civilians paired with the they doing in chechnya -- civilians. what are they doing in chechnya? the media does not give us credit. the over-emphasize mistakes. they do not look at contrasting conditions around the world. having said that, there is no mind that our -- there's no doubt in my mind that our engagement in the middle east is harming our national security and israel's security in the long run. unless we reconcile that in a constructive and just way, we will continually -- that will continue to be the focus for
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many people. i was in this what valley in pakistan right after it was cleared out -- the swat valley in bachus on right after it was cleared out. -- in pakistan right after it was cleared out. the guys down there are attacking you. the other issue -- one guy said, wait a second. why should we fight against other muslims, given what you do in palestine? this was in pakistan, a long way from palestine, but it is on the minds of people because it is perceived to be unjust. it is hard to productive from the security -- it is counterproductive from the security perspective. >> what we're getting you the microphone, let me ask you a question -- while we are getting you the microphone, let me ask you a question. you talk about the tsunami and indonesia.
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it was an extremely competent job. when i look at pakistan flooding. i'm on the state department list. i see what hillary clinton and her team are trying to do, but it is not breaking out. when i look at the amount of resources that we're spending and afghanistan, roughly $100 billion per year -- for $1 billion or so, you could completely change the infrastructure, create the possibility for partial rapprochement. i am surprised myself and i know there is another side to the story that someone like john allen, who has done this, has not been passed with -- tasked with this after what he did very confidently in the tsunami of aftereffects. >> u.s.a.i.d. made the effort to brand everything, literally, all
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the way down to pens, "a gift by the american people." i do support that. we uphold our u.s.a.i.d. stickers off to empower the local government. we ourselves have been downplaying what we have done. the second issue in pakistan is that there is so much corruption and somewhat questionable use of funds. i am not sure why more has not been done, but we also done quite a bit with the flooding. >> here. >> thank you. and the security adviser. i could not sit still when you talked about phasing both realities of the very bad men to shoot in the face. when they're approaching my control point with children i'm giving my -- giving candy to -- the reality behind that is that it is very sensitive. there is a lot that we cannot say in the groupthink.
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the word arrogance is come to mind. it is used in terms of how we address other cultures. you spoke to that. what else do we expect them to do when we support these big eight years? -- these behaviors? i'm a retired navy seal. i have been overseas more than i have been home in the past decade. i also write on peace, addressing the reality that the more we use the hard power, the more we bring hostility and negativity and-energy in return. -- and negative energy in return. how do you see this working its way up? >> strategically, in the field, tactically, we're using terrain teens and finally getting and
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this concept. -- terrain teams and finally getting at this concept. there are people who've been trying to understand human terrain. it as a bill lot of lives and brought people from the other side over -- it has saved a lot of lives and brought people from the other side over. general petraeus is a huge advocate of that. there is the joint science committee and special ops subcommittee of the house together on human terrain teams. i think it is central. in his -- it has yet to get to the congress at large. the issue of smart, -- soft power, smart power. here is the attack ad -- soldiers need better vests to
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artillery, congressman brian baird wanted to spend money on anthropologists. [laughter] you get that. you have come into the village and said, i do not know who to shoot. >> there are a lot of political consultants here. >> i would rather talk to somebody if i could. we have not done that well at the higher levels. one of the paradoxes, too -- colleagues have to not only have the courage to look, but actually open their eyes. i was in iraq in 2007. i opposed the iraq invasion. i think it was a terrible mistake. once you are there, you have a moral obligation to not just leave children to get their heads cut off by the al-qaeda. i think it was not easy as a
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democrat involved -- democrat voted against the consulate. you have colleagues to go in theater knowing what they want to see. you have to people who see the exact same thing and reporting exact opposite things. we go in with a preset. i have had colleague sidney, you might be right, but i do not want to say if. -- i have had colleagues say to me, you might be right, but i do not want to >> this gentleman, here. >> my name is tony berman. i am al jazeera's head of strategy for the americas, based in washington are was the managing director, and i have been back in north america. my first week back was the week of the florida pastor with the
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aftershocks of the so-called ground zero mosque. one thing i have found, as someone who has three engaged in north america is the incredible shrill level of the debate. i find your whole theme about the environment open to alternative approaches as a serious one. what is your own thinking as to what is driving it, and are you hopeful that once the congressional election is over with that the temperature will lower, and there will be more of an openness to looking at alternative approaches to the problems that we face? >> thank you, tony. >> thank you. i am not super-optimistic. there are a number of factors
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contributing. we did get attacked on september 11, and it was muslim extremists. you have to acknowledge that fact, not that it represents all of islam, but it was at least a part of the motivation. that resonates still. one has to be honest about that. secondly, on top of that, we have a terribly faltering economy -- a lot of unemployed people. they do not know what has happened to them. it is a global environment. they have seen their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, get shipped off to fight a war that it is not clear what it is about. they want the world to be what it was. it is not just what it was before president obama, it was what it was before september 11, really. why cannot make it go back
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there? why can you not make the economy be when it was when we had gone from a couple of hundred billion dollar deficit to a surplus? why cannot make that happen? well, all of those things are deeply distressing for understandable reasons. there is an undercurrent of anger that gets targeted and the convenient place to target is out. that is members of your own country, whether it is president obama, nancy pelosi, or someone else, and then the foreigners. the foreigners are islam. there is a link to the attack. all of that is really hard to turn around. remember, i said we had to get the alternative non-violent in the reason. one is the last time you saw a
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major western news story on non-violent resistance? during the civil rights era, john lewis was getting pounded crossing the bridge. that was national news. it troubled the american people. we do not see that there are extraordinarily courageous people on the ground throughout the middle east, not just palestine and israel, trying to bring about change in a non- violent way. i think that would create better empathy, especially if it was tied to a islamic scripture that is part of the motivation. not all of the nonviolent activists are muslim. there are many jewish and christian activists. i think there needs to be allowed voice among moderate muslims in america.
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i really believe that. i think there has to be a greater vocal condemnation of extremism. they are out there. there are people doing great work on that front. it is not getting the kind of coverage. the american people do not have a person to identify with. if you were to ask name one moslem that advocates non- violence, they could not do it. >> we have the chief of naval operations still coming down. we have time for one more question. there was another question i missed. yes, right here, the lady in the center, not in red. >> hi, i ran homeland security for the state of illinois. we recently had a young lebanese american that wanted to bomb the
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wrigley area. there was no motivation. it was not anti-christian, or anything like that. he had his own reasons. how will we counter terrorism without causing our own terror? that does concern me. i'm hoping to hear ideas today. how do we prepare the public so we do not turn on our neighbors. >> the short answer is you need political leaders to douse the flames rather than falling them, and the reverse is happening right now. for politically opportunistic reasons, if i can be more extreme, and condemn the other side, and make you feel good by association with me, it is that an age-old tactic, and it works. we have to call those people on it.
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some cannot be called because their agenda is different. some just disagree. there is a subset of people that are pretty darned cynical in their use of this issue. i think you need that moderate, sensible, rational voice. back to al jazeera, i think they need to do it. what was that guy, up 12 -- he had no one down in florida, and it becomes international news that they are burning the koran. -- burning the koran. that is not national news. he is unknot job. he is easy to stand on the other side as well. what has to happen is allowed for voice from the people in this room and our political leaders -- we need to call them on that, people saying to the
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demagogues on other -- on either side, it is not just what you are saying that i disagree with, it is why you are saying that, how you are saying that, and what its impact is. have you thought about what you are doing to the problem? that is a tall order. we have to communicate that is a better approach, the fundamental approach of a democratic, constitutional republic. we have to communicate that. it is difficult. i am a big student of the founders. my one son is william washington. i do not think any of them could get elected today. franklin was a vegetarian abolitionist, and he enjoyed recreational pursuits.
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washington but did not want to engage in foreign military entanglements, etc.. we will not cut this not, unless we have them. >> we are having fun. you are not going yet. >> but me ask you another question. we will go to tom pickering. i want to reflect on the relationship with the executive branch and congress. tom donilon has just become -- is on his way to become national security adviser. i wrote a piece saying that one characteristic icy in this administration, -- insisted administration is how the white house is competing with other branches of the government that
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it ought to actually be running. the pentagon actually works for the white house, but the staff often feels like it is competing with strategists. i am wondering, from a congressional perspective, how do you see your branch store route -- surviving, or not doing well? >> your kind enough to refer to me in a hyperbolic fashion. congressman, thank you for your frankness, your directness, and willingness to let most of it hang out, if i could use that perverse the expression. mine is a companion question, when that you perhaps for good reasons steered away from. we are depressed that bipartisanship is an on known science and a forgotten history, appeared in particular.
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what could be done to resurrect it, or are we in the hopeless process of having partisanship be the watchword for the eternal future? >> thank you. tom has been the champion of something that could be helpful -- science at diplomacy. i have championed it. if you look worldwide, one of the things we are most expected for is our scientific and technological prowess. i believe the brain scientists together internationally -- you could go to iran, and there are researchers there as we speak. those kinds of things, thank you for your work on that. on bipartisanship, two things -- the first would be the non -- establishing boundaries.
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it creates secure district on both sides. in general, you are less able to work with some of those folks the extreme, and they will get they go to the metal. -- the middle. or, they are an absolutely correct their ideology is right. an ideologue who is certain that they speak with the divine inspiration can really dumb things up. that, then, creates a lot of tension. issue is it is my way or the highway, and highway gives gridlock. the second thing is campaign finance reform. if i could do one thing in life it would be to say we would establish public funding, and an independent expenditures by
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individual candidates no candidate can span -- can spend or raise money. it corrupts you. it takes away your time, and your soul. his father independent expenditures,, public money -- if other independent expenditures come, public money goes against it. >> any quick reflections on how congress is doing? >> oh, yes. well, i will be absolutely frank -- i think congress has dramatically undermined president obama's efforts to move forward with peace in the middle east. i do not think we will successfully deal with the settlement issue between israel and palestine, as there is serious pressure from the white
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house and congress, and the congressional picture has either overtly or covertly said "do not worry, we will not do anything of substance if they do not stop the settlement." geographically, that can not work. if they continue to expand, you will not have a viable two-state solution you will either have a apartheid, or a non democratic state. israel and act along that you have to take a look loyalty oath. they now have to take a loyalty oath, not just i punched -- i pledge allegiance to the flag, but to a particular religious ideology, which is prescribed in the first line of the first amendment of the united states constitution bill of rights.
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our number one ally is now saying you have to adhere to israel as a jewish state. i think that will be counterproductive. i think president obama gave one of the best speeches a u.s. president has ever given, and created high expectations in gaza, right after the bombing, we met three children. we went with no security. we wanted to meet people. hear, a couple of 14-year-old boys. the first guy comes up and in broken english introduces himself. we asked where did he learn to speak english. he says shakespeare. this is a true story. he said i love shakespeare, and then i watched tv to learn pronunciation. let me into addition to my friends -- all this broken.
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the first and had a nephew, guess the name? barack obama. the third boy, builds rockets because people come into our village with tanks. what do you want to do with your lives? the first boy -- i want to be a teacher. second boy? i want to be a physician. >the question is how we get thoe kids to be teachers, doctors, and engineers, when so much of their surroundings is pushing them in another direction. [applause] >> brian, thank you. robert pape is the author of a new book that is out "cut in the fuse."
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bob is a professor of political science at the university of chicago, and the author of "dying to win," and bombing to win. he will not share the core parts of his work. -- now share the core parts of his work. [applause] >> thank you. in 2004, donald crumbs fell as to what i thought was the pivotal question about the war -- are we producing more terrorists then we are telling? i study suicide terrorism, which is along the cancer of terrorism. if we could stop -- cancer, we
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would save lots of lives, the same with suicide terrorism. let's apply the standard to suicide terrorism. in the year 2000, there were 20 suicide attacks around the world. one was anti-american. last year, in the last 12 months, there have been over 300 around the world, over 270 anti- american inspired. by the corps metrics that matter, we are producing more terrorists than we are killing. the war has been an abysmal failure. why? what is underneath it? how should we move beyond the war on terror? i have spent my life almost collecting information on suicide attacks.
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i am the director of the chicago project on security and terrorism. i have a research team of 10 people that collect information from all around the world in the the key native languages. when you see "cutting the fuse" you will see that we looked at all 2200 suicide attacks around the world in the last 30 years. i want to show you some of the data. if you go to our website, we put a phenomenal amount of data on the web for you to search, and export, which might be helpful for people doing research to generate reports. i wanted to show you a little bit about what is on the web site. you can search the data base. you can find very nicely that we have great variables for you to
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search from 1980 to 2010. i did a quick one on lebanon. you end up with a summary that there were 38 attacks since 1980. but, what is really important, is how good is this data? why our government officials paying attention to this? not because of the summer, but because of what i will show you now. you will see details. you can actually view the information. this is not just the number killed, or location, we often have the names of the suicide attack finish -- about the suicide attackers. you still asked how good is the data? every piece is corroborated. lookit the sources.
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these are not just footnotes. you can view the sources, and see the hard text verification of each and every bit of data. we have put over 10,000 documents on the web. if you find a problem, bring it to our attention, and we will fix it. this is very reliable data, and it is something the government has been getting for some time. it is now available for free on the web, and lays out the patterns of what you see. what do you see in the data? i want to talk about suicide terrorism in two parts. from 1980 to 2003, think about that as suicide terrorism before barack.
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-- before iraq. in that time there were 243 completed attacks of missions to kill others. the world's leader is not an islamic group during that time. they are a marxist group, a secular group, a hindu group. they did more suicide attacks than hamas. one-third of all muslim attacks were by purely secular groups, particularly the pkk in turkey. over half were not connected with islamic fundamentalism. instead, over 95% of all attacks since 1980 have had in common a
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specific strategic objectives -- to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces, and i mean tanks, fighter aircraft, and armored units, from territory that terrorists consider homeland, or prize greatly. every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been waged by terrorist groups around this central objective related to ground forces threatening territory. this chart takes us 95%, and shows you the nine disputes that produce them, and as you can see territory important to
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terrorists is central to each dispute. let me pick lebanon. many of you will know has the law. in june of 1982, hezbollah did not exist. in june of 1982, israel invaded southern lebanon. one month later, hezbollah was born. over the next year, hezbollah began to experiment with suicide attacks. the fourth was the famous suicide truck bombing of our marines in beirut. the same day, they did an attack killing 58 french soldiers. ronald reagan, no pacifist, decided to withdraw all american combat forces rather than face another suicide attack. the french left, and then israel
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left, first to a security zone, and then in may of 2000, altogether. what is important about the leaving is that the suicide attackers did not follow the americans to new york, the french to paris, where even the israelis to tel aviv. since may, 2000, there have been no attacks, even in the summer of 2006, one we had the three- week war between hezbollah and israel. if this was all about islamic radical list looking for a quick trip to heaven, we would expect hundreds of suicide attackers since 2006, and yet we got zero. what i am saying is that there is powerful evidence that foreign occupation is the trigger for a secular and religious suicide attackers,
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much the same way smoking triggers cancer. to beforeack september allowed -- september relent. of the 71 that killed themselves in carrying out attacks, we know the names of 68. the largest number comes from saudi arabia, where the united states first began to stage combat forces in 1990. 1990 was a watershed year in our military deployment to the arabian peninsula. before 1990, we had a few advisers standing in front of embassies, but no fighter aircraft, no armored units. and that went all the way back to world war ii.
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in 1990, we went in to kick saddam hussein out of kuwait, which we did by march of 1991, and never made a decision to stay, andy al qaeda attacks started five years later. what about the al qaeda -- the al qaeda attackers themselves? i want to show you videos from six of the most notorious. i want to show you four of the 9/11 hijackers. they will speak to you and arabic. i will show you some marker videos from two of the london of bombers from july, 2005. they will speak to you in english. let me let you listen to them. we will book and the english. the london bomber first, then
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the four hijackers, then another london bomber. >> your democratically collected government -- elected government carries out in justices to my people, and that makes you directly responsible. until we feel security, you will be attacked. until you have suffered the imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop.
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>> this is just the beginning of a serious -- of a series of
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attacks that will be continued until you leave afghanistan and iraq, and scott financial contributions [unintelligible] [unintelligible] >> you will never see peace. [unintelligible] >> so, what is it about occupation that triggers the suicide attackers? it is not one thing. occupations can do multiple things.
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first, occupations can produce atrocities, which produced revenge. they can also create the environment in which people can become heroes for their community by throwing off the occupation. they can also encourage people to become religious, even more religious as a way to deal with this newfound environment suddenly oppressing them. it is not that there is one specific micro-motive, it is that all of the motives are linked to the occupation. and why the occupation in general is because when there are foreign ground forces overseas, especially from a powerful country like the united states, local communities often
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believe that they have lost control of their government. many people in saudi arabia believe it is the american relationship that is the only thing keeping the house of saud in power. i am not trying to tell you there are always right, but imagine if you would that there was a chinese army, 50,000 strong in maryland. and imagine that that armey had a deal with the white house to be in maryland. does that mean that everyone in the united states would accept that? would you be surprised if people would question that relationship? i would not be surprised for a moment, and it is not because i think we are more radical, but i think the occupation can create the environment triggering all
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of those symptoms we so often associate with suicide terrorism. if this is right, if this argument is right, and i have only told new up to 2003, which should we have -- expect if there is more occupation? a lot like smoking, if there is more, there is more cancer. with more occupation, we get more suicide terrorism. since 2004, there have been over 1800 suicide attacks around the world, many more than from 1980 to 2003. notice where they are. they are not scared -- scattered as if they were but merely the product of religious extremism. they are concentrated around areas of occupation.
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for this pattern to be wrong, with 2200 attacks, we would have to have missed not just five suicide attacks, or 50, there would literally have to be hundreds of suicide attacks occur in somewhere around the world, not in this chart. or south mozambique's, africa. while while i do not think we have every suicide attack, although i do not think we have missed even five, i am sure we have not missed two hundred in the last five or six years. this is powerful evidence for the logic that is driving suicide terrorism. moreover, notice how many are anti-american inspired. let me say a few words about
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specific cases, especially those most prominent like iraq. it is a core example of this logic. before our invasion, iraq never experienced a suicide attack in its history. as you can see, they mount up in 2007, then come down from 2007 to 2008, and then again after 2008. why? let me explain. from 2007, 2008, most people would say the surge -- we put in more troops. let's take a look at that. these are the numbers of troops in iraq by the pentagon's numbers, from september 2006, to sept., 2008. look at the total numbers of
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coalition troops. they actually go down. while we were putting in 20,000 troops, our allies were leaving faster. we are essentially back fill in for our allies leading. then you might say that maybe they were distributed in a certain way. the key thing to know is that all of the suicide terrorism in the iraq was suny, none from portia, none from kurds. -- none from shia, and none from kurds. all of the suicide terrorism was sunni. why is that? it was an america that toppled the previous government and replace it with a non-sunni
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government, so they feel most oppressed. if that is the case, we can look at the number of troops. we put a few more troops in anbar, but nowhere near what would be needed to suppress the insurgency according to general manual what really matters from 2007 to two thousand eight was the growth of the sons of iraq -- de anbar awakening. we paid 100,000 terrorists who toe killing us $300 a month - basically do one thing, do not tell us. they could buy guns. we want to have food and have jobs, but cannot kill us.
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they took the deal. why does that matter? with 100,000, they can now feel confident about their way of life against the americans, the shiite-dominated government. they could sit this one out. that is why so much terrorism came down during that time. in november, 2008, that is one we signed the agreements to withdraw, and look at how successful we have then. in the last two years, suicide attacks are down over 85%. what about afghanistan? this is nearly the opposite story. before 2001, one week toppled the taliban, there were zero suicide attacks in and that
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country. they start in fall, 2001, and for the first few years, there was a small number, and in 2006, there is a spike, and it stays high. white 2006? first, the target -- who is being struck? the green are u.s. and nato troops, who are getting the lion's share of suicide attacks. why, suddenly, are they occur in in 2006? who is doing them? we can identify the identity of 93 of the afghan suicide attackers. 90% are afghan nationals. only 5% are from outside of the region of conflict. this is not a global g hyde
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swirling around the world. this is local, positioning -- local opposition. it might have something to do with ground forces, but not simply. here is the curve. the first thing you will notice in 2010, the obama surge, we have actually been surging 20,000 troops each of the last four years. the obama surge was just the last round of this. why 2006? that is a steady slope. the key thing you need to know is that in the early years when we only had a few thousand troops, they were occupied kabul, not spread around the country, until october, 2003, when the u.n. gave us a mandate
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to spread around. like a good military staff, they developed a plan for spreading our forces. first, we went north. then, west. then, starting in 2006, east. that is when the suicide attacks explode against our troops in the south. those suicide attackers are not just afghan nationals, they are pashtun, from the south and east. six months later, we have an explosion of suicide terrorism in pakistan, the regions that are also pashtun. while we are directly occupy the pashtun homeland in afghanistan, we are putting pressure on musharraf to take 100,000
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pakistani troops and move them from the east to the west, to essentially, indirectly, occupy the other half of the pashtun homeland. over 75% of all of those attacks have been against the pakistani army in western pakistan, part of our indirect occupation of that part of the pashtun homeland. this is not just about suicide terrorism over there. i want to talk to you about how al qaeda recruits attackers here, home-grown terrorists. i want to show you adam gadahn. adam gadahn is the poster child for recruiting home-grown suicide terrorists to kill us. he is an american citizen. he is about 33-years-old.
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his name is adam. his father is jewish. when he was young, his family converted to christianity, and when he was a teenager, he converted to islam. in 2006, this was his coming out video. i want you to see his pitch. by the way, two-thirds of the way through, remember the fort hood shooting spree. >> keep in mind that the americans, the british, and the other members of the coalition of terror have intentionally targeted civilians both before and after september 11. in sudan, in afghanistan, just to give you a few examples.
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[unintelligible] >> the government that started these wars have been reelected by the majority of popular both -- of the popular vote.
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>> so, no 72 virgins -- from beginning to end, this is a cost to respond to the plight of a kindred population under a foreign object h. -- occupation. it is important to see how al qaeda thinks it can best recruit if we are going to develop policies to stop that process -- cut in the fuse, and getting them before they start. what policies should we pursue? i do not believe we should cut and run. we pull forces out of regions over six months because we have important obligations. nor, do i think we should stay
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and die because we are producing more anti-american terrorists than we are killing. it is offshore balancing, the use of airpower, ground power, economic and political tools, and alliances with local groups to secure our security overseas. we pursued this policy for decades in the persian gulf, and it worked splendidly. the policy allowed us to rapidly deploy forces to the persian gulf ground forces to kick saddam hussein out of kuwait. that allowed us to topple the taliban in 2001. in 2001, they controlled 90% of the country. we put in 50 guys on the ground, used airpower, and economic and
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political tools, taking the taliban completely out, and al qaeda as well. this is the policy we should pursue in afghanistan, and i think more globally. in afghanistan, i would transitioned over three years. i would have a military for use in here one. year two, i would redeploy our current troops to the north and west from the south and east. in years three, i would begin to withdraw the ground forces from afghanistan. this transition is an approach that i called for in iraq, and it is what we are doing in iraq that is stabilizing our iraq. when i called for it, many people said we could not do it because it would embolden the terrorists.
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that is not happening in iraq, and it is highly unlikely in afghanistan. it is moving to offshore the zealot -- balancing that could cut the fuse of the terrorism that we face today. thank you. >> thank you very much, bob. i have to admit, it is very hard to listen to adam gadahn. i hear a highly manipulative propagandist. i know this is an unfair question, but it does seem to me that those running the show our power players, manipulating people, is using -- using a grievance to compel followers to do things. i think these people would try to find other mechanisms. i guess the unfair question is if the occupation was not there,
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why do you suspect these characters would attempt to use? i do not think they will disappear. >> i think they will get awfully lonely. i think what is happening is -- i am not try to tell you that bin laden would not use any old excuse. i think he probably won't. -- i think he probably would. he is well, let's say, a calloused politician, but he needs followers. the problem are the followers of more than the leaders. we have been actually given bin laden his meal ticket, the thing that recruits for him better than anything else -- more ground troops. there must be more issues, but
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when we give him his best vehicle to recruit, we are opening the doors. >> we only have a few minutes. i want to ask another question. we had the chief of naval operations here and he is into this off share balancing. -- offshore balancing. just a quick profile on how you think the navy and the army are responding. >> i think what is happening is that in terms of official or semi-official responses, when we are really seeing over the last year is the beginning of serious consideration inside of the halls of the pentagon, key institutions in washington. in the last few years, the data has become more robust. it is not that there were not pieces available earlier, it is
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look at the robust and formation. it is a lot like smoking and cancer. you are seeing a bit, by bit, curious people engage in the. >> the army and the air force? >> i think the army would have a tremendous interest in the developing a rapidly-deployable army, much like what we did in the 1980's, that allowed us to deploy divisions to kuwait. that did not just happen. there was a tremendous amount of thought that went into that. the army was very much behind it. i think it is possible to build a robust coalition behind offshore balancing. >> let me open the floor.
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>> good morning. thank you for open source in that data. it is very unique. i am a marine officer. i think there might be a good partnership with you and the center for cultural learning. marine officers are expected to be leaders and teachers. using disinformation, it could be informational at my level -- using this information, it could be informational at my level. where you see this with interfacing with google, or something like that? >> we actually have multiple levels of locations -- four levels of granular the. we have some folks that are expert in that. if you want to know, we can talk to you today. what we are putting on the web
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-- we will actually put more on the web. let me speak to the public education point. it is one thing to come to washington. washington itself is imprisoned by the environment. it is really important that many people see the information. it is like smoking and cancer. in the 1940's, there was a lot of questions, and interest trying to prevent the word from getting out. if the public came to understand that smoking causes cancer, and that is why we have better policies. >> i will take the last question. i would go back to you, but we need other voices and to go to the next panel. we will make this the last one. >> thank you, doctor. has your research look like how power projected from offshore
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drones or otherwise would be responded to by suicide bombers? are we to believe suicide terrorism would be significantly reduced? >> i do not think our research supports massive drum attacks. -- drone attacks. if we say we want thousands of drums killing instead of boots on the ground, i do not think we will be very happy. that will be called an aerial occupation. what we mean it is there would still be an offshore balance in strategy. the admiral is interested in using economic and political tolls to push american interests and develop good policies on shore, but there will be times when force will be needed, and
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those times it is best with aerial and naval power, or in extremes, with rapidly deployable ground forces. >> one of the most interesting this assessments of your work is that you are read as some sort of a pacifist. you are talking about alternative ways of securing the objectives without undermining. thank you, bob. [applause] >> now, former new jersey governor thomas kean on how terrorists -- terrorist threats have changed since september 11. after that, the former ambassador to the u.n. on how the u.s. economy poses a threat to national security. this is one hour and 25 minutes. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by
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national captioning institute] >> if we could have you go ahead and take your seats, we have a really exciting next speaker. there really is no one better positioned to talk about where we are with the war on care, -- i and terror, and to help us think about this in both the objective reality, and the politics, then our next speaker, governor thomas kean. he served as the chairman of the 9/11 commission, which was responsible for investigating the causes of the 9/11 attacks, and providing information to prevent future attacks. this is the most important national security commission in the u.s. history since the investigation of pearl harbor in the 1940's. 80 -- a two-term governor, he
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won reelection in 1985 was the largest margin of victory in the history of new jersey gubernatorial races and left office as one of the most popular figures in the state's history. he went on to serve as the president of drew university for over 15 years, and he is one of our most thoughtful leaders. his remarks are sure to help america meet the challenge of threats going forward into the future. please join me in welcoming the letter can. >> thank you very much for that too kind introduction, but i enjoyed it. thank you very much, and thank the new america foundation. this is an extraordinarily important conference here today, and it will make a big contribution. it is an enormously important
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issue. i was asked to talk on the topic of it is america safer. the simple answer, since 9/11, the simple answer is, yes, we are safer. but not safe enough. we are still not doing all the things we have to do. to keep us as safe as we should be. that is a topic of a group that lee hamilton and i have set up in washington called the national security preparedness group, the successor to the 9/11 commission, housed at the bipartisan policy center, and our mission is to things. one is to look to the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and see how many of them and how fairly they have been implemented, and second is to see perhaps how the threat has changed. it has been almost 10 years now, and the threat is not the same.
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in this capacity, lee and i are often asked, how has it changed? are the recommendations being implemented? what we did when we formed the group was meet with numerous senior officials in our government. almost everybody involved in this particular question, and asked two of the terrorism experts in our group to help us answer the question. i know that peter is coming later, and he is on the program for today's events, and i want to recognize his expertise on this subject. enormously helpful. let me summarize a bit some of the things we found. we started from the assumption that it has been six long years since we made our report on the
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9/11 commission, and it was appropriate to do a new look and new assessment. i think it is also significant in has been three long years since the last publicly disseminated u.s. government threat assessment. this was the national intelligence estimate created by the national intelligence council back in july of 2007. group and weth our thought it was enormously important get to the rest of our work of making recommendations to establish the foundation. the foundation was to decide what is the threat today and how does it differ and how serious is it. how has it evolved and changed since our report. even since the national intelligence assessment of three years ago. before i talk about that, we believe very strongly that although the world has changed,
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that most of the recommendations which we made are as important today as they were when we made them almost six years ago. i will go over three of them, briefly, because they are important. one is we found it almost the number one recommendation, we found the problem was before 9/11 at all of our 17, 18 intelligence agencies simply were not talking to each other enough. because there was a culture of secrecy within the agencies, you don't work for them unless you keep secrets, but it is the way the war brought up. they kept secrets even from one another. for instance, we know, we suspect that if the fbi and cia had actually been talking to each other at that point and sharing information each of them had about some of the 9/11 conspirators who were in the united states, plotting, is very
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possible by the sharing of information that that plot might have been disrupted. so information sharing. we decided to implement that by making sure there was somebody at the top of the system. so there was a director of national intelligence responsible, if necessary, for banging heads together, to make sure that information sharing was taking place. i will tell you, in my view today, although information sharing as much, much better, it is not where it should be. and we found that out with the christmas day plot. there was still among agencies information each of them had that they did not share with each other. perhaps if they had, again, that fellow would not have been allowed to get on that airplane headed to detrick. also, -- headed to detroit. also, the director of the
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national intelligence. the legislation we recommend it was to set out a very strong director of national intelligence because it has to be strong in order to get these agencies to work to gather. the legislation was changed in congress, as often happens, and it was made weaker and more vague. that is a concern. because there have been some problems with the structure of the director of national intelligence and suspicion as to whether or not he has the powers, the control to regulate the various areas of intelligence in the united states government. that is a continuing problem. pimm we have called for the president of the united states to make sure that he gives the dni full authority to do the job he has to have in order to make sure that information is shared properly among the various agencies.
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almost all of our recommendations or have plummeted by congress to some degree, except one. that was the recommendation involving the united states congress itself. maybe that is not surprising, and actually the members of the commission who had served in the u.s. congress said that would be the most difficult recommendation, but it is very important also and it has not yet been implemented. intelligence, remember, it is secret by its very nature. we can listen, you and i come to the recommendations before the transportation committee, the environmental committee, and the tax-writing committees. we cannot listen to the intelligence committee because what they're hearing is secret. so the press and the public does not get involved as they do in other areas of debate. what that means is that the congress has a peculiar
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responsibility in this area. because if they don't oversee the intelligence establishment properly, nobody does. there is no other group set up to do it. so the intelligence committees of congress have to do it, and have to do it well. and yet at the time of 9/11 and afterwards, members of that committee have told me personally and as recently as last year, "r. oversight is dysfunctional -- our oversight is dysfunctional." the homeland security department reports now to over 90 different congressional committees. and that means the directors of that department, those cabinet secretaries, spend a lot of their time testifying, preparing testimony before the committees rather than doing their job. that is not proper oversight, 90
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different committees. leadership passed to do something about that. second, the intelligence committees themselves has no budget oversight whatsoever. many of you know this town very well and you know the congress. you also understand what the agencies respond to it and who controls the dollars. if you don't control the dollars, you don't get a lot of attention from the various agencies of government. if you do, did a lot of attention. they don't control the dollars. the result is often the intelligence committees cannot get the information they really need in order to do proper oversight. and that has not changed. we still believe strongly that you have to give proper oversight to homeland security by less committees and give the intelligence committees some sort of budget oversight so the intelligence agencies pay
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attention to them. so they can do the proper job of oversight. they're not doing it now, and it will tell you they're not doing it now. now let me talk about the future. we believe that the threat at this time has both diversified and become much more complex than it has been at any time since the actual tax of 9/11. and it is a concern to me that there is no single profile of a terrorist threat in the united states today. we see is an adversary that in essence has drawn from all sectors of society and every single walk of life. these include persons born in afghanistan, egypt, pakistan, and somalia, residents of the united states. in many cases, naturalized american citizens. but also in the past few years,
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increasingly, for the first time, american citizens themselves. that is people born in the united states gravitating or being summoned to the clarion call of terrorism, jihad, and they're getting it over the internet. we have discovered that the people plotting travel overseas and received training and terrorist camps. they are young and old, male and female, married, unmarried, children, no children. they are well educated. one of them is a master's of business administration. others were high-school dropouts or gel birds or icons. -- or jail birds or ex-cons. there are petite, blue-eyed blonds who can easily blend in.
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s jihad jane. david headley, chicago, whose reconnaissance was responsible for a lot of the success of the november 2008 mumbai taattacks staged by a close ally of al qaeda. he was continuing after that to carry out reconnaissance using the united states as a base for future terrorist attacks on behalf of al qaeda or other pakistani groups. we also found that the leadership of these terrorist movements threaten the united states is becoming increasingly american-ized. what do i mean by that? key operatives, like at al qaeda central, or on the arabian
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peninsula, or a somali ally of al qaeda, we see in all these cases are americans. people with our passports. people born here. people who are citizens of our country going abroad, getting some training, making common cause with terrorist groups. and that is something that has to be for us fundamentally new and fundamentally disquieting. finally, which included the attacks and plots of the past year or so are not isolated things. we should look at them one by one and say, well, that was unusual. rather, we believe they are part of a broader strategy embraced by our adversaries, al and their associates to
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flood us with multiple threats and from all different directions, all different adversaries. we found, also worrisome, the united states has failed to adequately understand and prepare for these threats. there was a prevailing conviction of those we talked to that existed long past its shelf life that it could not ever happen here. that the communities of the united states were not communities of sworn terrorists. we thought we were to affluent, much better educated, particularly in europe or the united kingdom. and somehow, the american melting pot, established a fire wall to prevent radicalization and recruitment in this country.
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yet this has not proven to be the case. it was the case before 9/11. everybody from the 9/11 came from abroad to do less harm. all of our efforts since then has been to make sure they did not get on airplanes and to stop people from other countries, particularly suspected of harboring terrorists. this is something new. this is a new trend, alarming trend, and we better get on top of it. this is a threat that is more complex, board of first than at any other time since september 11, 2001. another disturbing thing, we discovered there is no single government agency responsible for identifying radicalization and trying to stop recruitment. it may be that we need some kind of multi agency strategy where they all get together, but that concerns me, especially because our experience on the 9/11 commission was if it was
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everybody's responsibility, then is nobody's responsibility. it is not even clear which agency among the vast array of agencies in the intelligence and law enforcement community of the united states which agency has the lead responsibility here. for radicalization and recruitment. they have told us the issue needs further study. we hope that terrorists, what they're looking for is our achilles' heel. we need a strategy to deal with this growing problem and its emerging threat. the diversity of this are array of recent terrorist recruits presents new and greater challenges to law enforcement agencies across this entire country. many of these entities are already overstressed and inundated with information and leads and now have to run down a new panoply of threats and a
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variety of factors and organizations. some of what we found out is the threat is very different than the threat which face us on 9/11. it has changed profoundly. today, america faces i am a threat -- faces a dynamic threat, from shootings to car bombs to simultaneous suicide attacks to attempted in-flight bombings of passenger aircraft. and this is a state of affair different than it was at the time of 9/11. let me conclude. we said it in the 9/11 report that part of the problem was a failure of imagination. on behalf of the u.s.
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government. they really cannot get ahead of the problem. they knew about al qaeda and about bin laden and all of the attacks abroad. they never really imagines they could pull off something as they did here in our own country. this is something, again, which requires a re-thinking and new thinking about our strategy. we're doing a lot of work on this, on the leadership with the group i am working with, consulting with experts, meeting with everybody that we can and the administration regarding recommendations that this country might adopt to deal with this new threat. but the one thing we cannot do is fight the last war. something we cannot do it is continue to make things based on the threat of what happened on 9/11. we have to look at this new threat. we have to look at this as a new strategy. and we have to use all the resources of our intelligence
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agencies and the united states government and most importantly our citizenry as a whole. because i have often said it is not going to be, as good as they are and hard-working as they are, it is not going to be the cia or the fbi or federal agencies to discover the next plot. it will be some citizen who has the confidence to tell his local policemen that something is wrong and a local policeman has to have the contacts and confidence to call somebody in the federal government to get people on top of it. remember, in the case of the bombing in times square, times square is probably the area of the nine states with the most least coverage. -- of the united states with the most least coverage. more policemen than any other place in the united states per square feet. yet it was a street vendor who discovered the bomb. at this point, we have to call
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in everybody. we have to have a strategy, and that is what we're trying to develop now with our small group. that is what i believe and hope the united states government will be trying to get on top of in the next days and months. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, governor, thank you. we will be taking questions. we only have one microphone. ezra, you will be the lone microphone. if you could put your hands up, and we will move around. and while we are moving the microphone, sir, you presented quite and eliminating picture of the threat today. i also wanted to ask a question to reflect on your experience of being on the forefront of trying to bring change to make us safer. you described also the difficulty of change. i just wonder if you would help
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us understand, are we facing bureaucratic inertia to be overcome? nobody has tried to produce as much change as you. can you help us understand the difficulties of change? >> i think change is always difficult, particularly so in washington, particularly so in a bureaucracy. let me give an example. let's take one of our lead and wonderful agencies, the fbi. the fbi is a wonderful group of people. but they were trained by the late j. edgar hoover. what they were trained to do was to build up surveillance people, build up enough evidence, make sure you have enough evidence to take them to trial, convict them, and send them away. and the fbi did that superbly for a number of years. now we are asking the fbi to do something completely different. we are asking the fbi to surveil
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people, yes, but to pass on his perhaps to other agencies of things that might be wrong, to build up evidence not to necessarily put somebody in jail but to prevent a plot. which could kill a lot of their fellow citizens. if you think about that, that is a whole new thing. to have somebody who has been trained to do the other suddenly turn around and do this is very difficult. taking the same agency, the top people in the agency have always been the agents. there have been movies about them, police shows. the agent goes an arrest somebody. their heroes, the top people, most respected, people we all like. now it is not necessarily the agent. the agent brings back information. that information has to be put together with a whole bunch of other information gathered from other places by the analyst.
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and the analyst becomes perhaps the most important people. but the analyst is not respected as the most important. they are not paid as if they're the most important. so we have trouble keeping good analysts in various agencies. yet if you think of the thousands of people who collect information, the analyst may be the most important person of all because they're putting together the pieces of the puzzle to get these people and convict them -- not convict them, but stop the plots. that is one example. i mentioned congress. i don't know how you change congress. i really don't. i have watched congress for years. there are some wonderful people, but they don't change. we have testified again and again before these committees and we have said to them, very openly, that the way you conduct your oversight of intelligence agencies is dysfunctional.
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and they not and they say, yes, it is. -- and the day nod and they say, yes, it is. but then it goes to the appropriators in congress and they don't want to change. they like the fact that armed services has control over the intelligence budget, even though they don't have time to pay attention to it. they don't want to change that control. so nothing changes. so change is very, very hard. the only way that i know of -- look, as far as i am concerned, every single candidate for congress last time around and this time around pledged themselves to the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. right? every single one. they came back to washington, having been elected or reelected, and one of the main recommendations was about changing the congress. nothing happened.
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change is very, very difficult. but the only way i know to do is to keep on working at it. after 9/11, there was tremendous momentum behind commission. they all came and listened to. the came back from vacation to work on it. we had a lot of momentum. now it is a little more difficult. we don't want to wait around for another attack to get the momentum. we want to change these things now, get better information sharing, get the fbi and cia to even be better in their information sharing, and i could go on. but there are a lot of things we have to do. the only way we get it done is for people like you and i to keep pushing them. sooner or later, it gives way. but it is tough. >> thank you very much. i am benjamin, an independent analyst in foreign service officer, retired.
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my question is it to levels. how is it that the terrorist threat has become more developed and complex, as you say, and to what extent have our foreign policies or failure to adjust these policies contributed to this complexity and this new trend? >> very good question. if we listen to what the terrorists say, and i am not saying we should change our form policy, but i am saying it contributes. if you listen to what they say, when bin laden spoke originally, and there were two things he mentioned. one was our support for israel and lack of help for the palestinians, and the other was troops on their wholey soil, because that point we had some troops in saudi arabia. those were the things he mentioned. and you can read the statements.
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they want us out of the entire region. they don't want any american troops there. they don't want any americans. all. americansn't want any there at all. we're not going to change our support for israel. i don't think we're going to change where we leave the american troops in certain places and leave protection of our friends. we can change the way we approach it. one of the most neglected areas of the whole 9/11 report is the soft policy area where we recommended a bunch of out reaches to the arab world, similar to what we did in eastern europe before the breakup of the cold war when we had all sorts of information agencies, exchanges, education programs. a whole bunch of things to try and show them who we were, who we really work, not to the
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propagandist's told them we were. i still think we can do a lot more of that. i think it is a deliberate strategy. we were very successful in stopping people who wanted to do was harm who had passports from other parts of the world. very successful. we can see now, an agency in washington, you can see everybody who is getting on every plane to the united states in the world. the idea is to stop some of these people before they get on the plane. but they recognize that has been successful. for years, bin laden wanted to do something big. he said the only thing that will stop them is to do a nuclear explosion on their soil. so they're trying to do something big. well, we have stopped that, made it more difficult.
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and then they saw that these smaller plots seem to disrupt us, too. i think the new strategy is to see if we can get people who don't look like we look like and are part of the world, people who are american citizens, and let's see if we can do smaller attacks and see if that does not disrupt them. that is the new strategy. i don't believe that it is something that happened by accident. i think it is because the old one is not working, they have gone to a new one. >> yes, sir? >> i write for the pakistani spectator. our friend israel is spending less than 5% on terrorism prevention, but they are a lot more successful than we are. are we buy our rhetoric encouraging terrorism by getting a lot more attention than we deserve?
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for example, in israel, whenever you have these kinds of nonsense things, after about 15, 20 minutes, people go on with their lives. they don't make a big issue. in pakistan, we're losing at least three people per year. we have lost since not such 11, 32 civilians. we have lost more pakistani troops. and they are spending so much resources on this nonsense. just because this has become a kind of industry. those poor countries like india and pakistan cannot afford it. it is there any solution? >> that is a very good question, and the question that is also very much in discussion now in the halls of u.s. government. the idea is, look, probably no
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matter what we do, one of these people are going to get through. if they do get through into a small-scale attack somewhere, and it really disrupts life in this country and is seen as the biggest thing that ever happened to us, it will encourage more of those attacks. and what they're talking about is how we make the american people understand that it may occur at some point, a small- scale attack, but we have to then go on with our lives? we cannot make it the be all, and all, or it will encourage more of the same tax. i don't think they have -- or it will encourage more of the same attacks. there is nobody in the federal government will step aside and say, one attack, don't worry about it. they're not going to say that. but there is that discussion going on, and it is very important. if one of these guys gets through a small-scale attack
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that we don't make it into the biggest thing in the world. that just encourages them. we go on with our lives and show them there is nothing they can do to disrupt the american way of life. that would be the best thing we can do if one of these guys gets through, but that is a good question. >> yes, sir? >> you talked about information sharing. i was hoping to get your thoughts on the potential for implementing standards and practices for and to credit risk management throughout the country and what your thoughts would be as to if that would be helpful in terms of supporting terrorism in the future? >> integrating management of, what? >> integrating risk management. >> yes, oh, yes. in fact, this can be enormously helpful, because the biggest ally we have on this he was a private sector. it a lot of companies have done that now, and we go over once
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you're the board of directors what procedures we have for risk-management econo, what hap. risk-management, what happened with our records in case there was a disruption credit we also, companies go through drills. if something happened to the building, it might not be an attack, and might be a natural emergency of some sort, but what happens to the employees? where do you go, where do congregate, how'd you know if everybody is all right? there are plants in most of the major corporations and is spreading to smother business, but, yes, this kind of into credit risk assessment. the united states. i have talked a lot with mayor bloomberg, and it is a lot better. they have done a lot better. 1 9/11 happened, nobody knew who was in charge.
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it was the first one on the scene. the fire department at their first, the were in charge. the policeman, there were in charge. nobody knew who was in charge. he has centralize that now. he has taken on whenever the police work, sing, all right, the police department, you are in charge. the police department has its own anti-terrorist unit. it they have a wonderful apparatus in the city itself. but the police are the ones who are in charge in case of any incident. every city and state all to do that. everybody ought to know, and it is not just terrorist attacks. it is hurricanes, floods, whatever the emergency is. when that emergency strikes, it is too late to worry he was in charge. >> so far you have told us a lot about the value and optical of
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change in the fbi at -- and the obstacle of change in the fbi, local police departments, but there was one change that you could magically produce over the next two years, what one change would it be? >> i am tempted to say converse. -- i am tempted to say congress. if there was one change, i think we still have some money -- this is a very difficult job. we have millions of bits of information, and coordinating, let alone sharing them, is immensely difficult. i don't anybody to believe this is easy. that is very difficult. if there was one thing i could do, it would be make the information sharing seamless.
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top analysts who were paid and recognized for what they do, and had to make sure because that would do more than anything else to prevent these things. yes? >> hello, i am samir daniels, ramsey decisions. i am very concerned with the whole issue of the quality of intelligence. when i say that, i want to distinguish it by saying that i believe being intelligent is not intelligence. unless the quality of intelligence and the analytical product and the language skills and these things are not improved, you're going to be spinning the wheel. i am sorry to say this, i have deep respect for lee and you, but i just think you are dealing with that at a level when the problem is at another level.
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>> well, the reason i am pointing out the importance of analysts is to get at what you are talking about. it starts at one level, were you collect the information. then it goes to another level where you analyze and share it. and then it goes up to leaders who hopefully understand what they're getting and can transmit that into policy on that basis. it is very important, for instance, who and how the president gets his daily briefing. each president does it differently. president bush, the last president bush, like to have people come in and tell him in the morning verbally what the threats were in all of that. this president likes to read it because that is the way he gets
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information. and then he call somebody if he wants to talk to them about it. but it is very important that the right person be there. we said we thought it ought to be the dni. it worries that it is not the director of national intelligence, but you are right, the whole system does not work if it breaks down at any level. it has to go right up to the president. altamonte, the president is the one who has to be responsible. -- ultimately, the president is the one who has to be responsible. >> governor, thank you very much for coming out. a spoke earlier about soft power approach and you are talking about soft power like we did post world war ii. the soft power is the japanese picking up baseball in bobbysocks. you talked about reaching the
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police forces of america. before i retired from the navy about four years ago, i attacked bases all over the world as a terrorist and i spoke with local commanders. i did a presentation with sheriff jim, in the central states. he asked me, you are from d.c., what do these color charts mean? what do i might do when it is fuchsia or warrants? -- when it is fuchsia or orange? i like to ask how we can do better with 300 million americans. >> absolutely essential. the first thing i think we have to recognize -- i'd want to scare anybody, because that is not helpful, but we have to let people be concerned and we have to let them understand what this new threat maybe. and probably if they see something.
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this is the way it has changed. right now if i am sitting on a plane and i look across the aisle and somebody is starting to like their shoe, i will jump them and so will everybody else on the plane. that is new. we have to alert people so if they see something suspicious, they know who to go to it and they know who to call. that is the first link. who they callke is has to have confidence. for years, federal agencies looked out on the state agencies, state police look down on local police, this hierarchy. it has to be much more seamless if it is going to work. there has to be the citizen and local law-enforcement personnel take the call, and that call gets paid attention to it by people at the level who can evaluate it. they're working on that. this is not new. they're working on it.
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it is difficult. it is difficult because it is overcoming years and years and years and years of doing something the other way. but we all know that has to happen. i honestly believe the federal, state, and local agencies are working on it. i have talked to local police who tell me it is not the way they would like to see it but they're getting more respect. and it is starting to happen. >> a follow-up question about differences across administrations, you had a great story about how president bush received and president obama. you have watched a new administration, and there have been positive and negative spread it could to help us understand as we have seen the change of administration, are there areas that have gone better, areas where you may have expected more? could you give us a better sense of the differences? >> i have great respect for the
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people president obama has appointed. people i have worked with, janet napolitano is a first-class cabinet member. there are a number of other people in the intelligence. , the director of the fbi who has been there for two administrations, bobby muller, one of the best public servants i have worked with. the people are good. because his administration was so dominated by 9/11, the bush administration spent tremendous resources and interest. it did a lot of good things, some things not so good, but the more concentrated on it. this person has been distracted, understandably so, by all sorts of other things. trying to get the health care bill through, the economy which has not responded to whatever they have been trying to do to it, to all sorts of crises in one area or another. occasionally, to be honest, i
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think the i has come off the ball. i think we have to understand that it cannot in this area. it no matter what else you are doing, the president of the united states always has to pay attention to this area. keeping the american people say is more important. that is what we elect governments for. we probably form our first government when we were in caves to keep us safe from other animals or people or tribes or what have you. keeping us safe occurs to me is the first obligation of government. no matter what else you are doing, you cannot be distracted from that. i think obama is a president of great good will and wants to do the job in this area, has the intelligence to do it. i think he has to empower the dni under him and give them whatever presidential authority they need it and move forward. >> thank you very much. we're very glad that your eye is
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on this ball. thank you very much for coming. thank you so much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> i can talk about this because it was written by another journalist. there is a clock that has lots of times around the world. one of them says potus, other cities around the world. he has been ambassador to two of the places on six or seven of his clocks. afghanistan and iraq. he was the successor to john bolten as ambassador to the united nations, and i happen to have spent a lot of time at the un there was a complete sea change
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in the reception at that time to america and what it was doing in the world, even with nations that had a serious problem because of the very different style that he brought to that job. i basically take these questions about the face of american engagement in the world and the style technique and the substance very seriously. one of the things i remind people, as i was a critic of some of the budget ministration's policies, it was not monolithic. the door many of faces in the struggle. -- there were many faces in the struggle. he is now ceo of his own firm, khalilzad and associates. he serves on the board for national endowment of the democracy. when i was working at the rand
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corporation, i was mesmerized by how cool and flamboyant and fun he was. i said that is the profession i want to go into. he wrote some important pieces that compared the nation- building task, as he saw it, between his experiences in iraq and afghanistan. it it were very interesting stories and i think is granular work in that area will form the discussion. chris has to teach. i hope he will stay as long as he can and then leave, but i want to bring this together. how many of you have been here since 9:00 this morning? wow, you deserve something. without further ado, please thank the panel. please welcome zalmay khalilzad. >> thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much. as steve said, it has been a long day for most of you. it is an honor to be here and i
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admire many of the gentlemen who are on the panel. i have worked with some of them. it is a great pleasure to be here. in my homage to steve. i thought given the end of the day, i will make seven very quick points, and then i look forward to the exchange and questions. the first point, i am unashamedly supportive of u.s. global leadership and the positive attributes of a world in which a single power such as the united states is the preeminent power in the world. the reason for that, i think compared to buy polarity of the cold war and the multiplicity of the previous time with the cold war, that it resulted in two
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world wars, a world in which the united states plays a role as the preeminent world power is going to be more peaceful and more conducive to u.s. security and security of the world. on balance, it does not mean or not be challenges or difficulties, but on balance that is a better world. the second point, can that role of pre-eminence be sustainable? i believe at the present time, our economic problems, the problem of the the best set -- the problem of the deficit and unemployment and lack of adequate economic growth, the problem of the inability to come to terms to deal with these issues through appropriate,
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broadly agreed to policies is a security challenge for the united states. that means it is going to be growing if these problems are not attended to. there will be demands for cutting back on the u.s. role, sang legitimately that the role we are planning is unsustainable, cannot be afforded. the calls for come home, america, will certainly increase. isolationism will increase, and retrenchment would result. that does not mean a better world, necessarily, because challenges will grow as a result. we have retrenched before, and the results have not been always very positive.
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look at post world war i u.s. retrenchment, and look at post- soviet afghanistan. we retrenched. we did not engage in a sustained the afghans in the aftermath of the soviet pullout, which was a great victory for the united states and those who supported the opposition to the soviets, and it created a security environment which became much more costly later on for us to deal with. so in my judgment, dealing with the economic crisis that we face is ultimately, now, and national security issue. it is a national security issue. and the challenge facing us, will our politics be able to deal with it, given the polarization that we see? it is really about politics,
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stupid, if you like right now. will our political system, political leaders be able to deal with this issue. the third point is the rights of other powers. the question, as we face economic problems, a number of countries are doing very well. we know about china, brazil, india as examples. the question is, you cannot have a single approach to how to deal with this change. certainly, we need to adjust the international system, the international system needs to adjust to this change in the way that is least destabilizing, because transitions and power can be very destabilizing. the question is how we change international institutions by giving greater roles and greater responsibility and greater burdens for countries such as india and brazil.
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how do we incentivize china to play a constructive role? the policies that are appropriate for dealing with brazil and india may not be entirely appropriate for dealing with china, and in my judgment, we need an appropriate balance. we need to engage and integrate with hedging strategies that potentially are able, should china go, either because of internal developments or strategies, which they made intensely pursued, that would result in the destabilization of east asia. the fourth point i would make, yes, what i heard from the previous panel, some colleagues, it is important for us that we
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face the world in the current time, that we avoid overextension. one of the ways that great powers fall before decline is they have not been selective enough or made the wrong choices, getting entangled in places that zap its energy, or because of internal decay, disagreements internally, not able to deal with the problems they confront it. therefore, the mix of avoiding overextension, being as selective as possible with burden sharing when you do things to the maximum extent possible bringing others with you, and reserve bank unilateral uses for the most critical of issues seems to be very important. but what should be the focus of our effort is, of course, to
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avoid the domination of critical regions of the world -- europe, where the threat is small, east asia where the potential is greater. and when it comes to the middle east, what europe was a couple centuries ago, dysfunctional, its problems became the problems of the world and cost two world wars. -- and caused two world wars. i think there is room for a greater collective effort of the stipulation -- of the stabilization over a long time. that gives me to this point, which in the case of places like afghanistan and iraq, we have to balance the military instrument better than we have with the non-military instruments, such
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as catalyzing politics. where people don't have an agreement, i think the ambassador mentioned the problems of nation building. why not let the people themselves solve their political problems, which would be ideal. but at times, people are not entirely free to do it because neighbors, unfortunately in this region, as europe was centuries earlier, are not allowed to decide. i give always the example that we were over-aligned on the military instrument because politically, our hands were tied. for example, and elections. it is very important how politics go, elections go because that creates circumstances that creates security problems that you then have to deal with military forces. under our law, i cannot
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interfere financially and elections. i could not give anyone any resources so he could compete, but yet our rivals, those who are much more extreme in their agendas, such as in the case of iraq, iran, they did provide support for it forces. the question is, when we have substantial interest in cases, when politics is critical for how a country of all, whether it is peaceful or not, -- critical for our country if all this, whether it is peaceful or not, how that is done. to bridge thew power-sharing formula. the iranians are pushing for one kind of outcome, the result of
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coalition politics, some of the arab neighbors are pushing and another direction. there is a role politically for us, and that is why i believe in the strengthening of the skills of the state department with regards to politics where it can reduce the burden on the military. because if it is the only instrument you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything looks like a nail, and that is not in our interests. of course, there are other challenges, and that is my sixth point, which is the question of proliferation and terror. these are big issues, global issues, issues on which we could build coalitions, but there is the new issue of dealing with
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weapons of mass destruction, the result of the reliance on technologies that we have in the modern world where we are very much netted, producing special vulnerabilities. the role of teaching international agreement, regulation, the role of deterrence besides prevention. these are all issues that we would have to consider as we go forward. now, let me summarize and conclude, and i look forward to the discussion. there have been times before in our history when there has been great pessimism about our ability to rise to the challenge, whether america was able to do what is necessary. and to pursue a grand strategy over extended time. many countries have bet against the united states in the past
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and later on come to the judgment that was a mistake. i believe now we face many challenges. but the most important is getting our own house in order, so to speak, and that is to come to terms with the big economic challenges of the fiscal issues and growth that the country needs. a sense of predictability so people do not sit on their money, and that it's a tax policies and a whole range of other issues that are beyond my expertise to deal with. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you so much, zal. this is exactly what i hoped to achieve.
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i hope that charles and sir christopher are able to join us. at first, zal, a loaded question about afghanistan. you were once rumored to be the ceo of afghanistan. we are spending about $100 billion per year right now and afghanistan, and a country with a gdp of about $14 billion. at that level, one would normally say, a management problem, there must be other ways to do i hear a lot of talk about that, but there seems to be zero shift to other tools. if you are running the show, what kind of opportunities would you seek for decreasing the military dominance of that coral?
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what would be some of the things you would do if afghanistan or going to remain as high-profile as part of the it security portfolio as it is today? and if you could, turn on the microphone. >> i would think that a game changer for afghanistan, given especially the level of effort that is not sustainable over a long period of time, and given the president's timeline of wanting to start drawing down, the democrats -- it removes the allowing of pakistan of the taliban network and others to attack not only the afghans but the coalition. this dilemma that we face, that we have not been able to
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resolve for nine years, of pakistan being an ally on the one hand but also acting as an adversary on the other, in terms of the allowance of these insurgents to be used. that may require a big diplomatic engagement. i credit the administration for recognizing that when it came and. it was a very positive approach, but it cannot produced diplomatically the kind of agreement that would bring that about. without that, i think any sense that you can achieve results in the timeline of the president is talking about is unrealistic. therefore, that would be priority one, and it is a big diplomatic, geopolitical approach. how do you incentivize it to
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negatively -- to change. what should the afghans do? >> i would love to go to charlie and the ambassador's comments. just as a great strategist, do others that think as you do, not recognize how the rest of the world perceives the united states as so caught in this that it becomes convinced that we don't have the ability to shake the international system what we previously did? sanctions or not, they are making a bet that in the stock market a power that the united states -- that the price on power is very low. >> there are some i am sure who would like us trapped there, not winning, not losing, but being
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there as we are. that consumes a lot of our energy and diplomatic and political focus. i am sure there are some russians out there who are taking advantage. there may be some others who have their own box. >> there is a real joke when i was in china once and i ask what they are when strategy was. they said how to keep america distracted in small middle eastern countries. >> exactly. it does not mean we have to play according to their script. the question is, while achieving mean wes, it doesn't
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grow in the towel and abandon our objective, but how do we successfully pursue our goals as they pursue their? >> just a couple of quick reflections. i don't think you would get much push back from any of us on the question of is a world in which there a strong american leadership and more stable world than the alternative? i think the answer is yes. the debate that we need to have is, how do you wielding that pre-eminence. how should the united states wields power, and how, given what is happening here at home, can we ensure that its domestic foundations are secure? i completely agree that getting our domestic house in order is a prerequisite for the effective use and deployment of american power abroad in a smart way. i completely agree with you on
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the issue of catalyst. i think it is a really good word, that the u.s. needs to figure out how to catalyze political coalitions and political compacts and other countries and to focus more on the political side and less on the military side. the only caveat i would offer is i think we need to be aware of the limits of our power to do so, and the dangers. the dangers of thinking that we can establish stable, functioning democracies in a place like afghanistan or somalia or sudan or yemen, just to name a few. these are troubled societies. they will be trouble societies for decades to come if we americans think we can solve the problems in these countries. we are going to wake up very
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forlorn and empires. part of the goal here is a sober dose of realism. >> i remember at the end of 2001 rather pretentiously quoting an saying the one thing american and british military is have forgotten was the old maxim that war is the extension of politics by other means. we were conducting war in afghanistan and did not have a clue that was politics. we had more of a clue about politics in 2010, but it is still working. in britain, when we look at this, we see we have been in a conflict -- in continuous conflict blogger than at any time in our history since the napoleonic wars. that is since 1815.
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it is quite something. it is very easy to criticize our engagement in afghanistan and describe all the mistakes we have made, sins of omission and commission, the search not working as well as it did in iraq. we never put enough troops into helmand province. there is all this stuff. there is still the question, what do you do? the strategic weakness for us in afghanistan is we do not have a reliable symbol body to work with. in the absence of that, how do you bring this thing to a conclusion which allows the united states and nato to withdraw in reasonable order? the only thing i can see that we can bring to help would be a massively complex operation.
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thinking hastual to be more ambitious. you have to say afghanistan, pakistan, india, china, russia, iran -- in other words, before you know where you are, you are starting to think about a grand, international conference of people who have a stake in the fate of afghanistan, and to try and create some kind of sense of international guarantees would come to be perfectly frank, allow us to withdraw was some measure of honor. beyond that, i haven't a clue what we do, except that we will not be fighting beyond 2005 --
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>> and that was five years ago. >> a senior moment, sorry. 2015. five years from now, when he has said it will have the next general election. >> we are going to cluster the questions and end with a bang. tommy, i know for tenor 15 years, you are going to do me a favor and make it brief. >> you just mentioned, we know that pakistan army is the most corrupt and incompetent institution on earth. how can we make the pakistan army feel secure. they soak -- they feel so
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insecure about the eastern borders. you did a wonderful job before you left india in 1947. my friends are from india and pakistan. there is really no point to spend $100 billion on a country that has only $40 million gdp. get these questions really quick. >> the department of defense, as we heard from the secretary of defense, is not necessarily well-prepared to take on some of the missions, and expanding the capabilities they have because they have been so focused on
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traditional warfare for so long. as we heard a couple of weeks ago, the department of state is ill-prepared to take on anything that involved on location. in particular, i am interested in hearing about rebalancing in these national powers, given this situation where you have to reduce the defense spending, yet somehow managed these other areas that the department of defense has this expertise. >> and this gentleman? >> my question is very simply this, you gave allusion to a conference of multiple powers. as happens in history, are you eluding to a modern-day congress of vienna?
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>> interesting question. >> on pakistan, i don't agree with your characterization of the pakistan military, but i believe there is some sense of fear in terms of what would happen if the united states was to succeed in afghanistan and then once again leave, where would that leave pakistan? maybe would be only focused on india. maybe driven by fear that india would gain a lot afghanistan be in circle. maybe driven by ambition, that
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once they dominate afghanistan when they leave, we can build a new empire including central asia. there is room for a lot of speculation, but the point is that this dilemma of pakistan being friend and fellow at the same time needs to be resolved, in part by dealing with legitimate fears, but at the same time, by appropriate pressure to deal with ambition. one of the means of diplomacy that every -- several people have talked about, because the alternative if that is not dealt with is a protracted war. already it has been one of the longest wars and a couple of hundred years. the patients is not there for a protracted 10 or 15 years war to defeat the strategy of the other
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side. abandonment would have its own very negative consequence. with regard to the rebalancing state, when it comes to state and nation building, we need -- there is a time when the military has to be in the lead. when it shifts to nation building, i believe that civilians should be the overall leader. there are all kinds of problems of command and control. integration of different instruments is vital for success. it depends on the individuals. integration can happen -- the chief of the military and i got along. what we really were working very closely together.
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he is to attend my morning staff meeting. we used to meet each other for our five times a day, on the telephone and contact. >> it has been really downhill. >> the report that [unintelligible] progressed very well in iraq, so that is not unique. we need to find institutional answers rather than rely on whether people got along or not to bring about true integration. at the same time, the training of our people and the civilian side for missions that have become so important in the case of iraq and afghanistan is also an issue. we asked very dedicated people
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that don't necessarily have the skills to do the job that needs to be done. that is an area that this department -- where we need more investment. there is a need for an institutional solution, in my judgment. >> i want to underscore the pal standard part. it is hard to overstate the enthusiasm that have. this was just six months ago. it is an interesting reality of that real. like most riddles that i cannot figure out, i tend to move away from them. we have not yet figured that out. >> i would add that if there has been something missing in
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afghanistan and iraq, it is strategy. we sort of have the troops there, and we do the thing in kandahar, the new step back and say what is the bigger picture here? how are we getting from here to there? it is very murky. it seems to me that we really do have to begin to focus on both the political strategy in afghanistan, and at this point, partly for the reasons we have been discussing, the need to reduce the footprint, i don't think there is any alternative to moving very forcefully on the political side. that means talking to all, if not most, of the taliban. simply because they are part of the political landscape in afghanistan. there i think the military has an important role to play, but
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largely as a way of getting the best deal that we can at the negotiating table. i would draw out a direct link here to the dayton process. what brought the serbs to the table? it was an offensive that changed the flow of forces on the battlefield. yes, military force can get the taliban to cut a deal that that might not otherwise cut. military force cannot defeat the taliban. i think that is how you put the two together. i would make a similar argument at the regional level. let's think hard about congress of vienna, if you want to use that analogy, but how are these different players going to come together? what are their stakes in afghanistan? sometimes, particular with countries we have troubled relationships, we ignored the fact that we often have common interests. we have common interests with
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iran in afghanistan on the border, on drug-trafficking. we have common interests with iran in iraq. they are not huge common interest, but they are there. i think we need to do a better job of figuring out how to pull out those common interests in creating a strategy to work with regional powers that at the end of the day will have a lot of influence in afghanistan, in some ways much more influence than we will have, for decades to come. >> i agree entirely with what you just said, charles. the reference to congress of vienna is not so fanciful. the congress of vienna ashley has a direct and pertinent relationship contemporary conduct of multilateral diplomacy.
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it would do so if we ever went so far as having a grand international conference. the reason it was an assembly of powers, big and small, almost 200 in size, and the organizers -- it was a triumph for french diplomacy. they decided at the beginning to do an immense amount of preparatory work outside the plenary sessions of the meeting, so that when everybody finally got together, the only time they got together in plenary was assigned the final act. -- was to sign the final act. if we got to having a great conference around afghanistan, it would require before they all
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met an immense amount of very careful preparation, a lot of digging. it would be a huge diplomatic undertaking. i have no idea whether it would be successful. the moment we say maybe this is the way to go, at the same time we are saying, if it is going to work, it will need the most careful preparation by some very skilled people indeed. >> on the specific issue of afghanistan, i wanted to reemphasize what the ambassador just said, which is it would take a lot of preparatory work. it would require a dozen different negotiations, at least. at the core of which would have to be pakistan, afghanistan, the united states, and to reconcile
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with the taliban. this would have to happen in stages and phases, but it would ultimately acquire a grand diplomatic arrangement. >> he always thought the bond deal would not survive that, but i think you'd find a lot of international partners. not many people have been talking in the way you gentlemen have come to agreement. it is a remarkable, a historic moment on this stage here. i want to thank -- before you thank everyone here, i want to say a few words.
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we were here today to make the point that data and empirical or research that academia can actually inform policy choices and policy thinking. this conference was one up the launching places for this book, which is available to all be. most of you have been here since 9:00 a.m. this morning. not only c-span viewers, many of whom may have watched all eight hours, but i want to thank all of this c-span staff and crew that is taking this conference to many thousands more people. [reading names]
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there was a fantastic number of people involved behind-the- scenes in this meeting. from earlier this morning, i want to thank all of you, for those of you who have made it through very long day. i want to ask robert to set a few words in final conclusion so we can adjourn today's meeting. >> i just want to say thank-you for helping us to make today a wonderful success, both for the university of chicago, and we hope, in part, for our debate on what to do to move beyond the war on terror. what you are seeing today is a real effort to bring social science to this conversation as part of the conversation. i think what you have seen today is an effort to have us, in
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part, bring in research from the university of chicago, but not to actually mandate that everyone agree with that research. the fact of the matter is, if we are really going to have a good working relationship between social science research and policy, it really is important that it is a part of the conversation, not just the conversation. thank you so much for making this a tremendous success. [applause] >> zal went to the university of chicago. thank you all very much. the meeting is adjourned. >> the following day, the fcc voted to move forward on proposed rules to make cell phone companies alert consumers at risk of high charges.
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taking a look here at boston in a rally that wrapped up about an hour ago with president obama, and helping out governor duval patrick. governor patrick is campaigning in a race against republican charlie baker an independent tim cahill. according to the ap, president obama has been active on the campaign trail, trying to motivate democrats and warned them not to take any of the races for granted. you can see their governor duval patrick. that includes this race here in massachusetts. private groups are pouring large sums of money into gop campaigns. democrats are concentrating their resources on a smaller number of races. early voting is underway in many states, including nevada. recent polls there showed the race between sen majority leader harry reid and republican challenger sharron angle at a statistical dead heat. you can find more campaign used
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and video online act c-span.org /politics. our coverage is continue tomorrow starting at noon with nevada's only scheduled senate debate. we will head west after that to california for a debate between democrat chris coons and republican christine o'donnell to fill the delaware senate seat that was once occupied by joe biden. finally, a senate debate from missouri and the seat opened by the retiring senator kit bond. amar not we will be going live to the kentucky senate debate between democrat jack conway and republican rant paul. a c will be empty after retirement of republican senator jim bunning. that is followed by another live
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senate debate tomorrow in washington where incumbent senator patty murray is redundant -- is running against republican candidate. you can see the debate live at 10:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow night right here on c-span. we will now hear from federal communication commission chairman to is genachowski on some proposed rules to alert consumers to high cell phone charges. the center for american progress closed this 50-minute event. -- hosted this event. >> good morning, or i should say good afternoon, everyone. i am the executive vice president here at the center for american progress.
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we are so pleased to have representatives of consumer advocates and the c-span audience with us. today's event is presented by the doing what works project, which seeks to demonstrate how all aspects of government, spending, tax policy regulation, could be made to perform better. we are honored to welcome the chairman of the fcc, julius genachowski to describe his agenda which embodies the doing what works philosophy by trying to take advantage of new technologies to do what works best for consumers in oak way that is increased his lead -- in a way that is increasingly practical. using tools and information so that they can make smart choices about their mobile home plants. the chairman and his team first
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launched this inquiry surrounding consumer empowerment a year ago by collecting data and asking questions about issues that directly affect consumers, such as early termination fees, the disclosure, and transparency. these rules and the chairman's agenda or a perfect example of doing what works. the problem is familiar of, but in a new technology form. consumers incur fees in significant measure because they do not understand what the consequences of their own actions will be. the solution is not more reams of impenetrable paper disclosures that no one ever reads. the solution draws on tools of the 21st century and reaches consumers at the teachable moment when they are about to make a choice about how they use their device in ways that might prove costly. the industry is already offering these billing
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informations services to many consumers. we know the technology is there and is affordable. this is a good way to maintain having consumers, not an expensive regulatory mandate. just by providing this information i believe you will see competition and fair prices for mobile services. i want to mention the leadership of senator tom udall who introduced the cellphone shot back in 2010. -- the cell phone shock act. i will start by introducing all of our participants up front. i will do it in the reverse order in which they will appear. the chairman will join me and then we will have a conversation with three consumers. after that we will hear from allan bloom of consumers union, and then the chairman will provide his remarks and we'll have an opportunity for questions with the audience.
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wildlife think in this audience i don't need to do this let me tell you a few things about german-- chairman genachowski. the two showed it brief appreciation the two guys with funny names with histories of significant family challenge, is family fled eastern europe and the holocaust could end up together at harvard law school and i can imagine now they remarked to themselves about their opportunity to be in a position to literally change the lives of so many americans in ways small and large. after harvard he was a law clerk at the u.s. court of appeals for judge abner mikva and then for justice david souter. this is his second stint. previously he stood as counsel to bill kennard and then chief counsel for the chairman leigh hunt. after leaving the fcc the chairman was an executive announceme or in the tech industry working to start accelerate and invest in many early tech companies and then he served as a senior executive at
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barry diller interactive corp.. his career has also been rich in social enterprise. he is a member of the founding group or the resource bank which specializes in serving the needs of green number to runners and sustainable business and served on on the advisory board of environmental entrepreneurs. as an adviser to his friend, senator obama during the presidential campaign that chairman earns the candidates to harness the power of the internet. introducing strategies that will forever change the way the presidential campaigns are run. since his appointment to the fcc in 2009 chairman genachowski has fought for consumer and focus on consumer empowerment not simply consumer protection. one of the highlights of this effort is the launch of the consumer health center which can be found at www.fcc consumers and serves as an information hub for consumers, policy make or send press alike. now turning to the consumer advocacy community that has fought to bring cell phone bill
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shock to the attention of policymakers, we are joined by representatives of consumer unions, national consumers and consumer action. on behalf of all of these organizations i would like to introduce allen bloom, director of the washington office of federal plicy and the fares for consumers union's. allen joins in 2002 but before that she had two decades of experience in both the legislative and executive branches. she served as deputy chief of staff to commerce secretary bill daily and a variety of other positions at the department including a stint in ntia. she also has 17 years of experience on the staff of the united states senate. but it is most appropriate that we start today's discussion from hearing from actual consumers who will tell us their stories of the cell phone bill shock. they will each tell you a bit of their story so i'm just going to let them introduce themselves but invite them to join me. we have with us kerfye pierre a theme employee and lives in
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maryland, robert st. germain a retired marketing professional from dover, massachusetts and dr. alison-- alexander cullison from fairfax virginia so please join us and mr. chairman if you would as well please. thank you. thanks very much. would you like to start us off and tell us a little bit of how you experienced--. >> i was in haiti after the earthquake happened, or during the earthquake and when i finally got ahold of my my family back home here, to let them know i was okay and the rest of the family was okay i was told that rules extending to victims in haiti, i had my phone bill but it was put on hold while i we to visit my sister
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who was having a baby, and so they told me i can turn the phone back on and use it and everything would be free, which i went ahead and used it to communicate because there was a lot of uncertainty and not knowing what was going to happen after the earthquake so i needed a way to communicate and for them to know we were okay. then when i got back on february 22 to the states and i saw the bill for $35,000, i thought it was like just, what it would be if i was to pay for it but it is not what i'm going to have to pay. then, when i called them the said yes, this is what you are billing is and it is for the text messages that they are charging me and it was just supposed to be phonecalls that were free. in haiti communication was totally gone and the only way i
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actually was communicating was the text messages because the phone cords were dropping a lot and there s not a good service there so i did use the phone, and the attacks that i was under the impression it was a courtesy and i could use it and when i came back and trying to get them to see that, it was an emergency and i-- so now they lowered it to $5000 that they said i have pay for the last hours there since i had to catch a flight from-- because there was no direct flight back here. that is my story. >> my situation has been going on for four years, started in 2006 when i receive a verizon wireless phone bill for $12,000. then i turned over the bill and called their breath back and we discussed the bill and the conversation got a little heated and we talked and he said
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whatever you do, this iscrazy. she was as shocked as i was. she said let me hold on so we did the data transfer for $50 a month. we will go back and predated. so she calls me back and said the system will take it so i got my august bill here. what i have gotten coming forward that i haven't gotten in the mail yet. she said you are up to about $18,000 so i said okay, so we did this and they will ran into a wonderful fellow who stayed with me for three plus years. we fought itall the way, the attorney general and he didn't want to get involved. two state senators who didn't get involved. and then finally some-- he gets reduced to $8600. it goes on my credit report in this massachusetts agency from
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day one said whatever you do don't ever pay the bill. they said don't ever pay it so that was in the back of my mind. but you know it didn't impact him as i was going into credit, to collections and all that. finally, about may of this year, meg will house of the "boston globe" was doing an article on consumer to dollar or 3-dollar chargers on their phone bill every month from verizon and i called and said why don't you make a contact. these two and dollar issues you know my bill was 18,000. she puts it i the front page of the globe. that article went across the country. i was invited down to talk shows and invited to new yorkcity to go on the evening news and it was unbelievable. i heard from people that i haven't heard from for 40 years. a lot of support and a lot of thank you. when that happened the fcc got involved and wants the fcc got
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involved in my opinion their peers put a lot of pressure on them saying hey listen, get rid of st. germain. we are all getting involved into the fcc. this is isn't funny anymore and sure enough you know that happened and i got a call finally and after four years from somebody from verizon who could make a decision and he said what can we do for you? everything will be taking care of. do you have any questions, just call me back and it all got taken care. from day one in summary, couple of things. bill shock is a high margin and they make a lot money with it. the variable cost of $18,000 services on my bill cost them pennies. it is not an expensive item for them. from day one i wanted two things. i wanted my bill taking care of and i wondered what i call the circuit rakers install. it runs up to a certain point in the trigger goes in and you get a text message or a phonecall or an e-mail telling you what is
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going on. that can be treated by a normal bill. my bill was 120 times normal. it was a shock and isaid thanks for having me and i look forward to some questions. >> iived in fairfax virginia and my son was getting ready to start school, and we had some very old phone so we decided that we would go to the sprint store and buy some new phones for him to go off to school. so we picked up two new phones and i needed a new phone so i picked out one that had texting capabilities. it had a phone that had texting capabilitiesnd we went on a family plan which included so many, so much data, so much text messaging and so many telephone calls, and we had decided that
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250 text messages seems reasonable. i don't know what i was thinking. so he goes off to school and by the way, when we went to check out at sprint, when they give you, when you sign your contract with sprint it isn't like a conventional contract. it is on like a, a cash register receipt and not only that, it is like invisible ink because they use the thermal paper so in eight months he you can't read it anyway. [laughter] so he went off to school, ad i got my first bill and this was a super bill, and it was way more than the $90 that we had anticipated. it was hundreds and hundreds of dollars from, from an overage of text messages, and i called him
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up and said, you know you weren't supposed to go over 250. he said bad i didn't go over 250. a lot of people text messages me back, they don't count today? certainly they did count a so i have this big bill and i call ups brand and i asked the lady why it wasn't very clear whether or not incoming text messages counted as the ones that my son generated. well they should have explained that to you, and which they didn't. so, i am facing his big bill d they said well why is it that you didn't let us know when we were close to our 250 or when we went over? we don't do that. i asked him if he could break it down so that i could see if my son actually had not gone over 250 himself. we bundle them together and give
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you the bill. i said well, it would have made sense if you would have just cut him off at 250. we don't do that either, so it was not a rewarding experience talking to them on the phone. and ultimately, i did talk to, as you go through tears of people that can probably make a decision, one lady, very nice lady, said that if i was willing to modify the contract to increase his text messages to something that is realistic, then she would give me, save me a few bucks on this huge overagi would wind up paying considerably more, it would no longer be $90 per month. it was going to be a lot more than that per month, but that is how they would rtify the situation.
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>> thank you guys very much for telling us that. we are now going to ask allen to join us and if you guys would actually join me back in the audience and you can stay there and we will get to the next step. thank you. >> thank you sarah. i am pleased to be here today, representing not ony my organization, consumers union, nonprofit publisher of "consumer reports" magazine that several other consumer organizations. i would like to acknowledge my colleagues who are here today. sall greenbergrom the national consumers league, rachel taub from consumer federation of america, and i believe jill r. rusco from consumer action. we are all pleased to be here. are accusations are deeply appreciative of the fcc's
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efforts to address the problem of wireless bill shock. we take of the chairman for taking this issue on as well as joel, the government affairs bureau chief at the fcc. this really is a critical pocketbook issue so we are just delighted that you are addressing it so thank you very much. as the fcc noted in it may survey, 30 million americans were one in six mobile users have been hit by wireless bill shock. unknowingly exceeding their limits for voice minutes, text messages or data usage. more than half of these consumers saw their bills go up $50 or mor a few of them were alerted by their wireless carrier before they exceeded their limt. at consumers union, we think that is wrong and we are frankly worried that the problem is tting worse. indeed in a "consumer reports" survey conducted just this
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september we found that about one in five adults said that within the past 12 months, they received a bill for service that was significantly higher than they had expected. the on line survey included more than 15,000 subscribers to "consumer reports" on line and was conducted by the "consumer reports" national research center. we think people should not be blindsided by the surprise charges on their bill. we constantly hear horror stories just like the ones we heard today from our readers of "consumer reports" magazine and our subscribers, who also received unexpectedly high wireless bills. many are completely unaware that they went over their voice, text or data limits and don't know about high coverage fees associated with them. in the case of roaming, some consumers do not know that roaming charges apply and what those roaming charges are. today's technology and the way consumers are using their mole devices make a risk of the bill
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shock even greater. for instance smartphones make it much easier for consumers to download large files. it has become relatively easy to exceed limits for downloading data simply by clicking on the internet, sending e-mail, watching a video, posting photos to facebook and i can attest to that from my kids and my nieces and nephews, or using other simple applications that chew up bandwidth. in recent years the industry is usually charged one monthly fee for unlimited data but that is changing. in june, att and he began selling monthly data service for its popular iphone and smartphone in rations of 200 mega-bytes and two gigabytes for $25. verizon says it might follo suit. some low use consumers might save a little money with these types of grapes hoever most of the popular new phones and the applications use a lot of data
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setting the table for even more consumers to exceed their limits and experience shock. we believe consumers deserve better. at a minimum we support providing all consumers with free and timely usage alerts. it is important to let consumers know when they aregetting close to a specified limit on data service or they are about to run up the roaming charges. we think it is critical for consumers to know how much they will be charged for going over their allotted time. right now this is an area without real oversight. some carriers like at&t and u.s. cellular offer alerts but these are voluntary actions and can change at a carrier's discretion. we believe that all consumers should have the benefit of this information and that is why we strongly support consistent and standardized formats and notification procedures that are maatory. again, on behalf of consumers union's, cfa consumer's actions in the national consumer league we are pleased that the
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commission will soon be looking at ways to protect consumers from bill shock. we look forward to working closely with you and other commissions to help all consumers and sure that they have the tools necessary to monitor their accounts and make informed decisions. thank you very much. [applause] >> mr. chairman. >> first of all, thank you to our three citizens who came and joined us today. we we know it isn't easy to set up here in front of the camera stand in front of all these people and you represent many other people. we appreciate, and my rand honor your willingness to be here today and on behalf of everyone here at thank you for participating. [applause]
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thank you senator wartell for that very nice introduction for all that you do here at cap and the doing what works project is such an important one, focusing attention on meaningful actions that help real people and efficient smart ways. it is a privilege for us to be at the fcc to be here in connection with that program. thank you to all of the consumer groups here today as a long-time subscriber to "consumer reports." it is privilege for me to be part of this. i apologize to consumers union for taking joel ground, who is now the chief of our consumer bure but briging that spirit to the fcc, combined with the career staff of the sort we heard about earlier. today public service trying to help ordinary americans deal with complex issues and also grow our economy. thank you to other guests who are here. i would like to second sarah and
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welcoming our staff of tom udall. kevin i know you are here somewhere. there you are. you are hard to miss. your work and the work of senator udall on these issues has been really impressive. consistent leadership and forceful advocacy in the senate. it has been a pleasure to work with you on this issu i welcome this opportunity to talk about the fcc's consumer empowerment agenda, what we are doing at the fcc to make sure that our friends who are here today and all americans have the tools to take advantage of new technologies without having to worry someone is taking advantage of you. there's never been more exciting, more complex times to be a consumer of communications technology. virtually every day new devices and services are becoming available and america's appetite for these new offerings appear to be an insatiable. the number of wireless subscriptions is up to
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293 million. the variety and capabilities of smartphones is incredible and here comes the tabloids. consumers bought more than 3 million ipads in 80 days and we have new windows, black hairy and android tablets on the way. we just got our first look at google tv and video delivery boxes from apple hit the stores last week in the way we watch tv and our flat-screenvs continues to involve. the broadband revolution is well undeay. wired and wireless. most of us would have a hard time imagining how we would get through the day without our favorite network links gadgets. these new technologies reflect amazing and world leading innovations. they not only are changing the way we live, they are driving our economy and they are creating jobs. the information and communication technology sector accounts for a seventh of our gdp and include some of the fastest-growing industries as we
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transition to a 21st century economy. no sector provides greater promise to be a foundation fr enduring economic growth and job creation in the united states to drive our global competitiveness and ensure that we lead the world in innovation. that is why we are at the fcc working hard to implement the national broadband plan including unleashing and recovering spectrum, licensed and unlicensed, lowering the cost of deployment of broadband infrastructure, reforming universal service funds, promoting adoption and promoting telemedicine, e-rate for education, broadband and energy and e-government, but now as we have all experienced the new devices and services in addition to bringing real value and opportunity, bring complexity to confusion. the more devices we buy the more services we subscribe to the more perplexing it can be for consumers. instead of tracking minutes use, something intuitive, consumers
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are being asked to track megabytes of data consumed. how many people even know what a megabyte is our contracted in their heads? then we have people receiving three and a page phone bill says many of you may have seen on the well circulated youtube clip. fortunately for the rain forest that is not the norm but it gives you a sense of how consumers are entering uncharted waters as the digital revolution gathers steam. making sure consumers have the tools and information they need to navigae the changing and challenging landscape has been one of my top priorities in becoming fcc chairman. my first day on the job i gave a speech placing consumer empowerment as the key priority on my agenda along with a unleashing spectrum and driving broadband deployment and adoption and a thriving broadband ecosystem. focusing on consumers is crital for a number of reasons. first it is one of her agency's core responsibilities. the fcc is here to serve the public and we must ensure that consumers have the tools and
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information they need to make the market work and when necessar to challenge unfair business practice. consumers must know that the fcc has got their backs. second, fighting for consumers is not only the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do for our economy. consumer policies are procompetition and pro-innovation. this is particularly true of the poor strategy we are pursuing, harnessing information technology to empower consumers with the knowledge they need to make the market work. technology driven transparency is a powerful tool. the more consumers know the more likely is that the company offering the best product or service or price will come out on top, driving competition which drives innovation resulting in better and more useful products for d and people and people. the fcc cosumer department agenda is all about driving healthy dynamic free markets. consumer empowerment enhances technology adoption.
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broadband internet adoption wired and wireless is critical to participation in our digital onomy and in our 21st century democracy. we know from our consumer research in connection with the national broadband plan that many people have concerns about signing up for broadband that keep them from donso. we heard a little bit of that today. consumers need to know they will not have surprising contractural -- security when they use the most advanced communication technology as the market has to offer. ..
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with some of the predecessors at the consumer organizations who are here today. this was designed to be a clean and simple way to display the credit card information to consumers. decades later, the power of clear and simple transparency remains constant. what has changed is the explosion of new technology that makes information more easily accessible at the times when the information can be most helpful, teachable moments, to use sara's phrase. our national broadband plan embraces transparency as a key strategy to promote competition. our work revealed that for a 5 consumers do not know the speed of their home broadband -- four out of five consumers do not know the speed of their home broadband. many experience speeds that are lower than half of the advertised speeds.
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the fcc released a new tool allowing consumers to test their broadband speeds on their computers and smart phones. more than 1.5 million people have used our speed test tool. i want to highlight how the fcc is using technology and transparency to help consumers cope with a perennial source of headaches -- fees and billing. sign p with the new service, they can face frustrations at every stage of the process. with all of the fine print, consumers are often uncertain about what they are signing up for in the terms of their contract. when consumers get their bill they can be surprised, as we've heard, by unexpected fees. some small and large. when they switch services, they are sometimes surprised o find themselves pays new fees. let's start with mystery fees. in an era where 300 page bills are a possibility, it's easy to find yourself paying more than
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you had planned on. received a growing number of reports that mystery fees popping up and that in many cases were unauthorized. i know we all agree on this. companies should compete on value, price, and service, not consumers confusion. what about fees for cell phones in particular? i mentioned earlier, there are 293 million noble scriptions in the u.s. now consider this. 265 million of those phone can transmit data, 61 million are smart phones that can do just about anything. americans spent 1.8 trillion text messages. used to be it meant tv, internet , and phone. now you have a it for your cell phone, voice, text, and data. last week it was reported that verizon wireless charged mysty fees to more than 15 million
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americans, resulting in over charges of more than $50 million. our fcc enforcement bureau under the strong leadership launched an investigation into this matter earlier this year. and while i can't comment on the specifics of an ongoing invesgation, i can say that our staff is working over time to get to the bottom of this matter and investigation other complaints as well. the fcc role here it to be a cop on the beat, protecting and representing american consumers. giving them a voice in the process. i'm working every day to make sure that consumers receive straight bills and straight answers when they question them. today i'm pleased to announce the fcc will soon hold a public forum on unexpected phone charges and related issues. i look forward to hearing from consumers and consumers groups, industry, and industry representatives and technology experts that forum. let's turn to the topic that we heard about earlier. bill shock, another unexpected
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charge. bill shock occurs when consumers see their bill jumps by 10s, hundreds or thousands of dollars from one month to the next. common cases is when a subscriber is charged for knowingly exceeding his or her allotments for voice, data. we heard from a wonderful series of people giving examples that are all too common. i won't repat them here. but i will say that the evidence that we have gathered as we have looked into this demonstrates that these examples are indeed very common. we released a survey in may showing that about 30 million americans have experienced bill shock in one form or another. that's one in ix mobile users. gao has issued a study with similar results. we just heard earlier today about consumers union, consumers
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reports survey. multiple data points and surveys. a lot of people are experiencing the kinds of problems that we heard up here today. today the fcc is releasing detailed analysis of the complaints that we have received on bill shock this year. and it shows some additional information about the problem. 2/3 of the complaints ofhe fcc receives are disputing amounts of $100 or mor. 20% involve $1,000 or more. that's, of course, a bg hit for budget conscious consumers, especially in the time of economic distress. and even smaller unexpected charges can pose real problems forconsumers on fixed incomes or who are unemployed. even if many of these cases are resolved, something is clearly wrong with a system that make it is possible for consumers to run up big bills without knowing it. cases like this are why the consumer bureau under the leadership who i mentioned before issued a public notice in
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may asking whether there are any technical or other reasons wireless carriers couldn't implement protection about the sort we heard about earlier. the bureau noted that the same type of circuit brakers are already required in other countries. these require sending customers text or voice alert when they are approaching the limits and about to occur roaming fees. most people don't know what a megabyte is. they do understand when they say they are about to go over their limit and occur additional fees. today we offer consumers timel relevant information. many carrier already offer some of these tools to help consumers. for example, ipad users are automatically signed up from text alerts from at&t when they are about to occur overage charges. it's a good tool.
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these and others are smart and effective tool to help consumers make the smart choices. they are the exception. not the rule. they are not helping consumers consistently, as evidenced by the tens of millions of bill shock victims that keep oncoming up in the survey done after survey. we've got many comments on that public notice as well as on other approaches to preventing bill shock. we've met with consumer groups, individual consumers, major wireless service providers, smaller providers, we are aware that smaller carriers face some unique challenges. all of this research is fed into proposed action on bill shock that will be voted at tomorrows fcc meetg. and i expect it will be move forward on ways to prevent bill shock in a simple, practical, nonprescriptive manner, using technology widely available today and in a way that encouraging ongoing innovation in informing consumers. now i know that some will argue
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this is unnecessary or burdensome. but consider what i heard from a business executive this morning. he said that a couple of months ago, he had occurred $2,000 in extra data charges while on a trip overseas, despite thinking about it in advance and buying an international plan. in his words, he was billed for quote, more than 5x when i had expected to pay. he said, and now let me read, it took hiring a lawyer to get the charged waived. cost me almost as much as the charges. but i did it for the principal. most americans would not have this luxu. this executive mentioned that he was in the technology business. doing work to enable cell phones to pay for on street parking. and he wrote, quote, i know how easy it is to send the consumers a text message. we send one 10 minutes before a parking meter expires so they
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don't t a ticket. we do it numerous times a they. the only reason not to do it is if you are trying to take advantage of a customer. closed quote. last comment from this business executive, good luck with this, he said. it's a worthy cause. early termination fees, let me address this issue. etfs have become a consumers headache, both for wireless cuomers and increasingly for people on fixed, broadband, and bundle plans. early termination are the fees you pay when you break your contact early. there's a legitimate case for etf. most of them subsidize the cost of your new phone, allowing you to get phones, including the latest smart phones at significant discunt. if people could switch carriers right after getting the phones, they could take a bath and the
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phone cost could go up. it's one the reasons why the phone with different models cost more in other countries. too often people are onfused and don't have clear information about their choices. people don't know you ca choose being buying a subsidized phone or paying full price without a contract. i had to argue with my father about this. he said, you know, i can't buy a phone at full price wthout a contract. i said yes you can. he said, no, i can't. i said let me check with my staff. [laughr] >> confusion often what happens when i go home. but confusion is particularly higher for fixed, broadband, and bundle plans where these fees are a fairly recent developmen there's no reason we shouldn't have clear and simple technology base. we're looking at this issue with the same basic view of
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harnessing technology to empower consumers with information in order to make the market work. these elements on the empowment agenda build on other steps. for years we've worked to promote truth and billing. why not truth at every stage? helping ensure consumers have the key information when they are choosing a providers. choosing a service plan. or deciding wheth to switch providers as well as when they read their bills. again, this is an area we can use technology to empower. we have informed fcc to look into this an agency wide task force which has already led to new initiatives without the agency. for example, we have a new web page at fcc.gov/consumers. where you can use the broadband speed test, more is coming this. we formed an interagency task force with the federal trade commission to make sure every
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internet users personal information is safe and secure. as we promote digital tools as core pieces of our empowerment agenda, it's important to remember when there's bad conduct in the market we have acted and we will act. when voice over ip are being blocked on the iphone, we issued inquiries and a short time ltr,applications were allowed. when a number of cell phones raised their early termination. our staff launched an investigation. one lowered the etf, and one lowered the fees. they can rest assured knows the fcc is looking out for them. we are doing so while also driving policies to unlease innovation and promote economic growth and job creation in the vibrant sec tock. -- sector. we can do most and we must do
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both. millions of americans a struggling to get by, even a small unexpect fee can make a big difference. now more than ever we need to make consumers aren't being charged for more than what they signed up for and they have the information they need to make the decisions for their families and their pocketbooks. we need to educate, empower, and enforce. a now more than ever, we need to make sure our policies promote economic growth and eate jobs. if we work together to empower consumers and promote our economy, we can score meaningful and lasting victories for the american people. and with that, i thank you very much. [applause] >> terrific. great we have time for just a couple of questions from the audience. so i'm gng to start over there with the woman against the wall. if y could please wait until the mike comes. and stand and identify yourself and any organization that you
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might represent thank you. >> i'm cecelia khan with the "washington post". can you clarify your thinking on early termination feeing? you metion they are justified and maybe no action on the fcc but clarity on the etf of the contract? and can you give me an example of the tool that you can use? >> sure. first of all, i wanted to specifically thank the consumers groups who are here today. i don't know if i mentioned them, consumers union, national consumers league, and consumers action. cecelia, your question, we want to make sure it's all benefit to consumers, and those that are
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about competing on the basis of confusion. we have some of both with etfs. a basic model where a telephone carrier subsidizes a phone. let's you have it for $100 or $200 instead of a higher number in exchange for a contract is not an unreasonable thing to do. particularly if consumers have the choice between doing that and buying an unsubsidized phone without a contract. there are a couple of things that happen that are part of the inquiry. one is consumers just don't understand how the system works. they don't often understand that they have a choice. they may not be acare of rights they have with respect to a pro rad or refund if they cancel somewhere between the first month and the lat

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