n our country. china has now become the largest co-2 emitter on the globe, not yet the largest energy user because they're not as good as we are at reducing the co-2 footprint. what this says is that three or four years before the recession, the supply of oil was constant and demand was going up in our country. we like to grow. the stock market has a lot of trouble if you don't have growth, you may have noticed. and the chinese are growing, india's growing, brazil is growing. so there was increased demands for oil so the price, you can see it going up here. it went from $50 to $100 to nearly $150 a barrel. and then the recession. now what does the future look

like? unless you have some concept of what the future is going to be like, you won't be making rational decisions about taxes and spending. because energy is a huge, huge part of our life. we live better than any civilization has ever lived at any time, largely because of the enormous supplies of this energy . the next chart is oil production looking to the future and where will it come from? the dark blue here is conventional oil. that's the kind of stuff we've been using for a lot of years now.

started using it way back in the early 1900's'. and we're producing more and more and more and now as this chart shows we've reached a peak. it's called peak oil. by the way, that happened in our country in 1970. it was predicted 14 years before that by m. king hubbered who was regular gated -- hubbard who was relegated to the lunatic fringe and ridiculed but right on schedule. in 1970 we reached our maximum oil production in our country. the world this chart says has reached it now. apparently that's so because you saw from the previous chart, both the e.i.a. and i.e.a. had oil production flat for the last four years. now, what will the future look like? this is their projection of what the future will look like. they say that we're going to get this light blue area, a lot of

oil, by 2030 we're going to be getting as much oil from fields yet to be developed as we're getting from all of our developed fields now. that may or may not happen. but even more specktive is this interesting red area -- speculative is this interesting red area, crude oil, fields yet to be found. that's almost as big in 2030 as the fields we now know and the fields we have discovered and are yet to develop. now the brown area is enhanced oil recovery, live steam and co-2 and pushing a lot of sea water down there if you're near it, these are ways to get more oil out, you know, opening up the fields down there and shale and so forth can get more oil out. this is the additional oil we'll get from fields that we now have.

nonconventional oil, that's like the heavy sour from venezuela and it's like the tar sands of alberta, canada, which are very interesting, about a million and a half barrels a day, it won't flow so you have to cook it and then add some volatiles to it so it will flow. i'm reading a very interesting book written by a canadian with a long discussion of the alberta tar sands. all you can do by surface mining, then it ducks over an overlay that's too big to remove economically so they're going to have to develop it like pumping live steam down there, maybe 1,000 degrees temperature to soften up this stuff. but this is a guess as to how much unconventional oil we'll get and with natural gas and we're using more and more natural gas, there are some

liquids that come with that. so they lynn crease. i think that -- they will increase. i think this light blue area and the red area and maybe the others too are kind of wishful dreams. i think that we'll be more than lucky if this top line here is level. i think we'll be more than lucky if we can make up through developing fields that we have already discovered, discovering new fields and enhanced oil recovery and so forth, we'll do very well if we can make up for the oil we're not going to get from the fields that we now know. the next chart shows that in a very different way. if you had only one chart that you could look at, that would help you decide what you need to do about your economy and what you need to do with taxes, i think this would be the chart. there's a lot of information on

this chart. the vertical bars here is the amount of oil that we found in each of those years. and you can go back to the 1930's and the 1940's and wow the 1950's and it exploded in the 1970's and through the 1980's. and we just found a lot of oil, a whole lot more than we were using, because this solid line here represents the oil that we were using. of course the area under that will be the total amount of oil used and if you draw a curve over these, the area under that curve represents the total amount of oil that you have found. and so up until about 1980 or so we were every year found more oil than we pumped. but then after 1980, look what happened. we're using more and more and finding less and less. now this chart was about five years old, as you can see, because the lightly shaded area

there which was the projection for the future begins at 2005. and they were projecting a peak in about 2008 or 2009. that's precisely what happened, as you saw from the first two charts. now, the discoveries for the future are to the going to be that very smooth, it's going to be up and down like this. but it's not going to be this kind of magnitude. the oil that we're finding now is in very difficult places, a major find in the gulf of mexico under 7,000 feet of water and 30,000 feet of rock. that's way down there. an oil discovery of billion barrels of oil, we heave a sigh of relief. 10 billion barrels of oil. why do we worry?

why do we still worry if we found that oil? we may find several fields that have size. that's because, and the math is pretty simple, every 12 days we use about a billion barrels of oil. 84 million barrels a day, i think 84 goes into 1,000 a little less than 12 times. so every 12 days we use a bit more than a billion barrels of oil. so that big find of 10 billion barrels, well, that's 120 days. that's it. notice the discontinuity in this curve, a very interesting phenomenon, notice the date back in the 1970's. the arab oil shocks back then. it changed the world.

in a way they were pour few to us and good because look what happened or look what would have happened if we didn't have those oil shocks. this was the rate of increase in the use of oil. had that exponential curve continued we would be off the charts. that was a big wake-up call and we and most of the rest of the world became very much more efficient in the way we used oil. your new freezer and refrigerator and air conditioner is very much more efficient than those of the 1970's and early 1980's. exponential growth is a poorly understood phenomenon. albert einstein was asked when they were talking about nuclear energy and what that was meaning to the world, what was going to be the next big thing that we'd find?

and he said, the most powerful thing in the universe was the power of compound interest. i mean, just think about that. 2% growth doubles in 35 years. a 2% growth is not much. kind of feeble, our stock market doesn't like 2% growth. it wants more than that. but 2% growth doubles in 5 years, it's four times bigger in 70 years, it's eight times bigger in 105 years and it's 16 times bigger in 140 years. 16 times bigger in 140 years? obviously we're not going to be using 16 times as much energy in 140 years from now as we are using now. so when you're think being spending and taxes and what we ought to be doing, you need to keep in the back of your mind this reality. gas is now a bit more than $3 a

gallon, oil is, what, pushing $90 a barrel, and the world is struggling to get out of this recession. there are many economists who believe that when the world comes out of this recession it's going to demand a lot more oil. but we're up against a peak. we can't produce oil any faster. so when you have this demand for oil, and it cannot be supplied, the price is going to go up and, you know, we in this country attributed this recession that we're trying to recover from to the housing bubble. but it was kind of the perfect storm. at the same time that we're doing -- we were doing grossly irrational things with financing these houses, we were also hit by peak oil and i guess it's an economist debate as to whether it was the cost of energy effect or the housing bubble that was mostly responsible to bringing us to our knees.

now you can make any projection you want about the future, but one thing is absolutely certain, you can't pump oil you haven't found and developed. and the probability that we're going to be pumping increasing amounts of oil in the fewer you to are very, very small. the next chart. what you need to be looking at when you're thinking about our taxes and our economy and what we ought to be doing, because this is the world according to oil. and the premise here is that, let's draw the world where the sides -- size of the country is relevant -- relative to how much oil in reserves that it has. what would the world look like? and then let's color it. so those of using a lot of oil show up as yellow and then blue and then on down to lesser

amounts of oil. well, you look at us over here, a couple of really interesting things. we don't have much and we're the only country colored yellow. we're big users of oil and we don't vch. well, we don't. we have only 2% of the world's reserves. we use 25% of the world's oil and we import about 2/3 of what we use. our largest exporter is canada. wow. they don't have probably as much oim as we have -- oil as we have and they don't have many people either so they tend to export oil. until very recently our second largest exporter was mexico. they also have less oil than we. but their people are too poor to use the oil so they're exporting oil. within about a decade, by the way, the rate at which they are

using oil and the decline in the rate which they are producing oil, in about a decade, maybe less, mexico will be an oil importer. venezuela, hugo chavez, dwarfs us and canada and mexico and all the rest of south america. huge, relative to see this side of the atlantic, huge amounts of oil. saudi arabia, represents 22% of the landscape if the country was sized relative to the amount of oil it has because it has about 22% of the reserves of oil in the world. iraq and little kuwait, it looks to saddam hussein like a province over there, tiny, united arab emirates, hard to find them on the map, isn't it? look how big they are as far as oil is concerned. and iran. a present and growing problem.p. now look at china over there.

china is next to the biggest user, blue. by the way, this lighter blue here in iran, with their present curb for exporting oil and increasing use of oil, within a decade, iran will cease to be an exporter. and this is one of the problems that we face in the world. all the developing countries have increasing populations. through the miracle of communication know the benefits of an industrialized society and they are saying, hey, what about us? there are 900 million people in china. three times our population that live in rural areas that are making just that request of the chinese government. what about us? china has a huge challenge in supplying the energy needs of this developing population.

there's russia. they are buying -- saudi arabia is the biggest exporter of oil in the world. they have more than us. about the same as venezuela. they are having near as many people and don't use as much energy as we use. they are buying -- saudi arabia is the biggest exporter. india. can you find india on the map there? a billion people, growing rapidly. buying oil. you can see the challenge that this presents and the recognition that we have got to look at our taxes and we have to look at our economy relative to the world situation in energy and what is likely to happen to the price of gasoline. 70% of all oil is used for

transportation and 90% of transportation is oil. relative to this, there is an interesting statement from former secretary of state rise. secretary of state, we do have to do something about the energy problem. i can tell you that nothing has taken me back more as secretary of state than the way of politics of energy is, i will use the word warping diplomacy around the world. we have simply got to do something about the warping now of diplomatic effort about the all out rush of energy supply. china is buying oil all over the world. why would china buy oil when it doesn't make any difference today who owns the oil. the person who comes to the auction, only 2% of the oil, we

use 25% of the oil, we simply buy the oil from those who have it because we come with the money to do that. your government has paid for four studies. here are the four studies that they paid for starting in 2005. two of them in 2005, 2006, 2007 and one of them had two reports, but four studies. the d.o.e. reports, army corps of engineers, d.o.e. and government accountability office, two of these are from the same study, just reported later. all of these said essentially the same thing, peaking of oil is either present. we didn't know then. you never know until you look back that it's peaked or

imminent with potentially devastating consequences. i want to spend the last few minutes in looking at some of the statements in these four reports. i think we pay for the second, third and fourth, because we weren't happy with what the first report said. that was the hirtsch. let's look at some of the comments in these reports. this is the first report. world peaking of oil is going to happen. it's obvious. oil is finite. one day it will be gone. but before it's gone, we are going to reach our maximum amount. peaking of oil is going to happen and they say the world has never faced a problem like this, unprecedented.

the world has never faced a problem like this. from the same report. the peaking of world oil production presents the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. as peaking is approaching, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically and without timely mit occasion, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented. we need to be thinking about this when we think about taxes and spending. by the way, i find facing a big challenge and meeting it successfully is very ex hill rating. i see these reports as

challenging. this next one is from the army corps of engineers' study. the most important form of energy in the world today, historically, this is really true, historically no other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities of transport built, versus tilt and cost. the qualities that enabled oil to take over fl coal as the front-line energy source for the industrialized world in the middle of the 20th century are as relevant today as they were then. we are hooked on oil. and that is true. another quote, a very early

pioneer in this. a number of years ago, they were predicting this was going to happen and the world should pay attention. we have had very optimistic projections of how much oil there is going to be in the future. they have come way down from those hopeful projections. but this is laherrere's of the usgs report. no evidence is presented, such an improvement in performance is utterly inplausible given the achievements of the industry. the worldwide search and the deliberate effort to find the largest remaining prospects. so he said that what they were proposing was utterly

impossible. now they have come way down from those projections. if you are thinking about our taxes and our economy and what we need to be doing about that. this is the reality that we need to pay attention to. this is the top 10 companies on the basis of oil production and reserves. the left one is protection production. now we have some big giants like bp, exxon mobil and shell. they have 22% of the production. companies that are -- well, they aren't companies. they are owned by a count tr try. they have -- countries. they have 78% of the production. when it comes to reserves, our

three big guys don't even show up. among the top 10. they aren't even there. 98% of it is from countries like national iranian oil, kuwait petroleum and so forth. luke oil, which is kind of private, russia, is 2%. as you are thinking about our taxes and our economy and what we ought to be doing, you really need to factor this in because it is a geo political reality that's going to make cutting taxes and reducing spending so there will be something to buy this energy with, which is really going to go up or or it's going to plateau and turn down and our economies are going to sour quickly with very difficult

recovery. all these charts are from government accountability office. very respectable, nonpartisan organization. worldwide proven oil reserves by political risk. how much can we really count on? how much of it has some political risk involved? well, let's see. lower political risk, 413. these are billion barrels by the way and these will add up over to a trillion which is a generally accepted number as to how much oil is out there. there is not a huge amount we add to it. medium risk, 314 and high risk, 389. what this says is that only a

third, roughly a third, little more than a third of the oil that is out there has low political risk we really count on in a pinch, it's going to be there. the other may not be there because it's medium and high political risk. the next chart here, this is investment risk. big oil companies invest their money. where can we invest our money? where do we have low risk? where do we have high risk? well in 384 billion barrels, there is no foreign investment. they own it all. they don't need any money. so there's no foreign investment there. only 165 billion barrels have

low risk, 164, medium. just a whiss kerr over a fourth of the oil that is out there has low and medium. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. >> i yield back, madam speaker. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from minnesota, ms. mccollum is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. >> i ask that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. >> i recognize the retirement of my friend, colleague, jim

oberstar. he has served the residents of the 8th congressional district with more than 36 years. jim is the dean of the minnesota congressional delegation and we are debateful to his commitment to our state. to many people, he is chairman james l. oberstar the chairman of the committee on transportation and infrastructure but to the citizens of minnesota is the jim, the heart of the iron range. it can be a tough place to grow up. lots of cold weather and a lot of hard work, but it has lots of great people. the hard lessons of his early years served jim well in washington. he knew how to fight for people and causes that he served. and he always worked for progress in a way that honored his principles. during his time in congress, jim made a career out of creating good jobs and building america.

his priority was investing the future prosperity of his country, laying the foundation of a 21st american economy and i'm proud to say he has been my partner in building a modern transportation system in the twin cities. next month, major renovations on the union depot in st. paul, a modern multi modal transportation hub will create 3,000 construction jobs. only months later construction begins on the light rail between st. paul and minneapolis, creating thousands of more jobs. neither of these major investments would have been happening without jim oberstar. he had the vision to plan for the future. he has also demonstrated his leadership in times of great crisis and he's been effective. on august 1, 2007, the interstate 35-w bridge collapsed in minneapolis and 13 people

lost their louvres. the chairman raced to action -- their lives. the chairman raced to action and helped secure emergency legislation that rebuilt the bridge, recorrected our community. but he didn't stop there. chairman oberstar worked in congress to call attention to the epidemic of weak bridges all across this country. and he made bridge repair and replacement a focus of the recovery act. because of jim oberstar's commitment, thousands of bridges across this country were replaced or rebuilt through the recovery act. millions of americans are safer today because chairman oberstar recognized minnesota's tragedy was an american crisis. jim oberstar not only served, he served well. he not only worked hard, he achieved results. he was a true ranger. his roots of loyalty to the needs of working families across this country could not be beat.

this institution is about to lose a great leader. but it's an -- it's inheriting a leg of commitment and professionalism that should serve as a model for all of us. on behalf of myself and the minnesotans i represent, i extend my thanks and my best wishes to chairman jim oberstar. madam speaker, i ask for and consent to insert in the record various letters of support for chairman oberstar. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. mccollum: from congressman erik paulsen, congresswoman betsy markey, state representative tommy ruck bina, state senator hog, state senator bach, state senator, the honorable don, the honorable christopher coleman, and the ramsey county board of commissioners and their rail authority.

madam speaker, now i would like to yield to congressman jim oberstar. mr. oberstar: madam speaker, i offer my very sincere and genuine personal gratitude to the gentlewoman from minnesota, ms. mccollum, and to the gentleman from minnesota, mr. peterson, for co-sponsoring this special order. never have i been the subject of a special order and it's a true and unique honor and i'm grateful for all those who have taken time to come this evening to express thoughts about my service in the congress, especially those of our minnesota delegation and the

gentleman from minnesota, mr. walz, who is here. and our two senators. i'm grateful to them for making the trip across the divide between the two bodies. the most memorable moment for me was the day that senator hubert humphrey came at the invitation that speaker o'neill to address the house of representatives. never in the history of the house had the senator been given that privilege to address the house and as hubert humphrey stepped to the clerk's desk just below the speaker's table he looked across the expanse of

this body and he said, oh, you don't know how long i've wanted to be here. of course that is where the president stands to give his address to the nation. it is, in my mind, the greatest privilege in life to be chosen by the people to serve in this greatest legislative body in the world. i have had the great honor to step into the hall of the mother of parliaments in london, the house of common sense in canada, others in france and germany, the great hall of the people in beijing, the parliament of

australia for their first sitting in their new parliament in the 1 u.n.th anniversary of -- 100th anniversary of australia. but in all of those venues they look to this dome and to this house as the voice of the people. i look back on years of service, they've been wonderful and inspiring years, my life has been touched by the people of the eighth district whom i've had the great experience to represent. and over the last few years, i've kept my report card with me, we held 316 hearings, heard from 2,201 witnesses, 1,028 hours of hearings wherks 41

markups and 180 bills reported to the house, 276 passed by the house and 179 public laws and resolutions. and in our portion of the stimulus, i can account for 1,300,000 construction jobs, $4.5 billion in payroll, $919 million in taxes paid by those working on construction jobs across america and 35,311 miles of a payment built during this period of the stimulus. those are lasting benefits that will prove beneficial to future

generations and they're much like the body of the rest of my work, that i can look back on my service and say i've given it my best, i've served the people to the best of my ability and to the gifts that the good lord has given me and that my parents stimulated in me. but at this juncture in these closing hours of this congress, i'm reminded of adle stephenson addressing a college graduation. he said to the graduates, as you leave, remember why you came. why i came was to serve people to the needs of their respective families and to leave this

district, to leave this house, to leave this nation a better place than i found it. i hope i've achieved that goal. ms. mccollum: thank you. and yes, you have. i would now like to recognize the gentleman from missouri, mr. carnahan. mr. carnahan: thank you, madam speaker. i'm sure that many of my colleagues rising tonight will want to pay tribute to chairman jim oberstar of minnesota. and every one of us will have a story or two about how the chairman moved what seemed like heaven and earth to the things done for the people of this country. with smart investments and all modes of transportation, his accomplishments in public service have truly earned him the name mr. transportation.

well, here's one of my favorite jim oberstar stories. a few years ago a group of people in south st. louis county had a tremendous economic redevelopment opportunity, to turn a patch of dormant brown field along the mississippi river into a great economic development. they'd done everything right. they'd researched all of the background, they'd identified the most effective way to bring jobs, they had brought their community together to build consensus, but they had one big problem, they needed a road. they needed a road to somewhere that created thousands of jobs. well right now you're probably thinking that this story sounds pretty familiar. there are plenty of communities that would love the government's help to build and fund a road. well this road was being blocked because of red tape. and they needed help. well, there's a phrase about things that are difficult in this country, they say it's like trying to get an act of congress.

well getting permission to build this road took two acts of congress that never would have happened without chairman jim oberstar. when i find out -- when i found out what was necessary to get the job done, i knew i had to talk to him, to get his advice and his help, and with that we were able to break through the red tape to get that job done. and a few weeks ago, i had the great pleasure to go back to visit just a few of the 3,000 people who now have good quality jobs because of jim oberstar's help. on behalf of those workers, myself, i cannot thank you enough for all you have done for this congress, for colleagues, for people across this country, for helping america build a road to a better future. thank you for your service, jim oberstar. ms. mccollum: madam speaker, i would now like to recognize the majority leader, the gentleman

from maryland, mr. hoyer. mr. hoyer: i thank the gentlelady for yielding. i thank the two distinguished united states senators from minnesota for joining us this evening on the floor. this is a sad day for america. not this particular day, but it is a sad event that an individual of the extraordinary quality and depth and courage and empathy and understanding will not be serving in the 112th congress. this election saw the defeat of many, many very qualified people. not on their merits, but on the

angst of the american public. concerned about jobs and the economy, concerned about deficit, concerned about many things and making a statement that they wanted a change. but unfortunately some babies got thrown out with the bath water. jim oberstar is a giant in this body. there is no person who chairs any committee in the time that i have been a member of the house of representatives which covers a period of 30 years, no chairman with whom i have served during that period of time has known his subject, has worked harder, studied harder and focused us on investing in building america any more than jim oberstar of minnesota.

jim oberstar graduatedy college. he has been in many places in this world. he taught in haiti. he comes, his family comes from slovenia. jim oberstar is not only a giant when it comes to how we make america a stronger country, how we build our country, how we make sure that we can get goods and services to and from and we can get our citizens to and from places where they need to be, but jim oberstar also is a giant when it comes to understanding the world in which we live. jim oberstar has been a continual unwavering voice on behalf of working people in america. jim oberstar in my view is the definition of a democrat.

someone who puts his highest priority, the interest of men and women in this country, who as bill clinton so famously said go to work every day and play by the rules, and want us to be on their side. i have served with no individual in the congress of the united states who has been more on the side of average working men and women who make this country a great country and who in fact are not average at all, but extraordinary citizens. who care for their country, care for their communities, care for their families and care for their faith. their faith. jim oberstar has represented all of those values, for every single day he has served in the congress of the united states. and for every single day he served as the chief of staff of his predecessor, john blackman,

this is a sad day, because we recognize the loss of an extraordinary asset to america, to this house, to this congress, and i count it as a personal loss to lose someone who has been such a close friend, an extraordinary adviser, a person who has set an example for what every american wants a member of congress to be, honest, committed and on their side, jim oberstar, you have blessed this house and blessed this country. jim oberstar, you have much to give in the years to come. jim oberstar, i want you to know that i, for one, will continue to rely on your advice and counsel as a partner on the side

of every american that makes this country the land we love. thank you. ms. mccollum: madam speaker, i would like to recognize tim walz from minnesota's first congressional district, another member of the democratic farmer labor party. mr. walz: thank you to my colleague from st. paul and all my colleagues from minnesota, coming today to speak of jim oberstar, no one mere son files, a man of quiet passion, a work ethic that knows no limits, a sense of humor in the sense of tragedy that can lift others, a man of compassion, someone who ex emapply files the very fiber of how we see ourselves, people

of the prarie that can withstand the cold winters and hot summers, but something of jim oberstar and today coming to talk about him, never about looking backward but looking forward, someone who spent their lives to create a better tomorrow. no one has had a more profound impact on me than jim oberstar, someone who understands the importance of history for what it means. it's not just an exercise to see the past but an understanding how to take those lessons and to move them forward and make a better tomorrow. nothing we did in this congress that dealt with jim oberstar that didn't have an understanding of that, that didn't connect what happened in the pass to what can happen in the future. one thing that was an impact on

me, decades ago, when the growing city of rochester and the mayo clinic and one of the biggest industries was growing, someone who had the foresight to invest in flood mitigation that would have flooded them out. someone who understood that the infrastructure projects allowed the growth of that community and industry and knowledge and the human spirit to prosper in that community on the prarie because we had the foresight to invs where we needed to. it is great to see someone who the majority leader put, is a legend amongst all of us here, a chairman, a mentor and a friend, the dignity and passion which he conducts himself has shaped how i would like to conduct myself. anyone who serves the people of minnesota and this nation, if you want to see a role model,

look no further than jim oberstar. he gets remembered a lot on transportation issues, but the transportation issues were a means to an end, the ends were working for working families, a man who understood hard work, who came from a family that worked in the mines and understood what needed to be done and how the jobs can sap lives out of people, someone who spent a lifetime to make sure a worker could earn a day's wage and not be subject to toxic chemicals or unsafe working conditions and have the opportunity to earn a living wage and maybe a retirement for them when they got done with those years of hard work. that type of work ethic and that type of focus is something that i said again has profoundly impacted me and all of us saw it here. what a lifetime of experience, a lifetime of work came in august

of 2007 when the tragedy of the i-35 bridge fell down. to see that rock of someone who knew this issue better than anyone in this country stand firmly and say we will not allow this to happen again, rebuild this bridge, commerce, infrastructure and safety will move forward. for me that is a moment that will stick with me. i think again understanding the history, i saw some of the transcripts in 1987 when jim oberstar talked about substandard bridges predicting some day we would see one of these bridges fall, that's what a true leader does, predicting the future and averting those things. as steny hoyer said, this house will miss jim oberstar. this country has lost an incredible leader but has not lost that leader.

that voice will not leave. that passion and foresight will live on in anyone who serves here and for that, i thank you. ms. mccollum: i would like to recognize the gentlewoman from texas, ms. johnson. ms. johnson: thank you very much, madam speaker and let me thank the gentlewoman from minnesota for organizing this. i rise this evening to honor a long time member and the current chame of the house transportation and infrastructure committee, mr. james oberstar, the distinguished the gentleman from minnesota. it has been my pleasure to serve on transportation and infrastructure committee for 18 years with mr. oberstar. and we have had some really good moments. as a matter of fact, as i was listening about the bridge, we

were right here on this floor the night that bridge collapsed and we were talking then about an aviation issue. the other thing is, being from texas, i only speak one english and that is texas english. but mr. oberstar speaks many languages and i was pleased when he heard me pro nouns those names. and those of us who serve on the transportation committee and many others in this chamber, chairman oberstar has been a historian, our friend, an expert, a champion and our admired leader. to think of the transportation committee and certainly the house without our beloved colleague leaves a vast hole among our ranks and in our hearts. during his tenure on the committee, both as a staffer, later as a member and then as

chairman, mr. oberstar has played a key role in every major piece of transportation legislation that is law today. and no one or would try to dispute that he is widely held as the foremost transportation expert among us. his dedication cannot be met whether it's transit, highway s, water, maritime, coast guard, so much more. he has worked to achieve the best results for the american people. i will dearly miss my colleague, my friend, my chairman, but also expect that none of us will shy away from seeking his advice in the years and months to come. during his ten your, we really have come to respect him as the expert and we will regretfully

miss him so much. thank you, i yield back. ms. mccollum: i thank the gentlelady. i would now like to recognize the delegate from washington, d.c., eleanor holmes norton. ms. norton: i thank the gentlelady from minnesota for yielding. i come to the floor this evening because a colleague of iconic reputation is about to leave this house. now jim oberstar will do very well. i wish i could say the same for those we leave behind. he is more than the institutional memory of the transportation and infrastructure committee. sure jim has a legendary memory

that he lends to the committee members ever so often. but you cannot describe jim's work with particular pieces of infrastructure that you may see here and there. you just can't do it. jim's work has been for so long and so deep and so influential, that it will be almost impossible for it to ever be repeated in this house. for jim has spent his entire career and by that, we mean not only his career as a member, but as a staff member most influential with members, with the t and i committees or public works, whatever you want to call it. we call it jim's committee. and members often expect staff

to specialize with the facts and to know more than they know. nobody expects a committee chair to know more than the staffs and the subcommittees put together know. we sat in committee and wonder in -- of the one man could know, remember and integrate so much into the ongoing discussion. the effect was to make us feel we just had to work harder not to meet jim's standard, we're not crazy, but because now, at least we knew what the highest standard looked like. you might wonder why this

gentleman who majored in political science became the most influential expert in transportation and infrastructure in the united states of america. it has little to do with jim's brilliant intellect. after all, jim would have been an intellectual leader on any committee on which he chose to serve. i believe it has to do with his own roots. it may have guided him to this committee. jim whose immigrant grandfather was a steel worker, his father was an iron worker in the open iron pits of minnesota. that jim, that jim got to know the plight of the american worker and his relationship to hard work and to building

america itself. so you see, it's quite simple. it's in jim's d.n.a.. jim brought an unrelenting hard work, the same hard work that his father put in in the iron mines to the congress of the united states. the only chairman i know of who regularly attended subcommittee meetings and then proceeded to join in the discussion at any point it was going on with -- with only with what he could have possibly added to the discussion and brilliantly so. now, some of us are trying to name the new transportation headquarters here in my

district, in the district of columbia for jim oberstar. i can't imagine that wouldn't happen. i know jim oberstar and i have a feeling that's not what he wants his legacy to be. i think jim wants his legacy to be the transformational transportation bill he fought to bring to this floor and brilliantly crafted for the 21st century. jim, it may not have been in your time, but it must happen in ours. this evening, jim, i pledge to you to do all i can to see to it that your prodigious work on that final, brilliant transportation authorization bill shall not have been in

vain. farewell, friend. have pity on us. don't go far. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: i thank the gentlelady -- ms. mccollum: i thank the gentlelady. i would like to recognize the gentleman from illinois, mr. lipinski. mr. lipinski: i would like to thank -- again, i thank the gentlelady from minnesota, ms. mccollum for organizing tonight's special order. i said four years ago, no one in the history of congress became chairman of a committee who was better prepared than jim oberstar. from the time he started here working in 1963 for john

blotnik, through all these years, it was not just jim's experience and expertise that made him such a great chairman and great member, but also his work ethic. his willingness to reach out across the aisle. his ability to get the job done. jim oberstar always took a thoughtful and thorough approach to policymaking. there's a simple reason why he was known as mr. transportation. it's because from aviation to highway and transit, to maritime transportation to water structure to public buildings and of course to cycling, he truly shaped the way we think about transportation infrastructure. during my four years of service on the house t&i committee, i can honestly say not a day went by in that committee room where i did not learn something from jim oberstar. i would have learned more if only i knew more than a dozen

french words. although i do know tour de france and jim taught me a few things about cycling both on and off the bike. as those who know jim know, he truly is a renaissance man. at the same time, we talked about everything that happened here in washington, jim knew, he knows that you have to be hands on. you can't learn everything by sitting in a committee room. you have to go out, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and that's exactly what he did. as chicagoland's only member of the transportation and infrastructure committee, i had what was about my yearly visit from jim oberstar. i was happy to welcome him to ride the rails and trails and together see firsthand the challenges facing the region in transportation. he always listened carefully, oftentimes taking notes, whoil

providing valuable perspective and insight that come from his decades of experience. but jim could only -- didn't only visit democratic districts. to quote the chairman, i've never seen a democratic road or republican bridge. we can build all-american roads and all-american bridges. if washington had only listened to and followed the leadership more of jim oberstar, our country would be much better off today. madam speaker, i want to thank chairman oberstar, jim, for his service, for teaching and for his friendship. i know that although he's leaving congress, his days as mr. transportation are far from over. ms. mccollum: i would now like to recognize the gentlewoman from california, ms. richards.

ms. richards: mamings, from wings to wheels, propellers to petals, there is no mode of -- to pedals there is no mode of transportation that chairman oberstar has not worked tirelessly to improve. i'm thankful to have witnessed the work of one man who improved the lives of millions with the transportation system which he tirelessly labored to make cleaner, stronger and more secure. chairman oberstarring your efforts on behalf of our weakening infrastructure is ledge dare. ms. richardson: what was not is your effort to promote -- to fend off an even worse recession you fought, even with our president, put more dollars in infrastructure which was exactly right and the best money spent with our recovery act. michigan, you have a view that reflects a full spectrum of a vision.

one that you've devoted your own personal and professional life. one of your legacies, mr. chairman, is your knowledge, your vision, that you've held even inspector generals, witnesses, secretaries of transportation, all accountable, something that i've enjoyed watching firsthand. it saddens me deeply to know that coming in january, our transportation guru and mentor of mine will no longer be chairing the transportation committee. we have so much more to accomplish and this will be very difficult without your presence, knowledge, and leadership. i vow to take all that you have taught me and to encourage others to build upon that vision of making america's transportation system the golden standard it used to be. however, i'm hopeful that you, chairman oberstar, will continue your public service. why? because we need you. we all need you. as i close, i want to speak to the public, to the speaker, and

for the public record. i'd like to thank jim oberstar, my mentor. he taught me that even everyone can have a second chance at a date if you work hard enough at it and that you can find the right person with that hard work. he also thought me in my first days in congress that his kind heart was always open to help me. i admire the commitment and capability of his very loyal staff. we would all be blessed to have that kind of staff. i respect his love for this house and even though through his surgery and pain he stood and walked to make others live better. but most of all, he also spent time reminiscing about his years on the committee and i enjoyed him talking about when he was the freshman and sat in the last seat in the front row like i had. i valued how much he listened and was not enslaved to seniority. mr. oberstar, your approach to

civility and bipartisanship has been remarkable but my greatest sadness will be in missing your steady and influential hand in all the work we do. i'm going to say something that most young members of congress don't do. i'm going to say, mr. chairman, i think you misspoke earlier when you said you had done your best. i disagree. you've been a great man and you've done great work. thank you. ms. mccollum: i now yield to the representative of hawaii, ms. hirono. ms. hirono: i rise to add my voice to those who are here to give thanks to our chairman, jim oberstar, for his extraordinary service to our nation as a member of the u.s. house of representatives. i truly count myself fortunate because as a new member of congress and fledgling member of the transportation and infrastructure committee, i had the example of jim oberstar as my chairman.

i remember the first time i ever met jim oberstar, i was just taken with the breadth of his knowledge, his commitment, and the said to me, this committee, which is the largest in the house, is also one of the most bipartisan committees because everybody needs bridges, harbors, roads, airports, very true. i don't expect i will ever be as knowledgeable or articulate on any subject as he is on all aspects of transportation policy. but it's good to aim high. of course, at this point, it would be pretty much impossible for me to match his 47 years on the committee, first as a clerk, next as an administrator, then as a member, and finally as an outstanding chairman. chairman oberstar has been the clearest, strongest and most vigorous advocate for restoring america's transportation and infrastructure system. he is recognized and admired in

my state of hawaii. one of the few chairmen, i hope that will change over time, who has come to the state of hawaii to see for himself, firsthand the challenges we face. but we admire him, we love him in hawaii for his support of our first and only rail transit system and for is hundredsing -- understanding of the importance of keeping our vital infrastructure strong. i recently met with the president and c.e.o. of hawaii's largest airline and he reiterated what i hear from many business people in my state, that is, if there's one thing that government can do to help our economy, it is to help repair and improve and maintain our infrastructure. mr. chairman, you have been right on the money. but what i remember most about jim, i remember his heartfelt stories -- stories about his father a union mine worker.

i remember our white knuckled flight over the honolulu rail route in a helicopter without doors. i remember how generous he's been with his time and guidance from taking time out of his personal time in hawaii to review infrastructure needs on maui and joining me in a live video feed with infrastructure stake holders in hawaii. i remember the flight we took over maui, we flew jim and his wife jean, his partner in life, over the open ocean to maui and we looked down and saw the whales and it was really something. jim, who knows everything about infrastructure looked down at maui island and said, my gosh, you really are vulnerable to things like earthquakes, because you're islands and you knt drive from one island to another. that's why it's so important

that jim came to my state to see for himself, not just to intellectually realize we are an island state and that i represent seven inhabited islands that i can only get to by air. i remember his intense interest in everything witnesses had to say in our t&i hearings and i remember chair oberstar and i will certainly miss him. i strongly suspect that all the people of minnesota, not just those of the eighth congressional district, will miss him as well. my very best to you jim and to your wonderful wife, jean. aloha. ms. mccollum: i thank the yom from hawaii. i would like to recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. altmire. mr. altmire: i thank the gentlewoman. madam speaker, i was listening to the debate earlier this evening and i heard the chairman say that he hopes that he's left this institution, the u.s. house

of representatives, better than it was when he first got here. 47 years ago. first as a staffer, then as a member, then as chairman. i thought to myself, my goodness, you, mr. chairman, have certainly left this place better but madam speaker, the chairman has left the country much better than had it not been for the work that he has put forward in transportation which is unmatched by any 10 people that have ever served in this institution. i can't think of anyone in recent history who has made more of a difference in their area of expertise and their subject matter than chairman oberstar. as a second term member of congress, when you are first elected, madam speaker, as we all know, you think about what committee do you want to serve on, what members do you want to associate yourself with. i chose immediately transportation. because i wanted to learn from the best.

and there was no one better than chairman oberstar to talk about all of the subjects that fall under transportation. certainly our waterways, our infrastructure, roads and bridges, aviation, rail, nobody in this house and nobody in the country, i would suggest, has a better grasp of any of those issues than chairman oberstar. and like many who have spoken before me this evening, i had the opportunity, thankfully to bring mr. oberstar into the district in western pennsylvania that i represent to meet with transportation leaders and i remember vividly a group meeting we had with some of the brightest minds we had in western pennsylvania, the chairman was throwing out facts and figures, names and dates and places and people and when i left and returned to my office after the meeting, i thought to myself, i'm going to look some of this stuff up. that can't possibly be all

accurate, he couldn't have known that off the on of -- top of his head. everything he said was true, down to specific date, down to the middle names of people he was referring to, down to the long names of legislation that we come to know when you add sponsors and co-sponsor, he knew them all. it was an unbelievable breadth of knowledge, we've all experienced it in dealing with mr. oberstar. i know not only where i started these remarks from, is the country a better place for mr. owner star having served here, certainly this house is better. but i know that i am better for having served with mr. oberstar. i know you're not going away, mr. chairman, i know that, madam speaker, the chairman is going to continue to be actively engaged in transportation issues in the country. i for one look forward to continuing to work with him, soliciting his advice and expertise and most importantly, mr. chairman, i wish you well. thank you.

ms. mccollum: i thank the gentleman. i recognize representative from maryland, mr. cummings. mr. cummings: i thank the gentlelady for yielding and i, too, come here tonight to honor my good friend, chairman oberstar and i honor him for all that he is and all that he's not. chairman oberstar is definitely a pursuer of excellence. everything he does, he does it to the highest level. and he realized how important that excellence is. talked to his staff, i worked with him and his staff tell me if a comment is out of place, that is a problem and that is so significant because one of the

things he talked often about is how we have moved in our country in so many ways to cultures of medocrity and so he is a pursuer of excellence. he also is a builder. not only a builder of bridges and roads, but a builder of people. and i am one who, you know, have benefited from his handiwork. he and i were working on several projects and i as chairman of the coast guard subcommittee, he constantly showed me the way to be a stronger and a better chairman. and he always had high expectations of me and because of my respect for muslim him, i wanted to be better, and i became better, and i know that i will go to my grave being

thankful for the way he has touched my life. finally, he is a visionary. he doesn't worry so much about the next election, but worries more about the next generation. he understood that the bridges still have to stand when he's long gone, there are roads that would be built for children who have not yet been born and he acted every day to make sure that that happened and that they were done in an excellent way. and so i have come to honor my good friend. i thank god so very, very much for allowing my life to eclipse with his because i know that a young man, former son, a son of former share croppers would meet a man from minnesota who bikes all the time and our lives would

come together and mesh together and mine would become better. i thank god for his life but i thank god for his journey. thank you. ms. mccollum: i thank the gentleman. i would now like to recognize the gentleman from louisiana, mr. cao. mr. cao: i have had the immense pleasure of knowing chairman oberstar and having had the pleasure of working with him on important issues from high-speed rail to reform. i have had enjoyed private conversations with him that have educated me and inspired me and reminded me of the true meaning of public service. chairman oberstar will be remembered by all who served

with him in his chamber who loved this nation and public service. his service will be remembered by his true intentions. as the distinguished chairman of the house transportation and infrastructure committee, his goal was to keep america safe and moving forward. i recall finally -- fondly the hours he and i spent discussing proposals to reform the army corps of engineers and the federal emergency management agency. the legislation on which we collaborated had the goal of bettering those two institutions and assisting my district of new orleans, a love for which shared. his transportation policies and initiatives embodied the meaning of change. he had the creativity to see challenges and put forward recommendations on how to address them. they will love on in this body with testament to his devotion.

i will miss our conversations in committee and on the floor. i could always count on the chairman as the voice of reason and friendship. as he and i leave this great hall at the end of this session, it is my honor to commend him for his accomplishments and to wish him well. ms. mccollum: we have heard many wonderful things about jim oberstar and we have many, many people present today who have worked with him and we are here as a delegation, strong and proud minnesota's democratic labor party and comes as no surprise that jim fought hard for working people. and as has been pointed out, he comes from the iron range. he worked in an iron mine and his father was a iron miner and

union official. he nout to include davis-bacon prevailing wage provisions. but he also had a unique side to him that many people were always taken by surprise, this iron ranger spoke french and that's because he taught french in haiti and taught french to military personnel another way jim oberstar served our country. when i came here as a member of congress, i came here under bitter sweep sweat circumstances. my mentor had passed. when i came here, the office had been closed for several weeks. there was no sharing of supplies. there was no one to turn to. i had two big brothers in the delegation who welcomed the first member in over 50 years to serve here.

i not only thank you as a member of congress for all the work you have done, but i thank you for extending all the courtesies you extended to me when i first arrived here to make sure my constituents were served and also my personal tragedies. jim's unique expertise should be shared with the next generation of public service. so we are very happy that the "star-tribune" hubert humphrey's public affairs is talking to him becoming a guest lecturer. and i hope to see a book written by chairman oberstar and i got a feeling it will be more than one volume. chairman oberstar, unless you would like to have the last word, we want to thank you for the last time thank you so much

for your service. and with that, madam speaker, i yield back any balance of my time. ms. mccollum: i would move that the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is now on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to.

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$5, go to c-span.org/books and click on the supreme court vote. be sure to use the promo code c- span at checkout. >> according to the national institute on drug abuse, legalizing marijuana has the facts are on people's perception of the drug. this found that marijuana use among adolescents continues to increase. this is about an hour. >> good morning. thank you for brady and the snow. i am the communications chief for the national institute on drug abuse. this is one of the institute of the national institutes of health.

thank you for coming. thank you for monitoring -- the survey as balance 36 the year, and it was conducted by our colleagues at the university of michigan. overall this year there were 46,482 students from 396 public and private schools in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades. since 1975, the monitoring survey has mustered drug, alcohol, and cigarette use and related attitudes in 12th graders nationwide. in 1991, eighth and 10th graders were added. many of you know this but i will repeat that this measures drug is encircled the freeways, primarily a lifetime, past year, past month, and in some cases daily use. we have some speakers for you and then we will open up for question. i like to introduce our first guest. the director of the white house

office of national drug control policy, thank you for being with us. and the person conducting the survey for 36 years. and i like to introduce my boss who has overseen eight of the surveys. >> the morning. i want to welcome you all to this press conference. i want to thank particularly the director of drug control policy for being here and his support. [unintelligible] i also think dr. lloyd johnson, the investigator for monitoring in the future. carol was mentioning this is the eighth time that i stand in an interview to address the significance of the findings.

looking at this and trying to identify to me what is the most salient, clearly the recognition that we see significant increases in the usage of marijuana. most meticulous -- those particular, the use of between 8 and 10th graders. these increases are quite large, more than 10%, and are particularly relevant because daily use of marijuana is likely to result in more adverse effects and more frequent use. also daily use of marijuana is associated in 50% of these kids who are marijuana-dependent. another important factor is the use of marijuana across all the estimators that we had, delaware -- daily use, monthly marietta is, or once a year exposure.

all of these indicators are on eighth graders. eighth graders of the youngest of arco hearts so this is very relevant for two things. this is over 10% for each one of them. second, in people arkin -- particularly vulnerable to the adverse affects. we know that the young. the age of association, the more likely they will be dependent. we have shown that those that could expose the marijuana before age 17 are more likely not just to become dependent to marijuana but to become dependent although rock -- over a wide variety of drugs. just a significant of these numbers that we're getting, we see an increase of marijuana daily use, the most adverse, the

one that has the most adverse the fact, and the most of the s graders, the most vulnerable to bear one of. from the perspective our country, what does this mean? why is this happening? one can only speculate that there will be increases and marijuana consumption in surveys because of the significant attention the potential use of marijuana has generated some of which we cannot stop and wonder to what extent this is led to the misperception that marijuana has medical properties. indeed, we're seeing it increase in the number of teenagers receiving regular marijuana use.

other indicators that are relevant -- psychotherapeutic use continues to be a significant problem. for the first time over the past seven years, we've seen a decrease in the exposure to buy vicodin.igid -- to pain medications is similar medications, met and finance, [unintelligible] with respect to the illicit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, in cigarettes we see decreases the we have been seen which are of course very important for a significant because cigarette smoking has a very adverse

effects and in many instances, [unintelligible] they're stabilizing, no longer increasing. in terms of alcohol, we're seeing decreases in their permanent rate of binge drinking and heavy alcohol consumption, even though these are not large they are significant. looking at the whole panorama of drug use by teenagers, i can only say that the increases we are observing in marijuana use in teenagers is to be taken very seriously. there is a high school survey also burn marijuana, when one takes the notion that it has long-lasting a face, brainer not, we know that it affects learning and memory. [unintelligible] these teenagers are going to school, it will be affecting their intellectual. we are relying on each

generation to build out into the future. do we want to jeopardize the achievements by exposure to illicit drugs, particularly marijuana? my answer is that this would be a loss for adolescence exposed to them and a loss for all of us. thanks to all of you. >> thank you, nor a. it is a pleasure to be with you here. it is my second monitor, and it is up pleasure to be here with lloyd. the information that is particularly disturbing regarding youth use, particularly among eighth graders. for example, we know that the earlier someone starts, the greater the difficulty that they are going to have, and the

marijuana and numbers are particularly troubling. as the doctor said, there is good news on the survey, but i think i would rather concentrate on the bad news. and that is over the uses use, we have seen particularly throughout the election and during that time the proposition 19 was being talked about throughout the country, even though there were a number of propositions, and number of initiatives in other states, prop. 19 continued to dominate the news. the other part that is patently false about all of this is that colin marijuana, smoked marijuana, medicine is absolutely incorrect. it sends up terrible message. and i heard that message when i met with a group of high-school students in oregon. they talked with me about wanted to make sure that they were doing well in school, the third

grades were going to be good, and that they would be going on to college. a state that was calling smoked marijuana medicine, they said that this was giving us absolutely the wrong message. and i said i could not agree with those high school students more. we've seen some positive outcomes in the study, and i think that should give us a little bit of hope that if we concentrate with parents and trusted caregiver is, those adults who really are meaningful in young people's lives, and we give them the right information about how to talk to young people about the dangers of drugs and how to send a message about making the choices, and not good choices, like staying away from drugs, but not using nicotine, and not engaging in underage drinking, and things like nutrition and health care.

the young people listen to those trust the messengers. parents, coaches, fact-based communities, neighborhood associations, etc., and they take the suggestions quite so seriously. for all the people that think the young people are tone deaf to them, that is actually incorrect. they do listen to those trusted messengers. and we can make a difference on this if we work that it, if we concentrate on this, and that we can clearly make a difference. right now we're not being particularly responsible adults by telling people that smoked marijuana is medicine, when in fact it is not.

>> good morning and thank you very much for coming. i see a lot of faces. faces. some of you have followed this study for a long time. it has been going on for a long time. he is a pleasure to join director kerlikowske, and dr. volkow in releasing these founding digit findings. -- findings. in the spring, we gave health ministers questionnaires, confidential and anonymous, to some 46,000 students around the country. they are located in roughly 400 secondary schools. because of the size, we get a high degree of accuracy both in terms of levels and changes. these are students in eighth, 10, and 12th grades, and we separately sample each of those

grades. they are both in public and private schools. this very well covered our youth population. if there are several findings i think that will be important. you have already heard some of them. first, marijuana use has continued in increase, and that includes daily years. ecstasy is beginning to make a comeback after being out of favor for about five years. cigarette smoking is no longer declining, and there is evidence that is beginning to go up again. alcohol use continues its -- term decline, which is gradual, but nevertheless has reached historically low levels. madison very good man's. -- that is some very good news. marijuana use has been going on

for three years, still is not great in size, but contrast to what was happening 10 years prior, one we had a steady decline. across the three grades, there is a significant change in the proportion of teens who say their use in the past year has risen from 21.5% to about 24.5%. that is a significant increase overall. today, about one in seven eighth graders indicate marijuana use in the past year, when more than one in four 10th graders, and more than one in three of our high school seniors. the greatest concern to me is that daily marijuana use is rising. those of you who are older might recall that back in the late 1970's we actually got to a point in our history where one in about every 11 high-school

seniors was a daily marijuana user. today, it is about one in 16. we are not as bad as we were, but we are still going in the wrong direction. daily use, we find about 1% of eighth graders, 3% of 10th graders, and 6% of 12th graders indicate that on 20 or more locations in the past 30 days they smoked marijuana. the propulsion that see marijuana use as dangers has been declining in recent years, including this year, and that is usually a predictor of what will happen to use in the coming years. this is something we saw coming, and we think will keep coming. it is what we call perceived risk -- the% that say they see danger to the user in using the

drug. the disapproval has already -- also started to decline among teens, and goes synchronous lead with use. reported availability and more kids say they could get it easily if they wanted. but return to the ecstasy story. as you might recall, ecstasy declined vary sharply in the late 1990's, a peak in 2001, and then plummeted as young people came to see it as much more dangerous than their predecessors. proceeds rest played an important role. use has remained relatively low for several years.

unfortunately, you never full he put it behind you. there's also the next generation of students that come along. and are more susceptible to try and get themselves. so, what happened was that ecstasy began to increase in the last couple of years, and it increased significantly this year, so that now, about two 0.5% of a trader said used in the last eight years.

>> smoking among teenagers was dropping by large proportions in fact, the prior 30 days smoking rate has fallen from a high in the mid-1990's by about two thirds. it is a fairly enculturated behavior.

these are very consequential changes that will make a big difference in the life of a

i think perceived risks did play a role in why kids smoke less. and disapproval has also leveled off more recently. as have another of connotations of cigarette smoking, mostly negative connotations we have been measuring for some years. the level of about three years ago. the attitudes are no longer moving in a constructive direction, and some of them are reversing. what attitude that i particularly look would like to call public attention to, because i think every young person thinking about smoking more in the early stages of beginning should be aware of, and that is the great number say that they prefer to date people who do not smoke.

that seems to me a very important message for kids to get, not only does it not make you more attractive to the opposite sex as the industry has been tried to tell us for some decades, it actually makes you less affected to the great majority. that seems to me something kids can relate to. be something kids can relate to. not all of the news is bad. you will be glad to now alcohol use is declining, as has the use of a couple of illicit drugs. nora mentioned some of those. while gradual, the proportion of teenagers using alcohol has been in decline for quite some years. past month use has declined since 1980. except for a time in the mid- 1990's, when we had when i called a relapse, alcohol use went up with it, but before

then, and since then, we have had a steady decline. the decline was fairly steep in the early years from 1980 until 1980 -- 92,. nevertheless 30-day prevalence among 12th graders, for example, whom we have back to 1980 was 72%, in 1980, and today, it is 41%. binge drinking, having five or more drinks in a row, has gone from a high of 41% in 1980, the highest we ever measured, down to 23% today. there has been an improvement in not only drinking, but in drunkenness, and drunk driving. the death and highway statistics

have been improving significantly, and kids have played a role. in 2010, all three grades showed further declines in both measures, drinking and binge drinking, and these were significant for the three gained -- gray's combined. the net effect is today, we have the lowest proportion of young people drinking and the life of the study. that is good news. another drug that has been showing some decline, if that was not significant this year, but continues the pattern is cocaine. cocaine was a major drug of problem levels in the 1980's. it made some come back in the 1990's when we had there relapse, today it is in decline. it has been very gradually for several years, three or four. only about 3% of high-school seniors say they have used cocaine in the past year.

that is considerably lower than it was in the 1990's, and much lower than it was in the 1980's. like a den, pay strong -- a strong narcotic drug also declined significantly, but in -- in 12th graders. i cannot explain why it does happen, but it has happened. it is always possible there is displaced by another drug, but we hope that is not what is going on. many drugs held steady. i will not talk about them in any detail -- boxy cotton, still used by 5% of high-school seniors, methamphetamines, a particular series and devastating drug, where we have seen a substantial increase, but to date it has leveled off.

amphetamines in general, including ritalin, are fairly steady. federal is more widely used now than ritalin. crack cocaine, a serious drug in the 1980's, it is said very low levels. several of the club drugs that get a great deal of attention, those are all at quite low levels. anabolic steroid use is down quite a bit from where it was in the peak rate of around two thousand. it remains low. it is partly because these drugs have now been scheduled. lsd is very low now, and remains low. the inhalants, i am glad to say, have not taken off. we have warned in the last

several press conferences that young people are seen inhalants does not dangerous to the user, which is incorrect. there has been a long time since there was an anti-inhalants program, the mid-1990s, which was effected, by the way, but there has not been any further erosion in that belief. the risk has gone up a little bit. cough and cold medicines are of use by young people. that is quite dangerous. i am seemed little systematic change in that. fortunately, that is not growing, but nevertheless, 7% of high-school seniors say they have used these drugs for the purpose of getting high in the last year. in summary, there are three

drugs decreasing in use, marijuana, texas, and cigarettes. three that are showing some decline -- alcohol, cocaine, as reflected in, and many that are holding steady including amphetamines and inhalants and lsd. thank you. >> thank you to our speakers. we will take questions in just a minute. a little bit of housekeeping. our nida press chief, if you have any questions after the press conference, stephanie will be happy to link you up with them. where is a rough idea of? he is here with director kerlikowske. we will open it up to questions in a minute, but i wanted to make a couple of points about

what -- what nida is doing to reach out to teens. we have a very robust website right now. we have a teen blog that is becoming very popular, and we do at least two entries a week. it is a steady increase in users. we just completed our fourth annual drug facts chat day where we sit up for the scientists to chat with teenagers from schools all over the country. if you are interested in finding out what kids are asking about drugs in an anonymous format, it is very interesting to see what they are asking, and we also post the responses. we just completed our first ever national drugs facts week, which encourages community is to

link teenagers what scientists so teenagers can find out scientifically accurate information. there is so much misinformation about drugs out there that this is our effort to put science into the middle of the conversation. more than 100 community is registered events this year. we hope it will grow. finally come away partner for the first time with a grammy foundation with a music video contest, and dozens of kids entered music video is. they have a panel of musical artists who judged. our scientists reviewed the entries for scientific accuracy. you can find the winners on our website and the grammy 365

website, and also on the above the influence website, the website director kerlikowske's folks put together. all of that information is in your press packet. we have this new booklet. this is unusual. but we went to local high schools. we showed them images. we have long discussions with diverse groups of teenagers to put this together, and the intermission and here is the most popular questions asked. i wanted to make you aware of those initiatives. of course, i am here to answer any questions about those afterwards. so, we can open it up for questions for our speakers. yes. please identify yourself, your name, and who you work for. >> i work for a a.m. media. i see in your topics in brief, the one-page handout on

prescription drug abuse issued this month, when asked about how they were obtained for non- medical use, 59% of 12th graders said they were given to them by a friend or relative. the number of attaining them over the internet was negligible. what is being done to reach the friends and relatives guilty of these crimes? >> who would like to answer that? >> there are two things going on that i think have been helpful. one is the drug enforcement administration sponsored a take back day with 4000 sites that took back over 120 tons of prescription drugs. it was not only getting people to clean out their medicine cabinets in an environmentally safe way, but it was also agitating had people on what exists in the medicine cabinet.

another group of people called drug free communities, 740 around the country, that are funded by the federal government for a very small amount of money. they are truly grassroot individuals who have partnered up to educate people, particularly young people, about the dangers of prescription drugs. frankly, when they think of the drugs as prescriptions, they do not realize the dangers that occur. there are a number of other things in the national drug control strategy that talk specifically about prescription drugs, but those are two things i wanted to highlight. >> also, early next year, and nida will be launching a series of initiatives to reach out to kids on the prescription drug issue. please be on the lookout for that. other questions? >> richard daley. just a follow-up, there is legislation that would actually

establish or allowed the existing state and local drug take back programs to operate on an ongoing basis in retrieving controlled substances, which right now, legally, they cannot accept. it has been described as a major problem, and the reason why there are tenants all of the -- cabinets all over the country. is there any push by the administration to get that legislation through? >> the legislation was passed by both houses of congress, and signed by the president. that is actually very good news. it allows the attorney general to work to rewrite the rules, so that these things can be disposed of both in an environmentally safe manner, and in a much more convenient way than what we are doing right now. >> there is another point we

need to consider. but did you look at the prescription -- the number of prescription of psychotherapeutic pain medications and similar medications? there have been significant increases. it tenfold increases over the past 20 years. for pain medications, it has been four-fold increases. we might be over-medicating, or many of these prescriptions are being diverted. the recognition that there is a significant increase in the product and the distribution of these medications brings to life the need to educate health care community is to the proper dispensing of these medications, the need to educate the public about the notion that these medications, while

they have very specific benefits, when your live outside the medical indications, can be as harmful as illicit substances this is one of the recent -- substances. if this is one of the reasons why these drugs are favored by young people, the myth that there are safer. finally, having a better way of surveying prescriptions among the physicians and dentists across the -- across states. that will provide us with structured to allow us to control the over-production of these benefit -- medications. >> in this regard, i wanted to mention a recommendation i made in a recent editorial in a journal in the field. physicians and dentists might think about actually writing the

prescriptions in a way that they give a lower number of doses, especially for pain medication, than is currently the practice. then, they give you a week's worth after you have had a tooth extraction. you might not use any, or you use one or two, then there is a bottle sitting on the shelf, either to be used by that person later for reasons it was not intended for, or to be given, or stolen by someone else. there is a over-prescription. it does not mean they need to write a prescription for a shorter time, they could every noels, but the initial model could have a smaller number of -- initial bottle could get a smaller number of doses. 30% of kids who say they are misusing narcotics say they are using their own prescriptions.

most are either getting it from friends, or buying it from friends, who may have had over- prescription. there is something that the medical and dental field could do that would help. it is certainly not anyone's intention to give long-term support, but i do not think many users meet the duration they are initially prescribed. >> and molly walker. what you are up there, do you guys know if it is from wisdom teeth procedures? that seems like a common procedure in high school. >> do you know down to that level? >> i do not know the specifics. i just know from personal experience, and the experience of other family members, that they often get longer duration prescriptions than necessary.

you can keep the duration as long, but it will just require someone to go back and refill the prescription if they needed. my guess is that 80% will never go back and we fill the prescription. >> to that specific question, we are calling a group of efforts -- experts to figure out what the prescription practices were. to start with, and there are medical specialties that account for most of the prescriptions which are dentists and emergency physicians. among the dentists, the first perception was related to your question, extracting the wisdom teeth, but then what became evident in a more thorough analysis was that many of those prescriptions could not be accounted for by the needs of

wisdom tooth extraction, and many of these prescriptions were given for several days, where there was the understanding that two or three days would be more than sufficient. there was also the disclosure that for many of these procedures they could be utilized instead. one of the action items we are pushing toward is the proper education and standardization of the management of pain. it is particularly urgent to do it for adolescents and children because they are the most vulnerable. >> you mentioned that a lot of people or some people have a perception that marijuana does not have long-term effects. could you go over the long-term effects? >> this has been a discussion back and forth between those

that say it will produce -- westing changes, and others say they do not. -- long lasting changes, and others say they do not. there are studies that can go from evaluating narrow psychological tests, and then evaluating long after you've stopped taking it to bring images -- brain images. there is data, and indeed from imaging studies, clearly that there are changes in the function of the human brain when exposed chronically and repeatedly. the extent to which those changes are not reimbursable -- reversible, at this point, is not clear. when you wage when i say to put it in the most conservative perspective, it is factual but it is interfering with memory and learning.

it is factual it will interfere all with motor coordination. therefore, it will impair your ability to learn, and the effect will be longer-lasting than when you are intoxicated because it stimulates in your body parts that act like a reservoir. if you are driving under the influence of marijuana, it is likely to significantly increase your risk of accident. while we recognize alcohol contributes to a significant number of accidents, this has been easy to track because it is easy to quantify. it is much harder on marijuana. when the studies have been done, they have shown that a significant percentage of occur under the influence of marijuana, and a combination of marijuana and alcohol is also quite frequent. >> i have a question for mr.

kerlikowske. you set ambitious goals some months ago, less than one year ago, a law reducing the use of drugs among young people. how does this report impact that goal? will you have a new strategy? >> the strategy that president obama released in may must be updated every year, and the strategy is an unbelievably good strategy, because it is very balanced and it is comprehensive. it approaches the drug problem, not just as a criminal justice problem, but also as a public- health problem. the president has made it clear that preventing young peopl from reducing drugs and reducing our demand would be incredibly helpful to people here and throughout the world, a particularly our neighbors in mexico. that is why in his budget

request the ss for and over -- and increase in funding and treatment funding because we know treatment works. we have ambitious goals. frankly, dr. johnson's report, and the survey from the drug use household survey did not come as a surprise to was the there was no increased because we saw young people's perceptions of years begin to flatten or decrease. there are two other things that are an important. off the national year's anti- drug media campaign has been completely revise, and it resonates very well with young people and giving them a message about not using drugs that -- in a way that they clearly understand that our partnership

-- understand. our partnership has sponsored two -- and continue to work hard for private funding to give information to young people and to parents about this danger. we are not pleased with the numbers, but it encourages all of us to work harder. >> any other questions? please identify yourself. you, yes. she is coming. >> i am from mexico. do you have any way to find of which are the ethnic groups that are more vulnerable to use drugs se reached? -- use drugs? also, you have mentioned that

the excessive use of marijuana affects the brain. what can a person who has been using for a long time be rehabilitated? >> in terms of what -- accusing repeatedly -- using repeatedly, the production goes down, so when there is not intoxication, there is a deficit in the brain areas. what are those systems, that involves memory and learning and motor behavior, and is also important in terms of reaction. in animal models, were you expose them repeatedly, the animals become very spread reactive prone.

the extent to which an animal can recover production is dependent on several factors. the aged and the combination, and ultimately the differences in the biology and are likely to reflect genetic differences. at this point, we do not know to what extent those changes will recover or be reversible. with respect to your first question, i will answer it with respect to the research nida has been doing that documents there is not a particular case that is protected from substance abuse disorder. drug abuse does not discriminate. you see patterns of drug abuse -- drug use, that are influenced by ethnic and cultural factors.

for example, one thing that is not recognized as among adolescents, for example, african americans have the lowest rate of use. among hispanics, for example, alcohol use is particularly one that is favored, and alcohol has consequences in that group that are different. it is associated with a much greater rate of dropout in hispanic groups. native american the use of alcohol is quite prevalent. there is no discrimination among the ethnic groups. >> did you want to add something to that? >> we do, in fact, suffer read out three major racial ethnic

groups -- african-americans, white americans, and hispanic americans. we do not routinely look the other groups because they are not in and that -- large enough numbers to make accurate estimates, but occasionally we do a piece based on multiple years and look at a larger number of ethnic groups. american indians were mentioned by dr. volkow, and they tend to have some of the more severe substance abuse problems in general, not just alcohol. hispanics, in our surveys at least, in the earliest grades, eighth grade, we tend to have high rates of use, higher than whites or african americans for a number of drugs. that is not true by 12th grade, and we are not quite sure whether that means because hispanics have a higher dropout rate we are simply losing more of the drug users, where because

hispanic culture is rising to a more precocious trying none of behaviors that is generally more associated with being an adult. whites tend to have the highest usage rate by the time you get to 12th grade and thereafter prepared -- thereafter. that is true for quite a number of drugs. there are differences. if you are interested, look on our website, and you will find all of our publications, including articles that goal and death on the subject. -- in depth on the subject. >> yes, please identify yourself. m media. what responsibility do organizations have to run public

service announcements? i regularly hear messages about ristian radio stations that i know very few young people listen to, yet the popular music stations, which my daughter, and co-workers that are of that age -- i have not really heard these messages on those of whites. i am wondering what is your knowledge about this, and what responsibility does the media have? >> i think the media has a huge responsibility to not only run those commercials, but we also buy time during the greatest number of young people watching. the other important part of that campaign is using social networks and social media to

get the message across, and of course that is oftentimes more popular with young people then perhaps some of the more traditional channels and others that are out there. >> when you are using paid media, are you able to afford some of the prime-time listening? >> no. [laughter] >> mr. kerlikowske, did think of the campaigns and the billions of dollars spent have failed up until now? are here preparing a new message that might be better delivered and made that the young people could make the decision? >> i wish we could cut the

questions off before that. the numbers are particularly disturbing. the media campaign that was existent in the past was not a particularly good. we completely revised that using some of the smartest advertising minds that clearly resonate with young people. we launched it in the bronx, and in milwaukee, and in portland. we know it resonates well, but has not been out there very long, so i think we need to deliver that message, and there are another group of messengers the need to say the same things. that is the parents, the coaches, the community groups, and the faith-based community. we need to make progress not just for young people, but quite frankly around the world on the drug issue. this is clearly not just a problem in the united states,

but in many other places, has and if we do not address it and recognize it with the seriousness and the severity that is warranted, i have great concern about where these numbers are taking us. >> i just wanted to make a point because we know, factually, that perceptions among adolescents regarding whether drugs are dangerous or not impacts their probability of taking it. look at that poster, which actually plots the relationship between the prevalence rate of marijuana use and the perception of kids proceeding marijuana as dangerous. you can see there's a greater number of kids thinking it is dangerous, have much lower rates of marijuana use. this is a mirror image.

to your question about the media, i think it can play an extremely important role, but as mr. kerlikowske said, the media has to be well targeted. it can profoundly influence behavior for example, a tobacco smoking, and the same can be applied with marijuana. >> while we are on the subject of media campaigns, i wanted to mention something else we have seen related to smoking, and that is the young people are not seem nearly as much anti- smoking ad campaigns as they were two years ago. the settlement with the state attorneys general and the tobacco companies gave rise to a foundation that sponsored the national campaign -- the

american legacy foundation, but that had a limited life. the amount of money that has been spent on that -- that is being spent on that campaign has dwindled. the other thing is that many states have their own anti- tobacco campaigns, and this is the pitch to state legislatures and governors. the state's got a great deal of money out of that settlement, and spent almost none of it on the prevention of tobacco use among kids. it is really quite a shame. i know the stakes are very stretched, but ultimately, the states and the federal government play a big price for smoking in terms of health and work performance. i think it is important that those campaigns somehow be reinvigorated. are we look -- or, we are likely to see an increase, which i

believe would be a tragedy. >> i can tell you it is difficult to know if your campaign is working because sometimes it takes years to look of the numbers. lloyd talk about the anti- tobacco campaign, and now that it has slowed down, we are seeing those numbers level off. in the 1990's, when ecstasy use was going up, there was a lot of campaigns, and we saw the numbers go down. was it a direct result? we have no way of knowing. we have not been talking about ecstasy, so those numbers are now softening. it is very hard to know the direct impact these campaigns have, but i will also cited ad budgets are dwindling, like everything else. we are fighting for the same piece of the pie that everyone else's. certainly, and the private sector groups that want to take on these issues are more than

welcome. more questions? >> my name is martin fox. given that our policies have obviously failed with marijuana, what did not make more sense to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to tobacco, and therefore lead -- keep away from children in a much more controlled fashion? >> no. it was not. we are not very good at keeping pharmaceuticals out of the hands of young people, and they aren't taxed, regulated, and controlled. -- are taxed, regulated, and controlled. we have 38,000 deaths as a result of these tax, regulated, and controlled drugs. we are not successful at that. we have not been successful at

of young people. i don't know why anyone could think we could develop a system where seven 11's would be an outlet for marijuana. >> any more questions? yes. >> heidi with pediatric news. a question for dr. jolson or anyone else who wants to jump in. given the increase in marijuana use among especially the younger kids, what advice do you have four doctors retreat teenagers about things may be to look for or how to talk about this with the teens and parents? >> i think one of the things we clearly know and for which we do not need more research in that respect is those of the greatest

resource are those who may have any type of behavior robust upturn, learning disability, attention deficit disorder or mental illness. and the early recognition of a psychiatric disorder or behavioral problem who may put that kid at risk of taking drugs as a way to try to medicate themselves could be a very important prevention effort. from the perspective of the message to the parents, if they feel that their child might be suffering from excess of anxiety or depression or trouble socializing they should evaluate the possibility that their kid may have psychiatric or psychological problems that may be amenable for treatment. because the proper intervention at that stage could prevent that kid from that use of drugs. the message that we send. with respect to positions, one of the campaigns that neither

has been aggressively pushing is the need for positions to take responsibility for evaluating and screening for the use of substance of this order in their patients and that is relevant for children and adolescents. early intervention could actually disrupt the continuous use of that particular drug and prevent it escalating into abuse and addiction. the physician has two perspective. from psychiatry perspective, proper screening and evaluation of a problem that can be properly treated and in general -- health provider, proper screening may do interventions that prevented from further escalating into abuse and addiction. >> did you want to add anything? >> i really think that pediatricians and other physicians who treat young

people are in quite a unique position to open up the subject, first of all, and to give advice that is heard. they are trusted. they are seen as not singing a moral song. and they are talking on the basis of one's health and self protection. i think it is very important for physicians treating adolescents to raise the subject of drugs and alcohol and ask whether a youngster has experience with those and to talk about it. i think not many of us in a position -- parents, teachers, counselors, or other things -- to open up the subject and expect honest answers. it what -- while i realize physicians have a lot of things to ask kids about that is one of the important months, i think, and i expect their advice would carry weight.

>> through our centers for excellent program we are developing curriculum resources on teaching medical students on how to talk to adolescents about this topic. we have existent resources for physicians on how to talk to adults. any more questions? okay, i want to thank everyone so much for coming out today. we will see you next year.

>> a forum on the effects of the web site wikileaks. in less than an hour, an october interview with diplomat richard holbrooke who died yesterday. after that, a forum on u.s. strategy in afghanistan. we will re-air the forumon produced -- forum on drug use among teenagers. >> the judiciary committee holds a hearing on foreclosure practices. that is at 10:00 a.m. eastern. at 1:00 p.m. eastern, the open source intelligence round table hosts a discussion of the relationship between technology and traditional media. panelists will talk about the future of so-called open source

intelligence in national security decisions. >> look back at the public life of richard holbrooke. online at the c-span video library. nominated for the nobel peace prize, he served under four presidents and was the main architect of the agreement that ended the war in bosnia. it is washington your way. >> this weekend, rose mary creeley looks at the history of women serving in the u.s. armed forces. and on dietrich bonhoeffer. find thehief of -- "the odd complete schedule and set up to get our scheduled e-mail directly to your in box with

the alert. >> a discussion of wikileaks affect on public policy in journalism. it is the website the publish classified documents. panelists include karen deyoung. an hour.houbout >> good evening. if anyone is confused, this is not a press conference for rose bowl. this is csis. i would like to a acknowledge

the dean of the school of communications who is here. i would like to introduce the vice chancellor in the back. also i would like to announce the presence of a true american hero. before we get started, i would like to -- i feel compelled to say a word, and has been a sad week in washington. ambassador holbrooke passed away and we wanted to say here we are thinking about the family and all his friends. many of you have had the occasion to work with him in the past. we are thinking about ambassador holbrooke. i would like to turn to bob schieffer and go from there. >> thank you. they will be going to the rose

bowl. i have been wearing purple sox all season and it has worked. i would like to introduce -- have as the first year to th semester in washington. our scholars who have been here, and laurence sanders -- lauren sanders who is interning here. [applause] we are happy to have making his first appearance as a palacpala.

you know him as a deputy secretary of defense. before that, he was one of the professional members of the senate armed services committee and professional staffer. panelist has hadeis a great career at quoting the washington post. he covers national security and was one of those to clegg's -- one of those who was one of the people who went to the state department. i will ask you about that in a

minute. he has been a finalist for the pulitzer prize. he was a reporter for "the baltimore sun." will start with you as a former defense official -- i will start with you as a former defense official. they had access to 250,000 documents, many of them highly classified. how did that happen? >> it was a good idea badly engineered. after 9/11, we had a sense of the nation, we had information that other people needed in the government in order to accomplish the larger task of situational awareness. we decided to try to provide much broader access. that was a good idea. the bad implementation is to not differentiate who has the need

for what kind of information. a corporal in the army may have need for relevant technical information about terrorists who are in the middle east but would have no plausible need to know about a conversation with the president of russia. we did not in any sense engineer access the right way. we made it available because that was the easiest way to make it available. it reflects on the feelings of our process. it is a larger issue and something we need to change. we have basically a perimeter concept. you have been to the curve -- perimeter. if you drive, you can go into any home want to go into. that makes no sense. it needs to be engineered in the wake -- it is beyond making no

sense. it is absurd. the challenge of government is taking ideas and engineering them practically with what you have. the department has a large network of classified information and the easiest thing is to simply add more to it. without being -- differentiating on the side of who is reading -- who needs that? we just made too much information available. most of whom did not needed. most of come do not go off on this foyer is and we saw. that is not the norm. most of our people behaved appropriately. we clearly had a problem individual who chose for other reasons to undertake what was little more voyeurism.

it is easy to put this material on the media and holdout and transmitted. it was a very badly engineered idea. >> let me talk to you about -- there you are at the new york times and this comes to you. what happened after that? how did you make a decision to accept it and what did you do with it after you got it? what happened to when we saw it? >> there were three batches of documents. "the *" got from wikileaks. the first to directly and the third. the founder had taken offense at a profile we had published of him. he did not want to give us the third group of documents which was the state department cables. the guardian which had sort of agreed along with us in "der

spiegel" agreed. we had cables and you refer to them as highly classified. nothing was classified higher than that. and a lot of it is unclassified and a lot is confidential. from the state department policy point of view, they did not want [unintelligible] is an almost impossible amount of stuff to go through. and so we created a search engine that you could limit by time, by the embassy from which the cable was sent, by the classification level and other

criteria. we started doing searches. you try to think of keywords and subject areas that might be newsworthy. and you would plow through everything in the last few years. this is a time wise, this collection -- how many people did you have doing that? >> in terms of people reading cables, there were 15 and another two or three people. is a ld say that there handful from the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. the majority is from the last three years. there is far more brazen and it cuts off presumably because of

the circumstances from which it came. >> you go through that and you get it down to how many? >> everybody came up with a different way of doing this. one of the things we wanted to look at was afghan corruption. and so, my way of looking at that was to narrow it to the last few years of cables from kabul and use words like " bribes" or corruption -- "corruption" . >> before you published them, what did you do with them? >> we had an arrangement to publish this on a schedule. a rough schedule by topic. with skyguardian -- the guardian

and "le monde" in france and "der spiegel" in germany. we had a rough schedule of days and subjects. but we also identified 100 cables we wanted to publish on the website. we gave those to the state department and said they had them the we identified those cables. these other ones we intend to publish. do you -- >> their initial stance was this was material that we do not want you to have. that was understandable.

we still intend to publish it. there were helpful in identifying. we had taken out a lot of stuff before we send them over. >> what did you take out? >> the vast majority of what we took down remains -- identities of people who have spoken confidentially. even government officials are military officials. their careers would be in jeopardy. if you spoke out of school to

american diplomats, you could -- >> did you withhold any documents at the request of the state department? >> we withheld a couple of documents that we -- they were interesting. we would have published but we did not post them. there was a strong case that would damage in the case of one i am thinking of, american -- a sensitive intelligence cooperation. >> let me ask you why? >> there was a release of afghanistan documents and iraq documents. military documents earlier. we were told that we had

published something about julian assange they did not feel was to their liking. we knew the documents were coming but we did not know when. it was set to drop saturday afternoon when the initial accounts were published. each of them published documents along with the stories they had published. often different documents. "the guardian" published more. wikileaks itself had a very strange selection of documents and still does that they chose

to publish themselves and often, you will see very obscure things that have come up on their website, where you can find them on a given day. the moves all the place. it gets shut down in various places. we were left to -- close to the deadline to look at the documents and i did lots of the stories. what i tried to do was not look at everyone. i tried to see what we thought was important in terms of stories. to see what we thought was important in terms of stories. >> you know, pele almost immediately began to talk about this as they did about the pentagon papers. of course, your paper paper was one that published the pentagon papers. i noticed now that daniel

ellsberg has said he's strongly in favor of this wikileaks undertaking. and he compares it to that. i'm not sure i would. do you? >> no, i don't compare it to that. i think what's amazing about these documents -- at least the ones that i've seen so far -- is thatith very few exceptions, they tend to cover issues that we or other media organizations have already written about and provide additional details that are always good to have in stories. and it's always good obviously to have actual words of officials as opposed to anonymous officials, which is what we usually end up quoting on these kinds of stories. but i think in terms of substance -- now, there were some exceptions. there was some having to do with iran, some having to do with north korea, and some that in the aggregate seemed to show policy going in a certain direction that actually did move

the ball in terms of what we knew. but i think by and large, it was -- they were things that we knew and, in fact, that we and others had written abou before. >> can i just say the reason the pentagon papers had such impact is becse it was a private story that was at variance with the public. we're not seeing that with this. what you're seeing here is fairly good, objective reporting by diplomats written fairly well that's quite consistent with the public message. so it doesn't have anything like the pentagon papers in terms of its -- >> do you think -- as a reporter, it's always hard for me to argue for government secrecy. but i do believe in some cases that you have to have some things that remain secret. i mean, i just think you do. and i stand second to no one in my defense of the first amendment. i stand second to no one in

saying that there's too much government secrecy. but having said that, i find this extremely troubling that something like this could happen. and do you think the government, dr. hamre, acted quickly enough in getting on this and trying to come to some understanding of how this private could somehow get ahold of all this stuff? >> well, i -- the dilemma of how a private could get access to this kind of information is really deeply embedded in a much larger problem. it's how we give clearances to people, the kind of information give to them, the nature of modern communication tools. solving this is a huge problem. it's going to take many years to fix it. and, frankly, we need to get on with fixing it. so the government responded with the immediate crisis. it now has to figure out the long-term viable solution.

>> do you think, karen, this is journalism, wikileaks? >> i don't know. >> i will go on the record and say i don't think it is. >> i classify it as sort of a release of documents for the sake of releasing them to say that you have them. i mean, wikileaks has described this as an effort to stop -- i think they've said an immoral and illegal set of policies. but they themselves did not analyze what they thought was immoral or illegal or point out what in these documents would support that thesis. i think that it's incumbent on us to try to put things in context and to try to explain why it's important, what preceded it, what came after it and what was going on around it. that, i think is our responsibility. but i want to go back to something that john said. what surprised me was -- even more than the fact that someone

at a relatively low level could apparently have access to these documents in the military, but that there was no trigger for when there was -- there were downloads that had not been authorized. it would seem to me that that would be even easier if you wanted to do some sort of interim -- >> the problem -- our security system, it's a perimeter security system. if you give them a clearance they can see secret material. the only way to constrain that is going through a fairly disciplined efforts by putting additional qualifiers on information. that's a hard job and we chose not to do that. we should have. >> there are a few things the pentagon said it is doing that it's already done. disabling the cd and dvd write drives on many computers so a guy like this can't put everything on a cd as he did and

walk out. that's one thing they've done. and they are supposedly experimenting with the kind of -- you get those calls from your creditard company saying this is an unusual purchase for you, is this you. it's a fraud detection mechanism. so they're beginning to build that stuff in so that if someone suddenly downloads a thousand terabytes of information in some outpost that alarm bells go off. they are working on it. >> there are things we can do but it's a more complex dimension than simply how you use a credit card. >> tell me, scott -- obviously you were very responsible. "the times" was very responsible in how they went about handling this. tell me about some of the thinking that went into this and how you decided to publish it in the first place and why you thought this was something you needed to do. >> well, it's a -- it is a -- you say it's obvious that we

were responsible there. i think there are many people who don't find it obvious. >> i mean, hearing your explanation. >> including the state department. but you're kind to say so. but the -- we still -- we did try to exercise judgment in terms of what we'd publish and what we wouldn't both in terms of newsworthiness and, as i was saying, what the downside would be for the government or for individuals. and i guess the three categories -- there was that first category which i think we tend to agree with the government on of individuals in oppressive countries who could really be in deep trouble, whose lives might even be at stake. that was probably the easiest category. the second category would be sensitive programs that the u.s. was engaged in. and an example of something that they -- that the government was

not happy that we ran but we did end up deciding to run was a cable that went out and it was one of many cables along these lines that went out to embassies and to the u.n. to say to diplomats, here are categories of intelligence information we'd like you to correct -- collect. some was biographical information about foreigners they were dealing with but some went all the way down to credit card numbers and frequent flier numbers of foreign diplomates. and we knew from talking around people that there was controversy within the diplomatic corps about whether they should really be asked to -- god knows how do you it. i guess at the lunch table kind of peer over and scribble down the credit card number. but whether that was appropriate, whether it was too risky and whether it blurred the line too much between intelligence collection and diplomatic work. that one we decided to run over their objection. then the third category would be

where the objection was more, geez, we just really would like you to not run that because tales really going to strain our relations with this guy or just make thingsore difficult the next time we talk to him. and in general, i have to say we did not usually go along with those requests. but, again, the majority of the -- of their requests and of what we agreed to were pertaining to individuals. >> let me ask all three and start withou, karen. was there anything -- and there were some of these things like that that were fascinating in the same way reading someone else's mail has a fascination. we're human beings. we can't help but be interested in things we're not supposed to know about. was there anything there -- and i'll ask all three of you -- in these releases that was the surprise, that told us something we really didn't know? because it strikes me that a lot of it we just saw background

detail on a lot of things t most part. >> i think the one that scott just mentioned, the collection asking diplomats to collect information like credit card numbers, bank account numbers, was -- of people at the you have nations was sort of surprising. and you knew if you have worked in foreign policy long enough that this had to be something that would cause a lot of consternation. the same way it does with journalists who are asked sometimes in some places to be a source of information in terms of damaging their credibility. i don't think in substance, you know, if you look at the corruption in afghanistan, certainly there were new details. there was some n information, more specifics about president karzai's brother in kandahar. so you had a broader and deeper sense of what it was that the

americans objected to about him. i think with yemen, you saw what we had already reported, that the government -- their cooperation with the u.s. government in terms of counterterrorism operations was pretty deep. you saw in the case of yemen and inpakistan where governments had denied agreeing to these kinds of programs, but everybody and his brother had reported that they agreed to it. it certainly causes them difficulties at home when you see in their own words their agreement to it. not only their agreement but their desire to cover it up from their own publics. so you expand your knowledge on those things. i don't think the -- in the first instance, the fact that something has happened or that a policy is in motion, no, i think

there was very little of that. >> what about -- >> democracy -- didou find out anything you didn't know? >> no. let me just say. i think it's very important. democracies have to -- vernments have to do things in secret but democracies have to ultimately sustain a debate about their policies and their goals. what's remarkable here is how consistent this was. we did not see any activity being reported that was not broadly sustained by our public discourse. so, i mean -- but democracies do need to have the capacity to have private conversations. and i know you think it's -- so what if it's about making relations harder. that is an important dimension. and if there was a bro disconnect between what we were saying as a nation to our citizens publicly and what we were saying to ourselves privately, it would be a more legit matd complaint. but the fact that it was largely consistent, hugely consistent

tells me that the government doesn't deserve a vote of confidence in being able to protect the informal discourse of diplomacy. >> do you think there is any serious damage? >> brzezinski is saying like someone once said this is castrophic but not serious. this is really bad. i mean, ultimately, i don't believe it's going to because it testifies to the integrity of our diplomacy in my view. but it is very difficult for our diplomats to have the next conversation and the next conversation with people. and i think we're going to find foreign interlocuters less forthcoming. i think it will be a depp detriment. >> any real news? >>