effective in its own right. it seems to me that if we're going to go down the road of trying to fix our espionage -- to address issues like asarnings terrorism, the right way is not to try and shoehorn a change that we're not quite sure -- it is pretty effective under the terms. aisle not going to be an -- i'm not going to be an advocate. i think it is a reason to -- i would will b happy for them to take more time and step back and think about all the categories and types of information and all the different means by which the information is disclosed and see if there isn't a way. i believe there is. i'll draw distinctions between -- mainstream media organizations who report news at half value and things like

wikileaks, which i tend to think of more as a just a means of communication as a telephone directory. they are just putting information out. nobody would say a telephone directory is a news organization. i believe that there is more to the question than that and so i sort of urge congress to take a little bit of time in thinking about it before going off. . .

>> i continue to work for the state department part-time, so i am not speaking for the state department. among other things that i have done recently as teach the course on table right thing, and i have updated my powerpoint slides. paul mentioned a couple of things which i think are absolutely spot-on, which is -- the first one -- how can you download a quarter of a million

documents and a huge alarm bell does not go off? i have to assume they are fixing that as we speak. that is an incredible oversight. another point he mentioned was access. if you're working in iraq, you need access to embassy cables of baghdad, but venezuela does not make sense. i think that system is sort of already in place. when i would check into a new place and set up a separate internet account, i would tell technicians i need access to certain kinds of cables and certain areas of the world. the one i do not think will work is the idea that we could have a revised security clearance procedure which would identify people like -- before i was an fso, i was a security

officer. you'll never catch people like that in the security clearance office. it does not work that way. finally, i have a suggestion. one of the things that might mitigate some of the damage -- and i am speaking as a person who has written thousands of cables for the state department -- we use names. not all the agencies in the government use names. for example, the cia, other intelligence agencies, the not on purpose use names. they refer to perhaps something like a government official, or some way of fudging that. maybe the state department should go that route. i do not like it myself. it does not read well, to begin with. but what do you think about that? going to a no-names policy? >> i think it could work in some

cases, particularly the second or third secretary talking to somebody. you could certainly not identified by name but give a characterization or a description. but obviously when it comes to high-level discussions, it matters who you are talking to because sometimes there are differences between high levels of the government. you have to know what that individual is thinking and saying. somehow it to be separated out that the lower-level diplomats come and be with human rights workers and journalists, democracy activists, the local government officials -- sure, but you are not going to be able to do it in all cases. but there are also other channels for reporting very sensitive conversations, that does not appear are going to turn up on wikileaks, which is good. so there are other channels even within the state department

reporting for sensitive information, and perhaps those will be relied on more now. i just wanted to raise something that tangentially related to the access of information issue. i think it is a balancing act. i agree with both sides here. the information sharing has done very good things for protecting the homeland, but at the same time i think it is inevitable that we are going to go back to this strict need to know the basis for sharing. but i have a bit of a difference with terry on the issue of archiving. i think it is extremely important to keep archives of information, for the simple purpose that if you do not know history, you are doomed to repeat it. i think we have a lot of declassification projects now. george washington university -- the classifications are done every 25 years upon request, and

i think it's very useful. i think it helps to refine u.s. policy. people in the public realm like myself and others on the panel can have more informed background and understanding of the way u.s. policy is conducted in years past. the problem with wikileaks is it is so recent and you have the same people working in the mc trying to work with the people the report was released to. i wanted to state that i still think archiving of information is extremely important. >> i would like to add a comment to that. i agree completely that there have been systems in place -- there are systems in place now -- that should have prevented the downloading of 250,000 documents. and we do have systems that aim at restricting information on

the basis of need to know within the u.s. government. so somebody in iraq is not necessarily or should at least raise eyebrows if they are releasing cables to venezuela, but my concern is that investment of technology particularly through things like the internet has resulted in a degrading of the checks and balances we had in place to control that information or control access to that information, and i think we will need to have our procedures within the west of a bid evolve and evolve very quickly -- with in the u.s. government to evolve and evolve very quickly. there is obviously a tension here between the need of the public to have access to information and our desire for the greatest possible freedom of information. i would just remind people that the motto of the heritage

foundation is "building an america where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourished." so clearly we have an interest in access by the public to as wide a range of information as possible. yet we are talking in the wikileaks case about a dissemination of information that goes beyond freedom and gets into the sphere of anarchy, where you have someone who is trying to bring down the orderly processes of government and diplomacy. obviously our legal system will have to evolve in a deliberate manner, and that is going to take some time. but i think administratively, the executive branch ought to in the immediate future make some significant efforts to tighten up and reform our processes. >> jim, one of the concerns i have as a military officer --

and i said this on one of the cable news network's right after the first one came out -- it's the real need for -- is the real need for the people at the end of the prettiest and of the sphere to -- at the end of the sphere to have access to information. i still have this concern that we have grown accustomed to fighting wars this way. the advent of technology has pluses and minuses, but in war, i think more information is better than last. to push forward more information, that accurate, timely, and focused upon that war fighter has been invaluable. have been been a -- having been

a jag, a lawyer for the seals, being able to relate information over here to the seal on the ground and getting it back here to execute the mission -- the mission would not get done if we could not do that. so i worry about the degradation of the ability to do that. but i equally worry about some pfc having access to stuff he should never have access to in the first place. or if he does have access to it, downloading umpteen-thousand cables without bells going off. i think it would fundamentally change the way we do war in our modern military. god forbid that wikileaks gets a hold of that type of real-time information that is being

strained and somehow push it forward. i think then you could make the case even stronger than there is a specific intent to injure -- that there is a specific intent to injure somebody, and then a charge of manslaughter could possibly be levied against someone who puts the fourth. >> more questions? >> hi there. i think it was paul that made the comment about the press, and i would say that the espionage is espionage. hiding behind the shield of the press should not change that. i would be really concerned with having -- i could see members of congress saying we need to enlighten members of the press and only they would be able to report on information. i could see that happening and that would concern me greatly. >> i guess i'm more optimistic

than you. i cannot see congress doing something like that. i cannot see the courts of america letting that stand. i do think that what we might see is an attempt to construct a definition of what defines press activity. i have a block, right? am i a press person? i do not think so. there is a difference between me, even though my blog has my views, and george will, because a lot more people listen to his opinion. it will not be something that we get right the first time. on the other hand, i am convinced that there is a way of describing that encompasses a

legitimate distinction between press activities that we have all come to rightly rely upon as a freedom in america, and an artistic, the listed activity of those who would use the system to destroy. i will go out on a limb here and predict congress will not go for a press licenser scheme in the next five years. >> let's hope not. any other questions? >> just going back to liability -- have we established that it is purely a government mess-up? in other words, the kind of investigation that kelly talks who didcan we find maybe yo something that they should not have done?

>> maybe. i doubt it. i doubt it because that would be a difficult defense to mao. think about it in practical terms. you are charged under your current job as the pfc or lieutenant or whoever you are in the military with not disclosing classified intermission. you have signed documents, non- disclosure documents. -- disclosing classified information. you have signed documents, and non-disclosure documents, and you do not have the ability as a member of the military to distinguish whether something is properly classified or not. it either is or is it is not. just because a vendor created a product that creates some sort of sieve or loophole or something -- if a document says classified and is not supposed to be disclosed under the rules

under which you're living, i think you would have a hard time making that defense. i do, as a practical matter. >> i will add that the point that you made it and the other point -- somewhere along the line, the system architecture went wrong. whether it is that the right system was not put in because of the speed with which the classified information system was constructed in iraq -- possible. or that the vendor did not put something in -- there are any number of places where the particular technical flaw that let this happen without anybody noticing occurred. in my world, for example, none of the super net and top-level

computers that i had had cd-rom drives, so it was physically impossible to do it. we were using the equipment that had that hardware capability, and i assumed because we were trying to build something quickly that was necessary in a theatre of war, and getting the really special equipment out from the united states is more challenging than buying it off the shelf and making do. somewhere along the lines, there was a failure. i have no idea whether it was a hardware or software failure, but somewhere the process failed. that is absolutely clear. >> we have just a few minutes left. we have raised a lot of issues

that are technical, procedural, moral, ethical, legal, process questions of all kinds and policy questions. what i would like to do in the brief time we have left is to give each panelist a chance to offer a final thought. lisa? >> i guess just to reiterate that governments, not only the u.s., require the ability to have protected conversations, not only with foreign officials but with people in country in order to advance democracy and human rights. there has to be a way to protect those conversations. frankly, in any business, you have requirements to be able to protect information. that is something that many

people have overlooked in this whole process. i think we have yet to see the full impact of this wikileaks phenomena, but we certainly have to go back and reiterate some of the traditions. i worked with the u.s. government for 16 years. you take an oath when you accept that public service, so it is important to keep those standards of taking your commitments as a public servant, and given the privilege of access to classified government material. that is one of the issues that we need to keep first and foremost in our minds as we move forward on this wikileaks case. >> paul? >> i will make two points and try to lift from wikileaks to some bigger pieces. keeping with my theme that this

incident is a reflection of a fundamental nature of the internet. one piece that we did not discuss much today but it's worth remembering is that the internet makes it possible for people to exercise asymmetric power, people acting in ways that are to the detriment of big nation states. that is the apparent fact that julian assange has released an encrypted insurance file that supposedly contained some of the most secret things that he threatens to allow, give the description -- in the de -- to give the decryption key if he is charged.

that is almost an unassailable refuge may be even against prosecution if what is in that file is enough to scare the government from going after him. certainly it puts him on a level playing field, more of a level playing field with the united states government than you expect an individual to be in a position to do. the second and more kind of fundamental thing that i think is happening is that the reaction of activists on the web to the arrest of julian assange is demonstrating that same principle of asymmetry in an interesting way. the government -- the internet grew up with a lot of governmental control because governments did not realize how important it was going to be. the first response to the misuse of the internet by governments in the wake of wikileaks was to

mobilize what they considered to be their normal avenues putting pressure on paypal, putting pressure on mastercard and amazon and servers. that is exactly how sovereigns exercise their power, on the s.al-world kinetic world' it is interesting to see how the activists fight back. they are not fighting back in the kinetic world but in the cyberworld. trying to mess up the paypal systems and things like that. what we are seeing through the prism of wikileaks is an exercise by sovereigns -- the united states government, but china with its great fire wall -- the denizens, the citizens of

cyberspace are fighting back in an anonymous, organized way. i do not know where it is going to turn out, it lists above wikileaks. >> thank you, paul. helle? >> i am going to stay in my lane and say that if we fast forward, the laws as written, we are up to the task assuming a thorough investigation takes place. we will not need to give a good housekeeping stamp of approval to approved media. but i think perhaps there is a

throughput point that we should note, and that is something that jim said. if you believe the press reports, manning was starting to exhibit troubling behavior. major has signed -- major hassan, the fort hood shooter, was starting to exhibit troubling behavior. if you look at these at actors that commit criminal acts, you will find that perhaps, for a lot of reasons, many of which are troubling in and of themselves -- political correctness, one of them -- the problem was there for us to see from the beginning, which did not want to do the right thing to take charge and stop the access that hassan had to

patients, manning had to classified information. maybe there is a systemic need to look at things and ratchet back, but it is the individual that we need to look at who has the clearance, who has the y,lity to have access to x, and z. but people in positions of power sometimes abuse that power, so i think it is a greek tragedy in a way that goes back to a story that was told down years before we were alive. it is the individual we need to focus on as much, if not more, than the system. >> please join me in thanking all of our panelists. [applause]

>> this morning on c-span, a coalition of democratic, republican, and independent politicians attend a conference called no labels, which has the goal of reducing partisanship and politics. that's next. topics on "washington journal" include state funding for health care and digital learning. the house gavels in this morning and will take up continued funding for the government. live coverage at 10:00 eastern. the senate continues work on the arms treaty with russia, known as start. it will also take up the government funding measure.

live coverage at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span2. later in the morning on c-span3, the government will release the results of the 2010 census. live coverage at 11:00 eastern. more now from the no labels conference. we will hear from new york city mayor michael bloomberg, florida governor charlie crist, and congressman michael castle of delaware. topics include redistricting and election reform. columbia university in new york posted this event. it is 30 minutes. >> the reason that it exists is that people always act rationally, or virtually always act rationally.

if you were a legislator, you would not want competition. the natural thing is to want to be able to go from election cycle to election cycle, move your way up toward being president of the united states, and not have to run the risk of being unemployed and going into the private sector, which scares the bid jesus out of them. the bejesusres' out of them. >> there are no jobs. >> well, there are no jobs because of their actions. i do not think you can expect much change. the interesting thing in new york where ed koch created an organization and got pledges from the state senate and assembly, if reelected, you will go into fair, non partisan

redistricting. i hope they do what ed has forced them to commit to. but there is a long history of saying one thing before you are elected and doing something different afterwards. >> is there anyway to have a binding contract as a government official? >> no comment and at the federal level -- no, and at the federal level you would have to change the constitution. in some places it would be debated in the courts. when we talk about fair, non- partisan elections, it is not clear what your definition of "fair" is. is equal opportunity or equal results? >> with care in the title of your organization, how do you death -- with fare in the title

of your organization, how do you define it? i want to talk about how some of these changes might alter the nature of the political process. how have you dealt with some of the challenges he was just discussing? >> florida has the distinction of being the worst gerrymandered state in the country right now. we have a situation in florida where we have about 700,000 more registered democrats in florida, but we have 75% now of our legislature is republican, and that is due to the way the districts are drawn. now, i would say that the elected legislators think it is due to the fact that everybody loved them very much. but the districts are drawn in such a way that whoever is drawing the district's puts the

opposite party voters in large numbers into a very small number of districts and then puts their voters to spread them out over twice the number of districts. basically that is the way it has been done in florida for years. this year, 63% of the florida voters, in a very unusual year in florida for many reasons, said 63% said, we do not want districts are drawn for the purpose of favoring or disfavor in a political party or an incumbent. that i think spoke very well about the mood of floridians. so these amendments say the districts shall not be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor political parties or incumbents. we now have along with that provision, another provision in

the constitution that says minority voting rights must be maintained. districts will have to be compact. presently we have dozens of districts literally that go for 150 to 200 miles, splitting counties, splintering cities and areas that have very little in common. and districts will now have to be compact and followed geographical and city and county lines to keep communities together so that voters will be able to vote alongside their neighbors for their representatives instead of finding that their neighbor next door is in a district totally unrelated to the district that they are in. so there is a lot of reason to think that, with fairness in redistricting, this is supposed to take the reading -- the

rigging out of redistricting? >> -- >> the legislators think that fairness will protect themselves or their political party. this new constitutional provision we have and florida all laws that, and it is fairness to the people. >> in whose eyes, though? >> to the people's eyes, because 63% of them voted for these amendments. fairness means a district is not rigged, set up to be a republican or democratic district. if in fact the district is rigged, you know what that means. if it is a democratic district, the representative or the member of congress is going to be elected essentially in the primary, with very little chance

of a challenge from across the aisle. if it is a republican district, same thing. when you have a situation where there is no real competition of ideas in an election, who gets elected? the person who is either on the far right, if it is a republican district, or the far left if it is a democratic district. and then what happens? when they get to the legislator, -- when they get to the legislature, they almost do not know how to come together to find solutions that will work for all of florida or all of the united states because they have only to -- they have only had to listen during the election to people on the extremes of their party. >> her point is well taken. when you have these districts drawn in such a way that it is so skewed for one party or the other, you do get sort of what

you ask for. that type of person, that model, is what gets elected. as a former republican, now independent, i can speak with some authority on this as it relates to florida. allen is exactly right. we were a state of almost 20 million -- ellen is exactly right. we were a state of almost 20 million people, but we have 700,000 more registered democrats in florida than we do republicans. so what does that tell you? the mayor is much better at math than any of us. >> gerrymandering. >> they did. they did a very good job of it 10 years ago. >> you have been fighting a version of this in california more with an actual mechanism of the primary process. >> first of all, i agree with the redistricting initiative that you're putting forward in florida.

in california, there is a 14% voter registration advantage, democrat versus republican, and they have had to redistrict to keep themselves in power. we have arnold schwarzenegger who won in an open primary. it was a recall special election. he never would have become governor in california under the closed primary system that we have today. i have said all along, how do you reform the way you elect politicians? the system that we had in the past -- they have been pretty happy. i have been working on open primary for 14 years. we had closed sessions, and we discussed potholes, not republican potholes' or democrat pot holes. they just needed to be filled. when i got to sacramento, there was a caucus problem.

you walk into a caucus, and it was how do we focus, instead of health care or less taxes, how do we focus on growing the republican party? i am sure the democrats on this side of the aisle were focusing on how to grow the republican -- how to grow the democratic party. >> how is it that the situation is altered, in your view? >> i think it is a giant step forward, and i support it. in california, in 19 days, i wrote senate bill 6, which took it to the vote of the people. we amended the constitution, the people voted 55%, starting in 19 days. the people of california will get the votes for elected officials, whoever they want. everybody is on the same ballot.

you do not have to put an r or a d next to your name. the top best candidates will run off in the general election, and the people get to vote for the best candidates that have three qualities -- open-minded, reasonable, and pragmatic. >> how would an open primary be different in your situation, congressman castle? is that even valid? >> i was sitting next to a u.s. senator elect today. it's an interesting question. we only have one mess -- one member of the house of representatives on federal redistricting issues. with congressman john tanner, a democratic governor from tennis -- democrat from tennessee -- there are some incredible districts, talking about the

17th district in illinois, apparently it was drawn right along the river, and it is in and out, it 10 yards wide, 100 yards wide here and there. democrats in that district, republicans shoved over to other districts that is why reapportionment occurs across the united states. at the state level and at the federal level. i am delighted to hear what is happening in florida. i was in a primary in delaware. sometimes i cry when i revisit this issue, so i have to be careful. i was in a primary in delaware and i was heavily favored to win the general election, and the tea party came in and spent a great deal of money and there was a very low turnout of republicans. i would have been better suited

with an open primary. i have always appealed to independents and democrats. i have had mixed feelings about that because parties exist for a reason. i can see now much more clearly than i could before september 14 the benefit of open primaries. >> i think you have to be careful. we are talking about open elections and redistricting. a lot of the redistricting is there for reasons that copy the u.s. constitution. the u.s. constitution has two houses, one proportional to the population, and one in every state gets two votes, period. a lot of people would argue that is the right way to do it and that the founding fathers had that in mind. the founding fathers when they originally wrote the constitution, it basically was

male, white landowners, and they were the only ones who had the vote. that is where the history is. the other thing is that in america, ethnicity is a very important thing. and the courts will say repeatedly, if a redistricting takes away the number of seats of ethnicity, then it is not fair. you cannot have it both ways of saying we are not going to look at anything or we are going to look at that equal results thing. >> you make an interesting point about the white male landowners, that the ideals of the constitution that were laid out fell meaningfully short of that. there has been a systematic progression over the years to expand the basic premise of equality for all people. >> we are much more democratic and fair today than we used to

be. >> hugely so. what is the next player in that progression, having come as far as we have already come, -- what is the next layer in the progression, having come as far as we have already come? >> when i first came into office, i supported it and attempts to change new york city's primaries to open election. we were resoundingly beaten. the city is overwhelmingly democratic, so you would think republicans would be in favor of it. they were not in favor of it either. as a matter of fact, given the results, if it is hard to find anyone who was in favor of it other than me. but since then, a lot of people have said we should have done it. but if you want to have something that is totally open, i do not even have a problem if you can display the r or the d

next to your name as long as everybody can put their name on the same ballot. our next mayoral election is going to have six, seven candidates probably. it will be all democratic because the democratic -- it is so overwhelmingly democratic, rudy and myself notwithstanding. each of the two candidates will put into a runoff, and most people are totally disenfranchised. >> how do you avoid that? >> i do not want to -- even if you have a fair redistricting plan, with a closed primary election where the turnout is lower in the midterm election, you still have to go to the right to win a republican primary and you still have to go

to the left to win a democratic primary. so when you put in an open primary coupled with fair redistricting, now we are rolling. as mayor bombay -- as mayor bloomberg talk about, we had an open primary in 1998 were you still had to put an r and a d next to the name. we asked californians, given the choice to the candidate -- give the choice to the candidate to put the r or the