>> on this tuesday morning, president obama heading to cleveland, cleveland state university. he will meet with small business owners. he will have a couple of cabinet members including commerce secretary. the president will speak just before 2:00 p.m. eastern. we'll have the comments live here run c-span. later, international politics. we will take to ireland.

leaders of the three major groups will be meeting. the outgoing prime minister recently resigned as leader. the party is doing poorly in the polls. three leaders of the three parties will deliberate. will have coverage beginning at 4:30 eastern here run c-span. next, more on wikileaks. a panel and editors of ""the new york times" and "the guardian" spoke about julian assange if he is prosecuted for releasing the documents. also part of the conversation, jack goldsmith. this is one hour 30 minutes.

>> this is a big crowd. with moved it from the precincts of the journalism school to the grand room in the library. this event evolves -- involves plants lining up in a way. we were called and it just so happens that we were able to procure the panelists services not only of bill keller but also allen alan rusbridger. all of them will be further introduced in a minute. this is a subject that is

completely obsessive interest to people interested in journalism and foreign policy and national security. this has been what is sure to be a memorable evening. i have one small logistical notes. courtesy of "the new york times," there is a room behind here. there is free food and drinks after this event. for anybody who cares to come. our moderator tonight is emily bell, who is still in a first year --

wanted to say hi to them if they are out there. thank you for what you have done to help make events like this possible. emily, come on up. ok. fair enough. sit down the takeover. i will go sit down. thanks again, everybody, for coming. [applause] >> thank you very much, indeed for that introduction. this is an auspicious beginning because we have all watched

fascinated in the past six months as one of the really great news stories and also a great story about journalism has unfolded in front of our eyes. it is enormously exciting to have two of the principles here with us on the panel tonight. with us on the panel tonight. the format is that we -- i will hold the questions for the first half-hour. i know people in the audience with a great deal of expertise. there'll be plenty of times to ask questions yourselves. we are lucky to have three people on the panel that we should probably because -- jack goldsmith is on my far left. not politically. jack is a former assistant attorney general during the bush administration. he is now a harvard law professor.

internet law, international law. he is playing the part of about 15 different lawyers. next to him we have my former boss and the chief of "the guardian," allen alan rusbridger. next to him, we have bill keller of "the new york times." i thought we would start at the beginning. that means we will begin with you, alan. would you like to tell us how this incredible story started and what your first contact with wikileaks was and how we got where we are today. >> it started with a reporter called nick davis on "the guardian" who read the story of bradley manning and read how

julian assange was essentially on the run. i do not think that is too dramatic a way of putting it. a man who had an amazing treasure trove of documents. thought he would be an interesting man to seek out. they met in brussels. nick persuaded him -- if you worked with the "guardian" and the mainstream media. he introduced "the new york times" as a way of making more impact. and i think that was -- julian assange agreed. we took it from there. i think nick's judgment call has

been borne out by events. there was the british media laws. we thought that would give car joint enterprise a legal robustness. we thought we would have a technological robustness if anybody tried to bring down this enterprise through a digital attack, it would be more robust with more than one organization. i think he rightly thought that it would be a task and we calculated there were 400 million words in just the cable gates alone. compare that with 2.5 million words in the pentagon papers. this was the biggest amount of data to any journalistic organization has ever had to tackle.

it would be necessary to bring as many eyes as possible to the enterprise. that is how would started. it started well. as far as we were concerned, ought to december 22, i think it ended pretty well. >> going back to -- your contact when julian assange was brought in, what would you -- as an editor, will you thinking when you took hold of this amounts of data? digit and appoint think this is something that will be too difficult to do -- did you think that this was something that would be too difficult to do? >> we realized the skills were built up to the task.

it has been quite interesting that as people who a been dining next to each other for years, we got to know each other -- harold, this is david -- they could do things that neither of them fully appreciated. that is been a high learning curve including how to build search engines across data and how to manipulate these vast amounts of information. so that was the first learning curve. then we went straight into the ethical issues of highly sensitive -- whether or not to sensitive -- whether or not to the highly secretive, we do not know. the ethical difficulties with each group, which for all difficult. there were all different. afghan was averment not distort.

the cable gate staff had all kinds of issues. are we going to publish these ould we redact them?cti >> with a relatively -- it went against some of what had been said previously about putting raw data. >> that was the first counter clash. wikileaks came to us from the point of view of assuming it would be publish raw and from the point of view of total transparency. by the end of the exercise, by december, wikileaks had essentially adopted the position of the mainstream organizations, which was a measure of redaction

was necessary. they adopted all of our projections. these tubes different cultures began in different places. >> one of the questions that comes over again is you have explained a little bit about why you have collaborated and this is a unique organization. you're saying the right decision and that the media was pretty global, do you think you would have gone under pressure as to how you were fearing at the beginning? it does not feel you be in the same position in terms. >> we have a highly important

confidential information has been injected. in a way that i think has been impossible. there was a case involving an oil company that had been accused -- i must be careful. dumping toxic material. new symptoms and people became ill. ringconnect 2400

would have done. i think we would proceeded more less the same way. your default position when sources offer huge secret documents and their resources you have not dealt with is misgivings. sources come with agendas. you don't know exactly what they are. wikileaks was not completely

unknown to us. they had the previous april released footage from military helicopters over baghdad shooting a group of people including two journalists. >> did make easier to publish an american company -- an american paper? >> i did nothing so. you could argue it made it a bit more complicated in the respect that while the times -- "the times" tries to be impartial. european news organizations are openly partial. i respect "the guardian." it is a paper of the left.

"le monde" entered the picture. none of the them, "the weekly standard." the question came up, will bwe e pilloried for doing business with lee wikileaks? >> you were more pilloried. how do you compare appearances about how happened -- was the reaction, the temperature, if you liked of sort of the ambient temperature when you pressed the publishing? >> we went online to answer reader questions. there was a striking difference with reflects the difference between europe and america and the difference between the audience of "the guardian" and

ours. he got questions like, how dare you redact these documents? publish the mall. i got in those that tend to be along the lines of, how dare you? you're putting lives at risk. the arrogance. i should say that that was in the first days. the opinion even doubt a bit as people read the articles -- dipping and evened out. gues>> it felt as though "the nw york times" was caught between a rock and a hard place. you were showing too little of what you could do. you're being too establishment. then fox said this wasn't anti-

american act. >> we lived between a rock and a hard place. >> and it did not in any softer. >> it did not get easier. there is a resurgence of e-mails blog comments and twitter and tweets since we released this e- book. we're still getting -- i'm still getting messages from people who think i am unpatriotic, treasonous son of a and i'm getting some from people who think that julian assange is the messiah and how did -- why don't treat him as such? >> we do not have anyone here from the state department. could shoot frame some of the issues for us legally -- could you frame for us some issues of

the will was going on at this point, do you think? >> there was a lot of -- i have talked to a few people in government. there was a lot of crosscutting with political and legal considerations for the government to figure out what to do. this kind of happened over a long pull into of time. everybody knew this was coming and did not take steps until the summer. a firm of steps, at least. the problem was -- affirmative steps, please. there was no plot to response they could make to stop this. there was no feasible military response to make. no political response to make. the only tool the government was left was was some kind of legal response. there was pressure to do something about this. right now the justice department is considering bringing some type of prosecution against assange. the problem is there is enormous legal hurdles.

one set of rules is how you get him to the united states. it will be a very difficult extradition proceeding. a lot of other problems. it is not clear that you could get him to the united states. once he gets here, it is not clear there could be a prosecution. the laws governing the dissemination of publication of classified information for people not inside the government are extremely vague and almost 100 years old. they have never ever been enforced against a journalist, a member of the media, or even a third party who happens to come into possession of classified information outside the government. the justice department has lot legal hurdles. it is very difficult to imagine a theory that would allow them to prosecute assange that would

not also sweep by those journalists. assange is very similar in soliciting information if that is what he did. those are the legal issues. then there are political issues on top of that. >> how badly do think people in the department of justice -- what are the tensions? >> my sense is there is political pressure from the top, whether from the white house, i do not know. it is very hard precisely because of the extreme difficulties if winning prosecution and of the difficulties distinguishing american journalists from their jobs, it is a very momentous step to take to bring this prosecution. i imagine the career lawyers -- the department of justice has a long tradition of restraint against journalists.

i imagine there's a great deal of discussion about the serious implications of going after someone like assange because of the implications for the first amendment to the press generally. if the government tries and fails, -- maybe that is the solution. i imagine some people are thinking we're under all this pressure to do something. if the accord says we cannot do something, it is not our fault. >> if you're a betting man, which is say the prosecution will be brought t three? >> i think it will be brought by did not think it will succeed. >> julian assange -- we haven't

talked about the ruptured relationships. you and "the new york times" found out about the sun's pretty quickly. >> we got in is dachau's earlier them alan. -- we got in his dog house earlier than alan. >> you ran a piece on the front page about a senssange. >> is certainly seemed odd to him. i have never met julian assange in person. we have had a number of phone conversations. the first we had -- all that involved his grievances against "the new york times."

the first one came after the afghanistan war lords. we made a point of not leaking to the wikileaks website. readers are intelligent enough to find the wikileaks web site without our help. it was entirely a symbolic gesture on our part. we did it because assange had made it clear that they do not intend to read bdact the documents. they contained the name of people who let answered questions. their names appeared innocently enough in these warlo logs. their lives were at risk. we at "guardian" were careful to redact the names of people who

have been killed or thrown in jail if their names would have become public. assange was not only reluctant to do that sort of redaction, he, according to this interesting book, told reporters that there were informants. they had it coming. >> let's talk about the profile. you have said that -- it was pretty personal. you went on record as saying that was a routine way to cover this kind of -- to do not return to treat someone who is a source of a story in that way a. has "the new york times" the net before -- done that before? guest>> it felt routine at the .

there were cries in distressed about what assange was handled. that seemed to be something that would be included on a profile of this man who had acquired a large profile. we reported on the dissension within the ranks of wikileaks and the unhappiness of some members of wikileaks over their initial refusal to redact the comments about his management style and so on. he has called it a smear and a hatchet job. i don't think it was those things at all. we did not say, he is our source and we will go easy on him. >> you had a relationship with him through alan. was that something of a relief, or was it a frustration? >> at times it was both. at different times, it was a

relief and a problem, particularly when started to become visibly agitated at the times -- at "the times" over the decision not to link. he took offense of a profile we wrote about bradley manning and subsequently his anguish over the profile that was written on our front page. i propose to come over and meet with him and sit down and have dinner. i just thought, there is something known in the trade as source maintenance and involves a certain amount of -- >> dinner. [laughter] >> dinner and beverages and conversation. you try to explain what you do what the you do and they explain why they do things the way they do. >> you maintained a relationship

with wikileaks after "the times" had been cut. you enraged them by insisting on supplying or contain to supply information to "the new york times." how did your split with wikileaks as your clobbers happen? >> there were two problems. one is about the nature of what julian assange was. he is a source -- is he a source? it seems to me he is probably not a source. he is a new breed of intermediary or on a spur nor or activists. >> or journalist. >> or journalist recalls himself editor in chief, which is probably a smart thing to do. he is many things.

and he wears different hats at different times. he is building a wikileaks brand. good luck to them. part of that says leak stuff to me, not to those mainstream media people who you cannot trust. our interests are not completely aligned. i think this business of him being a source when he chooses to be and saying, i need protection as a source, is a bit problematic. the second problem for us was -- the second general problem is the problem of communication. at a certain point, he just disappeared. we know he was living a life in some uffolk. we cannot bring them out or we

could not meet him. it would news e-mail -- he would not use e-mail. he would pop a points -- he would pop up at points. as the story i am about to tell, that was a source of channel communications. in normal circumstances, a lot of these misunderstandings would not have happened. i even wrote julian a letter and posted it to suffolk on paper to try and sort of have a conversation. normally on occasions where we all sat down face to face, he might begin angry. but normally by the end we would

be fine. so there was communication was the nature of the beast. who is the proof of how many hats is wearing -- who is takinhe? how many hats is he wearing? there was cooperation over the documents. julian was wrongly imprisoned. communication was almost impossible. somebody sent nick davis, the original report, the information about the sec's charges. ethical dilemma. do you say, he is our source, we should not write about this because we have to protect him to free that seems be a tenable situation. the women in the sex charge

case, not that there have been charges, but the sec's accusation case -- but the sec's accusation case were rubbish on the internet. -- but the siex accusation case were rubbish on the internet. there was no evidence. i don't believe that to be the case. we thought it was about time and we had an obligation to set out in the public to make what we knew. that is what we do. we went to his lawyers and said, we are intending. he said, give us a couple days. 5:00 on friday. i will come back to. -- i will come back to you. 5:00 came and at the moment, julian felt very cross with us.

i think felt a breach of trust. it was a unique set of circumstances. >> julian assange is not -- he doesn't have the luxury of your investigative journalist. he doesn't have the organization to skill that you have behind him. his life is altered forever now. you both have published books, and e-book any paper book this week, which kind of capitalize on your knowledge of him. do not feel the duty of care? it made the case saying -- >> he is being paid a million pounds to write a book. he has to pervert the ability to say -- he has the perfect ability to say what he wants to say.

he is not backward in coming forward and saying what he says. we were both sleazy news organizations. >> you both did say he smelled and was wearing dirty socks. >> in as much as he is a source and a partner in this collaboration -- if this ever came to court, i would side with them. in terms of defending him. and in respect of what he did. he has done some stuff on his own website that i'm not sure i would have done. there is no need to defend that. the joint exercise complete shoulder to shoulder. i have great admiration for him

and respect of the stuff he has done. the swedish sex stuff has nothing to do with that at all. >> would you be standing shoulder to shoulder with wikileaks? >> i am not a lawyer. probably "the times" lawyers would prefer i do not declare in a court of law. i agree with what jack said earlier. it is hard to conceive of a prosecution of julian assange the wooden structure of the law in a way that would be applicable to us. whatever one thinks of julian assange, american journalists and other journalists should feel a sense of alarm that tends to punish assange for doing essentially what journalists do.

any use of the law to decriminalize the use of public secret. >> on a point, you are clear that there was no difference between journalists and julian assange, which is something you disagreed with in the past. >> not in terms of the law. i am not a lawyer. so we're clear, i have said on several occasions that we should be humble about who gets to call themselves a journalist. we do not pass out membership cards to that for turner occurred if it wants to call himself that, that is fine. i don't think of him as a journalist in the form that we practice it. in terms of his rights to be protected for publishing secrets, i think we do stand alongside him. >> you have been on the end of inquiries from journalists at

"the new york times." >> wikileaks is quite different from "the new york times." the job that assange and wikileaks thinks he is performing is functionally identical to what national security reporters do every day. they try to get them to toe classified things. and so that is part of this very complicated and strange game we have an america where government tries to play the game of keeping its secrets and punishing its people. but the press has the right to go after this information. it is a game that plays out every day in washington, d.c. i did not see help a reporter is different from bill's

journalists. >> can we talk more about the overall impact of the cables and the story. we have heard -- we have had this debate in the past weeks and months. how significant is it in terms of the impact of these stories and also in terms of the impact is having on journalists to visit i know i heard you say that it has and turned to journalism on its head. it seems to of given it a nasty shake. >> yes. journalism has been transformed in the past few years. there has been a question about that. migration of the audience and the revenues to the internet have changed our business model. they have accelerated the speed of everything. it has eroded significantly

privacy and the secrecy. all that happened before wikileaks came on the scene. they sort of our a representative of a trend that is in journalism. they did not initiate it. they are not the first manifestation of it. >> how has it made you think the things that perhaps "the new york times" don't have to think about before. has it changed the way you do your job? if you are going to be using the web to store large amounts of the data or are carved style -- archive files, this is commercial space. if an amazon decides it doesn't want you have the space, if sometimes negotiating the right technical skills within the organization to redact and sort

the data. are you treating this as an anomaly? >> i think it is a difference in scale. we have redacted documents before. we have stored documents before. we worry about the security of documents stored electronically stored before. never on this scale. never has this kind of archive been delivered at once. i think it probably accelerated our development of the skills to handle large amounts of data. there are few people who are all lot smarter about how to create a searchable database, how to protect it, and how to search it in a constructive way. it has been a real education in

that respect. >> do you feel it has been -- journal doesn't -- journalism has been changed? it is had a bigger impact on "the guardian." >> the good thing of the mainstream medium -- it has the skills that it has and that is valuable. the store would have had a fraction of the impact. reporters going for and finding the story on trees winds to detect. they had to be found. there was an awful lot of experts from people and people who could find it. from russia, and from china.

experts on climate change. it took a lot -- julian assange has said that the bill -- the business of verifying has been a tremendous affirmation of old media skills. on the technological front, it has been a real challenge and a wake-up call. the business of making whistleblowing safe, i think, is something we have not given enough thought to. we don't have enough expertise in. in an age for everything has a digital fingerprint. we're not talking enough about. the challenge of organizations like wikileaks about the nature of transparency is a challenge to us. it has made us think about -- and to government. we would like to see an academic

institution the way the sky has not fallen end. the biggest exercise in transparency that any of us has known. i think there might be important. the third bit is the publishing bit. analyzing the document. i think there are huge legal and technological and future of journalism questions. we want to get down to the business of receiving the documents and publishing them. chilly is erecting a whole philosophy. we're going -- we will show you the documents and there is something in that. and also the legal challenges,

open leaks -- they do not want money but they want server capacity. smashed all this information into millions of atomic particles, to use a technical term. >> tiny pieces. >> we do not know the legal implications and whether it it is a good idea or a bad idea. >> there is a huge issue. how does this impact on the future of the internet? how we should think about -- the freedom of the press in that context? >> i tend to agree with bill that this is more of an evolution. the last 10 years, this is the culmination of the

digitalization of information. the fact that the cost of copying and distributing information is near zero. this is led to a dynamic where secret stuff has been flowing out of the government for a lot in an unprecedented way in the past 10 years. i do think that the keep innovation here is the kind of technological empowerment of the whistle-blower. and i think that while these documents, there are so many of them and so many people involved in them. there is a debate about how harmful they have been at all. they are just secret. they're not top-secret. these and not intelligence documents. and so i think over -- that this event will seem less significant overtime. it will be seen as part of a larger continuing.

the great difficulty the government has been keeping secrets. there will be an arms race between the government and the media, and indeed it will transform itself. "the new york times" -- i have predicted all these institutions will build these types of capacities. there will be at armories with the government. that will be the dynamic. i think the government will largely lose that arms race. >> you have equated as saying you were thinking about transparency and the damages which is a kind of mini- wikileaks. what is the implications of that prove it seems there is some relief in having someone as a technically adept as julian assange to take delivery of these things. how can you be sure as editors that you can honestly say that

you are sick -- that your site to secure? >> that is a complication in whether you want to open up the kind of drop box of your own. calling it the e-zpass lanes for whistle-blowers. we have been looking at this for a while. technically, it is not that hard. there are some legal questions. if something comes in over the transom and it is anonymous, how did you vet it? that is why -- we're not it decided to go ahead with this project. but we may. >> there will be 1 million wikileaks regarding the wikileak. >> i suppose we have been for

centuries. we're seeing documents from 1821. i think there is gone to the competition between us and the sort of open leaks wikileaks style of operation. we're not having to see how difficult it is. der spiegel want to build their own drop box system. if you speak to daniel, he says it is a bit out of the way you guys think. he is offering to build it for us and to create little male box which he says would come straight to us. there are all kinds of complications. you have this document that has a nno metadata. there are real problems whatever way you turn. >> teenagers complication

between traditional media and these new intermediaries. there is competition between national intelligence services. they are in the service of trying to uncover secrets. i think it will have a dynamic on that as well. that is what all our intelligence services try to do, uncover secrets from other country that will further our national security. they would prefer to do it and know about alone. and now have competition competition that will shape it in ways and alter the intelligence services and think about spying. >> if you seek wikileaks carrying a mission and carrying it out for the better, then the press, people who feel the mainstream media is not serving

very well in the past 10 years in terms of financial collapse, wars, illegal, and otherwise. isn't this just a wider problem than who has a secure server? how do you reinvent yourself for that part of the audience? >> it is a useful thought experiment. what if nick davis had not sought out julian assange? suppose decided to publish. i think the store would have very little impact. the average member of the public logging into the database would have found what we found. a massive impenetrable data. the number of people who would have searched the information or found anything of value would have been tiny appeared to would have been intelligence services and people who would have been

keenly interested. but it would have almost no political impact. that is what i say that we should not be too brave and about standing up for what traditional journalism has done in this case. it has found the stories and has given a huge currency. it has done so in an entirely safe way. no one has been able to prove anyone has come to any harm. is because of people working for bill and thuandus and have workd exhaustively. >> i'm not so sure that it comes up quite the same way. i agree with you that the public was well served and wikileaks was well served by having mainstream news organizations give a professional attention, highlighting what was important and treated responsibll and ay

in wide circulation. if the material had just been dumped on the website without being given advance to news organizations, some very interesting people would have gone into it. we are in the era of outsourcing. most crops include people with a lot of expertise. -- most crowds include people with a lot of expertise. i think you with had a cacophony. would have found things using it for a different, competing aims. in mid to attack the government, attacked the policy, to defend a policy, to defend a government. there would have probably been a great deal of confusion. i don't think it would have gone unnoticed or even on mind --

unmined. >> what would have resulted -- it would have had the saying -- the same impact as publishing around the world. we did an interesting exercise, having found the stories we could find. does anybody think we're missing stuff puts it would be searching for? give us some search terms and dates. had about 3000 -- we had about 3000 and we did look at. the child to disappeared in portugal. there was quite an interesting story there. rick conspiracy theorist in the world asked us to check out the conspiracy.

it produced some material. but it did not produce the sort of gems that i thought were -- >> to wonder if somebody would have teased out the cables in tunisia and if it would have had the same impact. >> certainly you would have pretty you wouldn't have just let these amazing documents to the bloggers. we might not have put as many intense resources as it did have access to them and the first shot at them, but i'm sure you would have had reporters plowing through them. we still would of gone salience. as many stores would have been revealed. i think it would of had a large impact. you would have been all over this. >> we would have been in the feeding frenzy. >> we mentions there was a

collective decision made on december 22 to bring down the curtains. what did you mean by that? >> urgently we decided we would carry out in the first week of january. we had anxieties about these documents leaking. >> ken is an understandable anxiety. -- that is an understandable anxiety. >> it was it -- there was a strange man in belarus who was selling the documents. he turned up in an newspaper in normandy. there was a sense of these documents were out and about. i thought at the moment that we were happy with what we've done.

it had been a good exercise and cooperation. but anything could happen over the next month. why don't we just make a clean announcement that we're now in in our exclusive license to put julian. he is now free to do what he wants with them. i'm glad we did that. i'm glad we put it on the record. i was surprised to read on sunday in "the telegraph," that he would have kicked us out. >> this is the u.k. paper that is now pick up the relationship. >> we had other news organizations. i think that is good. good luck to them. as long as they behave a similar kind of framework as we did.

this will undoubtedly find things that we did not find. i think we all had anxieties about the point where we were apparently be the exclusive partners. now it would start leaking out around the world. >> this was a footnote a point of clarification. it doesn't mean that we have stopped, nor has "the guardian" stop. we have three-quarters of a million documents. there is a small fraction of them that have been read a small fraction that have been published. events -- >> an amazing resource for years to come. you can go back into the documents. what do we know about them? >> when you say we have them,

this is something that i think people are not entirely clear on. you still love access to the entire cache of data. this is under collective service. you feel as if you have gone as far as you can in turning up interest on things. >> i will not say the obvious things, the things that occurred to us after we all brainstorm a one would be interesting to search for. that is the mayor we handled the documents, search for a subject, term, person, but there were a lot of things that we did not search for. prior to last week, we would not have thought to search for suleiman in egypt, but of course, it pops up. now we have this resource that we can go to to see if there is something that we ought to know about that is otherwise not obtainable.

>> you had mentioned that some of these stories that emerged may have had some affect on to nepa. -- tunisia. >> the wikileaks documents it clearly not start the rising, but the documents were all over the place in social networks, feeling the anger about the kind of high living at the royal late -- elite. to the extent that egypt and aspired to be sure, wikileaks may have had a role in the inspiring that as well. >> jack, we talked about possible prosecution, but what are the things that the u.s. government is thinking about? they had been warning that this may happen, that this cash of data would be coming for some time. >> there has been, especially

since the more logs had been published last summer. it is a problem inside the government because the 9/11 commission report criticized the government for not sharing information enough inside the government, and that was a reason why they say it happened. we cannot connect the dots. so the government is in this exercise of sharing information more widely, but that has the result of more people seeing it, access to it, and able to leak out. so the u.s. is trying to beef up its security to find the right kind of trade-off between sharing information inside the government, worried about excessive sharing that may lead to leaking. >> who we have a roving microphone is in the audience. if you have a question, please hold your hand up. the rule is transparency here.

if you could say who you are and where you are from. and please try to frame it as a question. >> i am a former british diplomat. i have been reading a lot of the cables at the wikileaks site itself, which has been interesting. i wanted to ask about that editorial decision about what not to publish, particularly, not so much the criteria of harm to individuals, but the possible political consequence of certain cables, which i believe are extraordinarily significant. there is one instance where "the guardian reported and "the new york times" did not that the u.s. was conducting secret surveillance of lebanon at the request of the lebanese government. in lebanese terms, that is an extraordinary revelation, not the least u.s. surveillance of

hezbollah positions, undoubtably, shared with israel. so this is a toxic relationship witin libya terms. "the new york times" decided not to talk about that cable, but "the guardian" did. i could be wrong about that, but could you explain the reasoning behind a political consequence of these cables? >> you actually went to the state department and showed them the material, is that right? >> we showed them the cables, not the articles. on the lebanese, we did not not decide to run it. it did not come to our attention. collaboration between the times and "the guardian" were not at a place where we were showing each other what we were going to write about.

the mechanics of it had evolved. on military dispatches, we had little involvement with the government because they did not want much. their reaction was, in dealing, engaging us with this would imply an endorsement of what we had done. the state department took a different tack, although they were furious with us for the fact that these documents were out there. the procedure we settled on with them is a couple of days before we were planning to publish an article on x, we would send them the cables that we intended to draw on for the article and gave them the opportunity to say you should not publish this portion of the cable.

in some cases, we decided they were right, in some cases, we disagree with them. the easy ones, of course, were the names of academics, human rights advocates, and so on. although, names of high-level people on several occasions they wanted us to reject because of the potential for diplomatic embarrassment. in those cases, we almost invariably declined. >> you presumably had little contact with the u.k. government. >> i think bill was in a much harder position than we were. it was his country's secrets, not ours. there were difficult areas. lebanon was one, yemen was another.

we were having discussions and regular conference calls and there were people divided about yemen. the case there was, you are playing with fire if you play with this stuff. yemen was the front line with the islamist insurgency and you have a president who has been caught saying my country is your country. if you publish this, he could fall and the whole deck of cards. in the end, that is a political embarrassment issue, not a security issue. simultaneously, we did a story about how allegedly $9 billion was taken off shore. today, he has decided that he is not going to contest the next election.

it is a useful thought experiment, if it turns out that wikileaks played a part in that. it is up to the historians to decide if that was a good or bad thing. >> on the political point of process, you did not show the cable the to the to the state department, but you did speak to them. did you come to america? >> no, we played that role on behalf of the european papers. on a few occasions, the yen and one was the most robust discussion we had with ourselves. the state department was quite firm and its belief that publishing that cable would present serious difficulties. >> was there any point at which you were trying to influence each other? >> sometimes we just agreed to

differ. there will be dekes who will someday pore over this and by the differences, find that the "the new york times" did different things from us, and for that, we were taking independent judgment. >> this is a question along similar lines for mr. rusbridger. there was a cable about the visit to the fin very mosque. i wonder why that cable was pulled? more generally, what goes into "the guardian's"decisionmaking when it has to reclassify cables that had evidently been published on the website? >> you believe there was a cable

called visit to the -- >> it it had appeared on the website in 2007. if you go to the portal on the guardian website, it is still listed under cable that originated from the engine -- agency, but you get a 404 when you click on it. from what i understand, "the guardian" has declined any inquiry to have it. >> the allegation is, if you click on the cable now on the website, you get a 404. when people make an inquiry of getting a copy of the cable there has been a negative answer. >> i generally do not know -- genuinely do not know anything about it. i can give you my e-mail. >> i hesitate to say that it is just a broken leg.

"the guardian" has one of the best web sites in the world. [laughter] >> mark gilman, "time" magazine. would you like to mention more about the peace in the magazine about your hacking of your e- mail account? for any of you, do any of you down that the mainstream media partners of wikileaks are probably the juiciest target for foreign services and wanted to get the whole wikileaks drove, including a 99% that has yet to be published? >> how bad they were you hacked. >> i do not want to say very much about this because we are still in the process of investigating it, and it is extremely complex. it involves getting access to places where it is difficult to

get access to. we have a computer of forensic specialist who is looking at these things. there were three individuals, one in the u.s., one in the u.k., one in germany, who all had virtually identical eruptions, should we say, of their e-mail accounts. they were all the same e-mail server. the forensics expert who looked at our said that it was clearly have to. but they did not leave any fingerprints readily available, so we are taking it to the next level. >> the entire contents of this book appeared on the amazon website friday evening.

when i got through to customer service and ask them to take it down -- although it was the american edition, they say it had been uploaded from the u.k. we noticed there were lots of bits missing, and generally the parts that were unfavorable to julian assange. [laughter] as though somebody had gone through the trouble of hacking the book and posted it on amazon in its redacted form. i make no complaints -- [laughter] >> but you also went to some lengths to write letters. you went to some lengths to protect communications, including techniques that you had learned from "the wire"/ ? >> you are humiliating me now. >> it is just a journalistic

inquiry. >> we had no knowledge -- it seemed to be reasonable to be paranoid, so we went out and pulled out a lot of burners. we then made the elementary mistake of ringing existing numbers from the burners, so we were total amateurs. >> jack, you have been in government. is it bad for them to be paranoid about this electronic activity? >> there is a much larger thing going on and wikileaks, cyber security. this is the serious problem. what is happening, in this context, like every other context in the digital world, surveillance is become a decentralized and governments

are being hacked by other governments, by large criminal organizations. this is part of a much larger problem. i am sure organization like "the guardian" and "the times" are dealing with. it is hard to detect and not terribly hard to accomplish. >> but not necessarily done by the u.s. government? >> the national security agency does something. i am not sure what it does. [laughter] >> i tried to explain that to you a few years ago. >> i wanted to get the panelists to respond to what is the current state of play with the government acting through various officials and agencies to intimidate people who act in the commercial space to provide services that benefit organizations like wikileaks.

particularly, do you see any sort of the facto infringement on the first amended rights? >> this was responding to the idea that pressure is brought to bear on commercial players as well as aiding -- this is about paypal, visa. >> i do not know if it was political pressure. i think they were more worried about their business and the government cracking down. >> its seemed to me that was a worrying trend that came out of this. realizing what we thought was the free space of the internet is actual largely privatized. if you think about it, it is obvious. >> the week after that

happened, basically, if you are going to tackle assange, take him to court, do not try to destroy him by cutting of his finances. i do suspect there was political pressure there. these companies were bidding cravenly. i do not want to see him prosecuted, but i would rather we have a court case, that it was done openly through legal means. >> this is the way the government controls the internet. the government puts pressure on the google and visa's of the world. this happens all the time today in all sorts of the contexts. and when the government want to get at the offshore arm of the

internet, they cannot get at the actual offshore, but they go to the intermediary. it is not new or unlawful. there is lots of pressure that the government can bring to bear. are we sure it was the government that was pressuring these institutions to cut support off? >> it was on the record -- but it is a question whether or not joe lieberman's office qualifies as political pressure. >> i do not consider that political pressure. to the extent it counts as political pressure is only that he is stirring up the customers. >> this question is regarding the implications of the future of journalism. it was remarked at the beginning that this was a unique collaboration between two large publications. i believe "the guardian" is also

collaborating in its coverage of egypt. bill mentioned, even had these documents not gone to these organizations, there were a lot of people who wouldn't analyzed and raised questions about them the difference of this was one of the scale. what do you all think -- is there a place -- what will have to happen in the way that we handle news and a massive bomb'' of data? as news desks are shrinking around the world, will there be a and additional tier of analysis who collaborate with newsrooms in new and different ways to make getting these stories out more feasible? should we expect more of this collaboration to keep news agencies relevant in the future at this fair? >> you are talking about this player of collaboration, but actually, this collaboration on

wikileaks was not the enormously mutual. do you see doing differently in the future, a blend of the two? >> julian assange is doing something interesting next with these documents. whee have come in a sense, have moved out of the way. otherwise, we would do this. -- we have, in a sense, have moved out of the way. we are partner with news organizations around the world to find that second layer of information. we had indian journalists go through the 3000 indian cables. basically, 30 frontpage splashes, which could have enormous impact in india.

so there are 26 stories just about in the way to be published. i think julian's idea to find th"the guardians" and other newspapers around the world is an interesting way to do it. the ripples of this are unpredictable. it is quite an intelligent approach to do it. it handles this problem that there are genuine problems in releasing all this data, which may not be true with other data sets. >> on the question of collaboration, as a point of historical interest, this was neither the first nor largest collaboration i was involved in. in 2000, a number of news organizations got together to recount the votes in florida after the contest the florida primary.

>> how did that go? [laughter] >> well, if you counted things the way the florida courts want them counted, then bush won. if you counted them the way that gore said he originally wanted them counted, which is every vote counts, then gore won. anyway -- >> there are a few questions down here. if we could start at the back. >> steve peterson. school of international and public interest. alan rusbridger, you mentioned how the cables with two other newspapers in the end, and how your relationship with julian assange went that way. what do you know -- you

mentioned boston, other newspapers in europe. he mentioned somebody from belarus. do you actually believe they bought these cables? >> do you know how these leaks happen to other papers? any suspicion? >> early on, going back to september, october -- it is in the book, we have written about it. there is a journalist called heather brooks, an american citizen in london. she got a hold of the documents entirely separately. we had a dig -- big discussion about whether or not this was a chilean -- julian lee king himself, but the control of the leaking of these documents is not tied down. i have no idea how belarus

newspapers got them. julian says he has no idea how the norwegian papers got it. we have a fairly good idea to rewrite it in the book. there is this pretty unsavory holocaust denier that has been marketing the documents in russia, belarus. somehow, these materials are leaking. i do not expect bill does. that is why we started feeling increasingly anxious toward the end of december. >> in the case of the pentagon papers, gravell's dumping of that in the congress was when helped break open. but we have a different situation here with literally

millions of pages of documents. i was wondering if julian assange, in your interacting with him -- you have the hacking culture meeting mainstream media. why didn't he simply put all these documents on the website? the hacker culture, in its philosophy, always talks about openness. if he could share some of your interactions with him on the political philosophy he espouses. i am curious to hear what you learned. >> obviously, you have never met the charming nick davies. i believe that was his intention until an intrepid reporter from "the guardian" persuaded him it was better to do it through the mainstream media. >> the whole issue of analyzing these documents, which is left

to a small circle of people, not the public at large. when you look at the hacker philosophy, they are anarchists. it seems a contradiction that but all documents are not left open to the people for the lead world to look at, rather than carry picked. >> my guess is during the course of this collaboration, he moved to a position close to ours, where he thought actually the fallout from publishing these documents -- partly, it is a political question for him. he has moved to being an underground figure to someone who wants to make wikileaks a powerful medium ground in the future. by the time we came to september, he was conscious about the political positioning of wikileaks and i think he brought in the idea that it

would be enormously damaging to wikileaks. you would be a pariah if you published the stuff and people started getting killed. >> the warlocks came out and the story was as much about him in danger of people as it did what he uncovered. >> it was not just mainstream media or governments saying that. it was groups like amnesty international, which julian probably sees as within his demographic. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> now i really feel the pressure. "newsweek" in response to the whole wikileaks episode, used the opportunity to pick and choose information that would support the obama administration. in fact, they said it made america look pretty good.

my question to both of the journalists here is, was there any editorial pressure placed on either of you to make sure that what you published was consistent with your editorial positions? if not, can you give an example of where you published information that was inconsistent with the editorial positions of both of your publications? >> an interesting question. were you ever pressured? >> where do you think the pressure may have come from? >> from the editorial side of your paper. >> he is the editorial side of the paper. >> it is not a democracy. >> bill?

>> the question sort of misunderstands the mentality of the american newspaper, at least "the times." it would never occur to me to ask whether something we were publishing contradicted something that the people in the editorial page had written. they answer to a different boss. i speak to them in the elevator, some are friends, but we do not coordinate or collaborate. i am usually unaware whether or not something that we rencontre dix the editorial pages opinion. >> i understand the wall between the editorial side and news side of "the times." my question is, did you end up publishing stories that seemed to undermine, contradict, in

retrospect, some of the editorial positions that "the times" had taken? >> i honestly do not know. we had published dozens and dozens of stories. i would not be surprised if some of the contradicted the views on the editorial page. the editorial page is not my domain. i do not keep a card catalog in my head of what their opinions are. >> in terms of "the guardian" i think there were some readers who were rubbing their hands, thinking that this would reveal america, strip back and all of its appalling hypocrisy. there was not much of that in the end. initial conversations -- we had one conversation with the state

department. they made a point to say this is difficult -- different than the pentagon papers because you are not dealing with the equity of the american people. that was not the only justification. we were unveiling inequities in russian, chinese, and time governments. we did right by saying that american policy works pretty well here. intelligence people right beautifully, in some instances. they report intelligently on the part of the world. that might have been thought to the contrary to what a certain 1960's mindset leftist to might be expected to read "the guardian" may have been expecting. >> i am really sorry. we have run out of time.

do more reporting on bradley manning? [applause] and the point of his restraint is -- that is actually a good point to end on. >> his is the one voice so far that we have not heard. we all ought to suspend judgment -- to the extent that he will be called to account this, it is important we hear what he thought he was doing. >> [inaudible] >> and the conditions in which he is being held. >> ok, i just want to thank our panelists for being so frank and open. the audience for being so open and interactive thank you very

much, indeed [applause] . [applause] "the new york times" has been generous enough to host a reception in the back. if anyone is thirsty enough -- i know i am -- please join us. and you may even get a glimpse of the books that allen promised. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> we will have more on wikileaks in a moment and their effects on foreign policy and diplomacy. an update on the unrest in libya. the u.s. is condemning the violence there, calling it appalling. jay carney calling on the libyan government to respect the universal rights of its citizens and allow peaceful protest to take place. this is libyan leader qaddafi calling on supporters to take

back the streets. he said he would die as a martyr. meanwhile, the un is said to me this afternoon. the security council is scheduling a meeting at 3:00 this afternoon to hear a briefing from the un secretariat. the foreign secretary of the u.k. says that military ships are being deployed in a potential evacuation effort. we are likely to hear more about libya from the state department at 1:00. we will have that for you on c- span. it is also possible the president may comment on libya, although he is in cleveland today to talk about small business. holding a forum they're called winning the future. joining him are the commerce secretary, treasury secretary, and others. now back to the issue of wikileaks. in this discussion, they focus on the effects of the leaks on the idea of foreign policy.

we are going to talk about wikileaks. it is clear to me, and many of us, that wikileaks has really sent shock waves through the foreign policy community and through the broader diplomatic community, here and abroad. it has engendered a lot of media attention, debate about whether to join us on is a hero or villain, and we continue to expect more. we know there is more coming from wikileaks. what is less clear, i believe, it is what the significance of wikileaks really is for american foreign policy and for the conduct of world politics

generally. that is what we're here to talk about today, to discuss the implications of wikileaks and to put it in some perspective and context. for example, secretary of defense robert gates called the consequences for american foreign policy of wikileaks "modest." the microphone is not amplify. it is just for c-span purposes. i will try to speak up. by contrast, peter king of new york called wikileaks a terrorist organization and a clear and present danger to the united states. so even within the government, there is a wide variety of views on how serious this is, what the implications are. so we are hopefully going to sort through that today. we have invited three experts talk about it. let me also mention today is the

first of two session we are going to do on this topic. on january 20, we are going to do another session. to date and time is to be announced. we have the former director of the voice of america. alongside him will be derek shearer, professor at occidental college. we will talk more about the public diplomacy aspects of this debate at that second session. let me now introduce today's speakers. each will say a few opening words, five minutes or so. i will pose questions, we will have a bit of a conversation, and then we will open up for questions. there is a microphone. you have to talk into the microphone, not for amplified, but for recording reasons.

keep your questions concise and on point here this will be broadcast on c-span, so we do not want long, rambling questions. so please wait for the microphone, most aboard in may. so to my right is dalia, a senior director at iran center for middle east policy. she has written about the arab region. she will actually speaks second. first is my colleague here at the ucla school of public affairs. a research fellow at the hoover institution and a faculty institute. amy is a former nsc national security staffer and a leading expert on national security. to her left is my colleague rob

trager. he is an expert on signals of international diplomacy. so we have three speakers on three different aspects of this wikileaks debate. again, we are going to run for 20, 30 minutes amongst us and then turn it over to you for questions. >> i want to thank all of you for coming out today. this is clearly a topic that is a moving target. it is a great opportunity for us to think again about how to make sense of the wikileaks era in which we live. i wanted to start off by trying to debunk a couple of months, talk about one big difference i see between wikileaks and mainstream media, and offer a few thoughts on what the potential implications of wikileaks could be. myth number one, which is important and often overlooked in the coverage of wikileaks, is the idea that these documents

that have been released are facts. documents are not facts. our colleague, former chancellor of ucla, has a wonderful saying. a cable or a memo is one person's perspective and it is usually designed to do one of three things, advocate a position, report information, and make the offer looks smart. not necessarily in that order. -- author look smart. so a hypothetical cable says that the u.s. official has met with a foreign official and that foreign official believes the u.s. should attack a third country. that does not mean that that port official's government actually holds the position that the u.s. should attack that country. it could be that that is the case. but it could be that that is actually the minority view in the foreign government. the official is trying to convince the united states that it is, in fact, the majority

view. maybe the fourth official is posturing to get something from the united states. maybe the u.s. official misunderstood the conversation. maybe a u.s. official had his or her own -- agenda and is a meeting -- the agenda and is omitting other policy agendas. or maybe the entire cable has been taken over by events. things have changed and the conversation is so outdated, it is not the position of that official any more, that the u.s. should attack that country. so we need to be cautious and careful, even it of press reporting wikileaks documents, and not treat them as ironclad fact. they are not. that is myth no. 1. i think the upshot here is, in some ways, no wikileaks data dump actually six years --

obscures' some realities of american foreign policy, as many as people feel the clarify spirit so some caution and how we deal with these documents. myth no. 2 is really propagated by julie assange and wikileaks. secrecy is always bad and transparency is always good. i am a researcher that rights and publishes open source information about the intelligence community, so i am a fan about transparency and openness in government. i have a great first amendment lawyer and i work hard because i think it is important to try to make public some of the critical deficiencies of our secret agencies. but that said, there is a limit to transparency. there is a careful balancing that has to be done between the interests of protecting information to guard national security, and the interest of making that information known to promote the public interest or transparency.

secrecy, in fact, has been used since the earliest days of the republic. george washington was a favorite spymaster. he favored invisible ink. he got the first secret funds offered by congress and secrecy has been a part of the american government since our earliest days. but i think there is a sense -- and wikileaks is tapping into this -- an american culture, we are skeptical, rightly so, of secrecy and a democratic system. harry truman was worried about creating the central intelligence agency, about the possibility of creating an american gestapo. so we are naturally, in our dna, wary of secrecy in and democratic society. it is that wariness that wikileaks is stepping into. which leads me to the big difference between wikileaks and mainstream media. this is a policy matter, not a

legal matter. i cannot speak to the particular legal issues. in my view, when you think about "the new york times," "the washington post" -- a traditional american media, they are owned by those to explicitly consider the balance between keeping something secret and publishing it in the newspaper for everyone to see, and they take that responsibility quite seriously. transparency is important, but transparency has limits because they are considering national security interests at the same time they are trying to publish information. wikileaks, by contrast, is run by an australian who considers himself more of an art -- an artist. his interest is in exposing the united states. and his view is that transparency should have no limits. that is what he thinks as the noble enterprise of wikileaks. there is very little balancing

in what wikileaks is doing. think about what is in the interest of american national security to reveal or withhold. just to give you some historical example. as many of you know, in the cuban missile crisis, "the washington post" and "the new york times" got wind that something was afoot in cuba. kennedy's mike asked both papers to hold a publication about what was happening on the island of cuba for those critical 13 days so that the president and his closest advisers could deliberate in secret. i think it is fair to say that the historical consensus is that those 13 days lead to a much better decision making process and outcome and had that information been made public and kennedy been forced to act in the first few days of the crisis. in fact, the transcript showed if he had been forced to make a decision the first day, the consensus was leaning toward an air strike, which would have

triggered thermonuclear war. so there is a pretty long history of balancing national security interests and transparency among the media. i do not see that in the wikileaks case. let me turn to a couple of occasions. to extend, we do not know yet how much potential harm there is from the release of these hundreds of thousands of documents. my panelists -- michael panelists may disagree with me. -- my co-panelists may disagree with me. secretary clinton argues it is quite serious in dade but secretary gates said that it is not such a big deal at all and countries will negotiate with us, because it is in their interest. whether or not they believe the secrecy will be maintained. so i think it is too soon to tell, in many respects. as we know, the cia has created

a task force to assess with potential implications of wikileaks releases could be. has the unfortunate acronym of the wtf task force. you cannot make that stuff up. but i will say, in the immediate term, it appears that the obama administration's reaction may be the most damaging aspect of the wikileaks episode so far in the near term. i say that for a couple of reasons. the first is, the possible prosecution of julian assange under the espionage act does open the door to opening other -- prosecuting other journalists. the second is the implication for intelligence. we have spent 10 years almost since 9/11 moving the

intelligence community from a culture that prizes need to know -- that hordes information, that does not like to share it -- and move that intelligence community to a culture that prizes need to share. responsibility to share. already, we can see a tamping down of sharing of information in a concern that maybe the pendulum has swung too far, and maybe the old days of warning and detection are where we need to back to go. to some extent, that is true. any to be much greater security protections in place. the risk of having it permission get out that is classified is a non-trivial matter. but there is a real danger that we will undo many of the good step that have been taken, difficult steps taken, to try to improve information-sharing across our 17 agency wide intelligence community.

finally, as you can tell from the u.s. government response, part of which was to shut down air force access, at least reported by the press, to news websites, and to recommend that those who seek government careers not linked to documents on-line, that our classification system itself is in great need of repair. the idea that you can have an airport that is not allowed to access that is available in the public domain so that a first year undergraduate has better intelligence about what is available than someone in our u.s. air force tells you that our classification system is a 20th-century classification system in a 21st century world. >> terrific. >> thank you for including me as the only non-ucla participant. it has been awhile since i have given a talk with students

sitting on the floor. thank you for indulging us. i am going to shift the focus more narrowly to the topic of the implications for u.s.- millie's policy. this has actually been one of the major areas where reporting on these leaks has focused on. speaking to what amy's myth #one referred to, one of the points i want to get across is the need for broader context. if you just look at the individual statement that are coming out of these reports, which are quite inflammatory, particularly about iran, u.s. diplomats, you miss the bigger picture and sometimes there is a tendency to take these reports and cables as fact. as amy made clear, that would be a real mistake, and i think, would potentially lead to basing our policies on incomplete and faulty premises.

we need to be careful about that. so what i want to do is talk about two things, one, the most misleading there to come out of these reports, and secondly, the damage this has done to u.s. diplomacy in the region. i do think it has been -- has significant undermine u.s. interests. in terms of the misleading part, the most misleading narrative coming out of these leaks is the notion that our united states arab ally in the region, saudi arabia, egypt, the rest of the gulf, are aligned in a unified front and would support a u.s. or israeli military attack on iran. this has been something that much of the reporting had suggested. the narrative goes something like, israel is not the only state in the region word about iran. in fact, some of the gulf states may be concerned more about iran and israel, implicitly putting

israel and arab states on the same side. that the peace process is no longer the major problem in the region. the major challenge deals with iran and its nuclear efforts. it may not be surprising, given this narrative, that the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, shortly after the reports came out, suggested some sense of vindication. we were telling you all along, israel is not the problem in the region. we are not the impediment to peace. the real problem is iran and everyone else thinks this. so this has led to an incomplete picture that needs to be corrected. neither the u.s. nor israelis should be complacent about this narrative that has started to solidify. i think this for several reasons. first, what arab diplomats may

say, especially to u.s. officials in closed rooms, is not always what these countries are going to do when push comes to shove. it is true, absolutely -- i am not trying to deny that arab states are incredibly -- sunni arab states, not iraq -- are incredibly alarmed and worried about iran and its infiltration in the region. they are worried not just about the iranian nuclear threat, per se, because they do not see it as a military threat. they look at iran as an ideological threat. a power that is challenging the legitimacy, influence, support to groups like hamas and hezbollah, which resonate with populations in the region, who tried to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of ruling regimes in the region. this is seen as the major threat of iran. since the 2003 iraq war, the way arabs look at it is that iran

has been the big winner. they are now not just a dominant player in their neighborhood iraq, their natural sphere of influence, but their reach expand all the way to the mediterranean, to gaza i, lebanon. this is a concern for regional countries. i am not too rigid trying to deny that these countries are not worried about the challenge. but i am suggesting, though, is that this picture is much more nuanced. these countries do not view iran in similar ways. the use about iran very not only across the region and within the gulf itself, for that matter, where you have states like saudi arabia, bahrain, sizable amount of shia populations, as well as much smaller states like oman, who have extensive political ties with the iranian regime.

so you have at their recent not just among governments, but also between governments and people. this relates a bit to what amy discussed, only getting the official view. you do not get the perspective of how the majority of people in this region, and how the media in this region are reporting the issue. and it is a different picture than the kind of reports that we might be reading in "the new york times." so there is great variety in terms of the response toward iran. there has never been a unified arab front against iran, and i would venture to predict -- i do not do predictions much -- but i do not believe there will be a unified arab front against iran. if the u.s. raises its policy based on this premise, we are going to be in trouble. number two, it is absolutely true that many arab regimes have great dislike of iran, not just because of traditional arab- persian divides, which are long

standing, but because of the trouble some actions the iranians have been engaging in. particularly in the last decade. but just because they do not like iran does not mean that they like us, and does not mean they are going to line up behind u.s. policies in lockstep with us. so that is another point of caution we need to draw from this episode. it is also important to remember there is tremendous resentment of the united states and its policies in the region. president obama or no president obama, public opinion ratings went slightly up. there was some optimism when he first came into office, that this would reverse course in u.s. policy. but if the look at regional polling, the anti-american sentiment is as strong, if not stronger than ever. hopes have been completely-and there is great disappointment with u.s. policy in the region. a real sense of frustration that nothing will enter change.

that is kind of the broader, mass sentiment in this region. so i thing we cannot underestimate that factor in how the region ultimately will respond to iran, including its leaders. finally, just because iran and israel are on the same side, in terms of their concerns about iran, does not mean the arab- israeli conflict is no longer an issue. we should not be taking this lesson out of this episode, which is what some people have started to suggest. it is true, in conversations, that some arab leaders may have with some american diplomats, the focus will often be about iran. this makes perfect sense when the u.s. is in the region, when our top officials are there every other week trying to ratchet up pressure on iran, on sanctions, u.n. resolutions, and so forth. but that does not mean that

conversation did not end by talking about the importance of the arab-israeli conflict. in my experience, we talk about iran quite a bit, but we also usually end the conversation by hearing a lot of concern about the need for the united states to focus on resolving the israeli-palestinian conflict. not because there is genuine concern about the welfare of the palestinians, but if for nothing else, for instrumental reasons. ultimately, folks in the region think, including its leaders, that if you do not address this conflict, this feeds into iranian propaganda and outreach to the arab streets. this feeds into growing iranian influence, rather than undermining it, especially in places like gaza and lebanon. finally, i want to conclude by emphasizing the damaging aspects, not only from this

meeting narrative coming out of this episode, but the damage it had done in terms of solidifying anti-american sentiment. the reporting in this region -- i refer to you as reporting. the reporting in this region has focused on how corrupt and authoritarian governments are completely subservient to u.s. interests. this is only reinforcing the vulnerability of regime that are important to us, egypt, jordan, saudi arabia. the narrative in the region, and conspiracy theories are often, and in this region, and a lot of the reporting has speculated that wikileaks was actually a conspiracy by the u.s. and israel to try to fomentintr intraarab disarray.

they point to the fact that there does not seem to be a lot of leaks about israel, and they use this as evidence to suggest a conspiracy. i am assuming we will have a whole panel to talk about on that. this way that the regional meeting and discussion that is developing which is emphasizing conspiracies and subservience of their leaderships to washington really reinforces this anti- american sentiment which is already so strong. i think this will make your leaders, as much as they might talk tough and private, very careful about over cooperation and alignment with the united states and the policies in this region. while these may not be democracies, these rulers are still accountable to these

populations and feel the pressure. i think this will put a significant constraint, more than had already existed, on u.s. diplomatic efforts in the region. >> thank you all for coming. i will offer some implications with disclosures of for the u.s. and for some other countries and for the international system. that sounds like a lot, but i will offer some brief thoughts. i must say that my thinking is evolving as i listen to my co- panelists here. and still find myself on the gates end of the clinton-its spectrum -- a clinton-gates spectrum. it is interesting to look at the coverage of wikileaks and the evolution of that coverage. initially, the coverage was,

well, this is an earthquake and u.s. diplomats were saying that the sky is absolutely falling and this will have dramatic effects on our ability to get things done. i think the coverage there has really shifted. the first thing i want to focus on is the actual content of the information conveyed by the documents. every morning, i've checked see the coverage on the wikileaks. it is not that there are not interesting things that have not been revealed, but most of what has come out has been even -- even the more seemingly sensational revelations have

been things that were either suspected or were really known by experts or by leaving just people with a deep knowledge of the regions concerned. for instance, we learned that the u.s. was responsible for some of the bombing in yemen. that the yemeni government had been taking credit for it. that was definitely suspicion already and i think many people believed that already to be the case. the fact that, even if we do not know for sure it is true, we now think that that is likely to be true. it was interesting to me. i did not know that because i have not focused directly on that question. but i think people, again, who are regional specialists did, on the whole, know that. it is not that there are not some very interesting things that have come out. sometimes we have learned a little bit maybe about how world leaders, some world leaders have

weighed different policy options before them. we may not have exactly realized and we still do not exactly know but maybe we know a little bit about how saudi arabia, for instance, weighs some of the policy items before, but it is not a sea change. it is not like we're discovering that they have views that we have absolutely no idea previously that they had appeared the content of the information to the communities who are already deeply engaged in the issues is really that substantial. on the other hand, i think there have been some positive aspects in terms of perception of the u.s. in the world. to be honest, i expected, especially following the initial

reporting and the coverage on the wikileaks website on itself -- i will just read to you in a bit. but i expected there would be more revelations that would be more damaging to the u.s. and would show the use doing one thing in public and another thing in private. for instance, on the wikileaks website, it says the following, "the cable shows the extent of the u.s. spying on its allies and inclined states. back when deals were supposedly neutral countries." there is a real targeting of the united states in concept here. there, i am not sure that wikileaks has really hit that target. yes, it is true that the u.s. can be seen exerting influence, but is anyone surprised that the

u.s. is exerting influence? is, it is true that -- was take central asia. the u.s. is cooperating a great deal with some states in that region. yes, it is in competition with pressure for influence their and the u.s. has made some morally ambiguous choices there. but why did it make those choices? one country is cooperating with because it is providing a military base there. the u.s. is cooperating with a leader who is anti-democratic. but, here again, we knew that. even i knew that one already. that, again, is not a major revelation that the u.s. is doing that. it puts it on the front page of the paper, but it does not -- to me, it does not tell that much information to people who are already engaged in this area.

so far, there was 1999 cables released out of to under 51,000 cables. keep in mind that five newspapers around the world have had the full set of those cables and they have been going over them for more than a month. my guess is that the biggest revelations, particularly about u.s. diplomacy are already made public and that there is probably a lot more to come about other countries around the world. for instance, since we were on central asia, i know that armenian communities around the world are very interested to see what u.s. diplomats were really

saying about the recent elections in armenia. there has been reporting about anti-democratic practices by the regime there. but so far, the u.s. has not been willing to be critical at all of the country. therefore, they are reasons that are probably relatively transparent for u.s. diplomacy in the region. but that would be huge news for the armenian communities who are trying to galvanize world opinion, in some cases for one cause or another. i'm expecting many more revelations that will be very important to many other countries around the world. in essence, it is not surprising because these are cables that are being sent back in large

part by u.s. ambassador's and their staff in other places. a few tables are from the u.s. secretary of state, but thery ae observations of what they see elsewhere. it is mostly about the views of the u.s. and other places and not so much of what the u.s. is doing. so that is a little bit about the impact of the specific information that was disclosed. if leaks like this were to become the norm, i think there would be some very significant implications. i think there would be less transparency within the government because, as the other

panelists have mentioned, there would be less ability to share information within the government. all information would be a bit more on lockdown. of course, we will see some move in that direction. if we see in a move to 4 in that direction, it would probably not be in u.s. interest. i suspect another very important point. u.s. personnel around the world will be understandably reticent to put more detail in the reports. my suspicion is that that could have significant effects. each diplomat in some form locale would be more law unto themselves as diplomats were prior really to the late 19th

century and the invention of the telegraph. once there was a direct link with a foreign diplomat and the home office or the secretary of state for the state department, the ability for some diplomat who is off somewhere else to make u.s. policy on the fly or make policy of their countries on the fly was much restricted. just to give you one example, this is one that comes from some time ago. the crimean war in the middle of the 19th century was a complex event and there were many sources of it. but most distresses would say that one source was a british diplomat named stratford canning. he was out there and he had a particular view of what the british should do these of the russia. he thought russia should be dealt a setback and he was basically in istanbul encouraging turkey to be resistant to russian demands in order to precipitate a war.

he was very clear on that. there was no -- the british foreign office had no idea what strafford canning was doing. so it was not that the entire cause for the war could be laid at his feet, but was very important to bringing on the war. another transparency that would probably do be reduced if these leaks became the norm. just to close, i think the sky is not falling. i think diplomats have been shocked by the idea that they consider -- that with the considered to be some of the most private moments in their lives can be exposed to public view and it has been very upsetting to the diplomatic community.

nevertheless, the sky is not falling. a continuation of leaks on this scale would have some very serious consequences. the fact that the sky is not falling, in my view, and maybe this is something we will come back to, probably indicates a little bit less secrecy in diplomatic practice is possible and even desirable. >> again, i want to thank all three of the panelists. they give us a lot of food for thought. i will start off with a few questions for each of them. then we will turn it over to the audience. let me start with amy. you made a lot of interesting points. one thing that struck me was that, even though we think of the wikileaks as a transparency- driven organization, you thought

it obscure -- the revelations actually obscured some of the realities of american foreign policy. i want to pose as will three of you. what realities do you think are being obscured and what are the more significant ones? >> i think she hit on one of the most important realities that what we get from these documents is an incomplete official view and that what is missing from these documents is the view of the street, the view of public opinion, some of those in tangibles. i would argue that even the official view is obscured. and does not make any consideration for what our next steps would be based on what these documents reveal. these documents do not tell you what is not in them. the only tell you one person's perspective.

generally speaking, you have a twofold problem, the focus on official communication as opposed to what the masses are feeling and the fact that that official communication is inherently incomplete and devoid of context. >> thank you. >> i think she really said it. even at the official level, i do not think we are always getting the complete picture. it reinforces the fact that these reports of these cables and the cables themselves are not the truth. this is not the authority of what is most important. it may not be that there is not so much new information coming out of these reports. but it is the narratives that are developing around them. i think that is what we have to be very careful of. i focused on the middle east, but they are starting

conversations that lead people into believing that there are some realities that are not there. -- i focused on the fact that if the u.s. would strike iran, there would be widespread support. that is dangerous. that is a dangerous assumption. but that is an interpretation of those reports that it is being taken as an assumption that is viewed as valid in many quarters. so i think we need to be quite careful. >> i think the area or this becomes most dangerous is trying to discern intentions of foreign governments, whether they are allies our adversaries. an exercise i do with my own students is that i ask them and if you take a piece of paper and

predicted that what you will do for your next holiday vacation a year from now, write it down. a year from now, we will get back together and see if you in fact did it. a significant percentage would say no. your ideas change and life intervenes. now imagine the u.s. garment trying to judge the intentions of another country -- the u.s. government tried to judge the intentions of another country with internal fractured politics and has an attentive to deceive the united states about what the true intentions would be. i think that is the area were taking these documents as fact becomes most dangerous for national security. >> i agree with all that. it is almost like everybody has been empowered around the world to be -- to become their own private historian.

that is great. of course, history is a hard thing. it is fought over even hundreds of years after the fact. historians are still trying to figure out, for instance, i mentioned the primary in war. there's not a general agreement on what exactly led to the crime marion were and what the intentions -- the grammariacrimn war and with the intentions were. the documents are spinning in a particular way. it does -- it does not necessarily mean the that is what the policy really is. vitellus some -- it tells us something that was said in a particular meeting. but even that meeting, that even

the u.s. diplomat who sending back a cable gave an exact account of what happened or an account that is very open to question. many people, after iraq, released its version of things. many people said, she seemed to say that it would be alright if iraq invaded kuwait and the u.s. government ambassador glaspie and said, no, she did not say that appeared a couple weeks ago, we finally saw the u.s. side of that conversation and we can see that the two sides do not exactly match. so do they not match because the u.s. side is right and the iraqi

side is wrong? or do they not match because one side was spinning it one way and the other side was spinning it another way? we do not know. >> one of the things that struck me, listening especially to rob and dalian is that a lot of the coverage on wikileaks focuses on cables from diplomat to diplomat and official to official. maybe the most important action is more at the level of domestic politics and what the implications are for domestic public and what they think about for policy. i think everything you just said is true. having different uses the nature of communication. people have different views on it. in some ways, wikileaks is like a microcosm of the internet. there is a flood of information.

a lot of it is untrue. a lot of it is true. discerning between the two is difficult. of course, the public in general is not so sophisticated bat discerning it. i am concerned about how those reactions will shape the conduct of diplomacy by the united states in years to come. >> there have been a couple of the immediate effects. i think some were symbolic more than anything else. for example, the president of yemen refused to meet with the secretary of affairs because of wikileaks. this is posturing. they do not want portray themselves as being subservient to washington. a think that will fade. the deeper tax will be a broader level among populations. in the case of the middle east, it is not that it has changed

impressions, but reinforced already pretty negative ones. this is not a good thing for u.s. diplomacy. i think the u.s. is making an effort to do a lot of things that tried to present an image, the united states acting in the region that is not just propping up governments. these are -- these large arms sales to not help the perception, but there is a lot of financial aid, development assistance. there is a letter recognition among american diplomats that the people in this region really look at these kinds of episodes as america just dealing with these very corrupt leaderships and they are forgetting about the people's interests. there has been an effort to counter that. i know that you have a session in public diplomacy and we need a lot of work in that area. this is a tough -- to do it. wikileaks has really -- this is a tough area to do it. wikileaks has really undermined

that. this undermines the efforts of the united states and its diplomats to present the united states as a force for good, that reaction care of the welfare of people and society and the youth and social issues and reinforces the narrative that we are propping up is really horrible regimes that are abusive, corrupt, illegitimate, and really neglect their people. again, i see a net loss, not because of anything new, but enforcing negative trends that were already there. >> you pointed out that specialists knew or suspected a lot of the things in wikileaks. it again, that is not the case for the broader public. so that seems to undercut the argument that you and secretary

gates were channelling. these are not significant. these are pretty modest. >> i am sorry, i wanted to limit it more narrowly on implications in terms of what we have learned. i think i do also want to emphasize, in fact, there are implications for domestic politics and other places that are quite extreme. what's the public's have learned about their own leaders is to them certainly knew. just to get your point in terms of what that means for the u.s. diplomacy -- again, i just see

it going in many directions. i think that some areas of cooperation where other countries were cooperating with the u.s. and they were willing to do that, but not willing to do it in a public way. what was it that bismarck said about france in the 19th century? friends like me, but she is not willing to go out in public with me. -- france likes me, but she is not willing to go out in public with me. it is a bit like that for the united states. a lot of closed doors cooperations me probably end. at the same time, it is not likely that, in some cases, it will be harder for leaders to be taking an anti-u.s. position in public when they are very directly dealing with the united states in the closet. that is not a bad thing for u.s. diplomacy and for u.s. public

diplomacy, for that matter. that is just to see some silver lining. >> we have time for a few questions from the audience. again, we have a hand-held microphone. please raise your hands and then bring the microphone over. let's start in the very back. keep your hand up there in the back. >> thank you so much for this really interesting event. >> let me remind you that that microphone is not amplified. you have to speak as if you do not have a microphone. >> i am wondering if any of the panelists can respond to the idea that julian assange represents global desire for this transparency. are there any alternatives for

wikileaks getting that transparency for people who are so angry at american for policy? my question is about whether julian assange does not represents american desire for transparency but global desire for transparency. if there could be a -- and is there a possibility for the to be an alternative to wikileaks for that kind of transparency? >> there are other alternatives to wikileaks. but this is probably the new normal we will have to live with. >> we live in a kind of paradoxical world where, because the united states is a democracy and we have so much transparency, we can see lots of things happening on the house

and senate floor that they probably do not want this to see on the house and senate floor. the domestic ramifications cannot seem to be very huge for us. but the paradox is that, in states that are not democratic, the potential for the wikileaks effects is much greater for the domestic politics. right? so if you're not an elected leader in the middle east, you are really worried about of this pressure from the street. in some ways, you are more worried about the street because you are not legitimately elected as if you had been legitimately elected. >> on the domestic front, it is not just the street that is a concern. opposition groups that are already utilizing this political football to countered and delegitimize sectors -- i do not

want to get specific, but in cases like in gaza and thought of this is being utilized. i think we will see a lot more of this. i do not know there is a global desire for transparency. in domestic conflicts, there are a lot of actors that are worried about how this will be used. but it probably will have a bigger effect in some of these countries than in our own country. >> unfortunately, there is a need for some secrecy in diplomacy. unless we alter the system of states and in a totally radical fashion, states have an interest in some secrecy and, in many cases, secrecy serves the side of peace between nations. i can list many examples of that.

i think we will have secrecy. since we have secrecy, we will have conspiracy theories. you'll never get away from them. i do not think there is anything to be done about that. on the other hand, however, again, these leaks have shown us, in my view, that we can have some more transparent tape. in many cases, basically, -- some more transparency. in many cases, basically, one can find a lot of evidence against in these cables. that will not in the conspiracy theories, but there is a lot of evidence in there. take the u.s.-china relationship. everything that i have seen in the cables has been the u.s. trying to establish as close as possible relations with china, even though they continue to have these differences in

interest. the theory that says that the u.s. is just trying to keep china down, there is no evidence for that in the cables. in all honesty, while the u.s. is not being entirely clear, not advertising some of its relations with autocratic governments, at anybody who wants to know can already know to a large degree what is really going on there. i do not think we will get away from that. probably, the u.s. could do a little more than it is doing now. but if they did more, there would still be conspiracy theories. >> the man in the green jacket. >> i would like to move the debate to a broader aspect. you talk about journalism and there is a lot of discussion

over all but the decline of journalism in newspapers. in this case, there is some kind of a shift where the journalists and newspapers, "the new york times," "the guardian," are reporting analysis of data. there is some state and nobody reads the data and everybody reads the analysis. how do you perceive the back to wikileaks? maybe there will be more leaks and how it is affecting the role of journalists and journalism as a whole? >> let me suggest that you save that question for our next panel. when we have jeff cowen, he will be well suited for it. i do not want to cut it off. but it is not in our area of expertise. with your agreement, we will see

that for the next panel. others with questions? in the middle, raise your hand a little higher and wheat for a microphone. thank you. >> i was wondering if this new world we are living in will be -- the lease will be a part of the normal culture in the world, how likely will it be for diplomats to adapt to this new world and start crafting leaks that they want to do that? is that possible? is that an ethical? is it responsible? what is the panel's thoughts on that? >> that is an excellent question. >> i think it is clear that it is possible and that it is already happening. i would like to hear four other parts of your question. they are interesting. >> we live in a world already where leaks are a common

phenomenon where government officials are strategically leaking information. that is what we read about in the newspapers. that is what we read about in the mainstream media. one of the most interesting pieces i have seen on jack goldsmith blog where he talks about his concern that there could be a double standard applied, that we have high- ranking government officials who strategically leak frequently in order to advance certain policies or try to get advantage for their policy preferences in washington -- will they be prosecuted? will there be a double standard for someone like him or for a journalist compared to the leakers in government? if you are a higher official, does it make it ok compared to a lower-level military person? these are very profound and important questions. i do not that we have a sense of

the answers are. i thought jack blog was very thought-provoking in terms of -- if you think of what you read in newspapers today, a typical article would say something -- i just making this up -- we will increase the rate of creditor drone attacks. say that is in the newspaper. that is really important. that is information that, in the ideal world, the american government would not like our adversaries to know. in terms of immediate damage, a story like that is far more potentially damaging immediately to u.s. national security than all documents that are dumped on the internet by wikileaks. but we do about that? many people would argue that we still need to know that information, but it raises many questions, legal, moral, ethical, that we're beginning to grapple with. >> i agree with which she said.

i will pass on that question. >> we have one question left for the end of our hour. thank you. >> i was wondering if you believe that julian assange has dramatically underestimated the cynicism of the american public. as you mentioned, because we live in a 24-hour news cycle and because they're so much information available on the internet, it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. with this large dump of information, i was wondering if we lost the ability to be outraged about anything anymore. [laughter] >> who wants to go first on

that? >> i think it is a good point. [laughter] i do not know if there is much else to say. it is a very interesting point. one of the surprising non-hits in the journalism world in the last year was the top-secret america series that ran in "the washington post." it was about the rise of contracting in the intelligence world. it took years of analysis. it was an incredible series. yet, what really struck people that i talk to in washington about this series is how quickly it died, the fact that it did not have legs, that people were not up in arms about it. experts in the field had known about this in the -- on about this for long to. -- for a long time. this was not news.

aside from actually being a major topic of conversation at the confirmation hearings of the director of national intelligence, it did not have a lot of legs. perhaps we are harder to out race today than we have been in the past. >> that was his point. the point may have been -- of course, we do not know the motives behind this man, but to embarrass us globally. that is what the ramifications are so much greater abroad than they are here. >> i think it was just exactly the right question to ask. i think it is hard to be outraged at something you know happens every day. i am a vegetarian for moral reasons. it does not make sense to me that people eat meat.

but i do not get outraged at my friends because they eat meat. i know it happens every day. i guess that is how mostly a feel about that. on the other hand, could we have more u.s. foreign policy or other foreign policies, could they be -- could they still advocate for their interests and take a moral component more into account? yes, they could. and maybe there will be some specific areas where people can galvanize and apply pressure and say, hey, here is u.s. policy with respect to this country. the u.s. did not need to be quite so a moral in that case. that would be great if that could happen.

often, the moralistic reactions can be overly simplistic or at least not take into account the real reasons why this policy was chosen in a particular case in the u.s. interests involved. but perhaps the leaks could give people an opportunity to object in a more informed way. >> i want to thank all three of our panelists. unfortunately, we are a little bit past hour hour. join me in thanking them for a terrific session. [applause] i again, let me urge you to come to our next session on january 20. that is a thursday.

>> an update on the violence and political unrest in libya, that country's leader spoke on state television today. meanwhile, the white house called on the regime to respect the universal rights of its citizens and allow peaceful protests to take place. this is john kerry who called the acts in libya cowardly and beyond despicable. we urge american oil companies to stop there. the u.s. security council is to set -- is set to meet on libya this afternoon. we will learn more about libya and usx's there after the briefing this afternoon. we will have live coverage when it gets underway. the -- not so sure the president will say anything on that. he is at cleveland state

university today. he will have some wrap up comments at that event at 1:55 p.m. we will have that for you as well on c-span. while we wait for the department briefing, a conversation from this morning's "washington journal" on savings and debt. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

host: could the siblings return to the 1980's? guest: nobody really knows. nobody knows what is the new normal. we have made a lot of progress compared to a few years ago. if we are going to go back to the 1980's level of savings, 7% instead of 5%, that is bad news for the economy in the near term. people will be increasing their savings instead of spending that money. less spending means less jobs, less revenue. part of the economy has been so bad in the last two years and so few jobs have been treated.

it is because people have been making the adjustment of their household balance sheets. the sooner they are done, the sooner the economy can improve. host: what does the current saving trend before the economy today? guest: i talk to people who look at consumer debt levels. their hunch is that we are about halfway through this. we may have about another year of consumers try to get their finances in line. when they are done, whether is a year from now or longer from that, but states the stage -- it sets the stage for better years beyond that. once household balance sheets are back to normal, then we can have a full-throated expansion instead of this very slow expansion. host: you wrote that there are three factors involved. guest: it is not just people paying down debt. people have a big credit-card bill with a big balance.

they pay down debt chip away at it over time. in the process, they wanted and they have less debt. another factor is that people have defaulted on their loans. the bank says, i do not think we will get paid back on this. this consumer is not paying their bills. we will write it down. it reduces the total debt level that is out there. but it does not create a new situation where people can spend. if you want to pay your credit card bills or your mortgage, you will not drive the economy. another is the simpler aspect of raurunoff. host: let me show you some of these charts. you can see a decline when it comes to mortgage debt of about 7%, a decline when it comes to credit card debt of 14%, auto

loans down about 12%, student loans up 18%. >> guest: yes, student loans are the one dark spot in this picture. student debt, people are going back to school and tuition prices kept rising. people have less income than they had to borrow more money for school. student loan that seems to be rising. host: you referred to a steady r the long term. the good news is there is more than that. ginnie and people paying down debts. there is real -- a genuine people paying down debt. there is real progress being made. if you are a bank or lender, and suddenly you have to write down loans, it may make you less able to land to other people.

the good news is less of a debt overhanging for that individual. the bad news is they were not paying their bills or they do not have a job. they are not likely to be a real growth engine. host: a republican in scranton, pennsylvania. caller: a pleasure to talk to you. what i find amazing is the markets say save, and on the other hand, the government says consumer. we are not producing anything anymore, because going to college makes you go $60,000 in debt, and then you do not become anything. people need to invest in themselves, get creative, create their own business, and produce. that is how america will

flourish. guest: that is right. production -- when you have a job, you are producing in the making things. if you are going to make things, you need somebody else to buy it. the first part of output is consumption. the sooner we get through this process of people paying down debts and getting their savings rates to a sustainable level, consumers will start consuming again. businesses will start to expand into looking to invest. you need both sides of the coin for the economy to get moving. host: the jobless numbers come out every friday. talk to the caller who says we did not produce anything. what sector d.c. an increase in? -- do you see an increase in? guest: the manufacturing sector,

was deep down in the recession. durable goods have come up. people say america does not make anything anymore. that is not true. we make a lot of stuff with fewer people than a few years ago. many sectors are doing ok. host: greensboro, n.c., independent color. calle -- caller. caller: i have not increased my savings because i am panel of my bills. as far as savings goes, i have a minimal amount saved, because i am productive. i can go out and work. as long as i am able to do that, i do not see the need to save. host: have you made it more of a priority in recent years to pay your bills?

caller: that has always been my priority, not more or less now than earlier. that has always been a priority, because i have always had some form of a debt -- whether it is a car payment or a house payment. i have to go out and work to pay those debts. host: when we say u.s. dollars, we receive 1% interest, thanks to the federal reserve. energy rises up to 5%. why save? guest: there is an inflation- adjusted rate of return. people have invested in other forms of savings -- the stock market, more risky assets, they have gotten decent returns. the point is correct. interest rates are very low. if there is a little bit of

inflation, you are losing money. a lot people do not understand what is meant by savings. you think of putting money in a mutual fund or a bank. the way economists think is different. it is more passive. if you have an income of $100, and you spend $95. you just saved $5. it is more residual. for the caller who says he does pay the bills, that is savings. if he is paying down debt, that shows up as savings. if you owe $10,000.10 month, and the next month you all $9,000, you have improved your situation. host: how is that tract?

guest: the bureau of economic statistics pulls a lot of data from around the country. host: democratic caller, go ahead. caller: a lot of people have been saying we have been bailing out wall street. if we have not, we would be more peril. in terms of the economy getting better, we need to look at everything. we need to look at the money we spend overseas. we need to start cutting and reshuffling. if we do that, we will find that people will be more satisfied. the people in congress should, on the cobra like everyone else does, and retirement should be

10% more than what they make. it should not be higher than that. host: neil irwin. guest: with the wall street bailout, the impact of helping the stock market comeback, and the markets have been up a lot since the low in march, 2009, i do not think that was by design. if that was unexpected side effect. the main goal was to try to keep the lending and financial system from breaking down. you go from the stability of money to slow the the system, and they've learned to keep that from breaking down. the stock market has had some other benefits. on gdp, it is not just consumption. gdp numbers reflect all of that.

consumption is about two-thirds of gross domestic product. there's also government spending and business investment. also, and net exports. those are actually extract it. -- extracted. economic statistics are not perfect, but the ones that people used to capture some of the things you are mentioning. .ost: this tweet guest: it is true that many of the wall street firms may not have been able to pay off debts if the financial bailout had not happened. which would have resulted in collapse, it is hard to know. there is a valid point. the big banks had liabilities backed up by the federal government and ordinary

americans have not had the same benefits. host: donna, a republican in pittsburgh. caller: i do not think the american public is extremely well-educated in economics because they do not understand the cost of servicing debt. for example, if you pay $1,000 for something, and put it on a charge card, you have actually paid $1,200. in our parents' day, they always saved up to offset the payments, and keep them reasonable. now, everyone has everything right away, and a finance the full cost. i would like to know if your guest could comment on the cost of servicing the national debt, which is phenomenal what we could do with that money if we were not paid the cost of

servicing debt $13 trillion. guest: two good points. on the first, there is the possibility that those who end copy and significant debt do not fully understand what they are getting into. we saw that when debt levels exploded. credit cards can have good benefits. if you are going along in your refrigerator breaks, and you need short-term cash, that is of great use of credit cards, and a great way to take advantage of that availability. and somebody is ready and 820 30,000 -- of 20,000, $30,000 debt and rolling over, that is a problem. all hallows make a lot of sense.

if you are perpetually rolling over debt, it is not clear. some people in the past, and to some degree still are using that inappropriately given their financial situation. on the national debt, that is a valid point. what we will see is what taxpayers have to pay to maintain the service on existing debt will be high, and probably rising. interest rates will rise, which will make a real burden. host: barlow, a democrat in dallas, texas, good morning. caller: on the report, it does not say anything about it, leveled. you do not see what income level is doing that.

host: let's talk about that. guest: that is a valid point. i am looking at the savings rate as a percentage of income. the trend with income declined a lot during the thick of the recession. it has been gradually coming back since then. personal income levels are rising a little bit month-by- month, but nothing to write home about. there is the question about when we will get real income increases. that is the ultimate measure of american prosperity. when we will have substantial increases, and what will have into savings levels, once that day arrives. >> the federal reserve bank of san francisco studied u.s. counties and how people took on that. what did they find in terms of areas that are doing the best? guest: they took u.s. counties and divided it were there were

high levels and low levels. the companies are doing far better where there was less debt. if there is any doubt that household debt, and the overhang is a major factor in why the economy has been so weak, it is very clear that debt levels are closely correlated with economic growth. host: will the best indicator of our recovery be consumer spending one's savings levels get to a point where they bottom out -- is that what economists will be looking at next? guest: it is no single number. the broadest measure is gdp. we want that to rise that said, gdp is not what we are solving for. it