>> c-span, created by american cable companies in 1979, brought to you as , walter pinkus discusses his career as a reporter along with issues of national security. us, you wrote on july 24, 2012, is congress a serious legislative body or not? in what is your answer? -- what is your answer? >> part of it is the terrible history in which, i was in my

20's, i worked for senator fulbright running an investigation, a totally different body. totally different. it has become so polarized that it does not work. and something has got to change. >> what did you do for senator fulbright and what committee? >> center for foreign relations committee. i have written in order -- a magazine article in 1960 on foreign government lobbying. he called it the next year and said, he pointed out weaknesses in the foreign agents registration act, do you want to come to the committee for 18 months and change the law? and i was 28 years old and fancy free. writing for three north carolina papers and magazines. the idea of changing the law was

tempting. >> did you get it done? >> we investigated for six months and we held two months of hearings and it took another few months to change the law. and we did foreign agents registration act -- registration is one of the best lobbying registration acts on the book. >> how does it work? >> if you represent a foreign governments or foreign government entity, you have to register and you have to file a report every six months, how you spend your money, who got money over a certain amount. they fooled with it somewhat because they were worried about the government's corporate entities. in the years after it left i got some wavering to that. but it still is a pretty good --

nobody goes to look at it but is there to look at. like a lot of stuff in town. >> if i cannot write in december of this year, you will be 80. -- count right, you will be 80 in december of this year. wiry still writing? >> i love writing and for an institution i love. for people i love working with. i think when i first started out i went into a generation of people who wanted to change things. i wanted to be free to what i wanted to write and to try to make things better. >> what are your arrangements? what is your title? >> i am a reporter. but i am also -- a consultant to the corporation because it is

part of this ridiculous background. i was once half owned by either cbs or nbc. and worked on television. >> what kind of consulting do you do? >> i talk to the -- editor about how the papers go and maybe we could do better. i talked to the publisher and talk to don graham, who runs the company. there are things you might do better. >> do you call yourself a columnist? you do give your opinion sometimes. >> i have a card that says reporter. i have written a column for the last to a half, three years. is a different category. -- it is a different category. i give my opinion to much -- the

column gives me a freedom that i have not had before and it lets you build on the past. >> how many different newspapers have you worked for? >> i started as a copy boy on "the new york times" and i was in a training program for "the wall street journal" and i was the washington correspondent for three small north carolina papers. i worked for the "washington star," and ben hired me for "the post" in 1966. 40 years or so. i tried to start newspapers which failed publicly but was a great experience and i was

executive editor of "the new republic." >> i have a stack of your columns. before i read some of these, what do you consider your beat? >> i think it is wahat i call sort of national security. national security is not just the pentagon or the intelligence agency, cia, etc. but the hill and the public at large. it is spread all over the place. i focus on national security. >> before we head into this, when did you start moskal? school.aw >> i started in 1992.

no, 1995. >> why? ben bradlee and k. graeme -- kate graham retired in 1970 at the post. both my folks ran until -- who lived until 95. my father ran a company and when i did not go into it, he retired. i figured i had after 70 lot of years left. i had covered the law a lot, i liked the law, i have friends who are lawyers, have an oldest son. i thought i would give a law degree and practice law. >> did you? >> i graduated in 2001. i flunked the bar, which came funeral.y graham's

i was one of pressures. that was my excuse. the war had kind of started. and don graham said i could stay as long as i wanted side have to give him up on it. >> what did it feel like, getting our law degree and flunking the bar? i know that happens to a lot of people. >> it was strange. i stopped going -- i have not taken almost 10 courses that were on the bar review and then i went to the bar review in the morning and went back to work in the afternoon. i do not know. i was disappointed i had a couple of -- i was disappointed. i had a couple of offers from a law firm but it would be to do pr.

i liked the law. the law was a great experience. i had a whole bunch of experiences that did not turn out to be what they were supposed to be and a couple failed but you do learn from all that. it took me six years going part- time and still working. it was a great experience. >> undergraduate at yale in 1954, and in 2004, a law degree from georgetown. here is a column, june 27. the state department is planning to spend $115 million to upgrade the u.s. embassy compound in baghdad. already the biggest and most expensive in the world according to pre-solicitation notices published this month. it has been three and a half years since american diplomats moved in.

why did i get your attention? -- and that gets your attention? >> one of the things i've focused on is the way we have spread money around not so much in foreign aid although aid in iraq and afghanistan is much too extensive. but building things that we now we're not going to need. five or 10 years down the road. the big story today in the paper about what we have done in afghanistan. hundreds of millions of dollars of construction. these people cannot possibly sustain. it was a lesson that was hammered home during the iraq period yet we keep doing it. >> why do you think? >> because we think we're getting -- giving something to the people but we do not understand, we're trying to make them like us and do things that we would want done.

as i have thought back over time, i keep going back -- i've worked for fulbright twice. in 1960 and 1970, if investigated the war in vietnam and the military war and foreign policy. the lessons he taught me stick with me now. and one of the things he told me in the first years is, if you do not understand the domestic problems of the country you are dealing with, you cannot have a good foreign policy. all foreign policy is domestic including ours. we do things that people here think ought to be done and we do not think enough about what the people we're dealing with one done. what their leaders are facing. it is not done easily. -- evilly, it is done because

we do not think a month -- enough. >> you wrote -- >> the state department people are upset about that. it is literally what was said in the document i talked about. there is an argument about whether to have or not have land rights. the thing that got me about it is we built the facility that our police would want. it is nothing like what the afghan police are used to, nor would they sustain when we left. >> how you spend $100 million on

a police facility? >> they have security around the whole thing. you have to build guard posts and all sorts of technical stuff. i am always amazed that the amount -- at the amount of money we spend abroad and how little we spend here. it has become an issue politically in this country more and more as we have to cut back. this is money that is poured into the pentagon to do things you could not do in any domestic program because people look harder at it. the budget is so big, my favorite is we have cut it. we spent on military bands. we built a $4 million facility

for the army materiel command band that had to move from -- belmar to virginia. they build a facility for the band which is about 40 people. if you spent $4 million on an elementary school, someone would raise questions. >> this is a column from july 2. in the same vein.

>> this is part of my -- when i get worried i sound more and more conservative or isolationist. this is more of the understanding that having created a democracy in iraq, where are not [inaudible] and therefore maliki to hold onto his support cannot be too pro-american even though we did all that for him. and it is something we have to understand but then we keep putting money in, less money this year in iraq. it is to try to make people understand in fact that money does not buy you support. you have got to understand the politics of that country and in

a lot countries in the middle east, we were not like before. we're not like now. although we have helped them, and part of it has nothing to do with our health, it has to do with their politics and underlying a lot of the middle east is the arab-israeli problem and our siding with the israelis. >> is anybody watching this expenditure? >> blog of when it comes to defense, a very few people. there is an argument about, they have cut $487 billion over the next 10 years but that is the reduction for only one year. the cost, nobody has analyzed the cost of this spectacular army we have created which is

all volunteer and has cost an enormous amount of money. >> this paragraph -- what is usaid? people are saying what is that about? >> we are building from the ground up. we are sort of military allies

and people will say they are buying american equipment. this is in effect a program that helps american industry, the military-industrial complex. i have mixed feelings about building up armies. in the middle east. you have no control over. and you have no control eventually over those weapons. and what happens? the anti-corruption thing. it is funny. we have a series of prosecutions going on in this country for our military who made deals and kickbacks on some of these programs and then we talk about other countries being corrupt.

but we called them corrupt, the iraqis saw what [inaudible] so we did not set a great example there, we did not set a great example anywhere. >> what was your position on going into iraq in the first place? >> i guess i wrote that i thought it was -- i was a reporter in those days and the so-called famous piece was two days before the war started, and started writing a piece on whether there was wmd in iraq. people in the pentagon and the agency had told me it or not sure. the intelligence was cherry pick. the bush administration wanted to go in. if that was an excuse, they would have found none. >> if you were inside the oval

office during this private conversations, what do you think the reason was? >> like all white houses, there was no one reason. there were several different reasons and had a president to i think felt he needed to do something dramatic. people forget where we were politically. at that point, president bush had previously made a big thing about catching osama bin laden. that had not been done. and this became an alternative and they had very sadly -- subtly beginning in august selling the idea that somehow there was a connection between saddam hussein and 9/11 which still was then and still is a

big thing in this country. >> when you hear people, the conspiracy theorists say it was oil, what kind of -- any truth to that? >> some people may have thought that. there were groups, paul wolfowitz and other people who were -- who was deputy at the pentagon, who, going back to the original goal for had wanted to go and knock some hussein -- saddam hussein off even then. there was a presentation in -- in which he said if you go into iraq, you would get all these benefits. first of all, they had oil, they could pay for anything that happened.

suddenly, -- secondly, they're the most educated people in the middle east. it would become democratic. he was talking about the sunni minority, not the shia majority. he said, it would become a democracy and democracies do not attack each other, therefore would not attack israel. >> go back to this embassy in iraq. you say they're going to spend -- are they committed to spending more on the embassy? >> their argument -- talk to the secretary of state. what has happened is partially because of the security situation, they had to bring more people who would be out in the country in consulates and

elsewhere. into baghdad and it would be more people there than they originally expected. and so they have to expand. >> there were $850 million on the embassy in iraq which is the largest one we have built anywhere in the world. and no one questioned this. >> i think people along the way questioned it. there was so much else going on. it is a big -- it has become such a big government. and it will eventually come around to my feeling about the media not doing what it really ought to do and that is keep track of all these things. we spend a lot of time and space covering press conferences and what people say and we spend not

enough time in my view with what is going on. >> how do you do it? >> the way i have always done it. reading documents. a huge amount of public material. -- public material is put out every day in the public record and people did not read it. the key to the column weather is good or not is documents. i try to base every column on something i read or a transcript airport of a hearing, whatever. >> do you try to be different from everybody else? >> i start out -- started out with these three north carolina paper so i had to compete with the associated press and the wire services so you're always looking for things other people are not doing. i have never been lucky enough -- i have never been a be reporter, really.

-- beat reporter, really. i have been fortunate enough to go out on my own. >> you're right here, will anybody take your phone call? anybody in government. >> the other part of doing what i have been doing for as long as i have been doing it, it is another part of the new culture. when i start off -- this this sort of old people talk. when i started out, there are a bunch of reporters, we used to have dinner and meet someone in government and meet them outside the arena so you got to know people who were in government. in a three-dimensional sense rather than just the person who stands about the podium or gives

the press conference or makes a statement. and then if you do it as long as i do -- have, as an example, it gets to be embarrassing. i am matt george tenet when he was an assistant to the senator from pennsylvania. i met the secretary of defense. imad landeta when he was a gun -- leon panetta when he was a congressman an. you sort of stay in touch. the other people -- the other part about being a journalist, a journalism is a profession. what we do is right out there so they see what you have done.

and so some people i got to know very well. i got in terrible trouble. after the trouble was over, -- >> name someone. >> clair george. i wrote the story that got him indicted and he was eventually convicted. i was -- there was a retrial. everyone was talking to him. he had never answered a phone call, never done anything. and when the rest of the press went away i went up and introduced myself and he said, six months after this is over, give me a call. and so he was convicted and he was pardoned in december and in june i call him up and we had lunch or breakfast and we became

good friends. >> what had he done wrong or did he do anything wrong? he was pardoned. >> he was pardoned by george bush along with everyone else. he had not told what he knew about the payments to get the [inaudible] out of iran. he knew it, he was at a hearing, they asked him about it and he did not say it. he was convicted for withholding intermission from congress. >> here is a column, june 20. how was it that we fought the war without paying for it? >> this was, to me, one of the worst things that happened

associated with the bush war in iraq. and that is not only is it a failure to pay for it, the first war in american history where there was no extra attack there were tax cuts, initiating the war in that same period of time, they withdrew the last remaining excise tax that had helped pay for the korean war. on telephone tax. there were not going to put a tax to pay for the war because congress would not have passed it. where were the democrats? the democrats were is afraid as everybody else was because of the aura that have been created about the threat from saddam hussein. the only people who raised an issue was the congressional

black caucus in the house. about going to work. the democrats were worried that at the first goal for the had opposed if you look back at the iraq war that started in 2003, the economic advisers for george bush said this will not cost $60 billion. it will cost to hundred dollars billion. someone else said it would take more than 160,000 troops. they both lost here -- lost their jobs. >> this was huge. you miss judgment by the bush administration -- misjudgement by the bush administration.

they misjudged what they were getting into because they did not understand iraq. they did not understand that saddam hussein represented a minority that had been running the country and beating down the shia majority and that this would open up a huge can of worms. we pushed elections in all of these countries. in almost every case, the people we wanted to win the election did not win. we did not understand what we were getting into. >> you said in that same column, how quickly with congress had voted in october of 2002 on the eve of the congressional election to give president george w. bush the authority to go to iraq if they had not had a provision to raise taxes? june 6, another column. let's start with cost overruns, you write.

does any branch of government get away with having its programs ballooned the way the pentagon does? >> what made you write that? >> i had a long talk with a retired admiral. i had read somewhere that there is a program that is part of developing a new weapons system. we have to make estimates on what the cost would be. he told me that there was obviously a game everybody u nderpriced and you have the problem with contractors who underpriced to win the bid. then you had congress making changes in weapons systems. >> let's go back over that

again. how can a contractor underprice something to win a bit and get paid for the cost overrun? -- bid and get paid for the cost overrun? >> they have tried to remedy all of these programs. it is hard to put your finger on who is at fault, particularly with the new weapons. we have -- they have an extraordinarily electronic elements. that business is changing so fast. if you have a system that takes five years to build, three years into it there is a whole new technology that you want to

integrate into it to make it better. everybody wants to make the perfect weapon. that costs every time. if you build a house in decide you want a bathroom on the second floor and you did not plan for it, the cost of the whole thing goes up. >> what is your personal philosophy about war in general? >> i think it is a bad idea. >> always? >> not always. i grew up with senator fulbright, whose view was that war was failed diplomacy. diplomacy is reaching some instances in which neither party claims of victory. it is harder and harder to do in society where there is a form of democracy where your opponent can demagogue.

i was involved in a discussion the other day about iran. the person i was talking to said, they offered things and got no response. i said, between now and the election, president obama could not make any agreement short of your government leaving and democracy taking over. anything short of that would be used as a failure by the republicans. democracy has got some weaknesses in an age of instant communication. >> let me ask you about something that i know you have thought about. i have seen it for all of the years i have been here. you speak positively about senator fulbright's. -- senator fulbright. for those who do not know the

name -- you wrote about the fulbright national program. who was t? >> senator will buy -- senator fulbright was from arkansas. he was a rhodes scholar. he went into politics when he was young. the fulbright program, which pays for exchange scholarships and exchange programs around the world, came out of an idea he had a using the excess money that came out of world war ii. he used it to pay for this scholarship program. he went to the senate and worked his way up and became chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. at a time when the committee was much smaller than it is now

and the staff was 16 people. he studied foreign policy and went out of this way to talk to leaders that we disagreed with. during the period i work for him, during the 1960's and the -- the period i worked for him, the colde 1960's and war, he said, you had to understand the other side's point of view. he had a committee that was understanding and bipartisan. both subcommittees i worked for, their word two republicans, they agreed with everything we

did. -- there were 8 republicans, they agreed with everything we did. -- there werer -- were two republicans, they agreed with everything we did. i went down to the dominican republic and found out the tender was giving campaign contributions -- the dictator was giving campaign contributions to democrats and republicans. we made it public. we did not make public that jackie kennedy's dress designer had been secretly hired to get

the sugar quota back from the dominican republic. we gave it to be sent -- the senate chairman. there was an agreement that we would give the attorney general six months to investigate and do what he had to do. it was a clear violation of the law. or we will hold a hearing. now, would never get away with that now. one of the great days i ever had was when fulbright called me up one day and said bobby kennedy wanted to see him alone. i went down to the office. i knew bobby. he walked in without saying anything. at 3:30 p.m., fulbright opened the door. bobby had left by another exit.

he said we talked about the poverty program for 25 minutes. he looked up at the clock and said -- is being indicted for right now. you remember those things. you could not do that today. >> what i wanted to ask you about -- tell me where i am is wrong about this -- the media in this town really liked william fulbright because of his anti- vietnam stance. why did they give him a pass having signed the southern manifesto? >> they actually did not. i had to go to new york to defend myself all over the place. he was considered anti-israel. it was partly my fault. part of the investigation of

foreign lobbying was a jewish agency that was doing things it was not supposed to do. it was a great lesson for me that you cannot have everything. i forget who the congressman was who did not sign the manifesto. he lost the next election from arkansas. >> we should stop and tell those who have never heard of the southern manifesto. 19 democratic senators signed it. ?hat was it >> it was a civil rights bill and the government should stay out of amending all of the terrible jim crow laws and the education the situation in the south. >> they were against brown versus the education -- the

board of education. they did not want the schools integrated. i read something that said, we all get along down south. we do not need to bring the races together. >> there was a long speech that said, we have to increase the education for african americans. they were not equal. they were separate, but they should be equal. if you did not say that, if you did not sign the manifesto, you would lose your seat. which is more important? one senator who is doing bad felt it was more important -- doing that felt that it was more important to stay in the senate. >> what is courageous about back? he was not raise enough to bring

his own people together in arkansas. but there were a two basis that he ran. -- >> there were two races that he ran. he was attacked on civil rights. you look around today and take a look at the moderate republicans. they are all gone. democracy has its issues. it cannot be perfect. he understood it. there were a bunch of things he did that i disagree with. you make decisions in life that are not perfect. i thought what he did in foreign policy was good enough for me. it was important to happen

there. >> back to your july 4 column. on the way to -- savings, a legion of cost overruns. brac is what? >> it is the program congress passed to reach agreement on closing military bases. a complicated thing in which the defense department picks out the areas they want to close. they put together a commission to comment on the recommendations and congress has to vote on it. >> they have to vote on the whole thing. i want to read this again. in its latest review of the 2005 brac program, the government

accountability office found that the estimated $21 billion to implement the program had grown to $35 billion by september 30, 2011. that is six years. it almost doubled in what they told us it would cost to shut the bases. why? >> once congress passed it, everybody forgot about it. two things happen. as time passed, they underestimated the cost of replacement just by the cost of living. then, it was shown in one case, moving a school for people at west point grew by 300%. the people at west point wanted

a much grander facility and the facility they left. nobody paid attention. >> have you ever seen a time when one of these comes in under budget? they are over budget almost all the time. >> there are things that come in under budget, but that is part of our dealings. we are looking for controversy. we are looking for one that did not work. so we promote it. the best example i always throw in is cia, which gets beaten up for all of these failures that get publicized, but you never hear about the things that work. >> i have seen you criticize for being the cia inside reporter at the post. their criticism? -- fair criticism? >> probably.

during this long. bank of time, i met a lot of those people. it is the most-- during this -- during this long period of time, they have given up their lives for what they do for the country. they work for the president, whoever the president is. they get whipped when they do something as they did in central america for ronald reagan. the democrats come in who did not like what reagan did and they take it out on the agents. you have that side of it. to tell the people -- i know some of the people who got caught up in those issues, they were doing what they were told to do. i know people who were involved in the interrogations.

a number of times, they went to the bush administration to make sure they were doing something that was supposed to be legal. they were continually reassured. of course, when it was over, they all got investigate. >> you say you knew george tenet. have you talked to him since he left the cia about why he told the president there were weapons of mass destruction? >> he was raising a question about iraq. he went with the people who took the dark side of it. >> did he say why? >> how is he today? >> if he had his druthers, he

would like to be in public life. he is in private life doing well, working for allen and company. i think he would have much rather have been in public life. >> let's pretend you are at your desk. you have two different phone calls. given what you have told us are your own feelings about war -- one of them is about somebody -- from somebody who is anti-iraq and wants to leak you some information and the other is pro-iraq and was to lead you information. which one would you take? >> not to be difficult, but people do not call me up and tell me things. i read something and i call people. i talked a lot about leaks.

leaks are not part of government. i teach at stanford. stanford has a washington program. i have taught there for 10 years. we teach a pro tem of it as a class called oversight of government and media -- we teach a class called oversight of government and media. what i teach them more and more is that we are in an era of government by pr. people just say things or leak things that are going to help their cause. the person who receives the leak or receives a classified document has to make a bunch of decisions. one of them is, is it true? they always involve the government. you have to inevitably go to the government.

when someone leaks something, you go to the government so they get a chance to say something. did you have got to decide whether it is newsworthy. every secret is not newsworthy. then you have got to put it into some kind of context. in the process of doing all of that, you get a sense of why somebody is giving it to you. they are not doing it because you are the greatest? -- the greatest questioner the the world. they won something. -- they want something. you have to decide the first three things before you decide whether to plant it or not. >> a column on july 9. battling ied's is not just about

money. i will read some of it. over three years, the contract could be worth more than $176 million. contractors will support and augment, not replace military intelligence operations. you go through a lot of stuff in your column and the new right, -- and you write, that your head is spinning. >> this idea of contracting out to the war in iraq and afghanistan was a step taken because the bush administration wanted to under plain what was going on. you mentioned the general saying

we needed more people. this was one way to get around it. then, what you have created is an industry of people who used to do something while they were in service or working at the pentagon, believe that job, go to a contractor and end up in exactly the same post with higher pay. there was no guarantee of what their future would be. that is now a big industry. there used to be a concern about military people going into military -- bowing to military contractors and helping them. we have had a lot of contract started by military people and doing the same thing they did in military service. >> how much did you have to do

with the valerie plame? >> lucky i went to law school. i wrote a story -- i was writing a story about raising questions about weapons of mass destruction. joe wilson, the foreign ambassador that worked in the clinton administration, became clear -- became critical of the bush policy. a columnist at the new york times said the american ambassador had checked out whether saddam hussein was trying to buy uranium from niger and found out it was untruth. it had been part of the bush argument about saddam hussein. it took me a month or so to find

out who the ambassador was. i agree to tell it as a news story. and i did. i was following up on that story and was raising questions with the white house about something going on associated with it. in the midst of a conversation with ari fleischer, a joint wish's press secretary, -- ,eorge bush's press secretary he said, might you keep asking about that trip. it was set up by his wife who works for the agency. i did not know she worked for the agency. nobody ever told me. in writing the story, i talked to steve vice president's chief aid about dick cheney's role

in all of this. he never mentioned anything about valerie plame. i put it in the back of my mind. at some point, there was a column exposing it and it became a big issue. the democrats in joe wilson raise the question about whether disclosure of her name had violated the law, which talked about disclosing the name of agents who were under cover. i looked up the law. i had gotten a law degree and i decided it did not. i wrote about it and said they were doing the wrong thing. in the fall, congress started to investigate.

it went to the cia and the cia sent it to justice. at that point, i wrote a cover story in which i said, a washington post reporter had been contacted. i did not think it broke the law. when the special counsel started investigating the leaks, he had the wrong reporter. he came to me. luckily, my son is one of the best lawyers in town. i used him and we decided it was not a first amendment issue. this was a criminal case. through a whole group of machinations with the lawyer and my son and a whole bunch of

things, i said i would only disclose my source if he came forward. at a certain point, ari fleischer went to the prosecutor an admitted he had talked to me. at that point, i laid it all out to the prosecutor. i got ari fleischer's lawyer's approval to talk to the prosecutor. i testified at the trial and ari fleischer's lawyers agreed to what i could testify. i testified that he had told me about walter pincus and he said he had not. he said he learned and he had told other people.

>> we are out of time. there is a lot more we could talk about. one last question. you have a book about your life? >> i have a wonderful editor who i promised years ago that i would write a book. i went on a trip and wrote a 25 page outline. i got a third of the way through. she still wants me to finish it. maybe i will. i just write all the time. you need extra time to do things like that. >> walter pincus, since 1975, with the washington post, writing columns and stories. thank you for joining us. >> thank you.