us -- allies and us. finally i would like to say we think that strategic warning for the most traditional military challenges will remain stable and significant, whereas strategic warning from those instances please.slide in trays that we identify ..s. centcom we talk about these trends in particular the takeaways. the trends are the most important to this report. the bottom-line is we think there are two basic trends that will be the focus of defense strategy and planning toward -- going forward. , and thefic challenge

impact on the stability of the region. i can talk about any one of those in great detail. you can see some of the reasoning behind our thoughts in that regard on the right. in the interest of time, i want to move on and talk about the next region and then we will punt to qa for the discussion. basichas four or five trends. the most common is an increase in competition for regional territory sources and freedom of action within the region and into the region. there are alternative features that we think are probably under considered. currently, when you look at pacom, the most common thought is the dominant rise in china that stays on a linear path of boards. we also think that there is some discussion of the different

paths for china, in a failing china or a weaker china. a strong china, in addition to that, there is this idea that if you see china as a principal focus of u.s. strategy in the pacific region, the chinese get a competitive strategy that basically occurs largely outside of the military domain, and therefore undercuts any military buildup that is associated with conjuring them. we do feel the uncertain trajectory will remain a dominant concern particularly for u.s. ground forces for some time to come. north korea is a three paths. it can simple -- unify with south korea. in collapse. tocan actually continue engage in provocative or aggressive behavior that somehow leads to war between the north and south.

we do think north korea remains important. the most dominant daily trade is natural catastrophe and climate change. it was a dominant theme with pacom. it is probably their most contingencyequired response. it is want to consider. there is ethnic and ideological problems. we came up with 10 -- 20 vignettes. listede 20 vignettes side-by-side. they range in likelihood from a a syrian century problem that we are staying on folds as we speak all the way to a future syria- turkey conflict. you can see we have eight other vignettes between those that we

considered. the likely stay man's all the way up to the most speculative demands. all away down to fighting physically anti-one. -- in taiwan. the major implications for ground forces that we came to that i want to highlight. first want to highlight the fact that future operating environments will be disordered there are a number of constraints that are the warscoming out of in iraq and afghanistan that will be a natural aversion and self deterrence.

the objectives pursued will be limited and new will be less decisive. we think u.s. centcom is defined by security and peace operations and u.s. pacom by the support actions and humanitarian response. .ubbing up this idea on warning there will be limited warning in this sister beachhead security category per that -- security category. finally, let me just again if the size the point of risk in all six categories that we identified. twoou think of forward

slides per eliminate a couple of points and then i will turn it over to my colleagues. the overarching challenge in the risk assessment problem is twofold. first, there is the general prioritization away from consideration of large-scale ground operations now going on inside the pentagon for a variety of reasons. there is war weariness. there is resource challenges, etc. that is competing with this idea that we have become a custom to war a contingency focused. dispensed with a number of capabilities and

competencies that are more relatives going forward and that we will have to capture those. the issue projecting forward is a key area. forcesre fewer deployed which will require the united states to have an employed -- deployed mentality with all of its ground forces that will be increasingly challenging with all of the forces based in the united states, and in logistics. with the across the board forces variety-- from a wider of actions. protecting those forces will be increasingly important in giving persons across the spectrum of response more ability to protect themselves and conduct operations. finally, one interesting point we came to is that we think

that given this idea that operations will be left decisive, the forces will have to become more attuned to the idea of actually disengaging from environments that are necessarily a factor. where the conflict or crisis is still very much in train at the time that we disengage, but we have pushed it to a level where it is manageable to the view of u.s. policymakers and therefore time to disengage. as we go forward, we think it is one that likely is to require more attention on their -- on the part of the forces. we have more charts, i do want to bore you anymore. we will punt everything to question and answer after that rethink you very much. we are right over you being here. we to the q&a portion. >> thanks, nate.

they key for inviting me for this session. i will be very provocative and brief, because there is a lot among aknowledge panelist. this is a rich study. it avoids the most common error that i see in force planning, and that is emphasizing the contingencies that dominated our thinking over the last decade or so. i think it has the imagination and an ovation. i applaud it. it hits on issues that i have been concerned about, including when i was helping the white house oversee the last cbr. i will get into the and a little bit. i'm going to make four basic points. i will be brief. hopefully i will stimulate conversation. i think i will. number one, we are terrible at

predicting future contingencies. there is no other way to say it. the only thing that is certain is that we will be tried again by major contingencies. i am doing a lot of work in the atlantic household with the national council and with other governments on global trends and are subject -- and instructive technologies bring it is clear -10me that the world in five years is going to have different dimensions than it has today. it really the iphone and the democratization of the medications technology has changed things, which is easy the rest of the technology revolution come to play in terms of biotech and the ,emocratization of 3-d printing and a rate of technologies that are coming on top of each other. we do not know how it is going to play out. it will be disruptive in some ways. it will be beneficial to the

united states, but there is always a dark side to each of these technologies that can be -- be applied. the key trend is that of individual empowerment. this is enabled by a large shift of resources to asia that is ongoing that will bring about a very significant rise in the global middle class. there is also this technology element in play as well. let's start sort of with the baseline of the strategy that the united states currently has an play. i think we need a strategy in a portfolio of capabilities that hedges against this very uncertain environment in an appropriate way. it is really important to keep in mind that i was part of the bureaucracy before. 's inclination to resist change and to focus on

the comfortable. in this case, the comfort zone is one where we love to deal with militaries that look like us. in this case, at av department 's inclination is to focus 80% of its efforts a strategy on dealing with the chinese contingency is understandable. it makes some sense. it is overplayed to a degree. i worry very much that the uncomfortable but extremely plausible scenario, some of which nate covered well, are going to come back to bite us. .nfortunately very damaging the summary of my first point is that the current culture of automaticity, of autonomy and departmental components, and -- as part of the strategic challenge that we face. i think it is much more significant than resources and

strength. we can talk about that. we can't wish away scenarios that we would prefer not to engage in. it certainly would be nice if the world would let us have it toward asia -- get it towards asia. we will deploy ground forces in very messy scenarios again. i have absolutely no doubt. my second major point is we have a very under hedge portfolio as related to the first point. there is a lot of scenarios that , andplace, ground forces the current trajectory requires -- than is foreign to. it strikes me that the best way to prepare for things -- being surprised is to ensure that we ingrain strategic foresight into our planning processes to a much

better degree than is the case. strategichood of shocks is high over the next 5- 10 years. just look over the last 5-10 years at the things actually did happen and you will have a sense that the next five years certainly will include some of those. he departments -- the departments need to change to one that scans the horizon in key areas and hedges are strategy capabilities accordingly. talkingarios that i am to people a lot smarter o then me about. one is that the scenario of failsafes with wmd. we are seeing that play out in syria. i wrote these words before the red line being blurred to a pink line.

for thiss me that scenario said, there is some good work going on. i do not want to be too much of a blunt instrument. the current approach to this set of scenarios, in particular pakistan, is to highly compartmentalize the activities that are underway. it is very sensitive. we have to be very capable. this is a way of limiting the needs of strategies and capabilities because it is so honest on one side. we need to open the separate we need to talk about this way healthy democracy helps to ensure there is a informed policy debate. when i look around the world and say where is the greatest gap between supply of capability and demand on our forces? it is this scenario set. it is extremely comfortable. we do not have a strategy. we do not have the capability.

in some cases we do not have the technology. we do not enough of them. not have a alliance relationships. we probably do not have necessary resources. besides that we are all set for these scenarios. i think they should be central in shaping elements in this pdr that is about to kickoff off. the second set is a little fuzzier. i am worried about bio. the chances of those are going to increase as i'll take revolution accelerates, and proliferates centers of excellence around the world. the chances of a nonstate using these two greatly damage u.s. interests is unfortunately rising very dramatically. we can still talk about some of those things in the q&a. i don't av department is prepared for such contingencies.

there was a panel on the future of war. this was the one question i asked. you content of a video this panel on our website. i said, how prepared is the department? she said nowhere near prepared. it was very concerning to me. part three, these are interests number five on nate's list of u.s. interests. theink -- i look at guidance from last january of 2012. it listed the bmd as one of the missions bring it is an a priori t. -- a priority. there is an over a dozen organizations that have a piece of this mission.

there is little synergy from what i can tell. there is not area strong integration or unity of command. if you can name one officer at a three-star level that has this mission as his are her single priority, i'm willing to listen. i am not sure if i have found that person yet. you would have an interesting indicator to the degree that this priority mission which was listed in the president guidance is being resourced in terms of personnel allocation, let alone terms of other aspects of how one overwrites -- underwrite strategy. my first -- fourth point is a resources. we have heard about these event

that talk about the resources that we are working through. i think they have a way of tending to focus the mind... but on what strategy really is him a which is the art of connecting your resources to your strategic ends. we should says develop the strategy and that capability, in a resorts unconstrained environment, -- strategy without a sense of resource is a hallucination. strategy demands a sense of the resources that we think we will have available. that is not that you cannot marshal resources. perhaps the president's job. or the congress's job. you cannot resource everything to the fullest extent. -- a heavy doris dose of resources is use in this -- that is but

assumed the pending on comes to recognize 21st century business practice. i can give you a list of the redundancies in the headquarters of the department right now that would probably squeeze out another 10% of the budget. i will in their. -- i will into their. -- i will end there. the'm would pick up where study actually ended. as with the dial. in egypt.just a river it is a climate alive here within the beltway. havest would like not to to have large numbers of ground forces. we would like to believe they are not really necessary pre-we would like to think we could anticipate the kind of war that

the future will hold for us. one wonders if we could actually do this, while haven't we done it question mark we'd like to think that we can prevent teacher threats to because of our forecasting abilities. one wonders if we could actually do it, why haven't we? we believe that should we fail in the forecast, some operation or legal fashion mode will resolve the issue or we will have enough time to raise forces that are necessary to meet whatever the challenge we are facing. finally, we like to think that the destructive power of our military forces, which is significant, will resolve whatever conflict of the day the nation faces.

endthe destruction equals of four, end of problem. the last 12 years of war should do just the opposite. this is the story we tell ourselves. the story isn't true create his fiction. it has not been true for a while. we covered the fiction in the past because we had sufficient size. we built a sufficiently large military would enable power, ground power, air power, special operations power, to cover the fact that we really don't know what the future will hold. offsetd balance capacity uncertainty and inability to predict. the study that nathan is -- a record hasn't

been perfect. we have not gotten it right once. what remains unstated though is that these lesser included contingencies of the past, all of our actual operations, or possible because we size -- .ecided against large threats, all this while the berlin wall was falling, the soviet union was collapsing, and we paid ourselves a peace dividend. by shrinking the force that word now being used. fewer ground forces were certainly necessary for the were inive phase that iraq and afghanistan.

we have forgotten, because we are tired, but the post-regime to 200,000 more operational reserves. the stress in our military is not the result of having too many. it is having too few. now we tell ourselves that never again. we told ourselves that before. with this study and the national intelligence council study of global trends 2030, and driving in the dark, and a bunch of other things, we have several data points that tell us uncertainty is the norm in our environment. the potential for conflict is increasing. the types of conflict are most likely the kind that cannot be resolved with mere destructive power. the global trend study comes out

to say that the potential for multiple forms of war comes at a time of rising uncertainty as to the united states's willingness or ability to be the security. at a time of increased ambiguity as to these fidelity -- the stability, in times of ambiguity with increased conflict, we need to tell ourselves the truth. not to hold onto our fiction. strategic leaders need more options, not less. the options associated with the kinds of conflict contingencies ,hat are in the csi study whatever you want to call these things, will require more ground force capacity, not less. a course we would prefer state-based threats that the

u.s. military must deter and defeat on which we can size our forces. unfortunately,, this is not the reality that we face. we do have some potential threats like this pre-we have to have the military necessary to deal with them. these now have become unlike the -- the lesseron contingencies. the areas of typical mission othern the study, and similar to them. the problem is, doing so does not get our story. making these adjustments may require more ground forces, not less. changes, not stability. unfortunately, reality has a way of forcing itself on a nation with global responsibility and global interest. certainly the johnson

administration did not want to get bogged down in vietnam. to invaded not want panama. but it did not want to do bosnia. bush 43 did not want to fight terrorists. some future ministration may well find itself having to do just what it is not want to do. when they find themselves in this position, enter into the military for options, time will not be on their side. in potency account much less. the study we are talking about today is very clear. the varieties of confrontations theconflicts that seem future cannot be resolved by distraction alone. -- by distraction alone.

destruction alone. the real threat that we face is ourselves in our ability to deny what we need, and choose instead what we prefer. thank you. >> mr. hoffman. >> thank you for letting me be a part of the story. this is an all too rare example of a useful think tank product. think it provides intellectual scaffolding that will ultimately appreciate, even if they may not recognize it. the art of strategy is all about thinking about possible futures to inform decisions you .ake today as the challenge said the department is facing. i am -- uncertainty, friction, and constrained resources are the unwanted the constant

companions of defense strategist. we have all faced them in our time in the building. as a fence mending gets constrained, as it will be ending years. will have to think through creatively. there is a lot of pressure on ways and means. we are to be more creative about the ways. formatting a sound strategy is going to require thinking and about scenarios, which is the most commendable aspect of this particular approach. which tees offs, conversation. more than we are currently doing right now. risk is itike about is component strategic planning. the fourth component is exploring, understanding, not

denying risk. do face limited information. we had to admit that there are still meditations with our decision-making ability. it is not that our intelligence. it is just the nature of the environment. one criticism is that there is a phrase for the foreseeable future. there is no such animal as the foreseeable future. hast tot strategist ask the right questions. as with this product is all about. it is about questions and exploring issues that we are not comfortable with. we are coming to comes with a deep underlying trends are going to reshape the secure environment and landscape for the years ahead. my boss general dems he has been doing this -- my boss general dempsey has been doing this. with the range of changes going on in the out years, there are iny people comfortable

which the number of wars is going down. as on the trend that i am seeing for the next 10-20 years. the evidence suggest that our future is not going to be linear continuation of the last few years or over the next couple of months. it is not going to be be nine care that we have lived in since the cold war. we need to anticipate that with more intellectual rigor. metaphorisk aspect between the current force and the future force, that is the essence of thinking about the future. you can get that balance wrong, over investing her cousin fred's own, and sustain the forces you have today, and you can create future risk by being unprepared for the future. conversely, you can think about things you would like to think , and and ignore reality over investing the future and the wrong feature because of denial. you can create a force that is

unprepared for the future, although you try to anticipate to the greatest degree of rig that you could. we should not look out too far. we should not create our own risk by not being prepared for the things that we know to be much more likely. the kind of contest that are going on in washington that studies like this expose is there is always a war going on between the past and the present. folks that are holding onto their comfort zones, forces that they are most familiar with. the more you do that, i think the greater your setting yourselves up for risk for a far greater impact in me recognizing now. the revolutionary changes and multiple sciences and the combination of sciences suggest that we really need to think much more rigorously for the future. i think dod recognizes this risk. maybe not to the degree that we did. guidance, wee last

tried to come to grips with many of those things to the degree that we could. we had a rigorous process. it was a complex range of scenarios. combinations of different scenarios. there's aspect in there that are hedging that we gave in reversibility language. the guidance has its critics. a critical aspect of it. the things like the shift in the pivot of the pacific, things like bal contest, whether you to move forward and look at the future and to deal with future challenges and risks. this upcoming one, i hope the language like this is going to influence that a little bit. we continue to wish for into the future. minimizing future risks.

there are a number of contextual factors that are going to be more of risk. factors that i think i presented to this group read one we should concern is of our industrial base. manufacturing some areas of the forest -- force is fragile if not then. , theme in the building effort we had to do to sustain litigation, it is a tenuous level. it is going to get thinner in the near future. we also faced a rise in manpower cost. the percentage of the budget to pay for the force is what is another factor that is driving the force size down. every soldier and marine is 60%

more expensive, we're going to end up cutting the size of the force just to keep the pay and benefits up to read it is crowding up investment. we're replacing one million- dollar vehicles with 50 million dollar vehicles. we are replacing $20 million helicopters with $20 million helicopters. we are on the wrong side of cost strategy. we need to get our hands around that. it is very hard. that bush is done your force structure size. it pulls up investment levels to a much smaller force. mark murdoch is on a nice study here by the erosion of these inflation factors eating up the inside of the budget while the same time approaching down. that is going to affect the capacity and size of the force. , and toity to respond assist people, is going to be longer. more risks, more cost.

the triple whammy, we're would have fewer friends and allies in the future that are viable. we have a few allies and friends in the room today. in general, there are inographics to politics some areas of europe we are not going to have the assistance and the friends and the allies we have had in the past. at least in quantity. hopefully they will be there with us. that produces a triple whammy. the size of the force affects the demand trying to do many things breed it will not be a specialized force. it be a general-purpose force. we'll have to adapt to scenarios over time. that is a training risk that we are not dealing with. on top of these contextual the idea that we can

have wars that are sure to clean and easy, rather than brutish, hard, and long. we to get past that. the last decade is noted. it is ugly. it is expensive. it has not been very successful. the scenario development indicates unfortunate it is going to be more frequent in our future pray we can ignore it. we can be unprepared. we can react unprepared and put the burden on soldiers. as not going to be a proper strategic approach. let me wrap up here. risk can be self-inflicted. it can be self-inflicted by denial. self of lifted by our own strategic unwillingness to challenge our biases and assumptions. -- we be self imposed by cannot limit risk free there is no such thing as a risk free

environment. studies like this are really critical to avoid self inflicted surprise and enhance strategic ability. the kind of scenarios here, we're going to come to grips with the frequency of the consequence of these. there is another level of analysis that needs to go on. hopefully someone will want to see it done. maybe they will give it to you to do. some of the scenarios, i agree, are outside and should be thought of as for shaping thought processes. you would probably have to be a resource. some may inside the major scenario and be thought of as a limited offense for which we are or as prepared, trained to,

have the correct equipment in every case. we just have to come to that. that is ultimately the list -- risk money balance beam. colleaguequote my read he says force planners have always -- have only current principles we must follow. prudence and adaptability. brits is all about risk. being honest about risk. understanding risk. truly understanding the risk are veryies like this prudence. adaptability, going forces we need, and making them adaptive enough to react to multiple scenarios is probably the kind of plan.

, theange of adaptability range of scenarios and capabilities of the force. now the big question is, capacity. with that, i will close. >> thank you. what i'm going to do now is we're going to open it up to questions. we will go ahead and get you first. thank you for your comments. i would like to expand the aperture of the study three ways. css did a great study which i agree by the end of the decade, if you -- assume spending, you will cut the force in half. how do you take into account those resource reality is? it seems to me our failure is not the military over the last 12 years. but it is the civilian side of the effort. i find it difficult to see engaging in a loss of areas by the military without any kind of civilian backup. how do you deal with that? this report obviously has been

isolated to ground forces. can you say what you need in terms of supporting maritime and naval forces, which are obviously going to go along with this package? , i will take a crack at all three of those on the perspective of the report. , myrly the resource reality view is this. first you the capability right. what is it that you are going to ask your force to do? then you need to worry about the capacity. unfortunately, those are both under an extreme out of pressure an extremeested -- amount of pressure. pre-9/11 we were focused on north korea, iraq. posted 11 we became focused on the terrorism problem.

a are probably entering different epoch that requires different capability. the point of frank brought up on what has been the capacity is the next step. we have to test it. i'm a bit concerned that we are not going to get to that next step. we want to make the reductions first and figure out if we can do something with it later. -- getting them capability right is important. i was at the army war college i talked about very similar topics on a civilian military balance. if you think the defense budget is going down, the civilian capacity will not expand. it will go as well. the military is always filled the capacity gap and hardware. it will be asked to continue to do so, which is another reason why you need to maintain and

to do multiple missions and multiple roles and take on things that are necessarily pure military responsibilities prayed i'm not confident that there is going to be a sudden revolution of civilian contingency capacity. join forces, i would say the one thing that really comes out clearly in this, this will again be a question of accepting the balance between what you believe is the most important threat. , and thenbased force close the army and the marine corps, they have to get there. in the places we are assuming the most risk, the area of strategic mobility. likelihood that that is going to continue to be an area of risk based on current policy priority is increasing. we found that to be the longest test with respect to the forces. the of more forces back, and

you're taking more risk and projection. you have to determine that you do not want to protect the force, and the numbers that have to be suggested, or you suggest mediation to change that. anybody else? >> i think in terms of resources, the easy way out is to cut the number of soldiers. the personnel. they are going upgrade it to figure out a way to -- they are going upgrade -- they are going up. ,he bureaucratic overhead costs the shrinking of the industrial base, these are all really hard and will be less likely to address. get the scenario that you describe where we just keep cutting personnel size because

it is the one of the lease lobby. that drives us to a position you do not have ended up to bofors because you do not have a force. if you do not have a force, you cannot cannot do anything. the one thing that as a trainer and a commander, many of the skills and disciplines that i used in the invasion of haiti in and, in the bosnia, training iraqi security forces are derivatives from the skills that you get from general purpose forces. the adaptability comes from those shields. i see the ease of personnel costs being driving us to a position where we are procuring the most.

>> next question. we have a my coming behind you. >> hello. i would like to go back to the comment that was made about cognitive challenges. getting over the clean and easy wars and tried to explain that we are going to have nasty wars. the general address that in one of the speeches he gave at the kennedy school. when he says you're going to go to americans, i am summarizing, how do we go to the american people and informed that narrative? how do we form some narrative that says we know what we're doing and we explain it pretty well pray we do not seem to. we do not seem to be able to

get the message across that things are not going to -- you don't need to send everybody home because everything is fine. we don't seem to know how to get that message across to the folks that are coming into congress who are increasing the isolated from the military. any ideas on how to do that? let me take a quick crack. one of the things that we came to in the process of the study is that we think that in general, there's going be a greater degree of respect to anda, self deterrence, that is going to be a couple of impact that is going to have operations. yourirst is going to have going to wait. religion -- imperfect circumstances.

by the same token, the missions will likely be chartered. there will be eight tendency under a more limited mandate we have seen. andink a limited mandate excepting the stage here will tell me that the fog of war actually always extended limited mandate. the limited mandate is equally explainable. instead of rectum -- revolutionizing using -- where you are standing with your back and your rifles pointing out, that limited mandate is morris playable to the american people. moreat limited mandate is explainable to the american

people. >> when he to find the american people that treaty requirements we established, we have friends partners and allies. recognizingr people that. we have agreements and obligations to people. we need to be prepared to live up to those agreements and obligations. i hope some of our other friends can sustain their obligations and their partnerships as well. we can exponent to the american people. -- we can explain it to the american people. both on the civilian side and on the military side, there is people who recognize this. this is the we recognize in the building with all the time. it is hard. there are priorities that it be set aside. it is not an easy job.

it is a hard task. we have to adapt on the past. we have to unleash ourselves a little bit. there are new challenges and it is hard to get rid of the old challenges and make the investments in cyber and bio that a decade ago, several of us thought was going to come with much more fury and violence that we have seen. .hese revolutions intersect they're going to impact. we continue to educate the american people. reinvestments, alterations, getting rid of going towards more lean operations, less headquarters, taking up positions of government, the middle management level. a.b. we need to get to those points so we can invest in the

capabilities where people have more risk. >> next question? >> you alluded to -- i know said, iman adam smith have for lewis in my district, i have an air force base. my constituents don't want to hear about problems. what they want to talk about is social security. medicare. medicaid. losing their 401(k). we seem to be not putting that message across. they're cutting defense budgets.

the british and had cut back on their military. american people look and think we spend this money on our military. why should we be doing and being the world why policeman? >> the first thing, we do not take up the addition that we should be the world by police. i think one of the things we really endeavor to do in this report is actually talk about the real need for some appetite suppressant with respect to contingency outbreaks. to endeavor at the beginning set minimum acceptable and achievable objectives. when you do, then you reevaluate whether you disengage or not. --ting expensive directives the other thing is, the whole

reason the study was chartered on core interest was to get down to brass tacks and say that let's talk first about what is important. it may be that you talk about a once in 20 years employment of your force. at least you've actually define what the left and right limits of that are. frankly then the sizing argument comes. that is why it is the second step. , andcus and target therefore have to be more penny wise with respect to what you are investing in. they needed to the capacity argument later. >> we have a study coming out about discriminate force. you do need to impress the american people that you are being more discriminate and more deliberate and discerning about

the situation that we get into, and how we accomplish what needs to be done. you just pointed out basically that the six factor we should incorporate, this is a problem. inwe are over investing things overseas, people don't see any value in it. you're going to lose the support of the american people. we need to maintain a support. while we are worried about -- moresome village in important for lewis, your letter lose the american people. >> gaining access is not just fighting your way in. that is just one way to gain access.

gaining access is establishing relationships, having rights, having basis, having allies. investmentps require and time. no relation ships are built on a virtual basis. -- you have toat be there with people. , fore in a position where aod reasons, we are becoming space force. a fortress america approach is not in our best interests either. the balance are going to be real. as part of the thinking -- that is part of the thinking of the strategy, not just bombing our way in. n important points.

there is a continuum of going to the bar and bring everybody back to making congressmen happy, not having the benefits of what the general talked about. we are too far to the end of the spectrum in terms of our engagement activities. i do not see any discipline or focus in our far-flung engagement and security operation strategy. when the defense department and immature to the american people that they have focused and made it live within the resources that we have, then i think we will have a stronger story to tell, and a stronger message. if you set how many countries are you engaging in, in 2013, sequestration aside, i imagine

you won't get a very tight answer to that question. ines of not change enough the way the department does its business pre-it needs to change. >> strategic targeting is really important. we ran this in the report as well bridges focusing your -- if youctivities dine that at the end of the day, yet more more on your checkbook than you thought, then user adding on to it. it is this idea of demonstrating .merican people responsibility we have time from one more question. this gentleman right here. then we will wrap up. >> my name is bill. beinglk about reducing

the easy thing if other things are done. andt were a company, secretary hagel address this the other day about analogies being appropriate and some not. it or a company, the first thing we would do is consolidate facilities. we would address things like -- the second thing they would do is conversation reform. if we are overpaying employees, paying others, there have been proposals for military compensation reform from the defense business. the third thing we do is partner with other companies to the capabilities that we do not have ourselves. you correctly point out the importance of relationships with partners and things like that. if you look at the two options improving the tooth to tail

-- is there more potential to improve the truth or is thatll ratio, going to bear all the hits because politics make it too hard to reform military .onference -- confrontation >> first up, if you are understand tooth to tail ratio as reduction of overhead infrastructure, we should get at that. in terms of compensation reform, we have to get that. in terms of modernization, all those things we have to get. there is another ratio that we have to be careful about.

as in the theater setting circle. theater is in the se setting circle. >> and the army has the tail. as we analyze this kind of stuff, we just have to be accurate about the way we do it. and i think go after the political support necessary for those kinds of mechanisms that we know our real hard. if all of us would add up the number of times we heard the term acquisition reform, we would run out of paper. we've got to get the political support necessary to take on some of these it really necessary, and would be very helpful to -- to to tell ratio, without destroying the tooth to

tail ratio. outdon't we just cut echelons in between? the environment in which to fight wars is much more uncertain than the environment in which you restart your shelves. further, the psychological benefit that junior commanders get from senior commanders and the information benefit that senior commanders give from junior commanders is very much embedded in the echelon. tail ratior tooth to reductions that are smart to do so, but i also think we should keep our eyes open for some of these things that are false. >> i second that. >> another thing we would do in the corporate world is raid all

that training and education accounts and undervalue human capital, education and things. i would strongly suggest that while they are part and parcel of overhead reduction, we should maintain our human capital to the degree we can on the qualitative, educational side. >> with that, i think we will have to wrap up. i would like to thank the palace with a round of applause. i think they did a wonderful job. [applause] the report itself is available online as well as the critical question that we handed out at the beginning. the video of this event will also be available on line. we are extremely grateful for your attendance today and on and our president and ceo, i am very grateful for your attendance today. i look forward to engaging on

these important issues going forward. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] bushe george w. presidential library opened it to the public today. president bush gave a surprise welcome to the first 43 visitors in the museum's replica of the oval office. tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span will take you on a tour of the bush library. we will explore the facilities with former first lady laura bush as she describes the design and construction of the center in texas through the exhibit. here is a preview. >> your husband had a lot of critics. will this change the way people view his presidency? i don't know that it will necessarily change the way, it is meant to explain what happened in those eight years of history, to talk about all the different things that we faced as a country and his choices and decisions that he made to respond to whatever the

challenges were. i think people will learn a lot. there are a lot of things that people don't know, like the aids relief program. the generosity of the american people funded. there are a lot of interesting things that people will learn about that they didn't know before. it will also give them an idea of what it is like to be president. there are successes and there are failures, and it is like in anyone's life. we all have that. and certainly our presidents are human and have the same sort of records. >> has it met your expectations? >> it has. i think people will find it very interesting. we have tried to include everything, and of course you cannot include every single thing. we have not even talked about our support for dissidents and the whole freedom movement that is part of this wall that i am

looking at here behind you. >> you can watch our tour of the new george w. bush library tonight at 8:00. highlights from c-span presidential library coverage, including a walk-through of the reagan library and visits to the library of fdr, president clinton, the first president bush, and lyndon johnson. on friday, "road to the white house 2016 kicks off with vice- president joe biden. he is the keynote speaker at the jefferson jackson fundraising dinner. also speaking at that dinner, represented jim cliburn and former senator fritz hollings. begins atage friday 7:30 p.m. eastern here on c- span, on c-span radio, and c- span.org. >> the intelligence he is driven

by this certainty that religion and reason are in different boxes, that science and religion are in different boxes, and the two actually are at war with each other. someone who is rational is not religious. someone who is a religious is not rational. science is the antidote to .eligion this itself is the ultimate irrational idea, because both the belief that religion is inevitable to science and region -- and reason in the west is completely untrue. the orwell prize for journalism, melanie phillips take your calls, e-mails, facebook comments, and tweets, live, sunday noon eastern on book tv. >> the bipartisan policy center

hosted a discussion on the use of drones for targeted killings. lawyer with the aclu and others of their thoughts on that policy. an all-starhis panel is a bit of an understatement. our panelists are a compilation of national security experts who have bought and reflected deeply on the issues at hand today. i feel like a guy who splashes with a group of rembrandt. let me begin by introducing the panelists. seated next to me is john bell in your. he is a former legal advisor to the u.s. state department and former legal advisor to the national security council. recently he testified before the

house committee on the judiciary, subject, drones and the war on terror. so happy to have you here. seated to his left is the director of the aclu national security project which is dedicated to ensuring that the u.s. national security policy and practices are consistent with the constitution, civil liberties, and human rights. her work includes a focus on the intersection of national security and counterterrorism. she is at columbia law school. the associate dean at the school of arts and sciences. he was executive director of the 9/11 commission. has served on national commissions and tax redid task forces. he is a member of the it

president advisory board for the word drone has been mentioned once or twice. mark is a national security correspondent at the new york times and cowinner of the pulitzer prize for reporting on the intensifying violence in pakistan. he is the author of a recently which is right on. to our discussion this morning. here is the book. i recently read it and i commend it to you all. let's dive right into the subject at hand. i would like to turn to john bollinger. you have been in the arena on so many of these issues, and if you talkinggin by just about some of the legal aspects of them. >> when i testified before the house judiciary committee a couple of weeks ago, i both

started and ended my testimony with a plea for more bipartisanship. of of the saddest byproducts 9/11 has been the national which havesues become so divisive when we really ought to be pulling together. was present at the creation at least of the legal basis for the use of drones. i was in the white house in the summer 2001 when we developed the armed predator and rethinking about using it against al qaeda if we could find him. so i was responsible for developing the legal framework.

i do think as a general matter, it is permissible under both domestic law under the subsequently developed law force act. al qaeda leaders planning attacks against us. the main legality of the program, as both the bush administration and the obama administration have practiced it, i think are correct. the devil is in the details, how in the problem we don't know a lot of the details. the obama administration would never have guessed four years later that they would now be being accused of war crimes, have the aclu suing them, have the human right's counsel conducting investigations of whether the obama administration is committing war crimes and violating international law. a british group has sued the british government for supposedly sharing intelligence with the obama administration, resulting in the death of a man in pakistan, so four years later, the obama administration

is now finding some of the same charges that were leveled against the bush administration. a couple of years ago i wrote in "the post," called "will drone strikes become obama's guantanamo?" at the time i wrote that, i did not really think that drone strikes could have become obama's guantanamo. i think this is a real problem for them. withhave been grappling the issue through a number of officials -- john brennan, harold koh. others have issued a series of speeches generally explaining the program, the problem is -- and this is my real point here -- no other country in the world has at least publicly agreed with the legality of our

drone program. that is not a good place for the united states to be. it may well be that there are a handful who are cooperating with us that believe it is legal or they would not be cooperating. but right now the united states is isolated as the obama administration has launched more than 300 drone strikes in four different countries, killing more than 3000 people, and the rest of the world is finding this very controversial if not unlawful. they have given the obama administration the benefit of the doubt for four years, but as we now go into a second term, i think they are now beginning to become increasingly restive, and the challenge for the obama administration, as it has been for us when we enter the second term of the bush administration, is now trying to convince the rest of the world that what they are doing in counterterrorism policy

is in fact lawful. so they are rapidly on the back foot. the obama administration -- i know they are working with this inside the white house to do a better job explaining the legality of the program, who they are targeting, why it is lawful, and why the rest of the world should in fact agree with what they are doing. in a moment i would be happy to get into the more of the legal details, but that is where we are right now. >> thanks, john. >> thanks, mike, and thank you very much to the bipartisan policy center for having this event and inviting me. let me start out in the spirit of the center with agreeing with a lot of what john bellinger has said. the targeted killing program has profoundly important legal and policy questions, and the debate is crippled because we do not actually have a lot of the information that we need in order to determine the

full extent of where the program is being carried out, how, against two, with what investigation, and what measures to prevent harm to civilians. let me also start out with another point of agreement. often a straw man is created, the idea that -- as a legal matter, i don't think drones are per se unlawful, but as a policy matter, they have raised a family important questions because they are easier to use without risk to u.s. forces, and they may be able to use -- to be used in places where we are not otherwise at war, as has been explained to the american public where we are at war. it also becomes a legal issue when you talk about who is

using the drones. it has been widely reported that the cia is using drones. the idea that the cia program is secret is one of the worst kept secrets in the world, undermining our legitimacy to make that claim. questionkes us to the of how are we using this weapon or any other weapon, because helicopter airships have also been used to carry out the program of targeted killing, and that is really what the heart of this debate is about. what we know is deeply troubling, and i think there is a general feeling amongst international law scholars that the use of lethal force is permissible under international law, human rights laws, may be

permissible in response to a specific and concrete threat. in the law of war context, in an armed conflict, it would be permissible against civilians who are directly participating in hostilities, as the terms are defined under the laws of war and as long as other law of war requirements are met. what has been made public in speeches by administration officials -- and i appreciate that those speeches have been made -- as well as the white paper that was first leaked, is that those are not the standards being applied. if you look at the white paper alone -- remember, this is a white paper that was reportedly a summary of the memo used to justify the killing of a u.s. citizen who is a senior operational al qaeda leader, or alleged to be one. the restrictions the white paper recognizes -- for example, on what constitutes an imminent threat, the capability of capture, the law of war

requirements -- when you read the white paper, you realize that they are permissions. it turns out that the senior high-level officials making the determination about whether lethal force may be used does not need to have, for imminence to exist, according to the white paper, actual evidence that a plot is going to take place, and all of a sudden the imminence requirement is read out of existence. it is vastly elastic. something similar happens with respect to the requirement and capture. where we are now is recognizing that the requirements that at least what we know with respect to u.s. citizens raise at least significant concerns from our

perspective, more than that about the legal requirements, whether they are being abided by. if we have that concern with u.s. citizens, we should equally have that concern with noncitizens. one u.s. citizen has reportedly been publicly targeted, three others have been otherwise killed, but, as senator graham said, there are reports that approximately 4700 noncitizens have been killed. and i think that there are fewer things that are more likely to undermine the legitimacy of our country as well as our national security than even the perception that we are not abiding by the rule of law with respect to noncitizens as well as our own citizens alike, and that we are in different -- and that we are indifferent to civilian casualties. disclosure to the legal standards of who can be

targeted. what is the process by which those decisions are made? who is a senior high-level official, who reviews the decision-making of senior high- level officials? holdho should the public accountable? who are militants or the civilians who have been killed out to the extent that the numbers are known, they should be disclosed. to the extent that identity is known, that should be disclosed as well. we will not be able to move forward with the kind of debate that we expect of ourselves as any liberal democratic society, one based on checks and balances, without that fundamental transparency which is necessary to accountability not just in court but public accountability in the public sphere. >> thank you.

phil, your views? >> i am actually not here as representative of the administration, and none of what i say should be construed as representing the views of anyone in the obama administration. between those two pillars, let me navigate a path. i would like to take a moment and explain to you an argument about how to conduct warfare in this strange way. the united states has been involved in a global armed conflict with al qaeda and its affiliate organizations now for approximately 15 years. al qaeda knew it was engaged in that global armed conflict before the united states agreed that it was in it. al qaeda was able to forcefully

impress on the united states government that it was in such conflict, probably most strikingly beginning in august 1998. whether it can be conducted with remotely piloted vehicles in many countries around the world. let me offer you two different paradigms for how to think about this problem. in these paradigms, i will try to make this very clear, and maybe too clear. you need to do three things. first you need to define what is the doorway through which i must enter that allows me to kill these people? what is the doorway? second, having passed through that doorway thomas i have two defined which people i can legally kill as a government.

third, having defined that, i must set some sort of standards of evidence and circumstances under which people so defined can be targeted. now, there are two contrasting approaches for how to answer all three of these sets of questions. one approach i will call and on- conflict/law of war approach, which i support. the second is what i would call a constitutional/self-defense approach, which worries me. let me just explain the way these two approaches work. in the doorway, if you are an armed conflict approach, the doorway is and must be a public doorway. the country knows and discusses that has entered into this armed conflict. the congress debates it, the

congress in may pass an authorization for the use of military force especially authorizing the government to wage war and enemies around the world. this is a healthy attribute of a democracy. under the constitutional approach, the doorway is some entity or person poses an imminent threat to the united states that allows us to defend ourselves. that doorway need not be public. that determination can be concluded in secret, whether or not the government has determined that it is in armed conflict with some larger entity, and that this in other words rises to the stature of a war or warlike thing, rather than being a person or group of

people who are dangerous to us in our secret determinations. so you can see the significance of these paradigms, and if you parse the administration public statements on this issue, you will see references to both of these paradigms. what you are hearing from me is a strong argument about the significance of one and the dangers of the other. now, the second standard i mentioned -- what about the definition of the people who you can kill? under a law of armed conflict standard, i must say the bush administration badly mangled this definition. and indeed did quite a lot to discredit it. it expanded the definition of the term "enemy combatant" to include anyone who has given or might have been seen to be given some sort of material support to a terrorist organization, equating it with other standards of u.s. domestic law, often in the context of guantanamo litigation.

that is very pernicious because the enemy combatant standard is very important, someone who our military can lawfully kill or capture without a lot of advance notice. that is a determination that should be approached with care. enemyroperly defined, an combatant is someone who, as international law experts would put it, is directly participating in hostilities. this is sometimes called the dph standard. to its credit, the obama administration has publicly

endorsed the dph standard and in my view has restored credibility to that kind of approach. credibility that was tattered when the obama administration entered office. in the constitutional paradigm, the definition of who can be killed does not use necessarily these law of war determinations and doesn't judge whether that person is a member of the larger entity with who you are engaged with in armed conflict. instead it mentions the threat posed by the individual. isher way, you'll notice it potentially pernicious in some ways. beginssame time, it assuming annexed ordinarily high standard of intelligence and evidence about particular individuals that is rarely attainable in practice. then at the third level, that is, what evidence and circumstances you need, we have

a great deal of experience and a lot of people who are well trained on the application of the dph standard of enemy combatants. that is a result of 15 years of warfare, of this is now a standard that a lot of people understand and know how to apply, and they know how to second-guess mistaken applications of it. we have had a lot of trial and error with this. we have had some seasoning in how to make judgments about this. in the constitutional standard, because it will turn on evidence and circumstances so related to this individual determination, assuming that the involved is one of good will and does not want to abuse its privileges. it is going to want to set very

high evidentiary standards. the irony, then, as i look back, for instance, on the years around 9/11, is there is a level at which we are a little spoiled about the intelligence we might have about certain people in areas we have been watching very closely now for a long time, areas that we now know better than people living in fairfax county know the street map of arlington. i am serious. so don't assume that that evidentiary standard is going to be met in other situations we will encounter. that evidence may look a lot more like that pre-9/11 story, where if you read the 9/11 commission report you will see all kinds of uncertainty about someone there, who else is there, judgments had to be made, repeated questions came up in 1998 and 1999. should we shoot? and in every decision after the first, the decision was made not to shoot. now step back.

i am basically offering a paradigm, you will notice, that is very public about how you get in. applies fairly well understood standards about how you work it. but then takes into account the inherent uncertainties of warfare in making judgments about when you can strike. but that is because the country has decided it is in a war and candidate that decision. in the other paradigm, a pure constitutional paradigm, you can bypass an aumf, you don't need an aumf, you can make these to constitutional determinations, and you can make this less open to the public, less open to debate about with whom we should be at war. simultaneously, because of

that, impose standards on you that actually make it harder to deal with the sorts of enemies we may encounter in the future, whether it might be, what would we have liked to have been able to do in libya last year, if we had had just a little bit more information than the information we had, and had more assets on the scene. let me stop there. >> thank you, philip. mark, you thought deeply about these issues and investigated them. give us the benefit of your thinking. >> thanks, mike, and it is terrific to be here. i was a last-minute addition to the panel. when the original rembrandt was going to be here. i am honored and appreciate being on this panel. i come at this subject to friendly than anyone appear. i am the only person who is not a lawyer. even the former cia guy is a lawyer. i am a reporter and a national

security report where we are getting added basic question about what is happening now and what has happened in the past on these issues. basically sort of trying to ask the same questions and get some answers. what i do in my reporting for "the new york times and also in my book is try to basically describe as much as possible the history of this secret war that has been waged since 9/11, as philip points out, because he really is a war and it really has been in secret. since those early years. i think by now we know the broad outlines and contours of the war in iraq and afghanistan, but what is happening in pakistan, what has happened in yemen.

in other parts, places like somalia, still, those stories need to be told, and that is what i have been trying to do. i agree with hina that we do focus on the idea of drones as a weapon because there is the science-fiction quality to it. there is the aspect of, although they are not robots, that they are robots carrying out war. the deeper question is obviously how they are used and the idea of targeted killing or not so targeted killing in places where at least officially the united states is not. so that is what i have written about, how this way of war has become sort of the default way the united states does.

bushs begun by the administration, in overtime if you are looking at targeted killing killing, the bush administration went from primarily a capture strategy and interrogation strategy two, after a few years, the detention and interrogation program, especially with this cia, really started to tail off and the policy of killing started to escalate, and the obama administration came in in 2009 and has expanded in many ways. as a reporter, it has been i think the most important story, to understand how the obama administration sees this way of war, how it has conducted this way of war. also the question of, will there be repercussions or blowback to this war being conducted.

john mentioned earlier that he thought that using drones to kill off al qaeda leaders is certainly lawful, and he supported it. i think that what we see these days in many cases is drones being used on targets that are far from senior al qaeda leaders, and in many ways al qaeda as it existed on 9/11 is a shadow of what it was. the questions we have to ask our things like, what is the bar for targeted killing? who is being targeted? is it al qaeda? is it al qaeda affiliates? are they enemies of the state of pakistan, of the state of yemen? is the united states the counterinsurgency air force for yemen or pakistan? these are questions that i think are being answered, but obviously we still need to know

more about because if this is really the default way of doing business, if this is -- if we don't expect to see another afghanistan anytime soon or another iraq anytime soon but a lot more somalia, i think everyone agrees that there does need to be greater transparency, greater public these issues, and sort of greater accountability for how the war is being waged. i still find it striking that, as a reporter, when recently i was covering the john brennan confirmation hearings and john brennan was being confirmed as cia director, i was struck to find that the members of the senate intelligence committee who are the dozen people in congress who are authorized to have the highest level of classified levels of

intelligence inside the government do not have the memos, the legal memos that are underpinning the targeted killing program. the white house makes the point that congress is not entitled -- they are. as an outsider, it is striking to me that members of the intelligence committee was formed after the committee investigations of the 1970's, the agencies do not have these memos. not having these memos significantly limits their ability to conduct oversight. i think if that is the position they are in, i think it is a lot tougher for citizens, people not in government, to really make informed judgments about what we think. and i hope for more discussion in the future. >> mark, thanks very much. yourand hina, just

reaction to what phil laid out? >> i take a slightly different angle. one, a couple things about the debate are really not about -- we talk about drones. the problem is not the use of drones. people now start saying the problem is targeted killings. it is actually not the problem, targeted killings. with are in a real war, germany and japan in world war ii and we developed a weapon in which one could only kill a single person rather than engage him in that is wonderful. that is legal, that is good. it is not actually that targeted killings are bad. when lawful and legitimate, they can be good.

beginsue here, and this to fit with what philip is saying, is that there is a fundamental disagreement around the world, which i experienced when i was a legal advisor, as to whether the united states really is in a war at all. we are about the only country in the world that believes we are in a conflict with al qaeda. i spent part through years as legal advisor in the bush administration engaged in the dialogue that was kicked off by the 9/11 commission, and one of the 9/11 commission recommendations was that we need to work with our allies to develop common standards for detention based on article 3. what is now going on around the world is a different debate with the rest of the world about not the tension, because as mark said this administration has decided they do not want to do detention anymore. the bush administration got in trouble with detention, so they are now just going to kill people. the issue is not the targeted

killings. the issue around the world, and i see a number of members of embassies here, is is the united states in an armed conflict around the world? can you be in an armed conflict with the group? with a group that goes on not just in one country, in afghanistan, that any lot of different countries? through successive administrations, the bush and obama administrations have been unable to persuade our allies that after the initial phases of the afghan war that the united states remains in an armed conflict with al qaeda that allows us therefore to use lethal force against members of al qaeda around the world. talkingwhere what i am about fits together with what philip is talking about. from the rest of the world's

perspective, it is not the law of war versus the u.s. constitutional law. other countries apply a paradigm of human rights law. we do not think we are in a war, and therefore to the extent that the united states may use force lawfully under international law, one has to apply human rights law paradigm, meaning that one can only target someone who poses an absolutely imminent threat. lawr a human rights paradigm, other countries would say, yes, if it can be shown that someone in pakistan is willing to launch an attack in pakistan is unwilling to do anything about it, the united states has the right to self- defense. but where we can kill members of al qaeda no matter where they are, and the rest of the world's perspective -- they were surprised to find the obama administration adopt this armed conflict paradigm that european countries in particular thought was going to be dropped

like a hot potato as soon as the obama administration came into office. and to not only continue the war paradigm but to wrap up the use of drones. i agree with philip, at least from a u.s. versus international perspective, there are paradigms, i would say there is a law of war paradigm that we are applying versus not a constitutional paradigm but a human rights law paradigm from the rest of the world. >> hina? >> one way to think about it is the constitutional standards and the human rights standards are very similar, and with what the constitutional rights allow i'm going to put that aside a little bit and pick up from there john left off about how the rest of the world not only does not agree but i think from our perspective we have to be concerned about the precedent that we are setting for the rest of the world to follow.

not just with respect to the use of drones, to the legal framework in which we conduct targeted killings. perhaps we can discuss this. in a very literal sense, when talk about the signatures trikes and such, there is no question we are talking about targeted killing in a literal sense. but going back to the precedent- setting standard, there is no question that multiple other countries, nonstate actors, will have access to drones technology. whatever standard we claim to use today, we have to accept that other countries are going to cite back to us tomorrow. while we can accept that terrorism is a global threat, the idea that we are engaged in a global war on terror which allows an executive branch,

regardless of which country's executive branch it is to declare people unilaterally enemies of the state and order their killing without judicial review before or after the fact is one that we must at least debate and seriously consider whether that is the kind of world in which we want to live. it used to be that our country condemned what we now call targeted killing. it will be the case tomorrow that other countries will carry them out. we look to ourselves as a standard setter for international law, the rule of law. ourndermine our status, legitimacy, and our ability to argue for the rule of law approach if we don't recognize that limitations that we want today -- that we might want for others are ones that we have to recognize for ourselves. and there i want to talk very

quickly about some facts. the reality is, as mark said, the majority of people who are being killed now are not senior-level al qaeda leaders. they are lower-level insurgents who do not necessarily pose a threat to the united states but may pose a threat to pakistan, yemen, and other countries. at the least we need more information and debate about where we are committed to being at war, why, and for what reason in order to be able to have sound policy going forward on these issues and an informed public debate based on theiru.s. people can let policymakers know what their

thoughts are. >> phil zelikow, any response to what john has said? >> i do not disagree entirely with john. i think the two paradigms are important in the american context. but reacting to both comments, i have to observe that country's under attack are the ones that get to decide whether they are at war or not. legalr or not that is a principle, i will make that observation as a historian. country's under attack will decide whether they are at war or not. if they think they are at war, they will act accordingly. if terrorists came to shanghai and blew up its holdings and killed thousands of chinese citizens tomorrow, it would not matter what president we had said or what labels we had applied.

if the chinese thought that came from people oversee, they would act as if they were at war, and they would use 100% of their available power to attack the people who had caused that. to the absolute limits of what was possible. and wherever those people were, they would do that. frankly, so would any other government that felt a sense of responsibility to its citizens. >> i have a couple of buttons i would like to pose myself. mark mazzetti, we have talked about the legal aspect here, the legal frameworks. on the policy side, as well, does the use of drones and targeted killing, when we think about long-term potentially doing more harm than good -- john bellinger, you made a similar point toward the end of your recent testimony to congress, so i will come to you

next -- a kind of a brief answer, mark, if you can. >> i think this is something we will find out in the years ahead in terms of, as i said before, blowback for what is being done now. at this point there is anecdotal evidence of the radicalization happening as a result of drones strikes in yemen and pakistan. one of the more famous cases is in may of 2010 when faisal shazad tried to blow up trucks in times square. i know that john brennan has said there is little if no evidence of radicalization. i think making firm judgments on what right now about the impact -- it is a little dangerous. i think, though, that if the

cia is doing its job, they should be doing very thorough analysis on the analytic side about what the other side of the cia, the operations side, is the impact that the drone strikes predominately are being carried out by the cia, are having on the views of the people in pakistan and elsewhere. and will that be more radicalization? will it mean more attacks, attacks directed by what is left of al qaeda, or things like the boston bombing? we still do not know too much about the brothers that carried out the attack, but certainly we all agree we may see more of that in the future. so what does that mean? >> john bellinger, just a very quick response. >> i was mostly quoting people that were more knowledgeable than myself, like stan mcchrystal.

my point was to know that people who really are in the know are concerned that our use of drones, while effective on one hand -- we certainly, one can quibble whether every last person ought to have been targeted, we are knocking out a lot of al qaeda leaders. but is it reaching the point of minimal returns? general mcchrystal's point is that we don't understand how much of the united states is becoming hated around the region because of the of drone strikes. my concern as a lawyer is that we are also losing support of our strong allies in europe, who really were willing to give president obama the benefit of a doubt in a way they were not willing to give president bush. these drone strikes have really ramped up the european public, their parliament, their journalists are putting pressure on their governments to say why aren't you saying anything about this to my are you sharing with the american

administration, are these things legal? ofse are really echoes guantánamo, so phil is right that any country that is attack has a right to decide if they are in a armed conflict. but it becomes a serious problem for the united states, who needs the support of our allies and is committed to the rule of law, if none of our allies really believe that we are in that armed conflict. where philip and i really worked very hard in the second term of the bush administration was to get out and do a better job in the second term than we had done in the first term to try to engage our allies in dialogue, explain to them what we were doing, explain to them for example why one can detain people under the laws of war without charging them, which is something that we absolutely did not accept. this administration problem, because they feel they are on the side of angels, is that they have not had to explain themselves.

we had been attacked, everybody ought to be behind us. we got into a deep hole. philip and i know that we worked hard in the second term of the bush administration to convince our allies that we were doing the right thing. these are exactly echoes what happened. the obama administration now finding itself maybe not in as deep a hole, and they have the support of their allies, but they need to get on top of this and explain to our allies why what they are doing is legal, why it is permissible under international law. >> philip, a very quick response from you, and then hina, a response from you, in that you have talked briefly about the number of dead. >> i think it is time to have a debate about the public authorization of military force that the congress passed into

his house in one. that was 12 years ago. that is the corollary of my argument. it is time to have a renewed debate about are we still in a war, or should we move this into another paradigm that maybe treats this as something less than a global armed conflict because of the different size and character of the enemy we face now. i think it is an appropriate time for that. if this year is not the right time, 2014 as our posture in afghanistan, which really was the catalytic event that -- for which the congressional legislation was passed in the first place, that we can move into a different phase. i think we are entering a period where it is time for renewed public discussion of these issues, of what framework really is appropriate for this particular set of people.

>> philip, you have anticipated and answered well a couple of questions i have had. i will skip those, if you can just comment on this issue. >> last week the senate judiciary subcommittee headed by senator dick durbin and ranking member ted cruz had a telling hearing on these issues. folks the extent that have not looked at the statements there, i would urge you to do so. i think the issue -- two issues. i don't think even with those explanations are allies in europe or elsewhere in the world will agree that this war based framework is one that accords with international law. so we really have to think through the fact that we have to ratchet set down and abide by the laws of war, which i ourk allow us to maintain

security and do so in accordance with a set of standards that the rest of the world recognizes and that we helped establish. what happens when we don't? one of the testimonies that i thought was most powerful last week -- and kudos to senator durbin and senator cruz for inviting a very first time a young man to discuss the human cost and consequences of targeted killing operations in yemen. this is an exceptional young man. he comes from a remote village in yemen who has learned english and went to university as a result of u.s. scholarships, and to high school >> sees himself as an ambassador of american values and principles to yemen, and six days before his testimony his village, drones were used to strike it. what he had to say was up until then what people knew about the united states was based on his love of the country and his talk about american values and

what it meant to him about this nation. droneat they know are strikes that killed someone that he and other people think could easily have been captured by yemeni forces, and that instead of this capture what resulted was death, fear, and a real backlash against the united states. so we need to hear more from people who are actually impacted on the ground to inform what otherwise might be a sterile legal argument and recognize that, as i think stanley mcchrystal said, general mcchrystal, that what may appear riskless to us here, to the perspective on those on the receiving end is very much like war. that is part of what we are doing and what we have to consider going forward including whether we want to expand authority at a time when

the public is tired of the blood and treasure that has gone into war-based endeavors, and when our policy makers are telling us that al qaeda and other organizations have been decimated. it is a debate we have to have, a debate we have to have more information to have on an informed basis. >> thank you, and i would like to open it up to your questions. we do have microphones. wait till the microphone comes, then please state your name and organization. if you would like to direct a question to a particular panelist, these do so. >> john gannon. >> thanks, great panel. the bellinger mentions obama administration was making efforts to clarify this issue. andve read those speeches, it seems to me what i have read is more of a rationalization for what we have done rather than establishing a critical

framework for where we need to go. a couple of questions have come out of that. what is it with regard to roles and responsibilities? troubleno one has any with the imam, but when we go to his 16-year-old son two weeks later, we learned that that operation was not conducted incia, which was supposedly charge of this, but by the department of defense. on the issues of roles and responsibilities and accountability that comes out of that, what is the legal foundation for either of those agencies or departments to be involved, and how do we get that clarified so that we can have clearer policy and then embed that in law? and the final point that hina has made are the international implications from a legal standpoint.

it is proliferating. issue of ourt an values and our standards to the world. if we do not establish international law that governs the use of this kind of capability. how do we move to embed in domestic law and then get into the international arena and establish international law that will rain this in. i would expect any president to use whatever capability is available to him or her at the time of an attack, but i think our history shows that we recognize we have to rein this and embed in law, because we are a country of rule of law. corrective you could keep your response as concise so we can take as many responses as

possible in the time remaining. >> on the igman and -- on the administration's speeches, they really are good speeches as far as they go. what i am arguing is that they you heard the precise legal parameters. persuade other countries to go along with us. the administration has not felt they need to do that. and they do. also if we want to constrain other countries from the use of drones, we need to be extremely precise in what is a lawful use of lethal force and what would be an unfiled -- unlawful use of lethal force. a dronena russia used and a spokesman has to tap dance and say that was an killing ingeted contrast to all of our lawful

killings. we have not been resized. that is a challenge for the administration to explain in mo detail. i see echoes of the cia interrogation program which was a reaction, perhaps an over reaction to 9/11. now we have the drone strikes again, proposed by cia, putting the white house in a difficult position of saying now. but now, need to get these on a better footing in the second term.

>> it was one of two recommendations of the 9/11 commission that was not adopted which was to take paramilitary functions out of the cia and give it to the dod. if anything, not only was it not adopted but the opposite ended up occurring where the cia has become so much a paramilitary organization, using drone strikes and targeted killing create the counterterrorism center has become the beating heart of the agency. we will see -- there has been indications that the administration wants to move back in the other direction and we will see what happens. >> , one of no question the most unsympathetic characters you could have an connection with being a poster boy for some of the policies.

what about the person after that? the administration takes the position in response to our transparency freedom of information act lawsuits that we cannot confirm or deny that we carried out the killing of an ki.y ar ala the -- and wa this is in essence a political question for the executive branch to decide. i think that is -- we profoundly disagree but that is a very dangerous proposition for a system of checks and balances that the executive branch may be able to unilaterally take the license of a u.s. of the sin and not be subject to judicial review even after the fact. >> thank you.

>> thanks for an interesting panel. i had a question for john and philip. -- to help me understand better the arguments for the legality. if al qaeda was to get hands on tone technology, if it were use them to attack u.s. military sites here or government offices involved in planning attacks, was the -- what would be the legality? the u.s. is engaged in mutual war with al qaeda and if it is responding to an imminent threat. pass the test of international legality? >> do you want to respond to the

guardian? >> we are discussing remote warfare with people who are waging warfare with piloted vehicles. there is nothing that prohibits people from going to war against the united states. there are consequences. it would be legal to go to war, it would be legal for us to wage war against the people who did that. >> governor? . all through history when we have had wars, we suspended civil rights and we have done things profoundly illegal sometimes. that is what we have done but we never had a war that lasted 15 years.

the idea that you could be extralegal for this amount of time and have a program that kills people, i tried to follow this, i do not know who authorizes this. i do not know if it is john brennan or a military man. let alone a legal framework. what the rationale has what is kind of thing and i worry very much as this technology spreads , we have through our history been a refuge for revolutionaries create we have had people rebelling against the government and we make a home for them here because we often support what they are doing. we have done that since our earliest days. that means some other country has the right to target them on american soil. there are fairly troubling questions here.

>> i was in pakistan in october. quite apparent that quitegnature strikes -- a significant proportion of the strikes. what is the legal framework for that? they do not know who the individuals are. how is that justified? >> do you want to start? >> that is one of the concerns even for those of us who think that these are legal is how the signature strikes seem to fit the obama administration's rationale where on the one hand they have said -- the president

has said surprisingly that he is personally approving drone strikes at one point a year and a half ago. there were stories that suggested that the president was pouring over the target list and reserving the targeting for those who posed a threat. that does seem to be inconsistent with the so-called signature strikes of people who bear a certain signature. not know abouto what their rationale is because the obama administration has not explained it. i will not criticize it because they have not explained what they are doing. that gets to appoint that almost all of us agree with. if we do not want to get , the administration needs to explain who they are targeting and why and what the rules are as john brennan said.

-- john gannon said. theverybody knows that united states conducts military operations in afghanistan against the taliban. so then you would say -- how do we know it is the taliban encampment in afghanistan? their intelligence indicator is about things people have people tohat caused conclude it is an encampment of people directly participating in hostilities. not all of those judgments are always accurate. in war, they'll -- never are.

an arcaneis terminology about signature strikes, the kinds of strikes 'sat military -- military conduct and you get into the arguments as to what are the intelligence indicators that provide compelling evidence that these are the people who are in combat. >> there are three major problems with signature strikes. of lethal force operations that might be conducted in war. this is further away from what this referred to as a hot battlefield. it is not clear that the administration is abiding by hostility standard or even what the definition is. i was struck when the former u.s. ambassador to pakistan was asked what constitutes a militant who can be struck here male between 20

and 40. one man's militant is another man's chump who went to a meeting. the legal issue with signature strikes in this context at least is it threatens to turn the presumption of civilian status on its head and civilians have a presumption in war of not .eing targetable we need more information that this is a real threat, if these are being conducted and many of -- we do not know as it has been reported. the counts, what is the basis and how do we know and

what is the numbers and we still do not know that. >> i am concerned that the pendulum is swinging too far in one direction. they responded to all of the 9/11 commission's requests for what were you doing prior to 9/11 to make the country safe and why did you not do enough? i can tell you on behalf of some of -- as someone who has been in the white house, all these things that has been said on one side of the spectrum. these are causing us great damage around the world. on the other hand if you were the president and his advisers, sworn to make the country safe, the cia director gives information that suggests there are threats against you that another 9/11 could happen.

i'm sure this administration looks back and looks at the investigation done by the 9/11 commission that suggested that not enough had been done and is mindful of that. i only want to make the point that although all of us have raised concerns about drone strikes, i do not want the pendulum to swing so far as to suggest that these are not incredibly difficult decisions if you're the president and his >> the george w. bush presidential library in dallas open to the public today. the former president gave up surprise welcome in the replica of the oval office. tonight at 8:00 eastern, a tour of the bush library. we have a tour of the exhibits. here's a preview.

>> i do not know that it will change the way -- it is meant to explain in those eight years of history to talk about all the different things that we face as a country and his choices and decisions that he made to respond to whatever the challenges were. i think people would learn a lot. there are a lot of things that people did not like about it interesting is things that people did not learn about. it will give you an idea of what it is like to be president. and their successes and their failures and it is like in anyone's life. we will have the same sort of records. >> hasn't met your expectations?

>> people will find it interesting. we tried to plead -- including three single thing. we have not talked about our this isfor dissidents part of this wall that i am looking at. >> there will be visits to other libraries and a walk- through of the reagan library with former first lady nancy reagan. she was anow that invalid when she got to the white house but people think she did not participate much and that is not exactly true. he was -- she was very involved. she had her own bedroom

upstairs across from the president's office and she was always able to hear what was going on. she was very active and she read the daily newspapers and brought different points of view and was able to calm him down. and she was the grandmother of the house as well as taking care of her daughters and grandchildren. >> the conversation is available on our website. tune in monday for the next program on julia grant. , former director of an telogen said john negroponte will talk about intelligence sharing. president's latin america trip which includes costa rica. karel mecham -- carl mecham. " is liveton journal

every day at 7 a.m. eastern. issue ofissed on the agricultural departments meet inspection program. -- we focused on the issue of the agro cultural department's meat inspection program. joins us from new york city this morning. thanks for being with us. tell us how and why did you do decide to do this? >> always interested in places i am not supposed to go. am last book about which i now and is working in a prison for year. it struck me that we should be talking about places like that and i feel the same way about the origin of the food i eat. as a meat eater. there is a lot of attention on me to lately. i thought the best way to take a

look inside the slaughterhouse for an extended time would be to become an inspector. >> you talk about participatory journalism and on the cover of the story it describes your reporting as being undercover. you declared to be embedded. what is the difference? >> there is a couple of levels here. one is that federal -- usda meat inspectors are by law embedded in every slaughterhouse. a slaughterhouse cannot operate without federal inspectors present. they have to give them space in the factory and they give us parking places. i had a locker room inside the cargo along with my covert, a federal inspector. on another level, i am embedding myself with those .nspectors

without them knowing that my goal is to write about what life is like in there. there is a couple of layers to that. >> before we get more into the piece itself, how did it work for you to get in there and if you become part of the team of usda inspectors that was doing the day-to-day work in the slaughterhouse? >> that was my goal. it took me two years to do it because it was not that hard to qualify. you can either get this job by experience, most people have worked in the meat industry, a lot of them on the line in quality assurance and you can get it by having a four-year college degree with math and science. they told me i lacked some of the math i thought i had so i took a long distance learning course and i got it for your credits and a couple of years later, there i was in nebraska. i had a badge, i was a federal

meat inspector. there was nothing pretend about it. i was fully devoted to the job. allas required -- required my attention especially in the early days when there is so much to learn. meat inspectors do not look. in the beef plan to use knives and a hook to cut into pieces of meat to look for disease. itis very participatory and is demanding especially at the beginning. >> you mentioned the plans you worked in was owned by cargo. they have pushed back the journal. cardinal is calling it a feeble tale. what is your response? >> it was a funny way to put it. this is a 14,000 word piece. they picked up on a couple of tiny factual inaccuracies. the funny thing about their

responses they likened it to the jungle which is of course the powerful novel that got meat inspection started in this country. i was very flattered by that comparison. none of us i think can hope to have that kind of power with our writing these days. within a few weeks of the publication of the jungle, congress had established federal meat inspection in this country. that was an incredible and seven reform. these days, factories are not like the jungle at all. i was not going after the industry. i did not see a single rat in the factory. i did not see anyone fall into a grinding machine. what i saw was the way

industrial soldering works. the way that you can run 5000 head of cattle through a factory in a day and turn them into meat. the ingenious machines that help get that done. ,he huge core of workers mostly latin american, who use knives all day and get what they consider a fair wage for the huge cost to their health. there is a awful lot of repetitive stress injury in these places. i suffered it myself. even though my job was not as intensely about cutting as theirs. i got little breaks during the day and got to change positions because we rotate our post as we cut into different parts of the animal. during the day. the regular workers do not get to do that. anyway, i wanted that kind of overview. i wanted to have a stake in the -- pardon me -- and the whole process. i did not want to be a casual observer.

i wanted to get my hands dirty. host: here are the numbers to call. give us a sense of the scale of the plans you mentioned. you mentioned how many heads of cattle can come in. where are they in the country? >> most of the beef plants are in that part of the midwest where there are cows. kansas, nebraska, northern texas. cargo is one of them. ll.gir gil

there is one of those. scales.pens on variouis there are giant multinational corporations that run these plants. the industry shifted from ager cities like chicago to smaller american towns. he did not need the real heads to get the cattle. you could use trucks get them anywhere. many years, they have been mostly caucasian and english- speaking. in the last 25 years, there is a whole group of towns like this that have become largely latino for their work fell.

there has been a profound the graphic change in the country's midsection as well as the typical meat factory worker has changed. most of the inspectors i have worked with were people who had grown up out there. they were mostly white. on the day i started, a mexican- american woman also started. i was able to get her perspective on the whole thing as well. caller: i saw a documentary that covers the areas that joe is talking about. it was called "food, inc." my question is simple. is there any validity to that? has four major conglomerates that control all

of our food source. was it similar to that documentary? >> i did watch that documentary but it was more than a year ago so i cannot remember everything about it. i am fairly sure that what i saw stands up to my own experience and to others' scrutiny. that is the way food is made in this country. i remember as i flew out to omaha, i sat next to a cargill employee who worked in the sauce division. he said something to me, i think it was that one out of three products in the supermarket has its involvement by cargill in one way or another. that is not necessary up -- not necessarily a bad thing. open than others

about letting journalists inside. they let in a camera crew to a plant in colorado. that said, if you wanted to go see how your meat was made, i would say lots of luck. these plans are surrounded by barbed wire. they're extremely secure. they have got cameras all around and cameras inside. everything i did on the job could have been watched by somebody in plant management. in fact, those video feeds are available at company headquarters in kansas. there is a lot of surveillance and there is a lot of secrecy over how meat is made. i do not think it is justifiable. the harder food companies work to keep journalists out, the more we are going to make our way in. there is this whole set of logs out there. and the two years as i was

waiting to get my job, they kept getting passed in state after state starting in iowa. the goal is to stop the hitting -- hidden camera videos that made the meat industry look so bad. i was afraid those laws were going to make it for me to do my job as a journalist. nebraska has not passed one yet. it shows there is an attitude of fear about what is going on in there. they should be more open. >> our guest has a cover story in harpers called, "the way of all flesh." piece to a companion this about how he did his reporting. going undercover in a slaughterhouse. frank tweets in, have always said you do not need the fda, it does make it so that any citizen

can view any food establishment during business hours. transparency and openness. what do you think? guest: i kind of like that idea. fat chance of happening, but i do not see why it should not. it gives the sense there is something shameful going on. i appreciate the process of killing animals is not attractive. there is a lot of blood involved. a lot of things that if you are not used to turn your stomach the first time you see them. one of my job post was of this roundtable where all of the organs that would drop out of the body cavity would pass in front of inspectors. right after lunch to have to stand at that table and watch these steaming piles of organs is not easy. it makes you think hard about this whole process. the first, and online ask me why

i have not become a begin as a result of this. -- a vegan as a result of this. i certainly understand people who do, but fortunately or unfortunately i like meat too much. but i want to eat meat that will not make me sick. there are things that happen in the factories that give cause for concern. host: when and how is the meat inspected? guest: sure. at the plant where i worked one of the veterinarian to run the detail of inspectors with that the animals -- looks at the animals when they're ripe. they arrive 40 at a time. they get unloaded, weighed in weight and corrals for their turn in the not box. they go up a box.

ramp designed by temple grandin , this will reduce anxiety. a worker there told me in spanish that it smelled so bad because they do not want to die. i do not know if that is true or not. you imagine most animals do not want to die but that is what they're there for. once they get inside, the first team of inspectors looks at -- tongues.ongs. looking at lymph nodes. signs of tb. cattle over 30 years of age considered at risk for bse. i am afraid i ever got what it stands for. we checked various parts of the animal at various stages of its

disassembly, if you will. then, of different team of inspectors a few days later other meat gets. tested by the usda and grinding plants. that is a different process.we look for things like excreta or ingesta. sometimes pieces of both make their way onto the meat and they are full of bacteria. atlity control is important that stage.

testing is important to make sure there are not bacteria and the ground meat that is going out to consumers. host: mount pleasant, mich.. independent line. caller: i have a question about the integrity of the journalism you are being involved in. doesn't it seem like a violation of privacy? it kind of seems like howard stern, kind of. guest: undercover reporting, to me, is a last resort. for journalists it is a nuclear option because some degree of deception is involved. it is different in every case. every journalist in every situation is different and should be judged differently. the first test is the subject important enough to justify an undercover investigation? i think the production of meat, something we can put in our body

with potentially fatal consequences, rarely, think of this, but that is a possibility. with all the focus on additives to our food and antibiotic used in the raising of cattle, this is a very important issue. it passed that test for me. is there a way might -- way i could get the same story by not going undercover? that is the way i could get the next question. i do not think so. i would never be able to do the job myself. the last question is privacy. i changed the names of everybody at work with.

-- i worked with. some of them say silly things. i did not want them to suffer personal humiliation because of that. it it will put your mind at ease, let me just say i found the inspectors be conscientious and hard working. that my editors were that i arrived at that conclusion, but i felt part of the process that had integrity. fortunately i did not have to write about the people i work with. the only thing i did not like is conditions that led my arm swollen and fingertips numb and my hand unable to pick up my socks by the end of the second week as my palm was so sore.

host: next call. caller: my question is i am a meat cutter and i know where i live here in maryland we have different meats like angus meats and regular. it is about integrity. people say they are selling things that are simply no kind of drugs put into the meat. we put in a black stripe for and

a red tray is usda choice. it is really up to the meat if he wants to have any integrity. host: before you get off the line, tell us more about how long you have worked in the industry. the you have any of those repetitive motion injuries? >> i started in 1988. i started as a meat wrapper. i have issues with carpal tunnel. my concern is the company i work for is building a new facility in pennsylvania. at the end of the year we did not know if we will have jobs but everything is being pre- packaged. i just wondered about the

integrity. guest: it sounds like he faces choices that would affect his personal integrity for how wefferent meats are labeled. would know because the holstein was harder to cut. what this points to is the key role of federal inspection.and make sense to talk about this a question or. .- the sequester earlier this year there was a fear that funding cuts would shut down the factories across the country for about 11 days because there would not be enough money to pay the inspectors. when the whole congress passed a to shufflellowed the usda

some funds so some of the plants would not have to shut down. meat inspection falls in the same category of air traffic control, national defence -- these are things you have to have a government to do. no matter what some people think, when it comes to greeting meet -- grading meat, certifying the wholesomeness or what was put in, if government will not do it, i am not sure who is. the way it works in a factory is quality-control is done partly by inspectors. the with the inspectors are helping the meat company by checking. the meat companies do their own checking on top of that. the inspectors have a fantastic power, which is to actually -- other workers do, too but infections can stop -- inspectors can stop the line. i saw some oil on a park is one day.

my co-workers saw a live bird dropped onto the floor and put back -- liver dropped onto the floor and put back on to the table in a contaminated state. -- an oldng animal. animal labeled as a young animal. meat that might have problems with neurological issues. that could have gotten an if my companion had not pressed the red button. i think americans need this done in the production of our meat to ensure there is integrity and the idea of a company could do it without an inspection is kind of scary. i set up a google alert for every time the usda does a

recall. it is constant. all year long. it is often little companies. the ones that should worry us all contaminated meat, it is not fully cooked can kill you. i have a friend in upstate new york who ate -- whose wife ate undercooked chicken from what he believes is the pain that she got in her stomach and other parts of her body soon after eating that, she said i did not need any attention, i am strong, this will go away. it did not go away and killed her. 3000 people per year are thought to die from food borne illness.

host: ted conover, a job as a usda inspector at the nebraska slaughterhouse. at least one federal program one was able to beat it. the sequester was supposed to be a budget cut you could not beat. three weeks in the agricultural department food inspectors were part of a spending bill the president signed to get out of the sequester. the program got $55 million in new money. the sequester was supposed to take that away. looking more at the question of

inspection, he writes the usda is responsible for overseeing the slaughter house operations, employing 7500 inspectors throughout the country. and the food and drug administration is responsible for most other areas. fresh produce. let's talk about the u.s. favors is the fda. here is the budget request for fiscal year 2011. over $22 billion. there is the breakdown for money for federal food safety inspection and inspection at the state level, and also at the international level. how does this differ from the -- the fda. guest: in the simplest terms the usda monitors the killing of animals. the fda monitors seafood, produce, processed foods it is this bifurcated responsibility for the food supply that is being modernized and brought up to date.

the fda has gotten the most attention in terms of legislation, food modernization act, which is being slowed down by the sequester, is intended to increase inspection of the increased proportion of the food that originates overseas. 80-90% of our seafood comes from other countries. 20-30% of the produce. it was not all inspected the way we would have expected things the way we do it it here. the government is a bit behind in doing those kinds of inspections. that is a scary thing. just in a very small nut shell, that is the difference.

peanut butter is fda. poultry, pork and beef production is usda. host: here is the difference between the fda requested budget. $4.7 billion. 1.5 billion would go to implementation of the food safety modernization act. and the other monetary breakdowns. mark is our next calller in arizona on the independent line. caller: thank you for c-span. i am glad i got on this morning. caller: i have a strong concern for the baghdad -- ag gag laws. as you mentioned yourself, we need undercover people to go in and see if the animals are being treated humanely. we also need people to fight for the gestation cages to be changed and things along that line. i think it is horrible they're

not on the making it illegal for the people to go in but attacking organizations such as cruelty for animals are going and having their people go in. they're calling them eco terrorists. i think it is out of control. i totally agree the opposite should happen, that there should be more openness and the ability to see how the animals are treated and how they are given to us for consumption. guest: can i tell you a story about that? while i was waiting to get hired, i called the founder of mercy for animals who had just produced another stomach-turning video showing abuse of animals. i told him who i was and i said how do you choose the plants where you send your people to do the hidden videos?

i said you pick the most notorious once? he said no, we send people wherever we can get hired and we have found abuse that every single place we work. i have no way of verifying that that is true, but i do not doubt it. i think these practices are endemic to agriculture. management is officially against abuse. educated people are against abuse but we hire people and put them in super difficult jobs with little supervision, and not all of them feel the same way we do. the way ourselves do or should about animals. thus, the hidden videos of chickens being lapped against

walls and dairy cows hit with canes to get them to move even though they have broken legs. you can go online and just cannot believe what you are seeing. i want to say though that this is not -- i think the attitude toward animals is not the way of the mainstream, even an agricultural america. one day in the break room in nebraska i was looking at the omaha paper with my fellow inspectors and there is an article about the latest mercy for animals video. my supervisor went on line, and we all gathered around a computer to watch it. it was awful what the animals were going through at the hands of the workers. the inspectors all thought so. none of them said that is b.s. or noise about nothing. people said that should never happen, how can that be allowed to happen? so these humane treatment laws represent a reasonable consensus of how americans think animal should be treated.

it does not like city people vs. country people. country people feel the same way. in these environments that things can happen. 30's to the oversight and openness. -- there needs to be oversight and openness. host: one tweets in that is why only order be from amish farmers that i know. one says my milk is from grass- fed, free range cows. you talk about the conversations that go on at the plants among some of the workers. they do perceive this divide. you write that one of your colleagues said she was bothered by the fact that urban consumers with little knowledge of animal husbandry could influence the whole economy simply by hopping

on some political correct bandwagon in terms of labeling. what did you learn about labeling and what those mean as consumers go to the store? guest: the most extreme example of that is the so-called pink slime products. that is the phrase used by a usda scientists to describe this product. this is made from parts of a cow that could only debatably be called me. -- meat. this got a lot of publicity is being served in school lunches. people in nebraska suffered because jobs disappeared. the demand for pink slime, the demand and strong for it drastically. people that my supervising

veterinarian who lost their jobs. he was angry about that. he said this is one of the cleanest thing that comes out of the factory because it has been subjected to ammonia and other things. this was- his opinion hysteria tramping over reason in regards to what we put in our bodies for food. define differing opinions about that. canada will not allow meat products treated with ammonia because of safety concerns. america seems to allow a lot of other things that country's do not. such as the sub-therapeutic use of the levels of antibiotics as cattle are growing up. as they are fed these, even though they're not sick, it

helps them grow. there is a lot of concern this weakens the drugs, which are such an amazing -- which are so important to human health that it weakens them when we get sick. you find a lot of differences of opinion about this, depending on what part of the country you live in and how connected to the industry you are. host: trying to get more calls than in the last few minutes we have left. jack in georgia. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. first of all, i salute this gentleman for appearing on your program. i think right now it probably did not take the courage it took years ago if you would have attempted this, god knows what would have happened. there would be ramifications that would have followed him through the streets wherever he goes. the problem as i see it is that the laws written in the books by introduced in the past of the legislative power are not stringent enough.

i will tell you why. anything goes in america today. this wonderful country we all share allows perpetrators, especially in the industry. who knows but the people who are at the head of the table, the kind of meat we are eating. caller: thank you for taking my call. i grew up on an animal feeding operation. at any one time we had 6500 pigs.

we were typically a better grow worse than the rest. -- grower than the rest. if the pig is being treated for drugs they only have to be off of that drug for 30 days before slaughter. i was wondering if you had seen a claim and sick animals coming in and being slaughtered and the rules are and standards are for that. also, i think the laws are being pushed because the people really knew how animals are treated and groaned and slaughtered, i think things would quickly change. thank you for taking my call. guest: unfortunately i was posted inside the floor on the kill floor, which is a football- sized room were animals on a hoax make their way slowly around being disassembled. just outside the room is where

the cattle would arrive. i started around dawn. the cattle have been arriving all night to get ready for their trip to the chain. i did not get to see them, but i believe the veterinarian i work for have high standards and would never allow a down cal to go -- cow to go up that ramp. that said, you see disturbing things inside. but the day i was on livers, as i reached for it i saw what looked to be my dog after a bath. i said what is that? people around me chuckle. it was a fetus.

supposedly the heifers slaughtered have not had calves, but that is not always the case. a lot of times you see all whole uterus with a fetus inside go by several times per day. their blood is collected by use for laboratories and is quite valuable. there's something pretty upsetting about that. a book by a political scientist called every 12 seconds describes cattle occasionally where he worked in nebraska having their babies while they waited to go in for slaughter, which messes up the whole process, as you can imagine. that seems kind of disturbing, and you like to think that does not happen, and especially it was weird because i was in a part of the country were you still see billboards with the aborted human fetuses.me iide te factory was upsetting in a way i uld r get out of the habit of

thinking about meat. unless you are from a farm area, and you realize that e an animal's life and. it left me thinking i should appreciate my meat a little caller: i n'- the books 14-23,, chapter seven jesus declared all foods fit to eat my man -- by man if they are given thanks for. and repaired normally. -- prepared normally. you can take a liver, it can drop on the floor. have you ever heard of washing it off with water? of course. this is the company's employees

not following the company's roles that my inspector noticed and the company took that liver , liver flukes in the everything gets used sooner orni eat meat. host: ted con joining us from new york city. his story is on the front of er " thank for having me. >>, the syrian civil war, and psi's meacham. is carl also a look at senate legislation that would require

online retailers to collect state sales taxes. " washington journal" is live every day at 7 a.m. eastern. >> last week we took you to the grand opening of the george w. bush presidential center and dallas, texas on the campus of southern methodist university. tonight we're going to spend two hours on presidential libraries here on c-span. beginning with the two or of the bush presidential center and lots more ahead of that, too. we're going to take some time and look at the presidential ceer tour with laura bush coming up momentarily just to let you know our schedule. in 45 minutes we will bring you a look at some of the presidential libraries we have covered over the past six years. we have covered over the past six years or so, in particular, back to our 2007 series, looking at the presidential libraries. now, with the bush center, there are team presidential libraries. and there will be a tour of the

reagan library. all of that coming up this evening. earlier today, the bush presidential center opened for official tours. the center sent out a photo. the former president surprise some school kids the dallas area. this is a look inside the mockup of the oval office. the former president, meeting about 43 kids from the dallas area