engagement in finding the right solution. but it is a very powerful positive agenda the president outlined. host: talking about the g8 summit and what happens next. our line for republicans with the eu ambassador here in washington. good morning. caller: i have my own beliefs on what is going on. theve always believed united states has always wanted to deal with one country which controls a lot of countries. with that in mind, the euro is a way of controlling countries. we had world war i, germany lost, world war ii, germany lost. andwe have the euro, whenever a problem develops, it is germany that has the last word. as countries begin to default, germany will pick up the pieces without ever firing one shot. thank you very much. i don't sharesay,

that view of things. i think the european union construction over the past six years has shown that we are a powerful tool to ensure stability, peace, and prosperity . this benefits germany as much as it benefits all of the other countries. if you look back the last 60 years of history in europe, the longest period of peace on the continent ever. it has a lot to do with the fact that after the war we decided to join efforts and build a common future. we started with a common market. ast of our countries, we have single currency. we have the beginnings of a foreign policy and security policy around the world. so, member states of the european union, the 28 -- because croatia is joining in a few weeks -- half a billion people. they realize that if they want to influence the world, if they want to have a say in the way the world is governed, they have to act together. because at the end of the day,

in relative terms, all our member states are relatively small. and this is good for the u.s.. , half a has a partner billion people, 28 countries, that basically share the same principles, values, and the same strategic interests, and the u.s. can deal with us as a single partner. this is very important. germany is part of it, of course. germany is a big country. it is a central empathy in europe. but i totally reject the idea that this is any way at germany conspiracy to achieve the power that they didn't achieve otherwise. i totally reject that idea. germany is at the heart of the european project and contributing a lot to strengthening our construction in europe. overcome this difficult situation created basically by the financial crisis, you see

europe coming back to growth. a stronger partner with the united states. host: british prime minister david cameron also put on the table the issue of tax evasion. can you explain how much that is costing the european economy, european jobs, and the european government? guest: at the moment, we are asking our citizens to do a lot of sacrifice in order to adjust to the impact of the financial crisis. we cannot allow a number of people to escape, a number of people to evade their tax responsibilities. so, i think this was a powerful message from the g8. very much supported and initiated by the europeans to make sure that our tax system is assumes itsverybody responsibilities in terms of and that when we ask normal citizens to make sacrifices, we should at the same time ensure that any of the

people that tries to escape this sanctions -- is sanctions. cooperation among states is an effective one, and this is what they discussed in the g8 and what we are implementing. we are happy to see that we are on the same wavelength with the americans. host: what about switzerland? is which alone one of those locations used as a tax haven? guest: switzerland is not part of the european union, but we have a solid relationship with switzerland. we made a number of agreements with -- with switzerland regarding tax cooperation and we continue to work with them and with an other jurisdiction around the world in order to ensure that there is no escape for those who are not aligning themselves with the rules in terms of taxation. host: do you have a number how much it is costing the european union? guest: you can quote you for numbers but it is substantial. particularly in times of crisis,

you cannot allow that to happen, because otherwise how can we justify that we ask our citizens to make enormous efforts as they are making in europe to try to adapt and adjust to these situations? it is an issue of fairness, an issue of effectiveness of our tax system that we are dressing here. host: our guest is the european ambassador to the united states. anna is joining us from ohio. good morning. caller: i wanted to ask the ambassador -- last night on msnbc he had this reporter matt taibi from "the rolling stones" widgets that an article about the rating agencies of the banks and how scandalous the rating systems were. i wanted to ask the ambassador do you think the european people responded more strongly in demanding accountability from banks in regard to the

situations in different countries there compared to american citizens demanding accountability from the banking system and the rating agencies here in the u.s.. and i also wanted to ask him in regard to the nonproliferation obama --ith you and would you and obama's movement toward breaking down the system or breaking down nuclear with the european union stand stronger in demanding that signed the nonproliferation treaty and kind of come out into public? i know i spent a lot of time at the you one website reading letters and documents at that website. there are a lot of nations in that part of the world who feel threatened by israel. host: we will get a response. ambassador de almeida?

guest: we should all abide by our responsibilities. we have international agreements that are to be respected. think we will continue on both sides of the atlantic making sure that there is a level playing field in terms of responsibilities being assumed by all states of the world. as far that is the case as israel is concerned right now. but we are together working on those who are not respecting the agreements. you know what we are doing about iran, about north korea. and again, we support all the efforts to revive and re- energize the world effort toward reducing nuclear arsenals and putting in place the right system. -- systems. as far as the rating agencies are concerned in the banking system, it is clear with the financial crisis in 2007, 2000 8, 2 thousand nine, and the aftershocks.

the banking systems, rating agencies, all the financial their observation by public opinion. there is a lot of debate going on in europe, and i understand here as well in terms of the specific role of each of the actors and how they should behave and how they should be regulated. we have an effort around the g 20, major countries in the world trying to do the same thing. i think it was quite successful in creating a new regulatory framework for banking activities agencies.or rating in europe, there was a particular concern about the way the rating agencies were observing and assessing our countries. the sovereign debt of our countries. but also assessing other economic actors and the banks and the other operators. i think there is a debate here. it is difficult for me to say who is tougher. i think we are equally concerned about making sure that each factor of the financial system

works under a regulated framework and assumes full responsibilities. i have seen also the reaction from the rating agencies, open to reform. each sidesolutions on of the atlantic. but i think a common trend to say, we need to regulate better. we need to organize better the way the economic and financial operators intervene in the system. nuances that have to do with the way the public opinion reacted to it. maybe i could say that in europe there was more acute awareness of how important it was to the -- before the rating agencies to operate in a different way. of elements oft convergence on both sides of the atlantic, including the way we deal with the rating agencies. defining your job description, how much of your time is spent diplomatically and how much on economic issues? guest: i have been here for

three years. in the first two years, i think it was mainly economic, in the sense of dealing with the aftershocks of the financial crisis, explaining to people what we are doing in europe in terms of addressing the euro area problems. now we in recent months, a lot of work being done on syria, a lot of work being done on iran and other issues of foreign policy. and more recently, a lot on trade. are about to launch the negotiations for the free- trade area across the atlantic. it is a major product. i dedicate quite a lot of energy with that and i want to share with you how important it is for jobs and growth in america and in europe. so, my agenda is a very diverse one. elements of foreign policy, economic policy, and trade and investment. across the atlantic. busy but veryn happy to see we are progressing -- in terms

host: a quick follow-up, on the greek economy, in a word or phrase how would you describe it today? guest: still a lot to be done. going in the right direction. of sacrifices asked from the greek people. a lot of important reforms being implemented. so, i think greece bank -- greece is on the right track, not completely out of the woods. but i want to pay respect to the efforts done by authorities, and particularly by the greek population in addressing a very difficult situation. for greece and many countries in the end of this year, next year and the coming years, we will see a return to growth, the beginning of, we hope, a solid recovery. we believe that after this adjustment am a europe will be in a much better condition than toore to be more competitive

open up a world markets to address some of its structure were -- structural problems. the aging of population -- in a more effective way. host: richard, good morning. mount laurel, new jersey. republican republican my. caller: good morning, ambassador. let me apologize for the conspiracy theorists we got in this country. we seem to have that in every corner. syria. question is with back when the u.n. condemned and the security council -- namely russia and china went against it -- i haven't heard anything else about that. at one time i heard that the arab league was going to do something. wayside.to go by the maybe thereing if

is a different perspective from someone else -- another country that voted for that, what their opinion was or if anything also is being done. host: thanks for the call, richard. guest: a lot is being done to try to address the syrian problem, as i explained earlier. the arab league plays a role. other regional organizations play a role. we of the european union, we have been very active. foreign minister is in the region right now in close contact with secretary kerry. all of the ministers are fully mobilized toward trying to find the solution. the issue was discussed in the g-8, particularly with president putin. other arab countries are involved, obviously turkey is involved. there is a mobile relation -- mobilization of the community to try to find a solution to the syrian problem. again, not easy. no silver bullet. no magic solution is available.

we need to access all the options we have. i think we given ourselves the fox ability and margin to maneuver to consider all of the options. europe not to prolong the arms embargo. look of the decisions taken by president obama a few days ago in terms of support of the opposition. look at our common efforts to energize the geneva negotiations and bringing all of the actors on board. and at the same time, dealing with an extremely difficult humanitarian situation. know, on our side in the european union, we provided more than $1.5 billion in the region to address the refugee problem and the humanitarian problems. it may be the biggest refugee crisis in many decades that has been raging in that region. and we cannot forget the regional dimension of the situation in syria. actorsre a lot of involved and we need to keep an eye on the big picture in order to understand what happens in

the country. in excess ofl now, 90,000. guest: the most serious and difficult foreign policy we have to address today. bullet.as the silver no one has the solution. all of us need to contribute to find the right conditions. host: eastlake, ohio. you are next. caller: my question is basically -- most of the problems in the world am i think, can be solved by jobs. createthey are trying to more jobs worldwide. i feel if people are working -- really working and have good paying jobs, they are not going to be going to war. buts an oversimplification, in a lot of these countries, there is so much damage from the wars, you know. down our arms, let's give them the money to rebuild their cities, rebuild the countries, though infrastructure .n our own country

i admire germany because they have been so wonderful at creating jobs and keeping the economy going. they are a good example for the rest of the world but how can all of the g-8 leaders really focus on jobs? because i feel if you give people good jobs and a good education, of course, two, then problems could be solved. what do you think? guest: i absolutely agree there is an economic dimension for these problems we have been discussing here this morning. if you look at the middle east, if you look at the southern mediterranean, if you look at all the countries that were involved in the so-called arab spring, you have very difficult economic situations. you have high levels of youth unemployment. so, you need economic growth. economic growth and economic opportunities, jobs, are part of the solution for this intricate nomadic and political problems. to this region is also at the same time diplomatic, diplomatic efforts, political efforts and dialogue,

but at the same time creating the conditions for job creation and economic growth. we are supporting the economies, we are promoting reforms that eventually will mean that bad economic situations will concentrate people's minds in prosperity instead of situations like the one today. ?ow can we contribute to that americans and europeans, by assisting and providing help and supporting reforms in these countries. but also putting our own house our economies and working together across this country to remote world growth. this is what we are doing right now with the free trade area contributionother to reenergizing the world economy, creating more opportunities for other countries as well, opening up the markets around the world.

so, i greet -- i agree with you there is a strong economic this economic and foreign policy problems. jobs can do wonders in terms of creating new situations and more positive scenarios for countries like the ones we are dealing with this morning. host: finally, how long will you stay in your current position as europe's's ambassador in washington? guest: about another year or so, i would expect. still a lot to do. i am very hopeful we can make progress. i am very optimistic about it. at the end of the day, americans and europeans have a lot in common. they'll use, tradition, history, backgrounds, languages -- values, tradition. we also have strategic interests. we both are industrialized countries facing a number of challenges. and we believe that if we join hands, if we work more together -- and i am here to contribute modestly to that -- we can find to ourr solutions

problems, domestically and for our capacity to influence what happens in the world. i am optimistic. i have another year or so to continue my job. and i am looking forward to good results. host: ambassador joao vale de almeida, eu ambassador to the u.s., thank you for stopping by. ourre going to continue conversation on the economy and specifically jobs, as with focus on america by the numbers. coming up in just a moment we will look at the latest measurements in job openings and labor turnover and what it means for you and your family. you are watching c-span's "washington journal" this friday morning. we are back in a moment.

>> when you talk about transparency to the american public, you are going to give up something. you are going to begin signal to adversaries as to what her capabilities are. and the more specific you get about the program and the more specific you get about the oversight, the more specific you

get about the capabilities and the successes, to that extent you have people sitting around saying, ok, now we can understand what can be done with our numbers in yemen and the united states and consequently i will find another way to communicate and keep that in mind. though, there is a price to be paid for that transparency. now, where the line is drawn in terms of identifying what our capabilities are is out of our hands. you tell us to do it one way, we will do it that way. but there is a price to be for that transparency. span, fbieek and on c- director robert mueller makes his last public -- appearance before the senate judiciary committee. 10:00, the nsa before and after 9/11, and interviews0:00, -- with key house judiciary committee staff investigating whether there were grounds to impeach resident richard nixon. sunday at 3:00.

first ladies have a capacity to personify, if they so choose. this is a pattern of american women in politics, famous or not. there are two things. one is there are women, real people, who actually do things. also thethere is secondary capacity of being a personifying figure, charismatic figure. a first lady has come to become a first lady and realize this was larger than life, and that is something dolly figured out. she becomes this figurehead for her husband administration,, and she makes the white house into a the attachment to the capital city. all of this is happening in 1808. she doesn't know this. but in 1814 the british will burn the capital city and all this work she put in toward helping the public identify with this house that they called the white house under her term is going to pay off. because it will give a surge of

nationalism around the war. >> our focus on first ladies continues every monday night. our next program features historians and authors on why we study first ladies. monday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. [no audio] host: or send us a tweet as well. but let's begin with sudeep reddy from "the wall street

journal" with the question that will really drive the situation, which is what creates employment and the country. guest: if you look at the economy overall, at the core there is a question of demand. if businesses are seeing demand from people across the country, then they will hire workers and add to their employment and perhaps even raise wages over time as demand comes in. and if those workers are doing well and those companies, than those workers might well go out and spend their money somewhere else, perhaps ended at a faster pace, and that will lead other businesses to higher of the workers. eventually you have a self- sustaining cycle in the economy, especially in a recovery where one leads to another and the economy picks up, employment picks up, and everything gets a lot better and the unemployment rate comes down. and of course, when you are in trouble, as a recession approaches, you have the opposite occurring where people pull back, businesses pullback, jobs.art to cut

let me follow up on this chart that sudeep reddy was talking about. leaving jobs every month i did through separation in retirement. a relatively small change in the levels is essentially what makes implement go up and down. since the recession has become too and, job openings are increasing, hires are climbing slowly, but the quits are also increasing slowly and the layoffs have returned in some sectors to these previous session levels. guest: yes, all of these things are an indication that the labor market is just moving very slowly right now. if you look simply at hires, there is a lot of hiring going on. you can see in this chart, over 4.4 million hires in april.

april is the most current month for which we have data. million hires against 11.7 million unemployed -- you would think the problem should solve itself quickly good look at all the people we are hiring. but if you -- if you could go to the next slide, i am sorry. where you see the separation component added him and now you get to see what is going on. there is a different here. when you've got 4.4 million hires but only 4.3 million separation, then that is a very small net increase and that is what we are seeing, very small net increase in in unemployment. if i could return to the previous slide, you could see what is happening with hires and my apologies. this is set up to show you the first column showing the peak of hires. not just the business cycle but the peak of the hires data

series, november 2000 six. by the time the recession started in 2007, they have already dropped somewhat. but they fell much further by the end of the recession, by june of 2009. you can see they have recovered but they only came back about 800,000 of what they lost. we are still at 1.1 million short of the november peak, november of 2006. so, that is what is happening here. hires are coming back, but not very quickly. based on that, the jolt report, job openings and labor turnover, how important is the weekly basis on the monthly jobs report intervu businesses looking to expand, contract, and what it means for those on the unemployment line? guest: the labor department gives us a lot of data about where we are in the course of the recovery. that is why it is so important to watch it is closely, whether

they are weekly figures on jobless claims, how many people may have been laid off when they were looking for unemployment benefits, or the monthly figures we see. and we hear a lot about, the first friday in the month, when the monthly employment report comes out with the unemployment rate and payroll figures. what we get in those reports, we get a lot of data. what we pay attention to the most are the headline figures -- how many jobs and employers added over the course of the month, where did the unemployment rate moved to. what we often don't see is what is happening in the service. -- under the surface. that is why the figures in jolt are self-important because you can get a little under the surface and find out how many job openings there are across the country, how many workers there are per job opening and really how the momentum is shifting in the labor market. what you can see in these numbers are the remarkable changes, turning points in the economy. it gives us a little bit of a

better sense of the health of the labor market. we are obviously struggling still right now for years in the recovery to see a truly strong labor market. but we have a fair number of signs of progress, which is important. it's so do these numbers et al. for what are called the frustrated workers, those who ave stopped looking? guest: in the survey we do not differentiate why people left a job. once people are in a state of unemployment we are not tracking them in the job openings and labor turnover survey because we are an establishment survey. if they are not connected to an establishment, we can't survey them. we capture when they separate from a job that we cannot really track them much after that. the bureau has other programs that do, but not this program. what we do is we can break out separations, at least in one way. people who left their jobs voluntarily versus people who

left in voluntarily aired host: host: based on that, explain this chart. guest: ok, this is a breakout of the total separations. the light on the bottom, the yellow, total for the month of april. about 4.3 million. , the of those were quits red line, 2.2 million. over half of the total separations were people who voluntarily leave their jobs. discharges, 1.6, 1.7 million. about 38% of the separations. the rest are residual category that would call other separations which includes retirement, death, disability, things like that that did not fit easily into either category. this shows you that even though times are not particularly good right now on the labor market, there are still more people voluntarily leaving their jobs than being laid off. host: we will get to your calls and comments in a moment. but sudeep reddy, one of your colleagues asking this west into

chairman ben bernanke when he held his quarterly news conference following the latest information from the fed that the quantitative easing program will slow down either late this year or early next year, causing a steep selloff on wall street. the question on the state of the economy and the job after and the fed chairman on wednesday. [video clip] >> it is the case the fed ,verestimated the growth rate very often in the past in this recovery. gone to a period and the first half of the year with pretty subdued growth. i would like to hear you explain where this optimism comes from and how confident you are that these expectations are going to be met. the fundamentals look a little better to us. in particular, the housing sector that has been a drag on growth since the crisis now i'm usually is a support to growth. it is not only creating construction jobs, but as house

prices rise, increased household wealth, support consumption spending, consumer sentiment. state and local governments, which have been a major drag, are now coming to a position where they no longer have to lay off large numbers of workers. generally speaking, financial conditions are improving. the main headwind to growth this year is, as you know, the federal fiscal policy which the cbo estimated something in the order of 1.5% of growth aired and our judgment is that given that very heavy headwind, the fact that our economy is still moving ahead, at least at a moderate pace, is indicative that the underlying factors are improving. and so, we will see how that eve all. obviously we have not seen the full effect yet of the fiscal policy changes. we want to see how they evolve as we get through the fiscal impact. host: fed chairman this past week. sudeep reddy, based on the jobs

market, what did you hear from him? guest: what the fed chairman is trying to do as he sets policy with his colleagues on the federal reserve is trying to understand where we are in the cycle of the labor market. that is what ultimately determines whether the fed is going to raise interest rates over time or more immediately pull back on the bond mining program -- bond buying program designed to spur the economy. he is watching not only the monthly report we see off -- across economic data but also try to get under the surface with reports like jolts to understand what is happening underneath. he is fairly optimistic right now, for the reasons he outlined. what he is ultimately looking for, though, is to see that people are getting jobs come of that the unemployment rate is coming down, that the labor market is improving overall. and that he is watching all of this to see whether that occurs. he core of the question

faces there is the fact that the fed has been too optimistic over the last couple of the errors -- last couple of years expecting a faster recovery, self- sustaining, and with almost 12 million people still unemployed, even more who quit looking for work, it is clear that he still has a long way to go, and that is probably best part of the challenge he faces. host: john wohlford, he brought up the issue of construction hiring the best part thing to different picture. up slightly since two 2009 but down significantly from where we were in 2007 or 2005. guest: it shows the construction hiring has not recovered. we were down 150 4000 before the recession even started from the peak. 000, but only risen 20,000 since the recession. construction hiring is just very flat.

host: conway, new hampshire. good morning. caller: i have a possible solution to two work concerns and after i am done speaking and connecting these two concerns, i have a possible exciting solution. the first concern is immigration and america's need for people to do the hard work harvesting our crops. the second concern is young americans finding jobs and after higher education having a large debts. if or when the 11 million immigrants become legal citizens, they will likely see different types of work than working in the field and parents will work hard to give their children better lives, and most likely their children will not be working picking crops. then we will need to find another million people to do the hard agricultural work. then we have students at tech,

junior colleges, technical articles goals, four-year colleges needing jobs. if hired by the farm owners or corporations to harvest the crop they will be paid by the farm businesses and so forth. but here is the exciting part. thisdition for doing needed work and the young people have lots of energy, in addition our government would pay some of their higher education. ofthey worked one summer this difficult work, they would get one semester free tuition paid for by the government. its guy. if they're great i think we got the essence of your point -- host: that stop you there. think with the essence of your point. guest: certainly a creative response. it gets to the two core issues getting a lot of attention on capitol hill. obviously immigration is being

debated at the very moment. to deal with that kind of problem, making sure there are enough workers who are willing to do that work and perhaps do some other work that other people are not willing to do. one of the underlying issues in the labor market, how many job openings do we have that are not being filled. in some cases, those are at the high-end. advanced workers, high-tech, and in some cases it may be the low- end, people people who might not be willing to go and work out in the field or in a harder labor job. on the other part, student loans and student debt is another issue getting some attention. it is going to be very difficult to link those two. as you have seen over the years, congress has not in doing a lot of very basic in, so you probably will not find them, together and finding a comprehensive solution to link these two issues. we can only hope they address each of them in some form separately. interested, one

her facebook website, there is a chart that looks at job openings and also the employment picture. this is what it looks like from 2004, and the essential roller coaster based on the recession and economic recovery. we are turning back to where we were back in 2005-2006. it is available online at facebook.com/c-span. spring, texas. how long have you been out of work? all her co-my name -- caller: my name is luanna. i have been unemployed for 2 yea rs every month from an institution well renowned renowned here in houston, texas. job separation. a whole department from -- of 60 people went down to five people. within the hospital, they had tons and tons of jobs in the same field. they did not re-recruit those people into those jobs. some of those jobs two years and three months later are still open.

preferred paying me the unemployment money than to pay me the salary. now, i am looking for jobs within the same field and willing to take a cut of $10,000, which is a big-time arm is cut. and the reason why i am willing to take that cut is because i witha child in college that kind of cost that we are not getting all of the college financially benefits at all. host: let's use your point in talk about what she and others are facing. unemployed persons per job opening. guest: this is a measure that a picture of how things are going in the job market in terms of how competitive it is for the unemployed. each situation is different. own skill setheir

and everyone has different requirements, people live in different parts of the country. this is sort of a broad brush. a top level. does not really apply to each individual. what if you compare the number of unemployed, basically divided by the number of job openings, you end up with this ratio. you can look at it as the number of people competing for each available job -- the number of unemployed people, that is. you can see the beginning of january in 2007, we were at around one point i persons per job -- one and half persons or job opening. coming out of the recession, you have over a 6.5 persons per job opening. a lot more competitive, a lot more difficult when there are that many more people you are trying compete with for a job. have made progress, unemployment has gone down and job openings have come up, so that has brought the number down and at april we were at 3.1.

you can see, there have been significant improvements; -- since the end of the recession but still more competitive than it was prior to the recession. guest: one of the reasons we love looking at data like this is it tells a story underneath that you would not necessarily think of from the numbers. if you imagine what conditions were like in january of 2007 1 people were able to get jobs, it was much easier to get a raise, much easier to move up in the job. employersn and what face finding workers. as the recession struck and as we went into the downturn, you can see that chart really go crazy. people are all looking for work. it is why we see in some occupations, wages coming down, and that is why even today, when you have three people unemployed per job opening, it is still very difficult to get a wage increase. it is still difficult to move

around on a job and feel completely confident that you are making the right decision. that is one reason why we have had such a slow period of growth in the economy, because there is still that much slack in the labor market and you cannot generate a self-sustaining recovery this way. host: comments, first from our facebook page -- host: from our twitter page there is this -- should housing be the result of growth and not drive it? wasn't that one of the reasons we got into trouble before? is joining us from brooklyn, maryland. caller: how are you? host: how long have you been out of work? : since january. host: what did you do? caller: i was [indiscernible]

host: your question or comment. caller: [inaudible] ice job hiring signs all the time no matter where i look -- isee job hiring signs. host: the connection was not clear but he basically said there were hiring signs but yet still those out of work and homeless. host: there certainly are, and that is obviously the face -- problem we're facing right now the labor market. the economy is improving, just slowly. that is why you are not seeing everyone who wants to get a job get a job. we still have too many people looking for work for the available positions. somehow we need employers to create more jobs.

that is obviously the big question of the recovery, what job -- drives job creation and what is the spark that will get us out of this period of slow growth. we have not been able to find an answer to that. we found a lot of explanations of far of what might be holding employers that -- whether consumers who are constrained by weak credit or even abroad in europe or china, holding back the man for companies that export, or could be conditions in the united states that our lawmakers have created, whether through regulation or fiscal policy or some of the other constraints. let's lookwohlford, at white-collar, professional and business service hires. may of 2006, 7 years ago. the most recent figures, the spring of 2013. guest: what we have seen in professional business services is it tends to lead some of the other industries, tends to move first in one direction or

another. host: why is that? guest: one reason is because temporary help with included in this industry. employers can use temporary help in ars, for instance, recovery rather than bringing on permanent full-time people. they can start with the temporary help until they have more confidence the recovery will continue. we see in this line that professional is the services did fall apart in the recession but it continued to fall through the end of the recession. exceeded the period immediately before the recession. aboutually recovered by 20,000 but higher than ifinitely higher --hires definitely higher. host: how long have you been out of work, tom? out of theropped

workforce because of a previous recession back in 2000. i managed to stumble through until now. mr. john wohlford's statistics are perfect, that they are not being cooked. we are back to normal, everyone should be happy. is, i was in say i.t. and i was getting paid more than $100,000 a year. i was working on mainframe computers. i know it is old, antiquated technology but it is underlying all the data processing that is out there now. this is just my story. i will get through it in about one moment. and there is a little morning. for anyone going into technology, if you can do something in indiana, you can do it cheaper in india. it is not just a knock on india. everything is being outsourced. computer, do it on a it goes elsewhere. i am out of work. i am 62.

i am scraping by. try to get -- have my social security rides a little bit. times are tough. i would work for free for a month for anyone who would give me a chance -- used to pay me 100 and 20-100 $30,000 a year i'm a i would work for free to prove to them i still have a brain in my head and i can do the work. nobody's interested. the of it is age, part is economy. this stuff is not being captured in all of the statistics. host: thank you for the call. sudeep reddy? guest: a lot of very important points. two defendants did to fix, they do what they are designed to do, which is to tell us a certain picture of the labor market or any part of the economy when we are looking for that specific theater. intonnot actually get down

the details of everyone's individual circumstances and stories. but you actually got at a very important point, technology in particular. we have seen over the last two decades of such an amazing transformation in technology and what technology is able to do for society that we had not really imagined. that is a central problem of the labor market. preventing proper skills for workers that we have not quite come to grips with a cause that is changing so quickly. we are often finding people over the course of their are having to change roles may be several times to be able to meet that job in that technology field. obviously there is a larger problem. some people call it skills mismatch, some people just say it is a factor of needing to have a more mobile labor force. there are a lot of jobs right now in north the coda, obviously, and a lot of people are moving to north dakota for jobs like that. there are not as many jobs in

california. certainly improving, but that is one of the issues we are facing in our country and other regions in the world are facing it. how do you get people to move to where the jobs are and create a more dynamic labor market that way? host: one of our viewers put it this way. stop the automation. robots are taking u.s. job. from our facebook page -- guest: that is true. the unemployment pool is always a moving target. always more people moving into it -- college graduates and things like that -- so each hire them not translate to a one-to- one basis to a drop in unemployment. the labor force does get bigger. employment has to keep up. along atrt of crawling maybe the replacement level. is true the labor force gets

larger and we need to continue hiring people just to stay even, let alone to start making additional progress against unemployment. jan --his is from host: you indicated an influx of this temporary work because they don't need benefits. guest: we do not measure benefits -- host: a temporary employee does not have benefits. guest: it does not come from a survey, but am reading and stuff like that. but this is what we are seeing what the hires and temporary help, this is the industry that has recovered because it is basically easier and safer for employers to start with temporary people. macon,alvin from georgia. hires,is is a look at 570,000 back in may of 2006 and

drawback back of the recession 541,000 april of this year. caller: how are you this morning? i have a number of questions. i know you will not have time to answer them all. one thing that stands out in my mind, how in the world did we get into the position we are in now? we have think tanks, we have history to show us the mistakes that were made in the past but how do we make these same mistakes here in the future? how is this possible? gripoes nafta take such a that we lost so many jobs? host: we will get a response. guest: obviously our society, our history is littered with examples of making the same mistakes over and over again. that is human nature. but one of the things we struggle with is understanding what has actually changed in the economy and the labor market and any part of our society to adjust to.

it is obviously a different economy today than it was in the early 1990s when we were embarking on nafta. it will be a different economy two decades from now. and that will create a challenge for whatever trade agreements are playing out. the nature of a fast- moving society and a fast- changing economy, is we have to adjust. host: open, california. how long have you been out of work, freddie? caller: about five years now. host: five years? i'll echo about five years. i have been seeking every day. -- caller: about five years. i have been seeking every day. i have been watching all the time. what i do not hear. the black people. they are an invisible race. the 41865 we were 100% employee. -- before 1865, we are one percent employee. -- we were 100% employee. i do construction -- i will wash

dishes and picking grapes or anything. what i noticed is of a higher a lot of mexicans in restaurants and they-or their people so when it is time for a black man to come in, who is interviewing you? a mexican guy. who is working? a mexican guy. all the hotels. they are not just picking great anymore. they are making good money in construction and masonry and they are only hiring their own people. where does the black man and woman get a chance to get a job today? and they're trying to get these illegals permanently over here. what do we do? host: thanks for the call. let me take this point to the immigration debate we are seeing in washington. debate is core of the around what role should immigrants play and our society. one of the reasons it is so contentions is the point we just heard. there are a lot of people who are looking for work right now. there are a lot of people who have been struggling for years and years to find work. and we seem to have a problem in

matching the people who are finding work into those jobs. whether it is because of skills, not having the right skills, or just not being aware of the opportunities that are available. the immigration debate is in part a longer-term discussion about what we are going to need five years from now or 10 years from now once the economy has improved a lot better than it has this point. so, that is part of what we are facing. but you can see this -- and some of this is in the data and some you hear anecdotally. employers at the high end are not able to find exactly who they need, and we need to sometimes drill down and understand, is it because the people who are here home might have been trained in a technology jobs are not trained properly for that role or is it an employer just looking for cheaper workers, looking to pay less than they would have to pay otherwise to attract somebody who is here? that is one of the reasons it is such a sensitive and contentious issue. host: this next graph is called

quit -- can you blame? guest: it gives you an idea of becauseormance of quits employers and employees both are good to make a decision. if someone is employed, they chose to be employed and they are employed because their employer chose them. an is making the decision. a quit in the voluntary exit, a breaking of the employment relationship. during thethat quits recession fell substantially. the interesting thing here is it really has not come back that well. when theye way that's are not confident they can better the situation by getting another job, they are more likely to hang onto the job they have. that is what they're doing now. people are not quitting, and that in turn slows down highway because you can hire for two reasons -- either to increase your payroll or you can hire to replace people who left. and if you are not having any people leave through quitting,

then that takes away a big chunk of the incentive to hire. host: dover, florida. as we look at america by the numbers. today, the jobs picture in the u.s.. good morning, welcome to the program. caller: i have the perfect answer to all of our problems. i am 81 years old. i was born in 1932. my father had a fourth-grade education and my mother mother had an eighth grade education. several years they had to migrate to work on the farms because that is all there was to do. school ind from high 1915 and went to work at a bank, which you could not do now -- in 1950 and worked at a bank. i was 18 when we got a, load -- when we got a commode in a house. i know what it is to live in a

third world country. government, the liberals,ome of the that people who did not educated -- when not educated did not have to work in the field, or the houses, the nasty jobs. so, they say you don't have to do those jobs, you can just draw welfare and live better than your counterparts who are trying is absolutely crazy. i have seen all of this. my husband was a schoolteacher and then became a principal. he was in ruskin, florida, if he had her -- ever heard of ruskin tomatoes. these immigrants came in. in the 1960s, they came here not wanting all of the handouts. they were good people. he worked with them. of course, welfare had already set in.

well, the people that came, the mexican that came, they were not accepting anything, but the government came in and convince them they didn't have to take that.ve like see, what has happened is the government works so hard to keep itself in business that it's just causing all of these problems. host: thanks for the call from florida. we obviously could spend an hour just on that very topic. did you want to summarize question mark guest: absolutely. as the ball, to be fair, there are tens of millions of people in the country working backbreaking and gut wrenching jobs, working very hard in difficult conditions. so we have to be fair to people who actually are stepping out into those roles because a very large number of americans are doing that -- both immigrants and people whose families have been here for decades. but there is a broader issue here. obviously there has been quite a bit of debate, not only recently

throughout this recession and recovery but even in the 1990s about what is the role of governments and government benefits and our economy. this was certainly an issue in the mid-1990s when welfare was overhauled. and it is probably going to be a continuing issue now, given there are so many people who struggled in this recovery to find jobs and are really surviving because of government benefits. there are people who are on government benefits, not taking in a whole lot of money but it is important to their lives and we have to figure out to what extent we adjust those as we come out of this slow recovery. host: we have a minute or two left. the question from chester, virginia. you are out of work? caller: yes. good morning. yes, i have been out of work since january of 2008, but most of that time i have been sick. i have chronic ailments. my question is to the gentleman

somentlemen, and heard on of these like "the ed show" that of thesee new hires new jobs created are low-wage jobs that are maybe $12 or $13 and less. guest: it's true that a number of the jobs are showing up in the industry. broad area, but that includes things like retail trade, professional business services -- which includes temporary health. those are the two that have the largest number of job openings in april. there is some truth to that. , gentlemenwoolford thank you both for being with us. thank you.

a reminder the president is set to nominate the next fbi director and the senate is back in session with live coverage on c-span2. right now, another discussion on the u.s. economy at the american enterprise institute and a speech is set to get underway by mitch mcconnell. live coverage here on c-span coverage. heck of a -- hope you have a great weekend. a> john f. kennedy gave speech about the discontented voice. the internal revenue service launched the ideological organization audit project. they targeted the american enterprise institute directly. as a direct result of john f kennedy talking about the corrosive impact of ideological organizations in the war of ideas and they targeted this

very institution. once again, we sue the federal government to the irs has shown that it is shutting down the competition of ideas. we are joined by one of our best friend here at aei. mitch mcconnell is a great friend to us here at aei. it is always an honor for us to welcome him here to share his thoughts and none more so than it is here today. senator mitch mcconnell. [applause] >> good morning. i appreciate you all being here, and i want to thank you arthur. for the terrific leadership you

survive here at aei, one of the most indispensable institutions in washington. arthur is a player manager in the think tank world. he not only steers the ship, he is generating some of the best research. he also has a lot of fans on the hill and it is safe to say he is a model and an inspiration to college dropouts. and disillusioned french one players everywhere. [laughter] and warned said here of a grave and growing threat to the first amendment. that threat has not let up at all. engage iny to freely civic life in defense of our beliefs is still under coordinated assault from groups

on the left who do not like anyone criticizing them. from the white house that appears determined to shut up anybody who disagrees with it. on the outside, there is a well documented effort by a number of left-wing groups like media who harass and intimidate conservatives with the goal of scaring them off the political playing field and off of the airwaves as well. an internal media matters memo showed the extent to which these tactics have been turned into a science. we learned of the groups plan to conduct oppositional research into the lives of on-air news personalities and other key decision-makers over at fox news. partneroordinate with

groups to pressure the advertisers and shareholders to -- by the threat of boycotts, rallies, shame, embarrassment, and other tactics on a variety of issues important to the regressive agenda -- progressive agenda. they had to make up a new name after the reagan area -- era because the term liberal is pejorative to most americans these days. it's databases can also use to remove chronically problematic media figures. programmingt altogether. then of course there is the widespread effort to stifle speech from within the government itself. something the obama administration has engaged in from its earliest days. to trace this back even further

to the 2008 campaign, when i was here with you last june, and my central point today is this -- the attack on speech that we've seen over the past several years were never, never limited to a few left-wing pressure groups or even to the disclose up which is been promoted in congress. extend throughout the federal government to places like the , and -- fcc, the hhs and is all-american nose even to the irs. these assaults have often been aided and abetted by allies in congress and they are as berlin --

as for the irs, i have got a phone call from a constituent laster who said he'd been subjected to extensive questioning and unreasonable deadlines from the irs. when similar complaints followed, i sent a letter to commissioner shulman asking for assurances that there was not any little targeting going on. public office in the irs depended on it. six weeks later i got a response from stephen miller in which he said to move along, nothing to see here. we know that was not the case. we now know the irs was actually engaged in the targeted applications of conservatives and others who were criticizing how the government was being run. for criticizing the government is being run?

overwhelm him with questions and paperwork and in some case initiate audits. in one case in irs agent demanded that the board members of the iowa pro-life group signed a declaration that they would not pick it planned parenthood. and irs agent allegedly demanded that the board members of an iowa pro-life group signed a declaration that they would not picket planned parenthood. several pro-israel groups said they were single out by the irs after clashing with the administer shoot over its policy on settlements. then there is the story of catherine ingle brett. she said after applying for tax exempt status for a voter integrity group, she and her husband were visited by the fbi, the atf, osha, and an affiliate of the epa.

when all is said and done, osha told them that they had $25,000 in fines. the epa demanded they spent $42,000 on new sheds and three years after applying for tax exempt status, they are still awaiting approval. the list of stories like this goes on and on. now we have an administration that is desperately trying to ,rove that nobody at the top nobody at the top was involved in any of the stuff. even as they hope that the media loses interest in the scandal and moves on. but we will not move on. as serious as the irs scandal is, what we are dealing with is larger than the actions of one agency, or group of them please, this admin station has institutionalized the practice of picking bureaucrats against

the people they should be serving and it should stop. the good news is that more people are beginning to catch on. when i warned about this last year, i got slammed by the usual suspects on the left, as you can imagine. they said i was full of it. even some of the now realize that just because mcconnell is the one pulling the long, it is not mean there is not a fire. irs scandal has reminded people of the temptations to abuse big government and its little patrons. people are waking up to a pattern, they are connecting the dots, and they are rightly troubled. looking back, the irs scandal helped explain a lot of the things the minister nation has done. you all are member the president wagging his finger at the supreme court. the president wagging his finger at the supreme court

sitting right there in the house of representatives during the 2010 state of the union. i assure you that this piece of residential theater was not done for the ratings -- presidential theater was not done for the ratings. he spent so much time and energy denouncing the case, but it's not the reason they gave. i realize this might be shocking to some of the interns in the crowd. the fact is the court decision was actually fairly unremarkable. all it really said was that under the first amendment every corporation in america should be free to participate in the political process, not just the ones that own television and newspapers. why should a corporation that owns television stations get a card?

free speech and everybody else does not. in other words, there should not be that when it comes to clinical speech who own media companies. it was a good and fair decision aimed at leveling the playing field. the realreason, reason the left was so concerned about citizens united is that they thought it meant more conservatives would form well for organizations. groups like planned parenthood and the sierra club, for example are groups like this. what is notable is that they do not have to disclose their donors, they do not have to disclose their donors. that was the main concern of the president and his allies, they were interested -- they were not interested in the integrity of the process. if they were, they would've been just as upset at left-wing groups for remaining private for

their donors. they really wanted was a hoax to stir outrage about conservative groups so that they could get their hands on the names of the folks who supported them. that is what this is about, they wanted to get their hooks on the names of the folks who supported groups that disagreed with the administration. and then they wanted to go after them. citizens united simply provided that hook. as a longtime political , ierver and first women hop knew exactly what the democrats were up to with their complaints about this decision. i have seen what the proponents of disclosure have intended and that past and it is not good government. that is why the donor list has been protected of the socialist worker party since 1979. that is also why the supreme court told the state of alabama that it cannot force of the naacp to disclose its donor list back in 1958.

the president could claim as he did six months after wagging his finger at the supreme court that the only people who do not want to disclose the truth of people with something to hide. he can claim that, but the fact is there is very good and legitimate reason that the court has detected folks from force disclosure. they know that failing to do so subject them to the kind of harassment that we have been seeing here the last three years. the political response to citizens united with the so- called disclose act was not about cleaning up politics, it was about finding a blunt political weapon to be used against anyone group and one group only. conservatives. those who doubt this have not and paying attention to the tactics of the left. they must not have noticed the stories about top administration

officials holding weekly phone calls with groups like media matters. they clearly do not know their history, and they must not have noticed the enemies list of conservative donors on the of them -- on the obama campaign website. or the strategic name dropping of conservative targets by the president's campaign team. these folks were talking about the coke brother so much, you would think they were running for president. but six months after the president rated the supreme court, he called out americans for prosperity by name. it was like sending a memo to the irs that said audit these guys. all of these things together point to a coordinated effort to stifle speech, and that is why one of the most enduring lessons in the irs scandal comes from the timeline. we now know a team of irs

specialist was tasked with isolate and conservatives for scrutiny as early as march of 2010. what matters is not where they were doing it, what really matters is that it coincided with a very public campaign by the president and a small army of left-wing allies in and out of government to vilify anyone who had recently formed the group around conservative policies. what happened before this party began as just as what happened -- is just as important as what happened after the targeting began. what matters is the atmosphere, what matters is the culture of intimidation, the culture of intimidation this resident and his allies created around any person or group that spoke up theconservatism or against direction the president wanted to take us.

the so-called special interest, he said special interest would flood the political process with money that would be coming from foreign entities. the problem he said his nobody knows who is behind these groups. they mighthadowy, even be foreign controlled. these were the kind of unsubstantiated claims the president and his allied claim from early 2010 right up and threw the election. they were just as reckless and preposterous as harry sang mitt romney has not paid taxes in 10 years. they might have been wrapped and appealing rhetoric of disclosure, but make no mistake, .he goal was to win at any cost that meant shedding of their opponents in any way that they could -- shutting off their

opponents in any way they could. i don't believe they picked up the phone and told someone at the irs to slow up these applications or audit anybody, but the truth is he did not have to. he did not have to do that. the message was clear enough. but if the message was clear the medium was also thickly suited to the cause. the federal iraq as he and the public-sector urines -- unions have made a pact between those who tend to benefit from the growth of government. electedace it, when leaders and union bosses tell us that they should view half the american people as being a threat to democracy, it should not surprise any of us that they would look at it that way. why would we even expect a public and fully whose union more or less exist to grow the

government to treat someone who opposes michael to a fair -- who opposes that goal to a fair hearing. the tea party was public vilified, is it any wonder that members of the union would get caught targeting them? this is something liberals used to worry about. fdr himself was horrified at the idea of look workers conspiring with lawmakers on how to divide up the tax payer pie. the him it was completely incompatible with public service to the public to be cut out of a negotiation in which the two sides were bartering over their money. even the first president of the flc 07 was impossible to bargain collective league with the government. if that is is actually had today. over the past several decades, the same public employees have

conspired with congress to expand those powers even more. and you endlessly increase the budgets that finance them. this is not done in the interest of serving taxpayers, it is done in the interest of policing them. because that is what happens when politicians start competing with the support of public sector unions, they stop serving the interests of people who elected them and start serving the interest of the government that is supposed to be heaping -- that they are supposed to be keeping in check. there is no better illustration than the news this week that the congressional hearings unionized employees at the irs about it $70 million in bonuses. $70 million in bonuses. the irs union is thumbing its nose at the american people, it is telling them in the clearest possible terms that it does not

care about the scandal or how well the government works or how well it is even serving the public. all it cares about is helping union workers get theirs. it is pure arrogance, and it reflects a sense of entitlement better suited to an aristocracy then a nation of constitutional self-government. it is increasingly appropriate to ask whose interest these public sector unions have in mind? the taxpayers? or their own? will sayuestion, i that public sector unions are 50 or mistake. years ago i saw the dangerous potential for collusion between lawmakers and public security and when i served as executive of my own county. theught hard against formation of public-sector unions and at the time there was a bipartisan agreement on this issue.

most people realized it was not in the public interest. unfortunately, the appeal of union support proved too great for some and shortly after i was elected to the senate, they vacated my office and the dam of resistance broke. and it has been gutting the finances of every state in local government in the country. the existence of public employee unions is without question a big part of the reason people of so little trust in government these days. they are the reason so many state and local minas appellees are flat broke. .hey are behind public pensions today i'm calling for a serious national debate about them. on the federal level, the first thing we should do is stop the automatic transfer of union ats from employee salaries the taxpayers expense.

[applause] if the unions want their dues, it should be incumbent on them and not us to pay for it. the assault on free speech continues, and it is fairly an uphill battle. but if we are alert to the tactics of the left, and take these assaults one by one, i am confident that we can beat them back. let me give you a few final examples of what i'm talking about. right now there is an effort over at the federal communications commission to get groups that buy campaign ads to disclose their supporters. this is utterly, utterly irrelevant to the mission of the sec. -- the fcc. and we need to say so. the sec is being pushed to display their public supporters. this proposal does not protect

shareholders and it does not protect governors. for the left, this is not about good government or corporate governance, is about winning at all costs. even if that means shredding the first amendment and that is why we need to be vigilant about every one of these assaults. they might seem small and isolated in the particular, but together they reflect a culture of intimidation that extends throughout the government. a culture abetted by a bureaucracy that stands to benefit from it. the moment a gang of u.s. senators started writing letters last year demanding the enforce more disclosure upon conservative groups, we should have all cried foul. the moment white house proposed a draft order replying applicants for government contracts to disclose their political affiliations, we all should call them out.

when the hhs secretary told insurance companies, back during the obamacare debate, told insurance companies that they could not tell their customers how obamacare would impact them, we all should have pulled the alarm. as soon as we learned that left- wing groups were manufacturing public outcry for corporate disclosure at the sec, we should have exposed that for what it was. there might be some folks other waiting for hand signed memo from president obama to lois learned to turn up. do not hold your breath. what i'm saying that a court made a campaign to use the levers levers of government to target conservatives and stifle speech has been in full swing and in open view for all of us to see for years. it has been carried out by the same people who say there is nothing more to the disclose

no then transparency and more two other disclosure regulations than good government. but the irs scandal puts the lie to all of the posturing. because now we know what happens when government gets in the hands of this -- gets its hands on this kind of information. when it is able to isolate its opponents and whether you are a pro-israel group, or a tea party group in the legal, -- in louisville, they can make your life miserable. they can force you off the political langfield. -- playing field which is precisely what we cannot allow. there are a lot of important questions that remain to be answered about the irs scandal, but let's not lose sight of the largest -- the larger scandal that has been right in front of us for five years. a sitting president who simply refuses to accept the fact that

the public will not applaud everything that he does. the president expects public to applaud everything that he does. my plea to you today is that you call out his attacks on the first amendment whenever you see them, regardless of the target. because the right to free speech does not exist to protect what is popular, it exists to protect what is unpopular. the moment we forget that this is -- the moment we forget that, we are all at risk from right to left. if liberals cannot compete on a level playing field, they should make up better arguments. what is wrong with the competition of ideas? is so weakument that you have to try to intimidate and shut up your opponents in order to win the game?

only way to beat a police to fight back. fightbe a bully is to back and that is all of us need to do. be wise to the way of the left and never give an inch when it comes to free speech. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for some,, yes, yes man. , my name is barbara from new york. is there any suspicion that intimidation goes beyond the irs and the things you mentioned. it is frightening considering that our government has things

like stunt guns and star wars. >> i will not speculate where else they exist, where they already exist is pretty stunning. we have seen that at hhs. they sent out a directive to health recoveries that they cannot tell their policy holders with the impact of obamacare would do to them. this is the same secretary that is shaking them down for money in order to run television advertising supporting obamacare. then of course over the fcc obama proposed an initiative that require you a condition to pursue what ever cause you may have to disclosure donors you are making advertisement. and then we have seen what is happening at the irs. the president himself has been demonizing these people and so the point i'm making here today is that it is not surprising that the bureaucracy would pick

up on that. and think they would pick up on that and say that is what we are soliciting. -- that is what we are supposed to do. the ceo has laid out the game plan, so i don't know what my else be going on, but the things we do know are going on our right in front of us and they are beyond disturbing. leave me, if this were a republican administration and these were liberal groups that were being subjected to this kind of treatment, this would be big news on the front page of "the new york times," on a daily basis. >> i am elizabeth regular citizen. tank you for coming and educating us. they after day, we hear a litany of corruption and abuses which should not surprise us because we know that president obama

has in his mind and is determined to fundamentally change and transform america. despite what karl rove advised, is there not any of these rises to an legally impeachable offense? i'm sorry to put you on the spot, but you will not answer my e-mails. >> i think we need a thorough and complete investigation and let the facts take us where we will go. i am confident the house of represented -- house of representatives will have a thorough investigation, at least two committees i am aware of. aey are pursuing this and methodical way and i don't want i jump to any conclusions, just love the fax to take us where they take us. i am prepared to say that the president and his political

allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments, but that is what different from saying they ordered it. i think we need to find out who is responsible and the investigation will go on for quite some time. hello, a couple of your colleagues have proposed a constitutional amendment that would specify that no rights in the constitution would apply to corporations. i'm just wondering if you could react to that and maybe discuss some of the junta point is of that would be. >> give them some points for not hiding it. the constitution has been amended very rarely in our well

over 200 year history. for good reason, it has served us well. they were not uncomfortable with corporate free speech when corporations that owned newspapers or television stations were engaging in it, they only become uncomfortable ones of report said why should there be a carveout for corporations that own the media out and for no one else? it is a -- it is an absurd proposal. >> what you think about the efforts of michael bloomberg to encourage democratic donors a particular amount of votes in the senate. >> he can express himself, and i support the right for him to say whatever he wants to. , from a partisan

point of view, i won't listen to them. -- i hope they listen to him. >> i am part of the mccain institute and i'm currently a student at the university of aboutand i am wondering this issue, it seems like they are starting to notice obama's immortality is disappearing and that he is flawed. what will it take for them to theaybe it is time to see light and understand that he is not all he's cracked up to be? >> i think it is keeping your eyes open and watching what is happening. simple observations. it is not surprising -- the biggest difference between the

two parties today in america, they are the party of government and we are the party of the private sector. that is not that we should think there is no government at all, but they really trust the government. that is why they are in such a tight alliance with a look employee unions who are the principal benefactor of larger government and to have little or no interest in bigger and bigger debt. to the extent that they have become skeptical, that maybe this degree of government is not such a good idea, that is an encouraging sign. one of the great things about being young is that if your health holds up, you get older. it is amazing how your views in age andou advance i hope they will simply observe what is going on.

this is what you get when you elect a government that believes government is the answer. and for two years they owned the place. they -- they had a great election in 2008. they can do whatever they wanted to, and they did. $300 stimulus, take over american healthcare, the student four yearsm, first of $20 deficits, they could do whatever they wanted to. the encouraging thing is that in 2010, they look to that initiative national restraining order. my guess is they were younger and younger -- younger voters who began to have second thoughts. ,he president was reelected but he did not have the kind of

election he did in 2008. he did not flip the house am a change the senate much, it was status quo at the federal level. at the state level 30 out of 50 governors are now republicans. it was not a wiped out election. now we have divided government and divided government can do one of two things, they can do great things as reagan and tip o'neill did when they raised the age of social security and they did the last conference of tax reform, or even bill clinton when he joined a republican congress and did well form -- welfare reform. what has been missing during this time of divided government from 2010 until now is a president willing to tackle the single biggest issues in

country. it can only be done on a bipartisan basis, and the transcendent issue of our time is the size of our debt. what i have been waiting for with this resident, i have probity of differences -- i have plenty of differences with the president, he will be here for 3.5 years and what will he do? if you want to pivot and help us solve the biggest issues confronting your generation in the future, we need to try and do that, but i've not seen any evidence of it. i've not seen any evidence that he is willing to leave this ideological place or he is put himself in for virtually all of his presidency and move in a different direction. i have wondered the field from your comment, but i think younger voters are getting more

skeptical because they are watching what is happening. mpr had a story this week where they quoted if you left- wing organizations that said they have undergone undue scrutiny as well, that they have been asked unwanted questions. plaintiff advocate, don't we want irs -- the irs to make sure that those groups are not being given tax exempt status? >> i think it will be easy to get tax-exempt status whether you are on the left or right. i'll think the government should deny a status that should be rather easy to achieve. i am not a fan of harassing either right or left.

>> i just want to follow up on that. this claim is being made that these groups are abusing their tax status, i'm not seeing any proof of those claims. if they were not 501(c) organizations, presumably to be 527 organizations and from the standpoint of revenue collection does this make any difference for the federal government and the irs? >> none whatsoever. good point. >> senator, you mentioned about the fact that 501(c) organizations do not have to disclose their donors, and that is true that they do not have to disclose them publicly. i resent the national organization for marriage who schedule -- the continental schedule donors was released by the irs is legally to a non-.

the goal opponents and it is still posted on their website. the jews support a legislation to say that -- would you support a legislation that they would no longer have to disclose their donors to the iressa? about it,not taught i assume you've given that case examples to the house republicans. andes, we asked for it investigation a year ago, but the irs will not give us a report because they are hiding behind taxpayer confidentiality and they are saying it is confidential. they will not tell us the identity of the individuals within the eye rest were responsible for that disclosure. asmy bias is in favor of much political speech as possible with minimal amount of government interference and harassment on the left or right or anyone else.

i think the last thing the american people suffer from is too little political discourse. that would be my general philosophical approach to all of these issues. fore is a rational basis groups like as not having to disclose, that is what the supreme court was all about. it is one thing to do -- to require disclosure when you give to a candidate or to a party, i do not oppose that. i think my voters and all of you should know who supports my campaign and my party. but these are not contributions to candidates or parties, these are cognitions to groups that have -- these are contributions to groups and sometimes that does intersect with what is going on politically because it is important to remember that

only those who get elected make policy. so, a lot of issues that people want to discuss certainly do intersect with the political discussion that is going on because they might have views that are better represented by one point of view versus the other. to me, this is not a subject we should be alarmed about. that we should think is something that needs to be dealt with, i think it is something that needs to be encouraged. >> senator, -- >> i have enjoyed you over the years norm, you been wrong about almost everything. [laughter] i've always wondered who is eaten lunch with you over the years. some of the worst things a been said about me have been said by

you. you have been entirely wrong on virtually every occasion i'm glad to see what is on your mind. [laughter] we agree on is that some of the worst things that are then set about me have been said by you. >> i didn't make any thing up, i was quoting you directly. >> my first question is that on 2000 on meet the press, you gave an eloquent defense on disclosure and why is a little disclosure is better than a lot of disclosure? in the citizens united decision, we had eight justices including robert scalia and alito all caps and equally full throated defense of disclosure of all sorts including shareholders knowing what their companies doing in the political front. why -- >> of course that is not

accurate. they didn't say was a matter of constitutional interpretation, i am sure that if we passed it they would not strike you down. you regard to disclosure, have to go back to the 1980's to find a time when i suggested -- which i did and i was wrong to find a time that i suggested that disclosure of 501(c) wasod idea -- a good idea. i made a mistake, the supreme court left that up to congress to decide and the democrats tried to pass the disclose act selectica the names of our critics and we want to make it difficult for them. >> at me ask one more question about five once he. the law says that they are spoke

to be exquisitely well for organizations, to believe that organizing for america and america's crossroad gps are exquisitely welfare organizations? >> the interpretation that the irs has had going back 40 or 50 years, i agree with. let me tell you what norm is really for. what he's really for is the government telling candidates for congress how much they can spend government mandated spending limits, and using tax money to pay for it. if norm had his way, he would push the private sector all the way out of the process of getting elected. you would file, the government would tell you how much you could speak and spent, the government would give you the money to pay for your speech. a total government takeover of the whole process from the time you file, to the time you're sworn in. what congress is that likely to

produce? the kind that was to go the government because the government would be in charge of how they got there. make no mistake, norm is a good old-fashioned far left guy. i like him, he is been wrong for as long as i can remember and it is great to see you i didn't want to spar with you for years. [applause] paul from cnn, the issue of immigration tuesday one area that the two parties are optimizing. how do you think this will sort out? >> i am not doing and immigration press conference here. we will be on that matter for another week or so. how about that young lady right there? >> senator, thank you so much for coming. i was wondering, just looking at

mexico and how they have had political turmoil and yet they are still pushing forward a number of substantial legislation and policy they want to get accomplished, they are still able to do that even though they have had a ethical political environment. you said the president has been unwilling to negotiate and deal with the government that he is faced with. is there anyway we can work through that and the comp but some of the things he mentioned like tax reform, dealing with irs? >> i hope so. it is up to the president. the president and our system is unique. there is only one person in america that can sign something into law and only one person who can deliver to the members of his party. the speaker and i have tried to

engage the president for 4.5 years to tackle the tristan an issue of our time, unfunded liabilities and/or current debt which is stunning. as part of his responsibility, what i hope what he will decided to engage in a series discussion about how to get an outcome to the biggest problem facing our country. we've not seen that yet, but i can't give up hope because he will be there 3.5 more years. we have do deal with the cover we have, not the one that we hope for. do you have any thoughts the anthonyorizing statute so we can get some of these investigations out from under the thumb of his partnership? happilye let that

expire in the late 90's. i don't think it's her of the country well at all and i would not be in favor of bringing it back. it was one of the post watergate reforms -- most of those have not worked out very well. i don't think going back to that would be a step in the right direction. hello, i am in internet freedom works and i was curious about what you are thoughts were on the nsa's overreach as far as wiretapping? how would you think it should be addressed? do you think it needs to be reformed? the will confine discussion today to things that are largely related to the subject of my speech and the independent counsel is in a way

because it was part of the post- watergate reforms. any other questions on the topic that we have been talking about this morning? how about right here? inhello, i just wanted to -- relation to public employee unions and your decision to have them scaled back, i just wondered if you want to comment on scott walker and how that can be translated nationally in other states? >> i think it has been a remarkable success story. i might not have this totally accurate, but roughly accurate that once the employees in wisconsin were given the option of not paying their dues, apparently the support plummeted. ,eaning that the employees

when given the choice, decided that representation was not that important to them. regardless of whether you have them or not, the larger question i wanted to race today is the appropriateness. that's what i went back to fdr, the appropriateness of unions in the public sector because in every negotiation there is a missing person and the missing person is the taxpayer. the negotiation is between today's public official in today's union leader reaching an agreement to obligate the taxpayer and their future and there is no taxpayer there. i believe that is why fdr, at least initially, felt that unions are entirely appropriate

in the private sector. i support private-sector unionism. there is an election, a secret ballot election, winners when, and losers accept it. but it seems to be as fundamental a incompatible. if you look at the results of that, with the pension problems all across the country, virtually every state in the country is awash with pension problems. he of people that work in the government actively discouraging and bring the power of the government down on the people who think the federal government is too big. this is a 50 that year mistake and it is time to have a discussion again of the appropriateness of unionism in the public sector. in the private sector, find.

i'll have a problem with that. but because we are suffering the consequence is that. i will take one more question. first, an observation about norms comment earlier where he talked about social welfare. when congress set up that statue in the 50's, there is no evidence that they intended to exclude political activity. i wanted your thoughts about this. -- i wondered your thoughts about this. do people trying to improve their government, couldn't that improve the social welfare innovation? .> obviously, that is my view i think we should be encouraging this sort of thing and not discouraging it. the whole disclosure game has nothing to do with anything

other than going after your donors. it would never offended by this until the last few years when conservatives started doing more of that. all the sudden, this is a fairy -- a fairly recent outrage here. this is about nothing other than getting the names of your donors so you can go after them. we should be discouraging that in every way we possibly can and encouraging this kind of dissipation. .- this kind of participation this kind of involvement is the kind we ought to have and goodness gracious to have the government itself picking winners and losers in the game of political speech is ridiculous. thank you for being here so much. [applause]

>> senate republican leader mitch mcconnell completing his remarks today at the american enterprise institute on capitol hill, his senate colleagues continue their debate on immigration let relation as we look live at the senate floor. , the other things bipartisan immigration measure would increase voter security and create a 13 year path to

citizenship for immigrants. they're hoping to come to an agreement. relativeses some concerns about border security. you can see live coverage of the senate right now on a companion network c-span2. and here on c-span we will have more luck coverage coming up, today it new in eastern we will renew a discussion examining the nsa pogroms about the mass lection of phone records and internet data. we'll have live coverage here on c-span charting at public hot eastern. -- at 12:00 noon eastern. is a public a new sound for new york and is deputy

attorney general during the george w. bush imitation. he nearly resigned in 2004 over concerns he raised about a laconic surveillance he deemed illegal. president obama will introduce his nominee this afternoon in the white house rose garden. you can see live coverage here at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. the senate is in session, the house is not. they wrap up their work for the week. before leaving, they voted down the farm bill. the bill set down policies over a five-years for farmer subsidies and nutritional programs. house with an republican majority leader spoke about the bills on the floor of the house. there was frustration expressed about a minute that would've created further cuts to the food stamp program.

they spoke for about 20 minutes. very friendly, i was not going to mention what happened on this floor today, but the gentleman has brought it up. the gentleman is correct. democrats voted for the bipartisan bill. 62 bravoem is that lukens voted against it -- 62 republicans voted against the bill. amendment wasast draconian and we turned a bipartisan bill into a partisan bill. i will tell my friend very frankly, you did the same thing, your side of the aisle, did the same thing with respect to the homeland security bill, which was reported out on a voice vote from the appropriations committee, that we would have voted for on a bipartisan basis,

except an amendment was adopted knowing our side could not vote for that. i will tell you i was not going to bring up what happened today, but you turned a bipartisan bill necessary for our farmers, necessary for our consumers, necessary for the people of america that many of us would have supported and you turned it into a partisan bill. very frankly, 58 of the 62 republicans voted against your bill voted for the last amendment, which made the bill even more egregious. we disagreed with a $20 billion cut, and your side upped the ante. i will tell you, we are prepared to work in a bipartisan fashion, and with respect the student loan bill, it was close to the president's bill, and we would

have supported it had it been closer to the president's bill. what your bill did it puts those taking out student loans at risk of having their interest rates substantially increased in the future. the president suggested let's get a variable rate which reflects market rates, but when you take out the loan, just like you do with your house loan, you know what your interest rate will be. we have a difference on that. it is a good-faith disagreement on that. we will say that, yes, i have been concerned about the inability to take a bill reported out of committee that is bipartisan in nature and turn it into a partisan bill. that is what happened on the floor today. it was unfortunate for farmers, consumers, for our country. if the gentleman wants to pursue

that, i will yield to him. >> allow me to respond. the amendment to which the gentleman speaks is an amendment that had been discussed for some time with the ranking member, with the chairman, and the gentleman was aware of the amendment. the amendment reflects what many of us believe is a successful formula to apply to a program that has, in the eyes of the gao, in the eyes of the independent auditors who look at these programs, a program that is in dire need of improvement, because of the error rates that are occurring. in addition to that, it reflects our strong belief that work, that able-bodied people should have the opportunity and should

go in and be a productive citizen. that is what this amendment says. it gives states an option. it was a pilot project because it reflects a winning formula to the welfare reform program, back in 1996, that was put into place, with unequivocal success. able-bodied people going back to work. working families beginning to have productive income. there was still an intention for our side to say we want to take away the safety net of the food stamp program. absolutely not. this is a pilot project. it was up to the states, whether they wanted to participate, to see if they could get more people back to work. again, consistent with what the gao report had said over and over again, these programs are in need of reform.

it was not as if this amendment came out of thin air. the gentleman, the ranking member, the entire leadership on the minority side to the amendment was there. the gentleman is talking about regular order, talking about the need for us to have open process, let the will of the house work and be worked and then go to conference. that is what the goal was, that the will of the house allowed to be seen through, work its will, and go to conference and then we would try and participate in a robust discussion with the other side of the capitol to see if we can see reform measures on a bill that is in conference ready. what we saw today was a democratic leadership in the house that was insistent to undo years and years of bipartisan work on an issue like a farm bill and decide to make it a partisan issue. and, mr. speaker, it is

unfortunate that that is the case, i do agree with the gentleman, but i hope we can see our way to working on other issues, where there is potential agreement. yes, we have fundamental disagreements on many things, but we are all human beings representing the 740,000 people that put us here and expect us to begin to learn to set aside those agreements, find ways we can work together. today was an example. the other side did not think that was their goal, did not think that was an appropriate mission, and instead decided to emphasize where perhaps they differed when we wanted to reform in a certain area. i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding back. we have a profound disagreement. when we were in the majority we got no help on your side, mr. leader. you remember that. there was no opportunity to have

bipartisan dialogue, to have agreement. the gentleman refers to regular order. the person who talks about regular order most is your speaker. you talk about regular order. to pass a bill and when we have an agreement. some 90 days ago we passed a budget. at your insistence, the senate passed a budget. good for them. we have not gone to conference, you have not provided an opportunity to go to conference, you have not appointed conferees. that is regular order. the gentleman wants it on one bill, but not all bills. i tell my friend we want regular order, we want to go to conference. we want to undo the breaking of an agreement we made in the budget control act which said there would be a firewall between domestic and defense. you have eliminated that

firewall. the sequester is in place. sequester is bad for this country. you and i tend to agree on that, i think. the fact is there's no legislation to undo that sequester, except the legislation you talked about passing in the last congress, is dead and buried. yes, we want regular order. the reason the bill lost today is because 62 of your members rejected mr. lucas' plea, which i thought was eloquent, in which he said i know some of you do not think there is enough reform in this bill, and some of you think there is too much reform. but mr. peterson and i brought out a bill that was a bipartisan bill, supported by the majority of democrats and the majority -- i think all the republicans, maybe i am not sure that -- but the fact of the matter is it was

a bipartisan bill, just as homeland security bill was bipartisan, and it was turned into a partisan bill. that is exactly what mr. lucas was talking about. he was saying some people do not think we went far enough and some people think we went too far. mr. sutherland thought we had not gone far enough. and 58 republicans voted for sutherland that turned around and voted against the bill, the reforms you're talking about. do not blame democrats for the loss today. you did not bring up the farm bill when it was reported out on a bipartisan basis last year. you did not even bring it to the floor because your party cannot come together supporting their chairman's bill. that is where we find ourselves. i was not going to bring up that bill at all. what happened happened. frankly, when we lost on the floor, it was because we lost on the floor when we were in the majority. we produced 218 votes for almost

everything we put on this floor. do not blame democrats for the failure to bring 218 republicans to your bipartisan lucas- supported and peterson-supported piece of legislation on the floor. we believe that loss, that partisanship in that bill, will hurt farmers and our country. let's bring that bill back to the floor and have a vote on it. i think it would pass. maybe not because of your votes, that has been your problem all along. do not blame democrats for the loss of that bill. do not blame democrats for being partisan. you knew those amendments -- yes, we knew about them, mr. leader, just as you knew about them and you knew we were very much opposed to those amendments, notwithstanding the fact that all the leadership, i believe, i have not looked at the record, voted for those amendments just as they voted for the king amendment on

homeland security. yes, you pushed my button. i am not prepared to work in a bipartisan fashion, but not when it said this is what we agree on, meaning your side, though you better take it if we are going to have an agreement. that is not how it works. it never worked that way in america. that is not what america is about. america is about us expecting to be working together. this reported will was on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, would have been passed on a large bipartisan vote, and was precluded by the actions taken through these amendments on the floor, most of which we did not support. and you knew -- i do not mean you -- your party -- so i'm surprised when you talk to me about regular order and there is nothing, nothing to do on the budget conference that you wanted the senate to pass a budget. they did.

you have just told me that you wanted regular order and that we should have passed the farm bill so we could work together. you are assuming that the senate would have gone to the conference. i hope they would have, i think they would have, because i talked to the chair. she would have wanted to go to conference assuming we got the republican votes. we also want to go to conference in regular order on the budget to solve the stark differences between the two parties. that is the only way you will get to where we need to be -- by having a conference and trying to come to an agreement. my premise is that you do not have a conference because there's nothing to which patty murray could agree, that mr. ryan could agreed to and that he could bring back your caucus and get a majority of votes for, because they are for what you passed and nothing more than that. we are $91 billion apart. if we divide it in two, split

the difference, you could not pass it on your side and i think you know that. i do not know if i have any more questions, and i do not know if they could be particularly useful. i yield to my friend. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding. as far as the budget conference is concerned, the budget is something that traditionally, as he notes, has been a partisan affair. it is a document that each house produces reflecting the philosophy of the majority of those bodies. and the budget contains a lot of different issues, two of which the parties have disagreed vehemently on over the last several years, taxes and health care. we understand you, mr. speaker, that the other side rejects our prescription on how to fix the deficit in terms of the unfunded liabilities on the health care programs.

we said we want to work toward a balance, we think a balance budget is a good thing. unfortunately, the position on the other side of the capitol is no balance, no balance, and raise taxes. when you know that is a situation, there's no construct in which to even begin a discussion. again, the budget has traditionally been that, a partisan document whether who is in charge of which house. and then to be a guide by which you go about spending bills after that. the farm bill, my friend, is a little different. it is for working farmers, for individuals who need the benefit of the food stamp program. we believe you need to reform the snap program and reduce some of the costs because even the gao, independent auditors we bring in, year in and year out

say that program is rife with error rates that we should be ashamed of. so we put forward our idea to through the sutherland amendment to try to reform, put in place those reforms. but it still, in the construct of the farm bill, again to the gentleman's point, we want to work together, but it is going to have to be about setting aside differences, and insteadin of saying, as the minority aleader did today, you disagreed with that program, we anddisagreed with that program, we areare out of here, and entire farm bill does not have a chance or ato go to conference, beyou arereconciled, hopefully inreforms adopted so we can make yousome progress according to what the independent analysts say should be done. andeally is a disappointing day. youi think the minority has been a disappointing playeryou

atoday, mr. speaker, on thea apart of the people. but we remain ready to work with the gentleman. ai am hopeful that tomorrow, perhaps next week, will be a better week.and you are you a>> i thank the gentleman for yielding back. mr. speaker, the majority leader andcontinues to want to blame the democrats for his inability and the republicans inability to give a majority vote to their own bill.as ismaybe the american peopleyou are a isthink they can be fooled. you are in charge of the house. as ayou have 234 members. 62 of your members voted against your bill. that is why it failed. we did not whine when we were in charge about we did not pass a bill. we got 218 votes for our bill that was pretty tough. we got zero from your side. you got 24 from our side to help you. mr. peterson stuck to his deal. on the budget you say we have got different philosophies. yes, we do.

mr. gingrich gave a speech on this floor about different philosophies, 1997 or 1998. he was talking about the perfectionist caucus. he made an agreement with president clinton which to some degree was responsible for having balanced budgets. but your side thought it was not a good deal. not all of your side. on a bipartisan vote, we passed that deal that was reached between mr. gingrich and mr. clinton. a lot of your folks said our way or the highway, and he gave a speech that he called the perfectionist caucus speech. that is what in my view i am hearing on the budget. yes, we have differences. the american people elected a democratic president, they elected a democratic senate, a republican house. the only way america's board of directors will work if we compromise.

the place to compromise under regular order is in a conference our ideas and their ideas meeting and conference. the most central document that we need to do every year is to do a budget. but you are not going to conference. your side will not appoint conferees. your side will not move to go to conference. patty murray wants to go to conference, senator reid wants to go to conference. your side over in the senate will not go to conference, in my view, largely because they know you do not want to go to conference, and they do not want to make a deal. they do not want to compromise on what their position is. so we will take no blame for the failure of the farm bill, none, zero. as much as you try to say it, you cannot get away from the statistic, 62, otherwise known as 25% of your party, voted

against a bill, which is why we do not bring it to the floor last year when it was also reported out on a bipartisan fashion. so i know you will continue and your side will continue to blame us, that you cannot get the votes on your side, for your bill. because you took a bipartisan bill, and that is what mr. lucas was saying. i thought he was very articulate, compelling, and pleading with your side, join us, join us. it does not go as far as it would like, and reform -- you talk about reform and that is a good thing to talk about, the senate bill has reform in it, mr. leader. the senate bill has reform in it. now, it is not in terms of dollars, cutting poor people as much as this bill does, but it cuts. it has reform in it.

what sutherland wants, what apparently your side wants, is your reform, not a compromise reform. mr. lucas brought to the floor $20 billion and couched it as reform, and said on the floor, it may not be enough for some and maybe too much for others, but it is a compromise. he was right. but it was rejected by 25% of your party, and that is why this bill failed. unless the gentleman wants to say something, i yield back the balance of my time. i yield back the balance of my frank lucas said he we're weighing all our options. timetable has been set to take the measure back up.

republicans voted for the measure, 62 opposed it. just 24 were in favor. 172 rejected the final bill. we spoke to a capitol hill reporter about what happened. jerry hagstrom is the editor of the "hagstrom report." the farm bill -- why was it defeated? >> there are basically two reasons. that is there was a dairy amendment that was not popular with democrats, and that dairy amendment passed. also there were more restrictions placed on food stamps and democrats did not like that, and there were a lot of republicans who thought they could somehow have a bill that would cut food stamps even more.

those were the basic reasons. >> majority leader eric cantor blamed democrats for not providing enough votes to help pass the bill. what do you think about his assertion? >> there were only 24 democrats who voted for the bill. i think it is a reflection of the deep gulf in the country between the people who get food stamps and the politicians who support them and the farmers who benefit from the farm program. since the 2010 election, you have had such a gap between these republicans and democrats. it is basically about that. >> how have democrats responded to what majority leader cantor said? >> they said they should not have put on this last amendment that would impose work requirements on food stamp beneficiaries, that there have never been such requirements for it, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. also, there was an amendment on

dairy that passed and the dairy farmers do not like it. >> who were the big losers? >> the people who are advocates for people eating more fruits and vegetables, for local production, for organic, because it is those programs that will least likely be continued. i think the food stamp program will be continued if there is an extension. so will the crop insurance program. all the big agriculture will be continued, but not the stuff for the newer, more innovative small and local programs. >> what is the next step for the bill? can it be revamped and passed? and what is the timetable? >> it can be brought up again, possibly changed. most thought it would get through when it got through conference. people were too angry, but also there were these 62 republicans who voted against the bill even

though they got a lot of amendments on that that they liked. and a lot of provisions, and they will also have to reevaluate their views on the bill. >> what will you watch for as the leaders decide what to do next? >> whether they will bring the bill up and if and also over the fourth of july break, whether there are people who want this bill passed so much that they put pressure on members when they go home and they make some concessions and bring it up again after the fourth of july recess. >> jerry hagstrom is the editor of the "hagstrom report" and is a contributing editor at "national journal." >> thank you. >> the house returns tuesday at noon the. will beive work

postponed until later. you can see coverage of the house here on c-span. john boehner spoke at the national association of manufacturers, where he talked about the u.s. economy and investing energy reduction, expressing his support for the keystone pipeline. he was introduced by jay ti mmons. this is about 15 minutes. >> may i have your attention please. that's what i love. rowdy manufacturers. i have a great privilege right now of introducing to you someone that is no stranger to any of us. probably the greatest friend that manufacturers have in the united states congress. john boehner has been a representative from ohio since 1990.

we are so pleased that he is speaker of the house. i can tell you that just watching him, i have had the opportunity to interact not only with the speaker, but his the job of speaker of the house i believe is the hardest one that exists in washington, d.c. imagine if you had 435 cats, and anyone who had a cat knows knows there are no two cats the same personality. i wanted to tell you a little bit about the speaker. first of all, one of the reasons

that john boehner is one of the greatest people in washington is because is because he is from ohio. i appreciate that. he used her present my parents in the house. that was a nice little connection. he was -- when people come to washington, they come with the preconceived values that were instilled in them throughout their entire life. i want you to think about this when you think of john boehner. he was one of 12 children, and those children shared two bedrooms, and one bathroom. if you wonder if he can handle the art of compromise, all you have to know is how he handled the first years of his life. i'm very proud that before he

came to congress, he represented manufacturers. he's one of us. he gets us. some of those manufacturers are members of this organization, founded in 1895 in ohio. i do want to leave you with this. i think this is something i have never forgotten from the time i watched john boehner take the oath of office as speaker of the house. these were part of the remarks that he made during that time. "economic freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility i hold these values dear because i have lived them. i have said my whole life chasing the american dream.

please welcome the speaker of the house john boehner. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> thank you. thank you, all. i appreciate the chance to talk with people who deal with the number one issue on the minds of americans, and that is jobs in our economy. when you look at where we are, we are still seeing growth.

it is not just that right now. in america, the people have always had a healthy skepticism about their government. they read about the irs abuse of power and targeting americans for their political beliefs. they wonder about what happened in benghazi where americans were killed. they see reports that journalists had their phones monitored, and they ask this could happen to them. in washington there has been no accountability. only arrogance of power that puts politics ahead of doing the right thing. when government is out of control, at odds with people it is supposed to serve, it makes

it harder to do our work, to grow our economy. the arrogance we are seeing in the same arrogance that has left our economy plodding along. after four years of washington knows best, our economy is recovering at the slowest rate since world war ii. the growth numbers barely move. unemployment stays about the same. we are told not to read much into it. experts call this condition the new normal. some even argue it is good enough for now. it is not good enough for me. i know it is not good enough for you either. how can any of us stay on top with groups that keeps nearly 12 million americans out of work and threaten our children's future future? we are not people who hobble along hoping things will get better. we are people who chart our own course.

who take matters into our own hands. that is why i'm here today. people in this room represent so much of our nation's economic success, and our potential for the future. manufacturing represents where things are gone wrong in recent years. america's greatness has always rested on our ability to build things and produce things. we built the steam engine. we'll built the model t. cyberspace. we are a nation of builders. our vision is one of a country where everyone has the opportunity to build something from nothing. a business, a charity, a church, a gadget, the website, a home. it is because we are a nation of builders that we have created more prosperity than anyone, anywhere in the world. it is because we are a nation of builders we've been able to pass

on to our children a brighter future and a better life. under the obama ministration, it is been harder than ever to build in this nation. red tape, an outdated tax code, shortsighted policies are driving the cost of everything, stifling innovation, and sending jobs and opportunities to our competitors like china. politicians and bureaucrats will bet taxpayer money on pet projects. meanwhile, the hoover dam, the golden gate bridge, even our highway system would be impossible to build in today's regulatory environment. this administration would have us believe that we can build a9

great nation on reams of red tape while operating the service economy by things that my earlier generations. this is not an issue of republicans versus democrats. it is about america. it is about the world. our competitors have detailed strategies for growth and high wage jobs. competitive tax codes, and cooperation between the government and the private sector. as result, we are now being displaced by -- being displaced in the global economy. china now consumes more energy than we do and produces more coal than we do. it is the world's leading manufacturer. our economy has grown slowly because we have invested in government rather than in ourselves. the resources that we need. we need a new approach. we need to unleash the nation of builders.

to become a nation of builders again, we have to stop picking winners and losers and focus on expanding opportunities for everyone. we start the foundation for giving more of her kids a chance at a good education. let's empower parents with choice and opportunities to improve access to higher education, job training, so students are emitter -- ready for tomorrow. we need to fix our tax code. if we clear out all of these loopholes that make the tax code fair, it is going to be easier to understand. we will keep ideas and resources here in america. we need --

we need to expand markets for american made goods. it will help lower prices for consumers, create better jobs for workers, and attract new investments to our shores. to become a nation of builders again, we need to reform our broken immigration system. securing our borders and enforcing our laws and making the process of becoming a legal immigrant fair or will help america remain a magnet for the brightest minds in the world. being a nation of builders means fostering innovation, and keeping the internet free for coders, developers, and engineers. they do build the hardware and software, and innovations that power our modern economy. becoming a nation of builders

again means finally pursuing a true all-of-the-above national energy strategy. developing america's energy resources is one of the best opportunities for robust and sustained economic growth. it is not just our economic frontiers. it is just that the internet was in the 1990's. america has more combined oil, coal, natural gas resources than any other nation on earth. we are sitting on the gateway to prosperity. an oil and natural gas renaissance is in full swing. here in washington, we have got an administration that will not let us build the keystone pipeline. think about it this way. imagine if the clinton

administration had told the budding tech companies in places like silicon valley or west reston, virginia, that they need to hold off on plans indefinitely because the federal government, even after review, had to have -- imagine that after years of study, the administration told america's private sector innovators that they needed to hold off on harnessing the internet because one federal department deemed the review of another department to be insufficient. other nations would have laughed at us, all the way to the bank. instead of restricting develpment, we need to greenlight the keystone pipeline. we need to expand production of our resources, onshore and

offshore. that is how we become a nation of builders once again. all these are the types of policies that can bring us out of the so-called new normal. they help create jobs and deliver sustained growth. it is all part of the republican plan for economic growth. i encourage you to go visit us online at gop.gov. while my colleagues and i do not have a majority in washington, we are going to continue to pursue our plan. i ask all of you to challenge members of both parties to join us. a nation of builders is not just a slogan. i was born in 1949 when america was entering the post-world war ii boom. by that point, my grandfather had opened a bar. my dad took it over and ran it for many years.

i worked there growing up, worked through school there. then i went on to start my own small business. we always knew that if we worked hard and sacrificed, we could make a better life. our young people today cannot count on that vision many of us had growing up. because of the lack of leadership in washington, it is slipping away from them and slipping away from us. it doesn't have to be that way. it is times like this week come together, it is times like this

when we come together and lead together. let's rise above the challenge of the moment. let us restore ourselves as a nation of builders. good luck. god bless you. >> when you talk about give upency, you will something. you will give signals as to what our capabilities are. more specific you get about the program and about the oversight, the more specific you get about the capabilities and the successes to that extent. you have people sitting around saying now i understand what can be done with our numbers in yemen and united states and i will find another way to

communicate. i will keep that in mind. there's a price to be be paid for that transparency. where that line is drawn in terms of capabilities is out of our hands. willell us to one way, we do it that way, but there is a price to be paid for that transparency. ,> saturday 10:00 a.m. robert mueller. sunday at 10:00, immigration stories. interviews with key house judiciary committee staff investigating wherether there were grounds to impeach nixon. at the white house president obama is expected to present senior justice department as hisl james comey nominee as the fbi director. he is a republican who has

served as the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and as deputy attorney general during the bush administration. that announcement in the white house rose garden. we will have it at 2:05 eastern on c-span. also love today, a discussion examining the legal and legislative aspects of the nsa data collection program, and that will be live on c-span starting at noon eastern, just about 20 minutes from now. until then we will show you testimony by james cole this past tuesday. he talked about the legal process and the oversight behind the nsa phone record and internet data collection programs. as general con xander said, and as the chairman and ranking member have said, all of us in the national security area are constantly trying to balance protecting public safety with

protecting people's privacy and civil liberties in this government. it is a constant job. there are statutes that are passed by congress. this is not a program that has been put off the books. statutes are passed. it is overseen by three branches of our government about the legislature, judiciary, and the executive branch. process of oversight occurs before,, during, and after the processes we are talking about today. i want to talk a little bit about how that works, what the legal framework is and what some of the protections are that are put into it. first, what we have seen published in the newspaper 15, the business records provisions of the patriot act that modify fisa come you have seen one order in

the newspaper that is a couple of pages long that just says under that order we are allowed data, telephone- records. that is one of two orders. it is the smallest of the two orders, and the other order, it has not been published, those into in great detail what we can do with that metadata, how we can ask as it, how we can look through it, what we can do with it once we have look through it and what the conditions are that are placed on us to make sure we protect privacy and civil liberties and at the same time protect public safety. let me go through the features of this. it is metadata. these are phone records, just like what you would get in your own phone bill. it is the number that is dialed from the number that was dialed to the date and the length of time here and that is all we get under 215. we do not get the identity of

any of the parties to this phone call. do not get any cell site or location information as to where any of these phones were located and most important, and you wonder this a hundred times today, we do not get any content. we do not listen in on anybody's calls under this program at all. section 215 of the patriot act. this has been debated and up for reauthorization and re- authorized twice by the united states congress since its inception in 2006 and 2011. in order -- the way that it applicationre is an that is made by the fbi under the statute to the fisa court. they asked for and received it for records th

that are relevant to a national security investigation, and they must demonstrate it will be operated under the guidelines set forth by the attorney general under executive order 12333. it is limited to tangible objects. what does that mean? these are records, that phone records i have been describing. it is explicitly limited to things that you could get with a grand jury subpoena. it is important to know prosecutors issued subpoenas all the time and do not need any involvement of a court or anybody else to do so. under this program, we need to get permission from the court to issue this ahead of time. with is court involvement the issuance of these orders, which is different from a grand jury subpoena, but the type of records, just documents,

business records, things like that, are limited today's same to those sameed types of records. the orders we get the last 90 renew thesehave to orders every 90 days in order to do this. there are strict controls over what we can do under the order, and that is the bigger order that has not been published. there is restrictions on who can access it in this order. it is stored in repositories at nsa that can only be accessed at a limited number of people and the people who are allowed to access it have to have special and rigorous training about the standards under which they can access it. in order to access it, there needs to be a finding that there is reasonable suspicion that you can articulate that you can put into words that the person whose

phone records you want to query is involved with some sort of terrorist organizations, and they are defined. it is not everyone. they are limited in the statute. it has to be independent evidence aside from these phone records that the person you are targeting is involved with the terrorist organization. if that person is a united states person, a citizen or a lawful permanent residents, you have to have something more than just their own speeches, there aren't readings, their own first amendment-type activities. you have to have additional evidence be on that that indicates that there is reasonable, articulable suspicion that these people are associated with specific terrorist organizations. now, one of the things to keep in mind is under the law, the fourth amendment does not apply to these records. there is a

case a number of years by the supreme court that indicated records, phone records that do not include content are not covered by the fourth amendment, because people do not have a reasonable expectation of called andwho they when they called. that is something you showed to the phone company am a something you show too many people within the phone company on a regular basis. once those records are accessed andr this process reasonable, articulable suspicion is found, that is found by a specially trained person, reviewed by their supervisors, documented in writing ahead of time so that somebody can take a look at it. any of the accessing that is done is done in an auditable five fashion. -- fashion. the decisions that support the accessing of the query is documented documented, the amount that was done, all that is documented and reviewed and

audited on a fairly regular basis. there are also minimization procedures that are put into thee, so that any of information that is acquired has to be minimized, it has to be limited, and its use is strictly limited, and all that is set out in the terms of the court order. areif any u.s. persons involved, there are particular restrictions on how any information concerning a u.s. person can be used in this. now, there is extensive oversight and compliance that is done with these records and with this process. every now and then there may be a mistake, a wrong phone number is hit or if person who should not have been targeted gets targeted because there is a mistake in the phonorecord, something like that. each of those compliance incidents, when they occur, have to be reported to the fisa court immediately.

and let me tell you, the fisa court rushes back on this. they want to find out why did this happen, what were the procedures and the mechanism that allowed it to happen, and what have you done to fix it. whatever we have a compliance incident, we reported to the court immediately and we report it to congress. we report it to the intelligence committees of both houses and the judiciary committees of both houses. he also provide the intelligence and judiciary committees with any significant interpretations 215 the court makes of the statute. if they make a ruling that is significant or issue an order that is significant in its interpretation, we provide those as well as the applications we made for those orders to the intelligence committee and to the judiciary committee. at every 30 days we are filing with the court a report that describes how we implement this

program. it includes a discussion of how we are applying the reasonable, articulable suspicion standard, it talks about the number of approved queries that we made against this at a base, the number of instances that the query results in containing u.s. person information that is shared outside of nsa, and all of this goes to the court. at least once every 90 days and sometimes more frequently, the department of justice, the office of the director of national intelligence, and the nsa meet to assess nsa's compliance with all of these requirements that are contained in the court order. separately, the department of justice meet with the inspector general for the national security agency and assesses nsa's compliance on a regular basis. finally, there is by statute a recording of certain information that goes to congress in semi annual reports we make on top of

the periodic reports we make, if there is a compliance incident. those include information about the data that was required and how we are performing under this statute. once again, giving in mind all of this is done with three branches of government involved come oversight, and initiation by the executive branch with review by multiple agencies mismatches that are passed by congress, oversight by congress, and oversight by the court. the 702 statute is different. under this we do get content. there is a big difference. you are only allowed under 702 purposeet for this non--u.s. persons who are located outside of the united states. so if you have a u.s. permanent resident who is in madrid, spain, we cannot target them

under 702. or if you have a non-u.s. person who is in cleveland, ohio, 702.t target them under in order to turn a person, they have to be either a citizen -- neither a citizens or a permanent u.s. resident and they need to be outside the u.s. while we are targeting them. there are perturbations in the statute. reservesle, you cannot -- reverse targeting somebody. your goal is to capture conversations was somebody who was inside the united states. you are trying to do indirectly what you could not do directly. explicitly prohibited by this statute. if there is ever any indication that it is being done, because we report the use that we make of the statute to the court and to the congress, that is seen. you also have to have a valid ce purpose.lligen

you have to make sure, as described, that it is being done categories of weapons of mass destruction, foreign intelligence, eggs of that nature. these are all done pursuant to an application that is made by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to the fisc. the fisc gives a certificate that allows the targeting begun for a year time. it has to be renewed at the end of that year in order to be re- upped. also is a requirement that, again, there is reporting. you cannot under the terms of this statute have and collect any information on conversations that are wholly within the united states. so you are targeting someone outside the united states. if they make a call to inside the united states, that can be collected, but it is only

because the target of that call outside the united states initiated that call and went there. if the calls are wholly within the united states, we cannot collect them. if you are targeting a person who is outside the united states and you find that they come in to the united states, we have to stop the targeting right away. if there's any lag and we find out we collected information because we were not aware that they were in the united states, we have to take that in formation about purchase from the systems, and not use it. there is a deal of minimization procedures that were involved here, regularly concerning any of the acquisition of information that deals or condoms from u.s. persons. as i said, only targeting people outside the united states who are not u.s. persons, but if we acquire any information that relates to a u.s. person, under limited criteria only can we

keep it. if it has to do with foreign intelligence in the conversation or understanding in foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime or a threat of serious bodily injury, we can respond to that. other than that, we have to get rid of it, we can purge it, and we cannot use it. if we inadvertently acquire any of it, without meaning to come again, will once that is discovered we have to get rid of it, we have to purge it. the targeting decisions that are done are again documented ahead of time and reviewed by a supervisor they are ever allowed to take place in the beginning. the departments of justice and the office of the director of national intelligence conduct reviews of each targeting that is done. they look at them to determine and go through the audit to determine that they were done properly. this is done at least every 60 done moremany times frequently than that.

in addition, if there is any compliance issue come it is immediately reported to the fisc. what are the mechanisms you are using to fix this? what are you doing to remedy it? have you gotten rid of it if you are required? congress withng all that information. we report quarterly to the fisc concerning compliance issues that have arisen during that quarter. on top of the media reports and what we have done to fix it and remedy the ones that we have reported. he also to congress under this program, the department of justice and to do office of director of national intelligence provide a semi andal report to fisc congress processing power compliance with the targeting and minimization procedures contained in the court order. we also provide a semi annual

report to the fisc concerning the imitation of the program. what we have done and what we have found. we also provide to congress documents that contain how we are dealing with the minimization procedures, any significant legal interpretations that the fisc ,akes concerning the statutes as well as the orders. on top of all of this, annually, the inspector general for nsa does an assessment which he provides to congress that reports on compliance, the number of dissemination's under this program that relate to u.s. persons, the number of targets that were reasonably believe that the time to be outside the united states who are later determined to be in the united states and when that was done. before,, there is from during, and after the involvement of all three branches of the united states

government on a robust and fairly intimate way. i would like to make one other observation, if i may, on this. we have tried to do this in as thorough, as protective, and has trim parent a way as we possibly can, considering is the the gathering of intelligence information. . of ourss and allies all around the world collect intelligence. we all know this. there have been studies about processesarent our are in the united states compared to our partners, countries like france, the uk, germany, who we work with regularly. a report issued in may of this year found that the fisa amendments act, the statute we are talking about here, "imposes at least as much, if not more,

do oversight on foreign intelligence surveillance and other countries." and this includes eu countries. the u.s. is much more transparent about its procedures, requires more due process in its investigations that involve national security, terrorism, and foreign intelligence. the balance is always one we strive to achieve. i think as we have laid out for you, we have done everything we can to achieve its. i think part of the proof is this report that came out just last month, indicating that our system is just as good, and frankly better, then all of our liaison partners. chair.ou, mr. >> and live now to the rayburn office building for a discussion of some of the legislative aspects of the in essay internet internetnce --nsa

surveillance program. >> on behalf of the internet , welcome toundation today's discussion. let me tell all of you that the twitter hashtag for today's -- the twitter hashtag for today's program isicsansa. for about 20 years, the education program has pursued policies on the education and done this in a completely nonpartisan and educational way. this includes the work of the professional internet caucus advisory committee, of which today's discussion is apart, and they also include the net

net conference, mobile net, and get netwise, and we expect soon on internet applications. i encourage you to visit our --and learneted.org more about the internet a education. if you like our work, i be one of ourto supporters. today's discussion is one of the series of discussion sponsored by the internet advisory committee. the internet caucus advisory committee is made up of trade organizations, nonprofit organizations, professional organizations, businesses, and

others who are interested in and supportive of a neutral and open dialogue about the internet and its activities and functions. like all such events, it is made possible true the support and leadership of the internet caucuses cochairs, senators leahy and noon --thune. is #icacnsa.shtag neted.org.site is our topic could not be more important or more timely. we will conclude by 1:00. the discussion will be led by mary ellen callahan, a partner with the law firm of general and block and former chief privacy

officer of the department of homeland security. we all look forward to an interesting program. mary ellen, thank you. >> welcome that -- welcome, everybody. i want to briefly introduce my colleagues on the panel. we will go very quickly and cover a lot of topics. we will try to keep on our time. alphabetically to my left i have alan davidson, a visiting scholar at m.i.t. and former director of public policy at google for the americas. next to him is michelle, the legislative counsel at the americans civil liberties union. julian sanchez from the cato institute, and at the far end, --e, a partner at set to steptoe and johnson and formerly worked at the department of justice. we are going to talk about these .ssues and the information

i will give you a brief overview based on public accounts and recent testimony. this is an overview of the accounts as we know them related .o to programs this will help us inform and define the rest of the discussion. first, what is the national security agency and why was that getting the records? 's technical and legal authorities of expanded over the decades to expand to foreign intelligence and counter intelligence and in the past primarily operated outside the united states. the programs we are discussing today, however, direct the content of manage data directly to the nsa after the fbi secured fisa court orders to secure documents. in this capacity, nsa is

operating as a technical service provider of sorts, receiving the information directly, but on behalf of the fbi and analyzing information under the fbi's jurisdictional activities. fisa act as a 1978 law that has been modified several times. it was designed for procedures of election of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers, agents of foreign powers, as well as those related to terrorism activities cents september 11. the original intent was to revive judicial oversight of covert intelligence activities. the fisa court has been appointed by the chief justice to serve for a seven-year term. the fisa court is experts say --ex parte. let's talk about the programs.

first, the collection of business records, also known as section 215 of the usa patriot act. -- takesot act as the business records. business records are defined as anyy can double thing." -- " tangible thing." they have the authority to produce on behalf of of the fbi forphone records communications between united states and abroad, or wholly within the united states including vocal telephone calls. the local orders are appeared to commence on the issuance of the fifo order and run 90 days. the leak -- if the leak is indicative of the overall process. according to the doj, the leaked order is one of two orders issued simultaneously to

be read together. the other order outlines what the fbi can and cannot do with the access information. doj has also testified about the limit of access and use of this data and some of those internal procedures were disclosed by the guardian yesterday. the numbercludes that was dealt from, the number that was doubt to, the day and the time and the length of the call. the fbi received 21 business record fisa court orders and nine in 2010 according to doj testimony. prism is section five of the fisa amendments act. section five is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-us persons located out the united states. it cannot be used to intentionally target any u.s. citizen, u.s. person, anyone

within the united date. but a u.s. citizen may be the result of targeting a non-us person. cablen 202 requires that companies and internet companies ith as google and yahoo -- indicated there was direct access to the information and user profiles. as i understand it now, that has been corrected. at the piers the online companies received fisa court orders, although how the information is accessed by the nsa has not yet been clearly defined. the order contains information for multiple accounts and can include requests for content information. intelligence officers are able to add the names of additional search queries up to one year later. for all fisa court orders, companies are prevented from his closing they received a fisa court order. this week google went to the

fisa court to seek permission to explicitly state how many fisa orders it has responded to every year. general alexander testified the use of these programs stopped 50 terrorist events. 10 a to section 202 and using business record information. he did not have a number on the percentage of intel just -- of essential intelligence coming out of the use of the business records metadata information. that was very long, but i wanted everybody to be operating on the same acronyms and terms as we go through this rapid pace questioning. so, i want to open it up to the panel and ask a broad overarching fustian. what are your overall observations about these programs as recently disclosed and do you distinguish the two programs from a legal or policy perspective?

>> thank you, mary ellen. thank you for having me here today. a quick word of context to start american companies have for years received many, many requests -- legitimate request -- from the government to produce data. internet and telecom company specifically operate under very strict rules set forth by congress that require how they comply with those requests and they get thousands every year. a large company get thousands of these every year. google has added transparency report for well. lester they received 42,000 law enforcement request, not including the kind of request we are talking about today. microsoft without its report in march. they got over 75,000 request in 2012. i say all this because this is

something that has been going on for a while in terms of producing information for the government and it is something companies take extremely seriously. i can say from experience, the monies, larger companies have whole teams dedicated to doing nothing but producing information for government requests. they were 24/7, weekends and holidays. they supply information quickly when an important information -- investigation is going on. the question is not whether the government is going to get accessor should get data to the content of conversations of telephone calls, e-mail. i think that has been asked and answered. the question, and it is an important question for congress, is what are the rules going to be? what standards apply? when should companies be required to turn this information over? that is the question raised by

these two programs. just to highlight two particular things about these programs. the first -- well, i should say actually the standards actually make a very big difference. there are big differences between them in the ways that the standards opera right. most americans think about a war and, like searching a home, you see on television. someone goes to a judge, gets award, sees probable cause, they search her home. we are talking about something very different where the rules are not based on probable cause, but your relevance to an ongoing national security investigation. the discussion with the judge happens in secret, ex parte. those differences are ultimately very important. that is what is interesting about these two revelations over the last couple of weeks. the first thing is, i think in the context of the verizon

order that was disclosed about what telecommute and haitians -- what telecommunications companies are providing, i think what was surprising was the breath of that order and the fact that it is happening wiring a lot of strict to a specific telephone call. the second thing that i think was surprising was the prison program, what appears to be the apparent ease of access to content. -- was the prison program, what appears to be the apparent ease of access to content. -- the prismrism program. this information elected in secret, potentially about u.s. nationals and people around the world. the question -- are the rules that we have in place effective enough of privacy? and i would say it's not just a civil

liberties issue, that it is a .usiness issue for companies that is why you're hearing so much. it is a business issue because if people do not not trust the services, they will not use them. that will not be good for american business, but it will not be good for the government's ability to get information in the future. those are the issues that i think get raised. >> thank you, alan. michelle? >> thank you. we are disappointed to see that these tools are being used to collect information on everyday americans. over the last decade or so the american has asserted it can be trusted to use the patriot act, the fisa amendment act judiciously, that this was about people overseas, not you and me. we know that is not true with the leak from the guardian. the phone collection company -- know collects the

phone numbers of everybody in america every day. the statement from members of the senate intelligence community that confirms this is going to more than just verizon. this is a regular collection program being done across the different phone companies. we also know the fisa amendments act is being used for the full collection of internet data. while it is nominally targeted at people overseas, it is regularly collecting the information and data of people inside the united states and that, the government is allowed to keep and use that information for certain purposes. i think right now there are two things congress needs to be thinking about. one is further disclosure. this is really just the tip of the iceberg and you need to get

more information. for example, on the domestic collection programs under the patriot act. is it just phone records or is it more? records are not protected by the constitution. that means e-mail records, financial data, e-mail information. there were 212 orders like this last year. thisome of them get information? we need to understand the legal underpinnings better. there are fisa orders supposedly under review that contain much more information about how the courts came to the decision that all of our records are relevant and can be sent to the nsa every single day. without that information it is very hard for congress to make an informed decision and have an informed debate. i think there is enough evidence now you can go in and start amending the statutes, especially to 15 of the patriot act. -- especially section 215 of

the patriot act. it does not mean it cannot be used to super vale terrorist sends spies. surveil terrorists and spies. that is actually an appropriate use. >> thank you, michelle. julian? julian, can you put your microphone on? >> is a very different programs. there are different concerns raised by both of those. i hope that they are distinct, because when we talk about the utility of them, you see that on balance,eful and justifiable with certain limitations and the other not. and then we discussed them

separately and two analysis independently. i will say they are similar in that they both appeared to represent element in a trend i think we expected or suspected of going on in the pfizer court since 9/11 -- the pfizer court fisa court since 9/11, which is a shift on the restrictions from what could be required to the backend where you have very broad access and analysts have the discretion to select which things will be queried for search. which selectors will be entered to pull up particular phone records or e-mail contents and various backend procedures are counted on to prevent that from being misused. i think that is, frankly, dangerous, in a way that -- that the fourth amendment was

supposed to prevent. that it was centrally about moving discretion in search engines from executive agents message tracks. instead of letting the agent decide which homes to search and have a backend review to make sure they were not indiscriminately searching too many homes, you would they, no, you need an upfront weren't for this particular home you're going to search. the move away from that, especially given the scale of the surveillance, which i think makes any meaningful oversight of a camaro than a reality, as evidenced by the chimerat -- more of a than a reality, as evidenced by -- fact that their findings more validity. i'm not sure if that is enough to make us comfortable with this shift from front end to backend

restrictions. once you got data, you've got the data. the backend restrictions on you -- on what you do with that last only until you decide to change them, and we will not necessarily know if they decide to change them. >> mike? so far,erybody has said the two programs are very different. i want to make a couple of points. whenot to feel whiplash you hear me talk. sometimes i will sound like a civil libertarian and sometimes like a former law enforcement person. i have perspectives on both that is not inconsistent. there with me. , whichgard to prism involves the election of so- called foreign information, where the target is supposed to be a so-called non-us person located abroad. key points to

learned there, what is about the way that activity is being conducted is completely consistent with the terms of the statute and i do not think anyone can seriously argue that it's not. if you read the statute, everything that has been --cribed you can see is jives with the statute. the waynot so clear is it has been described by government officials. you will hear nsa officials described the collection of u.s. information as incidental, which at the nsa is a term of art. to you and me, you look it up, it means accidental, unintentional. that is not what nsa means. means the u.s. person is

not the target, but they could very well be collecting information about the u.s. person. and the examples pretty much prove that. they cite this is the case -- aussie case for example -- this case, for example. they are looking for ties between four and terrorist's and people in the united states. that is something we want them to be doing. but that collection is hardly incidental in the way that most people would use that term. i think it's important when you hear terms like that thrown about in hearings to be more skeptical of what "incidental" means. if you look at the targeting procedures that were leaked and the washington post and the guardian, you are probably not supposed to read those things because they are classified and the executive branch will tell you you're not supposed to read them. so, just read the articles.

collect meant to information about u.s. persons as long as the u.s. person is not the ostensible target. and once they elect the information, they can retain it, disseminate its if it has intelligence value, relates to a crime, can be added to a technical database, whatever that means. so there are a lot of authorized ways to collect and retain the information about u.s. persons. those are the points about prism. section 215. it has been described as a dragnet electing phone call information about every person in the united states. that is apparently accurate. i do not think it is necessarily accurate to say it is spying on all americans. what is being collected is simply phone numbers. not your name, not the content of the communications, but all

the phone numbers so that nsa can analyze connections, so they can see what phone numbers are andn terrorist calling calling back? inside the u.s. or outside the u.s. once they determine a phone number needs to be looked at more carefully, and then they will go at a regular pfizer order which involves going to a judge and getting information -- fisa order and involves going to a judging getting getting information. there are protections in place. a final note about both programs -- really the important s are the minimization procedures in the targeting procedures. that is what all boils down to. exactly what are the rules regarding how the government

gets this information and how it may use it. if you're satisfied those things are essentially protective, i think you will be more comforted with these programs. if you do not think that those are essentially rigorous, then you will be discomfited. we will talk about that in a bit. to me the key question is can you have meaningful oversight when these things are classified, so people are left wondering what are the minimization and targeting procedures? with the leak, that is a bit of a moot point. >> thank you, mike. that is a great segue. you ended on the question of oversight. during the public hearing of the house intelligence to midi, the nsa and doj discussed the business records used in prism.

mike, i thought we would talk about those oversight elements and do you think they are adequate as currently constructed? then i will turn that question to the rest of the panel. thanks. >> again, i will start with prism. actually, let me start with 215. two essential oversight mechanisms. first, the order has to be .pproved by a federal judge so, the department of justice will present an application to the court explaining what the basis for the order is and the court will have to grant the order. so, that should give you some comfort there. as julian was saying, that is the archetypal vision of the fourth amendment. you have a neutral magistrate making a pass of what the executive branch wants to do.

the problem with that model when it comes to 215 orders is the government has a very broad definition of "investigation." information has to be relevant to an authorized investigation. most people read that -- in the statute, they will say ok, the government is investigating joe blow, so they want to collect information relative to joe blow somehow. iss is clearly not how it working. the government is collecting phone records on all people in the united states. they are using an expansive investigation -- definition of investigation. if you say we are investigating terrorist and that is the scope of the information, then the role of the judges is pretty minor. essentially a signature and that's about it. there's not much more the judges doing. item isnd

congressional oversight and i think there are serious questions about whether congressional oversight is adequate. it's really just the house and senate intelligence committees that typically engage in oversight of intelligence activities. everything is highly classified. and you know, there's not a lot of history of pushback that leads to the executive branch changing anything. again, unless there is broader involvement by congress, there's a serious question about whether oversight is adequate. 215 is a very different animal. there you do not have a federal judge issuing particular surveillance orders. they can make these directions, give orders to serviced providers directly. fisa is tole of the review the minimization and

targeting procedures, give the theand then up to a year, dni issues orders directed to companies. the second oversight mechanism there, two, is congressional oversight in the same points i made earlier applied. that's very helpful. i think we all want to talk about this. i'll try to be brief, but -- >> yes, very brief. two points. one about the court oversight here. it's important to remember this is not an adversarial process. know when is representing the interest of the people whose records are collected. it is just the government before a secret court. these are programmatic orders. they don't have names or accounts on them. the court is in making individualized decisions about

who is going to be spied upon. that is left to the administration to decide later. 215, ther section domestic phone collection program and the fisa amendments act. this is not a law that has been litigated, decided by public court. we really do not know what they're doing. we have statements from members of congress confirming there are court opinions interpreting our rights from the fourth amendment about what the government is allowed to collect and how they are allowed to use it and that is untenable because the decisions have to be brought out into the light. i will end with that second point of congress's role. so far congress has allowed the intelligence committees to do secret oversight of secret programs allowed under secret court orders and led to the collection of every american's phone calls. this cannot continue. we need to pull this information out into the public

sphere so the rank-and-file members can understand what they authorized, so the applicant understand how the government spies on them, and they can make decisions about how these programs should continue. secret surveillance has not been working and through the information leaked for the last couple of weeks, it is clear that some of this information has unnecessarily been kept secret and your bosses need to make strong decisions about what is appropriate. >> thank you, michelle. julian? a great book called "eyes on spies." it sums up the conclusions of most of the academic literature looking at congressional of intelligence. it's pretty feeble. members of the intelligence committee continually assure us that congressional oversight is

rigorous and effective, but that is not a conclusion many other observers have arrived at. ,ith respect to court orders the way the statutes are framed, very often the court has limited discretion to reject orders that are formally correct. that is if the application has certain formal elements and certifications, the word has pretty limited discretion in denying that order and more generally, it comes up pretty regularly in regulatory caps. the court will often get captured by regulatory industry and the regulation will become not a way of checking the in forming its interest. i there's a lot of that to suggest something similar may have happened with the fisa court which is meeting in secret with one side one tidbit ofand

evidence -- we know initially the congress and the metadata surveillance we've seen disclosed in the orders was done according to residential directive without court order. at you ask him a white is the court going to do this and this is legal under the -- you ask him why is this court going to do this and this is legal under the patriot act? why didn't he do that from the beginning? i think no one thought initially be patriot act could authorize this kind of action as broad as it was. once it was under way, the court was able to be brought around into signing off on it even though no one initially imagined it was him thing that was in their power to authorize. >> alan? >> quickly, i would say transparency will be a key. congress and the public. the role of secrecy here -- a

peculiar feature of the statutory operators were talking about, the recipients of orders are not permitted to even disclose they have received the orders. that is an unusual revision -- provision in our framework and it has made it very hard for people to talk about even the number in aggregate of orders being received. thee is a lot in terms of addition to problems about how the court operates, just understanding the sheer number of these and how the statutes are being used. second, there's a lot of ambiguity about how you interpret this. mike talked about the issues of what is anevant, investigation. it is often understood that companies receiving minas orders will enter into an -- receiving these orders will enter into a

negotiation about orders they have received. there have been a few public cases of this. google did this in 2006. they decided to do two months of search data. it just goes to show, there's a lot of ambiguity about how the statutes are supposed to operate and it shouldn't rely on negotiation with private actors from the government. there should be a lot more clarity. the low hanging fruit is a lot more transparency about how the orders are working and even how many orders would help a lot. , alan.ks i will take my own objective to raise a few more elements. i completely concur on the role of the house and senate intelligence committees. i do not think this is what frank church envisioned when he worked on intelligence reform.

have the authority to oversee the civil liberties issues and i want to highlight that because that is something that is not addressed. i want to go to the deputy attorney general's comments in front of the house intelligence committee earlier this week when you said there was lots of internal justice oversight, internal oversight within the department of justice. the oversight body within the is theent of justice national security division and the national security division has many strong capable lawyers but the concept of having an objective review of whether it is necessary, i find to be a weak link and i do not know there could be objective oversight. departmentknow the of justice as a civil liberties officer in that role has been vacant since august. it was notable the deputy attorney general did not note the privacy and civil liberties officer was part of the review,

because the obvious question is, well, who is the privacy and civil liberties officer? i would just have those questions about the oversight. now, we will turn to the business records orders. the president defended that approach by saying "nobody is listening to your calls and the information elected is only metadata. the information about the calls placed, the duration of calls, and so on." does this come for you, panelist? >> your records are incredibly sensitive. it is not the content of the communication. that is no comfort. the government would not want them so bad, right, if they did not have incredibly rich, telling data in them. you look at a phone record,

and you will know quite a lot about who you associate with, where you go. perhaps you are calling a cancer doctor or a lawyer who specializes in .ivorce you can learn a lot whether a congressperson is calling his scheduler at 3:00 in the afternoon or 3:00 in the morning, right? it is the content. the administration points back to old caselaw developed in the the 1970's, saying because they are records there is no fourth amendment protection. i think a lot of us inc. when thinks -- a lot of us when this is revisited that decision will come down differently. the way we live our lives is very different. if you participate in modern society doing everyday things, these records reflect a lot about your life and they need to receive heightened rejection.

we can't dismiss this as a very minor intrusion. >> fellow panelists weigh in yucca -- weigh in? timeitter said the only it makes sense to say "just metadata" is that a star trek convention. [laughter] >> why i agree with a lot of the points, i am comforted that it does not involve content. i think there's a difference between the government knowing what numbers i call or have been called i and the content of those communications. i think there is a real difference. even though you can make determinations about a person based on whom he or she is calling. comfort comes from the rules regarding how the government uses the information. again that goes back to the internal procedures.

if there are in fact rigorous procedures in place that the government will not look at the u.s. person, me or you, unless there is reason to believe you are somehow engaged in clandestine intelligence activities, i.e. spying, or they do haved that suspicion and they need to get a court order, then i don't have a problem with that. a aboutou think long-term how much destructive power an individual can have now and is going to have even more off at -- even more off as technology advances, there is got to be a way to keep track of individuals better than we do now. it's a scary thought and that but no one really wants to confront, but it's an issue that's going to keep coming up and keep coming up. and in the worst case scenario, when an individual brings a suitcase nuke onto wall street questionates it, the

is going to be, the government had this technical capability to keep track of people, but that will it? why? be the scandal. it's always a better idea to examine these issues and come up with a democratically agreed to set up procedures now rather than after an incident when the situation will be far worse from the civil liberties perspective. >> i will just add really quickly, first i think many people would agree there is a difference appropriately between the content of information's and other data about conversation. we'd need to recognize there is a big of trend here. we create more and more of a set of data. there's more happening in the section of big data, creation of more and more data about us. i think there needs to be a conversation about data about us

at scale. it comes back to the discussion about transparency. there are questions not only about targeting, but also how long is this information kept? how do we protect against mission creep? there's a lot of good work about the accountability of the system, a lot of technical work but it's very hard to know without having more transparency about how the systems actually operate. to end this portion of the conversation, my reaction to that is the collection first onset of this metadata is -- it to sayably on trend "well, it may be useful someday ." i may buy size to suits because -- size to 2 six someday, becaue 2, but i may never

be. the court records to obtain this order was not tangible -- i find that to be a stretch of a legal argument. so, with that said, we will turn to a slightly different points. let's talk about the justification. down on wall bombs street. general alexander stated 50 terrorist events were stopped due to these programs. does that factor into your assessment? and what about the smaller nature of 20 terrorist events, with no specifics on the business records? julian? >> a very brief coda to that last discussion. we are talking about metadata -- i'm not sure to what extent

that continues. the distinction between content and metadata is not as sharp when you're talking about what site he person is visiting. that's effectively a description of the content they are accessing. in terms of the terrorist events that have been disrupted, a little background here. one of the very first inspector reports on section 215 215,the first use of after being unused for several years, was essentially because the rector says, the congress will be reviewing our use of 215. we betterstop -- start using it so we have something to show for it. i don't think that is nefarious, but there is perhaps motivated reasoning in play, because the ,esire not to use authority

whether or not it will be used not sayingre -- i'm the fbi should be seen in that light. as we look at the specific cases described in hearings earlier this week, i think what we see seems likefirst it fairly dramatic claims -- dozens of terror plots being foiled -- looks a lot lester maddox under closer scrutiny. fromu separate out 702 215, actually 40 of these terror of vents, whatever that is, were overseas, so those may have involved prism or half may have involved prism in some significant way and you have 10 or 12 that are to mastech. and then -- are domestic. and then if you start looking at those, how many used the metadata program specifically? well, the majority, we believe. so, six or seven?

what are those cases? finding someone who had been donating money to ouster bob, the ethiopian terror group, and of course, absolutely find and prosecute those people -- shabab, theey to al ethiopian terror group. a is not clear that that is terror event. zazi found through an e-mail address. not clear why a more targeted use of that would not have been possible. there is another case involving the supposed lot bomb of the new york stock exchange. was it a serious plot? said,rector of the fbi the jury thought it was serious

because they were all convicted. it turns out that there was no jury trial. the people were convicted of the essential support of a terrorist organization. again, money. the new york exchange part of it seems to be that the u.s. person scoped out several terrorist targets. it appears to have been abandoned. the u.s. attorney who works that case said there was no specific lot. -- plot. i think we should treat with skepticism if these are the showpiece cases they are bringing up to justify the old collection of all americans phone and possibly internet records, it is not clear that the justification that passes that cost-benefit test. if you have general warrants to search any suspected place, yes, it turns out when you are investigating crimes, the thing solveou use to help

those crimes would be the general warrants. if we have a system where warrants are based on probable cause, that is what you will look back and see being useful in solving crimes. the question is, what are the instances in which only this broad authority and not traditional and more targeted authorities will do the job? there are types of analysis where you need the entire body of records to do fingerprinting of various kinds or pattern analysis. but these are not really justifications of these programs. their justifications of the ideas that phone records should sometimes be obtained which no one has contested. >> other colleagues want to talk about that? >> i fully agree with julian that the cases are not really what they are made out to be. in spite of what general alexander characterized the numbers, when you look at

testimony, really only one case but they talk about where 215 collection was instrumental, and that was the case of the fellow who gave i think $8,500 to al- shabab. 215 wasses, yes, relevant, but there's no indication it was instrumental or thwarted the terrorist attack. i think that's important to really probe. i think that something congress and intelligence committees should really grow. what role did these programs play? , theoint about prism collection these programs engage in are these sorts of programs that nsa could do outside the united states with no court order whatsoever. that is its raison d'être. collection of information outside of the united states. the reason that fisa was amended

to section 702 was today so many international communications passed through the united states because of the way the internet is designed. thatsa to collect information, it's much easier for them to do it here in the u.s. by basically wiretapping the major providers and the united states and the backbone providers in the united states rather than going abroad and trying to monitor everything there. when you think about their authority,, they are not really being authorized to collect anything more than they used to collect. they are just being authorized to do it within the united states. that is sort of the whole point. lesse, that makes it problematic if you look at it from the 12,000 foot level. >> that's a very good point, mike. michelle?

everythingwith julian said. just to highlight you are being presented with a false choice. the question is, do you want to spy on terrorists or don't you? that's not the question. the question is, are you going to spy on the rest of us in the meantime just in case? that is not good police work. it violates the fourth amendment. just remember, over the last 14 years, you have the patriots -- the patriot act, the creation of the apartment of homeland security -- >> hey! >> [laughter] isn't there intelligence reform? >> then you have intelligence reform, the creation of homeland security again, the rewrite of the fisa act. we are talking one level program on one tiny piece of continual expansion of mini programs

mini agencies. all of those tools are still available even if you stop spying on american phone records. to not think of this as not spying or spying, but whether you will include americans. .> thanks, michele we will end up with an overview. one of the issues is to address the growth or development of the internet. so, panelist's, how do you think the disclosure of two programs will affect the companies and will it impact of the internet economy overall? again i will use a little discretion and say i have three points i want to highlight. 20 eu membero states to talk about government information carrying in my role as the u.s. department of homeland security privacy officer, and to say, don't

worry, this was only used 96 times in 2010 -- i'm going to tell you. the relationship with the european union and the european commission are likely irreparably damaged. i used to say, no, believe me. don't worry. it will be fine. they would say, we don't believe you. you lie to us about guantanamo. lie to us about rendition. now they have a third one in there. the concept that transparency and has been harmed and particularly the nine named companies and at the same time the other elements, the other companies operating in this space, will have a cloud over their heads, saying, well, are you participating in this? what is the access?

the point on transparency is going to have to be a thing we development. to affect the internet economy, there is something in the privacy act ick factor. you can't define it, but people say "ick!" i think that will affect the government use of this data. alan? >> i think it's more than just the nine companies but the real impact on the broader internet communications economy. i think that we know people do not want to use services that they don't trust them. the last two weeks have not been good for trust of major u.s. and internet medications companies, which is partly why you are hearing so much about why they are trying to, in their eyes, protect user privacy.

director talked about this in his testimony from a different point of view. he said the disclosure will drive people away on the u.s. services and that is a damaging thing. i would say that is a damaging thing, but it is the existence of the services and the lack of transparency and oversight that is going to drive people away. we know people have choices out there. this will embolden the competitors, the services that are abroad, it will drive people -- especially if we do not address what the rules are -- it will drive people to use other tools. it will drive people to send their traffic other places than the united states. it will drive people to using creation tools to protect their information so they cannot be surveilled. that will be damaging to industry, of course. but ultimately i would argue it is damaging to our ability to conduct the kind of surveillance that is really important.

oversight and transparency are good for our ability ultimately to do this kind of surveillance, to give law enforcement the kind of tools we want them to have. i would say it is a false choice. we want our government to have the tools at its disposal, but we want them to be careful tools and we can do that with good rules and good tools, you have to be able to talk. you have to have a real conversation about how are the capabilities being used? are they being built in such a way that they will protect privacy over time? i think it's oversight and transparency is key to that conversation. >> thank you, alan. michelle? is hopefullyis just the beginning of the disclosure process that will continue. and release more information about what information the

government is collecting and being used. there's still a lot of questions left that we hope you and your bosses will pursue so you can make informed decisions about the value of these tools. this information will continue to be created by these companies. we will continue to use it. right now we do not have any option about whether we share that information with the government, and really the answer is going to lie with you as congress. it's incredibly clear that the administration will continue anye are brands without limitation. that the court will sign off on them. and if there is going to be more oversight or judicious use of them, it's going to have to come from the direction of you guys. , michele. julian. >> the fact that such an traffic percentage of

goes through the united states is a factor that will remain true until other countries decide that other countries decide that the cheapest path for a packet is too costly. the fact that we're having this domestic debate in these terms, where the assurances we are given our don't worry, we have these imris and minimization procedures, which most of you cannot look at them, even on the guardian side, but there are some loopholes. we are sure that we have all of these procedures cared only people outside the u.s. who can be and is firmly spied on. that does not play as well overseas, perhaps, as it does in the united states. >> it is no fun if everybody agreed, so i will disagree. >> thank you, mike. >> just for the sake of being devils advocate. in terms of these programs, sorted to to our foreign relations and trust, a ghost

through a few categories and say i do not think the harm is going to be that great except for one category. the europeans are going to complain. they always complain. but note that the complaints are presently coming from eu officials in brussels. they're not coming from the presidents or prime ministers of member states. why? because they benefit tremendously from these programs. they get intelligence from us about terror plots in their countries. if you read the articles about the president meeting with angelo merck -- angela merkel, she had to make a sour face about these things, but she acknowledged that they get tremendous assistance. so i do not think for all of this there is going to be much lasting effect on our relations with the europeans, just that there were not with previous revelations of u.s. intelligence programs. with regard to the companies, i do not think there will be lasting damage. even short-term damage to these companies. how may people do you think stopped using gmail or yahoo! or any of the other services that were listed as being recipients

of demand for information under 702? very few. if you want to protect your privacy, you can still use those while using other software, encryption software and other things to protect your confidential communications if you want. there is really very little choice. the other aspect is, we entrust our most intimate details to google, yahoo!, facebook, and that information is mined so we can be served advertisements. it is shared with companies we have no idea about. we trust those monies to deal doh that information, so i not see a huge den munition of trust because government pursuant to statute is getting that information for counterterrorism and counterintelligence. damage to our intelligence capabilities, which is what the government officials have been saying. yes, i think there is damaging the short-term now that the details of these programs have

been revealed. i do not think there will be great damage long-term because again, our adversaries have to communicate. they may spend 90% of their medications, they may take efforts to avoid surveillance. 10% of the time they will slip up for the sake of convenience or they will just forget. this is why wiretaps are still useful against organized crime. they know they'll are being watched and investigated, but they will still make that phone call him a which becomes crucial to the government for the case. phoney will be -- the call, which becomes crucial to the government's case. so few people in the legislative branch really understand that these programs exist, and even fewer still know the details of these things. that is the problem because that means the executive branch is effectively running the show with very little real oversight. and that is exacerbated by the fact that the president determines what is classified. and then congress has to open a

or think that has to obey those rules about what is classified, what could be shared, and things like that. i think that is an area where congress can really push back. ultimately, congress has the power. if congress is not think it is getting enough information, it is not know what the executive branch is doing, it can cut off funding. and then they will give more information all of a sudden. so i think if congress wants to push back, that is ultimately what makes congress the most powerful branch. the question is whether it wants to exert a power or not. >> mike, thank you so much. and thank you for playing the devils advocate role. i want to thank the panel is for a lively demonstration. i want to leave you with a question -- just because the information is out there, does that mean the government showed or have a right to access it? it is a question we will all have to struggle with. to close back to roger at our luncheon. rice thank you very much. for those of us -- >> thank you

very much. for those of you viewing us on c-span and those of you in the conference room, thank you so much for joining us in this program of the congressional internet caucus advisory committee. as i said earlier, if you would like to learn more about the activities of the congressional internet caucus, the visor he committee, or sponsor the internet education foundation, neted.org. us at an you can learn more about the programs that you've seen today. on behalf of the caucus advisory committee and the education foundation, please join me in thanking maryellen and our panelists. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> a quick reminder that we have more live coverage coming up. going to obama is nominate james comey at the fbi director nominee. mr. comey is a republican. he formerly served as the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, and he was in the george w. bush administration. that announcement coming up this afternoon in the white house rose garden. it will happen in about an hour from now, 2:0 five eastern. we will have it live here on c- span. quickly talk about transparency to the american public, there is -- you are going to give up something.

you're going to be given signals to our adversaries as to what our capabilities are, and the more specific you get about the program, the more specific you get about the oversight, the more specific you get about the capabilities and -- youities, you people will have the people saying i have to find other ways to committee kate and i have to keep that in mind. so there is a price to be made in the transparency. now where that line is drawn and terms of identifying where our capabilities are is out of our hands. you tell us to do one way, we will do it that way. but there is a price to be paid for that transparency. >> this week and on season, outgoing fbi director mueller makes its last scheduled appearance before the senate judiciary committee saturday on 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. 3's american history

tv, interviews with key house judiciary committee staff investigating whether there were grounds to impeach president richard nixon sunday at three clock. >> in a lot of ways, this is a challenging time for people who are conservatives. we have got not only a democrat president but a quite liberal democrat president, who is not only been elected but reelected after putting into place some ideas and programs and projects that i think are very wrongheaded. if the public had a chance to think about that, and they did him. so it is a challenging time. it is also an exciting time if what you are trying to do is -- i say i try to do, and many others or try to do -- is modernize conservatism. bringing into line with the challenges that the country faces faces now. to help conservatives and therefore also the country think about how to confront the challenges of the 21st century. neither side, neither party is doing a very good job of that.

there is a lot of opportunity for thinking about what america and the 21st century needs to change about the way it governs itself. to get back to economic growth, to get back to prosperity, to get back to a kind of cultural revival that we need. it is challenging, but exciting. >> more with national affairs levin sunday at 8:00 on c-span's q and a. again, the president will resent his fbi director nominee in about an hour at the white house feared we will have it live. right now, remarks from associated press president and ceo terry pruitt on the justice department seizure on the news agency's phone records. he also talks about protecting news gatherers against government interference. this is about an hour. >> good afternoon,, and welcome to the national press club. my name is angela, and im a reporter for bloomberg news and

a president of the national press club. we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists committed to our profession's future while fostering a free press worldwide and at home. for more information about the national press club please visit our website at www dot press.org. on behalf of our members worldwide welcome our speaker today. our head table includes guest speaker and working journalists who are club members. you hear applause in audience i note that members of the general public are also attending so it is not lack of journalist objectivity. i'd like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences. after our guest speech concludes we'll have a question and answer period.

i'll ask as many questions as time permits. now it's time to introduce our head table guests. i'd ask to you stand briefly. from your right, reporters without borders and vice chairwoman of the freedom of the press committee. breaking news reporter for u.s.a. today. senior producer for al jazz english. chairman of the press club's freedom of the press committee. bureau chief for routers marylandn bureau.-- chief for reuters washington bureau. vice president and bureau chief for cbs news. a reporter with u.s.a. today, vice chairwoman of the freedom of the press club here.

executive vice president for haguer sharp and the speakers committee member who organized today's event. thank you. founding director of the shine sign the center and a guest scholar. host of on the record with gretta van sustran on fox. senior business editor at n.p.r. a member of the press board governors. managing editor with the sunlight foundation. [applause] in may 2012 the associated press reported on a c.i.a. operation to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the u.s. the justice department notified the secretly obtained phone records of some individual a.p. reporters as well as bureaus in

new york, washington and connecticut and the house of representatives press gallery. some 20 phone lines assigned to the journalists were tracked. the justice department did not explain why the phone records were seized. our speaker today, the president and c.e.o. of the a.p. responded immediately. he wrote to attorney jenner rick -- to attorney general eric holder calling this seizure a massive intrusion into the news gathering activities of the a.p. he said the action interfered with the a.p.'s rights to gather and report the news. he speaks as not only the head of one of the largest news gathering organizations but also as a first amendment lawyer. his career as a freedom of speech lawyer led to the position for the third largest newspaper company in the u.s.

six years later he took a leadership position at "the sacramento bee," became publisher and embarked on a series of corporate leadership positions. he served as c.e.o. from 1996 until he became the head of the a.p. last year. the a.p. is a not for profit cooperative owned by member newspapers with 3700 employees in more than 300 locations worldwide. more than half the world's populations sees news reported by the a.n. on any given day. he probable thought his biggest challenge would be the transformation in digital markets. he says the seizure is having a chilling effect on news gathering itself and if journalists are restricted people will know only what the government wants them to know. please join me in giving a warm

welcome to the c.e.o. of the associated press, mr. gary pruitt. [applause] >> thank you angela. and i want to thank the national press club for inviting me today and i want to thank them for the really cool cupcakes they put together with all the logo through the years of a.p. i think it's really artfully done and deliciously done. for those of you who don't want your cupcake, bring it to the a.p. table. i'm sorry for those of you watching online on c-span that you're not going to get those cupcakes. but before coming here today to speak, i thought it would be a good idea to get a sense of how the seizure of a.p.'s phone

records by the u.s. department of justice was affecting our reporting. and what i learned from our journalists should alarm everyone in this room and i think should alarm everyone in the country. the actions of the d.o.j. against a.p. are already having an impact beyond the specifics of this particular case. some of our long time trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking to us even on stories that aren't about national security. and in some cases government employees that we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone and some are reluctant to meet in person. in one instance our journalists couldn't get a law enforcement official to confirm a detail that had been reported by other media. i can tell you that this

chilling effect does not just go on at ap. it is happening in other news organizations as well. other journalists have told me that sources have been intimidated from speaking with them. ihe government may love this. suspect they do. beware the government that loves secrecy too much. i want to provide you information on the ap seizure of what ap is doing about it, and the implications for us all. let me recap how the started. angela touched on briefly. it started may 7 of last year. ap published a story about a foiled plot of an al qaeda affiliate. al qaeda were planning on using a new and sophisticated bomb to destroy an airliner headed

towards the united states. the cia had reported this attack. it was intended to coincide with the first anniversary of the killing of bin laden. that is a real scoop. it was broken by two ap national security reporters. it was not, however, a story that was a surprise to the united states government. ap had held the story for five days, at the government's request. the operation was still ongoing. only after the administration had reassured us that the national security risks had been allayed, did we release the story. ap acted responsibly.

the story was important on its own merits. americans have the right to know that such an attack was being plotted and that their government was able to prevent it. the story also brought into question a statement made by jay carney. two weeks earlier, he had said that we had no credible information that terrorist organizations are plotting attacks in the united states to coincide with the anniversary of osama bin laden's death. yet, here was the associated press finding out that the cia has been in the middle of foiling such a plot. the person who was going to carry the bomb was a double agent. he was working with the cia, the saudi's, and the british. some said that the associated press got the context wrong. this was a cia scheme, they said.

that interpretation strains credulity. this was an al qaeda operation. they constructed the bomb. its agents were working to activate that plan. the story received wide attention. soon after, the doj announced that they were launching a leak investigation. on. fast forward one year, last friday, we received a letter from the department of justice informing us that they had received the records for 21 ap phone lines. we now know that that was over a this was on anme. president intrusion into ap's newsgathering records.

we had never seen anything like this before. it was an intrusion by government that was so wrong, so overreaching, so secretive. it violated a protection zone of the first amendment provides journalists. we cannot dispute that the u.s. government has the right to pursue those who leak classified information. this administration has prosecuted leakers like no other in the country's history. the justice department has ruled on how targeting the press works. this dates back to the watergate era. they require that a demand of the press be as narrowly drawn as possible. they require that news organizations be notified of the subpoena in advance. this gives them the time to appeal in courts. unless doing so would impair the integrity of the investigation.

in the collection of the ap's phone records, the department of justice violated their own rules. the subpoena was not focused as narrow as possible. it was broad. the telephone records seized included the work and personal numbers of ap journalists and general ap numbers in new york, washington, and hartford. it also included the number of the u.s. house of representatives press gallery that included ingoing and outgoing calls. these are not just the phone lines of our investigative team. these are general office in where mored numbers. than 100 reporters and editors work. thousands of phone calls were among the ap phone

records taken was the switchboard number of a number of locations. let me stop there. while they got the switchboard numbers, they also got a broad sweep beyond active numbers. they got a switchboard number for a d.c. bureau that was theyped six years ago. subpoenaed a line that belongs to a worker in harvard -- and hartford 17 years ago. we do not regard these as focused.the sweep of the records, you are thinking, now seems minor compared to the fact that we have now learned what the nsa has collected. they had the entire country's phone records. the doj was collecting ap records, not just a load them into databases, this was a

specific criminal investigation. they have a dedicated team of prosecutors to look over. in doing so, they are accessing a broad swath of other news gathering information that is protected by first amendment against precisely this type of intrusion. the second way the department of justice violated the rules was in executing the subpoena without notice to the associated press. we could not seek review. the doj claims that they had an exception. if they had notified us, it would impair their investigation. ap could notat be? tamper with these records. we do not have them in our possession.these records are maintained by the phone carriers. the doj claimed that by ,otifying jp -- ap thoma

if they had notified us, they say it would have tipped off the leaker. the leaker knew about this investigation. it was publicly announced. it was publicly announced nine days after our story ran. that kind of reasoning, about tipping off leakers, would apply in every single case. the press would never be given notice. they could never go to the courts. the exception would swallow the rule. had the department of justice came to us in advance, we could've helped them narrow the if the dojhe subpoena. and ap did not agree, then a court could decide which was right. there was never that opportunity. the department of justice acted as judge, jury, and executioner. they may have been acting in good faith. i will give them the benefit of the doubt.

i suspect they got so single mindedly focused on the leak that they overlooked best.the doj has a record, and they have probably used those as part of their investigation. we cannot unring that bell. i'm pleased to tell you that the justice department has given us assurances that phone records will continue to be walled off and protected. we appreciate those assurances. it does not excuse what they did. we want to make sure that it does not happen again. president obama has asked the attorney general for recommendations on the justice department's regulations in these areas.

to that end, justice has been consulting with a number of news organizations and first amendment lawyers. meanwhile, in congress, there has been renewed support for a law that would protect reporters from having to reveal their sources. this would extend, into the federal realm, laws that already the white30 states. house has expressed support for such legislation. ap believes- that the following measures are imperative. first, we want the justice department to recognize the right of the press to advance notice and a chance to be heard before their records are taken by the government. this would have given us the chance to point out the many failings of the subpoenas. we believe that notice was required. the department of justice sees it differently.

the regulations should be strengthened to remove any doubt. we want judicial oversight. we need to ensure the proper checks and balances. in the phone records case, the onstice department determined its own that advance notice could be skipped without notice of any government. denying constitutional rights is not how the government should work. third, we want the department of justice to update their guidelines.to bring them into the 21st century. the guidelines were created before the internet. they did not foresee e-mails or text messages.the guidelines need to ensure that the protections afforded journalists encompass all forms of communication. fourth, we want a law that will protect journalists from secretive government action.

fifth, we want to institute a formal protections from the justice department, that they will not prosecute any reporters the doing their jobs. department should not criminalize or threaten to criminalize journalists for doing her job, such as calling them co-conspirators under the espionage act. this needs to be part of an established directive, not limited to this administration. no one should be prosecuted for committing journalism. ap has no political dog in this fight. it is not about democrats or republicans. our issue is freedom of the press and the rights protected in the first amendment. if a reporter's phone records are open territory for the government to secretly monitor,

news sources will be intimidated from talking to reporters.the ap is not going to be intimidated, but our sources will be. and nonofficial news sources are critical to a free press, and critical for holding a government accountable. otherwise, you just hear from official sources. then, the public only knows what the government wants them to know. that is not what the framers had in mind when they wrote the this month'sent. headlines, if they show us anything, shows us how much information the government has. it is why a robust free press is more important than ever. this issue resonates beyond our borders. the freedom of press is a model and an aspiration for nations and peoples around the world.

the department of justice's actions could not have been more tailor-made for an authoritative regime. the united states does it too, they can say. it should not be this way. freedom of press is what differentiates democracy from dictatorship and a free society from tyranny. the first amendment is our collective covenant.that freedom will flourish on these shores. we should be concerned about a failure of the justice to recognize how its actions threaten that fundamental freedom. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you. not surprisingly, we have a lot of questions.>> i suspected. >> you said that the department of justice violated its own rules. you talked about the effor to update those rules. do you believe that revision will make a difference in how they carry out their practices? >> i hope they do. i can tell you that the greatest protection afforded reporters has been through these guidelines. that is why it is the focus of us going forward. we want them updated and i think it was appropriate that the president asked the attorney general to look at these and to come forward with improvements and recommendations. all of us, in the media, and

everyone in the country should look at what happens in july and what the improvements to those regulations are. we are extremely hopeful that they can provide clear guidance to the justice department's and increased protection to the media. especially regarding the strained interpretation that the justice department is applying to those rules. >> what can guarantee that this will not happen again? >> well, we believe that the rules were violated. the department believes that they were not. they went ahead, in secret, and got their way. they scooped up all the records and told us, up to 90 days later. if they can do that, their perspective will always prevail.

we need a check on that. the check is in another branch of government.the courts. we need to notice. that is what the rules contemplate. only in exceptional cases can they go in secret.but under their reasoning, every case is an exceptional case. you don't want to tip off the leader in a public investigation? give me a break. we want the rules clarified. we want to make sure that department of justice cannot cite that exception. we think that will provide a much greater protection. we can help them clean up the subpoena. we could have helped in that regard. if they did not agree, a court could decide.

none of that happened. that is because of their interpretation of the rules. they can be improved in a way that will improve the situation going forward for all of us. >> do you consider this administration's response to the news media any different than other administrations? >> no. [laughter] >> why is it getting more attention now? why are we seeing these highly-publicized instances? >> this administration has been more aggressive going after leakers than other so it has mores. active leak investigations going on. this administration came in on a platform of transparency and more access.

unfortunately, like past administrations, they have not lived up to that promise. >> did the federal government threaten a form of retaliation against ap for advancing the story?either directly or indirectly. >> no. nothing like that. nothing like that happened. ap alone got the scoop. it was a very significant new story and a sensitive news story. ap went to the administration and talk to them about it. the ministration asked us to hold the story because of national security concerns and we did. the associated press does not want to endanger anyone's life

or national security. we strive to act responsibly and we did in this case. only after we had heard from the government that the national security risk had passed, then we ran the story. now, the white house asked us to hold the story one more day. not for national security reasons. they were going to announce the plot the next day. we did not feel that we should hold the story for that reason. so we released the story. we did not feel that national security was compromised. we did not get pushed back from them for running the story. we do not hear anything until a year later. we found out that our records

and gotten scooped up as part of an investigation. we did not hear pushback at that time. >> if they did not stay in detail why they did not want the story published, why didn't the in detail that?-- why they did not want the tablet -- the story published, what did the ap do at that time you ge? >> i can tell you that we did hear that it could jeopardize safety and national security. that seems right. we did not want to jeopardize that.we didn't not want to create those problems. so we waited. we waited until we got reassurances that the operation was no longer under way. there was no security risk in running the story. i do not know the details of those conversations.

those were the judgments that were made. it was not criticized by the government or the administration. they said that they would have liked for us to hold one more day. because they were going to announce it. we did not do that.but that had nothing to do with national security. >> when the ap ran the story, did they have an inkling that the alleged bomber was a double agent? >> now we are getting into sensitive details. ap had a sense that there was a double agent involved. we did not report that. in part, because it could be a safety issue. after we released the story, the

white house was very aggressive in talking about this story. john brennan talked to the he was head of counterterrorism at the time before heading up the cia. he disclosed that the cia had internal control of the situation. that implication allowed others to draw the conclusion that there was a spy/double agent. then it was widely reported by others. including follow-ups by the ap that there was a double ap did not disclose the fact that a double agent was involved. the fact that internal control only came from the administration and was reported more widely by other news organizations.

>> if this was about when the story was published, why do you think that now attorney general holder has said that he considers this to be one of the most dangerous leaks ever? >> that is a good question. [laughter] i do not know the answer. i have that same question. maybe he will come here and answer that question for you. >> the invitation is pending. [laughter] has ap changed its newsgathering methods as a result of the department of justice? >> the short answer is no. we are looking at -- at our contracts very carefully with our phone service providers. where making sure that we can try to get as much notice as possible, that we want to have as much

knowledge about how we can protect our records as we can. we are looking at encryption and security that we can build into our internet and online we are doing a generally because of hackers. we are looking, very vigilantly, at secrecy protection and andnymity of sources. protection of our records. we're doing that more than ever before. that is an arms race that will continue forever. we are having to deal with sources differently. people are anxious about having their phone number associated with the ap. that could be going on in your news organization. you don't know it. you'll find out 90 days later. you will get a surprise in the mail.like we did. that goes on.there are fewer

nonofficial sources. there is reluctance on sources. it may require more personal meetings, but we also know that department of justice could follow reporters. and what they are doing on foot. journalism goes on. we will do our best to make sure that we protect our sources and still get the stories by every means possible. >> you talked about the integrity of your service providers. have you asked your service providers to pushback on the government when they violate your privacy rights? >> the phone service providers, when they get subpoenaed from the government, they comply and are required to.

the government also notifies them not to notify us. they are not put in a comfortable position. the answer to this is not in trying to -- and they have to abide by the government -- the answer to this is not in trying to get a better contract with verizon. that is not the answer. the answer is getting better guidelines from the department of justice. >> what you think about the public's reaction to all this? does the general public, outside of the media community, understand what all this means? >> i think the reaction has been very gratifying. i did not expect this story to be that big a story. i knew it would be a new story. do not think it would be this

big a story. it could have been for several reasons, oh, it was the third scandal, with benghazi and the irs. it got more attention than i thought it would.i thought it would be regarded a pure press issue. i was pleased that the american public saw it as a broader of -- is thee government harassing the media? can this affect us? does this affect us? does this violate the first amendment? that is a good debate to have. that is a good issue.i was very pleased that it did. i think the justice department was surprised by the reaction. that may be the biggest protection that we have. they do not want that backlash again.i sure hope not. and i hope it prevents them from doing this again. we were pleased with the and i do think this has gotten traction worldwide.

always to the benefit of the united states, as i said in my speech. some countries were surprised that this could go on in the united states. the ap is known around the world.this was not a local newspaper. god love local newspapers, but the associated press is worldwide.when countries around the world and press agencies around the world heard that the united states government was doing this to the ap and they were shocked and surprised. we received it an enormous outpouring of support. there were surprised that the united states government could do this. i was surprised, a little surprised, that it became such a major story. i am pleased that it did. i hope it will act as a preventative for future actions from the justice department. >> the next question is about how to better engage and mobilize the public?

you say that they are engaged. but everything is fleeting. the questioner notes calls and arrests from the "guardian" and "washington post" reporters. how do you keep the story at the forefront of public attention? >> i know some of the polls show that this is not resonate with the public like the irs scandal the irs will resonate with everyone in a different way. but i think it is important for the media to point out how this affects the people. not just the media. it is about holding the government accountable. the government has never been technology gives the government power that it could never dream of before.

but that is all the more reason why the press needs to be stronger. we are the surrogate of the people. this is the only way the public will be informed.we have to couch our arguments and are positions in terms of the people. why it is important for them. yes, these stories do, go, but i will tell you something -- when people sense of the government is overreaching, they rise up.they speak up. that happened here. i was wrong. i thought this would be insignificant. boy, i was wrong. it was great.this did resonate. this will have an impact.and if it happened again, it will resonate further. let's hope the silver lining from this is that we get better updated and improved guidelines from the justice department.that

we will get a shield law. that we will get a recognition that reporters activities are not criminal act. we will, therefore, have a freer society. >> should reporters be objective and impartial when it comes to as newsg press freedom. organizations, should we be doing more to pushback against this type of surveillance? >> ap is a nonprofit news organization. it does not have editorial positions and it does not express opinions. we cover the news, as objectively as possible, day in and day out. we should do that on every topic.including press freedom issues. if we don't, we lose credibility. our stake is clear. on the opinion page or an editorial page, that is different. that is a place for opinions. it is a marketplace of ideas

that argue every which way. the justice department deserves their say. they disagree with me. great. that is ok. we think they are wrong. we will state it clearly. i think the media needs to speak up for itself. we need to push for a law. we need to push for new regulations.needs to be active in that regard, but should absolutely covered straight and eight -- and objectively and not lose that because that will erode our credibility.and it will look self-interested. >> a follow-up from before. if the justice department violated so many of its rules, why did they bother to tell ap in the first place? >> they had to. the law required them to notify us after they did this.

they can sweep it up secretly. they can wait up to 90 days to tell us about it. we do not know when they captured these phone records. we are not sure. we know that it should have been within 90 days of when we got the notice. we got on may 10. they had to do it. they knew it would be public eventually. it was public after they obtained the records.and we had lost all opportunities to try to narrow the focus of the subpoena or get a court involved to sort out what the proper scope of the subpoena would be. we would love that opportunity. >> walter pincus

in his "washington post" column argued that the story was a national security risk and should not have been published. what do you think of this take? >> i respect walter pincus as a reporter. i think he is wrong. we were very concerned about we handled itrity. responsibly. we were not criticized by the administration in releasing and running the story. do i think they were happy that we got the story? no. did they criticize us for jeopardizing national security? no. i think if that comes up now, over a year later, that is more

we did not, to me. hear that at the time. i think ap did actress was a boy. the white house did announce the next day. i do not know when the white house was going to announce this, absent the ap story. >> ast do not know. questioner asks, if revealing information of the crime, why shouldn't it be a crime for reporters to publish classified information? >> this person has an elusive grasp of the first amendment. so, government employees -- it is a crime for government employees to reveal leak information.classified information. this is a complicated issue.we all know that information in the

government is over classified. there is way too much information is classified. a lot of it is classified that should not be. some of it is embarrassing.or they don't want it out. there's a lot of overclassification that goes on. the government acknowledges this. post-9/11, one of the criticisms was that our intelligence information was siloed. we needed to connect the dots. and we needed to have a more integrated intelligence network to prevent terrorism. so we did. maybe that helped to prevent terrorism. it could well be. millions of documents are classified document -- millionion.almost a contractors have access to confidential information. and low-level people have access to confidential information.

privates in the military can leak information to wiki leaks. government contractors that drop -- that dropped out of high school can release massive amounts of information. this will happen when you have 3 million people with classified clearance. you are going to have leakers.it is inevitable. it is going to keep happening. like i said, we do not challenge the government's right to pursue these investigations. they have that right. it is a complicated issue. we are not taking a position on that. the administration, the justice department, they make their own determinations as to what leak investigations they will pursue. our complaint was how they conducted the investigation. that is what we want to keep the focus on. it is a free press issue for us. when a journalist does his orher

job -- our job is to ask questions, and when we find out information and we are doing our job, that should not be a crime. we agree with president obama when he says that. we agree with the attorney general when he says that. we think it should be clear in these guidelines and rules. this should be something that we do not have to ask for. we think this is embedded in the thatt amendment. journalists doing their job, finding out information, that should not be a crime. , that is what we rely on to hold government accountable, what we rely on to have a free rest so that we can be an informed public so that we can have a robust debate inside of a marketplace of ideas. the united states is not afraid of that. we should not become afraid of that. we should welcome those debates. the president says that he welcomes this debate.

ok. we do, too. let's have that debate.as they talke -- and as a society, about it. you cannot have that debate if you do not have information. we need journalists to do that. they have to do their job without fear of being prosecuted for doing their jobs. not only will sources be intimidated, but journalists will be intimidated. i do not want to live in that country. >> do you know if any of the sources have been punished by the government? >> whether any of the sources for the story have been punished. >> i do not know who the source was for our story. i have no idea of their status. the investigation is ongoing. i know that there has not been any punishment or formal charges brought.

i'm sure we will know when and if they are. >> another follow-up, did your reporting do any harm to the double agent and do you care? >> of course we care. we do not want our reporting to jeopardize people's security or national security. we were careful, in this case, to make sure that we did not. we do not publish the story until two parts of the government told us that national security issues had passed. only then did we release a story. we do not reveal that a double agent was involved. we did not hear from the administration or the thatlligence community. there was any risk to the double

agent because of our story. if there had been risk, we would have heard about it. they would have told us. that was probably the reason that they want us to hold it, and we did. >> you mentioned a similar situation with mr. rosen at fox news. how do you compare that to what happened with ap? >> i think they are similar. in some ways, ours is worse. in some ways, that situation is worse. i think our situation is broader. ours was a very broad and overreaching, sweeping, and gathering of news information in secret. i think what the justice department did in the rosen case was more offensive, they put in a subpoena for a search warrant

saying that he was a co- conspirator under the espionage act. in other words, he may have been violating the espionage act and be a criminal. he was acting as a journalist. as i said, we do not think people should be prosecuted for committing journalism. given the degree of what they went after and how they tracked him, meetings he had, etc., i think there was more searching and a deeper investigation into his particular activities. in that sense, it was more troubling. both cases raise substantial you are pointing to the importance of a free press and the role of the press, yet the economics of the news business are