"breakthrough." later, and our spotlight on magazine series, fred kaplan of the m.i.t. technology review discusses the capability of u.s. drones. late tuesday the white house announced it would delay for one year part of its affordable health care act, the so-called employer mandate that requires businesses with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine. good morning on this wednesday, july 3, 2013. we will begin with your thoughts on the president's decision to postpone that mandate until 2015. the phones --

send us a tweet @cspanwj. begin with how this story is playing out in some of the papers across the country. here is a "los angeles times" -- ond timesichmand time dispatch" -- here is a "the miami herald," the paper of republican senator marco rubio.

are your thoughts? we will get to your phone calls in a minute. let me read some comments we are getting on facebook this morning. you can post your comments. valerie says --

"washington post close " this morning, there headline -- post" thiston morning, there headline -- cliff in california, repub lica lican caller. author ofthink the

obamacare, a retiring senator of montana, he called it a train wreck. the uber-liberal, jay rockafeller, he agrees it is not going to work. democratic senators, democratic people are very nervous heading into the next election. clearly, if this mandate is not , tens of millions of americans will lose the coverage they have, violating the central promise obama made seven four times -- made several times. we are going to lose our coverage and he knows it. he has to put this off until after the election. -- that waselayed

the last straw. we have unions speaking out that they are going to be losing their plans. it is a disaster. it,wanted it, you got congratulations. richmond,e from virginia, a democratic caller. i think the health plan can work if the republicans try to make it a better plan than what it is. they are so against the president, everything he does. they are just trying to wipe it out. he cannot do anything to please the republicans and he is always working for the people. tweet that says

-- what you think about that strategy? for thethat is good president to put off for a little while. if they can get the republicans to help us on this health care -- what they are doing is just trying to destroy everything the president does. if they would help us to make this a better plan for the people then i think it will work. they are so against the president. everything he does is 0. the assistant secretary of tax policy had this to say --

we will go to an independent caller. go ahead. caller: i want to know what was the republicans' plan for health for -- as opposed to obamacare, which they are so opposed to? you say they do not have an alternative? caller: i want to know what it is. they are so against obamacare. it is not a smart system, not one -- it is not a cost- effective system. the system that obama is trying to put into place that treat

people before they get sick and lower health care is the one he wants to implement. i want to know what the obstructionist party -- i mean, the republican party, what their plan was to lower the cost of health care. if you know that. host: i do not know of a specific plan. if we can ask members of the congress -- it is something we have asked when they are on this show. a we are talking about the president's decision, announced by the treasury department yesterday, to postpone what is called the employer mandate of the federal health-care law, for one year until 2015. getting your take on that. we want to hear what your postpone ite on this t

and how this is going to work for you and you are working your way through the law preparing for this new mandate that will take effect in 2015. 585-ness owners, call 202- 3883. here is an analysis piece -- for and as a republican caller from

new york. good morning. caller: my initial thought is that by delaying this one year, then that is one year added to the time that people will become and ile for medicare wondered how many individuals that affects.

the other thing is, i have a question on how this will impact the requirement that as a person an individual has health care insurance fighting this fall. whether the delay is going to add to the number of people that will be put on either the state exchanges or medicaid because the hours are cut, their income is less, and that may make them eligible for this expanded medicaid eligibility and i wondered if this was a way to eventually make the obama plan for employers cheaper. host: there are not -- there are a lot questions. i do not know this answers it --

does that answer some of your questions? it does in part. i am not clear on the details when -- was trying to recruit money to pay for part of this insurance plan from

businesses, he was trying to get --m to pay into this fund -- when of health care we have somebody different insurance companies and so many different plans, and there was recently information that depending on where you live the cost of a certain procedure can vary by as much as tens of iousands of dollars, then wonder how long it is going to be before as a developed country we realize that a single page plan is where we have to go. as long as everybody can set their own thing, the cost of health care is going to continue to rise. the focus of health care in this country is not in prevention, it

is and dixon the problem once it occurs. that is always the most expensive route to go. host: republicans responded yesterday to the president's decision. here is what john boehner had to say about the decision to delay this until 2015. he says -- this tweet -- from "the washington post close " this morning -- post"m "the washington this morning --

we will keep taking your phone calls on this. the president chooses to delay the employer mandate for one year. the phone lines -- in other news, the immigration reform prospekt, the "wall street journal close " editorial -- -- "wall street journal" editorial --

from the front page of "the washington times" -- that on immigration. this first reported by the houston chronicle yesterday but it was on "behalf and to post" website this morning --

huffington post" website this morning -- back to our topic, james in ohio, a business owner. talk about your business a little bit. what you do? caller: we are in the construction building business. we have 12 employees. i was hoping that it would go through. universal health care in here. people do not have hard jobs like construction -- they need it. now this country needs

universal health care. i hear about people in canada. i have an employer who lived in canada and we talking about the discussion about people having to wait so long for operations and stuff like that. after we went through it we found out this the same. here for special needs operations. it maybe not as long in canada as it is here. i always hear that the people on c-span, i hear people talking about people die before they get an operation. that is not so. i am looking at germany and switzerland and all these other countries that have been paying attention to it. say the united

states cannot afford it because we have so many more people. i think if you get a plan and to incorporate the plan to the amount of people that is here, we have a situation set up where we are paying half with the people. it andople are not doing i do not know why you would prefer somebody be sick and not be able to come to work or somebody could have an injury and they cannot afford it and you cannot either because you have a responsibility to the employer to pay that. workers' comp will sue you. ohio, is unable to pay it. you have to pay them. i just do not understand why there is this big fight. the people that are arguing and fighting about it, they have it.

host: we will go to an independent caller in nashville, tennessee. caller: in our country everyone is looking for someone to take care of them. it makes sense if they go ahead and let be enacted now. that would show the fact that it is political. those may be in general -- those may be in jeopardy. fallacies inmany the workability of it. isis almost as if someone not prepared. someone is always saying let us put off and work some more. it is of such a lack of preparation and lack of four with all, it is a huge experiment for our country.

there is no single payer plan that probably will work. individual this possibility is where we need to come from. to getture of america, past the place of obesity being declared a disease, you have to be passed that being acceptable before any kind of government- enacted insurance-type equipment can work. individual responsibility needs to come forward. it will just show the fallacy of the president. host: open " the washington post" preparation reports this -- post" reportsgton

this --

we are getting your take on the president's decision yet today to delete the employer mandate until 2015. we will keep taking your phone calls. update on edward snowden --

hear from the wall street journal -- the seven countries that have refused, including -- this from "the washington post" this morning --

it says in "washington times" this morning -- sticking with overseas, the situation in egypt has sparked many headlines in the paper this

morning. hear from "the pi times" -- that in open " the financial times" this morning -- " --the new york times of "the whshington post" blames obama for this --

we will go to irenic in pennsylvania, a republican caller. we are talking about the white house's decision to it the late the employer mandate. >> i think it should probably go ahead at some time. in the long run, what are you going to do for providers? where are you going to find people to treat these citizens? most doctors are just going to retire or they are just going to go to free service and not apply for the government, they will take no insurance at all. it has already started in washington. they are boutique doctors, you can pay them. randi, a democratic caller. caller: even when you are

reading from a tweet or facebook or e-mail, if those do not this isthe facts -- affecting only 4%. it has nothing to do with the mandate that requires people go forward. it is a move forward except for this one piece. it is being delayed for a year. all i ask the do -- host: what tweet -- caller: i know this will come up again. you read one and it said something about, this meant it was illegal. -- this mandate was illegal. it wasn't speaking specifically to this mandate and part. i think going forward -- we know

what the facts are about this issue. don't bother to bring up a tweet or even that does not report to that fact. perpetuate the stigma that is out there. host: that is the duty of the show, you get to call in and challenge what other people have to say about this topic and others. william from arkansas, caller: co-head good morning. -- from arkansas, co-head. caller: good morning. i hope i can get my point across. i think a lot of people have not got -- have not got that obamacare has shot themselves in children toallowing stay on their parents' insurance

until they are 26 years old. it looks great from a distance. as you come up on it you realize that that is eight years of these healthy individuals that you are completely wiping off of the table. when they areime targeting young people to get them to sign up. why are they going to sign up? they are on their parents' insurance until 26. i do not want to tie the immigration to the health-care law but i think a nothing a lot of people have not thought about is president obama has said in no way will illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants, no way are they going to get on obamacare.

if they do not get on obamacare and they are going to allow them into the country, they are going to have health care. where are they going to get? they are going to continue going to the hospitals, something they are trying to solve. they are going to get free health care. believe too many people have thought about that. i do not consider myself a democrat or republican. to address something somebody said earlier. what do the republicans have to offer? they try to offer some amendments during the health- care debate. leadership would not allow them to offer the amendments they wanted to offer. stop politicizing of the major issues of our country

we are not going to get anything soft. i appreciate you taking my call. host: we will go to peter next in maryland. a republican caller. quick: a couple of points. a have to believe that this delay will help the democrats in the next election cycle because the cost is going to be enormous and they do not want that to effect folks that still want to vote democrat. it is difficult as obama promises a whole bunch to get votes and then does the math later and figures out it is going to cost a lot of money. this has to be connected to securing the border. people come here to get free medical care. if they secure the border we can

talk more about obamacare. securing the to order will employ thousands of people. thank you for c-span. "the arizonaage of republic" -- dedicated to the hotshot crew that died out in arizona. --s is from "usa today"

that is reported by usa today and courtesy of press reader this morning. that your phone calls, a business owner, mike in california. what you think about delaying the employer mandate? caller: i think it was a good idea. there are two or specific situations i wanted to mention. alloes not affect us at because we provide good health insurance for our employees.

i have a client that owns a car wash. guyfact is he is the only in town that owns more than one car wash. inre are other car washes town. he is the only one subject to obamacare. basically it would put him out of business. i do not think there is anything unique to his situation in a town where you have one business a little larger than the other. the other one has a an unfair advantage. i know the heat on these 50 employees, if you are dealing with minimum-wage employees. it puts a real strain on the organization. host: this tweet --

nancy in kansas city, a democratic caller. hello. >> i am a democrat and an older democrat. i definitely do not want to take the health-care plan. the situation is i like my insurance, i am with aarp. it i have a plan that suits me. i do not plan to take any more health insurance and i do not plan to buy into the government plan. if they want to find me, that is fine. i am keeping the health insurance i have and i am going to pay my doctor out of my own pocket. plannk the health care needs to be completely overhauled. it needs to be fitted for people to have the insurance they need, not the insurance people think they need. hoping this plan will keep moving further back until they repeal the plan and let people

get the insurance they need and want to, not the insurance the government thinks they need and want. host: we have 10 minutes left to keep taking your phone calls and the president's decision to delay the employer mandate until 2015. this is the requirement that businesses with 50 workers or more must provide health insurance or face a fine per employee. back to immigration, hear from "the international herald tribune" -- a on gun control, here is the

front page of "the chicago tribune" -- front page of "the boston globe" this morning -- in political news, here is "the

washington times" this morning -- from "the new york times" about texas gov. perry's future --

in the mattress section of "the washington post" this morning -- this pieces written by ben pershing. a republican caller from california, thank you for hanging on the line. what are your thoughts on

delaying for one year the employer mandate of the affordable health care law? caller: [indiscernible] i am a business owner. it is a good program. here in california, $1.2 billion in excess of friedrich i am a businessman. the employee -- if the employee gets tax credit for obamacare i can get fined for it. it is not fair. thank you america for listening. we do need health care. [indiscernible] 30 from new york,

independent caller, you are next. caller: my family is from germany and we have been in this country for over 60 years. they have true universal health care. people did not understand why it is tied to employment in this country. place inlped put into germany by a monarchist and conservative. he wanted to make sure the newly formed termination was not turned apart by internal strife. bynot torn apart international sa -- by internal strife. system inis under the germany. you can go to any doctor, any discipline you want. that includes the dentist, orthodontist, i doctors. in this country people to not have that coverage. people need to understand that. pay a 10% health tax.

in this country have been lied to since who knows when. my father had arguments with people when it first came over. they had discussions about the differences and he was flabbergasted by the inferences and the lies they have been told about universal health care. partiallmost 20% for health care in this country. it is not even universal. people need to understand that. host: thank you for the phone call. some quick economic headlines. this is the front page of "the financial times" --

front page of "the wall street journal" -- a lot of sales on pace with the best year since 2007. "the detroit free press" reporting on auto sales. you probably heard the story from "washington times" this morning --

from "the financial times" this morning -- that about the former fbi director. "the washington

post" this morning -- also this morning, reporting about this the book on the 2012 election and the headline is --

his new book is due out august 6. it details the race three election day and its aftermath. hampton, virginia, democratic caller. go ahead. good morning. i was listening to the calls, this is like the basic ignorance of the people calling in reference to the benefit of the plan and who it covers. kudos to the caller from new york in reference to explaining the truly universal health care and know that the health care bill to not go far enough. they had to drop that. from missouri is under the impression that somebody could come in and change their health care.

for mebeen drilled and that if you hop -- if you have health care you'll do nothing. as far as the americans who are not covered -- i am amazed at the eight parents. no one is coming in to take care of your health care. they just want to cover those that are not covered. to team inll move on philadelphia, an independent caller. caller: this is on immigration. i think people who are over here should stay. the borders and all the money would be spending on border patrol and everything buy, the government should that land and use it for a test bombing.

host: we will leave it there. this is their front page -- we are going to switch topics, coming up we will talk to dewayne matthews about the group's latest report on college degrees. discussesmes o'keefe his new book on government an ambush journalism. all of that after the break. ♪ >> making a transition from journalism to books is exhilarating and completely

overwhelming and frightening, but wonderful. >> why did you make that choice? >> i made that choice because i have long wanted to be working on a book because of the freedom it allows you, to lead to buy it -- really dive into topic and losers on tangents and have enough time to really explore it fully. >> sunday, living in space, the afterlife, and the human digestive system. mary roach will take your calls, e-mails, based the comet, and tweets on the "book tv" on c- span2. "washington journal" continues. matthews ise with the lumina foundation, joining us from indianapolis this morning. step back and letting

people know, what is the lumina foundation? guest: thank you for having us on the program. we work nationally, the largest nation in the united states focused specifically on college access and success. we have been focused on what we call a big goal, it is the goal 2025. 60% of americans should hold high-quality plus secondary credentials by 2025. host: how close are we to that goal? you put out your -- this is the fourth year of your report. how close are we? aret: the bottom line is we not close enough. the higher education attainment rate, which is what we track, is 38.7% in the year 2011, which is the most recent year the debate is available.

it has gone up half a percent from the year before. it appears the rate of increase is picking up a bit. it has not gone up that much in the last three or four years. the rate is definitely going up. it is not going up quickly enough and there is still a big gap of where we are today and where we think we need to be, which is much closer to 60%. host: why the gap? guest: a lot of it has to do with the way that we think about higher education in this country and the access to college and all kinds of secondary opportunities for individuals. we tend to think only a certain number of people need to go to college. not everybody needs a college thattion in the 1970's the it's got to a level of 40% of americans getting post secondary credentials or college degree.

at that point we thought it feels about right. been close to flat for about 30 years. other countries did not do that. we saw that many countries did not understand they were supposed to stop when they got a 40% so they kept going. the data that cannot last week from the organization for economic cooperation and development showed that some countries are above even 60%. 60%h korea today has over of young south koreans. it shows how the rest of the world is moving ahead. the united states got stuck. i think we got a bit complacent. host: what does that mean for the united states? what is the impact? has to do impact overwhelmingly on the economy.

everybody knows that if you go to college and get a degree you'll make more money in your life that if you do not. everybody knows and understands that. for the most part people are not surprised by that. but people are really beginning to understand is the impact of education on employment. if you are a college graduate you are more likely to have a good quality job. ofyou do not have some type post secondary education is much more likely that he will be unemployed or at a job as simply does not provide a middle-class income. that discrepancy is becoming quite stark in our economy. it used to be that you could get a good job and a lot of sectors in the economy provided a very good quality jobs, middle-class jobs, where you did not need a lot of skills or education to get them. in the last recession many of those jobs were wiped out.

the long-term print had been very clear. more and more jobs are requiring higher levels of skills and knowledge. those are usually associated with post secondary education. out by theeport put lumina foundation, you wrote this -- guest: that was a shocking statistic to a lot of people. the economy created additional new jobs for college graduates during the recession, the worst

recession since the 1930's, that is a big surprise to a lot of people. ended, whatcession happened was that the job market for college graduates really took off. the economy added an additional two million jobs after the recession ended. began.ow job recovery pr the social the creaking that those 1 million jobs lost. for graduates and below they lost additional jobs. the economy lost two of a thousand more jobs for people with high school education or less. those discrepancies or caps, between the opportunities available to people with post secondary skills and opportunities for people that do not have them, this is becoming much wider every day. who needs to attain a

higher level of college education, whether it is 82 year or four year degree? are focused on in few populations that are particularly important. there are significant gaps in this country based on race, ethnicity, income. first-generation college students -- who did not simply go to college. those gaps are widening. young latinos, young american indians have a much lower rate of attainment of higher education than white or asian americans. those gaps have been around for a long time. we need to deal with that. that is primarily an issue of income and the fact that first- generation students, people whose parents cannot go to college, have a difficult time in our system of understanding how to go to college, what it

takes, how to become prepared. all of those are a factor. the other big population we are looking at is adults. it is wanting to just focus on young people, going through high school and going on to college. we need to do that. but there are millions of american adults who are already in the work force and are fighting their opportunities greatly limited because they do not have a post secondary education. they need to be able to advance the careers or hold onto their jobs. our data shows there are 38 million americans between the ages of 25 and 64, a full 22% of the american adult population in that range, to actually went to college but never finished. have any kind of two year or four year degree. we really need to focus on that population and other adults who need access to post secondary

education. obtainingpays for this higher level of education? guest: it is a good question. we fund higher education in this country. we believe individuals should pay a large share of the education. we also believe the republic should have a responsibility to pay as well. the federal government pays through grants, guaranteed student loans, and other forms financial aid. it is a shared responsibility between individuals and their families, the paris a particular, who pay tuition. oftentimes to have to borrow money to take out student loans to pay the tuition and public. what we have seen in this country is well understood. the share of support from the public is declining. that means the share by individuals is increasing.

that burden has been going up, the cost of education for getting an education has gone up. that is a very significant barrier for a lot of people to get post secondary education. host: host: we are talking with dwayne matthews of the lumina foundation. tom, you are up first. democratic caller. caller: good morning. i have students and grandchildren going to colleges. some of them have gone to community colleges and they tell them what to take according to their major, and when they go to transfer to the state college they have taken several courses that they do not need and they have not been told the courses they still need and they end up

having to go for as much as another year to a community college he says the school did not tell them what they really needed. my granddaughter is in nursing school right now. she was only allowed to have one b. everything else had to be a's. the girl is not dumb. she is having trouble with one course and the course has a 40% pass rate. in the community college, the same course has a 90% pass rate. host: dwayne matthews, your thoughts? guest: i wish i could say those were isolated but they are not. it happens to far too many students. start college, they go

for four years, live in a graduate and move on with their lives -- that is the way a lot of people in my generation experienced college, but that in fivethan one students today meeting the definition. most are starting in a community college, and transferring. some go the other way, start in a four-year school and then go to a community college. they are working for a while and coming back to get the skills they need to advance in their careers. this is the reality of jobs today and the way people do education today. our system is not adept at serving people that way. you and the state of florida,

community college -- in the state of florida community college students are guaranteed that all of their credits will transfer and all of their credits must be applied to a baccalaureate degree. in the state of florida what you describe is not happens -- does not happen. highers finish at rates than those that start in the four-year system. the state made that an issue and took care of that problem. too many states have not dealt with that. they feel that this is somehow an issue the institutions themselves can take care of on their own and that is not working. host: dwayne matthews, this is a specific question, but does the state of florida except the credits from a community college from another state?

>> yes, they do. -- guest: yes, they do. they are not covered under the ofe agreement because common course numbering and other parts of the florida system, but it is fair to say the universities in florida and some other states as well are much more aware of and accepting of the community college students. they do not treat this as an exception or an unusual situation. that is the norm. in some states, the community college transfer student is seen as something of an exception, having to prove themselves all over again when they come to the four-year institution. we need to move away from the notion that the student has to fit themselves into a very rigid system.

we need much more flexible options for the people that need access to this education because they need the skills and knowledge. if they do not, they have serious consequences. tweetsoring file clerk -- everyone needs a plumber, nobody needs someone with a degree in dance therapy. your choice of major matters. guest: absolutely. major matters, but plumber is an example of a wide swath of careers where the skills have gone up. common house plumbing might have changed that much, but codes change. specialized plumbing continues to change. it might sound funny, but the reality is in almost all occupations the skill levels continue to advance and the

skills that were sufficient a few years ago are no longer sufficient today. andsee this in healthcare, in manufacturing, where advanced manufacturing is actually growing, creating jobs, with huge opportunities for individuals, but the skill level that people need to work in one of these plants is very different than in traditional, old-style manufacturing, many of those jobs having been wiped out in the recession. we understand that the skills are going up, but the education has to match. >> we are talking -- host: we are talking to dwayne matthews from the lumina foundation. here is a tweet -- the rate of college attainment improving, but not high enough to meet .uture workforce needs

you can read that on twitter, and you can also go to lumina foundation.org. george in new hampshire. republican. caller: good morning. good morning, mr. matthews. .uest: good morning caller: i am glad you brought up the subject of financial aid and shared responsibility, it also in that list, the money received by colleges from foundations and grants -- some years ago on c-span, on " -- itgton journal might have been as far back as 15 years ago, there was a special on the cost of college

education, higher education, listing all of the colleges in america and the amount of money these colleges receive not only from the government, but from certain foundations. i have been in touch with c- span by e-mail and they have said they are education, higher education seas particular morning program. it was stated back then, and it truthnot be true today, be known, if a student wanted to go to college, the amount of money that colleges receive from any foundations and the government -- the money was astronomical, in the multimillions -- the students would not have to pay a penny at all because of the money they received. --ealize there are costs for the cost for education is going up, and there are reasons why. ise of us might think it not legitimate -- the cost of professors and so on, but do you are you that program,

familiar with that information? host: mr. matthews? guest: i am afraid i do not remember that specific program, but i am familiar with the issue. i do not know if ithost: mr. ma? guest: i am afraid i do not remember that specific program, but i am familiar with the issue. will be possible to make higher education completely free, what we believe the cost needs to come down as more people need to be able to get it at a cost they can afford. that is not just a matter of increasing the public subsidy, although one could argue that has to happen. we also have to lower the cost of delivering higher education. we have a costly system in this country. according to international data, we spend first or second in the world on a per capita, per student basis. we have a high-quality higher education system in terms of the cost, but it might not be a quality system in the terms of

the number of students educated. at lumina foundation we have done work around increasing the productivity of higher education -- openness to do a better job with the money we receive in higher education. many institutions are coming to grips with this issue, but, unfortunately, again, many are not and it is a problem we have to address. this is an area where technology could play a significant role. there are lots of ways to deliver education using technology as part of the package -- not the only way, but those things could really help. gallup put out a poll that job status iss key to their college choice. than thes higher

price of the college as well as the graduation rate. guest: people understand that college is an investment, so they want to understand, will they get a return on that investment? if you are going to pay the money, and even in subsidized higher education, you will have to pay a lot out-of-pocket and borrow a lot. people understand that and they are willing to do that because and have done the math they understand that over the course of their life they will be better off with that education, but they want to have some confidence that they are making the right choice. they want to know, if i pay this money, do what is expected of me, finished the course, get the ,egree, will i have a good job a job thl pay me enough to pay back student loans? that is a reasonable request, but it is information that is

surprisingly difficult for people to get. we are doing work at lumina foundation to improve the data around those questions so people get answers while they are making the choice about going to school, where to go and what to study. host: jason in georgia. independent. caller: good morning. good example. i got my degree in 1994. i am a carpenter. i have been for about 15 years during when i got out of college -- years. when i got out of college, there were not many jobs available in my field, and indications, so i took up carpentry. areink to many people pushed through without realizing what the outcome is.

when you get out of college with a tremendous amount of debt, it really holds you back. there is not enough emphasis spent on letting people realize what they are getting into as far as a college degree and what it will do for them when there are a lot of alternatives where you can make a lot more money, carpentry being one of them. thank you. .uest: i appreciate that call it is a point we have not emphasized enough. when we talk about post secondary education, we are not just talking about baccalaureate degrees in traditional fields of study. we are talking about a wide range, including at the certificate level, and in the technical fields, but an individual needs to go somewhere to get at, and increasingly the place to go is some form of post secondary education -- workforce development programs,

apprenticeships and traditional college experiences. all of this is passed high school, something that happens after you get your basic education. that is the point we are trying to make. postof these skills are secondary skills, college-level. it is also not just the specific skills we are talking about. somebody with a good communications background who is working in a field like carpentry, can apply those skills effectively in dealing and businesses, customers marketing. these elements are very important as well. those are other types of skills that you get in college or some type of education beyond high school. it is a much more complex picture that getting a specific set of job skills for a specific job and going straight to work. liti skills are different.

they are a much wider range, around communication, problem solving, radical thinking -- those are the real skills people think -- need. --t: market fish tweet in there are benefits to education, but everybody has a baccalaureate degree, it is the new high school degree. guest: that is why we do not say 100%. our goal is 60%. there are a lot of low skilled not requiring%, postsecondary education. it is not for everybody. he is absolutely right. the problem we have is there are a lot of people trying to get those jobs because they are not qualified getting the jobs -- to get the jobs they -- that are open. you see a gap with the surplus

driving down wages, simple supply and demand, and a lack of people prepared for the jobs that provide good, middle-class income, driving the wages of those jobs up. in thep is growing united states and in almost every advanced economy in the world. that as longeets as corporations keep shipping jobs overseas, or fewer jobs for all americans, college-educated or not. guest: we know we cannot compete for jobs internationally if we try to compete on wages, and that is a lot of the problem. if you try to compete on wages, he simply drive the economy downward. you have to compete on skills. countries around the world are figuring that out. the successes of the united states, and there are many in

the international economy, are in the high-skill, high-value jobs, the jobs you cannot outsource or take overseas to find someone that will do the job cheaper. you have to build the skills of people to keep those good jobs. the: dwayne matthews, lumina foundation says 60% by 2025 is the sweet spot. how do you know that? guest: we do it by analysis of employment trends and workforce .emands a lot of this analysis has been done by the georgetown university, brookings institution, and many states are looking at their own data and workforce demands and trends. all of that data suggests that about 60% of american jobs will require postsecondary education of some level by the year 2018.

this phenomenon is well documented. it is well understood that this is what is happening to jobs in this country and it is time for the education system to step up its game and respond to the demand that is clearly there. people understand this. enrollment is at an all-time high in college. host: inside of your report, you put together 10 targets the nation must hit to get on track for 2025. what aresome of them, you doing at the lumina foundation, and who do you need help from to reach this goal? guest: what needs to happen is a lot of people need to step up to help make this a reality. for one thing, young people coming through our education our k-12 education system, many of them need to be

prepared to be successful in college. we know that. that is not a surprise to need to gett but we more serious about raising the standards, the quality of education in the k-12 system, to what students need to be successful in college. we know higher education needs to do a better job of making the education available and affordable. there is a lot of effort there that needs to be done. state and federal policymakers have their role to play. employers have to align their expectations and requirements with the education system and do a better job of communicating what they are looking for two colleges, universities and other postsecondary providers. there is a lot of work and we lay that out in our document. dwayne matthews, where does lumina foundation get the money to provide for this report and do the work you are

planning to do? guest: we are a private foundation. have an endowment that was set aside for this purpose. we invest the endowment and the proceeds of that investment, like other private foundations, is one pays for our ability to do -- is what pays for our ability to do our work. the money that lumina foundation has came from a conversion of a that didrofit business student financing, and those proceeds were set aside for not- for-profit or is 12 or 13 years ago. host: nancy, new jersey. independent. go ahead. thank you. good morning, mr. mathis.

i find it interesting that everyone says you need a college tersegree in get a job, and i biology and i have been unemployed since 2010. i decided to go back to college for a nursing degree, and i have noticed a few things. since colleges are so expensive, many students are taking courses at community colleges and transferring credits into a four-year college -- when i --iced is that many colleges what i noticed is many colleges are not accepting the equivalent transfer credits because they want the student to take the class there so they can get the money for that course. host: dwayne matthews touched on mr. before, but go ahead, matthews, do you have additional thoughts? guest: i do not want to minimize the challenges in this employment market. it is a tough job market for

everyone, including college graduates and a college education is in no way a guarantee of a good job and i should not imply that it is, and nobody should promise that it is. the data, of course, is clear on this. unemployment levels are much lower for people with college degrees, but that is cold comfort to people that have a college degree and are not able to get a job. you point out something interesting. here is an individual with a biology degree that wants to go into nursing. what better preparation is therefore nursing and a biology degree? making sure a person like that has an opportunity to transfer credits and get a head start on the nursing degree is something we need to do. host: michael in new york. the public and caller that -- republican caller. first, in regards to the

get between job creation and job loss in regards to degrees, that is an example of how our economy has changed in that lower paying jobs in the service industry have fallen to the wayside while higher paying service industry jobs like analysts, consultants and ceo's have dominated the job market and the attention of the job market. i would also point out that i think our education system is preparing students to satisfy state needs as opposed to job market needs, and those jobs are filled by illegal aliens that are taking a low paying jobs, leaving the people with lower skills standing around saying i do not have the ability to earn a living with the skills that i have. host: dwayne matthews? guest: certainly on the first

point, that is absolutely right -- the shift is less about a shift from low skill jobs to high skill jobs or industry sector to industry sector. that is the way it used to be. ,oday, the -- what is happening the skill demand are going up within these sectors. i mentioned manufacturing where low skill manufacturing jobs have been lost, but high skill manufacturing are being created. you see that in the service sector and many sectors of the economy. that is certainly the case. on the other point all i can say is there are too many people in this country trying to get the low skill jobs that are declining in number. it is like a game of musical chairs. you have a game of musical chairs for the low skill jobs and you are taking chairs away from that, and you are putting

chairs in the game for people with high skill jobs. lockede some people into these two games and it is a terrible situation if you are in the low skill game. we need to make routes and opportunities for people to escape the low skill sector which is declining, not going away, but declining, and given the opportunity to move into higher skilled occupations. host: democrats find. marcus. illinois. caller: i live in illinois, and i feel here it is not easy, but not challenging to get into college. i know a number of people who almost took the back door into our state universities. they go through the school of agriculture, and in the school of agriculture, you do not need that good of grades, and then

they transfer into the career or subject that they want. is extremely easy to get a degree in illinois, but the problem is these kids, in the lower income areas, they do not know that they can get into college. they are not being educated in their high schools and grade schools. they think they do not have that self worth. we need to work on that and tell these kids they can get to college because tuition here, for example, if somebody wanted to go to uic, they could go for $13,000 a year in state tuition and easily get a degree and to muggleeir lives we do not do a good enough job telling people they can do this -- lives, but we do not do a good job telling people they can do this. guest: there is little to add.

you are absolutely right. we need to do a better job of getting the word out. the caller makes an interesting and important point. this is not just about giving them the motivation to go to college or letting them know college is available, but also getting them early enough so that they know what it actually takes to be successful. it is not enough to go, put in your four years and get a piece of paper that says you are a college graduate. what you need is the actual skills, the learning, the knowledge that that degree .epresents every piece of data we looked at is what employers -- says that is what employers are looking at. we need to help young people, especially students coming out of rural america, from populations that have not gone to college, first-generation students, they do not know what it takes, or what courses they

should be taking to get prepared, how they should be saving money, what type of education they could go into, what are the career fields open to them. we need to a better job of getting that information to people. host: baltimore, maryland. j.d. on our line for democrats. -30's,: i am in my young recently unemployed. i was working for the city. when i was 16, 17, a senior in high school, i feel that i unknowingly signed away future earnings potential. $400e been paying close to a month for a decade in student loans. i want to go back and get

something in a more high demand degree, especially in the baltimore area like therapy orion something medical related because of the hospital system, but that would entail me going back to get an undergrad degree in something completely different than my degree, which was in business, and that would entail me taking on an entire new set of student loans. , havingat is necessary worked in employment, i understand your numbers, but there are a lot of people in my generation in this age bracket that are not in the same boat and their pocketing themselves into this corporate world and it is artificially keeping wages down on them. i want to go back and change careers, but what am i going to

do with my 400 dollars now -- i could differ while i am in school, but when i get out, will i be paying $600 a month, $700 a month? host: we will leave it there. dwayne matthews, thoughts? synopsis of a good what we face. most people understand that education is something you got early in life, like getting your shots, you're an occupations, and then you on and you are done with it. people understand that is not the way it is. almost everyone has to continually develop their skills. the fields they work in our constantly changing and evolving and if you do not keep on learning, you really get left behind. unfortunately, this is not always a happy situation. people lose their jobs.

industry sectors go away and they have to get new skills. we have to make it possible. here is someone who has the motivation, sees the need, but it is a struggle to make it work for him because of the choices he has to face. that is unfortunate because we all lose as a nation when people like that do not have the chance to go back, build their skills and make their life better. host: dwayne matthews with the lumina foundation, thank you for your time. we appreciate it. you are very welcome. thank you for having us. host: when we come back, we'll talk with james o'keefe who is out with a new book, "breakthrough -- our guerrilla war to expose fraud and save democracy," and later, fred kaplan will discuss his recent "iece in "mit technology review about the history and capability of drones. first, a news update.

full texas state house will vote next week on a bill restricting when, when and how women may have an abortion in the state. texas voted earlier today. the publicans had approved the bill last week during a special session, but it happened after a midnight deadline and it did not count. tea party activists in ohio are turning the tables, trying to use the internal revenue service as an ally against hospitals in their fight against expanding medicaid. one leader says the idea is to invoke a provision that allows .nvestigation of salaries finally, health activists are saying a free trade pact being negotiated by the u.s. and 11 asia-pacific nations will impose aggressive intellectual property

rules and result in restricting access to affordable medicines in existing nations. once a drug's patent expires, generic manufacturers can legally produce it, but under the pact, companies would be able to apply for multiple secondary patents. some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. >> making the transition from journalism to books is exhilarating, completely overwhelming and frightening, but wonderful. >> why did you make that choice? >> i had long wanted to be working on a book because of the freedom it allows you to dive into a topic, lose yourself and go off on tangents and have time to explore it fully. taboo sciences, living in space, the afterlife and the human digestive system -- best-selling author mary roach will take your calls,

twitter comments and e-mail. "> "washington journal continues. host: we want to welcome back to the table james o'keefe who is out with a new book, "breakthrough -- our guerrilla war to expose fraud and save democracy." james o'keefe, what is guerrilla war and why do you do it? guest: it is a strategy we use it upontizens who took ourselves to investigate fraud, waste and abuse in the government and other institutions. it is guerrilla because we are ,tilizing facebook, youtube twitter, and sometimes we are spending our own money -- individuals taking on a vast government machine, and asymmetrical warfare, david versus goliath and the struggle, and that is what this book was all about. host: walk us through it.

how do you decide to send in undercover journalists? guest: we get sent dozens of send all the time, people me a facebook message or a tip on our project veritas website. , showing visualize people what happens when people are not looking, or in one case, one of my favorite videos, we wanted to visualize the economic problem where you dig holes and we refill them, so we posed as a group to dig ditches and refill them again. what happens is these people are usually angry themselves, engaging in the and type of absurd things you think they would do. host: why'd you call them investigative journalist -- are

they full-time employees of project veritas or undercover actors? guest: they are reporters like any other organization would , like c-span would do, but we call them likealists like people geraldo rivera, people that win awards, like recently, david corn who won an award for nothing but distribute in an undercover tape into the mitt romney 47% tape. for some reason, the established media does not think of us as journalists. host: you have been called activists, that this is activism and not journalism.

how do you distinguish between the two? guest: journalism is something that you do, not something that you are. you can be an accidental journalist. you are getting information out there -- especially in our case, we do it wrong, releasing full, raw video. c-span is the closest. host: i should also note we do not have reporters. --st: you do not have an reporters, but you have employees that you pay to do your segments. sometimes we do have volunteers, but we release the full, raw video to accompany our reporting. i would argue that what we do is closer to journalism than anything else. a lot of these other journalists package stories, manipulate headlines, assume things in their writing -- we show you the tape and let you

decide. host: here is a quote from "national review" who spoke to you and you were quoted as saying "i like being hated more than the like, and that is when the game began." what did you mean? quoting something andrew breitbart said in "time magazine." host: doesn't apply to you? extent.o a certain nobody in their heart loves to be hated, but it is a sign of respect when they ate you. they have a love/hate relationship with project veritas. if you look at this book -- these book reviews for "breakthrough," it is all positive. the only negative reviews are

those calling me a racist. initially, there is a barrier to entry for most people. they feel they are determined from making a difference, scared because of what the media might do to them. i have been called a white supremacist, a sexist, a criminal, and it is hard at first, but after a while you pun intended,it, and you survive and you keep making a difference. host: may i ask how old you are? guest: i am 29. host: you started this at what age? 21 and i started an independent newspaper ad anders, -- at rutgers, again said a respectable journalist does not cause this controversy, and that was my first lesson.

host: the reason i am asking is for people learning about the book, is this a biography? guest: it is a manifesto of war, a little bit of a biography, a field guide, it has been called a thriller novel. gallagher'sre like " travels" has been said. off with me in federal jail for a crime i did not commit. it is not your typical memoir. it is not retrospective. i do not know what i'll be thinking 20, 30 years from now. it is a fast-paced manual for doing what i do. "our and you say guerrilla war to expose fraud and save democracy." save democracy from what?

what we are trying to do is bring power back to the people. public officials have abused the power we have lent them, and there are extraordinary mechanisms in place to prevent us from reclaiming the power, so the aim away we can wreak -- so the only way to reclaim it is through exposure, sunlight, the best disinfectant. we expose the fraud, and every time we do it, we outrage people and they want to get involved. saving democracy, what we mean is getting people involved, and giving them a voice. host: where did the rules come from? the "rules for " long before salsa linsky became a role model for

bill clinton and president obama. i have had to swim through legal swamps that i do not think many journalists have found themselves swimming through. one rule is always make sure you extract the tape because if you are arrested and they take the tape, they will accuse you of doing anything and people will believe it. this is a simple rule. another rule is always use props, like the costumes in the acorn video. notice respect to you at c-span, but never spend any more than 24 hours in the washington, d.c. beltway. this is something i have learned the hard way. host: and you are here in washington, d.c., today, because your probation was listed in may.

this is what you wrote on may 29 -- open -- "i have endured 1210 days of unjust government surveillance, and depression, but i am now a free man." can you explain? guest: the federal government charge me with a crime i did not commit in louisiana. i was walking into a federal building. i intended to ask staffers whether they were ignoring constituent phone calls, and all i was going to do with a feminine off guard moment saying their phones were -- in an offguard moment saying their phones were fine, but unfortunately they arrested me on the spot. the federal judge deleted the contents of my recordings so that nobody could see what i was

actually there to do. i was sentenced to three years of probation with travel restrictions, fines and community service and it would not let me leave the state of .ew jersey for three years host: you were accused of? guest: i was initially accused of a felony and they drop that charge. however, the charge they actually charge me with was entering a federal building using false pretenses because i use myguest: i was initially acd of a felony and they drop that charge. however, the charge they actually charge me with was entering a federal building using false pretenses because i use my drivers license, i would argue there was not a false pretense. you could charge half of the electricians in d.c.. my crime was to say i was waiting for somebody when, in fact, i was not, and that was my crime, to making this statement .s it is an absurd -- statement it is an absurd charge. the department of justice is buggeding the guy who

mitch mcconnell, but they held me in captivity for three years, yet i was able to do journalism at that time. host: chris is calling from california. democratic caller. hear me?an you host: we can. you are on the air with james o'keefe. caller: james, thank you for what you are doing. i have been doing some investigating of government , and i found a number of latent frauds on the government report on the collapse of world trade center seven. would you be interested in investigating these frauds if i gave them to you? atst: we have a tip line project veritas. i cannot guarantee i would get to them because we have about a hundred tips a month. send us anything you have.

i cannot guarantee i would do something, as i need to determine the veracity of these things, do a we do, apply the project veritas secret sauce, as we say, but if you have any tips, enter your tip to our tip line. host: and. -- anne. for richie, florida. independent. i am amazed that james o'keefe has been on. i am glad he has been released. i would like to ask the gentleman, now that he has been thed and has seen some of situations having gone on recently with mr. edward snowden, does he feel more, i guess, threatened by retribution from the government,

-- cano, "breakthrough" you tell us who the a brochure what thist book and can you tell us who the publisher was on that book and what does he do to protect himself from the government? host: thank you. james o'keefe? guest: the publisher is simon & schuster, and in terms of protection and safety and edward snowden, i think the best protection is sunlight, publicity. just as i described journalism as an effort to bring power back to the people, the best effort to protect myself is certainly through exposure, leading people know what is going on. it is not really the direct threats you have to worry about -- it is the lawsuits, the justice system, the prosecution, the indictment. back in new hampshire, we did a

public records request into what they were trying to do with us. they were trying to shut us down, ending with federal agents, the fbi, the department of justice in massachusetts to shut our voter fraud exposés down. they have tried to wear us down through the legal system and that is what this book is about, overcoming that, surviving that, and i hope it will inspire people that you can make a difference despite the overwhelming obstacles working against you. edward snowden is its own pandora's box. i think it's good that people have information and i hope we get more information about what the government is doing. host: you are talking about the legal hurdles, that requires a lawyer, paying fines, and can

you give us an idea of how much this is costing you and how you are getting money? guest: we are a 501(c)(3) but the difference between us and a lot of groups a lot of themis do fundraising and we do journalism. npr stories, truthfully, i put on my credit cards. there is a deposition where i am being cross examined for acorn, and i said i paid for it on my credit cards. i had to send out lots of e- mails and letters asking for support. -- do you have any major donors, names people might recognize? guest: we are starting to get to that point, but mostly it has

of funding,ource $20 times 1000, and now we do have thousands of small donors, but it really is a wonderful is this model because it allows me the independence to do what i want to do. nobody controls me. i give credit to some journalists. havenk sometimes they their hands tied. they are not able to break them up because they work for people that do not allow them. host: a twitter follow up on what you did to expose acorn -- have you made settlement agreements with the acorn employees and if so, why? he is referring to a legal settlement in california. if you google me, you will see articles that i am a liar because i settled with an acorn employee. the settlement was over expectation of everything.

in california they have a concern that means you cannot record people without permission, and we argued this was a public area, a public official, and i have been reading articles from people on the left who are against these laws. the aclu came out against these laws in illinois when someone went to jail for 20 months for taping a police officer without their permission. i think they are unconstitutional. i had to settle this case because my motion was denied by a federal judge. .t was not over defamation it had nothing to do with accuracy. it was over expectation of privacy, which is admittedly a gray area. host: can i follow-up on a a question i asked before -- you put this out as a book has -- for people who want to do what you are doing. can you give people an idea of

what they would face in fees and costs to do what you do? guest: sure. it is an interesting one. if you have the technology in your pocket, and iphone, it has the ability to record video and audio, if you have close on your back, you are pretty much good to go. there are stories that have shocked the halls of congress. iwatch c-span, and sometimes -- i have been watching c-span and commercees see minutes hack me to discredit my work. -- congressman attacked me to discredit my work. mostly legal fees. host: can you give us an idea? guest: the settlement with the $800,000, and i do not

have that in my anchor,. -- my tank account. i would like people to read this book because they think it is something they cannot do because they are not a fundraiser. i am not a fundraiser. people believe in what we are doing and they want to help us. it is not a zero-sum game. there can be hundreds of people like me out there right you need to know the price you have to pay to do this work. host: angelo in new orleans. democrats. you're on the air with james o'keefe. caller: thank you. thank you for c-span. this man is a total fraud. this man entered senator mary office in new orleans representing himself and them as working for the telephone company.

they claim there was a problem with the system. one other question i would like to ask him is is he a member, or any members of his family a member of the john birch society. i understand why he is with simon & schuster, a news corp. company. host: let's give james o'keefe a chance to respond. first of all, simon & schuster, i do not believe they are a news corp. company. i will have to double check that. john birch, no, the only organization my father and i belong to our the boy scouts of america, and about using false pretenses, we represent ourselves as telephone -- telephone repairman, and there is a long history of journalists going into places like the list institutions and exposing abuses. there was a case in the 1940s where a guy went into city hall

posing as a telephone repair man and he was a winner of journalism awards. in element of false pretense "to catch a predator." abc news-- in fact, actually got jobs to expose. they went peabody's. the guy who bugged mitch doj,nell is protected by but i am a worse person for using a pretense while inside of a federal building. you need to be consistent. i have defended whistleblowers. i have sent the problem is and -- is in commencement with the crime. we should not be attacking journalists, but defending everyone's freedom of speech,

and we should be examining whether this ms. demeanor -- this ms. demeanor they have me on [indiscernible] independent scholar. mr.er: good morning, o'keefe. you are articulate, but you have one of the largest egos i have seen on this program. the subtitle of this book sounds like the opening to the old " superman" television series. you think very highly of yourself and what you do. what i think is you are part of the internet-based -- you use video, but you are part of this -- you mentioned andrew breitbart. there you go. the man has no journalistic standards. he does not check his sources. he exposes that poor woman showing an out of context

section of a speech and he ruined her life, her job, at least, and you, sir, are not a journalist. you keep describing yourself as a journalist. journalists have ethics. they have editors that send them, and they discussed these things and they care. listen, you have used muckraking as a term, and there is nothing wrong with muckraking. mike wallace goes and confronts people -- past tense -- he went and confronted people on camera in their face and exposed it the right way. edward r merle -- you are neither of those, sir. host: ok, james o'keefe. isst: i guess the question i am not edward r murrell and mike wallace, and i am not. i am james o'keefe, but we combine genres and influences.

i do not understand the fight over who is a journalist and who is not. it sounds like a cartel. matt is a famous speech drudge gave at the washington press club about 15 years ago and i saw the same types of attacks launched at him and the pointed he he made is that plenty of journalists get their fact incorrect, and in fact, i have had defamation lawsuit settled. i have gotten money from journalists for defaming me. we have also gotten retractions and corrections. we have gotten over 200 corrections and retractions. i am being lectured about fairness and accuracy when i release the full, raw transcript and i have called on release their transcripts, and this week i confronted journalists and ask them to release the raw footage and they refused. higherists hold me to a

standard than they hold themselves and i just want some consistency, some fairness. i am happy to release my raw tapes to accompany my reporting, but they do not want to release there's very -- there's. journalism is something you can do. journalism you can do by accident, though we should support more information, and i do not understand why my adversaries -- i do not know why i have adversaries -- but why my adversaries want less information. that speaks volumes about you. host: adversaries, perhaps, come from the left. you have balked at the title or the label of being a conservative, but have you or project veritas sought out conservative initiatives or programs to expose? guest: i do not consider government hypocrisy or abuses to be liberal.

if government watchdog journalism is my nature conservative, and we have greater problems in our country. entitlement programs -- we did this thing recently with the lifeline program, federally subsidized to corporate subsidies. if they are telling people they can sell the phones to the notion that npr is liberal -- really? that is the first time i've heard anyone admit that it is a liberal organization, government-funded. we went after olympia snowe, republican. ballots with the names of the dead in new hampshire -- some of those were republican. skew lefts tend to because we go after these government leviathan programs and a lot of people in the

journalistic community tell me these are well-intentioned programs and you should never investigate so-called good organizations with good intentions. i don't agree with that premise. let me show our viewers a little bit of the video of wireless company employees passing out these lifeline phones come which i can come to be called -- which have been come to be called obama phones. take a look. [video clip] [indiscernible] >> i'm good. host: what was the outcome of that? guest: fox news reported a fire that worker you just saw. -- they fired that worker you just saw. there were a number of other workers did they said we could break the law, one said that we could plead the fifth, which is ironic because it is what lois lerner at the irs said. they said we were going to

retrain every worker at this wireless company. thise weight, we didn't do a lot. we just did this a couple times. imagine if i had taped dozens of workers. it gets to a point where they fire these people, low-level employees. i would say that it is not even the employees you just saw -- it is not their fault. it is the management, this is them, the culture of washington that comes these subsidies into the private competition pumps these subsidies into the private committees, and then the butlers, they give incentives -- the bundlers, they give incentives for these phones. one company does not know what the other is doing so they call phones and the recipient say i got 8 obama phones. the government and big business skimming together. host: washington, independent caller.

caller: mr. o'keefe, with your claims of being this legitimate journals, i wonder if you were looking into governor casey and the gifts he has been a sitting with his wife -- receiving with his wife. guest: i'm not familiar with that story, but go to project veritas.com and send me a tip. i can't guarantee that i will get to it. i need more resources, more funding. but i do one major story a month. this claim about being a legitimate journalist -- it sounds more like a semantic distinction, that there is a cartel set up to prohibit people. i want more information. i think that people on the left and right should want more information. i do not understand why people on the left want to silence and shut down outside journalists from making a difference. it doesn't matter who you are or were you come from. if you're getting more information out there, it is always a good thing.

that is its own conversation. host: a couple websites -- projectveritas.com, but also projectveritas.org. that is your fundraising site. guest: i think they are one and the same, just different url's. host: your thoughts on lynne greenwald -- glenn greenwald. guest: good question. i think greenwald is a hero. he is certainly upsetting a lot of people. i saw david gregory easily on nbc news was asking if he aided and abetted snowden. he is being asked if he is basically committing a crime by reporting his source. that is exactly the type of behavior that we face, the mainstreaming of the criminalization of journalism. they have also rummaged through his personal life now.

we have seen that happen. i think the question about snowden, whether he is a hero or trader, is the least important question. maybe it is an interesting discussion but it is not the discussion we should be having. the discussion is what should -- what is going on with the information he exposed? i don't think the punishment is commensurate with the crime here. they're talking about decades in jail, may be jailed for life. i don't think he deserves that punishment. he probably did trust the line him he has crossed the line i've never crossed the line in that he violated a contract and broken an agreement. i've never done that before in my exposures. so he should be punished, not to the extent that the government will punish him. but let's have a conversation about the information. this is a election designed not to have an important conversation -- this is what the media does, they obfuscate, as with the acorn story.

don't want about that conversation, you want to talk about the fact that i filmed somewhere without permission. this is an except love how they obfuscate. host: tennessee, will is watching us there, independent caller. caller: good morning, greta. so good to speak you again, and so thankful for c-span, what it does for the american citizen. i would like to say, first of all, that the problems we have in america is about what this gentle man is talking about, the corruption and a lot of other things knowing on, trying to expose them. if we look back at president obama's initial appearance, we find that he was going to and exposensparency the problems that work during their -- that were occurring

there. we see being exposed by individuals like .histleblowers i'm glad he is part of the , at leastd trying to in the news media, trying to expose the problems going down that is result of corruption. ,ost: james o'keefe whistleblowers have the whistleblower protection act to fallback on. journalists, referring to the constitution. what is your -- what has your lawyer argued? guest: we have no protections whatsoever. that is a very important point you just made. depending on who is considered a journalist -- this is why the glenn greenwald discussion is so important -- depending on who is considered a journalist, you of certain protections. it is literally a semantical, arbitrary distinction that the department of justice is drawing. some people have first amendment rights, some people do not.

it is entirely political, the politicizing of the first amendment. it is worse than the violations of the forced him -- fourth amendment, because if we lose first amendment rights, we lose the ability to expose abuse. the caller made a great point about how a lot of the big stories you are seeing today are from people on the front lines because they have cameras. the big story about the mitt romney video was done by a bartender, who happened to put his camera on a table. he broke the biggest story of the presidential election. protections tove people who are accidental journalists, it is going to be really bad for government transparency. minneapolis, patricia on our live for republicans. welcome to the conversation. caller: thank you. it is simply to ship accuracy, and i want to point out c-span's also -- you had a gentleman, i would not call him a gentleman, but a man claims that mr. o'keefe has a huge ego and you

let him go on and on. whenever i go on and on and scully is the host, he interrupts me. the last time i was -- there was an abc reporter and i was could assessing journals and for not covering where was president obama during the benghazi attack. scully stomped on me. it was my dime and i couldn't even get to send this out before you step on my speech -- i couldn't even get two sentences out before you step on my speech. it is huge accuracy, and greta, you let that man who flew at hominems -- threw ad on your guest. i am a conservative should your guest is exposing things on the left, right, and middle, and if he attacked the left, you folks at c-span let people call in and claim things that aren't true and use ad hominems. scully really does not allow

scully,ech -- not tim but mr. scully. he is on on sundays and he really stomps on conservative speech big i don't call it anymore because he doesn't let me finish a sentence. host: ok, patricia. we will go on to chris, democratic caller. caller: my question is, republicans racist? host: why do you ask, chris? what is your point? caller: i believe they talk about obama because of the color of his skin. host: ok, james o'keefe? guest: probably not the question for me, because i'm not a republican, but we have exposed racism in things you and not even expect, like the teachers union in new jersey. you should check it out on youtube. it is called "teachers gone wild." we went into the leadership conference of the national education association in new

jersey, and the teachers were using racial slurs against kids. they could use those and not get fired. and then we went undercover and showed the fact that one superintendent said that if you word the and word -- the n- to a kid or a teacher said the n-word, i would not fire the teacher. we have exposed racism in all types of places. we went to planned parenthood and we found arguable racism there. i have been involved in exposing in a couple different institutions. people have actually resigned for admittedly saying or doing racist things. that is the best i can come up with in response to your question. farmingdale, new jersey, republican caller. caller: mr. o'keefe, i think the public has been shocked in recent weeks with a level of corruption throughout the federal government. yours was a real eye-opener.

people see you as a partisan. they cannot claim today that the things that going on -- that are going on in washington are the results of artisans. can you give the public some type of idea -- just a guess -- how much thought is there in the federal government? -- how much fraud is there in the federal government, how much waste? guest: you can kind of use mathematics to answer the question because if i go out and tape a couple of employees and i have a 90% success rate or something, every employee helps me except for one, and i we can use-- intervals and statistics to establish that thousands and thousands of federal employees are doing things that the government would cut down and you would condemn. the answer to all of our problems as a society is to sponsor and support more washed out journalism. -- more watchdog journalism. they can fire all the low-level

employees, but if everyone is doing the same practice, everyone on the left and the right would agree that the system is completely screwed up and needs to be reformed. then heads would roll, then we would change our political representatives, and then finally people at the top would be held accountable. .hat is not going to happen it is remarkable how many people get fired after our videos and laws are changed and people want shoo it away and focus on like it's rogue. it is definitely not rogue. it is definitely mathematics, that every employee i can't to is engaged in fraudulent behavior. host: what is next for project veritas? guest: we will scale what we do, do it on a massive scale, do it on so many different federal programs, and hopefully branch out any private organizations as well.

we have five investigations going on right now. tour, talking about this book and about my story. and i'm trying to inspire people, trying to get people not to be afraid of what might happen to them if they do what i do. host: how many employees do you have, and do you yourself collect a salary? guest: i do. 990se a nonprofit, so our are publicly available at the end of the year. a lot ofve contractors. sometimes we have volunteers. we have people who don't want to be paid. we have donors who are afraid to give us money because they are afraid of being audited by the irs. ,eople from normal backgrounds ordinary american citizens all over the country who want to get involved. as to how many of those people, i would rather not say. it is slowly increasing it to a small army. host: one last phone call, michael in charlotte, north carolina, independent caller. itler: yes, mr. o'keefe,

seems that most of the argument out should be about what is in the best for the country. at no time do you seem to think that the direction you want the country to go is in the right direction. i don't think that is the action that the country wants to go. think that is the direction that the country wants to go. some of the things you talk about is totally opposite of the left. the country is moving in the left. the supreme court, the president, as well as the senate. now you look at the house of representatives. republicans, who seem not to do in the best of the country, and the people. look at the president. he started obamacare. maybe more to hurt than to help, he compromise. where is the compromise from the

republicans? which direction do you want the country to go? host: we will leave it there, michael. guest: excellent question, and here's my response -- one of the dennings -- one of the things we want to do -- i don't tell you what to believe, what direction the country should go in. any journalists spend time what they believe and why you should believe it. i just expose the truth, i expose the reality. cinéma verité. we show you what is happening and you make the decision and you make the call. what we have done has prompted, like in the case of the acorn story, it prompted president obama to sign a bill to defund acorn based on what he saw and what congress saw. i believe and the power of a free people. if they get more information, they can make decisions for themselves. i don't understand your list who want to shove narratives down the throat. you asked me like i'm some type of political representative.

that is not my role. my role is to give you more information so you can make up your mind. i guarantee that if you look at some of my stories you will be outraged by what you see. i have -- i trust in you, i have faith in you, i believe in you, but you have to have more information. asking youe end by this -- if you could go back and do anything differently from what you have done, would you? if so, what? guest: i probably would've thought that misdemeanor in louisiana. i would've not pled guilty to a misdemeanor. i never imagined in my wildest dreams they would've held in captivity for three years. my lawyer told me he has never seen anything like that before. the u.s. attorneys who resigned for overzealous behavior -- i thought it was just a misdemeanor. they call me a criminal they had no curiosity at all about the nature of the offense. i never would have imagined and predicted the sort of wrath from

the media establishment. i would've definitely fought that. host: have you made mistakes? i've made mistakes, yes. in the book i talk about some .issteps, and i've been naïve i don't take it was the best pimp costume on fox news, for example. baptism by fire. yahoo! news read the book and said it was like watching a man rise up, toughen up, to a point where it was really a coming-of- age kind of manifesto. it is a fascinating read for anybody who is interested in the first amendment type of thing. the bookes o'keefe -- is called "right through. -- "breakthrough." thank you for your time. guest: thank you for being here

-- thank you for having me. host: coming up, we will talk to fred kaplan about his piece piece in "mit technology review" about drones. first, a news update from c-span radio. >> the number of americans seeking benefits fell to a seasonally adjusted 343,000 last week. a sign, say analysts, that layoffs remain low and companies are adding a modest number of jobs. on friday the government will issue its june jobs report. the u.s. trade deficit increased in may to the highest level in six months, as a weaker global economy depressed u.s. export sales, while imports of autos and other nonpetroleum products hit an all-time high. commerce department is reporting that the trade deficit rose to $45 billion in may. that is 12.1% higher than april. and finally, germany cost top security official says internet users worried about -- germany 's top security official says

internet uses worried about their data intercepted by u.s. agencies should stay away from services such as google and facebook. the french government wants major trade negotiations to join the u.s. and the european union suspended for two weeks amid anger over alleged u.s. eavesdropping on european allies. those negotiations are scheduled to start on monday in washington. some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. making the transition from journalism to books is exhilarating and completely overwhelming and frightening, but wonderful. >> why did he make that choice? -- why did you make that choice? >> i had long been wanting to work on a book because of the freedom it allows you to dive into a topic and lose yourself on go off on tangents and have enough time to really explore fully. am anday, taboo sciences

living in space, the afterlife, and the human digestive system. your calls,ill take e-mails, and tweets. "in depth," three hours live on sunday on booktv on c-span2. "washington journal" continues. caller host: on wednesdays we do our spotlight on magazine stories. we're talking to fred kaplan, who wrote for the "m.i.t. performance review" for their august edition on drones. let's talk about the history of this technology. where did it come from? guest: it is a curious history. it started in the mind of a physicist named john foster, within the head of livermore labs -- who had been the head of livermore labs, which helped him develop the h-bomb could he

was the top scientist at the pentagon. he was a model airplane enthusiast or many years, and he got it into his head that his abby could be the basis for new kind of weapon system. this was back in the early 1970s, a little more than 40 years ago. he had the idea that you could take a pilot-this plane, -- , put a camerae and its belly, and fly it over enemy targets. you could somehow transmit the footage back to some which would then get a good, close look at the targets. at some point you could load a bomb or two inside this pilot less aircraft and maybe with the aid of some kind of joystick or pushbutton headquarters from the target as well. this was back in cold war days. it -- the idea was to hit soviet

tank columns or ports or runways deep behind enemy lines and slow down the pace of invasion of western europe. but the idea that was in his head a little more than 40 years ago, at least the weapon itself, to what finally materialized in the mid-19 90s. host: who is albert hosted her, and how did the technology evolve over him -- under him -- holstadter and how did the technology evolve under him? guest: albert wohlstetter. at thea technologist rand corporation. around the mid-70s, one of the scientific -- the high-tech agencies and the pentagon called the defense of advanced research projects agency -- was looking for some ideas about how to deal with the soviet union in

a way that wouldn't involve nuclear retaliation. wohlstetter to do a study and he went to the ideas that were on the blueprints and discovered this idea of a foster's, which has since been turned into a prototype. the pentagon has come but prototypes of a zillion -- come uphings with prototypes of a zillion different things. it's when somewhere because it coincided with a new strategic doctrine and the study that brought the two together. wohlstetter outlined a vision of what the new weapon system could be at that time, and by this time, the mid-to-late 70s, the microprocessor revolution was beginning. there were things like millimeter weight sensors and razors -- on lasers and radar sensors in weapon systems, and this fantasy that foster had in

his head in the early 70s was becoming more and more plausible. host: as you write in the piece, the final version emerged in the 1990s as the so-called predator. how is that used? what was its purpose? guest: it was first used in an actual setting in bill clinton .s air war over yugoslavia at the time it just had a camera in it, but it was like foster's vision, a very small, lightweight lane that still exists. we have hundreds of these things. it flies over territory, it has a camera. the camera takes digital footage. the images are transmitted to a satellite, which in turn beams it down to headquarters, which could be on the other side of the earth. and then sunday sitting on a monitor with a joystick -- as

somebody is sitting on a monitor with a joystick and watching the imagery. it is like a videogame. at the time it was not an armed drone. the cia and the pentagon developed an armed version of the ground -- of the drone. the explicit purpose of the project was to go find and kill osama bin laden. ,round the turn-of-the-century the turn of the new century, the drone, which had been ,evised as a cold war weapon became adapted to what is known as the war on terror, and then it became used quite a lot at that point. host: fred kaplan, you write in your piece that it -- the air force decided it would be ideal for fleeting and heritable targets -- perishable targets. what would that have meant under previous wars, and what did it mean in 2001?

guest: fleeting and perishable targets -- in the old days that might've been a tank that could move. you had to get it right away. or a ship that was moving out of harbor. what it meant starting in 2001 was a terrorist in cheap, or a convoy of trucks -- a terrorist in a jeep, or a convoy of trucks carrying weapons into iraq or afghanistan, or a house where some al qaeda terrorists happen to be, but he might leave at any minute. how it hashat is been used, and we can get into this later and i'm sure we will, but it has become such a -- convenient technology, such an easy technology, that it has come to make more -- wore a little bit easier than it should be. host: yeah, we will talk about

that. fred kaplan, you talk about the people who pushed the technology. what about the people who opposed it ech -- who opposed i? guest: it is very interesting. initially, and up until about 2007, the air force, which developed this weapon, didn't like it at all, try to halt it. at the time the air force culture was tactical -- fighter planes. pilots in fighter planes moving fast. , you might remember, the big project of the air force was the f-22 fighter, the stealth fighter. there were generals -- i'm only exaggerating a little bit -- who traded in the rest of the entire air force budget for the f-22. you might remember that robert gates stop the f-22. --arrack, in the iraq war, in arrack, in the iraq war, the way that drugs were used as a of a support for the army -- they would be up in the sky, taking

pictures, they would see the the peopletoring -- monitoring the footage would see insurgents laying roadside bombs along roads. the drone could follow the insertion back to where his hideout was -- follow the insurgent back to where his hideout ways. army and marine officers were calling for more drones in the sky to deal with threats on the ground in iraq. the air force resisted because they were into past, manned fighters. this is a slow, unmanned plane that was not even -- it didn't have its own mission. it was supporting the army and the marines. .'m being quite literal here production was stepped up. first the air force was as did raising -- resisted raising production. then when gates ordered the production raised, they slow down the delivery. gates ordered the acceleration

of the delivery. finally, gates fired the four- star general who was the air force chief of staff and the civilian secretary of the air force, and broaden -- brought in a new air force chief of staff, general martin schwartz, who had been not a fighter pilot, not a bombardier, like all the other previous airport chiefs of staff, but someone who had been involved in air transport for special operations. flying material to special ops forces, army people, marines people. he was accustomed. he had come up to the range during joint operations with other services. he understood instantly what the appeal and the need for and latere in iraq the afghan theater. it was because of that that in 2007, 2008, the resistance fell and drone production started

going up and the use of drugs also started going up. -- use of drones also started going up. host: as part of our spotlight on magazines we are talking to fred kaplan about the history and technology of drones. he is the author of a new book that came out in january, "the david petraeus and the plot to change the american way of war." let me take you back to your piece for "m.i.t. technology review." " the air force was training more drone joystick pilots than airplane -- airplane cockpit pilots." what happened to this drone technology? how does the default after 2009 -- how does it default after 2009? ?- evolve after 2000 and guest: they proliferate. they can stay in the air for a longer time.

and they started developing very small drones -- literally drones about the size of a frisbee that you can throw out and it can look around the throw it or you can into a cave and a can look into a cave and see if anybody is there and the monitors can be in the field. and other countries are beginning to get this technology, two. something like 50 countries have drones of one sort or another. 16 of them have drones that are armed. only a few countries -- the united states, great britain, and israel -- has been known to actually kill people with drones. drones --e appeal of i say "appeal" -- i don't necessarily mean it is good, but here is the appeal. let's say there is somebody, a bad guy come in yemen. you don't have to send troops,

you don't have to send planes that might get shot down. you send a drone overhead, you drop a very small bomb, either laserguided missile or a gps- guided bomb. very small, very accurate. you kill the guy. very tempting to use. it is so accurate that it really -- it doesn't do much damage to things around the guy. there have been a few hundred civilians killed in the past few years in drone strikes at the unit -- that the united states is use. most of them haven't been -- because it missed its target -- most of them haven't in because it missed its target. it is because they got bad intelligence on who is in this house, or there were civilians that were in the same room. for president or a commander who has just fought two big wars in

iraq and afghanistan, where 6000 people die, 16,000 people -- i'm talking about u.s. soldiers -- 16,000 severely injured, it becomes very tempting to use that seems toapon get the job done without putting american servicemen and women in danger. host: fred kaplan is a longtime national security reporter. he is currently the "war columnist for slate magazine and he contributed to this latest edition of "mit technology review." john, you are first. democratic caller. caller: i thought i was a republican caller, but that's ok, no big deal.

mr. kaplan, i'm a retired air force pilot. i'm still quite involved in the theforce community through retirees at barksdale air force base. i think you overstate a little bit your comment about we who were broader pilots having a disdain for those who are drone pilots. ?uest: what plane did you fly caller: there are those pilots that still exist i also think that your timeline -- if you are talking about an offensive aapon drone, as opposed to drone -- i believe the quail drone back in the 1950s, and i was in a b-52, was a drone. guest: what was the range of that? i'm talking about -- you're right, you're absolutely right, less thingspilot like this, but i am talking about a drone, or as a college comedy unmanned aerial unmanned aerial vehicle, which has considerable range -- or as

they call it, the unmanned aerial vehicle, which has considerable range, which is armed, since my digital images through a command base halfway around the world and can be controlled -- it is controlled by someone sitting in that command base. in terms of that definition, which is how we commonly speak of drones now, that is been around for about 15 years. yeah.ind of plane -- host: hey, john, are you still there? caller: yes, ma'am. host: he wants to know what kind of plane used to fly. caller: half my career in the kc 31 tagger, and have my career in the kc 10 tanker in vietnam and the caribou. i was in strategic air command most of my time. that is why i was aware of the b-52s. i understand, that caveat, sir, you are absolutely right could the latter-day i would call it drone, the offensive weapon drone. the range, the technology paid i saw one of those things in

oshkosh and i was just amazed at the size of that predator drone. things aren't huge. but it was more of a matter of what you speak -- things are huge but it was more of a matter of what you speak with drones -- guest: i agree with you. as you probably know, the people involved in the program hate that word, "drone," niu used to refrain from using it. but it is in the lexicon and there's not much that can be done about it. host: steve wants to know about the technology. guest: oh, boy. you have hit it level of technology that i would have to go and look things up. the range -- i mean, it depends. these things can stay aloft between 24 and 48 hours. as you can imagine, the fuel consumption -- i don't have the

numbers, i'm sorry, but it is very light, because it is not carrying much. it is pretty much just -- you can see pictures online -- they are very narrow, very light. they are carrying only a digital camera, some communications gear, and in some places, very small, lightweight bombs. they can go for quite a distance. is allaid this stuff easily researchable but i'm afraid i don't have the exact numbers at the top of my head. host: no worries. we go to patricia in illinois, independent color -- independent clothing. think tank with the john thain catherine t macarthur i hate to be quarrelsome, but my ,nderstanding that the predator

or the prototype to the predator in the modern-day, as we think of it as the modern-day drone, was deployed in desert storm. --st: no caller: in the closable war. guest: nope. caller: well, forgive me, but i believe -- guest: it depends on what you define as a prototype. 1990-1990 onethe gulf war, where there was a lot of the ballyhoo over it, although there really weren't many of them, they were mainly laserguided missiles that were dropped from manned planes. cnn would show footage of missiles going right down the chimney over and over and over. it turns out that the smart bombs comprised only nine percent of the total bombs dropped in at more. -- trapped in that war.

at the time they were very expensive. the smart bomb dropped from a plane like that cost a quarter of a million dollars. the newest smart bombs cost , 20,000 dollars. the kinds of bombs that are put on drones. but in terms of unmanned aerial vehicles that were used as platforms for weapons, no, that did not take place in the gulf war. , fredquite a few tweets kaplan, responding to what you had to say earlier about civilian deaths. here is one. host: you cited in your piece some statistics put together by peter bergen of the new america foundation about casualties pray tell us about that. guest: right. well, again, the government

does not officially keep tallies on how many people are killed by these things. peter bergen, who is a very good journalist and researcher, has a team of researchers going through open data -- press reports, government reports, that sort of thing. and came up with some figures -- again, it is a range, but roughly 300, 320 people have been -- civilians -- have been periodby drones over the of time they have been used in pakistan and yemen. now, here is the interesting thing, and this is where we can start getting into some criticism of the program. on the one hand, given the number of drones that happened dropped and compared to other kinds of aerial attack weapons, this is a pretty small number. in the history of aerial warfare, you usually have about

4 civilians killed for every combatant. 1 civiliane about killed for every 10 commands. but here's the thing -- during most of the time, and what inspired a lot of the criticism of drones, is that they are being used in countries with which the united states is not at war. pakistan, yemen, somalia, places like this. droneis one thing for a to fall some place in the middle of the iraq war, in the middle of a war, where you are using it to kill sniper, and a few civilians get killed as a result, and i'm not meaning to minimize that, but i kind of thing happens in warfare, in wartime, in a war zone. a drone that comes out of the middle of nowhere striking something in a neighborhood in the people who live around this area don't even know that they are in a war zone, that becomes something

extraordinary. and the kinds of civilian casualties in a war theater might be said -- oh, that is low, not very many people -- suddenly becomes a very high number. for example, let's say that, i don't know, the mexican goingment, they are after drug dealers, dangerous drug dealers in texas or california, and they knew they were hiding out in some house in -- this is getting to be far- fetched, but some town on the border. they drop a drone on the house, at half a dozen american civilians are killed. half a dozen civilians. that doesn't sound like much. but hey, we are not in any war with mexico, we had nothing to do with this drug dealer you're going after. the american people and american president would be outraged by this. the same thing is true in pakistan. it is interesting, general

stanley mcchrystal, after he retired from the army for more -- or after he was booted out from the army for a variety of reasons, he used drones quite a lot as the head of special operations in iraq and the neighbor -- nato commander in afghanistan. he said in an interview with reuters news agency that, you know, this is really an arrogant to weapon. the drone inspires so much resentment from people in the countries where it is being used. in these kinds of wars, one thing we are trying to do is not just kill the enemy, but also affect the hearts and minds of the people. if the weapon you are using is, yes, ok, killing a few enemy fighters, but also really alienating hundreds or thousands of the people that you are really trying to influence, then it is really -- it becomes a counterproductive weapon. matt smith tweets in.

givesfred kaplan, what the president the power to strike alleged terrorists in countries that were not at -- that we are not at war with, and what conditions has he said? -- set? guest: well, there was something passed in 2001, a few days after the september 11 strikes, called the authorization for these of military force read this law is still in effect. it gives the president the authority to go after anybody who is associated with al qaeda or its affiliates, although there are some legal disputes over what its affiliates means, or anybody who might be planning future terrorist operations that would affect the united states, anywhere in the world. that is why the title of my freele is "the world as fire zone."

that is the legal basis under which president obama has ordered drone strikes. the thing that is controversial is that as the drones have evolved and as the use of drugs of accelerated -- as these drones has accelerated, we have been using the drones to attack and kill people who are not really -- certainly not al qaeda leaders, and in many cases, not even members of al qaeda. of, say, theers haqqani network in pakistan, which is an insurgent organization affiliated with the taliban, that its operations have been excluded -- but it is -- but it's operations have been included, have taken place only in pakistan and afghanistan. they have no reach globally, particularly into the united states. you know, the obama justice department has written legal toerpretations of the aumf

justify the use of these drones. inmuch of this is enmeshed secrecy. the military controls the use of .rones in war theaters the cia controls the use of drones in theaters that are not war zones. for example, pakistan, somalia, yemen. the current head of the cia has a desire to put this authority back in the military's hands, who -- where it would be in legal authority, but right now it is something that only a handful of lawmakers can have complete access to. , you know, a lot of the controversies and well-informed because so much of it is secret -- so much of the controversy isn't well-informed because a much of it is secret. i will said that even with the legal authority the obama administration is given to the use of these drones, the actual use of drugs is declining.

-- the actual use of drones is declining. the peak year, 2010, the united states dropped something like 110 weapons from drones in pakistan. this year so far it has been 13. it is going down. i think the president is taking a closer look, is controlling more of it himself, and we are getting a little bit -- we are getting a bit out of the drone fever, where it becomes so tempting to use this against a bad guy target where you do it without thinking of the long- term consequences. fred kaplan, just to clarify come here is a tweet from one of our viewers. guest: not always. the president sometimes does get involved.

usually when there is a situation where the identity of the target isn't known, and when civilians might be killed in the process, the president does actually get involved. -- sayse, the commanders that c.i.a. director or the secretary of defense, certain commanders have advanced authority to do this. it depends on the situation. but it is definitely true -- the .ilot is not in any danger now, some people have thought that, oh, this leads to a kind of videogame syndrome, where the pilot is sitting there just doing this senselessly. but studies have shown that these drone products go through some of the same levels of anxiety and weariness that regular pilots do. if you are and a 15 pilot right an f-15 pilotare

right now, you are flying in one of the great airplane government, having a lot of fun. this thing is not used in any war theater now. if you are a joystick piloting and a screen monitoring -- if you are a joystick pilots looking at a screen monitoring a drone, you are in thick of the action almost all the time. you are looking at the ground and seeing what is going on and you are doing this nonstop, several hours a day. and yeah, it is true, after that you get up and close the door and go home for dinner. it is a very weird, discombobulated thing. -- youll, you are doing are going through many of the ine emotions that a pilot the battlefield or even over the ground goes through. host: let me read from your piece about boat -- what goes into flying these drones. each drone flying on a combat

air patrol is supported by 43 service members rotating in three shifts, including seven joystick pilots, seven system operators, and five mission coordinators -- act via 66 person intelligence unit, including 18 intelligence and assist -- analysts, and 34 video crew members. two well-placed officials told me that the firm rule that a drone weapon will be fired unless the target is present is confirmed by at least two sources. for instance, spies on the ground and single intelligence or cellphone intercepts." let's go to john, democratic caller. go ahead. caller: all right. that was use of drones just intelligence, but not weapons on them, i thought was used in -- by the israeli tank units, because they had some trouble knowing what was ahead of them and they wanted to be .ble to see over hills and such is that true?

also, is there any usage of the drones to change into civilian type planes? guest: ah, well, the first question, i'm pretty sure that u.s. use in yugoslavia was the first time. israel does have quite a number of drones. drones, again, strictly reconnaissance drones, are used in many cities in the united states now by many police departments. now, you know, i think this is often overstated. people start talking about ,rones as black helicopters that they are going to start killing people with the drones in the streets. this just is not happening. they are sticking to reconnaissance. this idea that some people have -- oh, no, the government is going to start killing people with drones in the united states -- why do you have to? if you want to kill somebody in the united states you can shoot him with a gun. the reason why you use drones

in a place like yemen is that it is hard to get somebody to use a gun. i just want you, greta, say something about those numbers you were resetting about all the people involved. there is often this notion that these things are robots, that they are robots and pretty soon they are going to pick out the targets themselves and they are going to fire automatically and humans are going to be taken out of the entire operation. i suppose technologically this is true. but right now, and the whole command philosophy of the military is that the only unmanned think about the unmanned aerial vehicle is the aerial vehicle, the drone itself. there are lots and lots of people in every aspect of this operation. i see no trend pointing to an opposite direction. host: ok, cherry hill, new jersey, jeff, republican caller. caller: i had a question about to original drone programs

i worked in drone production in the early 1990s and and i thought that the u.s. navy had launchedr program, sometime in the mid-1980s, i guess. the other question i had was about the drones themselves on the authorizations. host governments, say, in yemen and pakistan, that the drone bases were there so there is some sort of thatcit authorization they can deny to their correlation and scream at the u.s. but at the same time have the benefit of cooperation with the u.s. in getting rid of some bad guys. guest: absolutely. i'm glad you raised that point. and by the way, you are seeing some of the same thing with this recent debate in europe over nsa surveillance, as if the government didn't know this is

going on, doesn't do much of the same thing themselves. but yeah, and pakistan, while the pakistani people are protesting americans, and the pakistani government is letting for from his reasons -- obvious reasons, the basis -- bases for most of these drones were inside pakistan. in yemen, the same thing. these strikes were authorized. now, once in a while -- when you see the pakistani or yemeni or whatever government really raising a stink over a particular drone strike, sometimes it happens that it was an unauthorized drone strike, and it was a brief period when these bases were shut down, but then very quietly they were open back up. you arehe navy drone talking about, it goes back to an earlier caller. there were drones in the sense of unmanned vehicles which went out in a certain radius to that

footage. but it is not the same kind of drone that we are talking about today. very different animal. host: john on twitter wants to know -- well, iraqi, afghanistan, pakistan, yemen, somalia -- i think that is about it. i might've missed one. we've been using at least reconnaissance films over mali and several other countries. host: another tweak here -- tweet here. very: well, that is a interesting question. some people think it is. now, targeting civilians, that is the issue. you can target -- that is, a ate weapon -- a mere weapon someone who you think is a combatant by definition of whoever you want to make a

combatant. isturns out that a civilian in the room and that person gets killed, two. is that a war crime? i don't know. there are serious lawyers, and i don't mean diehard critics of the drone program, who think that a lot of the drone strikes that the united states has somalia,n pakistan or countries where we are not at war, whether or not it is with the collusion of the host government, is illegal. -- youd assassinations know, technically that is against u.s. and international law. they have had to manipulate -- as i said, the authorization for the use of military force act -- to get around prohibitions on targeted assassinations. yeah, it is a very interesting legal question. anytime this has come to the attention of the courts, the

courts tend to side with the government when it comes to national security issues. e the keeping national security secrets secret -- either keeping national security secrets secret or justifying government actions on the basis of national security. it really hasn't gotten a full test in the courts. guest: well, no he didn't, really. obama campaigned against the iraq war but he said "i'm not against war, i'm against dumb wars." he campaigned for getting in deeper into afghanistan. he said this explicitly. he said we need to withdraw troops from iraq and we need to send some of them to reinforce what is going on in of -- in afghanistan. he didn't campaign one way or the other on drones.

, there is a lot of people who have come up with mythical ideas of what obama did and did not campaign on. but he didn't campaign against drones. host: let's go to margaret next trad. thanks for waiting, margaret. caller: thanks for c-span. i just want to say, you can read 2 books on that one is " area 51," that kind of tells you when this all started, and the other is jeremy scal -- -- wars."scahill's "dirty what are we going to do in other countries do the same thing to us, and where do our privacy rights go? host: fred kaplan? guest: on the first issue, this

is a serious issue. armed monopolies usually don't last long. armed competitions usually overwhelm monopolies. we have an advantage of being a long way from most of the people or countries that would want to do harm to us, although we found out on september 11, since only- that is goes so far. a lot of countries can get drones. it is a little harder to have drones that go a long ways. it is harder still to put satellites up in space that you can beam the signals and the communications back to the base that you need, yeah, this is going to happen at some point. the second question in terms of privacy overhe