online campaigns. campaigning in general, how to get people involved. but creating up portal and text that people want to share on facebook. creating news and uploading videos on youtube. that area of social activism has not been tapped into. there is a lot of potential considering how many young people use facebook. but the internet is limited. where it is available, facebook tends to be the most popular >> i think we have time for one more question. if not, i threaten to ask one myself area -- ask one myself. it's a general one to all of the panelists. if you had advice for the international community on how to more effectively support the democratic transition in libya, whether it is through increased engagement with civil society or

one of the things the libya working group has been thinking about or other means, what would that advice be? i would go back to the remarks i made at the very beginning. requires a real investment shifting away from working project to project and finding a way to couple when we are doing these projects, spending a lot of time mentoring and providing technical support to build the institution. >> i would say two things. the first is to take it easy on libya. everybody, considering the history of libya and the circumstances, i do think they are holding it together quite well. as news comes out of everything that is occurring, it really is

to be expected. it is an institutional void. very limited education on how moxie works, a very un-empowered people in the sense that there are ways for someone else to come in and build the country or create the change. in the process of empowering citizens, creating armiestions, creating and a police force, creating a healthcare system, an education totem, and i think we tend look at progress waste on a four-year term. to put this on my resume or not? question is are you interested in long-term success for libya or are you interested in headlines?

buildingon institution and focusing on education, because we are going to rely on a generation from now to be able to create the libya we are dreaming of today. >> i will say libya should be considered by international players, be it government or international players, it is a win/win situation. in whicha situation you have a state. it's not that strong. it is week. effortssituation where are being given to libyan society and all technical sides, libya could be a model of the

wise, it and security is north africa's gate to europe. europe is considering it one of the major gates of security. even the security should be considered, this is a place to invest heavily and thank god it's not investing in money because libya has sources. the technology, the knowledge, the know-how is needed there from civil society to the running of the security to the running of the government. it is needed and i think there should be a strategic decision to the libya get messages and today. >> i would like to thank everyone for very insightful remarks on the direction of libya today on how the

international community can engage. please join me in thanking all of our panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] http://twitter.com/cspanwj 5:00ming up at about eastern on c-span, we will bring -- we willcheon on bring you a discussion on immigration. here is a preview of the event hosted last month at the george w. bush institute last month. these are just

rough numbers, about a million new jobs in the state of texas in the last five years. roughly a million lost jobs in california. that is amazing. points is what we are seeing right now is one of the great wealth transfers in american history geographically from states like california that don't get it right, my home state of illinois that don't get it right and states that do get it right like texas. this is one reason to be bullish on the future of texas. the interesting thing is texas and california are the two highest immigration states. the tax system is a much better job of economically assimilating immigrants so they are successful here. tell a foreign more of a welfare invites immigrants and the welfare system at a much higher pace than texas does. people come to texas, in my opinion, for jobs.

people come to california for welfare grade i think you see the differing economic outcomes as a result. texas is the model other states should be emulating. see that entire event coming up today at 5:00 eastern. live at 7:00, c-span will host a town hall looking at immigration and the economy. the senate passed a measure back in june and health committees have considered adulation but nothing has come to the floor. a reporter from the "national journal was quote will be taking questions and you can join the question on facebook and twitter. minutes, tv, print and online editors will take part in a discussion on how they cover politics as part of an annual conference hosted by the association for education in journalism and mass indication. you will see that at 1:30 on c-

span. right now, look at the drug enforcement administration. we will show you as much of this as we can until our live program starts at 1:30. host: joining us now is john shiffman and has had a series of stories looking at intelligence gathered taking place within the drug enforcement agency. tell us about this program. what did you discover? guest: i worked with my colleague and we found the dea program that has been public for many years called the special operations division located in virginia. but a lot of what they do is public and coordinating international cases like the case against the russian arms broker, they also had a part of special operations that they did not publicize at all. they take tips from intelligence

agencies, from informants, foreign governments, domestic wiretaps, and a large database which is different than they nsa record and that pass them along to agents in the field. while this is perfectly acceptable, probably acceptable, to pass along the tips, what happens next raises questions. the agency has been instructed to create something called parallel construction. that is once they make a case, they act as if they never got the information. they might get a tip that a drug dealer will be in a certain place at a certain time. when an agent will follow a car and, they will make a pre textual traffic stop. they will find drugs inside but

the only reason they need to follow the car is from the tip. the agents and the police and the field must recreate their investigative reports. they are supposed to leave out any trace that they got this tip from special operations. the problem with that say some critics is that that means the defendant will not have access to certain information that is part of their constitutional right to a fair trial. host: when it comes up in court, how is it explained by the agents? guest: the agent might be asked how this investigation started. reports are written that the investigation started when i noticed this car made an unsafe lane change or the person was acting suspiciously and they pulled over. the truth of the matter is they need to target that person because there had been either an

ns ina to set, a tip from a foreign government or an informant or some other reason there were passed along with this information from the special operations division of dea. host: we will take your calls on this. this special operations division if you want to ask questions about how it works, etc, here is your chance to do so -- you can also send us a tweet - you can also send us an e-mail. just to get this straight -- essentially, you say the officers to conduct these cases with information have to go back and treat it like they picked up

this tip on their own? guest: that's what they're supposed to say. we published another story today going back through some of -- our database. we found instructions for irs agents to do the same thing from the information they get from the dea. all the information agencies are partners with special operations division. all of these agencies are receiving information. the big ones are the irs, fbi, ice, and the d a. host: are all these agencies passing on information?

guest: it works both ways one of the reasons the dea says this is legal is because they do it every day. defense attorneys and former judges and a couple prosecutors tell us it should not be. they pass that along. it works both waysthe dea is part of the connect the dots intelligence sharing that should happen post-9/11. host: we will take some calls, alabama, republican line. we are talking about the special operations division in the dea. good morning. he has left us. as far as the size and scope of the division itself, it is a sense of what kind of information they hold and how much and if there are rules as

to how long they hold on to this information. guest: one thing the special operations division has is a database called dice. that is one with a coordinate and send information out nationally. it is an acronym. seems to change a little. i cannot recall what the current iteration is. we have a lot of acronyms and washington. it is a database that is different from the nsa database because it includes information collected lawfully from search warrants and subpoenas andsays the dea. if they are investigating you for drugs and they did a subpoena and got your phone records, the numbers you've dialed and the numbers you dial you would be in that database. if they are investigating me, they would do the same thing.

it would not be the contents of the call but they metadata, ever is on your phone bill. then they will put -- they will do that for every drug case in the united states and take that information and put it into the database. a guy across the border was caught with $100,000 and would not say anything. inside his fund, they found four numbers and ran the numbers and it popped up with another case in the southeastern united states. they were able to put together a money-laundering and drug case together. the problem comes when these cases go to trial. it is complicated but and the defendant that goes to trial has a right to see any evidence that might be helpful or relevant to his case.

defense attorneys say by systematically exporting informational like the connections made by the dice database or other wiretaps, it is unconstitutional to show -- to say we will not shared that information. host: this information came from a shoe leather type investigations? guest: for example, if the nsa intercepts information on a couple of kilos of marijuana on a boat, the nsa does not sit on the information. they pass it onto the dea or passes on to someone else to make an arrest. if they make the arrest, when they make the arrest, the boat might be said to be moving too fast in navigational waters.

they come up with a reason to board the ship. they cannot act like they got lucky. it is just dishonest. if there are several people on the boat like people who really have nothing to do with drugs, children, wives, spouses or whatever, the information that the nsa wiretap -- there may be information if the defense lawyers can dig into that that may be relevant to show innocence and all sorts of things. the system precludes this. host: from our independent line, good morning. caller: good morning, i am very

much against violations of our rights by using the fear tactics. our country should be competent enough to keep us from harm without violating our civil rights. if this can happen to me, it can i had land inbody. escrow that turned out to be valuable. [indiscernible] my cases were expunged before they were dismissed and when i discovered the parties involved in the case, they got more defensive. host: ok, thanks for the call. i want to show you a tweet that

says this is a total bypass of the world's a probable cause. guest: when issues probable cause and the other issue is discovering in which the government turns over relevant evidence to the defense. in terms of probable cause, i was surprised to learn -- i have been covering law enforcement for a long time and wrote a book with an fbi agent and never heard anything like this, and i know plenty of people at the dea and fbi and irs and they are honest. my mom worked at the irs for a long time. i was surprised to learn that making a pretextual stop is -- you know, the supreme court law as it stands now is sustainable to the police in that manner.

it surprised me and a lot of people. what outrages the prosecutors and former judges and defense lawyers is the issue of discovery and turning over the information that might be helpful. when i met with the dea, they said they did this scrupulously. there was the ted stevens case, senator ted stevens of alaska, and his charges were thrown out after it was confirmed by the judge that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence, discovery evidence. so the dea told me that the doj had review of all discovery procedures and that this procedure was reviewed. i asked at the dea for a copy of their review and the paperwork but they declined to make it available. host: watertown, tennessee, republican line.

caller: first of all, thank you for your work in this area. there needs to be more reporters like you doing this sort of thing. i will speak to what i saw with my own two eyes. in the early 1990's i was a military pilot, and we were involved in the drug war. we had a systemic violation of rules, and that is that the military found alleged drug runners and tracked them, and when it came time for trial, customs agent or dea agent would show up and testify that it was then that started the case and all the stuff they saw, you know, a to b on the case, but the fact is it was all u.s. military personnel and equipment. i/o is thought that was not

right. -- i always thought that was not right. but that is the system and it might still be going on. guest: that is interesting. i talked to a couple people like yourself who were in the military and involved in this. i think it is really something to explore. the military is authorized in the drug war in the 1990's, to, throughout central america, get involved, and you see through some of the wikileaks cables how closely the dea and the latin american government worked together. "new york times" did a story on that about a year ago. the relationship between the military and the dea goes back probably before the dea was even created, going back to vietnam and some of the things the intelligence community was doing

related to drugs. i wonder what is happening today. host: the dea saying that drug cartels are linked to terrorists. guest: i do not think it is in the secret, you know, when they testify on the hill about the special operations division, it is one part of the special operations division. when the dea talks about the special operations division, has press conferences -- not at their headquarters necessarily, but they are talking about some very important in nature cases. there is no question that drugs are an international issue, drug importation. but what we are focusing on here are cases that remain inside the united states against americans,

but also foreigners who were arrested here inside the united states. it is one thing to use the intelligence, i think, being overseas in africa or central america am a afghanistan and pakistan sort of the primary areas -- and the dea is in i think 80 countries or something around the world. they have a larger presence overseas than the fbi, which is understandable because drugs cross borders and that is part of the whole economic makeup. host: why not just say i got the information from the s.o.d.? guest: that is a really good question. the dea says it needs to protect their sources and methods. there is a process for classified information already, and they're his -- there is also a process for in form and information. there is the classified information procedures act and then of course the fisa procedures.

what is interesting is in both of those cases, the government filed a public notice. it is just a page or two and says we intend to use fisa evidence or we have fisa evidence in this case. same thing with the classified information procedures act. defense lawyers said, why can't we use that for this? there may be a case or two where they do that. it is really hard to tell because it is classified. host: republicans can call in at 202-585-3881. democrats, 202-585-3880. independents, 202-585-3882. caller: this is part of the total information awareness act. we have got different secretive

agencies. let's get to the bone of this. when you have a government that dictates what you can and cannot put into your own body, by the very definition, you're living under a tear any. that is what we have here. what we looking at is the dea -- they manage is called recently military in conjunction with police action. we now have a police state. and john gotti and the mob, it is like the drug trade. we are not in the drug trade. we cannot compete with the government. guest: it is interesting, a lot of people are talking -- when they hear about this, they think about 9/11 and all the changes that were made after the 9/11

attacks. this procedure, this process that the s.o.d. has been doing was in place before 9/11. it was in place in the late 1990's. my colleague and i spoke with agents stretching from the early 1990's to present day who say this process was long and play before 9/11, and it is not the parallel construction or the legal aspects of whether this was ok to do, but in the 9/11 report, there is the document that talks about with the dea has been doing for a long time in terms of intelligence- sharing. so this is not something we just decided to do after 9/11. this has been going on for 20 years. host: does this program get review by the justice department? guest: right now the justice department is reviewing -- after

our board on monday, the white house said the justice department is reviewing the procedures. mike rogers, the head of the intelligence committee, said -- he is a former fbi agent, he said he needs to get out the facts and understands why the dea needs to operate internationally and to interact interact with the nsa. but he was on a show and said that they are re-creating investigations in parallel constructions is a new concept and he is comfortable with it. a couple other people on the hill have also commented on it, including senator rand paul. host: john shiffman of reuters is joining us. let's take a call. caller: good morning. let me ask a question. i am listening to your comments and you said you have extensive writing about criminal justice issues.

i do not have a criminal justice background, but just from my casual reading of events for the last couple of years, why is it, in your opinion, that the government is allowed, even from the local detectives to now the dea, to lie and mislead when they deal with suspects? the government gets away with things that the person who is underscoring the cannot it away with. i will take the answer off the phone. guest: well, i think it is interesting, a lot of people think that the police should not lie or that they should be honest all the time. i mean, it would be almost impossible to catch many people in the act. the supreme court has said that the police can be deceptive in terms of their dealings with criminals, especially when they go undercover.

i will say that one of the least understood aspects of law is that it is a crime to do this to a federal agent. in reverse, you can do this -- you can go to jail for up to a year. there are some people that are not just lying to the grand jury in a formal setting but on phone calls and straight up interviews when the fbi comes to your house. if you lie to the agent during that interview, then it is a felony. host: wisconsin, you're up next, -- >> will leave this program and product -- and go to this program hosted by the association for education in journalism and mass medication. >> i'm dr. jane singer, vice chair of the aj stanley committee on professional freedom and responsibility. our chair is also here with us. panel, sonsoring this

it is a special session. a quick plug that more politics are on tap tomorrow. we are also giving our first amendment award this year to the first amendment center based in nashville area that's going to be a great program tomorrow during the plenary time spot. if you have nothing else to do, please come to that. this veryg to do informally and just ask some questions and bounce around some answers and panelists are going to share their thoughts and we will open it up and i hope we have a great discussion. i know you have some good questions. i'm going to go in the order in which they are seated. first to my right is bill adair, the new professor of the practice of journalism and practice at duke university.

you probably know him better as , theounder of politfact fact checking site you know. a pulitzer prize winner for national reporting from a couple of years ago. , theis rachel smolkin current deputy manager at "politico." stories ofrseen the the killing of osama bin laden come of the president's reelection campaign and you may know her from her great work with the politics team at usa today and the managing editor of the american journalism review. pendry andhel is jen who is not on your program. originally we were going to have an al jazeera reporter here but she has gone over to the mainstream and is now working for cnn, making her ineligible for the panel. agreed to step in

and we appreciate that. she is the white house reporter for the huffington post and covers leadership on capitol hill. she joined huffington post a couple of years ago and spent years covering the legislative and executive wrenches of government for "rollcall." probably a walk in the park for her because she started covering the texas state legislature. again, stepping in for camille, so thank you for that. next to jen is john stanton who also has "rollcall" roots rate he is the chair of buzz feed here in washington. then smith, the editor described him as a reporter's reporter with being in his veins. he's a third-generation news man and it probably doesn't hurt he's a former bouncer as well. at the end of the table is alex mueller, currently with

"rollcall." he is currently the design editor, so he gives us a graphic perspective. ,e has a rounded graphics graphic design and journalism and web design and production. is current career niche making our legislatures look at least interesting online and in print. not sure we envy him that one. that's a great group and we are happy to have them here. i would ask you not to make any kind of hesitation. mercifully, none of them brought power points. i thought we just throw out some questions and jump in, panelists, jumped in with each other and we will talk about whatever you want to talk about. we want to hear your views on the washington post and the transitional state it is in now. but we want to say a little bit about how you do things differently. what do you do that different

from the way you cover politics and how do you define your role and how do you make it work in communicating to the public? go firstd be happy to and say we throughout the mold in terms of story form when we --when welitical act created politfact. the traditional news story, the pyramid, was not going to be the way we inform people about politics. we were going to do it through a different form of journalism and where the information was communicated both through an individual fact check article and also through the collective. go to michele bachmann's politfact page and you can see she has been checked sixtysomething times and 50 of those she has been rated false or hands-on fire.

so you learn something about michele bachmann to learn the collect of about her tells something as well as the individual articles. contact for our o theter, which tracks president's record, we decided we would create something new. >> we will go in order here. i work for will it go, and all politics of location, now politics and policies we have expanded little bit in the past couple of years and continue to expand. we are very much directed at being fast and smart and trying to think of the story that the post and the times might do the next day and we do it quicker and sooner. we have a traffic team of reporters and editors who work to make us look smart and we were directed very much at

influence makers inside the beltway and out. it has been a big shift for me because before i worked at politico, i was at usa today, which is a mass publication. including people who might not be familiar to politics. it has been a shift to the inside perspective and we want to be interesting and accessible, written in a way that is punchy and so we think a lot about tone and style and how to tell a compelling story. postwork at the huffington trade you probably all know what that is. if you go to the front page website, it's a screen of all kinds of issues all thrown up there together. to me, covering politics is great because we can take an issue that is in the daily grind

of news and do it a little differently. we have the ability to run a wire story to get the daily, this is what is happening today, and we can put that up and separately go do something related to it which is not probably the way someone else would report on it. for example, we've been focused on sequestration and the issue seems to have lost a lot of its wow factor and power in this town. it's not something you hear that much about anymore except for side comments. something we have done that has been done for me and unique to what we can do is we have focused on the subject and try to write on it all a time. we focus on janitors and we talk to families in tennessee who are struggling because their kids are cut out and they don't know how they are going to get by everyday. it's related to the daily news grind, but i like to

think of it as you kind of broader policyo issues all the time in this town. for me, that's one of the things i feel makes huffington different from political reporting. >> buzz feed is aimed at the 18 to 40 or so, a pretty broad range of people. the thingm rollcall, i found interesting is we have two things -- we focus on telling the stories in a way that will be viral. we consider twitter to be our front page or facebook, we consider our readers to be our front page. requires us to find ways to explain stories inside the beltway, congressional stories

that your average person may not understand or have any real reason to care. we have to find ways to tell them those stories and it's been interesting. we don't write stories about commodity news kinds of stuff. explicatefind ways to those stories in a different matter. interesting things people are saying or doing as a way to tell these stories. it's a general news and entertainment site which is very different than politico or rollcall. it's sort of the opposite way of going big to small and now you tell peoplea way to who eric cantor is and why you should care about the fact that he and john boehner are having a fight today.

the interesting thing, but we are sort of trying to use social media as a way to broaden people's awareness of politics. >> our bread and butter at rollcall has been focusing on the stories that affect capitol hill and the community in general grade we been doing that since 1955, so we build relationships on the hill. we look at rotter issues like piggybacking off sequestration, but we also narrow it down to focus on how it affects the capitol hill community and things like weight times to get into the visitor center and things like that. are broadening our web presence right now and doing a good job of that. we are always focusing on the stories that most affect the people who live and work in capitol hill.

>> you talk about the audience and we have done that as we go along. do you find you're using different kinds of sources than you use in traditional media? gap youou bridge that are referring to of we are we needhe beltway, but to help people who are not inside the beltway understand why this matters to them. does that affect your sourcing? >> we are very conscious of what people are talking about on reddit,come a facebook, and sites like that. if we see something pop up, we will report on it. after the trayvon martin verdict came out, for and since, there was an acknowledgment among white people that there was a thing that got termed black twitter.

did a story on black twitter and the power the black communities found in using twitter as a way to communicate things to each other and the broader national audience. those kinds of things happen in other areas. we used it to look at things like the election and people talked about a particular story or video someone put on youtube of a townhall, let's say or something like that great we definitely use it as a source, but we are still trying to have these very traditional notions of being a reporter in this new world. staff,talking to members, the interest groups and people outside of the beltway it is a new tool to find out what people are interested in in a way to investigate the things

they might already have prayed >> not just the use of social toia sites, but since moving getting from usa today, people who are in the room, , if there is acy leadership fight some of these are abstract examples that all happen and we want to talk to lawmakers in the room and we want as much detail as we can possibly give. we did that at usa today but we were more likely to rely on a professor who could tell you and overview,mics we want to get to the action as close as we can as consistently as possible. , our the case of politfact rule is when reporters have

defined original sources, it's not enough to renew a story that for thisnd so voted bill, we require the reporters to actually go to the rollcall vote and look at the original rollcall vote. we put a heavy emphasis on original reporting, unlike some of the other panelists. as metabolism isn't quite feverish. thorough fact check. sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it takes a little longer. our goal is to take a political claim and check it and be as thorough about it as we can and doing so to rely on original more than secondhand sources. we have a lot of flexibility to decide on the way we want to do our coverage. can is fun for me is we

walk into the senate press area, i can walk up to marco rubio and ask how we are supporting the immigration bill and how this is upsetting people on the far right. this is like our tried and true can walk outside and there's a huge rally outside the tea party happening outside the capital and a colleague and i spent the afternoon talking about what we think about marco rubio's role in the debate. do they hate him now? by and large they were unhappy. you probably can imagine what the responses were. those were separate stories that addressed the fight from a different perspective and from a sourcing standpoint, some of my

favorite stories are talking to people struggling with the kinds talked up int get this town and feel like they lose meaning, but when you talk about people not in the bubble here, you can get some great stories. they are real people and i think huffington has been really good , not justurcing people in the bubble, but they've got millions of sources. why not talk about them? timewouldn't let too much to buy without asking what's happening this week at the "washington post was quote and how you might think they will change. andg bought by jeff acis someone who is very much into audiences and engaging audiences and serving audiences, will they change or will it be a different kind of competition for you or

player in washington? will it role?ue the >> i think it is inevitable they will change. i think bezos has shown as jim brady put it, head of the digital first media, that he was able to see the future and build amazon before people knew they wanted to order things online. that is what has been needed in journalism, somebody who can envision the ways people are going to want information a few years down the road. i think it is a great thing for the post and i know there are a lot of people who are apprehensive about it some but i think he said all the right things. the letter to the employees of the post was pitch perfect in

terms of the balance between his commitment to the great journalism the post has always done, but 20 of clues for futurists who wanted to see what he is going to do. invented almost internet commerce. so much of internet commerce has been affected by what amazon did and i think he could have the same role at the post. i think it's a very positive thing. >> one of our editors made the washington post subscription with every candle sold. it's a lame joke but if you howk about it, you wonder that is going to affect others and how that's going to affect local news coverage because the local news has been incredible at covering the d.c. reach and you have to wonder how they are going to evolve in the upcoming years with the new mindset of

digital first. up readingal growing the post, i'm a little apprehensive. i think the post for a very long time seemed their core audience was not people in the city but sort of an upper economic group. they have started to change and have a great columnist is a fantastic writer. move little concerned that toward a more focused within the city, focused on a younger demographic may or may not be helped or hurt by that. but i think there is a utility for families who live in those cities. who lives indy

california or wherever he lives and whose mind is not about local at all. some reservations about what it will mean for coverage of crime and life in washington and even sports in washington. tothey continue to be to go place to read about the redskins or the nationals? does it become a bigger focus? these are questions that are not going to be answered for months, if not years as a result of this sale. , i do believed the post has been struggling a all the big newspapers have been struggling with such aomebody creative online commerce can help create a new renaissance for the post and all of the old guard newspapers, which is very

important. . don't think they should die i think they play a very important role in our society. institutes that hold what journalism should be on all levels and the beats of journalism. if someone can come in and find come in andem to find a place within the new digital environment, that will be great. much to add.ve i also grew up around here and i have friends who worked there people are kind of excited. people have to change. we don't know how long it will take to show what's going to happen, but something had to give. we will see what happens.

>> i think it's hard to say how seismic this feels in the industry and the graham family has been such a wonderful store of journalism and their names are synonymous with watergate and the pentagon papers and the kind of journalism that inspired a generation to come. dramatic feels like a turn in the industry representative of the time we live in. around what built our publications do differently than traditional journalism and this is a sign there is no more traditional journalism in the sense we are used to thinking about there is not web versus friend anymore because we live in a digital age and you have to think about good journalism delivered to people in a way they can absorb it and get excited about it in a way that they wanted. for big metropolitan papers like the "washington post" and the

"boston globe" and others that in the newspaper facing circulation decline and pressures, on profitability, they have to find a way to thrive in the new space if they are going to remain viable. we all watch the post and want to see it produce the excellent journalism they have for so many years but at the same time, there is a need to transform for them to succeed in the new world. the question i will have watching them move forward is it's easier to come into a wholly new space and create something from scratch that is to take a existing institution with proud traditions and an entrenched uropathy and figure out how to make that move into a new space. that will be an interesting process for them.

>> it will be interesting. they are coming from a very different place and dealing with a long-standing institution. mentionedyou have all going along the line here is getting people outside the beltway to care and see how sequestration matters to them. what if we could go deeper than that and offer some examples of things you have done that have worked really well in engaging your audience. how do you do that and what do you do with that feedback and how do you use it moving forward? becauseestled with this there had been some fact checking before. i'll a cell like it wasn't your vegetables herbalism.

if you are in a newsroom, has to be done before an election. somebody do a story on the candidates decision on education story andhey write a hardly anybody reads it because it's not appealing to people. theame up with the idea of truthometer. we go out and do in-depth research and get together and have a methodology for this and come up with a rating. eventw it is very affect doing this because it drives people crazy. go bonkers about our ratings and the wonderful thing is, as they are talking about our ratings, they are having substantive discussions about policy which i guarantee is not happening with the long 20 inch fact check.

you may not agree with our rating on any particular claim, thathe great saying is it's giving you a snapshot of our work and our best judgment of what the relative truth of it is and you can disagree. i think that is what is needed and one of the problems as we made the transition into the expectationis this that the old construct a easier vegetables will work, and i just don't think they will. >> that's a terrific point great we all spend time thinking of how to make journalism interesting and engaging. we're way past the world where how can involve today and we can expect anybody to care about it erie it we've talked a lot about how to punch through. you probably all heard driving politico drives

so much. talk about ways to measure if you are reaching your audience and what we do look at, is it being talked about by lawmakers and policymakers and hopefully in a respectful manner but we do use that as a measure. sometimes it's a committee publication, all of those measures we look at on debateinside the fiscal to the talks we do so many of and do them very well and we cover all aspects that there will be delays or employers on the obamacare mandate trade we did that for many topics and as we expand into more policy

areas, are we looking at the best way to meld them with the core mission of e as well -- .ission of politico as well >> the huffington post has always prized itself on engaging with the communities. with blogs on the site and have very engaging comment sections for most of the stories. engaging is a euphemism for something else. there is a lot of interaction with the non-mobile community. ,ne thing that's a real success when the senate voted down the background checks bill, there was an outcry and a lot of people couldn't believe it who don't live in bc and don't follow politics a by day. backgroundpass a checks bill? we of our projects was

clicked something on the site that said if you have a personal story about being affected by gun violence, send it in. here is a phone number. call and leave a message. we got hundreds of people who called. thatny people had stories were horrible. all personal stories of losing a friend, son, daughter -- people that were killed and gun violence. a bigger response than i would have expected. one of my colleagues went through and found a dozen of the stories that were project really compelling. us their names and where they lived. huge splash on the front page. it was like 10 images on the front of the page that were just

people. it was just people who have been affected by gun violence and really sad ways. when you hovered your cursor over one of their faces, it would take you directly to their story. you could hear it. you could hear the audio. you could hear their voices shake. morehen they would get worked up as they were talking. that was one of our proudest moments, because it is directly engaging the public on the issue that infuriated some of the people and letting the people tell the story that resonates much more broadly than the failed bill in the senate. that is the kind of thing that huffington has been very good at doing, telling people to tell stories that in return d.c. has

to read about. it connects to world in one way. worlds in one way. >> in mid-december during the fiscal cliff fight, i originally read a story about how members were not feeling that much pressure, which is a very traditional motion. that interest in politics drops of red after the election. we went in and looked at the data from the web sites. i compared the point in the fight with that with the debt ceiling fight in 2011. the thing we found is more people were reading stories about the fiscal cliff at that exact point in that debate than they were in 2011, despite the fact that they had just gone through grueling election where no one wanted to talk about

politics. it was right before christmas. that thereprised were not many people. i think it is indicative of a thet that is going on in public. i do think people are more engaged in politics than they have been in a few years. probably because they're frustrated. partly because they are able to see the people they see with and agree with and that keeps them more engaged. becomehts right now these life-and-death sort of deals. that gives me a lot of hope that we're finding a white, even if we do not understand how we're doing, it, people and keep them engaged with what is going on. i think one of the things that we try to do that helps with that is to try to find ways to make things a little bit more

personal. a lota story that has had of traffic to illustrate this. that wasof mine working for the defense department as a contractor and the sequester started, and he was your average american, lots of credit card debt, the house, divorced and had kids. he took a new job here thinking it would help him get ahead and anda handle on the finances then the sequester hits. it sounds like a 2 percent cut, but it can be 20 percent of your pay in some cases. that reality forced him to reenlist in the military. they go year without having to pay taxes and they get all these benefits by putting yourself in

danger of dying. and a lot oftory people read this, an average american being forced into this terrible decision because of sequester. the other one that i think that very well that illustrates this is we did a story about the chief justice for fis the court. one of the highest-ranking black judges in the united states. we found this great essay he had done about being racially profiled and what that meant for a justice and how he viewed the legal system. we just broke the spirit and this is a guy in charge of one of the most powerful courts in the world. a lot of people read it. an interesting way to look at the debate.

i think it puts a human face on this otherwise impenetrable government bureaucracy. no one understands exactly. >> i agree with john when he says people have been more plugged into politics than they ever have been here yet that is in part due to media analyst covering politics on capitol hill. sort of what you see is people are only going places that reinforce their already held opinions. it is important to provide an independent look at what is going on.

simplified enough for the common person but still the ones be enough that you are not boiling it down to something where we're not getting anything out of it. talking about roll-call does the 50 richest list which looks at lawmaker wealth on capitol hill. we just revamped its this year to create this fantastic online database. when you talk about the fat cats in washington, now you can see easily just how fast those cats are. conversely, we also read about the least rich lawmakers. some people who are not worth anything actually owe money. it is an interesting snapshot of who is making the decisions that affect you every day. you can look and see a lot of the people who have been on

capitol hill the long this are the richest,, reject what committee they said on and how well changes from year to year. what sort of assets their money is wrapped up in. you are providing this fantastic resources for people to look at their own lawmakers and see exactly how much money this you canas and whether make your own call on whether that affects the decision making. resource to learn information about the lawmaker. that is the sort of resources and reporting that we pride ourselves on. and >> i remember joe biden always came in dead last. least rich on capitol hill. made $200 on his book last

year. [laughter] >> i know everyone has questions. each team has worked somewhere else. some of you have worked in more traditional places compared to where you are now. can you tell us how that is different for you personally, what you feel has been a change for you perhaps in moving into the work you are doing now. we're also interested in how you help students prepare for this environment where there are all of these opportunities. what do they need to know to take a vantage of opportunities that are out there? i think they need to learn how to code.

as someone who has worked for a newspaper for 24 years, the last six of that running p oliticfact. i am struck by the tremendous opportunity for opportune it -- opportunity for students that can understand the fundamental of journalism and understand understandience, on htm html and want to take the curiosity of record a list and put it to work on the web. >> i will push back a little bit on that from my own interest and say i do not know -- do not care if they know how to code. i want to find students who are smart and curious. i was on a panel and talking to students in st. i think curiosity is the most important

factor. i want to see the wheels in their mind returning all the time. we finish a moderator says are there any questions? a whole group just sits there and look at us. someone asked as a question. question. i think we get so focused on social media and the bag of tricks we forget that journalism in the most fundamental way has not changed. you still have to be able to ask the smart questions and do this more reporting and be able to write a story that it's interesting, coherent and draws people in. i see young journalist be too reliant on the new tools. could email my source or send them direct message.

of office to get out and have coffee with them and look in their eyes. many new tricks of the trade, that is wonderful, but not at the expense of the most important things that we do. fifth >> i have to completely agree. i asked for questions and it is silent. one of the first questions i have gotten is is it worth it to get into journalism? there will kick off all of the hits the industry has taken and it is depressing. you do not make a lot of money. other than that, it is great. it is a great job. the teachers to organize the class suggested they should not

go into it. i am like what are you doing? no names. are you interested? are you curious? happening inething your community that does not seem fair or right? someone disempowered that seems stomp all over by people of power. basic questions like that that need to be told because that is how it works. i have a friend who told me once that he loves his job so much because the only job in the world where your actual -- your actual job is to tell the truth. at the end of the day you are supposedly here to tell the truth. you cut through all and you tell the truth. put it up for everyone to see. good story, that it's like the best feeling in the world.

there are friends leaving jobs because of newspapers holdings and things like that, but it is the initial excitement of these that are wrong and telling people about it. that is our job. we look for people who are not necessarily i believe frederick to want to come to huffington and get into this world. we look for people that are created in want of different ideas because they are curious. that is the most important thing i would say. i would agree with all of you. to learn the coding and things like that is very important and you half of the course set of values. i would say if you could teach them how to run a lead is

awesome. my view of this is increasingly a lot of the kids i thesometimes, you read other stuff, everyone is cause quasi-nist logge-- columnist blogger. thate boys is something seems completely foreign to the millennial generation. we all had the idea of what was

a movie. did not understand that they built that movie off over originally very boring stuff. a local crime story no one wanted to cover. they built the store that way. now it is more and more like a notion of understanding. it is a weird thing. i think that is the thing i have noticed with younger reporters sometimes make it frustrated by pierre did they feel like they're not getting ahead as fast as they feel they should. that is a shame because a lot of them are very talented and maybe they have tempered their notion about what they will learn on the job, they would be better off for it.

i thinkame time, because of the 24 hour news cycle, because of twitter and facebook and the ability to push things out, they have an ability that i do not know that we had what i was 22 or 23 and wanted to work all day long, all night loan -- all night long and never complained about it. they just do not. that is an amazing thing. every reporter i know is more than willing to drop what they're doing on a sunday afternoon and spend three hours working on a story. that is a credit to them. think it is a born for young journalists to look for ways to evolve their storytelling, whether that is increasing the media or looking for ways, working with other people in the news from to create resources to complement your story.

i think you should have an idea of what coating is a you can work with someone else in the newsroom to create a package that shines and hesitates the .erm " -- go viral you could be writing the best story, most important story, but no one sees it -- there is a so much competition out there right now. it is always important to be looking at ways to make your product unique. as editors we oftentimes need to learn how to learn from them. that ise, but a world foreign to me. i remember when pages for a new thing. kids come up and they have had

laptops with wifi for a much their entire life. they do not know world without e-mail or all these things we did not know. i am constantly amazed, the reporters are work with that have a different way of seeing the world. different ideas about how to tell people what is going on in the world. i ams that i look at and like that is crazy. it has been an eye opener to work with the folks and my outlet because i have embraced twitter. i thought it was this silly thing. i really have learned it is a valuable way to talk to people. if you can write a good, solid lead on 140 characters, i think you are doing something very bright. it takes me refer to figure out how to write a tweet that is not

terribly misspelled and books right. they do it everywhere it was bleak. >> i would make one more point to piggyback on one of these comments. we've been talking about building a brand and the younger journalists seem to know instinctively. they are born with that in their dna. they note to do all of that, but i think there is a little bit that has been lost. paying your dues is still viable. there are some opportunities now for young journalist to cover congress, even the president before they have covered a zoning meeting in chester county, which is where i started out. thatnk that is something is important to emphasize. get ahead and take all the opportunities but did not miss the thing that you were when you

covered with it when you cover the school board hearing and the county planning meeting. you learn how to deal with people, not be afraid of sources when they're yelling at you and how to tell sources at top story is coming and things that will ultimately make you successful journalist. the feel like we're in don't take stage of the panel. kids today. i have more questions but we have such a nice audience. i will ask if your questions and also at the panelists at questions of each other. let me ask the panelists, is there anything others have said that you would like to follow up on? when you work creating

politifact what was the conversation around dealing with the fear that maybe you were watering things down or simplifying it enough that it was easy for the layperson to understand but not losing any of the details of the overall conversation and discussion. it started on a word document. from the beginning it was a meter. that gave us confidence this was not going to be seen too much. there was a willingness that

this thing was a going to revolve. there was a willingness to invent overtime. i have said this and other speeches in panels, the willingness of the management to stick with it. and stick with this and let us to invent it, recognizing there would be mistakes along the way and what ever. i think it is a really cool story of creation. and also a cool story of team work.

did the word who doc scutched but the staff filled in the blanks and made it work. talking about writing today. i have to teach writing to these kids. iknow how to do it, but notions were created in 1973. has there been a definite change in how the writing style should be? the rise of logs -- blogs cause the softening of writing. it caused a little bit of softening for a time where

people that went from being bloggers to reporters. the notion that you do not to talk to a bunch of people. does is great, but not exactly hard news and reporting. he has some opinions and read about it. a lot of people thought that was being a reporter, and it is not. there is a difference. now there is a shift back. it is tough to tell. when i was a kid, when i was a dumb reporter, i could not write my way out of a paperback. i spent hours being screamed at by my editor about how much of an idiot i was.

i learned and got beat up said the head about how to follow a lead. a little bit of it is the speed of journalism, a lot less of that. say theyften times will not spend the time to browbeat the reporter and explain why this is wrong, which does not do the reporter a whole lot of good. the need someone to say this is how you do it right and wrong. we get caught up in the speed of it and it does have an effect. as a reporter is incumbent upon them and on us to be much more careful with our riding, at least the top of the story. >> the matter of the medium, the pyramid is timeless. you are not dealing with linked

issues, space issues, but people leading the way. so if you have the attention span issues now. still important to get your best information at the top of the story. i have noticed the trend, mainly that some of them are pretty good writers and also pretty good reporters. we throw them in the capitol building like here is congress, a figure it out. you have to start somewhere and get screened out -- his grain at a lot. one thing i have notice from the

here and there stories i take a look at that the interns are doing, of some of them are great writers and really good reporters, but it is the lead. they seemed to vary the lead. you are like what? he said what? think maybe can help with that is for whenever my advice is worth, just talking through a story before you write it. ishink what sometimes there a pressure to write everything you have and try to make something up tops down created by you are missing the content. where is the nagging that is the news? is the news/at

? >> i absolutely agree with that. i do not want to hear any throat clearing at the start of the story. tell it quickly so i do not have to wade through to figure it out. i would much rather see someone who can write a good, strong news lead. we're talking here a lot about the style of writing, but the other thing i would say is accuracy is more important than ever. yes, you could fix your mistakes quickly but a lot easier to make a mistake because it is not let

me write this story and go up and eat lunch and have a talk with people and come back and fix it. you want it as accurate as possible the first time around. >> you did long form journalism. takeover politico is now launching a long-form journalism. i think the future of that is fantastic. i think the future is less great for journalism in the middle. more and moreorm, than ever. we're all talking about tellalism that can really us something that we do not know. a lot ofhere is exciting experimentation in the industry with how you translate it to the web. do you put it on a continuous green? how do you tell it best with video and promote -- formed

journalism on twitter and facebook and the other places you might do it. i think the future is extremely bright because we're looking for ways to set journalism apart from others and make a difference with our stores in think that is the best way to do it. >> i agree. of speedd long reads and has done extremely well. -- buzz feed. we did a long story about david lee roth's a couple months ago. it was fantastic. a lot of people read it. he reminded you of the old days sitting down with a magazine. part of that was there was this push on the internet to make everything fast, get it out first.

i think consumers of news are starting to shift back a little bit. they are saying there is 5000 of you and all of you are posting the exact same for sentences of a democrat at the same time. as editors we are saying i want more than that. i think the content over speed is driving this resurgence of long read journalism. i think it is very good. >> i agree with that. launching a long form initiative. for long formp pieces. they are specifically who want to read it on their candles or whatever. to me, it is repackaging the way

you present it. i feel very excited and hopeful for it. we do the really fast stuff all the time, but it is encouraging if we have ideas about long form pieces to go with it. we can work with the design team on certain pieces. we can have video that goes with it. not to distract you, but to put it all together that works where you are engaged with it. a field there is a lot of potential that has not been fully tapped. togo before we go on, i want mention design. are there things you do that and engage people with that kind of journalism? to video orack nt the storyo accept read a piece and

you can click to watch the interview with the individual or they have just set up a camera during the interview and you can watch that as an addendum to the store you just read. that provides a different aspect of what you're looking for. you can see reaction to the questions and get a real feel for what the actual conversation was like. it is important to provide images. whether you are reading the newspapers or journalism or person writing it, a lot of gray can be very daunting. interesting to see you are all launching -- read products

that are in a specialized location. you want people to know there is a place where they can go that they can read along the peace about something they might be interested in. with a they can sit down have a long commute and plan ahead because they see something interesting bit like instead of accepting a clicking on it, putting it away and saving it for later and forgetting about it. it is interesting to see how that has evolved. here, and then behind you. this lady here. >> could you talk a little bit more about how marketplace pressures affect the work your organization does? years ago there was a camel news hour. today there is more instances of advertising masquerading as

journalism. >> trying to get us in trouble. take a like sponsor contents -- >> likes bonds are content, that sort of thing? >> what challenges your organization has faced, and either keeping that at bay or trying to do something with it. differenta little bit than a lot of organizations because we do not have advertisement. we did not have banner advertisements, pop up advertisements, things like that. the advertisement done on our website is sponsored content. it is very much in line with how we do things.

because we do viral marketing. i do not know whole lot about it. and could be they are in a different part of the universe. i did not know if anyone does any advertising. that is how it is. i do not know. that is how we do it. i feel pretty separate from the people that make those decisions. i know when i see the pages, the story, there is an advertisement here or video advertisements here. i did not even notice them honestly. >> i think there is a very

strong desire to keep advertising separate from the work they do. every news room i have bitten is focused on the separation. that remains critical to the success of the business. having said that, i think there .s a little bit less there is the fear of i cannot think about business because i am on the editorial side. i do not think there is a greater level of comfort. i think editors and general crop -- across the business, papers probably interact more with the business side than they used to,

and as long as that does not integritye expense or of the journalism, it is necessary to keep it healthy. >> we would never elect the roll-call influence what we're reporting. we do have a web site run by a boeing. it is set off to the side and very of front about it not being at -- roll-call is not writing this story. it is material. they pay us to advertise on the web site. it has been well received in industry and a testament to the industry -- to the editor. the outlet saw this opportunity

and ran with it. i think we will probably start more blocks like that. it was a new way to build revenue for the product. the unfortunate reality is you have to do it somehow. decent content. politico is an interesting aspect. they also provide content as the political side. i do not think any standalone site is making enough advertisement to pay for the bill for reporters.

the news organizations do it because it is great content. fortunately, i think the little politifacts is viewed as a public service. we have gotten money from foundations. i think that is another avenue. >> a lot of people have questions. i think will -- we will ask the panelist one or two people to respond unless you really feel you need to respond.

i have a question about legitimacy and this may go more to huffington post. first of all, michael hastings .eath this delegitimized him in the journalism he did and what has been done. and then also, questioning of bread -- glenn greenwald and the david gregory questioning whether he is a journalist or not. strange today is we're still fighting the battles of who is a journalist and who is not and we are questioning people that are doing really good journalism.

how do you go against these areas of going against what she wants to say that day. >> people say that? --ode well, on the topic of >> well, on the topic of "the example times" it is an of what is not journalism and was terrible. so there is that. on the broader question, but people saying it is the content, i always point back to the 1930's and this trial of the silent movie star accused of murdering and having sex with an underage girl. it was on the front page of every single newspaper in the united states for like a year

and a half. it was the biggest story. during the depression. during the worst economic time in this country's history, this was a top story. we have created this motion in my mind that for some reason, journalism, there was a decade- long time of very serious news kardashian's back end was not something anybody read about and suddenly in the past decade it is all right about, and that is wrong. the history of the profession is both of those things -- both of those savings are talked about. they want to know what is going on with tim kerr-jan. if they want to know what is going on with sports teams, but they also want to know when a general is acting like a crazy person answering bad things about the commander in chief.

i have never understood the notion that those things cannot coexist together perfectly well, or the idea that there are that do thisalist other stuff. i have tried to write a story several times and very difficult to do. takes a lot of time and skill. you have to have an eye for what will make people want to read it and continue to read it. take out i read the top 20 things about growing up in the 1980's that was awesome. loved it. >> requires you to have a depth of knowledge and understanding of how to relate information to your reader. those are exactly what made a good journalist in any part of the business. so that is my take on it. >> i have thought about this,

and there is a difference between being between journalism and people -- things people want to talk about. to me, they are both valid. we have what is maile cyrus doing to her hair? she is almost all now. those things are there now. i am not sure you would call it journalism, but they are there. people want to talk about all kinds of stuff. to me, that is fair. it is the way it works. then there are stories that are next to the stories that are well reported pieces of journalism. it is the way it works of huffington. cyrus storey and kitcat pictures are like catnip. they come to the site of like clicking on them, but hopefully

while they are they're clicking on the fun things and our board at work and do not want to work anymore, they will notice this story next to a about the latest fight over closing abortion clinics in texas or something, a real substantive issue to be reported on. left their house and wrote a really good piece. that is journalism. to prettycomes down basic stuff. then there is journalism. does that mean they're not worth reading about? i think they're fine. i like those things. i read heavy stories and i like to look at the cutis cats born in 2012 but i also want to know what is going on in texas. if it is a well-reported peace, it is journalism. and it is a fun read.

not that hard to differentiate. i think it is great because this together. in the end, it is human interest. if you like those, 20 reasons why john stanton should be in the 20 most beautiful people in washington. i have a question about the archiving of your content. a lot of you are born digital and only think about digital. as someone who thinks about capturing content for the future, what, if anything, could you go back and get from years ago or that is continuing on in the next 10 years is someone going to be able to get content from today 10 years from now? >> that is a great and important

question. as someone who is moving on to academia, i cannot tell you how many broken links i have found in the past two-three weeks. it is so frustrating. when we created this, we said it was going to be as important for people to be able to look things up as it is for people to see the latest fact checks. there has been a commitment from the start to archiving. the commitment was that we would .lso give the content to nexis it is preserved in both places. you just want someone to put some energy at every news organization to go put energy into fixing the link.

some of these will time out. a news organization will say this could only be used for two weeks. is a really big issue. take a more and more organizations are posting their news library. what used to be the place responsible for collecting and archiving is gone and those functions have not been absorbed by other people in the news organizations. especially troubling for the born digital publications. is a great question. theoretically it should be on the internet. over and over.es as the news story developed throughout the day, we call it more times, depending on what

the news dictates and then switching to the analysis piece. i find myself more often telling editors let's start and won because i want to preserve the original story for the people looking for it -- start at new link. >> there is no protocol for that at news organizations. i am putting things on the new own shooting and trying to find the early news stories and they have all been written through. there is no protocol in journalism for how you do that? how to use signal to a reader that this is an old story. if you want to correct one, go to this. we have not sorted it out yet.

is something that is new, we will put up data of the top. the original version is not there anymore. that is definitely something we are very actively thinking through a minister right now. much do you discuss the finding your role and defining the presidential field for 2016? we hear about man -- grand paul and mark rubio. >> we just wrote about this today. this is actually it -- we have a debate about it all the time, almost every story. i feel like our reporters are very reluctant to become part of the cottage industry of the next

presidential election the day after the last one. we will stay with that. but, the reality is we all do it. i sank right now, i have been trying to not get too far ahead of ourselves end allowing us to interview the players. paul ryan is not doing anything to make it look like he is really running for president. i feel like he probably is, but he is keeping a lower profile than save and paul is. pretty good about keeping it to the limited. >> we start off about

implications for the buyout of the washington post. one of the things we've been able to do is whistle-blowers. let's say a word snowed and best friend comes forward. he believed he wants to blow the whistle on government mismanagement. how does your organization handle that if they want to come to you because you are not the washington post? >> we would handle it the same way. i think they have done a very good job of being good stewards of information. there are tons and tons of information. .ay more than anybody realizes said we're not want to use this for whatever reason, it will put someone in danger or whatever. i think they have done a much better job than some of the

legacy u.s. papers. the new york times has erred too much on the side of caution in some cases. i think there is a model of how to handle that frankly. in an era of citizen journalism, he chose to go through traditional journalists. he could have very easily posted that of the website somewhere, and he did that need journalists, but he did. it would be fascinating to talk about this because i've -- because i would presume if he posted on the website it would be shut down but if he could and if journalists that they would give credibility and protection to him. so it has been a fascinating

episode, and yet, he really did not have to have them and probably had he put it up, wikileaks would have taken a snapshot of it. >> an organization that could go to bat for you. especially some of the smaller small citizen blockers would back away from that in a heartbeat. >> we had a series on ecuador. the government enlisted the outfit in spain to put the screws to us and get the documents we have gone taken down from file-sharing sites.

a few of them agreed. there was never a question. there was never a question from the top-down that we would protect not only rosy but the story and make sure the website put the information back up. we pushed back hard and they did. i have worked roll-call and work here and i know both of them and i feel like all of us come from that same place. think we have all work that organizations were the top leaders are very respected journalist and what not back down from a fight if they felt it was the right one to be having. handle it similar to greenwald said approach of handling this. >> time for one more question. one more question? anyone? >final thoughts.

tell us one thing that has been the most fun for you in this new endeavor. give us a lead. >> in this panel or in life? i think the new media world creates great opportunities for invention, and in my previous job, i loved working with people to invent. sitting int fun meetings coming up with stuff. in my to reject new job i am looking forward to a new and different things. ofank invention is a time invention. i think there is a great spirit

of journalism to do that. >> i agree with that. i think the creativity and the adrenalin of the new media world are incredibly exciting. a time where is practically everything we are covering feels like a first. the debt ceiling, brinksmanship or anything else. i feel like we're living in historic times and have a new way of covering this to get the news out. time is of very exciting to be a journalist in washington i have fun every day. it is fun. it is fun to be a journalist right now. this frees me up to take all kinds of different approaches to stories that previously i probably would not have been able to write. really quickly, i am thinking of one now. i ended up in a twitter exchange

with republican congressman about gay marriage. we went back and forth back and forth. in the end he said he did not think we should have the defense of marriage act. but that was actually a news story i wrote afterwards, and threw my tweets and his tweets into the story and published it on-site. random people were jumping into the conversation, too. five years ago i couldn't have done something like. that it is really fun right now. >> i think the gay marriage fight and sort of the broader emphasis we have been putting as a sight on the lbgt community and the issues affecting them has been the most fun for me. it is something that has been a major focus for the site. we now are dealing with the russian olympics and that kind

of stuff, and i find it to be deprat feingold -- gratifying to be at a news organization that is focused on something like that right now. that moment you get to say yes, in 30 we were working on this, paying attention to it, and it was an important thing. for me that has witness the best thing, i think. >> i agree with everybody. you stole all my answers. >> you have to be last. >> it is interesting to see the role social media is playing, like you were talking about creating a story, or mining social media for storylines or sources. it is an exciting time to be a journalist, especially in d.c., because we are seeing history being made right now, and it is incredible. it is truly -- like it is an important time to be paying attention to politics, and it is exciting to try and get those stories out there to as

many people as possible. >> a perfect note to end on, alex. thank you so much. terrific. >> you know, i don't want to volunteer their team, but if anyone wants to, they can. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute]

>> you can see this fordham again any time at c-span.org. make sure to look in the c-span video library. news from the white house tonight. tomorrow president obama is expected to sign into law, bipartisan legislation that should lower the cost of borrowing for millions of college students. it links student lone rates to the financial markets.

it should happen tomorrow in a ceremony at the white house. not a lot on president obama's agenda today after returning from a west coast swing earlier in the week. he did find time to call to ident george w. bush wish him well following a cardiac operation. in a couple of hours we will bring you a discussion on immigration, state economies and the contributions of immigrants. we will hear more from steven moore. here is a preview from an event hosted last month at the george w. bush institute in dallas. >> it seems like we hear this everywhere. it seems like it is almost conventional wisdom. what we hear is we have to make these pro texts for american workers. it facilitates this myth that

immigrants come and take jobs. even our leaders in washington on either side, they seem content to always just say -- to kind of buy into that by saying we need to build in protections for american workers. ignoring the protections, what do you respond to people saying immigrants come in and take jobs? >> we would do well to look at what has transpired in other states, neighboring states. you look at what happened in alabama recently. that state passed what i consider to be a fairly draconian piece of legislation. when it is all boiled down at the end of the case here, they had some 40,000 workers get up and leave the state. what ensued is that the state lost about $10 billion of $500 million ut of taxes it could have garnered

had the workers stayed in the state, worked in the plants, crops and construction sites. i think that sentiment was part of what happened in alabama. i am hopeful that will never be the case in the state of texas. bush and vernor president bush implemented his unders of the work that immigrants come here to do. i think he welcomed immigrants to the state of texas. i remember foppedly his relationship with president fox, then president of mexico, and i think a clear-minded understanding of the contributions that immigrants make to the state of texas. so there are lessons to be learned when you study what has happened in states that do believe that immigrants are there to take their jobs. >> right. >> the fact of the matter is no

one came back and filled those jobs that immigrants left untended. >> that is just a short portion of that program which we will ave later for you in its entirety at 5:00 p.m. after that at 7:00, c-span will host a town hall discussion on immigration and the economy. we will also read your tweets and facebook comments. it starts at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> tonight on c-span's encore presentation of first ladies -- >> camaigning is not allowed. you can't come out and say i would like for you to vote for me for president. candidates can't do that. and you can't ask for office directly. you have to kind of use the subtle back channels, and women were a good conduit for that. so they came to spread the gossip to ask for favors. she knows that she can't trust

these people. she is not naive, and a lot of them are spreading false gossip or false information. they are misleading. they all have their own agendas. she is aware of the political game and not a fan of it. >> the encore presentation of "first ladies" continues tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> i am not some sort of anti-suburb person who thinks everyone needs to live in new york city. i was very sensitive of coming sipping, n espresso condo dwelling elitist. that is not why i did this book. i understand people like the suburbs. the trends were just so undeniable, and the fact that there is a shift in the way suburban america is perceived by the people that live there is too big a story to ignore.

>> leigh gallagher on where the american dreessen is moving, sunday night on "after words" on c-span-2. >> "new york times" photo photo journalist michael camber released his new book. as foreign news breweros are closing their offices, he sat down and discussed the iraq war and its effect on journalists. this lasts about an hour. >> so thanks for coming out tonight on an unreasonably wet june evening. it is great to see such a wonderful turn-out up here. a few words before i introduce three incredibly esteemed colleagues up here. since the committee to protect

journal e.u.s began tracking attacks on journalists some 32 years ago, no conflict has been as dangerous or deadly no journalists as the war in iraq. since 2003, 150 journalists and more than 50 media support workers have been killed there. the vast majority of them were targeted murderers. they weren't killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, because they were karate in a crossfire or hit with the shrapnel of a car bomb. they are killed because of who they were or more specifically, what they did. they were killed because they dared to write, report, photograph, valparaiso. 93 murders. how many people were convicted for those crimes? none so far. that gives iraq the shameful distinction of being number one on the global impugnity index

for the fifth consecutive year. most of those killed were working for iraqi news organizations. iraq has been dangerous for news organizations. but it has been a particularly dangerous place for iraqis working for iraqi outlets. they have been picked off by militias, insurgents, beginnings and thugs affiliated with powerful individuals seeking to silence critics. 57 iraqi journalists have fled into exile over the past decade. i fear the real number is far greater. i personally know about two dozen who have sought refuge here in the united states. last year for the first time since 2003, c.p.j. did not document any work-related killings of journalists in iraq. but before you assume this is good news, we need to consider what is happening to the media landscape in iraq.

a year ago this month the iraqi government's media regulator ordered 44 local and international media outlets to be shut down. although authorities did not ultimately enforce that directive, local journalists say that that order was intended to be a warning shot to news outlets, that they should toe the government line. later in the year, the iraqi government debated a proposed cybercrime bill that would carry a sentence of life in imprisonment for using the internet to broadcast something that was suspended to damage the economy. just a couple of months ago, the shiah-led government there suspended the licenses of pro sunni chance. they included some of the largest and most popular media outlets in iraq, includingial

jazeera. then there is the reduction or near elimination of western coverage. precious few american news organizations still maintain a presence in baghdad. syria, the fall-out of the abbrederis spring are sucking up whatever dollars are left for foreign coverage. but iraq remains a vitally important country, teetering on the brink of yet another civil war. this evening i don't want this discussion to be one of those back patting, navel gazing discussions. we could sit here until the we hours of the morning and tell war stories of the we are not going to do that. we are going to look back a little bit, but look forward and talk about the important lessons from the coverage of this war. i think i can speak for this group.

we all hope we never have to cover another war as awful as this one as been. i am privileged to be up here with three colleagues whose work has been preeminent and whose work i deeply respected and whose work i am sure all of you have seen over the years. dateline from iraq and some cases from points beyond. chmed. mmediate left is a he calls himself an accidental journalist and has one of the most interesting resume's. before the car he was a sculptor and professor of art at baghdad university. after the war, as the university was closed for a period of time, as many other organizations in the country were, he chose though try to make his living as a journalist, and he has done quite well at that, working for

the "new york times," the times of london among others. most recently as a field producer forial jazeera english. he is serving as a scholar in residence in north carolina where he is teaching. to his left is hana. she is a national correspondent for mcclachey newspapers. she spent two years covering the war in iraq. was a fellow resident of the hamra homeland in baghdad when we were there and has authored a number of fantastic dispatches from there and was one of the preeminent voices covering the abbrederis spring, particularly the fall of the mubarak regime a couple of

years ago. and to the far right is michael, a simply amazing photo journalist who has been shooting professionally for a quarter century. he has had his pictures appear in publications all over the world. but you probably hear in new york have seen him most frequently in the pages and on the website of the "new york times", both his photography as well as his writing. he is the author of a simply markable new book entitleded "photo journalists in war quats, which is on sale to the right of the bottles of wine. when you are done, get another glass of wine and pick up a copy of the book and get mike to sign it for you. in going through these bios, there is a bunch of v matter at the end of them. he has one of the greatest

lines, in addition to all these awards he has won, which i will not bore you with right now. satisfies for say he has won every significance award that a photographer of his stature should win. he in 2001 worked on a three-part series on mexican immigration included in a book that i questions i have never heard before but must now pick up called the best american non-required reading. i would like to start out by asking, you were there as recently as 2012. >> i just left 10 months ago. >> so iy. we journalists are bad at math. my apologies. let's talk a little bit about the current state of affairs there. while targeted killings of journalists seem to have at

least for the last 12 months, not been a feature of the threats facing reporters there, let's talk about what that environment is like? we shouldn't be lulled into thinking that all is somehow now a magically permissive environment for journalists there? >> it is not. it is still as dangerous as it used to be. we thank god there is less killing going on now, but that doesn't mean it is not a hostile environment for journalists. you know that c.p.j. has reported a lot of aggressiveness against journalists in the past years, especially by the army and country where there is supposedly democracy and freedom of speech after 35 years of oppression at the

sadaam zambrano -- hussein. they are trying to prevent people from speaking again. before 2011 and the american departure, we used to have lots of journalists, especially iraqi journalists, who were targeted by armed groups because they were working as journalists. as journalists, we were considered as spice. at the beginning people used to ask us who do you work for, and we would say we were working -- and if we said we were working for an american organization, we were in danger because the iraqi occupation were led by american forces. when i say i worked for the french, they would say it is fine because the french don't

have any after a while, every journalist who worked for a western organization was considered working for an american organization. we were asked -- considered as spice, who traded with people's lives and blood. eople used at us as if we were happy to have explosions and people dying because of stories. this is how they looked at us. they didn't know we were trying to bring the truth out, to talk about what was really happening. so most of the threats were ming from the armed groups from the insurgence. sometimes from american forces, not a lot with iraqi forces, they would let us work. , and er that it changed

not the americans, not the iraqi army or the armed groups. now that the americans are gone, we saw that the iraqi army and police are becoming more and more hostile against journalists. it became very usual to have journalists being beat up by the police, by the army, having the cameras broken, taken into custody for a couple of hours, . reatened, maybe tortured also we started seeing journalists being targeted not because they are journalists, but because they work for this specific newspaper or this specific radio station or tv channel. and now we are having journalists being targeted

cause they are either sunnis or shiahs. >> if you look at the statements about news organizations and their accusations of them being subversive or acting against the national interest, and you , ange just a few of the words it could have been statements issued by the coalition press authority back a decade ago. talk a little bit about the restrictions that you guys faced as journalists in your time there imposed by the u.s. military and the degree to which you see a legacy in those restrictions as now being implemented by the iraqi

government? did they learn some of the -- and copy -- some of the worst tendencies of the u.s. military? >> yes. i started seeing it. in 2003 when we worked, it was pretty much wide open. we would just rome the streets and link up with whoever, and we worked pretty freely. and then, you know, late 2003, going into 2004, it started to tighten up. the americans started tightening it up. in the beginning i don't even remember signing restrictions. then i would go back, and we had to sign a page, and then two pages, and it got longer and longer. toward the end we were signing 15-page documents that said we could not photographer wounded soldiers without their permission. and in every instance that i was able to document photographers taking pictures -- of soldiers

killed in action, they weren't able to get future access to combat zones, et cetera. and you saw the iraqis pick it up quickly. in 2004 they started. first hospitals were off limits. then car bomb scenes were off limits. then they wouldn't let us photograph iraqi soldiers, and it just grew and grew. i remember in -- in 2007 i remember was it maliki? ic remember. going on tv and saying anybody o is going on tv and photographing car bombings scenes were enemies of iraq. then we were became instant targets. i left iraq in january of 2012 and i remember obama going on

v and saying we are leaving an free country. the last car bombing i covered. it was a huge car bombing when they hit the intelligence he quarters in downtown baghdad. i got there right away and there were several iraqi friends there. they had their cameras literally in their pockets. they had these point and shoot cameras. they didn't carry the bigger ones because it made you a target and get them beaten by iraqi security forces. they wouldn't take their cameras out of their pockets. i said you are not even going to try to sneak photos? they said we are not going to try to sneak photos anymore

because we get beaten so badly. i went back that night, and they still hadn't taken pictures all day. >> i lived there for two years and i went back and covered iraq for seven or eight years. it was really a mixed bag. like sometimes the military would have someone with you, and vetting people you could talk to, and hand-picking soldiers and steering you away. god forbid you would hear a bit of news. you would go to do a happy thanksgiving story, and someone says did you get to talk to your parents? no, because we are on black-out because someone committed suicide. and they were like no, you can't report that. it was a mixed bag. then you would go to, for example -- southern iraq was known to have a really good military public relations apparatus.

it was much freer to work down there. there was a commander down there at the time, pete newell, who really got it and allowed much more unfettered access. they also reached out to the iraqi press and gave them equal access. that was a rare example where it worked, and you could work. it did get a disproportionate -- nt of coverage pause because you could get the coverage. >> was it individuals and personalities? >> yes. the individuals in that role it at the time got it. they tried as best they could to do workshops with some of the iraqi commanders saying p.r. is your friend, and you can't just totally clamp done. that being said, i was just there a year ago. the abbrederis summit was -- the arab summit was held in

baghdad. this was going to be the triumphant arab homecoming to iraq. important these people from around the region coming back to baghdad. i don't think any of them spent the night. there was this big extravaganza, and they were determined it show how open, free and democratic. we got visas. there was a lot of security, but they would say come this way, interview this person, we are here to help you. day three wrapped up and all the dignitaries went home. you have to leave now. my visa is no a week. we have no place to put you. off you go. there was nothing beyond the

facade of we can pull it together when we want to, but only for three days, and then everything goes back to normal. the iraqi journalists don't get used to this. this is how it is. > when i was there in 2002 covering a referendum, you would get to stay the whole week. >> that is all i wanted to stay. >> when you look at the challenges that journalists ave faced over the past decade to date from restrictions imposed by the americans and the iraqi foster, and you look at the challenges that journalists continue to face with just the very precarious security environment. yes, we have a golden era in the first few months after the start of the invision, the summer of 2003 -- the invasion,

the summer of 2003, but it slid downhill quickly there after. if you look at the security challenges, and you overlay on that the financial challenges, the fact that news organizations just don't have need, of money they and international news organizations feeling this also. how do you rank these sorts of challenges? what was the real principle impediment to being able to really do the sort of work you wanted to do? i should note as a caveat to all of this, that inspite of those three real hurdles, and others, all of you did phenomenal work. when you look at the pictures you published and the dispatches you guys filed, you managed to triumph against a lot of that. but help us understand how each

of these factors, or those other two factors, sort of played in with official government restrictions? >> well, it was an extraordinarily expensive under taking. one route cost absolutely nothing, and the other route a $1,000 or there are 1,500 day. >> the free route being embedding. >> i remember guys telling me hey flew to cueto -- kuwait, picked them up, set them up with a kottaras. they would photograph a give away of soccer balls or paining ale school. unless you developed relationships, you weren't going to get to the real stuff. you could stay on an embed for months, and it literally didn't cost you anything. the other option was to be out in the world. if you were not going to get

kidnapped or killed right away, you had to have a smart sophisticated iraqi security force. i'm not talking about like a whole convoy of ham visa -- humvees. that was the most dangerous thing you can't do? >> right. you didn't want to attract attention. >> but you had precious few free-lancers who did that sort of -- i haywood to use the term unilateral reporting because it was real, original, on-the-ground reporting, the likes of which foreign orrespondents should do, but embedded reporting, you couldn't do it beyond the first few months? >> you had to do it smartly. you couldn't just get off the plane, jump out and hail a cab on the streets of baghdad and off you go. you may not even make it from he airport road in those days.

but you could do it if you had a trusted team. if you had enough hulett to accept the advice of your local staff, friends and colleagues, , to know the limitations knowing i cannot go there and do that right now. you had to walk away from some of them, unfortunately. >> yes. there was this matter of trust sometimes between the iraqi staff and the foreign correspondents. we know the country. we know what is happening in the country. we are mixing with the people all the time because the foreign correspondents in the bureau spent most of their time working. unlike us, we can go back home and community with neighbors and friends and know what is happening. when they asked us, for example, to go to fallujah, and we know it is deadly there, and

we would say that is not a good idea. they would keep saying no, we have to go to fallujah. i'm telling you it is not a good idea because it is going to be really deadly. no, you are afraid to go. this is what it is. i heard this a lot of times, and i would say ok, you want to challenge me, let's go. but if something happens, then don't blame me. this was the thing. then with time, this trust started to building. after that when we started telling them ok, it is off-limits, we can't go there, and they would say ok. at some point, especially when e kidnappings started of the fortunate correspondents, we became the eyes and ears for the foreign staff until things started to cool off a little bit and they managed to get out o safety, except for freafers.

. for photographers >> i didn't see the same going on in libya most recently and now syria. we didn't like it, those who were living there full time dealing with the security risks every day, we didn't like it when a freelancer or someone cab and and does the go out. it puts us all at risk. they got kidnapped, and there is a ran some, and it feeds that industry. there was such a backlash against that, one of my colleagues decided, and they were army of this or army of that, he said i propose we make an army of the journalists. we are going to go kidnap them, throw them in a trunk and teach them a lesson so they don't put

all of us at risk. [laughter] it was serious. we didn't want them coming in and getting us all killed. >> sometimes the new arrivals who just came to iraq for the first time, they don't know anything about what is happening on the ground. they have no experience in dealing with the people. they think that it is an easy task, they can do whatever they want, they can take to whoever they want and they can go wherever they want. sometimes they don't have anyone to help them do what they do. and ey just pick up a taxi say take me to fallujah, i want to talk to people there. then they are surprised by the people being so hostile to foreigners, and sometimes the unthinkable can happen. >> the key to staying safe -- people got killed that way. >> i know. >> the key to staying safe was listening to the iraqis.

when they said it was time to go, it was time to go, and you didn't argue about it. >> this highlights what a vital role our iraqi colleagues played in the process. the most valuable colleagues of mean in the post baghdad era, and i am sure with the times and others, were all the iraqis who worked with us. many of them come from different backgrounds. one of mine was a flight engineer for iraqi airways who just had a good sense of reading people, reading the street. own gnored him at your peril. i could go on about the newspaper of lives saved because of their incredible quick thinking. >> i also want to say all those

big stories, year after year -- i don't want to speak for the "new york times." but i was in the bureau, and all those stories you saw year after year, the guys who were doing the work on the street were iraqis. certainly dexter went out, and sabbatini that, and they did great work. but people who would go out, they would check the neighborhood beforehand, do preliminary interviews or sometimes they would do all the interviews. it was the iraqis who were going out day after day when we cooperate go out at all. they did the hard work. >> and it was stepping out at great personal peril. these are individuals who by day would be traveling out with you or me and then have to return home to their neighborhoods, to their families, where in many cases they were lying to their neighbors, not wanting them to know they were working for a western news organization. but in some cases then found out, and people were

threatened, beaten up, in some cases killed. it was only after some years that the u.s. government finally got around to issue special visas to iraqis working for them. to my mind, far too slowly on a number of them. approved since 2008, 25,000 especially migrant visas for iraqis who worked with the military and others. how many have they issued to date? 4,600. that is something that expires in november unless congress extends it. that is something to take forward. you still have people -- we were just talking about a museum friend of ours in baghdad. he sat out that first round because he believed things could improve.

i am shiah, this is my government, this is my community. my secretary is in power. what is there to fear? here we go again. i just got the news last week that he, too, has applied for this reis thelement option. to me that is the -- this resettlement amount. that is the greatest tragedy. we think our bureaus were shutter, and the public attention will shift elsewhere, but at least we will have the legacy of a free press, a probing press, an independent press. and all but maybe, one, two, maybe three of our 18-person staff, the ones that are still alive, have fled. they are in sweden, in the ukraine, in atlanta and massachusetts. d.c. so we haven't left that aggie's even. and we were a bureau that really took pains. on slow days we would talk

about journalism. they had their own blog inside iraq. they would report, shoot, do all their own stories, and we really promoted that. to what end? none of it exists anymore. >> mcilroy, let's talk about your book for a second. at prompted you to pull this book together? going through these incredibly compelling, arresting images over the week, i was struck with wondering the degree to which people react differently to some of these images with the passage of time. help us understand the feedback you've received and whether some of these very, very difficult to look at images, but nonetheless vital to see

because they depict the truth of war, how does the perspective change? are we now able to look at imagery of the iraq war, the sorts of which was very difficult to get published in the early years of the conflict? > that is a kwli indicate -- complicated question. starting off with the book, the answer is simple. i wasn't coming home and seeing my history of the war reflected. i didn't see what i new reflected -- what i knew reflected out there. the american people didn't seem to know what i knew. i was learning more from my colleagues. i was thinking the american people don't know this at a certain point. t became a thing where i couldn't live with myself if i

didn't colorado eight and put this in one place. all these things are floating around out there, and they just needed to be pulled together. i think as photo journalists, it is our history of the war. was some great journalism done. there were some great newspaper and magazine articles, but i just didn't see it all together in one place. i talk todd a lot of photographers and was some grea done. there said why were you taking these picks? you knew you couldn't get them published. i saw stanley green today, and he had a picture from fallujah. it was like the burned charred bodies of the american contractors killed at the bridge in 2004. there was a crowd of people stepping on them and mutilating them. there was no way we were going to get these pictures published.

i asked a lot of photographers why they took them, and they said we take them for history. we know we can't get it out there now, but some day people will be ready to look at this, and these pictures will be there. i am not trying to glorify violence. just the opposite. these photos, hopefully they will stand as a warning. hopefully, it will be something people will look at in the future the next time we think about rushing off on a military venture. i want to say publicly i had never been to iraq. worked in the middle east. i was covering wars in africa. i thought this is a great idea, we will go over there and get right of this guy, install democracy. what could be complicated about that? it didn't go so well. we need to have warning signs out there that people can look back on in the future.

>> so if you take to u.s. government efficiency who were in power back in 2003, 2004 and 2005, they would argue that a lot of the imagery that came out of iraq, still and video, was too defeatist, was too focused on the negative, on the gorey. -- on the gory. now let's look at this differently. do you think that the imagery that actually got published was too sanitized? >> completely. most americans have never -- we probably lost 5,000 americans over there including the contractors. most americans have never seen a picture of a dead american soldier. >> it took years before we at even see a casket

dover. >> yes. even at arlington, when the families invited photographers to the cemetery to photograph funerals, they were not allowed. you were not allowed to have a photographer come and photograph the funeral. if you saw this as a tribute, and you wanted to have this memorialized, the pentagon said this was off-limits. you could not photograph a funeral. they were smart about it. i felt they basically couched in this thing this was a privacy issue for the soldiers, that the soldiers have a right to privacy. that is what i was told repeatedly. it was smart because they made themselves the defenders of the soldiers and they put us in the position of the people who wanted to disrespect the soldiers. that wasn't it at all. first of all, if you are going to enlist in the military and go half way aaround the world and invade somebody's country, that is not a private event.

this is a war, one of the most important untakings in the last 25 years in america. you don't have a right to privacy in that. what about the iraqi citizens? so we were constantly fighting back against that. >> quite frankly, the men and women who wear the uniform want the war to be depicted for what it is. >> we get that all the time. they said this is bull. the military is not monolithic at all. lot of them are smart and progressive. some of these captains had been poets. rock band in berlin before he enlisted. one fly had been a professional surper. they were totally hip and smart, and they got it. they said we want the american people to see what is going on. andrew bruce tells a story about going from unit to unit,

and some units are saying i don't want to see a hang nail on one of my soldiers, nothing. they would immediately leave and go to another unit. she finally got to another unit humvees we are in that are not armored, and we don't have the things we need. we need you to show the people in washington what it is we are up against. it really depended on the unit that you were with. >> i have been monopolizing a lot of the time here. i know a number of you who have actually spent time out there, friends of the people up here, others engaged in this set of issues. we would love to hear your questions so we can continue this discussion. over here, can you wait for the microphone to come to you? if you can keep your questions brief, that would be great. >> my name is malcolm arnold.

can you talk about where the break don occurs as far as why the pictures, et cetera are not being published. the ave the stapleton -- ate department, the d.o.d. doing that. where are the breakdown? if we can identify where the exact breakdown is, then maybe we can address it. >> do you want me to take that? >> yes. >> that is a tough one. myself and a lot of photographers, we fought constantly with our editors to get more powerful photos in. frequently editors, they just didn't want to publish these photos. they would tell us people don't want to see this. they don't want to see this over their morning corn flakes. i heard this constantly from different editors around the world. in one instance i sent a

icture, maybe the most graphic photos i have ever taken. i stepped over a land mine, and the guy behind me, and he was literally cut in half at the waist. it was a horrible image. not only was the image not published, but editors called me and told me it had been put under lock and key so nobody could even access this photo. it wasn't just the military. it was much broader than that. but i have to say there was no clamor from the american people . i know people have to go on with their lives, and they are busy. the war is going on seven, eight or nine years, and that is just iraq, not even talking about afghanistan. but there was no clam yr from the american people that we want to see these images. we have 5,000 dead americans, and we haven't seen a picture

of a dead american. there has to be some type of public push for this. >> what was the excuse of the editors back then about nothing using the pictures? i have been in this situation before. although i am not a photographer, but i use to carry a video camera. at sometimes we had to stay longer than photographers because it is video, and we have to take our time in taking pictures. i have been trapped several times into gunfire between either american soldiers and armed groups or american contractors and snipers and got out with great pictures, took them back to the office, edited them, sent them back to france, and they don't use them. i ask why, and they say because there are a lot of dead bodies in the picture, and it is

really hard for the eye to see. i didn't understand in the beginning. >> right. where is the line? we don't need burning bodies in the paper every day. i don't know how often we do need them, but we do need them occasionally. >> and it is the truth to some extent. it is sort of becoming a moot bate pause of expanded satellite television, websites. if you really want to see what it looks like, you can now and with the growth of theial jazeera brand, which doesn't shy away from what regard looks like on receiving end. i think that is another option as it expands into western markets. >> but there is a difference between going out and actively searching for the stuff and confronting people with the true horrors of these torts of conflicts. >> back there.

>> hi. i actually work with a group to protect journalists and the journalist assistance program. in hindsight, can you guys talk about what we learned from iraq that we can apply as the u.s. is pulling out of afghanistan, on the ground, and with visas. >> i will take a stab at that one and kick it over to my fellow are other panelists. the visa program doesn't apply for those working for news organizations. a brave translator for the washington post was forced just a few months ago to travel to canada where he saute asylum because there was no legal pathway for him to apply for

refugee status in the united states despite risking his life for eight or nine years for the washington post and facing growing threats and intimidation because of his work for a u.s. news organization there. even for after begans who work not for news argueses -- organizations, but for international forces there, because it is a nato mission and not a u.s. mission like it was in iraq, you have a number of afghans who work for u.s. forces who are ineligible for the visa program. there are some legislative fixes on the way on the hill, but it is still at an embryonic state right now. admittedly there are fewer afghan journalists working for western news organizationings in kabul and other cities. for the afghan war, the u.s. organizations have committed

far fewer resources to that war, so they don't have the resources. those who applied two or three years ago, they continue to get caught up in this sort of limbo of what is being called a security review, but it really is sort of the placement of a lot of these applications into black boxes. a great example is the 70-year-old mother of one of my former baghdad employees, who has been left in security review for two years. anything you guys would care to add to that? >> what he said, yes. definitely. >> it is true, and it can take a long, long time. and it is a bit complicated. >> you came on? >> i came on a special visa. in 2008 i came here to the tates as a visiting scholar to u.n.c. university in chapel

hill, north carolina. while i was here, i was informed a special program was opened for iraqis who worked for an american organization that could grant them a special immigration visa. i said great. where can i apply? they said you can't. i said why? they said you have to apply in baghdad or jordan or other places. i am in the states and i can't apply for it here? they said no, towson do it there. so i went back in 2009 with my family, and i applied in july of 2009. i got my visa in august of 2012. i could have been killed like a hundred times in the waiting process until i got my visa. i was supposed to arrive here in states on july 1st, but i instead arrived on august 17th. the reason why is that on july

1st they called me and said your flight has been canceled. i said why? they said we have no idea. after investigating they said your last medical check was done on july 15th, and since it is only 14 days left, your medical scan is considered expired, and you have to do it again. by that time i had sold my car, my furniture, almost my house and had only my luggage with my family waiting to get boarded on the plane. and they called me and said it has been canceled. these are the kind of dullies the iraqis are facing in getting them. >> in my experience, people that worked for the "new york times", they didn't get a lot of support from the government government once they got here. >> that is true. >> i had friends that i worked with, one frequent in particular, we were literally

covering combat together in different places. she got her visa, and like a month later she was actually got a job at macy's for minimum wage. her job was to find the lost shoes. she was working in the shoe department. i think they got $500 a month for six months for rent, and that was basically it, and you are on your own. >> yes. and you have to pay back the tickets for the airplane. >> right. and these are people that are coming here with their entire families. a lot don't speak english. >> as far as lessons learned impart, urging the news organizations to follow up. they are being resettled. they are being resettled during a recession. a lot of the jobs that they would normally apply for aren't there. they are being taken by out of

work americans. it is really overwhening. of course they are also coming with the trauma of 10 years of vicious sectarian war and occupation you can't really trust some of the placement. one of our staff members, very much at risk staying in baghdad for the shiite militias, who decided to place him when he comes to the states. here we go, here is a spot in the apartment. with four iranians. that is not going to work. he did not have anywhere to turn if he did not have his

colleagues checking up on him. >> i consider myself one of the lucky ones. i consider myself lucky. it was something like $3,000 or $5,000 a month. now we are hardly making $1,000. just the others so that we can feed our families. why did we come here? we can make money or probably die. >> maybe my kids will benefit

from this. >> they run the iraq refugees assistance project that is affiliated with yale here in new york that has been helpful for a number of organizations. we're helping to navigate this very complicated bureaucracy. i am sure she would be willing answer them. >> i'm anne cooper, and i wanted to ask you to talk more about what the media is like, the content of the media --

>> the iraqi media? >> yes. how does it compare with saddam hussein's time? can you find out more? can you figure out what is really going on? >> we used to have one party, it controlled most of the media outlets. they used to say the same thing and use the same speech. right now, we have 340 registered political parties. each one of those parties has its own newspaper, radio station, and its own tv channel.

these parties have different positions when it comes to the occupation of what is happening in iraq. so let's give an example. some of these newspapers call them insurgents. some of them are called resistance. if you are in my place, which one would you believe? it means they have to choose which one is closer to what you

think and you are and where you come from. and then by all the others even if they are telling the truth. his his his this is the situation right now. it is all built over political views and political agendas. >> one of the main channels, even within their own messaging, sometimes it is different. when he is speaking against portia, it will say -- shia, it will say on the crawl, "anti- shia says this." when he is speaking against americans, it says "nationalist cleric says this." [laughter] >> maybe taking it a little different direction.

i am a medical doctor and also on the faculty of the harvard school of public health. we are interested in the psychological effects of war. i am interested in the effects on journalists. i do a lot of work with walter reed, military troops with significant injuries and incredible visible wounds of war. i am sure this is your sensitivity and your presence, it has an important impact on your view.

i am wondering if anyone is asking about the health of journalists, to be able to sustain yourself and do that work. the emotional aspect of dealing with conflict. >> we have seen a lot of horrific stuff over the last decade. >> i feel like my experience mirrors some of my friends that some guys don't want to admit the their commander what they're going through because they will not get picked for the next mission. word gets out that you are not dealing with it well, you know.

i kept things down. i did not talk about it. nobody gets away for free. you deal with a lot of shit. i don't want to talk about it too much. >> they were telling that in recent years, the end of deployment outbriefs where people are given the opportunity to start to talk about some of that stuff. most don't have an infrastructure like that. it's not let's talk about what you saw, it is how has this affected you? >> whir and as for employers and editors that need to -- they have done a fantastic job photographic and reporting. you don't want to be seen as weaker than. you find other outlets. we were dreading the fourth of july coming because of the fireworks. you can't get close to them because it is really hard. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> here is a preview from the events hosted last month that the george w. bush institute in dallas. >> for the last five years, roughly, about one million new jobs in the state of texas in the past five years. roughly one million lost in california. that's amazing. we were writing it the congress and we are really keen on one of the great wealth transfers in american history geographically from states like california that don't get it right. my home state of illinois is another example. states that do get it right is taxes and this is one reason to be very bullish on the future of texas. texas and california are treated with the highest immigration states. they do a better job of economically assimilating so that they are successful. california's is much more of a

welfare state and it indoctrinates emigrants and the welfare state at a much higher pace than texas. people come to texas, in my opinion, for jobs. he do go california for welfare. to california for welfare. texas is the model that other states should be emulating. eventhave that entire later today starting at 5:00 p.m. eastern. right after that i'm alive at 7:00, a town hall discussion on immigration and the economy. the senate passed an immigration measure back in june. house committees have considered legislation but nothing has come to the house floor for debate as of yet. reporter fawn johnson will be on hand to take your phone calls and we were also read your tweets and facebook comments. again it gets underway today at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> tonight on the encore

--sentation of first ladies, cannot askandidates for office directly. you have to use these subtle back channels and women were a good conduit for that. they came to them to ask for favors and she knows that she cannot trust these people. she is not naïve. a lot of them are spreading false gossip, false information. they are misleading and they have their own agendas. she is aware of the political not going on and she is particularly a fan. click the encore of our series "first ladies" continues tonight on c-span. >> 150 years ago, our nation was engaged in a civil war.

in 1863, our nation was reminded of its revolutionary past when henry wadsworth longfellow produces his tales of the wayside and one of the entries began, "listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of paul revere." so in 1863, the name is being .levated at the same time, the revere name is being chastised because one of paul revere's grandsons, joseph were in revere -- brigadier general of the army of the potomac, is up for a court- martial for for his actions at the historic battle in virginia in early may 1863. how did this grandson of one of our revolutionary war heroes get in such a mess? life of union general

joseph revere part of american history tv every weekend on c- span three. up next, a discussion on the drug enforcement administration and recent -- recent concerns from today's washington journal. this is about 45 minutes. host: joining us now is john shiffman and has had a series of stories looking at intelligence gathered taking place within the drug enforcement agency. tell us about this program. what did you discover? guest: i worked with my colleague and we found the dea program that has been public for many years called the special operations division located in virginia. but a lot of what they do is public and coordinating

international cases like the case against the russian arms broker, they also had a part of special operations that they did not publicize at all. they take tips from intelligence agencies, from informants, foreign governments, domestic wiretaps, and a large database which is different than they nsa record and that pass them along to agents in the field. while this is perfectly acceptable, probably acceptable, to pass along the tips, what happens next raises questions. the agency has been instructed to create something called parallel construction. that is once they make a case, they act as if they never got the information.

they might get a tip that a drug dealer will be in a certain place at a certain time. when an agent will follow a car and, they will make a pre textual traffic stop. they will find drugs inside but the only reason they need to follow the car is from the tip. the agents and the police and the field must recreate their investigative reports. they are supposed to leave out any trace that they got this tip from special operations. the problem with that say some critics is that that means the defendant will not have access to certain information that is part of their constitutional right to a fair trial. host: when it comes up in court, how is it explained by the agents? guest: the agent might be asked how this investigation started. reports are written that the investigation started when i noticed this car made an unsafe lane change or the person was acting suspiciously and they pulled over. the truth of the matter is they need to target that person because there had been either an ns ina to set, a tip from a

foreign government or an informant or some other reason there were passed along with this information from the special operations division of dea. host: we will take your calls on this. this special operations division if you want to ask questions about how it works, etc, here is your chance to do so -- you can also send us a tweet - you can also send us an e-mail. just to get this straight -- essentially, you say the officers to conduct these cases

with information have to go back and treat it like they picked up this tip on their own? guest: that's what they're supposed to say. we published another story today going back through some of -- our database. we found instructions for irs agents to do the same thing from the information they get from the dea. all the information agencies are partners with special operations division. all of these agencies are receiving information. the big ones are the irs, fbi, ice, and the d a. host: are all these agencies

passing on information? guest: it works both ways one of the reasons the dea says this is legal is because they do it every day. defense attorneys and former judges and a couple prosecutors tell us it should not be. they pass that along. it works both waysthe dea is part of the connect the dots intelligence sharing that should happen post-9/11. host: we will take some calls, alabama, republican line. we are talking about the special operations division in the dea. good morning. he has left us.

as far as the size and scope of the division itself, it is a sense of what kind of information they hold and how much and if there are rules as to how long they hold on to this information. guest: one thing the special operations division has is a database called dice. that is one with a coordinate and send information out nationally. it is an acronym. seems to change a little. i cannot recall what the current iteration is. we have a lot of acronyms and washington. it is a database that is different from the nsa database because it includes information

collected lawfully from search warrants and subpoenas andsays the dea. if they are investigating you for drugs and they did a subpoena and got your phone records, the numbers you've dialed and the numbers you dial you would be in that database. if they are investigating me, they would do the same thing. it would not be the contents of the call but they metadata, ever is on your phone bill. then they will put -- they will do that for every drug case in the united states and take that information and put it into the database. a guy across the border was caught with $100,000 and would

not say anything. inside his fund, they found four numbers and ran the numbers and it popped up with another case in the southeastern united states. they were able to put together a money-laundering and drug case together. the problem comes when these cases go to trial. it is complicated but and the defendant that goes to trial has a right to see any evidence that might be helpful or relevant to his case. defense attorneys say by systematically exporting informational like the connections made by the dice database or other wiretaps, it is unconstitutional to show -- to say we will not shared that information. host: this information came from a shoe leather type investigations? guest: for example, if the nsa intercepts information on a

couple of kilos of marijuana on a boat, the nsa does not sit on the information. they pass it onto the dea or passes on to someone else to make an arrest. if they make the arrest, when they make the arrest, the boat might be said to be moving too fast in navigational waters. they come up with a reason to board the ship. they cannot act like they got lucky. it is just dishonest. if there are several people on the boat like people who really

have nothing to do with drugs, children, wives, spouses or whatever, the information that the nsa wiretap -- there may be information if the defense lawyers can dig into that that may be relevant to show innocence and all sorts of things. the system precludes this. host: from our independent line, good morning. caller: good morning, i am very much against violations of our rights by using the fear tactics. our country should be competent enough to keep us from harm without violating our civil

rights. if this can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. i believe that our country should be competent and always has been competent enough to keep us from harm without violating our civil rights. in my situation, and if this could happen to me, it could happen to anybody, my competition wanted to steal from me. i ended up on a terrorist list. i cannot fly to court. i was falsely imprisoned. never charges brought, my case has been expunged. i discovered the parties involved and the violations, they got more defensive. host: ok, thanks for the call. i want to show you a tweet that says this is a total bypass of the world's a probable cause. guest: when issues probable cause and the other issue is discovering in which the government turns over relevant evidence to the defense. in terms of probable cause, i was surprised to learn -- i have been covering law enforcement for a long time and wrote a book with an fbi agent and never heard anything like this, and i know plenty of people at the dea and fbi and irs and they are honest. my mom worked at the irs for a long time. i was surprised to learn that making a pretextual stop is -- you know, the supreme court law

as it stands now is sustainable to the police in that manner. it surprised me and a lot of people. what outrages the prosecutors and former judges and defense lawyers is the issue of discovery and turning over the information that might be helpful. when i met with the dea, they said they did this scrupulously. there was the ted stevens case, senator ted stevens of alaska, and his charges were thrown out after it was confirmed by the judge that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence, discovery evidence. so the dea told me that the doj had review of all discovery procedures and that this procedure was reviewed. i asked at the dea for a copy of

their review and the paperwork but they declined to make it available. host: watertown, tennessee, republican line. caller: first of all, thank you for your work in this area. there needs to be more reporters like you doing this sort of thing. i will speak to what i saw with my own two eyes. in the early 1990's i was a military pilot, and we were involved in the drug war. we had a systemic violation of rules, and that is that the military found alleged drug runners and tracked them, and

when it came time for trial, customs agent or dea agent would show up and testify that it was then that started the case and all the stuff they saw, you know, a to b on the case, but the fact is it was all u.s. military personnel and equipment. i/o is thought that was not right. -- i always thought that was not right. but that is the system and it might still be going on. guest: that is interesting. i talked to a couple people like yourself who were in the military and involved in this. i think it is really something to explore. the military is authorized in the drug war in the 1990's, to, throughout central america, get

involved, and you see through some of the wikileaks cables how closely the dea and the latin american government worked together. "new york times" did a story on that about a year ago. the relationship between the military and the dea goes back probably before the dea was even created, going back to vietnam and some of the things the intelligence community was doing related to drugs. i wonder what is happening today. host: the dea saying that drug cartels are linked to terrorists. guest: i do not think it is in the secret, you know, when they testify on the hill about the special operations division, it is one part of the special operations division. when the dea talks about the special operations division, has press conferences -- not at their headquarters necessarily, but they are talking about some

very important in nature cases. there is no question that drugs are an international issue, drug importation. but what we are focusing on here are cases that remain inside the united states against americans, but also foreigners who were arrested here inside the united states. it is one thing to use the intelligence, i think, being overseas in africa or central america am a afghanistan and pakistan sort of the primary areas -- and the dea is in i think 80 countries or something around the world. they have a larger presence overseas than the fbi, which is understandable because drugs cross borders and that is part of the whole economic makeup.

host: why not just say i got the information from the s.o.d.? guest: that is a really good question. the dea says it needs to protect their sources and methods. there is a process for classified information already, and they're his -- there is also a process for in form and information. there is the classified information procedures act and then of course the fisa procedures. what is interesting is in both of those cases, the government filed a public notice. it is just a page or two and says we intend to use fisa evidence or we have fisa evidence in this case. same thing with the classified information procedures act. defense lawyers said, why can't we use that for this? there may be a case or two where they do that. it is really hard to tell because it is classified. host: republicans can call in at 202-585-3881. democrats, 202-585-3880. independents, 202-585-3882. caller: this is part of the total information awareness act.

we have got different secretive agencies. let's get to the bone of this. when you have a government that dictates what you can and cannot put into your own body, by the very definition, you're living under a tear any. that is what we have here. what we looking at is the dea -- they manage is called recently about using the military in conjunction with police action. we now have a police state. and john gotti and the mob, it is like the drug trade. we are not in the drug trade. we cannot compete with the government. guest: it is interesting, a lot of people are talking -- when

they hear about this, they think about 9/11 and all the changes that were made after the 9/11 attacks. this procedure, this process that the s.o.d. has been doing was in place before 9/11. it was in place in the late 1990's. my colleague and i spoke with agents stretching from the early 1990's to present day who say this process was long and play before 9/11, and it is not the parallel construction or the legal aspects of whether this was ok to do, but in the 9/11 report, there is the document that talks about with the dea has been doing for a long time in terms of intelligence- sharing. so this is not something we just decided to do after 9/11. this has been going on for 20 years. host: does this program get review by the justice department? guest: right now the justice

department is reviewing -- after our board on monday, the white house said the justice department is reviewing the procedures. mike rogers, the head of the intelligence committee, said -- he is a former fbi agent, he said he needs to get out the facts and understands why the dea needs to operate internationally and to interact interact with the nsa. but he was on a show and said that they are re-creating investigations in parallel constructions is a new concept and he is comfortable with it. a couple other people on the hill have also commented on it, including senator rand paul. host: john shiffman of reuters

is joining us. let's take a call. caller: good morning. let me ask a question. i am listening to your comments and you said you have extensive writing about criminal justice issues. i do not have a criminal justice background, but just from my casual reading of events for the last couple of years, why is it, in your opinion, that the government is allowed, even from the local detectives to now the dea, to lie and mislead when they deal with suspects? the government gets away with things that the person who is underscoring the cannot it away with. i will take the answer off the phone. guest: well, i think it is interesting, a lot of people think that the police should not lie or that they should be

honest all the time. i mean, it would be almost impossible to catch many people in the act. the supreme court has said that the police can be deceptive in terms of their dealings with criminals, especially when they go undercover. i will say that one of the least understood aspects of law is that it is a crime to do this to a federal agent. in reverse, you can do this -- you can go to jail for up to a year. there are some people that are not just lying to the grand jury in a formal setting but on phone calls and straight up interviews when the fbi comes to your house. if you lie to the agent during that interview, then it is a felony. host: wisconsin, you're up next, independent line. caller: what i am hearing you say is we have police and prosecutors were violating the

law of the land, the u.s. constitution, and engaging in perjury. i am wondering if the department of justice -- i do not expect the answer is yes, but if anybody's looking into this? those people are criminals. are they being charged? are they being subject to prosecution and jail time? is this a one-way street where our authorities can break the law and the citizenry pays the price? then why should i follow the law of the land or play by the rules myself? i remember during the reagan era, police were running drugs for our government. seems to me that this drug war is kind of nuts. guest: jay carney was asked about it at the white house briefing on monday and said the justice department is reviewing it. it is really all i know.

host: does the program itself can oversight from congress? guest: the special operations division, again, has had a lot of air time on the hill. but it is a different part of the special operations division. it would be as if you had c- span3 and you testified at length about c-span1 and c-span2 but we never talked about c- span3 and they were doing the things that were certainly of interest and needed some oversight. when they go to the hill, when dea goes to the hill, a lot of discussion is about drug prevention and the drug crisis. it is not about the actual process of trying to prosecute the drug war.

host: within the department, who is responsible to make sure the information is not used in an inappropriate way? guest: the dea is part of the justice department. and the dea has justice department and they have lawyers at s.o.d. in virginia and they oversee it. i do not exactly know what they do. one thing that was really interesting is when i asked the dea about this, i said, how widespread is the use of this? they said, well -- and how often does it work? they said that we really never hear back. so i said how do you track if it is a discovery violation? they say that they are comfortable with their policies. i am not going to get into a legal argument with you. host: how were you clued in on this program in the first place? guest: i write about law enforcement. i met someone and ultimately got a hold of some of these training documents that are used for anybody who is going to come in contact -- not anybody, but some agents who will come into contact with the special

operations division. the document shows them how to do it. the dea says you should re- create the investigative trail. but yesterday we found this irs manual for irs agents, and it was actually published for two years, that tracks essentially the same thing but just written in lawyer ease. host: the irs manual details the dea's use of hidden intel evidence. our guest is describing him talking about the program. charles, illinois, independent line. caller: thanks for taking the call.

i just really want to say i feel as though the so-called war on drugs is the biggest exercise of organized crime in human history. when you hear the stories over decades and decades of truly countless abuses and injuries done to innocent people and not just cocaine-sniffers and pot smokers but bystanders having nothing to do with it and it being perpetrated by individuals making untraceable cash, probably among the largest industry on the planet. you know, energy, oil, drugs. and it is all done by virtue of the law which takes people doing no harm to any other person and

makes them criminals. when you listen to the callers calling in today and those in favor of ending this heinous exercise, it should be apparent. when you look at the people who are speaking out, judge james gray, even sheriff mcnamara, there are endless examples of smart people on both sides of politics. guest: one of the former agents who was in the dea for 20 years that i interviewed -- i interviewed a couple of agents that belong to an organization called leap, law enforcement against prohibition. they believe that drugs should be legalized or decriminalized. one of the agents i spoke with, he said that the way that this process works with the special operations division, it is like laundering information, just like money laundering, but they launder the information to make it legal. the legalization and the drug war issue have always been front stage issues. right now with what is going on in colorado and washington, even more so.

caller: thanks for taking my call. just to sort of agree with the previous caller, yeah, i think anybody that seriously and honestly looks at this so-called war on drugs, it is a complete failure. so the question to the gentleman is, is there any real serious debate on legalizing drugs? and is it a threat to the whole security establishment? and i will take my answer off- line. thanks. guest: well, certainly in colorado and washington where marijuana is not now legal but will be in a couple months, and they just had the first medical marijuana sale in washington, d.c., a couple weeks ago, i

think. it is being debated around the world and seriously debated now in certain countries. to criminalize or legalize. so i think it is certainly out there. really, what we're talking about here though is civil liberties. the law right now, the critics of the s.o.d. program say the law right now as it stands could prevent them from doing what they are doing, which is taking information and using it for investigations but then hiding that information when these cases go to trial. host: there is a story this morning, according to the

substance abuse and mental health services administration, the number of people who say they have used heroine jumped if the 3.5% to 620,000 -- host: do those cases fall within what happens at the s.o.d. and dea? guest: s.o.d. just did a major synthetic drug take down a couple weeks ago in 37 states, hundreds of arrests. they cordon it, but i do not know if they pass -- and they coordinate, but i do not know if they passed the tip long. i really do not know. host: and there is no sense of what has been done with the tips once they have been passed on? guest: they turn out to be true about 60% of the time, which is pretty good for just getting a call and pulling over a car and you find cocaine in the car. the agents i talk to, about half

of them say this is a very important, legitimate thing that they do. the other half say they can see how people would raise questions about it. again, it is not just about getting the information and using it to make an arrest. that is not really what troubles the defense. what troubles them is the fact that they do not get the information, that they do not know that this happened, that this is being concealed in a way that could jeopardize somebody's constitutional right to see exculpatory evidence and have a fair trial. host: georgia, independent line.

caller: quickly here, one, i was on a navy ship in the mid-1980's and we were setting up blockades across different cuts in the caribbean. seven or eight ships, spending tremendous amounts of money. and we carried the coast guard unit on board that would actually go over and board the ships. intelligence was coming out of tampa, through the dea, i suppose. i do not really know. just the money that we spend, it seems to be incredible. that is just one thing. but but then the money for putting the prisoners in jail.

i am backing up what everybody is saying. this war on drugs and constitutional rights being stepped all over here because we are not able to even defend ourselves in court because it is classified. you have answered this many times, but i had to put my two cents in. host: what reaction has there been among civil libertarians to your story? those type of groups. guest: some of the leading voices from the defense bar, the aclu, the national association of criminal defense lawyers put out a statement saying that this practice seems wrong. their statements are much stronger than that. i just do not remember. norml has chimed in on this. there has been some talk of the hill. the chairman of the intelligence

committee is on the homeland security committee talk about civil liberties -- the chairman of the intelligence committee and rand paul who is on the homeland security committee talk about civil liberties. it took about these the -- the snowden database, the telephone database that he gave to the guardian and to the post, is somehow related to this, the internal domestic telephone numbers. they are two different databases, but it is true that the nsa evening information to the dea, passing onto the irs and criminal cases, and that is something that i think is catching people's attention. i would not do any on the record interviews, but i went to the dea and met for two hours with two of the senior officials. i did an interview and a back- and-forth explaining -- they gave their point of view and i told him what i knew. they provided a lot of context. for example, one of the cases

that we found was we found a prosecutor in florida, a federal prosecutor. he had a case where he was -- it was a cocaine case, i believe. anyway, the dea agent came to him and said, look, we have arrested this guy. the prosecutor said, ok, great, tell me about the case. and he said he got a tip from an informant and this is what happened. so he goes to the agent and says, hey, tell me more about this informant. i need to know because informants can come in all stripes. they can also be completely crooked. the agent said -- he was pressed and pressed and kept deflecting. he was pushed. finally, they call the

prosecutor and said it was not an informant. we got information from an nsa intercept. the prosecutor went bananas because he said this is going around the rule of law. this is lying. this is deceptive, not a great way to start a case. he dumped the case. i presented that to the dea, and they said that should never happen and that agents are not instructed to lie. there just instructed to admit the information. one of the things about washington reporting they can be helpful and also incredibly frustrating is that you do background interviews. you cannot use any names of the people, which is a double-edged sword because you really want to get information right, and then we also have this thing in washington where people have meetings in bug proof rooms so you cannot record the conversations. you cannot bring any electronics

in. you can only take notes. so i cannot say verbatim exactly what they said. host: utah, paul, independent line. caller: good morning. i was wondering how deep you believe the corruption and all the federal agencies are, including the state and local, concerning drug interdiction and the amount of money involved in that as well alongside other elements? guest: i would not know. i have written a lot about corruption, drugs and otherwise. but i think there is as much corruption in the united states, to some degree, as there is in other countries, at all levels. i used to work in philadelphia and one of the most famous corruption cases ended this week when one of the most powerful politicians returned home after

spending four years in prison on corruption charges. there is no relation to drugs there, but there is corruption all over the place. there are lots of good people, too, that worked for federal law enforcement and for state and local. but i think there is corruption in any place. host: a viewer system will need to remember that early in the process, they are supposed to issue a warrant only on probable cause. guest: probable cause, right. in this situation, as i said, there are four different ways that i know of that the dea disseminates the information. one of them is through information that originally comes from a search warrant or from a wiretap. for a domestic wiretap, you need a judge to sign off on it. i have read these affidavits, and they are laws.

many of them are hundred pages long. the rules are very tight in the united states. i think there is a misunderstanding about how the rules work. an agent that does a wiretap has to listen live and taped it. every 10 days they have to send a report to the judge. they have to renew it every 30 days. i am talking about domestic, ordinary, not terrorism intercepts. it is very complicated. people start talking about personal things. the agents are instructed to turn the volume down and not to listen to them. whether they do that or not, i do not know.

presumably some do. so there is probable cause. you do need probable cause to get a warrant, but we're not talking about probable cause here. host: kathleen from dayton, ohio, democrat line. caller: i met a young man who was studying at a university on a fulbright scholarship. he was from afghanistan. he was here studying and his wife and children and family were all back in that country. but we talked not only about the history of their war with russia he was only 34 so he lived his whole life during wars in that country. but we talked about the poppy production there. i was reading heroin usage in the u.s. and heroin usage in afghanistan having gone up a great deal. i am wondering how the dea works in afghanistan, because he said the dea works in many countries. and also in afghanistan. i also wanted to ask --

host: we are running out of time, so we will let our guest respond. guest: the dea has a fairly large presence in afghanistan. they have several teams that are paramilitary teams. they do not really like to talk about these teams. they are, i am sure, heavily involved in the embassies. the dea has sent agents over to spend lots of time in afghanistan. they work very closely with the u.s. military and i am sure the embassy and state department there. host: john shiffman, thanks for your time. >> campaigning is not allowed. cannot do that. you cannot ask for office directly. you have to kind of ask for these saddleback channels.

able to spread their gossip and ask for favors. cannot trustt she these people. she is not naïve. a lot of them are spreading false gossip, false information. they are misleading and they all have their own agendas and she is aware of the political game going on and she is not a fan. >> continuing tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. click c-span, we bring public affairs from washington directly to you putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefing, and offering complete gavel to gavel coverage of the house all as a public service of private business for c-span, created by agocable industry 34 years and funded by your local cable

or satellite provider. now you can watch us in hd. today at 7:00 p.m. eastern, c-span hosts a town hall discussion on immigration and the economy. the senate passed an immigration in june. house has considered immigration legislation but nothing has come to the floor for debate. oforter fawn johnson "national journal" on hand and we will read your tweets and facebook comments. that gets underway today at 7:00 p.m. eastern. now, more about immigration issues with a panel discussion on how immigration effects state economies. it took laced last month at the bush institute in dallas. it is one hour. >> wonderful. thank you, ambassador. thank you to the immigrants joining us today and thank you to the audience those here and

also watching us online. this is streamed line on -- online on bushcenter.org. as ambassador glassman mentioned, we are here in texas. this is a relevant topic to texas, nationwide but especially in the lone star state. this is the 4% growth state trying to get u.s. gdp about double the rate that it is now. in recent times, we have been 2.5% perat about 2%- year. we know we can do better. grown at 4% about a third of the years. texas, they are growing at 4% or even more. at 4.8% the last

calendar year. compare that to the u.s. growth, and weetween 2%-2.5% know we can do better. we are here today to talk about immigration as well in addition to growth. as ambassador glassman said, there is an important relationship between immigration and growth and we really need to hone in on that. texas is home to 2 million immigrants. there are more immigrants in texas band there are people in oklahoma. that's another thing texas can brag about. of 4.2 million people, that means about 10% of all immigrants living in america are here in texas, one third more than any state. it is almost essentially tied with new york. 16% of the texas population is an immigrant, one in six.

let me give that time toin amern eight. if you look just here in dallas, about one in four. really, i think we could not be in a much better place than america to have this discussion right now. i am joined by a fabulous panel of experts. usy are going to enlighten and him pack the relationship between growth in texas. many have probably seen him on tv. it ordered member of the wall street journal, he writes about immigration, taxes, many things. i am sure you have read his articles. he has been an advocate for years, a scholar, and we are privileged to have you here, steve. thank you for coming. something you do well is