point about how you tell the stories and interact. i do not take an adversarial approach. some people may not like films. to get into the world of the people who stories i'm trying to tell. here's what i tried to do at the end. god forbid there is some other major attack -- we all instinctively want it to be about justice done. there will be people whose names we do not know that are hidden away somewhere, making the decisions on our behalf on how to conduct that war or whatever you call it. by telling the stories of those who were there at the time, it allows us to better understand how our government works.

openness, we can tell stories without revealing anything that is classified. it is important to tell the stories because that is the way the general public understands how these work. there are ways of doing it, through documentaries and longform, and people like myself are hungry to tell the stories. i will leave my card afterwards. [laughter] watch "manhunt." i'm sure it will be available on all sorts of platforms, it is nominated for two primetime enemies -- two primetime emmys. please thank our guests. [applause] >> i just gave a talk in san francisco to a bunch of people creating products for parents and kids. mostly stuff for young kids. i showed them that if they went by the data, parents say they want products that will keep their kids smart and educated.

kids do not play with stuff that makes them learn. parents and they want to keep their kids safe. no parent has ever used the cdp -- the safety features on the programs they buy for the kids. if the just act on the data you're going to be in big trouble. and as steve jobs said, people do not know what they want until they see it. you can ask them a million questions and give them an ipad. the renault focus groups and data in the building of the ipad. it was all in here. >> what will the future bring jacobus discussion on the digital resolution -- on the digital revolution is one of our programs today on c-span. just before 12:30, the future of presidential debates. at 1:30, a history and look ahead at the next digital revolution. and then add 3:45, from the international festival of arts and ideas, a look at race in

america, 2050. >> the media is clearly a increasinglyeigh dominant criteria for every first lady. that, in the end they are the endless biographical human stories, which are not limited to the 19th century or 20th century or media or anything else. endureow these people and prevail in the very rough world of politics. >> historians richard norton smith and edith mayo review season to of -- preview season two of "first ladies; influence and image." tonight at 9:00 eastern on c- span, c-span radio, and c- span.org.

>> on this labor day holiday, no public events scheduled for public -- for president obama. later he will head to russia for the g2-0 summit. he will have dinner with leaders on thursday. on thursday he will meet with the king and queen of sweden. he will return friday evening here in washington. ahead of all of that, president obama has invited senate republican leaders john mccain and lindsey graham to the white house this afternoon. he will be discussing the path forward in syria. both senators expressed support for military action in that country. the meeting is set for 2 p.m. today. we have cameras at the white house, should there be any news coming from that meeting. the morrow we expect to hear from senator mccain on syria as the senate foreign relations committee, which he is a member of, should start debating on whether congress should vote on the use of force.

we're learning that secretary of defense chuck hagel and secretary of state john kerry will testify. the hearing comes after president obama announced on saturday that he would seek military action on set -- military action on syria. will likely hear more from syria the house and senate floors. members will return from their summer break on september 9. you can see the senate live on our companion network, c-span2. we want to know what you think about your members of congress, how they should vote on taking military action. looking at some of your facebook responses, of which there are over 700 -- michael crowley says, -- sergeant schwartz says -- sergeant schultz says, call your congressman and senators and tell them not to support military action. and chuck hillary offers, votes to mobilize and share your

.omments at facebook.com/c-span former vice president dick cheney, along with his eldest daughter, liz, took part in this year pot steamboat and fit -- steamboat institute meeting in denver. this discussion is about an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> well, we are delighted to be here tonight. i have watched the development of the organization of bill and tony thompson. i probably would not have gotten elected to congress in 1978 if they'll and tony had not helped me get cheyenne.

you may or may not agree with the outcome, but it was all their fault. it has been a privilege to have the opportunity to spend time with my daughter. as i finished up my time in the white house, i decided to write a book, and it is nice to have your oldest child interested in your old war stories. i notice she has the book in her lap. i have no idea what is planned. i am not sure where this is going. what it is all good, all good. i'm delighted to be here tonight and have the opportunity to spend the time with all of you, and with that, i will introduce my daughter, liz cheney, who is seeking political office, but

this is not a political event, [applause] not working. >> is there a way to turn off their? all right. i am guessing we will have the opportunity -- [no audio] hello? >> move the mike up. >> it's ringing. >> talk into it. >> thank you. i think the nsa is not operating these microphones, clearly. [laughter] or maybe barack obama is. that is a good point. it is wonderful to be here

tonight, wonderful to be here with the steamboat institute. it is long past time that the aspen institute got a dose of truth and reality and facts. we are thrilled to be part of that effort here tonight. we thought we would do a couple of things, talk about current events, but the most important current event in our lives, in our family, has been the fact that my dad was blessed, we were all blessed because my dad was the recipient of a new heart a little over a year ago. [applause] and his story -- he talks about his campaign for office when he was elected, and 1978, when he was running the first time, was also the first time he had a

heart attack. i have been going back for reasons you can imagine, looking at old clippings for political campaigns in wyoming, and came across one where my dad was asked about his heart attack in 1978, after he had the attack and decided he was wanting to stay in the race. he was interviewed, and the porter said to him, are you concerned that having had a heart attack it might hurt your ability to get elected? he said, no, nobody has ever tried the heart attack shtick before. i wanted to talk about his book called "heart," and it talks about his challenge in dealing with and overcoming heart disease. i want to start tonight as the

you to talk about that, you are this most famous cardiac patient in the country and maybe in the world, and you accomplished great things while you doubt with the challenge of heart disease. a be you could talk about how you dealt with it and in particular, what i think is interesting is the mental attitude you always had about the disease and not letting it pull you back. >> well, thank you liz. most of you know i dealt with a few heart problems along the way, in the midst of my career, and after i finally obtained a heart transplant 16 months ago, my cardiologist came to me, john reiner, and he suggested that there was a book that he and i might do together.

if you look back at the historical record, between 1968 and 2008 we reduced the incidence of death by her disease by 60% in this country. the fact that i am here tonight at all, that i survived, through that time, and he described at one point to me as the only heart patient he still had a live who had a heart attack back in the 1970's. we had the experience a couple years ago, what happened was i had lived and dealt with this in its various forms from 1978, through congress, vice president, and so forth. then i went into end stage heart failure after i left the white

house. they worked on me one night and put in a pump to supplement my heart. that got me through the transplant 16 months ago, and it is nothing short of a miracle. it is an interesting story, the way john told her, and i got a phone call one day for the transplant from the cleveland clinic, and they were going to put on a conference on innovation in cardiology and care of heart disease, and they said, we have all the suppliers, makers of the device, so forth, we have a lot of the docs coming, but we decided we needed patient. somebody said, let's get cheney. up to that point i have not had a transplant yet. this gave us the idea that you can tell the story of that 40- year miracle, really, of what has happened with respect to our ability to deal with heart disease in this entry through my

story and my case history. and most of the things that saved my life over the last 35, 40 years were not even around when i had the first heart attack in 1978. the treatment then is what dwight eisenhower got 23 years before in 1955 when he had a heart attack in colorado. so what we do with jonathan reiner writing as the physician, i write as the patient, and we tell the story of all those developments, including the historical background to where stents and deferred relators come from, and transplant surgery, the whole body of technology and development of medicine of cholesterol-lowering drugs, etc. we tell that story to my case.

also lay it against the background against mic, and public service. i was uniquely blessed in many respects. obviously you can never express enough ready to for a donor or the donor's family. you can not talk about what i went through and how i survived it without talking about liz and her sister mary and their mother, my wife, lynn, with whom i will celebrate my 49th wedding anniversary next week. when you go through everything we went through as a family and the only way to go through it is as a family, if at all possible. i wake up every morning with a big smile on my face thankful for a new day i never expected to see. the book is bought by simon & schuster. it is called "heart: an american

medical odyssey." it is not political. it has a thing to do with politics. i suppose you could say all of my critics who said i never had a heart may want to have that proposition challenged now, that i have proof that i do have, but it has been an important part of my life. you do not talk about it when it is going on. evil were not interested in me as vice president, secretary of defense, if i had a bad heart. they wanted somebody to do the job. because of the great support that i had from my family, from friends all over america who prayed for me, and who were there when i need support and help, made it possible for me to live a very full and active and otherwise normal life in spite of the fact that for regarding five years i was a cardiac patient, you had everything done

to him that you could do to a heart patient. i am grateful to be here tonight, grateful for all of the support that the people have provided over the years, including many in this room tonight, and grateful to be here with my daughter and my first child and hopefully my -- that remains to be seen. i will leave it at that. >> you are supposed to tell a story. >> oh, yes. she has the script. she never gives me the script. liz has got five of our grandchildren. kate is the oldest, the sophomore down at colorado college starting this fall, but the youngest is my namesake, richard, and after i had the

transplant, the rule is you cannot sit in the front seat of the car because they do not want you to get hit with an airbag, hard on the plumbing, and instead of sitting in the backseat with might grandson richard, and he said, did you get a new heart, grandpa? i said, yes, i did. he started asking questions. i did the best i did to explain the process and so forth, and how it all came about. he listened very carefully for about five or 10 minutes and the nature he said, yeah, i had one of those when i swallowed the quarter. my other favorite richard story he was in kindergarten, came home from school one day, and he told his mom, he said, mom, tomorrow i have to stand up in front of the whole class and tell what is special about me, why i am special. she said, what are you going to

say? he said, i have two choices. i could say my grandpa was vice president of the united states. she said, yes, that is a good answer. what is the other one? he said, i could tell them i got my cat at the dump. and you can guess which one he used. >> i will now tell a richard story. this was not in the script. the other thing in our lives -- obviously, caring for my dad has brought the family together. we are a family very much, politics has brought us together, and the chance to campaign together as a family when my sister and i were young and we traveled wyoming with my mom and dad and grandparents, it brought us together and gave us

a chance as kids to see how democracy works, to understand how important that process is, and it is a process that i am now going to go through with my own kids. people have asked me, you have five kids. how is it that you are able to run for office with five kids? what of the things i know for sure is the exposure that i had, the chance i had as a little girl to see what democracy looks like was an invaluable lesson for me. it is a lesson that i am really honored now to be able to share with my own kids. and so, the latest event we did together was the wyoming state fair parade in douglas, wyoming, last weekend. we had my kids and my cousin's kids, so we had a gaggle of kids walking into parade with baskets

full of candy. my campaign manager decided that it would be important for the prayed again or us to brief the kids, because when you're out there tossing candy, it can get dangerous. she brought them all together and she said, now we will talk about the roles of being in a parade, the rules of throwing candy in a parade. rule number one, and my older son raises hand, said, do not check the candy heart. she said, that is right, that is an important rule. what is rule number two? one of my cousin's little girl said, do not throw it in faces. my manager said that is right, do not throw that faces. she said rule number three, and richard raised his hand, and he said, no farting. that is a good life lesson.

in addition to the life lessons that you learn in a campaign, we want to talk about current affairs and about what is happening and about the concerns i know that steamboat institute has and about the concerns that people across this nation have about the direction of the country. and we are not here to do a political event, but it is very much -- those are concerns that made me decide to run for office this time around. i believe that we are living very clearly at this moment through a critical point in our nation's history. you can look back at other

nations and at our own, in other times, and see when it was that countries came to a fork in the road, when they came to a turning point. you can think about winston churchill and his election as prime minister in britain in 1940. the extent to which people around him said you got to seek terms with adolph hitler, that if you do not surrender, you will be destroyed. he refused, he refused to capitulate. he knew the odds were against him, but he saved civilization and freedom by doing that. you can look at margaret thatcher when she was able in 1979 to safer country from the ravages of socialism. she said i'm going to turn this nation around, against all odds. in our own nation, ronald reagan provided that same example of a president who came to office and who saved us from the malaise of the jimmy carter era.

i think many times in history when you look back, you have the ability to see those moments. you do not always know them when you're living through them. we know right now as we sit here tonight that we are living through one of those moments, and it is a moment that we have all -- we have got to make a decision -- what are we going to do? are we going to let this president to his country down a path which could lead to instruction, or are we going to stand and fight and defend our freedom? and i know that you think of this like i do, when you think of it in terms of the blessing that we have, this nation that we live in, the legacy that we have inherited, the unbelievable miracle of our fan think, when for the first time in the history of the world, the founding fathers said this

nation will have its people be the sovereign. it never happened before. and it is an unbelievable blessing that we get to live in a nation where we are free and where men and women have died for our right to be free. but that fact imposes an incredible obligation and duty on every single person in this room, every single american across this country, and that is a duty to defend that freedom and to defend that freedom against both external enemies, against terrorism, against threats to our national security, but also to defend it against presidents like this radical man in the oval office today who believes that the government is the answer to every problem, does not believe we are an exceptional nation, who is that we ought to control at least 1/6 of our economy who said that the private sector is

the enemy. i think we have the opportunity today, the opportunity over the next year, frankly, to be in a position where we send a very strong message to washington and that is a message that we are not going on to get along anymore, we are not content with business as usual, we are taking back our freedom, taking back our values, and we are going to fight to defend what every one of us knows this country was built on.[applause] and before i get the mike back to my dad, do not lose hope. it can be really easy, particularly if you listen to the mainstream media, to think that somehow conservatives are a minority, that we are powerless, to think that we ought to just be discouraged about 2012 and give up the fight and sit down and be quiet.

if you start to lose hope, think about this -- the president of the united states used the irs, i've used the power of his office, to go after political opponents, conservatives, republicans, members of the tea party. he had the irs people asking what people said in their prayers. that is un-american. it tells you something about our power. the president would not bother the to use the irs to go out after us if he was not afraid of every single one of us. wherever you live, you have the opportunity to cast a vote, work for an important cause, to work

for an important organization, dedicate yourselves over the course of the next year to making sure that 2014 will be critical for us, critical for taking back the nation, and it is going to be a moment when everybody around the country can hear especially from those of us in the rocky mountain west, that we are not going to stand for it one minute longer. one of the questions i get a lot and then i will ask my dad, because i would like to hear his view, the media in particular likes to talk about how the republican party is in disarray. we are facing these huge challenges, but we have got this abuse going on inside our party. i would like to hear you talk of about the introspective's on it, as somebody who has obviously participated in politics and policy for a long time and who has seen our party and the democratic party does through times of change.

i would be interested to hear your thoughts on where the party is today and what we have got to do to take back the white house in 2016. >> after the -- obviously i was not happy about the outcome in 2008, but president bush and i have had our eight years, we had worn out our welcome in some quarters, although we are looking better and better every [applause] it was easy after -- not easy, but it happens to a lot of people, to be down after the 2008 election, and we lost, but then we went through -- i can remember that morning on january 20 of 2009, when we swore in the new president, there is a certain ritual that goes with

that that i have always been fascinated by. there have been five republican presidents since eisenhower. i have worked with four of them. i worked with a fifth as part of the congressional leadership. i have been intrigued why that transfer of power. i can remember when president ford lost in 1976. one of my jobs as chief of staff was to read his cap concession statement over the telephone to jimmy carter, because president ford had lost his voice. he had been working so hard in this closing weeks of the campaign, his voice was gone. all he could do was a bear whisperer. he called me into the oval office. we drafted a telegram, and then he told me to get governor carter on the phone, which i did.

he introduced me and then i had to read that statement. that was a real armor. that was about as low as you could get when i think about my political career. as i look back over it now and think about it, those particular days, but a lot of my experience is that out of adversity rises opportunity. i think back to that time when we lost the 1976 election, on the heels of watergate, nixon had been forced to resign, and a lot of things you should be pretty grim about, but with the perspective of a little time and history, we had to go through that jimmy carter period to get to ronald reagan. that morning when i read that telegram, at was for me the beginning of what became the reagan revolution, when we were all reaganites, when we got behind governor reagan and i think did some tremendous work,

took back the senate that day and put a man in the white house who believed in all of those things we all believe in, in the creed, if you will, of your institute. i tend now when i look at what is going on out there, and there is an awful lot that i do not like about what is going on -- i will say a word or two about it in a minute -- but i look forward to the next election and all the elections coming up as it is not going to be easy, nobody will hand it to us, we will have to earn it one vote at a time, we would have to raise money, recruit candidates, build the organization, and put forth a program that the american people will believe in and will support, and it is our right as americans to go do that and right to go change the government. that is by golly what we are going to do.

there is a lot of concern, i hear a lot of discussion and debate these days that is focused a lot on domestic affairs, for good and legitimate reasons. but i am perhaps even more concerned were at least as concerned about what is going on internationally as i am about what barack obama and his administration are doing domestically. why do i say that? one of the most memorable days of my life was 9/11 when after the planes struck the world trade center in new york, i was in my west wing office, working with my speech writer, and some of the staff gathered around when word came down that there had been an attack in new york and shortly after that the war to my office burst open, one of my secret service agents came in, he was sitting down in a chair, and he said, sir, we are leaving now.

he did not ask. he did not say if it was ok with me. he grabbed my about with one hand and propelled me out the door and down the stairs, headed for the emergency operation bunker underneath the white house. he got part way down there, got into a tunnel, and he told me the reason they had effectuated me was because there was a hijacked aircraft that have been reported by dulles, headed towards crown. that was american flight 77 that went into the pentagon. what emerged out of that whole day obviously was not a terrorist act, it was not a law enforcement problem, it was not a matter of us sending out the fbi to go find the bad guy, bringing to trial, and lock him up, it was an act of war. it was worse than pearl harbor. killed more americans than pearl harbor did, took place in the heart of new york city and

washington. if it not been for those brave passengers, they would've taken out the white house or the capitol building in flight 93. it is as bad as it gets. one of the key decisions we made in the bush administration, and we made it basically that night and the next morning after the day was over with, the president was back and address the country. lynn and i were evacuated off the south lawn of the white house and flown up to camp david, and we wanted to make sure that the president and i were not in the same location because we want to preserve the continuity of government. we were careful not to get into a situation where an attack would take us both out.

i got enough there'd you watch the reruns on television on what had happened that day. people did all over the country, i am sure. we began to think about what did we have to do now, how do we make sure that never happens again and we get the guys at his to us? the key decision was to say that was an act of war, because then we were justified in marshaling all of our resources, including our military manpower, capabilities, using all the powers of the president under article as commander in chief. that is what we did. during the course of that, we put in place at the terrorist surveillance program that is now referred to as the nsa program, basically, what it did was it allowed us, and i am confident of the program we put in place and we have not been involved in the classified stuff -- but the program we put in place saved as

general alexander has said at nsa must stop over 50 attacks on the united states and our friends overseas over the course of the last 10 or 12 years. we put in place the and enhanced interrogation program, waterboarding. some people so that was torture. i do not believe it was torture. ksm may have felt it was torture. the fact was that the enhanced interrogation program was signed off by the justice department using techniques we used on our and people in training, it was not torture, it was a good program that allowed us to develop the intelligence we needed to keep america safe for 7 1/2 years. and it worked. the record speaks for itself. the cia put out a classified

report in 2004. ksm was subjected to enhanced interrogation. a report was published, classified by the cia, and it has been declassified, although it still has parts read acted. the headline is "khalid sheik mohammed preeminent source on al qaeda." that is the place where we learned most of the intelligence we had, at least in the mid part of our time there, about what al qaeda was about, about where they were base, how they were funded, where the training camps were. on 9/11 we did not know that. we knew osama bin laden was back, but that was the extent of our knowledge. the way we kept the country safe was get that intelligence and

according to the agency itself, the way we did that was by subjecting him -- because he was subjected more than anybody else to enhanced interrogation techniques. this administration does not get it. they do not. obama made a speech here not too long ago to the national defense university in may and basically said ok, now we are returning back to the pre-9/11 days. we are not at war anymore. we are going back to pre-9/11. we will go try to round up the guys when they blow up. we are no longer on a war footing, if you will, in terms of thinking about the state we're in. i think that is dead wrong. it is an absolute total misreading of where we find ourselves today. as i look at that part of the

world am a north africa, a good part of the middle east, not just afghanistan, where they launched 9/11 from, but also yemen and the major struggle underway in egypt, the muslim brotherhood taken power there, the group having spawned all those other radical groups, egyptian jihad, and out of that has come most of the major islamist terrorist organizations. they are out there. look at benghazi in libya, and all across the middle east, clearly in other areas such as pakistan, iran we see obviously significant delegates of radical islamist belief and action and activity. they have a much larger geographic base from which to operate now that they can use as safe harbors than they ever had on 9/11.

we have got major problems with respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. nobody likes to hear that. that is a dirty word after we went into iraq because of our concern of weapons of mass distraction. that was a legitimate concern. saddam hussein twice had nuclear programs underway. in 1991 we took it out in desert storm. he preserved the technology to get started up all over again. when we took down centcom, we shut down the iraqi nuclear threat. when we shut down the iraqi nuclear threat, muammar gaddafi surrender all of his stuff. he had centrifuges, he had a weapons design, a chinese nuclear weapons design, all that stuff now resides in the united states. gaddafi did not want to have happen to him what happened to saddam hussein. in the end he got worse. when we went after gaddafi, we went after khan.

he went into the black market operation himself and was selling nuclear weapons technology to the libyans. they were his best customer a. to the iraqis, north koreans, and we shut down khan's black market operation. we took out three major sources of proliferation. that in and of itself is reason enough for what we did to saddam hussein in iraq. the threat has not gone away. you may remember it was discovered in the spring of 2007 that a few months after new earth korea set off their first nuclear test that the north koreans had built a nuclear reactor a couple of producing plutonium in the eastern syrian desert. serious a mess today. imagine what would have happened if the israelis had not taken

out that nuclear reactor. we also found from khan that pakistani officials were bribed for the latest technology for and reaching uranium. we know from a scientist who has seen it that the north koreans now have 2000 centrifuges operating to produce enhanced uranium. the nuclear program is better now than it has ever been. they have already proven to be first class proliferators. this administration in the midst of all that that is going on claims there is no problem. we got bin laden. there is no terrorist threat in benghazi.

that turned out to be frankly a blatant lie. they are still covering it up. you look at their recognition of the threat out there. it is basically nonexistent. in the midst of the week that obama went to israel and met with netanyahu and they talked about the uranium, the nuclear threat from iran, thereafter they announced they were cutting their naval aircraft are your battle groups in the persian gulf down to one. do not cross that red line, and at the same time pulled a carrier out, the truman was scheduled to deploy to replace it, and it is still tied up at the dock in norfork. they're cutting the defense budget by huge amounts. one of the great things we had with ronald reagan was a man who understood what was needed in terms of our national security capabilities, build it, and the

first call i made after desert storm was over with was to ronald reagan in california, and thank him, and what i said was mr. president, i want to thank you for all the $600 toilet seats you bought. he said, him a darn it, it did not cost $600. then he got the joke. our capacity to win in desert storm was in those part due to the decisions he made 10 years before about our military capabilities. think for a minute now, the massive cuts underway, sequester of the budget, we have trouble keeping pilot in the air force because they do not get to fly anymore. oftentimes squadrons have just been grounded. we have a lot of them now who are not and they are leaving. but we are doing by the actions of the administration, in some cases, the in action, we are

crippling the capabilities that a future president will have 10, 15, 20 years from now to deal with the next crisis. that is how long it can take to build up all of the military forces. it is not like letting a highway contract and somebody is pouring concrete. it takes years to get a first- rate top-notch nco in the marine corps and the other services. to develop the technologies we need, to build tanks and provide for the training and proficiency that our troops demonstrated so tremendously in desert storm. that capability is not going to be there after barack obama gets through his eight years in the white house. one of our major priorities has to be to recognize the threats that still exist that does not matter that what he sells, they are still covering up benghazi, they do not want to admit there is a major threat out there and

he could care less about the quality and the state of our military capabilities. i think not only are there a lot of very good reasons to be concerned about where he wants to take the country domestically, with obamacare and so forth, and abuses like the irs, but i am deeply, deeply worried about what kind of national security posture we will have, how good our word will be around the word, our capacity to do with threats, and if you cannot even mount a rescue operation from an hour away from benghazi, and four of our people are being killed by al qaeda terrorists in libya, what does that say for the next time we have a big problem to deal with and hundreds of thousands of lives at stake? i think the biggest threat we face is the threat of terrorists armed with something deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters, and we have to be able to defeat that threat.

i am sure i have gone on longer than i was supposed to. >> i have a question. i want to go back to the nsa program. he said something important, which is you could vouch for the program that was underway when you were in office. but obviously not the into the program now, it is a different situation. i think everybody in this room would agree barack obama is no dick cheney. when you have a president who has shown himself to have such a complete the search are for the rule of law, who has shown himself willing to use the irs to go after political enemies, who has shown himself willing to completely disregard the constitution, to decide i am not going to implement the employer mandate because it is

inconvenient for me even though it is the law, who has shown himself frankly completely irresponsible when it comes to protecting americans' privacy, you have a lot of americans out there now, and in light of a lot of news stories we are seeing, that say the nsa made a mistake and they listen to phone calls or washington, d.c., because it has a 202 area code which is similar to the country code for egypt. there is a lot of concern out there, and when you think about the threats that still exists and the fact that we have got to be able to defend ourselves both from the threat that the president is posing to our freedoms the mystically, also from terrorists internationally,

what do you do in a situation were you a have a commander in chief who has put an important program at risk, in my view, who may well be undertaking a real abuse of power. if he is willing to do it in areas we can see, what makes you confident he is not doing it in areas that we do not see? >> you get yourself a new commander in chief.[applause] >> i have some ideas about that. >> no question this is a difficult subject matter, and i know there are a lot of americans, some good friends of mine, who are concerned about the nsa. part of the difficulty is -- and i plead with people, do not conflate the nsa with the irs -- those are totally different problems, totally different issues -- i believe there is ample evidence for the irs that it has abused its power, that the power and authority of the iris has been used, misused to go after the opponents of the administration.

no question in my mind. and in my mind it ought to be -- we ought to investigate it, subpoena whoever we have to subpoena, bring them to trial, and make certain that we build the safeguards that can be used again. but it would be a terrible mistake because the irs has been abused by barack obama and his people we would therefore turn and say we are going to get rid of the nsa program because it might be abused by this president. but there are not really good examples out there of how the nsa program has been abused. you do not have the kind of evidence there that you got with respect to the irs, or you have old who had been interrogated by the irs about their political beliefs, and keith alexander, the commander of the national security agency, four star now, he is one of the finest officers i have ever known, as is also true for people like -- now i

forgot his name. >> allen? >> before him. i am thinking of mike mcconnell. mike mcconnell was a navy captain on my watch when i was secretary of defense, on the joint staff. i got him promoted to three stars. he ran the nsa on my watch when i was at defense. mike hayden, in charge before alexander, and then went on over to run the cia. those are three gentlemen, all of whom commanded the national security agency at one time or another on my watch. i served on the intelligence committee, worked with them him a they all worked with me when i was secretary of defense. the secretary of defense controls the bigger part of the intelligence community that does the cia director. i know how hard they work to put together a good program and a program that would allow us to

collect intelligence, while at the same time we safeguarded civil liberties of the american people. i am the one that took the request in to the president after i met with the c.i.a. director, the director of the nsa shortly after 9/11 and said that the experts tell me we could do more, we can learn a lot more, we could understand better the threat if we can get additional authority. and that is in fact what the president did. what are the caveats, and he had to review it every 30 days and reauthorize it, or it was going to stop. in terms of the congress knowing about it, well, i used to brief the committee's, the chairman and ranking members of the committees on the status of the program. we once had a meeting in the situation room which included

the speaker of the house, majority, minority leaders of the house, majority, minority leaders of the senate, the chairman and ranking embers of the intelligence committees of both houses. nancy pelosi was in the group. i had been sit down, and the question that was, do we need to get more authorization for this program? this was in 2004. i had been briefed. general hayden there was that day, showed what we have learned, what we have accomplished, and i went around the room, saying, does anyone believe we should terminate the program? no one. they were unanimous. absolutely not. you bring it back to the congress, italy, and you will tell the bad guys how we are reading their mail. that was the situation we were there.

i know keith alexander is now in command of the nsa. i have not been involved in classified meetings since i left four years ago. i am confident with men like general alexander involved, and given the professionals in the intelligence community i have never seen a situation where they violated for political purposes the way has happened with the irs, the authority they have. i do not know how obama deals with that. i know how we dealt with it. we were screwed us in making sure that that i our is never a bused. every once in a while, a big

organization, there were problems that cropped up, but there are safeguards built into it. we have the fisa courts, the foreign intelligence surveillance act courts, that they have to sign off on these programs. before you can dig into any of those records, in terms of reading content, for example, you have to have the authorization from fisa. i know everybody is concerned about it. i understand the concerns. the last thing i would want to recommend is, well, obama might abuse the nsa authority and therefore we ought to shut it down. last possible thing we ought to do. these are good folks, doing the best they can to safeguard the nation, and i like keith alexander covering my back [applause] >> well -- we can move on off of this, but i think again, if you look back and you talk about

abuse, you guys were also scrupulously careful not to have the head of the irs in the white house. he may have been there once. we know the president had him in something like 72 times. and i think there is a real question about in a democracy, under threat, you have programs you put in place to defend the nation. then you end up with a commander in chief who seems not to care about defending the nation, the constitution, the rule of law, americans' privacy, and it gives rise to concerns. i think you have to talk about there has got to be a place between saying that you are going to trust him implicitly, because we trusted you guys and you had the programs, and we will throw the program out. and i guess that would be my final question on this.

don't you think there is a legitimate question the merit people should be asking, and you can't say that program is classified to you cannot talk about it. but when you begin to see the kinds of things we are seeing about the program, those of us who know we have got to defend against attacks from the outside, at the end of the day, that comes directly into barack obama's lap. it seems to me you have to say this is a president who has put us at risk because of his unwillingness to exercise the kind of care and concern for the constitution that you guys did. >> so what is your solution? >> a new commander in chief. >> yeah, exactly. i understand the concern everybody has. i am as much of a small government guy as you are going to find. but i believe very strongly for a strong national defense.

i served over four years on the house intelligence committee. i have been heavily involved in the intelligence business a good part of my career. and i know how dangerous a world we live in, how difficult it is oftentimes to collect the intelligence we need to make sure we get it right, and it is not a perfect business. it just is not. it is very hard. after the secrets that are being kept by the worst regimes are the ones more than anything else they want to protect. sometimes the intelligence community makes mistakes. but as a general proposition, i would argue that for the most part, what we have done with our intelligence community, especially since the 9/11

period, has been by the book, well managed, not perfect, nobody is perfect, but they do have in place for procedures to make corrections. the last thing i want to do is be in a position to say now we need to shut it down or we need to significantly limit their capacity and their capability, so we will be confident they are not abusing their authority. and we will only reduce their capabilities by 10% or 15%. which 10% or 15% of the next attack are you willing to accept? there was a book written about me called "the 1% solution," because we have to be 100% successful.

host businesses, most line of works, if you get a success rate of 80% or 90%, that is pretty good. when you are defending against the potential attack against one of our major cities by terrorists armed with a nuclear weapon, are you willing to accept 99%? i am not. you have to do everything you can to stop whatever might conceivably be coming out you, and that means you have to be aggressive with the military, you have to be overseas and be actively engaged to make sure that people with technology did not provided with the people to use it against us. it means we have to work doubly hard at home to make certain that we can indeed defend against that next attack. and as i am saying, based on my own experience, both with respect to our success and respect to our success after 9/11, as well as our military

forces, to prevent the next attack, i think nsa is a well- run program, an important program. we have a president that concerns us for a lot of reasons but i would not throw the baby out with the bathwater. i would not say just because we have a president who we do not think is up to the job or does not have the same concerns and cares about the constitution that we all do, that we therefore ought to minimize the capabilities of our defense capability, our defense forces. and our intelligence forces to protect the nation. i think we got at the wrong way around. we got to beat him at the next election. we got to get him out of office. and we got to a people that we can trust and have confidence in. it is a tough problem. i do not deny it. i despise what he has done with

the irs, and what has happened in benghazi. but we should not -- i know so many of our intelligence professionals. they put their lives on the line day after day after day for all of us. and we were successful at stopping all further attacks against the united states during those 7 1/2 years, and, boy, i would do everything to support them, because they deserve it. [applause] >> i am glad to see you have not gone squishy. >> ok. >> he will take a couple questions from the audience. before, i wanted to end by talking about our men and women in uniform. when my dad's memoirs came out, we spent time gather around the

country talking about his life and talking about his career. and when i would ask you the question of what was your job that you treasure most, or valued most, i know secretary of defense was normally the answer. and the time you got to spend with our men and women in uniform. and i know one of the reasons submitted people are concerned about the budget cuts and about what is happening in the defense department, because of what it is due to the military. you mentioned earlier what it is doing to our readiness, that we are hollowing out the force, but also what is doing to our veterans, and what we owe to those veterans and put their lives on the line and they come home, and the extent to which the kind of budget cuts we are seeing may well mean, that we are not taking care of them the way we should be. there is a story you tell in the book and it is a prayer that i

wanted to see if you would end our session with and i cannot tell where this prayer comes from, and read this section. >> well, toward the end of my time as vice president, lynn and liz and i were invited to a special occasion. i spent a lot of time when i was at defense and vice president with our guys in special operations forces. a group of them have developed over time a social get-together, and it is all done -- it is not classified, but it is not done out in public. they get together and honor one another. family is included, and spouses

are included eerie at linda and i were invited to attend one of these -- are included. linda and i were invited to attend one of these. at this dinner, a young chapman was asked to deliver the invocation. he said, we are soldiers, agents of correction. may our word -- world see the power of strings. -- strength. may our enemies continued to taste the inescapable taste of freedom. >> i think there are questions

>> [inaudible] >> the question is -- i think it was addressed in to you, liz. >> you go first. >> i have not signed on with anyone yet at this page.

-- stage. i think we should undergo a generational change in terms of leadership. i do not think we are likely to see somebody who has been engaged in the past regenerate a new successful campaign. there comes a time when your moment has passed. i want to see somebody else take over, and there are some promising folks out there. i think of people.

a lot of you know them. like kevin mccarthy. how many of you know kevin? he has got my old job. in terms of making the trains run on time he has got a key job. i am trying to remember the name of -- martinez. i loved her speech at the convention.

they had a certain appeal. they are actually making those budgets, cutting taxes. i am not pessimistic. i am inclined to think what they are trying to do is a good thing to do. i do not think we need 23 debates or however many it was. we have eaten up on each other. -- beaten up on each other.

we need an orderly process. we also need to do a better job than we have before in the party mechanism. the thing was the machine they built to get the vote out. they built it in 2008, and they kept it going until 2012. it is still cranking out tonight. we need to be better organized than the democrats are. there are a lot of things that will enhance our chances. i think we will see a lot of people come to the forefront.

as long as we end it soon enough so it does not become a death march for whoever we nominate. >> i agree about the next generation, and i think people should think about that when they are thinking about hillary. she is the last generation. she is not the next generation. as the esteemed former vice president pointed out she blew it benghazi and light to the american people about it. i also wanted to point out that the commissioner of agriculture used to be the republican party chairman.

i hope adam will run for governor. i think we clearly have the ability to defeat barack obama in 2016, and we have the obligation to do so for the sake of the nation. >> in case you think you might not be pessimistic, this particular question might change your mind. it is a composite of several questions that were sent out. despite how we got here, the places we were in and the middle east with egypt, syria, iran, seems as intractable as any of us will ever see. taking on the political side, does it concern you with some people who lean towards the libertarian side of the party

that questions on what to do with countries like this might be shoved off and end up being horrendous in the future? >> those are key questions. partly it is important to distinguish in different areas. i look at what is going on in egypt today, and i have been supporting the military. my experience with the military going back to 1990 when it was time to get organized and deal with saddam hussein in kuwait -- they are a pretty professional force. i think they got involved in the

morsi regime because there had been an upwelling of support from the egyptian people where petitions circulated that could be signed only by egyptian voters, and they got far more petitions that called for the removal of morsi, and they got far more signatures than the previous election. i think there is a majority view among the egyptian people that they do not want egypt to become an islamist state like a ram, -- like iran, and i think we ought to preserve our relationships with the egyptian military. i think it is a lot like turkey in the 1920's. he brought turkey into the modern era. i do not automatically say this

is a coup that is bad. my observation is the military has responded to concerns of the people, and what will arise from that will be free elections and another shot at democracy. in terms of the overall situation with respect to serious, -- syria, it is a huge mess. it is almost like whoever wins we are going to have problem's. if there was time to shape that it was some years past, and today we are in terrible streets, but they are also in a situation where you have to be concerned about who is going to inherit the chemical weapons a already possess.

they goodness they do not have a new look, but it is a worrying situation. >> the political side of it -- what happens politically if some of the people have a strong tendency? >> i understand the temptation to say, it is their problem, let them solve it. we decided in 1941 that did not work as a basic policy. a lot of people believed in the 1930's the united states should not get involved overseas. it was lit -- a legitimate debate. people believe that. i do not see any way you can

look at the threat, the potential for an attack, and say, what happens is none of our concern. the 9/11 terrorist trained in afghanistan. that is where the nuclear trade is taking place. you have got pakistanis dealing with lib. that stuff is spreading, and we have to do what we can to stop it. when you have got 19 guys who come into the united states with airplane tickets and box cutters and do what they did to us on 9- 11, how can you ignore that. you try to have support, but

they have said, that is your problem. we are going to hunker down behind our oceans. that is a pipe dream that was over decades ago. >> do you want to say anything about the situation? >> i was pointing out what we are seeing across the middle east today is a result of an american foreign-policy attempting to turn back on our allies. if you want to understand what happens when america leaves a vacuum you have to look over there than syria. the historical record is very

clear that a strong america is one of the best guarantors of peace in the world. when you have a president who has really attempted to weaken us, to bring us down a notch, you see a vacuum created like in the middle east today, and vacuums like that are filled by those who wish us ill, filled by those who are using chemical weapons against their own people on the one side of the fight and on the other side you have got al qaeda on the rise. the world is more dangerous when america walks away, and that is a clear lesson you can see just from turning on the television.

>> one more political question. so many of us realized that as republicans we are painted as the rich white guys. unfortunately, some of the people in the front make that an easy case to make, but it is not true. we need to find a way to get around that and present ourselves as more populist, younger, and what other things would either of you recommend that we can change this persona most of the electorate seems to have of us? >> since you are a rich white guy, maybe i will answer this question.

>> cheap shot. i think it is an important question. i do not have anything against rich white guys obviously. i love a number of them, but i think as a party, that is how the mainstream media wants to portray us. what we have to be able to do, it depends on who is speaking upfront for the party. that is very important, but i do not want to see our party falling into the trap of classifying people by the coupler of our skin, by our gender. i thank -- i think that is what the democrats do. we have to be the party of ideals. we have got to be the party that knows what it stands for.

i do not want to see us trying to be all things to all people. ronald reagan made it clear the political party has got to stand for something. we cannot have a tent so big nobody knows what we believe in, but we have to be able to articulate our beliefs. we have to be able to say we believe in the free enterprise system, and we believe in it not only because it makes people wealthy. we believe in it because it has raised more people out of poverty than any other system invented by men. we are the people of opportunity. we know the american dream can be real again, but it is not going to be real if every single young person falls under the well of a rock obama and the democrats, who are attempting to say, let's give you assistance all along the way. as a mother of five kids, it is

amazing for me to sometimes think about the fact that none of them when know what the soviet union was if i was not telling them. there is a history that seems recent to many of us, but to get today they did not live through the fall of communism. they did not live through watching nations try to control every aspect of their citizens lives fall apart and crumble. we know what happened. you can see it today across europe. those are the policies the president is trying to advocate. we have to say there is an economic renaissance possible if we have the kinds of policies that would allow us to get access to energy resources we have here in the united states. if we had a president really committed to energy independence we would have economic growth

you could not even imagine. across the board, talking to them, explaining to them, you want the government out of your life. you want to get back to the point of government is best that governs least. the more this government tries to give you things, give you benefits, tell you they can run your life, tell you they can make your life easier, it is a pipe dream, and it is going to end up that for all of us. the benefit we have as republicans is the truth. the truth is on our side. we have to be unafraid about standing up for what we believe in and making the case to the american people, because if we do it with conviction and pride, we will win today.