,oday on c-span, newsmakers followed by a conversation with the daughter of lyndon johnson and lady bird johnson. then the future of the health care law. >> this week on "newsmakers," senator patrick leahy on a democrat of vermont, joins us to talk about the nsa surveillance program. josh is a white house reporter covering issues for politico and the wall street journal. >> thank you for coming. i wanted to start talking about the legislation you have on the programs that collects nearly all americans phone records. section 215.

we voted on another collection program that the central intelligence agency has that tracks international money transfers. by the international transfers, it picks up a fair amount of american data as well. i was wondering whether that also raises concerns. you talked a lot about the privacy and locations of that. >> it does add to this. i worry about any kind of bulk collection for a couple of reasons. what have you collected? so much, do you have anything? i asked these intelligence agencies and others if you want the police to go into your home and go through all their

records, everybody knows they would have to have a search warrant. it would be inconceivable otherwise. quality of records and everything else are online. they go in there. is this any different? i think we are reaching a point in this country where many people feel we can do this so let's do this. just because we can do it, does it make any sense? secondly, do we have the legal right to do it? thirdly, if we do have a legal right, why? this is a country where i think most americans like their privacy. the concern i have had since the first patriot act since this has evolved, more and more the privacy of americans is disappearing.

that is going to hurt us as a country. it will not make us safer. some will be successful, as much as we hate to think about that. if we take away all of our privacy rates we will become our own terrorist. >> you have a sense of how many of these programs are being used at this point? all of them presumably would be affected by the legislation. >> i have held public hearings on these things in the judiciary committee. we have another one coming up in a few days. those are the questions we ask. we will get the answers. there are a lot of collections and implications that we have had in open sessions. what do we get from it? you mentioned the cia.

i completely understand the difference. in the nsa, we will talk about all the abilities to collect everything, enormous abilities. they were not competent enough to keep a subcontractor from stealing it all. the only silver lining and that is the fact that they love the people are now asking and why were you collecting all of this stuff? >> one thing that was interesting to me was that people do not necessarily think of the cia as collecting information on americans at all. >> they are not supposed to. they are not supposed to be involved in the domestic law enforcement.

>> in this case, it sounds like it is almost picked up collaterally. there are a lot of transactions between the u.s. and overseas. that comes into the system. i was wondering whether there is any difference or whether they present similar concerns. >> i think there are overlapping concerns. i believe the article in your paper pointed out the fact that there are certain procedures on bank transfers that are monitored. people assume they are monitored not only by us but by other countries for the obvious reasons of money laundering and just tax matters and so on. that is fine.

there are certain things you do. i have a problem with that. we may argue about the amount. you know up front. the question is how far does this go? let me give an example. it reposes with the obvious conclusion that there are right to do all kinds of collections, it could be your medical records. a family members medical records. your children's record in school. your employment records so that at some point you get turned down for a job and you never know why. there's something that has been misread or read incorrectly. it is easy to say that people

want to support all of this stuff and they want to keep from having another 9/11. nor is the fact that they had the evidence to stop 9/11 before. they acknowledge it. they dropped the ball. now they say we have to spy on you and everything you do to stop another 9/11. that is not a question i asked. how much of your privacy are you willing to give up? there are surveillance cameras when he was down the street. how much of your personal privacy are you willing to get up? if you give up everything, what have you gained? if you give it up all your privacy, have you made yourself safer? i would argue no. >> i would like to ask you about legislation but before i do that, there is one other program that has been declassified. that is the one that ran for a

few years looking at data from e-mails that the administration abandoned. >> because there's the question of whether they have the legal right to do it. >> they said they gave it up because they thought it was ineffective. until that point, had not the court said it was ok for them to be doing that? what is your view on that program? what does that tell us about the level of oversight? >> i am concerned about the level of oversight. most of this was done secretly. it is very difficult to talk about. i liked it better when i can talk about things in the press and say assuming that this is true and going from there. i think there should be more open oversight, less of we are going to tell you this seeker because only you and i know.

that can be said that it. i would like to have more oversight. one of the ones we heard from the intelligence committee saved us from 54 terrorist activities. when we got into an open hearing and started going specifically on that or people have to tell the truth, we went from 54 to maybe a dozen questions down to possibly one that was following up on it at the i investigation. the reality often does not match the rhetoric. more of this will be open. my hearings are open.

you come down this bottom line. if you collect everything do you has anything? it becomes so massive. >> what are the prospects forward at this link? >> we have bipartisan support for this. there were similar legislation. this is not an issue. this would be considered a liberal democrat.

we can come together on that. i want to have real up and down votes. there will not be secretive votes. we will see how we go. if you are an american, you can understand why he cannot come into your house and go through your piles. should they be able to go to them electronically? >> senator feinstein also had the intelligence committee. she said she thought we should continue. this is going to lead to what often happens in the senate which is nothing?

>> i disagree with the legislation. i can tell you right now i will not vote for the status quo. i do not think it makes us safer. we have seen because of the leaks in some cases we look silly by what we have collected. i would rather have us more specific about what we do. we use very good intelligence.

we're able to get superb intelligence. a lot of it was very specific human intelligence based on what has come out publicly. >> one more quick question on reform legislation. do you think the senate intelligence committee has the credibility to push forward a reform package given that it oversaw this program for a number of years? >> i will let you asked them that question. i am sure they will be anxious to answer. we have a basic disagreement on this idea.

oh like two things. i would like more the opinions to be made public. they support the idea. they would like to make it public. it is some kind of a closed door. i like to have an advocate in there. if you have somebody on both sides, those are prevented.

some of these are things senator feinstein and i can agree on. that is something i look forward to. >> i was wondering what your read is on the other sense of programs that we learned a lot more about. senator wyden has raised privacy protections for data collection. i was wondering what your read is.

>> a lot of changes need to be made. we face a real problem if we do not rein this in. you find some support to rein some of this in. we're going to see the american industry really hurt overseas if it is seen as an anonymous thing. having said that, i get a little bit tired of hearing some of the complaints.

i am shocked to find gambling going on. >> to the other countries spy on us? >> i think yes the do. countries spy on each other. they have the kind of relationship we have with written where we have a sharing of intelligence. there are very few examples of that. if we give the impression, everyone of our technological advances are really in an shipment of our intelligence agency. >> they do not like it. we had one testifying the other

day. i asked the question of how they felt. i asked if they had been under any court orders they are not allowed to talk about. he said i cannot answer that question. do you think national security would you heard? no. let's get the exact thing. they can go in and say we have your information. we have overclassification. every single administration has classified too much stuff.

now it is getting out-of- control. you make a mistake, classify it. then you do not have to admit the mistake. >> we have seen these coming down. they roughly mishandled it. >> they did. it should have been caught long before. when it finally does, they do not want to do that. >> to have a lot of concerns? >> if you had a corporation that involved a major product or whatever and they are in corporate espionage to come in

and steal all the stuff, don't you thing heads would roll? you have been in a fire? who has been recommended? >> could the head of nsa be a civilian and you separate cyber command from the nsa chief position? >> you mentioned edward snowden is now holed up in russia. >> because they are so protective of human rights and free speech. >> being sarcastic.

>> we do not have billboards in vermont. >> what do you think of him? do you think is more of a whistleblower or traitor? >> the traitor the decision of court will have to make. the fact they go first with it to china and then russia. they pay for freedom and free speech.

i wish we had that available for the appropriate oversight and it raises questions of why we are doing it. one was with private first class manning with material a lady gaga cd. that created some very real dangers for a lot of people. i asked the question who was the person who made the enormous mistake of putting all that stuff in a place where somebody could come in and download the old lady gaga tape? >> what should happen?

>> you have to have private controls. i got the impression and i'm sure a lot of them disagree with me. many say we are the nsa, look what we can do. we can do no wrong. they did not do the things that should be done to protect what they are doing. there have been too many that have been carried away with all of the technology. during the cold war, there was the development of an extraordinarily expensive satellite system. we overlook the fact that the

soviet union was breaking up. sometimes we can get too carried away. >> do you think someone needs to be reassigned? >> who has been recommended? who has suffered the consequences of having such life controls? >> who would be responsible and this case? >> who do you think should be fired? >> general alexander is leaving early in these ring.

it becomes a moot point. one reason i like to see the successor be somebody who first had a confirmation. one of the major questions that should be asked is where is the line of responsibility? who do we know is in charge? >> we have about five minutes. lacks what you think about president obama's handling of this situation? do you think in the wake of the do you think in the wake of the manning episode enough was done to secure classified information? there was a warning call. it is not as though this happened out of the blue. >> one was nsa. one was the state department

defense. i would argue that in the electronic era when it is easy to transfer massive amount of data that has to be far better controls. i would talk to some of the operations that have checks and balances within their own corporations. they should be a duel or tri-key situation. there are ways to do it. >> i said we have now learned about some activities that we were not aware enough. given the legislation that your pressing ahead on, have you

learned about new programs subsequent to the snowden releases? the collection stuff is right in your wheelhouse. you oversaw that. did you learn new things? >> we are finding out a lot from our hearings. >> did you learn about the collection programs? >> we are learning a lot from the hearings. we are having the hearings and public. i learned a lot from the papers. when casey was headed the cia over not tell the people he was supposed to about things on the hell, about the second or third time he came up there to explain to him this item we had just read was something she was supposed to report to us. i said you can save a lot of time.

just have it delivered to us marked "top secret." we have that wonderful crossword puzzle. i felt badly for the cia who was sitting behind them that started to laugh because of the look he got from mr. casey. the thing is, many times we have learned about things in the press. this happens a lot. this is one of the reasons why i is or to lose like reporters shield lost on all of that era and may not be happy about some the things that were reported, but if you're going to have a free country, you need that. >> this is largely about how our legal system is being tortured by the war on terror.

the justice department seems to be trying the tax to of delaying bringing people to court who have been charged with serious crimes to court. the department actually imposed a lawyer being assigned to represent that fellow. do you think that this something that needs to be investigated? >> i was a prosecutor for eight years. i never worried about a lawyer being assigned or a miranda warning being governed. if you have somebody who want to confess whether you give a miranda warning or not, i cannot quite understand what happened at lax. i know in the boston bomber, the

magistrate came to the hospital and major somebody was assigned to. it is a relevant. one of the problems i think, and it creates a concern for the obama administration, the president is trying to close guantánamo. did they are trying to bring the people who are there into our federal courts. this is a bad miss date area in our federal courts we have had four or five military tribunals and the couple were overturned. our courts are the best way to do it.

when we refuse to bring that into the courts, we have to be standing up and saying we've got this. we have evidence that we will do this publicly and our courts. 2.5 million dollars a year to keep these guys in guantanamo. we have been mapped up. thank you for being our newsmaker. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> on the next washington journal, fixing the healthcare.gov website. our guests are with lumbered news and politico.

a look at what types of federal assistance that sent to the deceased because of inaccurate records at the social security administration. washington journal is live at 7:00 a.m. east turn on you spent. monday, the senate homeland security committee will examine the impact of digital currencies without using real money. clientes include the big foundation and -- bitcoin foundation and general counsel. watch on c-span 3. >> i started with teddy roosevelt. i knew so much was written about him that i needed another story. i knew that he'd been friends. when i figured out the

difference between the two and their leadership, it was teddy's public leadership that gave his value as a leader. i begin to read about the progressive era. he was at the center of it. even the best historians writing secondarily wills david e's people were the vanguard of the progressive movement. i knew about ida tarbell, and william allen white, but i did not know about the others. >> tonight with doris kearns goodwin on c-span q&a. informationut the that facebook has on over a billion people. they know your political preference, your sexual preference, all these things. one security analyst said that if the government directed -- ask you directly to that information, it would take

money, lawyers, maybe even guns to get you to cough up that information. but we were to reduce on social networks. we also don't think about the fact that our google searches are tracked. books, and history my google searches, would be very incriminating. andok at date rape drugs things like that for my mystery books. people sitting there with their computers inc. that they are engaged in some the great therety, not knowing that is a big eyeball on the other end. they keep track of what you do. lorir laurie andrews -- andrews on "the communicators." night, we will look at the life and legacy of lady bird johnson. live at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c- span.

r,spoke with linda johnson the daughter of lady bird johnson and johnson. >> your mom is a bigger than life character to a lot of people who have written about her. of first do rankings ladies, she is in the first five or 10 in terms of in lance. -- influence. can you tell me what she was like as a mom? >> mother was so organized. she did not show a lot of emotion. that was so unlike my father. always on.as she was a calming influence to all of us. she was my best friend. we had a special relationship,

so i would say, i'm telling you this, not as my mother but as my best friend. when your mother, and i am an expert now that i have three almost perfect daughter's, a mother has to say "eat your spinach." you need to go to bed and clean your room. where is a best friend, you can say, i am so madly in love with joe. next week, when it's no longer joe, the best friend doesn't say, wait a minute, you tell me you were in love with him. now you think that hank is the man of your life. things thatkind of allow us to have that special relationship with my mother. that was a very important factor in my life, to have somebody

that i could talk to. love andho was full of not necessarily about what you should be doing all the time. i think mother gave daddy so much grounding. he knew always that she was going to tell him what she really thought. she was going to be able to be his eyes and ears. she would help him with what other people thought. he was not isolated. he got every kind of opinion. whenas going to tell him he was wrong, not publicly, but privately. she thought he should do something different or she -- how she felt about it. to would often wait for him

ask her. he thought she was the smartest person that he ever knew, regardless of male or female. she had the best judgment. he would tell us that all the time. your mother has the best judgment. talk to your mother about that. i thought she had pretty good judgment. but she was not perfect. she had too much puritan ethic. you must be working all the time. she always had a desk full of letters. day, aeven to her dying big tote bag that would be full of male and projects, things to do. she had an assistant, and one of her job was to get the bag back and go through it and see what she had written on it. then she had to get the bag back to her.

like, ialways feeling must be doing things. so sometimes in the white house, i would say, mother i'm going to kidnap you. atare going to this exhibit the national gallery. we will go out for lunch somewhere. because a lot of people do not invite you out to lunch for fun. they invite you to come to a luncheon where they're going to raise money. they invite you to come to a democratic dinner or whatever. it is a working dinner for you. just to be able to go out and order what you want to be. -- eat. to go to a museum. i would do that. the truth of the matters that i think she did it because she thought she was doing something for me. she could justify leaving her desk because she was doing something with lynda. the artnts to go to

gallery. i will go and it is something for her. of course, i would justify doing was -- i fact that it was getting mother out of the house. i was giving her some time to do something for fun. -- she always so had work to do. she was a wonderfully fun person to be around. change when she became first lady? >> oh no. gave me more if they need to get her out. we like being together. we enjoyed the company. your motherce said, never gossip. i would laugh and listen to what he said. i knew that she did not talk gossip, but she did not mind

hearing it sometimes. he just thought that she was perfect. i did too. i thought she was a pretty wonderful person. except that she did not play enough. that would be about my only criticism of my mother. >> she was obviously the wife of a politician. you are the wife of a politician. >> i swore i would never marry anybody in politics because i did not want my life invaded. i had other plans. then a married shock 45 years ago and hek 45 years decided to go into politics. we had two children. there we are. now we have three children. >> would did you learn about your mom? was your style in politics similar to hers? was a different or the same?

>> i asked mother and i said what advice would you give me to be a good political life -- wife? what did you do for daddy? she said she went around thanking everybody. i think that is true. there is a lot of that. people thatlot of were good to check. a lot of people that needed to have that connection. they knew they could call me and i would get a message to chuck. aware of that i was how much they were doing. same. did a lot of the she kept up with a lot of his friends. he was a wonderful friend though, daddy was. he had so many friends and he loved to call them and talk to them. democrats or republicans. timer spent a lot of

feeding all those people. on the senate days, particularly, there were a lot of bachelors. either they never married or their wives were back home. i remember one time a man came over because he was going to a white tie event and he needed someone to fix this type for him. him.s tie for mother helped him get dressed. daddy would bring lots of people home. mother offered that house with a lot of friendship and she made a lot of friends and would bring them into his life. the speaker was also interested in history just like mother was. mother and the speaker would go

off to see some old house in virginia on the weekends. gody would sometimes grudgingly along. speakerd to be of the and the speaker wanted to be a mother. it all worked out. about what to do in politics from my mother. i was raised with it. aknew when she walked into room and introduced herself to everybody, she did not necessarily stand back in a corner and wait. she went out and establish that friendship on behalf of her husband. that you the future can be a very helpful person. that is what mother did for daddy. particularly in things like the lady bird special. the lady bird

special. it seems like a unique jumping off my. do you go out on any of those? >> i did. our parents told us they really needed us to help them win this election. you and i know that they didn't really need us. but i think people like the family members. if they could not get daddy and they couldn't get mother, maybe at least they could get lynda or lucy. we took turns. one weekend lucy would go, the next weekend i would go. campaign, we both went to happy states. -- i went to happy states and lucy went to happy states.

went from virginia, alexandria, to south carolina. lucy went from south carolina to new orleans. we took turns. we were both in school. i could only take off so much and she can only take off so much. it was a fascinating experience. from your mom cost perspective, what was your role in the lady bird special humor -- lady bird special? >> i think she enjoyed it. daddy love to go out and speak to people. mother was a little more regal. she loved the south. she had grown up and spent a lot of time in alabama. paternal family were from

alabama. so she had lots and lots of cousins. she would go there in the summer. her mother died when she was five. her mother sister would take her to alabama to visit cousins in the summer. mother did not want these out to think that we did not want their votes. just because we knew that there were a lot of people who did not like the civil rights bill for instance. she hoped that she could appeal to them to recognize that the time is coming and change had to be made. we were moving forward. there were also a lot of african-americans who were there and we wanted to reassure them. whoe were a lot of people

love the south like she did. calledhe very formally members of the senate, the state where she was going, and the governors, and asked him to ride on the train. i do not want to come into your state without talking to you about it. she was not going to be invading. she was coming down to talk to them. that she did. some people that didn't like us. they were very vocal. threats that they were going to blow to train up. car through before hours.

if it were on the track, they would block the sidecar. and not get us. there were threats all along the way. success andderful mother would stand on the back of the train like she had seen harry truman do, and she would tell them how proud and how happy she was to be there. she hoped that they would vote for her husband. he cared about them and there were many causes that we all shared. daughter of the south. it was wonderful. it was wonderful for me to see of mother,, not just but a lot of the other people who got on the train with her. they were risking their political lives, even if it were

not their physical lives, they were risking their political lives to associate with lyndon johnson and lady bird in full -- lady bird johnson. some of their constituents were not in favor of the full rights bills that had been passed. some of the things that daddy was supporting. they love mother. , your fathererson -- how did he feel about you writing on the train? you have a senator from a southern state. she said, oh my daddy loves your mama so much. he does not care. people dought, those not get enough attention to. when you look at the people who are willing to ride on the train, having said that, when i ,ecame a first lady of virginia

a lieutenant governor told me that his governor sent him out to greet mother. the governor was not ready to go himself. but he wanted to be hospitable. capital, he to his came out to greet us and he said, if i had not done that i would not have been elected governor myself. he felt that he would have been poached by people in his own democratic party. there were some who were more liberal than he was. it was an interesting revelation to me. hearing the story in the 1980s from someone who was there in

the 1960s. >> you talk about your special bond with your mother. that trip must've meant a lot. >> he did. you would go to a stop, and there would be people who had signed up and down. there were a lot of things that were not nice. but there were a lot of wonderful people who would be there cheering. calm and sheways would let them all scream and do -- then she would say, you have had your say, now let me have mine. gentlelady -- gen tility took them back a little bit. they did not know they wanted to be seen as these evil people.

sometimes they would let her be. i rose to her defense. fortunately i did not say too many bad things. make ofi first did she having some semblance of a house?life in the white >> mother always told us that this is just for a little while. you are not important, it is the job that is important. i had read about how when the romans would come back from winning a great battle and they had their triumphal march, they had a slave who was on the back of the chariot who said, "remember you are mortal." because sometimes when all those people were cheering, people

would really begin to think that they were immortal. it wasn't the president who was important. you as an individual were not warned. -- important. do would always say, don't anything to you do not want to see on the front page of the new york times. something that was hard to do. that was limiting because there are lots of things that young .eople do it is just part of the times. timed you ever have a ?here she said, now lynda very shy. still am, believe it or not. i was studious and bookish and

boring. exciting one. press until i had the wedding. i had a wonderful wedding. that's a lot of press. i did not get my parents into much trouble. the beginning of your time in the white house, a difficult time for the nation with the assassination and then at the end, vietnam, did you see anything, especially to the end, protesters were outside the white house, you must've heard some of that? did that have an impact on your mother? >> mother was a very even keel person. daddy had his highs and lows. mother did not cry. she didn't shout or scream.

that was not my mother. i know she was affected by it. i know that it hurt her very much to hear people seeing -- saying those things. i was pregnant and then i had a baby. my husband was in vietnam. nobody wanted the war to be over more than i did. more than daddy did. he was trying to find a way. we thought we had it in the cease-fire talks. but then for reasons that you they got in touch with the south vietnamese and said you will get a better deal under nixon. peoplevery hard to hear shouting outside our window and saying, "hey, hey, how many did you kill today?"

it was hard on daddy and it was hard on mother. she did everything she could to give daddy some piece and solace and to be there by his side. supportive of his march 31 speech. when people could focus not on daddy, they could then be willing to come to the peace table. things get soe focused on individuals, for instance, you look at the release of the prisoners that untilanians held on reagan took his hand off the bible. they were not going to let jimmy success.ve that

it was personalized. sometimes in politics that happens. it is not just between democrats and republicans. it is international too. sadly that happened to us. we try. to make a loting of old decisions that he felt were right for the country. be best foras not the democratic party. or even if it meant he itsonally would suffer from in popularity. but he thought it was the best thing for the country. and he did -- i tried to tell criticize then

choices that somebody makes, but do not question why they did it. let's believe it that they did it with the best of intentions. they were trying to do what they felt was best for the country. it does not matter if it was lyndon johnson or george bush. i think everybody who is president thinks they're trying to do what is right. daddy used to say, it is not hard to do what is right. it is hard to know what is right. we were facing a situation where we had a lot of people on the bomb --de who wanted to go into vietnam with the bombs of corrosion the i get rid of -- hiroshima and get rid of the problem. i hope that history will talk

about a lot of the things that he did and i will hear some of that clapping in my lifetime. history and historians are constantly reassessing your father. there was published something about the presidency. , daddythe newsmagazines four with the two roosevelt's and i believe wilson, i cannot remember. >> just a couple of more questions. just as people have reassessed your father's presidency, your