>> so you can see from reading the story, you have known from covering senator mccain since 2000, what did you learn about senator mccain? contexthink just in the of carnations, he has been the product of so many phases. his life. -- what wasf striking is how friendly he is. is the kind of reflective you get when someone is deciding if you want to run. i think a lot of it was about republicans in the senate.

he once that very badly, if they do not win. >> you read the article, and you think he is going to run again. you think he is going to run? >> i do. i think he is one of those people who is so in the game, and i do not mean to say that to but ish the importance, think one of the lessons of is that it is interesting in american politics. evolve or change and get back up, so i do not see him wanting to get out of it. and with respect to his age, he is among the older but has a more youthful spirit than some of the other senators. so i think he would reject the

notion that he is too old. like a nice excerpt this morning. one of the greatest anecdotes that i have heard before. mccain, retirement equals death. his dad retired. has theyork times mother as 101. i think she is -- >> 201. >> she has been 101 for quite some time now. but, yes, old age is not a thing. all right, another rapid round of one-word responses. media leans left, yes or no?

>> yes. >> i think -- [laughter] in places, yes, but not entirely. yes, there are moments, but there is more to say about that. thinking in washington dc as a resident of washington, d.c., i just say i rarely talk about politics with my colleagues. but, let me think about it. i live in northwest washington. i do not know a lot of people. those that are pro-life. i think when you do have about politics, it

does not happen often. >> jake, you did not hesitate either. >> i do not hesitate, but i like to expand. it is much more complicated. ofch is a certain type person becomes a reporter, and generally speaking, we are, generally speaking, i am not they we are not, but generally person that kind of is a reporter in washington, d.c., or new york city has never worked a minimum wage job , hasde of high school never experienced poverty, is ,ot an evangelical christian you know, there are a lot of that they have not

had. that said, there is an awareness of that, and when there is an awareness of that is when the best journalism can happen. a country that they are on tv four, and talking about experiences, but it is not just them. reporters, most publications you can kind of get a sense of what the editors are thinking. there is more that i would quit on the senior producers then i would put on the day-to-day reporters. you do not see a lot of coverage of troops. you do not see a lot of coverage of faith. to say that.tic it is about experiences and

lifestyle, and i think it is more getting out of our comfort zone. if they did surveys, more of them would associate with being democratic than not. i try hard to stay out of that. my family, we have evangelicals and people on all sides. i think that is helpful. really, the issue of bias, left, thet, the bias towards quick and easy and the simplistic, and that is what we have to fight every day to try in apture things sophisticated and three- dimensional way.

we overlooked know much. and i am sure there are lots of reporters out there who have experienced poverty and more in the military and have evangelical relatives. >> revisiting it. >> well, i thought i had to say before,use i was at nbc so i have watched that change. time, personally, i have worked very hard throughout my career to be as intellectually aggressive about both sides of the aisle as well as the in between in order to not allow myself to sort of be animated by political feelings. i really enjoy the political discourse. and that has taken a lot of effort. to be able to try to be arms length.

also, i have been assigned to cover things in recent years, and people interpret that as i chose to go there. but i was assigned, and if you're out in an environment that may be a town hall meeting or an event that is very can you richard, and you have a chance i have heardople, quite a lot. i take it seriously. and there are those that are less likely to be drawn into the , whether we're talking about a school or church. drawn toot typically , and isomething in life think that is affecting how people go into the job. have for questions and bring you a microphone, but

before that, we have a twitter question. we'll obama enjoyed a similar resurgence in popularity after office, as bush did? think history shows that most presidents do better when they are not president. books,ere four or five in clinton is the main example. the office in the 20's or area's. by a lot, and he is venerated as a cold war strategist. reagan, we talk about reagan as an icon. controversial. a lot of people did not like him, so, yes, after-the-fact. even nixon. a fantastic job has been done

by the editor of politico magazine. about the historians presidency, who have the worst fifty-year, and a very common answer was fdr. relapseomes out of the quite empowered, and he overreaches, basically, and he gets snapped back, basically, and that is a lesson to learn. >> a question for the questioners. is first? do we have a question? while we are waiting for that, in early adopter, innovator on twitter, aggressive. on twitter.

how has social media changed in the last year, and what do you see in 2014? what twitter is my dredge. twitter is where i find good stories. of course, politico has always been my politico, and nothing else will be politico. but there are also breaking stories on politico on twitter. but, you know, all whole bunch of reporters are on twitter all the time and promoting each other stories. i follow, unbelievably, more than 2000 people. world, from all over the and it is about what is going on. it is, honestly, it is real-time

and interactive. but i find most valuable as a news source. because it is every publication and even of secure publications telling you what is going on from all over the world. unconventional women reporters, things you should be following. i will follow them. sometimes, they are writing about australian social policy. maybe all of a sudden, my eyes are open to something i was not. a chief, you are correspondent at the new york times. it is your job to follow conversations. when i started covering the the second term, if

you wanted to go and know what was going on, you had to physically go. more or less once a day around and carrier pigeon. it was awesome. different,000 times and twitter is now an important way of getting it out. it is sort of like a stream. >> i follow everybody here on twitter, and you three are pretty good. time you get to that aret edition story, there different things, podcasts, so make a challenge to phone call that you do not have time to. where instant news era

there really is a new cycle. you do your job, and d.c. changes. >> well, i think that in cable that we in the media see we have been ramping up with the times, a live shot at 11:00 a.m., brian williams at six: 30, etc., etc., etc.. we are continuing throughout the day. do that, as, we well, so i think we are multitasking in ways. this is about what is happening on the hill. the president has arrived. somebody might tweak that out. and it has been very, very helpful. there are many that are not technically savvy, thank

goodness, but there are lots of people around which can tell us what to use and which technologies to embrace, and i try to follow them. i come to work. at a newsyself conference as the only one with paper and pen, and there are different ways you can be old- school and new school. embracing using some of the social media. themselves, chuck grassley, who is known for tweeting, or those who have staffers who treat. certainly, they have used their various outlets to communicate directly to constituents, which is terrific, but there is a utility. grassley clearly tweak himself.

but a lot of these guys don't. finding if they actually do it themselves, and then you find some that didn't take it but are not actually operating it. >> i think it is a myth, actually. a scandal alert. marco rubio. >> anybody can jump in on this. what is a source for this? that is obscure but that you consider essential? >> well, i wouldn't tell you.

>> who is a good not obvious tweeter to follow? >> grassley is really smart. >> you have sort of the clash at the moment. tweets,at some of his you will see a president of time go by, and meeting the president and shaking his hand, not doing it like this, when they are trying to take a self he -- selfie. a blue light at every event. the glow off of people. not justactually looking at the campaign or politician. it is an interesting social

change. >> there is one person who is no , and his wasng obviously a very insider thing. a very knowledgeable insider. view of foreign policy. last question, and you can jump in in any order. people on live stream who wants to be you. on how tour advice succeed in journalism and life? >> me? ok. the two things i say are learn how to be a print reporter

before going into broadcast or write,and learn how to and work really, really hard and realize that it is the five percent that will get you where you want to go. but i think for young people, i would say enjoy the fact that you have some advantages in knowing the technology, getting a pulse on things, but at the same time, have a regard for , andexperience gives you that is lots of learning from being mayor along the way. years time and time again, there has been a scenario that i have seen before, a pitfall i have encountered, so there is so much more to learn and enjoy it.

>> there are some talks around but people come up and say, i am a reporter, 25 years old. people following them on twitter, and somebody says, i want a piece of that. you are living in community. with a twitter following, actually being close to people is something you can do later maybe. >> peter? was i tell them not to do what i did. it no longer is the path in journalism. fairfax county.

national affairs or what have you. the only difference, and every path is different. embrace the technology. embrace the possibilities out there. there are things we still care about today in terms of accuracy and iirness and so forth, still like print paper. i get five of them at home. it comes out of his essential values that we have. >> the tragedy that was , this is ahere result of leadership failures. from the outpost and from the reporting that you did -- >> i will keep it here in washington. to deal with the placement of the outpost.

to respond, to fix it. >> there are so many, but one of was that in order to do the job the soldiers were tasked with doing, they did not have enough assets. there were not enough soldiers on the ground. and that is for secretary rumsfeld to discuss for all time. and i would also say that when it came to the obama administration, there was a lot of focus early on with the white house and the people across the river about who was going to control the surge, who is going ,o control the next direction with obama and jones and others, and every day, i cannot help but that it took away from what

, andocus should have been not just the policymakers, but and what ithe media, should have been focused on, which was ultimately why i wrote the book tom a was the soldiers on the ground. goodbye, yousay have been on jeopardy. it was athat like? >> charity game that we played last year. alex trebek. it was a great experience. appreciative of the people who watched, and we are we should give up the bank of america for making these conversations possible, and thank you for coming out and our

authors have been kind to each signed three copies of their book, so there are nine visits and with your chair, there is something that tells whether or not you are one of the winners. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] \ >> all this week in prime time, we are bringing you encore presentations of c-span q&a. tonight, david stockman, also

the author of the corruption of capitalism. you can watch our entire conversation tonight starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c- span. wraps up, we are here to tell you about our c-span year in review series. tonight, immigration laws. on tuesday, senate filibuster rule changes, nsa surveillance on wednesday, thursday, a look friday, the and u.s. budget and the federal government shut down. it :00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> the thing i care about most is to make it more of a museum with more pieces of beautiful

furniture. antique furniture. most of it it's from 1902. >> i would have thought they had been collecting it from the thomas jefferson did the most wonderful thing of putting in beautiful furniture, and the sad thing was the war of 1812, and everything was burned, and then they had to start piecemeal, and he could sell , and thend not like the president could change the president grant had the blue room pilot, and another androbins egg blue, something stopped at the time of theodore roosevelt. >> first ladies, season two.

this week, jacqueline kennedy, weeknights on c-span. >> up next, a discussion on president obama's national security policy from sunday's "washington journal." host: and as we continue, and paperbacker, a edition of confront and conceal. thanks very much for being with us. guest: thank you, steve. writing about the president's first days in office, and that barack obama is planninggaged in america's covert attacks on iran --

can you explain? guest: we think right now of the that part ofions what drove iran to the table was the increase in financial sanctions by the united states and its allies. there was something else that brought iran to the table, a one with many countries, including the united states and israel. in the israeli case, those responsible for a number of together, they were responsible for the olympic games, which is a code word for a secret program to try to use an entirely different thing to the iranianw

weapon, and this weapon was a cyber weapon. , asneed for cyber defense we have seen this past year with , and for those using credit cards in stores, and so on. has not discussed is that the u.s. has become an well, and layer, as rans the centrifuge, and it pretty well until the summer of 2010, dealing directly with the , coming down in the situation room. cyber worm, costing billions of dollars, spreading around the world.

and suddenly, this huge operation evolved over time. whether itpeculating was the united states or israel. expected sometime in january. this is the story from your newspaper along with a colleague, the president urged to sharply that the nsa data mining. we will share what the president said at his news conference. this report was made public by the white house, which surprised some people. guest: they were handpicked by the president, including two people who were extremely close to the administration like the deputy cia director or her and

the head of regulatory affairs going back to harvard law school. ans report was written to be unclassified document. remarkable in the city is that there is no classified version of it. what you see is what you get. with 46 different recommendations, things that have to change within the national security agency, and they ran with the cyber command which is responsible for those kind of offensive attacks we were talking about. so what were the big suggestions? the first was that they did not find very much merit in the collection of americans telephone data. called, how long the call was, and so forth. so they said the program, if he continues at all, should be

moved off to the private sector or her, and you should have to get an individual borat, an ,ndividual order of the court if you wanted to go pursue steve scully's phone calls. that is very different than the way it works right now. the way it works under the system that president bush said up, the court simply issues a and if they have a reasonable suspicion that steve scully might be communicating with terrorists, then they could pursue that by themselves. they would not need to go back to the court and say we need to look at steve's phone records, .ecause steve called sanger now they would have to go back and get an individual borat. that is a big change.

what you saw as recently as yesterday when the director of national intelligence turned in court records of the classified materials, the nsa is continuing to argue that it gnosis program is absolutely essential whether they can live with the individual court orders. but there were some other things let's discuss,l. this group said that the national security agency and cyber command should no longer be in the market for finding flaws inside computer programs that they can exploit to develop their own weapons. the program against iran was based on three or four flaws in microsoft windows that they found and used to drill inside the iranian program.

so there's going to be a big behind the scenes argument about whether or not the intelligence community can unilaterally give up this element of cyber weapons including the chinese, criminal groups, who may be using those flaws, which are called zero days. host: let me go back to an issue that you touch on in your book and the subject of a new york times editorial. how do you deal with the guarantees of the fourth amendment of the constitution and deal with national security issues using 21st century technology? guest: this is an old issue for the country. the fourth amendment has been around for some time now. we have seen a constant pendulum swing in fourth amendment issues and general constitution issues between the preservation of individual rights on the one

hand and assuring the security of the country. we saw it during the john adams administration with the alien and sedition acts. we saw it during the lincoln administration when he suspended habeas corpus during the civil war. we saw it during the franklin roosevelt administration when he set up camps to intern japanese americans and we saw it after 9- 11. what is different this time? in the past decade, we have had an explosion of digital technologies that have enabled the government and the private sector to do far more with a much smaller base of information. in the past, no one in the government ever thought of collecting all of the metadata, the information around to the phone calls that are made in and out of the united states or even inside the united states.

why didn't they think of doing that? because they did not have the computer power in the all the rhythms to sort through them. why collect the haystack when you have no chance of finding the needle? when the president sent this we saw it during the lincoln committee off, he said, do not tell me whether they are legal. i am a lawyer. i can sort that out. tell me whether we are doing things simply because we can rather than because we should. the committee came back and gave 46 examples of things they thought they were doing because we can instead of because we should. host: the president responded to reporters' questions on this issue.

here is an excerpt. [video clip] >> if something slips, you say, mr. president, why did this slip? so the point is not that my assessment of the 215 program has changed in terms of technically how it works. what is absolutely clear to me is that, given the public debate that has taken place and the disclosures taking place over the last several months, this is only going to work if the american people have confidence and trust. host: again, david sanger trying to thread that needle. guest: you picked the most

fascinating excerpt from that news conference. this is a different barack obama who was senator and was railing against these programs and sitting down with ron wyden trying to figure out how to rein them in. once you become president, you become interested in the tools that are out there. what confront and conceal its all about is the story of a president who came into office and discovered if he was going to withdraw from iraq and afghanistan, which he knew he was going to have to do, he was going to need some new tools to defend american interests. he settled on three. i called them the light foot

print strategy. a phrase that comes out of the white house itself. there are drones, there is cyber, there are special forces. they are all supported by this cyber capability. he says he has confidence in the program, but he realized americans do not and he would have to adjust this program to american expectations. he is saying there is not a problem with the program. he is saying there is a problem with the way he explained it. that is different from what he was saying as senator. the other interesting thing he brought up in the course of that was that he himself indicated he resulted in changing these programs and perhaps moving this program into private hands. he does not think he can live without it. he is threading the needle between his own party, those on the left, wyden and

many of his own colleagues, patrick leahy from vermont, who want to eliminate this program, and some in his own party, including dianne feinstein, who says his program is absolutely essential. he is trying to find himself some wiggle room so he does not have to kill the program, but it some democratic buy in for it. some of these programs you could have made public without notifying terrorists about a way around them. you know what the atmosphere was in washington after 9-11. you probably could have gotten public buy in for this program. host: george w. bush began these programs after 9-11. we are going to continue to weave in excerpts from "confront and conceal." >> it was basically a half

million dollars worth of work perhaps. of 9/110th anniversary two years ago, our executive wanted to try to figure out what america had spent in the response. obviously part of what we spent

was the lives of 3000 americans killed that day and another 5000 americans killed in afghanistan and iraq after that. the cost that comes from rebuilding lives and this new system that we go through now and airports and the rest of the security state. when we added it all together, including the cost of afghanistan and iraq -- iraq was justified by president bush as a risk he could not take, having saddam hussein in place after 9- 11. when we added all that together in the cost of long-term care of those who were so grievously wounded in those wars, we ended up with the number of $3.3 trillion. i do not think anybody could have imagined that. we have a lot of budget debates

in washington. but nobody sat down and said, the cost of responding to 9-11, or would it be a better response to spend that money in different ways? american competitiveness or some foreign aid programs to try to better america's dealings with the rest of the world or some anti-poverty programs. there are all kinds of ways you could debate for doing it. think about how much time we end up debating in washington this weapons program, this education program. the amounts are tiny compared to what we spent in response to 9- 11. host: our guest is david sanger. the book is "confront and conceal."

scott is joining us from peekskill, new york. caller: i am glad to hear your sensitivity on 9-11. my father was in world trade center 2 when the second airplane hit. it is a very difficult moment for our family to deal with every anniversary. host: did he survive the attack? caller: he did. he has been very traumatized. his company virtually ceased to exist as of that day. being a senior member of that company, it was difficult for him to deal with all of the changes. he had been going to the same place to work and all of a sudden the building doesn't even exist anymore.

he was running through the smoke with his briefcase and the firemen found his wallet six months later and returned it to him. we could not find him all day. it was a traumatic event. i am glad to here you share so many sensitivities to the matter. my question is to your guest. across the street from the new york times building, there is a billboard asking you where your paper's coverage is and the 2000 architects and engineers who are demanding an investigation on the building's destruction and the overwhelming evidence that pre-planted explosives destroyed it. since this has everything to do with our national security, can you explain what rational and scientific basis your paper has or failing to objectively cover this crucial issue? guest: thanks so much for your question.

i grew up near peekskill and i grew up near new york. trust me, the people who work at the new york times have as much of a critical interest in what happened on 9-11 as anybody else. there were not only reporters there, but they live and work within the city. we have devoted fairly considerable amounts of time over the past number of years to the question of all of the different conspiracy theories, regular theories, all of the different theories. we have not yet found any convincing evidence to suggest there was a plot that the president knew about in advance, which was one of the theories. i was with the president in florida and he looked shocked by

what happened. we have not found any evidence so far. that does not mean there is none there. we have not found any evidence to suggest the building collapses were caused by anything other than the two airplanes that flew into them. host: this editorial from the new york times. bad news for big brother. a free society should have another kind of security, the security of citizens who fear their conversations are being watched, monitored or scrutinized. the basic ideals of citizenship are jeopardized. the way to restore that trust is not through cosmetic touchups, but by ensuring that the administration complies. guest: i do not write

editorials. if you read even the beginning pages of the 300 page report that the president's advisers turned out this week -- host: it is on the c-span.org website as well. guest: you do not have to read all 300 pages. there were 2 law professors on that panel, including one who talked with president obama when the president was teaching at the university of chicago. they lay out the 2 definitions of security. they go back to the latin origin of the term. they do exactly what that editorial does.

there is one element of security that comes from the fourth amendment -- securing your place and your persons. if somebody is going to go search your house and search your phone records, they need to have a warrant from a court or an order from the court. and there is the other side of security among which we talked about since the traumatic events of 9-11. that is the state securing the country and its viability. it is always a balancing act. what is remarkable about this past week, just as everybody was leaving washington for christmas holidays and new year's and so forth, is that you had a federal judge for the first time stand up and say, if i had to rule on this, i would probably find that the bulk collection of telephone data program is unconstitutional.

he called it almost orwellian. someone else said this program has not been as successful as the nsa would like you to think. on the panel were 2 experts that had been in the administration. they will have to figure out a way to retrench. in the president comes back from hawaii, he will have to figure out how to show that the changes he is making are deeper than simply moving the program from government hands to private hands, that there are new checks and balances. host: if you are listening in on c-span radio, we are talking to david sanger of the new york times. our next caller is from new york. guido on our republican line. guest: there are many in the nsa

who say if they had had the ability to do this in telephone system -- go back and look at phone calls that came in and who who say if they had had the the associates are, they might well have picked up one of the 9-11 conspirators getting his instructions back from europe in afghanistan, and so forth. that was the origin of this program in the beginning. i think president obama agrees with some of that. you have not heard president

obama or the heads of the intelligence committee say we need to eliminate the program. the question is, can you maintain the efficiency of the program, the speed of moving through a single database and build in more legal protections that will make americans comfortable with its use. host: our next call is nancy from new jersey. caller: my first comment is, and you made a point about the cost of 9-11. there was a really good book that was put out. i would like some articles that the data center in utah is capturing all of the internet traffic in this country and storing it and that the government has analysts that try to pick up on certain information in all of that data

and use it and there are encryption analysts trying to break the internet traffic that is encoded so that even if you send data securely or encrypted, the government is working on ways to break that so that they can see what the data communication is. guest: there is a facility in utah. it is not yet operating because they have run into some construction difficulties. we believe that what that facility is all about is to be a centerpiece for data collection.

and how much of that are you comfortable with? the second question is, how much of this is actually useful? that comesd question naturally is, if there are encrypted conversations, do you want the government to be working to break that encryption or to create backdoors to it? and here i would send you back

to that advisory committee report. there is a fascinating recommendation that says that the government should get out of the business of breaking encryption, and instead help microsoft, google, other american vendors who are trying to create [inaudible] why would they say that? two reasons. one is, the american business community has come to the government, come to the president and said, you are undercutting the competitiveness of american business. if the chinese or japanese believe anything they put in the cloud or anything that runs through the u.s. or any american equipment they buy has a back door in it in the encryption system that can take that data and dump it to the nsa, they're

not going to buy american goods. i was in germany two weeks ago. the head of deutsche telekom is talking about having a german- only subset of the internet, somehow in the thought this would protect them from the nsa. what is happening here is that the snowden revelation has brought out all of these not only nationalistic but protectionist forces who want to say, here's a reason not to buy american. the snowden spy scandal may be the first spy scandal that has more of an economic effect that has a diplomatic affect. host: a report that the meeting that took place at the white house with executives from yahoo!, google had very little to do with healthcare.gov and everything to do with these issues we been talking about. guest: people like melissa meyer, the head of yahoo! and

the chairman of google and others all use the moment to say to the president, we have gotten together and put together a set of principles. here is what we think we're going to need if we're going to remain competitive. while those principles don't align totally with what you saw in the advisory committee report to the president, they align pretty well. this is a remarkable case in which the business community pressure is actually lining up with the civil liberties side pressure, for different reasons. host: if you're interested, your competitors at "the washington post" came out with a new poll about how americans view the nsa. the headline, americans conflicted about watchful eyes. let's go back to your book,

"confront and conceal." you say, quote, the emergence of an obama doctrine has been a redefinition of the circumstances under which the united states will use diplomacy, coercion, and forced to shape the world around it. guest: that's right. the president came in saying that iraq was a dumb war and he would get americans out. he pursued the plan that president bush had laid out when he left office. we are out. then he did the surge in afghanistan that i think it's fair to say he regretted almost as soon as it started here it he did these very public national security council meetings that allowed for the surge, but he wanted to do it over a very short period of time. there were another trillion dollars over 10 years on top of the money we had already discussed.

that was followed by another committee called the afghan good enough committee that the white house said nothing about, that met on saturdays in the situation room to figure out, what is good enough to get us out of afghanistan. the other part of the obama doctrine is that the days are over when the united states can afford to send one hundred 50,000 troops to a country for six or seven years, discover you can't really alter the inner wiring of the country, all you do is breed resentment, then withdraw. that is what led to the light footprint, the use of johnson special forces. it is a fair question, has the light footprint begun to run out of gas? there is reason to think it has. drones in cyrus don't help you much in syria. they don't in afghanistan help you establish a judicial system

or help farmers get their goods to market or make sure that the schools are open for girls and for boys. they enable the united states to move in quickly, but to leave quickly. and not to leave a lasting imprint. i think the big question afoot foot now is, is the obama doctrine -- we have three more years left -- when we look back at it, will we say that president obama made lasting changes in the way the united states interacts with the world, or did he simply reacts to the american political impetus that after a decade of war in afghanistan and iraq, we want to pull back. the last three years of any two- term administration is mostly a foreign-policy presidency, because you can't get very much

done on the domestic agenda. host: in 2012 david sanger came out with "confront and conceal." tom is joining us for michigan on the independent line. caller: good morning, gentlemen. we make the east germans as he look like amateurs. are you familiar with this program called carnivore? guest: it's the same as the total information awareness, i think it is, yes. as the world has gotten more digital, the nsa has look for more ways to look for warning and be able to pursue individual terror threats, and digital

technology allows a government to go in ways that the stasi could not imagine. it's interesting that you brought the stasi up. in october, it was a vivid phone call between chancellor angela merkel and president obama, right after the revelations that the in essay had been monitoring angela merkel's personal cell phone since 2002, long before she was chancellor of germany. she herself had grown up in east germany before the wall fell, and said this reminded her of growing up under the stasi. i'm not quite sure how the president responded to that, but it is certainly something the

president did not want to hear. certainly somebody elected on the kind of platform the barack obama was elected on would not want to hear that. that is what makes me think he probably is pretty serious about wanting to build in the kind of legal protections here. on the monitoring of foreign leaders, the issue that angela merkel was bringing up, they have already brought this issue into the white house rather than have the nsa alone decide. i think the president was right when he said to the media they would be screaming why the u.s. did not do data mining. guest: if you're the president of the united states and every morning someone comes in with a threat matrix, and mr. president, there's been no 9/11 since 9/11 -- on september 12, 2001, i don't think anyone here would have thought that you

could have gone a dozen years with no major outside attack on the united states. we thought one was imminent at that time. i think the president has come to realize, and certainly came to realize after the benghazi attack that so tragically killed the american ambassador in libya and three others that you're held personally responsible as president post-9/11 for any kind of breach, even though it is a big, porous country. we have got both diplomats and troops sent out around the world, and they are all vulnerable. yes, you do want to ask the question, if another attack happened, what would we wish we were doing that we were not doing already. host: you say, quote, a president is clearly struggling with two overwhelming

imperatives, an obligation to put out the fires, and a desire to build something lasting. iraq might still be messy, but it was no longer america's mess. afghanistan would be more complex. guest: that's right. afghanistan will be more complex. the president said in a news conference that a year from now, almost all american troops will be out of afghanistan. that depends on whether president karzai has a small, continuing presence. host: how likely is that? guest: i would never want to bet a week's salary on president karzai being predictable on anything like this. think there is at least a 50-50 chance that there will be a small american presence, that karzai will kick this down to his successor and the americans will say, we cannot plan this

way. we have to know we are staying or know we are going, and be ready to get out. those forces are not simply there to stabilize afghanistan. they're also there to keep an eye on pakistan. we think about afghanistan because we're there for a dozen reasons. but it is pakistan that has a raging insurgency and 100 to 200 nuclear weapons we are worried about. one chapter in this book is called bomb scare. it is about the president cost of discovery in 2009 that there was possibility that a weapon had gone loose in pakistan. it turned out to be a false alarm, but that really focused their attention. ever try to figure out if there was a loose weapon. host: this intimate photograph of the events that led to the capture and killing of bin laden just looking at the expressions on secretary clinton, the president and vice president --

why did you decide to put this photograph in your book? guest: it captures obama's national security initiative. in some ways, that's an unfortunate choice. the bin laden raid was about cleaning up past business. it wasn't about what you create in the future. it was an incredibly well executed and organized attack. it's reasonable to ask the question that the administration that was able to organize the attack so well has had such difficulties in the past year in execution on a range of domestic and foreign-policy issues. syria -- we have discussed on this program, the rollout of health care was not pretty -- the bin laden attack was different.

host: we focus this morning on the situation in north korea, and almost bizarre story about the execution of his uncle and what it means in north korea. guest: if there is a 2014 possible story of something that comes up to bite us that we are all not focused on now, it's north korea. host: why is that? guest: the iran negotiations are going on to keep iran from becoming north korea. but north korea already has six to a dozen nuclear weapons. you rarely hear president obama talk about it. i think you can argue that iran is in a tougher neighborhood in some ways. in north korea, what we have seen as we just discussed with scott snyder, is that you have a young leader who is

consolidating his power at the possible expense of the security and stability of his own deeply poor state. american presidents have been waiting for the collapse of north korea since harry truman. if north korea does either implode or explode, there is suddenly going to be a scramble for that six to a dozen nuclear weapons, and we want to be prepared to make sure they do not go into the wrong hands. there could be divisions within the north korean military that we are now seeing, as a result of the execution of his uncle was in fact a reflection of that. there is something going on there that we don't fully

understand. if that blows up, it's going to be very hard. wikileaks documents published some fascinating discussions between the united states and south korean government about what you do when north korea collapses, and how you avoid a scramble with china for influence in the area of north korea. that's a lot harder today, given china's current mood about territory in general, than it might have been three or four years ago. host: our next caller is joining us from woodstock, illinois. caller: i can't believe i'm going to ask the following question. what does the word oversight mean? guest: when you think back about what the intelligence committees were created, capitol hill, after the church commission and the cia in the mid-1970's -- it's a reasonable question to ask, is oversight fully

contentious these days. when overtime, and some of these committees been concerned about the vulnerabilities the united states face, willing to allow the intelligence community to go too far and accumulate too many powers. that is a big debate. it's a big debate because you not only see divisions on capitol hill, but you see divisions within the president's own party on this. diane feinstein could not be in a more different place than pat leahy, or senator wyden. that tells you that the intelligence committees, if they're doing their oversight on not explaining well enough either to their colleagues or the american people how they're

keeping the intelligence community and check. same question goes up about the judicial branch. i think you will see some changes. i would not be surprised if you see changes in the foreign surveillance court. one of the recommendations the advisory committee had was that the appointment of the judges to that court would not simply be something that the justices do, but that other justices participate in as well so it does not become ideologically aligned with whoever happens to be chief justice. host: this is from one of our viewers on our twitter page. bin laden's stated goal was to bankrupt the usa through fear and overzealous nationalism. looks like he succeeded. guest: if you take that three point $3 trillion number, you

have to say that certainly on the economic side of it, he did not bankrupt united states, but it certainly had a huge cost. in economics 101, they teach you about opportunity cost, how else you could have invested that money. i think when historians look back at the period post-9/11, they will say, could you have accomplished more with less? could you have invested that money differently? host: mark is joining us from washington state. caller: i went to bring up two points of honesty. only 1200 americans were killed on 9/11. not 3000, as the president quotes. host: what is your source on that? guest: that is common knowledge, and it is easily proven.

host: what is your source? caller: i don't have a source right now. this is a worldwide never-ending war. there can be no victory against terrorism. terrorism is a tactic. guest: on the 1200 number, i've never heard that number before. terrorism is a tactic. that is something that president bush frequently confused. you heard for a while during the iraq war, president bush go out and give some speeches about combating what he called islamofascism around the world. it made members of his own staff wince. it took a series of disparate

groups and tried to agglomerate them together and make it sound like we were in the kind of conflict we were in an world war ii. why else would you use the phrase fascism? the strategy the president obama and others have settled on, which is more in line with reality, is that you take these individual groups and realize that while they may have some common ideological bonds, they really are not a well organized, oiled machine. you try to break them up into component parts because they're a lot easier to fight that way. the second question the caller raises is, do you want the country to be constantly on a war footing? the answer to that is obviously no. no country can remain on a war footing for a dozen or two dozen

or three dozen years. history is replete with examples of how that diverts a country from the kind of progress that we make. does that mean that we forget all the defenses and let anything happen? of course not. but there's got to be a bit of a balance there. president obama has tried to bring that balance back, but as i suggested earlier, i think as president he sound much harder to do than it was when he was talking about it as a senator. whatever happens happens on his watch and defines his presidency. host: let me go back to a couple of caller's points about what happened on 9/11. we just finished the 50th anniversary of the assassination footing for a dozen or two dozen or three dozen years. history is replete with examples of john f. kennedy. 50 years later, despite what the war commission had written, a lot of people feel there are multiple governments involved. we look at 9/11. what people think might've happened, will we be dealing with this for the next 50 years?

guest: one of the things that struck me during the kennedy assassination -- consideration not only of kennedy's presidency, but how the nation reacted at that time, the more we have gotten into it, the more questions have come up. i think you can say that to a lesser degree about 9/11. but the commission did not do a complete job, and people will be going back and looking at that. investigative documents will become declassified, as they have over the kennedy administration, and they will raise new questions. the bigger issue, the one we will live with for a long time, what "confront conceal" is about, does it change the way

the united states deal with the world, and did it change in the way we wanted to. for the first six or seven years after 9/11, the entire mechanism of american foreign-policy turn towards counter-terrorism. really only in the past two years have we begun to focus on some other big issues. not only the big issues of our day of climate change or global financial stability, and so forth, but the question of whether or not the united states has an essential role in asia as a stabilizing force. those are the big issues we need to debate. if we spent all of our time trying to figure out one more element of the plot of 9/11, fascinating as that may be, it

may keep us from having our eye on the bigger prize. host: one of your concluding points in "confront conceal." you're on with david sanger of the "new york times." caller: thank you very much, david sanger. you have been wonderful on this program. one thing i like is in reference to the nsa phone calls. you mentioned the word balance. i also want to add the word prevent. the government has the responsibility to secure the country and the citizens. i just want to tell my fellow citizens, don't be afraid. what they're doing, they're trying to protect us. host: thank you. guest: lewis is making a point that you hear from general keith alexander, the outgoing head of

the nsa. we have 100,000 people who go to work every day in this country trying to make the world more secure within the intelligence community to detect future threats. if there is a message about 9/11, the iranian nuclear program, the north korean nuclear program, about the awful things we have seen happen in syria in the past few years -- we are not very good at warning. most of the wars we have entered into the past 50 years, we had no concept a year beforehand we would be involved in. that tells you that we need to sharpen that. but that does not eliminate the need for balance. there is still something

critical to the constitutional protections, including the fourth amendment -- the question is, do you want to leave the question of how to do that balance to a secret debate between policymakers and the intelligence community, or do you want to open it up more. whatever you think of edward snowden, whether you think he violated his commitments to keep information secret -- and he certainly did -- whether you think he should stand trial and take whatever punishment he would have to take for revealing that data, you have to say this. he made this debate much more vivid. you would not have seen president obama standing up in the press room the other day, talking about the issues this way, had it not been for those revelations. host: let me conclude with your words, as a summary of this book. you say, the global influence of power is at a critical inflection point. how the united states navigates

the next few years will almost certainly determine whether the best we have to offer can transcend the decline in influence accompanied by the rise of so many competitors. guest: that's right. let's face it. we could do a separate our on this. the superpower days are over. we have to not only manage these fractured terror forces we have been discussing before, but we have to be able to manage the rise of a great new superpower in china. that's another big part of the book. history is replete with countries that don't do a great job managing rising powers. the british did not do a great job of managing us more than 100 years ago. we are not doing a fabulous job of figuring out how to manage china as well. over time, that means for going

to have to get used to the fact that were going to have to share some power. that is not something most politicians want to describe. they want to describe the u.s. as fundamentally an unchallenged power, and militarily, we are. but our influence around the world is much more fractured today. because of the internet, china, the rise of other powers including india, more cohesive europe -- we have to adjust ourselves to that. very little of the foreign policy debate you see centers on the question. host: david sanger, "confront and conceal, president obama's secret wars and surprising use of american power." his work available online at nytimes.com. we appreciate you stopping by.

>> all this week in prime time, we are bringing encore presentations of q&a. tonight at 7:00 eastern, our interview with david stockman, recent author of the book "the great deformation ." here is a look. >> i think the success that has been attributed to reaganomics is totally unwarranted. we had the teams he and deficit vans between 1981 and the end of the bush administration. those 12 years are all really the reagan programs. so we did have an economy that rebounded because volker killed inflation and the deficits were enormous, and they stimulated the economy, but they established a precedent for massiveus, chronic peacetime deficits and put the republican party, the old

defender of the treasury gates, soo the position that cheney in eloquently expressed, deficits don't matter. that was the beginning of the end. in democracy, if there is not a conservative party that is depending -- defending the taxpayers come you're going to have a free lunch competition between tax cutters come the republicans, and spenders, the democrats. that's why you have $17 trillion national debt and white is out of control and why we have kind of a doomsday machine. >> you can watch the entire interview with david stockman tonight starting at 7:00 eastern, right here on c-span. >> as 2013 wraps up, we are here on the west front of the u.s. capitol to take about our c-span year in review series, a look at

important issues we have covered over the past year. here is the lineup. tonight, immigration laws. on tuesday, senate filibuster rule changes. nsa surveillance on wednesday, thursday, a look at gun laws, and we wrap up the week on friday with the u.s. budget and the federal government shut down. starting tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> the thing i care about most ,s to make it more of a museum with more pieces of beautiful furniture that belong to two old presidents. there's very little antique furniture here now, and most of what is dates from 1902. >> why isn't there more antique furniture? -- i would'veeen thought they had been collecting that since the beginning of this republic. >> thomas jefferson did the most wonderful thing of putting in a beautiful new furniture.

the sad thing was the war of 1812 when everything was burned. then they had to start these meal since then, and every president who came could sell what he didn't like that was there. they used to have auctions, and then the president could change the decor if he wanted. when president grant had the blue room violet and chester arthur had it robins egg blue. finally that was all stocked at the time of the adore roosevelt in 1902. >> first ladies, image and influence, season two. at nine on c-span. journalistuardian lynne greenwald who published edward snowden's security leaks told the european committee last week that the nsa was attempting to eliminate privacy worldwide. parliament has been

focusing on national security and privacy issues following allegations of nsa spying and surveillance on european citizens. this inquiry is just over an hour. >> we don't seem to have a connection. can you hear me? >> hi, how are you? >> we can hear each other now. good. mr. greenwald, welcome to a session of the committee of inquiry of the european parliament. we have about an hour for this session. i'm first going to invite you to do your presentation, and then afterwards we will take questions and answers. very pleased to have you with us here today. i will give you the floor, or the video link, rather. the floor is yours.

>> good afternoon, and thank you to the committee for convening this inquiry and for inviting me to speech you as well. there has been a virtual avalanche of stories from reporters over the past 6 months regarding espionage and electronic surveillance by the nsa and its partners, and each of these stories has been extremely important, but i think that the quantity of them has sometimes endangered the ultimate point from being obscured. i wanted to spend a little bit of time discussing what i think is the primary revelation, the crux of all of these stories that ties them together and is the important thing for us to realize. and that is what the ultimate goal of the nsa is, along with its most loyal, some might say subservient, and junior partner,

the british agency gchq, when it comes to the suspicion of surveillance and build. the objective of this system is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide. at first glance, that might seem like a bit hyperbolic, like it is a little bit melodramatic, but it isn't. it is a literal description of what the nsa and its surveillance partners are attempting to achieve.

and the objective of the system is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide. at first glance that might seem a bit hyperbolic, like it is a little bit bill germanic, but it isn't. it is a literal description of what the nsa and its closest surveillance partners are attempting to achieve. the reason that i know that that is they are attempting to achieve is that this is what they say over and over and over again. on occasion, they say it publicly. repeatedly, they say it in their private documents, which were written when they thought nobody was able to hear what it was that they were saying. there are instances where keith alexander, the general who is the chief of the nsa has made comments along the lines of >> there are documents devoted to trying to understand how to better invade the wi-fi systems on airplanes, based on the concerns and that human beings can still go on airplanes and use the internet or phones for a few hours in their lives and not be susceptible to surveillance. there are documents that discuss ways to circumvent advanced encryption tools out of your

that individuals will develop the means to be a will to communicate with one another privately without the nsa being able to invade those communications. what we are really faced with is not just the creation of the most invasive system of suspicionless surveillance ever built in human history, although we are certainly faced with that, but it is beyond that. it is an institution that has embedded into the mandate the mission to ensure that human beings can no longer communicate with each other electronically with any degree of privacy, simply through institutional inertia there is an effort to collect everything.

over the past six months, i've done a lot of reporting about espionage targeting in many human populations. every reduce reporting i do interviews with newspapers or television programs in those countries, and i always ask, where they interested in sweden? why are they obsessed with collecting all of the communications of brazilians? or any number of other countries? the answer is that which comes from the nsa documents. the nsa and its partners don't need any specific reason to collect anybody's communications. just the fact that human beings are communicating with one another is reason enough for the

nsa to decide that it should be collected and stored and monitored. they don't need specific rationale. the only rationale is that nobody should be a will to communicate without nsa being a will to invade their communication. and every one of the stories we have done is driven by this overarching theme. that is why think it is fair to say that the significance of this reporting and what mr. snowden revealed to the world cannot be overstated. the nsa and the partners have profound consequences for everyone who communicates electronically, which is most people on the planet. at the very least, it is something we should be discussing and debating openly, if not figuring out how to stop. the second point i wanted to make is that i wanted to discuss

a little bit what some of the reaction has been to some of our reporting, especially in europe, but also around the world. i think it reveals a very important point. it was back in late june, five months ago or so, the people first reported that the nsa was targeting ordinary germans by the hundreds of millions for collection of the metadata of their telecom records. the reaction of the german government was very muted. by and large it was very restrained the reaction. there wasn't very much of an effort to do anything about it. it really wasn't until they were able to reveal that not only ordinary germans, but even the german chancellor was the target of the surveillance system did the german government finally react with genuine indignation and decided to do something about it. that is a pattern that has repeated itself.

there is an apathy and indifference when it is revealed that the population is being targeted will mass surviellence, and anger when governments find out that they themselves are targeted. what explains that political officials are concerned about themselves and not the interests of the people they represent. the other point has been this idea that as long as the nsa is " only collecting metadata" we

can live with that level of intrusion, but when it comes to cell phone calls and e-mails that is one genuine outrage is warranted. i just want to spend a moment addressing this point. i think it is probably the single greatest misconception. i think it is important that we do with it. if you talk to surveillance experts, as i know that you're doing, what you all here, i can almost by consensus, at this point around the world is that metadata is not almost as invasive as metadata cotton tent will but more invasive than content. and it isn't just the surveillance experts. it is the nsa themselves. throughout the documents there is a recognition that collecting that a data is the supreme priority of the agency, because it'd name owes the nsa to invade people's privacy more effectively than the interception of content. i think it is difficult to understand that in the abstract, but it is easy to understand with concrete examples. if you can imagine an example where a woman decides she wants to get an abortion, if you're

listening in on her phone call what you will hear his her calling the clinic. the clinic will answer with a generic name. like eastside clinic or that. you will hear the woman who you decided to target for surveillance ask for an appointment tuesday at 2:00. get an appointment tuesday 2:00, and you'll have no idea why she called or even what the purpose was. but if you are collecting her metadata, you will see that she called. you will be able to identify it as an abortion clinic. you will know how many times she called the clinic. and you'll have exactly the information that you wouldn't have i simply listening to the phone call. the same for somebody who has hiv and calls a doctor specializing in hiv. if you're listening to their

phone calls, you will not have an idea what kind of doctor they are calling. but if you're looking at their meta-data you will know everything about them. the same with suicide hotline or drug addiction clinic or somebody who is speaking with someone who is not their spouse late at night or any number of other types of intimate activities that human beings engage in that you probably wouldn't be able to apprehend reading their e-mails or listening to telephone calls, but that you will instantly be a ble to understand when collect in her metadata. there are sophisticated tools for analyzing metadata when it is collected in mass to understand who your target are speaking to, and who those

speaking to, and who those are speaking to, and to develop a conference of picture of the network of associations and front of fetters individuals, but also of the society individually to have a very basic understand of the private behavior and private citizens who you've placed under civilians by the collection metadata. it really is the case that if you're somebody who values privacy it would almost be preferable to have the nsa listening to your phone calls and reading your e-mails then it is for them to collect all of your metadata over the course of many years and it be able to link it to everybody's mad at and analyze it in secret with virtually no restraints, as the nsa and the surveillance partners are doing.

i also want to make a point briefly about individual privacy. there is often the sense that i think that western governments have to get people to accept that privacy doesn't really have much value, that it is essentially a luxury, that if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, all of these clichés that have been and you factored and disseminated to get relations accustom to an invasion of the privacy. i think in reality it cannot work and has not work because human beings instinctively understand why privacy is actually vital, that is why they put passwords on their e-mail accounts, their social media works, that is why they put locks the bedroom and bathroom doors, that is why they protect their homes from invaders and predators because human beings understand the privacy is a critical component of what it means to be a free human being. i think it is worth spending one

minute to underscore why that is. i think we all have this understanding that when we know we are being watched by other people, when we know that other people are passing a judgment or examination upon our behaviors, our behavior is much different than when we act in a private room. realm. when we think other people are watching us, we make choices that conform to orthodoxies that are designed to avoid behaviors that are shameful, and essentially we take it make choices to fill the expectations that other people in the broader society have a

say. we become conformist. we conform to norms. when we have around that we can go into or we are confident that we are not being watched can we deter creativity and dissent, can we violate orthodoxies, that is the round in which human freedom exclusively presides, where we can decide for ourselves what kind of choices we want to make. the society watch the private realm is abolished, in which human beings know they are susceptible to being watched in a time, i think that is the key, not necessarily that every one of the e-mails is being read, but that your e-mails and telephone calls can be monitored by unseen agencies to much as

the knowledge that you are being subjected by the possibility of surveillance, is a society that creates conformity. it is society in which individuals will have a range of choices available to them severely constrict did. that is why every oppressive government, every journey, every desperate, loves a surveillance state, precisely because it eliminates human choice and creates conformity, and really severely reduces the amount of freedom as individuals that we have. and that is way thing, beyond the political implications or theoretical implications, there are very serious consequences of what it means to be a free individual. the surveillance is invisible and ubiquitous. the final point i'd like to make is that i begin by saying that i'm glad that this committee has convened this inquiry and that we are able to have this opportunity to discuss all these issues and i just want to remind everyone that there is only one reason why we are able to have the discussion that we are having today and why we have the knowledge and information

that we now possess about the system and that one reason is the brave and self-sacrificing decision of my source for this decision, edward snowden to risk everything in his life, personal relationships, and the ability to be a free citizen in order to bring it to all of our attention. there governments all over the world, in fact most governments all over the world who are stream beneficiaries of mr. snowden's. human beings all over the world consider him a hero, governments have been able to realize how their privacy is being invaded to take steps to reform the abuses that we know know about to convene investigations like the one that we are here to participate in today. all sorts of people, all over the world exploiting for their own interests and for their own benefit the very great sacrifice that mr. snowden made . but although lots of government have taken advantage of this, very few, in fact a very tiny handful are extending courtesy to him to protect his rights of

the way he decided to protect all of ours. he is in a situation that is very uncertain, where his own government is attempting to put them in a cage for decades, if not the rest of his life. he has shown it a light on much of this behavior and certain abuses, yet most governments around the world have decided to turn their back, but only on him, but on their own obligations to protect people from persecution by granting him asylum. it is a strange and disappointing dynamic to watch governments in europe express indignation while at the same time turning their back on him and allowing their own government to threaten him.

they are exploiting his revelations for their own but they could express gratitude by protecting his basic human rights. he exposed secretive wrongdoing on the part of these factions. with that, i thank you very much for having me. i am very happy to have a discussion with questions. >> thank you very much for your introduction. we are going to go to questions and answers. i hope that the condition will remain stable enough. i understand that we can speak our own language and you will get translation into english, but our colleagues don't get any translation. but you should get translation into english. we signal if there is a problem.

our testsoing to ask to be as reef and concise -- guests to be as brief and concise as possible to allow for a lot of questions. please be very concise. please. >> thank you, for taking the time to be here today. , will begin where you finished on the source, edward snowden. in my report we were talking about whistleblower protection. they rejected the definition of mr. snowden as a whistleblower. what is your view of that? definition, the they are seeing them as a

felon. what is your view of that? it leads to consequences. secondly, on a federal court judgment which he welcomed, othershan find stan and have been saying -- diane feinstein and others have been saying this is a really important judgment because it begins to assign for the first time this old question as you've been describing it, as perhaps being significant that something has happened. , but weome the judgment are hearing that it is not a significant judgment. tell us what you think. thelly, the issue about guardian reporting what you are doing. how do you answer critics who say that reporting is putting people in danger or it is inappropriate.

my understanding is that you redacted also to of information, but please answer the critics. and finally, we had a european parliament debate on the issue of brenda, and if you feel it is onropriate, cleese comment how anti-terrorism is part of that -- please comment on how anti-terrorism is part of that. >> i will take those in order. day to he picked a bad deny today that mr. snowden is a whistleblower. thecore program that was citedone we revealed, and as what caused him to come forward was the metadata of all americans, in that regard to suspicion, that the core guarantee. is not even close.

andbody who owns ford reveals a program that violates the comes to sharon and is a legal is a whistleblower. he has sparked a debate in the united states and around the world, evidence by the hearing we are participating in today about all sorts of things that everybody agrees that we are better off knowing about. that is or was a war, somebody who reveals to the public wrongdoing and illegality. they are important debates that no democratic society can be without. that is what mr. stone has done -- mr. snowden has done. the only course that ever role on surveillance programs are courts that no western democracy would recognize as courts. they aren't -- they are

tribunals that meet in secret. what happened yesterday is that for the first time a real court proceeding has evaluated the illegality of the surveillance programs, and the judge's opinion, which i urge everybody around the world to read about the way in which these programs destroy individual privacy, and the rationale offered by the u.s. government is false. issued by oneas of the most respected national security judges in the united states. he is not known as a liberal, quite the opposite. he is a conservative judge, appointed by president bush. false and woefully theequate to justify serious privacy infringements that the collection of metadata imposes on everybody who is

subjected to it. given the gravity of the opinion and the fact that it was issued by the judge is quite monumental. as far as responding to make because is remarkable we have been criticized or haveosing documents which the people in danger. but we been criticized from the other direction, saying that with published to view documents , that we have gone to slow -- too slow. validider that to be more than the one that says we have put people in danger. people have long known that the u.s. and u.k. government are doing everything possible to monitor medications. osama bin laden used human couriers because they know that

everything they are doing is subject to being monitored by various governments. didn't tell them anything they didn't already know. the we told them that not terrorists, but they themselves, innocent people, are the real people of this mass surveillance system. harmed ishing we have the perception of honesty and credibility of western leaders who have built this massive surveillance system in the dark. the one thing i want to say i hope thats that everyone understands how to stream in radical the u.k. extreme and- radical u.k. government is when it comes to freedom. they have equated this with espionage and terrorism. they have been condemned as tyrannical governments that

equate journalism with terrorism. and that is exactly what the u.k. government is doing, in this case. they have threatened the core freedoms of " the guardian." they lose credibility when it freedom thatuncing are engagement companies -- countries that are not as familiar. thank you. i would like to talk in german. thank you very much for giving us your time and opportunity to put questions to you. three small questions. first of all, if there is a serious concern to raise

attention to what is going on in private lives around the world, i'm wondering, at the moment, whether we know everything there is to know, and that we ought to know, or whether there might be more information that could catch us by surprise. that would be interesting for us , as to what more might be lurking out there. , you mentioned all the ways of intercepting an indication that can be done and is being done, but for a long time, things have been made public, which were in the realm of national security, and that was in the national realm. for example, when you're talking up the opportunities of phoning up an abortion clinic and being found out, is that in the

interest of the nsa to evaluate that sort of information. the fact that it is possible to do, i think we'll understand that. that is not an issue. but is there any interest in the nsa doing that? hirdly, on the threats we are facing, obviously the private sphere is occupying us, at the moment, what about the stretch that exists around the globe, threats to states and from s, do youundamentalist think it is justified to carry reconnaissance work or activities, even if that may involve delving into information that perhaps should remain private? thank you for the questions.

know, whether we know everything, we know the gist of what these documents reveal, as i began by describing. but the governments are attempting to collect all communication. there are some stories left that we are going to report that are significant. it takes is a little bit of time , butport them accurately we are doing it as fast as we can. there are still stories that remain. they are significant, but certainly after six months everybody gets the fundamental menace posedis the by the system. as far as the question about the nsa and whether it has an interest in, for example,

collecting information about an abortion, or people calling drug and alcohol clinics, i think the answer to the question is, look at human history, not only in the united states, but other countries as well. wheres been no incidents the government has developed the power to have a massive surveillance where it wasn't abused. for decades, the united states government use the surveillance authorities monitored political dissidents and opponents of the government. the fbi tried to get evidence that martin luther king was having adulterous affairs and threatened him and encouraged him to commit suicide. there were tickets of abuses. i think it is understood that human beings can exercise massive surveillance power, in the dark, with no transparency, that it will be abused. the