you can see this on our companion network c-span3. i think it is all an evolutionary process. you grow into this role. my sense is that you never get comfortable if you are always pushing for change and you are never done. there is never a point in time were you say i am done and i can do the same thing all the time. it is always changing. >> first lady michelle obama tonight at 9:00 p.m. >> i have often said when i am traveling on amtrak that i run to the quiet car. this i know will provide for

consumers and it already has on some airlines is more opportunity for a data rich engagement. it will open up the market for more competitors to provide options. less hopefully be expensive. when you look at the ecosystem, i have been told by those in the thatn -- by the business 90% of the engagement is data only. what is great about this is up to the airlines. tonight on the communicators at 8:00 p.m. >> next a discussion about the future of counter intelligence after the disclosures by edward snowden. you'll hear from william nolte who worked for the cia. he is currently a research

professor at the university of maryland school of public policy. this was hosted by the institute for world politics here in washington, d.c.. [applause] >> i figure you are getting older or more important when there is an introducer to the introducer. that is pretty good stuff. let me first of all thank john and the institute for extending this invitation. michelle nor john can be here and they've given significantly incredible reasons they cannot be here. i hope it's not because they wanted to stay home and watch the opening ceremonies.

i am in a contest with some friends to imagine the most embarrassing thing that can happen to mr. putin tonight. maybe something real bad will happen to him. one of the things i stress with my students is intelligence is an integrity based profession. brian kelly remains one of the professionals who exemplifies in so many ways the integrity and the courage that sometimes is demanded of people in this field. this lecture gives me an opportunity in some ways to repay my debt to brian. and i should add it's an honor to meet ms. kelly tonight. this is a man for those of us who knew him all cherished him when he was alive and cherish his memory today. i have to say and i feel my sense of nerves coming on, when this offer was first made i declined. at the very least, i am not an expert in counter intelligence. i said i don't think this is a good idea. but then john talked to me about doing this and i had second thoughts.

my second thoughts were john this is a really bad idea. because this is a lecture that should be given by one of brian's colleagues by someone who has worked in this field. and not someone who from time to time and i'm proud of it has advocated for greater attention to and greater respect for counter intelligence. on third thought i decided to do it but i want to make it clear it's in that capacity as an advocate, not an expert that i speak to you this evening. >> i still struggle with the thought that advocating for counterintelligence should be a problem. it is an absolutely integral part of any intelligence process sometimes to engage my students

when we're discussing n.s.a. i raise the hypothetical that technology has moved to the point where n.s.a. can do only one of it's core missions, protect american codes or exploit the codes and communications of other countries. i ask if technology did that and you could only do one what would you do. to no surprise they pick the second mission and i have to tell them that's wrong. it goes back to an incident i had several years ago. as a young historian i was having lunch with david and i said something today effect n.s.a. was misnamed. it was the national security agency and i and 90% of my colleagues did signet, we didn't do security. david looked at me and said if you could only do one, which would it be and i've always tcheapt either or thought in my mind and hope we never reach the point it becomes a reality.

i think that same question about the role of counter intelligence versus what i refer to in my classes as positive intelligence only the make the distinction clear to people coming from the outside has that same sort of quality. what after all is the point of collecting all this information if we can't protect the sources and methods and processes that allow us to bring it to decision makers? what is the point of a world class intelligence structure if we don't match that structure with counterintelligence processes capable of protecting the confidentiality of that information and those sources? the question is asked where counter intelligence can take place

in a society that places high value on openness. one question that should be asked is a democratic society rules to regulate and oversee intelligence operations should permit individuals or institutions to declare themselves above and beyond legal authority. even abs at no time start either or hypothetical, we are probably in something like the sixth decade as far as i can see in which counterintelligence has been take your pick, underfunded, undernoticed or even disrespected. i've never gotten around to researching this but my guess would be if you went back to 1950 and before, the resources expend in the united states on intelligence probably came close to matching what we spent on that other aspect of intelligence. certainly the original pioneers to what became n.s.a. thought their job was to protect code.

it was a by product for them. and i think you can even find in the popular culture some reflections of that. if you look back to motion pictures in the 1940's and even the 1950's. counter intelligence agencies were the good guys. that's all you need to know. 10 years before they would have been played by ronald reagan which meant water saved a lot of scripts. then we know how the culture changed. over time the protagonist in motion pictures and novels were less in point to be the good guys ferreting out spice or actually the agents of departments and institutions that were out to violate civil liberties. this cultural shift marked more than counter intelligence and whether it places it with the warn commission. the view that intelligence represented an eye to spy on

americans and deprive them of their constitutional liberties. let's leave aside for the moment if we could oliver stone's j.f.k. after about two and a half hours of that i can't figure out any institution in american life that is not implicated in his conspiracy. take a look at something i find more interesting and that is the movie the way we were. on one level it's a love story about two people who can't resolve their issues. but the backdrop for that is the conviction that the 1950's represented a period in which innocent americans suffered repression at the hands of

agents of a hysterical witch hunt for communist agents who did not exist. let's not even deal while we're going into the depths with the crucible. a play that is so didactic and so boring that i've often thought if i had to do a desert island discs and my only choice was the crucible or the scarlet letter i would discover hawthorne as a master of prose spile. how did we get here? first of all, we did have the culture shift and the perception of intelligence and counter intelligence was just a part of that. never trust anyone over 30 it was motto for my generation along with sex, drugs and rock and roll. the tied of that culture swept over us and to some degree it's still there. the good news and i'll touch on this more as i go along is that tides eventually subside. the view of intelligence and counter intelligence would as we know benefit what for a lot of writers and screen writers was a trilogy of poster people.

if you were a script writer of a certain persuasion could you ask for a better trio to deal with. reality is more subtle than sometimes hollywood makes it. hoover, for one, had he resigned or died in the 1930's would have been considered one of the great figures in 20th century criminology. and one -- but the reality is if you stay in a government job for 50 years and assume it's your personal property, hubers is going to take over. that's a very real lesson in that case. as for mix exxon, we know the strange twist embedded with that figure. as for mccarthy his critics often portray him as an evil aberration rather than a representative of a pop lism

that produced demagogic and irresponsible figures. my former professor who just turned 50eu9 has long noted that mccarthy probably produced more anti-anti-communist than anti-communist and i think that's a great deal of truth in that. my first paying job in high school was shelving books in a library. one of the subjects that fascinated me at the time was the literature on the atomic spies. and it was the most interesting thing in the world, this industry of books half of which that said hits in the rosenburgs were innocent and mccarthy was a villain and the other half that said chambers and mccarthy were national heroes and the rosenburgs were guilty. >> i'll move forward a bit here to remember a day when i was sitting in my cube cal talking to a man name frank who was one

of the first freedman hires in 1930. he was probably pretty close to 80 at the time and when he tilted his head rather dramatically i thought i was waiting for a medical emergency. instead he had spotted on my book shelves allen weinstein's purgery and he was reading the spine. you know he was guilty he said. and i said i thought the weinstein book came pretty close to demonstrating that. to which he said ask your boss. >> he walk add way. i walked into my boss' office. i walked in and said mr. wilson,

what do you know about verona and he looked at me like personnel had made a real serious mistake and he said as in two gentlemen of. i said no mr. frank was in and said i should read into something called verona. he went ghost white. and he said you mean venona. he said do you know someone named bill kole. i said no, i don't. within a couple of days i was meeting with bill. and i was being briefed into this remarkable system. we tried several times there after to declassify venona within n.s.a. and each of those efforts failed. they failed because people within the agency and i assume with good motives insisted to release it to the public would destroy agency equities by released soirs and methods.

now i had failed out of the crypt analysis program, one of my other detours in life. but it did seem to me if the source and method at issue here was if you use a one time pad over, you are looking for trouble. maybe the agency could survive this particular disclosure. a few years later i was at a conference where christopher andrew was giving a talk simply stopped from his prepared text and said by the way, if you think ultra changed the history of the second world war, wait until venona comes out. and i raced from the hall and found a pay phone. some of you may need on explanation of what that is. i called mr. kole and told him what happened.

i know bill kole and i believe our british cousins had gotten tired of n.s.a. dragging it feet on venona and in a few years it was declassified. and what happened from that? we now know with the exception of a very few hard core is that the evidence is that the rosenburgs were guilty. there were soviet spice. there are people who deny it but when your handler has written a book how he handled you, those don't seem at all credible. we also learned two presidents and a decade of national security policy were subject to ridicule due to a story that was factually plausible.

what we did was value our equities above the good name of the united states of america. that's something all the intelligence services need to think about from time to time. hence, some of the damage to counter intelligence and its reputation came from outside. some of it was self-inflicted. the discussion on the atomic spice continued. the factually incorrect discussion continued only because venona was declassified far too late. this should be a continuing lesson for all the agency. where does that leave us now as far as the state of counter intelligence? i've had several moments turnover last decade where i thought the tsunami i talked about was reseeding. after a decade, it's very clear it suffers from the same shortage of authority and structure and resources that the d.n.i. as a whole suffers from. i'm glad to see my good friend burton here tonight.

i was excited when they published a few years ago and i thought here is an underpinning for intelligence and counter intelligence. that movement has yet to appear. i was encouraging by the advanced research project for intelligence and i hoped it would lead to a manhattan project on counter intelligence in the 21st century. when approached with such a proposal the lack of interest affs parent. when i ha later raised this with

a senior official, not michelle, i was told we just needed more c.i. training so maybe the time has come again to try and get that manhattan project going. there are other things that have said we're getting there. the intelligence national security aligns produced a great paper on counter intelligence a couple of years ago. i thought that might speed some things. that has not happened as well. you still see some structural problems. at the time of the manning wikileaks disclosure, the committee hosted at one of our meetings a d.o.d. counter intelligence official. when one of our members asked how d.o.d. counter intelligence was dealing with the security people involved in the case, his reply was you'll have to ask the security people. when i got back to my office i called a friend in d.o.d.

security who quickly told me that the problem was the counter intelligence people were messing around in what was clearly a security case. this was clearly a self- inflicted wound. i sat through a briefing recently just before the snowden article started to appear in which the briefers said that one of the problems in security and counter intelligence was dealing with the structures of the interface between security counter intelligence and information technology security. when i blurted out if you are going to name all of those, throw in information assurance, i was thanked. i didn't want to be thanked. i wanted some recognition that these old structures were getting in the way of getting it done, that there was so much turf going on between these various functions, why should they talk to each other. that's extraordinary in the intelligence community but i'll point it out anyway. i thought about this over those

last few months. this is in honor of mike, i have to do one sports analogy. i thought the former mike shanahan -- he's still mike shanahan, but the former coach. i have a problem with my line backers and backs. you have a problem with the whole. and that's the problem with have with our defensive systems. we have 20th structures dealing with a 21st century environment and that is not going to work. i'm very pleased that n.s.a. my former agency has now linked organizationally it's counter intelligence and security functions but i don't think that has to be the model for everyone. structure in the'1"st century is going to be less important than process. you can put people wherever you want structurally and communicate well and you'll get

past the structure. i still have these great fears when i see wiring diagrams to think that is really a metaphor. that's a metaphor of an industrial model and yet we think those are very, very real. john and david said over a decade ago that in a 21st century contest between bureaucracies and networks, network will win. i look at our government and intelligence community and i think we are far more bureaucratic than network and that does not help the cause. first of all, we all know this, the national discussion or conversation raised by the snowden disclosures is going to continue. and i don't continue to give mr. snowden any credit for this. you could argue john brown with the harpers ferry raid deserves credit for bringing to the country's attention slavery.

who didn't know slavery was an issue? and i sometimes think even dwhrooned that we had better building demodse our cities after the chicago fire but i've never been to chicago to see a statute of mrs. o?leery's cow. part of that cow would be where i'd put mr. snowden. let me not go there. i would prefer to see an orderly review of intelligence and counter intelligence. i stay in contact with the american security project which is the staff of the former heart rudman commission now out on their own. i look back at the reports and i think we missed a terrific opportunity. there calls for a very serious

comprehensive review of our 1947 national security instruments never came to pass. it was going to be looked at everyone told me in the summer of 2001, in fiscal 2002 and then we know what happened in september of 2001. instead of this orderly thorough look we had post crisis legislation and we all know what that means. as i also tell my students, the most dangerous thing you'll ever hear in washington is a group of congressman around the cameras saying we must do something. that is a very frightening prospect. how would we do a review in i think we could do worse than look at the method doling. make an attempt to define the environment we think we'll be in the in the next 10 years.

define a strategy to deal with that environment and look to see if our instruments match either the strategy or the environment. and i look around at our national security systems and i don't see that matching of tools and the problems they face. my two students mike and christina are air force academy graduates. we have a program with the air force academy to bring graduates to the school of public policy. and they are good sports when i come in and ask how many sorties did the f-22 fly in iraq and the answer is zero. something is wrong when we spend billions of dollars on instruments we don't want to use. i hate to pick on the air force,

i'll buy you guys a drink later. i think they are free actually. but i could do the same sort of thing with the other military services. and we could do the same thing in the intelligence services. we are not adapting our tools to the environments we face. the issues that we face in the future are among those defined in large part i the information environment. if we have not faced at by the snowden target, who else got hacked this week, i do not know. the information environment drives a lot of the national security. stewart brand, whose unless may remember as the founder of the whole earth catalog, david interview last august in which you set the most important event of the last 20 years -- he said the most important bit of the last 20 years was playing out of the moore's law. it is certainly the top five.

i used to give lectures were talked about it playing itself out around 2003 or 2000 and -- or 2002 and it has not happened. i see articles all the time that says it will slow down because we have finally reached limits on how many circuit you can put on a silk and -- silicon. old stuff. look what is happening in nano and biotechnology. the predictions that moore's law is going in is quantitatively balanced with those that say we are in for a whole new cycle of it. intelligence and counterintelligence more specifically for our purposes of the evening really has to do with the constantly changing, volatile information environment. i talk about that within different aspects. first of all, the first one is privacy. the worst thing, and i told a group of former intelligence officers, the worst thing the

intelligence community can do in light of the snowden event is to think that this whole controversy is about us. it is not just about intelligence. it is not just about nsa. it is about people living in an information environment that we use all the time but we do not understand and occasionally it comes up and scares the heck out of as. i think that is the period we are in. if i went out on the street and asked people what concerns you more, the snowden disclosures are what happened at target, i think a fair number of result people would say what happened at target. nsa is something off in the ether. target affects my credit. i think people have been very concerned i that. -- by that. several years ago, we were interviewing candidates for the national intelligence council for a national intelligence officer position. one of the things we asked the

candidate was named the top five experts in your field outside the intelligence community. one of the applicant's from a major intelligence agencies that there are no experts in our field outside of the intelligence community. the good news is you did not get the job. -- is he did not get the job. we had already spent several hundred thousand dollars consulting with those who. we have to do was seared -- serious issues of academics not want to get clearance. in part because of privacy issues. one of the things i am sure of is that we in the 21st century are not living in the same privacy environment that many of us grew up in and our parents grew up in and our grandparents grew up in. look back here again. popular culture. how many novels in the 19th century or movies had characters

who were escaping from something or other? criminal charges, their family, jobs, you name it. how did you get away from that? you simply went west. the chances of being apprehended were very slim. a couple of years ago and author challenged the country and a piece in wired magazine. was going to go off the web and contribute $10,000 if anybody could find him. this was a skilled computer professional. within weeks there were blogs all over the country of people coming together without any leadership to find this guy. he did a very good job. he really did a good job. about two weeks before the clock ran out someone approached him in the new orleans airport and said are you the guy from "wired" magazine. it is very hard to get off the web these days. think about that in your own lives.

suppose you go home tonight and decide you want to get off the web. you want to lower your profile. what are you going to do? i can give you suggestions. pay cash for everything. don't own a smartphone. turn it off when you're not using it. do not own a gps. all kinds of fun stuff. if you have a computer, make sure it is an apple product. this is not a commercial. it is funny how many of them use apples at home. are you trying to tell me something? if you do use the internet, never allow a service to share

your information. delete cookies. change passwords regularly. never write down the password. let me ask this audience. how many of you have never written down a password? wow. that is pretty good. that is really good. you clearly have a better memory than i do. i have so many of these things i can never, good for you. i expected no one to answer that. wow. i assume you're telling the truth. it you are not, i hope you don't have to deal with a polygraph. i am really impressed with that. we're going to have to deal with a different expectation of privacy. what that is, i do not know. it is going to before dawn. he used to be the deputy director of science technology. he did several paper some years ago in which he talked about the erosion of privacy. if you find those articles today on the internet, they are all labeled as cia official attacks privacy, calls for the end of privacy. don kerr is a scientist.

he was not recommending anything. he was simply observing. it is true. it is true. and we have eroded our privacy. i prepared these remarks before the president made his address and what he was going to do about the nsa issues. maybe we can touch on that in the queue and eight. one of the things that struck me most was by the end of march -- q & a. one of the things that struck me most was by the end of march of the government has to come up with a solution to store it. the phone companies do not want to store it. by the end of march, before taxes are due, we have to come up with a solution to this. i described this as coming from the thelma and louise: decision- making. there may not be an outcome at the end of this. there may be a cliff. i would say that the options for change in the next year or two include regulating things versus overseeing them.

i am all for oversight. it seems to be the most flexible mechanism for control. i often describe what we're going through in the internet as a wild west environment. a couple years ago i was telling friends that i really wanted to see them get a major piece of slifer -- cyber legislation through. i am now far less confident of that. i am far more concerned that we will legislate something and then find out two or three or five years from now that we have legislated the wrong thing or that the thing that we aimed at never develop or that we are hamstringing ourselves. this is something that i do not know when we will get regular. i do not know that this could do much benefit. oversight offers greater flex ability. i joined in the late 1970s when oversight was due. the only think i think was

visiting with people wearing black armbands saying nsa r.i.p. i was told so many times my god we will never be able to function like this. then they would say something like be brits do not function like this. every democracy now provide some oversight. i think congressional oversight is one of the great achievements in american intelligence history. where would the intelligence community be today without mike rogers and senators feinstein and chambliss? i am so glad these folk are on the site in the intelligence community. i am going to pass on the remarks of private see in civil liberties for. i will take questions if you want.

i'm going to be very brief as well on security. i already hinted that we need to redefine the link between counterintelligence and security. not necessarily a structural link. we need to know how we're going to do this in the 21st century. i have been polygraph. i have background investigations. i've had to provide people with the names of my neighbors. anybody who has been through that knows how that goes. how many of you really knows your name -- know your neighbors? what is he really like? my wife did not tell the truth. i kept my clearance.

it does is make any sense? i do not think so. let me spend my last few minutes on espionage. i want to talk about one possibility and then i will draw a short of recommending that as an option. i give the army prosecutors in the manning case highest marks for their attempt to prosecute manning under the 1917 espionage act. frankly, if they cannot get it done in terms of aiding a foreign power, i think the answer has to be the law cannot get it done. if you have to show that a person is giving away classified information directly to benefit a single foreign power, and that is pretty much what it does, where are we these days? do not give it to a single foreign power. give it to everybody. much more effective. in the 1920s and 30s, the soviets recruited young british and american academics and

students in the hopes they would rise to high government positions. i do not mean to attack the press in general. if i were a soviet or chinese agent, i would not recruit a government employee. i would recruit a journalist. quite seriously. or someone who claimed to be a journalist. what are the entrance levels to be declared a journalist in this environment? in any event, i do want to take a look for one second at something i am sure you all looked at over the weekend. that is section 98 -- 798 of the u.s. title code 18. i'm sure we read that all the

time. michelle then cleave has done a very good piece on this in the recent addition of the intelligence report. whoever furnishes or otherwise make available to an unauthorized person or uses prejudicial to the safety of united states, any classified information related to codes or other material shall be fined or imprisoned for 10 years or both. anybody hear of any impending prosecutions on this? it has become something of a dead letter. we have had people do this before. let's think about whether we need this law at all. that should come up in testimony. several years ago i had lunch walter he was a legendary figure at the cia. he mentioned seeing some of his colleagues having an attack. they didn't think it was needed. they did not think they would get it through the congress. it did not fit with our values. i continue to believe it will be difficult to craft legislation. what if you put in things like

disclosure to disclose illegality or malfeasance or corruption would be a positive defense? could you then have such an act? i cannot get myself there. that leaves a huge gap for us. how do we protect this information that we have collected, that has and by congress, president, by a court, but people just publishing it. i do not know how many of the stories that have appeared in newspapers and on networks are relating to nsa from the snowden piles has to do with nsa violations of civil liberties of americans. count them up. is it 2%? 5%. when i say the information is being used to support troops in afghanistan, it does not shiny as a civil liberties violation. that strikes me as what intelligence agencies do when he have deployed forces.

i think back to my younger days when i heard over and over during the watergate period the phrase that members of the committee said over and over, no man is above the law. i wonder if that is still true for us? in any event, i think one of the things we should think about before we go down the dark road of an intelligence secrets act is how we as a society look at a lawful government, conducting some of its functions in secret and how those should be protected. edmund burke once said that when you want to protect virtue it is better to do it through society than the state, because we all know the state can be a very clumsy and inefficient mechanism. i would hope that some weight we would come to an understanding as a society that the government has a responsibility to keep some information secret and to do so under oversight and law and that we should not tolerate the somewhat casual disclosure of that information.

let me finish with one thought. from time to time, i hear it said, even by senior intelligence officers, that the relationship between the american public and intelligence service is broken. i do not believe that. i believe it is seriously strained. i believe the intelligence services need to do a much better job of explaining what it is they do. i think this is an argument that can be one. i do not see the need for wholesale changes in the intelligence establishment.

there are any number of adjustments to section 215 that the congress could make and that i would lose no sleep over. as a matter of fact, if i were back on active duty, and i think most of my colleagues would share this view, if these were the roles and these are the ways we have been functioning in congress changes those rules, we will adapt to the changed roles. congress makes the rules. it is as simple as that. i do not see the need for wholesale change. where does that leave us? it leaves us in a country governed by an imperfect system. it is public and representatives can change. one of the values of a catholic education is a strong sense of original sin, which virtually demand that the world is inherently imperfect and that sometimes the bad guys win. in this case, we live in an imperfect country. edward snowden lives in prudence russia -- in putin's russia. we can count on the dedication and professionalism of the men and women of our

counterintelligence services and we can hope for a day where counterintelligence is accepted as a full peer of the other intelligence services. when i see a volume and i think of the prestige mf5 enjoys in a democratic system, i hope we can someday achieve that. there are obstacles. for many years, i asked my colleagues what if i encourage my best intern in a given year to pursue a career in counterintelligence? very often i would get the answer why would you want to do that to their career? that is something that we very much have to overcome. my daughter is not here this evening. i want to say in her absence i've done better than put an intern in the field. she works in counterintelligence for cia. i am extremely proud of what she and her colleagues do. i think all of us should be proud of the men and women who

work in that field. with any luck, that tide will turn. that truly would be an achievement that would honor brian kelly. until then, i hope the men and women of the services understand how much we value what they do. thank you. [applause] questions. >> in response [indiscernible] [laughter] >> nothing? okay. >> i wouldn't bring it up if you had not mentioned jfk. oliver offered a counterweight to the [inaudible] this many years later there is a

skeptical public on issues that were not disclosed in the early 60s. it was a student group that interact with oswald in new orleans. today they're apparently 1100 vials in full -- files in full. there is a disconnect. >> let me say. i could go beyond jfk. i think he was a horrible director. i do think if there are 1100 files still sitting classify, this goes back to my concern. when he have a public dispute of this sort and you are sitting on records that could help resolve that dispute, i think you do great harm to the public record.

i do not know that they are doing that. that would certainly be my concern. >> [inaudible] >> you may know more about cia history than i do. i really cannot you view too much advice on how to get that done. i just have that strong view of my own. i know nsa just declassified a 10 of record from a relatively recent period. the vile is so big that the idea putting eyeballs on every piece of paper is something they finally discarded. i give them some credit for going by credit -- category. it is not a perfect process. every agency is its own master.

>> i'm a journalist for the bbc. i have a question with counterintelligence. there is this problem that people were looking into it were marginalized. you know better than i do. >> not necessarily. it is a big business. i never work to the ames case. you may know more than i do. -- worked the ames case. you may know more than i do. >> i'm wondering just how it happened in terms of the culture. >> i have my own ideas. i want to emphasize they are my ideas. one of the things that strikes me about this is that he actually approached people and you're told to not give away your password. he actually approached people as the system administrator and said i'm working on a problem, give me your password. i would have to say i hoped i would know better. on a busy day and a guy looks like your village machine nerd

and he said i am your system administrator we discourage you from your passwords but i am different. i have a feeling there is a 50- 50 chance i would give it to him. i would hope afterward i would go to my boss and say do you know anything about this computer failure? he does not look like a charming con man. maybe he is a charming con man. i always think back to one of my favorite tv shows, law and order. there was a detective that used to do the same stick. he would go some places are supposed to get access to and the landlord or somebody would look at him and say are you authorized to do this. he would give the guys an altar boy looked break into someone's apartment. i have a suspicion that snowden was very good at getting people's confidence. other questions. in the back.

>> i am a graduate student. i want to say thank you for giving us the courtesy of your time. >> it was either that or the goal of big opening ceremony. that is a much of a choice. -- is as much of a choice. >> information technology has crossed the in formation and the ability of the united states intelligence community to surround the knowledge of the product and the knowledge of the process coupled with a culture shift that you have brought up. it reminded me of the rise in the new weapons in the late fifth these and how it had a role in that culture shift.

those people are not gone. that is the reception general hayden had gotten when he had done the presentation was mixed to say the least. that leads me to this question. given the impact of the technology and the culture shift on the ability to maintain operational security and the role that academia has played in the culture shift as it pertains to the contextual nature of how increasing information is looked at, what role do you think academia could play in shift thing that contextual framework

so that it is more fair-minded toward the intelligence community? what can we do to ensure a narrative supportive of the united states is more effective? >> wow. [laughter] there are times when you would be testifying in the senate and i would tell people who would have to cover for me that it was a committee that now vice president biden was on, this is not a partisan thing. he is just a very nice person to deal with. it is time for him i would say while he is talking, look for the question someplace. there is a little bit of that here. i think as our as the culture of the academic world, the only thing you can help is the tide comes in and the tide goes out. generations change. i think i am lucky to be teaching at the university of maryland maryland compared to a lot of other places. i gave an interview with a student newspaper once and they never published it.

they thought i was warning. that is fine. a lot of our faculty have clearance ease. a lot of our students have parents in the military and work for intelligence agencies. this is not like the university of wisconsin someplace. i do hope you have reached the limit to the diversity with no diversity school of diversity. it has gotten really quite oppressive. all i can say is part in me says i listen to a lot of bs from my professors in college and graduate school. to some degree, i regurgitated the bs back on the paper. then i left the person behind. not all of this takes. it is hermetically one-sided.

i don't think anybody denies that. how you change that, yeah places like this. yet individual students. we see it around the country. they basically say i am not going to the freshman orientation course. there's something quite stalinist about some of these things. my school public policy, they all know what i did for a living. i've never had anything but the most cordial relationships with my colleagues. i think it is because we are a school that deals with a process, not an academic doesn't plan. -- not an academic business plan. i can tell when i walk in that the scene has been set for this really evil guy to show up.

i feel a little awkward when i leave, because the professor walks out and the students crowd around the desk year it i am sure he thinks they are telling me i'm an evil person. they all want to know how to get jobs in the cia. i think i remember how to listen to your professor, nod, write the stuff on a paper and lift a finger when you feel like it. i know that has done rate damage to institutions. you just hope the tide changes. i know that sounds very pessimistic but it is not. it is a long view of history. david. >> i wish i had more hope for you. [laughter] >> you're telling me you have no hope for me. how do you feel about that?

i have a partial comment on a question. you mentioned the u.k. as being more accepting and liking mi5. part of the reason for that is the long, hard, or they have had with the ira, which presented disastrous bombing attacks and so forth. we are a nation. 9/11 was something of disruptive and shatter that serenity and awaken does however. sorry to say, i think whether you're talking about be tirades, that can shift probably when we get hammered -- the tides, that can shift probably when we get hammered.

>> this is one of my great concerns. the concern at the moment in the public is what is nsa doing out there? it would not take much i think to have a complete reversal of the public view. there is that point, democracy sometimes had to speed, do nothing and overreact. -- has two speeds, do nothing and overreact. ma we have the marathon bombing. that is about two weeks before the snowden articles. -- in may we had to beat marathon bombing. that is about two weeks before the snowden articles. favorite phrase is once again you guys are not connected the

one of my least favorite phrases is once again you guys did not connect the dots. this is tough. part of it is longer histories. i really say this with sympathy. we are new at this. the intelligence services are new at this. the country is new at this. when we call it, we call it homeland security. you cannot live in this city if you said let's make a department of domestic security. oh my god. take away all of our liberties. europeans understand this a little bit differently. maybe they had just been through more. look. eisenhower, the guy who i commanded the allied invasion forces into europe, says americans naturally a poor the spy -- abhor the spy.

i do not think you saying that is a good ink. i think he is right. -- is a good thing. i think he is right. what is the most intelligence effort between the end of the revolution start of the civil war? it is lewis and clark. did i remember an the sixth grade or ninth grade hearing lewis and clark was an intelligence thing? no. is a journey of expiration. for military purposes. -- it was a journey of exploration. for military purposes. if they had a nicer name, pinkerton would not be such a bad idea. we do have that. as un-american, i do not want us to get over that. i do not want as -- as an american, i do not want us to get over that. i do not want us to get over

that. i was in turkey a couple of years ago? one said professor nolte has read a lot of locke. we read hobbes. i said we read both hobbes and locke because madison did. we try to balance these things off. did we overdo it in post 9/11? yes. i regret in 2011 we did not do a 10-year tuneup of the patriot act and the irtpa. and the homeland security act. they desperately needed them. we just do not work that way. we muddle along. i think we will take two more. >> thank you for the presentation. you started off with a couple of points. you are talking about america's cultural dynamic.

early on in cinema, the spies, post-wwi. then in that, how it was being presented in this genre, the multimedia, which was the media for the u.s. at the time. fast forward now to we are in everything, the whole gamut of internet, tweeting, everything. the lieutenant general made a point about the rapidfire communication. >> he is a great guy. >> the rapidfire information that goes on 24/7.

how can the intelligence community, through information to the public, ever try to keep up with the pr, the very things you are talking about? the american public is virtually clueless. the information is being left in the hands of media that can use it which ever way they want to at any moment they want to. or flipping it the other. it does not really matter. there does not seem to be anybody taking control for their own agency or agencies.

>> listen, one of the things i've talked about. i am retired. they do invite me back. one of the things i have said is, when the air force decides it is going to build a new fighter, the story is in the paper. the air force is looking for a fifth generation fighter that will go at this speed with these characteristics. in some ways you have to distinguish it from the step they want to replace. i come from a place that for most of its history believes the initials stood for never say anything. you're going to have to be different with that. you're going to have to be different. i am not sure, and i think if you back and look at speeches general alexander may, i am fairly certain you could have pieced together the main theme of what we have been hearing. the nsa is sucking up metadata and doing so there is a belief that says metadata is not really covered by fourth amendment stuff. i think a lot of this stuff, if

you find it before the snowden period, very small stories. i have a feeling one of the things the intelligence committee may have to do is a better job of saying this is what we do for you. you're going to have to disclose the sources and methods. i am sorry. you're going to have to do some trade-offs of the benefits. the american intelligence can only operate within the space permitted by the american public. he's absolutely right. has the space collapse because of the controversy? no. there's controversy on it. -- pressure on it. it is going to be incumbent on active leaders. look. i will go back to the washington post. a couple of years ago they did a series of top-secret america, a fourth branch of government that operate without supervision.

it is like, really? really? no. i think they should have been must much more -- much more aggressive. i give the congress some fault. my concern was that if newspapers are saying there is a fourth branch of government operating without supervision, that is an attack on the house intelligence committee, the senate intelligence committee. the armed services committee. where were you guys? nobody gets elected or defeated from the congress defending nsa. maybe 2014 will change that. it is not a big issue. is it even attracted to serve on one of the committees? it is not something you can oppose for the photo opportunity. that is one of the reasons i'm

so absolutely klees with what -- pleased with what chairmen have done. they have been really upfront leaders on this. mike rogers is a conservative republican from michigan. diane feinstein is out defending nsa. that is pretty good stuff. i think there needs to be, we have to re-strike the balance between what we do in secret and what we open up. i know they're going to say there goes your clearance. it is true. we live in a by global world. the nsa has a museum open to the public. them will make it an author who has been kind of critical, there's a sense that you brought that diane? -- guy in?

yeah. -- you brought that guy in question mark yeah. we're open for discussion. there is a nasty story about you in the post or the times. how do you think the treasury department feels? there is no immunity from having a blue badge. deal with it. go on with your life. i know some cia colleagues who actually approached me with huge grins on their face. it is so great to see you guys getting slammed rather than us. i say, thank you for that. look. we try to do secret stuff in the public eye. i do not think people acknowledge that. until 10 or 15 years ago you cannot acknowledge in parliament or a newspaper who the head of mi6 was. i was on george tenet staff. he said there is a blog that has a photo of your house on it. my house was there. it is like that is interesting.

how do i break this to my wife echo --? i think this is our tough balance. how do you teach intelligence in a public university? easy. i know top-secret stuff. -- don't talk secret stuff. you all watch jeopardy last night. he won again. he has a textbook out on intelligence. this was reviewed by nsa. there has to be more systematic and less episodic. you have to be out there with a stronger public message. you guys were acting without supervision. you're treating a new body of law. there is this thing called the foreign surveillance court.

nothing nsa did was done without the foreign intelligence surveillance court approving it. it is not a secretive court. it is not a secretive court. secretive is about behavior. it is secret by legislation that created it. it is a tough issue. i think you have to be out there a little more and engage in the fact that people want to be reassured. i believe this. the maryland state police, google, nsa, all three of those can intrude on your privacy. which one operates under the title of supervision? not even close. not even close. nsa operates under tighter supervision than state in local government which are still doing the metadata thing all the time with no one seeming to challenge it. google?

google, really? i do have to say to my students when you apply for a job with the clearance, you want to be careful about what goes on your social network pages. some of my students, not these bright and talented people appear, say -- up here, say you mean they can get onto my facebook pages? really? if you apply for a job at sears they can look at your facebook pages. you know the little boxes of small text and at the bottom there is a box that they say check this and you accept it, the no. you gave it away. -- bingo. you gave it away. this is not one we solve. this is one you manage. ma'am you had, god -- >> i am a student at the merrick and university. -- university. -- american university.

i work for the treasury. i wanted to take her -- your conversation to the national arena. a lot of our challenges are not just security here. a lot of the feelings that the american population has about nsa and the security community, there are mirrors internationally. do we have to sell ourselves to the american population first and around the globe so we can adjust transnational security? >> there is the degree to how we must do this. i do think what you need to get to is the point where you have bilateral agreements. i think that is the only way you can do this. germany in the united states agree on what information we are going to share. their governments can say we have this under control. we do certain things with foreign intelligence services to

protect against terrorism. we do it under limits. there has to be that understanding. i do not think we can ignore that this is coming as a shock to a lot of even our ally populations. what has been funny if the reaction in more than one country where there has been a leader standing up and saying "i am shocked." there is spying going on here. about three weeks later, there's evidence of their government is doing the same thing. i think this goes back to let get comfortable with what privacy we can expect, where we can expect intrusions, how the intrusions can be overseen. i think that is a very long conversation. one more and then we will get out of here. >> i am a legislative staffer for the senate.

i am interested if you would mind elaborating on what changes you think makes the patriot act that would be sufficiently necessary for the public to not hinder the ability? >> i really do not have any. i've not looked at the act specifically enough. what i would say is this goes back to the methodology. let's take a look at what the instruments are. we look at the post-9/11 legislation. we wrote this. it was done very quickly. it is past the prevention act. somebody was supposed to go through and find every section in the national security act that gave authority to the director of central intelligence.

you are supposed to find, i do not mean you, your colleagues were supposed to find every instance in which that occurred and put in language that said "the him [indiscernible] it is hereby transferred. at least for the powers of docket transfer. -- four of the powers did not get transferred. congress does 1500 page bills. the famous quote from former speaker pelosi. i have some sympathy for nancy pelosi for that. i will know about it after we pass it. i would just say go take a look at it. do we connect the dots too much? there was a lot of fear. did some of that slip into the patriot act anyway we would like to go back off from that? i did not mention this because i've gone on too long. i am a big supporter of the civil liberties protection board. i wish them well. i wish they had not made that comment that what the nsa is illegal.

that is not what they're asked to do. i think courts are asked to do that. if they had said the patriot act may have gone too far in certain particulars, i would have thought that really opens up an important discussion. i expect if you look back at the homeland security act in the extensions, i think they need a post crisis scrap. they were really done in a crisis atmosphere. that is not the best guarantor of solid legislation. with that, thank you so much for being here. thanks again. i want to single out my students. not just because they are my students. they are hoping they will get good grades. we are so proud of the school public policy to have this program with the air force academy were some of the graduates come to us to get a masters degree. is always nice to people who are embarking on a career in public service. thank you both for being here tonight. [applause] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> both the house and senate return for business today. legislative work gets underway at 2:00. the financial stability oversight council will set aside certain regulations from the consumer protection bureau. senate is also back today. they started 2:00 eastern. they will work on a bill restoring cuts to military pensions. see the senate on our companion network c-span 2. a facebook question regarding congress. we would like to know your thoughts on term limits. penelope adds, we have term limits, it is called the voting

booth where the people decide. but the problem is the unlimited, unaccountable campaign-finance money. you can log onto facebook.com/c-span and leave your thoughts. is heritage foundation hosting a daylong conservative policy conference. senator's ted cruz and michael he will speak -- lee will speak. you can see this live all day. it runs till about 6:00 eastern. also, join us tomorrow when janet yellen will deliver her first monetary policy report to read she appears before the house financial services committee. that struck the 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. is all an it evolutionary process. you grow into this role. my sense is that you never get comfortable if you are always pushing for change and growth,

not just in yourself, but on the issues you care about. you are never done. there is never a point in time where you feel like, there, i am now here and i can do this the same way all the time. it is always changing. >> first lady michelle obama, tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c-span 3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. said that when i am traveling on amtrak, that i run, not walk, to the quiet car. for consumerside and it already has on some airlines -- more opportunity for data rich engagement. it will open up the market for more competitors to provide options. over the long term, less expensive for those to engage. when you look at the

international ecosystem when it comes to this, i have been told about those in the business that 90% of the engagement is data only. a very small part of it is conversation. ist is also great about this it is up to the carriers, up to the airlines, to permit the type of conversation. >> fcc commissioner tonight on "the communicators." the house gavels in at noon eastern. we will have live coverage. right now, a discussion on preserving medicare advantage. from today's washington journal." host: welcome back. our guest for this segment is sam baker from medicare advantage program." thank you for being here. we are talking about the medicare advantage program. explain what that is. guest: medicare advantage program, a subset of medicare. instead of the traditional

medicare program, these are private plans that you can buy. they can have wraparound coverage in addition to the traditional benefits. they are reimbursed by the federal government. host: how is it affected by the affordable care act? guest: it cuts medicare advantage program rather significantly. one of the bigger cuts in the law. this is a program democrats have felt overpaid, paying insurance companies more to provide the same service the government was already providing. we saw last year and insurance companies are afraid we will see additional cuts on top of the cuts in affordable care act. host: we have a chart.

what does that mean for a person involved in this program? guest: to some extent we are still figuring this out. insurance companies will say there's no way to make those cuts without us passing that on. they will have to exclude certain expensive doctors from their networks. the argument that insurers make is that every cut gets transferred over to seniors. host: our guest this our is sam baker medicare advantage program from. if you want to join the conversation, for republicans, 202-585-3881. democrats, 202-585-3880. independents, 202-585-3882. explain why these cuts are happening. guest: the cuts were included in the affordable care act were included for two reasons.

people thought the program was overpaying and people needed savings. an administration is trying to expand coverage and pay for that expansion and trying to make cuts. insurers were able to turn their proposed pay cut into a pay increase. it is one of these administrative cuts that was going to be layered on top. that is why you are seeing it. it is a very lean time across the board. host: peter on our line for democrats. caller: i was calling an earlier to raise taxes on this rich to get this country back going again. they are so far out.

we had 137,000 billionaires last year. you want to pay the debt down. medicare advantage should not have been in there. they took it away. it needs to be brought back and give medicare back up where it is supposed to be. people making $1000 up to $50,000, i do not think they should be taxed. the poor people are paying all the taxes. if you raise the taxes on the rich -- we have to bring the cost down. they do not want to pay the tax. let's get this country back in shape. thank you. guest: you see this debate playing out in congress. do you raise taxes or do you

cut? paul ryan wants to cut our entitlement programs like medicare. you'll probably see some balance between them. these were some of the cuts back during the presidential campaign. there was a to do over romney and ryan attacking president obama for some medicare cuts. that includes these medicare advantage cuts. host: ken is on our line for republicans. caller: sam baker said the government is able to pay for it. i am 64 years old. i have been around.

back in the late 1970's and we have been paying this, not the government. the seniors have been forced back into below poverty levels stealing the money. stealing money from the social security trust fund. it has got to stop. stop saying it is an entitlement. we put into the funds themselves. for every dollar we put in, our employer matches that fund. there is twice as much money but they have never shown the other dollar for every dollar we put in. when you use the word "entitlement," it sounds like a welfare program. we have been working all of our

lives. some baby boomers have died and their money is absorbed into the system. i think it is time everybody starts investigating into what is theirs. very simple to do. simple math. i like to see where we belong and what is ours. it is pitiful one senior citizens have to eat dog food to make up the difference between their rent and their electric and since 2009 they did away with the cost of living adjustment by taking out the utility courses and the food costs. and to bring the cost of living adjustment down. these people worked all their lives.

guest: the caller mentioned the trust funds, which gives back to the inherent tension. nobody likes to take a pay cut. not any of the stakeholders in the health care system. because of some of the cuts in the affordable care act, the trustees have projected the length of the medicare trust fund, the program will be solvent for an additional 12 years. it is that trade-off. you want a program to last longer. host: i want to go to an ad that talks about medicare advantage. [video clip] >> medicare advantage makes our medical care affordable.

>> i feel there's been enough damage already without cutting more. >> without medicare advantage, i do not know what i would do. >> i am not sure. >> we will talk and spread the word. no work cuts to medicare advantage. >> we vote. guest: that is an add being run by the insurance agency for lawmakers to see. this is wrapping up because it is time for the medicare program to set up payment rates for medicare advantage. these are the same ads that worked last year. a very similar ad campaign started running. a huge group of lawmakers sent letters saying you have to reconsider the form of to reconsider this cut.

there is precedent for these working. host: gail in florida on our line for democrats. caller: good morning. i am a nurse and a long-term care provider. one of the best things, the medicare advantage program benefits the insurance companies and not necessarily the senior citizens. senior citizens need the long-term care and there is restraint with such limited amount of services that could be provided through the program. basically the medicare advantage program, the insurance providers

profit, not necessarily the seniors, who need the assistance and there care to maintain their daily living. they were going to eliminate that. we did very well prior to medicare advantage coming on the scene. they do give a certain amount of care. it is all about profit. i applaud the obama administration for trying to eliminate the medicare advantage program. thank you. guest: i think the obama administration would be happy but they are trying to roll it back and a lot of democrats have never been crazy about medicare advantage. that is a big heart of the reason you are seeing a lot of the cuts that are taking effect. the other side of that is that even on traditional medicare, seniors have a lot of supplemental coverage to help

pay for other benefits that the program does not cover. medicare advantage often includes those. sometimes you getting more coverage for that price. host: we have a question from twitter. guest: it is a program that has been staying affordable. medicare part d has been as well, the prescription drug coverage. you are not seeing these transferred to benefits for seniors just yet. this means you can absorb another cut before we start to hurt seniors. host: gail on our republican line this morning.

caller: hi. good morning. i see huge, huge problems with the health care act that is taking place. i think basically the bottom line is it is a kickoff to the insurance companies. physicians are not going to give the best treatment they possibly can to a patient knowing they will get reimbursed for that type of care. therefore what we have done is decreased the level of care to our elderly. we are sorry you cannot have this because we cannot afford it. and therefore is not covered on your insurance.

the doctor will see where the problem is. as we decrease our kick backs our health care is becoming more of a third world health care establishment. it is a huge concern. thank you. guest: this is something else the affordable care act tried to take steps in this direction and to change the way medicare pays doctors and other providers and to shift away you get paid if you're a doctor for each service you provide. if you do a test you get paid for that. i think that is what the caller is referring to. there is a shift to say this is

not a good way to have payment structure set up. maybe it would make more sense to pay based on the health of the patient. if you're patient comes in with a particular problem, rather than pay for the x-ray and the drug, we will pay you a lump sum to make that patient healthy. host: we hear doctors are being dropped from this program. guest: that is a step insurance companies are taking. they are pushing out providers and doctors who cost them more. it is a way for them to absorb a payment cut on their end without directly cutting the benefits they offer to seniors. some doctors are suing to try to get back into medicare advantage networks. host: odd situation. steve is on the line for democrats.

caller: ok. can i ask my question? host: go right ahead. caller: yes, thank you. i am wondering when these cuts take place. have they taken place already? guest: the cuts in the affordable care act are phased in over a number of years. what you are seeing insurance companies lobby on our possible cuts that could take effect soon for next year. this is the time of year when the medicare agency decides what it's payment rates are going to be. that is why you are seeing this flurry of activity now. host: next up is rendered in tallahassee on our line for

republicans -- brenda. caller: i am a senior citizen on medicare advantage. from the date one when obama got in, one of his first speeches was, i am going to get rid of medicare advantage. i will tell you why. it is a good deal for the people and for senior citizens. obama wants to make sure retirees have to work into their 80's. this provide smart income for all the welfare clients, ok? i pay $130 a month from my medicare advantage. i have had my heart worked on. i was under chp prior to medicare advantage.

that was $97,000 worth of work done on my heart. and then a year ago i was diagnosed with breast-cancer and that was under the medicare advantage. the medicare advantage, my treatment without insurance or $700 for the radiation. what i owed was the total amount that was due for me was $3200, which i paid, the out-of-pocket, that i was made to pay. obama and pelosi and harry reid would like to see all the senior citizens just work right up through their death so that we continue paying in through fica taxes for all the welfare clients to get free medicaid and free food stamps and free housing and help on their

electric bill. and this is where our obama stands. guest: your hearing the point that insurance companies are making these ads for people who have medicare advantage generally like it. is a pretty popular program. seniors rate the program pretty well. the point is that if you cut this program enough, those cuts will check of down to seniors. host: geraldine is on our line for democrats. caller: hi. host: hi, there. caller: hi. i was calling in about the affordable care act.

i tried to apply for a couple of weeks ago. they tell me that i had to make at least $11,000 before i could apply for. i was one of those that was affected by the unemployment shut down. i had worked for 36 years. i am 59 years old now. i've been out to look for a job but i cannot find one. i tried to get the food stamps and i was told i can only get $15 for a whole month. i just want to know, i have no income now. i just sit and wait to see if they are going to put our unemployment back.

after working 36 years you would think i could get unemployment at least for a year. thank you. guest: on the health care part of that, this is a real problem a lot of people are running into. because of the supreme court decision upholding the affordable care act, there is a big discrepancy among the states. you have some states expanding medicaid and then obama subsidies kick in on top of that. you have a gap of people who are being told they are too poor to qualify for subsidies. this is the argument in trying to persuade more governors to take up the affordable care act medicaid expansion. so far that argument has been somewhat successful.

there was still a lot of work to do. host: we have had a lot of seniors: this morning. the overall impact of the aca on seniors. guest: there are some reductions in medicare advantage. there are new benefits that were added. the doughnut hole, prescription drug coverage is being closed. a new benefit for preventive care has been added. the lifespan of the program has been extended. right now and looks like a plus. there is an argument to be made that as you reduce these payments, fewer doctors will want to provide fewer services. host: johnny in georgia. caller: i wanted to talk about

medicare advantage. in my point of view, medicare advantage is another form of welfare. i am 79 years old. every senior citizen paid the same amount into the social security program and the medicare program. those people who own medicare advantage, that is what they get, and advantage. they don't have to have a secondary. myself, i have to have it. i don't go around saying i like welfare. that is exactly what it is. the lady from jacksonville is getting welfare. the lady from north carolina is asking for welfare. that is the way it should

explain it. it is welfare. guest: medicare is an entitlement program and something that seniors pay into and the government also funds. it is a publicly funded insurance program. one of the arguments against medicare advantage, a lot of the critics feel it is costing too much for pretty much the same care. welfare for insurance companies in a sense. insurance companies would reject that assertion. medicare advantage does offer a lot of benefits that traditional medicare doesn't. host: risk corridors, part of a safety net designed to stabilize the insurance market.

walk us through your piece and what you found. guest: this is a flashpoint that has flared up over the affordable care act in the past couple of weeks. the risk corridors are there because affordable care act created new markets in each state. we think people will be about this old, about this healthy, all the different factors they take into account. risk corridors are there in case they guess wrong. if they are too conservative and end up with a much better than expected experience in real life, they pay into a fine. if the expense was much worse than expected, to take money out of that fund. part of the equation where they take money out of the fund, you

see several republicans, led by senator marco rubio from florida, calling this a bailout for insurance companies. there is a move to repeal risk core doors come even though there was a similar program included in medicare prescription drug benefits and all sorts of previous forms of insurance that the government has undertaken. they have unexpectedly become controversial. host: us take another one of your calls. -- let's take another one of your calls. caller: my husband was disabled prior to age 65. in indiana he could not take a medicare supplement. it wasn't available. we weren't eligible for medicaid. we can go on the affordable care act exchange -- we can't go on the verbal care act exchange. our only option is medicare advantage. we play a premium -- we pay a

premium for that plan. there was nothing else available. they were to do away with that, i don't know where that leads us. as my comment -- that is my comment. host: you get spe guest: it get spectrum point -- a stepping back, traditional medicare doesn't cover everything. a lot of medicare advantage plans build supplemental coverage into the plan. host: a couple questions from twitter now. guest: that is a good question. the provision that the question is referring to is something that it doesn't directly cap insurance companies profits but it says that of the premiums you bring in, you have to spend 80% on medical care, and that leaves only 20% for administrative costs and profits.

host: another question guest: the actual dollar amount depends on a lot of things. in the past, their payment rate has been bashing various studies have put it between 107 and 117% of what we pay for traditional. host: next up in illinois, ed is on the line for independents. caller: yes. my question is, if obama would've left medicare alone instead of taking the money out of medicare to get this obama care going, medicare would be in better shape. i had medicare and i have my supplement. now i've been put with medicare and they have taken away my supplement.

you tell me how the government can stick their nose in and try to run our people out. we've got more sense than they've got. guest: well, if the administration had left medicare alone, the medicare trust fund, which only funds part of the program, according to the program's trustees would have become insolvent in eight to 10 years sooner than it is scheduled to now. some of these cuts have expanded the life of the program. medicare is very expensive. it is a big chunk of the federal budget. you can spend less money now and make that money last longer or you can spend more money out but it won't last as long -- you can spend more money now but it won't last as long. that is clearly the trade-off lawmakers have to make. host: deborah is on our line for republicans. caller: hello? host: hi, deborah, you are on "washington journal" with sam baker. caller: how are you?

host: we are all right. caller: ok. my father -- i was adopted by the grand parents, long story. my father was on medicare for a very, very long time. he actually recently passed away. now, all is medical bills that he had, medicare never covered. even though he said he was on medicare, they never covered any of those bills. i want to know if -- because my mother -- if my mother can be on this medicare advantage plan without any kind of deferments or anything like that, because he was on medicaid. guest: medicare advantage, they sell different plans in different states and it would depend on your particular circumstances. these are privately administered

plans that are sold as a supplement to traditional medicare. host: we will go to new york next. della is on the line for democrats. caller: yes, let me make something clear. medicare is funded by the government. medicare advantage is funded by private insurance companies. medicare does not cover dental, does not cover eyewear, prescription eyeglasses. along comes the insurance companies like humana and others and they say "let us take care of it can give them money to us and we will cover the glasses and we will cover the dental." this is what is draining medicare. the medicare advantage programs -- you pay the money to places like humana and they are supposed to cover the dental and the i care. medicare was never meant to cover it.

medicare part a and b covers visits to the doctor and her hospitalization, but does not cover i care and does not cover dental. that is why i say to these people who are calling in and saying that they're medicare benefits were cut, they were cut if you have these private insurance companies who promised to cover what they were never meant to cover. guest: that's right, to the point that we have been making should medicare advantage, one of the selling points that it has is that it covers things that traditional medicare does not, including dental and vision. again, that is the point that insurance companies are making. you are hearing both sides in the calls. seniors like the program, the program covers additional things , and it is more expensive but people get more for it is the argument they're making. host: let's go back to twitter.

host: comment? guest: that idea, raising the age was something that was like that was looked at. pretty much of the table now. the congressional budget office says the savings from doing that would be negligible and it is unpopular enough that it is not worth the limited amount it would save politically. host: jerry in rochester, new york, on the line for republicans. caller: good morning. this discussion has been very interesting. i've been following medicare advantage -- i have been a medicare advantage number for about 10 years now, and i find it very, very cost-effective. i guess my question is, medicare always promotes a very low administered of right -- administrative rate, in the

single digits. i believe it is senator tom coburn who said that it doesn't cover all the waste, fraud, and abuse in regular medicare. medicare advantage is run by insurance companies, and they might have a higher administrative cost, let's say 15% versus five percent, for example. they probably have a rate closer to zero for waste, fraud, and abuse. anyway, just to finish this, i live in rochester, new york. about two thirds of the seniors in rochester are covered by 2 very excellent medicare advantage plans run by "no nprofit insurance companies." i would like to hear your comment about the outcomes. are the outcomes better, and is it more cost effective than regular medicare? thank you. guest: right, so this goes back to the same debate that insurers have been happening with the

federal government. insurers say that we are providing more services, we are better able to present -- prevent waste, fraud, and b's instead of just going after it after we think it has happened. which is how medicare approaches things. the federal government says you are still providing any much the same service, although you've got a couple of additional things running. it is still basically medicare at its core. we are paying you more than the amount we spend on medicare. i don't think of that question has been definitively answer. -- i don't think that that question has been definitively answer. host: matt in concorde, new hampshire, on our line for independents. caller: i really enjoyed the segment. i'm disabled. i have been disabled during an industrial accident. i've been on disability for a long time. i'm currently 55. ever since i was disabled, in my mid-40's, i've had to take a premium of an 84-year-old, no

matter what supplemental insurance i buy. because i was disabled, number one, i take a lower percentage of social security on my monthly check. it reduces the amount i give because i'm disabled before retirement. secondly, every insurance i buy, as many types of supplemental. i have no deductibles, no copays. everything is paid with my type f and my medicare. i never get a bill. i'm happy with it. it would cost me a little more. but the one thing that most people lose and they lose this rapidly because they never see it -- anybody who receives social security, social security disability, supplemental discipline. -- supplemental disability, they receive that check from the government. they pay $108 a month, $140 a month out of the check for

medicare. not only have we paid into it our whole lives, we continue to pay for it. between my medicare payment, which i never see because they take it before i get my check, and my $300 a month premium for my type f plan, so i have no deductibles and no co-pays, but the thing that everybody misses is that you hear these states and broad differences. the reason is that every state has an insurance commissioner, and those insurance commissioners are related and controlled by the state. this is why we will have trouble selling the insurance over state lines. i would just really like to hear more diversity in the plans that are available, and is one color question, -- as one caller questioned, the efficiencies of all the different programs.

of the one thing that nobody's ever answered -- because i'm under 64 and i have a supplemental, why do i pay the rate of an 84-year-old? guest: well, there's a lot in that question and a couple of things. one, to the caller's point about state commissioners and state insurance markets, that is exactly right. that is something that the affordable care act attempts to get act. you build a new insurance exchange, and this is for private insurance in each state. the law attempts to create increased domination by bringing in more insurance companies and more plants and therefore more choices into each state. at the same time, it prohibits insurance companies from charging people more or denying them coverage because of the pre-existing condition they

might have had, whatever it is. diabetes, injury, that sort of thing. it has in the past always driven up your insurance premiums, and that is illegal now. host: we have been joined by "national journal's" sam baker. thank you so much for joining us. guest: thank you. >> i think it is all an evolutionary process. you grow into this role. you never get comfortable if you're always pushing for change and growth, not just in yourself, but in the issues you care about you read your never done. point in timeer where you feel like there, i am here, and i can do this the same way all the time. it is always changing. >> first lady michelle obama. live on c-span and c-span 3 at 9:00 eastern. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> the new c-span.org website gives you access to an incredible library of lyrical events. throughe added each day

nonstop coverage of national politics, history, and nonfiction books. c-span's daily coverage of official washington or access more than 200 hours of archived c-span video. everything c-span has covered since 1987. it is all searchable unviewable on your desktop computer, smartphone, or laptop. c-span.org makes it easy to watch what is happening today in washington and find people and events from the past 25 years. it is the most comprehensive video library in politics. the u.s. house is set to gavel in momentarily for morning our speeches. they will meet at 2:00 p.m. for legislative work. two bills under suspension of the rules. one reauthorizing funding for

early morning and drought research programs. the other would condemn the violence in the ukraine. no votes until 6:30 eastern. confirmed that the house gop is having a 5:30 meeting on the debt ceiling today. we're getting confirmation of this from robert costa, a journalist on the hill. boehner will go over debt limit options. this is important because the treasury department's spending authority runs out on february 22. live now to the floor of the u.s. house. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., february 10, 2014. i hereby appoint the honorable luke messer to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john a.