the public interest role she itke so powerfully about, would be yanked. >> [indiscernible] >> of course that was proved to be the case. >> exactly. sometime before the authorities actually came to the guard -- came to "the guardian" and they had to literally destroy their drives and what not, "the times" did obtain some but not all of the snowden materials from "the guardian" and we agreed to abide by all of the protocols that "the guardian" had established for keeping these materials as safe as possible.

i think that's a really important point. it's not the sexiest opponent but you were asking janine about the process by which they verified the story. i would say the process by which "the guardian" sort of schooled us in exactly how we needed to handle the documents, safe keep them, communicate in a very secure manner, that that is probably, you know, took up days of janine and me talking before we got a lick of actual work done. i just think that that point is somewhat lost on the public. sometimes they think, oh, a leak, it's just a bunch of stuff that's thrown at us and we just rush to publish it. and that is never the case and could be the least true in this situation. >> this touches on something that i want to come back to just before i move on. the two of you, the surprise of these stories, the unknowable end, you know, even with the pentagon papers, you could fit them into a shopping cart. and wheel them across the news room.

and part of that was actually, you know, ellsberg had to make selection choices partly on the basis of what he could actually get out. now we have these unknowably large stories that technically are incredibly difficult. but also isn't the difficulty of them an enormous journalistic challenge? you talked a little bit about the difficulty of that. there must have been times when both of you thought, are we actually capable of reporting this story? >> i think from the beginning we realized we couldn't do it alone in different ways. there was a very obvious point, we were running this as a new baby foreign addition of "the guardian."

the first thing we had to do was crawl back to the parent company and put in some help. but the second thing you realize is you're going to need outside experts. we talk a lot about being open at "the guardian." it's up with of our philosophies of how we work. thanks story that is the most secret thing you could ever do but at the same time you have to accept you can't do alone. you're going to need security experts, you're going to need to consult with experts. other news organizations, because your material could get destroyed or because there's a chill in the u.k. and we have brought in partners to work on an enormous number of the stories. on top of that, you have to make up how you're going to assess the material. we almost had a contract about how we were going to search it. we were really keen that we weren't going to use these documents as a fisher exercise. there wasn't going to be a team -- with the wikileaks documents,

which are much less sensitive, much lower level, we would bring in, you know, subject specialist journalists and they could have a search and -- and country specialists. >> country specialists. this is a very different sort of thing. you don't want to be using national security material to -- you want to use it to confine to the scope of the nature of the surveillance in front of you. we have had all sorts of conversations about how to build boundaries about what we were -- we would report and then conversations about how best to do that practically. do you put a small team in for two weeks, get them to whittle down a short list of stories. >> that is what we did. and that's what we did in wikileaks too. in both cases, we worked closely with "the guardian", a very small group of editors and

reporters who worked together, not in the middle of the news room. but on a floor, remote from anybody else. exclusively went through the documents. and after that long process, then moved to the next phase which is trying to put them in some kind of context, to start reporting. in our case i thought, some of what we brought to the table, you know, were our reporters in silicon valley who had very good sources on all the companies that "the guardian" could see, this was a source of controversy within the companies themselves. they had been required to cooperate with the government but whether it was right to or not became a very live debate. we could add reporting fire power on that type of thing as well as inside the u.s.

government and in the intelligence community. >> that's a terrific, i think almost sort of textual kind of background. you almost file like it was like to be in those rooms. i want to bring in david and then caas on these legal issues and the response, if you like, with the legal minds in the government. david, to you first. you've been on the inside of these stories. is something changing? obviously the scales of stories have changed. what are the challenges legally and where does the first amendment fit into this? >> it is a bit of a conundrum because in this country, as was mentioned in the opening segments, we don't have an official secrets act. we don't have clear laws about -- and you can argue it's a very good thing we don't. but on one hand, the criminal

liability, what we have primarily is an espionage act that was written during world war ii. >> 1917. >> 1917. it wasn't intended to cover the kind of disclosures that we're talking about, through the press, to the public. it was to get spies. and for a long time it was thought that that's all it dealt with. that started to change. and in the 1980's, for the first time a source, not a reporter, but a source was prosecuted for leaking information to the press. it was a navy employee who was working as kind of a freelancer for a magazine in london, a defense magazine, with the knowledge of the navy. and the condition was that he could write for them as long as he didn't disclose classified information. and then at some point, as he was negotiating full-time job to go work there, he secretly provided to the editor some highly classified spy photos that were considered very sensitive at the time because it disclosed to the soviet union the capabilities of our satellite cameras or our aerial cameras.

and so he was prosecuted criminally. and there was a big debate at the time about whether the espionage act was intended to apply to this type of disclosure, not to a foreign government, but to a news organization. and he attempted to defend the claim that the law doesn't apply to this kind of disclosure. and his conviction was upheld. but in a kind of interesting opinion, he was raising a essentially a public interest, his first amendment defense, in part, he said, i did this to a journalist, not to a foreign government. there's a public interest here. that was rejected but it was tied to the facts of the case. the court said, he was being paid for. this he knew what he was doing was wrong. he took off the classification before he turned it over. he provided it to them secretly.

the way they linked him up was through fingerprints, the old-fashioned way. so they said because of the bad intent and the knowledge of the arm that it would cause, it was not a problem under the first amendment to apply the espionage act to him. but two of the judges who decided that, two out of the three, said, if you make the same arguments against the press, we think there would be real first amendment questions here and it would raise different concerns. so on the one hand we have this very vague law and on the other hand we have this notion that the press is different, that there are first amendment rights. a long line of cases that say that you can't prosecute the press, you can't punish them for publishing true newsworthy information. that's kind of a settled principle in many areas. but it's not an absolute right, as we learned in a case a few years ago. there's a balance that has to be done, even with truly newsworthy information. and we don't know how the court will deal with that when the balance is the public's right to

know something versus a national security interest. never been decided. so we don't know what the risks are. there is a real risk. because what the espionage act says is that it is a violation, a criminal violation of the law for a person who has unauthorized access, a reporter, if you get national defense information, it's not even classified information, if you have possession of it, the mere possession, the failure to return it to the government, or the disclosure of that can lead to criminal violation, if it is reasonable to believe that the disclosure could harm the united states. so it's a very broad law. the government takes the position it doesn't require an intent to harm, it doesn't even require actual harm. if the document on its face could reasonably be understood to possibly provide harm, and in fact, a document shouldn't be classified unless it meets that standard, so you know that if you have a classified document,

at least in theory, the mere possession of it is a violation of the law. so it becomes sort of a tricky situation to advise a reporter or a journalist how to handle that. but on the other hand, that's the bad news. the good news is, since 1917 there has never been, almost 100 years, there has never been a prosecution of a journalist. we have a very strong tradition in this country of protecting the press. and so there is this uncertainty that that's the little dance we do. so dealing with the situation like this of course, you want to limit the number of people who have access to this so you're not putting people at risk and the basic advice is, if you're going to publish this information, it should be so important that the american people have a right to know and that could you convince a judge, if you had to, that this was something the public needed to know. but it's still an unresolved question whether that even is defense.

the government has taken the position there's no first amendment defense to this law and no public interest defense. it's a gray area. >> i want to come back to that in a minute. first of all, let's bring cass in. in august, your approach of having to review this for one of the review panels, can you talk a little bit about how you set out to do that and what you looked at before we get into this? >> great. so, we were constituted in late august and it was a diverse group with one of the leading first amendment scholars, he's associated with the american civil liberties union, jeff stone. a prize-winning book on free speech, of which he's one of the nation's strongest advocates. we also have one of the leading,

maybe the leading privacy expert in the united states, a guy named peter swyer, who was the privacy person in the clinton administration. a long standing person in the c.i.a. who had been acting director in the c.i.a. with three decades of experience there. he also is strongly committed to a free press and civil liberty. and richard clark, who is counterterrorism specialist, who has very strong convictions about freedom of speech and privacy as well. and then a regulatory guy with some constitutional background, yours truly. so the first thing we really decided to do was to try to learn as much as we could from people in the country. so we did something quite unusual which is we asked for a public comment process in which we asked people, basically all over the world, made a global request for comments, and we got hundreds. and while some of them, as i recall, had to do with people wanting to sell us pencils and paper, which we already had

pencils and paper, but most of them were substantive and about the issues at hand. every word was read and they were incredibly valuable. we also had meetings, extensive meetings, with people all over, including people who are specialists in privacy and civil liberties, the rights of journalists, got a lot of information from that. it made an impact on our report. we ended up endorsing four principles and i won't do them in exact order because i think the first one i'm going to mention is maybe one that's most salient today. which is, there's a lot of talk about balancing, about balancing national security against privacy. we think in important respects that's misleading and actually harmful. there are some things that just don't count in the balance. so if there's an effort to suppress dissent, to go after people because of their religious convictions, to target people because of their political beliefs, to go after people because of their gender or ethnicity, that's not part of legitimate balance, that's just

off limits. very important to identify a set of impermissible reasons for surveillance or anything like surveillance. and we say in the report that that is a foundational principle that applies inside and outside our territorial boundaries. so the first idea is the limits of the balances metaphors, a way of approaching these issues. the second is by i think a happy coincidence of language. the word security actually has at least two meanings. two which are crucial here. and they both have a latin root which means free from danger, safe. and that entails both not being blown up or at risk of being blown up and also feeling that your persons, papers, affects, etc., are safe from government intrusion. our view is that these two forms of security, which have the same

linguistic root, can both be safeguarded and it's a big mistake to think that in a free society one can be pursued at the expense of another. one thing we're fighting for when we protect the national security is the other form of security and it shouldn't be relegated to second-class citizenship. the third idea is that there are multiple risks involved that surveillance calls up. and it's a big error to think about only one. so national security risks are one. and they're very important to consider and they're part of the mix. but risk to journalistic freedom are also one. and that has to be considered. risks to our relations with foreign countries, including those who are friendly with us or we're trying to cooperate, that's another. economic and democratic risks that cut across territorial boundaries, that's another set of risks that might cut in a

different direction from the national security risk in terms of what policies to adopt. and of course risks to privacy which are a central feature of the overall calculus. the ideas we're dealing with, risk management and the risks that involve operate along a number of different dimensions. the fourth and final principle has to do with the need consistently to focus on the consequences of what government policies are. not only before the fact, but in an ongoing way. so if it's the case that you have some policies that were adopted, let's suppose, in the aftermath of 9/11, or a year or two before 9/11, to decide in a way that reflects -- the best practices of newspapers and businesses, which is to re-investigate your practices to see what actually are they doing to people? so you may have practices that at one point were thought

necessary to protect national security, but it turns out they're really not doing much on that, but they are scaring people or they are chilling system of free expression. that has to be known and subject to continuing scrutiny, not just by the intelligence community, as important as it is to the scrutiny, but by a range of actors who include people who aren't maybe principally concerned with national security but who have privacy or civil liberties as their mission or internet freedom as their mission. that last principle, that is balancing the human consequences, keeping your eye insistently on that ball, not only when you adopt the policies, but while you reassess them, has institutional implications. we suggest important changes in the foreign intelligence

surveillance court and also important changes in the structure of the executive branch where just to give one example we say there should be a designated official in the white house who has privacy and civil liberties as his charge. to have that person in the room, having a convening function and having a presence, can help ensure both that risk management operates along the full range of dimensions, and can also ensure the kind of continuing scrutiny that a free society needs. >> i can just ask at that point, though, the recommendations i think probably went further than some people were expecting you to go. certainly not as far as other people wanted you to go. so, for instance, on metadata storage. you said it should go to third party or private kind of companies. it shouldn't be kept by the government. one of the other review panels had a slight different review which is that it couldn't be kept full-stop. i wonder why you'd stop short on

that? >> to state our recommendation, we believe that the meta data, that is who the phone numbers are from, and -- who's calling whom and when, the government shouldn't be holding that data. in a free society, if we're engaged in a risk management exercise, there are undue risks to privacy and civil liberty with the government holding that data. we think that the information should be held privately, which has a safeguard against the risks of abuse which in american history have not been absent. not in the recent past, not in the last years, but under president nixon and president johnson there were risks from surveillance. and before. so we don't urge that the information should suddenly be held by the phone companies. that's not what we urge. the phone companies have that information. they hold it for consumer protection reasons, in large part.

they hold it because they don't want to be billing you for stuff that you're not responsible for. in fact, the federal communications commission, whose mission is not surveillance, requires that landlines at least, the phone records be kept for 18 months. they hold it either voluntarily or by f.c.c. mandate. like your bank has your bank accounts. we don't recommend, in fact we recommend the opposite, that the government should be holding bank account records. we are big against storage of all people's metadata. in a free society that's not what we're for. we're against that. but banks have the stuff. they just do. the government can get access to it through a warrant. that's the system of free society designs. we don't urge that the banks should disassemble people's bank accounts because it's dangerous for them to have it. we urge that the government should not get access to that information except in accordance with the standard legal forms.

what we urge here is precisely parallel to what's always been the case in a fourth amendment-respecting situation. materials held in private hands and the government has access to it on the basis of an appropriate showing. >> there are many more recommendations. i wanted to bring back the whole panel. we're here to talk about "journalism after snowden." actually, there's a very important legal point. you touched on it, dave. which is, you know, we have the director of national intelligence yesterday saying, well, first of all, two things. he said, people with material should give it back. so, jill and janine. \[laughter] do you have a response? >> now that you say that. >> the other thing that he said was, he talked about edward snowden and his accomplices.

and after a couple of calls, the clarification from his office was, accomplices could potentially mean journalists. now, given what they were saying about the espionage act, do we even know what the policy is for the obama administration? the attorney general in the summer said that in the james rosen case, who is the fox reporter who was -- had his phone calls -- sorry, his email taken, he was actually described as a co-conspirator in leaks. the attorney general stepped back from that. but there's a great deal of -- there's a lack of clarity, isn't there, here, about what the actual -- whether we even have a policy around this? i don't know whether you can respond to that.

>> i can tell you a lot with the obama administration's policy with the paperwork reduction act which i was helping to oversee. i can tell you a good deal about our policies with respect to cost-benefit analysis and environmental stuff. apologies. the other i wasn't involved in so i don't have a view of the policy. >> let me maybe tie a couple of points and throw some issues out. one of the points you're raising is that if you have a system of free expression, there has to be a basis for confidential communications between reporters and sources. that's one of the things that the privacy and civil liberties oversight board underscored in their report that came out last week or the beginning of this week.

and i think the concern, which is evidenced by all the interest in this, is that the snowden revelations kind of were a wake-up call. i mean, jill is right. we knew a lot of this was going on in 2005. and people have reported on it. but seeing that fisa order that said, give us everything -- >> it was the scale, that's what's different. >> and what we're realizing now is that it's not just the phone records and all the good things we can say about the recommendations on metadata, which they are very helpful and very strong and good ways, it's a piecemeal approach. because we also know they're getting not just your phone records but they're getting email in various situations, they're getting geolocation data. they're getting your contact lists and your buddy lists and all sorts of other information that they get in various ways from your cell phone from various websites. so part of the problem is, it seems to me what we need as a society, we really need to understand what we mean by privacy. we talk about protecting privacy. two years ago the president and the white house got behind an initiative that was geared at private industry. said, we need a consumers' privacy bill of rights because all these corporations are collecting your data. well, we need a privacy bill of rights.

we need to know what it is that the government can and cannot do, what corporations can and cannot do and we don't have a consensus on that. europe has a whole different view of privacy than we have here. and in many ways it's more refined and more forward-looking when it comes to data protection. and it's going to affect things like reporting. what the attorney general said this summer in reaction, and just, if you weren't following it, what happened is the department of justice wanted to get the email of a fox reporter because they were doing a leak investigation. and because of an anomaly in the law that says you can't get -- there's two laws that were relevant. one says that you can't get email unless you get a search warrant. they wanted a judge -- so you can't just do it with a subpoena without having a judge approve it. that is one law. there's another law that says you can't use a search warrant

against a reporter because you want to give the reporter notice with a subpoena. in any event, they wanted the email so they had to get a search warrant, but they couldn't get a search warrant against the reporter, the exception of that is if the reporter is suspected of a crime. so they actually filled out an affidavit and got a search warrant where they said there was reason to believe the fox reporter had violated the espionage act or was a co-conspirator because he was asking questions of someone who had access to classified information. the attorney general said at the time, we will not prosecute journalists for doing journalism. what does that mean? >> something that i think is an issue for journalists and citizens for the next 20 years, which is there's been a distinction in law and more generally between metadata and content, so some people have a thought that if government has access to your phone calls, that's really troubling. if they have access to metadata, meaning what numbers are calling what numbers, that's a completely different problem.

we in the review group are uneasy with that distinction. that if the government has access to knowledge about whom you are calling and when and where, meaning the numbers, and it can figure out who those people are, that's a privacy problem. and that needs to be -- that distinction between metadata and data needs to be rethought. certainly for policy purposes, the idea that government has, you know, your metadata, it can tell a ton about you. whether it's going to be used illicitly or, you know, to target people on the basis of illegitimate grounds, probably that's a risk and not a high one under current circumstances, i'd even say a very low one, but in

terms of the kinds of security which people in a free society are entitled to, and certainly journalists and their sources, that's something that needs to be reassessed. >> i just wanted to now bring the conversation right back to the fact that the title of this is "journalism after snowden." i think we can all agree that edward snowden has done us a favor. do we have general agreement on that? that edward snowden has done us a favor. can we agree on that? \[laughter] >> who are you asking? >> i'm asking the panel. can we all agree?

>> i have no comment on that. \[laughter] we have a 300-page report and the word snowden doesn't appear in the report and -- >> just to pick up on that. this goes to the heart of the issue in a way. because you recommended lots of i think recommendations that people would generally endorse and critics of the administration would endorse them as well. but the fact is that we've had oversight and oversight as failed. and where oversight has failed, a whistleblower and journalism has succeeded and yet the system is still wanting to punish, if you like, the one thing which has led to some transparency. >> that should be unsurprising.

useful backdrop to segueing into how journalism has changed after snowden is to acknowledge that during not obama administration, there have been seven criminal leak investigations. more than twice all of these investigations and all of history before president obama took office. and this has had a profound effect on journalists who cover national security. with the snowden case being only the most recent. this seems to be, if not a stated policy, a reality where journalism about sensitive national security issues that i see as vitally in the public interest is effectively being criminalized and a real freeze is setting in in what had been to this point i think a healthy discourse between sources and journalists and i might here if i can take just a minute,

because the gentleman had quite a long bit of time to speak, as to point out that max frankel and a very affidavit in the pentagon papers case wrote eloquently about how the public does benefit from this discourse. and i have seen both in the job as washington bureau chief of "the times" certainly then growing as managing editor and now as executive editor that these criminal leak investigations have had a very profound effect on journalism. >> come back to the accomplices point. the thing that was completely different about the story, you know, as journalists we all understand that at some point somebody might threaten you in the means of trying to get you to reveal a source and there's a sort of tenant that you learn in places like colombia, that you

would go to prison to protect your source. this source never thought his identity wouldn't come out. the very nature of the story. he knew exactly how fast they would be able to track him down and identify him, as soon as the revelations appeared. and the reason that first week was so intense at first was the idea of getting as many stories out as possible before it just became about source hunt, witch hunt, who is this guy? for a 29-year-old he had an eerie precedence about what would happen, what they would say about him, how they would try to characterize him. he wanted to be able to control his own story. what that means to the journalist is instead of the position that, you know, your journalists find themselves in, we are now being put in this position of even more chilling.

this has become part of a conspiracy, possibly involving the kgb or maybe china. [laughter] because the ordinary way of chilling journalism will not work in this case. we are not going to worry about naming names. it is about proving you are not a co-conspirator. >> and to say that this chilling effect of editors and lawyers, is it just not possible to comment at all for your protection or client confidentiality? knowing what we know now. >> it is very problematic.

there have been stories that we have had since snowden, a journalist who has had a source who they have been bidding with for a number of years on relatively innocuous bits of color and detail suddenly wanted to give him something much more serious and profound. and you are looking and going, right. so there will be a gmail trail going back some years with your contact with this person. >> it is amazing to me. over the course of the past decade, journalists literally saying to a source, i will go to jail to protect your identity. those words are now uttered. >> you have a reporter who is currently fighting that fight. >> worried about that possibility. >> i want to leave plenty of time for questions. i just want to wrap up on this point about the inevitable arms race of technology which allows us to do all sorts of things,

but leaves fingerprints all over the world. these are things that can be useful for governments and journalists -- is this a legal remedy we are thinking about here? is it a technical remedy? where do we start given the technology? >> there are so many great topics here and they are diverse. one topic is getting democratic governments on a sound foundation with respect to these issues, bracketing a question which is a different question. you could think that the idea of government storage, private stuff, metadata for content, just not acceptable in a free society. we think essentially, that is a

good thought. you could also think that the government access to such material, when the government wants it, should be qualified by what free societies insist on, which is an independent, neutral arbiter, a judge agreeing on the basis of a certain showing of need. that has served this nation quite well when it has been observed. that is also a good foundation. in a way, this is about taking forward some not new ideals in a radically different technological environment and insisting on their enduring value. that is one set of issues.

there is another set of issues raised about private ownership. that raises different challenges and the consumer bill of rights thing is about that. >> i am going to go to bob. you have been listening to this. there are so many things we have to it onto, these really deep discussions, but i want to call on you as a reporter. what do you think? >> thank you for including me. i will try to give deep discussion in a couple of short minutes. i wanted to parse what the director of national intelligence said yesterday about accomplices and returning the documents. and put that alongside something that happened down the block in the judiciary committee, where the attorney general said that he had hoped to release publicly

the guidelines that they were using in investigations relating to reporters and sources, but that a glitch had arisen and he was not yet ready to release these guidelines. what could james mean when he said that edward snowden and his accomplices should return the stolen documents? the only other people known to have these documents are a small number of journalists. it could be just a rhetorical expression of anger, perfectly understandable for a secret agency that has had secrets for a long time. it could be a request for assistance or help. if that were the case, you would expect that the government would have come to these organizations before or after and done so. or it could be a kind of signaling, a way of saying that there is a risk here. accomplice has meaning in

criminal law as a co-conspirator, aiding and abetting. besides the actual risk of prosecution, which i think still is remote for the reasons that dave has described, there is an investigative issue that very much relates to the ability to do national security. journalists now, almost everything you want to write about, everything but the press release or the news conference is crossfire. that it may be -- that is just how it works. there is a good article that a harvard professor wrote saying that that is the case. if you have an intelligence service that is capable of aspiring, living in the golden age of signals intelligence that is described internally in which the president said that surveillance is collecting as much as possible, to say that bulk collection is not

surveillance, bulk collection is not spying until they look at it or make use of it. it is all there, the tapes and the phone records. lots of the review groups did not have the scope to consider. think about the situations for reporters under these national security frameworks. you have all the information in these big buckets. the laws that interpret to mean that, talking to a reporter is espionage. counterintelligence, counterespionage is a valid foreign intelligence purpose as far as the nsa is concerned. so now the investigation is potentially over before it starts. they have all the records of almost every reporter

communication to almost every source. extraordinary precautions to limit that that are very hard to take and hardly anyone tries to take. they can be a reasonable or articulable suspicion standard when it comes to whether the records of a reporter are going to be relevant to a counterintelligence investigation. so this sort of legal tangle is what we have to address if we are going to seriously talk about national security investigative journalism in the post-snowden era. >> can i pick up on that? >> yes. can people put your hands up for questions and we will go there. >> i want to underscore the point in a different term. the technology that we have today, when you knowledge what

the government has and what it can do, you do not need to subpoena a reporter anymore. there is the ability to find out any information. we should all be very concerned about that. we need whistleblowers. you can look at the number of stories in recent years, secret cia prisons, waterboarding, on and on, important stories that only come from classified information. if we do not have a mechanism that allows whistleblowers, our whole society is going to suffer. we cannot count on oversight by congress and the courts to adequately perform certain types of tasks. if we do not acknowledge that and have some safeguard, and hopefully one thing that will be picked up by the review proposals, are things like national security letters and court orders should be subject to the same attorney general guidelines.

you do not go after reporters with those. right now, there is just a gray area. none of those national security things need to go through the normal checklist. >> i am going to take questions. somebody has a microphone over here and then over there. let's start here. ok. and then the back. if anyone has a microphone, can you ask a question? >> hi. my name is daniel. i am from germany as a journalism student. the document in the wiki case and the snowden case were both activist. the documents are not in hold at the guardian. at least that is what i heard. what does it mean for this whole insecurity about investigations into leaks? how much did you have control over the situation?

>> that is a great question. it is one of the things that we were having conversations about in the u.k. for quite a lot of last year. we were holding some of the documents in the guardian u.k. office. and the documents are held in other places, which i am not going to go into on this panel. including very securely in the new york times office. one of the problems with the u.k. government approach, and this is bitterly ironic to me when we have a conversation about the context in the u.k.

saying that we could not report a story without america. we would not have gotten this story if we were the guardian u.s. edition and we could not continue reporting it unless we were the guardian u.s. edition. and then to suddenly realize that we are driven out -- but to address your point, once the u.k. government tried to remove the guardian from the equation, we spent some time saying to them, do you not member what happened to wikileaks? once you remove the news organization with the 200-year tradition, history, values, concerned about public interest, the fine-grained judgment, if you remove them, the information will find its way out in a way that you cannot engage with, that we have talked to administrations and agencies into confidence on every single story we have done. we have engaged with them and ask them questions, talk about material we intend to publish and listened to their concerns. we do not do everything they

say, of course, and we know earnestly together, in partnership, the idea that by restraining us, we could be the subject of a legal order and they could somehow contain the problem. you only make it worse. at one point, we were saying -- we were best friends in this endeavor. >> in the back and then down here. >> i have two questions and i guess mostly for jill and janine. the first one for janine is could you talk about how the discussion in britain has been versus the discussion in the u.s.? it seems to have been a very different discussion in the u.k. and the kind of collaboration that you have with other media organizations on the story,

certainly that collaboration has not taken place in the u.k.? >> it is impossible to describe all of the rest of the british media. the u.s. media, from the beginning, has been brilliant. >> some of them thought you were traders though. >> momentarily on fox news, but they have come around. [laughter] i am talking about ap, reuters, washington journal, i cannot think of most news organizations that have not used the release of these documents to break stories and do amazing investigative reporting on these topics and really push ahead. no news organization in the u.k. has even followed up the stories. >> not the bbc? >> no. it has been quite extraordinary. i suppose the regulatory environment, they have been refusing to rule out prosecuting guardian journalists for some

months now. obviously, we know of the detention of david maranda. the guardian has been funding the legal actions to rule outside the bounds of the legal legislation. frankly, u.k. law is so widely drawn, it is almost impossible to overstep the oversight regime. the u.k. security agency and the nsa partner is where you have not proved any wrongdoing. it would be impossible to prove wrongdoing against the u.k. laws. there is very little oversight. guardian staff, as far as we know, still being investigated. >> conrad martin with the fund for constitutional government. i want to go to the term you used, edward snowden's eerie prescience.

i would say it was more an informed and healthy paranoia. in the thomas case, where they went after him under the espionage act, he had taken documents to the house of intelligence committee. those documents were turned over. diane rourke got the documents. the fbi waited at the house of intelligence committees office in going after that data. the healthy paranoia that is there -- my question goes to and you mentioned the whistleblowers, where are the reforms? the espionage act does not work and has not worked. it has been overly broad. any whistleblower protection act that should have been extended to contractors was not extended to contractors. the recommendations coming forward are coming forward about the metadata. third-party people handling

them. the underlying systems of how we are going to approach this in the future, and it will happen again, is not being addressed. when these things have come out before, what happened was you had a frank church that came forward with a new regulatory structure on how these things are going to be handled. congress has been completely silent. >> well, not completely silent. you saw senator wyden in the interchange with mr. clapper this week being vocal. i think that -- i agree with much of what you just said, but what is tremendously unhelpful, i think, is to have statements, as in the hearing the other day, saying that snowden's disclosures have done great harm to the national security without any kind of specific information

that helps the public, let alone journalists, evaluate the truth of that statement. it is just, to me, troubling. it reminds me -- you know, history is often a guide in these situations. during the pentagon papers case, the solicitor general erwin griswold made the passionate argument that the disclosure of the pentagon papers was very harmful to the national security. a few years later, after he left office, he was asked what harm to the national security did the publication of the pentagon papers caused? he admitted none. in this case, none of us know how to evaluate the truth of what mr. clapper said the other day. but the lack of specific information, i think, is harmful to the public ability to figure out where the truth in this situation lies.

>> we have a question at the back. i know we are a little over time. we are going to wrap up in a bit. >> years ago, nathaniel blumberg and carl bernstein pointed out the ways in which the media collaborate with the government. and cooperate in the suppression of stories. if the government -- this is the two editors. if the government asks you to suppress a story because of national security, do you ask them for proof? what does it take to make you toe the line, which happens so often. for instance, in the lead up to the iraq war, the coverage of 9/11, the way that robert kennedy junior said that his family did not necessarily

endorsed the warren commission. that was not necessarily covered. >> i think what janine was saying a few minutes ago about her efforts to make the case to the british government, we are your best friends. we are a responsible filter for evaluating the importance of the information which should be disclosed, perhaps even which should not be disclosed. i think that the new york times and other news organizations play a very important role in trying. it is difficult. as an editor, there is no set rentals or formula that i can follow in terms of when the government says, if you publish this, it is going to harm the national security.

but when the government does make that case -- >> which it did with the original -- >> of course. we take those request very seriously. we, in general, hit the brakes a bit in order to give consideration and give the government ample opportunity to persuade us that such is the case. >> to play devil's advocate, a fact that everybody was so shocked at what edward snowden revealed, wasn't that kind of a failure of the press in the same way that holding the government to account over iraq was a failure of the press? the fact that a whistleblower has to come forward with what has been available to so many people. has american media really been asleep? >> i do not think it has been

asleep anymore that -- again, i keep invoking the pentagon papers. basically, until ellsberg, who was the principal whistleblower of the same ilk as some of the more recent cases, basically, it took him to expose that the johnson administration had given a complete false history of the vietnam war. >> i think your question is about the duty on the press to respond to a whistleblower. somebody who is brave enough to leak information and bring it to a news organization, then our absolute duty is to publish it and to do the best job we can. i think that was what edward snowden had mine. that was his absolute primary consideration. he wanted it out with responsibly and carefully. he did not want it all over the internet, but he wanted it published.

we take that very seriously. >> i am going to step a little outside of the review group here and try to complicate things a bit. john stuart mill min, a great essay, said been somewhat like a one eyed man who was blind in one eye and could see further, but he did not have the perspective. some elements of the intelligence committee have been like that. they can see great on one dimension, but they do not have the perspective. i think there is a risk in thinking about leakers that we are blinding ourselves in one eye. i think we should just say that there is no one on the review group who would describe edward snowden as a whistleblower. from the civil liberties focus.

we did not discuss him, but that is just a fact. whatever you think of that particular person or any particular person, the topic is after snowden. to leak classified material, that is very complicated from a government standpoint, how to handle that. prosecution is a very severe act. if it is formally classified, that is presumptively grave. that might not be the right view. jill suggesting that the classification is not sufficient, it would have to also be a great thing to do. we call on our report for declassification, a lot more transparency, and we are committed to that. thinking about particular issues, i think it is quite important to have -- not to be like bensom. it is, gated on both sides. lex very quickly, a question and then we will really have to finish.

>> thanks for a great panel. a question that i have -- it seems here that we will have a big controversy over the next months and years. the counterpoint to the government looking at all of our data is the public opinion, well, i am not doing anything wrong, so what does it matter if the government is gathering data if they are going to do something good with it? do you think the debate will play out in legal ways or within an elite public policy circle or does public opinion matter? journalists have done a good job explaining to the public what are some of the obligations of privacy and metadata and things like this in collected for members of the general public over the next months and years as the debate plays out? >> that is a great question.

>> thank you, that is a great question. >> i think the fact we are having a national debate, and i think it is important for that debate to call out in particular the right and contributions of journalists as a report does, that is indispensable to a free society. the fact there are surprising coalitions is in a way encouraging. we do not have splits between republicans and democrats, and that gives an opportunity, a window for reforms that will have more stable foundations. >> i would just say it is a great question, and i am humble enough to believe that probably do aalists could indeed better job on very complicated issues of explaining this to the

public. >> i would say eight months in we are still trying to explain in better and better ways to the public what this means, what the potential pieces are,, but the opinion polls show the public has gone from [indiscernible] i question your suction that the public does not care. latest poll said 71% of people said they are concerned about privateon of data by corporations, let alone what the government is doing. a percentage of people on carfax say do not track me -- on firefox say do not track me, has more than doubled. one of the problems is people do not understand fully the implications of this. the need for combo kit it communications, that may not affect you, what will affect

your government if we do not have protection of confidential communications. one of the things raised earlier about the church commission, one of the things that is in unfortunate is we have not had anybody willing to take up the cudgel, we need to let people know what is going on. we only know bits and pieces, and is never going to come out unless someone in authority says we have a commission like that, that we need to come clean in ways that are not going to cange our security so we assess this. no one is calling for that right now. >> i am going to have to call time, but one question, it says one thing that happens after snowden, and what would it be? can it have the advantage of studying it --

orinternational norm agreement that safeguards internet freedom, number one. follow that with an international norm, a convention and defines privacy rights empowers people to control what they want to control. >> were great stories to cover. [laughter] i was worried they were going to say world peace, and i said -- an international agreement that journalists will not be prosecuted. [applause] >> and world peace. [applause] it was such a great discussion. can i think all -- can i thank all of the panelists? [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we are going live to the

heritage foundation for discussion on the prospects for democracy in venezuela. a former u.s. ambassador discusses current antigovernment protests there and the recent arrest of an opposition leader. this will begin in just a moment.

>> good afternoon. welcome to that harris -- heritage foundation. we welcome you in joining us on all of these occasions on our website and those viewing us today on c-span. we asked everyone to make the

check that your cell phone has been turned off. that courtesy is always appreciated. we will post the program on the heritage home page. hosting and discussion today is anna quintana. she earned her bachelors of arts degree in political science at --international university at florida international university. upon graduation she studied in brazil on the scholarship sponsored by the defense intelligence agency. she later completed a masters of floridaree at international school of international and public affairs. prior to joining us, she worked at the department of defense as a student trainee for 2013. she has interned with international relief and development, working on latin america rule of law issues.

welcomingn me in anna. [applause] you, john, and thank you for turning us today for this discussion on venezuela. i would like to thank the pellets for preparing remarks -- the panelists were preparing remarks. for the couple weeks venezuela in been mired interest -- protests. the government has responded by cracking down against demonstrators. so far six people have been killed and hundreds have been tortured. the videos coming out of offenders we left show apocalyptic footage of the national guard, police, and government-sponsored motorcycle

gangs. automatic weapons, grenades, and tanks, the government is using these to silence opposition. for the past 16 years venezuela has been in a downward spiral. society has been polarized and the economy has been decimated. contradictions that exist in venezuela do not exist anywhere else. while the country has the world's largest proven oil reserves, it has the largest debt in latin america. freedom, of economic venezuela has the third highest homicide rate in the world. muchcent months under euro, the situation has become more acute. we now have unprecedented levels of scarcity and a yearly

inflation rate topping 56%. you are more likely to be kidnapped and in iraq and libya. war zones in other countries are safer than venezuela. venezuela is ready to explode at any moment. panelists are experts, having served in the government and continue to be champions of freedom in the americas. of -- andsident president of the center for freedom and democracy. -- please join me in welcoming mark. [applause] thanks to heritage and to all of you for being here and heritage for hosting this

meeting. the marches that began a few weeks ago have gained in numbers and strength over the most recent days. the government has responded violently and aggressively, leaving at least 10 dead, 300 wounded, 100 imprisoned, and over 50 students unaccounted for. in this way left a long time ago went astray of the democratic path, and this is the crux of the issue. we have seen the use of tremendous oil resources of the state to extend monthly handouts and gifts to buy votes, but the use of all the instruments of the state crushed and suppress legality and democratic principles, attacking the spirit of democracy. employing aggressive and , to crushlanguage

its adversaries. all the while using resources of a fossilized economy, that is no longer a living organism that attracts investments, no longer generates productive employment for its people, that no longer invests in educating a population to be productive, but instead an economy that relies solely on the liquid products of the fossils that god placed in venezuela. requires andsystem demands freedom of assembly, expression, participation in the political system, and a peaceful protests. freedom of access to information and a free media, freedom from state intervention, division of powers, alternation of power so power is not used as an interest -- instrument to use to stay in power. it is characterized by respect,

tolerance of differences, by a tolerance and the plurality of use, and by calm and reasoned language and by a climate of peaceful disagreement in which no one claims to possess the whole truth, but each works together with those whom one disagrees to find that truth. this distinction is not tangential to understanding the subject of to date's meeting -- of to date's meeting -- of tod ay's meeting. that is because the two sides of the struggle currently being waged in the streets represent future.s for the one, a path of demagoguery, authoritarianism, which leaves destroyed nations, and the other the path of freedom, respect for the role of law, of progress, and of modernity and a climate of peace. increasingly, the venezuelan people are not being full by the

siren song of a career in -- of a caribbean version of populism. as lincoln said, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot for all of the people all the time. what we are seeing is the strengthening of a movement that is not full to reflect long-standing democratic and liberal spirit of venezuela. and today we are lucky to have a panel of experts who also have not been fooled and who have agreed to share with us some of their insights into what is taking place and have agreed to answer questions from the audience. we are going to invite them to come to the podium and speak for up to 15 minutes, starting with ambassador otto reich. reich is the present of a consulting firm.

he served as assistant secretary of state for western and his fear affairs under george w. bush and later went on to serve as a special envoy. in the 1980's he received three appointments from reagan including assistant administrator for usaid, and u.s. ambassador to venezuela. ambassador reich? [applause] >> thank you very much to heritage for the invitation, and all of you for showing up on a rainy day. fromnot going to take time my colleagues who are venezuelan and know more about the issue than i do.

i will give you my perspective about what is happening today, try to address three things. what is happening in venezuela today? what is the nature of government, which explains what is happening or why is it happening? and what are the implications for u.s. policy or what should we do? first, what is happening is a tragedy, human tragedy. it is the strangulation, the killing of a young democracy in our neighborhood with most of to say,hbors ashamed greening their hands, watching while the democracy of venezuela is being killed about watching from behind their lines or some would say blindly watching. this is not an even fight. some governments in the hemisphere who friendly favor

the dictatorship have already said this. this is not to groups of people fighting for power. this is a brutal government that is a cheap power -- that achieved power by deception, trickery, was once elected, as we have seen governments all over the world once having been elected, ukraine being one of them, for example, whose situation is very similar to what is happening today on a larger scale in europe and therefore getting more attention as it deserves, but so does venezuela deserve the attention. all thernment is using force at its disposal to eliminate peaceful dissent. so far there have been not a single incident where the government can accuse the opposition of using any weapon of any kind. the government is using uniform services, using police.

there are hundreds of videos now on the internet, on youtube that clearly show the human rights abuses being committed by the uniformed services and by , theyzed groups of thugs have all kinds of names, that motorcycles so they can run over people or beat them up or shoot them, and the police come, finish beating them up, and in many cases leave them to die. that is the government of venezuela. i will talk more about the nature of the government. aided,ernment is being but in many cases the repression is being directed by cuban force. 15 years since the cubans began arriving in force. they run over kerry intelligence. civil intelligence. 50,000stimated over

cubans in venezuela, teachers, doctors, many of them are the private security, the security for the president of venezuela and the current president, they run the internal security apparatus, and they run it like they do in cuba. no dissent. at the first sign of dissent, you cut off the head. that is way that astro has stayed in power 55 years and if met euro is allowed to do so, if maduro is allowed to do so, that is what will happen. unprecedented corruption in a country where corruption was a way of life, but with a corrupt -- flaunt their wealth. after 15 years of eliminating all political freedoms, speech, press, assembly, enterprise them and with very little attention

and fewer complaints from the rest of the world, the venezuelan people got tired of it and they have gone out into the streets to protest in the only way they can. what is happening is a popular insurrection, not unlike that in kiev, but on a smaller scale. smaller does not mean small human scale. the people who are dead in venezuela are just as dead as the ones in kiev. we tend to port more attention on our european scenarios because americans tend to be european oriented. that is historical and cultural. venezuela -- and you ukraine is a should you country and is a weapon to putin's strategy of building a soviet empire under a russian flag. an israeli is also a strategic country. in the last 15 years since the

arrival of chavez and the turning over, the gift of the venezuelan national treasure to cuba, you have seen countries like ecuador, bolivia, nicaragua and others join a cuban-venezuelan orchestrated, designed alliance that is basically anti-americanism. venezuelan money has been discovered and exposed in practically every country in the chemistry -- in the hemisphere in elections. insome cases successfully, some cases unsuccessfully. we are about to see another communist being elected in el salvador, because the marxist guerrillas that omitted all kinds of atrocities in the 1970's and 1980's have changed their face and they pretend to be democrats, but they are

getting money from venezuela and outspending the democratic opposition by as much as 20 to 1. that is a lot of money. and the importance of the it inelan oil, most of cuba. in the last 15 years venezuela has given cuba about the same absolute amount of money, not relative, an absolute terms as the soviet union gave to cuba, about $5 billion a year. some experts estimate a lot more than that because a lot of it is hidden subsidies and hidden cuba.from venezuela and that has provided life-support to a government of a cuban government, that was bracingly brain dead. cuba is returning the favor by directing this repression in venezuela and making sure the

venezuelan government stays in power. thes going to talk about nature of the government of venezuela. who is the government? this is part of the implications of u.s. policy. we tend to treat the state asartment all governments equal. at least they start out that way. they start out giving permits the benefit of the doubt. the venezuelan government is about as normal as a government in its own way as north korea or syria or others. differences in scale. the venezuelan government is not normal any more than dealing with and trying to deal with the beezuelan government would as erroneous as trying to deal with and organized crime enterprise, a rico enterprise, and organized crime state by diplomatic means.

the venezuelan government and many others in the region and others around the world, including russia to some degree, there are a lot of governments whose purpose it is not to raise the standards of living of the people, provide more safety and security and economic opportunity, but to stay in power for the sake of power and to make the people in power the military, make them as rich as possible, as wealthy as possible. maduro and chavez before him and all the people around the various power centers in venezuela today, there -- they are billionaires, people who were a lieutenant in the venezuelan army not too long ago. one was just found in west palm each, florida, a guy who was a lieutenant, who helped launch in 1992,with chavez

estimated to be worth over $1.5 billion, had bought a multimillion dollar mansion, airplanes, yachts, living very comfortably because this is a country ruled by law. so we have safety and security and transparency, and that is what he wanted. fortunately, he was found out, we canceled the visa, he left. there are a lot of voters. there are hundreds of venezuelans with ill-gotten money living in the united states today, spending their money, and joined her safety and security, our rule of law. i will get to that area quickly from what we can do about it. an illustration of what i mean by the venezuelan government is an organized crime organization. the u.s. treasury department, which is very slow in prodding

hastopical and careful, designated several top venezuelan ministers and generals as rugged kingpins. a drug kingpin is just not somebody who sells drugs on the corner. he's our people -- these are people who do not just tolerate her critics trafficking. they have been found to be directing and benefiting from our kardex traffic -- from narcotics trafficking. the equivalent ranks of some of those ministers and generals from the venezuelan government drughad been designated caimans are secretary of defense, head of national intelligence, head of military intelligence, defense secretaryce agencies, of homeland security, for example, equivalent, the lee terry chiefs, like the chairman

of the joint chiefs of staff. that is the venezuelan government. it does not make sense for the united states to deal dramatically with a country like that. the person we need to put in charge of our diplomacy is a bit like rudy giuliani, and no joking, because they are a mafia and have to be dealt with as a mafia. what do we do? how can you do with it? in the specific case of venezuela, colombia will say we cannot impose sanctions. it is interesting, the eu has just decided to impose sanctions on the ukrainian government. if it is good enough for the e.u., i do not understand why it is not good enough for venezuela. all you have to do is make a list of the people we know and i know we know -- i have been inside the government -- we know

the hundreds of venezuelans are who have benefited from this hypoxia and massive corruption hypocrisy and massive corruption and who are ordering these tortures and delivering venezuela into the hands of a hostile government, cuba, the those people and deny their visas to the united states. a lot of americans do not understand how important it is to the bad guys in latin america the privilege of coming to the united states. every friday -- i have an office in miami -- a venezuelan to me what we have to do every friday, go to the airport, the miami international, you will see all the venezuelan planes coming in with the families, and in some cases the very ministers and others for the weekend to spend their hundreds of millions of dollars that they have gotten

illegally in their own country. they have looted their own country, and they are coming here to spend it because we have allowed them to have visas in the united states. many of us would not allow the head of the local government into our living room. that is what we are doing. if we do not want to impose economic sanctions, just identify the kingpins antiquated pieces. let me just stop there. [applause] thanks very much. i hope that we will have some time at the end to explore some of the interesting topics that you raised so eloquently, including a parallel with what is taking place today in ukraine, where the eyes of the world are focused on that situation and reminding us of the value of a life lost there

is equivalent to the value of venezuela.in next we have with us the president of the center for democracy and development in the americas. he is also the representative of the democratic unity around congressman inr venezuela. and thankou, marc, you to the heritage foundation and everybody for taking the time, and i am honored to be in a panel with a friend otto reich, a man we know very well who was a good ambassador, and who probably got me involved in politics at some point in my life. i am going to give you six numbers for you to take on your notes.

57%, that is the rate of annual inflation in venezuela, the highest in the americas. 27,000, that is the number of people who are killed in homicides in the cities and towns of it is way less every year. the index measuring the shortages of basic foods that are part of what we call the basic goods and services that the venezuelans need every time they go to the supermarket or groceries. that means that a venezuelan has to make 3, 4, or five rounds to find 100% of what they need to make ends meet. i am talking about sugar, salt, i am talking about oil or

or a protein, fish, chicken, or beef. accumulated rate of evaluation -- dev aluation over the past 15 years in venezuela. ation,the last devalu 2014, when the cover and decided to narrow the number of products that are eligible to be imported through the official control of the exchange rate and movement to what they call another second accessich is due to get to it through a bidding process every day in the market, which

is almost $12. in a month, this went up from six to 12. 100%. , and about those numbers ask yourself, how in the world do you expect that students, dads,olds, women, moms, anybody could at any point in every hour we are sitting in on tooom he tempted to go the streets and say something about what is going on? now, i'm going to give you another number -- 100. girl is the average -- per barrel is the average price of oil over the past few years, in the international markets. it is the first time in venezuelan history that an oil

bonanza is not associated with high growth, low inflation, and progress. nobody a question that in the government of venezuela has been able to respond. venezuela havef not been able to find answers to the government. they are doing everything they no otherically, like people in the continent or the world by going on and on to elections, by participating kbyte day in -- participating kbyte they in forms of dissent. that is the contexts, my dear have got towhich we see what is going on in venezuela today. then we have to -- i am going to give you five events that you need to make note of the

understand exactly where we are standing right now. april 14. 2013,14, generate 23, sister, and the third, i am sorry, is 12 of february this year. which14 was the day in facedcked nicolas maduro the other candidate in a special national residential election. thatther candidate won election. the government claims they won that election by a one percent margin. placesn happen in many in the world, in many democracies in the world. the other candidate has shown, has given testimony on that particular event of the very alecific and institution

nature of the venezuelan opposition. he withheld the people from anything that could drive the country into violence, much of the grant of us several in venezuela who did that. he exercised and used all the political capital and individual can have to say we are going to refrain from inner rating -- from generating any event the government could use to fire this country into violence. and we are going to use the totitutional channels protest the selection, and you guys are going to follow me, and we did not. we did that peacefully for the last few months. took theire -- complaint to the authorities in venezuela, which without a look admitted,aperwork, it dismissed the claims come

opening the international opportunity of challenge in the election on another level, which the candidate did. we brought the case to the commission of human rights and we took the case to the united nations. so here is the face of an opposition, that picture of an opposition that wins an election and yet decides with a government that has been described in this context by otto reich that has to go through the numbers i am giving you. this is the nature of a able and leadership that says we have yet to do this specifically. you cannot be more -- what will --the tuerm

what do we have to do is show some in the americas who own their own democracies today to the efforts of the venezuelan democrats of the 1960 hot and 1970's and to look and say we a decent, peaceful, democratic group of individuals trying to make the best of their country without resorting to violence and opening the door to every form of dialogue? went through, we an election in which we had our gains and losses. the popular vote indicates some numbers, but the number of majors that the opposition has increased from 65 to 90, including capitals of the country.

it was not a loss for us. ajorships, yet m the government was deaf about that until they realized they had to enter into a dollop with the opposition, and we -- into a file lock with the opposition. and we went. capriles himself. why did he go to speak with nicolas maduro? he went because in those days one of the loved actresses of the venezuelan people was killed in a terrible crime. the same woman that has are life based in the international media. her husband is a reddish person. they have a five-year-old daughter. they are both living outside that is where the, if they decided they would take their little girl to know her roots and travel around venezuela, see

the beauty of this. a british man and a venezuelan that has economist everything say i want to take my daughter to spend these days of december, knowing their customs, knowing their land, going back to her roots. she and that that could be back again to the land of her daughter. she was killed. she gets killed. the country goes in indignation s said we need to speak about security in this country. yet maduro accepted to speak about security without any specifics in policy so to speak. he went to talk with him. this is the nature of the leadership that venezuela has in front of the opposition. january 23, about the day we celebrate our democracy. days, the caribbean

an were being played in israeli. the caribbean series is for us major leagues, and we played baseball that way. to see the major league rosters to see how many venezuelans play. we are the best. also very good. my friends from cuba also know that. that was a rivalry. anyone that has decided to eries, i would love to see venezuela lay the cubans. i love baseball. so this happens and a few students go to the event where the cubans are going to play and they go on and express their

discontent for having cuban -- inside venezuela in the nature the characteristics that also has described. to that dissent some of them go get arrested. what happens is the solitary of the students in cities comes forward and say, they put on our guys in prison out there and margarita. why did they do that? we want them free. they start to go out into this treats saying free them, make changes in the country. we are not tolerating the homicides, the economy, we do not have jobs, and here we are. february 12, the students go back to the streets come a they go peacefully out, and they get brutally repressed. where is the violence coming from?

after i just sent this? the violence is coming from fundamentally what it is known -- and the as the repression is coming from the official forces of the government. tivosiolence of the collec happens inside the perimeters of security that the national police and the national guard create when they are safeguarding the area where manifestations are taking place. think about this. out, armedin and with motorcycles, in the parent or desperate matter of security where nobody is stopping them when they come in or coming out, and they kill people, they hit people, they shook buildings, they come inside buildings. we will see images of that some

point in the conference. who are the collectivos? they are armed and sponsored troops to defend the revolution and to do an organized -- and organize the revolutionaries of the shanty towns in caracas around the political propositions of the government. they are armed, and they are in the words of resident maduro, while these events we will see later on tape were taking place in the videos, incorrectness, these armed and trained individuals harassing, killing, or intimidating people in the city. while they were doing this, in a mandatory national broadcasts, which we defined as -- in venezuela, president mike turow said he would not tolerate -- president mud turow said he would not tolerate the stigma that against the collectivos

because they were hard-working, revolutionary people. another element you have to think when you listen about the cubantivos, these are trained groups. this is where the cubans operate in this area. a terriblee part of situation we have in venezuela, which is a revolving door between the judicial prisons, and the society, that the president in venezuela are controlled by a group that called them -- they do not allow the effect she -- the official government come into prisons. they are there century. they dictate who comes and who will not come into a prison.

there is an interesting thing. after the killing of monica spears and her husband, the government rapidly and immediately before the official got there out the criminals, and these people were not allowed to go into a particular prison because -- is there, said those were not the guys who killed her, that they know who did. they could not put them in that prison. who rules the prisons? even if a person is tried in the courts, he will him out and do another crime and they tell me and they come out and they come in and they come out. so we are talking about an operation, a sophisticated operation of organized crime. i am going to share documents with this audience today of the rights we have in human

violations, id numbers, and so you can share and advocate with every activist, organization you know. these are names, family members, sons and brothers of venezuelans that you are going to see you there, that are subject to try all him and there are some cases of torture there as well. ez, and now leopoldo lop you'll have a document i will distribute with all the violations of the process that chargesce during his and arrests and events surrounding his surrender to the authorities, a significant number of you process issues that you are going to see. and i am going to mention in the ast few minutes the cases of media watch out we have in

venezuela. the government has a strategy to buy out the media. nock decided not to k anybody else down, like they did with -- they set to buy out the media, and they are buying media, using friends of the government to buy out the media. now, the international media plays a role. out of then taken cable system in venezuela and there has been a rebellion of the staff of these co-opted media, who are telling what they are seeing. they're disrespecting the editorial line of their new owners to say what they see because they cannot resist any more to talk about the violations, particularly human rights violations. what are the moods in venezuela?

the mood has issued a statement we are sharing today with you, two statements, one with regard regard to whatn we believe needs to happen in the country. we're talking about a refocusing of the protests. we are going to continue to mobilize the venezuelan people in an organized way. we do not want to have a conflict, we do not want to a communications between the majority of venezuelan people and the protests. we have monitored every protests. in 2013 we had 5000 protests in venezuela, of which more than by movements.ized we do not want to push them out of our coalition. we want to bring them in. so we want to keep our

communication, our methods focused on the issues. and we are approaching the international community in inerent fronts, promoting -- different fronts, promoting in ideas the constitution, the institution of the commission of agroup that we defined as group of friends of venezuela, that could come in, including urch, and trychi significantn a number of conditions that we think are necessary to reestablish the rule of law and groundxie and play under which we can resolve the situation the next two years. we are doing this with every - disposition to keep it peaceful, and we are doing this with every commitment to the institutional

have both in the international community and inside of venezuela. toare not asking any country any unilateral action or any sanctions. we are asking every country of the organization of american states to take a leadership position and influence with it the oas to make it possible that the democratic charges are applied in some way, in some fashion in the case of venezuela, which could be through a group of friends of venezuela, including influential former presidents that are -- they could be anyone. if they want to choose three former latin american presidents who are friends of maduro, we welcome that cap, as long as democrats, as long as always they are committed to democracy. this is where we are standing, and i would be open to your

questions if you want to understand more about our strategy, where we are going, and what we are thinking that could happen over the next few days and months in venezuela. thank you very much. >> thank you leopoldo. fieldl have a chance to some of your questions, but i would like to ask our next speaker who traveled here from miami to be honest panel and we could limit your remarks to 10 minutes, and then we will allow more time for questions and answers, because one of our panelists will have to leave for the event ends. the next guest is in the commerce business executive -- accomplishedst -- business leader.

she is currently the director for a consulting group. >> thank you. i must say i am honored by the heritage foundation to discuss what is going on in venezuela, in the company of such distinguished fellows, otto others -- also [indiscernible] i would beg your indulgence before i start discussing this confess iause i must am deeply affected by what is going on in venezuela, because over the last 24 hours, members of my family have been assaulted by the government forces. notices ofi get new people in my family.

i have tried to be as impartial as possible, but what i am seeing is they are going after civic leaders and student leaders. byezuela was described distinguished novelist as a wide andhat was unclaimed. tears isee today with venezuela not possessed by citizens, who now because it is rolled by a foreign colonial power, they are draining away resources and lifeblood with total disregard for its software and t s its sovereignty. this happened after a time for

the late 1980's to the late 1990's, a political tsunami that has cut short all the efforts for reform and renewal and created conditions for a to tell a terry regime. -- to tell a terry and regime. chavez converted a people whoe into were dispossessed. ban is decimating its political leaders. it is using the student's to justify the imposition of autocracy of the cuban model with military techniques that used by thef the -- argentinian army in that

dreadful period of their history. there is another thing that characterizes venezuela as being ruled by khalil power. the economy is in decline, with the foreseeable collapse in the near term. dura -- hasfore ma effectively been destroyed, and the governor of venezuela seized total control -- argentina at least is now [indiscernible] and adjustments are necessary. what president maduro with singular lack of insight is butng no judgment at all, coming down on his populism. [indiscernible]

other democracies in latin america to create even a more horrendous system of control that goes beyond venezuela's borders. investment in venezuela has come to zero. war production in december was declining steadily from when president chavez came into power. 1/3 is for domestic consumption. when much of the rest goes to pay china for loans the governor of venezuela has spent already. at some point the governor of the israeli -- of venezuela will run out of money and go into economic collapse. costeconomic collapse will

pollutant that causes political dissent, and this is what they are paying for. tobrutal repression in order be able to continue their role. in the meantime the israeli -- the venezuela financial support is critical to cuba. -- ine 15% of the cuban comes from venezuela. continue to hold ond nail to the government of venezuela. there are supposed to be $21 billion in operative in nonoperative resale. or $14 billion are in cuba. oversight.cise close the