today. , thell of the difficulties world has made progress in africa is making progress. it is growing. and there are fewer conflicts. there is less war. and there is more opportunity. and there is greater democracy. observancere greater of human rights. sometimes can you be slow and frustrating and sometimes, you take two steps forward and one back. but the great thing about being young is you are not bound by the past. and you can shape the future. and work you work hard confident inremain not possibilities and are

deterred when you suffer a setback and you get back up and dust yourself off and go back at it, i have no doubt you will leave behind for the next generation and the generation after that of africa that is strong and vibrant and .rosperous i cannot wait to see what all of you do. good luck. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> prime minister questions return on wednesday, september 3. you can watch it live on c-span two and to catch up on prime -- past prime minister's questions watch anytime online at www.c-span.org. >> a conversation with former missouri congressman and 11:00

p.m., "q&a." then another chance to see president obama's meeting with the young african leaders. >> while congress is on august break, c-span prime time programming will feature a range of political views and topics. the national association of latino elected officials, western conservative summit. we'll have a live update on 2014 senate races. c-span prime time monday through friday 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> a conversation with former missouri congressman about his new book firing back. this"washington journal," is almost 40 minutes. by toddjoined now

akin. the author of "firing back." much of your book is about sunday, august 19, 2012. what happened on that day? guest: that is just the first chapter. the interview was cut on a friday afternoon. i could tell by looking back at the tape, i was a bit tired. i did not see anything that seemed to outstandingly that people would jump on. the talkshow host was a very liberal guy. and atest sunday morning guy that had been following me during the whole campaign picked up on the word "legitimate rape."

sunday morning, everything was fine. , my assistanting campaign manager called me and defcon 1.on one -- within a couple of days, i've gone from the respectable congressmen to somebody that was considered some sort of world pariah. that was for missed using some words. i should have specified rape. i was trying to separate the idea of statutory rape from a rape that causes stress. stress affects pregnancy, which preface to get you to the gotcha question. host: these words caused a social explosion. let's play a clip from that interview. [video clip] >> if an abortion could be

considered in the case of pregnancy, what about the case of rape? people always want to try to make that one of the things, how do you slice this particularly top ethical -- tough ethical question? , the's a legitimate rape female body has ways to shut that whole thing down. i think there should be some punishment on the rapist and not attacking child. the point is this -- he is asking a very hard question. what happens if a woman is raped? child that is conceived in rape have the same right to life as a child conceived in love? that is the question.

if abortion is wrong, it is wrong. the person punished should be the rapist and not the child. of a woman becoming pregnant from rape are somewhat reduced because of stress. people argue about that. i give you some common sense. you know families who got married and could not have kids. they adopt a kid. then the woman gets pregnant and has a child. that'sf people say because the woman was feeling stress and when they were relieved, they were able to have children. competitives really in the triathlons -- she's a beautiful gal. she drives her body very hard to the point that she is almost sterile, according to her husband, because her body is under stress all the time.

that was my case. does the child conceived in rape have the same right to life as a child who is conceived in love? my case was yes. host: part of your book is firing back at the media elite. a quote from your book. same pundits who criticize the lack of clarity and substance in political campaigns are the ones to attack people like me who have tried it to add both. to add both." guest: one of the interesting contrasts on this -- we believe in free speech. somebody gets on a program

it choose his words poorly, is still just speaking. jump forward two weeks later, ill clinton as the keynote speaker at the democratic national convention. you have a guy who has a series of accounts of sexual impropriety and he is getting applause. there is a difference between saying some words and actually abusing a woman. seems like the democrats are the ones with the war on women. hillary clinton defended a rapist of a 12-year-old girl.

that's ok for a lawyer. she demeaned the testimony of the 12-year-old girl who is looking for justice. hook.t the rapist off the 10 years afterwards, she is talking about it on a media interview and she is laughing about it. to me, that is the democrats war on women. i don't think the national media is very balanced. goes to the point of keeping the public intentionally ignorant of some of the things that are done and said by people on the liberal side. todd akin here to take your questions and comments. going through your life and involvement in politics. republicans can call (202) 585-3881. democrats, (202) 585-3880.

.ndependents, (202) 585-3882 outside the u.s., (202) 585-3832 . we start in texas on our line for independents. rachel, good morning. if my 12-year-old , and ir was to get raped was to take her to the emergency, they could not give her the morning after pill so she would have to go through her after having been raped -- it is up to you to make the laws. that has been brutally raped goes through it every day of her life. these guys spend two years in prison and get out. it is up to you to make the laws

to wear that does not happen. i agree with that and i do not think killing a child will take a horrible memory out of the woman who is raped. i think those memories are there. >> bill is from corpus christi.

good morning, sir. >> i listened to you when you made your statement about women and i've listened to your explanation and quite frankly, you used doctors to your advantage in your first statement and now you're using doctors again by saying, oh, i'm not one. you got in trouble because of your ignorance. you are expected to know more and better than others and you don't. host: john, that's a -- the question of rape. the item of stress, there have been at least six new studies that have come out that say stress does play a part in pregnancy. to me, it's very much of a passing point.

not something that i want to die over particularly. and i do know so many people that i've heard that story about that they adopted a child and suddenly they could get pregnant and i think that's a matter of debate between obgyns and medical doctors as to what is the affect of stress on pregnancy. but i acknowledge that people can still get pregnant when being raped. it was reported in the media that i said people couldn't get pregnant if raped but i said the exact opposite. host: what was the purpose of this book? >> i'm trying to bring forward truth. i believe there's a difference between good ideas and bad ideas. it's sort of the

war between good and evil. i never thought of the people i served with as good and evil, but the ideas were. so this book is to try to bring light and clarity to a number of different situations. one of them is like carl rove and others say no conservative can get elected to the u.s. senate. just look at todd akin. the truth is i was a reagan conservative for 12 years in the state house and also in congress. never pretended to be anything but a reagan conservative. so i'm an example that, yeah, you can get elected. second of all where they took that is -- and this is why

firing back is relevant -- and that is you go to a place like mississippi and the senate leadership in mississippi is putting money into the senate primary race in order to pick the candidate they want. that's not a good idea. you should not use republican money against republicans. second, you're a republican in mississippi and you're not backing a guy that the establishment wants, you're going to be irritated and not want to work for the party because the big guys in washington have jumped in and said we don't want primary elections. we want selections and we're smart enough to know who you should elect. it's insulting to the grassroots so i stand against that. >> you mentioned carl rove and comments he made. among those

conservatives, there are republicans who have called for you to step away. who is most surprising to you? >> first the liberal media jumped on this thing, blew it out of proportion to the point that they were saying i said things i clearly didn't say. and it's a method of taking something someone says and misunderstanding it and misinterpreting it and creating a sense of everyone being mad and angry about it. so what's what happens. republicans were afraid of that situation and the establishment didn't just abandon me in the battle field, they came and tried to destroy us. and that's all in firing back. that's what they did. i'm just putting the truth on the table for people. you can read it. but here's what happened, conservatives all over the country, those people came

to our defense. essentially we were fighting a war on two fronts, the republicans and democrats were against us and the conservatives were for us. and basically, there were comments by senator mc-caine saying we don't want him. that was a really powerful ad that the democrats used. host: todd akin here to answer your questions and take your comments. let's go to derrick waiting in pensacola, florida. >> we're not idiots. we

understand exactly what you said. no matter how many times you resay it or try to say it, we understand exactly what you said. now, what you said -- and you continue to say that a woman can choose to get pregnant or not if she's raped. you know, this is something that i don't understand why you continue to say this. and republicans don't want you and the reason you're not re-elected is because you're an idiot. >> i never said that women could choose to be pregnant or not. i never said that. that's when i was talking about my comments beings just taken to absurd i did ty. i've never said that or implayed that. it's not true. i'm interested in truth. host: scott is waiting from california. good morning, scott. >> hello. host: scott, you with us?

>> yes. go ahead, scott. >> i think it's great that someone has the courage to stand up for something. your comments are correct fundmently. host: scott, thank you for that. and, you know, one of the things i try to do in the book firing back and you might be surprised in the conclusion, john, you think it's going to be political because i was a congressman for 12 years. but my conclusion is really to all of america. what i'm trying to talk to is the people who feel like they're not very big or not very important and they can't do

anything but they have this terrible sense their country is on the wrong track. and i'm trying to encourage those people that you don't have to even be involved in politics to make a big difference in america. there's all sorts of things you can do with your lives by just following the dream you have in your heart, doing it the best you can, standing for what's true, right, and beautiful. and when we do that as a group of people, the whole nation gets better. and it's not just political things but it's what you do with your family, your kids, your wife, what you do relative to your faith, church, place of worship. all of those things come together to make this country. that's what i want to talk about in the conclusion. so maybe you're not really interested in politics but you care about your country, this book is written for you. host: would you talk about those issues from an elected office one day? >> that's quite possible. i've just gone along and did what i

felt god wanted me to do. it always seemed logical to run for political office because i was interest and studied a lot about the founding of america. america is off track a lot today from where they started at the beginning. i would argue that america was started on the right track and that's why we have been blessed as much as we have, john. host: jennifer waiting from silver spring. go republicans fiscal conservetism. i don't

understand how they come down on women telling them what to do with their body, how to function, and telling people how to live their life. if god gave us the right to make choices, who is another man to tell me that i can't make a right choice for me and my family. guest: jennifer, that's an interesting question. you say laws tell people what's right and wrong. somebody put a stop sign up near your house and it's wrong to not stop your car at the stop sign. that's the nature of laws. so on what basis do we make laws? in general, we have a law that says you're not supposeded to kill people. so if we're not supposed to kill people, let me ask you this: first of all, is it ever right to take the life intentionally of an innocent person? we say, no, we're not allowed to do that in america. god gave us the right to be

alive. when a woman is in pregnant, what's inside of her? my wife has had six c-sections. so if it's a person inside then doesn't it make sense that those lives should be protected. it's not that we're trying to project somebody's will on a woman's body. it's respecting human life. and i could add the second part, the economic side of the question, the bible says you're not supposed to steal and when government takes money from one person and gives it to another, that's a form of stealing. host: mavis, good morning. >> good morning. i would like to say to the congressman, we have a right to decide for ourselves. and the mother being

young or not in the position of taking care of that child and they don't want to feed it and help it medically, i mean, you say bring the child into the world but you offer no help. and as a man, you don't tell me as a woman what i can and cannot do with my body. it's my body. you be concerned about your house and i'll be concerned about mine. guest: well, that's the same about the previous caller. what is it that is inside a pregnant woman? is it a child? if it's a child, then i would say the child has the same right to life as anybody else in our society. and that's the question. so is it the right for a woman to control her own body? of course. but does that right extend to taking the life of an innocent child, i say no, it

doesn't. that's what makes me pro life. so also what the caller said is categorically not true. i know in st. louis where a woman with an unwanted pregnancy is taken in area taken care of and nurtured so she can have her child. host: we have about 15 minutes left with former congressman todd akin from missouri taking your calls and questions this morning. let's go to dave waiting in washington d.c. on our line for democrats. dave, good morning. >> good morning. how are you, mr. akin? guest: i'm great. >> i'm an internist here in d.c. and this is a topic that you

really should strongly consider letting go of. i'm sure you have expertise, work that you did before you were in office and work that you're doing now. you're not helping yourself. there are hundreds of variables that go into whether or not a child is going to be born healthy and alive, development, birth weight, strength, gestation, physical environment, fetal growth, abnormal kerotytes. i know you have five studies, but you can find five studies on anything. it has been entirely disproven that there is any relationship between rape and whether or not a child will or will not be

born. host: mr. akin, you can respond. guest: the doctor certainly knows more about the subject than i do. and as i said, i'm familiar with a number of different studies and people that say they think that stress is a factor. okay. if it is or not, i'm not living or dying on that point. it is my understanding that stress does affect it. but there's people going both ways on that and i don't think it changes the overall question a bit. so if dave is right saying stress has no factor in that, that's fine. i'm not an expert on the subject. host: in 2012, you released an ad apologizing for the rape comment. your wife told you not

to apologize for it. and you say you agree with her. >> right. the media took it out of proportion and said i said things i didn't say. for example, they said you think if people are raped, they can't get pregnant. i didn't say that. i had people on my campaign who were children of rape. we didn't have money to explain the comments so we felt the best things to do was some people had been misinformed about what i said and to apologize for anybody who was upset about what they had heard. but it wasn't what i had said. so that was just a decision whether or not to run that ad and we felt that was the right thing to do in the campaign. the trouble with doing that is it's also saying that in some way what you said is wrong and the only thing i know of is people question whether stress has an effect on

pregnancy and that goes back and forth. so the question is do you run the ad or not, and all of our folks except for my wife said, yeah, you probably need to do the apology. on the other hand, it makes it look like you're guilty when in fact all i was trying to say was essentially i think the life of a child has a right to life. that was it. host: let's go to our line for republicans. doug is waiting. doug, good morning. >> good morning. i'd like to say hi to mr. akin. guest: how you doing? >> hanging in there. i'm a veteran, i'm disabled and i'm curious in what type of republican i am nowadays because i grew up shaking nixon's hand, i even knew president bush, jr.,

in the air force. shook his hand. and i always consider myself an eisenhower republican. he was for unions. eisenhower was for a lot of things. he felt that our government with everything we're handling now as big as we are we need to have -- not one person can handle this. anyway, my point is i'm for abortions, i don't think they should be taken lightly or done easily and i believe the husband if the woman is married should be notified that she had one. guest: i appreciate your being a veteran. i am an army veteran. i have three sons in the marine corps. i don't know

how to explain that. so i think what i heard you saying is you're a moderate republican. i tend to be more like ronald reagan. if you look a look at the budget of what's happening in this city and how we're spending a trillion dollars a year on a $3.5 trillion budget, we have more than we can afford. host: we'll go to nell waiting on the line from georgia.

>> good morning. guest: hi, how are you? >> i'm fine. blessed. i'm not hearing you now. guest: go ahead with your question or comment. we can hear you. >> i'm very pro-life, i don't believe in abortion. i believe a baby is a baby before it's born and i don't think we have the right to take that life. and you were earlier talking about the kids coming across the border. we should show compassion, we should take care. and these very liberal i guess that's what they're called, people that use -- they don't want prayer, they don't want god or anything but now suddenly the bible says this or the bible says that and to tell you the truth they're picking and

choosing. and that child that was aborted to me is just as precious as that child coming across the border. host: i'll let you comment. guest: i think just talking to you i heard your heart and the fact that you love people and you love children. and, you know, it's interesting what you're saying is so in line with what our forefathers did when they set this country up. you know, to them it was so obvious. it's not obvious anymore but we hold these truths to be self-evident. that means everybody agrees with this idea that our creator blessed us with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. the reason they listed first is because if you're dead, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn't do you any good. so that's basically a foundation for our country, respect for individuals. and the border

situation is a tough question. we're also a nation of laws and every nation has laws and the question is do you have wide open borders so anybody can come, terrorists, whatever they're bringing with them. that's a question. but this respect for each other is something i get into in the book firing back and this is something i beat up on republicans and democrats about and that is in the political process, what we'll do, we'll target people and say that, you know, joe blow thinks this is -- now, we know it's not true but we're trying to run his character down so people won't vote for him and that's wrong because we're lying about another person. we're bearing false witness against a neighbor. and when we do that, we make the country worse for everybody. and i trieded to in firing back i talked about how we ran our campaign in the senate primary. there were

opponents comparing me to barack obama. barack obama was the most liberal senators in the u.s. senate and i'm one of the most conservative congressmen. that's a stretch. so the point is why do we say things about people that we know are not true and why is that destructive to our lives around us. so why don't we just sell the benefits of what we have and believe in and let the voters decide. host: who are the politicians in the republican party that you think are the people most aligned with who you're talking about in your book here. who would you support in the 2016 primary? guest: let me say that the people that supported us in our race and probably think the way i think, they would be what i call conservatives, tea party type people. and i've had -- i take the republican leadership on some points to task,

particularly in the courage to stand up for what we believe. i don't think we make the country a better country by running away from something we know is wrong or evil. we each need to have the courage to stand to say, wait a minute, i love you but that's a horrible idea. host: shirley is up next from new castle, pennsylvania. good morning. >> good morning. and thank you for c span. mr. akin, i just want to say thank god for people like you who are willing to stand up and say, you know, this is how i feel, this is what the bible says most importantly. god says that we are not, not to do abortions, we're not to shed innocent blood. and, you know, i understand being raped is absolutely, absolutely terrible.

terrible. and the person that commits the crime, i believe should be given the full extent of the law so they don't ever, ever do it again. guest: shirley, i think you're absolutely right and i think that's one of the places where i try to outline in our book, firing back, how can we as just individual citizens, as a congressman, you still feel helpless when you're trying to get the country back on track. i think we all share a certain frustration. i think if we approach things the way shirley is suggestion, we show love for our neighbor, that, that can have a huge impact on our

country. i've given examples in my book. think about winston churchhill's nanny. she was a good christian woman. his parents didn't care about him but this nanny did and he became a guy that brought freedom basically to all of europe. so you can do things that aren't political but have huge political ramifications. host: jerry is on the line for democrats. how are you? guest: i'm fine, thank you. host: why are you still referring to women as gals? guest: gals, i don't remember saying gals. it's an slang term for women. why do you ask? >> because you're supposed to be

an intelligent man and you're still referring to women as gals. guest: well, i don't think that's a reflection to somebody's training or intelligence. what's your point? host: i think we lost the call. we're going to gregg in washington d.c. good morning. >> good morning. i just wanted to make a point and many people have that you might have scientific ignorance but the real issue is rape isn't a scientific question. it's something that can't be defined scientific. it's a social issue and deserves a social definition. so the objection is that you're calling somebody who was raped -- you're ask whether or not someone has been raped in a social context. that's it. guest: gregg, i think you're getting a little finer. i didn't really follow all your

reasoning. my point is i was connecting the idea with stress that with the stress that rape brings. there are rapes that are -- beating a dead horse a little bit, john. the real question is does that life, does the person that's conceived in rape have the same right to life. you know, that's a tough ethical question. i know it. this is a program where it was a got you, i'm going to try to get you to say something and i would have been better to say rape instead of trying to define it more precisely. host: and todd akin talks about it in his book firing back. appreciate you joining us >> the cia and knowledge they

and probably search computers. cia director john brennan apologized to intelligence committee chairman dianne feinstein and other lawmakers. senator feinstein give a floor speech outlining the initiatives. here is some of the speech. director of national intelligence. based on the above, there was a need to preserve and protect the internal panetta review in the committee's own secure spaces. now, the relocation of the internal panetta review was lawful and handled in a manner consistent with its classification. no law prevents the relocation of a document in the committee's possession from a c.i.a. facility to secure committee offices on capitol hill.

as i mentioned before, the document was handled and transported in a manner consistent with its classification, redacted appropriately and it remains secured with restricted access in committee spaces. now, the january 15, 2014 meeting with director john brennan. in late 2013, i requested in writing that the c.i.a. provide a final and complete version of the internal panetta review to the committee, as opposed to the partial document the committee currently possesses. in december, during an open committee hearing, senator mark udall echoed this request. in early january, 2014, the c.i.a. informed the committee it

would not provide the internal panetta review to the committee, citing the deliberative nature of the document. shortly thereafter, on january 15, 2014, c.i.a. director brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and vice chairman chambliss that without prior notification or approval, c.i.a. personnel had conducted a search -- that was john brennan's word -- of the committee computers at the offcite facility. -- offsite facility. this search was not only of documents provided by the committee by the c.i.a. but also a search of the stand-alone and walled-off committee network drive containing the committee's own internal work product and communications. according to brennan, the

computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the internal panetta review. the c.i.a. did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it. instead, the c.i.a. just went and searched the committee's computers. the c.i.a. has still not asked the committee any questions about how the committee acquired the panetta review. in place of asking any questions, the c.i.a.'s unauthorized search of the committee computers was followed by an allegation which we now have seen repeated anonymously in the press, that the committee staff had somehow obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means,

perhaps to include hacking into the c.i.a.'s computer network. as i have described, this is not true. the document was made available to the staff at the offsite facility and it was located using a c.i.a.-provided search tool, running a query of the information provided to the committee pursuant to its investigation. director brennan stated that the c.i.a.'s search had determined that the committee staff had copies of the internal panetta review on the committee staff's shared drive and had accessed them numerous times. he indicated at the meeting that he was going to order further forensic investigation of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee's oversight staff.

two days after the meeting, on january 17, i wrote a letter to director brennan objecting to any further c.i.a. investigation due to the separation of powers constitutional issues that the search raised. i followed this with a second letter on january 23 to the director asking 12 specific questions about the c.i.a.'s actions, questions that the c.i.a. has refused to answer. some of the questions in my letter related to the full scope of the c.i.a.'s search of our computer network. other questions related to who had authorized and conducted the search, and what legal basis the c.i.a. claimed gave it authority to conduct the search. again, the c.i.a. has not provided answers to any of my