everyone to check their cell phones to make sure they are turned off. that is appreciated. our internet customers are invited to send questions any time. >> our program will be posted on the heritage homepage within the day so that you can review for future reference as well. posting our discussion this morning is james care follow. of theice president institute for national security and foreign policies at ease. he is also a richardson fellow. he is a graduate of west point and a 25 year veteran of the army. he has a masters degree from georgetown and a masters degree from the u.s. army war college. at the homeland policy advisory and he is on

boards for the west point center for oral history and the renewed hope foundation. he serves as president of the nonprofit organization esprit de corps, which educates the public about veterans affairs, our main topic today. please join me in welcoming james. >> thank you. so, this is the plan. i am going to turn to each of the speakers and let them introduce themselves because their bios also explain why they are on this panel. they are each going to talk for 10 or 15 minutes or so, and then we're going to open it up for general discussion. and this is my favorite kind of event. i am not selling something. there is no real agenda. this is an exploration of ideas. i think today we earn our moniker of think tank. before we get started, i just

want to take a few minutes about i chose this issue and why i think it is important. at the notion of philanthropy in national do we even think about that? there are a couple of reasons. having been involved in philanthropic pursuits, particularly regarding this area, the very first thing you get from people is doesn't the government pay for that? doesn't the government deal with that? history andong tradition of philanthropy in the united states in military affairs and national security. america in many ways is almost a global high in the air in the notion of private philanthropy as a social good. it is in many ways almost american. this notion of the american people choosing to give back in the way they see fit is part of the american ideology in a sense

and really the birth of this notion. and how philanthropy is related to how people think about traditional government activities is interesting as well. there has been a lot of philanthropy over the centuries. most of it where you might expect, which is an professional military education. if you look at all of the major military academies, a significant portion of their activities are related to philanthropic endeavors. the marine corps university at quantico, which covers everything from enlisted education through officer education up through the marine corps war college and extends not just three quantico itself , a into the fleet as well number of their activities are supported by philanthropic

endeavors. people may get that, that just educationther higher institution, they rely on philanthropy to be cutting-edge and go beyond basic activities. but what i want to discuss today is not just philanthropy in that but to think beyond that to philanthropy more broadly. in part, i think, because it is going to be a quintessential enabler to get to the future. we can all talk about how the military got where it is today. i think regardless of our for a defense policy over the last decades, we are left with the military which has an enormous amount of operational requirements. and has been undercapitalized for a long time and is facing a diversity of threats in the

future, and the numbers do not ask -- numbers do not add up. side of thek either political spectrum argues that you can get from there to here. how do you bridge the gap? i think in part, if you look at the fiscal realities of federal spending today, the notion that the markupg to do military, that's not going to happen. even if we had an administration that had laced a bigger priority on defense recapitalization, it would be difficult for them to figure out how to do that. it's difficult to find money to throw at things. there is a gap there. in part, one way to bridge that could be private, philanthropic

enterprise, and perhaps in areas of,on't traditionally think including research and development, building capabilities and assets the military professionals use. something we is don't do, and actually, it may sound like that is something we don't do, and actually, ironically, there was time where this standard -- there are always times when people like the wright brothers said i will be happy to build a plaintiff you pay me -- but the notion of building capabilities and handing them over to the federal government is something that made an appearance in the post-world war i era and flourished up until world war ii.

in the run-up to world war ii, there is an incredible amount of philanthropic activity. the private sector did an enormous amount of pioneering work, research and development on radar and then essentially gave it to the government for free. i kind of disappears in the 1950's, -- that kind of disappears in the 1950's, in part because of the expenditures that greatlyar exceed private research and development. even at&t and bell labs are feeding directly into the military. we kind of got out of practice, and in the 1950's there was a great divorce between academia -- 1960's, there was a great divorce between academia and the vietnam war. i think the tradition died off. but i wonder if there is both a space and a need in the dawn of

the 21st century to revitalize this idea, to really help us century thethe 21st military capabilities that we need. so that is the idea, so i brought together three of the smartest people i know to tell me what the answer is and it this makes sense or not. so, we will start with rich and then go down and then open it up to the audience. >> you want me to start with a self intro since you're getting away with not doing it? >> yes. >> i am rich don. army colonel. i spent about 14 and a half years with the defense industry after that. i brought the defense chairman to the army staff once he thought he had found a nice, safe place to be. i'm glad to participate in a

discussion of an interesting and worthwhile topic. wasd to admit that when i not allowed to refuse, pleading everynce, i did what researcher does when confronting an unknown topic. i googled it. i came up empty. ofrting with a blank sheet paper is always an advantage because it makes it harder for your critics to point out your errors. when i started thinking about philanthropy in defense r&d it conjured up pictures of a brilliant young inventor soldering together a death ray and being invested

in by the next generations bill gates. on reflection, which i might admit over a glass of good scotch, i began to see more merit in it. in a broader context. let me briefly sketch some of my thoughts. number one, i started with the stated objective, which is always a good idea, because sometimes jim tends to diverge from what he has really asked you to do. what we were asked to do is oflore the concept philanthropy in defense, to identify areas where philanthropic investment is most aeded, and to discuss framework for philanthropic defense research and development. that's what we were asked to do. the other thing, being a good left brain engineer, is i like to start with definition. so i would like to define

philanthropic defense research and development as providing philanthropic funding for activities supporting defense research and development for the good of the nation without expecting any tangible or toluential return benefits specific persons or organizations. that specifies things a little bit more, and it also says we looking mostly to not necessarily the private sector, but more toward private individuals and less toward industry who might be using such businessty for development purposes like they did for a long time when i worked in the defense industry. so how might we develop a framework for looking at this? you look at the purpose of defense research and development to provide aned advantage to the american war

fighter. that's what it is intended to do. a lot of effort goes into evolving interesting -- evolving existing capabilities to make them better, like with the aircraft. that in itself may not be sufficient to provide a decisive technological advantage against a well-funded and innovated adversary, and we have several of those on deck right now on the world. this requires the ability to develop entirely new .apabilities radar and its exploitation isn't an oftenerenced -- is referenced example of this. first, the new technological capability has to be developed to the point where we are with applications that are recognizable to the sharp-witted.

some smart -- usually some junior young person -- mind realizes the overwhelming value of fielding this new capability and employing it in new and different operational concepts. these first two steps are relatively easy compared to the because making a revolutionary capability a reality requires some very senior decision-making with both compelling interest in it and the authority to bludgeon it into happening. -- mightphilanthropic philanthropic dollars provide the greatest return? assume the donors were able to 100 million dollars for r&d. that's a lot of money. but compared to the sum $63 billion that dod will spend on inearch and development

2014, that $100 million is almost a rounding error. we really need to find someplace where we get the most lever for our dollars. if you can just spend a few bucks, where can you make the biggest difference? to make a long story short and perhaps trigger a discussion, i would argue that it might make sense not to focus on these three steps per se but rather to ofk more broadly at the flow knowledge that enables them. 's andample, the scientist engineers working on technological capabilities are going to need sources for ideas. the war fighters using the capabilities need to understand how to exploit them. tothe senior leaders need understand how the capabilities

felt urgent needs. my opinion is the existing bureaucracy within the department does not do a sufficient job of moving ideas through these groups. secretary said when he asked for options, he would always get three, to do nothing, to wage nuclear war, or to deal with the bureaucracy. that is the challenge you have. it is difficult for groups within the pentagon to have a flow of knowledge that is inuired for innovation defense. the question then is how can knowledge -- knowledge, not data or information, knowledge -- flow across groups that are not usually well connected. there is a professor at the university of chicago who has devised some very useful ideas in this regard related to the bridging of social networks.

he sees societies, organizations, corporations and the department of defense as comprised of groups or clusters strong tiesth within the clusters. this is not the diagram you would normally see when you pull something up online. separate galaxies with close ties in between and a few strong ties in between them. these human networks he looks that are not electrical circuits. the influential communication, normally decays with only one intermediary and disappears when there is noise much beyond that. betweenns -- bonds people are much more than facebook friend fellowships and their only formed when people roll up their sleeves to collaborate on their same team and exchange ideas and thoughts.

argues that connections across these clusters provide early access to diverse and often contradictory information which gives them a comparative advantage in developing ideas. when you look across the fewlation, there are very really new ideas, but they are oldly new applications of ones. information circulates more within groups, these knowledge brokers, the people able to move knowledge from one group to another, are particularly valuable. creativity involves moving an idea from one group where anothery had an idea to group were nobody had that

particular piece of knowledge. let me use my very simple deck and jane example of that. think about the paleolithic era and a number of tribes living in separate valleys. in one tribe, someone invents a new way of lighting fires. you can imagine, once somebody in the tribe has developed this, pretty soon everybody in the tribe knows how to do it and they are soon sitting around eating hot roasted mammoth. transportation back in those days. a traitor travels and he learns a new way of starting fires. meet theravels on a new tribe that's freezing to

death. when he comes then, he'd teaches starting firesf and is treated as a demigod or a genius because he is taking knowledge that is monday, everybody in one group -- mundane, everybody in one group knows it, and he has moved on to another. the value of the knowledge is what important. of that knowledge can greatly increase its potential value. therefore, what we might want to defense in exploiting philanthropy is to move the knowledge necessary to develop and exploit the new technological capabilities across these usually disconnected groups. and that might be the best way we can move the needle in .efense i thank you for your attention and look forward to the discussion. click speaking of democrats.

-- speaking of demagogues -- demigods. translating r&d into actual defense products and i have a background in the private sector and several years in the pentagon. one of the things i love about the discussion of this kind is, a famous american philosopher, panel discussions are kind of like a boxer chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. i took a different approach. i would start by observing that one needs to be a bit of a philanthropist just by virtue of being in the defense business. there is a commonly held view that the ticket to corporate riches is to be a defense

contractor. nothing could be further from the truth. as the last eod performance report states, private sector haveal goods manufacturers average operating margins 50% higher than those of defense .ontractors that's a significant penalty in opportunity cost in being a defense contractor. when you talk to these people, yes, they make money because they use skills they have acquired elsewhere, but in a lot of cases, it is great engineering, it is great , theye, and in many cases are giving back. they are doing something meaningful. is remarkable how much that does play into the choices people make to do defense work or not. i want to take a somewhat

expansive definition of philanthropy and defense. it is not the same as charity, right? it is not giving to the less , although defense is fortunate inless many respects. rather, it is placing the welfare of others ahead of one's own and acting accordingly. initiatives to enhance public good does not mean that ,he activity is solely selfless that there is no conceivable gain for the one conducting the e philanthropic activity. improving air defenses of countries subject to air attack .s of interest to all there is a public side to that kind of effort. i would point out the defense

companies, like others, spend a lot of time on hidden philanthropy. of young people, dual programs were you can be in school and work our time in industry, is a remarkable effort -- part time in industry, is a remarkable effort. work by local of colleges in the private sector and the public sector. from engineering to welding, some of the more activities that ive folks a career for life would argue is philanthropic. it's doing what right rather than what is easy or conventional or what will assure a company they can earn the big. -- big bucks. are examples of

philanthropic defense activities that are more current than radar . recently, for example, several private defense companies have shown what can be done in the way of developing and building new platforms with real capabilities on their own initiative without r&d or even a requirement by the military service, and without money from the department of defense. , using its own money and talent, in two years, dkorsky produced the essay seven. 7.sid it knew it had to stay on the cutting edge of r&d. its design teams active and engaged, and it needed to attract young talent. argue in some sense

keeping people in the area, engineering to begin with, is in fact self-interest in some sense the benefit of the entire country. airline enterprises use their own money to come up with the a twin engine aircraft that is cheap to maintain, made from existing parts, a tinker toy exercise. and they did that with only a very vague idea that they could interest anyone in the department. this was a real flyer. cuspyou another one on the . sierra nevada corporation, one send ae contenders to

capsule into space. be awarded too one company to be the crew capsule. they announced they would carry vehicle system, put it on a rocket and fly it, even if they are not chosen as the winner of the competition. let's face it. there is not a private market for state -- space capsules. but they did that to demonstrate the state-of-the-art technologies they designed. maybe that then gets built into other things that nasa is doing. what is interesting about both the radar and scorpion programs as they were able to be successful. they were swift and cheapen what

they were doing because they were freed up from the limitations of a government program. freed them from the -- externaly dod airily burdensome dod standards, accounting, subcontracting -- dodaordinarily burdensome standards, accounting, subcontracting, and to the rest. philanthropy and charity are two-way prepositions. there is a giver and the recipient. giving is nice. giftalue of the act or the can be diminished if the largess is either inappropriate or refused. philanthropic organizations and even government put constraints on the use of their donations and

tolic assistance precisely prevent their misuse. you're not supposed to be using stamp money to buy drugs or alan call, for example. we have learned paint -- drugs example.l, for we have learned painfully over philanthropyhat can fail if the desires of the recipients are not taken into consideration. in other words, we no longer walk into a foreign country and tell them how to run their country. we try to assist them with aid. about philanthropy and defense, we have to consider the danger of the recipient, the federal government, and specifically the department of defense. simply put, dod makes it difficult for anyone, corporate to practicel, it

philanthropy. it doesn't like being the recipient of charity. -- if youofficials have ever worked as a defense contractor, which i did for a while, god forbid you do work over what you charge, uncompensated overtime. that means you are not living by the rules of the contract, the arrangement, the hours, and all the rest, but that is a form of philanthropy, giving of your time to get the work done. it's a no-no in the department. so, you can go to the department with a great idea, one that is , but ifundbreaking, there is no validating requirement, good luck. this can be the case even when officials know that the offering truly would be a game changer. -- rigged is not read

, but it is biased against ideas that don't come through the front door. this is particularly at the corporate level. maybe the individual, kitchen type of tinkerer, but how the defense department treats commercial items, it is a small and declining portion of their business. to a certain extent, they may make money back on it, but it is not going to make or break the company. it might make the company but it will not break the company. the companies that do this incur tremendous barriers when trying to deal with the pentagon. they have to tolerate new and different testing regimes,

testing standards. when a company provides a chart -- provides a commercial item to the pentagon, under contract -- we are not just talking about throwing it over the fence -- say a part for the airplane, it does so with the understanding that it will maintain intellectual property and not have to provide pricing data that if you build under government direction with government money you would have to provide. mind you, most commercial thatnies do not collect kind of data on commercial items. they don't care what it costs. they want to know what it -- what the prices. will go for it without having to do the kind of exhausting and mindnumbing

output that the department does. even then, they do not make the effort to ensure that the price of the piece they are buying for their part of the government or the price that anyone out there is selling their good on the market is charged worldwide, something that the government .equires so if you set down a product. some goes to defense. the majority goes to the millions of walmarts in the world. surere required to make that no walmarts or targets are selling the things you're giving them for less than your charging the government. try doing that if you are a private company. try doing it on a global product. that is not even the worst problem. there have been efforts in recent years to change the current laws and to force companies to go through this

ofcess of certified cost pricing data, components, all of that on commercial items. forget that this will make it cost prohibitive to buy commercial items. it is just madness. the pentagonhen behaves like the grinch, it can quickly sour the christmas spirit of any company or any individual. we were asked about how one fixes the problem and where to briefwill give some thoughts to that, because this is a tough problem. government in general and dod in particular are not set up or conditioned to deal with philanthropy well. is anyone here at heritage will tell you, the first rule of

being a recipient of philanthropy is treat your donors well. department, when it comes to this kind of stuff, doesn't. whether it is on a philanthropic basis or is simply dependent on commercial business, this is the direction we are headed in. we are less dependent on production and more dependent on commercial designs. look at the new tanker and the new aircraft the navy is buying. to go there for philanthropic reasons or because you are dependent on the philanthropic sector, be nice to these people. except the 80% solution to start. just to start. the rest is impossible, commercialacross the

sector. don't change from 80 to get to 90. anyone who deals with software knows what i'm talking about. they be less than 80 if it is something windows produces. globally.nk film stopping -- philanthropy does not have to stop at the american borders. here is an area ripe for philanthropic activity. ciber software. lennox. open source. people contribute to this all the time. of where the rapid innovation in software is coming from. of people are doing this just to be interesting and creative, including some of the things in cyber defense. out to the black cat society and all the rest. one area i would suggest, which is going to be particularly hard

-- the department of defense you go look at the pentagon, and this is oil and water, cats and dogs, that kind of thing, but there is a tradition of public good and philanthropy in software development. which the department could really make great use of the fit wanted to, but it requires a different mindset. -- if it wanted to, but it requires a different mindset. i will stop there. he has not only had a distinguished military career, he has made a great transition to academia. >> thank you. and thank you for inviting me to participate in this panel. i was in the army, as jim said, for 21 years. i retired as a lieutenant colonel.

the last assignment was a major defense acquisitions program in huntsville, alabama. i got my phd from george mason university and made the transition into academia. i am now at george mason university running us them professional development program stem professional development program for teachers in virginia. difficult to find examples of philanthropists investing in defense research and development. as rich and dan have alluded, there are areas there have been investments and defense affairs, narrowly look to defense research and development. rich looked and started googling. i did that too. started drawing venn diagrams to see what would happen.

overall research and development in the united states in overall defense budget, and then i could and overallropy various types of philanthropic activities. i could see the giving to defense in certain areas, especially nowadays with help to wounded warriors and things like and jim mentioned some things there. but then i found it hard to find examples when i got into research and development. of course, when you peel the onion back, as he just did, you find there are areas out there if you look at a broader definition of philanthropy. think there is a niche market out there. i did wonder how philanthropists and philanthropic organizations

distribute their funding. philanthropyate goes to education, 27% to health and social services, 14% to community and economic development and a smaller percentage to culture and the arts, disaster relief, and other noble endeavors. advocacy,nine causes, arts education, environment, health international, religion, social services, and youth. notably, it did not list defense research and development. i looked at the amount of philanthropy in the resources that might h be available. general donated $335 billion to philanthropic efforts annually. a good portion of that is donated volunteer time. foundations gave about $50

billion, corporations about $17 billion, respectively. of theuld be the source defense r&d funding we are examining here. the total amount of r&d in america was 400 and $56 billion and of that, slightly more than $300 billion is funded by industry. this is all about our r&d, not just defense r&d, which is about the $64 billion number there. overall government research and development was about $125 billion. as jim pointed out in his intro, we are looking for about $100 billion. where can we make the changes where a small investment can make a big change?

so those resources for resource and -- research and development and their motivations, that some of what i looked into. while i look at these individually, recognize that they do move in and out of different areas. in one area, industry may be acting as industry, looking for a profit motive. at another level, they may be providing some philanthropy for their causes. industry and entrepreneurs have return on investment as their objective. , they can switch between public good in private return on investment. the public philanthropists generally have the public good as their overall objective. research, is started looking at -- a framework began to emerge.

i spoke to jim, and he pointed out the example we heard about radar priorent of to world war ii. that effort was spearheaded by one man who brought together the resources and talent to collaborate internationally and develop radar. industryoned the investing in r&d. they have the resources to but they areng, still looking for a return on investment. it may be that it is rightly or it may be something they have some other motivations such as a ,taying at the cutting-edge those are all investments. people andid, organizations are motivated by many factors, not just one.

so while they give to certain they give a good deal to education and community efforts. in the defense industry provide a great deal of support to wounded warriors and other heroes. need to do is encourage the philanthropists and philanthropic organizations to research fornse their philanthropic giving, at least on a small level. this would be a challenge because a lot of the andanthropists philanthropic organizations already have a mission assigned. we are going to give to health. we are going to give to education. to localing to give

community development, whatever it is. we have to get them to open their aperture a little more and see if they can find something that would go into the defense research and development. now, and individual philanthropists probably has a little more flexibility. so we want to go and encourage entrepreneurs and venture capitalist's to consider giving a portion of their funds to philanthropic endeavors. and of these people organizations already provide a good deal of philanthropy to worthwhile causes. that is the role alfred loomis, who helped to develop radar, that was the role he played. he brought together the talent and resources, the financial funding they needed in order to make that happen.

here, i it all together look and say what is the framework that i see? first, you need the right individual to push it forward. to have aidual has passion for the technology they are going to invest in. as we saw with alfred loomis, he was deeply involved in scientific research well before he got into radar. own labs built up in his home. individual who has the passion has to have access to sufficient funding to get the program going or keep it going if it hits a roadblock at some .oint in its life cycle this can be from one organization and network or an individual. finally, you need some catalytic

event that will ignite the person to get moving. we saw with the development of beginning of world war the catalytic event the cut alfred loomis to collaborate with the british and get their project going. recently, we see that the 9/11 event scan service the catalyst -- events can serve as things goingto get here. philanthropists may want some kind of financial return in there too. a pony they can grab hold of, that may stimulate the investment. dual technology was alluded to, something that could be used in

military applications and civilian applications. that too holds a lot of promise for some people. public-private partnerships, matching requirements through the national science foundation can get philanthropist going into the arena we are looking to. finally, it could be that sometimes just a small effort to you seeball rolling, some successes, you see something opening someone's eyes, that may be all you need. just a small investment to get the ball rolling and then you can bring in some of the other larger sources to promote the program. in summary, any funding for defense r&d philanthropy will have to meet the framework i outlined. it will probably be a limited ability in a niche market, but

it could really provide, when targeted, specific projects and programs that really pay a lot of benefit for us. >> we do have a couple of minutes. i would like to get some questions. do we have a microphone? raise your hand and state your name and affiliation. >> i wondered exactly what date alfred loomis began his work on , when the philanthropy began to take effect. was it around the battle of britain? there was great concern in the white house starting around may 10, 19 40, that we needed to be armed, and of course radar is a .orm of armament, protection if that is the case, when did this start? he had been doing physics

research throughout the 1930's. 19 38 is when he started focusing on radar and then he started seeing the results from the battle of britain and that's when he started collaborating and sharingtish information technologies and moving forward from there. just about that time. of britaine battle really got him moving to expand his interest in radar. >> other questions? >> there are a couple of things i wanted to pull together from the panel that i thought were .eally useful points one is the notion of marginal investment, which they think is really important.

multi-billions of dollars a year go into defense research and development. as money has shrunk and a man's have grown, a lot of research -- demands have , a lot of what r&d really is is setting up for procurement. it is not what we would think of as traditional research and development. so the r&d pie looks healthy, but when you take away things tied to specific programs, all of a sudden that number starts to shrink. on thent about operating margins i think is really important because the department of defense is forced to really pool ideas and push defense to the side.

beyond the capacity of defense to do. this notion of marginal is really big. we say what the big deal about congress doing appropriations every year. they move about 3% of the money. 95%, you take 50% for salary, 25% for infrastructure, investments, and by the time you get done, that 3% really is a big deal. presentations brought together what i think are important points to think of in this space. in particular, dan made a seminal point about transition. the hardest part of philanthropy is getting the recipient to take

it. thingsre three critical you have to think about. the obvious one is institutional bias. i have a program of record. you may be providing me with something better, faster, cheaper. that's a terrible idea. my career is delivering this program. , even if you hand something over to the defense department and it is a wonderful -- commercial product, it has to operate in a defense environment. we talk about research, testing, development and evaluation. somebody has to pay for that. is goingomething that to solve your idea tomorrow. i give you it for free. that still is not a free lunch for them because it still has to go through the our dte process.

r&d te process. they have doctrine training organization leadership manpower, a wonderful widget, ok, somebody has to train the widget. how might going to use the widget? i going to-- how am use the widget? how am i going to maintain the widget? somebody has to pay for that as well. set ofere is a whole legal issues. you may have a buy american provision. here is a wonderful widget that totally solves your problem but all the parts come from switzerland. wecannot have that because are legally required only to buy this from an american manufacturer. it's not an insignificant topic and it seems to me it would be

really ridiculous to get involved in a philanthropic endeavor at $100 million if thee was not somebody at backend thinking about how to make the transition work. we think about research and development capacity buildings in terms of maybe just hardware, delivering something. here is a better bomb. better thing is process thatual leads to the better bomb. today if you work in the department of defense and you would like to go to a congress to talk about a that-generation widget, request would have to go to the secretary of your service to approve that. to au want to go scientific conference, a research conference, that has to go up to the secretary of your approve that.v

it's an incredible requirement. it's not just a question of money. we cannot appear to be going to a conference in hawaii or whatever. the point on networks was extraordinary. to create these useful, small networks when you can have this dynamic, progressive thinking, is really --appen at the military academy, which is in part a result of philanthropic effort, some young officers got together and said to help young officers connect with other officers and they invented a tool that was essentially facebook. if they had been a couple states , theyn silicon valley

would have been the guys who invented facebook and have their own movie. instead, they created a technology that they gave to the pentagon for free. just be building something by creating an environment that enables someone to do that. and finally, the notion of creating a framework for philanthropic environment. it seems to me there are two really logical reasons why somebody would want to do this. your point is the basic purpose of philanthropy. if you have an interesting keeping america safe, free, prosperous, and you could monstrously provide cutting-edge way to do that, that is a logical reason for giving. but there is a second reason that you both alluded to. what is the most

important thing a military could ?ave and develop throughout the cold war, jet engines, nuclear weapons, missiles, even the things we use now, silicon components. those are all generated military requirements. the military was doing the most important cutting-edge science for national security. the cutting-edge technologies that impact national security are things not the military is pioneering. they are following along and getting breadcrumbs. ciber is a perfect example of that. cyber is son of expansive and grade the military is far from being on the cutting edge. what that also means that if your philanthropic interest is ,he betterment of your society in all likelihood, if you do

something cutting-edge that has a national security application, very likely would have dual use applications in the civilian sector. so some of the things we mentioned in education, for spend billions on education but there are things done in education that could be applied to the military. they could allow us to leap ahead on national security. way you guys framed the problem and the challenges and the opportunity, i think there is something there that is intellectually worth exploring important.ng -- and if we had a second discussion, we could look at the areas where you could potentially have really cutting-edge technology capabilities that could really make a difference in the modern environment. thinking of areas like robotics, human sciences, , where eitherce

a commercialreally pull to push the r&d or something that is not being looked at, or the military side of the commercial application has not been fully exploited. i wonder if there are $100 million investments out there that could make a dramatic difference, particularly if there was a framework where you could have that transition happen. so, this is extraordinary. thank you guys so much. you're not only great friends you're truly inspired and creative scholars. so thank you again. [applause] and i'm sure guys can stick around if you want to come up and have some additionalconversation or discussion. thank you again. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> you can watch all of this discussion online anytime at c-span.org. a quick reminder we will return to the heritage foundation this afternoon for a discussion on unresolved historical issues that currently affect progress

in northeast asia. live coverage starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. c-spanup tonight on the networks starting at 8:00 .astern, here are issues the spotlight turns to the gm recall. ceo mary barra. kenneth feinberg, hired by gm to handle compensation claims. the history and future of money. american history tv, civil war battle, inn a washington dc during the conflict and other programs about the defense of the nation passes capital. all started tonight on the c-span network. today, primary day in alaska and wyoming. the senate house and governorships also at stake. alaska will choose a candidate to run against the democrat. a former senate candidate who ran against -- as an independent

in 2012. -- 2010. wyoming candidates, republican senator mike mz in the fall. >> this week, we will be focusing on president lyndon johnson's vision for a society and its impact today. tune in at 7:00 a.m. eastern time and join the conversation by calling us or sending us an e-mail. you can also send us a tweet and join the conversation on facebook.com/c-span. >> this month, c-span presents debates on what makes american -- america great, evolution, and genetically modified foods. veterans health care, irs oversight, student loan debt, and campus sexual assault your new perspectives on issues including global warming, voting rights, fighting infectious

disease, and food safety. and our history tour, showing sights and sounds from america's historic laces. week in tv schedule one advance at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us -- or e-mail us. conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> steven adler says the obama administration was supposed to be the transparent administration, yet restricts the press more than pass presidencies. news executives from the new york times, the associated press, talk about government restrictions on the press, the future of whistleblowers, and accusations of media bias. during the national association of black journalists convention in boston. peter thomas moderates. >> good afternoon, everyone. here to host and moderate the

w.e.b. du bois session, is pierre thomas, 2012 journalist of the year and senior justice correspondent for abc news. he joined in 2000 and reports for several programs including world news, "good morning america," and "timeline." he was a key member that won the edward r. murrow awards for the capturing of osama bin laden, the tucson shooting spree and assassination attempt of gabby giffords, and the newton school massacre. he's a key member covering the terrorist attacks of 9/11. he has won a peabody, a dupont, and an emmy. he has received an emmy for his coverage of president barack obama's inauguration. please welcome pierre thomas. [applause] >> hello, everyone. thank you so much for coming to

the national association of black journalists conference. this year, focusing on equipping members for the shifts taking place in newsrooms across the country. you can look forward to some great panels, workshops, and seminars including today's session, government and the media. we will address some of the challenges facing our industry specifically actions by the government, which appear to infringe on the truly free press. journalists subpoenaed to reveal sources, the justice department looking at months of records from the ap, the white house restricting access to many presidential events.

how do we operate going forward? fundamental challenges that stretch to the heart of what we do. today, we have some of the nation's top journalists here to discuss the challenges. they have confronted these issues first hand. we will have time for questions from the audience, but first i would like to introduce our illustrious panel. first, we have steve adler. he is the editor-in-chief of reuters news. before joining reuters, he was editor-in-chief at "business week," where during the five-year tenure they won more than 100 awards. he is a graduate of harvard law school and served as editor of "the american lawyer." please welcome stephen adler. ♪ next we have dean baquet, the first african-american executive editor of "the new york times." after graduating from columbia university in 1978, the new orleans native who went to work for his hometown newspaper. in 1988, he won a pulitzer for his work leading a trio of

reporters who uncovered corruption in the chicago city council. please welcome dean baquet. [applause] our final panelist is brian carovillano. he is the vice president and managing director for u.s. news at the associated press. he served as the asia-pacific news director. he led the ap coverage of the 2011 earthquake-tsunami in the nuclear crisis in japan. please welcome brian. [applause] ♪ we're going to get right to it.

thank you, everyone for coming. we will try to move it along quickly. james risen is a "new york times" reporter. in 2006, he published a book called "the state of war." they have issued a subpoena for his sources. he says he will not reveal his sources. they have sided with the government and he faces possible contempt of court, possible fines if he will not testify. dean, give us a sense of how james is doing in the impact on him and his family. >> it had a huge impact on jim. he has built a network of anonymous sources. that is his bread and butter.

it's been a lot harder from him. it's been harder for him to make new sources. his current sources are nervous about talking to him. things get slowed down because it's not like you can exchange e-mails or have phone conversations. that said, kudos to jim who is a particularly tenacious reporter, if you look at over the last year while he has worked up against this problem of the government going after him, he's broken big stories one or the two or three lead reporters when "the new york times" had to catch up with the "post" and others with the snowden issue. that is his bread and butter. and has certainly held him back.

his mood -- he's nervous. i don't think is nervous because he is worried about going to jail. i think he's nervous because if you imagine covering a beat and suddenly all the people are nervous about dealing with you in particular, this is the beat you have covered for a decade, i think that throws you off your game. >> it is at the heart of what we do in our profession. how has the paper sought to support him and keep him aggressive? >> we have helped support him in the legal arena. i talk to him a lot. i make sure that he is deeply involved in washington coverage

and he's in all of the national security meetings. mainly, i'm a pain in the butt to him to make sure that he's is working on snowden. we throw big stories at him and give him ambitious assignments. it would be too easy to tell him to chill out for a year while it plays out, but that would not be good for him or the paper. mainly, we make sure to throw assignments at him and that they get good play. that's been helpful to him. >> dean, i want steve and brian to jump in. when you have a reporter asked by the government to give up sources, what is at stake for our entire industry? >> first off, the answer to any self-respecting news organization is a strenuous "no." what is at stake is not only that particular story but our very relationship with the government and our relationship

with the government should be adversarial. i guess that some old way of thinking but it really should be. our role in society is to ask hard questions and tried to find out things government does not want us to find out. the moment you give the names of your sources to government, you wipe out one of the primary missions of the press, which is to find out things you don't want to find out. and to ask them hard questions. you lose that. >> one example from yesterday in what is happening. you go out there and you do a story on the government does not like it. it's a story about the securities and exchange commission and we were in the room when they made the decision involving the verdict. they did not like the story. it obviously came from something inside. think about what they did and what impact that has. they went to our reporters and asked for the source of the story. then they got their inspector general to do a multi-month investigation were they

interviewed 53 employees at the sec. they went through the e-mails of 39 employees and checked all of the visitor logs and at the end of it, they could not figure out who our sources were so i felt good about that. but the effect of that, what was the message that was sent? the message was sent to never talk to a reporter because your job is in jeopardy. we don't want reporters to know about these things. the poisoning of the potential of getting transparency in government just from that one event, you see that everywhere in the government. it impinges on our ability, which is sharing on with the public what's going on. >> brian. >> in the case that steve just described with the ap phone records situation with the department of justice is part of a really troubling trend. i'm not super optimistic it's going to get better any time soon. it really calls to journalists to alto our primary function, which is to hold the government accountable. >> given the war on terror and the covert actions we see our government taking, has it ever been more important for journalists to be digging and finding out what the hell is going on?

>> it has never been more important. if you think about the state of foreign policy, for instance, the u.s. is engaged in at least two possibly three undeclared relatively secret wars in pakistan where it is running extensive drone operations. in yemen and some could make the case for parts of africa, too. these are dangerous missions that have large applications for those countries, large implications for foreign policy in the united states, and they were embarked upon with no debate. there was no debate in congress, no discussion about how the u.s. should manage a war in yemen. it's our job to find out what's going on in yemen. it's more important than ever

that we find out what's going on in places like yemen so the country can have its own debate even if government chooses not to have it. >> it seems like we've reached a point where national security concerns whether they exist or not trumps the first amendment. in many cases, the first amendment does not even part of the conversation. unless we are talking about it amongst ourselves. >> right. >> i want to move onto a story that really struck me as well. ap gets the scoop in may 2012 about terrorist in yemen wanting to blow up a plane using a new kind of underwear bomb. the government wants to know how you did it. the justice department goes out, goes through a court, and secretly obtains two months of telephone records of reporters and editors at the associated press. brian, your reaction when you found out the government had done this? >> outrage. the justice department violated its own guidelines. they were guidelines that existed governing these types of investigations for decades.

the two primary ways in which this particular investigation violated them was these kind of subpoenas are supposed to be as narrowly drawn as possible. this was a hoover operation where phone records for 21 phonelines, including our former washington bureau that the ap had not even occupied, and the harvard connecticut bureau where one reporter worked seven years

before he transferred to the washington bureau and was involved in the story. that gave insight into hundreds of ap reporters, far from any stories that might have had anything to do with this particular scope. the government had no conceivable right to know any of that stuff. the second way it violated the guideline was there was no prior notification and we found out a year after it had broken that at some point i had got these phone records spanning 40 days and there was no opportunity for us to challenge that, no process of judicial review, and they cited a loophole that had always existed but turned out to be very gigantic loophole, which was that prior notice was required unless doing so would substantially impair the integrity of the investigation. and they took a very broad interpretation of that, which was to say that the leaker would

know if it had been made public, but after they announce the investigation, about two days actually the story broke, it was already widely known. >> when you confronted doj officials with what they did, did you get an audience with the attorney general? what was their reaction to your outrage? >> they convened a very high level group of media representatives and government officials. the justice department changed those guidelines. we think they have changed them for the better so the exception for prior notification requires the attorney general to sign off, and instead of a presumption violating the integrity of the investigation, they have to prove that it will. the guidelines are stricter but they have not been tested yet. >> how striking was it that

something like that could happen? them looking at your phone records, and the most senior levels of the justice department not signing off, it sounds like that's what happened. >> that's exactly what happened in this case. but striking, i think, in some ways, the revelations of the nsa and snowden, the ap case seems a sort of quaint now because we now know the government is able to access everything for everyone, journalists or not. i think that journalists who have operated in more restrict did countries have always sort of assumed they were being watched, and now we should assume that the united states is one of those countries, and we have to take those same precautions as if we were operating in china, north korea, tehran. [inaudible] they focus on violations abroad and now they have gotten very focused on the u.s., which i think is really illuminating. they are starting a campaign called the right to report where they will be [inaudible] these are the kinds of problems that we at reuters see everywhere in the world. -- there is way more issues in turkey, tehran, everywhere else. that we are now thinking about the u.s. in the same category is

rather troubling. >> and on a practical level, when you pick up your phone at the ap offices, do you now wonder? >> sure. we should all wonder if we were in the office or any other journalism shop. >> i'd like the reaction of the other two panelists. when you heard about this case, what was your reaction? >> i find this case more troublesome than the risen case, the most troublesome. for two reasons, first the sheer audacity and scope of the efforts of the investigation. but secondly, as he said, the fact that it's sort of did not even have to get approval at the highest levels shows that, i would argue -- and i would attribute this to the post-9/11

era -- i think the view of government after 9/11 that secrecy was so important, especially on national security matters, it became so pervasive, so powerful, so ingrained in a generation of government officials that they felt comfortable doing something that 25 years ago even would have required a real discussion. we are going to go after the records of a major american news organization. i think the fact that that can be done at the mid-level and even surprise eric holder says a

lot about how entrenched that secrecy is in the government. >> the white house has been restricting access to many events and distributing its own photographs and then giving access to the media, not letting us do the work ourselves. we just had a case recently involving some former astronauts that got some coverage. steve, talk about why this is a particular problem. >> i care about the photographs. we take photographs and it's important. you don't want the record of what goes on in your administration to essentially be pr. there is talk about what is independent journalism and what is an institution going directly to the public with their own message, and in some level, that's fine. companies do that as well.

people are using twitter to disclose things, and up to a point that's ok, but on the other hand, you do have to worry there is not a value placed on independent journalism. we were involved in lobbying with the white house to give us more access. we have gotten a little more, but it is not much. it is not everything you would want. >> did they understand why? >> i think only partly. i think one of the troubling things we are all facing is this is the administration that said it would be the transparency administration, and there's been a lot of language around the importance of transparency. we all believe that the government belongs to the people and we are representatives of the people and we are all fairly idealistic about that. we think the government works better when it is transparent. fresh air is the best disinfectant. it does not like the government feels that way, and you see that in the white house and all of

the executive agencies. they just make it very hard. it's harder to get press passes, it's harder to get into meetings. you get handlers who sit with you more. part of the problem is this is a practical problem, but also this is a symbolic problem because we do not want to be a society that believes it's important for the public to know what's going on and it's important for independent journalism to exist in a really robust way. it does not feel like the administration feels that way. >> is this administration more restrictive or less restrictive than past administrations? >> i asked the washington bureau before coming here what they thought. they do feel its more restrictive than it has been in the past. they are little bit more upset about it perhaps than they might have been because this administration bills itself as being more transparent and they feel deceived by that.

there has been an increasing desire to control the news. there has always been some, and look, we accept that. journalism isn't for the faint of heart. there's a constant back and forth with any government, and that's fine. we also believe that a democratic government should believe that a free press is important and should at least try to facilitate that in a general way and that's the kind of place where we end up thinking we are not so sure that is true. >> i think it's part of a trend that began before obama was elected, but i certainly think it has gotten more dramatic. the trend has gotten worse. social media has given the obama administration is a lot of elected officials the plausibility that they're going straight to the people, but they can manage the message. there's no reason to believe it is an honest presentation of information.

i also think that the way the obama administration has handled access has given other governments, state and local governments, a roadmap for how they can "manage the media." we saw in new york with the bill de blasio administration, who also said he was going to run the most transparent administration in history, that he tried to close his swearing in to the press. many protested and they eventually opened it, but in the first 100 days of his administration he held 53 event closed to the press around his schedule and 30 others with restricted access, and that was just in the first 100 days. >> wow. >> i think the obama administration is more secretive, but i think i agree that it is part of a continuum.

i think there was an amazing confluence of events starting with and more forcefully led by 9/11. i think 9/11, i think the bush administration was more philosophically secret, and i think 9/11 told them that it was ok. i think the press did not challenge it enough. and then along came a whole new way of covering candidates, i think social media making it easier for candidates and politicians to sort of communicate with people without going through the mainstream media, which is good and bad. i think all of these things came together -- a secret environment, the ability to commit it differently with

people. the constant campaign that politicians go into. i think all of those things came together and they reached the full flowering in the obama administration, but they began overtime and built. >> we are not without our own resources. nobody should feel sorry for the media. some of the changes that have occurred actually benefit us. there is so much more access, electronic media. we have more ways to get information. there are way more players. the so-called mainstream media may be somewhat in decline, but you have blogs, "the guardian" because of digital, al jazeera because of digital and television. you have all of the smaller organizations. if you are out there trying to

get information, and you are working hard to get it out, you have more ways than you did in the past. in some ways, it's an arms race. the administration has more tools, but so do we. >> and more outlets to publish it if you buy the argument, which i think everyone now buys, that the press was not aggressive enough in the buildup to the gulf war. i think today there would be a lot more places, including "the guardian," which is more activist news organization, more blogs, more places where questions would have been raised. i agree with steve -- that is healthier. >> i want to get to edward snowden in a moment. as news executives, how are you trying to manage and deal with social media and the fact that people can go around and talk directly to the public themselves? how do you try to use the social media to your advantage? [laughter] >> well, there are so many different ways where social media factors into the way we do our work. it's interesting when a public official takes social media, often that is the news itself, and the reaction to that is news itself. we all use social media to develop new audiences and broadcast content. it is a powerful newsgathering

tool, especially in terms of finding people who may have something to say about a specific event or topic. it is woven into the newsroom in so many different ways. it is just part of the daily journalism now. >> i worry less about the ability of politicians to get around us and use social media because that's different than the secrecy issues we are talking about. i think that is as much as it is vexing for us, i think it's probably ok. it's a little weird for the media to make the case that politicians should have to engage with us to get to the public. i'm not sure that would be a winning argument that i would be willing to make. >> i'm not a big fan of handout journalism. the most productive work we do is when we ask hard questions and we try to get under the surface to find out what's really going on. the politicians will hand out press releases and it's not our job just to take stenography and provide them to the public but to go deeper. >> there have always been a whistle stop tours and a fireside chats to engage directly with the electorate. this is just a way to do it from the comfort of your chair.

>> right. >> and full disclosure, i think nabj did invite members of the administration to participate in this panel, and as far as we can tell they chose not to. edward snowden. i think everyone in the audience knows edward snowden is responsible for releasing a boatload of information about some of the nation's covert activities. there are those who say, not withstanding, what he did whether it was right or wrong but the notion that one person was responsible for releasing this information, a relatively young person, they make the argument that it should not happen. question to the panel. is he a criminal or a whistleblower? >> i don't -- i actually don't -- i'm going to choose to answer this in a bit of a different way. i think that he provoked an important discussion that the country was not having and could only have had with his disclosures. i think snowden gets a tremendous amount of credit. i think the country barely knew the extent of the nsa spying. there had been stories over the years, but he provoked a significant discussion and debate that we should have had. i actually think the nsa position in this case is a little bit untenable. somebody should have said, i would argue, is the country

ready for the giant amount of spying that the nsa can do? without even going to the nitty-gritty of it -- i don't think the country had that debate. i don't know what the result of that debate would have been. it might have been even more intrusive spying, but i'm not sure -- it does not answer the question. in a weird way, as a journalist, i don't think that is my question to answer. but a news organization took advantage of some of the things leaked and they were really important. >> i do not object to making it illegal and attaching penalties to someone that has sworn not to

release information inside the government and its reasonable for the government to consider and potentially criminal if they

do. it's a very different question from our responsibility in my view is we have not stolen or paid someone to steal the information, our job is to inform the public. we are in a different role. and maybe the administration's job to protect information like this, but it's our job to release it. being careful about not putting any additional people in jeopardy if we get it. being a lawyer, i am not going to convict him without a trial, but in these situations, sometimes it is civil disobedience and they choose knowing their penalties but more important for our discussion, it is our responsibility if something is newsworthy and we did not steal it, to present it to the public and let it be part of the public beta. >> i am also going to dodge this.

[laughter] it's not my place to say, but think of what we know now because of the his disclosures? what we know now is really important. people had to write another government was doing it. >> do you think the disclosures helped or hurt our cause in terms of trying to get more information out of the government? >> i would argue they help our cause for two reasons. the government has yet to offer substantial proof that they truly hurt national security, which helps our cause because that is always the argument. the second thing, i think in the case of wiki leaks and in the case of snowden, the press behaved aggressively and responsively. i have worked, i mean, i have looked at the snowden disclosures in the course of our coverage of it.

there are things that everyone, including glenn greenwald, has not disclosed. i think it proved that the press can be very responsible and is not looking to just throw things up that jeopardizes lives. i think it helps our cause. the government might argue otherwise, but i would make the case that we were doing what we were supposed to do but we were careful. >> i guess my view, we in the media, we will never win any popularity contests. we're sort of down with public approval, and i think that's ok. the real resistance to powerful institutions in our society right now, we are often lumped together with other powerful institutions, and it's kind of a populist resistance to people with a lot of power. the fact is that the media does. i would say that it's our job to do it well and responsibly. not worry too much about whether we are popular as we're doing it

as long as we think we are performing a public service. >> i do worry about the chilling effect depending on what ends up happening to snowden and the chelsea manning case, it certainly must discourage people who would be tempted to disclose that kind of information from doing it in the future. while i agree the media has credited itself with the way they have handled these cases, but i worry about this like i do the james risen case. >> one of the most common things, by the way, that you hear a lot is i'm going to lose my job. i think it's a very serious concern. >> i want to take advantage of the years of experience and your thoughts on this here to give some of the young journalists and other journalists out here a sense of some best practices. what advice do you have for organizations or individuals who

come under fire of the government, be it city hall, the state, or federal government in terms of protecting sources? >> i'll start. clearly, we are living in a world where you have to assume that your work is being watched. you have to the very careful about the use of e-mail. there are encrypted e-mails. you have to be very careful about phone calls, particularly in going places where you think you are being watched or followed. at the very least, you want to turn off your phone. that is probably not enough. very often you don't want to

have your phone on you. when we travel globally, we take a burner phone, we will take an electronic device with no sensitive material on it. there are lots you need to do in terms of basic self protection. there was a report done by the aclu talking to 50 journalists about how you are being deterred. the main thing they said is they feel like they are in the espionage business now more than the news business. you do have to be careful about all of those things. we way over use e-mail and there is someone looking whether it is a foreign government, federal, or local. being careful about all of those things is really important. you have to exercise best practices and be very clear with your source about whether you are protecting them and under what circumstances.

you need to be clear with your editors under what rules you are operating under. will your organization back you up? it's important to work in an organization that will back you up. one of the virtues of the large mainstream media, although we all have our faults, is that these organizations really do support journalists when they are in trouble, and it becomes important in a world where that happened more and more. >> steve made two really key points. i would hope anyone in that situation as a reporter could rely on the organization they work for to go to bat for them. i think this is more important than ever, but to make sure in negotiating the terms of

disclosure with your source that they understand the risk they are taking on as well as being aware of the risk that you are taking on. i think those conversations need to have a much more detailed conversation about those types of disclosure and they have gone up dramatically in the past couple of years. they are possibly risking jail time and other penalties. they should know that. it's part of a journalist's responsibility to make sure your source is aware of the risk they are taking. >> i think i would agree with both of you in best practices, making sure your editors are behind you, and then the other thing i would add is more of a cheerleader point, which is to keep doing it. what inspires me about jim is he did not come to me and say he would actually like to cover the agriculture department or just do something different. he remained in the realm of national security. he continues to break stories. he's hampered, but he is still in the game, and i think that sends a tremendous signal to the people who want to chill is reporting but also a signal to those who do that kind of reporting. >> for every jim risen case, there are dozens if not hundreds of subpoenas and not everyone of these cases end up with the potential for jail time for the journalist involved, which i think is an important point. that very rarely gets to this point. >> one thing that's really encouraging, speaking to this room, is the younger journalists and those coming into the business that i have been meeting are amazingly intrepid and have tools that we don't have. they're really good at social media, searching on the web. there are people working for

buzzfeed, vice, and they are all doing a really exciting work and that's a positive indication of where the world is heading. even if you can stifle some organizations, there are so many people out there trying to get information that it's a real positive. >> the only thing i would add to this, and this sort of plays on something steve said earlier, the ability to get -- especially for international investigative stories, some of the best investigative work of any news organization over the last couple of years have been international investigative reporting some based on public record. you're trying to cover what amounts to war in yemen and pakistan, there are ways to report inside this country. you can behave safely if you keep finding stuff out. there will still be ways. let's not forget for all the restrictions, i would include the two news organizations on my left and right, there have been some remarkable disclosures in the last couple of years that show the press is still in the game in the big way. >> this has been terrific and i

want to thank you all again. i think we have time for questions from the audience. please step up to the microphone and ask your question. >> i do not think it is on. >> can someone help her to see if that is on? there we go. >> hello. i'm from the university of the virgin islands. aspiring journalist. you touched on it briefly, but research is hard, expensive, and it requires copious amounts of just in-depth work, so to see, and you did touch on safety. i have a question in regards to that a little bit more. you are talking about burn phones, but if you are really into a story, is there a way for

you to be as careful as you can possibly be? what would you advise? if someone is out to find you and stop you, most likely they will do everything in their power, and sometimes that's a lot of power. it's a dangerous case. espionage is what it seems like when we are trying to get information because there are connections with cops, government officials, and you want to protect yourself as well as your sources. can you elaborate a little bit more on that? i am very intrigued when you listed burn phones, and i was like what else, what else. [laughter] >> again, there are all sorts of

tools to encrypt things but i think your point is very often they won't work, right? are you talking about being in a physical danger? >> as you said before, as we excel in technology, we also excel in ways we can be caught. we are getting better at social media, there are more ways to be caught through social media. they can track your e-mails, they can also track your facebook accounts. whatever you post on facebook, your employers and anyone else in the future can go in there and peruse. >> i operate under the assumption that everything i say, somebody is listening to it. i think that's a worthwhile assumption. obviously here or on television, i know i'm being looked at, but on the phone, i assume that, too. when my parents who are 91 asked me what i did this week, i say i

cannot really tell you on the phone because literally, i'm fairly confident whether it's this here in government, someone in china or iran, there is someone listening. a lot of it is changing our habits and thinking about the fact that there is someone listening. if you are doing journalism in this country, we don't want to over scare people. to my knowledge there's one person in jail in the united states for doing journalism so it's very rare that it ends up that you get thrown in jail. one thing i have always found helpful, particularly when i work for small newspapers, was to write about it when someone is giving you a hard time. in other words, to make public what the problem is. if you're being investigated, write about it. again, we have a lot of power. we have tools. we own the presses, is what we used to say, we own the ability to distribute. that threat becomes newsworthy and we report the threat. that's just a couple of thoughts. >> hello. i'm a producer for the department of defense,

specifically covering intelligence. >> that's interesting. [laughter] >> i take back everything i said. >> it is very interesting. [laughter] >> i want to talk to you when this is over. [laughter] >> how do you decide when covering a story when to release a report or not if the government says this could potentially put someone's life in jeopardy? a case officer out in the field -- how do you make that determination of is this legitimate, or should we run this story anyway? have there been moments when you have held off on an investigation or a report because of those concerns? >> my standard has become you have to give me absolute detail of what you mean. it used to be the government would say, "if you publish this story it violates national security, and someone will get killed." that's not good enough for me. i want to hear who.

i want to hear the specifics. obviously i don't mean tell me how they are going to get killed. tell me what you mean. you cannot give me vague -- i really want to know. you mean a case officer in tehran? tell me how. the second thing, i demand that a request to hold something back comes from someone very high on the government. if the press person asks for it, i won't even take the call. it has to come from someone in the white house, the head of the cia, the head of the nsa. it cannot come from a press

person. usually when you say that, by the way, half of all requests go away because they're not quite willing to ratchet it up that high. i always insist they ratchet it up that high with offering a very, very specific proof. still, most of the time we go with the story. but if somebody offers -- are there stories we have held over the years? stories that met that standard -- yes. i will give you a classic one that has now been written about. i think most news organizations did not write extensively about corporal bowe bergdahl and his disappearance. we knew a lot about it. there was tremendous amount of information about it in the wiki

leaks documents, which i was involved in. we were in an awkward position because right around the same time, a reporter from "the new york times" had disappeared, david rohde. we were nervous about too much detail about his case coming out. so when the government asked about bergdahl, they made an interesting case that if we wrote stories about him that it would endanger his life. i can think of a lot of cases where i made a mistake and i was too cautious. by and large, those are the standards. it has to come from someone high up. it has to be very specific. i don't want to hear that i will have blood on my hands. i don't want to hear the vague that this will help the terrorists. i want very, very specific stuff. >> in the case of the foiled terror plot that led to the justice department sweeping up all those ap records, that story was held for five days at the government's request. their request was based on the fact that the operation was still ongoing and they were hunting these guys down.

it was only after the government said that it would not jeopardize the operation that the story was published, which makes what happened next even more outrageous. >> but that is the classic one. if it's an ongoing investigation and they make the case and they are very specific and it comes from somebody high up, that's a harder one to refuse. >> thank you. >> hi. professor libby lewis from ucla, former news reporter for cbs and nbc. i have a general question for each of the panelists. i'm wondering should we, as journalists, educators, etc., be concerned about relationships between the government and journalists when we see more and more in the news, we hear about journalists covering stories in other countries being held as

potential spies, being accused of spying for the u.s. and other things? should we be concerned about the fact that the cia and the fbi have recruiting booths here at various journalism organizations? not just nabj, but various ones. doesn't that beg the question -- what are they here for? these are journalism conferences and why are they interested? should we be concerned? >> we have journalists in the 200 locations around the world, almost 3000 journalists. it is a not uncommon problem where foreign governments accuse and haul our journalists in for being spies often for the u.s. any ambiguity, and we'll we say we have no association with any government, and we are entirely independent. whatever accusation is entirely untrue, but any ambiguity that in a government has about their using people who purport to be journalists as spies really puts lives in danger. i am extremely concerned about

it. that's not to say that the cia does not need people with journalistic skills to do things that they need to do so i'm not saying recruiting people for other things is a problem, but any time an intelligence organization uses the journalistic cover, it puts our people and journalists around the world in enormous jeopardy. >> thank you. >> in many of the countries that our news operates, the fact that we are independent does not resonate because the notion of independence does not translate. particularly for news agencies, the standard definition is that it is something tied to the government. the type of agency that ap and reuters are, it's hard for people to comprehend.

when i was in asia, i often had to explain that ap does not stand for american press and we had no connection to the government. the conversation can be very difficult to have because intellectually we all understand the definition that there are countries in which every entity is controlled by the government whether it is industry, education, or media. >> thank you. >> andrew humphrey, wdiv in detroit, michigan, and cofounder of the digital task force for nabj. what other loopholes exist now in the law that you can enlighten us on? for example, the patriot act, can electronic equipment can be confiscated at u.s. borders by customs and be searched without warrant? things of that sort. >> to be honest, i'm not

familiar with that rope enough to sort of go through the list. i don't know if you guys are. i am not sure. >> i think we would need a media lawyer. there's not one on this panel. >> that's the next panel. >> i can speak specifically to the guidelines about seizure of phone records, in which there is still a loophole. the loophole that the attorney general needs to sign off if it poses a threat or compromise the integrity of the investigation, and they can still do what they did to the ap. the loophole is smaller, but it still exists. >> federal laws broadly in the area of surveillance sometimes are wildly overused. there was an internet entrepreneur, aaron swartz, who downloaded a bunch of documents

from m.i.t. jstor document cache, and he ended up being indicted on very, very serious felony charges and ultimately committed suicide. he was operating in ways that would be parallel to ways journalists operate. there are some pretty draconian laws that are still on the books. >> hi. i'm from world policy journal. something i've noticed in the last few months buzzing around social media, especially more

recently around the conflict in israel and gaza is this impression among the general public that somehow the u.s. government or other governments are putting pressure on your organizations to color coverage in general. i am not speaking about specific cases, about classified documents or operations, but in general the state department or the u.s. military or the obama administration is pressuring the "new york times" or the associated press to run certain stories, not run certain stories, to cover a hospital that was hit or not hit for a u.n. compound. can you guys speak to that specifically? this is something which i try to correct with my colleagues, but may be coming from your mouth it may or may not be more persuasive. can you talk about what contact you guys have from the administration or other governments about your general coverage of certain issues, or topics, or conflicts? >> what you'd just described -- and i suspect my two colleagues would say the same thing -- that does not happen. i have never had -- i was a washington bureau chief, editor, i have never had -- i have had

many complaints about coverage, usually complaints about profiles that people thought were too negative. the obama administration is very sensitive, but in terms of how to cover things, how to place photos, i've never had a conversation like that. none at all with anyone in the government. i would bet these guys have not either. >> no, and i think if that were to happen, the obvious answer would be no because we are subject to our own editorial decisions. >> there is almost no subject order to cover than israel and palestine that both think they are biased. we get enormous increases in complaints when that story is flaring up from people on both sides leading to some conspiracy theories about who is influencing the coverage but we have not experienced any pressure on that.

>> the e-mails from each side, i wish i could just send them to each other because they are completely, on both sides, they are completely unrelenting and not at all understanding the difficulty of it or the fact that each side -- sides -- have very hard views and don't see the other side out all. i wish i could just sort of exchange nasty e-mails with others and just get out of the way and watch the discussion. >> today, we discussed a lot of issues facing our industry. a question for each of you. have journalists done a good enough job of explaining to the public what it is we do and why we do it? >> i would argue that we have not.

i think we are much better now than we ever were but i come from a tradition when i worked in a regional paper in the days when newspapers made so much money that you did not have to i come from a tradition in the days when newspapers made so much money he did not have to court them. i think we are much other at it. i try to answer e-mails from readers. we invite people to our page. we talk more in sessions like this about how we make decisions but i think sometimes we take for granted. i think i'll are always stunned that the federal government does not call up and say isn't it time you use of gaza