meals at lunchtime to 1.5 million more children. the educational and health benefits are very considerable, and i am delighted that we are now doing this across the country. >> brian donohoe. >> will the prime minister tell us why, with crude oil now below $70 a barrel, that price is not reflected at the pumps? >> i know that my right honorable friends, the chancellor and the chief secretary to the treasury, have raised this with the industry. we all want to see the lower shifts in oil prices across the world reflected in the prices on our forecourts. we must continue to focus on that in our dealings with all the oil companies. >> mr. peter bone. >> we should be clear. it is not wrong to express concern about the scale of people coming into the country. people have understandably become frustrated. it boils down to one word -- control.

does the stand-in prime minister agree with the prime minister? because they were his words. >> there are some important controls that we need to improve and strengthen. it is essential that we reintroduce the proper border controls and exit checks that were removed by previous governments. i insisted that that was in the coalition agreement. we are now on track to do that, so, just as we count people in, we count them out as well. those additional controls are important, because we can then discover who has overstayed their visa here in the united kingdom, which is one of the biggest problems that we face. you have been watching prime minister's questions from the house of commons. question time airs live every wednesday at 7:00 eastern and

medical eastern and pacific on c-span. watch anytime at c-span.org, where you can find video of past prime minister's questions and other public affairs programs. >> monday night on the communicators, mary gray on the ethics of internet companies harvesting prayers will data -- personal data. >> it is a great question. because for all of us, as someone who uses a computer every day, we have certain expectations when we fire up our computers about who sees what we're doing, who we are sharing information with. arehe expectations i have shifted because i realize there might be another party who sees if ai am doing, say it --

message asks if i would like help making a purchase, there are certain lines we do not know we have crossed them until it is too late. there is not a clear sense of what is creepy because that is so culturally specific. one person talking loudly on their cell phone in a park has no problem with somebody standing next to them on a bench and listening to that conversation. havee same time, you can someone trying to have a private conversation that will go to great lengths to go somewhere secluded. we are not just dealing with the cultural context, we are dealing with individual preferences. >> monday night at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. next, a discussion on the senate report on cia interrogation techniques. then a look at congressional efforts to amend gun laws. on effortste hearing

to reduce sexual assault on college campuses. now, from washington journal, a discussion on the senate report on the cia and have interrogation techniques. this is about one hour. host: we want to focus on the cia report issued this past week and what it means for the u.s and also overseas. two experts on this topic, two different perspectives. stephen vladeck is a lawyer and constitutional law professor at american university in washington. thanks for being with us. and steven groves, the international lawsenior fellow at the heritage foundation. i'll begin with you, steve groves. should the report have been released in the first place? guest: my conclusion is that it should not have been released, primarily because we really did not learn anything particularly new about it. with the notable exception of some procedure called rectal rehydration, these are

procedures that were used and we know who they were used on for about 10 years. so you wonder what was actually gained by releasing the report at this time, other than possibly handing propaganda victories to our enemies if the host: should it have been made public? guest: i think i disagree with steve about what we learned. we learned a lot that we did not know before tuesday. we learned the full extent of the cia's interrogation program. we learned about some of the methods that were used . but most importantly, we learned about the extent to which the cia affirmatively misled different agencies in the government. kept some of these disclosures from congress over time. i think it is really hard to look at his report and say we have learned nothing. unless the american people do not have a right to know about the abuses being carried out in their name, i think the report should have been released. the real question is, why did it take so long?

host: this is this morning from senator mark udall. he served one term. he lost his reelection effort. he has basically said that the cia is lying. those are his words. guest: i think you will get a difference of opinion from mr. brennan, mr. hayden, and other heads of the cia and the officers themselves. unfortunately, we will really never know that because senator feinstein and her staff decided they would not interview any of the officials were the operators or analysts, the professionals who actually carried out these interrogations, to find out why they did it and whether they gleaned useful information from it. so senator udall going to the floor, calling our professionals liars, i think is untoward. guest: that goes to why the american public needs to see the report. we have the right to make judgments for ourselves. on steve's point on how the senate committee did not interview all the relevant

actors, they relied on primary evidence. look at the footnotes in the executive summary. there are some 3000 footnotes in the 500 pages. they are replete with references to e-mails, to live communications, to what was happening on the ground in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. i think this is why we need this information out there, so the american people can make their own assessment about who knew what and when. host: we are learning a new term, eit, enhanced interrogation techniques, he did not use the word "torture." here is more from john brennan from langley, virginia, last thursday, an unusual event -- a news conference with cameras. [video clip] >> as to the issues on which we part ways with the committee, i have only stated that our reviews indicate the detention and interrogation program produced useful intelligence

that helped the united states thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. let me be clear. we have not concluded that it was the use of eit's within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees subjected to them. the cause and effect relationship between the use of eit's and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable. irrespective of the role eit's might play in a detainee's provision of useful information, i believe effective, non-coercive methods are available to obtain such information, methods that do not have a counterproductive impact on national security and our international standing. it is for these reasons that i fully support the president's decision to prohibit the use of

eit's. host: again, a portion of the news conference with john brennan. and steven groves, eit is it torture? guest: that is the big question. if i was on the jury and you gave me elements of the crime, that it has to be severe, mental and physical pain and suffering, you have to look at the methods themselves. if you just waterboarded someone one time, people might not consider that torture. if you waterboard them 20 times within an hour, maybe it crosses the threshold. i tend to fall back on potter storks' opinion in an obscenity case. i will paraphrase by saying i do not know if i can define torture, but i will know it when i see it. guest: i think many, if not most, of the interrogations conducted by the military after 9/11 were not torture. but i think enough were that we should not be debating which ones were or which ones work.

the u.s. did in fact engage in torture on some detainees in some circumstances. there is also no question that often times that torture produced inaccurate intelligence. the cia itself concluded that 26 of the 119 men subjected to the eit's were completely innocent. i think we have to be clear that there was torture. we can disagree about the widespread nature of how much there was. and that the torture was in many of those cases, counterproductive and ineffective. the question is, what we do going forward? there's a reason why u.s. law has categorically forbidden torture. since 1994, why the international community refuses to recognize is ever justified. so how do we learn from this going forward? how do we take the senate report and actually implement itinto meaningful policy reforms? host: stephen vladeck, while the cia director was delivering his remark, senator feinstein was

live-tweeting, along with her office, really rebutting everything he was saying as he was saying it. how unusual is that? guest: it is the modern world of technology. this is new. i think senator feinstein has been an interesting player in this conversation. she feels, in very many ways, that is the heart of the story. i think she feels the fight to get this report out, that she was principally responsible for, was much nastier than it needed to be. it is unusual, but i think it reinforces the perspective by many members of congress that they were not told enough at the right times about what was going on. so they weren't able to perform their constitutional oversight function the way we would like them to have done. host: if her tweets, advising people to read the 500-page public report, which is available on www.c-span.org, she said the authority did not include the authorization to use coercive interrogation techniques. steven groves.

guest: well, no, president bush's order to the agency was to go out and find who was responsible for 9/11, to capture them, and prevent them from having a follow-on attack. to track down the actual terrorists who carried it out. implicit in that is once you have them captured, you have to question them. the problem was at the time that there were no regulations on the book. there was not a playbook the cia could pull off the shelf and say, once we get khalid sheikh mohammed, this is how we are going to interrogate them. so as the cia admits, there was a very difficult program to set up and follow. and mistakes were made when they were trying to implement it in the early months and years. guest: steve said there wasn't a playbook, but it is worth pointing out there was the 1994 anti-torture statute, which made it a crime for any u.s. official to torture anyone in u.s. custody. there is the 1996 war crimes act, which makes it to commit a

grave breach of the geneva convention. this includes the abuse of detainees during wartime. so no one questions that we were in a very difficult position in the days after 9/11. that resources were brought to bear. that totally understand why individual officers might have overstepped their bounds. the problem we have learned from the executive summary of this report is that this was not just a handful of rogue officers. this was a systematic program sanctioned at the highest levels of the cia, perhaps in the white house. that is still somewhat unclear. it is entirely predictable, understandable, the most zealous officers are going to push the boundaries after a terrorist attack on 9/11. that is not a problem. the problem is when, months or years after that, we're engaged in a systematic campaign to not only go past the envelope, not only violate the laws that have been in the books for 10 years, but to mislead congress about what they are doing.

i think that is where the problem is really come up. host: steven vladeck, a professor at american university in d.c., graduate of el law school, and steven groves of the heritage foundation, a graduate of ohio university'ss hool of law. [video clip] >> it is true we did not conduct our own interviews. let me tell you why that was the case. in 2009, there was an ongoing review by department of justice special prosecutor john durham. on august 24, attorney general holder expanded that review. this occurred six months after our study had begun. durham's original investigation of the cia's destruction of

interrogation videotapes was broadened to include possible criminal actions of cia employees in the course of cia detention and interrogation activities. at the time, the committee's vice chairman, kit bond, withdrew the minority participation in the study, citing the attorney general's expanded investigation is the reason. the department of justice refused to coordinate its investigation with the intelligence committee's review. as a result, possible interviewees could be subject to additional liability if they were interviewed. and the cia, citing the attorney general's investigation, would not instruct its employees to participate in interviews. host: senator dianne feinstein this past week on the senate floor.

steven groves. guest: this is perhaps the lamest excuse we heard from senator feinstein. before i was in heritage, i was the senior counsel on the subcommittee of investigations in the senate. we investigated very controversial issues, very sensitive issues. we investigated cases where the justice department also had an interest in the case. our investigations proceeded along two tracks. we cooperated with the justice department. we found a way to do it together. we would call witnesses to hearings that would have to take the fifth amendment because the justice department investigation was going on. it is investigatory malpractice putting together this big of a report on this sensitive topic and not talking to the men and women and professionals of our intelligence community who are engaged in these practices and did these techniques and got information we needed to prevent follow-on attacks. host: 202-748-8001, our number

for republicans, 202-748-8000 for democrats. you can join the conversation by sending us a tweet. you can join us on facebook. the washington post has identified 20 key findings from the cia report. you can check it out on washington post.com. among them, damaged the united states' standing around the world, rested on inaccurate claims of effectiveness. brutal and far worse than the cia represented. let's get to richard. sparta, new jersey. democratic line, good morning. caller: i think the best thing about the report is we get to see who in our country is pro-torture. you know who was pro-torture? the nazis. the people who are pro-torture would make great not these. that is the way i feel about it. how the bush administration was warned over and over again about an attack. did absolutely less than

nothing. and used it as an excuse to attack iraq. that crime has never punished. host: we will get a response. guest: i am resistant to compare anyone to the nazis. there's a good rule of debate that the first person to invoke the holocaust loses. in response to that, you know, the real question is what were those perspectives six or seven years after these abuses took place? if you look at the footnotes, you see thousands and thousands of citations to e-mails, to conversations, taking place at the time. those communications speak for themselves. i think it is really important to note that allowing the agency to engage in what is a post hoc rationalization of what is illegal is something that is why we should not be so alarmed. this is not a criminal indictment. this is a discussion document. a document supposed to educate

people about what happened in 2003 and 2004. what officials have to say about that eight years later does not change what happened. maybe it says there was a justification we did not know about or learn things after the fact. but it does not change the moment what we did. if we drive a sick family member to the hospital and run the light because it is so important to get to the hospital, we do not go back after the fact and say it was not illegal we ran a red light. there is a difference between being morally justified and whether they were legally justified. host: stephen vladeck and steven groves of the heritage foundation. maria is joining us on the line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning, steve. i want to ask the gentleman. i read in the new york post that the executive order that president obama gave against

torture is going to expire at the end of his term. i am wondering if that was one of the reasons senator feinstein released it -- so we could have permanent legislation. host: let me stop you on that point. the president did sign the executive order. will it continue under new administration? guest: unless the incoming president specifically removes that the executive order, that executive order will continue into the next administration. i do not see a situation where an incoming president, though they do review the old executive orders, would specifically withdraw that the executive order. where i might disagree with the caller is the possibility that any additional legislation could come out of this report. nothing will come out of this report. this report made no recommendations as to what could be done. in fact, most of the things that would be in place to stop what happened in the report have been implemented for many years now. including the president's order,

including restricting interrogation techniques to the army field manual. that is why, going back to the first question, "why release the report at all," is the one that really wants me. host: marie, i'm coming back to you. is there any reason congress can follow-up hearings now? guest: to have a very short window to have any hearings. we are at the very tail end of the lame-duck session. they have airplanes gassed up to head home for the holidays. that said, even if they were still in control of the senate in the new year, i very much doubt that there would be additional hearings on this report. host: back to you with your second question. caller: if we signed on to the geneva agreement and the u.n., why shouldn't we deliver over bush and cheney and others to the hague to be tried for war crimes? bombing iraq when they had

nothing to do with it. i think the mistakes were made are in the same league as saying we were only following orders. so thank you. guest: thank you for the call with regard to the international criminal court, it is worth stressing that legally, what that means in practice is that the u.s. is not generally subject to prosecution in the icc. some of the other states that are named or that at least we know are part of the torture program, poland and romania for example, are party to the icc. so it is theoretically possible that the icc could try to assert jurisdiction over u.s. officers responsible for torture in those countries. i think it is unlikely because, politically, it will have the same kind of consequences as we have seen in debate this week in the united states.

there is insufficient appetite to prosecute those responsible. i want to go back to steve's point about why they released the report. the fact we are having this conversation at all is a welcome development whether or not the republicans choose to investigate it once they take over in january. otherwise, we would just sitting out there denying these things ever happened. so whether this is a worthwhile public debate is a very different question than whether republicans should hold hearings in the spring whether anyone is prosecuted. host: when we hear callers refer to war crimes against president bush or vice president cheney, do either of you know, if they traveled overseas, do they face the risk of these charges? guest: there have been, over the years, attempts in countries like spain and the netherlands, i believe, to establish something called a universal jurisdiction that would bring indictments against cases in

high-level u.s. officials. so far, those attempts have all fallen flat. i do not expect president bush or vice president cheney to be traveling to questionable countries anytime soon, the likelihood of that case successfully brought against any of our top officials very low indeed. >> i also think it is worth pointing out of the u.s. has been at the forefront of the movement in international criminal justice is the 1940's to enshrine the principal of individual account ability, to reject the notion that just following orders -- although i think is correct, i think it will undermine our credibility and ability to leaders when it comes to prosecuting other leaders around the world. we are not above this. we have a different structure. we have a democratic structure.

i think we should be worried about our ability to say with a straight face that charles taylor and other totalitarian leaders should be called to account when we think there should be no liability here. we should at least all agree that laws were broken. whether it was understandable or not, the laws mean something and should be enforced going. host: to your earlier point, steven groves, this is from jack, who says, "would you think it's torture if the techniques were being used on you?" guest: i am not a suspected terrorist who killed 3000 people. that said, i go back to my original description of torture. it any of the particular methods may be used individually, it may not amount to torture. if you make me stand in place for 18 hours without food, it might not be torture. if you use all of the techniques and a combination over an

extended period of time, you start to approach that line. i also think it is interesting to note that senator feinstein's report does not use the word "torture." in terms of our credibility around the world being affected by these methods, which the world knew about already, our credibility is going to be destroyed with the other intelligence agencies around the world who are our allies. we have to work with, get information from. how willing are they going to be to share information with our intelligence committee, knowing that someone like that senator feinstein is going to show the family jewels, the crown jewels, to the rest of the world? guest: what information in the executive summary is disclosing intelligence operatives? guest: i didn't say we were exposing intelligence officers

is very what i say is that intelligence agencies in those countries we had black sites are 9/11 when to be willing after senator feinstein and her colleagues, her democratic colleagues on the committee without even talking to our cia officials showed the groundrules to the rest of the world. guest: poland and romania and other countries have nothing to do with intelligence officials in those countries that their secrets have been disclosed. the backlash has been all about the public in those countries finding out the governments were secretly complicit from our report. guest: yes, that's how they found out. guest: i think that's not a problem from the perspective of revealing the crown jewels. as we have a right to know what our government is up to an hour name, i think the people of poland and romania have a right to know what their government is up to. it's not fair to us to object to the disclosure of this report and the grounds it might harm another country's ability. that's the agreement these countries made when they participated in this program for those governments di e