be effective for the following election cycle -- not the election cycle of 2016. >> righ. t. stuck with talking about the misunderstanding of facts and circumstances. there is a misunderstanding that we are not pursuing our statutory sponsor abilities. we are processing and trying to provide standards but to the extent in the ordinary course we will be auditing organizations as to whether there performing appropriately the standard that we have to use this fax and circumstances. say that we will not change the rules we would just like to make them clearer. >> mr. chairman, i would conclude by saying that the american people will be so fed

up by the time this presidential election is over with the amount of dark money, undisclosed, unlimited money that comes into the political system, that they will be readily accepting of a clarifying change in the irs, thank you. that it isust say always adjusting to me and our friends on the other side who benefit from hundreds of billions of dollars over the reported,t are never are finding fault with something withpeople have to report regard to 501(c) four's. political purposes can sometimes be social purposes and that is

why the irs is allowed to be at least 50% for political purposes. >> mr. chairman, i believe that all of it ought to be disclosed. >> see that you do but all of the union money ought to be disclosed as well and that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. >> it is never going to be because the democrats will not and i wouldo happen say at least they have to disclose to the irs what they are doing and the irs can make determinations as to whether they are doing it properly or not. the chairman would, i ask that you would yield to make a comment. it is this kind of back and forth that the american people are so sick and tired of and then all of this money comes in from whatever source. i agree that disclosure ought to be across the board.

>> but that isn't going to happen and he cannot just make laws at the irs. one-sidedly, it is so in favor of democrats that i don't understand what the argument is about terry all they can say is wouldn't it be wonderful if everybody could disclose what they are doing and what it is for. that has not happened. on either side we do not have enough political fortitude to be able to resolve those problems. all i can say is you are asking the commissioner to unilaterally of his own decide how the rules should be interpreted when it is already interpreted. >> it is not in order, it is in chaos. reelection, having to

go around and comply with the laws that i limited to personal money and every dime of it has to be disclosed and then have the disadvantage in my last reelection which was three years ago -- the disadvantage that all of this avalanche of unlimited undisclosed money comes in against me to try to defeat me. all that i can say senator is, the laws have been interpreted and i have to say that many on your side will never that -- a universally

large percentage on your side would say, we accept the unions. you and i might agree and you say they ought to disclose. they do disclose hard money. it's the other money they don't disclose. at least they have to disclose hard money. knowe fact that you don't there is a reason why they don't require them of the democrat side or the republican side make it necessary to disclose who does these organizations is because we know there will be people who deliberately go after the people who donate. very so very unfair way this is something that isn't as easy to discuss as i think you will theg it to >>

distinguished chairman yield for a question. ise knows that i believe he distinguished and a fair-minded individual. system is out of effect no is in campaign finance law. the way you can do things now. wouldn't you think that we would need some kind of order in the system? >> we do have order in the system. i don't like it, but the fact of the matter is that the reason why the supreme court ruled the way that it did is because one side had a decided advantage of soft money that the other did not have.

whether it is right or wrong, neither side should have an advantage over the other. chairman will have the last word in this hearing. but i think the chairman and i can at least agree that the present system, the american people are getting fed up with it. moretter start to find out equitable ways to finance our elections. anybody would agree with that generalization. hand, it's hard to complain when they have been benefiting from a whole raft of money that was never reported and being used consistently against republicans throughout the country. some, it is big-time

donors. i suspect that is one reason the supreme court made a ruling that it did. groups have to disclose how they get their money. they have certain obligations that exist in law today but we will consult that here. all i can say is the system is not fair. republicans think it is disastrously not fair. democrats are thinking that these organizations that can spend money on politics without disclosing the names of their and, well let's go back to one of the original cases. the naacp, where does it get its money?

democrat arguments are you should not have to disclose who puts the money up for politics because it can be used to discriminate against people and put the money up. these are not simple issues but i don't see how democrats can complain when they have had a decided advantage all these years with the unions and other organizations that don't have to report what they are doing very >> mr. chairman, this democrat is complaining and the reason i am complaining is, i'm sure that the fair-minded chairman of this committee does not believe that one wrong should be connected with another. thatl i am pointing out is your side will never give up the decided advantage that it has if you can do that, we can do business.

we can solve these problems overnight, but you will never be able to get them to fully disclose all the soft money that they get from unions and other groups that i could name. let me just say that we have appreciated your patience here today, mr. commissioner and i whitewashk anyone can what happened. i'm glad you are making changes that will hopefully ensure that this bias will never happen again. i don't see how anyone can say these are just mistakes. if you look at what lois lerner herand those who were with it was a lot more than just mistakes. it was wrong and it was deliberately wrong.

i don't care how much you try to whitewash it you cannot do that. but to make a long story short i'm very appreciative that you are at least trying to write these wrongs and do what you can. i have a high opinion of you i will get in trouble with the house for saying this, but i have a high opinion of you and i think you are trying to put things in order and i will count on you doing that. thank you for your patience throughout the hearing. let me just thank everybody who attended and participated in today's hearing. i thought this was a thoughtful and useful discussion that will help us to improve the irs. and i want to thank you again, commissioner, and for your cooperation with regard to the

committee's report and recommendations. as always, any member of the committee should feel free to's submit recommendations. i'll set the guidelines for two weeks from today. >>, now, more on the efforts by some republicans to impeach the irs commissioner. this is 30 minutes. examiner" and here to talk with us a little bit about why the gop is moving to impeach the i.r.s. commissioner. sarah westwood, thank you so much for being here. guest: thanks for having me. host: give us a little background. why are house republicans taking this effort to such a strong measure? who is really leading it? guest: congressman the chairman of the oversight committee is really leading this charge. the oversight committee as you

know has been investigating the i.r.s. for now two years because of the allegation that the i.r.s. was going after conservative groups. department of justice opened a probe. the senate finance committee also had its own separate probe. and just last week the department of justice decided not to pursue any criminal charges against anyone involved in the conservative targeting scandal. host: that includes lois lerner the former director of i.r.s. guest: exactly. perhaps frustrated with that move it could be read from at least the timing of this impeachment resolution from these 19 republicans they are now saying commissioner john koskinen should be removed because he has failed to comply with these multiple investigations. host: so go back a little bit further for us and sort of lay out what exactly the controversy was over how the i.r.s. perhaps targeted or

addressed conservative political groups. guest: the allegations were that the unit that oversaw whether or not groups got tax-exempt status, that was a unit headed by lois lerner, whether they used criteria found in tea party groups looking at key words like patriot, tea party, what have you, to keep these conservative groups from getting tax-exempt status. and placed extra scrutiny on these groups when applying for tax-exempt status for the first time so perhaps they wouldn't be able to get that status and do the same kind of work in the political sphere. keep in mind this all started happening after citizens united supreme court case that allowed these groups to have a more active role. in electoral politics. so whether they have the tax-exempt status was a big factor and whether they could operate and play a major part in swaying the election. that is why this is a very crucial time for the i.r.s. to be targeting these groups in

the first election in the post citizens united era. host: what happened to lois lerner after these allegations were brought? guest: well, she hung on to her position for a little while. she went before the oversight committee, very infamously invoked her fifth amendment rights not to speak. that angered a lot of congressional regimes. eventually there was so much scrutiny she just had to step down with her retirement benefits which did anger some republicans. up until last week she was still under investigation from the department of justice who was determining whether they were going to press charges against her. hat didn't end up happening. now this is a chapter that is essentially closed for her but now john koss inen, now the commissioner, this is still an ongoing issue. host: why is he wrapped up in this? these are allegations of actions that happened during her watch. why is he being threatened as well?

guest: he is being impeached for something separate from the conservative targeting scandal. he is being impeached the republicans say because he failed to comply with congressional subpoenas for documents, that he lied under oath when he testified before congress about the status of ose documents, and that he overall did not foster a culture where employees were encouraged to cooperate. for instance, there was this issue with lois lerner's hard drives maybe crashing, maybe destroying all of her e-mails. the timeline of when he knew -- when told congress is the timeline when he said the i.r.s. is doing everything we can to get these e-mails to you, congress and then when the physical hardware was turned over to the inspector general they were able to just very quickly discover those e-mails and the question was raised, how hard did the i.r.s. actually try to retrieve these e-mails? so there are a lot of questions

wrapped up in this but basically he is being accused of covering up the misconduct that lerner facilitated while in office. host: you can join our conversation as well by calling in. 202-74 -- call at you can also send us a tweet at c-span wj. find us on facebook@facebook.com/c-span or send an e-mail. we're talking with sarah westwood. she is an investigative reporter with the washington examiner. what has the response from the democratic party been like to this movement among top republicans to impeach the commissioner? guest: democrats obviously don't think it's a good idea. they think because john koskinen was not with the agency when most of this misconduct took place and

because whatever coverups there may or may not be were promulgated by people lower down in the agency not by himself personally. at least there is no evidence that, you know, commissioner koskinen was burning documents in his office or anything like that. they're saying there is no real reason to take such drastic steps that he's done nothing but try to reform the agency since coming into office. and they're saying this is really just a political stunt by republicans for retribution against the department of justice for failing to press any charges against i.r.s. officials. host: senator widen spoke recently at a hearing on the hill and asked i.r.s. commissioner koskinen what is eing done to ensure future e-mails and documents aren't deleted. >> the backup tapes, though there is no evidence they were deliberately destroyed to hide evidence now there have been some reports that employees didn't own up to their mistakes

when investigators came knocking. what is the irs doing to ensure that its employees in the future keep e-mails and records safe? >> again, several things. first of all, we discovered that it was a mistake that shouldn't have happened and it obviously did not help our response to the investigation. what we need to do is when we have a document protection and retention request, what we learned is you can't rely on sending it out from the top in a large organization, 85,000 employees, and assume it will automatically be transmitted accurately through the bottom. we have made it clear going forward those retention requests will go individually through the chain of command. secondly, we are training our employees as to what it means to retain all media within a particular area. but the broader issue is that we're dealing with is we should not be depending upon individual hard drives and disaster recovery tapes as a a

backup system. host: we are talking with sarah westwood an investigative reporter for "the washington examiner." can you tell us a little bit about some of the changes that the commissioner was talking about in terms of policy around how e-mails and communication is kept at the agency? guest: that is the biggest thing that koskinen is working on is this policy that makes it illegal for i.r.s. employees to use their personal e-mail addresses for official business. that's been quite a high profile issue in the government lately and it's something that lois lerner did to shield some of her e-mails from investigators. obviously there was an investigation going on at the time she was sending the e-mails but it complicated efforts to obtain documents that were necessary for congress and presumably the department of justice to look into this issue. so that's something that he has pushed. congress is behind him on that, something republicans and

democrats want. but some are saying those reforms just don't go far enough to change the culture at the i.r.s. host: our first caller for the segment is paul from danville, virginia on the independent line. paul, good morning to you. caller: good morning y'all. you know, the lady there said that she is denying it, that's why the tea party was formed. no, the tea party was formed because of the policies of obama's administration with the tax policies. that's why it's called tax enough already. and the other thing is lois lerner did not claim the fifth until after she made her statement. if you claim the fifth you're not even supposed to make a statement at those hearings. that's why everybody got upset. and one last thing. when the tea party that other people formed because they're tired of these policies, these socialist parties, schumer and reid and a bunch of them, these far left, extreme leftists,

said the tea party needs to be investigated because of their actions. thank you. y'all have a nice weekend. host: all right. that's paul from danville, virginia. guest: paul, the reason citizens united court case had an effect on this i.r.s. scandal is only because it allowed nonprofit groups to play a greater role in politics by opening up doors on what they could spend money on in politics. it did not create the tea party. you're absolutely right. but it created the ability for tea party nonprofit groups to play a larger role. that's all it did. as far as democratic attacks on the tea party, those are definitely real. those did happen. but, you know, there was misconduct perhaps on both sides of the aisle there. tea party groups did suffer as a result of the i.r.s.'s actions whether those targeting actions were the result of malicious political targeting or the result of just lax oversight in the agency.

i mean, that's what was under investigation. but, certainly, the end result was that tea party groups suffered. host: here is a comment, a question from twitter. ultimately what governed whether a political group will be granted tax-exempt status? aren't tea party groups currently tax-exempt? guest: tea party groups can be tax-exempt. ey aren't supposed to be having a specific political agenda, not to be supporting specific individual candidates. they can present a world view, a conservative view of the world, values, that sort of thing in a general political sense, but it is harder for those tax-exempt tea party groups to gain that status if they're breaking rules in the way they're going about participating in elections. host: and the 501 c 4 is that right is the status? guest: yes. host: caller, go ahead.

caller: yes. i just wanted to point out that there has been no legal or court fipedings that lois lerner -- findings that lois lerner was guilty of anything. all it talks about is all about what the politicians on those committees said. they're not real lawyers. they're just talking politics, when a person can claim immunity or not, fifth amendment, and, also, the guy who is head of that committee, he is the one that jumped out a week or so ago wanting to be . eaker of the house he's always attacking the internal revenue service, the government, obama. his partner from utah he thought was going to beat obama. he didn't. this lady is just talking a lot of hoopla. also, the i.r.s., it was found

that that department that lois lerner worked in was scrutinized and not only the conservative groups but they were scrutinizing all of the groups who were applying for those tax-exempt statuses. this lady with that examiner, that newspaper she works for, that's a bunch of trash. host: all right. we'll have to leave it there. sarah westwood? guest: well, the criteria that the i.r.s. used to go after political groups, it was called the bolo list, the be on the lookout list, that existed within the i.r.s. tax-exempt unit that lerner oversaw. there is no question there were more tea party terms on that list, lake patriot and some other ones that alerted i.r.s. officials to when they were dealing with a potential tea party group that needed to be scrutinized in an additional manner to perhaps another political group. that did exist. there is no question the conservative groups were

subjected to extra scrutiny. i mean, the treasury inspector general, which oversees the i.r.s., did find that there was inappropriate criteria applied to this scrutiny of political groups. whether that was motivated bipartisan drive, whether that was motivated by the fact that lerner was openly hostile to conservatives, which she was as some of her recovered e-mails do indicate, but, still up for debate conservatives would like to say that, yes, this was all out of, look, lois is biased against conservatives, and others are saying, no. this just happened because the unit inside of the internal revenue service was dysfunctional. employees didn't receive the proper training. they just, you know, things got lost in translation and it ended up conservatives happened to be the groups that were scrutinized more but it wasn't a nefarious motivation. that's where the tension lies. there is no question that tea party groups objected -- were subjected to more scrutiny.

host: let's hear what senator pat roberts had to say at the hearing on capitol hill this week. >> the justice department, lord knows how many other people have investigate this had with over a hundred folks and found absolutely nothing wrong. that is just not the case with regards to people that i know in kansas who have been targeted and not only targeted but also audited. i just find that rather incredulous that these two things don't match up. >> let me just say wup point if i could, mr. chairman. i think it's important. as i noted even in the limited resources we'll do a million audits this year. we'll audit democrats. we'll audit republicans. we'll audit independence. we'll audit conservatives. we'll audit people who go to church, don't go to church. >> probably audit some members here. >> right. all of those people will be selected by objective criteria, the g.a.o. has reviewed that with us. all of them need to feel the

only reason they're hearing from us is because of an issue in their return. >> but that was not the case with lois lerner. it just wasn't. it just wasn't. and now she has been cleared and is just collecting the pension. has anybody involved in this been fired, fined, reprimanded, denied a bonus, slapped on the wrist or even talked to in a stern manner? you're just saying everything is fine. it's not fine. >> it is not fine but it is not the problem of political targeting. it is a problem of in fact the recommendations you make, the recommendations we're implementing is we need to have a better operation to ensure it doesn't happen. lois lerner had political views that she was, had a right to. she had no right to have them expressed during her working hours. host: and that was irs commissioner john koskinen on capitol hill. we're talking with sarah westwood, investigative reporter for "the washington examiner." question from senator pat roberts was, was there any sort of any person who took any fault or blame for the actions that occurred?

were there changes made at the i.r.s.? guest: there were. the biggest example would be lerner stepped down. there was a new i.r.s. commissioner put in place. i think you wouldn't envy the position he was put in coming in when it was under such a cloud of controversy and to try to reform that is a huge challenge. one of those big things they did do which was perhaps, doesn't have that big an effect on the operations but certainly appeased a lot of conservatives was the cutback on the employee bonuses that they were giving to executives sund this cloud of controversy because that was angering conservatives. they were saying how can you be targeting republican groups and then receiving these big bonus checks? not necessarily any kind of correlation there but that's something that they -- that was done to sort of ease at least the p.r. aspect of what was going on. host: and the bolo list, the be on the lookout list, has that been changed at all?

guest: that has certainly been addressed and they've sort of taken out a lot of those terms that were unfair to certain groups and perhaps, you know, implemented some standards that make it more universal the way they look at these groups and not so ad hoc when they're going about scrutinizing. host: next on the phone lines gregory from pennsylvania is calling on the republican line. gregory, go ahead. caller: thank you, girls. i have an observation about the internal revenue service. the very nature of the service is internal and the exposure that it's getting presently is a reflection of the broken system that we got that our new hairman of the house described. what nobody seems to be saying

is the sharper -- we hear flat tax. eliminate the corporate tax. make it more competitive with foreign countries. why don't we have something harper, something that disciplines our main street community and contributes more to the well being and stability of our government? so that we don't have to keep alking about a broken house. host: all right, gregory from pennsylvania. a related question should we eliminate tax-exempt for nonprofits and let people just get out -- give out of passion for a cause? guest: that is certainly -- there are a lot of people who don't think it has any business in a democracy like this. there are others who say that these groups allow free speech to be given a bigger platform

because the groups can push views and positions on issues that people care about and these groups give them the vehicle for being able to contribute to what their passion is about. host: so there is a lot of controversy on both sides about the power of these groups. guest: for the moment they are playing a very big role. host: next up michelle from tomah, wisconsin. you're on the air. caller: hello. thanks for taking my call. i am calling because i feel it was a good thing lois lerner stepped down. there was some dirty business going on there. nevertheless, to go as far as start to impeaching people, the republicans have already made it perfectly clear that during the debates last time and this time that they just want to abolish the i.r.s. all together. they don't even want that to exist. so i'm afraid that this is just one step of them trying to make

the i.r.s. look bad in all cases and just to get rid of it completely. we need the i.r.s. to keep track of everything. to abolish it and get rid of it would be a tragedy to our country. i think this is just a way -- this is just a political move for the republicans to try to dirty the i.r.s. more so than ever. host: all right, michelle. we hear you. sarah westwood? guest: there are some republicans who would agree with you that impeachment is taking it too far because it is such a rare congressional move. it hasn't been used successfully since 1876 when the secretary of war was impeached by the house and he wasn't even impeached by the senate when they finally went about holding his trial. even though his misconduct was arguably much more severe than john koskinen's.

impeachment is supposed to be reserved for only the worst crimes and misdemeanors that a federal official can make. some have argued that yes while perhaps john koskinen didn't handle this investigation as well as he could have, he didn't engage in any criminal behavior. and this is clearly a tool by the tropical storm try to keep this i.r.s. controversy going. i mean, whether there was real wrongdoing or not, that's still up for debate. but impeachment is not supposed to be used as a do over for republicans who didn't get the results that they wanted from the department of justice investigation, so some are saying that this impeachment is doomed to fail from the beginning. host: here is a tweet from moments ago. we saw papers to impeach i.r.s. commissioner koskinen's destruction of evidence and false statements under oath among the charges. "forbes" magazine also has this

headline. i.r.s. commissioner koskinen impeachment trial would be historic. as you mentioned it hasn't happened in a very long time. what exactly would be involved in the impeachment process were it to proceed? would the authorities go forward with it if other republicans don't agree? guest: now that 18 other members of the oversight committee have supported the impeachment resolution it moves on to the house. congressman darrell issa who was the previous chairman of the oversight committee, probably safe bet to say he supports this impeachment resolution of john koskinen. it is expected to maybe do well in the house judiciary committee. then the new speaker of the house paul ryan has the authority to decide whether he wants to bring this impeachment resolution up for a vote on the house floor. so up in the air.

there is no timetable for when they're going to go about doing this. the house did pass articles of -- if the house did pass articles of impeachment it would move over to the senate for an impeachment trial. this process is used so rarely it is not even entirely clear what exactly would happen in the senate but the most likely scenario is the president pro tempore would oversee the proceedings. senator orrin hatch also oversees the committee that investigated the i.r.s. in the past. if the senate voted with a two-thirds majority to impeach john koskinen he would be removed from his position but that is a lot of hurdles. host: next on the phone lines, katherine from mobile, alabama is calling on the democratic line. good morning to you. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. my question is, the c104 law to the best of my upsing was written and had -- my

understanding was written and had no tax exemption status in it to begin with so i don't understand how it got that in there in the first place. i think they should do away with any exemption for political contributions, period. this would end the problems. i as an individual contribute and i can't deduct my money so why should they be allowed to pack up together and put this money into our system? another thing about the irs. i'm going to tell you i'm over 60 and i've been audited twice in my life. once by the federal government. and once by the state government. and if you don't have anything to hide, it's really not that bad. these people are trying to do their jobs. they are basically accountants and, you know, they do work, bookkeeping work, and if they put search words into a computer and they were young they just probably didn't know any better and were looking for a faster way of pulling up all

things that might be questionable. so i guess that's my point. i thank you for taking my call once again. host: all right. katherine from alabama. sarah westwood? guest: well, what we're looking at here in this i.r.s. controversy that started in 2013 was not audits per se but groups that were applying for tax-exempt status for the first time. their applications were being given extra scrutiny. and so those groups, there was a lot of anecdotal evidence at least to suggest those groups were given questions to verify that were unduly burdensome that other groups weren't given to name their donor list and said in their ey meetings and some anecdotes that were floating around. questions that were perhaps considered inappropriate to be asked of a group when applying for tax-exempt status and

that's where the controversy really started. host: next up is sam from crystal springs, mississippi on the republican line. sam, good morning. caller: good morning, ladies. how are you? host: good. what is your question or comment? caller: yes. i just think the i.r.s. is just another tool from the corrupt administration that we have, obama, and it goes down to the justice department and the i.r.s. and the commissioner with his smug attitude that he has just illustrates anything that we think about the i.r.s. itself and i just think that this was by design. everything that happened. and anybody, especially these two from mobile, alabama thinking otherwise, are complete idiots. but this is completely a corrupt administration. host: all right. sam from mississippi. sir, can you give us -- sarah westwood, can you give us a little background on commissioner koskinen and his experience and how he ended up taking over from lois lerner? guest: he has a reputation for being a fixer.

he went into freddie mac and cleaned things up. he oversaw the office of professional management during the clinton era. this is something he is expected to excel in is cleaning up the i.r.s. and, you know, there are obviously differences along party lines and opinions on how he has handled himself as commissioner of the i.r.s. give president obama credit in the faith that he has in john koskinen shall the oversight committee republicans started calling for his removal, writing a letter to the white house in july of this year. and president obama said koskinen is not going anywhere unless -- he could have easily removed the commissioner and replaced him and done away with the controversy but he didn't so that speaks to the faith that the white house still has in commissioner koskinen despite the controversy. host: our last caller for this segment and for the show will be susan from culpepper, virginia on the democratic line. susan, go ahead. caller: i didn't think i was going to get on. okay.

i just wanted to comment about those tea parties and the hysteria in which they grew up, the financial crisis. there is a ton of money being poured into these organizations that sort of came out of nowhere. and if you look at the finances of these things, they started paying these huge salaries. i know that jenny martin, head of one of them, makes about $450,000 a year. i mean, i think the i.r.s. is in its rights to say, you know, where is this money coming from? where is it going? especially when they start wanting the tax-exempt status. host: all right. that's susan from virginia. sarah westwood, a last word? guest: perhaps it would be appropriate to ask those questions of all groups, to ask why are you paying your leaders such generous salaries? where do your donations come from? maybe those are fair questions. that's another debate. the question here was why are

you asking those questions of some groups and not of other groups? if you were to ask all of those questions of all groups, maybe that would be a fair policy and that's, you know, a different argument. but when you're just going after groups with a certain ideological bent because of what they believe and you're just asking those groups about those problems and just scrutinizing them, for their high salaries or for their donor list or what have you, then that's where it gets unfair. host: sarah westwood, an investigative reporter for "the peter co. examining health care.

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k versus cases, schenc the united states. some forms of criticism of the government were a federal offense. the head of the socialist party handed out leaflets against the draft. >> this is a flyer that was schenck.t by flyer isage in this fiery. it calls on people in the united states to resist the conscription laws. he was arrested and found guilty espionageespionage -- act.

our guests include a attorney thomas goldstein and a professor of history at yale university. coming up on the next "landmark ases." for background on each case as you watch, go to the companion book, available for $8.95 plus shipping. announcer: next, it a discussion on u.s. relations with israel. in live at 7:00 a.m., your calls and comments on washington journal. washington institute for near east policy hosted this discussion on u.s.-israel relations and on benjamin netanyahu's upcoming visit.

a comparison of previous president's approaches but the current administration. this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon. welcome to the washington institute. m robwrong about -- i a satloff. event. a book release if you follow the washington institute, you know with bush a lot. i publish hundreds of essays a gear. they publish them under our own series of policy watches.

we have our scholars are seven major newspapers, periodicals, journals. once in a while our scholars publish books. we are especially proud of the books our scholars produce. they are among the most lasting and meaningful of the products of this organization. we are a research organization. we are not a fly-by-night institute.n focused we want to add to our collective knowledge about middle east politics and the making of united states foreign-policy in the middle east and nothing quite does that like a book. today we are especially proud to be able to celebrate the publication of this book. book,blication of this "doomed to succeed."

bythe book just published the institute's counselor and strategic fellow, mike colleague, ambassador dennis ross. please join me in celebrating the publication of his new book. [applause] dennis brings an entire professional career as academic and policy-making to the writing of this book. dennis has the last quarter century, more than a quarter-century, in public service dating back to the creditor administration. he has served in senior white house positions in the administrations of ronald reagan, george w. bush, and couldn't build clinton. barack obama.

he has been the envoy for middle east peace and the coordinator for american foreign policy in east that isiddle known in the obama administration in the central region, especially focusing on iran policy. especially the u.s.-israel relationship. in republican and democratic presidencies. there is no other american that has the deep inside, personal background, expertise, and experiments to bring to bear on the history of america process relationship with israel -- on america's relationship with israel going back to the founding of the state in 1948. tonight we're going to have an in-depth look at what is behind ," and whatsucceed

can wade look forward to but this relationship as we look forward to the arrival of the current prime minister to meet with the president of the united states at a moment that is especially strained between the two allies. there can be welcome panel -- better companion for this discussion then the third person on this platform today, i am delighted to be able to welcome president obama plus a second advisor.security h girlfriend of this organization, h boyfriend to the u.s.-israel alliance, and someone who has, over the course of administration after administration, contributed deeply not to just strengthening the alliance but building the foundation for peace in the middle east. welcome tomilege to

and dennis together on this discussion at about what makes the u.s.-israel relationship, how it is lead tod, what can strains, what are the opportunities and challenges, and where this relationship may be headed in the years ahead. first i will turn to my colleague dennis to explain why, why "doomed to succeed"? why write this book? dennis: thank you. this is an interesting time to be writing about this. many people have asked me about the title. they look at the tensions in the relationship and say it must imply that everything will be ok, which is interesting when most of the pessimistic about everything in the middle east. the u.s.-israel

relationship is not doomed to succeed. my original plan was to write an overview of the history. to go through it in a summary fashion. the problem was as i began to get into it i had some wow moments. i wasd it not only that finding the same arguments i had dealt with, in many cases, 50 same words the exact being used. much is the same arguments, but the same words being used. the more i discovered that, the more had these moments, the more i became convinced i had to look through each administration and show where the assumption about and whyaspects emerged, they had such a durability. one of these things that struck assumptionsthe lived on, lessons learned from assumptions that should've been

invalidated would never learn. the more i got into that, the more i realized i needed to write this book, not only so i could give visibility and expose that, but i needed to read the book because i know it is going before the the year next administration in the i wanted to the next administration, the next president, whoever it may be, and did it for advising the president to a much more of the history, to be much more of their of the assumptions. one of the think star knows, in the policy world, in the midst of this, the tendency to have your assumptions is mostly non-existent. some are implicit, rarely express it. theseed to show how assumptions have had a durability and been sustained. i wanted to highlight the

aproach to his has often been derivative of the approach to the middle east, and many of those assumptions have been misplaced. one of the key assumptions when you read it, and i know you all -- what are the priorities of arab leaders? those assumptions have almost always tip wrong. for most arab leaders has been security and survivability. the relationship with israel is feeling that if we did certain things, this would somehow have an impact on our relationship with the arabs. historically, from administration to administration, but i do is go through each administration and go through the key events and assumptions strove responses to those key events. one of the key assumptions you

will see is typically what kind leaders is the occupation of what mattered to them. i am not saying that relationship to the united states is immaterial to them, but it never drove how they -- from theirheir standpoint, the one thing that was critical, especially those who would been friends with those in the region, was how reliable are we? would you pay this i demonstrate this in one relationship after the next. one of the things that i do throughout the book is show the echoes that reverberate over time. how you see the same behaviors on the