Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion Focuses On The Pentagon Papers And Free Speech 20170217

Papers and how that changed news Media Coverage of National Security. Well hear from several washington journalists and bob woodward whose reporting on the watergate breakin helped lead to the resignation of president nixon. Good morning. Delighted to welcome you here and welcome you back those who were with us last evening with my conversation with daniel else burg. To our symposium to the legacies of the pentagon papers 46 years. Daniel will be with us again today and will be in the awed yns and im sure making his presence known as we go on. He is the person who made it possible for us to be here. I do want to mention that we are live on cspan this morning and we appreciate that very much and it will be shown again on cspan 3 and will be rebroadcast at a later date or dates as well. My only role right now is to interviews our moderator, who is a veteran of National Security coverage and reporting on abc and on cspan. Im sorry on cnn. Seen one, seen them all. Wont do what im tempted to do, which is to channel the president i wont do that. Jean has moderated panels of this sort all over the world and as a professional moderator as we could get. And i thank her for taking the time and will introduce our distinguished panelists. As many people observed, what could be more timely than a conversation about leaks. We have a President Trump who is calling these leaks lowlife, unamerican and criminal, and many we had daniel, calling for more leaks saying we need to keep the country and constitution secure. We have a Superstar Panel here to talk about the issues of balancing National Security with a free press and how that balance is changing and then argue whether there is a balance at all. Let me introduce who is next to me, a man who you are familiar, bob woodward who is the investigative journalist for the Washington Post, deeply involved with watergate coverage and much more. Section to him is benjamin powell. He was general counsel as the director of National Intelligence office under both republican and democratic administrations and on the end, another very familiar name, david sanger. He is the National Security correspondent for the New York Times. I would like to talk about the here and now. Leaks seems to be the inappropriate word. There is a deluge of information coming out of this administration right now. And if we put aside for a minute the massive dumps of information, the pentagon papers manning, havelsea you ever ever seen this volume of leaks coming out in an administration . Is it unprecedented or not . I wouldnt use the word leaks. Its aggressive reporting. And its the transfer of administrations that has created the enretirement and a good deal of this is coming from former people. But i agree, more leaks. And i think david would agree on this, there is this sense that reporters just sit around waiting for someone to bring in a grocery cart of documents like aniel did, or to call and i think the best sources are not volunteers, somebody who comes to us but people we recruit and go to and say, we want to understand whats going on. Spy craft . No. Its reporting. Nd its quite basic. Theres a lot that seems to be coming out as is always the case, there is so much more that dont know about, the whole general flynn issue that he came and now is departed. I think you could spend part of your life to untangle what is going on there. So many of the issues we dont know. And we dont know the answers to a whole lot of questions. Will we get the answers to those questions . As ben bradley used to say, the truth emerges. Sometimes it takes decades and sometimes it comes out rather quickly, but i think there should be patience in all of this. Have you ever seen anything like this . And what do you think is behind this . Is it politics, fear . It is highly unusual to see it this early in an administration. You have to assume whenever there is a transition, the people who come into an administration have come out of the campaign. They believe that their candidate, the new president walks on water and loyalty is at its highest. I mbt covered as many dministrations as bob has. Someone said what was Calvin Coolidge like. [laughter] there was a time that coolidge met you in that parking garage. [laughter] but its been my experience since i got that as a happy life a a Foreign Correspondent and threeyear correspondent that has stretched to 22 or 23. Administrations begin leaking after the first crew is kind of gone. A group that has come in to sort of undo whatever damage the initial crew did and how much more brilliant they are than the people they replaced. That takes about three years into an administration. Which saw this starting in week one, two and three, and that reflects a different phenomenon thats under way. First, the executive orders which were the first things to leak were put together by a very small group of people who did not consult broadly and because they didnt consult broadly, they made a lot of mistakes. We saw in the immigration executive order that nobody thought about green card holders or longtime visa holders and the promises we made to interpretters in iraq and so forth. There was an order that we still havent seen on detention that called for opening the Interrogation Centers if there are countries around the world that are trying to get our black site Detention Centers open. And those leaks were intended to act as a warning sign to other members of the Trump Administration who may not seen the early graphs that says you are about to walk off a cliff. When second and third versions leaked, they were missing the black sites. I think part of this was to create a new system because the old system wasnt working. The second set of leaks that you have seen has been just about the inner turmoil in the administration and i think that is in part because you are watching a group of professional people who have been through these transitions before who know when things are supposed to be operating like and recognize that that process is falling apart. If you want to look at the prime example of this right now, look at the National Security just gotten rid of flynn, the n. S. C. Is going back to day one. Before day one. They have to create themselves as if you were starting the transition. Now that may be ok if we run on auto pilot as long as nothing goes wrong between now and the time they all come together. What are the chances of that given the pace of events around the world. The second set of leaks is sort of a warning that you have to keep getting together. You keep saying leaks. These are not coming to us the executive orders might be different. They flowed out. Everything we are discussing is coming out of hide reporting. Are you concerned about this . Its a bit of a vicious cycle because what is the reaction when you see drafts published, when you see them leaked. The reaction is not necessarily, ok, make sure we are consulting broadly and widely to get the input. The reaction is lets draw the circle tighter which has the negative effect of not being able to consult more broadly. So it does not exist. Often the reaction is people go further and further into the bunker and say every draft that im going to put out there and do it amongst us three people here and well dribble it out. And i saw that in 2009 with some of the executive orders that were happening then where there coordination and those of us who were in the Intelligence Community, called up and said, i know you are going to sign it in an hour but let me tell you the impacts and there is always that scramble to fix things. It is not as if the reaction having observed this many times is ok, lets do this more broadly. Oftentimes it causes people to go further into the bunker. Because if you do it go through the whole process and feeling in the white house that everything that we give to the interagency is going to go straight to the press, it makes it more difficult and gives you more of that bunker mentality. Whats going on is not about executive orders. What at bottom it is is about the power of the presidency and is it functioning. There is this now, the first month into the Trump Administration, people, mostly opinion columnists are writing, its kind of over and you cant put it back together. And i suspect when the Trump Administration is written, his first month is not going to be that important. The president has extraordinary powers. And david and ben know this so well, a president can do all kinds of things and going to be measured by what they do. And in the National Security area, the president can do really start a war i remember talking to a group of academics sometime ago in the George Bush Administration and said, well, know, the constitution says congress will declare a war. The last declared war was world war ii and i think we have had a few since then that are undeclared. And kind of literally reading the constitution. And i said, look, george bush can invade mexico tomorrow if he wants. And somebody stood up in the back and said, dont give him any ideas. [laughter] but the president can employ the force as he sees fit. The only thing that congress can do is take away the money. And once the troops are out there and its a reasonable military excursion, congress is not going to take away the money. Trump interested in what is going to do as president. Thats going to be the measure. And all of this hand draining sm the first month has not been great. But what are those key decisions in the areas that are that real serious National Security, not things on paper. I think bobs right that the first month will not be seen asterbly important unless it portends a continued certain level of chaos. If he gets it together in the next six months, everybody will forgive a first month of chaos. F he doesnt, it will end up looking like they got off on the right foot. What is interesting in covering this administration, it has not been a straight line. There is nothing linear about covering this house. There are some things that they badly ne spectacularly and every once in a while they executed something in the traditional way. The Supreme Court nomination. No matter what you think of the nominee, he is eminently qualified. They rolled it out well. They coordinated with everybody. It was sort of a model of how you used to do this. And it was actually george bush who was usually pretty orderly about these things that when he tried to nominate his own inhouse white House Counsel for the Supreme Court without that, it collapsed on him. It is worth considering the fact that we have seen moments where they could put it together. What strikes me in the Foreign Policy arena is we have gone saidwhat then canada trump during our Foreign Policy interviews about japan, south korea and china, to what were more traditional encounters where right off after he said he would negotiate on the onechina policy. And he recognized that nothing else was going to happen with china if he didnt reaffirm the onechina policy. Meeting with the japanese Prime Minister and boring and you wouldnt have based . Except for that meeting on the patio. It came out of the north korean launch and they were trying to figure out was this an intermediate launch or the icbm we have been waiting for. And once they realized it was he intermediate launch, they went back to dinner with everyone else. I think what they will be measured by is the first big test. When you think back to the Bush Administration back when i was a white house correspondent, the first nine months of george bushs administration was about everything and nothing. And then 9 11 happened and it became the clarifying moment that defined what kind of president he would be. And defined, in fact, this whole century. Almost everything thats happened is connected to 9 11. Absolutely, including the movement of counterterrorism to the center of american Foreign Policy, which it was in the Bush Administration. We saw barack obama try to move away from that, and i think he did so somewhat successively. And we are seeing President Trump trying to move it back to the center again. Host do you think it will be tougher and tougher to get information out of this administration both because of the tightening circle that ben mentioned and also because some of that professional grasp that you mentioned will be leaving this administration, perhaps of their own choice, perhaps not of their choice . I think it depends on whether or not the president figures out how to make good use of the professionals in the bureaucracy around him. Host words this morning professionals at the state department have been told to pack their bags. I read one from the seventh floor, the coordination between the but the fact of the matter is, any president discovers over time that the United States government is a huge enterprise and cannot be run like a small family business. And a president who has run a business and argue how successful it has been, but it is small and tight. The techniques that worked so well at the Trump Organization do not work here. There was no vast bureaucracy or Intelligence Community that could go work out another agenda. In the real world of reporting, what the headline from the press conference that trump had yesterday really is where he said, he called the Justice Department and said looks like at these leaks. And again, back to the power of the president and the Justice Department, if they want to go look at leaks, they can really do this with an aggressiveness there was much criticism of obama and david got caught up in this, their effort to try to prosecute and stop leaking. But the power of the f. B. I. To come in and really examine that, if those are the orders and trump is right technically, some of this is illegal. And we would argue, its transparency and its desirable and generally the press is pretty careful about going through something that may be sensitive, but that may come down on our heads in a real serious way. I think thats absolutely true. While we all noted that the Obama Administration did more leak investigations than all previous presidency. Host by three times. To hey did it do it investigating suspected sources and didnt come after the reporters. And in the case that bob referenced, which was my reporting on the cyberattacks on he Iranian Nuclear Program Operation at the Olympic Games, they did a vast set of interviews with more than 100 people who they thought were potential sources, but they never did come after the New York Times, its notes. Which they could do. Which they could certainly do. And maybe you win or maybe you lose. We dont what the Trump Administration is going to adhere by the same rules. Exactly. Ben knows this so well, the power to do that is awesome, no . There were rules put in. There are rules governing the issuance of subpoenas to reporters. Those could be changed by the department of justice. Those are largely internal guidelines. Its not a statute, its not in the constitution and could be changed overnight. It could be changed. And there are people that would probably favor that, particularly in the realm of Communications Intelligence. That is the one place where there are federal criminal laws that say the leak of communication intelligence properly classified is a crime. Bob not just the publication. Exactly. Host i want to delve too deeply in there but the question of anonity. The Washington Post at least if you can say is using secure drop as well . We have a portal within the times site and find it advertised on our home page. Into which people can drop things in a secure way. It runs im in the same school that bob is in, which is that these things happen by getting out and trying to understand policy and get people to explain what theyre doing or understanding their objections to what is happening. And that is usually how we find these things. So when the times came up with the idea of putting in this secure drop and i think the wall street journal has now done. 99 of the stuff you get in there is going to be crazy and 90 of what is in there is crazy. But some of it is interesting. And there is a bad bureaucracy out there who feels a threat. Bob could i ask ben a question . Im somebody in the government and i come to you, a private lawyer and i come to you and i say i have documents and information im going to give the New York Times and the Washington Post, how would you recommend that i do it . We have to do a conflicts check to see if i can represent you or not. Let me make sure we are differentiating between two things. There is a big difference. There is the drop of things about policy in the environmental area or the vastness of what the federal government does where for whatever reason you are giving things to the press. That is unclassified government information. We arent going to get into the legalities or appropriateness of that. I dont think it comes into that drop. What we are talking about here is lets talk about National Security information. And are you dropping classified information . Yes. Yes. I have a boat load of stuff and they say you are one of the experts on this. Are you going to say you are conflicted out . No. No. Get our arrangements in place. So, look as a lawyer, so you are coming to me as a lawyer, so im certainly going to tell you about the laws that are on the books. So theres no we can talk about what the likelihood of prosecution is. So you are going to scare me and tell me not to do it. Im ethicically bound to tell you about the statute of dealing with Communications Intelligence and dealing with National Defense information and you could be subject to criminal prosecution. You could also lose your clearance and not going to be working in the National Security community anymore. There could be ramifications. Your bottom line recommendation would be dont do it . Im going to make sure that you have the full facts as a lawyer. But thats what you would expect, right . You are going to a lawyer and people have gone to jail and are in jail right now. People go to lawyers for protection and i would want you to tell me how to do this in a way suppose i have got something very important to the National Interests and you even looking at it say this should come out, how can i do that in a protected way or not . Mr. Powell so you want me to help you violate intelligence. And do it in an unanimous and secure way . [laughter] host basically, yes. Mr. Powell now im before the d. C. Bar for aiding and abetting you. Is that the next step . So ive gone to the wrong lawyer. [laughter] nurle if a person came to you, youd probably talk him out of it. Of powell no, the kind advice piece of this, but there is the fact. I mean, any good lawyer, you certainly wouldnt want your client to be surprised when you go and visit them in the federal correctional institute. [laughter] that, hey, you didnt tell me i thought you know, i read about these other guys like ellsburg and they get to go on panels and be treat adhereo. How come im sitting here 20 years in jail . You didnt tell me that. I thought i was going to get these awards and get to talk to bob woodward. Now im siting here in jail aupped didnt tell me i dont know of any lawyer, actually, who ever may advise somebody to go ahead, who would not make them aware of the severe of the risks of going ahead. Host if bob asked you, what about secure drop, will that give me anonymity. Youre a cyber guy now. Mr. Powell i dont know of anybody that works in the cybersecurity field that would say that any particular method is failsafe. Theres a lot of pieces that go into transmitting documents and other things that are involved. So the fact of the matter is is that would you have documents in some fashion and you would be placing those in the hands of a third party. You dont know the security of that third party. So relying on the security of one particular method has its own risks. Host you told me over the phone that you thought that the interplay between National Security and the press had changed 180 degrees. Since the pentagon papers. Explain what you meant. Mr. Powell i would say there was the pentagon papers to the era of the internet and the balkanization of the media. Probably was stable for a long time. In terms of a certain number of networks and newspapers that invested in this area and they were regular discussions when topics would come up. Now, of course, you have just the publication of raw material , without any type of responsible reporting on it. You just have whats happened with wikileaks and manning, the dumping out, hundreds of thousands of pieces of material , names of people who are democracy activists, names of people who have been helpful to the United States. Theres been negative consequences to that. So that is very different, i think, than the past where jude see an article and there may be where youd see an article and there may be discussions between the government and the newspaper and some of the responsible places would say, if you can show us hample, you know, were not just interested in putting out the names of sources, the names of technical methods, of so lets have a discussion about that. You see that in the past. Now, of course, you have a couple of things. You have the internet in which you can just people will just dump these things out there. Now you have the widespread solicitation that both have talked about of the material. Come and bring us the material. Thats not good reporting. Thats, hey, were like wikileaks, heres our drop box, drop it on in. Give it to us. So you have newspapers moving toward wikileakstype solicitation of classified information. And the fact that cant have discussions anymore in a responsible manner and have any confidence that its going to hold there. Host even with organizations like these . Bob the important question is, im sorry, is this solicitation with these drop boxes, would that make us participants in a conspiracy to release classified information . In other words, if the post d came to you and said, should we have this drop box, because i could conceive of a sent yare yo, somebody dropping scenario, somebody dropping something in there thats really sensitive, that causes some sort of catastrophe in the government, particularly the government now says the Washington Post is explicit and this is a conspiracy complicit and this is a conspiracy because they have a drop box. Benjamin i havent seen a case like that. Bob what would your recommendation a be . [laughter] benjamin like i said, i dont think ive seen any theory like that to date or ive certainly not looked at it. David let me disagree for a moment that the media of the kind that bob and i work for are doing what wikileaks is doing. The collection side may look similar, if youve got this drop box. Although the fact of the matter is, most of our reporting is in the traditional way one does reporting. What wikileaks does is take this material in and then dump it all out. And they dump it all out and have by and large unedited, without thinking very much about the motives of the people who dumped it in, and without interpretation. Thats not what we do. We may get this material in, and im guessing that the vast majority of it never sees the light of day. Some of it may fit in to a broader interpreterive piece of journalism of the kind that youre expecting the New York Times and the Washington Post and other media organizations that you want to go subscribe to to go do. And the example from this actually comes from the wikileaks operation on the state department cables. Which i was involved in when we were doing these in 2010. In which we published a series called states secrets. So we had about 250,000 cables that came from wikileaks. And we built our own sort of Search Engine and databases to go sort this through. And in the end, we wrote that series from maybe 150 of the cables. And only then from putting a huge amount of reporting around what we were learning from those cables. And only then from going to the government, in was a fascinating encounter or series of encounters with the state department and the obama white house, so that we were sure that we werent publishing when some dissident was going into the chinese embassy, so they could match it up with their cameras and throw them in jail. I had a moment when i got a call from the very senior official in the u. S. Government who said, david, were getting ready to publish one of the pieces of that gaddafi and libya, and gaddafi was still in power, this was about 10 months before he was thrown out of power this person said know, you know, i didnt know this until 10 minutes ago, but one person mentioned incidentally in the cable, just in passing, thats been an asset of the United States, meaning working for the c. I. A. , for years, if not decades. If gaddafi sees anymore a cable hes going to put him up against a wall and shoot him. I said, fine, well take it out. We even got wikileaks to take it out. This was a different era. As far as i can tell, hes still Walking Around and thats more than i can say for mr. Gaddafi. Host this 24hours news cycle, does it make it more difficult to give time to an investigation . Someone else is going to publish it. David it can because the Competitive Pressures are out there. Sometimes you just have to go out and say, folks, we need to calm down and slow down and figure out what we have here. And ive been at work on one project for the past seven or eight months, its a little hard to get away with that in this modern churn world and the churn sometimes slows down the ability to go spend the time on the kind of investigative things that bob and i and many other journalists like to go do. Benjamin youve got a culture of bob youve got a culture of impatience and speed which drives the readers and the viewers and the expectation is trump has his press conference yesterday and i found myself going to the New York Times or the post or other websites, well, whats the reaction . I want instant reaction. Host twitter is where you go. Bob i dont even know what that is. [laughter] now, but im sorry. I see sandy younger sitting there who did a great book on the pentagon papers. And the press, the papers and the papers, wasnt it called . Host yep. Bob and how really important the pentagon papers decision by the Supreme Court was to journalism and how liberating it was because in that decision, which was technically 63 decision, but there was a procurium issued by the court saying, oh, no, the press can go ahead and publish the pentagon papers. That created an environment. David was mentioning, youre and you go omething to the government and say, hey, look, we have this and it may be sensitive and secret, and we want to find out if its true. E want to put it in context. I think, at least im sure david and lots of people would agree that you dont want to publish something thats going to get somebody killed. Or thrown in jail. So you have to be very careful. I can think time and time again, going to the seventh floor on the c. I. A. , going to the oval office, and presenting information that we have, and you can do that knowing youre not going to be arrested and knowing in a more important way that the government is going to not say, gee, youve got this, were going to court to stop you from publishing it. So i think its been i know its been liberating to the press. Has it to the government . Benjamin liberating in the sense of being able to engage in those discussions . Bob yeah. Benjamin there have been a number of occasions where those discussions have been helpful. Now, but lets be clear. Its not a joyous and good day when you get the call and they say, we have this information, wed like to come in and talk to you like, say, at 3 00 p. M. Today because we want to publish it at 5 00 p. M. , unless you can sit down and have a discussion. Or so now i have a situation where classified information has been blown. Theres a source, theres a program, theres Something Else that may be very valuable to us. And often the case is youre doing repair around the margins. Bob you should have found another line of work if you were looking for joy [laughter] benjamin youre making it seem as if its a we go, we have this discussion and all is worked out and all is fine. What were doing is often youre trying to minimize the damage. But there is bob but youre given that opportunity because a of the pentagon papers decision, dont you think . Because of the pentagon papers decision, dont you think . Benjamin why is it . Bob because otherwise we wouldnt walk in the door in fear that we would be walking out in handcuffs. Thats not a joyously good day. [laughter] benjamin theres a reason for this process. And the reason for this process is that if were walking in there, its to say, look, we have this story. We think it is important and raises the following big policy concerns for the United States, whether its the wireless the warrantless wiretapping thing. David or whether its the use of cyberweapons by the United States against another state for the first time. And the precedent that it sets. And what were trying to get at is the concept that you can have a vigorous discussion about the policy implications of a hugely Important Program for the United States. Without necessarily blowing the how of how its done. The example here really is in nuclear. Most analogies to Nuclear Weapons dont work. Particularly, i find, i write a lot in the cyber field, they dont work in sibe, but one does. We had a cyber, but one does. We had a very vigorous discussion in this country about how and when we would use Nuclear Weapons. Without publishing most of the tails of how you build them, who has authority to use them, where we keep them, so forth. Some of that has leaked out over time. That debate turned out to be critically important. Because the United States policy reversed in macarthur wanting to use the bomb against the North Koreans and the chinese. We had crazy generals who wanted to blow up the soviet union during the cuban missile crisis. Kennedy listened to them and escorted them out the door. We ended up concluding we would only use Nuclear Weapons as a matter of national survival. Complete op sis sith from the eyes an opposite from the eisenhower, its just another bullet in the arsenal, which we dont even think eisenhower himself believed. Ok. So we need to have that debate in a range of different areas. Cybers one of them. Bob can i give an example . David please. Bob just because i think host i want to get to a question shortly, but go ahead. Bob real quickly. This was in the first month of the carter administration. 1977. Learned that we learned that king hussein of jordan was on the c. I. A. Payroll. And so i called jodi powell, who is the new press secretary for carter, and i said, i understand king hussein is on the c. I. A. Payroll. Whats your comment . And the code, i remember vividly, the code word for the app ration is no beef. I remember powell saying, no shit. [laughter] and then he did some checking and said, ok, the president wants to see you and ben bradley in the oval office tomorrow morning at 9 00. So we went. Went through and carter said, i want to talk off the record. Bradley said, fine. But i had my notebook out. He said, no, you cant even take notes. Ok. He said, off the record that, yes, this is true, they hadnt told him about it. He thought it was wrong to have heads of state on the c. I. A. Payroll. And he was going to stop it. Then ben asked the critical question. If we publish this, will it harm the National Security . Which ultimately is the measure. And carter said no. It wont. But i really dont want you to publish it. Kind of a, georgia, please do us a favor and dont publish this. Of course we published it. And he was quite upset that we had. But he opened that door by saying its not going harm the National Security. Ultimately thats the question youre asking when you go to the government. And benjamin and sometimes in that conversation, as uncomfortable as it may be for you, you work something out. So when i was working on Olympic Games on the cyber story on iran, i went to many people in the government. David a lot of this has now come out in court papers, im not revealing anything here that hasnt been before. I said, look, the storys got to be told. Cybers the first weapon that was developed by the Intelligence Community. So nobody really wants to talk about it. The Intelligence Community doesnt. But weve got to air how were going to use this. If there are techniques you think are particularly damaging because youre using them right now, that im describing here, tell me that and maybe we can figure out a way to word around that so were not undercutting ongoing operations. And in the end, thats what happened. Snowden as it turned out blew a lot of those techniques nine months later but we didnt know that at the time. Host did they get right or wrong . Benjamin i think this is this leads one to think that this is a process in which in all of these occasions, there is a considered and measured approach of the type thats being described by very senior and distinguished reporters here. These same situations, though, we can then draw a chart and start to have a fight about, well, what about this one, what about this one, the New York Times blew a very important financial program. The article was written in a manner that suggestive of widespread illegality. Turned out to be entirely appropriate based on unclassified subpoenas. No discussion with the government or consideration bob the program benjamin this involved the terrorist financial tracking program. Widely discussed. Entirely appropriate. Entirely damaging what was done there. David and unclassified. Benjamin that doesnt mean that it was the right thing to do or that it didnt have damage or that the article was written in a way that was entirely suggestive of sinister and illegal activity. Any number of other that have been discussed or published about in the papers bob you sound a bit defensive about that. Benjamin i think were presenting a situation where, as if in each case heres the process thats followed. And these are anecdotes. But for every one of those, lets not pretend theres not antidotes on the other side or stories, an he can debts or anecdotes or stories on the sore identify other side. Bob whats the worst that was published, that caused the most damage to National Security . Benjamin oh, boy. Id have to give that one some thought. Host while do you that, lets start taking audience questions. We have one right here. We have a couple of people with microphones. Theyre going run a mike to you here in the second row. Here it comes. If you can tell us who you are. Questioner my name is pete aer good luck. There were several rernses peter gluck. There were several references to the pentagon papers case. That was 45 years ago. Court has changed so much. Not just in terms of the people what confidence do you think media organizations should place that the pentagon papers decision would continue to rotect them today . Bob real quick and in the courts. All justices, all nine for the pentagon papers decision, are dead. So theyre not on the court. Believe it or not. [laughter] of course it would be different. You precedent here can change, absolutely. See under this to me is not a legal argument. That ultimately if the press is in the position, like i think New York Times and the post and others were on the pentagon papers, that this was in the Broad National interest that this be published. And that it actually did not harm National Security. It helped National Security. As you point out, elseberg is kind of a hero. So i think we have to proceed with that assumption. The difficulty here is if something gets published, which is so likely, that really does harm National Security or gets someone killed, then the press is in the position of being on the wrong side of the line. And the Supreme Court, having done a book on this a long time go, is inclined to look at what is the moral atmosphere and that doesnt drive the decision. But so its very important that we be careful, particularly in the Trump Administration. David points out, in the case he was involved in, the government was very careful in subpoenaing you finally got subpoenaed. David no, i never did. Bob oh. They wanted you to testify voluntarily or something . David they never subpoenaed me. Bob thats a kind of sensitivity to the First Amendment that would quite likely not be practiced by the Trump Administration. So we need to be careful, as we always have. Its always good to say when we told the world that king hussein was on the c. I. A. Payroll, i think it did not harm National Security. And it was in the context, you know, whats the c. I. A. Doing . What are they up to . What is their mission . What are they trying to accomplish . Carters position was, it was not right for us to buy heads of state in other countries. David two quick points on this. First, we published wikileaks in 2010, there was considerable internal discussion in the times d whether about whether or not the government would seek to relitigate the pentagon papers case and we were prepared for the moment. In fact, i think we presented it to the government the monday before thanksgiving in 2010. And we knew we were going to publish the following weekend. The thought had occurred to us that some of the courts might be closed over thanksgiving. We didnt plan it that way, but it was certainly a factor that we felt would be a disintendtific. The Obama Administration made no effort to go out and do that in the end. Secondly, bob makes the point that the pentagon papers certainly did a huge amount to inform the debate about the vietnam war. And if you go back and you read the pentagon papers today as a history and you think about the kinds of things that have been leaked, whether its wikileaks or snowden today today, the pentagon papers looks more innocent in some ways because it was backward looking. Host historical. David it was historic cal material. Whereas much of the material that has come out since has been operational to this day. And raises therefore i think a different set of issues. This process that we discussed of going to the government, i agree with you. This works when its the New York Times and the Washington Post and the wall street journal and a. P. And others coming in the door. Who are established journalistic entities and the white house will come in and have that discussion. Where i think it gets more worrisome is a lot of stuff that just leaks out over the internet, gets published on the internet, by people who either dont have the journalistic standards or wouldnt be able to attract the conversation to have that conversation at all. If i was the government, id be more worried about that than i would about the times and the post and others. Host another question. Right here in the blue. Questioner thank you for speaking today. My names shondra caldwell. Theres a clear distinction that i dont feel is being made and you alluded to a little bit, mr. Powell, in the sense of a distinction between revealing information of a dysfunctional white house or department of defense, and revealing classified information, which is classified not because of the content necessarily of the information, but the sources, means and methods by which its collected. And were seeing a distinction between the pentagon papers, which it was a very surgical approach to a singular issue that was felt to be important, compared to a Chelsea Manning or a snowden who is releasing terabytes of information without going through it and surgely daking out information that taking out information that they deemed should be shared and the sources, means and methods that we rely on for our National Security are being released to foreigned a never arial governments and person to adversarial governments. Thats con flated as being equal to each other and its setting a dangerous precedence in my mind that youre going to have analysts who are assuming that they should reveal whatever information they have access to because they feel that the justified. Im curious what your response is and the changing environment. Host who want to tack that will one . Benjamin i thought it was well said. This is an important distinction. Some what have were talking about here is policy issues. I do think were overlooking the fact that much what have we read about today and frankly since 9 11 has been far more operational and technical details, a fascination with intelligence sources and methods, how terrorists are tracked. How Counterterrorism Operations are done. And theres no doubt that theres a Public Interest in many of the programs and other pieces of that that has been discussed in the newspapers. Weve had public debates on them. Weve had laws that have changed. Weve changed collection authorities and really had a very vigorous debate about that. At the same time, though bob would that have happened without the disclosure . Would we have stopped listening to Angela Merkels cell phone or closed those black sites had it not been for the revelations . Benjamin im not going to to talk about anyones cell phone. I dont know what would have happened with the black sites. With or without those revelations. David i think they would have been closed without those revelations. Ut thats a longer discussion. Benjamin we have had damaging leaks of technical sources and methods. Frequently what youre read being in the paper is not the pentagon papers reading about in the paper is not the pentagon papers and Global Policy towards the muslim world. And heres a study from the state department discussinging that and its classified because it contains some intelligence in it. Weve seen a lot of discussion of frankly pure sources and methods of how we carry out operations, how we do sensitive electronic surveillance. When youre regularly read being these things, it does have damage. And it is not just confined to the wikileaks of the world. Bob but sometimes we dont publish. An example, from the Obama Administration. Going to the c. I. A. With 10 things i had that was going to be in a book, obamas wars. And went through them and listened to their arguments and got to one called the Counterterrorist Pursuit Teams. The c. I. A. Had a secret army in under tan that was c. I. A. Control. The best afghan fighters, very effective. I said, im putting this in the book and the c. I. A. Position was, oh, my god, thats secret, thats a secret army, you shouldnt put that. In i said, well, put that in. I said, well, im not going to name any members of it or where they operate from or any operations. No, still, you should not publish it. I said, well, look, there are a lot of people in the Obama Administration who say we dont need 100,000 troops in afghanistan, that this Counterterrorist Pursuit Team actually does the job. And i think the relevant. They were not happy but it was published. No harm. Then i got to another item and mentioned it and literally the c. I. A. Said, if you publish that, we can lose a war. That got my attention. And went through their argument. And the not in the book its not in the book. Its a great story that someday can be told. But you listen and you its davids point. Ou go through. Much disclosure, more disclosure than the government would like. Almost always. Because they would say, dont publish any of this stuff. But not the sort of thing that will get People Killed or cause us to lose a war. Benjamin whats fascinating here about this discussion, though, is it is the reporter who is doing this. So this is just a curious few it feature of the system that we have. Bob its called democracy. Benjamin exactly. But bob a single citizen can go and the government will listen to that. Youre worried about the power that journalists might have . Benjamin i would be concerned as to whether or not the reporter has the qualifications and the full global picture of youre making decisions on what sources and methods in your judgment are going to openly harm the National Security. Youre weighing the governments argument, youre weighing what you think is the Public Interest, youre weighing your papers interest. And that power is now in your hands because of information that youve obtained. Bob its called the First Amendment. Benjamin thats what distinguishes our system. It can work. David we held for three years at the Bush Administrations request, a story that we were ultimately able to publish once the program was done, about a secret u. S. Program to help the pakistanis secure their nubling Nuclear Weapons. A convincing argument was made to us by very senior members of the Bush Administration that to go publish it at the time that we had the story would be to give the taliban, you know, arrows into the most vulnerable Nuclear Sites within pakistan. We held it. And held it and held it. And finally some set of events came up and i called in and i said, you know, oom not sure were going to be able to hold this much longer. They said, youre Still Holding that story . Could you have run that a year ago. You could have run that a year ago. I wish id checked more often. But that said, yes. The distinguishing feature here is that its the News Organizations that make the decision. Thats not only what separates our democracy from nondemocracies, its what separates ours from, say, britain. Host do we have another question . Bob youre uncomfortable with that. Benjamin what youre Say Something that the First Amendment has wiped away the statutes for the protection of classified information and im not saying that im uncomfortable. Im saying we need to recognize, though, that it is, to the extent that the position is that we will do the weighing, and it is our power to do that, that is an awesome power. That is an awesome power. Bob you have an awesome power with those laws that you can go after someone who releases classified information. Right . Benjamin well, i guess we can debate about how awesome those really are in terms of the president s and those types of things. You take the position of the First Amendment wipes away all those laws. Bob it doesnt wipe them away. Host i want to get another question in here. Young man in the third row reer right here. Or fourth row. Right there. Questioner thank you all for speaking. Christopher blair. So far in the discussions, it kinds of im getting the feel that in the court of public opinion, were kind of delegating the media as the prosecutor. So, thus ethically speaking, where does the media draw the line when receiving documents from a potential leaker, and is the intrigue of the story more important than the potential are ramifications to potential ramifications to imminent or longstanding National Security or posture . David thats an excellent question. I hinted at it before about why we have these conversations. Because what were trying to do is air the issues, the policy questions, do we as a nation want to have these black sites, do we want to do bulk collection, and so forth. Without necessarily blowing the operational detail. And thats you said prosecutor. I dont think thats the case. We cant prosecute anything. We can start a policy discussion. We can make sure that discussion happens. In the end, Congress Gave the president and the executive branch many of the powers that president bush took upon himself in routing around the fisa court. But that happened only after a full discussion about whether or not that was the right way to go. So i think that what this what weve learned out of all of this, and what weve learned really in the era since the pentagon papers is that its very important to have that conversation so that we understand that something were about to publish could cost a life, cost an ongoing operation, cost an imminent operation. And i dont think most people in responsible media want to go do that. But that also means that we have to make a judgment about whether the broader discussion about whether were heading in the right direction with a set of policies gets aired. And theres a way to go do that. Theres a way to go move through that line. The points been made that in the world of the internet, where everybodys a publisher, not everyones going show that judgment. Thats certainly one of the big challenges of our time. Bob we should also take a position of humility on this. I think ben could would agree with this. That, for instance, the wikileaks stuff, which the New York Times hadnt published in that series which i thought was very good, but as you know, almost all of that information, and i think maybe all of it, the top classification was secret. David the lowest level. Bob mid level anyway. Not the Top Secret Special Access Program material. The New York Times editor took the position, were telling you how Government Works. Well, that was an excellent series. But it didnt tell you how Government Works. Because the top secret formation is really what informs a president s decisions. I remember talking somewhat recently to somebody about snowden. Very controversial figure. And this person, who ive known very well, said, snowden didnt have the good stuff. And i think thats true. I think that we said we worry about wikileaks and secret documents and some of the stuff that snowden revealed. But the good stuff, the really deep secrets, as president obama calls them called hem, dont get published normally. Its very rare. O were getting into the governments business and an important part of it. But theres also the deep secrets part that we really dont get into. Is that fair . Benjamin ive certainly seen a number of things published in the newspapers, putting aside snowden, that have been the details of technical technical operations. So i dont think that the papers stick to just heres how the Government Works or the policies. I have certainly seen discussions of operational details. Bob but say there are x number of operations that are really sensitive. Its a very small portion that get published. Is that correct . Or not . Benjamin i would say that when you publish the technical details, its been damaging. Ive never looked to see when jim clapper says only god knows all of the compartments that are out there, its probably a smaller proportion. Bob thats a classification in a special Access Program or s. C. I. Program that where theyre limited, allegedly, to people who have a need to know. I still think there are a lot of things we dont know about and, quite frankly, from my point of view, id like to know about them. Because the governments apacity to do things in secret i immense and its really, think, secret government is the thing we should worry about the most. Of all of the things. And the judge who said it got it right, democracies die in darkness. David this is a fundamental challenge. Benjamin having an Intelligence Community in a chemsy. This is the fundamental challenge democracy. This is the fundamental challenge. That the seak resy can be inconsistent with democracy. Bob and may you have many joyless days. [laughter] benjamin im not there, so im fine. Host theres a question way at he back there. Questioner hi. I just wanted to go back and talk about wikileaks. Basically, over the summer, it was very controversial when wikileaks published the d. N. C. Emails, Hillary Clintons emails. John podestas emails. How do you guys feel in terms of legality in terms of trusting of the source between wikileaks and say someone leaking from within a Government Organization or within a campaign . Do you guys feel that wikileaks is needed to get the information that sources wont reveal . Host anybody want david ill take a first shot at that. To my mind, the material that was released by wikileaks this summer, first about the d. N. C. And then the second trauverage was the john Podesta Emails, those were the two high points, were more fascinatinging to me for what it said about who was trying to act and disrupt an American Election than the contents. The contents of the d. N. C. Material was largely infighting within the d. N. C. About support for Bernie Sanders versus hillary clinton. I didnt find that to be quite as fascinating as many of the political insiders inside the Democratic Committee did. The Podesta Emails, again, wasnt full had no classified information. You got a sense of what Hillary Clintons speeches to Goldman Sachs were like. They were a lot like speeches i heard her give when she was secretary of state. There wasnt in there a whole lot that was terribly remarkable. What was remarkable was the fact that there was a channel from russian intelligence to wikileaks and russian intelligence distributing this first through some other channels who werent as successful, werent as widely read as wikileaks, that told us a lot about the russian operation. But we didnt know that that early. Benjamin well, we learned it pretty fast. By july we were writing stories. David remember the first revelations, the first publication was fairly early july. And by the third week of july we wrote a story that said that u. S. Intelligence had concluded with high confidence that it was the russians who were behind all of this. The Intelligence Community came out with that assessment on october 7. So within a matter of weeks, we pretty well put it together. Bob but it was it had an ambiguity about it, i thought. Inevitably youre going to go to the content. Whats the content of this . And those were legitimate stories. I agree with you, in retrospect when you have the much harder conclusion that the Intelligence Community made, that this was part of an operation to hurt hillary clinton. There was not over the summer in the campaign the kind of clarity. David as you said earlier, this reveals it self over time. We had a team that was pretty well just focused on the russian part of the operation. Even while we were reporting the materials from host im curious if anybodys tried to punk you. [laughter] i come from the world of television. Where we always had to be cautious about things that had been photoshopped or otherwise manipulated. Given the fact that video can now be manipulated with great sophistication, audio can be voices can essentially be reprogrammed to Say Something different than they originally said, and documents certainly can be edited, have you ever gotten material that you thought was the real deal and then discovered it wasnt . Someone was trying to play you . David i think its an increasing issue. Fake twitter accounts. Host yes. David are a significant issue now. Youve really got to slow down and say, you know, there was a moment, somebody was faking a twitter account they had set up for rex tillerson. We were looking at it and thought that he had issued a policy pronouncement until we realized this was an unverified account. Within cyber, a big issue is data manipulation generally. And its increasingly possible to go do it. Thats something we have to be careful of in a way that im not sure even five years ago was possible. Bob i tend to believe in human sources. If you have somebody whos in a position of knowledge and you have established a relationship of trust, thats so much better. Even going back in the 1980s. I remember bill kasey, the c. I. A. Director for reagan, once saying, you know, its so much better to have a human source, somebody who sits outside the Prime Ministers office, who will tell you what goes on, than having a bug in the Prime Ministers office. Because youre going to get stacks of transcripts and you dont know whats important. I think this is the problem with the internet and twitter accounts and so forth. Theyre guides. But in the end what you need is somebody who will really kind of, for good reasons, tell you whats going on. D ultimately you want to get a cabinet officer or somebody in charge of one of the intelligence agencies or a National Security advisor, or the president himself or herself, who will respond. In doing books i would send questions to president s bush, obama, and just because i had the luctsry luxury of time, i can kind of say, these are the 60 things that happened that are important and whats your comment on them . I they will in all cases have found engage in that. Because it comes from human sources. Not twitter accounts. Host a question. Theres another one back here. Toward the back. Questioner thank you. Hi. Im a georgetown student. I was wondering, do you think this discussion with the government is going to be possible when they view the media as this Opposition Party . Nd especially with the upper echelons of government. David thats a really great question. Every administration has to go through a period where they have to get accustomed to this kind of give and take. And ask the question, do we really need to answer these . What are the consequences if we dont answer these kind of questions, if we dont engage in this conversation . In past administrations, not in this administration yet, its early yet, ive had people say to me, id love to talk to you about whether or not this piece a of information would be harmful. But if i had that conversation with you, id have to discuss classified material. And i cant get into that. So, everyone, every administration has to work out its own set of procedures for this. Its very possible that this administration, with its rather unique view of what the media is, the opposition, may decide that theyre going to engage in a very different way or not engage at all. I think danger for us is viewing ourselves as the opposition. Instead of viewing ourselves as the people who are sent out to go do a very specific job thats the same job weve done with past administrations, democratic or republican. Bob of course the administration wont speak with one voice, thank god. There are many people out there who you can establish relations with, hopefully, who will explain whats going on. And i think ultimately the media, we have to make as strong an argument as we can for transparency. And the benefits of transparency. Its not just that it helps more subscribers for the newspapers or the websites. Host although thats a nice benefit. Bob no, but it helps the government. And if you spend enough time with people, ive had so many people in government over the decades say, you know, it was good that that got out, that we had public discussion about it. And initially often the reaction is one of seizure or a joyless day. But once things proceed, theyll say, yeah, its good that we had a discussion of the black sites. This raised the all kinds of governing questions, all kinds of moral questions that needed to be discussed. Thats one of those stories that served a really purpose. If you asked president bush, george w. , former president , had him here on sodium pent toll, truth sir um, i think he would acknowledge that, yeah, that was painful, but we needed to have that discussion. Host one of the things that struck me rereading sandys book the other day was that the post and the times, although competitors, stood together in a way with the publication of the pentagon papers. Im wondering in this current environment, with the splintering of the media, and different points of view, whether you have that unity of effort. You have breitbart, for instance, right now, although you may not like them, tremendously influential. Joining the trump chorus, decrying leaks to the media. So, is the press position weakened because the press is splintered . David its an interesting question. Do you have this group of lawyers out there. The times, just to watch the times and the post in the past couple of weeks, theres been obviously no cooperation between the two. But theres been, i think, host common cause. David there has been a remarkable amount of incredibly Good Journalism done by both organizations. While i think both organizations remain competitors and competitors with an everwidening group of other publications, i think thats been a really good thing. You cant work in concert. Bob but what you can do, and this is i agree, this is evident in the last month, when a News Organization, whatever it is, has a good story, another News Organization is following, there is that line. This first appeared in the New York Times. Theres more and more of that. I think the distance prevails. People are going to do their own work. But the acknowledgment of a good story, and there have been a lot of good stories, and i think the New York Times is more frequently than the post had to say, by the way, this appeared in the the Washington Post. [laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] benjamin well take the scorecard question off line. David i think where its important to have the cause in common is fp a government decides to take steps that in the view of many in this room would try to restrict free press, i think on that question , thats where you want to see as much unity as you can. And not just the times and the post, as much of the journalistic community. In the fractured world were in, youre not going see that. If this Administration Starts going after reporters or News Organizations, my guess is that breitbart might take a different view of this than the times and the post would. But i think that you can be fierce competitors on the news and have a relatively common view of what the fundamental liberties are here. Bob the real headline from Trumps Press Conference in these first four months, whatever it has been, he made very clear that hes going after leaks. And he thinks the problem is not the information in the leaks, but the leaks themselves. So i would say, keep your seatbelt on. David, i promise to bring you a sandwich in jail. David oh, thanks. Bob would you like to preorder . Demoip a show of unity, i too will bring bob something, as long as he emails his choices. Host do we have another question . Any hands up out there . Here, over here we have one. Questioner hi. My name is andrew. Im a georgetown senior. My question is, President Trumps press conference yesterday, he spoke about fake news versus real leaks. I was wondering if any of you have a comment on how he views the difference between what his concept of fake news is and how that relates to the leaks that he perceives as a real threat to his administration. David i was mulling over that line and trying to go figure it out. So, wind the clock back all the way to october. When he was reading out from wikileaks documents that he had they were not classified, that hed read from the Podesta Emails and so forth that came from inside Hillary Clintons campaign or among her top aides. And then contrast that with what he said in recent days. His view of the importance of leaks seems to have changed. He said the words, i love wikileaks. In october. I havent heard those repeated in recent times. But i think whats happened with the phrase fake news is, it has been adopted in part by this administration, but certainly by many of its supporters. And by many others. To decry any piece of news that they do not like or find not credible. Now in the case of these leaks about general flynn, in the end, hes the one who decided for cause, whatever that cause was, to dismiss general flynn. So he must have concluded that some of the data, which we ultimately quot got and used to explain all of this, was actually true. So i wasnt quite sure what he meant by that phraseology. Bob its a term that muddies the waters. In a way. Because if you parse what trump was saying, essentially saying these leaks are true, but he considers the reporting on them fake news. That is just inconsistent. The one of the issues there. E idea that and this is the mystery to be pursued, and that is, what actually happened with flynn . Because trump said, oh, yeah, i would have supported him, i would have had him have these conversations. If you think about it, those conversations, a at least as reported now, dont seem criminal or particularly unusual. Somebodys National Security have r about to become that job, and you talk to the russians, obviously sanctions are a key issue. Apparently didnt say well make a deal, he said, well revisit it. I think totally reasonable. So why was he fired . That question has not really been answered sufficiently. In my view. Host before we wrap up, ben, i want odd to give you a chance wanted to give you a chance. Had you thought over the question from bob about the work case . Benjamin wow. Thats a tough one. Because you inevitably get into confirming things that you cant talk about. Bob thats the reason i asked it. [laughter] benjamin exactly. Thats why hes a legend. Certainly there are things, i mentioned the terrorism financial tracking program. Tftp and the value that that provided to the country. So there are public examples out there. I wont say that thats the worst one. But theres certainly public examples of things that have happened out there that i think where the balance has not been struck perfectly. Host final thoughts on pentagon papers legacy. David, do you want to start . David sure. I think it was foundational to everything that we do. I was still working my way out of i think Elementary School or Junior High School host oh, be quiet. David so i would hard will be i will be an expert all hardly be an expert on all of this. From what ive read had in history no, i think bob had it exactly right. If it had not been for that decision, i dont think we could have gone on to do what it is that we go do today. I think that one of the big concerns we have is whether or not rather than building on that decision we are seeing the pendulum swing and seeing erosions of it. And that would worry me the most. Bob even in that decision, the pentagon papers decision, in a book on the Supreme Court, Scott Armstrong and did decades ago, we looked at some of the documentation and interviewed the people about that decision. Alexander bickel, one of the great lawyers, argued for the New York Times in that case. Bickel had the wisdom to realize that the famous near case from the 20th century said, yeah, you cant have prior restraint, but it is quite possible that the government could stop the press from publishing sailing dates and troop numbers. So the not absolute. Bickel argued so bickle argued that to the court, no prior restraint but its not absolute and hugo black, the great First Amendment justice was just enraged by this and came back to his clerks and he said, even the New York Times has a lawyer that doesnt believe in the First Amendment, because as far as black was concerned, this was absolute and if you didnt dig into the legal i wantry kacies, it is not an absolute right. There are things like sailing dates and troop numbers that clearly Supreme Court precedent says the press cannot publish. Is that right . Yes, but it is foundational in terms of changing this balance, the fact that what the government would often be interested in is stopping the publication. And by changing that in terms of basically saying the difficulty of a prior restraint really fundamentally was a shift. Thats what leads to these conversations and other things. The government is in a place where, this is out there now, were going to go after the press, what is it were going to do . Thats very different that whan i think many, some in government would want to do when something comes up like this as well, darn it, lets go into court and stop that. Of course if you were to to that, youre facing a huge, huge burden where youd have to be something very factual like this is the war plans of what our troops are going to do in this city on saturday. And this is where facts matter, ive ashrewded to this a little bit earlier, in terms of whether there would be, what the court would to, facts make a huge, huge difference even in Supreme Court litigation. It is not just a broad philosophical argument, what those underlying facts are. One of the reasons is the pentagon papers is not the base of the ships, its not heres our deployment of how were directing troops. If theres a next case in the future, lets hope the New York Times gets a lawyer who believes in the First Amendment. I dont know if hes going to be calling you about that. Thank you all very much for joining us here today. Really appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] earlier earlier today, cspan released the results of our third historian survey on president ial leadership which ranks every past u. S. President on 10 atrabets. A Cross Section of 91 historians ranked them and those results are available on our website at cspan. Org. En sundays washington journal, history professors Douglas Franklin and other advisors on the project will discuss the results, take your phone calls and tweets. That starts live sunday at 8 00 a. M. Eastern on washington journal. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, saturday evening at 6 00 eastern, two days after president lincolns assassination and a week after robert e. Lees surrender in april of 1865, generals William Sherman and Joseph Johnston met to discuss the u. S. Armys future. We look back on the historic meeting. Once they were inside, sherman took out of his pocket the telegram he had been handed just as he was leaving for the meeting and showed it to joe johnston. So far he had shown it to no one else. It stated that two days before, rain hamlin con had been assassinated in washington, d. C. Johnston looked up at sherman with horror and decleared it was the greatest possible declared it was the greatest possible calamity for the south. At 6 50, lin downey discusses her biography of the inventor of blue jeans, levi strauss. The palent was awarded after three tries on may 20, 1873, for an improvement in fastening pocket openings, which is boring language for basically the invention of the blue jean. Sunday at noon on oral histories, we begin a series of five interviews with prominent africanamerican women from the explorations and black leadersship oral history collection. The late gwen ifill, an american Peabody Award Winning journalist, discusses her life including her experience with racism in the news room. Getting in the door because i had survived was one thing. When i got in, i had to prove that i could write, that i could meet a deadline, that i could be a good colleague in a newsroom and newsroom environment where once again i was one of very few people of color. So just getting in the door isnt enough. Its what i always say about affirmative action, its nice that the door opens, but what do you do once you walk through it. For our complete American History tv schedule, go to c span. Org. Sunday night on after words, republican strategist roger stone talks about his book the making of the president 2015 how donald trump orchestrated a revolution, hes interviewed by susan farichio. What do you make of the response immediately after the election . Is