Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20140514

And if so, do you believe that that can happen this year before the midterm elections . If congress doesnt take action this year, what impact could that have on the 2016 president ial election . Our phone lines are open. Democrats can call at 2025853880. Republicans, 2025853881. Independents, 2025853882. We have a special line this morning set up for Illegal Immigrants if you want to call in to the washington journal today. That number, 2025853883, as we discuss this issue this morning. You can also catch up with us on all your favorite social media pages. On twitter, facebook, or email journal cspan. Org. I want to start with a story from the Associated Press yesterday on the president s speech and what happened in washington on Immigration Reform. The headline, immigrant activists turn up heat on democrats. The story from abc news and the ssociated press. They demand at that president obama order a halt to most deportations of People Living in the u. S. Illegally. Obama, meanwhile, tried to increase pressure on House Republicans to pass immigration legislation that would let most of those 11. 5 Million People stay in the country. The developments highlighted a split among democrats and immigration advocates. Some want immediate executive action by obama, others say the focus should stay on House Republicans while theres still a chance. However slim, to pass an immigration bill. At the white house, obama addressed Law Enforcement officers, exhorting them to lobby Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans ahead of the november midterm elections. Want to play you a little bit about what the president had to say on that now. Public opinion is on our side on this. Unfortunately, wove got a handful of House Republicans right now who are blocking going ahead and letting legislation get to the floor. To their credit, i think Speaker Boehner and some of the other leaders there do believe that Immigration Reform is the right thing, but theyve got to have a political space that allows them to get it through the talk us and get it done. Ive said to them, if theyve got ideas, im happy to talk to them. Were not hellbent on making sure that every letter of whats in the senate bill is exactly what ultimately lands on my desk for signature. But theres some Core Principles to get done. Weve got to have stronger border security. Weve got to make sure that we are dealing with companies that are not doing the right thing by workers. Weve got to make sure that weve got an improved Legal Immigration system, because a lot of folks are getting pushed into the illegal system because the waits are so long through the legal process. And weve got to make sure theres a way for people to earn some pathway to citizenship. Host that was the president yesterday. Heres a bit of the republican response, according to the Washington Post. On tureks a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner repeated the republican contention that obama has lost their trust and that he will actually that he will actually even enforce the laws as written. Republicans have pointed to Administrative Changes to enrollment regulations in the president s healthcare law and a 2012 administrative decision to stop deporting some young Illegal Immigrants. Thats some of the response from republicans in the Washington Post, one of the issues that might play into that is a new report from earlier this week from the center of immigration studies. That report, according to the Washington Times, showed that the Obama Administration in 2013 released tens of thousands of criminals awaiting possible deportation, including some accused of murder, sexual assault, arson, and kidnapping. Host some of the back and forth on both sides, we want to hear from our viewers this morning. The president said theres a narrow window on Immigration Reform. Do you think it can hatch . Well start first with don calling in from greenville, ohio. Don, good morning. Caller good morning. Ive got a comment, and also ive got some things to say about this, because ive been calling my senator for i dont know how long about this. But ill tell you one thing. For the last 50 years, the president and congress, just an example of not doing anything when it was supposed to be done that they should operated on this a long time ago. In i think 1981, president reagan was in there. They set up a plan to address this, and they did nothing about it, did nothing about keeping borders closed, and when 911 happened, president bush didnt do a thing. He did not close the borders, and we got all these people coming in here thats illegal and nothing is done. Now, if the regular people in the United States would come up against this, theyd probably be throwed into jail on account of this. Host youre not optimistic anything is going to happen in the next couple of months . Do you think this will just be caller well, it really wont be what should be done. Host what should be done, don . Caller im saying you should just pack them up and send them back. Theres some illegals that this president has let go, and theyve been trapped several different times, caught doing wrong things. Host don from greenville, ohio, that issue. What the president is doing about deportation, some news also on that coming out of that meeting yesterday that the president had according to the Washington Post. The Obama Administration is likely to overhaul a program that allows the federal government to partner with local Law Enforcement agencies to identify Illegal Immigrants for deportation host were talking to our viewers about the narrow window that the president set for Immigration Reform. Do you think something can happen this year, and if it doesnt, what do you think it means for the election . Lets go to our line for republicans. Jonathan in florida. John, good morning. Caller how you doing there . Host good, john. Caller let me say what i got to say here. Start with about a month ago obama signed an executive order to let all the illegals that werent in the military, i had to have my papers, citizenship, birth certificate when i went in, and they checked you for any kind of if you done anything wrong. Now hes letting these illegals in, going to take some more American Kids jobs out of school. They collected 4. 3 billion off child Income Credit accepting theyre mexico, and taking all the jobs. Theyre taking benefits they can get off the United States taxpayers. Theyre taking everything they can get, and they allow them to do it, and other day they said me get my train of thought here. Host go ahead, john. Caller they i cant even think of what it was. Theyre just still in this country. They invaded our country, and theyre allowing them to do it. Host lets go to linda waiting in columbia, maryland, on our line for independents. Linda, good morning. Caller hi, good morning. This is a classic immigration bait and switch. Host what do you mean . Caller well, while the public might belief in a pathway to citizenship, hes lying when he says, you know, that thats how its going to work out. These people arent getting background checks. From what youre telling us this morning, hes letting the illegal criminals into the public, and thats not what people are agreeing to. Were being received, and nobodys really doing anything about it. And i just think its disgusting. Thats all. Host and in columbia, maryland, referring to that report that was released earlier this week by the center for immigration studies, using numbers from the u. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency Statistics gathered in response to a congressional inquiry on deportations and those who have been released in the deportation process. That story in todays Washington Times. Opinion piece by rachel in the Detroit Free Press today, the headline, when it comes to Immigration Reform, obama is doing it wrong is her headline. She notes in that story that u. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is apparently having trouble determining which noncitizens convicted of criminal offenses on u. S. Soil should face deportation. Heres a type speed things up, she said, deport them all. Thats an inherit part of the deal. The assumed risk that one takes when entering a country illegally you is play the game knowing full well that one day you might get pulled over by a traffic cop who runs your i. D. And ends your streak of good luck. Rachel martin writes, as illegal immigrant, shes always been conscious of the possibility might result in visa renewal problems, let alone committing any sort of crime. Up to the read more on her piece today, its in the Detroit Free Press. Lets go to our independent line again, mike is waiting in arnold, maryland. Mike, good morning. Yeah, good morning. Caller im opposed to this amnesty. What it comes down to i dont believe anything obama says whatsoever. A couple of years ago, the number that they were throwing around was 30 million. Now its down to 11 or 12. I think you can conclude that this is directly relationship between all the additional costs and burden upon the taxpayer, middle class as far s use of the Healthcare System , the schools, and i dont think that any of our representatives are serving us at all. Thats pretty much all i have to say. Host on twitter, why are we still talking about this . Reagan took care of this, didnt he . Amnesty for all. Our line for democrats, mike is waiting in hinesville, georgia. Mike, good morning. Your thoughts on Immigration Reform. Do you think it can happen this year . Caller yes, i highly doubt it. Ike with anything, republicans are having an issue. All they want to do is talk about it, theyre not going to do anything about it. But the final analysis, its all a political game. When issue comes up, im kind of struck by how look, america is a country of immigrants. Everybody came here from somewhere. I came here same way Rick Santorums dad came to this country. I was brought here by my dad. But unlike his grandfather, my dad was an educated man. He wasnt person imported from. Ther country ive seen the issue of illegal as a coverup. These people, listen to what the republicans talk about, and its kind of disappointing to hear africanamericans toe this line. Africanamericans dont have a job, its because some illegal took a job from them, meaning africanamericans are only good to do the menial jobs in the country, and the illegals come in and take those jobs from africanamericans. I find that logic host what do you think will happen in the 2014 or 2016 election if Immigration Reform doesnt pass here after all this pressure thats happened . Its not going happen. The republicans are just playing games with people. You know, the president has this deal to try to do it, but it wont support them on anything. Theyll only talk about it as if they want to do something about it, but until this country stops bringing in minorities, people who are not the right kind of immigrants, i mean, listen to every comment the republican makes on some africanamericans. Host thats mike in georgia. Lets go to our line for republicans. Betty is waiting in iowa city, iowa. Betty, good morning. Aller hi. I want to suggest that we should be making this a soft landing for anybody who wants to voluntarily return to their home country. Why cant we contract with businesses or even governments in these countries wherever somebody came from, and it doesnt matter who they are, if they came here legally and overstayed their visa, or they came here totally illegally by crossing borders coming in some way in a container ship from china or some other way. That it could be to the advantage of the home country to take back their people if they want to go back, and it could be to the advantage of the person who would like to return knowing that they would have a sure path out of the country legally, and in 10 years they could apply to come back here. I dont know why it would be so much cheaper than if we stay re and go through all of the legalese that are going to be incurred. People are still going through the courts from when reagan nstituted amnesty. Why cant we make it a soft landing . Host betty with her suggestion of whats going on. Heres a tweet from the business group, the u. S. Chamber of commerce writing yesterday, reform necessary to encourage immigrant entrepreneurs. Well keep talking about this subject for the next 15 or 20 minutes or so, but also want to show i hidlines from around the world. Heres one from the Washington Times on the situation in ukraine. Kiev skeptical with talks about the crisis in ukraine, also noting six soldiers killed by insurgents in continued fighting. Well be talking about that issue a little bit more in our one of our later segments of the washington journal today. Were going to be taking our viewers live to the council on Foreign Relations and talking with experts there on that issue and other issues that the council on Foreign Relations deals with, a special two segments from there. And also later in our show today, journalist and author Glen Greenwald will join us to talk about his new book that came out, nowhere to hide. Hell be talking about Edward Snowden, the n. S. A. , and issues of privacy, all coming up later. Weve got about 15 minutes left to talk about the issue of Immigration Reform. I have several stories i want to show you today. This is the front page of the houston con cell, a story on their own ellis island, the Neighborhood Center in barker in the area, offers a safe and friendly place where many immigrants can get involved in community activities. The Neighborhood Center was founded in 1907, one of the biggest helping hands in east texas. The organization is a nonprofit behemoth with 74 Service Sites in 60 texas counties. Its services range from Charter Schools to senior centers, ives it unrivaled stature host thats in todays houston con cell. Lets go back to the phones. Marcia is waiting in North Carolina. Marcia, good morning. Caller yes, good morning. How are you . Host good, marcia. Idea. Caller i want to make a few comments. I have got a nephew by marriage that is from mexico. It took him about eight months to get a visa to come up to work in the United States. After he moved up here and got him a decent job, he met my niece, and after about a year, they got married. Theyve had a child. He has been married to her for three years. The court system to gain all of his citizenship documentation, paid worked hard, has into Social Security ever since he got here, has paid his income taxes ever since he got here, has held a job. When he did not have a job, he was on the streets looking for one and got another one. It didnt matter what it paid. He got a job. Now, men like this, i say let them stay. People who come over here dont try to do anything legally. They just sneak in, they dont try to work a job thats in the radar. They try to ride underneath it, and getting whatever help they can get from the federal government and the state governments by having illegal documentation is wrong, and they should be caught. If theyre not even trying to do it right, then they shouldnt be allowed to stay. People say, well, what about the babysitter born in this country . We dont have any right to them. Let them go home with mommy and daddy. Mommy and daddy should be the one raising them, not other people. All of this bull crap is exactly that. Theres no reason for all. Hoopla that goes on about the Immigration Reforms. Host marcia in North Carolina. Marie writes in that the only reform needed is to secure the border immediately. That conversation happening on twitter. cspanwj. Low along, also on facebook. Want to bring you up to date on some of the results of primary day yesterday in nebraska and West Virginia. The headline from the hill newspaper here in washington, d. C. Is tea Party Bouncing back, but can it last . The story notes that National Tea Party groups breathe a sigh of relief on tuesday night after notching two muchneeded wins after they overcome the groups. Madison project and Citizens United all prump thed midland universitys domination, and the Nebraska Republican Senate Primary and former chairman alexs nomination for West Virginias Second District as a product of the conservative movement pry umping over the establishment. The Senate Conservative fund spent 90,000 to boost the primary in West Virginia to replace congresswoman shelly, whos running for the senate, and also spent 1. 1 million on the candidacy in the fourway nebraska primary. So some of the results from those elections yesterday. Some other news to show you clay aiken wins North Carolina house primary. American idol runnerup clay aiken was declared the winner of his tight House Democratic primary in North Carolina on tuesday, a day after his opponent suddenly died. Aiken and keith crisco had been vying to take on congressman Renee Ellmers of North Carolina host one other piece of election news, this coming from the front page of the detroit news and several. Michigan papers, congressman conyers concluded off ballot plans to challenge the law is the headline. Theres a picture of congressman john conyers there. The story notes the political future of john conyers, the longest serving africanamerican in congress, hinges on a federal legal challenge and an appeal to the states top elections officer after the detroit democrat tuesday was thrown off the primary ballot. More than 640 signatures for conyers were disqualified after the clerks staff investigating found several petitions circulators were not registered voters, as required by state law. Conyers Campaign Chairman indicated tuesday that the campaign considered its best chance for getting back on the ballot a legal challenge of the state law requiring registered voters to circulate their petitions for candidates. And then, again, thats john conyers, democrat of michigan. Weve got a few minutes left to take your calls on this issue of Immigration Reform, if you think it will happen. If it doesnt happen, what impact do you think it has on the 2014 and 2016 elections . Lets go to rick calling in from pennsylvania on our line for republicans. Rick, good morning. Caller good morning. Its ironic you mentioned ellis island earlier, because we did have to have sponsors. We were checked for zeerks made to be productive citizens, and there were deportations at that time. But i think the big thing here is americans have no problem with illegally immigrants. We bring in more than any other in the world. The media just calls it immigration, though its legal. We welcome legal immigrants. Thats not a problem. Thats system does not have to be fixed. Lets be very honest about this. This is an ilLegal Immigration problem, not an immigration problem. Thank you. Host tom is calling in on our line for independents from new york. Tom, good morning to you. Caller good morning. I agree with the gentleman that just spoke. My company was put out of business by illegal aliens and the companies that hire them. The contractors that hire these guys are breaking the law. What do we have laws in this country for if were not going to obey them and enforce them . They enforce the laws if i speed, if i do something wrong, they have no problem enforcing the laws. But they have a terrible problem enforcing the laws with people that are breaking our laws coming into this country illegally and the people that hire them. Its red includes. Its not fair. Im not happy about it. I hope the rest of this country realizes this is not right for this country. Host tom in new york. We played you a bit of the president s comments on Immigration Reform from the white house. Some other actions at the white house yesterday, the awarding of the congressional medal of honor. President obama awarded the medal of honor on tuesday to a soldier who helped save the lives of comrades while under fire during a 2007 ambush in afghanistan, this according to usa today today we pay tribute to soldiers a soldier who embodied the courage of his generation, a former Army Sergeant during a ceremony at the white house. White, who left the army in 201, is now works in a bank in charlotte, had to overcome post Traumatic Stress disorder after his deployment ended. He is the seventh living recipient for actions in iraq and afghanistan. In a brief prepared statement after the ceremony, white said the medal is a tribute to his brothers in arms, without the team, there could be no medal of honor. Up to the read more on that, thats in several papers today, including usa today. Linda is up next from glenville, pennsylvania, on our line for republicans. Linda, good morning. Quoip its funny that the majority of the comments are clear. We accept immigration. Illegal is illegal. This is costing us so much money, and its really a nobrainer. Its a nobrainer. Its illegal. It shouldnt be acceptable. And thats it. I mean, its so simple that its appalling that were even arguing about t. Thats all i have, and live your show. Thank you. Host why the average american wants to legalize 12 million new workers with high unemployment, ill never comprehend. Lets go to dan yelle waiting in bronx on our line for understand penalties. Danielle, good morning. Caller good morning. Im on cspan. Im on cspan right now . Go ahead. Caller ok. So i know some Illegal Immigrants myself. Ive known them, i personally know them. I consider them my friends. But these are really good people. They come here because they have lots of struggles in their lives. But again, you also have to think about how life is going right here in the United States, right here its all like this is a big land of opportunity, all this, all that, and then when you come here, its lake, what happened in this used to be land of opportunity, but now look at how it is right now. Look at america right now. Look at the way we are right now. Look at obama. Look at the way the housing is. We have to see, ok, how can we make a better america more better, more shinier for immigrants . It used to be gold status back then. But now its like howard stern. Byebye. Host and lets go to chris waiting in spring hill, florida. Chris is on our line for independents. Chris, good morning. Caller hey, good morning. Yeah, you know, i think this is probably a nonstarter, unfortunately, just like it was with bush. I think the guy that was really partisan is i guess he doesnt remember bush was pushing it even harder to get the Immigration Reform. My feeling is, if theyre going to stay here, theyre going to e working, lets bring them in and make them pay taxes and show the Social Security burden. God knows were going to be hurting for that pretty soon with the baby boomer retiring, hatever. People, dont be so partisan. If you tonight look up new information, you wont learn. You only accept what you want to believe, its ridiculous. In florida, our governor Information Office about a month, and they said hes the worst governor of the country. A lot of people believed it, walked around telling me that, and i said hes been in a month, how do you know . Idiot. Thats how stupid people sound when they just believe what they want to believe and they only look for the facts to support that. Partisanship is ridiculous. Host chris in spring hill, florida. Our last call in this first segment today. Up next, were going to take our viewers live to the d. C. Council, as we spotlight the work of the well known think tank. And later in our 9 00 hour, author and journalist Glen Greenwald joins us to discuss his new book. Well be right back. I was looking at the real estate listings just for distraction and saw at the top of the charts, well beyond our price range, the most expensive house in connecticut was priced at 34 million, but then marked down to 25 million. It was a bargain. What a deal. And it was a cozy charmer with 14,000 square feet and 52 acres on a river. And i was curious who owned it. I imagined it might be the chairman of general electric, perhaps. I looked in the towns website, and i saw a little note in the zoning records that said this house has been unoccupied since this owner bought it in 1951. That didnt seem possible. I went over the next day to see it, and the caretaker asked me, he said, ive not seen any car, because this is mrs. Clarks house. I get paid by the lawyer every month. Her lawyer in new york sends me a check. No ones ever lived here. Theres no furniture in the house. I take care of it. It seemed more like a bird sank war. And as i was leaving, he said, can i ask you a question, do you suppose shes been dead all these years . This is one of the authors you can watch this weekend during book tvs live coverage of the gaithersburg book festival starting saturday. Steve vogel on the critical months at the end of the war of 1812. At 11 15, world war iis missing soldiers, and throughout the day, mark on washington, dan on the 2012 election, and anna on pop culture. Live saturday on book tv on cspan2. And online, our Book Club Selection is it calls you back by former gang member and Community Activist luis j. Rodriguez. Join other readers to discuss he book at booktv. Org. Washington journal continues. Host and this morning, we spotlight a think tank whose work often appears on this show, the counts soil Foreign Relations. Joining us from the d. C. Office is senior fellow, edward alden. First want to ask you about the mission. How do you see a role in major Foreign Policy debates like the one taking place right now, whats going on in ukraine . Our our role is to try to be a source of useful information to the public, to the media, to policy makers, so in an event like ukraine, weve done a variety of events. Weve done press calls with our experts that yes, youre going to have on next, steve sestanovich, i always have trouble with my ss early in the morning, with the former ambassador at large for president clinton, working on the newly emerging states in eastern europe. We do meetings here at the council with members to discuss some of the key issues. Weve got fellows and scholars here working on papers related to this and other major issues. The whole variety of things is think tanks tend to do to raise sandub policy make air wearness and help come up with ideas that can be useful in terms of solution. Scommoip ukraine is an issue thats been talked about and debated for months. What is c. F. R. s role when a less familiar Foreign Policy issue comes up, like boko haram did in just the past week or so here in the United States . Its become such an intensely talked about issue in nigeria. What is your role in sort of forming that discussion . Well, theres important work always going on here in the background. We have, for instance, the center for preventive action run by my colleague, and what they do is they prepare scenario papers. So if there are crises in different parts of the world that might affect u. S. Interest, they bring together groups of experts, councilmembers and others to try to think through, well, what could be the u. S. Responses in those sorts of situations. That information can be very useful for the state, for the white house, for the National Security council. I mean, in the specific case of nigeria, one of our fellows was u. S. Ambassador to nigeria, to seo a lot of expertise in that area. I havent talked to ambassador campbell, but im sure hes been speaking privately to help them think through their response. Again, the idea is for us to be a resource to the policy makers, to the public in trying to help the u. S. In these kinds of situations. Host and you bring up former ambassador campbell, who was nice enough to talk with us on this show last week as that issue came up. Were talking about the council on Foreign Relations, founded ot for , a 501c3 n profit organization. Were talking about its background, but i want to ask you, mr. Alden, how many scholars, how big is the pool of scholars, and how does one tapped to be a scholar or senior fellow with the council on Foreign Relations . We have about 70 fellows fulltime and adjuncts who are parttime usually have some other kind of affiliation. I would say the most common background is in academic or Government Back ground, so these are people with distinguished academic records. Elliot number of abrams, the deputy National Security adviser to george w. Bush. A fair number of other people have held senior jobs in the white house, in the state department, in the pentagon, and they let a few folks like me in the door. Theres some former journalists , one does superb work on epidemics. We have a Geoeconomics Center and has written excellent books on hedge funds, currently working on a big book about lan greenspan. So a few with a journalism background, and i would say thats most of it. So academics, former government officials, we also have visiting fellows of various sorts, so we have military fellows. These are officers generally in the different Armed Services who come and study work here for a year on a project thats going to be useful to them when they go go back in. We have visiting fellows of various sorts working on other issues. We talk about c. F. R. This morning. Its like the think tank on the washington journal. Mr. Alden, want to ask you about how the budget of 57. 6 million in 2013 was funded, break that down for us on where that money comes from. I might have a graphic on this, so correct me if im wrong. But about 30 of it comes from grants of various sorts. We get a lot of money from foundations and others. There are private individuals who donate to the council. We get about 10 from memberships, the council has about 4,700 members in the United States, and they pay dues as part of their membership, so that covers some of it. Foreign affairs, which is our flagship Foreign Policy journal, which is published every other month, actually makes a decent profit, so that brings in some money to the organization as well. We get some corporate grants. Im probably missing a category or two there, but there are four or five major categories of funding for the organization. Host what sorts of foundations or corporations donate to c. F. R. . Really, the whole thing. From my work in the past, you were talking about immigration on the previous segment, and i had a grant from the Ford Foundation to do work related to u. S. Immigration policy. Weve had grants from the Kauffman Foundation for work related to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism. You know, im sure we get money from rockefeller and carnegie and others. I dont know all the details. But there are a whole range of foundations that offer money to organizations like ours and other think tanks to do research that those foundations believe will be useful to the public and to policy makers. Host as were talking about ted alden, senior fellow at c. F. R. , our phone lines are open. If up to the call in, democrats can call in at 2025853880. Republicans, 2025853881. Independents, 2025853882. If youre outside the u. S. , 2025853883. Mr. Alden, i want to get into the specifics of the work that you do at c. F. R. , specifically whats the renewing America Initiative . Guest well, this was an initiative that was launched about three years ago. The idea was from our president , richard haas, and his new book is called Foreign Policy begins at home, and the essential argument of that book is that one of the keys to successful u. S. Foreign policy is the state of our domestic economy, one of the reasons that the United States has been such a powerful influence in the world because of the strong economic base that we have here at home, and as lots of listeners are aware, there have been lots of struggles. The idea was to branch out a little bit beyond our traditional Foreign Policy mandate and begin to look at some issues that really affect the health of the u. S. Economy and ultimately our ability to be a major player in world affairs. We have sponsored research on a broad range of issues. Weve looked at International Trade and trade agreements. I mentioned immigration, education extremely important. This is an area that the council has become much more involved in. We had a task force a couple of years ago that was cochaired by the former new york city superintendent and condi rice, former secretary of state, looking at u. S. Education as a National Security issue. How important it is for to us improve our schools, to maintain our standing in the world. Weve looked at other issues, like innovation, government regulation, have a new report out recently on Corporate Taxation and the need for Corporate Tax overhaul. Really, a broad range of issues that have to do with health of the u. S. Economy and our ability to compete in a global economy. These are some new yashese. Weve never really pulled it all together in the way thats been done under the renewing America Initiative. Host and we can explore some of those areas as were talking with edward alden of the council on Foreign Relations. But one specific one i want to talk about when we talk about economic competitiveness is a new report that you have coming out, i believe this week, on the subsidy war among states, if you can explain what that is. Guest yeah, so this was just released monday, and my coauthor and i had an oped that appears in the New York Times on saturday. As many of your listeners are probably familiar with, u. S. States compete quite aggressively for investment by large corporations. There are forms of competition that really make a lot of sense. If youve got a low tax environment, the way texas does, or sensible government regulation, those are all good things. Unfortunately, what we have on top of that is a subsidy war in which states are quite aggressive in offering big tax breaks, individual companies, donations of free land, other things to try to entice companies to locate in their states rather than in other states. Theres a recent case involving the sales headquarter of North Carolina, which texas has succeeded in luring. We see this in film making all the times, states shourg money on hollywood producers to try to get them to locate films in their state. From a national perspective, really, this is just wasted money. These are investments that would have been made somewhere in the United States regardless, and the states are just competing with each other for no net national gain. We laid out an argument about how we might be able to dial back the competition, looking, in fact, at international models, there have been successes in u. S. Negotiations with other countries to try to restrain those sorts of subsidies. Our argument is, well, its pretty silly we cant do that with our own state. So we call for a series of agreements and other measures among the states to try to set down some rules for this sort of corporation, instead of just shourg millions of dollars on corporations to get them to move around the silliest one is two states are negotiating this right now, kansas city, which straddles missouri and kansas, and youve got, you know, state governments offering subsidies to lure companies from one side of kansas city to the other. Thats really a selly use of taxpayer money. Host you put a price on this, each year states and local governments in the United States spend more than 80 billion or roughly 7 of their total budget on tax breaks and subsidies to attract investment from auto companies, movie producers, aircraft makers and other industries. What would you say to folks who say that thats just the price of competition in the United States . Well, i dont think thats the sort of competition that we want to encourage. I think healthy Competition Among states in terms of creating a climate thats attractive for investment for job creation, i think thats something we want to encourage. I think specific taxpayer handouts to Single Companies to lure them from one state to another, i dont think that makes a lot of sense. I understand why governors do t. They want to get credit f. They dont do it, theyre probably going to be criticized for not aggressively competing. Our why the is not to stop down the competition, but to put down a reasonable set of rules for what you can do. E do that internationally. Theres an International Agreement that sets the rules that restricts them and says here are things duke and cant do. The fear is otherwise it will just be a freeforall with the government and others just handing out money that will be gone forever. Seems to me, if we can too this internationally, ought to be able to put some sensible rules in play to direct this competition. Host to want get into some of the international issues, but first want to bring in callers to ask you questions, ted alden of the council on Foreign Relations. Hes the director of the renewing America Initiative. Well start this morning with dan calling in from georgetown, massachusetts, on our line for independents. Dan, good morning. Caller good morning. Yeah, its interesting listening to all these people that are in the c. F. R. And, you know, theyre scholars. Theyre people that have been heads of business. What im not hearing is, you know, wheres the common sense . That seems to be lacking. Host what do you mean, dan . What do you mean by common sense . Caller well, i find that when we get these overeducated people and institutions together, what happens is common sense goes out the window and everybody seems to be working under some kind of directive. A lot of times this direct siff keeping quiet from the public. So you have the c. F. R. With a p. R. Campaign and how theyre going to tell people things, and then you get behind the scenes and theyre involved with things that we probably shouldnt be involved with. Host all right, dan is in georgetown, massachusetts. Edward alden, can you talk about the independence of your scholars at c. F. R. And address his question about common sense . Guest an awful lot of the work we do is actually very public. Its out there on our website. Its there in Foreign Affairs magazine. You know, i attend meetings all the time that are open to the public. I speak around the country. So a lot behalf we do is very public. C. F. R. Takes no government money at all, completely independent from the government. We are a nonpartisan organization, so were not affiliated with either political party. I have been consulted by democrats, republicans, independents on my work similar for other scholars here. So we really, you know, our goal is to be a public resource thats generally available. You know, lot of students at universities use the material that were putting out on our website and elsewhere, so it really is open broadly for public consumption. We do have meetings here among our members. Some of them are quite interesting, some of them are not all that interesting. But almost everything we do is available public scrutiny and for comments and for reaction, you know, whenever i write things in newspapers or on the website, we have comments, we get pushback, so were really part of the public dialogue over these Foreign Policy issues. Host lets go to tracy waiting in minneapolis, minnesota, on our line for republicans. Tracy, good morning. Caller good morning, guys. I just want to say right off the bat that im not a fan of think tanks and stuff like that or any type of secret society or secret oath type crowds. Host tracy, why . Caller theyre unelect officials, and i think they try theyre branched out into a lot of Media Outlets and stuff, and they have a lot of power over trying to skew our elected officials that are actually putting pressure on them to someone opposed to their viewpoint that contribute money to the campaigns of other candidates that are more in line with theirs. The last crowd of important people that are dick cheney, bush, or obama or mccain and all those guys that are members of relations have close ties to people on the campaign and stuff like that, and then what they do is they squash people that oppose basically if you have a nonForeign Policy or Something Like that where youre opposed to dictators, they come one an idea about whats best for this region or whatever, and if you oppose that, then i think they pile on you and then they squash your campaign. Host edward alden, give you a chance to respond, and also, if you can tell about the history of think tanks and the rise of think tanks in d. C. Guest i want to be clear. The c. F. R. And most other think tanks, there are a few exceptions, but c. F. R. And most others are not involved at all in campaign finance. We certainly dont give money to candidates. We dont do that sort of thing at all. There really is a pretty sharp difference between the think tank world and various activist organizations of one sort or another that are giving money to candidates. Think tanks are its interesting in washington, because ive worked in other places as well, and you do have this proliferation in washington of think tanks which are generating ideas, you know, some like ours, nonpartisan, sort of strible both parties, others quite closely associated with one party or another, so you look at the heritage foundation, its been the kind of idea factory for congressional republicans, or the center for american progress, which is quite closely affiliated with the democrats in the Obama Administration, generating ideas that are useful to them. I think in some ways it reflects the nature of the american political system, which is very decentralized political system in which ideas can enter the political process in a lot of different ways, so individual members of congress, for instance, want to be able to write legislation that they can introduce in the congress, maybe get enacted, if not, at least they can say to their constituents, ive been pushing for this particular piece of legislation so. There really is this very, very Strong Demand for actionable ideas of one sort or another. If you go to a place like canada or the u. K. , you have think tanks there, but because you have very large professional bureaucracy that generates a lot of the ideas into the system, you dont see the same proliferation of these Research Organizations that we get here in washington. So i think it is something thats a little bit peculiar to the nature of the american political system. Host youre talking about the subsidy war among states. Sandy beach on twitter had a question about that. She writes, mr. Alden, am i wrong or do i hear you suggesting imposing a federal mandate over states where job creation methods are concerned . Guest no, its interesting. Some of the push book our paper is we should have calls for a federal mandate. There are arguments to be made that congress could, if it chose to do so, prevent the states from handing out these sorts of subsidies. Its interesting, if you look at the European Union, which in most respects is much more decentralized than the United States, the European Commission in brussels actually has the ability to block france or germany or britain or other Member States from handing out particular kinds of subsidies. There are rules built into the European Union agreement. We actually looked at this option in the u. S. Context, and we really concluded it wasnt workable. That wasnt something that the federal government was likely to do t. Wasnt something that congress was likely to do. What we called for instead was agreements among states really starting at a regional level, where a lot of the competition took place. Agreements in their own interest, to enter into rules voluntarily, to try to control these sorts of subsidies. Its very much a bottom up as opposed to a top down approach. Weve had some criticism from people saying you really need a topdown approach. But i just think in the current political environment, thats not something thats likely to fly. Host from domestic competition to global competition, can you talk about the partnership thats been in the headline a lot in recent months . How close are we to completing that agreement . Well, its hard to know. The negotiators say we are at the end stage, and its been very interesting to watch the evolution of the Obama Administration on this issue, because, of course, president obama in his 2008 campaign was pretty skeptical about trade agreements and actually called in his campaign for the renegotiation of nafta, which never happened after he became president , and stalled a long time before seeking congressional approval for the free trade agreements with korea, panama and colombia n. His second term, hes become much more a enthusiastic supporter of these agreements. And the Transpacific Partnership, which involves i always get the number wrong 11 other countries in asia, is pretty far along, and the negotiators will tell you theyre down to the final issues. There are real challenges. Politically very difficult for the japanese government to make some of the decisions that are going to be required, particularly to open up to agricultural imports. And then from the u. S. End, the Obama Administration does not have the negotiating authority that it will need from congress to bring this agreement back for approval, and i think theres some evidence that other countries are waiting to make their final offers until they feel assured that this is going to get a vote in the congress. While were in the final stages of some of the issues, i think its going to be hard to go that last mile. Host on twitter, wouldnt it be easier to avoid policy and trade deals that result in outsourced lost jobs . Guest well, theres a very long and interesting history to this, and my current Book Research is actually really looking into the question of how the United States has coped with the rise of globalization over the last half century or so, and i think if you look at the trade agreements, youd have to say that the experience is mixed. I think theres been some very positive things out of it. As consumers, we all benefit from the fact that, you know, the price on our smartphones or our televisions or, you know, almost anything you can buy at walmart is much cheaper in real terms than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I think the efficiency of our economy and other economies is improved dramatically. Trade has been very important in helping developing countries raise their standards of living. But theres no question theres been a pretty Significant Impact on the american workforce, particularly in manufacturing. And one of the things that im rather critical of, and my Historical Research is probably making me more critical, we really have not done enough as a country to help our people adapt to the reality of a more competitive global economy. Whether that means, you know, support as they move from one job to another, whats called trade adjustment assistance, which weve done very poorly, education generally, you need Higher Education now for the best jobs, and weve done poor on the that front. Building a worldclass infrastructure, so that the United States really is the best place for companies to invest. I think on all these things, we have not performed as well as a country, as we ought to have, and i think, you know, ordinary people feel that in their own lives when they look at the work possibilities that are out there for them. Host well show our viewers some stats on the potential impact of the u. S. Transpacific trade deal that weve been talking about a little bit here with edward alden of the council on Foreign Relations. As we take a call from theodore, calling in from carrollton, missouri, on our line for understand penalties. Theodore, good morning. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Go ahead, theodore. Youre on with edward alden. Caller mr. Alden, how you doing today . Guest very good. How are you . Caller marvelous. My question is, how is it democratic when you can support one group in ukraine to oust the president and then you disbelieve another group when it tries to go into the referendum, and the result of the referendum was like 80 , 90 , but then you disavow them. I dont understand what is the tank. Of the think host ill let edward alden respond to that. Up about coming up next, as we continue to spotlight the council on Foreign Relations, were going to be joined by the c. F. R. Senior fellow on russian studies, stephen sestanovich. Well be talking about these specific issues, but edward alden, if you have some general thoughts. Guest no, i would encourage the caller to call back and ask steve about these issues. Hes far more knowledgeable than i am. Just one quick point. He talked about the stance of the c. F. R. As an institution, we dont take positions on any of these things. You know, he will offer you a range of his personal opinions on the situation in ukraine, and he has great expertise there and experience, so very valuable. But c. F. R. As an organization does not take positions on those issues. My comments about trade come from my personal expertise and research. Theyre not the positions of the council on Foreign Relations. So we dont take it. Host wed love to hear your response on this piece that appeared yesterday in the daily caller by Alexander Bernard and paul leaf, talking about the Transpacific Partnership, which we talked about a little today. They write in their piece, president obamas failure to finalize the Transpacific Partnership while he was recent until asia undermined his asia pivot, a key Foreign Policy priority of his administration guest well, i mean, i would agree with the argument that successful conclusion of the t. P. P. Is absolutely vital to the larger strategic interest that the u. S. Has in the region. I think the big reason is china. What the big reason is china. What the ttp does his anchor the states firmly economically in that region. It will set up a system of rules that will be very attractive to companies all over the region on the side of that side of the water. If you have a successful negotiation of that agreement, the chinese will feel pressure to join us some point. Some point. One of the things on the table. S a negotiation there are real problems in china in terms of subsidies for state owned enterprises. Tpb has a chapter on state owned enterprises. This will be a good thing for the United States and the rest of the region. Is negotiation in vietnam another. I do think it will be wrapped up probably and not this week. On twitter guest i do not know how to answer that. Have scholars here working on the issues who are probably more knowledgeable than i am. He look at china. China is a much wealthier country than 30 years ago and a lot of it has been the result of its success in exporting. More energy. We know a lot of electricity in china is generated by burning coal. Coal burning is a major cheerleader to greenhouse gases. On some level, it is probably true. Makes the Climate Change problem harder to solve an otherwise. Im not sure many of us was a the right solution therefore is to keep economies us backwards as possible and make people poorer. The website is cfr. Org. Which joined by the director of the renewing America Initiative. Lets go to teresa waiting in illinois on our line for independents. Caller i am just an everyday person. Attention tod pay Foreign Affairs, unlike a lot of americans. Attempt atis an world domination. You look at mexico. The mexican farmer. That is why you have the influx of mexicans coming over here. Away and was taken just like the farmers here in america. Is taking overca the farming. You look at the oral oil industry, any company that nationalizes the oil are enemies of the United States and europe. Whys that . Just because they will not give them access in iran, they spew all the i all the propaganda but nobody talks about how the United States and britain was kicked out of iran in the first place. Wars and suffering in this country are at the hands of Corporate America and greed. That is a big menu there. Withart i am more familiar is nafta and mexico. There is no question nafta had a big effect on agriculture. You open up competition. It was possible for theto sell corn in mexico which created competition for farmers in mexico. The Positive Side of that is you end up with more efficient farms in mexico that are more productive. Dan the downside is you have more farmers. That is what happened to us over the course of the 20th century. I do not think it was handled well here or in mexico. Run, the story has been positive. I would suggest or listeners take a look at the recent book on usmexico relations, but you look at political problems, becoming a oneparty state to a much more vibrant document vibrant democracy. Caller good morning. I want to know why the American Worker by the only people doing with this globalization. The head of toyota makes a million dollars. Oil Company Executive to this lease go himself 124 million for one years worth of work. Live is the American Worker the only one has to pay the price . Guest one of the things globalization did was create a real bargaining imbalance between the corporate and labor sections sectors. You go to the 1960s and those unions that a lot of argument power. The companies are giving power. The companies had no choice. One of the things the opening of done it has created a significant bargaining imbalance. That. Olor is right about workforce does not have negotiation. These are one of the things we have not figured out. You have capital that is mobile and workers who were not. Theyre rooted communities and places. We have not figured out trying. O gain some of the benefits we make sure that gets distributed on the employment side to our workforce. We have not done a very good job of that in general as a country. American hero, joe offers his thoughts lets go to eddie waiting on our line for republicans in massachusetts. Interested in seeing what you think about infrastructure. We import half of our cars and petroleum to run them . Dont we spend more than twice as any other country on education . You sound very socialistic to me. I will have my medicare drop this year. A company i retired from his dropping me. As far as other countries, how about the Corporate Tax . Canada is down to 15 . Host andy gives you another platter of options to choose from. Guest a big menu there. Let me take Corporate Tax. We just published a report on this, available on our website. It is part of what we call our scorecard and Progress Report series. It is basically a factual report on the state of play in a particular issue. It includes an info graphic that tries to highlight in picture terms some of our biggest issues. The most recent feckless was on Corporate Tax policy. The story with Corporate Taxes is interesting. Taxcorporate share of total in the United States was much less than it was in the 1950s in 1960s. Our Corporate Taxes have come down and other countries have been cutting them even faster than the United States. We have gotten to the point where 35 has become a competitive disadvantage in some industries. There are a lot of complications about where we tax abroad. Ofalked about the abilities companies to move offshore. A lot more businesses done overseas. That money is taxable but only after they return it to the United States. A lot of money gets held offshore. There is a general agreement in our congress that the Current System does not make a lot of sense. Agreement fromet democrats and republicans on how to overhaul the system. My personal preference would be for us to move to lower Corporate Taxes significantly and replace some of the lost with tax. Value added taxes can be rebated. They are paid back to the company when they export and it creates an incentive to use the United States as an export location, creating more jobs here. That is not one of the options seriously on the table. Left we have 10 minutes with ted. Edward alden manyll try to get in as calls as we can. Good morning. I am an independent but that is ok. The reason why we called, we are talking a lot about employment. I have been in the executive recruiting business since 1979 and have seen the manufacturing sector. Sector ing their he is smiling there virtually hollowed out. We did a lot of work in the 1970s and 1980s in the fields of manufacturing engineering, primarily in the metalworking sector. Fortunately, me being a Small Business owner, i was able to pivot into new areas of engineering, computer science. We primarily work in middle other 510 nd the of our work is upper management area. Is, is going on here unfortunately, for people, their standard of living is actually deteriorating. Thehe United States, dialogue does not go as far as it used to go and these trade agreements, overall, enhance the standard of living of other nations. You can see china is the rise in power now. A few years from now, they will lead us as the number one economy in the world. I would respond to repeat some of the things i have been saying. If you look at overall standard of living, the evidence is the trade agreements have primarily improve that. The things we can buy now are far more reasonably priced and more accessible than they were 30 or 40 years ago. But there have been people who are very hard hit and there is no question the manufacturing nowor, employment is lower than it was in the 1970s. You saw two big drops in the late 70s and early 80s. A lot of that was associated with japanese competition. A lot of that associated with competition from china. Some of that was probably ofvitable as a result container shipping, worlds become a lot smaller, it is easier and cheaper to move goods around. There is no question trade agreements accelerated that. We did a pretty poor job as a country of managing that year the caller talked about his ability to pivot. We have done too little to make it possible for other people to pivot and move into different lines of work that would continues to pay them well if their factory closes down. To the history, we have not done a good job of this. The good news is recently you have seen something of a recent upsurge of manufacturing in the u. S. Not big job creation, maybe 500,000. As aow price of energy result of the fracking revolution made it cheaper for some companies to operate here. Some of the companies that have located significant Business Operations in china had difficulty operating there. The regulatory climate is difficult in china. We have seen some of the business move back in the United States. We will do more with mexico to create a north American Market where some of the lower wage work would be on the Mexican Border and some of the higher which work would be here. There are positive signs recently but no question over the past 40 years that the impact has been significant. Get rich ontry to our line from ohio on independence. Independents. Caller you just said Lower Energy Costs since fraction since fracking. They have tripled since fracking. That is not my point. Haveis country today, we rogue religious extremists and youre talking about Foreign Relations. The state of texas, that is the tea party, the south pier they have a different economic ideology. Is based on war, oil, illegal labor. To write this down. There is a great book. Taking back the rust belt. When i talk about rogue states, connecticut would be one. New york city would be a rogue state. Maryland is a rogue state. We will try larry in venice, florida, on our line for democrats. Caller i love cspan and i have a question. Real simple. I read pfizer is moving the so probably the next reason is Corporate Taxes like 39 or whatever. We are talking jobs here. Pfizer doesnt pay a penny. About the Corporate Tax and closing loopholes . Buyt pfizer is trying to the british pharmaceutical. The british are resisting that. Ashes and a cut is one of their Flagship Research and development companies. I think there are a bunch. Easons to this has rekindled the argument that we need to take a serious look at our Corporate Tax structure. It is hard to do things in congress. Very sensible reform proposal on the table. It really delved in great detail on what would be needed to lower the Corporate Tax rate to 26 to withus more competitive other countries. There are a lot of loopholes that would companies would like to get closed. We will see the new Senate Finance committee chairman. He has indicated his interest in taking on the issue. Certainly, your viewers, your islars now how difficult it an this issue is one everybody agrees ought to be a priority. It seems difficult to make progress on. Texas on our line for independents. Caller i am socalled. I am in my late 70s, and i have never seen the country in such a mess. Am sorry to hear all of this to say you are bringing in more people illegally, texas is in a drought, california is in age are out. What crap do you think they are picking . Get real. All you do is say they are putting jobs here. You have to build up mexico so they will stay there if you want things to change in the United States. If you think there is unrest in the ukraine, listen to the people that are calling in. We send people to washington to help us, not to put us in jeopardy. Ted, i want to give you a chance to respond on some immigration issues. Guest this is one where information is important. The level of immigration in the United States that is illegal is a tiny fraction of what it was, a quarter or less. If you look at the number of mexicans coming to the United States legally and illegally, and the number leaving the United States to go back home, it is net zero right now. It has not been an increase in the mexican population in the night is its four years now. A lot of it has to do with a weaker economy here but some has to do with a stronger economy in mexico. Some of the things the caller is talking about are in fact taking place. We are seeing the mexican economy keeping more people at home and tougher enforcement at the border on our side. It is important to realize these things change. Go back to their early 90s, no question. But it is simply not the situation anymore. We produced a big paper on this that came out about a year ago. It is something you can find on our website. Edward alden, thank you for welcoming us into the council of relations this morning. We will continue our spotlight on the council of for a Foreign Relations. We will talk about ukraine, russia, and the Current Situation and what it needs means in the United States with our senior fellow. Later, in our 9 00 hour, Glenn Greenwald will be here to discuss his new book on Edward Snowden, the nsa, and information privacy. We will first send you to Bobby Jackson and a news update from cspan radio. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] good morning. So she could get treatment for her gender situation. A promised appeal could still prevent the owner from being the order from being enforced friday as instructed. Says he intends to appeal the case and that he might go directly to the u. S. Supreme court. The u. S. Ambassador to japan, caroline kennedy, today joined the Japanese Nuclear threat plant devastated by the earthquake and tsunami. This is expected to take decades. Ambassador kennedy toured the plant for about three hours. Finally, the Labor Department reports this morning on a all, Producer Prices, and those are the prices the companies received for goods and services. In march, the prices edged up a 10th of a percent, led by gains for food, clothing, jewelry, and chemicals. Some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. Cspans newest book, sunday at 8 00. Cause i cannot say what the moment was because i have been living it all my life. From thes migrated south to washington dc. My mother from george and my father from southern virginia. That is where they met and married and then had me. Without the great migration, i would not the here. I lived with it all my life and grew up with people from North Carolina and South Carolina and georgia, all around me in the neighborhood i grew up. I was surrounded by the language in the food and the music and the ambitions of the people who had migrated from the south. A lot of competition about boost what child would go to school. It has been with me all this time. Voices from unique 25 years in our book notes and conversations. Publish by Public Affairs books now available by your bookseller. Withu can now take cspan you wherever you go with our free act on your smart phone and tablet. Listen to all three cspan tv channels or cspan radio anytime. Of each ofschedule our networks so you can tune in whenever you want, plate podcasts from our programs. Download our free app online. Your android and blackberry. Host we continue to spotlight the work of the council of Foreign Relations this morning, we turn to the topic of the ongoing crisis in the ukraine. Stephen sestanovich is a senior fellow for russian and eurasian onwant to take your opinion votes earlier this week and how you expect the uncertainty to play out here. These were votes conducted in two of the ukraine regions. In the far east on the russian , they were organized in an impromptu way by groups that had been ash kidding agitating and had been hostile to the government in kiev. They are somewhat shadowy groups and these people often appear with masks on camera. At least there on armed guards. The organization of the referendum was ready lose. There were many graft ballots,. O voter rolls there was no international monitoring. Nevertheless, there was a significant voting favor of the propositions put to the people about greater self rule. The interpretation of the referendums, even among the disputed. As other governments, the russian government, the restaurant the western governments, the Ukrainian Governments all had a different view of them. These parts of Eastern Ukraine would join russia or become independent states . There is absolutely no clear path. The leaders of these movements had been saying this is the step, possiblyt even further referendums. They claim there is now no authority for the kiev government in these two regions. They have asked for the police and the army to withdraw. But what kind of impact this on neighboring regions, which did not carry out ukrainiana national politics, on the president ial election that comes up in two weeks, we do not know any of that. That is still unfolding. Lies russia treating this differently than the way it treated crimea. It is an important question. Crimea is more much more heavily russian. You had a clear readiness on the part of the russian government to move quickly. And they have got a military base there. They have got their personnel in position. Ukraine, the russian population is large, but a minority. Alle is not a consensus at about what the future of these areas should be. Polls have shown rather solid majorities do not want to break away from ukraine. The russian government is apparently hesitant about pushing a confrontation that could be violent. Ony have had their troops the border now for weeks and weeks but have not moved because many russian experts say they are wary of military involvement that could be extremely messy. As we are talking with stephen sestanovich, our phone lines are open if you have questions or comments on the ukraine and russia. And if you are outside the u. S. Deaths outside the u. S. I want to get your thoughts on the ashes in the ukraine. The morning paper yesterday in the ukraine, six soldiers killed by insurgents and continued fighting in parts of the east. I am showing our viewers the headline from the Washington Times. Guest there have been skirmishes in many small towns in the Eastern Ukraine where separatists have taken over buildings, seized police insulation, and so forth. Or theither the military Ukrainian Intelligence Services or the police have tried to take them back. The latest skirmish is not so much an escalation as a continuing backandforth between the kiev authority and their representatives, and the separatist groups. Another headline that came out this week, this from the new republic and applebaum, is , theng in her piece headline democracy fails when citizens do not believe the country is worth fighting for. Do the ukrainian people believe their country is worth fighting for here in the east . In thea lot of people ukraine are fighting. People in think the large are mobilized for a fight is a harder question. Problems the ukraine has is, actually, theyre very contentious views on the part of people in different regions toward others. Toeadiness to respond slights and uncertainty and economic distress, cultural toference, and to turn it in. Major and militarized coral and applebaum gets an important point. What is the National Unity and cohesiveness of the ukraine . That has been slow in coming. Exaggerateple often the divisions in the ukraine. For 20 plus years now, this has been a country that has handled its divisions relatively moderately and well. We are now seeing that is a shallow kind of unity and that institutions like those of the Ukrainian Army and the police are in fact week. Host stephen sestanovich, if you want to check out his work while we talked to him this thatng as we spotlight think tank here in d. C. Lets go to herb waiting in springville, new york, on our line for democrats. Good morning. Youre on the line with stephen sestanovich. Caller good morning. You are familiar with ukrainian history, but i do not think most of the American People are. For example, in world war ii, and left talk about western toaine, which we do not seem talk about much. Western ukraine and world war ii welcome the invading nazi troops , collaborated with them to a great extent. There was even an ss division formed with western ukrainians which committed all kinds of atrocities in poland and other laces in just a few weeks ago, about three weeks ago, there were some reunions of descendents of the ss divisions in the western ukraine. They were marching through the streets with their banners. Tell us a little bit about that withry that goes on today what i would call neonazis that we seem to be supporting. Tell the American People little bit about that. There is no doubt that in world war ii, the ukraines were provided and divided and there were some parts of ukraine that were so unhappy with stalinist rule that they were prepared to back a german invasion and work with them. Remember, this is a stalinist regime that had been responsible for huge famine in the ukraine in the previous decade and one of the most brutal regimes in history that had become deeply by many inopposed the western ukraine. Throughout eastern europe, and world war ii does, you had people choosing sides, depending on the principle, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This was horrible time in that region. Divided. Tries were in the former yugoslavia, you had all kinds of groups opposing each other along exactly the lines the caller mentioned. There is a lot of history as to with groups finally broke the nazis because they found the nazis did not support them. The ukrainians in the west did discover that. Herb seen concerned so that history is still shaping what happened today. That is the crucial point. What you have in the ukraine is a lot of people calling themselves, calling their opponents nazis on the basis of this history. Ukraine is a in mobilization of a lot of groups unhappy with the direction the country has taken over the past 20 years. You had it in tf for months. A lot of people who came out of the woodwork their use all kinds of nationalist appeals. To say they are nazis is to get into a namecalling that is not really meaningful right now and reflects some of the feverish and extremeish extremist politics right now. The russians in many Eastern Ukraine have left on the theme and talked about everybody opposing western ukraine as nazis. That is ridiculous. Important, if ukraine will have any sort of way forward, as a unified country, to have a recognition of good faith on all sides about the ukraines future. Waiting in to steve connecticut on our line for independents. Would like to talk about the economic dynamics and, in particular, what is happening in russia. That chancellor Angela Merkel and christine growth projection ofrussia going down because the oil, gasbased economy. How does it tie into me . Lotve a 401 k plan and a of my money is in london and frankfurt, germany, in these Banking Systems. What happens if we tank russias economy . Russias is economy is in trouble the matter what we do. That is something european leaders are very aware of and mr. Putin is very aware of. Or soe past five years since the big economic crisis, russian Economic Growth was about 3, 4 . Last year, it went down to one and change. This year, it is flat or going to be negative. For about a year, russian export experts have been wondering when a recession would hit. Now, it is happening. If you are in the ruble, i would expect your holdings to decline. The ruble has been down this year and it will probably go further down. But, if your 401 k is invested in european securities, the effect of a russian downturn is probably not going to be so great. You might find out how much you are dependent on russian assets. One of russias key economic oil and russia is the gas industry. Can you talk a little bit about how the sanctions so far have affected that industry, specifically some reports about the south stream pipeline . And efforts to possibly block that project . The sanctions western governments have considered as part of their response to what russia has done in the ukraine russianrestrictions on energy exports. There have not been anything really significant there so far. Russianlties on some companies and individuals. One of the more interesting initiatives that has been taken is by the European Union, to say they are looking more critically at a russian project, a pipeline in the black sea to make it exports for russian gas to circumvent ukrainian territory. European officials have said, inasmuch as this pipeline does regulations,of the they are now more inclined to block it. That pipeline is in trouble in a way it has not been rated as one of the more significant potential penalties russia will pay and one that mr. Putin is closely associated with. He has advocated for these. Ipelines with the unrest in ukraine, does who need that type line . Does he need the pipeline to do an end around here of the ukraine . Ukraines going through unhindered. There is no problem with the export of gas through the ukraine and there has not been, spent except when the russians turned it off. But the russians wanted to weaken the ukraine by being able to export to europe without having to go across ukrainian territory. They have got two pipelines that already helped to achieve this. The north stream and blue stream pipelines. They wanted to add a third one. That is one now in trouble. Lets go back to massachusetts. Brian is waiting on our line for republicans. Good morning. Caller thank you for having me. One of the callers referred to it earlier. When we look at the ukrainian in of the biggest massacres did in the ukrainians and russians act as one people almost to walk over germany . They defeated the fascists in budapest and berlin. Comment one your that. I also find it very intriguing these days that many people who have slavic studies, could you talk a little about your background on how you became interested in russian studies . Host do you want to start with your background . Sure. My father was born in what was then the austrian hungarian of croatiahe coast today. That had very little to do with my interest in soviet studies, which had more to do with the was war, the fact that this the central problem of american. Oreignpolicy in my youth and as i was studying these matters. Union loomed large in my thinking because it loomed large in american foreignpolicy. Specialist ony a the former yugoslavia, for example, but i did become a specialist on eastwest during the cold war and on russian politics. Aboutller also asked russia and ukraine in fighting against the germans. Youre absolutely right that these were the two largest populations of the former soviet union and so form the largest part of the army that eventually defeated the nazis in world war ii. This was a terrible time for ukraine, and in some ways, you could say they have not really even yet recovered. This is a time of incredible their territory. Armies marching back and forth across these lands, after a time in which the ukraine had also suffered, particularly under stalinism. Of world war ii is still very vivid in this country. Host a little bit more on your background. A ba from cornell, a phd from harvard. What was your study and harvard . I was in the Government Department and got my doctorate there and did my dissertation on soviet american negotiations on nonproliferation. Rendon is waiting in washington for our line on independence. Ts. I was hoping you could comment on whether or not the demonstrations in eastern affectedave in any way the russian speaking populace in the Baltic States and the republic. It is a really good question. People have been wondering about russian minorities elsewhere on the periphery of russia. Let me take those two separately. They are quite different. In moldova, the country between romania and the ukraine, there is a small strip of land on one side of the easter river. Areas been a separatist for 20 years. Has got a larger russian population, although not a majority by any means. And it has frequently expressed in joining russia. Less than 10 years ago, they had a referendum there, asked to join and the russians told them to forget about it. Interesterated their and the russians still do not seem terribly interested. There are russian ethnic minorities in Baltic States as. Ell these operate somewhat differently. They are not separatist. The Largest Opposition Party in latvia is a prorussian party. But they work within the framework of latvian politics. They have an ethnic agenda, as you have in many countries, involving linguistic issues and education. But they are not pushing to join russia. Host some of those Baltic States, part of nato countries brings up this question from twitter interestere has been in a dialogue with the ukraine. Bout membership for some time in the most recent phase when this was discussed in 2008, the United States was probably the most interested in getting a hearing for the ukrainian membership. I think we leaned a little bit too far forward on this issue. Although i think it is the appropriate policy for the alliance to say they are willing to entertain applications for membership from many european countries, in the ukraine, this is a very divisive issue. , ithe Ukrainian Government was not really united in favor of it. Taken theasically issue off the table. Since then, it has really been they had no interest in pursuing the issue. Even since february, when a new government came in, they said, we are not pushing the issue. It is a nonissue as far as we are concerned. Although different members of the Nato Alliance have at different times expressed an interest, it is actually not anything that is a live question between ukraine and nato at this time. Questionther twitter on history and its impact today. National and if you could explain the history as you answer it. It is an interesting story. The soviet unions time when it a lot of Nuclear Weapons were left outside territory, particularly in ukraine. The United States, russia, and britain organized a dialogue in onch with ukraine, agreed a version of the Nuclear Weapons back to russian territory, in exchange for a kind of partiesnding among the that Ukrainian Security would be respected by all sides, most relevantly in russia. There were people in the ukraine saying there that was a mistake to do that. I think in a not particularly serious way, thinking they then would have been able to defend themselves against russian pressure. Ruefully all the same. I do not think too many other governments of regret that agreement. The idea of having another in europe was one that very few states welcomed. The united reminder states did participate in agreements that were meant to fortify Ukrainian Security. The agreements unravel. Russians have not respected ukraine security. Host a senior fellow for russian and eurasian studies joining us this morning as we spotlight the think tank where we bring our viewers live to their headquarters in bc d. C. I want to go to rich in pennsylvania on our line for democrats. Caller i wanted to say the balance of power was lacked. Wacked. That we pulled the nukes out of their. Great. A rant, north korea, all of these different places right now where we are very concerned. Meseems very upsetting to that the russians that is what theyre doing. That is ok. What the hell . Whos going to stop them. Even nato anymore. On thetephen sestanovich continued impasse of nato . Guest the caller is right about a couple things and not about one other important one. Doubtright there is no russia has acquired territory in. Very aggressive way that could changes lead to the dissolution of the ukraine. I think russian policy has been extremely destabilizing. Is it still nato . You have seen an interesting dialogue and debate within nato as to whether the Alliance Still has relevance. Most governments have been committed to the proposition that they have to be more serious about their article five commitments to each other. Those are commitments to security and defense. Thehave seen a rallying of alliance and an awareness they may be called upon before long to defend each others territory and preparations are underway and a lot of discussion about whether or not they could thatlly take the steps would deter pressure on members theme alliance and defend if the pressure mounts. Ukraine is getting ready for elections later this month. Can you explain what that means and how both the eu and russia are viewing the elections . The eu has treated these elections as a crucial moment in creating a legitimate National Leadership for ukraine. Ukrainiantice leaders are described as interim this or that. That is because they took office in emergency circumstances when president yanukovych fled the country in february. The elections are meant to install a new government chosen the russians. Government has been inconsistent on the question of whether the place orshould take would be positive. The most recent statement was one in which they did say they could go forward, but they have raised doubts about its legitimacy at other times. Now, the real issue is what other discussion the formation of a new government, and whether it is seen as legitimate, even if elections do not take lace in parts of Eastern Ukraine. The number one item on the agenda for any new leadership will be trying to find a National Agreement on decentralization on the rights of different regions under constitutional reform. Clinicalhe top priority of the ukraine on day one after the election. Several colors are waiting to chat with you, including jack on our line for independents. Caller good morning. I would like to suggest something and then i would like to ask the guests a question. As you know, with every philosophical or political question, there is usually a spectrum of opinion, from the far left to the far right, and may be objective in the middle. Our guest sounds like an anodyne, sort of in the middle person, though he seems he whitewashed the color from new yorks questions about the nazis. Four important posts in the government, including the portfolios for the police and defense. That is not insignificant. What is your question . Caller hold on just a second. I would suggest you get part of your political spectrum to the left here. Steve would be an alternative voice. William baum. Paul. Y, and ron get ron paul on. The question i would like to ask our guest is, does he have a that then the massacre not see minded folks perpetrated on may 2, where they burned they peaceful petitioners rounded up, herded into the trades union building, went in and shot, raped, strangled host i will let you tell us. Caller guest the callers use of the i think this is a terrible tour rhetorical 10 patient we have to say people we do not like our nazis. There is no nazi party in the ukraine. To say the nazis hold four ministries in the Ukrainian Government is simply not true. Who i do notple actually care for myself, but theyresent a kind of are definitely right wing populist group that is very whatle to russia and russia has done in ukraine. No surprise. Part of ukrainian politics. Get over it and try to understand the way in which it affects ukrainian politics today. Something awful happened in odessa and we do not know what it is. I do not wreck nice what the caller is describing, the raping and strangling part of his story. It is possible that what you had here was an explosion that took place with atook group in a single building. Is an investigation going on as to what happened. It is a shocking event here at a great tragedy. It reflects how terrible ukrainian politics can get if the kind of sectarian violence we have seen in some places becomes widespread. Is nazisay, this killing people, it is just completely false. I hope that even some of the authorities the caller mentioned that you should have on the program would recognize that this is just hysterical rhetoric that bears no relation to the truth. Is that anodyne enough for you . Host on our line for independents. Ask, how would like to does the council of Foreign Relations come out on this situation in the ukraine . The council does not come out on any particular policy recommendation. It is an organization that , and individual researchers come to conclusions about the right policy choices that could be made, but the Council Membership is in no way implicated in the conclusions that researchers come to or that any other members of the council voice. It is a nonpartisan and Bipartisan Organization interested essentially in Foreign Policy research and dialogue. How do you think the obama foreignpolicy legacy on the ukraine in this situation, how do you think it will be viewed . I know you have a book. Where are we guest my book looks at the periods when we get into overcommitment, great involvement in wars and pullback. Period of pullback. Arise. Llenges president s have to decide how to respond to them. To what theelops as appropriate new strategy is. Ukraine is one of those examples thathas to be late in has stimulated a debate as to whether the president is acting effectively to defend the traditional concerns that american Foreign Policy has had. I think its a debate that is likely to go forward for some time. Historically, retrenchment debates take years to unfold and resolve themselves. Ukraine debate is particularly animated because it comes after this. Debate. Seriouyriae debate. These different questions have come together to raise a doubt about whether retrenchment will adequately protect american interests. I think the Obama Administrations record is quite familiar if you look at past periods of retrenchment. , there is a challenge to that policy. That is what we are seeing now. Want to ask you, and your work in russian and eurasian studies, we will have the author and journalist who broke the Edward Snowden nsa story on with us next to talk about his new book. Have the russian people view the Edward Snowden revelation . Guest russians view it rather differently. Has had aputin personal hand in this. Had thenowden opportunity to put a question directly to putin. Him, can youto tell us what kind of activities russian Intelligence Services engage in that are like those of the nsa . As an opportunity to say, well, we provide russian security, but he tried to distance himself from the activities of the nsa and to indicate that these are all highly regulated activities under the rule of law. Russianse things that are generally conscious of is that there is very little oversight of their own government and their own military and Intelligence Services. Dont have a lot of Investigative Journalism in russia looking into this question. Since his answer, i have not seen stories robing the reality probing the reality of what he said. You have not had a lot of parliamentary investigations to find out what is really going on. Which thetem in president can comment on it. That is pretty much what the people are going to find out about it. There are not a lot of opportunities for other institutions to challenge executive authority. Host time for one more call. Spotlight the group today on the washington journal. Jerseyo to lakewood, new. Our line for republicans. Good morning. Caller good morning. A quick background my father was born 1900 in kiev. My mother was born in estonia. I was born in austria. My father fought against the red army. Do you know anything about the white army . My fathers family was killed by the communists because they had ar nicholas. Cz what is going on there is heartbreaking. Host if you have some thoughts. Were thee whites forces that tried to oppose the bolsheviks after the october revolution in 1917. There was a civil war. Years. Ed for four it was a pretty brutal time. Callers father was with the rights, there were different generals who dispersed throughout the empire. They eventually were defeated along with other groups that resisted bolshevik control. The civil war is not as vivid a memory as world war ii. Was one that pitted lots of different groups in russia against each other. Tragic time. One where ukraine was again a type of battleground. Ukrainians have many memories of this kind of violence. The history to the present, can you talk about the latest with the osc roundtable that we are hearing reports about . What is that trying to do . Guest an important initiative. We dont know how successful its going to be. Ce, a group made up of european governments, has taken the initiative to try to form a roundtable that would bring in ukrainianies politics to find a new formula for relations among the different regions. Decentralization or federalization. Dialoguesome informal back and forth john kerry said he had been using the swiss , the head of the osce to engage in a dialogue with putin to come up with a formula that would allow for some negotiations. This roundtable is supposed to start today. By a visited off from the German Foreign minister. One of the contentious issues is not just what the final agreement might be. Who actually sits at the table . Ukrainian government has said we are willing to have people from the east to would talk about it because we want True International dialogue but we can have killers. People who have blood on their hands. Issue thatound this will produce representation for different groups in ukraine will have to be found if youre going to have any sort of effective process of dialogue. Cfr. Org. Website, the senior fellow for russian and eurasian studies there. Thank you. , we will be joined by glenn, the author of no place to hide. His new book about Edward Snowden, the nsa and surveillance. But first, a news update from cspan radio. Inflation is picking up. Rose byt u. S. Companies the most in seven months in april. Led by more expensive food and on wholesale profit margins. The Labor Department says the Producer Price index rose. 6 last month. In vienna, iran and six world powers or marking on their most ambitious effort yet. Drafting of a final deal. The go shooting rounds the negotiation round that comes before the july 20 target date to reduce irans potential weapons making capacity. Finally, in saudi arabia, chuck hagel says the persian gulf security will not be jeopardized to get a deal with iran. He says washington is hopeful progress can be made this week and is negotiations with iran on a longterm deal to curb its nuclear ambitions. Some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. For over 35 years, cspan brings Public Affairs events from washington directly to you. Atn you win the room briefings and conferences and offering complete gavel to gavel coverage of the u. S. House, all as a Public Service of private industry. Were cspan, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago. Brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. Washington journal continues. Host more nsa revelations. A deeper look into the mind of the man who made those revelations. Edward snowden, the nsa and the u. S. Surveillance state. Will be answering your questions and comments. I want to start by a story that you lay out. It was the name he used when he first contacted me. He is a fifth century leader of rome. There came a time when rome was the siege by all sorts of enemies and was under attack and they needed a leader who they thought could lead rome to victory. They recruited him. He had gone off to his farm to retire and live a peaceful life and they persuaded him to come back to the bedroom. He led a successful war victory he was incredibly popular and had immense amounts of power and instead of keeping that power, he did what he said he was quick to do, which was relinquished voluntarily relinquished it voluntarily and he became this model of civic virtue. Someone who uses power for the collective good, not their own. Found thatwden inspiring and use that name. Host is this who Edward Snowden thought he was . Guest he did not think he was a Roman Emperor or anything like that. He admired what he did. He paid tribute to the relinquishment of power and the use of power for the public good by adopting his name as a pseudonym. Host you have been writing about these issues for many years. You have a lot of tips on different inks that people are willing to give you. What was it about the tips he got from Edward Snowden and made you trust him . Guest it took a while to establish trust. He first contacted me, he was quite reluctant to say anything about who he was or what he had. Communicate in an unencrypted environment, theres a chance that others are listening to the things youre saying. It took many weeks before we could begin communicating. Once we did, i cant say that i fully trusted what he was saying or who he was. Not until a got to hong kong and was able to sit down with him at a room and subject him to six hours of extremely intense and nonstop interrogation where i asked him every question that i had. Was extremely able to withstand that questioning. Everything he said was very consistent. There was no hesitation. I was entirely convinced that he was who he said he was and was convinced that his motives are what you are presented them to be. Book you talk in your about what you were expecting versus what you found when you first met him. When he first contacted me, he made claims about the kind of documents he had. He said they were extremely sensitive, topsecret documents that were highly incriminating. Before i would go to hong kong to meet him, asked him to provide me with some samples selected know he was serious and real. He provided those and those were explosive. They were unlike anything that had leaked from the agency before. That fact that he had access to this material combined with his sophisticated insight that he demonstrated to me made me assume that he was very sincere. The fact that he was adamant about the fact that he wanted to be identified as the source, not to hide or remain anonymous, knowing the risks also made me assume that he had been around for somebody decades that he became so disillusioned by what he was seeing that he was willing to do that. When i met him and he turned out , it was really disorienting and confusing and it took me a good couple of hours to get my composure and figure out what was going on. Host you said you kept coming back to the question of why he was doing this. Finally, he gave me an answer. The true measurement of a persons worth is not what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those police. If youre not acting on your believes, they are probably not real. And try toou go back put yourself in the position that i was in, which is part of ,hat i tried to do in this book to me, the most cold thing to understand was why was this 29yearold who had a very stable life and prosperous career and a girlfriend who he loved and a family that was supportive, why was he willing to unravel his whole life and throw it all away in defense of his political principle . I need to know that he had thought this through and there were motives that were genuine that he understood. He finally was able to access those during that time and said, conscious demands that i not let these injustices linger. I can only look at myself in the defense. I know i took to hide. Place Edward Snowden, the nsa and the western real estate. We will get two calls. Eric is waiting in georgia. On our line for democrats. You are on. Caller thank you. Did i have a couple of points i would like to make. What snowden did, would you recommend that everyone who worked in this agency tell what they know . Take it upon themselves to make themselves the king who determines what is constitutional and what is unconstitutional. All of these documents that you documentsht these are National Security issues. What makes you think you are the people who should disseminate this information . Guest there is a history in the United States that is extremely important where whistleblowers inside the government discover things that the u. S. Government is doing and come forward. Probably the most significant case prior to the ones of the heive years was discovered classified information showing the u. S. Government was systematically lying to the American People about the vietnam war ended upon himself and took it upon himself to come forward and bring that to newspapers which then published it and informed people. The reason there is a constitutional protection of the free press is because the design of our country recognizes that , ifle inside the government they can exercise people with transparency, they will abuse the power. The role of the press is embedded into the design of the country that we will report the things people in power are trying to hide. Host a question on twitter tommy documents did he take from the nsa . When will they all be released to the public . How many documents . Guest i dont know how many documents he took. I know how many he gave me. I have said its tens of thousands. Disclosedeen publicly many times. The government keeps trying to claim that he took 1. 7 million documents. Last Alexander Just said week that they actually have no idea how many took. That is a made up number. The media has been reporting it. Us, Edward Snowden came to he was very clear that he was giving us these documents because if you wanted them all to be published, he would not have come to us. He would not need us. He could have uploaded them all to the internet himself. That would have been very easy for him to do. What he said was, there is a lot of documents here and i dont believe i should be in the position to decide which ones should and should not be published. There are some that i think should not be published. Is these kinds of documents that should be published and there is a lot in the middle that i want you with your editors and fellow journalists to make decisions about and report on responsibly. We are reporting on them one by one and we agreed we would do so. That is the best way to do so. I dont think all of the documents will be published because that is not what you wanted. All of the newsworthy stories here will be published. Host andrew is waiting in california on our line for independents. Caller thank you for taking my call. You. An honor to speak to i believe in restoring basic Fourth Amendment rights. Given the tendency of government to maximize their own power over time, what safeguards could be put in place today which are likely to continue protecting our privacy 20 years down the road . Guest great question. A hard one to answer in the digital age when so much information is transmitted electronically. There is a lot of different ways that the powers of the u. S. Government are going to incur there is an institutional setting a couple of blocks away from us called the was congress that is in the process of passing some bills that will rein in a bit of what the nsa is doing. In there other countries worlds populations and governments are indignant over what the United States is doing. I think they are in the process of working on ways to recreate the internet so that u. S. Hegemony is not possible. Nsa now perceive surveillance as a serious threat to their prosperity. The most promising change is that individuals around the world now realize the extent to which their privacy is compromised. They are series and crypt and tools that do work that let you wrap your emails and protective covers or containers that the nsa cant penetrate. For more people who use those, will be for the surveillance to continue. Thatefault will be everyones Communications Online are encrypted. Host no place to hide. A book about snowden and the nsa. Also a book about your experience, which brings a broad question. To what degree has relied and the lives of others been disrupted by u. S. Government retaliation for your support of snowden . Guest it has been disruptive to a substantial degree. Its fairly well known that after 10 months, my reporting senior officials repeatedly come explicitly characterized what we were doing is criminal and they ask wh escalated to that characterization. Forpartner was was held nine hours under a terrorism law. There was a lot of concern about what would happen if we did return. There are all sorts of her risks. Curity at the same time, i think if youre going to do a pic of journalism and you want to challenge people in power, there will be some disruption and journalists around the world have more risk and threats than in standingronted up to corrupt Police Departments and the like. Good to james in jacksonville, North Carolina our line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Studied your book last night. I do have three quick questions today. Richard responded to snowdens appearance and said that the conversation could have the nsaace about what was doing. It was the way the documents were released that it showed methods. Organizations were moving away from using telecommunications, which made it harder for us to gain insight. Is, Edward Snowden turned over topsecret documents to journalists. Do you guys use anything to determine which to disseminate to the public and which do not . Did anybody have a background in intelligence to know the full scope of what they were releasing . The question about whether or not the disclosures helped the terrorists avoid communication, if you look at every unwanted disclosure over the last 50 years, they make the same arguments. Daniel was told that he would have blood on his hands and he would endanger the lives of men and women in uniform. Every subsequent disclosure faces the same thing. There is zero evidence that any of that actually happens. That is the fear mongering of state officials. Transparency i was asked about the number of documents we were given. We have published a small percentage. We have been criticized in some quarters that dont get a lot of attention for not publishing a documents. O many. Ding onto to i have that criticism much more then the claim that we publish too much. I think we have aired on the side of caution, especially in the beginning. We work with editors and the most experienced National Security reporters around the world and we consult with experts in cryptography cryptology and diligence. Them and geteasing the information that way. Processrough the same that all journalists do when making choices. Host the caller brings up Edward Snowdens appearance on sxsw. We have seen appearances in russia. Square with this nonmedia strategy that you talk about . He said, once identify and explore myself, i dont want to be the story. Guest he stuck to that for a long time. When we revealed Edward Snowden to the world, he became the most wanted media guest in the United States. Every day, i had the biggest media stars in the United States bombarding me with emails and phone calls. You could have been on Television Every Night on prime time for hours around the world. For months, he still has not given an American Television interview because he knew that his strategy of the American Media and the Political Class in washington is to demonize the messenger. He wanted the focus to remain on the revelations. That really work. That is why there is a worldwide debate. He is now participating more actively in the debate that he helped start around the world. He does it when he can talk about the documents and surveillance. Not when he is going to be asked , what do you do with your day in moscow and do you miss your girlfriend . Even now that he is becoming more assertive about expressing himself, he does so in a way that ensures that that participation will be substantive. Host how much are you still in contact with them . Contact am in regular with him where he is able to communicate entirely through encrypted chat technology. We have appeared together on a couple of occasions and events. He sits on the board of an organization, the freedom of the press foundation. I see him on video when we have board meetings. Host lets go to chuck in kansas city on our live for democrats. Good morning. Ask, if weanted to cant address the surveillance why arent more journalists seven onbout building 9 11 host we will stick to Edward Snowden. Lets go to lance waiting in springfield, missouri. On our live for republicans. Talk toit is great to you i cant wait to read her book. It is great to talk to you. I cant wait to read your book. British intelligence agencies have treated you guys, rating your compound and a string or personal property, holding your curious if mr. S snowden is being pressured in any way by the russian hisration in agreement with political asylum not to release any more documents . Is, ist thing i would ask believe you live in brazil, correct . I am from Middle America and they like to keep us in poverty here. About moving to south america myself before too long. I would like to hear your thoughts on what you think about it down there. As far as mr. Snowden and the pressure he faces or does not face in russia, i think its quite clear that the russian document has never pressured russian government has never pressured him in any way. He does not even have any of the documents with them any longer. As far as the erring on the side of caution, the way this works is that, what we were in hong kong, he gave us many thousands of documents. Those were all the documents that he ever released. He has not released a single document to anybody. Since june of last year. Since then, the decision about which documents to be released have been made by journalists. Whether you agree with the disclosure not, that decision is made by the journalist who published them. There is a framework he created to which we agreed about how it would work and which kinds of documents would be created. In general, he is not the one making those decisions. Its really the journalists. Y aboutan say i south america, its a beautiful content. Worse thano a lot those kinds of places. Host there has been criticism about picking hong kong to meet with you. Where would snowden have landed had we not taken his passport when he was in the moscow airport . Guest on the question of hong kong, when he decided he was going to take these documents an, his overarching priority was to make sure it happened. That he got his documents into the hands of the journalists he had chosen to work with. He needed to be in a place where he felt secure that it United States government had detected what he was doing, they would be unable to operate easily guessed him to stop him from doing this. If you got to iceland, the u. S. Pressured could have the icelandic government to turn him over. If you got to ecuador, the cia operates very freely and that would or and they could have stopped him. That gavewas a place him some degree of security because the u. S. Government does have a hard time operating there , but he wanted to be in a place that had political values that he felt come bowl with. Hong kong has this climate of dissidents there was this massive protest against the chinese government. He felt like it was this perfectly calibrated lays in which to be. The Public Record is clear that he is in moscow. Because he just to be there he was trying to transit out of moscow in order to get to cuba and fly on to ecuador. He never got out of moscow because the was government revoked his passport. Whatere will snowden will snowden do when his temporary asylum expires . Guest it is unclear. The russians have indicated that they intend to extend his asylum by another year. Are very active debates about whether they should offer him asylum. The acts that of he undertook to protect the privacy of the citizens of those countries. For at least a good while longer, he will be safe. Host diane is calling in from florida on outline for democrats. Good morning. Caller hello. Honor to speak with you and i want to thank you so much for your journalism and your ethics. I watched the frontline show last night. It was amazing. It it was so informative and so well put together. My question goes to an interview you did on democracy now regarding the cisco equipment and going through fedex and being intercepted. Had the nsa altering the equipment. Guest that is a perfectly fine description. If they are using tal service, which is a government entity, packages first class are sealed to inspection unless under warned by postal inspectors. You were saying that the Postal Service is part of that . Know you made a comment and that you werent sure how it worked. That youreocument talking about is one that we published for the first time in the book. Documents in the book, we put them online so people could see them for free. , 149 inment is a page the book, describes a program in provide Internet Services to villages or municipalities. The nsa will physically intercept the product in transit, open it up and reseal it with a factory seal and send. T on to the end user one of the photos actually shows boasting about what they do. Having opened a package from cisco. And then resealing it with a factory seal and sending it on after the implant a surveillance device that is undetectable to the eye. Whether they do that from the u. S. Postal service or from private mail Companies Like fedex or ups is unclear from the document. Its a good question. I think that is something we ought to know. What is clear is that they do it. They have a team devoted to that being done. This is something the government has been vehemently denies and the chinese for allegedly doing the public about. Here is the nsa doing exactly that. Ward the world off of chinese products. That gives the nsa access to more peoples devices. Mark ints go to maryland. On our line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Find this whole issue very interesting. When he first came out, there revelation about his character and what have you. How he will be viewed in the longterm. Involves do you see that mr. Snowden do you think he was naive in any way as to how this would affect International Relations among the Different Countries . How do you think youve use it now as to what he has done to the International Community . Guest for me, the Guiding Light of how to understand these issues is what happened to daniel, my political hero from my childhood. I spent a lot of time talking to them about what he went through and he has been one of mr. Snowdens most ardent defenders. All the things being said now by democrats and some republicans that we have supporters on both they wereell saying he was a russian spy and was reckless and antiamerican. The country regards what he did as noble and heroic. That is how history will view mr. Snowden as well. There are a lot of adjectives you could to Edward Snowden. Naive is not one of them. He had a very clear understanding of how the International Community would react to this finding. I think part of his hope for reform lay in the fact that most people around the world had no idea that the u. S. Government was doing these things. They would demand that the Government Take Action against them. He hoped that was one of the primary ways that reform could come about. Host kentucky on our line for republicans. The money. Caller good morning. Caller the information that you now know, is there any hope for some nuremberg trials in the future for corrupt politicians who are trying to start world war iii with russia . The Mainstream Media will derail rand pauls 2016 president ial run like they did his father in 2012 . Guest the last time i was on cspan, it was in conjunction with my 2011 book, which is a book about how political allegiance in the United States have committed the most egregious crimes you can imagine over the last decade. From torturing people systematically to rendering kidnapping them into invading and destroying a country of 26 Million People. Also causing a financial collapse around the world through systemic financial fraud. None of the people responsible for any of those policies were even remotely punish or held accountable. Theal and financial lesson from the armored trials nuremberg trials was that all countries as far as rand paul, its true for both the democratic and republican parties, whenever there is a candidate who challenges politics in washington, they step outside , theonfines of orthodoxy reflection of the media is to demonize them. That will happen to any politician in 2016 who does that. What is establishment journalism and corporate journalism as you describe it in your book . Guest one of the big changes in american journalism over the last 30 years has become this corporatization of journalism. When you went to work for your or a television program, you were essentially working for families or companies that had primary business journalism. General rule. Now, if you work for a large you reallyt, what are is a comcast employee. You go to work for the Washington Post, you are an employee of a corporation that owns educational services. These corporations have somebody different relationships and dependencies on the United States government and other factions that will power that will power. They have an overwhelming beingst in cooperative. Ties affect how journalism functions. There is no adversarial youth those of what journalism is. , like thetondown insurance industry. It is transforming journalism for the worst. New media and the digital age is allowing the older spirit of journalism that is more noble and more constructive to reemerge. You can now do journalism outside of those confines. Host how do you feel about your interaction with some of those media identities that you were talking about . How do you feel about the Washington Post and New York Times doing book reviews on your book this week . Guest despite what i said, there are good journalists at every single one of the large media institutions, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. It has been interesting to watch that over the past year, because ive been able to do the story and the reporting has received awards, the way that the reporting has been treated as changed to some extent. Reviews,mbedded in the even the post and the New York Times, this sort of closing up the ranks criticism and attacks on what i wrote. Largely due to the fact that ive been critical of the criticalto ration of the Obama Administration. Host from the New York Times review that came out yesterday, noting towards the end of that review, he makes false assertion that one unwritten rule designed to protect the government is that Media Outlets published only a few secret documents and stop. They would report on the archives like snowdens to limit its impact and publish and full stories, revel in the accolades of the big scoop, click prizes and walk away come ensuring that nothing had really changed. Based at which Media Outlets continue to pursue the story. Many of his gross generalizations about the establishment media do a terrible disservice to the many tenacious investigative reporters who broken important stories on some of of the very subjects that he feels so strongly about. A very positive review overall. Surprise surprise that he disliked my critiques of the dark times. It of the New York Times. The New York Times has been in possession of many tens of thousands of documents from the nsa. The received them from the guardian. They have produced very few stories over the past eight months since they have received the material. There absolutely are good journalists and these newspapers. They do break good stories sometimes. Everybody knows what the New York Times did in the runup to the iraq war. They sat on the story of the nsa in general, although there are exceptions, there is an overwhelming closeness between Media Outlets that are the andest and most influential the government. Host lets go to dan in george on our line for republicans. Caller i was talking to amy goodman about what the nsa a lot ofs about people in the world claim treason for this. It is noted going to be able to discredit the nsa where we can get away with our 20130 deal . Guest what will happen to the nsa is unknown because so much of it depends on how people around the world respond in terms of commanding reforms. Facesowden already serious charges. That is why he has been given asylum at four Different Countries. Host another question on 9 11 relating to your work. Do you have anything on the events surrounding 9 11 and the snowden archive . Guest i try not to comment on the stuff we have not published. It is very easy to say things that are not accurate representations. He tookments that tended to be very recent documents. Almost all of what we published have been from 2012 and 2013. There are things like investigations into 9 11 that occurred 10 years ago they tend not to be in what he turned over. Int lets go to mike florida on our life for republicans. The morning. Caller good morning. Caller good morning. President kennedy had concern about secret government , if yet gonewden to the regular process of whistleblowing, he would have been accused of treason anyway. My concern is, how can we better the process if we have an employee under federal contract if he wants to step forward, protective enough if there is a enough claim of wrongdoing without this political infighting about him being a traitor. He knows if you went through that process, he would have been tried and convicted for being a traitor. I just wanted to ask you of your opinion about how to better that process. Guest its a good question because so much of what is said here is designed to deceive and mislead the public. Mr. Snowden should have invoked the protections he had under the laws of a whistleblower. Which is something president obama himself said. False isn it is so because the law that president obama was talking about is not even apply to private contractor employees. Which is significant because a huge part of the National Security state is outsourced to private corporations. Something like 70 of the overall budget goes to the nsa. It ends up going to the functions of private corporations. This idea that there are these great whistleblowing procedures that he shouldve gone through, the way the u. S. Government is structured is to hide, not to eliminate secret wrongdoing by people in power. The best proof of that is that there are two Democratic Senators who sit on the Senate Intelligence community weapon going round the city and everywhere they can for years warning the public that there are these radical surveillance policies. Stunned towould be learn about what it was that was being done. Yet, those two senders do not senators do not have the courage to disclose these programs because the system is designed to gag even powerful senators when they discover the National Security is doing something wrong. He knew he cannot go to people like them because they were impotent. The system ensures they are and they ensure that they are. Was to go to newspapers and ask them to publish it. Twitterong with questions and colors, a few questions over email. One of the questions from jackie he stayed to fight for his ideals. Mr. Snowden ran for russia and it looks like he is making money off of this, as are you. You are a blogger and are now making a lot of money off the stealing of these documents. Guest he did hide. He had for weeks because he did not want to be rested. He is the person who most vehemently disagrees with the person invoking his name. He wrote an oped in the july 2013. Post mr. Snowden was right to flee. Snowden, if he were to come back to the nest is, unlike him, he would not be permitted to speak for himself or released on bail. He did the right thing and leaving. There is zero evidence that Edward Snowden made any money off of these disclosures. He could have. He could have sold this information to foreign intelligence agencies for tens of millions of dollars and been extremely rich for the rest of his life. That was not his goal. I am paid for my work. All journalists should be paid for their work. Edward snowden himself has never made a single penny from what he has done, except for the few whistleblower awards he has been given around the world. Host a question from scott on facebook. Where do you think we draw the line between being a whistleblower versus illegally hacking into classified systems, revealing classified information and thus been guilty of treason . Guest this word treason is being thrown around so frequently. There is a definition of what it means in the constitution. It means aiding and abetting americas enemies. Giving them assistance. I dont think he did that. There is no evidence that he illegally hacked into the systems. He was an employee of these corporations that were entitled to access these documents. He was doing it as part of his job. Ultimately, the distinction between a whistleblower and someone who commits treason is, you look at their actions. Hand information over to americas adversaries. He did exactly what you want a whistleblower to do, come to journalists and say to journalists, i discovered this wrongdoing and i wanted to publish it. Federal courts in the United States have said that the program we were able to reveal was a violation of the Constitutional Rights of millions of americans. That is what a whistleblower is. Host do you ever fear for your life . Guest there is risk to all of this journalism. Voted backan senate in july to provide me and my partner with federal security and protection. I think there are a lot of journalists all over the world who face much greater risk than we are. Host james is up next in new mexico on our life are independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. That the problems we are experiencing today are only here today after the advent of the internet. Secure the Banking Systems in america again and business in america again, it would be prudent that we remove business and banking from the toernet and allow it be for social purposes only. That would address some of the issues were dealing with today with financial security. Host how would banking and business work under your scenario . Guest we would go back to the paper system and put more people to work. Secure the systems like they had in the past. I dont think you can never fight against the wave of technology. You can make the internet a much safer place. Our government spends 75 billion to weaken privacy protocols on the internet and allow themselves and other to invade our information. Demanded that just a small fraction of that money comments of that money, and so the being spent by our government to destroy privacy on the internet, were devoted to finding way to bolster privacy and strengthen it. That seems to be a much better expenditure of a lesser sum of money. Go to dwight in alexandria, louisiana shoreline for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Journalism. R your i have three questions. What would snowden want in china and russia . Do not feel like this makes him seem as though he is a traitor . There are other places such as where you are that do not have extradition treaties and so forth with the United States. Adversariesiggest formakes it look like the country to be holding him up when we have never had andt goes back to hoover his Rapid Movement that he had during his tenure. Host i want to let him respond. We are running out of time. Guest anybody can make up anything and say, i think china offered him money and he moved on to russia and got more money there. That is what we call delusions and fantasies. If you have no evidence for those serious accusations, they are not worth it. There is a perception problem with him being in russia. Maybe that is the reason that United States government forced him there. I dont know what their motive is, but i know the reason he is in russia is not because you chose to be there. It is because he was trying to get out and was brought blocked by doing so. The hoover part of the question is important. We do have a history of systematic surveillance abuses over many decades by democratic and republican administrations. It should teach us a lesson that we dont want the u. S. Government being able to monitor our communications because we know that it will be abused and that the victims of that abuse will be our nations minorities and marginalized groups. Host the book is no place to hide. We appreciate you joining us. Guest thank you for having me. Host two programming. The entire interview will reair tonight at 8 00 p. M. On cspan. On can check it out cspan. Org. That is our show for today. Make sure to join us back here tomorrow at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] a picture of a fountain in front of the u. S. Capitol. This is a