Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion Focuses On The Pentagon Papers And Free Speech 20170217

So i think those are really key as well, the research and the length of the research to service delivery. You can watch all of this online at cspan. Org. Well leave here and take you live to a discussion hosted by Georgetown University looking at how journalism has changed since the pentagon papers of 1971 and what the implications are for National Security leaks. The Washington Post bob woodward participate in his first panel and later, Martin Barron. Live on cspan 3. President trump is calling these leaks low life, unamerican and criminal and then we have daniel ellsburg. Did many of you hear him last night in his speech . Calling for more leaks to keep the constitution and the country secure. We have a Super Star Panel here to talk about the issues of balancing National Security with a free press and how that balance is changing or ben might argue whether theres a balance at all at this point. Well find out. Let me introduce you. Next to me, a man who im sure you are all familiar with, bob woodward, which is the investigative journalist with the Washington Post, deeply involved with watergate coverage and much more. Next to him is benjamin powell. He was general counsel at the director of National Intelligence officer at both democratic and republican administrations and another very familiar name at the end, david sanger, the National Security correspondent for the New York Times. Id like to talk about here and now. Leaks seems the inappropriate word. It seems like a deluge of information coming out of this administration right now and if we put aside for a minute the massive dumps of information, the pentagon papers, snowden, Chelsea Manning, im wondering, bob and david, if you have ever seen this volume of leaks coming out in the administration . Is it unprecedented or not, bob . I wouldnt use the word leaks. I think its aggressive reporting and its the transfer of administrations that has created the environment and a good deal coming from former people, but i agree with ellsburg, more leaks. And i think david would agree on this, theres this sense that reporters just sit around waiting for somebody to bring in a grocery cart of documents like ellsburg did or to call and i think the best sources are not volunteers. Somebody who comes to us, but people we recruit and go to and say, we want to understand whats going on. Sounds like spycraft. No, its reporting. And its quite basic. So i also, i mean, there was a lot that seems to be coming out, as is always the case, so much more that we dont know about the whole general flynn issue where he came and now is departed. I think you could probably spend part of your life figuring out whats going on there. So many issues we dont know and we dont know a lot of answers to the key questions zb do you think well get those answers eventually . You know, as ben bradley, the former editor at the post used to stay, the truth emerges. Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it comes out rather quickly. But i think there should be a kind of patience with all of th this. Its highly unusual to see this early in the administration. Usually, when leaking, you have to assume whenever theres a transition, the people who come into the administration have come out of the campaign. They believe that their candidate, the new president , walks on water, and loyalty is sort of at its highest. So i havent covered as many administrations as bob has. I didnt mean that as an issue, but. You said, one said, what was calv calv Calvin Coolidge like . Even had parking garages. Not sure they had cars. So, but, its been my experience since i got back from a happy life as a Foreign Correspondent and entered into a three year assignment to washington that has now stretched to 22 or 23 that usually administrations begin leaking after the first crew is gone and a group has come in to undo whatever damage the initial crew did and wants to explain to you how much more brilliant they are than the people replaced. That process usual takes three years into an administration. Weve got this starting in week one, two, and lthree. I think that reflects a different phenomenon under way. First, the executive orders, the first things to leak, the first big things, were put together by a small group of people who did not consult broadly and because they didnt consult broadly, they had a lot of early mistakes. So we saw in the immigration executive order that nobody had hou thought about the green card holders and longterm visa holders and the promises we made to interpreters in iraq, so forth. And then there was an order which we still havent seen on detention that called for reopening the black site Interrogation Centers as if there are countries around the world yearning to get our black site Detention Centers reopened. I think those leaks were intended to go as a warning sign to other members of the Trump Administration who may not have seen the early crafts to say, hey, youre about to go walk off a cliff and you better read these drafts and once second and third versions laek leaked, the missing the black sites. The old circulatory system wasnt working. Thats group one. The second set of leaks, i think, you have seen have been just about the inner turmoil within the administration. And i think that is in part because you are watching a group of professional people who have been through these transitions before in our career who know what things are supposed to be operating like at this point in time and recognize that that process has fallen apart. And if you want to look at the prime example of this right now, look at the National Security council having just gotten rid of general flynn and i agree completely with bob that, theres a lot that we dont understand yet about that. The nfc is basically going back to day one at this point. Youve got to, before day one. They have to go create themselves as if you were starting the transition. That may be okay if we run on auto pilot as long as nothing goes wrong. What are the chances of that given the pace of echvents arou the world . I think the second set of leak cen s is a warning. You keep saying leaks. Bob is right. These are not coming to us. Executive orders might be slightly different. Everything else is coming out of hard reporting. Are you concerned at all about this, ben . As someone from the National Security . Its a bit of a vicious cycle because what is the reaction when you see drafts published or leaked . The reaction is not necessarily, okay, well, lets make sure were consulting broadly and widely and sharing to get input. Often the reaction is lets draw the circle even tighter which then has the negative effect, of course, of not being able to consult more broadly. Its not as if it is good because often the reaction is, of course, people go further and further into the bunker and say, you know, everyones going to leak every draft that im going to put out there so well only do it among us three people here and well dribble it out and i saw that in 2009 with some of the executive orders that were happening then where there was kind of last, last, last minute coordination and those of us in the Intelligence Community said, i know youre going to sign in an hour, but let me tell you what the impacts will be if you sign this and then theres always the scramble to fix things. It is not as if the reaction is to do this more broadly. Oftentimes, it causes people to go further into the bunker. If you go through the whole process and theres this feeling then in the white house that everything that we give to the inner agency is going to go straight to the press, it just makes it more difficult and gives you more of that bunker mentality sometimes. But this is not about executive orders. At bottom, it is, the power of the presidency and is it functioning . There is now, this first month into the Trump Administration, people are mostly opinion columnists writing its kind of over if you cant put it back together and i suspect when the history of the Trump Administration is written, this first month is not going to be that important. The president has extraordinary powers and david and ben know this so well. A president can do all kinds of things and is going to be measured by what they do and in the National Security area, the president can do, really start a war, i mean, legally. I remember talking to a group of antidemmics some time ago in the george w. Bush administration and they said, well, no. The constitution says congress will declare war. Last declared war was when . World war ii. And i think weve had a few since then that are undeclared and just kind of literally reading constitution and i said, look, george bush can invade mexico tomorrow if he wants and somebody stood up in the back and said, dont give him any ideas. But the president can employ the force as he sees fit. The only thing congress can do is take away the money. And once the troops are out there and if it is a reasonable military excursion, congress is not going to take away the money. So im interested in what trump is going to do as president. Thats going to be the measure and all of this hand wringing, i mean, the first month is not great, but what are those key decisions in the areas that are real National Security . Not things on paper. David, you want to jump in . First of all, i think bob is right that the first month is not seen as terribly important unless it portends a continued sort of level of chaos. If he gets it together in the next six months, everybody will sort of forgive a first month of cay why is or forghaos chaos. Otherwise, it will look like a wrong foot and didnt get back on. What strikes me as interesting in covering this administration is, it has not been a Straight Line in any way. Theres been nothing linear about covering this, folks. There are sop thime things they done spectacularly badly and we have just run through a list and every once in a while, executed something in the traditional way. Supreme court nomination. Supreme court nomination, no matter what you think of the nominee, hes eminently qualified. They rolled it out well. Coordinated. Coordinated with everybody. It was sort of the model of how you used to go do this and it was george bush who was usually pretty orderly about these things that when he tried to nominate his own inhouse White House Council for the Supreme Court without any of that, that it collapsed on him. So i think it is worth, considering the fact that we have seen moments where they could put it together. What strikes me in the Foreign Policy arena is that we have gone from what then candidate trump said to me and maggie during our two Foreign Policy interviews with him about japan, about south korea, about china to what were much more traditional encounters where right off after saying he would negotiate on the one china policy, he gave that because he recognized that nothing else was going to happen with china if he didnt reaffirm the one china policy. His meeting with the japanese Prime Minister was as boring and uneventful as every other past meeting with japanese Prime Ministers and you wouldnt have bet on that based on. Except for the little meeting out on the patio at maralago. That came out of a north korean launch and the fact they were trying to figure out, was this an intermediate range launch or the icbm weve all been waiting for . And once they came to the conclusion it was the intermediate launch, they went back to having dinner with everybody else at maralago. So i think what they will be measured by is their first big test. When you think back to the bush administration, the days when i was a white house correspondent, the first nine months of george bushs administration was about sort of everything and nothing and then 9 11 happened and it became the sort of clarifying moment that defined what kind of president he would be. And zbl a and defined this whole century, almost everything thats happened is connected to 9 11. Absolutely. Including the movement of counterterrorism to the center of american Foreign Policy which it was in the bush administration. We saw barack obama try to move away from that and i think he did so, somewhat successfully and we are seeing President Trump try to move it back to the center again. Do you think its going to be tougher and tougher to get information out of this administration, both because of the tightening circle that ben mentioned and also, perhaps, because some of the professional class that you mentioned, david, will be leading this administration . Perhaps of their own choice, perhaps not of their choice . You know, i think it depends on whether or not the president figures out how to make good use of the professionals and the bureaucracy around him. Word this morning that a lot of the professionals at the state department, for instance, have been told to pack their bags. I read the ones on the seventh floor sort of a dual coordination but the fact of the matter is any president discovers over time that the United States government is a huge enterprise and cannot be run like a small family business. And you have a president who has run a business, you can argue about how successful or not its been, but very small and very tight and i think hes discovering the techniques that worked so well at the Trump Organization do not work here. There was no vast bureaucracy or Intelligence Community that could go work out another agenda. But in the real world of reporting, what the headline from the press conference that trump had yesterday really is where he said, he called the Justice Department and said, lets look at these leaks. And the, again, back to the power of the president and the Justice Department, if they want to go look at leaks, they can really do this with an aggressiveness that, there was much criticism of obama and david got caught up in this, their effort to try to prosecute and stop leaking but the power of the fbi to come in and really examine that, if those are the orders and trump is right technically, some of this is illegal and we would argue its transparency and its desirable and i think generally, the press is pretty careful about going through something that may be sensitive, but that may come down on our heads in a real serious way. I think thats absolutely true. I think while weve all noted that the Obama Administration did more leak investigations than all previous presidencies by three times combined, they did by and large say with one exception to investigating suspected sources and they didnt come after the reporters. And in the case that bob referenced which was my reporting on the cyberattacks on the Iranian Nuclear Program Operation Olympic Games, they did a vast set of interviews with more than 100 people who they thought were potential sources. But they never did come after the New York Times and its notes, so forth. Which they could do. Which they could certainly do. And you could fight it and maybe you win, maybe you lose. But we dont know what the Trump Administration will adhere by the same rules. Exactly. And ben knows this so well. The power to do that is awesome. No . Well, yeah. I mean, there will be, of course, there were rules put in. Theres rules governing. The issues with some subpoenas to reporters and those could be changed by the department of justice. Those are largely, you know, internal guidelines and its not a statute. Its not in the constitution. It could be changed overnight. It could be changed and there are people that would probably favor that, particularly in the realm of communications intelligence. That is the one place where there are federal criminal laws that have the leak of communication and intelligence is a crime. That is different. Not just the publication. Exactly. Exactly. I know one of the subsequent panel wills get into the legalities. I dont want to dump too deep in there but my next question has to do with anonymity. The Washington Post at least is using secure drop. Is the times using secure drop as well . Weve got a portal within the time site. You can all find it advertised on our home page. In case you have documents you want to pass along. Into which people can drop things in a secure way. Never seen anything like that because im in the same pool bob is in, that things happen by trying to understand policy and getting people to explain what theyre doing or understanding their objections to what is happening and thats usually how we find these things but so when the times came up with the idea of putting in this secure drop which i think the wall street journal has now also done and so forth, i thought, well, you know, 99 of the stuff you get in there is going to be crazy. And maybe 90 of what you get there turns out to be crazy. But some is pretty interesting and when you discover is that there is a vast bureaucracy out there that feels. Can i ask ben a question . Im somebody in the government and i come to you and say, i have documents and information. I want to give the New York Times or the Washington Post. How would you recommend that i do it . First, do a conflicts check to see if i can represent you or not but getting past that, so the, lets make sure were differentiate between two things. Theres a big difference. Theres the drop of things about policy and the environmental area or, you know, the vastness of what the federal government does where for whatever reason, youre give things to the press. That would be unclassified. That would be unclassified government information, were not going to get into the legalities of that or the appropriateness of that. I should say, thats the vast majority of these. I dont see everything that comes into the drop. But thats the vast majority of what does. So what were talking about here though is National Security information and are you dropping classified information . Yes, yeah. Ive got a boat load of stuff and they say youre one of the experts on this and you say youre conflicted out . No, no. Just want to make sure we get our arrangements in place. So look, theres, as a lawyer, so youre coming to me as a lawyer, so ill certainly tell you about the laws that are on the books. So theres no, you know, we can talk about what the likelihood of prosecution is. We can talk about what the youre going to scare me and tell me not to do it. I am ethically bound to properly advise you that theres a statute about dealing with communications intelligence, dealing with National Defense information and that you could be subject to criminal prosecution. So in the end you could also lose your clearance, so youre not going to be working in the National Security community anymore. There could be ramifications. Your bottom line recommendation would be, dont do it. Oh, i dont know that it would be a billion liottom line recommendation but make sure you have the full facts as a lawyer but thats what you would expect, right . If youre going to a lawyer and want to hear what the possibilities are, people have gone to jail and are jail for this right now. People come to lawyers for protection. And i would want you to tell me how to do this in way. Suppose ive got something important to the National Interest and you even looking at it say, this should come out. How can i do that in a protected way or not . So you want me to help you to violate 798 and use my experience to do it in an anonymous and secure way, is that . Basically, yes. So now im before the dc bar for aiding and abetting you . So ive gone to the wrong lawyer. You might have picked the wrong so if ellsburg came to you, you would probably talk him out of it. No, i think thats, theres the kind of advice piece of this but there is the fact. Any good lawyer, you certainly wouldnt want your client to be surprised when you visit them in the federal correctional institute. That, hey, you didnt tell me. I thought, you know, i read about these other guys like ellsbu ellsburg. How come im sitting here in 20 years in jail . I thought i was going to get all of these awards and bob woodward and sitting here in jail and you didnt tell me. That would be highly, i dont know of any lawyer actually that, who ever made or advised somebody to go ahead who would not make them aware of the risks of going ahead. If bob asked you what about secure drop, will that give me anonymity. Youre a cyber guy now. Is it truly fail safe . I dont know anyone who works in the cybersecurity field that would say any particular method is failsafe. Theres a lot of pieces that go into transmitting documents and other things that, you know, are involved, so the fact of the matter is that you would have documents in some fashion and you would be placing those in the hands of a third party and dont know the security of the third party so relying on the security of one particular method is, you know, has its own risk. Ben, you told me over the phone you thought the interplay with National Security and the press had changed 180 degrees since the pentagon papers. Explain what you meant. I would say there was the pentagon papers to the era of the internet and the balkanization of the media. So probably stable for a long time in terms of, you know, a certain number of networks and newspapers that invested in that area and they were regular discussions when topics would come up. Now, of course, you have just the publication of raw material without any type of responsible reporting on it. You just have whats happened with wikileaks and the dumping out, hundreds of thousands of pieces of material, names of people who are democracy activists. Names of people who have been helpful to the United States. Theres been negative consequences to that. So that is very different, i think, in the past where you would see an article and there may be discussions between the government and the newspaper and at least some of the more responsible places would say, if you can show us harm, were not interested in just putting out the names of sources, the names of technical methods. So lets have a discussion about that and you see that in the past. Now, of course, you have a couple of things. You have the internet in which you can just, people will just dump these things out there. And now you have the widespread solicitation that both have talked about of the material, come and bring us the material. Thats not good reporting. Thats, hey, were like wikileaks. Heres our drop box, dropping on in, give it to us. So you have newspapers moving towards wikileakstype solicitation of classified information and the fact that you cant have those discussions anymore many a responsib, in a manner and have confidence its going to hold there. Even with organizations like these . But the important question, im sorry, is this solicitation with these drop boxes, would that make us participants in a conspiracy to release classified information . In other words, if the post came to you and said, should we have this drop box because i could conceive of a scenario of somebody dropping something in there thats really sensitive and causes some sort of catastrophe in the government, particularly, the government now says the Washington Post is complici complicitous. What would your recommendation be . You know hes cautious. Like i say, i dont think ive seen any theory like that today or certainly not looked at it. You want to weigh in . Let me read for a moment that the media of the time that bob and i worked for are doing what wikileaks is doing. The collections side may look similar if youve got the fact of the matter that most of our reporting is in the traditional way one does reporting. What wikileaks does is take this earl in a material in and then dump it all out, by and large, unedited without thinking about the motives of the people who dumped it in and without interpretation. Thats not what we do. We may get this material in and im guessing that the vast majority of it never seeing the light of day. Some of it may fit in to a broadbroad er interpretive journalist and media organizations to subscribe to to go do. The example of this comes from the wikileaks operation on the state Department Cables which i was involved in when we were doing these in 2010 and we published a series called state secrets. So we had about 250,000 cables that came from wikileaks. And we built our own sort of Search Engine and databases to go sort this through and in the end, we wrote that series from maybe 150 of the cables and only then from putting a huge amount of reporting around what we were learning from those cables and only then from going to the government in a fascinating encounter, a series of encounters with the state department and the obama white house, so that we were sure that we werent publishing when some dissodent was going so they could match it up with cameras and throw them in jail. I had a moment who said, david, were getting ready to publish one of the pieces of that qaddafi and libya and he was still in power. Ten months before he was thrown out of power. This person said to merks david, i didnt know this until ten minutes ago but one person mentioned incidentally in the cable, just in passing that has been an asset of the United States, meaning, working for the cia for years if not decades and if qaddafi sees his name in a cable, hes just going to put him up against the wall and shoot him. I said, fine, well take him out. Got the guardian and even got wikileaks to take it out. So it was a different era, right . And as far as i can tell, hes still Walking Around and thats more than i can say for mr. Qaddafi. Does the 24 hour news cycle, this constant deadline, does it make it more difficult to give that sort of time to an investigation . Because someone else is going to publish it. It can because of the Competitive Pressures are out there and sometimes you just have to go out and say, folks, we need to calm down and slow down and figure out what we have here and ive been at work on one project on the past seven or 8 mo eight months. Its hard to get away with that. The modern churn world and sometimes it shows down the ability to spend the time on the kind of investigative things that bob and i and many other journalists like to go do. A and youve got a culture of impatience and speed which drives the readers and the viewers and the expectation is trump has his press conference yesterday and i found myself going to the New York Times or post, whats the reaction . I want instant reaction. Twitter is where you go. I dont even know what that is. Now, but im sorry, i see sandy younger who did the great book on the pentagon papers. The papers and the papers, wasnt it called . And how really important the pentagon papers decision by the Supreme Court was to journalism and how liberating it was because in that decision which was technically a 63 decision but there was a procure issued by the court, he dissented but said, no, the press can go ahead and publish the pentagon papers. That created an environment. David was mentioning, youre working on something and you go ottawa governme to the government and say, we have this and it may be sensitive and secret and we want to find out if its true. We want to put it in context. I think at least, im sure david and lots of people would agree that you dont want to publish something thats going to get somebody killed or thrown in jail, so you have to be very careful. I can think time and time again going to the seventh floor on the cia, going to the oval office and presenting information that we have and you can do that knowing youre not going to be arrested and knowing in a more important way that the government is going to not say, gee, youve got this, were going to court to stop you from publishing. So i think its been, i know its been liberating to the press. Is it to the government . Liberating in the sense of being able to engage in those discussions . Yeah. Its been helpful to have. Theres a number of occasions where those discussions have been helpful now but lets be clear. Its not a joyous and good day when you get the call and they say, we have this information. Wed like to come in and talk to you, like, say, 3 p. M. Today because we want to publish it at 5 00 p. M. Because of the discussion. But now, i have a situation where classified information has been blown and theres a source. Theres a program. Theres Something Else that may be very valuable to us. And often, the case is youre doing repair around the margins. You should have found another line of work if you were looking for joyous. Exactly. Youre making it seem as if its a, we go, we have this discussion and all is worked out and all is fine. What were doing is often, youre trying to minimize the damage but there is. But youve given that opportunity because of the pentagon papers decision, dont you think . Well, why is it the pentagon papers . Otherwise, we wouldnt walk in the door for fear we would be walking out in handcuffs. And thats not a joyously good day. Thats right. So i mean, theres a reason for this process and the reason for this process is that if were walking in there is to say, look, we have the story. We think its important and raises the following big policy concerns for the United States, the moral concerns for the United States whether its the wireless, warrantless wiretapping thing or the use of Cyber Weapons by the United States against another state for the first time and the precedent that it sets and what were understand king hussein is on the payroll. Whats your comment and the code i remember vividly, the code word for the operation is no beef and i remember powell saying, no. And the president wants to see you, ben bradley in the oval office tomorrow morning at 9 00 so, we went. And went through. And carter said, i want to talk off the record and bradley said, fine, but i had amy notebook ou and he said, no, you cant even take notes. And he said, off the record that, yes, this is true, they hadnt told him about it. He thought it was wrong to have heads of state on the cia payroll and he was going to stop it. And then ben asked the tcritica question, if he published it, would it harm the National Security, which is ultimately the measure and carter said no, it wont. But i really dont want you to publish a kind of georgia, you know, please do us a favor and dont publish this and of course, we published it and he was quite upset that with had, but he opened that door by saying, its not going to harm a National Security. And ultimately, thats the question youre asking when you go to the government and i think. Thats right. And sometimes in that conversation, as uncomfortable as it may be for you, you work something out. So when i was working on Olympic Games on the cyberstory on iran, i went to many people in the government. A lot of it now came out in court papers. Im not revealing anything that hasnt been before, and said, look, the story has got to be told and cyber is the first weapon that was developed by the Intelligence Community so nobody wants to talk about it, because the Intelligence Community doesnt but weve got to air how were going to use this. If there are techniques that you think are particularly damaging because youre using them right now, then im describing here and tell me. Weve got to word around that to not undercut on going operations and in the end, thats what happened. Snowden, as it turned out, blew a lot of those techniques nine months later but we didnt know that at the time. Did they get it right or wrong . I think this is leading one to think that this is a process in which all of these occasions, there is a considered and measured approach of the type thats being described by very senior and distinguished reporters here, okay . These same situations though and we can draw a chart and fight about what about this one, what about this one . The New York Times blew a very important financial program. The article was written in a manner suggestive of widespread illegality. Turned out to be entirely inappropriate based on unclassified subpoenas and no discussion with the government or considering programs. This involved the terrorist Financial Tracking Program widely discussed, entirely inappropriate and entirely damaging what was done there. And unclassified. That doesnt mean that it was the right thing to do or that did not have damage or that the article was written in a way that was entirely suggestive of sinister and illegal activity. It was a number of other that have been discussed and published in the papers. You sound a bit defensive about that. I think were presenting a situation where, as if, in each case, heres the process thats followed and these are antidotes but for every one of those, lets not pretend theres not antidotes on the other side or stories on the other side. I could go down and talk about other things that have been published. Whats the worst in your knowledge that was published because the most damage to National Security . Oh, boy. Id have to give that one some thought. While you do that, lets start taking some audience questions. We have a couple of people with microphones. Theyll run a mike to you right here in the second row. Here it comes. And if you could tell us your maim. My name is peter gluk. There were several questions about the case that was 75 years ago and the court has changed so much, and not just the people. In terms of the ideological distribution of views. What confidence do you think media organizations should place that the pentagon papers decision would continue to protect them today . I mean, real quick and then all the justices, all nine for the pentagon papers decision are dead. So theyre not on the court, believe it or not. Of course, it would be different but the precedent here can be, you can change absolutely. But see, under this, to me, this is not a legal argument. That ultimately, its the press that is in the position like i think New York Times and the post and others on the pentagon papers that this was in the broad National Interest that this be published and that it actually did not harm National Security. It helped National Security. And as you point out, ellsburg is kind of a hero. So i think we have to proceed with that assumption. The difficulty here is is if something gets published, which is so likely that really does harm National Security or gets someone killed, then the press is in the position of being on the wrong side of the line and the Supreme Court having done a book on this a long time ago is inclined to look at what is the moral atmosphere and that doesnt drive the decision and so its very important that we be careful, particularly in the Trump Administration, but david points out in the case he was involved in, the government was very careful. You finally got subpoenaed. Never did. Oh, you never did. They wanted you to testify voluntarily. But thats the kind of sensitive to the First Amendment that would quite likely not be practiced by the Trump Administration. On the cia payroll, i think it did not harm National Security and it was in the context of whats the cia doing . And sort of prepared for the weekend and the thought had occurred to us that some of the courts might be closed over thanksgiving. We havent planned it that way, but it was certainly planned it but it was social ail factor we thought would be disincentive. The Obama Administration made no effort to go out and do that in the end. Secondly, bob makes the point that the pentagon papers certainly did a huge amount to inform the debate about the vietnam war, and if you go back and you read the pebt gone papers tooled as a history and you think about the kind of things that have been leaked, whether its wikileaks or snowden today the pentagon papers looks more innocent because it was backward looking. Historical. Whereas much of the material that has come out since has been operational to this day and raises therefore i think a different set of issues. This process that we discussed of going to the government i agree with you, you know, this works when its the New York Times and the Washington Post and the wall street journal and ap and others coming in the door who are established journalistic entities and the white house will come in and have that discussion. Where i think it gets more worrisome is a lot of stuff that just leaks out over the internet, gets published on the internet by people who either dont have the journalistic standards or wouldnt be able to attract the conversation, to have that conversation at all if i was the government i would be moreried more about that than the times and the post. Question from the woman in the blue. Thank you for speaking today. My name is chandra caldwell. Theres a distinction between being revealing information of adus functional white house or a department of defense and revealing classified information which is classified not because of the content necessarily of the information but the sources, means and methods by which its collected and were seeing a distinction between the pent gop papers which it was a very surgical approach to a singular issue felt to be compared compared to a Chelsea Manning or a snowden who is releasing terrabytes of information, and the sources means and methods that we lie on for National Security are being released to foreign adversarial governments taken seems like between the talk yesterday and today its being conflated that its equal to each other. Youll have armchair analysts who say they should reveal whatever information they have access to because they feel its justified. Im curious what your response is in the changing environment . Who wants to tackle that, ben . I thought it was well said. But this is an important distinction, some of what were talking about here is exactly kind of bigger policy issues. I do think were overlooking the fact that much of what we read about today and frankly since 9 11 has been far more operational and Technical Details, a fascination with intelligence sources and methods, how terrorists are tracked, how Counterterrorism Operations are done and theres no doubt that theres a Public Interest in many of the programs and other pieces of that, that has been discussed in the newspapers. Weve had public debates on them. Theyve had laws that have changed. Weve changed collection authorities and really had a very vigorous debate about that. At the same time though would that have happened without the disclosure, you think . Would we have stopped listening to Angela Merkels cell phone or closed those black sites had it not been for the revelations . Talking about nips cell phobe i dont know what would have happened with the black sites with or without those revelations, so i probably do think they would have been closed without those revelations but thats a longer discussion, but we have had damaging leaks of technical sources and methods, and what has frequently what youre reading about in the paper is not the pentagon papers and whats been kind of our Global Policy towards the muslim world, and heres a study from the state department discussing that, and its classified because it contains some intelligence in it. Weve seen a lot of discussions of frankly pure sources and methods of how we carry out operations, how we do sensitive electronic surveillance, and so when youre regularly reading about these things, it does have damage, and it is not just confined to the wikileaks of the world. Sthimz we dont publish. An example from the obama administratio administration. Going to the cia with ten things i had that was going to be in a book, obamas wars and went through them and listened to their arguments and got to one the counterterrorism pursuit teams. Of the cia had a team in of agab stand that was under cia controled the best afghan fighters, very effective and i said im putting this in the book and the cia position was oh my god, thats secret, thats the classic secret army. You shouldnt put that in, and i said well, im not going to name any members of it or operations. They said you should not publish it. Look, there are a lot of people in the Obama Administration who say we dont need 100,000 troops in afghanistan, that this Counter Terrorist pursuit team actually does the job and i think its recall they were not happy, but it was published no harm. I got to another item and mentioned it and literally the cia said if you publish that we can lose the war. That got my attention and went through the argument and its not in the book and its a great story that someday can be told, but you listen and you, its davids point, you go through and this is as much, more disclosure than the government would like almost always, they would say dont publish any of this stuff, but not the sort of thing that will get People Killed or cause us to lose a war. So whats fascinating here about this discussion, though, is it is the reporter who is doing this. So this is just a curious feature of the system that we have. It was called democracy. Right, exactly. That a single can go and the government will listen to that. Are you worried about the power journalists might have . I would be concerned as to whether or not the reporter has the qualifications and the full global picture of youre making decisions on what sources and methods in your judgment are going to ultimately harm the National Security, youre weighing the governments argument, youre weighing what you think is the Public Interest, youre weighing your papers interest and that power is now in your hands, because of information that youve obtained and its called the First Amendment. Wait. Thats what distinguishes our system and it can work. Weve held for three years at the bush administrations request a story ultimately we were able to publish once the program was done about a secret u. S. Program to help the pakistanis secure their members. Abargument was made to publish it at the time we had the story would be to give the taliban arrows into the most vulnerable Nuclear Sites within pakistan, and we held it and held it and held it, and finally some set of events came up and i called in, and i said you know, im not sure well be able to hold this much longer. Oh youre Still Holding that story . You could have run that a year ago. I wish i had checked more often. That said its the News Organizations that make that decision and not only what separates our democracy from nondemocracies, it separates ours from say britain. And youre uncomfortable with that, at core . So what youre saying is that the First Amendment has wiped away the statutes for the protection of classified information, and im not saying that im uncomfortable. Im saying we need to recognize, though, that it is to the extent the position is that we will do the weighing and it is our power to do that. That is abawesome power to decide. But you have an awesome power with those laws that you can go after someone who releases classified information. Right . We can debate how awesome they are, the First Amendment wipes away all those laws. It doesnt wipe them away. I want to get another question in, young man in the third or fourth row, right there. Thank you all for speaking. Christopher blair. So far in the discussions, im kind of getting the feel that in the court of public opinion, were kind of delegating the media as the prosecutor, so thus ethically speaking where does the media draw the line when receiving documents from a potential leaker and is the intrigue of the story more important than the potential ramifications to eminent or longstanding National Security policy or posture . Its an excellent question. I hinted at it before why we have these conversations. Were trying to air the issues of policy questions, do we, as a nation want to have these black sites, do we want to do bulk collection, and so forth, without necessarily blowing the operational detail. And thats, you said prosecutor. I dont think thats the case. We cant prosecute anything. We can start a policy discuss n discussion. We can make sure that discussion happens. In the end, Congress Gave the president and the executive branch many of the powers that president bush took upon himself in routing around the fisa court, that happened only after a full discussion about whether or not that was the right way to go. So i think that what this, what weve learned out of all of this and what weve learned really in the era since the pent gone papers is that its very important to have that conversation so that we understand that something were about to publish could cost a life, cost an ongoing operation, cost an imminent operation and i dont think most people in the responsible media want to go do that but that also means that we have to make a judgment about whether the broader discussion about whether were heading in the right direction with a set of policies gets aired, and theres a way to go do that, to move through that line. The points been made in the world of the internet where everybodys a publisher, not everyone is going to show that judgment and thats certainly one of the big challenge of our time. We should also take a position of humility on this, and i think ben could would agree for instance the wikileaks which the New York Times had and published in that series which i thought was very good with you as you know, almost all of that information, and i think maybe all of it, the top classification was secret, the lowest level. Mid level anyway, but not the Top Secret Special Access Program material, and the New York Times editor took the position were telling you how Government Works. That was an excellent series but it didnt tell you how government worked, because the top secret information is really what informs president s decisions and i remember talking somewhat recently to somebody about snowden, very controversial figure, and this person who ive known very well, said snowden didnt have the good stuff, and i think thats true. I think that thats right. We said we worry about wikileaks and secret documents and some of the stuff that snowden revealed, but the good stuff, the really deep secrets, as president obama calls them, called them, dont get published normally and its very rare. So we are, were getting into the governments business, and an important part of it, but theres also the deep secrets part that we really dont get into. Is that fair . Ive certainly seen a number of things published in the newspapers, putting aside snowden, that have been the details of technical operations, so i dont think that the papers stick to just heres how the Government Works or the policies. I have certainly seen discussions of operational details. But say there are x number of operations that are sensitive, its a very small portion that get published. Is that correct . I would say that when you publish the Technical Details that are damaging, when jim clapper says only god knows all of the compartments that are out there, probably is a smaller proportion. A compartment is a classification and a special Access Program or sci program that where theyre limited allegedly to people who have a need to know. Yes. But i still think there are a lot of things we dont know about and quite frankly from my point of view, id like to know about them, because the governments capacity to do things in secret is immense, and its really i think secret government is the thing we should worry about the most of all of the things, and the judge who said it got it right, democracies die in darkness. This is a fundamental challenge of having an Intelligence Community in a democracy, right . Yes. This is the fundamental challenge that the secrecy can be inconsistent with democracy. And may you have many joyless days. Exactly. Im not there so im fine. Okay, theres a question way at the back there. Hi, gabriellea munoz. Wikileaks over the summer it was controversial when they published the dnc email, hillary clinton, John Podestas emails. How do you feel in terms of legality in terms of trusting the source between wikileaks and somebody leaking from within a Government Organization or within a campaign, do you guys feel that wikileaks is needed to get the information that sources wont reveal . Anybody want to well ill take a first shot at that. To my mind, the material that was released by wikileaks this summer, first about the dnc, and then the second tranche was the john Podesta Emails and there were others in between but those were the two high points, were more fascinating to me for what it said about who was trying to act and disrupt an American Election than the contents, and the contents of the dnc material was largely infighting within the dnc about support for Bernie Sanders versus hillary clinton. I didnt find that to be quite as fascinating as many of the political insiders inside the Democratic Committee did. The Podesta Emails, again, wasnt full, had no classified information. You got a sense of what Hillary Clintons speeches to Goldman Sachs were like. They were a lot like speeches i heard her give when she was secretary of state. There wasnt in there a whole lot that was terribly remarkable. What was remarkable was the fact that there was a channel from russian intelligence to wikileaks, and russian intelligence distributing this first, through some other channels, that werent as successful, werent as widely read as wikileaks that told us a lot about the russian operatio. , but we didnt know that that early. We learned it pretty fast, bob, because by july we were writing stories remember the first revelations, the first publication was fairly early july, and by the third week of july, we wrote a story that said that u. S. Intelligence had concluded with high confidence that it was the russians who were behind all of this. The Intelligence Community came out with that assessment on october 7th, so within a matter of weeks, we pretty well put it together. But it was, it had an ambiguity about it i thought, and inevitably youre going to go to the content, whats the content of this, and those were legitimate stories, but i agree with you in retrospect, when you had the much harder conclusion that the Intelligence Community made, that this was part of an operation to hurt hillary clinton, and there was not over the summer in the campaign the kind of clarity. As you said earlier, this reveals itself over time, and you know, we had a team that was pretty well just focused on the russian part of the operation, even while we were reporting the materials from yes. Im curious if anybodys ever tried to punk you. I come from the world of television, where we always had to be cautious about things that had been photo shopped or otherwise manipulated. Given the fact that video can now be manipulated with great sophistication, audio can be, voices can essentially be reprogrammed to Say Something different than they originally said and documents certainly can be edited, have you ever gotten material that you thought was the real deal and then discovered wasnt, someone was trying to play you . You know, i think its an increasing issue. Fake twitter accounts. Yes. You know, are a significant issue now, and youve really got to slow down and say you know, there was a moment somebody was faking a twitter account they had set up for Rex Tillerson and we were looking at it and thought that he had issued a policy pronouncement until we realized this was an unverified account. Within cyber, a big issue is data manipulation generally. Yes. And its increasingly possible to go do it and its something we have to be careful of in a way im not even sure five years ago it was possible. And i tend to believe in human sources, that if you have somebody who is in a position of knowledge and you have established a relationship of trust, thats so much better, even going back in the 80s, i remember bill casey, the cia director for reagan, once saying you know its so much better to have a human source, somebody who sits outside the Prime Ministers office, who will tell you what goes on than having a bug in the Prime Ministers office. Because youre going to get stacks of transcripts and you dont know whats important, and i think this is the problem with the internet and things david and twitter accounts and so forth, theyre guides, but in the end, what you need is somebody who will really kind of, for good reasons, tell you whats going on, and ultimately you want to get a Cabinet Office or somebody in charge of one of the intelligence agencies or National Security adviser or the president himself or herself who will respond. I, in doing books, would send questions to president s bush, obama just because i had the luxury of time, i can kind of say these are the 60 things that happened that are important and whats your comment on them and they will, in all cases i have found engage in that because it comes from humans not twitter accounts. Another question, another one back here towards the back. Im a georgetown student. I was wondering do you think this discussion with the government is going to be possible when they view the media as this opposition party, and if that, especially with the upper echelons of government . Its a great question. Every administration has to go through a period where they have to get accustomed to this kind of giveandtake, and ask the question, do we really need to answer these . What are the consequences if we dont answer these kinds of questions . If we dont engage in this conversation. In past administration, not in this administration, its early yet, ive had people say to me id love to talk to you about whether or not this piece of information would be harmful, but if i had that conversation with you, id have to discuss classified material, and i cant get into that. So every administrations got to work out its own set of procedures to this. Its very possible that this administration with its rather unique view of what the media is, the opposition, may decide that theyre going to engage in a very different way or not engage at all. I think the danger for us is viewing ourselves as the opposition instead of viewing ourselves as the people sent out to do a very specific job thats the same job weve done with past administrations democratic or republican. And of course the administration wont speak with one voice. Of course not. Thank god, and there are many people out there who you can establish relations with, hopefully, who will explain whats going on, and i think ultimately, the media, we have to make as strong an argument as we can for transparency, and the benefits of transparency. Its not just that it helps more subscribers for the newspapers or the websites and so forth. Although thats a nice benefit. No, no, but it helps the government, and if you spend enough time with people ive had so many people in government over the decades say, you know, it was good that that got out, that we had public discussion about it, and initially often the reaction is one of seizure or a joyless day but once things proceed theyll say yeah its good that we had a discussion of the black sites. I mean this raised all kinds of governing questions also, all kinds of moral questions that needed to be discussed, and thats one of those stories that served a real purpose, and if you asked president bush, george w. , former president , and had him here on sodium penathol truth serum i think hed acknowledge yeah, that was painful, but we needed to have that discussion. One thing that instruct me rereading sandys book the other day was that the post and the times although competitors stood together with the publication of the pentagon papers. I wonder if in current environment with the splintering of the media and different points of view, whether you have that unity of effort. You have breitbart for instance right now, although you may not like them, tremendously influential, joining the trump chorus decrying leaks to the media. So is the press position weakened because the press is splintered . Its a really interesting question. You have this group of loyalists throughout. I think the times and just to watch the times and the post in the past couple of weeks, theres been obviously no cooperation between the two, but there has been i think common cause. There has been a remarkable amount of incredibly Good Journalism done by both organizations, and i think that, while i think both organizations remain competitors and competitors with an everwidening group of other publications, i think thats been a really good thing. But you cant work in concert. You cant work in concert. But what you can do, and this is, and i agree, this is evidence in the last month, when a News Organization, whatever it is, has a good story, that another News Organization is following, there is that line, this first appeared in the New York Times. Yes. And theres more and more of that, and i think the distance prevails, people are going to do their own work, but the acknowledgment of a good story, and there have been a lot of good stories, and i think its that the New York Times is more frequently than the post had to say. By the way, this appeared in the Washington Post. Im staying completely out of this one. Wise move. Well take the scorecard question offline, but i think where the cause is, where its important to have the cause in common is if the government decides to take steps that, in the view of many in this room, would try to restrict free press. I think on that question thats where you want to see as much unity as you can, not just in the times and the post across the journalistic xhunlt. In the fractured world were in youre not going to see that in its entirety. If this Administration Starts going after reporters and News Organizations my guess is breitbart might take a different view of this than the times and the post would. I think you can be fierce competitors on the news and have a relatively common view of what the fundamental liberties are here. And the real headline from Trumps Press Conference in these first four months, whatever it has been, he made very clear that hes going after leaks, and he thinks the problem is not the information in the leaks, but the leaks themselves. So i would say keep your seat belt on. And david, i promise to bring you a sandwich oh thanks. In jail. And in the show of that would you like to preorder . In the show of that unity i, too, will bring bob something as long as he emails his choices, yes. Do we have another question . Any hands up out there . Here, over here we have one. Wait for the microphone. Hi, my names andrew. Im a georgetown senior. My question is, at President Trumps press conference yesterday he spoke about fake news versus real leaks and i was wondering if any of you have a comment on how he views the difference between, what his concept of fake news is, and how that relates to the leaks that he perceives is a real threat to his administration. I was mulling over that line and trying to go figure it out. So wind the clock back all the way to october when he was reading out from wikileaks documents that he had which were not classified he read from the Podesta Emails and so forth that came from inside Hillary Clintons campaign or among her top aides, and then contrast that with what he said in recent days, and his view of the importance of leaks seems to have changed. He said the words i love wikileaks in october. I havent heard those repeated in recent times. But i think whats happened with the phrase fake news is, it has ban dotted in part by this administration but certainly by many of its supports and others to decry any piece of news that they do not like or find not credible. Now, in the case of these leaks about general flynn, in the end, hes the one who decided for cause, whatever that cause was, to dismiss general flynn. So he must have concluded that some of the data, which we ultimately got and used to explain all of this, was actually true. So i wasnt quite sure what he meant by that phraseology. Its a term that muddies the waters, in a way, because if you parse what trump was saying, essentially saying these leaks are true, but he considers the reporting on them fake news, and that is just inconsistent, and its one of the issues there, but the idea that you and this is the mystery to be pursued, and that is wt actually happened with flynn . Because trump said oh, yeah, i would have supported him, i would have had him have these conversations, if you think about it, those conversations at least as reported now dont seem criminal or particularly unusual. Somebodys National Security adviser about to become that, have that job, and you talked to the russians, obviously sanctions are a key issue, apparently didnt say well make a deal. He said well revisit it. I think totally reasonable. So why was he fired . And that question has not really been answered sufficiently in my view. Before we wrap up, ben, i wanted to give you a chance, had you thought over the question from bob about the worst case . Yes. Wow, thats a tough one, because youve inevitably getting into confirming things that you cant talk about. Thats the reason i asked it. Exactly. And thats why hes a legend. You know, but certainly there are things, you know, i mentioned the terrorism Financial Tracking Program, tftp, and the value that that provided to the country, so there are, you know, public examples out there. I wont say thats the worst one i ever saw but theres certainly public examples of things that have happened out there that i think where the balance has not been struck perfectly. Final thoughts on pentagon papers legacy . David, do you want to start . Sure. I think it was foundational to everything that we do, and i was still working my way out of i think Elementary School or Junior High School oh, be quiet, we dont want to hear this. So i would hardly be an expert on all of it but i have to say from what ive read i think bob said it exactly right. If it had not been for that decision, i dont think we could have gone on to do what it is that we go do today, and i think that one of the big concerns we have is whether or not, rather than building on that decision, we are seeing the pendulum swing and seeing erosions of it, and that would worry me the most. And even in that decision, the pentagon papers decision, in a book on the Supreme Court, Scott Armstrong and i did decades ago, we looked at some of the documentation and interviewed the people about that decision, and alexander bic kell one of the great lawyers argued for the New York Times in that case and bickell had the wisdom to realize the famous case from new york in the 20th century said yes, you cant have prior restraint, but it is quite possible that the government could stop the press from publishing Salient Dates and troop numbers so its not absolute. So bickell argued that to the court. In this case, no prior restraint but of course its not absolute and hugo black, the great First Amendment juror, justice, was just enraged by this and came back to his clerks and he said even the New York Times has a lawyer that doesnt believe in the First Amendment. Because as far as black was concerned, this was absolute, and if you dig into the legal intricacies, which maybe you have, it is not an absolute right, and there are things like Salient Dates and troop numbers that clearly Supreme Court precedent says the press cannot publish. Is that right . Yes. I mean, but it is foundational in terms of changing this balance, and the fact that what the government would often be interested in is stopping the publication, and by changing that in terms of basically saying the difficulty of a prior restraint really fundamentally was a shift, and thats what leads to these conversations and other things, so it puts the government in a place where its kind of like well, this is out there now. Were going to go after the press, what is it were going to do, thats different from what i think many, some in government would want to do when something comes up like this. Darn it, lets go into court and stop that, and of course if you were to do that, you are facing a huge, huge burned where youd have to be something very factual like this is the war plans what have our troops are going to do in this city on saturday, and this is where facts matter. Bob alluded to this a little bit earlier in terms of whether there would be, you know, a case, what the court would do and that was one of the questions. Facts make a huge, huge difference even in Supreme Court litigation. It is not just the broad philosophical argument what the underlying facts are and one of the reasons is of course the pentagon papers is not Salient Dates of the ships. It is not heres our deployment of how were protecting troops. The facts matter in how those cases so if theres a next case in the future lets hope the New York Times gets a lawyer who believes in the First Amendment. I dont know if hes going to be calling you though, ben. Thank you all very much for joining us here today. Really appreciate it. [ applause ] and thank you for being a great audience. Good questions. And so a break in this Georgetown University hosted symposium looking at how journalism has changed since the pentagon papers of 1971 and the implications for National Security leaks and sources in the digital age. We saw the Washington Post bob woodward in the first panel. The post executive editor Martin Barron will be on the second panel. Well have that for you in about 15 minutes here on cspan3. In the meantime some news to make awe ware of Senate Republicans plan to confirm President Trumps nominee to lead the environmental mental protection agency. Scott proulx pruitt is closely aligned with oil and Gas Companies democrats say and they want a delay in the vote. Senator Susan Collins is the only republican voting against mr. Pruitt and a couple of democrats said theyre voting for him. Watch that vote live on cspan2 starting at 1 00 eastern. Also this news, former Republican House leader bob michael has passed away. He served as minority leader for 14