>> guest: well, i'm waiting for the pope's position to open up. [laughter] i enjoy being back home in carmel valley, as i said, i have a walnut ranch out there and it's nice to be home working with a different set of nuts. i'm enjoying that. >> host: almost all of your life experiences and your positions are enviable but you have done one thing i'm not sure everyone here would be jealous of. you have been roommates with senator schumer. >> guest: yeah, we were all kind of bachelors back here and our wives were back in the district, and we came back to washington and we were all kind of living separately, and george miller had a house up on the hill, and george miller eventually -- we were all friends and would good out to din. he said why don't we all kind of stay together? so we all moved into george miller's house and it was four congressmen, myself, george miller, of course, our already, chuck schumer, and a guy named marty russo from illinois, and chuck sumer and i were on the bottom floor and he slept on the couch, and i had a bed that i moved into one corner of the room downstairs. this was truly animal house. this is really animal house. and chuck was the kind of person -- i mean, chuck would munch on anything. my son every once in a while would come back and stay with me, and he would buy cereal because we didn't have any cereal there. we didn't have any food. we just -- most of the time ate out. so he would by cereal for himself, and schumer, before heed go to bed, would eat the damn cereal. and my son would always wake up and say, what he hell happened to my cereal? i said, i'm sorry, that's schumer took care of that. so, it's an early washington lesson. >> host: mr. secretary, you lived the most amazing life and for those of us here in washington there's so many aspects to learn from, and to -- in wow forthy fights "you go back to the beginning and talk about when you were running for congress, and you talk about tip o'neill, later was your speaker, came out to campaign for you and it didn't go so well. >> guest: well, no. tip came out and it was wonderful to have him. big irishman from boston, came out, and we did a fundraiser with democrats, and tip went up there and he said, i just -- i want you to do everything possible to work for leo panetta. >> host: in good friend leo. >> guest: and he said it several times, and fortunately most of the crowd kind of took it in stride because he was enjoying himself. he had a few scotchs and was in good shape. and everybody enjoyed the evening, but from then on, when i did get elected, and i went to congress, there was another congressman whose name was norma net a. he was japanese-american. and tip would constantly wind up calling me norm, and called maneta leon, and the real problem was the carter white house screwed it up as will. the carter white house, when they italian prime minister came to town, they invited norm maneta to the white house. and when the japanese prime minister came to town, they invited me. and finally norm and i put a baseball team together and we said we'd played under the sign of the rising pizza. this was our team. >> host: one thing we see in this book, mr. secretary, is wheeling and dealing with congress, see you helping one pass for president clinton's crime bill. we saw in speaker o'neill a very effective -- what is that he did and you did then that now is missing? >> guest: they rolled up their sleeves, and wanted to get it done. probably the best way to say it. tip o'neill, who was political, democrat from boston, all politics was local with tip, but tip had a heart that i think was unmatched in terms of wanting to do the right thing for the country. and so whether it was reagan or carter or whoever was president, tip was really devoted to trying to help not only the president but the country, and so even though it might be somebody from the opposite party, he felt it was important to move legislation, to move proposals forward. i'll never forget with ronald reagan, when reagan was riding a high, and we brought the bug to the floor, and i was on the budget committee at the time, and we brought the budget to the floor, and we lost the budget book. lost the budget book. which is devastating to majority party to wind up bringing a budget to the floor and have it be lost. but a lot of the southern democrats sported ronald reagan and that happened. and tip didn't miss a beat. lost it, republican budget came up, it was passed, he didn't stop it. he didn't shut down the congress. he basically said, this place votes by majority rule, and it did. and he lost the vote. but he said, we're going to move on, and we did. and what was refreshing about him was that i think he really respected the fact that the house as an institution has to have the opportunity to vote on issues, and he also believed -- you hear it talked about now, which is regular order. but what regular order meanses the way the damn legislative process is supposed to work. president sends up a proposal, it goes a committee, goes to a subcommittee, subcommittee holds hearings, subcommittee marks up, goes to the full committee, full committee marks up, adopts the bill, goes to the rules committee, and then goes to the floor, where amendments can be offered on the floor. and that process allows members to be a part of the process, which is missing today. if members can be part of the process, if they can be engaged, then they own a little piece of that bill. and as a result of it, they'll help move it through. that's why a lot offings in my time was bipartisan. >> host: that's also something else missing now, that adept working of congress, and you have said that there was a grand budget bargain to be had between boehner and the president. why didn't that happen? >> guest: well, you know, look, first and form most -- foremost, i remember when the whole simpson-bowles recommend came out -- this was a commission that the president appointed. the president -- when they reported their report, and it was bipartisan, some members that didn't support it, but it had a bipartisan vote supporting simpson-bowles, and the president asked me, should he support it? i said, you should. you should support this, mr. president. it's your commission, they've been working at it, it's bipartisan, you may not like each of to the pieces but the fact they came together is important. and i said, look, if you support this, chances are the congress is going to have hard time with this proposal. but you will be in the right place. you'll be in the right place. well, for whatever reason, he didn't support it, and so we go to the budget negotiations, and there was this kind of back and forth, and joe biden was kind of leading the charge, trying to develop an approach. i think there was a moment there where everybody kind of stood by what they thought they had agreed to, that we could have had a budget, but there was some last-minute wavering and i don't know whether it was the president or boehner -- probably both of them, they were getting heat probably. boehner getting heat from the republicans. i'm sure the president was getting heat from the democrats. but at that point, when there has somewaverring, that i think spelled trouble then. >> host: i know that you hear an earful as well from people on congress -- democrats as muching a republican -- how they feel neglected by this president. why is it that he has never managed that relationship with the hill, even with the democrats? >> guest: i think that -- part of the process in this town has to be the engagement with people who are in political positions up on the hill, who you may not like. let face it. governing is tough. governing means you have to deal with people you may not like. 435 members of congress, 100 members of the senate, all from different parts of the country, some are smart, some are not smart, in are honest, some are dishonest, some want to do the right thing, some don't. it's a real mixture. it's cross-section of america represented up there. and there are a lot of people -- particularly today there's probably more in terms of numbers -- of people that are just very tough to deal with. and yet, the challenge in legislation is to engage people. i mean, why -- >> host: why doesn't the president do that? >> guest: i think the president believes that part of it is that he presents an issue and the logic of an issue, and that people should embrace it, and he is not -- the difference between bill clinton and president bara, both are extremely bright, both capable, quick studies when you brief them in terms of understanding issues, they ask great questions, and deep down, both want to do the right thing for the country. make no mistake about it. they want to do the right thing for the country. the difference is, bill clinton loves the political engagement. loved the process of rolling up your sleeves, dealing with individuals. he loved politics. he loved dealing with members. he knew every member's district, members would come in and he would say to them, you're running the wrong campaign. you know, you're running on the wrong issues. let me tell you what you ought to run on. and he would tell them what the issues were they would run on. and so he was engaged in that process, and that makes a difference. i think president obama is not into that kind of personal political engagement. he wants to work with people, he wants to work with people on the issues, but to get it done, it's like everything else, it is a personal process of basically wooing people, listening to them, understanding what their needs are, understanding how you can convince them what is in their interests to do the right thing. it is that entire process that ultimately results in getting things done, and that is where the president has to engage in terms of dealing with the issues that now confront the country. >> host: one of the many personal relationships you explore in your book is your relationship with the former prime minister of israel. clear lay lack of trust there. tell us about that. >> guest: he and i were friends going back to the clinton administration when i was chief of staff. i had the opportunity to work with ehud. we developed a strong friendship. he has a really remarkable background in terms of the history of his family, and he always used to ask me the history of my family, and i told him that. so we both kind of shared just warm family histories. he played the piano. i play the piano. >> host: who better? >> guest: i'm sure he is better. but we both enjoyed classical piano, and he is somebody who i found you could really talk with in terms of what is in the interests of israel, what's in the interests of the united states, and how can we work together to try to serve the interests of both? and as defense minister, when i was secretary of defense, we had some tough issues to deal with because at one point, netanyahu had indicated that israel was prepared to go ahead and strike iran, because they were very concerned that iran was developing this enriched fuel, that they could speed to the development of a nuclear weapon, and so their feeling was, this represented a threat to the state of israel, and they had the obligation -- that's how they viewed things -- they had the obligation to protect their country and that's what they were going to do, and i can remember president was worried about that. that we were suddenly going to have a war break out in the middle east. i talked with ehud about it. i said, look, we share the same goal. we do not want iran to have a nuclear weapon. but if you attack them, you're just going to give them black eye, they're going to come back you will have destroyed the international coalition that has developed all of these sanctions and put pressure on iran. i said, and besides that, they'll then come back with a vengeance in terms of developing a nuclear weapon. whereas if you -- if we do this together, united states has an even greater capability to make sure that we really do damage to their ability to develop enriched fuel. and we talked it through. and ultimately ehud thought that we did have a better capability to frankly do it if we had to -- i think the combination of him, talking with netanyahu and others, convinced him that they were willing to hold off until we could see what happens with iran and ultimately the negotiations. so, it was a strenuous moment for me, but the joy i had was working with him. we also worked together on providing military aid to israel, and one of the weapons we provided to them was a weapon that involves the missiles that can strike down the missiles that were coming out of gaza recently, and it was very effective. at bringing down those missiles, almost 90% in terms of effectiveness. and we -- both of us were responsible for helping to put that weapon in place. >> host: in the introduction we just heard there was a quiet from a very favorable review of "worthy fight" in the by david ignatius. the headline of the review is: why didn't panetta speak up sooner? would it have been better to speak out at the time and perhaps resign on principle? >> guest: well, frankly issue was always one who believed in speaking up and letting the president know my views. i never hesitated that way and i have done that throughout my life. i always thought it was important. i did it with bill clinton and with barack obama, which is to tell them what you think. tell them if you think they're going to do the right thing or the wrong thing, they may not like you, they may not like your views, but on the other hand they should. president of the united states should not have just a bunch of yes people around him. >> host: does this president have that? >> guest: i think at the time i was there with the national security council, no, there were a lot of people -- >> host: what about now. >> guest: secretary gates and secretary clinton others that spoke their mind. i don't know now. i honestly don't itch can't speak to how it works now there some good people there, obviously, but -- >> host: do you worry there aren't enough voices? >> guest: i worry that you have got to have individuals on the staff or in the national security council that are will tolling challenge what is being presented and tell the president about their concerns about certain paths that it may be taken. that is extremely important. i can't tell you how true this is, but i've seen it as chief of staff to bill clinton, and i've seen it in the white house under this president, and i'm sure it's true under other presidents. people get in a room with the president of the united states and they're immediately intimidated. and they don't want to say something to the president that might offend him. and as a matter of fact, one of the things i've often sensed, even in national security council, sometimes everybody is trying to read the president. where is he going? and then they all try to then march in line. and that is really important for a president of the united states to be exposed to a lot of different views. president ultimately makes the decision, but to be supposed to a number of views that -- be exposed to a number of views that can present to him, what are the consequences of different decisions and what is the impact in terms of the country? so to go to your question, would state my position, and present it, and sometimes the president would agree, sometimes not. i do have to say in the four years i was there, i think the president largely agreed with the operations we were involved in, agreed with what we were trying to do at the department of defense. >> host: that's not much of an endorsement. largely agreed with the operations? >> guest: well, he embraced the operations but there was always some of the operations where you had to -- there was a discussion as to just exactly how we would do it. and we might do some revisions as a result of that. but he strongly supported the operations that we were involved with, and i think he was right in doing that. certainly he supported the operation against bin laden, which was very risky, and i give him tremendous credit for making the right decision. >> host: a line in your book that has gotten the most air play is too often in my view, the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader. >> guest: there's nothing wrong with having the approach of a law professor in teaming with some of the issues you have to confront at president. i don't mean the presidents who use a law professor's kind of approach to analyze issues, but in the end they need to have a heart of a warrior. they need to be able to take on the battle and get it done, and that is the challenge. i've seen this president do it, but i would like to see him do it more. i would like to see him engage in the battles that have to be fought, in order to try to get legislation passed on the hill. i would like to see him engaged in the effort to try to do what needs to be done to get a budget deal passed, to get immigration reform passed, to get infrastructure funding done, to get trade legislation passed, too do an energy bill for this country. these are all important issues. and i know that congress is resist extent and they're tough and they're people there that basically want to bring -- tear down the government and not make it work. but you can't just sit back and say, i guess we can't get it done. you cannot say that. you have to continue to push. you have to continue to look for openings. you have to continue to work with those people who will work with you. it demands constant, constant pressure, to be able to make it work. that's the nature of being a president of the united states, you have to constantly be in the ring fighting for what is right for this country. have you heard of. [applause] >> host: have you heard from the president since the book came out? sunny i have not. we sent him a copy of the book. actually, we sent it to him a couple months ago. never heard anything in terms of commenting on the book. >> host: how do you take that? >> guest: i don't know how. i assume that they probably have now read the book. >> host: what do you think your next encounter with the president will be like? >> guest: you know, i really have been around almost 50 years in politics, and i have engaged presidents and i've engaged members of congress, and sometimes you challenge people, sometimes you fight people in the process, but in the end, you roll up your sleeves and say, that's all part of what our democracy is all about. sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, and i respect those that i work with and i respect this president, i want him to succeed in every way. i respect the office of the presidency. and i certainly will continue to respect him and the office no matter where i am. >> host: cover of sunday's "washington post" outlook had a second piece by aaron david mill with the headline-disappointer in chief. why has this president failed to meet so many people's expectations. >> well, you know, look. i think that the president has -- certainly in the first term -- i think he did take on the issue of the economy, and was able to turn the economy around. i think that is to his credit. he took on the issue of health care, and was able to put the affordable care act in place. that is to his credit. i think he made the decision on bin laden, which was a tough decision. i think that is to his credit. i think that for the first four years, this president was a very strong president, when it came to being able to push the issues that he wanted and being able to provide the leadership on foreign policy issues that he needed to provide. i think that in the process of doing that, there are these deliberations, there are -- you know, part of the process in the white house -- and i remember bob gates being concerned about it, he wrote in the book. which was that when you're in the national security council and you're secretary of defense you feel like you want to be able to have the president hear what you have to say, and i think there was a sense that the staff in the white house sometimes got to the president first or tried to move the president in a certain direction, and then wanted the defense department to go along with that particular position. and i think that is what offended bob gates because he is somebody who believes in the process of policymaking in the -- >> host: did you have a similar -- >> guest: i had some of the same experiences in dealing with the staff and for that matter, i'm sure that secretary clinton did as well. so some of that is frustrating. >> host: but just to stick on this for a second. what did you experience that either disappointed or frustrated you in regard to the staff? >> guest: you know, it's the process of having your policy people develop a strategy, develop the elements of the strategy as to what you think should be presented, and as you're about to present it, having white house staff basically say no, no, no, don't do that. do this, or do something else, to try to effect exactly what you're presenting. and i think the president is entitled to the best views from the secretary of defense, from his military leaders, and that those shouldn't be shaped necessarily by what the white house staff wants. what that white house staff needs to do is to allow a process that provides the best views from the secretary of state, from the secretary of defense, to be presented, so that the president ultimately can make a decision. not to back-door the process in order to shape those decisions before they go to the president. >> host: you have seen this president behind the scenes more than almost anyone, and as a leader, as a manager, as a person, what's he like behind the escapes? you write about how president clinton, to blow off steam and doodle would work crossword puzzles. what does this president do? >> guest: i do don't think he does crossword puzzles. i think he is very serious-minded. he basically looks at the issues, reasons the issues. >> host: what's he like? does he joke around? what is he like? >> guest: no. no. he -- look, i think he likes basketball. we talk about basketball sometimes. likes she the sports going on with'll talk about that. but he night -- >> host: he is not a chatter. >> guest: not a chatter. sure as hell isn't bill clinton when it comes to chatter. [laughter] >> guest: much more serious, much more disciplined. bill clinton was not very disciplined. [laughter] >> guest: but breck broke is very disciplined in the way he behaves. so a very different character. for me, i know bob gates kind of reflected a frustration with that process. but i have to tell you for me -- i understand kind of that process, having been through it as chief of staff and certainly having been in politics, i understand that kind of process that goes on there. in the end, i really do think that even though we had to fight our way to it, even though we had to fight sometimes the white house staff in the process, that in the end, the president would pretty much agree with the positions that we recommended, and gates said that and i said that in the book as well. >> host: doesn't sound like a very pleasant place. >> guest: you don't want to go to the white house if you're looking for pleasant. [laughter] >> guest: go to the caribbean or go to hawai'i. but don't go to the white house. the white house is -- it is a place where you have to engage. if you want to get it done, you have to roll up your sleeves and have to get into the process. and i frankly -- i like the process of engaging with people. enthough they may not agree with you, the challenge of talking, of debating, of saying why you should do something, was really -- it's really important. let me give you an example. on -- we had captured a number of russian shies who had been placed here -- russian spies who had been placed here, and we lad to proceed to arrest those spies because we were concerned one of the might go back to russia. so there's ten of them. very smart move by the russians they place hem here a long time ago, they developed their community relations, they married, have children, they become part of the community, and then ultimately they move into spying. fortunately we were aware of what they were doing. we were going to see to arrest them, and the problem was that the president was meeting with medvedev, and so there were some people that said, you know, maybe we shouldn't arrest them. because it might upset our relations with russia. and i said, excuse me? we have russian spies here. i want you to envision the "washington post" headline if we don't arrest these people and pick them up. and even though there had been some debate, i could see the lights go on in their eyes. when i said that. and the result was they said, okay, we should go ahead and do this, and we did, and thank god we did it. but that part of the process. >> host: the takeway there when the secretary says, excuse me -- mr. secretary, while you were shopping at costco, josh earnest said our strategy against the islamic state is succeeding. his full sentence is: we're in the early days of the execution of that strategy but certainly the early evidence indicates that this strategy is succeeding." >> guest: you know, i think that the right pieces are in place. i think it's being tested, though. >> host: because -- >> guest: i think the jury is still out as to whether or not ultimately we're going to be on the right path in terms of dealing with isis itch think the right pieces are in place. we have our troops trying to help with the iraqis. we're going to arm the rebels. we have airstrikes, strong coalition put together to try to go after it. but isis is well-trained-well-funded, they are individuals who are well-armed, and they have combat command that knows how to make this move on the ground. they're going against cab ban any. they're moving in anbar province. they are kidding us on different fronts. i think we are the ones that are going to have to be able to adapt to their strategy and be able to confront them. we're in the process of doing that. i have full confidence that we'll be able to do that. but it is going to take time. it is going to take time. and we may very well suffer some losses in the interim. >> host: mr. secretary, when you say the jury is out on whether they're on the right path, what worries you about the current path? >> guest: i think the key is that you really do need to have sources on the ground that can tell you what is happening and what is taking place. so that you know what the targets are that have to be struck, you know what the dynamic is in terms of the ground forces that are moving and trying to make a difference. now, in iraq, i think it's pretty clear that we can develop, i think, iraqi security forces to be able to go in and retake the lan that was lost. the real key there is whether or not we can get the sunnies to be part of the effort. if we can get the sunnies to be part of national guard, part of an effort to do it, then i feel very confident that we're going to be able to move that in the right direction. syria is a much different ball game. it's chaotic, we don't know what is going on the ground and the key is can we develop the sources we need in order to get that done? understand, in counterterrorism, which we have been involved with for a long time now, the key to counterterrorism is having the ability to identify those targets that the leadership -- what the targets should be and being able to hit those targets. to develop those sources in pakistan took us three years. to develop those sources in the yemen took is one year. so it's going to take time to develop the sources of information we need in order to be able to conduct the operations that i think would be effective at disrupting and defeating isis. >> host: one more on this. on sunday, on "state of the union," senator mccain said that candy crowley of isis, they're winning and we're not. >> guest: i don't -- i think that's going pretty far for senator mccain to say that's the case, because they obviously have moved forward. they've gained territory. they do represent a threat. but these airstrikes have been effective at stopping the momentum at really inhibiting their ability to move as fast as they wanted to move. so we have been effective at stopping the momentum. the real question is, can we continue to do that? can we continue that pace? and can we continue the toe hit the right targets? so that we are effective in using air strikes? that's going to be the challenge. i really do think that we have come a long way in this war against isis, and that we have at least set them back. the real challenge now is can we move against them in a way that cannot only disrupt them but defeat them? >> host: mr. secretary issuing mention secretary gate's autobiography a couple of timed. you have a great moment in "worthy fights pechowski when you're getting ready to make this extraordinary move over to secretary of defense and you first learn the job would be open when secretary gates took you aside after a meeting and said, leon, i'm about ready to go and i just want you to know that i'm going to recommend you to succeed me, and in the book you point out that he left something out. in the book you say i didn't know then, and on alarm from book's memoirs he also suggested hillary clinton, colin powell and michael bloomberg. >> guest: that's right. and bob gates, when he said that, we had gone to lunch for -- used to have regular lurch ford the intelligence operations cia, dni, and others within the intelligence operations. dia. to talk about intelligence issues with the secretary. and so it was after one of those lunches when he pulled me aside and said, i want you to become secretary of defense. and i said, bob, no, i am -- i really do think it's time for me to go home. we just got bin laden. i said, it's a good time to get the hell out of here and go home. you know? when you leave washington, leave on a high. and so i said, i've -- i really want to go home, and i've done this. we did well. and i think it's necessary he said no, need you to do this. i think you'd -- you understand the troops, you understand the need to really protect them, and do it. and i just -- i really resisted. i said, go and get somebody else. look at others because there are others. i said, colin powell and others. they ought to be recommended and do the same thing. and then bill bailey, the cleave of staff, followed that up and basically made the same offer, and i told bill, i said, look, talk to others. because this is -- i really don't want to do this, and i'll at the you the reason. i said, i don't want to stay beyond four years in the administration, and if i'm secretary of defense, frankly, you ought to have somebody that's going to stay longer in that position, and they said, no, that doesn't make any difference. you'd be great. do it, get it done. and i just said, no, i said, look at others. and try to make that decision. and then i think it was on one of the flights back to washington where the president called me directly and indicated he want ped me to take that position. and again, you know, throughout my life, when the profit the united states usually asks you do something out of respect nor office you do it. >> host: when you read your book, next to secretary gates' book, you have the feeling on some of these national security questions there haven't so much been camps as we so often say in the press but there have been types between the president has either taken action or resisted action that is almost him and all the advisers on different sides. did you experience that? do you agree with that? >> guest: i have to say when i was there, that there was a very good give and take in the national security council, and that we all had a chance to kind of present our views to the president. look, matter of fact, when weapon did the bin laden operation and the president rent around the table and asked for everybody's views, many of the people around that table thought that the operation was too risky. i could understand it. we didn't know for sure whether bin laden was there. we were going have to fly 150 miles at night into pakistan, and be able to conduct this commando operation, not really knowing what kind 0 resistance we would run into. so there were a lot of people around the table, including secretary gates, who was very concerned about the risks involved, as were others. and i remember when the president asked me, i said, look, mr. president, i have an old formula i've used going back to congress, which is that when you face a difficult decision, think about asking the ordinary citizen in your district if you knew what i knew, what would you do? and if the ordinary citizen knew that we had the best information on the location of bin laden since tora bora, and that this was the one opportunity to try to get our number-one enemy issue think the average citizen would say, you have to do this. and in addition to that, i had tremendous confidence in the ability of special forces to conduct the operation. now can the president didn't decide that night. and frankly, if you had to count around the table, i'd say probably there was a majority that were opposed to the operation. >> host: and you were for. >> guest: i was for it, and i think secretary clinton was for and it others that were for it as well. but i didn't know. i didn't know. next morning, we had everybody in place, and the president called and said, it was a go. so, that process is okay. i think that's the way it should work. everybody has to present their views, but in the end, president of the united states make the final decision. >> host: the president talked about how he had to go to white house correspond ends dinner do a comedy routine and keep a secret. we learn in the book you also at that dinner were at time magazine's fable you, too had to keep it a secret. >> guest: we all had to keep our mouths shut. we had to laugh at the jokes on bin laden that were going on at the time. >> host: when you were named dcia dish have to ask you -- when you were on the hill and even in the white house, you were very grateful -- you were not known for being discreet, and you become dcia, secretary of the defense, suddenly the keeper of the secrets. how did you pull that off? >> guest: it was tough as hell. it was tough as hell, because you're right. as a member of congress, i was very much engaged with the press, and would talk with them about what was going on, and was always enjoyed that relationship, and even in the white house as chief of staff, enjoyed a good relationship with the press and with others, and really kind of liked the give and take of the process. and now i'm cia director and i got keep my mouth shut. and it's much tougher because you still want to have that engagement, you still want to be able to say, what's going on and what is happening? that is one of the things you like about this town, is the ability to kind of look at different pieces and who is on first and who is not getting anywhere, and who is trying to screw who. that's all kind of fun in this town. but as director of the cia, we had to keep it confidential. the good example was on the plane when i would take a trip as cia director, there was no press. we didn't bring press along. and so i'd go into a country and they'd take me to wherever i went, visit with the leadership, went to visit with our stations, and got out of town. when i was secretary of defense, we had a whole hoard of people from the press that were part of our contingent. >> host: you got sick of jeremy? >> guest: i'd sic him on them. and trying to be able -- frankly, the first few times when i was secretary of defense, got in trouble for making comments that i would make to people on a -- swear a little bit. i'll share with you a story. gandolfini, when he played me in this movie "zero dark thirty" he wrote me a note and said, i'm italianer you're italian. i now you don't like the way i played this role but a i have a great deal of respect for you. i called him up and met him a couple times before and said, look, i'm glad -- just glad they picked an italian to play my role. i said, but you did a great job in the movie. it's a movie. and you really were fine. he said, yeah, but you know, it was one thing that really bothered me, was that they made me swear a lot. and i said, you know, that's the one thing you got right. [laughter] >> host: and speaking of swearing, there's a rumor in here about rahm. >> guest: two things that rahm. >> host: you said there war a rumor after you worked together in the clinton white house he got his language from you? >> guest: i doubt that very much. and in here you tell about when he worked for you in the christian top white house, a brass plaque he had on his desk. undersecretary for -- we can't say it. >> guest: i mixed audience iwant to bring -- >> guest: by the way, the story i do tell in the book is that rahm is a real go-getter. and he moves and he does it and times the'll step on anybody to try to get it done, and the president said -- actually, him and both george stephanopoulos, the president said issue really think we ought to move them out. i was becoming chief of staff and i had worked with george and of course had worked with rahm, and they're both very bright, capable people, who have a good puts on the political side, especially george, and rahm was somebody, when you till hem to take the hill, he takes the hill. so i didn't really want to lose them. so i kept saying to the pret, look, met me work with them. let me bring them under my wing and we'll try to make sure that i control what they're involved with, but i really do think they could be valuable. and so i managed to -- instate of having them walk into meetings, weibring them in when i wanted them to be part of a meeting, and i think it really worked out and the president finally became comfortable with the fact they were there, because both of them were extremely bright, extremely able, and i think it's an example that sometimes people who are good may be tough, may be brazen, may get in your face, but the key is do they do the job? and if they do the job, you damn well want to keep them. >> host: we would love to bring you into the conversation. there's a couple microphones here. we'll take your questions while you're doing that, in this book, a number of times secretary clinton is on the same side of an argument as you, and the effect of this will be that should there be a clinton presidential campaign, this will be very helpful. >> guest: well, i'll leave that up to the candidate to decide. there are some -- one of the thing is try to do in the book is to basically kind of shake the system a little bit so that people understand that in order to really get things done that you have to do, you do have to roll up your sleeves and you have to fight for it. >> host: you're saying he -- she did. what was she like behind closed doors. >> guest: she was very tough, but she was very thoughtful. she knew the issues. she didn't speak without knowing the issues and what she was saying, and i think it was always effective when she did speak up, peopleliened. >> host: because in a debate, if she wants distance from president obama she can say, don't listen to me, listen to secretary panetta. i'm sure i'll be quoted a lot. good and bad. >> host: but was that your intention or simply the effect. >> no. write the book to basically tell my story, and i'm pleased i did. but others will do with it what they will. >> please say you you are. >> frank, i wonder if you could add governor of california to that bucket list. applause. >> guest: nowow, i've been in public life almost 50 years, and going back to my time in the army and all of the other positions that i've held, and i've really enjoyed it. i tell about the positions, and i really do now enjoy going back to my home, and to my wife, and to our dog, bravo, and our sons and our grandchildren, and having the opportunity to enjoy my family. so, that's what i'm going to focus on. and also we do have an institute for public policy think panetta institute for public policy to inspire young people too get involved in public life. i real use do think we have to get young people interested in getting into public life because they represent our future, and very frankly, they're the ones that have to make a difference. >> host: good question. sir. >> kyle suspecter from d.c. a lot hat been made since your brock came out the centralization of the staff, talked about the white house staff controlling a lot. people saying that the national security council is making a lot of tactical decisions instead of providing strategy to the president. i'm curious, do you think that's the case, and if the process is broken as you mentioned earlier, what should we do to fix it? >> guest: ate a good question. by the way, is hasn't just happened in this administration. this has been a process that's been developing over the last 20 or 30 years. and in white houses. and what has happened is that more and more power has become centralized in the white house. and in the white house staff. and a lot of what you're seeing is reflective of drawing kind of the decisionmaking process away from the departments, away from the department of state and the department of defense and bringing those decisions into the white house through the white house staff. now, no question, that proximity to the president is power. closer you are to the president, the more power you have. and so what has happened is that more and more of these issues, domestic issues, defense issues, national security issues, are drawn into the white house, and the result is that that turns out usually a lot of the decisionmaking process and so when the departments are called in, they're playing catchup. they're playing catchup. and it distorts the way the process should work. and i understand -- presidents get comfortable with having the people around them. they can walk down the hall and walk into an office and talk to somebody about a problem is taking place or crisis, and so members of the cabinet are not really part of that process anymore. members of the cabinet are largely used for photo ops in the cabinet room in the white house. that's quite an extraordinary statement. >> guest: it's true. it's true. people who are very good, by the way, and capable -- most of you probably -- you know a few of the cabinet members, most of them you don't remember who they are, and the fact is they're good people, trying to run their deeps. they know they're deeps, know the palsies but the aren't brought into the process the way they should be. and so somehow what you have to do -- i really do think you need to begin to reduce the amount of people in the white house staff. you still have the key positions, and you have to open that process up more to those that are in key positions in the administration so they can play a better role in providing their views not only to the white house but to the president at well... i want to thank you for that. c thank you very much. it's one of the worthy fights that i talk about was the fight to protect our coastline. just very quickly during the reagan administration secretary watts ahead of the interior department, decided to put up the whole coast for sale and to the highest bidder for oil sales. i remember going to watt and saying what the heck are you doing? i understand you have to sell some of these areas for oil drilling but what about big sir? what about these national treasures? we want to protect them for the future and he said no let's make the process worked through. that's when we were able to put legislation together that stopped that process for moving forward and ultimately what i did was introduce legislation to create the national marine sanctuary which protects the area for the future so it was a great cause. [applause] >> kai, i'm erica. thank you so much for being here. i am curious about the tension between short-term response and playing the long game when it comes to security and i'm just wondering how do you strike at balance and responding in a wa way -- versus laying the groundwork for sustainable future? >> while that's a very good question and the reality is that you know when you are implementing defense strategy it has to contain both the short-term element and the long-term element. the short-term element basically using isis is an example is that you have to stop their momentum. that's the short-term strategy. you have got to stop them. so whatever it takes you have to basically stop them and at the same time you have to be thinking about what is the long-term strategy here? what are the long-term objectives and part of the problem that i think everybody recognizes is that i can see the objectives there. we can put the iraqi military together and i think we can get them in the right place. we have a ground force that can hopefully move against isis and regain the territory that has been lost. we can do that backing it up with airstrikes and with help from our people on the ground embedded with the force. i can see the objective there and i can see a clear path to really being able to push them back. syria is much more difficult and i don't see that kind of clear picture about just exactly how are we going to deal with syria. yes we are going to try to develop an opposition force and that's going to take time. we don't even know if there's something called the moderate opposition force that we can really make work here so that's going to take time to do in the meantime what the hell do you do in terms of confronting ices? you need to have targets. you need to be able to stop them from doing some of the things that they are doing so syria is going to be a much tougher game to try to think out but if you were going to conduct a war against isis you have got to think both about the short-term to make sure you are putting them on their heels but you are also going to think about the long-term objective in order to ultimately defeat them. that's going to take a longer period of time. >> good evening. following on the last question but looking beyond iraq and seriously move into it. into a new era and i wonder what you think about why, what is the goal for counterterrorism strategy? >> a good question. i consider all of what we are doing now is part of a kind of larger continuum that goes back to 9/11. we all have short-term memories in this country. i just had a chance to visit the 9/11 memorial in new york city and it's a punch in the stomach to walk through that memorial and see what happened to this country and what happened on that day. it's tough to bring those memories back but the fact is we were attacked. we were attacked by al qaeda. they killed 3000 people. as a result of that attack we went to war against al qaeda, a war on terrorism because they weren't enemy, because they attacked us and because we did not want them to attack us again so we went to war. frankly we did a pretty good job at going after them using counterterrorism capabilities. we did undermine the strength of their leadership but now we have this metastasis taking place with isis with boko haram, with al-shabaab and other elements involved in terrorist. i think we need a comprehensive strategy to deal with terrorism. part of it is counterterrorism using that capability to target leadership to go after them to undermine their ability to ever be able to attack this country. part of this has to be cultural educational in dealing with how do we prevent young people from choosing al qaeda, choosing isis as something that they would do. that is a much tougher strategy but it has to be part of how we address the threat of terrorism. we can't just do this on the military side. we have got to do this on the side of how do we improve the opportunities for the future, their education, their ability to enjoy the opportunities that life has to offer. to do that, we are going to have to work with other arab countries to get that across. saudi arabia is doing some of that. the uae is doing some of that. i think we have to incorporate those kinds of strategies as part of the effort to address this war on terrorism. >> i'm a student and public policy. thank you very much for your public service. so what do you think about the role of the united states compared to the role of the united nations and international peace and security? thanks. >> a real good question again. you know obviously all of us would love to have a united nations that could work effectively to try to deal with the crisis in the world and i think that was the design of franklin roosevelt and harry truman in establishing the united nations, that this would be the primary vehicle to hopefully deal with crisis, to hopefully deal with the challenges of the world. unfortunately the united nations has fought down particularly in the security council and its ability to respond to crisis. almost anytime a crisis breaks out we would like the u.n. to respond and that's probably the best way to try to get countries together to do it and immediately it hits the wall and vetoes in the security council and nothing happens. so ultimately continues to fall back on the shoulders of -- to respond. the president himself said when people get in trouble they don't call russia. they don't call china. they call the united states and as we have seen a recent event at the united states is providing that leadership nobody -- nobody else will. i wish that were not the case. we would love to see nato and air countries come to the floor and say let's get together to respond to these crises. it's the united states that drives the process and that frankly has to be the role of the president and it has to be the role of this country. we have a value system to ensure that we are the leaders in a world that is facing a number of dangers. >> i'm sorry. we are running out of time. we can take two more questions. this gentleman and then you have the final question. >> mr. secretary it's an honor to speak with you tonight. my question to you touching on something you spoke about earlier is what advice would you give a young person today who wants to start a career in public service? >> you know i think probably the best advice is to jump in and get involved. we take polls of young people at the panetta institute and they are discouraging because young people are turned off by the dysfunction and they are turned off by the sense that public servants aren't really doing what they are supposed to do. they're just they are just fighting each other not getting things done. so the inspiration i have to get into public service is not just my parents, not just the army by the president to says ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country and i look at public service as a higher calling. now that is tougher. now that is tougher so my recommendation is for those of you are interested, get in and see what it's like. they, legislative assistant on capitol hill. become an intern on capitol hill. get involved somewhere in the public policy sector. learn how the process works or fails to work. learn from that. don't get caught up in the politics of left and right, democrat and republican. get in, learn it, stand back and evaluate what is it that you can do in order to make a difference? let me tell you something. the most important thing you need to know is you can make a difference. i can make a difference in the jobs i have and i can tell you is young people get interested in government they can make one hell of a difference. frankly i would like the stalemate in this town to change from the top down. i would love it if the president of the leadership of the congress decided to start working together to deal with it. i don't know if that will happen but i do know one thing. if that does happen it will change from the bottom up and voters will say okay, we need to have people who are going to be willing to engage and do you know what? people your age let me tell you something. why am i hopeful? because i have seen men and women in the military in uniform put their lives on the line to fight and die for this country. and if you're not willing to fight for this country there should be leaders that are willing to take a little bit of a risk to govern this country. [applause] >> the former student body president of monterey -. >> my name is mckenzie and i'm a senior at the university of maryland. i study international relations and governmental politics. a lot of pressure for the final question but i have always been interested in the relationship between the department of state and the department of defense. could you speak a little bit more or an interesting anecdote about when you went head-to-head and onetime when he had to work together to push something through that would work unless you cooperated? >> each department obviously has its own bureaucracy and they all kind of operate in their own area. and yet when you are dealing with a critical issue like afghanistan or isis or other things, it's really important to work together. you have the diplomatic arm of the government working with the defense arm of the government to be able to work together to get things accomplished. frankly a big part of that is personalities that are involved. i just have to tell you secretary clinton and i because of our history working together we were able to work together because i said to my staff work with their office to get this done. and so we would set up conferences together. we would go to conferences. we went to the u.n. together to meet with the defense officials from the different arab countries to try and develop their security capabilities. she was at the table. i was at the table. we went to australia working with the australians to try to develop and improve that alliance with the australians. we did things together in europe. we did things together elsewhere and having that partnership was very important to our ability to deliver. it wasn't like we were competing against each other. too often there is a lot of competition. who gets the credit for at? who's trying to get it done and so there is kind of a tendency not to really work together. but if there is a strong personal connection and by the way don't forget this, in washington you can pass laws. you can build new departments and it doesn't mean a thing unless you have good people running those departments and running those agencies. in the end that is what determines whether or not it works. we are about to get the hook so think of a political question of personal question. political question, do you think there should be another president clinton? [laughter] >> i think that there should be somebody who runs for the presidency who has got great experience and great dedication this country and if that happens to be named clinton that's okay with me. >> if hillary clinton ran for president would you support her? >> sure, absolutely. >> after her last campaign the headline was panetta's lament, they had no plan. it says the money they brought in the clinton campaign should have done a much better job and how will it be different this time? >> well you know it's a huge challenge now. there are so much money in politics now that it scares "the hill" out of you in terms of this kind of open warfare that you see playing out on television between the various paths associated with it. i understand the game. you have got to raise money in order to compete against money and i'm sure clintons do it better than anybody in terms of being able to raise money and that's okay. but i really do think you have to broaden that effort so that ordinary citizens are conjured dating funds to a national campaign rather than just relying on big packs to provide that money. too much fund-raising is done in new york, chicago, silicon valley, l.a. where the big money is not enough of that fund-raising is done among the american people themselves. >> secretary why do you think she should be president? [laughter] >> you know she is somebody that i have seen who is dedicated to this country. she is smart and she is experienced and she is tough. what the hell else do you want? [laughter] [applause] >> on a light note you are a foodie. you were even a foodie before we called them foodies. you would have the best christmas parties. where do you like t when you are in washington and? >> you know, there is no place in washington that compares to the food i get at home. [applause] and listen and make my own. for those of you who know what it is my mother used to make gnocchi and my -- he taught me how to make it and i get have to go to a restaurant who makes it as good as i do. >> it's time to sign some books i want to thank all of you that are watching in livestream land and thank you too political for live streaming us and thank you for being here in person. thank you to politics and prose for pulling this together and thanks to sixth and i for this amazing setting and thank you secretary panetta. [applause] [inaudible >> it goes in a way, and goes to the equipment question you asked me. secretary rumsfeld famously said to soldier, you go to war with the army you have. and that's true. but what i add is, then you better make it into the army at you need as fast as you can. and that's what i think we did not do. >> i have to ask you this. you mention in the book, and i think i have this right, that your good friend brent scowcroft, very senior national security official was in bush 41 i think it was, the first bush administration, opposed the invasion in iraq. you never really address the issue as far as you're concerned in this book. had you been part of the ministratministrat ions in, would you have supported the iraq war? >> well, i say in the last chapter sort of in reflections that i don't know, it's hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003. i, like a lot of people in the congress and most of the countries in the world, initially all accepted the argument that saddam had weapons of mass destruction. that's a u.n. security council resolution 1441 got passed, intelligence services of even russia and china thought he had these weapons. and in that speech that i referred to a few weeks after the invasion, i said i have supported the original decision for that reason. but i say in the book toward the end that, you know, i had argued strongly against going to baghdad in 1991, in the first gulf war, because that would have meant to try and overthrow the regime, to get saddam would've meant occupying two-thirds of iraq you can think it would be our problem. and so we were unanimous in the first bush administration in opposing the idea of going to baghdad, and we took a lot of grief for it, for not completing the job. we tended not to get that criticism after march 2003 anymore. but i argue, maybe i would've made the same argument i did in 1991 about going to baghdad. i also might have been far more skeptical because my intelligence background. i might've been far more skeptical of the intelligence case that he had weapons of mass destruction and others were around the table, just because i have a pretty good view of both the strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence capabilities. so i think i'm you know, to be honest i think it's hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003 with 10 years of hindsight. >> right. could you talk a little bit about your effort to get these more hardened vehicles for the troops in iraq? you were surprised to learn that there were these vehicles in development, these m. raps, mine resistant ambush are connected vehicles that you say when or where toward reducing casualties. how did you get that done? i know that, for example, senator biden was it out of much of your criticism helped you a lot in that regard. >> and i give him credit for it. in the book. actually it's a lesson that try to hammer home to the senior civilian and military leaders in terms of paying attention when they read criticism in the newspapers not to go into a defensive crouch but to go find out whether the story is true or not. it was a newspaper, it was a newspaper series in the "washington post" that put me on to the problem with wounded warriors at walter reed that led me to fire the secretary of the army. it was a newspaper story where i first read about these mraps, heavily armored vehicles, at a rate in "usa today" that the marines had about 300 of these vehicles in anbar province, and in over 1000 attacks not a single marine had been killed was writing in one of these vehicles. i had got some briefings on it, and i wanted to buy these things in large numbers. there was no within the department of defense at the senior level, either civilian or in uniform, who supported that decision. and that basically said, well, we are going to do. and this is one place i'm very critical of the congress in this book, but this is one place where the congress did the right thing and they did it in a timely way, and they gave me all the money i asked for. we ended up buying 27,000 of these vehicles for iraq and afghanistan. one of the measures that meant the most to me, i mean, there are lots of statistics out there in terms of lives saved and lends that weren't lost, but when i first became secretary and visited the army's burn unit at brooke army hospital in san antonio, it was absolutely full. because most of those young men had been in humvees that are blown up and became funeral pyre's for them. by the time i was within six months of leave it at secretary, that burn unit was nearly empty. and so ultimately everybody can read to the practice is a really good idea, let's get on with it, probably because i said so as secretary of defense, but there was a lot of opposition. and begin because these vehicles warmed in anybody's long-term procurement plan, and they were more worried about what do we do with them after the war than what could they might do in the war. my attitude is, particularly when you're dealing with the lives of young men and women, is when you're in a war you are all in, and whatever it takes to protect them, whatever it takes to give them the tools to do the job and then come home safely, you make that investment. if you of all this surplus at the end of the war, so be it. >> part of the book, one of the most disturbing parts of the book, because there was a method that was available to the military to save lives, yet for narrow reasons of bureaucratic agendas, it wasn't implement. how do you fix a problem like that going forward? it seems to me like that is cultural and the culture no doubt survived after you left. >> is a leadership issue. i'll give you another example. it's even more shocking in my view. the medevac time, the time for medevac in iraq was one hour, called the golden hour, that helicopter could be dispatched, pick up a soldier who'd been wounded and get into a hospital within an hour. in afghanistan it was two hours, and i said i think it should be an hour, just like in iraq. both uniform civilian senior officials came to me and had all these statistics about how the death rates were comparable for medevac in iraq and afghanistan, despite the time difference and so on, and, therefore, because of his sisters declared obama should it wasn't worth -- statistically since it was a wash it shouldn't be significant. if i'm a soldier and i've been blown up, i want helicopter there as quick as possible. i said we're just going to do it. and so we sent more helicopters, several additional field hospitals. i made that decision in january of 2008 or nine, i can't remember which. and by july something like 80% of our medical evaluations were taking place in less than 40 minutes. but the problem in part it seemed to me was that the people who were in charge of these things weren't looking at them from the soldiers standpoint. they were looking at it from sort of 30 or 40,000 feet. the of the problem in the pentagon that i talk about that relates to all of these issues is that there are so many different elements of the department of defense who have to be on board, who have to agree to anything forward, that any one of those elements, whether it's the money people or the technology people or the budget years, or whatever, can basically slow down or stop something from happening. only the secretary of defense has the authority to override everybody in the building and they were just going to do. >> norge requires a leader with a considerable willpower and commitment to getting this thing done. i wanted to ask you -- >> there's nothing like getting the attention of the senior military and the pentagon as a whole, like firing some people. >> which he did a lot of i can tell from -- >> i held people accountable. my attitude was, in the case of both walter reed and the nuclear issue, which was in back in was in back in front of us went up by both the chief of staff and secretary of air force, i didn't buy them for not knowing about the problem in the first place. i fired him because once they knew about it they didn't take it seriously enough. that's the kind of accountability that it needs to be exercised more frequently in washington. >> how did you feel about losing stanley mcchrystal? >> well at first, i mean, i felt he committed a terrible error, and i say so and the book. getting access to this reporter come and mcchrystal is probably one of the most effective combat generals we have had since world war ii. both as command in afghanistan and as commander of the joint special operations unit in iraq and afghanistan. he did a lot of damage to our enemies and people who are killing our troops, but the world of politics and the media was a new battle space for general mcchrystal. and he was a brand-new second lieutenant in that realm, and as effective as he was in the command position, he stepped out of line in some of his interviews. but i felt when the report, when the article came out about him with the quotes that seemed to disparage the vice president at the national strategic pfizer, and others, my worry was that if he left, if he was relieved, that we might lose the war in afghanistan right then and there. we now had by that time he was the timeline. the president had decided, which i supported, of being all out, all of our combat troops out by the end of 2014, and he got along well with karzai. he knew the battle plan. he knew the brigade commanders. there was a familiarity there and i worried that finding a replacement would take months to get confirmed, and then more months to get acclimated enough to speak. so i was deeply worried that relating the crystal would be a huge setback in the war, and then it was the president in discussing whether to relieve mcchrystal who said, how about david petraeus to take over? anand immediately, adding to the president a lot of credit for the idea because it hadn't even occurred to me, but that alleviated a lot of my concerns because petraeus new battle plan, neither brigade commanders, new karzai and had a good relationship with him, and so on. so i felt like we really wouldn't lose much time in the war if mcchrystal were replaced by petraeus. and i told, as i say in the book, you know, i wish stan had given me something to defend him with, that the story was wrong and some particulars. but as i write in the book, it was sort of like he was at west point again and just saying no excuse, sir. and so under those conditions, as a right in the book, i thought the president had no choice but to relieve him. >> i found that part a little bit puzzling but there was a history as you point out. for those in the audience who don't know, stanley mcchrystal was a special operations command who had tremendous success in iraq before going to afghanistan, was a war hero, had caused taken out of battle this very feared al-qaeda commander, zarqawi i think it was, and was msha mini in capturing saddam hussain, a revered soldier who stepped in afghanistan made some very unfortunate and candid remarks to a rolling stone reporter. when he was called on the carpet, and this is after i gathered he had made some of the unfortunate remarks in london, not sensational but rather off the reservation and not closely tracking with the presidents of preferred policy positions, making the president met. he had already had a couple of strikes against him when this came up. you said general mcchrystal to take any steps to defend himself, even though there was possibly an argument that he could've used. why? >> well, i think, first of all i think, i think stan was, i'm assuming some things here because i never really had a detailed conversation with stan about why he didn't defend himself, only that he didn't. but i think that he knew he had made the decision to allow this nontraditional reporter to be a part of his entourage. i think he was stunned by the article, and it may not come an army inspector general report suggested that he may not have known about a lot of the statements that were made by his staff to this reporter. and so i think he didn't quite know how to respond. he did want to throw his staff under the bus, and so i think he did what he saw as the ethical thing for a commander to do under the circumstances, which was to take the hit. >> one portion of this book to -- >> let me just say to build on one of your observations, i mean there was a lot of ill will towards general mcchrystal in the white house because during the fall of 2009 when we were debating options for afghanistan, including whether to go with what he had recommended, this 40,000 additional troops or other options with smaller numbers that had been advocated by the vice president and others, there were a number of leaks and public statements by the military, including a general mcchrystal, that made it appear to the white house that, and to the president, that the military was trying to box him in and force his hand to adopt their option in terms of the 40,000 troops. i tried to convince the president that i could see where this suspicion came from because of these leaks and public statements. the president saw it, and others around them, vice president biden and others, saw it as an orchestrated campaign by the military leadership. i tried to argue that there was not a campaign, not orchestrat orchestrated, that if it had been orchestrated they would've been a lot smarter about it, but i was unsuccessful in that. but it did lead to an undercurrent of ill will toward him that, when this article then came out about six months later, he really didn't have a cushion. >> that was the last straw. i think as you write in your book that actually you describe this as a pretext that the vice president used to have mcchrystal fired. >> know, the way i described is that i think mcchrystal handed his opponents in the white house the ammunition with which to get rid of him. >> i want to talk to you very briefly about your political battles in washington on capitol hill. you do not paint a very flattering picture and this is not big news of our political process in washington. what struck me was your very detailed accounts of interaction with democratic and republican members of congress who, behind closed doors, wood to you that the policies that you were promoting were actually things that have to be done or should be done or were going in the right direction, but when they came out and faced the lights and spoke to the press, that was a totally opposite description of the situation and they were highly critical of the president and of the pentagon. you've been in washington or you've been in government and longtime. do you think that our dysfunctional politics are any different from the way they have ever been? >> well, television contributes. i say in the book that when the red light on the television camera would go on in a hearing, it had the effect on members of congress of a full moon on werewolves. [laughter] and i guess the way i would put it and the way i write about in the book is our politics in this country as the center makes nuclear have been rough and tumble from the very beginning, and quite vituperative. even george washington in his second term came in for a lot of hits, as did all of his successors. but what is different now and what is happening over the last i would say quarter of a century is that we have lost the -- congress has lost the ability to do the people's business. so it's one thing to argue and fight, said terrible things about each other. that's been going on for our whole history, but the inability to pass legislation to deal with serious problems i think is a relatively new phenomenon. and some of it is institutional, has to do with gerrymandering and the fact that in house maybe only 50 or 60 seats are now competitive, and so the only elections that really matter in a lot of places are the primaries where you've got to appeal to your party space with your democrat or republican. what we had for the first half of my career where what i would describe is a large number, and i'll just take the senate, senators who were center, center left, center right, figured a way to put together coalitions and get important legislation passed. the list will be familiar to all of you. these bridge builders as far as i was concerned for people like bill cohen, bill bradley, jack danforth, john warner, david boren, sam nunn, nancy kassebaum, republicans or democrats, and the list goes on. and maybe the last one to leave because of frustrations was olympia snowe. so you've got this large number of people, most of them could've been reelected for ever, who left in disgust because they couldn't get anything done. and i think that's the new phenomenon over the last couple of decades that is especially worrying. now the other theme though in this book and i think this as an important point to make, to spite my frustrations and even my anger at the congress, the reality is i got a lot of things done with the congress. most of my predecessors did they were lucky to get two or three or four big military procurement programs canceled that were over cost, overdue, or no longer relevant. i cut nearly three dozen and ended up getting congressional approval, or acquiescence come in all of them. i cut almost $200 billion out of the pentagon's overhead, and even eliminated a combatant command. and i got the congress to support me on the. partly it was because i had an enormously strong support of president obama and the beautiful it behind me, but it was also working across the aisle with members of congress of both parties and figuring out how to move the agenda forward. and so i argue in the end of the book that we do have these institutional problems such as gerrymandering, what i consider the weakening of the role of congress in governance because of the weakening of the committee chairs, and a variety of other things. but at the end of the day, the problem you can begin to i think address the paralysis, not necessarily the polarization but the paralysis by people just, by people at the white house and people in the congress beginning to treat each other more civilly. by people being willing to listen and take ideas from the other side, i'm not demonizing the other side, of not distorting the facts purposefully. i think there are a bunch of things just in terms of the way people treat each other in washington that could change the tone and the reason, the chairman of the house forum affairs committee when i first became secretary, a few months in told me that my arrival had been important because i changed the tone of the way the debate was being carried on in iraq and other things. so i was able, i guess the undercurrent of this book was i was able to make washington work, but the way you make it work is through the way you treat people. >> since we're on the subject of politics, and we're running out of time, very quickly or to ask you, you mentioned deep in the book there's a little description of a phone call you gotten from the senate democratic leader harry reid who wanted a defense department, he said, to spend the money on research, on irritable bowel syndrome. this is while you were dealing with wars in iraq and afghanistan. there's a great deal of danger here in deploying certain metaphors and i'm going to try to avoid that. how did that conversation go? >> well, i very politely told them that i would look into it. [laughter] he came out yesterday and was very critical of the book, to which my response was, you know, it's just a fact of life that members of congress vote on things they haven't even read. [laughter] [applause] >> welcome as they say you have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. he actually called you up and when asked what he would be interested in running with president obama as his vice presidential candidate. how did that conversation go? >> it was one of the more bizarre conversations i've think i've ever had. he called up and we were talking about something else, and then all of a sudden he said, you know, i was largely responsible for talking president obama into running for president. i heard that from a lot of people on the hill. and he said, but there's no candidate for vice president. how long have you been a registered republican? i said, well, i'm actually not a registered republican. and he said, welcome where do you stand on abortion? i said, i don't have a stand on abortion but somehow that's never come into the national security arena. he said, how long were you in academic? i said, not all that long. he said something may come of this or nothing, but i just wanted to check. i hung up the phone and it just started to laugh, and i said that is really weird. [laughter] and as i said in the book, i never told anybody about it because i didn't think anybody would believe me. >> budgeted end up working for the president nonetheless. one serious issue that's been raised by this book, and i think an ethics, the way the government functions issue that came up early on in the coach of the book was there was a lot of hand wringing about these conversations that's what with president obama and the focus was always on the conversation with president obama, not with president bush but you revealed much there as well, were held in confidence, and, indeed, the president often invokes executive privilege with congress to prevent exactly this kind of information from coming out in the public so that there could be a free flow of ideas and a kind of free exchange of information. how did you work through the ethics of that? i came away thinking this was actually a public service that people learn a lot about the way their senior government leaders make very difficult decisions, both republican and democrat. but you were disclosing something, and i have no doubt that both presidents didn't anticipate that this would be in the book. how did you work through that? >> well i think first of all, i think modern presidents have pretty realistic expectations about what will be written, but that said, i think from my standpoint what was important, a couple of things important. the first is if you actually read the book, the conversations i described almost entirely paint these presidents in a positive light. because it shows them of pushing back against the military, asking hard questions, not being, not allowing himself to be spoonfed information, and not just acquiescing because some guy with four stars on his shoulder said without did you dust and so and so. so it shows these presidents doing what i think americans would help the commanders in chief would do. and it underscores that these two presidents, just like almost all of their predecessors, have disagreed with the military at various times and made decisions that the military had not recommended. but the second piece of this is, this book is dedicated to the men and women of the u.s. armed forces. and i wrote this book in substantial measure for the troops and their families. and one of the things i wanted them to see under both of these presidents, and in both iraq and afghanistan, i wanted them to see what the washington battle space looked like. they knew what iraq and afghanistan looked like, but i wanted him to have some insight into the real world of what was going on in washington, as big issues associated with these wars were discussed. and to give them some sense of the passion and the amount of time spent debating these issues and the decisions that they would make. and i think that it is a realistic portrayal of the wars that were being fought in washington at the same time there were wars being fought in iraq and afghanistan. final point. people'people's memories are sh, especially in washington, but the reality is all through 2010, senior white house staffers were leaking what the president was thinking and what is conversations war, his criticism of the military, and so on and so forth. on a routine basis in the newspapers. southern ocean that what i describe in the book as the presidents of growing reservations about the decisions he made, is absolutely no news. the newspapers were full of that information all through 2010 in the first part of 2011 spent i do agree with you. your descriptions of both bush and president obama are often very laudatory but there is quite a bit of critical commentary in there as well and i think one portion of this book strikes me as very much in that vein. you take president obama to task are being what i would characterize as an uninspiring military leader. he didn't bring enthusiasm to his role as commander-in-chief, especially as regards the afghanistan war. and i think had a conversation with rahm emanuel where you make that point that the soldiers needed to hear, that the president was behind as you called it the nation. and you drew that conclusion from your interactions with them in these inner councils. >> yeah, in trying to weigh this and balance it, i supported
>> next on the presidency, author and intelligence expert melvin goodman describes the relationship between the white house and the cia from the truman years through today. goodman explains how president becames intelligence arm a politicized source of covert actions around the world, from the pay of pigs invasion -- from the bay of pigs invasion to the iran contra affair. >> thank you and good evening. thank you to dale with invitation to come out here. all the wonderful hospitality to see the world war i museum which is a remarkable museum. it has been an extremely pleasant couple of days. great topic to deal with because it is controversial from the outset. no matter what i say, it will be controversial. let me start with some controversial remarks that others made before i get to my own. i would like to start with senator frank church from idaho. he was the chairman of the church commission. when the church commission investigation started, he made remarks that were unfortunate. an elephante cia that was out of control. that is entirely wrong. the cia were a rogue elements -- elephant of control, the problem would be easy. you would get it under control somehow. the president should be able to do that. but the president has given all of the missions and quite a few of the more regrettable, that the cia carried out, came from the white house. the cia is quite obedient to authority, quite responsive to what a president wants, and if you look at the various covert actions over the years, i will be discussing some of them, these were direct did, conceptualize, orchestrated, endorsed by residents of the united states. the controversy of the cia itself, it is important to understand that when presidents them to washington and they fall in love with two institutions. they fall in love with camp david and they fall in love with the cia. when they follow level the cia, unfortunately, it is with the clandestine aspect of the cia. this clandestine operations and theyovert actions that fall in love with. harry truman was an exception to this. i will discuss that in a minute. when presidents have had trouble with the cia it has been over intelligence analysis, where i spent 24 years as a soviet analyst. remarks of a couple presidents will demonstrate what i mean. one of my favorites is richard nixon. when richard nixon sent jim/and or after the cia to become the director in the 1970's, he made it clear to slice in your -- shall i send your --schlessinger. that clearly said to him the cia is nothing but a sanctuary of a bunch of ivy league intellectuals who don't like me very much, a typical mix and observation. he also referred to them as a bunch of clowns. we wanted to know was, what in the world to all those clowns do out there, anyway? essinger's job to settle the problem. he said i want this agency to stop screwing richard nixon. we knew this is going to be a very difficult. eriod. the other president who are think has made remarks about , but also the cia was lyndon johnson. what lyndon johnson like to do was explain to people who came to the white house what it is that intelligence analysts do at the cia. he had his own interpretation of that. expressed ways he what cia analysts do was to compare us to when he was on the farm and he had a favorite tower named bessie. bessie and pull up oftool and pull up a pail milk from bessie. if he wasn't paying attention, and often happened that bessie would take her shirt smeared tail and run up to that pail of milk. that is what intelligence analysts do. both nixon and johnson were talking about was the cia criticism of what we were doing in vietnam. vietnam was an unwinnable war. harry truman did not fall in love with the cia. he may have created the cia, but he did not fall in love with it. by 1963, he wrote a very important op-ed describing the problems of the cia, which is relevant to today's situation. iiwas clear after world war that we were going to have a central intelligence agency for two very good reasons. one was pearl harbor. in the case of pearl harbor, we -- the japanese military code. we knew they were going to war with united states. we knew they were on to break relations with the united states. we knew that the embassy had been directed to destroy all of their sensitive information in washington, another indicator of war. this information did not get to the right people. if it had on any short list of possible targets, you would have to pearl harbor in the philippines. this is a tragedy that did not have to happen in the way that it did. six months after the war ended was when he sat down with intelligence types, most of them from the office of strategic services, and began to talk about the need for an intelligence agency, never discussing the possibility of covert action or even clandestine operations, but putting the emphasis on intelligent analysis and clandestine collection of intelligence, which he thought were two legitimate functions for intelligence agencies. in 1947 when you get the national security act, which really is the act that still governs the national security architecture of united states, infected can argue it is time to go back and re-examine the national security act. remember, he created the national security council as we know it today. it created the department of created the united states air force as a separate service and it created the central intelligence agency. the director of cia was also the director of central intelligence. here was one of the flaws in this piece of legislation. even though the director of the cia was supposed to be the director of all the intelligence agencies, he had no authorization for personnel, for budget, forecasting, even to be the central intelligence figure for the president of the united the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the central military figure. that is a problem that still has not been corrected even with the intelligence reform of 2004. when i went to deal with is not only the 16 year. . you're talking about presidencies of eisenhower and kennedy, but to look at the presidents of followed, these two presidents. truman's concerns were highly topical and relevant to today. they were with what the cia had become, which was not part of his original concept. in other words, when he was thinking of the cia, he referred to this as the quiet intelligence arm of the president of the united states. he wanted a place where he could go outside of the policy arena, outside of the state department, outside of the pentagon, outside of the joint chiefs of staff, were he to get intelligent grindingthat was not some policy acts. it was supposed to be objective and balanced. we saw that the cia had become over the 16 intervening years was a very subversive organization that he said had become much too noisy in terms of all the news that the cia was creating, unfortunately, and was putting too much attention into covert action. he said something that is very topical for today, which is that he didn't want the cia to become another pentagon. one of the arguments i was making over the years and in the book that given in the cia and the failure of intelligence was the cia had become a paramilitary organization, which i think is not what truman had in mind. one thing the truman understood that presidents after truman did not concern themselves with is that if you have an organization that conducts covert action, covert action is part of policy. already, you tainted the intelligence company tainted the intelligence collection, because covert action is in support of policy and comes directly from the white house in support of a very specific policy. what happened in that 16 year. ? eisenhower is an interesting study in this regard because when we think of eisenhower, we think of all the warnings he gave about overuse of the military. are all valid warnings and remain valid warnings to the state. you're all familiar with the military-industrial complex observation and the farewell address of 1961. he gave a very important warning in a speech early in his first term called the cross of iron speech that he wrote himself. warning about bloated defense budgets that would not allow the united states to do what it needed to do in terms of infrastructure, domestic economy, educating our children. there is a great line in it that he wrote that when we are spending on defense and particularly when we are overspending on defense, we are spending the brains or scientists, the sweat of our labors and hopes of our children. he warned against his. any era or.ed that of global war or permanent war such as the one we're in now would lead to definite limitations of personal liberty. you can argue that is exactly what happened over the past 10 years. president whothe started the cia down this trail of covert activity. when you run down the list of covert actions that he endorsed that came out of the white house , in every case they left the united states in a week or strategic position that existed before these covert actions were conducted. 1953, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of iran, most the sadeq. the following year, guatemala. the work of the cia did working with the guatemalan military in creating the k unit which was responsible for all sorts of horrors and nightmares in guatemala against the indigenous population. the decision to assassinate lumumba in the congo. think of the successor to butu. eveno was move though eisenhower didn't endorse , and wasf pigs supported by john foster dulles and allen dulles, the brothers who ran the state and cia, eisenhower consider the bay of pigs to be madness. but attempts to overthrow castro began in the last year of the eisenhower administration. and finally indonesia. the great crimes against indonesian civilian population because of the feeling that left foras too far american interests, particularly economic interests. these are not only covert actions that were strategic weremares, but they supported by a committee that eisenhower appointed in 1954 under general doolittle, the doolittle commission, which endorsed this kind of repugnant activity. that is exactly what doolittle recalled it. he said now they were up against an implacable, -- enemy that was seeking world domination, a tremendous exaggeration of the soviet union even by the 1950's. doolittle wrote a report that basically said that ends would justify the means and americans would have to learn to understand this kind of repugnant behavior and frankly, if you fast-forward to more current time. we you think of dick cheney's remarks about the dark side, they come from the same kind of thinking and conceptualization to we saw from the doolittle committee. office hedy came into had none of the experience that eisenhower had. he was somewhat uncertain about thatlans are given to him, included the bay of pigs. he did call eisenhower at the farm. instead of eisenhower saying or giving a sense of all the quorums and hesitations he had about the bay of pigs, unfortunately, he advised kennedy that when you have an excel force of your training, if you don't put them to use, they will eventually all go home and talk about an operation that never took lace and united states could ultimately be embarrassed by this. kennedy went ahead with the bay of pigs, even though he is been misled by some of the briefings he got from the cia, that there were people around him, including former secretary of state dean atchison and arthur/and your -- and arthur schlessinger. this is what the cia called the perfect failure. the bay of pigs was just a nightmare. it is interesting that here it is more than 50 years later and there's a federal court of appeals -- this is just last month in may -- upheld the cia and or efforts to hold onto documentation for the bay of pigs and we still do not know about, that still has not been declassified. we are still living with this great fear of cuba and great fear of castro and still declassified documents. kennedy was responsible for that nightmare, which could have undercut the kennedy administration from the very start if it hadn't been for the cuban missile crisis. kennedy's image would've been much different. kennedy was also responsible for the governmentf of vietnam. it was totally flawed. one of the reasons returned to move him out of the way was that ways to looking for open up negotiations with the north vietnamese which we are not in favor of. a really endede, any possibility of having a legitimate government in vietnam that we could work with. when you look at vietnam as an unwinnable war, which it was, like iraq and afghanistan, this is something that you knew from the outset. president through the after eisenhower and kennedy, the die was cast, innocence. the model of covert action and clandestine operations and political assassinations, for regime change, all this had been set. nixon inget to richard the operation against chile, again, like the guatemalan operation which was encouraged by united fruit which was the largest landholder in guatemala, in chile to get economic and miningike itt interests that will work in favor of overthrowing the democratically elected government of allende. in response you get pinochet which brought more horrors to chile. in fact, when richard helms left the white house with the mission that he been given by henry kissinger, he was stunned by the authority that he had to conduct covert operations in chile. he ended up flying before a congressional committee and was fined for that. but he was somewhat shocked by the authority that he had. followed by gerald ford. ford's contribution to the cia was extremely unfortunate. ford introduced the concept for politicizing the intelligence of the cia. introduced at concept of team a and team b. team a was the cia in the political analysis. team b was a team that the ford administration wanted to introduce. i have no trouble with that is a discipline for challenging the analysis of the cia, but this was a group of neoconservatives, hand-picked by the white house, led by harvard professor who is very anti-soviet. general danny graham was very anti-server -- anti-soviet. paul wolfowitz was very anti-soviet. you try to push analysis of the cia to the right. ironically, at the very time the soviets were realizing that the missile race is getting them nowhere and it was time to seek another push toward -- two more arms control. a and team b concept which is fostered to a great extent by two names that very familiar to you, did cheney -- donald rumsfeld at that time was the undersecretary of defense and separation of the national security act and the department of defense. ironically, he became the oldest secretary of defense in our history when he served for george w. bush. ford was followed of course by carter. carter was extreme and suspicious of the cia. his vice president was, too. carter usedime that where we did not send soldiers into combat. until the last year of his administration, there's really a walking away, at least a great reduction in covert action. 1979 whenhanged in the soviets invaded afghanistan. i think we reacted very vigorously and probably unwisely. i think it was napoleon who won seven adversaries did something stupid, leave him alone. the soviets were certainly doing something stupid. unfortunately, we replicated all of that and now we're finding a way out of that -- out of afghanistan. we started a covert action in afghanistan before the soviets invaded. i've always been convinced that zbigniew brzezinski was trying to bring the soviets into afghanistan. with the country would not accept that strategic setback and would find a way to get back . the soviets felt like a good idea to be his mission in afghanistan for at least a. of time. in any event, that tenure. was a nightmare for the soviet union, building up to 100,000 troops. we repeated everything they did. again, over a decade, 100,000 troops tried to create a central government in a country that never had a centralized form of government. reagan.as followed by you probably have as much harm done and misuse of the cia by president reagan than any other president with the possible exception of george w. bush. i will come to him in a minute. contra, look at iran and it has always been a subject of conjecture about how much reagan really knew and understood about iran contra, the fact of the matter is, these were reagan's people. bill casey, the director of central intelligence who is a first rector ever put on a president's cabinet, which is something truman never would've approved of. the cia was not supposed to be part of policy. in theled by people national security council including john poindexter, the national security advisor to the officials of both the national security council and the cia, all of whom were pardoned later by george w. bush . we will never get a full understanding, but clearly this was reagan ignoring the law of the land. arms,rst case, selling first israeli inventories and in our inventory to iran, a state that was involved with act of terrorism, which was violation of law, and then using the profits from the sales to provide money to the contras, which was a violation of the bowling amendment. when you think about impeachment , particularly based on not following the law of the land, there were clear grounds for impeachment. the country had gone through the nixon process,e there may have been some people who would have considered impeachment, but reagan was much too popular for that and the country did not want to live through that kind of experience so soon again. foran was also responsible appointing the most ideological cia director in the history of the cia, and that was william casey. casey was a campaign director for ronald reagan. he did a wonderful job as a campaign director, but he certainly was not suited to be a cia director. in fact in the 1970's when i worked at the state department kissinger came over to the state to become not only the national security adviser but also the secretary of state, he was being taken on the building and he saw --laque on one of the doors william casey, undersecretary for international affairs. how did he get this building? he's senile. was a foreign service officer can do about we in casey echo with george h.w. bush, you get not only the appointment of robert gates as a cia director, even though gates was the deputy to bill casey. when you look at all of the politicization of intelligence which led to the failure to anticipate the decline of the soviet union, and have to point to casey and gates were the filters for intelligence during this. time. they didn't try to make gates cia director in 1987 when bill casey died. the chairman of the senate intelligence committee, david boren, a senator from oklahoma said the committee does not believe you in terms of your expressions of knowing nothing about iran contra. lying and hads is to pull his name out of the process. in 1991 he lauded his credentials and convinced -- that he would be a good director. guaranteed that he would get them through and that is exactly what he did. when you get to bill clinton and ,eorge w. bush and barack obama i think you get three presidents whose appointments to the cia and churches of cia were extremely questionable. i had a lot of questions with regard to bill clinton's stewardship of national security in general. bill clinton was responsible for abolishing the arms control and disarmament agency. possible tot is understand how close they work in terms of providing verification and monitoring of arms control agreements. we lost aa very important tool for arms control and disarmament on an international level. if you look at clinton's woolsey,nts, jim george tenet, the same george tenet who told george w. bush said it would be a slamdunk to produce intelligence to support the decision to invade iraq. remember, george bush did not want that intelligence to convince himself, he wanted the intelligence to convince us. bush was dedicated to the idea of using military force in iraq. and i think it really mattered what the intelligence said, but if you go to the memoirs of bush, rumsfeld and condoleezza rice, the convince them that we needed to take action. that was just total nonsense. the intelligence was totally knew,, the people who knew there was also intelligence amid a clear there were no weapons of mass destruction. bush,ou get to george w. and get really to some of the cia conduct inf the field of clandestine operations. i am talking about the secret prisons, the renditions policy which was a kidnapping policy. detentions, torture and abuse. all of these things were part of what cheney called the dark side and u.s. clandestine operations. barack obama comes into office with for a little background in national security affairs. that was always a weakness of the obama candidacy. it is not that he had not been in washington that much to be a political participant in how washington operates on a political level, but it never really demonstrated an intense concern with national security policy. alice saw from the start that he was somewhat intimidated by the military and the central intelligence agency. his appointments when you look at the first national security team were extremely weak, leaving robert gates as it -- in the defense department. not only the into right wing but conservatives within the democratic party --ting hillary clinton appointing three-star retired marine general jones to be the national security advisor, which lasted about 18 months because he is totally unsuited for the role. , whoutting in leon panetta is been a wonderful civil servant of the years, but was a rather tired civil servant by this time. he was not an effective director of the central intelligence agency. captured from the outset of the operational side of the house and he carried out the white house mission started by george w. bush to weaken the process of oversight within the cia. remember, the role of the statutory inspector general of the cia was extremely important. it was created by one of the reforms after iran contra. a statutory ig as opposed to just a regular inspector general. this was an inspector general appointed by the president of the united states. individual a terminus amount of clout. we think of the work was done by the statutory ig's over the years, particularly the reports and 911 a lot of reports we had not seen yet, the report that work, itntion policy produced a 6000 page report that isortunately the cia dragging details on in terms of sanitizing for the american public areas i think senator feinstein should fight harder to get it released hurt i think obama should allow whatever reduction -- reductions are needed, but get the paper out. we need to see what happened in our name during the global war on terror. the problem in pursuing this talk away i have has been highly negative. i am saying that there what successes, by think the point i wanted to make was is the one of presidential misuse of the central intelligence agency. there have been good directors. general smith for president truman was a very good director. though kobe delta lot of the excesses of cia behavior. someone who was very new to washington community and aser felt really comfortable a cia director. their presidents who used cia intelligence for effectively. actually, richard nixon who was analysis usef cia that analysis on two very important occasions. one to start the arms control process in terms of the salt agreement in 72 and the abm treaty, the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 1972. guaranteeingia i was working -- on salt at that time. he called a sin. he said remember, only politicians can verify an agreement. basically, we are taking on the pentagon which is against arms control and arguing that these agreements could not be verified. in terms of abm and the salt and very important weapons systems, it was the intelligence of the cia and intelligence community in general that was essential to get arms control under way. of course when you think of the most important strategic initiative of any president over the last 40 or 50 years, it was the strategic triangle of richard nixon and henry kissinger that would allow the united states to build better relations with china and the soviet union than they had with each other. it was cia intelligence that provided the impetus to suggest that we could do this. as a result, the soviet union would have to engage us, which they did in terms of the treaty of berlin and arms control agreements. a goodd end up with relations with both of them. the cia can be effective as a support instrument in this area. in terms of what needs to be , i think they could do ourselves a lot of good by going back to that op-ed that president truman wrote in december. the covert action and the warning of covert action policy. covert action can taint clandestine collection and intelligence analysis. the cia should not be a second pentagon or a paramilitary organization. it was necessary to return the role to a quiet intelligence arm of the president. this means the militarizing -- demilitarizing the cia. president obama, i thought, made it clear that he wanted the usage of drones turned over to the military. we have reduced the missions and they are still being run by the cia. we need to demilitarize and decentralize. it might be good to have a statute for the cia director so that each president does not have to feel like he has to have his own director. that is what we have been doing for the last 30 years. finally, what i would like to see is separating intelligence analysis and clandestine activity into two different organizations. going back to president truman would be a good start. i would like to hear your comments and questions. we have a lot to talk about. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> it is usually hard to get the first question. i usually jump to the second. >> can you talk about the national security agency and the cia? we have been hearing a lot about the nsa's collection of information. what you seem to be referring to is what the cia should be doing, strictly collecting information. >> the cia was created by truman in 1947 as part of the national security act. the nsa was created secretly by truman in 1952 with a specific mission in communications and signal intelligence. they had the task to intercept all signals and communications abroad. it was a foreign mission dealing with foreign collection. no responsibility for domestic function. the cia it was going to have jurisdiction in national security matters. the national security agency is a collection agency. they have gone off the rails. it is interesting that the director of the cia, when they got into domestic surveillance, which i think is a violation of the constitution and one judge agrees. when michael hayden was nominated to be the director and i went down to talk to some staffers about the issue, the question of his role at the cia and metadata never came up in the confirmation process and that is unfortunate. they are focused on intelligence collections of signals and, when you look at the body of law, they get protection in the law that no other intelligence collections gets. whatever you think about snowden, he violated serious laws that make his return to this country and how that is conducted an extremely difficult process because the laws will be pursued, in terms of violation of signals and communication intelligence. he is in a lot of trouble, as we all know. >> several years after 9/11, there was a reorganization of intelligence agencies and there is one director overseeing absolutely everything. how has that impacted the cia? >> it has weakened the cia and the intention was to weaken the cia. you talk about the policy direction and now, to a certain extent, you could argue that the director of the cia, who was the director of central intelligence, war the hats -- wore the two hats, had too much responsibility for one individual. they did not give the cia director any authority, in terms of personnel or budget or testing. when they created the director of national intelligence, he did not get the authority because the pentagon would not allow it. before it could be sworn in, rumsfeld, who was a detroit in -- who was very adroit in terms of understanding -- adroit in terms of understanding and your accuracy -- a bureaucracy. the national intelligence czar got a desk at the new building and rumsfeld had created the undersecretary of defense or intelligence to make sure that all of the responsibilities that dealt with military intelligence stayed with the pentagon. you look at the intelligence community and budget and personnel along to the military. -- belong to the military. it is a military operation and that is why the cia outside of the military process was so important. if you look at the directors of national intelligence, with the exception of one, a retired foreign service officer who had no authority whatsoever and resigned to take a position at state, all of the directors of national intelligence had been retired and i would argue that the military, which does a lot of things well, one of the things they do not do well in strategic intelligence. the real problem we have with intelligence analysis is strategic intelligence. long-term intelligence. that is a long time -- another reason why present truman was. it has not been a measure that has led to improvements in the intelligence community. >> i read a book called "the brothers." >> good book. >> it seems to set the table for the cia and for policy for the rest of the century. my question is, how influential was that on eisenhower or was eisenhower calling the shots? it was not clear, from that book, at least. >> when you deal with eisenhower and strategic concerns, it was eisenhower's policy. john dollars and allen dulles, they did not have great influence over eisenhower. he had an uncanny sense on how to control the military. one of the best things he did not put in writing was on his way out of the white house in 1960-1961, when he was ruminating with close advisers and said, god help the united states when the person who sits in this chair does not know how to deal with the military. eisenhower did. all of the efforts to bail out the french, nixon was prepared to use nuclear weapons. getting involved in vietnam. bailing out the british, french, and the israelis in the stupid attack to prevent the nationalization of the suez canal. look at eisenhower in hungary. eisenhower accepted a stalemate in korea and a lot of presidents would not have been willing to do that. it was his policy and the dulles brothers and nixon were not that influential. he relied on military officers, to a large extent. particularly matthew ridgway. that was a close relationship. the one between eisenhower and ridgway. on covert action, for some reason, they did that cheaply and it was not noisy or visible. i ran a p a to be a success and -- iran appeared to be a success and he followed their lead on those issues. the way he controlled the defense budget, for example, and kept a lid on spending. covert operations were influential because he did not pay attention to them as he did to strategic matters. >> a two-part question. on the intelligence leading up to the iraq war, you said it was flawed. my understanding was that saddam's generals believe that he had wmd's. other people said that they knew the intelligence was flawed. can you clarify who they are and why they did not speak up? what happened with that? >> first of all, one of the things that saddam hussein did well was convincing international communities and his own people, including generals, that he had weapons of mass destruction that he was willing to use against his own people. saddam hussein never thought he would use the weapons against us. he was concerned about internal revolts, particular after the war in iran in the 1980's. he had chemical weapons and use them.d the cia had collections that made it clear, including from a defector in jordan who went back into the country and was killed for giving this information, who made it clear that there was no weapons of mass destruction. they were destroyed by his own forces or the u.s. military during desert storm or in the wake of desert storm. you have a former minister who said this and the cia ran an excellent operation in iraq. the americans in scientific areas went back and talked to relatives who were still working in important industries. they all made it clear that they did not have this weaponry. you had sources reporting that it was based on -- reporting -- it was single source reporting. it could not be supported by other sources or other reporting. even powell, who gave that speech at the u.n., was lied to. the people who knew and the people who wanted to learn new that there was no weapons of mass destruction. -- knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction. somewhat were shocked when they found out. clearly, a total misusage of intelligence and a politicization. you look at the october 2002, and the white papers that were prevented from the charter -- by the charter from doing, these were allegations that were all wrong. that was the very product used to write powell's speech before we went into the country. i do not think that bush cared at all about the evidence. i do not think he was looking for evidence. he was cowering people. richard clarke wrote about this in his book. he said, they want to do find out what iraq's role was in 9/11. not only was there no role, saddam hussein and osama bin laden hated each other. they were not allies at all. the position was the 1% factor. there is a 1% chance that saddam hussein has weapons of mass destruction. this is justification for what cheney wanted to do. there was no punishment to afghanistan because there were no strategic targets. there was no real terrorist movement because al qaeda had been routed. over two months, with 450 people. that is why the war is such a tragedy. the various ethnic groups were effective in getting the taliban out of kabul. we did not have to be there for another 12-13 years with all of the losses suffered. >> you spoke in your opening remarks about the cia not being a rogue agency and that the things that have happened had been misused by the president it is my perception that, at least for the last two years, they have gone before congress and repeatedly misled various committees. i also feel that the committees have really practiced a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach to the cia. in addition to the president misusing the agency, there is a lack of supervision by congress and i would like to hear your thoughts. >> there is no question that oversight has been compromised. the shocking thing to me is that we created a secret organization, the cia, with no oversight whatsoever. you do not have a statutory ig. it took a series of abuses before church and pike, who just died in the last six months, realized that you need oversight committees. for 30 years, the cia it was out with no responsibilities to the congress. i would argue up that the intelligence committee was an elite group and they were the powerhouses within the senate. it was bipartisan. you could tell it was bipartisan. that was the turning point. with democrats and republicans, it has been a cat's paw for the white house. dianne feinstein, is finally exercising -- because she knows the cia was lying to congress -- and i'm not saying that cia did not try to play sleight-of-hand with the congress. they often did that with the policies given by the white house. feinstein was in the position to know where all of the obfuscations were and she should still be engaged with the white house to get the report out. it has to come out. we are entitled to see the violations. we have to know what they are because they were conducted in our name. >> on the benghazi thing and hillary clinton, she was saying she did not want to get involved in the issue. it seems like mike was talking about how he prepared the talking points or whatever. it seems like he was involved in that whole benghazi issue. do you have thoughts about that? >> the important thing about benghazi -- and this is a misunderstanding from the beginning -- it was not a consulate platform. we had a consulate that was small. benghazi was an intelligence platform. the cia presence in benghazi had a specific mission and was probably four times as big as the state department presence. all of the other foreign communities had taken their consulates out of benghazi because of instability in benghazi. the cia was buying weapons back that had been sold to malicious. -- militias. it is interesting how many times the cia has to buy back weapons that never should have been provided in the first place. from the work i did, 24 people on the plane were cia and six were state department. to me, the state department has gotten off of the vote. there is no question. why was the ambassador, chris stevens, a popular young ambassador, even in an ghazi and -- benghazi and what business could he have been doing? to what degree was clinton interested in showing success in libya when the overthrow of qadhafi has been a nightmare and counterproductive? i believe that there is politicization of the briefing points and that susan rice, who now has trouble giving a description of what happened in the trade-off between the american soldiers and the taliban is the same person who bollocks the briefings about benghazi on the talk shows. benghazi was a nightmare and the people who were there knew it was a terrorist attack that had nothing to do with this film that was making the rounds in the united states. it is unfortunate that it has been so politicized. i do not think that anyone is really trying to look at benghazi for what really happened. it is being used as a partisan weapon and it is not good for this. >> i am told i am the last. we negotiated that i get two! i have about ten. i have agreed to settle for two. let's do the easy one. would it be your position, looking at the intelligence agency over the years and for purposes here, assuming it has two operations, intelligence and operations, would it be your position that they should not have an intelligence division? -- operations division? >> the director of operations needs the ability to collect intelligence and i would support that. i am thinking of some assignment that i had where i benefited from intelligence collection that was clandestine. for example, when the egyptians decided to kick out the soviets in 1972. i thought it was a signal that they were interested in israel and the intelligence was spot on. the important thing to remember is that the united states does a tremendous collection -- job with collection. the collection is always good enough to prevent us from being wrong. the errors are made on the analytical level. on just a lack of rigor. 9/11 was an intelligence failure that could have been prevented. the collection was there. iraq, the collection was there. the decline of the soviet union, the intention -- the information was there and gates did not allow them to do what they needed to do with the intelligence. the hard question. >> i will get to that in a moment. i want to say that i have read some of the books that you have written.
family of the late marvin gaye. >> for the first time today we heard hilliary clinton's side of the email controversy. she insisted no government rules were broken, and she used a personal system for government work because it was easier. david schuster is at the news conference, and he's back with the day's power politics report. david. >> reporter: tony, this was hilliary clinton's first news conference in more than two years. they felt that it was spinning out of control. so today with a presidential campaign coming soon, clinton engaged in damage control. speaking from the united nations, hilliary clinton said that as secretary of state she ride exclusively on personal email because it was more convenient. >> i thought using one device would be simpler and obviously it hasn't worked out that way. >> reporter: clinton has been under fire for a week after confirming that she engaged in email practices that contradicted the directives to state department employees, and while she was at times defensive. >> i fully complied with every rule. >> ? insisted that most of overemails were related to work captured on government servers. >> going through the emails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. and about half were work related and went to the state department. and about half were personal. that were not in any way related to my work. i had no reason to save them. >> clint on said he deleted most of those emails and she said others have been kept on a private server she controls at her home and will not be released. >> the server contains personal communications between my husband and me and i believe i've met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private. >> republican critics though are convinced that mrs. clinton's efforts to keep certain family members private broke government policies and protocols, and there are lingering questions about the clinton foundation, with accepted donations from foreign governments while clinton served as secretary of state. >> i think that people who want to support the foundation know full well what it is we stand for and what we're working on. >> but the issue is whether foreign governments were trying to buy the clinton and influence the next president of the united states. but as for the email controversy, the state department said that it will begin to release awful clinton's communications online. and clinton seemed pleased. >> i think that once the american public begins to see the email, they will have an unprecedented insight into a high government official's daily communications, which i think will be quite interesting. >> interesting well, the implication from clinton was there was nothing there and these controversies are much ado about nothing. but however most government workers don't get to decide for themselves what is and what is not convenient. and today it may only have served to reinforce that the clintons play by their own rules. >> david schuster, and page lavender is with the washington post. and good to see you. so, the former secretary said, in hind sight, i should have used a couple of devices first, are you satisfied with that admission? >> i mean, yeah. i think that the admission is that -- i think that it's not uncommon for a regular average person to use two devices in day-to-day. one for personal and one for their work, so it doesn't seem that it would be that hard for a very high ranking public official such as clinton to use two devices. >> are you satisfied that she was operating within the rules by sending work emails through this personal account? was she operating within the rules? >> she says that she was and she didn't send any classified information from this email address, and if she had, that would be a violation of the espionage act. and we'll have to see if she did violent it. but she's very adamant that she acted within the rules while at the state department. and that she has given all relevant information of her time there to the people. >> it's a bit troubling to me that to know that her account may not have been searched, in response to a freedom of information act request from you or from me, or a congressional oversight committee. that's troubling isn't it? >> well, she has said that she's given every bit of information regarding her time at the state department, including things like benghazi, and the house committee subpoenaed her emails, and they have several hundred emails in their possession, but not everybody is happy. trey, the chairman on that, he says there are many emails missing, and he's calling for more. >> so politically the gop benghazi conspiracy theorists are not going to let this go, are they? >> i don't think that they will. trey dowdy has been pushing she needs to to be more transparent and he needs to sew nowhere from her and the state get is going to release everything that they can but it's going to be a long process. >> and the server remaining private, is that troubling to you? >> it's not terribly troubling because bill clinton also has emails on that server and there's a question of what he needs to give up. and the law says that she's required to give up anything, any documents related to her work with the state department, which are the emails, so i think that it's fair for her to keep that private. and we'll see if the emails contain all of the information. >> gotcha. page lavender is the senior politics editor from the washington post. good to see you. members of sigma alpha epsilon have only a few hours left to vacate their frat house, and apparently those who led the racist chant were expelled. and the university president has taken a pretty hardline on this. >> absolutely. he said he was going to make an example out of these students, and he has followed through and his decision has prompted national reaction, the white house calling the expulsion an appropriate step. it started with an anonymous cellphone recording posted online. and it appears to show members of the fraternity singing the song, repeatedly using the "n" word. today, two students identified as the leaders of the racist chant have been expelled from the university. the university president david borein released a statement and said there could be more students expelled and said it's wrong to use words to threaten or hurt or abuse other people. and we'll continue on this. once their identities have been confirmed, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action. in one day boren shut down the fraternity. and he gave the members until midnight to get all of their belongings out of the building, and then it would this one came out. a woman who is said to be the paternity's house mother, she's also chanting racial slurs. >> and we're going to put that into context. you can hear the song playing in the background of the video which was a hit back in 2013. tony, when this video was record apparently the "n" word was the hook of that song. >> oh, my goodness. are we expecting any action those who aren't in the fraternity? >> you can see a young woman sitting on the bus and what has come out delta delta delta, the sorority is saying that they're now part of an investigation, working alongside of the university. the university president saying zero tolerance here, and disciplinary action will be taken against the students proudly taking part in that chant. and the other thing, is it a violation of free speech to have the university follow through in this way? >> thank you. and the president of the student government association at the university of oklahoma, and he's on-site from norman, oklahoma. kanal, did good to see you and what do you think of the response from the university's president, david warren? >> i've been nothing but impressed with his response to this disgusting video. throughout campus, just when that video started to spread, everyone was kind of waiting to see what kind of response our administration would take. earlier this year, we had some issues come to light about minority students on our campus not necessarily feeling as welcome as they would like to. and so this is kind of -- it was interesting to see how our administration responded. and with the absolutely zero tolerance policy that president boren took. >> is it true that the university had been looking into life on campus that was not necessarily exclusive. but an investigation before the video was released? >> that starts with the group heard, and nine graduate students, all black, who decided that the campus wasn't as inclusive as it should be and they did an incredible amount of research and did recommendations for the campus, based on their research. and the way that the administration treated them, again, as soon as it came out and also with the student life office, and pretty immediately you could see that the administration hadn't really thought about how serious this issue had become, and as soon as they realized it, they immediately started taking sentence to try to remedy that. >> are you a member of a fraternity? >> yes i am. >> phi capa phi. >> so you have a two-part question. do you have a race problem within your fraternity. and i wonder how many black or latinos or of indian descent are part of your fraternity? >> on that second part, i'm not really sure. i would say 10-15%, but that's totally speculation. >> are you proud of that. >> um, well, considering the -- i think that one thing that this issue really brought to light, at any school, it needs serious introspection. this is not an isolated incident. there's one thing that we can see. this gender equality, homophobia, you can see these issues popping up, and a variety of college campuses across america and yes, i'm a proud member of my fraternity. but at the same time, it's getting harder and harder for any of us to defend greek life without really really questioning it. there's not serious change in greek life in general then i don't know what the roles would be. >> that's terrific, so let me follow up with this. i have been one of those people who believes that younger people will be better on race relations than those fogeys like me in my age group. you see an episode like this caught on video and do you worry that many of the country's racial challenges are just simply being passed on to your generation? >> if they are i think we're going to put an end to it. because as disturbing and as awful as that video was, i was just so in awe of our student bold and there were response to it. just the other day isaac the president of the black student association here went on television, and said, i would forgive them, i don't need tore counter hate with hate. i want to bring love to hate. and i think that attitudes like that and attitudes like those previously mentioned, who want the conversation to keep going who say hey, this is a problem. yes, what they did was absolutely terrible, and i think that 99.9% of the students here agree that's just abhorrent. but at the same time, when racism stairs you in the face like that, and we as a university did our own soul searching and our own introspection about it i think that it actually makes very very substantial change. and the response from our campus so far david boren. >> it has been great talking to you, and i want you to reach out to that young man you were just referring to at the black student union. i want to talk to him tomorrow. pleasure to talk to you. >> pleasure to talk to you too. the president of the student association at the university of oklahoma. appreciate it. >> no problem. >> so there are reverberations in ferguson, missouri today over the damning report of the policing there. the state has pointed a state judge to oversee all of of the case and "real money" with ali velshi is taking a closer look at that tonight. >> it's a big deal. state supreme court issuing a take over of the supreme court to issue those reports. after the michael brown case, and the department of justice accused the local court of being profit driven. how the young and want court clerk work in conclusion with the state police and the city council targeting african-americans with petty fines and arrests. and after days of protests rocked the nation, more later when the local grand jury declined to indict darren wilson, but in the end said officer shot brown in self defense. they sat down yesterday before the news of the missouri supreme court order, and this is what mccollum said about the case. >> there was this quantum leap w. the fact that my father was way police officer killed by a black man and the quantum leap, mccollough can't be fair 50 years later with everything in between refuting that. >> mccollough said that his team conducted a fair investigation, and the department of justice came to the same conclusion, and he said that he never felt incriminatedded but investigators accused him of bias in the michael brown case. >> there were misconceptions that mr. brown was down on his knees, with his hands in the air surrendering when he was executed by the police officer, and that's the initial story that went out and there's nothing front the credible witnesses or any of the physical evidence. >> tony, we have that tonight and tomorrow night, it's a long interview, and it sort of takes us to the bottom of the criticism of what was going on in ferguson. >> gotcha, tony, and what's going on to the. >> climate change, after reports that some officials in florida want to ban the phrase "climate change" from the official correspondence. that while it's real and partly manmade, it's not damaging and actually has benefits. that one i'm looking forward to. >> i'm looking forward to it as well. ali velshi, "real money," every week night on ali aljazeera. and speaking of "real money", the stock market lost nearly 2% of its value today. so wall street, the sell off spurred by concerns that the federal reserve could hike interest rates sooner than later. the nasdaq and the espn and the dow all wiped out gains made so far. and coming up on the program the growing battle over the open lept to iran, how it could affect foreign policy, and france remembers athletes killed in argentina. and wikipedia is suing the usa. >> there's a search underway this evening in dallas for four men suspected in the shooting death of an iraqi citizen. 36-year-old ahmed, he arrived in the united states just a few weeks ago, and morgan is here with the investigation. >> reporter: tony, this really is a mystery. and the police know very little, including whether or not the suspect actually knew the victim. and they're trying to figure out whether he was in the wrong place at the wrong time or if he was targeted for his race. five days after ahmed ajamali was gunned down in front of his home the neighborhood remains stunned. >> he had come from iraq to join his family only a month ago. but last thursday, he stepped out to photograph the first snowfall he had ever seen. moments later according to the dallas police, someone opened fire with a rifle and hit him in the chest as he hit behind a car. he later died at the dallas hospital. the police are looking for four men seen on this surveillance video. at the time of the shooting, jamali was with his wife, counting the days that he had been separated. police have not yet determined a motive but with the shootings coming a month after the three students why killed in north carolina, local groups are working with investigators to determine if jamali, also muslim, was also targeted. >> this is a brutal murder of a beautiful man. >> on the council of islamic relations, they said there's not enough evidence to determine whether jamaaly's death was a hate crime. but it has raised fears among muslims and refugees. >> there's a lot of tension and edginess, rewards to the motive and what this means to the broader community. whether or not it is a hate crime. doesn't really have an impact right now, because it's another individual killed in a violent way. >> the council on islamic relations has set up a crowdfunding for his wife. and they have a reward for the capture of the shooters. >> in iraq, iraqi officials have recaptured an area around tikrit and isil fighters in the city. [ gunshots ] the iraqi army and shia militia are prepared to fight the salt. should this joint offense succeed, they will begin other ventures in other cities. a legal challenge for the spying programs, the coalition of advocacy groups are suing the government, saying that it infringes on freedom of speech. >> reporter: what's interesting about this, right off the bat, who is the driving force? it's wikipedia, the wicca media, the free online encyclopedia that we all use. and they're joined by aclu and rights groups, saying that they are spying on americans using wikipedia and everything else on the internet, an attack on the back done of democracy. if you want to know about the government spying that prompted protests like this one in washington last year, one place you might look is on wikipedia. and the reason that wikipedia is suing the u.s. government over surveillance has a lot to do it says over how wikipedia works. it's a free encyclopedia, used by 500 million people a month and the whole thing is non-profit. and it says that the way that the nsa gathered surveillance is by streaming and subjecting them to unreasonable search and seizure. the nsa violated the first and the fourth amendment. >> we believe that the master surveillance of our readers and users is damaging to us. wikipedia depends on a culture of openness and courage for people to participate. and in that context their privacy is very important. >> the nsa taps into the cables and routers that move traffic across the u.s. and around the world. and wikipedia says that that surveillance has a chilling effect on freedom of information. articles in egypt may not have been written if they had know that the u.s. was watching. and with the world backlash about the surveillance, whistle blower, edward snowden. one of the documents that he released mentioned wikipedia as a target for nsa spying. since then, the u.s. government said that it would stop and that it was wrong. >> the bottom line is that people around the world regardless of their nationality should know that the united states is not spying on ordinary people that don't threaten our national security. we take their privacy into account in our policies and procedures. this applies to foreign leaders as well. >> the department of justice says only that it's looking over the new lawsuit. in the past two years, other organizations have also sued the government. some cases are working their way through the legal system. and others have been thrown out because there's no proof that the plaintiffs have been harmed. that will be a problem for wikipedia as well. >> we have definitely have standing and there's no question about that. and so we think that the case will proceed. when you look at the merits, you look at what the law says and the constitution says and there's no doubt in my find. wikipedia said that it's case is different. everything that we do online. early last year, the obama administration promised to reform the surveillance program, the so-called bulk collection the bipartisan bill died in the senate back in november. and it has not been brought up since. the republicans took both houses of congress in january. >> coming up next, the united states is in a diplomatic dispute with venezuela and now cuba is getting involved. plus: protests about academic freedom turned violence, and also -- look, no blurred lines for the majority in this copyright infringement lawsuit. the verdict is in, pharrell williams might not be -- wait for it -- happy. >> hitting back even harder over a republican letter to iran. vice president joe biden is blasting the 47 senators who signed the letter and the man who spearheaded it, arkansas senator, tom cotton. they didn't pull any punches did they? >> reporter: absolutely not tony. they are pushing back hard. and among those criticizing the republicans who wrote this letter perhaps the most closely watched politician, who is not currently an office holder former secretary of state, hilliary clinton. she used a high-profile press briefing today to join the voices condemning this letter. >> and it is shocking. >> democrats are pounding the 47-senate republicans for their open letter to the iranian government. from the halls of the united nations building former secretary of state, hilliary clinton weighed in. >> either these senators were trying to be helpful to the iranians, or harmful to the commander in chief in the midst of high stakes international diplomacy. either answer does discredit to the letter's signatories. >> the open letter, dated monday, tells iranian leaders they not fully understand our constitutional system. and says without congress onboard, any deal struck between the white house and iran could be undone. it says that the next prez could revoke such an agreement with the stroke of a pen. vice president, joe biden said that the letter is beneath the dignity of the senate, where he served for 36 years. he said this letter in the guise of a congressional let me undermines any future president, whether democrat or republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the united states. the writer, tom cotton of arkansas pushed back on charges that he's undermining the president. >> no, we're making sure that iran's leader understands that if congress doesn't approve of a deal, congress won't accept a deal, because we're stopping iran from getting a nuclear weapon. >> they don't need congress to sign-off on a deal. to curb iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions. the white house said that it can do without congress on board. iran's negotiator, prime minister, dismissed the gop letter. >> it's a propaganda ploy. and it has no legal value. >> secretary of state, john kerry, plans to meet with him this weekend for the second time this month. with a march deadline to reach a deadline on iran's nuclear capabilities. >> reporter: these negotiations were characterized by a white house spokesman today as complicated and sensitive, and that's why it's getting so much attention here in washington, tony. a spokesman went on to call it an incompetent and flagrant attempt. >> jim walsh is associated with mit's studies program and he's in massachusetts this evening. and jim always good to talk to you. is it clear to you that this letter is an attempt to undermine this president and the office of the presidency? >> you know, i don't want to answer that question, tony, because the answer is yes. senator cotton has on the record said that his intention is to kill the negotiation so there's a sort of face to it all, oh, we're trying to help the negotiators good cop bad cop. and that's clearly not what's going on here. this is not about congressional participation. congress can vote on an agreement and do anything they want after there's an agreement to review, but not in the middle of a negotiation. imagine if members of one party wrote to the soviet union during the cuban missile crisis, saying whatever you agree to we're not sure we're going to abide by. it's unbelievable. >> so here's the question. will this interference, and maybe i should be a bit encouraged with the prime minister czary saying that he's going to ignore it. but will it make it more or less likely in my opinion in your opinion that we get a deal here? >> i think that it has no affect whatsoever, and there are three things to pay attention to. in iran at the negotiating table for the u.s. it helps the hardliners, and i think that but the guys that the death to america and at the negotiating table, it makes it tough. you want to get the other side to agree to missing, and the other side is yelling we're not going to agree. and that complicates things. at home, that weakens the republicans. >> what -- can we have the nuts and bolts of this? what makes for a good deal here? because i haven't heard on you this yet? >> i think there are three or four things that make for a good deal. one, restrictions on iran's nuclear program. that means limits on how hospital they can enrich. no enrichment beyond 5%. restrictions on how much material they can keep on their territory. if they start to accumulate something, they have to ship it out. a reactor that doesn't produce large amounts of plutonium. and number two robust inspection and safeguards. we want them to abide by the highest levels of inspection, and that's the protocol. and three, there have to be sanctions relief. you can't ask iran to get x y and z and get zero in return. you do this, and i do that. and finally international enforcement. this is not a u.s.-iran deal. this is an international deal. the brits, the french, the germans, everyone is involved in this, and the international community has to step in and make sure that no party walks away from it. >> is it fair to say that all of the members in this negotiating team, p5, not p1, understand what a good deal would look like here, jim? >> yes and it's sort of shocking that they have been on the same page for so long. two of the parties russia and china, russia not so friendly, but they have hung together. and the french get honorary on occasion. >> lastly, do you agree with what the president says, that he will walk away from a bad deal? >> absolutely, i think so. and i think that the iranians would walk away if we don't make progress here. >> jim walsh the associate with the mit studies program. jim, it's a pleasure. a cuban says that it stands by its ally, venezuela now that president obama has ordered sanctions against the oil producing country and castro calls it aggressive. now expanded powers to battle the united states. >> last night president maduro addressed the nation and he began his message by asking to reflect on the recently imposed sanctions that the u.s. has passed on his top echelon or top government officials, but what started as a peaceful message took on a fiery note with madura accusing obama of being the next nixon and requesting the national assembly to grant him special powers so he could confront any imperialist aggression that the u.s. might impose on venezuela and additionally, he congratulated the officials and named one of them minister of the interior, so clearly despite some call for reflection or peaceful measures or commitment from madura to handle this in a peaceful manner, the aggressive tone of the u.s. rhetoric continues. >> the protest turned violent. and myself beat demonstrators to try to bring an end to a week-long rally for a proposed education bill. it would limit academic freedom. >> a tense stand off between protesters turns into a confrontation. for more than a week, the protesters have been chanting. they are unhappy with the newly enacted education law which they say restricts academic freedom. on tuesday local officials said they would allow students to march. but when the activists found out they wouldn't be able to hold banners and chant slogans along the way they became angry. it doesn't take long for the situation to descend into violence. hundreds of police charge at the protesters, with batons and sticks, striking and injuring them. protesters are dragged into police trucks and student leaders are among those arrested. the police also attack a vehicle that was being used by the demonstrators. police have responded to some of the past week's protests. some held in solidarity with the students. last week, men in plain clothes attacked protesters. several people were arrested. yang gone officials admit to using force. but it's seen as a tactic used by the former military government to break up protests. tuesday's crackdown comes just as the u.n. special raconteur of human rights said that the country is sliding back toward conflict because the government has backtracked on its pledge to uphold human rights, and it has gotten many wondering if the transition from military to civilian is genuine. >> five days after he was attacked by a knife, mark lippert is out of the hospital. he received gashes on his face and arm. an attacker shouted about the joint military drills with the united states. and the president of france has offered his condolences to the family of three top athletes killed in argentine a they were filming a reality television show when the accident occurred. >> reporter: the accident happened at the end of filming in this remote region in the west of argentine a the video capturing the moment that the two helicopters crashed. there were no survivors. the victims included the french swimming star who won gold and bronze and silver at the 2012 olympics. >> you it don't take it in. it's true, i won my 400-meter title and then the next day the president came and visited me. there's another dimension. >> also onboard she broke the 1990 solo crossing of the atlantic ocean. and another was a boxer who won the bronze at the interstate olympics. remaining victims included crews to the reality tv show to the tf1 channel. and the two argentine pilots also died. the french president said that the sudden death of his fellow nationals was immense cause of sadness. tributes have been pouring in from across france. >> i think we're all sad about what happened to the athletes who committed themselves to france. one has to think about reality tv shows, but once again, they were there to bring something to the french people, and it's sad. >> it's tragic and dreadful news. i don't know whether it's a mechanical problem or a problem with the engine, so it looks like it was destiny unfortunately, regardless of who was onboard. >> he expressed his great sadness. a full eninquiry is there. the reality show drops contestants in remote areas from which they are challenged with finding food and water. these shows are all about risk, and those risks are capas baited. a full investigation is underway into what went wrong, and questions will be asked about the very nature of this kind of reality show. aljazeera, argentine a. >> the fda has pushed nursing homes to reduce their use of anti-psychotic drugs in the elderly, but one in five nursing home residents are stilling drugged without medical cause. as sheila vicar reports the results can be catastrophic. >> patrice captures this moment with her father, jerry following surgery for a malignant brain tumor. from the hospital, the retired city firefighter rent by ambulance to an assisted living >> how are you feeling? >> he suffered from dementia, and accompanying bouts of confusion, but on the first day at the facility, his family said that he was alert and lucid. >> daddy? dad? >> just one day later patrice gilligan found a very different man. >> he's not waking up. what the heck happened to my father? he was a vegetable. there was nothing to him. he was staring in space drugged out. >> drugged out on medications like haldol and saraquil. the fda has placed it's strongest warning a black box warning, telling officials not to prescribe antipsychotic drugs to patients with dementia because they can cause death. the accountability office found one in three nursing home residents with dementia receives antipsychotics. >> they're given to the patient for the benefit of the facility to control them. they're zonked out all the time so you don't have to be bothered with them. >> five days after he arrived at the assisted living typical facility gilgan fell getting out of bed. and a greater risk of falling is one of the signs. the state determined that he had been overmedicated. >> if medicare is saying that the drugs are bad, the research is showing clearly, it can cause death why the hell is medicare paying for it? it makes no sense to me. if they would stop paying for it, it wouldn't be administered. >> not only nursing homes but we're looking at other settings to figure out ways to reduce reliance on psychotic medications. >> it took away everything from my father, his rights and his dignity. >> sheila macvicar, aljazeera. >> and be sure to watch the rest of sheila's report tonight. the trial of an accused boston marathon bomber, dzhokar tsarnaev earlier, jurors saw photos of the blood stained message written inside of the boat the pencil written notes in defense of the muslims, and buying milk less than an hour after the bombs went off in. >> west virginia's governor has signed legislation allowing the use of a drug that can reverse the affects of a heroin overdose. the deadly overdoses in the united states for several years, many of them were from heroin. adam traveled there. >> reporter: dale everhart meets me in a hotel warmth where he almost died of a heroin overdose in november. he had relapsed like so many times before. >> they brought me here and pulled me out of the car. >> the addicts left him on the ground and someone finally recognized him and got him home and his mother called emergency services. >> cathy steven's daughter, tiffany wasn't so lucky. only 23, she died of a heroin overdose that same month leaving behind a three-year-old daughter. >> it's like a plague. that's the only thing that comes to mind, because people are dropping left and right. and the sad thing is, people that are already addicted to it, it's hard to help them. and we don't have any treatment options. >> martinsburg like the rest of west virginia has been hit hard by the wave of prescription painkiller addition, but as black market pills have become too expensive, a cheaper and more potent option arrived. high grade heroin. >> people in this community tell us that heroin is everywhere, and they measure its destruction, and the number of overdoses which ham every day. just the other day a man was found dead in the restaurant with a needle in his arm. we spoke to people gripped by daily heroin addiction. they want to stop, but every day they shoot up several times just to feel well. >> whenever you wake up, you need that to be able to function. you need to be able to move. >> john has seen his girlfriend nearly die many times. >> i checked her pulse and she wasn't breathing, and i held her nose and blue into her mouth. and she went -- and sat up and startled shaking. i want to be done with it once and for all. i'm going to end up dying or end up in prison. >> a fate, nurse helena brady wants to help the youngest addicts avoid. she was worked all over the country and never seen anywhere struggling like martinsburg many of the newborns she treats are addicted to heroin. >> there's a tidal wave coming. it's sort of here already and it's really coming. unless something is done. it's going to be biggest patient population in the future. absolutely. >> a stark warning for a problem already considered an epidemic that has already destroyed to many families. adam rainy west virginia. >> coming up next, a big win for the family of the late marvin gaye. and billion dollars blitz, controlling the skies over the nation's capital. >> a los angeles jury said that the 2013 blurred lines was too similar to a marvin gaye song, and infringed on his copyright. pharrell williams and robin thicke sued them after they complained about similarities between the two songs. take a listen. ♪ okay, that was blurred lines released two years ago and this is marvin gaye's got to give it up from 1977. ♪ that's a of better song, isn't it? the gay family has filed an injunction to stop the sale of blurred lines immediately. >> this is about the copying of melody, of harmony, it was about the copying of bass lines and keyboards. that's what the jury found. >> and the jury gave the gay family $3.7 million. and john seigenthaler is here. >> that is a better song. coming up at 8:00, the culture of fraternities, new college life after some transport brothers are seen on a video taking part in a racist chant. and plus, a marijuana store in washington state that's not only government approved, but its government run. we'll talk live to a mayor of north bonneville, washington about getting into the pot business and eric johansson using his camera to photoshop to create incredible and unsettling images. >> secret drone tests are reportedly underway in some of the most secure airspaces in the country. the associated press said that the secret service is flying over the white house in the early morning hours. the goal is to test defenses to see if the agents can interfere with the drones. earlier this year, they accidentally crashed a drone on the white house lawn, and as tom achermann explains, there are worries that devices might invade people's privacy. >> after spending almost $3 billion to develop the project, the u.s. military has launched the first of two lighter than air vessels called arrow stats. it has been hovering 300 meters above an army base north of washington d.c. it's mission to identify large metal objects like planes and missiles over a 500-kilometer range in the heavily populated northeastern u.s. and the system is designed to foil a short range enemy strike. >> the threat is real, our adverse airs to launch low altitude over the horizon attacks difficult to attack. >> the army sees the air ships tied to mooring stations, as superior to air based attacks. >> it's over the horizon so you don't have to worry about terrains and buildings. >> while the airship is tethered like this one, it's not tethered to cameras and civilian traffic but privacy advocates have filed a lawsuit to obtain details of the system. >> the agency has said that they're not going to integrate video surveillance. and the documents that we got shoulder that they had contrary plans. and the documents that showed that they had changed the plans or the specifics. >> they already have them in populated areas with mexico. they are equipped with thetials to spot illegal border crosses but the army hopes to fair better than the 15 lighter than air programs that were scrapped at a cost of nearly $7 billion. tom arc man, aljazeera aberdeen maryland. >> that's all we have for this time. and john seigenthaler will be back in just a couple of moments, and then it's the international hour with stephanie sy and antonio mora. we'll see you back here. >> hi, everyone, this is al jazeera america. i'm john seigenthaler. fraternity fallout. two students now expelled over a racist chant. we'll look at the troubled history of fraternities and race. reply all. hillary clinton defends using private e-mail. >> it has numerous safeguards. it was on property guarded by the secret service. >> what she said, and what it could mean for
chronicling the outrageous behavior of a frat house near you. she'll join us in a minute and then we'll talk to a sphra alternate leader who has some ideas on fixing excess of fraternities and a consultant who advises colleges and universities and friends how to lower the risk associated with fraternity life. and later i'll do a keg stand. no i won't. it's "inside story"." the ideal experience? you leave home for the first time navigate your studies get a taste of adult independence, and like minded guys you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll share formative experience do public service and after you graduate, the real experience, for many young men the house becomes your home away from home sure. but ends up having little to do with the education that's supposedly the whole reason you're on campus. instead providing cover social sanction for behavior you may never try on your own. binge drinking, eep even casual exposure to the headlines, might have you shaking your head wondering, how does this go on? kaitlin franklin presented a frankly shocking catalog of what's going on, in her story "the fraternity problem." she joins us now. kaitlin, a lot of defenders of greek life say these stories are the noted exception isolated cases, that really, it negates the good. >> the term bat apple kind of comes out of the fraternity industry a lot of times. i think that's a really interesting euphemism. when i think of someone who is a bad apple sometimes someone pulling a prank is sirted, but doesn't engender any bad activity. but we are talking about deeply criminal acts including sexual assault including the inflicted trauma of hazing and race ition incidents that go far beyond freedom of speech. you can certainly resistant a private bus and say horrible words in it, that's your right to do but do you have rights to belong to a club that accepts federal tax breaks and doesn't let many if any african americans into it? i don't think you don't. i don't think we're talking about bat apples at all but a small group of men who are committing grave criminal acts on college campuses. i think it deserves our attention. >> you take reader along on a journey, where you seem surprised to find out gradually the sheer shocking number of incidents just like falls from fraternity buildings. >> right. >> tell us more about people falling out of frat houses all over the country? >> well, there are a lot of serious falls from fraternity houses. the reason i studied that kind of bizarre accident is the fraternities will always tell you yes bad things go on in our fraternity houses we admit it but no more so than anywhere else in the campus, in the dorms et cetera. well let me take one strange event falling off the roof of a building and let me compare it nationally over a 12 month period between fraternity houses dorms and private reply rented residences. there was no comparison. when you are talking about a fraternity house you have kids who are on the weekends drinking titanic amounts of alcohol housing codes that don't fall into the same codes dorms do and very dilapidated structures, every single year, pretty recently one just happened, kids get drunk they open a window to urinate or vomit and they pitch straightforward and some of those injuries are devastating and include death. i use this as a metric, are fraternity houses any more dangerous than any other college residences? i found nothing to substantiate that. >> earlier this month a video surfaced of a couple of young white men from the sigma alpha epsilon chapter of oklahoma stat university leading a racist chant, including the use of the n word and declared that african americans would never be brothers in that fraternity. the national sae organization quickly closed the campus chapter and the president david boren expelled those students. >> i think it's time to show zero tolerance on these students. >> support for the disciplinary action ton penn state campus this month. it was revealed members of the kappa delta roe fraternity shared pictures of unconscious naked women. the fraternity chapter has been expelled, in a message to the penn state community president eric baron wrote moss we ask for a reevaluation of the fraternity system be reevaluated? some members of the university system feel it is and we are considering our option he. kaitlin, what, can a school suddenly just decide no more frats? >> you know, that's always people's immediate response, well the school should get rid of these fraternities if they're such bad operators. in fact the famous legal saying is the constitution does not end at the campus gates particularly at a public university such as penn state or the university of oklahoma. just because a young plan has enrolled in an institution of higher ed does not mean that he has given up his freedom of free association. he can join whatever club he wants, can he join the sierra club he can shop at 7-eleven, or get a library club. what is a fraternity, it is a private club, he has a right to join it. certainly in my opinion colleges should end their formal relationships with any chapters that have proven themselves to be bad operators on the college campus and i further think that the national interfraternity council should make it a policy that every time a university closes down a chapter that the individual fraternity itself should shut down the chapter. there are campuses all across america where the college president has shut down an individual chapter the national fraternity didn't shut it down and kids are living and partying and the pad bad acts continue. >> this is being fueled by families that are paying 20, 40, even north of $60,000 a year to keep their students on campus, don't parents get a vote in this? are they aware of what's going on? and how little oversight there is upon the part of the university itself? >> you know when parents figure that out it's when something terrible happens to their child. it's when a daughter is sexually assaulted in a fraternity house and suddenly they look into the deeper history that fraternity house in the news and they found there's been a lot of criminal allegations or maybe a death in that fraternity house or when someone was hazed and they try start a lawsuit against the fraternity and they find out how close the fraternity has indemnified itself. whether the it comes to the fraternity system the college doesn't look at that very carefully and the national fraternity house in the fraternity itself has in many ways distanced i itself from that bad behavior. unfortunately when parents find this out it is only when something really bad has happened. that's when i'm trying to talk to parents of college bound student saying, before your child pledges a fraternity, learn about its history on that campus. some are better than others. what risk you are willing to take tell your son i'll only pay for those ones. if you can get into that, otherwise i'm not paying. >> kaitlin flannagan the fraternity problem it's worse than you think. it's a great read and still posted at the atlantic website. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. >> the fraternity rides are worth preserving and a fraternity member who's found a way. we'll take it inside his plan, it's "inside story." judge welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. i have to admit a lot of this is foreign to my own college experience a long long time ago. on my big city campus in the 1970s greek letter societies had been chased out in the tumult of the '60s. one fraternity was allowed back my senior year and didn't make much of a splash. fast-forward 35 years and i'm walking by frat row with my undergraduate daughter on a different urban campus and all the bros were out, giants facing outside, sitting outside drinking cat-calling women some interested in the attention. i asked my daughter how is this allowed, she said nobody had any control over what went open. if anybody wanted to make it stop it wasn't clear anybody could. administrations on several big campuses are now breathing down their necks. can the young men themselves take back some of the initiative, change the flair tiff. bob bigs is the executive vice president of phi delta university and jenson mccreery, he consults on best practices for greek life on campus and was formerly director of greek life at the university of alabama. he joins us from pensacola florida. gentry mccreery, you heard kaitlin flannagan talking about the lawsuits in the first part of the program. who's being sued is it for a lot of money and are there big payouts? >> there are a lot of big payouts and a lot of people are being sued. deep pockets individual university leaders the first i ask them is whether or not they have an umbrella liable policy with their parents homeowners policy they may need it. universities have been fairly lucky getting them recused from a majorities of lawsuits but i think it's only amatter of time before that luck runs out. >> sometimes with a lot of reforms in society it is pain in the wallet that helps things move along. how come that hasn't worked in this case? >> i think there are a number of reasons and part of that speaks to money and the influence of money and fraternity and sorority alumni are the biggest contributors to universities. universities officials are hard to crack down on some of the high jinks you see. those bad amazon that apples that kaitlin talked about. that's what we've seen in the news a few weeks. >> bog bigs what are you trying? >> -- bob bigs what are you trying? >> it's good to be with you. we recognized some of the situations kaitlin articulated with regard to hazing and sexual misconduct but the poor academic conduct of students, alumni drifting away from being alumni advisors the poor conditions of the house the 1990s in 1997 we articulated a decision inify delta theta that in all of our chapters would be alcohol free, 24-7 365 whether you're 18 or 80 years old it is a bright line test no alcohol on the chapter property. because we believe that the misuse and abuse of alcohol was the common denominator in all of these challenging issues. >> well, it sounds like a big part of the answer because i think you're right a lot of this starts with the lowered inbusiness of excessive use of alcohol but that would seem to be a nonstarter for a lot of the young men on campus who seek fraternity membership. how does this work now that it's been in place for 15 years? >> ray let me say this. there are a lot of men on college campuses that are frankly turned off from the misuse of alcohol. we callify call phi delta theta a place where you can use academically, growth opportunities. there are men on college campuses that are looking for that kind of positive fra alternative experiences and they are finding it in phi delta that that the theta. >> very little alcohol is allowed yet it goes on unabated. >> that's right. no alcohol less than 25 to 30% of the undergraduate membership can illegally school alcohol. it doesn't seem logical to school alcohol. >> gentry, you have been on every point in the spectrum here from being a fraternity member yourself to being in some of the largest national organizations having to do with greek life in america. who enforces social norms in the house, if i'm a 19-year-old, am i gs going to listen to my brothers or some old fud university member when it comes to laying down the law? >> absolutely. the social norms are incredibly powerful and i think thing that makes the fraternity so unique and i ask this question to national fraternity executives like bob and to campus administrators, name knee one other social institution in the world where 19, 20, 21-year-old young men have absolute power of their 18-year-old new members their pledges? the only other institution i've come up with is the american fraternity. the members doing hazing, the active members the juniors and seniors in the house have absolute authority over those freshmen members who gets to bid, who gets accepted. the band droark is in director -- director is in charge. teempg 18-year-oldsteaching 18-year-olds what it means to be a man. >> how do you set in place a virtuous cycle installing positive behavior instead of negative behavior? >> absolutely. and i think phi delta theta has been a leader, we have more national fraternities willing to make bold moves sigma phi epsilon, getting rid of traditional ledging way back in the '80s. i think we need systems of shared governance where we have more alumni involved in meaningful relations with the chapters, it serves no purpose anymore and opens the door for hazing. we have more fraternities that should be willing to go through alcohol-free housing. high standards willing to do things differently. but so far a lot of national fraternity leaders are willing to maintain the status quo. >> i've been watching social media very closely before this program and one thing the members seem to hate is all the attention. now, are we at a point with some of these really outrageous stories where we're at a risk of losing the whole game, where some of these young men may not even realize how close they are to using up whatever patience the university has on this issue? >> that's absolutely correct. in our fraternity, phi delta theta as well we hold our students and chapters accountable. if there is a misstep by officers they could be removed removed from membership or eventually depending on the severity of the situation the chapter shut down as well. there is accountability in phi delta theta that's what students need to be doing holding their students and chapters accountable. >> gentry is the authority of shuting down enough to keep them down? >> it is, when fraternity life is done right it is a tremendous life changing experience. i'm a product of that, i had a positive and meaningful fraternity experience and it made me a better person. i often wonder what percentage is doing it right if i had to guess, 10 to 20%. and 80 to 90% are getting it incredibly wrong. we need to thank you on its head, they are willing to accept mediocrity, and we need to change that, i can assure you all these fraternities were not the priet spots in their organization they were probably struggling mediocre chapters this had issues before and probably should have been closed a long time ago but they were allowed to continue to operate because no one had the where wherewithal of shutting it down. >> thanks for joining us gentlemen. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is going beyond the beltway to derail president obama's plans to reduce the amount of stuff put into the air by burning fossil fuels. al jazeera america national correspond libby casey has the story, behind the story that's still ahead on "inside story." glur ooh watching "inside story" on laks, i'm ray suarez. covering 100,000 wells on public lands. the rules require new inspections and requirements that companies disclose what chemicals they pump into the ground to break open oil and goes deposits. and under influence regulations from epa the states are now required to reduce the amount of pollution from coal-fired power plants. from his influential seat in washington, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell of kentucky is lobbying state governments telling them they shouldn't comply. why would a member of the united states senate give detailed advice to governors on how not to follow the law? that's a tail for al jazeera's national correspondent libby casey and she joins us now and libby how did we get to this point? >> ray, mitch mcconnell promised both voters in his home state of kentucky as well as republicans across the country that if republicans took the senate if he became majority leader he would do everything he could to stop what he calls the war on coal. and this is just part of it. it is a very unusual move. republicans are saying it is a maverick move. i think democrats are rolling their eyes in frustration. but senator mcconnell sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states saying it's not you that will be out of compliance with epa regulations it's the epa that is out of line over what they'll ask you to do over the coming months. he's pushing states to buck rules coming down the pike and he says they will be the ones with the legal standing not the obama administration. >> the way you understand this states are given freedom to figure out for themselves how to reduce emissions to the level dictated by the epa. but if they don't do it, don't they get fined? >> well, that's right. the obama administration says the states will have a lot of leeway in crafting a plan to show how they can get within the acceptable limits. so they say it is in the state's best interests to come up with their own proposals but there will will be repercussions according to the obama administration and the federal rules. the question will be court challenges and mitch mcconnell says the law is on his side. now he's not the one in the governor's seat that will have to actually make that call and be the one to push the limbs and potentially ding the state in terms of breaching what is a rule. and so he is putting himself in an unusual position of prodding the governors to go forth and basically not obey the obama administration but -- >> are they looking for a fight with the president is that part of it? >> absolutely, absolutely ray. legislation on capitol is fairly ham -- hill is fairly hamstrung. they can push back against obama administration environmental regulation but the white house is pretty much going around the legislative process because they're not seeing any victories on comowl capitol hill these days and they're going through the epa the interior department rarg regarding other regulations like fracking. mitch mcconnell won't get many legislative victories that will get the president's signature so he's going his own way. >> what legislate are republicans getting? >> some are crafting legislation that will fight it but the sally jewel the interior secretary said today she didn't expect that to be able to get very far she says in part americans want some kinds of regulations. there haven't been any really to speak of on the books. the ones that came out have been in process for three years and they garnered 1.5 million public comments, environmental rules they say these don't go far enough. the interior department hopes it's walking the line down the middle. >> libby casey joining us from capitol hill, great to talk to you libby. >> that's all for had edition. give us feedback law hear on the program. we invite you to follow us on twitter. the handle ajinsidestory. and sunshiny new stadiums ch the nfl foot the bill? join us for that one i'm ray suarez. suicide bombers target crowded mosques in yemen killing over 130 people. hello there welcome to al jazeera also ahead in the next 30 minutes as negotiators take a break from talks in switzerland iran's president says his country will not respond to threats over nuclear program. scales walling to help their children cheat in exams. and a little bit
behavior of a frat house near you. she'll join us in a minute and then we'll talk to a sphra alternate leader who has some ideas on fixing excess of fraternities, and a consultant who advises colleges and universities and friends how to lower the risk associated with fraternity life. and later i'll do a keg stand. no i won't. it's "inside story" ." the ideal experience? you leave home for the first time, navigate your studies, get a taste of adult independence, and like minded guys you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll share formative experience, do public service and after you graduate, the real experience, for many young men the house becomes your home away from home sure. but ends up having little to do with the education that's supposedly the whole reason you're on campus. instead providing cover social sanction for behavior you may never try on your own. bing e drinking, eep even casual exposure to the headlines, might have you shaking your head wondering, how does this go on? kaitlin franklin presented a frankly shocking catalog of what's going on, in her story, "the fraternity problem." she joins us now. kaitlin, a lot of defenders of greek life say these stories are the noted exception, isolated cases, that really, it negates the good. >> the term bat apple kind of comes out of the fraternity industry a lot of times. i think that's a really interesting euphemism. when i think of someone who is a bad apple sometimes, someone pulling a prank, is sirted, but doesn't engender any bad activity. but we are talking about deeply criminal acts including sexual assault including the inflicted trauma of hazing and race ition incidents that go far beyond freedom of speech. you can certainly resistant a private bus and say horrible words in it, that's your right to do but do you have rights to belong to a club that accepts federal tax breaks and doesn't let many if any african americans into it? i don't think you don't. i don't think we're talking about bat apples at all but a small group of men who are committing grave criminal acts on college campuses. i think it deserves our attention. >> you take reader along on a journey, where you seem surprised to find out gradually the sheer shocking number of incidents just like falls from fraternity buildings. >> right. >> tell us more about people falling out of frat houses all over the country? >> well, there are a lot of serious falls from fraternity houses. the reason i studied that kind of bizarre accident is the fraternities will always tell you yes bad things go on in our fraternity houses we admit it but no more so than anywhere else in the campus, in the dorms et cetera. well let me take one strange event falling off the roof of a building and let me compare it nationally over a 12 month period between fraternity houses dorms and private reply rented residences. there was no comparison. when you are talking about a fraternity house you have kids who are on the weekends drinking titanic amounts of alcohol housing codes that don't fall into the same codes dorms do and very dilapidated structures, every single year, pretty recently one just happened, kids get drunk, they open a window to urinate or vomit and they pitch straightforward and some of those injuries are devastating and include death. i use this as a metric, are fraternity houses any more dangerous than any other college residences? i found nothing to substantiate that. >> earlier this month a video surfaced of a couple of young white men from the sigma alpha epsilon chapter of oklahoma stat university leading a racist chant, including the use of the n word and declared that african americans would never be brothers in that fraternity. the national sae organization quickly closed the campus chapter and the president david boren expelled those students. >> i think it's time to show zero tolerance on these students. >> support for the disciplinary action ton penn state campus this month. it was revealed members of the kappa delta roe fraternity shared pictures of unconscious naked women. the fraternity chapter has been expelled, in a message to the penn state community, president eric baron wrote, moss we ask for a reevaluation of the fraternity system be reevaluated? some members of the university system feel it is and we are considering our option he. kaitlin, what, can a school suddenly just decide no more frats? >> you know, that's always people's immediate response, well the school should get rid of these fraternities if they're such bad operators. in fact the famous legal saying is, the constitution does not end at the campus gates particularly at a public university such as penn state or the university of oklahoma. just because a young plan has enrolled in an institution of higher ed does not mean that he has given up his freedom of free association. he can join whatever club he wants, can he join the sierra club, he can shop at 7-eleven, or get a library club. what is a fraternity, it is a private club, he has a right to join it. certainly in my opinion colleges should end their formal relationships with any chapters that have proven themselves to be bad operators on the college campus and i further think that the national interfraternity council should make it a policy that every time a university closes down a chapter that the individual fraternity itself should shut down the chapter. there are campuses all across america where the college president has shut down an individual chapter, the national fraternity didn't shut it down and kids are living and partying and the pad bad acts continue. >> this is being fueled by families that are paying 20, 40, even north of $60,000 a year to keep their students on campus, don't parents get a vote in this? are they aware of what's going on? and how little oversight there is upon the part of the university itself? >> you know when parents figure that out it's when something terrible happens to their child. it's when a daughter is sexually assaulted in a fraternity house and suddenly they look into the deeper history that fraternity house in the news and they found there's been a lot of criminal allegations or maybe a death in that fraternity house or when someone was hazed and they try start a lawsuit against the fraternity and they find out how close the fraternity has indemnified itself. whether the it comes to the fraternity system the college doesn't look at that very carefully and the national fraternity house in the fraternity itself has in many ways distanced i itself from that bad behavior. unfortunately when parents find this out it is only when something really bad has happened. that's when i'm trying to talk to parents of college bound student saying, before your child pledges a fraternity learn about its history on that campus. some are better than others. what risk you are willing to take tell your son i'll only pay for those ones. if you can get into that otherwise i'm not paying. >> kaitlin flannagan, the fraternity problem it's worse than you think. it's a great read and still posted at the atlantic website. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. >> the fraternity rides are worth preserving and a fraternity member who's found a way. we'll take it inside his plan, it's "inside story." judge welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. i have to admit, a lot of this is foreign to my own college experience a long long time ago. on my big city campus in the 1970s greek letter societies had been chased out in the tumult of the '60s. one fraternity was allowed back my senior year and didn't make much of a splash. fast-forward 35 years and i'm walking by frat row with my undergraduate daughter on a different urban campus and all the bros were out, giants facing outside, sitting outside, drinking, cat-calling women, some interested in the attention. i asked my daughter how is this allowed, she said nobody had any control over what went open. if anybody wanted to make it stop it wasn't clear anybody could. administrations on several big campuses are now breathing down their necks. can the young men themselves take back some of the initiative, change the flair tiff. bob bigs is the executive vice president of phi delta university and jenson mccreery, he consults on best practices for greek life on campus and was formerly director of greek life at the university of alabama. he joins us from pensacola florida. gentry mccreery, you heard kaitlin flannagan talking about the lawsuits in the first part of the program. who's being sued is it for a lot payouts? >> there are a lot of big payouts and a lot of people are being sued. deep pockets individual university leaders, the first i ask them is whether or not they have an umbrella liable policy with their parents homeowners policy they may need it. universities have been fairly lucky getting them recused from a majorities of lawsuits but i think it's only amatter of time before that luck runs out. >> sometimes with a lot of reforms in society it is pain in the wallet that helps things move along. how come that hasn't worked in this case? >> i think there are a number of reasons and part of that speaks to money and the influence of money and fraternity and sorority alumni are the biggest contributors to universities. universities officials are hard to crack down on some of the high jinks you see. those bad amazon that apples that kaitlin talked about. that's what we've seen in the news a few weeks. >> bog bigs what are you trying? >> -- bob bigs what are you trying? >> it's good to be with you. we recognized some of the situations kaitlin articulated with regard to hazing and sexual misconduct but the poor academic conduct of students, alumni drifting away from being alumni advisors, the poor conditions of the house, the 1990s, in 1997 we articulated a decision inify delta theta, that in all of our chapters would be alcohol free 24-7, 365, whether you're 18 or 80 years old it is a bright line test no alcohol on the chapter property. because we believe that the misuse and abuse of alcohol was the common denominator in all of these challenging issues. >> well, it sounds like a big part of the answer because i think you're right a lot of this starts with the lowered inbusiness of excessive use of alcohol but that would seem to be a nonstarter for a lot of the young men on campus who seek fraternity membership. how does this work now that it's been in place for 15 years? >> ray let me say this. there are a lot of men on college campuses that are frankly turned off from the misuse of alcohol. we callify call phi delta theta a place where you can use academically growth opportunities. there are men on college campuses that are looking for that kind of positive fra alternative experiences and they are finding it in phi delta that that the theta. >> very little alcohol is allowed yet it goes on unabated. >> that's right. no alcohol, less than 25 to 30% of the undergraduate membership can illegally school alcohol. it doesn't seem logical to school alcohol. >> gentry, you have been on every point in the spectrum here from being a fraternity member yourself to being in some of the largest national organizations having to do with greek life in america. who enforces social norms in the house, if i'm a 19-year-old, am i gs going to listen to my brothers or some old fud university member when it comes to laying down the law? >> absolutely. the social norms are incredibly powerful and i think thing that makes the fraternity so unique and i ask this question to national fraternity executives like bob and to campus administrators, name knee one other social institution in the world where 19, 20, 21-year-old young men have absolute power of their 18-year-old new members, their pledges? the only other institution i've come up with is the american fraternity. the members doing hazing, the active members the juniors and seniors in the house have absolute authority over those freshmen members, who gets to bid, who gets accepted. the band droark is in director -- director is in charge. teempg 18-year-oldsteaching 18-year-olds what it means to be a man. >> how do you set in place a virtuous cycle, installing positive behavior instead of negative behavior? >> absolutely. and i think phi delta theta has been a leader, we have more national fraternities willing to make bold moves, sigma phi epsilon, getting rid of traditional ledging way back in the '80s. i think we need systems of shared governance where we have more alumni involved in meaningful relations with the chapters, it serves no purpose anymore and opens the door for hazing. we have more fraternities that should be willing to go through alcohol-free housing. high standards, willing to do things differently. but so far a lot of national fraternity leaders are willing to maintain the status quo. >> i've been watching social media very closely before this program and one thing the members seem to hate is all the attention. now, are we at a point with some of these really outrageous stories where we're at a risk of losing the whole game, where some of these young men may not even realize how close they are to using up whatever patience the university has on this issue? >> that's absolutely correct. in our fraternity, phi delta theta as well we hold our students and chapters accountable. if there is a misstep by officers they could be removed removed from membership or eventually depending on the severity of the situation the chapter shut down as well. there is accountability in phi delta theta, that's what students need to be doing holding their students and chapters accountable. >> gentry is the authority of down? >> it is, when fraternity life is done right it is a tremendous life changing experience. i'm a product of that, i had a positive and meaningful fraternity experience and it made me a better person. i often wonder what percentage is doing it right, if i had to guess, 10 to 20%. and 80 to 90% are getting it incredibly wrong. we need to thank you on its head, they are willing to accept mediocrity, and we need to change that, i can assure you all these fraternities were not the priet spots in their organization, they were probably struggling mediocre chapters this had issues before and probably should have been closed a long time ago but they were allowed to continue to operate because no one had the where wherewithal of shutting it down. >> thanks for joining us gentlemen. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is going beyond the beltway to derail president obama's plans to reduce the amount of stuff put into the air by burning fossil fuels. al jazeera america national correspond libby casey has the story, behind the story, that's still ahead on "inside story." >> sunday night. >> 140 world leaders will take the podium. >> get the full story. >> there is real disunity in the security council. >> about issues that impact your world. >> infectious diseases are a major threat to health. >> "the week ahead". sunday 8:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america. glur ooh watching "inside story" on laks, i'm ray suarez. covering 100,000 wells on public lands. the rules require new inspections and requirements that companies disclose what chemicals they pump into the ground to break open oil and goes deposits. and under influence regulations from epa the states are now required to reduce the amount of pollution from coal-fired power plants. from his influential seat in washington, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell of kentucky is lobbying state governments telling them they shouldn't comply. why would a member of the united states senate give detailed advice to governors on how not to follow the law? that's a tail for al jazeera's national correspondent libby casey and she joins us now and libby how did we get to this point? >> ray, mitch mcconnell promised both voters in his home state of kentucky as well as republicans across the country that if republicans took the senate if he became majority leader he would do everything he could to stop what he calls the war on coal. and this is just part of it. it is a very unusual move. republicans are saying it is a maverick move. i think democrats are rolling their eyes in frustration. but senator mcconnell sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states saying it's not you that will be out of compliance with epa regulations, it's the epa that is out of line over what they'll ask you to do over the coming months. he's pushing states to buck rules coming down the pike and he says they will be the ones with the legal standing not the obama administration. >> the way you understand this states are given freedom to figure out for themselves how to reduce emissions to the level dictated by the epa. but if they don't do it, don't they get fined? >> well, that's right. the obama administration says the states will have a lot of leeway in crafting a plan to show how they can get within the acceptable limits. so they say it is in the state's best interests to come up with their own proposals but there will will be repercussions according to the obama administration and the federal rules. the question will be court challenges and mitch mcconnell says the law is on his side. now he's not the one in the governor's seat that will have to actually make that call and be the one to push the limbs and potentially ding the state in terms of breaching what is a rule. and so he is putting himself in an unusual position of prodding the governors to go forth and basically not obey the obama administration but -- >> are they looking for a fight with the president is that part of it? >> absolutely, absolutely ray. legislation on capitol is fairly ham -- hill is fairly hamstrung. they can push back against obama administration environmental regulation but the white house is pretty much going around the legislative process because they're not seeing any victories on comowl capitol hill these days and they're going through the epa the interior department rarg regarding other regulations like fracking. mitch mcconnell won't get many legislative victories that will get the president's signature so he's going his own way. >> what legislate are republicans getting? >> some are crafting legislation that will fight it but the sally jewel the interior secretary said today she didn't expect that to be able to get very far she says in part americans want some kinds of regulations. there haven't been any really to speak of on the books. the ones that came out have been in process for three years and they garnered 1.5 million public comments, environmental rules, they say these don't go far enough. the interior department hopes it's walking the line down the middle. >> libby casey joining us from capitol hill, great to talk to you libby. >> that's all for had edition. give us feedback law hear on the program. we invite you to follow us on twitter. the handle ajinsidestory. and sunshiny new stadiums ch the nfl foot the bill? join us for that one, i'm ray >> on "america tonight": >> it's been 21 days since nurse practitioner returned home to loomis california from an ebola treatment center in leone. >> go ahead and take your temperature, 97.5. >> the biggest challenge of the quarantine is contact with other people.
kaitlin flannagan spent a year chronicling the outrageous behavior of a frat house near you. she'll join us in a minute and then we'll talk to a sphra alternate leader who has some ideas on fixing excess of fraternities, and a consultant who advises colleges and universities and friends how to lower the risk associated with fraternity life. and later i'll do a keg stand. no i won't. it's "inside story" ." the ideal experience? you leave home for the first time, navigate your studies, get a taste of adult independence, and like minded guys you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll share formative experience, do public service and after you graduate, the real experience, for many young men the house becomes your home away from home sure. but ends up having little to do with the education that's supposedly the whole reason you're on campus. instead providing cover social sanction for behavior you may never try on your own. bing e drinking, eep even casual exposure to the headlines, might have you shaking your head wondering, how does this go on? kaitlin franklin presented a frankly shocking catalog of what's going on, in her story, "the fraternity problem." she joins us now. kaitlin, a lot of defenders of greek life say these stories are the noted exception, isolated cases, that really, it negates the good. >> the term bat apple kind of comes out of the fraternity industry a lot of times. i think that's a really interesting euphemism. when i think of someone who is a bad apple sometimes, someone pulling a prank, is sirted, but doesn't engender any bad activity. but we are talking about deeply criminal acts including sexual assault including the inflicted trauma of hazing and race ition incidents that go far beyond freedom of speech. you can certainly resistant a private bus and say horrible words in it, that's your right to do but do you have rights to belong to a club that accepts federal tax breaks and doesn't let many if any african americans into it? i don't think you don't. i don't think we're talking about bat apples at all but a small group of men who are committing grave criminal acts on college campuses. i think it deserves our attention. >> you take reader along on a journey, where you seem surprised to find out gradually the sheer shocking number of incidents just like falls from fraternity buildings. >> right. >> tell us more about people falling out of frat houses all over the country? >> well, there are a lot of serious falls from fraternity houses. the reason i studied that kind of bizarre accident is the fraternities will always tell you yes bad things go on in our fraternity houses we admit it but no more so than anywhere else in the campus, in the dorms et cetera. well let me take one strange event falling off the roof of a building and let me compare it nationally over a 12 month period between fraternity houses dorms and private reply rented residences. there was no comparison. when you are talking about a fraternity house you have kids who are on the weekends drinking titanic amounts of alcohol housing codes that don't fall into the same codes dorms do and very dilapidated structures, every single year, pretty recently one just happened, kids get drunk, they open a window to urinate or vomit and they pitch straightforward and some of those injuries are devastating and include death. i use this as a metric, are fraternity houses any more dangerous than any other college residences? i found nothing to substantiate that. >> earlier this month a video surfaced of a couple of young white men from the sigma alpha epsilon chapter of oklahoma stat university leading a racist chant, including the use of the n word and declared that african americans would never be brothers in that fraternity. the national sae organization quickly closed the campus chapter and the president david boren expelled those students. >> i think it's time to show zero tolerance on these students. >> support for the disciplinary action ton penn state campus this month. it was revealed members of the kappa delta roe fraternity shared pictures of unconscious naked women. the fraternity chapter has been expelled, in a message to the penn state community, president eric baron wrote, moss we ask for a reevaluation of the fraternity system be reevaluated? some members of the university system feel it is and we are considering our option he. kaitlin, what, can a school suddenly just decide no more frats? >> you know, that's always people's immediate response, well the school should get rid of these fraternities if they're such bad operators. in fact the famous legal saying is, the constitution does not end at the campus gates particularly at a public university such as penn state or the university of oklahoma. just because a young plan has enrolled in an institution of higher ed does not mean that he has given up his freedom of free association. he can join whatever club he wants, can he join the sierra club, he can shop at 7-eleven, or get a library club. what is a fraternity, it is a private club, he has a right to join it. certainly in my opinion colleges should end their formal relationships with any chapters that have proven themselves to be bad operators on the college campus and i further think that the national interfraternity council should make it a policy that every time a university closes down a chapter that the individual fraternity itself should shut down the chapter. there are campuses all across america where the college president has shut down an individual chapter, the national fraternity didn't shut it down and kids are living and partying and the pad bad acts continue. >> this is being fueled by families that are paying 20, 40, even north of $60,000 a year to keep their students on campus, don't parents get a vote in this? are they aware of what's going on? and how little oversight there is upon the part of the university itself? >> you know when parents figure that out it's when something terrible happens to their child. it's when a daughter is sexually assaulted in a fraternity house and suddenly they look into the deeper history that fraternity house in the news and they found there's been a lot of criminal allegations or maybe a death in that fraternity house or when someone was hazed and they try start a lawsuit against the fraternity and they find out how close the fraternity has indemnified itself. whether the it comes to the fraternity system the college doesn't look at that very carefully and the national fraternity house in the fraternity itself has in many ways distanced i itself from that bad behavior. unfortunately when parents find this out it is only when something really bad has happened. that's when i'm trying to talk to parents of college bound student saying, before your child pledges a fraternity learn about its history on that campus. some are better than others. what risk you are willing to take tell your son i'll only pay for those ones. if you can get into that otherwise i'm not paying. >> kaitlin flannagan, the fraternity problem it's worse than you think. it's a great read and still posted at the atlantic website. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. >> the fraternity rides are worth preserving and a fraternity member who's found a way. we'll take it inside his plan, it's "inside story." >> the stream, >> your digital community >> you pick the hot topics and express your thoughts the stream it's your chance to join the conversation only on al jazeera america >> now available, the new al jazeea america mobile news app. get our exclusive in depth, reporting when you want it. a global perspective wherever you are. the major headlines in context. mashable says... you'll never miss the latest news >> they will continue looking for survivors... >> the potential for energy production is huge... >> no noise, no clutter, just real reporting. the new al jazeera america mobile app available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now judge welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. i have to admit, a lot of this is foreign to my own college experience a long long time ago. on my big city campus in the 1970s greek letter societies had been chased out in the tumult of the '60s. one fraternity was allowed back my senior year and didn't make much of a splash. fast-forward 35 years and i'm walking by frat row with my undergraduate daughter on a different urban campus and all the bros were out, giants facing outside, sitting outside, drinking, cat-calling women, some interested in the attention. i asked my daughter how is this allowed, she said nobody had any control over what went open. if anybody wanted to make it stop it wasn't clear anybody could. administrations on several big campuses are now breathing down their necks. can the young men themselves take back some of the initiative, change the flair tiff. bob bigs is the executive vice president of phi delta university and jenson mccreery, he consults on best practices for greek life on campus and was formerly director of greek life at the university of alabama. he joins us from pensacola florida. gentry mccreery, you heard kaitlin flannagan talking about the lawsuits in the first part of the program. who's being sued is it for a lot payouts? >> there are a lot of big payouts and a lot of people are being sued. deep pockets individual university leaders, the first i ask them is whether or not they have an umbrella liable policy with their parents homeowners policy they may need it. universities have been fairly lucky getting them recused from a majorities of lawsuits but i think it's only amatter of time before that luck runs out. >> sometimes with a lot of reforms in society it is pain in the wallet that helps things move along. how come that hasn't worked in this case? >> i think there are a number of reasons and part of that speaks to money and the influence of money and fraternity and sorority alumni are the biggest contributors to universities. universities officials are hard to crack down on some of the high jinks you see. those bad amazon that apples that kaitlin talked about. that's what we've seen in the news a few weeks. >> bog bigs what are you trying? >> -- bob bigs what are you trying? >> it's good to be with you. we recognized some of the situations kaitlin articulated with regard to hazing and sexual misconduct but the poor academic conduct of students, alumni drifting away from being alumni advisors, the poor conditions of the house, the 1990s, in 1997 we articulated a decision inify delta theta, that in all of our chapters would be alcohol free 24-7, 365, whether you're 18 or 80 years old it is a bright line test no alcohol on the chapter property. because we believe that the misuse and abuse of alcohol was the common denominator in all of these challenging issues. >> well, it sounds like a big part of the answer because i think you're right a lot of this starts with the lowered inbusiness of excessive use of alcohol but that would seem to be a nonstarter for a lot of the young men on campus who seek fraternity membership. how does this work now that it's been in place for 15 years? >> ray let me say this. there are a lot of men on college campuses that are frankly turned off from the misuse of alcohol. we callify call phi delta theta a place where you can use academically growth opportunities. there are men on college campuses that are looking for that kind of positive fra alternative experiences and they are finding it in phi delta that that the theta. >> very little alcohol is allowed yet it goes on unabated. >> that's right. no alcohol, less than 25 to 30% of the undergraduate membership can illegally school alcohol. it doesn't seem logical to school alcohol. >> gentry, you have been on every point in the spectrum here from being a fraternity member yourself to being in some of the largest national organizations having to do with greek life in america. who enforces social norms in the house, if i'm a 19-year-old, am i gs going to listen to my brothers or some old fud university member when it comes to laying down the law? >> absolutely. the social norms are incredibly powerful and i think thing that makes the fraternity so unique and i ask this question to national fraternity executives like bob and to campus administrators, name knee one other social institution in the world where 19, 20, 21-year-old young men have absolute power of their 18-year-old new members, their pledges? the only other institution i've come up with is the american fraternity. the members doing hazing, the active members the juniors and seniors in the house have absolute authority over those freshmen members, who gets to bid, who gets accepted. the band droark is in director -- director is in charge. teempg 18-year-oldsteaching 18-year-olds what it means to be a man. >> how do you set in place a virtuous cycle, installing positive behavior instead of negative behavior? >> absolutely. and i think phi delta theta has been a leader, we have more national fraternities willing to make bold moves, sigma phi epsilon, getting rid of traditional ledging way back in the '80s. i think we need systems of shared governance where we have more alumni involved in meaningful relations with the chapters, it serves no purpose anymore and opens the door for hazing. we have more fraternities that should be willing to go through alcohol-free housing. high standards, willing to do things differently. but so far a lot of national fraternity leaders are willing to maintain the status quo. >> i've been watching social media very closely before this program and one thing the members seem to hate is all the attention. now, are we at a point with some of these really outrageous stories where we're at a risk of losing the whole game, where some of these young men may not even realize how close they are to using up whatever patience the university has on this issue? >> that's absolutely correct. in our fraternity, phi delta theta as well we hold our students and chapters accountable. if there is a misstep by officers they could be removed removed from membership or eventually depending on the severity of the situation the chapter shut down as well. there is accountability in phi delta theta, that's what students need to be doing holding their students and chapters accountable. >> gentry is the authority of down? >> it is, when fraternity life is done right it is a tremendous life changing experience. i'm a product of that, i had a positive and meaningful fraternity experience and it made me a better person. i often wonder what percentage is doing it right, if i had to guess, 10 to 20%. and 80 to 90% are getting it incredibly wrong. we need to thank you on its head, they are willing to accept mediocrity, and we need to change that, i can assure you all these fraternities were not the priet spots in their organization, they were probably struggling mediocre chapters this had issues before and probably should have been closed a long time ago but they were allowed to continue to operate because no one had the where wherewithal of shutting it down. >> thanks for joining us gentlemen. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is going beyond the beltway to derail president obama's plans to reduce the amount of stuff put into the air by burning fossil fuels. al jazeera america national correspond libby casey has the story, behind the story, that's still ahead on "inside story." >> pain killer addiction on the rise >> i loved the feeling of not being in pain >> deadly consequences >> the person i married was gone >> are we prescribing an epidemic? >> the last thing drug companies wanted anybody to think was that, this was a prescribing problem >> fault lines al jazeera america's hard hitting... >> today they will be arrested... >> ground breaking... they're firing canisters of gas at us... emmy award winning investigative series... opioid wars only on al jazeera america glur ooh watching "inside story" on laks, i'm ray suarez. covering 100,000 wells on public lands. the rules require new inspections and requirements that companies disclose what chemicals they pump into the ground to break open oil and goes deposits. and under influence regulations from epa the states are now required to reduce the amount of pollution from coal-fired power plants. from his influential seat in washington, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell of kentucky is lobbying state governments telling them they shouldn't comply. why would a member of the united states senate give detailed advice to governors on how not to follow the law? that's a tail for al jazeera's national correspondent libby casey and she joins us now and libby how did we get to this point? >> ray, mitch mcconnell promised both voters in his home state of kentucky as well as republicans across the country that if republicans took the senate if he became majority leader he would do everything he could to stop what he calls the war on coal. and this is just part of it. it is a very unusual move. republicans are saying it is a maverick move. i think democrats are rolling their eyes in frustration. but senator mcconnell sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states saying it's not you that will be out of compliance with epa regulations, it's the epa that is out of line over what they'll ask you to do over the coming months. he's pushing states to buck rules coming down the pike and he says they will be the ones with the legal standing not the obama administration. >> the way you understand this states are given freedom to figure out for themselves how to reduce emissions to the level dictated by the epa. but if they don't do it, don't they get fined? >> well, that's right. the obama administration says the states will have a lot of leeway in crafting a plan to show how they can get within the acceptable limits. so they say it is in the state's best interests to come up with their own proposals but there will will be repercussions according to the obama administration and the federal rules. the question will be court challenges and mitch mcconnell says the law is on his side. now he's not the one in the governor's seat that will have to actually make that call and be the one to push the limbs and potentially ding the state in terms of breaching what is a rule. and so he is putting himself in an unusual position of prodding the governors to go forth and basically not obey the obama administration but -- >> are they looking for a fight with the president is that part of it? >> absolutely, absolutely ray. legislation on capitol is fairly ham -- hill is fairly hamstrung. they can push back against obama administration environmental regulation but the white house is pretty much going around the legislative process because they're not seeing any victories on comowl capitol hill these days and they're going through the epa the interior department rarg regarding other regulations like fracking. mitch mcconnell won't get many legislative victories that will get the president's signature so he's going his own way. >> what legislate are republicans getting? >> some are crafting legislation that will fight it but the sally jewel the interior secretary said today she didn't expect that to be able to get very far she says in part americans want some kinds of regulations. there haven't been any really to speak of on the books. the ones that came out have been in process for three years and they garnered 1.5 million public comments, environmental rules, they say these don't go far enough. the interior department hopes it's walking the line down the middle. >> libby casey joining us from capitol hill, great to talk to you libby. >> that's all for had edition. give us feedback law hear on the program. we invite you to follow us on twitter. the handle ajinsidestory. and sunshiny new stadiums ch the nfl foot the bill? join us for that one, i'm ray china's one child policy has quoted controversy, from accusations of the state confiscating children, to forced abortions. today it is being blamed for a declining fertility rate and
you. she'll join us in a minute and then we'll talk to a sphra alternate leader who has some ideas on fixing excess of fraternities, and a consultant who advises colleges and universities and friends how to lower the risk associated with fraternity life. and later i'll do a keg stand. no i won't. it's "inside story" ." the ideal experience? you leave home for the first time, navigate your studies, get a taste of adult independence, and like minded guys you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll share formative experience, do public service and after you graduate, the real experience, for many young men the house becomes your home away from home sure. but ends up having little to do with the education that's supposedly the whole reason you're on campus. instead providing cover social sanction for behavior you may never try on your own. bing e drinking, eep even casual exposure to the headlines, might have you shaking your head wondering, how does this go on? kaitlin franklin presented a frankly shocking catalog of what's going on, in her story, "the fraternity problem." she joins us now. kaitlin, a lot of defenders of greek life say these stories are the noted exception, isolated cases, that really, it negates the good. >> the term bat apple kind of comes out of the fraternity industry a lot of times. i think that's a really interesting euphemism. when i think of someone who is a bad apple sometimes, someone pulling a prank, is sirted, but doesn't engender any bad activity. but we are talking about deeply criminal acts including sexual assault including the inflicted trauma of hazing and race ition incidents that go far beyond freedom of speech. you can certainly resistant a private bus and say horrible words in it, that's your right to do but do you have rights to belong to a club that accepts federal tax breaks and doesn't let many if any african americans into it? i don't think you don't. i don't think we're talking about bat apples at all but a small group of men who are committing grave criminal acts on college campuses. i think it deserves our attention. >> you take reader along on a journey, where you seem surprised to find out gradually the sheer shocking number of incidents just like falls from fraternity buildings. >> right. >> tell us more about people falling out of frat houses all over the country? >> well, there are a lot of serious falls from fraternity houses. the reason i studied that kind of bizarre accident is the fraternities will always tell you yes bad things go on in our fraternity houses we admit it but no more so than anywhere else in the campus, in the dorms et cetera. well let me take one strange event falling off the roof of a building and let me compare it nationally over a 12 month period between fraternity houses dorms and private reply rented residences. there was no comparison. when you are talking about a fraternity house you have kids who are on the weekends drinking titanic amounts of alcohol housing codes that don't fall into the same codes dorms do and very dilapidated structures, every single year, pretty recently one just happened, kids get drunk, they open a window to urinate or vomit and they pitch straightforward and some of those injuries are devastating and include death. i use this as a metric, are fraternity houses any more dangerous than any other college residences? i found nothing to substantiate that. >> earlier this month a video surfaced of a couple of young white men from the sigma alpha epsilon chapter of oklahoma stat university leading a racist chant, including the use of the n word and declared that african americans would never be brothers in that fraternity. the national sae organization quickly closed the campus chapter and the president david boren expelled those students. >> i think it's time to show zero tolerance on these students. >> support for the disciplinary action ton penn state campus this month. it was revealed members of the kappa delta roe fraternity shared pictures of unconscious naked women. the fraternity chapter has been expelled, in a message to the penn state community, president eric baron wrote, moss we ask for a reevaluation of the fraternity system be reevaluated? some members of the university system feel it is and we are considering our option he. kaitlin, what, can a school suddenly just decide no more frats? >> you know, that's always people's immediate response, well the school should get rid of these fraternities if they're such bad operators. in fact the famous legal saying is, the constitution does not end at the campus gates particularly at a public university such as penn state or the university of oklahoma. just because a young plan has enrolled in an institution of higher ed does not mean that he has given up his freedom of free association. he can join whatever club he wants, can he join the sierra club, he can shop at 7-eleven, or get a library club. what is a fraternity, it is a private club, he has a right to join it. certainly in my opinion colleges should end their formal relationships with any chapters that have proven themselves to be bad operators on the college campus and i further think that the national interfraternity council should make it a policy that every time a university closes down a chapter that the individual fraternity itself should shut down the chapter. there are campuses all across america where the college president has shut down an individual chapter, the national fraternity didn't shut it down and kids are living and partying and the pad bad acts continue. >> this is being fueled by families that are paying 20, 40, even north of $60,000 a year to keep their students on campus, don't parents get a vote in this? are they aware of what's going on? and how little oversight there is upon the part of the university itself? >> you know when parents figure that out it's when something terrible happens to their child. it's when a daughter is sexually assaulted in a fraternity house and suddenly they look into the deeper history that fraternity house in the news and they found there's been a lot of criminal allegations or maybe a death in that fraternity house or when someone was hazed and they try start a lawsuit against the fraternity and they find out how close the fraternity has indemnified itself. whether the it comes to the fraternity system the college doesn't look at that very carefully and the national fraternity house in the fraternity itself has in many ways distanced i itself from that bad behavior. unfortunately when parents find this out it is only when something really bad has happened. that's when i'm trying to talk to parents of college bound student saying, before your child pledges a fraternity learn about its history on that campus. some are better than others. what risk you are willing to take tell your son i'll only pay for those ones. if you can get into that otherwise i'm not paying. >> kaitlin flannagan, the fraternity problem it's worse than you think. it's a great read and still posted at the atlantic website. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. >> the fraternity rides are worth preserving and a fraternity member who's found a way. we'll take it inside his plan, it's "inside story." >> tomorrow. >> you're taking "if" i have kids and you're changing it to "when" i have kids. >> a life-changing choice. >> it is wonderful to have children, but i think you can have a happy life without children. >> follow a very personal journey. >> after the age of 45 to get pregnant... is one percent. >> i'm a bit nervous. >> from the best filmmakers of our time. >> it's not traditionally what broadcast journalism does. >> the new home for original documentaries. al jazeera america presents "motherhood on ice". tomorrow, 10:00 eastern. only on al jazeera america >> sunday night. >> 140 world leaders will take the podium. >> get the full story. >> there is real disunity in the security council. >> about issues that impact your world. >> infectious diseases are a major threat to health. >> "the week ahead". sunday 8:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america. judge welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. i have to admit, a lot of this is foreign to my own college experience a long long time ago. on my big city campus in the 1970s greek letter societies had been chased out in the tumult of the '60s. one fraternity was allowed back my senior year and didn't make much of a splash. fast-forward 35 years and i'm walking by frat row with my undergraduate daughter on a different urban campus and all the bros were out, giants facing outside, sitting outside, drinking, cat-calling women, some interested in the attention. i asked my daughter how is this allowed, she said nobody had any control over what went open. if anybody wanted to make it stop it wasn't clear anybody could. administrations on several big campuses are now breathing down their necks. can the young men themselves take back some of the initiative, change the flair tiff. bob bigs is the executive vice president of phi delta university and jenson mccreery, he consults on best practices for greek life on campus and was formerly director of greek life at the university of alabama. he joins us from pensacola florida. gentry mccreery, you heard kaitlin flannagan talking about the lawsuits in the first part of the program. who's being sued is it for a lot payouts? >> there are a lot of big payouts and a lot of people are being sued. deep pockets individual university leaders, the first i ask them is whether or not they have an umbrella liable policy with their parents homeowners policy they may need it. universities have been fairly lucky getting them recused from a majorities of lawsuits but i think it's only amatter of time before that luck runs out. >> sometimes with a lot of reforms in society it is pain in the wallet that helps things move along. how come that hasn't worked in this case? >> i think there are a number of reasons and part of that speaks to money and the influence of money and fraternity and sorority alumni are the biggest contributors to universities. universities officials are hard to crack down on some of the high jinks you see. those bad amazon that apples that kaitlin talked about. that's what we've seen in the news a few weeks. >> bog bigs what are you trying? >> -- bob bigs what are you trying? >> it's good to be with you. we recognized some of the situations kaitlin articulated with regard to hazing and sexual misconduct but the poor academic conduct of students, alumni drifting away from being alumni advisors, the poor conditions of the house, the 1990s, in 1997 we articulated a decision inify delta theta, that in all of our chapters would be alcohol free 24-7, 365, whether you're 18 or 80 years old it is a bright line test no alcohol on the chapter property. because we believe that the misuse and abuse of alcohol was the common denominator in all of these challenging issues. >> well, it sounds like a big part of the answer because i think you're right a lot of this starts with the lowered inbusiness of excessive use of alcohol but that would seem to be a nonstarter for a lot of the young men on campus who seek fraternity membership. how does this work now that it's been in place for 15 years? >> ray let me say this. there are a lot of men on college campuses that are frankly turned off from the misuse of alcohol. we callify call phi delta theta a place where you can use academically growth opportunities. there are men on college campuses that are looking for that kind of positive fra alternative experiences and they are finding it in phi delta that that the theta. >> very little alcohol is allowed yet it goes on unabated. >> that's right. no alcohol, less than 25 to 30% of the undergraduate membership can illegally school alcohol. it doesn't seem logical to school alcohol. >> gentry, you have been on every point in the spectrum here from being a fraternity member yourself to being in some of the largest national organizations having to do with greek life in america. who enforces social norms in the house, if i'm a 19-year-old, am i gs going to listen to my brothers or some old fud university member when it comes to laying down the law? >> absolutely. the social norms are incredibly powerful and i think thing that makes the fraternity so unique and i ask this question to national fraternity executives like bob and to campus administrators, name knee one other social institution in the world where 19, 20, 21-year-old young men have absolute power of their 18-year-old new members, their pledges? the only other institution i've come up with is the american fraternity. the members doing hazing, the active members the juniors and seniors in the house have absolute authority over those freshmen members, who gets to bid, who gets accepted. the band droark is in director -- director is in charge. teempg 18-year-oldsteaching 18-year-olds what it means to be a man. >> how do you set in place a virtuous cycle, installing positive behavior instead of negative behavior? >> absolutely. and i think phi delta theta has been a leader, we have more national fraternities willing to make bold moves, sigma phi epsilon, getting rid of traditional ledging way back in the '80s. i think we need systems of shared governance where we have more alumni involved in meaningful relations with the chapters, it serves no purpose anymore and opens the door for hazing. we have more fraternities that should be willing to go through alcohol-free housing. high standards, willing to do things differently. but so far a lot of national fraternity leaders are willing to maintain the status quo. >> i've been watching social media very closely before this program and one thing the members seem to hate is all the attention. now, are we at a point with some of these really outrageous stories where we're at a risk of losing the whole game, where some of these young men may not even realize how close they are to using up whatever patience the university has on this issue? >> that's absolutely correct. in our fraternity, phi delta theta as well we hold our students and chapters accountable. if there is a misstep by officers they could be removed removed from membership or eventually depending on the severity of the situation the chapter shut down as well. there is accountability in phi delta theta, that's what students need to be doing holding their students and chapters accountable. >> gentry is the authority of down? >> it is, when fraternity life is done right it is a tremendous life changing experience. i'm a product of that, i had a positive and meaningful fraternity experience and it made me a better person. i often wonder what percentage is doing it right, if i had to guess, 10 to 20%. and 80 to 90% are getting it incredibly wrong. we need to thank you on its head, they are willing to accept mediocrity, and we need to change that, i can assure you all these fraternities were not the priet spots in their organization, they were probably struggling mediocre chapters this had issues before and probably should have been closed a long time ago but they were allowed to continue to operate because no one had the where wherewithal of shutting it down. >> thanks for joining us gentlemen. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is going beyond the beltway to derail president obama's plans to reduce the amount of stuff put into the air by burning fossil fuels. al jazeera america national correspond libby casey has the story, behind the story, that's still ahead on "inside story." >> tomorrow. >> you have to look at the suffering of these children. >> director of unicef, anthony lake. >> every one of those numbers is an individual child. >> helping the innocent victims of war. >> what can unicef do? >> there's a very short answer... our best. >> every tomorrow night. >> i lived that character. >> go one on one with america's movers and shakers. >> we will be able to see change. >> gripping. inspiring. entertaining. talk to al jazeera. tomorrow, 6:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america. glur ooh watching "inside story" on laks, i'm ray suarez. covering 100,000 wells on public lands. the rules require new inspections and requirements that companies disclose what chemicals they pump into the ground to break open oil and goes deposits. and under influence regulations from epa the states are now required to reduce the amount of pollution from coal-fired power plants. from his influential seat in washington, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell of kentucky is lobbying state governments telling them they shouldn't comply. why would a member of the united states senate give detailed advice to governors on how not to follow the law? that's a tail for al jazeera's national correspondent libby casey and she joins us now and libby how did we get to this point? >> ray, mitch mcconnell promised both voters in his home state of kentucky as well as republicans across the country that if republicans took the senate if he became majority leader he would do everything he could to stop what he calls the war on coal. and this is just part of it. it is a very unusual move. republicans are saying it is a maverick move. i think democrats are rolling their eyes in frustration. but senator mcconnell sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states saying it's not you that will be out of compliance with epa regulations, it's the epa that is out of line over what they'll ask you to do over the coming months. he's pushing states to buck rules coming down the pike and he says they will be the ones with the legal standing not the obama administration. >> the way you understand this states are given freedom to figure out for themselves how to reduce emissions to the level dictated by the epa. but if they don't do it, don't they get fined? >> well, that's right. the obama administration says the states will have a lot of leeway in crafting a plan to show how they can get within the acceptable limits. so they say it is in the state's best interests to come up with their own proposals but there will will be repercussions according to the obama administration and the federal rules. the question will be court challenges and mitch mcconnell says the law is on his side. now he's not the one in the governor's seat that will have to actually make that call and be the one to push the limbs and potentially ding the state in terms of breaching what is a rule. and so he is putting himself in an unusual position of prodding the governors to go forth and basically not obey the obama administration but -- >> are they looking for a fight with the president is that part of it? >> absolutely, absolutely ray. legislation on capitol is fairly ham -- hill is fairly hamstrung. they can push back against obama administration environmental regulation but the white house is pretty much going around the legislative process because they're not seeing any victories on comowl capitol hill these days and they're going through the epa the interior department rarg regarding other regulations like fracking. mitch mcconnell won't get many legislative victories that will get the president's signature so he's going his own way. >> what legislate are republicans getting? >> some are crafting legislation that will fight it but the sally jewel the interior secretary said today she didn't expect that to be able to get very far she says in part americans want some kinds of regulations. there haven't been any really to speak of on the books. the ones that came out have been in process for three years and they garnered 1.5 million public comments, environmental rules, they say these don't go far enough. the interior department hopes it's walking the line down the middle. >> libby casey joining us from capitol hill, great to talk to you libby. >> that's all for had edition. give us feedback law hear on the program. we invite you to follow us on twitter. the handle ajinsidestory. and sunshiny new stadiums ch the nfl foot the bill? join us for that one, i'm ray > across america, there's a booming industry worth over $2 billion. >> every year, thousands of children, some as young as 5 are sent away to camps and programs. >> you feel that pain? >> [crying] oh! >> that's the pain your mother feels when you disrespect her son. >> children are taken to these programs for weeks months or even years.
behavior of a frat house near you. she'll join us in a minute and then we'll talk to a sphra alternate leader who has some ideas on fixing excess of fraternities, and a consultant who advises colleges and universities and friends how to lower the risk associated with fraternity life. and later i'll do a keg stand. no i won't. it's "inside story" ." the ideal experience? you leave home for the first time, navigate your studies, get a taste of adult independence, and like minded guys you'll know for the rest of your life, you'll share formative experience, do public service and after you graduate, the real experience, for many young men the house becomes your home away from home sure. but ends up having little to do with the education that's supposedly the whole reason you're on campus. instead providing cover social sanction for behavior you may never try on your own. bing e drinking, eep even casual exposure to the headlines, might have you shaking your head wondering, how does this go on? kaitlin franklin presented a frankly shocking catalog of what's going on, in her story, "the fraternity problem." she joins us now. kaitlin, a lot of defenders of greek life say these stories are the noted exception, isolated cases, that really, it negates the good. >> the term bat apple kind of comes out of the fraternity industry a lot of times. i think that's a really interesting euphemism. when i think of someone who is a bad apple sometimes, someone pulling a prank, is sirted, but doesn't engender any bad activity. but we are talking about deeply criminal acts including sexual assault including the inflicted trauma of hazing and race ition incidents that go far beyond freedom of speech. you can certainly resistant a private bus and say horrible words in it, that's your right to do but do you have rights to belong to a club that accepts federal tax breaks and doesn't let many if any african americans into it? i don't think you don't. i don't think we're talking about bat apples at all but a small group of men who are committing grave criminal acts on college campuses. i think it deserves our attention. >> you take reader along on a journey, where you seem surprised to find out gradually the sheer shocking number of incidents just like falls from fraternity buildings. >> right. >> tell us more about people falling out of frat houses all over the country? >> well, there are a lot of serious falls from fraternity houses. the reason i studied that kind of bizarre accident is the fraternities will always tell you yes bad things go on in our fraternity houses we admit it but no more so than anywhere else in the campus, in the dorms et cetera. well let me take one strange event falling off the roof of a building and let me compare it nationally over a 12 month period between fraternity houses dorms and private reply rented residences. there was no comparison. when you are talking about a fraternity house you have kids who are on the weekends drinking titanic amounts of alcohol housing codes that don't fall into the same codes dorms do and very dilapidated structures, every single year, pretty recently one just happened, kids get drunk, they open a window to urinate or vomit and they pitch straightforward and some of those injuries are devastating and include death. i use this as a metric, are fraternity houses any more dangerous than any other college residences? i found nothing to substantiate that. >> earlier this month a video surfaced of a couple of young white men from the sigma alpha epsilon chapter of oklahoma stat university leading a racist chant, including the use of the n word and declared that african americans would never be brothers in that fraternity. the national sae organization quickly closed the campus chapter and the president david boren expelled those students. >> i think it's time to show zero tolerance on these students. >> support for the disciplinary action ton penn state campus this month. it was revealed members of the kappa delta roe fraternity shared pictures of unconscious naked women. the fraternity chapter has been expelled, in a message to the penn state community, president eric baron wrote, moss we ask for a reevaluation of the fraternity system be reevaluated? some members of the university system feel it is and we are considering our option he. kaitlin, what, can a school suddenly just decide no more frats? >> you know, that's always people's immediate response, well the school should get rid of these fraternities if they're such bad operators. in fact the famous legal saying is, the constitution does not end at the campus gates particularly at a public university such as penn state or the university of oklahoma. just because a young plan has enrolled in an institution of higher ed does not mean that he has given up his freedom of free association. he can join whatever club he wants, can he join the sierra club, he can shop at 7-eleven, or get a library club. what is a fraternity, it is a private club, he has a right to join it. certainly in my opinion colleges should end their formal relationships with any chapters that have proven themselves to be bad operators on the college campus and i further think that the national interfraternity council should make it a policy that every time a university closes down a chapter that the individual fraternity itself should shut down the chapter. there are campuses all across america where the college president has shut down an individual chapter, the national fraternity didn't shut it down and kids are living and partying and the pad bad acts continue. >> this is being fueled by families that are paying 20, 40, even north of $60,000 a year to keep their students on campus, don't parents get a vote in this? are they aware of what's going on? and how little oversight there is upon the part of the university itself? >> you know when parents figure that out it's when something terrible happens to their child. it's when a daughter is sexually assaulted in a fraternity house and suddenly they look into the deeper history that fraternity house in the news and they found there's been a lot of criminal allegations or maybe a death in that fraternity house or when someone was hazed and they try start a lawsuit against the fraternity and they find out how close the fraternity has indemnified itself. whether the it comes to the fraternity system the college doesn't look at that very carefully and the national fraternity house in the fraternity itself has in many ways distanced i itself from that bad behavior. unfortunately when parents find this out it is only when something really bad has happened. that's when i'm trying to talk to parents of college bound student saying, before your child pledges a fraternity learn about its history on that campus. some are better than others. what risk you are willing to take tell your son i'll only pay for those ones. if you can get into that otherwise i'm not paying. >> kaitlin flannagan, the fraternity problem it's worse than you think. it's a great read and still posted at the atlantic website. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. >> the fraternity rides are worth preserving and a fraternity member who's found a way. we'll take it inside his plan, it's "inside story." >> criminal gangs risking lives >> it's for this... 3 grams of gold >> killing our planet >> where it's blood red... that's where the mercury is most intense >> now, fighting back with science... >> we fire a laser imaging system out of the bottom of the plane >> revealing the deadly human threat >> because the mercury is dumped into the rivers and lakes, it then gets into the food chain... >> that's hitting home >> it ends up on the dinner plate of people... >> techknow only on al jazeera america >> i think we're into something that's bigger than us... >> that's the pain that your mother feels when you disrespect her son... >> me being here is defying all odds... >> they were patriots they wanted there country back >> al jazeera america presents the passion... >> onward.. >> pain... >> it's too much... >> ..and triumph... inspirational real life stories >> all these labels the world throws at you, that's what drives me judge welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. i have to admit, a lot of this is foreign to my own college experience a long long time ago. on my big city campus in the 1970s greek letter societies had been chased out in the tumult of the '60s. one fraternity was allowed back my senior year and didn't make much of a splash. fast-forward 35 years and i'm walking by frat row with my undergraduate daughter on a different urban campus and all the bros were out, giants facing outside, sitting outside, drinking, cat-calling women, some interested in the attention. i asked my daughter how is this allowed, she said nobody had any control over what went open. if anybody wanted to make it stop it wasn't clear anybody could. administrations on several big campuses are now breathing down their necks. can the young men themselves take back some of the initiative, change the flair tiff. bob bigs is the executive vice president of phi delta university and jenson mccreery, he consults on best practices for greek life on campus and was formerly director of greek life at the university of alabama. he joins us from pensacola florida. gentry mccreery, you heard kaitlin flannagan talking about the lawsuits in the first part of the program. who's being sued is it for a lot payouts? >> there are a lot of big payouts and a lot of people are being sued. deep pockets individual university leaders, the first i ask them is whether or not they have an umbrella liable policy with their parents homeowners policy they may need it. universities have been fairly lucky getting them recused from a majorities of lawsuits but i think it's only amatter of time before that luck runs out. >> sometimes with a lot of reforms in society it is pain in the wallet that helps things move along. how come that hasn't worked in this case? >> i think there are a number of reasons and part of that speaks to money and the influence of money and fraternity and sorority alumni are the biggest contributors to universities. universities officials are hard to crack down on some of the high jinks you see. those bad amazon that apples that kaitlin talked about. that's what we've seen in the news a few weeks. >> bog bigs what are you trying? >> -- bob bigs what are you trying? >> it's good to be with you. we recognized some of the situations kaitlin articulated with regard to hazing and sexual misconduct but the poor academic conduct of students, alumni drifting away from being alumni advisors, the poor conditions of the house, the 1990s, in 1997 we articulated a decision inify delta theta, that in all of our chapters would be alcohol free 24-7, 365, whether you're 18 or 80 years old it is a bright line test no alcohol on the chapter property. because we believe that the misuse and abuse of alcohol was the common denominator in all of these challenging issues. >> well, it sounds like a big part of the answer because i think you're right a lot of this starts with the lowered inbusiness of excessive use of alcohol but that would seem to be a nonstarter for a lot of the young men on campus who seek fraternity membership. how does this work now that it's been in place for 15 years? >> ray let me say this. there are a lot of men on college campuses that are frankly turned off from the misuse of alcohol. we callify call phi delta theta a place where you can use academically growth opportunities. there are men on college campuses that are looking for that kind of positive fra alternative experiences and they are finding it in phi delta that that the theta. >> very little alcohol is allowed yet it goes on unabated. >> that's right. no alcohol, less than 25 to 30% of the undergraduate membership can illegally school alcohol. it doesn't seem logical to school alcohol. >> gentry, you have been on every point in the spectrum here from being a fraternity member yourself to being in some of the largest national organizations having to do with greek life in america. who enforces social norms in the house, if i'm a 19-year-old, am i gs going to listen to my brothers or some old fud university member when it comes to laying down the law? >> absolutely. the social norms are incredibly powerful and i think thing that makes the fraternity so unique and i ask this question to national fraternity executives like bob and to campus administrators, name knee one other social institution in the world where 19, 20, 21-year-old young men have absolute power of their 18-year-old new members, their pledges? the only other institution i've come up with is the american fraternity. the members doing hazing, the active members the juniors and seniors in the house have absolute authority over those freshmen members, who gets to bid, who gets accepted. the band droark is in director -- director is in charge. teempg 18-year-oldsteaching 18-year-olds what it means to be a man. >> how do you set in place a virtuous cycle, installing positive behavior instead of negative behavior? >> absolutely. and i think phi delta theta has been a leader, we have more national fraternities willing to make bold moves, sigma phi epsilon, getting rid of traditional ledging way back in the '80s. i think we need systems of shared governance where we have more alumni involved in meaningful relations with the chapters, it serves no purpose anymore and opens the door for hazing. we have more fraternities that should be willing to go through alcohol-free housing. high standards, willing to do things differently. but so far a lot of national fraternity leaders are willing to maintain the status quo. >> i've been watching social media very closely before this program and one thing the members seem to hate is all the attention. now, are we at a point with some of these really outrageous stories where we're at a risk of losing the whole game, where some of these young men may not even realize how close they are to using up whatever patience the university has on this issue? >> that's absolutely correct. in our fraternity, phi delta theta as well we hold our students and chapters accountable. if there is a misstep by officers they could be removed removed from membership or eventually depending on the severity of the situation the chapter shut down as well. there is accountability in phi delta theta, that's what students need to be doing holding their students and chapters accountable. >> gentry is the authority of down? >> it is, when fraternity life is done right it is a tremendous life changing experience. i'm a product of that, i had a positive and meaningful fraternity experience and it made me a better person. i often wonder what percentage is doing it right, if i had to guess, 10 to 20%. and 80 to 90% are getting it incredibly wrong. we need to thank you on its head, they are willing to accept mediocrity, and we need to change that, i can assure you all these fraternities were not the priet spots in their organization, they were probably struggling mediocre chapters this had issues before and probably should have been closed a long time ago but they were allowed to continue to operate because no one had the where wherewithal of shutting it down. >> thanks for joining us gentlemen. >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is going beyond the beltway to derail president obama's plans to reduce the amount of stuff put into the air by burning fossil fuels. al jazeera america national correspond libby casey has the story, behind the story, that's still ahead on "inside story." >> the new al jazeera america primetime. get the real news you've been looking for. at 7:00, a thorough wrapup of the day's events. then at 8:00, john seigenthaler digs deeper into the stories of the day. and at 9:00, get a global perspective on the news. weeknights, on al jazeera america . glur ooh watching "inside story" on laks, i'm ray suarez. covering 100,000 wells on public lands. the rules require new inspections and requirements that companies disclose what chemicals they pump into the ground to break open oil and goes deposits. and under influence regulations from epa the states are now required to reduce the amount of pollution from coal-fired power plants. from his influential seat in washington, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell of kentucky is lobbying state governments telling them they shouldn't comply. why would a member of the united states senate give detailed advice to governors on how not to follow the law? that's a tail for al jazeera's national correspondent libby casey and she joins us now and libby how did we get to this point? >> ray, mitch mcconnell promised both voters in his home state of kentucky as well as republicans across the country that if republicans took the senate if he became majority leader he would do everything he could to stop what he calls the war on coal. and this is just part of it. it is a very unusual move. republicans are saying it is a maverick move. i think democrats are rolling their eyes in frustration. but senator mcconnell sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states saying it's not you that will be out of compliance with epa regulations, it's the epa that is out of line over what they'll ask you to do over the coming months. he's pushing states to buck rules coming down the pike and he says they will be the ones with the legal standing not the obama administration. >> the way you understand this states are given freedom to figure out for themselves how to reduce emissions to the level dictated by the epa. but if they don't do it, don't they get fined? >> well, that's right. the obama administration says the states will have a lot of leeway in crafting a plan to show how they can get within the acceptable limits. so they say it is in the state's best interests to come up with their own proposals but there will will be repercussions according to the obama administration and the federal rules. the question will be court challenges and mitch mcconnell says the law is on his side. now he's not the one in the governor's seat that will have to actually make that call and be the one to push the limbs and potentially ding the state in terms of breaching what is a rule. and so he is putting himself in an unusual position of prodding the governors to go forth and basically not obey the obama administration but -- >> are they looking for a fight with the president is that part of it? >> absolutely, absolutely ray. legislation on capitol is fairly ham -- hill is fairly hamstrung. they can push back against obama administration environmental regulation but the white house is pretty much going around the legislative process because they're not seeing any victories on comowl capitol hill these days and they're going through the epa the interior department rarg regarding other regulations like fracking. mitch mcconnell won't get many legislative victories that will get the president's signature so he's going his own way. >> what legislate are republicans getting? >> some are crafting legislation that will fight it but the sally jewel the interior secretary said today she didn't expect that to be able to get very far she says in part americans want some kinds of regulations. there haven't been any really to speak of on the books. the ones that came out have been in process for three years and they garnered 1.5 million public comments, environmental rules, they say these don't go far enough. the interior department hopes it's walking the line down the middle. >> libby casey joining us from capitol hill, great to talk to you libby. >> that's all for had edition. give us feedback law hear on the program. we invite you to follow us on twitter. the handle ajinsidestory. and sunshiny new stadiums ch the nfl foot the bill? join us for that one, i'm ray >> announcer: this is al jazeera. ♪ hello, welcome to the news hour i'm in doha and these are our top stories singapore mourns the death of their founding father lee kuan yew. can they defeat i.s.i.l., we report from the libya city of misrata where people are again fighting for their lives. a year on from the start of the ebola outbreak a
with five other world powers and iran. the self-imposed deadline is today. it statement is expected once russia's representative returns. he is sounding more optimistic about the process. >> one can never be sure with anything 100% but if nobody makes the stakes too high and tries to benefit or get some advantages at the last moment, i believe so far the prospects are rather good. betty: the ultimate deadline for a deal is june 30. the prime minister of greece is seeking support from his opponent so everybody can be on the same page on the bailout issue. he wants opposition lawmakers to biack's plan for ending austerity. >> we want a new agreement for development. a new agreement that must have been necessary restructuring of the debt because no country when it has a debt of 180% of its gdp can safely come out to the markets. this is the sour truth. betty: greece and its creditors are far apart. european officials say the proposed reforms do not merit more bailout money. everybody complains about the weather. but nobody does anything about it. don't tell that to ibm. they're teaming up with the weather channel to develop forecasting tools for companies. they want to help retailers prepare better for bad weather. we will be finding out more about their joint venture, joined by the ceo david kenny and bob picciano. a mysterious tweet from the founder of tesla. musk says his company will unveil a new product line. it is not a car. people are guessing that it will be batteries for home use. march madness driving some fans to dig deep into their wallets. the average retail price for a ticket to the final four $1900. 25% more than the prior record set last year. those are your top headlines this morning. just hours to go until midnight deadline, negotiators in switzerland may be close twitter limit her deal to limit iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions. peter cook has much more on the talks. it looks like things are turning a little bit for the better. are they going to cross the finish line today? peter: they're going to cross some line today, but at the finish line. they are closing in on an agreement a declaration, if you will of the broad agreement to limit iran's nuclear program going forward, the steps needed to do that. they will have the remaining three months to work on the fine print and solidify that deal and concrete terms by the july 1 deadline which has always been the final deadline. they still have some issues to work out but they are also include some of the authority issues on the sidelines and use the next three months to work out some of those sticky issues about the pace of sanctions relief and what is going to happen to the research and development program that iran has. betty: those are the sticking points. there is one sticky point in washington. how are members of congress going to react to any type of preliminary deal? peter: there are a lot of republicans ready to shred this agreement or matter what it says. you can expect some harsh criticism from republicans perhaps from israel as well. it is safe to say that the administration is hoping to have enough here to be able to convince skeptical members of congress that they have enough here to move forward toward the july 1 deadline and there is no reason for congress to blow up this agreement at this time. betty: thank you so much for the update. last week the deadly plane crash could have legal implications for germanwings and lufthansa. the copilot had suicidal tendencies. lufthansa has announced it will pay $54,000 to each of the families of the crash victims. that some will not affect future settlements. june, we were talking about this yesterday. what are the liabilities for lufthansa? is there any way they will get out of paying anymore damages? june: no. there is no way. the liability is limited. the victim's families can get up to one of his $60,000 depending on damages -- $160,000 depending on damages. the only way they could stop them from going over that cap is it lufthansa -- if lufthansa can prove it is not at fault. betty: it seems like that would be harder and harder for lufthansa to prove. what are we talking about in terms of amount? june: anything from $100,000 to millions of dollars. germany is at the lowest because they go by the law in that country. germany wants to discourage litigation. the highest is the united states. people could get millions of dollars here. it's a calculation that considers how many dependents there were, how much the person made. they don't consider emotional factors at all. it's so cold. betty: creeps you out a bit. that is going to be a ramification for lufthansa. june: their insurer has said that they will pick up that cost , even if lufthansa is bound to be negligent or whatever, they will still pick up the cost of that. they have set aside $300 million, which is a lot for something like this. betty: today marks the final trading day of the quarter. the major averages are going to record their ninth consecutive quarterly gains. sounds like it is historical here. scarlet: it looks like the s&p 500 was going to end its quarterly streak of games. when you look at the year today performance, it did bounce back. these are hardly robust gains. the s&p 500 and the dow reached their peak march 2. if you look at the best-performing sectors, we talked about all the deals and health care yesterday. the propelled health care to the best performance. retailers and auto shares also gained. among the worst performers, utilities and bob proxies. -- bond proxies. financials also did not do so well. the bank stress test caused a lot of concern. betty: no doubt the first quarter has been huge for mn &a. what about earnings gekko scarlet: we heard from intel that revenue would be less than anticipated. sandisk is the worst performer out of the s&p 500 after warning that earnings would come in less than anticipated because of lower demand for its flash memory chips. earnings are forecast to shrink for three straight quarters in 2015. if this comes to pass, that could signal a bear market at a time when valuations aren't five-year highs. betty: scarlet fu. much more ahead, including harnessing the power of weather. bob picciano and david kenny joining me to discuss their alliance to bring advanced weather insight to businesses. ♪ betty: here's a look at our top story this morning. big corporations in indiana telling the states leaders to fix the law so it can be used to discriminate against gays. ceos have signed a letter to the governor and legislative leaders -- they will clarify the measures of that nobody can be denied services. the debate in arkansas. a new deal will create the world's biggest online luxury goods retailer. they have agreed to buy -- the transaction valued at 700 and $5 million -- $775 million. mcdonald's trying to get americans to start loving it once more. the world's biggest restaurant chain has been experimenting with serving breakfast all day long at some san diego outlets. breakfast foods account for 25% of mcdonald's business. talk about starbucks have extended their practiced offerings. -- breakfast offerings. those are your top stories this morning. coming up, fareed zakaria joining me on everything from iran to his new book on liberal arts education. defending liberal arts. connecting with filmmaker morgan spurlock, more of his new original series with aol. no more excuses -- you can't blame the weather anymore for sluggish profits. ibm and the weather company are teaming up to help companies accurately track whether data -- weather data. for more on this alliance, we are joined by david kenny, the chairman and ceo of the weather company and bob picciano senior vice president of ibm analytics. how did this come together? david: we have a common passion around helping businesses transform. you saw us make a landmark relationship with twitter last year. bringing the voice of the customer into every business decision. now, we have the opportunity to do the same thing about the atmosphere. call it the voice of mother nature. taking the weather excuses out of business. betty: companies for decades have been analyzing whether data. how is this going to be different? david: we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in science to make sure we can get more observations from the internet of things. processing and more quickly. mobile has allowed us to give it back to people where they are. we have made enormous advances in both the predict ability, the insight and the analytics. it has come a long way. betty: it has come a long way. how come neither of you wanted to do this on your own? bob: it is a great combination of capability. precision, more accuracy, more real-time information. when you look at most businesses , the way they think about their day, the same day's everyday for them as it relates to whether. we get up and plan our morning around the weather. businesses don't think about it at that level of granularity. they don't think about it on a global scale. the don't think about it in small businesses the way they do in large enterprises. betty: you and i have talked about this. the partnership you have with walmart. we had paul walsh on before to describe -- that is the way that works with them. give me an example. how will this work with ibm? david: the weather is one important piece of data it. doing that as a one off is really time-consuming. hard for them and hard for us. ibm because of their focus on in right of things, can bring lots of different data together including ours. you become part of thee fabric of the decision. the way businesses make more money is to bring this data together. we put weather in with inventory data economic data, competitive data so you are making the best possible business decision. betty: how are you sharing revenue? david: we will develop -- bob: we will develop sense of applications that will deliver new solutions to the marketplace. we will share revenues around the data and applications. betty: how much investment is going into this? bob: ibm is making a major announcement around its investment in the internet of things over the next four years to focus in on what david was referring to. as people build more data rich products so they can have more awareness about how they are serving consumers. they're helping people develop and design those products. betty: you have the weather twitter, who else? ♪ companies like -- bob: companies like pratt and whitney and whirlpool. ensuring that their delivering differentiated service to the airlines as they deliver their product which powers the airlines throughout the country. same with whirlpool. they want to have a better consumer appliance experience. betty: i have to ask you about this -- we had barry myers on earlier this month speaking about verizon. people are calling it the weather wars these days. is this going to be something that differentiates the weather company from accuweather? people have made much about the recent advertising you put out. david: this differentiates both of us, ibm and the weather company in terms of bringing data to decisions. we will help businesses make better decisions. it's because to a different scale. this is a global scale for the whole economy the private sector and the public sector. it's a completely -- it is a game changer in a fundamental way. betty: great to see you this money. -- this morning. david kenny and bob picciano. coming up, one business that has many people fuming e-cigarettes. tenant take on -- can it take on the campaign from the cdc? ♪ betty: you are watching "in the loop." good morning. i'm betty liu. the u.s. centers for disease control taking on the electronic cigarette industry for the first time. this ad started running in prepublication yesterday -- three publications yesterday. he wound up using both products -- she wound up using both products until she ended up with a lung disease. it is part of a $68 million anti-smoking campaign being rolled out by the cdc and comes as the fda weighs new rules for regulating electronic cigarettes. joining us is miguel martin president of logic technology the second largest e-cigarette manufacturer in the nine states. -- united states. miguel: with the cdc and the fda there is a lot more we agree with. the cdc has talked about a lot of things. access to these products to kids. we completely agree with that and believe these should only be confident -- sold and targeted to adults. betty: what are you doing about it? miguel: we are not going to come out and refute the cdc. we support the fda and the science-based approach. betty: the cdc and critics would say i get it, you agree that you should not be marketing these to children. what are these manufacturers doing to make sure it doesn't get in the hands of kids? you have flavored vaporizers, gummy bear, cotton candy bubblegum flavored. why produce those if you want to keep them out of the hands of kids? mcgill: -- miguel: we don't have any youth-oriented flavors. a lot of these profits are accessed by kids to the internet. we have one of the most robust internet security systems. here in new york city, you have to be 21 to access the website. the vast majority of our products are sold in brick-and-mortar stores. we would support a complete ban on sales on the internet so kids could not have access. betty: how do you verify that and make sure they are 18 or older or 21 or older? mmiguel: the excess credit record so if you go in, you have to be the person you say you are at the address you say you are. if you are a child that buried your parents credit card you would have to take a smart quiz. what type of card you have? -- car did you have? the most important thing you can do is make sure that these are only sold in brick-and-mortar stores. betty: the other criticism from the cdc, these products have been marketed as an alternative to smoking. what some reports are finding is that 75% of those who vape are also smokers. there are some studies out there come if you are watching e-cigarette adds you are more likely to smoke or take up cigarettes if you have already quit. betty:miguel: if you think about the way these folks are seeing these products, we would support a ban on television. you are not having some of those concerns. we will learn a lot more about these products. like traditional cigarettes, they are chemical compounds. as you ascertain what is going on with them, you can make changes to these products and give smokers an alternative. betty: do you feel -- do you agree with the studies that say that vaping encourages smoking? miguel: i think it is too early to know that. we are at the beginning of this process. patches and gums and other alternatives for adult smokers have not been as viable. this is a product that is a lot more viable because it picks up on a lot of the score cues -- those core cues. betty: how prepared are you for the fda? miguel: we are spending millions on it. this is a process that a lot of companies have been through. we think this is a differentiation point. ingredient disclosure, labeling iso-certification, manufacturing adherence transportation -- it is substantive what you have to do. we support that. we think that is the right thing as this industry moves forward. betty: thank you so much. great to see you this morning. miguel martin, the president of logic technology, one of the largest e-cigarette manufacturers in the u.s. signs of progress today in the iranian nuclear talks. officials say an agreement is near on some major steps. john kerry is back at work in switzerland with five other world powers and iran. the self-imposed deadline is today. the ultimate deadline for a deal is this summer, june 30. the primary stroke greece is seeking support from his opponent. he was opposition lawmakers that the prime minister -- the prime and asked her -- prime minister of greece is seeking support from his opponents. prosecutors say the copilot planned for the germanwings tragedy had been treated for suicidal tendencies. andreas lubitz intentionally crashed the airliner last week. he went through psychotherapy before getting his pilot's license three years ago. lawyers for the accused boston marathon bomber calling witnesses today. the prosecution is wrapped up its case. his attorneys are trying to prove he was elsewhere when the biomaterials were bought. he could be executed if convicted. some musicians and say they feel shortchanged by internet streaming. jay-z is behind title. he and his wife will hold stakes in the company. >> when you see such incredible emotion, today is an amazing benchmark for something very significant. we're definitely creating a difference really to have a sense of control is what tidal offers. betty: usher talked about it with pimm fox paid into the full interview today at 5:30 eastern time. we have some breaking news right now. scarlet fu at the breaking news desk. scarlet: a bright house networks is owned by -- this is a transaction worth $10.4 billion. charter will own 73% of a partnership while advancing new house will be owning the ballots. a $10.4 billion transaction in which liberty broadband's equity will be 19% of new shares. the headline here, charter communications buying bright house networks for $10.4 billion. betty: a huge deal. much more ahead. learn to code. that is what we all hear these days. fareed zakaria says hold on math is not everything. she makes the case for liberal arts education -- he makes the case for a liberal arts education, next. ♪ betty: recently come wall street executives are not the only one having to silicon valley universities are making the big move as well. northeastern announced it will establish an educational held in the bay area. interest in size technology, engineering and math is growing at top colleges. why is this? this chart shows at all. the average starting salary for engineering majors is well over $60,000. for history majors just over $40,000 when you graduate. fareed zakaria says this is all a big mistake. he argues the point in his new book and joins me now. great to see you. i read through some excerpts and you say yes this is a mistake. why is it a mistake when many of the top colleges have underfunded computer science departments? fareed: i'm not making an argument against stem. it is incredibly important and very valuable because the simplest way to solve that problem is immigration. give these foreign engineers a green card. the point i'm making is it is not the only thing that is important. there are many paths to success. it is true that engineering graduates in general start off somewhat higher. over 20 years, the liberal arts graduates make it up, especially at the end up going to grad school. your second, third, fourth jobs have little to do with your first job. what you need for 50 working years is strong basics the ability to think and learn and analyze and develop social skills. the liberal arts can do that just as much as engineering can. my point is following your passion. don't forsake english and history. there are a lot of ceos who are english majors. betty: i was an english major. i remember the amount of student debt i had to pay after graduating fr. when you look at the $40,000 you might read as a history major many liberal arts majors when they graduate are loaded with student debt that they cannot pay off because they cannot get the job that will help them pay them off. fareed: student debt is a huge problem. if you end up making $50,000, you still have a lot of debt. the solution to that is also in hand. education has not been changed by information technology at all until now. education is done the same way it was 300 years ago. the information revolution has finally come to education and what you are seeing is these online courses where people are taking it for free as that will put enormous pricing pressure on most colleges. betty: speaking about the pricing pressure, look at the liberal arts colleges around the country closing down. sweet briar in virginia. the alumni don't want this college to close down but they are because high school grads are no longer enrolling. they cannot find the jobs to pay back the loans. fareed: this is the mistake. the mistake is to not -- to believe you cannot get a good job through liberal arts. if you look at the kind of work america is going to do we are not going to be in the business of competing with china to make computer chips. they will do that better than us. what america will do best mostly service, not manufacturing. we will do better at figuring out how human beings interact with technology, how technology is used in terms of the human elements. that's why steve jobs says apple's dna is not technology. he says the most important class he ever took in college was calligraphy. that is where he got the idea for the design for the mac. betty: some people might say what you are arguing is dangerous against the current trend we have seen. can you pull up this chart we have? it shows el harvard -- el, yale, harvard, princeton have underfunded their computer science programs. you look at the bottom, university of illinois has been one of the most prolific in terms of funding their computer science department. maybe this is just a catch up here. fareed: what you are looking at there is something slightly different. the big elite universities have typically spent a lot more money on basic science rather than technology. you look at harvard's physics department, you would be awestruck. math, things like that, they tend to be stronger than computer science which was regarded as an applied science. that is a slightly different issue. if you look at stanford, what's interesting they are trying to figure out how do you marry technology with the liberal arts. they're coming up with majors like math and music. look at their design school it's an incredible case of liberal arts, design, architecture and technology altering to work together because that is where america is going to be. mark zuckerberg says the key insights that made him make facebook what it was was a, not technological. the internet was the land of anonymity. betty: fascinating. thank you for joining me. fareed zakaria the author of "in defense of a liberal arts education." six new yorkers had six months to film their every move. a new dawn in reality television ? full details on this, coming up. ♪ betty: here's is a look at our top story this one. investigators say the men dressed as women who drove to the nsa headquarters simply took a wrong turn. please say they had spent a night in a nearby hotel. a second day of the vote counting in energy area -- in nigeria. half nigeria states reported their results. the returns are early and things could change. coming up, we will look at how oklahoma has become the most seismically active state over california. the possible link to fracking. how would you feel about filming your every move and sharing it with the world? it is really hard. that is what aol originals asked the stars of its first longform original series to do. six ordinary new yorkers agreed to film themselves and their lives for six months. the result is the documentary "connected." joining me is morgan spurlock and the president of aol's video. this is a 10-year-old film. i still think of you as mr. supersize me. that will be forever. tell me first -- i watched these clips. susan sarandon is not an ordinary american. you got her to film six months in her relationship. morgan: her boyfriend is one of our central characters. susan becomes the plus one in the show. a great story. betty: a great story. it is about their relationship. you have stories about families trying to -- a woman who tries to get pregnant. a gay couple, a blended family. why did you want to do this for aol? >> we believe in content and we believe in video and we believe there is a new moment in reality television that is about stories and characters and this show is full of great stories, great characters. it is about relationships. we think there is something in the show for everybody to connect to and we think there is a certain genre of reality that turns into conflict and throwing tables -- betty: the real housewives? taking aim at the cable networks? >> maybe i am. maybe it is time to tell better stories with better characters. morgan: this show raises the bar for what nonfiction television and the promise of what reality was back in the day should really be. people are -- betty: you think it works better for streaming? morgan: we believe in ott come over the top. i don't think the consumer cares how it gets there. we don't break the world down in terms of digital or analog because we don't think you missed it down that way. they want to watch on every screen they have. we are on 16 devices. betty: what streaming device do you like the most? >> i watch a lot of apple tv at my house. i watch everything i can. i'm a huge netflix fan. betty: they released their series, everything at once. why aren't you doing that with this? morgan: people will spare them in with this idea of binging and what aol is doing is what we like to call batch binging. we will release four episodes today and then every week watch for more. -- four more. the watercooler conversation. if you can create that a little bit at a time but still get people -- give people the ability to binge, it is a win. betty: advertising online, the rates are going down. is this your way of trying to get more premium advertising rates? >> it is about premium. advertisers want longer engagement. digital went to all devices and is now coming back to the living room. we sell it in the new fronts and package it altogether. sprint is our partner. it's about longer engagement and back to the living room. betty: getting back to morgan, i have to ask -- we had some news out this morning, they are going to -- morgan: they are going to have kale. they will have vegetables. betty: they will have breakfast all day. i charted where mcdonald's stock has gone. the returns are enormous. for you, what do you think about mcdonald's now and how the company is trying to recover? morgan: they made an announcement they were going to suddenly start serving. chicken. -- serving pure chicken. what have they been feeding us until now? betty: do you ever want to give them a break? morgan: why give them a break? until they start serving positive food, we need to push them as much as possible. betty: morgan spurlock and dermot mccormick. we will be back in two minutes on "in the loop." ♪ betty: welcome back to "in the loop" as we are 30 minutes away from the opening bell. futures will edge slightly lower the opening. greek crisis is weakening the euro to a store -- historic lows. agreement is near on the nuclear negotiations. that is a major step. secretary kerry is back in switzerland with the other world powers along with iran. the deadline to stop building nuclear weapons is june 30. greece wants the opposition to back its plan on austerity. it told the parliament debt restructuring must be part of any new deal. european officials proposed it does not merit more bailout money. investigators say 27-year-old andrea sloop it intentionally crash the airliner last week. he had psychotherapy before getting a pilot's license three years ago. now a music streaming service owned by artist is on the way. jay-z is behind the title. his wife jan faye and rhianna will hold stake in the company. -- his wife beyonce and rhianna will hold stake in the company. >> anytime you see this kind of emotion, to me, is a benchmark. very significant in artists careers, who are definitely making a difference, creating a difference. the ability to have a sense of control is what title -- tidal offers. betty: usher will also share ownership of tidal. you can see that on taking stock. our housing numbers are out for the month of january. it looks like a flight eat 0.8% -- a slight beat 0.8% rise in the housing market. scarlett: that is right. on a year-over-year basis, we're looking at a slight pick up as well. 4.7 increase over the same time a year ago. that was faster than the 4.4% that we logged in january. year-over-year gains, 14 out of 20 cities posted gains. chicago had the biggest increase. and 10 francis had one of the smallest. -- san francisco had one of the smallest. we also had other home data earlier this week and last week that were fairly encouraging and could signal that even with the bad weather in the northeast and even with concerns that the federal -- the fed will be raising interest rates soon home sales seem to be impact -- in tact. betty: let's get you down to the top tech headlines before hitting the bell today. julie hyman joining me this morning. let's start at number 10. the announcement from ibm and the weather company, saying that the two are teaming up to help other companies in retail, insurance, and everywhere else to anticipate that weather. i spoke with the company's ceo and an analyst in the last hour on this. any company that says, as far as reports on the bad weather, they have no use anymore. class that is the thing and that's why i don't give will catch on because companies will not have an excuse anymore. they won't the able to blame the weather anymore. julie: this brought up a couple of examples from retail. jcpenney macy's, some of the examples of companies across all retail. you can manager inventory better, perhaps if you have a better idea of what weather is coming. but you cannot control who comes into your store. yes, you can do the best case scenario, but there are many things still out of your control. [bell] betty: exactly. bob: including the weather. betty: bob miller is planning to step down this year. he became chairman of the board but plans to stand for reelection as a director, but will not remain chairman. the word on the street is that he came in their -- five years is about the average time that chairmanship and directors serve or that committee serve. and they have got back on track. sadly, bob benmosche passed away just a month ago, but miller felt this was the time to step down and make way for new leadership. bob: they are boring again all right? betty: you mean that in a good way. you want to be boring. bob: as a journalist, we love conflict. betty: bob! bob: we love the stories. betty: if an insurance company. bob: we are back to that now and he can leave clean. betty: ok, number eight. elon musk does it again. tesla shares got a boost yesterday, about a billion dollars after he tweeted major new tesla product line, not a car, will be unveiled at our hawthorne design studio on tuesday, 8 p.m., april 30. no more details, but let the speculation begin. julie: there is talk that it will be some kind of storage battery in your home. if you have solar patterns -- solar panels, that is the conundrum about renewable in just -- renewable energy getting it to stick around. you want something to store it like a battery. betty: so using a car in many ways as storage? julie: no, having an actual unit in your home. bob: we are taking a story here. elon musk belts. -- belched. betty: i hope he is not paying a pr or marketing team, because he does it all himself. bob: but you know, he's the man. in all seriousness, let's get away from fossil fuels already. he is one of the guys to count on to do that. betty: he is the guy that other guys want to be, or that they want to hate, too. bob: ok. betty: if you are in san diego mcdonald's is experimenting with the all-day option. the new ceo is trying to pull the restaurant chain out of its u.s. sales slump. we've been hearing about this. i kind of say, hallelujah. julie: a lot of people say hallelujah, i think. for a lot of people, oh, we have switched our operations over to the afternoon duff. this will kill anybody -- to the afternoon stuff. this will kill anybody who has that excuse. betty: can't you just make the egg mcmuffin? bob: the whole country is not 95 anymore. you see people walking down the street -- is not 925 anymore. you see people -- 9-to-5 anymore. you see people walking down the street in new york in the middle of the afternoon in pajama pants. betty: mcdonald's has said they would not want to do this before because it would impede their lunchtime and afternoon. but fewer people are going to mcdonald's during lunchtime. they got the room now. buckle and they would have too many customers, is that what they are saying -- bob: they would have too many customers, is that what they are saying? betty: the first undefeated team in college men's ball and 39 years, the pressure is on. the average price of tickets for the championship games, 25% higher than a year ago. bob: i have to recuse myself from this discussion because i'm a graduate of michigan state university. go spartans. julie: don't recuse yourself. are you buying the tickets? bob: i am not, because i can watch it on hd in my living room. it's great to be there, but i'm not going to go to indiana anyway. join the boycott. it's a political thing, julie. betty: apparently, 31% of the tickets being sold right now come from kentucky, you can imagine. [bell] i'm out of time. i think michigan might be the next state. coming up the new ceo starts work today that knows more about tech and fine arts. can he bring the historic auction house into the 21st century? ♪ betty: we continue to count down and we are halfway through. number five is the auction house celebes. it is the first day on the job for president and new ceo. smith is the top executive at madison square garden has no experience in the art will -- art world. he says recently, my colleagues at sotheby's know more about the art world and i ever will learn. how did he get the job? cut yet: it is he thinks -- caught you --katya: it is really his experience in technologies. when he was at madison square garden, he brought in targeted advertising. depending on where you sit in the arena, you see different things. betty: so localized advertising even micro-localizing. katya: if you have further way sees, you might be credit card ads. if you have received, you might see wealth promotion. betty: the sotheby's need that kind of reform? katya: it seems that it does. its biggest rival today is ebay. tomorrow, the auctions will begin and they will be trans and live on the ebay platform. betty: this is a live auction in partnership with ebay. was this his handiwork echoedka tya: -- was this his handiwork? katya: no, it was not but it really shows where the company is going. online, everyone is trying to figure out how to make it work stoppage a new frontier. they look that is for the process may lie. ebay is 25000 and below. hopefully they will have expertise and technology to boost that. betty: help me understand this. wouldn't an auction house make more money on these sales, the $140 million picasso versus focusing on a bunch of $25,000 or below items? katya: the figures are much higher at the top and that is with their competing because it's more glamorous. but in order to get that, both houses have to give up so much margin. they have to make caring team to the sellers to bring this work. -- they have to make guarantees to the sellers to bring this work will stop -- who bring this work. a lot of them get commission from the cosigners and from the buyers. the profit is better on lower price works. betty: dan loeb is ceo of -- dan low recently put out this statement. how important is it for ted to have dan loeb in his corner? katya: very important. it seems he is supporting them at this point. he got a really good compensation package, better than rupert had, even though dan criticized him for having that. loeb is the biggest shareholder, but the second-largest is mark otto -- . he seems to be on a little bit different page at this point. betty: there's going to be some tension there. thank you. coming up, ben bernanke joins the blogosphere. he's are posting his opinions online. what is bugging him still? ♪ betty: let's get back to bring you the most wanted stories before the bell. number four, ben bernanke. now he's going online. welcome, then. he finished writing a book and will start blogging now. he will blog about economic and financial issues and addressed questions by readers. we get to see more about then. julie: it is pretty cool. i read his first blog. let me paraphrase. he says "don't blame us or county doesn't really say that, but he says it's the economy -- "don't blame us." he doesn't really say that, but he says is the economy that needs to justify an appropriate level. i'm sure he's is in him to lecture away, and i'm probably vastly oversimplifying. but he did defend the set -- defend the fed against some of its critics who have said that you have artificially inflated asset prices and or members of congress who have criticized the fed. it's an interesting piece. bob: i'm trying to become a guy is. then who? -- ben who? ben bernanke? betty: i like his comments about not being under the microscope by the fed watchers. bob: i think about alan greenspan though. yes primus lost all credibility -- he has pretty much lost all credibility for what happened after him. betty: number three, focusing on growing business domestically and internationally for comcast. comcast continues to await the approval of time warner cable. bob: things are kind of boring and the broadband business. julie: that is another boring business. bob, you are easily bored. bob: i have a high level of gordon -- boredom, i do. but this is something where they can seek out venture capitalist have fun and find new opportunities and maybe far maximum the research and development that they could be doing in-house, but they are too busy buying other cable companies. betty: i would say that i agree except the $4 billion is a number. a lot of other companies have the ventral -- venture capital arm and its hundreds of millions of dollars. what is is about and how might it be related to the regulatory approval or lack thereof? julie: maybe they are going to buy the mistreating from elon musk. betty: number two investors in china sold $274 million in chinese shares through monday. we found -- we see monday -- more numbers like this. julie: this is what you were saying the other day. you were saying there was at this next year. look at you. because foreigners are pulling money out even as mainlanders are still pouring their money in. what is going on? bob: you were accusing me of boredom just a second ago. eddie: are you bored with china? -- betty: are you bored with china? bob: no, this is great. betty: futures have settled and as you can see, futures are down . ♪ betty: welcome back to "in the loop." julie hyman joins me this morning. our number one story is the fed. how low will the central bank let under go before deciding to raise interest rates. there is room for improvement in the job market and rejection of unemployment long-term was marked down as low as 5%. they kept bringing down the rate of unemployment. julie: is unemployment a problem? i don't understand. >> they keep moving the target and they don't quite know. it is like we are getting to the point where next thing you know alan greenspan will be on bloomberg tv. [laughter] we like low unemployment and inflation. i do know what they are using to measure. i will be one of those cranks and say when i go to the store things seem to be a hell of a lot more expensive than a year ago. betty: that is transitory. bob: it is time to fish or cut bait. are they or will they not? they are kind of moving the target around so nobody knows quite where they are going. betty: fed credibility. stocks are getting ready to start trade. this market is looking like 2014 all over again. the s&p is about 1% higher than at the start of the year. treasuries are paring some of their gains from earlier this year. is this good news the fact that we have oil slumps and the dollar scourge? mark travis joins us now. what do you make of that given all the volatility that we are where we were last year. is that a little bit of comfort? mark: i am never comfortable. betty: you are in florida. mark: in that aspect i am i heard it snowed up there. the world has not completely turned upside down. i think we are certainly in an environment where the markets are anticipating rates rising. this has been a six-year bull market. it is hard to squint your eyes and think back to the early parts of march of 2009 and how people disdained equities and now how they love them. if you look at the market cap as a percentage of gdp, we hit some obvious highs in the tech bubble in the march of 2000. the crest began around the fall of 2007. we have gone past that peak. it is difficult to find stocks people do not love, but i have found a few. bob: i heard you were a tesla bear. why? mark: i think i need to separate my feelings about the vehicle and my feelings about the valuation. from what i can tell, it is a great vehicle. everyone that has one loves them. betty: have you driven one? mark: i have not. i am afraid of being stranded. all kidding aside, i think the market can stay rational or solvent. i don't see how you can sell 32,000 cars however nice they may be an garner a $26 billion market cap. there seems to be a disconnect from my perspective. we are subsidizing wealthy people to drive a car that goes 200 miles without a charge. i don't see it. as long as you have people like bmw and porsch chasing you, that will be problematic. will the stock of from 200 to 100 tomorrow, i can't tell you. betty: are you betting that will happen? are you actually shorting the stock? mark: that is julie, right? julie: yes it is. mark: i can tell. i need to distinguish between my view on the position of the market and evaluation. -- of the market and valuation. again i don't see how you can support that valuation with the amount of sales they have. the latest announcement they might be profitable in 2020. i don't know how that lasts. betty: you mentioned there are some stocks that you do like. you have picked and chosen a few of them. one in particular i think is interesting because you admit it has been painful having to hold this company stock. northern oil and gas. why are you sticking to your guns on this? mark: i would mention the fund i run is equity and debt so i feel like the 8% coupon of 2020 of northern oil and gas is higher up in the capital structure than equity. at $.90 on the dollar, a superior claim to where the equity is. it is an interesting operating model. the control about 185,000 acres in the balkan. they aren't operating partner with most of the major rollers -- they are an operating partner with most of the major drillers. i think from a small business management risk and controlling your portfolio management size the equity could work out. it is hedged through the first half of 2016. if we wake up this time next year with oil at $35 a barrel, i think all bets are off. i would not invest all your money in northern oil and gas at this point. julie: what if we do see oil stay around these levels? what if you don't see much of a rebound? for companies that have these balkan holdings there are a lot of committees involved in north american shale, how long can they suffer through oil prices where they are now? mark: well, i think the ones we looked at anyone i just mentioned is hedged so they can hang in there for a while. you have started seeing some curtailment of activity. my guess is we are probably another year but i think you will start seeing people seeing the proverbial light at the tunnel being a train coming to them. they are starting to pare back and they will pair back further if things don't improve. can i mention on the air that the saudi's are bombing in yemen and that might be a supply disruption? betty: true. mark: who knows what will happen in the international oil markets. betty: thank you so much, mark travis. great have mark and julie and bob joining me at the opening bell. much more ahead on oil or it oklahoma might have a hundred earthquakes this year alone. to the rapid increase in oil and gas production be the culprit of that? more on that next. ♪ betty: trading just underway. the last trading day of the quarter. stocks are down. i want to get to scarlet fu with a look at some of the early movers including charter communications. scarlet: charter buying a majority stake of bright house networks which is on by billionaire stein newhouse junior. there is a $2 billion cash component. there are several conditions involved. regulators of course have not yet approved comcast's purchase of time warner cable. comcast is creating a new company with its cfo that will invest in other businesses. i like how bob ivry put it. the company will kick in $4 billion while the cfo will invest at least 40 million. betty: billions there is another billion-dollar deal. scarlet: a unit of johnson controlling salt and the price tag is a most $1.5 billion which will be funded with existing cash and debt. betty: thank you so much. scarlet fu with some of the movers as we start the trading morning. when you think of the state of oklahoma most think it is synonymous with earthquakes. this year, the state is on pace to experience 800 of them. now they must seismically active over california. scientists have studied the link between this and the rapid increase in oil and gas production in the states. specific links to underground disposal and oil and gas wastewater du jour hydraulic fracking. and you article on bloomberg shows there may have been instances where scientists may have been pushed to not disclose events and meetings. matt joins us from d.c. your article is great. it starts by citing a meeting between harold hammond and oklahoma seismologist in 2013. what transpired in this meeting? matt: in november 2013, austan holland who is the state seismologist for oklahoma gets a request to have coffee with harold him him anamm. the request came from david boren. that is where holland works. during the meeting ham asks holland to be careful in making a connection between the wastewater disposal and the earthquakes that are rattling the state. we know this because the e-mails from holland, he is writing to colleague saying he is nervous about it. and subsequent interviews we have had with them, he said hamm asked him to be careful in discussing this link. he was very careful in the next few months about making that link. betty: very careful about making that link. continental resources refutes this account. they say the insinuation that there was something untoward that occurred in this meeting is offensive and inaccurate. this is according to continental resources spokesperson. your findings and as you just mentioned say otherwise. what is your take on this statement? matt: a month before holland met with hamm he had an additional meeting with state regulators and another executive at continental resources. both of whom are saying they are nervous about this connection and they don't want this to be discussed publicly. this trail of e-mails also has examples of industry trade groups a holland directly asking him to water down language making this connection. oil and gas really is the dominant industry in oklahoma. it is possible for one in five jobs and it has huge political grasp. betty: tell us the link between disposal of the wastewater and horizontal fracking and how that is linked to seismic activity. explain the process to us. matt: the new fracking boom these new horizontal rails drilling into shall produce vast amounts of wastewater. this is salty toxic water that has been trapped in the rocks for millions of years along with the oil and gas. in a lot of cases with these new wells, you are getting way more water than you are oil and gas. we are talking hundreds of bills of water for everyone barrel of oil. you have to put it somewhere. in pennsylvania where they are doing a lot of natural gas drilling, they recycle and reuse it. in oklahoma they dispose it. they put disposal wells that inject it deep about a mile underground. it is this water over the past few years that scientist believe is lubricating these faults need the ground in oklahoma and reducing the friction that has cap defaults -- has kept these faults from slipping. betty: thank you so much for bringing up that story for us. fascinating story. in the meantime, we are getting breaking news on the economy. chicago pmi index is at a reading of 46.3 below estimates. scarlet fu has more. scarlet: it is below estimates although it is an improvement from the prior month's rita 45.8. -- read at 45.8. a little bit inconsistent as well with recent regional manufacturing surveys. this one, the chicago pmi is the one most closely watched among these regional surveys. u.s. stocks are holding onto their losses. they have come off their lows but they are losing by at least half of 1%. the 10 year yield not showing much change. the dollar remains near its highs up by half of 1% and 9841 -- at 98.41. betty: aston martin ceo joining us to talk about the new york international auto show. can't wait is he with a have. we will be back. ♪ betty: aston martin. ceo andy palmer would join market makers ahead of the new york city international auto show to discuss what the brand has in store this year in terms of electric cars, suvs, and perhaps even the next double a seven movie. -- the next 007 movie. i want to bring in matt miller who will sit down with andy palmer in the next hour. you got to see whether will display at the auto show. matt: a lot of people have seen pictures and read about it. they will show the vulcan, which is a new score that is for the -- a new car that is for the track only. it is a race car. i am excited to see that. betty: you test drove it? matt: know, i was driving the vanquish. you can see a picture of it here in the bloomberg courtyard. betty: is that you in the back? matt: that is my little brother. i am bringing it home where he lives so i guess he didn't need to come to bloomberg to check it out. i have driven every aston martin you can buy now. these lines are getting a little bit old. they have been around for a long time. i wanted a vanquish when i was in my fraternity. it has been a while. betty: does that mean you would turn one down if you got one? matt: absolutely not they are one of the most gorgeous cars i've ever seen. they are coming out with a new car for the james bond film. it is only for the film. i will ask about that in the vulcan. one of the things that is exciting is thinking about the future technologies that acid martin will employ. it has had problems getting funding to do too much future tech in its cars. it didn't have safety standards met for the u.s. with the vantage. they will make electric cars now. they have been talking about a dbx concept which is an off-road range rover type. i have no use for those kind of cars. betty: had he feel about an electric aston martin? -- how do you feel about an electric aston martin? matt: i have no use for these but maybe they will come out for an electric version of a car that may be a direct competitor to tesla. i want to see who they are partnering with to make the new electric car. betty: thank you so much matt miller who will anchor "market makers." the sure to catch the full interview with andy, and the next hour -- with andy palmer in the next hour. coming up, a musician trying to take back the serving business. jay-z launches his service. more on that next. ♪ betty: music mogul jay-z is making a splash in the music streaming business with a relaunch of tidal. a by the company in january for more than $50 million. some of the world's biggest pop stars join him on stage to endorse it last night. many of them co-owners including his wife beyoncé. they say tidal is friendlier to artists. such drivers will get access to exclusive content. is there space for another music streaming service? i am terrible at it. i still use itunes. we have more on this with christina. you have pandora and spotify and others that are popping up. >> the have been around for a while. spotify has been around since 2008 and has many millions of users compared to tidal which has 500,000. that is a lot of room for growth. and analyst said it is a crowded space but not a saturated space so there is room for a company to come in and come do something. we are seeing downloads start to decline by quite a lot and we are seeing streaming revenue skyrocket. betty: what will tidal do that is different than the others? >> i was struck by the power that jay-z has. all his friends were on stage yesterday. remember taylor swift a few months back pulled her catalog from spotify because she felt like she wasn't getting a fair shake. they have started a business that is artist driven which will get the more revenue. that is the focus going forward for them is just making this more artist friendly service. betty: usher was on stage and will be an investor. here is what he said. usherwe don't have the comment from usher. you have it now? usher: it is hard not to, especially when you see such incredible motions. today is a really amazing benchmark for something very significant. many artists' careers are starting to create a difference. the ability to have a sense of control is what tidal offers. betty: how did the spotify of the world react? >> they are on a premium model. they are on a different model. you can pay more to lose all the ads and such. entry level for this is $9.99 and what they are offering is better quality audio so we will see of the other services will match that. betty: great to see you. david our newest addition on the bloomberg television team. tomorrow, when will hillary clinton launcher 2016 campaign? will play political poker with don. don't miss the biggest names in auto tomorrow including audi of america president and the president of cadillac. that is right here on bloomberg television. ♪ >> live from bloomberg headquarters in new york this is "market makers." matt: negotiators are close to a deal on iran's nuclear program. if sections are lifted, what will all of that iranian crude to oil prices? >> time to say goodbye to the bowl? there may be in and to the stock market's six year rally. matt: behold one of aston martin's new cars. i will say what it is like to drive one. we will talk to the man who makes them. i am at miller and welcome to "market makers." looking at that car they will show it in new york tomorrow. olivia: we are in today for stephanie and eric. we have a huge show in line for you including the ceo of us in martin and it is deadline day for the preliminary deadline with iran talks. we want to get to scarlet fu. scarlet: the conference read comes in higher than
( laughter ) america asks are we ready for a female president? and other questions that seem insulting and out of touch in 2008. ( cheers and applause ) women in the u.s. are still dealing with the glass ceiling. just to be clear that's a metaphor for female advancement not some christian grey sex dudgeon. girls rule, boys drool, and transgender people are free to do whatever they want as long as it rhymes with rule. this is "the nightly show." captioning sponsored by comedy central ( cheers and applause ) >> larry! larry! larry? >> larry: thank you wow! >> larry! >> larry: thank you that's so nice of you. welcome to "the nightly show." i'm larry wilmore. i'm feeling so good tonight. tonight is laundry night. i forgot-- i forgot something to hold it up. san antonio came through! ( cheers and applause ) for those of you saying "the nightly show," the home game, i apologize for the inside joke. anyhow, we don't have a lot of time to waste. >> the national chapter of sigma alpha epsilon shutting their university of oklahoma chapter after this shock video surfaced appearing to show members using a racist chant. >> larry: racism doesn't exist anymore, larry. ( laughter ) why do you always have to focus on race on your show? just stop. ( laughter ) you first. ( cheers and applause ) what was i supposed to do? seriously, right? i'll stop talking about race when people stop being racist. and quick note to peter capturing racist on their phones, could you please stop shooting vertical videos? you have never heard of aspect ratio wide screen? i want to experience my hate in 16:9 not 2:5, all right. just saying. i gotta give credit where the credit is due. the university of oklahoma took swift action. >> the university of oklahoma president david boren has expelled two students related to the racist chant incident. >> larry: that's right they also kicked the fraternity off campus. so don't worry, you won't be seeing any more of those frat boys until they're your congressman. ( laughter ) ( applause ) right. welcome to america, everybody. that's how it works. ( laughter ) who's supervising these frat pratt anyway? i mean, wasn't there an adult property? >> overnight another video has surfaced. this one appears to show the fraternity's 78-year-old house mother. >> larry: oh, that's good. a house mother. finally, the voice of gentil reason ago oh! what is this? what does little angel have to say. >> larry: man, oklahoma! what the ( bleep ) is going on there? seriously! shame on you, lady. you're a frat house mother. you should know better. you have no excuse. >> in a written statement, gilbow says she is heartbroken by any racist portrayal. she does not tolerate any form of discrimination and she was only singing along to a rap song. >> larry: oh, oh, really, racist grandma. that's a song? well, what song is that? ♪ don't believe me ( bleep ) don't believe me just watch ♪ ( laughter ) ( applause ) >> larry: sorry, frat ma, my bad. i guess you can sing it, but maybe not with so much glee. anyhow, to help give smus more perspective on the s.a.e. fraternity culture, 1990s oklahoma frat guy d-train. ( cheers and applause ) thanks for joining us, d-train. >> larry, please don't call me d-train anymore. i'm an adult. i work on wall street. call me dennis. >> larry: all right. >> deep dick dennis. >> larry: i think i'll just go with dennis. >> dealer's choice bro, dealer's shois chois. >> larry: i'm assuming you saw the video of your s.a.e. prghts. >> i did it's stufting. i completely renounce it. you cannot use that word. >> larry: good, you totally agree. i'm with you. >> i couldn't agree more, that word is racist and offensive. clearly the song should have been. ♪ there be never be a black guy in s.a.e. there will never be a black guy in s.a.e. >> larry: wait, wait, wait hold on. i don't think you see the point. >> oh, god, i'm so sorry. what do you guys go by now, african american? i got it-- gr no no, no. >> let me try that on for size. ♪ there will never be an african american at s.a.e. ♪ there will never be an african american at s.a.e. ♪ ♪. >> larry: stop it! >> you're totally right the african american thing does not work. it totally screws up the rhythm. not that i have to tell that you. >> larry: look the issue here is not the specific word. it's the sentiment that you're excluding minorities. >> dude. dude. dude. ( laughter ) dude. maybe you don't understand what a frat is, dude. it's not about excluding anybody. it's about including people who are exactly like you. ( laughter ) >> larry: that really doesn't make any sense. >> because you've never experienced the bonding with your bros, bro. larry until you get all your friends together on a chilly easter sunday and run across a football field for six hours with your thumb up each others' asses you'll never really understand what brotherhood is about. >> larry: i two brothers and i'm a brother. ( laughter ) ( applause ) i understand brotherhood. >> whatever dude, whatever, dude. >> larry: d-train, everybody. enough of that. ( cheers and applause ) clearly we're not post-racial, but are we at least post-sexist. sunday was international women's day. ( cheers ). >> larry: yeah, no problem. ( applause ). >> larry: absolutely. now, this is when people around the world gaght tore demonstrate in support of women's rights. about 1,000 people came out to march in new york city. which sounds like a lot, until you consider that last year over 100,000 new yorkers showed up at coney island's annual mermaid parade. our priorities are definitely in order. it's amazing when you think of all the creative waitz women still get the short end of the stick. examples-- do you know how most americans celebrated international women's day on sunday? >> okay, this weekend it's time to spring forward as daylight saving time arrives. this is your remeernd to set your clocks 60 minutes forward. >> larry: by losing an hour in the day! oh, great. we have 24 hours to talk about women's issues. no you have 23. start talking now. ( laughter ) ( applause ) let's go. ( applause ) i mean, that's so wrong! now one thing people are talking about is hillary clinton's expected run for president. i'm assuming she's not going to make her announcement have a e-mail. just a hunch. ( laughter ) and now if she became president that would be history. un have there been that many women leaders around the world? i haven't been keeping up. mien, there has got to be a second or third ever. there's been, like, margaret thatcher cleopatra, isis, the queen-- xena warrior princess. ( laughter ) did i leave anybody out? ♪ ♪ ♪ ( applause ) ( cheers ) i know that went fast, but you may not have seen liberia and pakistan had female leaders before the united states? that's worse than our math scores. what's going on america? do we have a problem with female leadership in this country? >> new data highlights an old problem in big business best described like this. fewer women run big businesses than men named john. this list shows the most common first names among s&p 1500 c.e.o.s. it turns out there are more named john or david than there are women combined. >> larry: now in all fair tons women there weren't any darnells on there, either. ( laughter ) ( applause ) just saying. just keeping it 100. now i know a lot of you are saying, "larry why are you making such a big deal about women in power?" because sometimes it feels like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel with men. ladies and gentlemen, i give you idaho state representative vito barbier. >> an idaho lawmaker got an anatomy lesson. the law would prevent doctors from precybing abortion-induce medicine during a web cam unless they examined the woman in person. >> can the same procedure be done in a pregnancy, swallowing a camera and helping the doctor determine what the situation is with the-- >> mr. chairman, and representative it cannot be done in pregnancy simply because when you swallow a pill it would not end up in the vagina. ( laughter ) ( applause ) >> larry: you know what else is not going to end up in a vagina? vito barbier. seriously. ( cheers and applause ) this is a man tasked with crafting abortion law in the united states and his entire understanding of the female anatomy seems to be milk, milk, lemonade around the back fudge is made. i can think of no straighter example of why we need more women in position of power. i firmly believe that you should probably know how a vagina works because you can make laws that deal with vaginas. we'll be right back. ( cheers and applause ) this is smith & forge hard cider. it's like emmett, here. strong. sturdy. but not too sweet. [ male announcer ] built from apples. built to refresh. smith & forge hard cider. oww! made strong. hey. these are good. what have you been feeding us all these years? kfc popcorn nuggets. 100% white meat, extra crispy, and made from the world's best chicken. try our kfc bucket and popcorn nuggets meal. these don't even come with a toy and i don't care. >> larry: welcome back. we're talking about women in leadership in america. joining me on the panel tonight, she's the host of fusion's "alicia mendez tonight," and her special report "generation crisis" airs tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. on fusion. alicia mendez. ( cheers and applause ) alicia on alecia. >> alecia. >> i get it right right away. and author of "keep calm... it's just real estate," and host of hgtv's "property virgins," egypt sherrod joining us. ( cheers and applause ) we're happy to have her, comedian chloe hilliard is joining us. and his new comedy special "contextually inadequate" will air on epic april 24 yup comedian jim northon is right here. ( cheers and applause ) so we're talking about women leadership roles. who puts more hater-ade out there on the women, the women themselves or men? who is hating more in this in terms of holding women back jaoh that's a deep question. >> larry: sorry to start off-- >> since we're keeping it 100 -- >> what does it feel like? >> i think as a whole women, we sometimes can be our own worst enemy. we do tend to throw a lot of hater-ade on each other. a woman gets up from the table hey girl! "did you see those shoes?" >> larry: i wouldn't hire her as a c.e.o. >> that's a deep question. i'll throw it to you. >> i think a lot of times a woman doesn't want to support a woman outright because they still want to be respected by men so they want to play on both teams. i have ovariries but can still swing a dick. >> what a great bumper sticker. >> larry: i know. >> i would like to-- i would like to come to the defense of women though. i don't think this is about women. i don't think this is about men. i think this is about all of us. i think there are cultural expectations we put on men and women about what leadership looks like. and then i also think -- >> so women are the ones not in those position. >> right, so then you can put that on men that they've created systems that include things like massive amounts of fund-raising you need to do if you want to run for office. the fact that this is a largely family-unfriendly niewgz if you want to run for office. ( applause ). >> thank you. >> larry: even you want to have children. >> even if you want to have a marriage. it's simply not penalty for that if all of a sudden your private life is open to public scrutiny. who wants to be a part of that? >> larry: i understand. let me ask you this-- i voted for obama because he's plaque. i got no problem admitting that. >> wow. >> larry: here's the thing women were asked who if they would vote for another women. only 20% of republican women and only 69% of democratic women said it's important to have a female president in their lifetime. >> here's the thing,y just want someone who is going to follow through have a little bit of backbone, and i don't care if they are her maf rodiets, quite honestly. >> larry: you know-- you know you would be upset if there was a hermaf rodiet president before a woman president pup know you would be upset. you'd be like you got to be ( bleep ) me. what do we have to do? >> you have to come up with a better candidate. i want to see a woman president i really do. but hillary clinton, she's psychotic. >> what! >> she's psychotic. >> why? >> here we go. >> i'll tell you why. but sarah palin is also psychotic. one is liberal and one conservative but they're both psychotic. >> larry: sicot oict left. >> shealize about being in a war zone. she's changes her inflection depending on the audience. >> just like every other politician. ( cheers and applause ) >> larry: she was just code switching there. even obama-- obama gets a little bit on his plaquer side when he's goes into the black church. >> she was like i tonight feel no-- >>ing who is that lady? you know what? you gotta give her credit for come, out about those e-mails. she was honest-- "oops sorry, i made a mistake." honesty is something i can respect. people make mistakes all the time. what poldition do you know has ever said, "you're right." >> they're all liars. >> >> larry: all politicians not all women. i just want to clear that pup upon absolutely. i got your back. i was just clearing that up. how much is the superficial? how much do we punish women for just being feminine? hillary thought she had to be a hawk voting for iraq but now she's running on the women's ticket. >> we put them in this sort of impossible situation where you have to be strong enough that i believe you can be our commander in chief, but you also need to be soft enough they like you. and to-- ( applause ) yes, thank you. and to ask somebody to lay on the perfect nexus of those two qualities? how many of us are succeeding at that. >> larry: and we always ask those questions. people say, "i would have a beer with george bush." people would never say "i'd have a brazilian wax with hillary." >> just so you know, that's not a thing you do with your girlfriends. >> larry: i want to bring up this term, the class cliff. have you heard this? yes. >> larry: where comes bring in a woman as a c.e.o. when the company is failing. i thought that's what they did with paum. he comes in as the janitor to clean up all that mess. >> i'm glad you said it. >> larry: is there a feeling like the country has to go so bad, all right women, do your thing. >> it's the 52 faik out, that's what it is. it's you know what? we're sinking. put her in. she's going to be the scapegoat. when the company goes belly-up, then the man comes and saves day and they pull the wool over our eyes. it happens. we all know corporate people. can you picture corporate people going, "we're losing men. let's throw more out so we can blame the woman." the fact that we're even still having this conversation and questioning women's right and equality. ( cheers and applause ). >> larry: i'll get a real-world example. battle star galactica. nuclear war going on, the whole world is being destroyed. president dead, vice president dead, the secretary of state dead. they went to the only woman secretary of education alive, then she got to be president. we'll be right back. 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( cheers and applause ) for all the people who don't know that expression it means keep it 100% real. that's what it means. okay. alicia would you pick-- who would you pick for president, a woman or a la tino? you have to pick one. and the other one won't be in office for another 100 years. and latino woman is not an option because we're keeping it 100, not 10. >> you can tell you the freakiest thing? i knew this was the question you were going to ask me. i had it in my brain. >> larry: so you're prepared. >> i think because we've already crossed-- because we know race and ethnicity is no longer a barrier, i'd choose a woman. >> larry: funny how you had it prepared and still... she kept it 100 right? ( cheers and applause ) good job, aliciaia. chloe racism, sexism, cancer. you can destroy two forever. whichever one you leave, that one grows like a mother ( bleep ). okay? and i'll give you a hint. cancer should probably be of them? which two do you pick? >> i would definitely have to eliminate cancer, and i would eliminate racism. >> larry: you would leave sexism? >> yes only because racism i feel like can destroy generations -- >> did you hear the audience? >> what i'm saying is that when you do racism it has sneaky bits and cornerrers. when you deal with sexism it's sneaky cornerrers -- >> a little bit of tea. no you're just going to get some tea. >> what! >> larry: i didn't like that answer. >> what! >> larry: i don't think you thought it through ( audience booing ). >> can i explain myself a little bit better then? >> larry: we don't have time. just take this. which race has the worst tame in homes and decor? >> oh, no! oh! ( cheers and applause ) >> could i plead the fifth! are you trying to destroy my career and my business. >> larry: when race has the worst taste in homes and decor? open your hands like this. open your hands like this? open your hands. ( applause ) all right, jim, here you go. good job. jim, you talk a lot about sex in your act. you're very funny. you really go out there on it. reincarnation is real but you can only come back as a body part, all right. do you come back as a penis or vagina and why? >> i come back as a big giant penis because i want to be in as many vaginas as possible. >> larry: that takes two of these. we'll be right back. there's no way to top that. ( cheers and applause ) introducing york minis. a bite size way to enjoy the full size sensation of peppermint and rich dark chocolate. york minis get the sensation. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ welcome back. thank you. it's not home. but with every well considered detail, it becomes one step closer. no wonder more people choose delta than any other airline. ( cheers and applause ) >> larry: that's all the time we have for tonight. i want to thank our panelists, alicia mendez, egypt sherrod, chloe hilliard, and jim northon. ( cheers and applause ) tomorrow on the show we're talking about banning word. who get to decide what words people can and cannot say. i almost couldn't say that. as always, tweet your questions to me with the hashtag keep it 100. this is it is 11:59 and 59 seconds, good news ladies and certain fellows the