first i thought that was interesting was the internet feed idea. we put a camera on rising waters on the river and everyone in the community tunes in to see what is happening so they can see it or we use this all the time for weather. people are constantly checking today, right, when the storm is coming in tonight and the simple idea that people could with simple technology check to see what is happening with voting lines in their precincts. would you be turning a camera on the people or just giving reports? >> i think what we had envisioned is that the administrators would be continuously assessing wait times and posting reports that citizens could consult if they sort of plan out, when it would be most relevant for them and efficient for them to vote. and as you pointed out, this is fairly straightforward. it is one of the ways in which we believe we have to be continuously thinking about the introduction of technology to support the voting process. >> put election administrator saying no wait time -- >> half an hour, 45 minutes, correct. >> then you have another one on poll working and training and discussed the importance of that and professional workers operating in the polling places and training standards for poll workers. how would this work? >> again, it's something that really can be talked about by the state but implemented by either the state or local jurisdictions. poll workers are the point of contact for most voters. so having well trained poll workers is extremely important to the smooth functioning of the system and just the way voters feel about voting. it comes down to training. and whether that is a top priority or not with local administrators to be able to recruit poll workers. one of the laments we heard is how difficult it is to recruit poll workers, to find enough to be in the polling places. so we have some suggestions about using college students and even high school students, apparently high school students are more reliable in showing up than college students. go figure. and to encourage businesses to allow their employees to be able to help out as poll workers on election day and then have sufficient training. >> your report talked about the importance of access to information in languages other than english, including ballots in other languages, outreach to language outlets, there would be some efforts. we made efforts in minnesota with asian and pacific islander groups and why is access important to these groups so important? >> we want to say that the broader theme that the commission struck and i think it's well within its charge is improving the voter experience for language minority voters to go to the polls and find there is nobody there to help them who can speak their language, not consistent with offering the same experience to all of our voters that all of our voters deserve. and there is support that by federal law, this congress has tendered to these voters and the statutes that provide for this protection are not drawn compliance. in a variety of ways in the localities recruiting poll workers with language capability and then on the more -- on the next scale, next point up the scale, devoting their efforts to comply with protecting language minorities. it is absolutely critical to have respect for the voter. >> one of the things you talk about in here is people serving overseas in our military and having online registration materials would be so helpful to them. i think it makes a lot of sense. do you want to explain that. >> we found inconsistencies among the states in the sort of usefulness of their web sites for people serving in the military, especially people serving in the military overseas or living overseas. and so there are some states that seem to have morrow bus sites than others. websites is the easiest way to communicate if you are overseas or in the military, much more so than postal service or even a direct delivery system. and so, we would encourage at least the provision of registration materials on state web sites to be enhanced in the states. >> ok. thank you very much. >> i want to follow up again on the question of certification, because you have both identified there is a kind of coming-at-us wave of replacement machines with new technology and if the certification system is broken, that could be a real problem in six to 10 years. is the problem the structure and lack of functionality of the e.a.c. or the idea of federal certification itself? i see those two separate issues. if the e.a.c. tomorrow became fully functional, would this open the process and we would take care of this in an expeditious manner or should we consider saying this is a state and local responsibility, why do we need federal certification? mr. ginsberg, your thoughts. >> it's an area where federal certification makes sense where the states desire it. there needs to be a central body to be able to judge machines and give the states some comfort in the quality of machines. >> like u.l. underwriters laboratories for appliances. >> the state directors forming a group was the model before the e.a.c. i would agree that the e.a.c. and its functionality is a completely separate question wrapped up in a lot of other different regs. >> but it's a question that's important because if it doesn't get fixed, then we don't get the certification, correct? >> yes. i'm partial to the state election directors' solution for it. i think that could happen much more expeditiously with a greater need. there would be a federal rule in terms of the expertise and in terms of the expertise that would need to be brought to it. but that's not necessarily through the current certification process. >> mr. bauer, your thoughts on my question. >> i think you posed the question correctly and it is possible to confuse the issues. we would not have arrived at this conclusion i don't think and made this recommendation if the e.a.c. in this particular area hadn't been in some what in a state of paralysis and this never developed and the e.a.c. was correctly functioning could it discharge its role? the answer is yes. that may not prove to be the case and can't wait for a solution that may not be available to us in the political sphere and other alternatives have to be developed. >> would it take legislation for those alternatives, the certification is just behind the dam, right? it can't happen. what do we do? this is a problem that is going to come at us in the next two to four years. >> i think that is part of the discussion that needs to take place right now which is what steps should be taken and how could they develop those alternatives. we indicated only in broad brush strokes what the alternatives might be but we didn't grapple with the details in this report. >> the state directors created a certifying agency would be acceptable alternative. would that be acceptable to you or is this a federal responsibility? >> i would be prepared to consider all the alternatives. i wouldn't want any position that we take -- one of the concerns we have had, be a damning conclusion about the e.a.c. and that's not my attention. but any alternative that is an alternative is one i would consider. >> even if the e.a.c. is functional, does this need to be a federal responsibility, i guess is the question i'm asking? >> i don't know i would define it as a federal responsibility by necessity but i'm not prepared to say there is an alternative. i'm not prepared at this point because you i have not reached a conclusion which of the alternatives, the one ben suggested, potentially another, with more federal involvement might be the most effective. what we need to do is focus on what would be the most effective and i don't have a conclusion. >> we have to do something. the alarm bells are ringing. >> if i might, senator. the way the system works is that different states have different standards. almost inevitably they say the machines that are used in their state need to have been certified by -- right now the existing structure. it's not that there's federal legislation or a federal role that particularly blesses a particular machine when it gets done. there's still state legislation that refers back to a central testing facility for the machines to be sure that they are worthy of use. that can or cannot be a federal function that group that is judging the quality of the machines. >> or if i may, senator, it could be a function that is not federally supported. >> well, thank you both for your thoughts on this. and if you have additional thoughts on this important issue, please file them with the committee. any other questions? on behalf of the committee, i would like to thank both of you for your important system and particularly for your work on this commission. it is important -- it's important to the people of america and important to our process and who we are as a country and i really appreciate the work that you've done on this and thank you very much. and this will conclude today's hearing. the record will remain open for five days. thank you senator. we don't have a quorum so we not -- cannot proceed to a vote. but we will recess and take up the matters when we can obtain a quorum. thank you. >> you have done good. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next on c-span, the weight host a dinner for the french president. -- the white house dinner for the french president. then the budget -- and thestifies on utah senator speaks on the rising rice of higher education. david, the chair of the review board. he talks about the nsa surveillance programs and the board' last month that the phone program is illegal. here is a preview. >> we were concerned about the program and its implications. the of occasions are serious. thegovernment could collect loyalty card information or all credit card transactions. we are concerned once they start gathering so much information, the balance of power between the citizens and the government -- people exercise their first amendment rights to content journalists, political organizations -- if they know the government is monitoring their every move, it may damage those rice. -- rights. we felt having telephone numbers -- >> as far as the telephone program goes, does it concern you if the government went to -- were to change requirements? there is the question of how much you care about what the government is holding versus private parties? private parties can interfere with your life. significantse problems. if the information is there for the government to get, what is the practical difference? >> i think the government handling information does have severe consequences. they can audit your taxes and put you in jail. there is a different the significant difference. the government can impact your life in a serious way. telephone companies are already required to keep this information for 18 months for billing purposes under the fcc rules. some have suggested there might be a need to keep the information longer. that might be a more feasible approach. proposingecommend requirements others have suggested that might be necessary to have the provider so the information. >> you can watch the entire interview on newsmakers, sunday at 10:00 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. eastern on c-span. newsmakers, testimony from janet yellen on the economy and monetary policy. her first hearing as head of the reserve. sunday morning here on c-span. >> here they are coming in, closing in on me. i am thinking, even eight. -- evade. they taught us that the people who capture you are probably be --st trained to capture pows probably the least trained to capture pows. weaponout my 38 combat and went, get away. get back. and then i fired over their heads. did not flinch. and onesed their rifles of them reached into his pocket and pulled out a little -- like a little comic book. --had joined them one drawings on one side and on another.anatics the drawings showed them capturing an american pilot. surrender.'d, ' no die. here i am facing about nine long guns staring at me. i decided that was the best advice i was going to get that day. >> former air force pilot and is. it bls -- pow lee ell >> on tuesday, the president and first lady held a state dinner for the french president and state dinnereventh to have posted. we begin with the arrivals. bradley cooper. michelle rhee. this is three hours. >> mrs. linda dean. mrs. rachel robinson. mr. norman siegel. >> mr. charles adams, junior. mr. and mrs. kathy. mr. and mrs. ken ehrlich. ms. constance milstein. mr. and mrs. pete selleck. >> mr. and mrs. richard plepler. >> mr. keith smith. >> mr. burton smith. >> ms. edith windsor. >> roberta kaplan and mrs. rachel levine. [inaudible] >> mark hicing. >> mr. and mrs. goldman. >> mr. and mrs. duggal. >> mr. and mrs. chuck smith. >> mr. herbert jolie. [speaking french] >> i am the token french member of the u.s. delegation. i am happy to celebrate. the honorable and mrs. mike donnellan. >> mr. and mrs. joel benenson. >> the governor of kentucky. mrs. bashir. >> mr. steve clemons. mr. andrew oros. >> doing great. >> what is the french connection? what is the french connection. >> you just get it by looking good. ok. [ambient chatter] >> do you parlez any french? >> i do not parlez any french. >> mr. and mrs. steve holland. >> the secretary of transportation and mrs. anthony fox. [camera clicking] >> mrs. elma goldman. mr. drew. >> mr. and mrs. joseph blunt. the honorable stacey abrams. >> she is doing an incredible job. my name came from france a long time ago. i think the french are way cooler than we are. and they certainly have better gossip. [inaudible] >> ms. julia louis dreyfus. mr. william louis dreyfus. >> mr. jonathan levine. mrs. emily levine. ms. bonnie porta. >> the governor of tennessee. >> mrs. barbara schmidt and mr. richard schmidt. >> mr. randall kaplan. >> mr. gary simon. >> mr. and mrs. randall stephenson. >> the honorable elijah cummings and dr. maya cummings. >> glad to be here. >> we just love the country. we came to support france. >> ms. joanna coles and mr. peter godwin. >> we just brought it and it shattered. we heard there is no dancing. [inaudible] i'm about to find out, i think. this is jewelry from sydney in chicago. i am hoping this isn't too fluffy. thank you. mr. ara aprikian. mr. john ruddy. >> ms. elizabeth strickler. >> the honorable tod stern and ms. jennifer klein. mr. and mrs. caleb baloo. mr. andrew tobias. ms. marie brenner. >> the honorable edward randall royce and mrs. royce. [inaudible] >> is there anything you want to say about the day and how things are going? >> enjoy the evening. >> mr. and mrs. lee saunders. >> mr. bill and jane stetson. ms. karen nagasaki. >> mr. bill and jane stetson. >> the honorable daniel gray. >> ms. janique sealey. >> the honorable mr. karen in and leslie euro and -- kiernan. >> mr. james crane. >> mr. frank skinner. and jennifer bado aleman. >> ms. rebecca shaw ms. beth shaw. >> mr. and mrs. ken fraser. >> ms. sarah smiley and commander dustin smiley. the honorable tina chen. >> mr. and mrs. david stern. >> mr. robert mailer anderson. >> ms. andrea bernstein and mr. tom bernstein. >> mr. laura ross and mr. james ross. mr. eliseo medina. mr. and mrs. irwin jacobs. mr. jason collins. mr. brunson green. >> i'm just having fun and enjoying tonight. >> the honorable patrick f kennedy and ms. m. elizabeth swope. vic torry ofble new and and dr. robert kagan. and dr.ria nuland robert kagan. mr. raymond mcguire. ms. crystal mccleary. mr. bruce mosler. i will announce you. rummlerrable kathleen and justice elena kagan. mr. and mrs. stephen colbert air -- colbert. the honorable jay carney and ms. claire shipman. the honorable gene sperling. mr. rick sperling. greet french president hollande is her life coverage of the state visit continues. [background sounds] [background sounds] [background sounds] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> and so the guest of honor has arrived. french president francois hollande greeted by the president of first lady from the north entrance of the white house. this is the seventh state dinner or official visit for the obama administration the first of the second term and later we will take you to the south on pavilion. it has turned into a springlike display of french culture and flowers and arts. but first we will take a look inside the state dinner as part of our coverage here on c-span2's. we will tell you what it's like to be invited to one of these exclusives upstairs and get some background on the role of first lady's over the years and we will have a conversation with former white house social secretary giuliana smoot who served in the obama administration. as we continue to look at the scene from the portico entrance of the white house we want to begin with the perspective of james fallows from atlantic magazine. james as a national correspondent for the atlantic magazine you have attended three state dinners. what are they like? >> they are interesting and fun as you would imagine. usually at each dinner there's a sprinkling of journalists usually people that have had some connection to the country that is being invited. i've been to once for korea, for china recently and then for canada i guess because i'm from north america and is just interesting and fun. i think nobody can really not like these things. >> lets start the process at the beginning. you get the invitation. what is that like? >> it's a big heavy stark thing back in the days protocol like something you think of from -- downton abbey. you check in with social secretary to find out the details of when you're supposed to be there and what you can and cannot bring with you and what kind of i.d. and then you show up in plenty of time early on. usually you take a taxi to one of the social gates of the white house and perceived in through the clearance which now i think is more intense than it used to be after the renegade group tried to get into i guess an indian state dinner. >> after clearance you walk into the white house and then what? >> you go through this corridor to the east wing. there are pictures of all that have, and you make your way to the receiving line. you're announced by military guests. each person coming in has this announcement. mr. presently announce this person coming in. there is a kind of if you are in the less famous bottom group as we always were going to these things you have the sense that everyone is listening to the announcement. is it going to be yo-yo ma or some other famous person and then there is a category of people who are not famous that they announce. you come in and meet new meet the president of the united states and the first lady and the visiting president and his or her spouse and then you move on and mix and mingle. the brush with celebrity is part of coming to the receiving line. >> is certainly a festive evening but is it one with some added stress? >> i am sure there are people who have stressed that for me personally i found it just enjoyable because the most recent one that my wife and i went was for then president of china hu jintao about a year into the obama administration. we have been living in china for the previous three or four years so we thought it would just be interesting and fun to receive the present of china who has never greeted the people in china. and to see other people who are involved in this whole world of u.s.-china affairs. i am personally find it fun more than stressful. maybe my wife is spending more time on clothing and hair than i was. >> the reception has concluded and you go to the state dining room. how do you know where to sit in what is that like? >> depending on the size, dinners have a larger and smaller groups of attendees. the big ones have several rooms out there so you check your table to see where you are going to be and you cannot help doing an assessment of how does this table stand? they try to be careful of sprinkling out the famous people in the table so nobody feels he or she has a bad seat. you go there and you are seated in their name cards at each place of course. there are menus and wine usually american at least the ones i have seen. for the french president i don't know whether it's a gesture of franco-american amity but they will sprinkle in french wines are champagnes but then you spend quite a while just talking with the people at your table and other places and finally they have somebody who tells everyone to sit down to maximize their schmoozing time. >> what is the obvious like in the white house and the state dining room? >> long ago i worked for jimmy carter when he was the president. i was a speechwriter and i never got to attend the state dinners as a guess guest. i was under a lot of stress trying to make the toast but the ambience for the guests i think as far as i can tell it's just fun. people are almost universally excited to be there. i'm not trying to make this sound silly but it would be deal dishonest to say people don't enjoy this because there are a lot of usually well-known people there. they have common interest generally for the visit and it is always interesting just to see the five and the body language of the american president and his spouse and the foreign leader, what they are like and how they carry themselves. the vibe is a positive one. >> how important are these dinners for american diplomacy and how to heads of state view their visit at these events? >> i think they can be very important. for example when the chinese leader at the time i believe it may have been hu jintao in his early stage came during the george w. bush demonstration there was kind of the chill in the u.s. chinese relations so he got a lunch rather than a dinner. he started his visit in seattle not in washington d.c. so that was a sign of the cooling of the relationship. hu jintao came in obama's early time and had a state dinner and was taken seriously in china as this was a sign of amity. from the u.s. point of view it's a celebration. on the seat receiving end of the calibration that the u.s. can give to indicate its degree of warmth or coolness to a visiting partner. >> for those who will never be invited to a state dinner give us a sense of the sights and sounds and what you are looking at, what it feels like and how it comes across that you can't capture on television. >> i will try to give a quick panorama. you get out usually by taxi because there's no place to park on the east side of the white house which is the social wing where the first lady and eventually the first gentleman will be based. you walk through there and something inside the white house people may not recognize, it's full of these excellent pictures usually pictures of whoever's the current incumbent. there has been controversy about the white house official photographer pete souza anopoli singh opportunities in the obama administration. you walk through this long-haul that has historical memorabilia and all these interesting large photos of current presidents going around the country. you see a lot of military people, u.s. military and occasionally some of the foreign ones wearing their dress outfits with medals and the receiving line, there is a kind of, everybody is looking as if he or she is not excited but you can tell that they are going through the lines. the most impressive display i have seen of coolness under challenge was when during late in the clinton administration in 1998 my wife and i got to go to a dinner for the korean president and right in front of us was a famous korean conceptual artist who is having some kind of i don't know whether he had -- coming in with a walker and was very unsteady. he was immediately in front of my wife. as he was shaking hands with president bill clinton my wife about 3 feet behind this korean artist in his mid-60's or so his trousers fell down and he was wearing nothing underneath them. on a think live feed tv at the time you had a completely bottom half of an older korean gentleman with bill clinton looking every second into his eyes as the man's assistant pulled up his trousers. uchitel the korean president was not amused by this one little bit but bill clinton acted as if ,-com,-com ma he was taking it all in stride. the next person bill clinton greater was my wife so he had a raise on his eyebrows as to what just happened. usually things are more control than that. the other time i had seen something unexpected was during the chinese dinner early in obama's time. somebody started ringing out his smartphone to take pictures and suddenly everybody was doing it. you have the ceo of soft india had the pms from china and michelle quan who are starting to take pictures and jackie chan was at our table taking pictures with a smartphone. i don't know that it then done at state dinners before but when someone started doing it they'll started doing it taking pictures of the president obama and hu as they were working the crowd table by table. >> finally as you remember the evening of entertainment how did the night conclude and what do you remember? >> so it's, this also is very interesting in the calibration of the signal that the president of the united states at the time. what i remember most vividly was the chinese state dinner where was essentially a celebration of american jazz. i believe as herbie hancock and several other great american jazz singers or instrumentalists. president obama said to the visiting chinese that culture is part of our connection and we would like to highlight something that's an important part of our culture and then i believe the famous chinese pianist got up there and played with herbie hancock. that was a sign of cultural connection so it's one of the ways like the opening ceremonies of the olympics anymore condensed form that the united states can give a signal of what part of its cultured want to highlight and i thought that wal with the chinese and american attendees. >> james fallows of the atlantic magazine thanks for adding your perspective to tonight's coverage. >> my pleasure. >> you were looking at the scene from the bookseller which is on the ground floor of the white house. we will continue to watch as many of the nearly 350 guests arrive arrive for tonight state dinner gather. they will then head up to the state floor including the blue room which is where the obamas at this hour grading the president of france. >> mr. richard winter and mrs. alexandra winter. ms. christine lagarde. ms. krystal a. connors. the honorable charles schumer and ms. irs's line shah. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] mr. and mrs. kevin f. o'malley. the honorable michael nutter mayor of philadelphia and mrs. nutter. the honorable david l. cohen and mrs. cohen. the honorable debbie wasserman schultz and mr. stephen schultz. ms. juliana goldman and mr. mike gottlieb. the honorable stephanie rollins blake mayor mayor of baltimore and mr. kent blake. mr. samuel hynes and ms. stacey mills. ms. alexandra stanton and ms. donna stanton. [inaudible conversations] the honorable kevin johnson mayor of sacramento and ms. michelle lee. >> i'm really excited. this is my first state dinner. for my wife and i to big treat. i have learned to french phrases. >> go ahead. >> i can't remember. thank you. the honorable paul ryan and mrs. ryan. the honorable chuck hagel, secretary of defense and daughter ms. ellen hagel. mr. dan barber and brother mr. david barber. ms. mindy kelling and guests ms. jocelyn leavitt. [inaudible conversations] the honorable nancy pelosi and daughter jacqueline kelling. >> this is my daughter jack wayne. she is from texas. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] attorney general erik holder and mrs. holder. >> i'm glad to be here. we have a great relationship which i'm sure will be made better by this dinner. spanish. >> thank you. ambassador to the united nations and ms. cass sunstein. [inaudible conversations] mr. and mrs. peter bashar. mr. and mrs. james roosevelt junior. [inaudible conversations] the honorable karen bass and ms. barbara jordan. >> i've been to paris and i love it and i'm very honored to be here today. >> the honorable lives sure when randall and jeffrey randall. >> i was responsible for europe in the first term. [inaudible conversations] >> ms. mary j. blige and mr. can do isaacs. >> it's a surprise. it's going to be fun though. i don't know. excuse me? my last name is french. the reverend al sharpton and ms. asia schott. >> i have been practicing my french. [inaudible conversations] the honorable jennifer palmieri and james flatts. [inaudible conversations] mr. and mrs. arnie sorensen. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] most of the guests have arrived in you are looking at the scene from an area known as the bookseller if you are on tour at the white house. it's one of the first locations before you had upstairs. this is a burst the area where the guests arrive before going to the state florida. we said earlier the president and mrs. obama hosting french president hollande and one of the rooms therein is the blue room which we should point out was decorated during the monroe administration with furniture from paris in 1817. a number of french-american connections on display tonight. and later in the program a chance for you to have a conversation with joanna smoot who served in the obama administration is white house social secretary. we will also get your calls and comments as well. some background on this one is the seventh state or official visit dinner by the obama administration. the location for tonight's dinner is the south lawn pavilion and it's being turned into a montney inspired gala in honor of the french president. there will be 350 invited guests and you saw a moment ago r&b singer mary j. blige who will perform tonight and the cuisine will be american base but also a french inspired floral arrangement. some background on u.s. and french relations the last state visit by a french president was back in 1996 during the clinton administration french president jacques jaroch and the last official dinner was during the final year or two of the bush administration with french president sarkozy. by the way francois hollande is coming stag to tonight's dinner and we will talk more about that later but first a rifle which is part of the pomp and ceremony in the news conference that took place between the two leaders but it began shortly after 9:00 this morning on the crisp cold winter morning but temperatures in the 20s. no rain and no snow and one of the photographs released by the white house earlier today shows the president french president hollande with the french flag. here is more from the south lawn this morning at the white house. [background sounds] ♪ ladies and gentlemen the president of the united states and mrs. michelle obama. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [background sounds] [background sounds] [background sounds] >> ladies and gentlemen. [inaudible] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] [background sounds] [background sounds] [background sounds] >> mr. president the honor guard is prepared for inspection. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [background sounds] [background sounds] [background sounds] >> thank you. [background sounds] [background sounds] >> good morning everybody. that's the extent of my french. [laughter] few places in the world warmed the heart like paris in the spring. this morning we are going to do our best with washington in the winter. [speaking french] >> france is america's oldest ally and in recent years we have deepened our alliance. today on behalf of the american people and michelle and myself it is a great honor to welcome my friend president hollande and his delegation for their first state visit to united states, in fact the first state visit by a french president in nearly 20 years. [applause] [speaking french] >> yesterday at monticello we reflected on the values that we share, the ideals at the heart of our alliance. here, under the red white and blue and the blue, white and red we declare our devotion once more to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [applause] [speaking french] >> for more than two centuries we have not only proclaimed our ideals, our citizens have led to preserve them from a field in yorktown to the beaches of normandy to the mountains of afghanistan. and today we are honored to be joined by two extraordinary men who were there those historic days 70 years ago. i asked them to stand, proud veterans of d-day who are here in attendance today. [applause] [speaking french] >> so it's no exaggeration that we stand here because of each other. we owe our freedom to each other of course we americans also thank our french friends for so much else, this capitol city designed by l'enfant our statue of liberty a gift from france and something many americans are especially grateful for, new orleans and the french quarter. [laughter] [speaking french] >> mr. president like generations before us we now have the tasks not simply to preserve our enduring alliance but to make it new for our time. no one nation can meet today's challenges alone or sees its opportunities. more nations must step up and meet the responsibilities of leadership and that is what the united states and france are doing together. [speaking french] speak to our french friends, i say let's do even more together for the security that our citizens deserve, for the prosperity that they seek and for the dignity of people around the world who seek what we declared two centuries ago those inalienable rights, those sacred rights of man. [speaking french] president hollande, members of the french delegation we are honored to have you here as one of our strongest allies and closest friends. welcome to the united states. [applause] [speaking french] >> mr. president, dear barack, dear michelle, ladies and gentlemen it's cold in washington. [laughter] you are right. but it's a beautiful day, a great day for our american friends. and i will speak in french because i am obliged to do that for my country. [speaking french] >> translator: we are received here my delegation and myself and i'm particularly touched by this perception by the president of the united states. [speaking french] >> translator: we are always united by a history from the beaches of normandy and as you said each of our country knows what it owes to the other, it's freedom. [speaking french] >> translator: yesterday we ran monticello thomas jefferson's residents a great american statesman once ambassador to france who remains one of the most beautiful symbols of the ties that unite us. .. [speaking french] [speaking french] >> i wish to demonstrate the fact france will never forget the spirit of sacrifice shown by the nameless heroes to left their home to liberate by cou country and theirs. we will pay tribute to them to remember the normandy landing. i hope you will join me on the 6th of june 2014, 70 years after the landing. [speaking french] >> our two countries hold universal values. values that we write together the universal declaration of rights. [speaking french] >> we stand together to fight terror. france and the united states stand side by side to make the values prevail. we stand with the united states to address the threats of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons. together to solve the crisis faced by the middle east. together to support africa's development. and another to fight global warming and climate change. [ applause ] [speaking french] >> today, we stand united and we have built a modal of friendship. a friendship that is the best recipe for a better world. a world such as the one that was dreamt by thomas jefferson and law fay et. it is about an alliance that will enable us to make the world a better, safer and more humane place. [speaking french] [ applause ] >> mr. president, i am proud to stand here. you are a great man of the united states of america and you represent the united states of america. a country where everything is possible for who wants it. a country devoted to freedom and quality. long live the united states. long live france. long live the franco-american relationship. [ applause ] >> mr. president, this concludes the ceremony. [marching band music playing] >> one of the highest honors for a visit head of the state is a state dinner. on this day, a crisp clear morning in which the president talked about springtime in paris and winter in washington, d.c. they are hosting their seventh dinner for a special guest like this. the dinner is taking place in a tent on the south lawn. this is continuing coverage by the french president. a chance for you to join in on the conversation as the social secretary for obama and was responsible to organizing two state dinners for the president of china and mexico. our phone lines are open. those of you in the eastern and central time zone and there is the number for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. state dinners have a relatively new phenomenon. we are continuing our series on first ladies. the final program is taking place next monday on president's day. we will be releasing a new poll on now americans view america's first ladies. heather foster is a presidential historian and has written a number of books on the first ladies. i asked her about the early dinners and how they have evolved since the civil war >> we didn't have anything resembling state dinners during washington because who was coming? we had great big oceans and no heads of state were coming for dinner like now. state dinners were larger dinners for who was in town. the congressman, the court, and a lot of diplomats and that was the extend of a state dinner. they had rental houses that were large and couldn't accommodate the people we have now. if they had 30-40 for dinner that was considered large >> what changied during and aftr the civil war? >> before the civil war, entertaining at the whitehouse started through dolly madison. she liked to entertain and was a wonderful host. they lived in the whitehouse and she put it on the map. dining at the whitehouse at big important dinners was the expense of it was born by the president as a matter of fact. this is important to remember. there was no budget for official entertaining until the coolidge administration. the president and first lady were given a salary and they took care of those expenses themselves. >> can you give some specific examples of what first ladies brought to the fwin dinners and the diplomacy in the state house? >> the role of the first lady was an evolution. it was determined by the first lady herself what she wished to do. dolly was hands-on and warm. elizabeth monroe, her successor, was more aloof. elizabeth said i am not going to return calls which made her very, very unpopular. and a lot of the women in washington decided they were not going to come. so a lot of the monroe administration dinners were stag affairs. when jackson and van buren were in the whitehouse they were widowers. so they had substitute first ladies who didn't do very much in the way of official entertaining. they were young girls at 22-25 years old. they didn't have that kind of experience. the one first lady who really started entertaining very nicely was another substitute first lady harriet lane who was acting first lady during the bucannon administration. she had a bit of experience and ent ent entertained graciously. she was in charge of the guest list, seating plans and who was coming and who would be there and who would be introduce and how. mary lincoln didn't entertainment because there was a war going on and show was morning. after the civil war, entertaining got to be better >> as we moved into the 21st century, to t-- what changed in terms of the role of the first lady? >> transportation was a big factor in what changed. it didn't take six weeks to cross the ocean. you could do it in one week now. and after president wilson was the first president to leave our shores and go abroad. i think haft went abroad briefly but it was wilson who went abroad and that is when heads of state were coming to the country. during that earlier period, the diplomats were like quasi. they were representing their governments. they were treated royally. i think the first head of state came during the grant administration. and then during roosevelt's administration, he had the brother of wilham who put on a grand affair for him. and the mood of the whitehouse and oplence increased a lot. >> any examples of a mistake at a state dinner and how a first lady handled that? or a faux pas. >> they with well loved and kept in the protocol loop of who is to go where and everything. but the one story i love the most is the sad story, if you want a sad story, i will tell you one. this is about nelly taft who was first lady in 1910 and about three months in she had a stroke at 48. she had aafacia. she could not read or watch and her mouth drooped and she could not be seen in public. she is a very active first lady and wanted it like crazy. she was very ambitious. a man named buck painted a beautiful picture. nelly helped prepare a state dinner but couldn't attend. it was a big affair. there was a little room adjoining the state dining room. before the dinner, she comes down to this little room and she is dressed in her beautiful downton abby outfit with jewelry and hair down. and they had a table for one prepared. she sits outside in this little room adjacent to the state dining room and they left the room ajar is little bit so they can here what was going on. that is a beautiful story >> foster is joining us from virginia. she is the author of a number of books. thanks very much for joining us. >> you are very, very welcome. thank you for having me. >> tune in monday for the final look at the first ladies influence and image. julianna smoot is here. she is a veteran of state dinners. >> i am excited to be here. >> let's get to the guest list. steven cobert. eric cantor. david stern the former nba commissioner. paul ryan. julia dryfus and 350 people invite fork invited for the dinner tonight. >> that is exciting. >> how do you get an invite? >> it is a long process. we get the dirfferent departmens with the whitehouse together, nscs is a part of it, and it is a building wide planning section. we start meeting three months out with weekly meeting to figure out who we can invite, figure out what the day and dinner will look like >> last year the president was scheduled to have a state dinner were the president of france because of the nsa that was postponed. today that came up and the president made a point that france is our longest ally. there is a picture from the white house of the presidents yesterday in the home of thomas jefferson and he served as a u.s. envoy to france. as we look at the history of the relations, how is it determined we will have a state dinner for the president of france and what is involved in the decision making progress? >> the country decides what country they would like to honor and what leader they would like to have. and then it goes into the process of figure out a date. it is hard to figure out a date in your family. imagine across the globe and figure out how to make a date that will work. that is figured out first. and then you go from there. >> the other story that is getting a lot of attention is the french president is here by himself because of the separation from his long-time girlfriend. who is seated next to the president since he is coming alone? thelma goldman and steven coburt is next to the first lady. >> i think that is a good idea. it will make the president feel more comfortable and those are good dinner partners for the president and first lady >> i want to share with you a tweet and you can join in with the #cspan chat. bill king says you are a c-span junky when you are watching a state dinner over olympic coverage. they are taking a trolley attend on the south lawn. it is being called a monet spring festival. what -- but -- there is a winter approaching soon. >> the whole building, the whole staff, really go all out to host the guess and do everything they can to make it a beautiful ev t event. we have a wonderful flourrist a the whitehouse and the chef are wonderful. >> give us a sense of what is happening right now? the guest have arrived. we know earlier when the president and first lady greeted the president they went to the blue room and that has monroe furniture. as the guest are moving from one location to the other, what is happening and taking place? >> it is a lot to move a group of 350 people from one place to the other. there are cocktails and orders being passed around and folks are getting out to the tent where they will be seated >> i want to share what sally quinn wrote back in 1975. she said when putting together a guest list, you had to be sure to invite people that should be invited and don't invite the people that should not be invited and soothe the ones who should be but can't. >> it is building wide effort where you come up with a lot of names of folks you want to have invited to this very special occasion. so folks might be called from the list because, you know, it is a small veneue. 350-person dinner party is big. if it were inside, it would be limited to about 200-250 dinner. so you think about you and you get to bring a guest, it is really 150. >> you get a phone call from someone you know and they say i want to come to the state dinner. you put together one for the chinese head of state and mexican head of state. what do you tell them? >> if it is somebody i know we will say we would love to be able to accommodate you, let's see what we can do. when you are invited to a state dinner you should do everything you can to attend. we can try to make accommodat n accommodations but it is hard to do. we can make a list of ongoing folks we would like to invite. >> if you get a last-minute cancelation, what do you do? >> there are folks that might drop everything to be on a plane if you want to invite them. we tend to do that. >> this is a mix of administration, members of congress, eric cantor, nancy pelosi and some famous people like steven coburt. >> and bradley cooper. >> of course. >> it is a really great group. i love we have democrats and republicans attending which i think is so wonderful. that is such a testament to how this is a non-partisan event and it is as a great american tradition and people come together and celebrate. >> mary jay blige and the performer tonight. how does that come about? >> the performers are people that the president and first lady enjoy. and we talk to the honored guest staff to see if there is anybody they would like to hear from or listen to on their i-pod. you go from there and back to the process of availability. >> our phone lines are open for the eastern and central time zones. and for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zone it is on there. 350 people is a lot of china and silverware. how is that determined? >> there is staff at the whitehouse that has been there for many years. they know if i say i would like to use the regan china and they will say me might not have enough. or if the decor is hot pink you probably don't want to use red. not that we use hot pink. but they will help you figure out the china, and what linens look the best. >> there is a storm expected to hit washington, d.c. on thursday. what do you do if the weather doesn't cooperate? >> that is the most stressful thing. i can imagine departments were doing a weather call on the phone. luckily it was a beautiful day but it was cold. the decision was to go forward. we have had decisions where it rains and we have the guy standing behind with the umbrella. but the weather is a call that is made the day-of the event >> in the two state dinners you were responsible for; were the inside the whitehouse or did you have the tent? >> for mexico we were inside for dinner and then outside for a tent where beyonce performed. for china, we had three tables in three different rooms and everything was inside the whitehouse >> your work is done by the time the dinner is underway. so what is your job like on this night? >> you are running around making sure everybody is comfortable. and also enjoys the night. >> how do the obama's repair -- prepare -- for this? >> i think the first lady spends time on what she is going to wear. she is involved with the menu planning. >> this is what the table is looking like. >> it is beautiful. >> the first lady is very involved. so is the president. they will look at the books and they go up every night a month out they are getting memos about the state dinners. where the invitations are going out, tasting test, and a week before you start the process of a sea and say these are the people we want to sit here >> what will they dine on this evening? >> it is all food inspired by america. there is going to be stuff from the first lady's garden. but chris comeford is the chef and she is amazing. when we had guest chefs, for my first state dinner, we had rick bales who is an american chef but cooks mexican food. it is hard to fix a dinner for 300 people or even 200 and making sure it all comes out at the same time and it is hot. if you run a restaurant that is great. you can have perfect food with balance. but chris is great and billy is the pastry chef and he is great, too. they have a delightful menu planned >> i would imagine the best is the tasting >> that is very true. and during the holidays there are cookies left over and they will show up and you have to be careful not to eat them. >> annie chicago is on the line. are you with us? go ahead, please >> hi, let us know your most favorite part of the whole experience was for you. >> well, that is a great question, annie. thank you. i loved the first state dinner. it was big and scary. i was working with a wonderful team both mine and in the social office. it was wonderful to be into that state dinner and saying we did it and people had a great time and no body had a terrible time or got sick. >> you mention the seating plans, what kind of protocol is in involved in that? >> my other social secretary friend would say you would never seat spouses together. but the obama's feel different about that. they think spouses and friends don't spent enough time together so we seat them together. we typically split up men and women and make it boy/girl. but it varies. >> from houston, texas. kin kingsley is on the phone. >> just a couple questions for you: first of all, what influence or input does mrs.obama have for setting the dinner of the state menu. and given the fact there could be a female president, is the whitehouse set up for a male first gentlemen. who might be coordinating the state dinners >> ms. obama is very involved with the decor and definitely the menu. she is part of the tasting as well and decides what to serve ultimately. social office in the whitehouse is incrediblely small. i had two deputies -- incredi y incredibly -- small. and that format would probably stay the same, i would think, if there were a female president. i would presume that if the first gentlemen would want to be involved with this, they would happily take their advice. i think it would just be individual >> this is a photograph from french newspaper that haws the french president with president obama this morning. and i want to talk about changes because he didn't bring his long-term girlfriend. what does that change mean? >> you try to account for every detail, but you cannot be so ridged, you can't be flexible. we were talking about changing the invitation, but the folks that got it received it as it was. we have cligfers down the house from the social office and they work long hours and can make any changes needed for theman -- for the menus -- >> we welcome the listeners on the radio. we are talking about state dinners. we have our next caller from indiana. >> i wanted to know i also see politici politicians and business people and important people are only invited to the state dinner. do they occasionally let hard working, average americans come? >> that is a great question. it might look like that in the book-sellers as they are announcing the bradley coopers of the world. there are several hard-working americans that are invited to the dinner. when i was social secretary for the mexican state dinner, we had wonderful folks that were local to washington, d.c. who run non-profits here in towni. the first lady is very adement about having hard-working people. >> you have the president of france, and i want to ask you, france is known for many things, especially their food. does that add to the challenge for the chef? >> yes, i believe so. i am glad i am not the chef >> how does the whitehouse prepare for the food and wine for somebody who is coming to the united states for a country known for its food and wine. >> any time you have the french president coming there is a little extra pressure as the french are known for their food. there is going to be a little extra emphasis in being sure the t's are cross and i's are dotted. but the food is always taken serio seriously and there are no loose ends typically. >> how was it determined based on your experience of serving past visitors? >> it has a very french take in it. and in other respects a very american take. it is good blending of the two different styles. the first class of caviar, and quail eggs, and finger link potatoes is a french style. i am sure the executive chef at the whitehouse put her own particular american spin on it. but if i read that without the word american in it i would think this is a french course. this isn't atypical for the state dinners. we tried to do the first dish by honoring an ingredient or plate from their county. the second course is winter garden salad. it is curious because in my recollection there is cheese on the entre so they have moved the salad to the first place and this is probably a product coming from the whitehouse garden. it looks to be, while it is called a salad, it is probably a room temperature style venl vegetable dish. and very nutritional in keeping with the mandate of a healthy and nutritional lifestyle. the dry aged beef is the next course and that is american through and through. to have the blue cheese on it is a tip of the hat to the french style but a very american blue cheese. even the spelling is the blue american spelling here. there is a blending of these great american ingredients with a french take on it. the desert is going to be great because you cannot go wrong a chocolate chocolate and vanilla ice cream. it sounds like a light, refreshing healthy menu. the dry-aged rib-eye steak is great. they have a french sensibility with american ingredients and take on it. >> there is a tasting before it is finalized, but what else goes into account? >> the first thing that happens is the state's department officer of protocol will forward a paper going through the dinner. from the food stamp point we talk about cultural, personal taste and health of the guest. and typically the chef meets with the social secretary or with the first lady to talk about their thoughts on what the menu should be. several menus will be generated addressing all of the different concerns. and from that the first lady picks out a menu or number of courses she likes. there may or may not be a tasting. ms. bush liked them. ms. clinton didn't do that many. if there is a tasting, there is a follow-up and corrections or amendments to the menu. and then we would go through making and remaking and rehearsing if you will to get them the way you want them. a state dinner is like a broadway opening. once it hits the bright lights, you have to hit your mark and you cannot be experimenting at the last second. the dinner isn't the only thing happening that night so you have to find the niche within the entire options >> what about the vegetarian options? >> there are a number of options. when the invitations are ontario out there is a line that says let us know if you have dietary concerns. rather they are vegan, vegetarian or non-gluten it will be addressed. the whitehouse is a private home so the first lady wants to be gracious and having people coming into their home and be comfortable. so in many cases we go out of the way to make sure all of the alternative menus were offered. american wines from california and washington state -- the reasoning behind that? the whitehouse is all about highlighting american food, wine and entertaining. so even though france has a story history of wine, we are pretty good at it. i was looking at the wines. it would appear we have a couple really, really good ones. again, i think they are in the french style but by american producers. i am
then, federal reserve chair janet yellen testifying about the federal reserve and monetary policy. likes this week, david medine, chairman of the privacy and civil liberties review board. they give for being here. what is the argosy and civil liberties review board? >> we decide what went wrong and what could be done better. we created the 9/11 commission to look at how we could he for intelligence gathering and connect the dots. far downnot to go too that line to sacrifice our civil liberties. >> you are an independent board. could you report to? -- who do you report to? we inform congress and the president, but there is no review of our report. we issued a report recently about the metadata program and surveillance report. the board voted and issued our report. the presidentd before his speech with our recommendations. >> i think that is where alan -- ellen wants to pick up. ask your board got constituted and mete at a very opportune time, right in the midst of the snowden, who put a huge spotlight on several important surveillance programs. , asof them is section 250 you mention. your board came out with a 238 page report last month. theuld say it is arguably most extensive analysis of the legal underpinnings and the ,tility of the 250 program which is, as most of the public now knows, a program where the msa collects metadata, data about phone calls of americans, and puts it in a database, to search through them when they have a suspected terrorist's phone number, to search for links to that number and detect plots and networks. your board came with the conclusion and recommendation that the program was illegal, did not meet the statute that it was based on. you also recommended it rightore and -- and out outright, should stop operating. president obama in his speech only met you halfway. he said, we find the program has utility. use of to preserve the the data, but move it out of the hands of the government. what do you think of that? do you think there is a feasible solution, such as putting the data in the hands of a third party? is that feasible technologically or politically? president obama did track pretty closely what we recommended. we recommended an interim. we would have had more protections added. i hope that is considered. we both recommended the end of the 250 program, to move the information out of the nsa. we did it on constitutional and policy grounds. we do not believe that having a third-party handle the data is the right way to go. shifting the data from one box to another does not solve the problem. the third-party -- what is their legal authority? ?re they subject to foia what safeguards do they have? how will they operate? we think that is not the way to go. it is far better to have the information accessed through other legal authorities been held by the providers. providers.d by the >> how much of your concern has to do with the program itself, and how much has to do with the president the program sets? once you have a program of that sort, why can't the government collect -- when i go to the supermarket and give them a loyalty card, they have the list of everything i have richest just in the last year. can the government put that in the database as well? >> the implications are quite serious. the government could get all credit card transactions. is that once the government starts gathering so much information about our everyday lives, it shifts the power between the citizens and the government. will exercise their first amendment rights to contact religious organizations, political organizations. if they know the government is monitoring every move, it might chill their exercise of those rights. we are concerned about broad policy issues. has allelephone numbers those affects and lacks legal authority. , and lacks legal authority. >> would it concern you if the government expanded requirements of what telephone companies are required to store? do youtizen, how much care about what the government is holding versus private parties? can interfere, perhaps not as hermetically as the government. they can cause problems. if the information is there, what is the practical difference? >> the government can audit your taxes, put you in jail. the government can do lots of things. there is a difference between data held by a private company and the government, which can impact your life in a more serious way. the telephone company is already required to keep its information 14 months. a calamity.een some have suggested it might be necessary to keep it longer. others have suggested that might be necessary, to have the providers hold the information. directed theobama attorney general and director of national intelligence to come up with options, alternatives to the government holding of data, on march 28. and to work with congress as well. adoptions that congress can live with. that? think they can do if not, what happens then? >> we have been in touch with that group and land on meeting with them to give our input on how to move forward. are computer scientists, government officials, and others who think it is feasible to shift to others and be as feasible as it is today. we hope that will be a solution. our program and the statute underlying it expires in june of next year. does not act, the whole program will go away. collects you do not think there is enough support in the congress? >> i cannot predict that. a lot of members of congress have raised concerns about this program. be an approachll of stopping metadata collection of americans, shifting that to a more privacy protected, more focused approach. keepingaid you think this data in the hands of the phone companies, either with the current retention requirement or something a little bit longer, would be as effective and efficient as the way the system works now. how effective and efficient is the system? there have been reports by ellen and others, saying the system may be is not that effective, and certainly not as comprehensive as many people have thought at the outset of this debate. >> the government has put together 12 instances where they said the program was particularly effective. our board looked at both classified and unclassified information. we even had our write up. at the end of the day, we found no plots were supported. no terrorists were identified we did not know about earlier. on those big picture issues, not particularly effective. knowing there was not a plot afoot in the united states is certainly a value. we felt other resources with bulk data would address that concern. one case which seemed to have unique value involve material support. not an insignificant fact, but we felt that on balance that effect did not outweigh the concerns raised on the privacy and civil liberties side. the program is not comprehensive. you mentioned the peace of mind argument, which the government turned to after several months of trying to argue the program have been directly effective. how, they argue indirect benefit of ease of mind. if you had an alarm system on your home and it only operated on wednesdays and fridays, would you consider that a useful thing to have? would you pay money for that, and would you keep it if it cost you other problems, like major lights flash? -- like made your lights flash? >> that information remains classified, but the government has asserted the program is valuable and effective. our conclusion, our majority, is that it is not enough to justify the program as it is. >> in a sense, you got lucky. the existence of this program was leaked by a document edward snowden shared with "the guardian." , andhat program not leaked the government subsequently declassified it, how would you have handled the reporting of this program? >> our board has the highest level security clearances. we have access to virtually every government program that relates to counterterrorism, which is our mission. in some cases, going forward, there may be programs that remain highly classified, where we do a report that only goes to the president and congress. if there is a version we can make public, we will. that was our goal in this report, which ended up being entirely unclassified. there is a program which still remains largely classified. we will try to speak to the american public as much as we can about the constraints and what can be done about it. >> can you do that now? tell us a little bit about 702, for those who do not know. program, which is sometimes misnamed prism, it is focused on contents. metadata, we did not know who was calling or what they were saying. is being sent on the phone calls or the contents of the e-mails. that program is focused on non- u.s. persons, and those outside of the united states. you have to be not a u.s. person and outside the united states. countries typically engage in on foreigners, particularly outside our borders. is required.l i am not sure there is any other country in the world that requires for approval for surveillance outside the united states. to embark on at review of the program. it raises interesting issues. one is, at the end of that phone call, maybe an american on one and -- end. how should that day to be treated, particularly if the government wants to query it later on? >> and the effectiveness of the program. >> absolutely. the program is reportedly extremely effective. being an independent evaluation board, we want to take a hard look at that and find out what metrics were used. the onlyree that metric should not be thwarting plots. a lot of benefits to these programs. connecting the dots. providing valuable intelligence. guiding the president in his actions. we are certainly going to question the government and test the proposition that this program is as effective as it is reported to be. >> looking at the legality and constitutionality, two of your board members dissented. one of them i think said it was not the role of the board to assess legality. that is the role of the courts. what do you say to that? >> we are going to look at legality. the board member did not say we were not authorized to do that. it is a matter of allocating resources. if you look at our statute, congress told us to do two things evaluating programs related to enter terrorism. one is to balance civil liberties, and the other is to assess compliance with law. it is part of the congressional mandate. if it is an ongoing program, it is important to know whether it operates within the law. we will be looking at its operations, it's legality, constitutional issues it may raise. and the balance between private ,ecurity and civil liberties how secure it is and what impact it has on americans. little bitou are a lucky that the 205 program came up first. 702, the purposes are many. counterterrorism is just one. there is counter weapons of mass destruction. informationhering about what other governments are doing. there may be other areas the 702 program is used for. it is not limited by its terms to terrorism. the board mandate, as i understand it, the statute is limited to terrorism. how are you going to do this? are you going to be assessing this in respect to these other metrics that you do not have the statutory authority to examine? >> we are going to be mindful of our statutory limits. to --g at counterterror counterterrorism and other efforts -- it will be hard to separate those things out. our focus will be on counterterrorism. >> will it be useful for congress to tweak the language under which you are created, to expand a little bit, so it is not strictly counterterrorism? if civil liberties are being invaded, it may not matter that much with the reason is. -- theare talking about other side of it is, we are a new agency with a tiny staff. we are just getting established. expanding our mission right now -- certainly, we would do that if congress wanted us to do that. we are still scaling up the agency and getting started, staffing up. we have 20 within the counterterrorism program -- there are 16 intelligence agencies we oversee. we already have quite a big mandate as it is. >> what about other bulk collection programs? will you be taking a look at those, perhaps financial many transfer programs -- mini-transf programs, or the discontinued internet metadata program? >> we have not really established our agenda. once we finish the 700 to report -- the president, as you know, asked john podesta to take a look more broadly. we are also meeting with his group and with him to discuss our perspective on that issue. ofgeneral, the collection all committed data and its use does raise interesting concerns for us. >> you mentioned the legal analysis you did. there is one person on the board very qualified to do legal analysis, former judge patricia wald. interactiont the inside the board. how did that work? did some of you take more responsibility for some aspects of the study, and others look more at other issues? tell us a bit more about the makeup of the board and who has what kinds of expertise. >> we are an independent bipartisan board, so no more than three members can be in the same political party. circuitld was with edc -- the d.c. circuit court of appeals. she was given the presidential medal of freedom a couple of months ago. she has also served on other missions. a valuable resource for us. i should add i am the only full-time board member. the other four are part-time. judge weld is a retired judge, in jim dempsey works technology. rachel brand works for the chamber of commerce. we all bring our different perspectives. i think you can see from our work product that we are a collegial group. if you look at statements, they acknowledge how well we got along. these are tough issues. they are difficult issues. seetol hill, you will different sides. the president advocates certain views. the question is how you strike the right balance. intensesometimes discussions. weof the 12 recommendations made were unanimous. all of the recommendations regarding reform of the foreign surveillance board, all but one involving transparency, and all but one involving the 215 program. >> how does your agency go about raising concerns? ?s it just this report where do you go with them? >> we have an oversight function. we also have an advice program. we work with the agencies as they are developing their programs. one of the things we are doing right now in addition to our 702 report is meeting with agencies to give them feedback on programs. we are in negotiation with agencies to make sure, as they develop programs or change their guidelines regarding existing programs, that we put in those. we also have to meet with members of congress, congressional committees. we try to provide input in various ways. >> if these agencies do not listen to you? enough, ourngly statute requires us to tell congress that we recommended the agency do something and they did not follow our advice. we are required by law to report when that happens. to anant to take you back earlier position about how you might have handled reporting on the section 215 program, had it not been declassified. one of your recommendations is that the government report publicly on the scope of surveillance activities that affect americans. how much could you have made public? said there is a program that collects telephone metadata? what came out in testimony earlier this week is our board had been briefed on the 215 program, and the person who was briefing us was hit by a car on a bike and it had to be rescheduled. we operate in an area where there is a lot of classified information. are able to push for declassification to help the american people understand a program. if we find aspects of the program or the entire program where we think there is a public going towe consider the intelligence community and saying, please declassify these programs so we can have a fuller .ational debate we do not want a secret law where the american people cannot determine whether a program has been authorized. we also urge the government to report more on information collection activities. moreo let customers know about the government requests they are achieving. tech companies have reached an agreement to disclose more about what kinds of requests they get from the government. >> are there any programs you are pushing for more declassification? >> we are embarking on the 702 program, and that could come up in the course of reporting on that program. >> you have been following these issues for some time. how do you see the country's attitudes on this question of the balance between national security and privacy changing? that has takene place in the last few months have taken place eight years ago, nine years ago? we are 12 years post 9/11. in the courts.s almost all decisions in this area -- i do not want to say rubberstamp. time, in the last two months, we have seen in the 200 significantrogram a decision saying it was not constitutional. we have seen a few decisions describing how these counterterrorism programs have gone. do you think there is greater maturity on these issues? you think there has been a shift in how the government feels about this now? 9/11, i the horror of think the first action was to beef up our efforts. on, i think wee have struck up more of a balance between national security and privacy and civil liberties concerns. poll where a substantial percentage of people said they would not give up their privacy and civil liberties, and that was after a horrific event. our board sits in the middle of a debate. we are not an advocacy organization where we ignore the consequences to national security. we have to strike the balance and say, how can we protect the country and benefit privacy and civil liberties? the 9/11 commission and the president have said the same thing. if we give up one, we have lost a lot. >> time for a couple more questions. order 12-333, which is domestic, is not part of their mandate. given this increasingly borderless world of the internet , and the fact that communications collected overseas include communications of americans, do you think your mandate ought to stretch to include that? >> we do not have jurisdiction matters, because they involve -- every intelligence agency is required whenve guidelines collecting information, particularly about americans. some of those guidelines were decades old. was not text messaging decades ago. .here has been help the debate we have encouraged those guidelines be updated. 12-333 very much of a activity. >> do you think it is time for a unified set of privacy? is elected on u.s. citizens, or overseas. >> there are different contexts and benefits of programs. issues,e different whether it is u.s. or non-u.s. persons. our system has to work properly. i think there are unique factors. it may not be same size fits all. >> thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> we are back with our reporters, josh gerstein, ellen nakashima. what happens next with the nsa surveillance programs, whether capitol hill or the white house? >> in january, president obama ,ade a big speech at the forum and outlined reforms he wanted to see happen. one big one was, he wanted to see an end to the nsa collection of telephone metadata as it currently exists. he did not say outright. he said as it currently exists. he ordered his director of national intelligence to come up with alternatives to the government holding of the phone metadata by march 28. they are going to have to come up with some options. then, there are several other reforms that can be done curtail thevely to collection or the analysis, and some of them need congressional approval, like setting up a advocatesndependent who can provide a privacy or civil liberties viewpoint. that would require congressional approval. on the hill, you have a divided congress. there are those who believe section 215 should remain and stay as it is. they would like to see it put into statute and codified. there are others who are humanly believe it is illegal, and the statute does not authorize it. >> in his speech, he did not bring it up. the white house takes the position it is legal. they have been running the program since 2009. in an expanded fashion, at one point, it it got e-mail information. the white house does take that position. on capitol hill, i have almost never seen an issue where lawmakers are so splintered. it is not one of these issues where they are divided between republicans and democrats, or divided between democrats and moderate republicans and then conservative republicans. people are all over the map. there are a lot of lawmakers in the senate and the house who degree -- to agree on a lot of issues who disagree on this issue. a lot of it is where you stand. people on the intelligence community are gung ho and in the detail of how these programs are carried out. people at both ends of the -- there arectrum other people at different random points along the line that have formed alliances along the reform legislation. there does not seem to be consensus. those in favor of major reforms are setting it down are unlikely the fisavocates to court. >> rand paul has decided he is going to sue and wants millions of americans to sign up. where does it go from there? >> there are several cases pending in courts. at the u.s. district court level, we have two competing decisions. washington, the judge said the section 215 program is constitutional. another judge held that it is constitutional. the process can take months if not years. lawsuits,tion to the we have criminal cases. a lot about them. if you broaden it to the 700 to program this panel is going to be looking into next, there are a lot of cases that came directly or indirectly from that program. in each of those cases, the voters, once they find out if happened, or filing a motion saying the program is not constitutional. this is something the court is not going to be able to dodge more than another year or two. it is almost guaranteed that several decisions, whether it be -- this isfendants going to be dropped in the laps of justices. within a year or two, they are going to have to resolve this question. >> thank you both. appreciate it. >> janet yellen, the new federal leehe context is that enjoys a reputation in the modern day as someone who counseled acceptance. --t has always struck me as it is a sort of theory that does not add up, in a sense. we know lee was the most petite in the- prestigious man cells. but we know the south did not submit to the political will of the north. >> confederates began quickly to contest the northern understanding of the meaning of the war and the peace. they tested them through political means and extralegal means, violent means. what i found was that, in the eyes of confederates, lee was not a symbol of submission. he was a symbol of a kind of unbowed pride and a kind of measure of defiance. lee atinking grant and appomattox, this morning at 11:00 eastern, part of a three-day presidents' day weekend on american history tv. >> here they are, closing in. i am still thinking, when i went theygh survival school, taught us that the people who capture you are probably the ,east trained to capture pows so your best time to escape his right then. i thought, ok, these are rookies, so i have two rounds of tracer in three rounds of ball. i went like this. get back. i've fired a round of tracer over their head. they did not flinch. they just raised their rifles like this. one of them reaches in his pocket and pulled out a little -- it was like the comic book some carried in the pocket, with drawings on one side and be enemies fanatics on the other. the drawing showed been capturing an american pilot with the uniform and his hands up. "surrender. said up." up will stop -- hands i am facing about nine long guns staring at me, and i decided that was probably the best advice i was going to get that day. hands up. >> a former air force pilot and vietnam pow, lee ellis, tonight on "q&a." yellen testifying about the fed's
policy report. this was her first appearance before a congressional committee since being sworn in as head of the federal reserve. this committee will come to order without objection the chair is authorized any time. this hearing is for the purpose of hearing the semiannual testimony of the chairman of the board of governors of the federal reserve on monetary policy. and the state of the economy. before we get started, i'm not sure if i called this a personal privilege or not, but i would draw the attention of the committee that we are blessed again with the appearance of the gentle lady from new york, carolyn mccarthy and what a blessing it is to have her back with us. [ applause ] the chair will now recognize himself for six minutes to give an opening statement. we welcome chair yellen for her first of many semiannual humphrey-hawkins appearances before our committee. chair yellen, you may recall that just two months after allen greenspan became fed chairman in 1987, the stock market crashed. and at that time paul volcker sent him a short note that read, congratulations, you are now a central banker. chair yellen, you face the daunting prospect of unwinding a fed balance sheet the size and composition of which we have never seen before. all of this in the face of an economy that is underperforming at best, to alou me to paraphrase, congratulations, you are now the chair of the central bank. chair yellen we look forward to working with you to ensure that the federal reserve has the tools it needs to operate effectively in to the next century. we also look forward to working with you closely as this committee embarks upon its year-long federal reserve centennial oversight project. any agency or bureau of government that is 100 years old probably needs a good checkup, especially one as powerful as yours. and i remind all, independents and accountability are not mutually exclusive concepts. perhaps the most critical issue we must examine is the limit of monetary policy to actually promote a healthy economy. we have now witnessed both the greatest physical and monetary sim husband programs in our nation's history, and the results could not be more disappointing. despite being almost five years into the so-called obama recovery we still see millions of our fellow citizens unemployed or underemployed. shrinking middle income paychecks, and trillions of dollars of new unsustainable debt. why is the nonrecovery recovery producing only one-third of the growth of previous recoveries? by one estimate the obama administration owes $494 billion in new regulatory costs upon our economy. from the 2.5 million net jobs cbo has now announced obamacare will cost us, to the incomprehensible volcker rule, business enterprises are simply drowning in regulatory red tape that they attempt to expand and create more jobs monetary policy cannot remedy this. what else is different from previous recoveries? the single largest tax increase in american history. more than 1.5 trillion in higher taxes, from both the fiscal cliff agreement, and obamacare. and these taxes principally fall upon small businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors, again, as they try to bring about a healthier economy and create jobs. monetary policy cannot remedy this either. what else is different? fear, doubt, uncertainty, and pessimism that has arisen from the erosion of the rule of law. never before in my lifetime is more unchecked, unbridled discretionary authority been given to relatively unaccountable government agencies. we are slipping from the rule of law to the rule of rulers. to punke uate this point the president recently reminded us that he has a pen, and a phone to essentially enact whatever policy he alone seems fit. regrettably he does not seem to have handy a copy of the constitution. i suppose the fed could send him one and perhaps throw in a copy of milton friedman's capitalism and freedom, although i doubt it would do much good. there are clearly limits to what monetary policy can achieve, but much it can risk. thus, the roughly 3.5 trillion dollar question remains whether qe 3 will continue to taper slowly, whether it will end abruptly, or simply more into qe incontinuety. we look forward to hearing the chair's thoughts and intentions on the matter. as part of our centennial oversight project, qe will also cause our committee to thoroughly examine the federal reserve's unprecedented role in credit allocation. a focus distinct from its traditional role in monetary policy. should the fed pick distinct credit markets to support while ignoring others? this will -- this creates clearly winners and losers, and under the fed's current policies, seniors on fixed incomes are clearly losers. as we continue to witness the blurring of lines between fiscal and monetary policy. this committee will also examine the federal reserve's role as a financier and facilitator of our president's unprecedented deficit spending. since the monetary court of 1951 between the federal reserve and the treasury, it has been clear that the federal reserve should be independent of the president's fiscal policy, the question, though, is it? we will also consider how the federal reserve has undertaken the expansive new banking regulatory powers it obtained under the dodd-frank act. and why it fails to conduct formal cost/benefit analysis. we will also consider whether dodd-frank has constrained the fed's 13.3 exigent powers properly and precisely what should its role as lender of last resort be. we will closely examine an old debate in monetary policy between rules and discretion. during successful periods in the federal reserve's history like the great moderation of 1987 to 2003, the central bank appeared to follow a clear rule. today, it seems to favor more amorphous guidance, shifting from calendar based to tight thresholds to loose thresholds, which arguably leaves investors and consumers lost in a hazy mist as they attempt to plan their economic futures and create a healthier economy. chair yellen i look forward to working with you as we examine these issues and to ensure in the 21st century the federal reserve has a well-defined, specific mission that it has both the expertise and resources to effectively accomplish. the chair now recognizes the ranking member for five minutes for an opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would like to take a moment of personal privilege to just say how proud, pleased and honored i am to have our colleague, ms. mccore think from new york back with us today. [ applause ] thank you, mr. chairman. it is with great pleasure that i welcome, chair yellen, to deliver your first-ever humry-hawkins act report and testimony. chairman yellen your presence here today is both historic and well deserved. your record of distinguished service in government, academia, and at the federal reserve make you uniquely qualified to navigate the considerable economic challenges that lie ahead. your career in public service has been marked by high praise from economists and policymakers across the political spectrum. and in face of increasingly complex and interconnected global economy your sound judgment on the risks to economic growth and stability has been validated time and time again. in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, you accurately identified the looming risk to the economy and spoke up, telling colleagues, i quote, the possibility of a credit crunch developing and of the economy slipping into recession seem all too real, quote/unquote. when the crisis hit, as you predicted, you pushed to challenge conventional thinking about the limits of monetary policy and appropriately encouraged the fed to act forcefully to stabilize the economy. today, in mixed economic data seems to suggest that the recovery is still fridgele and millions of americans continue to be unemployed. your willingness to think outside the box is more important than ever. like many of my colleagues, i remain concerned that more needs to be done to address the long-term unemployment crisis. as you know, 3.6 million americans have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. and i fear that any further delay in addressing the problem could permanently damage the labor force and slow the economy's ability to grow over the long-term. as you weigh the costs, benefits and risks of further large-scale asset purchases, i hope you will press your colleagues on the federal open market committee to take into account the ongoing impact that this long-term unemployment crisis is having on millions of american families. of course the republicans ideologically driven austerity agenda, protracted political debt ceiling brinksmanship and failure to extend basic unemployment insurance benefits has only made this situation more dire. ironically republican unwillingness to provide the short-term fiscal assistance that the economy needs has put more pressure on the federal reserve to continue the same stimulative policies that many in their party oppose. although monetary policy is indeed a powerful tool, the responsibility of putting the -- for putting the economy on more stable footing cannot and should not fall exclusively on the federal reserve. congress, too, must do its part. what is shown i hope the congress can work in concert with the federal reserve to address is a growing issue of income inequality. as you know, the -- during the economic recovery have disproportionately benefited the wealthiest in our society leaving the middle class and most vulnerable behind. i believe that the income gap is one of the most pressing threats to our economic potential. i look forward to your views on how we can work together to close it. finally, there are a number of pending issues related to the fed's role in implementing the dodd-frank act and although we won't be able to discuss all of them today i hope to learn more about the fed's role in identifying and reducing systemic risk across the financial system. this includes your proposed rules to enhance prudential standards for large u.s. and foreign banking firms, and your views on risks that continue to exist in the repo markets. as the 2008 financial crisis made all too clear, growth and prosperity are inextricably linked to financial security and therefore your diligence on these matters is critically important. so i thank you, chair yellen, thank you again for being with us today, and i will yield back the balance of my time. >> the chair now recognizes the gentleman from michigan, mr. huizenga for two minutes. the vice chairman of our monetary policy subcommittee. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and chair yellen congratulations on being confirmed as first woman chair of the board of governors of federal reserve and i think, as you see with this group of cameras ahead of you, buckle up and hang on. this is going to be an interesting ride, i'm sure. as we're preparing for this, i sent out a facebook and twitter tweet about what i should ask you. a number of things came back. competitiveness, our u.s. competitiveness, auditing the fed, a number of other things, but i've got a couple of other ideas, as well. today i'm particularly eager to hear your insights on monetary policy and the state of the economy, specifically your views of the new quote/unquote highly touted volcker rule. i'm not the first to note that since the creation of the fed in 1913 the fed's power has significantly expanded over the last 100 years. ranking member waters just thanked you for quote, thinking outside the box. some of us are trying to determine what exactly the box is these days. and i think we have -- we all have a responsibility to explain that to the american people. well, originally created and supervised to monitor the banking systems in the united states, the fed's role has continued to grow seemingly unchecked, some of that through acts like the dodd-frank and other reasons but certainly its current position of being a lender of last resort to banking institutions that require additional credit to stay afloat is something that we need to continue to explore. given the interconnectedness of the global financial system, there's no doubt that the federal reserve's monetary policies have also significantly impacted the international markets, and foreign economies, as was explored right at that table last week, when there was discussion of the fragile five, countries out there, as well as our own country, and i look forward to hearing your comments on these topics. so thank you very much. and with that i yield back, mr. chair. >> chair now recognizes the gentleman from missouri, mr. clay, the ranking member of the monetary policy and trade subcommittee for three minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, chairman yellen. as you report to this committee for the first time in your new position, and chairman yellen, i want you to know that like you, i believe that the actions of the federal reserve should always consider the impact and well-being of main street, as well as wall street. that means actively pursuing the twin goals of full employment and controlling inflation, and it also means advancing the vital work of closing the income inequality gap, which is hurting so many working families, and threatening america's economic future. like you, a believe in fundamental financial reform and real transparency to protect american consumers. that includes maintaining a consumer financial protection bureau with real teeth and the authority to act swiftly against financial abuses. i strongly oppose the majority's efforts to cripple the consumer financial protection bureau, and it's shocking and it saddens me that the majority is more concerned about bringing comfort and relief, not to struggling consumers, but to some of the same financial predators who caused the great recession. you know in 1977, congress amended the federal reserve act to promote price stability, and full employment. the consumer price index rose 1.5% in 2013, after a 1.7% increase in 2012. and that is actually lower than the 2.4% average annual increase in cpi over the last ten years. as a response to the financial emergency in 2008, the federal reserve bank purchased commercial paper, made loans, and provided dollar funding through liquidity swaps with foreign central banks. this action significantly expanded the federal reserve's balance sheet. the fed has gradually tapered its asset purchases from an initial $85 billion per month to this month's $65 billion purchase in treasury and mortgage-backed security. in terms of supporting full employment, let's look at the data. and because of the positive leadership of under former chairman bernanke the unemployment rate in the u.s. is 6.6%, but the number of long-term unemployed is 3.8 million people. and that is even more compelling evidence why this congress should extend unemployment -- emergency unemployment benefits without delay. and my time has run out, mr. chairman, but i look forward to the chairman's testimony. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. today, we welcome the testimony of the honorable janet yellen, the chair of the board of governors of the united states federal reserve, a position she was confirmed to by the senate on january 6th of this year. she took office on february 3rd, just last week. we congratulate miss yellen for her confirmation. her historic confirmation as the first female chair of the board of governors. prior she served as the vice chair of the board of governors for four years and from 2004 to 2010, miss yellen was the president and ceo of the federal reserve bank of san francisco. during the clinton administration miss yellen served as chair of the president's council of economic advisers. she has taught at harvard and the london school of economics, she holds a ph.d. in economics from yale. chair yellen i want to personally thank you for cooperating with us to ensure that every member of the committee has an opportunity to ask you questions as part of this hearing today. i hope the members are paying careful attention. i would also say to the members that the chair unsolicited offer to stay all day. madam chair, you're in luck. we're not staying all day. this committee has a bill on the floor later this afternoon. you will be spared that. i peeked at your testimony to where you pledged to be accountable. you are off to a very good start by agreeing to do this. because of the anticipated length of the hearing, i wish to alert members, though, that the chair does expect to call a couple of recesses during chair yellen's testimony. and, indeed, the chair will also yield a very strict gavel. without objection, chair yellen's written estimate will be made part of the record, after her oral remarks. again madam chair, welcome. you are now recognized for your oral presentation. okay, since this is your first time, chair, you're going to have to bring that microphone much closer to you, please, so we can hear you. >> chairman hensarling, ranking member waters, and other members of the committee, i'm pleased to present the federal reserve's semiannual monetary policy report to the congress. in my remarks today, i will discuss the current economic situation, and outlook before turning to monetary policy. i'll conclude with an update on our continuing work on regulatory reform. first, let me acknowledge the importance contributions of chairman bernanke. his leadership helped make our economy and financial system stronger and ensured that the federal reserve is transparent and accountable. i pledge to continue that work. the economic recovery gained greater traction in the second half of last year. real gross domestic product is currently estimated to have risen at an average annual rate of more than 3.5% in the third and fourth quarters. up from a 1.75% pace in the first half. the pickup in economic activity has fuelled further progress in the labor market. about 1.25 million jobs have been added to payrolls since the previous monetary policy report last july, and 3.25 million have been added since august 2012, the month before the federal reserve began a new round of asset purchases to add momentum to the recovery. the pun employment rate has fallen nearly a percentage point since the middle of last year, and 1.5 percentage points since the beginning of the current asset purchase program. nevertheless, the recovery in the labor market is far from complete. the unemployment rate is still well above levels that federal open market committee participants estimate is consistent with maximum sustainable employment. those out of a job for more than six months continue to make up an unusually large fraction of the unemployed. and the number of people who were working part-time but would prefer a full-time job remains very high. these observations underscore the importance of considering more than the unemployment rate when evaluating the condition of the u.s. labor market. among the major components of gdp, household and business spending growth stepped up during the second half of the year. early in 2013, growth in consumer spending was restrained by changes in fiscal policy. as this restraint faded during the second half of the year, household spending accelerated. supported by job gains, and by rising home values, and equity prices. similarly, growth in business investment started off slowly last year, but then picked up during the second half reflecting improving sales prospects, greater confidence, and still favorable financing conditions. in contrast, the recovery in the housing sector slowed in the wake of last year's increase in mortgage rates. inflation remained low as the economy picked up strength. with both the headline in core personal consumption expenditures or pce price indexes, rising only about 1% last year, well below the fomc's 2% objective for inflation over the longer run. some of the recent softness reflects factors that seem likely to prove transitory including falling prices for crude oil and falling import prices. my colleagues on the fomc and i anticipate that economic activity and employment will expand at a moderate pace this year and next. the pun employment rate will continue to decline toward its longer-run sustainable level. and inflation will move back toward 2% over coming years. we have been watching closely the recent volatility in global financial markets. our sense is that at this stage, these developments do not pose a substantial risk to the u.s. economic outlook. we will, of course, continue to monitor the situation. turning to monetary policy, let me emphasize that i expect a great deal of continuity in the fomc's approach to monetary policy. i served on the committee as we formulated our current policy strategy, and i strongly support that strategy, which is designed to prior to the financial crisis, the fomc carried that monetary policy by adjusting its target for the federal funds rate. with that rate near zero since late 2000 and eight, we have relied on less traditional tools . asset purchases and forward help the economy move towards maximum employment and price stability. pressures put downward on downward interest rates and support asset prices. these accommodative financial conditions support consumer spending, business investment, and housing construction. our current program of asset purchases began in september 2012 amid signs that the recovery was weakening and progress in the labor market had slowed. the committee said that it would continue the program until there was a substantial improvement in the outlook of the labor market. in mid-2013, the committee indicated that if progress toward the objectives continued, as expected, moderation in the monthly pace of purchases as would likely become appropriate later in the year. in december, the committee judged that the cumulative process toward maximum employment and the improvement in the outlook of the labor market conditions warranted it a modest reduction in the face of purchases. from $45 billion to $40 billion month of long-term securities. from $40 billion to $30 billion per month of agency backed securities. at the january meeting, the committee decided to make additional reductions of the same magnitude. if incoming information broadly supports the committee's expectation of ongoing improvement of the liberal -- labor market conditions, and inflation moving back toward the longer run objective, the committee will likely reduce the pace of asset purchases and further measured steps at future meetings. that said, purchases are not on a preset course. and the committee's decisions will remain contingent on the outlook for the labor market and inflation, as was the assessment -- well as its assessment of the likely efficacy and cost of such purchases. the committee has emphasized that a highly accommodative policy will remain appropriate for considerable time after asset purchases end. the committee has said that it expects the current low target range to be appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5%, inflation is projected to be no more than .5% above the longer run goal, and longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored. crossing one of these threshold will not prompt an increase in the federal funds rate, but will indicate it had become appropriate for the committee to consider with the broader economic outlook to justify such an increase. in december of last year, and again this january, the committee said that its current expectation, based on its assessment of a broad range of measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments is that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate. that is especially if rejected -- projected inflation continues to run below the two percent goal. i'm committed to achieving both parts, helping the economy return to full employment and returning inflation to 2% while ensuring that it does not run above or below that level. i will finish with an update on progress on regulatory reforms and supervisory actions to strengthen the financial system. in october, the federal reserve board proposed a rule to strengthen the liquidity positions of large and internationally active financial institutions. together with other federal agencies, the board also issued a final rule implementing the volcker rule, which prohibits the trading of certain financial instruments. we expect to report results in march. regulatory and supervisory actions, including those that are leading to increases in the liquidity and banking sector, are making our financial system more resilient. still, important tasks lie ahead. in the near term, we expect to finalize the rules implementing enhanced prudential standards mandated by section 165 of the dodd frank wall street reform and consumer protection act. we also are working to finalize the proposed rule, strengthening the leverage ratio standards for us-based, systemically important banks. there will be a surcharge for those banks, as well as a long-term debt requirement to ensure that these organizations can be resolved. in addition, we are working to advance proposals on margins for derivatives consistent with the global framework and are evaluating possible measures to assess risks associated with short-term wholesale funding. we will continue to monitor for emerging risks, including watching carefully to see if regulatory reforms work as intended. since the financial crisis and the depth of the recession, progress has been made in restoring the economy to health and strengthening the financial system. still, there is more to do. too many americans remain unemployed. inflation remains below our longer-term objective, and the work of making the financial system more robust has not yet been completed. i look forward to working with my colleagues and many others to carry out this important mission that you have given the federal reserve. thank you. i would be pleased to take your questions. >> the chair will recognize himself for five minutes for questions. you testified that "i expect a great deal of continuity on the fomc's approach to monetary policy." i will ask the obvious question. guidance which has been anchored in the evans rule, that seemingly said that it will not tighten until unemployment drops below 6.5%. chairman bernanke announced -- well, he described this as a taylor-like rule. although he may not agree. we stand on the threshold. i also see in your testimony where you said, "crossing one of these thresholds will not automatically prompt an increase." the writer of the "wallstreet journal" predicted this. the mistake was telling markets there was a fixed will when the only sure thing is that the fed is more improvisation. who is right here? is "the wall street journal" that these thresholds are illusory right, or do we have something that is rule-like? chair, could you pull the microphone closer to you? thank you. >> after the federal funds rate reached the effective lower bound close to zero at the end of 2008, the federal reserve was forced to provide additional accommodations through tools that were new and novel. the most important tool that had been used, to some extent in the past, but we have relied on quite heavily since that time, is the forward guidance concerning the likely path of monetary policy. >> if you reach a threshold and then you ignore the threshold, what is the forward guidance? >> what the fed indicated in december of 2012 is that we would not consider, did not think it would be appropriate to consider raising the federal funds rate as long as unemployment was over 6.5% and inflation was projected to run under 2.5%, as long as inflation expectations were also well anchored. we have followed the guidance. >> i would say this if i could, madam chair. my time is running out. i want to cover a little of the ground, as well. dealing with a rules-based monetary policy. i think if i read some of your statements properly, and a lot -- i don't want to put words in your mouth, that you consider times after the financial crisis still extraordinary, and it is not necessarily an appropriate time for a rules-based approach. >> i am in favor of a predictable monetary policy that responds in a systematic way to shifts in economic variables. >> earlier in your career, you said in reference to the taylor rule it is, "what sensible banks do." that begs the question today, using your words, are you a sensible central banker? >> i believe that i am a sensible central banker. these are very unusual times, in which monetary policy, for quite a long time has not even been able to do what a rule like that would have prescribed. for several years, that rule would have prescribed that the rule and rate should have been in negative territory, which was impossible. the conditions facing the economy are extremely unusual. i have tried to argue and i have tried to argue and believe strongly that while the taylor rule or something like it provides a sensible approach in normal times, when there are severe headwinds from the financial crisis, and it has not been able to move the funds rate and the negative territory that rule would have prescribed, that we need to follow a different approach. we are attempting, through our forward guidance, to be a systematic and predictable as we can possibly be. >> madam chairman, my time is expired, and i'm going to attempt to set a good example for the rest of the committee. i recognize the ranking member for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you alluded to continuing the policies that were initiated by the committee that you served on with bernanke. i am a supporter of quantitative easing. i would like to hear from you what you think quantitative easing did to stabilize this economy. can you tell us, not only what you think happened with quantitative easing, but how you intend to continue the policy, on tapering as it is today? >> thank you, congressman waters. the purpose of easing and buying longer-term treasuries and agency backed securities, the objective has been to push down the long term interest rate. i believe we have succeeded in doing that. and to make financial conditions accommodative. the purpose is to achieve more rapid economic growth. and i believe that we have been successful. some examples would be that, as mortgage rates fell to historically low levels, we certainly saw a pickup, a very meaningful pickup, in housing activity. we have also seen a meaningful increase in house prices. and i think that prove the security of a large number of households. many households of an underwater in their mortgages. that fraction has diminished substantially. that means that those households are in a better position to spend and borrow. in addition, low interest rates have stimulated spending in other interest sensitive sectors, like automobiles. we have seen a decided pick in that sector, as well. when spending and employment increase in the sectors, the availability of jobs increases, unemployment comes down, growth picks up. as i mentioned, we have seen the beginning of this program, we have seen the unemployment rate declined 1.5%. i think this program contributed to that. you asked about our plans. when the committee began the policy it did to the time when it looked like recovery and progress in the labor markets was stalling. we began these asset purchases as a secondary tool, a supplementary tool to our forward guidance to add some momentum to the recovery. we said we would continue those purchases until we had seen a substantial improvement in the outlook of the labor market in the context of price stability. there has been a substantial number of jobs created. unemployment has come down. to begin, a measured pace of reduction and asset purchases. we decided to act in a measured and deliberate way and take measured steps to watch and see what was happening in the economy. we have indicated that the outlook continues to be one in which we expect and are seeing continued improvement in the labor markets that implies grow strong enough, going forward to anticipate such improvements. and inflation, which is running below the objective, if we see that coming back toward our objective over time, we are likely to continue reducing the pace of our purchases in measured steps. it is indicated that the program is not on the present course, which means that if the committee judges there to be a change in the outlook, that it would reconsider what is appropriate with respect to the program. >> thank you very much. i yield back my time. >> the chair now recognizes the chairman from michigan. >> did short proprietary trading cause the financial crisis? >> i would not say that was the main cause of the crisis. >> i'm sorry, it was not? >> i would not see that as the main cause of the crisis. >> i think we would be in agreement on that. you have noted just this past year at the open meeting board, that you had some concerns about the volcker rule. you asked for assessment of what impact it would have on u.s. banks, in terms of, do they face this advantage is compared to foreign banks in capital market activities? i have some of those same concerns, and i am not sure, as we had the five regulators, the alphabet soup of regulators that look at all of this, the discussion of the volcker rule and the impact. they seem to indicate that the fed was very concerned about that, that we were not going to somehow be at a disadvantage. i am not sure we have made ourselves safer. would you mind chatting up that? -- about that? the impact of the rule, it is something we will monitor over time, as he goes into effect. the agencies have worked hard jointly to write a balanced rule that permits banking organizations to continue to engage in critical market-making and hedging activities. we will be very careful in how they supervise institutions -- >> i am sure you are aware. we are the only major economy that has put anything like this into effect. you are comfortable saying, monitor this over time to see the effect? how long are you comfortable waiting to see what will happen? three months? six months? one year? how long will we see liquidity leave the united states and lose that market share? >> i think that banks will be able to go on as we implement this rule to engage in those activities, particularly market-making and hedging that are really vital to a well functioning financial system. >> is there a length of time? that is what i am looking for. how long are you interested in waiting to see the effectiveness? it is 932 pages. 297,000 words. there is a lot to wade through. >> we will be involved with other agencies with using supervision to make sure that firms comply with the rule. >> so an undetermined amount of time to see the effectiveness? >> we will certainly take time to see what the effects of the rule are. i will follow up with a letter. i would like you to put some thought about how much time. how long will we be at a competitive disadvantage is what i'm concerned about. and the fragile five, indonesia, india, south africa, turkey, and brazil have been affected by our monetary policy. now it is the reversing of our easing, i guess, as you would say. do you have any concerns that the tapering that we are trying to do might impact some of these other economies, as well, and what will that mean for economies, as well, and what would that mean for them? >> capital markets are global. the monetary policies of any country affect other countries in such a world. we have been very clear at the outset that we initiated a program of asset purchases and an accommodative monetary policy, more generally, to pursue the goals that congress has assigned for the federal reserve, namely supporting economic growth, employment, in the context of price stability. we have tried to be as clear as we possibly can about how we would conduct this policy. it has been quite clear at the outset that, as our recovery advanced, that you would wind down or reduce the pace of our asset purchases. as growth picks up and it goes toward the objective over time, eventually, we will normalize the policy stance. >> the gentleman for the time is long since expired. the chair would advise all members perhaps to ask that last question with at least 30 seconds to go on the clock. the chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will be cognizant of the time. the u.s. unemployment rate is 6.6%. for african-americans it stands at 12.1%. for hispanics it is eight percent. for asians it is a little over four percent. for young adults it is 20%. what can this congress do to work in conjunction with the federal reserve to lower unemployment rates for african-americans, for young people, for the latino community, any suggestions? >> for our part, we are trying to do what we can with monetary policy to stimulate a faster economic recovery to bring unemployment down nationally, and because high ununemployment disproportionately affects many of the groups that you mentioned, if we are successful, it will have a great benefit to the groups that you mentioned. of course, monetary policy is not a panacea. i think it is absolutely appropriate for congress to consider other measures that you might take in order to foster the same goals. some of those groups have been adversely affected, as well by longer-term trends in the economy that have led to very stagnant wage growth for those in the middle and bottom of the income spectrum. we were seeing rising inequality. all economist that i know of think that improving skills of the workforce is one important step that we should be taking to address those issues. >> congress could also assist by taking a look at the infrastructure and starting a jobs program in that area where we rebuild the bridges and other infrastructure and put americans back to work? >> these are certainly programs that congress could consider and debate. >> thank you for that response. in this speech at you gave last year, you stated that the evidence you had seen showed that the increase in unemployment subsidies, has been largely cyclical and nonstructural. you cited the fact that job losses were widespread across industries and occupational groups and went on to cite a construction manufacturing and other cyclically sensitive industries that were hard hit, as well. do you continue to believe that this is the result of cyclical factors? >> i do continue to think that. most of the increase we have seen and the decline we have seen, while a small portion may be related to structural issues, and there may be some reduction in structural mismatch. the recovery is preceded, and mainly we have seen the decline in cyclical unemployment. members of the committee every three months and offer their personal views as to what a longer run normal unemployment rate is. it is a range of opinion that was at the fomc. it range from five percent to six percent. we remain well above that. some broader measures of the labor market overfocus on the unemployment rate. the degree of involuntary part-time employment remains exceptionally high at five percent of the labor force. broader measures of unemployment are even more elevated, relative to normal and standard unemployment rates. there is an unusually high incidence of long spells of unemployment. via number of measures, our economy is not back, and the labor is not back to normal. >> the chair recognizes the chairman from alabama for five minutes. >> thank you. last week the governor appeared before the committee and said that the clo ownership issues was at the top of the issue for the interagency working group. what additional information do you need to resolve the clo issue and clarify how legacy securities will be treated under volcker? >> this is something a number of banking organizations have asked the regulators to look at. regulators recently issued a ruling, and this is something there to rallying gauged in looking at. i will have something on that reasonably soon. >> i was going to ask you, how soon do you think we can expect you to issue some guidance? >> i don't have a definite -- >> but you think maybe soon? >> hopefully. >> do you know what remedy the group is suggesting? >> i do not. this is something they will have to look at. >> do you agree that this is something that needs to have some sense of urgency to address? >> it is certainly something that the regulators will look at and should look at. >> the fed has long suggested, and i know your response mentioned this, has held review that a large portion of the recent decline in the labor force participation rate has been attributed to cyclical factors, which would become structural if unaddressed. therefore, because you considered cyclical, it is part of the reason for aggressive quantitative easing. and let me put this up. that is the philadelphia fed's recent unemployment study. if you look at that, you can see 1) there is evidence that there may be a smaller gap between full employment and current appointment then we previously expected. let me just read. almost 80% of the decline in precipitation since the first quarter is accounted for by an increase in nonparticipation due to retirement. this implies the decline in unemployment rate since 2012 is not due to more discouraged workers dropping out of labor force. and the likelihood that those of left the labor force due to retirement is small and has insensitive to business cycle conditions in the past, suggesting to me that the decision to leave the labor force for those two reasons is more or less permanent. if you look at that line, participation has been coming down for 10 or 12 years. that is the bureau of labour and 2001 we fed have got a consistent dropping of participation. does that modify or amend your view on the structural versus cyclical debate that we have been having? clearould like to make that i think a significant part of the decline in labor force participation is structural and not cyclical. the baby boomers are moving to older ages where there is a dramatic drop-off in labor force participation. an aging population. we should expect to see a decline in labor force participation. as you noted, that has been going on for some time. there's no doubt in my mind that in an portioned -- important portion is structural. there may also be -- and i am inclined to believe -- there are cyclical factors at work. the decline has a structural component and also a cyclical component. there's no surefire way to separate that declined into those two components. but we are seeing declining participation also amongst prime age workers and younger people. it seems to me based on the evidence i have seen that some portion of that reflects discouragement about job opportunities. but there is no clear scientific way at this point to say exactly what fraction of that is cyclical. >> the chair recognizes the lady from new york, for five minutes. >> i would like to begin by congratulating you, chair yellen. in the history of the fed, there have been only 15 fed chairs. you are the first woman to lead the fed or any major central bank. we are so proud of you. in your long and distinguished career, you have excelled at every single point of your career. i wanted to note that your appointment is a historic achievement in the women's movement. >> thank you. >> i would like to ask you about your reaction to the unexpectedly weak job report. which showed the economy only created 113,000 jobs in january. some of the markets are calling for a pause in the fed's tapering strategy. has the report caused you to consider slowing the pace of the tapering? >> i was surprised that the reports in december and january, the pace was running under what i had anticipated. we have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions. in interpreting what those reports mean. there were weather factors. we have had unseasonably cold eemperatures that made -- may b affecting economic activity in the job market and elsewhere. the committee will meet in march. we will have a broad range of data on the economy to look at, including additional employment reports. it's important for us to take our time to assess the significance of this. can you describe what would cause you to consider a tapering cause? many months of bad data reporting? >> i think what would cause the committee to consider a pause is a notable change in the outlook. the committee when it decided to begin this process of tapering, it measured steps. i believe the outlook was one where we would see continued improvement in the labor market, and inflation moving back up towards our two percent target. if incoming data were to cause the committee looking broadly -- >> what kind of data? >> we would be looking at a broad range of data in the labor market, including unemployment, job creation, and many other indicators of labor market performance. we would also be looking at inicators suspending growth the economy, because we do need pace in order to project continued improvement in the labor market. is running well below our objective and we want to be sure that is moving back -- >> what would it take for the fed to consider increasing its asset purchases instead of just slowing down its production? a significant deterioration in the outlook for the job concerns very serious that inflation would not be moving back up over time. the mick -- committee has emphasized that purchases are not on a preset course and we will continue to evaluate the evidence. >> the fed has been reducing its total bond purchases by $10 billion a month. why did the fed choose to split it to between mortgage backed securities and treasuries? both kinds of purchases have similar effects on longer-term interest rates. >> if the housing market starts to slow down, would the fed consider maintaining its purchases of mortgage-backed securities and only tapering its treasury participation? >> both kinds of purchases affect interest rates broadly. purchases of treasuries tend to push down mortgage rates as well. some evidence suggests a differential impact, but it's very hard to think of these being discrete. >> the chair now recognizes the gentlelady from west virginia. would like to add my voice to the chorus of congratulations for the chair on her appointment. i have understood more what you said today than i have probably the last two folks that were in front of us. thank you for that. i represent west virginia and energy state. in your report you note the growth in the oil and gas development business. thes noted in notes from richmond fed that the coal decreaseis suffering a in employment. what you think of and all the above energy policy and what effect does that have on our economic growth? >> energy has been a great contributor to growth, and we have seen huge shift in the u.s. position in terms of our net gas.ts of oil and natural energy policy certainly plays an important role there. >> thank you. coming from aon state that has a large senior population, one of the concerns i had is a low interest rates and what impact this has on who are trying to retire when they rely on six number assets. what kind of thinking do you have is your weighing the interest rate structure on the saving occurring in the country, particularly for the older savor? >> -- saver? >> it is a tough environment for retirees who are looking to earn income in investments like cd's or bank deposits. it's important to recognize that interest rates are low for a fundamental reason. that is because in the u.s. and global economy as a whole, there is an excess of saving relative to the demand for those savings for investment purposes. that savers return can expect depends on the health of the economy. in a weak economy when there is a lot of saving and less demand for those savings, that is a fundamental grab on growth and what savers can expect. our objective in keeping interest rates low is to promote a stronger recovery, and in a stronger economy, savers will be able to earn a higher return because the economy will be able to generate it. this isize that difficult for savers. it's also important to recognize that any household, in addition to saving, people care about their work opportunities. a care about the opportunities of their kids. lots of people have exposure to the stock market. should not be a one dimensional assessment. >> thank you. folks are working longer, and that is a concern for folks who thought they planned well. you mentioned that 5% of the labor force is exceptionally high for the part-time. we have learned with the president's affordable care act over 29 hours is considered full-time. is that consistent with your assessment when you are looking at calculations, and when you say exceptionally large portion, is that anyone working under 29 hours? >> i'm talking about part-time for economic reasons. >> what is the definition of a part-time job? how many hours a week? most people consider full-time to be 40 hours a week. this is the definition used by the bureau of labor statistics. >> can you get back to me on that? 35.nder >> thank you. >> the chair recognizes the gentlelady from new york. yellen, the median u.s. wage has failed to keep pace with the booming stock market on record corporate profits. possible that the stagnant wage for american workers and not overly accommodative monetary policy is causing a ?lower recovery much of the for workforce, wages have been stagnant in recent years. going back many years as far as the mid-to late 80's. speculationen some that that trend for so many ak labor markete income growth did contribute to in the economy. the idea there would be that wealthier families, higher income families spend less of than additional income lower income families. that shift in the distribution of income may have created a drag on growth. i don't know that we have any hard evidence on that. it is a hypothesis that has received attention. the housing sector has continued to see improvement, with robust construction activity and higher home prices. how will continued reduction in qe affect the housing market? easing, ourive purchases of securities did serve to push down mortgage rates and other longer-term interest rates quite substantially. it was a factor underlying the strength of the housing market, and also promoted a recovery in house prices. we did see a back up in interest rates in the spring and into the summer. think that was associated with reevaluation of the strength of economic growth, and the likely cause of monetary policy. although organ trades are still low, we have seen a slowing in the housing sector since mortgage rates have backed up. i'm hopeful that housing will continue to support the recovery. there are good fundamentals there. that provided clear evidence of the impact of mortgage rates on the strength of housing. >> according to the adp national employment report, small and fives created for new jobs in january. in your opinion, why are small adding more jobs than the larger counterparts? >> we have seen over a longer increases in jobs in most sectors of the economy. largek small and businesses have by and large contributed to that. there has been broad improvement in the labor market. the volckersible rule could boost small-business business lending as banks seek out revenue in traditional ?inancial products what we saw during the financial crisis was a fact. we saw stories about small businesses having problems accessing capital. yet it is changing. do you think that the volcker rule has anything to play with that? >> i would not tie trends in credit availability for small businesses so much to the volcker rule. downturn,during the during the great recession, lots of small businesses have had difficulty in accessing credit tr. business conditions have not been good for many small businesses during that period. demand for credit by many small businesses has not been that high. for smallone's home businesses is an important source of financing, and the decline in home prices has taken a toll there. >> the chair now recognizes the gentleman from texas, housing and insurance subcommittee. >> congratulations to you, and thank you for being here today. that the deficit we have been experiencing over the last few years has a negative impact on the future growth of our economy? i would say that long-run that are projected to rise in unsustainable ways is trends that have a negative effect on the economy. the larger deficits we've had in recent years in part reflect the weakness of the economy. long-term, these kinds of deficits and the path we were on is not a positive thing for that economy? look at long-term projections, for example of the wegressional budget office, go out 20, 30 years. the debt to gdp ratio will be rising over time in a way that looks unsustainable. that is a negative for the economy. it looks like in 2013, the equivalent of 62% of the treasuries issued in 2013 . and you currently hold 18% of the outstanding treasuries. what a lot of people don't realize is that you write down the yield per treasury -- brought down the yeidl per -- yield per treasury. you're doing him a favor by buying down that yield curve, transferred $77 billion from the fed to the treasuries. obviously reduce the interest-bearing cost. view, if these deficits are negative, the fed has almost become a deficit in a blur -- en abler in that you are making it very easy to really mask what the real cost of these deficits are. they saidf the cbo, in a recent release that 74% of the budget deficit for the next 10 years will be on interest alone. qe in this huge position the fed has taken -- i think it has almost become a deficit in a blur. i would be interested -- enabler. i would be interested to hear your thoughts on that. >> we are interested in achieving the objectives that congress has assigned to the federal reserve. maximum sustainable employment and price stability. had unemployment well above normal levels, and inflation running well below our two percent objective. the federal reserve is focused on putting in place a monetary policy that is designed to achieve those very important objectives that congress has assigned to us. because we have a week economy with savings relative to investment, the fundamentals calls for interest rates to be low. we are allowing them to be low and fostering a low interest rate environment to achieve those important goals that congress has assigned to us. i don't think it would be helpful, either in terms of achieving the objectives that congress has assigned to us, or deficit of congress's reduction efforts, for us to purposely raise interest rates to weaken the economy. the likely impact of that would be -- >> a hear what you're saying about the things that congress has challenged you with, the employment. not pass a bill for quantitative easing. that was a choice that the fed made and in that very choice, it has really impacted the markets, but more importantly it is enabling these deficits to continue, and for the real cost masked. as you talk about interest rates the deficit is a percentage of what interest applies will be much larger. >> the chair now recognizes the gentleman from california for five minutes. >> you have a very busy job and a lot of things you can't do, and i'm sure one of your great regrets is you don't get enough time to hang out with accountants. that being the case, you probably have not focused on the vans be proposal to basically force the capitalization of all leases. this would add $2 trillion to the balance sheets of america's businesses. you would think that would balance out, but it destroys , violates ratios their borrowing covenants. it is estimated that this will cost anywhere from 190,000 jobs , aso millions of jobs andorations try to cut back regain their debt to equity less owners refused to sign long-term leases, and as those wanting to do real estate development without an anchor tenant with a long-term lease, you cannot build a project. i won't ask a question here except to ask you to take a look at this and perhaps it will affect your economic projections on the downside. and then, in your role as a bank regulator, realize that there will be hundreds of dozens of companies who, through no fault of their own, are in violation of the covenants they signed with their banks and the pressure will be from your bureaucrats to call those loans because they are in violation. perhaps looking both at the macroeconomic side and the bank regulatory side, you could look at that. you say the savings exceed demand for investments, capital. i disagree with you in little bit on that. it exceeds effective demand. will we all deal with small businesses. they cannot necessarily knock on your door. they will knock on our door whether we want them to or not. american small businesses can't get bank loans. part of the problem is bank executives. no one ever got a huge bonus from making a quarter million dollar loans. they all want to invest in the whale. .nd they like the whale part of the problem is the bank regulators. hear from bankers, if we invest in sovereign debt -- heck, if we invest in zimbabwe getreign debt, we won't near as much from the bank regulators unless we know they have been with their bank for years or party determining -- part of our community. these loans shouldn't necessarily be made at prime. every new restaurant is a good restaurant. what can you do so that banks are making prime plus five, prime plus seven loans and having only modest increases in the demand for capital and that the pressure is on them to stop investing in highflying securities and instead make local loans? stewart banking back again. >> hi think it is very important for banks to make loans in their in our role is bank supervisors we have tried to be very cognizant of the possibility that overzealous supervision could diminish the willingness of banks to make loans to credit worthy borrowers . >> that may be your policy at the top. ,ut down at the field level that's not what is happening. >> this is an important issue that we have been aware of now for a number of years. we have worked carefully with our supervisors to make sure that they are not taking on policies that would discourage lending to small businesses. muchu will have to work harder to get your bureaucrats online on that. and the proof of it is that banks don't make prime plus five loans. one last thing. dodd-frank gave you and the other systemic regulators the authority to break up those who were too big to fail. any chance you will use that authority? >> we have a broad program designed to deal with too big to fail. it is the dodd-frank programmable and -- dodd-frank row graham -- dodd-frank program
there -- to find their way into the site. but i am keenly aware when i write about china now i am being read not but just by my mother-in-law but by chinese. and i think that does raise your game. again, i hope by -- >> it takes me back to a that you question ducked earlier on new technology and the effect that has. "the new york times" benefited from the wikileaks story. "the new york times" decided that it would send a team of reporters to another newspaper in england where the information already was, so it was no act of journalistic genius to go over there and pick up that information and then put it into the times. so what does that mean about the times and a fitting from wikileaks? is that a good thing? are they to be proud of the fact that they made that decision? >> you should really ask arthur sulzberger that. >> bill keller. he was seated here, and i did ask him. >> what did he say? >> he made an effort to answer it, which is more than you are doing. [laughter] you see, i'm trying to understand. >> the reason i am dodging this question and i am dodging it is because -- >> did you notice? >> is because it is a hugely complicated question, and i have not dealt with the raw material, the legal bit. i have not been deeply involved than i do not want to freelance on it. >> ok. then i will put it this way. [laughter] tomorrow morning, you are sitting in your office, and you get a call from the guardian in london and the guardian says, hey, tom, you are one of the greatest columnists ever and we want to bring you in on something. we have just received from bin laden's mother-in-law who does not live in chicago, should live somewhere else in the middle east, and she has his personal plans for taking over the world. this is what he was going to do. we want to bring you in on that. you have to come over here and take a look at it and then run with it. would you do that? >> i would definitely go over there and take a look at it. whether i would run with it would depend on the veracity of it. would depend on what the real content was. the journalist in me get -- would definitely do that. >> let's move along. "the new york times." i love to pick it up in the morning. ten years from now, will i have that privilege? >> don't know. really don't know. you know, one of the themes of my columns in the last seven or eight years has really, what i call, i think we are in a gutenberg scale moment of change. that is, i believe that we're in a moment that is a kin to gutenberg's invention of the printing press when the way in which information is generated, turned into knowledge and transforms into products and services has undergone a massive transformation. i always tell people, someone was alive when gutenberg invented the printing priest. some monk said to some priests, now this is cool. i do not have to use this quill anymore. we can stamp these things out, holy mackerel! i believe we are at a similar mom, and i call it the move from connected to hyper connected. and it happened just in the last decade or a little bit more, and it was completely disguised by the subprime crisis and post-9/11. we are living it. we are living all of the innovations that it is throwing off, all the incredibly rapid change. but no one is really describing it. my sound bite on this, you may of heard me say is that when i sat down to write "that used to be us," the first thing i did was go back and get the first edition of "the world is flat" to remind myself what i said. i started that book in 2004. so i waited up to the index. i looked under abcdef -- facebook was not in it. so when i was running around the world, last time we talked, and saying the world is flat. we are all connected. facebook did not exist. twitter was still a sound. the cloud was still in the sky. 4g was a parking place. linkedin was a prison. big data was a rap star and skype was a typo. ok, so all of that happened after i wrote "the world is flat." so what does that tell you? it tells you something really big just happened in the plumbing of the world. we went from connected to hyper connected, and it is changing every job, every workplace. >> how is it changing journalism? is that a good thing? what would you say? >> we now have -- when nytimes. com, we have the most e-mail lists. so we are using big data, to track most tweeted. on the one hand, any "the new york times" journalist who says, i do not look at the list is lying to you. do they go up or down. but it also is very, that can be dangerous, because i write about foreign affairs. and um, there are times when i should write about foreign affairs issues that may not make the list at all. you can tell. there are certain issues that just do not make the list. you write a political, sizzling piece about you know governor chris christie, goes to the top of the list. but if you write about the problem of water in chad, you are not going to make the list. as a journalist, as a columnist, do you start saying, i am not going to write about this whole set of issues because they are not going to make, most tweeted. >> so what do i do? >> i write about them and despite that. some days it does not go up the list. "the new york times" is going to have more of a lefty readership, and the new york times online will have more of a young and left readership. just by its nature. if you were to write a pro- george w. bush column, it is not good to make the list, baby. it is not going to get near. in the way you would a pro-obama one. >> dan rather sitting here a couple of years ago said that in his judgment what rules ina newsroom these day is fear. fear. he was talking about the consequences of 9/11, and the way in which journalism covers these events. you have introduced the cause of my question, you have introduced an element now having to do with the new way in which journalism has to be mindful of the new technology. >> right. >> does the new technology, in your view, pervert or force you into places you would not want to be dealing with stories that you would not want to deal with? simply in order to get the ratings boost? >> um, i think it is an important question to be asking. i cannot give you a specific example right now, but what i can tell you is that you sit where i sit, it is just incredibly noisy now. and um, you know, i find that more and more, i'm shrinking my aperture. i got to filter out a lot of stuff. you are constantly being written about, basically. if you take too much of that in, it is really paralyzing and i start to write for you, and that is really. dangerous i think this applies to young journalist, old journalist. i remember my daughter was in college, and she called me one day, there is an issue on campus that had disturbed her. and i said, honey, why don't you blog about it? in the campus newspaper. and she said no, everyone will blog about me. it really stuck in my mind. and so, to now be, i think a columnist at a place like "the new york times," wall street journal," you need a thick skin, but you have to keep your balance. >> if you could imagine yourself being a very important politician for example responsible for making decisions affecting all of us, the question that -- >> the feedback loop is so fast now. and so immediate. people tracking, twitter. i stay away from that stuff because i do not want to get knocked off my game. >> but that has to affect, if you are a politician, the way in which you think about voters, getting votes, saying certain things to attract certain constituencies. have you in your coverage, so i am putting you as a journalist -- going to be hard for you to duck it -- >> please. >> have you met a president since you have been doing these opinion pieces who is a great man? >> um, you know, that's -- i think all the presidents i have covered have had moments of greatness and a lot of moments of not greatness. but i have a lot of affection, this may come as a surprise, i don't know, for george bush, the elder, the father, who i covered as a reporter. i was the diplomatic correspondent for the times at the time. and the reason i have such great respect for him has to do with a very specific achievement that i think he forged that he was central in that so affected everyone that he has never quite gotten credit for. he brought the end of the cold war -- >> two germanies. >> the unification of germany and he brought the soviet union for a soft landing, and other than the one incident -- >> did he do that or gorbachev? >>he, gorbachev, that whole generation i think was amazing. he, margaret thatcher, gorbachev. but he was there and had it not gone well, he would've gotten the blame. and i think his role in that, the decisions he made were really, helped pave the way for the world that came afterward. >> are you optimistic -- maybe that is not quite the right word -- are you positive in your feeling that the current generation a political leader in this country can cope with the dimension of challenge now facing political leadership? >> it is funny. i was just in israel and i was thinking about that issue. there. can the leadership there handle the lift. i begin to wonder. u.s. a very important question. first of all, i know how noisy it is if you're just writing a column for "the new york times." i cannot imagine how noisy it is for the president of the united states. just all of the stuff coming in now. someone checking twitter and facebook in the evening in the morning news and cable tv. and so i think that is a real problem. and i also think that the complexity of the problems you have to deal with. think of you and your brother wrote an amazing biography of henry kissinger. let's think of henry kissinger 1973 -- 1974. he goes to the middle east to forge the first real peace agreement, disengagement agreement between egypt, israel, and syria. in egypt, he negotiates with one egyptian pharaoh named sadat, in syria, negotiates with a syrian dictator, and it is really negotiates with the prime minister golda maier whose majority in the knesset was so big no one had ever heard of the likud party. let's flash forward now. you are john kerry. in syria, who do you negotiate with? there's anybody who answers the phone that comes off the wall, basically. in israel, you have a kind of minority/majority coalition. not know who is in power but it is a really complicated set of coalition partners. --benjamin netanyahu is in power. the ministry of interior. by 6:00, he will end his political life. hop over to egypt, it was the generals and morsi, and a general again. think of what a difficult time this is. i also have enormous sympathy for anyone in these jobs. >> you mentioned before your most recent book which is called "that used to be us." here i want to ask you about whether i'm right in my belief in my many years of radio that you are a very optimistic and deeply patriotic --many years of reading you that you are a optimistic and patriotic person, and yet in this book, the title as well as part of it are for from a pessimistic. you seem to be suggesting that we are at a tipping point, and if something goes wrong, we're going to be up the creek without a paddle. what happened to your optimism? >> so, you know, let me start with where it came from and where it might have gone. so i grew up in minnesota, in the 1950's, at a time in a place where politics -- the year i graduated high school, the then governor anderson was on the cover of time magazine holding up a walleye, holding in the headline. the state that works. i grew up in this place where myself, the cohen brothers, al franken grew up at the same time. our congressmen were liberal republicans. the companies in minnesota, 3m, dayton hudson thought it was their obligation to build a theater. it was not a diverse place. we had one african-american person in my high school. i do not want to suggest it was a perfect or a snapshot of america, but i grew up in a place where politics seem to work and solve problems, and that really formed, that was really a formative thing -- i am always looking for minnesota in some way in my journalism. and by then i have gone off, to the middle east and obviously, that cheered me. i saw some horrific things in beirut and jerusalem and i covered the massacre in syria. but i have never lost that sense. one of the things that journalists have lost, a bright dividing line today sometimes, some journalists, is the line between skepticism and cynicism. you know, the skeptics -- i do'' t know. i want to check it out. i will not take anyone's word for it, but i want to report it out. show me. a cynic says, i already know who you are. one of the things that worries me is i did a call about this once where i came back. i was hired by upi, and spent two years in beirut. there was a reporter in the business section at that time. nathaniel was a wonderful, looks like a choir boy and he was a born-again christian and he loved to hear about the whole event. so we did have lunch and talk to him about israel. when i went off to beirut for the times, he said, i am going to pray for your safety. i said, i will appreciate that. two years later after i got out of her room alive -- beirut alive, he was one of the first people i called. i said, thank you. it was, i thought you were my good luck charm. and nathaniel nash was on ron brown's airplane when it slammed into a mountain in bosnia and he died in that crash. in my mind, because he was such a -- she was someone who taught me the difference between skepticism and cynicism and i kept that in my mind. >> we have got about a minute left, and i want to know whether deep down you are an optimistic about america now. >> deep down i feel this -- that i think the most important national foreign-policy issue global issue in the world is the health and vitality of this country. if we go dark as a country -- >> go dark? >> if we are pessimistic, if we cannot emulate these values were restarted -- freedom, opportunity, perl is an -- pluralism -- your kids will grow up in a fundamentally different world. that is why i invest so much of my time in writing about america, because i do believe it is the most amazing country in the world and the world will be a very different place if we cannot be all we need to be. >> i am really sorry that our time was up because i would like to continue with that saying but we have run out of time. and i want to thank our audience first and i want to thank our audience around the nation and the world by way of the internet and webs and all of that, and most important, our guest new york times columnist thomas friedman for sharing his thoughts, his insights about big questions. i am very grateful to you. that is it for now. i am marvin kalb. say, goodow used to night, and good luck. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] thank you very much. we now have about 15 or 20 minutes, and we can, that is to say you can, ask tom questions and what i would like to do is suggest you come up front where there are two people with microphones, and your voice will be heard if you come right up here to the microphone. please identify yourself. let us know what you're associated with, university or whatever, and please ask a question and not make a speech. >> i am a retired navy captain, and thanks for all of the great work you do and mr. kalb, thanks for putting this on tonight. a couple things. first, i have a book from paul brinkley -- >> oh, good. >> i have a two part question. how would you rate the trust factor of america in the world right now? and two, since we are in the press club, how does the international press look to the american press and what is your assessment of that? >> it is are very fair question and a big question. it is hard for me to generalize about how the whole world, how much it trust us are not. if you are saudi arabia right now and your fear is that we are going to make up with iran, you do not trust us very much. if you are, if you are japan, and you are worried about china, maybe you trust us a lot because you have to. it would be really hard to generalize. but i kind of know what is behind your question and on balance, you know, the trust level if we have put it -- quantify -- i think it is going down, not up. the second question was? >> the american press -- >> again, i think it really is, it really depends. and i think it depends the country, the newspaper, the tv outlet, the radio, the specific journalist -- i would be reluctant to generalize. there is international press here. you should ask them. >> thank you for that question. yes, please? >> hi, green connections. one of the issues -- >> your name? >> i did. one of the issues is energy and energy security. you mention it in your book and obviously energy security and independence is critical to the future of this country being its potential and the freedom to and the freedom from. and we have stories like the clean tech crash from "60 minutes," and we have other journalism that is sometimes covering it and sometimes not, what is your assessment of the coverage, what army missing, and can you give us your take on this component of the issue -- what are we missing? >> i have not looked at all the coverage and i am not going to make, i would not want to make a grand sweep on the coverage per se. i think it is a hugely important issue, and i think "60 minutes" did that story and the next week google bought an amazing clean tech company. people really have to be careful about, i think, generalizing about some of these things. so i spent a lot of time covering climate, water, energy issues. i think it is hugely important. it is also from a journalistic point of view really interesting. you have given me a chance to make a plug that i just completed a documentary with showtime. "years of living dangerously." it begins on april 13. and i did the one on climate and environmental stresses and the arab spring, showing how underlying the arab uprising were a lot of climate, water and environmental stresses. they did not cause it but they contributed. harrison ford did deforestation in indonesia. matt damon the water issue. it is an amazing series, and we hope it will be something that helps rekindle interest and debate on this. coming over here, i mentioned to marvin at dinner, i had to start with 60 degrees in sochi today. in the winter olympics. that is why i always use the term -- i never use the term global warming. i try not to, because that sounds so, so cuddly. global warming. it sounds like golf in february to me. i much prefer global weirding. what actually happens is the weather gets wird. eird. you get two feet of snow in new york and 60 degrees in sochi. the hots get hotter and the dries get dryer. you see what is happening in california. that is what climate scientists predict will unfold. >> i am going to ask you to give answers that are little brief because we have got so many people. just please. >> thank you very much. "the boston globe." um, since we are talking about freedom, i would be interested in your take on this. a lot of freedom post 9/11 was couched in terms of spreading freedom by military force. i'm curious your take on the lessons learned of the post-9/11 approach to spreading freedom. what did we do wrong? where are we now, and what can we do to maybe improve that trust which is obviously down in part because of that reaction? >> hard to give a short answer to that very valid and important question. so many things went wrong in iraq and afghanistan. hard to know where to start. the first was obviously, one of the things i think most went wrong and iraq, which you can understand now. you are talking to someone who really wanted that war to work, who believed in the opportunity and necessity of trying to build an island of freedom in that part of the world is that if you look at the arab spring today, which ones have succeeded and which one not, and your question deserves a long answer but i will just give you this part o f f it. there is one common denominator that tunisia and yemen have and that is the principle of no vic tor, no vanquished. somehow everyone has to be included, including the ancien regime. iraq a little bit of what we did iniraq iraq -- the one thing we did in iraq not only with saddam hussein. we also had to deal with the baathists. we created a victor and vanquished. because one side thinks sunnis in iraq think that that they can have it all. sunnis in iraq think they can have it all -- i was speaking about serious. that-- syria. that was the biggest mistake of all. >> thank you. yes, please? >> a former white house foreign-policy adviser. i want to ask you about the current israeli-palestinian discussions that are going on, and do you feel optimistic that they will be a final resolution to this debate that has been going on for decades? >> so, um, i am, i'm more optimistic than i have been in a while. and that means i think the chances are 50/50. you know, so that is what optimism really constitutes today. on the one hand, when i was just there last week, i just don't se e how this current leadership on both sides can make the big lift, the huge concessions they have to make in order for a deal to be forged. and on the other hand, i do not see how they do not do it, because if -- what is really at stake to put into the context of middle east diplomacy, i truly believe, and there had to be at some point, i d believe that theo kerry mission will tell us whether the two state solution is still possible. and if, john kerry, i believe, is the last train. and the next train is the one coming out them. >> ok, thanks, tom. yes, please? >> hi. i'm working at brookings. i wanted to circle back to the freedom and freedom of the press. i did my graduate work in europe and ireland specifically, and i found that the news coverage of the irish times was fairly different than the -- what we would get here. when i spoke to my peers about it they said, your press is so sensitive. my question about it is do you put any stock in that snap judgment or do you think it is more of an audience issue or just what we care about? >> i always try to avoid gross generalizations like our press is censored. i have heard that. i went to graduate school in england. i know what it is like to look at america from the outside in. all i can tell you is -- you know, like i served in beirut with a lot of european and american correspondence, and we covered those stories very differently. and i don't think there is anything -- i really disagreed sometimes with some take they might have. you know, you pick up the typical european prep on israel, for instance. it is just the baseline starts at a much higher level of hostility, not just skepticism, frankly. and so they might say, well, you are censored in america. we might say that you start out with a bias. that is why like to read papers from all over the world and i like to see everybody's perspective, but i cannot pass judgment on who's censored and who is just coming at it totally straight. >> thank you, tom. yes, please. >> i am currently with cctv america. my question for you is about reconciling freedom. is is is him and his rwandan genocide. looking at the middle east and afghanistan, the killing of innocent people in iraq, yemen, somalia, how do you as a journalist reconcile that? >> one of the problems you always have in this job is people, and when you are a bad things as well, happen all over the world all of and because bad things are happening, it does not always tell you what to do. so, for instance, you might say, we should have intervened in were wanda. a lot of people felt that at the time. but what we have already learned from some of our actions are ready like iraq and afghanistan, maybe we don't know what we are doing, and sometimes intervention, that gets you through day one. you stop people from doing bad things, but i think what i is sort of learn from the whole can stopst things, we people from one thing, but we rarely can make them -- it said, maybe we can never make them do good things, so once you get done stopping people doing bad things, like libya, for instance, we thought what we -- stop what we thought was a massacre in benghazi, and then we could not go in and could not make people do good things, and then they started fighting among themselves, so my take away from the last 10 years is a lot more humility about these things and if you will be end, you have to will the means. that can lead to its own downside. that would be my answer. >> thanks. yes, please. max michael, i did a graduate degree at uw in international affairs. you mentioned your high regard for president bush and his work internationally. >> bush the elder. and then you also mention secretary kissinger's work in the middle east. looking at bush the elder, does high regard also extend to his secretary of state, jim baker? and iovered jim baker, have very high regard for the job you did at secretary of state. yes. >> thank you very much. yes, please. >> my name is nicholas sorensen. i am an undergraduate at gw and am a great admirer of your column and report. i was here when ted koppel was the guest about the changing state of news, and i read the new york times a lot, and i am reading out to zero and bbc more synnex andading people writing for that group alone. that, likefeel about the business of fox news? >> we will do one question, because we have to keep going. >> one of the sites i go to -- people often ask me, hey, what do you read? of course, i get up in the morning and read the new york times first, and i read the new york times and the washington post and the financial journal, and i get up early, so some are not even there at my doorstep, but i also really enjoy real clear politics, because it gives me a really wide range, and one of the questions, and international opinion, as a kind of one-stop shop of some al jazeera, some beirut daily star, some dear spiegel, and i am a news junkie, and i am an opinion so i love reading opinion and other peoples opinions and a wide range of opinion, and i try every once in a while, and i do not have time, and i am not going to do it as a habit, because you have to do a lot of prep relation -- preparation, but al jazeera asked me to be on their show, and there were tough, and theing debaters, issue of debate was is america a force for good in the world, and i took the affirmative on al jazeera at the oxford debate, and i do that to test myself, and i think it is really important when you sit where i sit to give people a shot at you every once in a while, something that bush and cheney never did. their idea was to go to the heritage foundation and have no questions, and so, again, that is not something i am going to do all the time, but i think from time to time you should do that. time for justhave two questions. >> james tyson, brookings. thanks for talking. i think a quote, and i don't remember the exact one, but something along the lines of those who give up their freedom to preserve it get neither -- my >> that was one of the introducers, yes. >> i was wondering, i went to get your take on that, because isfeeling is that freedom something we have given up in favor of security, and i am wondering whether you believe there is any way, and if there is, what laypeople might be convinced to give up their security to preserve values? >> thank you. >> it is a very important question, and all i can do is go back to what i said. to thewhelming reaction whole snowden affair is two things. this is inevitable, and this is healthy that we have this discussion. wheree if you know technology is going now, it is leaping ahead as the world gets hyper connected, so much for human beings to adapt and adjust, but at the same time, i think you have to be aware. i go back to why i am seeing golf swing adds. people are voluntarily giving up, or in my case, not up freedom ofving information that is being used and crammed at me, and i think we need to have a very big discussion about this. >> last question, please. >> thank you for the discussion. bill clifford. your concern if america goes dark. assess thee you to american education system and how good a job it does keeping the lights on of creating globally minded citizens. what would need the prescriptions to do a better job? >> that is not a question. that is like a whole new thing. i think, and i do write about this occasionally if you go to the exams and whatnot. but what i find, i write about education a lot. i am not an educator. i just play one on tv. i am interested in american power, economics that goes to jobs, and that takes you to education, and so i am kind of but i think we, have a lot of work to do. there is no question about it erie it i think the single most important issue in my view is parent and --t parents to instill a love of learning to their children and have high expectations, everything else, teacher ed, reform, technology is third, fourth, and fifth, as far as i am concerned. let me say, first of all, these are great questions. and i incident as many as i issue oft this pessimism and optimism runs through it, so i will leave you with this story. -- ron -- rus ron n fairly regularly, and i asked one, why do you run my column, and he said, you are the only optimist we have, and another was at my said -- side, and he said, i know why you are an ox, and he said, yes, it is because you are short. you can only see that part of the glass that is half full. i am not so sure, but i am still an optimist. >> thank you. thank you very, very much for coming. thank you, everyone. >> coming up tonight on c-span, a former air force pilot who talks about his book, leading with honor. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> this week on q&a, lee ellis discusses his five and a half years in north vietnam as a prisoner of war. >> lee ellis, go back to november 7, 1967, at 4:00. what happened? >> i was in my 53rd combat mission in vietnam. and were we rolled in working with
called us in and said that they needed some bombs on gunners. we rolled into do that and there were two of us on the f-four phantom. airplane came off the at 4000 or 5000 feet. burstlly, the airplane into several pieces. we were tumbling, end over end. there was smoke in the cockpit and i could not commute it with my partner. -- communicate with my partner. i knew i had to get out and i was well trained. i was about to eject over enemy territory that we had to bombing for a couple of years. there was no other choice and i pulled a handle. everything worked automatically and perfectly. it blew the canopy and blew me 50 feet in the air. me,eparated the seats from which automatically pulled the d-ring. it was less than 2.5 seconds from when i pulled the handle. there was a lot of shooting going on at the ground and they were shooting at our wing man with a nest of guns. there was a good number of militia down there that were protecting a strategic target. a lot of shooting going on. the wonderful training that i had in the air force and the military, they do a great job of training, i was unfazed by the fact that i was in enemy territory and i had bullets going by my parachute. what was on my mind was even eating capture. there was a river to the south, and i thought that if i could get to the river, i have a life raft and i'm only 1.5 miles from the gulf of top can. i can make it there and the navy can pick me up. unfortunately, i did not have enough altitude to slip my parachute. the old parachutes did not slip area well. -- very well. that is what i did and it took them a couple of minutes to capture me. i made a radio call and call for the wing man. i said that i was on the ground and i was 200 meters north of the river. star strafing at 300 and i am heading south. after the war, i met with the pilots and the plane. -- in the plane. to not strafe because they did not think they could should that accurately. it was a good call because they were all around me. within two minutes, i was captured. >> how may times have you flown over north vietnam? fox 53. >> what was the purpose of the flights? >> we were in the northern part of vietnam, 70 miles north of the dmz and had been flying all types of missions. thehe time i got there, in summer of 1967, they had changed our mission to only fly on reconnaissance over the southern part of north vietnam. we were flying the ho chi minh trail and the main highways. we were flying the riverway to stop the trucks that were hauling supplies to the viet kong. -- >> how old were you? once i was 23 and turns 24. - turned 24. 23 and i had fun with various people. -- i had flown with areas people and some new guys with the squadron to check them out. that day, i was flying with a guy named ken fisher. unfortunately for him and fortunately for me, i could not have had a better guy with me. he was a guy of great courage, mentally, physically strong. he ended up being an incredible leader for me. >> where is he today? >> he is retired in tampa florida and playing golf. >> how close are you? >> very close. we do not play golf. we are very close. >> where were you at that point? >> i was 200 meters north of the floodplain anda a bushy area. scrubby bush. just like the paratroopers are taught to do and we were taught to do, i had hit all the points and had no injuries from the parachute. i had injuries from coming out of the airplane, the straps had hit me in the back of the head. they were not serious. i was thinking about making the call to get their heads down so that i could escape. that did not work and they are closing in on me. i am thinking, unpaid. -- evade. they taught us that the people who capture you are the least trained to capture pows and maintain them. your best chance to escape is then. i thought that these are rookies and i pulled out my combat masterpiece. i ran like this and said, get away and get back. i fired a round over their head. they did not flinch. they raised their rifles like this and one of them reached in their pocket and pulled out a comic book that some of them carried in their pocket. it had drawings and vietnamese fanatics. the drawings show them capturing -- phonetics. the drawings show them capturing an american pilot. one of them said, surrender, no diet. hands up. hands up. that was the best advice i would get that day and i went hands up. they did not shoot me and pounced on me. >> what was your level of fear? >> i did not have any fear. i was not aware of any fear. my adrenaline was going. i did not notice fear until they started stripping everything and all of my clothes off. once the cold the survival best off and they could not -- they did not know much about zippers. they started cutting. i was afraid that i was going to get cut. they pulled away my survival best and my flight suit. vest and flight suit. was having so much fear that, by the time i was in my jockey shorts, i was in shock. >> where was the pilot? >> we had to pilots. landedpilots and he half a mile away. they caught him in the parachute before you get the ground. -- he hit the ground. >> how many years were you in a p.o.w. camp? >> five years. >> what was the first one you want to? -- went to? >> would call that a halfway house or a holding station. it was a bamboo barn building with bamboo cages in its that they kept us in until they got enough people to haul in a truck. generally, we were called and tied up in the back of trucks. was before land camp the hanoi hilton. >> where was the hanoi hilton? >> it is in downtown hanoi stop it is a bit steel with 15 foot high walls. with a 15 foot high wall. that showssome video the outside of it. this network went over there in 1992 on a pow mia trip with john kerry and john mccain. you can see this. we were not allowed inside of it. how many cells were there and what did it look like? ofit was like being inside -- part of it was like a prison. you see the broken bottles on top of the wall and the electrical wire around it. inside of it was like a compound. ande are various sections two large buildings. holdsis a cellblock that pows in a different area. there is a larger part of it cells withrge vietnamese prisoners in it for several years. they emptied it out and put 330 pows, back into the and back into the seven rooms where the vietnamese prisoners were. when they were afraid that the united states would write -- raid downtown hanoi, that's where we were. ask you about him after we see this. that is the main reason you are in town. >> shut off from all communications. dumb, i guess. loyalty, that is another thing. we were as loyal as we could be to each other and it meant a great deal. for myself and everyone will play the same thing, -- will wel you the same thing, loved our country more than we ever wanted to and the flight meant a great deal to us. god had a great meeting to us -- meaning to us. >> who was he? >> robinson reisner. and was awn migs hotshot pilot. he was on the cover of time magazine in 1965. he was shot down and captured in september of 1965. in october of 1965, they andized that he was famous that they had somebody famous. they realized that he was exercising leadership as a senior ranking officer in the camp and came after him in a big way. that is when the big, bad torture started in 1965. when i got there in 1967, he had been the reigning senior ranking officer. we called him the sro. what an incredible leader to us. he was an inspiration and a tough leader. he led by example and, like denton, stockdale, other great leaders, they other went -- they always went first. they thought that if they could break them, we would follow. that was what was so amazing about this experience. seeing this extraordinary leadership, the courage that enabled him to lean into the pain of their fears and do the right thing to the best of their ability. i use the term, who was he, on purpose. >> he died six weeks ago and we were having his funeral tomorrow. >> what did he do for the rest of his life? >> he came back and continued his career as a brigadier general in a tactical flying world. an inspirational leader and retired in texas. he was part of the texas war on -- s for a wild insert served.d him and met him in the camps. he was the first american i was able to communicate with, face to face, and it was covert ozaki provide inspiration and he had just came out of 10 months in total darkness. , the passingalled of the night, and it is about the passing of that long night of darkness. he was in solitary confinement for more than four years of his p.o.w. time. we had covert communication. >> what does that mean? >> we were not allowed to openly communicate with other cells. when you are in solitary confinement, they wanted to have you isolated and so that you could not have teamwork. they had him in solitary confinement an awful lot. we would torture and risk our lives -- we were tortured and risk our lives to communicate in that way. he gave me basic guidance and told me to resist and take torture to the point of having mental or physical damage. give as little as possible. pray every day. go home proud. we had a mission statement. return with honor. >> when you think back on the first couple of months in the what. present, -- prison, is the first thing you think of? >> scared, cold. it was winter time and it was cold. hungry. scared. we had interrogations and it was not long before we had to put our foot down and say no. they wanted us to fill out a biography and i refused. i went through torture, through torture, my other cellmates winter torture. three times a day, they had propaganda. in, theyl that we were speaker and three times a day, we got propaganda. it felt that they could convince us that we were right and -- they were right and we were wrong. if we did not have a good attitude and make propaganda for them, we were going to suffer and might not ever go home. i did not believe they could keep us there and i did not believe that the u.s. government would let us stay there. on the other hand, these are communists, desperate to win their costs and be victorious. i did not know what they would do. >> explained what it is like to be cold and why you were cold. >> this was a bastille prison. it is a fairly high ceiling and, in the wintertime, there is no heat, and in the summertime, there is no air. it is damp and cold. cold, unless you do not have any warm cloth es. we had some blankets and we got another one. irs of thin pajamas and a little cotton sweater. i would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, cold, hungry, and hadn't eaten since 4:00 in the previous day. it was cold. >> what kind of food were you fed? >> six months of pumpkin soup. not much pumpkin. a thin cabbage soup. and, three months of what you would call sewer-green soup. it is like chopped up the lead ds. it's -- lily bu we would have a cup of rice or a small baguette. wherever the week came from, they like rice and they would give us the weeks and the bread bread.t ansd the that probably helped us a lot because that had nutrients and proteins. 6:00 --d how did they torture you? >> they had different ways and that was the humane torture. they may you torture yourself in a position of stress on your knees with your hands over her head. irons. after hours and hours of that, your body starts quivering and shaking. you cannot do that anymore and you fall over and get some rest. i was able to do that for quite a while and he put a guard on me. they would catch me and i would put my hands back up. we would go through round after round of this. they put a guard on me to stay with me. they determine if they are going to escalate until i said that i would do it. that is what i figured out and that is what i did. >> how long were you tortured and how much weight did you lose? >> it was a similar type thing. in theclose to 20 pounds early years. 155-160 and i went down to 130. >> how sick were you? >> i stay pretty healthy. i got the flu. there was one time that and i went through the camp. i got jaundice and hepatitis -- pink eye went through the camp. i got jaundice and hepatitis. it was one of those fluke things. he got typhoid fever and did not make it. >> i want to run some video and ask you if you have heard this person or the speaker. -- the american to our sense here to fight the war -- who are sent here to fight the war. i want the gis to resist. they do not take part of the fighting best in the fighting -- in the fighting. it is difficult. our job is to make them believe that the world they -- war they are fighting is not just and is against the vietnamese people. the vietnamese people want to be free and they should not be here. >> hanoi hannah. >> she taught me that her son was in san francisco and working and going to school. what impact did she have? >> humor. she provided humor. pretty well educated. i was the youngest guy in the camp. most of the guys were pretty well educated. is, why youay, "g notg in a war that does matter to you." we're this every day. she provided good humor for us when she mispronounced words, english words. like, she was reading a list of people who were killed in action. those who died and not for the fatherland. she had one person from chicago 3. this was back when illinois was abbreviated "ill." she was quoting somebody who was said, and, a middle-aged lady from detroit said. that became some fun. people would say, how did you know that? and they would say, i heard it from a middle-aged lady in detroit. it must be true. >> what did they do to the prisoners of war that worked? ore propaganda effort torture effort that had a negative impact? >> yeah. >> if you look at the lessons to the future, what would you suggest works? >> there were few people who side with them. there were 4-5 out of 400. one percent. >> you are talking about american military people who sided with them. >> is that what you're talking about? you are talking about the guys in the battlefield. some of those guys -- some of those guys were not sound about who they were and got in that situation and were afraid. they reverted to survival and were taking care of themselves to survive and go home. they rationalize that we should not have been in this war. remember the teachers at the universities who were anti-war in the national relations classes. they put it together with the propaganda and said that we should not have been there in the first place. that is fine if you are in the streets of chicago or washington. when you wear the uniform, you cannot just change her mind. -- your mind. >> where did the kernel rank in the camps? >> there were four of us in there for nine months. one of them was the lieutenant colonel. within a few months, we noticed that he was starting to talk like them and sounds like hanoi hannah. a softer version. agreeing with them that we should not be there and the bombing was not the best thing and all of this kind of stuff. here is a first lieutenant looking a lieutenant colonel in the face and saying, i don't think you need to be talking and thinking that way. and 8-10 pageote description of how some of the military operated in his world. fisher, who i was flying with and the second ranking guy in the cell, he said that he should take command of the cell and relieve him. will you support me? we said, absolutely. room,e came back in the he was relieved of command in order to comply with the code of conduct. he said, well, this is not a declared war and it is every man for himself and i do not think that the code of conduct applies. >> what happened to the relationship? >> it was kind of icy. we had to tolerate and live and let live. he went to another camp and we never saw him again. we heard from other pows that he continued to collaborate and ratted on them for communicating. they put him in a key corner room where the covert communications had to go around his corner to go down the other hallway. he ratted onelp, the guys for communication. is he alive? -- >> is you live? -- he alive? >> i would assume so. we try to court-martial him. not in thed it was best interests of the country in the war was over. if we court-martial him, it would be a trial of the war and movie stars with a lot of money would pump money into his case. it was not worth it. they gave him a letter of censure. and john mccain was in our studio. i want to get your reaction to this. >> this is where john mccain was kept. >> how long? do you know? charge ofot in prisoners. >> was he here by himself? [indiscernible] >> edit a bit. the windows were all bricked over and the only ventilation came from some small holes. >> when he said the windows were there with bars on it, that was not true. >> it had been there. but, they kept is isolated. second of all, there was never i saw inshelter that the 2.5 years in prison nor, did we go to any bomb shelter. we would have to be together and they did not want that to happen. >> he wrote the forward for your book. to know each other when we went back to the camp. after the agreement was signed up by thehey lined us capture date because that was the way they were going to release us over the span of two months. captured 11 been days apart and we were in the same group. we were together in the camp. they had to open the doors and we walked around the courtyard and were together. we walked and talked for a couple of months before we came home. we work together on our reunion and we coordinated one reunion and he coordinated the other. we see each other at reunions occasionally and i have been to his office in the last few years to see him. he was kind enough to write the forward to the book. , how many total pows were there during the war? >> there were 650 at the end of the war that came out of southeast asia. wereich, about 500 aircrews that were up in the hanoi area. of those, about 350 were there for more than five years. it was like two groups. there were people who were there for longer than five years and the bombing stopped in 1968. it did not resume for 2-3 years. there is a big gap where there were no p.o.w.'s coming into the system. we were wondering when somebody was going to take some action to get us out of here. there are were two groups. >> how many died in captivity? >> i do not know. , theres i do know about were nine who were alive and did not come back. a couple were tortured to death. a couple got very ill, that sort of thing. there are 2-3 that died after capture. the local populace killed them before they got to hanoi. there were others in laos that we do not know. >> this next video is a man with end up as a united states senator after he was a p.o.w.. i -- p.o.w. i want to talk about him. > denton was released from prison. he was a spokesman for the group of returning pows and was asked to make a statement. to serve ourored country. we are profoundly grateful to our commander-in-chief and our nation for this day. god bless america. >> god bless america! >> where were you around the time that that happened? had you already touched down? >> no. i was still sitting in prison in hanoi and we came out in three urrge groups -- i am sorry, fo groups. those were the old guys who had been there 7.5-8 years. harris, about eight years. some of those guys had been there for six years. thinking had been there for seven years. ton had been there for seven years. he gave the first words and he is a gifted speaker. done great leadership and courageous leadership over the years in solitary confinement for more than four years. he was a good spokesman for us and it worked out well. but explain what solitary confinement really means. solitary and what find it really means. what would it be like if we were in solitary confinement? what would the atmosphere be like what mark >> you would be all alone. the turnkey would open with a guard with a wife. there is a pocket. -- buckets. that is your bathroom. liters of water in a pitcher. they would come by and pick up the bowls and spoons. another p.o.w. will be watching -- washing. other than that, interrogation. that is not a good thing. it depends on what you are in solitary for and how long you are going to be there. they can be fairly often. >> was there a light on in the cell? >> yes. there is one lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. not a very bright light. sometimes, they turn those off in the daytime. they always burned all my lawn. >> did you have a chair? >> i never sat in a chair, except in interrogation, for 5.5 years. >> why? >> there were no chairs. p.o.w. cells have no chairs. you sit on a concrete or wooden slab. i never sat in a chair. there was a stool. our heads would always be lower than the interrogator. they are sitting in a regular chair and we are sitting in a stool. , that meansture that they are more important. >> you talk about the value of your religion in this atmosphere. explain how important that was. >> yeah. i grew up in age from christian home. i went to -- in a strong christian home. i had a strong foundation of faith. i am from athens, georgia. a little town called commerce is where i went to school. i had all the adventures of growing up on a farm. faith -- you know, when you're alone -- first of all, as a fighter pilot, you are confident, cocky, you can do anything. that sort of stuff. when you depend on your enemy to keep you alive, feed you, have a roof over your head, you know you are not powerful and it puts things in a different perspective than in america, when you are driving down the freeway and enjoying hot air and water. we did not have anything but the basics. my relationship with god was very important and so was prayer. everybody prayed. room of four guys, we did not talk all day. there might be total silence for 30 minutes or an hour. we were waiting for the next event to happen. somebody is sitting over there in meditation or prayer. you shut up and you cannot disturb them. there was a lot of that going. we would ask for a bible and they would not give us one. the communists did not like religion. >> somebody wrote down the bible and memorized it? had memorized verses and we would pass those around through our communication system and memorize more. and the chi minh died american national league of families got organized, there was a lot of pressure on the north vietnamese for better treatment. >> 1969? >> they put a lot of pressure and the new leadership came in. the bad publicity, they did not like. the new leadership cut out most of the day stay torture and it was rare for somebody to be twittered after that. that.tured after they went to a live and let live policy. we were for a bible and in a big sell after a raid. one guy -- two guys could go out and copy a chapter out of the minutes on a piece of paper and bring it back into the room and we would share that. cell, we had amy guy in charge of church service and he was a good speaker. it was interesting and there was some fabulous homilies there and myself from grizzly old firefight it's -- fighter pilots. there was one guy, i did not know it at the time, but one of the guys was thinking about committing suicide. the only time i had heard about that was this particular individual and he gave a speech -- my buddy gave a little sermon that day about how blessed we were and look around, we have lost buddies on the battlefield and we still have two hands, to wo eyes. we are doing pretty good. >> here is a familiar face from the 1992 campaign. another prisoner of war. along in thise 20th century and we have become litigious. we believe that somebody owes us an explanation, an apology, a payback, for something that is not quite right. when you talk about warriors who -- that theen alive government owes you a blow-by-blow description about their demise, there has never been a war in history where a government can do that. the government owes us an explanation for what happened to a guy who was last seen alive on the battlefield -- i mean, can anybody see that as a possible reality? was rossl stockdale perot's running mate. he was a senior ranking officer in the camps and a commander in the navy. what did he do that showed leadership? one period, he was the ranking officer. stockdale was running the show. >> where was the zoo? >> that was the old film studio on the south side of town. it was another camp where a couple hundred guys were for a quite -- for quite a long time. a lot of people were beaten and tortured. knewto stockdale, they that he was a big fish, also. he was a senior naval officer and they tortured him a number of times, over and over. they wanted him to make propaganda and propaganda movies. he said the policy, like reisner, same policy. we are going to resist them and not collaborate with them. we are going to do our very best. when they wanted him to be in this movie, he cut a reverse mohawk in his stealth. they said that he was not getting out of this movie. and lefta cap on him him in a room with a milking stool. he took the milking stool and beat his face black and blue, until his face was all swollen and they could not use them in the movie. >> how much was he tortured? what's a lot. a lot. >> what kind of impact did it have on him? >> he was in the ropes and he was beaten. pretzel? are tied and the elbows are tied. they would throw you on the ground and step on your elbows. they would keep pulling them and pulling them until your elbows touch. it is an unnatural act. >> did it happen to you? >> it did not. >> once the elbows were tied, one guy is behind you and lifting up on your arms behind your back and one guy is in front of you with his foot under her head, pulling that up. up your armshing over your head and tie you in that position. --was a terrible, terrible >> had people get through that? -- how do people get through that? >> mental toughness. there is no way they can make you do something. wouldale, reisner, they eventually give in. they would eventually given. -- give in. they would try to get them to back off, they usually would not. you giving at a point where you can outsmart them. in at a point where you can outsmart them. we wanted to give in before we ever really gave in. >> what is the story of paul galante? >> he was a cell mate of mine. he got their 1.5 years before me and had been through a lot of the old stuff that i had not been through back in 1966. he was a real veteran. they were trying to do a propaganda thing with them and they brought him into a cell. it was well organized and they were going to take a picture of him for propaganda purposes. he sat down on the end of his cell and, in order to outsmart them and show his defiance, he put both figures down between his legs and gave them the bird. that picture is taken by a photographer and was on the cover of life magazine that year. fingerstoshopped the out. >> did he have any retribution? >> i cannot tell you. i have forgotten. there was always retribution if they figured it out. ed torture.k tured him, he was blinking morse code. know about that. they probably would have killed him. and whatid you find have you done? >> 24.5 years. >> what was your last rank? >> full colonel. leadershipo organizations. we had 800 officers going through in a .5 week officer week officer 8.5 leadership course. my parents were getting old and they had sacrificed a lot for my air force career. and ran the rotc program for 2.5 years. that was a great experience. after my flying career, and i had a great flying career after i came back, i was in leadership development and for the last 16 or 17 years, i have been a leadership consultant. i worked to make the book focused towards leadership. leadership that we experienced was so remarkable that we may that see this example of much great leadership under such difficult circumstances again in my lifetime. thatw much do you find people know about the vietnam war today? >> all the people remember a lot remember a lot a number people do not know a lot. it is natural and they are looking forward, and not back. vietnam veterans are getting proper recognition. they did not get it when they came home. the p.o.w.'s did. most veterans were spit on or uniformo wear their because the antiwar movement was ulgar. they are being accepted and the veterans have done well. some have had homelessness and drug problems. gains -- economic success, mayor success, -- marriage success, career success , we have outperformed the general society. always want to fly and when i got into the university of georgia, i got into the rotc and it was smooth sailing. >> i want to ask you about some of the names that you labeled your vietnamese caretakers in the p.o.w. camp. -- dumb-dumb. >> he was a big roots and dumb as dirt. and dumb as dirt. you had to name people and places. cellblocks are named after las vegas casinos in the 1960's. you had to name the guards. guards.b was one of the the first time i got to the hanoi hilton, i was given a pair of pajamas and had my first back in two weeks. by thesea little stool guys who had written on the truck with me. and immaculately fitting uniform, puts his hands up at this and looks around. is in the fire. i almost laughed in his face. if that had not been such a situation, i would have. he memorized american idioms. he -- >> how often would you take your and putt or honey pots it under the door. >> not very often. we did it a few times. >> explain what you did. >> we had a guard who was bothering us. they could not get to us. they did not trust the guard with the key. they would yell at us and irritate us. they would trash talk us. they would open up our portable to look in and do that. to pull the said lid underneath a honeypot and sit under the door. the next time he opens the door, he gets a sniff of the honeypot. he opened up the porthole and left. tpea?o was swee >> he was our turnkey. he was a good guy. there was a guy across the hall and he brought him back. lockedmed him in and it. he looked in and saw that there were five guys and not four. he would moan. he grabbed him and put him across the hall. party campmmunist meetings -- like revival --and he had confessed what he had done -- and he had confessed what he had done. he was missing some stripes. >> did anybody pop one of the guards? >> one guy did. he was a big football player-type. they were messing with him and he hauled off and hit one. the hit him in the back of net with an ak-47 and he had some serious long-term injuries from it. >> here's a video on somebody you might recognize coming back from the p.o.w. camps. >> yeah. >> recognize any of those people? >> yeah, that is the guy across the hall. that guy looks familiar. >> that is you. >> i started growing my fighter pilot mustache again. >> is the eyebrows that are rather strong. but yeah, i always have -- >> where are you? >> the philippines. remember theu details of those days -- how much do you remember the details of those days? >> some. >> were you ever bitter? >> i was when i was there. i hated the communists. communism is built on a lie. >> is that your family? >> no. all those people were there and had worn our bracelets. they came out and hugged us. we just let them. we have not seen any females in seven years. it was nice. --acted the bitterness thing back to the bitterness thing, have you been back? cruise from on a hong kong to hanoi. i saidterness issue, that the last couple of years were more live and let live. it was a time for us to decompress and give us an opportunity to have less ptsd. we came home physically and mentally well because of the live and let live. better food, better treatment, no torture. we had time to think about what our future look like when we got home. we were smart enough to know the bitterness would never hurt them. us.ould only hurt it only takes that much bitterness to ruin your life. why should we go home to bitterness? layer being and washed away of anger and bitterness. i do not think any of us lost all of the anger. i think most of the bitterness. my anger is with communism. it is built upon and intellectual life and can only exist where there is a gun. >> when that ship goes to hanoi, what are you going to do? >> i don't know. i can go in like a torres. i have the mental ability to turn off all of motions when i need to. i can go in and be like a tourist. i do not know if i will do that or go in and celebrate being free. i have no idea what is going to happen. >> what is located at the hanoi hilton area now? and think there is a hotel some office buildings. they have a small museum. that is what i hear. a lot of the guys have gone back and have been well received through vietnam. some of my friends have been back three or four times and enjoyed going back. we were well treated by people and they said a lot of nasty things about the russians. >> really? >> how could it be that the vietnam people would greet us friendly and have a negative impression of the russians? >> i think because russians are russians and americans are americans. we are naturally people who want to help people and the russians do too, -- the russians do, too. not communists. >> did you worry that you are killing human beings when you were dropping bombs? >> not for long. i was a warrior and it was war. they were on one side and i was on the other. that is the bad thing about war. how many of the 500 or so american pows in northern vietnam are still alive today? >> 65-70%. if there were 400 of us there that were there for five years, there are 280 of us still alive. >> how often do you see them? >> some of them i see every year, some of them i have not seen at all in 20-30 years. >> we are out of time. lee ellis, the book is called reading with honor. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> for free transcripts or to give us your comment about this program, visit us at you and day.org. q and a is also available as a podcast. >> tonight on c-span, david cameron answers questions about flood relief in southern england. lawsuitalks about his on the obama administration's privacy rights violations of american citizens. right toons and the vote. then, another look at you and day. from the british house of commons, this is half an hour. >> order. ell, we got through the lots and the principals of present and house is expectant and we can move on to questions to the prime minister. >> number one, mr. speaker.
this survey sometimes is when there is new historical work and/or new work of popular culture that open up the book a little bit and tell the story of a first lady. that first lady's moves a little bit. mary lincoln portray by sally field in the film about lincoln and some of the literature on lincoln of late has told, given a wider perspective on mary lincoln. she does not rise to the top. she remains near the bottom, about 10 places from the bottom, but her stature increased a little bit with more understanding of the difficult situation she was placed in. and no longer just thinking of mary lincoln as someone who was mentally unstable, as she had been portrayed for a long time. the other first ladies near the bottom, in many cases, are associated with presidencies that were seen as unsuccessful and that they added little to it. one notable first lady, florence harding, i think stands out near the bottom because it is more and more been saying that she played some role in some of the perhaps corrupt aspects of the harding administration. so florence harding is nailed as lacking integrity, she scores right at the bottom. the other first ladies that tend to be at the bottom in many cases are associated with little-known presidents, and some of the presidents, both johnson and pierce, who book ended the civil war at a time in our country when we were really looking for great leadership and it was not until lincoln who, of course, is one of the most highly regarded presidents took over. but the first ladies before and after the civil war were seen as giving very little value to the country, very little value to the presidents who themselves were unsuccessful. >> the siena research institute did this in partnership with c-span. one of the new categories that was on the survey -- greatest political asset. eleanor roosevelt, hillary clinton, jacqueline kennedy, michelle obama, and nancy reagan. one other new topic area was lasting legacy. again, eleanor roosevelt topped that. jacqueline kennedy, hillary clinton, betty ford, and lady bird johnson. what is about those five women? >> the greatest political asset i think is a category that really matters now. no longer is the first lady only looked upon as being a white house steward, but rather as a very important political ally to the president. eleanor roosevelt stands out because she campaigns on behalf of the president. she was sent out to negotiate with various constituencies. she really stands out. hillary clinton quite obviously was instrumental in many of the policies of the clinton administration. and of course now is seen as a first lady most likely to serve as president. jackie kennedy makes the list. michelle obama as a current asset. nancy reagan shows up on that list in a very positive sense, i think, as a political asset. and the work that nancy reagan did as part of the reagan administration in some cases really taking care of the president, negotiating with various constituencies and even with warring parties within the administration itself was seen as quite crucial during the reagan years. greatest lasting legacy -- jackie kennedy, i think, deserves mention there. we just saw the 50th anniversary of the assassination of president kennedy. once again, the nation was reintroduced to the role that jackie kennedy played not only in her role of revitalizing the white house as an institution, introducing the country to the white house, but the grace she conducted herself was a model for the country at the time of the assassination. and that is truly a legacy that has stood out not only for the country but for the institution of the first lady and the importance of that position to the entire country. she speaks in many ways to the heart and soul of our country. at good times, demanding times, and at difficult times, as was that of the assassination. >> a quick look at some of the topline results of the siena research institute. the newest survey on first ladies in collaboration with c-span's first lady series. >> we conclude our series tomorrow night and we will discuss how the role of first lady has evolved. show the results of a new survey on the impact of each of the first ladies and we will include your phone calls on monday night. >> tonight, q and a with lee ellis. answers questions about flood relief in england and the israeli ambassador to the united states will talk about the impact of the iranian nuclear program. later, hearing about how prepared states are for extreme weather conditions. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> this week on q&a, lee ellis discusses his five and a half years in north vietnam as a prisoner of war. >> lee ellis, go back to november 7, 1967, at 4:00. what happened? >> i was in my 53rd combat mission in vietnam. that day, we rolled in and were working with a group that had called us in and said that they needed some bombs on gunners. we rolled into do that and there were two of us on the f-4 phantom. the bombs came off the airplane at 4000 or 5000 feet. unusually, the airplane burst into several pieces.
we were tumbling, end over end. there was smoke in the cockpit and i could not communicate with my partner. i knew i had to get out and i was well trained. i was about to eject over enemy territory that we had to bombing for a couple of years. there was no other choice and i pulled a handle. everything worked automatically and perfectly. it blew the canopy and blew me 50 feet in the air. it separated the seats from me, which automatically pulled the d-ring. it was less than 2.5 seconds from when i pulled the handle. there was a lot of shooting going on at the ground and they were shooting at our wing man with a nest of guns. there was a good number of militia down there that were protecting a strategic target. a lot of shooting going on. the wonderful training that i had in the air force and the military, they do a great job of training, i was unfazed by the fact that i was in enemy territory and i had bullets going by my parachute. what was on my mind was even eating capture. there was a river to the south, and i thought that if i could get to the river, i have a life raft and i'm only 1.5 miles from the gulf of top can. i can make it there and the navy can pick me up. unfortunately, i did not have enough altitude to slip my parachute. the old parachutes did not slip very well. that is what i did and it took them a couple of minutes to capture me. i made a radio call and call for the wing man. i said that i was on the ground and i was 200 meters north of the river. star strafing at 300 and i am heading south. after the war, i met with the pilots in the plane. they said to not strafe because they did not think they could should that accurately. it was a good call because they were all around me. within two minutes, i was captured. >> how may times have you flown over north vietnam? >> 53. >> what was the purpose of the flights? >> we were in the northern part of vietnam, 70 miles north of the dmz and had been flying all types of missions. by the time i got there, in the summer of 1967, they had changed our mission to only fly on reconnaissance over the southern part of north vietnam. we were flying the ho chi minh trail and the main highways. we were flying the riverway to stop the trucks that were hauling supplies to the viet kong. >> how old were you? >> i was 23 and turned 24. i had flown with areas people and some new guys with the squadron to check them out. that day, i was flying with a guy named ken fisher. unfortunately for him and fortunately for me, i could not have had a better guy with me. he was a guy of great courage, mentally, physically strong. he ended up being an incredible leader for me. >> where is he today? >> he is retired in tampa florida and playing golf. >> how close are you? >> very close. we do not play golf. we are very close. >> where were you at that point? >> i was 200 meters north of the river, kind of a floodplain and a bushy area. scrubby bush. just like the paratroopers are taught to do and we were taught to do, i had hit all the points and had no injuries from the parachute. i had injuries from coming out of the airplane, the straps had hit me in the back of the head. they were not serious. i was thinking about making the call to get their heads down so that i could escape. that did not work and they are closing in on me. i am thinking, evade. they taught us that the people who capture you are the least trained to capture pows and maintain them. your best chance to escape is then. i thought that these are rookies and i pulled out my combat masterpiece. i ran like this and said, get away and get back. i fired a round over their head. they did not flinch. they raised their rifles like this and one of them reached in their pocket and pulled out a comic book that some of them carried in their pocket. it had drawings and vietnamese phonetics. the drawings show them capturing an american pilot. one of them said, surrender, no die. hands up. hands up. i decided that that was the best advice i would get that day and i went hands up. they did not shoot me and pounced on me. >> what was your level of fear? >> i did not have any fear. i was not aware of any fear. my adrenaline was going. i did not notice fear until they started stripping everything and all of my clothes off. they did not know much about zippers. they started cutting. i was afraid that i was going to get cut. they pulled away my survival vest and flight suit. i was having so much fear that, by the time i was in my jockey shorts, i was in shock. >> where was the pilot? >> we had two pilots and he landed half a mile away. they caught him in the parachute before he hit the ground. >> how many years were you in a p.o.w. camp? >> five years. >> what was the first one you went to? >> would call that a halfway house or a holding station. it was a bamboo barn building with bamboo cages in it that they kept us in until they got enough people to haul in a truck. generally, we were called and tied up in the back of trucks. the holding land camp was before the hanoi hilton. >> where was the hanoi hilton? >> it is in downtown hanoi. it is bastille with a 15 foot high wall. >> we have some video that shows the outside of it. this network went over there in 1992 on a pow mia trip with john kerry and john mccain. you can see this. we were not allowed inside of it. how many cells were there and what did it look like? >> it was like being inside of -- part of it was like a prison. you see the broken bottles on top of the wall and the electrical wire around it. inside of it was like a compound. there are various sections and two large buildings. there is a cellblock that holds pows in a different area. there is a larger part of it that has large cells with vietnamese prisoners in it for several years. they emptied it out and put 330 of us, all pows, back into the hanoi hilton and back into the seven rooms where the vietnamese prisoners were. when they were afraid that the united states would raid downtown hanoi, that's where we were. >> we'll ask you about him after we see this. that is the main reason you are in town. >> shut off from all communications. stupid and dumb, i guess. integrity, loyalty, that is another thing. we were as loyal as we could be to each other and it meant a great deal. for myself and everyone will play the same thing, -- will tell you the same thing, we loved our country more than we ever wanted to and the flight meant a great deal to us. our faith in god had a great meaning to us. >> who was he? >> robinson reisner. he shut down migs and was a hotshot pilot. he was on the cover of time magazine in 1965. he was shot down and captured in september of 1965. in october of 1965, they realized that he was famous and that they had somebody famous. they realized that he was exercising leadership as a senior ranking officer in the camp and came after him in a big way. that is when the big, bad torture started in 1965. when i got there in 1967, he had been the reigning senior ranking officer. we called him the sro. what an incredible leader to us. he was an inspiration and a tough leader. he led by example and, like denton, stockdale, other great leaders, they always went first. they thought that if they could break them, we would follow. that was what was so amazing about this experience. seeing this extraordinary leadership, the courage that enabled him to lean into the pain of their fears and do the right thing to the best of their ability. >> i use the term, who was he, on purpose. >> he died six weeks ago and we were having his funeral tomorrow. >> what did he do for the rest of his life? >> he came back and continued his career as a brigadier general in a tactical flying world. he was an inspirational leader and retired in texas. he was part of the texas war on drugs for a while and served. i knew him and met him in the camps. he was the first american i was able to communicate with, face to face, and it was covert ozaki provide inspiration and he had just came out of 10 months in total darkness. his book is called, the passing of the night, and it is about the passing of that long night of darkness. he was in solitary confinement for more than four years of his p.o.w. time. we had covert communication. >> what does that mean? >> we were not allowed to openly communicate with other cells. when you are in solitary confinement, they wanted to have you isolated and so that you could not have teamwork. they had him in solitary confinement an awful lot. we were tortured and risk our lives to communicate in that way. he gave me basic guidance and told me to resist and take torture to the point of having permanent mental or physical damage. give as little as possible. pray every day. go home proud. we had a mission statement. return with honor. >> when you think back on the first couple of months in the p.o.w. prison, what is the first thing you think of? >> scared, cold. it was winter time and it was cold. hungry. scared. we had interrogations and it was not long before we had to put our foot down and say no. they wanted us to fill out a biography and i refused. we went through torture. i went through torture. my other cellmates went through torture. three times a day, they had propaganda. every cell that we were in, they had a speaker and three times a day, we got propaganda. it felt that they could convince us that they were right and we were wrong. if we did not have a good attitude and make propaganda for them, we were going to suffer and might not ever go home. i did not believe they could keep us there and i did not believe that the u.s. government would let us stay there. on the other hand, these are communists, desperate to win their costs and be victorious. i did not know what they would do. >> explained what it is like to be cold and why you were cold. >> this was a bastille prison. it is a fairly high ceiling and, in the wintertime, there is no heat, and in the summertime, there is no air. it is damp and cold. it is not very cold, unless you do not have any warm clothes. we had some blankets and we got another one. we had two pairs of thin pajamas and a little cotton sweater. i would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, cold, hungry, and hadn't eaten since 4:00 in the previous day. it was cold. >> what kind of food were you fed? >> six months of pumpkin soup. thin, watery, not much pumpkin. a thin cabbage soup. and, three months of what you would call sewer-green soup. it is like chopped up lily buds. we would have a cup of rice or a small baguette. wherever the week came from, they like rice and they would give us the wheat and the bread. that probably helped us a lot because that had nutrients and proteins. >> around 6:00 -- how did they torture you? >> they had different ways and that was the humane torture. they may you torture yourself in a position of stress on your knees with your hands over your head, in leg irons. after hours and hours of that, your body starts quivering and shaking. you cannot do that anymore and you fall over and get some rest. i was able to do that for quite a while and he put a guard on me. they would catch me and i would put my hands back up. we would go through round after round of this. they put a guard on me to stay with me. they determine if they are going to escalate until i said that i would do it. that is what i figured out and that is what i did. >> how long were you tortured and how much weight did you lose? >> it was a similar type thing. i lost close to 20 pounds in the early years. i went in at 155-160 and i went down to 130. >> how sick were you? >> i stay pretty healthy. i got the flu. there was one time that pink eye went through the camp. i got jaundice and hepatitis. it was one of those fluke things. he got typhoid fever and did not make it. >> i want to run some video and ask you if you have heard this person or the speaker. >> i don't know -- the american who are sent here to fight the war. i want the gis to resist. they do not take part in the fighting. it is difficult. our job is to make them believe that the war they are fighting is not just and is against the vietnamese people. the vietnamese people want to be free and they should not be here. >> hanoi hannah. >> she taught me that her son was in san francisco and working and going to school. what impact did she have? >> humor. she provided humor. we were pretty well educated. i was the youngest guy in the camp. most of the guys were pretty well educated. she would say, "gis, why you dying in a war that does not matter to you?" we heard this every day. she provided good humor for us when she mispronounced words, english words. like, she was reading a list of people who were killed in action. those who died and not for the fatherland. she had one person from chicago 3. this was back when illinois was abbreviated "ill." she was quoting somebody who was anti-war and said, and, a middle-aged lady from detroit said. that became some fun. people would say, how did you know that? and they would say, i heard it from a middle-aged lady in detroit. it must be true. >> what did they do to the prisoners of war that worked? some propaganda effort or torture effort that had a negative impact? >> yeah. >> if you look at the lessons to the future, what would you suggest works? >> there were few people who side with them. there were 4-5 out of 400. one percent. >> you are talking about american military people who sided with them. >> is that what you're talking about? you are talking about the guys in the battlefield. those --some of those guys -- some of those guys were not sound about who they were and got in that situation and were afraid. they reverted to survival and were taking care of themselves to survive and go home. they rationalize that we should not have been in this war. some of them remember the teachers at the universities who were anti-war in the national relations classes. they put it together with the propaganda and said that we should not have been there in the first place. that is fine if you are in the streets of chicago or washington. when you wear the uniform, you cannot just change your mind. >> where did the colonel rank in the camps? >> there were four of us in there for nine months. one of them was the lieutenant colonel. within a few months, we noticed that he was starting to talk like them and sounds like hanoi hannah. a softer version. agreeing with them that we should not be there and the bombing was not the best thing and all of this kind of stuff. here is a first lieutenant looking a lieutenant colonel in the face and saying, i don't think you need to be talking and thinking that way. one day, he wrote and 8-10 page description of how some of the military operated in his world. so, ken fisher, who i was flying with and the second ranking guy in the cell, he said that he should take command of the cell and relieve him. will you support me? we said, absolutely. when he came back in the room, he was relieved of command in order to comply with the code of conduct. he said, well, this is not a declared war and it is every man for himself and i do not think that the code of conduct applies. >> what happened to the relationship? >> it was kind of icy. we had to tolerate and live and let live. he went to another camp and we never saw him again. we heard from other pows that he continued to collaborate and ratted on them for communicating. they put him in a key corner room where the covert communications had to go around his corner to go down the other hallway. rather than help, he ratted on the guys for communication. >> is he alive? >> i would assume so. we try to court-martial him. they decided it was not in the best interests of the country in the war was over. if we court-martial him, it would be a trial of the war and movie stars with a lot of money would pump money into his case. it was not worth it. they gave him a letter of censure. >> here is 1992 and john mccain was in our studio. i want to get your reaction to this. >> this is where john mccain was kept. >> how long? do you know? >> i was not in charge of prisoners. >> was he here by himself? [indiscernible] >> edit a bit. the windows were all bricked over and the only ventilation came from some small holes. >> when he said the windows were there with bars on it, that was not true. >> it had been there. but, they kept is isolated. second of all, there was never any bomb shelter that i saw in the 2.5 years in prison nor, did we go to any bomb shelter. we would have to be together and they did not want that to happen. >> he wrote the forward for your book. >> we got to know each other when we went back to the camp. after the agreement was signed in 1973, they lined us up by the capture date because that was the way they were going to release us over the span of two months. he and i had been captured 11 days apart and we were in the same group. we were together in the camp. they had to open the doors and we walked around the courtyard and were together. we walked and talked for a couple of months before we came home. we work together on our reunion and we coordinated one reunion and he coordinated the other. we see each other at reunions occasionally and i have been to his office in the last few years to see him. he was kind enough to write the forward to the book. >> looking back, how many total pows were there during the war? >> there were 650 at the end of the war that came out of southeast asia. of which, about 500 were aircrews that were up in the hanoi area. of those, about 350 were there for more than five years. it was like two groups. there were people who were there for longer than five years and the bombing stopped in 1968. it did not resume for 2-3 years. there is a big gap where there were no p.o.w.'s coming into the system. we were wondering when somebody was going to take some action to get us out of here. there are were two groups. >> how many died in captivity? >> i do not know. the ones i do know about, there were nine who were alive and did not come back. a couple were tortured to death. a couple got very ill, that sort of thing. there are 2-3 that died after capture. the local populace killed them before they got to hanoi. there were others in laos that we do not know. >> this next video is a man with end up as a united states senator after he was a p.o.w. i want to talk about him. >> denton was released from prison. he was a spokesman for the group of returning pows and was asked to make a statement. >> we are honored to serve our country. we are profoundly grateful to our commander-in-chief and our nation for this day. god bless america. >> god bless america! >> where were you around the time that that happened? had you already touched down? >> no. i was still sitting in prison in hanoi and we came out in three large groups -- i am sorry, four groups. those were the old guys who had been there 7.5-8 years. smitty harris, about eight years. some of those guys had been there for six years. denton had been there for seven years. he gave the first words and he is a gifted speaker. he had done great leadership and courageous leadership over the years in solitary confinement for more than four years. he was a good spokesman for us and it worked out well. >> explain what solitary confinement really means. what would it be like if we were in solitary confinement? what would the atmosphere be like? >> you would be all alone. the turnkey would open with a guard. there is a bucket. that is your bathroom. there is 1.5 liters of water in a pitcher. they would come by and pick up the bowls and spoons. another p.o.w. will be washing. other than that, interrogation. that is not a good thing. it depends on what you are in solitary for and how long you are going to be there. they can be fairly often. >> was there a light on in the cell? >> yes. there is one lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. not a very bright light. sometimes, they turn those off in the daytime. they always burned all my lawn. >> did you have a chair? >> i never sat in a chair, except in interrogation, for 5.5 years. >> why? >> there were no chairs. p.o.w. cells have no chairs. you sit on a concrete or wooden slab. i never sat in a chair. there was a stool. our heads would always be lower than the interrogator. they are sitting in a regular chair and we are sitting in a stool. in their culture, that means that they are more important. >> you talk about the value of your religion in this atmosphere. explain how important that was. >> yeah. i grew up in a strong christian home. i had a strong foundation of faith. i am from athens, georgia. a little town called commerce is where i went to school. i had all the adventures of growing up on a farm. faith -- you know, when you're alone -- first of all, as a fighter pilot, you are confident, cocky, you can do anything. that sort of stuff. when you depend on your enemy to keep you alive, feed you, have a roof over your head, you know you are not powerful and it puts things in a different perspective than in america, when you are driving down the freeway and enjoying hot air and water. we did not have anything but the basics. my relationship with god was very important and so was prayer. everybody prayed. even a room of four guys, we did not talk all day. there might be total silence for 30 minutes or an hour. we were waiting for the next event to happen. somebody is sitting over there in meditation or prayer. you shut up and you cannot disturb them. there was a lot of that going. we would ask for a bible and they would not give us one. the communists did not like religion. >> somebody wrote down the bible and memorized it? >> some of us had memorized verses and we would pass those around through our communication system and memorize more. after ho chi minh died and the american national league of families got organized, there was a lot of pressure on the north vietnamese for better treatment. >> 1969? >> they put a lot of pressure and the new leadership came in. the bad publicity, they did not like. the new leadership cut out most of the day stay torture and it was rare for somebody to be tortured after that. they went to a live and let live policy. we asked for a bible and we were in a big sell after a raid. one guy -- two guys could go out and copy a chapter out of the bible for 45 minutes on a piece of paper and bring it back into the room and we would share that. on sundays, in my cell, we had a guy in charge of church service and he was a good speaker. it was interesting and there was some fabulous homilies there and myself from grizzly old firefight it's -- fighter pilots. there was one guy, i did not know it at the time, but one of the guys was thinking about committing suicide. the only time i had heard about that was this particular individual and he gave a speech -- my buddy gave a little sermon that day about how blessed we were and look around, we have lost buddies on the battlefield and we still have two hands, two eyes. we are doing pretty good. >> here is a familiar face from the 1992 campaign. another prisoner of war. >> we have come along in this 20th century and we have become litigious. we believe that somebody owes us an explanation, an apology, a payback, for something that is not quite right. when you talk about warriors who were last seen alive -- that the government owes you a blow-by-blow description about their demise, there has never been a war in history where a government can do that. to say that the government owes us an explanation for what happened to a guy who was last seen alive on the battlefield -- i mean, can anybody see that as a possible reality? >> admiral stockdale was ross perot's running mate. he was a senior ranking officer in the camps and a commander in the navy. what did he do that showed leadership? >> in one period, he was the ranking officer. stockdale was running the show. >> where was the zoo? >> that was the old film studio on the south side of town. it was another camp where a couple hundred guys were for quite a long time. a lot of people were beaten and tortured. back to stockdale, they knew that he was a big fish, also. he was a senior naval officer and they tortured him a number of times, over and over. they wanted him to make propaganda and propaganda movies. he said the policy, like reisner, same policy. we are going to resist them and not collaborate with them. we are going to do our very best. when they wanted him to be in this movie, he cut a reverse mohawk in his stealth. they said that he was not getting out of this movie. they put a cap on him and left him in a room with a milking stool. he took the milking stool and beat his face black and blue, until his face was all swollen and they could not use them in the movie. >> how much was he tortured? >> a lot. a lot. >> what kind of impact did it have on him? >> he was in the ropes and he was beaten. >> pretzel? >> the wrists are tied and the elbows are tied. they would throw you on the ground and step on your elbows. they would keep pulling them and pulling them until your elbows touch. it is an unnatural act. >> did it happen to you? >> it did not. >> once the elbows were tied, one guy is behind you and lifting up on your arms behind your back and one guy is in front of you with his foot under her head, pulling that up. they are cinching up your arms over your head and tie you in that position. it was a terrible, terrible -- >> how do people get through that? >> mental toughness. there is no way they can make you do something. stockdale, reisner, they would eventually give in. they would eventually give in. they would try to get them to back off, they usually would not. you give in at a point where you can outsmart them. we wanted to give in before we ever really gave in. >> what is the story of paul galante? >> he was a cell mate of mine. he got their 1.5 years before me and had been through a lot of the old stuff that i had not been through back in 1966. he was a real veteran. they were trying to do a propaganda thing with them and they brought him into a cell. it was well organized and they were going to take a picture of him for propaganda purposes. he sat down on the end of his cell and, in order to outsmart them and show his defiance, he put both figures down between his legs and gave them the bird. that picture is taken by a photographer and was on the cover of life magazine that year. they photoshopped the fingers out. >> did he have any retribution? >> i cannot tell you. i have forgotten. there was always retribution if they figured it out. denton blinked torture. when they tortured him, he was blinking morse code. they did not know about that. they probably would have killed him. >> what did you find and what have you done? >> 24.5 years. >> what was your last rank? >> full colonel. i had ran to leadership organizations. we had 800 officers going through an 8.5 week officer leadership course. my parents were getting old and they had sacrificed a lot for my air force career. i went back and ran the rotc program for 2.5 years. that was a great experience. after my flying career, and i had a great flying career after i came back, i was in leadership development and for the last 16 or 17 years, i have been a leadership consultant. i worked to make the book focused towards leadership. leadership that we experienced was so remarkable that we may never see this example of that much great leadership under such difficult circumstances again in my lifetime. >> how much do you find that people know about the vietnam war today? >> older people remember a lot. younger people do not know a lot. it is natural and they are looking forward, and not back. vietnam veterans are getting proper recognition. they did not get it when they came home. the p.o.w.'s did. most veterans were spit on or afraid to wear their uniform because the antiwar movement was so vulgar. they are being accepted and the veterans have done well. some have had homelessness and drug problems. economic gains -- economic success, marriage success, career success, we have outperformed the general society. i always want to fly and when i got into the university of georgia, i got into the rotc and it was smooth sailing. >> i want to ask you about some of the names that you labeled your vietnamese caretakers in the p.o.w. camp. dumb-dumb. >> he was a big brute and dumb as dirt. you had to name people and places. our cellblocks are named after las vegas casinos in the 1960's. you had to name the guards. dumb-dumb was one of the guards. the first time i got to the hanoi hilton, i was given a pair of pajamas and had my first bath in two weeks. i sat on a little stool by these guys who had written on the truck with me. this guy, in an immaculately fitting uniform, puts his hands up at this and looks around. he says, "and now, the fat is in the fire." i almost laughed in his face. if that had not been such a scary situation, i would have. he memorized american idioms. he -- >> how often would you take your waste pot or honey pots and put it under the door. >> not very often. we did it a few times. >> explain what you did. >> we had a guard who was bothering us. they could not get to us. they did not trust the guard with the key. they would yell at us and irritate us. they would trash talk us. they would open up our portable to look in and do that. one day, jim said to pull the lid underneath a honeypot and sit under the door. the next time he opens the door, he gets a sniff of the honeypot. he opened up the porthole and left. >> who was sweetpea? >> he was our turnkey. he was a good guy. there was a guy across the hall and he brought him back. he slammed him in and locked it. he looked in and saw that there were five guys and not four. he would moan. he grabbed him and put him across the hall. they had communist party camp meetings -- like revival meetings -- and he had confessed what he had done. he was missing some stripes. >> did anybody pop one of the guards? >> one guy did. he was a big football player-type. they were messing with him and he hauled off and hit one. they hit him in the back of the net with an ak-47 and he had some serious long-term injuries from it. >> here's a video on somebody you might recognize coming back from the p.o.w. camps. >> yeah. >> recognize any of those people? >> yeah, that is the guy across the hall. that guy looks familiar. >> that is you. >> i started growing my fighter pilot mustache again. >> is the eyebrows that are rather strong. but yeah, i always have -- >> where are you? >> the philippines. >> how much do you remember the details of those days? >> some. >> were you ever bitter? >> i was when i was there. i hated the communists. communism is built on a lie. >> is that your family? >> no. all those people were there and had worn our bracelets. they came out and hugged us. we just let them. we have not seen any females in seven years. it was nice. >> back to the bitterness thing, have you been back? >> i'm going on a cruise from hong kong to hanoi. the bitterness issue, i said that the last couple of years were more live and let live. it was a time for us to decompress and give us an opportunity to have less ptsd. we came home physically and mentally well because of the last years of live and let live. better food, better treatment, no torture. we had time to think about what our future look like when we got home. we were smart enough to know the bitterness would never hurt them. it would only hurt us. it only takes that much bitterness to ruin your life. why should we go home to bitterness? it was layer and layer being washed away of anger and bitterness. i do not think any of us lost all of the anger. i think most of the bitterness. my anger is with communism. it is built upon and intellectual life and can only exist where there is a gun. >> when that ship goes to hanoi, what are you going to do? >> i don't know. i can go in like a tourist. i have the mental ability to turn off all of motions when i need to. i can go in and be like a tourist. i do not know if i will do that or go in and celebrate being free. i have no idea what is going to happen. >> what is located at the hanoi hilton area now? >> i think there is a hotel and some office buildings. they have a small museum. that is what i hear. a lot of the guys have gone back and have been well received through vietnam. some of my friends have been back three or four times and enjoyed going back. >> in 1992, we were well treated by people and they said a lot of nasty things about the russians. >> really? >> how could it be that the vietnam people would greet us friendly and have a negative impression of the russians? >> i think because russians are russians and americans are americans. we are naturally people who want to help people andthe russians do, too. not communists. >> did you worry that you are killing human beings when you were dropping bombs? >> not for long. i was a warrior and it was war. they were on one side and i was on the other. that is the bad thing about war. >> how many of the 500 or so american pows in northern vietnam are still alive today? >> 65-70%. if there were 400 of us there that were there for five years, there are 280 of us still alive. >> how often do you see them? >> some of them i see every year, some of them i have not seen at all in 20-30 years. >> we are out of time. lee ellis, the book is called reading with honor. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> for a free transcript or to give us your comments, visit us at our website. >> next, question time with david cameron. he answers questions about the government response to flooding. this is half of an hour. >> order. well, the principles are present. and we can move on to questions for the prime minister. >> thank you. i had meetings with the colleagues and others. i will have further meetings today. >> our hearts go out to everyone who is devastated over the current flood. we agreed that it would be complacent and ignorant. change will lead to more sacrifice in the future. doing
people will overwhelmingly approve it. i thought it would've approved in 2000 or 2008. i'm not sure about the palestinians. i have to be honest about that. i hope it would be the case they would support it as well. asking the impossible conundrum. , i wroteof years ago an op-ed in the wall street journal. was about the birth of -- it was about the book of jonas. who the story of a profit say if you dond not repent, you will be destroyed. he realizes this is a no-win situation. if he tells them to repent and they do repent, three years later, they will say, why do we have to repent? nothing happened. or if he goes and they do not repent, then he is a false prophet. that is the paradox of prophecy. it is a no-win situation. you can house the same question about the maintenance of american hegemony in the middle east. if america had not maintained hegemony over 50 years, it may be nothing would've happened to the u.s. if america had let its guard something worse than 9/11 happened, and the paradox would have been there. why didn't america maintain its hegemony? there's no conclusive answer to your question. the decision-makers in real-time and something i've learned to that they have to confront those -- that paradox all the time everyday. they have my sympathy and my respect. sometimes even when they make the wrong decision, they take the responsibility. they assume the paradox of papa c. they know they make a certain decision, it may have untold consequences. if they do not make a decision, it may also have untold consequences. consistently and consecutively over the past half-century and even beyond, american policymakers have overwhelmingly come down on the side of maintaining american hegemony in the middle east. and i think with humility and some very powerful minds and good hearts. have to give them credit. ambassador michael oren, a couple of things in the closing. [indiscernible] thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next on c-span, a look at u.s. crisis response options in the middle east and north africa. obama'sllowed by the lan on climate change and energy policy. and hearing how well states are for extreme weather. later, lee ellis. >> tamari can watch elena kagan -- tomorrow you can watch elena kagan and ruth bader ginsburg. it will begin at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span. it will befall a discussion of the three branches of the u.s. government, the future of democracy, and the 2014 midterm thations with her faster is at 11:30 a.m. eastern also on c-span. a conversationt, with republican senator bob corker on his early career in business. >> i have started working at most folks when i was 13 doing all kinds of odds and ends. i migrated to being a construction laborer, a rough carpenter. when i graduated from college i ended up being a construction superintendent. after about four years, i had built some reasonable -- regional malls around the country and learn how to build projects. when i was 25 years old, i went into business. i started doing a lot of repeat work come a small projects where i could be paid quickly. the company grew about 80% a year. we ended up building shopping centers around the country, retail projects in 18 states. it was energizing. it was a great place to be. the energy when you come into the front door, it would almost knock you down. i sold that when i was 37 to a young man who had worked with me for many years. , i have done several things since. i ended up acquiring a good deal of real estate. through the years, through portfolios and other companies. i love being in business. >> later we will talk with democratic senator amy klobuchar of minnesota on being in the senate and the mother of a teenage daughter. >> she called me and i picked up the phone walking into the senate. she is in tears. mom, we can't wear a bikini at the pool party but you is and dadankin doesn't understand the difference. i go, get him on the phone right now. i walked into lindsey graham and knocked him over practically. i thought, i am not doing this balance very well. for any mother, it doesn't matter if you're a senator or a nurse. trying to balance the family and the work, you never do it perfectly. anyone that says they do is wrong. >> american profile interviews with senators bob corker and amy klobuchar tuesday night starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. >> next, colonel scott brown discusses how his team would respond to crisis situations in the middle east and north africa. he is the commander of a force of approximately 500 marines and sailors trained to support u.s. and allied interests in the united states africa command area. from the atlantic council, this is just over an hour. >> good afternoon, welcome to the atlantic council. i am the, none of the marine corps's fellow here at the council. today we have the pleasure of ,osting colonel scott benedict the most recent commander of the special purpose marine air ground task force crisis response. grundenrator is stephen who lent his considerable secretary ofe defense, the charles river andciates and is now the ma fellow for emerging defense challenges here at the atlantic council. following the 2012 attack in benghazi, we focused on protecting u.s. citizens and their interest. the marine corps's answer was a special purpose marine air ground task force. crisis response, a tethered ground force along with a command element and supported by six ospreys and others. tour, colonel benedict's they evacuated u.s. personnel from the embassy in sudan, patrolled the mediterranean and africa for a contingency response and engaged in bilateral training exercises with the french legionnaires, the senegalese military. colonel benedict is a copilot by training and has spent time with the infringer he, serving with --h force and retellings retaliatory units. he is presently commanding officer of the 24th marine expeditionary unit. he is a graduate of the u.s. naval academy, a nato command staff college and the marine corps war college. -- we'velcome me in join me in welcoming colonel scott benedict. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you here today about the crisis response. 24ths mentioned, expeditionary unit, commanding officer and i took command of that unit in march. about three or four months later, we employed -- diploid -- deployed into the european and african areas of responsibility. the core element of that came from our staff. we just returned in january, handed that force over to another commander from the eighth marine regiment. what i am going to do today is talk of little bit about capabilities, some of the issues that we ran into while we were overseas, some of the things we think make this force unique and answer any questions you have at the end. ok, i am just going to start off with a little bit of marine corps 101 on how we organize our forces. a special purpose marine air ground task worse, the way the marine corps organizes its task forces is with four elements. is thend element which top box in the upper left-hand of that side. we have the air combat element, the ground element, and the logistics element. we think this is what makes us unique. you get a task force capable of operating across the mission sets assigned to that force. the marine corps has freestanding magtf's. starting on the far right, marine expeditionary forces. they encompass the operating forces. this is the bulk of the marines that deploy or come out of these forces. this type force is used for major combat operations. it is a corps sized force like what you saw made the march to baghdad in 2003. next to that, you have the brigade commanded by a one-star. it says up to 15,000. this can range from a joint task force headquarters up to aggregating multiple forces in support of major combat operations. then you have the two on the left, which we would consider our forward deployed forces that we would project forward and anticipate would be operating in theater all the time, not just when there is a crisis. the one we have traditionally deployed is the marine expeditionary unit. it is about 2500 marines. it is associated with amphibious shipping. that is what you mostly see on the news, marines operating off of the ships. we have two of those on the water at all times. one in the pacific and one generally in the european, african, and central command regions. very capable force. runs the gamut from working security cooperation issues up to having the capability of executing forcible entry or having a play inside a major theater operation. the last one on the left is the special purpose. they do not have a size. they do not have a number associated with them. they can be created in order to meet whatever the mission requirement is. in this particular case, our crisis response was established with about 550 marines. it was based around an infantry company sized force. the command element was taken largely from the 24th. designed for specific evolutions or missions, hours being crisis response. i will get into the details on that in a moment. next slide. this was our mission. we were a forward applied crisis response as mentioned. it was established starting last year around the april timeframe. just one of many options the marine corps has, along with the augmentation of security forces, fleet antiterrorism security teams, and special purpose magtf africa that does cooperation on the continent. it is different. it is not the same. it does not have the same capabilities. certainly not the combat power it brings to the fight. the box on the right is alluding to what we see as the continuum of crisis response. i know it is hard to see a lot of the words. as you start moving up the slope towards the bang, a lot of things happen, particularly when you're talking about support to embassies and government facilities overseas. a lot of indications and warnings. the crisis starts to bubble up. we would like to get a force like spmagtf-cr in early to deal with the situation early and diffuse it right its presence or action that might be taken such as reinforcing. we are one of the red boxes on the bottom, or one of the many options. there are four deployed. but not the only option available. key missions we train to - expeditionary enforcement, site security, tactical recovery of aircraft or personnel, as well as noncombatant evacuation operations. we are capable of being a lead for a follow-on force on the way that we could scale up. we were unique in the theater based on our ability to self command and control, deployment, and the mobility we brought as part of the task force. that came from the combinations as well as the task organized ground element could that allowed us to project this force a long way. even though we were based in spain for the majority of the time we were deployed, we were able to rapidly project the force. when we got where we were going, we brought everything necessary to operate. we believe that is the ground of the marine air ground task force. it comes as one consolidated package that is scalable to be able to break pieces apart if necessary and also be able to quickly be organized in order to accomplish the mission without a lot of external support. i have already mentioned it does not replace it. there were questions about whether we were there in lieu of. we do not think so. because of the lack of mu presence in the mediterranean and african region, spmagtf-cr filled that gap. we felt it was complementary. this is a little bit about the operating area and time and space for the problem framing. we self deploy this force from camp lejeune to spain. that distance on the red arrows is about the same as it is down to the gulf of guinea. pretty significant. that is to scale. a map of the united states. it is about 3.7 times the united states that can fit inside the continent of africa. when they built maps, it always looks like the united states is a good size. russia is a good-size compared to africa, but africa is huge. you start running into significant problems or issues operating there. we also moved the force from spain to djibouti and then further on. the distance from moron, spain, to djibouti is about 34 nautical -- 3400 nautical miles, about the distance from alaska to florida. we repeatedly moved from moron, spain, to support operations in the african region. that is the distance from new york to new orleans. even routine movement which we did several times from moron, spain, is not routine based on this distance. the combination enabled that to happen. for the last six and a half months, i will start on the left-hand side of the screen. we did a lot of theater security cooperation and partnering with our host nation spain as well as the government of france and the french foreign legion units in the southern part of france. that is how we train in order to team up with a partner nation. in this case, the spanish army and spanish marines and the french foreign legion which allowed access for us into areas for us to operate and execute full mission profiles where we are able to put the force together and tie together our ground combat element and insert them into a range and long enough distance away that he was able for us to replicate to scale what it would be like to project a force into some of the areas we were responsible for. we also took the v-22's in support of those doing support operations for africa. when they were training in senegal, we supported them with equipment, approximately 1600 nautical miles from moron to senegal. pretty significant movement. it was the first time v-22's were introduced in the western part of africa. we were able to do key leader engagements throughout the western and northern africa. on the left of the slide, you see support operations for africa in may, september, and october. we were also able to take marines in theater, the black sea rotational force, special purpose magtf africa, although their missions are not merely crisis response, all marines have the capability to do crisis response. we brought those two forces together along with ours, aggregated them in the european theater, as well as operating with the anti terrorism support team. we brought those forces together and did a mock embassy reinforcement followed by a reinforcement with the spmagtf-cr on tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel and also ran mock evacuation exercises, so we were able to rehearse with all the marine forces in theater the type of mission sets we thought we might have to employ. a pretty important point just to say the way we are organized as marines allows us to be very flexible and scalable. bringing these different forces together along with other joint forces is very easy based on the way we organize and command and control the force. this was a good opportunity. the first time this had been done in the european and african theater. on the bottom right is the movement we made down to djibouti to support operations in south sudan, which ultimately led to support and evacuation of american citizens from the embassy in cuba. i hope everyone has at least heard a little bit about the new normal environment moving out into the future. if you have not heard about it, a couple of quick points on it. the new normal is the way to describe macro-stability, not being in major wars. at the same time, a lot of potential crises, rapidly moving crises that can occur for all kinds of different reasons, whether they be religion, politics, social issues, demographics, things like the arab spring that started in one place and rapidly moved to another. as part of that, the state department and department of defense working through this problem set. as i showed you earlier on the continuing slide, the state department has made a pledge to look early to see where we could get dod support if necessary to provide security early in the process rather than later. dod agreed it would pay more attention earlier and plan for support of u.s. government facilities and personnel overseas prior to crisis. what we saw with the lessons learned in south sudan what we believe is the first execution of one of these new normal type missions where we used a new normal force, spmagtf-cr, deployed in support of a u.s. embassy. the army as well projected a new normal response force into the embassy. you have both the marines and army come together under this construct underneath a joint commander and executed this mission. i have put up a couple of different thoughts on things we might need to think about as we move forward executing these types of missions. the types of resources we should put against them, how long we would leave those resources in place, who would make those decisions inside of our government when we do those types of operations. pretty difficult problem set, particularly when you look at the size of the forces we have available in dod and the size and scope of africa and the time, space, and force issues associated with projecting force across the continent to the many high risk type embassies or facilities that may be at risk. that is just one theater we operated in. you could expand that through the globe in a number of places we would consider hotspots. with that, i would turn it over. >> i will step up here and we will start a conversation with ourselves and the audience. thanks very much. i thought that was great. [applause] i am going to exercise my privilege as moderator to get a small handful of questions in myself before turning the attention over to questions from the audience. one of them i dare say is prompted by the last slide. that list of questions. as a commander of the special purpose magtf and now the mu, i assume those are not rhetorical questions. are there answers to those questions? is that work to be done? >> i think that work needs to be done every time we execute these types of missions. it is work that is being done as well. the point of me putting those up there, when i get a mission for a force like this, i do not have a question about what the mission is and i did not have a question about the mission in south sudan. as i look across the scope of potential areas that are having problems, i think we need to be asking those types of questions each time we employ a force like this. when we employ a force like this in one place, we are not providing coverage in a lot of others. >> i wanted to be the guy who helps put context to a lot of what you said for perhaps a less than fully expert audience, which i doubt is in the room, but maybe watching elsewhere. for example, tell us about the v-22. 3/4 of the room knows about it. it sounds like the way it was configured and the mission assigned might not be possible without that system. go right to the root. what is it? >> the mv-22 takes the qualities of a helicopter which can land vertically and combines them with a transport aircraft and puts the two things together, so you get quite a bit of range and speed of a turboprop aircraft but when it gets to where it needs to set down directly, it can set down like a helicopter. what you have done in a place like africa is you have greatly expanded the area and envelope you can operate in. i would agree when we are a land-based force like spmagtf-cr is, having the capability of the v-22 combined with the kc130-j refueling aircraft, that gives you the reach that would get you into the continent. amphibious shipping off of the coast provides a more direct path to that. without that being shore based in the southern european region, an aircraft like the v-22 gives us that capability. >> when you fly from miami to anchorage, that is three or four refuelings for an mv-22? >> it is more than that. it is about three to get from moron to ciganella, which was the first piece of the leg, new york to new orleans. i was talking earlier today about this. the number of refuelings, it does not have to be done by the same aircraft leading it forward. another aircraft can meet it at a point, you can plug-in, and keep going. it is limited by the amount of gas that can be provided. at some point, you start running into the number of hours the pilots are flying. that range capability is greatly extended with the v-22. >> to the end of getting the rudiments on the table, i want to ask if you could talk more -- set some expectations. i think it would be correct to say the impetus for the formation of this force was the attack on benghazi. i wonder if you could talk about setting expectations on the actual capabilities of 500 dismounted marines around a huge area of operation, in terms of lead time and other things that you would need to have an effect on the ground. >> i think this force was formed in response to situations in the new normal. i would suggest benghazi was one of those types of actions. a company of infantry marines is pretty capable. >> i did not mean to suggest otherwise. i am sorry. >> we like to say we are responsible for limited crisis response. clearly, if you had a situation where you had to force your way into an environment or secure a large area, you would need a larger force. but tailored primarily for the missions i flashed on the screen, which would be embassy reinforcement, site recovery, this is a very capable force to accomplish those types of missions. >> not designed for forcible entry, for example. finally, and then i will turn to those of you in the audience, i want to draw on your more than 20-year career in the marine corps and in other assignments and ask if you could put into context the new normal relative to other deployments in the past that you have been involved in, bosnia, haiti, others of these new normal deployments you have been involved with for more than 15 years. are we getting better at this? are we still learning the new normal after 15 years? what is your sense of it after having been firsthand involved? >> for me, it is a little bit of back to the future. this is what marines have always done. this is the type of thing i did at the beginning of my career. you mentioned haiti. we got an airplane within 72 hours and flew down and stood up a special purpose magtf for haiti. 1993-1994. i think this is what we do. the marine corps, we have a long history of these types of operations. we have a generation or two of marines coming in in a rack and afghanistan. i think this is more a turn back to the way marines have traditionally operated. this is not an area i feel uncomfortable in. many of the places we have operated, countries, partners we have operated with, i spent the first part of the year banging around on a ship in the mediterranean, working. >> so the new normal is not all that new to you? >> i think that is one way to characterize it without getting into the social aspect of media and all those things that we have talked about a lots. for example, the arab spring. i think the new normal tries to characterize the speed at which these crises will the -- iraq's and the speed with which they can transfer interrupted violently. i think that might be a little bit of a change. i think for marines to be deployed, to be ready, to be in position, i don't think that is new. >> ok. thank you for indulging my questions. i will say that our conversation is entirely on the record. we do have microphones. if i call on you, introduce yourself in a clear voice before you ask your question. i will start with this gentleman right here and then i will go to the gentleman in the last row. >> thanks very much. i served in many of the embassies you mentioned. the ones you have not had to evacuate yet and probably will. i'm a little worried why you're briefing. as i recall the news stories, you went into a fairly non-permissive environment. you do not fly with a lot of protection. is that the army attitude? i'm a little unclear on any protections you had going in? >> yes, there were a couple things going on in south sudan. >> let me interrupt you and ask you again -- for people who have no idea what you're talking about -- what that mission was, when it happened, etc.. so everyone knows what we are talking about and when. >> in the middle of december, violence started kicking up it mean to tribes in south sudan. one that was loyal to be vice president and one that was loyal to the resident. there was disagreement between those two gentlemen as to whether a coup had been attempted or not been attempted and fighting broke out. there were several folks at risk throughout the country. there were a lot of ngo's operating throughout the country. the diplomatic corps fell in south sudan. the eastern response force was brought into the embassy to assist with the security, and the embassy had also ordered evacuations. they had already drawn down a large portion of their embassy. some cb-22's -- we tried to evacuate personnel from further north in one of the camp's, and they were shot up. we ended up coming in after that. we were focused in north africa and west africa. we were directed with about 12 hours notice to make that flight to djibouti to evacuate the rest of the embassy. we did assist with the continued withdrawal of personnel out of the embassy. as far as the conditions we executed, we felt that the security was adequate for us to do that. i'm not sure if that answers your question. >> i will take the question right next to the camera there please. >> this is joe talbot. sir, i would like to ask you about the legal framework of your missions. do you usually need to clear the mission with your local authorities? if yes, do you coordinate with the local authorities in securing an embassy? >> absolutely. the ambassador does that coordination within the country that we would be operating in, and we would only do that under her or his request. so, that coordination would be done. as far as the countries we operate from, we have agreements in place or missions that we are responsible for and we are not doing any operations that are not, that do not have visibility or approvals of those countries we operate from. >> let me take a question from this gentleman right here with the glasses. ok, we will start there and go to the gentleman to the right. please. >> i wonder about the relationship of the marines to our special forces, navy seals, army rangers, delta force. to take a current example, there is a report we have special forces in southern libya right now where forces loyal to the former regime took over a military base. how would you decide who reacts to that? is a clearly defined whose function is which? would it be a joint operation? >> to respond -- well, we are a conventional force. we are not a special operations force, a special purpose task force. that just defined this as not a standing magtf as is determined by the data, the marine expeditionary force. i will get any orders from a combatant commander who i am responsible to. in this case, it would be general rodriguez. he will make the determination for what is the best force for what the requirements are. >> does the scope of the crisis response force per se change over time? or not necessarily? >> not necessarily. however, that is how we envision the force, that we would be tasked with a mission that would come up. we would execute that mission, be prepared to operate over a wide area, because it's just not enough units like this to operate in multiple different places at one time. we do have the capability to have forces join ours and roll up underneath it. we do have the scale to do that. we would have the tape abilities that would help augment another force. we could certainly do that as well. >> a question for the gentleman right there. >> thank you. i want to ask about the applicability of the structure, particularly this task force. is this something you have had an opportunity to reflect on at all? secondly, i want to talk about the quality and character of the relationship with the french and spanish allies. is that something we could expect to see in action in a cooperative fashion anytime soon? >> thank you. regarding the mass atrocity, we have capabilities that would enable us to support humanitarian support or disaster relief, just basic -- capabilities, how the aircraft could move things, move people, move supplies, those types of things. this organization did not have specific training or, you know, unique capabilities that would allow us to respond to a mass atrocity. as far as our relationship with the spanish in the french, the relationship that we have with them now is primarily a training relationship, partnering to do training. not an operational relationship. >> i would understand that president obama and president hollande have released a communication today at least intimating there would be some more regular cooperation between the two. would you like to comment in that regard? >> i just heard about the op-ed as i ran in here as well. we have the capability to work with partnering nations. we have the capability to work with the department of defense. either one of those is something we would be capable of executing. >> if i could take that a little farther, your unit did a training exercise or otherwise with legionnaires. could you put that in perspective? how long, where? >> there is a perpetual relationship between the french foreign legion brigade and the marines second division. these second marine division is out of camp lejeune, north carolina. we are able to if a site that relationship with the french. that is of great advantage to us to work with the legionnaires who are very comparable to marine infantry in skills and attitude and the way that they employ their force. also what it did was it took us just far enough that it really got us to stretch our legs, to do aerial refuel, go to an uncertain area, operate in an uncertain environment, training environment we had not seen before. to tie all those things together and execute a full mission row file, it ended up working out very well for us. what it also did, we've done a lot of work with the spanish as well. with the spanish and the french. having that force in that part of the mediterranean does hearken back to what we discussed earlier. in the 1990's and the 1980's, we did a lot of training with the french, italians, spanish, our partners in the southern mediterranean. we have not been able to her the last several years due to commitments in iraq and afghanistan. >> your response my mind me -- reminds me in the pentagon and around washington, we often hear the term "deployed presence." particularly in discussions about budgets and how to trade off allocations of budgets. i think it is an aspect -- correct me if i'm wrong -- of what our military is doing every day. i doubt most americans have much appreciation for it. if you are out on a six or a month deployment or so, how much engagement is there not only with allied forces, but partner forces. does that change? is that more, the same, less? where are we in our presence posture, if you will? >> certainly in the mediterranean bases, some of that has been interrupted. from the marine corps stance, it has been interrupted by a lack of -- training in the mediterranean, conducting those exercises. i think it is the tremendous value. i imagine it is probably in the interest of all partners to work with us. i will say as well, the experience that provides our younger marines when they get the opportunity to go into an arduous training exercise, training regimen and come out the other side and do social activities and a change of ideas, camaraderie with our partners, it's really an event they are going to remember for the rest of their careers. it's not something that marines who have joined since 2001 have had much opportunity to do if they have not been part of a marine expeditionary unit that has been deployed. >> i would guess from what you said that working with those partners is one of the features of the new normal? >> i'm not sure that we ever stepped away from our partners. we have been working with them in a different environment. it is probably a return back to those engagements we had habitually done in the 1990's. all for deployed forces, the opportunity to train with partner nations in their country. >> i'm just trying to keep my perspective at the level of normal americans. how they do not appreciate how much interaction, co-mingling, of capability there really is when our forces get out in the world. there is a question from a woman in the dark blouse on the second row please. >> i wonder if you could comment on relationships with the department of state. and also usaid. >> what we have done with this force, i have not done anything with usaid, specifically. the partnerships with the state department have been great from my perspective. i mentioned on the slide -- we call it to leader engagement. i probably should've done a better job explaining that. i was fortunate enough with members of my staff to visit with a few embassies that were within my area of responsibility and work with the country teams there. that is the way that we operate. in france, italy, we spent a fair amount of time engaging with the state department, engaging with those country teams in order to make sure, as the other gentleman asked me, that we have a common understanding of these forces, its defensive nature, and how we would operate if in fact we were called to operate and execute from that country. i think that -- my slide about lessons learned is in no way a slight one way or another. it is just that sometimes this is kind of a hard problem. in order to be out and operate in some dangerous places. one of the things a force like this does is it enables our diplomats to be able to operate, and i would not say take risk, but however what it ought to do is make them feel a little more comfortable with the many risks they do take in the course of their duties, knowing they have a force like this standing by that will make its best effort to support them as needed. >> thank you. there is a question right here on the second row, please. then i will come here. >> i have a question. colonel, two things -- general paxton, the assistant commandant, said a couple weeks ago that your magtf would have benefited if you had gators, amphibious shipping to work from. you mentioned the lack of one in the area. could you talk about that, and how a couple of things you did might've been better if you had at least part of one? and you talked about your command elements. how about the rest of the ground and air combat? where did they come from? how much training time did you guys have to prepare for that mission before you went into theater? >> ok, great questions. as far as the amphibious shipping and the impact, it again gets back a little bit to the question of operating in somebody else's country or even having to fly over somebody else's country. we are very keen to that, obviously. i think sometimes when we operate in the united states we forget that we have a lot of the latitude to operate inside our training areas and do the type of mission support and training we need to. then we go to another country and the expectation is that we should do the similar or the same things and the reality is we are operating in somebody else's country. we need to be respectful of their procedures and policies and rules that govern the operations there. so, absolutely we are a maritime force. we maintain the capability to operate off ships. we maintain that currency as well. the capability that a u.s. naval vessel brings to a force like this is incredible. just having that u.s. sovereign territory that can move around and not worry about diplomatic clearances and issues associated with overflight or operations is a huge force multiplier. given an opportunity to be on a ship versus operating often, marines will take being on a ship any day, a u.s. navy ship. i hope that answers the first part of the question. as far as our organization, all the elements of this force were drawn from the operating forces at camp lejeune, the second expeditionary force. these were forces that were trained and ready. in some cases they had other missions that were assigned and were off ramp. then they trained for this mission. then we have the opportunity to bring the force together. it was not a comprehensive training force program. it is not what we do for some of our standing forces such as the mew. our training organizations, our special operations group, if you are familiar with that, and our security operations group that supported the training in the theater. it is a trained and certified force drawn from cap lejeune. >> there are two questions over here. i would like to take them in turn starting with the gentleman on my far right. if there are other questions, please signal to me as we draw down to the bottom of the hour. >> i have three questions. the first one is, when you are deployed for a longer, a long presence in a country like afghanistan or iraq, do your members get any sort of cultural training to avoid cultural misunderstandings with members of those societies? >> let's take those one at a time. go ahead. >> yes, we certainly do. iraq and afghanistan, both of those have cultural training that was part of those workups. i will say from my experience taking my squadron over to iraq and for this training, we also brought in a gentleman who had spent about 20 years as a french careen -- marine embedded inside of a lot of the military organizations in west africa. we did cultural training as well. >> one more question about that -- >> thank you. >> members of local communities were recruited, i'm not sure if they were recruited specifically by your team or another part of the u.s. military. i want to say, how does that work? do you usually work with the local in terms of fighting the enemy, whether it is al qaeda or any other? >> this force is not specifically organized that way and of course would not established -- was not established then. we were just established in 2013. >> let me take the question right next here. thank you. >> thank you. john roden, cna. i wonder if you could talk about the logistics combat aspect, how long you could sustain yourself, those types of things. i also wanted to talk about the training aspect a little, and ask if there is anything particularly notable, special, specific about the prettied up --predefined training ort whether it looks like these smaller missions that? >> thanks. as far as the logistics combat element we brought with this force, it is tailored for the size of the force. would like to talk about our standing marine expeditionary units. 15 days, 30 days, 45 days of sustainment. we felt five days was the right number for this force. that level of sustainment allows you to employ the force him immediately. -- employed a force and not immediately have a problem on your hands as far as keeping the force moving. we have tremendous capability inside the combat element. most of it was through this type capability in order to operate the hub which is our main base in moron. what that enabled us to do was essentially bring a equipment through that area and get it out wherever the force might be at the time. very good capability and side, but tailored, certainly not as robust as the standing light tf's that wemag have. as far as the training or anything notable, i think that it was a scaled-down version. this is a standup organization. did not exist last year in april. that is about the time he started training to head over to spain. i think probably the most notable thing we did, when we did training, we did training to make sure that command and control could cross all the mission sets. we had a reserved organization at the time which actually belongs to my marine expeditionary unit. we were able to command and control their organization while they went through their certification. we were going through hours and we essentially did it in parallel. >> thank you. two more questions. i'm going to squeeze one in. then we will plan to wrap up in about 10 minutes. the next question i had over here. yes? >> eric schmidt with "the new york times." colonel, thanks for doing this. you talked about your experience in north and west africa. we have at least two large al qaeda linked organizations there, as well as smaller organizations in libya. as you per pair your -- as you prepare your mission how do you assess the threat on , the ground? and given how crises shift very quickly, what have you had to do as you think of the threat on the ground in this new normal environment? >> thanks. as far as the responsibilities, the personal responsibilities we had related to the u.s. government facilities, missions as well as personnel, we tended to focus our efforts towards those. some of the areas that you talk about, the threats that operate down there, our force as the capability its own self protection capability when it is deployed. and if we are employed into some of those regions, we bring our own organic self-defense capability in order to accomplish those missions. most notably in some of those large wide-open areas, things like the recovery of aircraft or personnel. we have certainly worked through that process, what that situation would look like on the ground and had to make sure in he execution had rater risk. >> along those lines, does this company sized element get a daily threat briefings so you're beginning to vector on different problems 24 hours at a time? >> yes, that is part of what we call battle rhythm. we will be looking at the problem sets every day across the areas we are responsible for. it's a pretty difficult problem. you have this huge area the size of the united states and a lot of really bad people running around. and some of these places are clearly operating and they are operating in a place -- there is not a lot of u.s. government interest either. i'm not sure we spent a ton of time focusing on areas i was not directly responsible for on a daily basis. >> ok, a question right here i believe. >> the command element going on and deployment for the time that you were on, didn't have an impact on readiness? let's say, the recon for the next mission set? probably this is as much the impact it would have on the ace as well. >> we have rotated the squads. the squadrons have been originally out in support, so they have been home for quite a bit longer than we have. regarding the command element, there is a little bit of a double-edged sword. on the one hand, we were away. things that we might have needed to take care of at camp legitimate in order to sustain the lead up to the next deployment, we were not able to do. by the same token, a majority of the staff served along with me and some of my key advisers and executive officers. some things like getting to know the commander in a deployed environment and things that are recorded -- important to me and not important, all those types of things that we might not have learned onto we got in the crucible of the workup, we were able to look on bush that while we were deployed.
the wing man. i said that i was on the ground and i was 200 meters north of the river. star strafing at 300 and i am heading south. after the war, i met with the pilots in the plane. they said to not strafe because they did not think they could should that accurately. it was a good call because they were all around me. within two minutes, i was captured. >> how may times have you flown over north vietnam? >> 53. >> what was the purpose of the flights? >> we were in the northern part of vietnam, 70 miles north of the dmz and had been flying all types of missions. by the time i got there, in the summer of 1967, they had changed our mission to only fly on reconnaissance over the southern part of north vietnam. we were flying the ho chi minh trail and the main highways. we were flying the riverway to stop the trucks that were hauling supplies to the viet kong. >> how old were you? >> i was 23 and turned 24. i had flown with areas people and some new guys with the squadron to check them out. that day, i was flying with a guy named ken fisher. unfortunately for him and fortunately for me, i could not have had a better guy with me. he was a guy of great courage, mentally, physically strong. he ended up being an incredible leader for me. >> where is he today? >> he is retired in tampa florida and playing golf. >> how close are you? >> very close. we do not play golf. we are very close. >> where were you at that point? >> i was 200 meters north of the river, kind of a floodplain and a bushy area. scrubby bush. just like the paratroopers are taught to do and we were taught to do, i had hit all the points and had no injuries from the parachute. i had injuries from coming out of the airplane, the straps had hit me in the back of the head. they were not serious. i was thinking about making the call to get their heads down so that i could escape. that did not work and they are closing in on me. i am thinking, evade. they taught us that the people who capture you are the least trained to capture pows and maintain them. your best chance to escape is then. i thought that these are rookies and i pulled out my combat masterpiece. i ran like this and said, get away and get back. i fired a round over their head. they did not flinch. they raised their rifles like this and one of them reached in their pocket and pulled out a comic book that some of them carried in their pocket. it had drawings and vietnamese phonetics. the drawings show them capturing an american pilot. one of them said, surrender, no die. hands up. hands up. i decided that that was the best advice i would get that day and i went hands up. they did not shoot me and pounced on me. >> what was your level of fear? >> i did not have any fear. i was not aware of any fear. my adrenaline was going. i did not notice fear until they started stripping everything and all of my clothes off. they did not know much about zippers. they started cutting. i was afraid that i was going to get cut. they pulled away my survival vest and flight suit. i was having so much fear that by the time i was in my jockey shorts, i was in shock. >> where was the pilot? >> we had two pilots and he landed half a mile away. they caught him in the parachute before he hit the ground. >> how many years were you in a p.o.w. camp? >> five years. four months and two week's. >> what was the first one you went to? >> would call that a halfway house or a holding station. it was a bamboo barn building with bamboo cages in it that they kept us in until they got enough people to haul in a truck. generally, we were called and tied up in the back of trucks. the holding land camp was before the hanoi hilton. >> where was the hanoi hilton? >> it is in downtown hanoi. it is bastille with a 15 foot high wall. >> we have some video that shows the outside of it. this network went over there in 1992 on a pow mia trip with john kerry and john mccain. you can see this. we were not allowed inside of it. how many cells were there and what did it look like? >> it was like being inside of -- part of it was like a prison. you see the broken bottles on top of the wall and the electrical wire around it. inside of it was like a compound. there are various sections and two large buildings. there is a cellblock that holds pows in a different area. there is a larger part of it that has large cells with vietnamese prisoners in it for several years. they emptied it out and put 330 of us, all pows, back into the hanoi hilton and back into the seven rooms where the vietnamese prisoners were. when they were afraid that the united states would raid downtown hanoi, that's where we were. >> we'll ask you about him after we see this. that is the main reason you are in town. >> shut off from all communications. stupid and dumb, i guess. integrity, loyalty, that is another thing. we were as loyal as we could be to each other and it meant a great deal. for myself and everyone will play the same thing, -- will tell you the same thing, we loved our country more than we ever wanted to and the flight meant a great deal to us. more than we had assumed. our faith in god had a great meaning to us. i did not know a single man over there that did not pray. >> who was he? >> robinson reisner. he shut down migs and was a hotshot pilot. he was on the cover of time magazine in 1965. he was shot down and captured in september of 1965. in october of 1965, they realized that he was famous and that they had somebody famous. they realized that he was exercising leadership as a senior ranking officer in the camp and came after him in a big way. that is when the big, bad torture started in 1965. when i got there in 1967, he had been the reigning senior ranking officer. we called him the sro. what an incredible leader to us. he was an inspiration and a tough leader. he led by example and, like denton, stockdale, other great leaders, they always went first. they thought that if they could break them, we would follow. that was what was so amazing about this experience. seeing this extraordinary leadership, the courage that enabled him to lean into the pain of their fears and do the right thing to the best of their ability. >> i use the term, who was he, on purpose. >> he died six weeks ago and we were having his funeral tomorrow. >> what did he do for the rest of his life? >> he came back and continued his career as a brigadier general in a tactical flying world. he was an inspirational leader and retired in texas. he was part of the texas war on drugs for a while and served. i knew him and met him in the camps. he was the first american i was able to communicate with, face to face, and it was covert ozaki provide inspiration and he had just came out of 10 months in total darkness. his book is called, the passing of the night, and it is about the passing of that long night of darkness. he was in solitary confinement for more than four years of his p.o.w. time. we had covert communication. >> what does that mean? >> we were not allowed to openly communicate with other cells. when you are in solitary confinement, they wanted to have you isolated and so that you could not have teamwork. they had him in solitary confinement an awful lot. we were tortured and risk our lives to communicate in that way. he gave me basic guidance and told me to resist and take torture to the point of having permanent mental or physical damage. give as little as possible. pray every day. go home proud. we had a mission statement. return with honor. >> when you think back on the first couple of months in the p.o.w. prison, what is the first thing you think of? >> scared, cold. it was winter time and it was cold. hungry. scared. we had interrogations and it was not long before we had to put our foot down and say no. they wanted us to fill out a biography and i refused. we went through torture. i went through torture. my other cellmates went through torture. three times a day, they had propaganda. every cell that we were in, they had a speaker and three times a day, we got propaganda. it felt that they could convince us that they were right and we were wrong. if we did not have a good attitude and make propaganda for them, we were going to suffer and might not ever go home. i did not believe they could keep us there and i did not believe that the u.s. government would let us stay there. on the other hand, these are communists, desperate to win their costs and be victorious. i did not know what they would do. >> explained what it is like to be cold and why you were cold. >> this was a bastille prison. it is a fairly high ceiling and, in the wintertime, there is no heat, and in the summertime, there is no air. it is damp and cold. it is not very cold, unless you do not have any warm clothes. we had some blankets and we got another one. we had two pairs of thin pajamas and a little cotton sweater. i would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, cold, hungry, and hadn't eaten since 4:00 in the previous day. it was cold. >> what kind of food were you fed? >> six months of pumpkin soup. thin, watery, not much pumpkin. a thin cabbage soup. and, three months of what you would call sewer-green soup. it is like chopped up lily buds. we would have a cup of rice or a small baguette. wherever the week came from, they like rice and they would give us the wheat and the bread. that probably helped us a lot because that had nutrients and proteins. >> around 6:00 -- how did they torture you? >> they had different ways and that was the humane torture. they may you torture yourself in a position of stress on your knees with your hands over your head, in leg irons. after hours and hours of that, your body starts quivering and shaking. you cannot do that anymore and you fall over and get some rest. i was able to do that for quite a while and he put a guard on me. they would catch me and i would put my hands back up. we would go through round after round of this. they put a guard on me to stay with me. they determine if they are going to escalate until i said that i would do it. that is what i figured out and that is what i did. >> how long were you tortured and how much weight did you lose? >> it was a similar type thing. i lost close to 20 pounds in the early years. i went in at 155-160 and i went down to 130. >> how sick were you? >> i stay pretty healthy. i got the flu. there was one time that pink eye went through the camp. i got jaundice and hepatitis. a little bit of typhoid fever. i had one cellmate i of typhoid fever a few months before we came home. it was one of those fluke things. he got typhoid fever and did not make it. >> i want to run some video and ask you if you have heard this person or the speaker. >> i don't know -- the american who are sent here to fight the war. i want the gis to resist. they do not take part in the fighting. it is difficult. our job is to make them believe that the war they are fighting is not just and is against the vietnamese people. the vietnamese people want to be free and they should not be here. >> hanoi hannah. she taught me that her son was in san francisco and working and going to school. what impact did she have? >> humor. she provided humor. we were pretty well educated. i was the youngest guy in the camp. most of the guys were pretty well educated. she would say, "gis, why you dying in a war that does not matter to you?" we heard this every day. she provided good humor for us when she mispronounced words english words. like, she was reading a list of people who were killed in action. those who died and not for the fatherland. she had one person from chicago 3. this was back when illinois was abbreviated "ill." she was quoting somebody who was anti-war and said, and, a middle-aged lady from detroit said. that became some fun. people would say, how did you know that? and they would say, i heard it from a middle-aged lady in detroit. it must be true. we turn to those things into humor. >> what did they do to the prisoners of war that worked? some propaganda effort or torture effort that had a negative impact? >> yeah. >> if you look at the lessons to the future, what would you suggest works? >> there were few people who side with them. there were 4-5 out of 400. one percent. >> you are talking about american military people who sided with them. >> is that what you're talking about? you are talking about the guys in the battlefield. those --some of those guys -- some of those guys were not sound about who they were and got in that situation and were afraid. they reverted to survival and were taking care of themselves to survive and go home. they rationalize that we should not have been in this war. some of them remember the teachers at the universities who were anti-war in the national relations classes. they put it together with the propaganda and said that we should not have been there in the first place. that is fine if you are in the streets of chicago or washington. when you wear the uniform, you cannot just change your mind. >> where did the colonel rank in the camps? >> there were four of us in there for nine months. one of them was the lieutenant colonel. within a few months, we noticed that he was starting to talk like them and sounds like hanoi hannah. a softer version. agreeing with them that we should not be there and the bombing was not the best thing and all of this kind of stuff. here is a first lieutenant looking a lieutenant colonel in the face and saying, i don't think you need to be talking and thinking that way. one day, he wrote and 8-10 page description of how some of the military operated in his world. so, ken fisher, who i was flying with and the second ranking guy in the cell, he said that he should take command of the cell and relieve him. will you support me? we said, absolutely. when he came back in the room, he was relieved of command in order to comply with the code of conduct. he said, well, this is not a declared war and it is every man for himself and i do not think that the code of conduct applies. >> what happened to the relationship? >> it was kind of icy. we had to tolerate and live and let live. he went to another camp and we never saw him again. we heard from other pows that he continued to collaborate and ratted on them for communicating. they put him in a key corner room where the covert communications had to go around his corner to go down the other hallway. rather than help, he ratted on the guys for communication. >> is he alive? >> i would assume so. we try to court-martial him. they decided it was not in the best interests of the country in the war was over. if we court-martial him, it would be a trial of the war and movie stars with a lot of money would pump money into his case. it was not worth it. they gave him a letter of censure. >> here is 1992 and john mccain was in our studio. i want to get your reaction to this. >> this is where john mccain was kept. >> how long? do you know? >> i was not in charge of prisoners. >> was he here by himself? [indiscernible] >> edit a bit. the windows were all bricked over and the only ventilation came from some small holes. >> when he said the windows were there with bars on it, that was not true. >> it had been there. but, they kept is isolated. second of all, there was never any bomb shelter that i saw in the 2.5 years in prison nor, did we go to any bomb shelter. we would have to be together and they did not want that to happen. >> he wrote the forward for your book. >> we got to know each other when we went back to the camp. after the agreement was signed in 1973, they lined us up by the capture date because that was the way they were going to release us over the span of two months. he and i had been captured 11 days apart and we were in the same group. we were together in the camp. they had to open the doors and we walked around the courtyard and were together. we walked and talked for a couple of months before we came home. we work together on our reunion and we coordinated one reunion and he coordinated the other. we see each other at reunions occasionally and i have been to his office in the last few years to see him. he was kind enough to write the forward to the book. >> looking back, how many total pows were there during the war? >> there were 650 at the end of the war that came out of southeast asia. of which, about 500 were aircrews that were up in the hanoi area. of those, about 350 were there for more than five years. it was like two groups. there were people who were there for longer than five years and the bombing stopped in 1968. it did not resume for 2-3 years. there is a big gap where there were no p.o.w.'s coming into the system. we were wondering when somebody was going to take some action to get us out of here. there are were two groups. >> how many died in captivity? >> i do not know. the ones i do know about, there were nine who were alive and did not come back. a couple were tortured to death. a couple got very ill, that sort of thing. there are 2-3 that died after capture. the local populace killed them before they got to hanoi. there were others in laos that we do not know. >> this next video is a man with end up as a united states senator after he was a p.o.w. i want to talk about him. >> denton was released from prison. he was a spokesman for the group of returning pows and was asked to make a statement. >> we are honored to serve our country. we are profoundly grateful to our commander-in-chief and our nation for this day. god bless america. >> god bless america! >> where were you around the time that that happened? had you already touched down? >> no. i was still sitting in prison in hanoi and we came out in three large groups -- i am sorry, four groups. those were the old guys who had been there 7.5-8 years. smitty harris, about eight years. some of those guys had been there for six years. denton had been there for seven years. he gave the first words and he is a gifted speaker. he had done great leadership and courageous leadership over the years in solitary confinement for more than four years. he was a good spokesman for us and it worked out well. >> explain what solitary confinement really means. what would it be like if we were in solitary confinement? what would the atmosphere be like? >> you would be all alone. the turnkey would open with a guard. there is a bucket. that is your bathroom. there is 1.5 liters of water in a pitcher. they would come by and pick up the bowls and spoons. another p.o.w. will be washing. other than that, interrogation. that is not a good thing. it depends on what you are in solitary for and how long you are going to be there. they can be fairly often. >> was there a light on in the cell? >> yes. there is one lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. not a very bright light. sometimes, they turn those off in the daytime. they always burned all my lawn. -- all night long. >> did you have a chair? >> i never sat in a chair, except in interrogation, for 5.5 years. >> why? >> there were no chairs. p.o.w. cells have no chairs. you sit on a concrete or wooden slab. i never sat in a chair. there was a stool. our heads would always be lower than the interrogator. they are sitting in a regular chair and we are sitting in a stool. in their culture, that means that they are more important. >> you talk about the value of your religion in this atmosphere. explain how important that was. >> yeah. i grew up in a strong christian home. i had a strong foundation of faith. i am from athens, georgia. a little town called commerce is where i went to school. i had all the adventures of growing up on a farm. faith -- you know, when you're alone -- first of all, as a fighter pilot, you are confident, cocky, you can do anything. that sort of stuff. when you depend on your enemy to keep you alive, feed you, have a roof over your head, you know you are not powerful and it puts things in a different perspective than in america, when you are driving down the freeway and enjoying hot air and water. we did not have anything but the basics. my relationship with god was very important and so was prayer. everybody prayed. even a room of four guys, we did not talk all day. there might be total silence for 30 minutes or an hour. we were waiting for the next event to happen. somebody is sitting over there in meditation or prayer. you shut up and you cannot disturb them. there was a lot of that going. we would ask for a bible and they would not give us one. the communists did not like religion. >> somebody wrote down the bible and memorized it? >> some of us had memorized verses and we would pass those around through our communication system and memorize more. after ho chi minh died and the american national league of families got organized, there was a lot of pressure on the north vietnamese for better treatment. >> 1969? >> they put a lot of pressure and the new leadership came in. the bad publicity, they did not like. the new leadership cut out most of the day stay torture and it was rare for somebody to be tortured after that. they went to a live and let live policy. we asked for a bible and we were in a big sell after a raid. one guy -- two guys could go out and copy a chapter out of the bible for 45 minutes on a piece of paper and bring it back into the room and we would share that. on sundays, in my cell, we had a guy in charge of church service and he was a good speaker. it was interesting and there was some fabulous homilies there and myself from grizzly old firefight it's -- fighter pilots. there was one guy, i did not know it at the time, but one of the guys was thinking about committing suicide. the only time i had heard about that was this particular individual and he gave a speech -- my buddy gave a little sermon that day about how blessed we were and look around, we have lost buddies on the battlefield and we still have two hands, two eyes. we are doing pretty good. >> here is a familiar face from the 1992 campaign. another prisoner of war. >> we have come along in this 20th century and we have become litigious. we believe that somebody owes us an explanation, an apology, a payback, for something that is not quite right. when you talk about warriors who were last seen alive -- that the government owes you a blow-by-blow description about their demise, there has never been a war in history where a government can do that. to say that the government owes us an explanation for what happened to a guy who was last seen alive on the battlefield -- i mean, can anybody see that as a possible reality? >> admiral stockdale was ross perot's running mate. he was a senior ranking officer in the camps and a commander in the navy. what did he do that showed leadership? >> in one period, he was the ranking officer. stockdale was running the show. >> where was the zoo? >> that was the old film studio on the south side of town. it was another camp where a couple hundred guys were for quite a long time. a lot of people were beaten and tortured. back to stockdale, they knew that he was a big fish, also. he was a senior naval officer and they tortured him a number of times, over and over. they wanted him to make propaganda and propaganda movies. he said the policy, like reisner, same policy. we are going to resist them and not collaborate with them. we are going to do our very best. when they wanted him to be in this movie, he cut a reverse mohawk in his stealth. -- in his hair. in his scalp. they said that he was not getting out of this movie. they put a cap on him and left him in a room with a milking stool. he took the milking stool and beat his face black and blue until his face was all swollen and they could not use them in the movie. >> how much was he tortured? >> a lot. a lot. >> what kind of impact did it have on him? >> he was in the ropes and he was beaten. >> pretzel? >> the wrists are tied and the elbows are tied. they would throw you on the ground and step on your elbows. they would keep pulling them and pulling them until your elbows touch. it is an unnatural act. >> did it happen to you? >> it did not. >> once the elbows were tied one guy is behind you and lifting up on your arms behind your back and one guy is in front of you with his foot under her head, pulling that up. they are cinching up your arms over your head and tie you in that position. it was a terrible, terrible -- >> how do people get through that? >> mental toughness. there is no way they can make you do something. stockdale, reisner, they would eventually give in. they would eventually give in. they would try to get them to back off, they usually would not. you give in at a point where you can outsmart them. we wanted to give in before we ever really gave in. >> what is the story of paul galante? >> he was a cell mate of mine. he got their 1.5 years before me and had been through a lot of the old stuff that i had not been through back in 1966. he was a real veteran. they were trying to do a propaganda thing with them and they brought him into a cell. it was well organized and they were going to take a picture of him for propaganda purposes. he sat down on the end of his cell and, in order to outsmart them and show his defiance, he put both figures down between his legs and gave them the bird. that picture is taken by a photographer and was on the cover of life magazine that year. they photoshopped the fingers out. >> did he have any retribution? >> i cannot tell you. i have forgotten. there was always retribution if they figured it out. denton blinked torture. when they tortured him, he was blinking morse code. they did not know about that. they probably would have killed him. >> what did you find and what have you done? >> 24.5 years. >> what was your last rank? >> full colonel. i had ran to leadership organizations. we had 800 officers going through an 8.5 week officer leadership course. i went to the university of georgia which was near my home. my parents were getting old and they had sacrificed a lot for my air force career. i went back and ran the rotc program for 2.5 years. that was a great experience. after my flying career, and i had a great flying career after i came back, i was in leadership development and for the last 16 or 17 years, i have been a leadership consultant. i worked to make the book focused towards leadership. leadership that we experienced was so remarkable that we may never see this example of that much great leadership under such difficult circumstances again in my lifetime. >> how much do you find that people know about the vietnam war today? >> older people remember a lot. younger people do not know a lot. it is natural and they are looking forward, and not back. vietnam veterans are getting proper recognition. they did not get it when they came home. the p.o.w.'s did. most veterans were spit on or afraid to wear their uniform because the antiwar movement was so vulgar. they are being accepted and the veterans have done well. some have had homelessness and drug problems. economic gains -- economic success, marriage success, career success, we have outperformed the general society. i always want to fly and when i got into the university of georgia, i got into the rotc and it was smooth sailing. >> i want to ask you about some of the names that you labeled your vietnamese caretakers in the p.o.w. camp. dumb-dumb. >> he was a big brute and dumb as dirt. you had to name people and places. our cellblocks are named after las vegas casinos in the 1960's. you had to name the guards. dumb-dumb was one of the guards. the first time i got to the hanoi hilton, i was given a pair of pajamas and had my first bath in two weeks. i sat on a little stool by these guys who had written on the truck with me. this guy, in an immaculately fitting uniform, puts his hands up at this and looks around. he says, “and now, the fat is in the fire.” i almost laughed in his face. if that had not been such a scary situation, i would have. he memorized american idioms. he -- >> how often would you take your waste pot or honey pots and put it under the door. >> not very often. we did it a few times. >> explain what you did. >> we had a guard who was bothering us. they could not get to us. they did not trust the guard with the key. they would yell at us and irritate us. they would trash talk us. they would open up our portable to look in and do that. one day, jim said to pull the lid underneath a honeypot and sit under the door. the next time he opens the door, he gets a sniff of the honeypot. he opened up the porthole and left. >> who was sweetpea? >> he was our turnkey. he was a good guy. there was a guy across the hall and he brought him back. he slammed him in and locked it. he looked in and saw that there were five guys and not four. he would moan. he grabbed him and put him across the hall. they had communist party camp meetings -- like revival meetings -- and he had confessed what he had done. he was missing some stripes. >> did anybody pop one of the guards? >> one guy did. he was a big football player-type. they were messing with him and he hauled off and hit one. they hit him in the back of the net with an ak-47 and he had some serious long-term injuries from it. >> here's a video on somebody you might recognize coming back from the p.o.w. camps. >> yeah. >> recognize any of those people? >> yeah, that is the guy across the hall. that guy looks familiar. >> that is you. >> i started growing my fighter pilot mustache again. >> is the eyebrows that are rather strong. but yeah, i always have -- >> where are you? >> the philippines. >> how much do you remember the details of those days? >> some. >> were you ever bitter? >> i was when i was there. i hated the communists. communism is built on a lie. >> is that your family? >> no. all those people were there and had worn our bracelets. they came out and hugged us. we just let them. we have not seen any females in seven years. it was nice. >> back to the bitterness thing, have you been back? >> i'm going on a cruise from hong kong to hanoi. the bitterness issue, i said that the last couple of years were more live and let live. it was a time for us to decompress and give us an opportunity to have less ptsd. we came home physically and mentally well because of the last years of live and let live. better food, better treatment, no torture. we had time to think about what our future look like when we got home. what does our future look like? we were smart enough to know the bitterness would never hurt them. it would only hurt us. it only takes that much bitterness to ruin your life. why should we go home to bitterness? it was layer and layer being washed away of anger and bitterness. i do not think any of us lost all of the anger. i think most of the bitterness. my anger is with communism. it is built upon and intellectual life and can only exist where there is a gun. >> when that ship goes to hanoi, what are you going to do? >> i don't know. i can go in like a tourist. i have the mental ability to turn off all of motions when i need to. i can go in and be like a tourist. i do not know if i will do that or go in and celebrate being free. i have no idea what is going to happen. >> what is located at the hanoi hilton area now? >> i think there is a hotel and some office buildings. they have a small museum. that is what i hear. a lot of the guys have gone back and have been well received through vietnam. some of my friends have been back three or four times and enjoyed going back. >> in 1992, we were well treated by people and they said a lot of nasty things about the russians. >> really? >> how could it be that the vietnam people would greet us friendly and have a negative impression of the russians? >> i think because russians are russians and americans are americans. we are naturally people who want to help people andthe russians do, too. not communists. that is the difference. >> did you worry that you are killing human beings when you were dropping bombs? >> not for long. i was a warrior and it was war. they were on one side and i was on the other. that is the bad thing about war. >> how many of the 500 or so american pows in northern vietnam are still alive today? >> 65-70%. if there were 400 of us there that were there for five years there are 280 of us still alive. >> how often do you see them? >> some of them i see every year, some of them i have not seen at all in 20-30 years. >> we are out of time. lee ellis, the book is called " reading with honor. thank you very much. >> thank you. 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welcome one and all. great to see our witnesses. great to be here with senator johnson, and we'll call this hearing to order. i appreciate the effort of all of you to get here today. i'm glad we're having the hearing today, and not tomorrow. if we were having it tomorrow we might not be having a hearing. today's hearing, as you know, is focused on the costs of not being prepared for extreme weather events, and exploring the ways that our federal government can increase resiliency in our communities, and just to underbehind this, and save money. save money in the long haul. we have deficits coming down, they're still too much. down from $1.4 trillion, i think, four years ago, this year expected to be down to about $550 billion. only $550 billion. that's still way too much and we have to continue to look in every nook and cranny and figure out how do we save more money. that's the focus of today's hearing. but, i will try to take about five minutes for my opening statement and yield to senator johnson. i'm delighted that he's here, and then we'll recognize our first panel of witnesses. each witness will have about five minutes to offer your statement to our committee. following your statements we're going to have a question and answer period. then a second panel of witnesses will come forward, and we look forward to hearing from you, as well. but, unfortunately, extreme weather appears to be the new norm. and events like superstorm sandy, which came to my shores and our shores in the mid-atlantic a year or so ago, seen recent wildfires in other parts of the country, dangerous tornadoes, destroyed droughts, it may well be the -- just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come. and even today the east coast is preparing for yet another snowstorm, while the west coast is experiencing a historic drought, and increased fire danger with no end in sight. i have a friend of mine who is from australia, and he tells me that they had the hottest weather in their history. so go figure. it's just sort of a crazy world that we live in right now. for years i've been working with a number of my colleagues, our colleagues, to address the root causes and unfolding effects of what i believe is one of the biggest challenges of our generation, that's climate change. according to the u.s. global change research program extreme weather events have increased in frequency over the last 50 years or so and they're expected to become even more common, more intense, and more costly. but let me just make a point and underline this if i could. today's hearing is not intended to hash out climate science. that's not what we're trying to do. instead it's about trying to find common ground, as our country debates how to address our changing climate and the extreme weather i believe it's likely causing our witnesses will deliver to us a clear message, and that is put simply, the increase in frequency and intensity of those extreme weather events are costing our country a boatload of money. not just a cost that's measured in lives that are impacted but in economic and financial costs as well. for example the damage from a storm still fresh in many of our minds, superstorm sandy, which impacted again my own state of delaware and many of our neighbors is estimated to have cost our economy $75 billion. think about that, $75 billion in financial damages and that's enough to run a number of departments of our federal government and have money left over. that's just one storm. we're also hearing reports about the devastating effects of california's severe drought and how it's impacting the wildfire season in that state and the cost to the west. not only are wildfires growing in frequency and severity but we're now seeing severe fires and wildfire conditions in winter and spring, well beyond the traditional wildfire seasons of summer and early fall. these fires are enormously expensive to fight, and recover from, and they pose serious threats to lives and property, damaging homes and businesses alike. according to a 2013 report by insurance company the nearly 40 wildfires last year in the united states cost our economy over a billion dollars. these economic damages can deliver devastating blow to many local communities, to states, as well as to our own federal government. fema, federal emergency management agency alone has obligated i'm told over $80 billion in federal assistance for disasters declared in fiscal years 2004, through 2011. $80 billion. however, the cost to the federal government is not just limited to disaster relief. as an insurer, of both property and crops, the government faces additional significant fiscal exposure. for example, since the creation of national flood insurance program in 1968, through december 2013, fema's debt from insurance payments to that program have totalled approximately $24 billion. and even before superstorm sandy total debt from payments to the national flood insurance program was almost $18 billion. the cost of these weather events keep going up at a time when we're trying to bring our government spending down. that is one of the reasons why, for the first time, our gao, the government accountability office, last year listed climate change as one of the biggest fiscal risks facing our country in its high risk list report. just to remind us all, every two years, beginning of everything congress, gao gives us a list. senator johnson heard me to say that before, we use that as our to-do list in this committee to figure out ways to save money and get better results for less money. we're thankful for that to-do list. in response to this historic announcement house oversight and government reform committee chairman darrell issa and this is a quote from darrell, the comptroller general has made it very clear that we've not prepared properly, that the federal government has a financial risk that we have not properly mitigated, said i think it's a wake-up call to us all. i couldn't agree more. gao's report is a call to action for both congress and the administration, warning us that our country must start thinking now about how to better prepare and adapt to a new climate reality. today our witness from kwchlt ao will further detail these financial risks to our communities, to our taxpayers and hopefully offer some commonsense solutions that my colleagues and i can work with the administration to see implemented. fortunately, this administration along with a number of state and local governments are starting to focus their efforts on preparing for the very real threats posed by extreme weather events and climate change. last fall president obama issued an executive order on climate preparedness, that incentivizes investments in more robust roads and buildings that may be more expensive but can hold up to more intense storms. i commend the president's approach, and believe it is very timely as rebuilding efforts continue from superstorm sandy and other recent natural disasters. i look forward to hearing more about the president's efforts, efforts by states like delaware and a bunch of other states to do a better job protecting our communities, and our taxpayer dollars from these challenges. as we continue to debate how to reduce our deficits i believe we can't afford to ignore the impacts these weather events are having on federal spending, a little extra planning combined with prudent, targeted investments can go a long way in saving both lives and taxpayer dollars. i believe this is a perfect example of that very wise maximum -- i used to hear from my grandmother all the time, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. thanks again to our witnesses for being here. we're eager to hear your testimony with that i'm going to turn over not to our ranking member senator mccain, but our ranking member acting ranking member senator johnson from wisconsin for any thoughts ron that you'd like to toss in. glad that you're here. >> thank you, mr. chairman. of course i'm mindful the reason i'm sitting in this chair is because dr. coburn is not here. he's in our thoughts and prayers. want to thank you, want to thank our witnesses, and looking forward to the testimony. when it comes to this issue, the questions i'm going to be looking to have answered is, first and foremost, since i've been here, been looking into this issue, we're really declaring federal disaster declarations much more frequent basis now. is that because we really have, you know, a higher instance of the types of disasters that require that? or are we just too quick to declare those disasters? i'm afraid that if we have an overreliance on the federal government help, is that restraining the mitigation? the new word i'm hearing resilience in terms of, you know, how we prepare -- are we being pennywise and pound foolish by not spending the money up front to mitigate, and again, is it overreliance on federal help when these disasters hit, everybody's expecting the federal government to come in and pay for things, as opposed to actually mitigating these risks ahead of time. and so from my standpoint coming from the private sector i certainly understand that a private insurance market really is very -- provides very strong discipline in terms of mitigating risk. you know, whether it's fire risk in a plant, basically insurers come in there, if you put in sprinkler heads every six feet apart versus every 24 feet apart, you're going to have -- you're going to be able to mitigate that risk and lower your insurance price. so i really haven't experienced that. the private sector insurance market is very good discipline to those risk mitigation efforts. and it goes -- those are the kind of questions i'm asking in terms of how can we, certainly utilize the federal government in the most efficient way because, you know, like you said, mr. chairman, we don't have the money to do all these things. so look forward to the testimony. >> thanks so much. joined by our fellow from little state, alaska, little state with a big population. a couple of great senators. mark would you like to say a word or two? >> you bet, small population but a state with a big punch but i would say in homer, alaska, i think last week we had green grass. so, you know, it is -- things are definitely changing. first, mr. chairman, if i could just -- i'd like to read a statement for the record, and if that's okay, and i apologize, i won't be able to stay but i want to make sure this is fairly important issue, especially when you talk about extreme weather events and how to prepare for them. but first let me say, mr. chairman i want to thank you, and i appreciate you holding this hearing to examine what i consider the true cost of not being prepared for impacts in extreme weather. we're about to feel it. as i drove in today i drove across salt. because they're waiting for snow to fall, to melt it. in alaska that would be unheard of. but that's, you know, the way it works. now the weather conditions also change, i'm sure we'll have power outages and many other things. you know, we understand very extreme conditions in alaska, and normal winter day in barrow or fairbanks will get to below zero many times. and in some cases, that would be extreme down in the lower 48, but not in alaska. alaska truly is on the front lines in the terms of changing climate, the effects of extreme weather, and existing challenges facing our communities and funding, including retreating sea ice, rapidly eroding shorelines, thawing permafrost, ocean acidification, this reality puts many communities at risk throughout our state. the army corps of engineers and the gao have both released reports identifying last ka villages imminently threatened by erosion. many of these villages have experienced incredible, extreme weather. 30-plus villages at risk of literally falling into the ocean or disappearing totally. flooding wiped out a village in alaska called galina. totally in what's amazing about it we read about a lot of issues in lower 48. we had a whole village wiped out by flooding. and no place to evacuate, the closest place was 270 miles away. all had to be done by air in order to move these people out quickly and now they're trying to rebuild in a very short time, and the winter set in and it was also very difficult. and i know when people talk about climate change, they get nervous, is it the, you know they want to debate the science on it. i'm telling you climate change is occurring. my state is the example of it. of what the impacts are. and it is extreme. and we are seeing the impacts economically, and from all levels. our state has the longest coastline in the united states, while in both incredible beauty but also its economic value, also requests and has enormous vulnerabilities in the sense of the impacts it has alaska's unique position as an arctic state presents a variety of advantages to leverage the challenges to overcome this extreme issue. you know, i have to tell you, alaska is clearly on the front line with dealing with the issue of climate change. we have our own task force set up. we have been active in it. we have focused on what we can do to mitigate the issues in these extreme changes in weather patterns that are impacting us on a day-to-day basis in alaska. let me say that, you know, as the president's climate action plan moves forward, and the state and local and tribal leaders task force on climate change preparedness begins to develop a recommendation i'm confident investing and mitigation is the right decision. we always spend the time, mr. chairman, always after the fact. picking up the pieces, and the costs are huge. you know, we had a hearing in alaska through subcommittee that i chair here with fema, and the corps, talking about what we can do before these situations. but when we know they're going to happen, we have 30-some villages on the list. we know they're going to fall into the ocean. we can do something now or we can wait until something bad happens, and we're going to call fema. and fema's going to be writing some checks. that's the worst approach in the sense of dealing with this issue. we can do this in a much better way. i know, mr. chairman, you invited individual mike williams sr. who is an iditarod musher but also an incredible native leader who was going to be on the panel today but i know he could not attend and if i could just ask for the committee to insert his comments and his testimony into the record, if that's okay. >> without objection. >> let me just end and just say, mr. chairman, as the chair of the subcommittee on emergency management that deals with disaster relief, emergency preparedness, first responders, mitigation, and this committee, we've had several hearings on these issues and sat here with an insurance folks that talk about how they're adjusting their risk analysis, how they're making sure that they're now seeing more severe weather patterns and they're not here to, you know, they weren't here to debate the science, but they were here to debate was, risk is greater. patterns are changing. the more compacted, and they're much more severe, so therefore the risk analysis goes in to play, and therefore rates go up. i know this as an owner of commercial property. i know my rates haven't been flat the last ten years because they're analyzing the risk. and i get that. but there is a risk that everyone is paying today for the lack of action in regards to mitigating these situations. so i think, and i want to again say to the chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. it's a hard issue to grapple with, because there are political views on climate change. but that's not the issue. the issue is, it is happening. we can argue over it all we want. but, in my state, we see it every single day. we have disaster after disaster. we have huge costs that are associated with it. and even though we're far away, 5,000 miles away, small villages, we literally there are buildings and houses are falling into the ocean. this is not a hypothetical situation or theory. it's real. so i really appreciate the work you're doing here. and i hope the committee continues to talk about this. i know, and i agree, that we can't bear all the costs. that's just reality. but how we manage it from everything from our building codes all the way up to what we do here on the federal level is critical to understand how we're going to manage this so we don't have these costs borne by the private sector, individuals or the government. so i look forward to this and thank you very much. >> we're just glad that you could join us, senator johnson and me. thanks so much for coming for your comments. when -- along when senator begich was speaking i was reminded of all people senator mick enzi from wyoming, as my colleagues know, i oftentimes cite him, he may be later here today. he has his 80/20 rule that is one of his guiding principles in terms of how to get things done and the 80/20 rule is basically, we agree on 80% of the stuff. here in congress. we disagree maybe on 20%. let's just focus on the 80% that we agree on. and we'll set the other 20% aside until another day. and today i think we're going to focus on the 80% that we can agree on. and to help try to path for just the congress but for our country. the one of the people who's not here yet will probably be here in a little bit is senator from arkansas mark pryor. they have a saying in arkansas, whenever you see a friend, and mark pryor said this to me about a million times, they'll say, hey, man, and your name is heymann. and i was just hoping mark would get here so he could introduce you. and say hey man. david heyman we're happy to see you assistant secretary for the department of homeland security. mr. heymann has the office for implementing policies, planning programs and strategies. caitlin durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the department of homeland security, and this role she leads the departments aefforts to strengthen the public/private partnerships and coordinate programs to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, assess and mitigate risk, build resilience, and strengthen incident response, and recoveries. nice to see you again, welcome. and last but not least mark gaffigan. and mark is the managing director of the u.s. government accountability office's natural resources environmental team. the natural resources environmental team is responsible for gao's assessments of federal efforts to manage our nation's land and water resources, protect the environment, ensure food safety, manage agricultural programs, ensure a reliable and environmentally sound energy policy, meet our nation's science challenges, and address the u.s., and international nuclear security and cleanup. that's a lot. that's a lot to do for one person. each of you have about five minutes, five minutes to read your opening statement. if you run a little bit over that that's okay. go way over that we'll have to rein you in. your written statement will be included in the record, and with that we're going to recognize mr. hayman, also known as hey, man. welcome. >> thank you. the quick aside, senator pryor has said that to me for now over 30 years. as i serve d as his vice president when he was a student government leader in my high school. his political career has skyrocketed because of my service to him. thank you chairman carper -- >> this story just kieps getting better. >> thank you chairman carper, senator johnson and distinguished members of the committee. my best wishes to senator coburn and his family. it's my pleasure to be here this morning to discuss the impact of extreme weather and what the department of homeland security is doing to improve the preparedness and resilience of our communities, and nation. this represents one of the most significant areas where we can all agree, i think, investment today will help us save billions in the future. over the past decade, an unprecedented number of weather related disasters, hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, crop freezes and winter storms have hit the united states. leaving devastated communities and billions of dollars of damage in their wake. in 2011, we experienced 14 natural catastrophes exceeding a billion dollars in cost each. that's a record number. we had a record 98 presidentially declared disasters. in 2012 we faced hurricane sandy. the largest atlantic hurricane on record and the second costliest to the nation, damaging or destroying more than 300,000 homes in new york, 72,000 in new jersey, and costing billions in damage. according to the world's largest risk insurer, weather related catastrophes over the past three decades have hit north america much harder than the rest of the world. total economic losses in the united states totalled approximately $1.15 trillion over the last 30 years. without a concerted effort, national resilience effort, the trend is likely to continue. the department of homeland security is responsible for providing the coordinated comprehensive federal response in the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other large-scale emergency while working with state and federal local tribal territorial and private sector partners so that we can ensure swift and effective recovery. offer the past several years we have made a significant shift in our thinking and in our practice of preparing for mitigating against and responding to disasters. and i can summarize that in one word. resilience. resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions, stand and respond to and rapidly recover from disruptions. in may of 2009 president obama took a significant step towards fasscilitating and institutionalizing national resilience when he merged the homeland security council and national security council into a single structure. and created a resilience directorate with the national security council. this directorate managing resilience policy and operates alongside the counterterrorism director. this action established resilience as a homeland security pillar and priority, which was called out for the first time in the president's national security strategy. dhs affirmed this prioritization in his qhsr, quadrennial homeland security view in 2010, promoting insurance of resilience to disasters as one of the department's core missions, and responsibilities. but the question is, how do you create and foster resilience. establishing the concept of resilience is an essential first step but it is only one piece of pro-actively preparing for potential disasters and readily responding to a situation as it occurs. across the department, from fema, to mppd to science and technology, we work with a wide array of government, private and nonprofit faith-based organizations to build and foster resilience. not as a concept, but as an applied reality. fema is leading implementation of the national preparedness system. my colleague here today will discuss our critical infrastructure, security and resilience programs, and in my office, the office of policy, we coordinate resilience initiatives and policy across the department and are working to create the framework that fosters resilience and gives a coherent baseline. i'd like to share one example of some of the important work that we've been doing. we're creating a program called resilience star based on the energy star concept which you probably are familiar with for appliances in your own home. in this case, it will help ensure that homes will be built to voluntarily standard, stronger standards that will incur far less damage by disasters, protecting lives, livelihoods and helping communities respond to and recover to disasters, much more quickly. ultimately, dhs aims to extend the resilience star program beyond homes and facilities and into critical infrastructure. helping to recapitalize the built environment across america in the long-term. one home, one building, one bridge at a time. our investments in resilience will pay significant dividends for the country. it is efficient and it is cost effective. homeland security is simply not about government action rather it is also about collective strength of the entire country. it's a shared responsibility requires the participation of individuals, communities, the private sector, as well as state, local and the federal government to be truly effective. the department's ready.gov website serves as a resource for citizens and businesses and communities, so that they can stay informed and take appropriate prepared measures. this is as i said a shared responsibility. it requires that we all work together to marshal all the resources to withstand whatever threats and hazards we may face. it is truly the actions of each of us that in the end will ensure the safety and security for all of us. i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> chairman, thank you very, very much. mrs. durkovich, please proceed. >> thank you, chairman carper, senator johnson, and distinguished members of the committee. i, too, extend my thoughts and prayers to senator coburn and his family. it is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the department's efforts to enhance the resilience of the nation's critical infrastructure to extreme weather. our daily life, economic vitality and national security depend on critical infrastructure. infrastructure provides essential services and functions, but it is easily taken for granted. often, it is only when an incident occurs in service is disrupted that attention is drawn to the importance of the infrastructure itself. threats to our critical infrastructure are wide ranging. including aging and failing components, cyber threats, acts of terrorism, and climate change and extreme weather. the consequences of these threats to the public and private sectors can be seen in the events over the last decade. hurricanes katrina and sandy, the tornadoes in the midwest, wildfires, and flooding across the western states, the california drought, the extreme cold in the northwest, all demonstrate how weather can disrupt the availability of lifeline functions in other critical services. just as terrorist attacks threaten our communities, extreme weather disrupts the security of our nation. extreme weather strains our resources, diverts attention from counterterrorism efforts, serves as a threat multiplier that aggravates stressors both at home and abroad, and destabilizes the lifeline sectors on which we rely. higher temperatures and more intense storms can cause inefficient infrastructure operations and damage and disruptions that can result in cascading effects across our communities. hurricane sandy is a vivid example of the potentially devastating impacts extreme weather can have on critical infrastructure, and demonstrates how interdependencies between infrastructure systems can magnify impacts and delay restoration. additionally, the increasing role of cyber and communication networks creates new vulnerabilities and opportunities for disruption. two years ago, high temperatures and high demand tripped a transformer and transmission line in yuma, arizona, starting a chain of events that shut down the san inevery nuclear power plant, disabilitying automaticing switching assistance leading to a large-scale power outage across the entire san diego distribution system. strides have been made to address vulnerabilities that lead to such outages but additional progress is needed to protect our interrelated systems. ed nation must take a long-term perspective in account for evolving threats and hazards including those caused by extreme weather that are linked to changes in climate. especially with regards to building resilience for critical infrastructure. built infrastructure has a ten-year design build phase in a life span of 50 years or more. and is expected to operate under stressor conditions that sometimes we can't even imagine. as a result, it is a prudent investment to incorporate resilient into asset and system design, promote mitigation and built infrastructure and to empower owners and operators with decision making tools rather than to rebuild or redesign infrastructure after incidents occur. to achieve infrastructure resilience owners and operators must be able to minimize the disruption to essential services provided to our communities. regardless of the hazard or threat. and when a disruption occurs, ensure essential services and functions are brought back to full operations as quickly as possible. one year ago today, president obama issued presidential policy directive 21. critical infrastructure security and resilience an executive order 13636 improving critical infrastructure cyber security. ppd 21 directed dhs to develop an update to the national infrastructure protection plan, or the nip which was released in 2013. the nip 2012 envisions a nation in which physical and cyber critical infrastructure remains secure and resilient. essential services and products continue to be delivered in the face of incidents, and communities and businesses adaptd to changing conditions and rapidly recover from poe tepgs disruptions. the office of infrastructure protection is leveraging our core capabilities, such as information sharing, capacity development, vulnerability assessments, and situational awareness to support owners and operators' efforts to strengthen resilience to extreme weather. as part of the hurricane sandy rebuilding task force, ip and other federal partners work to develop the infrastructure resilience guidelines which are sound investment principles to guide federal infrastructure investment as we modernize and adapt infrastructure. simple things, such as consistent application of comprehensive science-based data, and a regional cross jurisdictional focus or selecting projects. additionally, i co-chair the new infrastructure resilience work group with the department of energy under the white house council on climate preparedness and resilience. through this working group, we are coordinating interagency efforts on climate preparedness and resilience for the nation's infrastructure. the working group is studying infrastructure's most vulnerable to climate impacts throughout the united states, and identifying risk based mitigation in adaptions -- adoption strategies. this will inform and aid the critical infrastructure community with planning and decision making regarding climate preparedness and resilience. ip also works with state and local partners through the regional resiliency assessment program to examine a particular industry, region or municipality's dependence on key lifeline sectors and to mitigate the hazards that could disrupt these complex ecosystems. this year we are partnering with the state of maine to produce the first climate change adaptation plan for the portland metropolitan area. in closing, by increasing the resilience of our critical infrastructure in our communities we are better prepared as a nation to the myriad of threats and hazards we face. leveraging the partnership framework we have established over the past ten years, ip will continue to work with owners and operators of critical infrastructure to understand the impact of extreme weather, and to take steps to enhance resilience. thank you very much, and i look forward to answering your questions. mrs. durkovich, thank you so much for your time. stick around we'll have some questions. mr. gaffigan, very nice to see you. please proceed. >> senator carper good to see you again, senator johnson. thank you for inviting me here. let me also extend the best wishes to senator coburn and his family. i had the fortune to attend one of senator coburn's first hearings when he was on the hill and we told us afterwards he was going to do some oversight and i think he's followed through on that. so i'm very sorry he's not able to join us today. zbleez announced he's going to step down at the end of the year, and while he has some health he said that has nothing to do with those just a personal decision he and his family have made. but i have said to him, well, you're still on the payroll for another, you know, 10 1/2 months, so i know you wanted to finish strong. and we're going to make sure that you do. and he's determined to. so plenty more oversight to come. >> yeah. great. i want to make three points. first there's a lot at stake. we've all talked about some of the numbers, in your opening statement, there are significant costs from extreme weather. but not only to the federal government, but also to the state, local, tribal governments, businesses, farmers, individuals, in short, everyone. second, there is uncertainty about the specific risks we might face from extreme weather, and how we can adapt to those changes, and manage those risks. complicating this uncertainty is that the risks faced and the appropriate adaptation is going to be particular to the situations and the locations of those facings risk. to borrow from the phrase all politics is local. all adaptation is local. third thing, given the challenge going forward for everyone facing these risks, the challenge is to strive for the best, most updated information available to help inform specific preparation, resilience, adaptation, so that the investment and preparation and resilience is most effective. and as we've explained, funds are tight. so let me illustrate what's at stake and sort of challenges in four areas that are particular to the federal government. first, the federal government has a great deal at stake, as an insurer of property and crops. in 2012 the flood insurance program had property coverage of over $1.2 trillion, while crop insurance covered $120 billion in crops. that's a four-fold increase in the crop insurance program since 2003. however the flood insurance program has a debt $24 billion, as you pointed out. and the nation's crop insurance annual costs have more than doubled from $3.4 billion in 2001 to $7.6 billion in 2012. back in march of 2007, gao did a study and found that both of these programs' exposure to weather related losses had grown substantially and that fema and usda had done little to develop the information necessary to understand what those risks were. they've since developed a report, now those reports, usda released their report in 2009. the flood insurance program released their report in 2013. they recognize the potential risks, they recognize the uncertainty, but it's still unclear what actions these programs are going to take. in the future. and that will have a lot to say for the financial solvency of these programs going forward. but also in 2012 congress passed the bigger water flood insurance reform act which among many things required the use of information on coastal erosion areas, future change in sea levels, and intensity of hurricanes to update its flood maps. implementation of this will be key in making changes to that program. second, the federal government is a significant provider of disaster aid. the number of federal disaster declarations increased from 65 in 2004 to a peak of 98 in 2011, and has been mentioned fema's provided over $80 billion during those years. after superstorm sandy, congress provided about $60 billion in budget authority for disaster assistance. the federal government could do a couple things. it could start by fully budgeting for these costs to address the fiscal exposure that is largely outside of the budget process, and fema could also develop an updated formula. the formula hasn't been updated since 1986, to determine the capacity of jurisdictions to respond to those disasters. third the federal government is the owner and operator of significant infrastructure, dod alone has over half a million buildings, facilities, throughout the world, including some in vulnerable coastal areas. in addition, the federal government manages about 30% of the nation's lands. forests, wildlife, these natural resources face threats from extreme weather. dod has recognized the risks to its facilities and to trying to assess the potential impacts and consider what adaptation may be necessary at facilities in many different environments. regarding federal lands, federal resource agencies are also trying to incorporate climate related information at the local level to decide what to do best. fourth, the federal government is both an investment partner in public infrastructure, and a potential provider of technical assistance. the federal government invests billions annually in public infrastructure projects. for example cbo estimates that total public spending on transportation and water infrastructure is about $300 billion annually with about 25% of that coming from the federal government. and the rest from state and local governments. our work has found incorporating considerations about climate into the planning of this infrastructure that may be in place for 50 to 100 years can help avoid the need for assistance in the future, if the infrastructure -- so the infrastructure can withstand extreme weather. however, responsibility for planning and priorityizing these projects is primarily at the state and local level. and they may not have the information or expertise they need to incorporate climate considerations into their site-specific local projects. thus the federal government is in a position to be a provider of technical assistance, helping state and local officials identify and use the best available information that is specific to their circumstances, while also enhancing access to experts who can help translate that information down at the local level. that concludes my opening statement. i welcome your questions, thank you. >> thanks so much, mark. and for the work that -- anybody here on your team? anybody from the audience from gao? >> gentleman right behind me, yes. and there's plenty more back in the building. >> on behalf of dr. coburn and myself how much we value the work that you do, and appreciate the opportunity to partner with you. >> thank you, sir. >> i want to first talk a little bit more, talk a little bit more about the flood insurance program. dr. johnson -- well senator johnson and i both -- dr. coburn -- voted against the flood insurance corrections bill that passed the senate not very long ago just earlier this month. late last month. and i go back in time to 1990 i was a house member on the banking committee and believe it or not i think with a guy named tom ridge, who was the raking republican on the subcommittee that i chaired then and one of our focuses of the national flood insurance program because we were concerned that the program was under water and all these years later, well, it still. and the kind of changes we're seeing in weather it's getting to be more under water. and we adopted some changes to the legislation, in the last year or two, the -- and the costs as they come to bear on people who live in areas that are prone to flooding, are in some cases very steep, there's concerns about the flood mapping and so forth, that people were not in areas where they used to have flooding, now they do. and so the question is, what do we do, if anything, in response to those conditions, those changing conditions? and to try to be humane but also to realize that it's a lot of money at stake here. and this is -- we've got to -- i think doing nothing is not an option. i -- so the house -- the senate's passed a bill it's over in the house and we're not sure what if anything the house is going to do but i my guess is that there will be an opportunity here to find a principled compromise. that actually makes progress toward reducing this unfunded liability, and is not cruel or heartless with respect to people whose homes, businesses, are at risk. the i know how closely you've been following what the senate has done in the state of play but if any of you, mr. gaffigan, if any of you have any advice for us as to how to proceed and what might be some of the elements of the principle compromise i'd welcome hearing those, and my guess is that we're going to have the opportunity later this year to work more closely with you, to say, and with the administration, the administration, president's not crazy about this bill, but the senate has passed as you know, there's an opportunity for, for the administration to weigh in and be part of the solution. any thoughts you have with us on that? >> just very quickly and again the flood insurance is not necessarily in my portfolio. i have a lot of things, but not that one. but i will say that, you know, i think it's a tradeoff between the affordability of the program and the individuals who have to pay the premiums. i mean at the end of the day, someone has got to pay for this and it's a question of the balance between the taxpayer, and the individual businesses, homeowners, those who own the flood insurance. i think some of the things talked about in building in consideration of what the risks are going forward. trying to build in some resiliency going forward in that program would help minimize the risk so that we're not we're not having to pay the higher premiums, because we don't anticipate the higher risk down the road. i think that's where the area of compromise is probably best sought. >> okay. mrs. durkovich, mr. heyman anything you want to make sure on that before we go to another question? if you have something you want to say, go ahead. i don't think your mike is on. >> sorry. fema has actually been working with both house and senate on this, this is obviously a concern that we hear about, and i know that there are possibly going to be amendments down the road. right now our authority is only to complete a study on affordability. we have no authority-no authority to address the affordability of flood insurance. but we are happy to work with you to help try to think this through. >> all right, thanks. i'm going to come back to mark gaffigan, this deals with prioritizing risks, and i think in your testimony you may have mentioned three or four areas where the government could limit its fiscal exposure when it comes to climate change, and to extreme weather events. and within those three or four areas, which stands out to you for the maybe the biggest fiscal concern? >> -- >> let me just add to that as kind of a p.s.? are there high risk areas that cannot be addressed by the executive -- maybe higher priority for my colleagues and me here in the congress? >> well you mentioned the flood insurance program. that is one in terms of fiscal risk and i think it's hard to pick one that's more significant than the others and i just touched upon four areas. there are a lot of other potential impacts that the federal government. we think the disaster assistance program, the aid program, $60 billion for one storm is the amount that congress authorized for superstorm sandy. that stands out. right now, as an owner of infrastructure, the agencies are trying to assess what's at risk. dod has some serious concerns, they have at least 30 major facilities that are in coastal areas vulnerable to flood. they have to have dry docks making sure those do not expose so i think it's hard to pick a most important out of all those. >> all right. a question for mr. heyman or ms. durkovich or both but and mr. gaffigan's testimony he mentioned as i recall that infrastructure decision makers haven't necessarily incorporated potential climate change impacts in planning for roads, in planning for bridges, in planning for waste management systems, because they face challenges identifying and obtaining available climate change information best suited for locations and for their projects. could one or both of you take a minute or two and just talk a little bit about how your agency is addressing this concern, in particular, we'd like to hear how your agency is coordinating with other agencies to make sure that local planners have the best data possible, especially related to superstorm sandy, rebuilding efforts. >> thank you very much for that question. in our unique role within the office of infrastructure protection, we both have the ability to convene and coordinate with owners and operators, but with other members of the federal interagency. let me speak to the latter point first. and two topics related to that. first is i was in front of you a few months ago talking about federal fasscility security and happen to chair a group called the interagency security committee that works with 53 different departments and agencies to set standards related to federal building safety and security. climate change is an issue that this interagency security committee is addressing, and is working to incorporate it into its design basis threat scenarios, which are over three dozen scenarios that federal buildings think about when incorporating protective and mitigation measures to again ensure that the safety and security of those facilities. so this is a group of physical security officers who are looking at how we address climate change when it comes to the over 300,000 federal facilities that are in the area. we are dependent, though, as a federal interagency on other lifeline sectors. and in -- in the office of infrastructure protection, we have the ability to convene our 16 sectors and partners both on the government side, but also in the private sector side to talk about what they are doing to raise awareness, to look at best practices, to identify best practices, practices to understand where the gaps are and to look at the comparative advantage that the federal government has and to think through what are some of the capabilities that we can bring to bear to help this effort. and then just to speak briefly to the work that we're doing with the infrastructure resilience working group. this is, again, a unique opportunity to look across the federal interagency and look at the programs that are available to state and local communities, to the owner/operator community and to, again, understand what's working, where the gaps are, where we need to remove those barriers so that we can enable planning, that we can bring consistent, comprehensive data to our partners so they can begin to incorporate it into our planning. a lot going on on this front that i think we can continue to harness. >> i yield to senator johnson. do you want to add anything to that? >> sure. thank you. as part of the national preparedness plan, we work very closely with states and communities to assess their -- help them assess their -- the threats and hazards and risks that they face. this is called the thyra, threat, hazard identification risk assessment. every state is required to do this. fema has a policy of making the best available data available so that is to say whatever is -- so the top line scientific data that's available, fema tries to facilitate to the best of their ability. two years ago there were only 15 states that had climate action plans. today there's 36 that have climate action plans. they're incorporating the best data and their risk assessment to develop an action plan to better prepare their communities. >> thanks. thanks so much. senator johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm a big fan of a fellow named bjorn lombard. he issues his report, i think it was called the copenhagen project. i believe he's talked about climate change. he's talked about where we should spend our dollars. my first set of questions go toward prioritization. how do we do that? are we doing it effectively? can we be killing two birds with one stone? i'll start with you, ms. durkovich. you talked about cyber security, which brings to mind power grids, which brings to mind the attack at the metcalf transmission station in i believe san jose, california. there are a number of things that could affect our infrastructure. you know, obviously natural disasters, weather disasters as well as, you know, manmade terrorist attacks as well. are we trying to combine these and take a look at that from the standpoint of prioritization of trying to mitigate problems? >> our role within the office of infrastructure protection is to help owners and operators understand the range of threats and hazards they face and as they look across their enterprise to manage risk, to provide them with information, with tools, with best practices so they can be both efficient and effective in application of how they go about managing this. part of the reason that we have moved to a more all hazards focus within the department of homeland security and across the homeland security enterprise is that we find as you work to adapt preventive measures and mitigatetive measures to a range of threats and hazards, they are applicable not only to just one particular hazard but to many hazards. and so we worked very closely with the owner and operator community to think through this. let me touch briefly, for example, on the substation issue. so as we think about security but also incorporate climate change and extreme weather into that conversation, as owners and operators are looking to invest in upgrades and to modernize that infrastructure, as they make improvements related to security, we can also have conversations with them about whether these assets and these facilities are in flood prone areas, are in areas that are suggesti susceptible to sea rise so as they start to make the multi-million dollar investments, we're thinking about them in parallel and integrative fashion and ensuring that the money that is invested in these enhancements and these mitigation measures is used effectively. but, again, our role is really to help them understand the range of threats and risks and to consider measures and options that allow an efficient and effective application of resources. >> mr. heyman, in terms of prioritization, are there lists being prepared? i mean, we talk about it, we talk about prioritization, but is there any product that's actually ever produced? >> there is. so the -- if you -- the national preparedness system has about five parts to it. one is to identify the risks that are available. two is to get a sense of where the gaps are looking at communities based upon what capabilities are required for preparedness, then to do the resources assessment and ultimately resourcing followed by training and exercising and you do that cycle again. at the end of that exercise there is a list of capabilities that are prioritized for communities for states. those states then apply for grants to fema based upon those -- that gap analysis, and that becomes the basis for the next year's preparedness planning and evaluation and so that's a regular cycle that's done. we had the national preparedness report is an annual report and it was last released, it was last year. let me just talk a little bit about prioritization as a concept because i think that everyone has said that mitigation is critically important, and i think that's right. there was a study done a few years ago by the multi-hazard mitigation council which said $1 worth of mitigation up front led you back to $4 back in terms of return on your investment and similarly, the louisiana state university hurricane center evaluated what kind of benefit mitigation would have done in katrina and they came back with a figure of $8 billion would have been saved. how do we do that? one way of doing that, because the federal government doesn't own and operate -- it doesn't own the residential housing or businesses out there is to try to incentivize and encourage raising standards as it pertains to the built environment, and the program i mentioned, which we're piloting in the residential environment this year, provides a basis for trying to look at how we can do that on a broader scale across the infrastructure so that people are motivated and incentivized either through self-preservation because their house will be the one standing or through other incentives, mortgage reductions or perhaps premium reductions in insurance. so we're looking at that and i think it's something this nation should take a serious look at. >> you're using the word i wanted to get to next, which is incentivize. where are those incentives best? where does it best come from? where do they best come from, private insurance market where you have basically a million different decisions being made or from some centralized entity like the federal government trying to do a one-size-fits-all approach? >> there's a number of different actors in this world. you know, when you go to buy a house, there are the builders. they're going to build it to code plus standards. how do you get them engaged in that? as we're going ahead with the pilot, what we're seeing is a lot of builders are interested in this because they see a market advantage and so there as a benefit to being labeled, for example, resilient star. there are the insurance industry who is interested in this because it saves them a whole lot of money on the back end with possible claims for damage if you're looking at the life cycle of a house every 40 years and residential owners may see a benefit -- let me just stop. wouldn't the insurance industry have a vested interest to develop these standards and if they develop themselves in the private sector wouldn't it be more effective than a government-run solution? >> so insurers have looked at this. in fact, we are partnering with the insurance industry to develop this pilot project. i think for various reasons, because there's so many fractions insurance markets, a number of different state players, i think one of the benefits the federal government can bring is a national perspective which is not something any individual insurance company can do. >> can i just ask one more question? because i have a great deal of concern. if the federal government is the 800 pound gorilla and everybody in the private sector is looking to the federal government to bail them out, is that a real disincentive to do the resilien resiliency, do the mitigation efforts? if we have a big fwlolood, a bi hurricane, the fed will come in there and cover our losses and then some. to what extent are we witnessing that throughout the country? >> you're not unfortunately witnessing that in many places. you have communities that are devastated, people have packed up their bags and left. you're losing your tax base and your ability to attract individuals to come to your community and the federal government can't help when people move their feet. this is one of the issues where local governments, urban communities will probably take a good look at it. there are resilient communities, people may want to be there because in the long run they're safe, more secure and frankly the funds you would have to repay can be paid to other priorities and public safety and education. >> that's the point, isn't it, we need to raise the price for individuals that are building in very risky environments? correct? we don't want to incentive advise people to build in areas that are going to flood. >> that's why it's important to have the best available data, so people are cognizant of the area they're building, moving to. fema has tried to get that as a basis for getting data out and when we work with communities to do their threat and hazard identification risk assessment, that's all -- with your eyes wide open looking at what the risks are and asking if there's a way we can partner together to reduce those risks. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i wish we had time for another round of questions. i just learned that a series of votes starts at 11:30. i want to make sure we have ample time to hear from our second panel. i just want to follow up on what senator johnson was saying. we've had some demonstrations on star programs, energy star that we're aware of, and let's just make sure that we use those as laboratories of democracy. we can lobby work that may be just as important as some that were attempted and didn't work out. like senator johnson, how do we get people to use the belhavior that we're modeling. they talk about the role of government and the role of private sector. and he used to use the analogy and say the role of government is to steer the boat. t the role of everybody else is to row the boat. there's a good role for both and hopefully we can find the good balance. i just want to say to each of you, thanks for the work you do. thanks for the folks who work with you and to say especially with flood insurance we'll work with you to try to find a useful compromise. my father would say if you looked at it from above, you would look at it and use some common sense. hopefully we'll do that. so with that, you're excused and we thank you for joining us and we look forward to some questions. there will be follow-up questions. we hope you'll respond to those in a prompt way. thank you so much. thank you. collin o'mara, all the way from i want to say san jose, california. did you used to live in san jose? we stole him. we stole him from san jose at the tender age of i think 29 or 30 to come all the way to the national association of environmental control. if i had half the energy of this guy, i would be president and vice president. he's an amazing guy. very proud of the work that you do. thank you for joining us today. our second witness is from a bigger state than ours, new hampshire, and kelly ayotte can't with be us. dr. paul, is it kirshen? dr. kirshen, research professor at the university of new hampshire. what is your mascot there? >> wildcats. >> wildcats, yes. we've had some rough football saturdays against the wildcats and the blue hens. we're all the happy to welcome you here. i understand your research focuses on engineering and management as well as climate change, vulnerability assessment, adaptation, planning. it's a mouth full but we're happy you could join us. thanks so much for coming. lindene patton, my mother was a patton, chief climate product officer for zurich international group. in this role ms. patton, i'm told, is responsible for policy and risk management related to climate change. remember my staff said you might have a member of your family here or two? is that true? would you put down your mic? introduce your family. they'll stand up. >> my daughters, amelia and zoe. >> amelia, would you raise your hand? >> hi, amelia. zoey, would you raise your hand? who's in the middle? >> a friend of hers, sharon. >> all right, sharon. nice to come. >> and our aupere, gosha. >> you've heard me say with the first group, about five minutes or so if you will and then we'll ask some questions. delighted you're here and happy to be here along with senator jackson. colin, will you please proceed. >> thank you, senator johnson. our thoughts go out to senator coburn. thank you for holding this hearing today. your timing is good and it's an important topic to delaware. senator carp spent a lot of time in helicopters. in delaware we spent a lot of time evaluating it. i'd like to talk about delaware's approach and i would like to offer common sense solutions that should be part of the conversation going forward about shifting the focus to preparedness and resilience and a little less on the money on the back end. in delaware our approach has been fairly simple. start with the science and economics, and make sure you have good science and economics and know your vulnerabilities and know the tradeoffs. it's easy in a political environment to move towards the things that has the most attention but not the most economic imperative. we've looked at flood plains, sea level rise and i have a report that i'll introduce with the chairman's consent. we've looked at 75 different infrastructures and the vulnerability and then we took the data and made infrastructure impacts. we have that data drive our decision making in having the policy and it has the type of list that senator johnson is asking about, to make sure that the money is going in places that will make the sense. we had tony pratt who's behind me who is our administrator of shoreline and coastal protection, and looking at the bay regions and looking at the economics and who gets the benefit? most of the benefit is the private owners and not the broader population which suggests that the private owner should play rather than the broader community. we'd like to see the economic contribution to the coast and if i can out the economic benefits of having those protections. having that knowledge is important because it allows us to invest strategically. healthy dunes, healthy wetlands, the coast. they turn out very well after the storms. we see time and time again communities that aren't as prepared don't do nearly as well. we're taking a lot of steps to build resiliency into going forward. modernizing stormwater. we want to stop the bleeding and make sure new development is resilient. now that we have this kind of data that we're not exacerbating the problems and costs. because of all of this the governor was invited to be on the president's climate task force with a focus on the natural structure and resources projects that we're doing across the state whether it's in wilmington or elsewhere, we are piloting projects that we believe are good. one, resiliency needs to be built into every single federal investment. we don't need a new bureaucracy. we are spending billions every year. if we build resiliency into the projects, then we're okay. you don't want to throw good money after bad. the second is we need to invest more in protection. we're spending $5 billion in the army corps line. that's 50 years worth of investments compared to what they normally get for their protection line. it's about 100, 100 million. we're spending 5 million a year. it's become easier to pay for it after the fact as opposed to investing in it. we need to break the disaster, rebuild, it's so easy to rebuild to the old infrastructure standards. you can get money quickly as opposed to rebuilding to a new resiliency standard. there isn't a lot of conversation about this. great recommendations coming out of georgetown, but we need to make sure rebuild to a higher standard. we also need to prioritize comprehensive projects. right now as we talked about with the border contacts, you can have the army corps that's taking a bunch of sediment out of the water way, but it's cheaper to put it in a landfill than it is the beach next door. the army corps will choose the lowest cost option. they won't put it on the beach, they'll move it somewhere else. we need to combine those. we could be saving tens of billions of dollars a year. we need to have the nfip regulations which haven't been updated since 1989. we've focused on the money side. the cost of the insurance becomes cheaper if the standards are higher. we need to prioritize the natural infrastructure. they work exceptionally well. they shouldn't be the exception or the pilot project enmore. they need to be the default. we need to reward communities that are prepared. right now delaware is paying a lot of development money and we don't receive a lot after the disasters. it's completely crazy. we need to make sure that there are incentives and priority given to states that have made their own investments and are doing the hard work to hold themselves accountable and not relying on the federal government as senator johnson said. very two last points. we need to ensure that public expenditures can receive public benefit and really prioritizing things for a broader benefit to all people and we need a much greater community on hazardous sites. we have super fund sites. when those wash out, it's massive. we've been focusing on these more. there's not nearly as much attention. fema will help you acquire a parcel. if it's contaminated, fema won't touch it for liability. these are things we can change. the senator is looking at these because i think our experience in delaware shows if you do prepare an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. >> thank you so much. you got a lot in in 6:50, didn't he? >> i apologize for going over. i always talk quick. >> that's all right. i was watching the body language of the co-panelists. dr. kirshen is nodding his head up and down. we'll find out now. dr. kirshen, thanks so much. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman, senator johnson, for giving me the opportunity to talk before this committee. i do agree very enthusiastically with everything that senator o'mara is proposing. we have long-term economic consequences on a northern city being impacted by first of all extreme amounts of precipitation and secretary of all coastal flooding from large coastal storm surges. here i'm going to talk about the long-term costs of not being prepared for these present and future events and compare them to the benefits being prepared. because of the changing climate, the climate change impacts have always been part of my analyses. also want to point out that the case studies to new england are relevant to the rest of the united states and the world. the first study i wanted to talk about is the impact on the eastern coast of massachusetts, stretching from north of boston through almost cape cod. it's an area of large cities like boston but also suburbs. when you look at the total damages of surge flooding from storms to residential, commercial, industrial buildings over the next 100 years serving moderate scenarios -- if i were looking at the damages and look at where it would be reduced, evaporation would be taking place. adaptation is measured by damages avoided and measure the costs by cost of adaptation. we found better cost ratios. what that means, for example, benefit-cost ratio is six to one. every dollar invested in adaptation reduces long-term damages six times. these are, again, showing the true benefits of preparing for these present and future events. the second case study was the hansen seabrook falls area of new hampshire. coastal area of new hampshire with many second homes. typically on the barrier beaches. here we look at the cost of protecting privately owned buildings, in other words, homes and commercial facilities, and also key public assets, sewage treatment facilities, schools, from present and future coastal storms by developing adaptation plans protected 20-50 under low and high rise scenarios of approximately one to two feet. we found very large benefit cost ratio ratios ranging from 11 to 16 for public assets. the stormwater in the winter hill section ofsommerville, massachusetts. this is located north of cambridge and boston on the mystic river. this is served by a combined sewer system. presently the storm system -- the sewer system only has the capacity to handle all the wastewater and a small amount of the stormwater whmpt a larger storm occurs, only one inch of rainfall, some of the extra combined sewage is treated at the regional wastewater treatment plant but most of the combined waste is combined to the mystic river and is floating in the streets as raw, untreated sewage. this will be increased by 10 to 30% higher rainfall in 2030. so again we did a benefit-costa analysis, the cost of adaptation to handle more waist with the benefits avoided by adaptation. we found benefit cost ratios 4-1. showing the advantages of dealing with these problems now rather than later. so to summarize. so i've talked about my recent research to the cost of damages. the costs are underestimated. i did not include such items as human death and injury, damage to the ecosystems, incorrect costs such as lost employment and community displacement and disruption. but even with those costs not included and looking -- we found that we were looking at many scenarios of climate change and sea level rise, a dacht tags paid off in terms of damage avoided. no adaptation, no action, in all cases was the worst thing to do. to keep benefit cost ratios high would indicate that these actions are useful even if we didn't have climate change, so-called no regret actions. so i want to say a couple more comments. first of all, one of the first steps we can take to control these threats from climate change, control our emission of greenhouse gases. that will make a big difference whether we have a three feet rise or six feet or 10% increase in extreme rainfall or 30%, but because we cannot reverse climate change, we cannot stop climate change. it will continue for centuries. we have to adapt, be prepared and like everyone else here, i really support we ought to take planning now to start dealing with these threats, otherwise we're going to be suffering large, human, social and environmental consequences. thank you for your time. >> thank you for coming all the way from new hampshire to be with us today. tell those wildcats we said hello. ms. patton, your whole statement will be made part of the record. please proceed. >> thank you very much. >> make sure your mic's on. >> i think so. chairman carper, ranking member johnson. i'm lindene patton. chief financial officer for zurich. we provide coverage for customers in the 170 countries. we've been serving customers in the united states since 1912. we have over 8,000 employees nationwide. i would like to thank you for holding this timely hearing and i am pleased to share with the committee an insurance industry's perspective and the economic importance of investing today and improving resilience. zurich observes that the u.s. is increasingly reliant on disaster recovery funds and it's under invested in resilience. disasters have increased to over 1,000 per annum. it's risen to $400 per household. that is more than a four fold increase over the past 30 years. in other words, the resilience gap is large and growing. how large? in cummings projected that unfunded response costs for weather-related disasters would grow to more than 1 trillion u.s. dollars and might be as much as 5 point poip 7 trillion u.s. dollars. taxpayers are bearing the burden of this. without decisive risk reduction actions, economically unsustainable, accruing unbudgeted disaster costs can be expected to continue on an upward trajectory. insurance provides risk assessment, risk management and price stabilization. a study by the bank of national resilience says they're less likely to suffer from macro economic disasters. one of the many crystal differences is that disaster recovery funds typically are delivered more slowly than insurance payments resulting in slower recovery and even longer term negative economic impacts but assuring resilience to negative weather events requires being there before, during and after the weather event. should resilience be prioritized? absolutely. it provides greater protection to the public in the face of increasing extreme weather events, reduces human suffering and creates jobs and builds more resilience to housing and infrastructure. cure zurich understands that and acts accordingly. we are very proud of our efforts. hear are but a few examples. zurich has had the world economic forum, the business couldn't knew the at this institute, the institute for building and home safety. over the years we have worked with progressive customers like marriott and verizon to demonstrate by design and implement stations that are cost beneficial. zurich has committed to buy 1 million u.s. green bonds to focus on resilience at a scale that really matters. what action might the government take in the short term, medium term and long term to close this resilience gap? develop a national priority plan for resilience investment. promote increased government and private bonds. he educate the society and promote and enforce stronger building codes. two actions might include use the language over this to improve as a template. federal governments invest annually in water, pork, highway, transit and af reation infrastructure. they might include commercial applications and most importantly higher community resilience ratings. how much should be budgeted? it might be logical to take a portion of the predictable budget things. funding resilience is the wiser investme investment. funding resilience provides a 4 to 1 return on your investment. our co-panelists have talked about something in conclusion, zurich believes we have an opportunity to improve the resilience of our nation's homes, businesses and infrastructure. we believe we can save annually while providing citizens a great deal. we look forward to working with the committee in any way we can help. >> great. great testimony. thank you very much for that. i'm going to slip out of the room and take a phone call. john is going to read off the questions for this panel. i'll be right back. thanks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ms. patton, i'd like to begin with you. you mentioned a growing resilience gap. how much of that gap, especially the growth of it, would you contribute to the fact that we tend to build in readvice beingy areas in this country? >> i'm not in a position to identify the percentage but it's significant. we have a history and there's a lot of data and research that we have a migration to coasts and locations that have limited water supplies. under all of those circumstances you put more assets in harm's way so the suggestion is that at least that's a portion of the driver that the climate is changing. there a knows question. >> when society is subsidizing that, that increases that type of danger? >> there is research which i've cited which does demonstrate that. in fact, if there is an interference and a subsidy was basically providing information to an individual that moving to this location is cheap and if there is a disaster, it will be paid for. >> we have that interference? >> we do. >> what would cause that interference? >> there are a multitude of things. some is funding and some is appearance. there are programs that come in and provide subsidies. there are also circumstances where there are perceptions and there was a study done by a federal task force after sandy looking into what people understood about their insurance. people didn't understand what was insured or not insured. their understanding was that federal disaster funds would be dlifrd kind of like insurance. >> they were correct, weren't they. >> the reality is the priorities for federal disaster floodings is to get critical areas up and running. they are not a 100% substitute and i have cited research in my testimony that cites that and demp mon straits that demographics have the same. you can have longer term macro economic impacts. >> it does -- as necessary as federal help is in those circumstances, it creates more hazard, doesn't it? >> it is very clear that in under circumstances the federal government must respond under disaster. it's a political imperative, a social imperative. >> but. >> there are ways to structure programs in terms of prioritizing, spreading information. there are some risk base price signals that may be add justed. there are other suggestions that exist in terms of prioritizing infrom strurk tur development. >> to you think people billion 1 million, $2 million right on the beach if they had to pay the full cost of their risk on thir insurance? >> i don't think i'm in a position to know that. >> you come from the insurance business. is it a fantasy to think that overtime we could prioritize the flood insurance program? >> i would have to think about that. let the market work. >> that is not happening right now at the national flood insurance program. >> there is a team. >> which is suspended. >> which are designed to allow that. >> again, that's not a good thing in terms of reduction of that moral hazard. >> the position is -- >> and you're really creating incentive for risk management and risk mitigation and resiliency creation, correct? >> absolutely. i couldn't agree with you more. it's very important that the risk-based price signal and the insurance functionality be permitted to make sure that risks can be assessed. they want to be informed what the actual functional cost is and they need to make co gent decisions on before they invest, how much they invest. >> we're talking about private individuals, previous property. that's who they purchased insurance for -- whether you're talking about local, state, or federal government and in general the federal government is primarily a self insurer. >> does that reduce -- does that reduce their incentive to mitigate risk in your opinion? >> it's their money. if they were not self-insurance, would that help mitigate risk? >> the only thing i can point you to is that there is a long-standing comptroller general's opinion which dates back to the 1700s which indicates that the federal government is supposed to be a self--insurer by rule and there are policy reasons for that but the functionality of private insurance, you're exactly correct, is to send a risk base signal to encourage people to control the costs over time. >> the insurance industry has a unique capacity to try that discipline. either of you two gentlemen want to comment on that line of questioning? >> i think i would just add that the problem that we're seeing are people are libertarians until they need help. we are trying to figure out ways in delaware, in one of the counties, where they don't have some of the more protective policies in place not to have state government be the back stop because they're knocking private insurance and they're coming to us and saying, you have the strange issues and erosion issue. they're trying to find out whether it's a local issue or national. >> okay. dr. kirshen? >> i'm not an expert on insurance. i know if water rights go up, people start to conserve. i think it's very important we send the rights for climate change as well. i also want to say that i think, you know, the engineering and the science community and the social science community, we know how to do adaptations. it will give us the opportunity to work with stakeholders. >> again, thank you all for your testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i just asked my staff to double check to see if when we pass the omnibus appropriation bill if there's a one year stay on the effective implementation of the flood insurance changes to the laws. that was waters legislation. my understanding is there's a one year stay but i think it expires at the end of this fiscal year. there's a great opportunity for us to take some of what you said here today and to work with the administration who is not wild about flood insurance and especially on this committee and see if we can't make sure that we're properly aligning the incentives to incentive advise folks to do what they need to do so it doesn't all fall on taxpayers. tony pratt, collin o'mara referenced my name. tony, thank you so much for all of the good you do for the people of our state and the example that i think you help set for folks in other states as well. you said something, ms. patton, in your testimony. i think you mentioned some action that congress could take. i'm just so conducive to the testimony? >> right now there is a significant disconnect, it's not just for that but other appropriation bills where the design standard cannot keep up with the risk. we saw this frankly in delare at the union river bridge where we built a beautiful new bridge, $150 million but we weren't successful with working with the army corps and protection with the cost sharing. we're happy to pay our share of a system to protect that asset. so making sure the block grants are the life blood of many municipalities in terms of delivering projects. and having that especially with the cost share having more accountability can save a lot of money in the long run. >> thank you. dr. kitchs kirshen? >> i'm not going to say much because i'm not an expert. >> it never stops us from weighing in. >> my observations working with communities, there are many institutional barriers from adaptations and we have to address them. this is an example of some of them. >> thanks. this will be a next question for i think secretary o'mara and dr. kirshen. mitigation can, as we know, be very cost effective in reducing lives lost and damages caused by natural disasters. we've had a lot of success with mitigation in delaware in part because of the fellas that are sitting here in front of us today. i think we've done it with a relatively small investment saving our state a lot of money and i would just ask a question if we could, dr. kirshen, and secretary o'mara. based, dr. kirshen, on your research, how beneficial is extreme weather mitigation, especially long-term plan when it comes to saving money? >> well, i think as i said earlier, we're getting extraordinary cost benefit ratios. if you look at the benefits of adaptation versus doing nothing, benefit cost ratios of 4 up to 30 in some cases. so it's extremely beneficial to do this. and i think communities realize this. when i'm working with quite a few local communities in massachusetts and new hampshire on adaptation. they do get it because they're in charge of infrastructure and they are looking for nech how to do this. we're giving them the data and they need people to help them interpret the data and also think about how to use the data in planning for climate change. the problem with climate change is the uncertainty. we're not exactly sure what the future climate is. we know how to deal with uncertainties with scenario analysis and other analytical technique. i think we have to provide support from the communities to do planning. it's relatively cheap compared to the huge cost if we don't do good planning, thank you. >> secretary o'mara just to follow up on that based on your experiences, what needs to be done to encourage and support state and really local governments, too, to support individuals and businesses to adopt mitigation measures such as adopting -- adapting, adopting updated building codes to better address the threats of extreme weather? >> i think there's kind of two pieces to the equation. one deals with what senator johnson was racing about the economics. making sure that the economics in action are very, very clear to folks and also kind of toughening up a little bit and making sure that if people don't take those actions, government does not come in and bail them out which is obviously the easier political outcome. if we're able to do those things, you'll see behavior change quickly. money will drive a lot of these investments. i do think there are significant opportunities for the federal government to incent people whether that's earlier consideration whether it's competitive grants or having a slightly higher percentage for either percentage allocations for match or other types of federal systems, where if you've done the hard work it will saif the federal government money. we don't have claims that met the fema threshold after sandy. rehobath was intact. we didn't receive any from hud because our systems were successful. we should be rewarded or incentive advised in some way and the other states should be penalized. i think aligning those incentives is some work that this committee could lead on and find incentives and drive great incentives. >> ms. patton, if i could, a question for you. with the insurance companies having a long history of risk management when it comes to extreme weather events, are there ways to create more public/private partnerships to help share the knowledge between federal and state and local governments? >> i believe that there are, and i think it's very important to continue those and to take those exemplars that you have, which are ongoing, and expand them. as i mentioned earlier in my testimony, i'm very excited about the resilient star pilot at dhs. it provides a framework -- >> so am i. let the record show, so am i. >> it provides a framework in which we can actually and we are collaborating in a public/private partnership. we are at the beginning of this pilot but i can see it very easily extended to the commercial and infrastructure context. when that happens and you can actually create a resilient community, the -- it would enable other private sector opportunities. other types of incentives may present themselves if you have a resilient community, it may be obvious that it might be a really good place to invest. it might be obvious that the risks where loans are placed under those circumstances are reduced. it's not just about insurance, it's about the long-term functionality and economic resilience of that community to be able to survive and thrive even before, during and after extreme weather events. that is just one example. i think that to the extent that some of the other recommendations of the panel can be followed through in terms of providing opportunities with infrastructure investment and matching funds, that will provide other opportunities for private sector to inject themselves into the process. >> one final question. i'm going to ask you to make real brief answers. the votes have gun. it's begun. >> we're trying to reduce our deficit to 550 billion, but as a result son of my colleagues have been critical because they cost the federal government money, such as beach replenishment for coastal communities but other things as well. what are the counter arguments to those who say taking the steps needed to build resilience are really too costly and, therefore, should not be taken? if you have any parting advice on us, how can we better plan for extreme weather events and reduce financial risks to our government? we have to wrap it up fairly briefly. secretary o'mara, would you close us out with that? >> i think we'll let the economics speak for themselves. if we can say an extra dollar will save you $5 or $10 on the fema budget, that's a compelling argument. i'll take a five to one return any day. the same thing can be said for any other type of infrastructure investment today. there is a huge opportunity right now because we do have data that we could collect fairly easily in communities that were well prepared before sandy and the ones not well prepared. we should be collecting that data as we speak to make sure we know the costs to the federal government for communities that weren't prepared. you have two communities, one with healthy dunes, one without healthy dunes. they got more money. we should quantify that. >> thanks. very briefly dr. kirshen? >> i agree with secretary o'mara, but, again, that said, an ounce of cure is worth a pound of -- ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. >> you've got it. >> i think that's the solution. >> thank you. ms. patton? >> i would also agree that economics do speak for themselves. i think it is not just about the expense, it's about the potential interruption to the grows domestic product for the regions and about the potential for communities to no longer exist or be severely interrupted for not just weeks but years. it has both direct economic value but it also has social value in the short term and long term. >> let me conclude, first of all, thank you. thank you all. you've got a lot going on in your lives. grateful that you took some time to spend some time this morning with us. the only thing going back to what i said as we begin this hearing, mike enzy, senator from wyoming, one of my favorite colleagues, everybody loves him. 80-20 rule. how do you get a lot done, focus on the 80% we agree, set aside the 20%. there's a lot we agree on. this is a fairly controversial hearing. senator johnson came and stayed and he stayed a lot longer than he anticipated staying because he thought it was worthwhile. there's a great deal we can agree on and work on. so i just thank you for helping us to find that 80%, find the middle, and we are going to have some more questions. a couple more questions that folks will ask of you. some senators who were not here will submit questions. i think you have about 15 days to do that. if you receive any of those questions, if you could respond promptly we'd be most grateful. with that, this hearing is adjourned. thank you so much. >> steve wozniak discusses the origins of the company. at 12:30 p.m.gin eastern. jane little highlights how the media covers religion, including the pope, issues of same-sex marriage, and al qaeda's use of social media. you can watch her remarks beginning at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> i believe the creationists should educate the kids out there. we are teaching them the right way to think. historical sciences based upon the bible, but i am challenging them to be up front about the disc -- the difference. >> there are pyramid is older than that. there are human populations that are far older than that with traditions i go back farther than that. it is not reasonable that everything changed for thousand years ago. why everything i mean the species, the surface of the earth, the stars in the sky and the relationship of all the other living things on the earth to humans. evolution versus creationism. the debate is on wednesday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. next on c-span, q and a with lee ellis. followed by washington journal, live with today's headlines. ginsburg and elena kagan, later. a discussion about the three branches of u.s. government and the future of democracy. >> this week on q&a, lee ellis discusses his five and a half years in north vietnam as a prisoner of war. >> lee ellis, go back to november 7, 1967, at 4:00. what happened? >> i was in my 53rd combat mission in vietnam. that day, we rolled in and were working with a group that had called us in and said that they needed some bombs on gunners. we rolled into do that and there were two of us on the f-4 phantom. the bombs came off the airplane at 4000 or 5000 feet. unusually, the airplane burst into several pieces. we were tumbling, end over end. there was smoke in the cockpit and i could not communicate with my partner. i knew i had to get out and i was well trained. i was about to eject over enemy territory that we had to bombing for a couple of years. there was no other choice and i pulled a handle. everything worked automatically and perfectly. it blew the canopy and blew me 50 feet in the air. it separated the seats from me, which automatically pulled the d-ring. it was less than 2.5 seconds from when i pulled the handle. there was a lot of shooting going on at the ground and they were shooting at our wing man with a nest of guns. there was a good number of militia down there that were protecting a strategic target. a lot of shooting going on. the wonderful training that i had in the air force and the military, they do a great job of training, i was unfazed by the fact that i was in enemy territory and i had bullets going by my parachute. what was on my mind was even ding capture.- eva there was a river to the south, and i thought that if i could get to the river, i have a life raft and i'm only 1.5 miles from the gulf of top can. in. onk i can make it there and the navy can pick me up. unfortunately, i did not have enough altitude to slip my parachute. the old parachutes did not slip very well. that is what i did and it took them a couple of minutes to capture me. i made a radio call and f