Rhode of the new yorker and the investigative correspondent for National Public radio. I told david and dina, we were talking just before the session, that as a career diplomatic, Career Foreign Service officer when i hear the term deep state, and thats the title of our book today, when i hear that term, i think about some thuggish authoritarian regime, you know, turkey in its worst days, egypt under the dictators. I dont think of the United States of america. As we begin today, since david and dina are both really respected members of the American Press corps, i want to say how much we respect the press. The Aspen Security Forum would not work without journalism, nearly not all, but nearly all of our sessions are chaired by journalists. And i think of the citizen, one of the saving graces of the United States is the 1st amendment, the power of the press. I felt in government, as a state department spokesperson, that the press was doing its job to challenge me and challenge my colleagues in the administrations in which i worked, and when we talk about deep state, you know, we should never talk about the American Press corps because the American Press corps is part in parcel of our democracy. An Investigative Reporter will chair this, very experienced for National Public radio. David rhode is here to talk about his new book on the deep state. I met david a long time ago, during the bosnia war. I met him after a very tragic and unfortunate incident when he was kidnapped by the Bosnian Serbs and held for ten days, mercifully released. He lived to tell the tale. He was also kidnapped as many of you know by the taliban in november 2008 and held for seven months. I dont know any other reporter who has been kidnapped twice, risked his life to tell the story to the american people, and what a career hes had. David won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the massacre of july 1995, the worst war crimes in europe since the second world war. Hes won the george polk award, a very distinguished award for foreign reporting. A long time New York Times correspondent, now with the new yorker, i think this is going to be a fascinating conversation to talk about the deep state, and the last thing i will say is i defended the press corps, i also want to defend the men and women of the u. S. Foreign service. When i heard President Trump say at a press conference with the whole nation watching when he called the state department the deep state, it was a disgraceful moment for the american presidency because these are men and women of the Foreign Service who take an oath to the constitution to serve their country. Theres a lot of risk involved, and i just wanted to pay tribute to both to the Foreign Service and to the press. David and dina, as i turn this over to you. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you. Thanks. So what i wanted to start with, if i could, do i get in a big screen . Does nick go away . What do i do . Im just going to fire away. Im happy to have you there. [laughter] excellent. Okay, david, let me just start, i think that for most of us who have been following Foreign Policy for sometime, this idea of the deep state as nick burns said as ambassador burns said was sort of something we associated with authoritarian rulers. Is the deep state in the United States a thing, a real thing . Or is it sort of a figment of some peoples imagination . My first answer to that would be that it is a very real thing to the American Public. The poll numbers show this. These polls are sort of a wakeup call to members of the National Security establishment, you know, that are watching this and also to journalists, the mainstream journalists. I worked at the New York Times, the Christian Science monitor and the new yorker. The American Public doesnt trust us, doesnt trust the government officials, doesnt trust the cia, fbi, and doesnt trust journalists like us. I started writing this book because there was a poll i found that came out in the spring of 2017 and 70 of americans said they believed that groups of unelected officials and generals had too much power in washington, that they were secretly influencing American Government policy. Yeah, i never use the term deep state. It really hasnt been used in the United States until the trump presidency, but we have a problem, and it would be naive of us to blame all this on donald trump. You know, we need to think about how government officials and how journalists are communicating with the American Public and how we can rebuild and regain their trust. You said 70 of the people polled thought that there was some sort of deep state, were you in part of that 70 , or were you in the 30 . This is a good journalist. I deserve every question i get. Look, the book concludes that i dont like the term deep state. I think it is political rhetoric. And i think its a very effective tool that President Trump has used to discredit government officials, even members of his own administration who contradict the president s narrative or political talking points. That said, there is a permanent government. I use the term institutional government that exists, you know, no matter who is the president. Theres countless laws and procedures that are supposed to keep them all from being political. I agree with President Trump that unelected government officials should carry out the orders of elected president s. They are legal and ethical orders, government officials have to carry them out. We cant have the will of the people being ignored after an election. But there is no deep state in the way donald trump uses the term. Its an exaggeration that he uses to discredit rival sources of information, and he uses it for political gain. Whats the difference between Something Like the deep state and eisenhowers military industrial [inaudible] . So whats fascinating is that, you know, the government is on the right and the left but they use very different terms. Liberals use the term you just mentioned, liberals talk about the military industrial complex. They fear generals and big defense contracting firms that they feel are driving the country into war after war after war. Conservatives, you know, a better term, a term they often use is the administrative state. That would be this evergrowing government thats incessantly invading our personal lives and taking away our freedoms and the personal information we should control. But theres a funny thing right now, we can talk about this more later, theres sort of an agreement on both sides. Theres one thing that the right and the left agree on these days, and thats how do we, you know how do we control these agencies . How do we control the big private companies that are collecting our data in the digital age and kind of maintain privacy while also, you know, securing the country . And do you think theres an agreement that these Technology Companies need to be controlled . Yeah, we saw that, you know, recently, and this is, you know, one thing, since i finished the book. We had this hearing last week with the big tech companies, four companies that are worth nearly 5 trillion dollars in value, conservatives feel that they are censoring them. Liberals feel they are not doing enough to stop the widespread, you know, conspiracy theorys that are online. The second issue that makes this so important right now is the pandemic. We cannot get a consensus among americans about how to capture the pandemic, how many people are dying. Conservatives think the government count is exaggerated and higher than it should be. Liberals think the government count is under what it should be. You know, if, you know, by some miracle there is a vaccine, you know, theres i think were experiencing an enormous crisis of information right now. And part of its online. Part of it is the press not performing well. But, you know, if we cant agree on basic information and basic facts, people will refuse to take the vaccine, on both the left and the right. They wont believe Government Experts saying this vaccine can help you, not harm you. I think whats very strange about being a journalist today, in this current environment is that in the old days, you used to get two Administration Officials who were in the room to tell you what happened. Maybe they didnt talk to each other. Maybe they were on opposite sides of the table. This was enough for you to say okay, i know what happened in the room. Ki report it. I can report it. But now these two Administration Officials may be completely honest. They may have leaked it to you just the way you like it as a reporter and then the Administration Says it never happened. How do we deal with a problem like that . When you are talking about information problem and journalistic problem. Im glad im not covering the white house right now. I dont know how i would do it. I think its i thought about this a lot in working on the book. I want to repeat my core finding. There is no deep state in the way donald trump uses the term. Hes using that term for political gain. And hes spreading conspiracy theories about a deep state that doesnt exist, again, for political advantage. Thats my finding. His claims about a deep state which started with just the cia and the fbi. When pentagon officials, when he was when President Trump was questioning some war crime investigations that were being carried out against soldiers, you know, President Trump called the pentagon the deep state, and now, you have, you know, dr. Tony fauci and cdc officials being called members of the deep state by the president s supporters. It is important to call out falsehoods. I admire you know, glen kesslers work and the washington posts work and the fact checker, the facts he looked at matched his findings matched mine. I think calling out false statements and exaggerations is key. I also think it is important, though, to not you know, theres plenty of calmness and they can say mean things about the president or members of the house and the senate, as reporters, though, we shouldnt get into the name calling and get trolled and exaggerate our findings. If that makes any sense, like, declare, you know, false statements false, but dont spin and get caught up in the whole opinion thing that is dominating so many today. Im wondering if you think whether bill barr is somebody who you believe is a proponent of this idea of the deep state. In the book you talk a lot about the idea of the deep state being very married to this idea of president ial power and what the executive power should be. Can you talk a little bit about that . As i said, President Trump uses the term deep state for political advantage, to unfairly discredit others. Bill barr throughout his career for decades has believed that the presidency was weakened too much after watergate. He wasnt alone. There was a group of conservatives, dick cheney and don rumsfeld who worked with president ford felt it had gone too far, so did ed neese so did scalia before and after he became Supreme Court justice. Theres a school of thought, the war powers act, the creation of the senate and house intelligence committees to control the cia, the creation of inspectors general, of independent counsels, people like robert mueller, theres a view that all of those things weaken the presidency. And barr laid this out clearly in a speech he gave to the Heritage Foundation last fall. He said this country needs a strong presidency to survive. He argued if you look at american history, the great depression, world war ii, some would say right now the pandemic, the branch that says the country when it faces a crisis is the presidency. It is the only branch that can act decisively and help save people in peril, and he believes that its still weakened, that the presidency is too far weaker than it should be, that all these investigations of trump are preventing him from using his justified executive powers. Let me just say, many other scholars i spoke to think thats a very extreme interpretation, that bill barr is wrong. The presidency regained the power it lost after 9 11. And bill barr is creating a dangerously high level of power right now for President Trump. So we touched on this a little bit earlier about the effect the deep state is having on the pandemic as we see it now. Part of the undercurrent that you havent said explicitly here but you talk a lot about in the book has to do with the distrust of experts and how that is sort of part and parcel of this idea being against the deep state. Can you talk about how thats affected the pandemic and how we might be able to change the narrative before if we actually have a break between the first wave and second wave of the pandemic . How we might be able to change that narrative ahead of the second wave . So i talked none of this is in the book but im working on this topic still and trying to write about it. You know, former white house official told me that the president like many, you know, conservative republicans, felt that the private sector could respond to the pandemic quickly and more effectively than government agencies. Thats very common. But beyond that, the president , you know, trump does distrust Government Experts. President trump doesnt believe this is one interesting aside i got from an aide that there are nonpartisan public servants. He doesnt believe that anyone is sort of truly nonpartisan. He thinks that government officials like one president more than another and work harder for some president s more than others, that these bureaucrats, like slow roll proposals they dont like, and theres no question that, you know, government officials fight turf battles. They want their agency to get more money and get the, you know, the top billing and the best coverage and that they leak to influence stories. Every president to be fair to trump has, you know, come into office and said, you know, they didnt trust government bureaucrats. Ronald reagan felt the state Department Officials werent implementing his efforts to get tough on communism. Barack obama didnt trust the pentagon. He felt the generals were leaking possible troop increase numbers for afghanistan and boxing him in to a troop increase that was larger than the one he wanted. But again, no president has accused, you know, career government officials, you know, call them bureaucrats in a more pejorative term of carrying out a coup against them. Donald trump is the only president of accusing government officials of carrying out a coup. I found no evidence whatsoever of that. And i had Trump AdministrationCurrent TrumpAdministration Officials say to me you are right. There is no coup. You know, the president that i serve is exaggerating. Right. And so how do you how do we change this narrative . How do we make it i dont want to say more positive because that makes me pollyannaish but how do we get it closer to reality i guess . A, i think journalists and members of congress and, you know, out of the respect of the public suspicions that are out there, dont dismiss all the online conspiracy theories they are widely believed. I start the book talking about the Church Commission which was created in the late 70s after the watergate and the Church Commission exposed abuses by the cia around the world and inside by the fbi in the u. S. Itself. It was john tower, frank church was a democrat from idaho. John tower a republican from texas. People can laugh at this, but it was a bipartisan investigation. It stuck to facts. I mean clearly theres politics in all situations. We havent had a sort of bipartisan investigation in years. But there have been successful investigations, the iran contra investigation, the report was accepted by most americans as factual. The 9 11 commission, you know, dealt with the National Crisis and proposed reforms, and those reforms were carried out. We need some kind of Commission Like the church reform, journalists to work like i have talked about, like sticking to the facts and not getting caught up in kind of the partisan brawl. You know, that generation, the postwatergate generation had lost credibility with the American Public. They regained it. You know, there was folks who, you know, William Webster took over the fbi and revamped it and wasnt anywhere near, you know, reverse that j. Edgar hoover did, so its possible. I think thats what needs to happen today. Back on the bipartisan issue, you know, theres a funny alliance in the senate, rand paul, the conservative libertarian and ron widen the liberal democrat from oregon both agree privacy is a huge hearing. This came up in a tech hearing, this last week republicans and democrats actually agreed that were way behind in legislating for the digital age. We need rules of the road for how we protect our privacy, how we secure the country, and there is a way for democrats and republicans to agree on this and move forward. Theres a tiny glimmer of optimism. Were going to be taking questions now from the audience, and i just want to remind the participants that you can raise your hand to ask a question, even though were virtual. Normally i would call on you in the back of the room and ask them. But i have this background so we can feel that were in you are inside. [laughter] [inaudible]. Okay. I guess do you have a question for us . Hi. [inaudible]. I deeply appreciate your book. Great discussion. My question is not everybody has resources or intention or time to fact check everything that comes across the feed, and social media is a huge platform for getting information. People get a lot of information from facebook, social media, such. Whats your recommendation regarding people not just imbibing whatever comes on their social feed but Fact Checking on having Critical Thinking before they ingest and make decisions based upon things they see on social media . Aside from listening to npr or reading the new yorker . Yes, actually i love npr, thank you, dina. Plug, plug. [laughter] no, this is a fantastic question. You probably know this already and many people might know this, but i think section 230, which gives twitter and facebook and google and all these online platforms, they have no legal liability for false statements and slanderous statements that are posted on facebook, twitter, and the online platforms. If dina slanders someone in her story, if i slander someone in a story in the new yorker, i can be sued for libel. Some argue those laws are too loose. So i would make realize that absolutely everything you are seeing online has not been fact checked at all, and then this will sound hokie but i mean it. If you are a conservative and you are seeing these crazy things in your facebook feed and you are not reading them in the wall street journal, i would use the wall street journal news pages as your guide. What youre seeing on facebook is false. The wall street journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns fox news. Clearly their editorial page is deeply conservative. If it is not in the news pages of the wall street journal, it is false. There is a value to journalism. Again, we have a crisis of information right now across the world. It is leading people to