On the foreign intelligence matters. You recently wrote that the Church Committee experienced of your Church Committee experience is its important we recognize the extraordinary power the United States has in the international respect for our constitutional principles. But it often seems in times of crisis we forget that power. Why is that . I think the phrase in times of crisis. We cede we being the other branches of government particularly the congress cede to the executive branch great powers. If we are under assault or perceive ourselves to be under assault. The problem is that then encourages administrations to, i wouldnt say generate crisis, but to elevate a crisis to acquire power. This is where congress is most under pressure to do its job and to ask questions. Not to undermine executive authority but to defend the constitution. And protect the American People. Again, as i said there and ive said many times in other places those of us who have had a chance to travel the world know we are being watched by not only leaders in foreign governments, but people on the street. And they watch us not only for the kind of comical excesses that we exhibit, but the degree to which we live up to who we claim to be. The American People and their president s and others claim high standards for this country then when we dont live up to those this isnt missed by people around the world. They see that. And its not only kind of hypocrisy, its used by our opponents to say see they claim one thing and do another. Fritz you have written a book on secrecy. How does government secrecy undermine the power of our constitutional structure and our democratic process . I can pick up exactly on what gary said. The heart of american democracy is that the people should be involved. Thats what were about. James madison said the in a democracy, Public Opinion is the true sovereign. And the problem is that we have over the last 60 years 60 plus years, weve gone into a secrecy society, a secrecy culture where the norm is to keep it away from the people instead of striving to get it to the people. And that is totally inconsistent with the values upon which this country was built. Another one of the myths i think that has developed is the idea that the Church Committee investigation or another type of comprehensive investigation is about playing got you. Its only about trying to find the huhabuses and wag a finger. Vice president mondale . I think one of the greatest strengths exhibited about the work of the Church Committee is how that report has endured. No one challenged accuracy of our findings. I have not heard one serious scholar say this is is not right, so we got our facts right, and it was not just a got you disclosure, it contained a range of remedies that were designed to prevent recurrence of these abuses. The two intelligence committees, which hadnt been there before, the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act, the fisa court, the new regulations and rules issued out of the white house. This was was this not a passing effort to move on . It was an attempt to bring about a fundamental change in how we dealt with intelligence so it would be more efficient, it would be more responsive, and also adhere to the laws and the constitution of the United States. And did the heads of the intelligence agencies at the time recognize it as its purpose as making the intelligence agencies better at what they did . Some of them, one of the underlying themes that i picked up i think several others did, is when you talk to people like colby, talk to some of the people in the bureau, talk to some of the people else where in the agencies they were complaining about how screwed up their agencies were. We mentioned angleton earlier. And i heard this from colby. Angleton was in a key spot in the cia. And he decided all intelligence dealing with counterespionage was contrived by the soviet union. None of it was to be believed. Dont worry about it. And it should be worried about. How do we deal with it. And there were other stories, about, you know hoover was gone now. But hoover had, you know a witchs brew of nut stuff going on in there. And people around him knew that. And he was full of all kinds of strange ideas. We could tell stories here. He wanted to make certain that any gossip about any high official was immediately delivered to him. And he had a file that he kept in his own office several file cabinets, with every salacious rumor that he heard. He wanted then what he would often do is go to the principle involve and say theres a story out, but dont worry about it well keep it under so you had another kept officer. And this stuff was going on. And it bothered a lot of the sensitive bureau agents. And so there was a great desire within the agencies to get reform and i think they wanted us to succeed. Let me fortify that with a story i told at a dinner last night that recurs. In one of our early organizational meetings as to how we should proceed. By the way since this has never been done before no one knew what step one was. Order files and so forth. It came my turn, as the most Junior Member to make a suggestion. I said why dont we start out by each of us asking for our own cia and fbi files. And the room got very, very quiet. And the since was broken by Barry Goldwater who said i dont know what theyve got on me. There you are. You had member, senior members of the senate of the United States intimidated by the very agencies we were setting out to investigate. If hoover had not been dead, wed have had a hard time going with the fbi. Maybe we would have, may we wouldnt have. But it was sure helpful he was dead. On your first point about got you, that never was our point. But we did believe that to get reform, it was important that just to theorize about the problems but to get hard evidence. And that really helped. Because we showed not only dr. King, but many, many less wellknown people were abused and injured and committed suicide and so forth. So you its not got you, but its to make credible the need for fundamental reform. Well, you take the perhaps most controversial area we investigated, the assassination attempts to a person. Members and staff the effort was not to pin blame. The effort was to find out systematically how that decision was made. And we spent hours asking questions. Hearings, secret hearings with people involved in both the eisenhower and Kennedy Administration who made the decision. Who decides in our government to kill another foreign leader. And it wasnt pin the tail on the donkey, it was an inquiry that was systemic. How does the lead erof the United States make a decision to kill a foreign leader. By knowing how those decisions are made you can put in guidelines and procedures and oversight mechanisms that will then make sure that we have systems that will prevent those improper activities. Discovering a system which was designed to make it extremely difficult to decide who made the decision, was itself a terrible mistake by the government. That system needed to be exposed and criticized. That led to one of the reforms, which is socalled president ial finding. And that came out of our inquiry that if youre going to conduct a significant covert operation, the president of the United States has to authorize it. So its not, again, to pin blame, it is to identify accountability. And thats what we were trying to establish. And one thing i appreciate about all of your service is how youve stuck to these issues and worked on them, all the decades since. Senator hart, you cochaired the 1998 hart redman for International Security which warned of security before the 9 11 attacks. What were you able to see in conducting that investigation that the administration wasnt or the intelligence agencies werent . Part of what we i think the intelligence agencies were beginning to see certainly beginning to see the terrorist threat. We had naval ships bombed or dine dynamited dynamited. Our embassies had been attacked. It wasnt like a secret. But what we were led to conclude in that Commission Two and a half years of study, was that sooner or later, this kind of conflict was coming to our shores. It wasnt that theres going to be more terrorism. Our statement in our final report was that america will be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction. We did not say commercial airliners. And that americans will die on american soil possibly in large numbers. That was nine months before 9 11. What failed there was not the Intelligence Community, it was the failure of authorities, executive authorities, to listen and Pay Attention. And they had the same intelligence we did. They just didnt Pay Attention to it. And fritz, in your book, you quote former white house chief of staff james baker who after 9 11 said the Church Committee unilaterally disarmed our intelligence agencies. Do you agree with that . I forgive him because i think he was emotional. It was the afternoon of 9 11, and he said we had caused 9 11. He didnt Pay Attention to the record, number one. For example, the Church Committee said the fbi should get out of the business of investigating, you know, dissent and should concentrate on terrorism. And we said the cia should spend more effort with human intelligence and less simply relying on machines. And also howard baker his fellow republican with the same last name, who was a great member of the Church Committee had said in the long run this will be helpful to the intelligence committee. The idea that for 25 years which it was then people in government had been helpless to correct this terrible wrong that wed done is itself absurd. And then, finally picking up on the warnings that gary talked about that were going on, in the summer of 2001 after your hart redman report the white house got many warnings that there was going to be a devastating terrorist attack. And i tried to develop in my book the argument that had they released that information to the public and particularly importantly to all the people in the government who were responsible for looking at things like strange people getting pilots licenses, it is very, very likely that 9 11 would have been prevented. They simply didnt do it. Not out of malice, but because the secrecy culture is one that once something is secret, people sort of stop thinking about t. They never thought about well wouldnt it be smart to let the public and the people in the government know that there are these real powerful threats. Well, secrecy culture operated even inside the Intelligence Community. Our Commission Recommended the creation of the department of Homeland Security because we found out coast guard customs and Border Patrol were all operating we knew that under different federal departments. They did not have a common data base. They did not have a common communication system. They had no way of talking to each other. And they all reported to separate cabinet officers. Thats why we recommended the creation of a department of Homeland Security. Those three agency and fema, not the gargantuan thing we now have. And the Church Committees recommendations were an attempt to harness the power of our constitutional check and balances and the recommended reforms touched all three branches. We mentioned the executive reporting reporting. There was the judicial branch, bringing them in with foreign Intelligence Surveillance court which well talk about in a moment senator hart you were one of the founding members of the Senate Oversight committee created as a result of the investigation. How would you rate its performance . Well, sir, Fritz Schwartz said earlier the common belief in washington was members of congress politicians, couldnt keep secrets. And overwhelming all of us heard. It was in the press this is going to fail because these guys cant keep their mouths shut. So that was challenge number one. Dont talk. Dont leak. Now, in a culture in a city of overwhelming leaks, this was a huge historic achievement. Not only the Church Committee, but the permanent oversight committee. That was step number one. Keep your mouth shut. When youre told secrets dont divulge the secrets to your friends and particularly if your friends are journalists. With all due respect. We had constitutionized the reforms of the Church Committee. That was our first task, set these recommendations into a process. Some of which were statutory some of which were be executive order. And institutionalize briefings. You had to set a system where they would retenely come before us and particularly on covert operations, this was a very tenuous situation. Because part of the mandate to the Intelligence Community was if youre going to undertake a covert operation, youve got to tell us about it. And not just an agent on the street talking to a possible source. But an operation. And that was also a question of could we keep our mouths shut. I was involved in the first two or three notifications. I think our first chairman was danny anoi. He was in hawaii when one of the first notices came in. It happened to be when congress was not in session. I happened to be here. The agency got ahold of me and said okay were told to do this. Heres what were doing. Heres the operation. I had to go to a secure phone call the chairman of the committee, brief him, and let him decide whether to brief all the rest of the members of the committee. It was a work in progress. We were inventing oversight as we went along. And then, finally, rick underfirth and i one of the Staff Members made, i think, the first congressional trip. It was just the two of us to visit cia stations abroad to see how they operated. We went to some of the key stations in europe and the middle east. As many as 10 or 11 of them including tehran at the time. 77 or 78. The shah was still in power. Ive got some stories to tell about that. Okay. Vice president mondale, you were elected Vice President and went to the executive branch. How did you look at these reform recommendations once you changed branches . If i had any questions about it id call Fritz Schwartz to help me understand it. No, i think that was a fortuitous development that helped for a smooth transition from the recommendations of the Church Committee to the incorporation of those recommendations in the executive policies. And president carter agreed with that. Attorney general agreed with that. We i talked spent time talking to the head of the agencies. They agreed to it. And when our executive rules went into place, there was i would say almost unanimity within the executive branch and the congress about where we wanted to go. And that unanimity, i think, worked for about five years and then slowly it went else where. And if i would i know were going to talk about this. But i would say, our proposal was based on the idea that there has to be a separation in checks and balances. While trying to keep this information secret. It hadnt been really tried before. And we gave it the college try. And i would say its worked fairly well. But with some with time, some disappointments. I think the congressional work of the congressional committees has been somewhat coopted by the federal agencies themselves. I think weve seen evidence that theyre restrained by maintaining diplomatic relations with each other and the public pays the price because we dont get full accountability. Weve had some recent disputes and internal disputes that have been, i think, help demonstrate that. We thought that the courts, the fisa court was going to be a magistrate function for the federal bench. And thats what it was. That the its only function would be to act on applications for warrants. It was not to be a court that operated with general jurisdiction, as though it was a regular federal court. That has slipped some. And i know this afternoon were going to hear from one of the judges. That bothers me. Because the fisa court can be a private Supreme Court for the agencies. Everything they do is in camera and without any other litigants or persons who might be interested in the issue involved at all. Its in secret. Its without other interests involved. Not only at the trial level, but at the appellate level. There is no way that a responsible party who objects to whats going on with solid reasons for doing so will be heard. And i think that the idea of giving broader jurisdiction to that court is a mistake. And either we have to broaden the rules for who can participate in these hearings, or we have to walk the fisa court back to the rules that we put in place when we made our recommendation. But the idea of having a secret court of general jurisdiction competing with regular courts and being the secret agency court, i think is intolerable. We should do something about that. If i got the floor here. Another thing that really bothers me is the state secrets defense. Almost every court case involves activities of the agencies, very quickly, a petition comes in from the government saying this is a state secret issue and cannot be heard. We cannot participate. And the courts, not always, but very often, will say well, well dismiss the case. So you cant even get to the merits of the case. No matter what the reasons for it. Weve got a general statute thats supposed to deal with secrets where the judge will hear this and make a judgment about what can be done. Under the current process the state secrets issue thats being used across the board now