They very much see us as a stabilizing effect. We are providing them support. It is welcomed support. Surveys we do every 90 days or so continue to upper the support for army and police and the coalition in support of the army and police. They do not see us as occupiers persay or coming here for our own gain. Host richard on the independent line, thank you for waiting. Caller morning. My nephew is in his third year as a jag air force officer. He will be leaving for afghanistan in april for the first time. He has a two month old and a two and a halfyearold son. s mom is safety with worry that his mom is sick with worry about his safety there. I would like to call her and say it is fine. Happy thanksgiving to you and your family. We do everything we can to ensure the safety of the soldiers, airmen, sailors as well as civilians and marines we have here. Indaughters have served their very first assignment here in afghanistan. I have a lot of equity in making sure that this is the place that we sent our brothers and sisters safely. We make sure they are trained for the environment they will operate in. We ensure wherever we go, we take extra security measures and keep ourselves situationally aware. We know where people are. We also have the protective and defensive measures around the places we lived to ensure we can defend on any front that they may come. We work with our afghan partners. We use a system called guardian angels. These are men and women who have trained to carry weapons and provide security around the areas we work in ministries and various locations, etc. Ours has been my fourth t in afghanistan, and i can tell you i feel very secure with the systems and measures in place. Host gordon majors is a graduate of the academy in west point, and he is joining us from afghanistan. Jack is from illinois. Good morning. Caller morning, sir. I have a question. The all of noticing the vehicles isis is driving, fordss and and dodges. And all ofng online the heavy equipment and guns are all computer operated. They live by like they claim they can do in the states and kill one of those computers in the vehicles. Then they dont have to shoot nobody. Guest happy thanksgiving to you. I will tell you most of the systems you are talking about in terms of electronics in vehicles for Armored Vehicles or any type of vehicle are isolated. Expert in Technical Communications or information technology, but i do know that those are systems that are difficult to attack. You frankly cannot do that with electronic measures. Those really require almost a physical destruction to affect. Host very quickly, what concerns you the most being on the ground in afghanistan . What is your biggest fear . Guest frankly, i go back to one of the things i said earlier. That is a great christian. We will not that is a great question. We will not have the perseverance to see this through because of the cost. We are working very hard to drive down the costs so our efforts are more affordable to the country. We know that the army and police are frankly, and the afghan. Eople, depend on our support they know we will be there in terms of a long enduring partnership, a commitment to their success. They will have the confidence, the trust that we will help when needed, and they will basically happy morale and wherewithal to continue on. They are very concerned with our periodic commitment, ourselves, our allies, and our partners. Will concerns me most is not that we will not make progress, but that we might abandon too early before we become a sustainable effective force. Host how will you and your units celebrate thanksgiving on this thursday . Guest we already started. It is Late Afternoon here. We are about 9. 5 hours ahead of you, so we are getting into early evening. Some of us already had thanksgiving lunch o across afghanistan. We will have a thanksgiving dinner. I will be with other leaders serving for our troops. Host Major General gordon davis joining us from kabul, afghanistan. On the next wall street journal well look at free speech on college campuses, looking at student protests and marches. Washington journal on cspan and you can join us with your comments on facebook and twitter. Tonight the designing and history of the congressional gold medals, americas highest honor. We hear from a Graphic Designer and then with well show the ceremony for the world war ii monuments men. Thats at 8 00 eastern here on cspan. The Washington Center hosted four members of the White House Press corps to discuss their roles and responsibilities in coveringing the presidency. His is an hour and 15 minutes. Welcome, everybody. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Im going to have a couple of quick announcements. Then were going to have a short pause and for the cameras to pick up and then we will go to Kevin Nunnally who will introduce our moderator this morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. Im allen gross, senior director of Academic Affairs at the Washington Center. We welcome you to the second conversation of the leaders series. This is an important part here at the Washington Center, its an opportunity for you to learn about issues of public concern. This afternoon youll have a chance to learn about different strategies for citizens to make a difference about the issues that they care about and at the conclusion of todays conversation, my colleague, dr. Jen odell will share with you some logistics and thoughts for making the transition to this afternoons conversations. You come from all around the world and all around the country and we have a panel of professionals today that we had pretty much only put together here in washington, d. C. Theyre journalists, they have covered the white house. Theyre leaders in their field and theyre the folks that get to write the first draft of history. Opportunity for you to think today about the issues you care about and the difference you want to make as you embark upon your future pathways of achievement. So to introduce us in just a moment is our Vice President of student affairs, mr. Kevin nunnally. [applause] good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to welcome today our moderator, miss christie parsons. She is a correspondent, a 26year veteran of the chicago continue bune where she covered campaigns, State Government and local politics before joining the Washington Bureau in 2006. A recent past president of the White House Correspondents association, she has an undergraduate degree in journalism and english and a masters from yale law school. Please welcome ms. Christi parsons. [applause] ms. Parsons thank you for that very nice introduction. When i heard we were talking to college students, i first of all didnt expect you to show up on a friday morning and i didnt expect you to be dressed all professionally. I thought it was going to be all sweats. Were going to have to up our game a little bit. Its not at 8 00, right. I have seen a pair of shoes i like walking across. So were looking at you and listening to you, too. We appreciate you giving us that honor. Its terrific to be here at the Washington Center which does such great work in educating. Its good to talk to this crowd directly on this friday morning. Im christi parsons, i work for the los angeles times. For 26 years i worked for the Chicago Tribune and tribune newspapers. Like most people in media, i dont write for one outlet anymore. I work for lots of readers and for a wire service as well. The media landscape is changing. Well talk about that a little bit. My audience is broad and wide, too. We are really lucky to have this panel of White House Correspondents to talk about the press and the presidency. He president could not be here today. [laughter] ms. Parsons he is running the country or something, but so this will be from the perspective of the press. This is a really special group of people. These folks are members of the whous press corps and go to the whous whose and cover the presidency, we have 40 years of experience covering the whose. We thought it would be helpful for you to hear from each person here, their personal story, their professional story so how they got to where they are today. I would like to start with that. I would like to start with Kathleen Hennessy from the Associated Press who for many years was my partner at the white house covering the president for the los angeles times. Why dont you start us off. Ms. Hennessy we were colleagues three years ago, it seems sort of strange to say i worked for the Associated Press which is a wire service, which means it serves almost all of the newspapers in the country in addition to the internet and internationally, an enormous audience. It is sort of almost alone in the way that it covers the president completely fully at he have possible moment more or less. Therefore, my job when i worked for a newspaper, it shifted a little bit to really being sort of a constant presence in the white house and we consider ourselves a constant set of eyes on the president as much as possible. I started my career in washington and with the l. A. Times and then left to go and cover statehouse in nevada and politics in las vegas and sort of get out into the country and covered politics on sort of a more local level and came back to washington and covered congress and National Campaigns for the president s reelection and now the white house. And i think one of the things as i said that sort of most unique about the way that maybe that is different from the way we cover the president is really different than we cover any other politician in washington or anywhere really in any statehouse that i know of. Basically stuck with us almost all the time and any public statement, any public appearance, even if its a personal out with his wife, a golf game, we are nearby, a small cluster of the representative of the larger, we call it the pool, representative of the larger press corps is often a few sometimes in a van, its not terribly glamorous looking for any sign we can of him and making sure he is where he says he is going to be and trying to get some sense of what he is doing and the rhythm of his daily life. I want to come back to that in a minute, where you say where youre from and what your academic path was for what youre doing now . Certainly, im from st. Paul, minnesota. I didnt do any journalism when i was in school originally and sort of didnt know what i wanted to do. I studied history, i studied the classics. It wasnt a terribly useful major but i later got into journalism later in my life, i went to berkeley for graduate school, i have a graduate degree in journalism and did internships at the l. A. Times and the a. P. And now im back at a. P. Thank you, thank you very much. Lets do an introduction with april ryan who i just want to , but rted as a deejay now is on the public side. Im very excited about this new book by april, if you havent read it, you should, the presidency in black and white. April, will you do your twominute personal history for everybody. Im from baltimore, maryland, grew up in baltimore. Cut my eye teeth in news in baltimore. Baltimore is a newsy town just up the road, 50 miles door to door from my house to the white house, its a twohour commute each way. You know i love my job. I started out as a disk jockey in college, personality radio, i was a little board giving time, temp, and weather and station i. D. I wanted to delve into news. I started producing a knew news program. I left there and went to james brown, w. E. B. B. In baltimore. I did local stuff, went to chattanooga, tennessee, went back to baltimore and when i was in news, i kept stringing i am from very place i worked, every state, every city where i worked. What is that . Being a reporter who sends news from a local area to a network, it can be very knew si, they want to hear about. I was stringing to various networks to include American Urban Radio Networks and they loved what i did and they really started looking at me when the Naacp National headquarters which is located in baltimore, maryland at the time, their president was under fire and it wasnt about if he would leave, it was when and how he would leave. I broke that story and they said, we would like you to come to washington to be the d. C. Bureau chief. Little did i know, i was young and i would say dumb, little did i know that they wanted me to be the White House Correspondent. When im young, i can do that. If i would have known that, if i would have known then what i know now, oh, no. I have been a White House Correspondent for the last 18 years covering three president s and as kathleen said we were the first line of questioning of an american president and in the last 18 years, what has changed that i have seen, its more intense because we are in a social media realm. Everything is immediate on twitter. The president responds. People on the hill respond. You have to watch the twitter feed. Instead of getting the press releases and youre talking about being in the advance, you have to be in good physical condition to run after the president. The bear was on the loose the other day, i was running behind him. Im not a Spring Chicken so its been a very interesting ride. With april, when the presidency is she is having keeping up, he slows down. He did. Ok. I also would like to introduce jim from cnn. You have seen him on television. He is going to share his personal story with us here. You heard the expression people who think like theyre inside the beltway or inside the beltway. I was born about a mile outside the beltway. I was born in Fairfax County hospital, virginia, i grew up in northern virginia. Im a d. C. Kid, i grew up in the area. I went to james Mad University when i was the news director of my radio station, i started in hedo. After that, i came to washington. My very first job was in television answering the phones at channel 5 here in washington. April and im sure you guys remember sam donaldson. His wife worked at channel 5, so when i would answer the phone, january, january smith, can i speak to jim smith, please. Yes, mrs. Donaldson. I would get people their coffee and meals and i made 4. 25 an hour, had no health benefits. Jim, run out and cover this driveby shooting that happened. Marion berry would come up and give an impromptu press conference. That was my first taste of tv news and i was hooked. From there, i sort of worked my way into a job in knoxville, tennessee. Then i went to dallas, texas, and then chicago and then i was hired by cbs news and then later cnn. So its been sort of a long strange road. I finally got back to d. C. Doing what i love which is covering politics, covered the Mitt Romney Campaign in 2012 and typically whoever wins goes to the white house. Im not going to the white house, mitt romney lost, but cnn said, well, why dont you go over there. Youre pretty good at annoying these guys and giving them a hard time. Why dont you try the guy that actually won the election. So i have been there since early 2013, so not quite as long as april. I agree, its fascinating. As somebody was saying earlier, writing the first draft of history, doing the first leave shot of the first draft of history is quite challenging and its exciting. Its a little exhausting, but its a real treat and when i walk through the gates of the white house every day, i still feel, you know, like the luckiest guy in the world that i get to work in this place. And it is a real honor to work with all of you. I count myself lucky every day to work with great journalists like this. It keeps you on your toes. It keeps you honest and makes you want to do your best every day. You know, you really do write the first draft of history. I dont know if you watch the briefings, do you ever watch the White House Briefings or the press conferences at the white house, then you see jim turn around and tuck to the camera like 30 seconds after the press conference is ended telling you what just happened. The rest of the press corps is sitting there listening to the tv folks do their immediate take on what happened and its very influential over the whole process because thats the first read that most people get on air and youre not the only ones listening. The other people in the press corps are listening to that as well. Its an amazing talent. I usually need at least 15 minutes and a phone. Im still working on it. So were going to pull back the curtain a little bit about how we cover the white house and that was the first part of the curtain. Kathleen alluded to something in her opening story about the pool at the white house and this is a really Important Group of 21 people. Its 21 people at the white house every day are very close to the president for every open or press open event. They report back to other members of the press corps about what has been said or done in a small room where you really cant fit the whole press corps, but when we travel, that number is 13. Those people are on air force one with the president , everywhere he goes. Those members of the pool are with him sending feeds back to their peers to report what is going on. Kathleen as a member of the a. P. , is a member of the permanent pool. A. P. Is always in the pool, always with the president. Thats why its kind of rare actually that we have her right here right now. Watching the president right now. Someone has got him. One of her peers is watching the president. Can you talk about that a little bit. Why is it so important to keep that constant watch and the ap. Obviously spends a lot of money, a lot of resources, staff time, travel costs to make sure the president is watched at all times by your organization. Why do you do that . I think its a mix of, i mean, some of it just dark lesson of history really in that the president mean, has people want to do harm to the president of the United States and if anything were to ever happen, my organiza