Together, how that partnership worked. Sen. Mccain when the terrible tragedy of 50 veterans dying in phoenix that were part of the phoenix v. A. Because theyre on a phantom waiting list, it happened that triggered this whole crisis that continues with the v. A. The leaders asked me to negotiate with bernie, who was at that time chairman of the Veterans Affairs committee. I must say to you that it was a very colorful and xrated experience. I believe that my reward will be in heaven, not here on earth. [laughter] wedid reach an agreement, did compromise, and i think the v. A. And the country is better off great i think its the first step in reforming the v. A. , not the last. To anyone whoy asks from Bernie Sanders is an honest man. Hes an honest man, and his word is good. Once we reach an agreement, that agreement stops. And now hes brushing his hair, which is really a remarkable thing. [laughter] so, im obviously in strong disagreement with him on his basic philosophy and the role of government. An honest individual to work with to reach an agreement, i respect Bernie Sanders. We really appreciate it. Sen. Mccain chairman mao said, darkest waste always before its totally black. Weekends newsmakers, our guest is governor Bob Goodlatte of virginia. He talks about the committees work on immigration and sentencing reform as well as other issues related to counterterrorism and gun violence. The biggest thing that we can do with regard to gun violence is to enforce the laws that we currently have on the books. We have hundreds of them at the federal level, thousands that this at the state and local level, and the record over the last six years is one of steadily declining enforcement of our gun laws. Let me give you a few examples. In 2010, the last year for which data, but the partial data we have for subsequent years would confirm this, in that year approximately 72,000 people lied on their instant check form when they went to buy a gun from a lawfully licensed firearms dealer. Of those 72,000, 5000 were referred by the fbi and other Justice Department entities for prosecution to the 94 u. S. Attorneys offices in the country. Of those, only 62 were prosecuted. The odds are that if you go to a gun store right now and deliberately put false information on the form, have you been convicted of a felony, do you have a Mental Health disability that would prohibit you from owning a firearm, the odds are that even if you do caught, theu are odds are less than one in 1000 that you are going to be prosecuted. That is indefensible, and so to try tolook at ways make more new laws, we should be very serious about making sure the laws we currently have are being prosecuted. See the rest of that interview with congressman goodlatte tomorrow, at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Cspan presents landmark cases, the book, a guide to our landmark cases series which explores 12 Historic Supreme Court decisions, including marbury versus madison, korematsu versus the United States, brown versus the board of education, and roe versus wade. Book features introductions, background, highlights, and the impact of each case. Written by a veteran Supreme Court journalist and published by cspan in cooperation with cq press. Cases is available for 8. 95 plus shipping. Get your copy today at www. Cspan. Org landmarkcases. Part of the fbi investigation of the deadly shootings in San Bernardino, california is accessing the suspects phone data through the phone companies. Since the nsas Data Collection program was shut down for days prior to the shooting, that shut down ordered by the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, leaves all nsa records offlimits to fbi agents. The Associated Press reports that authorities were able to obtain roughly two years worth of calling records directly from the phone companies of the married couple blamed in the attack. The period covered the entire time that the female suspect lived in the United States, although her husband had been here much longer. On this mornings washington journal, we spoke about the itss new protocol and potential impact. This is 15 minutes. Joining us for conversation on the National Security agency, and collection program, two guests. And stewartguliani, baker. To both of you, thank you for joining us this morning. Have heard about this program, section 215, the collection of metadata. What does it include specifically . Guest the Program Collected metadata, that is to say, who you were calling, and who was calling you. All of the calls into and out of the United States. Database,t in the locked up the database, and said, the u. S. Government can go into the database if they are theying a terrorist, and have a terrorist number, and want to see who is in touch with the terrorist. Host as far as the nature of the information that it took in did a deal with content, or was it more logistical . Guest it did not deal with content, but we have to remember, it is extremely revealing. Metadata tells you a lot about someones life. The program was extremely invasive. Congress did the right thing by limiting it. Host since you both brought it up, the limits on it. What limits were placed on this program . Look, wengress said, will have this program, but we will not allow it to be quite as broad a you cannot collect all the records in america, or in a particular state. You can collect records if you bee a reason for it to collected. Its not completely eliminate the problem of the government collecting large amounts of information on innocent people. The original program was filled with protections. You can only go into the database if you had reasonable suspicion. There were only 20 people authorized to go in. The number of searches work 300500 per year. This was not a dragnet program. There were a lot of protections on going in. What the changed program does is essentially say, the government cannot collect all of that and put it in one place. Have to go to individual carriers and ask each of them to look through the records that they have collected and stored. Hat is what they are doing now again, they have to have a reasonable suspicion with respect to terrorist numbers before the collect the information. It is it i have about is not anywhere near as fast, probably not as copperheads of as comprehensive, and if you look at San Bernardino, we would have liked to have known smmediately who those terrorist were talking to, and have a theirassessment of connections. The old program would have done that. Now, the data is locked away. Host can i ask, what was the justification for the broad collection of information . Guest if you are trying to quickly determine, who are these with, you in touch need to be able to do the search of a be able to get it quickly, and that is the only way you will be able to control how you get that data. The phone Companies Keep it as long as they find it useful, which is certainly not as long as they might find it useful. Host if some incident happens and you have to get a wide scope of who is talking to whom and things of that nature. Two important points the agency said that these would not enhance their intelligence capability, so we have no evidence that this would undermine their ability to investigate legitimate terrorists. The second point is this program has not proven to be effective. There were two independent boards that looked at the nationwide called Metadata Program, and what they concluded as they never stopped an act of terrorism. Aboute of the assertions whether limiting the program will actually have an impact on National Security joining us, ifs you want to ask them questions about nature of collecting information and things associated with that, 202 7488001 for republicans, 202 7488000 for democrats, and independents, 202 7488002. You can also post on our website, on our Facebook Page at facebook. Com cspan, and on twitter cspanwj. Mr. Baker, what do you think about what she said . I do not want to paraphrase. Guest it is fair to say it never stopped a plot that it was designed to stop, but it was designed to stop plots where careful reparation and recruiting and planning for an operation was carried out in a terrorist safe haven, and terrorists coordinated here and quickly launched an attack, which was what happened in 9 11. The reason it never stopped a plot is that we wiped out those plots at the source by taking away the taliban and al qaeda safe haven. What is truly troubling as we are getting rid of this program just as there is a new safe iraq emerging in syria and , as we have seen in paris and now possibly in San Bernardino, about people in that safe haven are planning and recruiting for attacks on the United States and the west, and we have deliberately blinded ourselves to carrying out a quick assessment of possible attacks, identifying possible attacks just when we need the program most. Guliani, what do you say about that . Guest there is no purpose to investigate people who were not associated with terrorism, and that is what a dead a collected a lot of information about people who the government did not need about. They have to go to the intelligence court and request information when they believe they need it. That is assistant to allow us to respond to emerging threats and emergencies. If the government needs information, they are able to get it in a timely fashion. Host the first call is from a hamas in milwaukee, wisconsin is from mohammed, from the milwaukee, wisconsin. The nsa was collecting this information from the past several years, and killers, bernardino especially the man, were in contact with other people who the fbi and department, security say were on a known terror watch list, they were known to be in contact with them why was somebody like this, they were collecting all this credit card data, telephone data, why would someone with the oldest ammunition online using credit cards possibly, all the machine guns and everything, the department of Homeland Security and the fbi failed the United States and the public by not being able to control these people. What happened to all of the data that was collected on these guys . Guest let me address that first. The program that we are talking about today is designed to get people who are in touch with terror by phone outside the do notstates, and so we know at least i do not know from the report, whether the or ints were online encrypted form or whether they were actually phone calls. If they were phone calls, then they should have shown up, but if the phone call occurred after that would be over, and it would have been very difficult for the fbi or nsa to identify those contacts and quickly determine whether there was a broader plot. That i want to respond to fear it in a case like San Bernardino, there are still a lot of facts that we do not know. Been impossible for the fbi it would not have been impossible for the fbi to collect information. Could have gone for an authorization. The idea that we have reason to believe someone will do something and commit a terrorist attack and the government has ample authority to get the information they need, including call records and other types of data. Is dataain, our topic collection by the nsa. 202 7488001 for republicans. 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488002 for independents. What happens to the information that has already been collected . Where does it reside now . Guest the database still exists, but it has been locked away. The government has asked for searches to run compare how effective the new program is compared to the old program. So far, they have not gotten that authority. In fact, i suspect the aclu is litigating to prevent that. Host is that true . Guest it is important to remember that a federal court ruled that this program was illegal. It went beyond what the law allowed. Happen to is going to all of this information that was collected by the government illegally . It should be destroyed. The government did not have authorization to do what they were doing. Host and the house had legislative efforts to take hold of that information and allow the fbi, nsa, and others to gain access to it. Guest i think senator causes and senator cruz have requested that. Sooner rubio, i am sorry. Host is it easily interchangeable among those that need it . Guest yes. Connie in oklahoma, republican line. You are on, go ahead. Caller i am . Host yes, go ahead, please. Caller ok, here i go. I hear him. We are going to put you on hold for a second. We will go to another call. If you do not mind turning your television downstairs we go to jimmy next, san antonio, texas, democrat line. Hi. Caller yes, i was a member under an assay for over 40 years. I know what the program is like. I know it works. It is Nothing Better than getting raw data then you can work on immediately then waiting three days or four days to find out what that data is. And ourct our sources means of gathering that information. The other important thing is tree,ith us, it is like a you know. You find out where the root is, and then from the root you lead frome trunk, and then the trunk to the branches, from the branches to the leaves. What this Program Change has done is prohibited the nsa from finding out a source and then tracing it up without going to private companies to ask for the information, which could be compromising in the information. Guliani . Cooley o guest the reforms that were made still leave ample space for information and get it in an accelerated manner if there is an emergency. I think you will still have this ability to connect the roots and the trees. You will does have it in a way that does not result in mass surveillance that collects millions of americans information, who have no connection to terrorism or terrorist activities . Host mr. Baker . Guest i think that is like saying to someday, we are pointed to a google away from you, but you can still go to the library and look up the information you need, and we are sure you will find it there. Maybe so, but it will not be as fast or as effective, and it will put people at risk. Host connie, lets try her again. Brock, oklahoma, republican line. Go ahead. Caller what i was calling about is everybody in my community is really upset about what the president and Loretta Lynch said today they just seem like they was more concerned with the andims being harassed everything than they was the American People, and i just dont understand that. Host ok, connie. We move on to matt in new jersey, independent line. You are on with our guests. Caller thank you, good morning. I believe the gentleman, mr. Baker hello . Host you are on, go ahead. Caller yes, thank you theater good morning to her it i believe the gentleman, mr. Baker, is correct in his points. However, the First Response ability of a president is to protect the American People, and this president has failed miserably by his deliberate refusal to confront isis, and thank god the french, the russians, the brits, and the germans are doing this. And one question for these good people here why is turkey allowed to support isis by buyinkgg their oil and letting terrorists go freely between syria and europe . Last point, if i may, please obamas supporters the only thing they have left is to falsely accuse gun owners who want to protect their own families of causing problems like this. It is outrageous. Host that is matt in new jersey. Mr. Baker, if you want to pull from that, go ahead. Guest as i have said earlier, the way we stop terrorism plots for 10 years was like taking away the safe haven. Now the safe haven is back. If we are going to concentrate on stopping all of these attacks essentially in the end zone, we are going to have to be much more aggressive about pursuing the plots in the United States, and unfortunately, because of 10 years without serious attacks, congress felt it was free to start taking away those protections as well. I think that is a bad idea. Guliani . Cooley o guest it is possible to have our liberties in ways that still protect National Security, and when you look at events of recent years, what we have seen a lot of them come in many cases, the individuals who were knownhese acts to police and were known to investigators. What that tells us is mass surveillance is not necessarily the solution. Other methods allow governments to Better Connect the dots, better than they did in 9 11, and then potentially the case of the terrorist attacks. Turnaroundis the time usually from a request to a five the court by the nsa. . Guest we do not know what the turnaround time is because the program has only been running for a week or so. As far as i know, there was not any live testing, so we are actually probably giving at work of sanht now as a result bernardino, but there is no information yet on how effective that program has been. We have statements from intelligence officials who look at these changes before they were passed and said that they not believe it would intelligence capabilities, and we have provisions through draft emergencies, so every expectation is that the program will operate just as effectively and efficiently. Guest that is the second time that she has said that, and i agree that that is true, but these are people who work for president obama, and president obama decided to accept this legislation, and you would be a very fully tiebreaking intelligence high ranking intelligence official to say the president like this program, but i do not think it will work. They have little choice but to say, we think we can make this work. Guest it is important to reforms were these result a result of a twoyear debate in congress. Factwere concerned by the that the program had passed and were very concerned that it was operated with very Little Information