His book watchdog when is about investigations you went through and the troubled asset relief vote, your vote election to congress, interesting for readers is the gray davis recall in california and the behind the scenes story of how that came about and was financed. Has a little of chairman tom baits in it. Guest a little of that. Host what prompted you to write a book . Guest i think voters have lost a little hope. They see the wrongdoing, not all of it but some of it, and dont see what difference it makes. I thought a book about taking the stories people know about and link it to what difference it makes would help people. There were things done as a result on our successes. You sent out 2,000 letters in a congressional cycle and most of those end in government complying, and making changes and investigations. Many led to fundamental changes. There were lavish parties held on taxpayers money and our oversight changed how the administration oversees that to make sure taxpayer dollars are better spent. These are Success Stories but i touch on the additional changes. Changes in Government Transparency including what is known as the data act in law. And changes in how congress can bring to the courts complaints about wrongdoing of the administration. All of those are part of what we touch on as the next step and what we will do to create a government more responsive to people. Host we are supposed to be a balance of power with the branches but looks like the Congressional Branch has been neutered over the last few years. I think your book goes to explain some of the things you try to do and the oversight and importance of oversight from the legislative branch to make sure the executive branch doesnt get out of control. Guest i think you hit the nail on the head. Congress gave up power saying we will punt over to the administration and when the Administration Takes all of the power you give them and like most burrocracies they say how do we lose the power to make laws . But the court, when addressing the oversight of congress, always sided with the legitimate requirement of the administration to comply with our oversight. They have not seen the cases brought to them for what our oversight leads to. They are very good at saying, yes, you have a right to see these documents and call witnesses. But then when we say what you are doing is wrong, if the administration shows you the back of their hand and moves on, we have not been able to get back to the courts in a way in which they can side with us, if you will, two against one if we are right, and get the administration to do what they need to do. So the Obama Administration has taken a lot of well thought and perceived grief for being above the law but they are not real. They are above congress. When the courts spoken, the Obama Administration has in nakt complied. What we need to do is get to the courts when there are differences in views between the American People and administration quickly. Host administrations never like to give up information. It is kind kind of a nuisance they have to give up with. Guest as are the associated groups and groups under foya. Host you are the only member of the house that has subpoena power but the administration got of tired of it. Guest that was learned during your tenure when president bushs people were held in contempt in the firing of u. S. Attorneys. And eric holder, when he was withholding documents about the false statement and coverup to congress in the fast and furious investigation. In both cases we eventually were vindicated by the court that the administration was over asserting their right to privacy but it took time. These are covered in the book. Both are covered in the book. Host they run the clock out of you. Guest actually the deal on the firing of the u. S. Attorneys was made and they have been ordered by a judge to do so. If the administration is about to turn and the Obama Administration wants to make it go away before you leave. This is great read. I think the readers watch dog. It is an easy read. Host it is very readable. So you probably are if not, one of, the wealthiest members of congress. You talked about roots and how you got into that. Some of the trials you went through got you there. Guest i did grow up as a big family. I was a middle class family. I was given lucky and given the opportunity to go to college and paid for by the u. S. Army to serve as an army officer. That took me from starting to a business, having to education to grow a business, and ultimately do well enough to help what is wrong in the society. The class warfare that was being instigated and the question was government antibusiness or did they not under business . Host you were an arab family in suburban cleveland in an ethnic neighborhood. Guest he would have called ourselves lebanese or Something Like that else. It was the 60s. It was a great opportunity. But there were challenges. The arab was a war that broke out in 67, happened while i was a freshman in high school. It was a very interesting time to have older brothers of some of my friends heading off to israel to defend against an existential threat. A lot of that was part of it. But this was a community of Small Business people. A lot of my neighbors, you know, my friends families owned Small Businesses. Everything from retail shops to manufacturing and it gave me an opportunity to see that there was, in america, an almost unlimited ability to join a company and grow with it or start your own company and my father never had that opportunity until late when he started a business after he had a heart attack and his career was siphoned so he started a business. Growing up i had lots of examples. And you know, for all of us that lived the american dream, there is always that question of what is next. Politics and philantherpy. J participate but i had an interest in trying to give back and have government do a better job on behalf of the American People. I started coming off as someone coming to washington to describe what i was seeing. In the nafta debate with testified on behalf of the chamber. I got hooked on it, helped candidates win and then ran for office myself. Host you had learning disabilities to overcome in high school. But you ended up inventing a lot of things. You got into the electronic business. Tell us how you built that. Guest i went through college as a business major but i was a tinker if you will. I worked in high School Working on what was then tubed radios maybe with a transistor or two. And in the army i headed up an organization of engineers and ran a computer facility. I got the picture of a couple hundred million facility i ran and was trained in software. When i left the military, i figured i could do anything and i joined a bankrupt Electronics Manufacturing firm, with a partner, and it never really did that well but it got me into business and where i could look at inventions of my own and by 198283 i was starting to invent things. Got my first patent in 1981 and i have had 37 sense. Some did very well. Most have been radio frequency controlled products and microprocessors. But i was lucky the industry was changing. When i came into car security, you stuck a key in the fender to protect your car and locked it or locked the hood. By the time i left it, everything was high tech radio controlled and interfaced with the buddy and Engine Computers to shutdown the car or open the trunk. Innovating into that space as a car guy is a winwin. You are the subcommittee over patent and trade marks and you have first hand experience on how it affects real people. Guest it does. And fixing the Patent Office is something i have been involved in and has been a passion to me. I came to congress with a number of federal judges that had become friends after our cases and they have been good helpers. We passed a patent pilot bill in my second term and that provides federal judges that specialize in Patent Litigation with additional capability, expertise, clerks, and they are able to dispatch cases quickly and accurately. The calendar is complex and the judges are more confidant making good rulings with less of overturning on appeal. But it isnt over. We are innovating as a country and a world and patents are becoming more valuable. As a result, people who litigate for a living with weak patents but for great profit and that is what the i am working on postoversight position. Host you are certainly the right guy to understand this at every level. You came to testimony for nafta in 1993, i think it was. Guest it was. Host you got the bug. The San Diego Chamber adopted you and you had ran for the senate at that point . Guest no, not until 1998. The bug in many ways, tom, you came to san diego in 1986 . Host i did. Guest a group of us chamber folks got together and the guy with the short straw was the fundraiser and i was in between so i wasnt chairman or fundraiser but i chaired all of the volunteers and we put together 10,000 volunteers to do everything that needed to be done at the convention and it was the time of my life. I got to know so many people. Some were republicans and some democrats who were civically minded they went through weeks and weeks of training and preparation to make it a great success. It was a Great Convention because of east coast time everything ended early and you had the rest of the night to party. Guest it did allow you to have an early supper followed by a long and enjoyable evening and sleep in a little bit the next morning. Gue host you end up running for the senate, spend a lot of your own money and voters probably did you a favor in not nominating you that year. Guest well, you know i do. I have a soft spot for max von. He was the state treasurer. A superb young man. Graduate of the air force academy. Great candidate but he didnt win but did better in the primary and became the nominee of our party. Through loosing in the primary, i gained a friend and an i gained an opportunity to be seen as somebody who would fight hard for what they believed in but would then support the nominee of the party. The day after you get your butt kicked in a primary having to show up at a unity breakfast and having to show up and say good things about the guy the next day. Politics is about fighting hard and loosing half the time and coming back and being a gentlemen and knowing there is another day you will do things for this country. It was good training. Matt was a friend until he passed away for cancer and i never ran for statewide office because two years later my congressman announced his retirement and i was pretty close to a shew in because i ran statewide and i ran and have been there since. Host your opponent who represented a good part of the district. Guest his district was bigger than the congress. Host tell us about the ad he ran that blew up on him. Guest politics is interesting. They took the ads that were available, and information from the senate and tried to rerun it. Through a tricycle after me for being a poor soldier. Some sergeants said i was a bad private. Host everybody who served had a soldier who said you were a bad private. Guest i was 17 and i will never disagree the 17yearold private can be questionable and i am sure i was. I responded with efficiency ratings from officers i served for. Some medal of honor resip ants and two from general clark. That sort of shut them up. Was i good private . Not an issue. I was a good lieutenant and captain. Host it also made him look book. Guest and i have an arabamerican name and he claimed some of the money i received was tainted and came from those terrible arab states because this gulf state company and by the way the guy that headed that company was an arab. His last name was nasif. We got the ambassador in there who was the head of protocol. He said by the way, this the gulf of mexico and it made him look foolish. I wasnt tainted by some sort of foreign money. The man he accused was i think an incredible figure in history and a great help to president reagan. Those mistakes change the race. It was a mistake for the state senator to overplay his hand. He had served well and might have won but if it came between a false acquisition that could be disproved he tumbled and never recovered and never ran for office again. When you came to washington, you were fortunate to get on three committees. You get one or two and you got Judiciary Committee even though you were not a lawyer. You ended up on foreign assistance which makes sense, and government oversight which was probably your third choice at the time. You dont allude to that in the book but the committee that made your reputation and your first love. Guest tom, you are the only reason i came to oversight. My third choice was the committee on Small Business and as a freshman they put me on that. I want to be a big businessman. We just start off with Small Business. I got off that and went to energy and commerce and because of the work you were doing and the fact that yeah, government oversight often did not enjoy first choice but i saw the potential for it. By my third term, i realized the work you were doing, even in the bush sfradministration was important. So with the help of now former speaker haster i got that temporary transfer and that temporary transfer lasted for a decade. Host took you on to greater things. As you know, there is a balance of powers in government but when you have one Party Controlling the house, senate and presidency they can see the destiny intertwine and you can under investigate. You didnt do that. We were talking about the Mining Service and your leadership there. I will never forget whenever we go after something the Bush Administration did wrong karl rove would call the speaker, not me, but call the speaker and try to get us off, and i would say it is our job, there is a balance of powers, we have an institutional responsibility whether we see wrongdoing in the executive branch. It is not gotcha. But we need to shine a ligoitig those things. You were subCommittee Chairman and i put you over people in seniority. Tell us what you found at interior . Guest under reagan they committed the Management Service that cobbled together organizations that seemed logical at the time. They oversaw three parts of, if you will, federal lands. The leasing of them, the fair use of them, and the collecting of the revenues of them. That seems logical until you realize they didnt seem to write leases accurately and we had a number of examples where we had been jipped if you will because of the poor writing gipped. One had to do with the deep water horizon. Even when the price of natural gas went up they alloweded huge amounts of revenue not to be recognized. We didnt know how much they were entitled until the oil and Gas Companies told them. They were so cozy they went to parpti parties and stayed overnight. This dysfunction was a scandal. The Bush Administration said you will handle it. We provided what we thought was good guidance and particularly guidance on the fact their safety oversight was so bad they never saw a problem. They never came off an oil rig and said shut this down and you figure they should at least one. When henry waxman came into play, after your term, he had two years and during those two years we never said another word about it. Just as you and congress came in, he brought Management Service inspectors were on that rig that morning, had breakfast, saw friends and family, left with a clean bill of health, and millions of dollars in damage all because of the investigation. There is an example of a successful investigation and failure to stop something bad and that guided my chairmanship than any other event. You cannot end with telling people something is wrong. You have to provide at least a proposal for change. That is when the administration fights back and they will vote back. You came on, i left you the Ranking Member on the committee because the republicans were the minority. Two years later the republicans capture the house, you are xhar chairman of the committee and the first investigation was fast and furious. Why dont you describe that . It has applicability to today and what happened in paris just a few weeks ago. Guest and sadly that link continues. Fast and furious was a program that didnt make sense but was done. The idea and inspiration we found it went from an atf agent who tried to get it done similarly in the Bush Administration and it had been shutdown because it didnt work. You would allow guns to be sold to known straw dealers and try to find them later and pak make a link. The problem is guns dont talk. They had no way to track them or follow them. They only knew where it started when it was sold and where it is the scene of the crime which is where the program didnt make sense. More than 2,000 weapons were taken, video tape captured the purchase, but the straw buyer was of no value unless they could lead you to the next level and that never happened. As you say, late in the system, two weeks ago, in the paris attack one of the weapons turned out to be one of those 2,000 weapons. Host that was a weapon the federal government sold . Guest it is a weapon the federal government knew was being sold, recorded it being sold, and did not follow it. Host basically sold . Guest and of course the proceeds of this book go to the brian terry foundation. Host tell us about him. Guest he was a Border Patrol agent, his family members were police and even secret service. The chief agent in san diego today for the secret service is his cousin. The fact is this was a family where everybody was in some form of Law Enforcement. He had been in a different level, joined the Border Patrol and wanted to join the secret service. It was just before christmas. His gifts to his family in detroit