Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Power Wars 2016012

If the egos are getting in them way. Juddson and john seem to have dalliances with groupies and theyre married at the time. There are ways in which they mirror our ideal of rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s and these internal struggles richmond the group apart. By and large, after the civil war, the hutchinson family singers, asa moves out west. The brothers founded hutchinson, minnesota, and then asa moves to colorado and john remains centered in lynn, massachusetts. Abby will remain in new york and in orange, new jersey, and new york city, and travel the world. Shell be in egypt and other places. She has married again ludlow patton, extraordinarily wealthy to whom she wed. And the hutchinsons wont be that social voice they were in the 1840s and 1850s and by and large theyll be what a lot of singer from the 1960s are today. They make money off of what they once were. Theyre hadbusinessessed. Theyre repeating old music. Going on stage as a relic that people want to remember the older age in many ways, and that younger generations are curious about all these stories their parents had about this moment. We used to listen to so and so and you share that legacy, but theyre never reach the fame and celebrate they once had during the 1840s and 1850s. The legacy of the hutchinsons is important in several different ways to us today. One, starts with this kind of musical legacy, which is this combination of social activism, of commercialization, being a giant celebrity, that we again, most often locate in the 1960s or 1970s, and certainly maybe the 1930s during the great depression, and during some of the labor struggles, but maybe not that much celebrity or at least not that much economic success. The hutchinsons had this all in 1840s. Fog more information on our cities tour go to cspan. Org cities tour. This is booktv on cspan 2. Television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. Tonight at 6 15 p. M. Eastern, peter looks at the likelihood of a conflict between the United States and china. Starting at 8 00, katherine zott profiles several arab women who are working to change the middle east. They have been at 9 00, former centers tom daschle and trent lott way in on partisan politics on afterwords and at 10 00, matt ridleys examination of evolution through technology, religion, education, and more. And we wrap up booktv in primetime at 11 00 with a report on advances in technology that will enhance our senses. That all happens tonight on cspan 2s booktv. [inaudible conversations] welcome. My name is shane heel y, im a Vice President here at the Cato Institute and ill be your moderator today. Thank you all for coming out to the first cato event of 2016. Today were going to spread the new years cheer and take the chill out of your bones with an indepth look at remote controlled executions, the creeping surveillance state, and the seeming permanentens of the imperial presidency. So, merry new year. Ore focus the book by Charlie Savage power wars inside obamas post 9 11 presidency. Charlie has been with the New York Times since 2008 and has been the independent expert on executive powers since well below that in 2002 2007 he won a but litter prize on the bush signing statements, his book takeover eye the return of the imperial presidency was named one of the best books of the year by the washington post, slate, and esquire. To describe paw power wars pay as comprehensive would undersell it. Look at this thing. You cant actually theres no index available in the book. You have to actually print out 50 pages of index from charlies web site. Its mammoth undertaking and well worth the effort. Breaks new grounds and new stories based on interviews with over 1 50 current and former officials. Its basically a oneman 9 11 Commission Report on how we got to where we are today. Power wars picks up where takeover left off with the arrival of a new administration that had pledged to, quote, turn the page on the executive aggrandizement of the bush era. Yet, as charlie writes, early on in the new president s tenure, obamas policy choices that departed from bush era programs dwindled, and those that continued or even expanded bush era programs rose from a fierce campaign of drone strikes whose target would include an american citizen, to the perpetuation of a sprawling and voracious surveillance apparatus. People across ideological spectrum would voice with increasing intensity what became a defining accusation, not just of the moment but of the entire presidency. Obama was acting like bush. Our distinguished commentator today is michael glennan, profession of International Law at Tufts University and the former Legal Counsel to the smart Foreign Relations committee. His 2014 Book National Security and double government was the most disturbing thing i read that year. In it professor glennan asks the key question, why does National Security policy remain constant even when one president is replace i by another who as a candidate repeatedly forcefully and eloquently promised fundamental changes in that policy. He identified three possible causes for this striking degree of policy continuity between the two administrations. One, a rational goodfaith threat assessment by political actors, the policies we needed, given the threats we faced. Another is the enormous political pressures brought to bear on the presidency, whether rational or not. But professor glennan puns his emphasis on a third cause, what he calls an emergent autocracy made up of National Security insiderrers we moved beyond a mere imperial presidency, he writes to a structure of double government which even the president exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of u. S. National security policy. The boston globe sum up the thesis as, vote all you want. The secret government wont change. Now, you can find evidence for all three of these causes in the pages of power wars and reading it, it struck me that looking for a single culprit is look liking for the cause for the obesity crisis. Fat because of high fructose corn superor super sized portions or because we watch five hours of tv on average a day. Anyone who wants to figure out how we got to where we are today and want to get back has to start with par power wars. Please welcome Charlie Savage. Well, thank you very much for the kind introduction, gene. I like the idea of the oneman 9 11 commission. I could listen to you talk all day. Thank you very much, michael, for coming down from boston to participate in this event. I liked his book i was recommended to him mints ago by a former lawyer in the obama white house, about a year and a half ago when i was researching my book and talk can about the dilemmas and difficulties they encountered once they came into office, and i immediately ordinary it and devoured it and cite fit my book. And thank you to all of you. I wondered who would turn out bus it was so cold. Im heartened to have this crowd and cspan as well. Ill talk 15 minutes about my book and then michael will talk and well have a conversation and move to audience questions. Ry start with the story of my book. Eye have been covering National Security issues and legal policy issues 2003, rode the wave in on abu ghraib and the attempt by senator mccain to impose a ban on torture and the signing statements by bush that came out of that, as well as the revelations about warrantless wire tapping by the New York Times. I was then with the boston globe. And this is essentially the fights of president ial power. You may remember in january of 2009 when president obama was inaugurated there was this moment in which it looked like the war on terror was suddenly, abruptly, over. He had run on a platform of change from george bushs global war on terrorism. He had been a big critic on the campaign trail. He the government constant ducted itself in the years after 9 11, and talked about getting away from the constitutional ideals and security and among the first things he did was issue a series of executive orders promising less secrecy, banning torture, ordering guantanamo closed and looked like it was over, and this thing that i had become a specialist in, and a couple colleagues of mine, like scott shane and so forth, did for a living, was no longer going to be available, and i remember joking that we would have to find new jobs. Maybe there was an opening in the Sports Department and we could keep paying the rent somehow. But very quickly it became apparent to me that it was not over. There would be much greater continuity in the counterterrorism policies of the new administration, with the old one, and the expectations credited by thensenator obamas campaign rhetoric. Some of his incoming cabinet members in remarks during their confirmation testimony affirmed that they thought it was lawful for the government to terrorism suspects, they would continue the practice of rendition, transferring people other countryies from one one Intelligence Agency to the next based only only diplomatic assurances three would not be mistreatment, which was exactly bushs policy, ate least on paper as well. Theyd shut down temporarily military commissions but in a way that looked like they were keeping the door open to resuming them, which is exactly what happened. They were starting the states secrets privilege in court asserting the states secret privileges in court to continue to and all that was apparent by two or three weeks into the new administration, and so i called up the new white house and said i was plan only writing a story about the continuity, and one difference between the Old Administration and the new one was, the Obama Administration wanted to or at least was willing to engage with me. When i would call the Bush Administration, say, im going write a story about the signing statement that says you can torture not withstabbing the antitorture law, they would blow me off. This new administration called me into the white house, and i went in and talked to greg craig, who was obamas first out who counsel First White House counsel and we went through the litany of things that werent changing and the explained they were not going to have a shoot from the hip bummer sticker slogan policy. They were going to look carefully at everything they inherited and move deliberately, and that involved going out to langley and the pentagon and so forth, even during the transition and getting briefed be the members of the permanent National Security establishment, the subject of michaels book about what the programs were, why they were necessary, why they were put in place, what they were doing, what revoking them would entail, and he argued that this whatever it was Civil Liberties people on the left or right who were upset by that or it was Bush Administration veterans who were seeming claiming vindication by that, that both sides were wrong, they were charting their own course, and people should give them time. So i continued to cover these things and i became very interested in the targeted killing of the american citizens anwar alawlaki, brought a lawsuit to try to make them reveal their legal thinking about the scope and limits of the power to target american citizens who have not been convicted in a court in a sort of National Security situation like that, and then i eventually began to teach a class with mike davidson, retired lawyer from the Senate Intelligence committee, at georgetown university, on National Security and the constitution in which we had to organize all this stuff that id spent a decade immersing myself in, in a way that an educated but nonspecialest could understand. Started the stuck tier, the ten things you need to know about everything unleashed about severeliance, not clear what the law means or new technology that challenges oold rules. What are the ten thing iowa need to know about detention or interrogation or leak investigations or secrecy or war powers, whereas 21st century situations have reopened questions that seem to be settled in the 20th century because the premises were all different now. The laws of war are written for innings instate armies and uniform, clashing on a literal battlefield. How that gets applied by analogy to a transnational, nonstate actor, Armed Conflicts like the war against al al qaeda, and the idea was the student was learn this stuff and the next time someone is arrested for terrorism theyre on cnn theyre allergying whether this person should be read the miranda warnings or when should be prosecuted in a military commission or article 3 civilian court. They would be equipped to understand what it was that was sort of the unspoken assumptions behind those arguments and where it came from. And then the Edward Snowden leakses massive documents be the surveillance state and becomes clearer than ever that obama has not changed really at all the nsa apparatus that he inherited, including the bulk collection of domestic phone records. And at that thats when i decided this stuff really needed to be organized in a book. I couldnt do it justice in newspaper form. There was too much material and everything relefted to Everything Else youve couldnt understand what you were looking at in the argument about closing guantanamo if you didnt understand what had gone on with cia torture and the attempt to prosecute and then the failure to prosecute and why commissions were collapsing, which in turn turned on what happened on christmas 2009, and the attempted underwear bombing and how that created this big fight in new york, and these things were an imbedded web of complexity. So ive spent the next couple years organizing and researching when i say i talked to 150 people i dont mean i had 150 interviews if had probably a thousand interviews because i kept circling back to people that i trusted and crossreferencing memories of intern deliberations and focus on this and focus on that, do you remember this . One else told me it happened this i would. Way. Is there anew answer i am overlooking and i organized this book similarly to my georgetown class. Themeatic chapters and then chronology in stores in the chapter. So lot of it is case studies. You get to be in the situation room as actual people who want to think of themes as obeying the rule of law, are dealing with difficult situations in the world, and none of the options are perfect. Theres no clear answer. Everything comes with downsides and risks, and why did they make the decisions they do, what were the options they discarded and why. So, a lot of case studies, and how does that illustrate the recuring frictions of the rule of not being clear anymore because they werent written for these situations. And then arising from that are bigpicture questions. The biggest is how is it that obama has had so little change from the policies he inherited from the second term Bush Administration, where did this disconnect come from . Why do people keep saying he is acting like bush in what happened . And one of the takeaways that i put forward in the book as an argument is that what it means to act like bush is can mean more than one thing. Its easier to see now than it was at the time during the bush years when organizations like cato were having conferences and in which people had Panel Discussions criticizing bush or rallies. There were two different strands of criticism. There were entangled together but are distinct. There was a rule of law critique and a Civil Liberties critique. The Civil Liberties critique says its inherently wrong to have a warrantless wire tapping program or to torture or to have a system of military commissions, because the state should not have that power, visavis the individual. Its unamerican. The rule of law critique ising agnostic whether with thing and of over to tour, whether these degrees are good or bad torture is always ill lee and maybe these are a good idea given the 21st century transnational terrorism but its focused on the process. The president doesnt get to break the law and as a federal statute says you must get a warrant, the president doesnt get to say in secret, im the commander in chief and i can ignore that and disregard it. The president has to go to congress and persuade lawmakers to remake the law so that statutes authorize rather than forbid what it is he or she whatnots to do. So one of the big differences between the rule of law critique and the Civil Liberties critique is the lieu of law critique is fixable. If something violates Civil Liberties the an way to fiction it is to stop doing that thing. If something violated the rule of law, congress can pass a bill to change the law so it no longer violates the rule of law. In fact in the second term of the Bush Administration Congress Passes the military commissions act, passes with senator obama vote, the fisa act, and they took these program that were collecting everyones phone records and email records and rooted them in a somewhat sed dish claim patriot act authorized them. And by the time obama becomes president , if you think the problem that that acting like bush means violating the rule of law, the problem is largely fixed. If the you think the problem that acting like bush is violating Civil Liberties the problem is not fixed because who cares if congress blessed it. The government needs to stop doing this. So part two of the analysis is, barack obama is a lawyer, obviously. Joe biden is a lawyer. Bush and cheney are not lawyers. Theyre ceos by background. Very few lawyers that surrounded them. They were perhaps the least lawyerly