internet work is even harder, that's why we're providing lower income students access to affordable internet, so homework can just be homework. cox, connect to compete. >> cox supportsc-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> the u.s. senate is about to gavel in, lawmakers this week are working on executive and judicial nominations. no votes are currently scheduled in the senate. members are expect today recess this afternoon for their weekly party lunches. and now, live coverage of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, the earth belongs to you and everything in it. we look to you in every season of life's pilgrimage because you remain the champion that initiates and experts our faith. lord, help us to maximize today's pobilities with humble and grateful hearts. for give our past faults and failures and empower us to press forward with faith toward a productive tomorrow. bless our lawmakers, the members of their staffs. may the words of their lips and meditations of their hearts bring glory to you. let not life's weariness or this world's confusion rob them of their trust in you. we pray in your sovereign name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the president pro tempore: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate the senate will be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. mr. warnock: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from georgia is recognized. mr. warnock: madam president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the president pro tempore: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: professor hathaway thinks o getting a short time. >> guest: glad to be here. >> host: could you talk what your background and experience particularly at the pentagon comes to classified documents? >> guest: yeah. so worked for a year at the pentagon as a special counsel to the general counsel and in that job i had top-secret special information clearance which is a highest level of clearance deals government provides. in that role at a chance to work with lots of class a document at all levels, confidential level, at the secret level and at the top secret level. those are three levels of documents and when i left government and came back to work at my regular job as a professor at yale i i reflected back one work i've been doing and all the classified document i hate seeing. one the most striking aspects of that was realizing so much of what it worked with, so much of the classified material was kind of ordinary information and probably shouldn't have been classified in the first place. >> host: you talked about those three levels of distinction when it comes to classification. can you describe what exactly they mean when you call something secret or top secret or confidential? >> guest: yes. these three levels reflect evaluations by the government of how much damage it's going to do to national security for that information to be released. this unclassified information, the view is that's not going to do any damage to national security, confidential could do some damage to nasa security and then escalate from there. then it goes to secret, significant damage to national security and the top-secret is the highest damage to u.s. national security. the classification is supposed to reflect how important the information is and a damaging it would be for that information to get out but in my experience reality didn't always reflect that. >> host: why is that? >> guest: the way the documents were, when you're making a decision and working with his materials if you have derivative classification authority which is what i had, which means i can't classify information but whenever i'm writing a document i have to assess what level should be classified at based on information i'm including. if i'm using information from another document and that is classified top secret, my document also sweet classified top secret, even if most of it is unclassified. 99% is unclassified by one fact in there that's top-secret, , tn the document has to be top-secret. if i'm not really rigorous about what's called paragraph marking the document, so in theory everyone who does it is supposed to mark everything a paragraph, but truthfully in the busy jobs people generally don't do that. what happens is every time someone is a light under previous document is classified at certain level theft also classified at a that level ate highest possible level. it has of this magnifying effect, and more and more and more documents the classified at the highest level. it's also the fact when you're working come sitting at your desk and making a decision, how are going to classify this document, top-secret, maybe it could be unclassified, there is literally no consequences at least in the job i was in for classifying something more highly then is absolutely necessary but he's a class i simply ask unclassified or as secret and it should of an top-secret, that could be very damaging because you are potentially giving access to people should have access and that could have severe consequences to your job. you could get fired. in theory you potentially could be criminally prosecuted. the dangers of getting it wrong on the downside are very extreme but the danger of getting it wrong by classifying something more highly are very limited for you as a person is working in government. that creates these incentives to just classify things that higher-level. >> host: because of those incentives, what's your guess as far as how much classified material gets produced on a yearly basis? >> guest: i don't have, i have a rough guess based on some facts. the facts are the last time the government tried to count, it estimator about 50 million documents a year. 50 million classified documents a year. in 2017 it gave up even trying to count because they really don't have good records and agencies count these things differently. it's probably got up since then. i doubt it's gone much below that. we are talking millions and millions of new documents being created every year. in theory we should be declassified documents and wealthy the same pace but truthfully the declassification process is not anywhere close to keeping up with the classification process. we are creating 50 million new classified documents everything your on top of everything well rehab. it's become this huge edifice of classified information the government has to try to protect. >> host: our guest will join until 8:45 a.m. to answer questions about the process of classifying documents here in washington. you can call and ask you questions. texas you questions or comments, too. professor hathaway, something is classified what happens to it? >> guest: what happens is there stiffer rules for how you have to store those documents and whether and how you can transport those documents. if something is a top-secret document it has to be kept in a special compartmented information facility and refer to as a skiff. if you're going to work with those documents, read the stock would just been a skiff to do it. secret documents at the own set of rules. they have to be kept in a secure location but they don't necessary to be kept in a skiff or read and work with within a skiff. the same for confidential information. when i worked at the pentagon you have three different computer systems on the same desk. you are sitting at her desk switching between these different computer system. the physical documents i i ket physically and different storage facilities. these days almost everything is electronic and they are completely separate computer systems and completely separate computer storage systems for each of these classified systems. if you're working in a top-secret system, you can only to make it with other top-secret systems. you can't get on the web or if you're on your seek a computer you only communicate to communicate with other secret systems and the same thing has been classified systems. it's all segregated and manage very carefully by the government in order to try to protect the secrets as effectively as against. >> host: as an example if you had a document and i wanted to see what would have to go through to see that document? >> guest: you couldn't it was classified and lusty red clearance. to get clearance to generally you have to be working for the u.s. government, either directly as a government employee or working for a contractor that has the capacity to provide clearance. there's some former government employees and send the work with the government were also able to get clearances, private military contractors, people who continue to do legal work or provide consultation or information to the u.s. government. not a reporter i'm sorry this is not going to get access to this and less a gets leaked. that would be illegal. that person leaking that information to you potentially could be criminally prosecuted and if you retained information and use it knowing that it's classic information you could be criminally prosecuted. there is the threat of criminal prosecution hanging all over this term what the reason i asked and i probably should've clarified even if i did have clearance, now at a stage now and ultimately will talk about this where classified document s are showing up in homes of various presidents in that case embrace of the legislators. what's the chain of custody of the document? because i suppose in asking, seeking of that information there's a process. >> guest: it depends, right? somebody like the vice president has access to everything. he's got a computer access on his computer and injuries got paper documents being provided to them on a regular that are all levels. and that material is going to be provided to him in paper form. i don't know exactly what his preferences are. he probably looks of things electronically, different high-level government officials have different kinds of preferences. what you're supposed to do if you take a top-secret document out of the skiff there is a very specific process that it is supposed to be followed. they can be done but it has to be sealed in a certain way and has to be a careful chain of custody. you're really not support to transport it. i did have permission to take anything out of the building. i could take materials from one skiff to another but i had to be sealed but then was in the bag was in a bag was in a bag and headed directly for more office to office to the other. there is a lot of very stringent rules are somewhat at my level which was a very low level paper somebody at the vice presidents level he's dealing with classified documents on a regular basis, and the problem we have in evaluating what happened with president biden is what are these documents? we don't know that much about what they contained and at what level they were classified. top-secret documents of the kind that were removed by president trump and being held at mar-a-lago have these big very imposing coversheet that say top-secret. if you seen the fbi photo that kind of materials that were scattered on the ground, you could see the of this red stripes on been a big top-secret language on them. those are kind of hard to miss. things classes at lower levels like secret use of a line at the top that is often in red if it's printed on a color printer this has secret. it wouldn't be impossible to miss that, although that would be my level that would be very irresponsible and nothing ever left my office that was classified. the confidential level, of course that material tends to be less closely held and less protected although it's also governed by these, many of these classification rules. without knowing whether it was a top-secret document, whether it was confidential, whether it was secret, it's hard to evaluate the secret and confidential documents is eager to see this getting mixed in with unclassified documents. you can see a binder that gets put together that is number of documents in it. one of the documents might be a confidential or secret document and somebody could it take the binder up and bring it home and doesn't realize within that is a top-secret document. you can say that shouldn't have been done, it should of been prepared more closely. what they should've done if that's the case is that binder should that top-secret sticker on the front indicating it contained secret of top-secret whatever the level was. but truthfully when people are busy they don't always follow those rules closely. i think on top of it, it's important remember against a lot of this information is pretty unremarkable. so it's not crazy to imagine somebody thought that's not that big of a deal. i just read the same thing more or less in the "new york times" this morning. i'm putting it into a pile of documents. that mental thinking is this a secret that needs to be protected because at such an unusual information that i will have access to, very few number of people. without knowing what exactly in the document is hard to evaluate how problematic it is. we don't know what level is classified at but it's not an impossible to imagine someone is working all day long with his classified documents, that he would get mixed in with the classified document and, therefore, transported after he leaves. we don't know enough exactitude lightweight that. >> host: let's hear from tom in fort myers, florida, democrat's line for oona hathaway, former pentagon special counsel comic good morning, pedro. enjoy the conversation this morning. when senator moynihan left the senate it was like one of the last speeches before he left was about this idea that we classify way too much, way too many documents. he thought there should be, we should ease away from that, to get away from that. i think there was momentum to do that, and then along came the 9/11 i think probably, more than anything else, and sandy berger took the document out after 9/11 and he rest in peace now, he's died but that raised that issue. it moved on and now, listening to you this morning, oona, you seem to think that just your talk today is that we do way over classify things and that the law is hard to comply with. i think that was hillary clinton's problem with the server, separating her personal former government things. she even had conversations with former secretary of state colin powell about that issue, how he was having problems complying with the law. and that's my question for this morning is, what is the exact law that we're talking about here, that classify these documents? i think it's, my understanding is it's a rather new law that was the together by press people and good government types and everybody that wanted everything that's generated in the government to stay and the government, in the future they could come along and, you know -- >> host: got your point. thank you for the question. ms. hathaway. >> guest: it's a great question and you're right, senator moynihan saw this way before anybody else. and was a big advocate for trying to deal with this problem, and this was before things that really spiraled out of control. even then he said look at where classify way too much. this is that her government because it means government can't tell people what it's doing and it really handcuffs people and government from talking to ordinary americans about work that they're doing ever people for in government from getting information from outside of government. it hamstrings congress. congress is working with his class of the document they might get briefings on things but they kept other constituents what to know because if the briefings are classified they can't share that information. it really is not good for democracy and i was part of his point. you're right he was way ahead of his time. as to what is the law, here's the crazy thing. it's actually an executive order. it's not even a law that was passed by congress that classifies all this information. an executive order is just an order issued by the president that says you've got to keep this information classified, and you've got to manage and keep this information from the public. so there's a long executive order. the most recent one, presidents have been issuing this beginning with fdr and more or less most presidents issue a new one. biden hasn't issued one and trump did not issue it actually but the last one was from barack obama, still in effect. that governs the several levels is one that says there are three different levels and here's the rules that govern them and quite elaborate and spells of all e rules about managing the material. but it's back up by laws passed by congress that say if you release information and there's a bunch of different laws that's kind of a crazy quilt of laws, but more or less they say if you release information that is damaging to national security either intentionally, or knowingly come you can be held criminally liable. mr. schumer: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. schumer: mr. president, a few moments before you assumed the chair, senator murray opened the senate as president pro tem for the first time. kudos, congratulations. she's a great, great member. she's chair of appropriations, and now ppt, and it was a wonderful thing to see her open up the senate for the first time as ppt. so congratulations to murray, and to all of us for having such a good president pro tem. now, on to business. in no time at all, the house republicans are off to the rockiest start of any new majority in recent memory. have you ever seen anything like this? we aren't even in a month into the new congress, and already the house gop has shown the american people they've been consumed by chaos, paralyzed by division, and held captive by the most extreme elements of their conference. on their first day of voting, the very first day, house republicans decided their first order of business as the new majority was to pass legislation making it easier for ultrarich tax cheats to escape accountability. amazing. that's their first thing. and at the same time as they did that, they would blow a hole $100 billion in the deficit. because, according to cbo, the amount of money brought into the federal treasury by closing some of these loopholes against tax cheats, very wealthy tax cheats, would far exceed the expenditure made for the new irs agents. the deficit would come down if we passed this legislation, for all the talk on the other side we've got to bring down the deficit. not when it comes to closing tax loopholes of the ultrarich and corporations that pay smaller percentage than most americans. uh-uh. wow. apparently, cutting taxes for megacorporations and the 1% was not enough for republicans five years ago. they did that in the trump tax bill. now they want to make things easier, even easier for tax cheats. and then a few days later, the house republicans double down on their war on women by passing measures that will undermine women's freedom of choice. make no mistake, these bills will never see the light of day in the senate. but again, the extreme, the extreme maga fringe element of the republican party seems to be controlling the whole entity. we hope that doesn't last for long. we in the senate will serve as an inextinguishable firewall and stop the anti-women, anti-health, a