Transcripts For KTVU FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace 2014

KTVU FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace January 19, 2014

Privacy protection. Hayden and leahy only on fox news sunday. Obamas obamacare continues. I dont see how were still discussing if the website is secure or not, it is. There is no question about that. It is insecure. It is insecure, 100 . Well ask David Kennedy just how vulnerable the obamacare website s and our power player of the week. You can use these to save lives. You think of it as an ink jet printer. In these days it builds up a three dimensional model one step at a time. Hello again from fox news in washington. President obama tried to deal with a growing uproar over government surveillance friday looking to strike a new balance between National Security and Civil Liberties. Weve invited two men to discuss what the president did and didnt do. General Michael Heyden is former head of the nsa and then the cia, charged with gathering intelligence to keep the country safe. Democrat Patrick Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary committee and has already introduced legislation to cut back even more on government surveillance. Gentlemen, welcome back to fox news sunday. Lets start with the big picture. General, what do you think of the president s reforms he announced. Does he comprise this nations security . Chris, theres a lot to like about the speech. That first third is the most robust defense of why we conduct intelligence and how we conduct intelligence the president made. If he had been giving that speech for the last six months, im not so sure he would have had to have made the speech at the department of justice. Now, when you get into the substance, what he changed, i think theres a clear pattern with the domestic and the foreign piece. Hes going to cut back on capacities. He hopes that the margins, cutting into agility a little bit, putting administrative burdens on, that can be risky. It looks like hes willing to accept that risk to preserve the program. All right. Were going to get into the details in a moment. Let me get big picture perfefro. Does he go far enough . I think he is trying to protect americans. You always have that balance between the privacy and protection. The concern that many have had and this is united, republicans and democrats across the political spectrum in the house and senate is have we gone too much into americans privacy . And weve also reached a point of if we collect anything, do we have anything as we found in the past . Sometimes we have so much stuff we dont go through it. He went over what he might do. There is still going to be legislation on this. For example, attorney general holder is coming to before the Senate Judiciary committee january 29th, the day after the president s state of the union message. Were going to ask him a lot of questions. A lot of it was between what he and head of National Intelligence have to work out. Theres going to be a lot of questions again from both republicans and democrats or a concern that were going too much in the privacy of america. Okay. Lets get into some details. I think its fair to say the biggest debate is over the collection of metadata, the records of billions of americans phone calls, not the content but the fact that my number called your number, how long the call lasted. Heres what the president said about those on friday. I believe we need a new approach. Im therefore ordering a transition that will end the section 215 bulk Metadata Program as it currently exists and establish a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the Government Holding this bulk metadata. The president wants the nsa to get Court Approval before it can search the data base. He wants someone other than the government to ohold the records and only two steps removed from a suspected number instead of the current three steps removed. General heyden, given the fact that the current nsa director says that this bulk collection of metadata prevented one or two stops at the most, cant you live with those restrictions . It appears they have to live with those restrictions. Two versus three hops. When you get to the third hop what that means is they identify that theres a bad number. Currently they can say okay, this number called that number. Called that number. Called that number. Three hops. Now it will be only two hops. If the third hop werent useful from time to time, we wouldnt have been doing it in the first place. By the time you get out there, you really discover, everybody has a dentist and everybody orders pizza. So there is an impact. Im a little more concerned about going to the court every time you want to clear the data. As you said, they have the data in the big data base. Then they have what is called a foreign number. You get a cell phone and you want to ask that data base has that seed number, that bad number you now have ever been in contact with numbers here in the United States . And the standard is do you have a reasonable, articulate suspicion that that seed number is al qaeda related . Thats a professional intelligence judgment. I dont know what role the court has in adding value. You know judge banks, former head of this in a letter to congress specifically said that. Let me pick up with you. In your legislation, the nsa freedom act, you are calling for an end to the bulk collection of this metadata. Are you going to fight the president on this . No, i think we have a way we can do this. But its not a question of the president , its a question of what is Congress Going to do on this . There is too much leeway. As you know, the fisa court is critical, in fact, a few years ago the abuses of the procedures we had to collect data. And asked them to clamp down. I worry because we just see what happened. There was so much stuff stolen, we dont know everything that was stolen from snowden. And that worries you. They you have your telephone calls, general heydens telephone calls, my telephone calls. Where is all this going . I would rather have some somebody overseeing where you get it. Now on the question of emergency, president made very clear the emergency did go in and they would go to the court afterward. I just think back in the history of this country, j. Edgar hoover, if he had the power when he was spying on protesters and those against the vietnam war and Martin Luther king, hed have the power thats in here. We americans believe in our safety. We also believe in our ability to be private. I was a prosecutor for eight years. I believe in going after the bad guys. I realize this is entirely different level than the bad guys i went after. You still have to have some checks and balances before you have a government that can run amok. Let me go to another subject. Perhaps the most controversial reform he announced friday is to extend privacy rights for foreigners. Heres what the president had to say about that. People around the world, regardless of their nationality should know the United States is not spying on ordinary people who dont threaten our National Security. And we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures. Senator leahy, i can understand that because of the diplomatic uproar the idea that were not going to wiretap or eavesdrop on our allies, someone like a foreign leader. Why on earth would we extend our constitutional protections to foreigners, particularly when we know those countries are spying on us . I dont think thats what the president said. Now as general heyden and i know without going into classified material, we have as people know we have relationships with all the Intelligence Services among our allies. We share great deal of information from them in both directions. I think a lot of these countries were getting such feedback against the United States saying why are they spying on us, too . I think the president had to Say Something like this to know were being protected. There is a growing and i think erroneous feeling in other countries that somehow the United States was in tapping all of them. I think this is probably a way of helping some of our allies say its okay for us to cooperate with the United States. Well, let me ask you, is this a pr move . Well continue to survey foreigners when it comes to pr is your word, not mine. I understand that. Counter intelligence or Cyber Security, is that what is that what this is basically that hes saying were not going to do things that we werent doing already . Look, if your definition of a pr move is to restore confidence domestically and abroad, thats what the president is doing. Its very interesting. The president s language was very precise. He did not commit to pulling back on collection against foreign targets other than heads of state and heads of government. What hes talking about is the retension of that data and then how it is dem nature isseminate. He said we use the same standards as we do for american president. Had this concerns me. You mentioned administrative burden. We do that with great oversight for americans. It is administratively burdensome. This is a tenfold increase in the paperwork requirement. Well see how much the system can stand that. I want to make it clear though as we wrap this up. I want to move to one other subject, that basically, theres a lot less that the president changes than what he does change. And i want to talk about that. The government will still be able to issue National Security letters of broad subpoena power. They will still be able to build back doors into hardware and software of private companies to collect information. Let me get to both briefly to answer this. The impression i get, maybe im wrong, general, isnt the basic surveillance structure that george w. Bush started after 9 11, isnt that still intact . Absolutely. And let me add one more item to your list, going after incription. His Commission Said we should pull back on that. He never mentioned incription once in your talks. In terms of the basic structure of george w. Bush exactly. The president embraced it. He has a political problem, i dont mean to trivialize it. In a democracy, political problems are serious. He is willing to shave points off flexibility and add administrative burdens. Do you agree . I think that we will we are going to maintain our ability to protect the United States, thats extremely important. Talking about incription, we know that there is a tax on the United States all the time from foreign governments which is enormous problem for this country. So we will protect against that. The concern everybody has is allowing our government to have such a reach into your private life, my private life and everybody elses that we are we have a government controlling us instead of us controlling the government. And thats what both republicans and democrats are joined together on the hill to try to change. All right. I want to talk about one other subject in the time we have left and that is that the six month interim deal between the u. S. And iran goes into effect tomorrow. It would limit the Irans Nuclear program in exchange for some easing of some sanctions that the west put on iran. General heyden, should Congress Leave the deal alone or should they go ahead and pass this legislation which would impose sanctions six months from now if there is not another deal and prescribe what has to be in the final deal . Yeah. Chris, im creature of the executive branch, you want to give them as much room as possible. I think having that congressional action just off stage, just in the wings mute actually be a powerful negotiating tool. Heres the problem. If this is a nuclear weapon, the iranians are parked right about here. In the surnt six months, somewhat freezes on there and gives it transparency. But theyre too close. What weve got to do is crank them back. Theyve got to deconstruct stuff. So you would support the legislation . I like the threat of additional sanctions hanging out there. Senator leahy, so far 16 of your democratic colleagues say that they are going to support imposing new sanctions against iran. Are they i think its a mistake. Ill tell you why. We voted for sanctions. I voted for a very tough sanction on iran. Right now we have five plus one of the countries working with iran on. This we have people that joined us on the sanctions. If they look like were prejudging the negotiations, theyre going to say, hey, United States, youre on your own. Theyre going to start pulling away. Briefly, do you agree with the white house that if senators vote for that theyre pushing a march to war . I think if we do that, we screw up the ability to have real negotiations. If the negotiations fail, if iran is seen cheating, well impose more sanctions in a nano second. Dont do it prematurely because if youre trying to negotiate something, you dont have a third party in this case the congress coming in involved in that negotiation. Senator leahy, general heyden, thank you both very much. Up next, our sunday panel joins the discussion on the president s nsa reforms. And were taking your questions on the topic. Just go to twitter or facebook and we may use what you ask on the air. Theres a saying around here, you stand behind what you say. Around here you dont make excuses. You make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up, and make it right. 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There are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do. President obama trying to strike the right balance between security and confidence. Time for our group, brit hume, robert costa of the washington post, Kimberly Strossel from the wall street journal and juan williams. Brit, the president was trying to find middle ground between the Intelligence Community on the one hand and the Civil Liberties folks on the other. What side should be happier . I think the intelligence folks should be happy. He trimmed the program at the edges as you heard general heyden describe. Did hedismantle it or propose to dismantle it. He does have central idea of moving all this metadata to other site, not sure he can pull that off. Nobody knows where to put it. By and large, the Program Remains intact. I think the president did this shows the president believes in the program and what he did was as little as he thought he could get away with politically. He felt he had to do something because he objected to this paranoid, some of them in my view, were pretty loud and a lot of people sort of on left and right were expressing that. Lets make the point there. The president continues metadata collection. He continues the National Security letters. He continues the governments ability to try to penetrate private companies, theyre software and hardware, incription to get information. I want to ask you the same question that i asked our two guests in the prior segment. Doesnt the president in effect maintain the basic surveillance structure that was created after 9 11 by george w. Bush . He does. There was a status quo speech in many ways. Efface sometimes challenges in congress. Hes not only fighting against opposition in his own party, but theyre forming a new coalition thats going to push back against the president s recommendations. You know, thats an interesting question. Will how much trouble do you expect . A lot of this the president cant do on his own. One of the things, kim, that he talked about in the speech, congress is going to have to approve if hes going to move the metadata, not the collection, but the storage from the nsa to either the phone company because as brit says, dont want it, or to a private new created third party and you wonder about that and you wonder about potential security leaks there and privacy concerns. Is Congress Going to go along with him . This is where the drama shifts to. You did have john boehner come out after that speech very short statement saying, you know, we in congress are not going to do anything that is going to degrade their operational ability of the government to continue to protect the country. Which does suggest hes going to get some push back on some of the things that he has suggested. Of course, whats interesting is that you have had for a real shift in the Republican Party in recent years, too. Youve had rand paul and very big critics of the nsa. They nearly dismantled some of this. So its going to be very interesting to see if john boehner republicans now step up for those who are actually worried about what the president s proposals will do to the ability to collect intelligence, that they are going to get a group that can actually push back against them. I want to ask you one other question. For all our talk about all the things the president maintains, is there anything in his speech that gives you heart burn . Is there anything there that you look at

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