 Hello, I'm Heather Hurlbert. I run the new models of policy change initiative at New America's political reform program And we along with the national fellows program are very happy to welcome you to this webinar for the launch of David Rhodes new book in deem We will be talking together for about half an hour And then we will spend the second half an hour taking your questions If you think or as you think of questions during our initial conversation Please use the Q&A button at the bottom in the middle of your screen to submit your questions Please also note if the description of the book peaks your interest You can go to our website and to the page for this event and you'll find a link to buy in deep from solid state books We're very proud to have David road as a class of 20 Arizona State University fellow at New America He's the author of four books a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International reporting and a former reporter for Reuters the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor he's currently the executive editor for online news at the New Yorker and After spending his entire career in the US in the Balkans in South Asia Chasing down instances of both elected and unelected officials lying to the public and getting away with it It's safe to say David that you've literally spent your professional life getting ready to write this book for the first question Is there a deep state? I conclude that there is not a deep state as Donald defines it and that that's a coup a group of people who are secretly and actively plotting against him There is a permanent government. There are about, you know, three million Americans who work for the federal government at any given time and various agencies But no president, you know, every president is complained about coming to Washington and having bureaucrats Stifled their goals Ronald Reagan said the State Department Was liberal and wasn't carrying out his agenda to counter communism Barack Obama worried that the Pentagon, you know Was leaking troop numbers for a possible surge in Afghanistan and sort of boxing him in in that way But no president has accused, you know, government officials career government officials of plotting a coup against them in secret and Did you conclude that there was in fact something like a coup attempt going on? To describe what we the very unusual back and forth between the career officials and political appointees we saw administration I Think it is. I mean the the president's and I wanted there's some things that are understandable in the president's reaction But he's chosen to use this rhetoric of of a conspiracy, you know of a coup And and it's it's an exaggeration. It's it's simply not true Look government officials fight over turf. They have Personal biases they want their budgets to grow But, you know, that's very different from trying to you know plot secretly to undermine the goals of an elected leader I talked to career government officials. They they just denied anything like this existed The president's had three years to sort of unearth, you know, the this plot. He has effectively removed senior officials from Various agencies justice department and others. So I I did not find evidence of this and I even had Members of the administration privately admits to me that they thought the talk of a coup Again current members of the Trump administration say to me that they agreed that talking about a coup By a deep state was an exaggeration You you use a significant chump of the book walking through the history of Problematic illegal Behaviors by various parts of the law enforcement and national security infrastructure Do you see that as Forming the foundation for these ideas about a deep state How does how does the the history of struggle over what our national security infrastructure is allowed to do and the history of struggle over? Oversight, how does that intersect with this idea of a deep state? Well, it's it's really interesting, you know, you mentioned this before we started but just today The head of the office of management of budget for the Trump administration said that there should not be that There should not be an apolitical or this idea of an apolitical civil service that it'd be better to revert to a pure patronage System to go way back the patronage system, you know started in the 1880s One of the drivers was the assassination of president James Garfield By a supporter of his who expected to be named an ambassador was he was sort of delusional about disappointment Who was frustrated when he didn't get the job and shot and killed him in Washington? The book though really starts in the 1970s and with the church reform Investigation which exposed decades of abuses by the FBI and the CIA and this is where you know, president Trump is right The FBI and the CIA are extremely powerful organizations. They're more powerful than ever in the digital age You know more of our personal information can be connected Sorry collected without us realizing it than ever and the book sort of looks at the church reforms the abuses They discovered by both agencies and then talks about these mechanisms that were set up after the church reforms and after Watergate to try to stop abuses by The FBI and CIA and then a separate theme is also, you know, how do you you know? How do you stop a president from abusing these powers? also You've reported on in your career and book covers an enormous sweep of these events And I think any of us however old or young we are there's probably at least one of them that we hit that we've forgotten I found in reading the book. I thought oh, I'm going to know everything in here already and there were several Sort of amazing and terrifying episodes from the u.s. Past that that I had forgotten What's the episode or the scandal that you that you wish more Americans were aware of or that you thought had the most To say about how how we got into this situation of mutual mistrust that we're in now I guess it's one of the people I interviewed for the book His name was fritz schwarz. He was the one of the main staffers on the church committee And fritz schwarz, you know, his his middle initials are a o His name is f a o schwarz. I think it's the third of the fourth So he is a you know a young man of whatever Member of the f a o schwarz family that had the famous toy store in Manhattan And he described during his investigations of the ci and fbi that he He thought he would like better the the ci a officials and at that point They were overwhelmingly wasps like him and elitist, you know, he went to harvard And uh, when schwarz actually did these interviews. He actually liked the fbi is better as people Uh, they were you know, they went to they weren't members of the elite And what was sort of blood shilling to him was how These ci officials, uh, many members of the american elite like him could lie perfectly, uh without Him realizing it Um, and then the fascinating part of it and the theme for me was that the fbi officials talked about that they did these things. They Surveilled martin Luther king and tried to discredit him because of the fear of communism They also abused groups on the right the john birch society And there was this sort of rationale that fbi officials had come up with that they had to kind of take matters into their own hand To protect the country from a dangerous foreign threat or infiltration by its enemies and it's that rationale. I don't I think um One of the dangers of human nature, you know, are the people do things wrong and they they like to do it, you know they like to steal things and harm others But I think the biggest danger with people is our ability to kind of rationalize our actions and that we're somehow working To defend our way of life or defend our family Against an enemy and I see a lot of that happening in our kind of tribalized Politics, so I admire the work of the church committee. It was largely bipartisan It was a groundbreaking investigation and create a huge number of reforms. So, you know, that's effective Governance and that was the thing to see but I worry about, you know How divided we are and how each side is so convinced that they're right and the other is a danger to the country This notion of of bipartisanship both bipartisanship as the solution to the problem as you just put forward but also your Framing of the problem as in its own way a bipartisan one Um, I think is is one that's it that's not the usual frame with which people approach this issue Um, you know, many of us tend to see it as either a problem of the left or a problem of the right And so I wonder what do you think when you were setting out to write the book What do you think you gained by insisting and obviously that there's nothing bipartisan From administration version of this. So what do you think you gained? By framing it in that bipartisan way and are there things that you feel maybe get obscured Or are harder to see from from that both sides do it frame It's it's a great question. And and you know, maybe this was sort of a retro approach to this book and to journalism, but I will say that you know What what what did happen sort of with the church committee and the investigations of abscam the scale in the 80s in iran contra You know 9 11 what went wrong There were you know investigations that came out with basic facts that There was a consensus on and maybe bipartisanship is the wrong term But as we sit here today with the coronavirus, you know If we can't agree on basic facts that the danger that the virus proposes Presents, you know, what's the best way to counter it and limit the deaths? You know, we can't effectively function. I think as a society or a democracy So maybe bipartisanship is you know going too far I do think you know part of the problem and part of the reason I wrote this is because You know, there is a lack of faith in in our institutions There was a 2018 poll that found that 70 percent of americans think that There is a secret group of unelected officials and military officials who manipulate US policy people don't trust the media. I'm a mainstream journalist. So I'm wondering if we focus more on fact or try to get consensus around basic facts At least as journalists are in this book It will help us in this these these troubled times, but I completely accept that that is naive and Um, it was somewhat argue that that's naive But my approach was try to try to have a factual investigation of whether A deep state exists as don trump defines it You're frozen Hi, I'm sarah. I'm the program manager and I'll just pop in I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that lack of faith in institutions and sort of what You might suggest as far as a permanent government a small permanent government and what your takeaway was were in the researching of the book So starting out in the 70s, you know, there was a bunch of reforms made by you know, president ford and president carter Ford, you know, they both banned assassinations are brought by the cia There was a change where if a president was going to carry out a covert action program in the past It was a conversation between a cia director and president They had to put together written findings that would authorize the covert action the findings go to leaders in congress and leaders Of both parties Intelligence oversight committees were created that had subpoena powers to watch over these agencies And then they were in spec general created to look at how the government was functioning and look for fraud and abuse And lastly the judicial branch was involved It's now famous or interest but the foreign intelligence surveillance court Was created and that was designed to prevent the fbi from carrying out improper Wiretapping I found that that that new set of rules and I had cia and fbi officials tell me that They resented that system at first, but they actually liked Oversight in the end again many people will scoff at this Because it gave them kind of rules of the road and that they you know, if they sort of you know notified congress I'm sure they don't notify congress of everything. You know, they could not be you know, uh face arrest or or You know attacks for their actions if they if they follow these this basic new system this sort of I call it the post church reform System so I think it has worked You know and I I I think it's fraying now and that that's one of the reasons I wrote the book Well, I apologize for dropping out there. Um, I wonder how you would extend This thinking to what we're seeing now around coronavirus and again our inability to agree on basic facts and where Where some of what you look at in this book? Provides us a useful roadmap for what to do and not to do Well, again, it's this it's a suspicion of government officials It's kind of a rejection of the idea that anyone can sort of be an apolitical expert And I I think again since watergate since the 70s There there was a belief that there was a way for the justice department to kind of prosecute cases In a largely apolitical manner And then there's a way that you could have a government official like, uh, you know, dr. Tony Fauci Who is not perfect? You know some of the models, you know turned out to you know be have higher numbers of Possible deaths than were expected But you know high sense that he is sort of doing his level best to give the best information He can to the country if you have every single Player be political If you just have a giant patronage, uh, you know civil service You know everything will be you know will have a political angle attached to it I know that many republican conservatives think that everything is political One democratic senator told me that he thought about 40 percent of republicans in the senate Felt that you know, there is a deep state in terms of this of an administrative state And that would be an ever-growing federal government that's sort of Relentlessly invading people's lives and taking away their rights And there's a sense that anyone, you know a sense among conservatives that they sort of idealized the private sector that if you're really Excelling or an extraordinary person you're going to want to be in the private sector and want to achieve there And so there's an assumption that you know anyone who is a career government official Leans left and it's just you know going to want the government to grow and is going to slow roll or block conservative proposals You know their government, you know career government officials are barred by the Hatch Act from doing that But this is again part of our our sort of divide and it came up again with the coronavirus or the recent protests where people are just dismissing the advice of medical experts And saying it's unnecessary and and I I feel like again our Our democracy is sort of fraying as we we fight over basic facts in in all of this And I was really fascinated actually you had a quote of a member of congress I think going all the way back to the church hearings and saying we're looking into the edge of it We're looking into an abyss where the government can know everything there is to know about us in the not too distant future um So it's almost as if we we knew Or some of us knew for 40 or 50 years exactly what was coming And it came anyway, and then this can be understood as the backlash to it and yet Going forward both in the health area and in intelligence. We're going to be more and more Operating in this um high tech and big data space do you Did you see anything hopeful or models around how to how to conduct effective oversight how to build Civic trust or how to even start from a common space of knowledge about about these issues So there is one area of cooperation And it is on eavesdropping and the national security agency And that's where you have a political alliance between senator rand paul the libertarian republican of Kentucky and ron wyden the very liberal senator From oregon and they both are deeply suspicious of the government's attempts to monitor us They're very worried about you know the digital age and have been pushing and pushing to kind of rein in the NSA So there is one common area That americans don't like surveillance in the poll. I mentioned the 2018 poll We're 70 of americans feared a deep state The two groups that feared it most on one side were nra members They feared again that this large administrative state was going to you know, take away their rights and their arms and then also minorities You know people of color that you could imagine that african americans would be very suspicious of the Of the fbi and the whole criminal justice system Given what's happened over decades with disproportionate sentencing and things like that. So in this age sort of utter division There is a way to rally around. I think the digital age and privacy The power of tech companies is something that I think people on the left and the right fear And and there is sort of real progress on that, you know rand paul and and ron wyden are introducing joint legislation all the time It doesn't always make it very far, but that cooperation is happening And you also conducted well both both before and during the um the events of of impeachment You've talked a lot to career intelligence officials and I think Some of them that you you talk a lot about divisions within the agencies and the limits of the agency's desire for a meaningful oversight Um and relationship with the american people which goes back to the the comment you made earlier about You have some proportion of of an organization that That um that does not always want to do what is construed in the oversight sector as the right thing So where do you see where do you see the actual workforce the people who? Who make up the civil state the whatever you're you're going to call it? Where do you see that that group of employees going on its relationship with their political overlords of whatever party? So one of the main characters in the book is an FBI agent named tom o'connor. He was a cop in western massachusetts and and joined the FBI several decades ago His career is amazing. He essentially travels the world investigating terrorism. He's Uh after the uss coal is bombed. He is on the coal and recovers the body of sailors on 9 11 He responds to the pentagon He and other FBI agents, uh, you know are there for days and they end up collecting more than 2000 Bags of human remains He goes to iraq and investigates the black water shooting in bag dead that killed dozens of iraqis And he also investigates white supremacists in the u.s So tom o'connor retired on 9 11 this year And he was really alienated not from, you know Trump or the democrats just the political class and the political process as a whole He was part of the hearings that john stewart testified about, you know first responders Not getting enough assistance from the government the many cancers that were growing there And i asked tom now that he was retiring, you know, what what are you going to do and he you know He wasn't sure and i said well, would you ever, you know, you you frustrated with congress You're frustrated with politicians in general. Would you ever run? Uh, you know for office and he said, you know, no, I want to do something that has meaning And so I sense a kind of alienation From both political parties A sense that as politicians duke it out and as the media dukes it out too You know that the run of the mill people the you know, fbi agents And I know many people fear the fbi even cia operatives feel that they're sort of being you know thrown into the bus You know and that they're More and more discouraged Our recruitment numbers are okay. They're they're good at the fbi. That's that's what they've told me I've heard roughly the same thing from the cia But I worry it's a very, you know bad sign for our democracy When you know people and I think we need an fbi for better or worse We need intelligence services for better or worse to protect the country and its citizens But when they're this alienated, it's it's really dangerous. I think Well, that brings us to the um the trump impeachment hearings, which you go into in some detail in the book um where I think many americans were introduced to um intelligence and foreign affairs workers As as heroes and you saw a real lionizing of of the state department's foreign service and of the civil service In a way that you you really haven't seen um since the end of the cold war particularly for the the non-military side um How did that go down inside the bureaucracy? I guess it's my first question And second, do you think that forms a foundation? For moving forward with a better understanding between political and career Or do we risk sort of going too far the other way and lionizing people who as your book Ampli documents have made a lot of mistakes and have also been very willing to push the boundaries if not exceed the law over time Well, I think it you know, it depends on the individual, you know, there's bad members of any profession, whether it's you know diplomats or the fbi or journalists for that matter What was interesting about the hearings and I think the reason I think They were successful for part of the country and I'll come back to that is that, you know, uh, mashew manovich and fiona hill Uh, and other witnesses Tried to be apolitical Even, you know, bob moeller in his own way Um tried to kind of play it straight and I think that was refreshing for americans who believe that you do need You know apolitical public servants. You need a local police chief that's going to equally enforce the law You need You know school teachers that are going to teach the the jointly agreed upon curriculum not and you know, inject their own ideas You know, those are public servants, but I don't think that that view, you know Spread through Roughly half the country that, you know, passionately supports the president. They, you know, weren't convinced. They weren't impressed with those testimonies. So Um, but and this goes back to earlier question about the sort of taking this approach in the book of not bipartisanship But as a journalist trying to be factual um I think there's a There are, you know a need for commentators and and there's lots of them these days But some journalists need to try to just play it straight and present the facts Um, and we need that more than ever I think to and I you know, you know in a way that that many of those uh witnesses did during the impeachment Well, this brings us um to attorney general bar I think and you are perhaps one of the the leading students of attorney general bar and um, I want to ask you to To go back and and summarize his resume a little bit because I think many americans may not know How deeply embedded he's been in this debate about what the national security state has the right to do What the executive branch has the right to do over over 40 or 50 years So, um, I wonder, um, I wonder if you could just give us a flavor of how his career Intercepts with the development of of this controversy so, um And I want to be fair to the attorney general Throughout his whole career. He has believed that you know, we need a stronger Presidency or very strong executive branch to defend the country And hold it together in sort of moments of national crisis like This one right now in the midst of a pandemic. I talked to some of his high school classmates and they said He always, you know viewed The presidency is more powerful as necessarily more powerful than other branches. Uh, he actually got his start out Um, you know, it was the middle of the vietnam war and he actually interned at the cia and worked at the cia as an analyst He met george hw bush when he was an aide At a congressional congressional hearing Bella abzug Famous represented from 1970s who was the far on the left and was famous for her big hats Was demanding that the cia be forced to send a letter to every american Who's mail the cia had opened during the cold war. This was probably hundreds of thousands of americans And george hw bush who was the cia director at the time wasn't sure how to answer the question He turned around and asked bill bar For how to answer the question and bar was thrilled because george hw bush gave the answer bar advised him to give bar went on to serve as Bush's attorney general and he advocated and he's not alone In a sense that post watergate the president was working too much that there shouldn't have been congressional oversight committee committees And then bar talked about this recently in terms of the judiciary in his speech at the federal society He said the courts, you know that the idea that federal judges on the west coast Could block the president's executive orders on immigration. He thought was an infringement On the president's power and his philosophy is that if you look at american history When the us has faced war When 9 11 happened You need the executive branch to act quickly to mobilize and defend the country congress can't do that Because it's so divided in a cumbersome process And so, you know, he joined the administration. He said to try to protect and strengthen The presidency and it's so it's not some new thing. It's not some excuse. He's come up with the help donald trump it's a long-running Philosophy among some conservators. Anthony Scalia supported it Way back when dick cheney did as well so It's not new and as I said in the book and said in a profile in new yorker I think bar is the most effective member of the cabinet. He is Helping the president in a variety of ways, but particularly in asserting executive power So i'm going to ask you one more question and then we're going to go to some of the questions that have come in but paradoxally What something I took away from the sweep of the book is that Rather than see this as a fight between a shadowy deep state that it's almost as if There's been for 40 or 50 years Perfectly out in public if we cared to see it this fight over What executive power is what presidential power is and that what has happened is that this this group of people Who were written off as fringe as you repeatedly note in the 70s are now mainstream and that Both sides have been able to draw on People within the civil service to do their will and I wonder I wonder how you whether you see that as a viable alternate thesis I do and um, it is a you know, it's a central It's how do you prevent the cia and the fbi from carrying out abuses and then how do you prevent a president from doing so And it is a wrestling power between the three branches of government I guess what's different is that and I I want to donald trump is an amazing communicator and people who dismiss him as mentally unbalanced or you know, he doesn't know what he's doing or Are totally underestimating him and I think totally wrong What he's done is, you know question legitimacy of congressional oversight and what he's doing is reducing congress's power By you know saying he was going to defy all subpoenas from congress, you know more than any other president You know is shifting the balance of power. He's not just acting erratically. He is centralizing power by you know calling The media fake news. He's you know discrediting us As a source of information This is the sort of broad pattern that trump has used very successfully since he joined politics when he came in On the national scene and said that you know question whether brock obama was born in the united states trump Stephen gillers an nyu professor was this is his idea He's very effective in spreading conspiracy theories about rivals about rival sources of information or rival sources of power And discrediting those other sources And at the same time he's limiting the amount of information about his own activities And and and he's succeeded in that there was just ruling in in february For example, the don McGahn did not have to testify before congress It'll go to the supreme court, you know But you know charlie savage wrote in the new york times that if that ruling stands It will have an impact for decades in terms of increasing a president's power to resist oversight from congress and Future presidents are gonna you you know, even if trump were to lose in november future presidents are going to take advantage of that That power, um, whether they're republican or democrats It's an amazing moment in american history and as i wrote the book to solve Kind of came together in my own mind as well so if What you've just laid out though is that if if you if you value free flow of information But someone has discovered that a way to to perpetuate political power is to restrict flow of information That seems like a very uneven fight Well That the counter argument is that um, it's just the belief that The opposition in congress is going to attack the president And this was the view democrats had of the republican controlled congress during the obama administration that there were You know the endless congressional investigations Into the atf That exaggerated things democrats claimed into the irs You know again democrats dismissed it and then most famously into hillary clinton and ben gazi and um That's the danger i think is it's this view That everything is partisan a kind of a view and um That everyone's got an angle everybody's lying everybody's you know trying to Score a point even if they're a you know a career diplomat or working the irs and And I I hope that doesn't exist. I didn't find a widespread examples of that But it just comes back again the coronavirus if if we can't agree on basic facts of every single medical expert That's part of the president's task force is seen as some scheming political player who's either Helping the president or hurting him How do you respond to a pandemic? How do you get people to believe Government right now, you know shows the need for some sort of expertise and some sort of I'll say it bipartisan agreement About basic facts. This is about lives. It's rare People should fight for the policies they want, but we need a nimble government that is trusted You know and and effective So we've got a great question here that goes directly to this point about coronavirus Someone asks whether you think it's true that the anti-quarantine protests that we've seen in a number of states Although they appear to be spontaneous are actually Organized by a network behind the scenes and so I will first ask you to comment on on that that question And then I'll ask you to consider the meta question of what do we do when we say well This side's conspiracy theories are fake and crazy, but that side's conspiracy theories are real How do we how do we deal with that? So it's a great question. I'm not an expert on any of these Demonstrations of what's happening. I've just read the same news reports as everybody else I think that there's a large number of Americans that You know don't trust the government and feel that that the you know stay-at-home orders are excessive So I think there these I don't know if if they're secretly being organized, but Let's not question the motivation of the other side. Let's not Decide that they're not real protests. They're they're just organized You know, I think you look at look at their size, you know Most opinion poll shade showed that about 60 of americans think the restriction should stay in place So it does look like you know the protesters don't represent the majority of americans But unless you can prove that you know, the other side is engaged in a secret plot and it's all fake I think it's best to not Question that or anyone anyone can question and they want it's just the constant It's the sort of cycle of kind of distrust and conspiracy theory. That's just you know endless Um, a lot of it's the web. We can talk about the press and the web, but I just worry, you know how this cycle just gets more and more intense on both sides Of course, there is this problem that science and proof are really somewhat inimical to each other And so how do we prove or disprove? I mean if if we can't for example prove or disprove death Projection fatality projections for the coronavirus. We're we're really back into a slippery territory where my facts are just as good as your facts Yeah, and I it's it's a tough one I guess I would ask people to be skeptical of of government numbers that have that have come out, uh, but to hope I mean these are Individual doctors doing death certificates who have been trained in medicine And but not cynical about them. I I and many people are able to shake their heads I don't think that you know Thousands of doctors across the country are part of some plot to exaggerate or undercount deaths at this point. They're they're sort of frantically trying to do the right thing and then in terms of the media and This is maybe obvious or and I have a bias as a journalist, but um You know for conservatives, I would urge them if they're seeing some crazy thing on facebook and they're not seeing it reported You know in the mainstream media You know the most I think the place to look if you're a conservative are the news pages of the wall street journal It's owned by rupert murdoch. You know clearly he owns fox news as well and as lean's right and and and fox clearly supports the president Um, but if it's not in the news pages of the wall street journal, it's probably false Try to read, you know, things you see online with more skepticism um And one difference and I'm again biased But when I write a piece for the new yorker or when any of the main magazines or newspapers or news organizations report things You know, we can be sued under libel law. I have a lawyer reading every story I write Um, that is a good check on me not defaming someone or just printing something that's completely false One of the strange things that came about is the internet emerged was that twitter And google and facebook have no liability no responsibility whatsoever to verify the information that's appearing on their websites So anyone can say anything they want um on these platforms And smear people and defame them and spread conspiracy theories and there's no check on that whatsoever Legally and that's why I would sort of urge people to Trust the media a little bit or trust the you know, the right-leaning or left-leaning media I want to they're bad journalists, but I think most most journalists who are not commentators You know, we're trying to get the the facts straight as as best they know them. We're imperfect, but I would be skeptical of journalists, but Not cynical So we've had several questions about specific methods that might be used to try to Reestablish trusting facts or a common set of national facts And so I think I'll I'll run through several of these and invite you to comment on on any or all of them Can you point to a time in the past where american trusting government was actually restored? What brought that out about in the past and how we could trend toward it again in the future? Um, what do you think about the possibility of something on the model of a truth and reconciliation commission to address past issues? And past issues of violations of trust and what do you think specifically about the role of fear? Um that fear plays in american life in driving this this move Toward as the questioner puts it toward feelings and away from facts Huh? It's a great question, and I um, I'll try to come up with an answer I'll go back to some of the examples. I cited. I think that The church reform was a very effective um mechanism one of the amazing things that happened was that Um several this was a you know a step by jimmy car Uh several senior fbi officials were actually put on trial for breaking into americans houses and wiretapping them These were americans engaged and constitutionally protected uh political activities um and Black job operations were carried out by the fbi without warrants from judges to to wiretap them They were actually convicted one of those Officials that was convicted was mark felt a deputy director of the fbi who was deep throat Throughout his trial in the late 70s. He didn't reveal he was deep throat Woodward and bernstein didn't either But that was an amazing amount of accountability for the american people to see that You know that could be could be carried out. Um, so I think investigations can restore confidence I think the 9 11 commission was very effective. I mean there's clearly 9 11 truthers out there But it did create a you know a consensus a basic narrative of what went wrong in 9 11 That most americans um agreed upon uh just yesterday, you know the senate foreign relations committee came out Uh agreeing with the intelligence assessment that russia did Intervening the election to aid trump It might have been better to have a non-partisan commission to look at you know, uh the 2016 election and I think The trump russian investigation and the last thing. Um, I really want to point out and not forget Um, great work by the inspector general the justice department michael horowitz. Um, his report You know exposed and I think this is an example too That carter page wasn't properly surveilled at the final. Um, not the first two Applications to the to the fiza court were improper But that the last two were and that a low level fbi lawyer changed an email That said that you know carter page was the focus of fbi attention because it was meeting with russian officials The email originally said that page was cooperating with the fbi. I'm sorry with the cia And telling them about these meetings And that email was the meaning of it was reversed. So to say that uh, you know, he he was not cooperating with the cia I've talked to people close to that Lawyer they claim it was sort of a mistake and and the the lawyer Didn't mean it wasn't as nefarious as that seems but that's outrageous And and I I think that it's wrong that carter page was surveilled for longer than he should have at the same time You know trump tower was not surveilled Horowitz found that the the investigation into trump russia was justified legally Uh, we lowered the the the amount of evidence needed for the fbi to carry out an investigation after 9 11 So they could quickly investigate anyone they wanted there need to be reforms I think the fiza court has failed in terms of limiting surveillance Big reforms there. Um, I support bill bar's idea of of creating a higher standard For anyone involved in a political campaign to be surveilled. I think that's a great idea So things went wrong. But again, this is not a sort of coup by the fbi To, you know wiretap trump tower During the campaign Okay. Yeah, so follow-up question if what was disclosed in the horowitz report doesn't reach the level of a coup or a conspiracy What would be? What would what would be your your line for a concerted partisan effort to interfere in the political process? Um, the fbi would have leaked the fact that they were investigating the trump campaign's contacts with russia During the 2016 campaign I was one of dozens of journalists who got a copy of the dossier from glenn simpson of gps Fusion, I should say one of my colleagues at roiders got it I ran around I asked justice department officials if they could Confirm that carter page was meeting with russian officials and that he was being investigated Justice department officials refused to do that During the campaign, I met with john brennan about six weeks before the election. I was doing a big piece I was working for roiders at that point on john brennan's reforms of the cia I was sitting in the director's office and in langley in the headquarters and looking out the window and There's this sort of amazing view of all this these green trees and this verdant landscape out the window And I asked brennan is it true that russian, you know has compromising videotapes of the republican nominee donald trump and you know Brennan sort of seemed you know shocked by the question And then he just very clearly said I am not commenting on that in any way shape or form I'm not confirming it. I'm not denying it. And I you know, I don't want you know any part of of that Is what he said and then he urged me he said, you know, you are going to hear a lot of crazy things david in the last six weeks of this campaign You're going to hear, you know crazy stories about Donald trump you're going to hear crazy stories about hillary clinton and he urged me not to report He said only report what you know Uh, you know to be fact something that you can clearly prove because of all the things that are happening Right now So anyway in terms of the election, there's a conspiracy theory that brennan was distributing The the dossier he urged me not to write about it. Maybe he was lying to me But that was my experience with him And so, you know, I think that that this narrative of the trump russian investigation or this plot to block trump from being elected Is off and then the last thing I'd say in terms of once he becomes president He fires uh, james comey That leads to a, you know, moeller being appointed You can argue moeller never should have been appointed and and You know, that's a longer conversation But you know in the end moller Exonerates donald trump or doesn't find enough evidence to prove that donald trump and his campaign colluded with russia The system worked in that sense that bob moeller Was nonpartisan You know essentially cleared trump of collusion and I think it's important for liberals to accept moeller's findings. It's not Fair to declare donald trump, you know Collaborated with russian. It was a russian agent that was investigated and we people have to accept the Facts of the of the moeller investigation So I want to go back to the example of the 70s again for a moment We have a question about after The pike and church committees and the reforms of the 70s how the fbi and cia pushed back And can we view some of the things that happened after that as retaliation or as a specific efforts to In a way go after Attempts at at greater congressional oversight Um Well, I'll focus on two people and you can argue this is a bias. So I interviewed uh, William Webster that if there's a member of the deep state It's William Webster. He's the only american that's run both the fbi and the cia He's an extraordinary person when I asked him. I said, well, you know people think you're a member of the deep state You know judge Webster. He was like puzzled. He said, you know, well, what is the deep state? Webster, I think that you know, there's heroes in the book and I think he's one of them When the abscam Investigation opened up and there are questions in congress is this an out of control J. Edgar Hoover like fbi sting operation where members of congress were being videotaped accepting bribes You know, Webster accepted oversight. He opened up the fbi records to a special committee that was created It was like a watergate committee And having the legislative branch. I mean, he didn't push back. He didn't resist that oversight He welcomed criminal trials And they got jury convictions in those criminal trials and that actually helped the fbi So I think he was a positive force and then if you look at arant contra, there was pushback that would be a very different, you know cia director Bill casey and that was where all the the things I talked about earlier You know the the findings that had to be written and sent to congress and both parties would learn about it That was all ignored There weren't, you know, there was a finding reagan signed authorizing arm sales to iran But that finding was withheld for from congress so that congress couldn't find out about it casey and his a's is, you know Essentially lied to members of the intelligence committee about what they were doing Casey has a stroke and passes away and then webster's brought in to sort of clean up the fbi And it's a credit to president reagan. He, you know, accepts that these new, you know, post-church reform Need for oversight that there have to be written findings that that both parties find out about, you know, that it's a big test of the system Casey pushes against the system and I think fails At that point in the 80s reagan apologizes to the nation There's questions about what he knew when but congressional oversight, you know continues in the 80s So yes, there was pushback But the system held the problem today is that these same committees have just Generated into pure partisan warfare The intelligence committee, you know, and it was one other character in the book is will heard I remember the intelligence committee of former CIA officer a republican from texas You know, he's from his perspective Donald trump is a unorthodox president Heard felt that the call with the ukrain's president was amateurish, but he feels that adam schiff, you know, exaggerated The scope of you know consistently the scope of ties between trump and russia He points to a statement where schiff said it was beyond circumstantial evidence of of collusion And anyway, it was interesting the gulf where Democrats see trump as this existential threat to american democracy And will heard again. So to see him has unorthodox and and which was shown and you know heard voting to not impeach the president So one more thing on the Post church committee period and abscam in particular the questioner wonders whether The fbi's decision to target members of congress specifically with sting operations as opposed to other officials Could be seen as in some way retaliation or payback for the attempt to impose greater oversight It could I mean it's it's it it starts out with um mel God, I can't weinberg. I believe is his name who's this amazing con man. You know, he's he's in american hustle and the main character and you know, he He's saying I look the narrative is that the things snowballs and that they're sort of shocked at how many members of congress are accepting these Bribes so it could have been it starts in the long island field office other fbi And and you know, I think that's possible. But then again this and the broad a broad point is oversight Of these incredibly powerful organizations by all branches of the government So again, one of the reasons that you know abscam at least is viewed as credible by americans because there is a select committee That investigates it a legislative committee. They have subpoenas tons of testimony You know, they don't find abuses the the chief counsel Of the select committee that investigated abscam was also one of the main councils of the watergate committee and then again the judicial branch jury trials for every member of congress and the one senator All get convictions virtually all of them. So they're convicted by juries of their peers. So I think you need broader oversight. Our system is a mess. You have all three branches fighting with each other Nothing can get done. It's very cumbersome But you have the press looking into it. You have You know judges overseeing jury trials. You have, you know, congressmen trying to score points in their hearings And if if the fbi survives that, you know, that's the kind of rigor they should face You don't want less Oversight, you don't want less transparency. You don't want, you know, less investigations by congress or the courts or the press You want more of them. I am biased but as a journalist I want more transparency So that leads us maybe to one character and one episode in in the sweep of your book that we haven't talked about and that is Edward snowed And snowed and I think raises a couple of really interesting questions about this and the relationship between The kinds of things you could imagine in a deep state conspiracy before high tech espionage comes along and the the seemingly limitless additional scope both for high tech Conspiracies and for high tech whistleblowing So talk a little bit about how you see both the way the snowden story unfolds and the the technology That he uncovers as how how that helps get us to where we are now so It's a great question and to go back to my theme I would say that of the various mechanisms set up to control these agencies The biggest failure has been the fiza court and and one of the ironies of explain what the fiza court is because So back in 1977 after all this this these illegal wiretaps were carried out It was created by jimmy carter Foreign intelligence surveillance court. So if the fbi it's it's primarily first of all if there's a criminal investigation The fbi has to go and get a warrant from a judge, you know anywhere around the country that that's just Basic procedure and but there was a separate category with foreign intelligence investigations Where the fbi would want a routinely, you know wiretap russian diplomats or chinese diplomats in that process They would see that these foreigners Uh, you know we're interacting with american citizens. So essentially american citizens citizens were being surveilled by the fbi Uh in terms of foreign intelligence activities and also, you know post 9 11 They're looking for any americans who are talking possibly to al-qaeda members. So the idea there though is that the It's a closed court There is no advocacy. It's simply government lawyers. It's justice department lawyers presenting applications that are compiled by the fbi There's no adversarial system. There's no defense lawyers. It's all kept in secret I don't you know we the proceedings no one knows none of the public And over and over again the court has failed and the kind of one little detail of what snowden revealed is that Virtually all of the activities he revealed that the nsa was engaged in Had been approved by the fiasa court. Uh one difference between, you know, president obama and president bush After 9 11 president bush carried out Warrantless eavesdropping he he just this was this belief and the president has the power to do what's needed He doesn't need the support of the other branches Just started the warrantless wiretapping program without telling the fiasa court Uh james baker who's one of the characters in the book. He's the general counsel of the fbi and works with jim comey um, he many people hear about this warrantless wiretapping the justice department and Think it should go before the fiasa court the fiasa court's told about it And a failure they let warrantless, you know wiretapping continue. That's a big failure after 9 11 um The carter page case is a is a failure now at least of that system and the information the fbi it was providing but obama Made sure he he you know the same thing executive power all kinds of surveillance But obama sort of tried to obey the laws and sort of you know make it legal by presenting it To the fiasa court getting them to sign off on it But many americans were astonished when snowden You know real revealed to americans that this breath of surveillance was happening But that was approved by court. So I think the court has to be much more skeptical I think the maybe there could be an adversarial process. I think you know, we as journalists should know more about What's going on and I will worry that you know Blanket secretly i'm sorry blanket secrecy is sort of a recipe for abuses So in some ways, maybe to wrap up this brings us back to our contemporary moment and the problem of Collecting the massive amounts of data on ourselves and our movements that seems as if it's going to be necessary to to reopen Um any semblance of normal economic life and minimize the the risks of of coronavirus transmission Do you would you pull lessons for both federal and state authorities in how to think about Data and facts and relating to the citizenry on these issues from from the experience that you've chronicle Yeah, I we we are completely um unequipped uh legally for the digital age There is no kind of consensus on you know, when should the fbi be able to Break into an iphone um in a criminal investigation and our growing partisanship has prevented us from kind of reaching a sort of equilibrium um, and I I think that it is an area though where we can agree that there should be um stricter rules uh one of the officials for the story, you know works for the national security administration and uh, you know Most data is actually held by private companies and You know this person said that uh Eventually the the private companies are going to hold, you know more surveillance data You know than the nsa itself does the nsa says it works overseas primarily um But it's this is an area where I think there is a chance for bipartisan agreement in terms of privacy In terms of the power of big tech concentrations of power and data Are dangerous, I think um, and you know back to my Biden, I'm sorry not my biden thing. Excuse me There's gonna be much a bipartisan agreement involving president trump and joe biden anytime soon, but in terms of ron wyden Uh and rand paul that you know, we can agree on the need for some Uh, you know norms in terms of privacy There's a need maybe in terms of tracking and the coronavirus But this is an example to actually have agreement on something that that could save lives And to just turn down As I talked about this cycle of endless, um partisan combat When it all stakes politics and to spread it The other side and any of their any of their basic claims We have to move past this if we're going to counter the coronavirus if we're going to protect our privacy And and as I said, I think continue to be a healthy society and democracy Well, I appreciate your attempt to close us out with a bit of bipartisan As someone who someone who studies partisanship and trans partisanship that is always most welcome Thank you so much. Thank you to the audience for spending your lunch hour with us And if you if david's uh, both piqued your interest you can go back to our new america Event page on our website and find how to order in deep at solid state books. Um, thank you all and stay safe