 Less than a week ago, we observed the fourth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The events of 9-11 are indelibly set in our national psyche. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon became a starting point for a vigorous and an ongoing national discussion about security in the United States and throughout the globe. It would have been difficult for any of us to predict at the beginning of this new millennium that in the first five years, we would witness terrorist attacks on our own soil, as well as in Indonesia, London and Madrid, a war in Iraq, and most recently, a disaster in the United States that has caused one of our major cities to be substantially destroyed. All of these events are now part of our larger conversation about national security. Our program today memorializes the life of Josh Rosenthal, a 1979 graduate from the University of Michigan who died in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th. Josh, who worked in the world of international finance, was engaged by the broad questions of public policy. I know from conversations with Josh's family and friends that he was of sorts an explorer. He liked to delve into and seek answers to tough questions, and I think it's a fitting tribute to Josh that we're here today to explore some of the toughest questions in front of us. This lecture memorializes Josh by providing an opportunity for all of us to analyze and interpret recent events, to discuss and reevaluate our own positions, and to seek new policy approaches to both national and international security issues. I want to recognize the members of the Rosenthal family who are present today. Josh's cousins, Suzanne Waller and Gary and Chris Sarota are all seated right here. And is Steve Rickard here as well? Is Steve present? He will be. There are a few people coming in a little bit later. I want to call Josh's mother, Marilyn Rosenthal, who's really been the driving force behind these events to the podium, and have her say a few words. Marilyn. It's your presence that makes this anniversary bearable, so I'm so glad you're with us today. I also want to mention that my sister and my brother-in-law Harriet Nerving Berg are here today as well. And I want to begin by thanking Becky and her staff, particularly Linda Paco, for the wonderful job they do in organizing this event every year. And I want to offer a particularly warm and enthusiastic welcome to Senator Carl Levin. We are very grateful for the dignity and the honesty you bring to the U.S. Senate. We couldn't have a better or more appropriate speaker on this occasion, and the subject couldn't be more timely. And I know you will address some of the issues that continue to frustrate so many Americans. In the course of doing research for a book about 9-11 that I'm involved with, I spoke with a number of Josh's colleagues at work, and I asked them to tell me about what he was like at work. And they all said the same thing. He had a reputation for asking zinger questions. The meeting would be going on, and all of a sudden Josh would come up with a question that nobody thought of and that turned out to be very important. So in the spirit of Josh's wonderful characteristic of asking terrific questions, I would like to pose several questions to Senator Levin. It's just because of Josh. Of course we have to deal with the dysfunctional relationship between the 15 intelligence agencies of the United States. But this has been known for decades. We didn't just learn this after 9-11. Of equal importance, I think, are the following. How do we protect intelligence work from political manipulation? And how can intelligence czar, appointed by a president, help with this problem? How do we balance authentic national security with issues of social liberty, particularly when we are now looking at those who preach hate and recruit vulnerable youth? How do we protect financial markets from manipulation by those who have advanced knowledge of the attacks? I read very carefully at your suggestion, Senator Levin, everything that the commission wrote in their special brochure that came out a month after the report. And there are still many unanswered questions. And what we also have to recognize is the same thing happened before the London attacks on July 7th and the same thing happened before the Madrid attacks. And then finally, how do we protect all of us from the danger of dis and misinformation? I have just returned from a research trip to the United Arab Emirates for my book and everybody, every single person I met with the exception of the American ambassador, believes they know what lay behind 9-11. And that is they see it as a CIA conspiracy to position us to take our army into Iraq. And if that doesn't affect our relations with other countries, I'm not sure what does. You will have a very attentive audience this evening. And my deep, deep thanks for listening to these questions with such good humor. Thanks for being with us. It is my deep pleasure to introduce our speaker today, U.S. Senator Carl Levin. I hope he came prepared to speak about the questions that Marilyn asked. Senator Levin has served the state of Michigan in the Senate since 1979. He's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, where he's earned a reputation as a strong supporter of national defense and effective fighter against wasteful spending. The Senate Armed Forces, Armed Services Committee provides legislative oversight of the Department of Defense, authorizing its budget, including the parts that fund Homeland Security and Homeland Defense activities, and approving our establishing policies to improve the civil military effort to prevent or respond to attacks on the United States. Senator Levin is also a very strong advocate on behalf of our first responders, the men and women who risk everything to rescue people from the grip of disaster. He's worked tirelessly to ensure that Michigan's first responders receive adequate funding. I'm delighted to call Senator Levin to the podium to speak on the topic New Directions in National Security. Thank you. Becky, thank you for the great introduction. And Marilyn, thanks, I think, for the Zinger questions. I have a reputation in Washington for asking a lot of Zinger questions, as a matter of fact. The reason I do that is because I don't have Zinger answers. And I'll try to get to your questions. Some were buried in my remarks. I hope you'll find some of the answers to those questions. If not, I'll try to do that during our period for questions. Actually, my wife, Barbara, is here, and usually I refer to her all the questions which I cannot answer. But maybe she just left, as a matter of fact. Somewhere up in the audience is my wife, who's a graduate of the University of Michigan. So she's a Wolverine, and Gail Gauvara, my staff, is also here with us. It's an honor, Marilyn, to be speaking here, first of all, at this lecture, which is endowed in the name of your son, Josh. Your response to heart-rending tragedy and grief was to provide a forum for all of us to study and to learn. A fitting memorial to a very bright man who cared about others and about the world around him. I hope my remarks today are worthy of your goals in creating this lecture series. Four years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, our nation is struggling to recover from a new tragedy, the horrific effects of Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds have lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything. A million people are displaced. Our grief is compounded because of the bungled government response to a predictable and predicted natural disaster. Thankfully, there are rays of light that shine through everywhere and this campus, and it's taking in of displaced students so that they can continue their education, is one of the brightest rays of hope that I have seen. The sad fact, however, is that we have continuing major failures in government, in our actions and in our responses. We've had several major failures in the past four years, including the intelligence failure before September 11th, the intelligence failure relative to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the failure to plan for a post-combat period in Iraq, the failure to treat detainees properly at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the failure to plan for and to respond to a major hurricane. This afternoon, I'd like to share some thoughts with you about what I believe is one of the most significant changes that we must make to prevent future failures, and that is insisting on accountability for those who fail to do their job. Specifically, I'd like to talk with you today about why accountability matters. To look at the absence of accountability for some recent major failures, and then to give my best attempt at explaining why there has been a breakdown in accountability and my best hope for a way forward. If my remarks today seem highly critical, that is because they are. Many Americans, including this one, are deeply angry about these failures because of the personal tragedies that have resulted and because they have left us less secure as a nation. Yet I hope my remarks will be taken as constructive, not just critical. That's the spirit in which they are offered. At its birth, the United States government was an experiment in accountability. As the father of the Constitution, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, the genius of Republican liberty seems to demand not only that all power should be derived from the people, but that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence, should be kept in dependence on the people. That's our bedrock. Those entrusted with power must be kept dependent upon the people. Elections based on an informed public provide the ultimate in accountability. But while voters can provide accountability on election day, the executive, the president, is basically responsible every day for holding members of his administration accountable. President Harry Truman understood this, which he made clear with a simple buck stops here sign on his desk in the Oval Office. And by the way, Josh was named a Truman scholar in his junior year. He was in the first class of Truman scholars that were awarded, scholarships that were awarded based on a nationwide competition. Accountability can provide a measure of justice for the victims of a tragedy and some amount of closure for the families involved, and that's important. But it's also important for the country because holding people and institutions accountable for their actions or inactions is a vital way of improving future performance. And that's why after every military action, large or small, our military conducts an after action review to assess what went right and what went wrong so that we can learn from our mistakes. That's not just about being punitive, it's about improving performance. A Republican president from Michigan in this School of Public Policy's namesake understood this indispensable role of accountability. In 1976, President Gerald Ford spoke about his proposed intelligent reform legislation and he said this, quote, accountability is the real crux of how you can prevent abuses. Today, however, Harry Truman would be very disappointed. The buck gets passed and passed and never seems to stop anywhere. Let's begin with the failure to heed the warnings prior to 9-11. The then National Security Advisor would later state, quote, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would try to use an airplane as a missile. A hijacked airplane is a missile, close quote. Well, she was wrong. To take just one example, the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence unit had warned in 1998 and 1999 about the hijacking threat posed by Al Qaeda, quote, including the possibility that the terrorist group might try to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark, close quote. At best, the National Security Advisor was uninformed. The accountability problem was embedded at all levels relative to the 9-11 failures. Two of the 9-11 suicide bombers were known to the CIA as Al Qaeda associates. They were known to the CIA to have been linked to suspected attacks on the U.S. to the attack on the USS Cole, and they were known by the CIA to have entered the United States. But the CIA failed to notify the FBI of that fact or the immigration department. An FBI agent in Phoenix noticed a, quote, an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest, close quote. We're going to flight school to learn how to fly. He went to one of their homes, he noticed pictures, pictures of bin Laden on the wall, and the person freely acknowledged that he considered the United States a legitimate target. The agent sent a report to the bin Laden unit at the FBI where it was ignored. Meanwhile, efforts to seek a subpoena to access the computer of another suspected terrorist, terrorists were short circuited by FBI lawyers who had misread the law. These are examples of incompetence, and they point to a deeply troubling conclusion that prior to 9-11 U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials possessed information that may have, I emphasize, may have permitted them to disrupt or limit or possibly prevent those attacks of 9-11. More than a year after the attacks, I asked the CIA director and the FBI director if they had held anyone accountable for the failures to do their job. The FBI director replied, well, it all depends on your definition of accountability. Sounds too familiar, but I would say that I have not held somebody accountable in the sense of either disciplining or firing anybody. And the CIA director replied, I haven't held anyone accountable yet, sir, sir. Last month, Congress received a report from the CIA's Inspector General that examined the issue of accountability. It has been reported in the press that the Inspector General found that many levels, many people at all levels of the CIA failed in carrying out their jobs and that he called for an accountability board at the CIA. The new director, the CIA has not indicated whether he will accept that recommendation. No accountability yet. With no accountability for their failure before 9-11, George Tenant and the CIA had less incentive to get the intelligence right on Iraq, and they lived up to those low expectations. The intelligence failures before the Iraq war were massive. The CIA's errors were all in one direction, making the Iraqi threat appear clearer, sharper and more imminent than it was, thereby promoting the administration's decision to attack Iraq. Nuances, qualifications and caveats were dropped. The CIA director told the president that it was a slam-dunk case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The CIA shaped and shaded its assessments and told the administration and the American people what it thought the administration wanted to hear and wanted us to hear. In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a blistering 500-page unanimous report. The first overall conclusion on weapons of mass destruction was this, quote, most of the major key judgments in the intelligence community's pre-war national intelligence estimate either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting. In other words, the intelligence community failed to objectively and independently assess the facts, which is one of its core responsibilities. The response from the administration has been a collective shrug of the shoulders when it comes to accountability. The failures inside the CIA were multiplied by exaggerations and distortions in the highest reaches of the executive branch. Secretary of State made a presentation to the UN in which he claimed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs, despite highly dubious evidence at the time. The vice president repeatedly asserted that the lead 9-11 hijacker, Muhammad Atta, may have met in Prague with an Iraqi agent before the 9-11 attacks, though our intelligence community did not believe that that had occurred. The CIA told the White House to remove the suggestion that Iraq purchased uranium from Africa from the president's major speech in Cincinnati in October of 2002 because the CIA doubted that the claim was true and that comment was removed from the president's speech. That's about six months before the president stated the Union message right before we attacked Iraq. But in the State of the Union message, in late January of 2003, the president put that same assertion back in by saying that, quote, the British government has learned that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa with the clear intent, the clear intent of creating an impression that we believed it also, although we didn't. These exaggerations were not mistakes or slips. They were not inadvertent or accidental. They were calculated decisions to stretch the evidence past the breaking point to turn gossip and gossamer into grounds to attack. For these failures and these distortions, there has been no accountability. Instead, the president gave the CIA director the country's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the meritorious service that he had rendered. Another recent failure was the lack of adequate planning for post-war Iraq. When called to duty, our military fought bravely and brilliantly. Their performance in Iraq, however, was not matched by a similar performance in Washington. The administration tragically misjudged the post-war situation and failed to plan for the possibility of a violent aftermath. This was in part because they failed to adequately involve the uniformed military leaders in that planning. General Tommy Franks, the commander of our wartime forces in Iraq, told Senator John Warner and me that the senior civilian officials in the Pentagon had made it clear that uniformed military leaders should focus on planning for the combat phase and leave the planning for the aftermath to the civilians. Well, uniformed military leaders would have planned for a possible worst case scenario, not just for a rosy afterword scenario. When then Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki, warned that it could take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to occupy and stabilize Iraq after the war, he should have been listened to instead of being scorned and isolated. Civilian leaders at the Pentagon similarly ignored detailed studies on Iraq by the State Department that accurately predicted the problems that we have encountered. Had they paid attention, they would not have disbanded the Iraqi Army. That was among the worst of our post-war decisions. And it was done casually and thoughtlessly based on the arrogant belief that we would be welcomed with flowers by the people of Iraq. Again, no accountability. The Defense Secretary stayed on for a second term, and one of the main architects of the war was appointed to head the World Bank. Another large failure has been the horrific treatment of some of the detainees under American control. Photographs of some of those deplorable acts at Abu Ghraib flashed around the world, undermining our security, and jeopardizing our troops if they are captured in future combat. Similar reports of abuses at Guantanamo Bay have taken a similar toll. The wellspring of good feelings towards the United States of people around the world has been poisoned. Our values have been tarnished, and a club was handed to the religious fanatics who wanted to destroy us. This is one of the most serious scandals in recent military history, but there has been almost no accountability. Yes, there have been several reviews inside the Defense Department relating to prisoner abuse, but these snapshot inspections and narrowly tailored investigations have left huge gaps. They've not looked at the intelligence role. They've not looked at the role of special forces. They've not looked at the role of contractors, and they've not reached any high-level civilians or military people in their review. That's all left out. The Department of Defense has shown that it is not capable of investigating itself. Investigators cannot be independent when they are in the chain of command of those that they are investigating. The only review done outside of that chain of command was the Schlesinger Panel investigation. It concluded that the abuses are, quote, not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline. There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels, close quote. Yet, as of today, a few low-ranking enlisted personnel have been court-martialed, but no high-ranking civilian or military person has been held accountable, even in the most modest of ways. Instead, the shameful parade of unaccountability continues with little challenge from the Republican-controlled Congress. This not only undermines our moral authority as a nation of laws, but also puts our troops at increased risk if they are captured in the future. Finally, the failure in New Orleans. For three or four critical days, FEMA failed to provide food and water to 20,000 stranded people in the New Orleans Convention Center. No helicopters with rations and water, just shipwreck dehydrated people left in unimaginably squalid conditions. Millions of Americans and countless millions around the world watched in horror on their televisions at FEMA's incompetence and, in many cases, deadly failures. And when we watched in dismay, and then we watched in dismay, as the President congratulated the head of FEMA by saying, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The attempt to avoid accountability was swift. The President claimed that, quote, I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees. Those are his words. That statement was the 2005 version of the National Security Advisor saying that no one had anticipated that suicide pilots could strike prior to 9-11. And it was just as inaccurate. The President and his press secretary dismissed fair questions from the media by calling them a blame game. Instead, they insisted there would be plenty of time later on to assess accountability. Well, it was only because of persistent public outrage over his performance and lack of experience that Brownie was finally removed from the recovery operation. And when the head of FEMA, Brownie, later resigned, the President indicated that he was unaware that the resignation had even occurred. In his address last night, the President finally began to use the language of accountability surrounded by the destruction and devastation of New Orleans. And after weeks of public anger and outcry, the President said, quote, when the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem and for the solution. Well, that is a critical and an encouraging step. The words, however, are the easy part. The proof that he is serious and has truly changed his administration's attitude towards accountability will be if he and the Republican Congress agreed to the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate all aspects of what went wrong with the response to Katrina and to find ways to correct the problems. Well, what's the root of the no-accountability posture? One possibility is that it stems from a general unwillingness to acknowledge that mistakes have been made. The administration, after all, has never acknowledged that the failure to find WMD in Iraq was indeed a failure. Instead, it shifted the rationale for going to war. Another possibility, and the one I'm afraid that I believe is likely, is that it is a variation of the old, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Namely, if you don't point a finger at me for my failings, I will protect you when you fail. According to this theory, the administration fears that if anyone is demoted or fired, they will strike back at their bosses. And there's some history to support that feeling. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is one of the few people dismissed from the Bush administration. He later wrote that at Bush cabinet meetings, that Bush cabinet meetings made the President look, quote, like a blind man in a room full of deaf people. The President may not wish to risk a repeat of that public relations debacle. Circling the wagons around the President has become the operative policy. And the President is loyal to those who do the circling. As Republican Congressman Chris Shays said recently about the administration, loyalty and never admitting a mistake matter more than the truth. As a result, the message that those in the executive branch constantly receive is don't worry about mistakes, don't speak truth to power via yes, man. Well, that may be the road to positive recognition and personal advancement, but tragically, that's also the road to future national failures. What's the antidote to the no accountability disease? The best answer, like so many answers, is in our great Constitution. Tomorrow's Constitution Day. A day for the country to learn about and celebrate our Constitution. We look to our Constitution to help us fix mistakes, to correct course, to hold people accountable for failure. The Constitution created three co-equal branches of government and gave each of them checks and balances on the other. When the President does not hold members of his administration accountable, congressional oversight can and should be a great check on executive power. For example, in 1941, the Truman Committee investigated wartime profiteering under a Democratic administration that Harry Truman would later join. In 1972, the bipartisan Watergate inquiry exposed wrongdoing at the highest levels of executive power, and it was a Republican senator who repeatedly asked the famous question, what did the President know and when did he know it? In 1987, it was the congressional Iran-Contra hearings that put an end to illegal arms sales to Iran to finance the Contras in Nicaragua. Today, however, Congress is not fulfilling its oversight responsibility. Congressional investigations of executive branch activities are next to nil. There's no examination of post-war Iraq planning, no examination of detainee abuse. The Senate Intelligence Committee has not conducted the promised investigation into how policymakers used or misused the intelligence that they received. Given the inability or refusal of the Republican Congress to be critical of a Republican president or his administration, the next best alternative is an independent, bipartisan commission with staff and subpoena power, such as the 9-11 Commission. Created only through the persistence of victims' families, the 9-11 Commission did excellent work yet unearthed many of the facts which I referred to before. That commission should be the blueprint for the investigation of the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, just this week, the Senate rejected on a party-line vote an amendment to create such an independent commission. If the Congress refuses to engage in thorough oversight, the final guardians of accountability are a free press guaranteed by the Constitution and an informed public exercising its freedom of speech and its freedom to vote. But whether it's through citizens speaking out or the Congress finally fulfilling its oversight responsibilities or the president having a true change of heart, it's time to end the era of no accountability. For the sake of our nation's security, the buck passing must stop. Thank you, and I'd be happy to try to answer some questions. Thank you. Let me try first, Marilyn. I wrote down your questions because when you get to my age, you only can remember one question at a time, and you got three. On the dysfunctional intelligence community, we hope that we have eliminated some of the dysfunctionality, if that's a word, by creating a new agency which has the authority over all of our intelligence to try to make it cohesive, coherent, so that the analyses come from information which is gathered by everybody and that we don't have walls between information which one agency gets and doesn't share with another. We hope we've done it. I can't tell you a certainty that we have. When you look at FEMA and what it didn't do, we are already looking at backing away from what we previously legislated and making FEMA again an independent agency rather than part of a larger umbrella agency. But it's the political manipulation issue, which is the part of your question which, to me, is the most important issue. We rely upon the director of the CIA and now the director, the DNI director, the head of all intelligence. We rely on that person to speak truth to power. That's the bottom line. We've seen that failure massively with the prior director of the CIA. And when you read Woodward's, Bob Woodward's book, which has pretty well been acknowledged to be accurate, by George Tenant, who he was quoting, when Tenant and his deputy were sitting in the Oval Office briefing the president about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the war, Bush, when he was given the briefing by the deputy, looked in at Tenant, the head, and said, is that all there is? And Tenant said, Mr. President, it's a slam dunk. He then went out and made it a slam dunk. You need the opposite. You need someone who's the head of intelligence to tell the president or tell us what we don't want to hear. Otherwise, we make the most tragic mistakes. We have to be able to rely on those assessments. What do we think Iran's going to do? Are they moving in a nuclear direction? What's their intent? What's North Korea's intent? Are they moving in a nuclear direction? What is their purpose? If we don't have a director who will tell us what we don't want to hear, we're going to make some mistakes which can not just cause lives, but hurt nations, including this nation. George Marshall was Harry Truman's secretary of state, and Truman had tremendous respect for George Marshall. At one point, President Truman was with him at some kind of a meeting and said, George, and Marshall cut him off right there and said, Mr. President, don't call me George. I'm General Marshall to you. I don't want to be your friend. Now, that's an extreme point. But what he was saying to Truman is, I've got to be able to tell you what you don't want to hear. What presidents need. This president didn't have that in George Tennant. I believe he didn't want that in George Tennant. But whether he wanted it or not, that is what he must have. And when the new director was being sworn in, that was the question we all asked him at his public hearing. Will you speak truth to power? Will you tell the president and the Congress what you believe objectively and independently those assessments are? Or are you going to try to tell your leaders what they want to hear? And of course, and he was under oath, he swore that he would speak truth to power. But the president must want somebody like that. If he picks a yes person, he's going to get a yes person. So I wish I could look you in the eye and tell you that what happened with George Tennant will never happen again. But that's a long story. It's more than just that one squib from the book of Bob Woodward. There's a long history here of CIA. It goes back to Bill Casey when he was CIA director doing exactly the same thing in terms of shaping the intelligence in order to advance a particular policy position rather than giving a straightforward, independent assessment. What you heard when you were in the Gulf, I think you said about all the people there telling you that our presence in Iraq is a CIA conspiracy to take our army into Iraq. I know that isn't true. We're in Iraq for the wrong reason. But that's not the reason. We made a mistake going in. It's been bungled ever since we went in. I won't go into all that. But it's not a CIA conspiracy to take our army out. As a matter of fact, I think our president right now would like to get the army out of there as quickly as he possibly can. Because he's in much deeper than he ever planned on being. But anyway, I don't know if I've answered all your questions, but I've given it a go. The lady says that it was not a matter of incompetence that the CIA did not report the presence of two members of al Qaeda, which is what I said, in the United States who turned out later to be hijackers. That's what I said. It's true. And I can go into great detail. As a matter of fact, there was a meeting in July of 2001 in New York where the CIA and the FBI were in a room together. And the FBI point blank had heard that the CIA was tracking two people, allegedly members of al Qaeda, which the CIA knew they were. The FBI asked CIA agents in an office in New York in July, why are you tracking those two men? And the CIA said, we are not authorized to share that information with you. Now, without arguing with you, that's a fact. That fact is laid out in both reports of the 9-11 Commission and the Intelligence Committee on which I sit. That is a fact. And by the way, the other facts that I said about FBI not reporting people that were the Phoenix officer reported to the FBI desk in Washington, what had happened in Phoenix, and about seeing that person with the pictures of Bin Laden on the wall, that is a fact. The officer in Minneapolis, the FBI officer, name was Rowley reporting to the FBI office in Washington about getting into this computer in Minneapolis of someone she suspected to be al Qaeda. That is a fact. That the lawyer in Washington was wrong about the law and saying he couldn't get into that computer. That is a fact. Those are all facts. There was a Bin Laden desk in the FBI whose sole function was to track Bin Laden, who the CIA director said was the greatest threat to this country. That is a fact. What did that FBI desk do with that information that came in from Phoenix in Minneapolis? Nothing. Those are facts. Those are facts that I gave. I'll stand by them. Yes. It seems that recently most of the people of CIA's operation director are resigned, either those appointed long ago or recently. Is this a good sign for accountability or a bad sign? I really don't know as to the motivation of those people, and I don't know who they are. I don't know enough about their talents or their capabilities, so I really can't give you a good assessment as to that. But leadership is the key in any intelligence community. What you need is a leader who's going to tell people, you give me your unvarnished assessments. Don't worry about the politics. Don't worry whose toes you step on. That's what you need. You need that kind of leadership, and I hope we have that kind of leadership now with Negroponte. I don't know. He told us that he would be that kind of a leader, and I hope he'll prove to be that. But I don't know whether or not those changes and departures signify a plus or a minus or a neutral. To me, it's a national security issue. If we have a Chief Justice who is voted to unfold torture, that's really bad for me. So I know you're not on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I don't think, but I think the Democrats have actually been throwing some serious softball to John Roberts. They haven't mentioned, I don't think, that he is apparently lying about whether he was in the Federalist Society or not. That's a no-brainer. They did call anti-Hedgepets to the witness stand, the, um... What's your question? What's your question? Oh. Okay. You're coming in 10 seconds. As long as you're not going to ask me how I'm going to vote. Any questions, fair. I think you look good in the road. Right. Anyway. Anyway, I'll get to the questions quick. Anyway, they didn't call anti-Hedgepets the 12-year-old black girl who was arrested for eating a French fry on the D.C. Metro. You know, Roberts said that was fine. Anyway, my question is, what do you think the Democrats can do at this point? Ask more hardball questions. Phillip Buster or maybe Mary Landrieu could do a hold if Bush does not agree to a point that bipartisan Katrina Commission that you mentioned, which is a great idea. So what ideas might you have, Phillip Buster, hold, hardball questions? I don't know what the Democrats are going to do on the Judiciary Committee, and I don't know what this Democrat's going to do. Until I read that transcript and do a lot of soul-searching, I don't know what I'm going to do, what the Democrats are going to do. I added one question to all of theirs, which I'm interested in seeing the answer to. It was a so-called question for the record, which means it wasn't asked during the hearing, because I'm not on the committee, but it's asked after the hearing, and then he gives a written response. The question is, it's been reported that you were interviewed by Vice President Cheney, Carl Rove, Andrew Card, the new Judge Gonzales, and the White House Counsel Harriet Myers. If in fact this was true, did they ask you what your views were on the following 10 questions? And then I listed 10 questions, which are the most common questions I think most of us would ask. I'm interested as to whether or not he was as non-responsive when he was talking to Carl Rove as he was when he was talking, basically, to the Judiciary Committee. Now, non-responsive, I've got to be a little bit careful, because there are some questions that properly he does not respond to. Every nominee does not respond to a lot of questions. So I don't want to judge, but I don't mean to pick that as a pejorative word at this point. It's a transcript that I think he was unduly non-responsive, but for the moment he obviously did not respond to a lot of questions, and I'm curious as to what did he talk about with those five folks? What was the conversation? It was not about executive power and about habeas corpus and about prayer and school and about affirmative action, but all the other things he was asked, well, what did he say? I can't talk about that. I mean, those are pretty dull conversations. I wouldn't have answered that question, but I really... I mean, in terms of what could happen, assuming there were enough Democrats who decided to vote no, is obviously there could be a filibuster. I doubt very much that it will happen, because I think even the Democrats that vote no will probably not want to go to that extent on this nominee, even though we did go to that extent with some court nominees, and properly so in my judgment, I think the filibuster is an appropriate tool. In fact, it's the only check on this president is Democrats in the Senate. There is no other check on this president except for 41 Democrats saying no using properly the filibuster rule which exists to protect the position of minority, but I don't predict it's going to happen in this case. I don't know if I evaded your question sufficiently, but I tried, yeah. I'm sorry. Yes, you're next. Hi, Mr. Levin. Thank you for your second daily. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the president's speech last night and the action taken by Congress following Katrina. Do you believe that the administration is going to turn towards accountability now that there's been this huge national disaster, or do you believe it's going to go on the same as it has been with the other events you mentioned? My wife always tells me to end on a hopeful note, because I tend to be very serious in my analysis and critical and sometimes I can leave people a little discouraged and I don't want to leave any audience discouraged. I want to mention the Constitution in my last breath here as though I were Robert Byrd. And so I've got to be hopeful. I mean, I can't tell you I'm confident that this administration's stripes have changed based on one speech. At the UN the other day he had a different tone from previous speeches at the UN. He reached out much more to countries. I think maybe, I've got to be hopeful, maybe he's learned, hopefully he's learned that we can't succeed in this world and our cause is without allies. We cannot do it alone. We can't be arrogant, we cannot be cocky both at many times during the administration, both arrogant and cocky. We can't succeed in our causes without allies, without reaching out to people, embracing them. We need allies to face the difficult situations in Iran and North Korea. We can't do that alone. And so I'm going to be hopeful about his speech last night and say I hope it represents a change in his approach to accountability. But we've got to see it in many ways not just in that situation where he really has no choice. I mean the American people were confronted with such pictures that there would be no way that he could avoid accepting some responsibility. It's too overwhelming. The failure of FEMA was too overwhelming. And his complimenting the head of FEMA for his work, Brownie was too much of an insult. So in a way he I think had no alternative but to change direction. I just hope that he'll do that now across the board and let me use that hopeful note. Let me just take one more question then I got to catch a plane. Yes, I pointed at you. Good afternoon Senator, thank you for coming. You mentioned the failures of our intelligence prior to Iraq and how because of those failures we're now in Iraq and it's a big mess. But it seems to me that the problems of the Iraq are only just starting. Next month they'll have the elections. They're voting on a constitution that a third of the population is against. And it seems like the country could fall into civil war. What do you feel, number one, is the best exit strategy for us to get out of Iraq and how long do you think it'll take for that to happen? And if Iraq does collapse into civil war what will be the consequences for American security if that happens? Let me ask your second question first in terms of the consequences. If Iraq descends into a civil war it will be very, very dangerous I believe for the region and for us. They're on the brink of it. There already may be some element of civil war going on. There are attacks intermurally between some of the religious groups and ethnic groups in Iraq going on. There's retaliation. There are revenge killings between groups going on now. But it would be a very serious problem for us in the region if that happens. And so we have to try to do our best now that we're there to see that that doesn't happen. Now let me give you what I think is the only exit strategy that I can put together. As many of you know I thought it was a mistake to go in. I want to say this not to say that I was right but to set the framework for what my recipe is for the future. In other words what you're going to hear from me is from a person who voted against going in, thought we should not go in unilaterally, thought we should not go in without a UN resolution thought there was no imminent threat to us believed there was weapons of mass destruction by the way but said even if there are weapons of mass destruction they're not threatening to use them to us against us. Soviet Union had weapons of mass destruction we didn't attack them. China and Pakistan and India all have nuclear weapons they don't attack each other the fact that we thought they had weapons of mass destruction is not a justification to attack a country unless they threaten you imminently. I did not believe and said so at the time that there was any link between Assad 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. That's where the administration tried to manufacture that link. That was much of the manufacturing going on before the war was trying to make that link look like it was a real link rather than just some sympathy between the two or common hatred of us. So that's where I'm coming from before I give you my answer okay. I don't think that we can pull out tomorrow because it would lead to the Civil War which you ask about. On the other hand I think the president is totally wrong in saying that we should stay there as long as they need us because that could be forever. We can't give them a blank check in that regard we can't say that we are just there as long as you need us because that is too unconditional and it makes a fundamental error. It ignores what I believe to be the fact that without a political settlement in Iraq there can be no military solution. And our military leaders tell us this and this is fundamental to my position. Unless there's a political settlement in Iraq we cannot succeed they will not succeed and we cannot succeed in defeating the insurgency militarily. How do you then put together a political settlement? I would tell the Iraqis that unless they can reach a political accommodation real one a real political accommodation which involves all the parties by the end of this year that we must consider that's the signal consider a timetable for departure that's what I would like the president to say to the Iraqis he will not he doesn't want to talk about timetable but unless the Iraqis do get their political house in order the fact of the matter is we cannot solve this problem militarily they're the only ones who can solve it. We've opened a door for them they can walk through it or not we can't write their constitution they're the only ones who can write it and so that's the formula that I believe is the right one to put some pressure on them to put their political pieces together without them coming together politically they don't have a chance of defeating this insurgency it's being fueled by the dissatisfied and disgruntled mainly the Sunni Arabs are fueling the insurgency and unless they are on board in a political solution it's going to continue now the jihadists are a different element of this problem but they'll never defeat the jihadists who come from outside or the suicide bombers unless they can put their own political house so I believe we must send that signal to them folks you got four months you got an election coming up I'm not saying their constitution should be approved it's not up to us they've got to get their component parts together pieces together or else we've got to consider by the end of this year a timetable for the departure of our troops we've got to put some real pressure on them without telling them what the solution is or how to write their constitution it avoids the problems at both ends the problem of setting a fixed date now which I think plays into the hands of people who are trying to kill us on the other hand it also avoids what I think is the president's mistake and county rice's mistake of just saying we're there as long as they need us because that's just too unlimited that's where I'm at it comes from that background and I've talked about this issue with the Iraqi leaders I point blank as told president Taliban this again the other day in Washington the president of Iraq that we're making other mistakes right now in terms of the training and the equipping of the Iraqi army believe it or not many people in the Iraqi army and police are not being paid it's unthinkable to me that there's that much incompetence they're not being paid either by the Iraqis with their budget or by us we can't accept that it simply is unacceptable they've got to get their security forces geared up to take over their own problems in their own country that's the way out for us as far as I know the best of my ability that's it great audience thank you