Welcome to the Brennan Center at nyu school of law. I am your moderator i am a journalist at the atlantic and a staff writer in the ids section. The Brennan Center is a nonprofit im sorry nonpartisan that reforms and revitalizes when necessary to defend the systems of democracy and justice. You can keep up with their work online or follow them on facebook or twitter and listen to their podcast. One second. Sorry. Tonight we are hosting one of our own mike german who is a fellow with the Liberty National security programmer he focuses on Law Enforcement and intelligence oversight and reform. He used to work at the aclu for National Security and privacy and before that serve 16 years as an fbi special agent with domestic terrorism and covert operations and discussing his book speaking like a terrorist im sorry his second book that was his first book you should also read disrupt and discredit and divide how the new fbi damages our democracy. Since 9 11 it has transformed itself to be famous for prosecuting organized crime but a secret agency please welcome mike german. [applause] so we will start with a question some people may know but why did you go from being an fbi agent to aclu quick. Just what everybody does. [laughter] and to be fair i was doing policy counsel work in the legislative office. I actually had a friend from college who knew me when i was in college and to be an fbi agent and we met up after i started working at the aclu and said i never could have purchased land is pictured you working at the aclu yes i never pictured the government would have a torture policy. [laughter] so i see a lot of those changes that are happening within the Justice Department within the fbi were putting at risk that i joined the fbi to protect and the aclu was doing great work then to address that so it seemed like a great place to go and i cant believe they let me come. Speaking to that tell me about the Political Climate when you join the fbi and how when you left. I joined the fbi straight out of law school 1988 and it was when there was a big hiring phase is a very small agency only 12000 around the world. So growing up wanting to be fbi agent is always will they be hiring . So there was a period of time where the savings and loans were deregulated so they were investing in get rich quick schemes and the bottom fell out in the back then the Justice Department used to prosecute people so there was a huge hiring to work on the savings and loan fraud and thats how i got hired. You hinted at this be referred as a small agency which i think may come as a surprise to the audience but you mention in your book its actually smaller than the nypd. Correct. Obviously they serve a city of millions of people but the fbi is responsible for a country of 300 million. And only 12000 of those 30000 employees are actually agents and they are spread over 60 field offices that means a legal at a show attache offices abroad so for the impact they have on our society is incredibly small. It goes back to the origins and what was originally meant to do. Can you talk about that original mission so is it your view they strayed from it and wasnt necessary quick. The fbi was created through executive fiat the attorney general at the time Charles Bonaparte went to the Justice Department to have its own investigators to help work the cases and went to congress seeking the authority to hire these investigators in Congress Said no. There is a lot of expression they were afraid of having a federal Police Agency to spy on average citizens. So they rejected this proposal. So in congress adjourned president roosevelt gave the attorney general the authority to just hire the agents. [laughter] and by the Time Congress came back the agents were hired and there was a prominent story about corruption and president roosevelt said is it just that they are trying to protect themselves and change the Political Climate in a drastic way so with the attorney generals promise he would keep the agency and check they went ahead and let it go forward. Another lesson how washington manipulates politic. You said it was a misunderstanding that distorted the fbis approach to the mission and what do you mean by that quick. When Teddy Roosevelt started the fbi that would hold the most powerful to account corrupt officials, Business People but very quickly after that in the approach to world war i the government wanted them to be involved in more espionage like activities to encounter the threat from germans and that grant of authority open the door to spying on people there were no longer concerned of who is doing harm but then those thoughts were around journalists and universities of centers of thought and those were in the business of spreading ideas rather than committing crime and they labeled these people radicals because they were all seeking radical change to the establishment whether the financial or government establishment. That concept of targeting radicals has to have other means to go after them with something that really appealed to a Young J Edgar hoover who that became the director of the radical division and that concept those that are engaging in violence are the problem but those spreading ideas that might lead to violence is what this concept was. After the palmer raids there was abuse of these authorities so there was reestablishing the fbi as an agency and they said no we will have a Law Enforcement mission that will stop the political spying than that only last up until the runup of world war ii the National Security threats led to an expansion of the mandate and again they revived this concept after hoover saw them as a problem there were not a lot of communist so wanted to expand that with socialists and that expanded to the antiwar left so we might as well have a program to examine them in from the concept of radicalization in the spread of ideas and violence. Talk how that approach relates to modern day because im sure that sounds familiar to the audience. It was interesting when i was working undercover with the terrorist groups basically i was told where jeans and a tshirt. I was desperate with information how to work with these groups and what they tried to accomplish the basic labor to schools that argued its the product of a diseased mind and was a mental defect psychologist and psychiatrist did studies to find this mental feedback that could be useful to find a cure but also to identify people with the defect before they isolate them from the community that its a label that you cannot understand that segment without understanding all of the Political Violence in that situation and in context so that was silly to study terrorism and by the nineties but these are rational people engaged in horrific activity but after 9 11 they could not bring up those defects imagines a mental defect but its outside the scope so there is no diagnosis available we just know that when we see it and if you look at those radicalization models they identify First Amendment protected activities and those associations in political activity that is at danger down the radicalization pathways so the way the government put it is they cannot wait until somebody blew something up and that provided a blueprint of who was left so according to those documents from conversion to g hot just converting to islam what is the first step and then adopting to go to mosque and joining the social group and getting involved in political activity with other groups are all indicators it wasnt that surprising there was that much surveillance of the muslim communities for no particular reason. I hope nobody here is engaged in political activity. It if you are already in a university thats radicalization. Two strikes. You write the fbi appears to be immune to traditional efforts of oversight. Can you explain. It poses a difficult problem because it is an essential agency in many ways. There are real criminals would prey upon those and we need a force that is effectively too old to address that problem we need an agency that can work with corruption so we have to give this agency the tools that can be abused because they can be seen they also want to make sure to protect the communities so thats difficult as a problem and then to give them more authority and room essay obviously it was how dysfunctional it was a bed to see whats really wrong with it so it does present a problem in the best case scenario. But also we have seen significantly that fbi officials to Tell Congress things that sound nice that are not necessarily true about using its own authorities. And when the secretive agency can mislead the overseers its very hard to understand of the abuse. The perfect example one of the first things i worked on at the aclu was foia request and privacy act request in the aftermath of 9 11 they were being spied on so the aclu help them to do a nice nationwide privacy act request so turn sure enough they were engaged in spying in pennsylvania for the center of peace and justice. And that came out that was respected more in congress wanted to know so i said its all part of a different investigation. There were some muslim terrace i just happened to be at this rally we werent actually spying on the center. That turned out to be entirely false. So that makes it very difficult in addition to its expansive powers now a bigger cloak of secrecy. When theres that kind of secrecy then you manipulate what facts will come out to the publics attention and what doesnt and that makes it very hard for members of congress with an interest in reform you cannot make that happen because so much a secret you describe them fbi is a Lawless Agency that may given a surprise as a former agent but what do you mean by lawless quick. I use that because it technically is. When it was created in 19 oh eight it didnt have a charter and Congress Said this is what it should do and this is how it should do it. That just runs through executive fiat the president tells them what to do and they did it. Those limitations did not exist until after J Edgar Hoover died. The only comprehensive examination of our Intelligence Agency to find that abuse the effort was to limit those powers but instead the attorney general step forward to say i will issue guidelines and just like those reforms were intended with no reasonable indication of activity but because those attorney general guidelines they can modify them and most do and they have moved somewhat stronger and after 9 11 ashcroft significantly loose and the guidelines and then again in 2008 under kc they were extensively rewritten to the point where now under the guidelines they can conduct an investigation with no factual basis that anybody has committed a crime. These can be very intrusive not just physical surveillance but subpoenas for telephone records subscriber information recruitment and tasking of informants to recruit somebody to infiltrate your Group Without believing anybody has done anything wrong. They are not bound by the law. Fbi leadership is invoked through diversity but the bureau seems to struggle more with recruiting to diversify their staff than in the past why is that quick. When i joined the fbi 198820 years after J Edgar Hoover died and they spoke to the need to diversify the agency and every year it never approached the rest of america but you could see improvement. That was not easy. When i was a young age and there was a classaction suit by women agents and another by latino agents and black agents. So their word discrimination problems inside the agency but you can see there was some progress being made and i believe believe the lawsuits were forcing more progress to be made. After 9 11 we saw a retrenchment and i believe thats because of the shift of a National Security focus in your away from Law Enforcement you can no longer prove the law but they might be a National Security threat its very easy and human nature to see people who have a different Life Experience to be dangerous and a risk if an agency is overwhelmingly white for the normal security protocol thats applied to an applicant to look more critically than someone who doesnt look like the rest of the fbi and they go through case studies of agents who came under suspicion because of their religion or National Origin or they were born in a foreign country when there are small problems those are magnified the ability to disrupt is the concept they pull from the disruption strategy where they feel even if you cant prove somebody commits a crime you have the authority to disrupt their activities even though they cant prove somebody is a spy the easiest way to disrupt them is get them out than if they are a spy then we say tough luck. You got into that a little bit but how is the bureaus lack of diversity affects how it approaches the mission quick. For any Law Enforcement agency to not be representative of the communities at polices is a problem its easy to look suspiciously as someone engaged in normal behavior for that community but when the fbi has the tools it has it can do real damage so having that Diverse Workforce is essential to the eventual management of the agency but more so than what we have seen in those case studies i talk about in the book involve activities that start off with the purpose but then long after its appropriate that it should be obvious on its face with that investigation and it takes somebody in the agency and having robust guidelines and the courage to stand up to say i know this community and whats going on and what youre doing and you need to stop and agents i know who make that stand to the detriment of their own careers. You Say Something thats relevant to your case but describe how the loopholes of racial and religious profiling swallows the rules themselves. Because of a lot of good work of many civil Rights Groups in the nineties there was a lot of research of racial profiling that even if you put aside discrimination with the negative impact on the communities it was an effective Law Enforcement and they do a good job of educating Law Enforcement and i was proud to be in the fbi with the vanguard of that Law Enforcement instruction. But it became clear we needed strong guidelines so attorney general ashcroft and president bush said they were interested to put this together and did except 9 11 intervened so there is a big cut out for National Security so basically the message sent to Law Enforcement is this is a bad technique for quit doesnt work it alienates communities but we will keep it for the most important investigations so what Law Enforcement learned as i hear what you say but what youre really telling us using it in the investigation. So in 2014 they were modified again and in the meantime the fbi had to pull that actually had a Mapping Program across the United States the fbi was using census data by race and ethnicity to track ethnic behaviors at the aclu we tried to use for you to get what they were but unfortunately the courts would not let us have them and ethnic facilities im not sure what that is but obvious racial profiling they were not drawing maps because they liked pretty pictures but they would treat people differently from the other side of the line and in 2014 when the Obama Administration modified the ashcroft guidelines actually authorized this program for go so it sends the exact wrong message to Law Enforcement about the use of racial profiling. Ethnic activities will stick with me for a while. You right there are systemic problems make the bureau a threat to the very democracy its intended to serve. Can you elaborate quick. First and foremost we have to have confidence there is a rule of law that applies to everyone equally in society and when we see the law is not applied equally and i joined during the savings and loan crisis those that were responsible held to account and to see that crisis in 2008 very few were held into account that has this cynicism with the fbi target certain groups not just Muslim Americans in the aftermath of 9 11 but eco terrorism as a number one threat related to Environmental Activism it was a fear your political opinion would put you at risk. So that kind of behavior undermines the rule of law and that confidence while at the same time as we talk about the fbi not being completely honest with congress. With cong. You already have and then present it to the court as if thats the original way youve collected information so the defendant and the judge and the jury would never know it was another tactic and had opportunity to challenge the tactic. Does america need a new Church Commission . Critically and its overdue. Its not just a look at the abuses. The governmen government invadir privacy is nothing to increase its just abusive and creates the problem it is just as vulnerable as the liberty is and we have to understand that. It becomes apparent now where we have 70 billion somehow the russian government came in and that old with our election and whether you believe that influenced the outcome it certainly has disrupted in a very profound way how could an agency given so many resources as aggressively as it can be able to find the obvious threat that came in and before that, the financial crisis of 2004 the White Collar Crime division started warning about mortgage fraud and said this was going to be an enormous problem thats going to risk our economic viability if we dont address it. I want to say that in the privatization of the bureau that is another important part of your book. The daily mail did a publishing but you articulate your criticism of the stewardship of the bureau and the problems that you describe in the book. I started the book talking about the immediate action after 9 11 and you might remember the agent in minneapolis that ultimatelbutultimately wrote a t was made public that laid out a lot of the evidence its hard to go back in time and remembered how this happened. The Bush Administration was resistant to the failure and the information wasnt coming out and what we are being presented with from the indigents community is such a biological attack somehow the operatives were in the United States and able to do all this without communicating with any federal government that he knew of and we need t these grand tools when in fact everyon every one in thi especially in minneapolis knew that there were cases that were getting a clue and there wasnt a very clear picture but it was certainly clear that it was an Information Management problem and not a collection problem but of course giving Information Management reform would require a much more thorough where they could maintain it was a lack of information give us more authority and resources. Robert mueller went along with the even though he clearly knew what the problems were i find that very problematic when things started going further off the rails when the activities and even beyond the broadband patriot act and they were violating. It was similarly with military and cia abuse and torture programs and there were agents around the world reporting this back to headquarters this is a crime im going to get my handcuffs out and tell me what to do. For some reason the fbi praise for that. I would have felt a little odd and i have concerns of leadership in the fbi particularly when People Like Us raise concerns and are silent the reputation isnt necessarily well deserved and likewise a shorter tenure at the fbi with some strange problematic decisions. The fbi is investigating both candidates in the president ial campaign should raise some concerns for the democracy to withhold or release information to undermine one campaign or another and that is what james comey dave and his behavior after trump was elected was even harder to understand, and i dont think tha thats the modef the peak state o were that he ws somehow trying to undermine trump. I think it just reflects a very bad Decision Making and inability of highranking members to tell the director not to do something the director wanted to do. This i this is a question from the audience. Do you have any thoughts on the handling of the evidence in the case to investigate the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and the white house circumscribed the investigation and undermined the very purpose the fbi could have said they wanted to do an investigation in which they follow all the lead to the conclusion or not and what the political process take out and take its course but deciding to do a partial investigation i dont think was ever going to provide any kind of a reasonable answer even exonerating the nominee or finding some reason to hold him accountable. There is no such thing as a partial investigation. Another question from an audience member. Is the election already compromised and is there anything that we can do and i mean america, tell me if im wrong about that. Obviously the government hasnt reacted in a sane way that they can easily manipulate and again whether you believe that had an impact or not they certainly had an impact on the way we govern and that hasnt been a priority for either party its hugely problematic and again i think thats what has happened since 9 11 we have lost a lot of public faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect us so even if the fbi and department of Homeland Security were doing everything exactly as they should, how would we know that and would have the confidence that that is actually true when they told false stories so many times before and engaged in the problematic and abusive behavior so that undermining of the public space i think is just as dangerous as the foreign governments. Another question from the audience. The president and his administration have been working to undermine the credibility of the fbi. Are they succeeding and does it matter . I guess its because i come from the fbi ive had to hold those people more responsible and others. I think you cant expect politicians to do anything but act like politicians and take advantage of that and pursue the policies and winning the offices they want to win the similarly i think the media sensationalizes a lot of things and cant really stop that. I think a lot of the public fear of terrorism was because we had a media that amplified the threat far beyond any object is, but there has to be some truth as a society where we can all Work Together to solve common problems. If the Intelligence Community does anything it should be providing a truth and the threats that are not existential and focusing on that and what is actually real for us to deal with and they are not doing that and its already politicized the situation. I dont think it can complain that its being political, either. That is a problem that is going to be very difficult to get out of after some kind of Church Committee oversight where you have the lid is lifted off into privity can determine for themselves both what went wrong and what is needed to correct it. A slight re framing of the question for the audience, do you think racism within the fbi has affected how theyve handled the threat of White Supremacy . I think thats part of it. I think a lot of it is White Supremacy isnt this extreme ideology at the fringe of our society. Its foundational to the creation of our government and that was one of the interesting things i learned going and hanging out with neonazis is how fundamental it is and how recent is that we have had any other kind of idea. They look at the history of the settlement and creation of the United States of america and the hundreds of years of their ideas holding sway and defend the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s but somewhat changed it and all we have to do is go back to where we were in the 1950s and everything would be fine again. The failure of our society to be upfront about that foundational element is a real part of the problem because we cant understand how our policies have a racist impact even if it isnt a racist making the policies if we dont understand that history and how the policies were created and why, its a lot harder to reduce them, so when you have a Law Enforcement agency that is struggling to identify possible National Security threats, White Supremacists have an address to the communities that they live in and they are not a threat to their family so it is easier for them to say that its just the fringe element and it isnt really committing serious crimes and what we have to focus on is the black identity extremists that are actually challenging the status quo that is maintaining the system that we have and i think whether you call that overt racism or implicit racism or structural racism, certainly race is at the center of those decisions and either its interesting in this period now where congress at least has been focused on doing something about this that the Justice Department is arguing they need more laws. When i worked these cases in the 1990s nobody said we didnt have to work them. We did and of course we do. They are using the public fear for their power once again rather than showing any real interest in changing their policies and de prioritized in the investigation. Has the mission and funding of the fbi changed under the current president or is it likely consistent with the Previous Administration . Am not aware of any change in the mission. I mean, obviously the fbi has broad discretion in search and there are internal discussions going on about what should be prioritized. Again its interesting with the public conversation going on. The fbi has Mission Priority and that includes domestic terrorism which they consider White Supremacy domestic terrorism even though obviously there are White Supremacists outside of the United States and we didnt invent nazis. But when a white supremacist kills somebody, the fbi only rarely cause of domestic domestc triggers them, they more often called a hate crime and if they call it a hate crime actually most often they call it a gang crime and then it drops down to sixth priority so just by the labeled the fbi puts on the crime if de prioritized as the investigation and moreover, on top of that, the Justice Department had the policies that said that it deterred the investigation of hate crimes for the local Law Enforcement even though six states dont have the hate crime laws in most states dont use them so only 12 on 12. 5 of Police Departments report a hate crimes occurring within their jurisdiction and yet it remains in the state and local investigations that it creates this huge blind spot where we dont know how many of these crimes are being committed by organized places under the group because nobody is investigating. And those policies could be changed tomorrow. The Justice Department could think that the change but they are not making the change, they are waiting on congress to broaden their domestic ticker for some authorities which i dont think are going to be used against whites and assists anymore than they are now. They are going to be used for targeting environmentalists into socalled black identity extremists and other groups and facts that the president of the United States came out and said antifascism is a threats today when again there isnt a single homicide in the United States related to these activities, so you wonder where they are getting the idea. Its just a matter of using the label to target. I guess im going to rephrase this question. Are you concerned that the agencies have unfettered access to Americas Communications and speech as the revelations showed . Very concerned, and especially concerned as a onetime whistleblower, i mean im not part of the demographic that is normally targeted by the fbi right up until i complained about the policies and practices and then it was an effort to find a reason that they could hold and paint me as the one that was operating and they went to a pretty severe extent to do that so i know that broad collection is just holding this information and opposes a continuing threat you might not be targeting today, but whenever you run for office against somebody the establishment wants in office, it goes past droves of information and pulls out something that might not be illegal but that would be embarrassing if we. I often think of the Eliot Spitzer case where that was a patriot act authority that ended up being a socalled suspicious activity reports about the use of 6,000. That doesnt need any kind of standard of reporting, but it looks suspicious to somebody so they reported it and that fact alone that he used 6,000 of his own money justified it to the fbi opening up a political Corruption Case that involved incredibly dangerous activities having a governo governor becaue protected a detail being followed by an fbi detail both of which are designed to find the evidence. This is like an incredibly dangerous situation for very little justification in fact when you go to the indictment, Eliot Spitzer was never charged with any crimes come just the colegrove organization and if you go through th to the indicth client has just numbered and has a paragraph or two describing their activity until you get to client number nine and then there was the detail that it was clearly designed for no legal purpose just to embarrass and cause the governor to resign. In other situations you could find pretty easily the way that kind of power and disadvantage gives them so much power to Somebody Just complaining about a whistleblower or somebody that is running on an agenda that runs contrary to people that have access to that information. Its amazing to think that on the political timer that is an embarrassment. [laughter] given the fbis ability to repel every attempt to paint it from the Church Commission to the Obama Administration although im not entirely for the menstruation, what americans be better off abolishing the fbi starting from scratch . This is what is actually a topic of discussion people are old enough to remember one thing with the interns at the Brennan Center that i find i find out how old i am regularly. But those my age but remember back at that time there was a discussion of creating a Different Agency in Domestic Intelligence agencies. I was against the idea now and i remain against it. I think there is a part of the fbi that can be very effective in keeping communities safe and holding the most powerful to account as Theodore Roosevelt suggested. So there is something worth saving. Its that we needed to be a Different Agency that is above all transfectants. One of the things i found working the criminal justice side of transparency often reduced skepticism. When i was undercover with the Militia Group in northwest washington, there were eight or ten defendants and a long trial about six weeks i was on the stand for six days which is no fun being examined by eight or ten Defense Attorneys and with the Militia Groups there was a lot of support and groups that came out to the trial every day and with voice support for these people that were not part of the case, they were people that were just sympathetic to the viewpoint that these people were promoting so they were there for the entire six weeks and it created this Little Family environment with Law Enforcement and peace militia types. At the end of the trial come even before the verdicts that have come back, one of the gentlemen came back to shake my hand. I shook his hand and he said i just want to thank you for what you did here because i saw the evidence and its very clear to me people were going to hurt somebody and that would have been very bad so i thank you mr. Undercover agent for infiltrating likeminded people into doing this and heres somebody active in the antigovernment militia and the transparency of the criminal Justice System allowed him to make its own determination of the government had done in the case that was necessary to protect the public. And visibility to continue being involved in that kind of movement where his rights were not being interrupted by any criminal act that he. You are pretty critical of the fbi. This is a book that shows criticism of the failures. You are also pretty adamant that the agency of a certain type is necessary. So visioning a world in which the fbi is a lawenforcement agency that protects americans from violence and prosecute people who deserve and need to be prosecuted and is working on holding the most powerful and not those that are easiest to make the cases against. How do we even get there and what does that look like . It starts out with a new bipartisan comprehend the preview of all of the post9 11 authorities int and programs and activities to find first if a program like the Metadata Program that collected all of our colleagues data the government made her alleged that it was never helpful to stopping a single terrorist plot so they collected or telephone eight over more than a decade that was never actually helpful to any mission they had so why keep that around and if you think we shouldnt keep that around, reach out to your member of congress because we will actually have that debate this winter where it is up for reauthorization. So, part of it is making sure that these authorities that we are giving them are necessary to the legitimate goal and then if this is something that can be used legitimately how can we write strong guidelines to ensure it cant be abused and if it is that its not Just Congress and the courts so we can have a common understanding of what this agencies authorities are and how it is supposed to operate. You mac you describe in your book you mentioned today repeating itself which is every time there is a type of violence that becomes particularly focused on in the public eye right now and because of all the shootings weve seen before, with 9 11 and the radical jihad is some. How do you avoid this cycle where there is a kind of catastrophe and then the fbi says if you want us to stop this coming to repeal these constitutional rights. How do you avoid that even if it is to say we follow the path that describe, how do you avoid the cycle of something terrible happened congress is what you need to stop this from happening again and the fbi says give us more power, can you stop that cycle or is it a question of having to clean house every few decades . Stopping the cycle is what our responsibility and part of what i talk about in the reform chapter is how different communities that have been targeted by inappropriate fbi surveillance or investigative activities banded together to make sure that they are protecting one another and that is an essential element and i think it is incumbent on the media to do better at making sure it has Accurate Information going out. Its fascinating that we live in a very safe country. Its easier to make the argument for people in new york in the 1980s and 90s. Its so much safer than it was just a few decades ago and there are still problems in chicago and baltimore, but we are much safer than we were 20, 30 years ago. Theres much less terrorism of all kinds than there was in the 1970s, so number one, accepting we are a very big country and we have big problems that we need to solve and worrying about these problems if they are being handled by Law Enforcement shouldnt be part of the public concern. But its fascinating because even as the homicide rate has dropped, what has fallen with it is the even though there are far fewer homicides in the last two years there were reported 40 of the homicides in the United States are not solved so even though weve expanded all of these lawenforcement powers and information sharing, actual Violent Crime infecting our communities is getting less attention than it was and i believe we can do more to prevent terrorism including murders and Armed Robbers in jail because my cases were focused on people committing that criminal activity and exploiting those criminal networks. Part of it is making sure we are holding the agencies accountable and there is an effort within state and local governments now to look at their participation in federal passport. When i worked undercover in these cases, the joint Terrorism Task force have a rule that state and locals can to help they had to obey the fbi rules and thats because they were usually more strict than state and local. Once the rules were watered down after 9 11, we were not having a situation where Police Departments working were being told they should follow the rules that were looser than their own states and localities places like San Francisco and they finally said we cant participate because the rules are so black so the opportunity i think if it is the reverse of the Civil Rights Movement where you have the federal government stepping in and they were not protecting Citizen Rights and you have state and local governments stepping up where the federal government is not protected. That is a good place to end. They will be signing books right over there. Thanks to all of you for coming into the Brennan Center for hosting and for talking about your book. [applause] thank you for doing this on these topics for so long. If you dont follow, hit up his journalism at the atlantic and you should start. Michael and the Brennan Center in the Program Directors who gave me the opportunity and at the time to write this bu this d thput the event together so thas to the Brennan Center and all the staff that worked hard to make this possible. Thanks very much. [applause]