Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words With Representative Darrell Issa 20160717

Of the committee and cover site site government oversight reform in key best issues including benghazi fast and furious and irs targeting controversy but his book is sub six the real stories behind the headlines from the congressman who exposed washingtons biggest scandals. Host welcome to booktv. Im former congressman, former chairman of the house government reform and Oversight Committee tom davis and we are here today to discuss a book by the retired chairman of the house government Oversight Committee, darrell issa called watchdog and watchdog tells about basically your political history but also a lot about the investigations that you underwent as the chairman of the committee and is the minority member of the committee from the troubled asset relief, and nature sing for readers to gray davis recall in california and the behindthescenes story of how that came about and was financed and a little bit of chairman tom daviss time in there too. Guest i think you learned from my mistakes to move out but was what prompted you to write the book . Guest i think voters right now, they have lost a little bit of hope. They see the wrongdoing, not all of it that some of that and then they dont see what difference it makes you guide by the book that took the stories of people knew about and linked it to what difference it makes would really help people because there are things that were done as a result of our successes. I touch on the fact that as you do when you were chairman, sent out about 2000 letters and a congressional cycle and most of those and in government complying, making changes, dressing issues and our investigations. Many of them led to fundamental change. For example the gsa and member gsa and the number of other agencies including the irs and the Veterans Administration all held lavish parties on taxpayers money. Our oversight and are making that aware have change how the administration oversees that to make sure that taxpayer dollars are better spent. These kinds of changes are Success Stories but i touch on the additional changes. Changes in the freedom of information act, changes in Government Transparency including what is become to be known as the data act in law and changes in how congress can bring to the courts complaints about wrongdoing of the administration. All of those are part of what we touch on as the next step, what we are going to do to create a government responses to his people. Host we are supposed to be balance of power but the legislative branch and maybe im reminiscing since i Left Congress for looks at the Congressional Branch has been. Neutered over the last few years and i think your book explains some of the things you try to do and oversight in imports of oversight from legislative branch to make sure the executive branch doesnt get out of control. Guest i think you are hitting the nail on the head. Congress. At its periodically the power goes to administration when you give the power to the administration and the poor christy takes more than he can we find our constituents saying where do we go and how is it that unelected officials are making vast amounts of laws . The other part of it is an interesting one, the courts when addressing the oversight of congress have always sided with the legitimate requirement an obligation of the administration to comply with our oversight. What they havent done is they havent seen the cases brought to them for what oversight leads to so they are very good things and they have a right to see these these documents any of her right to call witnesses but then we say what you are doing is wrong if the Administration Simply shows you the back of their hand and moves on we havent been able to give back to the courts in a way which they can side with us too against one and we are right and get the administration to do what they need to do. The Obama Administration is taken a lot of well thought and received grief for being above the law but they are above congress. When the courts have spoken the Obama Administration has in fact applied. What we need to do candidly is get to the courts when there are differences in views between the American People and the administration. Postcode administrations ever like to give up information and congress is a nuisance that they have to put up with. After the Associated Press and the rules under foia. You have subpoena power and you were the only member the house of heads at kenya our. Hewitt one point held members in contempt of congress but the administration had to enforce that and you just get stymied at that point. Guest that was one of the Lessons Learned host during the Bush Administration in your tenure when president bush and his people were held in contempt for not laboring witnesses to the Judiciary Committee and the firing of u. S. Attorneys and again eric holder when he was withholding documents about the false statements in the coverup in congress and the fast and furious investigation. Both cases we eventually were vindicated by the courts but the administration was over surging their right to privacy and it took time. These are covered in the book. Host they run the clock out a lot of times. Guest they run the clock out. The deal on the firing of the attorney was made after the election of barack obama. They were willing to cut a deal that they had been ordered by a judge to do so. In the case of fast and furious documents are still coming in but the real closing of that will probably happen if the administration is about to turn and the obama does ration wants to make us go away before they leap to. Host i want to get to fast and furious. This is a great. Its an easy. Guest i use small words. Postcodes very readable. If you talk about your roots and how you started to get into it. Why do you tell the readers a little bit about how you got into politics and business and your successes and some of the trials you went through getting there and how that helped you in some of your campaigns. Guest i did grow up big kid, one of six and i was from a middleclass family. I was lucky. I was given an opportunity to go to college paid for by the u. S. Army and another four years like you to serve as an army officer. That sort of took me from a street kid with a likelihood that the bluecollar job and took me to the opportunities to start a business, to have the education to grow a business and ultimately to do well enough that i began looking at what was wrong in our society. The class warfare that was being instigated some several president s ago but also the whole question of was government or business, antibusiness or did they just not understand business . Guest you were in suburban cleveland growing up in a very ethnic neighborhood. What was it like . Guest are ethnic neighborhood was jewish so we wouldnt have called ourselves arabs. We would have called ourselves lebanese or maybe the nations by their neighbors, my schoolteachers and so one i was steeped in that culture and it was a great opportunity. It was the 60s but there were also challenges. The air of israeli word that rogue out in 67. I was a freshman in high school. It was a very interesting time to have older brothers of some of my friends heading off to israel to defend against an existential threat to a lot of that was part of it but also this is a community of Small Business people. A lot of my neighbors, my friends families owned Small Businesses come, everything from retail shops and manufacturing and it gave me an opportunity to see that there was an america an almost unlimited ability to join a company and grow with it or start their own company. My father never have that opportunity until fairly late when he started the business after you have a heart attack and couldnt quite candidly his career was somewhat stifled so we started a business. Growing up i had lots of examples and for all of us that sort of lived the American Dream theres always the question of whats next. Politics and philanthropy become what is next and i kind of have an interesting deal. My wife does the majority of the philanthropy and we have a foundation is able to help people and i participate that i really have an interest in trying to get back, to have government do a better job on behalf of the American People. I started off as somebody coming to washington to describe what i was seeing including after the debate i testified on behalf of the chamber but i did get hooked on it and eventually helped candidates win and then ran for office myself. Host you are not a stellar student in college. You are obviously one of the smartest guys that i have run across in the congress. You had learning disabilities to contend with along the way but you ended up and bending a lot of things. I guess you got skills in the army and you got into the electronics business. Guest to not think that i went through college as it does this measure major but i was at tinker if you will. I worked in high School Working on what was then two radios maybe with a transistor or two and then to the army i was fortunate not to head up an organization of engineers and run a computer facility so i had the balance of the big picture, a couple hundred Million Dollar facility iran and was trained in software. When i left let the military at the good i could do anything so i joined a bankrupt electronics manic action firm with a partner and it never really did that well but it got into business and got me to where i could start looking at the insurers of my own and by 1982, 83 i was starting to invent things. I got my first patent in 1981 and ive had dirty 7 cents. Some have done very well. Most of them have been a radiofrequency controlled products but i was also lucky in that the industry was changing. When i came into security he stuck the key in your fender to protect your car, you blocked it or you lock the hood. By the time i left everything was hightech radio controlled and it interfaced with the Engine Computers to shut down the car or to open the trunk, whatever you wanted to do and it was a lot of fun. Innovating in that kind of space as a car guy is a winwin. Host so you are is subcommittee chairman and patent over trademarks firsthand experience and how it affects people. Guest fixing the Patent Office is something ive been involved in and its been very much a passion. They came to congress or with the number of federal judges and have become friends and they have been good counselors and helpers. Early on in my career my second or third terms signed a pilot bill and that includes federal judges who specialize in Patent Litigation with additional capability expertise so they are able to dismiss these cases, dispatch them if you will quickly and accurately but the calendar of these cases, very complex cases are moving better and the judges are more confident making good rulings with less overturning on appeal. But it isnt over. We are innovating as a country and as a world and becoming more valuable and as a result there are people who litigate for a living sometimes with a very weak patent but for a great product. Thats part of what im working on post my chairmanship of oversight. Host you are certainly the right guy in understanding this at every level. So you came to testify for nafta in 1993 i think it was. You kind of got the bug in and the San Diego Chamber adopted you and you ran for the senate at that point. Guest i ran for the senate not until 98. In tommy came to san diego in 1996. A group of his chamber folks got together and they were doling out what everyone should do it and the guy with the short straw got to be the fundraiser. I was in between the short and long straw so i didnt have to be fundraiser indicted up cheering all the volunteers. We put together 10,000 volunteers doing every thing that needed to be done about convention and was kind of my life. I got to know so many people, some of them republicans some of them democrats who were so civically minded that they were willing to go through weeks of preparation and training to make that a success. It was a Great Convention because on the east coast time everything ended early. It did allow you to have an early supper a long and enjoyable evening and sleep in a little bit in the morning. In 1998 you ended up running for the senate and spent a lot of her own money and the voters probably did you a favor in not nominating you that year. Guest you allude to that in the book. Guess who i have a real soft spot for matt vaughn. He is now passed away. He was a state treasure and a superb man a graduate of the air force academy, great candidate. He didnt win that he did do better in the primary than i did so he became the nominee of our party and through losing in the primary i gained a friend, i gained an opportunity to be seen as somebody who flock hard for what they believed and that supported the nominee of our party and the day after you get your kicked in the primary and show up to the unity breakfast and say good things about somebody who, i liked him but i had some hurt feelings helps you understand politics. Politics is fighting hard, losing at least half the time and then coming back and being a gentleman about it and knowing theres another day where you will try to do things for this country. It was good training. Matt remained a friend until he passed away of cancer and i never ran for statewide office again. Two years later my congressman announced his retirement and i was already pretty close to a shooin in many ways because i had run statewide and i was wellregarded so iran and won handily and have been there ever since. Hosts are your opponent state senator bill maher old who represented a good heart of that congressional district. Guest you didnt just walk into this. Tell us about the ad that he ran politics is interesting. A tick the ads that were available some away to never think we are fighting they tried to rerun it so he tries to go after me for being a soldier. Some said i was at that tried it. Host everyone who serves that you have sergeant that was was. I will never disagree that the 17yearold private can be. Questionable and im sure i was but ive responded with deficiency ratings from officers that served with some metal bombers to dance in some kernels threestar generals and two of them from general wesley dark. I worked for him on two separate commands. That sort of shut them up. Thats the core of the question of what i said right at three. The issue, its a good lieutenant and a good captain. Host it also made them look back. Guess what made them look bad in the. Elsa my background. I have an arabamerican name. He claims some of the money it received was tainted. It came from most terrible arab states because his company and by the way the guy that headed the company was an arab. His last name was nasa. We got ambassador tom nassar in there. It then the head of the protocol to Ronald Reagan and had gone on to be ambassador to morocco morocco name by reagan and he said by the way this golfing, said gulf of mexico. Again it made it look foolish. Iowa wasnt tainted by some sort of foreign money. The man he accused was an incredible figure in history and a great help to the president , president reagan and those kinds of mistakes changed the race. It was a mistake or the state senators overplay his hand. He served well and might have one but it became between somebody with the false accusation that could be disproved, he tumbled that he never really recovered. He actually never ran for office again. Host when he came to washington you thought you would get one or two committees and you got the Judiciary Committee even though you werent a lawyer you ended up which makes a lot of sense for an arabamerican and somebody with your background and connections and government oversight which is probably a clear choice at the time. You dont quite allude to that in the book but it was your first love i think. Guest tom you are given respect and to oversight and i would say might her choice was the committee on Small Business. As a freshman they put me on that and i didnt want to be a Small Businessman. We all want to be big businessman. We all start off this Small Businessman. I went to energy and commerce for short time and because of the work you were doing in the fact that government oversight often does not enjoy my first choice but i saw the potential for him them by my third term i realized what you were doing even in the Bush Administration holding the Administration Accountable was important. With the help of now former speaker hastert i got that temporary transfer and that temporary transfer lasted for a decade. Host take you on to greater things. As you know there is a bounce of power in government and when you have one Party Controlling the house, the senate and the presidency they tend to see their destinies intertwine. You didnt do that as you know and we will talk about your leadership there. I will never forget going after something that the Bush Administration did wrong. Karl rove would call the speaker and tried to get us off the scent and i would say its our job. We have an institutional responsibility when we see wrongdoing in the executive branch. Its not gotcha but we need to shine a light on the things that go unchecked. You were subcommittee chairman. I think that what you offer people in seniority because i cite your capability. Tell us about what you found over there. Guest under Ronald Reagan they put together organizations that seemed logical at the time and they oversaw three parts of a few well federal land. The leasing of them, the fair use of them in the collecting of the revenues of them. That became logical as you realize they didnt seem to write leases accurately and we had a number of examples where we had been chipped if you will out of 1 million because of poor writing one that had to do with things like to be honest things i could deep water horizon. They have written exclusion to their leases which allowed even with the price of natural gas going up huge amounts of revenue not to be recognized under the lease. We found they didnt even know how much they were entitled to until the Gas Companies told them. They found they were to cozy, so cozy that in fact they went to parties, stayed overnight and even one of their employees became pregnant and the father was one of the people she was supposed to oversee. Host thats a cozy relationship. Guest this kind of dysfunction was a scandal in the Bush Administration as you said they handled it but he didnt shut down the investigation. We provided what we thought was good guidance are particularly some guidance on the fact that there is safety oversight that so bad that they never saw problem. They never came off an oil. And shut it down and you figure at least once they should. So was sad that when henry waxman came into play and you know he had two years and during those two years we never said another word about it. Who would have thought it would have continued and just as you Left Congress and president obama came in what we found was deep water horizon, to Mineral Management services inspectors were on that rig that morning, had brought us to an lost some of their friends and families, left with a clean bill of health and the thing blew up. Loss of life, millions of dollars in damages all because nobody pulled the stop button. So theres an example of a successful investigation and the failure to stop something really bad and a guiding of chairmanship more than any other single event. He can just and telling people that something is wrong. Youve got to provide at least a proposal for change. Host that is when the frustrations are stiff right back. So you came on and i left the ranking republican on the committee because republicans were still the minority and two years later publicans captured the house. You are chairman of the committee and one of your first investigations that are yours will know is on fast and furious. He was an investigation of gun running and you describe that an havoc with ability to today and what happened in paris a few weeks ago. Guess goes sadly that link continues. Fast and furious was a program that didnt make any sense but was done anyway and the idea, the inspiration we found it went from an atf agent who had tried to get it done similarly in the Bush Administration and it shut down because it did work great but it was all about was you would allow guns to be sold to nonstraw buyers people were buying on behalf of the cartel and then he would try to find it later. The problem is guns dont talk. They have no way to track them. They follow them so they really only do two things. Where it started and where was the scene of the crime which is where the program didnt make any sense but more than 2000 weapons were taken. Videotape captured the actual purchase but the straw buyer was of no value unless they could lead to to the next level and that never happened. As you say as late as a few weeks ago in the paris attack one of the weapons turns out to be one of those 2000 weapons. Host that was a weapon that the federal government sold. To weapon that the federal government new was being sold, recorded at being sold and did not follow it. Guest basically sold and brian terry, the proceeds go to the brian terry foundation. He was a Border Patrol agent. His family members were police. He was secret service a chief agent in san diego today. The fact is this was a family where everybody was in some form of Law Enforcement. He had then in a different level and joined the Border Patrol and wanted to join the secret service. It was just before christmas. Gifts to his family in detroit had already been shipped back to detroit and he was getting ready to go. Was one of his last times out there. He comes upon what turned out to be a drug cartel but he doesnt know. He comes on it with the normal nonlethal attempt and he gets gunned down because he finds himself against highpowered and modern assault type rifles that were sold in vast and furious and two of them are found at the scene of the crime along with his dead body. That was the tragedy. The coverup began almost right away. Senator grassley sent a letter inquiring about it and he got a false answer. That began because whistleblowers knowing that fast and furious was a failed program and tried to figure out who was responsible. A u. S. Attorney, drug enforcement, fbi. They were all part of the task force and yet everyone pretended like it was a rogue operation. Only later through this process did we find the sequence of events leading all the way up the chain and by the time we got the last i commend that i have seen you at eric holder guiding his people on how not to deliver documents pursuant to a subpoena issued by her committee. That is really where the book has to come to an end because that continues before the courts but it will be an example of where Law Enforcement in the form of the Justice Department doesnt enforce the basic laws which is when you receive a subpoena to turn over documents the documents. In this case they received a subpoena and they did everything to obfuscate and not turn over this documents. Host tell us about the fight to get these documents, what you got them what you didnt get in some the obstacles you face. Guess who you know, you have seven subcommittee chairman and hundreds of investigations going on and you have a highprofile one it takes a lot of your time. Fast and furious was a huge amount of our time but they also have other documents and other investigations going on in which we were Getting Better corporation. What we found in the case of fast and furious, they just shut down and said they are not going to give us anything after brian terrys death. It was a period after brian terrys death in which they said for 10 months that there was no link that was of the most interest in the documents beforehand most of which should have been delivered immediately they claimed that they were in important part of an investigation leading to criminal prosecution. Before the murder of brian terry they wouldnt give us the documents because they were part of the criminal best occasion. Afterwards they wouldnt give them to us because they said it wasnt within our jurisdiction and was conversations between lawyers and the Justice Department but it was conversations about a conspiracy to lie and coverup. Thats how we ended up before a federal judge and to be honest she was an obama appointee and i think a little timid at first. We have a lot that is arcane. It is perhaps a law that has helped used some of its usefulness. They have to report if they withdraw or deposit 10,000 or more. And the idea of that law was to look for a large transaction and just follow those more closely particularly at the time. That 10 figure was today about 39,000 if it was indexed from inflation. So every year that goes by. And you then have a problem which is you may have more than 10,000 to send or receive. Your bank doesnt want to have to go through this reporting. So what you end up with this someone will say to you as it happened in this case can you just keep it under 10,000. Once you keep that in its in the bank a lot of paperwork but in fact we had people that bring an 8,000 during the week. They can do this but when you do it you trigger Something Else which is the circumvention law which is if anyone tries to evade the 10,000dollar input or output that is a separate crime. Worse than that of course is that if they come to ask your question and you say anything that isnt true including i dont know what youre talking about or anything that is a crime. So in this case the money was seized based on the theory. Why were they taking out money less than 10,000. They were told this was a problem. So the bank suggests these people. What give it to us in smaller increments. So they did what was suggested to do. Try to help the bank teller. And that triggered at this problem. There was a problem in our society. We are mostly not a cash society these days and as a result cash sticks out. On the other hand 10,000 to a Business Operation is not a lot of money these days. So we have a number of these issues and that was the one that was of interest in the book. But since that time weve had an example that i like to tell the Young Musician hopeful. They end up taking out smaller increments freezes their assets. They have done nothing wrong. In the way they deposited their money and the end up having to pay 29,000 in forfeitures. They found themselves in a position where the only way to get free was to let the irs abuse them. It is equal one of these things were government needs to be overseen. The young man gets on a train a oneway ticket to los angeles. Hes a musician. He is a hopeful to go to hollywood and get into the business he has 17,000 on him, oneway ticket. He gets on a train they come and see him discover he has this money, take the money away from him. He said this is my money i dont have any credit cards im a young kid and he said what do i do how do i live. And they took his money. There was a separate they have a suspicion there was a band that was touring for charity and as often happens its the end of it. They have more than more 10,000 and they have to have it taken from them. The publicity shamed the forfeiture and this is not through the irs but through Law Enforcement into giving it back. So Asset Forfeiture in the i rs are all examples of where they have passed laws and then when you see them for mentation we need to head oversight as to the specifics in the example in the book is a good one. But we also need to have a change. We need to realize that maybe we dont catch every bad person but we also dont tack innocent citizens with these rules and thats probably what its all about. We have to create what i used to deal with in business which was a quality circle. You do something you think is good you send your product out. There is a defect in it. People need to tell you about the defect you need to redevelop the product so that it goes out without the defect. Now to us in manufacturing this is natural. You dont keep shipping a bad product. In the world of government sometimes defects are never cured because there is never enough will to deal with the problem because people say if you deal with the problem you might lose a little bit of the benefits in the answer is when it comes to the American Peoples freedom in the right to live free of their government we have to air on that side. Nobody wants to go outside. If the rules allow you to do it you dont give it back. You just keep your head down. That is where congress and oversight comes in. As you know and you came from a swing district. Im now in a district that is not going to be one by the nominee of the party. You have to be willing to be unpopular. If its your own president you become unpopular with your party. Youve dealt with that time and time again. If its the other one you have to be unpopular sometimes by both parties but certainly by the other party. If youre not willing to do it people on both sides of the aisle they should be on oversight. There were times where they were willing to Cross Party Lines and to help us do things. There were times when they werent. In the book i try to make a point. Sometimes we can agree and we did good things together. That gets lost sometimes. It is not news. Just after the book we were able to pass a major reform and the freedom in the freedom of information act. We have fought for two congresses to get it passed. That is a pretty darn happy event. I was with the speaker on the signing of the bill. Elijah cummings was a good partner on that. They have a vested interest in transparency. Sometimes you find it and sometimes you dont as you know. I am going to get to something that is still hot in the news and that is ben ghazi. Your committee did an investigation there is a lot of talking points that go cross purpose around this. My recollection is when some documents turned up the have been subpoenaed by your committee and others that have not been produced at turned up the information requests. They were under tremendous pressure. It was the special Committee Talk about what your committee did with it. The issue doesnt go away during the campaign and of course it showed the tip of the iceberg on the whole email issue. You are exactly right. A little bit like the breakin at the watergate. It went very deep. This is a situation in which we have an obligation to investigate the first loss of an american ambassador. Let me interject here. The reason your committee was created was because what so often happens they come so close to the pentagon that they want to avoid embarrassment. Your committee becomes so close to the state department they want to cover the state department. That is the nature. It would be beholden to the agencies that they regulated and gave you independent investigative authority. This was the best example of example of exactly that. That was all of the cia annexed with the final attack occurred. What happened, beforehand we did not do what we should have do shouldve done to protect it. There were huge mistakes made. The fact it occurred is undeniable. During that time it was very clear that nobody was actually moving towards the sound of the guns during those seven hours between the attack with tyrone being killed. You obviously had those events and afterwards you have the coverup, the false statements and so on. What we did we said this set this crosses three committees at least. We began an investigation. We had witnesses. It clearly was after we knew what she have said and it wasnt true. We were beginning to bring people in who have been on the ground in libya who have been in ben ghazi who could testify. And for the readers to understand im not sure she was briefed before she went on but if you even look at the state Department Emails going back and forth at that time we are not sure what prompted that. I assume Hillary Clinton did not want to go on the talk shows that morning. It probably costs are at the end of the day. Very clearly in retrospect Hillary Clinton going on and say weve have a terrible tragedy a loss of life at the hands of terrorism and we will Work Together to get to the bottom of it would have changed history instead, susan rice went on and talked about some crackpot in la in the video we are going to hold him accountable and that also changed history. For our committee and this is one of the chapters that was hard to write a lot is known about ben ghazi and we were view as some of it but very little is known about what you mentioned the intelligence committees wanted to say they did nothing wrong and we will not supply you any of these people. They shut down. They said there is nothing here. Reminding you of the star wars and these are not what youre looking for. The Armed Services fought in the chairman there who issued a statement suggesting that the department of defense not comply with our subpoenas. Foreign affairs was much more neutral. It wasnt the nature. It is the accountability review board. They sort of said you take the lead we will keep an eye on it and they assigned a person to work with us. So we have these three committees and we begin our investigation and as we discovered the department of defense was not innocent as a matter fact if they have done the worst thing you could do. They have created a command and that command was to toothless. It didnt have the ability to launch on its own. And it looked there. And the state department for guidance on what to do. And that put the general who was in washington at the time in a bad position. He did not had independent authority. To actually get things moving towards the target. The military has a limited culpability here. The state department clearly had the bulk of the mistakes not securing in their their facilities and not asking for military aid. That is a chapter still being written because some people have lost track and they wont read the 800 page report about the failures to secure our men and women overseas because they are interested in the next chapter. The decision to violate regulations and laws and is leading to classified information possibly being lost and certainly been mishandled. More to come with benghazi at the state department. And now they had found that. It is a whole different issue. In one of the things that is only slightly touched. The character we have seen early in our investigation has been so close to making money in doing business in the very rich country has been a close confidant. A lot of that is yet to be this effort. It was by the foundation at the time. The state department refused to put him on the payroll even though they were willing to put the individual who took care of Hillary Clintons private email had been working for her campaign and they were okay putting her on but they have a very checkered past. The state department has a great deal of integrity and they pushed back and a lot of those areas. This hearing you are the more aggressive in what i saw from the outside is the democrats are obviously in a place like that i can to protect their quarterback and part of this was before the election. It looks like Hillary Clinton may be that democratic candidate. I dont think that should surprise anybody. They can work very well in a partisan way together. When you Start Talking about taking out the candidate they are rallying around to defending that. Both parties do the job throughout the years. You are a tremendous filer of history. As we travel watergate started off with the republicans protecting their quarterback in their team captain as a matter fact and in democrats of course going after truth or not truth going after the president in the party. By the time it ended republicans were the one that went to the white house and told the president it was time to go they are the ones that have come forward and answered honestly before subpoenaed to a Congressional Committee and the republicans were the one that made it clear that the president would not survive impeachment. I would hope that that is always the case you certified two different sides you conduct oversight to get to the truth and when it starts leading either for or against the original position you are willing to change that. Ive seen it in some people but i havent always seen it. In the book we talk about the countrywide scandal. This was a wrongdoing that occurred. If they read the book it will x be explained. You can always go and get all of the places you can go to get it. But the one that headed this large and successful Mortgage Company had put together a program of vip service and includes our colleagues our staff of congress and the postmaster general just anybody does anybody they could have influence with. And they would do a favor for it. It wasnt just it was actually to make it cheaper and they would waive fees and provide favorable discounts in the case of one senator and they did a mortgage on the property. Even though they never did anything outside the u. S. And so when the scandal started to break what you saw was two directions one was towards angela who paid a fine and never went to jail and the other lead towards those who took these. We try to investigate that. What we saw was he have a reason. It was distorting policy. The policy if you believe he succeeded was part of the meltdown in 2008. Part of the mortgage crisis. Some of your own colleagues took this. I have the unhappy duty if you will when we discover this my investigators came to me and said what do we do and i said work and had to refer this part to house ethics. We do not the colleagues. I use one name both parties. The two names that should be discussed one was and talents. Ed talents. He was my chairman. He have received two loans for this. Another one was congressman sessions. He is now in the rules chairman so we read these things and what we see that he did not get the good deal. He did not refuse it. So i rent to them and told him that his name was on the list and he should come clean with the and he did. It didnt hurt him but he was certainly a name on the list. The interesting thing with the congressmans he actually went out of his way to say i do not want a special deal and he have an email train saying yes i need to refinance this i need a loan but i dont want anything special. I just want my application. So it was a great example of where they formed something to try to get a favor and favor and somebody said look i appreciate it but i dont want a special deal. I make it a talk on television about some of the others but there were some you actually went back and said i need a better deal and there was an unnamed staffed person that was the worst of all she work for a senator on the finance committee and she received 13 refinances at no cost whatsoever. Every time it went down a little she would refinance and they did not charge her points or fees. Obviously she wanted to help in any legislation and when the legislation came over from the house i got water down in the senate. We will never know if this staff have critical position and really did it. She did not. To be a key staffer it would obviously be the appropriate thing. And to get the unique deals and how to be something wrong. I think thats why they where they why they get so cynical about congress. They are not getting special deals. If they miss a payment someone is on top of them. They dont get perdiem. They dont get anything for having a second house. That is the only way they can make sure that they still go to college. I do belong to a body that has its strengths and weaknesses with the book talks about is where we can be and where we excel and it uncovered a great deal it was able to uncover quite a bit and he was the chairman who i give a lot of credit to the country wide. When it was hard personally so there has been some good work i hope people read it and see hope. They see bad things happening but they see hope in the seat some of the actions we take. We have just one more minute or two. You talked a lot about the media as you can investigate till the cows come home but if its not. The minute media. You talk about how they can stifle investigations and they can run the clock talk to me in a couple minutes about your experience with the media. They went after me and they certainly enjoyed the fact that buying being hope highprofile you could get criticism. But they were also are best friends. And sometimes reluctantly because they have to cover the work that we did and i have a tremendous team of people who would feed them the information and ill never forget going on kitty crawley and she bushwhacked me with the few documents secretly will you release all of them to the public. It was clearly a dirty trick because this is part of how you get stories in washington you take documents. But we are trying to tell a story and if its not an honest story they can release documents that you misread them. We tried to tease them with these things was a time is exceeded. I gained the belief that groups like this very left wing the press included the Washington Post and New York Times they are not our friends but they are so essential that more and more im dedicated to make sure that we get the information including directly through freedom of information because ultimately leave in given the left gets to the truth better than if we engage them. Im a big fan of the press. I dont go on an interview with out a little bit of sweaty palms but it is important in our society that they have a loud voice and im glad they do. Of course you had been for openness and government. Again the book is watchdog by train one. That is a great read. A lot of people have read this and it is getting glowing reviews. We will know it by the time this comes out. But Newt Gingrich is there. It is a great read and we appreciate your time today. Its brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. They look at the state of policing in america. She profiled that women instrumental in the Space Program in the 1940s and 50s. And historian pamela haig looked at the history of gun ownership in america. In the coming weeks on afterwards Karen Greenberg Director Director of the center on National Security will report to combat terrorism since september 11. Eric fehr will discuss his time in a rack we working as an interrogator or a private military contractor. Also coming up kimberly strawser will argue the political left is using scare tactics to silence conservative speech. Rep. Darrell issa talks about his time as chairman on the oversight and government reform. Periodically said and then when the Administration Takes all the power you give them and like most bureaucracies takes more if they can we often find our constituent saying where do we go to get fairness. They are making vast amounts