Gore. Guest i sure am. Host i like the story of the recount, a horrendous time of taking on the issue. It was one thing after another but the biggest one is when you were running against Carly Fiorina. I see what you are doing and up against. You are running and i thought now that we have seen Carly Fiorina running for president , you kind of put it away in that. But the moment when she got caught on air talking about your hair from the people are into these issues men wouldnt have to deal with. Guest its interesting and im glad you brought it up because it is an amazing lesson for the people watching this. Things happen that you dont expect. I was running in 2010, and Carly Fiorina was considered a toptier candidate. She had millions of her own that she had gotten when she got her golden parachute and got fired for hewlettpackard. She had millions of dollars to throw into the race and it was neck and neck because we were in the deepest recession trying to help the president in the stimulus bills. I remember standing on the floor just looking at us losing tens of thousands. California was a mess. The real estate situation hit us. We were struggling. Families were distraught. It was everything from even when it rained. Shes blaming everything on me, and its tight. And im saying we dont want to elect her. Shes saying Barbara Boxer is responsible. There is no Climate Change and so anyway, fast forward i think it was cnn. Shes being recorded and doesnt realize it and instead of talking to the staff about how to prepare for the interview, give me the latest issues of the morning news come has there been a change on this, that or the other, she says to her staff have you seen Barbara Boxers hair and her staff said no, what about it . Its so yesterday, and she starts laughing. My hair does have a life of its own. I thought at that moment, everybody does. What is she doing. And saying this its kind of an insult. [inaudible] host she got in trouble with that and i think in the end people understand we are in a hard tim time in what they understoounderstood with you ths including when you stood up against the iraq war there were so many things you were a loan or had a few people youre willing to take. It talks about that through the lens of the issues and history, but also people even when they didnt agree with you. I will buy something, but they dont think that way, like their profiting off of somebodys misery. So now that i have put in that word, but truly, there are things that happen in a campaign that you dont know who the person is really inside. One thing may not be enough but there are a few things that when people saw her making fun of me and not really caring about the issues when the cameras were off and they put it together with the fact that when she was ceo shes shipped tens of thousands of jobs overseas. You know it, not a good person. With a minute left left here, when you look at the incredible career that you pad what do you really want to pass on to people like me. Those who are looking to run for the supervisor seat. What i want to pass on to you and i think i have already passed it on is how to stand up at the top and know that you can win. Do not worry about the arrows. It doesnt matter. When i open up the book i have quotes from the rightwing media have said the worst things about me you can imagine. That is. That is what i want to say to everybody. The empower, stand up for what you believe in, and, and it will be a satisfying life. Thank you barbara. I recommend your book, the art of the top of it because i think it is went to fun to read and people will understand where you came from and it will give them faith and politics run themselves. Thank you. Book tv continues tomorrow night with books on education policy. First, ed bowens bowens account of teaching at a new York City Public High School in the battle for room 314. That is followed by George Thomas who writes about the Founding Fathers and their idea of establishing a national university. After that, monique shares her book, push out, the criminalization of black girls in schools. Then john shields talk about a book he coauthored, passing on the right. Conservative professors in the progressive university. Finally, a look at whether advanced mathematics should be part of the core curriculum for students. Watch book tv in prime time tomorrow night getting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. I q a a documentary film instructor talks about his students awardwinning documentary. Some of which have been grand prize winner at the annual student cam competition. He teaches at Jenks High School in jenks, oklahoma. I am not the kind of teacher who will look at something that is not very good i just go, thats nice, you did you did a nice job with that. I will say thats not working. Eventually, everyone of my kids makes a better better piece than they did in the beginning. Eventually the kids who do really well they are turtle lies this stuff so i no longer have to say to them, their own brain is saying these things to them. Turtle. Welcome to book tv. Former congressman and former chairman of the house government reform committee. Im here to discuss the book by the retired chairman of the house government oversight committee, called watchdog. Watchdog tells about your political history but also about the investigations that you wonder when is chairman of the committee and as a minority member of the committee. Your first election to congress, interesting for readers is that recalling california and the behindthescenes story of how that came about and was financed it has little little bit of chairman todd davis time in it. I think you will learn from my mistakes to move out. But what prompted you to read the book. Guest i think voters right now, they have lost a little bit of hope. They see the wrongdoing, not all of it but some of it and they do not see what difference it makes. So i thought a book that took the stories that people knew about and linked it to what difference it make it would really help people. There were things that were done as a result of our successes. I touch on the fact that you send out, as you did when you were chairman, 2000 letters in a congressional cycle. Most of those end in government complying and making changes, addressing issues. And our investigations, many of them lead to fundamental change. For example, the gsa and a number of a number of other agents including the irs and Veterans Administration all held lavish parties on taxpayers money. Our oversight, theyre making that aware is making sure that your 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 transparency is come to known as the data acted law. And changes in how congress can bring to the Court Complaints about wrongdoing of the administration. All of of those are part of what we touch on as the next step. What were going to do to create a government more responsive to its people. And we are supposed to be a balance of powers, the judiciary with the executive and the maybe im reminiscing since i Left Congress. It looks like the congressional ranks have been neutered over the last few years. Your book goes to explain some of the things you try to do in the oversight and the importance of oversight from the legislative branch to make sure the executive branch does not get out of control. I think youre hitting the nail on the head. Congress has given up much of its power. They said we will punt over to the administration, then when the Administration Takes all the power you give them and like most bureaucracies take smart they can, we often find our constituents saying, where do we go to get fairness, how is it making vast amounts along. But the interesting one the courts when theyre addressing the oversights of the congress had always sided with legitimate requirement obligation of the administration to comply with our oversight. What they havent done as they have not seen the cases brought to them for what our oversight leads to. So theyre very good at saying yes, you have a right a right to see these documents and call witnesses. But then when we say what youre doing is wrong, if the Administration Simply shows you the back of the handy moves on, we havent we havent been able to get back to the courts and away in which they coincide with us two against one of we are right. And get the administration to do what they need to do. So the Obama Administration has taken a lot of well thought and received grief for being above the law. But theyre not not really. There above congress. When the courts have spoken the Obama Administration have complied. They can put it in the court when theres differences in views with American People and administration. Ministrations never like to give up information. Congress is a nuisance that they have to put up with. As is the Associated Press and all the groups under foia that also want information. Right but when you have subpoena power, youre the only person in the house that have subpoena power on his own signature. At 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 both during the Bush Administration and your tenure when president bush, his people were held in contempt for not delivering witnesses to the Judiciary Committee and the firing of the u. S. Attorneys. And then again, eric, eric holder when he was withholding unreasonable documents about false statements and coverup in congress and the fast and furious investigation. In both cases we eventually were vindicated by the courts at the administration was over asserting their right to privacy. But it took time. These are covered in the book. Both are covered in the book. They run the clock out. Actually the deal on the u. S. Attorneys was made after the election of barack obama. They suddenly were willing to cut a deal to make it go away but they had already been ordered by 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 in the Obama Administration wants to make this go away before they leave. Host i want to get to pass to various but this is a great read, think the readers watchdog, and easy read. Guest its a very readable. Host you are probably the wealthiest members of congress. You talk about your roots and how you started to get into it. Tell the reader about how you got into politics, and i got into business in your successes and some of the trials you went through getting there and how that gets used against you in some of the campaigns. Guest i did grow up just a kid of one of six and a, i would say in a middleclass family who had five less kids. But 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 took me from a street kid with the likelihood of a bluecollar job on took me to the opportunities to start a business, to have the education and grow a business and ultimately to do well enough that i began looking at what was wrong in our society. The class class warfare that was being instigated but also the question of whether was government probusiness, antibusiness or just not understand business. But you are an arab family and suburban cleveland. What was it like . Like . Guest our ethnic neighborhood was jewish. So we would not have called ourselves arabs we wouldve called yourselves lebanese. But our neighbors, schoolteachers and so on, i was deep in that culture. It was a a great opportunity. It was the 60s. But there is also challenges. The arabisraeli war that broke up 67 when i was a freshman in high school. It was an an interesting time to have older brothers of some of my friends heading off to israel to defend against in a substantial threat. A lot of that was part of it, but also also this was a community of Small Business people, a lot of my neighbors, my friends and families owned Small Businesses, everything from retail shops and manufacturing. It gave me me an opportunity to see that there was, in america and almost unlimited ability to join a company and grow with it or start your own company. My father never had that opportunity until fairly late when he started the business after he had a heart attack. And he could not, quite candidly his career was stifled so he started a business. Growing up i had lots of examples. For all of us who live the American Dream theres always that question of what is next. Politics and philanthropy becomes whats next. My wife does the majority of philanthropy and we have a foundation that is able to help people. I participate, but i really had an interest in trying to get back to have government do a better job on behalf of the American People. I started off as someone coming to washington to describe but i was seen including in the nafta debate i testified on behalf of the chamber. But i did get hooked on it and i help candidates win. That i ran for office myself. You are not a stellar student in college. Youre obviously one of the smartest guys, the you had some learning disabilities to overcome along the way. But you ended up inventing a lot of things. I guess you get your skills in the arming maybe tell us how you built that. Guest i went to college as a business major. It has has been the most appropriate thing for me but i was a tinkerer if you will. I was working on two radios made with a transistor too. In the army i was fortunate enough to head up and organization of engineers and run a computer facility. I got the balance a big big picture, copper hundred Million Dollars facility i ran. I strained and software. When i left the military and figured i could do anything so i joined a bank dropped electronic Manufacturing Firm with a partner. And never really did that well but it got me into business and got me to where i could start looking at inventions of my own. By 1982 in 1983i was starting to invent things and it got my first patent in 1981. And i have had 37 cents. Some of them have done very well. Most most of them have been radio the quincy controlled products. But i was also lucky in that an industry was changing. You stuck a key in the fender to protect your car unlock it. By the time i left it, everything was hightech radio control. It interfaced with the body computers to shut down the car or to open the trunk, whatever you wanted to do. It was a lot of fun because innovating into that kind of space as a car guy is a winwin. Host so youre the Sub Committee now over patents and trademarks which is your first hand experience in this area in terms of how it affects real people. It does, and fixing the Patent Office has been something i have been involved in. It is been something very much a passion. I came to congress with a number of federal judges that became friend after our cases. They have been good counselors and helpers. We passed early on in our career and was called the patent pilot bill. Today that provides federal judges who choose to specialize only somewhat in Patent Litigation with additional capability expertise, clerks. Clerks. So they are able to dismiss these cases, dispatch them if you will quickly and accurately. The calendar of these cases a very complex cases are moving better. The judges the judges are more confident making good rulings with less overturning of appeal. But it is not over. Were innovating as a country and world. Patents are becoming more valuable. As a result people who litigate for a living a very weak patent but for great profit. That is is part of what i am working on. Host you are certainly the right guy of understanding at every level. Host so you came to testify for nafta in 1993. You kind of got the bug with San Diego Chamber kind of adopted you. And you ran for the senate at that point. Guest i ran for senate in 1998. The bug in many ways, you came to san diego in 1996 did you . Host yes i did. Guest i was supervising all the volunteers and they were doling out what everybody should do, and and the guy with the short star got to be the fundraising. I was between the short and long straw. I ended up chairing all the volunteers. We put together about 10,000 volunteers to do everything that needed to be done at that convention. It was the time of my life. I got to know so many people some republicans and some democrats. They were willing to go through weeks and weeks of training preparation to make that a great success. Host it was a Great Convention because of east coast time everything ended early and you have the rest of the night to party. Guest it did allow you to have an early supper followed by a long and enjoyable evening and then sleep in a little bit in the morning. Host i was a congressman at that point from virginia. And then you end up running for senate. Voters probably did you favor and not nominating you that year. Guest i do. I have a real soft spot. He was a was a state treasurer, a superb young man. A graduate of the air force academy. A great candidate. He did not win but he did better in the primary than i did so he became the nominee of our party. Through losing in the primary again to a friend and i gain an opportunity to be seen as someone who would fight hard for they believed in but would then support the nominee of our party. The day after you get your butt kicked in a primary having to shop at a unity breakfast and say good things about somebody, who i liked him but i had hurt feelings. Thats thats when you begin to understand politics. Politics is fighting hard, losing at least half of the time and then coming back to being a gentleman about it and knowing there is another day in which you will try to do things for this country. It was good training. Matt remained a friend friend until he passed with cancer. I never ran for statewide office again because two years later my congressman announced his retirement and i was already pretty close to a shoe and in many ways because i had run statewide and i was wellregarded. So i read one audrey and i want and have been there ever since. Actually his district was bigger he was a formidable opponent. Host tell us about the ad he ran. Guest politics is interesting. They took the ads that were available, the information to the senate, some of which had never been clarified and they try to rerun it. So he tries to go after me for being a poor soldier. Some sold some soldiers that i was a bad private. I was 17. I will never disagree that the 17yearold private to be pretty become questionable, and im sure i was. But i responded with efficiency ratings from officers i had served with. Some from medal of honor recipients, some from kernel sweat returning as threestar generals and two of them from general wesley clark when i work from him on two separate commands. That sort of shut him up. That took care of the question of was a good private, not an issue. Not an issue. I was a good lieutenant good captain. It also makes him look bad. Guest he also when after my background. I have an arabamerican name. He claimed that some of the money that i received was tainted. He came from those terrible arab states because this company, this gulf states company. And by the way, the guy that headed that company was an era. His last name was nassif. Well we got ambassador nassif in there. He had been the head of protocol to Ronald Reagan and had gone on to be the he said by the way the golf thing is the gulf of mexico. So so again it made him look foolish. I wasnt tainted by some sort of foreign money. The man that he accused was incredible figure in history and a great help to the president reagan. Those kind of mistakes change the rate. He served well and may have one but if it came between a false accusation that could be disproved, he really tumbled. And never really recovered. Host when you came to washington you were fortunate to get on three committees. Usually get one or two. You got the Judiciary Committee, even even though you are not a lawyer. You ended up for an arabamerican with somebody with your background in connection which is probably your third choice at the time. You alluded to that as well in the book but to me with your reputation it was your first love. Guest time youre the only reason i came to oversight. I was saying my third choice was the committee on Small Business. As a freshman they put me on that. I did not want to be a Small Business. Business. We all want to be big businessmen. We just start off a Small Businessman. So i got off that i got off the energy and commerce for the third time and because the work you are doing and the fact that yeah government oversight often did not enjoy first choice, but i saw the potential for by my third term i realize the work that youre doing even in the Bush Administration of holding the Administration Accountable was important. So with the help of now former speaker has to, i got that temporary transfer and that lasted for a decade. And then it went on to greater things. As you know, there is a balance of power in government but when you have one Party Controlling that the house and the senate they see their destinies intertwined and you tend to investigate. Were talking that a little bit with your leadership there. Ill never forget when we go after something the Bush Administration did wrong, we call out the speaker, he would call me and i would say theres a job there is a responsibility when we see wrongdoing. The executive branch goes unchecked. So you are subcommittee chairmen, i think i put you over some people in seniority you saw your capability. Tells about what you found over there. Guest under Ronald Reagan they created the middlemanagement service which was cobbling together organizations that seemed logical at the time. They oversaw three parts of if you will federal lands. Leasing of the fair use of them and the collecting of the revenues of them. That seems logical until you realize they didnt seem to write leases accurately and we have a number of examples where we have been shipped from poor writing. One of them had to do with wings like the deepwater horizon. They had written exclusions into their leases that allowed people in the price of natural gas went up, huge amounts of revenue not to be recognized under the lease. We found that we did not even see how much they were entitled to until they told them. Found there to cozy, so cozy that in fact they went to parties, stayed overnight, 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 quite a scandal of the Bush Administration said we will handle it, but you did not shut down the investigation, we provided always that was good guidance. In particular some guidance on the fact that their safety oversight was so bad that they never saw problem. They never came off an oral rig and said shut this down. And you figure at least once they should. So its a shabbat said that after your chairmanship during those two years they never said another word about it. Unfortunately, just just as you Left Congress and president obama came in what we found was deepwater horizon, to middlemanagement service inspectors were on that rig that morning, they left with a clean bill of health and the thing blew up. Loss of life, billions of dollars in damages. All because nobody pulled the stop button. So there there is an example of a successful investigation and a failure to stop something really bad. It guided my chairmanship more than any other single event. You cannot just end with telling people something is wrong. You have have to provide at least a proposal for change. Host thats when the Administration Starts to fight back. So you came on, the ranking republican on the committee two years later republicans capture the house. Your chairman of the committee, one of the first investigations i think that viewers will note is on passive fergus. That was described that and whats the applicability of today and what happened in paris. Guest sadly that link continues. Fast and furious was a program that didnt make any sense but was done anyway. It went from an atf agent and we know that they had tried in the Bush Administration it was shut down because it didnt work. You allow guns to be sold and then he would try to find them later make a leg. The problem is guns dont talk. They. They had no way to track them. So they really only knew two things. Where it started when it was sold and where it was at the scene of a crime which is where this program to that make sense. More than 2000 weapons were taken, videotape captured the purchase. But the it was with no value unless it led you to the next level. That that never happened. As you say, as late as a few weeks ago and the paris attack one of the weapons turned out to be one of guest that was a weapon the federal government sold. It was a weapon they knew was being sold, recorded it being sold, and did not follow it. Host basically sold. Host in this proceeds of this book go to the brian terry foundation. Tell us about him. Guest he was a Border Control agent. His family members were police, even secret service. The chief agent in san diego today for the secret service is his cousin. The fact is this was a family where everybody was in some form of lawenforcement. He had been at a different level joined the the Border Control and wanted to join the secret service. It was just before christmas, his gift his family in detroit had already been shipped back to detroit. He was getting ready to go and is one of his last times out there and he comes upon what turned out to be a drug cartel. He doesnt know, its probably human trafficking. He comes on it with the normal lot nonlethal attempt and he gets a gunned down because he finds himself against a very highpowered modern assault type rifles that were sold in fast and furious. Two are found at the scene of the crime along with his dead body. That was the tragedy of fast and furious. The government began almost right away. Senator grassley sent a letter inquiring about it. He got a false answer. That began, because of whistleblowers know that fast and furious was a bail program and tried to figure out who is responsible. U. S. Attorney, the drug enforcement, fbi. Only only later through this process to we find a sequence of events leading all the way up to the chain. By the time i got to the last document that i have seen, you have eric holder guiding his people on how not to deliver documents pursuant to subpoena issued by a committee. That is where the book has to come to an m because thats continuing before the courts but it will be an example of where lawenforcement doesnt come in the form of the justice department, doesnt enforce the old basic laws which use when you receive a subpoena, you turn over the documents. In this case you receive a subpoena and they did whatever they could to not turn that over because theyre embarrassing. Host tells about the fight to get these documents. What what you got, what you didnt get. Guest as you know, when you have seven subcommittee chairman, you have hundreds of investigations going on, you have a high profile morning it takes a lot of your time. Fast him. Took a lot of our time. But we also had other documents and other investigations going on in which we are Getting Better cooperation. What we we found in the case of fast and furious, they shut down and said theyre not going to give us anything after brians death. Was it. After brian terrys death which they sever ten months there was no link. It was of the most interest. Then the documents before hand, most of which shouldve been delivered immediately, they claimed they were important parts of an investigation of loot leading to criminal prosecution. So before the murder brian terry they would not give us the documents because they were part of the criminal investigation. Afterwards they did not give it to us because they said it was not within our basic jurisdiction. Was conversations within lawyers in the justice department. It was conversations to lie and cover up. Thats how we ended up before a federal judge and she was little timid at first. It took long time to get decisions. But Amy Berman Jackson in any case gave us what we call reasonable discovery and we received a great many documents. And she is as we speak ordering them to deliver more documents. It. Host its over right . The no longer doing this but there still out there, they not . You find out each incident. Guest this is the reason watchdog was written. There needs to be continuous oversight and predictability. Something you and i both have to do is chairman is to work with these inspector general. Seventyfour of them in the federal government as we speak with about 10000 employees. These are executive Branch Appointees confirmed in the senate. These people can investigate their own entities. Their brave men and women because quite frankly theyre being asked to be on popular within an agency. Host they have subpoena power within their agency . Guest someday. At the Department Department of defense, the ig does. Generally, no. They have no authority, somebody leaves an agency and goes nextdoor or two agencies are working together there is a wall that does not allow that ig to investigate the other. He has to call the other ig and hope that he or she will do it. There are reforms within the ig system that could do so much more. The most important though is that we need these imgs not to be shut out. In the book there is a problem. The ig is not allowed to inspect and oversee any lawyer. The department of justice is all lawyers. So even if it is sexual harassment, battery, all kinds kinds of things. The igs are locked out of it. So there is a lot to reform. Not all is it would be better way to be inspected is from within. Host again, the book is watchdog. Congressman to talk about some of the investigations of the House Oversight committee and a little history in there too. I went to get into the irs a little bit because thats a hot topic before congress. You tell a really interesting story. About a couple in marylands the government when after for money laundering. Can you tell that story. It was fascinating to me that some innocent civilians could get hurt in a case like that. Guest we have a law and lawenforcement likes it, the irs like that but its a loud that has outlived some of its usefulness. That is that banks have to report if you withdraw or deposit 10,000 dollars or more. The idea of that law is to look for large transactions and followed those more closely. Particularly at the time was in drug trafficking. Today it would be 39,000 dollars if it was indexed from inflation with the original law. Every year that goes by theres a better chance a better chance of having a 10000 transaction. If you are a dairy farmer, dairy rancher, or any number of professions and you receive money in cash, you then have a problem because you may have more than 10000 to send or receive. Your bank does not want to have to go through this reporting. So what you end up with his someone will say can you just keep it under 10000. Host it saves the bank a lot of paperwork. Guest yes in fact you have people who bring in 1000 during the weekend 12000 on the weekend. So they can do this, but when you do it, you trigger Something Else which is the circumvention law which is that if anyone tries to evade the 10000 input or output, thats a separate crime. Person that is that if the fbi or irs comes to ask your question and you say anything that is not true including i dont know what youre talking about, anything, that is a crime. So in this case the money was based on the theorymight. Host why were they taking money at less than 10000 . Guest because they were told so the Bank Something to take them out less because it be easier for them. So they did what was suggested to do. Trying to help the bank teller. And that triggered this problem. It is it is a problem in our society. We are mostly a cash society these days. And as a result cash sticks out. On the other hand 10,000 dollars to Business Operation is not a lot of money these days. So we have a number of these operations. Since that time time we have had an example that i like to tell, the Young Musician hopeful. Host let me finish the story. The couple ends up taking out small increments. They come out after them freezes their assets, they have done nothing wrong except the way they deposited their money. And they end up having to pay like 29000 in forfeitures. Guest basically they found ourselves in a position and that happens a lot. But let me me tell you this other one, because its equally the young man gets on a train a oneway ticket to los angeles. He is a hopeful to go to hollywood. And get into the business. Yes 17000 on a oneway ticket. They come and see him, discover he has this money, take the money away from him. And he said this is my money i dont have credit cards, im going there im young kid. And he says what i do, how i live and he said thats your problem. And they took his money. Host was the basis for that . Guest he had more than 10000 and they had a suspicion. There is a band that was touring for charity and as often happened at the end of the night theres various contributors and they had more than 10,000 dollars and they had it taken from them. The difference there was the publicity change the forfeiture and this was not through the irs but through the lawenforcement and to getting it back. So as the forfeiture, virus, all these things related to cash are examples where the federal government passed laws and now when you see excellent limitation you need to have oversight as to the specific and the example of the book is a good one. But we also need to have change. We need to realize that maybe we do not catch every bad person but we also dont attack innocent citizens with these rules. Thats part of what watchdog is about. We have to to create what i used to deal with in business which is the quality circle. You do something you think is good, you send your product out. Theres a defect in it, people need to tell you about the defect you need to be brought back into the team which is congress with the president. You need to redevelop the products or goes out without the defect. To us in manufacturing this is natural. You dont keep shipping a bad product. The world of government, sometimes defects are never cured because theres never enough will to deal with the problem. If you deal with the problem you might lose a little blood the benefit. The answer is, when it comes to the American Peoples freedom in their right to live free of their government we have to error on that side. Theres a factor government were nobody wants to go outside. If the rules allow you to do this you dont give it back. You you dont admit it and you keep your head down. That is were congress and oversight comes in sometime. Host as unit. Guest as you know, im in a district that is i can be one by the nominee of our party. You also have have to be willing to be unpopular. If it is your president you become unpopular with the party. Youve dealt with that time and again. If. If its the other one you have to be unpopular sometimes by both parties. But if youre not willing to do it people on both sides there are times when Elisha Cummings both of whom i served with were willing to Cross Party Lines and help us two things. There are times where we werent. Sometimes after agree and we now sit two points after the book already went to press your able to pass a major reform of the freedom of information act. My cosponsor on that book was elisha coming. We. We fought for two congress is to get a pass. That is a happy event. I was was with the speaker of the side of the bill. Elisha cummings was a good partner on that because the left and the right have a vested interest in transparency. While you know when you fight some days of work others and sometimes you find it sometimes you dont. I want to get to something that is still hot in the news and that his bank as a. You have a on that. Your committee did an investigation. Other companies did an investigation. Theres talking talking points that go across purposes my recollection of this is that when documents turned up to be subpoenaed by your committees and others that had not been produced, turned up freedom of information act request the speaker was under a lot of pressure to save this isnt the end of it. What were were your feelings about it as it moved on and this issue doesnt going away during the campaign and of course show the tip of the iceberg on the whole email issue. Guest youre right. A little bit like the breakin at the watergate. That was the tip of the iceberg. It went. Deep. This was a situation in this was a situation in which we had no obligation to investigate the first loss of an american ambassador. Host the reason your committee was created was because whats often happens with the defense committees become so close to the pentagon they want to avoid embarrassment your Foreign Affairs committee become so close to the state department they want to cover the state department. Thats just the nature of the act committees the same thing. So congress created this committee theyll be beholden to the agencies that they regulated and give you independent investigative authority. So thats your portfolio on this guest and this is probably the best example of exactly that. Three three agencies are involved. Im services, Foreign Affairs and the intelligence community. This is where the final attack occurred. What happened, before hand we do not do it we should have done to defend and protect the ambassadors. Its pretty clear there is huge mistakes made and the y is politically sensitive. But but the fact that it occurred is undeniable. During that time is very clear that nobody was actually moving towards the sound of the guns during those seven hours between the attack and sean doherty and tyrone being killed. So you have those events and then afterwards you have the coverup, false statements statements and so on. What we did was looked and said this crosses three committees at least. Its important that we begin the investigation and held the first hearing 29 days after the attack. We had witnesses. Host this is after susan rice had appeared on the tv shows. Guest it was nearly after when we knew what susan rice said wasnt true. We brought in those who were on the ground and could testify. Host just for the readers to understand, im not sure if she was adequately briefed but if you even look at the state Department Emails going back and forth at that time, shes off the restoration, shes, shes gone, were not sure what prompted that, i assume Hillary Clinton did not want to go on the talk show that morning was the highestranking person that they would get so it probably cost or at the end of the day and secretary of state. Guest really clearly in retrospect, Hillary Clinton going on in same we have had a terrible terrible tragedy, 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 l. A. In the video and were going to hold him accountable. And that also changed history. So our committee. This is one of the chapters that was hard to write. A lot is known about benghazi and we review some of it for very little is known about what you mention which is the Intelligence Committee wanted to say intelligence did nothing wrong and we will supply you any of these people even if they were not if you will operators. And they shut down. They said they said theres nothing here. Reminding you of the star wars and these are not the droids youre looking for. The Armed Services they fought and even the chairman there issued a statement that we received a copy of suggesting the department of defense not comply with our subpoenas and not produce people. The Foreign Affairs was much more neutral. They they felt they did not have the investigative team. It was not the nature so they looked at the arb, being the accountability review board. Another was the process is the state department went through. But our chairmans order said you take the lead, well keep an eye on it. They assigned a person to work with us. So we had three committees, three hostile, three hostile, one neutral. We begin our investigation. We discover the department of defense was an innocent. They did with the worst thing they could do. They created the african command and that command was toothless. It had no true to speaker. It didnt have the ability to launch on its own and it looked to the nato for assets in the state department for guidance on what to do. That put general hamm was in washington at the time of the attack in a bad position. He did not have independent authority and did not assert in order after they said go to actually get things moving toward the target. But the military has a limited culpability. The state department clearly had the bulk of the mistakes, not securing their facilities, not asking for military aid and not being honest afterwards. But that is a chapter being written because some people have lost track of benghazi and they wont repeat hundred page report which is all about the failures to secure men and women overseas because theyre interested in the next chapter. The next chapter obviously is Hillary Clintons decision to violate regulations and laws and it leading to classified information possibly be lost and mishandled. Host more to come with that email situation with benghazi at the state departments result. Result. Now i guess the clinton foundation, that could be under, thats a whole different issue. Guest one of the things that is only slightly touched but Sidney Blumenthal, character we had seen early in our investigation, his being so close to making money and doing business in this very rich country that seldom allocates its resources ominously in libya and having a a close confidant and private email correspondent with Hillary Clinton, a lot of that is yet to be discovered. Host he will was be paid at foundation at the time. Guest because the state department refused to put them on the payroll even though they were willing to put for example the individual who took care of Hillary Clintons private email have been working for her campaign and they were okay putting him on but Sidney Blumenthal had a very checkered past. The state department has a great deal of integrity and they push back and a lot of those areas. Host your hearing on this, youre the the more aggressive of the Congressional Committees look at this, what i saw from the outside looking is a past chairman is that the democrats are going to protect their quarterback. Part of this was before the election part was afterwards were it looks like Hillary Clinton may be the democratic candidate. Thats to be be expected. I dont think that should surprise there but it. Congress can look and work at a very bipartisan way. You so see g the quarterback rallying around and defending. Thats kind the way parties have done a job throughout the years. Guest it is. Your tremendous follower of history over the years as we travel you come up with these amazing facts throughout history , particularly political history. Watergate started off off with republicans protecting their quarterbacks and team captain and democrats going after truth or not truth, going after the president and the party. But by the time it ended republicans were the ones that went to the white house until the president president it was time to go. Republicans are the one who came forward and answered honestly before subpoena to a Congressional Committee and republicans were the ones that made clear that the president would not survive impeachment. I would hope that is always the case. You start off on two different sides, you conduct oversight to get to the truth and when the truth starts leading for or against your original position, you are willing to change that. I have seen it and some people but i have not always seen it. In the book we talk about the countrywide scandal. This was a wrongdoing that occurred. Host explain what countrywide was. Guest if they read the book its all explained. Host i want to get them to read the book the watched and you can always go to watchdog book. Com. Host Angela Mozilla who