that people are leaking so-called classified information, but there s a real thing in the united states about the degree to which we classify information that probably shouldn t be classified. well, that s right. there is tons of things that get a kind of secret stamp that s really, you know, more for bureaucratic self-preservation to use a polite term than it is about any real national security import. and the fact is that, you know, often journalists are asked not to publish something that might endanger troops, say, or, you know accident have a real implication for national security. and that s fair. and i think most of us fully subscribe to that. exactly. they do abide by that and i think usually they can work those things out in advance. so i think the bottom line is, look, prosecutors need to have discretion when it comes to, you know, what media cases they pursue. i think for the most part the justice department has been
but what would what more do you want when you have all of the people in the intelligence community saying it, including donald trump s cia director? they are all saying it. what would their motive be to lie or to on i ha i m not asserting they are lying. i understand how this government works and i m one who sat in on the intelligence of the weapons of mass destruction that saddam hussein had. i went out to the pentagon and sat in a classified briefing. i ve got a feel for how this intelligence gets interpreted, presented and i also am around people that will accept the definition or the analysis of the evidence and describe it as evidence. so i just think that it shouldn t be classified. the american people should know what is this evidence, how did the russians try to hack into the dnc? we also heard jay johnson say it didn t affect the election.
you pointed out it is a privilege ofheresint. you don t have the privilege on your own behalf unless you re asserting the fifth amendment. how can the senate compel it? you can always go for contempt. they re not going to do that? i don t think so. what they are probably likely to do is a low conversation between lawyers to say, look, what the hill is the issue and can we do it in closed hearing? over lunch the lawyers probably called these two and say you can t do that. the senate does what it so often does is have conversations behind closed doors. they classify things that shouldn t be classified. could be. that denies the american people we do pay their salaries. sure, but this is all going to come out. i know. anyway, it s like pulling teeth sometimes. anyway, thank you both. five hours after the comey testimony went public and still no tweets from president trump, are you surprised? at last, how will he handle the big hearing tomorrow? we re going to talk
we ve developed, that s inaccurate, actually. it s got two engines. we just can t do that, because we ll give information to our adversaries that way, and it s very, very frustrating, but we can t start down that road. when it s unclassified information from a reporter misreports the contents of a bill that s being debated in congress or a policy, we can call them and say hey, you ought to read it more carefully. you missed this or missed that. we cannot do that with classified information. it s very, very frustrating because i ve read a whole lot of stuff especially in the last two months that s just wrong but i can t say which is wrong and i can t say it to those reporters. mr. comey, if you could help us on this issue i would greatly appreciate it. what happens is that you come into a classified briefing with us, and you tell us perhaps what something that is absolutely false. it really shouldn t be classified, because you re telling us it s not true. but yet we can t go tell it s
ever. so i think he s got to take the ryan approach and try to keep it narrow and kind of say, this is about the classified information about hillary s mishandling of it. and say that it smells of a cover-up, but not get too far ahead of it. gloria, it also, you know, kind of fits into that overused word, the narrative of the fbi and whether they are, in fact, you know, kind of honest brokers in all of this, which now, there are allegations about director comey, and you know, lower level fbi agents thought that hillary clinton should be prosecuted. this sort of again feeds into that. it s kind of a toxic brew, if you mix it all up for hillary clinton. this is a complicated bureaucratic story on a lot of levels, about what should be classified and what shouldn t be classified, and if i do you a favor, can you do me a favor? we know all of that, none of it sounds good. how big it is, i don t think it s i don t think it s huge, but these are the last three weeks of the campaign, so