I appreciate that. Felt was an important part of the mission because so many other people were telling it to i wanted to get his voice. Thank you. You mentioned the New York Times and the articles and how numerous i am curious of their opinion . The black press did write about it and it was covered nationally from people who did not know about the story. It was covered by practically every paper across the country from the Washington Post if you were anywhere in this country would have known about ota benga. Thanks for coming tonight. It is great to be here. In doing this did you hope there are themes that white people would pick up on . I dont do my work life that i dont do what white people should know. [laughter] i think of all people. I dont work that way. For this audience for that. I of the truth junky to get at the truth that could be uncomfortable even for us. I am about humanity. If we can all get closer to that it would be a good thing. Thank you. Me. Is that it . If youd like to read more. If any spoke to his interests at the seminary . A lot of the class is academic courses and africans had studied there then read back as missionaries but he did not stay there long. She had no right things . No. That would be so great. You mentioned earlier the conflict is still going on where is that still going on . I dont do research on the human people but the last one or the last two that i saw one was in germany and what was in spain. Dash any point ever did they pay punitive damages . The city . This city supported it. To know where your next project will be . I wish i had that incite. Part of that will be to sleep and rest a the told them more. Because i go into a whole when im doing research. I disappear. So i am happy to be merged to see friends and family. [applause] senator book is available and give shop still free to come up if you have a book already. [inaudible conversations] what the terrorist group will do is put their message out of platforms that they know access via the largest population possible then they bombarded with thousands of messages every day of propaganda is run across the board so we are familiar with the shocking images it is despicable of Public Education execution but they also bombard them with micra targeted messages the same way that advertisers you to show a handsome young black actor in one video handing out candy to two children ended another video but in either hand holding a kick than. Images of a conduct life. It looks to see that large scale bombardment if they get someone on the book. Police commissioner talks about his career in Law Enforcement and the time he spent in prison following his conviction for tax fraud and making false statements from the foundation in washington, d. C. This is in and this is an hour welcome to the Heritage Foundation in the auditorium both of those that join us on all of these occasions ive ask the guest to be so kind to check their cell phones as a great courtesy to all of our speakers and of course internet viewers are reminded you can send questions or comments by simply emailing us at speaker of heritage. Org. Leading the discussion today is john malcolm as the Sherry Lindberg legal fellow at heritage is also the director of the center for legal and judicial studies. Joining heritage we joined a variety including for the Criminal Division at the u. S. Department of justice. He was in charge of antipapacy operations of the Motion Picture association of america and served as a general counsel at the u. S. Commission on International Religious freedom. Please try me in welcoming my code colleague. Its been a gorgeous today has seen incredible Justice System and the point that few of us have seen. He has been at the pinnacle of Law Enforcement in and the community. Having started as a military Police Officer he rose through the ranks to the corrections of the commissioner where he was credited in proving what had once been thought and im governable prison. He then served as the Top Cop Police commissioner where duties included overseeing the nypd response to the 9 11 attack on the twin towers. He was one of the most decorated Police Officers among the many for 30 medals of excellent meritorious and heroic service. He served as a National Security advisor to the king of jordan and king of jordan and was appointed by president bush to be the interim minister of the Iraq Coalition provisional authority and of course subsequently nominated by the president in 2004 to head the department of homeland security. Hes also served time in federal prison. After withdrawing the nomination the federal government initiated the investigation which culminated to eight charges including criminal conspiracy and lying under oath. He has written an account in the triumphs and challenges and ordeals, the copies of which are available in the lobby. He will now make brief opening remarks that he and i will engage in a moderated dialogue with each other and after that well have time permitting questions. Please join me in welcoming bernard. The process qquebec good morning. First i want to thank john at the Heritage Foundation for the invitation to be here and speak to you and speak about the buck as john mentioned ive been a christian officer, ive been a federal agent in new jersey and for six years i oversaw one of the most violent in the system. In a sixyear period i took it from one of the most violent best manage prison systems in the country to the International Model for efficiency and accountability. We averaged 150 per month and i took over in the mother became that is commissioner in the year 2000, we had one, a 93 reduction in violence and there were efficiency is in every area of management within the system. In the year 2000, i became the Police Commissioner. Violence was down, crying was down and everything was going fine until 8 46 on the morning of september 11. It was the most trying time for the nypd in the countrys history. But for me as bad as i was like out to witness the best and the worst, the worst demand that flew the planes into the towers into the pentagon and the best in watching the rescue mission which i consider one of the greatest and most substantial in the history of the country carried out by the men and women in the new York City Police department and fire department. From that point on, my career was up until i was nominated by the president. And i have to tell you i thought i knew our criminal Justice System. I thought i knew it better than just about anyone until i was a target of federal prosecutors and i had outdone myself in a federal prison and i came to realize quickly that our criminal Justice System in my opinion is flawed and failed anyways. So i will sum it up in a couple of things that i found most important to me. I think that the guidelines have to be repealed or abolished. The judges have to have the ability to judge. I think we are putting way too many people with Mental Illness and addiction in prison. We are taking young men caught first time and this is one of the things that struck me when i went into prison. I put a lot of people and i believe in a law and order and i got ive got a friend today and he and a law and order type of person than i was 20 years ago. And i put people in prison that wanted to kill me and then i worked with, people i seized cocaine from, then i went to prison and i met young black men, 18, 19yearsold. Two sugar packs in a Dunkin Donuts 15 years in prison because they were tacked onto some thirdparty conspiracy. Partial fishermen. There was a guy that sold on ebay. Young men that enhance their income in a Mortgage Application to buy their first home, federal prison, thousands upon thousands of people in federal prison. The one thing that i have come to realize, and i think that the general public i know, i am absolutely confident that the public doesnt know we are creating a permanent underclass of american citizen in the country. A second class by the millions because when you become a convicted felon, you are a secondclass citizen until the day that you die if that conviction ever goes away. We are supposed to incarcerate and rehabilitate. We are supposed to punish and make people better. Get them back into the society. I promise you that isnt happening. If we didnt have the advocacy groups around the country that we do today like the Heritage Foundation and others, thousands of others, i cant even tell you how bad the society would be. In many cases especially these lowlevel drug cases, society failed these young men and women the communities have failed them and stayed in prison for ten years, 15 years. We shouldnt should have an option once the takeover and we feel them completely. They are supposed to have programs, and i can assure you where i was we had the continuing education programs. But as i stand here before real examples, chess, checkers, they are not going to do anything for reducing the recidivism. We take people that committed fraud and n. Gage them in a prison to teach a real estate class two other convicted felons. Theres two problems i have with that. Otherwise you are letting someone teach the topic for which they were convicted and worse than that is once they teach the people they are supposed to be teaching that something that helps them for when they get on the outside. You can teach that to be a master realtor. They cant get a job for the real estate agent. You can teach them to be an accountant and they cant get a job as an accountant. Thats the last thing you and this is probably one of the most important issues that i see Going Forward in this country. The collateral consequence of the conviction in this country is personally and professionally annihilated. Very far and few between the people and the federal prison or after any sort of success unless they are entrepreneurial or have some special skill. But the consequences that come with the conviction are completely annihilating. At after some time you have to pay your debt to society. Its the civil and Constitutional Rights to be given back to you because as it stands today, that never happened. You lose the civil and Constitutional Rights that are never given back. You are were never again hold as an american citizen that matter what you do. I was with a young man. He was 20, 21yearsold and was a sniper with a pair of night vision goggles. He was convicted in the conspiracy because the person he sold them to didnt have the appropriate permit to sell them. The kid was 21 and he was sentenced to 30 months in prison because he did something he didnt know was wrong. That being said if he lives to be 120 and is a complete angel on the outside. The conviction is lying over his head until the day they put him in the ground. Its wrong. Its filed by the constitution, by a governing body, by the Founding Fathers who said the punishment is supposed to decline. They and the American Government thank you. Why dont you sit at the podium. Kind of a Remarkable Book he went from being one of the nations top cops and this is a difficult book. Im curious why did you write this book lacks a lot of people when i wrote the book especially critics. Writing a book to make money and make up for losses. I heard this line once and i couldnt agree more for the losses that i had over the last eight to ten years as a result of the investigation of my conviction. That would have to sell more copies than the bible for me to make up for it. This isnt about money. This is basically about an education. What i said earlier that im confident the public doesnt know the things i learned i said that for a reason. I know they dont know and im positive of many of the legislators and the outlaws they dont know either. I know that. I went to one of the biggest organizations in the country. The biggest Law Enforcement organization in the country. I did not know many of the things that ive learned since. And if i didnt know him i am sure that the American Public doesnt know thats what the book is about. The book is an educated to for the American Public and i think it creates if i wanted to create a debate for the change to the law. That would be good to those which are in ask them how do we in this country have 5 of the worlds population. The United States as a whole is 5 of the population have totaled 25 . How is that possible . It opens up eyes to create that debate. In the book you quoted from a fellow prisoner its like dying with your eyes open. Please describe a little bit of what you mean by that. If i heard that statement prior, i wouldnt have had a clue what that meant. I wouldnt have had any idea. But i had been there for months. Maybe for four months already than this kid made a statement and we were having a conversation one afternoon he had problems his wife had been dying from cancer and he was there on a charge and tried to get a compassion to get to the hospital. He had nobody else to take care of the kids. It was a mess and then he was basically standing there and said to me it is like dying with your eyes open. They knew exactly what he meant. When you go to prison, i dont care who it is unless you are an institutionalized animal when you go to prison thats what happens you die with your eyes open. You are placed in a stagnant position and watch everything that goes on around you and your family come in your personal life of your professional life, everything. Everything goes on and no matter how bad it can be, i have some bad incidences happen. My brotherinlaw went to the hospital for a routine surgery. Supposed to be in and out in a day. Three sons were 15yearsold, triplets and there wasnt anything i could do for him, his family, his wife, and it was horrible. My son who was a Police Officer, his partner was shot and killed during a robbery. I had the unfortunate position as a police chief or commissioner. But i couldnt be there for my son when his partner died. I know what he meant when he said its like dying with your eyes open, and thats what its about. In public you talk about the idea of a cure son and daughter. Can you describe more about how they cope with the difficulties and also how they do it now. When the wife standstill, theres dont. And then theres the reverse. Everything they do it doesnt have you in it. So the sporting events, you made it, the good, the data, the ugly. It all goes on without you in it. Theres distance created between the kid, children and spouse and none of it is good. I left my two daughters that were seven and ten. I came back and gave her ten and 13. They were adults when i came back. You come back to the same home that you left and back to the same spouse, very different relationship. If there is nothing good about that distance not to mention that the financial problems that occur. I cant tell you, i am and i was one of the fortunate ones i know i cant tell you how many were taken out of the workforce. The commercial fishermen that cost too many fish, there were a few where i was. And this is one of the problems i have in the system. Instead of dealing with that guy through a regulatory body which it should have been, whats what we did is turned them into a convicted felon. He lost his vote, his wife worked for the company, she was left alone, he went to prison now he gets out of prison 18 months later and has nowhere to go. The company is gone and he cant get a license. What is he going to do for the rest of his life . I dont doubt that what i can tell you is that there are thousands of cases like that, disrupting the economy and families and east roy and families, putting people in public assistance. Its your loss and its costing us billions if not trillions of dollars over the reported cost of incarceration. For a close friend and boss Rudy Giuliani and im sure you had other friends impact on the relationship i wondered what you could talk about. I have known him for two years prior to that. Once i retired, we had a company together and we were very close to a. When it started, we created between us mutually and it was understood. I didnt want him involved in my case and he didnt want the focus and the attention that was coming down on me on him especially at the time that he was running for. He announced he was going to run for president. I understood that. What happened later was in the aftermath of my conviction i never heard from him again. In the distance that he wanted to continue, thats fine. But i dont think theres anybody in the American Government that doesnt understand. In the absence that was painful but it was behind me. On probation for another year as i recall what are some of the current restrictions that you face and what are the additional restrictions youre going to face in the future . Spaghetti with constant oversight by the department of probation, and they have an enormous job in overseeing people in the system. The problem that i have in the system is that there has to be an evaluation process for people that are a threat for getting back involved in crime. Spec they are not a threat to society. They are not a threat of violence and probation officers can be better served by focusing on people that are problematic. So thats why i find the difference of opinion county supervisor for so long. But i will tell you regard this as my own circumstance. They dont want to hire people on probation because they dont want them showing up at work and watching probation officers shoving about your company. You dont want that oversight. You dont want the government looking at you in