We could just get rid of the cameras, we can do what we always do, just sit and gossip. Rose this Political Campaign you have seen a lot of it. Does it signal that somehow all of politics is going to change and this is an Inflection Point for americane play politics and the way we Cover American politics . Lessl i think it is but because of what is happening to the political system then what to our business. We have totally democratized in this country, and that sounds like a wonderful thing. Loves democracy, but the idea of a Representative Government is you have people who spend their entire lives, theoretically, trying to do what is best for the country. What you and i were meant to do as journalists is the same kind of thing. We were supposed to gather information and then process it, give people what was most important. We are way past that. We are a point donald trump in an interview, and we were talking after the interview, and he said, i dont need you guys anymore he meant you and me. He is absolutely right. He has 20 million twitter followers and facebook followers and if he wants to get a message out, he can just do it through them. Anybody who thinks that this fiasco is going to be over on november 8 is just dreaming. This is going to go on. We have never had a situation like this where someone like mr. , who i do not believe ever thought he was going to get this far when he started, but who has developed something of a taste for this he is not going to go back to just selling real steaks andstakes water in college. Rose i agree with you he is a bit intoxicated by the process. Heres intoxicated by it because he likes this notion of people who look to him, who believe in him, who stick with him, and who they believe he reflects them when no one else does, so that ies him a real sense of, want to be part of this process, im here to stay. Fact that hehe infuriates so many people in the just inhment, that tears him all the more to many feels followers who just betrayed, who feel the establishment has left them down. This guy comes along and says in effect all the things he is not supposed to say. That is part of his great charm. But it also is a reflection of how a significant portion of the American Population feel like nobody listens to them. They do not feel like they will have any impact. They do not feel like their life is going to be better, and they do not feel like the system is beyond theirorces control. Ispel yes, but donald trump in some respects like a political lottery game. You put five dollars into the lottery on the off chance i mean, maybe it is 10 million to one or one million to one, but you could win 100 million, and i think there are an awful lot of people out there who look on donald trump exactly the same way. Is he really going to change things . Well, maybe not, but we know dam well the establishment has not done any of the things it has said it is going to do. Rose washing watching and listening to people who campaign every day, there is a sense that he may not be the change that we want, but we want to cast a protest vote. If you look in the polls, she is ahead. Different polls say Different Things. It may be a little tighter than it was, and we do not really know. We will find out on tuesday, november, but my sense is Hillary Clinton you know, recognizes that she has a very difficult time ahead, not only emails and who she as but she will have difficult a time governing as anybody has in a long time. Is exactly right. The fact of the matter is that some of the republican congressmen are already making noises about the investigations. Really . Before the investigation is even over, weve got the investigations going . Well, yes. The fact of the matter is as long as it was her or donald trump, a great many people in this country were prepared to right, i will hold my nose and vote for hillary because i cannot stand the idea f donald trump. Once donald trump is theoretically out of the picture, suddenly, the limelight falls entirely on Hillary Clinton. She has pressure within her own party. Shes going to receive an awful lot of pressure from the left, im not at all sure she is ng to be a happy later two a happy lady two weeks into her administration. Even if she has a senate capacitygive her some to fight some of the battles. Even if she has a democratic senate, it will be by a vote or two. It will not enable her to do that much. It will still be largely divided. Journalism . Koppel thats a real disaster. First of all, in the years that you and i have been on, there was a day when people in our in of the business im talking broadcast journalism genuinely felt that we had a mission to give the American Public the news that it needed, and that has changed in some measure because of the. Echnological inventions we did not have cable. We did not have satellite. We did not have the internet. You did not have the blogosphere. It also changed because of the economic dynamics. 40 years ago, 50 years ago, the networks were printing money down in the basement with all of the entertainment programs they were doing, and because there was a certain amount of , the fcct regulation actually had some clout in those days, so the deal was goahead, make all the money you want to make on your entertainment, but make sure you give the American Public operate in the interest, necessity, and convenience. Those were the three catchwords. So we had a commitment to doing that. You and i were talking about it just before we went on the air. Abc, nbc, cbs among the three of them had more than 100 years ago,nts 40 based all around the world gathering information. These days, i would be surprised if they had 20 among the three of them. Probably not even close to that. The same time, on the other hand, we have some very brief correspondents covering the effort to retake mosul. You see them every day. Koppel let me just say my hats at nbc, harleyn williams, liz palmer, doing a brilliant job. You do not have the quantity, which means that whole sections of the world are uncovered. Sure a lot of your audience does anyway, but pick up npr at 9 00 in the morning and listen to the bbc for an hour and just take note of how many important events are taking place around the world that are never covered on american radio and television. Rose indeed. Back to this campaign. You have a campaign that has not on a lot on issues but on assaults on character. Have we given enough attention to the issues, or have we been distracted by a story that generates so many headlights so many headlines . Course we have, but let me tell you a story that seems to be unrelated. At the time of the hostagetaking in iran, i learned that a group of american diplomats, and there may have been one or two intelligence people in the group, maybe five or six, had escaped from the u. S. Embassy and had taken up and residence in the canadian ambassador, was turned into a movie rose argo. Koppel i learned about that at the time. Agot a call from correspondent who said she was not denying the story but was asking as a serious journalist to not carry it because it would jeopardize the safety and possibly even the lives of those people. It is the only time in 50plus years in journalism that i killed a story. Came out,ovie argo all of a sudden, the subject was hot again, and i found myself talking to my counterpart over at cbs. Out they had the same story, got the same story, got a from the secretary of state and agreed not to use it. Killed the story. My point being in those days, you only had the three networks. The fact that the three of us were prepared, without having spoken to one another, to kill the story meant it was dead. The story did not run. You could never do that today, charlie. With theo way thousands of outlets, the thousands of blogs, tweets, facebook, social media, various channels on cable and Satellite Television there is no way that you could kill a story. Longwinded way of getting to how can one network ion, one lets say cbs, for the sake of argument if it were to focus on all the serious subjects that you and i in principle can agree this and can cover on program. We have the privilege of being on public television. Koppel exactly. But if they were to do that, they would get their butts kicked in the ratings and pretty soon, someone up there in management would say, guys, this is not a private club here. Rose Something Like that happened this year in terms of anyone who refused to do a telephone interview with donald trump suddenly found him doing interviews with other shows. He was so much of a performance artist, an entertainer, he was attracting attention. The complaint that theres this terrible media conspiracy against him, to a certain degree, i even accept part of that as being a legitimate statement. I think the media certainly the establishment media has taken a position that comes dangerously close to saying, we feel that donald trump is such a danger to the republic that we are going to do things we have never done before. The New York Times putting letter fword, spelling it out on the front page could you imagine that they would ever have done that in the past . However, for donald trump, who owes where he is today to the fact that he got the kind of unbelievable coverage on every vision station rose [inaudible] koppel exactly. Refuses tod trump release his tax returns. Hillary clinton does not have press conferences to talk about emails. What do we do . Koppel that is a perfectly legitimate question. The answer is you try to cover it. Do whatever you can to find out. Rose somebody sent them unsolicited a copy of an early tax return. Koppel who did that . Rose they are not telling. Koppel journalism has always depended on someone with a conscience rose a source of some kind. Koppel or a grudge. Rose do you miss not being part of this every day . Koppel no. Rose not at all . Because you have a life that this would get in the way of . Koppel i must tell you, that this campaign makes me very sad. Is an extraordinary country. I mean, it really is. I came here as a young immigrant from england. Place. This i think it is just remarkable. Churchills great line the americans always end up doing the right thing but only after they have exhausted every other possibility. Thats true. Americans have always done things in a wild, chaotic fashion. Rose you were naturalized 10 years after you came here. Anpel because i had married American Woman and we had our first child, so i had an american child. There was no great pressure on me. Being a british citizen in this country is no hardship. Rose what do you regret . Koppel about . Rose the journalism career youve had. Are there roads you wish you had not traveled . I like to quote old poets when i can. Stories iere are certainly would have done differently, but as i look back, i cannot imagine a more rewarding professional life. Go to as when i would college and give a speech, they would ask why i wanted to be a journalist. Rose why would i not want to be a journalist . Koppel my colleagues and i wake up in the morning, get on the phone and ask what is the most interesting thing going on in the world today, who are the most interesting people, where are the most interesting thing interesting places we can go, and somebody else pays you to go there. Are the most interesting times. Not necessarily the most hopeful, but i think it is in the end. Lets talk about the book. I just interviewed james klapper, and we talked a lot about cyber security. Out. Book had just come lay out the threat of a cyber attack against this country and why it has not happened. Look at everything that has happened, and look at in one respect, the most interesting thing about the that in effect has created this awkward situation with Hillary Clinton and the democratic party. Right, and her campaign manager, mr. Podesta. Our 17 right, and intelligence agencies which are saying essentially that the russians did it and the russians , no, we didnt. Prove it if you can. Vice President Biden says, were going to get you guys. Were going to respond. The point was they will do something that will be in verisign to prove that will and herrassing to putin will know where it came from, and he will think twice before doing it again. That is the operative idea. Happened thising past weekend. Do you remember what it was . There was a distributed denial of service on the internet, and it knocked out thousands of operations, right . That is all and it is that that was the russians. With i did an interview was one of theat headlines that came out of it. He said it was probably a nonstate actor. Something . You know a nonstate actor can still be working with the russians. Rose but i think he was indicating it was someone else. Koppel maybe, maybe not, but my experience is in the good old we always knew where the danger was coming from. If rockets have been launched by the soviet union, there would not have been in a doubt in the president s mind as to who did it and against whom mr. Viewed of action should be taken ibutive actionetr should be taken. In this case, the russians and chinese are already inside our electric power grid and have the oracity of taking down one all three of our power grids rose what do you mean . I mean they have been mapping our grid using the internet to get into it gets. Ind of wonky the supervisory control and Data Acquisition system. It is the system that controls the flow of electricity of this country. If you can get inside, you can cause failure. Rose you are saying there inside and could cause havoc. The reason they do not do it is they know we could do it and they are more vulnerable . Koppel no, im not saying that at all. Im saying exactly the opposite. Rose we do not have the same power to get inside their system . Koppel we do, but what do you do if there is a cyber attack and the president is in the all hisn room with intelligence people around him and asks who did it, and they say it looks as though the attack came from stockholm. Really . Yes, but before stockholm it was routed through new zealand and before new zealand, it was routed through board srs ires, and asos a best we can determine, it came from brooklyn. Now what do you do . Against whom do you take action . Rose they call that attribution. They tell me they are much better at attribution. Koppel it still takes a long time. Rose they know and spoke out about the North Koreans and their hacking sony. Koppel it took them a couple of months. Rose they also suspect the chinese. They have not identified publicly. The question is why do they not do that . The answer is they do not do that because they do not yet know what they want to do. They want to be sure that they have it right and second, they want to know what they are prepared to do before they single them out. That was onlyy, intelligence gathering. A humongous amount of intelligence gathering, arguably the greatest single intelligence windfall of all time. They got what . 22. 5 million records. Want toght, people they know something about so they can approach them for one reason or the other. Exactly. 22. 5 million. R,t, you remember, mr. Clappe at the time director of national intelligence, almost said, pretty impressive. If we could do that why not . Gathering is ok. Economic warfare, less so. Taking out one of our most critical infrastructures that is an act of war, charlie. I do not think the russians or chinese are going to do it because it would amount to war once the attribution was made, but as you go down the capability scale, the iranians, North Koreans, remember the syrians actually did something a few years ago where they hacked into the Associated Press and put out a little bulletin, and the bulletin said there had been ,n attack on the white house that someone has shot a gun into the white house, and the president s whereabouts were not known. Within Something Like three minutes, the ap realized they had been hacked and put out a correction. Within those three minutes, the dow jones dropped 400 points, and it was simply the syrians saying to the United States, watch it, guys. Accusationere is the that the russians, that they are hacking because they want to question the credibility of the American Election system. That was quite a different thing that had been done. Although it was said that Vladimir Putin believes the americans are trying to undermine him all the time. Ted i think he is right. Charlie and that we try to create problems to him. He believed in ukraine that it was the cia that created the problems that led to the president of ukraine having to plea to russia. Ted we are old enough to remember that back in the 1950s, the cia was extremely active in central america, undermining governments we did not like. 1960s, 1970s charlie . Protectingn dictators. Ted they were simply different tools of that time. We now have new tools that are far more dangerous. Charlie what do you think Vladimir Putin is up to in the broader sense . Ted i think he is restoring some of russias greatness. People it hit a lot of in russia very hard that they were now considered a second or even a third rate power. I dont think you can overestimate how important that is. Charlie has he played his hand well and has he made russia relevant . Ed look, you are his pal the two of you looked adoringly at one another. Charlie those were some of the hardest questions he is been asked. I would like to go tomorrow and talk to him. Ted so what i. So would i. No, you did a brilliant job of interviewing him. Clearly had a fairly warm relationship. Charlie i got him to be engaged. You want to engage people so that they innocence are trying to be so that in a sense they are trying to be as open as they can be. Ted that is your great skill, you engage everyone. Charlie it is like the sun and the wind. Ted exactly. I was far too windy in those days. Charlie you were far too brilliant. Should we expect what, we have three electric grids . Should we expect one of them to be attacked . The intelligence people seem to be surprised that there has not been a successful attack against the United States on our own soil. There is been isolated attacks. Attack on the grid would be an act of war. An attack on the grid would have wrapping in way of the subject we were talking about before, the cam