Which russia has weaponized information as part of the campaign of special warfare, especially in the donbass. It is not a coincidence that the first thing the russian units did when they moved into key eastern ukrainian cities is pull down the Ukrainian Television and radio broadcasts. Im told the units have digital pacs plugged into the stations to immediately switch over to russian stations. The russian strategy, its important to recognize about the strategy of special warfare, the russian objective is not to win the argument, not to demonstrate truth. It is to confuse, create doubt and keep everybody off balance. Thats why you had little green men in crimea. So everybody spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out are they russians or from somewhere else . Who are these guys in slavyansk with rpgs and air peace radios. It is a strategy which rests on a tactic of misdirection which has an objective to sow division between the United States and european partners. And which has as an objective on the ground in ukraine to create fear. To create a sense of endangerment for russian speakers. I agree with you. It is a critically important issue. To be frank, we in the u. S. Government have only begun the process of thinking through how we need to respond to this but we are doing so. Jointly with your european partners. I was at an Atlantic Council event focused on this a couple of weeks ago. The fco has done tremendous work thinking about the implications of the strategy. The Ukrainian Government is struggling with the task of strategic communications. I would draw a strong distinction between propaganda and stratcomes. I think it is important not to go down the rabbit hole, not to fall into the trap of trying to meet russia on their grounds in terms of ms. Representation or propaganda. The best answer to that propaganda is truth. A consistent presentation of Ukrainian Government reality and Ukrainian Government intentions including, as i alluded to, Ukrainian Government intentions regarding Eastern Ukraine and the imperative of national unity. We have eight more minutes. I will take three questions. Ariel here. There. In the back. Ariel cohen, center for energy, Natural Resources and geo politics. I just came back from russia. In many conversations with the elites there is more than an under current. There is a message that ukraine will not survive this crisis. I do not know if our concerns about expanding the conflict zone all the way to odessa and the maldovan border will be justified. But taking what you were saying about the trying times for ukraine, what are the contingencies to the extent you can disclose them in ukraine and our contingencies to developments that go beyond donbass . Do you think this was just an attempt to engage in stratcom operations and convey this message that they think ukraine will not survive that . Or do you think something is really in preparation. Lets take the other questions and then we will. Right there. Right there. Thanks. Thank you, ambassadors pyatt and herbst. Local elections will be important to the decentralization process and to further renewal of the political class. I wonder what you are hearing about planning for local elections, if thats in the works yet. Thank you. John behind you. John gunderson, National Defense university. I was counsel general in ukraine after independence. I would like to sort of push you on the one that i know is very delicate to discuss and thats security issues. Two factors i think we should think about. One is russian thinking. I know we dont predicate policy. Looking at another way of how we look at russia, the heads of the Russian Military were all young lieutenants in afghanistan. Mostly. The thing they fear most is an insurgency. A vietnam complex in afghanistan complex. The sense then of having to think about a strong Ukrainian Military factors into russian thinking. So i would like you to address the concept or answer what the arguments would be against giving lethal defensive equipment, the type of things we give to sovereign states such as egypt or pack pakistan. Or pakistan. Not quite friendly allies. What is the argument against giving defensive lethal aid to ukraine . Thank you. The last question over there. Two points. First one from your comments, as well from the comments that have been heard today here as well as from the whole world discussion, it is clearer we are not talking about the crisis in ukraine. It is war. It is a russian aggression against ukraine. The question is why many u. S. Officials, sometimes in cluding you prefer to use the term crisis instead of using the more correct and appropriate term aggression and war. And why not use it from today at least . Second, three days ago there was the 20th anniversary of the budapest memorandum. Ukraine is a little bit bitter feeling about this. Dont you think the mechanisms of the budapest memorandum could be used at this moment . For example, in consultations provided by article vi or in other ways . All right. Last one right there. Then you have 30 seconds for each, jeff. Thank you. Eir news. As much assistance as ukraine might need now from the United States and allies abroad the reality is the u. S. Policy in the ukraine has nothing to do with ukraine. A question, not a statement. With destabilizing russia. Im sure you listened to president putins remarks at the bicameral address a couple of days ago when he warned you have 15 seconds. He warned the International Community that the last people to come after russia to destroy them were crushed and that was hitler. Similarly, germany, there is a letter circulating in germany signed by schroederer making reference to rithitler saying making reference to hitler, saying the last people to go after russia were crushed. My question is how is starting a third world war with russia in the interest of ukraine or the United States, how is this improving the security situation in the world . Ok. I will do lightning round on these. Let me start with ariels hypothetical. I guess what i would focus on is first of all the critical importance of the negotiations which are taking place in minsk, hopefully this week. Another round of Contact Group negotiations. This goes to johns question. This is a crisis which is not going to be resolved on the battle field. It will be resolved through diplomacy. Yes, the United States has an interest in helping ukraine to develop the capacity to defend its sovereign territory. Well continue to do so. We have devoted 118 million to that purpose so far this year. But the end game will be played in the court of diplomacy and the best vehicle for achieving that is full implementation of the minsk agreement which was signed onto on the fifth of september. Regarding lauras point on local elections, we just dont know yet. Ukraine has been in a very rapid period of electoral politics. I think at this point and i will be interested in what the experts advise, what the ukrainian political leaders decide. But i would argue having watched this unfold that the important thing is to move ahead on constitutional reform the deputy Prime Minister launched to figure out who is going to drive the process in the new government now that groysman has taken over as speaker. Then have that process proceed the conduct of the local elections so people know what are the packages of powers which they are going to be assigning through the local elections. So thats my view on where we stand today. On the budapest memorandum, it is not a coincidence that rose gotmueller was in kiev on the 20th anniversary of the budapest memorandum. We are proud of the partnership with ukraine. I would point out ukraine is a global leader. Ukraines role in president obamas Nuclear Security summit was one of the most important of any country. It is a country which has made the right choices on Nuclear Disarmament and the world is a safer place as a result of the choices ukraine has made. It is important that we do all we can to up uphold and help ukraine to defend its own territorial integrity. Thats why president obama has led the International Effort in imposing a cost on russia for its violation of ukraine s territorial integrity. Thats why we have worked as hard as we have on the sanctions regime. Which is intended to affect russias calculation. On the question of russia i would note i have been clear on the record from the days of my confirmation we think over the long term russia should see this as a winwin proposition which is anchored in european institutions with access to european markets should represent an Economic Community for companies. President poroshenko head a free trade zone in the donbass region. While ukraine moves ahead on the european choice, so that company this is the donbass region would be able to provide a bridging role between the european space, the largest space in the world and the eurasian space. That kind of winwin calculation has been absent from the kind of language from moscow. We hope we can get to that point. Terrific discussion. Thank you for coming. [ applause ] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] last week, john kerry warned Senate IntelligenceCommittee ChairDianne Feinstein that the relays that the release of cia interrogation tactics could put americans in danger overseas. He asked adequate time be provided before the reports release. Senator feinstein will talk about the report around 11 00 a. M. Eastern. We will have that live on cspan 2. Here are comments we have received from viewers. In thisvery interested program on the american indians. I did not watch the whole thing. I came in and found it. I watched what i could for about an hour and a half or two hours. The program is absolutely wonderful. Again, igoing to be on will get you an even bigger by notifying the journals and asking them to spread the word. I watch a lot of cspan. Thank you. I am calling from pennsylvania. About American History tv. I love that channel. Weekend, i watch it, almost religiously. I love all of the history stuff you have. Please give us more history programs. , youry in the sense of know, something before 1950 or 1960. If you want to have the political commentary type things , from the 1970s on, that is later during the week or something, but not during the history weekend. I really love your history lectures. Id would like to have another chance to hear that or see it again several months later. Like today, instead of this reaganite ranting about how bad the government is. I love cspan. I like the nonfiction books. I love it when you have the book fair. I am always elated on the weekend, watching cspan. The best thing i do. It is the most fun. My friend teaches history and a Junior College and i never used to be interested in a lot of history, and now i am. Thank you very much. Whatntinue to let us know you think about the program. Call us, email us, or send us a tweet. Join the conversation. Like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. On the next washington journal, david price looks at federal government funding, set to expire thursday, december 11. Doug collins discusses transparency in the Health Care Law and the possible release of a report on the alleged use of torture by the cia. Plus your calls, comments, and tweets. Jonathan gruber testifies this morning about his work on the federal Health Care Law and the state program implemented in massachusetts. The Oversight Committee examining his comments on how the law was written. He will be joined by maryland tavener. Aryland have in her marilyn tavenner. This week on cue and day q a, stories about being on the campaign trail with mitch mcconnell. In 2010, right after he saw what happened in the republican primary for rand paul. Mcconnells handpicked guy. He started to make changes. He hired key staff. He knew this would be the most difficult race in his campaign. They had watched the Obama Campaign and 2008 and 2012. They watched the harry reid election. Bey knew they needed to Bruce Lunsford by about six points. The latestg to have technology. In 2013, he said he was going to build the most dedicated opinion ever. Sunday night, 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Tom latham of iowa is retiring after 10 terms in office. Members paid tribute to him on the house floor. After the tributes, he made a farewell speech. And include extraneous material on the subject of my special order. The speaker pro tempore without objection. Mr. Simpson we are here today under a special order because this time of year at the end of a session, we have members that are retiring, members that deserve recognition and members that other members of the house would like to talk about for a few minutes and today we have one of the best that unfortunately is retiring at the end of this year. A gentleman i have known since i came to congress and become good friends with and have had many entertaining times. Im sorry to say that the people in washington are going to miss the most is mr. Latham and is orbison duets. We had fun with those at various events. Before i say anything, i would like to recognize the gentleman om iowa, for his recognition of mr. Latham. Its an honor to speak about tom latham. When i got legitimated in 2006, tom had been here for some time. And i knew about tom. Mr. Lobiondo i was one of those folks mr. Loebsack i came to congress and i didnt know that many folks in this body before i got elected. And when i got elected, one of the things i did was try to find out what i could and work with him on a number of issues because i knew he had a reputation for working across the aisle. I knew he was very good friends with mr. Boehner who subsequently became speaker of the house. It was in my interest to get to know him if i wanted to get things done for iowa even though Speaker Pelosi took over when i came. My job has been to work with both sides of the aisle and tom latham is a model for doing exactly that. When i first came, we had a lot of tough issues to deal with here in the u. S. Congress. And one of the things that happened very early on when i first got elected was the issue of the National Guard came up and i was on armed services. A lot of those guard folks were being deployed multiple times. And it was very, very difficult for their families. And a number of us recognized that what we needed to do is build facilities, upgrade facilities, get rid of those old facilities and replace them with Readiness Centers to train and equip our troops in the event that we had to send them overseas on a mission, which we id many, many times. But we needed to construct those facilities also for their families, for their spouses and for their children. On the Appropriations Committee what tom latham did was make sure we had the funding, to make sure we built those facilities as well. So we were able to work on that issue together. And then when the great flood of 2008 hit across iowa, but mainly across the eastern half of iowa, it included a lot of tom lathams district and a lot of it included my district, about half of the damage was in my district alone, but i worked with tom and steve king and bruce braley and leonard boswell. We did great job working on a bipartisan basis to make sure that what we needed in iowa we got. And so we worked very hard on that. And then also on veterans issues. When we heard about the scandal in phoenix, the first thing i did was i contacted tom latham and said, hey, we need to go to des moines together if thats ok with you. I know its your Congressional District, its not mine. But lets go to des moines together and talk to the folks there about the des moines facility. Ive been to the v. A. Facility in iowa city in my district many, many times. But i want to go to des moines and i want to go with tom and i knew he had worked together with me on that to make sure that everythings right and if it isnt right, that we fix it. So he was very much open to that. He didnt hesitate for a second. Thats the kind of person he is. Thats been the kind of legislator he is. Even at a time, and in this body weve seen a lot of ugliness over the years, it seems as though our politics in america has just gotten uglier by the day sometimes. And even in the middle of all that, when that has happened, tom latham has stood tall, he stood proud as an iowan. Hes got a lot of common sense like most iowans do and he works with the other side because he knows that the job is to get things done. And thats what tom latham does. Hes gotten things done. We are going to miss you, tom. Theres no question about that. I think you know that probably better than we do. But were going to miss you and i know youve heard that from a lot of folks. Tom latham, hes a humble iowa guy. Thats what he is. And hes been able to get a tremendous amount done for his district, for my alma mater, iowa state, before he lost that to congressman king. And for any number of other folks in his Congressional District over the years. I honor you, i honor kathy, looking forward to seeing you later tonight and thank you for everything, tom. Farewell and good luck with whatever you end up doing. Thank you. Thank you and i yield back, mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman from iowa for his statement. Id like to yield to another gentleman from iowa, the gentleman, mr. King. Mr. King i thank the gentleman from idaho for yielding to the gentleman fro