Afghanistan with Operations Commander general john campbell. On newsmakers this week, we are joined by congressman adam schiff of california. He is the top democrat on the house Intelligence Committee. He also serves on the House Select Committee on benghazi. To help with our questions, we are joined by Niall Stanage, associate editor of the hill newspaper, and ryan lucas, intelligence reporter with cq roll call. Ryan lucas has the first question. Congressman schiff, thank you for talking to us today. I wanted to start off with the announcement from the white house that it was essentially scrapping the train and equip program for syrian rebels. Instead of training and equipping them, they are going to essentially provide information to vetted insurgent leaders and then small packages of equipment to then send back with them. So that they can kind of be force enhancers in syria. Is this plan the way that the white house has outlined it is this something that you think would be more effective than the original program that the white house came up with . Yes. It would be hard to imagine how it could be less effective given the small number of people who were successfully trained and equipped under that dod effort. So i do think it will be more successful. I think it will be far more efficient and effective to work with forces already on the ground and already demonstrating a will to fight. I think this is a change that is necessitated by the failure of the dod program but also makes a lot more sense. Congressman, from the beginning of this debate on how to aid syrian rebels, you have expressed concern about how to vet the individuals receiving aid. So as we go from recruiting and training to what is being called equip and enable, does it make the vetting process any easier . Well it doesnt make it any easier. But we do have relationships with some of the commanders of these units. We can witness what they are doing on the ground and we have been witnessing what they are doing on the ground. So i think we have both a good sense of their fighting capability and the administration has been making an effort in combination with the Intelligence Community to identify are these moderate, are they radical, are they somewhere in between . And using those factors give us some good guidance about who we should back. Congressman, the white house said today that essentially they were not going to drop the requirement that rebels state that they will only fight the Islamic State. That they wont go after the assad regime as well. Can this program succeed if they dont drop that requirement . I think ultimately that is going to cause a real problem. I think initially we can provide support to those groups that are fighting isis, that are on the front lines with isis. But this is not a static battlefield. It is very dynamic and those battlelines change. A group we are supporting today because they are fighting against isis if they are successful in the fight against isis and that brings them into conflict with regime forces, they are going to be up against regime forces. So i think that line is going to be very difficult to maintain and that has been a problem all along. We also have the issue of whether the fighters understand that we will be there to support them if they come under bombardment by the regime or now by the russians. So it is a very difficult battle space and im not sure that distinction is going to be easy to maintain. Congressman, if i may shift gears. Obviously you have been a critic of the benghazi committee. At the same time, capitol hill has been roiled by the debate over the speakership. Majority leader mccarthy made some controversial remarks about the benghazi committee. Then he dropped his bid a few days later. Obviously youre a member of the other party, but how do you think those two things were related . I think that what representative mccarthy said was what everybody had long since recognized. And that is that this committee whatever its genesis, whatever its original purpose might have been and many of us were skeptical even from the beginning has become a Committee Interested in only one thing and that is trying to inflict damage on secretary clinton. If you look at the press releases put out by the committee, they are disproportionately about secretary clinton. If you look at the obsessive focus of the committees work and its public statements, it is essentially all about secretary clinton. We have lost sight of what was supposed to be the object and that is discovering something new about that tragic night in benghazi. I feel terrible for the families but also for the american taxpayers that have supported this effort that has produced so little over this period of time. In terms of the connection between those remarks and his dropping out of the speakership im sure those raised some questions among gop members about whether he was the best spokesperson for that conference. The speaker is among many other things the most public face of the gop in the house. And i think probably some of their members felt that if he was going to be so transparent about their object with the benghazi select committee, maybe he might give up the goods on some of their other efforts. Or at least be less politic in how he described them. So it probably was a factor, but i imagine the overriding factor was the challenge of getting that Freedom PartyTea Party Caucus to support him or anybody else on the house floor when it actually comes to a vote for speaker. Let me get more into your view that the committee is really politicized and you believe it should be disbanded. Just in the past few days for example, the committees work led to a revelation that a wellrespected reporter of yahoo news characterized it this way. Hillary clinton used her private email account to pass along the identity of one of the cias top libyan intelligence sources. Raising new questions about her handling of classified information. Is that not the kind of thing that the public has a legitimate interest in finding out about . First of all, i wouldnt put much trust in anything that is leaked out of our committee. Because historically, when there have been leaks from the committee, they have been proved to be inaccurate. I dont want to comment on the merits of this particular allegation. But there are many things the public may have an interest in that are well beyond the scope of what this taxpayerfunded committee was established to do. The question is, does the work of the committee shed light on the events in benghazi . Is it going to tell us more about how these four americans lost their lives or what steps we could take to better protect our consulate or facilities . And the answer is, for 17 months work and four and half million dollars, we are no closer to really producing anything new than when we started. And at a certain point, you have to say enough is enough. That doesnt mean that there arent legitimate issues over whether a certain email should have been classified. Many of them are now being classified after the fact, and it is hard to quarrel with the secretary when they werent classified at the time. Those are legitimate questions and the Justice Department is looking into the proper classification and the Intel Committee is looking into the same thing. In terms of attacking the secretary over this, that is the job of the rnc. That is not the job of a taxpayerfunded committee. The Democratic Party committee can go after jeb bush for his use of a private email server as governor of florida and his use of it for official business. That is the work of the parties. I would no more advocate the democrats create a taxpayerfunded committee to look into jeb bush then i think the republicans are justified in doing the same with secretary clinton. Congressman, i should note that we are recording this on a friday afternoon for our viewers. As of right now, House Republicans are working on a concerted effort to recruit ways and means chairman paul ryan to run for the speaker spot. Do you think democrats can find a way to work with paul ryan at least better than they did with Speaker Boehner . I certainly think we can find ways to work with paul ryan. I like paul very much. I think he is a bright guy. He is a very personal guy. I dont find him to be the kind of striking ideologue that you find that characterizes the tea party or Freedom Caucus. He is absolutely someone that democrats can work with. That may be the most serious indictment against him. I think Speaker Boehner was someone we could have worked with had he been given the latitude by his conference to do so. The challenge for the gop is that you have this rump group of Tea Party Members but then you have a Broader Group of more mainstream republicans who run in fear of having a tea Party Primary. And when you add those two groups together, it often constitutes a majority of the republican conference. That is the tea party and those that are afraid of the tea Party Primary challenge. And paul ryan if he becomes speaker is going to have exactly that same dynamic to work with. Yes, he is someone we can work with. So, frankly, was Speaker Boehner. But they had this internal problem that they need to overcome. And i will say this also. I take no satisfaction in the turmoil going through the gop conference right now. I am certainly glad it is them and not us having the turmoil, but at the same time, they are the governing party. We need them to be able to be functional. We need them to be able to govern. We need someone we can work with. We need a speaker who can deliver his conference. Or at least enough of them to get to yes. And for a long time we just havent had that. I want to turn back abroad. Specifically to syria. And russias intervention there. You mentioned that the u. S. Needs to continue its support for rebels on the ground. But russias intervention has significantly altered the dynamic on the ground of the conflict more generally. U. S. Officials have said they are not going to have their campaign against the Islamic State changed at all by the russian campaign. But already there are reports that planes had to alter their flight plans. And there is the broader problem of u. S. Backed rebels being targeted by russian strikes. How should the u. S. Respond to this . Should the u. S. Up their support for the rebels . Should they vow to protect rebels from russian strikes . This puts u. S. Officials in a bit of a tight spot. It does put the administration in a difficult challenge. Absolutely. I think we should push back harder against the russians than we have and i have been advocating this for some time. I think we should have pushed back harder in ukraine. I think we should provide defensive arms to ukraine to defend against these russian vacationers, these socalled little green men. But i also think that the battle space in syria is now changing and we are going to have to change strategy along with it. Some of the things that have been considered by the administration i think are going to have to renew consideration over and that might be in the shape of some kind of a safety or nofly or secure zone. It may also be establishing a policy where we no longer permit Bashar Alassad to drop barrel bombs on his own people. That i think would enjoy the support of the vast sunni population in syria. It certainly would be consistent with our stand for human rights and undoubtedly there are both internal legal issues to overcome with that in terms of the dated aumf that we have as well as International Law considerations. But i think that we ought to open our eyes again to some of the other possibilities and reassess where we are right now and how things have changed given the Russian Military involvement. The one last thing i would say in this is i think the president is exactly right when he says that putin is making a mistake by jumping into this thing with both feet. For two reasons. First it is going to prolong the war. It will prolong the agony for the syrian people. It will prolong the refugee crisis for the rest of the world. And for those people going through the trauma of being refugees. I also think that russia is going to find just as we have and just as others have that there are real limits to what you can accomplish through the air. So they are buying a big piece of that. I think they will regret that. That doesnt change the fact that it also must cause us to reassess the battlefield and what response were going to make. You could certainly make the argument that the russians have a more effective fighting force on the ground with which to cooperate. Iranian backed militias, hezbollah on the ground. Syrian military forces themselves. This has been a problem for the u. S. The kurds have emerged as somebody they can work with. A reliable partner on the ground is part of the struggle that the administration has had. Specifically, should the u. S. Look into providing surfacetoair missiles to rebel groups to try and push back against what the russians are doing . I dont want to see us provide manpads to the opposition that could he later used to down civilian airliners. We have seen unfortunately all too often that weapons that are provided to moderate rebels or people we might support whether it is in iraq or syria can easily end up in the wrong hands and it can be an utter nightmare if they got in the wrong hands and they started to use them against civilian aircraft. That is not something i think we ought to entertain. I think there are other ways that we can raise the pressure on the regime as well as raise the pressure on russia. That dont involve providing those kinds of lethal weapons that can be used against civilian craft. I want to ask, was the u. S. Intelligence community caught flatfooted about the speed and force level with which russia went into syria . And if so, is that something the Intelligence Committee is looking into . We certainly had evidence and i think could see the russian buildup. That the russians would decide to use this buildup to go after the moderate opposition, that they would embark on as aggressive and air campaign and perhaps a ground campaign, that i think is a surprise. A matter of months ago i think we would have expected the russians perhaps to increase their Material Support for the regime as we saw the regime weaken. But i dont think we expected russia to mount this kind of operation to prop up the regime. I dont think that just because something unexpected happens that it necessarily means you have had an intelligence failure. Putin keeps a very small circle of decisionmakers. This may have been a decision that he himself made quite lastminute to take this change in direction. We had hoped obviously that as the regime weakened, the decision putin would take would be to work with us and other nations on figuring out what the transition ought to be and who ought to be part of the coalition that would follow. Instead the russians have decided to double down on the regime in a big way. It is a provocative and dangerous move. Ultimately a counterproductive move. But im not sure that we can say this is something we should have predicted. Congressman, circling back to the benghazi issue. Your Party Colleague congressman grayson of florida filed an ethics complaint against representative mccarthy. The accusation being that mr. Mccarthy was using taxpayer dollars to make political attacks upon Hillary Clinton. It seems like you share his underlying view. But do you think it was the right thing to do to file an ethics complaint . I have not read the ethics complaint. Certainly if there is a deliberate effort to abuse taxpayer dollars, if there is coordination between the committee and the Republican National committee, there may be a very good case to be made that this is also a violation of law and ethics. But i havent read the ethics complaint so it is hard for me to talk about any specific allegations. I certainly think ethics violation or not it is a terrible abuse of taxpayer dollars. And at this point it is no longer serving a valid purpose not to be disbanded. To get back to the speakership issue, this is a somewhat hypothetical question. It seems at least plausible that we may be in a situation where no republican nominee can get the true 118 votes on the house floor that is required for a speaker. It would seem unlikely in that scenario that nancy pelosi could do so either. What happens in that situation . How do we get to a point where the substantive issues that you alluded to earlier can be addressed . I think as Speaker Boehner has said, he is willing to stay on as long as it takes to find a successor. I have to think the speaker although not enjoying what is going on in his conference right now must be having some wellplaced i told you sos about the difficulty in running the conference. This is not really about Speaker Boehner or any failings on his part so much as it is about a structural problem within the gop and the party at large. And in particular within the republican conference. I happen to think they will arrive on someone. As the days go by, as their dysfunction is showcased before the American People, they will be increasing pressures on the republicans to get their act together. And that pressure will be most significant on that Freedom Caucus and those Tea Party Members. So i think you will see a new speaker chosen that will be able to get enough votes on the floor. But not until sufficient pressure is brought to bear on that rebel faction. I want to turn briefly to Cyber Security. And the massive hack on the office of personnel management. Do you have faith in the opm to continue to process and told