Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20140224

I spent 28 years in congress as a staff member, first as a personal staffer for congressman john kasich. Then as a staffer for the Budget Committee, the House Budget Committee when he was chairman. I was the analyst for National Security affairs. In 2005, i moved on to the senate and work at the Budget Committee there in the same capacity. What do you think of that statement . Up close it is truly ugly. It generally is. I would want to temper that. It has been a long time have it habit of everyone to criticize congress because they think that resonates with the public. It truly has become to some degree a horror show because of the increased partisanship and polarization. However, it is an institution by the firstb list article in the constitution. If we dont nurture it, if good people do not go there, if good staffers do not go there, what tag orl have is the reichs one of those chamber of the utes situations in the french third republic. I dont want that. I won young people instead of going to wall street to go to congress or to go to the executive branch. We invited you to come talk about a column that you wrote about the bob gates book. We will get to that in a second. I want to go back to another quote. Rude, insulting, belittling i know you have read this book. What do you think of that characterization . Occasionally that is true. I wish he had cited more instances of that. Sometimes, executive Branch Officials are very carefully screenednd vetted and at go through murder boards their executive agencies of how to congress. Hings do seem to be answering the question and not really answering the question. I certainly do not believe in the technique of witness badgering or the sort of joe that thetechnique current senator from texas, if you would remind me ted cruz, would use on chuck hagel when he was a nominee, leaving the inference and the insinuation that he was somehow in the pay of iran or north korea. That is certainly something we dont need. On the other hand, i would say , the problem is the other way. If it is an Armed Services hearing, rather than asking pointed questions about the strategy, how long we are going to be there, is it working, if so prove it. If there is a general in the witness chair, they tend to fawn over him. I noticed that with petraeus. I noticed it with gates in his hearings when he was nominated as secretary of defense by george w. Bush. They were so thrilled he wasnt rumsfeld, they didnt ask the really hard questions and a lot of those pertained to his past activities. He was involved in irancontra. He was a very prominent figure in the cia at the time. They required intelligence that , andwas somehow moderating that intelligence was conveniently forthcoming. The gates book has moved to number one on the bestseller list. Im going to read back to you a quote from tom ricks you probably know of. He wrote a review in the New York Times and he says, the gates book is probably one of the best washington memoirs ever. What is your take . I have read your piece. Would you say the same thing . I would not concur. It and i tom riggs of do not understand where he comes from on that judgment. I am not attacking gates in an ad hominem way or saying that he is the devil with horns, however i think his representation of congress, of the administration and so forth, represents his own ax grinding. Se all grind our axe occasionally but it should be seen as that. Bideniticism of obama and got a great deal of prominence, but he in fact persuaded them to do what he wanted. Afghanistan, to escalate the war that obama wanted to wind down. Forhe is criticizing them having the bad grace to have tobts when he persuaded them do something against their better judgment. You wrote a book a couple years ago, the paperback version came out recently. t is called the party is over how republicans went crazy, democrats became useless and the middle class got shafted. What is the evolution of this for you . Are you still a republican . I am independent. Even when i was working on the hill, i regarded myself, or try to regard myself as a professional before i was a or any member of a partisan organization. In general, i think that served me well. I fortunately served under people who said, the budget figures are what they are and there is only so many ways you can spin them. Just give us the honest figures. You wrote in your introduction, today selected officials, just like those of the gilded age is the public well informed . I do not think they are very well informed at all. There is a kind of pseudoinformation one gets from whichng fox news or msnbc concentrate primarily on personality, on trivial scandals , on polarization and on revving up the respective bases. That is not true information that people need. What is the federal budget . What are its components . How big is it . How big is it compared to our gross the mystic product . These are things people really ought to know. How does medicare work . Who pays for it . These are the things that you find out when you are working down at the molecular level on the Budget Committee. ,vil really need to know those because budgets are essentially a statement of priorities. They are a statement of policy. Somebody would say, are you kidding me . This stuff is boring. It is not boring. It comes out of our taxes. It shouldnt bore anyone. It does things that are very important. Sometimes it does things that in my judgment are very full dish. Oolish. If people had knowledge of that, they could that their leaders much better before they pull the lever in the voting booth. Most National Publications about the government is this book on bob gates. If somebody reads it, from your perspective, what are they reading and what are they missing . Said, he is grinding his own ax. He is looking at it from the perspective of somebody who was brought in to solve a problem and congress isnt participating. I think the dirty little secret that people dont want to recognize, regarding the wars in afghanistan and iraq, is they , probably three times longer than the total period we were involved in world war ii. It is not that they hated the war. Unlike vietnam, there werent riots because there was no draft. People simply tuned it out. They were no longer interested. When people are no longer ask,ested, you have to what is the point . We covered a lot of the gates book and so did everybody else. Here is bob gates in philadelphia being interviewed by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. Lets watch this and just to you to react to this. The First Bush Administration opposed the invasion in iraq. Do you ever really address that issue as far as you were concerned in this book . Would you have supported the iraq war . I say get in the last chapter, sort of summing up in know. Tions, that i dont it is hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003. I, like a lot of people in congress and most other countries in the world, initially accepted the argument that saddam had weapons of mass distraction. That is how the resolution got past. Intelligence services in even russia and china thought he had these weapons. Your reaction . 20 20. Sight is i think that was rather an invasion of responsibility. At the time, around 2002, as the heavily caveated, footnoted and hedged intelligence reports were available to any member of congress and any cleared Government Employee in the see that it could was not a slamdunk. Ambiguous. Certain news organizations were simply in the tank. They accepted it so fact the cto that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction because we say he has. There have been indications for instanceore that, for from the u. N. American investigator, arms inspector in iraq, that that was not the case. Likein news organizations give very good coverage of the whole issue. When you read some of their pieces, it was much more ambiguous. Where were you when the whole iraq thing started, starting with in 1991, were you working on the hill . I was working on the hill as military legislative assistant to congressman kasich who was on the Armed Services committee. A pretty busy portfolio. And now he is republican governor of ohio. Raisee saw that we didnt the money for the war, how did that track on capitol hill . He was the chairman of the Budget Committee. Was there ever demand that we raise the money before we spend it . Are you talking about 1991 . The last 20 years of all this and spend after all this expenditure. At the time, he was not chairman. One little wrinkle that bypassed controversial,ss at least in my view, the whole 1991 war insofar as Saddam Hussein had demonstrably invaded another country. That made it different. The other thing that makes it different from a fiscal point of billionthe roughly 60 in thenyear dollars that it cost, was mostly raised by jim baker who was the secretary of state. He went around the world and collected checks from the japanese, fromhe other countries that would benefit from getting Saddam Hussein off the oil artery of the world. View,hat point of financing wasnt a problem. War,e time the second iraq , iich was out of Congress Still had to deal with that issue on the house and in the senate Budget Committees. There was some grumbling from thing, thet, for one initial cost was lowballed. When bushs council of economic advisers said it might cost i think the amount was 60 billion to 80 billion, he was gone. They didnt want people quoting high figures. It has turned out to the 1 trillion. Trillion you spend 1 through all hundred all 535 members of congress, without raising the money . It certainly was off budget money. It comes by increasing the deficit by the proportionate amount. It, but they about certainly werent going to not supply the troops with the wherewithal. The pentagon knows that. , whichevertration stripe it is, whichever party, knows that. They use it as a kind of moral blackmail. Lets look at some video. Joe biden, you talk about joe biden in your column about the gates book, and the way he treated scott ritter. Before we show this, we did see a little bit of scott ritter. Bob gates point talks about in his book how much he differed with joe biden. Put them in context with what you saw. Gates was criticizing joe biden. Senator,en he was a seemed to buy in as early as 1998, to the notion that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction and that some sort of forcible regime change in other words, the United States going in militarily and overthrowing him was an acceptable outcome. When scott ritter testified that, maybe the facts wast so cut and dry, biden very condescending towards him and called him scotty boy. Gatesshave to say, criticism is somewhat off the mark. A blind hog eventually finds an acorn. , aftereventually learn several years of the iraq war which he voted for, he started to rethink things. Mr. Biden, when he became vice ho inent, he was not gung favor of escalating in afghanistan. He wanted other solutions than that. Resistance, bob gates says that joe biden has been long on every single Foreign Policy issue. Clip, if mr. That gates is saying he didnt know how he would have advocated on iraq, i think all the necessary information is in. If he is still being ambiguous on that, he is wrong. Here is the video clip. It is a hearing, back with scott ritter in the chair, and joe biden being the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee. I recommend the president have at it and let the chips fall where they may. A reasonable position for the secretary of defense to take. Thatpectfully suggest responsibility is slightly above your pay grade. To decide whether or not to take the nation to war alone, or to take the nation to war heart way , or to take the nation to war halfway. That is a real tough decision. That is why they get paid the big bucks. That is why they get the limos and you dont. I mean this sincerely. Your reaction . I rest my case on the condescension. Official who is relying on staff will listen to them, because they sometimes have that granular information that they pick up on the ground, that no public official would have been in a position to learn the things that scott ritter learned. In order to make those earth shattering decisions that joe biden was talking about, they really ought to listen. , that was column somewhat critical of bob gates book, where did you get the idea at what point in the process and what did you think of the Media Coverage . I thought it was mostly concentrating on whyidiary issues such as, did he wait until now to say this when the real issue is, why did he give the president and the Vice President this advice and then criticize them for taking it . You think the media was somewhat fawning . They were sucked into this stereotype ofood mr. Smith, the truth teller from washington,g into which he cant stand, and how much he disdains washington and its slimy politicians who only want to get reelected. He has been a part of the Public Policy process off and on in washington since about 1970. Where did you write your comment and where can people see it today . It is truthout. Org what is truthout . It is a notforprofit website that carries political thatles, presumably stuff is too hot to handle in the mainstream media. So you just go on truthout. Org and it is there somewhere . You could do a search on the site. You said i am going to read back what you wrote gates has contributed to the selling of confusion in the minds of americans what moved you to write that . I think there is a good deal ishypocrisy regarding who it that makes the sacrifices and who doesnt. I think the United States and the public in the United States almosten conditioned to have a kneejerk reflex of, we support the troops, which is fine, but who are we actually supporting . Who benefits . Who loses . Who gets the big bucks afterwards and who has to contest a veterans disability rating . Unemployment for their age and demographic than the rest of the population at a time of very high unemployment . , you quote aok Bloomberg News account. , the party isk over. The 10 u. S. Defense contractors what is wrong with that . That moreomething than 50 years ago, general eisenhower warns about. Corporationsger of with the government, the revolving door. In thatterrible problem they are taking people from the service, who still have service ties and service pensions, and they kind of use them as front en to sellntm weapons. This does have an effect on serving officers. Explicit quid pro once you hit the general officer or flag officer rank, you in almost all cases know where you are going after you retire. Dont they have the right to work anywhere they want to . They have the right, but lets put it this way. In years past, omar bradley didnt do it. Most of the generals in world war ii didnt do it. They sat on their porch in a rocking chair or they did Something Else. Is a little too incestuous. Most of these companies, the vast majority of their revenues come from government contracts. It becomes almost impossible to distinguish where the government the corporations begin. And in point is those allen booz allen hamilton. The top officials at National Intelligence and nsa all cycle back and forth between booz hamilton and their government jobs. Hamilton is about 99 on government contracts of those. As of them are intelligence contracts. Are you retired from congress now . I am totally retired. I again nothing from this. I am not employed in any fashion. I represent no party, no interest, no faction other than my own opinion. Could you have written any of this when you were a member of the staff in congress . There is no way i would have tried. Why not . It would be indiscreet. Unprofessional, as you are working and taking the kings shilling. One of the things i dont think was asked about is, he is a part of an outfit called Rice Hadley Gates llc. Is an International Strategic Consulting Firm based in Silicon Valley and washington dc. It offers advice based on experience in the International Area and works with Senior Executives of Major Companies to develop and implement strategic plans. This is Condoleezza Rice and steve hadley and bob gates. What is the difference between that and going to work for a major defense contractor . Shouldnt they be allowed to do that . Relatively little. It is difficult to prohibit people, but they all want to stay in the game and make money off their government service. That is fine but it is fine for me to call out and say that there are conflicts of interest involved. Contractors are now taking over the government. Constitute a larger and larger percentage of the actual workforce, as the government itself tries to downsize and outsource personnel. Thousands of contractors in the building, does the dog wag the tail or does the tail wag the dog . Lets go back to the conversation that bob gates had do you know what that is . It is one of those enormous Armored Vehicles with a vshaped bottom to deflect roadside bomb blasts. It costs 500,000 apiece. Lets watch what he had to say. Series ina newspaper the Washington Post that put me on to the problem with wounded warriors. It was a newspaper story where i first read about these mraps, these heavily Armored Vehicles. I read that theyve marines had andt 300 of these vehicles in over 1000 attacks, not one single marine had been killed who was riding in one of these vehicles. I got some briefings on it. I wanted to buy these things in large numbers. There was no one in the department of defense at a senior level, either civilian or in uniform, who supported that decision. I basically said, we are going to do it. Aboutthe book, he talks spending 27 billion on a huge ps which they are now trying to dispose of. Want to be critical of the fact that he was trying to save the lives of people i am not critical at all. When he is right on the point, he is right on the point. Why would the military brass inside the pentagon fight the idea of spending money on that . It didnt fit their plan. They would rather have the next generation, the tank, then a relatively passive nonfighting vehicle that simply transports troops around, ill be at in inater safety albeit greater safety. It didnt fit into their weapons procurement plans. Gates was right. My rant is not about gates per se, although he does demonstrate intermittently, traits that i am very critical of. On that point, he is right. However, his problem with the military still persists after he is gone. They want to dispose of most of them because somehow, some genius in the pentagon is getting the idea no future enemy is going to use roadside bombs against us anymore. The single most effective weapon in both iraq and afghanistan. They want to get rid of them. Probably half of them are going to be left over there. Back,her half, shipped toonditioned and either sold other parties, other countries by Foreign Military sales, or god help us, will the excessed to Police Departments in the United States. We have seen this gradual militarization of Domestic Police forces to the point where they are no longer peace officers who treat people as citizens. Increasingly, they are swat teams dealing with targets they have to take down. This is simply a contribution to that. How has your attitude about all this of all over the years . When did you first come to this town . I first came in 1983, freshly married, freshly back from europe. Burning shoe leather in the halls of congress, looking for a job. Why . , the fascinated me political process. I wanted to be a part of it. Where did you come from originally . Originally, i was born in akron, ohio. 70s, i certainly wanted to get out of there. , sortwerent going to be of jobs that were necessary. Aboutreated my philosophy outsourcing, sending jobs overseas, the dein dustrialization of america, and how horrible this is to the country. How the politicians and wall managecolluding together not to notice this, and say that a rising tide will lift all boats. If you look at detroit, it resembles dresden after the fire bombing in 1945. What has caused this . I think all the factors we mentioned. Downsizing, rialization, basically a blueprint written on the hill in terms of tax policy that allows this sort of thing. It incentivizes capital to be exported, things to the outsourced, not made in america. A proper tax policy could assist us. Germany is certainly a traditional industrial country. Smith or faded by adam Milton Friedman that rich countries should lose their industry. They certainly didnt lose theirs. In your book, you have a , ate from hugh e pierce long speech from 1932. The quote is, they have got a set of republican waiters on one side and Senate Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the , the legislative grub is altra spared is all prepared in the wall street kitchen. That is correct. You have to consider, we went through a horrendous financial meltdown. Who is responsible depends on which party you are in. Democrats will blame bush, the tax cuts, the fact that chris the securities and Exchange Commission were asleep at the switch. Alan greenspan was asleep at the switch and was somehow surprised that all this happened. Yes, bush was responsible. But when you parse the historical records, was he any more responsible than bill the act thatsigned actaled the glasssteagall of 1934, that kept investment and commercial banking separate . Theigned that, he signed commodity futures modernization act in 2000 that took all the wraps off of derivatives trading. There was no regulation. That is how we got credit default swaps, synthetic cdos and a nominal value of trillions that collapsed. They are both responsible for this. I would like to ask you about labels. You said youre not a republican or democrat. I want to go back to this interview with bob gates. In the book, he said that he is a republican and in the interview here, he says he is not a republican. I am trying to figure out, what do the labels mean anymore . We were talking about Something Else and all of a sudden, he said, i was largely talkingble for president obama into running for president. I heard that from a lot of people on the hill. He said, but there is no candidate for Vice President. How long have you been a registered republican . I said, i am not a registered republican. He said, where do you stand on abortion . I said, i dont have a stand on abortion. That has never come into the National Security arena. It seems like people say they are republican and then they are not when it is convenient for them. You say in your column that he was a genuine, George Herbert walker bush, george bush consigliere for a lot of years. I think when you look at his curriculum vitae, the facts would tend to indicate that he was involved in intelligence 80s, thatin the served the purposes of a republican administration. Time inback a second 2006 when george w. Bush was facing only two more years of his second term and wanted to sort of salvage iraq for his reputation and to get out in a kind of way that didnt look disastrous. Congress. Deal with it had flipped and become democratic. Man, ass was just the rumsfeld was certainly not the man. Republican today in your opinion . What is a democrat . Ani think, gates, he is ideological operative of the permanent regime that exists whether you are a democrat or a republican in the oval office. Pose as experts on National Security or for that matter, like Larry Summers and some others, they pose as nonpartisan experts on economics and fiscal policy. They are all deeply ideological. They believe in military force abroad. They believe in the washington neoliberalism or freemarket style crony. Apitalism at home the whole business about abortion is somewhat and thatning enlightening he should raise that. These are the types of people who dont really bother about those sorts of issues. They understand that these are simply divergence to read up the things, polarize whether it is gay marriage, abortion and some of the other social issues. The real issue for the permanent state is, who gets what . How is the pie going to be cut up . Was there a point where you flipped on the Republican Party . Gradual journey. Ofhink the first three years Newt Gingrichs speakership had a lot of people scratching their heads. He was a very mercurial leader. Hadver talked to him last his total support. Time of sort of chaotic a lot of movement and not necessarily progress. Best toy much did his destroy the Old Committee system and the expertise that lies in committees. He tried to centralize everything in speakers offices. When you dumb down congress as he did by abolishing the office , at theology assessment time it was called the general accounting office. Now, the Government Accountability office. These are support arms of congress that give intelligence the factual and the cognitive sense. In 1994, here is tom brokaw reporting on Newt Gingrich becoming speaker. Just when you thought it couldnt get any uglier, it does. Newt gingrich, the House Republican who hopes to become speaker has already declared war on president clinton. His latest attack has the white house aroused. Declaring allout war, the republican whip attacked the president at a secret meeting with lobbyists. Newt gingrich told business lobbyists that clinton democrats are the enemy of normal americans. As first reported today, and rich promised the lobbyists that if republicans win control of the house and senate, they will use their newfound subpoena power to spend the next two years investigating corruption in the clinton administration. I do not know of any administration in modern times with as many different potential scandals. To the president or his wife for any individual. I said the total behavior of the administration is a threat to the american people. That is 20 years ago. What has happened since then . Mentality hasf infected the political process. Now it has become standard operating procedure. Sort of ironic and counterintuitive, where you are weak, that is where you attack your opponent. People who are ethically weak attacking others on ethics. Where do you come down on, money is speech . Lets all theeech corporations in for jury duty and make them subject to draft registration if they are people. I think it is a totally phony thing. Was totally inrt the tank on that one. After you left working for john kasich on capitol hill, who did you work for after that . Iowa on thee of House Budget Committee. Years, i moved to the senate and work for senator judd gregg. Nussle happens jim moved onto the house head of the budget. We are now 17 trillion in debt. Does anybody ever say, stop . Do they ever say stop when you were there . They werent too concerned with the bush tax cuts. They werent too concerned with an unpaid for trillion dollar war. I guess the answer is no. What is going to be the answer in the future . Be shortlly, it will and people hocism, will somehow figure out how to get around it. Do you get the sense that somewhere back in one of these offices, there is somebody sitting there saying, none of this matters . I think there are. Policy, by default, is in thebeing made unelected Federal Reserve board. So many of our economic policies , simply because congress can do anything, obama cannot drive his agenda through. It was the faulting the ben bernanke and then janet yellen. Know many people have severe doubts about the fed and quantitative easing and so forth. Some even go off on conspiracy theories about the fed. I certainly do not. Job theydoing the best can with the hand they were given. We had a terrible financial meltdown. It is unclear as yet whether that was the right medicine and whether it will be good for the future. As he is gates book, talking about going to work for him, they had a secret meeting as you know, but one of the seen thisi havent printed anywhere, in the middle of his conversation, obama answered a question of his saying, yes, i am no peacenik. Did we think that he was going to be a piece peacenik . I certainly didnt. If you listen to his speeches, he was saying, we are going to wrap up iraq. Statustter of fact, the of forces agreement that was already in place under the bush thatistration provided troops would be out december 31, 2011. So that was not his doing. He simply said, under my presence, we will be out of iraq. He characterized afghanistan as the good war in contrast, that we should have been there even if we shouldnt have been in iraq. Hear what theyo wanted to hear. On Civil Liberties as well, he talked a very good game, but in the month before the 2008 convention at denver, he voted fisahef isa tehe amendments bill that would have contractors, the telecoms, for their participation in spying, in surveillance that wasnt legal. Retroactively rubberstamped to that. Knewhe made that vote, i the fix was in. Go back to the original reason we asked you to come talk about the book. Did you get much reaction out of the column . I got a fair amount of reaction. Virtually all of it was positive in that as we have discussed, there are certain gaps in recollection were things he says in one place that dont square with things he says somewhere else. Again, it is not so much about gates, other than he was a very important person in this drama , afghanistan, the war on terror and associated issues that have had a profound. Ffect on the american psyche people dont want to realize that there is a less attractive id underneath our bravado about how good we are. We practice things like torture and try tonation sweep them under the carpet. The book was leaked out to the Washington Post and the New York Times and the wall street journal and then it started interviews on television. It to thethe view of point where it became a number one bestseller. What do you think of the idea of writing that kind of book at all . You wrote a book after you got out. Is there a difference between your book and this book . Well he is certainly entitled to write any book he wants and espouse any view he wants. Just as i or any other member of the general public is entitled to do google searches on robert gates, irancontra, robert gates, soviet intelligence and other topics and find out if his recollections square with generally accepted public records. Let me read a quote from bob gatesbook. When he was talking to the president , i want you to know that should i stay, the hard thing for people on this book is, a lot of the press on it said that he was critical of president obama. You get in here and hes has a lot of very positive things about president obama. Did you read the whole book . Disjointed in of that fashion. He may be could have used a better editor to smooth it out. Have ambivalent issues andabout other people. At some point, you try to reconcile. I dont think he ever reconciled. At least in a way that was clear to the reader. Town, were came to you a republican . Yes, i was. You changed your views over time. Now, where are you going to go . It was probably my trepidations over newts leadership style or trepidations over his leadership. Where it became a matter of principle was in the runup to the invasion of iraq. I read the same stuff everybody else read on the hill or was cleared to read. It didnt convince me. I told a handful of republican members who politely listens to me, that this thing is going to possibly turn out to be the west bank on steroids and you may end up being surprised, whether there is all those weapons of mass destruction that they are claiming. They listened. They asked questions, but it didnt change their vote. What made you suspicious . Bush and dick eager seemed a little too. Everybody in the administration seemed a little too eager, did relevant issues that would have made it more. Mbivalent or ambiguous the media were in the tank mostly. Wantrs of congress did not to be seen voting against it. I think the george w. Bush administration was very clever, putting the vote just before the midterm election, to get these. Uys on record even though he would not invade for another five months. That is kind of unprecedented for the equivalent of the declaration of war. Where do you think you will end up in the future . I think i will remain ideologies, because limit thought. You become to the extent you are ideological or partisan, you become an automaton who is mouthing propaganda. Your brain is not engaged. Theur book is called party is over how republicans went crazy, democrats became useless, and the middle class got shafted. If folks want to read your critique of the book i robert gates, they can go onto truthout. Org. , thank you very much for joining us. I enjoy being here. For free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at qand a. Org. Programs are also available as cspan podcasts. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]