>> okay. so i think what this case illustrates in the broader trends that we were talking about are some threats to press freedom, but i think it's important to put that into a global context. and there are many countries, including russia, that have far worse press freedom records and where journalists are imprisoned, journalists are killed and their murders are never investigated. indeed, in most cases of george journalist murders, nine out of ten are never investigated. several outstanding in russia as well. we have to keep this in perspective. i mean, there are threats certainly to the free practice of journalism. luckily we live in a country that has rule of law and due process. in many countries those things are missing. let's keep this in perspective and not let this become an excuse for say authoritarian governments to use in their crackdown on press freedom. >> just in the same light, nor should we let the fact that authoritarian regimes exist give us an excuse to brow beat journalists that are doing their jobs. the core of the issue is the expansive national security state. and so one can make an argument that, you know, in the name of national security you can do x, y or z. you can censor speech by classifying certain information and so on. the problem is, though, that the number of classified documents has increased exponentially since 9/11 and actually turned into something where information that is embarrassing to the government becomes classified. i know this in my experience as an attorney representing guantanamo detainees and later were representing criminal suspects in the united states. and never had you asked me five, seven years ago if i thought that my expertise in national security or in guantanamo would make me suitable or would be the value add to joining a case where i represent a journalist, i mean, just think about that. i mean, i get calls from journalists that want me to represent them because i represented guantanamo prisoners. so that's perspective. >> so i had another question for james. i know you don't want to take anymore questions. could you talk about the harassment you faced under the bush administration for your national security reporting? and also the fact that this subpoena was dropped by the bush administration and has been renewed under the obama administration. >> you're going to get me in trouble with my lawyers. now, first of all, the subpoena wasn't dropped by the bush administration. it expired. the first one expired in 2009. so it was after the bush administration left and then it was renewed by the obama administration and a whole series of subpoenas. yeah. in my affidavit, one of my affidavits in the case, i think i filed several of them actually, i talk about the harassment that i got during the bush administration. so that's on -- it's public in the court documents where i describe the -- all of the efforts, both public and some private efforts by the administration to, in my view, to harass me and to try to, you know, try and have a chilling effect on reporting that i was doing. it was -- if you remember what -- if you were around in 2005 or 2006, there was a lot in the press about that. so, it was a fairly concerted effort against both me and eric lichtblau, my colleague at "the new york times." so, yeah, it got pretty intense. thanks. >> hello. i'm wondering how hopeful are you that this collective effort will make a dent? i remember that you said that this is just the beginning and what would follow? and a sideline question is, is this an opportunity to push again with the federal shield law? thanks. whoever really. thanks. >> well, i'll address the first part of that. you know, as a 2008 obama delegate to the democratic national convention, i can say that the democratic party has given hope a bad name in the last few years. so, your question about how hopeful i am, i have some trepidation to directly answer. but i do think that this is inherently a political case that is being pursued by this administration. you'll notice -- again, if you go to rootsaction.org, you'll see where you can read all the statements and also at the freedom of the press foundation website, all of the statements issued, now 20 this week, by pulitzer prize winners. one of those journalists flat out says something that i certainly think is true based on the evidence, this is a vendetta. this is a vendetta against james risen. and if you read john rizzo's book, former legal department head of the cia that came out this year, company man, he makes clear that there has been a lot of hostility towards james risen at the cia for quite a while. matter of fact, he's the most named, vilified journalist in the entire book of memoirs of 30 years. so, that to me indicates the political nature of this entire effort by the justice department. and the hope that i think we genuinely have is to continue the momentum of what we've seen in recent weeks to bring this issue to public spotlight and to create more and more of a ground swell of public pressure. anybody have comments on the other aspect question? >> you know, one thing that i see from these kinds of actions is that -- well, first of all, if you look at it, there's a political washington and then there's a career washington. and it's really career washington, the fbi, the nsa people, and all those who do these investigations and want to stop leaks in the first place. and post-9/11, they've had more and more power to track that information. and so my point is, you know, not to give the obama administration any breaks here, but it's going to get worse no matter who is in charge politically. and so the best and maybe the only antidote to that is a ground swell of public support that says we're not going to stand for this anymore. and that's why i think petitions like this are so important. and that is also hopefully going to lead to a federal shield law because congress doesn't act in the abstract. it needs to see, unfortunately, somebody going to jail or threatened with jail to really get going and act. and that's -- in the states that's often how we see shield laws enacted, when there is a state controversy, and on the federal level it's happened the same way first with valerie plame and then with other incidents. this is the kind of thing that will prompt action and i hope it is enough along with the popular outpouring in favor of it to get something done in congress. >> i had a followup for you, mr. leslie. you're talking about the shield laws currently being discussed in the senate and the house. would those apply to national security issues like the ones that james risen has covered? >> it's all in the wording, obviously. that's always what it comes down to. but we think it's finessed enough to say that the exemption for national security cases is really going to come into play when there's an ongoing threat to national security, not when there's just an effort to examine something in the past. as long as we maintain that and, you know, obviously the wording can change day to day as it goes through every step of congress, but that's a critical thing. the government will always want the ability to investigate incidents where there truly is a current, real, meaningful threat to the national security. and, you know, we're never going to win that one. you know, it makes sense that if there's literally a bomb that's going to go off, they're going to want to investigate everything they can. so, as long as there's that limit in there and we can keep that, i think it can be meaningful and i think it can help in cases like this. >> i'm not a journalist, but i have a follow-up question. lyme a lawyer and a standford stude student. i'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about how the shield bill would actually as its written protect journalists like mr. risen. i know he spoke at the sources and secrets conference a couple months ago and indicated he didn't think he would be protected under the bill as its currently written. i think the language that might be relevant that you're pointing to in the senate version there's language about preventing or mitigating future attacks and the idea of preventing or mitigates doesn't seem to have a future tense to it. the idea of mitigating an attack seems like we could be focussed on any sort of ongoing terrorist activities. so anything could be covered under the exception. so, i ask you this because i wonder if you could help me see the bill the way you see it because the way i read it everyone is going to fall through the loophole and so the way it's written now it actually might do more harm than good. that said, aside from the shield bill, are there other solutions that you might be able to put forward that might be equally useful to help address the kind of situation that we're seeing here? thanks. >> well, i think the thing i would point out is that everything we hope for is an incremental change. there's no golden ticket that's going to solve everything. you know, you can't ask the government to solve everything. they won't do it. you know, it has to be by reporters continuing to do great work and having the public stand up for that. so, you know, with that in mind, you know, we've never felt that the shield law was perfect. we feel it's an incremental change. we've never felt that the national security exception should be as broad as the senate wants it to be, but you fight over every little word and hope to get something that will put the brakes on most investigations. and, you know, mitigating harm from a terrorist attack, if that's the only exception, that's going to allow -- that's going to stop a lot of the subpoenas that we've talked about, a lot of the whistle blower investigations that we've talked about in -- you know, even today or when we name all the ones that the obama administration is looking into. so, yeah, it's not a cure-all. there's no perfect way to get all this done. but every little thing helps. getting the department of justice to have a better policy about what it will do before it issues a subpoena is a big step. you know, assistant u.s. attorney out there who now knows he has to jump through a lot of hoops and ask for permission from washington and directly from the attorney general will hesitate much more often than an ausa who can just subpoena anybody or get any records. so, it all helps, and none of it is perfect in a sense the best i can say. you know, we've never thought the shield law was perfect. i would argue for an absolute privilege in the courts if only the courts would agree with me. >> i think congress is your problem. >> i think we have time for one more question. >> i have a question to james risen. it's not about your work but it's about the effect of the last six years on your sources. are they still motivated or maybe even more motivated and what new guarantees do they ask? what has changed in their way of coming out with the information especially in the sector of national security? >> you don't really think i'm going to answer that, do you? i'm not going to answer it. thanks. >> i'll give you an answer. at least as someone who is representing the sources in a lot of this. i mentioned that there are literally are -- i can count on two hands the number of journalists that i actually feel safe taking a whistle-blower to in this country because of the climate. and one of them is jim risen. and it's a very strict test to ask someone if they would be willing to go to jail to protect a source, but whistle-blowers have to face that question every day now. are you willing to go to jail to blow the whistle and to tell the truth and to reveal fraud, waste, abuse, and illegality. are you willing to be the one put in jail or even worse, exiled from your country and rendered stateless? it's a huge price to pay that both whistle-blowers and journalists are taking to get this information out to the public interest, out to the public, and we need your support in congress on whistle-blower protection bills, on surveillance reform bills, and on reporter shield bills. i know in the whistle-blower protection legislation, the national security exemption loophole swallows just about everything because i could probably link this glass of water to national security if you gave me five minutes. so i hope that helps answer. >> can i make two quick points? go ahead. i'm sorry. >> i just want to add to that, i mean, the community to protect journalists put out a report last year that includes dozens of interviews with journalists about the impact of these issues on their reporting. and it's on the website cpj.org. but essentially the broad overview was it has had an impact on sources going -- i mean, not only whistle-blowers, but just sources in general. and the society of professional journalists recently sent a letter about new rules that have come out from the administration and from various departments of the government prohibiting, you know, basic contact with journalists, the insider threat program and other things like this that cpj and other organizations here have signed on to in opposition. so we see across the board from whistle-blowers onto just general functionaries and subject experts that this is having an impact on reporters being able to speak to their sources. >> on that note, i want to mention that as we adjourn the news conference, we do have this room for another hour or so for one-on-one interviews and discussions, so you don't have to rush off. but i want to thank everybody for being here. [ applause ]. >> i just wanted to add before everyone leaves, i'm bernie lunzer, president of the newspaper guilt gild guild, and we did award the herb block freedom award to james risen yesterday, which we hope he'll receive in october. and it's not enough to commit journalism, you have to act to protect it and that's why we honor james risen. and it was the night riddle bureau in the leadup to iraq, then it became -- >> thank you. [ applause ]. our campaign 2014 coverage continues with a week full of debates. tonight at 7:00, live coverage of the pennsylvania governor's debate between republican tom corbett and democrat tom wolf. and thursday at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, live coverage of the illinois u.s. house debate for the 17th district between u.s. representative democrat cheri bustos and bobby schilling. and later pat quinn and republican bruce rouner. friday night live at 8:00 eastern, the wisconsin governor's debate between incumbent governor republican scott walker and democrat mary burke. and saturday night on c-span at 8:00 eastern, live coverage of the iowa senate debate with u.s. congressman democrat bruce braley and state senator republican joni ernst. and sunday, the michigan governor's debate between republican rick snyder and democrat mark shower. c-span campaign 2014, more than 100 debates for the control of congress. here are just a few of the comments we've recently received from our viewers. >> i'm calling in reference to the show concerning the secret service organization hearings with julia pearson. i think it was a good show that c-span put on. i think the message that should be taken from this show is that we're falling short of protecting the white house. the whole purpose of the secret service organization was put in place to protect the white house and the president of the united states. how will we be able to defend ourselves if even our secret service organization cannot defend a small place like the white house and a small family like the president's family? >> i watched hearings about the secret service. i do not like intel or secret service hearings. most of their questions cannot be answered in an open forum. pearson does know what she's talking about and the stats, but she can't say in an open forum. now after the hearing is over they're in a closed hearing, all of them, all the congress people, but they're not going to be able to tell you either or the media because they took an oath not to. so i hope everybody out there gets it out there in conspiracy land, and thank you, c-span. >> c-span is probably my favorite channel to watch. i am absolutely dumbfounded at the attitude of calmness that pervades this inquiry with the exception of mr. lynch of the state of massachusetts. this whole thing is extraordinary in it's meekness. action should be taken now, immediately to fire whatever her name is, the head of security, and also just to revamp the whole thing, and it shouldn't take a matter of days to fire those that should be fired and replace them with top of the line security people. this is a job that requires the creme de la creme. you know, they're not guarding a warehouse. frankly, i'm furious and it takes a lot to get me into this mood and it takes me a lot to pick up the phone and call c-span. i rarely do things like this, but this is extraordinary. let's get it cured and cured quickly. >> and continue to let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments@c-span.org or send us a tweet at c-sp c-span#comments. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. now, "the washington post's" bob woodward moderates a discussion on journalism and national security. it was part of the annual sources and secrets conference from earlier this year. this is about 50 minutes. >> do we get a cold start here or -- i'm bob woodward from "washington post." let me introduce the panel. we've got a great group. first jane mayer who i've known for -- >> forever. >> for forever it seems. worked at "the wall street journal," "the new yorker" for nor almost 20 years. it's astonishing. many journalism honors, especially for your 2008 book "the dark side: how the war on terror turned into the war on american ideals." so that's one of those titles where you know where you're coming from. [ laughter ]. >> we have bob deitz in the middle here. the distinguished professor of public policy at george mason. he's been the consigliere to the intelligence community. did you work for allen dulles or not? the first cia director. >> no. >> bob was general counsel to the nsa for eight years, is that correct? amazing. he then was the counselor to the cia director general haydn for three years. has worked in defense department, state department and was unbelievably a law clerk to justice william o. douglas, one of the great civil libertarians. so we'll get to the question of what douglas would think of your career path. [ laughter ]. >> mark mazzetti of "the new york times," worked with "u.s. news," "l.a. times," shared in a pulitzer prize for great reporting on afghanistan, pakistan, and i think i'm going to say this from the point of view of "the washington post," covers particularly the senate intelligence committee better than anyone. and next to him at the end is peter maass, senior writer for "new look" media. >> "first look." >> "first look." i'm sorry. done a number of books including the book "love thy neighbor" on bosnia, the war in bosnia. want to make this a conversation, not presentations. and do not hesitate to interrupt. i'll do the same, if that's okay. and our topic is the perils of covering national security, and i think we'll start with jane and go around. what is the -- what are the perils of covering national security now? >> well, i think it's become harder in that i think that our sources are under more pressure than they used to be. and so i've had a source in particular during the bush years who was under investigation by the justice department for violating national security and for having spoken to me. my phone number appeared on his cell phone apparently. and it ruined his life for quite a while. it was very expensive for him to get legal counsel. >> do we know who this is? >> i don't think i should identify him but he was falsely accused and eventually cleared. but the point was that during that period, you know, the cliche about what happens to the press in such situations is that it has a chilling effect. it wasn't just chilling, it was frozen. he couldn't speak. i couldn't speak to him. i was toxic to others who wouldn't want to get drawn into this snare -- >> this was the bush administration. >> this was during the bush years. and i don't think it's probably loosened up a lot since, but it has -- when there are more legal risks for sources, there's not a clear dividing line between the sources and the journalism that comes from them. it becomes an issue for the reporters as well. we get people in trouble by interviewing them when we don't mean to. and -- >> when we don't need to? >> when we don't mean to. right. we get them in trouble. we put them at legal risk. we can't guarantee that we are not going to put them at legal risk. it makes it very hard to get stories and tell the truth about what the government is doing and holding it accountable is basically what we're trying to do. >> so stf tougher now? >> yeah. i think it is tougher now, for sure. >> bob deitz. >> inevitably in conferences like this there's a lot of talk about the risks that reporters undertake, editors undertake in reporting the news and, of course, the first amendment makes it clear that news is important to the american people. the trouble i have is that while that goal, that role, is very important, the government also has an important goal, and that is to keep the american people safe. you know, what we're talking about here, national security leaks, we're not talking about leaks from the fda or the department of agricultural. we're talking about leaks that may, in some circumstances, imperil the safety of the united states. between those two issues, i think that the safety of the american people wins. now, i understand the importance of the press -- the important role the press plays, but by hypothesis, stuff that's highly classified, provided to people who swear that they will not violate the confidentiality that's been provided them, and then go ahead and leak it and the press publishes it, to me they imperil the safety -- >> bob, do you think there's been examples of things that have been published that really have endangered the american people? >> yes, i do. >> example. >> if i could just tell the principle first and then give the example. >> okay. >> the principle is that in the intelligence area the leak ends up being the harm. you know, in other words, if something is leaked about some new military capability, yeah, that's serious, but the bad guys still have to figure out how to counter that new weapons system or new defense, whatever. in the intelligence area if you leak information about how information was acquired, the bad guys immediately know stop using that means of communication or that -- yeah, that means of communication. and that's i think very risky. >> so do you have an example? >> yeah. i think that the -- i think that the leak involving that special nsa program during the bush years was very damaging. >> in what way? you were there at the nsa at the time. >> yes. yes. i was told -- and i think i was told responsibly -- that you would get a stream of data and then all of a sudden it would stop and you would see a correlation. it wasn't like anybody said, oh, wow, nsa is on to us and we must stop using this. you would get intercepts and then they would stop and you would see the correlation between the leak and the stopping of the communication. >> okay. >> mark, what do you think is the main peril of covering national security? >> i agree with a lot of what james said about the difficulty these days. i don't think it's ever been harder to do this kind of reporting. it's not only the -- there's a crackdown that has taken place on leakers and the number of investigations that create this climate that jane talked about. you also in the wake of the revelations over the last year about surveillance has created this, you know, perception among people that the surveillance is everywhere, right? and that everything is being watched. and so a similar experience to jane, you have people who you have developed relationships with over the years who won't talk anymore because they're concerned. people who otherwise may have been, you know, on the fence who have never dealt with reporters who might be inclined to do it, you know, i think maybe second guess it and they start to think, what's in it for me to do this? you have phone calls with people -- you know, used to be sort of ironically talking on the phone and they say, so if anyone is listening to this call, i'm not revealing anything. now actually people without any irony will say on the phone, whoever is listening to this call, i am not revealing classified -- just like it's accepted that somebody is listening to this phone call, which is -- >> do you think they are? >> i mean, possibly. i think over the last -- again, over the last year, whether it's people listening to my calls or my sources, you know, they're trying to get the source. i think increasingly we certainly have to be under suspicion more and more than -- >> you're still able to function and work? >> you have to function differently. you have to be more careful certainly about electronic communication, about phone calls. it's less efficient, i suppose, and especially in a daily paper that can be hard. >> so how do you communicate? do you move the flower pot? >> you meet in parking garages. it's -- you know, you try to have more first-person meetings. there's also -- you know there's -- >> but to set those up. >> it's hard. you have to somehow set them up in some means -- by some means. and, you know, people are going to encrypted communications now. i think that -- if you do that, both sides have to be doing it, right? so i think that -- you know, the concern is about when you're a reporter and you want to get someone to be comfortable and to talk to you and you've never met this person, the first thing you say is, hi, i'm -- i want to talk to you and you've got to use this phone because otherwise you're going to go to jail. you know, who is going to want to talk? again -- >> so do you use encrypted communication? >> i don't know how much i should say. yes, i do. >> well, you decide. >> but it's more recent. i didn't use to. >> and that's got to be -- you are talking to somebody for the first time or for the 20th time and say, let's go encrypted. aren't they smart enough to realize that automatically that is an admission that there's some sort of transaction going on -- >> people surveilling the situation -- >> no. if they find out "x," "y," and "z" have established encrypted communications with the intelligence reporter for "the new york times," that's semi incriminating, right, mr. deitz? >> yes. >> so how do you -- >> i think we can all agree on that. >> yes, right. >> maybe we were just talking about sports. >> okay. good luck. peter, whaets the main peril here? >> well, first off, to kind of respectfully disagree with what bob said here about leaks being the harm. i think in many cases the lack of leaks is the harm. if there had been more leaks for example in two 2002, 2003 upon the decision to invade iraq was made, our national security would have been better rather than harmed. that's just kind of basic point we can talk more about that perhaps. but, you know, it is more difficult for everybody up here, for people in the audience, for people who are watching. you know, one example i'll give is couple of -- a number of months ago somebody, if you're asking how this works and how it doesn't work, a number of months ago somebody contacted me through a friend and had something that this person wanted to kind of talk about and provide to me that related to iraq, and it wasn't monumental, but it was interesting. and i said to this person, okay. and we were talking not through phones that could be traced to me, at least. don't send it to me via e-mail. print it out and here is the address, send it to me over the mail because at this moment in time, i think mail is more secure than e-mail for certain things. and this was a work-around, which did not work because i never received this material, either it was intercepted or wasn't sent. i believe it wasn't sent. and so having to set up that kind of security operation obviously affected the fact that this person did not provide the material. and that is a cost, a tax in a way on this new era that we're in. yes, sources will not come forward. but i would say that on the other hand -- and this is why i don't like necessarily the framing of this in such a durridge-like way. we as journalists are presented now with this incredible, challenging, exciting story. kind of the story of our lives. i feel like i've had several of these stories of our lives and it's hard -- >> and what is that story? just define it. >> in my view the story is chal leptions to the first and fourth amendment of the united states constitution, which involves a crackdown on journalists ourselves and our sources, and i think that we have this incredible role to play to expose what is going on to try to prevent it from continuing to go on. and this is -- you know, i covered in most of my life overseas conflicts, you know, made my name, i guess, in a way in bosnia first. and, boy, there was a story that people didn't care very much about, and it was difficult to cover because it was hard to make people here understand why it would affect this country, america, and their lives and i couldn't make a very persuasive argument about that. but, boy, when you're talking about challenges to the first and fourth amendments of the constitution, you are talking about how life is lived, how our democracy exists what the future of your children is as members of a free society. that's a much easier argument to make and much more important one than the slaughter of some people in the cal bans. and i find myself as challenged and as kind of passionate about this story as i did about genocide in the balkans. >> jane -- go ahead. >> i was going to say i think what's hard from one of the things that's difficulty from the stand point of the press is the way that the national security community sometimes -- and you in this case define what's protecting the american public. it's not as if the press is trying to harm the american public. we just define it as a stronger country when there's a free flow of ideas, when there's consent of the governed because they understand what the programs are that you are implementing in their name, and we feel that even bad news sometimes strengthens the country because the rest of the world gets to see that our transparency and our accountability system. and so it's a larger framing of what national security is, but because of the way the executive branch has kind of a monopoly on defining what national security is, you get to put your own parameters around it and define us as outside of it sometimes, but we're not trying to harm the country by writing these stories. in fact, i think most reporters feel that they are really helping by getting this information out to the voters. >> i accept most of what you said. i mean, i, too, agree that reporters are not out to undermine the country. but i also am very clear in my mind that reporters often do not understand why something can be harmful or why certain kinds of things would be guarded. now, one of the arguments that's always dragged out in these kinds of meetings is the overclassification of materials. and i accept that. i'm sure they are. this is not, i think, caused generally by evil intentions. i think it's that when people are writing reports, you know, there are three different classification levels. most people just put the default, top secret. now, there ought to be a way of addressing that, for sure. >> okay. but reporters are not helpless in this. bob deitz, you're saying, oh, look, reporters don't understand the implications of publishing some of this stuff, but, i mean, as i'm sure mark and peter and jane can testify to, when you find out something, you go to the government. >> uh-huh. >> and you engage in, let's be honest, a negotiation of shorts -- >> yep. >> -- and a listening like one of hillary clinton's listening tours, you go listen and you say what is the argument that this is going to cause harm? and if you look at the snowden case in my own newspaper, "the washington post," we have been extremely careful about what we have published. >> agreed. >> always going to the government, and the government making their case and i think erring on the side of, okay, the government says this, let's listen. does it make sense? and so there is a lot left out. so i'm not sure -- i mean, you kind of are suggesting that the reporters are a bunch of people rushing into it and just kind of publishing willy-nilly, but that's not the way it works. is that right, mark? >> sure. on any beat you cover, right, you'll be calling for comment, you'll be going to the agency you're writing about. it's happening far more than it used to where the government pushes back now to try to get you to not publish. we, i think, keep pretty high standards for what we would not publish, and there are different standards that if the government is making a case that this does specific harm to specific individuals, this story i'm talking about, that's one thing. and we listen to it really seriously. if the argument, as was the case in many -- many of the wikileaks arguments, this is going to be really embarrassing for us, the government. it will hurt -- that is a lower standard and usually that's not a reason not to publish. >> and when you go to the government, you learn all kinds of things. first of all, you get a second or third source, if you can get them to validate what you have, which makes sleep much easier at night. and often in those -- it's not just a matter of calling and saying, i want your one-sentence comment. it's meeting with people. it's having serious discussions. sometimes weeks or months go by before some of these stories are published. >> i think we're finally beginning to learn what bob woodward does. >> well -- >> the inside story. >> well, but -- it makes sense. and i've been in the oval office and the seventh floor of the cia and other places where people have said if you publish this, you know, recently somebody said -- if you publish this, we could lose a war. well, that gets your attention and you listen very, very carefully. >> no, i agree. pretty much everything that i wrote in the book, "the dark side" i ran by the authorities at the cia just to check it, make sure it was correct, which is incredibly important, and see basically if it was going to cause some kind of undue harm. and, you know, we didn't always agree, but at least i was able to weigh their arguments and see what -- whether i thought they made sense. >> mark, go ahead. >> also goes to the point of classification. i don't think it's just a question of whether something is overclassified because we all agree that generally things are. it's really that i don't think there's a period in the country's history where the basic -- the entire war is conducted in a classified manner, right? it is a secret war. there's been the wars of iraq and afghanistan but so much of it is intelligence wars and wars carried out clandestinely and they're still secretly even when they shouldn't be like the drone strikes. >> which by the way they're not secret. the drone -- >> but they're technically still classified. >> but the government will -- there are people in the government who will officially validate and discuss those things. >> but they still won't cut -- after a strike come up and stand up and say this is what happened. some people really would like that to happen and the government would like that to happen because they think they will be able to explain it better, but it's -- and so i just that it's -- it's never been more important because this is the conduct of the war. it's all a secret that national security reporters tell people what's going on. >> peter, what do you think of that? or going to the government and saying here is what i understand happened or is going on? what do you say? >> well, i would say that's a useful and generally necessary step. you know, we have a story out this morning that i co-authored, about some nsa documents that were leaked to us by snowden, top secret. >> summarize the story. >> the nsa is hacking into computers of people who control computer systems that the na. sa wants to infiltrate. so these are innocent people who are targeted by the nsa as they have the keys to the kingdom as one of the documents said. in this case, we went to the nsa and said, look, is there any harm involved in us publishing this and the answer was no. there was no harm involved. we have gone to them and asked. i would say, however, in terms of the usefulness of talking to officials, yes, yes, of course, but actually right now i trust documents more than i trust officials. these documents say a lot more and tell me a lot more -- >> and they are a potent tool when you go to the government and say, i have this document and it says the following -- >> i don't, my personal feeling is i'm not using these as tools. i'm publishing them or we're publishing them. the greatest tools are instruments. and i think that these documents operate best not as instruments in terms of leverage with government officials but instruments in terms of informing the public. >> i'm not saying only as a tool but, you know, yes, publish them but it is -- when you go in to see somebody in the government and say, i have this document or i have these notes of this meeting and i understand the following is occurring, that gets their attention. >> it gets their attention but it doesn't necessarily get much truth out of them. >> sometimes it does. sometimes -- don't you find that to be the case, jane? >> sometimes. i mean -- >> don't you learn things? >> what i was going to say is i think the government -- the national security part of the government anyway, has a credibility problem at this point. when you look at cases like the case of tom drake and -- who was an nsa official former who was prosecuted under the espionage act, was facing potentially 35 years in prison. he is 57 or 58 years old, whatever he was at the time, the rest of his life in prison, and the case -- >> but what -- >> -- fell apart. the reason it was complete overkill. the judge himself eventually threw most of it out. >> and even general hayden said publicly that it was a case of prosecutorial overreach. >> i mean, as the previous panel quoted the judge saying, it was unconscionable what happened to his life during that period. there were five documents he was charged with taking that were unauthorized that were classified. three of them had to do with some kind of complaint he had made to an inspector general and he said he had been told to take the documents home. the other two, one was classified as just plain, you know, office items basically. and the other was declassified three months after he was prosecuted for having it. and eventually the case ended up with him pleading to a misdemeanor. but the idea that that could have been portrayed as a huge national security case under the espionage act and that man could have faced potentially life in prison suggests that there's a judgment issue sometimes on these calls about what national security entails. >> bob deitz, how come that wasn't stopped earlier? >> i don't know. >> okay. >> i don't know the case. i know drake. i know some of the people he's dealt with, but i don't know the facts of that case. facts matter. >> of course. let me ask this general question, which i think is important and the earlier panel said quite directly that the obama administration is anti-press and that actually it was said earlier that the prosecution on the effort to get jim risen from "the new york times" to testify is a persecution. do you think the obama administration is anti-press, peter? >> i wish you could have started with somebody else here. >> okay. >> anti-press is a very broad phrase, so i would like to get away from that maybe and just the specifics are, you know, how many people have been prosecuted leakers under the obama administration versus previous administrations. as the previous panel i believe went over and as we all know, it's more than any other previous administration by several factors. that's rather concerning to me. and one of the -- when i was listening to the previous panel, one of the people said, well, but there's the jim risen case but really that's kind of it in terms of actual journalists who are now facing incarceration if the supreme court rules against them. yes, and you don't need more than one case to make your message. that's the point of that case. this case is equivalent to me to hundreds of cases because the impact is the same in terms of -- >> mark, you think the obama administration is anti-press? >> like peter, i'm going to punt that direct term. but, no. we've had trouble sort of digging into what are the origins of this incredibly large number of investigations. some of it is -- >> they're not just investigations, they're prosecutions. >> the tools available to the investigators are far better than they used to be, so prosecutors want to prosecute and they want to make cases so they can make cases better than they used to be able to make cases. so there's part of that. at the very least, you certainly see, you know, supervise herbs can tell investigators not to go in certain directions and that is not happening. and so at the very least, the aggressive prosecutors trying to make their cases against leakers aren't being stopped. yes, some of these cases are holdovers from the bush administration, but at the very least, you know, there is -- they are conscious decisions being made not to stop them and that is, i think, where you see the continuity between bush and obama. >> but just bureaucratically, being realistic about the way the justice department works, people at the lower level start a case and they get very aggressive and it's just like one of your editors at "the new york times" would hesitate to tell you, don't pursue that story because it might appear as if they're stopping you from a legitimate inquiry. so i think up the chain if you talk to some of these people there's a lot of reluctance to stop it. the difficulty is they're not setting the policy at the very top and saying, you know, just from my point of view, i think they are harming themselves by either declaring or appearing to declare a war on the press. >> but, you know, what frustrates me a little bit about the way this discussion is categorized, by hypothesis, all these cases involved somebody who committed a felony. >> maybe. >> i said by hypothesis. prima fascia case and just like the police investigate robberies and white collar crime and so forth, it's very hard for me to understand the argument that says, well, this felony shouldn't be investigated. and if you are trying to put together a case -- well, archie cox, you know the watergate prosecutor until he was bounced -- in one of his briefs starts out saying something like the grand jury's entitled to every man's evidence. he was quoting some british jurist. how is it that you put a line around this felony and say, don't worry about it but we're going to pursue other felonies. to me that's crazy. sorry. >> no, that's good. every time a white house official gives some comment about a classified drone strike, isn't that a felony, too? should you go down -- you could really broaden it to every one talking about classified information. >> i agree with your point and every time i've been involved in these discussions i point out how official leaks make the administration lose the high ground. absolutely sure. it's so hard to explain rationally why a senior official can leak and yet when it happens to the gs-15 level, then the world is about to end. i agree with you. >> that's a really big problem. >> it's a huge problem. >> the earlier panel, i mean, you can't talk with people about national security issues and not discuss classified information. i mean, that is just the reality. >> yep. >> you know that yourself. >> i agree with you. >> and so the idea that these few cases where they seem to have evidence and they pursue them with this zeal and these tools that they have, somebody at the top needs to -- i think this is a common sense solution to kind of say, come on. let's get real. >> in this case, you mean? >> yeah. >> i agree. >> is it really worth it? >> i agree. >> and the idea that the obama -- i mean, do do you think the obama administration is anti-press? >> i think every administration is anti-press. every administration -- >> i've known some. i've known some. >> some more than others. yeah. some you've known more than others. >> i think there's a continuity here rather than -- >> yes. i mean, i think -- it's what the framers of the constitution understood, power has a certain tendency to make people want to hold on to power. and leaks particularly of unflattering information are not welcomed by people in power. so, i mean, i think the problem with the prosecutions is there's a sense that they're arbitrary because there are authorized leaks that come -- that are favorable and push one particular line and then there are some that unfavorable and they're prosecuted. >> i agree. >> and so the question is, who should -- who gets to define and decide what the american public should hear about what the intelligence community is doing? should the intelligence community get to decide only? or should the press get to decide also? and should there be -- what do you do with dissidents within your ranks who are critics who feel that maybe what they're seeing has crossed some line and is wrong and they want to speak out about it. such an american, you know, sort of act to speak up in decent. >> and don't you think -- most people, not everyone, but -- i mean, to use the legal term, bob deitz admission against interest. you can find people if you can talk to them for a long time, they may say something that's against their interest that's true. just in the last ten or so minutes, i mean, what's the remedy for the press in terms of how we operate? is it to go encrypt it? i mean, snowden told you, peter, he said, you know, it's -- an amazing quote. unencrypted journalists, source communication is unforgivably reckless. >> when encryption is required. not every communication i have with a source requires encryption. not every relationship requires it. when it's required and you don't do it, it is unforgivably reckless. as jane was saying earlier you get your sources into trouble. >> what do you use as a reporter mark in this environment then? what kind of frame of mind do you go into? are you kind of, hey, look, now i have an excuse i can tell my editors i talked to six people and they all hung up on me? >> that sounds good actually. you know, you have to -- as i said, a lot of it is more -- less efficient. you have to -- i think you have to be conscious of the security of your sources. i mean, you're entering into a trust. you know, i think when you're dealing with people who have been involved in government their sources, you're inclined to think they know -- they know how to keep themselves secure. i mean, they knew -- know better than i do the state of surveillance, right? but, i don't think that gets you off the hook. i think it means that you have to be very careful, increasingly careful that, you know, it's not because of something you've done, you get your source in trouble. >> go ahead. >> i want to say, this isn't a big mystery to me. there's this thing that we all carry around, well, sometimes you don't carry it around. that's the new important measure of protection. it actually is very easy to take. and you don't use this thing. at certain times. for a very long time, reporters managed to do very well without these devices. >> i remember the first time when i talked to somebody in a very important position in the intelligence world and he got out his blackberry and took out the battery. and i thought, what the hell are you doing? and he said, you know, then they can't listen. >> but this is something that's been going on -- i remember in 1999 when i was still covered the balkans, i was in belgrade, this is during the milos such area. before you had any conversation with anybody about politics, you would not only take out the battery of your phone, but you would put it on the table. the phone and the battery. not just so that you showed the other person that the government couldn't be listening but the other person knew that you weren't recording the call with their cell phone. that was back in 1999. the kind of trade craft we now have to adopt actually has been used and i've been using in other countries for quite awhile. it's not so new in some ways. >> go ahead. >> the question you asked a minute or so ago about what -- kind of what's the solution. well, the solution is the american people. the american people through their representatives have decided that there are some things that are sufficiently important that they ought not to be discussed in the open press. now, there are plenty of ways of addressing that. you know, you've got the american people to agree to a shield law. that's not happened. i think -- i would be surprised if it ever happens. >> i mean, sometimes the representatives of the people get it wrong. >> of course they do. >> and, you know, we're on the outside. and so i don't buy that. i mean, i think part of the remedy is to be more aggressive, frankly. >> as a reporter. >> as a reporter, and that you have to work harder. i remember working on the fourth bush book that i did, and there was a general who would not talk. e-mails, you know, phone messages, intermediaries, nothing. so i found out where he lived. it was in the washington area. and what's the best time to visit a four-star general. >> dinner? >> without an appointment. 8:15 on a tuesday. because they will have eaten, not gone to bed. it's not monday. and it's not getting close to friday. and so i knocked on the door. and he opened the door and he looked at me and he said, are you still doing this shit? and he meant it. and he looked at me, and then just got a disappointed look on his face. disappointed in himself. he said, come on in. and sat for two hours, answered most of the questions. why? because i showed up. we don't show up enough. and it is incredible the drop-in visit, if you're worried about surveillance and security and so forth. and i think if we ever get -- you know, the obama administration, i've done two books on them, you know, tried to understand. and i think there's a lot of ambivalence about the press, as there always is. and you can deal with them. and if you just show up and persist, you can say, we can do our job. the tragedy of this would be like if we just packed up and said, oh, it's too hard. the snowden era, and the prosecution era has created a new world for us. and i think it's really kind of the old world. i started in this in the nixon era, and it was -- you know, they -- it wasn't that you were on their christmas card list. and it always is tough. and we should remember that. and so if you work eight hours a day, you're maybe going to have to work 10 or 12. >> i've sat on cul-de-sacs and curbs waiting for people to come home, not so long ago really. it wasn't the grand life that i thought the "new yorker" was going to be. i thought it would be cocktails at the roundtable, you know. >> if you're honest with yourself, you probably don't sit on the curb enough. >> oh, i'm sure not enough. but at the same time, i'll say one thing from your standpoint, at least what i would imagine would be your standpoint, i think the press needs also to make sure that when we do push really hard, and make our calls, if something's important enough to publish when the national security community is saying, don't, it really should be something important enough to publish. i think we should try to keep thinking about something that serves public interest. not every secret is equal. you know? just because you find it out doesn't mean you need to put it in the newspaper or the magazine. it has to -- i feel, anyway, there should be an important public purpose when you take that on. >> i would just say one thing following up on your point further about sitting on curbs. it depends whose curb you're sitting. generals have told you some very useful things, and that has been helpful for everybody. i personally have found in covering iraq, afghanistan, being with generals, being with colonels, being with lance corporals, that actually the people's whose doorsteps, quote unquote, that i sit on are lower level. i remember one time i had an off-the-record talk with petraeus. and are it was great. i look at my notes afterwards and there's really nothing in there whatsoever. one of the geniuses. >> he's very good, absolutely. >> so is mike hayden, by the way. same way. >> and that happened again and again with the senior officers that i would talk with, whereas when i was talking with and hanging out with, you know, the specialists, the lance corporals, the captains, i was finding out a heck of a lot more about what was really going on. >> but then you move up the food chain. i agree with you that sometimes the best sources are names we never hear about. and no one else knows. but then you have to -- if you're ultimately trying to write about decision-making, you need to get to the generals and the people in the white house, or the pentagon, who are making some of these decisions, or the cia. >> i don't have the bob woodward special sauce to get that access. >> but what gets people to respond is information. if you have the document, or the notes, or the details, if you go in and say, i understand you're launching operation pink starling tomorrow, you know, and pink starling is a protected code word, people will say, okay, we better deal with this. >> the higher level people probably don't know what pink starling is. if we're just talking about the nsa, there are so many of them. and they are so technical, that i would be really surprised if the high-level people know the details of more than a small number of the most major programs. >> i think you would be wrong about that. >> yeah? >> i think so. many could not perhaps describe the engineering details, but i would be surprised if there are more than a handful of programs that are not -- >> you're right, but there are -- i mean, impossible to count how many programs there are in the nsa. we can talk thousands, and probably more than thousands. and i just imagine it's beyond the capacity of any individual to have significant knowledge about more than a handful of these thousands of programs. >> but i agree with bob dietz, and i agree with you. but the answer is, work the low level, the mid level, and the top, if you can. and you're going to get a total universe portrait. anybody else -- we have a couple of minutes here before there's a coffee and martini break. maybe not martinis. but to summarize -- i mean, you're the historian of this. what's going on here? when the historians look back at this era, what are they going to say, the snowden era, the prosecution era, the persecution of jim risen era? >> i don't have an apocalyptic vision. i don't think, unlike some members of the first panel, i don't think the west is about to end. civilization as we know it is disappearing. i think there are new challenges. the tension that jane was describing between administrations and the press, i worked in the carter administration. my god, the wailing that went on there about stuff in newspapers. i don't think that's ever going to end. i do -- i would like to mention one more thing if i may, bob. in these discussions, there's often a lot of talk, as peter did, with reference to the fourth amendment. the supreme court has, in the two cases that really addressed fourth amendment issues, in the criminal context that may touch on national security, they've always drawn a line between, on the one hand, domestic security, you know, stuff that involves criminality in this country. on the other hand, dividing that from national security involving threats abroad. and in the two major cases on this, the supreme court went out of its way to say, all right, we're not talking about foreign intelligence here, we're talking about domestic intelligence. my experience at nsa is that that line was rigorously drawn, and rigorously observed. i think most reporters should rest easy whether there's going to be a tap. and i don't believe there is necessarily a fourth amendment right when you're talking about conducting foreign intelligence. >> but most reporters who cover issues like terrorism, for instance, have many overseas phone calls. >> from terrorists? >> certainly as close as you can get to them, sure. you're going to try to get in there and understand what's going on. many reporters, you know, john miller, who worked in and out of the government, was famous for going in and interviewing bin laden. is that a crime? should it have been eavesdropped on? >> forgetting whether it's a crime. if somebody is speaking with bin laden on the phone, and we're not picking it up, the head of nsa ought to be tossed. >> yeah, right, but under nsa rules, if that were the case, and it was jane mayer, an american citizen, her name would have to be minimized. it would not be circulated. >> or maximized. >> exactly. you're dead right. it would have to be minimized. the minimization rules are religiously followed. >> i think we're done. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> you did wonderfully. now, more about the relationship between the government and the press. in august, reuters news president steven adler spoke about restrictions put on the media by the obama administration. he's joined by executives from the "new york times" and the associated press for discussion on whistle-blowers, national security, and media bias. hosted by the national association of black journalists, this is an hour. >> good afternoon, everyone. here to host and moderate the plenary session is pierre thomas. 2012 nabj journalist of the year and senior justice correspondent for abz. he joined the network in november of 2000 and reports for several programs including "world news," "good morning america," and "nightline." thomas was also the key member of the abc news team coverage that won edward r. murrow awards for reporting on the capture of osama bin laden. the tucson shooting spree and assassination attempt against congresswoman gabby giffords, and the newtown elementary school massacre. thomas was a key member of abc's team covering the terrorist attacks of september 11th winning a peabody award, a dupont columbia university award and an emmy. he also received an emmy for his coverage of president barack obama's inauguration. please welcome pierre thomas. [ applause ] >> hello, everyone. thank you so much for coming to the 39th annual convention of the national association of black journalists. revolution to evolution, shaping our future. this year nabj is focused on preparing and equipping members for the shift taking place in newsrooms across the country. this year, you can look forward to some great panels, workshops and seminars, including today's session, government and the media. today we will address some of the challenges facing our industry, specifically access by the government, which appeared to infringe on a truly free press. journalists subpoenaed to go to court and reveal their sources, the justice department secretly obtaining months of phone records from the a.p. the white house restricting access to many presidential events. how do we operate going forward. fundamental challenges that stretch to the heart of what we do. today we have some of the nation's top journalists here to discuss these challenges. and they have confronted these issues firsthand. we'll have some time for questions from the audience. but i'd like to first introduce our illustrious panel. first we have steve adler, editor in chief of reuters news. and he's the executive vice president for news of all of thompson reuters. before joining reuters, he was editor in chief for "business week" where during his five year tenure the magazine and website won more than 100 major journalism awards. he's a graduate of harvard law school and served as editor of the american lawyer. please welcome steven adler. [ applause ] next we have dean balke, the first african-american editor of "the new york times." before taking on that role he was the managing editor for news. after graduating from columbia university in 1978, the new orleans native went to work for his hometown newspaper. in 1988 he won the pulitzer prize for his investigative work leading a trio of reporters who uncovered corruption in the chicago city council. the final panelist is ryan carballanno. he oversees coverage and operations in state bureaus and regional desks. from 2010 to 2013 he served as ap's asia pacific news director. he led a.p.'s coverage of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and a nuclear crisis in japan. he's a graduate of colby college in waterville, maine. please welcome brian. [ applause ] we're going to get right to it. thank everyone so much for coming. this is an important discussion. and we will try to move it along quickly. james risen is a "new york times" reporter. in 2006, he published a book called "the state of war" and it contained a chapter that the justice department contends revealed classified information. the justice department has issued a subpoena for mr. risen seeking information about his sources. risen said he will not reveal his sources. the courts thus far have sided with the government and he faces possible contempt of court, possibly jail time, fines if he won't testify. dean, give us a sense of how james is doing, and the impact on him and his family. >> it's had a huge impact on him as a reporter. jim has built his whole career on anonymous sources, from the times he was at the "l.a. times" to the time he was at "the new york times," that's his bread and butter. and it's been a lot harder for him. it's harder for him to make new sources. his current sources are nervous about talking to him. things get slowed down, because it's not like he can exchange e-mails with them, or have phone conversations with them. that said, just as a plug to jim, who is a particularly tenacious reporter, i would say if you look at over the last year while he has worked up against this problem of the government going after him, he's broken big stories, he was one of the two or three lead reporters we put on the story when "the new york times" had to catch up -- try to catch up with the post and others on the snowden story. he's still in there hanging. because that's what he does. that's his bread and butter. but it's certainly held him back. his mood is -- he's nervous. i mean, i don't think he's nervous because he's worried about going to jail, i think he's nervous because, if you imagine covering a beat, and suddenly all of the people you deal with are nervous about dealing with you in particular, i think that's sort of -- and this is the beat you've covered for a decade, i think that's sort of throws you off your game. >> it's at the heart of what we do in our profession. how has the paper sought to support him and keep him aggressive? >> you know, it's -- we've actually helped support him in the legal arena. but i talk to him a lot. i make sure that he is deeply involved in washington coverage, that he's in all of our washington national security meetings. and mainly, i'm sort of a pain in the butt to him to make sure that he's working on snowden. we throw big stories at him, we give him ambitious assignments. i mean it would be too easy to say, jim, just sort of chill out for a year while this thing plays out. that wouldn't be good for him or for the paper. so mainly we make sure that we throw assignments at him and that they get good play. i think that's been helpful to him. >> dean, i want you to answer this question and i want steve and brian to jump in. when you have a reporter asked by the government, give up your sources, what's at stake for our entire industry? >> first off, i think the answer of any self-respecting news organization to that question is a strenuous no. because what's at stake, it's not only that particular story, what's at stake is our very relationship with the government. and our relationship with the government should be adversarial. i guess that's an old way of thinking of things, but it really should be. i mean, our role in this society is to ask hard questions, to try to find out things government does not want us to find out. and the moment you would accede and give the names of your sources to government, you've sort of wiped out one of the primary missions of the press. which is, to find out things they don't want you to find out and to ask them hard questions. you lose that. >> steve? >> it's interesting what ends up happening. you go out there and do a story. and the government doesn't like it. in this case, a story about the stock exchange commission. we were kind of inside the room when they made a ruling. and they didn't like the story. and it obviously seems to have come from someplace inside. think about what impact that has on us. they went to our reporters and asked us what were the sources of that story. of course, the reporters wouldn't tell them. they got their inspector general to do a multi-month investigation where they interviewed 53 employees at the s.e.c. they went through the e-mails of 39 employees. they went through phone records. they checked ought visitor logs. and they couldn't figure out who our sources were. so i felt good about that. but the deterrent effect on that on all of those people in government, and what was the message that was sent? never talk to a reporter. your job is in jeopardy. we don't want reporters to know about these things. the poisoning of the potential of getting transparency in government just from that one event, and it's in all agencies everywhere in the government, it has a tremendously negative effect ultimately of doing our responsibility, which is sharing the information with the public of what's going on in our government. >> brian? >> i think the risen case, and the case that steve just described and the phone records with the department of justice is all part of a troubling trend. i'm sorry to say, i'm not super optimistic it will get better anytime soon. if you play it forward in the years ahead, it really calls into question the ability of journalists to do their primary function, which is to hold the government accountable for their actions to the people. >> you know, given the volatile state of the world, the war on terror and the covert actions that we see our government taking, has it ever been more important for journalists to be digging and finding out what the hell's going on? >> it's never been more important. if you think about -- if you think about the state of foreign policy, for instance, the u.s. is engaged in at least two, possibly three undeclared relatively secret wars in pakistan, where it's running extensive drone operations, in yemen, and some can make the case for parts of africa, too. these are dangerous missions that have large implications for those countries, large implications for foreign policy in the united states. and they were embarked on with no debate. there was no debate in congress, or no debate or discussion about how the u.s. should manage a war in yemen. and it's our job to find out what's going on in yemen. and it's more important than ever that we find out what's going on in places like yemen, so the country can have its own debate, even if government chose not to have it. >> it seems like we've reached a point where national security concerns, whether they exist or not, seems to trump the first amendment and the government's operations. in many of these cases the first amendment is not even part of the conversation, except when we're talking about it amongst ourselves. >> right. i want to move on to a story that really struck me as well. a.p. gets a scoop in may of 2012 about terrorists in yemen wanting to blow up a plane using a new kind of underwear bomb. the government wants to know how you did it. the justice department goes out, goes to court and secretly obtains two months of telephone reports from the reporters. your reaction when the government had done this. >> my reaction was outrage, as i think it should be for all journalists, and all citizens, really. the justice department violated its own guidelines in doing this. there were guidelines that existed governing these types of investigations. and they had existed for decades. and the two primary ways this investigation violated them is these kinds of subpoenas were supposed to be narrowly drawn as possible. this was an absolute hoover operation in which they took phone recovers for 21 phone lines. including our former washington bureau that the a.p. hadn't even occupied for six years. and the hartford, connecticut, bureau where one reporter had worked for seven years before he transferred to the washington bureau and was involved in the story. and that gave the government conceivably insight into the actions of hundreds of a.p. reporters, far from any stories that might have had anything to do with this particular scoop. and the government has no conceivable right to know any of that stuff. the second way it violated the guidelines was there was no prior notification. we found a year after that story had broken, that at some point in the ensuing year, they had scooped up all these phone records, spanning 40 days. and there was no opportunity for us to challenge that. there was no process of judicial review. and they cited this loophole had always existed but turned out to be a very gigantic loophole which was that prior notice was required unless doing so would substantially impair the integrity of the investigation. and they took a very broad interpretation of that, to say that the leaker would know they were being sought, if this had been made public. actually, they announced the investigation about two days after the story actually broke. so the fact they were seeking legal resources was widely known. >> when you confronted doj officials with what they did, did you get an audience with the attorney general, and what was their reaction to your outrage? >> to the justice department's credit, they convened a high-level group of media representatives and government officials. and the justice department had changed those guidelines. we think they had changed them for the better, so that the exception for prior notification requires the attorney general to sign off. and instead of a presumption of violating the integrity of the investigation, they have to prove that it will. those guidelines are stricter now. but they haven't really been tested yet. >> how striking was it that something like that could happen? looking at your phone records, and the most senior levels of the justice department not signing off on it, it sounds like that's what happened. >> yeah. that's exactly what happened in this case. in some way, the revelations on the nsa and snowden, the a.p. case seems kind of quaint now. we know the government is able to access everything for everyone, journalists or not journalists. and so i think that journalists who have operated in more restrictive countries overseas have always sort of assumed they were being watched. now we should assume that the united states is one of those countries and we have to take the same kind of precautions as if we were operating in china or north korea or iran? >> it's a very interesting organization. it's focused for years and years on the violations abroad trying to protect journalists working abroad. it's really illuminating, where they're starting a campaign called start the right to report. where they can be asking everybody -- what they're saying is that problems we as reuters see everywhere in the world is problems that are current here. to put it in perspective, there are over 200 people in prisons around the world for being journalists. way more in turkey and iran and many other places than there ever is going to be here. the fact that we're thinking of the u.s. in somewhat the same category is rather troubling. >> and on a practical level, when you pick up your phone, in the a.p. offices, do you now wonder? >> sure. i think we should all wonder, whether we're in an a.p. office or other journalism shop. >> when you heard about this case, what was your reaction, and did you think my goodness, what was your reaction, dean? >> i find this case more troublesome than the risen case. it's the most troublesome. you know, just, first the shear audacity and scope of the effort of the investigation. but secondly, as he said, the fact that it's sort of -- it didn't even have to get approval at the highest levels, shows that, i would argue, that -- and i would a tribute it to the post-9/11 era, some people would a tribute it to other things, i think the view of government after september 11th, that secrecy was so important, especially on national security matters, became so pervasive, became so powerful and so ingrained in a generation of government officials, that they felt comfortable doing something that 25 years ago even i think would have required a real discussion. we're going to subpoena -- we're going to go after the records of a major american news organization. i think the fact that that can be done at the mid level and even surprise eric holder says a lot of how entrenched that secrecy is in the government now. >> the white house has been restricting access to many presidential events, and distributing its own photographs. and then giving access to the photographs of the media, not letting us do the work ourselves. i think we had a case recently involving the astronauts that got some coverage. steve, talk about why this is a particular problem. >> well, i care about the photographs. we obviously take photographs and it's important. because you don't want the record of what goes on in your administration to essentially be p.r. so there's been a blurring in our entire industry. and in the world, between what's independent journalism and what's kind of an institution going directly to the public with their own message. on some level, that's fine, and companies do it as well. and people are using twitter to disclose things. and up to a point that's okay. but on the other hand, you know, you do have to worry that there's not a respect and a value placed on independent journalism. so we were involved and a.p. was involved in lobbying very hard with the white house to give us more access. we've gotten a little bit more access. >> did they get it? >> we've gotten a little more access. but it's not everything you would want. >> did they understand why? >> did they understand? you know, i think only partly. one of the troubling things that we're all facing is, this is the administration that said it was going to be the transparency administration. and there's been a lot of language around the importance of transparency. i think we all viscerally believe that the government belongs to the people and that we're the representatives of the people, and i think we're all fairly idealistic about that. and we think that the government works better when it's transparent. that fresh air, transparency is the best disinfectant. it does not look like the government feels that way. you see it not only in the white house but all the executive agencies, where they just make it very hard. it's harder to get press passes, harder to get into meetings. you get handlers who sit with you more. and that's partly a practical problem. but i think it's very important as a symbolic problem. because we really do want to be in a society that believes it's important for the public to know what's going on, and it's important for independent journalism to exist, and to exist in a really robust way. it does not feel as if very often the administration feels that way. >> i want you guys to jump in. is this administration more restrictive or less restrictive than past administrations? >> i asked members of our washington bureau before coming here what they thought. people have been doing it for a long time. and they do feel it's more restrictive than it has been in the past. they think they're a little more upset about it perhaps than they might have been. because this administration bills itself as being more transparent. i think they feel a little deceived by that. i think there's been an increasing desire to control the news. there's always been some. look, we accept that. we understand that being a journalist isn't for the faint of heart. and there isn't a constant back-and-forth with any government. and that's fine. but i think we also believe the government should -- a democratic government should believe that a free press is important. and should at least try to facilitate that in a general way. that's the kind of place we end up thinking, we're not so sure that's true. >> brian? >> yeah, i think it's part of a trend that began before obama was elected. but i certainly think it's gotten more dramatic. and i think social media has given the obama administration and a lot of elected officials the plausible cover story that they're going straight to the people with their message. they can manage the message very closely if they're going straight to the people. there's no reason to believe it's an honest presentation of information. i also think that the way the obama administration has handled access, has given other governments, state and local governments a road map for how they think, quote unquote, to manage the media. we saw in new york with the bill de blasio administration, who also, by the way, said he was going to run the most transparent administration in history, that he tried to close his swearing-in to the press. our news organizations and many others protested and they opened it. in the first 100 days of his administration he held 53 events closed to the press that were on his schedule, and 30 others that had restricted press access. and that was just in the first 100 days. >> wow. >> i'm not -- i think the obama administration is more secretive. but i think i agree that it's part of a continuum. i think there was an amazing confluence of events starting with, and probably more forcefully led by september 11th. i think september 11th, i think the bush administration was more philosophically secret. i think september 11th told them that was okay. i think that the press didn't challenge it enough. and then along came a whole new way of covering candidates. i think social media made it easier for candidates to sort of -- or politicians to sort of communicate with people without going through the mainstream media, which is good and bad. i think all these things came together. a secret environment. the ability to communicate differently with people. and then the constant campaign that politicians go into. and even while they're in office, behave as candidates all the time. i think all of those things came together. and i think they've sort of reached their full flowering in the obama administration. but i think they began over time and built. >> one thing i would add to this, we're not without our own resources. and nobody should feel sorry for the media. and some of the changes that have occurred actually benefit us. so the fact that there's so much more access to electronic information means we have more ways to get information. >> that's right. >> there's also lower barriers to entry in the media industry. so there are way more players. while on the one hand so-called mainstream media may be somewhat in decline, but you've got blogs, and you've got "the guardian" here because of digital, al jazeera here because of digital and television. then you have all of the smaller organizations. so i do think that if you're out there trying to get information, and you're working hard to get it out, you have more ways to get it than you used to have in the past. in some ways it's an arm's race. the administration has more tools, but so do we. >> and more outlets to publish it. if you buy the argument, which i think everybody now buys, that the press wasn't aggressive enough in the buildup to the gulf war. i think today there would be a lot more places, including "the guardian," which is more active as a news organization, more blogs, more places where questions would have been raised. and i think that -- i agree with steve, that's healthier. >> i want to get to edward snowden in a moment, but as news executives, how are you trying to manage, deal with the social media, and also the fact that people can go around and talk directly to the public themselves, and how do you try to use the social media to your advantage? >> there's so many different ways social media factors in the way we do our work. in that instance in particular, it's interesting that when a public official takes to social media, often what they say on social media is news itself. and the reaction to that is news itself. and then, of course, we all use social media as a way to develop new audiences and broadcast content that our journalists are producing. it's also an incredibly news gathering material, where people have something to say about a specific event or topic. it is woven into the newsroom in so many different ways, that it's, you know, it's just part of daily journalism now. >> you know -- go ahead. >> i was going to say, i worry less about the ability of politicians to get around us, and use social media, because that's different than the sort of some of the secrecy issues we're talking about. i think that's as much of that vexing for us, i think that's probably okay. it's a little weird for the media to make the case that politicians should not -- should have to engage with us to get to the public. so i'm not sure that would be a winning argument that i would be willing to make. >> i'm not a big fan of handout journalism anyway. i think what's the most productive work we do is when we ask hard questions, and we try to get under the surface and find out what's really going on. the politicians are going to issue their handout photos and issue their handout press releases, and it's not our job to just take steno graphy and provide them to the public. but go deeper anyway. >> there have always been whistle stop tours and fireside chats by politicians to engage directly with the electorate. this is just the way to do it from the comfort of your chair. >> in full disclosure, i think nabj did invite members of the administration to participate in this panel. as far as we can tell, they chose not to. edward snowden. i think everyone in the audience knows was responsible for releasing a boatload, mountain load, whatever you want to call it, load of information about some of the nation's covert activities. there are government officials who say not withstanding what he did was right or wrong, the notion that one person was responsible for releasing this information, relatively young person, they make the argument that it shouldn't happen. question to the panel. is he a criminal, or whistleblower? >> i actually don't -- i'm going to choose to answer it in a little bit different way. i think that he provoked an important discussion, that the country wasn't having, and could only have had with his disclosures. i think that snowden gets a tremendous amount of credit. i think the country barely knew the extent of nsa spying. i think there had been glimpses of it and stories over the years. but i think he provoked a very significant discussion and a debate that we should have had. i actually think the nsa's position in this case is a little bit untenable. somebody should have said, i would argue, that -- is the country ready for the giant amount of spying that the nsa can do? and without going into the nitty-gritty of it. i don't know what the result of that debate would have been. it might have been even more intrusive spying. but i'm not sure that answers -- it doesn't answer the question whether he's a criminal, or in a weird way as a journalist, i don't think that is my question to answer. but as somebody whose news organization took advantage of some of the things he leaked, they were really important. >> i guess i don't object to the government making it illegal and attaching penalties to people inside the government to have sworn not to release information. it's reasonable for the government to consider it potentially criminal if they do. which, again, as dean said, is a very different question from what our responsibility is. in my view, as long as we haven't stolen the information or paid somebody to steal the information, our job is to inform the public. and so we're in a different role. it may be the administration's job to protect certain information like this. it's certainly our job to release it. being careful about not putting individual people in jeopardy. if we get it. being a lawyer, i'm not going to convict him without a trial. but i think, you know, in these situations, sometimes it is civil disobedience, and the person chooses, knowing there are penalties which are appropriate, the person chooses to do it. but more important for our discussion, it is our responsibility that if something is newsworthy and we didn't steal it, for us to present it to the public and let it be part of the public debate. >> brian? >> i'm also going to dodge the original question. you know, it's not my place to say. think about what we know now with these disclosures. what we know now is really important. i would argue that the people had a right to know that their government was doing that. >> do you think the disclosures helped our cause as journalists or hurt our cause, in terms of trying to get more information out of the government? >> i would argue they help our cause. i would argue they help our cause, because for two reasons. the government has yet to offer substantial proof that they truly hurt national security. which helps our cause. because that's always the argument. the second thing is, i think that in the case of wikileaks and in the case of snowden, the press behaved aggressively and responsibly. i mean, i have worked, you know, i mean, i've looked at the snowden disclosures in the course of our coverage of it, and there are things in the snowden disclosures that everybody, including glen greenwald has not disclosed. i think it proved that the press can be very responsible, cannot put things -- is not looking to just throw things up that jeopardize lives. i think it helps our cause. the government might argue otherwise, but i would make the case that we were, you know, we did what we were supposed to do, but we were careful. >> i guess my view is, you know, we in the media are never going to win any popularity contests and we're sort of down there with congress in terms of the public approval. i think that's okay. i think that there's a real resistance to the power point institutions in our society right now. and we're often lumped together with other powerful institutions in this populist resistance, you know, to people who have a lot of power. and perhaps the media does. but i would say that it's our job to do our job well and responsibly, and not to worry too much about whether we're popular as we're doing it, as long as we think we're performing a public service. >> i do worry, you know, about the chilling effect of -- depending on what ends up happening to snowden, which who knows what the future holds. the chelsea manning case, it certainly must discourage people who would be tempted to disclose that kind of information from doing it again in the future. so, you know, while i agree, you know, that media has credited itself with the way it handles itself, i do worry about the future whistleblowers, in the case that steve described earlier. >> one of the most common things you now hear from a government source is, i'm going to lose my job. you hear that a lot now. and to your point, i think that's a very serious concern. >> i want to take advantage of the years of experience, and your thoughts here, to give some of the young journalists and other journalists out here a sense of some best practices. what advice do you have for organizations or individuals who come under fire of the government, be it city hall, the state, or federal government in terms of protecting their sources? >> i'll start. clearly we're living in a world where you have to assume that your work is being watched. so you have to be very careful about use of e-mail. there are encrypted e-mails that you have to be very careful about phone calls. particularly in going places where you think you're being watched or followed. you know, at the very least, you want to turn off your phone. but that's not probably not enough. often you don't want to have a phone with you. when we travel globally to dangerous places, we'll take a burner phone, we'll take an electronic device that has no sensitive material on it. there are a lot of things you have to do just in terms of basic self-protection. there were recently reports by the aclu talking to journalists about essentially are you being deterred by this stuff. the main thing they said is they feel like they're in the espionage business now more than in the news business. i do think you have to be careful about all those things. i think we all way overuse e-mail. and there's somebody looking at your e-mail. whether it's a foreign government or u.s. government or perhaps even a local government so being careful at all of those things is really important. i think you have to really exercise best practices. you have to be very clear with your source whether you're protecting them, and under what circumstances. and you have to be very clear with your editors as to what rules you're operating under. will the organization back you up if you're protecting a source. it's really important to work in an organization that will back you up. so to put in a personal ad for all our organizations, i think one of the virtues of large mainstream media, although we all have our faults, these organizations do really support journalists when they're in trouble. that becomes really important in a world where that happens more and more. >> yeah, i think steve just made two really key points at the end there. one is, i would hope anybody who's in that situation as a reporter can rely on the organization they work for to go to bat for them. and the other one is, and i think that this is more important than ever, is to make sure in negotiating the terms of disclosure with your source, that they understand that the risk they're taking on as well as being aware of the risk you're taking on. i think those conversations in the past couple years have probably -- we need to have a much more detailed conversation with sources about that disclosure, because it's gone up dramatically in the last couple of years. they're possibly risking jail time and other penalties. it's part of a journalist's responsibility to make sure the sources are aware of the risk they're taking. >> i would agree with both of you that best practices, making sure that your editors are behind you. and the only thing i would add is more of a cheerleader point, or just keep doing it. i think that what inspires me about jim risen is that he did not come to me and say, you know what, i would actually like to cover, you know, the agriculture department now. i just want to do something different. he remained in the realm of national security. he continues to break stories. he's hampered, but he's still in the game. i think that sends a tremendous signal to the people who want to chill his reporting. it also sends a tremendous signal to people who do that kind of reporting. >> for every jim risen case, there are dozens if not hundreds of subpoenas that are issued. and go through a process and end up getting quashed, or dealt with in some other way. not every case ends up with a potential for jail time. which is an important point. that's always happened. it always will happen. it's rare it gets to this point. >> one thing that's really encouraging, speaking to this room, at least the younger journalists, and the journalists coming into the business whom i've been meeting, are amazingly intrepid, are very investigative. and have tools that frankly we don't have. they're good at using social media. they're really good at searching on the web and figuring out what's going on. there are people working for buzzfeed and all sorts of organizations that are doing really exciting work. and i think that's a very positive indication of where the world is heading. and even if you can stifle some organizations, there's so many people out there trying to get information. >> right. >> i think that's a real positive. >> right. >> and the only thing i would add to that is, this sort of plays off what steve said earlier, the ability to get, especially for international investigative stories, i mean, some of the best investigative work of any news organizations over the last couple years have been international investigative reporting. some of it based on public records. also, if you're trying to cover, you know, what amounts to war in yemen or pakistan, there are ways to report inside those countries, if you're a big news countries. if you're a big news organization you can behave safely to keep finding stuff out. so there's still going to be ways. in fact, let's not forget, for all of the restrictions, there have been some -- and i would include the two news organizations on my left and my right -- there have been some remarkable disclosures in the last couple of years that show that the press is still in the game in a big way. >> this has been terrific. i want to thank you all again. i think we have time for some questions from the audience. so, please step up to the microphone, and ask your questions. >> i don't think it's on. >> someone help her and see if that's on. >> there you go. >> okay. hello. my name is alicia haysley from the virgin islands. an aspiring journalist. research is hard, extensive, and requires copious amounts of in-depth work. you did touch on safety. i have a question in regards to that a little bit more, a little more in-depth. you're talking about burn phones. but if you really are into a story, is there a way for you to be as careful as you can possibly be? like what would you advise as tips? if somebody's out to find you and stop you, most likely they will do everything in their power, and sometimes that's a lot of power. so if you're on a case, a dangerous case, i say case, yes, because as you said before, espionage, that's what it seems like when we're trying to get information, because you have connections with cops, government officials. and you want to protect yourself as well as your sources. can you go and elaborate a little more on that? i'm very intrigued when you listed burn phones. and i'm like, what else, what else? >> well, again, there are all sorts of tools to encrypt things. but i think your point is, very often they won't work, right? >> yes. >> so, you know, the question is, are you talking about being in physical danger, or somebody -- >> it's both, because you know, as you said before, we are entering as we excel in technology we also excel in ways we can be caught. with social media, there are more ways to be caught through social media, just like they can track your e-mails, they can also track your facebook accounts. whatever you post on facebook, you know, anybody else in the future can go in there and peruse and, ooh, that's what she's about, or that's what he's about. >> i operate under the assumption that everything i say somebody's listening to. i think that's a worthwhile assumption. so here and on television i know i'm being looked at. but when i talk on the phone, i assume that, too. when my parents who are 90 years old, ask me what i did this week, i tell them, i can't really tell you that right now on the phone. i'm fairly confident whether it's the syrian government or somebody in china, or somebody in iran, there's somebody listening. so a lot of it is changing your habits and thinking about the fact that there are people listening. but if you're doing journalism in this country, we don't want to overscare people. to my knowledge, there's one person in prison in the united states, in jail in the united states for doing journalism. so it's very rare that it ends up that it throws you in jail. one thing i've always found helpful, particularly when i worked for small newspapers, was to write about it, when somebody's giving you a hard time. in other words, to make public what the problem is. if you're being investigated, write about it. because again, we have a lot of power. we have tools. you know, we own the presses, is what we used to say. we own the ability to distribute. so if threatened, that threat becomes newsworthy, and frankly, i would report the threat. just a couple of thoughts. >> okay. >> hello. my name is wanda brooks, i am a producer for the department of defense specifically covering intelligence. >> boy, that's interesting. >> i take back everything i said. >> it is very interesting. >> these are the guys you want to go after. >> so, how do you decide when covering a story when to release a report, or not if the government says, hey, you know, this could potentially put someone's lives in jeopardy? a case officer out in the field. how do you make that determination of, is this legitimate, or should we run this story anyway? and have there been moments when you've held off on an investigation, or report because of those concerns? >> my standard has become, you have to give me absolute detail of what you mean. it used to be, the government would say, if you publish this story, it violates national security and somebody will get killed. that's not good enough for me. i want to hear who. i want to hear the specifics. obviously i don't mean, don't tell me how they're going to get killed. tell me what you mean. i really want to know. you mean a case officer in tehran? and tell me how. second thing is, i always demand a request to hold something back comes from the highest -- somebody very high in the government. never -- if the press person asks for it, i won't even take a call. it's got to come from somebody in the white house. it's got to come from the head of the cia. it's got to come from the head of the nsa. it can't come from the press person. usually when you say that, by the way, half of all requests go away. because they're not quite willing to ratchet it up that high. so i always insist that they ratchet it up that high. offer very, very specific proof. and i would say, still, most of the time we go with the story. but if somebody offers -- are there stories we have held over the years? that met that standard? yes. i'll give you a classic one. i think that's now been written about. i think most news organizations did not write extensively about corporal -- i guess he was a corporal bergdahl and his disappearance. we knew a lot about it. there was a tremendous amount of information in the wikileaks documents, which i was involved in, and we were in an awkward position. right around the same time, a reporter for "the new york times" had also disappear ed i have a lot of cases where i've made a mistake and was too cautious. by and large, those are the standards. got to go from somebody very high up. i don't want to hear i have blood on my hands. i don't want to hear national -- i don't want to hear the vague, you will help the terrorists. i want very, very specific stuff. >> in the case of a foiled terror plot that led to the justice department scooping up all those records, that was held for five days at the government's request because their request was that the operation was ongoing and still hunting guys down. and it was only after the government said it would be -- it wouldn't jeopardize operations that the story was published which makes what happened next even more outrageous. >> right. if it is an ongoing investigation, and they made the case and are very specific and it comes from somebody high up, that is a harder one to refute. >> thank you. >> hi. professor libby lewis from ucla, former news anchor and reporter for cbs and nbc. i just have a pretty general question for each of the panelists. i'm wondering, should we, as journalists, educators et cetera be concerned about relationship between the government and journalists when we see more and more in the news. we hear about journalists covering stories in other countries, being held as potential spies. being accused of spying, you know, for the u.s. and among other things. should we be concerned about the fact that the cia and the fbi have booths, recruiting booths here at various journalism organizations? not just nej, but doesn't that sort of beg the question, what are they here for? being that, you know, these are journalism conferences and what is the interest. and should we be concerned? >> let me start on that. we've got journalists around the world, almost 300 journalists. it is a fairly frequent problem where foreign governments accuse our reporters and accuse them essentially of being spies, and often for the u.s. and so any ambiguity, and we say we have no association with any government. we are entirely independent. you know, whatever accusation is entirely untrue. but any am ambiguity that any government has and reports to be journalist, puts life in danger. so i'm extremely concerned about it. that's not to say that cia doesn't need people with journalistic skills to do things that they need to do. so i'm not saying recruiting people for other things who have journalistic skills is a problem. but any time an intelligence organization usees a journalistic cover it puts our people and journalists around

Related Keywords

New York , United States , Japan , Afghanistan , Iran , Turkey , China , Illinois , Wisconsin , Syria , Columbia University , Russia , Belgrade , Serbia General , , Michigan , Hausa , Ghazni , Washington , District Of Columbia , Pakistan , Connecticut , United Kingdom , Maine , Iraq , Virgin Islands , Massachusetts , Iowa , Tehran , Pennsylvania , North Korea , Yemen , Chicago , America , New Yorker , British , Syrian , American , Julia Pearson , Scott Walker , George Mason , Nightline Thomas , John Rizzo , Steve Adler , Chelsea Manning , Bruce Braley , Pierre Thomas , Archie Cox , Bob Dietz , Pat Quinn , Joni Ernst , Tom Corbett , Rick Snyder , Jane Mayer , Bobby Schilling , Peter Maass , Mike Hayden , Gabby Giffords , Edward R Murrow , Glen Greenwald , Asia Pacific , Cheri Bustos , Valerie Plame , Bob Woodward , Tom Drake , Edward Snowden , Barack Obama , Steven Adler , William O Douglas , Hillary Clinton , John Miller , Mary Burke ,