Bill Curtis: Everybody ready?
Ed Larson: Mm- hmm ( affirmative).
Bill Curtis: Welcome to Politics, Meet Me in the Middle. I'm Bill
Bill Curtis: Curtis. Well, firstly, our co- hosts are Pulitzer prize- winning
Bill Curtis: historian, bestselling author, worldwide lecturer, and widely quoted socially distant
Bill Curtis: and zoomed- in authority of everything historical and constitutional, Professor
Bill Curtis: Ed Larson. How are you doing, Ed?
Ed Larson: Hello. Nice to be with you and Jane, but especially
Ed Larson: wonderful to see Paul.
Bill Curtis: Okay. And also zooming in, we've got Jane Albrecht. She's
Bill Curtis: an international trade attorney, who's represented U. S. interest to high-
Bill Curtis: level government officials all over the world. And she's been
Bill Curtis: involved with several U. S. presidential campaigns and in full
Bill Curtis: disclosure, she's also president of the local Malibu Democratic Club.
Bill Curtis: Jane, it's nice to remote see you again too.
Jane Albrecht: It's always a pleasure and honor to be here.
Bill Curtis: Can you say that again, but pull into your microphone?
Jane Albrecht: Yeah, is the microphone a problem? Yeah, we didn't really do a
Jane Albrecht: final sound test. Is that working?
Bill Curtis: Yep.
Jane Albrecht: It's always a pleasure, a delight and an honor to
Jane Albrecht: be here.
Bill Curtis: And Paul Rosenzweig, we are honored to have the founder
Bill Curtis: of the Homeland Security consulting company, Red Branch Consulting and
Bill Curtis: senior advisor to the Chertoff Group. He was the first
Bill Curtis: deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland
Bill Curtis: Security and he's an author, he's a consistent contributor
Bill Curtis: to the Atlantic and he's frequently the authority on CNN
Bill Curtis: and in full disclosure, Paul considers himself a Republican. Welcome, Paul.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, not any more. I actually changed my political affiliation
Paul Rosenzweig: a while ago. I'm now officially an independent. But I
Paul Rosenzweig: think it's fair to say I consider myself a conservative still.
Bill Curtis: Well, so you're in the middle. We'll still find
Bill Curtis: the middle here someplace.
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes.
Ed Larson: I'm with you, Paul. I switched to an independent.
Bill Curtis: I think that the last few years has changed a lot
Bill Curtis: of people's stance on some of that. That's just what
Bill Curtis: our show is all about. So Paul, let's go back
Bill Curtis: a little bit. When formed originally, specifically, what was the
Bill Curtis: role of the Department of Homeland Security and how was
Bill Curtis: it formed?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, the Department of Homeland Security quite obviously was
Paul Rosenzweig: a response to the tragedy of 9/ 11 and the
Paul Rosenzweig: death of 3000 Americans or less that day. But more
Paul Rosenzweig: concretely, it was a response to the perceived lack of
Paul Rosenzweig: coordination of the Government's anti- terrorism, counter terrorism and border
Paul Rosenzweig: security efforts, which were, at that time, distributed across a
Paul Rosenzweig: number of different agencies. The coast guard guarded the maritime
Paul Rosenzweig: border and it was in the Department of Transportation.
Paul Rosenzweig: Customs and Border Patrol where... Customs was in the Department
Paul Rosenzweig: of Treasury, Border Patrol was in the Department of Justice.
Paul Rosenzweig: It was basically a-
Bill Curtis: Just kind of a coordination structure?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yeah. A lack of a coordination structure. It was a
Paul Rosenzweig: nightmare. And so the idea, which mostly grew out of
Paul Rosenzweig: the 9/ 11 Commission's review of what went wrong on
Paul Rosenzweig: September 11th, was to create a overarching superstructure of
Paul Rosenzweig: coordination that would bind all of these different things together
Paul Rosenzweig: in a way that would create a unity of effort
Paul Rosenzweig: and a locus for the focus of our counter- terrorism
Paul Rosenzweig: efforts. Especially, since at that time, we all thought that
Paul Rosenzweig: the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/ 11 were the first
Paul Rosenzweig: of a series. And happily that has not proven the [crosstalk 00:03:57].
Bill Curtis: So it was quickly assembled after 9/ 11?
Paul Rosenzweig: No, not very quickly at all. It took a couple
Paul Rosenzweig: years before the department was actually created. The very first
Paul Rosenzweig: thing that happened was that President Bush created an office
Paul Rosenzweig: of Homeland Security in the White House, which was intended
Paul Rosenzweig: to be a coordinating function, much like the National Security
Paul Rosenzweig: Council is intended to knit together the Department of Defense
Paul Rosenzweig: and the Department of State and all of our foreign
Paul Rosenzweig: and international engagements, including the International Trade Commission, I guess.
Bill Curtis: I'm curious, Paul, why wasn't the FBI involved in that group?
Paul Rosenzweig: In the office of Homeland Security? It was initially. They had
Paul Rosenzweig: a major counter- terrorism mission. And indeed one of the
Paul Rosenzweig: reasons that the actual formation of the Department of Homeland
Paul Rosenzweig: Security was delayed was that many people thought that the
Paul Rosenzweig: FBI should move over to the new office of Homeland
Paul Rosenzweig: Security. And there was, in typical Washington parlance, a bureaucratic
Paul Rosenzweig: knife fight over that one with a lot of
Paul Rosenzweig: blood spilled on the floor.
Bill Curtis: Interesting. So Jane, I think you had had a slightly different opinion of
Bill Curtis: how the FBI and, I don't know, did the CIA
Bill Curtis: end up part of this thing?
Jane Albrecht: Right. Yeah. I think I was in Washington at the
Jane Albrecht: time and recall everything that Paul is saying and he's
Jane Albrecht: basically right. There was bureaucratic fighting. I always believe
Jane Albrecht: in quality government and efficient government and I have never
Jane Albrecht: been convinced, and this is nothing with respect to you,
Jane Albrecht: Paul, because you worked hard and tried to do good.
Jane Albrecht: I've never been convinced the Department of Homeland Security was
Jane Albrecht: an effective and good idea to solve the problems. Paul
Jane Albrecht: is right. The main problem with 9/ 11 was the
Jane Albrecht: failure of particularly our various agencies, FBI, State, CIA DIA,
Jane Albrecht: to share, effectively, certain information, all of which they
Jane Albrecht: had, but sometimes they guarded it jealously and sometimes it
Jane Albrecht: was just not effective communication.
Bill Curtis: So after the creation of Homeland Security, Jane, did the communication improve?
Jane Albrecht: Well, that's...
Bill Curtis: Or maybe Paul?
Jane Albrecht: Paul could say that better, but the problem is that the creation of the
Jane Albrecht: Department of Homeland Security did not solve the communication problem.
Jane Albrecht: What you really needed was an executive order saying
Jane Albrecht: everybody report to the NSA and that's a different matter.
Jane Albrecht: So this is not to-
Bill Curtis: Paul, what do you think of that?
Paul Rosenzweig: I tend to agree with Jane that the department has
Paul Rosenzweig: been more promising and less delivery than we would like.
Paul Rosenzweig: The one area where it has been successful is probably
Paul Rosenzweig: in the unity of effort at the border itself, knitting
Paul Rosenzweig: together, customs, the agricultural inspection agency, the border immigration
Paul Rosenzweig: pieces, like border patrol. So there's now a kind of
Paul Rosenzweig: seamless border around the country, plus the coast guard at the
Paul Rosenzweig: maritime edges. But most of the rest of it has
Paul Rosenzweig: been less successful than we wanted, mostly because we've made
Paul Rosenzweig: it the center of DHS has no power at all.
Paul Rosenzweig: The secretary doesn't have a lot of authority.
Jane Albrecht: Well, on top of that, Paul, you were absolutely-
Bill Curtis: Yeah, Ed?
Jane Albrecht: Yeah, go ahead, Ed. Did you want to say something?
Ed Larson: Sure. Part of the problem, I think, as Paul's suggesting,
Ed Larson: is it didn't end up including the best intelligence gatherers.
Ed Larson: And what it is you're supposed to share that intelligence.
Ed Larson: And while I agree, I think the border is where
Ed Larson: it works best because they're the key organizations involving the
Ed Larson: border, including the coast guard, are involved. But CIA, the
Ed Larson: military intelligence and the FBI are the key intelligence
Ed Larson: gatherers and if they're not part of it, you've got
Ed Larson: the old problem just continuing. And then how closely you
Ed Larson: have an oversight organization, an individual who tries to listen
Ed Larson: to what the FBI and the CIA and the military
Ed Larson: intelligence is gathering and coordinate that, but it's not Homeland Security.
Bill Curtis: So Paul, let me ask you before the formation of
Bill Curtis: Homeland Security, which sounds like it was a difficult coordination
Bill Curtis: job. Were some of these agencies in possession of
Bill Curtis: knowledge that could have saved us from 9/ 11?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, that's obviously a counterfactual that can't be proven, but
Paul Rosenzweig: the 9/ 11 Commission identified a wall, a barrier between
Paul Rosenzweig: the law enforcement community and the intelligence community that it
Paul Rosenzweig: says did contribute to missing the blinking red signals.
Paul Rosenzweig: That was The Lights were Flashing Red was the title of
Paul Rosenzweig: one of the chapters of the 9/ 11 Commission report.
Paul Rosenzweig: There were famously a number of FBI agents, one named
Paul Rosenzweig: Coleen Rowley and another whose name escapes me at the
Paul Rosenzweig: moment, who wrote about how if they'd only known X,
Paul Rosenzweig: they would have been able to do Y and that
Paul Rosenzweig: would have worked out much better. One involved Zachariah Moussaoui,
Paul Rosenzweig: who was the fellow who took only takeoff lessons, not
Paul Rosenzweig: landing lessons, which ought to have been a cue to somebody.
Paul Rosenzweig: So all of that was part and parcel of an
Paul Rosenzweig: effort to create DHS and also some other structures. For
Paul Rosenzweig: example, the National Counter Terrorism Center, the NCTC isn't is
Paul Rosenzweig: an all threats, all information center that was built out
Paul Rosenzweig: in Virginia now where they take streams from DIA and
Paul Rosenzweig: CIA and NSA and DHS, and they try and merge it
Paul Rosenzweig: all together, again, with some success, but not necessarily all success.
Bill Curtis: Let me ask all of you, if I may, how
Bill Curtis: has the Department of Homeland Security changed in the last
Bill Curtis: 20 years?
Jane Albrecht: I think Paul would know best about that, wouldn't you Paul?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, I would say that the arc of the agency
Paul Rosenzweig: began with five to seven years of just trying
Paul Rosenzweig: to do integration. When you do that kind of big
Paul Rosenzweig: an organization, just pulling it all together and making sure
Paul Rosenzweig: everybody knows where the bathrooms are, metaphorically speaking.
Bill Curtis: Must be a massive amount of data sharing that had
Bill Curtis: to go on.
Jane Albrecht: Data sharing, with incommensurate systems, it took them two years
Jane Albrecht: to get everybody on the same email server, I think.
Jane Albrecht: No joke, but we laugh, but that's emblematic of it.
Jane Albrecht: So the first five years, I would say, from
Jane Albrecht: when president Bush started it till the end of the
Jane Albrecht: Bush administration in '09 was basically foundation building. And then
Jane Albrecht: the Obama administration began to be able to take advantage
Jane Albrecht: of some of the synergies and take this newly created car
Jane Albrecht: out for a little bit of a ride, for example.
Jane Albrecht: One good example of was that they did a, from
Jane Albrecht: my perspective, very good job in coordinating cyber security
Jane Albrecht: issues across the Government in ways that might not have
Jane Albrecht: been as successful if DHS hadn't existed. And then in
Jane Albrecht: the last four years, obviously the focus of the department
Jane Albrecht: has changed at presidential direction. It's mostly become a department
Jane Albrecht: of immigration enforcement. It's all about immigration enforcement and not
Jane Albrecht: even about customs, not really about cyber, very little
Jane Albrecht: about emergency management and response, not a lot about aviation
Jane Albrecht: security, certainly not about pandemic planning. And so what we've
Jane Albrecht: seen in the last four years, I would say is
Jane Albrecht: a regression of the department back from its all- threats
Jane Albrecht: perspective, which is how we used to think of it,
Jane Albrecht: to one that is much more narrowly focused, exclusively on
Jane Albrecht: a single- threat stream, the immigration- threat stream. And
Jane Albrecht: that obviously is... Well, the polite way to say, it's
Jane Albrecht: a product of president Trump's unique focus on that as
Jane Albrecht: a critical issue.
Bill Curtis: Well, I noticed that during your tenure at Homeland Security,
Bill Curtis: a couple of your focuses were very interesting to me.
Bill Curtis: One of which was international riles for data protection. Is
Bill Curtis: that another term for cyber security?
Paul Rosenzweig: Actually, no. Rules for international data protection were rules
Paul Rosenzweig: about when we, as the U. S. Government could or
Paul Rosenzweig: should share information with say our partners in Europe or
Paul Rosenzweig: when Europeans would share information with us, more limitedly with
Paul Rosenzweig: other nations like Brazil or India.
Bill Curtis: What type of information?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, the main locus of that information at the time
Paul Rosenzweig: was large- scale data sets about things like who's
Paul Rosenzweig: moving money around and who's traveling. It turns out that
Paul Rosenzweig: the best ways to kind of get a handle on
Paul Rosenzweig: terrorist activity are through following their communications, which was NSA's
Paul Rosenzweig: job, following their money movement, which was Treasury's job and
Paul Rosenzweig: following their travel, which was DHS' job. Since the three
Paul Rosenzweig: things you needed to do to become a terrorist, were
Paul Rosenzweig: talk to each other, have enough money to buy what
Paul Rosenzweig: you needed to do it, and then actually get
Paul Rosenzweig: to where you want it to go to blow stuff
Paul Rosenzweig: up. And so strategically our goal was to get better
Paul Rosenzweig: insight into how terrorists were moving around the globe, including
Paul Rosenzweig: through Europe. The problem with that is that in order
Paul Rosenzweig: to get insight into terrorist movement, you have to collect
Paul Rosenzweig: information about the movement of everybody. There are, last
Paul Rosenzweig: I looked, 80 million arrivals in the U. S. from
Paul Rosenzweig: overseas every year, nobody-
Bill Curtis: Help me understand why you would need to track everybody's
Bill Curtis: movement in order to track certain targets that you've identified
Bill Curtis: as potentially dangerous?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, first off, often we don't identify them until after
Paul Rosenzweig: they've traveled. So if we don't have a historic record
Paul Rosenzweig: of who's entered the United States in the last
Paul Rosenzweig: six months, say, I can't look back and say, " I
Paul Rosenzweig: just found out that the [ Mohammed Attar 00: 15:10] arrive,
Paul Rosenzweig: who is a terrorist, and he may have arrived sometime
Paul Rosenzweig: in the last six months. So that's the first bit
Paul Rosenzweig: of it, but the other more innovative and also candidly
Paul Rosenzweig: intrusive aspect of it was that we wanted to build
Paul Rosenzweig: a system that would build connections between people. So
Paul Rosenzweig: for example, if we knew that Mohammed Attar was a
Paul Rosenzweig: terrorist, we would also want to know something about the
Paul Rosenzweig: person who made a reservation with the same travel agency
Paul Rosenzweig: on the same day as Mohammed Attar.
Bill Curtis: I understand that but how does it help the knowledge
Bill Curtis: of how they travel if you're also tracking Jane Albrecht?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, it doesn't help to know that Jane Albrecht
Paul Rosenzweig: is traveling, but we don't know about that connection until
Paul Rosenzweig: afterwards. The theory is [inaudible 00:16:06], it's a big data thing. I
Paul Rosenzweig: collected all then I sift it and I discard Jane
Paul Rosenzweig: because she's an innocent lady, but then I look at
Paul Rosenzweig: the thing and say, "Attar, a bad guy," seated on the airplane
Paul Rosenzweig: next to Ed Larson. Maybe all of a sudden I
Paul Rosenzweig: should be interested in Ed.
Bill Curtis: That's not a surprise really.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, no, in this case, not. But the challenge of
Paul Rosenzweig: course is you have to trust the Government to
Paul Rosenzweig: discard Jane and also to discard Ed after we've looked
Paul Rosenzweig: at him briefly and said, " That was just an accident. He
Paul Rosenzweig: happened..." Because on the other side of Ed was Ed's
Paul Rosenzweig: wife and they had the aisle in the middle and
Paul Rosenzweig: Mohammed had the window. So tough beings for Ed.
Bill Curtis: So one of the things that I remember back then, because two
Bill Curtis: decades ago doesn't seem like that far from me anymore,
Bill Curtis: we were concerned that the tools used to track
Bill Curtis: potential terrorists targets could also be used to track, I
Bill Curtis: don't know , the other political party, for example.
Paul Rosenzweig: That's exactly what the problem was with the collection in
Paul Rosenzweig: the first instance that they... the department took the view
Paul Rosenzweig: that the terrorist threat was sufficiently real and that risk
Paul Rosenzweig: was small. So we were urging that we go forward
Paul Rosenzweig: with it. Your concern was very real because I could
Paul Rosenzweig: just as readily say, " Let's track Jane because she's
Paul Rosenzweig: the head of the Democratic Party in Malibu and follow
Paul Rosenzweig: all the people that she knows and build a profile
Paul Rosenzweig: on her." The Europeans were very reluctant to share information
Paul Rosenzweig: with the United States on exactly that basis. For example,
Paul Rosenzweig: they thought that we might target labor union members or
Paul Rosenzweig: people with disabilities or any sorts of other things. And
Paul Rosenzweig: so we had to do a lot of work to
Paul Rosenzweig: assure them that we were actually going to be
Paul Rosenzweig: respectful of European privacy. And then the last point I'll
Paul Rosenzweig: mention is this is still going on. Just last month,
Paul Rosenzweig: the European Court of Justice struck down the latest agreement
Paul Rosenzweig: between the United States and the European Union. Something known as
Paul Rosenzweig: the privacy shield, which was a promise from the U.
Paul Rosenzweig: S. Government to not use commercial data collected in Europe
Paul Rosenzweig: to target Europeans. The Court of Justice for the European
Paul Rosenzweig: Union said that the American promises of this was
Paul Rosenzweig: written in the Obama administration were insufficient and struck the
Paul Rosenzweig: agreement down. So all the commercial people are going crazy
Paul Rosenzweig: right now, trying to figure out what to do.
Bill Curtis: So it sounds like at least back then you weren't
Bill Curtis: focused on, I'm going to say that again because I
Bill Curtis: whacked my microphone. It sounds like back then, you weren't
Bill Curtis: really focused on cyber security, but now cyber security could
Bill Curtis: actually be a method of terrorism now, couldn't it?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes, it could. By the way, I was focused and
Paul Rosenzweig: the international data sharing was just one part of
Paul Rosenzweig: my portfolio. I worked on President Bush's first comprehensive national
Paul Rosenzweig: cyber security initiative, which was classified top secret at the time.
Bill Curtis: So tell me really, is China really listening right now?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes.
Bill Curtis: What does that mean to us?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, right now, I think it means absolutely nothing. There's
Paul Rosenzweig: nothing I'm saying now that, that the Chinese would be that interested in.
Bill Curtis: I don't necessarily mean in this program. I hope
Bill Curtis: they're listening to this program.
Paul Rosenzweig: I do too.
Bill Curtis: Are they actually stealing our secrets and our data and
Bill Curtis: have they basically hacked our systems?
Paul Rosenzweig: Pretty much. Four or five years ago, the Chinese breached
Paul Rosenzweig: the Office of Personnel Management, which was the repository for
Paul Rosenzweig: all of the information about people in America who hold
Paul Rosenzweig: top secret and secret clearances. And in order to
Paul Rosenzweig: get the clearance, we have to disclose to the government,
Paul Rosenzweig: everything about us, all of our peccadilloes.
Bill Curtis: The NOC list on Mission Impossible.
Paul Rosenzweig: Right. It's not quite the NOC because it's not [inaudible 00:20:13], but yes, basically. My SF-
Paul Rosenzweig: 86, which is the standard form 86, disclosed everything about
Paul Rosenzweig: my life from high school forward, including the last time
Paul Rosenzweig: I used narcotics, which was happily far enough in the
Paul Rosenzweig: past not to really matter. In my instance, it
Paul Rosenzweig: did not disclose that I'd had any mental illnesses because
Paul Rosenzweig: I have not. But in other instances, if you disclose
Paul Rosenzweig: that and it's not a barrier, they just want to know.
Paul Rosenzweig: And the Chinese stole that out from under us. And
Paul Rosenzweig: so they have everything about me personally that I disclose
Paul Rosenzweig: to the U. S. government. So, I'm hosed, baby.
Bill Curtis: Well, but okay, you're hosed. With all the data that
Bill Curtis: supposedly China has hacked their way into. Is there really
Bill Curtis: a method of mining, such a massive amount of
Bill Curtis: information and learning anything from it?
Jane Albrecht: Yes.
Bill Curtis: Yes.
Paul Rosenzweig: Surely.
Bill Curtis: So give me some examples, Ed.
Ed Larson: Well, all they have to do is focus on who
Ed Larson: they have to deal with on a particular issue. If
Ed Larson: they're dealing with a sir, if they have to look
Ed Larson: at this person, they can look. If Paul is actually
Ed Larson: getting involved with something in the next administration and they're
Ed Larson: having to deal with them, they can look up right
Ed Larson: where his weaknesses might be, might how they want to
Ed Larson: deal with them. So because these are all individualized
Ed Larson: information, they can focus in on anybody they want. Then
Ed Larson: beyond that they can run sort of large searches for
Ed Larson: certain issues and see who pops up on those issues.
Ed Larson: So those are at least two different ways that they
Ed Larson: can readily use it. And Paul can easily add a
Ed Larson: few more.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, it's actually very simple. I mean, you can find
Paul Rosenzweig: out what my hobbies are. And so, and it
Paul Rosenzweig: is a commonplace that is known in the intelligence means that
Paul Rosenzweig: you're much more vulnerable to people who share your interests.
Paul Rosenzweig: It happens that you would learn that I'm a baseball
Paul Rosenzweig: fan. Go nets.
Bill Curtis: No, go Dodgers.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, okay.
Jane Albrecht: No, go Cards.
Paul Rosenzweig: Go Cards? Hopefully they get to play sometime soon.
Jane Albrecht: Yeah, exactly.
Paul Rosenzweig: But I have always known that I'm much more
Paul Rosenzweig: personally responsive to somebody with whom I want to start
Paul Rosenzweig: talking about how good Clayton Kershaw is. We can have
Paul Rosenzweig: that discussion, whether Clayton Kershaw is better than Strasburg or
Paul Rosenzweig: Strasburg is better than Kershaw, you and I can have a fun discussion
Paul Rosenzweig: for the next 20 minutes. And at the end of
Paul Rosenzweig: it, I'll like you. And then I will trust you.
Paul Rosenzweig: And it doesn't matter. And because of that, when you
Paul Rosenzweig: come to me sometime and ask me something, I might
Paul Rosenzweig: slip.
Bill Curtis: So it basically helps in the act of spying?
Paul Rosenzweig: Definitely helps in the act of spying.
Jane Albrecht: But you asked how, Bill. And how is very sophisticated
Jane Albrecht: search programs. It's the same possibly better, we don't know
Jane Albrecht: how far it's advanced, search technology that NSA uses to
Jane Albrecht: monitor our emails and sometimes phone calls and that's [crosstalk 00:23:21].
Bill Curtis: But what they're looking for-
Paul Rosenzweig: Or they could use this to figure out what you're interested in.
Ed Larson: Think back how the famous historical example of this
Ed Larson: would have been in the forties and fifties, when they
Ed Larson: worried about anybody who was homosexual, because they could so
Ed Larson: easily blackmail them back then when that was a black
Ed Larson: ball. Well, the same way now, suppose they look through
Ed Larson: those forms and find that you admitted to an affair
Ed Larson: that you've never told your spouse about. There's other things
Ed Larson: that you can use to sort of blackmail them. So
Ed Larson: I agree both the affiliation, how you work out affections,
Ed Larson: like Paul's talking about, that is you're both pretend
Ed Larson: to be a baseball fan and work out friendship with
Ed Larson: him or find out about what stocks they own or
Ed Larson: what their personal life is, and then use it for
Ed Larson: good or for ill. Think of what if they found
Ed Larson: out that one of our senators was closetly gay and
Ed Larson: active, and then they could use that to threaten to
Ed Larson: expose that person. So you can use these things in a
Ed Larson: lot of ways. It just depends. You you just
Ed Larson: have to think like a spy and think like somebody who will do this.
Jane Albrecht: But, of course, that's why when you go into the government, the important thing
Jane Albrecht: is to disclose all your peccadilloes because they can only
Jane Albrecht: blackmail you and extort you if you've got secrets, that's
Jane Albrecht: one reason what [crosstalk 00:24:46].
Bill Curtis: Let's talk to our listeners for a second. I don't know.
Bill Curtis: Maybe we have 100 or 200, 000 people listening and that
Bill Curtis: nice woman who makes my coffee at Starbucks. I'm just
Bill Curtis: curious, before we freak her out by saying your-
Bill Curtis: Before we freak her out by saying, you're being watched
Bill Curtis: and listened to and exposed, are regular people that are
Bill Curtis: not in the government and not actually involved in negotiations.
Bill Curtis: I'm going to say this again when the helicopter passes.
Jane Albrecht: Oh, so there's a helicopter monitoring you, huh?
Bill Curtis: All right. Yes. Are regular people who are not involved
Bill Curtis: in the government and not involved in negotiations with China,
Bill Curtis: are they at risk here or is that really
Bill Curtis: pretty much just noise? Because you're not going to closely
Bill Curtis: monitor individuals who are making coffee at Starbucks, are you?
Paul Rosenzweig: That's correct. There are however, two ways in which the
Paul Rosenzweig: barista at Starbucks needs to be aware of this. The
Paul Rosenzweig: first is that we've been talking at a governmental level
Paul Rosenzweig: about risks to national security. There's another level that almost
Paul Rosenzweig: every American has experienced, which is the risk of
Paul Rosenzweig: identity theft and cyber crime. On average, 30% to 40%
Paul Rosenzweig: of Americans have had to change a password, change a
Paul Rosenzweig: credit card, had their data stolen from target or Home
Paul Rosenzweig: Depot and have experienced some of that. So, that's a
Paul Rosenzweig: real risk for everybody. It's not the same existential risk
Paul Rosenzweig: as national security in China in the Trump or
Paul Rosenzweig: Bush administrations. But what it is, is a risk to
Paul Rosenzweig: them for their money and their personal identity. I actually
Paul Rosenzweig: had a friend recently whose account was hacked on Facebook
Paul Rosenzweig: and the hacked account sent out this horrifically racist and
Paul Rosenzweig: antisemitic screed that was totally inconsistent with the person I
Paul Rosenzweig: knew. But which caused no amount of anguish for
Paul Rosenzweig: him because he had to convince everybody that it really
Paul Rosenzweig: wasn't him, that he'd been hacked and that he hadn't
Paul Rosenzweig: just gotten drunk one day and revealed his true self.
Paul Rosenzweig: So, that's the first way in which it's relevant. The
Paul Rosenzweig: second way in which it's relevant is really in the
Paul Rosenzweig: aggregate, which is to say that information about Americans as
Paul Rosenzweig: a group or any society as a group allows people
Paul Rosenzweig: to manipulate our social systems in ways that are
Paul Rosenzweig: disruptive of our political discourse in American norms. The classic
Paul Rosenzweig: case of this is the Russians. In 2016, who were
Paul Rosenzweig: on both sides of Black Lives Matter, advocating for Black
Paul Rosenzweig: Lives Matter with some fake accounts and talking to all
Paul Rosenzweig: those people about how their issue wasn't being taken seriously
Paul Rosenzweig: and then advocating for Blue Lives Matter and saying to
Paul Rosenzweig: all the pro police, pro order people that their
Paul Rosenzweig: issue wasn't being taken seriously. They spun people up with
Paul Rosenzweig: fake accounts and fake meetings, and fake anger, anguish that
Paul Rosenzweig: was mostly derived from collecting, mining our social media and
Paul Rosenzweig: figuring out what our weak points are.
Bill Curtis: An interesting strategy. Are we as good at infiltrating the
Bill Curtis: cyber systems in China as they are at infiltrating ours?
Paul Rosenzweig: Probably. The answer to that is, I'm sure classified and
Paul Rosenzweig: I don't know it. If I did, I wouldn't answer
Paul Rosenzweig: it. But the honest answer is probably. Where we're very
Paul Rosenzweig: good, we tend to be smaller. China acts at scale.
Paul Rosenzweig: So they've got 3 million hackers where we've got 3,
Paul Rosenzweig: 000 but ours tend to kind of come from a
Paul Rosenzweig: slightly higher cream.
Bill Curtis: Ed?
Ed Larson: Again, I'm like Paul, I have no way to have
Ed Larson: inside information on this, but the countries you might think
Ed Larson: about using would be probably less China though maybe you
Ed Larson: do it with Hong Kong somewhat. But some other country
Ed Larson: like Iran, try to use this sort of collected information
Ed Larson: to figure out who might be on one side, who
Ed Larson: might be on the other, and then try to
Ed Larson: disrupt situations in Iran or Venezuela or Nicaragua or other
Ed Larson: countries, maybe Cuba. That we have more immediate issues with,
Ed Larson: sort of like Russia did to the United States.
Bill Curtis: Interesting. So, we can act incredibly indignant that some other
Bill Curtis: countries are listening to us and taking our data, but
Bill Curtis: we're all doing it, aren't we?
Paul Rosenzweig: We are, though it's at least worth noting that
Paul Rosenzweig: the official American policy, that as announced by President Obama
Paul Rosenzweig: and actually reaffirmed by President Trump publicly, is that we
Paul Rosenzweig: will not steal Chinese data for the economic benefit of
Paul Rosenzweig: American companies, or anybody's data. Now, you may not believe
Paul Rosenzweig: them, which that's an interesting question. But if you do
Paul Rosenzweig: accept that, that puts us in a slightly different
Paul Rosenzweig: category than much of the Chinese efforts. I've actually had
Paul Rosenzweig: clients whose intellectual property was taken by China and six
Paul Rosenzweig: months later, knock offs were arriving on the boat in
Paul Rosenzweig: Seattle at two thirds the price and putting them under
Paul Rosenzweig: severe economic pressure.
Bill Curtis: But Paul, we like many other countries have agreed in
Bill Curtis: principle that we wouldn't use torture in wartime and I'm
Bill Curtis: not sure that we stuck to that principle.
Paul Rosenzweig: Like I said, you can believe them or not.
Ed Larson: And you should also remember the key word in what
Ed Larson: Paul said, they affirm to not use it for economic
Ed Larson: purpose. That is, they won't steal how TikTok works and
Ed Larson: give it to Microsoft or something like that. But they
Ed Larson: didn't say the same thing about for political reasons and
Ed Larson: of course, what Russia did was steal it for political
Ed Larson: reasons and I presume China does as well. Whenever president
Ed Larson: Trump gets asked this question about something the Russians
Ed Larson: do, he immediately replies, well, we're no angels either, we
Ed Larson: do it too, and he probably knows. So, there you
Ed Larson: got Trump affirming that we do it.
Jane Albrecht: There's no question that in the past, and currently, we've
Jane Albrecht: tried to influence Russian elections. No one likes to say
Jane Albrecht: it, but we have, and other countries as well. The
Jane Albrecht: CIA did that and it was considered okay, because it was
Jane Albrecht: much less costly in terms of money and human
Jane Albrecht: lives to try to influence an election than to do
Jane Albrecht: assassination or worse, invasion. We do it, we're just not
Jane Albrecht: used to other people doing it to us. I'm not
Jane Albrecht: saying I approve of what Trump does, I'm just saying
Jane Albrecht: it's a fact.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, interesting. That noted. Let's take a quick break. We'll
Paul Rosenzweig: be back with Paul Rosenzweig in just a minute. Everybody
Paul Rosenzweig: take a breath. How are we doing. Hey, Jay or
Paul Rosenzweig: Mike do you need anything so far?
Speaker 1: No, we're good. Good for me.
Paul Rosenzweig: Do you hear the-
Bill Curtis: Are you on a laptop by any chance?
Paul Rosenzweig: I am.
Bill Curtis: Can you tilt the screen down a little bit? We
Bill Curtis: have your head like towards the, yeah. Yeah, just stay that's
Bill Curtis: perfect. Thank you.
Paul Rosenzweig: My pleasure. I actually have a Razer Kiyo, which they
Paul Rosenzweig: sent it to me so I could do a CNN.
Paul Rosenzweig: It's a high highfalutin camera and I have a snowball.
Bill Curtis: Yeah. You didn't tell us. So who is they?
Paul Rosenzweig: Our street Institute where I'm a senior fellow likes it
Paul Rosenzweig: when I do CNN. So I first started coming down
Paul Rosenzweig: here. They set me up with, it's not a home
Paul Rosenzweig: recording studio, but I've got a really spiffy camera that's
Paul Rosenzweig: better than your average laptop camera. It even has a
Paul Rosenzweig: little independent light that I sometimes put on when it's
Paul Rosenzweig: darker. And they gave me this giant microphone.
Bill Curtis: You know that it's all Chinese made, right?
Paul Rosenzweig: Oh yes, absolutely. But I've reached the conclusion that if
Paul Rosenzweig: I've got grits, I keep them on something other than
Paul Rosenzweig: an electronic system.
Bill Curtis: A file cabinet. I remember those.
Jane Albrecht: What about keeping it on a computer that you don't
Jane Albrecht: connect to the internet?
Paul Rosenzweig: Not all computers that are not, you don't connect
Paul Rosenzweig: to the internet don't connect to the internet. I can
Paul Rosenzweig: install on your computer, not me personally, I'm not good
Paul Rosenzweig: enough. But one can install on your computer, a system
Paul Rosenzweig: that if it has the capability, right, if you have
Paul Rosenzweig: a WIFI, if you have an antenna, which every laptop
Paul Rosenzweig: does right now, you can turn it on while
Paul Rosenzweig: not knowing that and connect same true with your phone.
Paul Rosenzweig: Even if you've turned off the... you see this phone
Paul Rosenzweig: it's off right now.
Bill Curtis: But it knows where you are in, and it's tracking you.
Paul Rosenzweig: And it could be on for all I know. There
Paul Rosenzweig: are programs that can turn this on, but maintain a dark
Paul Rosenzweig: screen. Actually, one of my favorite stories is that those
Paul Rosenzweig: programs use a fair bit of energy. So the
Paul Rosenzweig: first way that people first noticed that they existed was
Paul Rosenzweig: that you turn off your phone and it would have
Paul Rosenzweig: a full battery. And when you turned it on, it didn't
Paul Rosenzweig: have 50%. And people would go like, shit, my battery's
Paul Rosenzweig: not working. And eventually they figured out that there was a drain.
Paul Rosenzweig: So now they come with a little sub- routine that
Paul Rosenzweig: marks what your battery symbol was when they start and
Paul Rosenzweig: then puts that back up and then slowly drops it
Paul Rosenzweig: down to where it actually is at just more
Paul Rosenzweig: rapidly than you would notice.
Bill Curtis: Pretty crazy. Okay. Shall we restart?
Jane Albrecht: Okay.
Bill Curtis: Everybody take a breath. So we're back with Paul Rosenzweig
Bill Curtis: talking Homeland Security. Paul I also noticed in your bio
Bill Curtis: that you had a focus back in Homeland Security on
Bill Curtis: avian flu. Was that because you saw it as
Bill Curtis: a potential weaponized disease?
Paul Rosenzweig: No, it was because we were concerned about it as a pandemic.
Paul Rosenzweig: Avian flu, you may remember in the mid bodies is
Paul Rosenzweig: transmitted by birds and from people to people. And when
Paul Rosenzweig: it initially appeared in China or Vietnam it seemed to
Paul Rosenzweig: grow like Topsy. And we were worried about it being
Paul Rosenzweig: communicated to the United States. So we were trying to
Paul Rosenzweig: figure out both what its risk was to humans,
Paul Rosenzweig: as opposed to birds and what its propagation would look
Paul Rosenzweig: like, and whether or not we could prevent its entry
Paul Rosenzweig: into the United States. So it was very much pandemic
Paul Rosenzweig: planning of the sort that would have been useful to
Paul Rosenzweig: have done more of in the run up to COVID- 19.
Bill Curtis: So is Homeland Security involved in today's challenge?
Paul Rosenzweig: They should be. They have a lot of the
Paul Rosenzweig: emergency planning and response capabilities. Obviously the medical side of
Paul Rosenzweig: this, the epidemiology side of this is outside of their
Paul Rosenzweig: expertise. They have a small office of health affairs that
Paul Rosenzweig: has 50 kind of doctor and epidemiology types. But America's
Paul Rosenzweig: expertise in that is in Centers for Disease Control, the
Paul Rosenzweig: Asheville Institutes for Health and the Health and Human Services,
Paul Rosenzweig: HHS. So that's where people who know stuff about
Paul Rosenzweig: that are residing. What DHS has or what it did
Paul Rosenzweig: in the avian flu experience and what it has today
Paul Rosenzweig: is experienced in a, stopping things from coming in at
Paul Rosenzweig: borders. We've missed that boat already with COVID- 19, but
Paul Rosenzweig: that would have been a possible. And b, about the
Paul Rosenzweig: distribution of emergency supplies and communication and emergency communications to
Paul Rosenzweig: people who are suffering in times of crisis. They
Paul Rosenzweig: develop that mostly from earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, that sort of
Paul Rosenzweig: thing. But also through the distribution of vaccines and other
Paul Rosenzweig: critical goods, right? They have a whole plan for distributing
Paul Rosenzweig: food, for distributing water during times of crisis. So they
Paul Rosenzweig: have basically the logistical chain that is going to be
Paul Rosenzweig: the next most important part of our response to COVID-
Paul Rosenzweig: 19. On the day we get the vaccine, that
Paul Rosenzweig: doesn't mean everybody's got it, right? We've got to manufacture
Paul Rosenzweig: 350 million of them. Not being the rough population in
Paul Rosenzweig: the United States. Got to vaccinate everybody, which means that
Paul Rosenzweig: if we vaccinate three and a half million people a
Paul Rosenzweig: day, it's going to take us 100 and three and
Paul Rosenzweig: a half million vaccines a day is a lot of
Paul Rosenzweig: vaccines. You need enough people to give it. You got
Paul Rosenzweig: distributed in vials with syringes on trucks. I mean,
Paul Rosenzweig: I don't know, but maybe the vaccine will need to
Paul Rosenzweig: be refrigerated, or maintain the room temperature.
Bill Curtis: Paul this seems like a somewhat broadened sensibility for an
Bill Curtis: organization like Department of Homeland Security that was put together
Bill Curtis: to combat terrorism.
Paul Rosenzweig: It is, but it isn't. The idea was that all
Paul Rosenzweig: of our responses to crises look the same after the
Paul Rosenzweig: crisis happens, whether or not it's a nuclear weapon
Paul Rosenzweig: exploding in New York or a plane flying into the
Paul Rosenzweig: World Trade Center, or a hurricane hitting Miami. In the
Paul Rosenzweig: immediate aftermath, the cleanup is going to involve mostly not
Paul Rosenzweig: exclusively, but mostly the same things. Yeah. Clearing away the
Paul Rosenzweig: rubble, bringing food in, getting communications back up and running,
Paul Rosenzweig: giving people places to shelter. There are some unique pieces
Paul Rosenzweig: of it like decontaminating a nuclear bomb site that
Paul Rosenzweig: don't happen in every instance. But the assessment was and
Paul Rosenzweig: we may or may not be have been right. But
Paul Rosenzweig: the assessment was that by and large, our response to
Paul Rosenzweig: mass catastrophes looks more alike than it does different even
Paul Rosenzweig: given different causes. And so they put all of the emergency
Paul Rosenzweig: response and preparation, planning, and response, and recovery in DHS
Paul Rosenzweig: for that reason.
Bill Curtis: So why is department of Homeland Security have virtually nothing
Bill Curtis: to do with COVID?
Paul Rosenzweig: It is FEMA Jane, that's what FEMA.
Bill Curtis: Can you say that again? So I'm not interrupting you Jane.
Jane Albrecht: Everything you've mentioned is FEMA, it's not the rest of the.
Paul Rosenzweig: Mostly, I mean, one of the brilliant (inaudible) of
Paul Rosenzweig: DHS that we haven't realized was the idea of being
Paul Rosenzweig: able to take other resources and bring them to
Paul Rosenzweig: bear on a crisis. For example, in hurricanes, it's very
Paul Rosenzweig: frequently the coast guard that is a responder, right. Coast
Paul Rosenzweig: guard helicopters and things like that. In many of the
Paul Rosenzweig: other instances, for example, it's aviation stuff that has to
Paul Rosenzweig: be flown in. So that involves TSA. Plus the whole
Paul Rosenzweig: idea was to give the secretary of Homeland Security, the
Paul Rosenzweig: unique coordinating role for all of the federal government. So
Paul Rosenzweig: he could then call in national guard troops from DOD,
Paul Rosenzweig: Department of State has a role coordinating federal donations of
Paul Rosenzweig: a significant fraction of what we get to respond to
Paul Rosenzweig: a hurricane is the kindness of people in Germany or
Paul Rosenzweig: Japan. Right. So that's a state department thing. So the
Paul Rosenzweig: idea was to create this one locus for coordination, which
Paul Rosenzweig: was DHS, with FEMA carrying the main load, using the
Paul Rosenzweig: immediate resources of DHS for the next outermost ring,
Paul Rosenzweig: and then broadening it out to DOD state department of
Paul Rosenzweig: justice, FBI, whatever,
Bill Curtis: Paul, you're going to move immediately know where I'm going
Bill Curtis: with this, but I'm going to ask Ed a historian
Bill Curtis: to talk to us a little bit about when have
Bill Curtis: federal troops been used and deployed inside the United States
Bill Curtis: for the purposes of enforcing local laws.
Ed Larson: Not very often, what is much more common is
Ed Larson: the use of federal troops often actually not the army,
Ed Larson: often actually the federalized state militia or national guard, but
Ed Larson: federalized under federal control have been used to domestically enforce
Ed Larson: federal law. That's the much more common all the way
Ed Larson: back to George Washington, leading a militia of thousands of
Ed Larson: men to enforce the federal tax laws in Pennsylvania
Ed Larson: and the so called whiskey rebellion. And then you can just
Ed Larson: go right just forward. I mean, Colonel Robert Lee and
Ed Larson: forced a protection of Harpers Ferry, a federal institution from
Ed Larson: the attacks of John Brown during reconstruction. Federal troops were
Ed Larson: all over the South enforcing federal civil rights laws to
Ed Larson: protect African Americans or the Pullman Strike in the so-
Ed Larson: called Gilded era. There are several railroad strikes where federal
Ed Larson: troops were using the depression era. Federal troops were used
Ed Larson: to monitor the veterans marshes. And then of course, Eisenhower
Ed Larson: famously used the federal troops to enforce court ordered desegregation. So
Ed Larson: you have a lawful lot of examples. And once the
Ed Larson: federal troops are there ostensibly and primarily to enforce federal
Ed Larson: law, they of course have a general police presence
Ed Larson: that will enforce state law as well, therefore local law
Ed Larson: and state law. The other example that you do have
Ed Larson: historically is when a governor will call upon the federal
Ed Larson: government to send in troops, such as in, during the
Ed Larson: riots between various riots, massive riots that occurred in the mid-
Ed Larson: 1960s. Whether it be Los Angeles or Detroit, you had
Ed Larson: governors or local officials calling for help to send
Ed Larson: in federal troops.
Bill Curtis: Didn't that have to get signed off.
Ed Larson: Usually those are the examples.
Bill Curtis: Didn't that have to get signed off by both the governor and
Bill Curtis: the president [crosstalk 00:44:43]?
Ed Larson: No, the governor had to request it. It wasn't signed off.
Ed Larson: It was a government governor initiating the request. Now, of
Ed Larson: course often the federal government had said, we're ready to
Ed Larson: do it if you ask for us. So really the
Ed Larson: examples you have are using federal troops domestically to
Ed Larson: enforce federal law. And that of course, was a claim
Ed Larson: in Portland recently because what they kept saying is we're
Ed Larson: here to protect the federal courthouse. And the question is,
Ed Larson: how far beyond did those troops go? And then you
Ed Larson: have the alternative examples such as the LA riots of
Ed Larson: sending in federal troops at the request of the local
Ed Larson: officials or the governor who signed off and indeed asked
Ed Larson: for it. So those are the historic examples.
Bill Curtis: I'm sorry. In Portland the governor asked for it?
Ed Larson: No. In Portland was the other example.
Bill Curtis: Exactly.
Ed Larson: It was the example of using federal troops domestically to
Ed Larson: enforce federal law in case protecting the federal courthouse. That's
Ed Larson: like sending Colonel Robert E. Lee into Harpers Ferry to
Ed Larson: protect the armory after John Brown attacked it. Now,
Ed Larson: the question is, is that all they did? How far did
Ed Larson: they go beyond it? But that was the legal precedent
Ed Larson: that they would use?
Bill Curtis: Okay, devil's in the details. So Paul, has there been
Bill Curtis: circumstances where these kinds of troops were deployed by the
Bill Curtis: federal government actually in spite of the local governors not
Bill Curtis: wanting those troops to appear?
Paul Rosenzweig: So I'm going to start with a gentle disagreement
Paul Rosenzweig: with the phrase. I wouldn't call them troops, right? Because
Paul Rosenzweig: none of these were national guard troops of the sort
Paul Rosenzweig: that Ed's history was accurately describing. Either federal troops or
Paul Rosenzweig: national guardsman who had been federalized.
Bill Curtis: Who are these guys?
Paul Rosenzweig: These guys were law enforcement officers, sworn law enforcement officers
Paul Rosenzweig: who exercised federal law enforcement authority. The most militarized
Paul Rosenzweig: of which, the ones you saw in the camouflage with
Paul Rosenzweig: the night goggles and the really heavy armons were a
Paul Rosenzweig: group known as BORTAC. BORTAC stands for Border Tactical Unit.
Paul Rosenzweig: The Border Tactical Unit was created probably 15, 20 years
Paul Rosenzweig: ago in response to the increasingly dangerous arms being
Paul Rosenzweig: used by drug cartels on the Southwest border. The typical
Paul Rosenzweig: border patrol agent has a revolver, maybe a rifle, right?
Paul Rosenzweig: And he was turning out to be facing a bunch
Paul Rosenzweig: of cartel guys with AK- 47, machine guns, all sorts
Paul Rosenzweig: of armaments that... He was outgunned. So BORTAC was
Paul Rosenzweig: essentially a quasar militarized law enforcement agency that was created
Paul Rosenzweig: for the very purpose of being armed to equate themselves
Paul Rosenzweig: to the drug cartels. And their training was for low
Paul Rosenzweig: grade combat that was not quite war, but it was a
Paul Rosenzweig: lot more than arresting mules, druggies on the border.
Paul Rosenzweig: It certainly was never any training for dealing with protesters
Paul Rosenzweig: who were exercising their rights to protest and or engaging
Paul Rosenzweig: in illegal civil disobedience involving threats to federal property. That
Paul Rosenzweig: was not part of their training. Most of the people,
Paul Rosenzweig: almost all of the people that they interacted with were non-
Paul Rosenzweig: Americans who we could talk a long time about the
Paul Rosenzweig: difference in the legal rights of non- Americans and
Paul Rosenzweig: Americans. And it's very detailed, but suffice it to say
Paul Rosenzweig: that non- Americans illegally entering the United States have a
Paul Rosenzweig: lot less due process protection, broadly speaking, that's a generalization
Paul Rosenzweig: I know, but that's okay.
Bill Curtis: It didn't seem like the protestors in Portland had a
Bill Curtis: whole lot of civil rights protection. They were held for
Bill Curtis: quite a while in a parking lot without having their
Bill Curtis: rights handed to them.
Paul Rosenzweig: That's exactly right. The BORTAC units that we saw
Paul Rosenzweig: on video were not very experienced in operating in situations
Paul Rosenzweig: where the threats to them were less. Their protesters not
Paul Rosenzweig: armed with machine guns, right. And where the people they
Paul Rosenzweig: were interacting with were people who brought with them a
Paul Rosenzweig: bucket of rights, First Amendment rights mostly that had some
Paul Rosenzweig: value here. I mean, that's not to defend them
Paul Rosenzweig: all of them, there were lots of people in Portland who were...
Paul Rosenzweig: Not to defend them, all of them. There were lots of people
Paul Rosenzweig: in Portland, who were throwing Molotov cocktails, and they deserved
Paul Rosenzweig: a more of-
Bill Curtis: Direct approach.
Paul Rosenzweig: Fueled response. By all reports, those were a minority within
Paul Rosenzweig: the larger group, so in some ways, this actually recapitulates
Paul Rosenzweig: the discussion we had earlier about picking Ed Larson and
Paul Rosenzweig: Mohamed Attar out from a group, that has Jane Albrecht
Paul Rosenzweig: in it, right. It's really the same problem, in
Paul Rosenzweig: a different context, and these guys were not trained to
Paul Rosenzweig: do that, and so they just lumped Jane right in
Paul Rosenzweig: there with the Jane, being in this case, my metaphor
Paul Rosenzweig: for the Portland moms.
Bill Curtis: So-
Paul Rosenzweig: And-
Bill Curtis: Why was this group chosen for this task of protecting
Bill Curtis: the federal properties in Portland?
Paul Rosenzweig: That's a truly excellent question, to which we don't have
Paul Rosenzweig: an answer yet, for which I would advocate Congress seeking
Paul Rosenzweig: an answer.
Bill Curtis: Take a stab at it, Paul.
Jane Albrecht: I'll take a stab at it, if you want.
Jane Albrecht: I think, generally, it's fairly clear that Trump tried to
Jane Albrecht: use the military in Washington to put down protests, and
Jane Albrecht: the military rebelled as much as military can rebel, and said, "
Jane Albrecht: That's not our job and we won't do it." As
Jane Albrecht: you know, he was strongly rebuked and paid a political
Jane Albrecht: price. So he wanted to, essentially try to do the
Jane Albrecht: same thing and the Department of Homeland Security, if I'm
Jane Albrecht: correct, has more law enforcement resources at its disposal
Jane Albrecht: than any other agency, and he's got a lot more
Jane Albrecht: power over that, particularly if he has an appointee, who's
Jane Albrecht: sympathetic to them, but basically he couldn't use the military,
Jane Albrecht: so he grabbed these law enforcement officers to do the
Jane Albrecht: same thing.
Bill Curtis: But can the federal government deploy troops to a place where the
Bill Curtis: local governors don't want the help?
Jane Albrecht: I would say, no. My argument would be no. Ed ?
Ed Larson: Well, historically they certainly can and have, when it's the-
Jane Albrecht: Right.
Ed Larson: Defense and protection of federal law, not domestic law-
Jane Albrecht: Correct.
Ed Larson: But federal law. And so when you have federal law, I
Ed Larson: mean the Southern Governors didn't want troops there and Reconstruction,
Ed Larson: but they were defending federal law. Certainly George Wallace didn't
Ed Larson: want the troops defending the desegregation of The University of
Ed Larson: Alabama, or the Governor of Arkansas didn't want Eisenhower to
Ed Larson: send federalized National Guard in to desegregate Little Rock
Ed Larson: schools. But since it was federal law, or in some
Ed Larson: of those cases, federal Court Orders, the federal government has
Ed Larson: the power to do it and so that raised the question
Ed Larson: first that was raised up, " Okay, where they defending federal
Ed Larson: property?" There's a law saying the federal government can defend
Ed Larson: federal property.
Bill Curtis: (crosstalk) Sounds like Paul is saying that they might
Bill Curtis: have been, they went much farther than that while
Bill Curtis: they were there.
Ed Larson: Well, that's where the questions. And I agree with Paul on
Ed Larson: both of the points he was making on that. First,
Ed Larson: if they were pushing out far beyond the courthouse itself,
Ed Larson: to rough up people that weren't threatening the courthouse. And
Ed Larson: second, the types of troops they enforced, they were not
Ed Larson: army. Absolutely. They were not technically federal troops or nationalized,
Ed Larson: Oregon National Guard, they were other groups. But the
Ed Larson: Border Patrol has a long history, that goes way back
Ed Larson: a hundred years of being really rough at the border,
Ed Larson: really rough. And so you take those people who work
Ed Larson: out in the desert, with a history of what we
Ed Larson: would view as, questionable activities, that only a rogue police
Ed Larson: department would engage in, and then throw them into a
Ed Larson: setting, which they weren't trained to do with the
Ed Larson: equipment that was designed for other uses, as Paul describes
Ed Larson: it. You have a recipe for really troubling activities.
Bill Curtis: But you know what? That's really interesting Ed, because here we are, we're
Bill Curtis: looking for a view from the middle. So, I think
Bill Curtis: what I'm hearing is, it's reasonable to think that the
Bill Curtis: federal government could want to protect federal property while people
Bill Curtis: are tossing Molotov cocktails and shouldn't be. The problem,
Bill Curtis: could very well be just a management problem, not actually
Bill Curtis: a conceptual problem where maybe it's reasonable to protect federal
Bill Curtis: property, but the management of a group of people who
Bill Curtis: were likely Trump's only solution. It was very difficult and
Bill Curtis: resulted in a whole lot of video that we've all
Bill Curtis: watched and-
Paul Rosenzweig: Wow, I really got a finger up here-
Jane Albrecht: Okay. Let me, let me clarify my-
Bill Curtis: Paul, how about you go first?
Jane Albrecht: Yeah.
Paul Rosenzweig: Jane wants to clarify first, go ahead Jane.
Jane Albrecht: I do not believe it was legal, to send federal
Jane Albrecht: law enforcement officers in, to enforce state or local law.
Jane Albrecht: Yes, they have the right to protect federal property. But
Jane Albrecht: if I was the Governor of Oregon, I would have
Jane Albrecht: ordered the federal troops out and I would have used
Jane Albrecht: the state, my state troops over which I have authority.
Jane Albrecht: I would have surrounded the federal building and said, " You
Jane Albrecht: take one step off of federal property. You've got
Jane Albrecht: a problem with us."
Bill Curtis: Okay. I didn't. And Jane, I would expect you to have that
Bill Curtis: position. So Paul, let's get you a point of view.
Paul Rosenzweig: That's a great, we actually game- played that out Jane,
Paul Rosenzweig: at a little (inaudible) I was doing with people.
Paul Rosenzweig: And the obvious response is for President Trump to nationalize
Paul Rosenzweig: the Oregon National Guard now, put them under his control
Paul Rosenzweig: and order them to disperse. And apparently, there's no authority
Paul Rosenzweig: for a Governor to refuse a nationalization order like
Paul Rosenzweig: that. So yeah, we've been having-
Jane Albrecht: But, I'm not talking about the state National Guard. I'm
Jane Albrecht: talking about the state highway patrol.
Paul Rosenzweig: Ah, well then, then we would have had a shootout
Paul Rosenzweig: at the O. K. Corral.
Jane Albrecht: And I think Trump would have backed down because (crosstalk)
Jane Albrecht: the state versus federal, it would have played so
Jane Albrecht: badly in red states.
Bill Curtis: (crosstalk) But conceptually, if this is federal property, people
Bill Curtis: shouldn't ought to be throwing Molotov cocktail, and try
Bill Curtis: to destroy federal property. And perhaps the reasonableness of the
Bill Curtis: response, is greater than any of us feel is appropriate,
Bill Curtis: but a response could very well be appropriate.
Paul Rosenzweig: That's fair. I mean, had President Trump brought in other
Paul Rosenzweig: members of the Federal Protective Service, which is the group
Paul Rosenzweig: that is responsible for protecting federal property, Federal Protective Service,
Paul Rosenzweig: had he brought... And those people are trained, both
Paul Rosenzweig: to protect federal property, and to deal with American citizens,
Paul Rosenzweig: because all federal property or not all, but most of our
Paul Rosenzweig: property is on American soil. Had he brought them in
Paul Rosenzweig: to Portland, from Nashville or Atlanta or Big Sky, Montana
Paul Rosenzweig: or LA, probably they would have responded better. They would
Paul Rosenzweig: have not pushed their perimeter out. They would not
Paul Rosenzweig: have engaged in activity that seem to be purporting to
Paul Rosenzweig: enforce state and local law, which is beyond their remit.
Paul Rosenzweig: And they probably wouldn't have wound up, as it seems
Paul Rosenzweig: to be the case, serially violating people's Civil Rights. I
Paul Rosenzweig: think truthfully, this is yet another example of the biggest
Paul Rosenzweig: paradigmatic problem that Trump has shown a light on,
Paul Rosenzweig: which is to say that all of the structures of
Paul Rosenzweig: American law involve broad rules and executive discretion to ignore,
Paul Rosenzweig: violate, extend, modify those laws. Whether it's tariffs on steel
Paul Rosenzweig: or emergency funding to build a military facility or
Paul Rosenzweig: moving people to defend federal property in Portland. The problem
Paul Rosenzweig: with all those, is that we rely upon the good
Paul Rosenzweig: judgment and probity and discretion of the President to exercise
Paul Rosenzweig: that authority normally. That he won't call Canada a terror
Paul Rosenzweig: threat, that he won't take the money to build a
Paul Rosenzweig: wall that Congress has twice rejected. And that he won't
Paul Rosenzweig: take that, instead of taking the Federal Protective Services. He
Paul Rosenzweig: won't take [inaudible 00: 08: 59].
Bill Curtis: Ed?
Ed Larson: Historically the agency that he would have picked on, if
Ed Larson: you go all the way back 150 years, it would have been the Federal
Ed Larson: Marshals and the Federal Marshals are probably strong enough to
Ed Larson: have, if sufficiently deployed from around the nation, to defend
Ed Larson: the courthouse. They were, who were used in bleeding Kansas,
Ed Larson: which was sort of a state federal issue. I mean,
Ed Larson: they've been used for all these years and it goes
Ed Larson: back and let me just reinforce what Paul said.
Ed Larson: You can go back to the actual debates when they
Ed Larson: wrote the constitution in Philadelphia. And you had people like
Ed Larson: Benjamin Franklin and Governor Randolph of Virginia who offered the
Ed Larson: original Virginia plan and George Mason and the future Vice
Ed Larson: President of the United States, Jerry from Massachusetts. And they
Ed Larson: all said, " We've given too much arguable power to
Ed Larson: the President." Now, this will only work, you will only
Ed Larson: keep a Republic if your President has virtue and Republican
Ed Larson: virtue. And that's why Franklin went along. He made a
Ed Larson: famous last speech, he said, " This can be abused." They
Ed Larson: had in mind, somebody like a Patrick Henry or later
Ed Larson: on, an Aaron Burr, who would have been a living
Ed Larson: example of overusing this possible power. It's there, it's
Ed Larson: arguably constitutional. But, if you have somebody as Franklin used,
Ed Larson: the example of George Washington, this'll work. But there's this
Ed Larson: risk here, of the checks and balances being disrupted by
Ed Larson: a President who pushes the limit of their power. And
Ed Larson: so, that's why we have the stories of people like
Ed Larson: Eisenhower or Roosevelt or Washington, of course, recognizing how
Ed Larson: you have to practice as President, if you push all
Ed Larson: the limits, what you can arguably do. And then if
Ed Larson: you can arguably do it, who can stop you, it
Ed Larson: takes forever to get an issue through the courts. Who is stopping you?
Bill Curtis: So let me ask you a question, Ed, and actually
Bill Curtis: Paul as well with what you just said before. I'm
Bill Curtis: jumping ahead and I realized that this is probably a
Bill Curtis: whole show in itself, and we don't have time for
Bill Curtis: it. What happened to constitutional checks and balances? Where
Bill Curtis: is everybody? You know, I know there are groups like
Bill Curtis: the Lincoln Project but how is it that virtually no
Bill Curtis: Republican seemed to be concerned with checks and balances?
Paul Rosenzweig: That's a great question. Probably a historian like Ed can
Paul Rosenzweig: give you the long answer of it. I-
Bill Curtis: Certainly Ed can give me the answer of it.
Paul Rosenzweig: Yeah. Sorry, Ed. From my perspective, you've identified the
Paul Rosenzweig: approximate cause, which is that members in Congress see themselves,
Paul Rosenzweig: less as advocates for the institution and its role, and
Paul Rosenzweig: more as advocates for the Party and as defenders of
Paul Rosenzweig: their party, if that happens to be the party in power-
Bill Curtis: Don't they realize that if they give the President too
Bill Curtis: much power that, next time it might be a Democratic President?
Paul Rosenzweig: It used to be the case, that that was the
Paul Rosenzweig: case, that people, as recently as Robert Byrd, the
Paul Rosenzweig: Senator from West Virginia, who was pretty famous in trying
Paul Rosenzweig: to want to call Bill Clinton to account, for a
Paul Rosenzweig: number of things including his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But,
Paul Rosenzweig: saying that the Senate has a role, he didn't care
Paul Rosenzweig: about the house very much, but that was unique and
Paul Rosenzweig: different in protecting these things. I would say that a
Paul Rosenzweig: lot of this, has eroded over a long history
Paul Rosenzweig: of time. Of one example and I don't know if
Paul Rosenzweig: other people will agree, but one example that I think
Paul Rosenzweig: of is, we all thought that having popularly elected Senators
Paul Rosenzweig: was a good thing, but actually it turns out making
Paul Rosenzweig: them less independent, and more responsive to populism and so
Paul Rosenzweig: they no longer stand as a bulwark. And that's happened
Paul Rosenzweig: over the last 100 years, since the Amendment changed that,
Paul Rosenzweig: it's a slow process. We thought that courts, up
Paul Rosenzweig: until the 1950s, people who were nominated to courts never
Paul Rosenzweig: appeared for hearings, right? They didn't come and defend their
Paul Rosenzweig: political philosophy. The only question was, are they experienced enough
Paul Rosenzweig: to do the job? Yes. They get the job. Now
Paul Rosenzweig: you have to, I mean, Josh Holly just said, " I'm
Paul Rosenzweig: not going to allow anybody on court who doesn't vote,
Paul Rosenzweig: promise to vote against Roe versus Wade." And we've tried,
Paul Rosenzweig: we're slowly transforming them into a political, just a
Paul Rosenzweig: baby legislature. If we don't recover it, that way lies
Paul Rosenzweig: inevitable politicization of everything.
Bill Curtis: Of course, not too long ago, you were on CNN
Bill Curtis: and you were talking about the idea of Presidential power
Bill Curtis: and how possibly even Bill Barr, our Attorney General believes
Bill Curtis: that the authority of the President is total. You apparently
Bill Curtis: felt very differently about it. And you felt differently about
Bill Curtis: Bill Barr's powers and function as well. Do you want
Bill Curtis: to describe that a little here?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, yeah. I mean, let me restart that, the Department
Paul Rosenzweig: of Justice is headed by a political appointee and that
Paul Rosenzweig: political appointee necessarily gets the right to set priorities for
Paul Rosenzweig: the Department of Justice. The Obama administration can decide,
Paul Rosenzweig: it's going to put more resources into enforcing Civil Rights,
Paul Rosenzweig: and anti- gun legislation. And the Bush administration before that,
Paul Rosenzweig: decides that it wants to focus on counter narcotics and
Paul Rosenzweig: counter terrorism. That's what political people get to do. What
Paul Rosenzweig: they don't get to do, is determine that the Department
Paul Rosenzweig: of Justice will essentially serve as the handmaiden for the
Paul Rosenzweig: elected President, enforcing his political desires and moving to
Paul Rosenzweig: support his political agenda for re- election.
Bill Curtis: (crosstalk) Could that not happen? He serves at the
Bill Curtis: pleasure of the President.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, traditionally it has not. I mean, to greater or lesser
Paul Rosenzweig: degree, we've had bad Attorneys General like John Mitchell, who
Paul Rosenzweig: went to jail for doing that exact thing, right?
Bill Curtis: That's interesting.
Paul Rosenzweig: But mostly there's been a a strong norm against
Paul Rosenzweig: political interference in the day to day operations of the
Paul Rosenzweig: Department of Justice. Stu Gerson, who I know from his
Paul Rosenzweig: time when he was assistant Attorney General and then acting
Paul Rosenzweig: Attorney General in the Bush and Reagan era, tells this
Paul Rosenzweig: wonderful story about how one day he was called in
Paul Rosenzweig: by the political guy, about somebody who pulled some political
Paul Rosenzweig: strings and gotten a meeting. And the political guy said, "
Paul Rosenzweig: Tell me about this case?" And Stewart explained it to him
Paul Rosenzweig: and said, " This is a righteous case." And the fellow said, "
Paul Rosenzweig: That's all I need to hear. Go ahead, go do
Paul Rosenzweig: what's right." And that's the end of it. Right? Yeah,
Paul Rosenzweig: the political appointee asks a question, gets an answer and
Paul Rosenzweig: that's it, right? The White House does not call down
Paul Rosenzweig: and say, " I want you to start an investigation of
Paul Rosenzweig: Amazon, because I hate Jeff Bezos because he owns the
Paul Rosenzweig: Washington Post." The President does not get to pick
Paul Rosenzweig: up the phone and call the Attorney General and say, "
Paul Rosenzweig: We need an investigation into the origins of the investigation
Paul Rosenzweig: of my campaign, so that I have an October surprise
Paul Rosenzweig: to play." He does not-
Bill Curtis: But he apparently can call the Attorney General if he
Bill Curtis: wants to take a walk over to a local church
Bill Curtis: and hold up a Bible.
Paul Rosenzweig: Exactly. I mean, this is fundamental to the idea of
Paul Rosenzweig: blind justice. It's the idea, that there are and ought
Paul Rosenzweig: to be Firewalls, but against political interference in the
Paul Rosenzweig: normal course of Department of Justice activity. Of course, it's
Paul Rosenzweig: not perfect. That's leaked all the time in the past,
Paul Rosenzweig: it happens. But when it happens in the past, we
Paul Rosenzweig: all yell and scream and said, " This is terrible."
Jane Albrecht: It's an obstruction of justice.
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes. Today we're saying, " Go for it."
Jane Albrecht: What Paul's talking about, with the normal operation is he's
Jane Albrecht: talking about, it's not legal, permissible or acceptable for
Jane Albrecht: the President to interfere with the actual ongoing criminal investigation.
Jane Albrecht: And that's what's been happening here. And he has been using
Jane Albrecht: it to prosecute his political enemies or try to do
Jane Albrecht: so, and free his friends with, the Michael Flynn investigation
Jane Albrecht: and the Roger Stone, being two of the most outrageous examples.
Bill Curtis: That's great example. Ed's got his finger up though.
Ed Larson: And a related issue I would just add to
Ed Larson: that is, with the current Attorney General, he has a
Ed Larson: view, an ideological view that goes way back, about the
Ed Larson: power a President should have. To me, it strikes me
Ed Larson: like a medieval King, a pre- Vatican to medieval King,
Ed Larson: and that's what his beliefs are, it seems to be.
Ed Larson: And I don't think it accords with the historical view of
Ed Larson: the power that should be as a President. We
Ed Larson: have historically, Congress should have the highest power and the
Ed Larson: President execute the law. That's what I think the founders
Ed Larson: had in mind. But if that's not the way the
Ed Larson: Attorney General believes. And if the Attorney General believes that
Ed Larson: the President has basically the Divine right of Kings, then
Ed Larson: that Attorney General is more willing to carry out whatever
Ed Larson: those powers are, and it's that policy that we
Ed Larson: serve the President. It's different than the way another Attorney
Ed Larson: General who would be trying to, " Okay, the President sets
Ed Larson: the basic policy viewpoints, but still the President's operating within
Ed Larson: his power or her power to execute the laws of
Ed Larson: Congress." Now you get the example, just to give an example, "
Ed Larson: The Congress debates and debates, and decides how much money
Ed Larson: it's going to give to build the wall. The
Ed Larson: president signs it and then he turns around and issues
Ed Larson: an Executive Order taking money appropriated for an entirely different
Ed Larson: purpose, to build his wall." Well, maybe you can say
Ed Larson: that's arguably constitutional. Maybe Bill Barr thinks the President should
Ed Larson: have that power, but I believe it flies in the
Ed Larson: face of the checks and balances that were designed, where-
Bill Curtis: That leads us to our question Ed, " Why do we appear
Bill Curtis: to have no checks and balances?
Jane Albrecht: I'd say, Ed is being too kind. In the
Jane Albrecht: case of Bill Barr, I think Bill Barr is behaving
Jane Albrecht: as the perfect conciliary to a Mafia boss. He's not
Jane Albrecht: above lying and he's not above doing whatever it calls.
Jane Albrecht: I'm actually a moderate person, I'm actually not such a
Jane Albrecht: radical partisan there [crosstalk 01:10:48].
Bill Curtis: You know Jane, we have had vice Presidents before, that will go unnamed Chaney,
Bill Curtis: who used to run absolutely everything, everywhere. So there have
Bill Curtis: been unprecedented situations before.
Jane Albrecht: There's power, there's people in positions of power, but that's not
Jane Albrecht: what I'm talking about with what Bill Barr does.
Paul Rosenzweig: Okay, I want to continue this conversation. We take a
Paul Rosenzweig: 32 second break. I've got to go close some windows,
Paul Rosenzweig: because the rain is blowing in.
Bill Curtis: We can, I was about to, and if you'd let
Bill Curtis: me just do that real quick. Okay. Let's put a
Bill Curtis: pin in that right there. Take another quick break. We'll
Bill Curtis: be back with Paul Rosenzweig in just a minute.
Paul Rosenzweig: I'll be back in a minute. I got to close
Paul Rosenzweig: a couple of windows.
Ed Larson: You Jane, you're just tougher than I am.
Jane Albrecht: Sorry for interjecting that. I said you're too kind [crosstalk 01:11:28].
Bill Curtis: She's just angrier than you are, Ed.
Jane Albrecht: That's not angry.
Ed Larson: Sounds like Mike Thomas.
Jane Albrecht: This has not to do with Republican or Democrat. This
Jane Albrecht: has to do-
Bill Curtis: Of course it does.
Jane Albrecht: What I consider to be illegal behavior by an Attorney
Jane Albrecht: General. I think he's at least as bad as Mitchell.
Bill Curtis: Oh, what Mitchell did by comparison is child's play.
Ed Larson: But he's a lot smarter and he's a lot cleverer. And
Ed Larson: there you had the Republicans in Congress, many of them
Ed Larson: bite back and say like, Goldwater, this, " You just
Ed Larson: can't do this."
Jane Albrecht: Well. And what's the problem there is-
Ed Larson: That were such a partisan government that except for maybe
Ed Larson: Mitt Romney and maybe occasionally the good Senator from Alaska,
Ed Larson: they all just roll over and, you might have Collins
Ed Larson: of Maine saying, " Well, they'll learn their lesson and they
Ed Larson: won't do it again. And I talked to them," but
Ed Larson: nobody really standing up.
Jane Albrecht: Yeah. I mean, this really does come back to
Jane Albrecht: having a Senate. That's just a lapdog to a President
Jane Albrecht: who has done the longest list of impeachable offenses that
Jane Albrecht: I can ever imagine. Except, he hasn't shot anybody on
Jane Albrecht: Fifth Avenue yet.
Bill Curtis: Well, he promised to, we just weren't listening.
Jane Albrecht: Exactly.
Bill Curtis: Mike, I'm sorry that I've got a bolt of light
Bill Curtis: coming in at me. I don't know if I can do anything about it.
Ed Larson: No, you look like an angel with angelic light tone.
Jane Albrecht: If you could just get the light to be behind you, you'd have
Jane Albrecht: like a halo.
Paul Rosenzweig: If you want to see what it looks like now.
Jane Albrecht: Yeah.
Paul Rosenzweig: It's (crosstalk) pelting down.
Bill Curtis: Next time we have one of these Paul, I think
Bill Curtis: you should do it from that jacuzzi.
Paul Rosenzweig: In the normal course I do a lot of my
Paul Rosenzweig: meeting outdoors, but I saw the rain coming in, and
Paul Rosenzweig: if I were out there right now, I'd be,
Paul Rosenzweig: well I'd be wet.
Bill Curtis: Paul, do you have another 15 minutes?
Paul Rosenzweig: I do, and I'd be delighted to share them with
Paul Rosenzweig: you. If I don't put down the screen, the rain
Paul Rosenzweig: screen, the house is built to be outside in and the
Paul Rosenzweig: entire house gets-
Bill Curtis: Oh, I understand. Do you want to go do that now?
Paul Rosenzweig: Or that's why I just did, see?
Bill Curtis: Okay. Oh, you went out and you're all wet.
Paul Rosenzweig: Yeah. Well a little.
Bill Curtis: You know, not a figuratively what you're saying is
Bill Curtis: all wet, but you personally are all wet.
Paul Rosenzweig: Indeed, but I'm yours now. (crosstalk) One more second.
Jane Albrecht: Okay. I will note Bill that Paul said he agreed
Jane Albrecht: with me about Barr. It wasn't so angry.
Bill Curtis: That's true.
Jane Albrecht: I just said we were just talking while you were
Jane Albrecht: gone about Barr. I said, please note that Paul agreed
Jane Albrecht: with me for the most part about Barr. It's not
Jane Albrecht: such an angry comment. It's a comment of a lawyer
Jane Albrecht: who understands.
Paul Rosenzweig: Yeah.
Jane Albrecht: What the limits should be to be the Attorney General.
Paul Rosenzweig: No, I think the Attorney General... Ask me about the
Paul Rosenzweig: ethics complaint against the Attorney General when we restart.
Jane Albrecht: Okay. I didn't realize there was one.
Bill Curtis: (crosstalk) Actually Jane why don't you ask the question.
Jane Albrecht: No, you go ahead and, Bill.
Bill Curtis: I don't know enough about it to form a good question.
Paul Rosenzweig: Just say you understand there was an ethics complaint filed
Paul Rosenzweig: against the Attorney General. What is that all about?
Bill Curtis: Okay.
Paul Rosenzweig: Now you'll and then you'll know, because I'll tell you.
Bill Curtis: We're back with Paul Rosen-
Paul Rosenzweig: And then you'll know because I'll tell you.
Bill Curtis: We're back with Paul Rosenzweig talking Homeland Security and a
Bill Curtis: few other things now. Paul, what was the ethics complaint
Bill Curtis: against the... sorry. Ethics complaint against.
Paul Rosenzweig: Attorney General Barr.
Jane Albrecht: Bill Barr.
Bill Curtis: Paul, what was the ethics complaint against Bill Barr?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well actually, an interesting recent development, 27 lawyers, including
Paul Rosenzweig: several former heads of the DC Bar and former ethics
Paul Rosenzweig: lawyers for the DC Bar Association filed an ethics complaint
Paul Rosenzweig: with the DC Bar, arguing that Bill Barr should be
Paul Rosenzweig: disciplined. And the reason they argued he should be disciplined
Paul Rosenzweig: was not because of political disagreements about his views, about
Paul Rosenzweig: the president's authority, because that's not a ground for discipline.
Paul Rosenzweig: What they argued was, that he had systematically lied to
Paul Rosenzweig: the American public about matters relating to his activities,
Paul Rosenzweig: and that those lies made him untrustworthy and therefore unfit
Paul Rosenzweig: to continue to have a law license. They specified that
Paul Rosenzweig: he lied about the contents of Mueller's Report about President
Paul Rosenzweig: Trump's activities, that he lied about an inspector, the contents
Paul Rosenzweig: of an inspector general report about the FBI's investigation of
Paul Rosenzweig: President Trump. That he lied about his actions in
Paul Rosenzweig: Lafayette Square. So they just laid out point by point,
Paul Rosenzweig: and it's not like a two page thing. It's 27, 28
Paul Rosenzweig: pages with footnotes and facts, kind of demonstrating all the
Paul Rosenzweig: different ways in which he lied to the American public,
Paul Rosenzweig: and thus calling into question his fitness to continue to be a lawyer much less his [crosstalk 01:16:53].
Bill Curtis: So what happened with all of this? I mean, he testified
Bill Curtis: not too long ago in front of Congress and mentioned
Bill Curtis: a number of those things that you just touched
Bill Curtis: on. It still seems like nothing has happened discipline- wise.
Ed Larson: Paul, was he under oath when he testified before Congress?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes. The things that he repeated under oath before Congress,
Paul Rosenzweig: are potentially fit subjects for a perjury investigation. I mean,
Paul Rosenzweig: it won't happen, in part because the perjury investigation will
Paul Rosenzweig: be conducted by the same Department of Justice that he
Paul Rosenzweig: runs right now. Which is why another really interesting fundamental
Paul Rosenzweig: Meet Me in the Middle type topic is how
Paul Rosenzweig: do we find an independent way to monitor the executive
Paul Rosenzweig: that is effective. Congress has failed on its authority. As
Paul Rosenzweig: Ed said, judicial process takes way too long, right? And
Paul Rosenzweig: independent counsel laws have been struck down, have been eliminated.
Paul Rosenzweig: So where does an American go for some independent check.
Paul Rosenzweig: Quis custodes custodiet, who will watch the watchman?
Bill Curtis: I've had discussions with Ed and Jane over the
Bill Curtis: last year during this show. My frustration with the concept
Bill Curtis: of checks and balances, but it seems that they really
Bill Curtis: don't exist. Nobody is exercising them, and as a result,
Bill Curtis: maybe they were badly formed, badly conceived.
Paul Rosenzweig: I would disagree. I mean, for many, many years, Congress
Paul Rosenzweig: was quite effective in oversight. As recently as the 1980s,
Paul Rosenzweig: I appeared as a witness in front of John
Paul Rosenzweig: Dingell and I swear to you, I was peeing my
Paul Rosenzweig: pants. Can I say that? Oh [crosstalk 00:03: 39].
Bill Curtis: You can say whatever you want.
Paul Rosenzweig: I was peeing in my pants out of fear.
Bill Curtis: Yeah, just don't do it, right.
Paul Rosenzweig: There were eras in which the... in the aftermath of
Paul Rosenzweig: the Civil War, in which the Speaker of the House
Paul Rosenzweig: was probably more powerful than the President of the United
Paul Rosenzweig: States. I, one of the things I do on
Paul Rosenzweig: the side is I work part time at a think
Paul Rosenzweig: tank called the R Street Institute and we have a
Paul Rosenzweig: project it's called Make Congress Great Again, yeah. And [crosstalk 01:19:14].
Bill Curtis: How is it going?
Jane Albrecht: I agree with Bill that I think the concept of
Jane Albrecht: checks and balances is a very good idea. One of my
Jane Albrecht: greatest concerns right now is not the strength of the
Jane Albrecht: fourth estate, but the true independence of the judiciary. And
Jane Albrecht: while, for example, the Federalist Society, there's nothing wrong
Jane Albrecht: in them promoting judges that are good jurists and have
Jane Albrecht: a certain attitude towards legislative construction. But I'm really getting
Jane Albrecht: worried, particularly with this administration that they're appointing too many
Jane Albrecht: judges that'll just rule the right way regardless of the
Jane Albrecht: facts before them. And that if we lose the independence
Jane Albrecht: of our judiciary, and of course it also takes, it
Jane Albrecht: also means that they're not going to exercise their oversight
Jane Albrecht: over the executive branch. And that's also a problem.
Bill Curtis: Ed.
Ed Larson: I think part of this problem that Paul's talking about and Jane
Ed Larson: is underscoring simply comes from simply partisanship. That if we
Ed Larson: turn out, instead of having a institutional government, a government,
Ed Larson: which Madison and Hamilton and Franklin thought they were creating,
Ed Larson: where institutions would protect their own independence. And Paul adds
Ed Larson: to that when you made the Senate answerable to the
Ed Larson: states and the states appointing it rather than elected
Ed Larson: by the people, that was part of those institutional protections.
Ed Larson: Now, if you change to everything, it's just tied to
Ed Larson: partisanship. So you have partisan judges, you have partisan senators.
Ed Larson: And instead of following their institutional biases and norms defending
Ed Larson: their own and therefore fighting against each other for power,
Ed Larson: the Senate fighting with the House, and the Senate and
Ed Larson: the House fighting with the president, and the courts
Ed Larson: sort of being independent empires. If they all just follow
Ed Larson: what partisan, and I liked the point Jane made, because
Ed Larson: you can have judges picked for ideological purpose. Like you
Ed Larson: pick ones that care a lot about abortion rights or
Ed Larson: right to life. That's one thing, but that's not a
Ed Larson: partisan issue. If they're just going to follow a partisan
Ed Larson: line and then the president sets the partisan tone and
Ed Larson: suddenly senators will just ask how high they're supposed
Ed Larson: to jump. Not the like people like you were mentioning,
Ed Larson: Burt of West Virginia or Mitt Romney, trying to make
Ed Larson: an institutional decision or their own judgment as senators used
Ed Larson: to do or congresspeople. Then if you get everything aligned
Ed Larson: politically, if you get the judges dominated by one party's
Ed Larson: judges and both houses of Congress is dominated by the
Ed Larson: same ones and they obey partisan rules, well, then you
Ed Larson: have the recipe for a president having a powers
Ed Larson: like the president of Turkey now has, or the president
Ed Larson: of Brazil. Authoritarian powers, and that flies in the face
Ed Larson: of this idea of institutional checks and balances.
Jane Albrecht: But Ed, I would even take issue with you on
Jane Albrecht: the ideological issues, whether it be abortion or something else.
Jane Albrecht: If you have a judge appointed who promises to rule
Jane Albrecht: a certain way, one way or the other, and they
Jane Albrecht: know that's the price of their getting an appointment,
Jane Albrecht: you've got a judge predisposed to decide a case, not
Jane Albrecht: on the facts before them and the law, but on
Jane Albrecht: ideological principles. It's even worse when it comes to oversight
Jane Albrecht: of the executive branch and there, they won't do it.
Jane Albrecht: And I'll say it, with Kavanaugh, I think he's a
Jane Albrecht: good jurist in many respects, but he was also shown to be
Jane Albrecht: intensely partisan. And I say that in an... from a
Jane Albrecht: nonpartisan perspective.
Bill Curtis: But he's actually shown up, hasn't he Jane?
Jane Albrecht: I'm not sure, I'm not sure because if, let's.
Bill Curtis: No, no. Look at the last huge... the last few cases that
Bill Curtis: have gone by, I bet he surprised you pretty good.
Jane Albrecht: Not entirely, no. And what really worries me is when
Jane Albrecht: the election coming up, that there's challenges to the election,
Jane Albrecht: Kavanaugh knows that he is intensely indebted to Trump for
Jane Albrecht: going to extraordinary lengths to back him to get him
Jane Albrecht: that seat on the thing [crosstalk 01:23:23].
Bill Curtis: Well, I'm glad you bring this up, Jane, because as
Bill Curtis: we wrap this up, and by the way, I think
Bill Curtis: this is turning into two shows. And Paul, I
Bill Curtis: thank you for all your time, but-
Paul Rosenzweig: My pleasure.
Bill Curtis: ... I can't help but bring up the 800- pound
Bill Curtis: elephant in the room. So got to go back to
Bill Curtis: speaking about Homeland Security. Would the safety and security of
Bill Curtis: an election, be something that depart... Would the safety insecurity
Bill Curtis: of an election, be something that the Department of Homeland
Bill Curtis: Security would look into?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yes. They're spending a fair amount of effort into it
Paul Rosenzweig: now, which I'll talk about in just a second.
Paul Rosenzweig: I would say that the biggest problem for DHS right
Paul Rosenzweig: now in doing that is that there isn't any interest
Paul Rosenzweig: in the safety and security of the election at higher
Paul Rosenzweig: levels, which is to say that the people at [crosstalk 01:24:19].
Bill Curtis: The higher levels seem to want to delay it until,
Bill Curtis: I don't know, four years from now?
Paul Rosenzweig: I'm trying to be polite, but the truth of the
Paul Rosenzweig: matter is that in government, people focus, and the things
Paul Rosenzweig: that the president and the Secretary of Homeland Security
Paul Rosenzweig: want done get the most attention. And right now election
Paul Rosenzweig: security is not on that list.
Bill Curtis: Was it while you were there?
Paul Rosenzweig: That would have been before we realized it was a
Paul Rosenzweig: problem. So I would have said the answer is no.
Paul Rosenzweig: Because in 2008, 2009, 2010, nobody would have thought of this as
Paul Rosenzweig: a real issue. And we were just beginning to figure out
Paul Rosenzweig: that cybersecurity was an issue and we hadn't broadened it
Paul Rosenzweig: to information security in the social media space. And
Paul Rosenzweig: we certainly hadn't broadened it to the physical security of
Paul Rosenzweig: the electronic ballots. In fact, our main effort was the
Paul Rosenzweig: opposite, was to get people to use electronic ballots because
Paul Rosenzweig: our most recent experience was the hanging chads and pieces
Paul Rosenzweig: of paper in Florida that we thought sucked. And we
Paul Rosenzweig: thought, oh, electronics will actually stop all this. So we
Paul Rosenzweig: rushed in where angels fear to tread. So today, the
Paul Rosenzweig: election security is a major focus of the Cybersecurity and
Paul Rosenzweig: Infrastructure Security Agency, which is a component of DHS.
Paul Rosenzweig: And they're thinking both about information security and combating disinformation,
Paul Rosenzweig: and also about the electronic security of the actual machines
Paul Rosenzweig: themselves. They need more money. They need more attention. The
Paul Rosenzweig: people who are doing it are doing their best jobs,
Paul Rosenzweig: because they are actually really good civil servants who really
Paul Rosenzweig: care about this. But above a certain level, there is
Paul Rosenzweig: an I don't care, they're focused on protecting Portland
Paul Rosenzweig: or the border or whatever. And President Trump is actually
Paul Rosenzweig: sort of undermining their efforts a bit. So [crosstalk 00:11: 09].
Bill Curtis: So in your role as an officer of these security
Bill Curtis: companies, help me understand something. Isn't it more possible that
Bill Curtis: there could be corruption and hacking of electronic voting than
Bill Curtis: even the mailing?
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, that's a great question. I have a whole 30-
Paul Rosenzweig: minute lecture on it. If you want, you can go to Teaching
Paul Rosenzweig: Company: They're Hacking The Election. Oh, it's free on YouTube,
Paul Rosenzweig: you don't even have to pay for it. But, the
Paul Rosenzweig: answer is this, the risks to the electronic systems of
Paul Rosenzweig: voting are real. That's why every scientist, every person who's
Paul Rosenzweig: looked at like the National Academy of Sciences recommend systems
Paul Rosenzweig: that have paper ballot backups, right? And they also recommend
Paul Rosenzweig: something called risk limiting audits, which is to say,
Paul Rosenzweig: we take a sample of those paper ballots and we
Paul Rosenzweig: compare it to the reported result. And if they align,
Paul Rosenzweig: closely, statistically closely enough, we're happy. If the ballots are
Paul Rosenzweig: 56 for Biden and 44 for Trump and the paper
Paul Rosenzweig: ballots coming 55, 45, we're happy. If the paper ballot is coming 55, 45,
Paul Rosenzweig: Trump beating Biden, we know that something went wrong and
Paul Rosenzweig: somebody played with it, played games with it. Everybody
Paul Rosenzweig: believes that that's the case. The other thing that really
Paul Rosenzweig: needs a lot more securing is the pre- election process.
Paul Rosenzweig: The single most vulnerable thing that's out there right now,
Paul Rosenzweig: our state registration databases, where voting IDs are collected. And
Paul Rosenzweig: if hypothetically, the voting database in North Carolina were degraded
Paul Rosenzweig: tomorrow, right? Or destroyed tomorrow, the election officials in
Paul Rosenzweig: North Carolina simply would not have time to recreate it.
Paul Rosenzweig: I mean, no matter how much they wanted to, they
Paul Rosenzweig: wouldn't be able to. And they are desperately underfunded to
Paul Rosenzweig: the tune that I wrote a report with some others
Paul Rosenzweig: to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions
Paul Rosenzweig: of dollars. And that's why more election funding is one
Paul Rosenzweig: of the red lines the Nancy Pelosi has in
Paul Rosenzweig: the current negotiations.
Bill Curtis: So, apparently the state of Washington and Montana have had
Bill Curtis: tremendous success with mail- in ballots. Georgia, on the other
Bill Curtis: hand, forgive me, screwed the pooch. What is your opinion
Bill Curtis: in your industry, looking at the type of security that
Bill Curtis: we need to have faith in the election of the
Bill Curtis: whole country, having a successful and secure election during
Bill Curtis: a pandemic.
Paul Rosenzweig: I have a high degree of confidence in the overall
Paul Rosenzweig: independence and well- meaning of state and local election officials.
Paul Rosenzweig: It's not universal, but in (Agalaga) County, Mississippi, the
Paul Rosenzweig: head of the Board of Elections there is just as
Paul Rosenzweig: interested in doing it right as anybody else in the
Paul Rosenzweig: nation. They are under extreme pressure. George's failure was
Paul Rosenzweig: not... was maybe partially a political failure, but mostly it
Paul Rosenzweig: was the fact that they went from 40,000 to 1.
Paul Rosenzweig: 25 million mail- in ballots, in a two year period.
Paul Rosenzweig: And I don't care how good you are, no government
Paul Rosenzweig: can choke down that kind of change at that time
Paul Rosenzweig: scale. Montana, Washington, they've been doing it. Washington has been
Paul Rosenzweig: doing it since 2000, I think, or Oregon in 2000 watching [
Paul Rosenzweig: crosstalk 00:01:29:58].
Bill Curtis: Can't we just go to school on those states?
Paul Rosenzweig: Yeah, we can. We should have started six, eight, 12
Paul Rosenzweig: months ago. It's very [ crosstalk 01:30:09].
Jane Albrecht: Oh, so how is.
Bill Curtis: So is there justification to say, we're not ready.
Paul Rosenzweig: No. Postponing the election would be the worst thing in
Paul Rosenzweig: the world. I mean, not to quote Donald Rumsfeld, but
Paul Rosenzweig: you go to war with the army you have, right?
Paul Rosenzweig: Not the one you wish you have.
Jane Albrecht: Paul, how does DHS help with the elections? I
Jane Albrecht: know, not the cyber, checking for cyber threats, but since
Jane Albrecht: the elections are the providence of the states, how would
Jane Albrecht: DHS get involved with the elect... with voting machines, for example.
Paul Rosenzweig: DHS, that's a great question. DHS in coordination with a
Paul Rosenzweig: small commission known as the Election Administration Commission, the EAC.
Paul Rosenzweig: I may have that wrong because it's a three letter
Paul Rosenzweig: acronym, right? They do a lot of best practices stuff.
Paul Rosenzweig: So they tell people best ways to secure voting.
Paul Rosenzweig: For example, one of the things that DHS has done
Paul Rosenzweig: in the last four years is talk about the physical
Paul Rosenzweig: security of machines. Four years ago, machines were probably stored
Paul Rosenzweig: in warehouses, behind shingling fences with nobody giving a fig's
Paul Rosenzweig: worth to stopping you or me from breaking in and
Paul Rosenzweig: messing with them. Today, much better. They talk about things
Paul Rosenzweig: like verified identity on the network, so that the
Paul Rosenzweig: Twitter account for the California Secretary of State needs to
Paul Rosenzweig: have a little blue check mark next to it, right?
Jane Albrecht: So if Congress, if.
Ed Larson: Wait, wait, wait, just a second, Jane.
Jane Albrecht: Go ahead, yeah.
Ed Larson: Historically, we've held elections in very difficult times. In the
Ed Larson: middle of the Civil War, we were delivering ballots
Ed Larson: to the battlefields. In the middle of the Second World
Ed Larson: War, states were having to deliver ballots to the middle
Ed Larson: of the battlefields in the Pacific islands and in Europe
Ed Larson: for hundreds of thousands of troops. In the middle of
Ed Larson: the pandemic, the much worse pandemic than we're facing today,
Ed Larson: in 1918, we conducted elections that changed that the
Ed Larson: House and the Senate dramatically and undercut the power of
Ed Larson: the president, President Wilson. Now, all those cases, there were
Ed Larson: problems. There was a tremendous cut in voting, trying to
Ed Larson: vote in the middle of a pandemic. Yes, there were
Ed Larson: problems. There were problems in the Civil War. There were
Ed Larson: problems in the revolutionary war. But if you look at
Ed Larson: what's the most fundamental right in America. Oh, sure.
Ed Larson: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, property rights are all
Ed Larson: important. But if you ask all the founders, what is
Ed Larson: the foundation of a Republican government? It's free and fair
Ed Larson: elections. And we do the best we can. And we
Ed Larson: have them. Oh, in England, they put them off during
Ed Larson: the Second World War, we don't. The constitution mandates them,
Ed Larson: and if we don't go through with them, well,
Ed Larson: our constitutional democracy is finished.
Bill Curtis: Ed. I'm pretty sure I heard a choir behind you
Bill Curtis: while you were saying that as well. Jane, let me
Bill Curtis: ask you this last question on this subject. Why is
Bill Curtis: it assumed that the potential corruption of mailed- in ballots
Bill Curtis: would be an advantage for the Democrats?
Jane Albrecht: I actually I'm one Democrat who is not so sanguine
Jane Albrecht: that mail- in ballots are necessarily a benefit to
Jane Albrecht: the Democrats. And that's because to the challenge... The challenge
Jane Albrecht: with democratic, getting Democrats elected is getting out the vote.
Jane Albrecht: When voter turnout is higher, generally Democrats win. With, normally
Jane Albrecht: getting out the votes is a process of getting a
Jane Albrecht: person on a particular date or particular 10 days to
Jane Albrecht: show up once at an election location. And if they
Jane Albrecht: need help for that, you can knock on doors
Jane Albrecht: and drive people. With the mail- in ballots, you have
Jane Albrecht: to ensure essentially that three or four things are going
Jane Albrecht: to happen. One, if they need to request them, if
Jane Albrecht: they're in a state where they need to request it,
Jane Albrecht: that they make the request and do it on time.
Jane Albrecht: Secondly, you have to ensure that they actually get the
Jane Albrecht: ballot. Things do get lost in the mail. Third, you've
Jane Albrecht: got to be sure that they are comfortable filling out
Jane Albrecht: the ballot and fourth, you've got to be sure that
Jane Albrecht: they mail it. So to me, it's a mixed
Jane Albrecht: blessing. Maybe you're getting ballots to more people, but actually
Jane Albrecht: getting them to getting those votes in, I think, is a bigger
Jane Albrecht: challenge. And that's just my personal view, it's not the
Jane Albrecht: view of.
Bill Curtis: Paul, how about you? Is your role of keeping our
Bill Curtis: country secure? And it sounds like you're comfortable with the
Bill Curtis: idea of largely mailing ballots for this election and how
Bill Curtis: Ed so eloquently just brought us to the point
Bill Curtis: where clearly we should have an election. Tell us why
Bill Curtis: Trump believes that mail- in ballots will be bad for him.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, you're asking me to speculate as to the thinking
Paul Rosenzweig: of a man whom I don't understand very well. That's
Paul Rosenzweig: putting it politely. I have been given to understand
Paul Rosenzweig: that he thinks that higher turnout is bad and that
Paul Rosenzweig: the more people vote, the more Democrats will vote and
Paul Rosenzweig: that it will differentially impact him. Like Jane, I actually
Paul Rosenzweig: think that the evidence of that is weak and quite possibly
Paul Rosenzweig: wrong. In many places like Florida, where aged people vote,
Paul Rosenzweig: we've seen lots of seniors who like to vote, which
Paul Rosenzweig: it probably explains why Trump said yesterday, mail- in
Paul Rosenzweig: balloting Florida was great, but not in Nevada. So I
Paul Rosenzweig: think it's just his reptilian little brain thinking, win- loss.
Paul Rosenzweig: The truth of the matter is that there are risks in mail-
Paul Rosenzweig: in balloting. And there are risks in in- person balloting
Paul Rosenzweig: of fraud. There are risks... Both of those, I should
Paul Rosenzweig: add by the way, hail in comparison to internet balloting,
Paul Rosenzweig: which I am deeply and vigorously against because we
Paul Rosenzweig: can't secure the ballot that way. That's what actual governance
Paul Rosenzweig: is. It's not Trump being, do what I want because
Paul Rosenzweig: I win that way, it's assessing comparative risks and by
Paul Rosenzweig: and large, the comparative risks of mail- in balloting are a little
Paul Rosenzweig: less or comparable to in- person balloting. And every piece
Paul Rosenzweig: of evidence we have for the last 30, 40 years says
Paul Rosenzweig: that. So, in a risk management scenario, I say
Paul Rosenzweig: do both, especially when you layer on top, pandemic, because I
Paul Rosenzweig: don't think anybody should have to risk dying to exercise
Paul Rosenzweig: their fundamental ballot right.
Jane Albrecht: Absolutely, I agree.
Bill Curtis: Ed, do you want to bring this home?
Ed Larson: Yeah. Historically, as Paul's noted, historically, mail- in balloting has
Ed Larson: actually helped the Republican Party, because the elderly and foreign
Ed Larson: troops, soldiers overseas, were the main users of mail- in
Ed Larson: ballots. And they vote, tend to vote more Republican.
Ed Larson: Trump, of course, there's a possibility that this year will be different
Ed Larson: because of a pandemic and other people where you've brought
Ed Larson: out to vote. We don't know if that's the case.
Ed Larson: Now, what he could be doing is not really deep
Ed Larson: down, have any question about mail ballots at all. He
Ed Larson: just may be wanting to sow doubts about the outcome
Ed Larson: of the election that then he'll use after it happens.
Ed Larson: And the easy target for him to do is what's
Ed Larson: changed about this election. Well, it's going to be
Ed Larson: more mailing. And therefore, if the goal is not a
Ed Larson: question about mail- in ballots, per se, but just simply
Ed Larson: wanting to sow doubts about the election, and I don't
Ed Larson: think President Trump is beyond just doing that, then he
Ed Larson: looks at whatever the change will be. And so he
Ed Larson: picks on mail- in ballots.
Bill Curtis: Well, let's put a pin in it there. Paul Rosenzweig,
Bill Curtis: I hope you will come back and join us again,
Bill Curtis: you've been fabulous, and I really appreciate it. And Jane
Bill Curtis: Albrecht, and of course, Ed Larson, you round out
Bill Curtis: our group wonderfully. And Paul, tell our listeners how they
Bill Curtis: can follow you if they want to keep up with
Bill Curtis: your philosophies.
Paul Rosenzweig: Well, great. I'm on Twitter as @ RosenzweigP , R- O- S- E- N- Z- W- E- I-
Paul Rosenzweig: G, and then initial P. I sometimes write at the
Paul Rosenzweig: Lawfare blog, which is a blog about national security and
Paul Rosenzweig: Homeland Security law and policy. And I also write
Paul Rosenzweig: at the R Street Institute, where most of my media
Paul Rosenzweig: appearances will eventually be clipped and put up. And I'm
Paul Rosenzweig: delighted to have been here. Thank you for having me.
Paul Rosenzweig: It was a really great and fun conversation. And I
Paul Rosenzweig: hope when this is comes out, you'll send me the links so
Paul Rosenzweig: I can put them out on those social media as well.
Bill Curtis: Absolutely. Well, this is Politics: Meet Me in the Middle .
Bill Curtis: Thanks for joining.