Lewis Brooks:
Welcome. Welcome. I'm Lewis Brooks. I'm a proud Brandeis alum from the Class of 1980. A proud parent of a Brandeis grad from the Class of 2016. And I happily serve as president of the Alumni Association. On behalf of the Alumni Association and the Lawyers Alumni Network, it is my pleasure to welcome you to today's Alumni College program, featuring from the Class of '84, Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the US Department of Justice, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Bob Woodward. Today's program will be moderated by Associate Professor and American Studies chair Maura Jane Farrelly. We look forward to your questions. Please submit them via the Q&A feature on this page and please note that this event is being recorded. We are delighted to welcome you, our alumni, Brandeis parents, Brandeis national committee members, and friends all around the world. Thank you for joining us. It's now my pleasure to turn this over to my wife, Denise Silver Brooks, Class of '84, and similarly, a very proud parent of a member of the Class of 2016, who will introduce our speakers.
Denise Silber Brooks:
Thanks, Lew. It is my honor to introduce and welcome my former classmate and distinguished alumnus, Michael Horowitz, world-renowned journalist Bob Woodward, and our esteemed faculty moderator Mara Jane Farrelly. Michael Horowitz was sworn in as the Inspector General of the Department of Justice on April 16th, 2012, following his confirmation by the US Senate. As Inspector General, he oversees a nationwide workforce of more than 450 special agents, auditors, inspectors, attorneys, and support staff, whose mission is to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct in the DOJ programs and personnel. And to promote economy and efficiency in department operations. Since 2015, he has simultaneously served as the chair of the council of the Inspectors General on integrity and efficiency. An organization comprised of all 73 federal inspectors general.
Denise Silber Brooks:
Prior to his current post, Mike worked in private sector practice as a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft before entering private practice. He worked in the DOJ Criminal Division in Washington, first as a deputy assistant attorney general and then, as chief of staff. He also served as an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1990s, where he was chief of the public corruption unit and deputy chief of the criminal division. Mike earned his Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his bachelor of arts summa cum laude from Brandeis University.
Denise Silber Brooks:
Bob Woodward is an associate editor of the Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He shared in two Pulitzer Prizes. First for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein and second as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Woodward has written number one bestselling books on the last nine presidents, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump, as well as, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, Hollywood, and the Supreme Court. He's authored or co-authored 20 books, all of which have been national non-fiction bestsellers. 14 have been number one national bestsellers, including his most recent book Rage, which was Woodward's second book on the Trump administration.
Denise Silber Brooks:
Newsweek magazine has excerpted six of Woodward's books in headline-making cover stories. 60 minutes has done pieces on eight of his books, and three of his books have been made into movies. Woodward was born in Illinois and graduated from Yale University in 1965. He served five years as a communications officer in the US Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County, Maryland Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the post.
Denise Silber Brooks:
And today, moderating the Q&A portion of today's program is Maura Jane Farrelly, associate professor and chair of the American studies department at Brandeis. Before joining the Brandeis faculty, she worked as a full-time reporter. First for Georgia public radio in Atlanta and then for Voice of America in Washington, DC, and New York. She also freelanced for National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and British Broadcasting Corporation. Welcome to all of you.
Michael Horowitz:
Thanks.
Denise Silber Brooks:
Thank you.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
So I guess this... I'm not sure how this is working. I'm seeing a blank screen that has Denise's name on it. All right. I'm going to start just by throwing out a question to Bob and Michael, and you all can take it from there. I thought I'd begin by interrogating the first word in the title of today's topic, transparency. It strikes me that in a way you both do have somewhat similar jobs and that you are both tasked with the obligation of investigating a situation and then compiling a report for an audience that explains what that situation is about. And of course, in the case of Bob, we're talking about an audience of the American public. In the case of Michael, we may be talking about an audience of the American Public. At the very least, we're talking about an audience of people who represent the American public.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
And so, the question I thought I would begin by asking you is about the place of transparency. When you are compiling these reports, what are you obliged to be transparent about in each of your positions? When you determine that you can't be transparent, what are some of the factors that you consider? Of course, we know that you have a bit of experience with that, Mr. Woodward. And then, what are the obligations that you have to your audience when you make a determination that you cannot be fully transparent about the story. How it is that you investigated this story that you're telling? So throw it out to each of you.
Bob Woodward:
Let Michael go first.
Michael Horowitz:
So it's a very important question. It is one of the core principles of inspectors general is transparency. We think about transparency, accountability, and independence is the three watch boards. And coming from Brandeis, I regularly like to say just as Brandeis famous words and saying about sunshine being the best of disinfectants. And well, we start at from a position and as inspectors general, and I do in my office is, absent a reason not to make something public. And that usually turns on what the law is, the privacy act classified matters, things like that. We start from the proposition that everything in our reports and that we find should be public. And then we have to assess from there, are there laws, rules, regulations, policies that restrict that. And in the justice department, as you might guess, there are a fair amount of issues that come up in that regard, not only with regard to classified issues but frankly, with regard to law enforcement issues, sources and methods, sensitive investigative techniques. We're doing a report right now, that's going to be out soon, for example, about judicial security and how the Marshall service protects judges.
Michael Horowitz:
These are the kinds of issues that come up. We want to make things public. We don't want to put people in harm's way either as we issue those reports. So we start from the proposition of, we want to make it public and then when we can't, what we try to do, again if it's classified and we may be limited in what we can do in this regard. But we try and at least include in our methodology or in footnotes along the way to let the reader know why certain information isn't in the report, or we'll release report redacted.
Bob Woodward:
Can I ask Michael a question about this?
Michael Horowitz:
Yeah.
Bob Woodward:
What percentage of your findings, say there's no privacy law, no classification, what percentage is made public 50%, 60%?
Michael Horowitz:
I would say much higher than that.
Bob Woodward:
How much?
Michael Horowitz:
An cverwhelming majority is. I would guess if 90% might be an understatement. It's rarely invoked, and you'll appreciate why this is the case, Bob. It's okay if it's a matter that isn't clearly a legal restriction. I'm not going to threaten to put out classified information, or privacy act protected information. But if it's something where we think, and we discussed this a lot. Is being marked as we should redact it because it's E, E for embarrassing. We don't do that. You can try, but we're not going to do that. Embarrassing isn't a legal obligation. And so what we do is we say, okay, here it is. You tell us what should be blacked out, and then we'll explain whether we agree or disagree with it. And you know when that happens, usually, it's the judgments made that blacking out for embarrassing is a lot worse than letting it go. It's the unknown.
Bob Woodward:
So if I may interject here, so as a reporter or book author in my books, I do them where I'm protecting sources, but it is so clear that I am describing events on noon on the 14th of January. These people met. This was the discussion. This was the issue that I either have some documentary notes of support or people, participants, or witnesses. And so what is, I think at the core of this is the information, and we find out is Ben Bradley, the famous editor of the Washington Post, said, "The truth emerges." And I think it does. Sometimes the sources come forward themselves, or they are identified for one reason or another. And I would say you get to the point of 98% transparency in journalism, but it's not at the moment when the first stories or when the book is written.
Michael Horowitz:
Right. Agreed, and a good example being, we did a report early on in my tenure on the fast and furious operation. If people recall it, was guns going to Mexico, allegation that was done for an improper purpose, et cetera. But one of the things that came up was the allegation that perhaps the White House or the leadership of the department tried to do it for the purpose of getting gun laws enacted, restrictions enacted. This was the Obama administration when E. J. Holder was attorney general, and we have a whole chapter in there, and you could read it. But what we do is we send it to the department and say, okay, if you think any of this is covered by executive privilege or deliberative privilege or other legal privileges, that's not our call that's your judgment to make, and none of that is blacked out.
Michael Horowitz:
Arguably they could've, but none of it's blacked out because judgments were made, I wasn't in the room for those meetings, but clearly, judgments were made that we should not start having a blacked out IG report go out. Think of all the times people see documents with the Swiss cheese of blacking out and what people think of that.
Bob Woodward:
Maura, can we get to the news of the day? I mean, here-
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Well yeah, exactly. Well, I was hoping that you would seize on that, the lead story today-
Bob Woodward:
Go ahead.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
... and having to do... Go ahead.
Bob Woodward:
What's the question?
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Well, I mean, what's going on? I mean, what does this mean? So maybe I should just begin by explaining to everybody just in case some people didn't see the front page of the Post or the Times today. The lead story has to do with the fact that the justice department subpoenaed Apple's records on Adam Schiff and a number of other members of the House Intelligence Committee. Basically looking for evidence that Schiff or some of the other people on the committee might have been leaking information to the press about the Trump administration's dealing with the Russians. And I don't know if Michael is able to speak about that. Are you able to tell us anything about this situation?
Michael Horowitz:
I'm not going to be able to speak more than what's out there, although I'm sure Bob will be peppering me with questions as we go along here.
Bob Woodward:
Well, this is a really important story. I mean, here, back in 2017, the Trump justice department is getting records on sitting members of Congress to either get to them or their staff in leak investigations. What shocked me is we didn't know about this until 2021 this year. Michael, did you have any hint of something like this before?
Michael Horowitz:
I think it's fair to say that as the newspaper stories have recounted, there were gag orders in place. This is similar, by the way, to other stories in the last week about gag orders being placed on subpoenas to journalists or subpoenas to service providers for journalist records. And I'll just say without getting into specific facts on it, generally speaking, people comply with gag orders issued by federal judges.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Can you maybe fill us in a little bit on how such a gag order gets determined?
Bob Woodward:
So that certainly is something that would be a subject of an IG report review on the facts, but as a general matter, with current situations like this, if the department believes that disclosure of a subpoena, now I'm not talking just about this circumstance is really any circumstance. They can go to court and seek an order from a federal judge to restrict what can be disclosed about that information to the recipient of this being a right. Somebody is getting that subpoena, a third party, whether it's Apple or another service provider. And the question is, who can they talk to about that? Or when it goes to the publisher of the Washington Post or the New York Times, who can they speak to about that? And so-
Maura Jane Farrelly:
The argument is-
Michael Horowitz:
... the federal judge has to make that decision.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
The argument is made-
Bob Woodward:
But this is outrageous. I'm sorry, this is outrageous that you have the government snooping on sitting members of Congress, and we don't get some clue. And then there is a mechanism from not the justice department, but from federal judges saying, you can't talk about this. Michael, I just think on the scale of zero to 10, this approaches a 10 on the Richter scale of abuse of power. Or at least to start with Maura's point about transparency of such an utter lack of transparency that we don't know, a central action by the government that at the time would have been major news. And I would argue that's something the public should know about.
Michael Horowitz:
And that's exactly why we're here as an IG office is to do that. As you know, we're not the office that's in the middle of these investigations. We're the ones who have to look at them after they occur to figure out what happened and get the information out there. It's frankly, the role we played in the FISA review, which is-
Bob Woodward:
Don't you wish you'd had this information in 2017 and done an investigation and told the public?
Michael Horowitz:
Oh, clearly, as we all know, you want to get the information and do these as close in time to when they're occurring, rather than years later. We were doing 2016 related reviews into 2019 and 2020. So these are real issues, and I agree. I think it's one of the key issues that's going to come out of this is the department answering for how it handles these matters and when and how it determines when to go and get a gag order and to whom and under what rationale it would need to do that.
Bob Woodward:
And there's another element in this, and that is Apple. I mean, they know that the government is seeking their records. It's mad that they had that. So it's not the substance of these phone calls supposedly, but the fact that they exist, who called who when and so forth, is that right, Michael?
Michael Horowitz:
Right. In this case, it was Apple and the other journalists. It was other-
Bob Woodward:
But Apple should have gone to the government. Apple should have raised holy hell about this, and they are being victimized also in this, aren't they? I mean, they are enablers of a process that I think once you get done, Michael, you're going to reach the conclusion that this is an outrage or whether it's illegal or whatever it is when you have the government spying on sitting members of Congress. Look Watergate was all about spying on the opposition. Sometimes the opposition was in Congress, people who were running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1971 and 1972. And part of the offense was that this is the executive branch of the government. Or at least an off-the-books operation that Nixon and his people were running. But if it had been the work directed just at private citizens, I think the feeling would have been somewhat different. But the idea that these were Senator Muskie running for the presidential nomination becomes a victim of espionage and sabotage by both the off-the-books operation. And by what turned out to be the justice department itself.
Michael Horowitz:
I know the justice department, as you said, was right in the middle of it with the FBI. It wasn't just the FBI and several attorneys general got themselves in trouble because of that. And agree with you and as to apple, the one thing that we don't know yet, we don't know all the court litigation. That has not all been unsealed so we don't know what was going on in court at the same time were Apple, presumably would have been able to bring it concerns as well, not only to the justice department, but to the court. And so I think there's a lot to learn still on this and frankly, that's why we do these things. When we started the review of the handling of the Clinton email investigation or the FISA investigation, we had no idea where we would end up and we ended up in a pretty significant place with some real good concerns-
Bob Woodward:
Remind people of those findings, Michael, would you? Because that really is important and it has not been lost in history, but I think sometimes people don't recall.
Michael Horowitz:
And so with regard to the FISA review that we did about concerns how the FBI used FISA in connection with certain applications, it obtained in 2016 during the campaign, keep in mind at the time the FBI-
Bob Woodward:
Remind everyone what FISA is and where the applications go.
Michael Horowitz:
So FISA is a surveillance statue that allows the FBI, the FBI here it also allows intelligence agencies, but I'll focus on the FBI. It allows the FBI to get court-authorized surveillance against non-US and US citizens, in this case, it was a US citizen. For various materials, they're wide-ranging possibilities. It doesn't go to a Article III court that handles criminal cases. It goes to a special court Congress created called the foreign intelligence surveillance court. It operates in a classified setting with no adversarial proceedings. The FBI brings the applications after being approved by the leadership of the justice department and the FBI. And in that case, at the same time, the FBI was investigating the democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, for mishandling classified information on her email server.
Michael Horowitz:
And, as we know, publicly reported on that through a press conference then Director Comey had and a letter to Congress that Director Comey sent in October of 2016. At the very same time, the FBI had opened what was called a counter-intelligence investigation at the time, morphed into somewhat of a criminal investigation, of the Trump campaign and certain personnel there for their alleged connections to the Russian government. It went to court, got four FISAS on an individual named Carter Page based on a dossier from an individual who, as we've reported, was paid for through people connected to the Democratic National Committee. As we ended up discovering through various work we did, there were serious questions about the validity of those FISA applications. Ultimately, the Department determined that at least the last two of the four were not appropriately sought and withdrew them.
Michael Horowitz:
But what we learned in the course of that is to the point of notice and who knew, what we learned was the FBI was able to move forward with those requests and there were no department policies, for example, requiring the Attorney General of the United States to sign off on them or be notified. There were limited restrictions on who the FBI could record undercover conversations with in the midst of a Presidential campaign. So some very significant issues about that and about disclosure and about notice. One of the key questions being, why not be transparent and tell the campaign about concerns about foreign interference and things like that coming up?
Bob Woodward:
And so just simple bottom line, Michael, Trump has a point in arguing that this was beyond the pale, that this was, I mean, whether you call it spying or not, it was improper use of surveillance authority, you agree?
Michael Horowitz:
I think what you found from both of our reports, because we did one report on the Clinton email investigation and one report about the FISA, if you look at both of those hand in hand I think you have both campaigns having legitimate complaints. One about how public the FBI Director made one matter and how secretly it held the other matter at the same time and the other campaign, having the complaint, as you indicated, that it was investigated using evidence that ultimately didn't stand the test of time and should not have been used in the way it was used.
Bob Woodward:
I mean, it was public what Hillary Clinton's complaint was about FBI Director Comey's public statements. We knew that. But we didn't know during the campaign what was going on with the FBI and the surveillance court. And so the secrecy of that, as you know from my reporting, I am no fan of Donald Trump, but on this, I think it's pretty clear that he has a justifiable complaint. Do you agree?
Michael Horowitz:
Well, and it goes back to the transparency point that we started with, and what you just mentioned, which is the justification for keeping that secret while at the same time you're going out and publicizing that you're opening a criminal investigation, it's hard to understand how you justify that side-by-side. So I think both candidates, I would say, had reasons to raise concerns about what was going on there, and we detail it in, by the way, two reports, as you know. One's 500 pages, one's 600 pages. I mean, it's all out there factually for the public to see in extraordinary detail.
Bob Woodward:
And it's pretty scary, I think.
Michael Horowitz:
Yep.
Bob Woodward:
I think it's exactly not what Democrats, Republicans, or Independents expect from the Justice Department. As you and I have discussed, Michael, I mean, the government has extraordinary power in cases like this and it's got to go through some sort of common sense, fundamental fairness filter before you let decisions like this get made. And I find it alarming and I'm embarrassed that I didn't find out about some of this stuff earlier, quite frankly.
Michael Horowitz:
It's one of the things, I'll just say, in preparation for this job, being a corruption prosecutor in New York, which as you know, is in the fishbowl almost like D.C., you learn that pretty quickly, that your decisions as a prosecutor are going to be second-guessed and judged. And you may have a big hammer, but you've got to be careful what nails you go around pounding with that hammer. You've got to exercise some good judgment and sound discretion.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
If I could just jump in, one more thing about the gag order and then I want to ask you a question about the other two words in the title of today's talk, oversight and accountability. But I mean, the gag order, we're not just talking about Apple as having been gagged and not being able to talk about this. Just earlier this week, the New York Times had an editorial in which they called for a federal shield law in part because their own reporters were being required to turn information over to the Justice Department, and they were not allowed to talk about that until recently. So it's not just private companies that are being told to keep their mouths shut. It's reporters that are being told to keep their mouths shut as well. About this issue of oversight and accountability, I thought I would pitch this specifically to you Bob.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Oversight and accountability, those two words connote the idea of authority. And so I'm wondering about the question of authority with regards to the standards that journalists use in determining who their sources are and what sources they're going to trust. And I think that this becomes particularly important when we think about how some of the traditional sources of authority that we have relied upon such as police officers, such as the President of the United States, these are sources of authority that journalists have looked to, have been shown to play a little fast and loose with the truth sometimes. And so I wonder if you could maybe talk about that in this post-Watergate era, the question of authority and sources.
Bob Woodward:
Okay. Well, when does the post-Watergate era? Watergate was almost 50 years ago.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
I thought this was going to be post-Trump, but the title says Post-Watergate.
Bob Woodward:
Yeah, and I'm not sure how to answer that, but I think we've got to be very introspective in the media and in the Justice Department. I mean, in a sense, Michael, as a statutory inquirer, the conscience, if you will, of the Justice Department, and I think we need to think about how we do our business in the media and what the rules are. And certainly always police officers have been questioned, Presidents have been questioned, and I just think we need to do it in a way that lowers, if you will, the temperature, because all of these inquiries by the press, by the Inspector General, are done in a political environment. Michael has heard me tell this story about Katherine Graham, who was the publisher and the owner of the Washington Post, and after Watergate, she wrote Carl Bernstein and myself a personal letter, and she did it on yellow legal paper. She had more stationary than anyone in America.
Bob Woodward:
But she decided, I think it was an impulse, "Dear Carl and Bob." This is 1974, 1975, after Nixon resigned, and she said, "So you did some of the stories about Watergate and he's gone. Don't start thinking too highly of yourselves, and I want you to come down a little bit and think." She said, "I want to give you some advice, and the advice is, beware of the demon pomposity, and the demon pomposity stalks the halls of media, Congress, the White House, academia. There is a lot of pomposity around and I think it is an intrusion and it gets people off the track of getting the truth." And it was the great writer Graham Greene who said, "Don't despise people on the other side. Don't despise your enemies. They have a case." And Michael knows when you do an IG report, you have sufficient time, you talk to everyone, you listen to the argument and the case on both sides, and I think we were doing that less and less in the media.
Bob Woodward:
We have cable news outlets that are proud and advertised in the case of MSNBC and CNN to be very anti-Trump, and you have Fox News advertised happy to be proudly pro-Trump. And so we've got to somehow find and get out of the partisan labels. I don't think they serve us well and I think there is an aura of pomposity in certainty, in smugness that people employ particularly on television. "This is the way it is. This is the only way to look at it. End of speech."
Michael Horowitz:
Can I just jump in on that? Because it brings up the important point that you mentioned, this truth. When we look at truth, does truth matter? We've talked about this before, does truth still matter? But when you look at the truth, in almost all instances, it's not quite as pure as each side thinks it is. It's usually muddied. And even if you look at some of our various reports, each side will try and claim, "Oh no, this vindicates me." The other side will say, "No, it vindicates me." Then usually, if you step back and are willing to take an honest look at the facts and the truth, it's not quite as clean as everybody was hoping at the outset.
Bob Woodward:
Amen.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
So coming back to this issue of how partisan the media have become, I wonder if you could say, and you've said we need to step away from that, and this is an issue I do struggle with myself because that's my instinct, is that this has been a bad development in journalism. And yet, if you look at the history of American journalism, the idea that the press should be non-partisan is a relatively recent development in the history of journalism. You used to have newspapers would advertise their partisanship in their mastheads. And so I'm wondering if you could maybe follow up a little bit and say more about why it is that you think it is a bad thing that we have become partisan and why we need to pull back from that.
Bob Woodward:
Well, the important question, and you've got to ask this question yourself, and that is, who is the audience? Who are you trying to reach? Are you preaching to the converted? And I thought about this a lot, I've talked to lots of people, I've talked to the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, about this, how important it is to really work on establishing trust? And that's an important word like truth, trust, and people need to trust what the media is doing. And let's face it, we are distrusted. You have to go through a period of reform, I think, and part of that is getting more in the realm of here is what we found, here are the arguments. Now, you've got a difficulty when you really have found a significant abuse of power. In the case of Watergate, in the case of Nixon, it was very clear that Nixon set about to destroy the process of nominating people who were going to run for President on the other side and then the final election.
Bob Woodward:
And so when we wrote stories about Watergate, we would say, "We found this and the money went here for these dirty tricks operations. This is the money that went for the cover up and so forth." And then there would be a paragraph, about paragraph four or six saying, "The White House says it's all untrue and it's all a fiction." And then we would get back to what we found. And so you have to be on as solid ground as possible if you present one sided information. And in the book I did last year, Rage, I interviewed Trump for nine hours and 42 minutes. What an adventure, and a third of the book is quotes from him. In fact, when the book came out, interestingly enough, the first book, Fear, he denounced. The second one, he said, "Well, it was okay. I said some great things in that book."
Bob Woodward:
Why did he think he said some great things? Because I let him have his say, and I think we've got to make sure people have their say. In Michael's reports, there's always somebody who defends themselves, the other side is presented completely, and I would say sometimes, Michael, compulsively.
Michael Horowitz:
Yep. It's true. It's very important in our reports in our view, let people have their say. We put it in. Some of it is demonstrably untrue, unsupportive factually, but we nevertheless recount what they say, and then, if you go look at our reports, we will factually simply explain. We don't editorialize on it. We just simply explain what is wrong. And I remember Bob joking about some of our titles and some of our language and how monotonous and boring it can all be, and very matter of fact, but that's precisely what we try and do because it is critical for people to have their say. And I think what we're most proud of in our reports, particularly the higher profile ones, is no matter how much 500 or 600 pages is picked apart and looked at no one's out there saying we got the facts wrong. They might not agree with our conclusions but, boy, they better not say we got the facts, because we live in glass houses like journalists do. Easy to throw a rock at our windows and break them if we get it wrong.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
So this phrase that you both used really dovetails nicely with the big question I wanted to ask you about. And given that we're supposed to turn it over to the audience in about eight minutes, I think this is a good segue. I wanted to get your thoughts on a big debate in the field of journalism now. And it's one that I struggle with my students, I will tell, you within the classroom quite a bit, and it's this objectivity versus moral clarity debate in the field of journalism. And I don't know, Bob, if you want to say something about it, or I could maybe clue people in as to what this is about. It's this notion that the old standard in journalism is exactly what the two of you just said, that it is important to let people have their say, that a journalist should strive to be objective knowing that true pure objectivity is impossible, that no reporter can be completely objective, but you deal with that by being transparent about your methods and by letting people have their say and there's that one standard in journalism.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
But journalists under the age of 40 increasingly are pushing against that, and the phrase that is being used is moral clarity, the idea that it is the job of a journalist to reveal injustice, to shine light into the hidden corners of society, and that sometimes when you let people have their say and people say things that are incorrect, you mentioned, Michael, sometimes people say things that are just factually wrong or people say things that are perhaps racist or homophobic, that you're "giving a platform" to these people and you are facilitating injustice as opposed to fighting injustice. And I'm curious as to your thoughts on this.
Bob Woodward:
Yes, but who gets to define injustice. It's like Nixon used to say, "it depends on who writes the history and it depends on who gets to define these terms." Look, we're going through a period of change and it's fine. I mean, my general view is let the First Amendment prevail and if people want to write an article or a book that is under the general heading of moral clarity, let them have at it. And sometimes moral clarity works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't worry about that. I think we should not wring our hands, and I think some of the universities and some people in the media are getting into this business of, "Well, let's ban things that we think are not true."
Bob Woodward:
The ban of Trump from Facebook and Twitter and so forth, I'm not sure where I would come out on that. But I think it's something worth debating. Certainly, Trump can have his say. Those are businesses, private businesses, they get to make their own rules and decisions. So it's not as if Trump can't get his voice heard. So I'm not really worried. I think the First Amendment, it's being stressed tested, but it gets stress tested regularly. Again, that's the name of the game. That's journalists and that's politics. I don't find myself wringing my hands about much of that.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
It is an issue that's roiling newsrooms right now. I mean, I think you're correct that it began in classrooms. It began in academia, but those students are out working as journalists and they're in their 30s now. And, you have debates like, was it okay for the New York Times to run an op ed from a sitting Senator about an existing law when Tom Cotton wrote his editorial for the New York Times about the Insurrection Act?
Bob Woodward:
Yeah. But Senator Cotton's going to get his voice heard. I don't worry about that. I'm not concerned at all. Senator Cotton is an interesting political figure and if he wants to write something for a newspaper, I'm all for it. But at the same time, if the New York Times wants to run it and then I guess fire their op ed editor because he ran it, that's their business. It's not what I would do.
Bob Woodward:
I really think the First Amendment is, and you were talking about shield laws and so forth, I think the ultimate and important shield is the First Amendment.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Okay. So I've got some questions over here in the chat, and I'm just going to go through them in the order that they came in because it's too complicated for me to do it in any other way. So I'll just read from my computer screen here. Question number one, how do you think the Watergate investigation would have proceeded if there had been social media back then?
Bob Woodward:
I don't think it would have changed it that much. I think it might've accelerated it some. But as Michael was saying, what's important are the facts, and the facts of Watergate came out and people commented on them at the time. If there had been social media, there would have been comment, there would have been debates. There would have been people who liked it, people who didn't like it. But once you get to the facts, to quote Bradley again, "the truth does emerge over time." Sometimes it takes weeks, months, years, even decades.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Question number two-
Michael Horowitz:
What if you had had emails? Let me just ask, what if you had had emails, Bob?
Bob Woodward:
Pardon?
Michael Horowitz:
What if you had had emails back in the day? That would have been the gold mine, right? If you had had emails during Watergate.
Bob Woodward:
Yeah, but I think the really good sources wouldn't do things on email, and some of the criminals involved probably would not have used email. But in a sense, the money was the email. Follow the money. And once you realize there is hundreds of thousands of dollars behind this, you realize also that it's something that's authorized from the top. You just don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the '70s, so it'd be millions now, without some supervision and approval at the top.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Question number two. This is an interesting one. How can the Department of Justice be prevented from being weaponized by the president? And that, of course, is related to Watergate as well.
Michael Horowitz:
It's a great question. Edward Levy, who came in as the Attorney General after Nixon resigned, and is a revered figure in the Justice Department because of what he did after Watergate, put in place various provisions that have continued to this day that seek to limit interactions between the Justice Department and the White House. Those were stress tested and have been stress tested at various points in time, certainly recently. And it is difficult. It's difficult because in part, if you look at the Constitution and read the Constitution, the ultimate power of law enforcement authority is, in fact, that's been the president of the United States. This is a discretionary policy that AG Levy put in at the time to try and separate that, and was very well received and to this day is well received.
Michael Horowitz:
But again, so much of this goes to complying with policies, complying with restrictions, self-regulating restrictions, if you will. And then the other thing that happened post-Watergate is the IG Act was passed, which was passed in 1978. This is one of the reforms, and we're here to look at that. And I would just suggest people to keep tuned to our reports because we will be writing about those issues in the not too distant future.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
It strikes me, you used the word provisions. It strikes me, that's a vague word. Provision could be a policy. A provision could also be a convention. And I think that's certainly what we saw an awful lot of in these past few years, is that conventions were just thrown out the window.
Michael Horowitz:
And that's exactly what we've commented on. We've talked about it in terms of norms. Well, how valuable are norms? If you're willing to abide by them, norms are good. If you're not willing to abide by norms, then norms aren't norms. They're there to be broken and thrown to the side. But again, coming back to the issue in the newspapers, there are department regulations, actually about media subpoenas and media policy. The contact with the White House is a policy on paper. A notch below, for those who aren't lawyers, actual regulations that exist as to media subpoenas. So just to give you a sense of how all these issues-
Bob Woodward:
Yeah, but as Maura suggests, they're provisions or they're rules, and they can be overlooked or changed. Right?
Michael Horowitz:
Correct.
Bob Woodward:
I've spent a lot of time reporting on presidents, nine of them, and now working on the 10th on Biden, and you really get to the... In your business, Michael, in a court of law, people weigh evidence, right? But I think what voters really do is they are looking at character, and in character is not evidence. It's a judgment based on what people say and what they do and so forth. And I think the character of a president is really, really important, where you can see somebody who will go against the grain.
Bob Woodward:
Not to make a final judgment on this issue of subpoenaing reporters. It sounds like President Biden has issued an order to the Justice Department saying this is... What did he say? Simply wrong. Simply wrong. And I think he's overturned all of those provision and rules. And the subtext here is we're not going to be overly obsessed with leaks, at least at this point. Now, he may change his mind, as presidents often do, because it may be leaks about him that he doesn't like, or his administration.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
We have a question about whether we know who the judge was who issued the gag order for Apple.
Michael Horowitz:
I don't know, as I sit here, who these cases were in front of.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Okay. Michael-
Bob Woodward:
There's a number of judges, I think, aren't there?
Michael Horowitz:
There are a few different cases floating around there. I don't know too much about the actual court cases.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Can the attorney general override your decision of what can or cannot be made public in any report you submit, Michael?
Michael Horowitz:
That's a great question. So under the IG Act, if a determination is made that some matter is classified and it would be illegal to put it out, I can assure you that we won't violate that and put ourselves in legal jeopardy of getting prosecuted. Having said that, we would black it out and make public our disagreement with it. And keep in mind, that information would go to Congress, because Congress can see classified information. So ultimately, it would be Congress that could make those judgments.
Michael Horowitz:
As to other matters, if we disagree, ultimately on most issues, not all, on most issues, the attorney general would get the final word on the decision whether to redact or not. But I would get the ability to speak publicly as to my objection to it. And then of course, it goes to the journalists and the Congress and other stakeholders to decide, moving forward, how that's going to be assessed. But that's my obligation, is to... If I disagree, if I believe it's an improper invocation to make it public, to make it known.
Bob Woodward:
Can I ask a quick question of Michael? When you walk around the halls of the Justice Department, do people flee into the washrooms and their offices? And they say, are you viewed as a bad news cop?
Michael Horowitz:
Generally, yes. I joke that I can clear out the lunchroom here if I want to get a sandwich at any point in time. But there are times when people knock on our door because they're concerned about what happened. And that has happened over the years, and said-
Bob Woodward:
But never enough, right?
Michael Horowitz:
But never enough. And people are worried about doing that, as you know. The same issues you have to deal with as a journalist in getting people to be willing to talk to you, and their fear of who's watching them and who might retaliate against them if they know they're talking to Bob Woodward or another journalist. We have to deal with those same issues and protect our whistle blowers and complainants from retaliation.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
There's a question from the audience that is somewhat similar. They begin by asking just some details about the term of the inspector general. How long are you going to be there? And then the person also wants to know, how did you survive the chaos of appointments in the DOJ during the Trump administration?
Michael Horowitz:
So the independence piece of this is among other provisions that, under the IG Act, I have no term. Inspectors general don't have a term. So I was nominated by President Obama, confirmed in the Senate. Having said that, I can be removed by the president, and it doesn't necessarily have to be for cause. And so last year, two IGs were fired by President Trump. And I issued statements about that and my concerns about how that happened in my capacity as the IG Council Chair. And so you have to come into this job being willing to do what's right and not worry about that you could be terminated, you could be removed for a bad reason. Or frankly, in some instances, for no good reason.
Michael Horowitz:
In terms of how do you survive? I've talked to my folks about this as well, which is my instruction to them is keep your blinders on, focus on your job, focus on your responsibility. Basically, I started turning off the TV in the morning, figure out what's going on by looking at online. At night, I'd go look what's on. If there was something I had to see on a news clip, I'd go watch it. But I had occasions when people would walk into my office and say, "Hey, by the way, you might want to turn on the TV now, because I think you want to see this is happening."
Michael Horowitz:
But I finally just decided you have to keep your focus. What our mission is, what our job is, what our responsibility is, and not get... It's a real danger in this, and I think for all of us, journalists as well, it's not getting swayed by the overarching views, feelings, your own concern. It's where do the facts lead you? Because if you stick to that, certainly in our jobs, you'll get it right. If you start wishing what's out there or trying to go floating around like a free agent looking for something, that's when Igs have gotten themselves in trouble.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Talking about how you'll have colleagues who say, "Hey, come look at the TV. You might want to see this." Somebody made a comment, apparently, as you were talking. On CNN, Adam Schiff is calling for you to investigate the situation with Apple. So that happened while everybody was tuning in here.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Bob, this question is for you, and I have a feeling the person probably asked it when you were discussing the idea of partisanship. Don't you see a problem with the fact that the owner of the Washington Post is Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, who's about to go to space? I put that in. And isn't corporate bias even more damaging than partisanship?
Bob Woodward:
Yes, it can be. But I've known Bezos for over 20 years. And what's interesting about him, he bought the Post not to get involved in politics or put his thumb on the scale in any way. And he doesn't, and if he ever tried, it would be a story in the Washington Post. And if the Washington Post wouldn't publish it, then the people involved, editors or reporters, would be on television or go elsewhere and say, "He's meddling with what we do." I agree with you conceptually that it makes you uncomfortable. But in the case of him, and I had discussions with Trump about this that are in my book where Trump said, "Well, of course Bezos bought the Washington Post, so he could put his thumb on the scale." And I said, "I've not seen any evidence of that. No one else has seen any evidence of that." And Trump was just, "I just don't believe it."
Bob Woodward:
And so we're out there, in a sense, making a declaration that he's not going to do that. It's not exactly that the Washington Post is a big pillar in his empire. It's not. And he, I think, accepts the premise. And the Post writes stories about the union movement in Amazon and so forth, really tough on Amazon. I'm sure Bezos doesn't like it. He was involved in a divorce and scandal connected with that, which was covered extensively by the Washington Post. If there was ever something an owner might put the clamps on, it would be that, and he did not. But everyone is watching, and we will see.
Bob Woodward:
But I think, in fact, his impact on the Washington Post has been very good. He's put a lot of money in it. He's brought in a lot of high tech people to run the digital subscription business for the Post. And our subscriptions are in the millions, digital subscriptions. And so it's working for the moment, but that doesn't mean that it will be working forever.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
I know that Marty Baron, who used to be a local boy around here until he moved down to DC, he has said the same thing about Bezos's impact in his sense of the Washington Post. But that's always been a perpetual problem with the news, right? The question of who or what is paying the bills and any impact, whether it's the Republican party or the Whig party paying the bills, or it's some rich guy like Jeff Bezos, or it's Coca-Cola and At&T and your advertisers who are paying the bills. It's a perpetual problem.
Bob Woodward:
But Katharine Graham and Don Graham, who were publishers of the Post, really set the standard there. And I, a number of times, got in disputes with the publisher about whether we're going to run things, particularly investigations of the former DC mayor, Marion Barry. And they were very uncomfortable with that, but they said, "You make your decision and run it," and we did. We were criticized by the editorial page of the Post. And I went to the editorial page and I said, "I think you've got this wrong. I think this is exactly what newspapers do. And we're writing about the mayor going to a strip joint where there was cocaine, and if that isn't news..." And it turned out, as we know now, that Mayor Barry was a crack addict, and you don't get to that unless you do the first story. And so to the credit of the editorial page, the Washington Post's then editor, Meg Greenfield, in an editorial, she reversed herself and said, "Yes, the news department, as uncomfortable it may make people feel, is doing exactly what is necessary."
Maura Jane Farrelly:
It strikes me, though, that some of what you're getting at there is similar to what Michael was saying about the Justice Department and the conventions that have governed the way things get done. And I just wondered, do you have any concerns at all about changes in the conventions of journalism? As you said, that the Grahams said, "Okay, yes, to be a journalist is to go forward with this story and we're going to let you do that, even though we really wish you wouldn't." That's a convention. They could have said no.
Bob Woodward:
Yeah. But there are consequences of that. You can't have the motto that's on the front page of the Washington Post, democracies die in darkness, and contribute to more darkness as the owners. And so these are always, these are not... It's like Michael's job. It's like him clearing the lunch room at the Justice Department. Somebody's not going to run around and say, "Hey, boy, everything you do is exactly right." That there are stresses, as we've talked about, there are tensions, and there are uncertainty. And if you're not willing to live in a world of some uncertainty, then go do something else.
Michael Horowitz:
I'll just jump in on this, because we've had similar situations here. We are going forward, and we give draft reports to the department so they can let us know if it's classified, grand jury, et cetera, any legal restrictions. And the attorney general has authority under the IG Act to restrict certain information from going public if it would harm an ongoing criminal investigation, national security matter, et cetera.
Michael Horowitz:
I've had a couple of occasions here where the leadership of the department over the years has said, "Gee, if this goes out, it could present a threat to blah blah blah," or "It might cause this kind of harm. You should think about not putting it out," and throwing it back on me. And my answer has been, "Look, this is with you. You know whether this is a real threat or not. I can't make that judgment. And there's a provision in the IG Act that says if that's the case, you can redact it. And I will abide by it because that's what the law provides. But it also requires the department leadership to send a letter to Congress to let Congress know they've redacted that information." And of course, that didn't occur because people didn't want to send the letter to Congress and take ownership of having that. And of course, by the way, the bottom line is there was no threat. There was no harm. There was no-
Bob Woodward:
And then hopefully, if it got to sending a letter, the letter would go to Congress and then it would leak out.
Michael Horowitz:
And it wouldn't be restricted unless there was classified information. Members of Congress can put that out. It's not a leak by a member of Congress, right?
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Very good point.
Bob Woodward:
Okay.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
All right. We've got a request for a comment on Trump's using the Department of Justice as his personal lawyers. Will he and others in the department ever have to pay for that?
Michael Horowitz:
Well, we will continue to do reports about what occurred. That's our responsibility, to lay out factually what occurred.
Michael Horowitz:
And then we do that so the public can be informed. Stakeholders, Congress, the media, the public generally. We don't have any other accountability mechanisms. We speak through our reports, and then the public has to decide about accountability beyond that.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
A question that may have been prompted by some of the discussion at the end about objectivity and letting people have their say. This question is, how do you give each side its say when one side is clearly not acknowledging reality and/or is pushing lies. This strikes me very early on. There was this whole debate in journalism about whether it was even appropriate to use the word "lie" in discussing things that some officials said.
Bob Woodward:
I'm not comfortable using the word lie, frankly because it goes to motive and you don't know the motive. I don't think in your report, you ever say something is a lie. You say, here's what somebody says, here are other facts, or here are the facts. I think it's not a good newspaper word, frankly.
Michael Horowitz:
If someone violates the law, makes a false statement to us, we will say that in our report. We will say, we found this person violated the 18 USC, 1,001 for the lawyers out there, or the FBI, and other department opponents have a lack of candor provision where we might make a finding. But we have to make that finding, and we will do that. That's in our investigative matters. In a review, where it's somebody recounting information that turns out to be demonstrably false, people may not be necessarily intent, right? You need to have intent to lie. And that can be a challenge to figure out whether someone intended to lie. So we spend a fair amount of time when we do these reports, laying that out if we make such a finding. And again, we meticulously lay out what we think the facts are, and what they show to contrast with the statement that is, in our view, demonstrably false.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
To push a little on this, and I would actually say, I completely agree with both of you on the use of the word lie. It's a debate that I have with my students in the classroom. I'm not comfortable with it either, but there is this idea that if, again, coming to the question, if somebody who has authority, because he is perhaps the president of the United States. The president of the United States says grass is blue. It is not blue. He says it multiple times that it is blue. He has had it pointed out to him that it is not blue, rather.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
When you report on that, even if you say you don't necessarily take the step of saying the president is lying about the color of the grass, but you say the president says the grass is blue. The grass is not blue, it is green. You're still repeating the lie. And there's an argument to be said that you're doing damage to the public discourse by allowing the lie to be repeated or the untruth, rather, to be repeated, even if you are contextualizing it and saying that it's not true. What are your thoughts on that argument?
Bob Woodward:
So, you want to censor the president of the United States. I mean, that's absurd. And part of developing an aggregate profile of who the president is, his or her behavior, attitudes, decisions, that's part of the story. And so you put it out. Now, I am not a fan of the idea of saying the president falsely asserted the following. I would prefer the president said the following, the contrary information is, and then present that, because that's kind of like saying it's a lie. People are smart. They can make judgements about facts and assertions, generally. And I think you've kind of stoked the notion of media bias when you label something that an official, particularly a president, said as false or unsupported.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Got a question again about the Watergate era. Do you think Nixon might have survived if he had Fox News defending him and creating a counter-narrative?
Bob Woodward:
No, because he had his secret tapes and those showed the extended, the criminal that he was not ambiguous. In the end, I think it was 41 or 42 people who were on the house judiciary committee. Once the final tapes were out, they unanimously said they would vote to impeach him. Barry Goldwater, and the Senate, and house leaders went to Nixon. And Nixon asked Barry Goldwater, how many votes do I have in the Senate, 15 or 20? Which is not enough, of course. He would need 34 to keep from being impeached. And Goldwater said, you have five votes, Mr. President. And one of them is not mine. The next night, Nixon announced he was resigning.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
Coming back to our original question about transparency, is government transparency a bit of an illusion when it can take so long, years sometimes, for FOIA requests, that's freedom of information act requests to be met? And I'll throw out the idea that it's not just time, it's money, right? That's one of the ways that the governmental agencies can also make it more difficult is to say, "Oh, it's going to cost $1.50 a page to satisfy this FOIA request." Is transparency an illusion, in light of that?
Michael Horowitz:
I don't think transparency is an illusion. It's clearly a very real concern about how long it takes to do that. As we've become more popular, we've gotten more and more FOIA requests, and we've had to hire more people to try and keep up with the FOIA requests. Because we do want to comply with FOIA in a timely way because our goal is to get information out. So it can be a challenge even when you're trying to keep up with the requests.
Michael Horowitz:
Going back to what we started out in this discussion, having reports out two or three or four years later obviously is problematic. Having said that, I still think there is transparency and getting that kind of information out matters. I know from our work that our reports live on here in the Justice Department, when people want to do something that maybe gets closer to align, they kind of remember in the back of their mind earlier reports we've done. I've seen instances where people have clearly asked themselves the question, I'm not sure I want to end up being in an IG report where 10 years later, or 20 years later someone says, "Hey, do you remember what that attorney general, deputy attorney general, or assistant attorney general did?" So there's still a value in it, but I agree. The delay in the lag time is concerning.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
I have a question here that takes a premise that I'm actually not sure I agree with. But it's a premise I do hear a lot from people, and that is that it is so hard to find fact-based news today. I actually don't think it's that hard. I always tell people if you're reading a story that is immensely satisfying to you, bing, bing, bing. That should maybe be your first sign that it might not be the most accurate story, because little in life is immensely satisfying. But this person would like to know from each of you, what are your top news outlets that you go to? And then I would want know why, what it is about those news outlets.
Bob Woodward:
My news outlets, there is The Washington Post, where I'm still an associate editor, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. Some of the network news I think is excellent. I like to look at CNN and MSNBC and Fox News to give me a perspective on what may be going on, and then some of the aggregate sites, like Politico is a great one. Axios is a great one where if you look each morning, their playbooks and their analysis, Mike Allen on Axios, I think is very informed and useful.
Michael Horowitz:
I, of course, get Google alerts and given how much news is generated by our work and other IG works, I'm looking at pretty much the wide swat of news stories related to us and the IG community broadly. And then of course getting information from various people on my staff. But what I tend to do in the morning is at a minimum do quick looks at, and maybe more in-depth depending on the time I have, The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Politico, given the kinds of stories they have about the work we do and people making requests of us and those sorts of things. So try to scan those. There are often various pieces in other places like HuffPost, Axios, Hill, other media outlets that become highly relevant.
Michael Horowitz:
Then of course there are various journalists who focus on the federal prisons or prisons generally, I'll say, and I have oversight over the federal prison system. So I'm reading specialized reports from organizations that focus on prisons. And I try and keep up on that. So because of the job, there are other specialized outlets. In terms of TV, if there are issues related to us, I'll try and scan as many networks, cable, or broadcast networks to see what they're saying about the work we're doing. But like I said, I tend not to try and focus on the daily ins and outs of that.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
We hear so much bashing of the quote-unquote MSM, the mainstream media. And, I'm struck by the fact that you both went to... I mean, you mentioned some more recent news outlets, but at the top of each of your lists are these old, gray, traditional media sources. So I'm wondering if you could say a little bit about why, what is it about the mainstream media that put them at the top of your lists, each of you.
Bob Woodward:
Because the mainstream media has its flaws and sometimes doesn't go down the right track, but it's basically quite good. I think we need to face that, look at history and there are certain fads and there are certain problems that emerge, but I know my newspaper very well, and this is the issue of trust and good faith effort. And I think that almost all the time, it's good faith effort. It's done with the unwritten contract, but implied contract with the reader to be as straight and direct as you can. And so I like them. I think the wall street journal, for instance, they keep a separation between news and opinion, but I think their opinion section is very good. I like to read it. Same in all of these news outlets.
Bob Woodward:
There's criticism of the mainstream media, yes. And I entered journalism in the Watergate story 49 years ago. And you talk about being criticized and having the leader of the free world Richard Nixon and his spokespeople run, Ziegler the press secretary, saying that we are making up stories and it is a concoction. It is a fountain of misinformation. And that steals you a little bit for, okay, there's going to be controversy when you get something right, as there's going to be controversy when you get something wrong.
Michael Horowitz:
I'll just add to that. Partly it's of course, growing up, reading what you've read, but it's also what the people I'm going to be interacting with have read also that day, right? What I'm trying to do is keep up on, for me, what's going to play out during my day at the office. And that's why I do look at specialized publications. I might not go every day to The Atlantic or Axios or HuffPost or the various other outlets that will be covering various issues that we're dealing with. But I'm getting Google alerts. I'm looking at them as they're coming in. And frankly, it's just a question of time. There's just so many hours in the day I have to do this. And I've got to scan what I can scan and get through it quickly. And then, at night it'll be driven largely by what's happened during the day in terms of what I can catch up with at the end of the day.
Bob Woodward:
But do you think they're good? Do you think the mainstream media is good?
Michael Horowitz:
I certainly think that they are. They do, generally speaking, a good job at it. Obviously, I have some insight and connection with stories that I know about. And I have as you might guess, I know I have a good feel for, generally speaking, stories written by some reporters tend to be particularly well-sourced and very well done and very carefully worded. And then, all the other stories and think, well, I know they're a little loose with some of their language. Maybe because they have a source that led them down that path, but I can sort of tell that. But I think as a general matter, they do a good job. And it's important for me to understand what's out there because I know that's going to come back to me sometimes in the form of a letter request, sometimes in the form of the journalist is going to call us and ask us for a comment, or I'm going to be in a meeting with the attorney general or deputy attorney general. They're going to ask me something about what's going on, publicly.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
I've got about two or three minutes. A few questions came in looking for you all to give us your impressions on the state of American democracy, up or down?
Michael Horowitz:
Bob?
Bob Woodward:
You know, I'm going to pass. I'm working on this book with Bob Costa about Trump and Biden. And that's very much a question in the reporting and I'm going to let the book answer it as best as we can. And I'm not going to jump the gun.
Michael Horowitz:
I'll just say I tend to be a glass-half-full person, so I try to be optimistic. And I, as someone who enjoyed history and at Brandeis, and generally when you look at the history of the country, there's been a lot of very challenging times for this country. And I think about it a couple of years ago, we went through the 50th anniversary of what happened in 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, when the Chicago riots occurred. And you looked at all of that and thought, well, it wasn't great. That was not a great year for American democracy.
Maura Jane Farrelly:
When my students come to me and say, "America has never been more polarized." I always say, I think February 1861 was probably a little bit more polarizing than what we're going through now. Before I turn it over to Lewis, somebody wants to know, Michael, how your Brandeis education prepared you for where you are today. And then we'll go from there.
Michael Horowitz:
Great question. And so what I'll say is it was the liberal arts that Brandeis offered. And coming to a school say... I came to the school thinking I was going to be a politics or history major. And I turned out to be an economics major. And I enjoyed all of the classes I had, but it was the rigorous setting where people debated, discussed.
Michael Horowitz:
And I'm going to pick up what Bob said earlier. The first place where I really was, where I heard contrary views to what I had grown up, been hearing as a kid and to have that kind of discussion and to have it in a respectful way was so important. And the listening part of it was so important. And so having that wide range of experience in the humanities and economics, can't say in the sciences so much, but in all those other spaces was just tremendous. I have great affinity for it. I often say truth even on to its innermost parts, I'm a pretty good feel for that because that's what we're all about. So it stuck with me and it's been a great journey coming out of Brandeis and having the chance to go to law school and do what I've been able to do.
Lewis Brooks:
Thank you, Bob, Michael, I was going to ask if you have any final thoughts for all the Brandeis alumni and friends who have joined us. I mean, Michael, that was beautiful, but anything else?
Michael Horowitz:
Let me ask Bob, if he had any final words.
Bob Woodward:
No, no. Thank you. I think we've run out of time and ideas.
Michael Horowitz:
Well, I'll just say, the question people asked earlier about sort of what we're going to do going forward about the issues we started with, how people perhaps watch the news a little bit.
Lewis Brooks:
Thank you. This was truly fantastic. And many thanks to our distinguished speakers, Michael Horowitz and Bob Woodward and our moderator professor Farrelly. It was a great privilege for Denise and me to host this program with all of you. And special thanks to all of you who joined this session. We are delighted to see so many of our Brandeis alumni and friends coming together to explore the most current of topics with our Brandeis faculty and alumni experts. And we look forward to you joining us for an exciting array of programs throughout this Alumni Weekend.