(continued)

Which industries spend the most in influencing Congress? Can we rank oil, defense, pharmaceuticals?
It changes over time, so that's hard to answer. The telecom and pharmaceutical industries are two of the most robust in terms of lobbying and contributions. The defense industry, which has thousands of companies spread throughout the country, actually doesn't spend as much as you might think given the importance of that in our policy.

It's more a question of having it spread throughout the country so that every congressman has a vested interest in keeping all this crap going?
Right. Which is what Eisenhower had a conversation about in 1960—about the military industrial complex.

Oil is certainty right up there; pharmaceutical and telecoms. The Center has done frontal examinations of the funding of all these industries. Those are the ones who do the most.

So there's no chance the telecoms won't get immunity in the current bill?
No chance. It's headed where it headed last time. So, all of this is depressing, but it is how things work, unfortunately.

Did you see that thing about the 435 days of missing White House e-mails?
I've been astonished by the lack of coverage about this. The New York Times really needs to go into this. I said this to Tom Blanton, who runs the National Security Archive, a nonprofit at George Washington University. Blanton brought the court action about this. His center is the biggest single requester of Freedom of Information records in America today, and has been for years. I bumped into Tom Blanton the other day and I said, "Tom, this is unbelievable!" And he said, "It sure is." I said it reminds me of the 18.5-minute gap in the Watergate tape. And he looked at me and said, "Oh, no, this is much much worse: These are millions of White House e-mails. It is technically against the law to destroy these records. And of course the White House is saying it did not deliberately destroy them. This story should be the lead on the evening news."

And it probably hasn't been on the evening news at all.
No. The same thing with this Iraq report we just did [about the administration's 935 lies]. It should have been on the evening news. It wasn't anywhere on the networks, except for the NBC show at 6 a.m.—they read the AP story.

Isn't [Los Angeles congressman] Henry Waxman still pretty good? An exception to this general mess?
I think he's the most aggressive. Even before he became chairman again and now has subpoena ability. Back when he did not have that, he was the one that was bird-dogging Halliburton. He was the one going hard on the energy task force issue when they were setting policy without revealing who was in the meetings. He was finding out about the no-bid Halliburton contract.

There's this image we have from our civic books that congressmen will haul people up and get them to talk about whatever they want to. It's actually not like that.

Because they have these elaborate negotiations in advance about exactly what they'll talk about?
Right. It's really frustrating to watch, because you know the truth is not coming out; a piece of the truth is coming out about something you're not quite interested in.

Are you disappointed that the change in control of Congress to the Democrats hasn't made more of a difference?
I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon here. Studies have shown congressional oversight has been diminishing over two decades. The number of hearings has gone down, the network coverage has certainly gone down, not counting C-Span. The number of subpoenas that have been issued—the tenacious oversight use of the Congress has also gone down over time. So in a way this is typical, and not surprising. Democrats don't want to seem to be too critical because it's an election year; they want to seem more like statesmen and junkyard dogs. Also, they don't want to alienate half their constituents or some of the independents.

But even when they try to get folks up there, even when they flex their muscle and try to do what is an entirely reasonable oversight thing to do, they're stiff-armed by the White House. And most of the power in Washington for several years now has been at the White House, clearly, and not at Congress. It shows.

The other problem is that the national news media takes its lead from Congress. They're clearly symbiotic. If the press doesn't want to cover the hearings, Congress doesn't want to hold them.

The dynamic has changed so much from 20 years ago. Our checks and balances are not what people might thing they are; it seems to be much more diminished. The gusto and the aggressiveness by folks doing oversight is nothing like it used to be. It's quite serious for democracy. You end up having mono instead of stereo for the information the public gets. It ends up just coming out of the White House, and everyone being carefully on message. And Congress for much of the time was the same party. So it too was on talking points.

When you have everyone saying the same thing, the media emaciated in its newsroom ranks and otherwise disinclined to be aggressive, they generally went with the easy way—the horse's mouth. The president said it; it must be fact. And they amplified it like hell all over the world. So they're complicit in what's happened here. It does give the average citizen a sense of powerlessness that someone else is in charge of this country.

What are five things a citizen can do?
Five? It sounds corny, but we have a real problem with the informed-citizenry part of our democracy. Sixty-six percent don't know who their member of Congress is. As recently as 10 years ago, 40 percent didn't know who the vice president was. More people know who the judge is on People's Court than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And 36 percent of high school students think the government should censor the news every day. Quite disturbing. I think media literacy—but just in general being informed about public affairs. In other words, watching the bastards, whoever they are.

The reason news organizations are hollowing out their newsrooms and investors are harboring their investments is because people are not consuming news the way they once did. When sound bites have gone from 19 seconds to six seconds from the '70s to the '90s, when you dumb down the public, you get a certain result here. They're much more easy to manipulate by those in power.

Democracy is not a spectator sport; people have to participate. This idea of sitting on the sidelines and bitching and moaning gets old, too. You can't just complain about what they are doing. It's supposed to be us. This is our government.

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