Face the Nation transcripts June 9, 2013: Ayotte, Gillibrand, Speier, Cummings, McCaul & Dingell

(CBS News) Below is a transcript of "Face the Nation" on June 9, 2013, hosted by CBS News' Bob Schieffer. Guests include: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich. Plus, a panel with David Sanger, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Joseph Nye and CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan. Finally, an update on Nelson Mandela from CBS News' Debora Patta.

SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. Former South African president Nelson Mandela, who is 94, was hospitalized overnight for a recurrent lung infection. His condition continues to be serious but stable. So we're going first to Pretoria and CBS News reporter Debora Patta.

DEBORA PATTA, CBS CORRESPONDENT: A presidential spokesman said he has heard no word regarding Nelson Mandela's health from his doctors. This means the official statement still stands; he is serious but stable and able to breathe on his own. CBS News has also been told that he had a good night's rest. Family members have been to see him. His wife Graca Machel was with him when he was rushed to hospital. She's been by his side ever since and we're told this is a source of great comfort for him. The South African nation has been also been asked to pray for Nelson Mandela at Sunday morning church services. Now, you have to understand that Nelson Mandela has been hospitalized four times since Christmas. His health has deteriorated in recent months, and every time it is the same problem, a recurring lung infection. And whilst he has around-the-clock medical care at his Johannesburg home, he needs a special machine that is only available in hospital to treat this condition. A presidential spokesman says that whilst there is still public anxiety around Mandela's health, there is growing acceptance that he is an old man. And this was echoed by an old friend, Andrew Mlangeni, who spent many years in prison with Mandela. He says "It is now time to let Mandela go." And certainly there is a sense that the South African nation is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Bob?

SCHIEFFER: Thank you so much, Debora. And now, back in Washington, we're joined by the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Mike McCaul, who's in Austin, and the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings; he is in Baltimore. And, gentlemen, we have plenty to talk about. Let's start with these leaks that are coming about. Has NASA, in your view -- or, I should say, the NSA, in your view, Mr. Chairman, overreached with these latest disclosures we're hearing about, about gathering all this data about people's telephones and so on?

MCCAUL: Well, I think that is the issue that Congress will be looking at, providing our oversight responsibilities. Let me say first, though, that this is a -- was a lawful program. It was approved and reviewed by the FISA court. So you had that approval. It has -- the program itself has stopped terrorist attacks in the past, including the 2009 New York subway bombing plot by Mr. Zazi. But, on the other hand, it does raise concerns, I think, on several levels. One was, when I was a counterterrorism federal prosecutor, we could take the number and run them through the phone companies, through a national security letter or subpoena. Now what has happened is they have literally taken all these phone records and maintained them, taken them out of the private sector and maintained them in the public sector within the NSA. And I think that gives a lot of Americans great pause and great concern. And lastly, if I could just say, the optics are terrible in this case when you consider the latest scandals, whether it be the IRS targeting conservatives, whether it be the AP being targeted by the Justice Department, and the Fox News reporters. It really makes you wonder -- you have to ask yourself this question, is can you trust this administration with your phone records?

SCHIEFFER: Well, I guess I would ask you, then, do you believe that they ought to be curtailed, even if it is legal now, as you say? Have they gone too far? Should new steps be taken to restrict the government in being able to do this?

MCCAUL: Again, I think it's the warehousing of all the phone records from all the major carriers within the federal government is what gives most people the great concern. I think it could be run through the private sector as we used to do it, and that's something I think we'll be looking at in the Congress. You know, I think there's a fix to this. On the other hand, you know, look, this program, you're talking about national security; you're talking about protecting American lives, and that's our number one mission.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, let me get to Mr. Cummings. What's your take on this, Congressman?

CUMMINGS: I tell you, first of all, I voted against the Patriot Act, and one of the reasons why I voted against it is because I was afraid of unintended consequences. Here we have a situation where we clearly -- since 9/11 -- clearly, we have to be very, very cognizant of a threat to our people and -- and -- coming from afar or within our borders. But at the same time we have to make sure that we guard our Bill of Rights and guard the Constitution. That right to privacy is extremely important to Americans. So a lot of this information, of course, is classified. We're going to be having a briefing in Congress come Tuesday where we'll get even more information. But I've got to tell you, I understand that the balance has to be struck. I looked at the president's presentation in defending this. But I think we have gone too far and I think, again, we're now open for debate. I want the -- to have that debate, and hopefully we'll strike the appropriate balance.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

CUMMINGS: But, you know, the question then, Bob, becomes, how far does it go? I mean, how -- I mean, if this becomes the normal now, what's going to be the normal tomorrow?

SCHIEFFER: All right. Mr. Cummings, I also want to ask you about this outrage in Washington over reports that the White House is using the IRS to go after conservative groups. This is the charge made by the chairman of your committee, Darrell Issa, who you say has accused the White House of not only doing it but is now -- he says they are lying about it. You sent a strong letter to him. What's that all about?

CUMMINGS: Yeah, well, Chairman Issa has a tendency to make strong allegations and then go chasing the facts and usually never finding them. We have a situation here where we now have interviewed the manager of the exec office in Cincinnati of the IRS. He is a conservative, 21-year veteran who spent six hours with our committee the other day talking in an interview. And he explained to us that this Tea Party situation started with one case back in 2010. Somebody -- one of his screeners brought it to him; he looked at it and said -- he said, "We must send this to the technical office in Washington because this is high-profile; this is a unique situation, and we want to have consistency." So Washington IRS technical office did not ask him for the case; he sent it. And keep in mind what I said, Bob, this was a 21-year veteran and he termed himself a conservative Republican. And so...

SCHIEFFER: All right, well are you -- are you saying that the chairman of your committee is a liar?

CUMMINGS: Oh, no, I would never do that. I think that -- I think those kinds of words are inappropriate in our -- on Capitol Hill. What I am saying is what I've said to him over and over again, we must maintain the integrity of our committee and of our work product. And -- and in order to do that, we cannot make these wild accusations, Bob, and then not be able to back them up. Because then, when we say anything, people begin to question it. Again, I -- and I can tell you that, in this case, Chairman Issa, with all due respect, is absolutely wrong. This Republican...

SCHIEFFER: OK.

CUMMINGS: No, no, no, let me finish. This Republican manager said there was no White House involvement, no political involvement, none of that. He made the decision doing the best he could to have some kind of consistency.

SCHIEFFER: All right, I want to go back to Chairman McCaul quickly. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, says these leaks investigations -- he is asking now for a criminal investigation of this. Do you think that's necessary?

MCCAUL: Well, I do. This is probably one of the most highly sensitive programs out there in the executive branch and for the United States to protect American lives. And -- and the fact of the matter is somebody leaked this information, putting the -- not only the court orders, slide show presentations and very sensitive data out there on the internet. This is the kind of thing that while some may applaud the person for doing that and it will give us a chance to provide additional oversight into what the administration is doing, I do think in terms of when you look at national security law that this was a serious breach and a serious violation.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we thank both of you. I want to turn now to New Hampshire Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte who is with us this morning. And senator, I want to ask you about some of this, too, but I want to start with the news. I understand that you have decided to endorse the bipartisan immigration reform plan being sponsored by the so-called gang of eight in the Senate. This is a big deal. I don't want to get too far into inside baseball, but this is a big boost for those that are pushing that bill. Why did you do it? And I trust you are going to do that.

AYOTTE: I am, Bob. And I've looked that the very carefully. Our immigration system is completely broken. We've got 11 million people living in this country illegally, in the shadows. We have a legal immigration system that isn't meeting our needs to grow our economy. And so I looked at this carefully. This is a thoughtful bipartisan solution to a tough problem and so that's why I'm going to support it. I looked at the border security provisions, the e-verify to make sure we control who's getting job in this country, and also making sure that there's a better legal immigration system, bring the high- tech workers here to make sure that we can have the best and the brightest here in this country to grow our economy. And finally, with the 11 million bringing them out of the shadows, a tough but fair way for them to earn citizenship. Go to the back of the line, pay taxes, pass a criminal background check, learn English. So this is a good bipartisan solution and i look forward to supporting it.

SCHIEFFER: So there are now five Republicans who have expressed support for this plan. You make the sixth. And what that really means is it would be extremely difficult if all the Democrats stay on board, to filibuster -- for Republican to filibuster this bill down the line. So, this is not really inside baseball You may turn out to be the key vote.

AYOTTE: Well, Bob, and I don't think anyone wants to filibuster this. This is a debate we have to have for the nation. And the status quo is unacceptable. We need to solve this problem to make sure that we have the work force we need and that we don't have another wave of illegal immigration and that's what needs to happen.

SCHIEFFER: I want to also ask you about this whole NSA situation. You're on the armed services committee. Do you think the government overreached here?

AYOTTE: Well, Bob, we have a responsibility to protect people's constitutional rights, but let's not forget that we are still at war with terrorists. This program has stopped terrorist attacks against our country according to the intelligence officials. And this threat still remains. And so we have to step back. This is reviewed by the FISA court. I think there needs to be more rigorous congressional oversight over this. And this comes up for periodic re-authorization. We ought to make sure that we're not capturing records we don't need to protect America. But we cannot allow the terrorists to make -- we need to make sure that we keep going after them. And I don't think it's an accident that administrations from two very different philosophies have supported keeping this program in place.

SCHIEFFER: I want to also ask you about this whole situation on the famous talking points issue by Susan Rice after Benghazi. You were one of those who were very critical of Susan Rice for coming on television and saying what she said. Will you support her now that she's been named to the national security council? That does not require Senate confirmation, of course, but is she the right person?

AYOTTE: Well, I think that Ambassador Rice did a huge disservice to the nation in the representation she made about the attacks on our consulate on this show and on every major channel. You know, even what she said after following the Libyan president, really, contradicting him that this was a premeditated event even though Secretary Panetta, Chairman Dempsey knew right away this was a terrorist attack. So -- however, I will -- it's the president's call. And I will work with her where I can to make sure that we're focusing on the security of this country.

SCHIEFFER: And I also want to ask you about this extraordinary hearing when the members of the joint chiefs of staff were hauled before the senate last week and really read the Riot Act about sexual assaults in the military. Where do you see this going?

AYOTTE: Well, this is a huge problem, Bob. I'm married to an Iraq War veteran. We have the finest military in the world. But this is so wrong what's happening with sexual assaults in our military. We need to hold the commanders accountable. They need to be fired if they're not going to take this seriously. And we also need to make sure that we have the most supportive system for victims of sexual assault. I'm the co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill with Patti Murray to make sure that every victim gets a special victim's council to be supported within the military. I expect that we're going come up with tough bipartisan legislation to address this because zero tolerance has to be where it is within our military.

SCHIEFFER: Do you take the punishment out of the hands of the military commanders?

AYOTTE: Well, Bob, I'll tell you this, I appreciate what Senator Gillibrand and others have been doing on this. However, no problem gets solved in the military without the chain of command. And I don't want to let the chain of command off the hook. We need to make sure that they have additional responsibilities and checks to make sure that these cases are prosecuted. So whatever we do, I think we'll come up with a strong solution this week. They need to be held accountable. And they can't be let off the hook for what is done and what is happening within our military.

SCHIEFFER: Did you get the feeling that they got the message during that hearing?

AYOTTE: I think they got the message, but they're going to get the message even further after we're done with this issue in the senate arms services committee. We're not letting this go. We have got to solve this. Status quo is unacceptable.

SCHIEFFER: All right, senator thank you very much for coming this morning. We'll be back within one minute with more on this sexual assault in the military story. In a minute.

SCHIEFFER: And we turn now to Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier.

I want to talk more about this amazing hearing in the senate. It is really rare for one thing to see all of the top military commanders at one table at one time and the senators, especially the women on the committee, really pull no punches. Senator, you were at the hearing and here's just -- I want to have another look at what you said.

GILLIBRAND: Not every single commander can distinguish between a slap on the ass and a rape.

SCHIEFFER: You were angry! You were angry! Do you think the military understands that this is a problem? I mean, do they get it?

GILLIBRAND: I think they understand it's a problem. I think the chairman of the joint chiefs said that he felt he dropped the ball to a certain degree. What we have here is a crisis. We have 26,000 unwanted sexual contacts, assaults and rapes a year. We know of the 3,300 who are willing to report that 70 percent of them are sexual assaults and rapes. It is a serious problem. These are serious crimes.

And what the victim tell us across the board is that they're afraid to report because of retaliation, because they've seen other women be retaliated against. Or they feel that they'll either be marginalized and their careers will be over, or they'll be blamed. And so until you have transparency and accountability and objectivity where the decision maker of whether you're going to trial or not, is an objective prosecutor, not a commander, you're not going to have the kind of reporting and, frankly, justice that we need in this system.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Congresswoman Speier, you have actually said the military has become enablers of sexual assault by not demanding that these cases be taken out of the chain of command. That really kind of goes against the military way of doing things. I mean, the commander is a guy who who tells the people "you've got go up that hill and if you don't go I'm back here and you're going to have to deal with me." If you take this out of the chain of command, how can the military -- how can they maintain discipline? I guess that's the argument they will make.

SPEIER: Well, I think there's a distinction between discipline -- which they absolutely should have total control over-- and crimes, felonies, violent crimes. And that's where the distinction should be made. And I think that's what both what Kirsten and I are interested in doing is fixing that component of it. They're enablers because this has been a problem for 25 years and for 25 years they've trotted up to Capitol Hill, they sat in committee hearings and they said all the right things, zero tolerance. But then the scandals keep happening.

SCHIEFFER: So what is it, Senator, that you want to do in your legislation?

GILLIBRAND: Well, we want to do what a number of our allies have already done, Israel, the U.K., other allies we fight side by side with. They have removed the serious crimes, rapes, murders, sexual assaults, outside of the chain of command into trained military prosecutors. And they made that shift because they needed objectivity in that decision. We believe that same change here in the U.S. system would make a big difference. Because, frankly, that's what the victims are telling us, that they have such fear of retaliation, such fear of having their careers be derailed that they aren't reporting. And until you see justice being done; until you see accountability in the system, you will not be able to change the culture. This is a cultural problem. It's from top to bottom. And that's why you need to see a major shift.

SCHIEFFER: Do you agree with that approach, Congresswoman?

SPEIER: Absolutely. Until there are more prosecutions and more convictions, this problem is not going to end.

SCHIEFFER: Well, what happens then -- let's say somebody is assaulted. So what does that person do?

SPEIER: So, presently, they have to file a report and it goes up the chain of command. And typically, with the chain of command, you have someone who knows the assailant, may even be the assailant, or is also concerned about a promotion. And having something under your watch take place that's a violent crime may not look too good when it comes time to being promoted. So historically, what's happened is they've found ways around it, either non-judicial punishment or saying to the victim "You know what? We think you have a personality disorder, so we're going to give you an honorable discharge, but you're going to leave." So typically you have the perpetrator getting promoted and the victim getting kicked out of the...

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: And under your bill, what would that person do instead of filing this report, as you say?

GILLIBRAND: Well, there's many places where you can report today. You can report in many places, not just to your commander. But the difference is the decision-maker of whether or not you're going to take this case to trial rests with a trained military prosecutor. And in that way, there's objectivity. They're going to base it on the facts of the case and nothing else, no pressure about their own promotion, no bias perhaps because they know the perpetrator or know the victim. So that decision will be made in a more objective way, which we hope will instill more confidence by the victim in the system, that he or she has a chance to receive justice. And just to be clear, this is not just a woman's issue. More than half of the victims are men. This is a problem that is corrosive, that's undermined the integrity of the whole military and is undermining our military readiness. And if we want our troops to be ready for any -- any event that our military needs to prepare for, you're not going to be as strong as you would be otherwise if you have this within the ranks.

SCHIEFFER: Thank you all very much. We really appreciate you being here. And we'll be back.

SCHIEFFER: President Obama came out of his first meeting with China's new leader and said "We are in uncharted waters when it comes to dealing with security." That may be an understatement. The marvels of modern technology have crossed us into a whole new world that goes beyond the current controversy over government snooping and how we strike a balance between security and privacy. We're in the midst of a changing culture where we are redefining the whole concept of privacy. Younger people routinely post on Facebook things that those of my generation once hesitated to discuss in mixed company. Our phones and credit cards leave a trail of where we go, and we don't go many places outside the view of street cameras that monitor our speed, among other things. A nation that has depended on a free press to provide it with independently gathered and, for the most part, accurate information is now overwhelmed by information from all sides, some accurate, much of it totally false, and a lot of it disgraceful and mean. The Internet allows us to transmit the news instantly, and that's a good thing. But the down side is the nuts can find each other now and find someone to agree with them no matter how twisted or evil their logic. That is not so good. You're right, Mr. President, these are uncharted waters. But I'm afraid there are some rough seas ahead before we reach shore. Back in a minute.

SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now, but for most of you, we'll be right back with our panel to talk more about that National Security Agency monitoring of phone and Internet records. Plus, the president's summit with the new president of China, and for our "Face the Nation" flashback today, a special interview with the longest-serving member of Congress ever. Stay with us.

SCHIEFFER: And welcome back to "Face the Nation." Our panel now on a lot of things. With us today, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, David Sanger; the national editor of The Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran; plus Harvard University's Joe Nye, whose new book is "Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era," and our own State Department correspondent Margaret Brennan. All right, let's talk about this summit. The president and the president of China met. They talked about global warming, keeping North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. I'd just like to get the takeaway from all of you. Joe, let me just start with you.

JOE NYE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I think it's probably the most important meeting between an American president and the Chinese president or leader in 40 years, since Nixon and Mao.

SCHIEFFER: Why?

NYE: Because Xi Jinping represents a new China, which is beginning to feel its oats. And he's also a new kind of man. Unlike his predecessor Hu Jintao, he's a bit more relaxed and assertive at the same time. Getting the ability to communicate informally between Obama and Xi Jinping is going to be very important to manage this relationship for the next few years.

SCHIEFFER: So what you're saying is it's not what they agreed on but the fact they met that's important here?

NYE: Exactly. They met in an informal situation and the fact that there weren't deliverables, concrete things that had to be signed and all that pomp and circumstance, that was a good thing.

SCHIEFFER: David?

DAVID SANGER, WASHINGTON POST: Well, I would agree with what Joe said. It's almost impossible to imagine Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao, sitting for eight hours, relatively unscripted with the president of the United States. It just -- it couldn't happen. That said, there are forces both in the United States and in China that could force both men into a direction that is clear what from what they said they don't want to go in. I mean, we're at this sort of tipping point of do the territorial disputes, the cyber allegations, the intellectual property theft, tip the relationship more toward a cold war relationship or does it tip toward cooperation between the world's two largest economies? Both leaders made it clear they want to go the cooperation route, both have militaries and intelligence services that may push events the other way.

SCHIEFFER: Rajiv?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, WASHINGTON POST: Look, we've got now almost a full term for President Obama to continue building this relationship. This engagement here I think leads us down a path where, as David and Joe were saying, we can open an important new chapter, particularly at this moment with the cyber issues that are roiling in Washington. And it is the -- one of the principal issues in the U.S./China relationship, some prance incremental progress being made in these discussions. Where does this go from here? Getting these two men in an informal setting to start to tackle some of these things is an important step forward.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think that was the State Department's objective? Is this what the administration wanted to just simply get them to sit down and get to know each other a little bit, or is there more to it here?

MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the sort of shirt-sleeve summit idea, it's about building that relationship. I mean, the messages that Secretaries Kerry and Clinton brought every time I went to Beijing with them was, you know, a rising power and an existing one don't have to clash. And they're trying to set that tone. But there are a lot of paths that they're set to clash on. One thing that the administration seems relatively pleased with so far is that at least in the past few months, the Chinese have been bringing Pyongyang to task a bit in trying to rein in their new leader in terms of the saber rattling that he's been doing. So there have been somewhat of a deliverable on that front that at least Beijing is cracking down with some sanctions, but you're not going to see easy resolution. I mean, with Chinese diplomacy is always incremental.

SCHIEFFER: But you know as your colleague Graham Allison at Harvard has pointed out, when you have a case since the time back to Sparta and Athens where you had an existing power and a rising power, at those junctures in history most of the time they wind up going to war.

NYE: Not always. There are some cases that are the exception. And even the original case going back to Ancient Greece could have been solved differently. I think the key point here is if you look at the U.S. and China, we have some real, deep conflicts, but we also have areas of cooperation that are even more important. You can't have financial stability, you can't manage climate change, can't deal with terrorism, can't deal with cyber unless we and the Chinese overcome the differences that we have in cooperating with in these areas. Perhaps the most important thing of this summit may be that on the issue of cyber-- which is a big deal-- we've been talking about that for some time. The fact that it's now raised to level of the president and president to president, that is a big step.

SCHIEFFER: Well, the president -- I thought it was significant, he did not accuse China of stealing our stuff, but there's no question of anybody you talk to in the U.S. government or anybody who deals with all of this that the Chinese have been hacking into our system stealing our plans too make the various kinds of weapons and all of that. Is there a chance, can the president of China do anything about this?

SANGER: Well, that's the fascinating bit that the Obama administration is taking here. At their meeting on Saturday morning, I'm told the president sat and went through some very specific cases. And he kept them all to the territory of economic espionage, stealing intellectual property. He didn't go into whether it was the Chinese who took part of the design for the new F-35, or traditional kinds of military conflict. And the argument he was making was that China over the long term can not manage to keep growing at these levels if investors believe they can't bring serious new technology into China. He was trying to appeal to their long-term best interests. What we don't know about Xi Jinping is whether or not he is going to be able to have the control over the People's Liberation Army and that unit that we've written about so much that does a lot of this cyber spying to bring a halt to this, or whether the interest inside the PLA, which also owns a lot of businesses within China, are going to sort of overwhelm it. The good sign is he actually now has the title early on as the chairman of the military commission. His predecessor didn't have that until he was in office for several years.

SCHIEFFER: Margaret, did you get any indication -- we know they talked about North Korea but what happened on that

BRENNAN: Well, we have heard from U.S. officials that they think Pyongyang has gotten the message that they had to reengage with South Korea. That does not mean that they're ready to give up their nukes. There are no signs of progress on that front. But what we have heard is that in recent visit by North Korean officials to Beijing, they were brought to task and they were told you need to calm down here. And what we've seen from the North Koreans is that they are saying we want to speak one on one with some of the members of that six party talk group. The issue is that they're trying, though, to break apart that alliance against them. So they're more willing to engage, but it's not getting to the bottom line the Obama administration wants, which is give up your nukes and then we can talk.

SCHIEFFER: Well, the fact is that North Koreas have kind of quieted down from some of that high rhetoric we -- I guess we don't know exactly why.

SANGER: But they haven't used -- they haven't signed onto the phrase denuclearization, which is what the Chinese used.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we're going to take a break here. And we'll come back in one minute and talk about other things.

SCHIEFFER: And we're back now with our panel. Rajiv, Senator John McCain, who was just in Syria, met with the the rebels put out a report this morning that he's heard from some of the rebels leaders who say the situation in Syria is more desperate than ever. Do you have any insight on what's going on here?

CHANDRASEKARAN: Certainly over the past couple weeks with the addition of more Hezbollah fighters crossing over from Lebanon, backed by Iran, it's allowed the Assad government to reclaim critical terrain, terrain between Damascus and the port city of Aleppo. The Assad government is gaining ground here. Rebels are being pushed back. And so the dynamics there are changing. And this going forward I think poses an important new test now for the president's new national security team with Susan Rice coming in as national security adviser, Samantha Power going over to the United Nations, two individuals who have expressed concern in the past at American inaction with regard to genocide in the case of Africa, We're not there yet in Syria, but, look, they're about a million-and-a-half Syrians who have been displaced outside the borders, significant humanitarian crisis. And the situation there continues to, sort of, get more grave as the months roll on here into the third year of this war.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Margaret, are you getting any indication that we may -- are going to do more, or we're not going to do anything, or what do you think happens here?

BRENNAN: Well, I think where Rajiv was just pointing us towards is the next step here, is that question of ethnic cleansing and moral imperative to act. That's certainly something that the new ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, has written a lot about -- and right to protect. Also, we've seen humanitarian intervention as, sort of, instincts from Susan Rice herself. What other tools are in the president's tool box short of military intervention? That's the one thing he definitely has taken off the table here.

SCHIEFFER: So there won't be any military intervention?

BRENNAN: But you are hearing, on the Hill and others, other tools in the tool box. Can the U.S. help organize the Arab League to help support some sort of military intervention? Can we get something on another end? The French and the British are really trying to nudge us to do more. And from the rebel leaders I've spoken to in the past week and even just this morning, they are incredibly concerned that we are taking this turn towards ethnic cleansing. You've seen the Hezbollah fighters come in. You see fighters come in from Iraq. They're getting to this level of panic. Whether or not we can check those boxes to say that is indeed happening, therefore international action has to happen, it's not clear. But it seems to be where the conversation is going next.

SCHIEFFER: Let's talk a bit about these leaks, these new revelations about what the government is doing. You have a news story today, David, in the paper where you say we're now giving help to those in the Middle East to help them fight cyber attacks and so on.

What's going on here and where does this whole thing about these -- it just seems to be a flood of leaks that are coming out here.

SANGER: Well, there is a big flood, and The Guardian and The Washington Post have had some pretty remarkable stories based on documents that have come out in recent times. Our story today was really about the U.S. trying to help allies in the Persian Gulf defend themselves against Iranian attacks. And of course, that the United States and Israel attacked with a cyber weapon -- one of the first big state uses of a cyber weapon -- attacked the Iranian nuclear program. So there is an element of tit-for-tat going on here. What I think we've seen happen this week, though, that is -- is quite different is that, as Americans have come to recognize the degree to which the National Security Agency has moved to the manipulation of big data, keeping these huge logs, as you were discussing in the first half of the show, of every telephone call and so forth, there is a new question about where we draw the line. And just because something is effective against terrorism doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right thing for the United States to do if the impingement on privacy is too great. You heard the president talk about that balancing act, but he only talks about it after there's been a revelation. He doesn't bring it up proactively.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Joe, have -- have Americans' privacy rights been violated by what the government has been doing?

NYE: Only a small amount, if I compare that to what's happened in the past. We live in this country between security and liberty. It's a pendulum that swings back and forth. And the times when we've done most damage to our liberties are when we felt very insecure. Abraham Lincoln basically suspended habeas corpus in the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese-American citizens in World War II. So the president's argument that he has to figure out where's the tipping point between these two poles, I think, is an appropriate point. But, as David said, we need talk about this. There are certain limits on privacy, but we don't want to give up fourth amendment freedoms. And where do you get that tip? You can't talk about that if it's always hyper-secret. So we've got to have more of a public debate about it.

SCHIEFFER: Why should some of these things be secret, Rajiv?

CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, you know, it...

SCHIEFFER: I mean, I can understand why some of it has to be secret, procedures, techniques, and all of that. But sometimes, when an entire program is classified, it seems to me there's a question of whether it ought to be classified.

CHANDRASEKARAN: And it cuts off reasonable debate in Congress and elsewhere about the merits of it and more specifically the implementation of it. You know, thus far the American people have been generally willing to allow the National Security Agency, the federal government to engage in certain types of programs in the spirit of keeping the nation safe. But what was different this past week, Bob, was we learned that the NSA was vacuuming up phone records of all Americans. At least from what we know about what they were doing with Verizon, we can -- we can extrapolate to that being with other carriers. And the story The Washington Post reported about the NSA being able to go in and search material, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, among others -- it raises some real questions about just how the government is actually going about conducting this. You know, the most remarkable detail in the stories, to me, was this, sort of, cavalier attitude about how some of these searches were being conducted. So long as it's 51 percent focused on foreign information, that's good enough. You know, this, sort of, dismissive attitude that they were taking in material about American citizens. And I think, as Congress starts to ask questions, it may be less about the actual framework of the law and more about how were NSA officials actually implementing this? And here you, sort of, connect potentially even to the, sort of, IRS scandal, where you're looking at how were federal employees actually carrying out their duties? And I think, for some Americans, all this stuff will start to conflate.

SANGER: I agree with that. There's a big question, Bob, about whether everything that we've seen that was so heavily classified really needs to be. For example, on Friday we saw a presidential directive signed in the fall about the use of offensive and defensive cyber weapons that laid out a good case for the American state using significant restraint in this. And I've asked the question to the White House, why was this document classified at all, much less a top secret level until 2037? I still haven't gotten an answer. But it would seem to me that much of it could probably be made public in that debate.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, I want to thank all of you. This is -- this is one of those issues that is so complicated, I can't decide whether what they've done is right or wrong because I can't figure out what they did.

(LAUGHTER)

So maybe if we have a little more information about it, we'd know about that. Thanks, all of you, for being here this morning. We'll be right back with our "Face the Nation" flashback.

SCHIEFFER: On Friday Michigan Congressman John Dingell became the longest-serving member of Congress in history, a record of 57 years, five months and 26 days, more than one-quarter of the years that Congress has existed. That is our "Face the Nation" flashback.

SCHIEFFER (voice over): Dingell came to Congress in 1955 when Dwight Eisenhower was president.

(on camera): I want to ask you, a little bit, about, as you look back on those years, how many presidents?

DINGELL: Eleven presidents and 11 speakers I served with -- not under.

(LAUGHTER)

SCHIEFFER: You'll notice I may -- I did not say that you served under.

DINGELL: I knew you're a wise head, but some folks do.

(LAUGHTER)

SCHIEFFER: As you look back on it, who were you favorites?

DINGELL: Well, if you look, you'll see there's a picture signed "To John Dingell, Franklin Delano Roosevelt." I didn't serve with him, but he was to me right after God. He'd speak, as you'll remember, to the fireside chats. Everything in the country stopped; people wanted to listen to him. And he had that wonderful speaking style. And after him, I think Truman...

SCHIEFFER: Really?

DINGELL: ... who is -- who is an extraordinary guy who had the remarkable ability to simplify enormously complex questions into a simple yes or no.

SCHIEFFER: And what about LBJ?

DINGELL: He was a tremendous president. There was only one thing that destroyed LBJ, and that was Vietnam. And probably at the bottom of that was his ego because he was, I think, very much afraid that people were going to say, "Who lost Vietnam?" Johnson didn't know how to defend against that, so he stayed and kept raising the ante in Vietnam, and it cost us a huge number of lives and an awful lot of money.

SCHIEFFER: But he also passed the Civil Rights bills?

DINGELL: That was, I think, one of the great pieces of legislation in history because we eliminated discrimination against deserving, decent American people. I almost lost an election over that, and I've had to go around and say "Now, I want you to explain to me why it is that a black man or woman should not be able to vote if they're a citizen when an American who happens to be a white man or woman can vote? And people responded.

SCHIEFFER: But, you know, when you look back in those days, those were the days of these great across-the-aisle relationships. I mean, I don't think there's any question Lyndon Johnson could not have passed that without Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader.

DINGELL: You're a wise man, my friend, Bob. The answer is he could not. And the interesting thing is that Dirksen and LBJ talked. They're friends. You don't find that now. And it's -- it is hurting the institution; it's hurting the country; it's hurting our Congress; and it's -- it's keeping us from making progress. Because now everybody thinks we've got to fight. They send you down here to fight, and the media sends you down here to fight. And they put the five, 10, 15-second soundbites on where people are denouncing somebody or saying something bad about somebody. And now we have a situation where people will shout at the president during a State of the Union message, "Liar," or call a member of his White House press staff a "paid liar." You know, that's not the way it should be done.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think that you could pass the 1964 Civil Rights bill today?

(LAUGHTER)

DINGELL: I've said the other day I wasn't sure we could pass the Ten Commandments in this place. Money has become a curse in this place because everybody's chasing money all the time, and the result -- and that's true in the Senate, too. And the result of this is that the place is simply locked up. And -- and -- and we have people who come in here that don't have the vaguest idea how the place works; they don't know where the restroom is, but all of a sudden, they're on the floor making a great big speech and they're talking to their press manager about what's the statement they're going to issue today, when -- when they ought to be sitting down and talking with the other side and working out the problems that we confront.

(voice over): His proudest moment was the vote he cast for that 1964 Civil Rights bill. His greatest regret?

DINGELL: There was one vote that I have regretted ever since I made it, and that was the vote I made on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

SCHIEFFER: That is the resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson the green light to go to Vietnam.

DINGELL: I went over to the floor; I got there late; I was going to vote against it. And I got to thinking, you know, Lyndon Johnson is the president; I'm going to help him to do what he thinks ought to be done. Well, it turned out that the information that he had and that we had about that was wrong, and it committed us to Vietnam, which cost us thousands of American lives, untold treasure, vast ill will, which hurt generations of Americans, particularly the guys who went over there honorably to serve their nation. That's what I'm sorry about. There was one that taught me something so that, when the second Bush wanted to go into Iraq, I voted against it because I thought that was a dumb thing, and I didn't think they had the basis for it.

SCHIEFFER: What was your favorite time here?

DINGELL: The first year I was here because I didn't have anything really important to do. I was just...

(LAUGHTER)

... just a freshman. All I had to do was to look around and act important. And...

(LAUGHTER)

... and that's easy to do. It doesn't take much intelligence. And then, when Lyndon Johnson came, because we began to realize all the things that we wanted to do. Medicare, which was -- which my dad was the first author and which I had introduced every year since, and when I got to preside over the House when we passed Medicare. I've still got the gavel sitting over yonder.

SCHIEFFER: Will Dingell run again? He says he and his wife Debbie will make that decision in January, as they always do in an election year. Our "Face the Nation" flashback.

SCHIEFFER: Well, that's it for us today. Tomorrow on "CBS This Morning," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, plus the latest on Nelson Mandela. We want to thank you for watching "Face the Nation." See ya.