Today we have another edition of "Across the Aisle." I'm joined by the top two ranking--or members of the Intelligence Committee. We have Republican Chairman Mike Turner of Ohio and Ranking Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut.
MS. CALDWELL: Hello. Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell, an anchor at Washington Post Live and also co-author of The Early 202 newsletter.
Congressmen, thanks so much for joining us.
REP. HIMES: Thanks for having us.
REP. TURNER: Thanks for having us, Leigh Ann.
MS. CALDWELL: I just want to note at the outset, this is "Across the Aisle," and on the show what we do is we try to bring together bipartisan pairings. And it's extremely notable that the two of you are on together, the top Republican and top Democrat of the Intelligence Committee. So again, I just really want to thank you before we get started.
I do, though, want to start with some news of the day, and that is about January 6th. Last night, Chairman Turner, Tucker Carlson, a Fox opinion host, he gave his interpretation based on what he saw of footage granted to him by Kevin McCarthy of what happened at the Capitol on January 6th. He called it mostly peaceful. He said it was not an insurrection. I just want to get your sense of if you agree with that.
REP. TURNER: Yeah. Well, you'll actually have to ask him about his assessment.
The January 6th Committee was a highly partisan committee, and we're not. In the Intelligence Committee, we're focusing on the intelligence community and national security issues, and we're looking at going forward to make certain that we can ensure that our country is safe.
I want to give a tremendous amount of credit to my Ranking Member, Jim Himes. You can't be bipartisan if you don't have a partner, and I do. Jim and I are working very closely on issues of what's Russia doing, what's China doing, what does our intelligence community need, how can we rise to those issues that can make America safe, and, Leigh Ann, I think that's what people want us to do. They don't--they're not interested in us watching the news and commenting on other commentators. They're interested in us doing the job that we're here for, and that's national security. And Jim and I are working very hard on that.
MS. CALDWELL: And we're going to get to all of those issues, but I just have to follow up. Does this help--does the airing and, say, calling it "mostly peaceful"--you were there. Does that help to ease the partisan tenor in this country? Was that day mostly peaceful?
REP. TURNER: Well, Leigh Ann. Partisan tenor--what would help the partisan tenor is if you actually interviewed us on why you invited us on your show, which is to talk about my job, and my job is chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the issues affecting national security and intelligence community, which is what Jim and I are very committed to. We've been talking to a number of reporters about the importance of our work.
In fact, we have the Worldwide Threats hearing coming up this week where we have the head of the CIA, the head of ODNI, the head of the FBI, and the head of the NSA coming before us, and I'm sure you probably have some curiosity about that. And Jim and I would love to talk about it.
MS. CALDWELL: Yeah. We have a lot of time, and so we're definitely going to get to it. I just had to ask you that on the top to see if that was good.
REP. HIMES: Leigh Ann, if I can interject here, Mike.
MS. CALDWELL: Yes.
REP. HIMES: The chairman is right. The committee that we now lead probably, inevitably, when a national security oversight committee was asked to investigate a president, there's just no way you do that without creating an awful lot of partisan animus.
I--we all have our views on what happened. The American people need to think about January 6th, how we got there, what happened, efforts being made today to turn it into something that it's not. But the only way the chairman and I can restore this essential committee to its role of overseeing very dangerous, you know, activities that, in some instances, sort of touch up against the edge of the law, that touch up against the edge of our ethics and values--I'm talking about surveillance, which, you know, surprise, surprise, the intelligence community does. I'm talking about counterterrorism actions. The only way the chairman and I can restore the committee to its role of being as nonpartisan as possible is if we look forward, which is what we're trying to do here.
MS. CALDWELL: Okay. So looking forward, Congressmen, let's start with Congressman Turner. Today China's foreign minister said the U.S. should change its, quote, "distorted attitude" toward China or, quote, "conflict and confrontation will follow." What is your reaction to that? Is the United States moving toward conflict with China?
REP. TURNER: Well, first off, our view of China is it's an authoritarian regime that's controlled by the Communist Party of China. That, of course, inherently places them in conflict with the concept of strong and leading democracies, which is what we are. So it's inherent in their definition of who they are that they're going to seek conflict with us.
Now, we have only thought--sought cooperation. We've thought--sought economic ties. We've sought, you know, certainly leading in the world together. We've even invited China to, with us, condemn Russia's aggression where there's the unbelievable atrocities that are happening against innocent people of this, you know, provoked war by Russia, and China has failed to do so. China is building up its military. It's doing so in a way that goes beyond what it needs for its own defense. It's certainly not looking just for its own territorial integrity. It's looking for a military that can have both aggressive behavior and, you know, outside of its own domestic territory aggression, and they've been openly threatening to do so.
I mean, if you take President Xi's open statements, he has talked about using military force against Taiwan. So those types of aggressive statements inherently are going to run against counter, not just of the United States' interests but just as you've seen with the outcry from the world against the aggression from Russia to Ukraine. They're going to face worldwide opposition to their new tenor.
MS. CALDWELL: And, Ranking Member Himes, do you think that China is actually going to get--give lethal weapons to Russia in their war with Ukraine, and is--should that be a red line for the United States?
REP. HIMES: Well, hard to know, hard to answer your question, but I sure hope not. And I think the United States and our leadership hopes not for two reasons. Number one, to do so would be morally repugnant, and it would be inconsistent with what China has always been, which is that you don't mess around in other people's countries. And of course, Russia in a very big way messed around in someone else's country with a brutal, criminal, almost terrorist invasion.
So for moral reasons, they shouldn't, but also for practical reasons. You know, China is--you know, unlike the old Soviet Union, which is why I sort of bristle at the questions of whether we're in a new Cold War with the Chinese--unlike the Soviet Union, China has grown over these two or three generations by being engaged with the rest of the world, by selling its products, by producing things, by importing American and European things. China has really gone from one of the least development--the least developed countries on the planet, you know, 60, 70 years ago to a world power, and they've done that by engaging.
So the answer is, are we ever going to get to a place where we agree with everything that China does? Of course, we're not. They steal our IP. They brutalize their own people, particularly in the western Muslim provinces. But the magic here is for us to stay clear when they violate values which are fundamental values, even as we sort of employ the statesmanship, recognizing that they're a critical trade partner to us and to Europe, recognizing the fact that unlike the Soviet Union, they own a trillion dollars of our sovereign debt. What I'm saying here is that we need to make it very clear that we don't want the Chinese to stop developing. Nothing is better for the U.S. economy than 1.4 trillion Chinese buying our products. But we need to have that conversation in the context of who they are in the world, and if who they are in the world is to supply weapons to a murderer, that's going to make it very hard to engage in the way that we should.
MS. CALDWELL: Yeah. And then, Chairman Turner, do you think that the administration is handling China appropriately? Does the U.S. need to be tougher? Does there need to be better diplomacy? Can you just talk about that relationship and what else the United States can and should do?
REP. TURNER: Well, you know, I think Jim is absolutely right in the way that he's characterized what the threat here is. Certainly, if China engages in this, the problem is instead of having Russia begin to deplete their capabilities, it would be sort of an inexhaustible source of replenishment for Russia that would be certainly very disheartening, especially in the light of the atrocities that are happening in Ukraine. I think the administration has done one thing that's incredibly important, and that is that they released the intelligence that it was their conclusion that China was considering giving weapons to Russia. That's allowing us right now to have this conversation. It's allowing embassies across the world to have this conversation and Europe to react. If Chinese weapons show up on the battlefield of Ukraine, it will be obvious. We will see them. We'll pick them up. It will be easy to identify that they're there. All across Europe right now and our NATO allies, they're communicating to the Chinese, as Jim was just saying, that this would be a considerable step of aggression on the part of China.
And the administration has allowed that conversation to happen by releasing the intelligence so that we could have the conversation, and I think that impacts the outcome.
MS. CALDWELL: And, Ranking Member Himes, as you guys have mentioned, there is a hearing later this week on Worldwide Threats. What do you--were the five--the leaders of the five intelligence agencies are going to testify before your committee. What do you want to hear from those intelligence leaders about China?
REP. HIMES: Well, so the open hearing, as it always is, is a survey of all the threats that face us. So I want to hear about more than just China. Because we've become so focused on China, we have probably not focused as much as we used to on other threats that are ongoing out there. North Korea is being very belligerent right now, you know, making threats against the South and the West. You know, they're working very hard to deliver--to develop technology that could be a threat to the United States and to the West.
Iran, of course, continues to show what an appalling regime they are, and they represent a threat to the stability, certainly, of the region and arguably the world.
And, I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't note that if you had told me at Worldwide Threats four years ago that there was a threat coming down the pike that was going to kill over a million Americans--I'm referring, of course, to covid--I would have said you're crazy, and today we're looking back at the deaths of 11- or 12 million people on the globe. So it's not just China, right? And this is really important, because as overseers, we need to make sure that we're not forgetting the other stuff that is out there.
Look, with respect to China, what I want to hear is an articulation of how we oppose China in the ways that we should. We do not want American chips going into advanced weapons that the Chinese might someday use against us. We don't want people supporting the militarism that we're seeing out of China. We want, of course, that to occur in the context and the understanding of the critical economic partner that China is and hopefully will be, and I'm talking about what behind me here, the furniture, the clothes that are trade items between us.
So we need to be sophisticated in saying, you know, we're not letting China import military hardware or chips that will help them make it, even as we hope that both the West and China develop in tandem the way they have over these many generations.
MS. CALDWELL: And then, Chairman Turner, same question to you. What do you want to hear--and I'll broaden it out this time--not specifically on China? But what do you want to hear from this hearing on Thursday?
REP. TURNER: Sure. Well, Jim listed some very impressive threats that we have and that are very, very concerning, that I do expect that will be the subject matter, and we'll sort of get a preview because the intelligence community is going to be having their Worldwide Threats first before the Senate, before they come to us. So we'll get a little bit of a preview of their message.
But one thing that I'm going to be looking for is that, you know, right now you've got Ranking Member Jim Himes and myself committing to working on a bipartisan basis. Senator Warner, Senator Rubio also have that commitment, and they've made a commitment to work on a bicameral basis, the Senate and the House working together. So the next two years, we have the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate working bipartisan, bicameral. This is a great opportunity for us to get some work done, and in getting that work done, we have to focus on the issue of what is the functions of the intelligence community. They're there to get us intelligence on what our adversaries are doing, what are the threats, so that we can translate it into policies about what we are going to go do.
And we need to shift to moving at the speed of our adversaries. We need very good clarity as to what are their risks, what are their threats, what are they doing with their military, what are they doing in ways to undermine our allies, to pull together allies of their own. How are we going to impact that so that we can make certain that our allies in the United States are safe? And that's going to be a great part of our to-do list in the next two years.
MS. CALDWELL: Speaking of bipartisan things, there is a bill that's going to be introduced today in the Senate. Of course, you guys are in the House, but it's a bipartisan bill regarding TikTok. The chair of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, Mark Warner, and the number two Republican, John Thune, are leading that legislation that would make it easier to ban TikTok. There was a different but same-topic bill that passed out of committee in the House last week. Where do you stand, Ranking Member Himes, on TikTok? Do you think that it is a threat, an intelligence and a security threat in the United States?
And to remind our viewers, it is owned by a Chinese company.
REP. HIMES: Yeah, it's a great question to which I have a preliminary answer to, but the reality is that we don't really know how dangerous TikTok could be.
Now, we do know that as a Chinese company, the Chinese government could require that company to turn over information about its users. So again, I sort of reserve the right, as I learn more, to change my opinion.
Here's where I am right now. To me, it's a no-brainer that government officials or anybody in a sensitive position, you know, that might be in national security meetings or, quite frankly, talking about their day with their spouse should not have TikTok on their devices, which is why I do not have TikTok on my devices, nor does my staff on any of their official devices.
I'm not quite ready to say, though, that the United States government should tell every American citizen, all 300-plus-million Americans, that they can't use a particular media platform. That's a pretty big deal when you think about it, right? And it leads to some areas that I would want to be very careful about.
So if the federal government is going to be in the business of telling each and every American what media platform they can watch, what else? What's next? What's the limiting principle? Can the government say, well, we think that this particular media platform is actually inconvenient to our democracy? So anyway, I'm not quite ready to say that I'm supportive of telling every American that they can't use TikTok, but I do think that it's a no-brainer that anybody in a sensitive position should not have it anywhere near their devices.
MS. CALDWELL: And, Chairman Turner, feel free to comment on TikTok too, but I do want to ask you about covid and the origins of covid. Of course, that's a big topic over the past week or two, as the Department of Energy said that with--has low confidence that it did develop--it was a lab leak in Wuhan. What--you know, I know your briefings are classified, but is there any--do you tend to agree with that, and should we expect more transparency from the administration on this?
REP. TURNER: Absolutely. And I think you're going to see soon, the House take action on this. Jim and I are working together in our committee on this. You know, the Senate took action last week to try to declassify some of the information that the ODNI has put together on the direction of the administration.
You also heard Director Wray come out and say that, in his opinion, it was most likely a lab leak. I think that there is enough controversy here that shouldn't be there, and that is both in the media and in partisanship, a question about even discussing what the data is and what the information is. And we really need to put all that aside, and I think that's one thing that Congress is going to be able to do--I think our committee is going to be able to do--is get to just what is the information that we. How do we get to some consensus as to the information we have, and then how do we deal with this?
All of this information, of course, is about holding China accountable, but more importantly, it's about ensuring that this doesn't happen again. This was horrible. The impact to families, the impact to loved ones was extraordinary, and even just, you know, the children who missed time in schools and their development opportunities. This is a huge catastrophe that has occurred, and we should not take lightly reviewing how this may have occurred so that we can stop it in the future.
MS. CALDWELL: Ranking Member Himes, I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this, but at the beginning of covid or until we got this, the origins of covid was a very partisan issue. Why was that? Why--at the beginning of this, why was there such resistance to it even being a possibility that this was a lab leak?
REP. HIMES: Well, it's worth--you know, it's worth us, as Americans spending a lot more time thinking about why every aspect of covid became so partisan, so political--and of course, it wasn't just the origins. It was--you know, the wearing of a mask became in parts of the country sort of a partisan identifier, and it haunts me because if you look at the numbers, our country, which all of us believe is the greatest country on the planet, as competent and capable as you can be, on a per capita basis, we actually lost far more people than our Western peers, than Europe, than many places in Asia. We don't know about China because China is not reporting good numbers, but you get my point here.
One of the reasons that we didn't respond as well as we could have to this was that we let it become political, and look, you're asking me to speculate. I think, you know, the former administration obviously had a very aggressive and angry tone towards China. So I think it fit the narrative particularly well for supporters of the last administration that this was Chinese incompetence that did that. That's pretty speculative on my part, but the point is that--the chairman is exactly right. Mike has got it exactly right. The reason we really need to know this is not for partisan satisfaction. If it turns out to have been a lab leak, we need to really understand how that happened, and the Chinese certainly do because it cannot happen again.
And by the way, we have labs that handle terribly, terribly dangerous viruses too. So there's a lot of learning that could occur if we got to the truth. To get to the truth, we're going to need the Chinese to be forthcoming, and we're going to need to dial back the partisan identifiers that are attached to everything from masks to how you think about vaccines to the origin of the virus itself.
MS. CALDWELL: Chairman Turner, on the classified documents for Trump, Biden, Pence so far that we know of, you have said that you were not satisfied with the briefing that the administration gave you. Will there be another briefing, and what questions do you still have?
REP. TURNER: Yeah. None of us were. And there were--this was a gang of eight, which is the top eight out of the 535 people who are in Congress and have opportunity to discuss classified matters. This was the top classification meeting to which they basically provided us no real information. This is very disappointing, obviously, because the information that they were supposed to be providing us was actually congressionally requested.
The FBI and the Archives did not engage the intelligence community or the defense community in its initial quest to receive the classified documents in a manner where they asked, well, what is the risk to national security? What is the threat to national security? Congress asked that, both on the Senate side and the House side, bipartisan, bicameral. We said, ODNI, Office of Director of National Intelligence, we want you to take a look at these documents and give us an understanding of what was the risk, what has happened, and what is being done to try to address that.
In the briefing we had, not only did we not have access to the documents, but we did not have any specific information that gave us a real understanding of what has occurred, and why is this important? Back again to how do we make certain this doesn't happen again, Jim and I just had the archivists over to our committee, and they told us two shocking things. One, that every administration since Reagan has delivered documents to them that had classified documents and non-classified documents co-mingled, and secondly, on non-presidential, on vice president level, but congressional level and other officials that have tendered their documents to libraries and other organizations, to hold their official documents, that the archivist has gotten 80 inquiries back from them where those groups of organization have found classified documents.
Now, Jim and I are just shocked by this, because I can tell you that in our committee, everybody--there's not a manner in which people mishandle documents at the level that we're seeing. So it's very concerning. We need to do something, and we need to get the--we need to get the information and documents so that we understand what do we need to address this so this stops.
MS. CALDWELL: Yeah. You said, Ranking Member Himes, on "Meet the Press" over the weekend that you received a flavor of the documents. What does that mean? And then, separately, can congress legislate how presidents and vice presidents handle classified documents? There's already rules that are on the books.
REP. HIMES: Yeah, yeah. And I said "a flavor" precisely to avoid doing what we can't do, which is give specifics about what we learned in that meeting. That, of course, is the most, you know, classified environment. There's a reason why it's gang of eight rather than--rather than the two committees themselves, but--
MS. CALDWELL: But did you get specifics, though? Did you get any specifics?
REP. HIMES: Again, I'm not going to--I'm not going to go there. I'm going to agree with Mike that we were--we are a--we are a country mile away from where we need to be around the two things that are really important here. Number one, as Mike said, figuring out how this never happens again, because yes, it turned out to be two vice presidents and one ex-president, and as we learned in discussion with the archivist, as Mike said, turns out a lot of members of Congress had in their papers classified. I don't even begin to know how that happens. Mike and I spend more time around classified information than probably anybody in this building, and yet somehow people are apparently, you know, getting it out, out of the building. So that has to stop.
The second thing is really what's important here--and look, we live in a political world. I just know that the world is--you know, depending on what side of the aisle that you're on, you want it to be much worse at Mar-a-Lago than it was in Biden's garage and stuff. Fine. That is what the Justice Department will figure out, the investigations.
What Mike and I really need to do is not just make sure that it never happens again but also to make sure--and this is really the key thing for the committee, that any of those documents that were at risk of exposing our "sources and methods"--that's a fancy term that actually means people in--you know, all over the world who are risking their lives on behalf of national security, it is absolutely essential that Mike and I are satisfied. that those people, those sources, and those methods have not been compromised. And until we have a better sense for what was in the information that made it out into the wild, it's going to be very hard for Mike and I to be satisfied on that question.
MS. CALDWELL: Mm-hmm. I want to ask you, finally, about bipartisanship, the fact that you two have agreed to try to restore a sense of comity on the committee.
To remind our viewers, the last several years have been very contentious, two impeachment hearings. Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff are not best friends. Let's say that.
So why did you guys agree to that? Was it McCarthy and Jeffries sending down an edict? Was it the two of you? How did this new tenor that you're trying for the intelligence committee or bringing it back to a bipartisan way--how did that agreement come about? Let's start with Chairman Turner, please.
REP. TURNER: Sure. Well, Leigh Ann, you're absolutely right that the Speaker himself and the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, came down to our committee and, as we were being convened, charged us with undertaking our work on a bipartisan basis. But I have to tell you, the--their sentiment was shared by everyone. Jim and I then addressed the committee making our commitment to them that we were going to work on a bipartisan basis.
But I can tell you that in that room, there was not a change of demeanor of like, okay, I have a different job now than I had before. There was relief. The people who chose to be on the intelligence committee, who seek this position, because it is an appointed position, are there because they're concerned about their country. They're concerned about national security, and they want to support our intelligence functions. They want to do work, and that work is going to become central.
And whenever you actually have work that people are doing together, you have bipartisanship. Not everybody has the right answer. Together, we can get there. We're going to have that debate. We're going to have that dialogue. We're going to do it together. And I think that everybody on the committee individually has that exact same commitment.
MS. CALDWELL: And, Ranking Member?
REP. HIMES: Leigh Ann, let me be clear too. I mean, it's important that people--I want to make an important point here. As you can tell, Mike and I are making a real effort to be bipartisan. That does not mean that we are going to agree all of the time. In fact, you know, I look forward to the disagreements because the disagreements make us stronger. The truth is when we poke at each other's beliefs, at our priors, at our assumptions, it makes us better. So it's not about doing away with disagreement. It's about disagreeing in a constructive way.
And there's two reasons why Mike and I need to do that--three really. Number one, we need to rebuild the credibility of the committee. Number two, the work we do is really, really important, and we need to be at our best. And the only way we're at our best is if those disagreements are constructive rather than destructive. And, look, we also need to model this for the broader Congress.
Again, disagreement and debate and argument are at the core of our country's strength, but they've gotten to a point where they're so tribal, where if you disagree with me, you're not a patriot, or if you disagree with me, you know, you're a MAGA fascist, or if you disagree with me, you're a socialist communist. We can't have that conversation in this country. We need more people to embrace the notion that, you know, as diverse as we are as a population, we're going to have lots of different views coming from lots of different areas. And if we can't figure out a way to constructively reconcile those views, the way Mike and I are trying to do, our democracy is at risk.
MS. CALDWELL: Yeah. Well, Chairman Turner, can you--
REP. TURNER: And I agree with Jim.
MS. CALDWELL: Well, I was going to ask, can you--
REP. TURNER: To what he just said.
MS. CALDWELL: Can you give examples of how the committee operates differently if you are working together, while disagreeing, of course, on some issues? But what's a concrete example of what did not happen last Congress that is going to happen this Congress? What does working together mean?
REP. HIMES: Let me jump in real quickly here, because I've actually got a concrete example that isn't about the substance of the work we do. You know, Mike and I had to negotiate the rules of the committee, and we actually had a pretty substantial disagreement on one of those rules. And we had a Sunday night conversation with our staffs about it. We worked it out, and we settled on a good outcome. And, you know, neither one of us went to the press to, you know--to try, you know, light the place up. You know, this was a couple of weeks ago, but on that issue, we had a disagreement. We had strong feelings about it. We had a phone call. We worked it out, and it got settled in a way that did not ruffle the waters.
So, you know, that to me was an indication very early on that we're going to figure out a way to disagree in a way that actually makes the committee better, not worse.
MS. CALDWELL: Chairman Turner?
REP. TURNER: Yeah. So I would give you one that really shows, as I was describing, the commitment from every member, from that moment where the Speaker and Ranking Member Jeffries--or the leader, Minority Leader Jeffries was in front of us, through our doing our work. So we just had a briefing by representatives from the Archives on the classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, the President Biden as former Vice President Biden, and Vice President, former Vice President Pence. That could have been an absolute land mine and could have been, you know, knockout, drag-out fight between us.
Everybody handled it professionally. Everybody asked questions that were substantive. Everybody tried to get to the bottom of what's happened, what do we know, what do we need to do. Here we are, 25 people, a broad range of ideas, views, and certainly representatives from both the Democrats and Republicans, and we actually had a bipartisan discussion with the archivists on what in the news is a highly partisan-charged topic.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. We are unfortunately out of time. I want to ask you very quickly, though, have you gotten any update on the Chinese spy balloon?
REP. TURNER: I can't comment on that.
MS. CALDWELL: Can't comment on that. [Laughs]
REP. HIMES: Yeah.
MS. CALDWELL: Ranking Member Himes?
REP. HIMES: I was enjoying the two weeks of not having to talk about balloons.
I will tell you--I will agree with Mike and tell you that, obviously, we do expect soon--we do expect soon reports from the intelligence community about what information was gleaned by the fact that we were able to recover the wreckage of the balloon and what we were able to observe over time as it drifted around the world, but we have not yet seen that report.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. Thank you. That is definitely a story that captured the American public, so I appreciate you answering that at the very end.
We are out of time. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us.
REP. HIMES: Yes.
MS. CALDWELL: Of course, we were speaking with the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio, and the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes of Connecticut. Really appreciate it.
REP. TURNER: Thank you.
REP. HIMES: Thank you.
MS. CALDWELL: And thank you to our viewers. If you want to watch this program again, find transcripts, or all of our other programs, please go to WashingtonPostLive.com. Thanks so much.
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