Opperman: And I want to ask you about Gideon. Why or what did you learn here? Would you have taken the opportunity? Could easily have passed it off. Nobody expected a young Attorney General from Minnesota to get involved in indigent rights, For goodness sake, why did you do it? Mondale: Well, I think a lot of it came from this law school, from my professors and my friends. We talked about these issues while we were going to school. I mentioned Yale Kamisar who helped us. He was a professor, one of the giants in constitutional criminal law in the country. The idea that the law should be an instrument of justice, not of victory. The idea is to do the right thing, as tough as that is, was deeply ingrained in me. And the idea that a person could be charged with a felony and have the right to Counsel, but because he or she didn't have the money to hire a lawyer, would have to go into that trial where their life and liberty is at stake without having a fair trial offended me. And also, in fairness, Minnesota had a law providing just that. We were a leading state for what you might call the Gideon Principle, and it worked here. And I argued that this was good law, it works. And also the facts in Gideon were enough to drive you crazy. This big talker, kind of one of life's losers was charged with stealing, petty theft in a drug store or something. And the trial started, it was over in two hours. He didn't say a word. He was found guilty. Given five years. And he wrote a letter, handwritten letter, to the Supreme Court saying that was wrong because he's entitled to counsel. Of course, he wasn't under the old rules, but he thought he was. And unbelievably the court took that handwritten letter and decided to make it a case, and tried to do justice. When it went back for trial, after Gideon had a good lawyer, the trial lasted about four hours and the court threw it out because they didn't have a case against Gideon. They had no evidence that would work at all. I think that's a good example of what justice is all about. All the due process issues over the years I've just gone with due process. And often it can be risky politically because if people are scared, If people think there's bad people around that are going to hurt them and the law they think is weak. They often call for remedies that first of all, short circuits the civil liberties. I've spent a lot of time in my public career, like the Church Committee, looking at the inside of FBI files, the inside of CIA files, talking to these people at the top, the people in the field, trying to find out if there was an argument that in fact American law is so weak that when we're in trouble, we have to forget it and go out and, and do the manly thing. I never found one case where I thought the law wasn't and shouldn't be observed. Shouldn't be observed. And we set up the Foreign Intelligence course. We set up the House and Senate intelligence committees. We set up a rule of law that affected the President, and we got both. We have strong intelligence, but we made it accountable. And so that's been basic to me. And I got it, I got that I think here in this Law School.  Opperman: Let me ask you, let me follow up, because you were very involved in the Church Commission findings. Frankly, many of us felt the Church Commission was a compromise. And read its report with a view that certain periods of time have been somewhat sanitized. And so, I'd like to ask you, and we have people in this audience who actually served on that court. Mondale: The FISA Court. Yeah, let's see. Judge Davis did, is he here? Opperman: And Judge Tunheim, I think he has to have. Mondale: Were you on the FISA Court, Judge? Audience member: I have. Opperman: Yeah. Mondale: Mike Michael Davis who was on it for four years. Opperman: But let me ask you,  in terms of what you saw in the Church, and you've got about 25 pages. Mondale: Yeah. Opperman: That document a lot of what was discovered during that time period. Were you at all disappointed in the activities of the Johnson-Humphrey administration or its lack of oversight in the civil liberties violations that obviously took place? Mondale: Well, we found some evidence, for example, in the 1964 convention, Johnson had ordered FBI agents to follow Martin Luther King everywhere, and report on him. To follow the leaders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Entirely outrageous abuse of FBI authority. That was standard, not only for him. This is a bipartisan problem. It's not just Richard Nixon, although he hit the gong. [ Audience laughter ] It required new, new laws, and new institutional standards. And I believe that what we came up with, while not perfect, first of all, works.  It gives them the authority they need. And several CIA and FBI instructors, leaders have said, yes, we can live with this. It helps us, you know these agents go out and have to do awful things. And they have sometimes do it at risk for themselves. A lot of them said, I am grateful for the fact that there's a court order that says I can do what I'm going to do. I think it's helped law enforcement. I think it's a comfort to know that there's accountability. If you don't hold government to account. If you think that people with high power, operating in secret, will always do the right thing and not think about themselves or not think about politics and not get greedy or self serving. I got a bridge, I'd like to sell you. If you look at the Constitution and look at their idea of checks and balances, the great irony is that here's a society based on democracy, the vote, but a constitution based on suspicion about what people will do when they have power and how they always have to hold them checks and balances, accountability four or five times over, and sometimes it's slower than they want. But it has worked. It has been at the heart, I think, of the American success story. Opperman: And I think that's why you need lawyers. Because without lawyers and without legal code and independent judiciary, I don't think there is any protection. Do you think that in the growth of government, I thought the civil liberties violations in and surrounding the Vietnam War were atrocious. Later however, [ ] exceeded in succeeding administrations, and most recently with the passage of the Patriot Act in Section 314. But laying all that aside, do you think that there is something intrinsic in government and the growth of government, that leads whoever it is, a bipartisan. I'm not being partisan, that leads government to a view of self protection and that means some of these kinds of abuses. Mondale: Well, I think we have to admit that we live in a tough world, dangerous world. A lot of nuts out there. We see it every day. A lot of deep hostility. Fanatics. And we have to,  one of the functions of the State is to provide security. So we have to be sure that that part of the State's ability to defend us is there the way we need it. But we also have to realize that if in the process we damage our legal system, and it becomes a government of men rather than of law that we can hurt ourselves in an even more profound way. I say they go together. You have security and liberty. You can't have one without the other. I think all American experience shows that. Government is growing. We're a bigger nation, we've got more population, there's more problems to deal with, a wider range, so you have to be even more alert to the possibility of abuse of power. And as I've said here a couple of times. Watch when the public gets scared. There's something about fear where your upper nerve center stops operating because you're scared. And you know when World War II busted out, the first thing we did was ran to the West Coast and arrested every American of Japanese background, put them in concentration camps, even while many of their young were in the service, fighting on our side. It was insane. When Hoover was FBI director, he was convinced that Martin Luther King was a Negro hate leader, as he called it. That he was a communist. That he was out to undermine American government. And he undertook to tail the man remorselessly, To do everything he could to undermine him, to try to break up the marriage. To prevent the Noble Institute from going through with their invitation to Martin Luther King. To stop the Pope from being seen in public with, with King. And there's even a letter in the file where it was suggested to King that he should commit suicide. Now these things I think are very dangerous. But it gives us an example of what happens if you don't hold these officers to account. Opperman: I've wanted to ask you this question for about 30 years. And thank you for giving me the opportunity. When you were on the Church Commission, did anyone in the Church Commission since J. Edgar Hoover died in office and succeeding presidents had extended his retirement date three separate times, did anybody in the Church Commission ever ask the question or muse about why it was that President after President extend his retirement date? Mondale: Right. Right. Well, Lyndon Johnson elegantly said, when asked that question, he said, I'd rather have him in pissing out than outside pissing in. [ Audience laughter ] So Hoover kept private files, and if there was any dirt against any public official, the agents were encouraged to bring it in and put it in that file. And there's evidence that he would go to the person who was under suspicion and tell him, don't worry about it. He said, I've heard about him and this is under control, don't worry about it. And he had a lot of people intimidated and fearful in American politics, no question about it. You know, they passed a law that now says a FBI director can't serve for over ten years. Very good law, because it means that there's no chance of being a director for life. That's very dangerous. Opperman: I promised we'd open it up. I have time for one more question. I have to tell you that this was a needed tonic if you believe in the role of people working together through government. And we've gotten away from that ethic, read the book and you'll come away renewed in that faith. With the exception of one sentence that jumped out at me, and I want to ask you about this one sentence and I'll read it, in reflecting back on what you've covered here in about 40 years, you say, 'But we also overstated what was possible and failed to understand how much money and patience would be required.' I guess my question is, what did you have in mind when you wrote that? Mondale: Well, I was around in what I call the high tide, when there was like 68 Democrats in the Senate, Republicans in the House were an endangered species. Opperman: We call that the enlightenment Mondale: I call it the high tide. And we had Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey up there. We had the Warren Court, very Progressive court. It was when all the civil rights decisions -  without the courts, one man, one vote principle, without the courts involvement in these progressive changes, the Congress couldn't have succeeded, even with those numbers. So there was there was and what was your question again? Opperman: Well, my question was you made a sentence that we .. Mondale: Oh, yes. Mondale: Okay. We were promised and yeah. Okay. Opperman: So what do you have mind? Mondale: So we passed everything, honest to God. We passed aid to education. We passed student assistance. We passed the poverty program. We passed the legal services program. We passed all the Civil Rights acts. We passed assistance to aide to dependent children. And a lot of it was based on the belief that through the use of good education tools, I'll just stick with that one. You could go out and help young people who came from disadvantaged or cheated backgrounds, who never had any inspiration at home, never had any reason to believe they could make anything out of their life. Who had done, were bound to do poorly in school, who had kind of a hopeless life. And there's a lot of people that would fit that description in America today. And I'll bet you know some of them. And our dream was that we could change that. We could through education, through the poverty program, through elimination of discrimination, through encouraging justice for women, through all of these things that we could change it. And that's still my dream, but what we found was that it takes a long time. It takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of decency for a society to mount the kind of sustained, profound commitment that would give every young American the opportunity that all of you have obviously had, or you wouldn't be here. We tried, we made some progress, But if you look at the figures today, there's not much to boast about. I would say I was I was more hopeful about quick progress. Some things worked like the Voting Rights Act, where we sent registrars right down to the precincts in the deep south where all those barriers were in violence to boot, and put in registrars. And very quickly, the percentage of black Americans voting in the south and around that rose. Because it wasn't at risk of life and were protected. But when it came to these cultural things, of trying to get within the reach of young Americans, tools for a full life, I think that's a job yet to be done. Opperman: Well, that'll be up to some of the people in this audience. Mondale: Absolutely. Opperman: We now have 14 min to ask questions. So let's open it up for questions. This is a unique opportunity. You ought not let it pass. Yes. Audience member: [inaudible] Mondale: Well, did you get the question? You know, I loved Paul Wellstone and Sheila and everyone on that plane. We had ten days to go for the election and I would never have considered running that office in a regular cycle. In fact, I didn't because I think you need new people coming into these offices. You can't just stay on forever if you try to get into trouble. Like Dave Obey, my friend who's Chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the House, announced that he wasn't going to run again from Wisconsin. And I said, Dave, why aren't you running. He said, Because people are tired of me. And he said, I don't want to go out this way and you have to move on. So I did. But at this moment, with only about a week to go, the Jeff Blodgett, whom you know, Wellstone's right hand man there Wellstone's two sons came to see me. Said you got to run because we don't want to lose Wellstone's voice in the Senate, I talked to Joan, agreed to do it. Opperman: I thought he did a great job. I thought the debate for those of you that watched that debate, it was amazing. Frankly, I thought it spoke well to legal education. The ability to stay on top of all the comments and all the topics. And Norm is not a - for those people who worked with him. And Norm's, not a dumb guy, not inarticulate. You say that in your book. Actually, you say a lot nice things about people, including Ronald Reagan. Mondale: I'm not very nice to Cheney though. Opperman: No. You're not. [Audience laughter] And you do say. Mondale: I wish I had more room. Opperman: Further questions, please? Yes, go ahead. Audience member: It's becoming a bit of it's becoming a bit of a [inaudible] in Minnesota which we rely on lawyers to fight our legal battles after the fact. On the other hand, that market for some of us. I was wondering what your thoughts were [inaudible] Mondale: Well, first of all, there's, there's a tendency to laugh at lawyers, to put them down, make a joke out of it. I think be careful of that humor, because I think it syncs in. The crucial role that good lawyers play in American society is fundamental to everything. It's fundamental to good businesses, every aspect of American life. If it's working well, there's some lawyers around helping to sort it out. I don't think we should be defensive or accept the ridicule at all. When people get in trouble, they overcome their derision of lawyers and they'll call you. I would hope that we would just fight that. And you've got a lot to do with it. Is this all first year students? Yeah. Well, you can help change this attitude and you can help build confidence in our legal system. And you can help make our legal system more just. There's a lot of people falling between the cracks here now. You can help make society more civil. That's one thing that's really changed in my lifetime. When I was in the Senate, when I was attorney general Republicans, Democrats work together, not all of them. But it was sure most people would go into a problem trying to solve it. And the word compromise was not a poisoned word. Compromise can be bad, but intelligent compromise is fundamental to government. You never get everything you want. You have to try to do the best you can. This is a big problem in American life, the harsh polarization, hostility, how it converge over into violence. We saw again in Arizona. We see it again and again and again, and it is really undermining the ability of America to function as we should, as the greatest nation. There isn't exactly a law that can clear that up. If you pass a law, say civil, or else it's hard to know how that would work. And certainly against the First Amendment, but your general, you're all going to be leaders. You'll all be around in some place in your professional career where you're going to be tested on your civility. And the example you present to others of whether there's civil ways of handling issues or not, and there's a lot of you and you can make a big difference here and around the country. There's several of my old friends sitting here that are example. Vance is a good example of what a lawyer can do for civility and decency in addition to making a living. I hope that you'll all take that responsibility very seriously. We sure need you. This is one where your predecessors have sort of let you down and we need to go at this in a different spirit. I quote, Judge Learned Hand in the book, he said, 'The spirit of Liberty begins with the notion that you might be wrong.' And I think that every once in a while we ought to think of that as being a possibility. Opperman: In the back. Mondale: Thank you. Audience member: [Inaudible] Audience member: Insight to the age differences between domestic [inaudible]  Mondale: Well, it is true that a lot of my work was on domestic issues, but I also did quite a bit, particularly as Vice President in international affairs. And certainly our time in Japan, wonderful time in our lives, Jo and I loved it. And I would say that the distinction is doubtful. More and more domestic issues have international ramifications More and more we are international in our outlook. We should be in where we're going to go. I know that you have,  don't we have a campus in Beijing now? More and more young lawyers are expected to have the wider vision, to have some understanding and sense about the world, about systems, competing systems in the rest. I believe that was my experience. You know, take civil rights. You say, well, that's a domestic issue, it isn't alone. Civil rights is a domestic issue. But civil rights was killing America around the world. The fact that we would separate blacks from whites and others through official discrimination, absolutely hobbled and paralyzed America's ability for stature and strength in international affairs. The example we set many times, I think more than we realize. The example we set is more important than some of the other things we do overseas. Because people can see that in the Tiananmen Square uprising, student uprising those many years ago they made a paper mache Statue of Liberty. Because for those young Chinese wanting liberty, the best symbol they could think of for the justice of their cause was by appealing to American example. And I'll tell you, it's not a gun, it's not a ship, it's not a plane. But that's America at it's most powerful. We've constantly got to pay attention to whether we live up to the kind of standards that will appeal to others. We're talking at lunch today about the competitive problems that America has. And we've got a lot of them. But one place where we don't have competitive problems, our universities and top institutions of higher education - I see Carleton College here today -are the envy of the world. The brightest kids want to come here. And no other country, other countries do compete with, no others really have the appeal that we have. Part of it is the quality of our institutions, no doubt. But the other part is the openness and flexibility and the justice built in to American society when we're at our best. That is a real competitive advantage. We must never lose it. Opperman: We promise to end at one o'clock. I understand that the Vice President will be in the back. Is that right? Books are in the back. All right. I want to thank well, it's been a great opportunity. Mondale: Let's give Vance Opperman a big hand here. Opperman: And I want to thank a great product of this law school. Great Minnesotan. Great American. Thank you very much. Mondale: Thank you Vance. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much as time. Right. Thank you.