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Former State Dept. Official Offers Critique of American Foreign Policy Decisions Watch Video \| Listen to the Audio JEFFREY BROWN: Finally tonight, the first of two takes on America's role in the world. Margaret Warner has our book conversation, which was recorded before President Obama's national security speech yesterday. MARGARET WARNER: In his new book, "The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat," Vali Nasr, a former adviser to the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, blames the White House for mishandling those countries and the broader Middle East. Politics and the Pentagon drove too many decisions, Nasr argues, while overlooking broader strategic solutions offered by his former boss, the late Richard Holbrooke, and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And Vali Nasr joins me now. Welcome. VALI NASR, Author, "The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat": Good to be here. MARGARET WARNER: Why did you feel the need to write this book? VALI NASR: Because I think it's important for us to have a good gauge of our foreign policy-making, particularly with regards to Afghanistan, which was a very important foreign policy issue at the beginning of the Obama administration, and because I think the way we handled it has an impact on our standing in the region and our standing globally. And I think we in many ways didn't handle that war and the end of that war in a way that protects our interests. And I think the same set of approaches and attitudes towards foreign policy-making is now governing our approach to Syria, to the Arab spring, and also potentially more broadly in terms of the style of foreign policy that's very tactical, it's timid and cautious, and it is too much driven by domestic political considerations. And I think also, still, we are looking at our main form of engagement with the Middle East through the prism of military and security issues. MARGARET WARNER: You were on the inside for two years. There's a lot in this book of -- in the way of tidbits from meetings. Did you have any qualms about writing it? VALI NASR: I did. I thought very hard about this. And I thought that, after the election, once the politics is over, it's time to go back to really considering, are we on the right track with foreign policy? Did we make the right strategy for Afghanistan? Was it right to surge when we did and then immediately withdraw? And have a debate about how we are projecting our role in the world to allies and enemies and how we are being perceived. And I think, by and large, the perception outside is that we're not keen on leading, and we are retreating from many policy areas globally. And I think Americans ought to think about these issues before going down that path. MARGARET WARNER: Now, when you say the administration is driven by, say, politics and by the military, do you mean in terms of both surging in Afghanistan -- let's take Afghanistan, which you were deeply involved in -- and now also in setting this timetable for withdrawal? VALI NASR: Yes, I think ... MARGARET WARNER: Or isn't it -- or is it the realistic thing to do, given all the financial constraints that the U.S. finds itself in? VALI NASR: Well, then we shouldn't have surged -- we shouldn't have surged in the manner that we did. That was largely a domestic political consideration, because the military came out of Iraq victorious and triumphant. It had saved the day in Iraq. So we surged. But then he didn't like that policy, and he immediately put a deadline on the surge, which made it basically dead on arrival as far as the Taliban/Pakistan/Iran, et cetera, were concerned. And then we began to withdraw. So in the end result, we didn't win in Afghanistan and we didn't achieve a political settlement that would allow some kind of stability when we leave. MARGARET WARNER: Now, Sarah Chayes of the Carnegie Endowment, who worked a lot in Afghanistan and served as an adviser to some U.S. military figures, she wrote a real rebuttal of your book. And I'm sure you read it in Foreign Policy magazine. And she agrees with you that the military -- the Pentagon had too much to say about the policy, but she actually faults your shop and the State Department. She says: "Neither Holbrooke nor Clinton ever produced a serious analysis of issues like the corruption of the Afghan government or the Pakistan military's coziness with the Taliban, nor developed coherent approaches for addressing them." VALI NASR: That's actually not a valid criticism, because that's about operational issues at the lower level. The most important thing that the State Department tried to do was to convince the White House that, instead of just either choosing between the surge, all in, or just withdrawing everything and relying on drones, which is all out, there has to be a medium approach to ending the war, which is focus on diplomacy. Give the primacy to a diplomatic solution that would engage the neighbors and also the Afghan government and the Taliban. Put enough troops on the ground that would back up this plan. At the highest level, the solution that the State Department was looking for was never part of the options the president considered for Afghanistan. MARGARET WARNER: But there were these arguments within your meetings, which you make clear. Isn't this what -- because the Pentagon of course was pushing back against engaging the Taliban while the Taliban was ascendant militarily. Isn't this just the sort of disagreements that are supposed to take place among the different players in an administration and voiced vigorously inside, and then the president decides? VALI NASR: But it wasn't. The president considered two options. One was a fully resourced counterinsurgency, a military solution to the war. And one was the idea of counterterrorism-plus, which was advocated by the vice president, which means we should just abandon this war and focus on counterterrorism. It wasn't debated. The whole idea is that, yes, it could have been debated and it could have been rejected based on its merits, but it wasn't. MARGARET WARNER: So what now? I mean, what's done is done. What do you predict Afghanistan and the region will look like two years from now? VALI NASR: I think everybody is in a holding pattern until we leave, because they factored us out. We announced we're leaving without any kind of a closure to this war. We have come out with a narrative that we will have an Afghan security force that can take over from us. I don't think many people in the region take that as a serious solution for Afghanistan. And everybody around Afghanistan still has vital interests there. And they are likely to pursue those interests. And that means the potential for breakdown of the current order, ultimately, potentially, civil war in Afghanistan. MARGARET WARNER: Well, I look forward to continuing our conversation online. Vali Nasr, author of "The Dispensable Nation," thanks for being with us. VALI NASR: Thank you. JEFFREY BROWN: Those extra questions and answers are indeed online, as is Margaret's second conversation. It's with Richard Haass, who served in both Bush administrations. His new book is titled "Foreign Policy Begins at Home." We will air that on the NewsHour next week.
Brooks and Marcus Discuss Obama's National Security Address, Disaster Spending Watch Video \| Listen to the Audio JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Brooks and Marcus. That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. Mark Shields is off today. And whether they're watching us on television or their laptop or their smartphone, we're glad you're here. DAVID BROOKS: Or stone tablets. JUDY WOODRUFF: So the president's big speech yesterday on national security, he basically said that we need to redefine as a country our approach to the war on terror. In so many words, he said, if we don't define it, it's going to define us. David, what ... DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I think redefine is a little strong. I think we're fine. We had a period of really intense expansion of the national security state in the early Bush years. By the middle of the Bush years, we'd begun to try to normalize things. And so they began to scale things back. They began to try to figure out, how can we get out of Guantanamo Bay? And then things have been slowly returning to some sort of permanent normalcy since. And I think the speech the president gave this week was a very mature speech, a very serious speech, and moved us another step in the direction. Rhetorically, it was pretty big. Substantively, it was pretty uncertain and small, but I think a step in the right direction. So things like getting -- making at least a nod toward the idea of getting the drone policy out of the CIA and back in the Defense Department, where it belongs, trying to find a way to get rid of Guantanamo, adjusting our level of panic, how strongly we're going to react to terror attacks, getting it more like we're less scared out of our minds, and more like, OK, this is a permanent part of reality, I think it was a very positive step in that right direction. It was not a dramatic shift in substance. JUDY WOODRUFF: Step in the right direction? Or were -- some critics are saying it's capitulation to the enemy. RUTH MARCUS: Well, I wouldn't say that. But I'm pretty much in line with what David said. I would like to give the president credit for tackling this issue. It's something he's been stewing about and thinking about. He's been agonizing about it. I'm all in favor of agonizing. I don't think George W. Bush did enough agonizing about the legal footing of the war on terror and its future going forward. That said, listening to the speech, reading it again, I -- it strikes me that the president is in some ways a better law student than he is a president, by which I mean he's terrific at spotting the issues. He will give you the argument. He will identify the issue. He will analyze it really well. He gives you the argument on this side. Then he gives the argument against. What he doesn't come up with -- and David touched on this in saying that it was rhetorically big, but substantively small -- he doesn't come up with a solution. So, on Guantanamo, he talks about the legacy issue. Well -- the legacy issue of people who can't be safely released, but can't be tried. Well, it's been four-plus years of his presidency. That's something we need to figure out the answer to. It's hard. JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying he should have supplied the answer or ... RUTH MARCUS: Well, I'm saying it's great to -- it's important and useful to have the discussion, to educate the public. But it's frustrating on -- we -- there was movement, clarity, a little more clarity on drones, but, simply, what are we going to do in terms of oversight on drones? He raised the issue, but he didn't answer it. What are we going to do about the Guantanamo legacy prisoners? He raised the issue, but didn't answer it. And there were, time after time, that kind of sort of sidestepping. DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would say I sort of -- I guess I'm going to be a tad more positive. First, on the drones, I think he's been reasonably responsible about the drones. When you're faced -- as president, you're faced with a couple choices. If you say we know there's terrorist X here, you can send in the Marines, which is like hundreds of people, which is terrible collateral damage. You can send in bombers, or you can use a drone. And it's the least bad option. Having some sort of outside review procedure, which he sort of nodded to, but -- Ruth is right about this -- did not define, I think that would be more positive. On Guantanamo, it's just a terrible situation. All the evidence is tainted by how it was gathered. Nobody wants to take them. Congress is blocking it. So it's sort of a very difficult situation that's landed in the Bush administration and now this lap, and no one has been able to think of a solution, as far as I could tell. The one positive thing I wish there were more of is going back -- and now I'm going to sound like a Bushie -- but going back and saying -- he talked about the uncertainty of the Middle East. It's still true, I think, fundamentally that the only way out of this and the long-term answer is the promotion of democracy and moderation. And I wish we were a little more aggressive in using soft power to help the moderates, to help the democratic project, knowing that it's going to take a couple generations, but a little more of that, I think, would be nice. JUDY WOODRUFF: But he didn't really get into that yesterday. DAVID BROOKS: But I -- he did talk about the instability of the Middle East. He gestured toward the Arab spring. I still think that has got to be our -- the core of our policy. JUDY WOODRUFF: But, essentially, David is saying there aren't answers yet to some of these questions you're raising. RUTH MARCUS: There aren't answers, but when you're the president -- I'm sorry to be uncharitable here -- you need to do more than raise the issues. You need to start to sketch some of those answers. I'm not saying -- it was a step forward. But, for example, on drones, now we're only going to -- the guidelines say we're only going to use them if there is a near certainty there won't be civilian deaths. Well, the attorney general revealed that drones, which, I agree, are a -- can be a very, very valuable tool -- that the drones killed four Americans. Three of them were not Americans that we targeted. So how do you -- guidelines are nice. Ask the -- but ask the press about guidelines in the AP investigation. Guidelines are only as good as the people who are implementing them. JUDY WOODRUFF: That was the Yemen strike. So let's -- one of the other things that has landed in the president's lap, the IRS, a couple of developments this week. We learned that the woman who was overseeing decisions on what was tax-exempt and what wasn't, she's been put on administrative leave. David, we also learned that the president's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, knew about this, but decided not to tell the president. DAVID BROOKS: Right. JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this a bigger controversy, smaller? DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think it's a little more appalling. I think we have learned the IRS is not in the business of owning up to what they did and trying to say here's how we will fix it. They're more in the business of let's try to shut down. And I guess they're doing it for criminal -- for fear of criminal prosecution or something. But they're not exactly pointing toward a solution and they're not exactly pointing to a fix. They're not exactly pointing to any sense of contrition. And so I do think we have a problem there. Was it a problem for Denis McDonough to not tell the president? I don't think so, actually. There's a lot of things. If you pick out this isolated thing, why didn't he tell the president? Well, every day, Denis McDonough or whoever the chief of staff is probably learns a lot of things that he doesn't tell the president, because the president has a limited amount of decision time. And there are a lot of people who want to get a lot of things in front of him. So blocking information to the president is his job. And so I think this probably seems maybe the political radar didn't go off. I think probably seemed like something the president didn't need to worry about. JUDY WOODRUFF: How do see that? RUTH MARCUS: I see it a little bit differently. I think we need to keep the IRS story in focus, which is this. Yes, the IRS actions were reprehensible. Heads should have rolled, and they did roll. There is no evidence that this was anything except for bottom-up incompetence and stupidity, abetted by management, incredibly bad management at the IRS. There's no evidence that anybody at Treasury, no less anybody at the White House, knew about any of this before the I.G. started investigating. So when this did go to the White House, though, they in their usual way managed to make their own mess of things, which is, they gave out information that wasn't full and accurate information ... JUDY WOODRUFF: Oh, you mean what the press secretary, Jay Carney, said? RUTH MARCUS: ... about -- with the press secretary -- about who knew what when. And then, if they did have the information early, why didn't they do a better job, for goodness' sakes, of responding quickly to this thing? Because I don't think it was a lack of political radar. They knew this was going to be a big mess and they should have had the president out there more quickly responding to it. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you're criticizing the way they handled it ... RUTH MARCUS: Yes. I ... JUDY WOODRUFF: ... not so much the -- what McDonough did or didn't do in telling the president? RUTH MARCUS: Yes. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, is it -- would do you think? Is it a bigger -- is the scandal controversy growing? And Republicans are saying there's still going to be more hearings, more investigations. RUTH MARCUS: It's continuing. I do not think it's growing. DAVID BROOKS: Yes. RUTH MARCUS: Because I think this is all sideshow, the -- not the IRS -- just to be clear, not the IRS targeting itself. That's outrageous, but who knew what at the White House and what was the decision-making about what to tell the president, I think it really goes to, they erred on the side of caution in not telling the president, because they didn't deal with the what did the president know and when did they know it question. It's so going to continue, but I do not believe it's going to mushroom into -- to keep on with the Watergate -- cancer on the presidency. DAVID BROOKS: Right. But I find it hard to believe, though, I should say, that they happened to pick the most anti-tax groups in America, and there wasn't some prejudice. I feel -- I don't know if it was political targeting. I do think there was prejudice. As a scandal, I remain convinced the Justice Department attack on the press is a much -- will balloon into a much bigger scandal. JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about, because we have learned more about how aggressive the Justice Department has been in going after reporters at FOX News, at AP. But the president yesterday in his speech said, there needs to be limits, clear limits on how far an administration goes after journalists in pursuing leaks. So where ... DAVID BROOKS: Well, he might talk to his attorney general. I really think what's happened to Rosen at FOX News, what happened to AP is almost historically unprecedented and unconscionable. I think it's without limits, without any sense of legal responsibility, of invading someone's private e-mail. And it's partly we have this technology where it's easier to trace people, because it's all done on e-mail now, and you can look at it this two ways. OK, there's going to be greater temptation for us to pry into every media reporter's e-mail, so we have got to police ourselves. We have got to have some self-distrust. Well, there's no evidence of any self-distrust at the Justice Department. It's just hog wild. And I think this scandal is vastly over the line. I don't even say that as a reporter. I'm not a particularly open government kind of guy. But I think it's truly offensive. JUDY WOODRUFF: Does the finger point at the attorney general, at Eric Holder? What ... RUTH MARCUS: He's recused from one of these, the AP one, not from the other. It's a classic example, right? There are Justice Department guidelines that, if they were followed carefully, should have stopped this. The richest part of the president's speech was when he said, we need to make sure that we protect reporters and the press from government overreach. It's like, excuse me, sir. That's your government you're talking about. Now, just to be slightly fair to the president, it is very difficult, right, in a criminal investigation. You do not want the White House micromanaging. You don't want them saying, this subpoena is OK and that subpoena is not OK. But you do want them making clear what the general tenor of their relations with the media should be. And I do fault both him and his attorney general for allowing this. DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I mean, the press -- when we -- when anybody in the media reports on a story that's somewhat based on leaks, it's public. And if that's going to be a crime, publicly reporting on leaks, then we just can't function. JUDY WOODRUFF: Final question, I want to ask both of you about Oklahoma, terrible tragedy this week with the deaths in Moore, and we just saw that story about other parts of the state. They just get devastated every spring by these tornadoes, but some discussion this week, David, about -- and Ruth -- about, number one, whether communities have a responsibility to make sure there are shelters in public buildings, and also whether in federal aid, there should have to be an offset of any money that's spent on disaster aid. RUTH MARCUS: Well, we can't predict what disasters there are going to be, but we can predict that there are going to be disasters. And one of the things that we need do is, instead of needing to have emergency spending -- and there's -- there are – Sen. Coburn is right. There are -- this emergency spending becomes a way to slip in all sorts of extraneous things. And I say that with due sympathy for the folks of Hurricane Sandy, for these tornadoes. But we need to have a sort of better functioning general fund that anticipates disaster spending and budgets for it. JUDY WOODRUFF: Less than ... DAVID BROOKS: And it's crazy to worry about offsetting some tiny little bit of discretionary spending, when the entitlement spending is a giant wave. And we perpetually spend our time worrying about little stuff, and not focusing on what's actually causing the big debt problem. And this is just another example. JUDY WOODRUFF: And that's another topic for another whole discussion. JUDY WOODRUFF: David Brooks, Ruth Marcus, thank you. RUTH MARCUS: Thanks. DAVID BROOKS: Thank you.
On Netflix, Streaming Entertainment Is New 'Development' for Traditional TV Watch Video \| Listen to the Audio JEFFREY BROWN: Next: A new season and a new phenomenon hit computer screens this Sunday. Gwen Ifill looks at the latest evolution of the entertainment industry. JASON BATEMAN, Actor: Oh, dear lord. Because I'm looking to make a new start. Oh, mother of God! GWEN IFILL: Viewed one way, it's old-fashioned television, a situation comedy with familiar actors appearing on a screen. But those screens are increasingly found on laptops, cell phones and tablets, as shows like "Arrested Development" migrate to streaming video. DAVID CROSS, Actor: This is the sign I have been waiting for. GWEN IFILL: Cult favorite "Arrested Development," which was a critical hit for three seasons on FOX, before being canceled in 2006, is the latest online-only offering for viewers who are increasingly choosing when and where to get their entertainment. That includes canceled soap operas like "All My Children" and original programming like "House of Cards" ... KEVIN SPACEY, Actor: Welcome to Washington. GWEN IFILL: ... which may have single-handedly revived the video service Netflix. The programs lend themselves to on-demand binge-watching. Netflix's 33 million subscribers can dip in and out whenever they want. Nielsen even has a name for some of these viewers: “zero TV households,” up to five million now from two million in 2007. KEVIN SPACEY: Power is a lot like real estate. It's all about location, location, location. GWEN IFILL: "House of Cards" alone helped Netflix, which had been struggling, add three million new subscribers in three months, which pales when compared to conventional broadcast audiences, but is on the rise. Other projects are in the works. This fall, "Desperate Housewives" actress Eva Longoria is producing a 13-episode adult animated comedy on the online video site Hulu. As our viewing habits are shifting, so is the entertainment industry. For more on, that we're joined by Brian Grazer, chairman of Imagine Entertainment, which produces film and television, including "Arrested Development," and television and media critic Eric Deggans of The Tampa Bay Times. Welcome to you both. Brian Grazer, why did you decide to take this online, this cult favorite, as I think we called it? BRIAN GRAZER, Chairman, Imagine Entertainment: Well, I mean, there were other choices, but it turned out that Ted Sarandos, who's a huge fan of "Arrested Development," and happens to also at the same time run Netflix, asked us if we would like to do our series for Netflix, which would enable us to release it all in one night, and then enable audiences, kids in particular, because that's our big audience is 18 to 25, to binge-view it. And it's the kind of show that kids would watch four or five or six episodes either alone in their room or at a party, or it just becomes a social situation. And they would watch several of these episodes. And so it was just kind of the perfect situation for us. GWEN IFILL: Maybe some adults will be watching at the same time. BRIAN GRAZER: Well, adults will watch it as well. I don't want to eliminate adults. So ... GWEN IFILL: Eric Deggans, is there a business model for this now? We have seen this a couple different times with a couple of different program -- programs. ERIC DEGGANS, The Tampa Bay Times: Well, I think Netflix is creating the business model, which is what's so fascinating for those of us who cover television. They're pioneering a way of delivering television and spending the amount of money that they're putting forward to make this show, to make "House of Cards," to make "Hemlock Grove." These are big-ticket enterprises. They pull out all the stops with the production. And it's helped Netflix's stock price, but we don't yet know how all of this is going to play out. I don't think even Netflix knows how this is going to play out. GWEN IFILL: Brian Grazer, when you're trying to produce something like this, does it change knowing that people are going to watch all at once if they want to? Does it change the kind of program you put together? Does it change production? BRIAN GRAZER: It doesn't really change production. In fact, what it does, it changes production only in the most favorable way, because it enables us to make them all at once and have them experienced all at once. So what we did was, with the actors, because the actors on our TV series, "Arrested Development," they all became movie stars. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, they -- they all became movie stars. So it enabled us to sort of figure out a schedule where each one of these stars would be sort of the primary focus of an episode, even though everybody else, too, will be on the episode. So it empowered us to board the show and make -- and once again enable the show to come back, because it might not have actually worked in terms of a production schedule for normal television -- normal television. GWEN IFILL: Eric, I'm curious. I know I watch very little television live anymore, and probably you don't either. But, of course, that's your job. But is that normal? Is that something which is spreading, or is that a very targeted audience we're talking about? ERIC DEGGANS: No, it's definitely spreading. And what we're finding is that younger people, of course, are less likely to watch television in the more traditional ways. They're more likely to use it online. They're more likely to be cord-cutters, people who don't use cable television, for example, and only get their television habit through online. And that's why it's interesting to see what Netflix is doing, because they seem to be targeting the way we're going to be watching a lot of our television in just a few years. GWEN IFILL: So, let's assume for a moment, Brian Grazer, that this is a cultural shift, that people are just changing the way they entertain themselves. Does it pay off creatively or financially for producers? BRIAN GRAZER: Well, OK, two things. One is, I do think -- I mean, nobody can really prognosticate what viewing habits are or what they're going to be. But it really does seem, because of DVR, that they're a cycle ahead of everybody else in terms of how they're going to allow viewers to see television shows, because it's just, I think, going to be the perfect situation for them. As far as financially, they ended up -- they, Netflix, and Ted Sarandos, their company, paid us what anyone else would have paid us, whether it be Showtime or HBO or possibly the network, for these episodes. So, in that way, it was quite comparable. And I think it just helps you build your show, get it to syndication, get it to other out -- you know, to other income streams quicker than maybe, you know, the alternative direction. GWEN IFILL: So, Eric, if you're the consumer in this formula, and you are thinking, well, maybe I can watch everything on my iPad, why should I bother to pay for cable anymore? Is this a threat to cable companies or to broadcast? ERIC DEGGANS: Well, one of the things that you can't get is, you can't get live news necessarily. That's harder. And you can't get live sports. You can't watch the Super Bowl, necessarily. There's a lot of live sporting events, football especially, that you can't necessarily see online. And so that's where cable companies are drawing people in. That's one reason why ESPN, for example, can charge so much per subscriber, a reported more than five dollars per subscriber for their service, because that's something that you can't necessarily get online yet. But there's a drive amongst consumers, I think, to have more control over their viewing, to watch shows when they want to watch them and how often they want to watch them. And that's breaking down both the cable TV model and the broadcast model. GWEN IFILL: And let me tell you guys both my problem with this, which is, of course, I watched "House of Cards" all online, and I couldn't talk to anybody about it. When you're binge-watching, Brian, you don't have a chance to say, did you see what happened last night? Is isn't that a risk for the way we communicate as a people at the water cooler the next day? BRIAN GRAZER: That's very interesting. No one actually presented that question to me. I don't know. I think we generate -- there's other ways to -- I mean, I think I understand exactly what you're saying. But I think excitement, curiosity and the explosive nature of how conversations work can still be applied, because you can say, I just saw five episodes of "Arrested Development." You might not be doing it on the water cooler the next day. You're going to be doing it on all your social media. So I -- actually, I hadn't thought of your question or its answer, but I do think that it leads to other conversations that live within the demographic of the audience, and that is even more scalable because of the Internet. GWEN IFILL: How about that, Eric? ERIC DEGGANS: Well, Gwen -- Gwen, I have got to say, you remind me of that "Portlandia" sketch where two couples are trying to have conversations about the TV shows they like, and everybody's: Spoiler alert. Don't talk. Don't talk. ERIC DEGGANS: We have already seen that people, they watch "Mad Men." They DVR it and they watch it when they can. They DVR various shows. And you try to talk to your friends about it, and they haven't watched it yet and they don't want to talk it. So, that is a little bit of a problem. But what I found with "House of Cards" especially, that was such a well-done series, that people tended to watch it in the big chunks. So you really could talk about it. Within a week or so, you could really talk about it, because a lot of fans of the show had already watched it. There's so much anticipation for "Arrested Development" that they're not even letting us critics see very many advanced episodes. I just found out today I may get to watch one episode in advance. Normally, we have been able to see three of them before the show debuts. So they're not even trusting us critics to not spoil things for people. GWEN IFILL: Well, I'm going to let you -- I'm going to let you take that up with Brian Grazer offline. Eric Deggans of The Tampa Bay Times and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment, thank you both so much. ERIC DEGGANS: Thank you for having us. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, you can test your own "Arrested Development" knowledge by taking our online quiz. And we have also posted one author's take on how technology has cracked open the entertainment industry to just about anyone with a creative idea.