Former Director of the Energy Information Administration Jay Hakes Delivers Remarks at the National Press Club

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Former Director of the Energy Information Administration Jay Hakes Delivers Remarks at the National Press Club

FORMER DIRECTOR HAKES DELIVERS REMARKS AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB

AUGUST 13, 2008

SPEAKER: FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION JAY HAKES

[*] MODERATOR: Thanks for coming, joining us at the Press Club this morning. Before we get started, I just want to announce a couple of events coming up. On October 15th the Press Club will be hosting Newsmaker with the senior foreign policy advisors for Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. So pay attention for more details on that.

And also on October 23rd, we'll be hosting a luncheon with Billy Joel, so more exciting things coming up.

But today we're fortunate to welcome Jay Hakes here to discuss a topic that's been on many of our minds -- energy. Mr. Hakes served as the assistant secretary of the interior under the Carter administration and also headed the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy.

His new book, which I have a copy of right here, is "A Declaration of Energy Independence." It was released this past July and examines why we started and still rely on fuels from expensive and unstable parts of the world.

And he looks at past policies that have been successful in reducing oil imports and how we lapsed back into our oil addiction.

So Mr. Hakes will be speaking for a good amount of time, and I'll open it up to questions for the members of the audience.

HAKES: Thank you very much, Jenny (ph). It's a pleasure to be back in Washington. I'm talking about this book, "A Declaration of Energy Independence," how freedom from foreign oil can improve national security, our economy and the environment.

But I suspect that some people are going to ask about the presidential election, so I'll start right off with that. And I've been somewhat fearless in my comments.

So to summarize it, I would say that the debate so far reminds me a little bit of the static that you hear on the radio, which is somewhat related to the unde...

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