 Good afternoon. Welcome to the New America Foundation. I'm Peter Bergen. I run the national security program here It's with a lot of pleasure that We get to welcome Mike Allen to talk about his excellent new book blinking red and Mike has had a distinguished career most recently In the government as chief of staff to Mike Rogers on the House Intelligence Committee He also spent seven years in various senior positions at the National Security Council and under in the George W. Bush administration He managed to write the book and have two young sons and set up a very successful new business beacon strategies All in the space and continuing working on there on the on the hill at the same time So very impressive all those different things to do those simultaneously Mike has agreed to speak about the big themes and stories in his book For about half an hour and I'll engage him in Q&A and then throw it open to your questions Mike. Very good. Thank you I think I'll go to the podium if that's okay. I Think you can do without that. Yeah I want to thank the New America Foundation for having me today, especially Peter for the Invitation and thank you all for coming out in the rain to hear a little bit above about my book Blinking red and I look forward to Q&A about other pressing intelligence community topics blinking red is an attempt to write the authoritative Objective history of the most substantial restructuring of the US intelligence community since its foundations in 1947 the aim in 1947 of course was to create a central intelligence agency that would and this sounds familiar to Many of you who've studied 9-11 But to make sure that pockets of the US government did not have information That if shared with other entities of the government might foretell of a particular attack or national security threat on the United States The National Security Act of course also created the National Security Council and the Defense Department But the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency really laid the foundations for the modern American intelligence community Default of the National Security Act of 1947 was that it seemed to give the Central Intelligence Agency many responsibilities for Coordinating the variety of intelligence entities across the federal government, but not enough authority to do the job So let me break that down for you just if I could the CIA is of course famous For two missions. You're all very familiar with Covert action and the recruitment of spies around the world the Security Act of 47 Also sought to make the CIA director give him another mission Which was to manage the community to be the DCI and to coordinate the growing Infrastructure of intelligence agencies that had begun to grow up around World War two AF as you approach through the Cold War years a variety of task forces and commissions Noted that the underlying ability of the director of central intelligence to coordinate for example The SIGINT the signals intelligence entities in the Department of Defense was very weak literally dozens of commissions and foundations recommended augmenting the director of central intelligence's power So that they would be able to keep up with the increasing complexity Billions of dollars being spent in American intelligence and to be able to better face down the Soviet Union none of these Recommendations none of these attempts to reform or centralize greater authority in a director of central intelligence went anywhere until 2004 There were several factors which I go through in blinking red that contributed to This major juggernaut of activity which rewrote one of the most famous Pieces of legislation in American history in four and a half months. There were a variety of things going on that summer I want to take you back a little bit. I think you'll remember these very well At the time the central intelligence agency had really taken a beating They had been through grueling hearings before Congress about Who should be blamed for 9-11 and whether the CIA had failed to watch lists? Certain individuals and had otherwise failed to share information with the FBI that might have foretold of or allowed The FBI to investigate the plots on 9-11 the CIA I think it's fair to say was really buffeted by These particular hearings and then the 9-11 Commission came along and had us another set of hearings Which really were very very tough indeed the chairman of the 9-11 Commission noted that their staff statement About what happened what the CIA did on 9-11 was really an indictment of the agency's performance a second factor that occurred that contributed to this momentous change of events in the fall of 2004 Was really the 9-11 Commission itself? They were a group of nationally prominent men and women who were able to build a national audience through a series of hearings about what had happened on 9-11 and really they had a lot of cachet and a lot of Influence and indeed they constructed their own strategy to be able to build a legislative proposal that would have a chance of succeeding and Could be acted on very swiftly The third factor occurring at the time was that the failure or the mis-assessment of a rock WMD was coming into stark relief in the summer of 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee's report Came out and faulted group think and again the CIA was at a very low level of prestige at the time And finally I you have to note of course the presence of the 9-11 Commission families Who I go through in the book became quite a powerful special interest group Advocating for reform of the intelligence community joined forces with the 9-11 Commission and was able to have tremendous Influence over the process the last thing and really the conventional wisdom is is that we created a Director of National Intelligence and a National Counterterrorism Center that the 9-11 Commission recommended because of the presidential election of 2004 I think the conventional wisdom is a little bit wrong for the reasons. I just stated I think that the blooming presidential election in which the performance of George Bush and whether he had made the country safer were Undoubted undoubtedly Incredibly powerful factors that influenced the likelihood of Congress and the president to take on Intelligence reform But it's not the only factor there was exhaustion with the CIA And we had not one but two spectacular intelligence failures really in the same two to three year period So what did the 9-11 Commission recommend what they recommended was a director of National Intelligence really a super empowered Spymaster who would have the ability to in an increasingly complex world of proliferators and stateless international terrorists be able to in the 9-11 Commission's words Have a court. We needed a quarterback. We needed someone very agile who would be able to move dollars people and Analysts to be able to meet new threats to be able to organize quickly to meet What they determined was perhaps a more greater intelligence or national security challenge than the Soviet Union had been in the 9-11 Commission's estimation the Soviet Soviet Union while Forboding of course at least in an intelligence sense There were embassies from which to recruit spies There were armaments to look at through satellites and other particular government agencies to seek to intercept their communications But that this wasn't the case With terrorist cells and so we needed to be able to organize differently On the point about there being a particular electoral impact John Kerry the Democratic nominee for president endorsed the 9-11 Commission recommendations 17 minutes after the Commission recommendations were announced in July 2004 George Bush endorsed the DNI in concept 10 days later So this speaks to the tremendous force and the incredible forces that were at play at this particular time However while a lot of members of Congress and the two leading individuals of each political party endorsed the 9-11 Commission's recommendations nearly immediately it inspired tremendous bureaucratic opposition and this is really the heart of blinking red. It is a tale of bureaucratic power and Jockeying for influence really over the 80 billion dollar intelligence enterprise Who would be able to control the intelligence assets of the United States? I go through the book three camps that were in opposition to the 9-11 Commission's Recommendations, I'll go through them briefly and then we'll talk a little bit about What the entire act means for national security today? But I think these three camps are very important because as people try and contemplate Where we are ten years after the 9-11 Commission report a lot of people are asking well How is the system working and how could we improve it? Why did we create it? And what were we trying to do at the time? one of the camps that broke out Immediately in opposition to the 9-11 Commission report were those in the military who argued that the primary mission of intelligence should be direct tactical support to the warfighter and That now in this time period in 2004 was no time to centralize intelligence Any well or anywhere else be it into the current system with the director of central intelligence Located at Langley, Virginia a DCI who in their estimation might retain the two other missions that the DCI had namely human intelligence and covert action, but especially not into a new Super-empowered individual a spy master because they viewed this as a zero-sum game that any rebalancing of authority away from the Department of Defense would degrade the Department of Defense's intelligence capabilities the two principal players in this camp were secretary Rumsfeld and vice president Cheney Secretary Rumsfeld is of course very quotable He at the time was vociferously against the 9-11 Commission recommendations and he wrote in a letter to George Bush from this time period something That I think is very notable and you can almost hear some of the intensity in his voice which was Something basically that the United States Congress the media and John Kerry can afford to be wrong and Paid no penalty the president of the United States has to be right on a matter of such importance And he ended this memorandum to George Bush at the time which is detailed in the book with a single word caution Urging caution on the president before he adopted these particular Recommendations vice president Cheney himself a former secretary of defense also opposed the DNI recommendations he focused on The fact that we were at war at the time in Iraq and Afghanistan and said now was no time to be Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as we were trying to fight and win a war The second view was those at CIA CIA I think took some offense that they were being so heavily faulted for intelligence failures on 9-11 and began to argue that really what the essence of power is in Washington, DC is bureaucratic clout and That at least the director of central intelligence The sent the head of the intelligence community when he headed the CIA at least had troops He had analysts he had Collectors he had someone that he could ask and They would actually respond to what he wanted to do So the point of Robert Gates himself a former DCI and he argued that summer that the 9-11 commissions D and I would would create essentially a eunuch someone who would be unable to Affectuate his will indeed This was the view of almost all all but one of the former directors of central intelligence who argued that the only way to increase Centralized power in the intelligence community would be to give him more authority and more bureaucracies to directly control and not to subtract from his authority by separating these Community management functions these coordinating functions from the CIA from Langley, Virginia Finally another camp and this is interesting because of who the two people were and the positions that they would come to hold they argued Without the knowledge of secretary rumsfeld ironically enough That the national security agency and the national geospatial agency at the very least these two Factories of intelligence now we know NSA very well through the constant revelations in the newspaper they argued that the D and I would be indeed feckless unless they had Authority direction and control over these massive intelligence agencies that resided in the Department of Defense the two individuals who argued for this bureaucratic position are the Current director of national intelligence today Jim Clapper and the future CIA director General Michael Hayden at the time they were the head of NGA and NSA respectively So it was quite an incredible position that they would advocate of actually moving their bureaucracies out of the Department of Defense this set up of course the infamous lunch in Washington when secretary rumsfeld learned of General Hayden and general Clapper's efforts to advocate around town on behalf of a more muscular D and I a D and I who would Control their intelligence agencies and rumsfeld invited them to lunch at the Pentagon and to hear general Hayden Retell the story He says it looked like peace talks between north and south Korea as they sat on opposite sides of the table And the only thing missing were the respective flags of their nation They sat there and argued about whether the D and I in the 9-11 Commission recommendations Would lead to a more successful? Intelligence community and according to the participants of the lunch secretary rumsfeld slammed his fork into his plate and Said he couldn't believe what he was hearing from two people who had worn the uniform of their country that the D and I Should not have control or any additional control over the intelligence agencies in the Department of Defense and needless to say the lunch ended badly and The rest is history These bureaucratic divisions and the book goes through this were reflected and argued aggressively throughout August 2004 in the National Security Council as George Bush's advisors tried to color in exactly What President Bush's beliefs would be in a piece of legislation that he later sent to the Hill on what the in future Intelligence communities would look like I won't go into this in great detail, but the Congress Embraced the 9-11 Commission recommendations the D and I and the NCT see the D and I separate from the CIA and Really tried to in the United States Senate enact the will exactly of the 9-11 Commission's report I was there at the time as a White House legislative affairs staffer and people carried around the 9-11 Commission book as if it were the Bible and Tried to interpret as faithfully as possible what they thought the 9-11 Commission meant and this is really The reason for my argument of why the 9-11 Commission has really been the most successful Commission in American history Because they were able to dictate the policy agenda in the fall of 2004 caused the Congress to immediately endorse and the respective presidential nominees to Nearly immediately endorse their recommendations The bill did hit some snags the House of Representatives Was more interested in the Secretary of Defense's authority over the intelligence agencies and the book goes exhaustively through some of the arguments that they advanced in opposition to the 9-11 Commission and Eventually how after the presidential election of 2004 the bill was enacted into law I'll end with this Secretary Gates Was gracious enough to let me interview him for my book and I wanted to know his views and whether it was true Whether the rumor was true that President Bush had offered him the job to be the first director of national intelligence He confirmed that indeed Andy Card and Steve Hadley the two of the president's top lieutenants had tried to recruit him to be the director of national Intelligence and I think this is very sort of in interesting contemporaneous view of the statute immediately after it passed and Indeed was little really looked down the road to some of the problems that the DNI would have in his first years He gave me his emails that he sent to the White House in December and January of 2004 2005 critiquing the law and trying to lay out some of the conditions that he would ask President Bush for for him to even consider it Secretary Gates, and I have this in the book Described the new law as quote strange He said the president needs to make clear that the new director of national intelligence is the head of the intelligence community Not some mere budget here or coordinator Who just has Common denominator the ability to convene people and only hash out the common denominator about the policies and directives affecting the US intelligence community Eventually secretary Gates turned down the offer. He said sort of Funnily to me that Hadley and card made a mistake that a Neophyte car salesman would never make when I visited the White House. They let me off the lot without a sale He went back to Texas. He thought about whether to take the job and eventually turned it down We had four DNI's in the first five years it inspired bureaucratic opposition from the central intelligence agency, which as I mentioned wasn't in a very Good place to be able to affect the outcome when the bill was under consideration, but I think was able to maneuver and jockey Successfully so that the CIA might argue today that they don't feel Substantially managed or impinged upon by the new head of the intelligence community. So as we sit here in 2013 amidst a Variety of intelligence challenges from Iran to Syria and the crisis that Edward Snowden Has caused for the National Security Agency I think it's a good time to ask ourselves and reflect upon the situation the Structure that we set up post 9-11. This was the most tangible reform of The intelligence community and of what the American people thought they were doing when they asked for reform of intelligence after two calamitous intelligence failures in The book and president Bush's first term Has the DNI been successful in making the country safer or Did we give the DNI? tremendously more of a to-do list as John McLaughlin likes to say the former acting director of CIA did we give the DNI all the responsibility But not enough new authority to make a decisive difference in the overall cohesive Management of the American Intelligence Enterprise all 17 intelligence agencies that reside around the US government So with Peter Peter with with that I will I'll leave it at that and welcome your questions. Okay. Thank you very much Mike. That was a great Overview of the themes of your of your book So this you know jumping off from where you left it I mean is the Director of national intelligence the DNI But I we shouldn't use too many acronyms because we've got a C-span audience. So we should try and Is the director of national intelligence basically a figurehead with no authority? because he or she Doesn't have the budget and is sort of in this coordinating position or has the job somewhat evolved so that whether it's General Clapper or some future DNI director of national intelligence He or she actually can move the community the intelligence community in a particular direction So if surging on an issue like Syria or whatever, I Think it's an open question. I think that the CIA very Adeptly at the beginning of the Obama administration when Admiral Blair became DNI He read the statute and it says that the CIA director Reports to the DNI and he tried to make it very very clear to the central intelligence agency that as far as he was concerned He ought to be able to appoint certain CIA individuals in positions around the world and that the DNI ought to have a greater oversight role in covert action These two issues I think Leon Panetta appealed to the White House and the DNI lost So and it was a very public and sort of spectacular loss Right it was Admiral Danny Blair who was DNI at the time and he wanted basically the power to appoint Station chiefs effectively the most important person CIA person in a particular country He wanted that to be in his remit he he did indeed and This is where the book tries to get into some of the vagaries of the statute in that we didn't really consider or Debate very much in 2004 the relationship between the CIA and the director of national intelligence However, this came to be one of the chief thorns in the side of the DNI going forward in the Blair episode He very publicly appealed and lost merits a side of the issue He everyone knew that he had fought Leon Panetta on these two issues and had came out came out on the losing side And so people in Washington noticed people noticed that the new director of national intelligence had lost an important issue and Something that they had appealed to the White House on and I think it hurt the DNI's authority So is it going to be going forward? Is this going to be very personality dependent depending on who the DNI is? because he or she will have to in a sense operate by consensus or and and it depends who the CIA director is or basically is this bureaucratic battle one which is CIA is going to really kind of generate much of the covert action and So I think the most optimistic case about whether the DNI can ultimately succeed or not is by looking back at history in the Record of the Secretary of Defense when the Secretary of Defense was created in the 1940s he had no real authority over the Departments of Army and the Department of Navy and over time accreted more authority up until when Congress we've revisited this particular Law in 1986 so defenders of the DNI like to say well look give it time We're only in the first few years the DNI will accrete more authority over time I think what a lot of the experts also believe in is that if the president Makes very clear that the DNI is the head of the intelligence community and of all the things that people want the DNI to do Here are the top two or three things that that will lead to more DNI success Because that is in the end one of the key ingredients of bureaucratic power in Washington Is if people believe that he's acting at the behest of the president of the United States then he will have more bureaucratic bureaucratic clout and so I see that as a way forward something that may work over time But I think your point is right is that we've had real Operators prestigious individuals in the CIA director job and arguably they've been able to outmaneuver the DNI in Not in a number of cases was the National Counterterrorism Center set part of this 2004 I mean what was it sort of evolving separately? so it evolved separately it began with President Bush's idea of a terrorist threat integration center this of course as you remember from the story of 9-11 of how do we Fuse information collected abroad with information collected domestically How do we make sure that we've bridged this foreign domestic divide? President Bush created an entity in the 9-11 Commission did him one better and Suggested that he renamed it and expanded its mission and call it a National Counterterrorism Center And so it was created in statute by this very same law and is at the DNI's office today And this is an example of an institution which actually I think has accreted to use your term sort of power and Influence over time and more than perhaps the DNI. I mean it has become really a coordinating a successful coordination center for terrorism, I think that is Everyone's view. I mean the net the analytical function anyway the fusion center the ability to pull together the counterterrorism analyst from FBI and SA And of course the central intelligence agency to have them all Co-located working in the many cases the same room and access to all the computer centers All the computer terminals around the government I think has enabled a better exchange of information and a better analytical product for policy makers And it's a national analog of the joint terrorism task forces that in every city, right? So who is that who is at the National Counterterrorism Center then who who is who's part of that? Well, so the it's the DNI staff they very clearly report to the director of national intelligence Although they're quite they also report to the White House for some functions for some convoluted reasons I can go into but largely they report to the director of national intelligence But they are detailed from a variety of other intelligence agencies So the idea is is that if you're an FBI counterterrorism analyst and you come to the NCTC They want you to be able to see the entire Perspective of the intelligence community not just the narrow view from the FBI office But across the government and to work with your colleagues in other intelligence community entities so that you might be able to provide Warning and be and have a better product so that policy makers can have some idea of the threats arrayed against them You mentioned the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, you know sort of intelligence fiasco And you were on the House Intelligence Committee in the run-up to the hunt for bin Laden And it's a matter of public record that you and Mike Rogers were Were briefed about that hunt Yes very in January of 2011. So you're one of maybe 20 people in Washington or a very small group who knew To the extent that you can what what did George Tennant so what did what what did George Tennant what did the the director director Panetta say to you Well, this is a pretty good story I mean this was the night that Chairman Rogers had formally assumed the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee in January 2011 and I had just been Selected as his staff director and Leon Panetta invited Chairman Rogers out to dinner In his private dining room on the seventh floor of the Central Intelligence Agency out at Langley I got I was lucky enough to get to go along as his staffer and I assumed the dinner was a very shrewd way of the CIA director beginning to build a relationship with someone who had oversight responsibility over the agency And at so as we walked into the dinner I expected to go back and have a nice dinner but we were immediately back and then to Leon Panetta's office and he had his sit at his conference table which was strewn with Pictures that were all now familiar of of the Abadabad compound in Pakistan And he had at the table also two of the top spies and analysts on the bin Laden case And was able to lay out for Chairman Rogers He pulled a sort of piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket that he looked like he had just briefed Perhaps to the White House and had his scribbled notes and gave Chairman Rogers a Very detailed update of we think we might have found bin Laden. This is our best lead since Torah Bora Here are the reasons we think that and here the things we're going to try and do in coming months and so It was a good first day at the office I Was felt fortunate to be able to get this type of information But it does say a little bit about the centrality The continued centrality of the central intelligence agency and some of the biggest intelligence questions facing the government The reason I mentioned it in the context of the Iraqi WMD Sort of fiasco is I mean you were in the White House when that all played out Not necessarily directly involved in that issue. Although you did then later Get involved as the senior director for weapons of non-proliferation, right? You know the the case that bin Laden was living in Abtabad Was a circumstantial case and the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was basically circumstantial there wasn't and and some of it was as it turned out false, so I guess sort of different kinds of questions one Where you sat at the entire intelligence committee? Did you do you feel that the intelligence community has a better way of? Interrogating Cases that are circumstantial. Do you think that that? Better way of interrogating circumstantial Cases was used in the bin Laden case And one of the sort of how has that been internalized by the the intelligence community I think so I think that one of the arguments for a DNI and something that My old boss Steve Hadley advanced as one of the reasons he and Condoleezza Rice supported a DNI was that They were colored by their experience in Iraq where they believed that the CIA's information the CIA's intelligence was Considered too heavily was weighted too heavily against other dissenting views across the intelligence community of course Namely the Department of Energy's intelligence office And so I think they saw that the DNI and others have seen this as a as a benefit as well the DNI is able to Martial all the intelligence all the information from across the community and not just look at CIA's I think CIA still plays the most prominent role and they have among them the most Brilliant analysts that we have in the country and certainly in the government But I think that's one benefit of the DNI is that the DNI is able to bring together All the points of view so that we might have a completely balanced Assessment on important questions like WMD right so when a national intelligence estimate is written The DNI is now coordinating that and it would yes, the National Intelligence Council is the entity that writes National intelligence estimates previously it had reported to the CIA director. It now reports to the DNI But but but really it's people would point to me and say well, you know the national intelligence process always Considered views from across the government and this is a way of forcing and it did but this meant a way of forcing it this gave more rigor to the process especially as we were sorting through the recommendations of Other commissions that looked at the WMD intelligence failure So I think more analytical and intellectual rigor has been given to the process Let's just go back before we throw it open to the you mentioned You know, obviously it was kind of a common view that the CIA had sort of failed on 9-11 and there's The very specific issue which is they they knew of two people associated with al-Qaeda who had visas Who are here in the United States in the months before 9-11? They didn't flag that to the FBI until August of 2001 and there was that very specific intelligence failure, but I think it's a broader strict I mean if you look at the the 9-11 Commission You know the CIA did a pretty good job of strategic warning that al-Qaeda was planning some kind of big attack in the summer of 2001 and you know all the memos they send and George Tennant had his Hair on fire and right the title of your book is blinking red, which is what he said the whole system was quote Yeah, the system was blinking red. So in a sat yeah, was the CIA kind of There were the people who screwed up about this piece of information but as an organization they did a pretty good job of strategic warning about al-Qaeda and in fact It seems to me that if you look at the pre 9-11 era CIA and and the FBI office in New York You know we're really the two institutions that did the most to warn and to be and we're concerned about this issue I don't know what your assessment is and well, I think that's a fair point I look at look the CIA people that I interviewed to this day are very bitter at the 9-11 Commission's portrayal of their work on the way up to 9-11 they Believe that the character chore of the central intelligence agency in the 9-11 failures of just connect the dots is a very superficial explanation of What happened after all there was a bin Laden unit at CIA or what is you know from early 96? So you know if that sort of speaks for itself There was no other place in the US government that really had that kind of level of attention to him and the and the book details George Tenet's efforts to have Not only the warnings that he gave at least at a strategic level to the White House But he also talked about the considerable efforts that he made in the counterterrorism center and trying to marshal all the aspects of the Intelligence community together to fight the new Terrorist threat. So I do think it's fair to say that CIA felt a little bit like a political football Yeah, in the running you think the CIA's mission, you know, at the end of the day CIA's Mission is providing strategic warrant wanting to the president is advisers, right? I mean, that's the bottom line in addition to covert covert action You know as you as is well known It's sort of devolved more and more into a paramilitary organization that is so focused on CT That do you think the that it that it may have sort of distorted the mission of the CIA to some degree And I'll give you a kind of for instance You know predicting when the Arab Spring was going to happen We could all make the prediction that these regimes would face opposition the question is when would it happen? I don't think you can fault the CIA for saying for not knowing which day or month, right? But I think you can fault them for instance in Egypt You know when the when the Salafis not the Muslim brotherhood, but the Salafis got 25% of the parliamentary vote This is the sort of thing that the CIA should you know because it has resources on the ground It should be and this seemed to be like come as a total surprise and that's just one example. So the question is How's the CIA moved too far away from what it's supposed to be doing in an effort to be doing you know Are we and fighting sort of a last war? Well, I think there's something to that But I mean I'm more of a defender of what the CIA has done post 9-11 this yeah, of course 9-11 such a shocking Incredibly terrifying event for many Americans and they Doubled tripled down on their counter-terrorism Mission and did something they needed to do for the country. It was a threat the most pressing threat I do think now as we begin to get a better handle at least on Al Qaeda's ability to pull off the spectacular style of attack like they did on 9-11 that it's a fair question to ask of Are we devoting enough resources to all the different problems in the world? Egypt Libya of course what's going on in Syria? And I think that's something the oversight committees the president and the DNI need to be able to do after all That's what we asked the DNI to be able to do is to take a holistic look of what our people are doing Where the resources are going and are we? postured to be able to face Upcoming emerging threats and not just the fights of yesterday, you know 2002 George Tennant tapped Bob Grenier to be the Iraq mission manager, which I think makes a lot of sense Like does to have somebody who so does the DNI today tap? You know a Syria mission manager I mean other people because at the end of the day you have to say you are responsible You know that General Kappa can't do everything right so presumably he would tap somebody to be the mission manager He does and is that somebody that's within DNI or somewhere else in the ice in the intelligence community or well They would be often they are from another intelligence agency But in the when they're serving in a capacity and across community capacity to try and bring together For example all the China experts from every different department They're housed at the director of National Intelligence Office so that they can try and Have some sense of what everyone is doing and make sure it's coordinated Just to turn to NSA for a second Can you tell us in what your understanding of what what is we hear a lot about 215 and 702 right? What what what is what does what does that mean? What are the and what is the intent of these? Sure 215 is the shorthand for the section of the Patriot Act and That expanded the authority of the government to seek business records To be able to go to phone companies and say we would like you to give to us the what we call Metadata which is a fancy word if you remember looking at your phone bill and it says this number called this particular number This was born out of 9-11 Which was because two of the individual hijackers in San Diego? We didn't know this at the time that they we later found out they were in San Diego but we were monitoring a safe house in Yemen and Had we been able to figure out? That these particular safe house was calling a residence in San Diego if we had had access to this database We might have now. This is not ironclad But it's just an illustrative example of how the tool could have helped and how 9-11 influenced NSA's collection efforts later, but it could have helped foretell of the existence of other Plotters in the United States but Mike isn't the counter argument to that the CIA had the information that these two guys were Associated with al-Qaeda. They knew they had visas in fact. They knew that one of them was in the United States I mean if they just called the FBI A year before 9-11 said hey these two people are in the United States They were living in San Diego under their true names. They listed themselves in the phone book They weren't you know it would have been a relatively easy thing to find them You didn't need the the phone surveillance necessary. You just did regular law enforcement. That's right not necessarily I mean it with any intelligence or in law enforcement tool You want to be able to bring as many tools to bear as possible and it's very possible if these Individuals names had gotten to the right FBI people. They would have launched a full field investigation And maybe things would have been different But the point is that why people thought we needed something like 215 and the answer was is that we want to be able to build an analytical case for if there are additional People who would do us harm inside the United States. So NSA sought legal opinions thought they had Sound legal basis for what they were doing. Were you surprised on the closeness of the vote on this issue in the house? I mean this was almost This measure to basically change or end this was very very close It was and what we're implying you know an unusual amount of Republican and Democratic Kind of agreement for the house that exists today. No, I think you're right. I think the votes for or on and views on national security issues have changed since President Bush was in office and since Tea Party members of Congress have joined the House of Representatives Because because it's not just we're not 9-11 is not as recent as it once was people have forgotten some of the lessons and people have a heightened degree of skepticism about the role of the government or increased desire to see privacy and civil liberties protections in place and We're offended at the idea that Americans phone records even if it didn't have a name or the content of the phone call was in a Government database that was scary and offensive to them and that's why there was a coalition of People on the right and people on the left who almost were able to score a real victory against The Patriot Act 215 provision in July and your boss Mike Rogers, of course is one of the main defenders of this on the Hill. That's right He and Senator Feinstein have I think it's fair to say aggressively defended Their oversight of the program and aggressively defended what NSA's role is in this particular matter And tell us then about 702 because this seems less controversial Americans do be uncomfortable with having their bulk phone data with the government sure and 702 is the shorthand for And it says this in the statute that refers to the FISA amendments act that we debated in past through Congress in 2007 and 8 is the shorthand for our ability to accept intercept Foreigners phone calls if perhaps they transit through the United States is the essence of what it is and emails phone calls and emails And so this has been a big issue overseas. I know of a I'd read the papers of Those in Europe and I know the Germans and others are very upset But you're right It's been less of an issue in the United States because it's about foreign intelligence collection There's sort of an analog the drone issue really became an issue when an American citizen was killed And they did not become a live political issue on the Hill until that point I think so No, I think you're right. Look Congress is Split on the issue the intelligence committees I think it's fair to say are generally comfortable. They would pass laws to make you know codify and strengthen civil liberties protections and increase the transparency but fundamentally not change the underlying operation of the program in The House in the Senate Republicans and Democrats and the judiciary committees are just in a different place And so the Congress is split I think on these two last night President Obama said to Chris Matthews that You know, he's planning to make changes He didn't specify what they were and as you know, there's this group at the White House is working on on Thinking through what those changes might be. Do you have any sense any predictions about what is likely to happen? What is politically able to fly on the Hill? It I think this is an open question as to what the review group will recommend and whether President Obama will Adopt who is in the review group. The review group is made up of a variety of individuals appointed by President Obama I think the two most recognizable figures are Michael Morrell who was the deputy CIA director up until very recently who now works for you who now works at at the firm I am at and working at and Richard Clark who was the counterterrorism advisor for Clinton and for Bush and they and along with some others are charged with reviewing essentially the question of how do we reconcile the tension between security and Privacy and civil liberties and so I don't know what's in their report. I expect it will be aggressive I expect President Obama will speak to it in a matter of weeks and this will drive the legislative Agenda at least on intelligence next year Great. Well, let's throw it open to your questions. If you have a question Can you wait for the mic and identify yourself and raise your hand? No questions This room you do it with everything. That's right I'll jump in Mike. I'm a huge African Australian embassy Mike we've talked about this before The connect the dots point that you made is really interesting and you started off your speech by saying that the agents the CIA Had all these functions, but in addition to that it had the function of coordination, but I didn't have the authorities to really make that happen It seems to me that that coordination function Who wants that I mean do the intelligence agencies Really want a coordinator? Or would they prefer to be? Left alone and I get to that question is because as you outlined We're still sort of stuck with that situation where there is a coordinator, but it's not really resourced You don't really have the authorities to perform that function In an unambiguous way where you have control of people's budgets and you have control of people's institutions And there's a sort of follow-up to that. You know, can you point to sort of? You know an evolution that the director of national intelligence where you think that he I was the president of all the previous ones have actually though it's specific examples where they've really had this role where it's actually More than just sort of window dressing, right? I think he was on to something I mean one of the points of the book is that the Congress didn't spend enough time discussing the relationship between the CIA and the DNI I think on the one hand CIA didn't want to be blamed for 9-11 and didn't like the idea that they would Perhaps have a new boss, but on the other hand, I don't think that they want it And are probably glad today that they're not vested with coordinating other intelligence entities I've heard General Hayden say he's not sure how his predecessors were able to do all of the work that was required Across these three different mission areas in the central intelligence agency, but by the same token I don't think the CIA wants to have the DNI trying to get between The CIA and the National Security Council as you know The National Security Council and the CIA have a very intimate role in every Presidency virtually of course we're aware of all the Famous stories from the Eisenhower and Kennedy years about what the CIA was doing for those presidents and that's their source of The relationship with the CIA is called the president's agency because presidents over time Wanted to affect National security policy and realized that they didn't have enough tools to do it or at least didn't have what they wanted To be able to do and sort of a medium course of action between diplomacy and between Military action, I think that's why they rely on covert action to this day as a lever to influence National events and I don't think the CIA Wanted an interloper. I didn't think they don't want the DNI trying to play an oversight role over what their activities are You know a couple of speaking of oversight Do you think I mean there's been a variety of discussions about how we could make the drone program more accountable and some of them I think are kind of unworkable for instance Having a sort of pre-review board. I think there's going to be problems about that because You know things move quickly and there's right, but what about an after-action Review because I think it's just natural in life if somebody's grading your homework You're going to spend more effort perhaps making sure it's 100% accurate and also would have an advantage that you know The military routinely Compensate civilian casualties and drone strikes or other forms of military activity where we kill civilians as you know So laser payments We don't do that if we inadvertently kill civilians in a CIA drone strike so although I mean what what I mean is there anything that we could do that seats You know wearing your powers intelligence committee Chief of Staff hat That is realistic to make the program You know we obviously President Obama gave a big speech on May 23rds talking about some changes nothing really very substantive Seems to have happened although the number of drone strikes in Pakistan have dropped pretty dramatically I think that is substantive, but so of the proposals that are out there. Is there anything that actually makes sense? I think this gets to the issue of congressional oversight I mean having worked in the Congress for so many years the reason these Committees were set up is precisely so that there is a check on and an oversight of aggressive intelligence community actions a Lot of people Fault the Congress for not doing aggressive enough oversight I think the Congress could do a better job of explaining what they do and I think there's definitely Room out there for more scholarship on what the appropriate role of oversight is But I think most members of Congress at least the chairman of the two committees would say that's our job It's our job to check the homework of the central intelligence agency We think we're doing a pretty good job of it Not that there couldn't be more or that there couldn't be some of the reforms that you suggest But it really gets down to do you want to use the intelligence committees for the purposes? They were created for or do you want to create new institutions? So that they also will have a check on what the agency is up to yeah Well, I guess he the argument in favor of maybe having some Independent body that was outside would be you know the intelligence committees, you know They're very close to the people that they kind of yeah, but they're in this To relatively small group of people. I mean, you know what the sort of counter argument might be But anyway, do you think that there will be any I mean one of the ideas of course was to migrate this all into DoD? And make it no longer a CIA function and that doesn't seem to have happened so far because it's complicated to do it seems the main reason Yeah, judging from the papers. I'm not sure that it actually happened I I don't know I mean, I guess if you subscribe to the view that CIA ought to be sticking to collection of intelligence and Analysis then you feel better with the migration of authorities to the Department of Defense But I don't know how that necessarily leads to increased oversight I guess the theory is DoD would be able to talk about it more and others would be able to check their work more Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean also, you know, it is obviously a mill you know sending it an armed bomb into somebody's house is a military function and it is it You know traditionally the CIA. I mean obviously OSS had a sort of quasi military function But there's no particular reason why it should be a CIA function Right is I guess the idea and and that you know that there's a whole apparatus at the Department of Defense Justice Jags who sort of you know are involved in these decisions all the time. That's right So so the argument is it would have increased oversight. I think the the DNI does at least play some role in Or awareness about these particular programs the Justice Department does have to opine on their legality I and the White House I think does do a lot of work another Bush White House does on trying to oversee these issues And so there are a lot of layers. I don't think I know this is a big issue. I don't know that Congress is going to Particularly get involved in that. I know they're really seized with the national security agencies issues Well, we'll see how this develops. I mean if you do the thought experiment where NSA hadn't those leaks hadn't happened Right, I think there was growing kind of movement. I mean it started to get public hearings I testified one before the Senate Judiciary Committee. There was one before the Senate Armed Service Committee there was more public discussion because Essentially, this is the worst kept secret in the world a drone attack is a public event I mean there's there's been a lot of so there will seem to be more movement around discussing it and the Presidents obviously talked about it, but Talked to a little Edward Snowden as he performed a useful public service And we're having a discussion in a much more informed way about what the NSA actually does when you can disagree or agree with what they're doing, but Well, I'm so obviously he broke the law I you know he was a he broke the law But that's the different question than did he perform a public service in the foot in when he broke the law Well, I'm more of the view of you know having written this book and having studied a lot of the Commission reports about intelligence failures You know, it's worth noted noting that just as long as ten as short as ten years ago The Commission reports were beating up the National Security Agency for not keeping up with technological change Not collecting enough information collecting bad information on Iraq WMD indeed the you know the major commission work That examined the Iraq WMD problem actually faulted in SA for a variety of problems so I sort of Want to make sure that we don't Legislate in anger about what the National Security Agency has done Because the reason that they have Mounted some of these programs is they were listening to what their political leadership said and indeed arguably what much of the Country was demanding after September 11th and after Iraq, which is that they needed to do a better job of Provided what providing warning to our policy makers so that they might be able to averted disaster like 9-11 and so I want to be careful that we don't just whipsaw the intelligence community one Five-year period you better get a lot better very quickly and then if you do we're going to get very mad at you because You were too good at some of the things you were doing but seen this group that is that that is advising President Obama Who are the Mike Morale and Richard Clarke is on it? there's Peter Swire who was a I believe he was a lawyer out there and in Chicago and Commission on American progress the committee on American progress here and The other two were escaping although I know I know it sounds like a Non-partisan group or expert. I mean Morale is a very Non-partisan guide that Dick Clarke I could work for both Bush and Republican Democrat and Republican administrations. I think that people have seen it In different ways. I've seen criticism that they're all insiders and Cronies of the president. I've seen some people say you shouldn't have two people on there that have such intelligence backgrounds And then I've heard people say well There isn't a real strong defender If maybe except for Michael Morale of intelligence community I think it depends on where you sit is how you see the Commission report And I think we're gonna have to read it to develop a real do you think it'll be public? Yes Great. Yeah, and what do you think it's gonna come out? Well, I think it's gonna come out in December, but I was the theory down there I don't know for sure. I know the government shutdown probably complicated their work, but I Hear around town that it's coming out soon Do you wait for the microphone for one second because that way C-SPAN viewers can hear what you're saying Bill Tucker It's our intelligence that good enough that you now and our and coordination of it to prevent another 9-11 or do we know? Well, I think we have got a look at the record. We have I think prevented another major 9-11 style attack at least And so I think of the intelligence community has undoubtedly We wish what are you referring to better? I'm referring to generally the fact that nothing of that scale has happened I'm talking about other plots that have been foiled that you speak and write about and know very well Some have slipped past like Abdul Matalab and we got lucky and that we were able to prevent that But I put that in a different kind of Abdul Matalab was the so-called underwear bomber the underwear bomber of 2009 So that actually goes to some of the big themes of your book, which is the DNI and National Canada National Counterterrorism Center was sort of they were supposed to like make sure that because there were shards of information in the system Obviously very easy to see post-event That didn't kind of surface the dad dropped a dime on his son, right? There was other he was on a sort of secondary list a list for people to go into secondary if you gone to if you got to Detroit, he would have been gone into secondary first for additional screenings. So that was a kind of example where The apparatus didn't quite work or maybe that's an unfair critique of the of that of the apparatus say Well, so it gets down to what you think You know, yeah, should it be a mission of intelligence? Yeah, are you gonna be able to prevent every little yeah event and I think the answer is no You're not gonna be able to always operate perfectly But to the larger thrust of your question I think the intelligence community is doing a much better job on counterterrorism and we're as a result I think are safer at least from a large-scale attack The question Peter raises of whether that is because of the institutional reforms that I discuss in my book or Just because we were spending up to 80 billion dollars on the mission Doubling what we'd spent before 9-11. So it's debatable whether it was because of the increased money focus and lessons learned from 9-11 or whether over time the Institutional improvements is the Commission and some would argue That we've made whether that will lead to increase national security down the road I think the institutional reforms are an open question and still being debated But the intelligence community certainly has improved its performance in the last 10 years If there are no other questions Thank you Mike very much. Thank you because for sale great book blinking red for everybody watching at home And you'll be prepared to sign them. I think absolutely. Thank you very much very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you Mike. Thank you