 Good morning. Good morning and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We'll confine all questions about Richard Sherman until after the briefing. Thank you for being here this morning. We've got some weather coming into Washington, so it's great to have such an excellent turnout. This is obviously a very timely briefing, and we'll get right to it. I'm joined here by my colleagues from the Russia-Eurasia Program, Andy Kutchins, Dr. Andrew Kutchins, who is our Russia-Eurasia Program Director and Dr. Jeff Mankoff, who is his deputy. I'm also joined by the Honorable Juan Cesarotti. Juan, of course, was deputy national security advisor during the Bush administration as a senior advisor here at CSIS and our key person on counterterrorism and many other issues. So with that, I'd like to offer Andrew Kutchins the microphone and we'll get started. We'll have some brief remarks to open up and by our principals here, then we will open it up to your questions. Thank you for coming. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to CSIS. As Andrew said, I think we're all glad you braved the rumor of a snowflake in Washington, D.C. later today to come here this morning. It's always a good thing before doing a press briefing to just check the news, and so I checked the Moscow Times and the title of the story was Potential Suicide Bomber Reported in Sochi. Now, you guys have already probably heard about this story. There's two parts. First of all, there's this video that was produced supposedly by the Dagestan Villiat, which is a part of the caucuses emirate headed by the maybe alive, maybe dead, Doku Umarov. And supposedly this is a video of the two suicide bombers who conducted the acts in Volgograd. Maybe. I don't know. I watched the video, you look at these guys, and they look a little bit like Wayne and Garth in a Saturday Night Live skit. And I do wonder whether some of this is a hoax conducted by folks. Imagine yourself in a dorm room in a university. This could be... I don't want to take this lightly at all, but when I look at this, this is sort of the first thought I had. And then the story of the suicide bomber, Rustana Ibrahimov, who's supposedly been spotted in Sochi reported by Alexander Valov, the head of blogsochi.ru. You know, how serious this is, it's hard for me to say, but when you read the story, you really have to scratch your head. It says it was unclear whether Ibrahimov was carrying any explosives with her. It was also not immediately clear how a suspected terrorist, who was supposedly interrogated by law enforcement officials in the past, could get into Russia's Olympic capital and heightened security. She was... Valov published a copy of the official letter sent by the local FSB to the Krasnodar Anti-Extremism Center, asking them to chase the subject. That's a good idea. Who arrived in Sochi on January 10th or 11th. Alexander describes Ibrahimov as someone who limps, quote, limps slightly, her elbow does not bend, and she has a 10-centimeter-long scar on her left cheek. How she got past the security does make one wonder whether, again, actually, is this really true? Or could this be a hoax? And if it's not a hoax, then how could someone who obviously looks like an extremist Shahidka, actually is an extremist Shahidka, has been interrogated and identified as an extremist Shahidka, could get through security. It doesn't give one great confidence. Anyway, we can talk more about that later, but it is unusual. These games are unusual. I mean, how many times has CSIS a press conference before an Olympic Games? My suspicion is never. And that's a hint that these are... and it's a press conference which actually heads of major news organizations actually showed up. So this is a rather unusual event. Let me start by saying these games are very, very personal, I think, for Vladimir Putin. I mean, has any Winter Olympic Games in history been so identified or attached to a national leader as these games are to Mr. Putin? I mean, in 2010, was anybody talking about Stephen Harper much when the games were in Vancouver? Or George W. Bush in 2002 in Park City? Actually, ironically, the Park City Games, if they gave any political... if they were politicized for anybody, they were a boost to Mitt Romney, who was running the games at the time. But this is pretty unusual. Now, you probably have to go back to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Hitler's games, the Nazi games, to have a games that are attached, that are so politicized in a way. I don't mean in any respect to compare Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler or current Russia to Nazi Germany, but it's just a comment in that the nature of these games, those might have been games where you would have a CSIS if at times CSIS it existed. So why? Well, I think it goes back to, first of all, when Putin personally went to Guatemala City and ironically on July 4th, 2007, and he gave a very convincing and impassioned speak to the Olympic Committee to award the games over the other three finalists at the time in Austria and South Korea. And he convinced the Committee to award the games to Russia. Now, and for Putin, he said this on numerous occasions that he looks upon, you know, holding an Olympic Games, you have to be a country that actually, to put it in layman's terms, it has its act together. You know, you have to be a major country. This is not a small undertaking to put on an Olympic Games. And so this represents, you know, this is not Russia of the 1990s that was, you know, the wild, wild East, you know, where we had the images of the Russian mafia basically running the country to the extent that it could be run, or organized crime, or actually I refer to it as disorganized crime. No, this is Vladimir Putin's Russia in which he has restored a sense of order and stability to the country, and the country is suddenly finding itself much more wealthy than it was. So the timing. Now, in 2007, this is after, literally, Russia became financially sovereign. 2005, Russia pays off its debt to the IMF. In 2006, it pays off its debt to the Paris Club, so Russia is financially sovereign, which means in Putin's mind, and I think appropriately so, that Russia is politically sovereign. Russia is actually a real independent country again. And so the timing that he can go, then go down to Guatemala City and do this is significant. Remember, it was 2006 that Russia held for the first time the G8 meeting in St. Petersburg. Now, I should have thought at the time that 2014, probably if, you know, Russia is hosting those Sochi Games, that should have been a big hint that probably Vladimir Putin would be joining Russia in 2014. I didn't quite put that together at the time, but I should have. And so thinking into the future, I would think, well, Russia has also won the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Now, that's going to be after the 2018 presidential election, so my bet is that Vladimir Putin will also be presiding over the FIFA World Cup in 2018. Assuming things go well here in 2014. Now, why are the games unique as well? Well, first of all, there's the location for Putin. This is very personal as well. He spends a lot of time down in Sochi in the context of the Valdai Discussion Club, a group that Jeff and I have met annually with Mr. Putin and other Russian leaders. Several times we've gone down to Sochi to meet him at his nice spread down there, shall we say. And Sochi, well, it's kind of like a Russian California. You can swim in the sea in the morning and then you can go up the mountains and they're only 45 minutes away. You don't have to drive three and a half hours, four hours, or if you're in traffic, like six hours to Tahoe, and you can ski. You've got this very unique combination and it's kind of bizarre that Russia, a country that's known for being a northern country, is hosting the Winter Olympics in a subtropical climate. Go figure. But the really significant thing about Sochi's geography, obviously, is its proximity to the northern Caucasus. And this is also a very, very personal issue for Vladimir Putin. I mean, his rise to political stardom in Russia, to have a national caliber, took place when he was initially Prime Minister in the fall of 1999 when the Second Chechen War started. And the First Chechen War, of course, was a representation of the humiliation of Russia, where Russia effectively lost a civil war on its own territory. Russian troops performed miserably. In the Second War, particularly in the beginning, Russian military forces, other security forces performed better than they had and the perceived success of those early strikes on the terrorists in opposition in the Second Chechen War were a big boost for Putin's popularity. And it was where Putin also kind of bonded with the Russian people with his, you know, his kind of macho way of being. You know, he said famously, I'm going to wipe them out in the outhouses. You know, well, you know what? Okay, guess what? You know, Russia, you've got to get the vernacular, actually what Putin was saying, because Russia is a rich, Russia is a rich language, and it's also a very rich language of four-letter words. Or in Russian they call it mat, that's tied to the word mother. You hear what I'm saying? So, think of what you said, it was basically I'm going to eff them up in the blank houses or in the speepers, okay? I mean, really, that's what he was saying, okay? He was much more kind of earthy and down to, yeah, I'm going to mess these dudes up. And he saw this as part of his mission, that he was going to deal with the separatists and later terrorist groups with this threat in the Northern Caucasus, initially in Chechnya, and because he saw it literally as a mortal threat to the Russian nation. And so his MO is he brought stability and the fact that hopefully in Olympic games for the first time in history can be held in such close proximity to a conflict zone. Now, it's a relatively low-level insurgency going on in much of the Northern Caucasus today. Again, is a totally unique aspect about these Olympic games and it's why we're having this press conference here. And if you can successfully hold these games next to this area, which Putin saw as his mission as Russia's leader to bring stability to, then yes, he's been successful. So he's got a lot riding on it. Just a quick word about the controversy over the LGBT legislation, which has attracted so much controversy, the law on propaganda against pedophiles and homosexuality. Many have asked the question, why in the world would Putin and the Russians implement this piece of legislation on the eve of this big international event when they know it's going to attract a lot of negative attention and press? Well, you know what? The legislation, in my view, is not really addressed to the international community. It doesn't really care, frankly, about what the international community thinks about this. Although, in his press conference, he will defend it in kind of comparative terms that look actually our legislation is quite liberal when you compare it with most of the rest of the world, etc., etc. It's aimed at a domestic audience and it's done for domestic political reasons, I think, to support his constituency. Now, let me say a quick word finally about the terrorist, which that would be a good segue over to Juan because I'm going on too long. The terrorist threat is very real. Regardless of what is true or not true about this video and Rustam Ibrahimovic, etc., and obviously the tragic terrorist acts in Volgograd that took place a few weeks ago at the end of 2013 attest to that. But I think what we're talking about right now really aren't separatists. So, Doku Umarov is head of the Caucasus Emirate, which in principle talks about establishing a separate Islamic state in the Caucasus. That's not really the ideology that motivates I think these people at this point. I think they're motivated by a global jihadist ideology, which is common to that of al-Qaeda and others around the world. This is what motivated the Sarnayev brothers in Bubam, the Boston Marathon, who are also from Dagestan in the northern Caucasus in last year. Now, Doku Umarov himself, he may have been a Chechen nationalist 15 to 20 years ago, but again if he's still alive, he utilizes a global jihadist ideology. This is what you'll see in what he said, particularly what he goes back to in July 13th, in the games and with other subgroups that are kind of affiliated loosely with the Emirate, this loose network. So, with all that, Putin's got a lot riding on the games and Sochi is the holy grail, I would think for a terrorist, Islamic jihadist terrorist individual or group to go after. And so in a way, we have kind of the ultimate showdown because for Putin's got a lot of riding on it. This is a very juicy target. This is sort of in American vernacular, it's high noon at the OK Corral. In Russian terms, it's Kto Kavo. Who's going to get whom? Or in Spanish terms, this is mano a mano. Or in NFL football, this is Richard Sherman versus Michael Crabtree last Sunday. Who's going to prevail? The question though, and this is where I leave it to Juan who really knows something about these groups and individuals, is one of operational capabilities. I mean, Sochi is supposedly under lockdown, although you read a story like this, you go, really? You know, but you don't necessarily have to hit Sochi to spoil the games. This was my concern when I, my response to the Volgograd bombings a few weeks ago. You know, a series of Volgograd caliber attacks would virtually terrorize all of Russia and spoil the games, and that would be a great tragedy. Finally, just a word about Umarov. Is he dead? I'm kind of skeptical about that. I mean, the reportings of Mr. Umarov's death have been many in the past. And one would think in particular that if he were taken out by the FSB, the Russian authorities, you know, they would want to show the video of his dead body to bring greater sense of calm about the games themselves. But, you know, whether he's dead or not, I'm not sure how much that would actually make a difference in that I don't think that Umarov is as much sort of operational capacity as, let's say, Shamil Besayev did ten years ago. And the network is so loose itself that maybe the absence of his leadership would leave others possibly, okay, competing to carry out or to be able to claim, taking the responsibility for carrying out the act which would gather all of the attention. But, you know, let's all pray that that doesn't happen. Thank you very much. And for any difficult questions, my colleague Jeff Mankov will address them. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. And we've had an interesting confluence of events of events in D.C. today. We have D.C. schools are closed, Virginia and Maryland schools are closed. So I think our children, all when they were flipping back and forth between SpongeBob this morning, learned how to curse in Russian. So this is great. Thank you for that. Juan, I'll leave it with you. Thanks, Andrew. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you all for attending. Andy, it's great to be here. I think part of the reason you get great attendance is because CSIS has great expertise in you and your team. So really a pleasure to be here. What I wanted to address was more specifically the terrorist threats and to give you some perspective. In particular, from my vantage point, when I sat at the White House and at the Treasury Department, when we worried about security of every Olympic Games post 9-11. Because the reality is the security of the Olympics, whether they're in the United States or in London or in Athens or in Sochi, become a principal concern for policy makers around the world because the Olympics become such a target-rich environment for terrorist groups, including those that have designs not just globally, but perhaps locally and regionally. And I think the security concerns with respect to Sochi are even greater and even more justified in this regard. And let me explain why. The terrorist groups led by the Caucasus Emirates, but not solely, and their affiliates, but also Central Asian groups like IMU and IJU have the clear intent to try to disrupt the Sochi Olympics, or at least to embarrass the Russians and in particular Vladimir Putin who has so personalized the Olympics and the success of them, as Andy has described. The intent has been declared. Doku Umarov, this past summer, has been very clear about the desire to have major attacks on the Olympics, or at least major disruptions. Significantly in July, he lifted the putative ban on the attacks on civilians, which in many ways opens up the target set for terrorist groups to attack softer targets, transportation hubs, civilian sites. And they clearly have the desire to engage in these attacks, as seen through their video postings, their blogs, and their communications. And so the intent is clear and it's there, and it would have been obvious, even absent their open declarations, but the open declarations have really made it very clear for authorities. They also have the capability. We've seen that with the three attacks in Volgograd in September. We've seen this in their past attacks, in particular those directed by Umarov since 2009, the high-speed attack between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the airport attack, and other attacks that have predated. What's interesting and important here is that the Caucasus Emirates and their various groups and operatives have demonstrated multiple modalities in terms of attack vectors. That is to say they can use a variety of means to attack, not just a variety of targets to focus on. And so they've used suicide bombers to include the now-famed Black Widows. They've used teams of operatives. They've used assault teams. They've vectored against airplanes and metros and trains, hospitals, security sites. And so the modalities and capabilities sort of match here in that they have a target-rich environment, and they've demonstrated the ability to organize different types of attacks based on the opportunities available to them. And that's why the reports of a singular Black Widow getting into Sochi becomes concerning, in part because you have the potential that she's a singular actor intended to disrupt, but it also could be that she's a part of a broader series of suicide bombers who've been dispatched to attack different sites. And so no doubt the Russians are following not just reports of a singular actor but multiple threat threads and individuals that they're concerned with. Lastly, they have the opportunity. The Olympics, as we all know, is center stage. The world's media will be trained on the Olympics, both the activities, the social activities around it. In addition, you have the proximity, rather brazen on the part of Putin, in a sense to place the Olympics so close to the caucuses and to give the terrorist actors who are used to operating in this environment the opportunity to plan attacks not just in Sochi but in the immediate environs. And as Andy rightly said, the terrorists in this context for the purposes of disruption and embarrassment don't necessarily have to get into the inner rings of security within Sochi to have a declared successful attack. They need only create a sense of terror or disruption in the immediate environs or even in the transportation hubs, as we've seen with Volgograd, to create a sense of instability. And I would dare say if you saw a successful attack significant enough, even in the far abroad from Sochi, for example, in Moscow, you would begin to see debates in delegation circles as to whether or not to withdraw athletes and to stop participation in the Olympics and that would be disastrous for the success of the Olympics. A final point in terms of why this threat is so unique at this time and I think it has gone relatively unreported but I think it's critically important as an accelerant to the threat. And that is the fact that, as Andy said, we are talking about a movement and a set of actors who themselves as part of a global jihadi movement. And so this in many ways is born out of the Chechen conflicts and insurgencies of the 90s and early 2000s but these groups have been animated and populated by global jihadi actors, many of whom have interacted with the leadership of the Caucasus Emirates, many of whom have gone on to fight, including now in places like Syria. And I think it's critically important to keep in mind that the Russians have taken a very open and active role diplomatically in supporting Assad which has brought Russia back into the center as a far enemy for the global jihadi movement. And you've begun to see that narrative play out in some of the terrorist discourse and I think that becomes important as an accelerant because Russia is not just an actor in regard to the Chechen or Dagestani or Ingushet insurgency or fight but is also a global actor in the context of the global jihadi narrative. And Syria in many ways is a key accelerant to that both in real terms and in ideological terms. What are the concerns for the U.S. in this regard? And I think you've started to hear more and more about this from U.S. lawmakers and security officials. But there are threefold. First, the obvious fact that you have a real terrorist threat here. These aren't just imaginings or sort of one-off threat threads that have to be chased down as often the U.S. has to do. But this is a real terrorist threat that exposes athletes, sponsors, U.S. citizens that are going to attend the event. Two, you always have the question of venue security raised very good question as to how secure actually are the rings of security around the Sochi venues and sites. But how well are they secured? You can secure the venue but have you secured well enough where the athletes and sponsors are staying? If you've secured that, have you secured well enough the ingress and egress, the transportation in and out? And so the raw security questions emerge as very important questions. And there's growing sense of lack of confidence in that security even despite the Russian assurances. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you've started to hear including from Chairman Rogers of the House Intel Committee, concerns over lack of visibility and cooperation from the Russians. As I was mentioning to Jill before we started the remarks, usually what you have in the Olympics is most countries very prideful wanting to secure the Olympics, manage it themselves and to succeed for national pride and other reasons with the U.S. offering support and help in a variety of ways. Most countries don't accept the support initially because they can do it themselves. But as you get closer to the day of the event, most countries begin to accept more and more of the assistance because the reality of the daunting task of securing the Olympics and frankly of the threat to Western athletes and sponsors becomes more real. That I don't think is happening in the Russian context. In fact, I think the reverse is happening, that the Russians have grown more and more concerned over the threat and are concerned over the perception of insecurity and therefore have not wanted to allow the United States and other security services in on the ground to assist. In an Olympics like London, as you can imagine, U.S. worked very closely with British security officials to create cohesive command centers, response plans, etc. That in my estimation is not happening in the context of SOCHI and that has created concern is why I think you started to hear U.S. officials speak openly about those concerns. In addition, that's why I think you started to see reports today in the press about contingency plans that the U.S. is making for potential worst case scenario. Transport aircraft being prepositioned, naval aircraft, naval resources and warships being placed offshore in the worst case scenario if, for example, you had wounded athletes or citizens you needed to get them out. And so you're going to see a lot more of that where the U.S. is trying to vector and take into account the fact that we don't have on the ground cooperation resources as we have in the past. Now, very quickly, the challenges for the Russians and for the international community, because I think this is not, you know, any Olympics is an international event despite the fact that it's been so personalized by Putin and the Russians. But the Russians have to not only secure the sites as they're trying to do with physical security and intelligence and vetting of individuals, but they are going to want to disrupt as much as possible any terrorist activity abroad. And this is why you've seen the reports of the death of Doku Umarov. I think that regardless of whether or not it's true, it's an attempt to demonstrate that the Russians are doing something to try to disrupt these activities. And I agree with Andy that with respect to the individual, I think it matters much less as to whether or not he's alive now with respect to the Security Olympics because I think all the terrorist groups that want to attack the Sochi Olympics know that they want to attack the Sochi Olympics and will try to do so. They obviously need to secure the site and they need to worry about the perception of security. I think this is key because, again, you could have a relatively minor terrorist attack during the opening ceremonies or something in the general environs and it begins to affect the sense of security for the Olympics and in many ways the terrorists begin to win in terms of that perception. A quick final note that we often forget but is squariling the minds of security officials. You have not just the Winter Olympics in February, but you have the Paralympics in March. And so you have two sets of events. That are critical internationally that require the Russians to engage in security not just in the month of February but February through March. And I would dare say that the terrorists probably would prefer to attack the Sochi Olympics in February but if they could launch significant and serious attacks against the Paralympics or those environs around it, they would probably view that as successful. So this is a two-month endeavor for the Russians that is going to be fraught with real threats and real concerns for the Russians, the U.S. and others who have Olympians at the site. Great. And with that, we'd like to open it up to your questions. Questions, please? Jill. Thank you. James, I'd like to ask, to follow up on that U.S. side of it, what does the United States do? To your knowledge, what is the state of play in terms of any type of cooperation in potentially coming in and getting Americans out of there, either people who are competing or tourists or officials? And what does the U.S. do if they do not have permission on the ground? Let's say how do they work that out in advance? You were mentioning that. What's the next step for the United States? What's happening right now? Well, ideally in the Olympics, what you would have is, you know, State Department diplomatic security officials, FBI and other U.S. security officials who are cleared in to the various venues or cleared in to a command center or in some way integrated into the on-the-ground security. I'm no longer in government, so I don't know what the status of that is, but I would dare say, given the public comments that we've seen, that the U.S. government probably is not getting a lot of billets, so to speak, a lot of clearances for individuals from the State Department, from the FBI and others to be on the ground at particular sites. Now, that's different from security for individual teams and such, but I would venture to say that we're doing the best with what we can on the ground, and what you've seen and started to see publicly is contingency planning, which would be led by the State Department to try to determine what happens in the worst-case scenario, and that's why you've seen the reports of movement of U.S. military assets and personnel in this regard. And so you would have the State Department leading that planning, trying to determine how best to get citizens in and out in case of an emergency, and you would hopefully have pre-cleared plans and clearances for ingress and egress in the case of an attack in Russia. But I would assume that the Russians are going to want to control any of that. Any security service in any country is going to want to have full capability and control over what happens after an attack or a worst-case scenario. And so it's likely the case that the U.S. doesn't have pre-clearance to move choppers in or assets in in the event of an emergency. That's probably going to have to happen as events unfold. This gentleman, if you could identify yourself in the microphone, that'd be great. I think the Syrian foreign fighter problem, and in particular the flow of caucus-based fighters in and out of Syria, amplifies the concern, I think. And part of this is, again, the ideological and narrative dimensions of what this does to animate the threat, but also populates sort of the environment with other actors who are trained, tested, and perhaps willing to attack. Keep in mind that the Syrian conflict has now attracted more foreign fighters than we saw in the Iraq conflict and more than what we saw during the Afghan Mujahideen days. And so this is a very serious threat, and you've seen plenty of reporting of Western European services, North African services, Gulf services, very concerned about the flows of fighters in and out of Syria. And the one thing I would say is concern that officials should have, at least, is that the survival rate appears to be much higher in the Syrian foreign fighter context. Whereas in Iraq, what we saw was foreign fighters would flow in, but they wouldn't flow out. That's not necessarily the case here in Syria, where you have foreign fighters already starting to flow back. And what that means for the Russian service's ability to monitor who's moving in and out of Syria, I don't know, but it's certainly something they should be concerned about. Just to follow up on that, there are reports of hundreds of foreign fighters from the North Caucasus in Syria itself. So there's no, how many actually are there, it's impossible to say, but there are many there. And this is one really big reason, and I think it's been underestimated over the past two-plus years for why Putin's held this position on Syria as he has. Because when he looks at the, when he looks at who are the most effective fighters in Syria, he sees the same kinds of individuals in groups, sometimes literally the same individuals in groups, that he's been dealing with in the North Caucasus, or that he and his Central Asian colleagues were dealing with back in the late 1990s in particular, coming out of Afghanistan. And that is in particular why this is, the issue is deeply, deeply personal for him. And there's some, I think if the Syrian conflict had receded and foreign fighters were leaving Syria, I think there's no doubt in my mind at least that that would increase the danger that those from the North Caucasus or others, maybe even not from the North Caucasus, would return there and increase the threat there. A friend of mine was a month or two ago at the airport in Istanbul transferring and he heard Russians spoken by people who clearly looked like what you would imagine a foreign fighter in Syria to look like and it was rather unnerving since he himself at the time was transiting into the not the Northern Caucasus, but the South Caucasus. Bill Douglas, right over here. Jeff. Well, Putin in his press conference just the other day noted that no, Russia has not had the experience of securing an event of the magnitude of the Sochi Olympics. So the answer is no. I mean, you'd have to go back to the Moscow Olympics in 1980 you know, for a I think an international event of this magnitude which quote-unquote Russians had to deal with that was in the context of just having invaded, attacked Afghanistan which of course led to the essentially the creation of the Mujahideen and much of the problem that we see here today. So the simple answer is no. You know, one can speak to this much more effectively I think you know, we never know the number of successes in preventing terrorist attacks. We only know about the failures but simply the fact that we saw significant failures in Volgograd three times in the recent the end of last year, October and two in December. Piatta Gorsk even closer to Sochi also at the end of the year you know, the daily bombings and problems that they are in the North Caucasus. Now it's not at the frequency of what we're seeing in Iraq right now we're listening to the radio and there are 25 car bombings a day approximately but so magnitude for sure is a no. The capacity of the FSB is very, very hard to say but I think to get back to Juan's point earlier you know the fact that the Russians have been reluctant to embrace support from the United States I think partly out of reasons of you know, intelligence cooperation is a very, very delicate matter in the best of times. We had pretty effective intelligence cooperation with the Russians after 9-11 in fact I think at that time the Russians were probably providing us as I've heard, you know, more high quality operational intelligence than we were able to provide them but you know, we know that the relationship and the level of trust between the two countries has deteriorated significantly since then and that's a problem for sure and then there is the sort of the nature of the Russian kind of psychology and it's not just the Russian psychology but maybe more so that we can do this on our own and we don't need your help and then for Putin, you know, this is such a sore spot because it's like we did not recognize in his view soon enough and I think he's got a legitimate beef about this that the nature of the threat even in the 1990s and the First Chechen War when it was mostly a movement of national liberation there was a significant, you know foreign element there fighters, also sources of financing and training and training for them that factor was much more significant in the Second Chechen War and it really rankles him deeply deeply that this was not adequately adequately recognized and this is a harping on the double standards that only accentuates I think some of the chip on the shoulder so to speak about this forum now I think the State Department did a very smart thing in a few years ago in actually putting Doku Umarov in the Caucasus Emirate on the list of recognized terrorist groups and individuals but some would say in Russia that was too late too little and too late and finally we have to look at what happened with the Sarnayev brothers the fact that there was inadequate communication between US and Russian intelligence services tracking and following these guys and when the elder brother had gone to Dagestan which is really now the heart of the sort of Islamic threat region in the North Caucasus for six or seven months how effectively were they tracking him we just don't know and not knowing doesn't lead to increased confidence my suspicion that it's both Jeff do you want to I would just add two things on this topic one and you've heard a lot of discussion of this in the Russian press recently in terms of the capacity of the security services they're essentially structured differently from the way that security services in the West are structured their main goal is regime security rather than public security let's say and obviously with a high profile very politically significant event like the Olympics those two things are connected but nevertheless I think that the goal of the security state that Putin presides over and indeed out of which Putin himself came is very much directed more at insulating the regime from pressures coming from outside rather than it is towards securing the public in general and I think one of the challenges that apparatus faces in the context of the Olympics is trying to make that pivot to do more of a public security role precisely because of the political importance that it has and I don't know about their capacity to do that the second point that I would just emphasize here and this is something that we haven't talked about but I think it's really important in a lot of context related to the Olympics is corruption the discussion in Russia has a lot of in the lead up to the games is really focused on this element on the amount of money that's been misappropriated, misplaced gone into dodgy contracts and offshore bank accounts by almost all accounts these are going to be the most expensive Olympic games ever upwards of 50 billion dollars as much of a third of that may have just simply been embezzled or stolen now what does this all have to do with security well I think operationally the security services can be supremely effective but they're only in the macro sense as effective as their weakest link and in a lot of cases the weakest link is corruption if you think about some of the successful attacks that have been carried out in Russia over the last decade or so the one that really is really striking I guess is the when two female Chechen suicide bombers blew up Russian aircraft in about I want to say 2007 or so I don't remember exactly 2004 okay and essentially what happened was these women bribed their way through security checkpoints they bribed the guards at the airport they came onto the plane even though they hadn't gone through the proper procedures they weren't searched and then they detonated suicide bombs when they were on board so the system can be set up in a way that's designed to focus on these kind of threats but it only takes one person one corrupt guard who's willing to look the other way in exchange for a bribe of one kind or another to have the entire thing come apart and for a successful attack to be pulled off and I think that's one of the real unknowns as we think about how secure the Olympics are going to be that's a very important point and just note that one of the planes that was targeted in that 2004 attack was headed to Sochi interestingly one thing I would say about the Russian security services is they are ruthless and effective when they want to be and if you look at the history of U.S. designations of individuals terrorists from the Caucasus regions or otherwise most of those individuals end up dead because the Russians kill them so the Russians can be ruthless and effective when they want to be there are huge limitations and I think they're going to be challenged here I'm Fatima Tlesov, Voice of America Russian Service my question is anybody who takes it in their latest statement the Dagestani Ansar Alsuna took responsibility for Volgograd but also they threatened to attack Sochi including chemical weapons how serious this this threat can be in your opinion is there any connection to Syria in your opinion, thank you I think to Andy's initial point I think part of this is building the perception of insecurity and so you have to modulate one's reaction to anything that terrorist groups indicate but you have to take it seriously of course and I know one of the concerns that Russian and U.S. officials have had for a long time is the ability of groups in the Caucasus to get their hands on WMD whether it's chemical weapons or nuclear components and that has been a source of great concern for a number of years I think the fact that Syria is a cauldron of conflict and you have chemical weapons available to the actors there certainly heightens that concern but I myself have not seen anything in the open source reporting or otherwise it would suggest you've had sort of a caravan of chemical weapons moving to Sochi for attack seriously and no doubt it's something the U.S. authorities are looking at in terms of threat vectors It's an excellent question although I thought you were going to bring up the Circassian question which is an excellent question also but I'm sure somebody will subsequently it was very striking to me in the diametrically opposed responses of U.S. and Russian officials to the August 21st brutal chemical weapons attack in Syria the largest one that had been it has been perpetrated by a long shot and it puzzled me a lot and in thinking about I was trying to think of what could be a plausible case where actually the two sides aren't fundamentally disagreeing so much and the plausible case I suppose would be that actually the Russian government response that the Assad forces had no incentive to use chemical weapons since they knew that was the only contingency which would possibly bring upon an American military strike there's a logic to that for sure but there's a corollary logic to that as well I think that if the opposition somehow could gain control of some chemical weapons in Syria make it appear as though the Assad's forces had carried out that strike there would be a huge incentive for them to do that because of course that would not only bring on the American military strike but much more significant American and other international support for them in their fight against the Assad government and knowing at the time that before our agreement on the chemical weapons initiative the diffusion of chemical weapons sites around Syria there's so many sites it just seemed that gosh it would only take again one person or one group to get a hold of one site amongst 40 or maybe even more than 40 that existed to be able to have access to the weapons so I think all of this only is supporting what Juan is saying we have to take this very seriously and because of the boundary or transnational nature of the groups and individuals that are fighting in Syria now certainly the one issue in fact this is the moment in which the US-Russia relationship began to turn around somewhat last year over the chemical weapons initiative and subsequently in our talks about the Iranian nuclear weapons program but it's whether it is true or not what they are saying it's certainly clearly something has to be taken very very the utmost seriousness in the US today Andrew I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on the hoax element of this and whether we might expect to see more sort of reports coming out in the next two weeks before the opening ceremony and also what are your expectations for protests for human rights anti-gay legislation that kind of thing particularly in the zone that they've you know set up outside the park far from the park sorry in my opening remarks I was a bit too flippant I think maybe and you know although there is somewhat of a when I look at the picture I look at the video it just it does make you think this could be a total hoax you know someone just having fun like the the intern at KTVU KTVU news in San Francisco who fed the report to the teleprompter after the Asian airliner kind of crash landed in San Francisco about the names of the pilots that supposedly the first one's name was why so low and etc sort of that kind of someone trying to be funny but not really funny but I think we're going to see I would expect to see more reports like this for the reasons that Juan elaborated simply to enhance the sense of insecurity around the games now there have to be to really be effective there do have to be some terrorist attacks to accompany it but I would expect to see more of this in the weeks ahead I can only say that I'm very relieved at least to this point we haven't seen any more attacks of the magnitude of what we saw in Volgograd three weeks ago because my greatest fear, I think the fear of probably all of us was that that could be the beginning of just a series of attacks that could take place on a weekly basis or even more frequently that would effectively destroy the games whether or not Sochi was attacked itself on the LGBT issue you know, of course Putin tried to sort of deflect that in his press conference although in doing so it only kind of I think probably enraged many in the LGBT community more and then there's supporters more with the way he looked no one's going to get thrown in jail this kind of legislation is actually more liberal than in many other places and really what we're only talking about is propaganda about this that's been disseminated but finally just leave our children alone the effect he was trying I think to address the problem to diffuse the problem I don't think that was a very effective way of doing it, shall we say and all I can say is I hope that the Russian authorities have learned enough from the response they've seen to the issue over the last few months that they will handle it with the utmost care and do their best not to inflame the issue and responding to any kind of sort of act or demonstration or statements that take place but after following Russia's so for so long sometimes I feel that you can never underestimate their capacity to cut their nose off despite their face but maybe Jeff has something more to say on this well, I don't know but on this question of hoaxes or threats that may or may not actually be real or that may or may not lead to attacks I think this gets back to the point that Andy made towards the beginning about how these particular games are such an important political project for Putin personally and for the Russian regime more broadly there's a particular narrative that Putin and the government are trying to get across and they're using the Olympics in order to advance that narrative about how Russia has recovered about how it's back on its feet about how they've succeeded in bringing stability not only to Russia but specifically to the North Caucasus which has been such a volatile area for the last two decades and so to the extent that the jihadists, the insurgents who are changing that narrative succeed in getting the discussion surrounding the Olympics not to be that Russia's back on its feet that Putin has brought stability but rather that there's this instability that there's this insecurity and that's what everybody is focusing on then I think it really gets at undercutting that message that the government is trying to get across regardless of whether there's a successful attack obviously if there is a successful attack that changes the narrative even more but even if there's this kind of low level chatter that basically takes the attention of everybody who's going to Sochi and who's looking at the Olympics off of the attempts to use this to bolster the prestige of the regime then in some sense that's a success for these insurgents as well I think there's Putin has been very successful as many in his foreign policy in the past year successful Sochi Olympics kind of accentuates it it takes the eyes off other issues that are going on inside Russia because some things that are going on inside Russia are actually quite problematic when you look at one of Putin's the most important reason why Putin is popular in Russia is because Russians are living more prosperously than they ever have in their history and he experienced this remarkable period of growth from 1998 to 2008 had the dip after the financial crisis came back to a level of about 4% growth which was okay not where they wanted to be but since Putin has become president Russian economic growth has actually fallen close to zero in 2013 it was 1.3% in the last quarter of 2013 it was close to zero and when it comes we're falling so the sense that he has brought prosperity to Russia the Olympics go badly then they're disgruntled and people are looking around and saying actually this guy things aren't going so well economically right now in Russia if you were to have a dip in the oil price which is so important for the performance of the Russian economy then one can actually start imagining a scenario his leadership is really under much more pressure than one would have imagined so there's also I think an element of have the world focus on the successful Russia they're going to come to Russia and see what the new Russia is like it's completely different from what the old Soviet Union was like this is not your father's Buick this is the new Russia this is one reason why they've spent so much money even if a lot of it has been embezzled or what not as a showcase just one quick point the question about protests is a very interesting one an important one because in planning for the security of any event whether it's a G20 meeting or the Olympics you've got to account for a multiplicity of disruptions or potential disruptions and so to the extent that there's been planning I'm assuming that there's planning around everything from dealing with low-level criminality all the way to high-end terrorism and in between there are disruptions tied to demonstrations or unanticipated gatherings of individuals that could be disruptive and could then combine with other threats to create a problem so your question is a good one because we've been focused on the terrorist threat and the security around that but any security service that's looking at a major event like this is looking at a full suite of potential disruptions and has to be taken into account both singularly and then in combination Charlie Erickson with Hispanic Link New Service in Washington here in Washington to what short of any kind of disruption or attack might cause the United States to withdraw from their perception from the Olympics and secondly what do you know about what preparations Mexico and Latin American countries are taking to ensure the safety of their athletes You want to do this in Spanish? I don't know specifically what the Latin American countries are doing. What happens in events like this is that you have a reliance on the host country to provide the adequate security, the communications usually most delegations have their own security officers protocols the U.S. is certainly sort of best in class in that regard and probably the most demanding international player in terms of security for its athletes and citizens To answer your first question I think absent an actual attack what would be disruptive to U.S. participation in the Olympics you know the only thing I can imagine is if there were a very serious credible set of threats directed at U.S. athletes or at venues that U.S. athletes would be attending combined with the sense that the Russians aren't sharing enough information about what's being done to counter it and a sense that we have an inability to counter it ourselves and a sense of serious risk to our athletes that is imminent that is a material and that can't be countered then you would start to see a discussion in the situation room around what is to be done but that kind of decision is taken incredibly seriously nobody wants to see the Olympics disrupted pulling the American athletes out would be disastrous for everybody I think that would be a big victory and so you would want to take that decision very carefully and only in the most serious of situations excuse me with that I would like to thank everybody for coming out this morning this briefing will be archived at csis.org you can follow our twitter feed at csis for updates and we will have a transcript out later which will release on twitter at csis csis.org thanks very much for coming this morning