problem it will be 10 or 15 years before we can get a good answer and just like dr. mohler study and wonderful things a department of defense studies and it takes doctors to our practicing medicine to realize this is a problem the over diagnosis was put down by a number of positions in practice in the early 1990 90's with those of us who are seeing is a problem. know we have numerous studies the prostate prevention trials my favorite is the only steady to biopsy normal men been in the '60s over seven years could die ignite -- diagnose 13% and also shows that the psa mrs. just as many prostate cancer as unfounded of the 26% of men in the

'60s who were diagnosed only 3% 12 dae. three out of the 26. that is the indication of the over treatment there was actually a vote in the integration committee earlier in the decade that said more money for the defense department ought to go to seeing how to take the money away from the studies of the biologic behavior of the prostate cancer so we lead to our emotions i am very emotional because i want men to get the right thing and i know i am hearing that men are not getting the right information. >> the gentleman's time is expired i yield to mr. cummings a. >> thank you very much. doctor, let me ask you this or any other panelist, the

problem is i think lou gossett said it earlier when he was talking about african american men but he could apply it to them then point*. they are squeamish about the prostate and in the exam and and so i am trying to figure out they already are not likely to go and for the exam and don't want to talk about it so how do you make the jump with all of the new information that just came out yesterday to give men the excuse not to do it? men look for excuses not to do this. they'll ready don't want to do it but really not now if they said see?

they told do it did not do any good anyway so how do we deal with that? is seems the question becomes even if i go and and it sounds like there is confusion. do you follow me? >> what is the best argument to a man who is looking at you right now to go and try to address this issue? >> i can tell a the argument to address the issue but not why they shouldn't be screened baidu think there are guys like the experts who came together who said does not want to be screened we should support that decision. but i do think we should be talking about prostate cancer. what a big problem in the black community is a number of men have the difficulty

urinating and suffering from that and i do think we do need to talk about these things openly and i will tell you growing up and becoming a expert from the inner-city of the charge were all of my relatives were afraid people for not telling the truth found out my relatives for why is because on this issue there are a lot of things out there that is not truthful but to misleading we do not know of prostate cancer screening saves lives. some of us think it does but i hear routinely that prostate cancer screenings save lives and i hear routinely any man who does not get screened is a fool by yet i have nothing to do with the acs guideline i am a staff person these are volunteers comment doctors comment e epidemiologist in patients who met over a period of one year looking

at all of the literature that we have and they came up with the same thing this from 2001 there is huge uncertainties people need to know there are huge uncertainties to make a decision about what is right for them. >> dr. shtern the imaging that does it appear the imaging that dr. deweese testified earlier their radical party of prostate cancer then more like a dormant? i don't know if that is the right word is that the believe this imaging can detect which one it is? >> it would be possible to develop imaging tools to

differentiate but the current eve rigid information talks about specifically the university of california may help to differentiate from prostate cancer. in a few days in march 10 there be a study published in poland and he is presenting data in 51 men wear the imaging was able to discriminate that aggressive from nonaggressive cancer. there has been rather extensive research needed it and that is why investments in imaging increase.

thinks is a direct ic my time is up. >> i know i am running at a time. >> i want to reiterate negative i think you heard a message that to we need in addition a way to detect prostate cancer better way to celebrate autopsy from the legal prostate cancer that is the common theme. but the problem right now is men have to decide what to do now they cannot wait for dr. brawley 15 years steadies. what happens in the 15 years since the american a european screening studies were designed? medicine advance and then the results of 15 or 20 years into the future become obsolete? mentor faced with a difficult problem of what to do now and the guidelines

emphasize aggressive leave finding prostate cancer in young men because the and man you can detect prostate cancer he will live so long he will die. you need to relax as they get older because they will suffer the increasing incidents of the autopsy camps are you do not want to go aggressively find purpose of the treatment is justifiably criticized because there was overzealous use of psa for early detection and treatment we need more science to separate the autopsy cancer then we don't have to be having so many of these discussions. >> let me indicate we will leave the record open for five additional-- our comments or information and let me thank all of you for your testimony today. it points out we still have

a long way to go but we appreciate your work and what you are doing and working with you as you move forward. this is an important hearing if you look at the statistics and what is really going on. let me thank you again and this time the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conveatio]

>> all three of whom happened to be born during congressional recesses. and senator dole never understood why any of our staff had any children during session. he would say sheila had them. on a more serious note, during the budget impasse during the period of time of the clinton administration, the government had been shut down for a period of time. and we had been going back and forth with the house in terms of continuing resolutions in an attempt to get the government back operating and to pass a sufficient amount of money for a short period of time to allow the government to operate.

and the house was quite determined to essentially force the issue. and from gingrich, who was speaker at the time, and dick armey and others, essentially were opposed to doing anything that would allow the government to go forward and wanted to sort of force the issue. and there was a point in time where we were bouncing something back and forth and the house once again indicated that they would be unwilling to pass something. and senator dole came out of the cloakroom and said to me, you call dick armey on the phone. and tell him the next time we're not going to stop it. these people have no idea what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck. and they are essentially doing enormous damage to the people in this country who we depend on. and it was an occasion of the things -- when it really counted what he cared about. and it was the -- he had extraordinary respect for the public service nature of government and the people who performed those services.

and little tolerance for sort of the indifference that seemed to be being shown and this kind of brinkmanship where other people's lives were at risk and at stake. and i had the opportunity to call dick armey and pass this information. but nonetheless it was a memory i will long hold and it again gives you the kind of indication the man is. >> rod? >> well, i was thinking of humorous. a lot of it was self-deprecating but i remember one particular markup that we had. and senator dole was a great fan of the use of ethanol and we had a proposal to enhance the tax benefits of ethanol. and i was down in the witness chair as the staff director

explaining to the committee what senator dole's proposal was in the course of a markup. and then the senators would be free to amend it and they would vote on it. and so i'm describing the proposal. and senator bradley, who was at that point a vigorous opponent of the gas-a-hol tax in -- incentives. and how much is this subsidy? and i'm just getting sliced up by senator bradley and senator dole is just sitting there. i'm thinking this is his approach. -- proposal. [laughter] >> and senator bradley said mr. dearment how much does it cost.

and he said it cost just as much as that mass transit you're interested in. and senator bradley said, now it's all coming into perspective. [laughter] >> senator bradley had occasion to run for president. and had a conversion in iowa to see the beauty of ethanol. [laughter] >> mike? >> i think my story is not that particularly specific but more general as to the character of the man that goes to what sheila was referring to about his ability to communicate with working people in particular. so i think one advantage he had over many of his colleagues in the senate from my perspective was that, you know, unlike any of them who on the weekends -- i don't know what they were doing. i know what he was doing was attending hundreds of town hall

meetings in states all across the u.s. and particularly in the u.s., kansas and new hampshire. but i think through those meetings he had access to far greater access to real people. and engaged in dialogs with them to a far greater extent than his colleagues did. which in turn formed his ability to communicate their needs and legislate their ability. that was a particular strength that he had that was probably a significant advantage for him. as an extent of that, you know, my experience in traveling with him in campaigning was that again i think unlike a lot of powerful politicians in the position he was in, he really didn't differentiate between the billionaires and the bottle washers in my experience. so as a matter of fact, i think he more closely identified with the bottle washers. in almost every case, when we were in a particular location he would make a point going to the

location or in the -- behind in the back of the house to meet the people -- the working people. so again, i think that urge and that instinct for him to engage with the common man was one of his greatest strengths when it came to translating to legislation and policy. >> didn't the senate elevator operators always take an annual vote on who was the most powerful senator. >> and he habitually won that poll, right? >> it was interesting when he made the decision to leave the senate, he made an opportunity for folks to come and say goodbye. little did we know at the time essentially what ended up occurring were day after day after day he would stand outside on what was known as the dole beach. which was essentially a patio that overlooked our mall outside of our offices.

he would stand there waiting for people who essentially lined up for hours all the operators, all the guards, all the cleaning staff, all of the runners to essentially get their photograph taken with him. and he would stand there until there was no one else in the line and it went on for days. and it was -- even today, when i go up and i'm sure it's true for rod, when any of us are in the senate, there's an immediate acknowledgement of having been a dole staff person. and the fondness with which he has held by the folks who has worked the back room in the senate is an occasion that he never hesitated to stop and ask how someone was. knew them by name. introduced them -- you know, you'd have gorbachev or someone in the office and some poor cleaning woman, martha, have you met president gorbachev. some poor leader is standing there what is this man doing.

but that -- mike is exactly right. i mean, he was beloved. and it was because he was essentially knew who they were. it was never walk past of them and essentially click your fingers waiting for them to open your door he was remarkable on that. >> i was going to ask this later but it sets up this question perfectly. you were there with him. talk a little bit about that last day in the senate, the decision to leave to devote full time to the campaign. kind of your thoughts on that. and that i'd like to find out from rod and mike what counsel they gave to him on that issue 'cause i know it was a really difficult decision for him? >> it was. his decision to do it and the day we announced it was somewhat separate. it was a remarkably difficult decision for him to make. and it was one i think he made recognizing that it was going to become increasingly difficult to manage the business of the senate. it was something which we'll get

into in terms of his remarkable skills on the senate floor and in legislating. and that is at odds for running for president or running for anything full-time. and i think he acknowledged that it would be unfair to his constituents in the sense of his on caucus as well as to the body to try and do both. and do perhaps neither well. he made the decision. and he made the announcement over in the hart senate office building. and the word had gotten out. and the number of democrats who attended and who spoke to him. and that, of course, his last actual day in the senate was remarkable. the chamber was completely full. there wasn't an empty seat. and the number of members who came up to him, who acknowledged how remarkable he had been as a member of that body where they fought over issues, but the

respect with which they held him was just palpable in the chamber. but it was a tough decision. but i think he felt it was the right one for the body. as much as anything else. and i think again it shows the respect he holds the institution. and how important that relationship was for him. and again, you know, whether it was danny inouye with whom he's chaired a hospital when they both came home from world war ii, his long history with pat moynihan and george mcgovern, george mitchell, robert c. byrd, you know, tom harkin and the disability work they'd done, ted kennedy on voting rights -- i mean, there was -- on the other own colleagues. an acknowledgement of really a change that would occur with his departure. >> mike, what did you feel that day? >> for me it was more of a -- well, i would say it was shock. because in particular because i

felt it more as a kansasan. and it was really a palpable sense of loss for our state. because i knew -- you know, i had learned enough by then to know that, you know, the leverage and the power of the seniority that senator dole had brought to the congress in representing our state was so significant. and probably would never be replicated. so from that perspective, it was -- as a campaign operative, i frankly was happy on one hand because i knew that it would be easier to concentrate and focus on the general election that we were facing, which was an uphill battle to start with. but, you know, more as somebody from home, i felt a sense of loss that he built up over the

years. one thing that i would want to -- not about how i felt that day but in retrospect, it struck me the example he set of leaving the -- not only stepping out of ace majority leader but leaving the senate as the party's nominee was a particularly graceful way to exit his congressional career. i note more recent examples of kerry and mccain. i think their decisions to go back in the senate are frankly less than graceful. and have presented a whole host of sort of awkwardness that, you know, having reached that pinnacle and then sort of being back down in the legislative process. i think senator dole graciously avoided much to his credit. >> did you have anything to add? >> well, i remember that day vividly. it was a day of some sadness for me because i sort of thought and still think it was a passing of

an era. there wasn't a majority leader quite like them. and not have one since. there have been great majority leaders both before and after. he gave a moving speech. it was -- there wasn't a dry eye in the room. and, you know, it was a packed room up in the -- >> it was the top -- >> top of the hart building. a great big cavernous building and everybody was moved. >> and it was true on the floor as well. again, both speeches, both his last speech in the united states senate as well as the speech acknowledging that he had made a decision to leave were both remarkably graceful. and his acknowledgement of the institution and the people with whom he'd worked. >> let's talk about his leadership style.

i didn't work with him on the hill. one of the things i saw rod, and sheila and mike was how he would literally have in the majority leader's office multiple meetings and he would basically just go around -- circulate around rod, sheila and mike tell us a little bit about that, how that worked. >> he was a master of meetings. and i'll tell you a remarkable set of meetings that was a courageous effort that didn't result in legislation. and that was an effort to seriously tackle the budget and cut spending in 1985. and he went after that. he assembled groups of members, sort of small groups, large groups. i think we finally counted when we were done the best we could. and we had like 40-some -- like

43 meetings of various members that he would pull together. and we would -- and dave stockman was, i think, part of that effort from omb looking at different ways to trim the budget. programs that had long since outlived their usefulness. we would have -- we would have ended. and we got that actually together. we voted it out of the senate and the house. it did not end up taking it. and a lot of those programs that were -- had long since outlived their usefulness in 1985 are still in place today. so there's probably some nuggets that we could go back and mine there. that was a tour de force of massaging the list and putting it together. and it really was the dynamic of

his personality. his never say die energy. that he would just keep pushing and somebody would say i can't have that. there were real flashes, i remember, a very heated discussion between lowell weiker and dave stockman. it had everybody looking at their shares. it was so embarrassing that particular thing. he just pushed ahead. put together the package and got the package enacted and out of the senate and into the house. >> i mean, rod is exactly right. he was never happier than where there were multiple meetings going on. and you would have a meeting taking place in his conference room. a meeting taking place in his personal office. a meeting taking place back in my conference room. or rod's as my predecessor. and he would move between the meetings. and encourage people to stay.

but he was also quite adept at essentially going outside the box. and whether it was the sort of passage of notes between he and moynihan that brought us the rescue of social security, whether it was the conversations with tom harkin that brought us the disabilities act, he was fully capable of going outside the boundaries of his own party and his own caucus to cross the aisle and essentially work a deal. the catastrophic -- the catastrophic, catastrophic health insurance bill essentially he and senator mitchell essentially bound themselves together to try to move that forward believing that, in fact, it was going to be in the country's interest to do those kinds of things. but it was persuasion. it was an extraordinary knowledge. he'd never cease to amaze us of sort of minutia that we would have gotten. and he would have dug up from someplace.

that he knew a particular member needed something. and he was deferential where he needed to be and quite firm where he needed to be. and rarely ever did he essentially give up. and you didn't leave the room. and he'd wander on and off the senator floor and come in and out of the meetings. and something horrific, you know, someone would be arguing. and, you know, he would make some comment about well, i see we're making progress. we knew just to bring humor into the room when things were getting very difficult. and when essentially to let people go. mark hatfield, for example, the senator from oregon had a long-standing and firm point of view on issues around the death penalty. and on a -- vietnam. there were a number of things which hatfield felt very strongly. and dole would know the line you couldn't cross. he knew that there were members who had views that essentially were firmly held. and that you couldn't push it. and knew when to stop.

but he also had extraordinary patience and would wait people out. rod and i on the way out -- i was remembering an instance where we had been in session quite late. and dole was trying to work out a consent agreement with senator byrd. senator dole was the majority leader at the time. senator byrd was in the minority. and senator dole gave senator byrd the consent agreement that would allow us to proceed on a piece of legislation agreeing to a set of rules on the order of amendments and so forth. and senator byrd who is a very formal person and felt very strongly about personal relationships took the consent agreement from senator dole and went into his office. and began to play his fiddle. and we could hear him play his fiddle and we're all vibrating about trying to get out and senator dole simply sat. and i think senator byrd finally

came to us at 2:00 or 3:00 to us in the morning but we essentially just sat there and senator dole waited him out. and knew he needed whatever time he needed. compute pressure of time needed to move things forward but it was a time to wait. there were times when he wasn't as patient. but he was remarkable in sort of his sense of that. >> how was he so successful at getting senators consistently when he was leader either minority leader or majority leader to take votes that maybe they would have preferred not to make? >> i think it was personal persuasion that he would talk to people. you know, sort of waiting people out and working people. i remember at the day of the last session and going with him and sitting on the senate floor and we had a number of bills that were hung up for one reason or another.

there was an amendment that a person wanted to have that they had to have. and holds on mills and we had maybe a dozen bills hung up. and he started with bill one and he would get people on the phone. try to work out their problems see if the compromises would work. and he would work that bill until we either got it free and passed it or it was so hung up that he would move to the next one. and we did that all day long. and into the night. we just kept working down those. and he would be calling people -- listening to what they had to say knowing what he needed to have, trying to find where that magic formula. and he was very clever -- you know, he would try different things. and how about this? and he had a great sense of where compromises could be found. and managed to find them.

i think that something that people -- there was some discussion of my favorite bill that i named. i don't know who doesn't like that name. [laughter] >> although i had -- my long time mentor for whom i started practicing tax law with, professor edwin cohen of the university of virginia law school, a great tax lawyer, always told me we pronounced it. it should have been called tefra so that we could have tea for two. >> tefra was a remarkable solo performance by bob dole it off deal with exactly the problem that we find insurmountable now, which is dealing with the deficit. although at that time we had a huge deficit. and we had very high interest rates.

and in the order of 18% interest rates. and dole and some other members of the finance committee met with paul volcker was the fed chair at the time. and he said if you pass a big package that cuts the deficit by a specified amount, he would -- he would ease off on the interest rates. and so that was the motive that they had. and the members of the finance committee and i believe it the republicans took upon that as a challenge. and we were -- we put together in 1982 and tefra was mainly the tax piece. but there was a spending cut piece. and it was called the three-legged stool, the famous -- i often talked about the three-legged stool. it was tax cuts and spending

cuts and incentives. and volcker cut the interest rates. and it had a remarkable payoff for the country by a terrific cost. and it was a political exercise while he compromised on people with that. on that he put together tefra and that package with i don't think a single democratic vote in the senate. the chairman passed it without without a republican vote in the house. so it was the democrats that supported it in the house. and the republicans in the senate. and so it was a remarkably bipartisan in a buy cameral way because both chairmen realized they had the responsibility of doing something. and it was a tough, unpleasant set of votes but they did it. >> bill, can i add something to that.

from my perspective, i think it's important to remember by the time he had been elected majority leader he had been on the national stage, a political way, for 25 years. so i think my experience of seeing him with these senators and members outside of washington was that he had an encyclopedic and exceedingly indepth knowledge of their political position in their districts and states. he probably knew -- well, he definitely knew when they were coming up for re-election. he knew -- he probably knew the percentage of the vote they'd gotten in their past election. probably knew how much money they had in the bank for their next election. so i think all those factors, you know -- in the way he was able to bifurcate his roles as politician and legislator, i think all that data, too, was brought to bear in his negotiations in the senate with members and how to get their

votes and who wouldn't be with him and who would. i think that made a significant -- gave him a significant advantage in being able to come together these majorities sheila referred to >> that's a very good point, mike. that sets up talking about tefra, a couple of other accomplishments that he's very proud of. let's talk about a couple other things. americans with disabilities act obviously he was committed with americans with disabilities his entire career. i think one of -- >> it was his first speech on the senate floor which was about disabilities. exactly. long-standing interest. i mean, one of the remarkable things about senator dole -- mike described what he was like when he was in a crowd. it always amazed me -- he would instinctively go to people who had some obvious disability if he were in a room. if it were someone in a wheelchair. if it were someone who was in any way impaired. he was drawn to those people.

it was obviously something he felt very strongly about. it was obviously not something high on the list of a number of republicans. but he had a keen appreciation, i think, for what he believed to be the appropriate and important role the government can play in helping people help themselves. and whether it was the provisions that we also dealt with through the medicaid program to allow people to essentially keep their coverage when they went back to work so there was no disincentive to work because suddenly you lost your health coverage. those kinds of accommodations again recognizing that people need to help -- a helping hand up in order to help themselves. and i think he approached that with harkin and others. as an acknowledgement that there was a population that needed remarkable consideration. the same is true of the food stamp program. and the work he did with george

mcgovern and the role government can play in a responsible way so help people help himself. both his ability to cross the aisle and to do things that perhaps were at odds with his party at the time. but his acknowledgement of the sort of balancing act for an appropriate and important role for government. you know, in sort of the right way. >> one of his other great accomplishments that he remains to this day very proud of is salvaging social security. >> i often hear today the notion we need to put together a commission like the greenspan commission that solves social security. but the greenspan commission was about to put out a report that made no recommendation. because they couldn't solve the problem and senator dole was a member of that commission as was senator daniel patrick moynihan

from new york and senator moynihan loved the social security program. he was devoted to it. and he and senator dole got together and senator moynihan said we can't let this go like this. that is the commission just put out a set of -- a set of options with no recommendation. and so the two of them started a dialog. and then they got dave stockman involved in that dialog to try to hash out a proposal that everybody could agree on. where everybody gave on increasing and accelerating the scheduled tax increases. and to tax half of the benefits. and benefit cuts. and greater coverage. and then they sort of got a gang of nine and built more consensus around that. but it really started really with the conviction of senator dole and senator moynihan.

and putting that together. that sort of lifelong bond that they had. and it was -- they had a remarkable relationship. i remember a couple of years later going on a congressional delegation all through asia, which was another workfest -- >> it became known as the baton death march for those of us who was on that trip. >> we brought one democrat with us. >> it was moynihan. it was moynihan >> 'cause otherwise it was all republicans. but that was a singular achievement. not that rescued social security we were at a point where it was about to go under. and we need to have a next generation of senator dole's and senator moynihan's to deal with

the train wreck that's not too far away. >> i'm sorry. >> i was just going to say there are those remarkable, very large pieces of legislation. i mean, an enormous amount of medicare and medicaid policy. a lot of the coverage of children. that occurred during the '80s and '90s was a result of senator dole and henry waxman interestingly enough. but in addition to those sort of big remarkable things that we all know about, there were also the small things. we had a young man on our staff who was an intern from kansas. and a young college student. and he was -- had hemophilia and he came to work for us one summer. and direct result of his being on the staff and having had the opportunity to meet the senator. having, you know, talked with us about sort of the challenges he faced and his family faced, one

of them was a small issue which had to do whether or not -- when you needed a clotting fact and hemophiliacs do not have a clotting factor and when they are injured you can bleed and there's a drug to help that clotting factor. but at the time medicaid would pay for it if you were going into the hospital to have it provided. although it was something that could be easily administered at home and it was much more easy for a man his age deal with that. and a direct result of that man was was pass of the hospice budget and the creation for rural health clinics in rural locations around the country. and medicare's acknowledgement of those services and the sort of challenges faced by small rural hospitals was a direct result of bob dole.

so while we all acknowledge and celebrate the social security salvation, tefra, defra, obra, cobra, there was a whole series of those, there was other things in which he gets get little credit but which he is directly responsible which has had an enormous impact onacross this c is really something. >> i was just going to comment on the dole and moynihan relationship is illustrative of how close that was. i can recall during the primary campaign in 1988, presidential campaign, senator moynihan asked senator dole's permission to use his image and words in one of his campaign commercials in new york, which he did. which i thought was remarkable. a display of bipartisanship and illustrates their closeness in that relationship rob is referring to. >> that relationship repeated a situation similar to the social security situation although didn't play out as well.

that social security event occurred because of a conversation on the senate floor between moynihan and dole. during the debate over health reform in 1994 through that period of the sort of clinton reforms, '93, '94. a similar conversation occurred. and a note passed between moynihan and dole. saying isn't it time for us to step in and make this work? and a whole set of circumstances prevented that from occurring not the least of which was the antipathy between moynihan and the clinton administration. but that opportunity was there for a brief shining moment where we might have been able to get something done. >> we're going to open it up to your questions in just a moment after i ask one more. so if you have a question, we have two students who will have cordless mics. raise your hand. they'll bring your mike to you and call you and give you a chance to ask your question. but my question really for all

three of you, how was the senate of bob dole and ted kennedy and robert byrd of 25 and 30 years ago we've been talking about tonight -- how was that so effective? and how is it different from the senate we see today? >> well, some of the activities that we engaged there in the senate was very long debates. i don't think we have any debates in consideration today. quite like they have then. maybe they don't have the same work ethic like they did then. but the windfall profit tax debate in late '79 early 1980 was on the floor for months. i don't think we debate bills for months today. so people had an opportunity to

offer their amendments. many times over. there was perhaps a greater collegiality between the members even though there was very partisan votes then and very partisan activities. as i said the tefra was created in the senate. passed in the senate. really entirely by republicans. and so there were no democrats that chose to join in that particular bill. there were others that were much more bipartisan. i think it might be the -- sort of the tradition of long

friendships. members served within a long time. and worked together across party lines so that even where there was party-line votes, they still could be civil with one another. >> i think we're all struggling to understand why things have become so bitterly partisan. much more obviously than they were in the period of time that we served in the senate. that's not to suggest that there weren't battles that occurred because there were quite pitched at times. and clearly there were partisan -- i mean, senator dole could be very partisan. but also knew essentially when to reach across the aisle. i think there was a sense of the importance of legislating to a conclusion. that there was -- i can remember senator dole on more than one occasion commenting that he rarely thought it was a win to lose. that simply putting something up

to force people to vote knowing it was going to lose but to try to put people in a corner rarely served anyone's purpose. that the purpose of legislating -- in fact, he was criticized at times as a candidate of being too legislative and talking in legislative speak and talking like a legislator. well, he was. there's less sense of that now. there's more of a sense of sort of blocking people into a corner. and, you know, forcing them to take positions at odds where they needed to be. less risk-taking. i do think there is the history, you know, many of these members had served for a very long period of time. there's some who would suggest there's a greater presence of former house members in the senate now and there's a desire for the senate to operate more like the house. the senate is a messy place. the house is a very structured, very controlled environment where the majority have absolute iron control. the senate is not a body that

functions that way historically. it's a body, you know, largely does its business by consensus. most of the work that we were involved in with rare exception got done by consent. where the leaders would essentially agree to sort of what the structure was going to be and what you were going to get done and the rules in which you were able to get it done. and at the end of the day, you essentially worked to try to come to closure. there's less sense of that now. whether it's the nature of the individuals in the body, the lack of sort of history with some of them. i mean, i can think of the members that were on the finance committee when rod and i first went on the staff. and there were people like abe rubikoff and jack heinz was on and john chaffey and people who had long, long histories with the institution. you know, is that the difference today? i don't honestly know the answer to that. but i think we're all kind of struggling to kind of figure that out. >> let's open it up to your questions and answers. if we have a question, if you

would raise your hand. i know somebody here has a question. if we can get a microphone over here, chelsea. i'll threaten everyone. i have plenty of questions to ask them but this is your time >> i understand senator dole and tom daschle -- [inaudible] >> interestingly enough, president obama has now, i think, three or four times over the last couple of weeks referenced the proposal that dole and daschle and howard baker and george mitchell put together. we started working on it over a year ago. we released it last june. it has the support of all four of them, although mitchell by that time had gone to solve the middle east.

but it was supported by mitchell. but then by daschle, dole and baker. it has elements that are common to both the house and the senate. and are both democrat and republican. they sort of came to the table. and put everything on the table. senator daschle agreed to the limitation on the tax treatment of health insurance benefits. he agreed to a number of other provisions. no public plan. he agreed to allow insurance to be purchased across state lines. senator dole and baker agreed to requiring individuals to have coverage but no mandates on business. they agreed to a number of preventive services. they agreed to a variety of things that essentially exposed all of them to the opposite points of view. but essentially was a package that would have made major improvements. they did all the insurance reforms, guarantee issue, no preexisting conditions, things of that nature.

some expansion of medicaid. limited some changes to the medicare program. both expansions as well as constraints. again, it's been out there -- obama has referred to it a number of times. they've met with people on the house and senate side, the republicans and the democrats. there's some suggestion -- and my guess the three of them may do another op-ed piece before the senate concurs, everybody stand down and come back together open-minded to changes, whether it's malpractice reform or whatever it happens to be. but the three of them were able to once again cross those barriers and come to an green. -- agreement. >> one of the things that amazes me that i would like to ask you guys about -- i've been here five years. and the thing that just blows my mind is here senator dole is 86 now. you know, and i'm looking

forward to like playing golf and stuff like that when i'm 86. but since i've been at the dole institute the last five years, he's gotten the thayer award from west point and the trench legion of honor role. he's taken this big role, sheila, you just described. he went to normandy with the president this past june. he took the lead on the world war ii memorial and got that dedicated. he was involved in the dole -- >> you know, bill, the thing that you talk about the world war ii museum, the thing that makes his eyes light up is he goes and meets veterans that fly in. they have these fly-ins where they raise money -- >> honor flights. >> these honor flights that come in. and that's what motivates him. he will go out on a saturday and meet the honor flights. you know, he's in the hospital at the moment so he's not doing that. if you talk with him, that's what causes his eyes to light up

right now. >> and i think he's done 60 of those flights. met them. at the memorial and shaken hands. i had the privilege of going with him to normandy this time as well as at the 50th anniversary, both of which were remarkable experiences, but i will never forget having gone to the 50th we walked into the amphitheater at normandy and we were all waiting for all of the heads of state to arrive. and it was largely, obviously, filled with american veterans. some number of thousands of veterans. and you could hear as he approached -- you could hear them respond. you could hear them say, there he is. and i thought, you know, someone had arrived -- one of the leaders had arrived. and it was dole. today, when we were in normandy this time around, you saw the same kind of connection between him and that generation.

and rod's right. it is remarkable to see him when he goes to the memorial and greets these veterans and thanks them for his service -- for their service. it is really quite remarkable. and as rod said, we saw senator dole on friday. he's been at walter reed for a period of time now. you know, i mean, that still is the thing that he cares most about is making sure every veteran from world war ii who is still alive get a chance to see that memorial. but it's really quite remarkable. >> i think the list of achievements that you referred to, their bill just showed his drive for public service hasn't abated in the least. it's just in a different form than it previously was and less public. but i don't think it's abated in the least from his so-called retirement. >> he still wants to talk to politics. i sat with him on friday listening to the races. did you hear so-and-so and so-and-so. it's really quite remarkable.

>> we have a question right here if you'll wait, chuck, for a mic. >> i'm trying to connect some of the dots here. senator dole's military service -- we've talked about his empathy, his very natural authentic empathy with the so-called common man and so on. i'm wondering if a large part of that indeed goes back to the military service. and then having been the beneficiary of so much support from public and private sources in his rehabilitation and so on. and it seems, you know, when we look at the situation today in congress and elsewhere there is no common denominator service that, you know, young people, middle-aged people have shared. and, you know, what tom brokaw refers to as the greatest generation. there is that extraordinary common denominator where guys in

their 80s even 90s are still going to these reunions of their various units and so on. and they are able to talk across, you know, whatever part of their head has the rush limbaugh or keith olbermann tapes, tracking and so on. and i'm just wondering if you might comment on, you know, what you understand in that respect. perhaps even some sort of government service for all young people. whether it's military, whether it's peace corps, whether it's civilian corps, et cetera. >> well, that factor of service particularly world war ii service for a lot of the senators that were of that generation that we saw was a common bond. and it is less common now. and it was interesting when senator dole was engaged in his

search for a vice president -- and looking at really by and large a younger generation, he had a preference for people who had military service. but i would say the majority of the people he looked at didn't have that kind of service. i mean, he was particularly interested in governor ridge who had been a vietnam veteran, who lost some of his hearing in vietnam. and governor ridge wasn't ready to be considered at that point. but it was interesting to me when he said i'd have a preference for somebody who was in service and we started looking at the candidates that it just wasn't that common bond that you're referring to. but -- i mean, not only did he not have the common bond of a lot of those people who had been in service but there were three

members that he served with remarkably who had all been in the same hospital. danny inouye and himself had all been in the same veterans hospital. and what are the odds that they would all become united states senators? >> and played bridge together. and took care of one another, which was remarkable. in fact, inouye and dole had still that special relationship that came out of that common experience, which was really quite remarkable. >> one thing i always found remarkable in the course of his national political campaigns particularly at the public events and the town meetings was one of his standard things that he did was that asked every person in the audience who was a veteran to stand up and be recognized. and i think that was -- in many cases that was probably up with of the few times they were publicly recognized by their townspeople so you could see the

pride in the -- not only his service but in the other people that were introduced publicly as having served. and i always thought that was a remarkable recognition of what they had done. before all their peers and friends. so i thought that was a great thing. >> we have a question from former senator tom eagleton's chief of staff right here. >> yeah, i'd be interested in your observations particularly sheila, on dole's relationship with the other principal leaders in the congress when he was a leader. i think probably jim right, tom foley and gingrich were speakers. >> and tip. >> and byrd and mitchell. >> uh-huh. >> i would be interested in those relationships. how they differed. we know about gingrich. >> let me start in the senate.

he and senator byrd, who was the democratic leader when senator dole was elected leader had a remarkably close relationship, which, you know, wouldn't appear obvious, remarkably different backgrounds, ages, generations. but both -- i think what senator byrd recognized in senator dole and the same was true for senator dole was the remarkable respect for the institution. and they were able to talk with one another. senator byrd is a very formal person. felt very strongly about the role of members as compared to staff. senator dole was very respectful of senator byrd and his history in the senate. one made a mistake to think senator byrd was anything other than a remarkable master of the rules of the senate because he was. and so their relationship to the point where senator byrd stepped down was really quite positive. his relationship with mitchell

who was younger. a much more outspoken leader for the democrats at the time. and was was also remarkably strong. they had -- they made an agreement as i noted very early on that they would never surprise one another. and we had literally weekly if not more frequently meetings where we just quietly senator dole and i would go down to senator mitchell's office in turn and that was actually a very interesting indication. dole would always go to someone else's office. i mean, it was never one of these you come to me i'm in charge. he would always make the effort to go to someone else's office. so we would go down to senator mitchell's office. and his -- my counterpart in senator mitchell's office was a woman by the name of martha pope. and and the two of them would sit where are you having problems? who in your caucus is going to give you a difficulty. can we get these things done? i mean, dole would go to the senate cloakroom.

each party has a cloakroom that manages the floor for them. and dole would -- there were recordings where the staff would essentially call and say the following bills are going to be occurred. -- considered. if you have objections, if there are any particular issues. and dole would make the recording himself. and you can see the lights -- you know, the phones light up 'cause dole is on the phone telling people this is what we're going to do and that's because he and mitchell have decided these are the things we need to get done where rod had indicated where he would go to the floor and make it happen. the two of them would have a good relationship. tom daschle -- they ultimately became partners together at a law firm and worked well together. were not together for a very long time. but again, very respectful. both could be very partisan where they needed to be but both respectful of each other in a very open and i think candid relationship. what the house -- little experience with jim wright. and not a long experience with

tip o'neill. but again similarly senator dole would go to the other side where we needed to. we didn't do it very often. you know, we had enough to say grace over in our own body without having to manage the other body. [laughter] >> but again, it was a distant kind of respectful relationship. you know, he recognized tip o'neill for the remarkable politician he was. skillful. he had great respect for bob michael. a similar generation. they'd known one another in the house. but michael had been in the minority for so long. it was very challenging. for the republicans in the house during that period of time. he and gingrich had a -- certainly a challenging relationship. [laughter] >> very different personalities. there was a clear change in the

house during the gingrich revolution. i remember we were on the receiving end of the contract of america where they were shipping bills over to the senate which many never got out of the senate. and, you know, very different approaches. very, very different approaches. it was the -- you know, the sort of young turks coming up through the house. you know, a very different body in the senate. much more aggressive. but again, there was this tension, you know, in the house because they'd been in the minority for so long. and there was this sort of backlash. as that -- as that changed. with, you know, both sides, i think, coming to a new reality. but again, i think in every case senator dole had, you know, corgial relationships. some were more challenging than others. with his senate colleagues they were quite open and candid.

where they needed to be, he and mitchell could really go at it on the floor. but personally had a remarkable and still do have a very, very good relationship. >> i think we have time for one last question here, please. >> you made reference to senator dole being in balloter reed. -- walter reed. i wonder in the last few months the status of his health. >> well, rod and i saw him friday and we spent a lot of time talking about politics. he had a knee -- he had some knee surgery done. he was having problems with both of his knees and had some knee surgery done, which was quite successful. i mean, he was going to work every day. had gone back to work after having had the surgery but then had some infection issues. and so they've been trying to manage that at walter reed. i think, you know, they're quite hopeful he's making great progress and will get back home again.

he's still, you know -- wants to go back to work and i expect him to be back in his office. but, you know, you have to remind him that he is, you know, not 25 anymore. and so the recovery from, you know, the series of, you know, things he had dealt with, you know, are not quick and not easy. but he was in great spirits when we saw him. you know, i think we'll be back at work fairly soon, i would think. >> sheila, rod, mike, thank you very much for a wonderful discussion time. we really appreciate it. [applause] >> we thank all of us for joining us. and next tuesday night we will have the former speaker of the california assembly former mayor of san francisco willy brown who will be a fascinating program. we'd invite you all back for that. and then a couple -- then a week after that we'll have richard baker the recently retired

historian of the senate. so thanks for your support. have a great evening. thank you, guys. that was terrific. >> yeah. [inaudible conversations]

>> now a discussion on the state of the intelligence community with former national intelligence director mike mcconnell and other officials from the bush administration. this is part of a conference marking the fifth anniversary. >> thanks very much to our first panel. we're ready to begin the second panel. it's my pleasure to introduce john gannon. it's my pleasure to introduce john gannon who's the vice

president for global analysis. at bae systems. john has a long history in the intelligence community including serving in the senior-most analytical positions at cia including deputy director for intelligence, chairman of the national intelligence council, and assistant director for central intelligence for analysis and production. john also served a stint on the hill as staff director for the select committee on homeland security in the house of representatives. and he's also a member of the bipartisan policy center's national security preparedness group. please join me in welcoming john gannon. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, michael, very much. it's an honor to be here. and i want to turn very quickly to our panel. we have mike mcconnell who is second dni. we have steve cambone who's the

first secretary of defense and for a very turbulent period the acting dci. all of these gentlemen whom it's been my privilege to work in my career. were very active in the leadership and i think reform efforts in the intelligence community prior to 9/11. they were fully engaged in the post-9/11 period and improving our intelligence capabilities. and also were very much engaged in the discussions with the congress and with the -- with the population in general about intelligence reform after 9/11. so what i'd like to do is -- this is a panel that is not about all the problems we've talked about but we are solutions. and we're going to -- we're going to -- we're going to look -- [laughter] >> we're going to look at the future and you're going to go away nourished. ...

>> that said, we can always be better and i'm going to give you a premise on why i think it can be better. my model for that is goldwater-nichols. it's been mentioned a couple times this winter for those of you who may not be similar, the department of defense created after world war ii by the national surgery act of 1947 as

amended, we debated it. we thought about it for years but i was a product of that environment. my service in the penn state navy, if i taken a tour outside the navy i would have been feels like for the next promotion consideration. that was the way the process was disappointed i was there for the debate. is a right, is it wrong? every service chief, every service secretary testified under oath, we pass this bill, it will ruin the united states department of defense. it was passed in 1986, signed by president reagan. we had a dustup called desert shield. every service chief in every service secretary since goldwater-nichols has said it's the best thing that's happened to the united states military. it was a radical transformation. now, here's my premise. a bureaucracy was established in any bureaucracy, you pick it,

government, business, a bureaucracy, a group of people, once established will fight to maintain itself to the point of redefining reality in its own self-interest. that's true of any bureaucracy. without intrusive oversight, intrusive oversight, or forces beyond the control of the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy will refuse to change. now, that's my premise. some might agree, others might take issue with that. that's just an observation of an older gentleman who has been observing this for a long, long time. and i used my navy that i am very fond of, my beloved navy, as my model. virtually every change in the navy was forced from the outside. there's a long history there. we don't have time to discuss it. i would like to answer questions if we want to follow up on that issue. what is the mission of the community? collect and analyze information beyond all possible competitors.

collect and analyze information to know beyond and better than all possible competitors. first, responsibly to speak truth about power. it's your job in defense of the constitution to let the facts speak for themselves, not to twist the facts but let the facts speak for themselves. i think the closest analogy we have to that in that country is the director of the fbi and the chairman of the federal reserve. they are selected. they have a 10 year. their responsibility, whether speaking to the congress, executive branch, they must speak the facts as they know them. this town we asked you for things. only for things that i can figure that maybe some others but before in my list, crisis, we have a crisis we're going to have some action. what did you know and when did you know and why didn't you do something? we will act in crisis. the second is balance. we don't control crisis there will we're not going to control

balance. but they'll get the attention of this town and things will change. the 30th money. doesn't always get the exact change we need but when there's money generate a gets a lot of attention and people start to pay attention. the fourth thing is the law. that's the thing we control. i believe we need to update to get it right. today, the law lays us in a position where it is entirely, entirely personality dependent. now, my good friends bogota. i don't know if mike is still here. mike is a true intelligence professional. and intelligence professional from the early days in air force as i was an intelligence professional in early days in the navy. we understood this community. what does it take to be successful. and we had a deal. he said the best thing about

your job is it lets me do my job. and i said, i understand that. and the best thing about my job is i can try to make the community better. and he said i will work with you on that. and we were growing our. there were some things we couldn't agree to because of the seats were occupying. there was some credit to some things that were achieved. revision of executive order 12333. it took a full year with the full support of the president, so full support of the secretary of defense and it was a battle on every paragraph. because the law doesn't spell out the authorities. so my view is we need to revisit that law. we need to establish to on the principles of goldwater-nichols, and there are three important words in english language that matter. in a bureaucratic context. those three words are authority, direction and control. and if the dni is given

authority correction and control to this community will sort itself out and we will get missions and go off and do things like the army, navy, air force, marine corps did their mission and then provide fighting forces to the combatant commands for operations. final thing i would say is, and this was mentioned earlier on the panel, we are a community without being espionage against foreign interests. we can't play out our activities in the public. we are compelled to protect sources and methods. if we do not protect sources and methods, we will have lives lost, and we will lose the capabilities of very sensitive and expensive systems that we used to collect information. we also can't allow our output in speaking truth to power to be the political fodder for the policy debate. so getting this right is

important for the country. the big question is, am i prepared, as a professional, to make the point that we need a tenured dni and we need a department of intelligence. i've been thinking about that long and hard, and on the drive down here this morning i wasn't sure how it was going to come down. and i am there. the tenured dni, and department of intelligence. if we don't do it that way we are going to continue to argue about these issues, and it will be personality deepened. in my great fortune i had my guest director of cia. and keith alexander as director of nsa. and so on. and we are able to work it out because we all wanted to work it out. but it leaves -- it leads to the personality of those layers. and it can become very

dysfunctional if those personalities do not mesh. the far turn to joe mclaughlin, i was remiss in not noting the revival of her personal dni dennis where. welcome, sir. great to have you here. john? >> on i am reminded, when we're all debating this in 2004 in the situation room in congress, i alone with many of the people actually think mike hayden at the time, too, argued that this person if the president was going to create a dni, needed to be very substantially empowered. i think we lost that argument, for reasons that may be understandable, thinking back to jane harman's comments year. but i do recall that in the middle of the debate very senior senator called me from the code room and said john, you know, i'm still searching for the answer to a question as we debate this, that you raise

during her testimony. and my question was a simple one. it was, who will really be in charge, and who will you hold responsible when something goes wrong? seemed to me a very vital question, having been held responsible a number of times for things that went wrong. so i think today as we try and talk about the future, try to make recommendations year, we keep funding ourselves ranged back to the past for all of those reasons. so as i think about the challenges, the point about panel here, the challenges for the dni going forward, i would say they fall into two categories. the first seems rather simple but it actually isn't. and that is to continue establishing the legitimacy and effectiveness of this office. basically to continue venting the dni. agencies, people in them

continue to question the effectiveness and legitimacy of the dni, and they do it in, not personally, but the office, and they do in a couple of ways. they do it directly, sometimes when you circulate among the agencies. and they do it indirectly by that classic bureaucratic technique that we call slow rolling. that's exactly what mike mcconnell was talking about here when he said it took a year to get what amounted to an important, but essentially, modest revision of 12-333, the bible of the intelligence community. we shouldn't be surprised by this. a little history is in order. this is normal. when the cia was established in 1947, it took a number of years before it had established itself, if you will. it was vigorously opposed by the military, by the fbi, and by the state department. so it was not until the early

'50s the cia began to take the kind of shape that we came to know during the cold war. so there's a long struggle to establish the dni is not all that surprising. but i would say the dni's job is somewhat harder than it was for an early dci, director of central intelligence, to establish the legitimacy and effectiveness of that office. and i say harder because there is, as everyone here has noted, admiral mcconnell just made clear, there is this gap between the responsibilities of the office and the authorities of the office. now put yourself in the role of the dni, you are the dni. and you literature book every day, you look at your car, your business card, and if you could fit on your business card, it would say that you are the president's principal advisor,

and the principal advisor to the national security council, and the homeland security council on intelligence matters relating to the national security. that's literally what the law says. if that's on your business card, actually what it is, you're going to feel responsible for just about everything that happens in the intelligence world. i don't know how you cannot. so that gap is i think an important thing for all of us to keep in mind. while the law freed this individual from the burden of running a large complex agency, for which mike hayden was thankful, it also in doing so took away one of the sources of the power that the director of central intelligence had. which was his role running a large complex agency. one that was more organically

hooked to the rest of the intelligence community than any other agency. that was the source of power. so the dni's power have to come from some other direction, some other source. now there's some opportunities around today, the christmas bombing attempt, for example, that friend alluded to is an enormous opportunity for the dni in terms of what needs to be done and its aftermath. why? think about it. i think, i may be wrong i think this is the closest call we've had in the homeland since the dni office was created. and when you think about the complexity of that event, and the gift that is in many respects by virtue of being a completely formed a terrorist operation that didn't work, when you think about the complexity of it and the involvement in the way it touched different missions in the intelligence

community, only the dni, by law, can take the steps required in its aftermath to tune up the performance of the community. it's important to remember the cia director can't do that anymore. it's interesting, too, if you think back to the period, one thing that struck it was after that event, no offense to the media here, if you watched the crawl at the bottom of the cable news channels, for the first two or three days it was all about the cia had failed. after two or three days, you start to see some other initials appear. people came to realize there was a dni, there is an nctc, these were i think fairly obscure initials to most people in the media until they thought about it for a while. so there's an opportunity here for dni to demonstrate that he's the only person who can tackle all of the things involved.

you can bring a story into line with responsibilities to all the me to talk about here today. personal relationships, presidential embrace, more legislative octane. and i frankly would endorse what admiral colleges set on that score, but maybe the most important way to close this gap is to achieving things out of the dni office that no single agency can achieve. what are they? let me just list five very quickly and then i will wrap up. start with some very big ideas and move to some very, some narrow ones that are nonetheless important. first, we think our collection paradigm. no one else can do this. we have a collection paradigm that is rooted in the marriage of classic espionage and technology developed in the 1960s, involving basically spy craft imagery, communications intercepts, and some other arcane methods of collecting

intelligence. the adversary understands this pretty well. it is probably time to ask the paradigm shift question, which is what is a we cannot do today which, if we could do it, would revolutionize our business the way technology did in the 1960s. that can be done by anyone agency. second, several panelists have although to this, too, when the issue came up of who should be the spokesman for the community. only a dni can shape the environment in which intelligence operates. people talk about intelligence as though it exists and a hermetically sealed box. how often do you hear the phrase it's all about intelligence. well, frankly, it's not all about intelligence. there are a lot of other things that bear on our performance of national security. and that bear on the performance of the community itself.

there are four major constituencies. the congress, the public, the media, and the customers, and they all have to be in some sort of alignment, at least in some comprehension, if not agreement about what this incredibly arcane business is about. if not, something will be dysfunctional to dni can deal with it. third, resolve key problems that no one else can resolve. the committee has not yet have, despite a lot of progress, david shear talked about this, does not yet have an i.t. our structure technology architecture. that permits intelligence officers to do with the enormous volume expanding everyday of information with anything like the efficiency that you deal with at home, sitting in front of your computer. it's better, but any dni that can take you to that level of performance will revolutionize

the business beyond anything that's been done since the community came into being 63 years ago. form teams, form teams of people from throughout the community to tag up on the issues today that are all multidisciplinary, cross discipline that no one agency can deal with. again, one needs authority. finally, all sorts of issues that need to be solved on the half of the whole community, one that comes to mind is the difficulty of dealing with, as far as domestic concerns and data merge in the era when what is it with terrorism, the whole question of how you deal with u.s. persons data. it's very complicated. legally, policy wise, civil liberties, no one agency can touch that. someone else has to do it.

so those are some of the things that are the future challenges for dni, but that takes us, as i close, to what i would call the catch-22 question. those things need to be done, but does the dni have the authority to do them with the process that is less than a trip to the dentist. i think not yet. >> steve? >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here, and it's good to see a lot of old friends that i haven't had time to see for, rather they were more busy than the i think over the last two years. so it's good to see so many folks. unlike most of the other panelists, i am not a career intelligence officer. i did not grow up in the intelligence environment. i came to it as a user of

intelligence, and ultimately as a policymaker who had to rely on the intelligence community and its various agencies and actors for information that was vital for performance of my task, which, over the course of my time at pentagon, in the various jobs i was in, boiled down to providing to the secretary of defense, advice about the execution of his responsibilities and obligatio obligations, both the secretary of defense and as a principal staff assistant to the president of the united states. so i can't at this issue somewhat differently than the others, and that may account for some, more of the nuance that i think specifics because there's little less than said about some of the additional capability that the dni as a dni is currently constructed might usefully have in the way of additional capability. but i always think it's helpful,

and i'm not sure who made the point about expectations this point, it might have been david, to come back and set some expectations on just what it is we think this human being in this very complex world ought to be charged with doing, and how we are, in fact, going to measure his success. because what the policymaker looking for from the intelligence community is accurate, timely, useful, and often even actionable and in the sense of being able to immediately convert knowledge to action, information. most policymakers don't look for intelligence. they need information. they need to understand what's going on, and they rely on the judgments of the people who are in the community to provide that information to them. and why? they have a hard job to do and the most important policymaker

of course is the president. he has a myriad of obligations. fran touch on some of them this morning and is once it's back and reflect on the range of responsibilities he has, one can't i think begin to appreciate that he would like to have a variety of instruments, tools, by which to accomplish the myriad of tasks. but by extension the president flows down his authorities to his cabinet officers, and they execute much of the nation's policy on his behalf. and so as a group, let me call them the national safety council for lack of a better term, not the staff, but the statutory members, what are they looking for? they are looking for the intelligence community to provide them information that will allow them, and they keep searching for the right phrase, but it is to anticipate the continuities and practice around the world as they see it today. i do use the word surprised

because the second half of that is that they would launch information to help mitigate the consequences of surprise. oftentimes people want to talk about anticipating surprises. nearly by definition you can't do that. a surprise is something you didn't anticipate. and so it is really anticipating those discontinuities which might in fact lead to surprised that allows some lead time for the leadership to make adjustments that one looks for. second, minimizing risk and maximizing opportunities for success. where are the risks that we face? i will never forget the long conversations we had with george and john and others in the community with respect to operations in afghanistan, and subsequent in iraq, and how did those risk get minimize, how do we deal with problems in north korea? that was a constant conversation that took place between the intelligence community and its

representatives, and the policymakers who were wrapped up in decision-making. but those two things, anticipating and minimizing and maximizing risk and opportunity, were also looking into the policymakers for information that will permit the laying down of a foundation for an intern and stable outcome, to whatever set of issues or problems or crises we may face. and that the outcomes favorable to our interest. whatever they may be in the event. but, of course, we are always looking for that help and support. there's been a great deal of criticism over the years, nearly unending, and as i say i did not grow up in the community but i must say some of the literature one reads is beyond belief. as the unmitigated failure, of the entire lack of success of the intelligence community, which is to me astonishing. again, having had the privilege of being associate for only a

brief bit of time i can assure everyone that most of the purported history is not true. it is studded with successes that, unfortunately, are not the communities lace detail. but for those of us to testify to. but as i look over the period of time when i was dealing with them and what i hear from my friends who are still working today, there is the question, no question whatsoever, that at the operational level the community is far better than ever they were. that's not surprising. they have had a lot of opportunity to improve their performance, excel, train, learned. but these guys are good. they have learned to take information and turn it into action in ways that were never anticipated in the past, and will undoubtedly continue to evolving future. at the analytic level, creating knowledge out of intelligence and i want to make that distinction, because what is

intelligence after all but by definition a mix of two facts, misleading facts, false facts, and no facts. i mean, and maybe more. from all that they are expected to provide to a policymaker information on which that policymaker is expected to make decisions. and on which he relies. and by all accounts again, despite recent stories to the contrary, seems to me that there has been remarkable improvement. and that has to be in turn laid at the feet of the reform effort in no small measure. it can't be otherwise. that's -- that access is despite reform effort but i think in good measure of a. but what about than the role for the odni going forward and for the dni itself and admiral blair, we were given assignments, so please accept in the spirit in which it's

offered, i agree with the other panelist. and i think i understand the implications of being the principal intelligence adviser to the president. and what i would argue is that the management responsibility is that they have been conferred on the dni are for the purposes of fulfilling that assignment. data management responsibilities, in an of themselves, have little value. unless they are designed, and less that management is done for the purposes of making the dni the best adviser to the president and, of course, by extension to the other members of the nse, to the congress, and all of the other operators out there in the world from combatant commanders down to the fbi agents. as was pointed out this morning, and i were in mind again, the

dni was not given operational responsibilities. and one can argue whether he should have been given those responsibilities or not. if he had been, we would not be debating whether the dni was in the d.c. i just made larger, and it would really make any progress. inevitably that would've been the question. but there are other issues that need to be thought about when one thinks about whether or not that dni should have operations responsibility. let's think of the point that fran made and others have made about the spokesman. and mike hayden can't the true dilemma, i believe, for the intelligence officer when faced with a question by the president of the united states. the president of the united states, whoever he is, or she may be someday, has an agenda. he was elected for that purpose. he has a policy.

he is looking for information as i suggested earlier that will help him to execute a policy. i can imagine a more difficult position to be in than to be asked a question wherein the officer has both developed and of the present and what he knows to be, or knows not to be the facts of the case. that's very hard. the advantage of having a dni, in my view, is it does allow for some separation between what the dni can represent to the policymakers, the president and all of his cabinet, as being the judgment of the community, the information that it can't supply, and he can be that buffer, and he can make certain that there isn't any concerns that then seek out about the politicization of intelligence. another way, i think he is a true buffer against that concern. and that is not nothing in the

world in which we live. second, i think he has the advantage of being able to work the domestic intelligence agenda with greater facility than any other intelligence officer, or policymaker for that matter, say, for the director and a g. and again, that's not nothing, and something that is absolutely essential and this was pointed earlier, has really not been fully aired, i mean, the singular failure on 9/11 was not with all due respect, whether the nsa was part of the d.o.d. or was an independent agency, it was we didn't get the domestic and foreign intelligence properly, properly integrated. which brings me then to a close here. it seems to me that the dni really has broadly i think to responsibilities that the principal adviser. one is to assure the president

that he has received that which the president thinks he needs, and what he wants to have. and those are not the same things. the president may want something but sometimes he needs something else. so that's the dni's role, is to make sure he has both. to conduct his business every day as i suggested earlier. but second, it is to anticipate the future needs. we had a conversation this morning about the mission managers. conversation about where are we going with some of the collection capabilities. the dni has come if i can use that phrase, the luxury, standing back from the day-to-day execution. again, another reason, for the day-to-day execution, community, to think about where it ends are going. what this companies might be, what does it mean to minimize risk and maximize opportunities? how to put into trying to the kind of changes which will take, trust me, a generation to work

their way through. we talk about goldwater-nichols. you know i spent a good time in the pentagon. no one joined the joint chiefs. no one joined the joint staff are quite joined the army, navy, the air force and the marine corps. and they did those that each of those instills is what each of those men and women bring to their jobs in the joint staff or they bring to the job and a combatant command which is by definition joint. but by god, they are our sailors, airmen, marines, coast guard and the like. so it takes a while for that to work its way through, and he has, the dni does, the opportunity to bring that kind of change over time into place. now, whether we make an orchestra director or a cabinet secretary, we can debate about which is the proper role and

function, but i would leave you with this this thought. as the principle intelligence adviser, there are advantages, significant advantages, to the dni not having an operational role first. and second, that in choosing what he decides to manage in the most direct way, again, it's a very large community. it's very confident that it cannot be managed by any number of people you could imagine bringing into the dni staff. it's not possible. i was told by one former secretary of defense, thinking about the department of defense, the 3 million people, he told me at any given point and time someone is out there breaking the law. what i going to a bug that? you have to manage it. after he got how to deal with it. in thinking about this going forward we have to be clear about where we want him to place his time, attention and effort to what is the benefit he brings to the president and to the members of the national safety council conference. >> thank you, steve.

i had a couple of questions. i think i will combine them. and you can voluntarily take them on are not take them off because i want to leave time for questions from the floor. but the first question has to do with the usdi, dni relationship for those of us who are in the intelligence community, for most of the period since 1947, if you are cia the real wolf at the door was not dni. it was d.o.d. and in the sense that every battle we got involved in, no matter how powerful the dci was, you would lose the battle with the d.o.d. but the fact was that the secretary of defense, while they controlled most of the assets of the intelligence community really did have five minutes in the week to concentrate on budgetary or issues with regard to intelligence. so the dci did have considerable authorities. with the creation of the usdi position in 2002, the secretary

of defense had 24 sevenths set of eyes on intelligence priorities. so the question is how has -- certainly i would have to conclude a very significant success of intelligence downrange, incredible capabilities we have now on rsi and not just technical capabilities but the collaboration with seeing in afghanistan and iraq. has something to do with leadership of those two organizations. so i'd like, any comment, and want to make particularly about this relationship going forward. the other question that i would have if i would assert that the intelligence community is subject to technological surprise. today and in the future more than any time in its history. and this doesn't mean emerging technologies but it means disruptive technologies. that is essentially where the ied came from to surprise us. the qdr of which is just published last february,

mentions this with concern. that we now have a world where r. and d. is now distributed globally as opposed to when it was controlled very much within the united states, most of the history of the intelligence committee. so the question, go back to the last panel would be, are we prepared with regard to technological surprise? regard to the relationship and the second one is on technological surprise, are we prepared? and you may pass on these questions and effort to the floor or you may take them on. you have to take a lease the surprise. >> technological surprise prepared, no, we are not. we have got a game plan. is a work in progress. we are focused on it. my view is unless it's improved dramatically in the year i've been gone we are not there yet. and since i'm speaking, let me just comment on the first and. i think the relationship between the committee with the creation of usdi has made it better, but

not what it needs to be. secretary, own, and what do we do, it's big, chart, is complex. contrast that to the most expensive complex organization in the world, which also happens to be the most effective. it's called department of defense. $660,000,000,000.3 many people moving parts in every part of the world. and one person has raised -- is responsible for running the process. raise, train and equip operations quality, national security advisor, rove for the president. so what i am an advocate of is having appropriate statutory authority for dni that allows problems to be resolved, not wanted. example, join duty. everyone is agreed, joint duty is wonderful. it took us three years, three

years, my predecessor, work it for a couple of years, i working for the better part of the year, and when we finally got it it was a compromise. and it doesn't put the community where we need to be because there is no one's forcing mechanism in the community can wave it off. so that's what i keep coming back to the fact the appropriate role and authority, and admittedly very complex environment. but without the decision authority, we are just they are points of view. and i would also extend this to the congress. was mentioned i congress woman harmon, 88 committees and subcommittees overseeing dhs. the appropriation for this community, not all the, major appropriation for intelligence community is done in the defense appropriations committees, subcommittees. we have had an authorization

bill and three years. five years. so my point is getting this recognize or its importance. it is truly is important for the state institute of the nation in putting it on par with appropriation oversight authorization, accountability, i think is what we need to be focused on. and if we talk about correcting this and make it better for the future. >> john our state? >> just briefly. i support the creation of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and i think it makes us for secretary of defense to have a person that he or she can turn to because 80% of the budget is there at this point. provided a dni is still seen as the counterpart essentially of the secretary of defense. that is, that the usdi serves primarily the secretar secretarf defense. bmi deals directly secretary of defense an occasion to the usdi. second, on technology, part of

what i was saying part of what i on technology we're living in talked about a collection paradigm relates to this. the midst of the greatest technological revolution in history. and, therefore, intelligence always have to be ahead technologically aware the rest of the world is because your adversary always has what you have, what's ability to commercially. so you have got to be ahead. there are countless examples of that over the years. my bottom line here would be that avoiding technological surprise and false have a not just a defense against technological surprise, but having an office that assures your dramatically ahead what everyone else is technologically. in the end that's the best way to avoid surprise. >> steve, any comments because i concur with john on the technological surprise, and i think was a good idea to have that. lap expect that's why start at the same. ,. >> but for some of the reasons john touched on, the phone calls from the dni only went from him to me. i never -- i was not -- the protocol did not have me calling

dni. that was the secretary's call. that didn't happen. now that i spent time with john, yes. and i spend time with his successor, yes. that i spend time with a lot of deputies, when mike when he was principal deputy? qubit. the relationship was between the secretary and a dni, and i believe that what george does, and i don't think -- in the context of a commission we did come he said he and i were talking, he said the most important relationship in washington is between the dci and the secretary of defense. and in my view, what has happened is that that relationship has now been adjusted to be the secretary defense and the dci very close related in that relationship. but what had been a bipolar relationship it is now sort of a triumvirate, if you will, for those matters which are

effecting the intelligence community. and they have got to be a on the same sheet. and it is not by accident that you often see the proper array of personalities there. a president paying attention is going to look to make sure he has the right people in those jobs. >> thanks. want to turn it to the floor. and also we didn't get to discussion about information sharing. so if anyone has questions about that, throw it out as. let's start here. >> thank you. frank luntz. my question is really to counterintelligence. if one looks at what's occurring within the borders of the united states, if you act together the number of personnel, just terrorism, terrorists, and their supporters. russia, the people's republic of china, i would say that while we have very good people working in counterintelligence, good policies and a good strategy, we don't have the resources to

conduct the kind of counterintelligence that we need to. it's very labor or human intensive. so i would propose that we need a massive court significant expansion of the number of personnel. it should be done in a way that is coordinated. i don't know if the military services might return to playing a role domestically, not in wiretaps or anything that would violate civil liberties, but as they did before in certainly a coordination with the fbi, expanded double agent operations, or certainly physical surveillance, and things like that, that you know, but competent what the fbi is doing. >> anyone? >> i will start. on resources i agree. i don't think it's necessarily simply a solve it with a people problem. i think there are lots of things we could do. and how we administer the process, something was mentioned

earlier, a claim to something that dni was able to do is address the clearance process. the clearance process was trying to make it go faster. not all time. but also embedded in that was a better way to administer the process from the ability for constant lifecycle monitoring. doesn't mean you monitor it all the time, but you could. so it acts as a deterrent at the other point i was mentioned as those on the inside after the clearance, they are in for life and, that's what happened in the past with spies into a. so i think it probably needs to be addressed. i don't know if it's quite as dramatic as the way you framed it, but certainly it's something that needs attention. >> thanks, mike. anyone else? >> randy w. had a question? >> i would like to pose an issue of future challenge, and that is cyberspace. admiral mcconnell has been

outspoken about that recently, some of the challenges, but what about people who may not know is that admiral mcconnell when he was a dni actually was a catalyst for the effort would lead to the competent national cybersecurity initiative, it was under his leadership that we achieve that recently declassified. so it attributed that to his leadership there. but going forward, how should we think about cyberspace and the context of the dni? recently in the "washington post" there was an article talking about an episode that showed the tension between operations and intelligence collection, and one that apparently, according to the article, left neither side very, very happy. so going forward, i would be interested to hear your thoughts collectively about how should cyberspace be managed within the context of the dni. thanks. >> thanks, randy. >> my view is that the first response of the dni and the community is to understand the

threat and implications of the threat and so on. it is with that knowledge that i attempted to make the argument and the previous administration, the current administration, this is serious. there are things happening that are of strategic significance. we have all benefited from the standpoint of created higher standard of living, connection around the world, and we enjoy. and has introduced perhaps an unprecedented level of risk when you imagine john use banking as my example, we don't have a gold standard. if you take all the printed bills and all the coinage, you would get maybe 5% of our wealth. so where is and how is it accounted for? it's an accounting entry in a database. and my war is not so much nation states was getting information for advantage, my worry is and extremist group whose intent is to destroy or to downgrade or corrupt.

and so if an extremist group with a relatively low level of investment attack is in that way, it could have come in my view, a large-scale consequent is. so what's the dni's role? my view is to keep it visible, keep it understood, make it plain english. be willing to take a position on it. the mitigation of the issues, often are embedded in the intelligence community. the national city agency is, i don't know what the number is, probably over its lifetime, i have a trillion dollar investment, is the only authorized force in the nation whose mission is code breaking. and what we have finally come to realize, over time, it's code breaking breaking is often the enabler for a tack which is everyone talks about, but is also the enabler for defense. so i think the dni and the community has a very dramatic and important role in this and making it translatable to how would you defend the department

of defense, how would you defend government, of what's out there, it's pride and 98%, how would you do that, using a community that has capability operate at the top secret level to make it unclassified and useful at the speed of the net, big shot. so my view is the dni has got to be involved in this debate, this activity for quite some time before we get a level of mitigation that we find acceptable. >> any common? >> i would you say is complex pe because it involves exploitation, attacking defense. and those functions are all spread around the u.s. government, again, probably only somewhat of a very senior cross agency level can get their arms around his. the other problem is that our vision of it is clouded because we have yet to have a demonstration on a major scale of what it can do.

you know, we've had the equivalent in the cyber world of the embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the uss cole in 2000 in the terrorism world. it wasn't until 9/11 that we really got our act together, broadly speaking. we haven't had that on cyber yet. it may come, and if it comes, we better be ready to quit better not be scrambling. >> steve? >> stephen cash, the question for the panel and hopefully for director blair later, one of the analogies that was used in coming up with the idea of the dni was the hope that in the intelligence community it would create an equivalent to what a military at least am a civilian's perspective is the shared professional bond between particularly officers. steve cambone mentioned you join the army, he joined the navy.

but from a civilian point of you, you become a military officer. everything bombed. it's very, very significant. there really isn't or really wasn't in the intelligence community. to what degree now do you think the workforce, that 100,000 people, would self identify regardless of what agency they are from, as intelligence officers? and are we at the level we should be? what do we think we're going in the future with that type of cultural shared self identification? >> john mclaughlin, do you want to start? >> first off, nobody knows the answer, but my instinct is just circling around talking to people, most people identify themselves as intelligence officers. but the question really is beyond the. i think it goes to education. you know, a number of very fine schools and intelligence business. but generally speaking, the idea of continuous education is not as impacted as a routine as it

is in the military. i think that is part of firming up everyone's identification and as part of a profession with standards, ethics and such better comment across the board spirit i would add a comment that i haven't grown up in the navy, i had three enemies, the russians, the army and the air force. [laughter] >> in that order? >> about that order, yes. it wasn't until i was a part of joint activity and joint force that you really start to have a bond as a professional military officer. and in my hierarchy its citizens first, you affiliate, even today with goldwater-nichols, as much as we have a joint task force and so on, people still will identify with their parent organization, army, navy, which is not a bad thing. but they also identify with the united states of america doing

the right thing in bringing together the full capabilities of all forces to a compass whatever the mission is. so i think we're better, but we are not -- the intelligence committee has not yet achieved what the department of defense has achieved, and it's mostly the isolation of our communities. and we don't live any other persons spaces and have that constant interaction and dialogue. >> going to have to cut the questions here that i want to thank the panel members very much, and thank all of you here. [applause] >> thank you very much. there's a light snack outside if everybody could come in but it's become and that we will get swiftly to the dni's speech in the next few in his. thanks very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> former congressman and current head of the national endowment for the humanities, jim leach, discuss the importance and understanding american history, culture, and the arts in today's world. his remarks come at this event hosted by the aspen institute. it's an hour.

>> good afternoon. good afternoon. welcome to the aspen institute. i am dana gioia, the harmonizer director of the program and arts. it is my pleasure to welcome you to one of our cultural roundtables. and i would like to thank michele smith from the robert h. smith family foundation for helping make this series possible. it's my pleasure today to do another of what we think of as a particularly aspin kind of expect where we invite the leaders in arts, culture and education, and give them an opportunity to talk to one of the most important people in the field of the united states today. and i am delighted to have my friend, jim leach, the ninth chairman of the national endowment for the humanities.

i first met the person i still think of as congressman leach, when i was chairman of the nea, and he was one of the most informed and supportive members of either house of congress in terms of the arts and humaniti humanities. and i know that i couldn't have been happier, and i suspect most of you sure that emotion when it was announced that he had been appointed the ninth chairman of the neh. unit, chairman leach has a unique background for neh cherry-pick i believe he is the only neh chair in history who was a member of congress and in this case, a 15 term congressman from southeast iowa. he was educated in sort of out of the way places. princeton, johns hopkins, and the london school of economics. and his background was from the beginning, and international background at.

at had conceded a master degree in soviet politics, and he went on in congress, not only to found and co-chair of the congressional humanities conference, but also to serve, and i think, did you ultimately chair at the asia-pacific affairs committee, am i right? subcommittee. and he then fled congress temporarily two years ago, and taught at both princeton and harvard before he was sucked back into the federal government, to our gratitude to serve as the chair of the neh. but i think actually his most interesting distinction, is not his congressional service, his eight honorary degrees, but i do believe he must be the only neh chair in history to also be honored in the international wrestling hall of fame. [laughter] >> certainly good training for congress. [laughter] >> so you know welcome to the aspen institute.

gym, it is our pleasure to have you here today. >> i am honored to be here. i think aspin is very fortunate to have, for the first time to my knowledge, a poet in the midst. >> they hide me come and despite that. [laughter] >> well, there's a lot of things we could talk about, but what i want to actually to ask you a general question, goes back to some of the things i said in my introduction. you have an absolutely unique and invaluable training for a cultural chairman, which is that you, you know, were a member of congress. you understand the congressional process, which is something that's really fundamental to the success of the cultural agencies. i was wondering, you know, what is your perspective on the? is that something, you