systems and that in 50 of those 67 transitions, the pivot bal force, the propellant was some sort of nonviolent coalition, some sort of civic group of those engaging in protests, strikes, demonstrations to be the instigator, initially, of the transition. not all of those transitions were quote-unquote revolutionary. revolution is a word that's way overused with respect to these kinds of transitions. but, um, without the but for factor, almost all of those was some form of nonviolent force. ..

and non-violent campaign than the movements could be in that 106 year period said to have been successful. 53% of the nonviolent cases. this is not what even today mainstream media knows or believes which is why so much coverage in the first five minutes of any cable or broadcast newspaper anywhere in the world typically isn't the best filter on objective fact about what is going on. it is not that they want to distort the truth of what is happening. they don't see it in many cases even when it is happening.

gandhi's work in india from a historical point of view and also it world headline attention acquiring perspective was seminal but also a master strategist to non-violent conflict. he sequenced and innovated in the use of nonviolent tactics to put strategic pressure on his opponent. his work prompted the american scholar gene sharp to identify hundreds of nonviolent tactics many of which gandhi used and grab them and tactics of protest and persuasion, petitions and walkout and tactics of non cooperation. we actively with through cooperation from the state or the oppressor of civil disobedience and raised the cost of oppression and control, tactics of direct physical intervention to impose greater economic cost on the oppressor.

the dynamic of the use of civil resistance can be reduced to of this. people acting together using these tactics in a sequence way advertise to the rest of the country that they are depriving an oppressor of their consent they say we don't believe you have legitimacy in calling the shots in this society because of what you are doing. then they list their grievances. what is wrong with the country? that discourse and the active with the role of consent reduces the legitimacy of the existing system. legitimacy goes down. that is a weakening of the concept, the idea behind the hole on control that the system has. when enough people participate

in this withdrawal of cooperation, physically and socially and economically increases the cost of holding control. the police have to work overtime. soldiers go to 60 parts of the country in order to confront demonstrators. real costs are being borne by a system which has resorted to that kind of oppression to hold control. this is not simply be seeking an oppressor to stand down but putting so much pressure on that system that those who are defending and enforcing it have doubts whether it is sustainable and most of them are not tendered ideologically to the oppressive system. they are working for the system. they're taking a paycheck. they have to think if this group isn't going to be in power in 5 or 10 years where does that leave me? is questioning pervades the

structure of the state or the oppressive system, not only do you have hard physical cost being paid and legitimacy being challenged but what appears to be representative campaign or movement. i am talking about the form it takes when there's a challenge to an authoritarian ruler but even the expectations of what the future will be begin to change and the ability of that state for system to freeze people in a system that holds control begins to be challenged. the movements in the campaign's going on today are not just anti authoritarian struggles but important struggles going on against occupation and independence. they are struggles increasingly for social justice that take the political form of struggle against systemic -- and against pervasive social violence and other forms of violence the state is unable to control because it is paid to stay out of the action.

there are a protracted struggles which continue some of which made real progress in the last decade in palestine and burma and tibet and zimbabwe. they are overlooked by the media. in vietnam in pro democratic struggle, in western sahara, in ethiopia, in fiji a struggle against a military coup and in kashmir. there are larger countries in which there's a great deal of resistance around a number of different issues which cumulatively represent a challenge to the system. in iran and china and india and brazil and nigeria and russia and even initial signs of this in saudi arabia. there are brand new movements like the movement against systemic parlance in mexico which is in effect a movement against political corruption within the state itself. there are a number of others i

haven't mentioned. all of these beat a few criteria of whether they are a movement. political change is being advocated and is also being resisted by a group of some kind which wants to hold society in its existing state instead of accommodate this change in this force for change. there are self organized collisions or groups of people campaigning around clusters of issues and systemic change and in the course of the events that protagonists are for you see catholic -- catalytic events for outrageous manifestation of behavior on part of the regime to which ordinary people who haven't been involved in the organized campaign rally and beside this is why there has to be action which is what we know happened into anita followed by egypt which opened up -- took the lid off of the enormous

social discontent in the arab world. i hope i have drawn the landscape for you of what we have seen historically, what it is we're looking at systemically and where it is happening around the world. >> moving right along, i am next. i am sitting closest. i am going to give a slightly different perspective on answering this question for the reason that my background is not non-violent conflict. non-violent conflict, engaging in non-violent conflict. i am honored to be with this panel and her your presentation and honored to be on the panel with bill -- william zartman. i thank you for being here and allowing me to be here and

present to you. i work for the united states government. i am in that state department. that will tell you about my perspective right there. let me also add quickly that everything you will hear coming out of my mouth this afternoon is the perspective of cyntha irmer and not necessarily the perspective or view of the united states government. so don't hold them to. told me to it. as i thought about the question why here and not their --there legal-truthful response to that is i don't know. i am not sure that any of the snow. and won't speak for the rest of everyone besides myself but i am not sure that we know. i can speak from the perspective of the conflict resolution,

conflict analysis, peace studies deal and say that part of the reason we don't know why from that perspective is we are most often looking at the mechanism of how conflict becomes violent. we have some systematic and regularized thinking on that mechanism. and some of those things you are all familiar with, i am certainly gristle include basic human needs, grievances of identity groups, key actors, the things that motivate them, the ways they have to organize people around their grievances. these are the things we think about that help us understand how a situation can become violent. it occurs to me that if we

really want to get to understanding the why we may have to ask different kinds of questions. we may have to shift for refocus our looking. we may need a different world view. i think i can safely say that to this room full of people. i can say that to any roomful of people. we may need to do that. we may need to say if we are going to look at key actors, in addition if not instead of looking at political, state and not state actors that are at a very high level. if not only looking at actors who have enormous resources and can get into the news media every day, we may need to look at key actors who look more like

wise people or stages or community activists. people we might not always be looking for. we may be looking at a different scale of analysis. in addition to looking at the state level of conflict we may need to start looking at conflict at the community level. that may sound overwhelming. it may sound like something we can't do but i am beginning to believe there is no way we can understand why violence if we don't understand community. if we don't have a sense of why people who are living in the violent condition or in the passive non-violent resistance. if we don't understand what community means to them in their words, not in our projection on

to them of what we think of those communities but what it means to them in their words, our community coalesces, how people come together and why. questions that help us understand that if we want to understand why non-violence. also our communities vivified bigger and how they get energized. what gives them life? what gives them the ability to move through space and time and stand up together and resist when that is what they do. we need to understand that. i don't even have the beginning of understanding that except to say it is critically important that we understand that.

in addition to that, how communities manifest. what do we see? and again not only in our description, standing back and saying corrupt, anything, but instead going and listening to the people and say and what do you say? how does a community forum here? they may not have thought of it but we still get good answers if we ask those kinds of questions rather than us speculating about it. it moves us one step further away from reality in my view when we speculators. it moves us closer to reality when we asked let somebody struggle with an answer and listen to their answer in their words. don't try to translate it into our words. and finally -- finally manifest.

how do communities manifest? they coalesce people they defied, take life and what do they show up as? do they show up as peaceful resistance? they show up as a cell of people angry with guns and bombs who will destroy things because they feel unheard were not acknowledged? these are things we need to find out from the perspective of people we're looking at. it would be helpful from my perspective to take a mirror and hold it up and say how does community, less and manifest in the state department, in the united states of america. those questions would be useful because it gives us more information about what our world view is and how it might be filtering the information that

is coming in. it sounds a lot of odd and different but we don't have to reinvent the wheel. if we want to begin this inquiry into community and understanding why violence or non violence we can take a few pages out of the lesson books of other movements, other activities and events that occur. some of these things are known to us as civil organizing. the president of the united states wrote a book about this. there are lessons in how they go about doing this. what they understand and what connections need to be made. we would do well to understand why violence or why not violence. there is a big body of work and effort called public

participation. don't know how many of you are familiar with that but also many years, two decades of work, getting the public to engage and be part of decisionmaking can help us understand that. the third one that would be useful to look into the approach used and the underlying philosophy is community mediation. mediation's done on the community level for community purposes. a lot of things that already exists a we don't have to start over from 0. unlike to end on a high note. my hy note -- hy note --high note is that the president of the united states is very much aligned with this kind of

thinking and this is a very good sign for those of us who work in the united states government. is part of what helps me get up every morning and go to work with a smile on my face and energy in my bones. not only the president but the secretary of state. the secretary of state -- don't know how many of you follow what she does but from my perspective as a government employee when she issued qddr, the quadrennial development review, she said conflict prevention is a core capacity of the state department. wow! that is huge. knowing that this is already president in those leaders of hours at the level of the president of the united states

and the secretary of state is very am powering. also won smaller bit is the office i currently work for, coordinator for stabilization and reconstruction, reconstruction's stabilization. they got it backwards when they named it. it is going away and there will be a new bureau. it is my sincere desire of the government completes that many of the things we are doing in this office will show up in this new bureau. you may have seen on the table the interagency conflicts assessment frame work. we already use it. we use the around world in several embassies, going out and listening to people. not only conflict the social and indigenous resilience and strength. what is good and strong and already working right here, how

can we see that growing up in a way that u.s. support, policy support that comes from the u.s. but it is grounded in local and indigenous strains and resilience. thank you very much. >> i would like to begin by thanking the organizers for inviting me to this special event. great to be back at sys. everything seems small to me. that is what happens when you come back after 12 years. i would like to talk about non-violent resistance, resistance communities in colombia. you know that they have been embroiled in a horrible conflict since 1964 which has had great cost in human lives and human

rights violations and the conflict that has led to the displacement of over five million persons, mostly rural peasant communities. many of them indigenous but also other communities. when you look at the paper in the united states and read about colombia you hear about violent groups like drug-traffickers or the military taking over some area or another or the guerrillas and the horrible actions they commit on civilians but you don't hear about which is rather unfortunate and we would love to see changed is the courageous colombians who are in these areas where the conflict is taking place who are trying to figure out a way out of the conflict for their own benefit and security to be able to feed themselves in their daily lives

but also because they see the military and violent solution is not working. it hasn't worked. there are several different categories. one of them is called the peace community. that concept is an idea that came about in the 1990s when internally displaced persons returning to their homes decided to designate a certain area where they were going to live. they were going to demarcate that area with signs and fences and put posters up stating in that area only civilians could be present. only the armed groups whether they are official or unofficial could not be in that space for that area. all of the members of the

community would pledge an oath not to deal with farm groups or carry arms and munitions and to not in gauge the armed groups when they had conflict between themselves. the idea was to designate a whole area where the population could live in peace and go about its business. since many of these communities were developed in areas where people were literally surrounded by illegal armed groups which meant their livelihoods were often at stake because they couldn't travel from one state to another due to restriction of movement, it goes further and develops a community project involving self sustainment in that land so rotating and working together to make sure the community has what it needs to take care of itself and remain in that space especially during times of blockades and so

forth. the most well-known piece community in colombia is in san jose, in northwestern part of colombia. another form of civilian resistance initiated by internally displaced persons who decided to go back to areas where the conflict was taking place are they humanitarian of funds--those which we have seen in different parts of colombia but mainly choko apply humanitarian law under ground. they take the principles of civilians not being engaged or forced to be engaged by the armed groups in the conflict and

make it a reality also designating a certain area where they live and work but they don't go as far as the peace community in making sure all their needs are met within that zone. another form of community resistance we have seen that has been more utilized in areas with a high rate of narco trafficking is what is known as resistance ming mingas. in the south area of colombia where afro colombians have decided the problem is not just the internal conflict but these are groups force us to grow coca and then they bring in their way of life, recruit our people.

when they get mad at as they kill our people. we have to get rid of the coca. would you have seen is rural farmers come together and eradicate the coca themselves. by doing at in numbers, 300 rural farmers go in and eradicate coca making it difficult for the guerrillas to kill them because it makes them look really awful. it pressures the guerrillas to accept that these communities don't want to be part of the drug train. those are some of the examples that happen. what we have seen most recently and it happened in the past weekend days is these movements are joining together. you have seen these resistance movements, afro colombian movements and mingas joining

together in the conflict and going beyond their localized situation to see how they can spur a movement that promote peace in the country. since the topic of this evening is why, i was trying to think about why these resistance movements and one thing i can say they have in common is they agree the military solution to the conflict is not working and you need to find another way. they're very much commentary on the political and social -- they are not solving the problem. there's such a high level of corruption in those social and political elites linked to the legal groups. many of you know paramilitary and others they decided that as rural farmers they will take this on themselves.

another reason these movements continued to gain ground is the practical need for these people to live among the armed people and to have basic security for themselves. five million colombians have been displaced. most are displaced three four times because even within the countries they can't find refuge because they are stigmatized or seen as suspicious because they come from a certain region or face tremendous discrimination for being rural farmers or afro descendants. this is a practical solution that the victims of the conflict are at high risk. also key to these movements is the idea that justice is a big

part of peace promotion. they have documented 180 human rights abuses committed against them and during the time -- they have also been able to document some of the massacres that have taken place but not very far. you often see that pushing for justice and human rights go hand in hand in constructing a political climate that would lead to peace. have these movements been a success? depends on how you look at it. you could say it is not a success. you have internal conflict with multiple fails peace efforts that are localized solutions of conflict resolution and mediation with groups.

it hasn't worked. or you can look at it as the fact of all the communities that we are talking about in colombia the ones that gained possibility to prevent further displacement and have a level of security have been these groups so many cents it has established some localized peace effort for them. it also has kept cyntha irmer -- colombia and different parts of the community in the spotlight and there is internal conflict taking place that helped generate international solidarity is that raises the visibility to the problems that are the root cause of the conflict. ..

or as a given and, not decided that they wanted to push for support for other ways of resolving the conflict. it's also shown and exposed the lack of political will on the part of all of the armed groups and the parties to the conflict in terms of really caring about seeing if they couldn't move forward for peace because in many cases especially in the case of the guerrilla groups being so tied to the drug trade they're self-sustaining movements that are able to perpetrate and keep themselves going without your usual conflict

resolution mechanism where you get to the point where due to attrition you have to negotiate something. so if there's anything i would say about these movements is that, one, that people involved are incredibly courageous and, you know, it's cost them a lot both in terms of deaths and so forth to keep this going but that there is tremendous hope in these movements there is another way forward in colombia. secondly in closing i would say it is very important for practitioners of conflict management, policymakers and others to learn more about these movements and see how they can support them and see how they can find a way to transform what is a localized practical solution to something that actually leads to an end to the conflict. >> i'm here to talk about the arab spring or by now the arab summer.

maybe the arab autumn certainly if not the arabs fall. and that's what brought us here and that's what brings up the sun project. i would -- subject i like to go back into the beginning of events to try to understand what happened and why and look at some characteristics of them and see also why not and then to see where where else. to begin with, i think it is important to recognize, at least to me, that what has been going on is an exhilarating event. it is a spontaneous, widespread, secular protest against a repressive state and it is first of all important to recognize this is a protest against the state that is arrogant, nonparticipatory, doesn't care about its people. you know about the tunisia incident.

it embodies that kind of nature of the protest and i think it is a very good symbol of it. and the economists and other people will tell you everything is economics. i'm a political scientist so i tell you everything is political. and the fact is behind all this part of the uncaringness of the state is that it didn't provide jobs for a large number of young people. but let's put that in perspective. that is supporting element for, what i describe, first of all as a protest against the legitimacy of the state. it is not the leading element. so we have here conditions then that we might call, and the world bank, they call proneness, that is characters we find in the states that have undergone rebellion from an uprising and intifada in the arab spring. and we can find those

conditions everywhere else throughout the arab world probably more specifically throughout the arab world than through much of the african world or other places, other places beyond my knowledge. but places in that general area of the world. and there are two other specific characteristics then that help us sort out that where arab spring and inintifada where it occurred and where it hasn't occurred. all places except one we had a revolt against an aging leader who was about to disappear anyhow and did not have an accepted successor. the accepted is important because as we know in the case of mubarak, he was grooming his son and intelligent as the son is, he was not accepted by the population. but in all the other cases except for syria, we have

somebody who is to go anyhow. and that i think added to the ripe% -- ripeness, if i can use the word, to the proneness of the situation that led then to the intifada. the other thing that is important, the real turning point in this kind of an event, whether the army will fire on its people or not. in the two cases where the change of regime, or at least the overthrow of the old regime was accomplished the army specifically decided not to fire on its people and indeed were part of in the egyptian case were part of the decision for the leader to step down. in yemen half the army decided not to fire, the other half decided to fire. so we have a mixed event. as we've seen in syria, in bahrain the army decided to fire on its people. to go back to the first point that was, the first

speaker raised, were these then peaceful protest, nonviolent protests? well, they started out that way. in all cases they started out that way. so we have an event that brings up 50% of success in the statistics that were cited. but when they didn't succeed, it then turned violent. not violent with tanks against tanks but violent with the kind of violence a mob can very effectively use against forces of the government. not effectively against tanks however. and so, we have that 25% success when it turns violent because the government is able to mobilize more violence against it than the protesters are. and that's why we're up in the air in cases like bahrain and in cases like syria and we're kind of dangling. it is much more complicated

but still the outcome is somewhat in doubt in yemen. so, and where else might this occur or why has it not occurred in some other places? there are two places i think are perhaps three places that are relevant. one is algeria which is so full of proneness you could cite it as a classic case but it hasn't happened there. and in algeria the two conditions are, or the two conditions are relevant. on one hand we have an aging leader who is going to disappear at some point and has no designated heir at all, let alone an accepted one. around there is the question of the army. but in algeria you know the army will fire on its people. that is all it fires on. so that's a chilling aspect

of algeria and helps explain in part why nothing has happened there. another part however, that has to be added to that in algeria and the army notion has to be strengthened as well by the idea that in algeria they had 10 years of violence led by extreme it is lame mick groups and led by army-led retaliation against them and other people who might be suspected of suspected being sympathizers to them. so the public it tired of taking on the state. the state is also very clever in algeria. when protests arise and there are protests, manifestations as we call them in algeria, not riots but manifestations and the state always comes in and in that wonderful world, word that, i think is so effective it satisfies them.

not satisfies them. it divides off the protesters and moves on. we have a very interesting case in algeria with explanations of why things are not taking place. in jordan we had some serious protests. we had a strong state hand and we have just recently in the last couple days a serious but perhaps not adequate reform movement, constitutional revisions that have been introduced and now have to get through the mechanism of the state. still leaving the king and the forces of control, probably not repression but control, very much in hand. and the third cases morocco where i think one thing that is very important is that

you don't have an old king ready to go but rather a king that is of the generation of the people who elsewhere and some in morocco are protesting. there have been demonstration, protests in morocco. it is striking none of them has asked for a change in the system but rather for greater and accelerated reform and this system has responded with changes in the political arrangements within the state. that is were in preparation before the intifadas began elsewhere in the world and in morocco. so in morocco the explanation for why it hasn't occurred is that the system is still legitimate and the people are, are skeptically or warily hopeful. now we've said that what people are rising up against

is the old order and they want to put into effect a new order. they want to bring in the a new regime. what's it like? and the striking thing is that nobody knows. that is the people who were rising up against the old regime had one demand and maybe expressed it in a number of different ways but all focusing on the downfall of the old regime. what is it to be replaced with? we're busy at the moment. we have to get the old regime down and then we'll think about what we want to replace it with. that's a big thought to be thinking about. and it takes a lot of time. in tunisia we see the regime is bumbling along trying to deal with dates of elections and sequences of

constitution-making and so on and is making sincere but slow progress. in egypt we see that there is a force that's present, the army. it's not, it doesn't want to take over. it wants to preserve its skin and its privileges and it has to deal with a number of forces from different directions. the process is slow and perhaps less open, less hopeful than in tunisia. and people are getting impatient. the young people who started the intifada in the first place are saying, where is this new regime and where are our jobs? the second demand is utterly unrealistic. you can imagine just thinking about it. jobs are certainly not just going to appear like that and particularly not at this

time. when a regime falls, economicking go down and tourists go away and therefore jobs become scarcer. and so it's unrealistic to say where are our jobs? but it is a natural demand and people are getting very concerned about it. in a little town in tunisia where it all started a group of young people went to the town hall and said you better get us something quick or you will see it all over again and we should be looking and we should be looking for that. so the questions now are, where does it go if there's an early or a late overthrow of the regime? if we have an early overthrow of the regime i've just described the impatience that comes up as people are look around for the replacement of the old regime and the institution of a new order. we're not quite sure what's going to happen if it is a late overthrow of the regime except that we, we think we

know from past experiences that that leads to a hardening of the uprising. a hardening of demands, radicalization of the uprising and a hardening of groups within the uprising rather than a cooperation together even though they are focused now on that one demand, the overthrow of the regime. so we're standing before a continuation of these events, a continuation of a search for answers to what started out in the first place. don't be misled by what we hear in the paper as lot about subversion of these movements. people say, you know, in yemen there is an al qaeda member among the group that was trying to overthrow the regime. in egypt there's the brotherhood. of course, everybody will be grabbing, trying to find out

where this opening in politics can be led. the basic demand of the people who started it, it is for an open, accountable, participatory reg people. they may not be able to pull it off but the fact that other people are trying to push forward as well doesn't mean that it's lost. it means it remains exhilarating and exciting and rather open series of events that will take a long time before it finally works itself out. where else can this happen then outside of this part of the world? well the conditions, the proneness as i said is not the same in the rest of the continent. the old leader who is ready to go, the army who is on the fence about firing on its people or not, are not around in many cases. people have cited the case of uganda about which i know

very little and i will just mention it then for the record but there is a place where we see initial signs and where the intifada may cross the sahara and that is in senegal. you have a old leader, a guy in his mid-80s, a guy who wants to run again. he is also grooming his son who has but zero qualifications for it except he is the son of his father and where there have already been demonstrations in the streets against the legitimacy of the regime. there the army is most unlikely to fire on its people and therefore we have the possibility of a crossing of the sahara. there's of course another place that comes to mind and that is zimbabwe. there it's all been tried and the kind of reaction that we talked about when

the army will fire willingly on its people is borne out there. so there are possibilities south of the sahara as well. they're limited and limited by the conditions that we have seen in the northern part of the continent and in the arab world but we might just find little pieces of an african fall? [applause] >> so i know there are going to be a lot of questions so we'll move immediately into them. just a couple ground rules first. as there will be many questions please leave it to only one question. no multipart questions. if we've gone through everybody and you want to ask the second part of your question you can ask it then. remember all questions end with a question mark. it is not a many could meant rand then so what do you think about that?

that's not a question either. try to keep them less than 30 seconds and everybody will be happy. so i think we're going to try to take maybe two questions at a time, three questions at a time. three questions at a time? it is decided. three questions at a time. we have a couple mic passers that will come up. just raise your hands and they will come to you. >> first of all, thank you all for a very enlightened panel. my question has to do with your views on having, or the need or value of a unified leader? as a part of a resistance movement, a la, or aka, gandhi or civil rights movement, martin luther king. what role or what value do you think that would have in the individual or in your experience? thanks.

>> thank you again. i've enjoyed this so much so far. looking forward to hearing your answers as well. i wanted to know, i feel like so often nonviolent protest, nonviolent movements have such good intentions but they fail like you mention, they fail to put real pressure on the oppressive force so i know it is such, must have so many answers and such broad question but what are maybe some, even one really good example, something, that can predict a positive outcome in terms of nonviolent movements? you mentioned that it is easy to, it is easy to predict what will lead to violence but maybe if you could enlighten us with some predictions of successful nonviolent movements. thank you. >> hi. i'm dana. i'm a csis. i, my question has to do

with, i'm wondering after the regime transition, has there been any pattern in the american response to regimes, whether that's intervention, military intervention, financial assistance? you know we talked about how there have been some transitions within the last 100 years. has there been any kind of pattern? >> let me start first. a unifying leader. unifying leaders are rare and and in the events i'm talking about another character i can was there was no leader. there's no guru. even in places, like tunisia and in egypt where there is a guru in waiting, an islamic leader, he wasn't a

guru for everybody and wasn't the leader and they were very slow in coming in. so a leader would be nice. the nice thing about pluralism, about diversity and not quite knowing where you're going but having to work it out is that is the beginning of a more open system rather than one in which a man on a white horse comes in and likes it there and stays, thank you. so there are i think great downsides to having a strong leader. a predictor for a peaceful protests, yeah, is it likely that the army is going to fire on its people or not? and you can make a evaluation of what the army will do. it was predictable in tunisia that it would not

and i've made the prediction that it won't in senegal. what's the u.s. response? my colleague will talk about that more unofficially. but i do think we have to understand one thing. a country like the united states, and there aren't any other countries like the united states, has to make a forward-looking bet. now there are two parts of that that's important. it should not just make a backward-looking bet. so often the united states said, this guy was our friend through thick and thin and we're going to stick with him. that is totally irrelevant. we're grateful for what he did in the past but we don't want to go down with him. and there's a lot of criticism about the united states not sticking with mubarak. tough, mubarak. you didn't remain stickable

anymore. you outlasted yourself. but there is also criticism of the united states being slow to react. and in hindsight that's absolutely true. we should have seen where things were going. it is a little hard to see where things are going in a new type of event like this. and you don't want to, you don't want to be in a position like we are in libya, backing the people who are not winning and killing civilians for the purpose of saving civilian lives and coming in kind of late when it was more difficult, when it would have been much easier to do the same kind of thing had we come in earlier. it is not an easy call. >> so in terms of the resistance communities in colombia, what we've seen is a shift away from one leader and that's basically because,

just to give one statistic in recent years, at least 37 ipt leaders have been killed. so what a lot of more successful resistance communities have found by teaching the idea of the collective and the community, even if you lose people, it goes on and we're seeing that a lot. in terms of when some of these nonviolent efforts have, what would be the way for them to put real pressure, basically cohesion in the message has been one way. finding a way to shame the parties and embarass them internationally. figure out a way to get economic pressure. give one example. the peace community in 2004, the colombian military along with berra militaries basically dismembered several members of their community and while those

types of actions not to that extreme were rather common in that community, only in that case were they able to get the united states involved. the united states was going to freeze a portion of its military aid for multiple months until there was more justice in that case. all of sudden you saw this tremendous pressure that basically leveled the playing field between the community and the government in a way that had never before. so it does work. also when you have media attention and international support. in the case of another community we had a whole series of people who were about to be evicted and, you know, it was something that was going to happen but the media and the international support made it, the political cost too great for that to happen. and so i think it's a question of the tactics used and the cohesion of the message. >> yeah, i'd like to talk a

little bit about the question of leadership. it is a common misconception that a nonviolent movement needs a single charismatic leader. the exception who was gandhi does not prove the rule. less was known about how to devise, plan, and then instruct people in how to use different kinds of resistance tactics in the 1920s and 1930s than is known today. today you can download hundreds of thousands of pages on how to do nonviolent resistance and believe me, they're doing it all over the world. the knowledge, the accessibility of knowledge, about how to plan and execute nonviolent resistance is orders of magnitude greater than it was 70 or 80 years ago. so it was much more necessary in his circumstances for there to be a single leader, speaking

of gandhi. but the question of leadership really has to do with how to build the capacity of a participatory, broad-based, diverse, representative campaign or movement to do the kind of pressure that one of the questioners asked about. movements have to exhibit unity, diversity, and representation so they can have legitimacy. so they in fact can accumulate political force and how to do that is a form of knowledge. it is a skill. you have to acquire that skill. you have to learn how to plan a campaign and particularly have to know how to remain disciplined which most importantly means, not to be violent because that's a serious problem in trying to cause a military or a security force to hesitate or to stall. you can not get somebody to

defect to your side who you are shooting at. doesn't work that way. so all these things really have to do with the skills that a movement or a campaign can acquire. the skills don't have to be channeled into one or through one individual. they don't have to all come out of one individual but once a movement or a campaign acquires skills and capacities, you may not need as much ripeness because conditions don't dictate by themselves whether movements or campaigns are successful. it's the capacities. it is the collective intelligence. it's the will and the ability to put that will into effect that a campaign or a movement acquires. they're like nascent or embrey ron nick political parties if they can being solidified around particular movements or goals. . . out of the way of this

transition. all along as we have worked to expand the circle of global condemnation, we have backed up our words with actions. as i repeatedly said, it does take both words and actions to produce results. since the unrest have began we have imposed small financial sanctions on assad and dozens of his crony.

we have sanctioned the commercial bank of syria for supporting the regime billed as a nuclear proliferation activities. and we have isolated the regime from keeping them off the human rights council to achieving a strong presidential statement of condemnation at the u.s. security council. the steps that president obama announced this morning will further heighten the circle of isolation around the regime. his and he can't order immediately freezes all the assets that are subject to american jurisdiction and prohibits american citizens from engaging in any transaction with the government of syria or investing in that country. these actions strike at the heart of the regime by banning american imports of syrian petroleum and petroleum products and prohibiting americans from

dealing in these products. and as we increase pressure on the assad regime, we will take steps to mitigate any unintended effects of the sanctions on the syrian people. we also continue to work with the international community because if the syrian people are to achieve their goals, other nations will have to provide support and take action as well. in just the past two weeks, many of syria's own neighbors and partners in the region have joined the chorus of condemnation. we expect that they and other members of the international community will amplify the steps we are taking both through their words and their actions. we are heartened that later today the u.n. security council will meet again to discuss this ongoing threat to international peace and stability. we're also working to schedule a

special session on the united nations human rights council that will examine the regime's widespread abuses. earlier this week, i explained how the united states has been engaged in a relentless and systemic effort with the international community pursuing a set of actions and statements that make crystal clear where we all stand. and generating broader and deeper pressure on the assad regime. the people of syria deserve a government that respects their dignity, their rights and lived up to their aspirations. assad is standing in their way. the sake of the syrian people, the time has come for him to step aside and lead this transition for the syrians themselves. and this is what we will all work to achieve. thank you all very much.

>> secretary of state hillary clinton with a statement on the u.s. response to the syrian president al-assad, the u.s. reaction including a call by president obama for the resignation of the syrian president and new strengthened economic stranges. all this is detailed in a statement released just a short time ago by the white house which you can read on our website. we're linked to it at c-span.org. we're also learning from the a.p. this morning that the leaders of france, britain and germany issued a statement saying assad should leave power in the greater interests of syria and the unity of its people, quote-unquote. the u.n. security council we have just learned is also expected to meet today to discuss the latest actions against syria.

>> until then your phone calls from this morning's "washington journal." >> host: here's the "washington times." president obama in atkinson yesterday, after that obama calls for shared sacrifice. dave boyar writes the story president obama wrapped up his three day bus tour in the midwest by previewing his renewed drive to sell a plan for deficit reduction involving what he called shared sacrifice. if everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice we could solve our deficit and debt problem next week. mr. obama said at a town hall-tile event staged at a hybrid seed factory. i need you to send a message to folks in washington stop drawing lines in the sand. but even as he spoke, voters were delivering a message of their own. a new gallup poll released yesterday gave mr. obama the lowest ranking of his presidency on the economy.

this 26% of americans said they approve of mr. obama's record on the economy. down 11 percentage points from mid-may. some 71% of respondents say they disapproved of president obama's job on the economy. a majority also gave negative marks to the president on creating jobs, foreign policy, and the war in afghanistan. white house officials confirmed that the president will deliver a major speech shortly after labor day outlining his plan for job growth and to cut deficits by more than 1.5 trillion that a super committee in congress is tasked with achieving. that's from the "washington times." here's the "new york times" this morning. far from the capitol obama finds that its woes have followed him. when president obama called on aa child who just turned he may have figured he may get the break of drumbeat of loss of

jobs, threats and social security that flowed through his town hall-style meeting wednesday at a seed corn warehouse here. no such luck, the boy said his grandfather owned an ethanol plant and he wanted to know what the president planned to do to help keep it running. mr. obama defended his commitment to biofuels while arguing that the industry needed to move away from food crops like corn toward grass and wood chips. it has been like that across the midwest this week where the president wrapped up his three-day bus tour in two illinois farm hamlets, the welcome mat was out but the mood was somber. even here in the state where he began his political career and makes his home, mr. obama got tough questions from people who said they were fearful about their future. frustrated by the paralyzed job market and fed up with the political culture in washington that produced the debt ceiling imbroglio. that's in the "new york times" and here is "the new york post" this morning. black anger at bam. he ignored us on bus tour according to representative

maxine waters a prominent member of the congressional black caucus ripped president obama's bus tour for ignoring suffering african-american communities as it rolls through pastural and mostly white heartland towns. here is maxine waters yesterday in detroit. >> we're supporters of the president but we don't have jobs. and so what we want to do is we want to give the president every opportunity. >> how long? >> to show what he can do and what he's prepared to lead on. we want to give him every opportunity but our people are hopeless. unemployment is unconscionable. we don't know what the strategy is. we don't know why on this trip that he's on the united states he's not in the black communities. we don't know that. but all i'm saying to you is we're politicians. we're elected officials.

we're trying to do the right thing and the best thing. when you let us know that it's time to let go, we'll let go. applause >> host: 202 is the area code -- what do you think the impact of the president obama's economic bus tour was. we're going to begin in tampa with alex. hi, alex. >> caller: hey, good morning, how are you doing, man? . >> host: good. >> caller: i believe the media hasn't been fair with the president. i mean, when you buy a new house and the house is a wreck, of course, it's going to take time to build a house and put a house in order. i believe the president is doing whatever he can. as a latino the only subject that actually kills me that i don't see the president doing anything about the immigration

reform but everything else i believe the media hasn't been honest and fair with the president. thank you for let me talking on your show. >> host: cathy is in michigan. hi, cathy. >> caller: oh, good morning, steve. thanks, c-span and everybody that works there. i have several points. i live in a small community. we have a town probably 20 miles from here. it's called boine city. they're going to be building a factory that produces surgical instruments. they're based, i think, out of sue saint marie, michigan but there's also some very negatives. i had my wages slashed, a summer job i had. i worked in education by $1.50 an hour down to $10 an hour. that's not a positive. and there's really no recourse. >> host: so, cathy, tie that in to the president's three-day bus tour through the midwest. caller: --

>> caller: why doesn't he come to smaller communities in lewis michigan, and a tribal land where you have tribal land up here in emmett county. it's really -- the truth is that it's -- most often it's a very set of factories that supports communities like this. it isn't just -- >> host: it's also a big tourist town, isn't it. >> caller: tourism doesn't pay high wages. maybe for the business owners, for some of them but not for the general worker, the every day person. no, it doesn't. and everybody knows that. >> host: that was cathy. the president heads to martha's vineyard today for his vacation. three comments from our facebook page. we're going to begin with donna. he needs to get out of d.c. more and hear directly from the voters. this is a good start. nancy and gene say, i think the bus tour has had a negative

impact. it appears to be just another politician all talk no action all promises of better things. nothing to back it up. and bill comments on our facebook page, i wish president obama would stop being so diplomatic saying there are those in congress and say the tea party members in congress are holding us back. rose is a democratic. staten island, new york, rose, what do you think of the president's bus tour? >> caller: i thought he did a great job in cannon falls. one thing i like to say , the senators of new york just declared that the staten island ferry is going to run on liquefied natural gas. and we have two empty plants since 1973 that we could utilize. we could start jobs with that but the other thing -- he touched upon a few key things with me.

when he was at the mexican border, he talked about how the employers break the laws by hiring illegal immigrants. my key thing about it is this, he needs to focus even more into that about the illegal medicaid claims because these employers breaking the law. >> rose, we're going to leave it there. we're talking about the impact of the economic bus tour if you could tie in your comments to that, that'd be great. carl in new orleans, what do you think? carl? carl, we're going to have to move on to los angeles. suzanna, you're on the line. impact of the president's economic bus tour the last three days. what do you think? >> caller: i think it's about time that he actually gets on a tour and actually goes out and speaks to the people. i really believe in him. i just don't really think he's been very vocal lately. >> host: what's your economic situation? >> caller: i'm part time.

i have no health care. you know, i do believe in him. i do believe in this president. i do believe he does care about people but i really believe -- i don't know that lease worried about speaking out, you know -- speaking out for the people a little bit more. being a little bit more forceful. >> host: all right, suzanna, thanks for calling in. robert tweets in i don't believe anything constructive was accomplished again calling for tax increases, same old message. not enough listening. jackie writes to the "new york times" obama press committee on jobs. president obama will deliver a major address soon after labor day seeking to pressure a special congressional committee to propose new measures to promote job creation as well as larger long-term deficit cuts than mandated aides wednesday. much more than in the past months. mr. obama has spent the last weeks combining his pitch for deficit reduction with a renewed emphasis on the need for further temporary spending and tax cuts

to encourage businesses to hire and consumers to spend going beyond proposals like continued payroll tax relief. until the economy showed fresh signs of weakening, mr. obama had all but shelved additional proposals given republicans opposition but even before he has disclosed details of his proposals including new tax incentives for hiring, public works measures and state aid for teachers, mr. obama has essentially dared republicans to try to block them suggesting the onus is on republicans to prevent a major threatening impasse. michael in philadelphia, good morning to you. what do you think about the president's bus tour in >> caller: good morning, c-span? it's more talk. talk is cheap. he needs to do some actions. i don't know who his advisors are exactly, you know, but i'm a retired union smith finisher and i would be more than happy to go

down to washington and spend a couple days down there. 'cause he's not listening to anyone. one of the other things i'd like to say is where are the democratic leaders? where are they? there's no one speaking out. we know, you know, some republican politicians, not the republicans themselves, you know, all americans. but some of these republican politicians -- i mean, stand up. i mean, say what's right. >> host: gregory, manhattan, good morning, you're on c-span. >> caller: good morning, c-span, good morning, america. this has become a daily routine for me to wake up and watch c-span's "washington journal" for the past couple of years. hopefully i'll get a chance to finish what i have to say. the question i have to say is really minute. what impact to the economy does the president bus tour have on me individually or anybody else? the reality is, what impact have the republicans being the party

of no has on you, america, or who had on you, america, for the past 2.5 years? obama's impact economically on america is proof via texas. and the current puppet perry. obama actions with the stimulus money that was given to perry, billions of dollars to balance texas's budget. so i think america needs to get off its butt and open up its eyes and realize how manipulating the republican party is right now. what could a president do in three days that he has not tried to do for the past 2.5 years? if anybody and everybody was honest with themselves, they would realize the country is on the downward spiral via the republican party who said we are

here to destroy this president. lastly, perry did a treasonous action by threatening bernanke. so where are the real questions, c-span. that's what you should be asking. >> host: don, who goes by affirmatively tweets on if obama would take a 15 month golf trip and take congress with him. an op-ed in the "washington post," big jobs are not dead. democrats are up for a fight with president obama. having despaired that obama gave in to the tea party on the debt deal they criticize him as too cautious in his proposals to boost american jobs. they're right that obama should present a sharp distinction to the public with his efforts and the republican party's utter passivity in the face of a national employment crisis. but perhaps obama realizes that the most important factor that will help his re-election and democratic prospects more

generally is a rise in employment and to have an impact on any economy, obama needs proposals that can get through congress, not ones that sound good on tv. another call from new york city, this one from james. james what do you think about the impact of president obama's three-day bus tour? >> caller: hi, peter. thank you for c-span. i think that the impact is very small because it was only three days and president obama continues to avoid his state. he came to new york for, what, three hours to visit a billionaire on the west side? he's missing the point that if he doesn't bring jobs to america and the simple proposals like increasing the federal mandating that all federal buildings have 50% clean energy or energy efficient to 90%. these are simple things that he can do as the president to

change the job structure because he's not going to get re-elected on a mass support of young voters again and i really think that was his -- that was the thing that he didn't target. i mean, he talked to the midland who are suffering just like everybody else on the cities and both costs. he's got to target jobs and i didn't hear that as a proposal. i mean, it's so simple. just said made in america. give simple loans to small businesses under 100 people or so and you will stimulate the economy. then he will get re-elected. is it going to do this versus all the people on wall street that he's catering to. >> host: all right, james, thanks for calling in. zach puts on our facebook page, if it was up to the republicans we would be in more debt than we are now. thank god for obama. he knows what he's doing,

people. sunny comments, i think he's just like the presidents before him. never see them in the communities that are suffering from poverty. celeste is a democratic in houston this morning just democrats for the first segment. hi, celeste. celeste? we have to move on to upper marlboro suburbs, ann, hi. >> caller: hi. i'm glad to talk to you today. i'd like to sort of reprimand the democrats. i'd like to know what do they have in mind that's better? if these people are so bright and so smart and mexico so much, why aren't they president? what's do we want out of him? i think he would be wise to listen to chris matthews and take the problem to the states

and pinpoint all the falling bridges and buses and whatever. i hope he listens to chris matthews because that will be a plan i believe the democrats, none of us are so wise where we should be supportive. that's all i have to say. >> host: all right, ann, thanks for calling in. and our next segment are with former pennsylvania governor ed rendell who is promoting infrastructure spending. we'll be talking with him as well as current indiana governor mitch daniels about his new book. those are two segments coming up on the "washington journal" and then following those our continued series this week looking inside the fbi. today it's the fbi and cybersecurity. "wall street journal" editorial, obama on the farm, prepare to be insulted. if he wished to express a point of view not shared by president obama. agree with him and he won't even hold it against you that you're a billionaire who owns a credit rating agency. mr. obama's unique brand of

political discernment was captured on film yesterday during a town hall event atkinson, illinois and after welcoming the president to down he said drought conditions had made it an especially tough year in the midwest. then he said, please don't challenge us with more rules and regulations from washington, d.c. he added that farmers like to rise in the morning and start tending their fields not their paperwork. mr. obama asked which rules the farmer had in mind the man spending rules on noise pollution, dust pollution and water runoff was concerns. was this a valuable opportunity for the president to discover more of those unnecessary rules that he claimed to be hunting down and eliminating last winter, no, mr. obama quickly made clear the "wall street journal" editorial page writes that he wasn't on a listening tour of the midwest. he instructed the farmer, if you something's happening, but it hasn't happened, don't always believe what you hear. contrast this with the president's frequent approving mentions of billionaire warren buffett who agrees with the

white house that taxes should be raised on millions of people who make less than he does. last week the president also happily quoted mr. buffett's dismissal of s & p's rating downgrade without even mentioning that mr. buffett berkshire hathaway owns a main stake in moody's. how progressive of mr. obama. he thinks one of the country's richest men is an oracle but small town farmers are domes who have been duped by special interests. the larger pattern is that mr. obama ms. everything said by anyone engaged in profit-seeking business except when the comments support his policies. >> that's again from the "wall street journal" editorial page. lee in atlanta, you are on the air. what do you think is the impact of the bus tour. >> caller: i think it was very good in a sense but it missed an opportunity. one of the opportunities is for the president to restore the system. the buck may stop with the

president but it begins in your local area. and most area does not have job creation type ordinances. it does not create the kind of environment where the individual, where their company that is having problems can go to competent people at the local area that can help make plans and do what they can do at the look area and then if they forward that up, the chain of command to the federal level including their political delegation, then these people can help them with the fix that when the republican or democrat will not help with the fix, then the local area should be able to get that back to the people. now, again talking with the people they should be able to inform them how to use the system because again the buck stops with him but it begins at their feet and, again, let me say this, main street -- mean

street is not equal to the back streets and mean street can be as much for the special interest, old money and special people than it is for the new start, the person whose first generation business start. >> host: all right. thank you, lee from atlanta. arlene in clear water, good morning to you. >> yes. i didn't know this guy anymore. even his talk is republican. he gave an interview wolf blitzer and praised corporations and now calling for shared sacrifice and asking corporations and the super rich to pay their fair share by god we're in three wars one of which we started. we're drone bombing god knows how many countries. now he plans to announce more cuts than the republics he offended lbgt and approved legislation to begin monitoring facebook.

boy, that's a great one. [inaudible] >> caller: just remember, people the lesser of two evils is still evil. we have to get into the streets, people. we are in real trouble. we are in real trouble. thank you. >> host: brent emails in, as a democratic, liberal and progressive fill in whatever label you must, i have come to believe that the biggest change the president brought to the white house was a change from candidate obama to president obama. unless the president begins to espouse traditional democratic values unless he lays out specific wpa-like projects to put people back to work unless he leads the attack on the opposition instead of pleading for the base to do it, i will not vote at all. dixon, illinois, hi, chris. how close was the president to dixon, illinois? >> caller: i don't know. sarah palin was here the other day. >> host: oh, was she? >> caller: yes. >> host: you're in the south, you're in the way south? >> caller: no, midwest. northern portion. >> host: northern portion of

illinois, okay. >> caller: i believe the president's hands are tied. the republicans are going to do whatever they can to taint the economy just to make it harder for him. but he is the only one that's been talking about the middle class, seniors and the poor. when have you heard the republicans worrying about them? never. thank you. >> host: thank you, chris. we have a tweet, president obama 61 vacation days, president bush at this point 194 vacation days. and republicans are now angry is what spooney35 tweets in. cindy republican does not have a plan and they are asking everyone to sacrifice while he is living in luxury. time for clinton 2012. raven is a democrat in charlotte. raymond, good morning to you. what do you think of the impact of this economic bus tour in

>> caller: good morning. what i would like to say is that we have came to a cross-point to where we're experiencing the same old stuff over and over again. people, wake up, please! you don't do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. these republicans have just put this same old garbage in another block. >> host: raymond, what does that mean? what does that mean? >> caller: that means they're trying to help us with the same old garbage they did when bush was in the white house. you know, they're trying to say that, okay, we need to lower taxes on the rich and all that. it's the same old stuff. it never worked. the only thing that we know that have worked is the method that what president obama is trying to get us to understand, there's got to be a balanced approach. you can't just expect -- just to work, you know, the way that the republicans have never have worked and we know it don't work. so we need to get back to what

works. >> host: d.w. emails in my opinion the main impact of president obama's bus tour is to bus itself. i have seen more reporting on the bus. how much it cost, how the secret has needed a bus like this and then the tour itself though my main reaction to this tour is wow, nice elite rocket-proof bus. gina is in miami. gina what do you think of the president's bus tour? gina? we will move on to mary in riverside, ohio. hi, mary. >> caller: hi. hey, you know -- >> we'll leave "washington journal" and go now to the pentagon for the military operations and developments in afghanistan. >> a senior member of the department of defense she has served as isaf joint command since its inception of 2009. she's responsible of cultivating governance, development, community of effort relations in

afghanistan. she regularly works with afghan government officials and coalition governments and travels throughout the country both to address efforts in the provinces to improve afghan government services and the connections between kabul and local governments. ms. stack joins us from isaf joint commander in kabul. she will make an opening comment and then we'll take your questions. and with that i'll turn it over to her and from here from the pentagon i will then call on reporters. ms. stack? >> good morning. thank you, george, for your introduction and thank you all for the opportunity to discuss my experiences over the last 22 months that i have served as isaf joint command deputy chief of staff for stability operations. first i should make clear what

my role in the organization is. i'm responsible for ensuring that security plans and operations are synchronized with national and provincial plans for governance and development. in short, i focus on local government initiatives and work for those responsible for providing daily support to afghan citizens. working with coalition members in our afghan partners here at ijc has been a truly rewarding experience. for almost two years i've witnessed firsthand the extraordinary progress of afghan communities. and from personal experience i can verify that our partnered efforts have brought about some truly remarkable achievements. and i'm confident that as i prepare to depart, i'll be leaving an afghanistan that has the opportunities, to govern and deliver a better quality of life for afghans. let me give you a few examples of concrete progress in governance. in helmand province the security problem has improved sufficiently. work is underway to add justice centers expanding on the success

of the province initial center. and complement that in helmand justice field and the independence human rights commission has just held a justice and the ngo wore women based on kabul. for civil law, women's right and family counseling training throughout helmand province. this last week, they began a comprehensive work strategy and implementation plan orchestrated by the canned bar public health they will benefit from an in the of a number of input departments, kandahar university, the world health organization and the a.i.d. among others. there will be construction on a new business park is more than 50% complete and local business men and women are buying into it at least 15 business plans have already been submitted to the

afghan support agency. similarly combined u.s. military efforts are providing electricity to support a growing industrial park in sharif. this is not to say there aren't challenges to governance and government as we move forward. as you're aware, last month, several areas went around a successful transition from isaf to the afghan government. as security improves across the country and more provinces transition and assume their own control each will have new circumstances to require tailored circumstances at the provincial and district levels at that end our own forestructure must adapt. it's now more than important than ever that provincial reconstruction teams, civil agencies, the international community and nongovernmental organizations in afghanistan all coordinate efforts. this will ensure that our afghan partners have the assistance to develop the capacity and

resources needed to carry out the daily work of making governmental and economic progress. ultimately, afghanistan's success in this counterinsurgency must come from a capable government at all levels. that can be trusted by the afghan people. although it is not for us to decide what that will look like, government must be real, it must be fair and just and above all it must serve the needs and the will of the people. and in that area i truly believe we are making real headway. now i'd like to offer the opportunity for any questions. >> hi, i'm from stars and stripes. i wonder if you can say how the recent shift in violence directed toward local governments, you know, the attack in some areas and the assassination attempts do have any effects on these efforts to build these local national government institutions, you know, what does that do to

change your role or your focus? >> the recent attacks haven't adjusted or changed my focus or that more importantly of the afghan government. governors continue working and, in fact, first of all, the afghan national security forces reacted very well to that incident with minimal support from us. within hours, the afghan government and private organizations were working to rebuild the damage to the district center -- excuse me, to the provincial center and the governor remained working throughout that day and it is working today. so it is absolutely a concern for the afghan government officials and for isaf. but i think it's a testament to the growth of the security forces and to the strength of the administrative officials at the local level that they are able to respond to it and they are extremely resilient.

>> this is joe. i would like to ask you about the corruption. how much do you think the problem of corruption within the afghan institutions is a real problem in pushing your plans forward? >> it's a very real concern. afghans both in government and outside government tell me constantly how much they hate corruption, how they want to see that system change. and they talk often about what they're doing to change it. and at we're taking a holistic approach to the problem. we provide a lot of information, support to those efforts and to efforts of other coalition governments. it is a serious problem. and it's one that the afghan government and we are taking very seriously.

within our own plans, for example, at ijc one of the things we've done is focus on our own business practices. directed the regional commands and others to ensure that they are taking an afghan-first approach in hiring and contracting. that is looking for direct contrast with afghan businesses and local businesses. also doing a lot on in terms of transparency and working with other organizations such as joint task force 2010 and private organizations. so we're taking it very seriously. we do take a holistic approach to it and one of the strongest things we have done is changing the way we have worked and it has a strong effect on the afghan market and on the expectations of the afghan people. >> thank you. my question is, madam, what message are you sending to the

people of afghanistan -- the people of afghanistan and also to the taliban when they hear that u.s. or nato forces are going to leave afghanistan? so what -- what will be their future as social security is concerned for the people of afghanista afghanistan? >> well, my focus as i mentioned is on the local government level particularly the province and the district. and what we can do to create security conditions so that governance and development can take route and the afghan people can take that in their own direction. so what we're looking at that level is the transition process and that it is a process. as i mentioned seven areas are -- more continue will go into us and it's a process of thinning out international forces and international support. not leaving. not handing off. and that's the message that i talk to the afghan people about, that i talk to my counterparts

in the afghan government about and that's the message more importantly that the afghan government is conveying to its own people. it's a new process. like i said, the first tranche has only gone through just now but here in afghanistan, it was definitely very well received. i think particularly in helmand. people look at it as taking control of their lives and getting sovereignty. >> just a follow-up, ma'am. as far as now as the u.s. military is concerned there's a new boss in afghanistan and also a new boss do you think you're going to change as far as you have new bosses in afghanistan and the pentagon? the situation in afghanistan or in any other ways? >> i was here when ijc was established in 2009 under lieutenant general rodriguez and

i was not being able to get together. working the province where there's a lack of confidence in the central government, how does that affect your work?

>> i think throughout afghanistan at all levels the central government, provincial government and district governments and even to some extent in village or small communities efforts, the capability, the capacity is growing in leaps and bounds especially as security improves. wherever we see security improve, we see the capacity improve and i think that's true at the central level as well. in the -- one of the areas of focus that we are looking at with the afghan government both we as the isaf joint command but then also with the donor community key nations, u.k., u.s. and some multilateral donors is working on just what you highlighted, making sure that resources are able to flow from the central government to the provincial level and then down to the district where you have service delivery. that is a challenge in any developing country. afghanistan has the added challenge of being a country currently at war. and it has vestiges of several

different regimes left in its administrative system. so what the afghan government is doing again with donor support and with our support with the security side is a comprehensive review of its administrative structures. there's a civil service administrative reform process that ministries go through here at the central government level. many of them have completed that. and many of them are starting now take it on at the provincial level. so you have highlighted one of the key resource management problems and it's a key area focus particularly part of the transition process that just part of the normal development for any country. we do see significant strengths as i mentioned wherever communities get security. the bottom-up community involvement is really remarkable. helmand again is a great example of this. herat, sharif, some of the areas that have transitioned already have relative security, community council has come together, civil servants go to

work. as i mentioned they are resilient in cases of threats. and so that bottom-up process -- i have a lot of confidence in and i think that's where afghans look for their government and for their governance and that bottom-up push matched with better technical assistance from the top down, i think is really going to help the administration here take off. does that answer the question? >> another question? yes. >> we've heard a lot of about various training programs for military specialties. what -- what are the corollary programs for civil service training? how are you building the core of governance professionals that afghanistan will need? >> that is a major effort.

that's not one that is in my purview here at the isaf joint command but it's one that i work with our donor partners and particularly in the coalition members so i'll highlight a couple programs that i think have been particularly important and useful for our security plan 'cause again my focus is on integrating that security with the civil service training and in the civil service delivery of programs and the whole development piece. the core of your question, though, the best agency to ask is u.s. agency for international development. on the u.s. side, they have majority of the programs that are focused on developing civil service capacity. in fact, they have one with the administrative reform and civil service commission. the u.s. government through usaid with a major sponsor with the afghan civil service institute that in the past year they trained well over 16,000 civil servants nationwide. germany just started a program that's focused on developing

provincial council so it's not focused necessarily on the career civil servants. again, that community bottom-up focus that i was talking about, germany is looking at it several of those and strengthening the ability of provincial councils to understand what it means to represent a constituency. how you run a council meeting, just the order for minutes for notes for follow-up. they have taken similar efforts on the west with efforts from the civil service training. and in the u.k. and helmand has done a lot and prt has done direct partnering in some cases with local officials. so those are some of the examples of the programs the different coalition members bring to the table but that is primarily the focus of traditional aid and development agencies. u.n. development program in unama are great coordinators for that effort in ijc.

>> hi, i'm carl osgood with executive intelligence review, you talking about improvements in governing capacity at local and provincial levels but i'm wondering how resilient all of this really is. there's still a great deal of violence in the country. there's the problem of drug trafficking which leads to corruption. how sure are you that as nato forces thin out that you won't have a rise in violence like what we've been seeing in iraq for especially the last few months? >> it's absolutely impossible that there would be a rise in violence. we were expecting to see that this summer. and through that violence, administrative work on the executive side and elections and council organizing are taking place at the local level in villages. so i think the afghan

government -- and the afghan peoples really through their performance through this summer and through the last shows that resiliency and that persistence, the desire for competent administrations to be competent administrators. and to have control over governance in their area. so what we are working on here on the civil side as well as on the security side is a focused partnership to develop the capacity and the capabilities and providing some of the moral support of being there with our partners facing the same things they face. and helping them see that they can push through it. more and more, though, as we get to transition, i think what many of us on the coalition side are seeing is that it's the afghans who are reminding us that we can push through it. >> i'm from stars and stripes. i wondered -- you mentioned the seven districts in the first tranche to transition. how involved or how are you

involved in what the next districts would be? are you advising to the afghans in the areas that the local government is doing better and, therefore, should be -- have the list and, you know, what are the areas around the country that you see are the better examples are the -- than the ones farther down the road? >> well, transition is a joint process between international coalition members. unama and most importantly the afghan government. so we at the isaf joint command are involved in that process, assessments for us come from the bottom-up so they come from our task forces, the provincial reconstruction team and the regional commands. here we have a assessment group that takes a look at that material. we see that in on the isaf side into isaf headquarters. it ultimately takes it and then shares it with the afghan government through a process

called jnev which is the joint afghan -- sorry, i'm going to have to refer to my note. i've been with the department of defense longer now that i only speak in acronyms and so i've forgotten what it stands for. or the n stands for it'slition and we fed into that -- into that joint board. there's a discussion at the isaf headquarters level and with embassies on the afghan side it's headed by mr. ghani. we'll have that discussion and coming from that joint board is a recommendation of areas that we'll look at for transition. our focus is on the security part of the transition. governance and development are factors. but our primary focus of what we're looking at here is the security and the capability of forces to take that lead role, what it would take for them to take the lead role on the

governance side we're making sure that there's sufficient governance and administrative and representative council support to keep the security going, to re-enforce it so that we have a mutually benefiting -- or mutually beneficial cycle between security and governance and i'm sorry i'll have to get back to you on what jnev stands for. >> anything else? all right. well, thank you very much for joining us today in the briefing room. and thank you, ms. stack, as well. have a good evening in afghanistan. >> well, thank you very much for the time. it's a real pressure for me to get talk back to the pentagon in my natural habitat. i appreciate your questions and your interest. i think this is an extraordinarily important area. in looking out i think afghanistan's success is going come from a government that allows afghans to have a better quality of life and that will naturally flow from the security improvements that we're seeing. again, thank you very much. if there are follow-on questions

after this, i'm more than happy to take them later. >> thank you. and that's a wrap. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and we have more live events coming up for you here on the c-span networks

>> secretary hillary clinton made new remarks regarding stability and security in syria. she spoke for just under 5 minutes. >> good morning. for months, the world has dealt

with assad's regime. syrians are demanding their universal human rights. the regime has answered their demands with empty promises and horrific violence. torturing opposition leaders, laying siege to cities, ordering thousands of unarmed civilians including children. the assad government has been condemned by all countries in parts of the world and can look only to iran for support for its brutal and unjust crackdown. this morning president obama called on assad to step aside and announce the strongest set of sanctions to date in the syrian government. these sanctions include the energy sector to increase pressure on the regime.

the transition to democracy in syria has begun and it's time for assad to get out of the way. as president obama said this morning, no outside power can or should impose on this transition. it is up to the syrian people to choose their own leaders in a democratic system based on the rule of law and dedicated to protecting the rights of all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion, sex or gender. we understand the strong desire of the syrian people that no foreign country should intervene in their struggle and we respect their wishes. at the same time, we will do our part for a syria that is democratic, just and inclusive. and we will stand up for their

universal rights and dignity by pressuring the regime and assad personally to get out of the way of this transition. all along, as we have worked to expand the circle of global condemnation, we have backed up our words with actions. as i repeatedly said, it does take both words and actions to produce results. since the unrest began, we have imposed small financial sanctions on assad and dozens of his cronies. we have sanctioned the commercial bank of syria for supporting the regime's nuclear proliferation activities. and we have lead multilateral efforts to isolate the regime from keeping them off the human rights council to achieving a strong presidential statement of condemnation at the u.n. security council. the steps that president obama

announced this morning will further tighten the circle of isolation around the regime. his executive order immediately freezes all assets of the government of syria that are subject to american jurisdiction and prohibits american citizens from engaging in any transaction with the government of syria or investing in that country. these actions strike at the heart of the regimes by banning american imports of syrian petroleum and petroleum product and prohibiting americans from dealing with these products and as we increase pressure on the assad regime to disrupt its ability to finance its campaign of violence, we will take steps to mitigate any unintended effects of the sanctions on the syrian people. we also continue to work with the international community. because if the syrian people are to achieve their goals, other

nations will have to provide support and take action as well. in just the past two weeks many of syria's neighbors and partners in the region have joined the chorus of condemnation. we expect that they and other members of the international community will amplify the steps we are taking both through their words and their actions. we are heartened that later today the u.n. security council will meet again to discuss this ongoing threat to international peace and stability. we are also working to schedule a special session of united nations human rights council that will examine the regime's widespread abuses. earlier this week i explained how the united states has been engaged in a relentless and systemic effort with the international community pursuing a set of actions and statements that make crystal clear where we all stand.

and generating broader and deeper pressure on the assad regime. the people of syria deserve a government that respects their dignity, protect their rights and lived up to their aspirations. assad is standing in their way. for the sake of the syrian people, the time has come for him to step aside and lead this transition to the syrians themselves and that is what we will be continue to work to achieve. thank you all very much. >> thank you all. ..

in the greatest interests of syria and the unity of his people. that according to the associated press earlier this morning. i understand also the u.n. security council is set to meet later today on syria. you can follow all of this on our website at c-span.org including a link where you can read the president's statement released early this morning. defense intelligence deputy director, david shedd and former acting cia director john mclaughlin talked about the successes and challenges in the u.s. sell against community in on a event in washington. he warned of a cyber pearl harbor and increasing threat of cybersecurity attacks. this is about one hour and 25 minutes. >> thank you very much. alan, let me say what a

pleasure it is to be working on this series. this is the first of a series, more to come. but i think as demonstrated by the large turnout here today, we will, we're going to have a hard time generating more star power than we have here on the stage today and many thanks to john and david for being with us. the topic of today is a broad topic, secrets and security: intelligence today. so we're going to do kind of a tour of the horizon of what are the issues, current hot topics in intelligence. we're going to talk a little bit about the reforms that have been undertaken in the intelligence community over the last few years. both of these gentlemen are highly experienced in that. they have been through that and helped shape it. i thought it might be useful to start with a little bit

of a introduction of our panelists. you have their bios at your place but nonetheless i thought it would be worth highlighting from the stage some of their really impressive experience. let me start with john mclaughlin. he is former deputy director of the cia and also former acting director of the cia. he spent more than 30 years in the cia, starting in 1972 with a focus on european, russian and eurasian issues as directorate of intelligence. he held a variety of senior positions in the cia before becoming deputy director for intelligence from '97 to 2000, heading up the agency's analytical corps. while deputy director for intelligence he showed, i thought it was interesting he showed a lot of concern about the health of the workforce and about bringing in the next generation, making sure that they were well-situated in the intelligence community.

so he created the senior analytic service, cia career track that allows senior analysts to rise to very senior rank in pay and stature without having actually to go into the management rank. which is obviously a salutary initiative. and he also created the sherman kent school tore intelligence and analysis, an institution that teaches the history and mission and essential skills of the analytical profession to new cia employees. during the closing months of the clinton administration and the beginning of the bush administration john served as deputy director, acting director and again deputy director of the cia until retiring in late 2004. he's now senior fellow and distinguished practitioner in residence at the philip merrill center for strategic studies a the paul ness

school of advanced international studies in washington, d.c. he has been appointed by the director of national intelligence to serve, to head up a group of national security experts to invest, to investigate various intelligence failures if you will and, and to make recommendations for possible fixes. he's an accomplished magician. and he has lectured on magic above big conventions of magicians. if i only thought to ask him to do a magic trick before we got on stage here he would have done one but now i think he said he is not prepared to do one all of you can see. and he tells me that it's, that it's important that you be able to see it. cameras might be able to see it but anyway. we'll leave that to the q&a.

david shedd was named deputy director of the defense intelligence agency in august 2010. he helps manage a workforce of 16,500 military civilian employees worldwide and leads what is called the defense intelligence enterprise as the defense, all of the defense intelligence community organizations within the department of defense. i heard him describe his career as follows. just to sum it up. 27 years with the cia officer. 4.5 years on the national security council staff and, and then a period of years at the very top of the odi. office of director of national intelligence, helping to shape that institution before moving to his current posting at dia. these little bios subject to correction by you gentlemen

after but he served as, from may 2007 to august 2010 as the director of national intelligence for policy, deputy director for policy plans, requirements. responsible for overseeing formulation, implementation of major intelligence community policies across the full spectrum of issues from information-sharing and intelligence community authorities to analytic standards and more. in particular he led the review of executive order 12333, the foundational u.s. intelligence policy which was revised by president bush in july 2008. he developed and then implemented the national intelligence strategy published in august 2009 for the intelligence community and led all strategic planning efforts to determine future intelligence priorities for the community and the nation. so we have two highl

highly-experienced people here who know all the ins and outs of the intelligence community. and i thought we might start by asking them a broad question about the intelligence community. let them talk a little bit about how they see the intelligence community today in light of the reforms that have come especially since the odni, office of the director of national intelligence, came on the scene and david perhaps in your remarks, you might tell us if the national intelligence strategy you developed and published, i guess about two years ago, is holding up in light of developments since then. so, why don't we start with, since you're closest to me, why don't we start with you, john, if that is okay. >> thank you, tim. first, let me say it is a pleasure to be here, not only with this great audience from across the

government but also with my former colleague and good friend, dave shedd. just to elaborate on the introduction you heard from tim about dave, i would tell you it's rare to find an individual, very rare to find an individual who's worked at so many different places at senior levels. white house, military intelligence, civilian intelligence, at the very top of the community working with the dni. so david's experience is quite vast here. tim's opening question is one that could be answered many different ways and we could take the entire time answering it but let me just make three very quick points. first i think that what you think about intelligence depends a little bit how you think about intelligence. i actually don't use personally the word, reform. i talk about it having been transformed rather than reformed. my experience was that, let

me put it this way. i tend to look at it in the long term, historically. a major point i would make to you, intelligence as a discipline in national security is relatively new in the united states compared to other countrys. if you look at china, for example, the military strategist was writing all the things we talk about here in the very sophisticated ways in the 6th century bc. we've been doing this since 1947, okay? when i say that, that's when the cia was created and we were the last major country to actually create a national intelligence service. we had intelligence before then but largely in pockets of the military and so forth. in fact you could divide the history of intelligence here into some eras. i would say era of innocence is roughly from the revolution up to world war ii. we just didn't pay much

attention to the whole field of intelligence then. world war ii is the era of transformation. we learn about all the classic disciplines in intelligence from the british basically and from our experience fighting a worldwide struggle against two other powers. in that period of time we invent imagery from space. after world war ii up to the berlin wall falling and so forth, that period is a period of great transformation. we developed signals intelligence. we deepen our understanding of classic human espionage, things we hadn't done much with in the past. then we enter the 1990s there is sort of a dip in interest. kind of era of uncertainty. many work in the government so we were cut pretty dramatic across the government particularly in national security in the '90s. then 9/11 happens and which enter another era, doesn't have a name particularly but i would say another

transformation and that transformation is accelerated by the restructuring that occurred in the 2004 with the creation of the d. in i. my point here to you intelligence has been relatively new and has been in a state of transformation in the last couple of decades. i guess the second point i make about the big restructuring in 2004 is complicated but fundamentally i should confess i started off as an opponent of this because essentially it moved the leadership of the intelligence community from the position i held in dci, acting dci, deputy, director of central intelligence to another office that was created then, the direct or l tore of -- director of national intelligence. over the five or six years since that happened, close to six now, i think i have come to view it as a positive thing, in part because of what it lib rates the cia to do.

very hard to run an entire community of 16, 17, depending how you count, agencies, when you're also running a global agency, one that has worldwide responsibilities. it is now possible for a cia director to focus very intensely on those things that he or she is personally responsible for, and the dni can drive things that no one else can do. integration of sourcing. integration of effort. common standards for many different things across the community. so i think we can say more about it but i think fundamentally while people often say about that office now it's a work in progress meaning it's still being defined. we're on our fourth dni. each dni brings kind of a twist to it. jim clapper, current director of national intelligence is emphasizing integration of effort and analysis and collection

basically. but, my sense is that that is progressing pretty well and david can elaborate on that if he wishes. the final point i'd make, judging intelligence is hard. judging, if you ask how are we doing? my answer is pretty well but it depends a bit as a friend of mine says, whether you think intelligence is essentially a competitive game, right? you're competing in the world with adversaries who are seeking to deceive you, deny you information. this is not classic research. this is a contact sport and whether you think of intelligence as basketball or baseball is what my friend says helps you to think about how you judge it. if you're in basketball you have to hit about 85, 90% of

your shots, foul shooter, if you're a foul shooter, right? or you're out. you're not succeeding. if you're playing baseball you can actually get into the all-star game with a .300 batting average. something about the different difficulty of those two endeavors. think how tough intelligence is. you're working against an adversary who is seeking to deceive you. you're working in an atmosphere where the information is hard to come by. so i wouldn't put a grade on it but i would say you always want to be over the 90% end of the scale of course and you can't, the other thing that makes it very hard is intelligence succeeds when nothing happens. you know an embassy doesn't blow up, i can remember instances say in the summer of 9/11 when i would call the deputy secretary of state you need to evacuate embassy in certain part of the world because we have report that indicates we have an attack planned on

it. we were very confident in that. retrospectively i know the reports were accurate. the embassy wasn't attacked. the plot was disrupted. no one hears about that. intelligence succeeds when it is woven into the fabric of a successful policy. something like the balkans in the 1990s, intelligence, very active there, seen as a policy success but the intelligence role was quite invisible. there is old joke in my former profession says two kinds of out comes in the world, operational successes and intelligence failures. so, i'm not to say that intelligence doesn't fail sometimes because it clearly does and we can talk more about that. but my point is simply i would leave it at that and say i think overall the endeavor is going pretty well. america has a very good intelligence enterprise. another friend of mine used to say on our very worst day

we're still better than everyone else in the world. and on our very best day, we're still not as good as we need to be. and that tension between those two things kind of defines the nature of the discipline i think. so i would stop there. >> david, would you add that to john's remarks, please? >> thank you, tim. diane, helen, thank you for this event. it is indeed an honor to be here and next to john who i have admired for many, many years. worked side-by-side with him. then had the opportunity with several dnies to do reviews that paid high dividends. let me just build off of what john has said. as i look over a 30-year career i, i won't start with george washington as john did. >> i'm older. >> but in those 30 years

just how dramatic the changes have been. let me put them in three categories. mission, people, and now again the budget because it is all in that context as well we need to look at intelligence. the people. are one of the greatest contributors to the craft of intelligence for fulfilling the mission but the mission itself has changed dramatically. when i think of, who do we produce for, i think of, my first 20 years very much pre-9/11 thinking almost exclusively of support to the president, the national security establishment, the nsc as we know it through the statute, not the nsc staff that support it but the nsc itself. providing then intelligence with the objective or the goal of creating decision advantage with decision

confidence. i will talk about that a little more. and then post-9/11 the dramatic increase of the intelligence command from the combatant commanders, the warfighters and in that category in where we have seen a meld of integrating tactical with national intelligence, national intelligence with tactical, and increasingly indistinguishable in terms of trying to measure the net contribution of one over the other. that's a dramatic change in the mission. the third category beyond that nsc combatant commander is state, local tribal law enforcement. the fusion centers, the dhs mandates for intelligence and analysis and the office there that care ron wagner runs. when think of intelligence and what we have instituted still imperfectly but writing for release, writing

for below a tear line concept, so that you give that law enforcement community that decision advantage with a confidence advantage to understanding what value that information has in terms of taking action on it. still within that mission, dramatic change over the past decade is, a much-greater demand for actionable information than i certainly remember from my first 20 years or so. the people. we are at dia somewhere in the 65 to 70% range and i think it's very close to that throughout the intelligence community of hires that have come in post-9/11 period. obviously now it's a decade and that isn't far off but you have to also look in the first five years, it was already at 45 or 50%. so there is a dramatic change in the makeup of your

workforce. it is said that at any given time our workforce has four generations in it and as we look at the challenges, any of you who are parents of teenagers or perhaps in their early 20s, compared to how you see the world and how they see it. i call it the pda world. they're literally in their world of virtual space before they go into physical contact with friends. in a way that they think differently about the world that they're in. in many ways i consider it a world that the adversary also in that generation sees as having no boundaries. physical boundaries as we have known them are dropped dramatically as a result of the cyberspace and the social network that they reside in. so how we look at the intelligence business and how they view the world in that gen-x, gen-y, millenials

and so forth is very important to me as a leader inside dia but is as well for my colleagues across the 16 agency, 17 agencies with the dni's office. finally the budget. what we are trying to do under the direction or leadership i should say of jim clapper as the director of national intelligence is really look at lessons learned from the 199's. judging from most of the ages in this room, you remember very clearly the so-called peace dividend we were able to harvest in terms of the fall of the wall and the fall of the soviet union. that is not the case today in terms of the demand signal for intelligence against those three big broad categories that we support but within those categories the demand is increasing at a time that the budget is shrinking. that drives me naturally

toward an idea that perhaps in many ways foreshadowed in 2004 this idea of a dni, relieving the dci a or the dci to run cia as dcia today and having this full-time responsibility actually put on the shoulders of a director of national intelligence by any other name but the creation of that person. because now as we go into these, this fiscal environment that we're in, and i tend to remind our people as well at dia often, we've always been resource-constrained. we're simply going into a much more resource-constrained environment in where i think that as that demand for intelligence either flattens or increases, and i would say it's the latter, we have to have a different formulation as to how we're going to work together. and that will drive us toward greater integration.

duplication of effort will collapse around single efforts of where agencies will do more together if you think of the spectrum of coordination, and i believe as an intelligence community we graduated from that a long time ago. we coordinate pretty well. that doesn't mean there aren't occasions where that falls through between a cia and an fbi or an nsa with an nga, so forth, that whole alphabet soup, and by and large we've been doing that for many, many years. the collaboration, moving toward that center. again i think the past decade we've shown a jointness at collaborating a whole lot better. that is, simply two parts coming together and saying, what's the task at hand, what's the challenge we're facing, let's work together toward it. i will put in my pieces, you put in your pieces. i'm talking about a different model at integration.

not on every single subject, not on every effort but where it makes sense. you bring the human capabilities integrated against that same target set in terms of what the defense humint effort is with the national clandestine service is one example. where cyber is concerned, you integrate the focus on that problem set, rather than having it separate and still collaborating. so i think i've given you a bit of a sense where i think we're going while still giving you an idea where i think we've come from over the past decade in particular as we look at this very broad and capable intelligence community simply building on what john already said. >> thank you, david. let me follow-up on one thing you said. you talked about the dra make -- dramatic change that

has national intelligence melding with tactical intelligence to support the war fighter and it brought to mind an experience i had when i went out to aludate air force base in kuwait and they showed us there the, a video of a, use of a predator with an army tactical squad in baghdad a block away from an apartment building and the predator was there and taking a picture of the apartment building where there was a sniper. and so, it had a cursor that was focused on one level of the apartment building and the squad radioed their commanders and said, no, this is, you need to move over, you know, two apartments and down two levels. that was communicated somehow by satellite, et cetera, to the operator of the predator who was sitting in a trailer in

las vegas, who then made the adjustment to the targeting and blew the sniper out of the apartment building. that is amazing melding of technology and tactics et cetera. i don't know if that is classic intelligence but that is one little anecdote. can you tell us, give us a little color, if you will, about how that operates on the ground now? that's, i give you one instance but i know there are many others. >> i often recount the story about zarqawi and his demise in iraq where he was clearly the aimr for al qaeda iraq at the time. attacking our troops, our men and women in anbar in particular but baghdad and so forth. and the questions asked of me, which intelligence discipline was the one responsible? which tradecraft was applicable to his demise?

and the answer simply to me, that i give back is, i don't know. and that's actually a very good answer in this particular case. the reason is because the melding of intelligence, both tactical and national in that case, and by the way, including open source. i include that in terms of information that chriblt contributed to his takedown, is i'm not here to give more weight to one over the other. what i am here to tell you is that our intelligence analysts who were working that target on the ground were able to meld intelligence in realtime at network speed, in order to take him down. and that, that is the story of zarqawi's end. that is being repeated in the battlefield time and time again. and i think that is testament to the fact that our intelligence disciplines

are incredibly important as disciplines in terms of the capabilities of those analysts who do, who understand imagery and the goint or who understands the signals intelligence product for what it is but then melding it, fusing it together in order to be able to take action on the battlefield in the example that you gave or the example of zarqawi. i believe the same model, the same template is actually applicable for national policy as well and that the all-source analyst then has the benefit of looking at all that information because sometimes it is not intelligence. it is certainly not classical intelligence that enables him or her to be able to make that judgment. tim, let me go back to a question that you asked about the strategy at the outset. by developing this strategy

i think one of the tests of time is always, will it survive one particular leadership? and this would have been admiral blair as dni when it was developed and promulgated as a strategy, to another dni in this case because it is the national strategy for intelligence and it has and it has survived that particular, relatively short test of time with four dnies in a relatively short period of time but it is important but it is important it went beyond the boundaries of one particular dni as its focus. right now it serves as a very good road map for the intelligence community to develop as dia has and developing their strategies. what are those primary goals? what are the objectives under those goals and it allows you to move from that

national level for national intelligence to where it's applicable to your particular agency or element of the intelligence community. also informed by the national security strategy that has been issued as well as the quadrennial reports and so forth, other documents that help inform it. but since you had asked specifically about the national intelligence of strategy of 2009, that applied there too. >> thank you. john, let's talk a little bit about the explosion of information and how that affects our conduct of intelligence gathering and analysis. everybody knows there is

exponential explosion of cell phones and web and so on. what is proving to be the most difficult and most valuable in assessing intelligence on key issues? perhaps you can talk a little bit about the role of human intelligence, the question of monitoring these huge flows of data. the capabilities of high-tech satellite and airborne imagery, all of those are important but is there, where is the emphasis falling between those various activities as we seek to improve our intelligence capabilities? >> this actually, think think is the major question of our times on intelligence. because much of what david talked about and what tim asked in the previous question, practice kbli -- practically every intelligence test i can think of depends on various integration of various sources of intelligence.

what made that more dramatic and more effective is technology really. now you've done that forever of course but now you can do it more rapidly because you can move information so rapidly. you can move it visually. you can move it electronically. you can move it on a screen in front of you. so technology is our friend but in some respects it is also a challenge and an adversary. i think it is really the main story of our times when it comes to intelligence. you know, if you went back to 1952, that's the year the national security agency was created, that's the agency that intercepts messages there were only 5,000 computers in the world, okay? today we have an internet population of over one billion going to lord knows how many sites, the last count i saw, depends how you count, three billion or so. computing power is doubling every 18 months.

the miniaturization of circuitry is the untold story behind much of this. if you looked at a microprocessor, for example, the sort of thing you've got in your cell phones right now, going back to 1980, there were in that microprocessor, about 29, 30,000 transistors. today there are more than a billion. okay? so that's why we now have in our hands the computing power if you are as old as i am you remember once housed in a big building and we all did punch-cards and waited for the error message overnight. [laughter] it is miniaturization of circuitry. it is untold story of our time when it comes to technology that allows us to do all of this stuff. so that creates a, so this is our friend, all right? because if you went back to before the invention of the telegraph in 1844, or there abouts, we didn't move

information investably. once the telegraph was invented, we began to move information investably. and that's where intelligence began to change. then through world war i and world war ii, we developed techniques, everyone did, for trying to goob that -- grab that information being moved investably and now we're very good at it. but we're too good at it. the national security agency can scoop up, it doesn't every day, it has the capability to scoop up within three or four hours the equivalent in bits and bytes what is in the library of congress. so when i did the study tim referred to for the dni about a year and a half ago, one of the things i discovered looking back at the attempted bombing of an airliner over detroit in christmas 2009, recall that? the so-called, underwear bomber? what a great metaphor. it failed but the only thing that failed was basically

the detonation. had it worked, a lot of people would have died and that would be a different story but the question was, why was it so hard for us to dedeck this in advance? that's a long story i can elaborate on but one of the reasons is that the volume of material that the average person had, the average analyst had to go through to anticipate such a thing had grown dramatically from, let's say a couple hundred to multiples of thousands. and so it becomes increasingly difficult for an analyst to remember that on, you know, january 3rd, i saw a piece of paper or a image on my screen which resonates with what i'm seeing today four months later from another source that's adds to that. that then requires, so the challenge for intelligence today on this score and david will be more current on what is currently being

done but my sense is we're still not where we need to be in terms of analytic tools, basically software tools, that allow us to, as an intelligence community with this vast volume of information to do what you do when you go and order a book on amazon. you know, you ask for a book and amazon says, you might also be interested in. okay? so, in intelligence terms that means i have a report that says, you know, a guy from, i will make up a country, a guy from albonia, that is my favorite made-up country just visited a very bad, extremist in yemen. and i would want my computer then to say, you might also be interested in. [laughter] well, david will, i think know more than i do on this but i suspect we're getting better at that but we're probably not where we

ideally would want to be on that score. and it isn't a matter of not trying. it's a matter of, it's hard. when you're also balancing the two requirements, here again is a way which intelligence is different than what i do now. i work in the academic community and we do research. you don't have to worry in that world about balancing two things, the need to share the information and the need to protect it. obviously you need to protect it for a whole variety of reasons having to do with operational security. imagine if we hadn't protected the information that was gathered before the bin laden operation? very few people knew about that and that's one of major reasons it succeeded. at the same time, it had to be shared among a lot of people because as david pointed out, taking that operation as an example, every conceivable int and agency was involved in putting that operation

together. so the tension between those two things is what makes information technology management so difficult in the intelligence business. so i just stop there on that score but just emphasize again, i think this question tim raised is probably the core question about intelligence today. i would add one thought to that. and that is that, because basically my point is we're in the middle of the greatest technological revolution i think we can document in modern history. i suppose if you went back to the invention of the wheel they would have said the same thing but in modern history i can't, there is no time that we have, that i have lived through where technology is changing faster than we can come up with names for it, okay? kids are doing that for us. but, for intelligence, what this means is we have the potential now to break out of the paradigms that we developed in that age of transformation i talked

about from, say, world war ii up through the fall of the berlin wall. when we developed most of the techniques that we currently use. taking pictures from space. listening to intercepted communications and so forth. we have the potential through technology to break out of those paradigms or elaborate on them in ways that frankly the average person can hardly imagine. because intelligence always has to be technologically ahead of everyone else. why? because your adversary has everything that's available. so you've always got to be better than them technologically. and i think without going into the details, the intelligence community is. but the challenge is technology is changing so quickly that you've really got to be quick and fast and agile and, there is no time to waste.

>> david, part of my question had to do with the role of human intelligence. you talked about the 70% turnover in the ranks of the cia in the past decade. many of these people, new people were brought in, were from ethnic communities and foreign language speakers, so on, to change the face of the cia a bit so that we could more easily integrate with the communities that we need to be gathering intelligence from, what is, when you talk a little bit about the importance of human intelligence, in a context that the john just so well-laid out where you're also trying to monitor huge amounts of data flows, et cetera, how important is human intelligence today? >> well, tim, human intelligence remains

absolutely critical to an understanding of the plans and intentions at the core. the difficulty that i have seen over the years in the pursuit of the tradecraft of human intelligence is knowing what to go after and how to pursue that so that you are investing that very precious resource against the highest payoff. that requires, it's back to thinking of all source information in order to be informed about what you have to collect and where that secret resides that you would get through a human penetration. the other high value for human intelligence is that it is also an enabler, to the technological collection or the technology collection.

in other words, it points the finger at the right place for the national security agency to pursue something as opposed to as john described, purely theoretically, the capability of nsa to simply gather all that information in the volume that he referred to. and by having that human penetration, that human individual that's sitting in the place next to the right server, the right switch and so forth allows then the, the effort to be far more targeted as well. finally, that human source is one who will give, and i promise to come back to this, this decision advantage that gives something the machine does not generally give, which is the atmospherics

around a situation. so as a human source that's in a circle of influence or a circle of power that we're interested in, that individual is able to give the sense of the environment as well as just the facts. an enormous amount of effort has to go into the vetting of that source, the weighing of that information, properly weighed against the value of other information collected on that environment as well. but that becomes very, very important to the decision-maker. so by that decision advantage, and then that confidence advantage, let me tell you what i'm talking about. the decision advantage is being one step ahead of the adversary, in terms of that collection objective that gives the decision-maker on our end, that ability to make choices that he or she

otherwise would not have. that could be the president. that could be the combatant commander. it could be a war fighter down in a humvee or the law enforcement community chief of police ray kelly in new york or los angeles. wherever might be in the local law enforcement environment. the decision confidence is a way to think about counterintelligence. it is the weight that you give that information and for those familiar with the human intelligence reporting, there's a source description. i'll say, an individual, an official with close, good access with close ties to this reporting judged to be fairly reliable. that fairly reliable has to go with a definition that really is a definition a counter-intelligence message to the reader. it says, on balance he's

fair to middling, but be careful he is not a generally reliable source yet. the vetting hasn't gone into it that needs to go into it and in time it may get there, it may not, depending on the situation of that source. so your decision advantage is married up together with decision confidence. and to me it is a very critical combination and one that, if you look back on the intelligence challenges that we've had to outright failures, it's been in the balance of those two things, that decision advantage that you are bringing to the decision-maker with that confidence level. if the analysts don't know that for source protection you've changed that source description three or four times, but it is still the same source, you won't be able to have that decision confidence balanced properly

to the decision advantage that you're trying to give that reader. so human intelligence remains critical. it is not obviated by technology. it is in fact enabled by technology and in reverse the human operations can actually serve to drive focused technology operations. >> i think we would be remiss if we didn't follow up that these two answers with, by talking a little bit about the hunt for bin laden and of course that, there's been a lot of writing about this. there was a terrific piece in the new yorker just a week or two ago about the hunt for bin laden. and it talks about satellite imagery, airborne photography. i believe we had people on the ground, and in nearby building in abadabad.

it also reflected this article on levels of cooperation between various parts of the u.s. government as we went, as we looked for bin laden. so let me just throw out a general question. maybe you can start, john. on how you see the role of intelligence and the components of intelligence if you will as operating as we sought to find bin laden. >> well i think the first thing to say is that, the successful outcome there was the result of literally years of effort. that accelerated in the last several years. now bear in mind, i'm not in the government so i was not part of that. david, will have a fresher and more informed perspective on that but, what i do know is that the

information collected over many years helped us to get there. i would go back almost 15 years because it's in 1996 that the cia begins to focus intensely on bin laden and on al qaeda. 1996 when he moves from sudan to afghanistan, the cia notices this is a financeer of intelligence who is also getting into operations. and you know the story from there on. the embassy bombings in 1998. the attack on the uss cole warship in october 2000. 9/11 itself. and so throughout that period the cia was even, the 9/11 commission will acknowledge, the agency that focused most intensely on bin laden and al qaeda. with some success before 9/11 and obviously a big setback on 9/11, a huge

loss. which will be commented on extensively in the next couple of weeks i'm sure. but in that period of time the agency and the rest of the intelligence community began to develop a picture of al qaeda. this accelerated dramatically after 9/11. if you recall those days, and many people do, pro roughly 2001 to 2005 or so the community, i think led principally by agency during that time took down the 9/11 era leadership of al qaeda. in the years since then, that has accelerated in terms of attacking the infrastructure of that organization and those by attacking i mean killing and capturing, and the data that came out of those operations in terms of captured

electronic media, the detention program that produced many, many reports about the nature of the business, the nature of the al qaeda organization and so forth, the technical intelligence collected, all came together in a way that brought us the result we saw with an accelerated development of intelligence in the last two to three years. there is no point repeating what has been in the press here. you know that the focus was on a courier, once the agency had figured out that bin laden relied principally on couriers for communication, the focus was on a particular courier who eventually became the one known as the one most close to bin laden. and that's what you do in intelligence. so you focus in on this clue and you start peeling away the layers of the unknowns until you figure out who is that courier?

what's that courier's real name? where does that courier live? what does that courier do all day long? how does that courier communicate and drive and son forth? eventually you get to the compound that you now all know about. what i can tell you with some confidence is that at the point when all that information came together, technical intelligence, human intelligence, open source intelligence, layers of it from years of collection, the agency was still, and let me say, everyone was involved in this. the national security agency. the national geospatial-intelligence agency. the defense intelligence agency. everyone who has intelligence in their title was somehow in this. putting that all together, the confidence level was still not 100% that he was there.

but, it was the best case that anyone was able to make up to that point. and i understand now when i reflect something leon panetta said because he said something publicly that i think tells me why the president in part, why the president decided to go ahead. the case that his, he was there was strong enough that had he not been there, i think this is what leon said, you could present that case in public and defend it. in other words, the public would understand why you acted on this. the case was that strong but it wasn't 100%. and that is almost always the case in intelligence. i don't know what i would add beyond that. >> david, do you have thoughts on that? >> sure. one of the things i look forward to is being out of government and being able to

say what he said. [laughter] but i still want my job tomorrow. but. >> i gave now classified information. >> no, no. but coming from me i would be confirming the details of the "new yorker" and elsewhere that's been in the press. i will say this. i'm actually a critic about how much has come out in the press. >> yeah. so am i, by the way. >> i know, john. i think that, no, i know, i can drop i think, i know that our tools are limited by definition and with as much exposure across the whole ambit of counter terrorism what comes out in the media really does hurt our ability to fight the next iteration of the war on terror. i will say this and i will come back to this time and

time again. you could not have mounted the 1 may operation without the integration of the information in intelligence as john described it. that i will say categorically and time and time again as john has alluded to, the successes that we have had in the intelligence community, many by unsung heroes in the background because they aren't revealed in terms of the disruptions, occur as a result of integrating those efforts in terms of the collection capabilities and the analytic coming together with the collection been enabled by great men and women. >> i would add to what david said about, i too am distressed by how much has been revealed about the operation the but what i said here was not particularly sensitive i don't think but all of that comes from information that's been officially put out there i think.

here's why i worry about it a little bit. in my very first comments i said, intelligence is very new to the united states, okay? one reason i said that is we still don't know how to deal with it, we really don't. we're an open, and i in my course i have a whole section that i do, a day that i do, teaching i do now, called intelligence in an open and free society. and there is a tension here between the obvious values we hold as american citizens, which i of course fully support, and the fact that we need to have a secret intelligence organization, organizations, in order to manage our affairs in the world. we have more trouble with that than any other country i'm aware of, any other major country. and with the tension between those two things. and here's here's the bottom line. for our adversaries who

aren't as strong as we are, okay? either conventionally, technologically or otherwise, they have to seek advantages that are, to use the term everyone employs these days asymmetric. that is, things they can do that help them overcome our great power. and you know one of the things they can do? keep secrets. secrecy is a tool they use as an asymmetric tool to overcome our great advantage. and i don't think we've figured that out. >> i would, follow that up a little bit by observing and maybe asking you to comment further, john. the accounts in the media are accounts that portray this operation as highly successful. that is, you know, the sources for this were people in the government. some of whom anyway, perhaps many of whom, wanted that

information to come out. so because it portrayed, you know, the success that could be attributed to the white house decisiveness, et cetera, et cetera, right? >> i don't know that that's the case but it may very well be. i'm sure david can't comment on this. >> okay. >> i'm just trying to take care of you here. >> yes. >> that's natural. and let me say, first off, i can say these things. i worked for, how many, seven, eight, administration, republican and democrat. generally when an intelligence success occurs people like to talk about it. it's not, it's not confined to one political party or one political season but, generally if there's a big intelligence success people tend to talk about it.

now that's not true of ever intelligence success because most of them are incremental and not spectacular like this one but it's just a tendency we have as a country and i would say it's one we need to think hard about. >> tim, let me just add. because of terrorism and counterterrorism, i'm refering to international terrorism in this case, has taken on such a public, profile in terms of the political stance that one takes on counterterrorism, all the way down to the local district, obviously at the state level and at the national level, that, my concern goes well beyond what's been said publicly about the events of 1 may. it's on counterterrorism more generally. and it is the ru