our threat. we trust them with the most sensitive and proprietary information that our organization holds. and we trust that they won't betray that. but as we all know, probably why you all are here, they do. the other key factor is that it's not a sole technical problem. insider threats can range any spectrum of demographics, technical skill and subject matter expertise. so if you solely apply a technical response, you're really not grasping the extent of the issue. certainly, insider threats that do have significant technical backgrounds that use those technical backgrounds to penetrate and infiltrate the systems and enact harm, steal information, but that's only one component. there's a whole other sphere of different ways that these behaviors are manifested. when i first got into this business, the most accurate yet depressing thing that someone had told me about how to describe the insider threat problem is that we're not looking for a needle in a

haystack, you're looking for a needle in a stack of needles, and i don't really know how many people frequently dig their hands around a pile of needles, but it seems pretty painful and pretty difficult. and that highlights exactly what the problem is with the insider threat. these are people who look exactly like the person next to them. it's not necessarily about trying to figure out what's wrong or what's different. it's about identifying what some of these indicators or red flags along the spectrum are, trying to mitigate the exploitation of them so that a person doesn't reach that tipping point and then incorporating, monitoring or detection mechanisms so that you can see some of these behaviors. it's clearly, as i said, a multidimensional problem, so it requires a multidimensional solution. it's a goal of an insider threat program to detect, deter and disrupt. you can take a twofold approach in how you combat those objectives. the first is in how you identify the problem.

not only are insider threats themselves a multidimension alphas set, but the problem itself spans numerous different subject matters and incorporates numerous key players. it's not just a security or a counterintelligence or an information assurance problem. a successful insider threat program implements the critical components from all of the key stakeholders and attacks the program -- or attacks the problem from all of these various perspectives to really get an understanding of what this problem is. and then second, you can focus your efforts by looking at your people, your data and your threats. knowing your people is the post critical aspect to any successful insider threat program. and when we say know your people, we really mean know your people. not talking about their ip or their e-mail address, their user names or their work schedule. it's really about understanding who they are, what they do, who they interact with and what

potential vulnerabilities they might have that sit along that spectrum so that you can try to proactively prevent them from reaching that tipping point. in taking this approach, we've come to adopt this threefold model in how you really look at the whole person. it's a combination of cyber, contextual and psychosocial information that really allows you to take this holistic view of a person. and that's really where the power in attacking this issue comes from. cyber indicators being what you do on the system. your system activity, your print behavior, your searching, contextual being who you are, your job role, what type of financial considerations you might have, your foreign access. and psychosocial reallying being how you react to different factors and stressors within your environment. so your coping mechanisms as they pertain to stress or your interactions with people in the workplace, getting a deeper understanding of who a person actually is.

so for cyber indicators, again, this is what people do on the system. this is helpful because it allows you to actually detect activity of interest or activity of concern. in order to do this, obviously, the first step is to collect the information. and for people that don't have as robust insider threat programs, you can set up whole space awed do kitting, capabilities, collect audit logs from your critical applications, really garner a way to get an understanding of what your people are doing on the system. then from there, implement in some alerting mechanisms. because it's not just about having the information, it's about identifying what's important. so figuring out what activity might be of concern to you. if most concerning to you is the annual budget report gets leaked to the media, set up alerting mechanisms to detect anytime somebody accesses that document or prints that document or e-mails that document. and then from there add more

intelligence to those reporting mechanisms. so if you're concerned about the report getting leaked to the media and 10,000 people have access to the budget report and on one day 9,000 people print the budget report, from personal experience, this is a really tough problem to deal with. so we really need to incorporate some types of behavioral detection techniques. there's a huge span of different ways that you can kind of add intelligence to those alerting mechanisms. anomaly detection, looking at not only anomalies against an enterprise-wide solution, but against yourself, against smaller groups. looking to see what might be different or what might be abnormal for a person. combining things together. so if 9,000 people print the budget document, maybe i want to see who printed it and also e-mailed it or who accessed it within a certain time frame. just putting more context to the things that you're looking for, that's where you really get to

the meat of the issue. contextual, again, is really who a person is. this is so important because with it allows you to understand what your work force is and, more importantly, what your threats are. i know a lot of people don't really like to think of it in this way because we want to trust the people next to us, but if they're our threats and when you're in a position of security or counterintelligence position, you want to try to mitigate the threat, but you can't deny that the threats sit among us. so figuring out the best way to strike that balance between them. and identifying contextual risk factors, there's some commonly-known things that you might want to generally look for. you want to look for any of those red flags or risk factors that if manifested and if exploited could lead someone to a tipping point. so if you're looking for financial consideration, if you're looking for someone or looking for individuals who might have some problems in their financial history, they're having issues with their

finances. not because they're having issues with their finances, but because if they were approached by a foreign intelligence service or a competitor, that could be catalyst enough to enable them to reach the tipping point. likewise for foreign nexus issues, if someone has strong ties to a foreign country, it's not that we care that they are foreign, it's that they might have an allegiance to a country other than the united states which could then potentially enable them to pass over that tipping point. so it's about identifying some of these factors and really thinking about the reasons why we're interested in them in terms of how we protect our data. and how to go about that, um, within each agency and organization there are going to be different ways you can tailor it to what's best for you, where you get this information from. some of the key ways to collect this information are to do background or reinvestigative processes, doing interviews,

normal security checks, self-reporting mechanisms. basically, anything that you can do within the limitations of your own organization that can enable you to get at some of these static risk factors that might prove important. and then the psychosocial component, this is really the most underdeveloped component of the three spheres. and in my opinion, i think it holds the most significance. we recently conducted a study where we were trying to identify which psychosocial indicators were the most indicative of malicious insider behavior. one of the key findings from the study, which i think is one of the most interesting, is that it really kind of shows that it's some of these more innate characteristics that might be the most diagnostic even across all three spheres. so one of the indicators pretty prevalent amongst the community is workplace disgruntle lment. people who are angry do bad things. that's what we're told to look

for. i don't know if it's just the fbi, but there are a lot of disgruntled people in the work force, in the government. so it's really about, again, thinking about what are you really trying to look for. the premise behind that is that somebody might be upset enough at their workplace that they would enact some harm. the true indicator behind that is a psychosocial indicator that's beneath the surface. you're looking for someone who has a vengeful or retaliatory characteristic. and that could, that may manifest or be exploited as a result of an external circumstance like workplace disgruntlement. but the concept is you can have two people that work in the same office that have the same exact levels of disgruntlement, but only one reaches that tipping point and becomes an insider threat. and it's really getting at what that, what that beneath the surface level indicator is. the large problem with that is it's much easier to identify workplace disgruntlement than it

is to try and identify personality features or characteristics of employees. so that's why the sphere is really in development, and it's something that within the community i think everybody sees the utility in collecting this information or figuring out a way to use this information. because with, again, it will prove the most valuable. but it's about figuring out the best way to do it within the limitations, the feasible limitations, the legal and the sensitivity limitations within the environment. i think one of the best ways to do that or at least as a starting point is to increase the training and awareness as a starting point within your organization. get people to understand what the true risk factors are and then enable and create some type of reporting mechanism, focused reporting mechanism so that they have the ability to report these concerns should they see them. that, obviously, would enable -- that would give us the opportunity to really understand some of these things and figure

out what these psychosocial indicators are. so in addition to knowing your people from a cyber, contextual and psychosocial sphere, you also really need to know your enemy. you need to come watt thish -- combat the issue from a variety of perspectives. knowing your enemy. by knowing your enemy, you're proactively identifying your potential vulnerabilities which puts you in a much more effective position to defend. who is your enemy? is it a competitor, is it a foreign intelligence service? what types of information would they be targeting? who would they be targeting? how might they recruit or target these individuals? who are by name these individuals, these high-value individuals within your organization? approach it from that perspective and maybe put more stringent security protocols or monitoring on the people or things that your enemies might be most attracted to. and then also knowing your data, that same sense. what are the crown jewels of

your organization? what is the most sensitive information that, if compromised, could be overwhelmingly damaging? in an ideal world, we want to protect all of our information. i think we're all struggling with limited resources at this time, so it's really about starting by figuring out what is the most important information that i have. where is it stored, in what system? how does that system work? who has access to it? breaking it down to that level, i think, is one of the best ways to start to protect the information that is the most valuable within your organization. so in implementing this multidimension lal approach, the key factor is, again, really aggregating disparate data sources and taking that information and funneling in a central repository. robert hanson is, obviously, the poster boy of insider threats for the fbi. he certainly had numerous red flags and indicators and risk factors along that 20-year

spectrum that multiple people saw. one person saw his sexual deviance. another saw his history of security violations. another knew about how sensitive his position was and what access to to sensitive information he had. the problem is there was no one person that saw all of those things. and when you take this approach with those red flags and indicators, the red flags in isolation really don't mean much. it's the combination of those red flags. so that's why he went unnoticed for so long. no one person could kind of see all of this information in one place and make an objective assessment of miseriesing level. of miseriesing level. this is the last slide, but i guess i'll end the fact that the unfortunate truth that there is no silver bullet. i think a lot of people are looking for the one thing that you should be looking for, the one action, the one tool or technology that can solve this problem. and unfortunately, there is no

silver bullet with. i think if there is a silver bullet, it's the combination of all of these different things. that's what's going to be most powerful in order to combat this problem. it's certainly not an easy task. there's a lot to look at, there's a lot to collect, a lot of time and money and resources put in place to actually have the most effective insider threat problem, but it's such a large and expanse iive problem d have so many damaging consequences, but it's certainly worth devoting some resources. i know that my biggest, my biggest hitch is that with limited time and resources instead of putting all resources into one aspect, it's about spreading that out and really trying to get as much as you can across the sphere. because as identify harped for the -- i've harped for the last 20 minutes, it's really the combination of information across this multidimensional spectrum that is going to give us any possible chance of combating the insider threat issue.

that's all i've got. [applause] questions? be -- >> hi. you mentioned the difficulty of developing the psychosocial dimension. how much of what you have now or the industry has now is still anecdotal, and how much of it is, like, systematic studies? >> so specifically for the psychosocial, there's been a lot of really great research to look at some of the psychology of spies. there's a lot out there. a lot of really great research to get at that. the problem is there really are no studies or research that compare all of that great information to a controlled population to really see what's diagnostic. because, again, what we're seeing within the community is, okay, look for a narcissist. narcissism.

i don't know if anybody else has interacted with the fbi, but find me a special agent who doesn't have a little bit of narcissism in them. not saying it's not a good thing to be looking for, but when you're in an insider threat program and charged with proactively looking at your people, if you start with narcissism, you're not limiting your population by that much. at least in the bureau. of but similar with other risk factors as well. it's the same thing with the financial considerations and the foreign travel and the foreign contact. it's really about finding what's diagnostic. and so i had mentioned we've conducted a study where we've tried to assess some of the diagnostics features of those risk factors. we are in the process of drafting up those findings. prepublication review is a big thing, so maybe in, like, five years it'll be out there. but it's certainly something that people realize the necessity of getting into it, and i think in the next couple of years it's only going to garner more support.

>> for the psychological indicators of someone turning, you know, like they're turning into a zombie or something, right? i could see there being a lot of potential good data sources for intelligence from psych evaluations and other, you know, interesting things, human resources. and excuse my ignorance here, i don't know what the limitations are, so i'm asking what are the limitations op your ability to pull there those data sources and utilize it for profiling? >> i think one of the biggest limitations for specifically the psych evaluation and, again, this is not limited by any means to the fbi or government, is that a lot of the psych evaluations are considered medical, so they're protected under hipaa laws. and that's proved a huge, a huge barrier in all of the groups that i've talked to about how to actually get that information. so what i think, where i think

the community is going is figuring out ways to kind of take that diagnostic, you know, those diagnoses and break them down so that they're not clinical, but that you're still getting at the factors that are important. again, there's still a lot of work to figure that out. right. that still means that, but you can't, you can't use clinical terms from the dsm. that's where you kind of draw that line into medical territory. so that's what i think the biggest challenge is. >> hi, you mentioned taking reports from coworkers that observe things about people. is it of more value to have of anonymous reports or to have the person name who the reporter is? >> i think both prove beneficial, actually. i know that we certainly have a problem in the bureau. i think there's a large sense of camaraderie between our agents

that might not, might not enable someone to be more forthright when they're reporting something. so anonymous reporting system might work best in environments like that where you fear that people won't report unless it's anonymous. ideally, you would like to know who's reporting it so then you could then follow up with them. i do think the critical aspect any type of coworker, supervise reporting mechanism is that nothing that's reported triggers any type of specific punitive action. that's the biggest thing, and especially with some of the psychosocial indicators and all of the indicators. no one thing is meant to trigger anything. so it's just a combination of things. just because you have financial problems or you're argumentative and abrasive in the workplace, that doesn't mean anything. it just means that you might be a layer up, and we might want to look into you a little bit more. >> hi.

elise axlerod, hello. my question is about personality versus the narcissist diagnosis. you mentioned not going to dsm because that's hipaa, but is personality accessible in a way that these diagnoses might not be? >> in a couple of different ways. and, again, we're still trying to figure out the best way to do that. and there are limitations. in an ideal world, we would like to have clinical psychologists conduct tests on our employees and then take that information because it's value -- validated and tested. as we just mentioned, that's not really a feasible option. so in my talks with other people within the community, we've been toying around the ideas of, again, creating a reporting mechanism, asking specific questions not geared as you think that a person is narcissistic, but asking about behavioral manifestations. so if you're a supervisor, being

able to answer a questionnaire that has at least -- based on your knowledge as a supervisor, has elise ever acted argumentmenttive or abrasive in the workplace? what are her interactions like with her coworkers? basically getting at behavioral manifestations so the supervisor isn't necessarily providing his opinion, his l psychological opinion of you, simply just answering questions on things that he has or has not observed in terms of what you've behaviorally acted in the workplace. i'm see that as being probably one of the most feasible ways to get at this problem because you're taking out the clinical aspect, you're taking out any type of, any type of sensitivities, or personality or psychology, and you're solely just linking how a person acts to what that a might possibly mean -- to what that might possibly mean. >> and what do you do when somebody goes critical on your

indicator score? [laughter] >> what do you mean when somebody goes critical? sorry, i don't -- >> [inaudible] >> classified. i can't -- [laughter] discuss that. we have a variety of measures in place and a lot of other groups of similar measures to -- it's a struggle. i think that's one of the biggest struggles within the community is what you do. because, again, even if somebody 100%, that doesn't mean they're a malicious insider. it just means that they have all of these risk factors. they could be further back on the spectrum. and i think one of the things that we also try to promote and why it's important to get plugged into your hr departments is that it's not necessarily just about detecting, it's about deterring. so if somebody triggers 100% but, you know, we look at them and we can't determine that they've done anything, that 100% is based off of these risk factors that are normal to a person. they're going through financial

problems or marital problems, or they're acting out in the workplace. so we also like to use the analogy that it's like rumple strips on the side of the road. you have a person who's going straight, if we can identify when they start to veer off someone who's 100% and try to push them back straight on the road by giving them resources through our hrd., you know, having -- hr department, you know, having our employee assistance program, having somebody to talk to, getting them financial help, things like that, that can also help to kind of steer that. >> you speak to the data aggregation aspect of it? i understand data from multiple sources, but getting how you get that data considering that if you rely on your i.t. shop, you're actually relying on the people that you are looking at. can you speak at all about that? >> yeah. i mean, you raise a really big problem, too, which is something that we deal with and every

other program i've talked to deals with too is who watches the watchers which comes into play when you're getting this i.t. information or system information from your i.t. specialists. it's something i think the community still struggles with. i know that we have mechanisms in place to kind of watch the watchers, but it's a big problem. in terms of literally how you aggregate that data, it takes a lot of building relationships with all of these other entities. that's another thing i'm seeing as i talk to a lot of people within the community, that again, it's a multidimensional problem. you have tons of stakeholders that each need to the kind of give information. hr needs to give personnel information, i.t. needs to give some audit logs. for us, counterintelligence agencies gives threat information. and the personalities involved with trying to get some of that information prove pretty difficult. but technically, aggregating

that within one central repository, that's kind of where we're trying to go with it, if that answers your question. >> so i want to ask you a question. so are there studies out there that, for example, have been put forth to kind of bring forth now these indicators? like, for example, we know that there is a lot of studies maybe that can be cited to really profile or put that indicator as an important one in this aspect rather than another one. can you sed light on that? -- shed light on that? >> yeah. there's certainly a lot of research out there. i think it's kind of ox si moronic, but there's more research on the psychology side of things than there is on a lot of the cyber and contextual though we have more capabilities

on the cyber and contextual side than the psychological or psychosocial. again, the research that i'm aware of within the psychological community is that there are a lot of risk factors that have been identified, but they solely focus on the bad population. they look at these are all of the psychological elements of spies. but, again, they haven't really compared that to try and understand what's actually diagnostic and then, again, we get into the problems that we discussed that we can't really attain these psychological characteristics from our employees because of all of the sensitivities and other issues involved. so there's a lot of research. i think it's just about pushing it forward a little bit in terms of how to take that content and operationalize it. >> some of the characteristics you mentioned up there, the psychosocial, are really cultural and different. there are cultural differences in the way people behave. do you take that into

consideration when you do your analysis? >> well, i think if somebody -- and, again, i'm not necessarily saying that we're doing all of this, it's just kind of in an ideal world. yeah, i think that's an inherent issue when you kind of delve into turning something that's so subjective, trying to make it objective that there are inherent biases in terms of where you're getting this information from. if you're asking coworkers or supervisors to provide this information, there's a bias there both in terms of their opinion, but also as you mentioned, what that behavior might actually mean. and i think if anyone is going to try and imelement some of these indicators -- implement some of these indicators operationally, that's exactly right. that's a key issue to keep in mind. and i think where that ties in is the notion that there's no specific action from one of these things. and you have to take all of this information with a grain of salt and insure that you're not penalizing someone or enacting any type of punitive action on

them solely because their supervisor reported that they were acting weird in the office. which, again, that could be a cultural difference. they're not talking to people because they don't feel comfortable with the cultural divide. so i think that's -- it's tricky, but i think if you implement something like this, you just have to really be cognizant of how you use the information. uh-huh. >> just curious because of social media, so all over the place how are you bringing in that data today if you guys are bringing in that data today or in a program? >> social media information is certainly something that i think it's on everybody's radar. we're exploring it. i think -- [laughter] that's the best i can say. [laughter]

[inaudible conversations] >> as an fbi person on everyone else's -- [inaudible] >> i'm speaking from, i'm speaking from my experiences in the fbi's insider threat program. so just looking at if pbi population, not -- at fbi population, not from anybody else. and then my interactions with other groups, how they deal with their own employees. >> okay -- [inaudible] >> i, that's not my purview. i wouldn't know. i do know that with the recent executive order and kind of the noteworthiness of insider threat that the fbi does have a mission to kind of reach out to industry. that's not something that i can speak about though, unfortunately. >> well, we have all these rules, regulations that we're supposed to share data.

the only problem is when you share, you become liable because how a person interprets what you're saying. now, when you have this stuff here, is there anything about the standardization of the insider threat across the federal government and the dod? so we can be able to turn it around and give that to the commercial world and our mission partners? >> i think that's something that, that's something that we're still trying to put together. again, i'm speaking from the fbi's programs. what i know is that between the ncix and the fbi, we have the national insider threat task force who has the objective of taking that executive order and breaking it down through the various government non-title 50 industry levels. we can maybe touch base offline, maybe point you in the direction of somebody who might be better able to answer that. ..

but i can't really talk about that in this forum. okay. well, thank you. [applause] >> and we will leave this now,

take you live to the center for strategic and international studies here in washington where they're hosting a discussion on diplomacy and muslim world. we will be hearing from walter douglas, foreign service officer is worked in pakistan, saudi arabia and turkey. is currently the public affairs council at the u.s. embassy in india. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning and welcome to csis. for those of you who haven't express our beautiful new building, i hope you enjoy it. i'm jon alterman, the director of the middle east program and it's my great pleasure to introduce to you walter douglas. walter was with us as a visiting fellow a couple of years ago and worked on a very interesting project on engaging audiences in muslim majority countries.

and the point that walter is trying to work through was the problem that he'd been out in the field, and felt that washington was somehow disconnected from the field and had to be a way to not only go from washington out but also the field in, especially when you're trying to persuade audiences. actually and i met out in the field. we met in paris on several years ago when he was spokesman for the embassy there. -- riyadh. walter has a large string of jobs talking to muslim audiences on behalf of the united states. not only in saudi arabia and pakistan where he was just before he came to csis, now he's in india which has one of the largest muslim populations in the world although it's not a muslim majority country. i saw walter in india about a year ago, and walter brought

that same combination of intellectual acuity and enthusiasm, which so much of have -- so much of us have come to appreciate through history. walter started out in advertising, something i found a little surprising. because walter has been focused from the beginning on how do you actually speak to audiences. not only telling the audience what you want the audience to know but how the audience and the way the audience wants to hear. and walter did something that i think very few people in the state department are able to do, not only did he sit down and put his thoughts into a document, a document which i hope you'll read and then he did what a lot of officer do is, then he went to the clearing process. that explains a little bit of why now that he's been in india for a year, he is back with us.

i'm delighted to welcome him here. i'm delighted to hear some of the ideas he conveys in his presentation, and now look for to helping moderate the discussion with all of you and his linux. so ladies and gentlemen, walter douglas. [applause] >> it's wonderful to be back at csis. [inaudible] excuse me. jon, thank you very much for the introduction. as jon said we met in riyadh in 2006 when i was -- actually bob casey was in riyadh with me at that time. we hit it off and i've always found him to be one of the sharpest observers of what's going on in the middle east, and

i find myself still quoting him on what's going on over the years. so it's wonderful to be back here with jon. when i was at cis dashing csis, i was able to benefit from his input pic specifically he read this report twice. first time taking a very rough peace and shaping it and the second time refining it. it would be nothing, a shadow of itself without john's input. so thank you very much. i'd like to thank a few of the people who are here today before get into it. one is i should think the state department for giving me the detail to come over to csis. and it was really an eye-opener for me at a lot of the strategic thinking i've learned when i came here. i've been able to get back to the state department and the things we're doing in india today. i'd also like -- gene is up in the front. i might refer to we sometimes, and she was with me. she was the intern on the

project and a nothing about public diplomacy i think when she started and left as an expert but she went through more reports and that sort of thing i can ever imagine what a fantastic research assistant. i want to thank her. you see her name is on the report as well. terence smith is here somewhere. parents was at sea i dashing csis with me and he went -- he helped some of the logistics to help up the report. then, of course, nothing is final without thinking my wife and my family who are over there and so they put up with a going to places like riyadh and islamabad. without them and probably drove the family of a crazy that way. but i must say the result was i got through this report and see a lot more of the world which is very interesting, so thank you. jon was hinting at why this report, what was the origin of it, and i hope some of you have had a chance to read. it went up on the csis website last week and i'm not going to go through a blow-by-blow because i think you can read it but i just want to point some

the things of how this came about and what it takes us. as jon said was sitting come if you look at 26 reports since 9/11 dealing with the middle east, and the most amazing thing is how few of us focus in the field. there were bits and pieces but nobody said how do you do this stuff overseas. in this sense, we had a lot of advice coming out but the best that they could come up with the overriding recommendation, just give public diplomacy more money. that's easy to do but money doesn't solve all your problems, how use it and how you employ when you're overseas. that was one of the tenants are doing as to what goes on over there, how does it work? so over the years i've been associate with public diplomacy for quite a while and spent the last 10 years really working in that region, the arab middle east, pakistan, afghanistan. so as to look at what our officers are doing in that region to come up with a number of suggestions, challenges, i

stayed away from policy because that's the white house prerogative. but really as implementers what do we do overseas to get there? i would like to say i've taken a lot from what i've seen and heard but everything i put in this report is why. it's not the state department's report. i came over on a detail which mean i could use independent thinking. i just want to make that -- that a major i speak in my voice and nobody else's. something else that really i think was very interesting coming out of his, sort defining what public diplomacy as. there's been a lot of talk about this since 9/11, but basically, and there's been a lot of reporting on its i don't think public diplomacy officers -- i should define what it is. one thing that was striking, one thing that came out in the report which i found interesting is we hear a lot about

messaging. washington to messaging, are you getting this message right. public diplomacy something larger than that. messaging a certain something we do in the press a public diplomacy is a full and play of programs and platforms that we use to engage the audience is out there, to make the more receptive towards american policy. what we spend most our money on in these public diplomacy programs that go on overseas. at him, as was pointed out, it really is the son of these two things. adam is no longer with the state department so i can mention it. it's true, we probably spent three quarters of our money working on programs such as fulbright international visitors and really targeting those people that we think can make a big difference to the landscape that is out there. that way since you have the rifle the effect of targeting certain people who we think are very important, and the shotgun

effect when we use the media to reach broader audience. i think that was not fully understood and something i wanted to put in the report and it's not just messaging how you get to work out. it's not just messaging how you engage an audience and it's not messaging how you sort of make them see what we're doing and show that we have a point of view that's very respectable. i think it's important if you look at the cover of the report, you see was on there. it's not a spokesman who is on the. is actually an english teaching office. someone who is in pakistan with me and i thought he really stood for the other side of public diplomacy that isn't often reported. but the fact is english teaching is something we used very effectively out there. retarget to certain audiences that we think perhaps are more at risk, but it's a way we get out our word to a different audience and give them a broader sense of what's going on in the world and maybe they can inform other people about what's going on as well as get ahead in their

own lives because english is such an advantage to anyone other. i thought it was important to have that on the cover and not a spokesman at a podium. finally, i would like to say for why the report, i think there's something else that motivates a lot of us. public diplomacy officers in the field of very patriotic. so many of us just feel really strongly about what we are doing but nobody had looked at who we are and what we were doing. innocence this is a port i wanted to come out and say here's how we see what's going on overseas. here's how we think it should be implemented. this is how we will take something that comes from the white house and then shape it for the audience that is out there. but innocents the heroes of my report on that public diplomacy function in the state department and they really are the ones were charged with leading the public diplomacy efforts worldwide won a one to sort of tell their stories and get out what goes on. that's why took one of countries i spoke to public diplomacy officers in of years i've been engaging on this, this is the summation of this.

i really wanted to get -- i think the real heroes here are all these colleagues in the state department that are overseas working in very difficult environments trying to get that word out, engaging audiences and making them more receptive towards our policy initiatives. if you look at the report itself, and they don't want to go through it all, but basically i think as i said earlier i haven't engage in the policy structure because that is something the white house does but i very much trying to do is give a how to outlined how we do overseas, some the challenges and opportunities we have. just to highlight a couple of them, more than a couple, but one thing i think is very interesting when we approached societies i divided for the reports sake in telling america's story versus engaging in behaviors and attitudes within the country. and i think a lot of people are sort of unclear exactly which one we put emphasis on. what i said is every country will be different.

that's why the guys in the field are so important because they can help us work through what goes on after. what are we trying to do here? are we trying to engage and tell them about what we're doing about our policies? or do we want to take people overseas who might turn violent and sort of make it so okay, they don't take that route. not that they will necessarily olove us but if they don't codified about. in this part of the world after 9/11 it's a question we have to ask. every countries different to everyone of them will have a different percentage assigned to one side or the other. it's one thing i wanted to highlight very much and i think that everybody understands that we have these dual functions out there. i also felt and i mentioned this in the report that sometimes we need a third office and we need one in pakistan to really engage on the changing attitudes and behaviors to a little different than traditional press work and exchanges. it was important to point out that the number of different ways you can post this question even outside the existing

structure of the embassy. in places like pakistan and afghanistan we have so much money that's given to us to do public diplomacy. where the luxury of being able to create anything we want and that's what i tried to capture. even offices without all those resources can do a lot to change things. another point i brought across all the time is the diversity of audiences. one thing is you do hear people say the muslims or something like that. i really want to say that in many different audience and many different types of muslims believe in a lot of different things out of. was important is people feel a to do that right away a few communities believe one thing, others believe another. sometimes when you're back in washington people don't understand those differences so well. i thought it was interesting to sort of look at how the field looks at when they get into the country trying to size up who is what, who is more susceptible to a message, and we have to work hard with, whose important, who's not, that sort of thing. the diversity out there is incredible. it also ties in with the need,

therefore, to speak to these people in the languages that they speak. i say this in india it's funny, i constantly bring this up. did you ever see to indian speaking was to each other? basically lets the leading indian language in common, in which case they will use english but even the best english speakers -- you get a standing out in the middle east. you can of people who communicate wonderfully in english but the moment they engage each other they use their own language. we need to be in those languages. is where they say what's most important to them. it's where you basically have to listen to them to what they say. not rely on english. it's interesting, english-language newspapers you see out there, i remember in pakistan i was speaking to an editor and i said what it is about? he said these are for you, foreigners. this is not something that pakistan is used to communicate with each other.

and i thought that was a really important insight and it's one thing we have to make sure we don't rely on english leverage other to try to interpret what's going on because that's not where the real action is. it's in the vernacular and it's very important to be there. i want to talk about security which i did in here, and i -- obviously in afghanistan, iraq, pakistan and libya and yemen could go into today, security is a huge concern for us. the other places while we get these indices much more secure than anywhere else, real public diplomacy work takes outside embassies. i argue that the people we want to reach generally don't come into our facilities. that's where the real value is, going into their institutions in getting them out of the i quoted thomas friedman who came to army member turkey after the bombings in turkey, looked at our new consulate and remarked that this was a bad message. it can be or to difficult

message out there. it can be buddies public diplomacy officers can you get out of that environment. you want to go to the people who really don't care what our embassies and consulates look like. that's vital. that's why that's not such a key summon block for public diplomacy officers except in those very high risk security posts i just mentioned but is very important to see these other places to get out and that's what public diplomacy officers do. finally -- not finally, sorry. the next step in the report, i hope you read it, i set out a series of recommendations. one thing very important is, and they go back to this 26 reports written since 9/11, the one recommendation as i said for everybody was to spend more money on public diplomacy. that's not going to happen. basically what i tried to come up with, with gene's help, was we came up with low-cost or no cost solutions. the state department is not looking to dump tons of money into something new.

in this environment will be a while before the able to do that. i think what we came up with a lot things we can do by shifting emphasis, canfield differently, real thinks the state department to do. i believe some of them are under way for a certain extent and i'm looking for deception going and speaking to love people to find just where we are that way in the state department. finally let me wrap up and say, the limitations of this report, the limitation is obvious. there's a whole world out there. people said why didn't you cover in tunisia? i think would be great if somebody does. i'm certainly, in india now i'm finding a whole series of public diplomacy ideas that are different than a had in my report because i'm getting a totally different environment where we are working with the country that it 60-70% approval

rate but very different from what we have in the region that is covered in this report. so what i'm saying is the limitations just because of time, money, effort, all that surfing but i'm hoping this will spark more reports to look at what we are doing overseas. i think this is a vital area that we understand public diplomacy. i'm delighted, i'm going to which the state department to speak the number of people who do that i'm going to give a report and talk about the importance of what goes on in the field as something very different than what they've seen. i'm going to stop to pick whatever like to do, i hope i give have given me a bit of an overeager i hope you have a copy of the report if you've read it or looking for to reading. i think there's a lot here that really will define something that hasn't been seen before. i was glad that some academics are brought into this project said we have not had a report from the field and the are eagerly awaiting this. as jon makin it was a little late in coming out. the research, but now they have

something in the public diplomacy courses where they can look at what we doing in the field and trying to make judgments that might be different than what we hear if there relying solely on material coming out. so thank you very much, and i look forward to questions and answers. [applause] >> thank you, walter. as you suggest, there's a lot to chew on there. one thing that you didn't talk about at all in your report really was the issue of metrics. and one of the things i see in the state department is a fascination with metrics for social media because social media tends to produce very precise metrics. from your position in the field, what is your sense of the role

of metrics? how do you use them? how are people misusing metrics in ways that we have to stop? >> metrics is a question that is really a difficult one for public diplomacy. you mentioned i was in advertising before, and you always had a product to sell or not it is a very interesting metric but if it didn't sell well they would fire the ad agency. so you would pay that way. now that was always the ad agency salt but they tended to blame blame the ad agency first. metrics are something that is are difficult. we know the public diplomacy in u.s. aid contributed to the fall of the soviet union. nobody has been able to have metrics for how that happen. we talked it but it did play well in undercutting the intellectual the office of union. trying to measure metrics is for difficult because you can measure input but you can't measure output. there is some work done in the private sector, mostly someone takes action to understand they

absorb that id. for example, i mentioned it's not just a tweak to do, it's the reach weights that you've scored something with this. that's one way we do. but nobody has come up with an idea because they have changed the way of looking at the united states based on what we have given them the many have tried to do that, very difficult to do. i did come up with a recommendation and this is over the years speaking to help people, hill staffers if they have said one thing we need our narratives about what you're doing. how to stop play out writ large. it's something i think we can all improve in what we're doing is printing of all these public diplomacy programs around the world in certain areas and say what of it achieving? what message are we getting out? point to some success stories. not having exact metrics and we moved the needle from 50 to 60% leasing we are putting out these ideas, there's concerted effort, it makes sense. if your narrative makes sense people can probably trust your

onto something. i think that's one of the recommendations i have is get out to the hill, get back to the state department from the field, more about what is going on. >> and with a suggest that the number of people engaged, the number of people who are in our audience is less important than creating a dynamic? and we give them more intend to the dynamics we create rather than the size of the audience? i mean, it sounds me like you're recommending sort of looking at ways and creating ripples rather than trying to measure the force. >> i think that's right. if you go on broadcast television, you get huge numbers. how many of those people are important to influencing policy?

that's an open question. we have those exchange programs and other things we do where we say that someone who is important for the debate. we want to expose them or, maybe get a person on next an exchange program. you are making judges all the time of the valley of the audience that is out there. some more valuable than the others. when you put together you try to then draw the conclusion of which are getting out there, how much you're causing a debate. but to measure the impact is difficult. but you've got to put all these factors together on that one idea you want to get across. there's another idea on how those blend together to give got use all these tools. there are probably at anyone post you could probably draw up a toolkit that would have 20 the things that we basically use, and it's all from using a local staff in the vernacular language to using the ambassador as a speaker, to using exchange broke

ram, bringing out speakers into these countries. all these different things in a toolkit to get the message out, getting to different audiences we think are important but how you measure the impact, where m. is the needle, that's difficult spent as a marriage how do you think of the problems as you allocate your resources across the entire to get? >> at the beginning of going anywhere, i think that to sort of sit back and say what are the objectives here and try -- this is something i learned at csis, going through a number of exercises with you and others, was to try to say what the goals are up front but don't worry about the intimidation by the way but simply set out the strategic goals. i think there's a tendency often do nix implementations and strategic goals and you got to see them as something separate and then go reach into the toolkit of what works best in that environment. that becomes a judgment call. probably more an art than science. but for example, if you're in a very open country like india, you can do a lot of things but i guess in getting out of my --

were the report -- were the report is due to my difficulties in other places where it's more close. in the middle east you find a tremendous variety of countries, some more open than others. some can surprise you. when i was in riyadh i was amazed at how open they were too engaging on so many topics. outside of saudi arabia people don't realize and when you're over there i think you've been able to engage quite a few and you sort of know that receptivity to what's going on. anyway, you try to judge what's the best way to engage the audience is i want to reach, and usually there's always a blend of those two things, the broad media but the more narrow targeted approach. >> on pursue one other line before we open it up. you are mostly spent your career overseas but you had a lovely here in washington. when you were presumably part of a target for other embassies, outreach programs, other embassies efforts at public

diplomacy here in washington, who do you think was especially good? what kinds of things did you see as a target where you said, you know what, i recognize what they're doing and they're being effective and we should try to take a page from that and do it when we are overseas? >> that's an interesting question. i guess when it struck me is how rarely i would think people did engage me. you know, often the officers are working on specific countries, that one embassy will engage them engaging more broadly you don't come across it as much in the state department. that said, you do end up with some events. you do end up with certain things -- >> you are at csis. right? >> when i was your? yeah, we engage with a lot of audiences i have to say and it was very interesting. i don't think anybody targeted me the same way i would have

expected, and i would think they could probably do more of that. i think the think tanks at csis being my favorite obviously, have a lot of these ideas and a lot of these people they want to engage more with, but i don't see as much as i would've expected. certainly wouldn't look at audiences when i was your of which are the think tanks as well, csis, and i look at the audiences and i was sort of struck by some industry people but i would have expected more. and i think probably maybe it's because i mentioned this to the public diplomacy function is unique to other countries don't seem to quite have it the same way. and so i found the state department people were much more around the city, getting around and i see that overseas engaging in think tanks overseas. i notice other countries may be doing it a bit less than we do and perhaps don't have a dedicated function. they will have a spokesman but not a guide to seize the broader picture of how will i influence

about what we are doing. >> interesting. as i look in the audience i see a lot of people who know a lot more about public diplomacy than i do so let me turn it over to you. yes, sir. to me a favor, three things. wait for a microphone, identify yourself, and ask only one question so we have a chance to go around the room. >> thank you so much, douglas. a good presentation. i am a ritual for pakistan. you were recommended approach in muslim country, the same yardstick for kingdoms like saudi arabia or -- you know, some of the middle eastern country and pakistan, like a democratic country? thank you. >> one thing that really comes out here is the bride that's out there and they would have to shift gears. at one point i talk about --

kind of guy you can understand differences in the regional culture, the local cultures, the different arabic that is spoken at the pics i think what's important is i think we do recognize adversity anybody who works overseas sees the. what works in saudi arabia is a necessary something that will work in jordan. they have different levels of openness. for example, in saudi arabia, we have an american archaeology team out there, and that was something kind of new and different. but in jordan they have had in their for 100 years, even longer. even going back into the ottoman days. something special there. every country have to look at it as a different activity. that's one reason why so much i believe in you have to have the guy in the field, man or woman, trying to understand and interpret these societies and getting back what works best year. as you said, some are open, some

have a democratic political process, others don't. others have a monarchy. all these systems really demand a different part of the toolkit to go into action. >> how do you think working a monarchy quick you are now in the world's largest democracy. you served in one of the world's most important monarchies. how do you think about the targets for public diplomacy in a system where you were not trying to target elected officials? >> some people say there's an audience of one when you have a monarchy, but i think it is much broader. there are a lot of influences there. the king goes out, goes on trips to meet his, i guess his subjects, and so there are a lot of people giving advice. and so i think the important thing is to are those people. you want to engage in as much as

possible. i think all over that region you deal with very varying degrees of democracy and lack of democracy, but you still always have people who influence the debate. you are always going to have a guy who will go on tv and talk about something. talk shows are huge business out in this part of the world. those guys, even if they support the government, they will have different ways of portraying it. and then there are those who don't support the government so much and will have a different way. i think the key thing is to find out who are the people. for example, a systematic watching of television, something that kids are really good at, can often, you'll find who are the people who speak most of the subjects you won't. and within three weeks you can come up with, i'm noticing these certain people coming up. that are influencing the debate. you probably want to engage those guys. they're going to be important to you. and so i think it's listen, look

at who is out there, and come up with who are those people who are important. it's not just the one guy at the top. >> bruce gregory, george washington university. you made a strong case for looking at public diplomacy in the field, and for the most part looked at the state department's role in the field. but you've also served in large platform indices whether our variety of departments and agencies and in india have an annual strategic dialogue that involves many, many different agencies. could you reflect on who does public diplomacy in the field, in addition to the state department, and what's the state department's role in leveraging those actors? >> well, certainly one i can think of a large place is usaid. and pakistan it was a huge usaid operation to. in india it's much smaller. and other countries it and other countries if there is to engage in huge and it varies wherever you go. they are influencing the public debate. they do have a public role.

it's a bit different from what the state department is. they generally coordinate with us and everything to do and so you hope there's a unified message going out but there's certainly key communicators when you're overseas. there are other agencies like health and human services could be a big win. generally doing cdc. there are all these other people out there doing things. the key thing is want to capture a lot of the good work they're doing and explain why it's important what did you and show that partnership between the united states and these other branches of government. it's not just strict policy. a lot of these other things are going on. it's important that people see that. you're right though you in my report i focus on the state department because as i mentioned we had the lead role but there are others who support the efforts and give a lot, do a lot to support public diplomacy. >> good morning.

i'm from the beurre of middle east north african affairs at the state department. walter and i worked together in the office of press and public diplomacy. walter, i would love your comments on how you approached issues of religious faith and tolerance, both in saudi arabia and in pakistan. and some of the great programs that i know you did in saudi arabia i think would be of interest. what i'm really curious about is how you avoided and inflammatory exchange or engagement, but rather kept it more at a level of mutual understanding and of interest in the issue on both sides. >> religion is a fascinating one. i think we have to realize, establishment clause isn't to avoid religion. it avoids a specific religion and that, it's a very effective way to engage people. i keep think of someone who cannot to saudi arabia when i was there who was jewish and his father recently died, and in the

jewish faith you read everyday certain passages to honor your father. we mentioned that two saudi audiences and they say that's great, honoring your father. they just love it. so here was someone or he was quite open about what he was doing religiously and they respected the. i think we have to be open about that. it's something that's very important for them. there's much more religion in their come in their daily debate than you might find you. and i think we can't shy away from that but rather embrace it as something that is very worthwhile. and explaining, i guess one thing explaining how the united states is religious. that's always a surprise for audiences when they come here. i quote a journalist who said when he was studying in boston, there were like 10 churches on his block. he never realized americans were so religious. al-jazeera today program and found out their surprise it was pretty good. the religious situation was good here at i think that something

that is a barrier and breeds and lack of trust and who we are but religion is so important to them that sometimes what they see coming out of america, it doesn't portray that as much as that is part of our lives. i think in the state department we have to embrace the. be very open about the we are religious and believe that, too because it opens up a lot of doors for you. when you speak about that. >> the other piece of course is when american religious figures do things that are polarizing in the middle east, or seem to be disrespectful. is anything you can do other than to explain, you do, nobody speaks for the government and wiway of a big, messy democracy? >> we do that a lot. [laughter] and there are a couple of publicized papers recently in which we need to consistently engage on that and trie trying o explain the first amendment. the first amendment is a tough

one because most countries don't have it. i mean, we are it innocents. the lot more restrictions even in western europe and what you can say than the united states. it's a hard concept to get across because those people can use that an agenda can get a lot of press even though they have a small following in the united states. so while you can talk about the first amendment you have to explain that these are not mainstream people, that what they're saying is that something that a lot of americans are picking up or a lot of americans who. yes, certain ones do but the best defense is to be open as you can't about. don't try to ignore it, don't try to hide it or try to explain it and in some ways let the message fall flat in the united states and say okay, what effect does this happen what we do. often at the proof is it has very little affect. so we are constantly dealing with those guys. and it's troublesome. but we have to explain this is our society and how we do it.

but look at the results. >> today throw back at does the same thing of for all the people who are endorsing -- you throw this all in the same basket? >> yeah, that's right. we hear that constantly. how very do muslims are. in the field you get a sense of that. you realize they are like you and me. they just want to live a good life, get the kids educate them all of the. a lot of people recognize a problem they've got. when i was in pakistan,. [inaudible] i used to say america, don't abandon us. it's not a message you back your very often but it's something that is felt there. right after we killed bin laden, i was there and i was talking to the driver and it turned out he was from abbottabad. and i said. [laughter] , have you ever seen the house where bin laden was? he said, i haven't but my family is all going by it now.

my family is looking at it. he said, i'm glad you got that guy because last august my brother-in-law was in a market where a bomb went off. he was killed. so my sister and her three daughters, three children, don't have a father. she moved back in with us. he said these guys cause a lot of trouble here and i'm glad you did what you did. if the message you don't hear back here as much. but on a daily basis when we're out there you hear that a lot. these are people trying to sting which themselves from the stereotypes of what muslims are like. they're speaking from the hard and she can't help but be affected by it and understand those differences any society. are the troublemakers? sure there are but both societies know as well and they don't like it anymore than we do. >> a question all the way in the back. >> thank you. my name is lynn. like a number of others in this room of overlap with walter

professionally. personal i was a capitol hill staffer and lead a staff delegation to the region. he was very gracious to help us. later during his last days with the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs for whom i can work for you and have. now i'm at the broadcasting board of governors where our governing board has an opportunity to change the focuses of the agency over time. and in the wake of 9/11, for example, they created the middle east broadcasting network and i wondered walter, if you'd like to address how the personalities and changing of the undersecretary's overtime may have affected how the muslim majority countries are approached either through the way the united states speaks to them through public diplomacy or programs that have been launched or relaunched over time? thank you. >> that could be a minefield. i could speak most about the

ones i worked for, judith mchale, and her approach was kind of different and one that i think still lives on today in the way i very much liked, and that is the u.s. -- urged the state department but it wasn't a complete merger allen strategic planning functions did follow from usia and she then had to discover and realize the importance of bringing that in and out that she did a very good job of giving us a tool to do strategic plan and get us focusing on the. this was 10 years after the merger. it's invaluable. i think more work needs to be done of that but i sort of think this planning and we've got limited resources and the more you can plant what's important and not spend your money and your resources on the personnel on all that on what's on important, that makes a huge difference. i think one of the most difficult thing about that decision is how much it's taken.

matt armstrong has written about it in his book about the position has been vacant about a third of history and the turnover has been pretty fast. that hurts public diplomacy. we like to have people in there and emphasizing what we can do and putting resources and giving some direction to what we do here spent why do you think it has been empty so long? >> it's an interesting question that i would think a lot of people who want to do it, and usually when i have spoken to them they enjoyed. he had a great time and wished he could do more. and my sense is that in its harder -- they're generally worked out -- they don't use career people there, so to find the right person is out there who they think can do a good job, seven for the state department, takes a little more time perhaps then something

else. probably every case is separate. i do, judith mcgill came in quite quickly when the obama administration came in. so clearly, you know, they move very clear way to bring in as fast as the confirmation process would allow. i'm not sure why an individual basis why the others took so long. and i wish it weren't like that. >> hi, walter. mica schneider. i wanted you to describe for us some of the ways in which your program in saudi arabia try to foster civil society? >> okay. well, i guess i was there at a time 2006-2007 will get some spectacular terrorist attacks early. the saudis were doing a lot on their own but i guess what we

would try to present is a view of how the united states works, maybe there were some things they are that would be worth borrowing. part of it was just exposing people to the united states in a way they never had before. and it was everything from using muslim-americans in mecca to talk about things like how we deal with health problems. the photo exhibit we work with national geographic with tom abercrombie, really introduce the middle east to the united states. they without the exhibit you go to places that americans didn't traditionally go. we parted with the saudi ministry of culture to do that. and hoping that when people saw that, some of the extremist there would say maybe america is not all that bad and that therefore maybe just like america is not something that extremes would say, it will get us the mileage that would make them hesitate, not all americans are bad.

i looked right in front of you -- very innovative and going out and working with a lot of these communities come embassy people had not been before. she was a wonderful asset to have with us but it think just the exposure to an american like that couldn't talk to someone about who they were. there was another project that i greatly admired and that was, it was her breast cancer project tying up the susan g. komen foundation in texas. breast cancer was a terrible problem and saudi arabia is not equipped to handle it. so tying the awareness with susan g. komen was a wonderful project out there that women can together but fully supported by men. they all have wives, daughters and that sort of thing. and that i thought was just a brilliant program to sort of show how you can tackle this problem in which mice a civil societies, and a very fine way

using us as the example because we do that. we tidied the awareness together with a trading. stuff like that i think has a lot of impact. especially the saudis to talk to any attention from the king tells you that we were onto something. >> can you say a little more about gender? i think there's this presumption that foreign policy is a man's game. but i know from what i know of your programming that, like with susan g. komen, you're reaching out all kinds of audiences. as the united states thinks about engaging broadly and we know that women play roles in families determining who participates in boycotts and those sorts of things, how should we think about engaging women as distinct consonant with female audiences, and to what extent should we say we will

talk to foreign policy and over is interested will? >> well, i think the thing is you have to engage women on both levels, as professionals. they fit those opinion leaders positions. there might be fewer of them. to watch lebanese tv is to see all these announcers and reporters who are women and realize that nbc is broadcast in the middle east. spent partly because so many of the presenters are so i tracked if. >> whatever it takes. you know, the fact is they are presenting news and points of view and their you want to work with them on those they're serious, hard-core political issues. but i think then in looking at how you engage a larger grouping, you have to find what's important to them and make sure the things we're talking about are important to them. so, for example, if you sit

there talking about glass ceilings and corporations are something and things like that, that's important for a very small group. it's important but it's not a broad-based effort. effort. i think which have to do is look at something that perhaps does have a large impact on women and that ca can be education to it o be gender-based violence. it could be all these other things that really had a broader society. and maybe share some of our ideas and maybe share it's not about lecturing or doing anything like that. you have to show up we do and see where they can borrow something that might fit with our society. you can't impose this on them. they will work at their own speed and that their own time to do. but probably exposing to somewhere better practices can't hurt. you've also can't explain things that are not so bright but one of the things you get is especially might look at certain aspects of our society. some of our tv shows show quite a lot of this injustice in america. you have to put those in context what they are.

one, they are television shows and not reality. and had to deal frankly with these issues. because i found sometimes these make the greater barriers to understanding the united states than anything else because they see the portrait of america, whether it's accurate or not. general it's not accurate and said i don't like that and say, there's more to america than what you see on those shows. spent reality tv isn't reality? spent jarret springer presents a view of america and they certainly watch it and love it but i also like to think that opera i think is the most part pursue out there that probably put a more positive image of but speaking about real women's issues a broader audience. >> hi. i'm stephen, retired from the u.s. council for international business and i'm looking at this paragraph called the private

sector. and you say free conversation with private sector might be an inexpensive alternative. so if i'm head of the ibm office in mumbai, my job is to make ibm global, a seamless operation, what can they give? what should i do? don't want to get engaged with this? this would like walking on eggshells. so to what extent tenuous global companies play a positive role without cracking the eggshells? >> sure. well, it's interesting because we do work -- if you take someone like microsoft, they have every interest in intellectual property rights that we do and they are very vocal about it. they bring people together, they send them off. they do a lot of things like that. a lot of companies are augmenting what we do are complimenting what we do for

their own reasons, but they happen to hit a lot of our ideas. one thing i would mention the about that, what i thought was so interesting, i really saw this in pakistan. we put out with aig a contract to add agencies and i was part of the gritty to choose one and i found and that been advertising so i could read this some of the mumbo-jumbo they put there. and what was interesting is when you have an ad agency talk about what works, you're nuts just getting a guide -- there is some guy with 25, 30 expenses selling products and has a good sense how this stuff works. so one thing that came through and a lot of these contracts, for example, is don't use sms. that's spam. it's time didn't kind of use sms. who are you going to believe kind of thing. i think these ad agencies were really trying to move product and all that, had a good sense about the tools are, what can work and what can't.

i think we can also learn from some of the failures. i mentioned a mcdonald's campaign ended that was covered in "the new york times" about how they thought they were doing one thing with social media backfired on them and it turned out to be something very different. i think we can learn from what these companies do. but my final conclusion is, it's funny when i go back to india and, looking up a session with an ad agency, i say i want -- what will we be surprised to know about how you communicate in india? i think there's lots of experience we can tap into the. we tend not to be so good metering with the private sector but they have a lot of experience that can tell us an awful lot. >> we have time for one more question right there. >> thank you very much. richard, british embassy. i feel a need to ask a question just to show that we are here and we are listening. [laughter] i wanted to ask about the

balance between effort from washington and effort in country -- huge number of foreign journalists. to what extent can you use them to influence the message that you receiving in country? and what sort of been has been fast experience you've heard of that happening is because once the last sports? >> good examples of engagement of the foreign media here to influence. >> okay. we regularly engage the foreign journalists that are there, and we do it, one, especially the americans have a courtesy because there are fell under can so we are there to help out but also one thing that's interesting is what they like might boomerang back in society. the fact is when i was in pakistan, it was covered and entered into the debate. so we found them very valuable

to trade for something to make sure they have our perspective and what's going on. we also know that they engage with all a lot of people, whatever host country they're in. such as by the questions they ask you learn a lot about a question when we have chats with them. one of the difficult things though is they have difficulty gaining access to a lot of these places. some countries let them in. some don't. some of them. somehow bind us. it's not something, you can use them everywhere all the time that way where they're just not around the they will use level wire reporter of something like that, talk to a local but to get a new times or "washington post" got in there is something different. in pakistan we are very spoiled because almost every major media or session had represented there. in india i can say, ma new delhi is a huge hub for international journalists. at every major media is there. so whatever we are we like them.

we use them. we think it's important to communicate when ask us questions but they also are not our target. they are not the guys who are out there to reach. it sort of what we do in addition to reaching out to whatever the host country is. and i think that's always something to be aware of. for us, a real success is when we see a story that appears, say, in the middle east press or in al-jazeera, something we worked with them on, much more than if something would appear on bbc. and once again, i also get back to vernacular, trust and all that, that certain organizations will grow deeper and have a broader audience than others. so we want to be sure we are clear who we are really trying to work with the most here. >> walter, i want to thank you for presenting not only a fascinating report but also a really broad ranging discussion that demonstrates just how rich the field of public diplomacy

is. i wanted to thank y'all for coming, and look forward to seeing you again soon. thank you. >> thank you. thank you, jon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of this discussion about the middle east and diplomacy, you can find it online. we will have it up at

c-span.org. want to turn to afghanistan. "the associated press" reporting that white house national security advisor susan rice is in afghanistan today. she's meeting with president hamid cars and other officials as part of her first overseas trip as a white house adviser. -- president karzai. president karzai rejected a recommendation to finalize a troop withdrawal agreement with use. he is choosing to defer the decision until after afghanistan's elections which are scheduled for april. the ap also reports that susan rice plans to visit with u.s. troops while she's in the region. over on our companion network c-span at noon eastern starting any moment, the cato institute will be hosting a discussion on america's nuclear weapons policy. this discussion comes in conjunction with the institute recently released paper. ..

again, i remember in northwest ohio depending on the day if the antenna on the house was working right you get two channels and sometimes you didn't get any channels because it depends on the light so the industry has

changed so rapidly. i want to make sure we have things out there and the regulations in the books that spurred this innovation because if not mistaken on the cell phone side about 3.8 million jobs. ♪

[background sounds] >> november 25, 1963 approximately 1 million people lined the route of president kennedy's funeral procession from the u.s. capitol to arlington national cemetery. millions more watched the television coverage. starting tonight at 8:30 on c-span2, much nbc coverage of resident kennedy's state funer funeral. >> during the president's historic trip to china -- how mrs. nixon was looking at a package of cigarettes and the package he said i understand you also admired the pandas at the

zoo. he said we will make sure that you have to han panned us to goe with. it was important for her to support her husband. just her being there with so much goodwill and everyone was at the end of the trips where the news requests would come out and they would always see what a wonderful job they did. >> last week the foreign relations subcommittee held a hearing on north africa and the political and economic and security situation there. government officials and regional experts testified about recent develop and in morocco, algeria and tunisia and focused specifically on the security situation in libya and the threat of al qaeda. the hearing is about one hour and 45 minutes.

>> we called a hearing to order this is the subcommittee on near east and asia affairs on the foreign relations committee. i want to welcome the panels of excellent witnesses before us today to address political, economic and security situation development in north africa. we have two wonderful panels. i indicated the first panel for a few seconds and we had an interesting day on the floor, and there will be more votes later today. the ranking member senator rich has invited witnesses to participate as well and will likely be in and out during the hearing but i think it's a good idea to go ahead and get started. what i will do is give the opening comments and then i will turn to the witnesses and ask them to comment for about five minutes each and then we will get into some q-and-a and then repeat with the second panel the same basic format allowing other senators that are here to ask questions as well. this is my first hearing as the chair of the subcommittee.

i was the chairman of the international development subcommittee until late july and then with the change in the membership of the frc occasioned by the election of senator edward -- ad markey i'm excited to tackle this region as described herein this building to bangladesh. and i'm excited to begin my chairmanship with a hearing on north africa. within very broad and publicly unmanageably broad scope of real estate, north africa and sometimes pay less attention to it than i think we should, and i wanted to begin here and especially in a way since king mohammed the sixth of mark o is visiting the white house this week i thought it was a good thing to do, and in coincidence with his visit. three years ago a young tunisian man waved a mass political protest and change across north africa. the broader middle east, and also across the world. the era of the spring has

affected each of the countries of north africa that we will discuss today. morocco and algeria maintained basic political continuity during the arab spring. we will likely hear about significant security status and political reforms that us about each of the countries today. tunisia and libya has undergone fundamental and at times violent political change. tunisia is participating in a dialogue and seemed generally committed to the democratic process, but in each of these countries there is significant work to do. there are regional debates about governance, accountability, the transparency of reform, the effectiveness of governmental programs, economic liberalization and the role of religion and military in public life. while the debates will go on for a long time as they do here, the deterioration of security conditions recently has raised the important questions and has raised the stakes certainly for

local communities and certainly the united states and our interests. violent extremist groups appear to be exploiting and the weakness of security forces across north africa, al qaeda and the islamic uim from its breakaway factions and units referring to themselves as all sure we are capitalizing on the divisive identity issues as well as popular frustrations with the slow pace of reforms in these transitional states. a q. i am -- aqim doesn't appear to have the threats to the united states outside of north and west america but we are often concerned about the capacity to strike at civilian populations at the allied nations and that u.s. and other western interests and also the role of these groups in the regional arms trafficking and other extremist organizations. i know we have witnesses who are very well prepared to talk about this today. since late 2010, the policy has sought to encourage greater

political openness and participation in north africa while undermining other foreign-policy priorities, especially the efforts to combat terrorism. i want to hear about the balance. in the budget environment, which is very challenging -- i'm on the budget committee as well engaged in a conference, which if it works would be the first example of the budget conference in the divided congress since 1986. but one of the realities of the budget conference that we all grapple with its resource limitations. so, large increases in the u.s. assistance on the packages are not realistic at the current time. i want to hear about programs especially the u.s. aig perspectives, policies and tools to address challenges in north africa that don't come with high dollar figures that rely on innovation and smart investments in how wand how we are coordinad leveraging those investments together with our international partners. each of the countries in the region. morocco remained a staunch counterterrorism security partner. we have a free trade agreement

with morocco and virginia ports just to use my own state as an example have strong business partnerships in morocco. king mohammed six visit tomorrow and it is an important one to ratify and continue to express appreciation for a long-standing alliance that goes back into the 1770s. senator menendez and i sent a letter to the president this week encouraging the president to continue to build upon this relationship. i see opportunities from morocco potentially as a positive example for the way that the u.s. engages in the rest of the region. the united states has a strong dialogue with a lot of cheese aa -- i know that algeria is improving especially as we face the common challenges and the enemy of the aqim. i would like to hear how the economic opportunities are being lost every day as a result of that tension. and that would of course mean addressing the long disputed

territories in the western sahara. tunisia sought sadly high-profile political assassinations in 2013. but, the citizens still have high hopes for successful democratic transition. the islamist party is engaging in what appears to be real about political and democratic dialogue, the national dialogue. we will hear about that. secular and islamist tensions persist into powerful trade unions remain an effective regulator of the political process. anxious to hear that the prospects of the success of the dialogue and programs to foster the democratic process. libya is obviously very vexing challenge as the nation does so very well. the lack of security is threatening and prospects for any real political process and we will hear in the second panel from a witness who was an expert who's just actually back from libya. fred from the carnegie institute. he landed just yesterday where

he has been studying the militia and we are looking forward to hearing the testimony. libya is different in that it does not need a lot of financial assistance. it has ample resources but libya needs capacity building and training. militias need to be disarmed, which is a huge task. and we are worried about the borders and weapons proliferation, arms finding their way to egypt, gaza and syria. a lot of international partners working on comprehensive security systems programming we will hear about. of course we can talk about libya without mentioning the tragedy of benghazi for brave american public servants were killed. there's been a lot of attention on that. there is a lot of effort to fix blame, and also more importantly, efforts to learn what went wrong and what we can do to improve the safety of our embassy security personnel not only in north africa but around the world. i've been happy as a member of the foreign relations committee to work on efforts with the

department of state to implement some of the recommendations of the accountability review board to make sure that we can continue to carry out vigorous and aggressive diplomacy. also, to take the steps that we need to keep our embassy personnel safe. we need to do -- and we need to rework those and protect those and support those who do what ambassador chris stevens and his colleagues were doing. they believed improving the livelihood of libyans and u.s. interest and felt that those were consistent and not inconsistent. ambassador stevens had so many close friends in the state department and in virginia. doctor william warren's who was on the second panel was a close friend and we look forward to hearing from him. this is about the current status and what our policies and orientation should be going forward. we want to break down barriers in the region and hear about economic opportunities and the potential for economic integration. we also want to talk about other initiatives such as the transparent counterterrorism partnership, which works with ten countries in northwest

africa including tunisia, morocco and algeria. i will reserve opening statements for senator rich for when he arrives and move right to the panel. with the introduced the first panel to you. ambassador schmierer is the acting deputy of state in the near eastern affairs. he served as ambassador and as a deputy secretary assistant state for iraq. he began his diplomatic career in 1980 and served all over europe and in the middle east. amanda dory serves as the assistant secretary defense for african affairs in the office of the secretary defense. prior to this she served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and received a presidential award for her work on the 2,010th quadrennial defense review. her nongovernmental experience includes positions in the carnegie endowment for international peace, foreign-policy magazine into the nuclear nonproliferation project. finally on the first panel is

alina romanowski deputy assistant administrator for the middle east or love usaid. since 2013 she's fulfilled the duty of assistant administrator and oversees a large and varied portfolio that provides about $1.5 billion annually and assistance across the middle east region. these romanowski also served at the defense departmen defense dd senior positions involving the near east and south asia. i would like to ask the witnesses to deliver opening statements in the order in which i introduced you and following that we will begin questions and answers. mr. schmierer, to you first. >> chairman, thank you for the invitation to be here today. it's a particular honor to appear here with my colleagues, deputy secretary for defense amanda dory and deputy assistant administrator alina romanowski with whom i enjoyed working on a regular basis. we welcome speaking to you on the issues that you've just outlined and certainly look forward to answering any questions that you and your colleagues may have.

i have a full statement which i asked to be submitted for the record. >> without objection. >> and with your permission i would like to summarize my remarks. as you have just indicated, north africa thomas which is known as an arabic is a tremendous potential. it's the birthplace of the era of awakening and it is currently undergoing a difficult but critical transformation. tunisia pursues efforts to achieve democratic promise of its 2011 revolution. as libya continues to undertake its democratic transition while confronting numerous challenges on the political security and economic fronts. morocco and algeria have undertaken a more gradual reform process. they may remain key sources of stability and have assumed an increasingly important roles in our global effort to combat service on and extremism. we continue to enjoy a very

strong bilateral partnership with morocco, a relationship that we look forward to strengthening during the visit of king mohammed the sixth to washington. this is an opportunity to discuss the best means of promoting security and prosperity in the region. under king mohammed, the political system has gradually liberalized in the constitution was adopted in 2011 and morocco's first government ran nationwide democratic elections. we will continue to support morocco as it undertakes these important reforms. and algeria, mr. chairman, we have also built a strong relationship characterized by our shared interests to combat service on and facilitate greater regional stability. in addition, we are focused on developing a more robust economic partnership and supporting civil society development. to expand the leadership role to

stabilize neighboring states. loose weapons and the poor borders. libya is absolutely essential, mr. chairman. it's in our national security interest to ensure that libya becomes a stable and democratic partner. based with violence the libyan government has been unable to address the company's overlapping challenges. we stand ready to support future elections in libya as well as constitutional drafting and national dialogue efforts necessary. as a part of this effort, we have agreed to trade 5,000 to 8,000 members of a general-purpose force with italy and the uk to be the core of the new libyan army. we are also in the process of beginning to implement a global

security contingency fund and border security program to provide technical expertise, training and equipment to build libya border security capacities. yes, security is only part of the solution. we also welcome the opportunity with our partners to help the government built its governance capacity. finally, mr. chairman continue to view tunisia as a best hope for a successful transition to democracy. the assassination of an opposition politician in july led to calls of the dissolution of the government. civil society mediators have been facilitating the negotiations and the government and the opposition. we are encouraging the leaders across the political spectrum to compare efforts to finalize a constitution that respects universal right of all tunisians and to set up an election date. it also remains a top priority

to help bolster the tunisian security capacity. this is vital to protecting the national security interest as we look to maintain relationships with key allies and to budget the democracies to difficult transitions countering the extremist threats, thank you for the other committee to testify before you today. i look forward to answering your questions. >> thank you very much. his dory? >> chairman, i'm pleased to appear before the subcommittee for the first time to provide an update on the security situation in north africa and the department of defense engagement strategy in the region. dod is committed to working with the state department to enhance u.s. government security assistance to build the capacity of north african security forces. our strategic approach recognizes that developing strong and responsive defense

institutions can support regional stability, allowing partner militaries to operate under civilian authorities while dissecting the rule of law and international human rights. each of the four countries under discussion today faces a differing array of political, economic and governance challenges as a result of the political peoples that you've already cited. countries will continue to face security challenges and in addressing the challenges will take time particularly in the case of libya. the goals are to focus on long-term institution building and regional cooperation and coordination with other countries. to be supportive of the host nation requests and to maintain a limited and effective u.s. military footprint in the region. in morocco, algeria and tunisia dod maintains close military ties with our respective senior military and civilian counterparts. our shared security goals include counterterrorism and enhancing cross-border security.

we regularly engage with counterpart defense institutions in each of the governments on a bilateral basis to assure alignment of goals and prioritization activities. in addition to biological invasions be trans- sahara is a multi-year regional program that brings the state department, department of defense and usaid together to build the capacity of the government and communities in the mob -- mograb. a few remarks on a few of the countries. with libya, it remains a country in a very difficult democratic transition. militia violence and the consequent rich reviewed a tax continue within the country. the libyan government is unable to control its borders contradict into instability within the sahill. prioritizing the system to focus on building the institutional

capacity and improving the governments ability to counterterrorism to secure and destroy the chemical weapon stockpiles. on the latter by the chemical weapons and the program with libya is on schedule to eliminate the remaining libya chemical weapons by the end of 2013 in accordance with the international commitments. and thanks to congressional support, this fiscal year the united states will work with libya to develop the capacity to conduct counterterrorism operations and border security particularly along the southern land border. additionally, in response to a request for the premaster, we offered to provide general-purpose or military training as is already mentioned. the training is intended to help the government build the military is required years to protect government institutions and maintain order. this effort builds on the g8 summit announcing that focusing on the expansion of support for libya security sector.

in tunisia the military deserves tremendous credit for supporting and protecting the population earning tunisia's democratic transition. the government continues to grapple with the threat of violent extremism. our assistance to the security sector focuses on counterterrorism support, border security training and a continuation of long-standing programs such as the international military, education and training program and foreign military financing. algeria has been a critical security partner in the regional violent extremist organizations and particularly it is a linchpin in the struggle against al qaeda and the islamic maghreb aqim and affiliates. the attack highlighted the growing transnational threats in the region. the algerian military continues to be operations against aqim and affiliates. additionally algeria provides training and equipment assistance to its neighbors

contributing to the broad regional efforts. the dod engages in algeria across a range of activities to include permission sharing and exercises. with morocco, the united states and the kingdom share a long history of bilateral relations. morocco has been a strong partner in the struggle against terrorism. the visit this week has already been referenced the secretary of defense and secretary of state had a meeting with him yesterday to discuss the shared concerns. and our long-standing security cooperation with the moroccans continues. thank u for the chance to discuss the u.s. military cooperation, the maghreb as it supports the broad policy and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you. ms. romanowski. >> thank you for the opportunity to appear to discuss usaid efforts to support u.s. interest in north africa. as my colleagues have said, north africa is a region of many possibilities and great importance but also one that faces daunting challenges especially in this transition

per cup. -- period. we've supported morocco, tunisia and libya as they write new constitutions before the institutions as they carry out credible transparent elections and the citizens of the cape for the political participation. the programs target of the development challenges that span north africa including high unemployment and the lack of economic growth and work to address factors that push local populations towards violent extremists. the arab awakening has been a phenomenon that each country experiences it differently so we have tailored the programs to each country's specific needs. in libya, usaid support of the transition by developing government institutions and building and the emerging civil society. as libya and begin to draft a new constitution, usaid is working to ensure the libyan people are engaged in the process. we are also promoting women's

empowerment by supporting programs that engage women in the political process like a series of training program where the women were provided internship at the height commission and these women were in fact permanently higher. usaid is supporting women through economic growth programs, the strength in the women on shipping orders by providing business skills and improving the access to finance through brokered relationship with financial institutions. tunisia remains one of the nation's best hopes for a successful transition to democracy. usaid supports the tunisian people as they lay the foundation for economic prosperity that empowers a new generation and strengthen civil society and solidifies the institution of democracy. to promote economic growth, we launched the tunisian american enterprise fund on a signature u.s. initiative that will invest in growing the tunisian economy. currently capitalized at

$40 million, the enterprise fund is designed to develop the much-needed private sector in tunisia, expand access to credit and create opportunities for the small and medium-sized businesses. in the 2012, usaid provided the government a 100 million-dollar cash chance for that supported its short-term budget needs. usaid also subsidized the cost of 485 million-dollar loan guarantee to help address the longer-term financing needs. usaid is encouraging job creation and high impact growing sectors of the economy like information communications technology, the ict program organized a job share were 4,500 young tunisians met with over 200 employers to discuss job opportunities. and additionally, our work in the ict sector has generated over 2,400 new jobs for

tunisians. usaid is also actively engaged in helping tunisians building peacefully and stable democratic political process. during tunisia's historic october, 2011 elections, usaid supported the only nationwide campaign targeting women voters, and also a get out the vote campaign that focused on youth. for tunisia's upcoming elections, usaid will support international and local monitoring activities. for over 50 years, usaid and the government of morocco have had a strong bilateral relationship that continues today. this year to support the ambitious political and economic reform goals of the moroccan government and respond to the needs of the moroccan citizens, usaid has designed a new five-year country development strategy. this is a focused plan to work side-by-side with the government of morocco, civil society and the private sector to enhance the employee of the body of

morocco's large youth demographic, improve the education system, strengthened by civil society organizations and improve the credibility and transparency of political parties. during this week's visit of mohammed we will launch this new strategy reaffirming our long history of cooperation and promoting sustainable development in morocco. in conclusion during this time of transition it is a central that aid continuous engagement with the people and their government to build free democratic prosperous and secure nations. this engagement is vital to countering extremist threats, maintaining relationships with key allies and advancing the strategic interest. chairman kaine, thank you very much and i look forward to answering your questions today. >> thank you all for your opening testimony. to have the representatives of our defense diplomacy in the region is wonderful and gives a full view and it's also particularly fitting because

africa and -- africom has the governmental outreach in the region and as it is fitting that you would all be here. i want to begin with a question. you've each organized your questions virtually around the reports on the four countries individually, talking about the united states bilateral activities that protect to each. there's dory, you mentioned the efforts to promote their cooperatiocooperationand i woulo address what is going on regionally, what do you do regionally that tries to link any or all of these countries together and possibly beginning with scotians of the current status of the trans- sahara counterterrorism partnership, but it does seem like there are some regional opportunities executive of the regional cooperation that is the current status with can we do more to promote it?