again, there is no super eyes on what the agenda is, because the roadmap was laid out -- no surprise on what the agenda is, because the roadmap was laid out in that process. i do not it at any major revisions to the framework itself. the impetus is going to be going after these gap areas, identifying these areas where we felt there was real work to be done. read your -- maturing what we call the governance discussion. in other words, we should seriously start taking on if this framework is going to go and be a normal process. how do we set up a governance scheme where all of these different companies can work together to turn this into an ongoing, routine process? and again, we've had exterior -- experience doing that both in the cloud sector and smart grid and other areas. would like to

continue those discussions as well. inwhat was your experience the cloud sector and smart grid sector tell you that will end up looking like? >> probably the most maturing right now is the discussions the smart grid, just because it is a little bit older than the cloud side. it was focused on the government adoption side. the smart grid, a smart grid interoperability panel, which is an actual 501(c)(3) organization , was put together because the stakeholder group felt there was not an existing organization that could facilitate that process. they establish one of their own. this has provided funding for the operation of the organization. we remained working with them routinely today where you now have a living cycle of, ok, here are the changing issues, here the top ones, here are the ones

to fix. the top panel does the triage. and in many cases, now works with all of the different standard organizations that are hey,rting that, saying, here are key areas to improve. and making sure the adoption side is worked out. because again, that was interfacing with the regulated industries as well. i think it might look different. it probably will. this is a different sector. we are not going in with an answer. and this may take a wild to put together, but it is worth continuing discussions about how we do this if it is not a one-time process, but something we do year in and year out. >> thank you for this discussion. i am unaffiliated. you spoke a little bit about how

the federal agencies are going to comment on this, and react, and how industry has incentive. i was wondering how you will get the state government to adopt this and get involved. there are many things at the state level that our matter -- that are very important. that is a great question. i will let you answer that. [laughter] >> we have had strong interest from the states. a number of state cio's were at .he event i was talking to them about their framework process. they end up touching this problem and a number of different levels. many of these critical infrastructure entities are interacting heavily with the theys, and in some cases are regulated or involved with the states themselves anyway. again, this harmonization issue comes right out for them, that this is an important building , becauseuilding block

it is something they can use as a framework for these organizations. think of the water utilities and others that are happening at this level. the other place that this is helpful to them is the extent to which we see widespread adoption of the framework means that the technology providers that are providing technology and software and security solutions to support these companies are now creating a market of some scale. they can help drive down costs and improve performance. affects all the states that may be in and of themselves would not have the market scale to drive this. we encourage state participation from the very beginning. they have it involved in the framework process from the very beginning and you will continue to see their involvement ramp up. click the only thing is, one of the reasons we have been pushing for legislation at the federal level is the fear that you would end up with a mishmash of state

legislation that doesn't allow for these types of efficient, effective markets. the framework is helpful, because it creates a baseline that is collaborative and based on the sort of standards full stop i think it's quite helpful. -- sort of standards. i think it's quite helpful. but how do you think it is handled at the federal level -- >> how do you think it is handled at the federal level? there are requirements of security at the federal government. how do you see this being ruled -- rolled out? clicks -- >> at the rollout, we talked a little bit about this in terms of government use. the most straightforward thing that every adopting company is doing right now is to use the framework to develop profiles of your current practice. that is what is laid out in the framework. one of the first things we will be doing is at the agency level,

we will be using this to, similar to your in the station, try to develop -- similar to your organization, try to identification. the security model aspect of the implementation of the framework could be extremely helpful to the federal government. they moved the debate past the and theion of controls notion that the only thing you can assess and measure is how many of the controls you put in place. under the framework, that is a tier one implementation level. what this starts to point to is that you can move beyond that into a real risk management framework with a higher maturity level that has bigger advantages. it opens up the pallet of addressing this as a risk management exercise within the government. and finally, the last one is,

there has been a tendency to address cyber security performance issues within the government i just making the cio's more and more muscular. the framework actually points to a different answer, which is integrating it with the program lines. this is going to the boardrooms and to the ceos. it points to a very interesting starting with is the cabinet level secretaries and accountability there and looking at this from an integrated perspective. we just started that, but i think it will be quite interesting. >> you have been a cabinet level secretary. >> i was privileged to have a wonderful acting deputy , dr. patrick gallagher. and one of the things he has done in that capacity is to really take in hand the cyber security management at the

department of commerce. i think you called it eating our own cookie. in terms ofat, making management at the highest levels of the department security,e for cyber and not simply something that our cio's deal with. >> when do you see that being made publicly available, published? know, there isou no obvious exemption. there may be security issues and aspects of them. >> let me go back to the point that the framework is not about the controls. in any organization, you're going to have the dynamic set of controls.

in piles are drowning of controls that they have been looking at, and by the way, other mandates outside the security space. what is unique about the framework from the government's perspective is the management approach to really integrate it into how you run the department. and to make those decisions, not just technology decisions, but skill sets and hiring and cost allocation, and all of the other things that are just as much a part of cyber security as controls. is a veryys, this fresh perspective on the government approach. and i think the management approach could be very public. that is probably more important. that is where the real accountability lies. we have two questions. you can take them both, and then we will have two questions to finish. we will take both questions and then we will answer them. i wanted to come back on your

comment about controls. if i understand correctly, the controls are the first step of four. does that mean that the controls are within the government today? bitet me be a little careful about what the implementation is pointing to. there are controls at every level. and controls are an important control ahow you particular risk. i'm not saying there are only controls at tier one and then you can get away from the controls. what the mud -- the implementation here is pointing to is, in some ways, you are maturing and managing this risk. i think of tier one as being a rule following culture. in other words, you create it and the success is i got through the list and i can do all of this reliably and repeatedly. that is quite different than an

adaptive or proactive type culture, where in addition to having the rules and controls, you are actively identifying new changes preemptively. it is going from ace -- from a set of static controls to an immune system. controls are everywhere. but you asked an interesting question -- where will the federal government and up as we start doing profiles? i don't know. i think, because -- my suspicion is that since we have been mesmerized by control belications, we should not surprised to find ourselves near an implementation level that is focused on that, which would be ground one. but we will see. it will be quite interesting as we do that. >> final question. one of the things the panel talked about was the alignment of the business interests with the national interests. andme give you a scenario

see how that would really change in the corporate world. i'm talking about a target named nieman marcus. i recently read a study where the u.s. credit cards are eons behind the european credit cards with a magnetic strip and everything. visa, mastercard, american now, a target like neiman marcus could be losing $7 billion a year. replace all ofto the credit cards, it will cost us more like $11 billion, right? normally, cyber security they don't really do. case, they are doing that. how do you make sure that some interestin a financial

does not overtake what you would call the national interest? >> underneath your question is one of the profound issues congress will face. if these are not aligned, then i think that is because ultimately, we are talking about something that if it fails under a cyber attack has great harm to the country. that is just going to get fixed somehow. but i think, backing up a little bit, i'm not sure that i would financial risk assessment that they were looking at was correct. in the following sense, you know, you are correct that one of the issues the u.s. has seen in the sector is we were early adopters of car tech -- of card technology, but it was very expensive to deploy. it has been compared to mature -- too much younger technology for card readers and so forth.

and with that legacy comes vulnerability. ie question will really be, yes -- that is why the risk management is so important. to what extent does the refresh of this technology help and mitigate and control those risks? i would assume that is what a good organization would be going after. but this is not just the direct financial loss of those customers who lost their information. and that is certainly not what i'm hearing from the ceo's. this is a profound reputational loss. this is potentially going right at their market share. what i'm hearing from ceo's is a very acute sensitivity that this is a big deal and that is why it is rising to the very top of the boardrooms as the discussion. i would be surprised if they were reaching that kind of simple apples to oranges comparison, because that does not track from what -- track with what i'm hearing from ceo's today. >> i think that is right.

the cost benefit analysis is, in today's environment, wrong. i think it reflects what has challengerically the in dealing with cyber security. , the compliance , they were whirring about it, but it is a cost issue. it is difficult to get attention. i think because of reputational concerns, because of the impact if you are a company that has a , i thinknt failure that is reaching -- that is changing, as reflected in the level of concern that was talked about. and i think we are seeing that reflected in some of the demand in the corporate sector to change, for example, card technology, despite the economics that you talked about. >> i work in a highly disruptive

sector where companies don't , largely based on new innovation. the key to the success of those companies are trust and integrity. to the extent that we don't take cyber security seriously, we are undermining that trust and integrity. and that is a principal reason why it is one of the issues that fromr, perhaps, most often our most senior executives in the companies that iraq present. it is truly one of their top priorities. in anright and pure analytical or quantitative sense might not show up. but the and the brand damage is so significant that it is conscious of those issues. >> one penultimate question

whate we end up looking at this is like in this. and that is, the question of privacy. what is explicit when the president gives his executive orders that he needed to respect privacy. and throughout the process, from the --ncern what you might call the privacy lobby -- to ensure that was the case. and you have produced a response in -- a response to that. could you tell us the story so that we have a better understanding of how you have altered the framework to reply to some of those concerns? >> i think, the short version of that story is the one you laid out, that privacy was the explicit requirement for us to consider as we developed the

framework from the very beginning. it was actually part of every discussion and every workshop we had, including the kickoff workshop. i remember having a discussion about the incorporation of privacy at that point. -- weeemed to happen could come back and have a discussion about what the psychology was, but it was intended to be an issue where, first of all, the maturity of how you implement the building .locks those were less mature than what was true in a lot of the cyber security areas. and partly based on that, it was relegated -- even though we brought it up at every workshop, it is one that we kept going back to, saying that we need to work on this. and one of the consequences of this is that midway through the process, the privacy principles were basically in a standalone section as an appendix. what think maybe that is

caught everyone's attention. when that construct was finally there, then i think the stakeholder group was working on them,amework, all 3000 of they jumped in. it was an interesting perspective of how the framework works. the whole industry stood up and said, this does not make sense to have this be a full on attachment. this is based on the same kind of data protection principles that are integrated. they made a counter proposal to integrate those into the main framework. now it is actually integrated and not bolted on. that is where we stand today. >> i think where it ended up is the right place. security is an essential ingredient of privacy. it is part of the privacy principles, part of the white consumer privacy

bill of rights. it is not a standalone issue. privacy implications on some of the cyber security practices, particularly when you get into sharing information , or inird parties particular the government. incorporateant to into the framework the privacy practices, as has been done. it really is part and parcel of security. we were one of the stakeholders who were concerned with the bolted on approach. but we think it ended up in the right place. i do note that it is one of the nine more extremes, so we intend to engage and make sure it

progresses forward. >> which brings me to my last question, which is as we do what do werward, think success is going to look like? and an important part of the framework, i hope i am correct is to assess where there may be a requirement for legislation or others to engage. a question for each of the knowists is, how will we ,hether a direction is required but more importantly, what does becess look like, and can we confident that this is delivering what we think it should deliver? would come down this way. >> i think a big part of it is adoption.

the extent to which most businesses are looking at the framework and integrating it into their operations, much in the way we talk about ceo's taking it apart of their boardroom discussion. the second part of it is that if it am i in fact, does not become a stale document that sits on the shelf, but does become a living, breathing, iterative process as opposed to an -- whereby we be are still working on it 10 years from now. gaps with congress. i think we have spoken to those. and the most pressing that can be dealt with on its own is around information sharing. >> how much confidence do you have that those can happen? >> a high degree of confidence. the question is when. [laughter] my confident, i'm sitting in a discussion with congressman rogers and ruthless burger on --

lossless burger on monday. i hate to say anything that would give away my position. it is highly unlikely, but i think it is possible. or one version, 2.0, point some significant number. because i think that would be a that there is active engagement, active adoption, and is leading toe the iterative process, and any indication that the model is working?

it to getways like asked this question. acid test of all of this is our nations critical infrastructure, is it better protected, and it is also hard to measure. that is going to be very challenging. so i think of the success story as having sort of two elements. one is the near-term. i think that is the adoption, and the way i have characterized that, is that inevitable? and we are struggling with those kinds of nuts and bolts issues. they may be tough, but the kinds of things that can only come up with those trying to use this. that is a big success, because that means this is actually need put into practice, and you have a framework to improve, and then i think there is an intermediate set of metrics that i think are potentially very powerful, and it kind of goes to the safety comparison, so while the final outcome could be something we

are only retrospectively looking back, i hope that we start seeing some very meaningful improvements in what i call security behavior, and that could be the capacity within organizations to be able to identify risks, that could be the capacity of staff, it could be skill level, and it could also be behaviors like self awareness, the idea that we know what is happening on our systems more or that the speed improves. i think it is quite measurable. it would point to a healthier organization in managing these risks, and my hope is we will be working with industry. nist thing toof a do, looking for meaningful measurements along those lines. >> thank you. we will be looking forward to the cyber security framework 2.0 or 3.0 and perhaps have comment on it, and i would like to thank all of you for joining us here today and invite you to join me

thinking dean garfield, pat gallagher, and others for a fantastic panel. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

director of the intelligence committee discusses his looks "blinking red".

this is just over an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the america foundation. i'm peter bergen. it's with a lot of pleasure that we get to welcome michael allen to talk about his new book "blinking red" and mike has had a distinguished career most recently in government's chief of staff to mike rogers on the house intelligence committee and also spent seven years in various senior positions with the national security council under the george w. bush administration. he managed to write a book and have two young sons and set up a very successful new business all in the space, and continue work on the hill at the same time so very impressive. mike has agreed to speak about

the big themes and stories in this book for a half an hour and engaging q&a and throw it out to you in for questions. mike. >> thank you. i will go over to the podium if that's okay. >> i think you can do without that. >> i want to thank the new america foundation for having me today especially peter for the invitation and thank you all for coming out in the rain to hear a little that's about my book "blinking red" and i look forward to q&a about other pressing intelligence community topics. "blinking red" is an attempt to write the authoritative object if history of the most substantial restructuring of the u.s. intelligence community since its foundations in 1947. the aim in 1947 of course was to create a central intelligence agency that would and this

sounds familiar to any of you who have studied 9/11, but to make sure the pockets of the u.s. government did not have information that is shared with other constituencies of government might foretell of a particular attack or national security threat on the united states. the national security act of course created the national security council and the defense department but the creation of the central intelligence agency really laid the foundations for the modern american intelligence community. the faults of the national security act of 1947 was that it seemed to give the central intelligence agency many responsibilities for coordinating the variety of intelligence entities across the federal government but not enough authority to do the job. so let me break that down for you if i could. the cia is of course famous for

two missions you are all very familiar with, covert action in the recruitment of spies around the world. the security act of 47 also sought to make the cia to give him another mission which was to manage the community to be the dci and to coordinate the growing infrastructure of intelligence agencies that have begun to grow up around world war ii. as you approach through the cold war years a variety of task forces and commissions noted that the underlying ability of the director of central intelligence to coordinate for example the signals intelligence entities in the department of defense was very weak. literally dozens of commissions and foundations recommended augmenting the director of central intelligence's power so that they would be able to keep

up with the increasing complexity, billions of dollars being spent in american intelligence and to be able to better face down the soviet union. none of these recommendations, none of these attempts to reform were centralized greater authority when the director of central intelligence went anywhere in 2004. there were several factors which i go through in "blinking red" that contributed to this major juggernaut of opportunity -- activity which rewrote one of the most famous pieces of legislation in american history and foreign half months. there were a friday of things going on that summer. i want to take you back a little bit. i think you will remember these very well. at the time the central intelligence agency had really taken a beating. they have been through grueling hearings before congress about who should be blamed for 9/11 and whether the cia had failed

to watchlist certain individuals and otherwise shared information with the fbi that might have foretold of or allowed the fbi to investigate the plots on 9/11. the cia i think it's fair to say he was really buffeted by these particular hearings and then the 9/11 commission came along and had another set of hearings which really were very very tough. indeed the chairman of the 9/11 commission noted that their staff statement about what happened with the cia did on 9/11 was really an indictment of the agency's performance. a second factor that occurred that contributed to this momentous change of events in the fall of 2004 was really the 9/11 commission itself. they were a group of nationally prominent men and women who are able to build a national audience through a series of hearings about what happened on

9/11 and really they have a lot of cachet and a lot of influence and indeed they constructed their own strategy to be able to build a legislative proposal that would have a chance of succeeding and could be acted on very swiftly. the third factor occurring at the time was the failure for the miss assessment of iraq wmt was coming into stark relief in the summer of 2004. the senate intelligence committee's report came out with groupthink and the cia was at a very low level of trustees at the time. finally you have to note of course the presence of the 9/11 commission families who i go through in the book became quite a powerful special interest group advocating for reform of the intelligence community joined forces with the 9/11 commissiocommissio n was able to have tremendous influence over the process. the last thing that really the

conventional wisdom is that we created a director of national intelligence and a national counterterrorism center that the 9/11 commission recommended because of the presidential election of 2004. i think the conventional wisdom is a little bit wrong for the reasons i just stated. i think the blooming presidential election in which the performance of george bush and whether he made the country safer were undoubtedly incredibly powerful factors that influenced the likelihood of congress and the president to take on intelligence reform. but it's not the only factor. there was exhaustion at the cia and we had not one but two spectacular intelligence failures really in the same two to three year period. so what did the 9/11 commission recommend? with a record wreck of recommended was a director of national intelligence really a super empowered spymaster who would have the ability to in an

increasingly complex world of proliferators and stateless international terrorists be able to in the 9/11 commission's words, we needed a quarterback. we needed someone very agile who would be able to move dollars, people and analysts to be able to meet new threats, to be able to organize quickly to meet with a determined was perhaps a more greater intelligence or national security challenge than the soviet union had. in the 9/11 commission's estimation the soviet union well for voted at least in an intelligent sense there were embassies from which to recruit spies. there were armaments to look after satellites and other particular government agencies to seek to intercept communications but this wasn't the case with terrorist cells so we needed to be able to organize differently.

on the point about there being a particular electoral impact, john kerry the democratic nominee for president endorsed the 9/11 commission recommendations 17 minutes after the commission recommendations were announced in july of 2004. george bush endorsed the dni in concept 10 days later so this speaks to the tremendous force and the incredible forces that were at play at this particular time. however, we have a lot of members of congress and the two leading individuals of each political party endorsed the 9/11 commission's recommendations nearly immediately. it inspired tremendous bureaucratic opposition and this is really the heart of "blinking red." it is the tale of your craddick power and jockeying for influence really over the 80 billion-dollar intelligence enterprise to be able to control the intelligence assets of the

united states. i go through the book three camps that were in opposition to the 9/11 commission recommendations. i will go through them briefly and we will talk about what the entire act means for national security today that these camps are very important because as people try to contemplate where we are 10 years after the 9/11 commission report a lot of people are asking how is the system working and how could we improve it, why did we created and what world are you trying to do at the time? one of the camps that broke out immediateimmediately in opposition to the 9/11 commission report were those in the military who argued that the primary mission of intelligence should be direct tactics support to the warfighter and that now at this time in 2004 was no time to centralize intelligence anywhere else be it in the

current system with the director of central intelligence located at langley virginia, dci who in their estimation might retain the two other vengeance that the dci had mainly human intelligence and covert action but especially not into a new super empowered individual spymaster because they viewed this as a zero-sum game that any rebalancing of authority a way from the department of defense would degrade the department of defense's intelligence capabilities. the two principle players in this camp for secretary rumsfeld and vice president cheney. secretary rumsfeld is of course very quotable. he at the time was vociferously against the 9/11 commission's recommendations and he wrote in a letter to george bush from this time period something that i think is very notable and you can almost hear some of the

intensity in his voice which was something basically that the united states congress, the media and john kerry can afford to be wrong and pay no penalty. the president of the united states has to be right on a matter of such importance and the end of this memorandum to george bush at the time which is detailed in the book with a single word, caution. urging caution on the president before he adopted these particular recommendations. vice president cheney himself a former secretary of defense also oppose the dni recommendations. he focused on the fact that we were at war at the time in iraq and afghanistan. he said now is no time to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic as we were trying to fight and win a war. the second view was those at cia. cia i think took some offense

that they were being so heavily faulted for intelligence failures on 9/11 and began to argue that really what the essence of power is in washington d.c. is democratic clout and that at least the director of central intelligence intelligence community when he headed the cia at least had the troops. he had analysts. he had collectors. he had someone that he could ask and they would actually respond to what he wanted to do. the point of robert yates himself a former dci he argued that the 9/11 commission's dni would create essentially someone who would be unable to effectuate his will. indeed this was the view of almost all but one of the former directors of central intelligence who argued that the only way to increase centralized

power in the intelligence community would be to give him more authority and more bureaucracies to directly control and not to subtract from this authority by separating these community management functions, these core dating functions from the cia, from langley virginia. finally another camp and this is interesting because of the two people were and the issues they would come to hold. they argued without the knowledge of secretary rumsfeld ironically enough that the national security agency and the national geospatial agency at the very least these two factors of intelligence now we know very well through the constant revelations in the newspaper, they argued that the dni would be indeed feckless unless they had authority, direction and control over these massive

intelligence agencies that were cited in the department of defense. two individuals who argued for this bureaucratic position are the current director of national intelligence today, jim clapper and the future cia director general michael hayden. at the time they were the head of nga and the nsa respectively so it was quite an incredible position that they would advocate of actually moving their bureaucracies out of the department of defense. this set up the infamous lunch in washington when secretary rumsfeld learned of general hayden and general clapper's efforts to advocate around town on behalf of a more muscular dni, a dni who would control their intelligence agencies and rumsfeld invited him to lunch at the pentagon and to hear general hayden reid tell the story, he says it looks like peace talks between north and south korea as they sat on opposite sides of the table. the only thing missing were the

reective flags of their nation. they sat there and argued about whether the dni in the 9/11 commission recommendations would lead to a more successful intelligence community and according to the participants at the lunch secretary rumsfeld slammed his fork into his plate and said he couldn't believe what he was hearing from two people who have worn the uniform of their country that the dni should not have control or any additional control over the intelligence agencies in the department of defense and needless to say the lunch ended badly and the rest is history. these bureaucratic divisions in the book goes through this were reflected in the argued aggressively throughout august of 2004 in the national security council is george bush's advisers try to color in exactly what president bush's believes would be in a piece of

legislation that he laid your -- later sent to the bill on what the future intelligence communities would look like trait i won't go into this in great detail but the congress embraced the 9/11 commission recommendations. the dni and nctc the dni separate from the cia and really tried to in the united states enact the will exactly in the 9/11 commission's report. i was there at the time as the white house legislative affairs staff are and people carried around the 9/11 commission book as if it were the bible. and try to interpret it as faithfully as possible what they thought the 9/11 commission meant. this is really the reason for my argument in why the 9/11 commission has been the most successful commission in american history because they were able to dictate the policy agenda in the fall of 2004 caused the congress to immediately endorse the respective presidential nominees

to immediately endorse their recommendations. the bill did hit some snags. the house of representatives was more interested in this the secretary of defense's authority over the intelligence agencies. the book goes exhaustively through some of the arguments that they advance in opposition to the 9/11 commission and eventually how after the presidential election of 2004 the bill was enacted into law. i will end with this. secretary gates was gracious enough to let me interview him for my book and i wanted to know his views and whether it was true and whether the rumor was true that president bush had offered him the job to be the first director of national intelligence. he confirmed that indeed andy car and steve hadley two of the president's top lieutenants had tried to recruit him to be the director of national intelligence. i think this is an interesting

contemporaneous view of the statute immediately after past and indeed was looking down the road to some of the problems we had in the first years. he gave me his e-mail said he sent to the white house in december and january of 2004 and 2005 trying to lay out some of the conditions he would ask president bush for for him to even consider him. secretary gates and i have this in the book described the new law as quote strange. he said the president needs to make clear that at the new director of national intelligence is the head of the intelligence community, not some near budgeteer or coordinator who just has common denominator the ability to convene people and only hash out the common dominator about the policies and directives affecting the u.s. intelligence community.

eventually secretary gates turned down the offer. he said sort of to me that hadley and car made a mistake that a neophyte car salesman when i visited the white house. they let me off all off without a sale. he went back to texas and thought about whether to take the job and eventually turned it down. we had for dni's in the first years that inspired your craddock opposition from the central intelligence agency which i mentioned was in a very good place to be able to affect the outcome when the bill is under consideration but i think was able to maneuver and jockey successfully so that the cia might argue today that they don't feel substantially managed or impinge upon by the new head of the intelligence community. so as we sit here in 2013 amidst

a variety of intelligence challenges from iran to syria and the crisis of edward snowden has cause for the national security agency i think it's a good time to ask ourselves and reflect upon the situation, the structure that we set up post-9/11. this was the most tangible reform of the intelligence community and of what the american people thought they were doing when they asked for reform of intelligence after two calamitous intelligence failures in president bush's first term. has the dni been successful in making the country safer or did we give the dni tremendously more of a to-do list as john mclaughlin likes to say the former acting director of the cia, did we give the dni all the

responsibility but not enough new authority to make a decisive difference in the overall cohesive management of the american intelligence enterprise and the intelligence agencies that reside around u.s. government. so peter with that i will leave it at that and we welcome your questions. >> thank you very much mike. that was a great overview of the themes of your book. so just jumping off where you left it, as the director of national intelligence, the dni and i shouldn't use too many acronyms for c-span audience. is the director of national intelligence basically a figurehead with no authority because he or she doesn't have the budget and assorted in this

coordinating position or has this job somewhat a fault so that although its general clapper or some future dni director of national intelligence he or she actually can move the intelligence community in a particular direction so surging on an issue like syria or whatever? >> i think it's an open question. i think that the cia very exactly at the beginning of the obama administration when admiral blair became -- came to the dni key where the statute and said that this cia director reports to the dni and he tried to make it very clear to the central intelligence agency that as far as he was concerned he ought to be able to appoint certain cia individuals around the world and the dni on to have the greater oversight role in the covert action.

these two issues i think leon panetta appeal to the white house and the dni. >> it was a very public and spectacular loss and was admiral blair who was at dni for time and he wanted basically the power to appoint station sheeves effectively the most important cia post in the country. he wanted that to be in his remit. >> he did indeed and this is where the book tries to get into the bagel reset the statute in that we didn't really consider or debate very much in 2004 the relationship between the cia and director of national intelligence. however this came to be one of the chief thorns in the side of the dni going forward and the blair episode he very publicly appealed and lost. merits aside of the issue everyone knew he fought these two issues and came out on the losing side. people in washington noticed. people noticed the new director

of national intelligence had lost an important issue and something that appealed to the white house on and it hurt the dni's authority. >> he is it going to be going forward is it going to be personality dependent depending on who dni is because he or she will have to and a sense operate a consensus depending on who the cia director is or basically the cia is going to really generate much of the covert action? >> i think the most optimistic case about whether the dni can ultimately succeed or not is by looking back at history and a record of the secretary of defense. when the secretary of defense was created in the 1940s he has no real authority over the departments of army and overtime created more authority up until

congress revisited this particular law in 1986 those defenders of the dni like to say well look give it time. we are only in the first years. the dni will create more authority over time. i think what a lot of the experts also believe in is that if the president makes very clear that the dni ahead of the intelligence community and of all the things that people want the dni to do here at the top two or three things that will lead to more dni success because that is in the end one of the key ingredients of your craddock power in washington. it if people believe he is acting at the behest of the president of the united states binnie will have more bureaucratic clout. and so i see that as a way forward, something that may work overtime but i think your point is right that we have had real operators and the cia director

job and arguably they have been able to outmaneuver the dni in a number of cases. >> was the contra terrorism center in 2004 word they -- did it evolve separately? >> separately? >> it evolve separately and with president bush's idea of a terrorist threat integration center. this of course your member is the story of 9/11 of how do we fuse information collected abroad with information collected domestically? how do we make sure that we bridge the divide? president bush created an entity in the 9/11 commission did him one better and suggested they expand its mission in call it the national counterterrorism statute. >> this is an example of an institution which actually i think has agreed to use power and influence over time.

it has become really a coordinating successful coordinating center for terrorism. >> i think that is everyone's view. the analytical function anyway, the fusion center, the ability to pull together at counterterrorism analyst from fbi and nsa and of course the central intelligence agency to have them all co-locate working in many cases in the same room and accessing all the computer centers all the computer terminals round the government has enabled a better exchange of information and analytical product for policymaking. >> he who is at the national counterterrorism center now? who is part of that? >> if the dni staff. they clearly report to the director of national intelligence although they also report to the white house for some functions for convoluted reasons i can go into but largely they report to the

director of national intelligence but they are detailed from a 480 of other intelligence agencies so the idea is that if you are in a the counter -- fbi counterterrorism analyst they want to be able to see the entire perspective of the intelligence community not just the narrow view from the fbi office but across the government and to work with colleagues in other intelligence community entity so they might be able to provide a better product so policymakers can have some idea of the threats made against them. >> you mentioned the weapons of mass destruction intelligence fiasco and you are on the house intelligence committee in the run-up to bin laden and it's a matter of public record that you and mike rogers were briefed about that hunt in january of 2011 so you are one of maybe 20

people in washington or a small group. to the extent you can what did george tenet,. [laughter] what did the director of panetta say to you? >> this is a pretty good story. this was the night the chairman rogers formerly assumed the chairmanship of the house intelligence community in january 2011 and i had just been selected as the staff director. leon panetta invited chairman rogers out to dinner in his quiet dining room on -- at langley. i was like enough to get to go along as staffer and i assumed that dinner was a very shrewd way of cia director beginning to build a relationship with someone who had oversight responsibility over the agency.

and so as we walked to dinner i expected to go back and have a nice dinner but we were led into leon panetta's office and he had a citizens conference table which was strewn with pictures of the abbottabad compound in pakistan and he had at the table also two of the top spies and analysts on the bin laden case and was able to lay out for chairman rogers. he pulled it piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket and he looked like he had just briefed the white house and scribbled notes. a very detailed update of we think we might've found bin laden and this is the best led since tora bora. here are the reasons we think that and here are the things we are going to try to do in the coming months. so it was a good first day at the office.

i felt fortunate to be able to get this type of information but it does say all bit about the centrality, the continued centrality of the intelligence agency some of the biggest intelligence questions facing the government treats be the mentioned i mentioned the context of the iraqi government the fiasco, you were in the white house when that all played out not necessarily directly involved in that issue also he did later get involved is the senior director for nonproliferation. the case that bin laden was a circumstantial case and in case saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction was basically circumstantial. so i guess different kinds of questions. one, where you set out on the house intelligence committee -- community do you feel that the house intelligence community has a better way of interrogating

cases that are circumstantial? do you think that better way of interrogating circumstantial cases was hughes in the bin laden case and what are the sort of, how was that being internalized by the intelligence community? >> i think so. one of the arguments for dni and something that my old boss steve hadley advances one of the reasons he and condoleezza rice supported the dni was that they work colored by their experience in iran where they believed that the cia's information, the cia's intelligence was considered too heavily, was weighted too heavily against other dissenting views across the intelligence community, of course namely the department of energy's intelligence office so i think they saw that the dni and others have seen this as a benefit as

well, the dni is able to marshal all the intelligence, all the information from across the community and not just look at the cia. i think the cia plays the most prominent role and they have among them the most brilliant analysts that we have in the country and certainly in the government but i think that is one benefit of the dni is that the dni is able to bring together all of the points of view so that we might have a completely balanced assessment on important questions. >> right so when a national intelligence estimate is written the dni is now coordinating that? >> yes. the national intelligence council is the entity that rights national intelligence estimates. previously it had reported to cia directors and our ports to the dni but really people would point to me and say well you know the national intelligence process always considered views

from across the government. this meant a way of forcing it. this gave more rigor to the process especially as we were sorting through the recommendations of other commissions that looked at the wmd intelligence failures so i think more analytical and intellectual rigor has been given to the process. >> let's just go back. you mentioned obviously it was a common view that the cia had failed on 9/11 and there's a specific issue which they knew of two people associated with al qaeda who had visas who were here in the united states a month before 9/11. they didn't fly down the fbi until august of 2001 and it was a very specific intelligence failure. if you look at the 9/11 commission the cia did a pretty good job of strategic warning

that al qaeda was planning a big attack in the summer of 2000 and all the memos they sent. george tenet had his hair on fire and the title of his book is -- your book is "blinking red". was the cia kind of, the people that screwed up about this information but as an organization they did a pretty good job of strategic warning about al qaeda. in fact it seems to me if you look at the pre-9/11 era of the cia's and the fbi were really the two institutions that were concerned about this issue. i don't know what your assessment is. >> i think that's a fair point. the cia people that i interviewed to this day are very bitter at the 9/11 commission's betrayal of their work on 9/11. they believe that the character

of the central intelligence agency and the 9/11 failures of connect the dots is a very superficial explanation of what happened. >> after all there was a tin laudanum bureau of the cia so that sort of speaks for itself through there was no other place in the u.s. government that had that. >> the book details george tenet's efforts to have not only the warnings that he gave at least at a strategic level to the white house but it also talked about the considerable efforts that he made at the counterterrorism center to try to marshal the intelligence community together to fight the new terrorist threat so i do think it's fair to say it felt ike political football. >> you think the cia's mission to provide strategic warnings to the president's advisers? that's the bottom line in

addition to their action. it is well-known a paramilitary organization, do you think that it may have destroyed the mission of the cia to some degree? i will view a for instance. particularly when the arab string was -- arab spring was going to happen we could all make the direction direction -- prediction who would face not knowing which day or month but you can fault them in egypt when the cell is this not the muslim brotherhood but the salafist, this is the sort of thing that the cia has resources on the ground. this seemed to come as a total surprise and that's just one example so the question is has the cia move too far away from what is an effort to fight to the last two are? >> i think there's something to that but i am more of a defender of what the cia has done

post-9/11. 9/11 was such a shocking and incredibly terrifying event for many americans and bade doubled, tripled down on their counterterrorism mission and did something they needed to do for the country. the most prescient threat. i too think now as we begin to get a better handle at least on al qaeda's ability to pull off the spectacular style of attack like they did on 9/11 that it's a fair question to ask, are we devoting enough resources to all the different problems with libya and of course what's going on in syria. i think it's something the oversight committee and the dni is able to do. after all this is what we asked the dni to do, to take a holistic look at what the people are doing and where the resources are going and are we postured to be able to face a

coming emerging threat of the fights of yesterday? >> in 2002 george tenet tapped tapped -- to be the mission manager. does the dni today tap a serious mission manager? at the end of the day you have to say you are responsible. general clapper can't do everything so did he tap someone to be the mission manager? >> does. >> is that someone within dni or somewhere else in the intelligence community? >> often they are from another intelligence agency but when they are serving in that capacity across community capacity to try and bring together for example all the china experts from every different department they are housed at the director of national intelligence office so that they can try and have some sense of what everyone is doing and make sure it's coordinated. >> and just to turn to --

for a second. can you tell us your understanding of what is -- we hear about 215 and 702. what does that mean? >> shirt. 215 is the shorthand for this section of the patriot act that expanded the authority of the government to seek business records, to be able to go to phone companies and say we would like you to give to us what we call metadata which is a fancy word if you remember looking at here phone bill and it says this number called this particular number. this was borne out of 9/11 which was because two of the individual hijackers in san diego, we didn't notice at the time and we later found out they were in san diego but we were

monitoring a safe house in yemen and had we been able to figure out that these particular safe house were calling for residents in san diego if we had access to this database we might have and this is not ironclad just an illustrative example of how the tool could could've helped and how the 9/11 could have helped foretell the existence of other plotters in the united states. >> is a counter to that of the cia had information of these two guys associated with al qaeda and neither one of them was in the united states. if they had just called the fbi the year before 9/11 and said these two people were in the united states and they were living in san diego under their true names. it would have been a relatively easy way to find them.

we didn't need the phone surveillance necessary. just regular law enforcement. >> not necessarily. with any law enforcement tool you want to be able to bring as many tools together as possible and it's very possible that these individuals names are gotten to the right fbi people that of launch a full field investigation maybe things would have been different. the point is why people thought we needed to 15 and the answer was we wanted to be able to build an analytical case for if there are additional people who would do us harm inside the united states so nsa thought they had a sound legal basis for what they were doing. >> were you surprised on this issue in the house? this was the measure to basically change or in this was very close. >> we found an initial republican and democratic agreement that exist today.

>> i think you are right. i think the votes were on national security issues have changed since president bush was in office and since tea party members of congress have joined the house of representatives. >> because? >> because we -- 9/11 is not as recent as it once was. people have forgotten some of the lessons and people have a heightened degree of skepticism about the role of the government or increased desire to see privacy and civil liberties protections in place and we are offended at the idea that americans phone records even if they didn't have a name or the content of the phonecall in the government database that was scary and offensive to them and that is why there was a coalition of people on the right and people on the left who almost were able to score a real victory against the patriot act 215 provision. >> and your boss mike rogers of

course courses one of the main defenders. >> that's right. he and senator feinstein i think it's fair to say have aggressively defended their oversight of the rob graham and aggressively defended what nsa's role is in this particular matter. >> tele spent about 702. this seems less controversial. americans seem to be comfortable with the government. >> 702 is shorthand for a status that refers to the fisa amendment that do we debated and passed through congress in 2007 and eight is the shorthand for our ability to intercept foreigners phonecalls if perhaps they transit through the united states. phonecalls and e-mails. this has been a big issue. i know of, i read the papers and

those in europe and germans are very upset that you are right it's less of an issue within the united states because it's about foreign intelligence collection. >> it really became an issue when an american citizen was killed. he didn't become an issue on the hill until that point trade. >> i think you are right. congress is split on the issue. the intelligence communities i think it's hurt as they are generally comfortable and they would pass laws to make codify and strengthen civil liberties protections and increase the transparency that fundamentally not change the underlying operation of the program. the house in the senate republicans and democrats in the judiciary committees are a different place of the congress is split on these. >> last night president obama said to chris matthews that he is trying to make changes and he didn't specify what they were but there is a group in the white house that is working on

thinking through change. you have any predictions about what's likely to happen and what he is lyrically able to file on in the health? >> it's an open question as to what president obama will adopt. >> who is in the review group? >> a variety of individuals. the two recognizable figures are michael murrell. >> who now works for you. >> who now works at the firm i am at and richard clarke who was the counterterrorism advisor for clinton and bush and they along with others are charged with reviewing essentially the question of how do we reconcile the tension between security and privacy and civil liberties? i don't know what is in the report rate i expect it will be aggressive and i expect president obama will speak to it in name matter of weeks and this

will drive the legislative agenda at least on intelligence next year. >> lets throw it open to questions. please wait for for the mic and identify yourself and raise your hand. this gentleman here. >> mike we have talked about this before. connect the dots point is interesting and you started off her speech by saying that the cia had all these functions but in addition have the function of the core mission but didn't have the authority to really make that happen. it seems to me that backward nation function, who wants that? do the intelligence agencies really want a coordinator or

would they prefer to be left alone? i get to that question because we are still sort of stuck with that situation. there's a coordinator but it's not really resourced and we don't really have the authority to perform that function in an unambiguous way when you have control of the budgets and the institutions. >> a follow-up to that can you point to an evolution as the director of national intelligence where you thought the previous ones, specific examples of where they have had this role as windowdressing? >> i think he was onto something. one of the points of the book is that the congress didn't spend enough time discussing the relationship between cia. on the one hand cia didn't like the idea that they would perhaps have the new loss but on the other hand i don't think they

wanted and are probably glad today that they are not vested with coordinating other intelligence agencies. he is not sure house predecessors were able to do all of the work that is required across the three different central intelligence agencies but by the same token i don't think the cia wants to have the dni trying to get between the cia and the national security council. as you know the national security council and the cia have a very intimate role in every presidency virtually and of course we are aware of all the famous stories from the eisenhower and kennedy years about what the cia was doing for those presidents and that is the source of the relationship with the cia called the president's agency because presidents over time wanted to affect national security policy and realized they didn't have enough tools to do it or at least didn't have

what they wanted to be able to do in a medium course of action between diplomacy and veteri action. i think that is why they relied on covert action to this day as a lever to influence national events and i don't think the cia wanted an interloper. they don't want the dni trying to play an oversight role over what their activities are. >> speaking of oversight there have been a variety of discussions about the drone program and some are rather unworkable for instance having a pre-review board and there are problems about that because things move quickly. but what about action review. it's just natural in life. also it would have an advantage

that the military routinely compensates for any casualties in drone strikes or other form of military activity. we don't do that if we inadvertently kill civilians in a drone strike. is there anything we could do bring your chief intelligence staff have that could make the program, you know obviously president obama gave a good speech on may 23 talking about changes. nothing substantial has happened although -- has dropped dramatically. of the proposals that are out there is there anything that makes sense? >> this gets to the issue of congressional oversight. having worked in congress for so many years the reason these committees were set up is precisely so that there is a

check on oversight of the rest of the intelligence community actions. a lot of people fall to congress for not doing aggressive enough oversight. i think the congress can do a better job of explaining what they do and i think there is definitely room out there for more scholarship on what the appropriate role of oversight is i think most members of congress of the chairman of the two committees would say that's our job. it's our job to check the work of the central intelligence agency. we think we are doing a pretty good job of it, not that there couldn't be more or some of the reforms that you suggest but it really gets down to the intelligence committees use for the purposes they were created for or new institutions so that they also will check on what the agency is up to. >> i guess the argument in favor of maybe having some independent body outside would be the

intelligence committees were very close to the people to a relatively small group of people and what the counteroffer might be but anyway one of the ideas of course was to create the dod can make it no longer cia function and that doesn't seem to have happened so far. it's complicated to do. >> judging from the papers i'm not sure that it has actually happened. i guess if you subscribe to the view that the cia ought to be sticking to collection of intelligence and analysis than you feel better with the migration of the department of defense but i don't know how that necessarily leads to oversight. i guess the theory is the dod would be all to talk about moore and others would be able to check their work more. >> i think that's part of it and verizon is the ability in a

military function and traditionally the cia has a quasi-military function. there is no particular reason why it shouldn't be a cia function because i guess the idea and the whole apparatus at the department of defense, j.a.g.s who are involved with these decisions all the time. >> so the argument is we would have increased oversight. the dni does at least play some role in awareness about these particular programs. the justice department does have to rely on their legality and the white house i think does a lot of work and the bush white house does on trying to oversee these issues. there are a lot of layers. i know this is a big issue and i don't know that it's going to particularly get involved in that. >> we will see how this develops.

>> i think there was a growing movement. there was one before the senate armed services committee and there was more discussion because essentially this was the worst kept secret in the world. a drone attack is a public event so there seemed to be more movement about discussing it and the president talking about it. as he performed a useful public service and a discussion and much more informed way about what the nsa does but obviously he broke the law. that is a different question than when he broke the law. >> i'm more of the view that having written this book and studied a lot of the commission reports about intelligence failures it's worth noting that

as long, as short as 10 years ago mission reports were beating up the national security agency for not keeping up with technological change not collecting enough information, collecting that information on wmd and indeed the major commission work that examine the iraq wmd program faulted nsa for a variety of problems so i want to make sure that we don't legislate in anger about what the national security agency has done because the reason that they have mounted some of these programs is they were listening to what the political leadership said and indeed arguably what much of the country was commanding after september 11 and after iraq. they need to do a better job of providing the warning for policymakers so that they might be able to avert disaster like 9/11.

so i want to be careful that we don't just whips the intelligence community one year year -- one five-year period. if you do we are going to get very mad at you because you were too good at some of the things you are doing. >> this group that is advising president obama. >> there is peter swire who was i believe he was a lawyer out there in chicago with the commission on american progress, the committee on american progress here and the other two escaped me. >> it sort of sounds like a expert group. >> i think people have seen it in different ways.

i've seen criticism that they are all insiders. in terms of the president i've some people say you shouldn't have two people in there that have such intelligence backgrounds and i've heard people say there isn't a real strong defender except for michael murrell in the intelligence community but i think it depends on where you sit and i think we will have to read it. >> what -- when do you think it's going to come out? >> i think it's going to come out in december. i don't know for sure. i hear around town that is coming out soon. speak and you wait for the microphone for one second in that way c-span viewers can hear you. ..

i think the intelligence community is undoubtedly gotten better. i'm referring to generally the fact that nothing on that scale has happened. i'm talking about other plots that's been foiled that you can write about and know very well. some have slipped past, we got lucky in that we're able to prevent one but i put it in a different category. >> the underwear bomber. that actually goes to some of the big things in your book which the dni, thenal counterterrorism center, they would make sure the information was in the system, easy to see,e that didn't surface. oth he was on a secondary list on tr additional. so that was the kind of example

where the operators did not quite work or maybe that is an unfair critique of the operators. >> so it gets down to what you think, you know the mission of intelligence is. you going to deal to prevent every little event. that think the answer is no. your not going to be always able to operate perfectly. for the largest of your question i think the community is doing a much better job on counter-terrorism. we are safer, at least from a large-scale attack. the question peeresses of weather that is because of the institutional reforms that i discuss in my book for to is because we were spending up to $80 billion on the mission, doubling will we get spend before 9/11. it is debatable whether it was because of the increased money, focus, and lessons learned from 9/11 or whether overtime the institutional improvements as the commission and some would

argue that we have made, whether that will lead to increased national security down the road. i think the institutional reforms are an open question still being debated, but the committee certainly has improved its performance in the last in years. >> any other questions? no other questions. thank you very much. the book is for sale. great book. blinking red for everyone watching it,. you will be prepared to sign them, i think. >> absolutely. >> thank you very much for having me. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> tonight booktv in primetime examines political ideologies.

>> today, gene sperling will discuss the obama administration's economic agenda and the plan to raise the minimum wage. you can see this event hosted by politico starting at 8:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> the beauty of america is that in this country we have the ability to write the script of her own life. we are in a sense in the driving seat of our own future. and our biggest decisions in life are made by. america creates the sense of possibility. and out of that you could become

an activist, a king and organizer. in a sense what are you doing? you are living off the great capitalist explosion of wealth that you didn't even create. >> so many strawman setup it's hard to know where to begin. nobody said america is the most terrible place. but there are couple of assertions that you to take on faith that are astonishing up with the idea that america, america's great invention was wealth creation. not based on facts at all. what about the entire continent ?-que?-que x that was a theft. that doesn't mean -- [applause] 90% of the residents who live here were murdered. that was a part of it, to. >> bill ayers and dinesh d'souza debate what separates about america friday night at eight eastern on c-span. >> now from booktv, investigative reporter james bamford discusses the history of national security agency spying.

nsa surveillance of american citizens since 9/11 and the edward snowden leaks. this is an hour 15 minutes.y muh >> thank you very much. really appreciate everybody coming it. a really great event. it's only the second the greatest event i've had here. right through those doors i was married a few years ago wedding, which i discovered later was the major russian spy, bob hansen. i had known him for years as one of my sources. i did not realize what his application was. but it is really good to have you all here. i was very happy that the president decided to hold off on his announcements until tomorrow so that he could hear what i had to say tonight. it was very nice of him. i don't think he will agree with most of what i have to say, but

i will be interested to hear what he has to say tomorrow. one of the things that is fascinating is how many people actually know about the nsa today. i mean, when i first heard the puzzle power back in a june 82i was doing a book tour. one of the people on the book tour or at least in a limousine telling the studio was senator bill bradley from new jersey. he said, well, what is your book about? well, the national security agency. was that? so we got on the said. he was there to talk about the economy. i was there talk about the nsa. i just could not resist it when i asked how secret it is. even senator bradley said he had never heard of it. you get really angry. he took a separate car back to the hotel that night. the next day his aide called up and said, that was below the belt. i said, no, below the belt, he

probably confused with the nba. [applause] so i hear he went on the intelligence committee after our get together. he knew a lot more about the nsa after that. one other thing that was really funny when the book first came out was that the book was picked by a book-of-the-month club. so at the new york times book review. on the back to have all these are pictures of these little books that make little pictures of the books that make the book-of-the-month club. i saw mind. the name was there. the picture was different. it was a picture of a rocket taking off for something. then we called up and they said, well, what was the idea of doing this. they said, well, we the you were talking about nasa. they actually change the cover of my book on the book-of-the-month club because they thought i had made a mistake. so -- but john wanted me to keep

his shirt because we a lot of people with a lot of questions. the question's going to be far more interesting than the talks. i thought i would run through the few interesting things here. first of all, i'm happy to be in the press club. the press club has been -- by been a member here for over 30 years now. i was actually a member -- actually not at the time, later on, this was actually an all man's place until 1971, i think it was. but the person upon -- out there that has a deck of cards in front of him was an all-time press club member. he would hang at year during the 1950's. he became a really fascinating card shark. he wrote a book called education of a poker player. that is the -- ers still in the

original building. he may have been playing cards year. before he became a card shark yet another job. that was being a founding father of the national security agency. and the nsa actually got its start in that little apartment building there. july 21920. and the chief of the black chamber, that is what it was called. he lived on the top floor with his family. the first floor was of farming company. it was accompanied a supposedly made commercial codes, but it was just a front. the actual code breaking was done on the two middle floors. so as you can imagine, the nsa has grown a fair amount since those days. but what -- some of us, at least some people have been saying -- right now. afros actually in 1929. that was the secretary of state

to came along, secretary of state simpson. did not want to tell him that there was a thing called the black chamber even though his state department was paying for. did not know what his reaction would be that there was a secret office in new york that was eavesdropping on carry vacation. he did finally tell him. simpson was erased. the gentleman did not read each other's mail, and he immediately close down the black chamber. well, that put yardley out of work. so then yardley went from being the head of the black chamber, the head of the organization that was the first predecessor of the nsa to becoming the basically edward snowdon of his state. snowden, who today has become the object of is he a hero or a trader. my answer to that is always he is a very heroic was a blur.

there is no connection between snowden as far as i'm concerned, as buys. i had one in my weddings that i mentioned. he's not selling secrets to the russians. he did not go there themselves seekers to the russians. he went there because the u.s. canceled his passport halfway between hong kong and ecuador. the way before there was an ever snowden there was herbert yardley. and herbert yardley, after the close the black chamber, they decided to -- it is such a write a book about it which was the very first to expose a of american cripple logic community and there were not very happy, obviously, what -- when his book came out and they try putting him in jail. they could not find a lot, so they actually created a new part of the espionage law to prosecute him with. a lot of that is what they're

prosecuting or were trying to prosecute, trend to prosecute snowdon with red now. ironically the first head of the nsa became also the first whistle-blower. now, this is something that i think every word would be very interested in. there is history of this. there is history which i will show you a little bit. at one point being a really big villain for the nsa, and the next minute being a hero to the nsa. it took a while. it took almost seven years, but they finally put herbert yardley in the hall of honor at the nsa. so maybe there is still a chance for every seven at some point. but like us said, this is an -- yardley wrote the very first book on the organization of the crypt illogic organization, the predecessor of the nsa. the next one to write was david

connecticut hero of book called the code breakers and 1967 which still lot about the nsa has the most -- the biggest expos a of the nsa that had never happened since herbert yardley. and the nsa went to a lot of trouble to get rid of the book. i mean, they even considered -- this came out in and senate intelligence committee report, surreptitious entry into this house to steal the manuscript, clandestine service supplication , whenever that is, kidnapping, termination. worst of all, there were going to plant some disparaging press reviews about his book commodes as an author you take every other option before that one. so like yardley david connecticut was rehabilitated in the 1995 that made him an official -- the first official

scholar in residence at the nsa. they took all his books, including the one that there were trying to ban and put it in a library. so, again, more hope for edwards no near. and then mine was an excellent, the puzzle palace. and there they accused me of putting the country at risk. they threatened me to rise with prosecution. that said -- they forced me to give up documents college and never gave up r-rated a library or did the research, ripped a lot of stuff of the library, they threatened some of my sources, including a former nsa director with prosecution and jail time and everything. they had to -- they have a guy follow me. that is why wore a costume or rye went. so they actually that was eileen party at john henry's house. but they did actually have somebody in every audience or i

give a talk taking notes justin cases of japan said something that they could put me in jail with. they put all file cabinet of papers to get around me. fl ia, the free information request. we don't have anything on the. that's impossible. a been writing a benefit three years. even of a single piece paper. and then i saw on one paper in the sub defense of the word esquire. so i sent a request for everything on the file i'm gonna holds or. then i get rehabilitated. so after -- after about 20 years the agency -- yes, i just when that picture up. they actually had a book signing. the nsa. they did have a line going up the door. a lot of the people were actually carrying the puzzle palace was there were forbidden. anyone his book of the national

group the largest school, but i'm really recalcitrant i became a bad guy and wrote the book about the nsa and eavesdropping. i no longer on their official tour listening more. but anyway, there is possibility here that this could be really. you get general alexander : of saying snowdon is a hero are wearing a hero t-shirt. it is all possible. but before those are the people that i really admire, people that helped me in writing some of the books i did, some of the articles i did. tom drake, occur week, all the people who defined the nsa. these are people who were working there for almost 40 years.

tom drake it works their is a contractor for a long time. before that he was in the military. and tom's to cut hundreds first-ever job at nsa was september 11 to those among. but these are the people that i really and mired because their people who have a conscience. and when 9/11 came along and the nsc began he's tapping domestic is the people that spoke up. they left the agency, quit the agency because it did not want to see the system they work on turned into a vehicle for use german-american citizens and the u.s. so i have a lot of aberration. in all have the honor of attention that is no national what they did an awful lot of work to help get the message out in a few of the mayor here tonight actually. well, the nsa is, longways since herbert l. yardley in the town

house. now it's an entire city. have been to their a few times. and it is just a mammoth location. people have no idea how much that agency has grown just in the last ten years. it is -- the complex, the headquarters complex itself, you could put the u.s. capital and therefore times over and have space left over. and the whole purpose is eavesdropping. it is an agency that really needs to have a -- one and released have a close eye on which is why we're here, why this controversy is, because there has not been a close eye and a. here is the nsa budget. for years the nsa -- this is one of the top-secret documents released. for years the nsa was the largest budget item in the intelligence community, but that changed more recently because of

the advent of drones with the cia and so forth. so it is an enormous amount of budget. you can see how it is budgeted. and it is very widespread. this is one of the more revealing slides i have seen from the 9/11 group that shows where they do all of their -- they plan all of their mall where, the computers around the world, 50,000 places the plan now where. of the places with a tap into fiber-optic cables and so forth. so for somebody has been writing about the nsa for a very, very long time this was an extremely informative slide. matted data. no one ever heard of that word before last june, i think. but it has become really the key -- one of the key issues we're talking about now. i don't know about you, whenever give the u.s. government, particularly the nsa, the

authority to have, you know, every time i pick up the telephone to keep a record of that and to keep it for five years. so that is one of the big issues that will be talked about tomorrow and the president's talk, whether he will go a long with the committee's recommendation which is his panel's recommendation which is basically taking the nsa out of the business of storing all of these records and instead putting the data where it is supposed to be, the companies are the collected it. and then using legal authority, getting a warrant from a judge to search through the data and not just going through it without any oversight. anyway. meditated is a really big problem. one of the things that has come

up more recently was these two decisions on the issue of mad at data. one was judge richard leon, a federal judge in washington. the other was judge william pauley in new york and none of it made any difference, but i grew up with judge lyonnais went to law school with them. but we never agreed on anything in 30 years. he is a very conservative judge. periods judge leon came to a very conservative conclusion which happens to be the same conclusion i came to which was the conclusion that the government should not be able to do this kind of activity with the data. judge william paleo-indian came to the office -- opposite conclusion. you had that split decision. in my opinion provides that

whole idea of the government collecting netted data. i mean, the snowden case is a perfect example of why. here was at risk snowdon. the was a contractor. he was in his 20's. and yet he was able to spend almost a year, it seems like, exfiltrating all of those -- well, over one-half million secret documents. and without even knowing about it until the inception on gone. so do you want to trust his agency with all of your data? i don't particularly want to do that. you can see what happens with target. there are people out there that really one data that will pay a lot of money for it. and as somebody at the nsa said to him, the honorable thing, being a whistle-blower, wanted

to be a criminal, they have all that data. the lessee keep in the hands of the government, the better it is pretty darn of the key issues which is an issue will talk about, which is somewhat of a complex issue but it is a key issue in the entire meditated discussion. it is the issue that judge pauley sort of hung his hat on on his decision. and it all centers on this house in human and this person appeared. i will guarantee you i am the only person in this room that has actually been to that house. this was the operations center in the men. it was very controlled of his plots from. i went there because i did a documentary for pbs. we did a documentary and the nsa and 9/11. so i went to that house, and we saw it, and that was where the first hint of 9/11 came from. again, these were all the issues

that feed into judge paulis decision, the comments of the director of the nsa. this is -- what i am about to talk about here is the key excuse for having limited data program. what happened was in december of 1999 the nsa -- while, the nsa had been listening to this house for years because it was the house where he would call to set up his terrorist operations. it is the house where they attacked the u.s. -- set up a plan for the u.s.s. cole, the u.s. embassies and so forth. the nsa was listening to that house. december of 1999 it picked up the communication, and it was from afghanistan that said send khalid for the meeting. so we know that the nsa knows at this point that there will be a big meeting in kuala lumpur.

well, they nsa passes that to the cia and to the other intelligence agencies. the cia says people to kuala lumpur. they get the cooperation of the government, the malaysian government. and they're watching these guys. and then all of a sudden they get to the airport and they get on a plane. and they fly out of the country with all of the cia being good intelligence people they figure they're flying to bangkok because that is where the plan was going. the problem was, like all of the station in bangkok to let them and it happens to be a saturday and nobody was working. so that the terrorists got the plane and disappeared into bangkok. but the cia did know that there were going to the united states because they had a copy of their

passports with the visa and it. so what happened was the two of them flew from yemen to kuala lumpur. california. and since nobody had been tipped off by the cia, no one was there to watch them arrive. they went down to san diego. then managed to get this house here. it was a house in san diego. done by somebody, muslim and san diego and needed a place to stay, let them stay there. the guy happens to be an fbi informant which was very interesting. you had to terrorists there were on their way year. the cia knew about it, did not