[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> here on c-span2 we've been bring you daylong coverage of this cato institute conference on government surveillance and privacy issues. during the lunch break their expected resume around one p.m. eastern. while we wait here's the first panel from the spring which focuses on oversight of the intelligence community. >> good morning and welcome to the cato institute. my name is julian sanchez, i'm a senior fellow here and i'm grateful to everyone who has come up bright and early for the

hayek auditorium here at cato for our 2019 surveillance conference. we've been doing this for some five years now. when we launched this in the aftermath of disclosures about bulk nsa collection by form and as a contractor snowden, the nsa itself was a fairly obscure agency unfamiliar to most americans. and as we kick off our 2019 conference we find that now even intelligence oversight is itself very much in public headlines. we have an impeachment preceding kick off in significant part by a report from the intelligence community inspector general. we have forthcoming next week i'll breathlessly awaited report on allegations of misuse of the foreign intelligence surveillance act during the 2016

presidential campaign. we have proceedings aired, actually would be from the house intelligence committees. even intelligence overseers are at the senate and the sense of our political discourse in a way the intelligence agencies itself began to be earlier in this cycle in a in a way that was unprecedented since the 1970s. we have a special focus this year on not just the intelligence agencies themselves but also the mechanisms in place to oversee them. one of the classic problems of intelligence and surveillance in a free society is how to balance the need for operations that are inherently secret. surveillance that is done publicly in a in a sense that s definitely not effective surveillance. how do you balance the certain kinds of operations information

gathering in secret while at the same time rendering those who have power accountable to the public, the democratic mechanisms, given the unfortunate history around the world but certainly in our country as well, secret surveillance power being accused for political purposes. we have a program at today that includes a discussion with one of the most important bodies doing that oversee, the privacy and civil liberties oversight board this afternoon. will have discussions on the renewed war on strong encryption, one of the mechanisms that ask to check large-scale collection. we're going to examine later this morning some of what we have learned about compliance issues or misuses of large-scale surveillance authorities under, authorities such as 702 and 215

and in the intelligence community is seeking to address those and how effective those corrective mechanisms have been. but you start up i think appropriately we're going to begin with an overview of the intelligence oversight apparatus. what are all the different entities that are working to keep the secret use of power in check? did operate effectively and how can they be improved? that are a few people better i think suited to lead that discussion that our moderator, liz hempowicz was a policy director of the project on government oversight which does excellent work working to increase transparency and accountability across government. i'll pass it off to the variable liz hempowicz to editors are worse panel. >> thank you so much. let me give some brief introductions. our panelists have long, storied careers and so their full bios are on the conference website and i encourage you to check them out.

genevieve lester is the de serio chair of strategic intelligence an associate professor at the u.s. army war college. she recently published her first book, when should state secrets stay secret? accountability democratic governance and intelligence to cambridge university press. daniel schuman who is demand progress, issues that concern government transparency, accountability and reform come civil liberties, national security and promoting an open internet. is a nationally recognized expert on transparency accountability and capacity. david barrett is a professor of political science at villanova university and author of among other titles the cia and congress, the untold story from truman to kennedy. the "washington post" called a triumph of research and one amazon reviewer called it one of the coolest books out there. and professor margo schlanger is the mccree professor of law,

in civil and criminal detention. i think to kick us off before we get into what are some of the problems with oversight of intelligence community, we should understand what are the mechanism that exist to conduct oversight over this relatively secret governmental apparatus. so professor slinger, hope you don't mind i'm going to come to you first. you've looked extensively at the mechanism for internal oversight at the national security agency or the nsa. can you talk over the about those and the benefits and limits to internal oversight offices and then were going to go into some of the external oversight offices of that exist. >> great. i come at this conversation from the role of the former come as a former head of the civil rights office of the department of homeland security where i played a role as internal overseer for the tiny sliver of the ic is located at dhs but i got

interested in nsa at the center of this. if you think broadly about the internal office placed on the role of complaints with extra imposed norms and what you might broadly see in terms of oversight it's a pretty big list of the suspect some of my fellow panelists will quarrel with the inclusion of some of these offices on this list but i needed to make sure i i didn't skip any. i needed notes. there is at the nsa i compliance office responsible for aspects of compliance with especially the strictures of the fisa court and also the 12333 rules. there's the office of general counsel which functions in part as an oversight office although in large part not. in large part as an enabling office to enable its client to do with his client wants to do but in some degree that's also an oversight office. there's the nsa ig which is more

independent obvious at the bears the civil liberties and privacy office act the nsa which is both a policy role, policy creation role to be at the table when policy is originated, a policy implementation role and an oversight role. there is, at the department of justice there's the national security division. a quote that unlike the says this is not such a big oversight office comes from a doj official called the nst the place that ic goes to get blast. so that makes us are not very oversight like, but other people disagree with that and say yes, that functions as an oversight office. there's the intelligence oversight function at the department of defense. there's the intelligence community ig's office.

there's at odni the civil liberties protection office which particularly has a role in 702 compliance work. there's the odni office of general counsel. the odni mission, it's his integration. that's not right, is a? i think it is right. mission integration, function which can have some complaint oversight sorts of function. there's the presence intelligence advisory board, intelligence oversight board. there's the fisc itself which is internal so now i'm making for my role here and the pclob which of the people talked much more about. but then to do two more minutes if that's the right amount of time. the challenge of oversight internal oversight offices is simultaneously, the offices, internal oversight offices are desired item agencies they work for because they want the blessing of those offices. they want the extra credibility that such blessing gets them.

if they can create enough authority or enough of a reputation that the blessing actually carry some reputational benefit. that's the thing they want from the. they might also want the expertise but they don't always want the expertise. what they mostly want is the blessing. the the in the question is what comes with that? what comes with that has to be some kind of actual bring into the agency the norm office is designed to for the period if it's civil liberties office there has to be some civil liberties credibility that comes with that. what those offices have did it if they're going to be effective is to have to maintain simultaneously their influence in the agency and their commitment to whatever the external norm is. it's a norm that academic work

sometimes called a precarious valley, a value that is challenge in the agency and it is continually under threat. this office whatever it is, say the civil liberties and privacy office, has to carry a sustained commitment to civil liberties and privacy against what is a really very strong mission orientation that tends to run against that value. it has to do that simultaneously while maintain influence in the agency, and that's the challenge. and so how can it do that? well, it has to maintain pretty strong affiliation both with the agency and simultaneously with external points outside the bureau. if that neither can be threaded, and will have more time to talk about it, what it can do is -- inside the office for more empowered entities that can tell

people what to do as opposed to just advise them. it can increase public access by writing reports, both reports that are publicly available and reports that either get leaked or disclose in discovery but generating internal papers that becomes external. and it can build the relationship with external advocates that helps agency respect the norms in question. that the basic idea. it sounds hopeless. my position on this, it's that help us but boy, very, very hard. >> internal oversight offices certainly serve a purpose, but they can't be the only check on a special in the intelligence community could be really extreme abuses of their authorities. >> can i just say it's only because they're not empowered enough to be the only check but if there the only check, they

would use both influence and they lose the external orientation they need to succeed. both under authorized but also because they would just lose whatever influence and commitment they have if they are the only check. >> putting aside questions of their effectiveness for now, this is a question to the whole group, what are some of the major external oversight bodies applicable and oversight of the intelligence community? whoever wants to take it. >> we can start briefly with congress. there are two full committee on intelligence and they have existed since the mid to late 1970s. there's been a logic, sort of constitutionally derived logic of congressional oversight of executive branch agencies that goes back to the presidency of george washington. in terms of congressional oversight as intelligent and my specially has been cia, whose

very informally carried out in the '40s to the mid-'70s but not very adequately, certainly not systematically. and so now we have the house and the senate intelligence committees which one hopes dashed in the thing is about intelligence agencies, surveillance pulse signal is so much of it is carried out and must be carried out in secret. so on behalf of the american public we have democratically elected officials to try to monitor the secret activities. here's the president, also congress and especially these two committees to present over legislation to keep them functioning to create boundaries, to investigate and see their performing with both conference also legality. >> can i i pick up on that a little bit? i would argue for the commission oversight committee usually

intended to rebalance information asymmetry when it comes to relationship with the extra world intelligence agencies. looking at this complicate the executive branch ownership of intelligence information. the congressional committee balance that by asking questions bringing in people requiring reports, testimony that type of thing and i think what david touched upon is both cameras were set up in the 70s in the wake of scandals. the church in pike committees investigated for allegedly intelligent abuses and were stood up as a way, a bipartisan way of putting bounties on intelligence activities. this is the scandalous, or the birth from scandal that these committees can select committee show is an interesting political piece of the whole picture, that the intelligence oversight was to rather sporadically and then the body politic decided we needed something more formal to be put in place to rebalance

this relationship. >> when you think about congressional oversight, it's not just house senate intelligence committee. for example, eyes is overseen in part by the judiciary committee. the story for the house and intelligence committee is being overseers to being the supporters are almost the boosters for the intelligence community. the role they play has changed from church in pike committee role to being no, no, we will be your biggest advocates. other places will, the government and county building office which has a number of folks who are intended to aid comics in getting questions answered. the intelligence community tried to work around gao and among the ability to engage in oversight but they do have that role. there's also the inspectors general that exists and we can

talk about the spell than i can, there's dissidence, whistleblowers, there are a number of players that help educate and bring in congress, congress is a major point of leverage where you can actually force folks into question. you see a lot of games get played. there's 1.1 million people with top top-secret or higher clearances. there's already something people on house intelligence committee. the number of senators who have access to a staffer with a clearance is 37. most senators don't have someone who can get the basic questions answered. when you talk to oversight, to what degree, to what extent of whom, with what help. and i think when you look at it in the congressional contacts, the political games that are played, just go back for one

final second, it's a select committee which means the members of -- are chosen by the speaker in the minority leader. it is not missed any committee like judiciary. its members are supposed to reflect the composition of the chamber over -- but it does happen and the fact oftentimes that i've represented so the record if somebody from judiciary. david. with the cabinet anyone from that committee. there is the overseers but to the extent to which they oversee is an interesting and open question. >> if nobody else but of the role of whistleblowers in overseeing the intelligence community, i definitely was going to some glad to be me to it, daniel. doctor baird, your book, examines the years between the years of the cia and the bay of pigs invasion.

[inaudible] do you think congressional oversight any intelligence community has changed much since those dark ages? >> oh, i think there are some common features across all those many decades but it changed very such as because in the old days, in the first three decades or so there were tiny and very secretive subcommittees of the armed service committee, said appropriation committees, and so four of them and sometimes some of them performed somewhat effectively but there was no all-time staff devoted to this task review and members of armed services and appropriations committees and the subcommittees who would assign some of their staffers to spend some of their time in assessing them and monitoring, especially cia. so what was -- that old system wasn't as awful as the history books say. that's one of the conclusions of my book but it was never

anything like comprehensive or systematic. now we have these big committees. maybe they are too big, these intelligence committees, but as has been pointed out other committees engaging in oversight but we have a lot of members of congress who at least can't examine with intelligence agencies are doing. my sense, when i spoken to former legislative liaisons for cia and i spoke to a couple of them, i have to say for what it's worth they were very unimpressed in the years where they did that work with the sort of attention and questioning that ca received from members of congress. you would think in the modern era with the big committees, big staffs, all the laws we have that the quality of oversight would be better than it is, but one consistency across the long

haul from 1947 through today, if i can believe these former legislative liaison is strangely not enough attention given by most members of relevant committees to intelligence oversight. >> why do you think that is? that's a question for the group. a special in our advocacy on whistleblower protections and increased transparency in the intelligence community, it's been my experience we go up to fail and meet with staffers and they wave around national security and that's the end of the conversation. that's been my experience but what i would love to post a a question to you guys can why do you think that is, that members of congress and their staffs are not asking the tough questions they should be asking? >> maybe i misspoke before. the house intelligence committee has fortysomething staff. so the number of personal they have is tiny -- personnel.

congress at whole, put it in context compared to 1970s, there's 1000 fewer house committee staff now than there was in like 1983. there's twentysomething percent decrease in stepping gao is down by 2000 staff. crs were i work is done by 20% so we actually see the diminishment and the number of staff who are able to do this. the allocation of members that's gone up significantly. this follows true what you are saying which is congressional focus and attention is very diffuse. you didn't say this but i will say this, it's often reactive. it's reacted to the news, reacted to leaks, reacted to the administration. it's not proactive. right now peach and is going on, that is being managed by the house intelligence committee. how much can they oversee the intelligence community which is

what the primary responsible is when you're spending all the time focus on this other thing? this isn't a critique. we can get at that later if folks want but it's more, you know, they just don't have the resources to do the work they need to know. a lot of their staff come over from the intelligence community. so this also perspective issues in terms of you want to make sure people you're hiring to help do this work on the people at leadership are expecting to run the committee of those who are motivated to go in to find out what's is going on and talk about it. they feel caught that the intelligence community will answer the question if you don't give them a lot of accommodation. the consequent of that is you take this out of public space or you don't ask them the tough question. you have people can ask the tough question. oversight that needs to happen doesn't happen for these institutional design reason. >> a lot of what has been described is endemic.

it's not particular to ic and oversight of the ic. almost never talk to companies who worked as an agency says are overseers are amazing. that's something i've never heard. some of them have more, homeland security has whatever it is, 34 to oversee it which it has its own problems. part of this, the world of congressional oversight is inherently limited by the political economy of congressional oversight. the difference is, one is, clearance. there's a reason that these committees hire people who are coming out of the ic because that way they start with clearances and knowledge, and because the subject matter is so hidden, if you don't hire people who have the expertise already, it's hard for anybody felt the expertise. you had this in hand, you start

off with people who have i would want to call it captured but who are in the academic literature on the path to capture, right? and oversight, congressional oversight has to play a bigger role with the ic than house to play with any other part of the federal government because of the security issues. we are asking congressional oversight to do something that it is incapable of doing even in a really open area. agriculture or whatever, right? it incapable of doing it and get we are not asking to do it about the ic, , we're asking you to do more. >> hold up on that. i think it is a certain piece that is captured. i would also think beyond the secret nature, , it's highly technical. your limited staff, principles who are torn in a lot of different directions. intelligence up on it

responsibly. the incentive structures not set up to make them want to delve deeply into technical and controversial issues but i think i want to introduce the concept of an importance of emerging technology because one could argue you could understand covert operation that involved operators. can you understand how satellite works? do you have the people who can do that? can explained? you have the time to understand? technology is increasingly complicating the overall picture. >> and there's the matter of reelection incentives. no one wins reelection because they are a great overseer of intelligence. >> often comes down to your constituents. >> its off-camera. to the extent that oversight meetings are functional for elections because of their conducted in public but these are not. >> want to wait in on -- congress is incapable of --

maybe i'm overstating the point but i don't think congress is capable of oversight. the church committee report and the investigation that took place was highly technical, highly detailed. it was politically dangerous point it wasn't good for senators, but it was invaluable. the reports they came out were great. it changed the nature of the way we look to what was going on. it revealed great wrongdoing across a wide spectrum. i hesitate to talk about this with a historian who sitting immediately to my left, but the house and senate intelligence committees seem to do a good job in the '70s and '80s and they sort of slipped away from that. what we're seeing is an institutional -- congress itself has made itself dysfunctional and this was a choice. it was a choice to decrease the number of staff, the choice and how many committees that members should have, a choice to allow leaders to appoint members.

these institutional design choices combined with -- there's harry yes, sir bring back the office of technology assessment. if you want to know how encryption works or how satellite work, having a dedicated body of staff that work for you who can answer those questions is invaluable. all of these things were cut off in the mid-'90s. there was the gingrich -- it's coming off one intent so this is, i don't know what to that content would be but double desolation for it to strip much of the capacity of congress to do this type of work but that is a policy choice. i don't think it's because they are inherently incapable. i think it's the result of a number of political -- in retrospect were unwise but they don't have to be the final choice about what the decision is. >> so we talk about the intelligence community as a group, as one body, but it a tk everybody in this room

understands the intelligence community is made up of different agencies, different offices within agencies that are not typically part of the intelligence community. and one i think the challenge is coordinating role across the board and i think the intelligence community is kind of a really good example of that logistical challenge in terms of executive branch. so the office of director of national intelligence created that coordination role and in a way to oversee the actions of the entire intelligence community. in your opinions, , a question o the whole group, did the creation of the office of the director of intelligence change effectiveness of oversight positively or negatively? >> that's a hard one. >> i mean, i think about it quite a bit.

i talked to people but a talk to people who i know some who used to work at odni, but i don't have a clear sense of that. >> there's obviously pros and cons. it's like with everything. you put instructions and have potential. i don't think you and i are disagreeing about congress actually. they have the potential to do things and they have a drag on that potential that comes from whatever sort of situation they are in. odni has occasionally been great for oversight and other times not so much, right? like, how do you sound that? i don't know how to add that up. >> it's an interesting question because the variation, also very deep end on the individual. we saw this with dan coats and

his relationship when he steppep down, and we saw acting dni maguire in a situation he got in in this whole impeachment process. i think measuring its effectiveness, maybe go back to first principle to understand what it was intended to do which was to streamline and integrate and provide a point of contact or advising the president and others on intelligence issues. is it achieving that or is it one more layer of bureaucracy that is getting increasingly large. either people who say some think it's a great vantage point. others think it's one more structure that is muddying the waters. it's an interesting open, hard question. >> i hear more often it's an additional layer of bureaucracy. are there some specific ways in which odni has improved oversight of intelligence? >> well, i mean, even calling oversight is an interesting

question because describing at least interval oversight, congress not so much. when coke stocks of oversight there talking about are you doing the right thing? buffer interval oversight it tends to be are you doing illegal thing? interval oversight aspirations tend to be much more tame than congressional aspirations. they tend to be a compliance frank rather than a policy, you know, is the game worth the candle kind of frame? or is the drag on civil liberties worth the game, whatever the gain is, to security or intelligence? odni hasn't definitely been, when it does interval oversight, and i'm talking about the office as a whole rather than the director. >> right. >> has been in compliance mode.

i have written and believe that compliance mode is not, it's a useful mode but is not actually the mode we most need, that compliance, if the rules are set to about allow a pretty stronge of intrusion on civil liberties or privacy, compliance should not satisfy us. and if there is insufficient attention paid by people who are in the know, to thank is that the right set? i think odni is compliance mode has furthered that disinclination to think about surveillance from the perspective of are we doing the right thing as opposed to doing illegal thing. that doesn't answer your question but i think we can see it in the sort of what's been made public of the report of the civil liberties office at odni. it's very much a a compliance

mode, and i don't think that is terrifically helpful in terms of what we need out of the office. i wish you would do something a little different. >> i think the distinction you draw is a very useful way of thinking about the is versus the art. that brings in another entity in terms of oversight which is the office of legal counsel inside the department of justice. just because you can make a plausible case the law allows you to do something or you will not run into legal difficulties for decision that you make because no one will ever find out about it or they find out about it there's nothing they can do about it because they don't have standing or all of the legal ways you can stop something from happening is a very different conversation from well, what's the blowback effort allies find out that we did this thing to them, or what's the consequence when people see where industry in political, like is this wise?

is something you would think that would be an truly decide as well is being imposed upon them by congress after the political process. the concert i always have -- mixed responsibilities of implementing whatever they political decision is as well as having this sort of foresight role, is that the latter drops the way. can we do the thing is been asked of us or what's the next met we can do that getting into if and when their hearings, we will emerge unscathed? that is very different question from his action wise to be doing this thing? i don't think that conversation happens made as much as it should. and when it does happen, it is subsumed by we can do this, not as much of whether we should do this. >> also for internal offices, they can possibly say but that is the legal. that's a very powerful move.

and if they instead say, that doesn't seem worthwhile, we think the privacy invasion of that is not worth thinking of intelligence. they kind of lose juice in the agency. they gain authority in the agency to the extent -- internal offices have an incentive to stick with compliance and internal civil liberties office in the intelligence community have an incentive to stick with compliance and stay away from -- which is a piece of -- right? and so some of the offices, many of the offices say okay that's over going to do, were going to be about law. what that does is the price the ic of a voice that is in about law but is in addition to being about interests.

the privacy and privacy and cis interest are real and they need representation in the interval process and they don't get it because the offices and i think this is true of the odni offices, is that's sort of have institutional reasons to not want to be seen to kind of going there. >> it would strike me as a real missed opportunity to not address those concerns because i think when we see scandals come out of the intelligence community it's almost always related to those incursions on personal civil liberties. i would think the intelligence community would have an incentive to begin addressing those earlier on in the process. in really serious and meaningful way. >> sort of in that context, so when you look at like the state

secrets privilege, this is in the context not of great questions of the state, right? it's about liability from whether people are killed in a plane crash, or we have, this is a community intelligence. certainly national security. the basis in charge of making toxic chemicals that are killing their neighbors. if that only question of if i open up your email. it's can we don't all these pollutants in the stream and then give everybody who's living on the base brain cancer ten years later? or can with plaintiff fall out of the sky goes were not doing due diligence to make sure -- there's a whole spectrum of questions that when you put the cloak of secrecy over something and when we put over more and more things, is it about protecting something that needs to be protected that really needs to be protected? like this compelling argument for someone pushing -- or is it something that is just embarrassing or that is more

embarrassing that creates lyrical distances but doesn't have to do with our underlying mission. preventing doesn't have to do with military mission but it is something they want to keep under wraps. >> are you suggesting the intelligence community keeps things secret that could be embarrassing? >> no, never. >> because that's against the rule. >> nor do they advocate against legislation for transparency around the things that they do. >> right. going back to congressional oversight and the role it plays in the intelligence community, i think everybody can recognize we are moving in a much more hyper partisan direction almost daily. and i think the intelligence committees encompass have typically been above the fray, typically, not uniformly of course. but i think, i'm not just tarting with her role in the impatient inquiry although that

is not helping. i think we have started to see this hyper partisanship in impt the work of the intelligence committees, and so i swung to pose the question to the group,, what do you think the impact that it will have or is having on oversight of the intelligence community? >> well, i'll just start. i wonder about the future, not just the present, but the future of the house intelligence committee having had this deep dive into the impeachment inquiry. i can only assume that speaker pelosi deciding that represented adam schiff chair of house intelligence committee that committee to take on that role, this is a sign of her respect for his intelligence conference and all that, but certainly my sense of the house committee

versus the senate, i have sort of made myself do some reading about what the committee has been up to recently and i certainly get the sense the senate committee functioning fairly well in this hyper partisan period in which we find yourselves, and, of course, the house committee not so much. what could draw the house committee, house intelligence committee, back into a more sort of bipartisan cooperative functioning? i'm always interested how, periodically check how do the committees which are themselves we should acknowledge, the committees are shrouded in a lot of secrecy. it's not just the intelligence agency but the committees are shrouded in secrecy, but how do they present themselves to the public. it's instructive to look at their website and when you go to the website of the house committee, you would barely know

they are republicans but you can click on minority and then you go there and it's nunes and you wouldn't know much anything about schiff. their for nunes you can essentially conspiracy theories. anyway, a bit of a mess. well, with the senate committee, you know, you see both sides and you see more evidence of constructive functioning and cooperation that has to be i think attribute to senator burr, the chair, republican, and the ranking and the vice chair senator warner who is a democrat. but how will we move -- i think there's a difference. there's an old idea, going back to 1948 that congress should have great a joint committee on intelligence and then much to my surprise the so-called 9/11 commission publicize the idea of recommended idea in early 21st

century, but my friend who is a great scholar, congressional oversight of intelligence, i've heard him say if you're going to fly a small plane and there's some dangers, better to have to make engines rather than one, if one engine is not working, maybe the other will. my sense of it is, one engine is working at least fairly well, the other is not, and i wonder how to get the other one -- i just think you can't function very well if you're utterly polarized. i think unfortunate this impeachment role has made that problem more difficult. >> i would say i tend to agree with you that the senate has been operating more normally i guess then the house. there has been reports that chairman burr is considering subpoenaing the whistleblower that kicked of this all off.

your face is exactly my face. of course there's been a request on the outside to do that as well and i think it would just be such incredible mistake considering the role that whistleblowers play in assisting congress to do its oversight, to do its oversight work. so yeah, i didn't come as a organization that fights for the rights and protections of whistleblowers, it's a scary time to see this happening. there are already intelligence committee was lord always have some of the weakest protections and hardest to enforce protections for whistle blows in the government. so i'm holding my breath watching as things go over to the senate how that will be handled. >> so a couple of things. first, i wouldn't draw too much from the distinction between the house and senate committee websites, only in all the house committee websites have several website for the majority and minority, where as this and all websites are a single website.

you'll see that is for all the committees. there are other things i think support your thesis but that is not necessarily that. i also think that the spectrum of my person the hyper partisan is the wrong spectrum to look at. i think that's the house and senate intelligence committees were failing long before impeachment in the top administration came. that thereby person can sensualism was largely in support of a lack of oversight and that was more captured by the perspective of the intelligence community. going back to what we had five years ago, it's also better hyper partisanship is bad. just using the powers and tools to go and release, that is not helpful in the least and we are seeing it as very destructive. we put out a report two use go with 26 organizations a number of scholars in congress that talk of a changing congressional oversight of the intelligence community. strengthen the gl and look at --

changing fundamental house senate intelligence committee. what you need to do is one the brennan center as recommended which is you need to go and see all things have happened since the last church and pike commissions. go and what, pick the year 2000 come from 2000 to present where are the over sets taking place and have separate entity that is not captured in the white house intelligent to be set captured. that would require was in 100 staff like the prior entities but i think that would be valuable to figure what the state of play is. you also need to think about the consequences of having leadership speaker, in order taking members of the committee is pernicious. you need to think about did have enough staff? when you look at the scope of the entities that the oversea, you did look at how the clearance process works. staffers wait years for clearances winter and congress.

this is ridiculous. if jared kushner can get an intercourse in weeks, in the executive branch, you know, in a matter of days and it takes more than a year for congressional staff to get a clearance, that doesn't do any type sense whatsoever. there's a number of things. and taking all of the stuff and sticking it in a supersecret committee when the purpose of the committee is to act as the avatar of the american people and be responsive, documentation the obama administration posted to congress that the committee stop them from being sent to all of the members of the house which there are not allowed to do. the house intelligence committee will go chastise its meant for putting up pocket on the floor the listings of appalled newspapers saying there classified. if it's on the front page of the "new york times" and you can discuss it on housework but the committee was filed an ethics complaint against members who did those things. we have a handful of folks have taken upon themselves to be

arbiter of all this and they have sort of closed the cloak around themselves they can't see what's going on so members can't see it, so staff gets it, so the public can't see. this is the fundamental problem. i would suggest whether it's more bipartisan or whether is more hyper partisan. i think the nature of the house and senate intelligence committees themselves is indicative of family and we need to rethink it from the ground up. >> i think you make a really interesting point about the long wait time for study clearances and one idea that we come over and over is there's precedent for congress to take over the job of granting security clearance to congressional staff done either through the house, sorry, through the capitol police or another body and i think that is something that congress should consider because the fact, you're right, you could get in security course if in white house and we can congressional staff left to wait years, and that just

incentivizes further holy people from the intelligence community into the oversight offices which is not necessarily about -- you have to balance that out. >> why hasn't congress done this? my suspicion, when i look back across with its recent decades not to mention -- i think so much deference from the legislative branch to the executive branch. is that the answer? why hasn't congress done this? >> question for the ages. >> there's a a great letter frm 1978 between the head of the cia and tip o'neill where the cia, i believe cia says there are too many people with clearances across government, we need to reduce them so we need to encourage you to read them as well. tip o'neill is like sure, as long as we get to keep them for leadership. there's follow-up letters that say increasing the number of

people in executive branch for cleanses and, of course, this massive overclassification, congress will not be happy. as long as leadership gets there people it will be totally fine. speaker pelosi is a member of house intelligence committee. the people who think they need the information, the speaker the people she had pics, then motivator, they think the members of congress themselves simply are not -- touching around clearances and why does congress, why do congressional staff need to get a clearance? clearance is an executive branch function. putting aside that, why would congress want to go to these other folks to go and engage -- there's an edge which is the consensual process by which you obtain information. but from the first principles perspective there's a reason they should need to do so.

>> there's a moment of fear and i see the related stuff, right? it's the area in which, it's not the only area but it's the area in which somebody can say to you that will mean the end of the republic, or some moderated version of that. and everybody who's been involved in oversight or civil liberties protection has a story to tell. where somebody said to them, i'll just use one that was me so that it's not so much you say, where somebody said to me that's a victory for our enemies. i thought they were wrong. i thought this person was wrong. i thought that insane. just to be sure everybody i think -- at the fact is that that requires, that's why

congress wants other people to do clearances, right? because that way if something bad happens, if there was another set of disclosures, if there is a leaker, if there's a whatever, it's something that happens they can say look, we didn't clear it. they cleared it. those people who are the experts, they cleared this guy and so you can't blame us for having -- that's also why there is this explicit threat in terms of disclosures. the experts in the agency are actually better equipped to dismiss that threat that people who are less expert. how is the speakers most know if something really is a threat? that would take a lot of attention and she's got a lot of stuff going on, right? so it's nice for her, i don't

mean this about speaker pelosi in particular, i'm not talk about a particular dispute that just been in general congress has every reason to want to get the say-so of the ic before they receive information, refer they disseminate information because then people can't criticize them if something bad happens. and then they don't have to figure out if that is like something bad will happen. >> i would just argue that while it may be the easy way out and without the means less adequately for them, it's not necessarily them fulfilling their role as the legislative body. >> i didn't mean -- >> right, and i think but it's easy to hear that a color that makes a lot of sense. i wouldn't want that responsible either but i'm not a member of congress. for a good reason. i guess i just i don't have a lot of sympathy for the position, although i do

understand. >> it's also, the circumstance now is the worst of all worlds for congress. they get informed so they gang of eight will get something communicated in very cryptic form. the rockefeller note, you know, he was the vice chair of -- he was informed of illegal behavior and writes a note to file a handwritten note to file -- is ridiculous, he's vice chair of the intelligence community and is taking in a file? i have real problems but he can't even with them. of course you can consult. >> just do it. >> that's your job. congress has the downside. we told you this was going on and you didn't stop it what's the upside? there is the upside. all these terrible things are going on will continue to go on. i think this game, will tell some of them but we will not tell them all. will tell them a little leave a

handwritten note in pencil, ten years later. that is politically unattainable to make congress look stupid because they're choosing to be stupid. that is dangerous for them as a body that rests upon the approval of the american people. >> i'm going to ask one more question and then i'm going to go to the audience. this, i may be putting on the spot and i apologize, but to move into the conversation about necessary reforms. if you could like wave a magic wand and one, it would be one thing so it doesn't have to be politically feasible in the moment, doesn't have to be may be realistic to happen tomorrow but if you could wave a magic wand and have one change occur in any particular oversight office or entity of the intelligence community, what would it be? what you think would have the most impact?

>> these will be super wonky but they are possibly are one of you is every member of course should have one staffer who is cleared at -- because the games the briefers play. there are numbers that introduce legislation to do that. the other would be i would change from being a select committee to a standing committee. members are chosen through the political processes and the parties and not chosen by the speaker or the minority leader so they would be more broadly represented to the caucus and not be held into the person who put them on the committee. >> increase expertise understaffing, increase the size of the staff. if they don't have recourse and support, they need clearances but they need wide expertise. i keep harping on the technological piece for so much of this work is headed in that direction we need to broaden the capacity there to support the principles. >> i understand there was an

ideal very much alive back in the '70s, '80s, that those who are appointed to the congressional intelligence committees, those members should be people who have really good reputations within their respective body for sort of seriousness of purpose and a willing to spend the time and willingness to be nonpartisan, bipartisan. ..

and then the speaker and the minority leader should agree on who should the device chair of the committee. seems to me, that would be a start. this notion that people on these two committees would be intelligence oversight. i think everyone in this room knows it. there is a big audience out there on c-span two. i want to make an elementary point. what intelligence agencies do is critically important. we know from history that sometimes there has been incompetence. sometimes it has been a legalities. congress and these committees especially can make a difference sometimes they have.

>> i will just take my role on focusing on the internal offices i do not think those are the most important. each element, i would redesign the civil liberties office to increase a higher stature. safeguard its kind of -- >> a senior fellow here. i am pleased to welcome you for our afternoon session. again, more fascinating stuff happening in the world of surveillance than can be covered in full-length panels. we are always glad to have an