it is a fairly frequent problem where foreign governments accuse our reporters and accuse them essentially of being spies, and often for the u.s. and so any ambiguity, and we say we have no association with any government. we are entirely independent. you know, whatever accusation is entirely untrue. but any am ambiguity that any government has and reports to be journalist, puts life in danger. so i'm extremely concerned about it. that's not to say that cia doesn't need people with journalistic skills to do things that they need to do. so i'm not saying recruiting people for other things who have journalistic skills is a problem. but any time an intelligence organization usees a journalistic cover it puts our people and journalists around the world in enormous jeopardy.

>> thank you. >> in many of the countries where our news organization operates, this doesn't resonate because the notion of independence doesn't exist in a lot of countries around the world. you know, and particularly for news agencies. i think the standard definition of the news agency in most countries is something that is tied government. and the type of agency that ap and reuters are is sometimes hard for people to comprehend. when i was based in asia, i often had to explain that ap didn't stand for american press. i think intellectual, it is the difference between government and independent but there are countries in which every entity is controlled bit government and whether it is industry for education or media. >> thank you. >> andrew humphrey, wdiv if

detroit michigan and founder of the journalism task force. thank you for being here. my question is, and for all of the panelists, what other loop holes exist now in the law that you can enlighten us on. for example, from the patriot act, is it -- can electronic equipment be confiscated by reuters by customs and be searched without a warrant, things of that sort. >> i'm not -- to be honest, i'm not actually familiar with them enough to sort of go through the list. i don't know if you guys are. i'm not -- i'm not sure. >> i think we need a media lawyer -- >> on that panel. >> that's the next panel. >> all right. i can speak specifically to the guidelines surrounding seizure of phone records. there is a loophole and the loophole is that attorney general needs to sign off and that there is a threat to national security or that it would compromise the integrity

of the investigation and they can still do what they did to ap. so that loophole is smaller, but it does exist. >> i think the federal law is that is broadly in the area of attacking surveillance. sometimes it is wildly overused. there was an internet entrepreneur who downloaded a bunch of documents from mit store documents cache and he was indicted on very serious charges, and ultimately committed suicide under indictment. he was parallel to the way journalists would operate. he didn't plan on selling them. he just thought information should be free. there are draconian uses around electronic information that are still on the books. >> all right. there is more policy journal. something i've noticed over the past few months, buzzing around

social media. especially more recently around the conflict in israel and gaza. is this impression among the general public that somehow the u.s. government or other governments are putting pressure on your organizations to color coverage in general, not speaking about specific cases. and about classified documents or operations but in general, to the state department or the u.s. military or the obama administration is pressuring the "new york times" that are associated press to run certain stories, to not run certain stories, to cover a hospital was hit or not hit for a u.n. compound. can you guys speak to that specifically, because this is something of course which i try to correct among my colleagues, but maybe coming from your mouths, it may or may not be more persuasive. can you talk about what contact you guys have from the administration or other governments about your general

coverage of certain issues or topics or conflict? >> and that doesn't happen, and i never had a -- i mean, i was washington bureau chief and then the managing editor and then the editor. i've never had -- i've had many complaints about coverage, usually complaints about profiles of people who are too negative or -- the obama administration is very sensitive. but in terms of how to cover things, how to place photos, i never had a conversation like that. none at all with anybody in the government. i bet these guys have not either. >> no. i think if that were ever to happen, i think the obvious answer would be no. subject to our own editorial decision making. >> there is almost no harder story to cover than israel palestinian. views are so harder on both sides that each of us think the other is biassed on the other

side. so there is an enormous increase in complaint when that story is flaring up from people on both sides. that leads to conspiracy theories about who is influencing the coverage but we haven't experienced pressure on that either. >> sometimes i wish we could take these the same way i could take the volume -- the e-mails from each side and just send them to each other. >> because they are completely -- i mean, on both sides are completely unrelenting and not understanding difficulty of it or the fact that each side actually sides have very hardened views and don't see the other side at all. i wish i could just exchange nasty e-mails with others and just get out of way and watch

the discussion. >> you know, today we've discussed a lot of issues facing our industry. question for each of you, journalists done a good enough job of explaining to the public what it is we do and why we do it? >> i would argue no. that we've not. i think that we are much better now than we ever were. but i come from a tradition of when i work in a regional paper in the days when newspapers made so much money that you didn't have to court readers. if a reader called up, i just hung up the phone. i think we're much better at it. i think we sort of tried it -- i mean, i try to answer e-mails from readers. we invite people into our page one meetings. we talk more at sessions like this about how we make

decisions. but sometimes i think we take for granted, i think people are always stunned and in fact the federal government does not call up and say, is this a gaza picture. it amazes us that people think like that. i think some people do think like that. i can certainly do a better job of explaining how we make decisions. >> i agree. even when we do, it is probably pretty hard to get an audience for it. some people have too much information flowing out of them,some distractions, that the ideal role of the media is not one that interests many people outside of our industry. >> yeah i think we are much more interested in the public than anybody else. by and large, the best thing we can do is do our job vigorously. over the last 10 or 15 years the industry is much less swelled and there was an arrogance in

our industry that we felt we could go out there and do what we wanted and the public would soak it up. so i do share the view that if we can be more transparent that that's helpful and consistent with who we want to be as organizations. >> that's right. as we wrap up, i would like for each of you for some of the journalists out there to give a sense of how you try to inspire the people that work with you, your colleagues, who mine for the difficult stories and why that's important. steve, just go left to right, please. >> and reuters, trying to encourage more and that is bigger and investigative stories. you can be tempted to chase every story that occurs. this enormous satisfaction in trying to get to the bottom of

things. find out why things happen. what's really going on and what is going to. what next. i think as people have done more of that, they discovered both that it is enormously satisfying, challenging and that there is a big appetite out there for it. when i talk to customers, whether the financial customers or news organizations or individuals, i think what they are saying is we have so much information, they are flooded with information. what they always say is helping make sense of the world and i think journalists get excited when they are helping people make sense of the world when they are backed by the organization and when they see the results. a lot of the journalism, best journalism we do has positive results in society. you see things happening and see people freed from forced labor camps. you see good things happening in the world so i think it just up to us to encourage us.

talk about it. incentivize about it and do a job and do it very well. >> i think encouraging a bigger more probing pieces, i'm deeply involved myself in them. i think the best way to send a signal to the newspaper, so your stamp, that you really care about her, is to get involved in story discussions about the biggest stories to actually play a role in line editing. when we do big investigative stories, in the time i've been executive editor, i want to be in on them from the beginning. i want to play on the editing of them. and i think people walk away with the sense of, okay this is important. you get time with executive editor. >> think about all of the cases we talked about today. from snowden to the appoj thing. all of the revolutions were really important for people to know and hugely competitive stories. and there's an imperative do that because if journalists hadn't been doing that kind of work, we wouldn't know about it. these are disclosures that are important for the public to know

about. it is imperative do this kind of work because, we spoke earlier about how many different media outlets there are. and for some degree they all cover the same story everyday. for things that are exclusive and distinctive are that much more important because it is what you have that nobody else has. there is no better way to set yourselves apart and as someone that breaks news that readers and editors can't get from any other source. >> this was a great conversation. i want to thank each of you, steve, dean and brian for joining us. and thank you to the audience for coming. we will take a short break. but at 2:00, we have the news maker with dnc chair debbie wasserman schultz. >> thank you very much. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. >> thanks, man. ♪

our campaign 2014 coverage continues with a week full of debates. tonight at 7:00, live coverage of the pennsylvania governor debate between republican tom corbett and democrat tom wolfe. and thursday at 7:30 p.m. on c-span. live coverage of the illinois u.s. house debate for the 17th district between u.s. representative bustos and bobby schilling. and later at 9:00, live coverage of the illinois governor's debate with incumbent democrat pat quinn. and friday night live at 8:00 eastern, the wisconsin governor's debate between scott walker. and saturday live coverage of the iowa senate debate with u.s. congressman democrat bruce braley and state senator republican joni ernst. and sunday live at 8:00 p.m. eastern, the michigan governor's debate between rick snyder. c-span, more than 100 debates for the control of congress.

now national security agency director michael rogers talks about the nsa's mission and efforts to create transparency. he spoke at the intelligence and national security alliance in august. it is 50 minutes. well, good evening. can you hear me in the back? can you hear me in the back in excellent. first and foremost, thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to spend time together this evening. to be honest, i was somewhat shocked. when i was asked to do this, i said, you want to do an event in d.c. in the middle of august? i didn't think there would be very many people here. thank you for taking time-out of your busy lives to spend time. i'm grateful because tonight i'm here for several reasons.

first and foremost, many of you have heard me previously talk about this as director of national security agency. as commander of united states cyber command. i'm a firm believer that public dialogue and public transparency is a public part and an execution of today and in the future. we have to be willing to have a public dialogue. so when i with a is asked if i would be willing to do this, i said no restrictions on media. we will do this. rogers has go in on this with his eyes open. that's important. because there's no doubt that one of my primary missions is to represent the hardworking men

and women of that organization and help the american public understand, who are they, what do they do and why do they do it? because quite frankly we haven't had much discussion about that. now the national security agency in simple terms is tasked to defend the nation and its allies, to comply with the rule of law, and ensure we always remain accountable to the american people. that is what we are about. defending the nation and our allies. following the rule of law. and always remembering that we are accountable for the citizens that we defend. much debate about areas highlighted about what nsa can do. what we haven't talked about is the context in which those capabilities are. the policy and legal mechanisms put in place to ensure those capabilities are not put in place to be misused against those that we defend. what leads us to believe that things that the nsa does are in the interest of the nation and our allies. i took this job in no small part because i believe in the national security agency and i believe in its mission. it doesn't mean we're perfect.

you will not hear me say that. what we are, is for the rule of law, we will be held accountable. when we make mistakes, we will stand up. perhaps more importantly, broader set of external compliance teammates, whether that be the congress or courts, whether that be the department of justice or teammates in the b & i. when we make a mistake, we will acknowledge it. and in fact, much of what you have read has flowed from nsa self reporting where we have made mistakes and not properly follow had our own procedures. you have seen multiple public reviews of what nsa does, for example, in compliance with act 5702 in the 15 section of the

fisa. by external organizations who have looked at us and said, hey, nsa is complying with the law and nsa has a robust mechanisms and that we abuse the information that we protect and appropriately protect, doesn't mean we're perfect. but i'm very proud of what we put in place. in no small part because we have learned from our past mistakes. we implemented a pretty expensive compliance organization back in the 2009 time frame because we realize we need to do things better. i compliment my predecessor for his commitment to that idea of come compliance and oversight. to do our mission we have to do that. there's much debate and a good one for us a as nation to talk about what is the right balance between the need to ensure our security and the need to ensure

the recognition of the rights of every one of our citizens. and it's not either or. we have to address both very valid concerns. the harder challenge to me in some ways is what is the right balance between secrecy and transparency. and that's challenge for me as a professional. if i'm honest, i submit my whole life thinking about how to protect sources and methods. how to ensure that what we do is not to grow compromise. i realize as that an intelligence leader under the 21st century, rogers, you got to be willing to talk to a broader set of people and you've got to be willing to talk at least in broad determines about what we do and why we do it. and i'm very comfortable with what nsa does and why it does

it. because i believe we defend the nation and its allies and follow the rule of law and always remember that we remain accountable to the american people. that accountability comes in many forms. whether the congress that executes oversight of our functions, whether it's the courts that grants us the authority in many cases do what we do. we have to make a case in many cases for a federal court and get permission to do what we do. nobody writes us a blank check. we are given permission for a finite purpose for finite period of time. if we want to continue beyond that period of time, we have to go back to court and make that case again. when we make mistakes, we have to make sure we report to the court if we have failed in our compliance responsibility. the other challenge i have, as i

tell nsa as new director, we cannot be trapped by the past. we have to learn from the past and drive. we have a mission that nation depends on. in almost every major operation that i can think of that we as a nation have done in the course of the last year for example, nsa and many other elements of the intelligence community have played a major role in our ability do that. that is a good thing for the citizens of this country and a good for our allies. and don't ever forget, we are not loin about supporting the united states. we are also about supporting our allies. i spent a good deal as director as does the d and i and remember what brought us together in the first place.

my challenge is how do i make sure that an essay remains effective in executing its mission. how i do make sure that we're positioned as the world around us is changing. to make sure we maintain relevance and capability and obey the rule of law and we are accountable to the citizens of the nation we defend. and what are we doing now that if we don't do in five to ten years that we will be in real trouble? another area i would give general alexander great marks in, is i was always impressed during my early time as director that i remember talking to him about and him telling me, what are some investments that we need to make now that with won't be a factor for five to ten years. whoever comes behind me will have challenges. that is hard. and hard do it in an environment in which a budget pressure is increasing, not decreasing. we have enjoyed relatively study courses over the next decade. we have found ourselves in it as a nation and in the two wars with he have fought and in which

many, many of our countrymen have made the ultimate sacrifice and came back from that fundamentally changed. they sacrificed their lives in many cases and become different individuals. i think about them all the time. as we move into the future, i'm constantly thinking know self, what do we need to make sure we remain relevant to the men and women deployed around the world. what are they wearing in a uniform or in an embassy somewhere or just like average citizens traveling the world who sometimes find theirselves and we are here to make a difference in all of these scenarios. there is nothing to apologize for. when we do it, we obey the rule of law, and we are accountable to the citizens of this nation. and every review we've had to date has come back and said, hey, look, you can argue is the law correct? you can argue, is the policy

what we need to be doing? but nobody has come back and said, nsa failed to follow the law or nsa is failing it meet its obligations at ensuring that we protect the information that we collect in the course of our doughty. again, it doesn't mean they're perfect. but i fundamentally believe in what we do. i fundamentally believe in how we do it and why we do it. if you are our current employee of nsa or you were where before, will you stand for a minute? come on. i know there's some of you here. the reason i ask you to stand is roger gets all of the attention as director. but what matters to me is men and women like this. dedicated their adult lives in many cases.

i just want to say thank you very, very much. [ applause ] >> now as i think to myself about how we build that few tour, partnerships are incredibly important to the future. i have always agreed with general clapper. the future is about generations and maximizing partnership. i want to be very public in saying that he need the help and capability that many of you in this room and others around the world bring to bear. we can't do this alone. i wish i could tell you this is the 1960s and it is like the apollo space program. this is just not the scenario we find ourselves in in the 21st century. i don't see that changing. nsa needs good partners. before an intelligence

commission to gain insights about the world around us, about nations who would like to get an advantage over us, but if they had the way, literally every one of us would be dead. we don't think about that much in the society we live in. think about what we take for granted. stable society in which the rule of law is respected. and the rights of individuals are codified in law. and our practice as a society. we've been pressed with that for 238 years. and we take it for granted. we go around the world today and it just flat out doesn't exist in many other places. and there are groups that individuals who if they had their way, the entire idea of the inherent right of the individual could make choices in their lives would not exist. there are groups and individuals who believe everything we stand

for is a nation is diametrically posed to their view of the world. and the only way their view of the world can triumph is if we aren't here any more. i'm not someone who jumps up and down and says, see how terrible the world is. i am somewhat amazed at times by some who act as we have no significant challenges up there. we have been fortunate as a nation that since september of 2001, we have managed to force stall terrorists on u.s. soil. we have had some domestic issues. but we have been able to foil those external to the united states who attempt to recreate in some form the events of the 9/11 where we lost almost 3,000. people from around the world. not just the united states. but people from around the world where they pick a particular day

to do business in an office building. but they went to work at the pentagon. on the wrong aircraft and almost 3,000 of them lost their lives. the individuals who perpetrated that remain out there an like-minded individuals remain out there. we need to remember that. now, as i said, all about finding that balance. it is not either or. if the price of achieving our security is fundamentally becoming something we aren't. then they have won. and i have no desire to fundamentally capture the heart of what is america. and as the nsa director, i am always mindful of those right, and i'm mindful of what makes america, america.

and i'm always mindful of the values of our allies and our partners. we aren't in this alone. as i said, i need your help. i need strong partners. the men and women of the national security agency need strong partners. and you got see some of them here with us tonight. let me conclude, because i want you guys to have something to eat. we will have a session after dinner where we will teak questions and answers and we will take it from there. but let me conclude again. thank you for being here tonight. thank you for your willingness to be part after dialogue because we need a dialogue. as a nation, we have to make some tough choices. and we want to have a well informed dialogue when we make those choices. and we've got to realize that there's a wide range of opinions out there. i understand that. but the dialogue has to represent multiple view points.

that is at heart what is the strength of america. the idea that we can bring together lots of individuals with lots of different view points and yet we can still remain who we are and what we are and what we are about. that is what makes me so proud to be the director of the national security agency because i believe in its mission and i believe in its men and women. i'm proud to stand up and say i'm director. i'm proud to stand up and say i'm a member of the nsa team. and i will not apologize for that to anyone. i thank you very, very much for your time. have a great dinner. i look forward to the question and answer. thanks very much. [ applause ] >> so welcome to my living room. this is a nice little intimate chat. that we're going to have this evening. i have a few questions that i received from across the leadership, so i'm going to start with those. but i'm hoping that you will send cards and letters. some of you sent cards and letters already. but they are like two pages long. so help me out. and keep them nice and brief and punchy and we will get through as many as we can. welcome.

>> thanks, again. >> first of all, i want to thank you for continuing do your engagement in unclassified environments so we can actually have conversations. meaningful conversations. [ applause ] some of you may not know but mike rogers did his first session unclassified session with me back in 2011. he was the joint staff -- >> yeah. >> this is not something he is just doing because now he is direct over nsa or cyber com. so this is a continuation of something he's been doing for a long time. so i was just reading an article recently that the nato summit is -- >> really -- [ inaudible ] >> a nato summit in two weeks.

and one of the items on the agenda is the cyber defense policy. and so i don't know if you are on your team, how directly involved you are. but what do you think some of the key points of a cyber defense policy from a commander cyber com perspective should vis-a-vis some of our closest allies and nato? >> first, before i answer the question, thank you all again very much for hanging around. i got to tell you, it's after 2100 and i'm sitting in a beautiful comfy chair and part of me is going, oh, man. got to stay strong. so we are talking about what is the elements of a cyber defense policy? first thing that i think is important is the recognition that cyber defense is not something that one single entity will do.

and in order to be successful in this area, it is about creating partnerships. how do we have the capability resident with the department of defense, department of government and commercial sectors. we are trying to figure out what should the vision of the cyber defense of the future. number one, it is about partnerships. number two, it is about how do we enable those partnerships this year and what we are trying to do right now and where we need to be and not where we want to be. with the direction that i have is, upon the president or secretary of defense, not only do i do your day-to-day department of defense, but the cyber command mission is to be available for the secretary. to do that, u.s. cyber command can't do it alone. department of defense can't do it alone. we need strong partners, and that partnership has to include information sharing both ways.

because i'm quick to remind people if i put on my nsa hat, and it says under the information assurance mission that i talked about, that's an important set of capabilities to help this government, and by extension, the civil sector in the critical infrastructure arena in pro viding core defense capability. the critical challenge for me is i'm not in those critical infrastructure networks. nor would you necessarily want me in those networks. i want to create partnerships. they are in a position to share information with us and i in turn can share information with them. hey, here's what i'm seeing in that red bottle space. here is what i think will come at you. these are the ttps i think, tactics, technique and procedures you're going to have to be able to defeat. here's how i think nation states, individuals, groups are going to come after you. these are the things i think you need to look for. that's only one part of what it

takes to create a good defensive structure. it is that two-way dialogue. great. i told you what i think you will see. tell me what you are actually seeing. what are you experiencing on your network? what are the conditions you're seeing that i don't see because i'm not monitoring your networks. i look at what are the groups an individuals doing. i need that partnership to make this work. in talking to our nato allies, one of the things we try to highlight is this is about ultimately, i think you heard, one of my takeaways after four months in this job, quite frankly having been on and off for 11 decades cyber to me is the ultimate team sport. if there is any one group who thinks they have all of the answers and if there is one silver bullet technology that is just going to defend everything, that's probably not the answer. i could be wrong. but my experience leads me to

believe that's probably not the answer. >> okay. so i'm going to keep on the international theme for a little while. can you discuss how we are working or meaning the royal we, how are you working with director clapper and the rest of the national security team to build back trust with our allies and international trust in u.s. companies? >> so the first thing i would say is for the majority of our foreign partners, we don't have a trust deficit. but i will say clearly there are some who have some very real concerns. collectively, we are attempting to ensure that we maintain an active dialogue with our foreign teammates. that we each, quite frankly, we need each other. those partnerships you keep hearing me talk about, those relationships, partnerships, the partnerships we have with key allies and friends overseas. i need them, and they need us. this is a two-way street. and can make the relationships work.

we each have to acknowledge that we each get something out of it. we will come to different conclusions. what with the different friends and allies, it is amazing what you can work through. there is no doubt in my mind that even as we work through challenges, all of us remember that ultimately back to my comments before dinner. it is about funding citizens and the nation. i don't care if you're in europe somewhere, asia, south america, i welcome partnerships. i also ask my partners what can nsa do to support you. not just, hey, here what i need to you do for pups that's not a partnership. that's not a true relationship. that's not what i'm interested in if i can avoid it. and acknowledge at times we will have a difference of opinion. all i ask is we've got to keep talking to each other and work through this. >> you're over the first hundred

days. >> here we go. >> right now about now, you should have a sense of what your top priorities are for nsa and what your top priorities are for cyber com. can you go over those? >> now we're leading into my retirement speech. >> we want to know your stretch goals. >> so, my number one goal as the commander of the united states cyber command, is to create the the cyber mission force that the u.s. department has committed to. my view is, if you ask me, what do you think your legacy will be, as you are cyber command, i would say during my tenure as

commander, we create the the cyber mission force for the department of defense. we enabled the strong foundational partnerships to build success over the long term. and we created a long standing foundation where cyber is considered a very normal operation. not something specialized, unique, that hey a bunch of geeks do. hey look, cyber and the ability to operate and defend in the digital world that we're living in, and i think we're likely to live in for the rest of our lives anyway. you have got to be able to operate. in this kind of environment. i try to tell operational commanders, look. you have to own this problem set. we're way past the day when you can turn to your communicator or your chief information officer and say, you know all this cyber network stuff, go do good stuff

and you just let me know when you fix it all. that ain't going to work. as a commander you got to understand how that risk works, you have to understand how cyber capability helps the broader operational vision. and you've got to understand when you're taking a risk. in the end, it is all about risk. on the nsa side of the house, a couple of things. first and foremost, it's making sure the workforce understands we have a mission that is critical to the defense of this nation and its allies, and we have got to execute that mission, and we can't do it with our head down, thinking woe is me. we've got to get our head up. we have to focus on the mission, and we have to remember it's about following the rule of law and ensuring accountability. as long as we do that, don't cut corners, stay focused on what we're about, we're fine. so that's probably priority number one for me. second priority is making sure even as we lost capability because of the compromises, we

need to make sure that we can regenerate that capability. and the third thing really is, what do we got to do, as you heard me say in my opening remarks. what do we do now that won't pay off in five to ten years? if we don't do it in five to ten years, our successors are going to go what in the heck did roger do? because i believe you can see the future coming and i know under are things we have to do differently and partner with our broader intelligence partners. we are part of a bigger team. we are just one part. it is amazing what we can do when you think about immigration. i'm honored to partner with cia. and rogue dia, it is amazing what we do when we create strong integrated partnerships. i think that's the future in the intelligence progression. >> so we have something going on

at insa that we call the ic imperatives. and in my own words, it's sort of taking stock of the national security arena in the digital age. and how do you maintain relevance and impact in the digital age? and actually providing that extra so what. so some of us, myself included, believe that maybe it might be a time when the paradigm is shifting from us starting with sensitive sources and methods, and then saying what else is out there in the open source or unclassified arena. and perhaps start with unclassified data, analytics, insights, information, and then focus sensitive sources and methods on the gaps.

is that a culture shift that you're thinking about? and if it isn't, you know, how are you approaching the digital age? >> the comment i want to make and i could be misunderstanding. so just tell me. >> sure. >> i'm leery at times when i listen to people, i'm going, you sound to me as if you're characterizing and it is one versus the other. >> no, right. >> one of the projects we are working on for fort meade -- is how do you do signals intelligence in an unclassified environment? >> i'm sorry. >> how do you do signified intelligence in an unclassified environment? >> right. >> this is a big cultural for issue for them. >> there are unclassified things around you. it's an environment with unclassified connections around you in a way you're not normally used to. we do everything at a very high

security level. we totally separate the unclassified world. we go to a different place many times. the vision for us in the future is how do we bring the two arenas together so that you can work them both simultaneously? rather than linear thing where you do one and i do the other. i start off unclassified or i start off at the highly classified level. the vision i think we have of the future is how do we provide our analyst and our workforce simultaneous access to both? and how do you train them about using both capabilities on the site? it's amazing. and i'll be honest, the ones who have the challenge with us, it ain't the young members of the workforce. they look at it and say, this is the way i live my life. this is what i do at home. what is the big deal? it's generally people who have been around a while who are like oh. but part of me goes look, there's technical challenges. i think we can mitigate those.

there is clearly risks, and we want to go into it with our eyes open. there's clearly risks. we have to go into it. it's not either/or. and living in the dejal world that we live in now, as an officer, it just excites the heck out of me. there is opportunity out there. to help generate greater insights to defend our nation and those of our key allies. technology will help us with that accountability piece. that's opportunity for us. it's not a risk. a risk i guess, but not a threat. it's an opportunity. >> okay. so you were talking about the millenials. you have two of them, and i have two of them. >> that's right. >> there are real challenges to recruiting, retaining, enabling them in the national security arena and having, as you talk about, the cyber force, you

the right skill set mix. you might not be able to do it with military only. you might have to have civilians integrated in there. or you might have to have new ways of integrating contact for your support. contractor support. so there is sort of a dynamic going on about manpower in general. what is your thinking on how you're approaching it? >> for me again, i make the same comment. it isn't either/or. you need both. key components for us, in no particular order, contractors are important to us. i don't see that changing. civilians and if you look at the civilian workforce in the national security agencies, we have more civilians than uniforms. you have to create a structure that harnesses capabilities of all of those. and the biggest thing i'm

interested in trying to do as the director of nsa is, how do we create mechanisms, particularly given the technical focus of our mission set -- how do we create mechanisms and structure that will enable our workforce to work with us, to go work on the outside, whether it's out in silicon valley or other elements to specially come back. this idea for the future, i am always amazed by the amount of people i talk to in our workforce, and many of you nsa shipmates here will tell you, if you meet him at work. he says you got to start by telling me about you. one of the things he'll always ask is tell me how long you've been with us and tell me what brought you to us in the first place. i am always amazed at how routinely you meet people who have been with us 30, 35 years. i just did a -- i'm doing a session next week with an employee, a young lady who has been with us for 50 years. >> i'm glad you said young.

>> and one of the things i talked to the leadership about is hey, that has a lot of positives to it. but the flipside is, if we're not careful f we're going to be a very ancillary organization. what do we do to create a membrane to enable us to bring people in and out? i want long-term experienced nsa employees to get them experience in the corporate sector. i want them to understand what shapes the corporate sector, what drives the technical investments. the cutting edge technologies and r & b and if you're a venture capitalist, you are there right now. i'm a bit surprised. i try to spend time with venture capitalists. i never thought as a naval officer i would be doing that. why? i said to the workforce venture capitalists are one of the best you got out there. why? they're willing to invest money on what they think will be the technology that two, five years from now will form a baseline.

they invest because they think it offers monetary return. i'm interested because i want to understand the technology that's going to be out there, two, five years from now. the thought about what are the investments we need to be making now. i just think we got to create a workforce where you can move back and forth. how do we go to the corporate sector, for example, and say how would you like to do internships at nsa? you want to spend people to work with us, two, three years. i can can put them to good use. i can show them what we do. you know, they'll need to meet our security requirements. they'll have to sign a nondisclosure agreement, because what we do is sensitive. but i want them to understand what we do. and this will help us in those partnerships. because one of the challenges for us in the corporate sector in my experience is we do not understand each other well and we don't know each other well. i would like to see what we can do to try to change that.

i need to understand what shapes the corporate world. what are the things that they, that many of you are concerned about. what shapes your world view? what concerns you? what is it about nsa that you want to make sure know you'd say to yourself, boy, i'm a little uncomfortable. i want to have that dialogue. i want people to form their opinions from fact. and not conjecture and not from a one-side view of the world. and in the end, they got to make up their mind as to what they're comfortable with. i understand that. >> so, let me poke at that a little bit. we, the royal we, hear a lot of government seniors talk about new kinds of partnerships and new kinds of relationships with industry and academia. but we really don't see a lot of new mechanisms put in place. and i'm not talking about the acquisition process. i'm talking about the ability to

have those open vetting and sharing of ideas and getting folks within government who are articulating requirements, right, to have those insights. is there any part of your plan that's about how you put those new partnerships in place? >> so, what i have done is tasked the team and said, okay, roger sets the right and left limits and broader strategic limits. roger does not say, here is every step we're going to take to do it. workforce, you're the men and women who have been doing this for a long time. you have great insights. i provided the leadership team with a series of tasks, this is one of them, in which i said you're going to come back to me in the fall and tell me how we're going to do this. because we got great partnerships with dni. great partnerships with undersecretary of defense for intelligence. if you look in the last six months, for example, we have been granted authorities to change pay scale for some of the technical fields where we're

concerned about recruiting and retention. we approached our usdi and dni partners and we said, look, i think we need to do things a little differently. here are the authorities we would ask of you. it's great to see them come back and say, okay, we think you've made a case. we'll grant you the authority to do that. and that has been very positive in the workforce because much of the workforce tells us, hey, we love what we do and we want to stay with you. but, i can make a whole lot more money on the outside. i can work a whole lot less hours and quite frankly, i wouldn't have my neighbors going, you work at nsa? can we trust you? one of the reason i had those men and women stand up tonight is because nsa is about men and women. it's about motivated people who want to make a difference. not who go to work every day thinking about, you know, today i'm just going to indiscriminately collect against people i have no clue who they are. or today i just want to abuse

the authority that's been given to us. i could harness this technology to do neat things that have nothing to do with my mission. that is not, that is not what motivates those men and women out at ft. mead and in the broader enterprise we want around the world. they want to make a difference. they want to do the right thing for the right reasons. and they are energized by the fact that they tell themselves, hey, i go home every night thinking to myself, i'm trying to keep america safe. and i'm trying to keep our allies safe. and i'm trying to do it in the right way. they're not perfect. but they're just like you. they're not some sort of techno geek who has no idea what's going on in the world around them and who doesn't think about the world around them. i'm honored to work with them. [ applause ] >> so, i have quite a few

questions about -- so i'm going to roll them into one. about cyber com, and it's about -- >> that is what, if i could? >> i thought i was -- never mind. it's been getting established. they're putting the relationships in place with the services. you have the cyber force. now coming online. but where is cyber com fitting between the lines of authority, acquisition, capability, man train and equip role, vis-a-vis the services. since you've been both, i think you get that. >> you know, clearly out of the current construct the point i make is u.s. cyber command sets these are the training standards and the skills it will have. i, the broader cyber command

team, provide that to services. services are tasked with the responsibility to generate capacity and generate capability. u.s. cyber command in broad terms, we do have some authority, but in broad terms under the current construct u.s. cyber command does not focus on acquisition. i don't buy or generate capability. i state operational requirements as an operational commander. but i don't go out and design them. i don't go out and buy them. that's what services do. and i say that as a guy who just finished 2 1/2 years as the navy component commander for both cyber and sig. much discussion about, hey, is that the right long-term view? do we need to change that? is there a socom model we to want look at? we'll work through that. i just sat down today and spent about an hour and a half with all of the service components and the question i poised to the team was, i think we're coming up halfway dlu this cyber

mission build. we've got a good vision for the future. we've got a good set of standards. i think we've got a broad operational concept. how are we going to generate true combat readiness? to me it's like a ship. take a carrier. we spend, you know, notionally eight years or so building it. the day it's commissioned, contractor turns it over to the united states navy. we have a beautiful ceremony. on that day we certify everything on that ship works as designed. contractors met their obligations. crews manned at 100% or as close as we can. every member of that crew has achieved basic qualities to enable that ship to operate safely at sea. we then spend an additional, depending on where they are in their schedule, 12 to 24 months, actually train that carrier up so it's ready to deploy in a combat operation in a tough, demanding arena. siber is no different. i talked to the team earlier

today about, so, how are we going to do that? we focused on commissioning the teams. that's great. that doesn't get to operational capability and war-fighting skill. that's what we need and that's what the department and nation is counting on for us. so, we're spending a lot of time focused on that. hey, the services are key partners in that. it isn't just going to be u.s. cyber command. >> so, as you can imagine, we have a few questions related to snowdon. but i think this one absulates it the best. many elements of government media and the public seem to be displaying an anti-nsa sentiment. how do you get the public to understand that nsa's clearly mandated legal roles and responsibilities and its commitment to ensure -- you talked about that at a high level.

are there some specific things you and your team are doing, especially with, you know, the new onslaught of article today that came out through -- >> i don't know. to be honest with you -- >> through wired. don't worry, your staff will have it all outlined for you tomorrow. >> i'll go in tomorrow, there it will be. >> in other words, how are you dealing with whatever continues to come? >> so, i think there is a couple things. first, i'm quick to remind the organization, look, this is not what is going to define us. i'm not going to spend my time focused on this. what we need to do is focus on the mission and doing the right thing for the right reasons the right way. defend the nation and our allies, follow the rule of law and always remember we're accountable to the citizens of the united states. keep that in mind. always remember that and we're

going to be fine. the sending thing i'd say as a component, i think about, so, how do we address this knowledge deficit? you could argue a trust deficit in some ways among some. i think among the components are, so, if you've looked, we have probably declassified partnering with the ni and others, we have declassified more stuff in the last 90 days than -- boy, as i can remember as a professional sig officer my entire career. we're trying to ask ourselves, so, what can we do to help ensure that the nation has a sense for what we do and why? and that is -- and i say, look, you got to be willing to do it -- as i said, there are sometimes we get it wrong. when we get it wrong, we are going to report that. we've got to be willing to acknowledge that. we are not perfect. but nobody is trying to systematically undermine the rights of our citizens or trying

to systematically bypass the laws that we are required to execute. so, to do that i think we're looking at disclosing, in a very public way, more information than we've ever done before. trying to engage in a broader public dialogue. tonight is an example of that. hey, so, there's media here. fine. they need to be here. hey, i'm not screening questions. you need to ask what the audience has in mind, we'll take it from there. another point i try to make, it just can't be about nsa, defending nsa. that's a loser to me. it needs to be part of a broader dialogue. we're fortunate we have great partners out there who are willing to stand up and have that dialogue. if it's just about nsa, talking about nsa, we're missing the point. nsa needs to be a part of this dialogue but it needs to be much

broader. people need to understand, hey, look, there is a legal framework in position out there. we just don't unilaterally decide what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. we have a set of policy mechanisms that help shape what nsa focuses its foreign intelligence mission on. we have a set of court-directed compliance requirements where we have to make a case, in many cases, to get the authority or permission to do what we do. we have regular congressional oversight where we have to notify and i have to testify. i have to notify in writing and testify publicly as well as privately before our primary oversight committees. you know, part of the challenge in all this is, if we're honest with each other, the mechanisms of governance in our nation right now do not enjoy broad trust and confidence among many elements of our citizenry. that's a tough thing to acknowledge. it doesn't help us as a nation

that that's the case. but it is the case. so one thing i try to tell the team out at ft. mead is, i'm not going to waste my time wishing the world was a certain way. we are going to acknowledge the way the world is. we're going to make sure we understand the context in which we operate and we're going to be effective in doing that. and we just have to acknowledge that this is part of this challenge. much of what we structured initially, if you go back historically for us, was we ensured congress as the elected representatives of the citizens of this nation were among the primary tools to ensure nsa's compliance. and yet we find ourselves in a situation where much of our public doesn't trust many elements or has low confidence in many elements of our government. what do you do when your compliant strategy was founded on that approach? we've got to broaden this a little bit. that's one of the reasons you find me here tonight and hopefully you'll see some things over the course of the next few

months where we're trying to have a dialogue. i'm not out here to sell anything. i'm not out here to necessarily convince anybody. what i told the team is, stick to the facts. and let people make well-informed decisions as to what they are comfortable with. that's what we need to do. we need to focus on the mission and stick to the facts. >> one last quick question. >> yes, ma'am. >> those of us who support and have worked with both the ft. mead area and dhs have sensed a tension over the years. in roles and missions related to the cyber arena. so, what is the partnership that you have in place or are putting in place with dhs? >> for me, i'm very fortunate. i partner with a cabinet secretary in the form of jay johnson, who i have worked with before in my career. i love the fact it is just --

jay will just pick up the phone and talk to rogers and rogers will just pick up the phone and talk to secretary johnson about, hey, i think we need to do this, i think we need to do that. he and i meet regularly we have talked to our teams about what we need to create stronger partnerships. what i have argued is, nsa and u.s. cyber command bring great capability to the cyber mission set, but we have got to do this in a partnership with others. and in the federal government, probably our two biggest partners are dhs and fbi. that's the way it's going to be. that's what we need to do. i'm not about control as ft. mead hears me say, it's not about control. it's about outcomes. i don't care who gets the credit. i'm willing to provide manpower and capability to support others. i don't care if they get the credit. this is about helping to defend america and its allies. it's about providing a capability for the greater good. that's what we're doing in the

cyber arena. nsa needs to do that as part of a broader partnership. i would only highlight from my perspective, i love my partnership with dhs. we're way past -- i can remember two, three years ago, arguments about who should do what? tvgs a conversation with jay. we made the decision, we got a vision, let's execute, let's drive. no longer interested in the mindless debates about who ought to do what. mindless is too strong a characterization. i apologize. again, i'm not interested in control. i'm interested in outcomes. >> you can come to my living room any time. >> yes, ma'am. >> thank you, admiral rogers. this is great. your presentation, your q&a is great. sitting on the table with director of national intelligence, jim clapper.

director clapper, want to come up and personally -- [ applause ] >> well, listen, i know this is a school night. it is for me, so i'll be brief. five years ago i did one of these with dempsey, and one of the things i labored over, what do do you with your legs? do you cross them -- >> i put them this way. >> i was watching for that. secondly, i do want to thank nsa and particularly the corporate sponsors because evenings like this wouldn't happen without the support of the corporate sponsors. so, thank you. so, mike rogers is a testament to the system that we have in the united states for grooming

leaders. and no one else on the planet can compete with that. and mike's passion for the mission, for all of his missions, whether his commander of cyber com, i think you would agree with me is manifest. so, you know, hats off. >> thanks. >> and i have to do this as a commercial, but as you heard, and, you know, i wouldn't have blessed this if you weren't an advocate for integration, so, mike, thanks for that. >> your leadership of nsa, cyber command, thank you. we appreciate that. on the 18th and 19th of september, we'll be having a

summit. it's going to be a great event. over 70 speakers. >> and a cyber track. >> and a cyber track. look at our websites, join us that day. admiral rogers, thank you for your leadership. >> thank you. our campaign 2014 coverage continues with a week full of debates. tonight at 7:00, live coverage of the pennsylvania governor's debate between incumbent governor republican tom corbett and democrat tom wolf. thursday at 7:30 eastern on c-span, live conch of the illinois u.s. house debate for 17th district between herry bousto suchlt and bobby schilling. later at 9:00, live coverage of the illinois governor's debate with governor democrat pat quinn and republican bruce rouner. friday night at 8 p.m. eastern, wisconsin governor's debate stween scott walker and democrat mary burke. saturday on c-span at 8 p.m. eastern, live coverage of the

iowa senate debate with bruce braley and state senator republican joni ernst. the michigan governor's debate between republican rick snyder and democrat mark shaur. c-span campaign 2014. more than 100 debates for the control of congress. up next, former nsa director michael hayden and washington post reporter martin gelman debate national security and civil liberties. they also discuss the legality of two nsa surveillance programs revealed by the edward snowden leaks. from american university, it's about two hours. >> so, we're really privileged to have two people who know the nsa extremely well from different perspective. general michael hayden is a retired four-star general who served as the director of both

the cia and nsa, among many other illustrious appointments in his nearly 40-year career of public service. he was appointed director of nsa by president bill clinton and served 1999 to 2005. after his tenure at the nsa, general hayden went on to serve as the country's first principle deputy director of national intelligence, the highest ranking intelligence officer in the armed forces. in may of 2006, president george w. bush appointed him as director of cia and he served there until 2009. he's a frequent commentator on many major news outlets as well as having been a foreign policy adviser to mitt romney's 2012 presidential campaign. he's currently a principal in the chertoff group and distinguished visiting professor at george mason university. barton gelman, immediately to my left s a two-time pulitzer prize

winning journalist and lead reporter on edward snowden's disclosures at "the washington post." he's actually met snowden. >> once. >> he spent 12 years on washington post and won numerous awards, of which i'll mention only a few. his first pul its zero was award the in 2002 for reporting on the september 11th attacks. his second pulitzer was for a series on dick cheney's vice presidency which went on to his best selling book, which won "the los angeles times" book prize and was named "new york times" best book of 2008. today he's a senior fellow at the sent century foundation and lecturer at princeton woodrow wilson school. he returned to the post

temporarily in 2013 after receiving various nsa documents from edward snowden. with his colleagues he's broken stories about many of the things that we're going to be discussing tonight. so, i'd like to have you join me in welcoming our distinguished speakers and the national audience of c-span. welcome to american university. >> thank you. >> now, the format for this evening's presentation is we're going to have conversation amongst ourselves for the first hour or so. and then we'll open it up to questions from you all. and there are two microphones. i see one in the middle and one on the side over there seems to me all the fundamental questions

on the nsa and privacy rotate around balancing security and privacy. how have we done it so far? how should we do it? and there's the further question of what privacy even means in a digital age, where every time you go to the store or use your ez pass, people are keeping track of you, let alone every time you use an e-mail en masse of the accounts. to make an informed judgment about the nsa programs, we have to know what they are. i want to spend a lot of time during our hour talking about what those particular programs are, how they work, et cetera. first, since this is -- we are hosting this, the political theory institute, i'd like to start by asking a few big normative questions around which i think all the others will revolve. and so what i want to do is i'll

ask my first question to each of you now and so you'll have a few seconds to think while i'm asking the other. first for bart, what right do you have to publish secrets, determined to be such by our du dudo you couldn't substituted public authorities? and for general hayden, the parallel question. what right does the nsa or any other governmental body have to keep secrets in the first place? democracy is based on consent. and if we, the people, don't know what you're doing, doesn't that necessarily undermine democracy? so, for bart. >> i'm going to give an answer that starts with a proposition that my history and politics grades are no longer subject to change.

i'll give a little theoretical or structural answer to that question. it has to do with the structure of self-government in a democracy. if the government is working for us it's usually thought to have two elements, authorization and accountability. we authorize them in elections. we say, you get to be in charge for a while. we hold them accountable for their performance, not only for purposes of re-election but throughout a sort of consent, civil society political society in which people get their say through a variety of mechanisms between elections. and to me the principle conflict here may not be between security and privacy. that's certainly an important set of questions. but to me it's between self-government and self-defense. both of which are core values. in fact, they are both -- they're both touched on by the time you get through the preamble to our constitution.

defense is fourth among the six principle purposes of the creation of this form of government. and its first words are, we the people. so, you have this conflict, which is to say, we have we have secrets that inherently important to keep for purposes of protecting ourselves, but there's -- but information is essential to govern ourselves. and the model have i in mind is that nobody gets to maximize one interest or the other. they have to be balanced. and you would like it. it would be cleaner and neater if you had a theoretical model if there was a trustworthy principle balancer who could do that balance for you. but there is not. i am not elected. i am not accountable to the people for decisions i make about what to publish, but for -- it's also the case that for the president and everyone working for him, they're not

competent to decide what we need to know in order to hold them accountable. we can't give them that power. and so, we know information is power. secrecy is the power to withhold information to obscure information, very great power, especially when combined with surveillance. because what it sets up is a sort of one-way mirror in which we bim more and more transparent to our government and they become more and more opaque to us. and so, the somewhat unsatisfactory answer we're left with, and i could go into this at much greater length, once you rule out all the other possibilities, is that there's going to be a process of competition. in which governments try to keep secrets. sometimes for good reasons. sometimes for not. nobody works in the intelligence field, i'm quite sure that would -- that mike would agree with this -- would not accept

that there's massive overclassification. all kinds of things that are stamped habitually with secret stamps that don't need to be. and we can get into examples of that if you would like. the idea is the government tries to keep secrets and we try to find them out. no one exerts coercive power at the margin. and i guess i'll put it this way. there are tradeoffs. you can imagine a society -- we studied one very closely in the old soviet union that maximized either security or the entrenchment of the state authorities. against all other interests. and so when i was a tourist, in the soviet union and moscow in 1974, i found i was getting lost all the time. wandering the streets of moscow. i usually don't need much help with that but they deliberately drew the tourist maps

incorrectly. in case napoleon came by, he took a wrong turn. i mean, it's not literally irrational to say we're going to publish inaccurate maps because that could -- i mean, all information in principle is useful to the enemy. but that's not the model we have. the model we have is not, for example, jfk in his big inaugural speech saying, we will pay no price. we will bear no burden to secure the blessings of liberty. there's a balance. we are prepared to accept some risk in order to govern ourselves. and so, after the competition, and i'll close here, i find something out or i get a big pile of documents and kind of interest, 100-year storm of aleak, and i now know secrets i'm not supposed to know, according to the government. and there is a more cooperative process in which i then go and talk to people, like the

people -- like mike hayden, when he had that old job, and we discuss the equities. and the washington post and every other journalist covering this stuff withholds a great deal of what they know if they're persuaded the public interest is -- the public interest and the subject is outweighed by the danger of disclosure. >> bart and i agree on an unawful lot of this question. the most important agreement, i think, is that this is a conflict of values. this is not the forces of light versus the forces of darkness. these are things that free peoples have to balance all the time. frankly, where that line is really dependent on the totality of the situation in which we find ourselves. that line can move back and forth. depending on realities. when my public affairs officer or someone else would be aware that someone in bart's profession had a story we felt really problematic, they would -- they would come to me as director of either nsa or cia

and lay it out. and i said all right -- generally, since i had already worked with the reporter, i would generally call the editor and, you know, this -- my secretary would make the call and generally speaking the editor would take a call from the director of cia. and the editor would come on the line. and this is mike hayden. i want to thank you for taking the call. invariably i would then begin the conversation with, look, we both have responsibilities for the welfare and safety of this republic. but how you're about to exercise your responsibilities, i believe, is going to make it much harder for me to exercise mine. so, we really do need to talk. and we would have that dialogue bart suggests. this is really tricky. he has to have freedom of the press. there's a reason that's in the first amendment. on the other hand, the government has legitimate

secrets. okay? no fooling things are overclassified and human beings in government will make decisions that, perhaps, are less noble than we would all want to be. as bart also suggests, when bart or "the post" or "the times," declassify information on their judgment, they are performing an inherently governmental act. without the system of checks and balances and responsibilities that normally go over here on this side of the equation. this is getting much, much more complicated. in our society. bart mentioned the whole question of accountability and how do you hold a government accountable without a great deal of transparency? let me walk you through the arc of american history here when it comes to american espionage. look, there are other secrets. the american intelligence community isn't the only one that keeps secrets. the federal reserve, they keep

secrets. i mean, there are a lot of organs of government where the general welfare is improved by the government being closed and secretive. at the beginning of the republic -- in most western democracies, in fact, in many western democracies still, this espionage thing is pretty much contained in the executive branch. i mean, george washington was the nation's first spymaster. when he became president after running the spy ring for the continental army, when he became president he insisted on a secret covert action budget, all right? and with very little, if any, congress appear oversight. and so espionage has generally been viewed as being a province of the executive. and the way the nation changed espionage policy was change the executive. by the mid-1970s there was broad agreement after the church commission that having this

responsibility, this knowledge, this oversight, only within the executive branch was insufficient. and the grand compromise of the 1970s was to create two bodies in congress and a rather unusual court to spread this transparency and accountability over all three branches of government. so we end up with house permanent select committee and senate select committee on intelligence. we end up with the fisa court. the theory was that that was sufficient transparency to legitimately get consent of the governed in a representative democracy. after all, this isn't ancient athens. that consensus that the grand compromise of the 1970s was adequate has eroded. and now, and i'm sure we're going to talk about the 215 program here pretty soon and people at nsa are going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute,

it's been authorized by two presidents, the congress legislated it, reauthorized it and it's overseen bit fisa court. that's the macedonian trifek that. i got all three branches of government. the great swing in american popular culture right now, and i'm not just talking about out here on the wings, all right? i mean sustained among thoughtful people, is that that no longer constitutes sufficient consent of the government. okay, okay, it's all diane fine steen, you told saxby chambliss, you told mike rogers, but you didn't tell me. and we're kind of at that cusp in our political culture. when i was director of cia, outside advisory board, i had a wonderful team of outside civilians. carla fiorina. i gave them a tough job. another subcommittee was doing i.t. another subcommittee was doing recruiting.

i dave her a philosophical problem. take a couple months, study this problem. will america be able to conduct espionage in the future? inside our broader political culture that every day demands. they study itted for four months and gave me a very firm, heartily speaking, eh, we're not sure. which is a very telling answer. here we are with a national enterprise i'm going to assume we all believe is legitimate and necessary, american espionage and a broader political culture that demands for tran parency that demands secrecy for its very nature for its very success. that's why this is now so difficult for all of us. >> following up.

bart, general hayden described what you're doing -- or the release of this information as being inherently governmental function. and we'll go into the various checks that exist on the nsa and whether they work or not. but when you get that information, i guess there's no checks on you or a reporter or the -- or are there? what is the process that you go through in determining, wow, this fellow on -- fell on my la. should i make it public or not? >> are there checks and what's the process. some of the same checks on us, not the sort of digori but de facto checks is not because the government doesn't have the

power according to some legal interpretation of the words on the page. but because it believes there would be grave sort of public consequences. that public opinion wouldn't support them. that they would suffer reputation and political harm. "the washington post" cares about its reputation for telling the truth and telling it responsibilitiably and nobody wants to be responsible for some terrible thing happen. if we publish story "x," the next day there are ten people strung up in the square of some foreign country because we disclosed their identities, that would be a really bad thing for "the washington post," in addition to being a really bad thing for the country. and so there are checks there. the process is as follows -- >> before we go on, on the checks point. for any of the nsa stories you've run, are you aware of any bad consequences? and then maybe general hayden on that point. >> so, there's a bit of a

conundrum here. which is to say that a secret has spilled and "the washington post" has published something and suppose you are inside the intelligence community and you know very specifically what some consequence was. disclosing that knowledge itself discloses the capability. so, they are constrained sometimes from talking about it. on the other hand, there are -- there are consequences we would know about. it's also the case james clapper, director of national intelligence told in a closed door briefing and used language quite different from what he says in public, that they went back and did a study and they found that, you know, over the years, there have been breaches of secrets lots of times. usually in the context of espionage cases, sometimes in the context of news stories or foreign services disclosing something or sometimes presidents disclose sensitive secrets because they want to make a -- they have a good

political reason for doing so. for example, when ronald reagan played a recording or quoted a recording of a conversation that took place in libya in order to persuade libyan allies to allow american planes to fly over their air space so they could bomb libya. he wanted to prove we had the case nailed. very much against the recommendations of the intelligence capability, he revealed that. what clapper told closed door meeting is that these damage assessments consistently overestimate damage. it is not unnatural or abnormal for the nsa to gain and lose capabilities. technology is changing all the time. a channel that is working now, to listen in on target "x" stops working tomorrow because microsoft changes their network architecture or the other country chooses a different

vendor or the target, you know, gets tired of that phone and switches to a different company or whatever. there are -- and there are many -- or targets are trying to practice communication security, so they switch to things. the other thing that clapper said is that people will change their behavior but they will make mistakes and we will exploit them. the nsa is not in danger of losing its global preimminence in signal. i concede it's possible that some of the stories published by some of the news organizations sooner or later will have done -- will have degraded the ability to listen in on something. and i am -- i'm prepared to accept that. and i believe that you should be prepared to accept that because at the same time, we're finding out things that they have been doing that completely contrary to what the public understanding was, what their job was and how

they're doing it. i mean, if -- if there is a program going on and the executive branch has blessed it and a select few people in congress has blessed it and a closed fisa court has blessed, it and when it becomes public the american people are shocked by it and many, many people are angry about it and they start telling their members of congress and members of congress introduce bills to stop it. and it gets brought to federal court. the first federal judge to assess its constitutionality says it's orwellian and likely unconstitutional. there's another way to tell the story whether or not we had already consented as a society to this happening. yeah, i'll stop there. >> general hayden, are you aware of any -- i know you're not in government now, but are you aware of specific negative consequences from any of the nsa stories -- >> yeah i see three tiers of

consequences, all of them damaging. no, i'm not in government, so i don't know. >> do you have clearance? are you being briefed on this? >> no. so i can speak freely at events like this, i don't go to get updated. so i don't have to -- >> if i would have known this was yoip dated information, i would have chose someone else. >> i know how to read a newspaper. three tiers of damage. one is operational. by the way, fif i were in government -- let me rephrase the question you just asked me. would i give me a list of all communications you didn't intercept yesterday? i mean, that's really the question you want me to give you the answer to. and, well, i don't know. there is an erosion. i agree with bart that this significant game, signal intelligence, is constantly moving. all information in significa in transient. you download the next dot, whatever up.

don't have a penetration anymore. someone buys the next level of encryption, you don't have that level anymore. not running away from you just because people build communication paths have a smarter way to spend a buck. have you to go after it. all advantage is transient. we have simply accelerated the rate as which we will lose our current accesses. and that, to me, to my mind is unarguable. that's one level. will we recover them? sure. how much? 8 to 10 billion. in order to recoup. the second level of loss is -- let me stick with that for a minute because bart makes a good point that, you know, these things have informed necessary national debate. but they've done more than inform. they've also misshaped. let's take the one program i know we'll dwell on which is 215.

215, this was not bart's work. bart flagship piece on this was 702. that's a program, your phone bills, my phone bills. that was pushed out the door with an incredibly detailed coverage of the front end, which is they got all your phone records. and only over a period of several weeks did the back end story begin to get out there into the public domain. so what is it they do with them once they have them? and the people at nsa would make the argument that you may disagree, even after you've gotten the back end story, but you really can't make an informed judgment until you have the whole context. i saw a recent poll that said over 30% of americans, and i think this is because of the way this has been portrayed, over 30% of americans think the 215 program allows nsa to listen to the content of your phone calls.

so, operational loss. second loss is in relationship with foreign governments. and here i am not talking about angela merkel being really upset. what i'm talking about is angela merkel's spy service, the bnd, or dgse or any other intelligence service around the world, to whom we would go for help in a matter of great sensitivity, a matter that would require great discretion, in which we would say, this is lawful, a little politically edgy but the right thing to do for both our countries. come on, let's you and us cooperate. we can keep a secret. there is another intelligence service in the world that should take that to the bank. so, our ability to cooperate has been eroded not by the public outcry -- okay, a little bit -- but fundamentally been eroded by

foreign intelligence services having no faith in our ability to keep things where they ought to be. and the third level of damage has to do with american industry, who has been very unfairly pillaried by this. now you have google and microsoft and young mr. zuckerberg calling the president complaining about how his company is being treated in the global digital domain. american companies do nothing more for the united states than other countries do for their sovereigns around the world. microsoft, at&t, et cetera, do the same thing that deutsche telecom does for german security services, et cetera, et cetera. but it's only american information that has been put out there. and it has been put out there in a way that suggests -- no, almost declares, that only the americans are doing this. i would -- i would suggest to

you that practicely the entire continent of europe, including their elected representatives, now know more about american signals intelligence than they do about their own country's signals intelligence. and that's not a balanced discussion. >> i mean, i -- there are lots of things that america might want to compete for global preimminence on, but i don't think one of them is going to be that we're the most closed government and we're the best at keeping secrets. and we don't need it because our security is -- we are the global -- we actually have a little bit of room. we have a little bit of running room, the luxury of allowing democratic debate over big questions like, should the nsa be collecting all of the records of all the calls that you and i make? or taking it out of the context of section 215, this court-authorized telephone program, what do we think about

bulk collection? what do we think about something that is new now that the nsa never did in its history, you know, on anything remotely like this scale because the capabilities didn't exist, the communication flows themselves didn't exist. but the nsa now wants and has taken many, many steps to achieve a kind of comprehensive situational awareness of the world. and it wants to be able to collect every ee electron and phototon that passes over communication channels in case they might need it. it's not just metadata, although i think it's enormously important for privacy, but it's also what they do overseas. the debate has been channeled, somewhat deliberately in the current kind of political context, towards the statutory kinds of surveillancsurveillanc. that is under to say under section 502 they collect

information under the nine internet companies. section 215 of patted trot act court-supervised they collect your call records. overseas they are not bound by statute or supervised by any court, including the intelligence court. they operate solely in almost all cases under the authority of a presidential executive authority. and since we had a little historical sweep before about the 1970s, let me give you an additional point of view on that. the 1970s after a bunch of very, you know, sort of gross abuses that today's programs don't at all resemble. there was a deliberate misuse of surveillance for domestic civil liberties purposes, for corrupt purposes. they created this structure of oversight in the foreign intelligence surveillance act and since then in the creation of the intelligence committees. the idea is you can do what you

like overseas, spy on the foreigners, but you can't do it at home. and the restriction was on spying on u.s. persons, citizens and green card holders and actually u.s. companies as well. and you can't do it from u.s. territory. so, around the time that general hayden became nsa director, the u.s. government started making the argument and executives started making the argument to congress, you need to change this because the structure of global telecommunications has changed fundamentally. there's now lots of foreign traffic that passes through the united states. it's not american phone calls. it's not american e-mails. it's just the nature of the distributed network that you could be in germany and calling brazil and the call passes and transits through the united states, for example. and so we need you to take more of the leash off. you need to have a lot more freedom to spy from u.s. materiality. what they didn't say, and

what -- and then congress changed that law. what they didn't say and what congress did not address is that lots of u.s. communications are now flowing across foreign points. so, if you're sitting here in washington and you send an e-mail to cleveland, it is literally quite possible and likely that your e-mail is going to cross ireland or google data center in hong kong. the global internet balances its load by distributing in, you know, in microseconds the communications flows in the packet of communications all over the place. when the nsa operates overseas where it has very little constraints and allowed to presume the people its enter sepgs septembers are foreign it does things like this. the story i did with ashton, who's sitting here in the room, the nsa with british counterpart, is breaking into the privately owned links that google has between its many data

centers around the world. so, data center in hong kong, data center in latin america, they have private fiber they have bought up. they have fiber that links them directly. nsa was breaking into that and intercepting the traffic that went through them. that is to say, it can reassemble the entire contents of a data center if it wants to. yahoo! and google won't say what proportion of their users are americans. let's say it's half. let's say it's a third. you're talking about ultimately not only the metadata but also the content of hundreds of millions of people that are crossing into these flows that the nsa feels free to dip into. and the legal term for that is incidental collection. so you're targeting foreigners of some kind or another. as it happens, incidentally, foreseeably but not your actual purpose, you're getting lots of americans with it. and then once you have them in your storage tank, as the dni clapper has acknowledged in

writing, or it was -- it was revealed this week he's acknowledged, the nsa feels free to search through it. you know, in its own -- when it's in its own data repositories. if i say to you collectively in this room that i have a foreign target. i'm going to collect everybody's smartphone, download everything from it, all your appointments, all your text messages, all your confidences that you've exchanged with one another, with other people, your bank records, whatever happens to be on there that's going by, and i promise not to look at it, you know, unless i have a really good reason. and if it turns out that two-thirds or one-third of you are americans and you're in our tanks. it's incidental. perfectly legal. you should be fine with it because it's not surveillance unless we're doing something with it. so, don't try that argument if you want to download movies. don't say, but i have -- i have three terabytes of pirated music

and movies on my hard drive but i haven't listened to them yet so it doesn't count. that's not our ordinary understanding either of the law or of what it means to be under surveillance. and those issues were never -- they were never debated publicly because we didn't know about it. that's allowed us to do is say, is it okay with us? >> bart's last recent articles -- imagine snik. >> mystic. >> mystic, thank you, that describes that effort. in clapper's letter to senator widen that reveals this, he pointed out that the committees actually debated whether or not they wanted to reauthorize the mystic approach and that they agreed that it had. so, you know, we're not putting the card on the bottom of the deck here. bart's right. we didn't call a town meeting and say, let me tell you how we do sig here and search for your approval. but it was known and consciously, specifically debated in committee whether or not that should continue. by the way, that's an edgy way

to do sig int. it gets close to what we used to call reverse targeting. so, decent argument. but don't think, you know, this is a republican gate nsa. fully debated. now, i'm going to try to be really efficient about this because an awful lot of the snowden revelations are putting things out there the way they are now. i frankly think some are uncharacterized, despite the great talented folks who work on this, this is complicated stuff. >> i have to say, you've been a lot tougher than that. i wouldn't be overpolite about it because i'm sitting on the stage. >> okay. he screwed this thing up so badly -- >> thank you for that intervention. >> beyond all recognition for anybody who really knows how this stuff works. so, i think a lot of the story out there has been distorted. let's just -- >> but you can't entirely blame him, though, because he only knows what he's been given, right? >> right.

>> that's actually not the case. >> yeah. yeah. >> well -- >> that's exactly right. >> well, then, it's your fault. >> i'm given a piece of paper. i don't assume it's authentic. i don't assume even if it's authentic the facts contained therein are accurate. turns out there are authentic documents in the world that are wrong. >> i used to get some of those briefings, too. >> yeah. and so i do a lot of reporting. and my colleagues do a lot of reporting around the material. and a lot of the reporting, certainly a big part of it, is to talk to the people who are the stakeholders in government, who are running the programs or who are speaking for the people who are running the programs. and so mystic, this is the story which "the washington post" wrote, story by ashkan and me, a couple weeks ago, that said the united states is intercepting and recording all the telephone calls of an entire foreign country and storing them for 30 days and then of the billions of calls that go in this 30-day holding tank, millions get sent

back to ft. mead to be, you know, sort of stored and processed in their repositories. >> it's got to be a little country, right? >> we did not name the country. we didn't give any hints about the country because we actually -- we had already decided before we went to the u.s. government that we were not going to name the country. and i can't say exactly why. i'm in this bizarre position as a reporter of saying, i can't -- i've got to sort of hold things back from you. and i've always done that from time to time in stories over the years. i could give some examples of that. but, you know, here it happens all the time. but we were persuaded, even without yet talking to the u.s. government, that there were specific concrete, obviously foreseeable harms that would come from naming the country or saying what kind of country it was or what kinds of intelligence targets required this approach. but what we can say is this raises a big public policy

question. if you live in that country, if you work in that country or if you have relatives or friends in that country and you make calls there and that would -- that would in any country in the world, you know, amount to millions of americans, then your calls are recorded. so, now they're not just collecting metadata. they're collecting content. they're listening to your words, that is to say, they are recording your words, and they are -- and they feel free to keep whichever ones they want and search whatever ones they want because that was incidentally collected in the course of surveilling a foreign country. it is a capability that the nsa did without and kept us safe throughout the cold war. and it is, as the general says, quite edgy. and i think worthy of debate, even if congress voted for something which had the effect of allowing that.

it is -- there's one last point to be made here about oversight. judge walton, chief judge of the federal -- of the fisa court, the foreign intelligence surveillance surveillance court said in his first ever interview with any news organization, told my colleague that the court knows nothing unless the nsa or the u.s. government tells it. it doesn't have any independent fact finding ability, that it can't go out and investigate. it doesn't have a technologist. it doesn't have a former nsa person on staff with expertise on the programs. when the court in 2009 found that the nsa had been unlawfully running one of these big programs and it had been consistently misrepresenting the facts of what it was doing to the court, the nsa's response through the justice department was that -- you can make fun of it as, these computers are so

complicated. what understands what they are doing. but the argument was there was no one at the nsa who fully understood the workings of the program and therefore, it was inadvertent that they were describing it incorrectly to the judge. when you say that a judge is supervising it or congress is overseeing it, the nsa is classifying almost all of this stuff sometimes for very good reasons and sometimes i think plainly not at the top secret code word level. there are fewer than 10% of members of congress who have a staff member cleared to read anything at that level. members of congress do not go into a 10,000 page intelligence budget or sit and study dense hearings and reports. they just don't. they rely on staff for that just as general hayden does. but most don't talk to a staff member who is cleared to read what they are talking about. so the level of supervision is

in some cases pretty theoretical. >> i want to pursue this. >> i'm falling behind on my accusation countering count here. my turn. >> go ahead. >> as i was saying, bart does this well. even the best of folks are going to get this wrong. the nsa has from time to time. it's so complicated, it's hard to explain. not everyone is as conscientious as others. a lot of people take them and run them as quickly as they can to the darkest corner of the room. let's put that aside. let's just say that we can reduce all of the stories that are out there to hard-core facts. all right? that we pulled the hyperbole and the misrepresentation out and we can get it done. i'm not going to argue about that's not what we're doing. let's assume we can get it there. all right? you realize that you are coming

in late in the third reel of a complex movie, and you are looking at the third reel, assuming you've got good glasses. i'm assuming we have all the chaf out of the way. you are looking at the third reel and making the decision, i know the butler did it. and you really can't make that decision until you walk back to the first reel and where did these things come from, why were they developed. it requires more time. but i will try to be very efficient about this. i became director of nsa in 1999. we were being overwellhelmed by modern communication. we were approaching it the way he would approached it the previous life, which was find the right frequency and listen to the specifically targeted call. now there we were with a tsunami of global data flying at us in a

way that was beyond our ability to control. look at your -- you are young. you don't know what it was communicating in '99. a lot more photons and electrons out there than there were then. we decided in 2000, pre 9/11, the only way we could deal with volume was to quit acting like we were on the beach pushing a tsunami wave back and say we will try harder to keep the wave from engulfing us, and we decided turn around and swim with the wave and make the power of the wave your tool. that's collection and metadata. that's why we did it. it was in response to a very specific challenge. if we had not in some way dealt with, we would have gone deaf. technology change number two. nsa spent most of its life watching the soviet union.

there isn't anyone in the room, regardless of your political persuasion is going to raise that much of a finger, civil liberties concerns with nsa intercepting soviet rocket forces communications coming out of moscow going over hops over the mountains out to icbm fields in siberia, you know, while we're looking for interesting words to pop up on the net like launch. [ laughter ] the 21st century equivalent of that isolated signal on a dedicated network being run by a superpower, the 21st century equivalent of that signal are proliferator terrorist, money launderer, child trafficker, e-mails, coexisting with your e-mails in a single unified, global communication structure. there is no way nsa continues to do what it used to do for you if

it can't go out there and be in the flow why your communications and mine are co-mingled with a legitimately targeted communication. that's a reality. a third change -- bart mentioned this already. that's the fact that global communications grid changed in such a way that most -- many, most, global communications either resided or transited the united states just because of american dominance in global telecommunications. and yet, without the amendment, an e-mail from a bad man in pakistan to another bad man in yemen sitting on a server in washington enjoyed the same 4th amendment protections you have. i don't think that was the intent of the founders. that's why the change in the act. a fourth change in reality --

this is 9/11. that's the fact that the enemy was inside the gates. that foreign intelligence targets like the 19 people on the airplane were here in america. after the 9/11 attack, there was a commission from the hill called the joint inquiry commission made up of house and senate intelligence committees. one of their findings was that nsa, that would be my nsa, the one i was running before 9/11, was entirely too cautious in dealing with the al qaeda communications of most importance to the united states. and that would be al qaeda communications one end of which was in this country. the metadata program was designed to be the lightest touch we could device to know which communication entering or leaving this land would be the ones we wanted to go down on for

content collection. after having seen the movie now, you may stul ill be confident t butler did t. yit. you may object to any or all of the things i discussed. they didn't develop because someone said excellent. i've been waiting to do this for decades. they were logical responses to technological and operational changes. one more thought i will yield the floor. picture life as a triangle for this subject. okay? the three sides of the -- a happy triangle is an ee kwa lateral triangle. it's in harmony. the three sides are threat, technology, law and policy. you got it? what you want is that your technology is responsive to the threat and used within the confines of agreed law and

policy. those three things never changed at the same rate. but they are changing at amazingly different rates today. the problem that bart points out in his writing and one that i'm -- i will freely admit is that as those other two sides change much faster than law and policy, that happy, contented, har monic ee kwa lateral triangle turns into this violent isosceles thing because these things have changed whereas law and policy is struggling to catch up. that's kind of where we are in the debate. >> i have a little bit lost with the triangles. >> you ci can do it again. >> mike used to draw diagrams. i'm used to curves and not the lines. i want to come back to the question that you made -- the point he hasn't supported, which

is the idea that we're getting it wrong a lot or getting it out of context. that is certainly possible. it's possible that there are things we don't know that we're mischaracterizing something. there was one good story, i thought, that we were getting ready to public. i was persuaded it was wrong because i'm talking to sources and i'm talking to the government. i had very specific reasons -- i received very specific reasons to believe that i had the context entirely wrong and we just killed the story. but what we're doing is we're try -- we are trying to shed light on the subject. we're trying to get it all the way right. that is not the case when it comes to the public debate on the part of the government. the government wants to keep the secrets. in a few outlying cases, people come out and say flatly false things to the public. everyone knows about the example of director clapper and t