>> from god slips to no traffic for you. good captioning performed by vitac institute that knows a lot about nuclear weapons and we we're going to give clair to give opening remarks and then it's your turn. thank you, michael. >> thank you very much and it's an honor to be here. i want to address very briefly some of the problems that are inherent in the current deal as it draws to a conclusion. first of all, there's been absolutely no buy in from the islamic revolutionary guard corps. this is especially problematic when it comes to issues relating to the command control and

custody of any potential military program it would be the islamic revolutionary guard corps which would have that command and control and custody. in effect we're dealing with a foreign ministry and they have been unable in iran to show that they can bring the islamic guard corps into compliance. number two, in the iranian system, the president is about style. the supreme leader is about substance. the supreme leader has not firmly committed to this nuclear program. when he has talked about heroic flexibility, in persian his office has suggested that that means a change in tactics not a change in policy. he's very happy to be able to get for iran, more than $100 billion in sanctions relief and unfrozen assets. that doesn't mean when it comes to the basic policy with regard

to nuclear weaponry he has come alongside. the state department prides itself on cultural understanding and doesn't recognize the religious connotation of this term. going back we're projecting good will on the iranian side. rowhani has been known as mr. fix-it and also quite a loyalist. his campaign commercials put forward as his legitimacy that he was the first one to bestow the honor isk imam to the figure upon ayatolla choe mainny. in the year before we began our joint plan of action.

iran's economy according to the central bureau of statistics had shrank and it's now in the black. the goal has been all along from iran to come to the table to engage in the process but not to come out for the same sort of motivation that we do. if i can make an analogy as the father of two young kids it's like giving a toddler desert first and asking him please please, eat your spinach. it doesn't work. now, what about the the day through money we can moderate. history repeats. between 2000 and 2005, iran got a hard currency wind fall as the price of oil increased and as the european union embraced this philosophy that through trade we can moderate. according to many estimates approximately 70% of that hard currency windfall went into the ballistic and nuclear missile programs -- ballistic and covert nuclear programs at that point

in time. by the way this is during the point of time in which iran was engaged in a dialogue of civilizations and indeed some of the negotiators at this point in time said this was our strategy, we can import whatever we need for our goal. if the goal of the obama administration is to give iran 50 plus $100 plus billion in sanctions relief and unfrozen assets and assume that money will trickle down it underestimated or misunderstands the role of islamic revolutionary guard corps in the economy. the name of the conglomeration and basically controls up to 40% of iran's gdp. this is the group that would control import/export oil within iran. we're pumping into the money of the wallet of that unit which most wants to kill us. now, when it comes to voluntary

compliance this is a phrase that hassan rowhani and zarif have put forward. in 2005 when he was a nuclear negotiator he said, we suspended enrichment and did it voluntarily and explained himself to the hard liners, we did it so that we could remove the suspension that any time we wanted as long as we are the ones who are voluntarily doing it. that always raises red flags. february 9th 2005 rowhani, at the time he was stepping down as supreme court national council chief in iran, gave a speech at the university to an assembled elite of iranian officials and he was defending his negotiations at this point with eu3. he outlined and this was translated by the open source center what he called a doctrine

of surprise. in which he gave an overview of u.s. iranian history since 1979 and said that every critical point in time, we have triumphed by lulling our adversaries into kplasantsy and delivering a knockout blow. has he changed? if so, what evidence do we have to support that? >> another nuclear negotiator who has been praising the nuclear corps suggested an also in persian, more importantly, suggested that north korea was a model to em late rather than an example to condemn. that also raises red flags in my mind. a couple of final points before i turn the floor over to clair who will talk about the possible military dimensions and character of the regime, we've gone through this before. i mean, historian by training, which means i get paid -- i get

paid to predict the past and i only get right about half of the time. but we have a situation where a country did come in from the cold, that was south africa, 1991. in order to certify that had had come clean, the international atomic energy agency mandated and south africa complied because it no longer had anything to hide that they come clean on 20 years of previous nuclear work so that everything could be accounted for. we are -- at present letting iran off the hook on that same thing. and the agency said no go. now, the iranian's often equip that they played chess while americans played checkers. i ultimately that's what's become of our strategy in comparison.(ski now, final points, to address

two things the general said. would iran ever use nuclear weapons? i'm in the camp that does not believe that iran is suicidal. this is my concern. what if they are terminally ill. what if you have a situation like romania in 1989 where you have a spark and you have an uprising and in this case, the revolutionary guard or security units, instead of putting it down, some join in. when we talk about hard liner and reformers in the iranian political context, we don't have insight into the factual divisions within the revolutionary guard. what happens if some of the units join in so you see the regime is collapsing within 24 hours it's going to be gone? under that stage what's to stop the guard units, the idealogically poor selected ones, would anyone really retaliate against a country that already had regime change? this is where that idea of deterrence breaks down and as a historian, we know mutually assured destruction, we got

pretty darn lucky. you can't assume that's going to buy stability. the last thing i want to say, when it comes to the 1953 coup, and there's the conventional wisdom and also reality first of all, the shah was the head of iran. most was democratically elected but same way in haiti was a democrat. he was democratic if you agreed with him if not you were able to get lynched. at the same time, at the same time who were our co-conspirators in the coup? we can litigate the cold war at some other point in time. if you look at the literature at the time, our allies included the conservative clergy who now make up the leadership of the islamic republic. so while americans do tend to like to self-flag late if you want to be accurate in this regard, we would be apologizing to our co-conspirators and done

it again and again and again. regardless you know when it looked -- when we come to the iran -- the antipathy between the united government and the guys with guns that control things unfortunately when it comes to tharks we have very, very good relations after the coup and into the revolution up until the revolution. so ultimately if we're looking at 1953 as the breaking point we're mistaken. with that let me turn over to kt and clair. [ applause ] >> clair lopez for the center for security policy. >> thanks very much. kt, and thanks to the acu very much for sponsoring this fantastic event and the chance

to talk today about such an important critical topic. i wanted to talk about a couple of things. one, michael laid such a great foundation there about what this regime is about, what the iranian regime is about the nature of the regime is where i want to start with it. then i'll talk a little bit about the components of a nuclear program specifically iran's nuclear weapons program and where we are with the negotiations. so i would like to start probably with the iranian constitution. this is one of the versions that's available online. you can get it at amazon. this is an english language copy of iranian constitution. it says that the iranian regime is a jihadist regime dedicated to revolution too spread sharia across the word unified under islamist governance. that's what their constitution

says. it also says the irgc, the islamic revolutionary guard corps that michael was talking about that has control of the wmd programs, that's plural by the way, iran's missile program and as well as a great deal of iranian economy well, this constitution again says the they are an idealogical army, quote/unquote, whose job is not just to defend iran's borders but fight jihad until they can instill terror into the hearts of the enemy and then they, quote, directly from the koran verse 860 in the constitution and that particular verse of the koran says gather your power to the utmost of the your strength to instill terror into the hearts of the enemy. that's in the iranian

constitution. so when we wonder what about the motivation or intent or the nature of this regime, i think we have to look no further. let's do take a look at some of their behavior. that's what's it's based on. let's look at the behavior. this one? so place where i would like to start first of all, iran like every other muslim country in the world is a member of something called the oic, organization of islamic cooperation. this is the largest international organization, head of state organization in the world after the united nations itself. the oic members back in 1990, all of them signed something called the cairo declaration. the cairo declaration was essentially an ab ril gais of withdrawal from the declaration

on human rights. did you know that? they all withdrew it from. all muslim countries withdrew and said instead according to the cairo declaration, that the only human rights that muslim countries henceforth would observe would be those granted under sharia. okay? what does sharia call human rights? amputation, beheading? crucifixion? stoning to death? that's all part of islamic law. that's what all muslim countries in the world have ascribed to not the universal declaration on human rights. getting to that nature of the regime. what is the regime about idealogically. now, the first victims of that horrific ideology and legal system, which is sharia and it is imposed inside of iran of course, are the iranian people

themselves. for 36 years the iranian people have suffered under this regime and its strict application of islamic law. the execution level in iran is horrific. at this point in time, this year 2015, we have reporting that they are executing another iranian every two hours. one iranian gets executed inside the country every two hours. they've executed well over 500 people since january of this year, the beginning of this year. women are second class citizens. they are legally unequal to men. that's islamic law. the morality police rome the streets looking for people who are not wearing the right apparel, right clothing.

that's inside the country. now for 36 years the iranian regime has been at war with the united states. i don't think there's any other way to put it. and six american presidents have shied from confronting iran from jimmy carter to the current occupant of 1600 pennsylvania avenue. that death to america they chant every friday after friday prayers is a staple of this regime. it is also to israel, death to israel. the former president used to say that a world without america was not only desirable, but held a conference on this by the way, world without america not only desirable, but achievable. what does that mean? in the context of a regime that is driving for a deliverable nuclear weapons capacity. over these 36 years, iranians and their proxies especially

hezbollah have kidnapped and killed and maimed and tortured americans. they are holding four american citizens hostage. i want to say their names. pastor said aball deanny, because he's christian. robert levinson taken in 2007. amir former u.s. marine arrested in 2011. and jason, the white house tehran bureau chief arrested in july 2014 about a year ago. the other part of the ideology, the nature of this regime is jew hatred. it is intrinsic to islam and throughout the koran in many different verses. but the genocidal threats of this regime against the jewish

state of israel, have been nonstop. there's no way that israel can look at this regime, listen to its daily threats of genocide, its dehumanization of jewish people calling them bacteria and cockroaches and other insects. that's how they talk about them. they talk about cartoons. you've seen the kind of cartoons that appear on a daily basis in the newspapers. jew hatred. just in march three months ago, the commander of the besieged forces, he said that -- and this is while our negotiations are going on with iran -- the annihilation of israel is nonnegotiable. that is our number one ally and partner in the middle east

standing between the barberism of regime's like iran's and rest of western civilization. why are we talking to these people? state sponsorship of terror. since the beginning of the regime you heard michael talking about this certainly. the regime in tehran and again, i also want to make this strong distinction between the people of iran and the regime of iran. i'm talking about the regime here. has sponsored a whole host of terrorist organizations. certainly hamas, hezbollah palestinian islamic jihad, at latest count, well over 100 iraqi shiite terror militias, who tore our troops apart with ieds back in the 2000s are kind of sort of our allies in iraq. sponsored by iran. the taliban the regime in

tehran is running begunguns and training to the taliban. the alliance between the regime and al qaeda over two decades long. it's gone on since the beginning of the 1990s when the iranian regime and al qaeda formed an alliance. the attacks have been a result -- the attacks against u.s., americans, our citizens and military since that point in time have been unceasing. beginning with the 1983 marie corps barracks bombing in beirut, and murder of our chief of station, bill buckley colonel richard higg ins as well. 1982 the israeli embassy bombing in argentina. 1984, the bombing carried out by hezbollah, both ordered by the iranian regime, including same

figures currently holding senior regime administrative positions to this day, so 1994 the attack on the jewish cultural center and 1986 cobar towers and 1998 east africa embassy bombings carried out by those trained by iran, by hezbollah. al qaeda learned how to do big building suicide truck bombings from hezbollah. that's who taught them how to do that. uss cole in 2000 and attacks of 9/11 themselves. judge george daniels december 2011 ruled from the bench southern district of new york, federal district court, iran co-responsible legally with legal financial responsibility, co-responsible with al qaeda and hezbollah for the attacks of 9/11. didn't get much publicity, did

it? let me talk about the nuclear weapons program because that's where we're all. this is prelude to what we're dealing with, why we're concerned with iran going nuclear. if it were sweden that was breaking out of the nonproliferation treaty, we would say another failure of the npt but it's sweden. i don't lose sleep because britain has nukes. don't lose sleep because france has nukes. a regime like i just described to you, if they have deliverable nuclear weapons, that's worry some. what do you need to get a nuclear weapon? well, you need three things. three components. enriched uranium. you know how to know how to make a warhead and need a missile delivery system to send it to your target. as we know from iaea reporting and other reporting david al bright's group international

science and -- i always get this wrong because the akron nim is isis unfortunately, information technology, in any case great reporting on this. according to the iaea reporting as long as eight years ago they had blueprints for a nuclear warhead and working on trigger testing to detonate a bomb. missile delivery system, you heard i think it was general flynn mentioned that the pentagon itself estimated that the iranians would have the range to reach continental united states of america from iran this year. this year. the missiles are not even on the table for discussion in the current negotiations. those are the things you need to make a deliverable nuclear weapon capability. so what are we doing in the p5

plus1, the five permanent members of the united nations security council britain france russia china and us, pluz germany plus one part. in these negotiations that began, remember, in secret in 2013 israelis had to find out about them from whom? the saudis. the saudis let the israelis know that the americans were dealing in secret and talking about their nuclear weapons program. enrichment used to be a red line for a long time and united nations security council passed six resolutions demanding they halt nuclear enrichment. now it's not so much anymore. they can keep enrichment just maybe not so much or not to such a high percentage or whatever. they can keep their stockpiles of low enriched u eduranium.

they don't have to anymore. the low enriched uranium dlugs into a form most readily made into a nuke cheer bomb, that die lugs problem has gotten stalled. it's still in the form more quickly turned into a bomb. the low enriched uranium stockpiles that go up to almost 20%. 20%, remember, is the cutoff where you begin to talk about high enriched uranium. they've got a whole bunch, 220 something kilos of near 20% enriched uranium stockpiled, not even up for discussion. 19,000 known centrifuges, only the ones we know about. they get to keep them all. they are supposed to unplug some and maybe put some into storage someplace where the iaea can

keep track of them. we're not quite sure about that. advanced centrifuge ind work. we talk about what the output might be but that assumes that you're talking about the most primitive senry fujs iran has developed. news flash they have developed centrifuges to the seventh and eighth generation beyond the first generation we're talking about that are super fast by comparison. 10 20 times as fastenrich uranium. they get to keep doing that rnd, they are not going to be stopped from doing the rnd. investigation or inspection of military facilities the iranians tell us that's off the table completely. you're not allowed to look at those. where would you hide your military nuclear program? where did the soviets hide

there's. who taught the iranians how to do wmd programs and hide them? kgb did. military facilities even some of those we know about off limits. past bomb work what the iaea calls the possible military dimensions of iranians nuclear weapons program. we thought that was a red line too, that the iranians would have to come clean about their whole past work, just as michael said the south africans did and willingly and certificated to give up their program. now secretary of state kerry says, well we don't really have to have them explain all of that because we already have absolute knowledge of everything they ever did. absolute knowledge that's his quote, his words. we know for a fact that ever since the iranians nuclear program again in mid to late 19

1980s there has been a clan des tyne nuclear weapons program. the one they are negotiating that's the o vert side of the program, the overt part. we don't know about the covert part but pretty confident there is one. i'll wrap up here quickly to get to questions. i don't want to take up all of the rest of the time here. let's quote a couple of people, michael hayden said such perfect knowledge about the program does not exist. and director general said we don't know what they did in the past. the only reason that we know anything about iran's nuclear weapons program, i'll conclude here, is because the opposition national council of resistance of iran, intelligence services

and satellite imagery and other intelligence work found it out. they never volunteered any of that. we didn't even know they had a program until 2002 when the ncri blew the lid off of it with press conferences and showed pictures of satellite imagery of places that we do now know about. iranians have never volunteered anything. the only reason we know about the program at all is from sources not iranian. all right, and then finally, just i'll conclude with this. the long time i call it a joint venture agreement with north korea is not even up for discussion. north decreekoreans have helped iranians since the beginning of the program with nuclear specifications and centrifuge assistance and ballistic missile assistance in particular. their scientists north korean warhead scientists are in iran

all the time. and the irgc has been noted multiple times in north korea attending at their launch pads when the north koreans are testing their nuclear weapons and missiles. that's what i call a joint venture but that's not up for discussion. the north koreans per brigadier general courtney director of norad and northcom in open testimony said the north koreans -- this is open testimony -- the north koreans have the ability to miniaturize warheads and fit them on the nose cones of missiles. the north koreans can do this and iranians can't? not even up for discussion. emp capability, maybe we can get into that in the q and a, north korea has it. iran doesn't? let me stop there and welcome your questions.

thank you. [ applause ] i think in the interest of time, why don't we throw this to questions from the audience. i'll call you on you and you can direct who you want. wait for the mike and tell us who you are. >> hi jim, independent consultant. i want to go to an area we haven't discussed yet and ask two specific questions. assuming that the president does make a deal with iran what role should the congress play and what role do you think the congress will play? >> either of you want to jump into that? >> sure. congress -- is that on? >> yeah. >> congress has the responsibility and it took upon itself the responsibility when it passed the bill to take a vote on any ultimate agreed --

agreement between us and the iranians. i'm not confident we're going to get to that point. i think there are tremendous benefits to the regime to spreading things out. they get the sanctions relief as michael said they get all of the dessert up front and don't have to eat the spinach. but the congress has the responsibility now has taken it upon itself to vote. unfortunately the way they passed the law is that the bill goes before the president and if the congress turns down the agreement and the president then perhaps predictably vetoes it. congress must muster a super majority two-thirds vote to overturn the veto. it's very high hurdle they set for themselves but they have the responsibility. this is a bad deal no matter how you look at it from what we're hearing at least coming out, it is a bad deal and bad deal is worse, much worse than no deal. we need to let our congressional

representatives know to vote down this deal. >> how about right over here. is the mike still there? >> my name is harrison reef from the institute of world politics. i was wondering how concessions on nuclear proliferation to iran will affect saudi arabia's potential acquisition of nuclear weapons? >> well, very good. basically, we have a bad habit of being very myoptic assuming us and any adverseary in the sand box. but it's not the issue of concessions during nuclear negotiations but the fact this is an incredibly bad deal. if we listen to any of our allies in the region israel or any of the arab countries for whom this is brought up a great

deal ooun nimty. we don't oppose the idea of diplomacy but have enough self-confidence to share with us the drafts. we're so used to working with iranians we can point out the loopholes, they don't need to cheat because they can drive a tank through the loopholes. this is historian, as the agreed framework negotiations were concluding, the south korean president at the time gave an interview to "the new york times" in which he said this is an incredibly bad deal. you should listen to us because we have decades of working with north koreans and clinton white house when they read this, they went ballistic. the south korean president got the netanyahu treatment before netanyahu got the netanyahu treatment. there does tend to be a problem. this is something that all allies are noticing that we tend

to embrace our adversaries and batch our allies and that only convinces everyone in the region that we need -- that they need to go it alone. when we -- i'm not one to defend saudi arabia, not at all. when we have given them the 3:00 a.m. phone call because of the nature of alliance they've answered the call. i would expect to be put on permanent call waiting from here on in and the last point i would make, when a president of the united states loses political credibility, it's automatically restored to the oval office every four or eight years when a new president comes in. on a world stage there is no magic wand to restore the credibility the united states is losing and that's impacting saudi arabia's calculation. iran's calculation north korea's calculation throughout the world, we're hemorrhaging our credibility and that's only going to lead to bloodshed. >> over here. where's the mike?

right over here sir. >> i'm a former member of congress. we have been hearing for it seems like forever, iran is three months a year away from having a nuclear weapon. we fiddle around it feels to me like, whether we get a deal or don't get a deal. i'm wondering frankly if it matters if we wake up one morning before or after we've got a deal we find out iran does in fact have a nuclear weapon. when we get to that warning when iran has a nuclear weapon. it feels to mel the obama administration, have a little time left already, already made the decision that we'll deal with it after. what do we do then? what do we do then? what's the balance of power look like not only in the middle east but in the world?

and what are america's options to defend america and our allies interests? >> if i can jump on this quickly before turning the floor to clair. if i could rephrase a bit, too often we focus on what would we do when they get a nuclear weapon. we have to wake up to the reality that five years after the get a nuclear weapon, what are we going to do when they have 100 of them. that's ultimately the problem. the other problem we have we treat containment and deterrence as retore cal strategies rather than military strategies. loosely defined, containment is the ability of all states in the region to wage war independently until the cavalry can come in. it's a multimillion dollar strategy and we're trying to do it on the cheap. deterrence loosely put is the willingness to kill millions of people and that's not a road i want to go down if there are policies we can apply now to

never have to get to that point. >> agreed. i would just add that the united states intelligence community does not have a great record on predicting or knowing ahead of time when a country is going nuclear. i can mention soviet union in its time, china, pakistan et cetera. so given all of the input that iran has had, the regime has had for all of these years from north korea pakistan and russia and china in the technical assistance in all kinds of expert assistance and so forth, it's inconceivable to me that they don't already have at least warheads and go back to the joint venture with north korea and exchange and presence of their officials in each other's countries and at test sites and so forth. that north korea is as far

advanced as we do know that it is another failure of deterrence or containment of any kind. and that iran does not at least have or perhaps is using north korea to test nuclear components or warheads for it. you know when -- when iran finally decides to demonstrate its nuclear weapons capability, whether it's out in the desert, like a pakistanis and indians did underground, just a demonstration of we have this or a mushroom cloud over tel aviv or emp over kansas, it's a game changer. it's too late by that point. michael is absolutely right. we have to be ready now right now to take steps that ensure that this regime in iran never has the most dangerous weapons. but the only way to do that is to change the regime. currently we do not at the

senior national security leadership, no we do not. >> can i throw my two cents in. if you come to the conclusion that we are where we are, iran is getting nukes and other countries are getting nukes, you have to start thinking about it in a very different way. i look at how reagan defeated the soviet union without firing a shot economic war fare. we have the ability, we're not doing it but have the ability particularly with energy independence. the ability not only that we're energy independent but supplant them as an energy source for the world. throughout the middle east, they have populations, 75 80% of the population under the age of 30 and don't have jobs. that's a revolution. if you can get those countries to the point where their economies are so stretched that they have to worry more about their own people and in other words keeping their own necks, i think they are less worried about their nukes. technically missile defense, we dropped the ball on missile defense.

if we look at adversearyies in the region, that could reach the united states, we need to have an adequate an robust missile defense system. third, intelligence if this is a world now where there are going to be nuclear weapons in the middle east, we need to have a robust intelligence. we need to know who's doing what and who's coming here and we've been so handstrung by political correctness, we failed to do that. as michael said, containment and then ultimately regime change. how do countries -- not regime country like the obama administration says regime change means war no it doesn't. regime change the best regime change, when you maneuver events around where the people@taycát(r"e they've had enough and change the regime. any other regime change doesn't work. so i think there are options that we have but we would have to summon the national leadership to do it and hopefully it happens before somebody sets something off.

sir? you've already asked a question. a quick question then all of these other people in the back. >> just to place things in broader historical context, john f. kennedy, the joint chiefs of staffs negotiated preemptive nuclear attack and walked out, we call ourselves a human race. john kennedy recommended working towards mutual global nuclear disarmament of everybody. >> we're going in the other direction. >> i vote that iran goes first. >> that is really the ultimate -- if iran gets nuclear weapons and other countries in the region we're going in a completely other direction that the nonproliferation regime which is governed since the kennedy administration, that's over. sir in the hat. >> i'd like to strongly commend

for most beautiful description of what this nation and the world is facing and how little the american public appreciate what she just said and how little the american public really understands the nature of the threat. but throughout all of this is one thing i just touched upon which should be explored even more and that's the islamic ideology that is motivating what iran is doing. not only the history of iran as a persian nation and some concept that re-establish it battle with isis, attempt to take over iraq, not so much defeat isis but to expand this ideology, i think as the general said regarding the return of the 12th imam. i think we make a huge mistake if we really think that once they do get one and it looks like they will, they will not use it. if we think containment will

work at that point forget it. they have said as i think once said a number of years ago, not sure, but they have said that they would welcome death and destruction. and yet we don't pay enough attention to the motivating factor of islamic ideology. above all of this we are in tremendous danger because of this. >> would you like to comment on that? [ applause ] >> you all agree. you said it best. thank you. >> very well said. >> sir in the back. are there no women in this group who want to ask questions? you're next. for this man first, gentleman. >> retired air force. why do we keep hiding behind the nuclear delivery system as being one of the components of our ability to protect ourselves right now given the fact if you have tons of illegal drugs

coming across the border every day and i can drive them all the way to des moines without inspection, why wouldn't i put it in a container. we had gis driving around west germany with a tactical nuke called a davy crockett and they treated it like a hand grenade. but containers cars and trucks et cetera. >> if i may just asked and answered, i agree with you. one of the problems we have in counter terrorism at large is that we're always trying to defend against the last attack rather than recognizing that new attacks come in different ways that exploit new vulnerabilities. >> ma'am? >> that's you. >> i wanted to ask you about cyber warfare and how do you see -- i think that's a primary

element of the future. both defensively and offensively, but it seems so dispar ately distributed at this point in time. pieces all over. how -- what strategies would you recommend with regard to sort of aligning and organizing ourselves more effectively in that regard? >> well, you're absolutely right. cyber threat cyber warfare is one of the most serious threats facing this country. if you may know, just last1pcfhvqp) in november 2014, an american company called silance it was called operation cleaver they had been investigating the iranian capability through cyber warfare to access and to manipulate and to attack

criticalinfrastructure in 16 countries, including our own, canada australia, western european countries, israel, et cetera. that -- and they prematurely published the report in november because they were so alarmed by what they found that they thought they couldn't sit on the results any longer. and they put out actually most of the report is actually the pages are devoted to the code to show people so they could take defensive measures that the iranians have the capability already to be inside of our critical infrastructure and to manipulate and attack that. it's an extremely serious threat. i talked about the emp threat that can take down our electric grid, the failure, lack of a missile defense system as part of that, but cyber security is a big part of it that could take down our electric grid and send us back overnight to little house on prairie days, minus the

farm or cow or chickens or any idea what to do -- >> when we think the cyber anything, we think of the russians and chinese. as clair pointed out the iranians are there too. >> a two finger response, if you want to look more in the english language iranian news with regard to what the iranians are planning with regard to cyber and how they are exercising the capabilities, the unit of the islamic revolutionary guard corps, which is in charge of the this capability, is called the passive defense organization. if you google cyber warfare unit, you're not going to get it. if you google passive defense organization, you will find it and the important thing is also to note the obvious there's already a unit within the islamic revolutionary guard corps dedicated to this. >> the gentleman with his hand up. >> i'm johnny long i was out on the road when you were speaking, i think. when i came back in you said

something that i think is a key -- i agree with almost everything being said here. we need to get our relationship with israel built back or this country is in for a fall. i believe that with all of my heart. i'm not the only one that believes that. i think i've been communicating with you on e-mail, johnny long bald eagle 36. >> did everybody hear his e-mail address? are we abandoning israel and what should we do? >> i would point out, i agree with you, that when we go back to the korean war, one of the reasons why north korea decided and believed they could get away with invading south korea, is within the truman administration, there was an outline of what our defensive

perimeter would be. we excluded south korea from that and that only em boldened aggression. in the big picture i worry about israel, but i also worry around the globe with so often we hear in the news one of the problems it seems increasingly that the obama administration is really playing russian roulette with congress. you got to accept this or else it will be even worse. the key to successful diplomacy and successful policy is leverage. and hillary clinton when she became secretary of state said we didn't make -- i mean, if you don't talk to your enemies then who your going to talk to and she pointsed out ronald reagan sat down with mikhail gorbachev. but that came after five years

of building leverage so you could sit at the table. we took our eyes off the prize with regard to moral clarity and, ultimately, the chickens are coming home to roost. >> the lady with the bangs and two more questions after that and then that's it. okay. >> i'm with the heritage foundation as an intern. just a question. looking forward to the close nature relationship between the iranians what new threats are we looking at? how is the u.s. foreign policy have to adapt to the new challenges? >> i think i would look at the question, if you may not have heard it, would iran pass along if it got these, you know, nuclear weapons capabilities for terrorist organizations.

iran's preferred month did you say op empb-- modu operandi to operate through proxies like hezbollah. but in terms of a nuclear capability i do not think that the iranians would pass that capability to hezbollah. they passed an awful lot of everything else, missile capabilities, other wmd, you know chemical biological capabilities to hezbollah but i think that this is a nation state capability and that rather iran would use it if they didn't launch upon acquisition essentially. if they did not do that they would use their nuclear capabilities for blackmail and

for insurance purposes. in other words, to blackmail the region around them into kowtowing to their agenda and insurance in that they could then more aggressively deploy their proxies or their partners, terrorist partners like al qaeda into activities around the world, you know with the umbrella of the insurance policy of a nuclear capability. so, i see it kind of that way that they would be more aggressive to deploying feeling free to deploy and send out their terror proxies because they would feel protected by this nuclear umbrella. >> we have time for two more questions. gentleman here in the blue shirt. >> robert whelan. is there anything congress can do to stay or delay the lifting of sanctions?

>> congress ultimately if they are willing to put their necks out on the line and control the purse strings and that gives them a great deal of leverage. but when it comes to the existing sanctions there's two problems and i'm saying this as an analyst not as an advocate. number one, some of the most biting sanctions, it's all relative but some of the most biting unilateral sanctions going back to the clinton administration, 1995-1996 were executive orders. that's number one. so executive cords s orders can be waived. it's been traditional in congress to provide waivers through the white house. so that the president would be able to waive certain elements of sanctions. i'm not sure they ever expected that they would have a commander-in-chief who would become so disassociated from the national security protection of

the united states that he would waive those willy-nilly. ultimately that's what we're seeing so ultimately the question is what lessons learned will congress have so when new sanctions are put in place that such waivers aren't there. the last quick point i would make is just the irony that the sanctions which president obama the white house and the state department now create and now seek to take credit for they opposed and congress passed 100-0 over their opposition. >> i think we have time for one more question. the gentleman in the back. >> i study political science. one of the key questions is question what is the iranian state right now? i thought they were at a cross road. hard line islamic theocracy.

connected to that it wondering boston you said you were open to diplomacy with iran in this deal. i was wondering what specific criteria would have to be in the deal for it to be a good deal >> okay. number one, and this also picks up on what kay said. there's a naive belief in muddle through reform in the iranian system, but if we want to analyze the iranian power structure with greater precision you're not going to have a regime change led by the iranian people until the islamic revolutionary guard corps fractures. one of our biggest intelligence holds is we don't have good insight within the islamic revolutionary guard. so that backs the key subject. now 75% of iranians may not care for the concept of clerical rule

that was ushered in by the ayatollah khomeini but, again, it's the guys with the guns that matter. any regime change will not be u.s.-led. instead of the intelligence community spending $20 billion trying to figure out ahead of time who the chinese guy was tiananmen square in front of the tanks. when it comes to what would be in a deal, you know, when you teach military strategy and this is the way it's taught in u.s. military academies. you use -- they talk about a paradigm where every strategy should of informational military and economic component to it and the hole actually is greater than the sum of the parts. over the last 25 years or so we've started sequencing our strategies where we tried

diplomacy first. if that doesn't work then economic sanctions. if that doesn't work then we hear about military strategies which by the way don't simply mean bombing as a last resort. it's important to go back and see what has worked with regard to leverage and for this we can either look at 2003 with moammar gadhafi coming in from the cold or we can look back at the ronald reagan era and this is a whole history seminar if you want to have it and it's a cheap advertisement to talk about it a great deal in the history on dancing with the devil, history of american diplomacy with rogue regimes going back 50 years. >> i would like to recommend to you a series of nine points drawn up by my colleague at the center for security policy who drafted a set of nine points that should be our red line, absolutely must be included for

any deal to be considered a good deal. no enrichment. all sites open to military inspection. let me see how many i can remember. the enrichment must be halted completely, the stockpiles of already enriched uranium must be either destroyed or verified destroyed or taken out of the country. missiles have to be on table. american hostages have to be released. iran must give up support for terrorism. the genocidal threats against the state of israel must be -- i forgot one but center for policy security nine points. >> with that i would like to take the option of taking the opportunity of being the chair and making my concluding remarks. from what everybody has said there are a couple of things. one, when these negotiations started out a year, year and a

half ago it sounded pretty good. we would lift sanctions against iran in exchange iran would as the president said dismantle or roll back its nuclear program. and as a result of that iran rolling back its nuclear program, a nuclear arms race in the middle east would be averted. this deal doesn't do that. we have now gotten to the point where the president is saying a year ago no deal is better than a bad deal and he's now to the point that any deal will be fine. and the way they present it is this is a straw man argument. they say it's either this deal flawed as it may be or war. who wants war. so everyone is forced into the position of saying okay not a perfect deal maybe this isn't okay but it's the best deal. what everyone seems to be saying, if i can summarize is there's another option. it's not this deal or war. there's a third option and that's regime change economic

pressure, all the other things that we have used previously in our history to great effect particularly in the reagan administration. another point to make though, is that what this is being perceived as in the entire region is that the united states is choosing sides. as michael said there's a growing connection between the two sides.

it will be very, very bloody in between. it looks like the united states is playing sides and the side we're choosing is iran because the deal with iran, iran is not dismantling its nuclear weapons. it's not being asked to stop support for terrorism. it's being rewarded with a signing bonus as michael said i think $120 billion on day one as assets are un"f iran. so, to quote the general iran is getting nuclear weapons. we now realize iran will probably have an economic boom in the region and the other countries in the region as claire cleverly pointed out the other countries in the region are buying this and will embark on their own nuclear projects. money will be no object. when that starts happening, which we feel it will be in the next several years that you will see nuclear weapons introduced into the most dangerous and unstable part of the world a part of the world where people should be allowed to play with matches and now going to have nuclear weapons. as we have seen in the last 18 months governments long time autocratic governments can fall seemingly overnight and what takes their place is not freedom and democracy and human rights but jihadi chaos. so we could potentially be look at the nightmare scenario like

people like me who stew did and written about and dealt with nuclear weapons my whole career the nightmare scenario since the dawn of the atomic age nuclear weapons in the hands of crazy people who want to use them. throughout the cold war deterrence work. the soviet union was many things but it didn't want to die. we're now up against an adversary which claire pointed out is happy, willing and eager to destroy themselves as long as they can take others with them. our conclusion in all of this and i think i can speak for everyone is we find this agreement to be unverifiable. unenforceable. and probably, to your point unconstitutional. and the argument that no deal is better than a bad deal we have now gotten to the point where this is a very bad deal, and we all would encourage members of congress, members of the international community members

of the united states intelligence to stand up and stop this because this is a deal where not only iran get nuclear weapons other countries in the region get nuclear weapons and once that starts happening it's not a matter of iran turning nuclear weapons over to hezbollah it's a matter of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of people who overthrow their governments. i also in conclusion want to say i have been impressed by the quality of this audience. we've all listened to a lot of congressional hearings and congressional questions by congressmen, aides to congressmen who ask the experts. the questions that you've asked are really profound. you've gone to all aspects of this issue and i think they speak to the you know, the great common sense and intelligence of the american people or at least people to come to american conservative conferences. we hope to have many things like this in the future and thank you so much for joining us. [ applause ]

later today democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut is speaking at the wilson center about u.s. foreign policy and ways to broaden the debate by focusing on issues like human rights and climate change. that's noon eastern. at the same time over on c-span 2, sara kate ellis will talk about the state of lgbt rights in the u.s. and the supreme court case on same-sex marriage. that will be live at noon eastern on c-span 2. the brennan center for justice recently held a symposium on intelligence oversight in washington, d.c. among the speakers were a number of former congressional staffers who worked on intelligence oversight for lawmakers. this is just under two hours.

>> hi everyone. welcome back. thank you for hanging in there with us. i'm the co-director of the brennan center and i'll be moderating our discussion on oversight within the executive branch. this panel moves us from external oversight to internal oversight, which is a real one of these things is not like the other kind of step. to begin with the constitution creates a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government precisely because the framers didn't think the branches would do a very good job of checking themselves. yet the federal government has grown so massive and the information disparities between the executive branch and the other branches has grown so great that it's really not possible or desirable to leave oversight entire try to the congress and the courts. in the intelligence area in

particular there's substantial reliance on internal oversight. that's in part due to some of the limitations on congressional and judicial review in the national security context which we heard about on the earlier panel. and, in fact when administration officials talk about some of those limitations on external review they often invoke a level of overtake that happens from within. so this tells us that this internal regime is at least in part being used to compensation for a lesser degree of exalternatival oversight as well as to compliment that oversight when it exists. the panoply of oversight is indeed impressive. the nsa surveillance operations alone are overseen by no fewer than 12 executive branch offices. to name just a few of them nsa director of compliance nsa general counsel, nsa inspector

general, nsa civil liberties and privacy office the inspector general for the intelligence community, the civil liberties office and the privacy and civil liberties oversight board. the existence of oversight mechanisms doesn't guarantee their effectiveness, quantity doesn't ensure quality. in the last couple of years a couple of series of fisa court opinions showing nsa had routinely failed to comply with court orders in each of three major collection programs. now on the one hand, it was internal oversight that caught these problems and toledo their correction. on the other hand, the violations were numerous significant and widespread and they continued for years before the government detected and reported them. the effectiveness of oversight can, of course be impacted by the rules that govern it. so for example congress has

authorized the heads of intelligence agencies to block inspector general investigations involving sensitive national security matters. and these kinds of rules and restraints can in theory be changed. there's more difficult questions potentially surrounding the dynamics of internal oversight and in particular how an internal overseer that exists within an organization, within the organization's culture can maintain the necessary objectivity. we've certainly seen some courageous and thorough and rigorous investigations and one example that comes to mind is the reviews of national security letters that were performed by the justice department's inspector general the former inspector general. we've also seen inspector general reports that outsiders described as whitewashes and we recently saw the cia inspector

general step down after antagonizing cia leadership with a critical report and that was the report on the agency's monitoring of senate intelligent committee members who were investigating the torture program. so these observations raise a number of questions which i'm hoping we can touch on today. can internal oversight on which we're increasingly reliant perform the same functions? what are some of the advantages as well as limitations of oversight from within. and most important what changes can be implemented to improve internal oversight? i cannot be more excited about the group of people we put together to discuss these issues and i'll introduce them very broefly but there is much more information on your program. first michael horowitz from the department of justice. i'll skip over some of your background. you have held many positions

within the department of justice starting i believe as a prosecutor. you went to harvard law school but i'm still glad he's here. [ laughter ] margo schlanger is a professor of law at the university of michigan and her research and teaching focus on civil rights and civil liberties and how to induce large complex and large institutions to respect them. she importantly served in 2010 and 2011 as the presidentially appointed officer for civil rights and civil liberties at the department of homeland security. next we have shirin sinnar who is assistant professor of law at stanford law school. she focuses on institutions of protecting civil rights and works as a public interest attorney for civil rights of san francisco. finally, we have alex joel who works for the office of director

of national interest. he heads the civil rights and privacy office and reports to the director of national intelligence. i'll start right in with questions for the panelists and my first question is for inspector general horowitz. michael, what has your experience taught you about the advantages about oversight from within. we would like to hear some examples. >> i certainly learned a lot in three years now on the job as inspector general. i spoke with glenn about some of the challenges he faced. we released a 215 report a report on nsl, a follow up report on some of the other authorities out there. we talked about the 702 report.

unfortunately, so many of those are not public. we talked about that a little bit as well. but there are a number of challenges but i think a number of very positive reasons why an ig's office can't have any impact and you've seen some of that in the last 10 plus years with what our office has done. we are of course, within the agency and one of the things we have to make sure we keep in mind in everything we do is what the ig expects of us, which is to be independent. we may be in the agency but we're independent of the agency. so we talk about the department if you look at our report you'll see us referring to the department or department of justice and then there's us. we very much try to keep the two separate. we'll talk further about access being within the department. we should have complete unrestricted access to all the

records we need to do our work. that has been an issue over the last five years for our office. identify testified at length about it it began just before glen left and continued during the active ig's tenure and continued for the last three years that i've been ig. we have been able to get all the records we asked for but it has been a struggle in a number of areas including the national security reviews we've done. one of the advantages in the way we're set up is we should have complete access to all of the records in for example, the fbi's possession as we're doing these reviews of their national security authorities. another advantage is we have the staff that we have has done this work, has been with us for many years. they developed an expertise. we understand the department from being within the department and that continuity is very important. the folks that have worked on

the most recent 215 reports worked on prior reports, worked on 702, worked on some of the other reports. we have a continual knowledge base and we have an understanding of the organization and the culture of the organization. and i have some ideas going in the struggles we're likely to face. the push back we're likely to here at the substantive level and procedural level and we bring that as well. we also have access to people which is a very significant part of what we do. we have the right to interview and to compel if necessary interviews of all doj employees. and we generally have not had difficulty getting people to speak to us voluntarily, we haven't had to use the authority to compel. we have had on occasion to talk to folks who left who we don't have any a built for people,

staff that have left the department of justice to compel them. we don't have subpoena authority although that is in both ig reform bills that's pending in congress. so there are limits so what we can get in terms of testimonial information from individuals that left the department but staff within the department, employees still within the department we have a right of access, they have to speak to us, we can compel their testimony if they refuse to speak to us. it is a termination offense within the department. >> so before we go to margo i want to ask about the access aspect that you mentioned and that's very important and i want to give you more z out what's that been. >> what occurred back in 2010 is the fbi office of general counsel took a completely different legal position that it had taken in the eight years

prior to 2010. in 2002 just to rewind in 2002 we first got authority over the fbi. and the dea. when attorney general ashcroft extended our jurisdiction to cover both organizations. in 2003 congress codified that decision. during that eight period security reviews and other reviews we did of the fbi we got access to documents. we had -- there's all this attention, back and forth about volume, scope, all the things that occur in any process that involves requesting large scale large amounts of documents but we never had it posed to us a legal objection. it was all based on sensitivity security issues, how we were going to maintain records, whether we really needed 50000 records, is there any way we can refine our request those sorts of things. it was never about do we have a

legal authority to get the records. that changed in 2010. the fbi office of general counsel took the position it was with regard to a variety of categories of records -- specifically what was at issue at the time grand injury title 23 wiretapping information and fair credit reporting information we were not entitled to get access to under the ig act which section 6a of the act provides that the inspector again ral -- i'm paraphrasing -- should get access to all records it requests. it's pretty clear. the fbi's position was because the ig post-dated the three statutes i referenced and since the ig didn't reference it was overruling or limiting the authorities within the limitation that exist in those other statutes those other provices apply still, the ig overrode it and therefore subject to the same limitations that others were on the grand

jury title 3 wiretapping information. that seemed to glen, the near terrify rim the acting ig myself interesting novel change in position when if you look you'll find in 2010 nothing happened to the law. the law didn't change. no regulations changed. no policies changed. the legal position of the fbi changed. even though for eight years we got grand jury material we had got wiretapping information fair credit reporting information, all of a sudden the fbi decided that those decisions that previously had been made were wrong. it's our view, remains our view today that nothing had changed, the law remains as clear as it

did in 2010 as it did day. yet the fbi changed its position. to give you and example of how that affected the work we did, we were in the middle of the nsl review that we released last year. and in 2009 when we began that review, we asked for fair credit reporting information and we got it. in 2010 as we were doing a field visit we found out when we arrived in the office that they weren't going to give us the information. that we had seen a year earlier because their legal position had changed in the intervening year. that resulted in -- you'll see this in our report if you look in our report because we made public all of these issues -- that resulted in a nearly year long delay in our work while this issue was pending and remains pending to this day. >> what i find interesting about this dispute is that there were i think 47 inspector generals who signed a letter to congress

not only supporting your position but also sort of intimating this was a more widespread problem maybe not that particular legal claim but there was issues with respect to information that inspector general more broadly had. is that a fair characterization? >> it is. what we've seen as a community. most igs have not faced the argument that the law prohibits them receiving information. what most igs i think have struggled with including us in other areas is getting timely access to records. dealing with all the frivolous, baseless arguments that we can face, that we face sometimes in getting our work done and getting access to records. >> so, margo, jack goldsmith the former head of the justice department's office of legal counsel wrote a book "power and constraint." in this book he argues intelligence oversight is actually at an all time high

particularly within the executive branch because of the sheer number of lawyers and compliance officers and others who are devoted to internal oversight. he is right about that? and if so, can we all just relax and go home? >> well, as a matter of basic fact, yes, he is right about that. there's no question there are more people inside the executive branch now whose job is to check up on their colleagues than there have been before the ig's office is bigger and more of them, the office of compliance that exist now and they didn't used to or where they did used to they moved up into the organization chart. in the ic in particular there's been this mini trend much these offices of civil liberties and privacy like the one alex heads, like the one i used to head. so that there have been new

people whose job is in part, internal check. most of them are less independent than the ig's offices, the ig's office has some unique independence and we'll talk about that. the answer is yes. there are more people doing that. the thing about these lawyers mostly and even in the offices of where they are not explicitly practicing law, they are mostly lawyers. the thing about all these lawyers is that -- i mean this is good for law following because lawyers are good at reading laws and understanding what they require. and so if you have an agency that's interested in following the law that agency will have to have some lawyers unless the law is really simple which it is not. >> right. >> so, this is a necessary change it seems to me. so -- and agencies where the lawyers used to be banished to out buildings they are now in the headquarters and so on and you can read that in various memoirs and so on. or there's a passage in the

church committee reports where -- i can't actually remember who this was. who was this? senator mondale asking the question. he asked did it ever occur to you this might be illegal? what? seriously that was the answer. is this illegal? the answer was no i don't ever remember us discussing that issue. so, i don't think you would have that conversation any longer. and that's the reason. lawyers, i don't mean to say lawyers are unmitigated good. i would be interested to know how many of us here are lawyers. it's not an unmitigated good. we can use our lawyering skills against rule following. lawyers, there's nobody interpreting rules out of existence than a good lawyer. there's nobody better at re-interpreting what looked like

plain english words to discover they have unambiguity. lawyers have excellent rule not following skills too. but even when lawyers -- i think of those things as sort of somewhat bad faith. even when lawyers operate in good faith it is a core commitment of the legal profession that you are counselling your clients as opposed to your own ideas about what should happen and that one of the things that do you as a lawyer is you create and then explain the space that's available to your client and that's good faith. that's before we get to interpreting rules out of existence and finding ambiguity when there is none. so lawyers -- lawyers are professionally predisposed i think to talking about floors. they want to give their clients as much space as possible in which to carry out their client's mission and that's

actually their mission as lawyers. i'm not talking about bad faith lawyering. i'm not talking about finding ambiguity where there is no ambiguity. i'm talking about finding ambiguity where there is some. have you read fiso? it's a tough complicated statue. what's true those lawyers do a lot for creation of a floor of rule following and i am on the optimistic side of this, i see people in the audience right here who have told me i'm crazy but i don't think i'm crazy. i think i'm right. all those lawyers create a floor for rule following. they depressed the floor a little bit but they have created a floor and that's important but we shouldn't fool ourselves. they don't do more than that. the lawyers are not about achieving the right balance between liberty and security. that's, you know, it turns out

that you know laws sometimes do that and sometimes they don't and lawyers don't reform laws, lawyers are about implementing laws. the fourth amendment itself is not -- the fourth amendment itself when adjudicated there's a lot of signs and a lot of opinions that talk about, you know deference. so if what we're interested in is not mere compliance, but the right balance, the right -- the right policy, the right operations, i don't think we should expect that from lawyers alone although i do think we can expect, you know enforcement of a slightly depressed floor. >> is that a role for overseers? because what you just described finding a right balance to me is a very interesting concept of oversight which a lot of people would look at that word or concept, compliance is what you're looking for. do overseers have a role in sort of looking to see whether that right balance success struck?

>> i think that some place somehow there has to be a lot of people whose job it is to figure out what the right policy is. a lot of people. so, let's think again, since this is a church committee day let's think about the church committee. the church committee didn't stop by saying huh there's no statute that bans assassination so i guess it's okay. that actually wasn't the way that conversation happened. the church committee proposed drafting of implementation of and enforcement of a set of -- maybe i shouldn't have started with assassination but in some other areas a set of new rules, and i think that's a crucial part of an oversight function and i think and have written as you know that that has to happen both within the executive branch between the executive and -- between the executive and congressional branches. i think that the congressional

branch can only be expected to rejigger the rules every once in a while in a spurt of attention. maybe this is a sign of the age that we currently live in. a a different age i would have different ambition for the congress. but that's my ambition every once in while it will startle it to pass a statute. >> maybe on sunday? >> maybe on sunday for example. and reconfiguring the rules some. then in between and maybe in addition i think it is the job of the executive branch to not only faithfully execute the laws put to do so in a way that's as effective and civil liberties protective as it can be consistent with carrying out the laws and carrying out its obligations. so i think there should be policy shops within the

executive branch. and they could be called things like offices of privacy and civil litters that do some policy work and you're going to ask me other questions later where i can elaborate on that. they can be other things too. they can be called policy offices. they can be called lots of stuff. but somehow inside the executive branch the down side of lawyers is that sometimes the lawyers say yes that's legal and that's legal which i call the can we question substitutes for that's a good idea which is the should we question. and can we and should we are not the same question. this is something that i tell my 15-year-olds often. and i think the executive branch needs to act on that insight and needs to know just because something is legal under current law which may well change if you know, congress passed laws, that just because something is

legal doesn't mean it's good and they should ask often is that a good idea? and that is a good idea entails taking very seriously both the effectiveness of the proposed course of conduct and the down side negative impact of the proposed course of action as far as both intelligence and civil liberties. so i think -- i don't know if you would call that oversight exactly but i do think that there is a really important role that in order to get that kind of activity in congress in the executive branch we need to create an eco system where there's a lot of people ginning up a lot of information and a lot of ideas that are cross fertilizing and communicating all in secret -- no not all in secret but mostly in secret because that's inevitable where they can talk to each other and sometimes the should we question gets asked in a really rigorous

way inside and outside the executive branch and so some of these offices that you're calling compliance offices i might call them policy offices instead and say that's actually their unique role. the igs do some of this. igs do more compliance. >> the church committee is to combine those functions. >> it's that eco system idea. what it does is i've kind of written about this idea of intelligence legalism which is an idea that all of a sudden rule following substitutes for virtue and, you know rule following is not bad. i'm in favor of it. it has some down sides. but i'm in favor of it. it's not the same as virtue or if you want to sound a little bit less greek maybe it's not the same -- the should we question is not the same -- i'm sorry the can we question is not

the same as should we question. >> shirin i want to ask you about the book. in his book he says that the presence of inspector general and other internal overseers has actually had the net effect of expanding rather than constraining executive power because congress and the courts and the public feel more comfortable and trusting the executive with broad authorities with these overseers there. do you think that's right and if so, you know is more power but more oversight a worthwhile trade off? >> in a sense the question is an impossible one to measure, right. this idea of whether on net the effect of internal oversight is to increase or monoare the executive power. clearly two dynamics at play. one dynamic is that internal

oversight can and i think in notable examples and instances has led to limits on national security excesses and, in fact increased and reinforced the stringency of external review. we mentioned one example earlier the national security letters review by the department of justice ig from 2007 to 2010. i think that's a very good example of that where first the reviews expose ad practice that been essentially unknown outside the fbi this practice of useing exogent letters to obtain phone records outside of standard legal processes. in doing so it led to a curtailment of that particular practice but also led the fbi to adopt more stringent internal oversight mechanisms to make them morrow bust in internal compliance program and so forth as well as triggering a more

extensive public debate around those issues and additional scrutiny. similarly internal oversight led to particular areas to an increased willingness on the part of dourts move forward with the civil rights litigation. we see a number of examples where in responding to motions to dismiss constitutional challenges, courts have looked extensively to information that's come out of ig reviews to say, look, there's actually quite some evidence that policies have not been implemented in the way that we should and encouraging them to go forward with constitutional review. so i think there's that dynamic of auditors have incredibly important role in both public transparency on these issues and then in promoting this broader dialogue and reinforcing internal oversight. at the same time we see that the presence of internal oversight is used by both courts and

members of congress to say well it's okay to delegate broader discretion to the executive and that the fact that we have ig oversight, you know or other forms of internal control is a reason for us to be less concerned. we've seen that in multiple legislative debates over the years. you look at any major piece of legislation over a number of years, fisa amendment act, patriot re-authorization act from previous iterations. in all of these debates there's plenty much comment from legislators saying look we're inserting this provision for ig oversight so therefore it's acceptable to the executive. so, i think at the end of the day in response to the question there's no set answer. what it means is in my mind at least two things. first, that paying attention to what these internal executive

institutions are doing and holding them accountable and showing that they are, in fact, effective at what they do is incredibly important. so, you know for every example of a doj ig which is, sees its role as staunchly independent and, you know frequently looks to civil liberties and civil rights there's other examples of igs who see their roles as less of an independent term and they often coming across more as defenders of their agencies rather than as offices that are taking a very critical view and some igs who say quite directly that individual rights concerns human rights concerns that's not part of what we do, that's not part of our core mandate and i heard that directly from some igs a few years ago in part of my research. so holding institutions accountable and making sure that we're not just establishing organizations without seeing that they are actually being

able to be effective is crucial. the last thing i'll say is that i think it's important to distinguish between what these offices can and can't do and margo's comments go to that as well. some are mostly about doing compliance and looking at the implementation of policies. others are particularly useful in pushing back against claims of government secrecy. in my mind none much these institutions can compensate for what margo may say lack of constitutional floor setting to the extent that courts are sitting on its hands or congress is not legislating, that floor does go quite a bit down and maybe we can talk more about this afterwards. i have some skepticism about the ability of very internal sort of subservient offices whether civil rights offices or policy shops to effect substantial policy change and where they are not able to leverage sort of a

public discussion or, you know, be in greater communication with the public. so, i think there's some real concerns about that and additional concerns about cooperation for offices that are esconced into the structure. >> alex your turn. the intelligence community exists for the purpose of gathering intelligence through surveillance or through the exploitation of human sources. this is an undertaking that's inherently invasive of privacy and inherently secrecy. your job is to prot privacy and secrecy secrecy. it seems the decks are stacked against you. why should we expect you to succeed. >> thank you for inviting me. i'm a personal fan of the church committee report. i have a photograph of senator

church and senator tower on my desk the one famous one where he's holding up the pistol. i've read through key volumes several times. i've learned about being careful about saying which one are the key volumes. because people here will argue with me which are the key volumes. we teach it. we have training that focus on the church committee and lessons we've learned. so the framework we've been discuss, at least in my opinion is an outgrowth of the lessons we've learned from that whole experience from the church committee and i think i was mentioning to johnson that director clapper himself director of national intelligence as very strong and vividrecollections of that era that we don't repeat the mistakes that were uncovered

by the church committee. so thank you for this opportunity. why should i be successful? you shouldn't base it on me individually as it's very evident by the fact this is a church committee event congress didn't suddenly invent the idea of civil liberties and privacy function in intelligence. it was very much embedded as i've just described in the lessons that we learned. and those lessons are now manifested in a lot of the institutions that you guys have been talking about. so we are a relatively new thing the civil liberties function but we've had a lot of lawyers. church committee report said we should have more lawyers. i'm sure the office of general counsel took that and ran with it and said we need more lawyers. these things are very well lawyered. we have inspectors general, i guess they have different -- you perhaps have spoken more directly to them some of them about how they view their roles

than i have but it's been my assumption they are an integral part of this framework. you need inspector general with access to information to do their jobs. that's another piece of the puzzle. we of course have other agencies outside of government. we have a privacy board. we heard from david, we work closely with the civil liberties privacy board to make sure they have all the information they need to do their jobs. we've heard a range of things about congress and intelligence committees. i meant to mention the department of justice is very, department full of lawyers and very focused on make being sure we're doing things the right way in the intelligence community. we also work closely of course w-the ledges committees and the judiciary committees when called for by the various reporting requirements. in my view that level of oversight has been granular. i know there's a range of opinions about how effective the oversight is from the

intelligence committees and what more could to be done and a lot of people have a lot of different views on that. in my experience having done this for a decade we feel very closely overseeing by the intelligence committees people are up there all the time with briefings, we're providing all kinds of information and reports and they are weighing in making line item by line item decisions on budget matters and things like that. then of course the judiciary it was great to have judge robertson up here on financial. other judges have been speaking out about their experience and i've said this before. i know other people have said it. in my experience it's by no means a rubber stamp. they are rigorous. they are careful. they have a staff that asks a lot of questions and we spend a great deal of time keeping the foreign intelligence court informed. if there are compliance incidents those are promptly reported. if the court gets concerned about a compliance incident they will write a blistering opinion

some of which we've released and people can see them. so in my view they are a very real tangible presence that we must respond to and we are required by law to respond to and we feel a very important part of the system. for me personally one of the thing i focus on is making sure i have a seat at the table. i'm there with director clapper and other intelligence leadership to make sure they are provide the civil liberties and privacy perspective. where i do get it? some from reading. some i talk to advocates trying to arrange for session where advocates can talk to intelligence professionals which i think is the most helpful to have that engagements. i'll close by saying i recognize that even though we have this system of many layers, what i call many layers and many players and it's very complicated it's not a perfect system. there's things we can do to improve it. administration supports the freedom act and nipt clouds changes to the fisa court and

includes additional transparency requirements. we have been doing a lot to create transparency. i am coordinating the intelligence community. we need to be more transparent. it's inherently difficult for an tension community to ingrained within their culture the need for greater transparency. the whole culture, the whole system is structured around make being sure we keep our sources and methods secret so we can be more fully effective. a fully transparent intelligence service will be a fully ineffective one and we might as well not have one. to the extent we have one they need to keep secrets and a lot of church committee structure the structure we created following the church committee was an effort from provide controls and oversight in a classified environment where people could speak in trusted spaces to other cleared people, bring forward all the information they can. the church committee was a

lesson in transparency because a lot of that information was made public and we really need to figure out how to do that better so that's what we've been working on. >> i want to back up something you were just talking about which is this idea of sort of more outreach and more conversation with the civil liberties community which is something i actually have been impressed with what your office has done and the amount of times we've had a seat at the table to talk to you and i think at some point hopefully that translate into changes in policy but that aspect of it certainly has been significant. i don't want to put words in your mouth but do i hear you saying that we should check you to succeed because it's not just you because there's more of an ecology of oversight. >> very well put. you can put those words in my mouth. >> i just want to make sure i was understanding you. okay. i would like to go back to michael and go back to fundamentals here, the constitution which as i

mentioned as we all know relies on the three branches to check on one another. by entrusting and relying on inspector generals to inspect their own agencies are we putting our eggs in the wrong constitutional basket. are you performing a role that congress and the courts really should be performing? >> i think our role is very different from what congress and the courts perform. i think structurally that isn't what we were set up to do. we're there to be the internal watchdog. we're there within the organization but independent of the organization. we have within the doj inspector general's office 450 people working for us. we have about 30 lawyers or so doing the oversight we've talked about. much in the intelligence community and the space, the reports that we've put out. those are the ones being done by the 30 or so lawyers in our oversight and review division. and that's what we're there to

do. we're not there to substitute for congressional oversight. we're not there to substitute for judicial oversight. it's a mistake to think that's our role. having said that we also report to the congress. if you look at the igf there are a number of provisions that require us to report to congress. i am regularly briefing members of congress. i'm regularly testifying before congress about our work and making sure they are well informed about what we're doing. so we have dual reporting responsibilities. we have responsibilities to report to our agency leadership and we have responsibilities to report to our congressional oversight committees but we're independent of both and we have to absolutely both in practice, in perception in reality make sure that we've kept that independence. >> does anybody else have any thoughts on this question of how we should think of internal oversight within sort of the

constitutional scheme of separation of powers? >> you know one of the methods used often and johnson used it often is this idea that oversight is the police model or police on the beat kind of model versus the fire alarm model. one of the things that congress needs if it's going to do an oversight job is it needs to know who to ask. now one method is internal secret sources that we also heard about this morning. another method is there for there to be offices within the executive branch that congress asks to report to it. and particularly to report triggered by certain things. so when i was at hhs -- i don't think you have the same statute but when i was at dhs one of my requirements under my foundational statute was that if i gave advice to the secretary i had to report not -- hit to

reach a certain level of formality but certain kinds of advice had to be reported and the agency's response had to be reported. that's useful to the congress.ways it is intimidating to the person in the role. if you give advice you have to report it to the congress. so it has a complicated kind of reverb. nonetheless, it can be quite ute full to the congress that wants a fire alarm that they can say, wow, is this the kind of issue that somebody gave advice on and that advice was rejected? so you get sentences that you've read that says even the department's internal office of whatever said it shouldn't do that. that turns out to be quite useful to congress. i think that you know congress is a they not an it. the executive is a they, not an it. everybody. it is all about this complex web, this ecosystem of action

and reporting and compliance. i think that these offices can be a really -- it's not an either or. although shall the dynamic that you talked about is real but it is not generally either or. it is a both and. these kind of offices help congress do its job better. >> i was just going to say, and i think something to understand and appreciate is how different alex' office and my office is. we are both in our agencies. i don't have a seat at the table. i don't want a seat at the table. i have monthly meetings with the attorney general the deputy attorney general. it is just oig and the depfy or the attorney general. i am not in management meetings. i'm not part of management at the justice department. we have purposely not gone to regular meetings at the department, because i'm not there to give advice, informal. i'm giving it when we make a

recommendation, it's in a report assuming it is not classified. it is public. that's how we speak and that's how we work and yet we are both within structural on a chart the executive branch and within the agencies. there are these different roles of internal institutions. so when we are talking about oversight mechanisms in the executive branch there is a spectrum from those that have more of an internal advice function and those that have more of an external review and auditing function. he was really interesting is when you put those two together within the same institution. i would be interested in hearing david medine's view on how that, would. there is then some tension between those two roles. you release a public report that's very scathing of particular programs within the intelligence community, you are also involved in meetings with those same agencies to proactively design policy on a set of issues. so the dynamic of putting both

those functions in the same institution, i think creates interesting challenges. >> if i could just piggyback on that, i think, i hear what you are saying. it is a challenge. i won't speak for david. he can talk about the board as much or as little as he wants on that topic. from my perspective it is very helpful to provide advice and oversight. that duality of function can be very helpful. these are people brought from outside who have a capable staff and we can consult with them to avoid problems from happening to get to the function, which is how do you structure and design activities so that they are, in fact appropriately addressing all the privacy and civil

liberty issues. you can only do that with people getting involved early and waiting for advice. i understand what you are saying about keeping the functions separate versus together. in this particular case, i think it is helpful. the other thing i just wanted to pointous is that a lot of times the executive branch function as it responds to oversight from congress or the need to keep the court appropriately apprised of all the herb us that might arise with their orders is a resource is a resource demand on the executive branch. it takes particularly for the intelligence community the people who are most knowledgeable and have the greatest expertise on a particular activity that somebody might be reviewing, be it the board or the court or the committees are the same people that are actually implementing those activities from a national security perspective. so you are pulling them away from that work in order to provide information and briefings, which in my experience i know that you have

had different experience recently, in my experience, they are willing to do. we have to recognize that there is a requirement. it is a draw on their unlimited resources. one function that offices like mine can serve is to help manage that, help structure it, so that we can find way toss provide the information that's needed while still allowing the subject matter experts to do their big jobs. >> okay. i have a question i would like to throw to any and all of you which is quite generally. we are trying to have an increase today and a strength in oversight in various different areas. the question i have is where do you see the gaps and what do you think can be done about them? where are their shortcomings in internal oversight. some may be inherent. there may be nothing to be done about them. where do you see the potential to strengthen internal oversight? anyone should feel free to jump on in. >> a few things i would throw out there. one is that we mentioned the

differences among i.g.s. some differences are just due to individual leadership or culture of institutions and so forth. thezm fundamental-@ ind of i mlstatutory"9 distinction that remains is that some are not presidentially appointed. the nsaig is not pinted by the president. that is something looking for very specific things where we might want to consider a change could be something to do. in the past there was a point at which the cia had an internal i.g. after the iran contra, there was a push toward making that position a statutory one which is presidentially appointed. when you are not reporting to the nsa but to the president, that might create more of an opportunity for that position to review itself in a staunch independent fashion. the privacy and civil liberties

skroefr oversight has done some wonderful work. when we think about capacity, this institution has one full full-time person, four and a budget just a little over $3 million. thinking about that in comparison to the $50 billion of help needed in this community, we are still talking about a very striking mismatch between the review and what is being reviewed. >> so resources. one final point where i think there is something to be done. i think it is incredibly important when there ir statutory mandates for i.g.s to conduct reviewing or to assign them, an on going in reviewing individual rights because many i.g.s don't see that as something within this gambit, some say, fraud, waste and

abuse, that's a number of things but i think to the extent that congress ledge lates it at all would be providing more specific mandates that make explicit a role in reviewing a certain oat of issues of which we would have concern. that would be an additional area of improvement. >> so i'll speak to kind of one more layer toward the internal away from the i.g.s. the issues in internal compliance or policy shops and how they balance that role, what they have to do oral challenges to them are a combination of expertise, commitment and influence. the expertise is relatively easy. you wouldn't think that expertise would be easy. that's relatively easy. commitments and influence the more committed to a value that is a constraining value rather than a primary mission value,

like. >> so privacy versus surveillance? >> yes, for example. the more committed you are to that constraining value than the primary mission val crew. the more an tag gone is stick it is possible for the relationship to get. so there is two ways for an agency to deal with that kind of idea. one, they can hope and help that the commitment arose. so the people in the office. it is the equivalent in the state department of what they call client teleitus. they can lose the very reason why we have them. they are suppose to represent a different, slightly different value set. than the agency as a whole or they can lose the influence. they can be tamed by having no authority and no influence. if you are going to maintain inside an office like that, both commitment and influence then that needs to be really

carefully considered. i think there are a set of policy tols that an office like that can be given. they can be mandate td certain kind of roles and access. not in an investigation kind of way but in a what they need kind of a way. they can be mandated to have clearance functions of various types. if the office objects to something, it goes up a level. >> security clearance. >> oh, no no, no. >> sec kurnt clearance is different. i am talking about clearance within an executive secretarial kind of functionality sometimes it is called coordination but clearance. they can be off the rise to do some of the kind of things that alice was talking about where this is for the commitment rather than the influence idea, where they have a set of fairly