weak, so fragile that it ultimately led to the collapse. mr. robarge: thank you. we are through our appointed time, and will break for now. we will come back at 3:30 when there is a break outside for our view. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter at @cs panhistory to keep up with the latest history news. up next on american history tv, former navy seal and u.s.

special operations commander william mcraven discusses the importance of good military intelligence and its role in strategic decision-making. admiral mcraven played a leadership role in osama bin laden's capture and advised presidents george w. bush and barack obama, as well as secretaries of defense, state, and homeland security. the cia, lyndon b. johnson presidential library, and the university of texas at austin cohosted this event as part of a symposium titled "the president's daily brief. it is just under one hour. >> our next speaker is a umnist of the al university of texas. hook 'em horns. graduate withn a degree in journalism.

he went on to serve 37 years in the u.s. navy, where he became a navy seal and ultimately advanced to the rank of four srta -- four star admiral. admiral mcraven led a force of 69,000 men and women. he advised presidents, secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, and other top u.s. officials in the areas of u.s. foreign-policy and defense. in addition to many other operations, admiral mcraven headed up a special ops rate in 2001 that led to the killing of osama bin laden. briefing president obama in real-time as the operation was executed. the same year, he was named "time's" runner-up for person of

the year. theral mcraven became chancellor of the university of texas system earlier this year. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chancellor william mcraven. [applause] adm. mcraven: thank you very much. the lbjhank you and library for hosting this magnificent event. let me think jim klapper and john brennan, two those friends who have worked with me side-by-side. we are blessed to have these two gentlemen in the position they are in. i cannot think of any to guys that have done more to protect protect the- to united states than these two guys. [applause] i want to recognize former director. you have added a lot to the last

two days and i would be remiss if i did not call out my friend admiral bobby inman as he has walked me through the minefields that can be the politics of the university of texas and has graciously worked with me as i have established my tenure here at the university of texas. thank you again very much. [applause] i am going to approach this a little bit differently. you have been looking at the first customer. now we're going to take intelligence and move it down to a tactical level. i hope to walk you from the tactical backup to the first customer. i have been asked to talk about why is intelligence necessary. i want to start off with a little bit of a thought experiment. in the world of special operations, one of the things we have to tackle often is hostage rescues. put yourself in a situation where you have a hostage and you have perfect intelligence on

what is going on in the single room. you have a single room. there is a hostage. he is on the right side of the room. he is in a chair. he is bound. you know exactly where he is. there is a hostage taker on the other side of the room. you know what weapon systems he has. you know the dimensions of the room. you have the thickness of the walls. you have some understanding of the intent of the hostage taker and you have some understanding of how the hostage himself or herself might react. you know how the door swings open. you have perfect intelligence. the perfect of that intelligence is to mitigate the risk to a manageable level. on the outside of the door, you have special operations soldiers that are prepared to go in and rescue this hostage. not only do you have perfect intelligence at a point in time, but you happen throughout those points in time. it is real-time intelligence and it is confident intelligence. what that does for you is it

reduces the risk to a manageable level. always in the process of going through the door, you blow the door open. the first man through the door can stumble and that creates problems and the next man has to adjust because you have a moving hostage taker. all that is in play. with perfect intelligence, the chances of success on that operation are very high. when we look at intelligence from a military standpoint, and i will talk a little later about how policymakers use this intelligence, but from the military standpoint we love to talk about the fact that the defense is stronger than the offense. the defense just has to preserve and protect while the offense has to impose its will on the enemy. the defense only has to preserve and protect and the offense has to impose its will on the enemy. if you are going to impose your will on the enemy, the better the intelligence, the more

likely you are to be successful against the stronger form, i.e. the defense. intelligence is never perfect. i will walk you through some of the significant uses of intelligence we have. we will start with imagery. tracking a very, very high value al qaeda target in iraq. in 2005, the special forces there had only one predator. predators were relatively new on the battlefield in terms of the military. we had a qualified special operations force but we had one aircraft. we had been tracking this individual through human intelligence and we knew that he was going to have a rendezvous at a certain place out in our ramadi. we had human intelligence surrounding where we thought linkup would be and a single printer overhead. as the linkup was a -- a single

predator overhead. as the linkup was occurring, we were not able to verify the person was there. we thought we had identified the appropriate vehicle. the vehicle started to move. that was fine because we had a predator overhead and we were watching as his vehicle moved and a second vehicle joined the convoy. now we had two vehicles, which was fine because they were moving together. at some point in time they came to a crossroad and the lieutenant colonel who was working for return and looked at me and said, you've got to call it. are we going left or are we going right? so we took the vehicle on the right and we allow the vehicle on the left to move out in another direction. and so we followed the vehicle on the right for quite some time. the predator flies at a fairly high altitude and this was 2005. the quality of the sensors were not that great. the vehicle stopped near a pond. we had a good bead on the vehicle. it was the only vehicle around the palm grove.

right around this time, the optical bowl underneath the predator recycled. he goes right picture that seems to be a couple hundred meters away to a picture that is now several thousand feet away. it recycled up and it shocked us all. we can still see the vehicle but instead of it being this large, it was now about this big. we watched very closely. 15 seconds later, the ball reactivated and we thought everything was fine. we continue to fall the vehicle and finally my patience ran out and i asked the assault force to interdict the vehicle to capture whoever was inside.so we interdicted the vehicle. were fired. there was just a driver inside. not the guy we were looking forward there was an ak-47 in the back and a laptop. so we quickly got that and got it back to our headquarters. as we began to do forensics, we went back and look and thought something is amiss. as we did the forensics, we

found right at that point in llme when that optical ba recycled and went to a distance view, the individual had gotten out and ran into the palm grove and we missed him. it took us another year to kill this individual. ear'sat your's time -- y time, dozens and americans and hundreds or thousands of iraqis were killed. it showed us the power of imagery intelligence and the limitations. the other technical intelligence we used, and i won't go into a great deal of detail, but we have the ability to understand what is happening between two individuals on various communications. away,me in a country far not iraq or afghanistan, we were pursuing a target and we had interpreted listening to the two individuals their devices.

we thought they were going to link up with a high-value target in this particular country. we stood ready to conduct a strike. and weoperation evolved were continuing to pull in technical intelligence, we took the opportunity and took the strike and while was a bad guy, it was not the bad guy we were looking for. questioni was asked a about the quality of the intelligence and how i viewed the risk and how that risk was, in fact, presented to the decision-makers up the chain of command. it is something as a user of intelligence and a conveyor of the quality of the intelligence and the need for action that i never forgot. suffice to say, you have to be certain that the quality of the intelligence is reducing the risk. we have other types of intelligence where we have large sensor devices. use this quite a bit in iraq and afghanistan to locate buried

explosives, homing disposes. we would position these sensors on large aircraft and they could determine whether or not a particular road had been dug up and explosives had been put in the road. the technology was good, but it was hardly perfect. many times we would send a soul folks in based on the intelligence we had and sometimes it turned out it had been young boy that was digging in a road that had no bearing on the threat we proceeded to be. there is always human intelligence. that is the hardest of the intelligence, but frankly, the most important and most viable in terms of understanding the context. human intelligence gives you a sense of the intent of the the individual. nothing is harder to determine, whether you know them well or not.

you never know what their next move will be. what we have tried to do since 9/11 was how do we go about improving the quality of intelligence? in the realm where we used imagery, the quality of the image has improved dramatically. in the early days in some cases, ball, washe optical what we consider standard definition. the quality of the image was sometimes a little grainy. not that you couldn't see people clearly, but it did not operate well at night. there were a lot of problems with it. as technology has gotten better, the quality of that image has gotten to the point where it is as clear as i am looking at you in some cases. that is important. the purpose of the intelligence is to knock down the risk. if you don't understand the factors involved in creating the

risk, if you are looking at a picture that is not as clear as you think it is, the risk is greater and you will not be able provide the angles. if one predator is good, more are better. target. angle on a in afghanistan sometimes we would be looking at a compound and the angle of the view was obstructed by the compound itself. consequently, you went in without perfect intelligence. it was better because you had some angle. pulling one predator and multiple predators together and working them with fire support that you get from the ac-130's, one of our gunships, all that requires a delicate and sophisticated dance. that is difficult to do. it is important to make sure that under the imagery aspect you have multiple angles.

fortunately over time, what we found is some of our imagery platforms is they were limited in time frame. before we had a predators, we had a helicopter with a small optical ball on it. helicopters were limited by fuel and every once in a while you would have to land the helicopter was the only helicopter we had. -- the helicopter. it was the only helicopter we had and we realized we could not do business that way. the united states government invested a lot to make sure we had multiple platforms to do the job. then we talk about the timeframe. when you look at bdb's and what they provide the president in intelligence, on the battlefield, and the question was asked yesterday to director brennan about the quality of intelligence and what you can get to the soldier today. what you can get to the soldier is unprecedented. the soldier in the foxhole can have a terrific view of the

battlefield. a visual view of the battlefield. , andat view is timed late i associate it with i have a box in the stadium to watch the football games. we have a number of tvs up in the box, but the tvs are about five seconds late. the you know what that means we were watching football and you hear everybody cheer and you were looking up and wondering, i wonder what you are cheering about, and five seconds later you begin to find out? in the world of intelligence, when the intelligence has to be so timely because it is being relayed to the operator, the soldier on the ground, five seconds can be a lifetime and can mean the difference between life or death. as you look at the imagery, you have to make sure on ensuring the quality of the image is good, multiple angles are out there, and the timing between the actual capture of the image and the return is as small as you can make it. on the technical intelligence, this is really about ensuring we

are able to collect on a variety of different platforms. i will not go into a lot of detail there. the other impact is making sure the analysts you have and the interpreters you have are good. in a lot of cases as we are chasing bad guys around the world, some of the dialects that we are trying to translate are not common, and therefore there may be one or two people in the department of defense that speak this dialect. they may not speak it as well as you would hope. in the middle of a complex operation, as you are trying to interpret the nature and the intent of the bad guys through technical intelligence, the nature of that translator is absolutely critical. i learned this the hard way as well when i was giving a speech to the graduating west point academy folks in afghanistan. i got up and gave what i thought was a rousing, fabulous speech

to the graduating class and i got a very polite applause at the end. i thought, i must have missed the mark. the chief of staff of the army came up to me afterwards and said your translator is terrible. he misrepresented everything you said. so if you take that to an intelligence standpoint and you realize if you do not have the right translator and if that late, your is understanding of the intent and your understanding of the risk is entirely different. we have a lot of analysts that look at these sort of things. it is the same problem set. we have to have analysts that understanding context what is going on. on the human side, we look at the training. the cia are without a doubt the world's finest when it comes to intelligence analysis. we have great folks across the community.

some fabulous intel analysts. the u.s.what separates intelligence community from any other organization in the world is the quality of the training these analysts go through in order to be analysts. it is like any other aspect of life. you have the rookie analysts and you have the experienced analysts. the reason you have the quality of pdb referred is because that individual has spent a lot of time being an analyst, able to convey the analytical information in context, and that is important to anyone that is receiving intelligence. again, understanding the behavior of the individual. a lot of times we are chasing people that we know very little about. somebody in one of the organizations with the intelligence community knows something about them and that person becomes a subject matter expert on a particular individual. sometimes there is only one or

two people. you really do rely a lot on them to provide you the analysis of that particular individual. as you look at the various types of intelligence, what we learned very quickly in the war in iraq is where we started this is that you have to be able to fuse intelligence. we have always known that. the intelligence agencies have always understood that, but sometimes on the battlefield you tend to take whatever you got, an image, technical intelligence, a human intelligence, and that became your only source. you have to fuse them altogether. it is fused intelligence that reduces your risk. i go back to the scenario of the room. if all you have in the room is a , then you don't understand what is going on between the two. if you don't have a constant video stream, you have an

incomplete picture. what is critical to take these types of intelligence and fuse them together. this is an important aspect of what we did in iraq. not only did we fuse them, but then we recognize from the military standpoint we also are not the sole source of intelligence when it came to various types of intelligence. fbi, iraqi intelligence, and we would create these fusion cells. conventional forces were part of these fusion cells. to passze if you wanted and use information, you need to understand what is going on on the ground. sometimes the soldiers that were closest to the problem set could give you better insight on what was on the ground than the analyst in baghdad or fort bragg. you put all the subject matter experts in a single place and you look at a target set and

fuse the intelligence and use this interagency process to have the best intelligence you could and reduce the risk on a particular mission. we used a lot of what we call metcalf's law. bob metcalfe created the law that talks about telecommuting networks. when you look at telecommunications networks, what he said was if you add a new node to a telecommunications network, so if you have a and b c, what you get is an expansion increase in the power of communications. c and b have to be able to talk equally as strong as a nd b, this applies to human networks as well. youy time you add a node, exponentially increase the power of the intelligence out there. as we created these interagency task forces, and we had analysts from all the intelligence

communities, we had analysts and operators from the military at from all the other constituents out there fighting the battle, the state department, etc.. you had a much better look at the picture on the ground. added, youode you had a better understanding of the picture. we took this concept of fusion and we started out small with fusion cells. we started these locally grown joint interagency task forces in iraq and afghanistan. we began to partner the iraq and afghanistan node when we found the enemy network did not see boundaries between iraq and syria and afghanistan and other places and we created a global agency. we became better and better. let's talk about the intelligence and its role at to the policymakers. i will use another football analogy, if i can. when you look at two opposing

teams on the football field and you said i'm going to have perfect intelligence on my opponent, and i'm going to be able to steal their signals, i'm going to know exactly what i need to know about each player. which one is hurt, which one state of the night before, how fast are they, everything about their scheme, their maneuvers, defense, offense, you know how they will play on the field and you say, i've got it. i have perfect intelligence on that football team. the problem is it that football team happens to be the dallas cowboys and you are a high school full all team, i don't care how good your intelligence is, it's not going to help you. this is the point for policymakers. this is not just about intelligence. it is using the intelligence to understand what your options are and how to apply options against her problem set. i had a chance to talk to the texas football team a couple of weeks ago and i was talking to

them about the notre dame game of 2007. [laughter] in the notre dame, notre dame and the naval academy. the naval academy had not beaten notre dame and 43 years. it was a given that notre dame was going to be the naval academy. -- beat the naval academy. they had half a dozen four and five-star recruits on the notre dame team and i asked the players on the longhorns, i want you all to raise your hands on those of you that want to go to the naval academy to play football. nobody raised their hand. i said, exactly right. you have the case of the dallas cowboys against the high school team. the game goes into its first overtime, the conclusion of the regular time frame, goes into his first overtime, goes into its second overtime, goes into its third overtime, and the navy

beats notre dame 47-43. my point to them, and is a point that should not be lost, is navy studied notre dame. maybe understood what notre dame's strengths were and maybe understood where the weaknesses were and they developed a plan, they produced the risk to a manageable level two defeat notre dame. when you look at it, that is the value of intelligence to policymakers. we will talk about the bin laden raid area the cia did a magnificent job, along with the nsa and others for providing us with the intelligence and operators for the bin laden raid. it was as good as we could have gotten. we did not know what the inside of the compound looked like because we are not able to do that. we were not exactly sure whether and we thoughtn it was a 50-50 chance at best. there were a lot of things we did not know about the compound

where bin laden was, but we presented it to the president, president, or the dallas cowboys and they are the high school foot all team -- football team. we will be successful on this. we have intelligence. our team is better than their team. that is what policymakers have to grapple with. what are their options? the president said i don't only want you to be the dallas cowboys, i want you to be the dallas cowboys that won the super bowl. i want to make sure that you have produced that risk to the smallest possible limit. you have great intelligence, but now come up with every plan b, are strapping we down all contingencies. we did that through good intelligence. we continue to mitigate the risk. let's take that scenario of mano- a mano, the cowboys againt

the high school team, my seals against what we thought the compound, andthe let's look at isis. think of the complex city of these -- the complexity of a situation in iraq and syria. this is not a single room. this is a room with another room and another room and another room and another room and another room and another room. these are problems on top of problems on top of problems. when you have multiple factors involved. you have isis, the syrian army under assad, the moderate syrians, our allies, and the turks and the saudi's and emma roddy's and the iranians and the russians. you can see the dilemma that occurs. now all of a sudden what was a nice, clean picture gets

multiplied 100 fold. therein lies the problem for decision-makers. i would offer that you begin to slice the problem into definable tackle the best options you can. what do we do against isis? how do i build a better team against isis? how do i build a better team to help build the syrian military? how do i do with the iranians? how do i encourage the iraqis to be more forceful? in each one of these cases you build an intelligence portfolio that by the president -- that provides the president options. the great thing about options in an area like that, unlike the bin laden raid for me where was the military against a military target, you have the advantage of having the diplomatic option. diplomacy can work. economic sanctions can work. the military is obviously an option. law enforcement is an option.

the president has to have the intelligence. he has to look at all of his options. in every case, he has got to wn that option so he has the best option going forward. i will end with a couple of final thoughts. what intelligence brings not only to the battlefield, but i think the policymakers is the intelligence is there to reduce the risk, to reduce the risk to a manageable level so you can apply your options against the risk that you know. sometimes the risk you don't to know. the intelligence is there also because it is not just about offense. in my business, it is almost always about offense. it is the nature of special operations to be on the offensive. that is not always the case. the president and the national security team are also looking for opportunities to play defense against a threat that might come from overseas. we have to work continuously to improve the nature of our intelligence. when you look at the director of

national intelligence and director brendan in the cia and the other directors and leaders in the intel community, that is what they do every day because the game changes every day. the enemy is a thinking enemy. the enemy is a reactive enemy. every step of the way you were trying to get ahead of the reaction every time you come up with a solution, i guarantee it will not be long before the enemy comes up with something that counters that and now you are all on another tangent to tackle that aspect of the intelligence. you're constantly battling this loop, if you will, of the enemy being able to adapt. said, the whole purpose as i see it, from my standpoint as a military commander and the standpoint of policymakers, is that intelligence helps them with the options that they have got to be able to put on the table to do what is best for the united states of america. i thank you very much. mark, wherever you are, would you like me to take any

questions? i can't tell you who killed kennedy. i don't know that. [applause] [laughter] mark said i can take one or two questions. yes, sir. >> fantastic. mcraven werelor admiral mcraven for both? >> it is built my friend and i'm happy to be called bill or chancellor. my time in the military is behind me and i'm thrilled to be chancellor. >> i have a question for you aout a report regarding actdom of information request for the bin laden photos. photos instroy the request?o a foi

chancellor mcraven: we have answered that question already. you can go back and check the record on that. thanks. [applause] >> third-year student at ut. i had a question for you. -- we have heard a lot today about how consumer -- policymakers are consumers of intelligence and you have spoken about the strong relationships between the military and intelligence community. i'm wondering if you can go deeper about what training military officials get about how to be good consumers for intelligence and what kind of questions to ask. chancellor mcraven: that is a great question. .e have learned so much as tragic as 9/11 was, and it was incredibly tragic, we have learned a lot as a nation on how to deal with pulling the inter-agencies together, how military officers can be better consumers of intelligence.

one of the things that really helps, if you go back to the goldwater nichols act, it told the military you need to be joint officers. as a naval officer i was required to spend time with the army and the air force in order to be jointized. when 9/11 happened, we realized in the military that if you want to learn and understand how intelligence is held, how other people think about problem set, you have to have this interagency flavor team. what has become standard within the military, certainly within special operations, is we cross pollinate all the time with her interagency -- with our interagency partners. a young captain prior to 9/11 would learn to do army intelligence. now what they get an opportunity to do is spend time at the cia or at the national geospatial agency or the defense intelligence agency and they get a different look at how the

intelligence is developed, how it is produced, and the questions to ask, because they are around great folks who do this for a living. by the time the captain becomes a lieutenant colonel and a retiring commander, they are very well schooled -- and a battalion commander, their very well schooled and understand what question to ask. all right. one more question. thank you very much. appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you, chancellor mcraven. introducemy letter to the director of national intelligence, james clapper. in his role as dni, director clapper leads the united states intelligence community and serves as principal intelligence provider to the president. general clapper retired from a distinguished career in the

u.s. armed forces in 1995. at the lieutenant general in the u.s. air force and director of the defense intelligence agency. after working the private sector for six years, general clapper returned to government service in 2001 as the first civilian director of the national imagery and mapping agency, known today as the national geospatial intelligence agency. he then went on to serve as the under secretary of defense on intelligence before becoming dni in 2007. please welcome me in -- please join me in welcoming director james clapper. [applause] director clapper: thank you, mark, for that kind introduction and thanks for being such a great host. decided ier

should follow chancellor mcraven, i will offer a much more sarcastic thanks. [laughter] this seems to happen every time i come here. bill mcraven is a great american, a skilled warrior, and someone i consider a personal hero. he is a national icon. [applause] yes. advice andowed the counsel without question that bill mcraven has offered. i know you're all familiar with his iconic advice. the first thing is to make your bed. i know you've heard that, and so it was a very early get-up for me this morning because i flew here this morning. i was going to endeavor to make my bed, just like bill advises, except i got a groggy but andrtive voice for my wife,

not this morning. [laughter] i tried. he is right about that. there is wisdom here. if you can't do the little things right, you can't get the big things right. following bill at the lectern is a big thing. bill did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the challenge for intelligence. to eliminate, which we rarely can do, or at least reduce uncertainty for a decision-maker . the decision-maker is in the oval office, or to stretch the foxole.r, an oval -- foxhole. bill, thank you for your distinguished service and french appeared i also want to thank bobby inman. he mentored me with a lot of years. officiated my promotion ceremony for colonel ago.80, 35 years

i never forgot that. he has been a great mentor to me ever since. pleased andry honored to be just a small part of this very significant milestone. it is a significant milestone for the central intelligence agency, but it is also one for the entire intelligence community. this afternoon, john brennan, i thought, did an excellent job of taking a long, historical look at the president's daily brief. i could not be prouder. i could not ask for a better partner, colleague, friend, and as we call each other, foxhole brennan, and i'm so proud of the relationship that we have had during not only going back to john's tenure in the white house and now in his great service as to rector of the cia. -- as the director of the cia.

he spoke very eloquently about fromignificance of the pdb the kennedy and johnson years. the cia modernization that john talked about, integrating disciplines and capabilities across the agency, reflects changes that we have been making as an intelligence community. fasterll make the agency and more responsive to world events. john's superb leadership at bringing these changes about has been tremendous. i could talk for hours about how these improvements at the cia will make the entire ic better, but i recognize i'm the last speaker and i'm standing between you and the reception, so i won't. today, we have focused on a single vital daily intelligence product. theare at the apex of intelligence production food

chain. i don't think any other nation on the planet will look back open and exposed intelligence works of the significance of what we are declassified. what of my major takeaways from the controversies of the past few years has been that come yes, we have to protect our secrets, our sources, and methods, our tradecraft, but we have to be more transparent about the things that we can talk about. foremost of my 52 or so years in the intelligence business, we have not talked publicly about our work, at least very much. now i think the american public expects us to talk about how we are using the power of u.s. intelligence responsibly. i personallyon believe we did not learn quickly enough. that certainly includes me.

more and more we are discussing to correctelping misunderstandings and help people grasp what we are due, the show that we are worthy of america's trust and make worthwhile contributions to the security of americans and our friends and allies around the world. it is why over the past two years the community has declassified thousands of documents about our work and importantly, about the oversight as conducted by all three branches of our government. publishing these declassified documents on the record and pushing them out on facebook and twitter him a big -- twitter, they reached millions of people around the world. that includes our adversaries, who also learned a lot from our transparency. admiral inman, i think, spoke very compellingly about this dilemma. worthieve transparency is

the cost. releasing historical documents what we are doing today is another way we can talk about what we do. while protecting the tradecraft behind today's intelligence work. i believe the pdb's we are releasing today are from a particularly interesting time in our nation's history. i received my commission in the air force when kennedy was president. in august of 1962, i met president kennedy at the rotc summer camp i was attending in massachusetts. as luck would have it, i was in the front row of the rope line and president kennedy came by spoke briefly to each cadet. most of whom, when he asked, were planning to be pilots. ps to me -- he asked me what i plan to do the air force and i said i wanted the in intelligence officer and he said lisa, that is good. we need good intelligence

officers. i never forgot that, obviously. [laughter] i also served, of course, in air force intelligence during president johnson's time in office and serve two tours in southeast asia, the first in vietnam in 1955 in 1956. this event has personal significance for me. i think there is a certain relevance and symmetry to john opening today's event and my briefing closing it. i'm here because 10 years ago, under the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act, the management of the pdb process moved to the central from thence agency -- central intelligence agency to the office of national intelligence. in the last decade, the pdb has become a product as john

mentioned. product, as john mentioned. we tried to build on the foundation of cia's condition of excellence. i think i can say, i'm proud to say, that i believe the intelligence community is living up to the legacy. mainstaynues to be a .f producing pdb articles all 16 components of the community. every can tell -- every intelligence agency has contributed material that has made it to the president. it is truly a community effort. it has been an honor this afternoon to be at this library to talk about the work of our top analysts. president johnson himself once said, "the president's artist

tax is not -- hardest task is right, what tois know what is right." i can vouch for president johnson's word. knowing what is right and deciding what is right is the president's hardest task. ic cannot decide for him what is right. we would not want to. it is the intelligence he needs to make the hard decisions. i can vouch that our current president is a faithful and gracious consumer of intelligence and he has been right there with us through the difficulties of the past two years. process, wheree intelligence comes from, and importantly, the men and women who do all that. today as we celebrate the release and publication of the documents that informed

,residents kennedy and johnson i want to assure the american public that today's intelligence and today's pdb's live up to the excellence, of exemplified by the briefings you can read that president johnson's library. diversityb's cap the and excellence of thought of the entire intelligence community. it was a great honor for me to be here and play a small part in this really significant milestone not only in the history of the cia, but the intelligence community. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you very much, general clapper. to conclude our conference, i will bring up a friend, joe lambert.

joe, i want to thank you and the cia for not only releasing these documents, which are really a treasure trove to history, but for helping to organize today's conference. thank you very much. this concludes the event today. the documents that were referenced throughout the they are live on the ca's website, so you -- the cia's website, so you can access them now. the you join me in thanking speakers from the intelligence agency today, both current and former? [applause] i think they did a terrific job insight,u inside -- and as a thank you, we have a small token of our appreciation we want to give three organizations. if i could ask for those right now? thefirst one will be

library for your help. it is a nice piece of crystal that has today's event on it. we have one from the university of texas. chancellor merkel rate, if you could come up for this, please. [applause] , if youellor mcraven could come up for this, please. we have one for the association of former intelligence officers. are in the audience, could you,? [applause] -- could you come up? thank you, folks. safe travels home. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]