tactics used from the cold war to post 9/11. they discuss techniques and human intelligence gathering by foreignand russia's intelligence service, as well as the shift in intelligence methods after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. the new york military affairs symposium in new york city hosted this two hour long event. >> i would like to turn things ailing but here, bright and lively, is the publisher of enigma books and executive director, mr. robert miller. [applause] mr. miller: thank you very much. i was very sad to hear about the passing of bob. i was shocked by the news. had this could have

information earlier on our website. i am pleased to welcome all of you to this to-day event on espionage from the cold war to asymmetric warfare. i shall first offer a few words of introduction followed by a brief presentation of our panel. since the collapse of the soviet union and the 9/11 attacks on new york, the american public has never been so thoroughly informed of the successes and failures of its espionage services. starting with the crumbling of the berlin wall in november 1989 and the disclosure in the mid-1990's of the now-famous [indiscernible] there was ample reason to congratulate both f.b.i. and c.i.a. for a job well done. cryptographersan had broken the soviet codes at arlington hall, washington, d.c., campus where the secret work took place.

and proof of the vast amount of soviet spying that had been long suspected was confirmed. the victory over communism came with the vindication of our intelligence organizations. , the new, open russia suddenly closed its archives with the assent of a former k.g.b. officer named vladimir putin to the presidency of that a shortin 1999, ending window of transparency and cooperation among historians. just a year and a half later, the greatest shock troubled a newfound satisfaction in our security apparatus with the september 11, 2001, destruction that took place in the city. the media taught us all about connecting dots and the f.b.i. and cra were actually suddenly dysfunctional, since we had been

caught sleeping at the wheel, just like at pearl harbor in 1941. in a rush to fix things, a vast new bureaucracy was erected with homeland security. and a vast reengineering took place within the traditional agencies. for obvious reasons, we cannot tell how successful those initiatives have been. we can only agree the absence of major attacks in this country on the scale of 9/11 and the assurances of congressional committee members that are offered periodically are meant to be reassuring. the question we have for this panel and for the audience that will participate in the debate is simply, are we better off now than before? how do the services measure up to the challenges offered by

islamic terrorism, a russia that seems to live in a new cold war, the leaking of vast amounts of secret documents by improperly vetted military or government employees? i am referring to wikileaks and perhaps the panama papers. what do we know -- what we do know is a major distraction can be the work of very few, determined individuals who carry out a specific plan. is the united states better off today than it was in the 1990's? allow me to introduce our distinguished panel. dr. mark kramer is the director of cold war studies at harvard university and a senior fellow of harvard davis center for russian and eurasian studies. of "exposing,or maintaining, and tearing open the iron curtain, the cold war and eastern -- east-central

europe" published in 2013. he is also the editor of a three-volume collection to be published in late 2016. fitsanakis, who received his phd from the university of edinburg, and build the security and intelligence studies program at king university has taught and written extensively on the subjects such as international espionage, intelligence tradecraft, cyber espionage, transnational crime, and intelligence reform. is a frequent interrater to the news media -- he is a frequent contributor to the news media. has reported extensively from afghanistan, iraq, and the horn of africa for the "new york times" on national security group holds a masters in history from oxford university and is the author of

"the way of the knife," a best-selling account of the c.i.a.'s covert action forces. panel.welcome our [applause] i give it to dr. mark kramer. kramer: thank you very much. i'm just waiting for a powerpoint presentation to be put up. mentioned in the brief biographical sketch, but something i realized afterwards is especially germane to tonight's symposium. of "spies"e editor put out by m.i.t. press. it is a collection of essays about cold war spying.

the topic of tonight. i was just in russia. mid april until about 24 hours ago. i have worked extensively in the archives there many times, including this most recent trip. the political situation in russia is dismal because putin has imposed an authoritarian system. the good news is it has not affected the archives. if anything, bizarrely or paradoxically, archival access has improved over the last couple of years, particularly the last year. i will be referring to that a bit in tonight's comments. ok. that is all right. i did bring my computer with the

presentation in case this does not work. the structure of what i will be presenting his first to go through some of the newly available to give a sense of what is available now. availableo much more as compared to the situation during the cold war. i just want to highlight that because it is not only from russia, but also from other former warsaw pact countries and from western countries as well. one of those sources which robert miller mentioned is the panama papers. ok. i will go through some of the newly available sources and then talk about some of the activities.

i wanted to move it here. then i will talk both about intelligence gathering activities of different types and then other activities. tomorrow, i will come to questions of the impact on policymaking and impact on the cold war. i may get into a little of that tonight. but i want to reserve most of it for tomorrow. let me go through some of the newly available sources so far. europeanents from east state security archives in some cases fully open, so you have access to foreign intelligence materials of the warsaw pact, including a lot of soviet documents, copies of which were sent. they are in germany, former east germany. the federal commissioner that

oversees the former state security archives. the intelligence files are not completely open. there are a few areas that aren't. the fire large, they are fully open. in the czech republic under legislation adopted in 2004, the records of the former state security apparatus, including the foreign intelligence apparatus are fully accessible. oland is not as accessible, but a great deal of the foreign intelligence files of the communist regime are accessible. they are under the auspices of the institute of national remembrance, as it is called, ipn. there is a separate archive of the ministry of internal affairs in poland. but the communist era records by and large now are housed at the centralch does have a

archive you can go to and work in. in hungary, it has varied somewhat over the post-communist period. former state security archive, there is a considerable amount accessible. bulgaria, you might be surprised. in 2006, there was a commission set up. that commission oversees the security records of the communist regime, including foreign intelligence. they have made vast amounts of the collections they have available online. you can go online and download tens of thousands of documents. if you go there and work, it can work there even though it is a cumbersome process. but you are able to get access to very important materials of the foreign intelligence service

in bulgaria. all of these are important records because they worked very closely under the supervision of the soviet k.g.b.'s foreign intelligence apparatus. not only are those records valuable in themselves, but you can also find copies of soviet foreign intelligence documents. in addition, in the former soviet union outside russia, for ,xample in the baltic countries latvia, lithuania, estonia, there are foreign intelligence records. even though they were soviet republics and were not a central archives -- the central archives, there were quite a few copies of central foreign intelligence documents from the k.g.b. that you can find there, particularly in lithuania and estonia which have

separate k.g.b. archives. latvia is merged within the central state archives and is not -- there was more destruction of material later in the final months of the soviet regime than in lithuania and estonia. but you can find very useful materials in all three countries, foreign intelligence records of the soviet regime. russia, the foreign intelligence archive which is in the outskirts of moscow. kvdused to be in the main n and k.g.b. building in central moscow. in 1974, it was moved out. the whole foreign intelligence apparatus. it was still part of the k.g.b., the first main directorate of the k.g.b., but it was moved out there and so was the archive. that archive has been

inaccessible throughout the post-soviet period. i was at a conference where the head of that archive took part. archivehim when the might be at least partly accessible. he responded "never." relativelyre is little hope, short of some change to a democratic government in russia, of having some access. is therethe good news are a lot of copies of important records that you can find in archives that are at least partly accessible. in 1992, there was a trial of the soviet communist party. it did not result in anything. but in connection with that, there was a special commission of up to investigate files

the k.g.b., among other organs of the soviet regime. the things they looked at and collected were eventually made available at what is now fund 89 of an archive now known as the russian state archives of recent history. that is not only accessible in russia. it was microfilmed in total. the microfilms are readily available at many university libraries. also, new york public library and others. if you're interested in looking at those, you can find the records, many k.g.b. records, including important things pertaining to covert operations, among other things, k.g.b. covert operations. k.g.b.re also important foreign intelligence documents

stored in other parts of the same archives. that would include now files of various departments of the communist party central committee. those were off-limits for quite a while. but they were opened last august. the irony of the situation in russia is that archival access fortunately has not corresponded to the degree of political liberalization in russia. for reasons we can get into later if anyone is interested, it has not been that way. it has operated quite independently. there are also other archives where you can find important records from soviet foreign intelligence apparatuses. this wouldclude -- include the russian state archive of social-political

history. it is the former central party archive. it covers the stalin and lenin periods. if you are interested in stalin era intelligence activities, you can find copies of some documents, including important documents there, very important documents there. also, that archive houses the records of the former comintern, which played an important role in soviet espionage. there is a very good book available about that by genre haynes and harvey claire -- john are all haynes -- john earl haynes and harvey claire. their first book on the topic is based on the comintern files of the american communist party housed there. the state archive of the russian federation also has important materials pertaining to soviet

foreign intelligence. these were partly as a result of just record-keeping. the files of the soviet state security apparatus were under the auspices of the ministry of internal affairs during the 1950's. that ended in 1960, but you can housedose records now there. they were specially digitized. it is pretty easy to go through them. garf is one of the most open of the russian archives. but all of the ones i have referred to our easy now. even though it various times they have not been. then there is the archive of the russian foreign ministry. of the foreign policy of the russian federation, as it is known. that archive contains important

materials the foreign ministry was using from the k.g.b., as well as the soviet foreign ministry played an important role in its own right in soviet espionage. it has the diplomatic service of the soviet foreign ministry, have the supplementary rationale of being a kind of supplement to the foreign intelligence service. materials --rtant other important materials are available in the transcript summaries. these were transcripts of documents done by the k.g.b. archivist of the foreign intelligence archive from the early 1970's until about 1983.

these records were transferred. they were initially offered to the united states, the u.s. who in an unwise decision turned them down thinking they were not serious. fortunately, the british secret intelligence service was more observant and realized the great value of these materials. unfortunately, sis cap them off limits for 20 odd years. fortunately now they are fully accessible at churchill college, cambridge, in cambridge, england. they were made accessible there in the summer of 2014 after being off-limits for about 22 years. the records, you are allowed to use a digital camera. if you are interested in looking at the records he transcribed

pertaining to espionage in the united states, you can do that. those are in volumes. i did photograph all of those. there are records pertaining to most parts of the world. had been earlier summarized in two important books put out by christopher andrew, the british intelligence historian. for the most part, they quite accurately reflect the content of the documents. things theyny, many were not able to include in those two volumes. is at least one important discrepancy i found when going through the material. transcripts cover the whole soviet period but are prominently about the 1970's and early 1980's.

there is relatively little about the stalin period. there are a few very interesting things, but much less about the stalin period than i thought there might be. there is also a good deal less about the 1950's and early 1960's. as you move into the 1960's, it increases. , the largelarly majority deals with the 1970's and early 1980's, so you can find very important things there. anotherr vasiliev is foreign k.g.b. foreign intelligence officer. he was working on a project for the book that came out as "the haunted wood." it came out in 1997 or 1998. that book dealt with soviet espionage in the united states during the stalin era. was able to deal

with only a very small portion of what he actually transcribed. he was allowed to work in a room where archivists from the foreign intelligence archive brought him materials. were focused on the united states. he was not an- expert on foreign espionage in the united states, which is good because it meant he erred on the side of copying a great deal. he would transcribe entire documents. you can find extremely interesting things about soviet foreign espionage in the united states. materials, again because of earlearlham's -- john

haynes and -- i worked with him as well. those were transferred to the archive in conjunction with a project known as the cold war international history project at the woodrow wilson center in washington, d.c. that project has been invaluable in making materials available from former communist countries, including russia. the transcripts were digitized. they were translated and all are available online. you can find translations of them if you want to look at the original transcriptions. they were done by hand. he typed them out in russian. you can look at the translations. all three versions are fully accessible. complimentks are a and extraordinarily valuable

supplement to the venona papers. over aers were decrypted long time by what is now known as the national security agency. it became the national security agency in 1952. the national security agency in its various incarnations was decrypting these going back to the late wartime years. but then really had key ,reakthroughs after the war even though these are intercepted documents to very parts of the world including the united states. the major descriptions -- d ecriptions came in the late 1940's into the 1950's. they continued to decrypt them into the 1970's. eventually, the project was halted. they realize that a certain point, they would not be able to decrypt more of them.

they were extremely difficult to decrypt. it was only through ingenuity, because this was the time when computers were relatively primitive. most of this was done through human ingenuity of n.s.a. codebreakers. it is quite a stunning thing they were able to decrypt any of they used a particular feature that made it essentially impossible to decrypt them. there was a flaw introduced into it just after the german invasion of the soviet union in 1941. as a result of that, a lot of them used a particular one-time pad that was duplicated. so they were able to, upon detecting that, to break the codes to be able to read them. notebooks overlap with even

on a papers that are -- with even on a papers but are an invaluable supplement because they fill in a lot of gaps for each other, all dealing with soviet intelligence in the united states. and dealing with soviet foreign intelligence elsewhere. there are documents from east european spies who were working for the c.i.a. or british intelligence. richard jablonski was an intelligence source for the until november2 of 1981 when he had to flee poland because he had been discovered and was on the verge of being arrested.

there is a startling account of how he got out of poland in a aok by benjamin wiser, who is "new york times" reporter or used to be. at that time, he was also working for the "washington post." out inbook that came 2004, you can find an account of how he got out. prior to getting out, he was able to transfer to the c.i.a. copies of tens of thousands of documents. materials hef the smuggled out, by no means all, were made available by the c.i.a. about seven years ago. there was a symposium held in washington, d.c., in conjunction with that. and then, all of the materials eventually were put online. if you go to the c.i.a.'s

extremely useful electronic a.cia.gov,room, foi you can find the kuklinski documents among many others. there are also documents u.s. forces involved in operations in the middle east for other forces involved in operations in the ,iddle east, especially israel and u.s. personnel in africa and latin america were able to acquire at various points. a lot of these, by no means all, are also available. the middle east was in particular, the ones from iraq captured by u.s. forces, because these are difficult to work with, even if you know arabic, they are often difficult to work with. they are in three separate locations as well.

them are a good deal of that are now being made available in translation. if you are interested in that aspect of intelligence, particularly saddam hussein's foreign intelligence apparatus, you can find a good deal because they had close ties with the soviet union. there are also now vast quantities of declassified c.i.a. documents. again, it is hard to overstate what a change the end of the cold war made. there are endless collections of c.i.a. materials you can find on that website i mentioned, the electronic breathing room. these were kept off-limits during the cold war. but one of the beneficial aspects of the end of the cold c.i.a.it did inspire the to agree to release large chunks of its cold war collections.

covert operations are still difficult. there is still a great deal of made, he made -- being for the most part unsuccessfully, to secure a greater release of materials pertaining to covert operations. ie intelligence gathering -- am sorry, the analysis part of the c.i.a., the analytical division, a great deal of those are now accessible and are often extremely interesting. ifetimes wrong about things you are able to compare it with the soviet records, you can see they got some things wrong. but they often did an extremely good job and got things pretty accurate. did a lot of benefit to u.s. policymakers who wanted to understand what was going on.

then there are memoirs by former east european intelligence officers in former soviet intelligence officers. the memoirs you have to be wary of because not only are memoirs bound to be self-serving to a also, most ofey these people did not want to disclose too much. in some cases, they may try to mislead people. so you have to be very cautious when using these. but they still are often extremely important sources about key records, including former intelligence officers in the soviet bloc who genuinely wanted to disclose what had happened and the sorts of things they were involved in and what their countries have been involved in.

are also important memoirs by western intelligence officers, including some former directors like robert gates who wrote an interesting memoir that came out in the mid-1990's. there are others who have written, other senior c.i.a. personnel, and in some cases not so senior personnel who have written interesting and useful memoirs. again, with the same caveat that you do have to remember most of them are under legal obligation not to disclose classified information. just to finish tonight's presentation by going through a little bit about what we know with regard to the soviet foreign intelligence apparatus. i am not going to deal as much now with the u.s. intelligence in part because my colleagues or

at least mark mazzetti will be dealing with that about current day. it has not changed drastically in the post-cold war period. its focus has, it is no longer on the soviet union which does not exist. some of the entities have been renamed, including several times. i don't even recall what used to be called the operations director of the c.i.a. and then became the national clandestine service. i know it was recently renamed, but i don't recall exactly what. in the case of the soviet bloc, the 11th department of the soviet k.g.b.'s first main directorate oversaw the various warsaw pact foreign intelligence services. the first main directorate of the k.g.b. was the foreign directorate apparatus.

it shifted over time. in the stalin era, it had been under the foreign ministry. another time, it had been under what was called the nkvd or the ministry -- people's commissary of internal affairs. the first main directorate from the time the k.g.b. was created in 1954 through the end of the soviet regime had an 11th department that oversaw the warsaw pact foreign intelligence. k.g.b.ere so-called advisors, intelligence officers, and operational groups stationed with the east european foreign intelligence services. their upkeep was funded by the east european governments that were warsaw pact governance until 1990. there, you can find many of those in the east in the formerves

warsaw pact countries archives. and they said a great deal of light on the structure and policymaking portion of the foreign intelligence service itself. the sovietbulk of and east european state security organs' efforts were directed at domestic intelligence. roughly 85% of personnel in most cases. internal security was the primary orientation. it is not surprising because these were large state security apparatuses overseeing modern countries was a difficult thing. the 15% or so of personnel that worked in foreign intelligence, the foreign intelligence service had special training to allow them to serve there. as robert miller mentioned, one officer was vladimir putin.

the sheer size of the warsaw meanttate security organs they had very large, aggressive foreign intelligence branches. above all, the soviet k.g.b. in the case of all the others i have discussed, you can find the similarly had very active foreign intelligence operations. they took this mission seriously. mention for me the soviet andon east european foreign had a good deal of joint efforts during the cold war. there was an increasing centralization of efforts under soviet warsaw pact structures in the 1970's and 1980's. this corresponded as well to an increasing centralization of warsaw pact structures in the

military sphere. but that was true equally in the foreign intelligence sphere. before intelligence services of the warsaw pact countries -- the foreign intelligence services of the warsaw pact countries were under the 11th department -- the 11th directorate of the k.g.b.'s first main directorate. those structures were increasingly under soviet control through changes enacted in the warsaw pact statutes. formal leadership organs were theblished in all cases in 1970's. even to an extent, earlier. but by the 1970's, it was heavily centralized. there were specific cooperation agreements in addition. these were bilateral for the most part. there were multilateral agreements. but they were largely bilateral. they were updated periodically.

again, bringing foreign intelligence increasingly under soviet control. so you can understand what soviet priorities were if you look at the records of the east european foreign intelligence groups. there was also, beyond the formal agreement, there was informal cooperation and allocation of assignment. for example, it is now known the bulgarian state security had a 12 department that was responsible for assassinations overseas. the question i am often asked is whether bulgaria was involved in the attempted assassination on the pope. i won't get into that now. i will talk a little bit about that maybe tomorrow. the informal cooperation particularly applied to things

like covert operations. but also in some cases involved intelligence gathering. there was an allocation of assignments among the warsaw pact countries. the only exception to what i have mentioned here is romania. the cooperation between the soviet and romanian intelligence agencies greatly diminished in the mid-1960's. this was a conscious decision of the regime in romania. it wanted to establish autonomy for romania -- not independence -- but autonomy for romania in the military and foreign intelligence spheres. it never disappeared entirely. for example, romania was involved in covert operations in which it worked closely with the soviet and other eastern european agencies. this included the bombing of the

radio free europe headquarters in munich, and also romania had close involvement with terrorists, especially in the middle east, in some cases, also, in western europe. the romanian foreign intelligence service continue to play an important role. it was just much less under soviet hospices. it worked in -- auspices. it works in conjunction. finally, the roles and missions of individual eastern european intelligence services varied some depending on what the area of expertise was. for example, the east german state security apparatus had the great benefit of speaking german as a native language, so that made it quite easy to penetrate west germany. addition,ny, in allowed entree to the nato

headquarters. so, in the east german state security apparatus -- i will discuss this a little tomorrow -- in the east german security apparatus files, you can find large quantities of nato and west german documents. in fact, there are so many of them, and you can track when they were supplied, in some cases almost on the same day they were produced. in many cases, within a few days. east-german state security apparatus had direct entree into important classified materials of the west. this meant that in some cases -- i will get to this tomorrow -- you could argue it may have had a stabilizing role because of what it showed about nato's intentions -- that nato, for

example, was a defensive alliance. he would probably be the easiest 2.2 -- east germany would butably be the easiest 2.2, bulgaria had a role in the balkans overseen efforts. there were two balkan countries that were members of nato from 1952 on -- greece and turkey. large ethnichas a turkish community, so was able to draw on that in part to deal with turkey and assimilate with greece. so, the polish foreign intelligence services likewise had, particularly to try to deal polish emigre's, if they were able to turn them, or to use polish scholars in the west.

i have found, for example, a very interesting report -- not interesting -- interesting in a perverse way -- of a polish foreign intelligence service from november, 1968, about the service -- the entity of harvard that is now called the data center, where i have an office. that center was then called the russian research center, and they clearly had someone from the polish scholarly community supplying information. quite an accurate report, unfortunately because poland was in the throes of an anti-somatic campaign, it talks about how campaignnti-somatic committee talks about how many druze there were -- choose there there were.ws it can be found online.

with that, i will finish tonight's session, and look for to speaking with you tomorrow. [applause] >> so, i have the non-powerpoint interlude of the evening, so you will have to hear me and be captivated by my voice. my nephew just arrived. i will keep an eye on him. if i keep his attention, i figure i'm doing ok. first of all, thanks for having me at the symposium. it is a terrific honor being on this panel and being back up in new york, a city i have spent a lot of time in and it is always great to be back in. i was feeling a little jealous listening to the previous presentation, mark's presentation, because the idea of going through all of these

terrific archives and seeing all of this information that has been either declassified or officially released his something that a journalist who is toiling away in this current era could only dream about. we have to deal with the memories of officers. you have to deal with -- mark mentioned memoirs -- that i agree our imprecise -- are imprecise or self-serving. you have to deal with eating information from people who are always under the threat of going to jail for talking to you, and it makes it very difficult to do this kind of work in this period when people are going to jail, but i do think it is very important. when robert talked about some of these mass disclosures of classified documents, i should say that as a reporter, i am wholly endorsing matt's

disclosure of classified documents, as long as we at "the new york times," get to look at them first and decide what we should publish. [laughter] mr. mazzetti: but it is difficult -- and i look forward to -- i do not know if i look forward to this, but all the documents coming out from this 40 years from now and i can find out what i got wrong. i wanted to talk tonight about -- it is a good segue -- the end of the cold war and the beginning of the 9/11 period, and, really, what i argue are the dramatic changes that have taken place in the intelligence world. less on the structure, and more years andus, and what years of doing a specific kind of operation, and i would argue counterterrorism operations have been at the center of it, have changed intelligence and change spying.

i thought i would open my talk with an anecdote that gets at the beginning of this period that is, i think, colorful, but also, i think, sets up where we are going. it is an anecdote from right after the september 11 attacks, and everyone was -- it was chaos, the cia was not quite sure what to do, and the british came to visit. spirit of the special relationship. also, there was a glimpse of what was to come. i will just read a brief passage from my book that talks about this. it focuses around a man named you -- sir gerelove richarddear love. he came to the united states with other top british intelligence -- officials to

show solidarity with the united kingdom's closest ally. he arrives at the cia headquarters in langley, virginia, to deliver the message personally that british spies were opening up their books, giving the cia rare access to all the mi six files on al qaeda. they had long approach the spy game differently. in 1943, 1 member of winston churchill's special operations executive complained that "the american temperament demands quick and spectacular results, while the british policies, generally speaking, is long-term and plotting." he pointed out the dangers of the missions carried out by the office of strategic services, the cia precursor, which blowed up weapons depots, cutting telephone might. the americans had more money than brains, he won, and they are hankering after -- and their hankering over playing cowboys and indians could only be to trouble.

he had grown up in the classic british spying tradition, graduated from queens college at the university of cambridge, and served in foreign postings in africa, europe, and washington. like his predecessors, as head of mi six, he signed internal members with his codename in green ink. plane landed,his he found himself inside the counterterrorism center at cia headquarters. on a large screen, cia officers were watching video of a white mitsubishi truck driving along a road in afghanistan. dearlove had known the united states had developed the ability to wage war by remote control, but had never watched a predator drone connection. several minutes went by as the mitsubishi was framed by the crosshairs of the center of a video model, and till a missile blast washed the screen in white. seconds later the picture

clarified to show the wreckage of a truck twisted and burning. dearlove turn to a group of cia officers, including ross newman, a veteran who much earlier had taken the job of the group overseen the predator program. he cracked a ride smile. it almost -- rise smile. it?lmost isn't sporty, is this is the beginning of a real change in how cia did intelligence, how the united states looked at the role of the cia, and i think it would be the beginning of what would be a reauthorization of american intelligence and establishment away from a particular focus on traditional espionage, as was practiced during the cold war -- laser-like forecast -- focus on hunting, targeting, caption, killing. capturing, and killing. it is a story at the frontline of a secret war that has changed

the nature of spying and has had both good and bad consequences. it has changed the focus of a cia, which i would argue the cia has had the most profound change since 9/11 of all the intelligence services because they have had -- they have been the ones put at the front of this secret war, and it has shaped the perspective of a whole new generation of intelligence officers. the cia now has more than 50% of the agency are people that joined after the september 11 attack. if you think about that, that is the majority of cia officers are relatively young, and are people who have known a mission where two successive presidents, one republican and one democrat, have given the cia the first and foremost mission of counterterrorism, in other words, man hunting. it has changed the language of intelligence. the idea of what is a target in traditional terms -- and

intelligence target is someone you would target to turn into an agent for information. targeting becomes something much different in the post-9/11 era. targeting means someone who you are hunting, either to interrogate for information, or, possibly, to kill. that distorts the idea of what an intelligence service should be for. so, what i wanted to do was tonight talk a little bit about how we got to this point where we are today, and then spend time tomorrow talking about, i think, where we are going, as best as we can tell at this point. so, it was four years ago when president obama in his second inaugural address said that a decade of war was coming to an end. what he was talking about was the public wars -- the wars in iraq and afghanistan, one's he was hoping at the time to end. as we have seen, that hasn't

quite worked out as he planned. and then in a speech that may, he said that this war on terrorism must end, and the government has to be more transparent about it. was made in 2013. basically, he was trying to get to a point where the united states was not in a semipermanent war that was all about in the shadows -- one that was relying on the cia, covert action, and secret strikes, but as we have seen, it is three years later, and the war continues. there is little indication as of yet that this new era of transparency is dawning. we are not saying really strong action movement by the government to declassify information, or even declassify the cia for the special operation wing of the military -- their role in wars in pakistan, yemen, somalia, libya, and the list goes on.

the tides of war that seem to be receiving at one point, have come back in. i think what we are seeing is the secret wars that the united states and in particular the cia, have been waiting for 19 years, do not show any signs of ending, and this is going to have an impact on our intelligence service. i will get to that, i think, a little bit tomorrow, about where we are going. so, this war, and i talk about it as a shadow war -- the war that is outside of the traditional war zones in iraq and afghanistan -- it has created a new model for how the notice states goes to battle. it has had benefits, and it has had costs, but there is no question that it short-circuited the normal mechanisms by which they then states as a nation decides to go to war. it has been carried out, as i said, not in war zones we traditionally see during the cold war, or even in the post--9/11 era, like iraq and afghanistan. the laboratories have been

places like yemen and pakistan, and libya and east africa. so, what are some of the other characteristics of this war as i get into the details of it? and just in characteristic, i think, is that it is a war, even at the cia, that has been run, in large part, by lawyers. what the net states could and could not do in a war of this slate was largely a blank before the september 11 attacks, and then the lines were drawn by lawyers over time, over the past 15 years. so, some of the most momentous, and arguably controversy decisions that have been made in the last 15 years -- decisions about detention, interrogation, torture, surveillance, assassination, effectively when they because groups of lawyers got together and said what could and could not be done -- what did and did not violate the law.

we still had an executive order on the books banning assassination. as we know, there have been hundreds and hundreds of cia joan strikes killing -- drone strikes killing individuals. there has to be a line drawn about what does and does not constitute assassination, just like what does and does not constitute torture. even at the cia, for those of you -- i know many of you and you have a great deal of a background in the intelligence world or how the cia works -- what we have seen is the cia has grown, not only in its analysts and operatives, but it's number of lawyers who have had to make these assessments about what the agency could and could not do. impact, i profound think primarily, and so what i want to talk about most -- is i would argue and have argued is that it has blurred the line between the work of soldiers in the work of spies. you canthand, i think,

look at it as -- over the last 15 years, the cia has become more like the pentagon, and the pentagon has become more like the cia. so, let me explain that. i think by explaining that, i want to talk a little bit about where things were on september 11, 2001, in order to describe the changes. cia -- those of you that know it -- there is a history that is cyclical to some degree. the early decades in the cia were intensely operational in terms of in europe, in south america, in africa, covert true attempts, some assassination plots that became revealed in the 1970's. this was an intense focus that in the 1970's most of which came to light in the church and pike committee. this was a revelation to americans about what the cia had

been doing, and a really wrenching experience for people who had been in the cia, and had not been accustomed to much congressional oversight, and all of a sudden on television all of the dirty laundry of the first three decades of his existence was being.. .- was being aired this had an effect, according to memoirs and documents, and the number of people i've spoken to from this period, the generation that came in after the church commission. those that came in during the 1970's came in during a period when the cia was trying to reorient itself back to being a traditional espionage service. not only the covert actions of the 1970's -- of the early-19 50's and 1960's, but the the and non-arab -- he saw an intensely -- vietnam era -- you saw this

intensive focus after vietnam, but those that came in were taught it should be not a paramilitary service. many of those people took that message very seriously throughout their careers. what happened was that 20 years later, many of those people were then in senior jobs in the cia early-2000's990's, , when a new era dawned for the cia, and specifically a moment in the summer of 2001, when the cia was handed this new weapon called the armed predator. the cia had been watching the rise of al qaeda for a number of years. in afghanistan, osama bin laden had carried out a number of attacks to that point, and the question was how should the united states government respond , and the cia had been able to penetrate al qaeda and the television to some degree. they were able to -- televangelist some degree. they were able to find the whereabouts of osama bin laden,

but it was never in real-time, and once they found him they could not find a way to kill them, and there was a question about if they had the authority to kill him. going back to the ban on assassinations, could the cia carry out an assassination to that extent question would even be an assassination? there was an intense debate in 2001 where the military, that had developed an armed predator, hand in the military this question, and the answer was should the cia take them up on it, and george tenet recalls during meetings it boiled down to we are spies, not assassins. should we take on this new weapon, this new mission? shouldn't that just be the military's job? it seems quite now, but this debate played out until the september 11 attack. on september 8, 2001, there were meetings at the white house about whether the cia should use the armed predator and go to

afghanistan with the aim of killing osama bin laden. even years later there is to this agreement about what was decided at that meeting, but what we do know is the september 11 attacks happened, and within six days president bush gave an authorization to the cia, a secret finding, to go around the world to capture or kill al qaeda operatives, a secret order that is still on the books today and is still, basically, the foundation of the cia's mission, even though those who did the 9/11 attacks are either mostly dead, or in jail. that authorization has been expanded to encompass all sorts of different groups and different people who have carried out different tax. that -- i attacks. that is the foundation for the cia which took up the predator and the role of targeted killings, but as a knowing the early days and early years, it was more of a focus on

detention, interrogation, somewhat argued torture, with methods like waterboarding in secret prisons, because there was basically very little information about al qaeda, and the belief inside the cia in the bush white house was you had to use these extreme methods to get that information. but, over time, i pointed to around 2004, things begin to change. there is this concern in the cia about the methods they have been employing. there is an inspector general report about how some of the methods might across the line into war crimes. there is a shutter throughout the ranks of the cia that once again the agency might be facing another period like the church commission -- they would be the ones who would be facing possible legal jeopardy for the methods they used. it is during that period, 2004 on, you see a shift away from

interrogation, away from the use of secret prisons, toward targeted killing as a method of counterterrorism, and it is something that the bush white house embraced wholeheartedly at the end of 2008 -- the middle of 2008, the end of the bush administration, and as we know, president obama has embraced as well. so, what we have seen during the obama administration is an acceleration of that process of focusing on paramilitary activities, counterterrorism inivities, man-hunting places where the united states is not officially at war, but where the cia has this authority. that is one half of the coin on how the cia has become more like the military. i will spend less time on the military side, but i think it is important because, again, it is the other half of this dramatic change since 2001. so, 2001 happens -- 9/11 happens military hadntagon

been structured very much like it had been for decades with large, static armies built to like the gulf war in the early 1990's. and this really infuriated the defense secretary, donald rumsfeld, because what he saw was a military that -- we saw an enemy that was not in wars where the military was authorized to fight, so the question was how could the military, how could he, the secretary of defense, run a war in places where the united states was not at war? the cia have the authorities to operate in these places, but the military didn't. so, what he really push for in the years he was secretary of defense was to expand the pentagon's authorities to operate clandestinely, someone say even covertly, arguably to act more like the cia did with its own authority to operate in

deniable places in places where the united states did not have to acknowledge it was operating. he expanded dramatically the role of special operation forces, specifically joint operation command, which is down at fort bragg, north carolina, the delta force seal team six, a group bill to do hostage rescues -- short operations over 24 hours. basically, what he did was create, build this organization to fight large, secret wars in iraq, afghanistan, across the border in afghanistan, and this became rumsfeld's tool to create the military more like the intelligence services. so, there has been a convergence over the last 15 years between the military and the cia and this blurring of the lines. in a little while i will get to where does this culminate, but worst of all let's get to where

does this play out. well, i think that the true laboratory for this convergence is pakistan, and i think, probably the most interesting -- i think the most interesting setting for this experiment of the last 15 years, partly because it created this dilemma for the united states government of a country that was officially country where there were questions about the loyalty of its leaders, the loyalty of its intelligence service, the ability of its government to deal with terrorism threats going not only into afghanistan, but in the united states, so it presented this dilemma. i think if you want to look at a place where this transformation has taken place, i think pakistan is the most adjusting place to look, and the ark of the relations between the united states and pakistan follow

finished in, although somewhat depressing trajectory. there were, early on, good for what, i would say, you would call good relations between the united states and pakistan, specifically the intelligent services of the united states and pakistan, the ca -- the cia, and pakistan intelligence services, the isi. there was a degree of commonality and what their mission was 10 there was no love for al qaeda among the pakistani intelligence service, and there was a view that while isi had nurtured the television, and saw in text andalwart against india, al qaeda was a threat and therefore they could theyagainst the united -- can work with united states against al qaeda. that netted a number of successes. there were a number of senior al qaeda operatives captured in

afghanistan. that did show collaboration between the pakistani and american intelligence services. over time, suspicion grew about the motive, about each other's motive. beganited states expecting that the pakistanis were playing a double game, to going with the television, and while they were helping with al qaeda, they were secretly nurturing the taliban because they were unclear whether the next states would stay in afghanistan. the pakistanis were unclear whether the united states is going to stay in afghanistan, and we were not sure as the united states got diverted to the iraq war, whether they should be continuing to nurture the taliban, because they were looking at the long-term picture of how the taliban fit into their own strategic defense against india. so, the mutual suspicions grew over time to a couple of critical points, and i think these points then accelerate

these transformations in the cia that i talked about earlier. the decision in july of 2008 by the bush white house to, basically, conduct drone strikes in pakistan unilaterally. up to that point, there had been 2008 toion from 2004 to get the pakistanis to sign off on every drone strike, or at least notify them of drone strikes that were taken part in the country. there came to be a believe inside the cia at the white house at the pakistanis were tipping off militants before the strike, and in 2007, there were no successful strikes. so, there was this belief that perhaps their partner was in such a reliable partner. so, president bush authorized unilateral action, and you see this dramatic spike in drone strikes starting in july, 2008,

and when president obama comes in in january, 2009, he makes the faithful decision to continue the program, and in many ways accelerated from where bush had left it, leaving, you see in 2009, and especially 2002, a dramatic increase in drone strikes based on intelligence that had been gathered by the cia and its agents in the pakistani tribal area. so, that had positive end, argument, very negative results. one is that it had a dramatic effect on al qaeda and al qaeda operatives in terms of those that were killed, or who fled because of the joan strikes -- drone strikes. it also really poisoned relations between united states and pakistan to the point that by three years later, it was really the cratering of the relationship, and i think this is one of the big points we want to look at when we look at

intelligence operations post 9/11, because there is a much of a focus on what they call connecticut operations, -- kinetic operations, caption, killing and set of countries where you may not acknowledge a role, or tell your partner service. it can have really deleterious impacts on diplomas, -- diplomacy, diplomatic relations between the countries. so, monday but would think that between -- so, many people would 2011, five years from monday, when the osama bin laden raid happened, was the low point. i think in traveling to pakistan and doing a lot of reporting there, and as i write about my book, i think the lowest point of the relationship came a few months earlier when a cia operative named raymond davis was captured -- was picked up by policemen in pakistan after he had shot two people he thought

were trying to rob him as he was driving through the streets of lahore. davis is picked up by the cops. after he shot the two men, he had radioed for help. a white man from the lahore consulate -- the american consulate in lahore came to rescue him, but in trying to do so, it killed a third person by accident, then drove away, and left raymond davis on the street to his own devices. he is picked up, put in jail, and the beginning of my book is the interrogation of davis by the pakistani police, which you can actually watch on youtube, amazingly, and it set off this period where president obama had to say publicly that he was not a spy, that he was a diplomat. the pakistanis knew better. for the pakistanis, this was, in

their mind, proof about cia operations over the years -- that the cia basically had deployed this secret army inside pakistan without telling the pakistanis they were up to, in their minds, all sorts of nefarious acts, and raymond davis sitting in jail in lahore was the proof of that. -- the issuee ultimately resolved when a deal was struck that the families of the victims were paid off. out of theis was jail, put on a plane to afghanistan, and brought back to the united states, but that really sour their relationship, really 10 years after 9/11, more than what happened three months later when a group of navy seals went into pakistan, deep into pakistan, and killed osama bin laden. i think that moment -- the bin laden raid -- illuminates a

transformation i have been talking about. here you had, 10 years after the september 11 attacks, you had a group of soldiers operating under the cia's authority with the click of a pen. the navy seals were given authority to operate under cia rules, to operate inside pakistan, a country where the united states was not at work, and if they -- if the bush administration -- the obama administration so chose, they could have never acknowledged their role, never acknowledged the operation. as we know, what happened in that operation -- it was acknowledged. it became what was considered the cia's greatest moment since the september 11 attacks, but it does show a blurring of the lines of what had happened between the united states military, intelligence services, and how they converged in this country that is officially an

american ally. i think that i will stop here, and then get tomorrow into where all of this is going, and whether we are likely to see any change. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. i am glad to be here. it is a pleasure to celebrate -- share this podium with two distinguished speakers from the panel. i'll most didn't make it. i flew in from myrtle beach in

south carolina where i teach at coastal carolina university, and the flight was over-books, in typical fashion. i should not mentioned the name of the company since we are on tv -- maybe i should for that reason. i almost did not make it on the flight, but a kind lady said i will stay here tonight so you can go to your conference because i had to be at the conference today. i was thankful to her, and she turned around and asked me what was your conference about, and she said it was about espionage, -- and i said it was about espionage, and i think she got scared after that. [laughter] mr. fitsanakis: which is typical of the subject, i guess. it happens a lot when i tell people my academic interests, which is espionage. the discussion usually ends at that point, or dies away. i'm happy to be with an audience would hopefully this discussion will not kill the discussion, andin fact it will feel it,

i also hope for tomorrow's discussion will have to mentioned thoughts and debates. my main area of expertise is espionage. it is, in fact, technically speaking, human -- human intelligence. essentially, a very quick humantion of this is intelligence -- any information that can be gathered from human sources using human sources is basically what the cia was initially founded to do before it changed its mission, as mark very correctly pointed out. a few very basic aspect of the background of this in the united states. there is a significant human element to the intelligence committee. is one of manyn disciplines of intelligence collection. it is not the only one. in the united states, the central intelligence agency is the agency that makes the most use of human intelligence. it is the one that makes the

most use, but it is not the only one. we have the central intelligence agency, which does more or less what the cia does, but it is more military issues as opposed civilian issues. the department of state also makes use of that -- they collect information from humans .sing humans they have an intelligence component, for sure. of course, not to mention the fbi makes use of human intelligence, and of course every branch of the u.s. armed forces has components that facilitate human intelligence. so, it is a very scattered discipline throughout the u.s. intelligence community. the most esoteric of all, no question about that. that is the reason i want to spend a few minutes going into the background of this before i go into more detail. states, since

9/11, we have had a reorganization of what we call the national clandestine service, which is supposed to be -- the national clandestine service is supposed to be a unit that brings together the various human aspects of the u.s. intelligence community. in reality, it is mostly run by the u -- the cia. an office of the director of -- national intelligence is supposed to supervise it. there are a lot of issues there, turf wars about who is actually in charge of the national clandestine services. there is a lot of confusion about this, but it is supposed to be bigger than just the director of operations, which is the part of the cia that does human aspects that i specialize on. would you reduce the size -- thank you. i appreciate that. of theng to the website

office of the director of national intelligence, the national clandestine services is supposed to serve as the national authority for coronation, d confliction -- i love that word because it points to conflict -- in the u.s. intelligence community, and the evaluation of clandestine human intelligence collection. that is the mission of the ncs, and of course it is delegated by the director of the cia, who is an undercover officer. now, just a very quick and important note here about human -- humint. two degree, operations officers that deal with human intelligence, they don't kill people, typically. they don't drive flashy cars. fact, if anything, being flashy is looked down on the work of an actual operations officer -- the intent to bland -- blend in.

casinos,ot frequent unlike james bond, but there was a story about the cia recruiting or trying to recruit chinese officials in casinos in macau. it happens sometimes, just not very often. , and alsotant of all i should say technically they don't spy. they don't, themselves, spock and they recruit others who spy for them. so, they are -- by. they recruit others to spy for them. most important of all, most of them have diplomatic immunity. we can return to this in a minute -- about what that means in the current era of asymmetric war that the u.s. finds itself in. officers arens involving human intelligence collection, known as core collectors, or case officers. peopleey do is recruit

in foreign countries to spy for the united states government. this is a very complex and difficult task that is based on developing very strong relationships with trust between an operations officer and an agent. these agents then will trust you as an operations officer, as a case officer, to such an extent that they will actually go out there and put their lives at risk for a number of reasons -- sometimes money, were grudges against their own agencies, or whatever, but often, to a large extent, they do it because of you. so, psychology plays a very important role in this, far more important than guns, weapons. i would actually call this the ultimate people job. you have to be very good at convincing people to do things for you that they would not otherwise do. so, that is the important background to keep in mind as we discuss how this type of work

has changed in the post-9/11 era that we find ourselves today. the core collectors for the u.s. intelligence committee -- again, the term we use for an operations officer the collects human intelligence -- this is really the conventions the u.s. intelligence community uses to collect u.s. intelligence. it is pretty much a cold war phenomena. they were developed during the cold war. america hardly had an intelligence community to speak , so thee world war ii conventions, the methods, disciplines, the traditions in america of human intelligence developed during the cold war -- it is, strictly speaking, a cold war phenomena. and that typically involves, in the cold war in particular, involves usually men, usually from a middle-class, upper-middle-class, or upper-class background who joined the cia through, sort of,

a word-of-mouth system, which, of course, were not used to living in austere environments because they came from quite privileged backgrounds -- not as much as the british case, but still, there was an element of class in that recruitment process. so, they were not used to living --very serious environments austere environments, so they spent, as a result, much of the career for the most part, not always, in safe locations, and doing things that were quite safe. covers, had official meaning they had a position in the u.s. government that gave them diplomatic immunity. meaning that they were often stationed in u.s. embassies or consulates in countries around the world, and they pretend to be the comments, many of them --

diplomats, many of them. they were also diplomats, but their real job began at night, the humint part of their job. now, of course, their life resembled very much those of diplomats. at least it overlooked -- overlap in many important areas. diplomats, often are known, for example, to attend cocktail parties and various embassies. that is the big part of a life of a diplomat. every country is a national holiday, host an event, and you are supposed to attend. very often, and operations officer would attend this event and strive to recruit other diplomats of other countries. they do the same song and dance, and they do the same to you because they are pretending to be diplomats, but they are not, and you have to go to the officer, and report on this. that is, very often, a very large part of an operations officers life during the cold war. these were mostly safe

assignments. and that would say they are safe even today. in unity and a passport that says you are a diplomat -- let's say you get caught spying in china, you are exceeding the description of your job, they might be able to arrest you, refuse up, but they cannot really do anything -- but they can't really do anything to you. they will likely get you -- let you go. assignment,ry safe as assignments go. in addition to that, and that is an important part of what i am trying to say today -- these, mostly men, mostly upper-class or middle-class individuals were trained to recruit people who looked and acted, and often right? just like them, even in the depths of the cold war, your average russian diplomat you are trying to

recruit, polish diplomat, for the most part, dress like you, spoke english, or something that resembled english, and for the most part you could communicate. there was a connection of cultures. to howso had limitations far they were going to go as far as a commitment to the principles. they often would not have a suicide and talented, which often is not the case today. additionally, most of that work focused mainly on the ussr. it is amazing when you look at the archives the degree to which the united states focused on the ussr. of course, it was active all over the world, but that activity did read all around with the soviets were doing there. i have written a documentary history of the national security agency, and one of the things i found funny and interesting is that during the early 1980's, they had four different departments and accounts, but

they had to basic units. one was soviet, and the other allo, which meant all others. the amount of output dedicated to the soviet union was incredible. if you look at the map of the world in those days -- let's say you are in operation officer involved in humint. you will be placed somewhere abroad, and the robbie, -- nairobi, the consequences we associate with the cold war, as it were. and i will have you know, these are nice places. if you are stationed in vienna, you have a nice house, and if income. even if you are in nairobi, you live in the western area, it is leafy, gated, and you get a good income because it is cheap to live there. it is a very nice, safe, type of life for an operations officer.

that with thepare types of cities that we associate with today's current affairs, places like juba, benghazi, peschel at -- -- peschel at -- that type of thing where you type in the word, tells you you are wrong. the cold war is over, and their focus has shifted. these places are not as nice, are they? essentially, what we find ourselves in today is that the main problem we have, of course, is that i mentioned human intelligence operations were developed during the cold war on state actors. now we're done with nonstate actors, and the way you collect human intelligence on a nonstate actor is mostly different from how you go about this with a state actor. to begin with, nonstate actors

do not display over targets of human intelligence collection. they don't have diplomats. they don't have a business community, senior officials they can actually commute. come in contact with them because they mostly operate on the ground. in addition to that, that forces core collectors to actually focus, for a change, on targets that are not diplomatic. you cannot recruit anymore by going to cocktail parties at embassies. you can't recruit people that live in the same neighborhood as you that happen to be working for another country. this is over. of course, we do that still, but what i am saying is the world there's the war on terrorism does not revolve around that kind of universe anymore. that is over. in addition to that, the actual terrain is alien, on for a minute -- unfamiliar to operatives. have you been to yemen recently -- it looks like an alien

landscape, and i mean that in the sense of extraterrestrial. of the images from "star wars." even the architecture is different than what we are used to hear in the west, let alone the way people talk, the way people dress. the linguistic issues are massive. the linguistic barriers, cultural barriers are almost insurmountable, even today, many years after 9/11. that is a serious problem for human intelligence collection, not to mention, of course, the very hazardous operational environment. i mentioned before, if you are caught even in russia today, let's say, or venezuela, something like that, chances are nothing major is going to happen to you. i tell my students if you want life-threatening situations, don't join the cia. join local law enforced. a lot more dangerous than

working as a typical case officer for the cia -- even a case officer, let alone an analyst, right? in this case, if al qaeda were to arrest you, or isis, we are talking about a very serious turn of affairs for you and for your account back in the cia. very important that a in my research that comes from an article written under this title -- "the counterterrorist by a formeren intelligence officer for the cia. july,te this in 2001 in and i think that is a very accurate picture of what was happening then at the cia. this is a quote from his article in "the atlantic" -- the existence of the u.s. counterterrorism program in the middle east, south and central

asia is a myth. he said it is virtually impossible for westerners to operate in al qaeda's environs. what are the chances of a white, caucasian guy in america surviving in peschel at for more than a week -- peschel at for more than a week, or going unnoticed? that is impossible. not in a place like sauna or benghazi. it just doesn't happen. so, that brings me to the point that often these places are terrorist safe havens, and these terrorist safe havens have a very closed structure and it poses operational difficulties, even for non-caucasian muslims who are correctors, with the cia has. a member, this was 2001 -- the time -- around the time of the 9/11 attacks.

even a cia officer who is a muslim, who is familiar with the kind of culture finds it very difficult to survive and to be convincing in a place like a sure or benghazi. so, case officers, because of that, have to force themselves to venture outside of the , except backrcuit in 2001, that was not sincerely encouraged, because it is dangerous, or, in fact, even rewarded. a great quote that he has in his article from a former division -- sorry for the strong language, but this is typically the director of operations. the ca probably does not have a truly qualified arabic speaking would believe to --

prepare to spend years of his noe with shitty food and women." we don't do that kind of thing. another quote -- operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen. i would add to this, operations that include lack of toilet paper as a way of life don't happen either. i do think that he says, i am not sure i agree with it, but it is an interesting comment, that humint in the cia is characterized by risk-averse, bureaucratic nature which mirrors the growing physical risk aversion of american society. i am kind of skeptical about that one. i would add to this, it is not his point, but my point, often because of that, it is

difficult, and to gilly for some of the older case officers trained in a different perspective to venture outside of safe western areas -- it is difficult, and they tend to fall into predictable patterns of behavior. flexible, when meeting their agents, which makes him the target of foreign counterintelligence. this may have happened in beirut. there were some reports in the news that the cia suffered a andual without of its age network in beirut in 2001. what had happened, apparently, was they would meet them, at, like, you know, the kfc in beirut, or the starbucks, because that is what felt comfortable to them. you feel at home. it is not challenging and dangerous. all hezbollah had to do was monster who was meeting in those places who was local. that simple. those are the kind of things that i'm talking about how things have changed since 9/11.

so, what is the way for -- what is the response to the challenge -- a direct articles written in 2001. of course, we do not have access to the entire picture. we can speculate, and use some open sources, like, for instance, mark's book, that he mentioned earlier. , of course,question the cia counterterrorism is not a 9/11 creation. it existed for decades before that, we have seen an unprecedented growth of the center. now, it is so big, and so active, that it rivals some of the traditional national clandestine service account. that things i have been talking about. it is a direct outcome. there is a renewed growth in the 's nonofficial program, officers that go out and they do not have immunity. they have no connection to the

government of the united states. so they do others do under immunity without the protection, which gives them more flexibility. and bigger pressure to obey within society. that is very dangerous. of them,e hundreds something over a thousand. we do not know for sure. there has been a rise, a few dozen back in the cold war. so that is a direct result of this situation. perhaps,urse we are this is more of a speculation on my part, i would like to see what others have to say about this. you may notice a post global war on terrorism transition from counterterrorism, the killing and ken -- killing and kidnapping, back to strategic on humans focusing

operations. this is a matter of discussion. i think it is happening, but we cannot be certain. and again, speculation, connecting to what i will talk about tomorrow. you may see a possible future emphasis on case officers specializing more, in other words, instead of having somebody focus on different countries for their career, you may be narrowed down to maybe just 2-3. they will become more aware and more able to operate in these kinds of environments because that is all they do. again, that is one speculation. accents --ed on my research. i will mention more about that tomorrow. until then, thank you for your attention. [applause]

>> ok. that was a wonderful presentation. &. miller: we have time for q a. please raise your hand and stand up and ask short and pertinent questions. thank you. uh. -- back in 1971, during the, where west pakistan became bangladesh, there was that conflict and the united states that -- backed pakistan, which many said was the wrong thing to do. even though this was 30 years 9/11, when it was

mentioned that at first the united states and pakistan had reasonably good relations, even before,t is 30 years what was the united states's role in the bangladesh conflict a good example of that? mean, i can talk about that a little it. i am not an expert in that conflict. mr. mazzetti: i can recommend a book called "the blood telegram." the authors name -- professor at princeton. backre right, it does go thatkistan in putting down in bangladesh,n there are all sorts of documents about henry kissinger's role in

that. pakistan was seen as a very important cold war ally for the united states, where it was seen that india was in the soviet sphere. some colleagues may be able to speak more intelligently on that, but pakistan certainly -- and moving forward you have the very important role that the u.s. and pakistan played in the 1980's to drive the soviets out of afghanistan. it was an important alliance until the end of the cold war, after the fall of communism, there was a dressed in the release -- drift in the relationship, and the u.s. got cope with -- closer with india. the pakistanis, after the soviets left afghanistan, the taliban came about.

they cultivated the taliban as an important ally to get to india. 2011, an oldve in ally that was not the same level of trust that they had been in the cold war, but it was seen as a country that had drifted from our same interest, but they were still there. >> the soviet records pertaining to the separation of bangladesh from pakistan in 1971 just became available last august. soin, because they were only recently available, i have not gone through all of them. but i did look at some of them as marc mentioned, india was a close ally of the soviet union, the soviet intelligence service and the

foreign ministry were basically quite happy about the outcome that bangladesh had been able to be separated through india's intervention. mr. kramer: they saw this as a new arena in which there would be possible opportunities for intelligence gathering, via pakistan, which was an important -- what was important for the u.s. >> a question for mark. you call this a lawyer's war. do lawyers ever say no? [laughter] >> you know, when the service wants to torture. thearious things on operational agenda, the lawyers say, no, you cannot do this. if you could talk about examples of that.

and for joseph, specialization -- you ended with that now? that is in this sense, haven't we been doing this, aren't there people that were working on behalf of iran, iraq, afghanistan, you know, who have dedicated their career and is a specialization to these things? you see that as a way of the future? isn't that what is happening now, i am hoping it is. >> yes. quickly, yes they say no. examples ofous course are those when i have said yes and they were presented a sort of list of things the agency wanted to do and the lawyers basically found ways to justify them. mr. mazzetti: whether it is the interrogation, surveillance, whether it is the infamous

decision to target american citizens. ones,se are more famous but there are examples of lawyers, once decisions were made, or the middle of those decisions, resisting that pressure. there is a man named alberto mora who i believe was, the general counsel of the navy in the pentagon, i believe, who was resisting some of the interrogation methods of guantanamo bay and elsewhere. he famously was at the center of that movement. and there is a lawyer from the justice department who wrote a book about how his role in rescinding some of the orders given specifically on surveillance, the infamous nsa wiretapping. so some of those lawyers are

known now, famous in some circles. but it is telling that some of the, it is fascinating i think some of the most important figures of this period, in this clandestine conflict, are the lawyers on other side -- on either side. >> thank you about the question. mr. fitsanakis: i will say that you are right, there is specialization. states,y for the united a lot more specialization than in analysis. for instance, there is, i can't assure you that there is somebody at the cia that specializes in albanian agriculture. and they are living in a cubicle somewhere and their whole life, they're waiting for somebody to ask them about this. it does happen. however, in operations department, not so much. if you look at retired

operations officers, they run operations in 30 countries. my sense is that this will become, this number will be reduced significantly in the years to come. so now with operations, not so much. >> thank you for everybody on the panel. i will start with the new york times, mark, talk about the extent to which they technology got the policymakers, whether republican or democrat, off the hook. you can fire hellfire from a predator, or from an f-16, so talk about the extent that the technology made it easier, or easy to pursue the policy of targeted killing and perhaps was a substitution for a more nuanced policy. and there have always been lawyers in the intelligence community. colby was a lawyer, casey was a

lawyer. but i agree, it is a much more legalistic process. so talk about the impact of technology on policy, versus the policy on technology. >> that is a terrific question. obviously, there are lawyers and they have had a role. mr. mazzetti: the point i was making is a sickly all these decisions made after 9/11, they were very much a blank slate that had to be filled in by the lawyers on what could and could not be done. it is point on the technology. what is the difference between a predator shooting hellfire and in f6 team, -- f-16, the answer is, with a predator did was it allowed the agency or whoever was flying it, to pick one spot for a long time and watch. and there were, i do not think i said in my opening talk, there were unarmed predators before

there were armed predators. those that just did surveillance. and those that came about, they flew the predator in afghanistan and some cia officers are convinced that they saw some of the modern watching -- osama bin laden, watching with an unarmed predator. the question was, what to do? and did they have the authority to kill him? do they have the technology, launching a cruise missile from a simmering mullahs could take which couldarine, take time. but the technology drove policy and it allows them to sit there for a long time and watch, then when they saw, to make a decision and carry out a killing. so it is the technology, i think then, it was suggestive for policy -- seductive for policymakers to do what they wanted. >> thank you. curious as to what you find with

regards to the cold war in false flag operations, operation northwoods, especially mark kramer, you could comment as far as what information has come out with regard to the documents from the soviet union and of them doing false flag operations or contemplating it? operation northwood's was never carried out, but it was planned. mr. kramer: let me ask for clarification, by falsifying operations, you mean operations that -- oh, ok. false flag, ok. i mean, covert operations were a staple part of soviet foreign intelligence activity. many that were designed for assassinations, they carried out assassinations,

both within the eastern block, but also in the western countries and third world countries. , they were efforts there certainly to deceive and present something as being western, whereas it was soviet operated. the records on this are still, many of them are sealed, at least in russia. so it is hard to give a sense of the full magnitude of it. wasintelligence gathering the core of the mission of the soviet foreign intelligence service. in the soviet arm important inwere the various eras, especially the

stalin era. i think it would be misleading to say that it was a dominant element of the soviet foreign intelligence services. it was an important part, but the bulk of personnel went into intelligence gathering and more straightforward espionage. wasust recently, i think it in the new york times sunday review a week or two ago. there is an author doing a biography of angleton and he commented on how the cia had essentially pulled, learning that he was doing a biography of him, wanted to look at some stuff that was available to anyone. and the cia pulled everything when he, you know, when he went to the archives and he said, oh they have taken everything. probably for mr. kramer, could you talk about reclassification

and again, intelligence agencies hiding their dark secrets through this? mr. kramer: it varies. what was the operations director of the cia, specifically -- from the freedom of information act. you can apply for a request, a very common thing for cia materials, but that part of it is not subject to it. and for understandable reasons, you do not want to disclose agent names inadvertently and potentially endanger people's lives or safety. so, there are bound to be gaps in that regard. i would say though, over all, at least with respect to cold war records, the cia has become more open than it was. the electronic reading room for example would've been

inconceivable during the cold war. and there are tens of thousands of documents out there and very good search engines you can use. so there is reclassification of some material that pertains mostly to nuclear weapons related materials. vacuum about as an act of congress -- that came about as an act of congress, something i think was unnecessary and also has been a burden on declassification. so there are major problems in the declassification process with regards to u.s. documents, but it is within that sphere. the exempt and of certain parts of -- exemption of certain parts of the intelligence community, i do not think will change, even with the cold war records. that is -- there is a great deal of reluctance to change in the

intelligence community and on the part of the congress. >> i had a question, and it have to do with the psychology and the american psychological association. last year, there was a big revelation that they were with the cia, in cahoots with the cia, and top heads eventually fell. but the apa came about heavily after world war ii, when you had veterans dealing with ptsd. the apa i guess had very strong relations with the military right after that. and a bunch of operations people have studied about and so forth, but how does the concept of terrorism and that find my between what is moral and epic -- ethic, in terms of what is humane. there is always a fine line between and you have the apa crossing over and pretty much advising them on how to extract

information. and what are the lines between and how to play with somebody's mind. it is interesting that that came out and several of them fell from their positions. it seemed like a lot of them were involved in that community for a very long time. a lot of it is based on psychology. is there any more about that? that is a very great area -- gray area that a lot of people do not have information about. i thought it was interesting when it came out last year. say, i think the connection between psychology, psychiatrists, the military and the cia is much longer. mr. fitsanakis: the recent stuff from there it -- from interrogation, if it is controversial, just look at --

speaking of missing documents, that is a much more aggressive in basis program -- aggressive, invasive program that is far less supervised than with the apa. and i think a lot of it has to do with fear. 9/11 caused a tremendous amount of fear on americans. academicst influenced in the academic community, who perhaps became a little less careful about the fine line you are talking about. joseph mentioned about ak ultra. he alluded to it. that was a very strange operation. mr. mazzetti: it was disclosed in the mid-1970's. mr. kramer: in which records were deliberately destroyed to

try to cover it up. copiesut that they were of that records, more than were made available. it is depressing to read that the cia was engaged in that kind of activity. then, these were some of psychological experiments, also ellis the experiments -- also ls d experiments and windows were disclosed -- and win those were disclosed they were controversial. as far as we know, they have not returned to that kind of activity. matthew cannon was a friend of mine. and he was a case officer in the 1980's, he worked for the counterterrorism agency, probably one of the most influence people in arabic. he worked in yemen. he was killed in 1999.

i understand the soviet union and eastern europe, they had ames,s, but bob bair, bob i think that you are a little incorrect in your statements about generalization of case officers. i want to point out that again matthew died in 1989 and a lot of people were very upset about that. for, as a, i work low-level person for general hayden when he was at fort meade. he would say that he was very active in full intelligence and interrogation, and surveillance, in full intelligence aspects to end al qaeda. obamae left in 2009,

changed that and they essentially went towards targeted assassinations. saying that essentially the way to get rid of al qaeda was not their general intelligence methods, but through getting rid of leadership. would you agree or not agree with that? >> i will start. hayden, you general said his background was in secret intelligence, he ran the nsa. mr. mazzetti: i think he came to the cia with a view of things, he got invited on a mission very deep into antiterrorism -- counterterrorism, and he was the one i went to the white house in july 2008 to advocate for the

accelerated target killing program that the bush administration picked up. and that obama ran with. i do think by the end, of his tenure at the cia, general hayden began something that obama picked up on. mr. kramer: to answer your question. -- mr. fitsanakis: to answer your question, you are right. it puts everybody in that light, because there is a tradition in operationsry risky with risky case officers. thead people in beirut in 1980's. we had people in difficult environments. my comments, and there were people that did resent james bond, like that, this stuff did

happen. if you go further back, there was even more of that. my comment is that during the cold war, the majority of people involved in this business were playing it safe, not really because they wanted to, because they had to. the culture was more toward that, as opposed to the risky operations that cost many officers their lives, very often. thank you for your comment. >> time for two more questions. >> you spoke about the cia officers changing and basically pushing the envelope on how they collected intelligence. you spoke about how most of them never lived austere lives, grew up as white privileged americans. i would like your opinion on boyd bergdahl, he spent several years as a prison learning about the culture and living it, and

he would seem to appear as one to become arecruits cia case officer. i was wondering if your opinion was if the cia would push the envelope that far to get officers that indent -- that in-depth and get that knowledge? mr. fitsanakis: great question. basically, what you are saying is, how do you correct the efficiency? i would say that there are steps taken in that direction. i will say that the cia in particular has done great strides to diversify its operations. not just with the aspect you mention, but with people who have some kind of foreign background, have lived abroad, speak fluently if foreign lynwood. it is -- foreign language. it is more difficult to recruit these people because it is difficult to assess their background. if you are born in holland and

your mother is dutch and your father is american andy move to the united states. it is great background, but to investigate they need to go to holland. or if you are born in pakistan, it makes it more difficult. so those people who apply for those jobs, they get tired of waiting and they move on to their jobs that are easier to get and they pay more and less dangerous, too. cia whenery often the they hire people they will make 2-3 conditional offers for one position, knowing that people will eventually drop out because they are tired of waiting. so it is a difficult job and it is more about the metals -- me dals. that is one example of how hard the situation is. thank you. ratherll use the phrase,

than saying reorient, we should probably say reemphasize. ,ow much does the cia still maybe there are some old men and women who still, how many still worry about the threat of russia and china? good question. i think that part of the problem ciahe reorientation of the after 2001, but to summit after the cold war ended in general about,as we all talked during the cold war the cia was overwhelmingly focused on the ussr, and understandably so. but when the cold war ended, particularly when the war on terror began, it moved so drastically away from the focus

on russia that i think it lost its ability to conduct operations and even to conduct basic analytical work about it. there are still very good people there that deal with russia and are experts in russia, but it has shrunk from what was. and now that russia is seen as much more of a threat over the last couple of years, particularly because of its activity, military activities in ukraine, that there will be some rectification of that. there will be more effort and more personnel devoted to trying to understand russia. [applause] >> ok, thank you. takeszzetti: quickly, it time. as mark said, if you focus on it now, it takes years to develop expertise. and if you are talking about

human intelligence penetrating russia, the inner circle of kuhn, figuring out intentions. it will take -- putin, figuring out intentions. it will take time now. >> thank you for coming. please return tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. and we will continue. [chatter] >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. ♪ [applause] the hard-fought primary season is over, with historic conventions to follow this summer. >> colorado. >> florida. >> ohio. >> watching c-span as the democrats consider the nomination of the first woman to head a party. watch live on c-span.

listen on the c-span radio app, or get video-on-demand at c-span.org. you have a front row seat to both conventions on c-span, beginning on monday, july 18. ♪ >> this year marks the 100th anniversary of the battle of the somme. of worlde bloodiest war i. next, joe sacco discusses his book, "the great war: july 1, 1916 - the first day of the battle of the somme." the book is a panorama of drawings of the battle of the somme. on the first day of the battle, tens of thousands of troops were killed. this was recorded in washington dc, in 2013. it is a little under one hour. joe: