having gone through to protect the people in this country. you have seen quite a few changes between 1972 and now about people getting scared in different ways. i have spoken to you guys. you understand that times are changing. i wanted to say thank you, keep up the good work. guest: thank you. host: any final thoughts? guest: that is about it. thank you very much. host: we will continue this series tomorrow, same time, 9:15 until 10:00 here on "washington journal." we wanted to let you know, before the end of today's "washington journal," this is on the associated press, "aaa credit rating, outlook on long-

term rating is stable for the u.s." thank you for being with us. we will see you tomorrow. ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> secretary of state hillary clinton and defense secretary leon panetta get together this morning to discuss how the two agencies are working together toward common goals for the secretary clinton took part in similar discussions with former defense secretary date. you can see today's look at international challenges facing the u.s. coming up and about half an hour at 10:30 eastern. at 1:00 p.m. eastern, we will be

live with a discussion examining the impact of u.s. political problems on foreign policy. the event is hosted by the brookings institution and at 5:30 eastern, the pakistan foreign secretary will talk about u.s.-pakistani relations. we'll have that live. >> for politics and public affairs, nonfiction books, and american history, it is the cspan network's. available on television, radio, and on line and on social media sites. search, watch, and share our programs anytime with cspan's video library and we are on the road with our cspan digital bus bringing our resources to local communities and showing the events from around the country. it is washington your way, the cspan networks, created by cable, provided as a public service. >> below the current state of the u.s. housing market and the impact of recent downgrade of

freddie mac and fannie mae investments. "washington journal" from this morning. journal" continues. host: paul bishop is the vice president of research at the national association of realtors here to talk about the housing industry. what is the state, mr. bishop, of the housing industry -- when you look at the existing home sales and the figures? what does it say to you? guest: probably the best way to characterize it right now is fragile. we have been looking for signs of stability in terms of sales and right now there are a lot of headwinds and tail winds. i guess the best way to characterize the market is fragile, and we are hoping things will continue to improve even if they are not improving the way most homeowners would like to see. host: what do the existing home sales numbers say? why do people look at that indicator? guest: they are the majority of home sales that take place compared to a new home sales which of the relatively smaller fraction of all transactions. it really reflects the activity

in the housing market. it reflects people buying and selling homes. it reflects the fact that people are moving from one place to the next to buy a home. it is a pretty strong indicator of all the level of activity going on in the housing market. host: what does that mean for this headline in of of what the washington post?" it says president obama has directed a small team of the advisers to create a proposal to give the government playing a major role in the mortgage market, extending a federal loan subsidy for most home buyers, according to people familiar with the metal. -- matter. earlier this year the administration released three options for restructuring the secondary mortgage market. they varied in terms of the role

of the private market. but this headline suggested the administration thinks there is ongoing need of some federal role in the secondary market. what it basically means is there is a way to guarantee there is a flow of mortgage is available in good and bad times, and the federal government has a role and is -- as a backstop, so as we go through the next financial turmoil, that homeowners still have the option of getting a mortgage and also guarding against the fact that the private market may not be there in times of turmoil. host: what type of buyer are we talking about, and the average mortgage? guest: what this would target is, if you will, the typical buyer. now, the limit at which a government sponsored enterprises can't guarantee mortgages is as high as 729,000 in high-cost areas. -- the limit at which the government sponsored enterprises

can guarantee mortgages. also the viability of the 30- year mortgage which most depend on. host: doesn't put back in place what the mortgage -- does it put back in place what the mortgage industry looked like before the crisis and preserve the status "? many of whom think what was the problem to begin with -- many 0.2. guest: i don't think anybody was the back to the way fannie and freddie were structured in the past. you have private property -- private profit and public laws. one option we support it is to have the government in a role to make the secondary market move forward, provide guarantees, packaged securities so that they can be made available to financial markets on wall street, and at the same time making sure the flow of capital and the mortgage market is steady through good times and bad. there certainly is a role for the private market would can't depend only upon the private market for the source of mortgages for the typical home

buyer. host: let me read more detail from "the washington post" on this. what do you make of those options? guest: there are certainly a number of options in terms of how the proposal can come forward. there will certainly be debate on what the right form of the secondary market will be once the proposals are made known. but i think the bigger point is that the old fannie and freddie are probably not a viable option going forward. as i said, the private profit

and the public loss as structured in the past. what really needs to happen going forward is the secondary market and the government's role and that needs to be a very straightforward roll -- actually really that it is not profit seeking, does not have shareholders, and the primary role making the secondary market role in an effective and efficient way. host: how does the downgrade of fannie and freddie from s&p play into this? host: to the extent -- guest: to the extent it would raise the cost of lending. but we have not seen as much increases in interest rates because of the downgrades so, so far it it has not been an issue in terms of what the typical home buyer would see. host: we have seen the health of banks -- bankamerica losing a lot of the stock value. what is in the health of banks in lending out for mortgages?

guest: one of the biggest concern we hear from home buyers is that underwriting standards have tightened considerably. it goes to the point that some banks are experiencing the goal piece in terms of their own financial health. but at the same time consumers and potential home buyers are concerned they may not get a mortgage, or if they are looking for emerge -- mortgage, the hurdles of underwriting standards are really much higher than they have been in the past. the fear is that in fact the pendulum has swung too far so there are qualified home buyers out there who are not able to get a mortgage or simply dissuaded from getting a mortgage because they think they are not qualified. host: a couple of headlines about loaning -- from "the wall street journal" -- that is a piece in "the wall

street journal." then this piece in "the financial times" -- we are dividing the phone lines up a little bit differently for this discussion. if you live in eastern central part of the country dial -- we want to hear what the real estate market is in your community. before we go to phone calls, can you, mr. bishop, break it down? they geographic impact, what does it look like? guest: if you of magic and math and the united states, the areas that as parents housing bubble and the greatest distress are really along the east and west coast. they had some of the highest priced homes to begin with, and they were more likely to have

some concentration of subprime lending back in the days when that was available. but in the middle part of the country basically didn't see the rise in the home prices like the coast did, so they avoided a lot of the fallout we saw in other parts of the country. the thing overlying the market now more so than trouble in the mortgage market is just the economy and the fact that a lot of communities are suffering from the fact that high unemployment and jobs into the asian is not positive in those communities. this is one of the things causing consumers to be less confident not just in a particular but their long-term prospects over all. host: we will hear from a spot in atlanta, georgia. caller: how are you doing, paul? i am a real-estate appraiser and licensed agent and the real issue is tied to employment numbers. when employment numbers start to drop you will see values stabilize. what the government could do is offer a streamlined refinance program with no appraisal, either -- it would enable people

to actually take advantage of the low rates they are offering right now. right now nobody to go anywhere because you all more than the house is worth, and that is 75% of the market. that is something obama could do right now, which is allowed the fha or fannie mae or freddie mac do a streamline refinance program and that would free up capital and in some cases three up $300 to $400 a month in people's pockets. and the management companies killing the qualified individuals. i used to do residential and commercial. i have been doing appraisal work for 17 years. for example, bank of america -- they ran through countrywide which have their own appraisal management company and everything they did through their own appraisal management company and that is why they are getting hammered. the same thing with chase and what wells fargo and it is driving people like me out of business. i will not do a residential appraisal anymore because i can't do it for $200 and a

charge the consumer $500. they make money whether the deal goes through or not. basically the scam. my comments are to streamline refinance on the commensal loans of free up capital, and these appraisal management companies have got to be taken out of the process in general. host: i want to ask you questions about streamlining the refinancing process. what is it like right now that it needs to be streamlined? caller: basically if you own it -- all $300,000 on a home that is worth 200,000 and you are locked in to 6% interest rate, you cannot take advantage of a 3.5% or a 4% rate. if you go out and make sure people are current on the loan and can pay the money, why would you not streamlined? they are paying $200 a month now at 6%, and you can just refinance -- just verify their income and their credit and verify that they have been paying their payments the past two years and put them at a 4%

rate, which is common market rate, you could free up on that loan at least $400 a month. what you think the people will do question of it will spend it. pay down debt. talking initial $500,000 a year in people's pockets. that money could drive the economy -- talking an initial $5,000 a year in people's pockets. host: don't byers depend on getting an appraisal to make a determination whether they are getting a fair price or whether or not a name -- need some money brought down -- if they have to fix something? guest: basically what they have done is they decided they wanted to manage the process. the fee would be a $400 or $500 depending on the market you would be in. so, what you have is the actual appraiser making $250 for an

appraisal. still, it is less than what it would make directly. most of the experienced appraisers are leaving the business. you have these new people who really do not know what they are doing and of the fraud is very rampant. as the average -- the average appraisal has gotten worse. this is totally documented. everybody that i know has experienced this. they are leaving the business or are going totally commercial. guest: those comments are very consistent with what we have heard time and time again by banc one of our recent surveys said 10% of realtors had at least one deal canceled because of the appraisal issues. another 22% had deals and delayed or renegotiated for a lower-priced. sellers are not happy, buyers

are not happy, and appraisers are not happy with the system now. it seems like there are some hurdles in the system that are preventing us from getting there, and a number of experienced appraisers are leaving the business. host: this tweet coming in -- we will go to chris and wisconsin. you are on the air with paul bishop. caller: years before i heard it was in our paper that the banks wanted fannie mae and freddie mac out of the picture because they were competing with them, and then listen to congressional hearings after the crash, and the man who was at fannie mae

and freddie mac at the time who was the replacement said they were not in any trouble before they started buying the junk crap from wall street. if we get rid of fannie and freddie, we will be getting rid of the 30-year mortgage. i do not have a mortgage because i am old. if my mortgage had come to meet a the 1970's, it you had short-term mortgage in the 1970's, i would've had to pay 12% interest during that recession. what can people do? they have no jobs. i know a couple of people whose houses were foreclosed on, and they tried to renegotiate with their bank, and their banks refused. one of the most treacherous was wells fargo bank and there was no way they could afford the payments after the husband had lost his job.

the wife was still working. if they would have negotiated a lower interest rate, they could have kept their home. guest: those comments reflect something we have heard time and time again, that the process of getting a loan modification or refinancing as an option is much more difficult now and is filled with hurdles that make the process more difficult. these stories in this context really wears on consumer confidence so it is having a negative impact on the housing market. also in terms of those potential home buyers who are thinking about buying a home in the near future. host: i want to show our viewers what -- number one, qualified borrowers have access to mortgages. how would that work?

guest: the underwriting standards are much tighter than what they were so qualified borrowers who are financially able to get a mortgage are often being left behind. we want to make sure that all the qualified buyers had that opportunity. host: you call in regulators in what way? guest: just to give you an example, the typical mortgage freddie mac purchased had a credit score owes over 750. a maximum of 850. that is a very high credit score for a typical mortgage. not too many years ago, a typical mortgages were financed in the lower 700. qualification standards are tighter, such that with those with very high credit scores are able to take advantage. host: mortgage loan limits

should be extended? guest: the current loan limits are set at a maximum of 724 -- 729,500. that is set to expire at the end of september. what we would like to see is those loan limits be extended because in those high-cost areas that have seen more troubling housing markets is if those limits were reset at the end of september that would leave out a lot of those potential buyers. host: fourth -- long-term reauthorization of the national flood insurance program. guest: it is an important program because lenders require when they have a mortgage with a home buyer when there is flood

insurance -- the problem with the national flood insurance program is it has lapsed five times since march 2009. what that means is it is one more layer of uncertainty for the home buyer. also, in those cases where the program temporarily expired, as many as 1300 homes per day are either delayed or that transaction is canceled because they cannot move forward without insurance. host: this headline from the detroit free press -- it tells the story of one home buyer in the area. what is going on with this? guest: if you look back at the

various efforts that have been put in place, none of them have been particularly successful at that point -- at this point. the administration has the knowledge that. it is clear that those programs has nve not been effective. host: the home affordable modification program in february 2009 was introduced, and president obama promised it would help millions of home buyers with their mortgages. more borrowers were rejected or dropped out of the program. we will go on to anne in rhode island. go ahead. caller: i am glad to speak about this today because i have been a licensed real-estate sales person and broker since 1981. you know, working as a

professional markets in the providence and now waterfront area in cranston, which is a professional market, and my concern at this time is that most people are not aware that fha mortgages are available for , you know, of course, qualified buyers, but with special provisions. if your credit score is very solid, you can work with a 3.5% down payment. that can be 100% gift money for first time buyers. we use this in the recession of the early 1980's quite substantially for first-time buyers. then with a little bit lower

credit, you can be available for a 10% down financing. an fha loan allows not only the gift money, but also closing costs credit. i think most people today are not aware that this is available. it is a fixed rate, otherwise conventional, loan. i think this information has not been disseminated, either by the government or even on a local basis. i have talked to my lenders very seriously about this because i think too many people are unaware that that one tool right now in this very difficult

mortgage financing situation -- a lot of people are just not aware of it. those loans can run up to just over $400,000. guest: yeah, the fha especially for first-time buyers has kept in the housing market moving forward at this point. many loans have been fha loans. it is one of the only ways that some buyers are able to get into the market. that touches on another point. this is in regard to the new dodd-frank legislation and one of the proposals for qualified mortgages. one of the proposals from the regulators is there would be a 20% down payment. at a time when the housing market is fragile, we see a 20% down payment as something that would take a big bite out of the

housing market. think about how long it would take a homeowner to save up 20% of the home to bite in their community would be 14 or 15 years. host: we will go next to lynn in north carolina. caller: my concern is getting the middle class and back to where they are buying and purchasing. i think they have been underwater for a while. i do watch this program quite frequently. i am concerned as an accountant that schedule a should not be used for these types of mortgages. i think reductions should go straight to the 1040 in the area of the child-care credit bank and all interest echoes into homes for first and second -- host: are you talking about the

mortgage interest reduction? caller: yes. i think that would help the middle class so much. host: for those that do not know, explain that a little bit more. caller: you can take a standard deduction or a schedule a deduction. you have to meet certain quotas of ratios to be able to get the medical, but then you have your property tax, your state tax on your schedule a. some people are out of work now who own homes and are struggling. how can they have state taxes in some situation? your schedule a -- i heard only 90% of people use their schedule a on their taxes. i beg people to look into this

situation so we can start taking it off our 1040, the interest that is on your home. guest: the importance for most middle-class homeowners, just a couple of numbers to put things in perspective. about 75 million homeowners right now, 59 million of them have a mortgage, and of them, about 39 million take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction. it is a very substantial benefit to the middle-class in terms of helping them stay in a home. to the extent that we have any tax reform or proposals, it is pretty clear that we need to preserve the mortgage interest deduction as it is now or is basically an increase on the struggling middle class. host: eliminating the mortgage

interest deduction -- let me put some numbers out there bank here is the "washington post." the home mortgage interest deduction will cost the federal government $100 billion during 2011. between 2008 and 2012, the write-offs for mortgage interest are expected to total under a half a trillion dollars. critics say the right of are inherently unfair and skewed to benefit upper income earners disproportionately and highly concentrated geographically along the west coast and northern east states and midlantic. guest: in terms of the point about it being skewed toward higher income, as a general statement, homeowners tend to have higher incomes than those who are not homeowners.

but, based on data from the irs, 65% of those that take the deduction to earn less than $100,000 a year. it is also not the case that it is only the mega rich taking advantage. the other aspect of that is the m.i.d. has been around since the federal income tax has been around, so it would be unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game when it is such a substantial benefit to the middle-class home buyers that are struggling. host: you are on the air with paul bishop from the national association of realtors. caller: i have a question for your guest. i was wondering if he had seen a speech on youtube called the mortgage bankers speech given at

the western regional mortgage bankers' conference in 2006. it was given by a man named peter schif. guest: i have not seen that. caller: i just want to make sure that everyone knows that this housing crisis it was not something that was unpredicted. this youtube video has received over 100,000 views. this man predicted exactly what was going to happen in the housing market. there is no question about what the solutions are, and highly recommend that everybody take an hour and view this amazing speech that was presented and given by a peter schiff. guest: looking back over the past decade or so, there has

been some question about whether or not we should have known the housing crisis was going to happen or whether or not anyone predicted it. the record is mixed. in terms of what a lot of people were saying about the housing market. there were a lot of respected people that suggested there might be problems and others suggesting there probably were not problems, so the record is mixed. we did see that there was a crisis in many communities as far as the housing market is concerned, so now we have to move beyond that and see what factors we can put in place to move us forward it especially in terms of jobs and consumer confidence. host: to >> next, secretary of state hillary clinton and defense secretary leon panetta will participate in a conversation

covering u.s. international challenges and how the state and defense departments work toward common goals. this is at the national defense university in washington, d.c. secretary clinton took part in similar discussions with former secretary of defense robert gates. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. and the morning to both of you. >> good morning. >> is a great pleasure and privilege to be here with the secretary of state and secretary of defense. i cannot think of a more propitious time for this conversation watching this country going for the budget gyrations, i think is the right word, with a world so uneasy with our war is ongoing.

perhaps we can talk about america being a wounded colossus. are these are war is winnable? where and how did these two big departments, the extension of foreign policy and diplomacy and military strength for together? i want to thank the national defense university for your gracious welcome today. welcome to both of you. >> thank you and thank her for doing this mammoth thank-you. >> let's start with the budget. that is your idea of a good time. [laughter] the world has watched with bated breath as to whether we were going to default, whether american troops would not get their pay checks which is an incredible thing. as you face the prospect of budget cuts and the reality of this, secretary panetta, what is

really at stake? >> i think this is about the national security of the country. our national security is our military power, our defense department but it is also our diplomatic power in the state department. both of us, i think, are concerned that as we go through these budget tests we will go through that the country recognizes how important it is that we maintain our national security and we be strong. we recognize that we are in a resource limitation and we have to deal with those challenges. i don't think you have to choose between our national security and fiscal responsibility. i want the country to know that we can get this done but we have to do it in a way that protects our national defense and our

national security. >> you will have three other $50 billion or so. >> that's right and if the trigger takes place, if there is an ability for the congress to decide where to go from here, it could be $500 billion more. then what? >> with the numbers we're dealing with now, the president and bob gates before me decided pretty much the parameters that we would have to be looking at and we are within the ballpark with what the congress just did. if they go beyond that, if they do the sequester, this kind of massive cut across the board which would literally double the number of cuts we are confronting, that would have devastating effects on national defense and the state department but more importantly, when we think about national security, i think we also have to think about the domestic discretionary budget as well.

education plays a role other elements of the discretionary budget in terms of the quality of life in this country play a role in terms of our national security. more importantly, based in my own boss experience, if you are serious with dealing with budget deficits, you cannot just keep going back to the discretionary part of the budget. >> what would be the most damaging part? to the department of defense and to the national security if you had to face hundreds of billions or more of the $350 billion? >> very simply, it would result in hollowing out the force. it would terribly weaken our ability to respond to the threats in the world but more importantly, it would break faith with the troops and their families. a volunteer army is absolutely essential to our national defense. any kind of cut like that would

literally undercut our ability to put together the kind of strong national defense we have today than secretary clinton, you have a harder case to make given public skepticism and where america is spending its money. >> i know it is a harder case because there is a lot of a misunderstanding and rejection of the work that is done by the state department and u.s. aid. we comprised 1% of the discretionary budget. what we have done over the last 2.5 years was long overdue. we basically said we are a national security team. we are all on the american team. by that i mean that we have civilians who are in the field with our military forces in areas of conflict. we have civilians in the field on their own in other dangerous

settings without our military boots on the ground. we are trying to enhance the coordination to achieve our national security objectives. one of the goals that secretary kates and now secretary panetta and i have is to make the case as to what national security in the 21st century actually is. it is the strongest military in the world that has to be given the tools to do the job we send it out to do. it is our diplomatic corps which is out there on the front line all the time trying to deal with very difficult situations but to the betterment of america bus national interests and securities and it is our development experts that with another face of american power who are trying to deliver a, as we speak, aged 0 to 12 million people on the part of africa who are facing famine and starvation because of high al

shabob, which makes our challenge more difficult. between the two of us, we have many years, but probably more than either of his care to admit, of experience in dealing with a lot of these issues. leon, as the chair of the budget committee, director of omb in the 90 bus was part of a process that got us to a balanced budget. this is not ancient history. we're not talking about sometime so far back we cannot remember. "tough decisions were made in yes,990's to cut spending, deal with entitlement issues, and yes, increase revenues. this is so that we have the kind of approach that got us on a trajectory had we stayed on it where we would not be facing a

lot of these issues. i will end restart it -- -- i will end where you started -- i know how difficult this was for our country domestically over the last month. it is always hard seeing the sausage being made. i was in hong kong a few weeks ago. vice said confidently that we would resolve this. we were not going to default. we would make some kind of political compromise. i have to tell you that it does cast a pall over our ability to project the kind of security interest are in america's interest. this is not about the defense department or the state department or u.s. aid. this is about the united states of america. we need to have a responsible conversation about how we're going to prepare ourselves for

the future. there are many issues that are not in the headlines but in the trend lines. we are asserting our presence in the pacific. we are it is of a power. that means all elements of our national security team have to be present. we cannot be abruptly pulling back or pulling out when we know we face some long-term challenges without how we will cope with what the rise of china means. we have so many issues that leon and i'd deal with every day that will not be getting screaming headline coverage by which we know will affect the economic well-being of our country and the security of american citizens of. >> there was a headline that bears directly on the budget and the changes in store. cloud was a report yesterday

that the pentagon is considering a very substantial revamp of the retirement program for those in the military. 401k and ending eligibility after 20 years and extending it to a normal retirement age, is that the death of change out there? >> that report came as the result of a of an advisory group that was asked by my predecessor, bob gates, to look at the retirement issue. they have put together he some thoughts and they're supposed to issue a more complete report in the latter part of this month no decisions have been made. >> is that the kind of thing you have to deal with? >> you have to consider these kind of things in terms of retirement reforms in the broad form. you have to do it in a way that does not break faith with our troops and their families. if you're going to do something like this, you have to think seriously about grandfathering in order to protect the benefits

that are there. >> so it would not affect the people in this room? >> exactly. [laughter] i know my audience. [laughter] you have to do that. you have to protect the benefits that are there but at the same time, you have to look at everything on the table. when i was on the budget committee and director of omb, you have to look at everything and put everything on the table. you cannot approach the deficit the size we are dealing with and expect you will only deal with it at the margins. you have to look at everything and we should. >> secretary clinton, back on the budget and then to the audience. you and your predecessor talked a lot -- and secretary panetta's predecessor talked a lot about the budget and how development is cheaper than war. "we had that conversation at george washington university.

what do you say to secretary panetta about your budget and your needs and your lobbying for more in terms of what he's got and what you need to accomplish? >> obviously,the dod budget far outweighs the combined budget of the state department/usa aideed 12:1. we understand? and we have to put everything on the table. we are going through a difficult budget process. 9 >> that includes where you help to grow? >> it includes everything. i am not saying that we should be exempt. think education and health care should bear all the costs. as we look at everything that is on the table, we have to try to do. reasonable analysis of what our real needs and interests are. it is easy in a political

climate, which in no something about as leon does, and -- if you go out to the american public and you ask what is the easiest thing to cut in the american budget, it is always foreign aid. how much do think that represents? .eople think it is 20% ver they say it should represent 10% rate we have a case to make. "it's a case we have been making. there is a new way of looking at which bob gates and i am leon and i are working on the military has always had something called overseas contingency operations in the budget that go to the kind of conflicts and investments that have to be made in places like afghanistan and iraq. for the first time, we have the congress accepting that we, too, need anoco because we have a lot

of costs that will begin to go down over time because they are not part of our base. we are doing things to try to get smarter about explaining what we do and what it will cost for us to do it. the bottom line is that we won national security to be looked at holistic play and we want people to understand that what we will have to be doing in the future is not sending our young men and women to arms with but trying to avoid that in the first place them what is your view of her budget? >> it is absolutely essential area." >> would need to be caught? >> we know we will have to exercise some fiscal restraint as we go through our budget. the bottom line is that what i hope the congress does not do, what i hope this committee does not do is to walk away from their responsibility to look at the entire federal budget.

the entire federal annual budget now is close to $4 trillion. in the discretionary side which is around $1 trillion, it is already has been cut $1 trillion by virtue of the deal made in congress prepare. 2/3 of that budget has not been touched. 2/3 of the federal budget has not been touched. if you want to do with the deficit, you have to do what mandatory spending programs. you have to deal with revenues. every budget summit i have been a part of going back to ronald reagan which was the first budget summit i participated in was a balanced package. it was true for ronald reagan. it was true for george bush. it was true for bill clinton and it has to be true today if you are serious about dealing with this theme cuts take our first audience question on the budget. >> ask you -- i ask you to identify yourself and we will

get a response. >> i am an army former officer. welcome to both of you. i have spent about five years out of last 10 in the middle east and afghanistan. when thing that concerns me as we see the budget tsunami approaching his problems with the teaching of foreign language and culture. that is incapacity that persists now. how can we deal with that as we lose though hundreds of millions of dollars? have we looked at ways in which you can see energize efforts to teach? have we quartet bridget looked at working with academia? -- have we looked at working with academia? >> i think we have to look at creative ways to be able to deal with this. i am a believer in foreign language training. this country has not devoted enough resources to foreign language training. allhave elected to threer's

we have not looked at the reality of the world we deal with. when i was the cia director, i did not think you could be a good intelligence analyst or operations guy without knowing languages. i believe that for the defense department and the state department. there is a recognition that you need to have language in order to be able to relate to the world we live in. my goal would be as we go for the budget and develop restraints that we are created and not undermine the kind of teaching and language training that i think is essential to our ability not only to protect our security but, frankly, to be a nation that is well educated. >> i certainly see amen to that. we need to look for better ways where we can coordinate our language and culture education programs. i have begun to do that in the

state department/ usaid because they have different platforms it and language. i did not think this was the most sensible way to train our development experts and our diplomats. i think we will have to be more creative. we have had more rondeau who needs the ndu team and a number 2 in the state department. we have to get that in our minds which is more likely to be the pattern of cooperation both before deployment whether it is as a military or civilian personnel and then after deployment. we cannot afford to do with any other way but secondly, it gives us a better results. you may have seen the article in "the washington post" over the

weekend of one of the civilian employees in afghanistan. because of his pashto experience, he was able to communicate informally in a way that really captured the attention and eventually the cooperation of many of the afghans. that is what we need across the board. any way we can work together, it will begin to put together this whole government national security team. >> let's start with afghanistan. it is terrible and cause sleep -- it was a terrible and costly wheat last week. americans say with this loss, is this worth it? are we prevailing? should we stay? what is your response to that? how do you view what is happening in afghanistan? >> it was tragic what happened

last week. we lost 4500 in afghanistan. we have lost many more and have seen more that have been wounded. many of our went -- men and women have put their lives on the line. we cannot forget the mission. the mission as the president said is that we have to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-qaeda and a juror that never again find a safe haven in afghanistan from which to launch attacks to this country. i think we have made good progress. i just talked with general allan this morning. we're making very good progress in terms of security particularly in the south and southwest. those are difficult areas. we now cap to improve the situation in the east but overall, the situation is doing much better. we weekend that taliban significantly.

-- we have weakened the taliban significantly. the police and army are right on target as far as the numbers we needed to develop. we're working in the right direction. we are going through a transition and beginning to transition in areas. there'll be other things we have to do. we have to ensure the afghan government is prepared to not only govern but to help secure that country in the long run. i really do believe that if we stick with this mission in that we can achieve the goals that we are after which is to create a stable afghanistan that could make sure we never again a establish a safe haven for the taliban or al-qaeda. >> what is the conversation the two of you had about the reliability and stability of the karzai government? >> we have a strategy for

transition that we are following. it is based on the decision that present obama made upon taking office that we have lost momentum to the taliban. when he came into office, the situation that we found was not very promising. he ordered the additional troops. i ordered and fulfill the more than tripling of the civilians on the ground from 320 to more than 1125. we put in a lot of effort to try to stabilize and reverse what we saw as a deteriorating situation. i met with both believed that we're now at a place where we can both begin the transition and do so in a responsible way. part of that transition is supporting afghan

reconciliation. we have said that for a very long time. i gave a comprehensive speech about our approach in february at the asia society in new york. ambassador marker grossman is leading our efforts to build a diplomatic framework for this kind of reconciliation effort. he is proceeding very vigorously. we know there has to be a political resolution along side the military gains and sacrifice that we have put in a along side the sacrifice and suffering of the afghan people. we want this to be at then-lead and afghan-owned. >> can happen with the regime your work in west? leadersi'd deal with all over the world who have

their own political dynamics that they are trying to cope with which are not always wants -- ones that we think are necessarily the most important. they get to call the shots. they are the ones coming out of their culture and they are trying to implement democracy often in places where that is a foreign concept. it can be a difficult and challenging partnership. there's no doubt about it. there is a commitment on the part ofkarzai government to this transition process. when we adopted this process that will go through 2014 at the nato-lisbon summit, it was in concert with the karzai government making the same commitment. we are also discussing what kind of ongoing partnership,

diplomatic development, military, that we will have with afghanistan. president karzai met an important statement just this past week. he is not seeking a third term. that is a very strong signal that there has to be enacted dynamic political process to choose his successor. i have dealt with president karzai now for nearly 10 years. i am looking at john warner. i dealt with him as a senator and i have dealt with him as secretary of state. you have to listen to him because all too often, we come in with our preconceptions about how things are supposed to be. he says over and over again that he does not like this or is not sure about this. the private contractor issue went on for a long time because we did not quite get what his concerns were. it is not all a one-sided

critique. i think there has to be a recognition that we have a dialogue and a partnership and that would both have to work at it. >> question of who predict question on afghanistan -- >> industrial college of the armed forces -- we mentioned a lot about iraq. our allies and pakistan are also critical what is going on in our efforts there. as a strategic partner, water thoughts about how we continue to enhance that relationship given the difficulties we've had recently? >> let me start by saying we consider our relationship with pakistan to be of paramount importance. we think it is very much in america's interest. we think it is in the long-term interests of pakistan.

for us to work through what our very difficult problems in that relationship and this is not anything new. how we have had a challenging relationship with pakistan going back decades. we have beenbeen deeply involveh pakistan as we were during the 1980's as we were with the mujahideen, the old charlie wilson's more issue. if you remember the end, the soviet union is defeated and charlie wilson and others are saying let's build schools, state in afghanistan, support pakistan, but the political decision was, we accomplished our mission, which was to break the back of the soviet union. we are out of there. so i think the pakistanis have a viewpoint that needs to be shown some respect. are you going to be with us or not? >> are they partner or

adversary? >> they are partners, but they do not always see the world as we see the world, and they do not always cooperate on what we think -- i will be blunt about this -- is in their interest. it is not like we are encouraging them to do things that are bad for pakistan but they do not often follow our logic as we make those cases to them. it takes dialogue. >> let us talk about pakistan for a minute. there was a story talking about how they handed over parts of the helicopter that went down in bin laden's compound, handed it over to the chinese. is that what a partner does? >> this is a very complicated relationship with pakistan, at the secretary said. [laughter] >> is that a yes?

it is not a no. >> i should not, because it does relate to classified intelligence. we are concerned -- the relationships that pakistan has, what makes this complicated, they have relationships which tribes -- with the crimes that are attacking our forces in afghanistan. it is clear there is a relationship there. there is a relationship with the lte. they go into india and threatens and conducts a tax there. in addition to that, they do not provide visas. yet, there is no choice but to maintain a relationship with pakistan. why? because we are fighting a war there.

because we are fighting al qaeda bear, and they do give us some cooperation in an effort. they do represent an important force in that region. they happen to be a nuclear power with nuclear weapons. we have to be concerned about what happened with those nuclear weapons. so for all those reasons, we have got to maintain a relationship with pakistan. as i said, it is complicated. there will be ups and downs. the secretary and i have spent countless hours going to pakistan and try to get their cooperation. >> let me ask you to take this into a conversation that you may have. this war that you talk about is largely conducted with drones. those grounds are deeply resented and complicate your efforts on the diplomatic front. how do you balance that?

is it your best asset your worst nightmare? >> no. that me take you back to conversation that are maybe not so current, but may be relevant. shortly after i became secretary of state, we were quite concerned to see the pakistani taliban basically taking advantage of what had been an effort by the government in pakistan to try to create some kind of peace the diriment -- agreement with the pakistani taliban and effect, say to them, you stay in one of the territories and do not bother us. we will not bother you. i was blunt both publicly and privately with my pakistani counterparts saying you cannot make a deal with terrorists. the very people that you think you can either predict or

control are, at the end of the day, neither predictable or controllable. i was pleased when the pakistanis moved into that territory and cleaned out a lot of what had become pakistani taliban stronghold. then they begin to take some troops off of their border with india to put more resources into the fight against the pakistani taliban. as leon says, we have some other targets that we work with them on. yet, it has been a relatively short period of time, 2 1/2 years, when they have begun to reorient themselves militarily against what is common in our view, an internal threat to them. we believe this will undermine the control that the pakistani government is able to exercise. so we have conversations like

this all the time, frank. i do think there are certain attitudes, beliefs that the pakistanis have which are rooted in their own experience, just like we have our own set of convictions. but i also think there is a debate going on inside pakistan about the best way to do with what is an increasing internal threat. >> let me add to that. the reason we are there is we are protecting our national security. we are defending our country. the fact was, al qaeda, which attacked this country on 9/11, the leadership of al qaeda was there. we are going after those who continue to plan to attack this country. they are terrorists, and the operation we have conducted

there are very effective in undermining al-qaeda and their ability to plan those kind of attacks. but let me make this point. those terrorists that are there are also a threat to pakistani national security as well. they go into karachi, islamabad and carry out operations that killed pakistanis. it is their interest to go after these terrorists as well. they cannot just pick and choose among them. >> what is left of the al qaeda network? >> the network has been seriously weakened, we know that, but they are still there, and we need to keep the pressure on. those suggesting that this is a good time to pull back are wrong. this is a good time to keep pressing to make her that we undermine their ability to produce any kind of attack on this country. >> will they ever be defeated,

or was donald rumsfeld right, and that this is just a long war? >> we can go after the key leadership of al qaeda that i think has largely lead this effort. we have certainly weakened them, we took out bin laden, which seriously weakened their leadership. there are additional leaders that we can go after. by weakening their leadership, we will undermine al qaeda's ability to ultimately put together that universal jihad and they have always tried to put together in order to conduct attacks on this country. the answer to your question, we have made serious inroads in weakening al qaeda. there is more to be done. there are some nodes in yemen and small and that we need to go after, but i think we are on the path to series the weakening al

qaeda as a threat to this country. >> let us talk about iraq for a few minutes, and then we would take a question from the audience about that. a terrible string of attacks that have claimed lives, hundreds injured, leading to concerns about the ability of the iraqi government to look after its own security. what is happening in that country now? what do you read from this wave of violence? >> what i see happening is there continues to be terrorist capacity inside iraq. by the time i left my office, nobody had claimed credit. we believe it could be al qaeda in iraq trying to assert itself -- the sunni extremists. at the same time, we know there are shiite extremists that have also been conducting attacks,

not quite to the extent of what we saw yesterday, but attacks that have killed americans and iraqis. i am of two minds about this, frank. i deplore the loss of life and the ability of these terrorists to continue to operate inside iraq. i also know, up until recently, the trajectory of violence had been going in the right direction, and we were feeling that it was headed in the right direction. the iraqis themselves have more capacity than they did have, but they have to exercise it. we spend a lot of time pushing our friends in the iraqi government to make decisions, like naming a defense minister and interior minister, so that

they can be better organized to deal with what are the on going threats. certainly, we are in discussions with them now. they do want to be sure that they have sufficient intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capacity. they want to make sure they can defend themselves internally and externally. that is a conversation that our ambassador and commander are having in baghdad. >> has it been worth it, and should we stay? >> the bottom line is, we are going to maintain a long-term relationship with iraq to make sure that they remain stable. >> militarily? >> that is a discussion that we will have with them, as to what kind of assistance we will continue to provide. the bottom line is, whether it is diplomatic, military, we have

a long-term relationship with iraq. we have invested a lot of lives there, a lot of blood in that country, and regardless of whether you agree or disagree on how we got into it, the bottom line is, through a lot of sacrifice, we have established a relatively stable democracy that is trying to work together to lead that country. it happens to be a country that is an important region of the world at a time when there is a lot of other turmoil going on. it is very important for us to make sure that we get this right. >> just to add something to what leon said. the president made a commitment that we would be withdrawn our forces from iraq, and would follow the timetable that was set in the bush administration. that is for our troops to be out

by the end of this year. that is a period, the end of that commitment. there is, however, a discussion that the iraqis are having internally and with us, about what we would do following that. i do not want there to be any confusion about that. our combat mission ends in iraq at the end of this year. support and training, if there is to be such a mission, is the subject of this discussion. >> don't these attacks demonstrate the security situation is still precarious? if the iraqi government were to ask for an ongoing military presence, it might be more than just mere training. >> we do not believe the iraqis have that on their list. >> you agree? >> they want to be able to

confront counterterrorism in their own country. we have given them help, assistance in that area. that is something, as a country, that they will have to confront. their main goal right now is to get the kind of training that will allow them to improve their defense capabilities. >> let us turn to the audience for a question on iraq. >> rand corp. i was at cpa in 2003. do you believe it is in the national security interest to have all of our troops leave the middle east by the end of the year? i understand what the secretary said in terms of we are leaving, but even to have troops there that are trading after words,

don't you think it sends a strong signal that we are not interested in basis? >> as the secretary has said and the president has made clear, we are leaving by the end of the year. the combat mission is over. discussions now are what kind of assistance we can provide with regards to training, and other assistance. we do this with other countries. we have done it with countries in that region. this would be what i call a normal relationship with iraq. >> that is why wanted to be very clear. the combat mission is over. our troops are leaving. they are in the process of literally packing up. that is what we agreed to. i agree with you, that is very much in america's interest to

keep that commitment. but what leon is seeing is also important. if a country comes to us within what we know -- we would view as a normal diplomatic relationship, and they say my troops need training. i will need continuing help on collecting intelligence, learning how to do it for counterterrorism purposes. i think it would be irresponsible for us not to listen to what they are requesting. indeed, the iraqis have not made a formal request, but we have reason to believe they are discussing it internally. we do that in kuwait, qatar, saudi arabia. i think it would be unusual for us to say we will not respond to a responsible request. we do not know what it is yet. >> but the bottom line is

interesting, something that the country will respond to. if there is a responsible request, as you put it, a military relationship of some form going forward, not unlike these other regions, will be part of the military diplomatic landscape. >> for the record, this will be a process of negotiation. the good thing is, the iraqis indicated a willingness to have that discussion. we will have that discussion, but as to what it actually turns out to be, that is up to them. >> syria. is it time for the u.s. 2 and quickly state that president assad has to go, should step down? >> i am not a big believer in

arbitrary deadlines when you are trying to manage it difficult decision. what we see happening in syria is galvanizing international opinion against the outside regime. that is a far better landscape for us to be operating in, than if it was just the united states, just a few european countries. look at what has happened in the last few weeks. the arab league has reversed positions. king of the law had made a strong statement. the council also making a strong statement. turkey is desperately trying to use its influence, which is cause considerable, within syria, to convince the regime to quit shelling its people, and return the shoulders, begin a process of transition. yesterday, the foreign minister made it clear that the administration is not following through on that.

i happen to think that where we are is where we need to be. it is a growing international chorus of condemnation. the u.s. has been instrumental in orchestrating that, and we are pushing for stronger sanctions that we hope will be joined by other countries that have bigger stakes economically than we do. >> i get that, but your critics say, a leading means being out in front. >> we have to condemn it, and we will continue to condemn it. i have to say, i am a big believer of results over rhetoric. what we are doing is putting together a very careful set of actions and statements that will make our views very clear, and to have other voices, particularly, from the region, as part of that to be essential

for there to be any impact within syria. it is no news that the united states is not friends with syria. it is, however, important that we send an ambassador there. i am proud of what ambassador ford has been able to do. we have done when we have needed to do to establish the credibility, and frankly, the universality of the kind of condemnation that may actually make a difference. >> secretary panetta, another cheery place, libya. we find these interesting developments where we hear of another defection from the senior ranks of the administration of gaddafi. we also hear that the rebel forces could be having internal pressures, disputes themselves. what is your read on the

military campaign in libya and whether gaddafi is any closer to being driven out? >> i spoke to commanders within the area in the past few days. the indication is, yes, there are concerns about the opposition, but we have had those concerned for a period now. the fact is, the opposition is moving in the west towards the coast line, moving in that direction. the opposition in the east is moving to brega, moving in the direction of tripoli as well. that is having an impact. the regime forces are weakened. this latest defection is another example of how weak they have gotten. i think, considering how difficult the situation has been, the fact is, the

combination of nato forces there, what the opposition is doing with sanctions, international pressure, the work of the arab league, all of that has been helpful to move this in the right direction. i sense that gaddafi's days are numbered. >> i would like to take one final question from the audience. >> defense intelligence agency. my question is, are the messages we are sending in libya, syria really sending a message that the u.s. is willing to -- not willing to underwrite stability in the world anymore? >> i do not think so. i see it differently. it is a message that the united states stands for our values, and security, but that we have a

clear view that others need to be taking the same steps to enforce a universal set of values and interests. i view this someone differently than i know perhaps some of the commentary has evidenced. if you look at libya, this is a case for strategic patients, and it is easy to get impatient. but when you realize this started in march, there was no opposition, there were no institutions. there was no address even for trying to figure out how to help people who were attempting to cast off this brutal dictatorship of 42-plus years. the distance they have traveled in this relatively short period of time, the fact that for the

first time we have a nato-arab alliance taking actions -- you have arab countries running strike actions, arab countries supporting with advisers the opposition. this is exactly the kind of world that i want to see, where it is not just the united states and everyone else is standing on the sidelines while we bear the sacrifice, while our men and women lay down the lives -- their lives for our values. by all measurements, we are the strongest leader in the world, and we are leading, but part of leading is making sure that you get others on the field. that is what we're doing. similarly with frank and syria, it will not be news if the u.s. says assad needs to go. okay fine, what is next?

if turkey says it, can abela says it, -- king abdullah says it, there is no way that they can stay. i think this is smart power. i talk a lot about smart power. it is not just broke force, unilateralism. it is saying, we want a bunch of people singing out of the same hymn book. we want the singing a song of human rights, democracy, everything that we have stood for and pioneered. that is what i am looking for us to be able to achieve. >> before we close, i want to ask you about another place, specifically, about the kind of coordinated assistance that are gigantic organizations -- >> well, he is gigantic.

[laughter] >> i am talking about somalia here. a gut wrenching, horrible famine. some might say that this can and should be a model for how these departments respond. how much is humanitarian, how much is military? could you talk about the integration of that? >> that is actually a good example of the close coordination with the two departments in dealing with that crisis. the reality is, it is a very difficult situation in somalia. you have al-shabab, which is a real threat to the area. literally thousands upon thousands that are starting right now. on the military side, we have been working closely through

africon, with the state department, with various ngo's to make sure that we can provide whatever assistance we can provide in that region. >> logistical assistance and the like. >> that is right. we are doing that on a daily basis and have made clear that we are willing to provide any other assistance we can. it is a very good team to do with the crisis in that part of the world. >> i would just add a few points. the u.s. was the principal founder of fusenet. it was an early morning network for signs of famine. when we started to see the signs, we started to prepare food and material. that gave us a chance to get our for equipment and food into these areas quickly. we are talking about 12 million

people in the horn of africa, an area the size -- twice the size of texas. ethiopia and kenya have been responding generously, given their own situation, and we have made progress. i remember when ethiopia had a famine. that affected about 12 million people. now it is down to about 5 million, which is still unacceptable, but at least we are trending in the right direction. the u.s. has spent $580 million to help these people who are starving. particularly, women and children who are most at risk. at the same time, the u.s. has supported the african union mission. we have been making progress in driving back al-shabab out of mogadishu. brave troops are working with the transitional government in mogadishu.

unfortunately, they are still posing a real threat an obstacle in south central somalia to our getting food in the area, but we are making progress. i say all of that because, if you look at the horn of africa, you can see the complexity of what we are dealing with, trying to sort out the diplomatic role, a defense role, development role. how do we work with the un, ngo's, other governments? stability in somalia is so much in interest, first and foremost, of the somali people, but in the region and beyond. but the u.s. will not be putting boots on the ground. we remember what started as a humanitarian mission that more often to a military mission. that was, unfortunately, -- resulted in the loss of american

lives. but we will be in power in africans and provide some resources to them to allow them to stand up themselves. this is the kind of multi- layered approach that we are taking in a lot of complex situations right now. >> you will see all of this event tonight and soon in our video library. we will leave now. the house is coming in briefly for another pro forma session the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's rooms, washington, d.c., august 16, 2011. i hereby appoint the honorable jim jordan to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john boehner, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the

guest chaplain, reverend susan curlin hackett, holy cross lutheran church, lake stevens, washington. the chaplain: let us pray. good and gracious god, you hear the cry that rises up from the people of all nation, calling for leaders whose decisions are tempered by compassion and mercy. we pray on this day for the men and women of the house of representatives that they might exercise their power and authority with kindness, and with regard to the poor within our own conry -- country and beyond our borders. holy god, you know the limits of human wisdom, our frailties, and selfishness.

we pray that the women and men of this place would seek justice and enjoy friendship that provides sound counsel and encouragement. grant to all who serve in this house rest when weary, competence in their task, and a deep appreciation of the trust that has been given to them by citizens of this nation. may your wisdom prevail and your steadfast love be known. amen. the speaker pro tempore: the thank you. pursuant to section 5 house resolution 375, the journal of the last day's proceedings is approved. the chair will lead the house in the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under

god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. pursuant to section 4 of house resolution 375 legislative business is not dispensed with on this day. the chair lays before the house a communication. the clerk: to the congress of the united states. section 202-d of the national emergencies act, provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless prior to the anniversary date of its declaration the president publishes in the federal register and transmits to the congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. in accordance with this provision, i have sent to the federal register for publication the enclosed

notice. stating that the emergency caused by the lapse of the administration act of 1979 as amended is to continue in effect for one year beyond august 17, 2011. signed, barack obama, the white house. the speaker pro tempore: referred to the committee on foreign affairs and ordered printed. pursuant to sections 3 and 4 of house resolution 375, the house stands adjourned until 1:00 p.m. on friday, august 19, >> the house will continue to meet every three days while members remain on their summer long recess. it is away from making the president appoint recess. we will take you back live to the national defense university conversation with secretary clinton and secretary panetta. >> we do not know the cost of everything and the value of

nothing. budget documents are value statements. who we are as a people, what we stand for, what investments we are making in the future, whether we will continue to be strong and be able to project american power is up for grabs. we are going to make the best case we can that american power is a power for the good, that it has helped to liberate hundreds of millions of people around the world, that it has helped to enhance opportunities for people and to give young girls and boys a chance to live up to their own god-given potential. we need to make sure we continue to do that. i think you will be hearing leonine -- leon and i make that case. we hope that it finds a ready audience in the congress as these negotiations resume. >> a ready audience in the congress and i hope a receptive

audience in the public. because the public need to be a part of the conversation, needs to understand what is at stake, needs to have the opportunity to ask tough questions. as the dialogue on false, this is of immense importance to the country. to the men and women serving the country here and run the world, in our service and diplomatic corps, and importantly to secretary clinton and secretary panetta, thank you for an outstanding and insightful conversation today. [applause]

we will have all of today's conversation with secretary clinton and secretary panetta later today. and our live coverage continues at 1:00 eastern with a discussion examining the impact of u.s. political problems on american foreign policy. it is an event hosted by the brookings institution. later this evening, the pakistani foreign secretary talks about u.s.-pakistani relations. we will have that line at 5:30.

for politics and public affairs, nonfiction books, and american history, it is the c-span that works. -- networks. search, watch, and share any of our programs on the c-span video library. it is washington, your way. the c-span that works. created by cable, provided as a public service. >> it has been almost 10 years since the attacks of 9/11. intelligence and national security experts look at why the u.s. has not had a major intercontinental attacks since then. participants include michael chertoff, and others.

and also one of washington's leading experts on intelligence reform. last but not least, the man who wrote the book on 9/11, as executive director of the 9/11 commission. so you could not ask for a better panel. i am going to start right here with you to ask the most obvious question. some of these questions will be obvious. the most obvious is, it is almost 10 years since 9/11. can it happen again, why? >> i will symbol of four things to help get the conversation going. number one, we came after their

home sanctuary, broke it up, and set them on the run. this degraded their operational capability. 9/11 was actually the third intercontinental operation where you have operatives organized and trained on one continent, deployed to stage on another, where they prepare for the case, and launched the attack. they did intercontinental operations in 1998 in east africa in two locations. in 2000, the operation against the destroyer coal. since 9/sullivan, they have not mounted another successful intercontinental operation. their capabilities have been degraded and they rely on local and regional networks of people in europe and asia who then may get some training and advice from the base in pakistan or yemen, but launched primarily

regional operation on a lesser scale. so number one, broke of the -- broke up and the organization in kabul. number two, this year attention given to this by law enforcement, intelligence and defense officials. if you simply did the numbers and how committed the amount of money spent on counterterrorism, not just in the u.s., but in western european governments, governments in asia, japan, australia, even pakistan, jordan, egypt, the number of people devoted to this task and mission, you would see off the chart changes of magnitude, a bewildering variety of ad hoc connections. third, the u.s. became -- one

reason why there have been no attacks within the u.s. -- the attack at fort hood was actually the most then they carried out inside the u.s.. that was carried out by a lone, deranged fanatic. the u.s. became a much more difficult area for the enemy to operate in. notice, the 9/11 at tak, the u.s. was actually a good place to stage. they chose to train and state in the united states for four years. so the united states was a highly hospitable place to stay and train at leisure. the united states actually became a difficult place to stage and train, a special with foreign operatives. one aspect of that problem, and

travel. it has become much harder for terrorists to travel. there is a lot of attention to terrorist finance. i do not think there is enough attention given to terrorist travel. if you think terrorists are like submarines, they need to pass undetected at various points. the trouble is when they have to go through international airports and provide documents to international officials. that is the rare time when the submarine has to surface. if you read a terrorist literature, and they devote enormous time to their travel problems. that is why they want people with western passports, people who look western peering from their point of view, if you think you have a one in three chance of being caught, and that means that you spend the rest of

your life in guantanamo, that chance is too high. you can significantly deter people from moving intercontinental lee if you make travel much riskier. so those three things are where i would start of answering your question. finally, the basic al qaeda narrative has fragmented and become more discredited within the muslim world. before 9/11, you had the extremist agenda that was local, primarily, against a local regimes they hated. so if you hit in the egyptian regime, the saudi regime, and so on. that was presented -- pre-empted for a time by a global jihad agenda. now, they are focusing more on their individual regions.

the global list the agenda has lost a lot of its credibility and force, in part because the largest majority of people that they have killed since 9/11 have been fellow muslims. >> it begs the question, it is it time to stop worrying so much? >> first of all, i want to clarify, i am not jeff's favorite person. harmon was his favorite. [applause] but, no, i do not think it is time to -- >> i was just provoking him. >> the act of 9/11, turning

airplanes into weapons of mass destruction, is much harder to do here now. i am sure michael can go through the range of things that we have done to make airplanes more secure. i'm doing with solemn, trained in the arabian peninsula, almost got through. christmas day, 2009. i believe that specific attack is less likely to happen. however, al qaeda, as i have said on other panels, has morphed into a different organization. no longer top down, led by folks first in afghanistan and now pakistan. it is now a loose affiliation of horizontal organizations with

loose affiliations with uap, al qaeda, etc., and we have been successful in the grading the top leadership. however, that does not mean that there are not potent leaders in other places. particularly, al-awlaki in yemen. yesterday, john brennan gave a significant speech at john hopkins announcing that the administration's focus is now shifting world wide to a counterterrorism strategy focused on this loose affiliation of al qaeda cells, and the intent is to block them from attacking us here in the homeland. that, i think, is the right focus. let's add one more thing. i said an airplane and that is less likely, but i am sure there are other ways -- and you will get to this -- otherwise where

we can see a significant attack in this country. one of them is a dirty bomb attack. when me get back to this, i can explain what i think there is a real risk to them, which would be far more lethal compared to a conventional attack. >> let me turn to michael chertoff for a couple of things. i will get to the tsa, believe me. >> bring it on, as they say. >> i want to go to something that we were talking about before, this bin laden moment. i wanted to try to answer the question, are we safer because bin laden is dead, are we less safe, or is it irrelevant to our posture? >> i would not say irrelevant. first of all, justice is done,

demonstrates to the world that we are capable and willing to take a very aggressive and successful kinetic action to kill people that are trying to kill us. that is an important lesson that needs to be driven home time and again. of those are all positive. here is what we do not know. we do not know what the next round of leadership will be. i know is out here is labeled as the heir to bin laden, but i believe that he is more of a transitional figure. you have some other guys. al-awlaki is a radical preacher. he is an american citizen. there was another that was in america for about a dozen years, a trained pilots. he has been on the wanted list forever. these are younger folks who are operational, and they understand the u.s. and the west.

and maybe most significantly, they are not bound up in repeating the success of 9/11. like anyone else, when you have bin laden, when there is one thing where he has succeeded, there is the desire to repeat that again. they have focused in the u.s. on very high end attacks, which for the reason that fill pointed out, are difficult to execute. but now you have a generation who is likely in the bird from that and they may decide to do smaller attacks. we are going to do mumbai five times. no one attack being catastrophic, but the net effect of being troublesome. so we will need to retool our strategies and not get complacent about what has worked and start to look at what is happening on the ground level. including in the u.s.

we have seen the times square bombing effort. these are plotzed launched within the united states from people who are entitled to be here. therefore, we need to make sure we can collect and analyze intelligence picked up at the grass roots. >> the strategy that jane was just praising has some problematic features. if is very much focused on al qaeda as an organization, and its affiliates. the speech does not really get into the idea that is actually too late for some but irrelevant to try to deal with al qaeda central because what you have is self-radicalization of lone cells. >> i do not know in terms of travel and in terms of international operatives coming in, i do not think it matters if

they are formally al qaeda or not. that is why, what you are seeing is an emphasis on trying to radicalize and train people in place. >> but the strategy does not grapple with ideology very much. it deals with knocking out an organization, but it does not seem to be grappling with the ideological underpinnings of this movement. >> i think there is some of that, although some of the challenge of tackling ideology, that is an area where we are not well situated to be out in front. people who are listening to the narrative of radical islam and islamist extremism are not interpreted -- it is not interested in what the united states interpretation of the koran is. that is where we have to come in to rescue the youth, to prevent

them from becoming suicide bombers. >> could you grapple with something that has developed, interestingly in the past few years. i was doing a piece in the past and essentially, we have two combatant forces. in the real world, special forces are operating in any number of countries, and on- line, we have another cadre fighters who are battling al qaeda in the internet space. i wonder if you could talk about that, -- you were known as the world wide expert on this -- cyber terrorism. talking about terrestrial hot attacks, we would be talking about the wrong thing, at this point. >> let me just say, i did not think the new strategy was much different from the old strategy. finding those who wish to do us harm and hold us -- hold them accountable. i was giving a speech in

detroit the morning after it was announced that osama bin laden was dead. i chose to start my speech by lighting a cigar, and i puffed on the cigar and i said to the group, how about them seals? i got a response, a defense group, and we enjoyed the moment. a reporter asked me, are you celebrating the death of a human being? i said no, i am celebrating the success of america. we set our mind to doing all the things -- i do not see this strategy as being particularly different. what i worry about is those who wish us harm at an extremist level, who want to change the world order, can attack the scenes of the u.s. in ways that can have strategic damages. what i have spoken about most is

the cyber blogger abilities with our financial system, electric power, and so on. but there are a lot of potential attacked vectos. one could be biological. -- attack vectors. recall after 9/11 we had those anthrax letters. imagine if you have 3 pounds of anthrax, and they were put in parcels in the u.s. mailing system and mailed to 10,000 addresses in the country. that would shut the country down. we have to be ever vigilant. the big change, in my view, of how the law changed, post-9/11, it forced us to address foreign

and domestic threats in a more comprehensive way. we divided those things after the nixon era of the watergate. my community could not focus on anything domestic. the fbi had much higher standards to do surveillance, tap a phone, whatever. we changed that a bit so that there was less lawn between foreign and domestic. i think that is important to consider as we go forward pwa something interesting, i think, about this particular moment, in a way, talking about biological attacks. a lot of people, for many reasons say, we have all these mechanisms in place to stop these kinds of attacks. we have not had an attack. we are very good at this now.

phil, talk about the paradox of counterterrorism success. a lot of people may think there is an amount of fear mongering by government officials about terrorism. talk about the consequences of not having a tax, and how that could lead to more attacks. >> a big change from before 9/11 has been -- it is difficult to rally against massive action at a time when the perceived threat is most vulnerable. until the threat has manifested itself apparent to all at a time at which point it is too late to prevent it. we had a paradox of prevention that the 9/11 commission spent a lot of time describing. what we have now is a paradox of adjustment. the parents of adjustment is that the threat is diminished,

but not gone away. you need to right size the threat, you need to normalize the threat. because the u.s. has a lot of purposes and worries in the world besides islamist extremists. i am reminded of the fact that when lehman brothers when down, hank paulson turned to his aides and said, this is an economic 9/11. there are other kinds of 9/11 shots out there. the next one may not come from an attack from islamic extremists against a particular system they are targeting. it could be another systemic flaw. but that does not mean that the president cannot go out and say that terrorism thing is done, we took care of that. the paradox is how do you normalize something for long- haul without dulling the edge of alertness and inducing complacency, in the sense that this has now become routine?

how do you keep people on alert for a threat that has been reduced? it is hard for a politician to say anything that implies the threat is going down for fear that the next day something will happen and you will look bad. >> this is a fascinating question for michael chertoff. i have written a bit about the tsa. the broad question is this. once the bureaucracy of government puts in place a security countermeasure, will it ever be able to remove that measure? there are a lot of stories from airports these days, obviously. there was a 95-year-old in a wheelchair who was being taken home to die. the tsa agents made her remove per adult diaper as part of the search because she was in a wheelchair.

is there a point where we can simply take down a notch some of these -- >> i think you will see some modifications over time. one will be through the development of technology. congress continues to forbid, as far as use of a lot of the data that is out there commercially to adjust the risk on turn people. if that changes or if there are work around, that may change. it is the aardvark a fact, the anecdotal case for someone messes up and it is used to argue that the system does not work. i will give you two important things to bear when you are looking at the tsa. one is the conception of people

about what a terrorist looks like is wrong. the people who have been homegrown and in this country, jihad jane, daniel maldonado, these people do not look like what you think it terrorist looks like. a 92-year-old person? what was the demand walked in the holocaust a museum and started shooting people? 92 years old. how many infants could be mentally impaired? the have bombs strapped to them and have been sent out to be blown up. what about the couple who got onto an airplane in august 2006 with their one-year-old baby and blow the plane up? to be nice to say that certain parts of the population are out of bounds, but we cannot say that. i often hear the argument,

sometimes made by jack, that they're never quite a terrorist. they are meant to deter. fort knox has never caught a bank robber. does that mean for knox's secure or that security deters bank robbers? you have to have a realistic understanding of what security delivers, not a perfect system, but a system of systems and it to end that give you a much better chance of diverting risk. >> i have never argued that point. there could be more intelligent measures put in place that would deter, but two quick points. the aardvark effect? what is that? >> the weird looking beast. >> i thought maybe it was an acronym. you're absolutely right. when i walk into the airport and i once saw an obese man in a

wheelchair, and i thought that would be a good deterrent. get some to dress up like a nun and put her in a wheelchair. you're right. i'm talking about an invasion of privacy that is humiliating. this person was put through the process of having to undress. there has to be a better way to do this. >> there could be for issues like that, and no pun intended on this issue, but unfortunately, one of the things we learned, and i think it was revealed by the detroit bomber is that we are uncomfortable looking more touching certain places and therefore, is that we put the components of a bomb and you increase the chances that you'll get by. what makes no sense is the only book that half of the body and think you have done the job. either you do not do it at all

or you need to be reasonably thorough. >> the new screening machines that are being used in many airports now are getting increasing acceptance. i think now everyone understands that he will not be radiated and the radiation bounces off of the. i'm not sure if there was not one in the airport in this case, but there are better technologies coming. the other two. some want to make about what michael said it is that we have laird security. we should not bet the farm on one thing. i know we do not. if you go to an airport, there are things that you do not see which protect both the airport and identify a passenger very quickly who could be a problem, including taking that passenger of of the airplane if they get the role of the other layers of

security. we have a layer of security, and the other thing that we have, which is a big deal, is unpredictability. these people have very evolved tradecraft. they will game against that and attack us around it. if they now believe, and they should, that it is not the case, then we will only do three things with these invisible layers. this will deter them, which is the goal. i do not talk about other forms of attack, so the dirty bomb needs to be there. they can be made by taking radio isotopes out of machines in every hospital and sitting in a window and blowing those isotopes light pole vault 40. it has the half-life of 30 years, just so you can be

totally scared. you can take this out of the radiological machines, sit in the window cop killer yourself and five other people, but you would make a to square, a radius to make it uninhabitable for that half-life of 30 years. this is not a random idea. we have not done enough yet, one, too hard in these machines. yes, this is deeply imbedded and so forth, but i saw a film which scared the heck out of me about how easy it is for kids to know intuitively to dismantle things. we have hardened cases, but it still to be blown up. we need to get the nuclear regulatory commission which is focusing on this to find a substitute to put in these machines that will not have

these consequences. i put it out there that we are very good against the last war and we need to start thinking about people in this country who need to sell fire from radicalizes and have readily available materials in colloquial english prepared by our friends in yemen and learn how to bomb in the kitchen of your mom. >> let's put a few more things before we open it up to questions. to continue the catalog of horribles, to ask you the one thing, if you had a name, that really scares you as a possible attack. we have been very technical and specific about some things, but we're talking about law enforcement and military designs, but i want to move this to the in the logical level and talk about what their policy, over the long run, can affect what we do.

let's start over here and talk about cyber security. again, without scaremongering, talk about what a small organization can do. >> let me put this in a context that everyone will understand -- money. the economy is $14 trillion last year. two banks in new york city, the financial capital of the world, cleared $7 or eight trillion dollars per day. two banks, $7 trillion in a bid. but backs up those transactions? economics 101 will tell you we went off of the gold standard quite some time ago. it is maybe 2% or 3%, so what is it? it is an accounting process.

the world cannot function without banking. we depend on it. a relatively small group that is sophisticated could contaminate the clearing process for reconciling the exchanges. what do i mean? tokyo telling a york than a ton dollar billion transaction. send your transaction. i have sent. new york responds and they're gone. less than one second. that's what it takes to run global banking. that process could be attacked by a small group for a relatively small sum of money. that is one example of the kinds of things that we depend on to run our lives. when the framers did the constitution, the vast majority were farmers. think about today how we depend

on the electric lights, money, a grocery stores, the delivery of goods and services. if you can interfere with that, it can have a devastating effect on the country. >> mr. chertoff? >> i want to go back to buy a. -- to bio. if you happen to know, we have a pretty good way of reducing the risk on bio. we have countermeasures for most of the obvious legal types of attacks. we have stockpiled a lot of this. we are in the process, although it is underfunded, in trying to

put out protection capabilities and. there is one big problem that we have that would be very, very difficult that we have an attack which is getting these countermeasures' into the hands of people. this is a great way to show how we cannot get out of our own hands which is pre-9/11 thinking. we need the countermeasures, put them in kits come and distribute them around the country, let people buy them, you can have it in your medicine cabinet, school has come up fire station, and people can get to it within a couple of hours. great. if's have a pilot and see people will use it if we give it to them. after one year, 97% had kept the medical kit. great, let's launch. cannot do it. fda has an obstruction.

it is a routine business model and you cannot routinely distribute things require a this -- a prescription. if there is an anthrax threat in new york, we cannot have them all seen fast enough. it would be a great deterrent. if you tell the terrorist that derecognize anthrax and distributed, then the u.s. will be able to react and mitigate the harm instantly. >> apart from the fda, what is the most dangerous threat to the united states? [laughter] >> not jeff goldburg. >> mumbai-style attacks that involve no technical expertise,

just people to start shooting. like what happened in kabul yesterday. it is the require sophisticated operatives, and as people willing to kill multiple people. all you have to do is get the people in the country, the arms are readily available, and then what you do is you rely on culture to produce the terror. what is remarkable is when you hear the parade of horribles, you wonder about how it happened it yet because the motive is there. this is an indicator of how great the operational capability is. they will probably start surmounting this to some degree because there are just too many people in the world and a handful of zealots will try to attack our system and our culture. we need to harden the systems

and hard and our culture. we need to develop a culture of resilience and systems. interestingly, the department of defense has not reoriented itself in thinking of systemic defense. the department of homeland security could become as important in some ways, and maybe even more important, then the department of defense for defending our critical systems. think about that. think about the value of an ntsb culture. the most useful thing the national transportation and safety board has done is political and cultural. every so often, hundreds of people die in accidents. there are catastrophes. the board will go out, look hard at what happens, analyze it very professionally, come up with conclusions, then we will tweak

the solution reduce the chance, and millions of people will get back on airplanes the next morning. that is the culture of resilience. we need resilience systems and a culture. >> one final round and then we will go to questions. we have not talked about the political plane. the common perception in washington is that pakistan poses the most dangerous threat to the united states because of what is going on inside pakistan and our ability how understand how the isi operates. what made you fix? how would you fix this problem, if you cut? if you're president, what to do to mitigate the damage that could be done? >> first of all, we have to maintain our relationship with the state of pakistan and its

endemic corruption is something that we have to face up to man deal with. and their core concern is india. they have fought and lost several wars. they are worried that india as surrounding them by going in to afghanistan. now with their economic problems, the corruption, and their focus on india, it is pretty bleak. that being said, it is in the interest of the u.s. to sustain that relationship in the best way that we can and have this collaborative arrangement. for the last 10 years, it has been very effective. the comments that were made about degrading al qaeda and their leadership were large part carried out as a result of that partnership. in the last day or so, the defense minister of pakistan has ordered us out, the trainers, the capability, and someone.

>> quickly. when you were dhs secretary, how many threats were you dealing with the that emanated from pakistan? >> the majority of the serious stuff we look at. i agree. the newspaper reports and if that is true, i think mike is right. we lost about a decade in pakistan where we cut off from them and there was a group of people. as tempting as it is to get angry and lash out,, we have to have a firmness but remain involved. >> i agree with john brennan who said the largest threat to our homeland is from yemen because

they have a failing government and very active al qaeda and relatedcells hiding in the hinterlands preparing to attack our homeland. that is where abdulla talal was trained and were these materials are developed. they do not have nukes, but they are more imminently dangerous. on pakistan, the group that just attacked the hotel in kabul was the haqqani network. they are protected by the pakistani government. they are off limits. their training area is located just at the afghan border and a very lethal operatives go in and kill our troops.

i agree that we have to work on this, but i agree, and i know we are doing this, but we need to take countermeasures to protect our country, even if they are inside the borders of pakistan, as we did with bin laden when we see that there are groups that intended to attack us. that is why i bought two things, the reset of the policy by obama last week because it gives us more brain cells than resources, and the refocus by john brennan yesterday that the goal has to be to protect our homeland from groups, wherever they may be, al qaeda and it's affiliates attending to attack us. >> i agree with plan a. keep working with pakistan as

best as we can, as hard as it is. it is a long story and complicated. you read about it all the time. the interesting space is not to think about how can we move into plan a, no one here really knows enough of the tactical details, but what is your hedging strategy? what is plan b? if the times square attack had succeeded and that a bomb had gone off last year and killed 500 people in times square, my estimate is is a 50/50 chance that the u.s. would launch a massive military operation and pakistan within the next week or two. the president would have been under acute pressure if that attack emanated from pakistan. he told the pakistan government this. you really do not want this to have to invade your country on that scale, so please try to

manage this so that is not necessary. what is your hedging strategy darks -- strategy? what if it becomes a failed state tax what if this is not manageable internally with respect to the security of their nuclear stockpile, with respect to becoming a sanctuary or mutated version of the extremist groups attacking the pakistan government and our interests in different ways including the provocation of the indian- pakistan war? the beat a strategy of containment and isolation with the capability to conduct long- range strike that selected targets in in hostile areas and important international cooperation with the people that pakistan relies on as their key brands, namely china and saudi arabia, who will take an

interest if pakistan goes that route. think about what the hedging strategy should be if plan a fails. >> questions? raise your hands. and there are some microphones right here. >> what is the greatest threat to about qaeda but this point in time? is it the governments of pakistan and afghanistan? what is the greatest threat to al qaeda? >> i think there're two threats. first is the arab spring and what is happening in the arab world. the trend is going in the right direction and it will be a long time before it plays out, but the unification that existed some time ago has been destroyed. the second thing is the primary leadership of the united states in going after and hold accountable the leadership in very determined ways.

it has taken a long time and cost a lot of money. we had to change laws and develop operating procedures that were different, but let me is the death of bin laden as an example. it was u.s. navy seals under title x as an element of the department of defense carrying out that operation commanded by the director of the cia. it took us a long time to work through that culturally with the free market. the determination of the united states and the persistence to see justice 10 years after the fact has been the greatest threat in addition to this trend that we see. >> to add to that, al qaeda has killed more muslims than non- muslims. the muslim world is aware of it. the arab spring had nothing to do with al qaeda.

the change occurring is the bottom up from people who actually want freedom. they do not want to go back to the seventh century. that is one point. the second point is that the u.s. finally, and other countries, too, are developing the right counter narrative. we are not in a war against muslims. george bush did not make that clear. us a bombing in five muslim countries can be distorted to make that point. we are now clarifying the fact that we are in a war against al qaeda and their affiliates, not this amorphous thing and we are clarifying what we stand for. what we stand for is something that is very appealing to the younger people rising up and taking huge risks in tunisia, egypt, syria, bahrain, and a

number of other countries. >> it is very clear that we have become more sophisticated over the last decade. how has out qaeda and these networks become more sophisticated? are we fighting last year's war? >> we have mentioned how lucky -- a degree receive the sophistication is in few places. one is the deliver it target to recruit westerners or people who have western experience and appeared have a clean records as these operatives. second is to use the internet and providing what appears to be, at least to some subset of the population, and appealing propaganda about what is going on with the visuals, the modern pillars of technology, and exploiting that. as the generation changes, and i

think the elimination of a bin laden may accelerate this process. we will see a much more sophisticated and nimble organization. >> clearly, domestic and global airport screenings and homeland security measures have been very successful in preventing another major attack. could the panel speak to what seems to be an open border with mexico and this constant flow of people coming in? the majority of the immigration is clearly here for work and an improved quality of life, but there has to be some percentage, a fraction of a percent of the people that are coming through that have more nefarious intense with this country. what are we doing to secure terrorist activities from the southern border? >> the media two facts, which are interesting. i will get in trouble with my friends in canada, but almost

all the threats have come from canada, not mexico, because there are some groups that had emigrated to canada that have created recruiting tools for terrorists. we have had progress in securing the border, but it is a huge challenge. the southern border is huge. we build 600 miles of fence, doubled the patrol, and the current administration has continued that. unless we're prepared to invest huge amounts of money, it is going to take time to continue to make it harder to get across. i used to argue that one helpful thing would be comprehensive immigration reform with a temporary worker program so that a lot of the pressure on the border would be funneled into a system that was regulated which would actually give us a better ability to manage the remaining physical border.

no country in the world has ever really sealed its country other than a totalitarian country, and they would not do it 100% job. >> just to add something, do not think stealing the borders is the right answer. letting students come here to study and permitting foreign tourists to come here, obviously screening them if they are affiliated makes sense, but if we close of our country, we lose the ability to create these foreign ambassadors for the values that we stand for. i think that is a mistake. the second point is that are near term threats are not from foreigners coming in. i think it is from homegrown terrorists who are here with clean records and are either radicalized on the internet or through their own troubles go somewhere else and seek out training. they are not invited to do this but generate their own interest

and go and learn something. >> to follow up on something you said, i think there is one flaw in something you said. there is the general notion that we should give it vises to students and they should come here and learn to like us, etc. and in line while it is true in most cases, i would point it out to fill that he spent years in north carolina as a student. we could name one dozen people who came here as students who were somehow immune to the charms of the u.s. >> you just wanted to say his name. >> we could name dozens of people who have come here and have not fallen in love with the american idea. could you talk about that as a national-security problem? >> the most important ideologue for islamists extremisms lived

in colorado in the late 1940's in 1952 was so shocked by what he saw when he returned to egypt that he developed this whole ideologies in which the west was the source of all evil. it is true that someone can go through an should be wiped from the face of the earth. fortunately, that is not a sprint would have at the university of virginia. i will tell you right now. >> it is a very high-minded place. a >> i am sorry people have expenses like this in north carolina and colorado. >> i had a friend who was the budweiser distributor there and he was very busy. let's not oversell this. >> what happens here, and this is why it is interesting to think about this problem sociologically, the whole notion

that this is a problem of west obverses is long -- which is completely wrong. it is about islam, people trying to figure out how to cope with islam, and a fairly radical fringe that is mostly focused on local said do not like, and the minority of that developed the global agenda that it touches all of these evils to the u.s. that agenda became very powerful in the 1990's as a function of history. a useful way of thinking about this, historical comparison, the phenomenon that reminds him this was the large-scale growth of european centered anarchism which reached its peak between 1880 and 1920. this was a source of enormous fear and terror in the western world until six heads of state around the world, including a u.s. president, william

mckinley, self radicalizing people, inspired by ideologue's living in london, mainly from germany, france, spain, italy and russia, and immigrants from those countries coming to the u.s. throwing bombs in chicago and believing in the etiology. what were these people? these were people who were profoundly deeply alienated by the turmoil of modernization, urbanization and the repressive societies at home could then externalized this and somehow try to bring down the system and create utopia that could never be. there was no chance the al qaeda idealized would ever be created in life. no chance. it is a hopelessly utopian agenda. what does this alienation represent? rage and dreams. and what will eventually happen among the small group of people, many are patriots

disassociated from their home communities, who form and identity around this idea o throughout the world who feels alienated because he cannot fit into the society and it's another entity that welcomes them, what happens to these people is they get channeled into other forms of alienation. in the case of anarchism -- somewhat ominously -- at morse and the more dangerous movements better able to tap into that rage and dream and a much more operational a powerful ways, which movements like fascism began drawing in the 19th -- in the teens and 20s. >> you, sir. for someone who has been sitting here and becoming increasingly terrified,

listening to this discussion on policy terms, fascinating and very energizing, but my question is, on an individual basis -- without sounding silly -- is sometimes feels like the only way that me or him or hurt, the only way we protect ourselves is another -- never leave the bathroom. if you never leave your bathroom, you'll be fine. but you have to go outside. on an individual basis, how can one address the kind of concerns that we are feeling? >> by the way, the batter is one of the most dangerous places in the world. [laughter] >> then there is the kitchen. move yourself to karachi where it is safe. >> i knew this was going to be helpful. >> that is a serious question. it speaks to a certain failure among the political class. i will include me, even though i

am a recovering politician. i think politically it is easy to play the fear card. you get a lot of traction for that. if we have not done a good job on this panel saying there are threats, but put this into perspective in a brilliant way, phil, and a last compliment i will give you, we have to do a better job of helping the public to understand what it can do. he used the word "resilience. >> you and your family are resilient. i do not know where your bathroom is. i am sure your bathroom is big. you can also, as michael said, even if they will not give you ciprro, you can have your own form. we talked about this five or six years ago of a phone tree or e- mail tree, how you get in touch

with your family. you can get that to happen. then you can think about this stuff and put it in perspective. the israelis have attacks all the time. the police state comes down in a matter of hours and go back to whatever they were doing. that is the people of israel, understanding there are terror threats against their country, more than our country. and the best way to defeat them is not to be terrorized. it is a state of mind. that is what terrorism is. if we have a plan to respond, better yet, prevent -- two street vendors figured out the times square plot. they call law enforcement. law enforcement was spectacular. they found those as quickly and then wrapping the plot. i am just saying, you are

stronger. unfortunately, we, the government, or i, the former government member, have not given you enough encouragement to be confident. >> jane, you make it -- a good point. it begs the question -- by the way, we will see this as we move to september. the last 10 years represent a massive overreaction on our part? we spent trillions and trillions of dollars in response to the 9/11 attack. >> made the fundamental problem that we talk about these issues, but i think the message of this group, almost uniformly, things have gone considerably better but things still need to be concerned about. we have to adapt, but have done quite a bit to make ourselves more secure. i often find the media frames this as either panic and hysteria or the whole thing is

overblown and there's no problem. both are false choices. we are in the middle. there will be threats. we are good about managing and dealing with them, but we are not perfect. there will be some failure. the public is by and large more resilient, give them credit for. for example, if there were an mumbai style attack with guns, frankly, this country has experienced than attacks before including colorado. we recovered from that. at the same time, i think we sometimes under serve ourselves by not doing what she said, which is spending an hour to put together a plan and lange and reasonable supplies in case we had a disruption of food or water, which can get from a natural disaster and a terrorist attack. the message here is kind of innocence, things are real problems out there and we have to be concerned about medium to

long-term serious problems, but we to make progress. with a lot of in a capacity as individual citizens to manage our risks, not eliminate, but plan what we do in emergencies and build certain capabilities in case we have to rely on ourselves for a short period of time. >> i would add to that, america is the safest place in the world. i think the message you hear consistently from this group is resilience is the key. there are a series of choices. there are many professionals that worry about these things. some level of resources and to be dedicated to that kind of thinking and potential reactions, and it is something we need to keep sight of. as an intelligence professional over the years, my job was to protect -- predict the threat. we tend to think about that

alive. policymakers will decide, what level of resources are we going to commit to whatever the threat might be? we are very good at thinking about the last war of the last problem with the last issue. i think what we're arguing is just be mindful. to the things we have to do. calibrated in a way that we can be safer and go on with our lives in the safest place in the world and a level of resilience we will and/or. >> one last question. make it quick, if you do not mind. >> thank you for mentioning intelligence. i think that is our first line of defense against this threat. each had critical roles in this country's intelligence structure following 9/11, enormous flurry of activity with new laws and new departments, agencies. 10 years later, some say it is time to revisit that and put that in order. things are a bit confused.

stovepipes still exist. could you each give us a brief line on where you think intelligence needs to go from here? >> this is a great question. we are 10 years away. there was a 9/11 commission report, an excellent report. there were many recommendations. many had to do with what you're talking about. to piggyback on that, talk about intelligence reform and where we have come. everyone can participate in that. from all of your perspectives, talk about the recommendations in that report that have not been fulfilled and what you would do right now if you could to enact some of those recommendations. >> i am going to make a couple of broad points because i think former dni mcconnell and jha --

jane can dive in more deeply. the key points i want to make our first of all, philosophical principle to keep in mind. yesterday, the president's counterterrorism advisor said the president's highest duty is to safeguard for the safety of the american people. wrong. that is not his highest duty. when he gave the oath, he said his ties to the, which is the one in the constitution, to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. that is the highest duty. [applause] the reason security is important is because the greatest danger to the constitution is massive panic in security. that is when the constitution and its protections will be in greatest jeopardy. it is an important principle to keep in mind on intel reform. the greatest victory so far in

the least discussed it is the one director mcconnell alluded to not too long ago, which is the domestic foreign divide was bridged. it is so far been bridged without any significant jeopardy to our constitutional liberties. it has been well managed. that needs to be sustained in a conscious effort. the last observation and will make about intel reform is this -- there are a number of controversies on how this is managed. mainly what happens, people have preconceptions about how the intelligence community should be managed that they have for the last 10, 15, 20 years. they have been restating preconceptions. this should objectively analyze how well the committee has managed a such criteria as, canny move large amounts of money across functions to adapt to changing priorities? can you manage back often -- office systems are effectively

and so forth? mcconnell did better in maximizing the possibilities inside the current law. he is well qualified, as the chain is committed talk about if we need to go further. the go further issue is this -- all the reform issue so far have been relatively easy. when we had a huge national security reforms between 1947 in the early 1950's, a rapid succession of laws, why so much turmoil? because the defense budget was being radically cut. it was under terrific pressure. for the last 10 years, the budgets have been going steadily up. it is much easier to manage a pie that is constantly getting larger. the management tasks that are harder starting now. the real pressure on intel reform is beginning now because the height is about to start shrinking and the hard choices are moving in the foreground. >> first of all, i think the

takedown of osama bin laden is a credit to two dozen navy seals, but most of the credit should go to the intelligence operatives and our new intelligence system, which was massively revised in 2004, which put together the clues to find the couriers, to find a safe house, to predict with reasonable certainty that osama bin laden would be there. and then to enable those navy seals to understand in specific terms what they might find if they went to abbottabad and surrounded and landed in the compound. that was a massive intelligence success and it would not have happened, in my view, without a legislative reforms that came out of 9/11 and recommended by the commission. the biggest failure in terms of

those reforms is congress. the biggest reform that has not been implemented is a reorganization of congress to revise the committee structure to be able to do the right kind of oversight to protect our constitution. it is important that belatedly phil service that issue. that is the biggest failure. i do not see any chance that will be corrected soon. let me finally say yesterday, i was in washington meeting with a director of natural intelligence and we were talking about congress. listen up. i was not aware of this. the house appropriations committee has just purported the bill which requires the dni to give specific authorization from congress every time he tries to move money between point a and point the. that totally undermines the joint command structure we set

up in the 2004 law. the job in the next week for seoul to make sure that congress never an act that provision. we of congress not reorganized and try to micromanage a system which is just beginning to succeed. >> we have to let jane go to work. >> i think she covered intelligence. i want to talk about recommendation 9/11 commission, partly by not fully implemented. one of the key recommendations was false documents are enabling people to travel. as part of a reform, we upgraded our passports, but we did two things that were passed into law. one was a requirement of a passport or passport equivalent across a land border and the sect was the requirement to strengthen the identification of our security for driver's licenses, which we stick to it -- you would not believe what

we had moving these recommendations forward. we cut the first piece of this done. -- we got the first piece of this done, about 90% done under my tenure and janet napolitano put it over the finish line. i was constantly in arguments with congress, felt there would be a little negative economic impact of the canadian border. if someone comes in from canada and they set off a bomb in new york city, that might not be proper for your constituents, but a problem for new york city. we still have not completed the problem with driver's licenses. this is an example of everybody agrees we need, but not in my backyard, not in my term of office rules is a tremendous institutional obstacle. if, god forbid, we do not get it done and it is the cause of another attack, we will delete regret it. >> quickly.

>> we're in an evolutionary process and a point of decision. let me use the department of defense as my example. we establish the department of defense and how we would operate in 1947. we argued for years and years about it. congress got frustrated. the bill was passed and was streamlined. it forced to joinness, a joint duty, to a lot of things to unify army, navy, air force marine corps. we have a debate on this. since she has her fingerprints on the law and will defend it, she says all it takes is leadership. my response to that is, if that is all it took, then as a leader in congress, he would have written a better law. >> i said 50% law and 50%

leadership. >> and we got a 50% law. >> i agree. >> the community is 16 agencies, 15 work for a cabinet officer. the first probe of the officer is to protect the prerogatives of that officer. the focus of any debate about of getting executive order or changing a lot or whatever. the one organization that is not a subordinate to a cabinet officer is the cia. the law says the director will report through the dni. you can drive a train through the word through. we're at a point where it is working better. are we safe? not totally. are we safer? absolutely. secretary chertoff had to do was 78 oversight committees. i do not think that was the right way to set that up. we're at a point in time where we are evolving. this question will come up again. do we want to have a more

streamlined intelligence community that is controlled by an authority who was accountable for its performance? jane mentioned already on the hill, a draft to say the dni seeing a problem cannot move money from one program to another because it wants to be micromanaged by congress. we have made congress. we will have this debate until we have another crisis, then we will adjust. >> thank you for coming. thank you to the panel. thank you. [applause] >> "washington journal" taking a poll on facebook asking, are you willing to pay more in taxes? so far, 353 voting yes.

277 voting no. let us note on our facebook page. watch more video of the candidates. sunni political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c- span's website for campaign 2012. easy to use. navigate the political landscape with twitter feed and facebook updates from the campaigns, bios and links to cease and media partners in the early primary and caucus states. all at c-span.org/campaign2012. coming up at 1:00 eastern, we will be live with the discussion examining the impact of u.s. political problems on america's foreign policy. the event hosted by brookings. until then, and look at the at the ipods role in terrorism after 9/11. > t different aspects of the

fbi. different units, different agencies within it. yesterday, wealked about tactical operations units. tomorrow we will look at how the agency prioritizes its resources. thursday, cyber attacks and fraud. friday, we will wrap up the series with crime labs and forensics. today is the role of the fbi in counter-terrorism. david williams joins us. how does the fbi define terrorism? guest: it has been defined differently,y different people. people that want to take violent acts against groups of people with anti-u.s. interests, generally with the support of political causes. host: what is the role for the fbi in combating terrorism? guest: basically, it comes down to a series of legislative actions passed by the congress

that give the united states government, the department of justice, the attorney general, certain jurisdictions that are passed on to the fbi. the fbi is already the lead in the counter-domestic terrorism organization. host: homegrown terrorism? guest: or international. those with genesis overseas, as well as homegrown threats. it is defined as terrorism, it falls within the realm of the fbi. host: there are agents dog counter-terrorism overseas. is that not the role of the military ban apartment? -- military department? guest: there are a number of different tools available to the government. the central intelligence agency and the fbi worked in counterintelligence.

that is the primary role of the central intelligence agency. the fbi's primary role is to look at th intelligence to protect american interests. host: this phrase, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, why are those categories separate? what is the difference? guest: talking about the national security program that puts them together, counter- intelligence is generally looking at people trying to steal the secrets of the united states, whether they be classified or something that gives someone else an unfair trade advantage. that is thelassic james bond stuff. counter-rrorism has to do with stopping organizations before they can do damage to the united states. prevention is the number one word. if there is an act of terrorism, the fbi will lead the charge.

taking whatever action is needed. host: you were doing counter- terrorism for 30 years. was it called a counter- terrorism in the 1970's? guest: it was. i did start doing this back in the 1970's, when people were using bows and arrows, continuing right on through. host: what was that like, though, 1970's, 80's, 90's, leading up to 9/11, what was the priority, the focus of the fbi? guest: when i was coming in, the big concern was domestic issues. the weather underground. offshoot organizations providing bombs on government reservations, injuring people. it was always an attempt to attack the government at that time. that always seemed to be the

bastion of the status quo. after we started to get into the later half of the 1990's, we started to see more international activists. in the most prominent case that most people would remember, the 1993 bombing of the world trade center. host: after 9/11, did the definition of terrorists change? are showing the most wanted terrorists right now, for our viewers. that definition change? host: not so much. the fbi is very interested in the thrust. it is the interest in the organization or individual. if it is a criminal act and it falls within the fbi's jurisdiction, we do that as well. i would be happy to touch upon how many and where they are, and

what they are doing thinking back to the early part of my career, we had will be calle legal attaches. that whole organization, that movement, was built up quite a bit. we had 42 legal that served fbi interests that were primarily based on controlling the leaks. they do not do investigation overseas. the interface with the host country and law enforcement organizations to share information and get it done. that has grown tremendously, going from 42 to having representatives in 75 cities are around the world.

primarily, those are areas that are threats to the united states that are counter- terrorism. host: what about the for situation in pakistan and afghanistan, does the fbi have a presence there? guest: yes, we do. the fbi has been imbedded and working with the department of defense closely. host: is there a role for counter-terrorism? guest: much of it is the collection of parts of the improvised explosives. those are all sent back to the united states forechnical analysis in quantico, virginia. there is a large organization in quantico called a terrorist explosive devices analytical center. they look at each of these that, in. in.