as c-span.org including remarks from vice president biden. looking at some news, russia's foreign minister accused the u.s. of encouraging ukraine to challenge moscow. in televised remarks, he said the u.s. will push for a ukrainian leadership toward an "confrontational path," and the ongoing conflict would be better if left to russia and europe. those comments come one day after ukraine announced it has signed a free-trade pact with the european union, the very same deal that former ukrainian president viktor? viktorejected -- yanukovich rejected. and representative mike rogers spoke at the christian science monitor breakfast. this is one hour.

>> representative mike rogers, chairman of the house select committee on intelligence. this is his first visit with our group and we appreciate him starting his morning this way. he grew up in michigan, went to college there after serving in the army he became an f.b.i. special agent, specializing in public corruption cases in chicago he returned to michigan in 1994 and was elected to the state senate the next year, rising to become majority floor leader. in 2000, he won a hotly contested race for the house seat being vacated by debbie stabenow he became chair of the house intelligence committee in 2010. this march, he announced he will be leaving congress at the end of the current term to host a radio program for cumulus media. so much for biography, now on to the ever popular process portion of the program. as always, we're on the record here, no live blogging or tweeting, no filing of any kind while the breakfast is under way

to give us a chance to listen to our guests, there's no embargo when the session ends. if you want to ask a question, send me a subtle, nonthreatening signal, a subtle eyebrow raise or finger wiggle, be careful there. and i'll call on one and all. we will start off by offering our guests to make some opening comments and then we will move two comments around the table. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i appreciate the invite. thank you for lowering your standards and letting a house member in. i thought i'd quickly go around the world, briefly, just to let you know the challenges that i think face the u.s. intelligence services but our defense and what that -- those of us who are often crying about our security matrix, the threat matrix, being so varied and so deep and so wide that makes us, all of us, not sleep at night. look at me, i'm only 25 years old, look what this job has done to me. one of the things, if you look

at strategic and immediate threats. on the strategic side, you have a north korea pursuing nuclear weapons, very clearly it's doing that. it's working to perfect its missile systems in a way that's very, very concerning. you recall, it was about a year ago when they stood up a missile and were bragging about the thought that they had the capability of hitting the western united states. pretty serious, i think, threat to the united states that got washed over by all the other threats we face. china has been very, very aggressive at militarization in space. and they are very aggressive about investment in technology, certainly to try to mute the strength of our u.s. naval forces around the world. and then, one those things happen, you watch what their aggressiveness in the south china sea. and that is clearly something that is concerning and i think

it's a growing tension. i still believe that between vietnam and japan, there will be some maritime skirmish within the next 24 months, and i don't think it will be huge, but i do think there will be a maritime skirmish between either vietnam or japan with china in their pursuit to push out their boundaries in the south china sea. that's significant, about 40% of the world's trade goes through the south china sea. we have been, as the u.s. navy, we have been there since we've been a country. so when china starts telling us that the u.s. navy can't be in the south china sea, that's a huge, significant strategic threat to the united states and certainly our economic prowess in the world. clearly russia is, you can turn on the tv and see where they're at. they've spent the last 10 years in that rise of oil money, investing in their military, modernizing their military, professionalizing their special forces. that has, as you can see, has proved to be a valuable investment for them when it comes to ukraine.

so the fact that they were able to glide through and annex crimea and their activities in eastern ukraine are certainly troubling and it shows you that the payoff of their investment and they know it and they understand it. they continue to invest in their navy modernization, they've dropped some submarines in the water that are very, very sophisticated, very high tech. we haven't seen that since the early 1990's. so they're making an investment in their ability to project power around the world. when you look at where we are on al qaeda, this is the one that worries me most. this the one, the most immediate threat is this proliferation of al qaeda affiliates with capabilities and intentions to strike outside of their areas of operation. so clearly when you look at what's happening in iraq, and it

started in syria, by the way, we need to be clear about that, we watched this development of al qaeda in eastern syria for three years. we watched them pool up in ways that we had never seen before. we watched them recruit in ways we had never seen before. and when i say recruit in ways we have never seen before, i mean, successfully. they were gaining strength. really by the day, by the month. and the longer it went where there was no disruption, the more aggressive they became. and about -- and about a year, year and a half ago, you saw the tension start between the islamic state in iraq in the levant and the al nusra front , and many argued it was because they thought they were so brutal they couldn't be part of al qaeda. it's hard to argue that an organization that has participated in beheadings and stoning of women and flying airplanes into buildings would find anyone more brutal than themselves. it was really about control. zawahiri was trying to assert

some control over the isil leadership and having a difficult time doing it. they believe if you're going to be in this fight, you want to hold toward a caliphate. at that point, the disagreement was zawahiri telling them, we want you, isil, to focus in iraq, not sir ark and don't do and don't do external operations. the concerning part of that conversation was that the reason wanted to do, term operations is because they had such a large number of foreigners with western passports working with them. they saw that as a huge opportunity to conduct, very easily and quickly, operations in europe, in the united states. zawahiri thought it was too soon and he wanted them to focus in iraq. so now what you see is, they apparently decided to focus in iraq. that split where they desert

decertified al qaeda, i would look at it as two organized crime families in chicago. at the end of the day, their goals and intentions are exactly the same. if they can work together, they're going to work together. if they're going to fight about it, they're going to fight about it. at the end of the day, they are brutal criminal organizations, in this case terrorist organizations, functioning the same way. so al nusra now is reaching out. i think there's been some public reports about them reaching out to aqap in yemen. yemen is looking for the -- the yemenese leadership, not the government, but is looking for ways to have success. they believe that's important. they were the first ones to hold territory in the south of yemen that they believed was the initiation of their ability to create and hold a caliphate. so you have all of these new relationships happening in a way that's really concerning.

al shabab, about two years ago we were table establish the relationship between them and aqap. they were trying to get their branch down in northern africa , and you see the activity across northern africa. i won't go into all those activities. but you get the picture that the threat getting worse by the day, not better by the day. the fact that they hold $1 billion in cash and gold bullion, 9/11 took about $200,000 and about a year of planning, that's a lot of dangerous cash in the kitty. these folks aren't worried about building schools and roads and taking care of public services. they're worried about killing and trying to dominate individuals across iraq, syria -- they'd love to take lebanon, now they're on the border of jordan. they're on the border of israel. this is as bad a situation as

you can possibly imagine. with that, i think we should all have a drink. >> have a stiff orange juice, in the "monitor" paradecision. -- tradition. let me ask you one or two, and then move to my colleagues. you're a member of the house republican leadership team. what lesson or message do you take from the tramp of thad cochran and the loss of tim --do does it say anything to you about where things are going or is it just poll techs and local and there's no message? >> listen, despite what you might see portrayed, the republican party is a big tent party. parties are coalitions. if you travel overseas and you see parliaments, those are made up of these wildly different coalitions of cobbling certain groups and philosophies together to form a government or body.

here we have two parties but those two parties are tremendous amounts of coalitions. that's the way our parties have operated for a long time. what you're seeing now is a healthy debate and struggle about with which of those coalitions gets more seats in the republican party than other coalitions. i thought it was, at the end of the day, i think americans are ready for governance. this last five years has been so devastating to the middle class, devastating to energy price, s, devastating to our national security, it's been devastating to their own health care. they're looking for some leadership, and sometimes that means people forming a coalition, that means you're going to get something done. i think the elections showed across the country that people are ready for that. they're ready for a change in the way the country is being governed. i think that's what you saw happen last night and over the last few months. >> let me ask you one other, that's about intelligence. your counterpart in the senate, senator feinstein, has been critical about the level of

detail and quality of briefing that has been provided by the administration. yesterday on a conference call, an intelligence official said that the american intelligence agencies that provide, "strategic warning that isis was growing." is it your sense that you've been well served in terms of the isis intelligence you've been getting? >> you know, about two years ago, i was -- i and others were ramping up this notion we had to something in eastern syria. i did an op-ed on it, i talked on it. i came to those conclusions based on the intelligence afforded to the committee as a consumer of intelligence. we get it all. sometimes it's raw. it doesn't draw the conclusion that, you know, isis on this day is going to do this we get all -- we get all the raw intelligence. we can come to those conclusions ourselves. it was very clear to me that

years ago, isil or isis was pooling up in a dangerous way, building training camping, recruiting, drawing in jihadists from around the world. we saw all of that happening. then we -- we talked for a long time, nothing happened to disrupt that. then we saw them cross the border and go into fallujah. nothing happened. that was six or eight months ago. so some notion that we wouldn't have seen this coming means that you weren't paying attention to the intelligence that was afforded us. now, you know, could they have come up and said, hey, this is -- we're going to give you the fallujah update? maybe, maybe not. nothing happened when they crossed the border, nothing happened when they took fallujah, nothing happened when they took mosul, nothing happened when they took tikrit. then they said, oh, we've got a problem. that's an unfair assessment of what we knew and how we watched it develop.

they clearly stated their intentions. we knew what their intentions were. they clearly were arming and training. we saw that. so you know, maybe they didn't say they were crossing on this day but you would be hard pressed if you paid attention to the intelligence, that something bad is going to happen here. >> so your complaint isn't about the intelligence, it's how the administration responded. >> not responding is a decision. not making a decision is a decision. i have been pretty vocal in the last two years about trying to bring this problem to the attention of the public on why we need to do something in syria. because of the potential. now did we know they were going into iraq? i'm not sure. but they clearly want lebanon. they want jordan. they want israel. they want all of syria. and they do want iraq. and so, it was very clear they were going to try to expand their interests from eastern syria. which were a safe haven for two

and a half years. >> a couple of senators said yesterday after the classified briefing that the threat to the homeland is more urgent than it seemed last week and one senator said if you -- anyone who walked out of the briefing could not quibble with the fact that there's an urgent, dire threat to the homeland here. do you agree and how urgent is that threat? >> i do. now, remember how we come to this conclusion. we knew, remember, the fight a year and a half ago was do we do external operations against the united states in europe or not? zawahiri said focus on iraq. the very fact that they're having the discussion sends a chill down my spine. that means somebody is in an operational status trying to put together something that would look like something that could get the green light. including access to people who had western passports. that's the most dangerous thing. you fly to germany and you're a german citizen, you're flying to

the united states you don't need a visa. that's a problem. that's a big pob for us. or fill in any country in the e.u. or vice versa. so what we've seen now -- they're a little drunk on their own success. they understand, as a matter of fact, an interesting -- i read an interesting report recently bagdhadi was talking about the fact that zawahiri, if he were going to come to syria or iraq, would have to pay deference to him, to baghdadi

because he's the only one establishing a land-based caliphate. that's a scary mentality. they both want the same thing. they both want to attack the united states. they're going to go about it in different ways. with access to these western passports and their stated intention to commit acts of terror beyond their areas of operation, that is why i wasn't in the senate briefing, but i imagine that's what the senators walked out thinking, this is pretty bad. and they have complete safe haven. there's nothing to disrupt their activity. they can plan it, finance it, train for it. the training camps have been ain abetted for years. they've let it go. that's how you get to this place where you wonder, you know, we're in some trouble. and of course the most recent court ruling that says you can't have a no fly list, perfect. that's a great recipe for disaster. there was a federal ruling, i think, yesterday, on that. >> in oregon. >> oregon? >> it was the federal district court for the district of oregon. we might as well get you to say a little more about it. the procedures for putting someone on the no fly list were inadequate, violated the right amendment right to due process, called on the homeland security department to provide more information to people about

why they're on the list, and also ways for getting off the list. so you would disagree with that? >> so we have, according to public reports, an organization trying to build bombs that circumvent security. they're working with another organization, according to reports, that -- in syria that expressed an interest in showing their chops by having an international terrorist attack, and now you just had a judge rule that you can't put someone on a no-fly list -- you tell me why i can't sleep at night. that makes no sense whatsoever. and by the way, the international community has no fly lists -- that just means you'll be able to fly domestically. congratulations. that's the worst of all worlds. that makes no sense to me at all. if they want to refine them, maybe they can do it and they ought to look at refining them fairly quickly. i hope the case is appealed and the decision is stayed to make sure we have an opportunity, if you have an idea that somebody has an ill intention on an aircraft that you can keep them off an aircraft. >> we're going next to maureen.

then to ken and then to john. maureen? >> the republican party and the debate going on about that, when you're doing your radio show is one of the things you're trying to accomplish in that show, trying to push the party in a particular direction and get one group to be more successful than the other, and if so, which one? >> my goal is a productive conservative, which means you actually accomplish something. when coalitions are tearing themselves apart, it's hard to form a governing majority.

i look back at some of the fights that have happened within the republican conference and how much money we let get spent because we couldn't agree on the exact amount. so rather than get half of what you wanted -- the way the conference was fighting amongst itself, we got zero. so we couldn't agree that there were 42 job training programs needed to be 26. people said 26 is too many. so you know, how many -- so you know how many we ended up with? 42. that's not productive governing conservatism in my mind. i think there's a way to focus our efforts to get the government to look a lot more the way i think most conservatives want it to look, which is lean and mean, you know. not mean in that term. but lean in the sense that it's functioning, not wasting money, that it takes care of people who need it but doesn't do things the federal government shouldn't be doing. and, you know, if we're together as a force, i think there's a lot of that we could have accomplished in the last two years that we just left on the table. and that, to me, is unfortunate. we fight about some of the things in my mind that are small potatoes if we could come to an agreement on bigger, broader limited government issues that

we couldn't quite get consensus on. for this notion that we're going to have a perfect score. you have to have a perfect score. i don't know anywhere in life that that works, including the u.s. government. >> ken. >> i think you just alluded to this, but can you say more about the intelligence that suggests that aqap bomb making expertise from yemen has my grated to -- migrated to syria and they're working on bombs that can get past security. that seems to be driving the threat that jeff was asking about. how much of a threat is that, have they perfected a bomb that's better than the underwear bomb? and are aqap people in syria right now? >> if you look at this -- i can't confirm any specific reports, but here's what we can look at that's in the public domain, and i think it's fair to draw a conclusion from what's in the public domain. you have aqap, who has desthinde

detonated ink cartridge bombs, remember those, that they were going to detonate, i forget how many now, eight or 11 or whatever it was, nine, in different airplanes over the oceans. that was their goal. these cartridges were designed to circumvent security. some good intelligence work, we were able to shut that particular operation down. but we know they never stopped trying to design explosives that circumvent security system of the underwear bomber was a great example. that was another iteration on december 25 that they thought they could get through security and set off on an airplane. and candidly, but for a quarter of an inch of a syringe pull, that plane would have blown up and we would have killed thousands of people in their homes. it flies over a very populated area of detroit into its landing zone. you'd have had all that equipment falling through houses while people were sleeping in their beds. this was not just the airplane

itself, which would have been horrific, but the ground damage would have been significant. that was their second iteration. we know they haven't given up on the notion that they're going to develop something that circumvents security and gets on an airplane. that's just the fact of the matter. so now you see those things and you see this relationship that started very early in 2013 and some of it, by the way, was to mediate. in the beginning, before this decision came down to desert fi an al qaeda group they tried to mend their fences. , all the al qaeda leadership was say, you need to fix this. they didn't want to lose aggressive fighters who shoot people in the head. it's a value to them. it scares us but it's a badge of honor for them. they wanted to keep those folks in the fold. couldn't work out. now you have al nusra who has also expressed an interest in

creating -- that's the other group in eastern syria -- that is an al qaeda affiliate that express and interest in external operations and you know there's a relationship between aqap and al nusra, including what we think intermediaries and the like. that in and of itself i think would allow any logical person to come to the conclusion that we have a problem. we have a definite problem and we know that al qaeda in the past shares technical expertise on i.e.d.'s, how to circumvent security, surveillance, and all the things that come with those conversations, how not to be a target of the u.s. or our allies. you can draw your own conclusion with that bit of information. i'll tell you, this is worrying me a lot. >> why does the public have to draw their own conclusion? i understand -- just if it's a fact, state it's a fact. >> we want -- there are the ways information is obtained, we want to protect ways to find out

information that would stop an event, it would be important to protect those ways so if there is a threat information -- and by the way if you remember the leak that happened with the bomber that, remember the aqap bombing thing, there was a pretty significant leak about the bomb? we saw real changes in realtime about that leak that really did disrupt u.s. and our allies' ability to collect information on aqap. it cost us a long time, as a matter of fact, we may never get back. and so those things are -- it was just the procedure about who, what, when, and how got leaked. and it changed the way they operated. to the point where we lost our ability to see some things. that's dangerous. i just think we ought to try to protect it so we have the ability to get somebody that, if they're going to get on a plane or not, hopefully you catch them earlier.

if we have to catch them getting on a plane, there has been a failure in the system. >> just a second, go ahead but normally people ask to be called on. >> sure. so there's no clear line yet between isis and aqap? we can speculate they may work together? >> we know that they have -- they all relationships. they had intermediary exchanges. we know that. remember, once they were decertified, they became -- they decide they were going their own direction. again, their goals and intentions are exactly the same. there isn't a fraction of a difference. the tactics of how they get there may have been different. zawahiri's position with them was if i can't control you, i'm not going to have you as part of our group, and he did that primarily because being part of

a.q. gets you financing, gets you status, gets you recruits. what i think he underestimated is, that these folks were winning on the battlefield and when you're winning on the battlefield that in and of itself attracts other jihaddists, they want to be part of the winning team if you will. so they're the same, exactly the same, they still have this kind of funny respect for each other, i look at it as, if they disagree, they'll fight, but they want the same thing. they are al qaeda minded. no different. aey want to establish caliphate. they will use all of their tools to do it. >> a couple of mechanical things. we're about halfway through, we're going next to john. anyone who came in late and wants a question, wave your hand at me. >> thank you, dave. mr. chairman, picking up on your analogy of the organized crime family, it's been said that some

of america's friends in the middle east that we depend on, saudi arabia and qatar, are akin to merchants in the city paying protection money to don corleone when it comes to isil or other terrorist groups. do you have any solid evidence that qatar, saudi arabia, are indeed also paying isil or other terrorist groups and what can be done about it? when they talk about a winning coalition, your colleagues on capitol hill talk about those countries, not iran. >> well, i think we, and again, this is a product of indecision in a very difficult neighborhood. so when you see a problem in the middle east you have to deal

, with it. end of story. deciding we're not going to deal with it as some notion of a foreign policy framework, this is what you get. so let me talk you through that. early on in syria, our arab league partners came to us and said, we want the united states -- this is not about boots on the ground, it's not about big military but we need your help. we need your help with some command and control. we want you helping guide any support, think of this, any support that the arab league is producing, so that we do this in a way that's vetted properly and doesn't come back to bite us. wow. very reasonable offer. and the united states' response was, nope, that's too hard, we're not going to do it. so what happened was, other parts of that arab league started to fracture. which is why you needed the united states showing the leadership role at the table. that would have been a very, very important role for taos us to play.

and so we know, for a fact, that some of the supplies that some of those arab league countries were supplying were getting in the hands of extremists. and it also caused, because of the way that was ramped up, even our arab league partners started fighting amongst themselveses or disagreeing amongst themselves because they realized one country was more aggressive than the other country and some of those materials were ending up in a place that was bad for even their own national security interests. and so that's how this problem got started. and the united states never quite weighed in. i have had significant appeals from our arab league partners to me personally i feel know other -- to me personally. i know other members have as well about their frustration with the lack of the united states -- with the welcome of united states engagement on these issues. because of it, we watched a lot

of that money and weapons did migrate its way to the most violent extremists operating in eastern syria. that empowered the very problem we have today. as frustrating as that is, i think there's an opportunity to reengage and candidly, having the secretary of state just show up for a chat isn't going to do it. they need to see something. and as one arab league leader told me about two years ago, if you're not going to sit at the table with us, you don't get to lecture us what the table looks like. that's what you saw happening. and unfolding. did not make big news at the time, but that was really the gas that got thrown on the i.s.i.s. toow start to develop. and certainly some of those arab countries do not mind if it went to extremists. they could do with this later.

>> what was the timetable on this? >> we have known about this for three years. so the discussion happening first course of the 12 months. over income our opportunity to impact this got worse and worse. the option you had at three years or 24 months, one of the options you had 18 months ago -- i mean it's completely deteriorated before our eyes, and we watched all of this happened, which was i think highly unfortunate. again is why engagement is important in the world. the fight we have now about isolationism versus engagement -- this is why engagement is so important. >> paul. >> chairman, can you look down to our southern border, and what you see there as a threat to the -- for the past couple of weeks, it has been about 70,000 unaccompanied kids coming across the border.

you the i can tell first trip i took as chairman of the committee to mexico -- why? forad a real opportunity failed northern provinces, failed states, that is a huge national security risk to the united states, so these organized criminal elements down there were controlling huge swaths of land. he fighting you saw was because there was lack of police authority and the bad guys were winning and they were policing themselves. they had these rival gang fights, the beheadings and delaying the bodies on the roadways. that was telling you we were well on the way to something pretty awful happening. and even north of 70,000 kids -- they are not getting in vw vans and driving up on a nice country drive to get up through central america, mexico, into these united states. these are controlled by criminal elements. there isoutrages me is

no compassion in allowing these criminal elements -- because i will guarantee you there is slave trade issues going on, exposure to drugs. you have already heard the reports about they are trying to figure out which ones can be recruited into gangs before they get up here. this is pretty awful stuff. failedrry about those northern states. we have done some good things with mexico. i think in some ways it is getting a little better. aboutave been very leery having direct u.s. support, but we know some of our other success stories around central and south america -- columbia being a great example -- is now in a position where they might be able to help mexico, trainer counterterrorism forces, trained their counter narcotics forces, but i think would be impactful. but it has been a long, slow road. in the meantime, you know, you get on the south side of the mexican border -- it is as

lawless as it gets, and if that truly devolves into failed states, we will have a significant security threat from our southern border. >> don? >> thank you for being here, mr. chairman. it is interesting we are having a public conversation now but is and whattually its relationship to the other affiliates happens to be. what i am interested in is what you've seen in terms of this recent surge by the group and its alliances with sunni groups in iraq that are not necessarily aligned with this idea of --ating an islamic caliphate might actually be partners in the administration's push for including government in baghdad. what is the nexus between these two groups? how reliant on moderate sunnis has isil become in iraq?

one. and two, what specifically should we be doing -- i mean, you are at a unique position as a senior member of the oversight we heare at the ic, and people say the administration did this wrong -- what actually could we be doing differently than sending 300 troops, and what should we do right now? >> we have a good history and why are the sunni tribes joining isil in their march toward baghdad. if you look at what happened in the establishment of the taliban in afghanistan -- because of the outer regions, and they had some differences with the thereship in kabul, that was horrible corruption, horrible injustice is being done to the tribes that were not empower, and the taliban came in , actually mullah omar, got his

start because of the allegation of a rape of i think a 14-year-old girl, and no justice was done. mullah omar came in and justice on the spot. drag a guy out and hung him. people said hey, that is good. with the other guy was doing was also good. what they found when the taliban took over what this is pretty awful. it looked good at the time, turns out it is pretty awful. stoning of women, made it illegal to teach little girls how to read, pretty brutal stuff. cannot leave your house if you're a woman without a male escort, even if that male escort is six years old -- i mean, it is really kind of crazy stuff, right? the that is where all of chafing started in afghanistan. we saw the same thing in libya to a lesser degree. people joined together because they were against muammar gaddafi. once they were done, people said

wait a minute, this is not for me. that is what you see brewing in libya. it is the exact same thing happening in iraq. he sunni tribal leaders are pushing back against what they view as an unjust, unfair, corrupt shiite-led government by maliki, and they're not going to put up with that. what they're finding out when they take over a city like mosul and they are playing shia law, that chafing is already started because it takes away the sunni tribes leadership. iny lose a little influence a kind of arrangement, so we are seeing that happening. that was the same thing i was tapped into in 2006 for the awakening that separated the in iraq.cal i argue that you cannot allow isil to continue to have success

the way it is. means may be training camps. that means you have to directly target command and control and leadership in a way that is disruptive. one of the things about airstrikes or not airstrikes -- that is a tactic. the president should not be debating over a tactic. we should be talking about a strategy. the airstrikes may be a part of that, they may not be a part of that. a special forces raid may be a part of it, it may not be a part of it. we have to have a strategy that and after isil leaderships its logistic training -- by the way, which starts in syria. you cannot be effective if you do not take away their safe haven in eastern syria. the reason they are controlling those border points as they know that is the way they will continue to resupply their efforts all across iraq and vice versa. if they ever decide to turn that around and headed toward lebanon, they're going to need that supply line both ways.

the united states has unique capability, and i'm not talking about troops on the ground -- when i say troops on the ground, big troops on the ground, the 101st airborne holding ground, that ist marine mass -- not what we are talking about. we're talking about a strategic disruption of isil. roomwill give breathing for a political reconciliation to happen in baghdad. i do not think you will ever get political reconciliation until you give breathing room. we don't have leverage the way we're operating currently. even the very thought that we're going to have a conversation with iran about this solution, you can imagine all the calls we get from our arab league partners about what an awful idea that is. some of these things they need to stop talking at that level and start applying strategic solution to this so we can show disruption, stop their momentum, hurt their command in control,

hurt their logistics base, make them have to reconsider what aggressive offensive operations that they take. >> let me go to the gentleman in the green tie. i am waking on a name. i apologize. into catherine, then to francine. >> sorry. now further known as the gentleman with the green tie. >> senior moments are terrible. let me tell you. >> you have a few things on the plate. i didn't know what you were looking at. >> we want to finish up the fifa legislation to make sure we can our -- the nsa and others focused on all of the threats versus looking over their shoulder. at what is a title wave of misinformation about what they

do. that's going to be important to get that so that americans can reengage in the confidence that their intelligence there to keep us safe. which by the way, they are. that's important. we just got the 2014 bill done yesterday. why that's important -- the authorization bill, excuse me -- is because there's a lot of reforms in there. some of the reforms are based on making sure our security clearance operations are changed a little bit so we're more accurate catching somebody who may be going bad and stealing whole bunch of stuff and running to places like, i don't know, moscow. the 2015 makes an important investments which we have to get done and continue our dominance in space. we're at the back-end of that arrangement. we better pick up our pace or we will be in trouble. making sure making the right investment in our ability to protect ourselves what is a growing list of countries and

nonnation states -- cyber capabilities, which is concerning. we're on the back-end of that one. we got to pick up our pace and continue our investment in human collection throughout the year. lastly, this week, we had a great round of negotiations in the last few weeks with the senate on an information sharing bill. saxby chambliss and diane feinstein are going to vote out a cyber sharing bill this week. i think that is the date -- thursday. this is going to be critically important if we are going to stay in front. this won't solve all our problems. if we're going to stay in front what is on growing threat matrix, just on cyber destructive attacks, we have got to have this bill in place so that the privacy sector with protect itself. right now, any offensive action we would take indicting five chinese intelligence officials who we know who are stealing our

offf -- it exposes the 85% networks that won't have the a espionageithstand style attack. those are my immediate priorities. then to continue the internal policy debates we have on things like covert actions on other things we need to get right with the community. i hope to do that before i leave in january. >> catherine? >> thank you. >> welcome back. >> thank you. for a layperson how would you , characterize this relationship between isil and aqap, the skills they're sharing? isn't this relationship that's driving public states from others on the hill that's a direct threat to the u.s. homeland? secondly, were there specific multiple strategic warnings from the ic and isil and if so, who fail to act on them? >> i'll start with the last part first.

i argue this is a result of an indecision. which is a policy failure. this is not an intelligence failure, it's a policy failure. it's pretty easy to blame the guys who are out standing in the dust to collect the pieces of information. again, i think it's important. we watched them pool up, we watched the debate between al-nusra al isil. we watched the concern between the al qaeda leadership, zawahiri, about trying to get them back in the fold. we watched them get weapons. we watched them get finances. we watched western passport holders show up. we watched it all. we heard their stated intentions. reason they're called the islamic state in iraq and the

levant is that they want the levant. which is lebanon, syria and jordan. they want it all. they decided they became strong enough to actually implement it. the reason they're -- a small number of folks is having big success in iraq, the other policy failure of we're just packing up and going home. we don't care if all the troops are ready or not. we're just coming home because this is hard. i think that was a major disaster. if you had a u.s. presence, i'm not talking about engaging in combat operations, if you had a u.s. presence there, it would allow the security services to be more sustainable. it would have influenced the political fracturing we saw happen after we left. that is the whole purpose of that so you get better , reconciliation. and you could have seen up close and personal the trouble this that was being developed in syria. because syria was going to have this problem at some what we point. didn't understand, was that isil was going to take advantage of it. those are all policy failures in

my mind that has led to this. you can't blame the intelligence community, you can't blame congress. this is a foreign policy failure of a magnitude that will risk the security of the united states of america. they need to shake themselves out of that and start coming one up with a strategy to win this fight. >> where does the buck stop on that? does it stop with the president? it stop with the security advisor? who failed to act here? >> ultimately it's the president of the united states. this is his policy of -- i forget what he call it. don't do stupid, something. >> i was not going to jump in there. >> it's almost laughable that is even the mindset of a national security team that threats -- they see the same threats we see. it's not like they didn't get the same stuff that we got. some notion that we just don't anything really hard, that everything will be just fine is absolutely -- i think a bit

naive. it's a bit politically self-serving that you're more concerned about what ratings you have at home than what threats happens overseas. that's a dangerous mindset. at some point, they keep doubling down on this notion of -- well, now it's hard and let's stay out of it. i get that but the problem is, they are threatening the united states of america. that's the problem. >> does it give you any pause -- do it make you want to stay? you regret your decision? >> you know, i've been in public service and the fbi and army and legislature for 28 years. that is a long time. this is an opportunity to talk to people hopefully i don't get a chance to talk to them now. i am pigeonholed -- and i love it, don't get me wrong. intelligence space, i think it's important work. but i think most americans don't get to hear the other side of this conversation. why if we had engaged early, we may have avoided this problem.

i don't ever hear that conversation certainly in talk radio, i don't hear that conversation. i think this is an opportunity for me to talk to a lot more people about why it's important. why american exceptionalism does matter. certainly our arab league orders have been crying about it. to have a dialogue in a different way that hopefully influence the debate, so by 2016 we have a bunch of americans who are truly interested in national security, international engagement, economic prosperity for the next generation. that i just don't hear. and that regard, i am looking forward to that challenge. >> as a journalist, the idea of having access to all that information, sort of like a kid in a candy store. are you starting to feel a period of withdrawal in terms of knowing so much? >> the problem was, things seem to get worse.

in that regard, without the campaign moving over my head, i spend a lot more time down there trying to go through all of this. i've had my conversations by the way with the white house and expressed my concerns. we've had our disagreements and we had our agreements. and i think it was right that the president made the decision to send 300 advisors with the right mix of individuals that he did. good on you. now we have a lot more to do. but there comes a time, and i think you know it. if i can influence by talking to a lot more people about the importance of these issues in way they might not hear today, i think maybe i can do something more positive in that regard. >> i had a follow up. it got lost in that answer we had. how would you characterize the relationship between aqap and isil to the extent that they are

sharing their best practices? is it this relationship that is driving the public state from -- statements from the colleagues on the hill? >> two things. aqap has a stronger relationship with the al-nusra front. that is i believe a direct an ongoing relationship that has command and control and advice in counsel roles. isil is now exactly the same mindset but has a competitive nature to al qaeda in general. their goal is to establish the caliphate now. wait.ri wanted to they decided they wanted it now. i think they are a little bit drunk on their success and really do believe that this is their time to outshine them. same exact wants, desires,

techniques, tactics, they want the caliphate, and they also are willing to conduct operations outside of their operations area. i'm not sure you were here for that, but zawahiri -- this whole debate that they were brutal and that's why he cut him free is nonsense. it was all about isil wanting to do external operations based on a large number of holders. -- of passport holders. zawahiri did not want them to do that. he wanted them to focus on iraq. go back and fight iraq, have him fight in syria. that's what started the split. so again, they all know each other. there's a little bit of -- i'll show them kind of attitude. >> did the relationship worsen? >> i would describe it as a competitive relationship. between -- and isil.

>> same goals, same intentions. they have this mutual respect going back and forth. this is a disagreement on the tactics of how they want to succeed. >> did you not say earlier that there was a relationship between aqap and isil? or did i misunderstand that? >> they had intermediatories established trying to work out the differences before they were separated from a.q. leadership. >> anybody who has not had one? >> getting back to you thinking about leaving, with retirement at some of the other colleagues, do you worry at all about your home state of michigan about the losing any influence or power in congress? >> you know, obviously if you don't want us all to go at the same time but term limits, this is going to happen to other state. this is bound to happen.

fred upton is going to be there. he's certainly a powerful chairman and a great advocate for our state. i think that will help the newer folks who get elected come in and get established and allowed to have an impact for the state of michigan. obviously, the timing isn't great. again, it's all based on this time frame of how long can you be a chairman. it's just an odd coincidence. that we got watch oh chairman, which is unusual, especially for state like michigan. as i told my people back home -- good while it lasted. the other ones will come up. i'm a huge believer that people shouldn't be here for 50 years. i think it's better when you get a little bit of a term. you get new ideas. it should be a representational body. i think this is a good thing people come in and out. >> last question. >> yesterday on the governing

--ernance issue in congress yesterday the bipartisan policy center released a whole set of recommendations on how congress and the election system and so on, could become more governable. one of the things they said, power back to the committees, and marrying up the house schedule and the senate schedule, working five days a week. that kind of thing. what's your thought about appetite that within the congress? >> i am going to, first of all, dispose of this issue that members of congress don't work five days a week. i'm leaving, so i can say anything i want. if they work less than six days a week, i don't know that member of congress. that is a complete misnomer. the problem we've gotten ourselves into, in congress, is that we get yanked around by

these sometimes populace trends at home that don't transfer into the information we know is the of congress, and the lack of willingness to have that discussion back home. that's a huge problem. a leadership that is geared toward the smallest minority in any coalition is dangerous. you have this notion that it's better to be at home sometimes than working on these issues through a committee process. i believe in a committee process in congress. i think it's the best way to get a bill that will have best opportunity and to bring people together. you have to sit down and work through hard differences. it doesn't mean you sacrifice who you are or your principles. it means you get to place that people can support something moving forward. i like to think our committee has been able to do that, the intelligence committee. we passed -- we are going to get every budget since i been

and dutch ruppersberger has been ranking member. that's unusual. but an important thing to have happen in a committee like ours. it can happen. it should happen. the questions at home shouldn't be, what are you doing to fill in the blank on this other major issue. it should be, on your committee, what are you doing on this particular problem. how are you going to make that problem better? if every member is a generalist, we will be in trouble. i spent my last four years not being a generalist. i looked at all members of national security, and i think it helps. i think members who serve on ag and energy and commerce and serve on those committees, what we should demand of them is more time in committee working through these issues and if in means staying in d.c. five days a week, okay, so be it. i think you can do it in less but you have to force people to , show up and do the work. that's a hard thing to do.