impulses and embrace those who appeal to our best. for we have shown we can choose a better history. sitting in a prison cell, the young martin luther king jr. wrote that human progress ever roles on the wheels of inevitability. it comes to the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with god. and in the course of the eight years, as i have travel through many of your nations, i have seen that spirit in our young people, who are more educated and more tolerant and more inclusive and more diverse and more creative than our

generation, who are more empathetic and compassionate towards their fellow human beings than previous generations. and, yes, some of that comes with the idealism of youth, but it comes with young people's access to information about other peoples in other places. an understanding unique in human history, that their future is bound with the fates of other human beings on the other side of the world. i think of the thousands of health care workers from around the world who volunteered to fight ebola. i remember the young entrepreneurs i met who are now starting new businesses in cuba. the parliamentarians who used to be just a few years ago political prisoners in myanmar.

i think of the girls who have braved violence just to go to school in afghanistan and university students who started programs online to reject the extremism of organizations like isil. i draw strength from the young americans, entrepreneurs, activists, soldiers, who citizens who are remaking our nation once again, you are unconstrained by old habits and old conventions and unencumbered by what is, but are ready to seize what ought to be. my own family is made up of the flesh and blood and traditions and cultures and faiths from a lot of different parts of the world, just as america has been built by immigrants from every shore. and in my own life, in this

country, and as president, i have learned that our identities do not have to be defined by putting someone else down, but can be enhanced by lifting somebody else up. they do not have to be defined in opposition to us, but rather by a believe in liberty and equality and justice and fairness. in embrace of these principles as universal, it does not weaken my particular pride, my particular love for america. it strengthens it. i believe that these ideals apply everywhere. it does not lessen my commitment to help those who look like me or pray as i do or pledge allegiance to my flag, but my

faith in those principles does force me to expand my moral imagination and to recognize that i can best serve my own people, i can best look after my own daughters by making sure that my actions seek what is right for all people and all children and your daughters and your sons. this is what i believe, that all of us can be coworkers with god, and our leadership and our governments and this united nations should reflect the irreducible truth. thank you very much. [applause] president obama: thank you. >> on behalf of the general assembly, i wish to thank the

president of the united states for the statement he just made. may i request representatives to greek seated while the the president, after which the meeting will stand suspended for five minutes before resuming to hear the next speaker. >> coming up monday morning,

zika funding and campaign 2016. charles debt will be with us to talk about government funding and campaign 2016. sarowitz on why some should be focusing on real-world issues. join the discussion. wednesday, we are covering a hearing on counterterrorism efforts by local jurisdictions. officials from local law enforcement agencies, including new york city's deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, testified before the house homeland security committee. at 10 a.m. eastern live on c-span3. you can also watch it live on c-span.org or listen live on the c-span radio app. 2015, the 2007 and

-pen medicationpi $317.y 461% to rose bys compensation approximately $2 million to almost $19 million. live at 2stifies p.m. eastern on c-span3. you can also watch live at c-span.org or listen live of the c-span radio app. >> the c-span radio app makes it easy to follow the 2016 election wherever you are. it is free to download from the apple app store or google play. get up-to-the-minute information from c-span radio, television, plus broadcast times for a our public affairs.

stay up to date on the election coverage. weing the radio app, means will always have information wherever you go. announcer: next, james clapper, director of national intelligence, on national security threats and intelligence gathering. this interview, with "washington post" associate editor david ignatius, is 50 minutes. [applause] david: thank you very much. so, thank you very much to rick hunt and fred ryan, my boss. welcome to cocktails with the director of national intelligence. i apologize -- mr. clapper: you are cutting into my martini hour. david: i apologize. it will go quickly.

we are very pleased to have director clapper here. just to expand on what fred ryan said, james clapper is a rare person in our government, an intelligence officer for 50 years. he has served, running the intelligence agency, directed intelligence and the defense department. and now, dni, basically, the nation's top intelligence officer. i have had a chance over the last few years to come visit director clapper and talk to him, on the record, asking questions. and he has been, as you know if you read some of my articles, direct, blunt, sometimes undiplomatic. but he either gives an honest answer, i just cannot talk about that. so, really, a pleasure to have you here.

there are a lot of issues, obviously, in the news. and i want to start off with newsworthy subjects. there is a report that has been moving this afternoon on cnn, that says this really dreadful attack on the u.n. aid convoy to the west of aleppo on monday may have been a result of a russian airstrike or other russian attack. and barbara starr is saying that is the preliminary inclusion by u.s. officials, as they study this. i just went to ask you, director, as a starter, is there anything you can share about this? or, just in general, how you are looking at this kind of issue, this very complex tug of war on the battlefield? mr. clapper: i think you have a few phrases that characterize the job we have. you know, the classical situation there is always the

fog of war, which this is not. syria is unbelievably complex. and to be specific and directly respond to your question, i have not, myself, gotten into the specifics of whatever evidence you may or may not have about who was responsible. that is being worked as we speak, but i cannot speak to it here right now. david: so, the other issue that is obviously in the news and on our minds -- mr. clapper: per your introduction. david: exactly. it is the terrorist attacks on new york city, the area, by ahmad khan rahami. and i think we are all looking at that, asking a couple of questions. the first one i put to you is whether there is any evidence

you found of connections that he had to terrorist networks, directions or inspirations, anything like that that would connect him more broadly to isis or any other group? mr. clapper: again, a very fast breaking situation. fbi is all over this, under active investigation. i spoke with a senior fbi officer just before i came down here, and i think there is probably more to come. but again, i cannot say one way or the other that we have found any definitive evidence of a connection yet. there is a lot of evidence to look at. i cannot point to external direction, at this point. david: one thing that has surfaced at this point today, the possibility that rahami's

father might have notified law enforcement, who then in turn notified the fbi, that he was concerned about his son. i want to ask whether that report is a credible one, and more generally, ask about this question of getting muslim communities, other communities from which extremist might come, to talk about people in those communities that are concerning them. james clapper: a couple of issues that this brings up. regrettably, this will not be the last such issue in this country that is regrettable. i think that is just the situation we are in. we will, undoubtedly do, when this is over with, as we always do, critique. i have noticed in the six years

that i have been in this job, boston marathon case in point. it was decided that we should have been more invasive. i am speaking broadly of the law enforcement community. this pendulum swings back and forth. this is an issue that i think is something that requires some discussion and debate in this country. this line that we are supposed to thread between keep in the nation safe and secure, and not invading anyone's privacy. that is something we agonize over a lot. i am sure that we will have a reprise of that discussion after all of the information on this incident is in. one more thing, i do engage in muslim community leadership. i personally learn a lot when i

listen to them because a lot of phraseology that we use in the intelligence and law enforcement community is great sensitivity on their part. it is a dilemma for them. most of them are loyal, patriotic americans and this is a bad time for them. they are under siege right now. i have to be mindful of that as well. david ignatius: since you raise the sense in the muslim community of being under siege, i need to ask you, there is out there in the political campaign, some polarizing rhetoric about muslims. it is sometimes argued that makes the job of our intelligence, law enforcement, fbi officers harder because it may close the doors that we may need to have open.

strictly from an intelligent standpoint, is that true? james clapper: i think in general, some of this heated rhetoric is not helpful, either in this country. i have been doing some traveling and it is striking to me how people overseas hanged on every word that is uttered in the course of this hyper heated campaign. the many countries around the world, at least with my intelligence colleagues, are very concerned about it. does it help? probably not. it does not encourage freedom dialogue that we have. i worry about a inhibiting that and the concerns that people have about the commitments we

have made. david: you mentioned earlier that there is a difficult trade-off here. the country wants to be more secure in a time of lone wolf attacks and a lot of these things that are hard to track. our intelligent law enforcement agencies would have to be more intrusive. if people ask you as director of national intelligence whether you think that is wise, what would your answer be? james clapper: i think we have to be very careful about that. we are very sensitive about infringing on privacies. we could clamp down very hard in

this country if we wanted to. i just do not think there is the political will, or the societal will to want to live like that. so there is a compromise that we have to strike. a couple years ago, i meant it only half jokingly, the expert nations for intelligence, we collect accurate intelligence and do it in such a way that there is no risk, don't do it in such a way that it is discovered, and do it in such a way that there is no jeopardy and someone's privacy. we call that a macula collection. [laughter] david: so you are not confident -- mr. clapper: it was taken humorously. it does create the limit of challenge that we have.

i care about my civil liberties and privacy just like anyone else. as does everyone else in the intelligence committee. we are mindful about. david: let me ask you about the series of issues that will confront the next president, whoever she or he is. there are issues that i am sure you in your waning days -- i happen to know that director clapper keeps on his desk a clock. james clapper: it counts minutes and seconds. david ignatius: you will be asked about an issue that has caused deep concern, which is the appearance of attempts to interfere in our political process from outside. it has been widely reported that

the fbi and the department of homeland security are conducting an investigation of russian hacking. not simply the collection of information by russians, but the dissemination of that information. i ask you to speak about that problem and help all of us get a sense of what we know, how we should think about it, what the dangers are and what we should do about it. james clapper: first of all, there is a long history of the russians trying to interfere, or influence elections.

that is going back to the 60's in the heyday of the cold war. her have been documentations that would appear that they were trying to, somehow influence the election. in the united states. there is a history there. there is a tradition in russia in interfering with elections. their own, and others. it should not come as a big shock to people. i think it is more dramatic, maybe, because now they have the cyber tools taking to bear with the same effort. it is still going on. i will say that it is probably not really clear on if there is influence. what i worry about, more frankly, is the sewing seeds of doubt. where doubt is cast on the whole process. what are we doing about it?

well apart from what you talked about, certainly the hs. secretary johnson has been very active with the state election officials. offering our services to secure that we are appropriate. in particularly, if there is any dependence on the internet in the course of the conduct of the election. voter registration, databases and the election. we have a strength in that we do not have a centralized system. we have a decentralized system, that works to be a monumental undertaking to try to affect the election nationally. i think the more likely objective would be to sow seeds of doubt about the intricacy, viability and think the tea of

the whole system. david ignatius: you mentioned that there were passed instances where russia, in this case where the soviet union had tried to interfere in our election process. i probably should know what those are, but i don't. what comes to mind in terms of past history of this? james clapper: they had sent money to opposition candidates, or try to feed information. the way it was done in the cold war, which preceded with what we now know as the cyber era. the records show influences in east europe and that sort of thing. they have a history of that. david ignatius: to turn to the question of what we should do about this, what the united states should do about it, there

is an official dod cyber strategy that talks about deterrence. as you look at that set of options, response, denial, resilience are the three words that are used in the strategy, it is hard to now know how they would help us in establishing the rules of this game. i want to ask you to think with us director, about ways that we could send a message. some people in the government have argued that we need a high level message from somebody just to say that this is something we know and it is not acceptable. is that a good idea? james clapper: it is certainly a good idea. you are getting into policy now,

i am not into policy. i think, in the context of how do you generate deterrence. deterrence has both a substance and a psychology about it. if you think about deterrence in a nuclear sense, which works because there are physical things you can see. mushroom clouds, twice, 1945, has not been used since. you can see field measure gauge, subs, that sort of thing. it is very difficult in the cyber domain because you cannot render it physically. there is the challenge, despite the issues and strategies, how do you generate the substances and the psychology of deterrence?

deterrence is principally focused on nationstates. nationstates are easier to deter than non-nationstate groups or individuals. this is what we have confront it with here. the other thing is that deterrence is hard in the absence of international norms. at some point, in order to make the rule of law, and as a part of that deterrence and work in the cyber domain, there has to be international understanding of what is acceptable behavior and what isn't. then you will be in a much better position to generate deterrence. but deterrence in the absence of that is hard to do unilaterally. david: in the real world that we all grew up in, on the playground, you learn that if somebody bumps you, you should probably bump them back or you

will get picked on. does that establish how people will behave? does that apply in the cyber world? mr. clapper: it could if you think that the way to respond to a cyber assault is by cyber meetings. what we have actually done is to react in other ways. again, this is why deterrence is hard to conjure up when, in fact, the exchange may be in a completely different mode. cyber attack of some sort, a sanction of some sort. that is why it is very hard to develop deterrence, and why we need to develop what i call a body of wall. we have to develop an experiential base for what works

and what doesn't. unfortunately, we will have to inter--- indoor -- endure hacks before we reach that point. i think there has to be an international recognition and acknowledgment. the u.n. has been very preliminary and trying to develop it. before it is recognized importantly to adhere to, we are a ways away from that. david: officials in the obama administration have pointed to china as an example of successful messaging action that has the effect of changing behavior. they argue that after our threat of sanction and naming some chinese actors, and the numeration for rules at the

summit last september, the chinese behavior has changed. i want to ask you as our top intelligence officer, you see a change in chinese? james clapper: there has been a decrease, and we hear that from industries as well, at least from what has been detected. we have to be the skeptics in the crowd, in intel. they have actually reduced their exultation, or they just got more secure. i think that not enough experience has elapsed to make that call. the other thing is, what they agreed to was not to use what they do for economic gain.

well, that turns out to be a hard bar -- a high bar from an evidentiary standpoint to make that relationship, so i think there's some room for cautious optimism because there has been overall a decline in at least what we have detected. i have to caveat that, so we'll have to see. >> let me turn to another issue that i'm sure is going to be high in the inbox of the next president and that's north korea and north korea's ability soon, based on the reporting that we have in the public media, to have a nuclear warhead that it can put on top of a missile that has sufficient range to strike at targets in japan, conceivably

the u.s. territory, not the u.s. mainland, but the u.s. territory in the pacific. and i want to ask you about the intelligence officers' side of this question. not the policy issue, but what you can tell us as you look at the evidence of north korean intentions. is the leader of north korea as volatile, as much of a risk taker, as he seems or is that for public consumption and do you see a different picture? >> first of all, we have long assessed that the north koreans have the capability to fit a nuclear weapon and a warhead on a missile. they've fielded what's called a kn08, which is in the icbm range, which would include alaska, hawaii, and part of the west coast depending on a lot of factors.

now having said that, neither the north koreans or we know if these will actually work because they've never actually tested a full missile system with an rv and all that. but in our business we kind of have to assume the worst. based on my brief exposure to north korea when i went there in november '14, it's interesting to sit and try to talk to them because from their vantage they're under siege from everywhere, even their erstwhile

brother china is probably frustrated and mystified by the north koreans as we are. for them, this is their ticket to survival. they go to school on gaddafi and that sort of thing. they are definitely afraid of our capabilities. if it came up once, it came up five or six times about b-52s. they don't like b-52s. for them, this is all about face, about their ticket to survival. i think even kim jong-un realizes if he were to launch one, that would be the end of north korea. so i think it is more of a psychological thing rather than them actually using them. can't predict. can't read his mind. although some people suspect we can, but i just don't think that's logical at all.

david: just a slightly different way to ask this is whether kim jong-un can be deterred, whether he's a rational actor that can be -- >> i believe he can be and has been. one of the great vulnerabilities of north korea, which i don't think we exploit as much as we might, is information. they are deathly afraid of information -- and they're fighting a losing battle trying to keep outside information from coming into their people. to me, is their great vulnerability. their reaction to leaflets that are dropped over north korea by non-governmental groups, their reaction to loud speakers along the dmz and then actually turning them on, i think says a lot about what they're really concerned about and where they are most vulnerable.

david: i want to ask you briefly about china. so many questions, but i'll just focus on one, director, and that's the south china sea and chinese behavior after this very strong arbitration ruling in the hague in the case involving the philippines. initially, the chinese seemed to be fairly cautious. they didn't announce an air defense identification zone as some people had feared. they seemed to have stepped up their activity in the east china sea, which is where the japanese claim islands, but there have been reports in the last couple weeks that the chinese may be active again in trying to reclaim the area of the shoal near the philippines, which would be a very worrying sign that they're resuming the very activity that the arbitration panel said was contrary to

international law. so i want to ask you how does that evidence look to you and how do you in general see this south china sea situation? dir. clapper: the chinese embarked on a very reckless campaign in the south china sea to erect military facilities, runways, hangars, and other military equipment that, you know, that in their mind sticks out their claim. by the way, it always makes me wonder why there isn't more of an outcry from environmentalists because of tremendous damage they're doing to the environment in the south china sea by virtue of these projects.

tribunal ruling did take the chinese aback. i don't think they realized how far reaching it would be. the crucial thing to me frankly -- and i'm getting out of my lane here a little bit -- but to the extent there's consensus among countries and to the extent they're willing to speak in a single voice to push back, i think, would have a great impact on the chinese. but the chinese have talked themselves into believing that this is a legitimate claim on their part. that's why it's important, i think, that the u.s. continue what we've been doing, which is to reaffirm freedom of navigation both maritime and air.

david: so i want to turn now as any discussion of intelligence, foreign policy, inevitably does to the middle east. and i thought i might start by remembering a conversation that you and i had after the isis, isil, break out when they initially took mosul. we had a conversation in which you said on the record that you thought the united states had underestimated the will of the -- the fighting will of this adversary and had overestimated the will of our allies in the iraqi security forces. it was a wonderful moment i thought for speaking basically truth to power. this is just saying it the way it was. so i want to ask you two years later do you see any significant sign of change on either side. the united states' allies have

been going hard at the islamic state, pounding it? and what sign do you see, if any, will be affected by that? we put a lot of effort into work and training to try and create a stronger iraqi security force. how is that going? on each side of that, compared to where we were two years ago, how would you estimate things are now? dir. clapper: well, we're in a better place. by we, specifically the iraqi security forces with our train, advise, and assist mission. so they've made headway. there's been a significant reduction in the territory that is held by isil.

the territory is shrinking. we've taken literally thousands, the coalition has, thousands of fighters off the battlefield, and that is starting to show in the form of stress for isil. we're seeing desertion rates going up. they're having to move forces around from place to place more. attrition is affecting them. their revenue streams are not what they were. the foreign fighter flow has declined for lots of reasons. so that all is great except that i think what this will do is -- if isil is anything else, it is resilient and adaptable, so it can revert to its roots, what it was as aqi, al qaeda in iraq, in the early 2000 period. and they'll revert to that. conversly, i think there has

been improvement in the iraqi security forces, although they still have many endemic, systemic problems in terms of morale, attrition, logistics, command, control, et cetera. but if you look at the map, it's better. i might add, david, that this issue of will to fight has always been a challenge for us in intelligence to gauge. it's a very subjective thing. my war in southeast asia, i did a couple tours there. that was always an issue there, how to gauge the will to fight of the army of the republican of vietnam, and we have gained a lot of hard won experience here on how to try to train -- raise and train a military while it is under attack. that is a sort of common theme

with vietnam, with afghanistan, and with iraq. i was the chief of air force intelligence during desert storm, and we didn't do a very good job then. we way overestimated the iraqis will to fight. that's why the war ended so quickly. david: so just to close this question out, what the country would want to ask its top intelligence officer and i have the chance to ask you is whether the u.s. strategy for dealing with isis is working. >> well, it is working in the sense of those things that -- if i can use the word, are metricable. territory held, number of fighters reduced. we have taken a lot of their key

leadership off the battlefield. we're reducing their sources of revenue. foreign fighter flow has reduced. so i think there's been great progress made there. what's been more of a challenge for us frankly is the ideology and the appeal to people around the world. and they are sophisticated, very slick, at the use of social media whether it is for recruiting or command and control. that's been more problematic. david: to look more broadly about the middle east, i was asking about your judgment of dealing with isis and other aspects of policy whether we're going to see a turning of the

corner with these problems of instability and you basically said, no, that we shouldn't expect that. and the words you used is we can't fix this. meaning it is not in our power to reorder this. dir. clapper: i always liked tom friedman's line. he writes for "the new york times." david: is he a columnist? [laughter] dir. clapper: too important to ignore, and too expensive to fix. one-liner bumper sticker. that's why we're going to be, i think, in this business as we are now of suppressing information these extremist movements whether it's al qaeda or isil or something else is spawned. so we in the intelligence business and the military are going to be in the business of

suppressing these groups for sometime to come. by the time where you think when we get involved, it's too late. because the fundamental issue that is give rise to these movements, you know, economies that are strained, ungoverned areas, places awash with weapons, a large population of frustrated males, et cetera, until those conditions are addressed, people in my business, my profession, and in the military are going to be doing this suppression for sometime to come. david: so when we think about this, we should think about this in generational terms and not look for an instate that is like the endings of most wars they've we fought. this just ain't like that, if i understand you. dir. clapper: well -- no, it isn't the ease of looking at the daily line of contact, the foreign line of troops kind of thing that you're used to in a

conventional set... show full text >> there's a younger generation of leaders that's beginning to emerge. the deputy crown prince in saudi arabia is 30 years old. there are other youngerleaders who are beginning to surface after so many decades, as i remember, of basically frozen leadership. do you think that could make a difference as you do your assessments of the region? dir. clapper: i do. there's a lot of controversy, but i think he is, you know -- has a vision for the future of

saudi arabia, and i think he's committed to reforming its economy, so it's not so dependent on one source of revenue. i think he has in mind a lot of other reforms he'd like to make in saudi -- and he's an example of this younger generation that's not without controversy. there's controversy about him certainly in saudi arabia, but the last time i met with him i was genuinely impressed with his vision and his commitment to it. >> if anyone in the audience doesn't know who director clapper is talking about, this is the deputy crown prince, this

30-year-old. so we invited people to submit questions online. there's still time to do it. the hashtag is securing tomorrow. i just want to turn to one or two of these, mr. director, and ask you. here's an interesting question. it's one i've puzzled about over the years. i'll just read it out. why doesn't the u.s. and its al lies use their intelligence to expose more corruption around the world? it's a good question because corruption is increasingly kind of strangling both governance and the ability to trade freely. why don't we do more about that? dir. clapper: first of all, i think we look at that as an individual country issue, getting into people's internal business and their own

sovereignty. there are ways to do this kind of sub-rosa rather than making a public display of it in the hopes that the country in question, if that's what it is, will take that on itself, but the other thing is frankly, you know, to the extent to which corruption or crime poses a national security threat to this country, i think that has a lot of influence on how much time, attention, and resource we pay to this as opposed to all the other requirements that are levied on us.

david: there's an interesting question here that raises another issue that i'll the question. twitter version says given the intelligence committees reliance on private sector technology and the tech communities suspicion, the u.s. government post-snowden snowden, what can you do to repair that relationship and then i have to ask you, because it's now a public issue that is getting a lot of debate, what your view is about pardoning edward snowden. dir. clapper: first, we do need to repair the relationship with them and we are working on that. there are many commercial firms wanting to work with the government.

that's a case where time wounds all heels. over time it will get better. i think in the dialogue i have had with this industry, there's still -- there is generally support for, you know, the safety and security of the country and those elements of the government that try to do that. as far as edward snowden is concerned, you know, i could understand what he did if it were limited to so-called domestic surveillance. i use air quotes intentionally. but, he exposed so much else that had absolutely nothing to do with domestic surveillance where he has damaged our capability against foreign threats. he has taken away capabilities that were used to protect our

troops in afghanistan. so, questions never been posed to me officially, but if it were, i don't think i would concur is offering him a pardon. david: what about if you were asked as the director of national intelligence about some sort of negotiated plea agreement? not a pardon, but an agreement in which snowden undertook to tell us more about what he knows about what he may have taken we might not know about on your inventory, can tacts he may have had over the last couple years in moscow. does that sort of negotiated settlement of this through our legal system, does that make sense to you? clapper: >> no.

[laughter] david: and why not? dir. clapper: i just don't think that -- first of all, the damage he's done, which we are dealing with, ages off over time. it's like all previous spies that have done damage to us. over time, we recover, technology changes. especially at the rate of change of today. so, the more time that goes on, there's actually in my mind less and less incentive for a negotiated agreement. so, at least as far as the intelligence community is concerned, we are not in that camp. ultimately, that won't be a determination we would make. that's up to the department of justice. david: understood. i'm sure you would be asked for a recommendation. you have touched on this

question earlier in our conversation but it's been asked in an interesting way so i'll throw this one at you. russia spends millions of rubles on misinformation campaigns online and on tv in the u.s. and europe. if you look at russian tv, you do see an account of what's going on in the world that's a variance from what's on u.s. networks or u.s. wire services so the questioner asked, is this effort working? are they getting their money's worth? >> you would have to ask them. i tell you, that is a big feature, a big aspect of their approach and when ever i travel, particularly in europe, i like to surf the tv channel and turn

on rt. it is pretty slick stuff that the angle that, the perspective they take to paint the united states always in a bad light and russia always in a good light. they are very aggressive about that. they tailor these information operations, these campaigns, particularly in europe. seeking to drive wedges between the european nations and between europe and us. i worry sometimes we are not keeping pace. david: we are going to turn back to my own question list. we have only five minutes remaining. i know that you were hoping to do this for another hour, but it's not possible. [laughter] david: so, i want to ask you in your remaining 122 days and however many minutes, what you worry about in terms of the future and the intelligence community, the system that you are going to hand on to your successor, whoever that person is. in particular, i'm going to ask about areas where you have concern about weakness, things you think aren't working the way

they need to. threats we may not see but they bother you. dir. clapper: so, what we try to do in the intelligence community and certainly i have in the last six years is make investments and those capabilities that give us the greatest agility and

adaptability. there's no way to predict all of the potential threats that we face. if you contemplate on russia technology as it always has in our history. it has double edged swords. artificial intelligence, some people are concerned about that if it's abused. it is a tremendous tool for us. genetic research and genetic manipulation with ethical and moral considerations. russians and the chinese are doing research in this area. the next great leap in how we compute, which has huge implications for cryptology. all these challenges we will face always as we always have, as i look back on my 50 plus years in the intelbusiness. one constant. lots has changed. we are better today. we have more capability. we have many more accesses. we can move data around much quicker than when i first came in this business. my first tour in vietnam,

automated intelligence was acetate, pencils, and two corporals. [laughter] clapper: weir. were a far cry from that. so, with all the change, the one constant i will tell you, this may sound risky, but i believe it is the quality of the people that for whatever reason we continue to be able to attract to service and the intelligence community. it is a constant and going to stand in the future. david: why, to focus on that, why would a smart young person put up with all the intrusion, control, all the limitations that go along with getting your security clearances and being in the ic. do you worry about that? people are going to say the heck with that.

dir. clapper: i have an unusual experience. i have a grandchild in the business. so it's about a 52-53 year age difference. he works at cia. we have a lot of interesting discussions about that very thing. the millenial generation and what appeals to them and what doesn't and what he finds frustrating. what i find with him, and i think he's representative of young people today that are in the intelligence committee is they are very interested in that. are patriotic, they are dedicated. they are not, however, as committed to an institution as i was when i was his age, 22. that was when i was first commissioned in the air force. that's a big difference. we, in the intelligence committee need to be sensitive to that, meaning, we need to be able to promote mobility for our young people so they are able to move around, not only within the intelligence committee, but move out and come back to us. we need to build our systems in such a way to accommodate that. david: so, with that, it's a wonderful way, i think, to end our conversation. i want to offer my personal thanks to director clapper for taking time at the end of a long

day to do this. the name of the series is securing tomorrow. in a lot of ways we are going to secure tomorrow, but one of the most important, obviously, is to have a good intelligence agency that operates within the law and have good oversight and experienced people running them. i think we all want to thank you very much for coming and sharing this time with us. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause]

>> coming up on c-span, a panel with intelligence chiefs. after that, wells fargo ceo testifies about the charge of fraudulent consumer accounts. >> we are covering a hearing today on counters them terror -- counterterrorism efforts. officials from local law includingt agencies, the -- for counterterrorism testify live on seized entry will stop you can also watch it live on seized and oracle or listen live on the c-span radio -- will stop 2017, the price

for the epipen rose by an estimated 400 percent. ceong the same time, compensation rose from approximately $2 million to almost 19 millions. fory, she testified beat the house oversight and reform committee. you can watch it live at c-span.org or listen live on the c-span radio app. >> the smithsonian museum of african american history opens it stores for the first time on saturday. c-span will be live for the education ceremony. also in attendance will be first lady michelle obama, former president george w. bush and

mrs. laura bush. u.s. supreme court justice john roberts, congressman john lewis and more. atch the opening ceremony the smithsonian african-american museum for history and culture live on saturday it to :00 a.m. ,n the span, c-span radio app and c-span.org. >> next, intelligence chiefs , australia, and the uk talk about their positions. this is just under one hour. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you for being here. i want to give special thanks to

to my colleagues, alex, mohammad, and nick. for agreeing to appear at this conference. as frank said, it is the first time they are speaking publicly in the united states. as one of them said, payback is hell, so i can only imagine what they will ask me to do. but i did ask him specifically, there is a geographic dispersion here. we cover the world. one of the things i wanted to start off by asking, i mentioned this morning in my opening remarks just how important our intelligence partnerships are at the cia, that allows us to fulfill our mission. i wanted to get perspective from each of them whether or not a place a similar role in terms of what you're being asked to do and your positions, especially looking back over the last 15 years when we have worked closely with one another. give me your perspective on the importance of those partnerships. alex?

alex: thank you, it is a great pleasure to be here. contrary to what i said this morning. partnerships. so i'm a professional , intelligence officer, i joined mi-6 about 25 years ago. very much a product of the time, our focus was on the strategic intelligence mission, finding things out, deep penetration operations. culturally, i don't think at that time we were thinking automatically of this idea, and that has changed. i put that down to a number of things. most important, we have gone from an intelligence service primarily about finding things out to one that is about doing

things, acting on what we know. and that is all about partnership. and certainly, we intercepted the terrorist threat, although we have experienced terrorism for a long time in our history, we have discovered that terrorists are adept and we have to be adept at networking a response. i think now we are at a place with the reverse of where i begin, albeit in the covert space. it is the principal determinant of success or earlier. and of course, it is quite easy to talk about this community because we have shared values and shared threats, and we have these very close relationships. times we have relied on services less like our own. but we want a partnership without abandoning our values.

mohammad, you have had a long and distinct career in afghanistan. your perspective on, as you are now at the helm of the afghan intelligence service, how you look at those partnerships. mohammad: thank you very much. thank you for this wonderful opportunity. i think we are living in a very changing global environment. we are facing threats not as under visual -- individual countries. we are facing threats that move from one part of the world to another part of the world and is a transnational. to deal with that, we constantly deal with them just protecting ourselves, but we have to mitigate the threat at the same time to prevent that. in order to do that, we need the partnership. the partnership from a different angle is very important.

one, because of national globalization of trade, we need to share information and get together and act together in many instances in order to stop the threat. but at the same time, for countries like afghanistan, which has suffered for significant numbers of years from violence and wars, rebuilding the country, i think it is very important to have that partnership for sharing the knowledge, the experience and also to help the rebuilding capacity. if you look backward toknowledge, the 2001, and coming back to the institution, is a result of partnerships that afghanistan is achieving something which is something modern.

with all of the new, gradually neutralizing, and using new technologies. dealing with challenges, i think the partnership is extremely important, especially because we are living in a complicated neighborhood. mr. brennan: on the intelligence side, you've been at the helm of asis for years, how you look at

it? nick: thank you for putting this together. i think this is quite a remarkable combination. it shows your powers of persuasion. [laughter] nick: australia and the united states has always been a partnership that is vitally important to australia and its national security. that remains as true today as at any time in the past 60 years. but things are changing if we look at the number and complexity of issues confronting our policymakers today, all of them have at their hearts a requirement for hard, timely intelligence. we can get some of that ourselves, we can get some of that from allies. but increasingly as these issues take on a transnational character, terrorism, smuggling, supports of military operations around the world, that partnership, that vital partnership is not enough.

that is what you two have been saying, as well. for australia, for afghanistan, afghanistan, we or 15 years, relied heavily on our partnership. but look across the globe. these are transnational issues. relationships from the south pacific, with intelligence and security agencies in southeast asia, the middle east, and so on. relationships with a myriad of intelligence organizations are important to us in ways they have not been before. mr. brennan: i love working with you and your services because we have such an alliance. also because of a strong alignment of policy. sometimes we have opposite relationships with governments

around the world, that can be a governor on the intelligence relationship. i was out in moscow in march, i talked to them about syria and try to push forward on counterterrorism, and i can tell you that my russian counterparts can be frustrating. [laughter] increasingly so, quite frankly. but you also have the chinese, the iranians, the cubans. all of these countries where there are strong tensions between our policymakers. i put north korea way out there because it is beyond the pale.

but how you look at our relationships with some of the services of countries where some of the policies are frequently misaligned or not aligned and there can be adversarial relationships between our capitals? alex: it is a fact that a lot of countries are run by people like us. that is safely not the case in democratically constituted regimes. often the security intelligence component is the only constituency. it appears to me we are missing a trick. i spoke to the prime minister the other day, he said i want a coup. [laughter] alex: so to be clear, i don't think this is the right way to arrange your country. we need to find ways of communicating with these countries. so often, communication between the intelligence services is the most important. i stand for my government to communicate, perhaps on hard messages. i think these conversations are a good way of doing it.

to intelligence agencies, we are not looking at international approval. it is a practical way of communicating that i think we need to be prepared to sustain. for me, i believe strongly as an intelligence service we must uphold the values that we are constituted to defend. so when it comes to cooperation, i think it is very different and frankly, we have to cooperate with very wide range of services across the world, we make it clear it is on our terms according to our values. that is easier said than done, but providing you can achieve that, you can arrange partnerships which are important, because terrorists tend to do business in countries different from our own.

mr. brennan: mohammad, you have personal experience with this? mohammed: i think there is a big difference. to deal with the situation there, the first thing is there is always misperception. i think the relationship between the intelligence services can help to overcome those missed receptions and what is happening in afghanistan. who is doing what, and particularly when it comes to the current situation in our region. i think one thing is very common, and no country in the region is sacred. -- spared. china, workingo hand-in-hand with al qaeda. or with others. the same thing when we come with russia, because we have a historical relationship and we have an up-and-down relationship. we have had a hard time.

many afghans have sacrificed their lives for that. at the same time, there is no doubt that we have to have relationships with each other. with iran, we share a closed border, but we have so much in common. in terms of culture, language, and history. with each of these countries, we have our own relation, and idea of how to manage the relationship. there are a lot of differences. we suffer from the rivalries of of regional countries because of the geopolitical location. i hope that afghanistan can play more than balancing role in keeping good relations with everybody. nick: john, if i can add to your question, not just state actors. -- not just state but also

nonstate actor doors. actors.tate half of my working career was spent as a diplomat, in my former colleagues in the foreign ministry don't like it when i say this, but there are countries, there are regimes, governments, intelligence organizations and nonstate actors who will talk to an intelligence service but will not talk in the same way as freely, as directly, as honestly to diplomats. so i agree with alex about it being an opportunity to pass a hard message, but it is more than that to me. it is also an opportunity to hear, to learn, to exchange views in a quiet way under the radar. no publicity, no attribution. a getting to know you, a getting to understand your position

better. all to pass, and this is really from them to us, for the passing of very sensitive messages. we don't like what you have been doing, it is easier to do that in some cases through an messages. intelligence service. rather than through a foreign ministry. brennan: a balancing of openness, being here on the stage, we are trying to engage with the public about our work. at the same time, we have a responsibility to make sure we keep certain things secret and use things discreetly. it allows things to happen take place that are out of the spotlight, that the diplomatic realm is not able to have the same discretion.

we have been faced over the years with this horrendous phenomenon of terrorism. much of what is rooted in a very distorted interpretation of faith, of islam. individuals who masquerade as muslim but are anything but am a -- anything but muslim. they are murderers. this is epitomized by al qaeda as well as isil. are we still going to rise in the coming years before we see a decline, as we take away territory, the tentacles stretch far and wide. take a look at the next decade or so, how do you see this trajectory? alex: i would like to be optimistic about this, but we have quite long experiences. i see it as the flipside of some deep-seated global trends, including the reduction of barriers between us. i think it is a function of the information revolution and the

capacity for ideas to travel. i think it is fueled by a deepening sectarian divide in the middle east, and i think there are some deep social, economic and demographic drivers to the phenomenon which we know as terrorism. it aligns with the state which ihe think is in enduring issue. to go back to the part worship conversation, we have gotten much better at developing our partnerships to deal with it. the key to a practitioners to understand it as a holistic and, two, and phenomenon. phenomenon. in the u k, where you have a dangerous combination of a threat and radicalized community and our borders, we have to take a government approach and an international approach.

i think we are doing a great deal too many great the threat. -- committee great the threat. i think it is a phenomenon and more important, ideological alternative to the states that we hold dear side think it is good that we are making inroads to terrorism reduction in the territory but i regret it is deniable to remove territory. you will have threats representing some of the fault lines still exist in our world that i think will be pressed for paper should for long-term partnership. >> you think it will get worse? mohammad: let me first say that we should not link islam with terrorism because sometimes there is misinterpretation of islam as extremism because the core value of islam is focusing on [indiscernible] which is how the narrative should be strengthened in the islamic world.

we have to focus more on it in order to really mitigate the spread of terrorism in the world. secondly, i think we've seen over the past few decades the extremism that is coming to the surface. the first when it was in afghanistan and at that time there was a first wave that started that gradually began spreading to people in different parts of the world who came to fight it afghanistan the second is the taliban which was the level of fighting in extremism and al qaeda was the third one.

and isil was the fourth one. i wanted to look to each of these levels of the aspiration because they wanted a new extreme in order to recruit more people and then they used the new digital technology and cyberspace and other countries and this is because of different reasons.

sometimes because this was a complicated crisis. when you go to other countries beyond what is attractive to go with these in join with these terrorist groups. they have the ability to bring people from one side to another side of the world and that was spreading. one of these things coming into the narrative, what are the goals of the extremist group that at the end of the day they will achieve? they are coming back and thinking about this phenomenon to tackle this problem in i think that is a requirement of the political world, how we should deal with this. because sometimes our policy has contribution because we talk about [indiscernible] -- using them as an instrument of national security so i think that the first and foremost thing in order to mitigate this influences we should generate to

a kind of strong political will to deal with these. not to support them, not to facilitate them. and then we can generate the kind of narrative that is valance to end the kind of partnership you are looking for. for instance, the countries, and the five countries that have a relationship with each other in the core values and aches handing them from the place where it is or originating and and [indiscernible] -- that is how it can be mitigated and at the same time for the question, i think in addition to the updates it is not ending at this stage. it will continue for a certain time but it will decline.

>> john, you asked mohammad if it would get worse before it got better. i do not think it will get worse but i do not think it will get better at his for a long time. i have no doubt that in time muzzle will be liberal -- mosul wil be liberated and the caliphate will collapse in on itself but that is likely to be replaced with something unless we are agile and cleverly -- clever. it even if in insurgency does not follow, think the ideology of isil has spread too far, too widely for us to be able to

destroy it anytime soon. it is not just brussels, not just paris, not just uk or the u.s. or australia or north africa. in australia's backyard in southeast asia there are now isil affiliate in indonesia. in the southern philippines this year there have been for small-scale and pretty hopeless terrorist attacks. the willingness is there, the ideology is there. if i can go back to your third question about partnerships, partnerships for us in fact certainly the three of us in southeast asia with law enforcement and intelligence organizations is now and is going to be vital if we are to ensure the sort of terrorism we saw in southeast asia 2002 with the bali bombings, if we are to ensure that does not occur again, working with what is now very capable intelligence and

law enforcement agencies in indonesia, malaysia, and the southern philippines will be vital. in the southern philippines there is also in isil affiliate in looking at it through open sources, social media, they seem to be taking all the boxes to lead the proclamation of an isil branch in the philippines. that worries me a lot. i can see that acting as a magnet for one of the jihadist out of the caliphate. so that is just one region, a region very important to me. it will not be the worst art of the world where terrorist attacks occur, but for australia it is likely important into those partnerships will also be vitally important. >> of the intelligence

profession has changed profoundly over the past couple decades because the global landscape has changed profoundly. most significantly as a result of the technological advancements we have all witnessed to end the discovery of the digital domain, the cyber environment. you mentioned how to take advantage of that environment. do you see these developments on

psychological fronts as well as the growth of the cyber environment being the great enabler of the intelligence professionals, or is it a great disruptor of the intelligence mission? i think the information revolution fundamentally changes our operating environment, including the intelligence side. it is as true for us as anyone else. i would go further to say that in five years time, they will be two sorts of intelligence centers. those that understand and those that do not. 6 will be in the former category. it willon for that is be very interesting, a very interesting combination of an existential threat and a golden opportunity. it represents a threat and i have seen this firsthand because our opponents, who are unconstrained by considerations of lawfulness or proportionality, can use these

capabilities to gain visibility of our activities, which means we have to completely change the way we do stuff. it is a golden opportunity because lawfully overseeing and used proportionally, access to data and technology can be an to ourmissed ai enormous aid operations, and terms of threats beforeying they head, but also understanding the nature of intelligence opportunities and finding ways in which they can be pursued. these facts are interesting as far as i am concerned. we have to fundamentally look at the way we do intelligence operations. then there is the issue of cyber, which is a new domain. to remind everyone, it is still another form of human interaction. it has human beings on the other end of it, but it represents a whole new set of disciplines. u.k., it has led

to a significant way to welcome integration of technical intelligence. this represents a great opportunity. andthe nexis of opportunity human intelligence are a good part of our future. this is a fabulously important issue and when i think will dictate our future success. the issue, again is that of our values and the equality of the conversation we have with the public and our overseers about this. and the extent with which we can be clear we can use these capabilities and discharge have responsibilities in a way that fits with the values of our country. in the u.k. we're are just going through parliament in its final stages, a new bill that will regulate our use of data in this regard. i haven't really pleasantly surprised by the quality of the public debate and the understanding of the link of our proportion of regulated

positions, the capabilities, and our ability to do our job. this is really important because though it is about law, our relationship with the tech community must actually, the some form of teamwork. it must be consensual with both of us understanding that common responsibilities that we bear to deal with threats. i don't think it should be characterized by the sort of any form of adversarial relationship, so i would welcome the t conversation from the tech community. i understand the interests on both sides of the environment, but i think the experiences we are working toward a solution to those issues. in the sessiont this morning on disruptive technology. this is a problem that has to be commonly owned. >> mohammad, technology in the full corners of afghanistan.

>> let me go a little that back with how technology changed. i think 14 years ago, 15 years ago, in afghanistan, somebody who wanted to make a call, they had to go to pakistan to make a call. because the system was not there. and today, we have a founding into the digital and information technology and i think today, everyone in afghanistan and g -2 and g-4, migration is already happening and there is a lot of benefits to our society and education in the other fields. for afghanistan, i think the modernization of the politicalization is part of the utilization of technology in our day-to-day work and building for the future. that is also a great benefit, but at the same time, we have a lot of motor ability.

-- we've a lot of vulnerability. that is how to create new systems and cyber security is another important issue because afghanistan is new to that and we have to invest more on that. as far as technology, we are still ahead of those adversaries who are using it. if we lag behind, i think it is a problem. they have said it all. let me repeat. technological change has traded huge opportunities and huge vulnerabilities for intelligence collection. if we do not get it right, we are going to lose, our operations will fail. the pace of technological change is not slowing down and it is not stopping. you know, you can rattle off a

nanohanges to i.t., technology, dna sequencing, facial recognition, gate recognition. you can go on and on. isis point of view, it is very much what we were saying. i think the business model that has served us so well for six decades has to change. if it does not change, we fail. we are changing already and what we are changing pretty much is everything. everything from how we recruit , how andr to join where we change that officer, the sort of changing the officer receives, the cover that we deploy, the use of covert communications, you name it.

it is going to change. as i have said before, if we don't make these fundamental changes, our officers, our operations, our sources, our agents will be vulnerable and our operations will start to fail. so, we are in the beginning of a fundamental, may be revolutionary, change in the way that humans successful, humanssful contact is conducted. >> as a much as i and -- as much as i am enjoying the role of questioner, as opposed to being questioned, we will open up the questions to the audience. and i don't know how you want to do this. i can't even see where people are. [laughter] >> ok, no questions. [laughter] >> ok, over here.

>> i am samir daniels. the question i have, you raised some extremely important observations about the transformation of intelligence, the potential transformation of intelligence. i am wondering, how do you think that the communities that you are leading are responding to it? do they understand the dimensions? because i think that the point, the thing i have seen, the political class sees the whole -- these issues of terrorism differently than the intelligent systems and they are using a different language and it is, i think, confusing the analysis of

the consequence. i was wondering you know, what your thoughts were on the. >> that was directed at me? >> i don't think in the australian case that it is true. i think the language i have used with respect to terrorism and the threat of terrorism would be a language that would be commonly used and generally accepted and understood in australia. i think one of the great things all organizations have is that individuals who are joining the organizations have grown up in early technology. they know how much the world has changed. they have not had to be introduced to it as we have in our professional careers. they grew up with it. it is almost second nature to them. next question. right there. hello, thank you. my name is doug samuelsson.

i run a company called info logix in annandale. i wonder if you could talk a little bit out about the role of the intel community in countering biological threat, and natural.man-made any thoughts? this one is for alex. [laughter] [indiscernible] >> i would go for a generic response to that. i think that we should not, of course, we need to think very carefully about future thread factors and we need not to have a failure of imagination. do the very best of our endeavors, put ourselves in the mindset of those and made this home.

think we are bound by considerations and practicalities. isapproach on the whole that, as i have said already, they are done by groups of people who mean us harm. intelligencen officer, this is a self-serving operation. i think normally, our cost will be advanced by the best possible penetration of the groups that are organizing against us. so, i think it is incredibly important that we maintain our imagination and we attract people into our agencies that have a deep understanding of the type of capabilities. i rather like cyber. i don't think it actually changes the fundamental shape of the mission, which is for us to be working upstream, as far away as we can get to provide the warning and to give the structure and crucially to give our policymakers the time and information they need to deal

with and disrupt the threat. sincreasing amount ts of information are available. what are the things policymakers should be thinking about in terms of what could be coming at us, as well as the mitigation steps you want to take? as well as preparedness and some type of events and then resilience. and then on the biological front, these are things that i think we as organizations need to be thinking about because there are always individuals out there that are thinking up the most nefarious ways of doing .arm and creating chaos biological agents, i think, are one of the things that we at cia , given that we have the ability to call silly thing can monitor what is out there. as much as it is glenda stein acquired information, there is so much information out there in

the open domain. >> the question over here. >> chris anders. during your confirmation hearing you spoke very convincingly, opaque live maybe, but convincingly about the need for the cia to kind of move back to its core intelligence function and away from functions that have been historically held by the military. could add your colleagues talk a little bit more about maybe progress towards that if you can, but also the importance of kind of segregating out some of these functions. >> we have five core missions.

our roots really are in world war ii. the parachute behind enemy lines, served as that additional capability that was part of the war effort in world war ii. dimensionramilitary has always been part of the cia, but collecting foreign intelligence is one of the driving forces inside the cia. it is a question of balancing the capabilities, the development of infrastructure expertise that when the president, and every president since we were set up 69 years ago last sunday, has called upon cia to carry out some type of covert action. it requires some type of paramilitary dimension to it, but not always. what we try to do after 9/11, there was so much of the demand to go out and go on the offense against terrorist groups. that is why cia boots were the first boots on the ground in afghanistan after 9/11. the first time a u.s. person was

killed in afghanistan after 9/11 was a cia officer. invested a lot of love in our good friend and ally, the country of afghanistan. it is a question of balancing the capabilities and i think we should not have too much excuse where the one side is given. the world is a big place and we have a lot of challenges. >> i am interested in two things. the first, doing things other people can do. in other words, where do we as the covert capabilities act? and the second, is making a difference. when you look at the morality of our business, fundamentally, it's about proportionality. it is about doing things that we expect to have a positive affect on the things that really matter to our government. so, we focus on the stuff that on the we can do that will make a big difference. in a sense, the capability

conversation comes after that. once we determine what will make the biggest difference, how do we achieve that aim? of course, we come out of the human tradition and i am proud of that, being a relative speciality of my service and something i think is justly respected. elevate thewant to input over the output. the output is safety and security of our citizens. how do we achieve that within our values? that is the question. >> i think when you look to the anti-intelligence agency, the core of the organization is the same. they are looking how to make the economy saver and the political stability. it is about how to achieve peace and stability in the country. that is the core mission for the intelligence organizations. that, i think it

is important to provide information for the decision-makers, the right kind of information so they rate the decision at the right time. at the same time, it is a warning system for many cases, whether it is a man-made or natural disaster. so, you provide the early warning to the decision-makers and also, you can also take some action, which covers the covert actions and will facilitate and provide the facility and to prevent and disrupt some of the theents that would impact instability in that country. in particular, when afghanistan is facing with a significant threat from an organization, our main effort will be about how we can disrupt, how we can prevent some of the ask because whereistan is a place

every day, we have 10 to 15 prevented and we have some of those attacks that take the lives of the people. so, i think that is how our core values are developing. mostly, people are not think the acts of the intelligence agencies. they are soldiers that nobody knows them and they have lives.ced their and they don't talk much, so they hear and listen and communicate effectively. >> lives. and they don't talk much, so they hear if we had been havings conversation 10 or 15 years ago, all i would say in response to asis collectsis, secret information that no other arm of the australian government can collect. but activities are now much broader than that. and the broadness comes in,

trying to mostly succeeding in helping the australian government implement its foreign-policy, defense policy, and other policies. in part, we do that by disrupting terrorist attacks. in part, we do that by breaking smugglings syndicates. it is like what alex was saying. we tried to have and we do have the skills and the ability that others don't have. we take action in support of australia's national security. so, it is broader than it was, but not as broad as the cia. we don't have a covert action capability or mandate. >> are all these things being done consistent with the laws and authorities vested with our organizations? i hasten to add this. >> let's go over there.

thank you very much. i wanted to ask the question to any of you and all of you could answer. applications do you have when you're intelligent service becomes aware of serious human rights violations by a partner intelligence service, either regarding stopping it, reporting it, or not disclosing it. we have the obligation to make sure that we first of all, investigate because there could be a report to some kind of violation. andwe seek corroboration confirmation. whatever it is we find out we have obligations related to reporting to congress, as well as to executive branches of the authorities. as well as to take steps with the service that is implicated. we have done that on a regular basis. sometimes we will be very system specific in terms of what

needs to happen. we will not continue to go down this path if they knowingly violating human rights. now, there are times when the cost of the importance of the relationship with the service that we will pursue the relationship because u.s. lives, u.s. national security could hang in the balance. i have special authority that i can wave for a period of time any issues or concerns related to those violations, but it has to be at a very sort of high-level, in terms of importance of the relationship and we take these things very seriously. >> absolutely. likewise. going back to what i said at the beginning. we cannot defend anyone who is undermining our values simultaneously.

what i want from appearances like this is understanding of the difficult, ethical, and legal complex situations our office is collectively in every day of the week. it is about equipping them to deal with these issues. it is about recruiting officers of the highest moral literacy, and about being really clear. as far as the u.k. is concerned, we have the guidance and it is published online in a national record. you can see very clearly. wayink my experience is a of dealing with this issue longer-term is through engagement. so, you can make yourself feel better when you're dealing with a state that is unlike your own and just walk away. but first of all, you will not deal with the terrorist threat and second, you have lost influence for the better for the behavior of that partner. so, within the limits of practicality, we will work closely to try to create

capabilities, cultures, training, and dr. and. we hope they will respond to a way that is inside our norms and values. we have been doing this for a long time now and it has been effective. but it is ultimately, the key message needs to be that intervention is done on our terms, based on our intelligence. >> do you have anything you would like to say? >> i think in our country, everybody knows that we've gone through so many atrocities over the civil cycle of violence in the country. i think the issue of human rights is one of the very highest priorities in our organization. and we have the collaboration with other intelligence agencies, like the cia and in the u.k. an din australia, and in other countries as well. on human rights, we of a close collaboration with the united suren as well, to make

that what is the past is the past and it should not be repeated today. i think the people in afghanistan are watching very closely whatever we are doing. whatever we are doing it is observed and monitored. at the same time, there is a lot of effort to train and educate our staff, how they should the fighters were human rights during their work from day to day and at the same time, building the capacity at a level . and at the same time, we are whoo very keen to add to wha we are partnering with and working with. it is a two way channel. that one cannot impose something that violates the rights of people as a sovereign country and at the same time, to have a collaboration that will politically promote the rights,

human rights together. nick? human asis observed rights because it is the right thing to do, and because it is the ethical thing to do, but also because that is what the rules and regulations and laws of australia tell me that i must do. and i am not going to put any of my offices in a position where they are observing breaches of human rights. it wouldn't be fair. it wouldn't be right. it would be degrading of the morality organization. accountability arrangements. part of those are a position known as the inspector general of intelligence and security, an

office with -- i don't know if this translates in the united states, but the royal commission looks at everything and everything we are doing as they are doing it, or to look b ack. that is a process that works very well to regulate and understand the activities of asis. so, my answer really is the same as my three colleagues. the only difference in respect of john's answer is i don't have the right to a waiver for a period of time. there's no room for me to maneuver there, even for a pre eriod at all. >> i think we have time for one more quick question. why do we go back there. i think there is a hand up. kelly, nprary louise . thank you for taking questions.

minas for the three intelligence chiefs on stage. as you know, u.s. officials, including director brendan, say that edward snowden's disclosures have greatly harmed the u.s. national security because they have damaged trust and relations between u.s. intelligence services and their foreign counterparts? my question to you three is, is that true? do you share less with the united states then you once did? [laughter] >> i think we just went one question too far. [laughter] i think the real issue for us is we have to review some of the things that we are doing and maybe whether somebody should access to all of the information that they can to the damage of the foreign

services. is highly problematic. >> i think we have to review some of the things that we are doing and maybe, whether somebody should have that much access to all the information that they can do damage to the foreign other services. so, i think it is a lesson. learned acase we have lesson and we have fixed it. is i am would say amazed still that there is a debate about this in the united states. edward snowden damage your national security and very significant ways. [applause]

>> after that, i don't want to ask for another question. [laughter] >> but i do want to take advantage of the opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for each and every one of you. this is not something you do every day, and i realized that. but i do think it reflects the depth of the relationship we have with one another. the dependence we have him another in order to carry out our sponsor abilities and keep our citizens safe. that the increasing relationships i think, around the globe, that intelligence officials really recognize that as good as we are individually, we really need to be able to work as closely as possible with our allies. thank you so much, not just for appearing on the stage today. thank you to your officers for what they do on a daily basis. i can't think of better partners than those who served in the british, afghan, and australian intelligence services.

thank you so much. [applause] >> we're covering a hearing today on counterterrorism efforts by local jurisdictions. officials from local law enforcement agencies, including new york city's deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, testified before the house homeland security committee at 10:00 a.m. eastern live on c-span3. it live ato watch c-span.org or listen live on the c-span radio app. between 2007 and 2015, the price n incorporated epipen application rose by an estimated 456% from 300 -- from $100