>> well, i think our head of the intelligence community, jim clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimatedaking place in syria. >> you were d.i.a. at the time? >> yeah. do you think it was an intelligence failure? >> no, i don't. i really look at that and -- it's easy to -- i mean, i'll take one for the team, you know? the president has to decide who he's going to listen to and what information he's going to use. and i think that he was poorly advised to say that. >> the president makes no apologies for being measured and deliberate about committing u.s. military resources. >> benjamin rhodes is deputy national security adviser and close aide to president obama. do you think we should have been alerted to the threat that isis posed earlier? >> you know, it's always easy to look back and say you could have been alerted to a specific threat at a specific time, the question is then, what action would that have triggered? part of what the president has brought, his approach to national security, is some degree of restraint in saying that we're not going to chase every rabbit down every hole in

>> well, i think our head of the intelligence community, jim clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimateden taking place in syria. >> you were head of the dia at the time? >> yeah. do you think it was an intelligence failure? >> no, i don't. i really look at that and -- it's easy to. i mean, i will take one for the team, you know. the president has to decide who he's going to listen to and what information he's going to use and i think that he was poorly advised to say that. >> the president makes no apologies for being measured and deliberate about committing u.s. military resources. >> benjamin rhodes is a close aide to president obama. >> do you think we should have been alerted to the threat that isis posed earlier? >> you know, it's always easy to look back and say you could have been alerted to a specific threat at a specific time, but the question is then, what action would that have triggered? part of what the president has brought, his approach to national security is some degree of restraint in saying that we're not going to chase every rabbit down every hole in the middle east.

jim clapper also mentioned in the remarks this morning that there is no indication that isis even has the capability, the type of missile to bring down the aircraft at that altitude, pamela. >> yes, 30,000 feet, and it is interesting the disparity of the two officials, and arwa, where is the investigation standing there? >> well, both russian and e egyptian teams have been on the ground. the russians are arriving on saturday, and then going out to the crash site on sunday. now, one of the russian state news agencies quoting a russian investigator here in the egypt saying that the as of now, all tof the parts that they have tested, none of them have tested positive for any sort of explosives, and both the russian, and the e e jgyptian authorities were pleased to come out to say that the plane was not shot down. but even the groups that operate in the area have a maximum capacity from shoulder fired missiles to bring down an aircraft that is well below the 30,000 feet that the russian airplane was flying at. a medical source who has been dealing with the recovery of the bodies said that

department of defense said that the secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence, jim clappera great friend, are leaning forward and ensuring that we share every bit of information that we have with our partners in paris and brussels. >> okay. so this is something interesting. and i want to tag back to what catherine herridge was talking about because some people were wondering if there was a little bit of an intelligence gap in terms of one of the individuals we thought that he was in syria he has been able to travel quite easily back and forth. what's the problem with why we thought he was out of country and all of the sudden ends up dead in paris? >> it's my view that the french services, they are quite good. they are excellent but they are not perfect charlie hebdo attack that we saw. the french have conducted over 600 raids because they know some of these extremists and they have been interrogated either in belgium or france. i'm a little surprised but right now france is moving. they are moving militarily and they are moving their intelligence services are moving very ha

we heard this morning at a conference in washington held by defense one, jim clapper, head of the --r of national intelligence, addressed this question. he said that he so far has seen no indication of this -- that isis was involved. he even said he's seen no indication that isis possesses the kind of missiles that could be used to bring a plane down like this. i just interviewed nick rasmussen, head of counterterrorism agency, and they would review the manifest and see if there's any indication in the intelligence that says terrorists might have brought this plane down. he told me there's absolutely no sign of that just yet, john. >> evan perez for us in washington, working his sources. thanks so much, evan. >>> president obama is heading to new jersey today to push for prison reform and also efforts to help newly released convicts rejoin society. he's announcing new actions to help promote rehabilitation and reintegration including jobs training programs. the president is calling -- also calling to ban the box. some folks might know this, but this is the check box on federal job ap

it really isn't the wild west as a jim clapper will tell you, a lot of cyber activity is espionage andit's very difficult to establish norms for espionage. generally if you ain't cheating you ain't trying in espionage. so he didn't inside somebody's network and you can exfiltrate data, hey man, that's a great thing from your perspective. it's not very good for the people who has the data exfiltrate did. so we have a lot of work to do in this agenda to the internet of things that makes it even more difficult when a potential adversaries might be able to take over the vehicles were ships were airplanes. so this is an area in which we have a lot of attention and it is being, and i believe, i can assure you that it's from the president on down, we'll look at this very, very hard. >> we have time for about one more. >> hello, deputy secretary work. considering the complexity of the budgetary process and appropriations, what do you foresee as a way for the type of innovation that takes place in the private sector in the united states to have a convergence of technology sometimes to provide s

unfortunately, i think there's been a great deal of pressure brought to bear on central command by dni jim clapperhere's daily phone calls made between clapper and grove, basically my understanding is made to essentially skew the information a certain way. i know jim may not understand the makeup of central command, it's manned, the analysts are all dia. they're defense intelligence agency analysts on station. what happens is that information is put together based on what you said. it all comes in from the field. central command basically puts it together. the analysts make assessments and then pushed upstairs. cia does not get a vote on it. with that said, though, it goes to the pentagon to pentagon leadership. people like the chairman of the joint chiefs and the staff look at this. this information is hugely important to those who are planning and executing military efforts on the ground there. this is no smal >> oh, absolutely. general austin testified earlier yea in front of congress regarding some of this issue. and i do believe general austin finally forced to admit things like the syrian tr

the national intelligence director jim clapper and n.s.a. director admiral mike rogers assured us that the new law preserved a critical counterterrorism capability, but these paris attacks remind us just how brutal isis really is and that the terrorist threat persists. now, madam president, something that we ought to look at is as you look at who were the terrorists in paris, there were four of them that we knew of and that we had on our no-fly list andere citizens of european countries. what does that mean? that means that they didn't have to go into the embassy to get a visa so their background could be checked. they are one of the visa waiver countries, but there was another one of their citizens who was one of those terrorists that in fact was not on our no-fly list. i think the fact that the administration has already started clamping down doing the extra checks, we certainly want to keep the visa waiver program going, but it is a considerable potential threat if we're not checking and rechecking, and i think from what we learned out of

you would have jeh johnson and jim comey and general clapper spending all of their time going over individuallyee. >> well, i would hope that they would place this level of importance on this program as they have been saying, that they have full faith and confidence in the vetting process, that it would not allow terrorists or those who would pose a threat to the united states to sneak into our country through this refugee program. they have a lot of people that work for them that can work through this process but it's an important one. having their certification simply places a vote of confidence with the american people saying that they believe in their vetting process and that those who pose a threat to the united states would not be able to get here through that program. >> i'm just wondering as a member of the democratic caucus, you were probably in the caucus when steve israel was asking colleagues not to vote for this. the president has sent messages through his people. the president's concerns notwithstanding, you're still going to vote for it? >> i'm going to vote for it. i imagine man

jim, what is keeping these people up at night? what's keeping intel against officials applause at night? the biggest fear? >> that's the question i kept asking. director clappert the end, the variety of threats. a scale, the small players like isis capable of carrying out relatively small attacks, still deadly. but big players, superpower players like china, russia -- i didn't know this -- already have the ability through cyberattacks to shut down key u.s. infrastructure from afar, aviation, financial, et cetera. that scope of problems, it's multipolar writ large and that's what truly keeps them up at night. fascinating. worth the watch. >> sounds like you learned a lot, which means we learn a ton. do not miss "targeting terror inside the intelligence war "9:00 eastern right here on cnn. that is all for "the lead" today. i'm john berman. follow me on twitter, in for jake celebrating thanksgiving. "the situation room" with wolf "the situation room" with wolf blitzer is next. i in the name of my parents and my grandparents. i was getting all these leaves and i was going back generation after generation. you start to see documents and you see signatures of peopl