Transcripts For CSPAN3 Former DNI Director Clapper Delivers Remarks On Intelligence Gathering... 20170929

Good evening. Welcome to the Elliot School. And to this beautiful Conference Venue that we have available to us this evening. My name is ambassador laura holegate, here at the Elliot School. Emphasis on the visitor part. Im not here very often. But its a super treat to be here this evening to have a chance to introduce a true hero from our National Security community. And youve all seen his biography in the title of this evenings talk of a discussion on an intelligence career. And its hard to imagine anyone more suited to the topic of a career in intelligence than mr. James clapper. And its a great treat to have him here this evening. As you can see from his background, hes had over five years of experience in the Intelligence Community. In the military side, on the civilian side, inside and outside government, and overseas, as well. And maybe its not listed in his bio, but maybe someone can ask him a question to tell you about his 2014 visit to north korea. To rescue a couple of americans who got caught up there. I first met mr. Clapper in the 1990s when i was a baby bureaucrat in the pentagon, and he was head of Defense Intelligence agency. And i was, i confess, a little bit scared of him when i first encountered him. But my boss, ash carter, and the rest of the pentagon civilian leadership, held him in such high regard and respect that we were all grateful to have him part of the team. Most recently, i logged many hours with mr. Clapper in the white house situation room, discussing north korea, ebola outbreaks, serial chemical weapons and the whole gamut of National Security issues. These were in the format of the Principles Committee meeting chaired by ambassador susan rice and i was on the back bench. He was, of course, at the table. As some of you know because i know you do some role playing here, every principals Committee Meeting begins with an intelligence update so it was almost like a ritual prayer. Mr. Clapper would entone the latest update on whatever hard problem that was on the sit room table that day. It has been my pleasure over my entire career to work with incredibly talented members of the Intelligence Community and in particular in my last tour at the white house to work with people who work directly with mr. Clapper. I know i speak for not only myself but for legions of intelligence professionals in noting the integrity and humanity with which he has led the Intelligence Community from his various roles. He truly personifies the term servant leader. Its a special honor to be able to introduce you tonight. The other thing that shows the humility of that is i did a little bit of surveying some of his former teammates and they said a favorite saying of his is their job was to be down there in the engine room shoveling intel coal. So i am sure that we will have more than coal from the conversation that he offers us today. So it is my distinct honor to invite mr. James clapper to the podium. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thanks very much. Thanks very much. Its great to be here. I first think i should pay tribute both to dr. Holegate and as well the gentleman sitting to her right who im sure is known to many, chris koejen. Chris and i worked together when chris served with great distinction as the chairman of whats called the National Intelligence council. If any of you are looking for role models for public service, you only need look right here at laura and chris. What i thought id do tonight is and i think im going to try not to talk too long because what im really interested in is dialogue and questions and discussion. Ill talk about 20 minutes about some ruminations on the profession of intelligence. I do that by way of a commercial. Im writing a book. Reflecting on the 50plus years or so i spent in the profession of intelligence. So for the first time in a long time i had some time for contemplation. I thought id share some of those ruminations with you and hopefully if youre not already interested, at least consider public service, National Security and i think more specifically im here to recruit for intelligence. In doing so, just a couple of lessons i learned along the way. Again, ill just touch on some of these things and we can talk more about them in the q a period. My father was an Army Intelligence officer. He served in world war ii, specifically signal intelligence, collecting Enemy Communications and breaking codes and that sort of thing. He served during world war ii and during the korean war and then coincidentally, quite by accident, he and i served together in vietnam in 1965 and 66. So, in some ways i probably inherited the intelligence gene from him. In fact, first time in my life i knew i was going to be an Intelligence Officer i was about 12 years old. It was 1953, and typically military families when youre moving from duty station to duty station you move a lot in the military, parents would drop the kids at the grandparents and go on to the next place, find a place to live, get the house set up and come back and retrieve the kids from the grandparents. You just stayed out of the way. So in the summer of 1953, we had just returned from japan oh hokkaido, the northernmost island of japan, and we were on our way to ft. Devins, massachusetts. So my parents dropped my sister and me off at my grandparents in philadelphia. Grandkids love i have four grandkids now and you spoil them. The big thing was i could stay up as late as i wanted to watch television. Back in the day, back in 1953, television was still a novelty. Not like it is now. So anyway, one of my favorite shows on friday night was the schmidts beer mystery hour. They used to show old charlie chan movies. I loved them, from the 30s. One friday, the first friday i was there as a matter of fact, i decided about 12 30 in the morning i was going to surf. For all of you in this room, in those days when you surfed, you had to actually go up to the tv and turn the dial. I know thats a completely foreign concept but thats the way it worked. And you only had like 13 channels. Thats all. Black and white. Big huge television with vacuum tubes. Nothing like you have, flat screens and all that. Anyway, so im turning the dial between channel 4 and 5 and about halfway between those two channels i heard talking. Thats odd. I held the tv selector right there halfway between channel 4 and 5 and i held it for about 15 minutes and i figured out it was the Philadelphia Police department dispatcher. It was really interesting. So after a while it got tiresome, tiring holding that tv knob so i switched it to make sure i could get it back and then i ran out to the kitchen and got some toothpicks and stuck them in the selector dial so it would stay in that one position. So i guess i hacked my grandparents black and white tv set. Anyway, i started listening. It was just interesting. I stayed up until 2 30 or 3 00 in the morning. The next night i wanted to do the same thing and i got a map from the city of philadelphia and i started plotting police calls, where they would dispatch cruisers and all this sort of thing. And it didnt take too long. Im doing this night after night, bear in mind. I could figure out where the high crime areas were in philadelphia and all this sort of thing. Then, the police use these 10 codes like 104 and 106 and they have certain meanings. So i got a bunch of threebyfive cards and started writing these down and when i started figuring them out because you could figure out the context and they would compromise them and say what they really were, then i figured out that they had a call sign allocation system where Police Cruisers in each district would have a unique set of call signs that they would call the cruiser, whoever was riding in it. Then i also found out that the police officers, the lieutenant and above, had their own personal call signs. So i had these files set up and pretty soon just by the way they dispatched Police Cruisers, i figured out what the Police District boundaries were in the city of philadelphia. After about three weeks of this, i had a pretty good idea how the Philadelphia Police department worked. I didnt really know what i was doing. It just seemed a cool thing to do. So my dad who spent his life in the signal intelligence business, he and my mom come back to pick up my sister and me and my dad said, hey, what have you been doing . So i whip out my map with the Police Districts on it and the high crime areas. I whip out my i guess you call it metadata today but my threebyfive cards. 65 years ago, i still remember the expression on my dads base, my god, ive raised my own replacement. I told that story unfortunately for humor but also to make a serious point because it does illustrate, even though i didnt know what i was doing, it does illustrate the nature of the work in intelligence. Youre figuring out a problem where you dont know all the facts. You have to draw inferences. You have to corroborate your hypothesis, test your theory, and then at some point in time youll come up with, you know, thats a fact, thats a fact i can go with. Thats kind of what i did, even though i didnt know. But anyway, thats when i knew i was going to be in intelligence. Anyway, fast forward, i enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1961. Moved to the air force, was commissioned i went to the university of maryland, finished up there in 1963 and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the air force. I did 32 years in the air force, moved we moved 23 times in that 32 years. My last job in active duty, as laura indicated, i was director of dia. I was out of the government for six years but i was still working for the dwoft. I did the cobar towers investigation in 1996 which is when i got religion about terrorism. We can talk about that if you want. The gilmore commission, the commission headed by former governor jim gilmore of virginia on weapons of mass destruction. Served on the nsa, National Security Advisory Board for four years, and i taught intelligence at the graduate level. I came back in 2001, specifically two days after 9 11, as director of what was then called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency which is now the national gio spatial intelligence agency. Did that almost five years, was out for a couple months and bob gates who was then secretary of defense who had been the dci, the director of Central Intelligence when i was dia director asked me to come back and be the undersecretary of defense for intelligence which oversees all intelligence and dod. The deal was only 19 months and then he got held over and asked me to stay on so 19 months turned into three and a half years. I thought i was done and i was dra gooned one more time and i stopped that on january 20th and i can tell you it is a great time to be a former. I went to vietnam in that was my war, Southeast Asia, did two tours there, 65 and 66. I dont know how many of you may have seen at least some of the series, i think its on pbs, by ken burns on vietnam. And it is very well done, and having lived through that era, both the war itself and the aftermath of it which was a very traumatic time for this country. I really resonate with that series because i think it captured not only the facts but the atmosphere of it as well. For me personally, that was absolutely the worst year of my life, both personally and professionally. I hated the war. I became very disillusioned about it. I briefed for a time, general westmoreland who was the commander there, and then i really got disillusioned. So i was all ready to get out of the air force as soon as i could after my tour was up, came about this close, and for some reason somebody sort of plucked me out of anonymity and mentored me. It was a couple general officers that picked me out of the crowd for some reason. And that had a huge, huge impact on my life and my career. I just mention that because to emphasize the importance of mentoring. Say well, i dont have anybody to mentor. Well, i would commend to you and what id always tell people, young people in our agencies that if you see somebody that you think would be who is a role model for you, ask them to mentor you. Dont wait to be asked. There are no thinking senior, i dont care what the capacity, will turn you down because theyre going to be so flattered and honored that you asked. Thats a way to help yourself advance your career wherever you go. I just mention that very briefly because of the huge impact it had on me. Then i was back in actually texas for a while, went back volunteered to go back for a second tour which in contrast to the first one was very, very rewarding. I was flying Reconnaissance Missions on the back end of some old rickety c47s from world war ii and commanded a detachlt and flew about 73 combat support missions. My second tour was a great tour. So, after my second tour in Southeast Asia which ended in june of 1971, another mentor who planted me in the heady environment of the front office of the National Security agency at fort meade, maryland. I was at this point a young captain. I had about 8 years service, and i was working directly for turned out to be two threestar officers, two threestar directors. Theyre both dead now so i can talk about them. I bring this up because of the contrasting styles in their leadership. I served for the last year working for admiral then vice admiral noll guiler. He was followed by air force threestar general, director of nsa who was only there a year, then he got his fourstar and went onto another assignment in the air force. I bring this up just to mention the two contrasting leadership styles and i recount this in the book. Admiral guiler was a very demanding boss, very smart but he was extremely hard on people. What i watched happen, from my advantage as military assistant which meant i kept his calendar and tracked his papers and all that sort of thing, so i had a lot of opportunities to observe. And what i noticed is that that style of leadership is effective if youre very dictatorial, demanding and very harsh with people. It is effective. People will do exactly the minimum and nothing else, and dont ever depend on i watched this too. People were afraid to convey bad news to the director because they didnt want to incur they were afraid of incurring his wrath. He would fire people on the spot. So then the next director came in. Admiral guiler left and general phillips came in and he was the exact opposite. The antithesis. 180 degrees out. Very quiet, very introverted, very courteous with everyone, very gracious. The impact was amazing to see the difference in the way people reacted to that. People would bring ideas to him. People were not afraid to tell him, hey, this is screwed up, you need to do something about it. They werent reluctant to do that. Now, both styles of leadership are effective, they both work. So fast forward 20 years and now im a threestar general and im now a director of an intelligence agency, in this case, dia, Defense Intelligence agency. So what i tried to do is remember that experience, both positive and negative, and yeah, there are times when you do have to be tough with people, but by and large what i found in my 50plus years in the intel business is people want to do the right thing. They want to do the mission. They want to do it well and they want to excel in it. You just have to create an environment where that can happen. Leadership and intelligence ultimately, penultimately i guess is about motivating others to use their intellects. Thats one of the great things from a diversity standpoint about the Intelligence Community. Its all about your brain. It doesnt matter what your ethnic group is, your gender, your sexual preference, none of that matters. Its your mind is what counts in the Intelligence Community and the interesting work that you have the opportunity to engage in. I sort of consider that kind of a leadership laboratory. It will be in the book but i thought id mention it because in the context of leadership. Looking back i think the one factor that has changed the Intelligence Community, the thing that has changed the Intelligence Community more than anything else looking back historically is technology. Its not i mean, when we had traumas like 9 11, yes, that had an impact. Reorganizations which i think are highly overrated, yeah, but what has really historically changed the business of intelligence is technology. I say that in the context of adversary technology, what are the adversaries doing and our own to cope with it. So fast forward on the six and a half years i spent as director of National Intelligence, my focus was on integration of the community and that was the central message from the 9 11 commission which was convened which chris served on, was convened to examine what happened and what went wrong in the 9 11 attacks. So one of the major recommendations that came out of the commission was their view that the nation needed a director of National Intelligence. First they called it the nid. The National Intelligence director, acronyms arent very appealing, the nid . Anyway, it came out dni. The notion was to have someone as a fulltime responsibility to champion integration across the community. U. S. Intelligence community is the premiere capability on the planet. Its huge in total, 70 billion plus if you count the dod and the National Intelligence program. That is larger than all but maybe three of the cabinet departments, three or four of them, as a program. Its huge. Its a major enterprise to run. 16 components. 6 agencies including now the fbi which is very much a part of the u. S. Intelligence community. So how to integrate that, draw on the complimentary strengths of each of the agencies. Thats what i worked on during the six and a half years i was there. Its a neverending journey. Youre not all done with integrating by close of business friday. I think the high, the low and the most interesting and we can talk about it during the q a, i think the high for me was being present in the white house situation room during the raid to take down osama bin laden. That was an amazing, amazing event. The low i think has to be although lots of people dont agree with me about this, was Edward Snowden and the damage that he continues to have caused. We can talk about that as well. I understand the issues with domestic surveillance and if thats all he had exposed i could probably be a lot more forgiving, but he exposed so much else and did so much damage that had absolutely nothing to do with domestic surveillance. The most interesting experience for me i think was my trip to North Vietnam excuse me, freudian slip. North korea in november of 2014, i was on a mission to bring out two of our citizens who had been imprisoned in hard labor there. It was a fascinating experience, particularly for me since i had served 30 years previous in korea as the director of intelligence for u. S. Forces in korea. I became an amateur student of the peninsula after that so it was on my professional bucket list some day to go to north korea. Let me conclude these remarks with some sort of philosophical observations ill call them. Maybe sounds a little pretentious. First of all, why do we do intelligence . Why does any nation state do intelligence . Simple answer is to reduce uncertainty, reduce uncertainty for a policy maker whether a policy maker is sitting in the oval office or if i can stretch the metaphor, oval fox hole. Doesnt make any difference. What youre trying to do is to reduce uncertainty and reduce the risk, never eliminate it, rarely based on intelligence. But you can certainly reduce it. That was lauras metaphor about i used to use this a lot on the hill when members would like to beat me up about some policy they didnt like in the administration. I used this metaphor on more than one occasion. I just said, senator, im just down the engine room shoveling intelligence coal. People up on the bridge get to drive the ship, decide how fast it goes. They arrange all the deck chairs on the decks, and what direction the ship goes in. I dont do any of that. Im just down here in the engine room shoveling intelligence coal. Anyway, reduce uncertainty. Why is it a great profession . Well, i guess from that early philadelphia vignette with my grandparents, i just found it always interesting and an intellectual challenge not only for the work, not only for, you know, what is the adversary doing in trying to figure out the adversary capabilities and intent which is always very hard, i never got bored with it. I think thats why i kind of stuck with it. I will tell you as i mentioned briefly, i was out of the government for six years. Money was great but i just never got the psychic income i got from public service, and so when i was asked to come back in 2001, i jumped at it, although my wife was not too pleased at the time. Another issue that often comes up is intelligence ethical. Of course, you know, the whole notion of spying, i dont even like that word, you know, the spies. Always cringed when i was referred to as the head spy. Theres something sleazy about that, i dont know. Its only three letters so the media likes it. I do think it is a noble calling, and it all stems, i think, from the values of this nation and what we have stood for. Theres lots of bad people out there, bad nation states and bad nonnation states that dont agree with that and would want to attack it. So i think it is a noble thing to participate in keeping this nation safe and secure. Now, i may not be objective about it but its something that was beat into me, or instilled in me is a better word, by my father. There is the issue of something i wrestle with, particularly in the last ten years in the two jobs i had, was safety and security on one hand and Civil Liberties and privacy on the other. You have to reconcile both. You have to do both at the same time. Always a challenge and i will tell you frankly after six and a half years of dni, i get mixed messages about that from the American Public. In the postsnowden environment, too much government surveillance, too much big brother, until we have an attack of some sort. Well then you should have been more invasive. I saw that happen time after time after time when the pendulum would swing back and forth. Boston marathon was a case in point. We had three igs do a postevent critique, homeland security, department of justice and my ig. And the bottom line was the fbi did everything it should have, abided by all the rules but it should have been more invasive. Thats kind of the mixed messages that we get. I think there is, as citizens, theres a certain amount of sacrifice for the common good. Its why we all stop at stop signs most of the time and why we stop at red lights. Its really for the common good. I spoke about three or four years ago at a trade thing, and after a particularly frustrating week of this, i said, you know, we have a new paradigm in intelligence, and what the American Public expects from the Intelligence Community is to provide timely, accurate, relevant and participatory intelligence all the time, dont miss, no mistakes, but do that in such a way that theres no risk and do it in such a way that if a Foreign Government finds out about it they wont be mad, and do it in such a way that there isnt even a scintilla of a suggestion of jeopardy that anyones Civil Liberties and privacy, ours and foreign citizens. We call that new paradigm immaculate collection. I need it semihumorously but it makes a point about the difficulty of being so precise given the global interconnection represented by the internet, its where everybody communicates, and the difficulty of sorting out good people and bad people, hundreds of millions of people conducting billions and billions of innocent transactions, but among them are the bad people, nefarious people, doing bad things. And how do you isolate it isnt just one needle in one hay stack. Its thousands of haystacks and by the way, if a straw of hay starts to convert into a needle, you better catch that. I may be reflecting a little bit of my bias as being from within. Let me stop there. Ive probably gone over time here. I think were going to do hopefully do some q a. Otherwise ill just go home early, i guess. Chris . [ applause ] thank you so much and i want to reciprocate your very find remarks by noting it was just a great honor to serve you and serve in the position i held for five years. Ive learned so much from working with you and for you. So lets turn to questions here, and id just simply ask you to stand and wait for the microphone and identify yourself and keep your question brief, please, so that we can have as many questions as possible. I see a first hand here, and please wait for the microphone. My name is joseph. Im a senior got that bright light there. I cant see very well. Sorry about that. Mine is i guess more of a policy question. How successful do you think general Michael Flynns efforts in afghanistan to reorganize and rebolster the Intelligence Community efforts there helped the mission in afghanistan and do you think its effects are felt today and it will ultimately be successful . I didnt hear the question. Is it about afghanistan . The question was with respect to general flynns report about how to improve intelligence in afghanistan and whether its had lasting effects. Well, i had quite a bit of discussion with mike flynn about that when he put it out. I was the undersecretary in the pentagon and first of all, the basic thesis of that report was kind of the pogo syndrome. We weighed the enemy and its ourselves. What this laid out was the need for great detail fidelity about individual villages in afghanistan, understand the political dynamics, who the elders were, who the bad guys were and all that in each individual village. That is actually been the domain of the resident Intelligence Officer there who is i think he was then colonel flynn. I dont know, maybe he was a general. The point was, what he was complaining about was under his own control. Its not feasible for the national Intelligence Community to define whats going on in village x. Only if youre there on the ground. And he had a lot of intelligence resources. So, you know, certainly cultural i guess you call it cultural intelligence, understanding the broad dynamics of afghanistan, understanding particularly the tribal nature of afghanistan, those are very important things, but when you get down to the level of detail that he was asking for, i think it was kind of on him to attend to that. So i dont know that it had some profound impact on certainly what was going on back in the United States, if thats your question. All right. Well try over on this side all the way toward the aisle there. No, thats you. Yeah, please, go ahead. Hi. Im i wanted to ask about when people are collecting intelligence and putting themselves at risk. How do you evaluate the cost of an Intelligence Commission when you dont know exactly what youre going to find . Thats a great question and thats the sort of thing we get asked every year, or i did every year by the congress. We spent all this money on intelligence or this particular Intelligence System, whether its an overhead collector and all that and how do you evaluate the worth of it. This is a timehonored challenge in intelligence. How much is a pound of intelligence worth . Well, the answer is it depends. One of the difficulties of answering that question today is that theres a temporal aspect of intelligence. So a piece of intelligence collected today will have could have a different value next week, next month or next year or five years from now. This is particularly true in the imagery business which has great importance for history. And so it is we have all kinds of systems for evaluating the performance of Intelligence Systems but theyre largely quantitative. This system produced this number of reports. And in the case of the most subjective form of intelligence probably is human intelligence, classically, historically, human intelligence. Always difficult to grade it. Sometimes you get a gem there and other times the source turns out to be worthless. So when the mention of risk versus gain plays in your mind big time, of course with human collectors, many of whom take great risk to recruit an asset and collect intelligence, and this is extremely risky in a place like russia or china, a denied highly surveilled country. Its a great question. Im not sure i have a glib answer for you because, as i say, it depends. Lets get a question from the back on the right side here, please. My name is jake. So you said earlier that technology is a predominant driver in driver of change in the Intelligence Community. To what extent is social Media Technology in social media in intelligence a driving force in how the Intelligence Community approaches gathering, open Source Intelligence . Well, i think i understood the essence of the question, how does technology play in open source context . And in particular social media as a driver of intelligence collection and analysis. Well, its huge. That was when the russians moved into ukraine, that was a crucial piece of source of intelligence for us. All soldiers are alike, they got to take pictures and send them home to mom and their girlfriends. Well, russian soldiers are the same way. If they stand in front of things, we get intelligence from that. Its hugely important. Of course thats a recent phenomenon and in my day you didnt have we didnt know what the term meant, social media. Its hugely important and this is one case where we absolutely must apply some automation in order to and we are. Weve made steady investments in social media as a subset of what we call open source, that which is available openly. So it is a growing growing importance of exploiting social media. We got into this a bit, not as in depth as it is now, but the use of our own social media as a part of the Russian Campaign to interfere with our election. So its very important that we understand what is going on in the social media world. Okay, ive called on three men in a row and its time to change it up. Yeah, its a diverse crowd here. Please. Hi, im sarah, a freshman in school and i was wondering if you saw any correlation between the intelligence work that you did in the military versus the intelligence work that you did versus like in the government. Actually not. The question was, is there much difference between what i did when i was in the military for 32 years in intelligence versus the 16 years as a civilian. Really not. The basic principles are the same and understanding the intelligence process is the same. Obviously when i was in the department of defense when i was director of dia, focused much more on military topics, but in general, no, there wasnt not much difference. The customers are different but the intelligence process and all that is not. Okay, over here, please. Sir. Good evening, sir. My name is henry and im a sophomore here in the elliott school. My question is regarding on the uncertainty that you previously mentioned. One of the biggest uncertainty is north korea, the lack of information led to many miscalculations and missed estimation, especially on north Koreas Nuclear weapon plan. So my question is, in your opinion, what else should the United States Intelligence System do in order to clear in order to collect more precise information in north korea . Thank you very much. Well one thing that would help is if we were there. Thats actually a serious comment. When i visited there in 14 ive been an advocate in this before. I believe we should establish an intersection in pyongyang, much as we had in havana for decades to engage with a government we didnt recognize. And i think we need to do the same thing with the dprk and theres several reasons for that. This is not a reward for bad behavior by the way. This is very pragmatic. One is to have an inresidence diplomatic presence in pyongyang. Not an embassy. We didnt have an embassy in havana. And i have to think that there might have been a chance that things might have turned out differently for on the otto warmbier, the student, had there been a presence there to bug the North Koreans and demand access to him, those kinds of things, and we werent there to do that. I obviously cant make that case but ive thought about that. Thats a tragic thing that happened to that poor young man. Secondly of course and i cant go into detail here but certainly how should i put it. It would enhance our understanding of north korea if we were there. Ill just let it go at that. Maybe most important of all is a conduit for getting information into north korea. I dont find and i guess while im on the subject of north korea you shouldnt have asked me that question. I can go on for days about it. But the notion of demanding denuclearization as a condition for negotiation is crazy. They are not its a great ideal. Id love Nothing Better than for the North Koreans to say, okay, were all done with Nuclear Weapons, but that isnt going to happen. As i learned when i was there, they go to school on what happens in the rest of the world and so they watched Muammar Gaddafi in libya and he negotiated away his weapons of mass destruction and it didnt turn out so well for him. And the North Koreans understand very well that if they dont have Nuclear Weapons or the optic of having Nuclear Weapons, it doesnt matter if they work, they have created what they want which is deterrence and attention. They crave the attention. So when embassy haley says they are begging for war, no, theyre not begging for war, theyre begging for attention. They want the recognition. They want to be included as that tenth nuclear country. And all that that demands. So as far as denuclearizing, that train, im afraid, left the station a long tile ago. I believe their demand to negotiate a peace treaty is not unreasonable. All we have there right now is an armistice. If youre sitting in pyongyang looking south, you see a very, very formidable, overwhelming conventional military force in the form of the republic of korea armed forces, modern, well trained, well equipped, much better fed, buttressed by the United States. So they see no way to match that conventionally. Ergo, for them their Nuclear Weapons, thats their life insurance. Thats their ticket to survival. So theyre not going to give them up. We just, i think, have to recognize that and try to negotiate with them, and i think the quid here, the quid pro quo would be they need to stop testing underground and stop the missile shots. Of course, we all look to china because, yes, china has the most economic leverage over north korea, no question about it. And i can attest, i was in china a year ago june and had a long session, a long series of meetings with secretary mung who oversees their intelligence operations. And yes, the chinese do not like kim jongun. They dont like his behavior, they dont like the underground tests. They dont like the missile tests. They dont like the thad deployment. What they dont like even more is the thought of north korea violently imploding and the loss of what is a strategic imperative for them in the form of a buffer state in the form of the dprk. So theyll put the screws to the North Koreans, they will, but only to a point. Lets mix it up here. Yes, please, on the aisle. Hi. My name is aditi. Im a student here at the elliott school. Im just wondering to what extent in your opinion does the private tech sector in america have a responsibility for the negative transactions that are occurring on their platforms or at least to collaborate with u. S. Government intelligence and Law Enforcement . Can you help me here, chris . Yes. The question is with respect to what is the responsibility of the high tech private sector to cooperate with the government, Law Enforcement and intelligence . Excellent question. Thats been an issue. It certainly was for us and of course in the aftermath of Edward Snowden revelations was a chilling of ill put it that way of the Historical Partnership between industry and the Intelligence Community. Some of that is understandable. This is another case though where we its like the safety and security, Civil Liberties and privacy. There has to be a balance somewhere. I hear, you know, i understand tim cook, head of apple who takes a very absolutist view. What happened after the revelations of Edward Snowden that the rate of commercial encryption accelerated by about seven years. In other words, what we thought we were going to see in 2020 we saw immediately. And of course the terrorists particularly, regrettably, went to school on a lot of this and of course bought into whatsapp and other secure applications which we cant break. So i think there needs to be a serious discussion, serious thought given to how much of a pass are you comfortable is the American Public comfortable with giving to the likes of child pornographiers, human traffickers, murderers, et cetera, who can use secure communications. We lost a lot of capability to track terrorists plots overseas because of that. And so were not there. Were in a bad place. What we had decided, we, the last administration, was that we were going to pick within the Intelligence Community, have director jim comey who was, we thought, would be staying on, and that he would be the lead spokesman for the governments cause because he was a great public speaker, and we thought the most compelling arguments here for having some sort of motives with industry would be the Law Enforcement argument which is probably in the minds of many people more than National Security. Well director comeys gone, unfortunately, so i dont know where were at there. I just wish that the energy, the innovativeness, the creativity of the industry would be brought to bear on this problem. How can we do both, guarantee peoples privacy. I like my privacy too by the way, you know. Just because i was a head spy, thats important to me too. But i think were out of balance right now. I will tell you this is a huge issue overseas, particularly in the commonwealth countries who come here regularly and go to Silicon Valley and appeal to them for help. Of course, the United States is still dominant in this whole business. Most of the internet infrastructure in the world is either owned or controlled or influenced by the United States. I get all the counterarguments to this, i really do, but theres got to be a better way. Okay. Well go all the way in the back. I cant see you but i want to give i apologize to you. One of the legacies of a long time in the air force has been bad on my ears. I dont hear so well. Thats why i have chris translate for me. Hi. My name is is elizabeth. Please stand up so we can see you and hear you. Yes, i am. You might be in the light. My name is is elizabeth and i am a graduate student here at the elliott school. Thank you so much for your service in the Intelligence Community. My question is, in light of being a past dni, what for the next generation of Intelligence Officers, in addition to mentoring, would you provide advice on going into the field today . Thats a great question. One thing i would tell you forgive the commercial is if you are interested in working in the Intelligence Community, if you have any opportunity for an internship and most all of the agencies particularly offer internships to college students, i would look into that and i would apply to every one of them. Too many people, young people say i want to go to the cia because its cool. Well yeah, its cool, but theres lots of great work and many, many challenges in all the other agencies. The main thing you want to think about is just getting on with one of them because there is mobility once you can move around once you get there but the big thing is to get on, get your clearance which these days is getting harder and harder. The reason i tell you that is because you dont have to necessarily go to the government. You can also serve as a contractor working for the government. And that clearance you get, and particularly if you intern someplace, go to nsa or one of the agencies and intern, that will carry over with you. That will mean more just to be crass about it, means more money for you if you go to work as a contractor. To apply to everything. Get on someplace. The second piece of advice is be patient. One of the difficulties were running into because of our problems with clearances is that people have to wait a long time. Well, if youre graduating from college and youve got a student loan to pay off and if youre married and have obligations like that you cant wait around. And thats on us. Not me any more but a problem for the Intelligence Community. You know, im going through an interesting experience right now because my grandson this really makes me feel old is an i. T. Contractor at cia. Hes about a 53year age difference and we had a lot of interesting conversations about how he approaches it. Hes 23, 24. And we have a lot of interesting discussions about life in the Intelligence Community and how he approaches things starting out in his career versus when i started 50plus years ago. And there arent actually a lot of differences. I mean, hes patriotic, committed, mission focused, all that, but hes a millennial, needs lots of feedback, you know. And the one thing that we need to be able to do in the Intelligence Community needs to do i believe is promote mobility. In other words, come in and serve some where in the Intelligence Community and go to industry for a while and then come back and we need to be able to facilitate that so its not a huge gauntlet you have to run from a clearance standpoint and both you and the government will be better for it if we can promote more mobility. Okay. Please all the way over on the aisle, the gentleman with the glasses. Hi, my name iss is luke and im a student at the elliott school. I want to ask you, given the past interference in our election, do you think the nature of Domestic Intelligence im sorry of the Domestic Intelligence gathering, do you think thats how can you speculate thats going to change . Well, the way were organized, this is a direct outgrowth of 9 11 and the changes in the Intelligence Community after that and one of the big changes was the fbi becoming part of the Intelligence Community, so there are thousands of billets in the fbi that are funded by intelligence. And the fbi occupies a unique position because it straddles both the Law Enforcement arena as well as intelligence and so my general counsel used to wash my mouth out with soap when i even used the term Domestic Intelligence because thats a very charged term in this country. But we sort of look to the fbi and now with the other very Important Organization is department of homeland security. So in the run up to the election when we saw what was going on as more time went by we understood better what the russians were doing, the prime interlochters with the domestic side meaning the voting apparatus which of course is managed at the state and local level. The federal government doesnt manage the voting apparatus if i can call it that throughout this country. So the natural interface was the combination of the fbi, director comey and his people and jay johnson who was then the secretary of homeland security, who interacted with election commissions, secretaries of state, whoever in each state was in charge. And, you know, this is a profound threat to this country is the russian interfering in our political process. They were wildly successful with relatively modest investment of resources. They had huge success. Theyre first objective was to sew discord and discontent in this country and they succeeded very well. Secondly, great personal animus toward Hillary Clinton from vladimir putin. Mr. Trump would be a better for them and so they tried to help him win and regardless of what he says, the evidence for this which we couldnt expose for understandable reasons was overwhelming and thats why we had such a high confidence level when we put our Intelligence Committee assessment on the 6th of january. Very high confidence about it and this is what the American Public needs to be concerned about because this is going to continue and the russians dont care, by the way. Next time theyll stick it to the republicans. They dont care. And we as a people ought to really be alarmed about this and i worry that all the investigations and whether it was collusion or not, that elpan out what worries me the most as a former dni and now as a citizen is what the russians the success theyve enjoyed and theyre going to continue with and we as a people need to be alert to that. Okay. Over here, yes, please. Maam, yeah. Hello, im madelyn and im a junior here at the elliott school. My question is, what consequences do you foresee rising from the kurdish independence push or more broadly u. S. Support of various kurdish groups in the region specifically on our relationships with turkey and iraq . The questions about u. S. Support for turkish groups and what are the ramifications of that particularly with u. S. Relations with iraq and turkey i think you said. Kurds, the kurds. Thats been a very tricky course or at least it was when i was in the government. Because, you know, the kurds were our great fighters. Theyre also interested in pursuing their own independence and of course we have very difficult line to walk by we wanted to maintain good relations with president erdogan and from his vantage, you know, the organization every occurred was somehow connected with the pkk which of course for them is a terrorist group and the turkish government worries a lot more about the pkk then they do isis. So we didnt have exactly a confluence of consistency. So it was a very delicate balance to engage with the occurrkurds who are great fighters but in doing so not incur the wrath of the turkish government and so there are i dont have a good answer for you. Its a very difficult line to navigate. Okay. Over to this side, sir. Yeah, you. Thank you. Director clapper, again, thank you for coming over here to gw. My question is about north korea. Im sure as the highlight of your career, ironically happens to be the highlight of my career, so when you were going on your way to north korea you stopped through Traverse Air Force base because i was Staff Sergeant koebl working in the office at the air force base. Its mccord. On the way back but on the way there i believe you did stop i think it was mccord. Mccord is on the way back you refueled at travis on the way there and your staff came in, i got to talk to them, jamgz clappers on board and im a huge nerd so i was very excited. You didnt get off the plane but its fine. [ laughter ] your question, please. Theres a reason for that. Very proud to meet you now, the question was what was that process like working with the dprk and what what is something you learned and took away from that . Well, everything you read about how what a bizarre place north koreas its all true, its really bizarre place. Well, in terms of what i learned there was the what blew me away frankly was the siege mentality and par annoya that prevails among the leadership there. I wasnt prepared for that and everywhere they look they see they see enemies and so thats why this sort of bellicose rhetoric right now is not good. And so ive been extrapolating my experience when i was there three years ago to whats going on now. And the president of the United States has advisers around him who can tell him what the implications are. Kim jongun doesnt have any advisers. He has a bunch of sycophants that are all yes men. Youll see these pictures of kim jongun, hes got these generals bedecked with all these medals and they got notks dutifully writing down everything he says, the price for pushing back in north korea is kind of high, you know. You push back with him you get executed, which is very effective management technique i might add. So what i worry about is theres one guy there, kim jongun, and i had no idea nor does anybody else, what is it thats going to light his fuse and i would much prefer what secretary mattis did about six missile tests ago where he simply said we note the North Koreans have tested a missile, we have no further comment, which drive the North Koreans crazy because what they crave is that attention and kim jongun is just eating this up, having us direct dialogue with the president of the United States. When i went there, i had a very pro forma letter from president obama to give to them to give to kim jongun. Didnt say anything, i was i was appointed as his envoy and it would be a very positive gesture if the dprk government would release our two citizens. Thats all it said. They really wanted that letter, just the fact that the president of the United States addressed the letter to the head of the dprk. That was a huge deal to them. And that, by the way, was the only leverage i had or that i felt i had and when i gave that letter away i was really nervous. I had no guarantee the main mission was to get those two people out. Incidentally i never heard from either one of the two for until i was in seoul on the 26th of june and i was interviewed by korean newspaper and this interviewer from the paper said, she had a message from kenneth bay who was one of the two citizens who was a missionary in north koreas, trying to do good and he got arrested for it and hed when we got him out he had been in hard labor for two years. He was actually in very good shape. He sent me a wonderful message expressing his appreciation for getting him out and all that sort of thing. And ill tell you when i watched the family reunions, it was very impactful. I went to the cockpit and watched and quite heartwrenching to see, you know see them reunited with their families. It was great. Okay. Yes, a question, here, maam. Hello. My names im a freshman an the Elliot School. My question is regarding cybersecurity and the spinterne of things. Youve talked about how Cyber Attacks are the number one threat facing our country. And with the number of internet of things devices that collect personal information increasing exponentially, what do you think firms can and should do to better arm themselves against the cyber threat . This is never ending thing. We will never achieve cyber nirvana. The reason is because the internet when it was created, the Founding Fathers didnt think about security. So it is fundamentally flawed. If you have, if youre connected to the internet. Theres an vulnerability. We have to understand that. Both from an institutional and personal level, you know, doing the simple things. Of hygiene. One of the thipgs you did was train our employees on spear fishing. To recognize bad emails and dont open attachments. The only way id get that to improve is wed to tests once a month and keep scores. Id throw the scores up at the weekly sta lly staff meeting. That got the leaders attention. Simple things like that. Be religious about patches. Change passwords and password 1234 doesnt work. Its the simple things that get us in trouble and a lot of these massive breaches, the opm and all these other things were cause caused by failure to abide by simple hygiene. You have to do it personal and individually. Whats really frustrating like the Equifax Breach where an organization youre counting on to protect your personal data and they dont. And that is you know, its really agreenlgous. Institutionally, what i saw particularly when i served in pentagon, we were engaging with industries as in early 2000s. And we get you know, the ceos in from these companies. And when they would, when you could show them a threat and oh, by the way, this could affect your bottom line, that always got their attention. They would apply the necessary, reason is, it costs money to keep your network secure. It costs money. So, theres no Silver Bullet here. I will tell you that its almost a waste of attack if we within the talk about with standing a counterretaliation. So fundamentally, we must attend a defense first and arguing about our cyber policy, it doesnt matter because unless we have confidence in our ability to with stand an attack, we shouldnt bother. The problem is we think very legalistically and precisely and surgically. You have to anticipate a greater retaliation. Unless youre sure you can withstand it, dont bother. Okay. Back on the island. The gentleman. Hi, my name is michael. Im a second year master student here. Imt to thank you both for your countless years of service. How do we go about restoring faith and trust in Public Institutions particularly when the Intelligence Community is at such a disadvantage when its failures are known, but successes are unknown. Excellent question. I think it came across to me after snowden because one of the lessons you had to take away from that is the Intelligence Committee which is secret institution. It works with secrets. Has to feg yur out ways to be more transparent. One of the things we did was start declassifying fisa court judges. Its a unique institution unlike any other. No other country in the world has that. They sit for two weeks then r rotate in and out to address the applications. There needs to be a better understanding of how that works. Of all the safeguards that are built in to overseeing what the Intelligence Community does. All three branches of government. Oversee the Intelligence Community sochlt the combination of you know, declassifying as much as we can. Now, when you do that, transparency has a double edged sward because the adversaries go to school on that. So, theres also a risk gained judgment you make. What actually are we going to damage here if we expose this to the public. I felt for example exactly the republican you infer, that in order to were going to have to be more transparent. The most controversial thing snowden exposed t Business Records metta data that nsa stored. From three providers. And that was a judge to be, a deep, dark secret. Im convinced and this is in the aftermath of 9 11. If you had a foreign caller calling someone in the United States, it would be interesting to know if this foreign caller is involved in a terrorist plot and hes talking to somebody in the United States, it would be good to know about it. Before a plot which we didnt do with 9 11. Im convinced that i dont think there have been any more anxiety about it than there is about the fact that the fbi maintains hundreds of millions of fingerprint files on innocent americans. But Everybody Knows they do it and they know the purpose for it. And its open and known. Thats what we should have done with the 51215 program. I think it had more to do with two things. The shock of the manner in which it was revealed. And then of course the media narrative that developed, which try as we might, wektd not counter. Okay, this i think will be our last question. Maam on the aisle. Im on a roll. Thats okay, im old enough for that. So, my question is partially north korea focused as well. Thats my background. My name is freedom. I am a first year master student in International Policy and law and a navy veteran. With the tool set that we currently have, with the mind set we have in this administration, and the way he wants to renegotiate or relook at the iraq nuclear arms agreeme agreement. Iran. Iran, sorry. What tool set dupg would be helpful for this administration when negotiating with north korea for something similar because im on the same page with you and in the second part, if you put a travel ban on North Koreans. And the concern i have with this is most North Koreans that do leave north korea are refugees. Of whom i work with a lot of. Are refugees. Refugees from north korea. So, the travel ban for them is something a little bit more, its definitely more impacting a direct sector of the north korean population. Thanks for your service. Second, i think its instructive to look at iran and north korea right now. And what it, one thing it illustrates is its much easier to negotiate with a company that doesnt have a Nuclear Weapon to prevent it from getting one than to from a country thats going to get one. Thats why id be an advocate for acknowledging the fact that North Koreans are not going to negotiate a way, at least not immediately. Maybe some day in nirvana land. But theyre not immediately going to negotiate a way. The to Nuclear Weapons. Theyre just not. They know they lost whatever leverage they had. So, if the administration decides to desert fi the plan of action with iran, i just hope they have a plan b. Because the iranian are come plying with it. Now, you know, iranian get critiqued because theyre not complying with the spirit, whatever that means. Just remember, they have shipped out of their country, 25,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Theyve cemented their plutonium in iraq. Theyve moth balled their centrifuges and an unprecedented intrusive surveillance regime maintained by the Atomic International energy agency. I just hope we give serious thugt giving that up because we will never refompl the coalition that imposed sanctions on iran. That will never happen. By the way, there are five other countries involved in this agreement besides us. Its a p5 plus 1. Permanent members of the u u. N. Security council, russia, china, uk and us plus germany. Theyre not interested in pitching out of that agreement. I fail to understand how pitching out of this agreement is going to make israel safer for example. So for me, it was a simple propositi proposition. Which would you rather have. A state sponsor of terrorism with a Nuclear Weapon capability of a state sponsored terrorism without a Nuclear Weapons capability. And for me, i sort of pick the latter. Thats what we got right now. The agreement was not designed to make iran a shining city on a hill. That was not the point. Have we tried to negotiate a comprehensive feel good thing and end irans nefarious behafr javier in the region. So we took away, the last administration did. I show them coal. I wasnt involved with the policy on this. Just speaking out as a private citizen. I also wonder, the focus on whether or not iran is agreeing with the spirit of the jcpoa while russia is abjectly violate ing the imf treaty, the a treaty approved by the United States senate. You never hear about that. Sorry. Director clapper. With respect to refugees. And the travel ban. Well, the, put it this way, the cynical interpretation, they put up nonmuslim states. I think last year, there were ten North Koreans that came to the United States. Thats kind of ceremonial. Most defectors in my day, it was big deal. We got two or three defectors in north korea. Back in 85, 86, 87. Now, they come by the hundreds. Most all of them want to gravitate to the south. Theres lots of reasons for that. There are Strong Family bonds. By the way, one venn yet i just thought of, if theres any room for optimism here in north korea was my principal, i had go four star rank, one was a political four star, minister of state security who had been executed and the other was chief of their recognizance bureau, amal gamble sbel where she knows. My main host. Really nasty guy. When we got our two guys out, we went through this bizarre amnesty granting ceremony at the hotel and got our two guys change of clothes, we were booking. So i had a i had a minister of securi security, sort of my escort to the airport. The translator, a north korean with a british accent. This guy said, well, if you, come out to north korea. Sure, if i was invited, id come back. Ha what a tragedy it was. Even their language is getting separate because the south koreans have all these western terms that have invaded the korean language and the republic, not so in the north. So even the language is getting disparate. Then the minister of state security guy, he had been to the south korea, been to seoul. At times when the north and south had met together. Made what i thought was a telling statement. Id been to seoul and seen whats there. Hes got his button on and that sort of thing. I thought it was a telling comment. Speaking of the button, thats another point. Withjongun. Hes not only the head of state as his father, the founder of the dprk. They are also regarded as deities in the north. So when President Trump insults kim jongjongun, hes insultin their god. They play all this in north korea to deliberately to incite the people because as i was reminded when i was there, kim jongun is a deity. Director clapper, certainly wanted to thank you for your 50 years of service and your visit to the Elliot School today and a small token of appreciation for you, a gw sweatshirt. Oh. I need one of those. Freedom. Saturday on cspan, the march for Racial Justice in the nations capitol. Civil Rights Groups are organizing a march to the National Mall for a rally calling for racial equality in the United States. Cspans live coverage of the event begins at 2 30 p. M. Eastern on saturday. And sunday, mike lee on cases coming up on the Supreme Court docket. The gops unsuccessful attempts to repeal the Affordable Care act. The republican proposal to rewrite the u. S. Tax code and moores victory in tuesdays primary. Mike lee is on newsmakers sunday at 6 00 p. M. And next week on cspan, richard smith, the former ceo of the credit reporting company, equifax. He testifies before congress about the data breach. Tuesday, hell go before the house energy and commerce committee. Wednesday, mr. Smith testifies before f the Senate Banking committee. Both hearings start at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Online and on the cspan radio app. Our prayers have been answered. His bravery and his familys strength have been such an inspiration to this house and to the people it serves. America grateful for moment. The chair now proudly asks for what purpose does the gentleman from louisiana seek recognition . To speak out of order, mr. Speaker. The gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. Thank you, mr. Speaker. You have no idea how great this feels to be back at work in the peoples house. For the past 30 year, the Video Library is your free resource for politics, congress and washington public affairs. So whether it happened 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago, find it. Where history unfolds daily. Members of congress return to capitol hill on monday. The house meeting at noon for speeches. Bill debate starts at 2 00 p. M. Eastern live on cspan. The senate comes into session at 3 00 p. M. Eastern to debate the nomination of fcc chair to serve a second term on the commission. Senators will vote on the confirmation at 5 pau 30 eastern. You can watch on cspan 2. The Senate Agricultural Committee Held a hearing to consider Rule Development and Energy Programs in the 2018 farm bill. Kansas senator pat roberts chairs the committee. Good morning members of the committee. I call this hear iing, the commte