Transcripts For CSPAN CIA Director Mike Pompeo 20180124

That, he served on the Benghazi Committee but before that, he was in business for himself, he headed up his own company and he was a graduate, the number one in his class served with the for the idea along the iron curtain when we still had an iron curtain and we are well on our way back and graduated after serving from Harvard Law School at the lot review, that is pretty impressive. It is really an honor to have you serving in our government and i am delayed to see it. Normally i would give you a bit of a run down on what the director was going to say but unusually perhaps in this administration, i had no idea, no leaks out of the cia, you imposed a discipline on everybody that is here to for a minute. This director was before a little while and then he will sit down with aeis on market for a conversation and then some questions for the audience. Without further a do, mr. Director. [applause] director pompeo good morning everyone. This will be one year to the minute when i was sworn in as the director of the cia. It was supposed to be the weekend before but you know how the senate goes. I was held up across the weekend. Thank you for the kind introduction, they could for having me here, i thought i would spend a few moments talking about that year from the Central Intelligence agencys perspective. It has been a very different role than i have had. I did serve on the House Oversight committee so i did get to see the cia as a member of mygress and i have told friends were still on the committee, it is not possible to gain a full perspective of what the u. S. Intelligence service is collectively doing until someone gets the incredible privilege like the one i have two lead one of those organizations. Nothing can possibly prepare you for the death, the scope, the scale, the magnitude of the efforts that we undertake each and every day as the nations first line of defense. I go back to the president s inaugural speech, he talked about this being the hour for the American Action and at the cia, i have tried to live that and have my team live that. We are doers at cia. We just get stuff done. I think if the American People have the capacity to see that, each and every day and they cant forget reason, they too would be as proud of the men and women who have joined the cia as i am. I came to understand that i wasnt going to improve the courage of our officers, the skill set of our officers although we are working diligently to take it to even the next level, but having led to small businesses, having been a leader in the military, i could see that there was a bureaucracy that was preventing them from being unleashed from doing the very things that they were directed, commended and indeed, america today. So, i wanted to be part of ianging that understanding, want to do make sure our obsessive appreciated the fact that we were going to have an expectation nearly every day that we were going to still secrets. That is what espionage services do. We ask our officers to risk toir lives to still secrets protect america. It is our fundamental mission, we will never shy away from it and we do so aggressively and without any apology. Me to was not enough for talk about it, we had to implement it. We tried to do that. That we haveings done, you have all seen this in every organization you have ever been a part of, it is true in government but it was true in the private sector when i led there as well. Your accuracy just slows stuff down. , i led by is worse that, 40 of the decisions were previously made by the director of the cia no longer were made by me. You might say wow, that is reckless, i would tell you it was reckless to do with the other way. We make careful decisions about which pieces to keep it has significant risk, cost, that is a military, point for the director to have. If the director brought a special knowledge to bear, if he needed full input from all the Intelligence Community or the broader u. S. Government, then i keep that decision. Justf it was coming to me because i was the next guy on the chain of command, that is a mistake because i would never slowed down and i would not be in a position to add any value to the decisionmaking process. I spent a minute talking about that, my role, i have tried to impart that same thing everywhere in our organization, ive asked every leader to make sure to empower the people that work for them and i have tried to encourage the people that work for them to go grab that authority. If we do that, we will be as fast as our adversaries. I have told the story was before, i was sitting in a very long meeting with senior officials and i was asked if we did ask, what would our adversaries do and i respond by saying they wont have a meeting like this. Is how it was met at the meeting, a little bit of laughter and some real concern but everyone knew i was right as well. We need to have a bias toward being as noble as our adversaries, if we dont, we will serve america poorly and we want still secrets that our president and our senior policymakers must need at the most challenging times. Here is another good example, we were forced by circumstances to close down one of our operations the team came and said this is what i think were going to lose, we all found it on acceptable. I give the commanders intent, i said youre going to be out, we will move out of the station, we will set the date and we wont lose anything, go figure out a way to do it. Remarkably, some months later, i can tell you that our intelligence postures are able to where it was, we did some remarkable things, some creative that hadome things real risk. We cannot afford to have any gap larger than the one that we had before the facility went away. When assad used chemical weapons against his own people and asked me what happened there. And the president called me and asked me what happened there. We tried to enter the key questions, it was clear from what i heard from the president that he wanted to take action in response to the chemical test chemical attack but he needed to know it was the regime, he needed to know that it was chemical weapons used against civilians. Though sound easy, everybody could see the open source material but we all know for a president to ask, you need more than that, we have put together a team that amounted to the hundreds that worked every intelligence channel and we were able to deliver to the president the three basic facts you need to know with the certainty that i could stand in front of him and commit that he would not we would not later find that we were wrong and that he had acted in error and we delivered it to him in a way that represented the finest of what this agency does. I could leave one thing behind as the director, maybe next year i can stand here and tell you that we made more progress, it would be to be as agile and as speedy as we need to. To second thing would be make sure that we continue to keep the American Peoples trust. It is in law and as i was reading in preparation for my confirmation hearing, it continued to strike me how much power and authority are granted to the director of the Central Intelligence agency and through that, to our remarkable officers. We have an obligation to do everything we can to operate in a way that engenders a mac in Peoples Trust so those powers and authorities remain in place, if we dont, if we behave in ways that are loveless, if we behave in ways that you might see in the movies than the American People would rightfully take those powers, that authority, that capacity away from us, that would be unforgivable for our agency to find ourselves in that place. What we do is too important. I see it against whatever target we are working whether it is efforts to help the secretary of state for the president understand what is going on in north korea or our efforts to counter iranian influence throughout the world, whether it is work we are doing against russia, those authorities, that trust that the American People have provided to us are central to achieving our mission. So todays like today which are few and far between when i come out of langley and speak publicly, it is important for the American People to understand that we operate inside a democracy that we respect the rule of law deeply, that we have processes in place to ensure that we continue to do that and that we are working diligently to make sure that the people entrusted with ensuring that is happening in clandestine branch in executive which we work fully formed work fully informed of the things we are doing. Everyone would know that is my imperative, my directed to them and i believe we are doing that anyway that the American People ought to be incredibly proud of. There are a handful of stories, i may wait for more to come up and i will tell a couple of them. You should know that we are focused on the same set of priorities than if you have the secretary of state for the secretary of defense for the president standing before you today, we would be very closely aligned. It has been in the news news, it last year it was remarkable cia creativity that has led to our capacity to materially impact the capacity of the American Government to stop shipments to north korea. We are not where we need to be, our mission is not complete but we have officers all around the world working diligently to make sure that we do everything we can support the u. S. Pressure campaign. And you type the sanctions in such a way that we have the opportunity to prevail and achieve the american president s mission which is the denuclearization of the dental a. Task thate kind of the cia was designed for, it is the kind of task we are delivering against. I talked last week about the is never north korea closer to being able to hold america at risk. I said that several things same thing several months before that. Everyone needs to understand that we are working diligently to make sure that a year from now, i can tell you several months away to have that capacity, it is not a static timeframe, there is much effort across the United States government to ensure that americans dont have to feel at risk, we saw what happened in hawaii, it is an American International imperative that we deliver the information to our Senior Leaders so that they can resolve this issue in a way that works for the American People. Here and take questions from mark and others. As we move into 2018, i want you want to know that we will continue to do remarkable things on behalf of the American People. We are not just focus on north korea and iran. We are working diligently to solve problems in venezuela, and problems in africa, our mission set has brought the counterterrorism fight that im , it continuesned as a central part of making sure that the policymakers understand the threat and how best to attack it. Frankly, i have to say i came in looking at several these problems and realize that we have been whistling past the graveyard for decades on some of these. You should know that when i say decades, that is republican president s, democrat residences, republican congresses of which i was a member and democrats were members of our legislative branch as well. Some of these need to be taken off the table, we need to reduce this risk and the cia has prepared to do it part to ensure that those risks are reduced and that we ultimately can stare at these problems with fewer resources consumed because we have actually resolved many of them. I look forward to our conversation and thank you all for being here today. [applause] thank you for being here today. We are proud to have you. We have had a lot of people without firsthand knowledge commentating and writing books and other lies about the president s briefing practice. You briefed the president almost every day as part of the president ial daily brief, i would like you to take us into the president s daily brief. How does he receive it. What kind of consumer of intelligence is he. . Pompeo every day, i get up, i get ready, i present him the material and i go down to the white house, we present the president with the most exquisite information any policy make whatever have the privilege of getting a chance to read, that is the mission set for the analysts that prepares a book and it is, is quality material. I am there, general mcmaster is there, i have a professional preferred with me as well. An opposite which has the briefing as well. The Vice President is there when he is in town. That is the gang that is usually assembled for the present, someone shouts pompeo, you are in and identity breath and we deliver to him. This doesnt happen each day because the world is to varying of we tried to Say Something the moment. We will talk about things that happened overnight. Today we will have imagined what took place with the turks moving south out of syria and then we will try to talk about something that is coming up. Her instance, preparing the president for his trip to devils or our poor leader was coming to visit or providing them with material that we know he will confront in the days or weeks ahead and then we create some space as well. Some space to do knowledge building for the team, strategic items, things that wouldnt be confronted, they wont be in the news tonight but things we know that are central to having a shared, factbased understanding across all of the agency so those would be the three types of information, the president asks hard questions, he is deeply engaged, we will have rambled his back and forth all and at making sure we are delivering them the truth as best as we understand it, he will ask questions that we dont have the answer to, did bring it for we werent as complete as we needed to be, we will go back and within a couple hours deliver that information as best as we can. Process the process that we go through with the president is day is a process that it is my hope every senior policymakers is doing with the various briefers that we have throughout the administration. I hope there are all consuming the information that we are delivering. We spend a lot of money on it in the same way that the president does. , user you have some stories is there a possibility you could declassify some things that have been discussed, is there an example or anys of times where the president has pushed back on you and pushed you to get more information and you have been able to change the outcome of isething or i know this sensitive. Mike pompeo the present was very concerned about the matters hearing issues taking place in yemen. The risk of cholera as solid starvation was taking place. He kept pushing back on what the real layout was, what was possible given the configuration of forces on the ground and he pushed us and over three days until we were able to deliver him a satisfactory picture where you can make a decision about which of our friends to call to try to make sure that problem was at least diminish or mitigated. This is the second example, it was a little bit before that, it was on venezuela, the president thedissatisfied with description of the situation as we had laid it out for him. So we kept coming back, it was some Financial Issues he was more clarity on, who had the money, where was the debt, what was the timing of that russian mark there were multiple pieces, the array of the material, he wanted to really understand how they all can together and it wasnt long thereafter that that wouldve been the first or second set of sanctions that the administration put in place they were enabled by the intelligence we delivered and had requested. As you know, different president s is take a briefing,al daily president obama did not take a present over half the time. It seems President Trump was not going to take that he said why was i going to have the same people telling me the same thing over and over again . That is always a change, however do take a president ial daily brief . Is it daily and what are his briefing habits habits . It is not daily, it happened today, yesterday, we will often do it when he is traveling, i dont travel to deliver that myself, we will have a prefer briefer provided to him. It often goes on for 40 minutes or so depending on his schedule. How did he become convinced of the need for it . I think it is about value. I think we all end up with our schedule shift by things that are proving valuable in educating our jobs. So the meetings i take everyday are very different than his. My battle is different than his. This president s pattern of taking information is different than president obama tossed obamas. I think the reason he does is because he finds value in it. We are able to convince him that the fact we are delivering intact his capacity to perform his mission. I think the day we cant deliver that is the days start getting pushed off and other things began to occupy that time and space. I tell my team as they are preparing for what it is we will brief, we have a big process. We have to make sure the information we are delivering meets the threshold for the president of the United States and is delivered in a manner in which he can grasp sufficiently to actually be able to act upon to provide real value, not just data, not just some set of random facts but real data he can use to formulate policy. If we do that, i think we will continue the pattern that is serving america well. How do you see him as a consumer of intelligence . Sophisticated . What do his your interactions with him in that setting type about him as commanderinchief . Seen 25 year intelligence professionals receive briefings and i would tidy the president is the kind of recipient of our information at the same level that they are. Lot every day. You can ask me about certain places in the world that i need to get up to speed. None of us come within the cyclopean acknowledge of the world. The world moves fast enough that what we knew yesterday or year ago is is of only modest interest today. Things move very fast. He has the grounding for him to be able to grasp this information in a way that he can ask a sophisticated questions and then lead to important policy discussions. We will be sitting in a National Security Council Meeting talking about it particular topic and hell bring up something that i briefed him on which our months ago. It could be that he knew that before, i am going to take full credit for having been the source of that knowledge but i have seen this time and time again so it is not the case that this is an exercise. He is taking it on board and im confident our team is delivering it in a way that is delivering bound to the president and not just him but to our other senior policymakers. Do so many people underestimating him actually act as an asset . Everyone said that president bush was not very smart but he was a very smart man. Is that a useful tool in National Security . Director pompeo i dont know. A lot of us have been underestimated many times, just keep plugging. Yourts talk about leadership of the cia. He recently said that your goal is to make the cia more ambitious, more aggressive, more belined to take risks to more aggressive about the problems the world faces. Quite it is all about incentives. It is about the things that are reported and every organization has ever been a part of, it is the human condition that you respond to the guidance that is laid out in an organization. We use ct as an example. Is important, if you say it is a priority, you better minutes. That doesnt mean good speeches about it, it means if you care about something, you will apply resources, and the agency, that is money, technical skill, other tools that we have, he will take those and apply them against that problem set. When you operate in a constrained environment, that means you have to do prioritize Something Else as well. It is almost impossible to invite to avoid that. We have done it, we have said here are the things that matter most to us, we prioritize and we shoveled that, people see that and people want to go to the place where they believe the missions that is. Mission set is. Will work diligently i guess this, here are the outcomes we will deliver for the president in the country and we are prioritize that way. I rent a company that sold equipment to oil and Gas Industries before i came to congress, it is the last job i , i worked withan companies that were drilling for oil and natural gas. The best open is the world, the most Healthy People and they drilled all the time. Didnt understand genetic who made the choice, they got up the next morning and try to do a , we wantttle better to create that culture at the cia. If we will do it right, we will have failed missions, it is inevitable, almost by definition, i am an engineer by training, if you move out of the risk profile, you will increase the number of times you have failure. Weare going to do that and are going to make sure that people arent punished for that but they are recognized for , havingeen professional operated against the target set and having done something incredibly audacious. It turns out the coin and up tails instead of heads, so be it, we will go the next day and crush our adversary one more time. The last time you were here, before we had this conversation, the top it was guantanamo. You are a congressman, you returned from guantanamo bay. Aparte the point that from closing it, we are to be telling it with new people. When will we get New Residence residents . Pompeo from my perspective, heres what i can say, for the cia, what is important is that if we are going to take down networks, we need the opportunity to engage with individuals whom have been pulled from the battlefield, we need to have the time, the space, the capacity to take on board the information that these individuals may possess. U. S. Government policy, must reflect that, we have to make sure that not just the cia but all of the others who have a part in the counterterrorism fight have that opportunity. Insiderking diligently administration to make sure we have that, how that will play congress will have it say here. Today we have a set of rules for interrogation purposes, we have the army field manual, dod has the authority, that seems fine to me but the moment i have officers come to me and say we missed something, we missed an opportunity to conduct an interview on someone who i believe had information that could save american lives, we will have a discussion to make sure that never happens again. Since president obama and the interrogation, we are captured and interrogated very few people , we have relied more and more on signals and intelligence. But our single capability has been decimated by lease in recent years and your predecessor pointed out that in an age of encryption which is increasing, can we keep the country safe without content and doesnt that suggest we need to start getting human intelligence again in a way we have been . Director pompeo a lot of predicates in your question. I love the general hayden. He is a dear friend. Were still doing pretty good collecting signals intelligence. Mostly our partner, not the cia but we have a role in that as well. That does not foreclose the imperative that we can today to improve our capacity to collect human intelligence. Not the least of which is the capacity to interview those folks who have been polled for cesspool from the battlefield. Who have been pulled from the battlefield. We should not put ourselves in a position where we are, were making decisions on the assumption that we cant detain and interview to improve americas information. The Trump Administration obviously inherited a mess in north korea. Both democratic and republican administrations have kicked the can down the road and this is coming to a head. How does north Korea Nuclear Missile Program jump from a dozen unsuccessful test a year to the state it is now . Is that alarming in the sense, are they getting at a build rate where they can overpower our Ballistic Missile capability and what can we do about that . Director pompeo i cant share much about this with you other than they have moved at a very rapid level. They are Testing Capacity and it has improved. The frequency that they have tests which are materially successful has also improved, putting them ever closer to a place where americans can be held at risk. I think thats a true statement. It is also analytically true that kim jongun will not rest with a single successful test. The logical next step would be to develop an arsenal of weapons. That is not one, not a showpiece, not something to drive on a parade route on february 8 but rather the capacity to deliver from multiple firings of these missiles simultaneously. That increases the risk to america and that is the very missions that President Trump has directed the government to figure out a way to make sure it never occurs. Does the cia assess that kim jongun is an irrational actor. We do. 00 32 01 and do you think that he believes that the Trump Administration is actually willing to use military force . The only way you can have a successful diplomatic solution if he feels the threat. He seems to proceed these untouchable because what he can do to solve and what his conventional capability much less emerging merging nuclear capabilities. Does he believe that we pull the trigger do something to threaten him . Director pompeo we are concerned he may not be receiving good information. It is not healthy thing to be bringing bad news to kim jongun. Try to get life insurance. I dare you. So we are doing, we are taking the real world actions that we think will make unmistakable to kim jongun that we are intent on denuclearization. We are counting on the fact he will see. We are confident he will and then we will continue to have discussions about how to achieve that denuclearization. Can we live in a world where kim jongun has the capability to destroy new york or washington with the push of a button . Is that a world we are willing to go into . Director pompeo thatll will be a decision for the president ultimately. He is unambiguous on his view. Is the deterrable . Or, does he want it for regime preservation or does he do it because it gives them the freedom to do things that destabilize the region . Director pompeo it is more than just regime preservation that were concerned he would use, we talk about the nuclear risk all the time. That gets to the brunt of the worlds attention appropriately so, but his conventional forces alone. Close to a million under arms to bassett depending on how you count them is no small thing. And so we do believe that kim jongun, given the toolset, would use them for things besides regime protection. That that is to put pressure on what is his ultimate goal which is reunification of the peninsula under his authority. So we do not think it is the case that he will use this toolset for selfpreservation. The we think it will be in a way, call it what you will, call it coercive is perhaps the best way to think about how kim to potential that potentially about how kim jongun is prepared to potentially use these weapons. There seems to be a perception the options in north korea are nuclear war or letting, or going to a deterrent strategy. There are options in between that. If he is an rational actor and President Trump decided to do Something Like a limited strike like the one he done in syria, would a rational actor not respond the way the Syrian Regime didnt respond, right . In the sense that relate to that would lead to regime destruction. If you are a rational actor who wants to preserve your regime, are there options to address his capability. Director pompeo im thrilled you ask. Im equally happy not to answer. The American People should know we are working to prepare a series of options. Well make sure the president has the full suite of possibilities. The president is intent on delivering this with diplomatic means. It is of the focus. It has been uniformly that for now 365 days. It remains so today. We are focused like a laser on achieving that. We are equally at the same time ensuring that if we conclude that is not possible that we present the president with a range of options that can achieve what is his stated intentions. Lets talk about iran. One of the holes in the nuclear deal is the oldschool come part civilization. The assumption all the Nuclear Program work occurs within the country. To what extent could iran we know there was north korean cooperation with syria for example in building that facility that the israelis took out. To what extent could iran use cooperation to conduct Illicit Nuclear work like on warhead design that would advance the iranian, not just in north korea that could advance the program that necessarily our catching it or violating the agreement . Director pompeo it is a real risk. We think we have pretty good understanding of whats taking place there today. Having said that i am the first person to admit that intelligence organizations can miss important information. These are terribly difficult problems and an incredibly tight spaces, and when youre moving information sometimes difficult to detect that information is moved. So someone asks me as the Senior Intelligence leader of the cia, can you guarantee this . I would say absolutely not. But we are working to make sure that doesnt happen. This goes back to previous question about one of the risks of allowing north koreas regime to continue to add this nuclear capability. It is this proliferation risk. It is this technology that they have developed and then figured out how to manufacture at something beyond just a museum piece. But some form of production level capacity within the perforated proliferated elsewhere in the world. Then secondarily it doesnt take too much imagination to understand that if they continue to have that Nuclear Weapon system or the iranians make advancements in theirs, that many other the countries around the world will decide me, too. Right . That i want to have one of those things that that guy has. Being very careful not to identify countries but you can go through the list of those would feel incredibly threaten and feel that they needed to have similar capacity in order to defend their own National Security interests. Lets talk about Vladimir Putin for a second. This is a guy who shows up a lot with his shirt off, right . Theres a famous story where he told president bush that my dog is bigger and stronger. Are these behaviors of someone who is a strong leader or a weak leader . Director pompeo our assessment of Vladimir Putins intentions have not changed. He continues to view the greatest failure of the last century to be the dissolution of the soviet union. He is bent on returning the former soviet union to its former greatness and glory. That is the first thing he thinks about you today. You might add being reelected as a second thing he thinks about each day. Those are related in some ways. He moves about the world and is conveying to his audience the imperial power of the russian people. He hasnt changed. This administration is deeply aware that we need to continue to push back against the russians everywhere we find them. Lets talk about a little bit about the recent news stories about a possible mole within the cia that resulted in a loss of chinese assets and harkens back to losses we had, you were stationed on the iron curtain, losses of agents in the soviet union, dozen or so iranian recruits in the middle east who have been lost. The business of recruiting and running spies is hard but the records suggests we may not be as proficient as we all to be. Is a something that needs to get fixed . How do you assess where we are . Director pompeo we are never what we need to be. I actually saw this as a member of congress, i came in as the director a year ago intent on improving our capacity to protect our own information. We should make sure the secrets we steal are not restolen. We have an obligation to the American People to do that. Ive made a number of changes, one of which is to make sure were providing information so the department of justice can do it good work in bringing these traitors to heel in u. S. Courts. The second of which is making sure our organization has the resources it needs to deliver on its counterintelligence mr. , Definition Mission which includes ensuring were doing offensive counterintelligence, that is, working against our Advisory Services in a way that prevents them from getting inside of our service. One of the first things i did, and woman who runs a Counterintelligence Mission and reports directly to me now, was intentional, send a signal to two places. The cia will be serious about protecting our stuff, and second, to my workforce. The director was personally attentive to a mission that can fall too far down in the priority scheme. To me there are few things more important than protecting our officers, are assets and our assets and our information. Its also really hard to benefit groups like alqaeda and isis. You have experience in serving on the front lines of the cold war, russian immigrants, was in was not a tribal culture in the same way. How hard is it, back before 9 11 with almost 1 million assets. We had almost no human assets. How hard is it to get intelligence on these terrorist networks . Director pompeo they are difficult targets for sure, but as the u. S. Government has been successful against them in different places, whether it was a significant set of successes in the previous initiation against alqaeda, as with a significant success taking the caliphate away against isis. Provides real opportunities to reach in. There are more people who decide being part of team america might be better than being part of team jihadi. And so we are beneficiaries with the big disruptions that occur. They allow us to collective ways we cant when their force is united and we dont have any chance of to touch them. The success in syria against isis has been remarkable in terms of taking away their physical caliphate. But it arguably came at a little bit of a price because we did with kurdish fighters which is causing tension with turkey. We are perceived to lease by the sunni population in syria as being at least tacitly in an alliance with russian and iran in the fight against isis which pushes sunnis away from us and towards alqaeda which is sitting there waiting. Have we been too focused on isis and not focused enough on alqaeda . Can we defeat the Global Jihadi Movement with upbringing sunnis into our orbit . Can we do this with kurds and russians and iranians or do we need a a sunni partner on the ground thats going to fight these guys . Director pompeo we absolutely need sunni partners. We are working to do that. In the eastern department, we have been working on bringing in the sunnis in alongside our kurdish partners in there as well. I think theyve made Real Progress in there. This administration has broadly reached out to sunni countries all throughout the middle east to form coalitions against not only against isis but against iran as well. I think weve made some substantial progress there. If were going to be successful in taking down the jihadist threat will actually need sunni partners aiding us in that effort. What worked in iraq during the search was the sons of iraq. That the sunni tribes came over. We were in force enabler by sending additional troops but it was a sunni uprising against alqaeda which was both a military defeat and ideological defeat because the jihadist claim to be the vanguard. When you are rejected by the sunnis, it sends a signal throughout the region. Are we doing, making any progress in getting the sons of iraq equivalent in syria and some of these other places where we are fighting them . Director pompeo ill let others talk about the progress we are making there. You should know that the cia understands that. Our analytic assessment is much in line what you described. It is an absolute imperative that we achieve that. One last question and then i will turn it to the audience. This is a question i ask all National Security policymakers when they come through aei. During the 1980 president ial debate, no one asked either candidate about iraq. During the 2000 president ial debate, no one asked about alqaeda. Both those cases those two elements became the crisis that ofinated the presidencies george h. W. Bush and george w. Bush. What is the threat that is out there and do you see threats none of the sea . Director pompeo we have things that could be in the National Intelligence priorities framework and we would all know them. Then there is a set of other things that others should not characterize as secondtier. Certainly, the Political Risk in south america are one of them. To make sure we get that right. The United States is watching what is taking place. Everybody south of our border, Central America and mexico. And we need to get right that some of these threats are real but they are not nationstates. Historically the threat to the United States with a country. What was america doing against the threat from yugoslavia or some other nationstate but today the threats are much more varied. Whether it is from groups like hezbollah or al qaeda or threats to our Information System or groups like wikileaks. They do not have a flag at the u. N. And they present real threats to the United States. We have to go back and fix some of the rules and laws that are designed to fix the nationstate challenge. We need to make sure we are watching those actors in the same way we would watch a threat from a traditional nationstate. Lets take some questions. Microphone coming to you. Good morning. Good to see you again. One of the unconventional threats were confronting as transnational organized crime. Ive been talking with you about this for good long while. In the year you have been director, has it been a priority of yours to to put more intelligence resources in going after the Financial Network of drug traffickers and other forms of transnational organized crime, which is now playing an active role in the destruction of venezuela . And looking at influencing elections in colombia and mexico, where drug traffickers have a Significant Interest in sowing mayhem and optimizing supply chain of cocaine to the market here in the United States . Director pompeo you could probably at others to the list and you could list the telethon as well, thats taliban as well uses drug revenue to foment so much pain around the world. We have bolstered our capacity, our collection capacity. We have done that jointly with treasury department, secretary mnuchin at his team, working together to take the tradecraft we have historically used against networks that look and feel very much like Financial Networks and apply them against those very networks. There is still a long way to go. But what it delivers for policymakers is a set of options. Part of what you would see is sanctions options but in other spaces, other ways we can disrupt because we know where the money is we have the capability to stop the flow. Were probably still not at the level we need to be but we are in a better place than we were just a short time ago. I just want to know, one of the challenges will be recovery of assets. Majority of the region the maduro regime has limited has looted over 350 billion from venezuela, being able to recover those assets and reprocessing and giving them back to the venezuelan people to reconstruct the country would be our priority. Director pompeo there are more than a halfdozen places in the world where we are watching large amounts of wealth being stolen from the people of that country. And our effort is to identify them gained the capacity to take them away from the person who has title to them today and then use them for u. S. Foreign policy purposes. Frankly, in both cases returned them to the people from which they were looted. Director pompeo, how satisfied were you with the intelligence capabilities on north korea that you inherited when you came to langley . What do you see as the unknowables. What do you see about the things that are unknown but should be known. Director pompeo so when i i came and there was insufficient focus on the problems. Wasnt the case itd been ignored. It wasnt the case we had missed material things, but clearly had not received the focus and attention that were going to be needed to deliver for what this administration is going to ask of the Intelligence Community. So we, within weeks of becoming director, i created a Mission Center and stood it up with a Senior Leader he was retired. Brought her back to run the organization. I can see my Information Security people over here, a lot of folks working on it. We are in a much better place today than we were 12 months ago. We are still suffering from having gaps. Part of it is not the Intelligence Communitys fault. But it is inadequate for the state to say it is a hard problem. Of course it is a hard problem, that is why you pay us. We are developing a Global Intelligence picture so we can understand rates of change and what is happening amongst the various leadership elements of north korea so we can see if the sanctions put in place are having an effect or sufficient effect. And which sets of people are being affected. There is enormous pressure that has been placed on me. We are trying to solve the riddle to close those gaps to the maximum extent. Good to see you. I want to go back to what hes said in the beginning, that north korea is a handful of months away from having a Nuclear Missile that could reach the United States. He said you have that we are in the same position a year from now. Is that good enough . That in a year from now they might be a few months away from developing that weapon . Director pompeo that is inconsistent with u. S. Policy. U. S. Policy is that were going to the Nuclear Allies denuclearize. It is a secondary mission that we keep them from getting that capability. We often focus on timeline but it is not that simple. The way we think about it is reliability. It is one thing to say you could, if the missile flew in the right direction and if we got lucky we can do it, as opposed to certainty. This is the core of deterrence theory. You have to be certain that what you aim to deliver will be successful. You have to make sure your adversaries believe it is certain. Kim jongun is trying to put in our mind the reality that he can deliver pain to the United States of america and our mission is to make the day he wants to do that far off. He said a couple of months away, we know the intelligence before, six months, two years and he was much faster than you thought. Do you trust, do you feel you have enough information in saying a couple of months away to be certain and also, you said there was a gap in sanctions. Director pompeo the impact of sanctions. Do you see any impact they trust that you can trust also on the missile timely . Director pompeo so i cant answer your second question so do my best to answer your first. Its not that i dont know. I do know. I just cant share with you what we know on the second question. The first one, the predicate is actually wrong. You said that somehow that Intelligence Committee got this wrong. We didnt see this come as fast, thats just untrue. I have seen the news articles that have written that. By the way, that is not me bragging. This happened before my time. The Intelligence Community understood the capability and Testing Capacity. We will never get the week and month right on something this complicated but we can get the travel and breath the rate of change right. We will continue to deliver solid information on the north Korean Missile Testing Program and all the information around it. Lets take one more question. Thank you. Recently north korean wants dialogue with south korea. On the other hand, engine on, kim jongun Nuclear Threat on United States with nuclear and missiles. What is the u. S. Final destination of north Korean Nuclear issues . And is it possible to preemptive strike to north korea if necessary . Director pompeo i will leave it to others to address the capacity or the wisdom of preventive strike from an intelligence perspective. We are trying to ensure that all the various options the president might want to consider are fully informed. That we understand whats really going on and the risks associated with each of those decisions as best as we can identify them for him. One more question. Director pompeo doing that in conjunction, too. We should rumor we have partners that are working on this diligently as well, south koreans themselves, the japanese. We have partners throughout the region that share our understanding. That this is a global threat. We often talk about the threat here. This is a threat to the whole world. Ok. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to end it here. I ask everybody to stay seated while the director leaves. Director pompeo, i know you dont do a lot of these things. We are hugely honored you came to aei and spend your time and your services with us. Director pompeo thank you. Cspans washington journal live everyday with policy issues that impact here. Up, conflicts of interest and then we are live from the d. C. Convention center. Ofwill discuss the future Automotive Technology and Rideshare Services with robert grant of lyft. And senator john thune, the chair of the commerce, science and Transportation Committee will discuss today hearing on automotive regulators