Cspan2. Here is our prime time lineup for tonight. Up next on booktv michael allen, majority staff protecter of committee on intelligence provides an insiders account of restructuring of the u. S. Intelligence system after 9 11. This program is just over an hour. Good afternoon. Welcome to the new America Foundation. Im peter bergen. I run the National Security program here. Its with a lot of pleasure that we goat welcome mike allen to talk about his new book. Thank you. And hes had a distinguished career, most recently in the government as chief staff on the house Intelligence Committee. He sent seven years in at the National Security council and the george w. Bush administration. He managed to writ book and have two young sons and set up a very successful new business. All in the space and continuing working on the hill at the same time. So very impressive. [inaudible] mike agreed to speak about the stories in his book for about a half an hour and ill engage in him q a and let him answer your questions. Very good. Mike . Go ahead. Ill take the podium, if thats okay. I think you can do without that, yeah . [laughter] i want to thank the new America Foundation for having me today. Especially peter for the invitation. Thank you for coming out in the rain to hear a little bit about my book blinking red. I look forward to q a about other pressing Intelligence Community topics. Blinking red is an attempt to write the author at a timive objective history of the most substantial restructuring of the u. S. Intelligence Community Since the foundations in 1947. The aim in 1947, of course, was to create a Central Intelligence agency that would, in the sense, sound familiar to any of you who studied 9 11 if you make sure that pockets of the u. S. Government did not have information that if shared with other entities of the government might foretell of a particular attack or National Security threat on the United States. The National Security act, of course, also created the National Security council, and the defense department. The creation of the Central Intelligence agency really laid the foundations for the modern american Intelligence Community. The fault of the National Security act of 1947 was that it seemed to give the Central Intelligence agency many responsibilities for coordinating the variety of intelligence entities across the federal government, but not enough authority to do the job. So let me break it down for you just, if i could. The cia, of course, is famous for two missions youre all familiar with. Covert action and the recruitment of spies around the world. The security act of 47 also sought to make the cia director give him another mission, which was to manage the community to be the dci and coordinate the growing infrastructure of intelligence agencies that had begun to group around world war ii. As you approached through the cold war years, a variety of task forces and commissions noticed that the underlying ability of the director of Central Intelligence to coordinate, for example, the signals intelligencenties in the department of the defense was very weak. Literally dozens of commissions and foundations recommended augmenting the director of Central Intelligences power so they would be able to keep up with the increasing complexity billions of dollars being spent in american intelligence none of these recommendations reform or centralize Greater Authority in went anywhere until 2004. There really several factors which i go through that contributed to this major jugger nut of activity which rewrote one of the most famous pieces of legislation in American History in four and a half months. There were a variety of things going on that summer. I want to take you back a little bit, i think youll remember these very well. At the time the Central Agency agency had taken a beating. They had been through grueling hearings before congress about who should be blamed for 9 11 and whether the cia failed to watch list certain individuals and had otherwise failed to share information with the fbi that might have foretold of or allowed the fbi to investigate the plots on 9 11. The cia, i think its fair to say, was buffetted by these particular hearings and the 9 11 commission came along and had another set of hearings which really were very, very tough. Indeed the chairman of the 9 11 commission noted that the staff statement about what happened what the cia did on 9 11 was an indictment of the agencys performance. A second factor that contributed to the mom titus change of events in the fall of 2004 was the 9 11 commission itself. They were a group of they had a lot of cache and a lot of influence. Indeed they constructed their own strategy to be able to build a legislative proposal that would have a chance of succeeding and could be acted on very swiftly. The third factor occurring at the time the failure or the misassessment iraq was coming in to stark relief in the summer of 2004. The Senate IntelligenceCommittee Report came out and faulted group think. Again, the cia was at the very low level of prestige at the time. And finally, you have note, of course, the presence of the 9 11 Commission Families who i go through in the book became quiet a powerful special Interest Group advocating for reform of the intelligence comeenty joined forces with the 9 11 commission, and was able to have tremendous influence over the process. The last thing, and really the conventional wisdom, we created a director of National Intelligence and a National Counterterrorism center that the 9 11 Commission Recommended because of the president ial election of 2004. I think the conventional wisdom is a little bit wrong for the reasons i just stated. I think that the blooming president ial election in which the performance of george bush and whether he made the country safer or were undoubt belie incredibly powerful factors that influenced the likelihood of congress and the president to take on intelligence reform. But its not the only factor. There was exhaustion with the cia and we had not one but two spectacular intelligence failuressing with really, in the same two to three year period. What did the 9 11 commission recommend . What they recommended was a director of National Intelligence really a super empowered spy master who would have the ability to increasingly con flex world be able to in the 9 11 commission words have a we needed a quarterback. Someoning a guile to be able to move dollars, people, and analysts to be able to meet new threats and organize quickly to meet what they determined was perhaps a more greater intelligence or National Security challenge than the soviet union had been. In the 9 11 the soviet union while foreboding, of course, at least in an intelligence sense there were embassies from which to recruit spies. There were armaments to look at through satellite, and other particular Government Agencies to seek to intercept their communications. But this wasnt the case with terrorist cells. And so we need to able to organize differently. On the point about there being a particular electorial impact, john kerry, the democratic nominee for president endorsed the 9 11 Commission Recommendations 17 minutes after the Commission Rights were announced in july of 2004. George bush endorsed the dni in concept ten dais later. This speaks to the tremendous force and the incredible forces that were at play at this particular time. However, while a lot of members of the congress and the two leading individuals of each Political Party endorsed the 9 11 commissions recommendation near life immediately, it inspired tremendous bureaucratic opposition. This is really the heart of blinking red. It is a tale of bureaucratic power over the enterprise who would be able to control the intelligence assets of the united. Ill go through them briefly and talk about what the entire act means for National Security today. I think the three camps are very important because as people try to contemplate where a lot of people are asking how is the system working . And how can we improve it . Why can we create it . What were we trying to do at time . One of the examples that broke out immediately in opposition to the 9 11 Commission Report were those in the military who argued that the primary mission of intelligence should be direct call support to the war fighter. And that now in this time period in 2004 was no time to centralize intelligence anywhere else be it to the Current System with the director of Central Intelligence located in virginia at dci, in their estimation might retain the two other missions that the dci had. Namely human intelligence and covert action. Especially not to a new superempowered individual spy master. They viewed this as a zerosome game. Any rebalancing of authority away from the department of defense would degrade the department of defenses intelligence capabilities. The two principle players in this camp were secretary rumsfeld and Vice President cheney. Secretary rumsfeld, of course, was very quotable. He, at the time, was vociferously against the 9 11 Commission Recommendations, and he wrote in a letter to george bush from the time period something i think is very notable. You can almost hear some of the intensity in his voice which was something basically that the United States congress, the media, and john kerry can afford to be wrong and pay no penalty. The president of the United States has to be right on a matter of such importance. He ended this memo to george bush at the time, which is detailed in the book with a single word cautious. Urging caution on the president before he adopted the particular recommendations. Vice president cheney himself a former secretary of defense also 0 pods the dni recommendations. He focused on the fact we were at war at the time in iraq and afghanistan. And said no is no time to be rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic as we were trying to fight and wane war. The second view was those at cia. Cia, i think took some offense they were being so heavily faulted for intelligence failures on 9 11, and began to argue that really what the essence of power in washington, d. C. , is bureaucratic clout. And that at least the director of the head of the Intelligence Community, when he headed the cia at least had troops and analysts, he had collectors, he had someone he could ask and they would actually respond to what he wanted to do. So the point of robert gates, himself a former dci. He argued that summer that the 9 11 commissions dni would create essential lay someone who would be unto be affect wait his will. It was the view of almost all but one of the former districts of Central Intelligence who argued that the only way to increase centralized power in the Intelligence Community would be give him more authority and more bureaucracies to directly control and not to sub fact his authority by separating these Community Management functions. These coordinating functioning from the cia. From virginia. Finally another camp. Its interesting because of the two people were and the positions they come to hold. A they argued without the knowledge of secretary rumsfeld that the National Security agency and the National Geospatial agency, at the very least, the two factories of intelligence. We know nsa well through the constant revolutions in the newspaper. They argued that the dni would be indeed feckless unless they had authority, direction, and control over the massive intelligence agencies that resided in the department of defense. The two individuals who argued for this bureaucratic position are the current director of National Intelligence today, jim clapper. And the future cia director general michael hayden. At time they were it was quite an incredible position they would advocate of actual moving their bureaucracy out of the department of defense. The set up, of course, the infamous lunch in washington when secretary results field learned of the efforts to advocate around town on behalf of a more muscular dner. A dni that control the intelligence agencies and he invited them to lunch at the pentagon and to hear him retell the story. He staid look like peace talk between north and south korea as they sit on the opposite sides of the table. The only thing missing was respective flags. They sat there and argued whether the dni and the 9 11 Commission Rights would lead to a more successful Intelligence Community and according to the participates of the lunch, secretary rumsfeld slammed his fork to his plate and he said he couldnt believe what he was hearing from two people who had warned the uniform of their country. The dni should not i have any additional control. Needless to say the lunch ended badly, and the rest is history. These bureaucratic division and the book goes through this. Were reflected and argued aggressively throughout august 2004 in the National Security council as george bushs adviser try to color in exactly what president bushs beliefs would be on a piece of legislation. I wont go in to this in great details. But the congress embraced the 9 11 commission recommendation. Separate from the cia and really tried to in the United States senate enact the will exactly of the 9 11 commissions report. I was there at the time as a White House Legislative Affairs staffer, and people carried around the 9 11 Commission Book as if it were the bible. And tried to interpret as faithfully as possible when they thought the 9 11 commission meant. This is really the reason for my argument of why the 9 11 commission has been the most Successful Commission in American History. Because they were able to dictate the policy agenda in the fall of 2004. Cause the congress to immediately endorse and the respective president ial nominees to nearly immediately endorse their rights. The bill did hit some snags. The house of representatives the book goes through some of the arguments theyed advanced in the nieflt commission. And how after the president ial election of 2004. The bill was enacted in to law. Ill end with this. Secretary gates was gracious enough to let me interview him for my book. I wanted to know his view and whether the rumor was true that president bush had offered him the job to be the first director of National Intelligence. He confirmed that andy and steve, government president s top lieutenant had tried to recruit him to be the director of National Intelligence. I think this is very sort of intlessing contemporaneous view of the statute after it passed. Indeed looked down the road to some of the problems the dni would have in the first years he gave me his emails he sent to the white house in december and january of 2004 and 2005. Critiquing the law and trying to lay out so. Conditions he would ask president bush for him for him to consider it. Secretary gate, i have this in the book, described the new law as, quote, strange. He said the president needs to make clear that the new director of National Intelligence is the head of the Intelligence Community not some mere budget tier or coordinator. Eventually turned downtown offer. He said funnily to me that hadly made a mistake. That a car salesmen would never make when i visited the white house. They let he off the lot without a sale. He went back to texas and thought whether to take the job and eventually turned it down. We had four dni in the first five years. It inspired bureaucratic opposition from the Central Intelligence agency, which i mentioned wasnt in a very good place to affect the outcome when the bill was under crshes but able to maneuver and jockey successfully so that the cia as we sit here in 2013, amist a variety of intelligence challenges from iran to syria and the crisis that Edward Snowden has caused for the National Security agency. I think its a good time to ask ourselves and reflect upon the situation the structure we set up post 9 11. This was the most tangible refo