Detainies from Guantanamo Bay for one soldier being held. Senator mccain expressed disagreement today. Disagreement and this puts future men and women in the military at great risk. These individuals were judged in Guantanamo Bay frequently that if they were released it would cause a great risk to the men and women serving on the battlefield. These individuals, as senator graham calls them the five fab, these individuals will be able to move around qutar and after one year they will be able to go back to afghanistan. 30 of those who left Guantanamo Bay have reentered the fight. These are wanted war criminals. One of them is supposedly guilty of murdering thousands of muslims. So this decision to bring sar sergeant home is illfounded, it is a mistake ilfounded and it is putting the lives of American Service men and women at risk and that is unacceptable to the American People to me. These were taliban leaders . They were members of al qaeda, too. They are listed as taliban leaders. They were associated with and part of taliban. In 2001 al qaeda and the taliban were working together. These individuals were working with al qaeda. But some suggests the only bases with the United States is they were held in Guantanamo Bay. These people dedicated their lives to destroying us. Why do you think the judgment was made they will be a great risk. They are taliban and al qaeda. You might remember in 2001 al qaeda found a haven with the taliban and that is why he invaded afghanistan. Separating them from al qaeda is damn foolishness. I understand your problem with giving up the five taliban cabinet members clearly. I cannot get my head applauding he is home. Should he by encapsulated still . I would make every effort to bring home but i dont think the deal should have gone. You can watch the rest of the interview on our interview on our website. Today mike vickers talked about challenges that face the country. He spoke at the center for strategic and international studies. This is an hour. Good morning, everybody. We are delighted to have you here on this beautiful morning that we deserve after this tough winter. Welcome to all of of you and may special thanks to my friends at rollsroyce who make it possible to make this available. And we are delighted to have mike vickers with us this morning. I was serving in the Armed Service committee, i cannot remember the year, i think it was 1988 when we created the program 11 and the whole special operations command. And i think that we actually had mike in mind for who would be the leader at socom. It took a while for us to find him. At the time, mike was serving in the cia and he had a long history in special forces and came to the administration to become the assistant secretary back in 2007. It was just the right time when he was brought in. The Bush Administration asked him to come in and give direction. He did a great job and bob gates felt no one would be better to replace jim clapper to be the secretary for intelligence. I think it has been masterful service. We have been lucky to have you at this crucial time. I know it has been challenging and wearing but you have shouldered it so well and the community is so grateful for what you have done. We will have an interesting section this morning and kathleen is leading the q a period. Would you with your applause would you with your applause welcome secretary of of intelligence. Thank you for that gracious introduction dr. Hamre. And thank you dr. Hicks for your service for our country and to csis for putting on important forums such as this. I thought i would make a few remarks this morning for about 20 minutes and then take questions as the standard f format. Next slide, please. Appaollgies we are having technical issues. Which one hits it . All right. Which one . Good. I am qualified on this now. I am going to talk about these four topics and given that this is a military strategy forum, i am going to try to move beyond my intelligence brief and talk about the implications of Defense Strategy and National Strategy as we look at the issues. Before i do, one of the themes i would like leave you with is the change taken place in our intelligence capabilities over the decade and greater change we forsee looking forward. One of the aspects of this, is the revolutionary impact Precision Targeting has had across the enterprise whatever department it is in. To illustrate this, i would like to if you endulge me i would tell a joke my former boss used to tell about the way we did business. Many years ago, an Intelligence Officer was working in a foreign capital at a diplomatic Cocktail Party patrolling the circuit and look for targets. This officer had too much to drink and his targets went toward more amorous pursuits rather than traditional targets. And he spotted a vision of lovliness in a red gown. He approached the target and made a pitch asking the target for a dance and then to his shock the target rebuffed him and said i am rebuffing you for three reasons. First, you are drunk. Second, this isnt a waltz it is the peru anthem and third, i am not a woman in a dress i am the cardinal next slide, please. I will go three a range of terrorism challenges. The first one is quite threats. The keypoint here is we have had success in degrading the al qaeda core in the pakistanafghanistan border region they continue to pose a threat particularly a reconstruction threat. But al qaeda in yemen and the growing al qaeda threat in syria are the biggest concerns. And they are taking advantage of the metastasizing across the middle east and north africa and that is conditions that are created by ungoverned space and the historic transformation that is underway in that region. There is the threat of homegrown violent extremist as we saw with the boston bombers and others. This is job one for the Intelligence Community and our special Operations Forces as well. The Syrian Civil War presents a particularly vexing National Security challenge. It is horrific civil war with 150,000 dead. It is hcrisis with 9 million internally displaced or refugees who have fled the country. About 2 3 and 1 3rd and a continuing crisis there. And it is giving rise to a significant terrorism threat there as well. As the president noted at west point, we are committed to them and help them fight for the right of all Syrian People to determine their own future and deny terrorist a safehaven they are enjoying there in syria. And we will work with the congress to ramp up the support of opposition. Now we come to russia and relaunching. The most concerning currently is the destabilization going on in Eastern Ukraine and what we would term as Unconventional Warfare. Russian troops pulled back from the border region. They have not seized their support for prorussian sepretist and that remains to the area and threatens the integrity. Cyber threats. These plan from property theft to disruptive denial of Service Attack to destruction attacks through malware that is an emerging domain that has move quickly. We have had disinstru instructor i proliferation and use of wnds is the next issue for us. We continue to have concerns about the iranian and north korea missile programs. Iran has made progress in the ability to enrich and stock pile urrani urranium, and it is working on missile programs. North korea is expanding its facilities for uranium, and continues to develop other items that have been displayed publically a few times. I already eluded to this about the voltility in Southeast Asia and africa that will be with us for a long time to come. This is one of the key enduring challenges i think we face along with a couple others on this slide or on this slide and the previous one. All right. Transition in afghanistan. The president announced right before the west point speech that we will maintain 9800 troops in afghanistan and by the end of calendar 2015 we will reduce that in half approximately and consolidate the force on kabul and 2016 reduce it to a normal embassybase presence centered on kabul. Afghan forces assumed the lead for combat operations last year and at the end this year combat operations will seize. We will continue to train, advise and assist Afghanistan Forces and pursue the antiCounter Terrorism in the region. The rise of china. China of late has engaged in provocative behavior in mari ska skare maritime disputes and attempted to counter u. S. Engagement in asia by asserting that the United States is a declining power which we are not and we will remain a pacific power. The key thing i would like you to take away from the previous two slides is that when you look at these in total, a number of senior Intelligence Officers, director clapper, my good friend cia Deputy Director michael m morel and others havent seen these kinds of challenge on our plate in our careers. We maybe wrong about that but that is our collective judgment. Second point is that taken together these are highly asymmetric challenges. They are not directly head on head. Some are further and unconventional or novel as in the cyber case or direct in terms of challenges happening in the region or the relationship between economic power and National Security power. The other point that i want to highlight is that unlike the cold war where we had one enduring and not to be discounted National Security challenge and then a series of crisis, a number of these are likely to be more persistent and enduring and that creates challenges for strategy as you deal with enduring very difficult to solve, multiple problems. Some of you may remember in the late 1970s in the department of defense we developed in response to the situation in Central Europe an offset strategy to counter soviet military power and followed that up through the 1980s with a series of other stratgies to reinforce that and bring an end to the the cold war. We dont need just one offset strategy but a series to deal with these challenges. And the final point is also critical to dealing with the set of enduring challenges is the continuing technical safety of the United States which is a National Security imperative. Now i would like to talk about the relationship between intelligence and National Security. We say it is the first line of defense. This time Going Forward we really, really do mean it. The benefits that it gives us is it informs our National Security policy. If you are the president trying to make sense of the challenges intelligence is the first thing you need. And for our operators, war fighters and other operators, intelligence drives this. When directed by the president , the Intelligence Committee gives additional operations with diplomacy and military force. These are important as well. And offense course preventing stretegic surprise. This is an advantage to us that is important but it has to be used aggressively and prudently to make sure we are helping our leaders solve problems and not adding to their problems. And of course as you conduct operations there is inherent risk in them and the riskgain is something that we look at all of the time and continue to evolve. Now i would like to talk about investment we are making here with capabilities. I have grouped it into five areas focusing on National Intelligence on the defense strategic guidance and then the defense review and the soon to be released National Intelligence strategy. I group it into global coverage, the ability to operate in antiaccess areas, denial environments, sustaining capabilities in Counter Terrorism operations and adding to them in proliferation, building out our cyber abilities and strengthening our abilities in counter intelligence. Let me touch on these. Global intelligence covers everything we do across the areas. As budget flattens declines it becomes more important given the Global Distribution and challenges we face. I cannot say too much about the spi specifics in many of the areas. As director clapper said and betty sap mentioned in florida there are big changes ahead in the way we use our overhead space architecture. Some of the biggest changes in my view we have seen in several decades. It will be possible as director clapper mentioned through techniques such as activitybased intelligence and associated architecture capabilities to have persistance and look at things for a long time. The second aspect i believe is revolutionary is innovation. Rather than having overhead architecture as betty sap described it that is a set of supporting systems we will have integrative architecture and there is benefits that come from that. We are working to strengthen our cryptanalytical capabilities and our National Level defense human capabilities through an initiative called the defense clan service. In the antienvironment th an viral environment this is to keep pace with asia and highend challenges we are working on surveillance and reconnaissance and the resillancy of the architecture and that is all i can say. There the third bullet is indicative and we are focused on adapting the techniques we learned in Counter Terrorism where we have gotten precise and apply that to the higher end value. The creditor and reaper, the aircraft that is unmanned and known as drones, have been the signature weapon of the past decade much as the explosive device has been the weapon for terrorist. It has enabled the most precise campaign in the history of warfare and it is or most effective instrument. We are healthy in this area but we are looking to make enhancements in advance censors and extended the range of the Second Generation platform considerably. Another key advantage the the operations in the area. And the c2 problem evolves and shifts on us and we are at a turning point not just in National Security but in the Counter Terrorism and the need to rebalance and rethink the weee have done business and what adaptable and what isnt and what do we need to reinvent. On Cyber Capabilities we are supporting combat and defend the United States if called upon and the associates support structures to go with it, intelligence capabilities as you would in know demesne domain cyber space or other. Our partnerships with industry play a big role in all of this. Also with the fbi. But in particularly industry and information sharing. And counter special and security. As a result of wikileaks, snowden, and the navy yard attacks and the reviews associated with those we have taken significant measures to stregthen our capabilities against Insider Threats whether that is work place violence or work espionage. We are looking to shift the way we evaluate people for positions of responsibility and security clearances through a method called continuous evaluation. If you think of snapshots in time where you do an investigation and wait several years and do it again this is more of a continuous stream like you do with credit checks and we believe it will have a number of advantages. Okay. Let me conclude by talking about the importance of intelligence integration. This was the focus of the 9 11 commission and there are four areas i would like to talk about. Some of this honestly predated 9 11 and it has been at work or in the process of a couple decades of work and others have accelerated since responding to evolving threats. The first is integration within agencies. The cia in the 1980s isnt the cia today. It is vastly more integrated and it produces big dividands by doing so. Our intelligence agencies work much closer together. It is hard to find a case where a single Intelligence Agency has been responsible were a significant breakthrough or operation. The bin laden case is an example for many groups worked together to produce the intelligence case and that is the model Going Forward. Director clapper and i have made it a top proiority to make sure the National Defense programs are innovative and transparent to each other. We defend on each others capabilities to do missions. Tactical missions and Important Mission and Tactical Operations defend on the national capabilities. And then finally the partnership between the department of defense and the central Intelligence Agency is very important across the board in a number of intelligence areas and with capabilitiecapabilities. I would conclude with that and i am happy to take your questions with dr. Hicks. [ applause ] thank you, very much secretary vickers for your remarks. I am kathleen hicks. You covered the water front and it gives us a rich conversation opportunity with the audience and i will turn it over to them in a few minutes. But there are a few things i thou