. . . . . . captioning performed by vitac in europe and south america and africa, covert actions coup attempts, some assassination plots became revealed in the '70s. this was an intense focus that in the 70s most of this came to light in the church committees and this was a real revelation what the cia had been doing. a really wrenching experience for people who had been in the cia and not accustomed to much congressional oversight. all of a sudden on television, all of the dirty laundry of the first three decades of its existence was being aired. and this had an effect -- according to both memoirs and documents and number of people i've spoken to from this period of of the generation that came in after the church committee, that those who came in in the late '70s, came under this period when the cia was trying to reorient itself back to being a traditional espionage service, not only the covert actions of the '70s -- early 50s and 60s but also the vietnam era. you saw intense focus during vietnam. those who came in after church were taught that the cia should be an espionage service not a paramilitary service. many of those people took that message very seriously throughout their career and what happened was that 20 years later, many of those people were then in senior jobs in the cia in the late '90s, early 2000s when a new era dawned for the cia. that was -- specifically, a moment in the summer of 2001 when the cia was handed this new weapon called the armed predator. cia had been watching the rise of al qaeda for a number of years. in afghanistan, osama bin laden had carried out a number of attacks up to that point and the question was how should the united states government respond. the cia had been able to penetrate al qaeda and tally ban to some degree and able to find whereabouts of osama bin laden but never in real time. once they found him they could never find a way to kill him. there was this question of did they have the authority to kill him? going back to this ban on assassinations that came in 1976 under president ford, could the cia carry out an assassination to that extent? would it be an assassination? there was this intense debate in the summer of 2001 when the military, which had developed an armed predator basically handed the cia this weapon and the question was should the cia take it up. and george tenant recalls meetings during that summer where basically it boiled down to we're spies, not assassins. should we take up this new weapon? should we take on this new mission? shouldn't that be the military's job? it somewhat seems quaint but this debate played out until the september 11th attack. on september 8th, 2001, there was a meeting at the white house whether the cia should used armed predator and go to afghanistan in -- with the aim of going to kill osama bin la n laden. and even years later, there is still disagreement about what was decided at that meeting but what we do know is the september 11th attacks happened and within six days president bush gave an authorization to the cia, a secret finding to go around the wall to capture or kill al qaeda operatives. a secret order that is still on the books and the foundation of the cia's mission, even those who did the 9/11 attacks mostly either dead or in jail, that authorization has been expanded to encompass all sorts of different groups and different people who have carried out different attacks. that's the foundation for this new transformation by the cia which took up not only the predator and the role of targeted killing but in the early years it was more a focus on interrogation some would argue torture, issues like waterboarding because there was very little information about al qaeda and the belief inside the cia the bush white house, you needed to use extreme methods to get that information. over time, i pointed to around 2004 things begin to change. there's this concern in the cia about the methods they've been employing and inspector general report about some of the methods might have crossed the line into war crimes. and there's a real shuder throughout the ranks that the agency might be facing another period like the church commission. they would be the ones who would be facing possible legal jeopardy for the methods they used. and it's during that period, 2004 on, you see a shift. you see a shift away from interrogation and away from the use of the secret prisons towards targed killing as a method of counterterrorism. it's something that the bush white house embraced really wholeheartedly at the end of 2008, middle of 2008, end of the bush administration and as we know president obama has embraced as well. what we've seen is an acceleration of that process, focus on paramilitary activities and counterterrorism activities and manhunting in places where the united states is not officially at war but where the cia has this authority. that's one half of the coin how the cia has become more like the military. i'll spend less time on the military side but i think it's important because again, it's sort of the other half of this dramatic change since 2001. so 2001 happens, 9/11 happens and the pentagon had been, military had been structured very much like it had been for decades with a -- with large static armies built to fight wars like the gulf war in the early 1990s. and this really infuriated the defense secretary donald rumsfeld because what he saw was a military that -- saw an enemy not in wars where the united states was authorized to fight. so the question was how could the military, how could he, the secretary of defense, run awar in places where the united states was not at war? the cia had the authorities to operate in these places but the military didn't. what he really pushed for in the years he was secretary of defense was to expand the pentagon authorities to operate clan destinnily to act more like the cia did with its own authorities to operate in deniable places and places where the united states did not have to acknowledge it was operating. he expanded dramatically the role of special operations forces, specifically joint special operations command, which is down at fort bragg, north carolina, the delta force at s.e.a.l. team 6, built to do hostage rescues, very short operations over 24 hours basically what he did was he created -- he built this organization to fight large secret wars in iraq, in afghanistan, across the border into pakistan and this became rumsfeld's tool to create the military more like the intelligence services. there's been a convergence over the last 15 years between the military and the cia. and this blurring of the lines. and in a little i'll get to where does this culminate. but first of all, let's get to where did this play out? i think that the true laboratory for this convergence is pakistan. probably the most interesting -- i think the most interesting setting for this experiment of the last 15 years, partly because it created this dilemma for the united states government of a country that was officially an ally and yet a country where there were questions about the loyalty of its leaders, loyalty of its intelligence service, the ability of its government to deal with terrorism threats, not only into evidence but the united states. so it presented this dilemma. and so i think that if you want to look at a place where this grand transformation has taken place, i think pakistan is the most interesting place to look. and the arc of the relations between the united states and pakistan, follow an interesting although depressing trajectory. there were early on good relations, i would say, for what you could call good relations between united states and intelligence services, cia, namely and pakistan's intelligence service the isi. there was a degree of commonalty what the mission was. there was no love for al qaeda among the pakistani intelligence service and there was a view while the isi nurtured the taliban and saw the taliban as a bull work against india, al qaeda was a problem and threat and therefore they could work with the united states against al qaeda. that in the early period netted a number of successes. there were a number of senior al qaeda operatives captured in pakistan, khalid sheikh mohammed, which did show relations. but over time suspicion grew about the motives, about each other's motives. the united states began suspecting that the pakistanis were playing a double game, particularly with the taliban. while they were helping with al qaeda, they were secretly nurturing the taliban because they were unclear whether the united states was going to stay in afghanistan. the pakistanis were unclear whether the united states was going to stay in pakistan -- sorry, afghanistan. we're not sure whether as the united states got diverted to the iraq war, whether they should be nurtured continuing to nurture the taliban because they were looking at the long term picture of how the taliban fit into their own strategic defense against india. so the mutual suspicions grew over time to a couple critical points and these points accelerate the transformations in the cia that i talked about earlier. the first is the decision in july of 2008 by the bush white house to basically conduct drone strikes in pakistan unilaterally. up to that point there had been a decision from 2004 to 2008 to get the pakistanis to sign off on every drone strike or at least notify them of drone strikes that were taking part in the country. there became to be a belief insi inside the cia and white house, the pakistanis were tipping off militants before the strikes and in 2007 there were no successful strikes. there was this belief that perhaps their partner wasn't such a reliable partner. president bush authorized unilateral action and you see this dramatic spike in drone strikes starting in july of 2008. and when president obama comes in in january of 2009, he makes the very fateful decision to continue the program in many ways accelerate it from where bush had left it leaving -- you're seeing in 2009 and especially in 2002, a dramatic increase in drone strikes based on intelligence gathered by the cia and agents in the pakistani tribal areas. that had positive and arguably very negative results. one is that it did have a dramatic effect on al qaeda and al qaeda operatives in terms of those who were killed or who fled because of the drone strikes. but it also really poisoned relations between the united states and pakistan. to the point that by three years later, was really the cratering of the relationship. this is one of the big points we want to look at when we look at intelligence operations post 9/11 because there's so much of a focus on what they call connecticut operations, capturing and killing, operations inside countries where you may note acknowledge your role or may not tell your partner service it can have really dell tear yus impact on diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. many people would think that in 2011, exactly five years -- five years from monday when the osama bin laden raid happened, was the low point but actually, i think in traveling to pakistan and doing a lot of reporting there and as i write about in my book, the real -- i think the lowest point of the relationship came a few months earlier when a cia operative named raymond davis was captured -- was picked up by policemen in pakistan after he had shot two people he thought were trying to -- trying to rob him as he was driving through the streets of lahore. davis is picked up by the cops. he had -- after he shot the two men he radioed for help. a white van from the lahore consulate in the american consulate in lahore came to rescue him but in doing so killed a third person by accident and drove away and left raymond davis on the street to his own devices. he's picked up and put in jail and the beginning of my book is the interrogation of davis by the pakistani police which you can actually watch on youtube amazingly. it set off this period where president obama had to say publicly he was not a spy he was a diplomat. the pakistanis knew better and this was in their mind proof about cia operations over the years, that the cia had deployed the secret army inside pakistan without telling pakistanis they were up to their minds all sorts of nefarious acts. raymond davis sitting in jail in lahore was the proof of that. the -- the issue ultimately resolves when a deal was struck that the families of the victims were paid off. raymond davis was put on a plane to afghanistan and brought back to the united states but that really soured the relationship ten years after 9/11, more even than what happened three months later when a group of navy s.e.a.l.s went deep into pakistan and killed osama bin laden. but i think that moment, the bin laden raid, i think kind of illuminates the transformation i've been talking about. here you had ten years after the september 11th attacks and you had a group of soldiers operating under the ci a's authority sort of a flick of a pen, the navy s.e.a.l.s were given authority to operate under cia rules, to operate inside pakistan, a country where the united states was not at war. if they -- if the bush administration so choose -- obama administration so chose, they could have never acknowledged the role, never acknowledged the operation. as we know what happened in that operation, it was acknowledged. it became what was considered the cia's greatest moment since the september 11th attacks but does show a blurring of the lines of what happened between the united states military, intelligence services and how they converged in this country that is officially an american ally. i think that i will stop here and then get tomorrow into where all this is going and whether we're likely to see any change. thanks. [ applause ] >> thank you. i'm glad to be here. thank you to the consulate for inviting me and it's a pleasure to share this poed yim with two very distinguished speakers from the panel. i almost actually didn't make it today. i flew in from myrtle beach in south carolina where i teach at the coastal carolina university. the flight was overbooked in typical fashion. i should not mention the name of the company since we're on tv. -- maybe i should for that reason. almost did not make it on the flight. very kind lady stepped in and said, i'll stay here tonight so you can go to your conference. i was very thankful to her. then she turned -- asked me, so what's your conference about? and i said it's about espionage and he think she got scared after that. typical of the subject, when i tell people my academic interest, espionage, i have a discussion to end at that point or dies away. i'm glad to be with this audience that hopefully this discussion will not -- this subject will not kill the discussion, in fact probably fuel it. i hope also for tomorrow's discussion to have some interesting thoughts and debates. my main area of expertise is espionage, technically speaking, we can call that human, human intelligence, right? essentially a quick definition of this is human intelligence, any information that can be gathered from human sources using human sources. it's basically what the cia was initially founded to do before it changed its mission as mark correctly pointed out. a few very basic aspects of the background of this in the united states. there is a significant human element to the intelligence community, of course, human is one of many disciplines of intelligence collection, it's not the only one. but in the united states, obviously the agency is the agency that makes most use of human intelligence. it's one of the core missions of this agency but it's not the only one. we have of course a defense intelligence agency that does more or less what the cia does but focuses on military issues as opposed to civilian issues. the department of state also makes use of that technically, they collect information from humans, using humans, although they are not an intelligence agency and have an intelligence component for sure. not to mention the fbi makes use of human intelligence and every branch of the u.s. armed forces has components that facilitate human intelligence. it's a very scattered discipline throughout the u.s. intelligence community. the most he is so teric of all, no question about that. that's the reason what i want to spend a few minutes going into the background of this before i go into more detail. in the united states since 9/11, we had sort of reorganization of the national clanestine service, supposed to be sort of a unit that brings together the human aspects of the u.s. intelligence community and reality mostly run by the cia. the office of directser of national intelligence is supposed to supervise it, a lot of issues and turf wars of who actually is in charge of the national clandestine services, people often refer to the operations as the ncs, a lot of confusion about this. in fact it's supposed to be bigger than just the director of operations, which is a part of the cia that does the human aspect that i specialize on. if you would reduce the -- appreciate that. according to the website of the office of director of national intelligence, the national clandestine service as the national authority for decontradiction and evaluation of clandestine, human intelligence investigation. that's the managed by the director of ncs as delegated by the director of the cia who is an undercover officer. a very quick but important note here about humint, operations officers that deal with human intelligence, they don't kill people, typically, they don't drive flashy cars and if anything being glash flashy is looked down. they don't frequent casinos unlike james bond although there was a story recently about the cia recruiting or trying to recruit chinese officials in casinos in macao. it does happen sometimes, just not very often. and most important of all, i should say by the way, technically they don't spy. they don't themselves spy. they actually recruit others who spy for them. so they are officers not spies. the agents are the ones that do the spying. and most important of all, most of them have diplomatic immunity. right? as important subject to return to this in a minute of what that means in the sort of current era of asymmetric war the u.s. finds itself in. most operations officers are an evolved human intelligence collection, core collectors or case officers. what they do is they recruit people in foreign countries to spy for the united states government, right? this is a very complex and difficult task that is based on very strong -- developing strong relationships of trust between an operations officer and an agent. these agents then will trust you as an operations officer, as a case officer to such an extent that they will actually go out there and put their lives at risk for a number of reasons, sometimes money or grudges against their own agencies or whatever, but often to a large extent they do it because of you. so psychology plays a very important role in this, far more important than guns, weapons. i would actually call this the ultimate people job. to convince people to do things for you they would not otherwise do. that's the important background to keep in mind as we discuss how this type of line of work has changed in the post 9/11 era in which we find ourselves today. so the core collectors for the u.s. intelligence community -- core collectors another term for operations officer that collects human intelligence. this is really the conventions that the u.s. intelligence community uses to collect human intelligence. it's a cold war phenomenon, developed during the cold war. america hardly had an intelligence community to speak of before world war ii. and so the conventions and methods and the disciplines and traditions in america of human intelligence developed during the cold war. it is strictly speaking a cold war phenomenon, right? that typically evolves in the cold war in particular, involved probably men, usually from a middle class or upper middle class or upper class background who joined the cia word of mouth type system, which of course were not used to living in austere environments, they came from quite privileged backgrounds. not as much as the british case but still there was an element of class in that recruitment process. so they were not used to living in very austere environments, right? and they spent as a result much of their career in quite -- i would say for most part, not always, safe locations and doing things that are quite safe. they all had official covers, meaning that they had a position in the u.s. government that gave them diplomatic immunity. meaning that they were often stationed in u.s. embassies or consulates in countries around the world, right? and they pretended to be diplomats, many of them. in fact they were also diplomats but in fact the real job began usually at night when they did -- the humint part of their job. of course their life resembled very much those of diplomats. it overlapped in many important areas. diplomats are known for example to attends cocktail parties of various embassies. every country has a national holiday or wholesome type of event to attend and during cold war they would attend those events and stride to recruit other diplomats of other countries. that strange song and dance with them and they are doing the same to you because they also pretend to be diplomats but they are not and you have to report about this and sort of like hope that something happens out of it and often it does. sometimes it does not. but that's very often a very large part of an operations officer's life during the cold war. these were mostly safe assignments and i would say they are safe even today. if you have immunity and you have a pass that says you're a diplomat and you get caught spying in china, you are basically exceeding the description. they might arrest you or rough you up a couple of days but they can't really do anything to you. chances are they let you go. the case of raymond allen davis you mentioned is typical of that. even in that case he was roughed up for a few days and got to come back homes. these were very safe assignments. as assignments go. in addition to that, that's an important part of what i'm trying to say today, right? these mostly men or upper middle class individuals would train to recruit people who looked and act and often thought just like them. right? even if the depths of the cold war, right, your average russian diplomat you're trying to recruit or polish dip plomat dressed like you and spoke something that resembled english and for the most part you could communicate. there was a connection of cultures and also had limitations to how far they were going to go as part of the commitment to principles. they would often not be sort of suicide -- have a suicide mentality, which is not the case today. additionally, most of that work focused mainly on the ussr. it's amazing when you look at the archives, the degree it focused. often that activity in the same parts of africa or asia did resolve around what the soviets were doing there, right? i've written sort of a documentary history of the national security agency and one of the things i found funny and interesting, during sort of the early 1980s, they had four different departments and accounts but they had two like basic units, one was soviet and the other was ilaoo, which menz all others and that was pretty much it. the amount of output dedicated to the soviet union was incredible. if you look at the map of those days. you're an operations officer and stationed somewhere abroad in a place like istanbul or nairobi or berlin, vienna, the kinds of places or brazil, we associate with the cold war as it were. i'll have you know these are nice places, quite nice, if you're stationed in vienna, you get a nice house and income. even if you're in places like nairobi, you live in the western area and it's leafy and gated. and you get a good income because it's cheap to live there. it's great. it's a very nice safe type of life for an operations officer. you get to compare that with the types of cities that we associate with today's current affairs, places like benghazi or peshawar. these are the kinds of places we're talking about. the cold war is over and the focus has shifted. these places are not as nice, are they? so essentially what we find ourselves in today is that the main problem we have of course is that i mentioned that human intelligence operations were developed in the cold war on state actors now we're dealing with nonstate actors and the way you collect human intelligence is totally different than how you go about this with a state actor, right? to begin with, no state actors do not display o vert targets of human intelligence collection. they don't have diplomats. they don't have business community seeing officials they can recruit. you rarely come in contact with them because they mostly operate underground. in addition to that, that forces core collectors to actually focus for a change on targets that are not diplomatic. you can't recruit any more by going to cocktail parties in embassies. you can't recruit people who live in the same neighborhood as you that happen to work for another country. this is over. we do that still but what i'm saying is that the war on terrorism does not revolve around that kind of universe anymore. that is over. in addition, the actual terrain is alien to western operatives. have you been to yemen lately, place like sanaa, it looks like an alien landscape. i mean that in the sense of extra terrestrial, reminds you of images from "star wars" almost. even the architecture is different from that we're used to here in the west. let alone the way people talk or dress or ling gis tick issues are massive and cultural barriers, almost insurmountable, even today many years after 9/11. that's a serious problem for human intelligence collection. not to mention of course, the very hazardous operational environment. i mentioned before, if you're caught in even in russia today, let's say or venezuela, something like that, chances are nothing major will happen to you. i tell my students if you want life threatening situations, don't join the cia, join law enforcement, you know? local law enforcement, far more dangerous than working as a typical case over for -- even a case officer, let alone an analyst. in this case if al qaeda were to arrest you, or isis, we're talking about a very serious turn of events for you and your account back in the cia. i have a very important data point in my research which comes from an article written under this title, the counterterrorism myth written by mark gerercht, former intelligence officer for the cia. he wrote this in 2001 in july. and i think that's a very accurate picture of what was happening then at the cia. this is a quote from his article in the atlantic, the existence of a u.s. counter terrorism program in the middle east south and central asia is a myth he says, it doesn't exist. we don't have such a thing back in 2001. he said, it's virtually impossible for westerners to operate in al qaeda's environments. that's a good question. what are the chances are white caucasian guy from america surviving in peshawar for more than a week or going unnoticed, that's impossible. not in sanaa or benghazi, doesn't happen. the close -- so that brings me to the point that often these places are terrorist safe havens and these terrorist havens have a very close structure and poses operational difficulties even nor noncaucasian muslims which the cia has. what they are saying, back in 2001, not necessarily today, 2001, around the time of the 9/11 attacks is that even a cia officer who is a muslim, who is familiar with the kind of culture finds it very difficult to survive and to be convincing in a place like peshawar or benghazi. case officers because of that have to force themselves to venture outside of the diplomatic circuit. what gerecht is saying, it was not necessarily encouraged because it is dangerous or even rewarded. a great quote that he has in his article from a former division operative for the cia, sorry for the strong language but this is so typically trekter of operations. the cia probably hasn't got a single qualified arabic speakering officer of a middle eastern background who can believe a believable muslim sharing his life, for christ's sake, most case officers lived in the suburbs of virginia. we don't do that kind of thing. right? that's a great quote. another quote this time from an active cia case officer, operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen. while we're on the subject i would add operations that include lack of toilet paper as a way of life don't happen either. another thing that he says i'm not sure i so much agree with that but interesting comment, we can discuss it that humint is characterized by risk adverse bureaucratic nature which mirrors the growing physical risk of american society. interesting comment even though i'm skeptical about that one. and i would add to this, this is not gerecht's point, this is my point, it is difficult for the older case officers to venture outside of safe western areas. it's difficult and they tend to follow into predictable patterns of behavior. for example, when meeting agents, which makes them very much the target of foreign counterintelligence. this may have happened in beruit. there was some reports in the news that the cia suffered a virtual wipeout of its agent network in lebanon beruit. that's what they felt comfortable doing. you feel at home, noz as challenging and dangerous, all hezbollah had to do monitor meeting in those flasplaces, th simple. how things have changed since 9/11. so what's the way forward? what are the responsibility? this is the article written in 2001. what's happening now we can point? of course we don't have access to the inside picture where we can speculate and also use some open sources like for instance mark's book that he mentioned earlier, there is no question of course the cia counterterrorism is not a 9/11 creation. it was existed for decades before that but we have seen an unprecedented growth of the center. now it's so big and so active that it rivals some of the traditional national clandestine service accounts. that's a direct outcome of that. there's also a renewed growth in the cia's nonofficial cover program, you have probably heard this before. these are actual officers who go out there and don't have immunity and go out there and don't have a connection to the government of the united states. they do what others do, under immunity without the protection which gives them more flexibility and a bigger pressure to operate within society as opposed to detached from society. that of course is very dangerous. there were about -- hundreds of -- hundreds -- some say over a thousand but norcps have seen a rise over a few dozen from back in the cold war. that's a direct result of this situation. and of course, we are perhaps, perhaps, this is more of a speculation on my part and i'd like to see what others have to say about this. we may be noticing a post global war on terrorism transition from tactical counter terrorism, the killing and kidnapping and all of that stuff back to strategic operations focusing more on human intelligence. this again is a matter for discussion. i think this is happening although we cannot be certain -- cannot be certain. and this is something part of speculation and connects to what i'll talk about tomorrow, we may be seeing a possible future emphasis on case officers specializing more. in other words, somebody spent like 30 different countries in their career, it may be narrowed down to two or three. they go more in depth and culture becomes more aware and more able to operate in these kinds of environments because that is all they . that's more of a speculation i think based on my sixth sense and research that this is where things are going toward. but i'll mention more about that tomorrow. until then, thank you for your attention. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. that was a wonderful presentation, all three of you. we have time for q and a. and please raise your hands and stand up when you take the mic and ask short and pertinent questions. thank you. >> back in 1971 during the where west pakistan became bangladesh, there was that whole conflict and the united states backed pakistan, which many people say was the wrong thing to do. but even though this was 30 years before 9/11, when it was mentioned that at first united states and pakistan had reasonably good relations. even though it's 30 years before. was the united states' role in the bangladesh conflict a good example of that? >> i mean, i could talk a little bit about it. i'm not an expert in that conflict. i recommend a terrific book called "the blood telegram" about that conflict but it gets to the point, the author's name, gary bass, a professor at princeton. you're right, the united states backed pakistan in putting down that -- the insur recollection in bangladesh, all sorts of cables and documents about henry kissinger's role in that. the larger point is that pakistan was seen as a very important cold war ally for the united states where it was seen that india was in the sort of in the soviet sphere and some of my colleagues might be able to speak nmore intelligently and pakistan certainly and moving forward you have the very important role, the united states and pakistan played in the arming othe mu ja dean to drive the soviets out of afghanistan. it was an important alliance until the end of the cold war during the -- after the fall of communism, there was a drift in the relationship. there was anne estrangement to some degree and the united states got closer to india. the pakistanis after the soviets left afghanistan, the taliban came about. they as i said earlier, cultivated the taliban as an important ally against india and so what we had on 2001 in 9/11, an old ally that was certainly not -- certainly not the same level of trust as there had been in the cold war but it was still seen as a country that had drifted from the united states' sort of same interest but still quite important. >> if i could quickly add, on the soviet records pertaining to the separation of bangladesh from pakistan in 1971 just became available last august. and again, because they were only so recently available, i haven't gone through all of them. but i did look at some of them and because as mark mentioned india was a close ally of the soviet union, the soviet intelligence service and soviet foreign ministry were basically quite happy about the outcome in the -- that bangladesh had been able to be separated through india's intervention. and saw this as a new arena in which it would be possible opportunities for intelligence gathering vis a vis pakistan which was looked upon as an important u.s. base for espiona espionage. >> quickly a question for mark, you called this a lawyer's war. do lawyers ever say no? do they ever say, you know, when the services want to torture, when they want to do various things that are on their operational agenda, that the lawyers say no, you can't do that? if you can talk examples of that. and quick question for joseph, specialization you ended with that now? that is in the sense -- haven't we been doing this and aren't there people working -- iran, iraq, afghanistan, you know, with have sort of dedicated their career and their specialization to those sorts of things? you see that that is a way of the future. isn't this what's happening now? i'm kind of hoping that it is. >> so yeah, quickly, yes they say no. the most famous examples of of course are those of when they have said yes when they were presented a list of things that the agencies wanted to do and the lawyers basically found ways to justify them, whether it's -- whether it's the interrogation, whether it's surveillance, whether it's the famous or infamous decision to prosecute an war al awlaki. once decisions were made or in the midst of some of the decisions resisting that pressure, there's a man named alberta mora, who was the -- the general council of the navy i believe in the pentagon who was resisting some of the interrogation methods at guantanamo bay and elsewhere. he famously was a dissenter from some of that movement. there's a lawyer -- justice department bush administration jack goldsmith who wrote a book about how his role in rescinding some of the orders given specifically on surveillance, for infamous nsa wire tapping. some of those lawyers are known now. they are sort of famous in some circles but it is i think just telling that some -- it's i think fascinating that some of the most important figures of this period in this clandestine conflict are the lawyers on i think you got a great point that a drove policy allows them to charlotte there and when they saw to make a decision to carry o autokill. it they encourage to do what they thought they could not >> thank you. >> so curious as to what you find regards of the cold war with false flag operations, north wood, mark, you can comment as what information has come out with regards to the gu document of the soviet union or contemplating it, you know, operation north wood was not carried out but it was planned. >> let me if i can just ask for a clarification, you mean operation -- >> oh, false flag. >> operations were a staple part of the intelligent activity. they had many that were designed for assassinations and carried out assassinations both within the eastern blocks but in western country and in third world countries. the war efforts to deceive and present something as being western front where in fact it was sew osovi operated. it is hard to give a sense of full magnitude of it. intelligence gathering was the core of the mission of the soviet intelligence. the covert is what in the soviet is what we called the operation. especially of style an error. i think it is misleading to say it is a dominant element. it was an important part of the personnel went into intelligence gathered of more straightforward. >> um -- just zrooerecently and think this was in the "new york times." there was this author and he commented about how the cia had essentially -- he was doing a biography of him and wanted to look at something that was supposed to be available. the cia essentially pulled everything when he went to the archives and they said they have taken everything. i wonder i guess this is for doctor kramer if you can talk about reclassification and the agency is hiring their dark secrets to this. >> well, again, in theories of what was the operation striker of the cia and specifically exempt from the freedom of information act. you can apply for requested comments for the cia materials. for understandable reasons, you don't want to disclose agent's names and potentially endanger people's lives for their safety. they are bound to be in that regard. i would say overall at least with respect to cold warrior records, the cia has become vastly more opened as it was. the electronic reading would be in conceivable during the cold war and there are thens of thousands of documents out there of good search engine that you can use. there is three classifications of materials mostly to nuclear weapons related materials and that came into congress. something that i think was unnecessary, also has been a real burden on declassification. there are major problems of declassification process with regard to u.s. documents. the exemption of certain part of u.s. intelligence committee i don't think will change. there is a great deal of reluctant to change in both on the intelligence community and on the part of the congress. >> i have a question, it has to do more with psychology and american psychological association. last year of a big revelation that includes the cia and a b bunch of top head fail, cia came heavily. you had a lot of veterans suffering from ptsd, there is a bunch of operations as you read and studied about and so forth, how does the concept of terrorism in that fine line wheen what is moral and ethical in terms of what is legal but what is humane. you have the apa crossing over advising them how to extracting information and how to play with someone's mind. it was interesting that came out and several of them fell from their positions but it seems like a lot of them had been involved in the community for a very, very long time since human intelligence is based on psychology. is there any more about that, because that's kind of a real gray shady area that a lot of people don't have a lot of information about. i find it interesting when it came out last year. >> i think the connection between psychologists and psychiatrists and cia is much longer than you make it out to be. if you think of the recent stuff is controversial, speaking of missing documents by the wa way -- that's a much more aggressive invasive program, controversial with the apa. what i learned over the years, 9/11 caused a tremendous amount of fear on all americans and also influenced many academic communities and perhaps careful of the fine line you were talking about. >> he also eluded to, that was very strange operation of the activity of the cia. it was disclosed the mid 1970s which records were destroyed to try to cover it up. it turned out there were copies of some of those records that were obtained and made available. it is quite depressing to read that the cia was engaged in that kind of activity. these were some of the psychological experiments. they were also lsd experiments. they those were disclosed and it became controversial. as far as we know, there is not been return of that kind of activity. just one thing quickly, mathew, again was a friend of mine. he was a case officer in the 80s. he was one of the most fluent people in arabic. he worked in yemen and lebanon, he was killed in 1989. there are other people, i don't know -- i understand the soviet union and eastern europe, they had experts, i think you are a little incorrect in your statements about generalization of case officers. i want to point out that mathew died in 1989 and a lot of people were very upset about that. um -- i work for as a level person as general hayden. general hayden would say, mark, he would say that he was very active in full intelligence and interrogation in surveillance and in a full intelligence type of facet in al-qaida by full intelligence. when he left 2009, obama changed that and they essentially went towards targeting assassinations -- essentially the way to get rid of al-qaeda was through getting rid of its leaderships. wh would you agree or not agree with that? >> i will start then. given his background you said was secret intelligence and he ran the cia, he got a vital mission very deep in his world. he was the one who went to the white house july of 2008 to advocate for this accelerated target killing program that the bush administration picked up. as you said obama went with it. i do think by the end of his tenure at the cia, he didn't really began something that obama picked up on. >> thanks for your question and also trying to say my last name, that was very brave of you. >> you are actually right. there is a a lot traditions in the cia. conducted with risky police officers. we had in the '80s in bay ruth or in congreo or in the '60s. my comment is -- there is also people who did resemble james bond. so this stuff did happen. i am just saying and if you are going further back in the oasis day, there was more of that. the majority of people involved in this kind of business were kind of safe not necessarily because they wanted to but because they wanted to. the culture was more towards that as oppose to the risky operations that caused many officers their lives very often. yes, thank you for your comment and question. >> yes, mister, you spoke about the cia and the intelligence, you spoke about most of them never lived their looifives. i would like your opinion of bowe bergdahl, he spent several years as a prisoner, learning the culture and living the culture and he would seem top appear as one of the best recruits to become a cia case officer. i was wondering if your opinion if the cia pushed the envelope that far to get the officers in-depth and to get that knowledge. ? y . >> yes, it is a great question. basically you are saying is how do you correct tit. there is a lot of steps taken towards that direction. the cia particularly have tried to diversify. not just with the aspect that you just mentioned but people who have some kind of foreign background and have lived abroad and speak fluently in foreign language. it is difficult to recruit people because of difficulty in assessing their backgrounds. say for instance, if you are born in holland and your mom is dutch or something like that and your dad is american and you speak fluent dutch, great background for the cia but they have to investigate your background, they have to go to holland. often people apply for the job, they get tired of waiting and moving onto other jobs that paid more. you have to really want to in order to work for that kind of work and i mean often the cia would hire people, they would make conditional offers for one condition, two of the people who got the offer they eventually drop out because they are tired of waiting. it is a very difficult job. that's just one example of how hard this situation is and how difficult. thank you for your question. >> i suspect that you all use the unfortunate phrase. how much does the cia still i mean -- how much does it still worry about russia and china which is still major step. the problem especially after 2001 -- as we've all talked about during the cold war, the cia was focused and understandably so, but when the cold war ended in particularly and particularly when the war in terror began, it moved so drastically away from russia that i think it lost its ability to conduct operations even in conducting analytical work about it. there is still very good people who deal with russians, who are expert in russian. i think now russia has seen much more of a threat over the last couple of years particularly because of its activity, military activity and ukraine that's more efforts and personnel trying to understand russia. >> thank you. >> did you have something? >> just really quickly, you know it takes time and as mark said, if you focus on it now, it takes years to develop expertise and if you are talking about human intelligence penetrating russia and putin in a circle so it will take a while. thank you very much, thank you for coming. please return tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. we'll continue. watch live or on demand any time at cspan.org on your desktop or phone or tablet where you will find the full schedule, follow us on twitter or like us on facebook. don't miss a minute of the 2016 republican national convention starting today 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