for the study of intelligence where he was the deputy director. he began his career in the cia, it age s you if i say in 192772. after two years in the united states army, also with the u.s. military command in vietnam. since his retirement from cia he was also national security and teaches at georgetown school for service. he is also a founding advisory board member at the international spy museum, here since the beginning. he s the author of a new book, the foundation of the cia: harry truman, the missouri gang and the origins of the cold war. you re not here to listen to me talk, so, thanks, rick, for coming out. [ applause ] and thank you all for coming out when you could be over at the christmas market across the street. i appreciate that. as vince said, i ve been a cia officer for running on to 50 years now. and for the last 20 years i taught intelligence courses at georgetown school of foreign service. and in teaching there at georgetown, i ve discovered as well as
really happy to have you here. we are less than 30 days out now from the elections. we are going to be joined in just a moment by the man who was in charge of the democratic party s efforts to hold the united states senate. and that is quite a job this year. the polling averages right now show that the prospects for both parties in the senate are equal as of today. literally, if the polling says today ends up matching the vote on election day, it will be 50/50 in the senate. so in terms of control of the senate, control of the direction of the country, every race really matters. every seat really matters. every candidate really matters. it is just on a knife s edge. and i mean, just on a personal level, if you didn t know whether you would volunteer for a candidate yet this year. if you would volunteer to door knock or do some get out the vote work. if you haven t committed to voting for sure yourself this year, this year your vote will really matter. this is not one to skip
so in terms of control of the senate, control of the direction of the country, every race really matters. every seat really matters. every candidate really matters. it is just on a knife s edge. and i mean, just on a personal level, if you didn t know whether you would volunteer for a candidate yet this year. if you would volunteer to door knock or do some get out the vote work. if you haven t committed to voting for sure yourself this year, this year your vote will really matter. this is not one to skip out on. this election will be very tight and very, very interesting. and very consequential. again, if the polling bears out. and election day looks anything like the polls say it will lookh today. we ll be talking with the man in charge of the democratic party s efforts in the senate in just a moment. obviously, a super high stakes job. a super difficult job. still though, who would you rather be? would you rather be the senate guy for the democrats right now? or would you r
i m going to read a statement which i typically don t do at these but i want to make sure you full will you understand fully understand what i have to say on the issue that i think is mostly on our minds this morning. obviously, any foreign breach of our cybercurt measures is serving, and i strongly condemn any such efforts. prior to the election the director of national intelligence released a statement saying that the russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from u.s. persons and institutions. including from u.s. political organizations. that is what the intelligence community believes can be said in had unclassified remarks without risking sources and methods. anything else, anything else is irresponsible likely illegal, and potentially for partisan political gain. i agree with senator schumer, chairman mccain, burr, and others simply cannot be a partisan issue. let me remind all of you that the senate intelligence committee on which i and chairman o
the terrorist threat israel, and it is dangerous, but these terrorists want to cast themselves as the vanguard of a new world order. they are not. they arethugs, murderers, and they should be treated that way. [applause] pres. obama: fascism threatens to overrun the entire world, and we had to wage total war in response. communism threatened only to overturn a world order threatened not only to overturn threateneder, but the nuclear holocaust, so we had to build arms alliances to contain it. kill s terrorists can innocent people, but they don t pose an existential threat to our nation, and we must not make a mistake of elevating them as if they do. that does their job for them. it makes them more important and helps them with recruitment. a second and related point is that we cannot follow the path of previous great powers who sometimes defeated themselves through overreach. whiletecting our homeland drawing down the number of troops serving in harm s way overseas, we helpe