Face to Face with Adam Schiff, Chairman, House Intelligence

[Music] [Music] good evening everyone welcome thank you for attending the latest in a series of public events in 2021 by the michael v hayden center for intelligence policy and international security here at george mason university i am mark rozelle i serve as the dean of the char school of policy and government at george mason university and we are very proud to host the hayden center mason's president greg washington likes to say that these hayden center virtual events are george mason's equivalent to must-see tv and judging from the turnout for these events clearly many people agree now tonight we have over 600 persons who have signed up from 45 states the district of columbia six continents 17 countries and 32 universities so welcome to all of you from around the world the hayden center of course honors its founder general michael hayden who has been on our faculty now for 11 years and i noticed by the way that someone on twitter not long ago asked general hayden his current status and he replied retired now just to be clear in retirement he has written two best-selling books been a national security analyst on cnn lectured around the world among many other ventures and founded our hayden center and has been a frequent moderator panelist and always participant on our many programs so may your retirement be so full as his we are fortunate to have many leading scholars and practitioner teachers in our international security studies master's degree program professor ellen lapson is the program director she's done a fantastic job in building it into one of the most highly ranked in this field in the country and recently we have added to our teaching capacity and drew mccabe the director of the fbi david priest phd in political science and ceo of law fair as well as longtime intelligence analyst and white house intelligence briefer and also ronald marx long time cia officer and staff member on the hill but so also welcome tonight's event i do want to turn to the founder of the hayden center general michael hayden general thank you again representative adam schiff thank you again for being here it's really going to be a wonderful evening and by the way you did so many things thank you again from cia nsa and so on thank you again michael morell will moderate and larry let's begin thank you general great to have you here again tonight and welcome to the chairman and welcome uh michael morell um for those of you who aren't familiar with the hayden center uh we've been around for a little over three years and we were set up to uh try to demystify the intelligence profession the role it plays in policymaking uh for a lot of our students and for really the general public uh it's a it's an area that is uh shrouded in a lot of mystery and uh we felt uh general hayden felt it was important to try to get out there and uh um make it a little more explainable and a little more sensible to folks we put on lots of events that's the the main our main line of business if you've missed our events in the past we do have a youtube channel uh go to hayden center on youtube and you can find three years worth of events that touch on all aspects of intelligence if you want to hear about our events first get on our mailing list you can just go to our hayden center website haydencenter.gmu.edu scroll to the bottom of the page put your email address in hit return and you'll be hearing from us about events uh some administrative points uh after we get through this great conversation we're gonna have uh michael is gonna turn to you in the audience for your questions so start thinking of your questions start sending your questions to us the way to get them to us is using the q a tool in your zoom window uh there is a chat tool in this zoom window we will not be monitoring the chat tools so don't send your questions there send them to the q a tool if you're watching us on our youtube live stream you can use the chat function and youtube live stream and we'll monitor that for questions as well we have we are going to be recording the event we are recording the event uh the event will then be put on our youtube channel and other social media um but we also are recording the event for use by michael morrell uh in his podcast that is carried by cbs news and cbs news radio it's called intelligence matters again a wonderful uh vehicle for learning about all things intelligence and national security thanks to michael and cbs for allowing that to take place uh if you do not wish your name to be used in your question because we're recording uh please make sure to indicate that you want to remain anonymous with your question uh we're on social media we're on twitter so go on twitter comment about the event before or after during we'd love to hear what you have to say we're also on facebook and linkedin about that let me introduce our speakers tonight we have michael morrell michael morell is uh former deputy director of cia and twice acting director during that time after both the petraeus tenure and after the panetta tenure he's currently a senior fellow here at the hayden center and is also a distinguishing visiting professor at the charter school teaching graduate level courses on intel analysis one of the most popular classes we offer and michael does consulting work at beacon global strategies for those who might be interested in hearing from him in a more professional venue uh our guest tonight is congressman adam schiff uh thank you congressman for joining us many of americans know you mainly as that guy that ran that first impeachment of donald j trump about a year ago and uh but we in the intel business have known you for a long time uh congressman schiff joined the house permanent select uh committee on intelligence in 2007. he had been the ranking member of the committee beginning in 2015 and became the chairman in 2019 he represents california's 28th congressional district which covers a significant part of los angeles county uh home to much of the entertainment industry so he's a strong advocate for intellectual property and digital privacy it's also home to the jet propulsion laboratory which has had this wonderful success in the last week with the perseverance rover sending wonderful pictures and videos from the planet mars so congratulations to your constituents there for doing that great work uh and he's not always been a congressman he spent time in the state senate in california and was a federal prosecutor at the attorney's office in los angeles uh thank you uh for joining us we're very eager to get started and so with that i'll turn it over to michael thank you larry congressman it's great to see you again it's great that you could join us for this joint hayden center and cbs news intelligence matters podcast episode it's sort of two birds with one stone i really want to spend most of the evening as i'm sure you do looking forward rather than looking back but i do want to ask a couple of questions about the last four years we were chatting earlier and you used the word difficult they were difficult for years for both the intelligence community and for the house intelligence committee but i'm wondering with regard to the intelligence community if difficult equated to damage right was was there was there real damage done to the ic if so what was that how much and how do we fix it thank you uh michael for inviting me and uh and thanks for the question uh was there damage i think the answer is yes um it was multi-faceted damage probably the most serious damage um was to the the reputation of the community for essentially non-partisan analysis the workforce continued doing their job in a professional way but at some of the very highest levels of the ic including in the office of the director of national intelligence you had appointed officials who were i think unquestionably politicizing the intelligence and i think they cultivated an environment at some of the agencies where the workforce had real concerns about whether an objective analysis would be welcome at the highest levels or whether it would be career ending and often when intelligence was shared publicly it was done so in a way to suit the narrative that the former president wished to tell rather than a straight recitation of the facts uh and so i think that was deeply damaging to the reputation of the intelligence community to the functioning of the community um i think it also injured some of our relationships with our overseas partners who had profound concerns whether information they shared would be protected whether information they shared would be politicized there was at one point early in the last administration where some of our overseas partners were accused of spying on the then president of the united states that does damage to our relationships now as you know michael those relationships are really strong they have survived those trials but we have work to do i think to rebuild within the community the the uh understanding that um the agencies need to speak truth to power whether that's power in the executive or power in the congress you know as i would often communicate to my intelligence colleagues i want you to tell me exactly what your best analysis is whether you think i want to hear it or i don't i'm counting on you to do that and and i know with the the uh appointments that the by administration has made that that kind of independence will be restored uh and uh and i think it will help improve morale within the workforce there's also been damage i think to to the relationship between the intelligence committees uh on the hill and the community uh and i look forward to working to restore that um i'm in particular want to resurrect something i was doing uh prior to the last four years which is doing some town halls within the ic um i you know enjoyed going over the agency for example and doing a town hall with the workforce where you know they got to ask me questions about what it's like testifying in congress and what the members are thinking and uh and i remember one of the uh analysts asking me what keeps me up at night and i thought well in fact you're asking me is going to keep me up at night but but i do think the damage that's been done uh can all be repaired and i think given the caliber of people the by administration is bringing in the very top it can be repaired in short order there's one one piece of decent that i'm worried about long term which is um because of the actions and words of donald trump for four years there are many americans who supported him who now see the ic as part of this quote deep state right who see the ic not as a defender of america but as um an organization trying to undermine it right how do we how do we deal with with that perception that's out there among among some of our fellow citizens you know that's a really good uh really good point and a good question um that's gonna be harder to overcome and of course it's not a problem confined to the ic uh that that kind of uh falsehood or myth has been propagated about the law enforcement community about the state department um and you know it used to take the form of you know complaints that any administration might have about the bureaucracy but but this deep state um uh uh myth um is is deeply damaging and and i'm sure you recognize it uh michael it's what we used to hear in other countries often the third world countries that were really prone to conspiracy theories uh you know i i once uh went to pakistan and there was this conspiracy theory that i was john negroponte and i was there on a mission to try to uh change the the judgments of the pakistan supreme court in dealing with musharraf and i thought you know my god i'm glad we don't have those kind of crazy conspiracies at home well now we do and uh and i'm not sure there's a there's a shortcut to that problem as long as i think donald trump is on the political scene and given the fealty that kevin mccarthy has now pledged to him and mitch mcconnell after that stirring speech he gave on the senate floor about trump's responsibility for the insurrection uh pledged his support for donald trump should donald trump become the nominee so i i don't see a quick end to that problem particularly congressman you mentioned the new leadership in the ic so we have real haines as the dni we have david cohen back as deputy director cia bill burns yesterday had his confirmation hearing and it appears in almost certainty that he will be confirmed by the senate um love to know uh your thoughts about these folks love to know about any interactions you've had so far and what you might have advised them you know i think they're all superb choices uh i would love to to see mike morrell uh having joined their company uh or join their company in the future um but but as you know these are really quality people um and um i've had a chance to speak with with all of them um i think they will put as priority number one restoring that independence to the intelligence community um but i also like the the decades of experience that bill burns brings in diplomacy um that's an interesting background to bring to the the cia there are times i think where there's a tendency to think particularly if you've grown up within the ic that the ic is the answer to every problem and you know frankly there are also a lot of people that i see who recognize all too well it is not the answer to every problem and have to tell presidents of the united states you can't rely on the ic to do everything um but uh but i think that he will bring a very broad perspective of here's the state department's role here's the defense department's role here's usaid's role here's the intelligence community role um and and here's how we need to make sure all of these uh parts of the government are working together in pursuit of u.s policy interests so um i'm you know very excited about the experience he brings um and uh and i think dave and avril uh have you know such a background within the agency but also with with uh respect to uh terrorism finance uh on cyber issues a lot of you know the real challenging issues of the day so i have a lot of confidence in this group um and uh and and can't wait for them all to be uh be seated uh and i'm sure judging from how well you know the the love fest with uh bill burns that uh that will happen soon any idea when we might see a worldwide threat hearing uh you know that's one thing i brought up with each of these uh designees and appointees um the the the desire to go back to doing those to do those on a quarterly basis um they both uh they all committed to to doing that uh so i would imagine fairly soon um and that was a good indication frankly the cancellation of those open worldwide threats hearings was a pretty solid indication that the then leadership of the ic uh whether it was grinnell or ratcliffe or others were not willing to speak truth to power you know to his credit dan coats um when he was odni spoke forthrightly publicly and what he said publicly was consistent with what he said privately now it ended up forcing him out of his position but uh you know that's that's the responsibility you take on in leadership of these agencies uh and uh and if a president doesn't want that then i think frankly you're better off leaving the administration uh so um i hope to have those worldwide threat hearings open hearings back on schedule shortly so for for the committee congressman you've said repeatedly that you want to get partisanship out of the committee you want to get back to comedy um i'm just wondering how you think you're doing and making progress on that do you think it's possible in this era to get politics out of there how do you see the committee going forward well i certainly hope so and i've already discussed this with a couple of my republican colleagues on the committee including uh the ranking member nunes um i would like to get back to some level of comedy uh i realize it's going to take time you know frankly within the democratic caucus there is continuing anger among other emotions over the fact that even after the failed insurrection so many of our republican colleagues were back on the house floor trying to overturn the results of the election and propagating the same falsehoods that that led to that attack on the capital um most of the republicans on the intelligence committee um are among that group but nonetheless the work of the committee has to get done and so i've been talking to republican members about trying to reset you know i will say that and this is a kind of an untold story of the house and tell committee even over the last four years where it was so acrimonious on our committee we nonetheless got the intelligence authorization acts done every year um and so we were able to compartmentalize but what i what i have urged in the past and i will urge again is even in those areas where we disagree whether it was the russia investigation the ukraine investigation investigation we're undertaking now into politicization of intelligence at the department of homeland security let's at least keep those differences within civil limits um and that's my hope uh i'm going to do my part um my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will have to decide whether they're interested in that i can't do it for both sides uh so i hope they will take me up on it yeah i'm wondering if if china you know given the importance of china given that everybody agrees this is the challenge of the moment that that could be something that that people can rally around and agree on and work together on without a doubt and you know indeed in the um the last two years of devin nunes chairmanship um they did a focus on china in the the first two years of my chairmanship i did a focus on china and we produced a i think very well received uh report on china and how the intelligence committee really needed to reposition itself to deal with the challenge of china we obviously and for understandable reasons have devoted so much uh within the ic to dealing with the counterterrorism threat and at the same time uh have really not sufficiently address the rise of china and the extraordinary challenge and threat china poses in practically every field of domain on the seas on land in space in the cyber realm um and uh and you know a particular interest and concern of mine indeed this the very first hearing i had two years ago as chairman of the intel committee was on authoritarianism and how china was exporting its digital uh totalitarian model with its uh ubiquitous cct tv camera its uh orwellian uh named safe cities initiative its use of big data analytics uh and um and this was every bit as much of a threat to democracy globally as anything the russians were doing right so i want to ask you about some priorities um and i want to start with china so it's a great transition um and i want to start with the report that your committee put out which i thought was terrific and which was bipartisan um it was quite critical of the ic it said let me quote here the ic requires a significant and immediate re-prioritization and realignment of resources to meet the threat from beijing the report did not come out directly and say that our collection wasn't what it should be but you could kind of read that between the lines um report had over a hundred recommendations i'm wondering how did the ic react to that have they made any progress and what do you consider to be the most important of those recommendations uh you know i think the ic reacted very responsibly and respectfully uh and i think it is receptive to the recommendations that we made you know i thought it was interesting in the executive summary um that the the most redacted part of the summary was part of our recommendations which i took it to me they thought those were areas where they needed improvement um and you know it wasn't meant to be my criticism uh as much as it was meant to be constructive and to you know just recognize the reality of the the changing world circumstances uh the the counterterrorism threat the terrorism threat has not gone away we're just going to have to be more efficient in how we address it uh because the the threat from china is so elevated and they are a very uh worthy rival in so many ways um and you know i think that uh in terms of uh prioritizing the recommendations uh it's you know difficult to be specific since some of them i can't go into but we need to make sure and this is kind of a cross-cutting challenge that i see has always had that we have the personnel that understand the the china problem set um that that have the linguistic skills it and it is not sufficient to simply have china expertise in a mission focused on china it needs to really be diffused throughout the ic uh so that when you're looking at particular problem sets there are people within those parts of the agencies with expertise about china and i think one of the other big challenges we have and this is again not a criticism but uh a reflection of chinese uh technological sophistication that um the operating environment within china has become so difficult not just in china it's become more difficult everywhere you add to that the uh extraordinary and tragic success of chinese espionage in terms of stealing data from u.s agencies and private sector entities the chinese ability to assimilate that data to try to identify who works in the ic and who doesn't work in the ic the the problem of digital dust in a increasingly digital world uh and it just goes to underscore the breadth and depth of the challenges so uh that requires a kind of a whole of government but a whole of ic effort to meet uh that that challenge uh and we are up to it uh but it will require uh changing the direction of that big aircraft carrier uh that we call the ic would you say that china is the biggest national security challenge that you've seen in your lifetime well you know i'm old enough uh as you are to remember the soviet union so i don't know that i would say in my lifetime but i would say that the the the danger from russia which is a declining uh power um you know is the danger that you face from a wounded animal that is dangerous because it's wounded and desperate um and russia very much sees the world in a zero-sum game with the united states but but china's on the rise uh and china is already formidable um and uh you know it used to be not that long ago that um the the the way americans view china was they're good at copying our technology they're good at copying our innovation they're good at stealing our our intellectual property uh they're not so good at developing their own um we pointed to our education system as a part of the reason why um that china was producing individuals that were more inclined to group think than innovation well that was probably an inaccurate stereotype in the past it's certainly not an app description in the present china is a real innovator uh in every field of domain and and so um it's also clear that while china historically was focused in an inward direction they are increasingly focused in an outward direction they are increasingly self-confident and increasingly willing to challenge the united states and regional powers in the south china sea and elsewhere so um i think that over time china will only continue to eclipse the threat we face from other places you know that's not to obviously diminish the threat posed by iran and north korea but there's no other country that poses such an across-the-board challenges china congressman the second issue i wanted to ask you about is is your committees doing a deep dive on the coronavirus pandemic and the ic's uh response to that reporting on it etc um and so i want to kind of take that and ask kind of a broad question here about some non-traditional intelligence topics so um you know global health um climate change how do you think about the ic's role in those kinds of issues how do you think about the ic's responsibilities versus the responsibilities of other government agencies how do you how do you think about that yeah those are exactly the right questions and you know we've been having an internal debate about this you know a debate at times between the parties on the committee a debate sometimes within our party uh as well um you know for years as you know we have tried to prioritize these you know what we're called soft threats um and it's been a struggle when it came to climate change for example uh we have created you know a center um to focus on that issue but but it's one of the areas where every year in the intelligence authorization act we have a fight over climate um the reality is uh and it should be just obvious climate's having effect for example in sea lanes in the arctic opening up new possibilities for the chinese navy for the russian navy resource scarcity in yemen creates additional national security threats for the united states the fact that you know some of our naval bases are underwater and not in a good way is a national security issue and an intel issue so there's no question that climate is having an impact on our security uh and that that keeping an eye to those impacts and and where they will aggravate dangers the country is an important i see responsibility but if anything brought home or should have brought home the the need to pay attention to some of these non-traditional threats is the pandemic and with the pandemic you know we continue to have an internal debate uh as part of the deep dive we're doing on what's the ic's role what's the ic's lane um how do we make sure there's the kind of collaboration between the intelligence community and the public health community and other uh parts of the u.s government and and international organizations to deal with pandemic threats i think one thing is is certain the ic has an important role to play and you know that role for example can be in early detection of potential pandemics when host governments may not be interested in transparency in fact maybe affirmatively trying to hide the magnitude of a problem and you know just to you know allude to public reporting you know this public reporting about you know how crowded hospitals in the wuhan were what the parking lots look like well you can see parking lots from space and you know if you have good enough uh ai and you've got good enough analysts and good enough tipping and queuing you can look for the signs of potential health crises and pandemics and as well to learn of how governments are responding and uh and how a problem may be migrating so there is definitely an in an intelligent security lane here but at the same time we have to be careful that agencies that we need to work with on the global stage aren't going to view a suspicion our health agencies with the with the um false impression that they are now intelligence agencies uh and uh you know again referring to public reporting for example about uh the search for bin laden uh there's public reporting uh without commenting on whether it's accurate or not because frankly it doesn't matter whether it's accurate or not at one level that a vaccination program may have played a role um you know if there is a intermingling between health issues and intelligence community issues uh it can end up degrading an important health care effort so we are in this deep dive trying to figure out how is the ic resourced to focus on this problem set we have half a million americans dead had that been the result of a terrorist attack you can imagine the analysis that we would be undergoing to figure out why wasn't the ic better able to thwart this and you know and i think it's appropriate to do the same analysis while recognizing the ic is only one part of the tripwire and you know this gets to another issue michael that you've been deeply involved in and that is we need to make good use of open source information because some of the best early information on the pandemic was open source information so um what we hope to do is you know look at for example the national medical unit within dod that has a seminal role in pandemic ascertainment is very small and it's in dod now that may have made sense when when health threats like a pandemic were viewed through a defense prism does it still make sense uh and and so those are the those are the issues that we're looking at uh and the questions we're trying to answer i know that you know um that i agree 100 with you on open source um somehow we have to get people in the ic to believe that just because something's not stamped top secret right or secret that it's somehow not as important right um as i think that's a cultural issue we have to get over you're absolutely right and it's it's kind of the flip side in a way of the problem we're talking about earlier in in what a difficult operating environment china is now um because of all the private data that they have stolen and the and their sophistication in terms of technology um there's also now tremendous amounts of open source information if we uh know how to look for it if we know how to find the needles in the in the huge haystack uh and you know and one of the things that we're uh trying to determine there is how is open source treated within the intelligence community um is there a center of excellence or do we have a lot of jack of all trades and master of none so those are some questions we're trying to answer also um the third issue congressman i wanted to raise um was solar winds um as you know devastating hack um nobody's nobody's talked about it this way but but i'm wondering to what extent you know did the ic miss this you know at some point uh the russians were obviously if it was the russians the russians were planning this um at some point they began uh preparations they carried out those preparations they carried out the attack you know shouldn't cia nsa others have seen that how do you think about that question yeah well uh you know i think that the um i guess i would say a couple things first of all um there's only so much that we can do with our um cyber capability to ascertain what our foreign adversaries are doing so if we're always going to count on the ic to see what our adversaries are doing and stop it before they succeed we're going to have a lot of failures and costly failures we are going to have to up our game in terms of looking at what the russians and other bad actors are doing and how they're doing it uh to try to guard against things like solar winds but that's only one piece of the puzzle we're going to have to be much better at defense and here i think the ic was aware there was a real vulnerability when it came to the supply chain but not enough was done um i think within the ic and outside the ic uh not enough has been done in the private sector to shore up and secure the supply chain and in particular as we see with solar winds when a supply chain vendor who supplies a product that's important to a lot of operating systems sends something that they've authenticated but encrypted it's a really difficult problem set and so we've been aware of the problem it's not like it's a surprise but we haven't obviously done what needed to be done to guard against it and and we're going to have to and we're going to figure out well um what does this mean in terms of how actively involved the ic needs to be in the work of the vendors um what kind of disclosure requirements do we need to make uh of the private sector when there have been uh infiltrations and problems you probably saw the comments of microsoft's uh ceo the testimony recently that uh you know they're being transparent but but the intimation was there are other companies that have decided not to because it's not good for business to admit that you've been successfully hacked in any way and so senator warner i think has proposed something like a um uh like uh the the kind of uh entity and review after plane crash to determine what went wrong uh and i like that concept very much uh so that there is a independent analysis and uh and corrective action uh taken um we're also gonna have to you know decide uh what part of the supply chain do we need to bring in-house and of course look at the whole other aspect of supply chain problems in supplies that we obtain from overseas so big problem yes big failure uh in terms of the intelligence community the private sector you know in fact frankly we had to learn about this from the private sector uh is also uh i think uh deeply embarrassing to the intelligence community um so we have a lot of work to do uh and then the the last specific issue i wanted to ask you about is domestic terrorism so you have you are now you have been the victim of domestic terrorism um and i'm wondering how you think about the ic's role in domestic terrorism if any you know given fourth amendment concerns you know and actually uh um given you raise the fourth amendment issue let me make one other observation about solar winds and here again repo referring to public reporting but if public reporting is accurate that the russians took advantage of utilizing u.s facilities to mount part of its cyber attack knowing that the authorities we can use domestically are much more limited than the authorities we can use internationally and we have to figure out that problem too um in terms of the uh domestic terrorism threat and the ic role um you know clearly there's an intelligence community role uh when there is a foreign component uh foreign support of domestic bad actors um there is also an intelligence community role um through the department of homeland security uh at the fbi uh in terms of sharing the information that it obtains uh with law enforcement authorities and making sure that it's done in a timely way that um that the intelligence is shared in a form where it will be paid attention to uh and you know on the basis of the public testimony thus far um we can see there are real issues and discrepancies about what was the quality state of the intelligence how much of us was shared if it was shared was it shared in the format where it you know it was sounding the alarm or was it shared in the format of well we can find a document we sent to you so you should have paid attention to it we are doing an investigation in our committee working in concert with other committees to determine how much of this was a failure to gather the right intelligence how much was it a failure to share that intelligence and how much of it was a failure to act on that intelligence um you know i won't be surprised if there's responsibility to be attributed at every stage of the process but uh but the intelligence community does consistent with our you know domestic authorities and constitutional uh requirements have a role um but uh um it is uh not the paramount role uh but it is an important one maybe the last issue we can talk about before we go to questions is um this whole idea of the ic and technology um and one of the ways i think about it is there's kind of three things we have to get right one is we we have to collect on and and understand um where our adversaries are with regard to technological advancements right um two is we have to use technology to do a better job ourselves in the ic and then three we have to protect ourselves right against the technology that our adversaries are using against us and the operations that we're conducting and i think you would agree that we need to be on the cutting edge right and stay there um and i know you agree with that how far do we have to go to get there um are we are we moving are we moving fast enough do we have to think about new approaches do we have to think about new approaches to the government working with the private sector how do you think about that big big problem yeah well you know i think we are on the cutting edge i don't think we're playing catch uh in that respect now there there are other countries like china that are ahead in certain areas but frankly i think we still maintain the technological advantage but the the delta is narrowing so i think that china is making rapid gains uh and if we don't make a renewed investment in research and development uh and and here i'm speaking not just of the ic but as a nation then we will be eclipsed uh and that will have i think catastrophic uh repercussions for us and for the free world uh because we really are in a new battle of ideas not communism versus capitalism as much as it is uh authoritarianism versus democracy and so um we you we can't keep kicking immigrants out of our country who get advanced degrees from caltech uh in stem fields that's that's you know economic and national security suicide um we we can't keep under investing in uh science and technology and research and development um either in the public or private sector in the private sector you know this uh chase for quarterly profits uh in which companies aren't incentivized to invest in the long term uh in their research and development and we've seen a real and precipitous decline in the investment corporate investment in r d is catastrophic um you know one of the profound issues i think that we need to grapple with and it's exemplified by huawei and zte is how does the united states compete with china when china is willing to put billions in a state-run enterprise is willing to essentially be a loss leader underprice the global market drive competition out of the market and then enjoy a monopoly on a technology that is a critical technology like 5g um it's very hard we have found uh in pushing back against huawei uh to compete with something with nothing uh and uh you know when we've had these conversations as i've had with our european partners and others about the security risks uh that are uh present in a technology like uh wallace 5g their response is um what's your alternative and and i do think that it's going to force us to uh you know really grapple with a big question that we haven't had to uh probably since we felt uh challenged by the japanese model um in the 90s and that is do we need to explore a different kind of public-private partnership to compete in certain critical technologies to make sure that we always have an american alternative and and so um those conversations are happening i think they're still at a very nascent stage and they need to happen much quicker i'm congressman let's uh let's turn to audience questions but this is where the podcast will end so thank you for joining us on intelligence matters it's great to have you back again um let me take the first question here um the ic probably tomorrow is going to release a report i guess the biden administration is going to release a report uh redacted on the 2018 murder of jamal khashoggi um if the if the media is right about the key judgments the key judgment will be that muhammad bin salman crown prince of saudi arabia approved the killing um you were among those that pushed for the release of this um why did you think that that was important and what would you like the binding administration to do with it from a policy perspective yeah well thank you uh for the question i did push for it um you know years ago i started a bipartisan bicameral caucus on freedom of the press with a a fellow a freshman a backbencher named mike pence and uh and for the last 15 or 20 years uh freedom of the press issues have been you know very near and dear to my heart um and it's hard to imagine a more chilling um crime than the murder and dismemberment of a journalist and so i was uh particularly um aghast at the murder of jamal khashoggi and i think part of holding saudi arabia accountable is publicly attributing the the actors responsible for that murder and and so um you know without commenting on the report that is soon to be released um if it does show culpability by the deputy crown prince there need to be serious repercussions now frankly many of the things that we've been advocating prior to now the by administration is already implementing in terms of cutting off support for the war in yemen cutting off arms sales to saudi arabia and putting human rights back center stage in our relationship with saudi arabia but but i think that with the publication of this report it will be important to go further and this is something that i've had a chance to discuss with director haines and and obviously there are elements of the relationship that will remain important in terms of the joint counterterrorism work in terms of pushing back against iran's malign conduct so i'm not advocating we have no relationship with the kingdom but if this is going to be a leadership that murders uh journalists that hunts down dissidents that locks up um members of the press uh and um and of course there are public reports also of um saudi hit squads uh trying to track down other dissidents if the kingdom is going to imprison family members of people overseas that are espousing views they don't like then we really have to wonder um whether the price of the relationship is just too high um another question here um a person notes that uh at the confirmation hearing yesterday of ambassador burns that he was asked about these attacks um on both diplomats and intelligence officers overseas that have caused you know serious injuries that that that have never gone away um people are wondering uh or this questioner is wondering if you know if we know as a government what caused the attacks and who did it and do we need to do a better job taking care of the people who were injured well on the last question absolutely we need to do a much better job and i think there are real flaws with how um the uh and i'll say broadly here the the community in terms of our diplomats and others overseas have been treated or not treated when it comes to these injuries in terms of what we know there are still a lot we don't know and i can't go into a lot of the specifics but there is still a lot more hard work i think we need to do to understand what's happened to our workforce and and how to protect people going forward because unless we can make public attribution of who's responsible um unless we can take protective measures uh uh against uh for the repetition of these kind of attacks we can expect them to proliferate uh wherever our adversaries don't want us to have a diplomatic or or intel presence um then uh they may view this as a um a good tactic with a lot of deniability so we have more hard work to do i think in terms of our understanding of what's going on and how to protect the workforce and and immediately we need to make sure that uh that everyone gets the help the treatment and support they need um question do you do you intend to look into the findings of the ic analytic ombudsman report on politicization and intelligence that was sent to the congress on january 6th the questioner says that the ssci is already investigating will will you as well um we have been undertaking an investigation of precisely these issues for months now and that will continue uh you know in particular and and i can talk about because uh it's uh public um we've been looking at whistleblower allegations uh that within the department of homeland security there were any number of efforts to politicize the intelligence everything from allegations that the threat of the southern border was hyped in order to justify the wall the threat of terrorism that is from the southern border to a sort of an edict or an ethic within dhs intelligence unit that the threat of antifa should be hyped and the threat of white nationalist terror should be diminished and and other allegations of a serious nature regarding potential abuse of intelligence resources to monitor protesters in portland uh so we're looking at that uh series of allegations but whenever there are credible allegations of politicization within the ic it's among our highest priorities to investigate question is can you please comment on whether you think the house armed services committee's subcommittee on national intelligence infringes on your turf you know it's a interesting very timely question because adam smith and i just got together today to talk about how do we coordinate uh between our two committees so that um you know where appropriate uh chairman smith um can gain access to information about uh intelligence uh within the military domain and uh where um where i and others on hipsie can gain the information we need about um special operations where intel is implicated or in the cyber realm or the space realm or elsewhere where there's an overlap of authorities uh and and a need to know and so um we we are in discussions to try to uh make sure that um that information is shared where that's appropriate to do so uh you know it's uh um you know i think a challenging area for every committee nothing prompts fights on the hill more than turf um but uh what we're committed to doing is working together at the level of chair to chair and at the level of staff to staff to try to make sure that um where uh there is an appropriate need to know that that members can get the information they need but nonetheless we obviously protect um classified information and make sure that uh it's only shared uh where necessary um this is a this is an important question this comes from somebody who actually works in the inspector general community and they're wondering if there's any legislation planned to protect inspector generals from retaliation by an administration yes uh and in fact um one of the one of the reasons why the intel authorization bill was so hard uh to pass last year and last year was frankly the most difficult year we had in the house intelligence committee is because i and the democratic members were insistent on including protections for inspector generals and whistleblowers within the ic um now the ranking member and republicans were insistent in the house not including that and frankly on the senate side uh senate intel republicans also took a dim view of those provisions uh so they were stricken from the bill in order to get the bill passed uh and um but we will be back uh trying to enact those provisions and now with uh democratic majorities in both houses i'm hoping that we can do so but quite separate apart from the igs and whistleblower protections within the ic i introduced legislation about uh four months ago or five months ago uh called the protecting our democracy act uh that i worked on with the several other chairs and with the speaker and it's probably the most comprehensive set of pro-democracy reforms since watergate um and uh it would it would do things like expedite the enforcement of congressional subpoenas stiffen the penalties for violation of the hatch act uh provide an enforcement mechanism for violations of the emoluments clause discourage abuse of the pardon power protect the independence of the justice department but it also has very broad protections for inspector generals uh for uh whistleblowers um prevents retaliation against whistleblowers and it's my hope that we can also move that package uh and you know i would say also and only time will tell um when trump was in office it was difficult to get republicans to support those things which frankly in the pre-trump world would have been consensus items for people both sides of the aisle inspector general protections whistle or protections were consensus bipartisan policy matters before donald trump um now during donald trump um they the republicans on our committee viewed it as a poison pill uh as an implicit criticism of donald trump which they could not afford to support uh now that he's no longer president i hope that they will um uh uh go back to the gop of old that supported things like whistleblower protections and the independence of inspector generals but as donald trump has not disappeared from the scene um that may be optimistic and uh um and we will soon test that proposition uh but i would hope that we can go back to those being bipartisan priorities so we have a lot of students um tuning in uh tonight and this is a question from one of them um which is what advice would you give to students who want to enter the ic and i love this part is there advice that you would give to your younger self [Laughter] well um i uh first of all i i would strongly encourage you uh to pursue a career in the ic um there's nothing that's been more interesting um more rewarding and challenging uh in my career than the work i've done with the ic nothing that's been more inspiring than in particular when i have a chance to visit professionals within the ic at home and around the world to see the extraordinary work they're doing the courage they display often operating without a safety net around the world and and so you couldn't choose a more interesting rewarding and i think important career so i would strongly encourage you um the next thing i would say um that's related to the first and uh uh and you know it's uh advice that i i uh i would give my younger self except that my father gave it to me already so i had that advice and i i'd like to think i followed that advice my father told me when i was a kid if you're good at what you do there will always be a demand for you which i found to be a very liberating idea because then you just need to focus on trying to be good at what you did but you could follow your passion and and this is what i would advise which is if you have a love and fascination and interest in intelligence issues national security issues foreign policy issues in in the world at large and and being a force for good in the world then follow that passion um you can not only make a living doing it but you can have a wonderful um uh interesting challenging rewarding living at the same time and you know i think life's too short to do anything you don't love so that would be my advice to my younger self it's my advice to my current self uh and very much was my uh advice from my parents that's great advice um question here on on the investigation into the events of january 6th you know and whatever form that takes right commission or or what what have you the question is how do we make sure that that investigation is nonpartisan how do we make sure that that investigation is perceived to be nonpartisan given that whatever the judgments of the investigation and whatever the findings of the investigation are are so important to the country well you know it's very difficult i i remember at the very first hearing of the russia investigation um in which uh james comey testified for the first time at open hearing that uh that the fbi was doing an investigation into uh the trump campaign and its connections to russia a counterintelligence investigation i remember in my opening statement during that hearing saying that uh i hope that we could do a bipartisan indeed nonpartisan investigation and reach a common conclusion that if we did our own separate reports at the end of the day it would be of little value because people would read the report they wanted to believe but that i didn't know if it would be possible but i knew that it would be in the public interest if we could now that didn't prove possible um indeed you know within 24 hours of that opening statement uh um our then chairman uh was off to the white house and what became known as the midnight run um but uh but i i believe now as i believe then that if we can do this in a bipartisan fashion that's the way it will have real value for this reason i think we shouldn't put all our eggs in the congressional basket and i do think we should have a 9 11 like commission that can be ruthlessly nonpartisan and it will be really important who gets appointed to that commission one of the reasons why the 911 commission was so impactful was not just because of how the legislation was written but because those that did the appointing and those that were given the responsibility uh recognize the need to do it in a non-partisan way and so that's what we need to do here and you know in terms of what we're doing in congress this is not only important with respect to the look backward at january 6th but the look forward um there was a national threat assessment that many of you may have seen a public well became public the national threat assessment for law enforcement that talked about after january 6 the continuing threat of domestic terrorism from those who were aggrieved at the outcome of the 2020 election those who are upset about coveted restrictions and and those uh who are upset about police violence now it lump those three very disparate groups together and i have to say that reading it that way made me wonder whether um this was being done because it was too politically sensitive to highlight the paramount threat which comes from white nationalist domestic terror um you know for those of you that that follow these issues so carefully and have over the last several years you'll know that i raised concerns during the trump administration with efforts to de-emphasize in my view the um od and i's statements about russian interference in our election by hyping the threat from china iran at times nicaragua or god knows where else yeah there may be threats from a variety of nations they're not all the same and in lumping them together because at the time it was viewed as too sensitive to highlight where the predominant threat came from because the president wouldn't like it it's misleading to the country and so you know i frankly worried when i read that national threat assessment is this the same thing happening in terms of threat of domestic terror and so we need to make sure that we're analyzing the problem correctly that we're speaking about it plainly because otherwise we can't respond in the way we need to um someone asking for you to comment on how congress and the administration can work to prevent the erosion of democracy and human rights around the world um given that that erosion can lead to national security challenges for us well uh this this is as i mentioned uh earlier uh a topic that um i i feel keenly about and have for many years uh uh and and it comes from an abiding conviction that democracies pose less of a threat to us than autocracies and that we have a very proud legacy of supporting democracy's fellow democracies around the world now it's not an unblemished record certainly and you could point out um a lot of uh terrible failures to live our values in our past including within the ic in deposing the iranian prime minister in favor of the shah just to cite one example so we've not always lived our ideals but we we do have a cherished legacy as a beacon of liberty um and we do so um because it's consistent with our values but we also do it because it's consistent with our interests uh one of the things i think that has been so destructive in the last four years is this effort to tear down these the international rules-based order which i think is inherently supportive of freedom and human rights at least it should be this uh fondness fascination uh you know at times um debasement of our country uh before autocrats and dictators like putin or xi jinping um i i'm thrilled to see such a rapid change in the buy demonstration you know i can't tell you what a thrill it was to read the readout of president biden's first conversation with vladimir putin the fact that first of all that wasn't the first conversation he had with the world leader that he talked to our allies first but that it was exactly the kind of conversation a u.s president should have uh taking the russian leader to task uh on a host of its malign activities uh including interference in our elections its support of uh you know uh terrorists in syria it's uh uh uh occupational legal occupation of crimea um the list goes on but nonetheless recognizing there are some shared interests like new start um you know that's exactly the kind of conversation we should have with vladimir putin um and and the conversation that president biden had uh with the the saudi uh king i think um uh is also uh enormously important because human rights was very much uh on the agenda um and you know we are going to have to stare down for some time uh accusations of hypocrisy um you know we've had a president for four years who described the press as the enemy of the people um who tried to use our justice system our justice department to reward friends and punish enemies and uh um you know it wasn't without a lot of consternation on the anniversary of tiananmen square that you know we put out statements about the chinese government's need to be honest and forthright about his history and about what took place then considering what was taking place in our own country um and you can imagine the difficulty my republican colleagues had in condemning the the coup in myanmar um given that it was based on bogus claims of election fraud in myanmar which were very much a mirror image of bogus claims of election fraud in the united states of america so um you know we very much need to lead by our example i think the by administration is off to a tremendous start um and i think that we can burnish our image over time but it will take time uh and and for the foreseeable future there will be a worry around the world that the united states is not a reliable partner uh on human rights uh that the the virus that took hold of the last four years may recur and only time and consistency i think will dispel that i think larry's going to pop in here yes i am thank you michael a great job moderating uh chairman schiff that was more than we ever could have asked for thank you very much i know we have a an audience out here that was very thirsty for the information you were sharing as michael will attest he probably left a long list of questions on the floor there and he was getting the questions we curated from an even longer list so we had a very engaged audience uh which says to me that there's a lot of americans out there who want to hear this substantive conversation they want to get away from the politics so thank you very much for the time you gave us tonight and for to and for for frankly all the great public service you've been uh affording the nation as well um michael chairman well uh thank you uh thank you for inviting me tonight uh thank you for the great questions uh and uh really appreciate the public service that that you all perform uh in hosting these kind of discussions uh and uh i do want to say to director hayden uh how wonderful it is to see you uh and how uh greatly appreciative i am of your leadership mark last thoughts oh i just want to say thank you again mr chairman and thank you larry um for leading us off and michael morrell we look forward to the broadcast on your program as well on your podcast um later on so what is that going to be uh presented see you next wednesday next wednesday next wednesday next wednesday so everybody knows great thank you and general hayden i said thank you again thank you again thank you all right good night to everybody thank you for joining [Music] everyone

Channel: The Hayden Center

Views: 131

Rating: 3.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: intelligence, Adam Schiff, House Intelligence, HPSCI, Congress, Michael Morell, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, ODNI, Director of National Intelligence, oversight, George Mason University, Schar School, Hayden Center, Michael Hayden, Larry Pfeiffer, Mark Rozell, Intelligence Matters, CBS News, CBS Radio, Podcast, Webinar

Id: NE7lJH3ebVo

Length: 72min 36sec (4356 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021