Gen. Michael V. Hayden: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'm Erin Freiburg I'm the co-director of the Wilson School Center for international security studies since 9/11 more than at any other time in the post-war period questions about the adequacy and the appropriateness of the performance of America's intelligence and counterintelligence agencies have been at the center of domestic political debate the discussion about the absence of warning before 9/11 questions about the adequacy of intelligence regarding Iraq WMD treatment of detainees questions about electronic surveillance programs debates over the estimates of the Iranian nuclear program and now controversies over Russian interference in the u.s. election and allegations of improper use of intercepted communications for political purposes and our guest today was at the center of many of these controversies and he can offer a unique perspective on all so it's great honor for me to be able to welcome General Michael Hayden to the Woodrow Wilson School as director of the CIA from 2006 2009 general Hayden was responsible for guiding the collection of information concerning America's adversaries producing timely analysis for decision makers overseeing the conduct of covert operations to thwart terrorists and enemies of the United States before becoming CIA director general Hayden served as a country's first principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and he was the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the Armed Forces prior to these assignments general Hayden served as the commander of the air intelligence agency director of the joint command and control warfare center director of the National Security Agency and chief of the central security service he currently is a principal at the turtle group and the author of playing to the edge American intelligence in the age of terror and if you are interested books will be available for sale in the lobby following the talk although because it's general Hayden is tight schedule he has pre signed them and won't be sticking around to sign them a final word of introduction general Hayden is a native of my hometown Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and is a loyal steal Steelers fan I noticing his book there were nine entries in the index of Pittsburgh Steelers so to me that tells tells a life is a man of great discernment and taste please welcome me please join me in welcoming general Hayden [Applause] [Music] so thank the opportunity to come and chat a little bit this evening I think the order of March that's been given to me by dr. Friedberg and and the Dean is I get to transmit for 3035 minutes and then we all get to have a generalized discussion and scrum and and you can go ahead and ask questions and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability and frankly I'm more looking forward to the back half than the first half because that's what we're actually learned stuff from your comments and observations so thanks I'm gonna talk a little bit about the book all right because I think it's a good framework to actually talk about some of the issues that the doctor is raised right and in the book out for about a year now I've been doing some recent rounds on Bill Maher and Colbert show because Random House has pushed out the paperback edition the hardback came out about a year ago and then I did the usual thing for for all the tours and in the presentation being an air force officer I had three main points you only get to make three in the air first and it was why did I do this what's in the book and then the last thing was how does a former director of this and that get to write a book about that mess all right I've actually changed that format you're still going to get the why'd I do this I'm going to I want to talk a bit about what is in the book but rather than talking about how which is fundamentally a humorous but not overly compelling story about getting stuff cleared through the American bureaucracy it's going to be what now all right and how some of the things I try to reflect in the book now seem to be even more pertinent or more related even to to recent events all right so let me start let me start with why why did I write the book I actually teach now I've been at George Mason since I left government at the charr school of policy and government and for most of the time I teach a course called intelligence and policy occasionally I'll mix it up I'll do one about global problems and then I have actually taught one course on American espionage and popular culture alright which which actually was I I had a great deal of fun you know where I'd play season 1 episode 1 of homeland alright and then the lights would come up and I would turn to Jose Rodriguez the head of operations for CIA and John Rizzo his lawyer and say so what'd you guys think of that and it gets a yin and yang of the Hollywood version and the real world version but in the basic course the one I've taught almost every semester intelligence and policy I begin literally at the met level of metaphysics I actually begin with Plato's parable of the cave where I didn't think back ok yeah you know the fire the cave the chain they can't turn the shadows the voices is the pursuit of knowledge worthy can can we to learn and I know the Greeks were talking about philosophical knowledge but I just use it as knowledge and I let the students kick that parable run for about 20 minutes they all agree with Socrates Plato and Aristotle yes the pursuit of knowledge is working and then I say ok good what about this secret pursuit of secret truth how about that and they kick that around for 10 minutes or so yeah that's good too secret pursuit of secret truth now you can see I'm kind of setting them up and I'm narrowing it down and I go so is the secret pursuit of secret truth compatible with the American democracy or more broadly is the secret pursuit of secret truth compatible with any modern Western valued democracy and then I let them kick that around for for another 5 or 10 minutes now here report I'm going to George rates in eight years most of the semesters I talk about this I probably got a sample size to 12 or 13 classes 50 25 to 30 students I'm here to report that so far 100 percent of my students when asked is the secret pursuit of secret truth compatible with American democracy have answered in the affirmative when asked the question by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency who has ultimate control over their final grades and even that's part of the wind up and then I really get to the pitch and here I don't toss it let them discuss it I actually give them a premise I feel let me do you one better I think the secret pursuit of secret truth is not just compatible with that see it is essential to our democracy and and I base the argument is simply on the reality that frightened people don't make good Democrats or Republicans small D small R in both cases frightened people begin to gnaw on their neighbors rights and privacy's and liberties and when they get really good and scared they don't mind gnawing on their own rights and liberties and and privacy's and so I talk about successful espionage not being just about the defense of American security but but about the defense of American liberty so I was director of NSA on 9/11 and on nine thirteen two days afterwards I addressed the entire NSA work force I mean actually I've talking to a camera like this that NSA being NSA we were beaming it out to all 35,000 work stations which is the actual population of the agency it's really quite large and really quite global and the speech was pretty much what you'd expect me to say number one and you know it's good you're here you're doing your duty because I met I'd actually heard you know the tensions of the time you know some folks have been had family members throwing their bodies across the front end of the car saying don't go don't go I said thanks for being here let me give you the good news there are more than 300 million of your countrymen wish they had your job today so that they could contribute something I got a little tactical with them I said look job one now is still defense we'll get to offense but we're doing defense technically it's called TWA a threat warning attack assessment what happened why anything more on the pipe we'll get to offense defense defense and then I ended up with what I thought was the most important part of the top and I actually found to talk I mean I'm doing research for the book I she found my notes what I actually said that day in in Athens what I said was let me tell you what I think the big picture is I am free people have always had to decide where in that spectrum with Liberty at one end and security at the other a privacy over here and safety over here were they wanted to tuck their banner and I said we Americans blessed blessed by two really big oceans and in frankly two neighbors that were either weak and or friendly all right we've always taught our our banner way over here on the side of Liberty and privacy I said point blank frankly that is now at risk that is in danger because of the events of 48 hours ago so so our objective here at NSA is we're going to keep America free and we're going to do it by making Americans feel safe again and that was our that was our broad tasking rarely has something in my view really has something so essential to American democracy than as Miss or as understood as American espionage has been to the broad American public I mean unless you're a real groupie for the topic I mean you I digest stories about American espionage through homeland and zero dark thirty and Jack Bauer and Jack Ryan and an enemy of the state and and Will Smith and so on and I just thought there was just this gaping hole in terms of America's understanding of an enterprise of its government but I viewed to be not just legitimate but essential to the appropriate functioning of of that government so I mean the purpose of the book is it's kind of hey come over here with me I want to introduce you to some people we're gonna have to go through this door here I'll punch in the code you can't know the code and we're going to go through the door and I'm going to introduce you to some of these folks and the things that they do on your behalf in the preface to the book and the forward to the book I talk about being at a place called Alice Springs Australia Alice vio like Alice's the middle of nowhere it is in the middle of the continent I mean you'll and you get on the road okay you drive out of the airport you comes with tea Alice 15 kilometers or something Ayers Rock 650 I mean that's all there is out there I would get Alice but by the way anybody who's got any experience in this profession should be a little bit mildly surprised that I get to say Alice Springs in a public audience it's one of the things that was kind of rolled back it is a joint American Australian facility all right our Aussie friends called Pine Gap we call it Alice for the for the nearby town we've got a lot of Americans there they love it they do great work we were having a five ice conference there the five eyes that kind of the anglo-saxon Bubba's who trace trace their roots back to Bletchley Park or the similar activity in the Pacific ourselves the Brits the Canadians the Kiwis and the AUSA's and we're having a meeting there and we were on the floor of the operations floor at Alice and we came out and it is brilliant outback some I'd our eyes are adjusting to it and I'm walking out with my Australian counterpart and I turned and said Steve wouldn't you love to take your countrymen back there on the ops floor and show them what those kids are doing of course she said yeah well that's the why to degree allowed by law and policy I wanted to show you what goes on inside your espionage services so that's the why but what so the book is called playing to the edge American intelligence in the age of terror that's why my wife Janine here so the title was hers all right so I get the manuscript done I get it cleared I told you already gonna spare you that story about how you have to get it cleared I send the manuscript up to penguin Random House they they do what editors do and then kind of wire back saying we need a title I said title you can say they're my title and so we motored over for a weekend she had read every chapter in multiple drafts and finally about Sunday afternoon and she says your book playing to the now I need to tell you the colon that's mine okay and the American intelligence and the age of terror that's me too but Janine's playing to the edge so so what what's the metaphor we talked about Pittsburgh we rolled the hardback out February a year ago they got David Martin of CBS News to do a piece for CBS Sunday morning and we did it in the Steeler practice facility on the south side and so we were we're in the south side of Pittsburgh and the indoor field at the Steeler training facility and the long and the long camera view were mic so you can hear us but we've got this long camera view of myself and David Martin we're walking along the sidelines with my right foot coming down you know maybe three or four inches from the sidelines and David says so what's with the title of the book here where's that come from and and frankly what I say is luck David it's kind of look you see this field it is a 120 yards that way it is 66 and 2/3 this way and all good athletes use all the grass all good athletes use the entire field it would make no more sense for us to refuse to use the entire field than it would for an NFL team to say hey we got to put you gotta be a little cautious this weekend we're going to keep the ball inside the hash marks all right I mean that's obviously a recipe for failure I did so by the way David the sewers don't determine it's 120 and 66 and two-thirds that comes from the league office and in my case is ultimately you and I realize in a representative democracy that's that's a tortured and sometimes very indirect and sometimes unsatisfying process but the line we get is the product of American law the Constitution American law and an American policy and my pledge is that once we've been drawn that field when the down in distance require it to extend the football metaphor when the circumstances demand we will play all the way to the sidelines all the way to the corner we'll use the entire field even though we know when we do that as surely as night follows day we're going to be in an unpleasing congressional hearing sooner or later all right and it will be it will be sooner if we are successful and prevent the attack because folks would then be made to feel safe and wonder why we were so aggressive so that I could play back from the edge avoid the congressional hearing avoid avoid the rather harsh treatment in a major American newspaper generally one on one or the other coast right it's yet to appear in the Omaha world-herald or the Des Moines Register these kinds of stories but if I play back to avoid that unpleasantness I may be defending me more nobly I may be defending my agency but I'm not defending you and so frankly to the limits allowed by the Constitution by the law and by policy we're going to use a whole field and we're going to do it unapologetically and out the reason for the for the title and frankly the scene all this other stuff in the book all right but the core around which is organized if frankly it's already introduced all the controversial programs have been rolled out since 9/11 like I should just tell you now if you haven't yet read the book my fingerprints on every one that's controversial I started the surveillance program at NSA I inherited renditions detentions and interrogations at CIA and although I modified them quite dramatically I did not turn my back on my predecessors or condemn them and in fact continued aspects of the program and frankly the targeted killing program you know the drones the predator stuff was something that my agency forcefully urged upon President Bush in very late 2007 in the first half of 2008 now the books not me I don't think it's judgmental but I know it's not apologetic it just lays out here's what we thought here's what we knew here's what we thought we knew and here's why we did what we did so I talked about surveillance all right right after 9/11 on 9/11 I made a decision about communication between Afghanistan and the United States fully within my authority of director of NSA actually has to do with masking and unmasking the word you've been hearing recently I actually gave the end that's a little more a little more running a little more space to unmask identities in communications between Afghanistan and the United States I did it I did it on the afternoon of September 11 why because the circumstances had changed the fulcrum the balance between privacy and security had begun to shift after all we adjustment attacked by an opposing armed enemy force that was headquartered in Afghanistan I called George Tenet to let him know I told both congressional committees immediately I said I'd come down explain it to you the Senate said no you're good house said yeah come on down which I did tenet George the Director of Central Intelligence goes in goes into one of his morning meetings with President Bush and lines out all the things he's doing and then as George tells the story says oh yeah one more thing Hayden he's our guide NSA I think he's going to jail okay and Cheney then responds tell them we got money we'll bail him out okay and the president said what do you mean well he's doing some stuff he wasn't doing before I'm not sure I understand it all right and so and the president just says good is there anything more he could be doing and so George goes back to Langley and that morning he calls me said my president vice president jail bail you out so on and so forth is there anything more you could be doing and uh George no no not with Mike not within my current authorities pause that's not what I asked you Mike is there anything more you could be doing I said I'll get back to you and I huddled with my lawyers and my office folks and said well there some things we could do that would be more aggressive it would kind of change that fulcrum you know security Liberty under the new circumstances and within a couple days I'm briefing the president about it and he authorized it and we pressed on now we called it stellar wind because stellar wind doesn't mean any that's how we name these things the New York Times when they finally revealed parts of it called a domestic surveillance which we strongly disagree with the adjective there when it became a political issue the right White House labeled it the conveniently labeled terrorist surveillance program you can see the political spin in that by the way when President Obama was briefed on it he hugged it like a teddy bear - and continued it and it remained fairly steady and they've been changes in the law has been changed and all that my validation is the guy who ran on not being George Bush when he was briefed into the program accepted most of the outlines of the program so that's surveillance again a controversial I get it we can talk about it in the Q&A renditions detentions and interrogations I didn't start it I inherited it when I got the CIA in the summer of oh six it was an 800-pound gorilla in the room I spent the summer of those six trying to master what it was my agency had done right and by the by late summer I was prepared to go in and tell the president we can even change its program all right not second-guessing George tennis decisions at all frankly I probably would have made the same thing George did that you know that was oh - this is those six I've got a lot more penetrations of al-qaeda I know more about these guys I got a real better understanding of the level of threat so I we could throttle back mr. president oh by the way mr. credit we are not we're not your jailer so what are your intelligence services we don't need to keep these people forever I think we ought to empty our black sites and we did a Labor Day weekend we took the last 14 prisoners we had including the Guantanamo we didn't close them we kept them open and you read the book I put two more people in them later so we reduce we reduce the population of zero only put a couple more and only kept him for a relatively short period of time we took the techniques that had been outlined by George Tenet 13 reduced them to six and in fact I convinced the president and you probably we probably need to tell more members of Congress what we've been doing and you should probably make a public speech about it what you did in September 2006 so talk more about that specific let me get to the third print which is targeted killing we spent early 2008 trying to convince the president that the strategic balance between ourselves and al-qaeda had shifted we were pretty vociferous that we were seeing Afghanistan pre 9/11 light in Pakistan in the tribal region that we were seeing training camps al-qaeda activity people coming in to be trained mostly Westerners were being trained and then shipped back to to the West people up the line we used at the president people who would not have raised your attention had they been next to you in that in the at JFK or a new worker or at Dulles we were pretty insistent with the president the line I'm going to tell you now is something we never said to President Bush but if you've taken everything we had said and said okay hey you get 75 words or fewer to say it this was a message mr. president knowing what we know now there will be no explaining our inaction after the next attack and in early early July the president really moved the dial on the rules of engagement for the United States to conduct targeted killings and you saw the sharp increase from July forward in you know eight you saw President Obama sustained that raid in oh nine and then increased that rate in ten and eleven not because he changed policy you just had more tip coming online that allowed him to do even even more of it yeah I get the controversy but if you read the book you will find that what it was we said would happen if we did this happened I had the good fortune there's a court case in southern Manhattan involving al Qaeda affiliate and as part of the court case the American government made public a whole bunch of letters between bin Laden and some of his key lieutenants and these letters talked about the dramatic effects of the drone campaign against them and they would think it did everything we wanted it to do it disrupted it cut to the chase they spent more time worrying about their survival than figuring out ways to threaten yours and we really decapitated the al-qaeda leadership and again a program that despite the controversy despite the politics was embraced by by a very different kind of administration because I think it was good for America well there are lot of other stuff in the book I talk about a Syrian nuclear reactor in the Eastern desert actually talked about in the classroom not more than an hour or two ago it was finally destroyed by the Israeli Air Force but the discovery of it was a joint CIA Mossad activity I there's a there's a good chapter in the book that I really like called espionage bureaucracy in family life in which I try to describe the burdens that this profession puts on the families of our officers I talked about an event there CIA has a family day every September it's the first Saturday after after Labor Day and we open our campus up to the families of our officers one bounced out mom dad brother sister wife husband son daughter extended family but even with that limitation the last couple of family days I officiated at we had 20 to 25,000 people there and in each of the offices try to outdo one another so you got to get all the all the black SUVs up there in the front the kids climbed through it you got that you got the dogs one of the real popular displays for the little kids is disguises okay so they get in line and they get caught up with beards and so on one of the popular one of very popular stops for teenagers so I don't think it's their choice I think it's their parents who want them to experience this is the polygraph station okay and they bring their bring the kids in it is a wonderfully uplifting experience for someone like myself and Janene director and it's false what we do a little formal stuff at the beginning but then after that is discounted fare you know people just walking around we'll go to the cafeteria which we've turned into kind of like a church Sunday picnic place them you know big beans hot dogs hamburgers and and so on and we'll stop there and someone will say mr. director and you'll shake hands and at that point you were there for the next three hours as a as a receiving line form you get a chance to say hi to officers there were two there are two very distinct groups there one one was the 20-somethings all right who were bringing in tow mom and dad who had just driven up from Raleigh or flown in from Salt Lake right and mom and dad are clearly having an out-of-body experience as their son or daughter takes them through the Central Intelligence Agency the other group is a little bit smaller or the 40-something officers who had a teenager or two in tow and not infrequently they would get to the front of line director Hayden mrs. Hayden is I've got a Margaret that our son James today we told them where we work I mean cover covers a burden not not everybody at CIA is covered but some are and you know don't think they're gifting you if they tell you they work for CIA they're giving you a burden they've given you a secret knowledge you must protect they can't even tell their children that they're CIA officers until the children have the maturity to protect the secret all right so it's 14-inch 15 ish where where the kids get older and my wife Jeanine can see me points out Yeah right when the teenagers are having all these trust issues you get to tell them we've been lying to you for the last 14 years Janene leaned in de and in the one young lady and said so you show your your mouth works your mom and dad work for CIA yeah how does that make you feel in she goes my mom's a spy so so I do try to put a human face on on this activity all right there a lot of other things in there but you've got the basic themes of the one let me let me press on to Roman numeral three the what now all right what how do the things I have written about published a year ago for the first time relate to what's what's going on now alright so I've got two or three points I'll make rather briefly but you know have at me in the QA the first is a relationship between American intelligence and the government serves the relationship between let's say CIA and oh the president okay I don't know if you've been following along up here in New Jersey but it's not been totally smooth okay I'm going to give you a take on that alright because if that's a big deal all right CIA exists only to make the president wiser and more effective period there is there is this existential thing so I'm gonna get a little cartoonish you to bear with me alright there's this existential thing that has to do with the Intel person and the policy person or the Intel person and the decision maker by those with military experience this apply to that canvas covered talk to you served in in some sandy part of the world the Intel guy and the decision maker but this model we're talking about senior national intelligence figures president the vice president the National Security Advisor all right so in my little cartoon I got the Oval Office here alright and I got two doors and there are two doors the Intel guy comes in one door the president comes in the other door the Intel guys actually that's not technically right but live with the cartoon all right so the Intel guy comes through the door marked fax okay the president comes through the door marked vision you know the one you voted from for right vision say fact vision world as it is world as we want it to be I think back vision as is want to be inherently inductive I mean the intelligence process is to collect as much as you can synthesize organize present it goes from the specific to the general inherently inductive sick post-newtonian bacon Western thinking inherently inductive inherently deductive isn't her primary task is to take that vision thing those first principles and apply them to a specific situation fact vision as is want to be inductive deductive inherently pessimistic it just comes with the job what do you think about the Far East on North Korea's a problem I mean if it's we just naturally go to the negative Bob Gates has a wonderful phrase Bob Center Gates was in my office before he was SEC def right gage says when a CIA analyst stops to smell the flowers she looked around for the hearse okay inherently optimistic or they would not have interviewed for the job with you right back vision edges want to be inductive deductive pessimistic optimistic always and so you've got this you've got this inherent gap to close because you you you do want to close and get into the mind of the president but you can't become him you can't become the people come through that other door otherwise you shouldn't be in the room you're only license to be in the room is here the fact-based worlders is inductive pessimistic person so you can't break your tether but you got to get into the head of the president now that varies by president but it's a challenge with every president I think was a little easier with george w than it was with others not not because of any inherent quality of him but his dad was had my job okay I mean his dad used to work in my office so I think he kind of got a little coaching and mentoring on how this should work because HW had been but it's an issue all right with every president and so you know that's always going to happen I suspect the community going forward last summer within only two horses left in the race said that with Secretary Clinton is going to be a pretty easy lift because frankly we had done that already with her she had been Secretary of State for four years and that fact vision has is that we pretty much work that out that have been a fairly easy transition I also think that as Secretary Clinton might have been a less a less difficult than average transition everyone knew that a president Trump would be a higher-than-average difficult transition right simply because all those things over here I told you about the vision thing and all that he took extra doses of those okay and I mean it I do mean this very respectfully all right this is a man who thinks intuitively who has almost preternatural confidence in his op priority judgments about how the world works all right instinctive in his reasoning right and before any of us here in academia myself included get too judgmental those are the instincts that made him president in the face of all the experts saying that ain't going to happen so we got to give that a little space that he may know from time to time what he's talking about so we always knew this will be a little harder with a president Trump than than average it is a great American tragedy that this is gap-filling exercise I told you was always going to happen always happens it was a group really happened with this guy because it just comes from a different space it is a great American tragedy that the issue on which we first attempted to resolve that gap to close that gap was an issue that was being used by some of our countrymen not the Intel guys but being used by some of our countrymen in order to challenge his legitimacy as president the United States the first time we had we had a bridge that gap was was on the Russian interference in the American election that is a perfect storm in a really dark storm to boot and we are still done way down in the trough of of that that reality and we as a nation he the president my tribe as a community needs to claw their way back out of the hole and get to a better equilibrium so that's one kind of what now another one now has to do with how much of what it is we do we should be telling you so I y'all remember the Edward Snowden thing right and all that stuff going out the door yeah the first Edward Snowden story to really hit and this was this was not his design it with Glenn Greenwald's and Bart Gellman it was given to press guys to when he gave the stuff the first story they rolled out was something called the 215 program that's the metadata program that's your phone bill sitting up at Fort Meade I started that October 2nd 2001 George Bush what more can you do Haden all right and it was pushed out the door and and there was a pretty strong public uproar and frankly the administration and my old agency NSA as my British friends would say was really back footed I buy it and part of it was the administration really didn't want to grow up with sleeves and punch punch back on this because there's actually the powerful defense for the program I've done Bob Schieffer Meet the Press no Face the Nation Sunday morning and it was post Snowden and metadata and how you're doing and why you're doing it and so on and I was there talking I got all done we broke for commercial because she persistently Mike thanks for coming that was really great can I ask you one more question sure how come only the bush guys are here defending the Obama program now part of it is it started under bush but the other part of it was the Obama guys didn't want to go out another part of it for NSA was not just the kind of the political suppression don't don't go out and fight this so much it was an assumption I think that this is going to be ok so put aside the data put aside that the fact we were arguing about and go back to process NSA I'm convinced with of the belief no no yeah there's going to be a bad week or so but everyone's very good over this I'll tell you why because this has been approved by two presidents okay President Bush approves it present Obama proofing oh by the way he got legislated by Congress after I did an under presidential authority it was later legislated by Congress I know yeah it is overseen by the two Intelligence Committee in fact they're fans of it they're the strongest supporters of the program even after Snowden made a public where the chair and ranking members of the two intelligence committees so it's approved by two presidents its legislated by Congress is overseen by the intelligence community committees oh yeah and the place of court gets to look at it every 60 days just make sure it's on on an even keel I mean if you said not a port major going hey we're cool that's the Madisonian trifecta I got the executive I got to legislative I got you judicial we are good to go it is the formula that we decided on as a nation in the 1970s after the scandals of the early seventies Church Pike and and all those things that centered house oversight committees and so on right so NSA's singing I will have a bad week here but then people are going to realize that we did this just right president Court Congress committees oversight we're going to be fine and they weren't okay a whole bunch of Americans and part of me don't don't mean to be harsh a whole bunch of Americans not all of them wearing tinfoil on their heads all right a whole bunch of Americans not way over here way over here but in here a whole bunch of Americans said you know what I get that Madisonian trifecta I get Congress of course oh yeah but you know what I don't I'm not convinced that constitutes consent of the government anymore that might be consent of the governors you may have told them victim alright my life experience tells me is it's not the guys in the trenches doing this at all this is done for political effect at a political level sir in vain on whistleblower yeah I would love your views on whistleblower do you think they have a role to play in democracy or on democracy and my question would be more today and if you would like to go in 20 30 years as digital and numeric becomes even more what they are today yeah so so yeah the obvious answer is yeah whistleblowing is good because by definition a whistleblower is blowing the whistle on something that should not be done alright so now I wanna make it more complicated all right Edward Snowden is described as a whistleblower all right Edward so does the problem is he is yet to point out anything that was illegal all right he point out a bunch of things he didn't like he point out a bunch of things that you may not like but none of it was illegal the 215 program which was the big explosion perfectly legal in fact that lets never change until Congress changed the law all right until you eat the phrase the phrase is used in the public discourse for anyone who says anything he doesn't like it a true whistleblower who courageously stands up and points out something that is inconsistent with law or policy yeah you've got to have that and so I I don't know how anybody a might with my history could say that that's not a good thing when I got to CIA and this flies in the face a little bit of my answer to you when I got the CIA in the summer 2006 may of 2006 it was in the news a lot and there were a series of leaks to the degree they weren't from the top and political they were probably coming from the Alumni Association no I'm serious you know guys inside complain to guys outside Friday night at the bar guys outside talk to other I mean this story just kind of kind of percolate out and so the first speech I gave to the agency was and we're getting out of the news as subject or source and my tool was not to make war on my own for my own work force my tool was to create a completely open email process to me and I had this lot of emails I answered every one of them alright and and over time they went down and and so did stories and comments about CIA in the press so so I yeah whistleblowers are good if you have a whistleblower you already got a problem you have not allowed the space for people to bring up these issues inside where you can actually act on them yeah so I'm just wondering in addition to trying to solve the problems attendant to the current crisis with Russia how much does the American intelligence mean and the greater national security community how much does it considered the Russian problem as representing kind of a new reality and and how come we've taken steps to adapt to that new reality concept lower yeah so so y'all hear the question the Russian okay so we probably didn't pay sufficient attention to Russia for a while my wife's here with me we traveled to more than 50 countries in 31 months as director of CIA not one of them was Russia all right we were we were head down in the scope with proliferation Iran North Korea terrorism and institutions and human beings only have so much physical and psychic energy and we were really really really into that all right and so I would actually say not not that my being more active not my establishing some kind of relationship with the SVR which I could have done we had the Russian resident come once to CIA he actually asked to come see us this is the acknowledged Russian intelligence officer in the embassy in Washington he came it came to my office made a very pleasant conversation we thank him for coming he left and not about the electronic team in immediately afterward and swept the office for bugs sure sorry all right probably probably a unforced error on my part to establish more better relationships with the Russians now the Russians have come on strong okay I'd let eight and a half years ago all right so I'm not taking full responsibility here here's my picture of Russia and I think it's accurate this is not a resurgent power it's a revanchist power it's not resurgent I was on Morning Joe couple 6-8 months ago after they did some weight we objected to we're about ready to cut to commercial I said Joe can't say one more thing yeah general way what do you got I'm down in DC he's up in New York yeah general what do you guys it's Joe the only stuff he's doing yeah general you know he's doing it he didn't have more than a pair of sevens in his hand right it is not a strong hand all right everything you need to be somebody in the world today they don't have right what is the last time you've got a Russian product other than Matuschka doll or you know a handy handy work you know by car from Russia I mean they are they are a colonial economy colonized by other Russians they are they are live in London okay and it is an extraction economy they're running out of entrepreneurship the more and more the Russian economy is state-owned each day goes by they're out of democracy they're not running out of oil and gas but it's getting harder to get and only cost up to $3 a barrel so it's not very productive and fundamentally they're running out of Russians this is a declining population all right and a little bit from the front end birth rate most from the back end life expectancy which is below that of the Soviet Union the most primary causes of death for Russian males or violence traffic accidents accidents and substance abuse I was after a quality-of-life poster right until Putin so Putin Putin one says I'm going to be autocratic but don't worry Mother Russia is going to be rich and that was oil 110 then he had the mega jeff interlude and Vladimir comes back for Putin to and he says I want to be autocratic don't worry mother Russia's going to be proud and he's staking his internal social contractors internal validity on redressing historic Russian grievances the dom boss eastern Ukraine Crimea and Moldova and and in other places but he's doing it from a position of weakness so it's going to be very interesting if the current president actually decides to strike back at his client Bashar al-assad with a physical strike in Syria which might actually have some merit how that all that plays so my picture of Vladimir's approach is it's a cartoon but it works so bear with me he's over here at the kiddie table alright and all the big people over here eaten at the big people's table and his chair no matter what he does he can't make any bigger already told you about his limitations right but in order to continue his domestic validation he's got to make Russia proud he's got to make the Russians feel like they deserve to be at the big table but he can't make his chair any bigger he got these limits so every night he goes over the big this saw and he goes there every night and cuts another inch or two off the table and the great hope that if he cuts enough off the legs of that table someday he's going to slide his Russian a little kiddy chair over the big table and it's going to look like it just fits perfectly I told you it was a cartoon let me give it a punchline that's his opposition to the EU that's his trying to dissolve NATO that's his support for breakfas brexit and that's his messing around with American and European democratic processes he wants to cut our institutions down to a level where he actually fits and that's what he's trying to do so sure I read someplace when you talked to Obama about Iran and the nuclear yeah he said you should look at in a different way it's about them trying to gain confidence and and intelligence yeah sure so what is it referring to it's chapter in the book on Iran which acts pretty interesting although not very satisfying doesn't say and then we just did this it'll be fine it actually ends up with sentence it says I don't think we'd have bought this deal but then again I don't know that we had a better idea that's how I end the chapter so the reference here I was I was President Obama's CIA chief for three weeks all right he made it he made the it ain't your night kid phone call in early January all right and said we're going to make a change here Leon Panetta's coming in could you stay until Leon's confirmed of course the answer that is of course mr. president-elect will stay so I am his chief for his first NFC meeting and quite revealing his first NFC meeting is on Iran right so at the meeting he turns to me and said general how much fissile material did the Iranians now have le you and HEU right lo and Richton and high interest and I turned to him you're suggesting the interlude I turn it to mr. president I actually know the answer to that one can I but can I give you another way of looking at it and I'll give you the answer in a minute it doesn't matter how much Lau and hu you they have in Natanz there isn't an electron or a neutron at Natanz it's ever going to be in a weapon what they're building at Natanz is confidence what they're building at the tongs is technology when they go weaponization they're going to do it somewhere else and so what you need to be focused on is how good are they getting at it not how much of this stuff have they stockpiled that was the argument which by the way if you take that all the way forward now to the nuclear deal you can understand why I'm uncomfortable with it because the nuclear deal is based upon how much stuff they have not how much technology they get confident in and that's that was the objection yes sir we're going to talk you mentioned an increase in CIA ability to penetrate extremist groups I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on what changed after 9/11 that let you do that yeah it frankly frankly is it is a function of time all right human intelligence get you exquisite stuff but it takes time to build the network to build the the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who's willing to talk to the other guy it is time we can do it anyway but it just takes time whereas signals intelligence alright you just say I move the move the feet or in this way and the satellite responds and now all that work you used to be doing over here you're doing over here now you got to do a little homework about the frequencies and who talks on what frequencies and so on but signals intelligence is rapid and you just turn it human intelligence just takes a lot of time so now in 2006 now I know more about this I don't know about that animal what the other thing I didn't do that George did that because he began to invest in doing it it happened again right after I left so we're beating the living daylights out of al Qaeda in the tribal region with the targeted killing program alright and we were always of the belief that they can't stand it that they gotta leave and that they had a they had to go somewhere else and the somewhere else we always thought it was Yemen alright they didn't they stayed there and died alright but we always believed you in an operation like this if you can make the enemy move he is really vulnerable and so the idea was if they begin to move we could you know we get the closure we more rapidly disintegrate the organization they did they stayed in Afghanistan there was another however wholly separate organization that grew up in Yemen called AQAP al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula so it wasn't a migration from the guys in the tribal region it just started and moved up that became apparent about 10 I guess maybe 11 maybe right around in there and I look from the outside looking in but I can see the temple of American operations where we know al Qaeda and the Arabian Prince is up and running and we're talking about a lot but we're doing nothing we're doing nothing but good nothing and about 18 months in big-big we started we start doing targeted killings that's the clock that's that's the human network being developed in order to create the exquisite nation that you need to do the other operational wax so it really is a function of time okay thank you for your service thank you um I'd like to speak a little bit with the targeted killings versus the longer term the longer term how we attack IQ ap Isis these groups I welcome this close like as long as the underlying grieving right remain there that's like AQAP yep and Isis and so on and so forth will continue to address them so how does the United States where do we find the balance between short-term tactical killing versus long-term addressing underlying grievances may God bless you for the question so there is um Showtime spymasters Showtime had a special called spymaster interviewed every living director of CIA will be back to HW was on there Jimmy Carter's director was on there it was mostly about post 9/11 stuff that they interviewed all of us interview me for nine hours all right two separate sessions and they got everyone in the boat everyone agreed to talk which is it's not the most comfortable thing for a former CIA director to be asked questions with somebody else controlling cutting the film after nine hours of interrogation we all finally went in it's a wonderful piece if you're not seeing it called spy masters those you kind of follow this kind of stuff it's a bit like the Israeli film the gatekeepers which is about heads of Shin Bet and the theme okay someone said yes yeah the themes are roughly the same they interviewed us separately I have no idea what tenet said what Porter said what Morrell said an idea right and there's a there's a there's a there's a montage at the end where they have every director who has been director since 9/11 saying one version or another is you know you can't kill your way out of this you know you can't kill your way out of this you know you can't kill you with you know if you could kill our way out of this we got a parade 15 years ago and break right through so all of us know you can't kill your way out of this remember that three weeks where I was President Obama's chief and the margins of Nan SC meetings I I got to report at you didn't tell me that's a big deal okay and I am the last part of look is simply telling my old friends you know what guys you're probably gonna have to say a lot more about what it is we do don't pretend it's not going to hurt don't pretend it's not going to shave points off of effect of this okay good these good folks here aren't going to let you do it unless they know more about it just like a whole bunch of other things with regard to our government you're no longer willing to outsource your approval and we're just going to have to be more open with you I I said we're gonna have to be more transparent actually a good friend of mine Jeanine my wife reminded me of a word he used a couple years ago at the Aspen security conference and I said you were just got to be more transparent and he said Mike you're right but I think you're using the wrong word we need to be more translucent and that's actually really quite clever okay translucent means I can see the broad shapes I can see enough that I that I know the broad outlines of what what is going on but I don't I don't have the fine operational detail and so that is that is a massive adjustment that we have to make one final one final what now and it is I'll be very very brief because I don't know where it goes this whole unmasking Susan Rice minimization legal collection they were wiretapping Trump Tower whatever it's doing for your digestion it is in a way that is irresponsible charging the American intelligence community with using its enormous powers at this for the service of a domestic political cause that's awful and it's untrue and and you watch this space all right because that could actually lead to some very very dark places I was when I was director of NSA I used to I used to find a saying Terry to be successful we only need to be two things secretive and powerful and we exist inside of a political culture that frankly distrust only two things secrecy and power and now but we get the Hall Pass we get the hall pass because we are and always have been a political if in any way shape or form we are card now with a tool of a political element it is the kiss of death for American espionage so I talked about them in my class George Mason essential to and all that let me let me end on that point and then we'll get to all the questions you might want to ask one of the great delights of my second life and with Jeanine with me we get to come and talk to folks like yourself and we get to invite we get we can advise a whole bunch of other things too so we got invited for example to the Corcoran Gallery done in on 17th Street in DC for the Washington premiere of Episode one of season two of homeland so we saw it and I got I got to walk up to Mandy Patinkin and then they in the after show party and mocked up - hi mr. katenka I'm Mike Hayden I used to play the director of CIA - we got to go to another premiere this one for far less famous show I think it's a MC called turn it's about the culper spy via some simple - not again it's not the culper spy ring on Long Island during the revolution okay and so we got invited we saw episode 1 season 1 it's been renewed I think they're in that but season 3 for for season 4 get a little more fantastical little further away from the historical narrative is they got to build another season after another season but the first one with obviously dramatized but pretty close to culper I think that culper couple was a ring wash and set up on Long Island to spy on the British in New York alright it's a classic American espionage story so I get to be on the panel afterwards and I'm sitting sitting at the panel and in the auditorium and it's me the historian on who's worked the screenplay have been based an actor or two and I'm the producer or director or just having a conversation finally the moderation so you're the only real spy on stage what did you think of it I really enjoyed it this is great really well why I said it showed culper Washington it showed that American espionage is as old as the Republic but this is baseball and apple pie that the nation's first spy master was the nation's first president oh by the way when he became president he insisted on a covert action budget which makes us 45 for 45 right now on presidents wanting to be able to do covert action right and I went through my whole shtick about not just compatible with but essential to American democracy and I was delighted to be able to say that with the backdrop of American history with an audience like yourself there oh yeah where were we we were in the auditorium of the National Archives and I got to say that essential to not just compatible with lying about 135 feet from block Constitution and about 145 feet from a copy of the Magna Carta I am serious about the somatic essential to American security and liberty and with that I will stop and happy to take any [Applause] [Music] we have two ground rules first we're going to give preference to Princeton students so if you have questions if your student please come down one of my cronies getting the line and second that is applied to everyone students not students everything in between please be brief no speeches and no multi-part questions hello thank you for coming out today my question concerns the reports of leaking that's been going on within CIA NSA the executive branch in general some of these intelligence reports could you talk a little bit about why I think there's been an uptick at least in my sense there seems to be a been an approach so you're asking about the disclosure of masses amount of information by someone who has stolen them which is kind of the Snowden file 7 episode or are you talking about Mike Flynn's name being made public it might flip okay good yeah I offer you the view I'm a challenge the premise of your question all right that's intelligence information that is not prima facie evidence in any way shape or form that it's being leaked by intelligence people all right in fact I think the smart money in Washington is that the Flynn name is leaked by one or another faction in what is a very factionalized White House not from the intelligence community and so so as director you know we would get on and brief somebody on something really really kind of close hold both on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue right and then about it you know day or two later I'm in there with my deputy Steve kappes and got CNN on it who turned MC I didn't take very long did it and so there's a saying in Washington that the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top so so don't do not presume as many do in this very dark news coverage of all this that it is the dark state the intelligence apparatus making war on a successful operational act all right which terrorist is taken off the battlefield and at the end of I just mentioned it wasn't the core of the meeting it was about something else but we had everyone there I told him so I'm getting up ready to go throwing stuff in a bag and and I get shoved in the back it's Rahm Emanuel right and you must know wrong so so so wrong says to me tell you guys good stuffing you know he didn't have to do that very appreciate so I had the thought Rahm Emanuel was nice to me back away from the room slowly leave the room pockets at the compliment but I actually had the conscious thought I'm not going to talk to these guys ever again I'm leaving it's my last week Ron thanks that was really kind but you realize that the kind of terrorism success unless you change the facts on the ground we get to kill people forever and that somebody mentioned it seemed that the gatekeepers right that's the complaint of the Shin Bet Chiefs who said we have done your heavy lifting for 30 years it was designed to create the time and the space for you to solve the problem this could never be the resolution and the Shin Bet Chiefs were feeling a sense of betrayal that their political masters had not used the time in space they had created and frankly we at CIA have the same eye you know you could probably tell told you the books not apologetic totally was very successful did exactly we told the president was going to do but we never told the president's going to make al-qaeda go away and that can only be done with these more long-term things that we haven't adequately addressed yeah okay there it is sir thank you I think so earlier in the lecture you talked about the Madisonian system as posing an effective check on potential abuses of the 215 program and other surveillance activities but in more recent years information has come up about Jim for giving an accurate testimony to Congress yeah or 99.9% FISA Court acceptance rate of these weren't requests so to what extent do you think that this meta funding systems actually function exactly yeah I became betraying my background but yeah it's fine so let me talk about Jim all right this is clapper infront of the Senate Intelligence Committee a couple years ago open session on I think it's a worldwide threat briefing so it wasn't about this and Ron Wyden says some general I'll get the words wrong with the gist is right general does NSA collect any information in bulk on millions of Americans and Jim responds no Center certainly not intentionally all right now now if you know the 215 program a and a and B don't don't fit very well together all right and in Jim's answer was wrong and and clumsy not evil not attempting to lie just wrong and clumsy now the backdrop okay why he knows everything there is to know about 215 program everybody on that Dyess knows everything there is to know about the 215 program everybody behind everybody on that Dyess all the staffers know everything there is to know about the 215 program widens explicit purpose was to track trap clapper into revealing a program that Wyden opposed that remained classified and the reason that Wyden was so vocal about supporting the program about trying to hammer the program that the senator was losing the votes in the committee 13 to 2 on trying to limit the program so there's a Jim was wrong you shouldn't have answered it that way but there's a whole backstory here that actually puts an awful lot of extenuation out there on the final approval rate it's not 99.9 but it's high all right but I I got to tell you the fight you have to go to court if you want if you want to target anyone that's called a u.s. person that's an American anywhere in the world or frankly anyone in America all right so for example Sergey yuck the Russian ambassador he's the US person okay he enjoys the protection of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution because he's a legal permanent resident the United States so if we were ever to want to intercept his communications and I don't know if we've ever done anything like that okay if we ever wanted to intercept his communications we would have to go to a court and prove that he is an agent of a foreign power not an especially heavy lift for the Russian ambassador but frankly it's about that thick and so it is a heavily cumbersome bureaucratic process and my life experience is at the end of the day you get almost all of them approved but a whole bunch of them are not approved right away and I don't mean they just say we'll come back later it's really I don't think so or or your window is too big all right yeah I'm not so sure he uses all those phones so what phone does he use primarily which one of these phones is used by his wife I mean you get the you get the press and so what happens in the dialogue at the end of the day if you really think is an agent of a foreign power you're getting your primary to get the court to approve it but it takes a lot longer than you think it is heavily bureaucratized a lot of hands touch it and very often it's back again and again and again for approval by the way right remember I told you the president did this the Congress now has oversight committees and we've got courts right got that right hit CCC House Intelligence Senate Intelligence FISA Court okay there is no other Western democracy that has that we in the 1970s we took something that has traditionally been the pure reserve of the executive and spread oversight of it into the legislative and the judicial branch French doesn't do that England doesn't do that Great Britain Australia doesn't do that Canada doesn't do that our oversight committees are more invasive than any parliamentary I step European parliamentarians come to NSA to complain about NSA and my normal grilling was yeah I know why you're here because you don't know anything about what your services do because you're not allowed to know we had a we we have facilities that we share with partners all right I had a congressman visit another country where we had a joint facility he said I want to go to I want to go to hell I go there he can America I want a House Intelligence Committee of course I can you know you can't why not we got one of these in the US and I went there not more than a month ago why can't I go here and the answer was because no parliamentarian in this Western democracies ever been allowed to go there and we can't possibly let in American congressmen go so I get I get gets concerns we all we all share the same political culture we're all just trustful with secrecy and power and we may want to make it better and I already told you about being more translucent but you need to keep in mind that if you want to make it more open if we want more invasive oversight if we want more checks and balances the line of departure from which we will be leaving is the most invasive comprehensive system of checks and balances in the Democratic world thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

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Id: PeVZ8EfodVU

Length: 70min 57sec (4257 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2017