Topic, fostering bipartisanship in intelligence oversight. We have a senior fellow at the center for National American security. And a former National Security lawyer within the doj from 20002010. The bush and obama administrations. Really, the poster children or lawmakers for bipartisanship on an Intelligence Committee, congressman Rupert Berger from maryland is district and includes the National Security agency. And former congressman and the chairman of the house Intelligence Committee, mike rogers. All of you know mike and dutch. Mike and dutch served on the committee as chairman and in ranking from 20112015. And mike and 2016. So we will start this is just a very timely topic at such a remarkable moment marked by intense partisanship, including even in National Security, which is an area that has traditionally been impervious to party affiliation. And the bipartisanship, we know it is not necessarily always mean everybody will always agree and lets agree all the time, but there are good reasons why there should be why the oversight ought to be free from partisan politics. So today in our discussion we want to get at what bipartisanship is, how do you do it and why it is so important. I will start by asking you mike and dutch to talk about the start of your partnership in 2011. And one of the first things you really got done, i still remember it, was he got the first intelligence authorization bill passed in 2011, after a string of dry years, five years without intel authorization. How did you do it, why was it so important to do it . Talk about that first year and how you set up your partnership. Mike . Mike dutch and i had gotten to know each other on the Intel Committee and we realized we had a synergies on Security Issues that we were looking at. Broader than the over political discussions of the day. So when he was a Ranking Member and i was named chairman, we decided we would be partners versus the chairman versus vice chairman, we thought it would be a more powerful arrangement if we could do this together. Our goal was to never issue a subpoena off the committee, if we could not get them to cooperate we argued it was on us. Not that we would not have used it, but our goal was not to do it. So we said, his favorite story, he was the prosecutor and i was fbi agent, we said we would be able to figure this out. Dutch fbi agents do not listen to prosecutors. Mike i heard that in every negotiation i ever had. We decided to do it differently. One of the first things we did was make the staff briefed together on budget issues, that had not been done before on my time in the committee. We wanted to send a clear message that we were serious, we were going to do this together. We were going to try to remove all of the partisan amendments that happened at any time. We took kind of a hard stance on that, saying if it was a democrat amendment, a messaging amendment, dutch was going to oppose it, same on the republican side. So the first go around people tested all of those things, because they think it is the normal way of doing business, and we held together. That is why we were successful in getting that first bill agreed to and passed. Dutch a lot of it has to do with relationships and trust. Mike was in the fbi, i was a former prosecutor. When you had those jobs before hand, it is a need do what is right. The hardest problem was the staff. For so many years, it was so partisan, they would fight and there was no relationship. The hardest part for us was to get the staff and turn them around. I literally had to threaten somebody that i would fire them if they did not cooperate and work with the other side, but once we got the first bill done, basically, then it started to change. And i think that both sides, we realized that it was usa first. Then overseas, the Intelligence Community, make sure they have the resources to do the job. Once the Intelligence Committee started to see that we were working together and with them, we did oversee them and we held them accountable. It was not like hi, we will give you what you want. But then they started cooperate, because the Intelligence Community, when they trust you they will open up. That allows you to do better as far as oversight. Unfortunately, that is not what has happened now. Ellen there is an anecdote i heard about the moment where you actually did get that first intel bill passed. Tell us about that, how did you all react . Mike we had not had a bill for five years. There were some depressing moments as members of the committee, not being able to get things done, not doing proper oversight. So we finally, we spent a good part of our summer coming in working together, trying to get an agreement on this budget. It was, as you said, it does not mean we did not have disagreements about priorities or spending, we had all of that. But we negotiated our way through it and we came to conclusions, we agreed on where we should be. And we always said the u. S. First, and of story. So we are to be able to get there, and waited. We finally got the agreement, it was a long negotiation upfront. We reached across the basement of the Capitol Building and we shook hands. We shook hands and at the building started shaking. [laughter] i am not kidding. We thought, oh my god, what have we done . It was the earthquake, remember the earthquake . Dutch the earthquake. Mike so we all had to be evacuated. I said, i think we are in trouble, dutch. But that is a true story. We use that as an example of how you can change tone and get things done on the inside. Dutch we have a lot of war stories. We have traveled all over the world, iraq, afghanistan, yemen, and by going to the front lines you can see what is happening. And of people that we oversaw, it also helped us to learn so much more on what to do. I also want to give credit to my chief of staff, and your chief of staff, mike allen. Those two really came together, which is important because they ran the staff. And i think that once we got together it worked very well. Whatever issue we dealt with, whether it was terrorism, north korea, iran, all those issues. Mike one of the benefits, this is so important, once we established that we were for real. That we would hold them accountable where they made mistakes, but we were also going to support them, we felt the job of the committee is not just a beat on you, it is to give you tools and policies that you need to be successful. They would call us with problems. And we had never seen that. The agencies, they would call and say, before you find out about this, because well ways would, we want to brief you on something that got off the tracks. We felt that that was a Golden Moment for us, because now they were bringing us the problems of which we were going to do oversight so you did not need to say oh my god, how did this happen . They acknowledged we were trying to do this in an earnest way and they came to us with problems it wouldve taken us years to figure out. We were able to mitigate them, get them back on track. Hold people accountable where necessary. We did it all within the confines of the committee, we did not run off no offense, we did not call the washington post. Dutch they tried. [laughter] mike that is how you know you are functioning as a proper oversight committee. Dutch you have to give credit to nancy pelosi and dachshund boehner. I wanted the job but did not know i would get it. Once we got on the committee, they allowed us to do what we needed to do. On numerous occasions, nancy pelosi voted against some of the legislation we put forward, but she never interfered. Same with the john boehner. A couple times but we will not get into that. [laughter] mike tried to interfere. Ellen lets step back and look back at the last 18 years, 9 11, you having been inside the Intelligence Community and being part of the body that was overseen. Overseeing. How would you characterize the state of oversight over the last 18 years 10 now, is it that issues today are inherently more political and thus susceptible to being politicized, or is it just that we are noticing it more because the amplification from social media . You know the committees were created so the house Intelligence Committee and the senate and were created out of political issues. And abuses that took place in the Intelligence Community in the 1960s and 70s, so in one sense controversy and sensitive issues and politically charged issues have been part of the reason, part of the committees work and part of the reason that committees were created to begin with. I think that the partisanship and the effectiveness of the committees has ebbed and flowed over those years. And a lot of it has had to do with it has been different on the two different committees and it has depended a lot on the leadership. You know, when you speak with folks who i was working on those issues from 20002010 during a lot of counterterrorism activity, obviously. And when former staffers and former members of the community, when we talk about the Intelligence Committees, the leadership tenure of congressman rogers and congressman rogers berger, everybody notices it was a moment and bipartisanship. But one of the reasons we are having this conversation is that in my work at sea nas, we have launched a project on intelligence oversight, we are doing a series of roundtables and papers that focus on the importance and value of intelligence oversight. One of the issues that has come up is i think that you just described this a little bit bipartisan oversight is more effective. One of the challenges is articulating, why if we want to say that these committees should work in a bipartisan way, why does it matter more than any other committees in congress . Part of the reason it matters is because the work is conducted mostly behind closed doors, because it is regarding classified information. So less is apparent, members of congress cannot do back to their district and talk about everything they are doing on the committees. You can talk about budget issues, talk about bills that you are working on, but a lot of them and oversight, you cannot talk about them. So sometimes it is hard to articulate the value of why it matters that this particular work is so important that it be done in a bipartisan way, but i think that part of what has already been articulated here is that the value is it is more effective. The Intelligence Community responds more willingly, with more trust when they know that the leadership is doing its work in a serious, substantive way and not based on partisan interests. Ellen do you know of examples where the lack of bipartisanship resulted in less responsive, less cooperative intelligence communities . Carrie i think that what we have seen, you mentioned congressman rogers mentioned subpoenas. I think the current example, what we have seen in the last two years a big difference between the way that the senate Intelligence Committee has conducted its work. They have a big investigation they have been conducting for some time now into russian interference. And the leadership of that committee has really gone out of their way to demonstrate that they are trying to do it in a bipartisan way. I suspect there is a lot going on behind the scenes that maybe is not quite as copacetic all the time, but they are trying to publicly show they are doing so in a unified way. We have seen more volatility on the house intelligence side. And i think, although we do not have specific examples because we do not always know the back and forth going on within the community, the sense i have in speaking with folks and watching the public statements that the members feel compelled to make and the d classifications of information, that demonstrates to me a downward trend behind the scenes. Ellen i want to get into the nuts and bolts of how you get the committees, first, your own staff to work in a bipartisan manner, and also how you work with colleagues on the senate side to do things in a bipartisan way. Can you talk about that, was it important to have your staff go on oversight trips together . Maybe do joint projects together . What did you do to really foster that bipartisanship . Mike the first and most important thing we did, when we got into the budget cycle , remember, both teams had a set of staff. Within themselves they would work about budget before we got there and lay that out, our staff would do the same thing. And then we would have a public debate, public inside of the committee, on lets do this. We argued it was a waste of time and we were going to make them Work Together and work on the budget at the same time. It sounds easy, like a nobrainer, why wouldnt you do that . This was like moving mount rushmore, it was unbelievably difficult, because they had never done in the past. They were arguing, somebody is moving my cheese. I do not want my cheese moved. We said, good. We will take away your cheese. The first couple ones of were a little rough. We had some fits and starts and to some complaints. They would say come i cannot work with x or y. But once again, once they found we were serious about this, we worked through the issues. We did not get upset about anything. We said, we will work it out. That was the most important statement that we made. Then we did do things like, we traveled, we always try to travel together as chairman and vice chairman, only because we thought it sent a strong message, not only to our staff but the community we were visiting. So we did things like that. We rotated staff that would go with us to make sure that everybody was included in those oversight missions. I have to say that the most important thing was that having staff briefed together. I think it is for a while they would go out in social events on their own and they would not invite us. We took a little personal. [laughter] i was like, wait a minute, i thought we were part of . That think but they work working together and coming up with Solutions Together and i thought it was a very proud moment for us and we felt like fathers at that point. Dutch it is about relationships and trust. We had that relationship, then we had to let the staff do that. If you look at how important that committee is and how dangerous the world is, we are talking about space, nuclear weapons, russia and china and the u. S. Getting into a nuclear war. We have the capacity to maybe stop other people, but you look at a hypersonic weapon, they are really serious. And we need to focus on that and make sure that we can protect our aircraft carriers. You get into the cyber field. I did not do a lot on that, but the Cyber Threats are really serious. They are getting worse every day. And not even states, but russia and china and people like that. You know, you have people in the u. S. That are very smart and they can do certain things. In this country, we have only had one deceptive attack and it was sony, but it is the ability for a lot of people to have destructive attacks. It we start getting into electric cars, all of those issues, we will be more exposed. So mike and i tried to have legislation that would work through all of the issues. And on my side, i had the far left concerned about privacy. And what i tried to do, and i still do today, i will take busloads of pressman over to the nsa and let them see what is going on, the checks and balances that have been there. And once they go, they look at it a little bit differently. If you look at what the nsa does, i am pronsa and i represent them, but they probably do more to help our military, or other intelligence groups, to get information. What people do not realize, nsa does not have jurisdiction in the United States. If they have issues in the u. S. , they give it over to the fbi or Homeland Security. But the relationships and trust. Again, you have to give credit to leadership, they did not interfere with us. They let it do it they let us do it our way into work. Ellen it is interesting you raise the issue of privacy into the left wing of your caucus. What about you, mike . Mike the leftwing of my caucus was pretty small. Did not have a problem with it. [laughter] ellen did you have members that were concerned about certain issues, certain issues where they were concerned about being part of the Republican Party . And maybe the libertarians who had privacy issues. Mike it was really a bipartisan opposition. The far left, civil libertarians and libertarians who were uncomfortable with where it was at. So our approach to that was, we felt that transparency was the most important thing so we brought lots of people, had them sign and we brought nsa folks to the committee it we opened it up to the whole congress, specifically after the snowden event. We tried to get ahead of that narrative. I think today that we did not get ahead of the narrative. Most of the facts people believe about snowden are not accurate. And, you know, i think he is doing fine in an apartment paid for in moscow, probably a reason for that. So i think that what we tried to do. We did not get ahead of it. But my argument on that is for the people who are in the committees, who got the information, we went through this line for line, who said that is fine. And when the lights came on, they said oh my god, cannot believe they were doing that. That sent me into orbit. And i think that a comment in the political figures in washington dc, they are far too many of that. My argument was, if you did not like it, why didnt you say so . This was your opportunity. You didnt say anything and when it was leaked anyway. I will need therapy through this whole thing. [laughter] dutch mike and i realized if there was going to be in end game, it was going to be the senate. When you and i were on the committee, we did not work with the senate a lot. So we reached out to senator feinstein and others and we said, we need to Work Together, here are the issues, they are so critical. They agreed. We traveled together. We traveled to afghanistan together. Dianne feinstein is a tremendous person, very formal. And she hated it that sometimes it would not wear socks. So on the trip we were like, we are not wearing socks. And we will be in a meeting, hey, Dianne Feinstein oh my god. It was the relationships we had, we all came together. It was more difficult to negotiate, because we would get our act together and we would go to the senate and we eventually all came together. And it was very positive. And im glad right now that the senate, the relationships with the leadership in there. We served with on the house intel as well. U. S. First, then senate, house and the president. Carrie this is an important moment to pause on, because somebody who had previously been in the Intelligence Community, deeply involved in setting up a lot of and working on the oversight structures that take place within the committee. Dutch mentioned the checks and balances within nsa, so i worked a lot on setting up the internal Intelligence Community, the director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department come all within the executive branch, conducting oversight over these activities. And when disclosures happen, one of the biggest surprises mike mentioned that congress had been briefed on a lot of these activities that ended up being disclosed. To folks who were inside the Intelligence Community, the most jarring part of what happened was that all of the oversight structures had been followed as designed. So there were internal oversight and reviews done. The oversight committees of congress had been briefed. And it so that was the design of the late 1970s, when these committees were created, which was that these committees would conduct the oversight as proxies for the rest of congress, because it was such sensitive information. And that that was the deal that was struck. What happened was when the disclosures happened and there was still this really significant public reaction to the information, those who had been on the inside were taken aback, because we thought, all of these oversight procedures were doing it the way that the rules were set up. What is not working . We had the fisa court, we had congressional Intelligence Committees briefed, and it so it really did raise the question of whether or not the committees, as they currently are structured, which is really more or less they have operated in different ways but the structure is really the same that they have been for the last four decades, is that structure still sounds . Is the deal that was struck in the late 1970s to create these two committees in each chamber, is that still in sustainable model . I would add it has not changed since that time and we have weathered it in committees are continuing to do that work, but i feel like there is sort of a lingering question it does not seem to me, because i have been looking at the issue recently in our research that there is any appetite for making any kind of substantial structural changes to the committees, but that issue is out there. Ellen that would be the attention of this model of intelligence oversight, where you are conducting your activities largely in secret behind closed doors, because so much of what you deal with is classified. And when you talk about trust, the trust you need to instill in the intelligence agencies, then there is the larger trust the public needs to have it in you and in the Intelligence Community, or this is not going to work. Or else intelligence activities are not going to be effective, National Security will not be strong. So i want to just stay on this section for a moment, because it is such this is the phone programmer the agencies were collecting phone metadata, who called whom and when, but not the content. Dutch and yet people thought it was the content. And that was technical, but there is a perception by the public. And it was hurting the reputation. It was not correct, of the intelligence communities, especially nsa. So we met with jeremy alexander, who we have a lot of respect for, the director of nsa. We worked very closely with them and we said, do we really need metadata, do we really need it because it is causing a lot of problems. We have enough issues already trying to let the public know and protect confidentiality, but we need to deal with this. The perception of reality. So we came up with a bill and we stopped metadata, that was a big issue. Collection. And that was huge, because that is how a lot of the information, finding a needle in a haystack, that we were able to get that. But it made a big difference with respect to the public in understanding that we did something about it, we were doing our oversight, and again i give Jim Alexander credit. He said, we need to work through that, but i think we can go without it and i think it is important to have a reputation so we can do our job. Mike this was part of that important category, if the public does not support with the Intelligence Services are doing, they will not be successful. And so we did this out of the abundance of understanding how the narrative was going, and where we thought technology might be able to be more impactful. The important part of this though is if the committee has turned into i will catch you doing something wrong, right, then i will go out and make a lot of hay about it, it will never work. What you see happening today and in the recent future, was that people wanted to catch people doing something wrong. And so we had legitimate debates on reauthorization inside of the committees, and i think that america would be proud of the vigorous debate. It was not a notion that it was a rubberstamp, that is not true. We have to sometimes go back and back and back at this to try to get it right amongst ourselves, because we took it seriously. We realized with the door closed that we were kind of, we were it, we were americas representatives in the room representing americas interests and values to the community that we have to do really hard and difficult things. Dutch i will give my credit. Mike you can talk all you want. [laughter] dutch i got a lot of heat from my left on the collection. Mike had the more conservative. I said, we have to deal with this. We worked with adam schiff, he helped us a lot. I said, we have to go, if we do not do this everything could fall apart. It is really sensitive. We battled. We do battle, do not think that we are great buddies and we shook hands on everything. We had an earthquake when we finally agreed. But the bottom line is that he worked very hard, he had to talk a lot of his people into coming over to where we were. I had the far left, we did not want a lot this, had issues generally. But when we did this either we came together we had to go back and forth and we made sure, we always did, that the people we were overseeing were part of the conversation before we made a final decision, whether it was the head of the cia, Jim Alexander, space and cyber. And mike agreed. I do not think that could happen today and i do not think i saw it happen before we got into leadership. Ellen when you talk about having to earn the support of the american public, i remember the director of National Intelligence jim klapper is saying after the snowden leak and it all became public and it spawned at the years of contention and debate over what to do about this phone metadata collection program, klapper said in retrospect i think it would have been better to have done this publicly from the start, to have the debate publicly as opposed to having authorized in secret. And to have avoided all of the angst and at the eventual leak, which created huge controversy and a lot of distressed and acrimony between the Intelligence Community and industry. If we had done this publicly, it probably would have gotten the authority you needed and avoided the angst and acrimony. What do you think, do you think that in retrospect it might have been better to do it publicly, or was there a way to do it with transparency while still preserving the efficacy of the tool, the collection and surveillance, you do not want to lose that edge on . Mike i think it wouldve been really difficult. Dutch do you want to take it . Mike look what time it is. Carrie this program had come out of intense Counter Terrorism activity. I think it is difficult in retrospect to go back and say, well, we should have been more transparent at the time because it was born out of a particular threat environment. And i was working on operational cases in the early 2000s after the 9 11 era and for several years that was a really heightened threat environment. We were so far removed we are so far removed now is hard to contemplate, but at the time it was an incredible threat environment. Where i do think that things have changed is in this issue of transparency. So what i do think is what happened after the disclosures is first, there was the 2015 law that dutch mentioned, which in addition to making changes about the legal oversight over the program, made a lot of changes regarding what had to be declassified, legal opinions being declassified and much more transparency. My view on that, even though when i was in the executive branch i did a lot of work to get the information secret, i do not think there is going back in terms of transparency. Because of and this does come to the 24 hour news cycle, the way that information spreads, the public desire to know more information i do not think we can go backwards on these transparency initiatives. I think that they are here to stay. The question now for the Intel Committees is really, not only how did they continue to encourage the Intelligence Community to go forward, be more transparent about what it is doing, but also is there or if so, what is the response ability responsibility of the committees to inform the rest of congress more about the types of matters dutch you have to protect sources, that is a basic premise. If you do not, russia, china, iraq, they will take advantage. Just last year, the Commerce Department estimated that china had stolen over 400 billions of dollars from our companies, our media and academia. This is serious. You have to make sure that you have a system to protect sources. Mike and i, we agreed from the beginning that when we could be or disclose information, we would do it as much as we could. If it would not violate laws. We had open hearings. We had an open hearing on wally. Quality. Huawei. We took them on and we had a Major Investigation. And that with the founder in hong kong. We did a law in that regard. That was all open. Whenever you can be open and transparent, that is important. By the way, if you violate sources and methods, they the Intelligence Community does not want to speak with you. It costs lives and those types of things. It is important when you can, to disclose as much as you can. And as far as other members are concerned, that when you are ready to vote on issues involving intelligence, members can come down. A lot of them are not even sure with this gift is, but they can where the skiff is, but they can come and we have a staff and we will go over and answer all their questions. Remember in congress, we specialize. I am not on the education committee. I am not on energy or different issues, but when the issues come to the floor, we all have to learn them. That has to do with our staff. Our Intelligence Committee is small, but many times, even now , defense and Homeland Security appropriations. I have members that come to me and ask information. That is where we are in the process. Mike i think that at that time, carrie is right, we had a way to try to better isolate where we thought terrorists were operating or planning operation. And are concerned, my concern at the time, if we openly talk about how we are trying to triangulate where they are at, they will make an adjustment. And i assumed my role was as chairman, to argue about this and make it right is it wrong, are we doing something that is a violation of the constitution . We had private hearings on the issues you saw it in law publicly and we came to the conclusion, i would argue rightly, that we needed to protect how we are going after these folks at a time when that threat tempo was very high. And we had troops in the field. We had troops into countries. In my argument was, that was the fault Line Committee thing we do that makes their job harder we should not be doing. And if i was concerned if we had a this public discussion too early, that we may jeopardize life and limb. To me it was not worth it. You can look back and a maybe we could have done it differently, we probably could have, but given the circumstances in which we made those decisions, i do not know how you would make a different decision honestly. Dutch those were some of the most dangerous times. The threats, russia, china, iran, north korea, we have issues in space right now, Cyber Threats. There are issues we have to deal with and they have to be classified or the other side will take advantage. Again, when we can move forward and we can open it up to the public and be transparent, we tried to do this. Ellen one of the more contentious issues that arose during your time was benghazi. And your committee, actually after two years of investigation dutch thousands of hours. Ellen came up with the conclusion that the Intelligence Community, that it was not a failure of intelligence. That the cia did not bear responsibility, i guess, for the security lapse. How did you conduct that investigation and how are you able to get that investigation done in a bipartisan way, i imagine under pressure . Dutch i will answer for you. You showed a lot of courage there and i do not want to speak to your leadership. Mike i have no leadership. [laughter] dutch stop me if i go too far. The reason we were able to do an investigation like that because we developed trust and relationships from the beginning. It was automatic that we were going to come together. One of the key players was working for dick cheney and so we all worked together on that and we had a target and we we knew what we were doing. I think that there was one member on the committee that went to the other way, but that was it. We did this Major Investigation about benghazi and it got very political. And i remember when it was time to vote, this is why i want to say it instead of mike, his leader communicated with him and i said, you cannot take the vote. Here is mikes courage, standing up for America First, he said i will protect you from yourself, but you have allowed us to Work Together in we have commitments to do what is right for our National Security and our country. And we are going to take the vote. And we took the vote. The next day, the phone call came, you cannot get it out until after the election. There is nothing that mike could do at that point, but it was a time where mike could have said, whatever, you are the leader. He didnt, he stood up for America First and i really appreciate that. I will not mention any names. It is your turn. Mike when i was in fbi agent, i at the end of theery seriously. Investigation, you can ruin peoples characters, take their freedom away, it has serious impact on an individuals life. When the whole of government is on someones back, it is unbelievably bad. And if you are that soul citizen ole citizen trying to protect yourself, it is damn near possible. We would take any investigation we did and take it into that light, including huawei. That was a factbased investigation. We are not putting up any people throwing it up. It will be a factbased investigation. We decided we need to do something. What got confused here is that we only did the intelligence. Everyone thought ours was the premier investigation for the entire u. S. Government. It was not. It was never intended for that. We have the task of, did the Intelligence Community screw this up . And were all of the public things you heard about gunrunning and all of this and we took everyone serious. We do not talk about how crazy it was. I will only give you one example. We had someone who was very public about the fact that we were interviewing person a in this place. It was overseas. It was because they saw the fact that there was an armed drone flying over the city, and it was because the conspiracy would not allow them to rescue them because they wanted them to die. Someone in the government wanted them to die. I said, on the face of it, that is crazy, but we are going to investigate. [laughter] we spent hours and thousands of dollars and we sent a staff member to germany to talk to the person who talked to somebody who talked to somebody in a bar who told that person in the bar, you wilt believe that you wont believe this story. That person ended up being an elected official. Let elected official went public and said, they are not doing their job. The guy was not even in the room. This is the craziness that was happening. But because of the political nature of it, everything got escalated. We investigated it, we ran it down to the ground. We ran down every lead, every conspiracy theory. We left no stone unturned. We did not have the staff to do this candidly. It took away a lot of the oversight things we were trying to do. But i figured this was so important, we better get it right. If it had been the other way in this report, i would have on that, too. I would have come out and said, let me tell you why x. Other committees found other things in other departments, but people decided this was the worst evil. There were some people that got knicked up in this report. Dutch what is unfortunate is that committee, the Benghazi Committee, what really bothered me, we have a small staff, you have jurisdiction over all these issues, and that committee had a bigger budget than it our entire intel it then our entire Intelligence Committee. That is part of the problems we have. Thing,tell you another he got a lot of heat from his side, which really bothered me. Mike if you watch the movie, it made it look like the base chief hid under his desk the entire time. There is one thing that really gets my goat, because i thought the people that were there were heroes. Great heroes. But they stole the honor and valor of that individual. He went with them downrange. They portrayed it very differently in Public Comments and in that movie. Maybe i am oldfashioned, i dont think it is right to steal someones honor the way they stole that individuals honor. Because he was still in the agency doing really hard work in tough places, he had no ability to defend himself. All the books and the movies, that poor guy got absolutely eviscerated. To this day, it gets my goat. I think that is wrong, and we should never put up with it. That is what happens when partisanship gets into government investigations. It should never happen. We ought to have the courage to do it as members of Congress Just like any other doj investigation to keep that out. This is the kind of thing that happens. People get hurt for no good reason. Dutch the sad thing about thing ghazi. If there was proper instruction in the safe room, we wouldnt have had it because they did what they were supposed to do and took the ambassador into the safe room and smelled smoke and they had to get out. If they had done the job that we they did in pakistan, we moved all of our people into a safe room, it was safe. Ellen your experience in this investigation raises a bigger issue regarding how to conduct these really sensitive, politically sensitive investigations, and at the same time make sure that doesnt suck all the oxygen out of the committee to conduct the regular everyday intelligence oversight work. This is one of the issues i am concerned about in the current environment. I think the senate side, they are wrapping up their work, but there was no separate joint midi of congress that was created. There was no commission that was created. The senate Intelligence Committee for the investigation they have been conducting, they have been using their own death area they really did not wrap up in terms of budget and staff, and now we see a lot of activity that their side of the investigation abbott and flowed and got stalled, and now they are Building Backup ebbed and flowed and got stalled, and now they are Building Back up in terms of the inquiries they will do. What i worry about is what is going to happen to the regular intelligence oversight that is important, the everyday making sure the community has the authorities they need, making sure they are properly doing their work with law and policies and the oversight mechanisms. I am curious how worried should we be that these ongoing investigations are going to detract from the everyday work of intelligence oversight . How do you keep both going i am at the same time . Mike i am not sure that is where you have those kind of investigations. Investigating the finance of the sitting president of russia, no business. You are sucking all the oxygen out. The kind of investigations we incredibly was important and it set the table for the debate. Ost people yawned at it it was a very important full public report. And the other telecoms as well. We did things that did not make it public for how our resources our sources and assets and agents communicate with each other. If you recall, we had some lips. We had some blips. And tha said wedown were not putting up with this. We generated resources. We have treated people who were work for the United States in we have treated people who are working for the United States in dangerous places and got the better equip men that they needed at the end of the day. We could convene an all ofgation and beat on them equally until we got a good conclusion. They used to call it the wire brush treatment and it was pretty effective. We did not have to subpoena or complain to the media. We just put you in a room and we worked it out. Those to me are really important. Our counterintelligence operations needed some adjustments while we were there. So we started, dutch and i, started quarterly and then we monthly, and quarterly until we have the right resources and the right focus for the entire community. To me, that is what you want. No other committee can do it. No other committee should do it. You do not need to have public hearings on it. I would argue you should never have public hearings on those things. We actually moved the ball. When you get into this other stuff beyond the confines of the committee, what happens is you will have to regain the trust of the intelligence. They will say, i hope they dont dont find that. That is what happened. I guarantee you it is happening today. Nobody wants it. If you talk to anybody in the Intelligence Community, nobody wants to go up there. I think im going to be sick that day, look at me, i am pale. [laughter] no one wants to do it because they do not respect the process and respect is both ways. Oops, that is boehner calling you. [laughter] he is really mad at you right now. If respect only comes from a subpoena, you will not be successful. Dutch i want to Say Something on that, too. The first thing is about priorities. Anything you do in life you need to prioritize. We had to make sure we did what was in our scope and was a high priority. I have always made the comment you are only as good as your team and your staff. And we had excellent staff who worked day and night on these issues, and that really made a big difference. Those two issues are where we are now. To do the job, yes, we did oversight on everything we had to do. I think we did it ok. That took a lot of time to do that. But in the end, the benghazi and zte, the space issues, those are things we made a priority. Ellen do you think you would have, if you had still been there, conducted an investigation into russian interference . That is a topic better suited to a 9 11 commission style, independent commission, or maybe a setting of a select committee or a joint senatehouse committee . Dutch it depends on the politics. Right now, the political climate, im not sure about a joint committee and how effective that would be. Ellen what about an independent commission . Dutch that might be the case, but i think from the intelligence point of view, there are certain things that only they can do because of the classified nature of what has to happen and then take it to the next level to Work Together. I am concerned sometimes and the Benghazi Committee is an example. It was controlled by the majority, and what happened really in my opinion, it was nothing new that came out other than the politics that came out of it. I dont know if i answered your question. Mike here is the thing on russian interference. For 70 years, the russians have been trying to interfere in our politics. It started when a member of congress was recruited in the 1930s to try to steer the conversation in the house from communism and fascism to steer it only to fascism. That is an interference in the political process. By the way, we did not know he was on the payroll of the russians until the fall of the soviet union. We got these files from a stassi file worker in east germany. There is a guy that was recruited and put on the payroll to influence politics. They have been at it for a long time. 1960s, during the race riots cam, they had to physically recruit someone to take pamphlet and they would go to black churches and it would be inflammatory. And then they would go to white churches and it would be inflammatory the other way. They were purposefully trying to drive wedges into our society. What they have done recently is much more powerful. They dont have to find a person to do anything. They are sitting in moscow and moving their fingers and pitting this is what we found. White supremacist groups against black activist groups. They are trying to drive a wedge in america. We know what they are doing. They havetched what been doing for 70 years. They just refined it. Those committees ought to be working right now on remedies for this. I would get past the political big committees where Everyone Wants their fiveminute of fame. Five minutes of fame to say i hate the russians more than you hate the russians. My argument is we ought to be passed that and asked what are we doing . Is the whole government approach on this working . Do we had the nsa unleashed in a way that they need to be unleashed to try to stop this . It is a big effort and they are still doing it. I do some work for a fund and if you go to hamilton68. Com, we track russian bought armies and what they are trying to do around the world, and we post it. A little transparency, a little bleach, just to let them know what kind of stories they are trying to peddle. We are one tiny little organization. If we can get the whole of government on this, i think you can overdo the committee thing. Beht now, we ought to mustering our resources. Look for Real Solutions versus the i want to get on 60 minutes and talk about my hatred of vladimir putin. Or maybe a love, i dont know. Ellen we have time for one or two quick questions. If you could just identify yourself and keep it pithy. We have a microphone. Thank you very much. Steve shapiro. Mike, i am going to ask you a question we have talked about in the past, and i appreciate the fact that you are both here for this. Taking the importance of structures and processes you have outlined with respect to oversight of the community itself, if i could get a little bit off the central topic of bipartisanship and turn to the question of Domestic Intelligence, which is something you have not touched on and nobody wants to touch on. It is the third rail of the discussion, but there are 20 plus u. S. Entities doing some form of Domestic Intelligence. The obvious is fbi and not so obvious is treasury and others. Coast guard, et cetera. The fractionated oversight with respect to Domestic Intelligence only enhances, in my opinion, the fractionated performance of that intelligence. There is no Mission Statement or threat assessment on a domestic level. There is no package that goes to congress that gets to be unified and gets to oversight in a unified way. If you guys could comment on that issue, and we have talked in the past about bringing that inside, which i think is the right way to go, and there is no appetite for this conversation at all on the hill. It really is significant because it is like grade school soccer, nobody is holding the position and everybody is running to the ball. We just get lucky sometimes. Mike one of the problems we ran into is there was Something Like 117 committees that these folks had to go and report to. Any big event, the phone rings. 117 staff directors and then there are subcommittees. You have got to come up here tomorrow. It was consuming for the Intelligence Community to try to do this. Good luck trying to fix this. We went after a small and i wont even say what department it was. It was an Intelligence Department that was taking process work from another department, literally, changing up the flag deck, putting their name on it, and putting it out in the public forum. We are like, why are we spending money on this . We went in and said, lets lined this out. I wont even say what you thought we would have done. It created a huge fight over nothing. We ended up saying that we had bigger fish to fry. That department is still there doing the same thing because it wasnt directly in the jurisdiction of the Intel Committee. Unless Congress Really wants to reform itself and get back i dont know how you do it. Dutch that was a very good question. One of the issues is priorities. There is so much the Intelligence Committee has to do and has oversight, and we dont have the staff. If we had a bigger staff, maybe. If you look at how we have handled terrorism domestically, tf, the jointt Terrorism Task force. I was a prosecutor and i think working together, the strikeforce makes a difference and you are part of a team and have different disciplines. Intelligence has so much on the play. But it was very good question. We have got to deal with it. You need leadership at the top and you need a plan, and you need them to get the right people and give them the resources to do the job, and hopefully they will do it. Ellen one more quick question. It seems to me like there is a White Elephant in the room and as much as it is instructive and we appreciate hearing about bipartisanship in the past, but when the United States president is not a consumer of intelligence and seems to have contempt for the Intelligence Community, and seems to have contempt for congress . Youve got a problem. I would like each of you to address via. To address each of that. Carrie i will start. I think it is a real question. I think different reporting as to how much intelligence the president actually consumes. Over the course of the time in his office, ive seen different reports that he was taking briefings, and the Intelligence Community needed to adapt and to the way he wanted to receive briefings. And then i have seen other reports over the case of 18 months that indicates that maybe right now doesnt take his briefings as frequently as prior president s do. There are two points to that. First of all, it is appropriate. The president really is the Intelligence Community exists to inform policymakers about their decisionmaking process. Useehooves any president to the resources of the Intelligence Community to make more informed decisions, and i think it does raise questions about whether he is making decisions informed by this incredible resource that the Community Brings to it. It also raises the question of a a separate issue is the disparagement of the Intelligence Community. I think that piece is really harmful because, for the most part, the Intelligence Community is made up of nonpartisan, nonpolitical people who are working to keep the country safe. It does not help the National Security of the United States to have the commanderinchief disparage the Intelligence Community in a way that then sows distrust in the rest of the country. We need the country. This gets back to a point you made earlier. In order for the Intelligence Community to be effective, it needs to have the trust in the confidence of the american people. On that point, i think the president s comments and disparagement actually hurts the National Security because it is sowing distrust out in the rest of the country. Dutch i think it is a very serious issue. I think it makes the country weaker. They are fantastic people and are well trained. I think that when they are disparaged, what is the reason . His narcissistic personality is his narcissistic personality so serious that he is worried the agents will look at him and investigate him . What is the reason . Whatever it is, it is, and we have to deal with it are the deal with it. The only thing we can do is make sure we hold him accountable and continue to get the facts. We have to stand up to that. As far as the issue of impeachment at this point, my concern is that right now if you would have the facts, the senate is not going to do it. What is end game for america . At this point, keep searching for the facts. If he refuses to give us the facts to protect himself, which is what concerns me with the new attorney general and other people, we have to keep moving forward, pursuant to the law, the checks and balances that exist. Another issue politically, if you do go out and the senate votes not to impeach him, you have fired up the base. The more people with trump in at the beginning, the more they see pushback and these ridiculous rants and raves, the relationship with putin and all these issues, sooner or later, it is usa first. And that is really important. Dont get me going on trump. My role is [indiscernible] usa comes first. Dutch not is how mike and i got together. Mike this is the unfortunate piece about the committees not functioning at a higher level. It is not helpful and i agree with that. This is where the committees need to make sure they have the resources and are performing the mission according to task. If they are engaged in that role, they can get around even a president who is disparaging to the fbi and other Intelligence Services. But that takes work and time and efforts, and you need to make sure those things are happening, including pulling in a from the administration who are making the daily decisions. That would be really important. Rather than run up to the microphone and say the world and the sky is falling, i wish they would have construct meetings and say that it is our job and on our soldiers shoulders to make sure that america is being protected and we are getting the resources and information we need from the Intelligence Community. They can do it, but in a dysfunctional place like this Politics Today is like the three stooges. They cannot wait to doink you i n the eyes. Come on, work with me, people. [laughter] dutch the split in the country and where people get their information, whether it is fox on one side, msnbc, that is where the majority of people get their information. I got back from normandy, the 75th anniversary. And we look at the sacrifices our men and women did to maintain and protect our democracy and freedoms. That is the message that needs to get out there. I hope we can get forward with we can keep moving forward with that message, to say to america, this is a dangerous time, and we have got to stop this i can forth and build the wall, and talk about this country. [applause] all right, thank you. Dutch goes quick, doesnt it . Ellen it goes real quick. [indistinct conversations] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [indistinct conversations] announcer cspans washington journal , live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, the president of citizens against government waste discusses his annual2019 book, an compilation of porkbarrel projects in the federal budget. And peter greer discusses the magazines democracy under strain theories, looking at americas political structure in the challenges it is facing. And locklin marcaine talks about ethics in the Trump Administration. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Detroit put the world on wheels. In one generation, this and other names created americas number one industry, and the unheardof idea that everybody can ride. Vision with know how. That is detroit. City you know the motor nothing in the world we cant do i got impeccable timing. The cspan cities tour is on the road exploring the american story. There is a lot of Development Going on. Businesses opening up oma restaurants and stores. 90 of detroit is outside of downtown. I dont think johannesburg is a good model for development. Announcer with the help of our Comcast Cable partners, this weekend we take you to detroit. The city of detroit itself was founded by the french in 1701. The Detroit River was the busiest freshwater shipping channel in the world, and it still is today. Announcer watch our special feature on detroit today at noon s bookson cspan2 tv, and on cspan3 the cspan cities tour, exploring the american story. Announcer this weekend on book tv, sunday at 645 00 eastern, we visit the home of Jean Schaefer and Robert Brooke kaiser to hear how they maintain their relationship despite opposite political figure opposite political views. Opposite political views. It is called the chemotherapy test. When you aret that lying on a hospital bed with chemotherapy in your veins, you the political affiliation of the person standing next to you getting you through it. Announcer author mark levin talks about his freedom unfreedom of the press. The difference between the the patriot and media, the men with the Printing Presses and the pamphlets, 30 some newspapers, that was it, they were trying to fundamentally transform government. They wanted representative government. Is trying toess fundamentally transform us. Announcer at 9 00 eastern on whitewards, cnns chief house correspondent jim acosta offers his firsthand account of covering the Trump Administration in his book the enemy of the people. He is interviewed by jay rosen, New York University journalism professor and founder of press thank. As of this taping, we are 90 plus days since our last official White House Briefing in the White House Briefing room, and we just do not have access to white house officials the way we used to, even during the Trump Administration, where we have them on the record in that Briefing Room where everybody is micd and you have a variety of reporters, not just the networks vyingrk vyin who were to get a question in, but also the wire services, newspapers, foreign news outlets. That has been lost. Announcer watch book to be ond on soup you attach cspan2. Announcer