Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today 20160718

Let us pray. Lord, god, source of all that is good and just, be with us now and help us begin this ceremony in gratitude, for this opportunity to recognize and honor your gifts of courage and selfless service. Witnessed to us in these heroic acts of Lieutenant Colonel charles kettles. Let his courage remind us today and tomorrow of the great Human Dignity that possesses an indomitable spirit to serve and protect those most in need. We ask now that Lieutenant Colonel kettles actions we honor provide hope and inspiration for those who face the perils of terror and danger as they serve their brothers and sisters. Lord, bless this ceremony, the acts we honor, that they may strengthen the values that we hold dear in this nation, in our military, and our families, and our way of life. We ask all this in your holy name, amen. Good morning, everybody. Please have a seat. Welcome to the white house. Of all the privileges of this office, none is greater than serving as the commander in chief of the finest military that the world has ever known. And of all the military decorations that our nation can bestow, we have none higher than the medal of honor. As many who know him have said, nobody deserves it more than charles kettles, of indianapolis la ypsilanti, michigan. Many believe that, except for chuck. As he says, this seems like a hell of a fuss over something that happened 50 years ago. Even now, all these years later, chuck is still defined by the humility that shaped him as a soldier. At 86 years old, he still looks sharp as a tack in that uniforp. I pointed out he obviously has not gained any weight. And his life is as american as they come. Hes the son of an immigrant. His father signed up to fly for the United States the day after pearl harbor, and filled his five boys with a deep sense of duty to their country. For a time, he even served in the army reserves. For a time, even as he served in the army reserve, chuck ran a ford dealership with his brother. And to families who drove a new car off that lot, hes the salesman who helped put an American Icon in their driveway. To the aviation students at michigan university, chuck is the professor who taught them about the wonder of flight in the country that invented it. To the constituents he served as a rare republican in his home towns mostly democratic city council, hes the Public Servant who made sure their voices were heard. And to ann, his beautiful bride, who grew up literally as the girl next door, chuck is a devoted husband. Next march, they will celebrate their 40th anniversary. Happy early anniversary. So in a lot of ways, chuck kettles is america. And to the dozens of american soldiers he saved in vietnam half a century ago, chuck is the reason they lived and came home and had children and grandchildren. Entire family trees made possible by the actions of this one man. We are honored to be joined not only by ann, but also eight of chuck and anns ten children, and three of their grandchildren. Its the kettles Family Reunion here in the white house. Were also honored to be joined by chucks brothers in arms from vietnam. And some of chucks newest comrades, members of the medals of honor society. May 15th, 1967, started as a hot monday morning. Soldiers from the 101st airborne were battled hundreds of heavily armed north vietnamese in a rural riverbed. Our men were outnumbered. They needed support fast. Helicopters to get the wounded out and bring more soldiers into the fight. Chuck kettles was a hero pilot. And just as he volunteered for active duty, on this morning, he volunteered his hueys, even though he knew the danger. They call this place chump valley for a reason. Above the riverbed rose a 1500foottall hill, and an energy had dug in a series of tunnels and bunkers. The ideal spot for an ambush. Chuck jumped into the cockpit and took off. Around 9 00 a. M. , his company approached the landing zone and looked down. They should have seen a stand of green trees. Instead, they saw a solid wall of green enemy tracers coming right at them. None of them had ever seen fire that intense. Soldiers in the hilos were hit and killed before they could even leap off, but under withering fire, chuck landed his chopper and kept it there exposed so the wounded could get on and so he could fly them back to base. A second time, chuck went back into the valley. He dropped off more soldiers and supplies. Picked up more wounded. Once more, machine gun bullets and mortar rounds came screaming after them. As he took off a second time, rounds pierced the arm and leg of chucks door gunner, rahalened shank. Chucks huey was hit. Fuel was pouring out as he flew away. But chuck had wounded men aboard and decided to take his chances. He landed, found another helicopter, and flew rowland to the field hospital. By now, it was near evening. Back in the riverbed, 44 american soldiers were still pinned down. The air was thick with gun powder, smells of burning metal, and then they heard a faint sound. As the sun started to set, they saw something rise over the horizon. Six american helicopters, ozone of them said, as beautiful as could be. For a third time, chuck and his unit headed into that hell on earth. Death or injury was all but certain. A fellow pilot said later, and a lesser person would not return. Once again, the enemy unloaded everything they had on chuck as he landed. Small arms, automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades. Soldiers ran to the helicopters. When chuck was told all were accounted for, he took off. And then, midair, his radio told him something else. Eight men had not made it aboard. They had been providing cover for the others. Those eight soldiers had run for the choppers but could only watch as they floated away. We all figured we were done for, they said. Chuck came to the same conclusion. If we left them for ten minutes, he said, they would be p. O. W. S or dead. A soldier woo was there said that day major kettles became our john wayne. With all due respect to john wayne. He couldnt do what chuck kettles did. He broke off from formation, took a steep, sharp, descending turn back toward the valley. This time, with no aerial or artillery support. A lone helicopter heading back in. Chucks huey was the only target for the enemy to attack, and they did. Tracers lit up the sky once more. Chuck became chuck came in so hot that his chopper bounced for several hundred feet before coming to a stop. As soon as he landed, a mortar round shattered his windshield. Another hit the main rotor blade. Shrapnel tore through the cockpit and chucks chair. And still, those eight soldiers started to sprint to the huey, running through the firestorm, chased by bullets. Chucks helo, now badly damaged, was carrying 13 souls and was 600 pounds over limit. It felt, he said, like flying a 2. 5 ton truck. He couldnt hover long enough to take off, but cool customer that he is, he says he saw his shattered windshield and thought, thats pretty good air conditioning. The cabin filled with black smoke as chuck hopped and skipped the helo across the ground to pick up enough speed to take off. Like a jack rabbit, he said, bouncing across the riverbed. The instant he got airborne, another mortar ripped into the tail, the huey fishtailed violently, and a soldier was thrown out of the helicopter, hanging on to a skid as chuck flew them to safety. Couldnt make this up. This is like a bad rambo movie. Right . Youre listening to this, you cant believe it. So the armys warrior ethos is paced on a simple truth. A soldier never leaved his comrades behind. Chuck kettles honored that creed. Not with a single act of heroism, but over and over and over. And because of that heroism, 44 american soldiers made it out that day. 44. We are honored today to be joined by some of them. Chucks door cgunner, who was hit, rowland shank. The soldier chuck rescued that day, the one who figured he was done for, dewy smith. And a number of soldiers or Vietnam Veterans who fought in that battle. Gentlemen, i would ask you to either stand if you can or wave so we can thank you for your service. [ applause ] now, chucks heroism was recognized at the time by the armys second highest award for gallantry. The distinguished service cross. But bill velano decided chuck deserved an upgrade. Bill is a retired social worker who went to chucks house to interview him for a veterans history project sponsored by the local rotary club. Ann overheard the interview from the other room and reminded chuck to tell the story i just told all of you. This is something chuck and i have in common. We do what our wives tell us to do. Chuck told the story, and with his trademark humility, finished it by saying it was a piece of cake. Bill, hearing the story, knew it was something more. He started a fiveyear mission along with chucks son mike, a retired navy pilot, to award chuck the medal of honor. Bill and mike are here, as is congresswoman debbie dingell, who along with her legendary his, don dingell, went above and beyond to pass a law to make sure we could still fully recognize chuck kettles heroism today. We thank them for their outstanding efforts. Thats one more reason this story is quintessentially american. Looking out for one another. The belief nobody should be left behind. This shouldnt just be a creed for our soldiers. This should be a creed for all of us. This is a country thats never finished in its mission to improve, to do better, to learn from our history. To work to form a more perfect union. And at a time when, lets face it, we had a couple tough weeks, for us to remember that goodness and decency of the American People and the way that we can all look out for each other, even when times are tough, even when the odds are against us, what a wonderful inspiration. What a great gift for us to be able to celebrate Something Like this. It might take time, but having failed to give our veterans who fought in vietnam the full measure of thanks and respect they had earned. We acknowledge that our failure to do so was a shame. We resolve that it will never happen again. It can take time, but old adversaries can find peace thanks to the leadership of so many vietnam vets, i was able to go to vietnam recently and see a people as enthusiastic about america as probably any place in the world. Crowds lining the streets. And we were able to say that on a whole lot of issues, vietnam and the United States are now partners. Here at home, it might take time, but we have to remember everyone on our team, just like chuck kettles. Sometimes we have to turn around and head back and help those who need a lift. Chuck said the most gratifying part of this whole story is dewys name and rowlands name and the name of 42 other americans he saved are not etched in the solemn granite wall not far from here that memorializes the fallen from the vietnam war. Instead, it will be chuck kettles name forever etched on the walls that communities have built from Southern California to South Carolina, in honor of those who have earned the medal of honor. Of course, chuck says all this attention is a lot of hub bub, but ill survive. Chuck, you survived much worse than this ceremony. And on behalf of the American People, let me say that this hubbub is richly and roundly deserved. As a military agent prepared to read the citation, please join me in saluting this proud american soldier and veteran who reminds us all of the true meaning of service. Lieutenant colonel chuck kettles. [ applause ] the president of the United States of america authorized by act of congress, march 3rd, 1863, has awarded in the name of congress, the medal of honor to you, major charles s. Kettles, United States army. Major charles s. Kettles has distinguished himself while serving as flight commander 176th aviation company, air mobile light. 14th combat aviation battalion, near duke, republic of vietnam. On 15 may, 1967, major kettles, apardon learning an airborne infantry unit had suffered casualties immediately volunteered to lead a flight of six uh1 delta helicopters to carry reenforcements to the force and evacuated wounded personnel. Enemy small arms, automatic weapons and mortar fire inflicted heavy damage to the helicopters. However, he refused to depart n until all helicopters were loaded to capacity. He returned to the battlefield with full knowledge of enemy fighter waiting his arrival to bring more upon departing, major kettles was advised by another helicopter crew he had fuel streaming utof his aircraft. Despite the risk posed by the leaking fuel, he nursed the craft back to base. Later than day, the commander requested immediate extract of the remaining troops, including four members of his unit that were stranded when their unit was destroyed by enemy fire, with only one helicopter remaining, major kettles volunteered to return to the deadly landing zone for a third time, leading a flight of six evacuation helicopters, five from the 101st aviation company. During the extraption, he was informed by the last helicopter that all personnel were onboard and departed the landing zone accordingly. Army gun ships supporting the evacuation also deported the area. Once airborne, major kettles was advised eight troops were unable to reach the helicopters. With complete disregard for his own safety, he passed the lead to another helicopter and returned to the landing zone to recuse the remaining troops. Without gunship, artillery, or tactical air spoers, the enemy concentrated all firepower on his lone aircraft, that was damaged by a round that shattered the windshield and was further raked by small machine gun fire. He maintained control of the aircraft and the situation, allowing time for the eight soldiers to board the aircraft. In spite of the Severe Damage to the helicopter, he once more guided his aircraft to safety. Without his courageous actions and superior flying skills the last group of soldiers and his crew would not have made it off the battlefield. Major kettles selfless acts are keeping in the highest traditions of military service and reflect greatly upon himself and the United States army. Let us go forward with joyful hearts, with these words. Be not afraid for i have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through waters, i will be with you. Through rivers, you shall not be swept away. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned nor will flames consume you. Let us now go forth into the world in peace. Dedicated to your service, amen. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the ceremony, but we have a reception. I hear the food here is pretty good. Lets give one more round of applause to mr. Chuck kettles. [ applause ] arkansas senator tom cotton is in cleveland for the Republican National convention, which starts this afternoon. Later today, he will be interviewed by the atlantic magazine. Live coverage is at 2 00 p. M. On cspan. The Republican National convention from cleveland starts today. Watch live every minute on cspan. Listen live on the free cspan radio app. It its oeasy to download from the apple store or google play. Watch live or on demand any time at cspan. Org, on your desktop, phone, or tablet, where youll find all of our Convention Coverage and the full convention schedule. Follow us cspan on twitter, and like us on facebook to see video of newsworthy moments. Dont miss a moment of the 2016 Republican National Convention Starting today at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, the cspan radio app, and cspan. Org. Cspan makes it easy for you to keep up with all the latest convention developments with the cspan radio app. Available as a Free Download from the Apple App Store or google play. Get audio coverage of every minute of the conventions, as well as Schedule Information about important speeches and events. Get cspan on the go with the cspan radio app. Next, a panel of historians talks about espionage tactics used from the cold war to post9 11. They discuss techniques and human intelligence gathering by the cia and Russias Foreign Intelligence Service as well as the shift in intelligence methods after the 9 11 terrorist attacks. The new York Military Affairs Symposium in new york city hosted this twohourlong event. With that, i would like to turn things over to ailing but here bright and lively is the publisher of enigma books, mr. Robert miller. Thank you. Thank you very much. I was very sad to hear about the passing of bob maness. I just was shocked by the news, and i wish we could have this information earlier on our website. So im pleased to welcome all of you to this twoday event on espionage from the cold war to asymmetric warfare. I shall first offer a few words of introduction followed by a brief presentation of our panel. Since the collapse of the soviet union and the 9 11 attacks on new york, the American Public has never been so thoroughly informed of the successes and failures of its Espionage Services. Starting with the crumbling of the berlin wall in november, 1989, and the disclosure in the mid1990s of the venona, there was ample reason to congratulation fbi and cia for a job well done. By 1945, american cryptog rfers had broken the soviet codes at arlington hall, the washington, d. C. Campus, where the secret work took place, and proof of the vast amount of soviet spying that had been long suspected was confirmed. The victory over communism came with the vindication of our intelligence organizations. But then, the new open russia suddenly closed its archives with the assent of a former kgb officer named Vladimir Putin to the presidency of that country in 1999. Ending a short window of transparency and Cooperation Among historians. Just a year and a half later, the greatest shock troubled the newfound satisfaction in our Security Apparatus with the september 11th, 2001 destruction that took place in this city. The media taught us all about connecting dots, and that fbi and cia were actually suddenly dysfunctional since we had been caught sleeping at the wheel just like at pearl harbor in 1941. In a rush to fix things, a vast new bureaucracy was erected with Homeland Security and a vast reengineering took place within the traditional agencies. For obvious reasons, we cant tell how successful those initiatives have been. We can only agree that the absence of major attacks in this country on the scale of 9 11 and the assurances of Congressional Committee members who offer that are offered periodically are meant to be reassuring. Finally, the question we have for this panel and for the audience that will participate in the debate is simply, are we better off now than before . How do the Services Measure up to the challenges offered by islamic terrorism . A russia that seems to live in a new cold war, the leaking of vast amounts of secret documents by improperly vetted military or Government Employees . Im referring to wikileaks and perhaps to the panama papers. What do we know what we do know is that major destruction can be the work of very few determined individuals who carry out a specific plan. Is the United States better off today than it was in the 1990s . Now, allow me to introduce our distinguished panel. Dr. Mark kramer is the director of cold war studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Harvard Davis center for russian and eurasian studies. Hes the author of imposing, maintaining, and tearing open the iron curtain, the cold war in east central europe, 19451990, published in 2013. Hes also the editor of a three volume collection, the fate of the communist regimes, 19891991, to bepublished in late 2016. Dr. Joseph, who received his ph. D. From the university of edinburgh and built the skufrt and Intelligence Studies program at king university, has taught and written extensively on the subject such as international espionage, intelligence trade craft, wire tapping, cybe cyber espionage, transnational crime and intelligence reform. Hes a frequent contributor to the news media such as bbc, cbs, nbc, and npr. Mark has reported extensively from afghanistan, iraq, and the horn of africa for the New York Times on National Security. He holds a masters in history from oxford university, and is the author of the way of the knife published by penguin in 2013. A bestselling account of the cias covert action forces. Please welcome our panel. And i give the podium to dr. Mark kramer. Thank you very much. I am just waiting for a power point presentation to be put up here. I should add, it wasnt mentioned in the brief biographical sketch, but something i realized afterwards is especially germane to tonights symposium, is im also the editor of a book put out by m. I. T. Press called spies. And it is a collection of essays about cold war spying. The topic of tonight. I also just was in russia. I was there from midapril until about 24 hours ago. And have worked extensively in the archives there many times including this most recent trip. As ill get to in a minute, political situation in russia is dismal, as everyone knows, because putin has reimposed essentially an authoritarian system. The good news, though, is it has not affected the archives. And in fact, if anything bizarrely or paradoxically, the archival access has improved over it last couple years, particularly the last year. And ill be referring to that a bit in tonights in the comments here. Okay. I did bring my computer with a presentation in case this doesnt work. The structure of what i will be presenting is first to go through some of the newly available sources, just to give a sense of what actually is available now. There is so much more that is available as compared to the situation during the cold war. I just want to highlight that because its not only from russia but also from other form er warsaw pact countries and western countries as well. One of the sources who robert mentioned okay, so. Okay. Good. So first ill go through some of the newly available sources. Then to talk about some of the activi activities. I want to move it here. Then ill talk both about intelligence gathering activities of different types and other activities. Tomorrow, ill come to questions of the impact on policy making and impact on the cold war. I may get into a little of that tonight, but i want to reserve most of it for tomorrow. So let me go through some of the newly available sources so far. The documents from east european state security archives, in some cases, are fully open. So you have access to foreign intelligence materials of the warsaw pact, including a lot of soviet documents, copies of which were sent. Theyre in germany, former east germany, the federal commissioner that oversees the former state security archive. The intelligence files are not completely open. There are a few that arent. A few areas that arent. By and large, theyre fully open. In the Czech Republic under legislation adopted in 2004, the records of the former state Security Apparatus including the foreign intelligence apparatus are fully accessible. Poland is somewhat not as accessible, but a great deal of the foreign intelligence files of the communist regime are accessible. There are under the auspices of the institute of national remembrance, as its called, ipn. Theres a seceral archive of the ministry of internal affairs in pola poland, but the communist era records by and large now are housed at the ipn, which does have a central archive cow can go to and work in. Unhungary, it has varied somewhat varied somewhat over t postcommunist period, but at the former state security archives, there is a considerable amount that is accessible. Bulgaria you might be surprised by, but in 2006 there was a Commission Set up and that commission oversees the security records of the communist regime. Including foreign intelligence. They have made vast amounts of the collections they have available on line. You can go online and download tens of thousands of documents. They also if you go there and work you can work there even though you have to its a somewhat cumbersome process but you are able to get access to very important materials of the Foreign Intelligence Service in bulgaria all of these are important records because they worked very closely under the supervision of the soviet kgbs forward intelligence apparatus. You can also find copies of soviet form intelligence documents. In addition to the former soviet union outside russia for example in the baltic this would be latv latvia, lithuania and estonia, there are foreign intelligence records even though they were not they were soviet republics and were not the central archive. There were quite a few copies of central foreign intelligence documents from the kgb that you can find there particularly in lithuania and estonia. In latvia its merged within the central state archive and is not there was more destruction of material of in the soviet regime in lithuania and estonia but you can find records of the foreign intelligence regime. 2 in russia, the foreign intelligence archive in the outskirts of moscow, it used to be in the main nkvd and kgb building in central moscow but it was moved out to yosemite. The whole form intelligence apparatus. It was part of the first main directorate of the kgb but it was moved out there and so was the archive. That archive has been inaccessible throughout the postsoviet period. I was at a conference where the head of that archive took part and i asked him when the archive might be at least partly accessible, he responded never. So i think there is relatively little hope of having some access however the good news is that there are a lot of copies of important records that you can find inner koo in archives t least partly accessible. For example in the early postsoviet period in 1992 there was a trial in the soviet communist party that didnt result in anything but there was a special Commission Set up to investigate files among the kgb and those the things they looked at and collected were eventually made available in what is now fund 89 of an archive thats now known as the russian state archive of recent history. That is not only accessible in russia, its also it was microfilmed in total and the microfilms are readily available at Many University libraries also New York Public Library and others so if youre interested in looking at those, you can find the records, many kgb records. They talk about kgb covert operations. The there are also important kgb foreign intelligence documents stored in other parts of the same archive that would include now files of various departments of the communist partys central committee. Those were off limits for quite a while but they were opened last august. And so the irony of the situation in russia is that archival access fortunately has not corresponded to the degree of political liberalization in russia that for reasons that i can get into later if anyones interested, it hasnt been that way. Its operated quite independently of that. The there are also other archives where you can find important records from soviet foreign intelligence apparatus. This would include what is the russian state archive of social political history. Its the former central part y e archive. It covers the lenin and stalin period so if youre interested in stalinera intelligence activities you can find copies of some documents including Important Documents, they are very Important Documents it played an Important Role in soviet espionage. There is a very good book available about that by John Earl Hanes and harvey clare, two prominent specialists on soviet era espionage in the United States. Their first book on that topic is based on the common turn files of the American Communist Party thats housed there. The state archive of the Russian Federation also has important materials. Pertaining to soviet foreign intelligence. These were partly as a result of just recordkeeping. The files of soviet state Security Apparatus were under the auspices of ministry of internal affairs during the 1950s. That ended in 1960 but you can find those records now housed there and in fact they were specially digitized and its pretty easy to go through them. Its one of the most open of the russian archives but all of the ones ive referred to here are pretty easy to work in now even though at times in the postsoviet period they havent been. Then there is the archive of the Russian Foreign ministry the archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation as its known and that archive contains important materials that the Foreign Ministry was using from the kgb as well as Foreign Ministry the soviet Foreign Ministry played an Important Role in its own right in soviet espionage it had the Diplomatic Service of the soviet Foreign Ministry had had a rational of being a supplement to the Foreign Intelligence Service. Other important materials are available in the transcripts and sum reis. These were transcripts of drom documents done by the kgb archivist, the foreign intelligence archivist there from the early 70s until about 1983. These records were transferred. They were initially offered to the United States, the u. S. Governme government, they were turned down thinking they were werent serious. And fortunately the British Secret Intelligence Service, mimi mi6 was more observant and realized the great value of these materials. The materials unfortunately sis kept them off limits for 20 odd years and fortunately they are now fully accessible at Churchill College cambridge in cambridge, england. They were r they were made accessible in the summer of 2014 after being off limits for about 24 years. Youre allowed to use a digital camera so if you are interested in looking transcribed from pertaining to espionage in the United States you can do that. I did photograph all of those. There are records pertaining to most parts of the world so those are had been earlier summarized in two important books put out by Christopher Andrew, Christopher Andrew the intelligence British Intelligence historian and for the most part they quite accurately reflect the content of the documents but there are many, many things they werent able to include and theres at least one important discrepancy, i found, when actually going through the materials. The transcripts cover the full soviet period but are predominantly about the 70s and early 80s. There is relatively little there about the stalin period. There are few interesting things but much less about the stalin period than i thought there might be. There is also a good deal less abilities the 50s and early 60s. As you move into the 60s it increases but in the large majority of it deals with the 70s and early 80s so you can find very important things there. Alexander vasiliev is another kgb foreign Intelligence Officer. He was working on a project for the book that came out as the haunted wood which was he and the late Alan Weinstein coauthored. It came out in 1997 or 98. That book dealt with soviet espionage in the United States during the stalin era. And that book was able to deal with a very small portion of what vassiliev tribed. He was able to work in a room where archived brought him materials and those terlts were, again, focused on the United States. Vassiliev was not an expert on Foreign Espionage in the United States. You can find extremely interesting things about espionage in the United States. The materials again, because of John Earl Hanes and harvey clare who worked with vassiliev, i myself also worked with him in 2009 and the materials were transferred to the Woodrow Wilson Center Archive which is in conjunction with a project known as the Cold War International history project at the Woodrow Wilson center in washington, d. C. That project has been invaluable in making materials available from former communist countries, including russia and the transcripts were digitized, translated and all of those are available online. So you can find translations of them if you want to look at the origin original trimgss as well as because they were done by hand and he typed them out in russian and then you can look at the translations. All three versions are fully accessible. Vassilievs notebooks are a complement to an extraordinarily valuable complement to the painers that Robert Miller mentioned and the papers were decrypted over quite a long period by what is now known as the National Security agency. It became the National Security agency in 1952. The National Security agency and its various incarnationincarnat decrypting these going back to the late wartime years but then had key breakthroughs after the war even though these are intercepted in documents to various parts of the world including the United States. And the major decryption came in the late 40s and into the 50s and they continued to decrypt them even into the 70s and eventually the project was halted. They realized at a certain point they wouldnt be able to decrypt more of them. They were extremely difficult to decrypt and it was only through the ingenuity because this was the time when computers were relatively primitive so most of this was done through human ingenuity of nsa code breakers and its quite a stunning thing that they were able to decrypt any of them because the soviet decrypts used a particular feature that made it essentially impossible to decrypt them but the there was a flaw introduced to it in the early just after the german invasion of the soviet union in 1941 and as a result of that a lot of them used a particular onetime pad as it was known that, in fact, was duplicated and so they were able to, upon detecting that to break the codes and be able to read them. So vassilievs notebooks overlapped with the papers but are an invaluable supplement to them because they really nil a lot of gaps with each other all dealing with soviet intelligence in the United States and the case of vassiliev and in the case of the venona papers also dealing with soviet foreign intelligence elsewhere. Then there are documents from east european spies who were working for the cia or for British Intelligence Richard Kuklinski was a spy for he was an intelligence source for the cia from 1972 until november, 1981 when he had to flee poland because he had been discovered and was on the verge of being arrest ed. There is extremely quite startling account of how he got out of poland in a book by benjamin wiser whos a New York Times reporter, at least used to be. He also at that time was working for the washington post. But the in his book about kuklinski which came out in 2004 you can find the account of how he got out prior to his getting out he was able to transfer to the cia copies of tens of thousands of documents. A goods deal of the materials he smuggled out by no means al were made available by the cia about six years, seven years ago and there was a symposium that was held in washington, d. C. In conjunction with that and that all of the materials eventually were put online so if you go to cias extremely useful electronic reading room www. Foia. Cia. Gov you can find the kuklinski documents among many others. Ill get to some of the others in a minute. There are also documents that u. S. Forces involved in operations in the middle east or other forces involved in operations in the middle east especially israel and u. S. Personnel in africa and latin america were able to acquire at various points and a lot of these by no means all are also available. The middle east ones in particular, the ones from iraq that were captured by u. S. Forces, because these are difficult to work with, even if you know arabic, theyre often difficult to work with but they had been gradually theyre in three separate locations as well and there are a good deal of them that are now being made available in translation and so if youre interested in that aspect of intelligence, particularly saddam husseins foreign intelligence apparatus, you can find a good deal because, again, it had close ties with soviet union. The there are also now vast quantities of declassified cia documents. Its hard to overstate what a change the end of the cold war made that there are just endless collections of cia materials you can find on that web site that i mentioned, the electronic reading room. These were kept off limits during the cold war but, again, one of the beneficial aspects of the end of the cold war is that it did inspire the cia to agree to release large, large chunks of its cold war collections. It covert operations are still difficult and there is still a great deal of effort being made so far for the most part sun successfully but to secure documents of covert operations but the intelligence gathering and the im sorry, the Analysis Part of the cia, the analytical division, a great deal are accessible and are often extremely interesting. Sometimes wrong about things if you look are able to compare it with some of the soviet records you can see they got some things wrong. But they also often did an extremely good job and got things pretty accurate and did a lot of benefit to u. S. Policymakers who were trying to understand what was going on. Then there were memoirs by former soviet Intelligence Officer officers. The memoirs you have to be wary of them. But you have to be wa just by their genre theyre bound to be selfserving but most of these people didnt want to disclose too much and in some cases may dissemble and try to mislead people. So you have to be very cautious when using these but they still are often extremely important sources about key records including former Intelligence Officers in the soviet block who genuinely wanted to disclose what had happen ed and the sort of things they were involved in. There were important memoirs by western Intelligence Officers including former directors like robert gates who wrote an interesting memoir that came out in the mid1990s and others who have written, other former senior cia personnel and in some cases not so senior personnel who have written interesting and useful memoirs. Again, with the same caveats. You have to remember that most of them they are under legal obligation not to disclose classified information. The so let me then just to finish tonights presentation just by going through a little bit about what we know with regard to the soviet foreign intelligence apparatus, im not going to deal as much now with the u. S. Intelligence apparatus because in part because my colleagues will be at least mark will be dealing with that about current. It hasnt changed drastically in the postcold war period. Its focus has, its no longer on the soviet union, which doesnt exist but in some of the entities of it have been renamed, including several times i dont even recall what used to be called the Operations Director of the cia and then became the National Clandestine service. I know it was recently renamed but i dont recall exactly what. So in the case of the soviet block, though, the 11th department of the soviet kgbs first directorate oversaw. The first main directorate of the kgb was the foreign intelligence apparatus. Its jurisdiction shifted over time during the stalin era. At one pointed the been under the Foreign Ministry and another timed the been under what was called the nkdv, the peoples commissary of internal affairs. The but the first main directorate from the time the kgb was created in 1954 through the end of the soviet regime had an 11th department that oversaw the warsaw pact foreign intelligence. There were soviet kgb socalled advisors, Intelligence Officers and intelligence operational groups stationed with east european Foreign Intelligence Services and their upkeep was funded by the east european governments, the warsaw pact governments, until 1990. So those records the records there are, again, you can find many of those in the east european archives and the former warsaw pact countries archives and shed a great deal of light on the structures and policy making portion of the Foreign Intelligence Service itself. By far the bulk of the soviet and east european state security organs efforts were directed at domestic intelligence. Roughly 85 of personnel in most cases so internal security was the primary orientation and its not surprising because these were large state Security Apparatuses and overseeing modern countries was a difficult thing. The 15 or so of personnel that worked in foreign intelligence the Foreign Intelligence Service had special training to allow them to serve their, as Robert Miller mentioned, one of such officer was Vladimir Putin. The sheer size of the warsaw pact state security organs meant they had very large, aggressive foreign intelligence branches and above all the soviet kgb but in the case of all of the others that ive discussed here you can find similar, that they similarly had very active foreign intelligence operations. They were took this mission seriously. So and then finally let me mention the for tonights session is the soviet and east european foreign Intelligence Forces had a good deal of joint efforts during the cold war, there was an increasing Central Station of efforts under soviet warsaw pact structures in the 1970s and 1980s. This corresponded as well to an increasing centralization of warsaw pact structures in the military sphere but that was true equally in the foreign intelligence sphere. The Foreign Intelligence Services of if warsaw pact countries were under this 11th department the 11th dire directorate of the kgbs first main directorate and those structures were increasingly under soviet control through changes enacted in the warsaw pacts statues. Formal leadership organs were established in all cases in the 1970s. Even to an exsent earlier but by the 1970s it was heavily centralized. There were specific cooperation agreements in addition these were bilateral for the most part. There were multilateral agreements but they were largely bilateral and they were updated periodically, again bringing foreign intelligence increasingly under soviet control so you can understand what soviet priorities were if you look at the records of the east european Foreign Intelligence Services. There was also beyond the formal agreements, it was informal cooperation and allocation of assignments. For example, its now known that the bulgarian state Security Apparatus, the it was called the state security had a 12th department that was responsible for our assassinations overseas. A question im often asked is whether bulgaria was involved in the attempted assassination on the pope. I wont get into that now. Ill talk a little bit about that maybe tomorrow. The informal cooperation particularly applied to things like covert operations but it also in some cases involved intelligence gathering. There was an allocation of assignments among the warsaw pact countries the only exception to what ive mentioned here is romania, the cooperation between the soviet and romanian foreign intelligence agencies greatly diminished in the mid1960s. The this was a conscious decision of ceausescus regime in romania. It wanted to establish autonomy for romania, not independence but autonomy for romania in both the military and foreign intelligence spheres. It never disappeared entirely. Romania was involved in covert operations in which it worked closely with the soviet and other east european agencies. This included the bombing of the Radio Free Europe headquarters in munich. But also romania had close involvement with terrorists, especially in the middle east, in some cases also in western europe so the romanian Foreign Intelligence Service continued to play an Important Role, it was just much less under soviet auspices. It worked sometimes in conjunction with the other block Intelligence Services but separately. The and then finally the roles and missions of individual east european Intelligence Services varied some depending on what their area of expertise was. For example, the east german state Security Apparatus had the great benefit of speaking german as a native language so that made it quite easy to penetrate west germany west germany in addition gave allowed entree to the nato headquarters and so in the east german state Security Apparatus, and ill discuss this a little tomorrow, in the east german state Security Apparatus files you can find large quantities of classified nato and west german documents. In fact, there are so many of them you can see and you can track when they were supplied, in some cases almost on the same day they were produced. In many cases within a few days so the east german state Security Apparatus had direct entree to important classified materials of the west. This meant that some cases and ill get to this tomorrow, you could argue it may have had a stabilizing role because of what it showed about natos intentions. That nato, for example, was a defensive alliance. So jest germany would probably the b theiziest to point to in a specialty but there were other missions. Bulgaria, the important state Security Service in bulgaria had a role in the balkans in overseeing efforts. There were two balkan countries there were members of nato from 1952 on, greece and turkey. So bulgaria was able to and bulgaria has a large ethnic Turkish Community and so was able to draw on that in part to deal with turkey and similarly with greece so the polish Foreign Intelligence Services like wise had particularly to try to deal with some polish emigres if they were able to turn them or to use polish scholars in the west. I have found, for example, a very interesting report produced by the not interesting interesting in a perverse way of the polish Foreign Intelligence Service from november 1968 about the service that is now called the entity of harvid that is now called the davis center where i have an office and that was then called the Russian Research center. They clearly had someone from the polish Scholarly Community who was supplying information. Quite an accurate report. Unfortunately because pole hasnt at the time was in the throes of an antisemitic campaign it talks about how many jews there were in the at harvid and particularly at that center. I translated the report and you can find it online on the davis center web site. So will that i will finish for tonights session and will look forward to speaking with you tomorrow. [ applause ] so i have the nonpowerpoint interlude for the evening and so youll just have to hear me and be captivated just by my voice and not be and my nephew just arrived so ill be keeping an eye on him. If i keep his attention i figure im doing okay. First of all, thanks for having me here at the symposium, its a terrific honor being on this panel and being back up in new york, a city of ive spend a lot of time in and its always great to be back in. I was feeling a little jealous listening to the previous presentation, marks presentation, because the idea of going through all these terrific archives and seeing all of this information thats been either declassified or officially released is something that a journalist whos toiling away in this current era could only dream about. We have to deal with the memories of officers, you have to deal with mark mentioned memoirs that i agree are imprecise or selfserving. You have to deal with getting information from people who are always under the threat of going to jail for talking to you. And it makes it very difficult to do this kind of work in this period when people are going to jail but i do think its very important and when robert talked about some of these mass disclosures of classified documents i should say that as a reporter i am wholly endorsing mass disclosures of classified documents. [ laughter ] as long as we at the New York Times get to look at them first and decide what we should publish. [ laughter ] is but it is difficult and i look forward to i dont know if i look forward to this, all the documents coming out from this period 40 years from now and i can find out everything i got wrong. But i wanted to talk tonight about the its a good segue. Its the end of the cold war and the beginning of the 9 11 period and really what i argue are the dramatic changes that have taken place in the intelligence world less on the structure and more on the focus and what years and years of doing a specific kind of operation and i would argue Counterterrorism Operations has been at the center of it has changed intelligence and has changed spying so i thought i would open my talk with an anecdote that gets at the beginning of this period that is, i think, colorful but also i think sets up where we are going and its an anecdote from right after the september 11 attacks and the everyone was in it was kay yot and the cia wasnt quite sure what to do and the british came to visit and it was this the spirit of the special relationship and also there was a glimpse of what was to come so ill read a brief passage from my book that talks about this. It mentions it focuses around a man named sir richard deerlove, the head of mi6 at the time of the september 11 attacks. Sir richard saw a glimpse of the future just weeks after the september 11 attacks. The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, mi6, he came to the United States with other top british tell intense officials to show solidarity with the united kingdoms closest ally. He arrived at cia Head Quarters to deliver the message personally that british spies were opening up their books, giving the cia rare access to all the m i6 files on members of al qaeda. The british tutor it had americans in the dark arts during world war ii but long approached the spy game differently. In 1943, one member of Winston Churchills special Operations Executive complained that the american temperament demands quick and spectacular results. While the british policies generally speaking is long term and plodding. He pointed out the dangers of the strategy carried out by the office of strategic services, the cias precursor which relied on blowing up weapons depots, cutting telephone lines and land mining enemy supply lines. The americans had more money than brains, he warned and the osss hankering after playing cowboys and indians could only lead to trouble for the alliance. Deerlove garage waited from Queens College at the university of cambridge, a recruiting ground for secret services and served in postings in africa, europe and washington. Like his predecessors, as head of mi6, he signed his memos with his code name c which by tradition was in green ink. Shortly after his plane landed, the plane carrying the call sign ascot 1 landed in washington deerlove found himself inside the Counterterrorist Center in cia headquarters. On a large screen, cia officers were watching video of a white mitsubishi Truck Driving along the road in afghanistan. Deerlove knew the United States developed the ability to wage war by Remote Control but he never before watched the predator drone in action. Several minutes went by as the mitsubishi was framed by the cross hairs at the center of a video monitor until a missing blast washed the entire screen in white. Seconds later the picture clarified to show the wreckage of a truck twisted and burning. Deerlove turned to a group of cia officers, including ross newland, an Agency Veteran who months earlier had taken the job as part of the Group Overseeing the predator program, he cracked a wry smile. It almost isnt sporting, is it . This was the beginning of a real change in how the cia did intelligence, how the United States looksed at the role of the cia and i think it would the beginning of what would be a complete reorientation of american intelligence and the intelligence establishment away from a particular focus on traditional espionage as was practiced during the cold war to a laserlike focus on hunting, targeting, capturing and often killing. Its a story of the cia at the front lines of what is a secret war, a war thats changed the nature of spying and that has had both good and bad consequences. Its changed the focus of a cia which i would argue the cia has had the most profound change since 9 11 of all the Intelligence Services because they have been the ones put at the frontover this secret war and its chained the perspective of a whole new generation of Intelligence Officers, the cia now has more than 50 of the agency r people who joined after the september 11 attacks so if you think about that that is the majority of cia officers are relatively young and are people who have known a mission where two successive president s, one republican and one democrat have given the cia the first and foremost mission of counterterrorism. In other words, manhunting. Its changed the language of intelligence. The idea of what is a target in traditional terms, an intelligence target is someone you would target to turn into an agent for information. Targeting becomes something much different in the post9 11 era. Targeting means someone who you were hunting either interrogate for information or possibly to kill. That distorts the idea of what an Intelligence Service should be for. So what i wanted to do was tonight talk about how we got to this point where we are today and spend time tomorrow talking about i think where were going as best we can tell at this point. So it was four years ago when president obama in the second inaugural address says that a decade of war was coming to an end. What he was talking about was the public wars. He was talking about the wars in iraq and afghanistan, ones that he was hoping at the time to end. As weve seen, hes that hasnt quite worked out as he planned and then in a speech that may he said that this war on terrorism must end and that the government has to be more transparent about it so this was may of 2013 and basically he was trying to get to a point where the United States was not in the semipermanent war that was all done in the shadows, one that was relying on the cia, one that was relying on covert action and secret strikes but as weve seen its three years later and the war continues and theres little indication as of yet that this new era of transparency is dawning. Were not seeing less strong action move by the government to declassify information or even declassify the cia or the special operation wing of the military, their role in wars in pakistan, in yemen, in somalia, in libya, in syria the list goes on. The tides of war that seemed to be receding at one point have come back in and so i think what were seeing is that the secret wars that the United States and in particular the cia have been waging for the nearly 15 years dont show any signs of ending and this is going to have an impact on our Intelligence Service and ill get to that a little bit tomorrow about where were going. So this war and i talk about it as a shadow war, the war outside of the traditional war zones in iraq and afghanistan, its created a new moll dead for how the United States goes to battle. Its had benefits and costs but theres no question that its short circuit it had normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation decides to go to war. Its been carried out, as i s said, in war zones that we would traditionally see during the cold war or even in the post9 11 era like iraq and afghanistan. Its been waged the laboratories for this experiment have been places like yemen and pakistan and libya and east africa. What are some of the other characteristics of this war as i get into the details of it . Heres an interesting characteristic i think is that it is a war even at the cia that has been run in large part by lawyers what the United States could and could not do in a war of this nature was largely a blank slate before the september 11 attacks and the lines were then drawn by lawyers over time, over the past 15 years. So some of the most momentous and arguably controversial decisions that have been made in the last 15 years, decisions about detention, interrogation, torture, surveillance, assassination effectively were made because groups of lawyers got together and said what could and could not be done. What did and did not violate the law, we still have an executive order on the books banning assassination but we know theres been hundreds and hundreds of cia drone strikes killing specific individuals so theres had to be some line drawn about what does and does not constitute assassination just like what does and does not constitute torture. So even at the cia, for those of you i know many of you in the audience have a great deal of background in the intelligence world or how the cia works, weve seen the cia has grown not only in its analysts and operatives but number of lawyers who have had to make these assessments about what the agency could and could not do. Its had profound impacts i think primarily and this is what i want to talk about most is i would argue and have argued is that its blurred the line between the work of soldiers and the work of spies. And the short hand i think you can look at it as over the last 15 years the cia has become more like the pentagon and the pentagon has become more like the cia. And so let me explain that and i think by explaining that i want to talk a little bit about where things were on september 11, 2001, in order to then sort of try to describe the changes. So for the cia, those of you who know it, theres a history that is cyclical to some degree. The early decades of the cia were intensely operational in terms of in yoourp in, in south america and in africa covert actions, coup attempts, some assassination plots that were revealed in the 70s. This was an intense foe dhacus in the 70s most of these came to light in the church and pike committees. And this was a real revelation for americans about what the cia had been doing and a really wrenching experience for people who had been in the cia had been not accustomed to much congressional oversight and all of a sudden on television all of the dirty laundry of the first three decades of its existence were was being aired and this had an effect, according to both memoirs and documents and a number of people ive spoken to from this period of the generation that came in after the church committee. That those who came in in the late 70s came in during this period when the cia was trying to reorient itself back to being a traditional Espionage Service. Not only the covert actions of the 70s of the early 50s and 60s but also the vietnam era, you saw this intense paramilitary focus during vietnam. Those who came in after church were basically taught that the cia should first and foremost be an Espionage Service not a paramilitary service. And many of those people took that message very seriously throughout their career and what happens was that 20 years later many of those people were then in senior jobs in the cia in the late 90s, early 2000s when a new era dawned for cia and that was and specifically a moment in the summer of 2001 when the cia was handed this new weapon called the armed predator. The cia had been watching the rise of al qaeda for a number of years. In afghanistan Osama Bin Laden had carried out a number of attacks up to that point and the question was how should the United States government respond . And the cia had been able to penetrate al qaeda and the taliban to some degree. They were able to find the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden but it was never in realtime and once they found him they could never find a way to kill him and there was a question of did they even have the authority to kill him. Again, going back to this ban on assassinations that came in in 1976 under president ford, could the cia carry out an assassination to that extent. Would it be an assassination . So there was this intense debate in the summer of 2001 when the military, which had developed an armed predator, basically handed the cia this weapon and the question was, should the cia take it up . And george tenant recalls meetings during that summer at the cia where basically it boiled down to were spies, not assassins. Should we take up this new weapon . Should we take on this new mission . Shouldnt that just be the militarys job . And it somewhat seems quaint now but this debate played out right up until the september 11 attacks. In fact, on september 8, 2001, there was a meeting at the white house about whether the cia should use the armed predator and go to afghanistan with the aim of going to kill Osama Bin Laden. And even years later there is still disagreement about what was decided at that meeting but what we do know is the september 11 attacks happened and within six days president obama gave an authorization to the cia, a secret finding to go around the world to capture or kill al qaeda operatives. A secret order thats still on the books today and its still basically the foundation of the cias mission even though those who did the 9 11 attacks are either mostly either dead or in jail. That authorization has been expanded to encompass all sorts of different groups and different people who have carried out different attacks. So thats the foundation for this new transformation by the cia which took up not only the predator and the role of targeted killing but as we know in the early days, the early years, it was more of a focus on detention, interrogation some would argue torture with methods like waterboarding in secret prisons because there was no there was basically very Little Information about al qaeda and the belief inside the cia and the Bush White House was you needed to use these extreme methods in order to get that information but over time i pointed to around 2004 things begin to change where theres this concern in the cia about the methods theyve been employing. Theres an Inspector General report about some of the methods might have crossed the line into war crimes and theres a real shudder throughout the ranks of the cia that once again the agency might be facing another period like the church commission. They would be the ones who would be facing possible legal jeopardy for the methods they used. And during that period, 2004 on, you see a shift. You see a shift away from interrogation, away from the use of the secret prisons towards targeted killing as a method of counterterrorism its something the Bush White House embraced wholeheartedly at the end of 2008, the end of the Bush Administration and as we know president obama has embraced as well so what weve seen during the Obama Administration is an acceleration of that process, focusing on paramilitary activities, man hunting in places where the United States is not officially at war but where the cia has this authority so thats one half of the point where the cia has become more like the military. Ill spend less time on the military side but i think its important because its the other half of this dramatic change since 2001. So 2001 happens, 9 11 happens and the pentagon had been military had been structured very much liked the been for decades with a with large static armies built to fight wars like the gulf war in the early 1990s. And infuriated the defense secretary donald rumsfeld. So the question was how could the military, how could he, the secretary of defense, run a war in places where the United States was not at war . The cia had the authorities to operate in these places but the military didnt so what he really pushed for in the years he was secretary of defense was to expand the pentagons authorities to operate clandestinely, some would seko verdictly to act more like the cia did with its own authorities. To operate in deniable places, in places where the United States did not have to acknowledge it was operating, he expanded dramatically the role of sperpgs Operations Forces specifically joint special operations command. It was seal team 6 with this small niche group built to do hostage rescues, very short operations over 24 hours, basically he built this organization to fight large secret wars in iraq, in afghanistan, across the border into pakistan and this became rumsfelds tool to create the military more like the Intelligence Services so theres been a convergence over the last 15 years between the military and the cia and this blurring of the lines and in a little while ill get to where does this culminate but first lets get to where did this play out. Well, i think that the True Laboratory for this convergence is pakistan and i think probably the most interesting, i think the most interesting setting for this experiment over the last 15 years partly because it created this dilemma for the United States government of a country that was officially an ally and yet a country where there were questions about the loyalty of its leaders, the loyalty of its Intelligence Service, the ability of its government to deal with terrorism threats going not only into afghanistan but to the United States and so it presented this dilemma. So i think that if you want to look at a place where this grand transformation has taken place, i think pakistan is the most interesting place to look and the arc of the relations between the United States and pakistan follow an interesting although i think somewhat depressing trajectory. There were early on good relations, i would say, for what you could call them good relations between the United States and pakistan and specifically the Intelligence Services of the United States and pakistan, the cia namely and pakistans Intelligence Service, the isi. There was a degree of commonality of what their mission was. There was no love for al qaeda among the pakistani Intelligence Service and there was a view that while the isi had nurtured the taliban and saw the taliban as a bulwark in afghanistan against india, al qaeda was a problem and a threat and therefore they could work with the United States against al qaeda. So that in the early period, there are a number of senior al qaeda operatives captured in pakistan. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed abu zubaydah, others that did show collaboration between pakistani and american Intelligence Services. But over time suspicion grew about the motive, about each others motives. The United States began suspecting that the pakistanis were playing a double game, particularly with the taliban. That while they were helping with al qaeda, they were secretly nurturing the taliban because they were unclear whether the United States was going to stay in afghanistan. The pakistanis were unclear whether the United States was going to stay in pakistan sorry, in afghanistan and were not sure whether as the United States got diverted to the iraq war, whether they should be nurtured continuing to nurture the taliban because they were looking for the longterm picture of how the taliban fit into their own strategic defense against india. So the mutual suspicions grew over time. Two couple critical points and i think these points accelerate these transformations in the cia that i talked about earlier. The first is the decision in some of july of 2008 by the Bush White House to basically conduct drone strikes in pakistan unilaterally. Up to that point there had been a decision from 2004 to 2008 to get the pakistanis to sign off on every drone strike or at least notify them of drone strikes that had were taking part in the country. There became came to be a believe inside the cia and at the white house that the pakistanis were tipping off militants before the strikes and in 2007 there were no successful strikes so there was this belief that perhaps their partner wasnt such a reliable partner. And so president obama authorized unilateral action and you see this dramatic spike in drone strikes starting in july, 2008, and when president obama comes in in january, 2009, he makes the, i think very fateful decision, ways accelerate it from where bush had left it leaving youre seeing in 2009 and especially in 2002, a dramatic increase in drone strikes based on intelligence gathered by the cia and agents in the pakistani tribal areas. That had positive and arguably very negative results. One is that it did have a dramatic effect on al qaeda and al qaeda operatives in terms of those who were killed or who fled because of the drone strikes. But it also really poisoned relations between the United States and pakistan. To the point that by three years later, was really the cratering of the relationship. This is one of the big points we want to look at when we look at intelligence operations post 9 11 because theres so much of a focus on what they call connecticut operations, capturing and killing, operations inside countries where you may note acknowledge your role or may not tell your Partner Service it can have rally dig tear yous deleterious impact on diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. Deleterious impact on diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. Deleterious impact on diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. D diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. D diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. D diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. E diplomacy and diplomatic relations between the country. Many people would think that in 2011, exactly five years five years from monday when the Osama Bin Laden raid happened, was the low point but actually, i think in traveling to pakistan and doing a lot of reporting there and as i write about in my book, the real i think the lowest point of the relationship came a few months earlier when a cia operative named Raymond Davis was captured was picked up by policemen in pakistan after he had shot two people he thought were trying to trying to rob him as he was driving through the streets of lahore. Davis is picked up by the cops. He had after he shot the two men he radioed for help. A white van from the lahore consulate in the american consulate in lahore came to rescue him but in doing so killed a third person by accident and drove away and left Raymond Davis on the street to his own devices. Hes picked up and put in jail and the beginning of my book is the interrogation of davis by the Pakistani Police which you can actually watch on youtube amazingly. It set off this period where president obama had to say publicly he was not a spy he was a diplomat. The pakistanis knew better. And for the pakistanis, this was, in their mind, proof about cia operations over the years, that the cia had deployed the secret army inside pakistan without telling pakistanis they were up to their minds all sorts of nefarious acts. Raymond davis sitting in jail in lahore was the proof of that. The end of the the issue ultimately resolves when a deal was struck that the families of the victims were paid off. Raymond davis wu was spirited out of the jail, put on a plane to afghanistan and brought back to the United States but that really soured the relationship ten years after 9 11, more even than what happened three months later when a group of navy s. E. A. L. S went deep into pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. But i think that moment, the bin laden raid, i think kind of illuminates the transformation ive been talking about. Here you had ten years after the september 11th attacks and you had a group of soldiers operating under the ci as authority sort of a flick of a pen, the navy s. E. A. L. S were given authority to operate under cia rules, to operate inside pakistan, a country where the United States was not at war. If they if the Bush Administration so choose sorry, the Obama Administration so chose, they could have never acknowledged the role, never acknowledged the operation. As we know what happened in that operation, it was acknowledged. It became what was considered the cias greatest moment since the september 11th attacks but it does show a blurring of the lines of what happened between the United States military, Intelligence Services and how they converged in this country that is officially an american ally. I think that i will stop here and then get tomorrow into where all this is going and whether were likely to see any change. Thanks. [ applause ] thank you. Im glad to be here. Thank you for the council for inviting me and its a pleasure to share this podium with the two very distinguished speakers from the panel. I almost actually didnt make it today. I flew in from myrtle beach in South Carolina where i teach at the Coastal Carolina university. The flight was overbooked in typical fashion. I should not mention the name of the Company Since were on tv. Maybe i should for that reason. Almost did not make it on the flight. Very kind lady stepped in and said, ill stay here tonight so you can go to your conference. I was very thankful to her. Then she turned asked me, so whats your conference about . And i said its about espionage and i think she got scared after that. Typical of the subject, when i tell people my academic interest, espionage, i have a discussion to end at that point or dies away. Im glad to be with this audience that hopefully this discussion will not this subject will not kill the discussion, in fact probably fuel it. I hope also for tomorrows discussion to have some interesting thoughts and debates. My main area of expertise is espionage, technically speaking, we can call that human, human intelligence, right . Essentially a quick definition of this is human intelligence, any information that can be gathered from human sources using human sources. Its basically what the cia was initially founded to do before it changed its mission as mark correctly pointed out. A few very basic aspects of the background of this in the United States. There is a significant Human Element to the Intelligence Community, of course, human is one of many disciplines of intelligence collection, its not the only one. But in the United States, obviously the agency is the agency that makes most use of human intelligence. Its one of the Core Missions of this agency but its not the only one. We have of course a Defense Intelligence agency that does more or less what the cia does but focuses on military issues as opposed to civilian issues. The department of state also makes use of that technically, they collect information from humans, using humans, although they are not an Intelligence Agency and have an intelligence component for sure. Not to mention the fbi makes use of human intelligence and every branch of the u. S. Armed forces has components that facilitate human intelligence. Its a very scattered discipline throughout the u. S. Intelligence community. The most he is so teric of all, no question about that. Thats the reason what i want to spend a few minutes going into the background of this before i go into more detail. In the United States since 9 11, we had sort of reorganization of the national clanestine service, supposed to be sort of a unit that brings together the human aspects of the u. S. Intelligence community and reality mostly run by the cia. The office of directser of National Intelligence is supposed to supervise it, a lot of issues and turf wars of who actually is in charge of the National Clandestine services, people often refer to the operations as the ncs, a lot of confusion about this. In fact its supposed to be bigger than just the director of operations, which is a part of the cia that does the human aspect that i specialize on. If you would reduce the appreciate that. According to the website of the office of director of National Intelligence, the National Clandestine service as the National Authority for decontradiction and evaluation of clandestine, human intelligence investigation. Thats the managed by the director of ncs as delegated by the director of the cia who is an undercover officer. A very quick but Important Note here about humint, Operations Officers that deal with human intelligence, they dont kill people, typically, they dont drive flashy cars and if anything being flashy is looked down on the work of an officer. They dont frequent casinos unlike james bond, although there was a story recently about the cia recruiting or trying to recruit chinese officials in casinos in macao. It does happen sometimes, just not very often. And most important of all, i should say by the way, technically they dont spy. They dont themselves spy. They actually recruit others who spy for them. So they are officers not spies. The agents are the ones that do the spying. And most important of all, most of them have diplomatic immunity. Right . As important subject to return to this in a minute of what that means in the sort of current era of asymmetric war the u. S. Finds itself in. Most Operations Officers are an evolved human intelligence collection, core collectors or case officers. What they do is they recruit people in Foreign Countries to spy for the United States government, right . This is a very complex and difficult task that is based on very strong developing strong relationships of trust between an Operations Officer and an agent. These agents then will trust you as an Operations Officer, as a case officer to such an extent that they will actually go out there and put their lives at risk for a number of reasons, sometimes money or grudges against their own agencies or whatever, but often to a large extent they do it because of you. So psychology plays a very Important Role in this, far more important than guns, weapons. I would actually call this the ultimate people job. To convince people to do things for you they would not otherwise do. Thats the important background to keep in mind as we discuss how this type of line of work has changed in the post 9 11 era in which we find ourselves today. So the core collectors for the u. S. Intelligence Community Core collectors another term for Operations Officer that collects human intelligence. This is really the conventions that the u. S. Intelligence Community Uses to collect human intelligence. Its a cold war phenomenon, developed during the cold war. America hardly had an Intelligence Community to speak of before world war ii. And so the conventions and methods and the disciplines and traditions in america of human intelligence developed during the cold war. It is strictly speaking a cold war phenomenon, right . That typically evolves in the cold war in particular, involved probably men, usually from a middle class or upper middle class or upper class background who joined the cia word of mouth type system, which of course were not used to living in austere environments, they came from quite privileged backgrounds. Not as much as the british case but still there was an element of class in that recruitment process. So they were not used to living in very austere environments, right . And they spent as a result much of their career in quite i would say for most part, not always, safe locations and doing things that are quite safe. They all had official covers, meaning that they had a position in the u. S. Government that gave them diplomatic immunity. Meaning that they were often stationed in u. S. Embassies or consulates in countries around the world, right . And they pretended to be diplomats, many of them. In fact they were also diplomats but in fact the real job began usually at night when they did the humint part of their job. Of course their life resembled very much those of diplomats. It overlapped in many important areas. Diplomats are known for example to attends cocktail parties of various embassies. Every country has a National Holiday or wholesome type of event to attend and during cold war they would attend those events and stride to recruit other diplomats of other countries. That strange song and dance with them and they are doing the same to you because they also pretend to be diplomats but they are not and you have to report about this and sort of like hope that something happens out of it and often it does. Sometimes it does not. But thats very often a very large part of an Operations Officers life during the cold war. These were mostly safe assignments and i would say they are safe even today. If you have immunity and you have a pass that says youre a diplomat and you get caught spying in china, you are basically exceeding the description. They might arrest you or rough you up a couple of days but they cant really do anything to you. Chances are they let you go. The case of Raymond Allen davis you mentioned is typical of that. Even in that case he was roughed up for a few days and got to come back homes. These were very safe assignments. As assignments go. In addition to that, thats an important part of what im trying to say today, right . These mostly men or upper middle class individuals would train to recruit people who looked and act and often thought just like them. Right . Even if the depths of the cold war, right, your average russian diplomat youre trying to recruit or polish diplomat dressed like you and spoke something that resembled english and for the most part you could communicate. There was a connection of cultures and also had limitations to how far they were going to go as part of the commitment to principles. They would often not be sort of suicide have a suicide mentality, which is not the case today. Additionally, most of that work focused mainly on the ussr. Its amazing when you look at the archives, the degree it focused. It was active all over the world. Often that activity in the same parts of africa or asia did revolve around what the soviets were doing there, right . Ive written sort of a documentary history of the National Security agency and one of the things i found funny and interesting, during sort of the early 1980s, they had four different departments and accounts but they had two like basic units, one was soviet and the other was ilaoo, which meant all others and that was pretty much it. The amount of output dedicated to the soviet union was incredible. If you look at the map of those days. Youre an Operations Officer and stationed somewhere abroad in a place like istanbul or nairobi or berlin, vienna, the kinds of places or brazil, we associate with the cold war as it were. Ill have you know these are nice places, quite nice, if youre stationed in vienna, you get a nice house and income. Even if youre in places like nairobi, you live in the western area and its leafy and gated. And you get a good income because its cheap to live there. Its great. Its a very nice safe type of life for an Operations Officer. You get to compare that with the types of cities that we associate with todays current affairs, places like benghazi or peshawar. These are the kinds of places were talking about. The cold war is over and the focus has shifted. These places are not as nice, are they . So essentially what we find ourselves in today is that the main problem we have of course is that i mentioned that human intelligence operations were developed in the cold war on state actors now were dealing with nonstate actors and the way you collect human intelligence is totally different than how you go about this with a state actor, right . To begin with, no state actors do not display o vert targets of human intelligence collection. They dont have diplomats. They dont have Business Community seeing officials they can recruit. You rarely come in contact with them because they mostly operate underground. In addition to that, that forces core collectors to actually focus for a change on targets that are not diplomatic. You cant recruit any more by going to cocktail parties in embassies. You cant recruit people who live in the same neighborhood as you that happen to work for another country. This is over. We do that still but what im saying is that the war on terrorism does not revolve around that kind of universe anymore. That is over. In addition, the actual terrain is alien to western operatives. Have you been to yemen lately, place like sanaa, it looks like an alien landscape. I mean that in the sense of extraterrestrial, reminds you of images from star wars almost. Even the architecture is different from that were used to here in the west. Let alone the way people talk or dress or ling gis tick issues are massive and cultural barriers, almost insurmountable, even today many years after 9 11. Thats a serious problem for human intelligence collection. Not to mention of course, the very hazardous operational environment. I mentioned before, if youre caught in even in russia today, lets say or venezuela, Something Like that, chances are nothing major will happen to you. I tell my students if you want life threatening situations, dont join the cia, join law enforcement, you know . Local law enforcement, far more dangerous than working as a typical case over for even a case officer, let alone an analyst. In this case if al qaeda were to arrest you, or isis, were talking about a very serious turn of events for you and your account back in the cia. I have a very important data point in my research which comes from an article written under this title, the counterterrorism myth written by mark gerercht, former Intelligence Officer for the cia. He wrote this in 2001 in july. And i think thats a very accurate picture of what was happening then at the cia. This is a quote from his article in the atlantic, the existence of a u. S. Counter Terrorism Program in the middle east south and central asia is a myth he says, it doesnt exist. We dont have such a thing back in 2001. He said, its virtually impossible for westerners to operate in al qaedas environments. Thats a good question. What are the chances are white caucasian guy from america surviving in peshawar for more than a week or going unnoticed, thats impossible. Not in sanaa or benghazi, doesnt happen. The close so that brings me to the point that often these places are terrorist safe havens and these terrorist havens have a very close structure and poses operational difficulties even nor noncaucasian muslims which the cia has. What they are saying, back in 2001, not necessarily today, 2001, around the time of the 9 11 attacks is that even a cia officer who is a muslim, who is familiar with the kind of culture finds it very difficult to survive and to be convincing in a place like peshawar or benghazi. Case officers because of that have to force themselves to venture outside of the diplomatic circuit. What gerecht is saying, it was not necessarily encouraged because it is dangerous or even rewarded. A great quote that he has in his article from a former division operative for the cia, sorry for the Strong Language but this is so typically director of operations