Foundation inage washington, d. C. , this is just two hours. Good morning, everyone. We are delighted to have you here on friday the 13th. It gives me great honor to introduce the director of National Intelligence dan coats. He became the fifth dni this past march. He leads the u. S. Intelligence community and serves as the principal intelligence advisor to the president. He provides the intelligence briefing for the president virtually every morning in the oval office. Servedr codes previously in the u. S. House of representatives and the u. S. , then from 19811999 returned to the senate again in service to our nation from 20112016. During that time, he was not sitting idly in indiana. Having served on the Senate Armed Services committee, the Senate Select intelligence committee, he worked on ways to strengthen our National Defense that service but was interrupted in washington by going to germany as our ambassador between 20012005. With his experience in the legislative and executive branches, director codes brings a unique perspective to todays very important topic for this audience, this audience online, and to our nation. Toare pleased to welcome him offer opening remarks providing an overview of section 702 of the foreign intelligence and surveillance act and its importance to the community. I do, welcome. D [applause] dir. Coats thank you. Friday the 13th is not a happy day for washington. I think probably the audience here this morning is impacted by the fact that a lot of people did not want to get out of bed this morning. What is unusual here and a for someonetening to speak before you is not only did david grow up in the chicago area, not only did admiral rogers grow up in the chicago area, a lifelong cubs fan from girl,a, married a chicago and we are trying to play down our excitement this morning, particularly since we are sitting in front of a crowd of mets fans. I fully understand that. Just remember this, we have been suffering 108 years. [laughter] dir. Coats so we know a little bit of your pain. Ido want to say i felt like was in a winwin situation last night because spending all these years in washington, you have to year. We got our shot last that took the pressure off. I thought, i can make this switch over for the rest of the series. Game that willa go down in history as one of the craziest games i have ever seen. All the things you anticipated would happen when wrong, on both sides. One side barely snuck in and survived. I have an easy job this morning. With another engagement right on, but im going to try to stay a little bit for admiral rogers. Which is identified by the Intelligence Community has really the holy grail. It is the instrument which gives us access into the thinking in the minds and actions of adversaries, foreign adversaries , not u. S. Citizens, but foreign adversaries that half bad thoughts relative to the United States and want to do us harm. It has become an indispensable we can determine and gain information about threats to the United States, about threats to our troops, about weapons of mass distraction, proliferation, about cyber attacks, about any number of things that threaten the american way and the American People. And so, the reauthorization of this authority is extraordinarily critical as we move towards the end of this session. That therey aware are those who think this is an overstep, that it invades their privacy, that it might not to the constitution, but we have taken such extraordinary steps to ensure that we respect and that we honor and that we do everything we can to provide americans their Constitutional Rights, their right to privacy, and at the same time have in place something that is not designed and has multiple protections to but is anom incredible element of our ability to keep americans safe. Admiral rogers has lived with 702 before his three years as director of National Security agency. Inwill explain to you explicit detail just what it does do and what it doesnt do. He will talk to you about how the Intelligence Community values and respects the rights of americans and their Constitutional Rights to privacy, but also steps that have been put in place legislatively and procedurally to honor our commitment to that protection. He is going to talk to you about the successes we have had, the unclassifiedhave for the purpose of letting the American People know the value of this particular authority that we have. Affectsit not only those of us here in the United States trying to keep our family safe, trying to keep our country but it also affects our foreign partners and allies. Has i have traveled throughout asia, europe, the middle east, virtually without exception my counterparts in the intelligence agencies of these ferries countries have said, thank you, thank you for providing us the information that allowed us to stop a plot, intercept a plot, keep our people safe. Onlyal have said not hundreds, but perhaps thousands, survived azens have potential attack on their lives because of the information that. Ou have provided to us so this is not just about america. It is about the civilized world trying to deal with the barbaric attempts of many throughout the world to undermine democracies, wherever they live. And those are peacekeeping targets ofhat are those that want to target them, so it has value beyond our shores. The, as all of you know, this collection is not against americans, it is against the law. We also know that there are misunderstandings on what the law does and what the law does not do, what are procedures do and do not do. There is mischaracterization, some of it just a misunderstanding. They have not seen the facts or had the opportunity to dive into the program, to see what we have done to try to protect the privacy of americans. Say, ifrankly i want to think simply hold us to a different thought about the role of government and keeping americans safe. And about the breaches that they perceive. The erroro know that rate, i want to emphasize the word unattended, the unintended error rate report was delivered a daily. Unintended errors that have taken place throughout the program and we keep track of every one of these, we release all the information to the public, to the um, oversight committees. Rate iserror significantly below 1 . I cannot find another agency in government that has an error year that1 each comes in, unintended. Throughout the life of this authority that we have, we have not found one intentional breach. One intentional misuse of this authority. That is a record i think speaks to the care in which we impose the people that work through these processes, and how much they care about doing this the right way. Admiral rogers will give you information as to how the procedure is executed. We have reached out to members of congress, in the senate and in the house, saying do not take the director of National Intelligences word for it, do not take admiral rogerss word for it, come to the agency, walk down the floor. Do not sit through a powerpoint. Go talk to the young men and women, Exceptional People that are working in this agency, and talk to them. What are you doing . How do you do this . What about this and that . We have brought members out there that have been a total 180, the misconception of what they have had based on narratives spun by those that want to take away this authority. It is totally contradicted by the facts, unfortunately some members have turned down multiple requests to either escort them or provide Technical Information to them in their office, or take them out to fort b. , take them over to the fbi so they can not walk into the directors office, but walk on the floor where this is being executed, and be with the people that are exercising these authorities to keep us safe. Those who,p against frankly, have a mistrust in government. They simply refuse to think that government has any interest in keeping, or adhering to the fourth amendment, or keeping their privacy, their privacy. Want to say, maybe close with this admiral rogers, the formal director at the nsa, in a public hearing before the Senate Committee on intelligence, talking about the authorities that we have and trying to determine who the bad guys are. And how we can prevent them from connecting with our operatives and, those from overseas, having the information to intercept these types of attacks on the United States. I ask the question, to keith alexander, the general alexander i said, if these authorities are removed, if they are not reauthorized, if they are compromised to the point where compromises our ability to determine who is trying to do bad stuff on us, what is the ultimate result . In three words he said, americans will die. That is the reality we are looking at. The last thing, the thing we absolutely cannot do is compromise this program to the point where we are back before 9 11. We learned a lot of lessons from 9 11, the 9 11 commission, bipartisan, gave us recommendations on what we need to do to prevent that her rent vent day from ever pre that day from ever happening again on american soil. Unless we commit ourselves to do everything we legally can, supported by the courts, supported by every Court Decision that has been raised, supported by evidence of care and trust in doing it the right way, supported by all the transparency, all the information we provide to the American People in terms of what we are doing, we half to succeed this year. It is the agency, all 17 of us, our number one priority it is essential if we are going to do with the world, not as we would like it to be, but as it is. The world as it is is looking to provide great harm to the American People. With that, let me introduce admiral rogers who is more steep in this issue than a whole combination of the rest of us. But he can bring very compelling reasoning and evidence of why this program is so critical. Admiral . [applause] delightedgers we are to have you here. You have had three plus distinguished years, building on existing West Building on a distinct career that takes us back a good 15 years, as i have watched you progress and lead different organizations from theific command to the j2, intelligence element of the department of defense, then at msa. And thank you for your service. Mr. Shedd his biography is obviously available online, so we would like to jump in really on the questions and issues of the day that we are here for. Give the audience, if you will, a sort of baseline of what 702 is, before we jump into some of the issues. Admiral rogers if i could, not only is today a good day for thatgo, but also for those are veterans of the navy, october 13 [indiscernible] admiral rogers so to my fellow veterans in the naval service, now with respect to 702. How did we come up with a number . It is the section of the foreign intelligence service, it provides the legal and Statutory Authority for collecting persons against nonus of a specific set of purposes. Law was first passed in 2008 by congress. Renewed again in 2010. Now we find ourselves five years later, the Statutory Authority 17. Ires december 31, 20 mr. Shedd you are not on. Admiral rogers ok. Mr. Shedd it is the high tech. Admiral rogers can you hear me now . So now we are in another statutory review process, Congress Considering legislation which is set to expire. [indiscernible] admiral rogers as you heard from the director of National Intelligence, we are arguing that there is a compelling case to continue the reauthorization of this Statutory Authority, which has been in place for almost a decade. That decades use of the authority has generated tremendous value for our nation. And we will talk about that. Some of the value in the course of almost 10 years of using this authority, we are very proud of the track record we have of our Legal Compliance with the lot and the fact we have been forthright as an organization, and we have made mistakes and publicly analyst publicly acknowledged the mistakes. We have informed the attorney general and our oversight committee. It is something that is very important. I very much welcome this discussion thought because i will be the first to acknowledge that it is important for us as a nation that we have a forthright dialogue about how we ensure that our government has the tools it needs to help ensure the security of our nation, while at the same time it does so under a very specified legal regime, and that legal regime includes explicit protections for the privacy and the observance of the rights of its citizens. It is not one or the other, we are committed to doing both. So i very much welcome opportunities like this to sit down and have a discussion about what is, why is it that we feel so strongly that renewing this again is in our nations best interest and i look forward to that discussion today. Mr. Shedd thank you for that introduction, it builds on remarks at the opening. Es uses phrases like sav american lives, quoting general alexander from several years ago. And the privacy and Civil LibertiesOversight Board placed in the percentage of intelligence that is collected at this over 25 , which we understand at a classified level it could be with greater precision on what that is, but when you weigh the importance of this program with in terms of keeping americans safe and the dependency of giving the decisionmaker that ability to prevent a terrorist attack, or transfer of weapons of mass distraction material, or whatever sort of threat that may come, can you talk a bit about the importance of the program from a standpoint of what nsa does on a daily basis by the men and women at fort meade . Admiral rogers there are two measures we look at that lead us to the conclusion that this program is so fundamentally valued. Valuable to us. The first is the uniqueness of the insights it generates. And the second is the quantity of the insights that it generates. So as you have heard, 702 generates of the total reporting, which is generated to provide policymakers with insights, and generate public policy, the help military commanders to be better informed and in a position to make better choices, to help inform the Cyber Security of our nation, this Statutory Authority, section 702 and the information it generates, is incredibly unique and significant in its volume. As you heard, david quoted a number, i will say it is a sin of an percentage of reporting credit which is another point reporting. Which is another point i try to make it if we lose this Statutory Authority, there is no alternative way. If we lose this Statutory Authority, there is no alternative way i am aware of, to account for it by other means. I cannot replace it. If we lose this Legal Authority, i cannot replace this information via other legal means, that is how unique in some cases is the data that we get. That data, that insight has enabled us to do things like understand movement on the battlefield in afghanistan, enable us to reroute convoy units, u. S. Troop concentrations, alert u. S. Service members serving in afghanistan of imminent threat against them, so it has saved lives in afghanistan. This same authority and information it generates has enabled us to generate unique insight on the transfer of weapons from certain nationstates around the world, to other parties that would do harm to our nation, as well as those of our friends and allies. With the information generated as a result of this Statutory Authority, it has enabled us to take key isis leaders off of the battlefield and we have been very public with one issue we have declassified. He was the number two commander between 20142016, we the u. S. Government writ large has spent almost two years trying to locate him. Posted aly as a nation multimillion dollar bounty, a reward for information leading to his arrest or death. Despite two years of that, we were unable to locate him. Because of we derived through hint, iot our first will not go into all the specifics, but we will try number 4 now . The light says it is on. [indiscernible] [laughter] admiral rogers ok. You guys keep trying. I apologize. Ok. Um, so this Statutory Authority enabled us to take hegemon off of the battlefield. The number two individual in isis, we were looking for him between 20142016, this was one smart adversary. He had a sense of how we worked and he knew the techniques collectively, he moved without a regular signature. He was a very intelligent adversary who constantly was adapting how he communicated and where he moved. Because of 702 we were able to gain insight to an individual associated with him. It led us to track this adversary and tie him to him. We then put him under surveillance. Through our u. S. Military forces on the battlefield, we attempted to actually capture him, but unfortunately he wanted to resist capture and he was killed in 2016. Had it not been for 702 after literally two years of trying to find him, after an extended period of a multimillion dollar bounty on his head, it was only because of 702 generated authority, or insight, that we were able to find him. It is because of the data generated under this Statutory Authority, that we have been able, if you look at europe in the last six months, i will not go into specifics, but we have been able to take data provided to aspire european counterparts to use the information that we generate under 702, to go back to them and say we have proof the individual who executed this has ties to isis. There are additional people involved. Here is who they are. And in at least one case, they are try