[laughter] mark thank you for coming. Im mark loiselle, at George Mason University and we author the intelligence policy and National Security that has put on a number of these wonderful programs in the last few years. We will continue to do so. I am very flattered by this turnout. For those of you who dont know jarden George Mason University has a schar School Policy government that provides academic programs in fairfax and arlington, virginia and we have a number of degree programs primarily taught in arlington and Public PolicyPublic Administration interNational Security studies which has been ranked number two by u. S. News and world report nationally that we are very proud of and i think the Michael Hayden sent her center for Security Policy studies a number of other entities at the school are a very important component of the recognition we have received for being leaders in the field of security studies. Again thank you for being here. I look forward to a great event i want to acknowledge the presence of the provost of our university. [applause] several members of our board of trustees also are here tonight. Thanks to them for attending this event as well. Most importantly i want to acknowledge the presence of the founder of the Michael Hayden center and his wife janine. General Michael Hayden and janine hayden. [applause] general hayden, we are really proud to have you in the schar school. Michael has been teaching for us for the past 10 years and we look forward to him coming back to the classroom and i think he is a few words that he would like to say. Hayden thank you again for coming. I think this is going to be a really interesting debut. Im looking forward to it. Thank you again. Thank you. [applause] so i just want to take another brief moment and acknowledge this gentleman has been through a lot in last year and this is one of his first times speaking publicly, since he suffered a stroke, so one more round of encouraging applause. [applause] i know we are running a little bit behind so i will shorten my comments much to the pleasure of my management at the schar school. First i want to welcome you all here. I also would like to welcome the audience that is watching right now on cspan, channel 2. We are speaking to quite a large audience and i think thats a testament to the value of the material that the schar school in the Hayden Center is bringing forward. Secondly for those of you who are social media savvy, we would love you to tweet along the event and putsomethings out there that reflect the comments of some of our speakers. If you look in your program hayden2020vision and then say whatever the heck you want to say about the event that would be great. Later on we are going to have a section of the audience q a encouraging you guys to ask questions. You probably noticed we have microphone stands, so when Margaret Brennan indicates its time to ask questions, line up at the microphone to be prepared to ask a question. We would love you to identify yourself and if you have an affiliation you are proud of, let us know what it is. We would love you to make your comments brief and ask a question. Dont make a speech. If you want to make a speech talk to us later. Lastly we are going to have a reception for all the audience members and give you a chance to talk. Those of you who arent rushing home to watch the world series game, but please exit the back doors for the reception and let our Panel Members and guests in the front row exit through the side door and i think it will make for a more pleasant experience for everybody. The Hayden Center, we have a mission to inform about intelligence. General hayden through his career i think was a little worried as to how intelligence is being portrayed across the nation often in a very negative light. The Hayden Center allows him and us to better inform the American People about the incredible value of the Intelligence Community provides the nation and i think to emphasize the men and women who work in the Intelligence Community are your neighbors and friends and your family. They are out there to do good for the country so we hope if you walk away with anything tonight youll walk away with that impression. This year were sponsoring a series we are calling 20 20 vision. General hayden and i were a bit concerned with the lack of focus on National Security issues in the campaign so far. If you are like me and im guessing most of you are like me because youre here and not watching the baseball game you have been watching the president ial debates and much of the conversation is steered away from the National Security issues. In my view a president can do the most good in the most harm in the National Security arena. Domestic issues, its a battle in congress but the president has a lot of authority in National Security and he can move very quickly in that arena. And so we thought we needed to do something about that and we decided to run a series events that we are calling 20 20 vision. The first of those we are having tonight is looking at intelligence and the u. S. President ial election. The conversation will be guided by Margaret Brennan the moderator of cbs news face the nation. She has been the moderator cents 2018. It is one of the longestrunning Television Shows in america. It goes back to 1954. Today one of the most highly rated shows on sunday morning. Before that she was cbs News White House state Department Correspondent and before that covered Global Financial markets on bloomberg and cnbc. We have a Powerhouse Panel of u. S. Intel leaders. Their experiences stretches from vietnam to the current day. I will let you read their bios in the program, but i frankly think most of them dont require a lot of introduction. Im not going to spend a lot of time on introductions right now. We haveention again john brennan, former director of cia, former assistant to the president for Homeland Security and counterterrorism and a longstanding 20 year career at the cia. John mclaughlin director central throughence, and he led some incredibly trying times of our nation. He is a legend in the analytic tradecraft. Michael morel, Deputy Director of the cia, serving twice as our acting director, and he also served under george w. Bush. The only person in america with the president on 9 11 as well as with the president the day we brought Osama Bin Laden to justice. Andrew mccabe, Deputy Director from 20162018. He served as the acting director in 2017 after james comey was fired. He has had a storied career in counterterrorism. Lead the fbi Security Branch and Washington Field office. Played a Critical Role investigating the Boston Marathon bombing, the attack in benghazi and the russian attack on our election in 2016. Please welcome our Panel Members and moderator to the stage and thank you. [applause] thank you all for coming out tonight. What an incredible lineup of panelists that we have here from the National Security community. We will be taking questions but im lucky that i get to lead them off tonight. And i want to dive right in because theres there is so much rich territory to mine here. When we look at the question of the Intelligence Community and how it impacts people with regard to Election Security, can you help us at the table john brennan with the day in august of 2016 when you went to susan susan rice, then National Security adviser and said, we have evidence that Vladimir Putin himself is directing election interference in this country. Thank you for the invitation. It is great to be here. In 2016 when i went to the white house i went to see the president and a few others to talk about what we had determined at that point in terms of the interference with the election. It was an effort to try to make sure that the president of the United States was aware of what it is that we know and what we assessed. And that the work that we needed to do, in order to try to get a better sense of what was going on. Making sure that the chief policymaker of this country had the information he needed to safeguard one of the foundations of our democracy. That is the right of all americans to choose their elected representatives. So it was a discussion i had with that small group. And then made some decisions about who else we needed to brief. To brief the gang of eight to make sure our congressional or leadership was aware as well. And how we are going to ensure that we would work with our partners within the Intelligence Community the ones that had the expertise and capabilities as well as the responsibilities such as fbi and nsa. , would need to work whose effort collaboratively really and do it in a matter it was going to be apolitical. In an effort to try and ensure that the election, that went out without a hitch. And largely, it did. It is quite evident now after the Mueller Report that the russians did engage in a systemic effort to try and influence the election. And it was directed by Vladimir Putin. I have learned a lot of things since i have left government. I think the impact of the russian attempts, the impact on the vote is unknowable. It was something that we did not mandate. Ive learned a lot about what the russians were doing in a digital environment as far as putting out these personas and trying to influence the perceptions of the candidates, the situation. Im sure personally that they changed the minds of at least one voter. Whether you change the mind of one voter or one million voters, i dont know. Based on what it is i have come to more fully appreciate as far as pushing out this content based on my background i think votes were changed how many and in which states . I dont know. Whether it made a difference as far as the outcome, i dont know. I do know the russians have engaged in this type of activity not just here but abroad. They would much prefer to shape the politics of other countries through this insidious manner as opposed to trying to use military pressure. Sometimes they opt for that in places like ukraine. If they can shape the outcome of these elections particularly in western countries, they have a toolkit of capabilities they have leveraged. In 2016 they didnt do some of the things we have seen them do in other places. I dont know whether or not that was the result of us confronting them. I confronted one of my russian counterparts in early august about it. Jim clapper and jeh johnson came out with a statement about it in october. President obama braced putin, so i dont know if that is confrontation we had with the russians dissuaded them from doing more things. People said that we did not try to stop the russians. We did. Maybe the things that we did had , maybe itance impacted the russians not to go to a greater extent than it did. Mike, i should also say we are lucky we worked together at cbs as well. Facebook said today it removed three russian backed influence networks on its site were aimed at african countries. The networks were linked to a name that you know well. It was the same Russian Oligarch linked to some of what john brennan was just recalling from 2016. Does the fact that they are continuing to use the same individual mean russia and its efforts are completely undeterred . First of all, it is great to be here. This is my fourth or fifth event. Everyone has been a pleasure and it is great to be here. I think it is fair to say the russians in general have not been deterred. Not only in africa that they are continuing to use social media to influence populations to react a certain way, to split them. To raise debates. They are still doing it here. They are doing it as we speak right now. They have not stopped. Not only have they not stopped but we know from public testimony by the director of National Intelligence that others have seen the bennetts and benefits of this joined them. I know how carefully analysts write, so i know that the others means something there there are other countries that he did not want to mention that are also doing this. I would be interested to know who they are. I think it is probably some of our allies. Not only have the russians not been deterred but because the russians have not been deterred it is spreading and becoming a larger problem. This is a new tool but it is a wellknown rival, enemy to the United States. Why has there not been more of an adaptation by the community to figure it out . I think people are working on how to battle it. What we dont know is the Intelligence Community cannot talk about is what they may or may not be doing offensively for that is the one part of Cyber Operations we dont talk about. But i am quite sure our community is not relaxed about this and is vigilant. The bigger problem is not what it can or cannot do, it is if the u. S. Government as a whole can coordinate in the absence of a cybersecurity coordinator in the white house whether the government can coordinate all of the tools to both detect and combat what the russians will attempt to do. While it is true as john said, we cannot determine at this point with confidence what effect they may have had. If you look at volume one of the Mueller Report, which is very interesting, it is a gold mine, and you look at the four states that were pivotal in the outcome of the election, take michigan. Mr. Trump won michigan by about 11,000 votes. You cannot be certain of whether or not that margin came from a russian influence. We know from the Mueller Report that manafort briefed an officer from russia on internal polling data on the swing states. There were similar margins in pennsylvania, minnesota, wisconsin on which manafort briefed the former russian Intelligence Officer. So it is not a leap to say that this could have had an impact. When you are looking at someone who came within the fbi and how to protect against the influence that was described here, the debate often focuses whether congress should pass laws to crack down on this . It doesnt seem to be going anywhere. There is not a lot of support for it. What can be done short of that legislatively to give the fbi more tools . When we talked to a lot of people from the obama administration, they share frustration that when it came to recognition of patterns and speaking to states in particular , there was a pushback against the federal government and how to protect against interference . Im not sure theres an easy answer to what tools or capability should the fbi have to do that work more efficiently or effectively. It is a bit beyond the scope of the bureau in that area. There is no question. It needs to be done. There is no question it should involve legislation. We did encounter that sort of pushback and resistance. But those are broad states rights issues that quite frankly it is an augment that the bureau is not going to be able to settle. We need a more consistent securityto election and that involves not just cybersecurity it in terms of all of the processes involved in signing up and registering voters. Maintaining the sanctity of that information, and then of course right through the electoral process. The fbi is wellplaced to respond to threats as they are perceived in cyberspace by our intel colleagues and here on the grounds as that information comes through. The kind of prophylactic measures that get the states on an even footing when it comes to the approach with Election Security and cybersecurity goes far beyond what the bureau is capable of doing. Did you want to bring in a microphone . Your microphone was cutting in and out. I want to add one point to what john and john said about whether the russian effort influenced the outcome of the election. I agree with him 100 . We will never know. In early 2017 i did a number of briefings on the hill about what russia did. I was often joined by somebody on the clinton campaign. They would offer very interesting anecdotes that suggested that this mattered. I will give you one. They saw in the final two weeks of the campaign, social media blasts questioning whether secretary clinton was healthy enough to be president in critical swing states. They would see the daily tracking polls move in response to some of these blasts. I sat there and listened and i said wow, we will never know. You cannot prove it did not happen either. I think the Senate IntelligenceCommittee Report in particular emphasized the focus of a lot of these russian bots. On the African American community in particular, and on other fellow republican