Begins with an intelligence update so it was almost like a ritual prayer. Mr. Clapper would intel be intoned the latest update on whatever heart problems were at the table that day. Its been my pleasure over my entire career to work with a talented members and in particular and the white house who worked with mr. Clapper directly. For legions of intelligence professionals noting the integrity and humanity with which he has led the Intelligence Community from and he truly personifies the leader. And so its a special honor to introduce you tonight. The other thing that shows the humility of that is i did a little bit of surveying some of his former teammates and they said a favorite saying of his is that their job was to be in the engine room show boring shoveling the cold so i am sure we will have more than coal from the conversation he offers us today, so it is my distinct honor to invite mr. James clapper to the podium. Thank you very much. [applause] thanks very much. Its great to be here and i think i should first pay tribute dr. Whole gate and is well the person known to many of you chris cogen. Chris and i worked together when chris served with great distinction as the chairman of whats called the National Intelligence council and if any of you are looking for role models for Public Service you only need look right here at laura and chris. What i thought i would do tonight is and i think ill try not to talk too long because what im really interested in is dialogue, questions and discussion. I thought id talk for about 20 minutes about some ruminations on professional intelligence. I do that by way of a commercial i am writing a book and reflecting on the 50 plus years or so i spent in professional intelligence. The first time in a long time i had time for contemplation and so what i thought id share were some of those ruminations with you and hopefully you were not is not interested would at least consider Public Service, security and more specifically intelligence. In doing so a couple of lessons i learned along the way and again i will just touch on some of these things and we can talk more about them in the q a period. My father was an Army Intelligence officer and he served in world war ii specifically signal intelligence and collecting communications and breaking codes and that sort of thing. He served during world war ii and during the korean war and coincidently quite by accident he and i served together in vietnam in 1965 and 66. So in some ways i probably inherited the intelligence gene from him. In fact the first time in my life i knew i was going to be an Intelligence Officer i was about 12 years old. It was 1953 and typically in military families moving from duty station to duty station the , you move a lot of the military come up parents would drop the kids at the grandparents and go onto on to the next place, find a place to live get the house set up in her treat the kids from the grandparents to stay out of the way. In the summer of 1963 we had just returned from japan. The northernmost island of japan and on her way to massachusetts. My parents dropped my sister and me off of my grandparents in philadelphia and of course grandkids love, and im going to miss them because i have four kids grandkids might spoil them. Back in the day in 1953 television was still a novelty, not like it is now. Anyway one of my favorite shows on friday night was the schlitz beer mystery hour and they used to show these old charlie chan movies back in the 30s. One night, the first friday that i was there as a matter fact i decided that 12 30 i was going to serve and for all of you in this room in those days when you served you actually have to go to the tv and turn the dial. I know thats a complete foreign concept thats the way it works. You only had like 13 channels. Thats all. Black and white. Television was in a vacuum tube, nothing like you have the flatscreen. Anyway im turning the dial between channel 4 and five and happened between those two channels i heard talking. Thats odd so i help the tv selector right there halfway between channel 4 and five and i held it for about 15 minutes and i figured out it was the Philadelphia Police department dispatcher. [laughter] and it was really interesting to me because there was all kinds of mayhem going on in the city of philadelphia, you know. It was really interesting so after a while it got tiring holding that tv knob so i switched it to make sure i could get it back and then i ran out in the kitchen and got some toothpicks and i stuck them in the selector dial so would stay in that one position. So i guess i hacked my grandparents blackandwhite tv set. So anyway i started listening and i stayed up until 2 30 or 3 00 in the morning and the next night he did the same thing that i got a map of the city of philadelphia, so i started plotting police calls, where they would dispatch cruisers in this sort of thing. And it didnt take too long. Im doing this night after night bear in mind. I can figure out where the high crime areas were in philadelphia then police used 10 codes like 104 in 106 may have a certain meaning. I got a bunch of 3x5 cards and i started writing these down and when i started figuring them out because you figure out the context they compromise them and say what they really were. Then i figured out they had call sign allocation system where Police Cruisers in each district would have a unique set of call signs. They would call the cruiser, whoever was riding in it and i also found out that the Police Officers and lieutenant were above their personal calls. I had these card files and pretty soon by the way they dispatch the Police Cruisers i figured out what the Police District boundaries were in the city of philadelphia. After three weeks of this i have a good idea of how the Philadelphia Police department worked. I didnt really know what i was doing. It seemed like a cool thing to do. Id add who spent his life in the signal intelligence business, he and my mom came back to pick up my sister and my dad said hey would it be been doing . I whipped out my math with the Police District honored in the high crime areas and i picked out i guess you would call it meditated today but 3x5 cards and 65 years ago i still remember the expression on my dads face. My god i have raised my own replacement. [laughter] i told that story unfortunately for humor but also to make a serious point because it does illustrate even though i didnt know what i was doing, it does illustrate the work and intelligence where you are figuring out the problem, where you dont know all the facts. You have to draw an emphasis and you have to corroborate your hypothesis, test your theory and at some point youll come up with thats a fact i can go with. Thats what i did. But anyway thats when i knew i was going to be in intelligence. Anyway fastforward a list dashed enlisted in the marine corps in 1961 and i went to the university of maryland and finished up there in 1963 and commissioned Second Lieutenant in the air force predicted 32 years in the air force, we moved 23 times in those 33 years. I was director of dia for four years and i retired in 1995 that i was out of the government for six years but still working for the government. It did Khobar Towers investigation in 1996 and we can talk about that if you want. The Gilmore Commission headed by former governor jim gilmore of virginia on weapons of mass destruction, served on the Nsa National SecurityAdministration Advisory board and i taught intelligence. Came back in 2001 specifically two days after 9 11 as director but was then called the National Mapping agency which is now director of the National Geospatial intelligence agency. I did that are almost five years i was out for a couple of months and bob gaetz who was then secretary of defense and the director of Central Intelligence when i was director asked me to come back and be the undersecretary of defense for intelligence which oversees all of the intelligence and dod. The deal was only 19 months and then he got held over and asked me to stay on some 19 months turned in a three and a half years and then i thought it was done. I was drag and one more time into serving as the ni and i did that for six and a half years. I stopped on january 20 and i can tell you its a great time to be a former. [laughter] i went to vietnam and that was my war. It did two tours there. 65 and 66. I dont know how many of you may have seen at least some of the series i think its on pbs by ken burns on vietnam. It is very well done and having lived through that era, both the war itself in the aftermath of that which was a very dramatic time for this country, so i really resonate with that series because i think it captured not only the facts but the atmosphere of it as well. For me personally i was absolutely the worst year of my life both personally and professionally. I hated the war. I became very disillusioned about it. Very brief for time general westmoreland who was the commander there and then i really got disillusioned. I was all ready to get out of the air force as soon as i could after my tour was up. For some reason somebody plucks me out of anonymity and mentored me. A couple of general officers that picked me out of the crowd for some reason and that had a huge, huge impact on my life and my career. I just mention that because it emphasizes the importance of mentoring. You say i dont have anybody to mentor. I would commend to you what i always tell young people at our agency that if you see somebody that you think with the a rule model for you, ask them to mentor you. Dont wait to be asked and no thinking senior, i dont compare compare i dont care what capacity will turn you down. They will be honored that you would ask them thats a way to help yourself to advance your career wherever you go. I mention that very briefly because it had a huge impact on me. Then i was back actually in texas for a while. I volunteered to go back for second tour which in contrast to the first one was very, very rewarding. Was flying Reconnaissance Missions on the backend of some old rickety c47s from world war ii and commanded a cigie at attachment and flew 73 combat support missions my second tour. It was a great tour. So, after my second tour which ended in june of 1971 i was by the same, another mentor who planted me in the National Security of office of maryland. It is pointed as a young captain and i had eight years of service i was working direct we for it turned out to be two and threestar officers, two and threestar directors. They are both dead now so i can talk about them. I bring this up because the contrasting styles and their leadership. I served the last year working for ben vice admiral noel kyler. He went on to get his fourth star and be the pacific Combatant Commander and he was followed by air force threestar general. He was only there a year and then he got his fourth star and went on to another summit with the air force. I bring this up to mention the two contrasting leadership styles. I recount this in the book because admiral garland was a very demanding boss, very smart and extremely hard on people. What i watched happen from my vantage as a military assistant was i kept his calendar in tracked his papers and that sort of thing so i have a lot of opportunity to observe you what i noticed is that that style of leadership is effective if you are a very dictatorial demanding and harsh with people, it is effective. P. Wu will do exact with a minimum and nothing else and dont ever depend i watch this too. People are afraid to convey bad news to the director because they didnt want to, they were afraid of incurring his wrath and he would fire people on the spot. So then the next director came in. General phillips came in and he was the exact opposite, the antithesis. 180 degrees out, very quiet, very introverted and very courteous with everyone, very gracious and the impact was amazing, to see the difference in the way people reacted to that. People would bring ideas to him and people were not afraid to tell him this is screwed up and you need to do something about it. Now both styles of leadership are effective. They both work so fastforward 20 years. Now i am a threestar general and i am now a director with the Defense Intelligence agency. What i tried to do was remember that experience, both positive and negative and yeah there are times when you do have to be tough with people but by and large what i found in my 50 plus years in the intel business is people want to do the right thing. They want to do the mission and they want to do a well and they want to excel at it and create an environment where that can happen. Leadership and intelligence ultimately panel to mentally i guess is getting others to use their intellect to thats one of the great things from a diversity standpoint about the intelligence. Its all about your brain. It doesnt matter what your ethnic group is, your gender, or preference, none of that matters. Its your mind is what counts in the Intelligence Community. And just thing work that you have the opportunity to engage in. When i consider that a leadership laboratory, it it will be in the book. But i thought i would mention it because in the context of leadership. But looking back the one factor that has changed the Intelligence Community, the thing that is change the Intelligence Committee more than anything else is technology. Its not, when we had traumas like 9 11, guess that had an impact. Organizations which i think are highly overrated, yeah but what is really historic weight changed the business of intelligence is technology. I say that in the context of adversary technology. What are the adversaries doing and our own to cope with it . Just fastforward again on the most recent period the six knackers are spent as director of National Intelligence. My focus was on integration of the community and that was the central message from the 9 11 commission which was what chris served on. It was convened to examine what happened and what went wrong in the 9 11 attacks. One of the major recommendations that came out of the commission was their view that the nation needed a director of National Intelligence. First date first they called it the National Intelligence director. Acronyms arent very appealing. Anyway the notion was to have someone as a old time responsibility to champion integration across the community. You do u. S. Intelligence community is the premier capability on the planet. Its huge in total. 70 billion plus this year, 76 billion i think it is if you count dod and the National Intelligence. That is larger than all three cabinet departments as programmatic its huge so its a major enterprise. 16 components, six agencies and the fbi which is very much a part of the u. S. Intelligence community. So how to integrate that, how to draw on the strengths, the complementary strengths of each of the agencies so thats what i have worked on in the six and a half years i was there. Its a neverending journey. If you are not done with integrating by the close of business friday. I think the high, the low and most interesting and we can talk about it during the q a, the high for me was being present in the white house situation in a. To take down osama bin laden. It was an amazing event. Below i think has to be and a lot of people dont agree with me about this is Edward Snowden and the damage that he continues to have caused. We talk about that as well. I understand the issues with domestic surveillance and a thats all he had exposed i could probably be a lot more forgiving but he exposed so much else and did so much damage that had absolutely nothing to do with domestic surveillance. The most interesting experience for me i think was my trip to north vietnam, excuse me freudian slip, north korea in november of 2014. I was on a mission to bring out two of our citizens who had been imprisoned in hard labor. Was it fascinating experience particularly for me since i had served previously in korea and i became an amateur student after that. It was on my professional bucket list someday to go to north korea. Finally let you conclude these remarks with some philosophical observations i will call them and maybe it sounds a little pretentious. First of all why do we do intelligence . Why does any nationstate to intelligence . The simple answer is to reduce uncertainty, reduce uncertainty for the policymaker whether the policymakers sitting in the oval office or an oval foxhole. This make any difference. What you are trying to do is to reduce uncertainty and reduce the risk. Never eliminated based on intelligence. You can certainly reduce it. That was lauras metaphor. I used to use this a lot on the hill. When members would like to eat me up about policy they didnt like in the administration. I used this metaphor on more than one occasion. Senator i am just down in engine room. People on the bridge get to drive the ship and decide how fast it goes and they arrange all the chairs on the decks and what direction the ship goes in. I dont do anything. Im just in the engine room shoveling coal. Rent any way reduce uncertainty. Why is it a great profession . I guess from the early philadelphia benyette with my grandparents i found it always interesting and an intellectual challenge. Not only for the work, not only for what is the adversary doing and trying to figure out the adversary capabilities and intent which is always very hard i never got bored with it. Thats why i stuck with it. As i mentioned briefly i was out of the government for six years. The money was great but i never got the psychic income i got from Public Service so when im asked to come back in 2001 i jumped on it. Although my wife was not too pleased at the time. Another issue that comes up is intelligence e