The good evening, everybody. Welcome to the center at the school of law. Im your moderator for this evening. Im a journalist at the atlantic. Im a staff writer in the ideas section. The Brennan Center is a nonprofit sorry, nonpartisan Law Policy Institute tha institute o reform and revitalize when necessary to defend the systems of democracy and justice. You can keep up with their work online or you can follow them on facebook and listen to their podcast on the website or wherever you get your podcast. You should still listen to the Brennan Center podcast. So, tonight we are hosting a fellow with the Liberty NationalSecurity Program where he focuses on Law Enforcement and intelligence oversight reform. He used to work as a policy council for National Security and privacy and before that he served 16 years as an fbi special agent specializing in domestic terrorism and covert operations int and today we are discussing his book thinking like a terrorist, sorry, discussing his second book first is thinking like a terrorist which you should also agree that we arread that we are new book today disrupt, discredit and divide. In the book he outlines how the fbi has transformed itself for being famous for prosecuting organized crime to becoming a secretive agency. [applause] we are going to start with a question some people here may know the answer to that everybody is probably curious about which is why did you go from being an fbi agent to being a staff attorney at the aclu . Thats just what everybody does at the fbi. I had a friend from college who knew me when i was in college and only talked about was wanting to join the fbi into being an fbi agent and we met up after i started working at the aclu is that i never could have pictured the working of the aclu. I said i never could have pictured that the u. S. Government would have a torture policy. I dont think ive changed that much. I think the government has changed around me. I stole a lot o saw a lot of tht are happening within the fbi, within the Justice Department were putting at risk for things that i joined the fbi to protect and the aclu is doing great work thathen to address that and so t seemed like a great place for me to go and luckily they let me come. Can you tell us about the Political Climate when you joined the fbi and how it was different when you left . I joined straight out of law school in 1988 and it was when there was a big hiring phase. Its a small agency only 12,000 fbi agents around the country and around the world now so growing up wanting to be an fbi agent the issue was always are they going to be hiring and there was this period of time savings and loans had been deregulated for the people who own the savings and loans for investigating and all kind of crazy get rich quick schemes and back then the Justice Department used to prosecute people who treated publicly insured money that way so there was a huge hiring and thats how i got hired straight out of high school. School. And for the impact they have on our society. Go back to the origins of the fbi can you talk about that original mission was that necessary . The fbi was created through executive fiat the attorney general at the time Charles Bonaparte wanted the just a part Justice Department to have its own investigators to work cases and went to congress to seek the authority to get these investigators in Congress Said no for go they were afraid of having a federal Police Agencies spying on average citizens so they rejected the proposal echo when congress adjourned prose that roosevelt gave the attorney general the authority to just hire the agents. And by the Time Congress came back the agents were already hired and there was a story in the newspaper about the leaked documents of congressional corruption and he said is it they are trying to protect themselves and change that and a drastic way so with the attorney generals promise he would keep this agency in check they let it go forward. An early lesson how fbi manipulates washington politics. So with the radicalization and violence so what do you mean . When Teddy Roosevelt started the fbi his argument was this was an agency to hold the most powerful to account businesses people corrupt officials but very quickly after that from world war i they wanted to be in espionage activities to counter the threat from german spies and that grant of authority open the door to spying on people when they were no longer concerned with who was doing harm but who was thinking the wrong thoughts and the centers of those thoughts centered around universities journalists people who are in the business of spreading ideas rather than committing crimes and they would label that radicals because they would all seek radical change with the federal or the government establishment and that concept of targeting radicals you have to have other means that appeals to a Young J Edgar hoover and that concept of radicalization to engage in violence that are the problem that might lead to violence is what this radicalization concept was. And after the palmer raids in that public outrage there was a reestablishing the fbi as a Law Enforcement the attorney general said no we will have the Law Enforcement mission that will prevent political spying and that only lasted until world war ii when then again the National Security threats led to an expansion and again they revive the radicalization concept mostly after the war when hoover saw communist as a problem and there were not a lot of cumin islam dash communists so he wanted to expand that to socialist sometimes they say things that sounds like a socialist than that expands to the antiwar left so we might as well have a program and then off from the concept of radicalization to spread ideas rather than the spread of violence. Talk about how the approach to radicalization has reproduced itself because im sure that all sounds familiar to the audience. When i started to work undercover the advice was to wear a tshirt not my suit and ties i was desperate for some kind of information of how to work with these groups and look to academic works and there were two schools of research one that argue terrorism was the product of a diseased mind that it was a mental defect and mostly psychologist and psychiatrist for this that could be useful but also to identify the people with the defect and to isolate them from the community and then the other school was political scientist that argued terrorism is just a label we put on certain kinds of political violence. Like you cannot understand that without understanding in that situation and in context so it was silly to try to study terrorism in and of itself. By the nineties and i was working undercover there was enough psychological studies they realized there was no defect that they were engaged in horrific activities to be sure but with a rational basis so after 9 11 they could not bring up that story so radicalization proved elusive because it imagines a mental defect but its outside the scope of social science so there is no diagnosis available we just know that when we see it and typically looking at the radicalization model the government uses they identify First Amendment protected activities police, associations and political activity are all indicators of the dangerousness down the radicalization pathway. It is a way they couldnt wait until somebody blew something up and the radicalization model provided a blueprint so according to the fbi with the radicalization document with the conversion to g hot it suggested converting to islam is the first step on this pathway and then adopting joining the muslim social group or getting involved in political activity are all indicators of increasing dangers so it wasnt that surprising we saw so much surveillance with muslim communities for no particular reason other than they were Muslim American communities. I hope nobody here is engage in any political activity. In there already in the university of the notes of radicalization. To strike. So the fbi appears to be immune to traditional efforts of oversight. Can you explain what you mean . s. The fbi poses a difficult problem for the overseers because it is an essential agency in many ways there are real criminals out there who would prey upon those if they could if they are too old to address that problem and those that can work political corruption because that something that harms our confidence in government so we have to give this agency those type of tools because they can be targeted against the overseers themselves its risky to push too hard against the fbi and i also want to make sure the fbi is effective for whatever jurisdiction they come from so without this history of abuse so when a problem arises its much easier to give them authority and room to do work secretly rather than how 9 11 was how dysfunctional this agency was we should rip the lid off to see whats wrong with it. So it does present a problem in the best case scenario. But also significantly fbi officials are willing to Tell Congress things that sound nice but are not true but how they use their own authorities and when a secret agency cannot lead the overseers its hard for them to understand whats real and a perfect example one of the first things that i worked on at the aclu was freedom of information act request by a number of political organizations that were stair one spied on by the Terrorism Task force so the aclu helped them do a nationwide privacy act request sure enough they were engaged in spying in pennsylvania at the center for peace and justice. When that came out that this agency that was wellrespected was being spied on congress wanted to know more the fbi told congress this was part of a different investigation a muslim terrorist happen to be attending this rally in the surveillance was based on this other investigation we might actually spying and that turned out to be entirely false. So that makes it very difficult in addition to the expansive powers we give them a much bigger cloak of secrecy so that its easy to manipulate for what comes out to the publics attention doesnt and that makes it hard for members of congress who have an interest in reform to generate the support that is necessary to make it happen because they cant make the story understandable to the public. You describe the fbi as a Lawless Agency so what precisely do you mean by lawless technically it is lawless. When it was created it didnt have a charter and congress didnt say this is what it should do. It had always been operated through executive fiat the president told the fbi what to do and they did it. There is limitations on the fbi and they did not exist until after J Edgar Hoover died when the Church Committee did the only comprehensive examination of our intelligence agencies to find widespread abuse, the effort was for congress to write a charter to limit the fbi powers instead the attorney general step forward to say i will issue guidelines and those reforms were not to be an indication of illegal activities so to restore its function as a Law Enforcement agency that because the attorney general guidelines every attorney general can modify them and most do and incrementally they move stronger or less and then John Ashcroft significantly loosened the guidelines and then again they were extensively rewritten to the point now under the fbi guidelines they conducted an Investigation Called the assessment with no factual basis to believe anybody has committed a crime and these can be very intrusive with subpoenas for telephone records subscriber information the recruitment and tasking to recruit somebody to infiltrate their Group Without any basis to believe anybody has done anything wrong thats what i mean by lawless they are not bound by the law. Fbi leadership has invoked diversity but if you look at statistics they seem to be struggling more with recruiting more than in the past. Why is that quex. When i joined the fbi in 1988 almost 20 years after J Edgar Hoover died in every director was speaking to the need to diversify the agency and every year it was getting better. That never approached the rest of america you can see improvement. It was not easy when i was a young agent there was a classaction suit by women agents and latino agents and black agents. So there were discrimination problems that existed inside the agency but you can see there was some progress being made and the lawsuits were forcing even more progress but after 9 11 we sought retrenchment i personally believe that is the shift to the National Security forecasts when you are away from Law Enforcement that you cant prove people are breaking the law instead looking at National Security threats its easy as human nature if people have a different Life Experience to be more dangerous than the risks of the agency is overwhelmingly white is easy for normal security protocol as applied to an applicant to look more critically at somebody that doesnt look like the fbi and i go through a number of case studies in the book of agents who came under suspicion and when there are small problems those are magnified and its easier the disrupt in the title is based on the concept the fbi calls the disruption strategy where they feel even if you cant prove somebody is committing a crime you have the authority to disrupt their activities even though the fbi cannot prove somebody is a spy the easiest way to disrupt them is get the amount that way if they are a spy and if they arent tough luck. You guide into a little bad that just now but how is a lack of diversity affect the way it approaches its mission quex. Any Law Enforcement agency not be representative of the community of polices creates a problem and the knowledge gap its easy to look suspiciously at somebody that has normal behavior in the community but then they can do real damages so having that Diverse Workforce is essential but more so with what we have seen with the case studies i talk about in the book involve activities that start off with a justifiable purpose but long beyond when it is appropriate that this is an abusive investigation and it takes somebody in the agency to have robust guidelines to point to a rule to say you cant do this but to have the courage to stand up to say i know this community and what is going on. And those that make us that stand to the detriment of their own careers. Why it is relevant to the case you are making but how those loopholes swallow the rules quex. Because of a lot of good work from the 19 nineties there was a lot of research about rich racial profiling that it was the ineffective technique to put aside that discrimination involved in the negative impact on the communities it was an effective Law Enforcement and they did a good job of educating Law Enforcement about that i was proud to be there with the vanguard of that injunction but it became clear that we needed to have strong federal guidelines so John Ashcroft and president bush said they were interested to put this together and eventually did accept 9 11 intervened so there is a big cut out for National Security border integrity cases so basically the message is sent to Law Enforcement this is a bad technique it doesnt work it alienates communities but we will keep it for investigations somewhat Law Enforcement learned from that i hear what you are saying it is Political Correctness you are telling us its very effective because you use in the most important investigations so i think it was the loophole that swallow the rule and in 2014 they were modified again and in the meantime the fbi had this loophole implemented a racial Mapping Program across the United States it was using census data to map all americas communities by race and ethnicity to track ethnic behaviors versus the aclu we try to get them but the courts would not let us have them and ethnic facilities but obviously racial profiling they were not trying the one drawing the maps because of pretty pictures because they would treat people differently from on the other side of the line and when the Obama Administration had those guidelines they had these Mapping Programs by sending the exact same wrong message. Ethnic activities will stick with me for a while. You right there are systemic problems left unchecked make the bureau threat to the democracy is intended to serve. Thats a heavy statement can you elaborate . First and foremost we have to have confidence there is a rule of law that applies to everyone equally that is in society. When the law is not applied equally i joined during the savings and loan crisis when they were held to account to where very few were held for when you see the fbi raising targeting groups but labeling that terrorism is the number one domestic terrorist threat although not a single homicide related to Environmental Activism it became clear so that kind of behavior undermines the rule of law and that confidence while at the same time talk about the fbi not being completely honest with co