Both republicans and democrats Work Together on intelligence issues. Held by the center for a new american security, this is an hour. I would like to welcome all of you today. Thank you to all of us for joining us here. We will enjoy talking and watching you eat. We have a great panel for this topic, fostering bipartisanship and intelligence oversight. Carrie cordero, senior fellow at the center for National American security, and a former National Securities lawyer with the doj and dni from 2000 to 2010. So, the bush and all, first year of obama administration. And then, really, the sort of poster children are poster lawmakers for bipartisanship on an Intelligence Committee, congressman dutch roethlisberger from maryland, whose district includes the National Security agency. And former congressman and former chairman of the house Intelligence Committee, mike rogers. A lot of you probably know mike. And dutch. Mike and dutch served on the committee as chairman and ranking from 20112015. And mike left in 2016. So, this is just a very timely topic, at such a remarkable moment, marked by intense partisanship, including interNational Security, which is an area that has conditionally been in purposely , impervious to party affiliation. And the bipartisanship, we know is not necessarily always mean. Everyone is going to agree and we are going to have come by our and agree all the time. But there are good reasons why there, lay intelligence oversight ought to be free from partisan politics. So, today in our discussion, we want to get what bipartisanship is, how you do it, and why it is so important. I want to start by asking you, mike, and dutch, the talk about , the start of your partnership in 2011, and one of the first things you guys got done, i still remember it, was, you got the first intelligence authorization passed in 2011 after a string of dryers. Five years without an intel authorization. How did you do it . Why was it so important for you to do. Talk a little bit about that first year, and how you set up your partnership. Right . First of all, dutch and i have gotten to know each other on the intel committee, and we realized we had some kind of synergies on some of the Security Issues we were looking at. Broader than the over political discussions of the day. So, when he was named Ranking Member and i was named chairman, we decided we were not can have, we were going to be partners, versus this chairman versus vice chairman. We have found a more powerful arrangement if we could do this together. Our goal was to never issue a subpoena of the committee. If we cannot get get them to cooperate god we would argue that that was on us. Not that we would not have use a subpoena. But our goal is not to do it. We sat down and said, duchess favorite story coming with the prosecutor and i was the fbi agent. We ought to be able to figure this out. The prosecutor must muscles into the prosecutor even for the minority. That was the first negotiation ever had. We decided we were going to do this very differently. One of the first things we did was make the sass brief together on budget issues. That had not been done, certainly in my time in the committee. I dont think it was done on your see the. We wanted to send a very clear message, we were serious. We were gonna do this together. Were going to try to remove all of the partisan amendments, the messaging amendments that happen in any bill at any time. We took kind of a hard stand of that saying if it was a democrat amendment messaging amendment, that wasnt oriented, dutch was going to approve a post it in the committee and same on the republican side. The first go around, people touched all of those things. The think its a normal way of doing business. And held together. Thats why i think we were successful getting that first bill agreed to and attached. A lot of it has to do with the relationships and trust. As mike said, he was fbi, i was a former investigator prosecutor. And when you had shots before had, it is and came to do what was right, pursuant to the law. The hardest problem we had was, for a staff, for so many years, it was so partisan, and they would not talk, they would fight each other. There was no relationships at all. I think the hardest part for my kid i was to get the staff to enter them around. I literally had to threaten some of them that i would fire them if they did not cooperate and work with the other side. But once we got the first bill done, basically, then it started to change. And i think both sides, we realize that is usa first. The Intelligence Committee, hold them accountable. To make sure they had the resources to do the topic and once the Intelligence Committee started to see that we were working together, and working with them, we did oversee them, and believe me, we hold them accountable. Was not like hey, buddy. Were going to give you what you want. But then they started to cooperate. Because the intelligence communities, when they trust you, they will open up. And that allows you to do better as far as oversight. Unfortunately, thats not what is happened in the past. And unfortunately, it really is not happening now. There is i heard about the moment when you actually did get that first. Tell us about that. Headed you will react . Think about it. We had not had a bill for five years. There are some depressing moments as members of the committee not being able to get some things done and not doing proper oversight in the past of intelligence operations. So, we finally, we spent a good part of our summer coming in and our staffs working together trying to get an agreement on this budget. And as you said, it does not mean we did not have disagreements about the priorities are spending or whatever. We had all of that. But, we negotiated our way through it. We came to conclusions, we agreed on where we should be. Again is just that, we always had a the bottom line here is the United States first. End of story. So we ought to be able to get that. We did. So, we said thats it. It is finally an agreement. It was a long negotiation up front. We reached across the in the basement of the capitol building. We were downstairs in the skiff. Shook hands, and the building started shaking. I am not kidding. We thought, oh my god, what have we done . What have we done . It was the earthquake. Remember the earthquake . The earthquake on the day we shook hands. So, we all had to get evacuated of the building and thought, i think we are in some trouble, dutch. Thats what i think. Its a true story. We use that is our example of how you can change the center town and how you can actually get some things done on the inside. We dont have time for a lot of war stories, mike and i traveled all over the world, iraq, afghanistan, yemen, afghanistan. Not bermuda. By going to the frontline, too. You can see what was happening. And the people that we oversaw appreciated it. And it also helped mike and i learned so much more. What to do. I also want to give credit to my chief of staff who was helen marino and your chief of staff, mike allen. And those two really came together, which is important, because they run the staff. And i think, once we got together, it just worked very well. Whatever issues we dealt with, whether it was cyber, terrorism, russia china, north korea, iran, all of these issues. One of the benefits to that, if i may, i think it is so important. In congress, once we established that we were for real, we were going to hold them accountable where they made mistakes. But we were also going to support them. We felt that the job of the committee is not just a beat on you, it is to give you the tools and support and policies you need to be successful. They would call us with problems. And we had never seen that before. The agencies would call up and say, before you find out about this, because we always went. We want to come down and brief you on something that cut off the tracks. And we felt that that was a Golden Moment for us, because now, they were bringing us the problems of which we were going to do oversight. Okay you did not have to run to the microphones and say oh, my god. How could this happen . They acknowledged that we were trying to do this in an earnest way. They came to us with problems that would have taken us years to figure out before. And we were able to get it mitigated, get it back on track. Hold people accountable when necessary. We did that all within the confines of the committee. Like i said, we did not run out, no offense, we did not call the washington post. Donna. They tried, but we didnt. To me, that is how you know you are functioning as a proper Oversight Committee on sensitive issues. You have to give credit to pelosi and weiner. Because, i didnt know i was going i wanted the job i didnt know i was going to get it. Mike was the same way. Once we got out of committee, they allowed us to do it our way and what we needed to do. And on numerous occasions, pelosi voted against some of the legislation we put forward. But she never interfered. And the same with weiner. Except a couple of times when it was later on we wont get into that. Try to interfere. So, lets step back a little and take a look back at the last , i dont know, 18 years since 9 11 and you having been inside the Intelligence Community and being part of the overseeing. Do you think that that the state of, how would you characterize the state of intelligence oversight . Over the last 18 years . And now, is it that today . Inherently more political . And susceptible to being politicized . Or is it just that we, you, are noticing it more because the amplifying effect of social media . Particularly the personalities we have. What you think . The committees themselves are created, the Senate House Committee and senate, the house committees were created out of big political issues. And abuses that took place in the Intelligence Committee in the 60s and 70s. So, in one sense, controversy and sensitive issues and politically charged issues have been part of the reason, part of the committees work in part of the reason the committee were created even to begin with. I do think that the partisanship and the effectiveness of the committees has ebbed and flowed over those years. And, a lot of that has had to do, and it has been different on the two different committees, the ci versus a house Intelligence Committee. And it has depended a lot on the leadership. You know, when you talk to folks who, i was working on those issues roughly from 2000 2010 during a lot of counterterrorism heightened activity, obviously. And when former staffers and former members of the community, when we talk about the intelligence communities, the leadership tenure of congressman lethas burger and congressman rogers, everyone recognizes that was really a movement and bipartisanship. And, what i have done, one of the reasons that we are having this conversation is that in my work at cna ask, we have launched a project on intelligence oversight. So, we are doing a series of roundtables and papers that focus on the importance on the value of intelligence oversight. One of the issues that has come up is that, and i think you guys just described it a little bit, bipartisan intelligence oversight is actually more effect. So one of the challenges is articulating, you know, why, if we want to say that these committees should do their work in a bipartisan way, why does it matter more than any other committees in congress . Part of the reason that it matters is because the work is conducted mostly behind closed doors. Because it is regarding classified information. And so, less is apparent, members of congress cant go back to the district and talk about everything that they are doing. On the committee. You could talk about budget issues, you can talk about bills that you passed and that you are working on, but a lot of really in the weeds oversight, you cant talk about. Sometimes it is hard to articulate the value of why it matters. That this particular work is so important that it be done in a bipartisan way. I think, you know, part of what has already been articulated here is that the value is that it is more effective. The Intelligence Community responds more willingly. With more trust when they know that the leadership is doing its work in a serious, substantive way. And not based on partisan interests. Do you know of any where the lack of bipartisanship resulted in less responsive, cooperative, intelligence communities . Do you know, karen . Specific examples . I think what we have seen, you mentioned, has mentioned, subpoenas, and i think in the current example, what we are seeing is, what we have seen in the last two years, a big difference between the way that the senate Intelligence Committee has conducted its work, so they have a big investigation that they have been conducting for some time into russian interference. And the leadership of that committee has really gone out of the way to demonstrate that they are trying to do it in a bipartisan way. I suspect there was a lot going on behind the scenes. That maybe it isnt quite as copacetic all the time. But they are trying to publicly show that they are doing so in a unified way. We have seen a lot more voluntary than the volatility, unfortunately on the side. We dont always know the back andforth that is going on with the community. The sense that i have in talking to folks in and sort of watching the public statements that members feel compelled to make, and the public declassification of information, that to me demonstrates a breakdown in the process of going on behind the scenes. I would like to just drill down a little into the nuts and bolts of how you get the committee, your own stuff to work in a bipartisan manner, and the media work with your colleagues on the senate side to do things in a bipartisan way. Can you talk a little bit about that, mike and dutch, is it important to have your respective staff go on oversight chips together . Maybe do joint projects together . What did you do to really foster that bipartisanship . I would argue, the first most important thing we did, is when we got into the budget cycle, remember, both teams had a set of staff. So, they would put their budget priorities, and then within themselves, workup of budget. Before we got there lay that out. Our staff would do the same thing and lay that out. And then we would kind of had this public debate. This public insight committee, unless do this. We argue that that was a complete waste of time. We were going to make them Work Together in brief the budget at the same time. That sounds easy. That sounds like, that should be a nobrainer. Why would you not to that . This was like moving mount rushmore. Was unbelievable difficult. Because they had never done it in the past. So, they were arguing, no, no. Somebody is moving my cheese. And i dont want my cheese moved. So, we just said, good, we will take away your cheese. And the first couple once were a little rough. We had a few fits and starts. And a few complaints. They would walk in at night, oh, i cannot work with x or y because of x or y. But once i think again, found that dutch and i was serious about this. We were to all the issues. We never, we didnt get upset about anything evers budget year. Would just i write. We can work it out. That to me was the most important statement that we made. And then we did do things like when we travel, we tried always travel together as chairman and vice chairman, only because we felt it sent a very strong message. Not only to our staff, but to the community which we were visiting other places we were visiting. So we did things like that. And they rotated the staff that would go with us to make sure everybody was included in those Oversight Missions that we conducted. I have to say to me, the first and most important thing was that having staff briefed together. I think it is completely change the complexity. For a while they would go out on social events all around. And didnt invite us. We took that a little personal. We were like wait a minute, but we were a part of this. But that was a good scientist. They were socializing together. They were working together, they were coming up with solutions together. I thought it was a really proud moment for dutch and i. Without light proud fathers. Tickets about relationships and trust. The first thing mike and i had have that relationship. Then, we had to let our staff to that. And if you look at how important that committee is, and how dangerous the world is, we are talking about space. Were talking about nuclear weapons. Russia and china and the United States into a nuclear war, the earth is over as we know it. We have the capacity to maybe stop other people. But you look at hypersonic weapons, which are really serious. And, we need to focus on that and make sure we can protect our aircraft carriers. Then you get into the cyber deal. And i didnt do a lot of the cyber because i represent an essay. The Cyber Threats are really serious. And they are getting worse every day. Did not even, the states, like the russians and chinese and people like that. You have some people in the United States at a very smart. And they could do several things. In this country, we have already had one deceptive attack at sony. There is the ability for a lot of people to have destructive attacks. We start getting into electric cars and all new issues. We are going to be more exposed. So, mike and i try to have legislation that would kind of work through all of the issues. And on my side, i had the far left who are very concerned about privacy. And what i tried to do, and i will tell you today, ill take busloads of freshmen of nsa and let them see what is going on. And the checks and balances that have been there for the last 1520 years. And once they go there, they look at things a little bit differently. If you look at what the nsa does, im not proessay, i represent the. But they do more to help. Our military, our other intelligence groups, to get information. What people dont realize, nsa does not have jurisdiction in the United States. They have issues in the United States, to give it over to the fbi. Sometimes Homeland Se