Leaders such as Angela Merkel and french president francois hollande. Im pleased to have david cohan at the first time at the table. Its said you know as much about sanctions as anybody in the obama administration. Give me the sense of what you have learned about how to make them work. How effective they are, what you have to have. Once you have applied them and taken them off, is it difficult to put them back on . David sanctions can be enormously effective if we have a couple of key elements. One is a linkage between what the sanctions are trying to achieve and overall u. S. Government policy. We bring to bear all of what the u. S. Government is trying to do to affect a policy objective. The second is that we have as much international buyin and cooperation as possible. Our sanctions are much more effective when we have our partners around the world working with us. The third key element is a very clear objective. I think the sanctions against iran are a good example of that, where we had all the elements of the u. S. Government working together. We had international buyin. The objective was to bring iran to the negotiating table to negotiate seriously about their Nuclear Program. It was a clear objective we were trying to achieve. Charlie what sanctions remain . David with respect to their Nuclear Program by and large, have been relieved. Charlie how much money did that drain . There is some debate. David one of the misperceptions is iran got access to new money as a result of sanctions being relieved. Over the course of time, the sanctions put offlimits from iran money they had otherwise earned. When changes were relieved they , got access to funds they had earned over time that they could not access. Charlie but they also get new revenue. David part of the expectation is, with the sanctions being relieved, a number of the Financial Institutions in iran, which had been put off limits are no longer offlimits to banks outside of the United States you will see Economic Activity pick up in iran. The restraints put into place will be relieved. Frankly, i think thats part of the bargain here, that, in exchange for very significant restrictions on irans Nuclear Program, they are allowed, once again, to engage in Economic Activity in the world. Charlie including with American Companies, like boeing and others. David there are still some restrictions on many restrictions on American Companies working with iran. There are some specific by and large, american businesses are still prohibited from doing business with iran. Charlie what would have to happen for that to be eliminated . David statutes would have to change. Congress would have to change the law. Charlie russia, ukraine. That is what precipitated. Some would argue russia has not changed its behavior at all. They have been more aggressive as they send troops and supplies and planes to syria. They have withdrawn some of that, but no one can say, here is an example of where the russians did something because of the impact of sanctions. David i think its important to understand that sanctions, in and of themselves, are not the tool that is going to fundamentally alter behavior. They are part of an overall effort. With respect to the sanctions against russia, for their activity, their aggression in ukraine, i think there is a fair debate and some intelligence to back this up, that he did have an impact on the trajectory of what was happening in eastern ukraine. Charlie meaning they might have done more if the sanctions had not been applied. They might have been more aggressive with other baltic countries . David without getting into any great detail on this, i do think you can make a credible argument that the sanctions, combined with what happened in the overall oil markets, which had a real impact on russian economy, caused putin and his crew to think harder about what they were doing. Charlie and you have intelligence that tells you that . David im not going to go into any detail. Charlie i thought you just said that. David no. Charlie so, with respect to isil, how were you able to disrupt, not sanctions, but disrupt the incoming revenue . They have, as i understand, been able to raise more revenue through, one, taking over banks in country countries and cities and places they occupy and through other means, whether it is trafficking or hostagetaking. David most of the revenue that isil has amassed in the two years or so that it has been in iraq and syria has come from two principal sources. One is robbing banks. When they swept through mosul and elsewhere, they took over banks, emptied out the vaults. The other was the sale of oil. Those were the principal sources. The third is extortion of the population that they are dominating. On the banks and on the money that they took out of the vaults, thats not recurring revenue. Thats a one time hit. It is not being replenished. As you may have seen in the last month or two, the coalition has been targeting cash depots, where isil has been storing this cash bombing them and incinerating the cash. Charlie knocking off their finance guys. David the deputy to , also the head of their finance operation. Charlie and is their Financial Capacity diminished . How long does it take to replace someone of equal talent . David what weve seen in other circumstances and al qaeda is probably the best case study, over time, it is very difficult to replace the folks who are lost. With isil, the folks who are around him our assessment is that he has surrounded himself with the most capable people he can find within that horrible organization. As you take those people out, it is difficult to replace them with people of equal caliber. That being said, they are an adaptive terrorist organization. We will see them and have seen them try and fleet up people into positions where others have been taken out. Charlie i ask this not as an aggressive question. Why cant you take him out . David without getting into any detail on targeting, not that the action is done by the cia, but by others we play a critically Important Role in helping to find and fix the locations of critical leaders in isil. Charlie as you did working with al qaeda and osama bin laden. Having said that david we are working on this one. Charlie what does that mean . David we have a variety of means by which we collect intelligence in iraq and syria against isil, the whole spectrum that you might imagine. We have sources, we have technical means, we work with partners, we work with others in the u. S. Intelligence community, we are applying all of the resources that we possibly can on a variety of topics. One is finding him. Its also working against the external operations network. There is a whole spectrum of activity over collecting that we are collecting intelligence against. Charlie is there an upward trajectory in your sources of information about isil . I would assume you have to have sources who are of syrian and iraqi descent . David we are on the ground in baghdad. The ability to run sources in a terrorist organization, like isil, is difficult and it is dangerous. We are working very hard and have been for several years now to enhance our intelligence picture in isil. I think, every day, we are getting better, we are getting more sources in place and developing better intelligence. Charlie let me talk about how you acquire information in 2016. Obviously, you have cyber capabilities. Obviously, you have some media capabilities. Obviously, you have people on the ground, human resources. Is the equation between the three of them changing at all because so much terrorist activity is communicated on the internet . Thats why we see such an emphasis on encryption by our adversaries in the terrorist world . Human intelligence david human intelligence, mining sources, developing spies has been the base of the cia since its founding and its predecessor as well. That will always remain core to what we do, but we are also increasing activity in the Digital Domain. One thing weve done recently is created a new director, the director of digital innovation. Its mission includes a host of different activities dealing with the Digital Domain, including improving our capability to collect intelligence of the type someone throws away a cell phone. We want to be able to extract intelligence from that cell phone. The increasing amounts its not just terrorist organizations. The increasing amounts of intelligence potentially available in the Digital Domain is something we need to be focused on. Charlie give me an example. David a perfect example is exploiting digital media, the type that you described. Someone talks by the way of cell phone. We want to make sure that if some isil operative gets captured or throws away a cell phone, that we are able to identify who it is that he has been talking to, where he has been, what sorts of connections he may have. Charlie what about encryption . David theres been a lot of discussion about encryption. We work really closely with our colleagues at nsa. Charlie at fbi. David and fbi, working on encryption issues. Its a challenge. I think the director of cia, director of fbi have spoken to the difficulty encountered with encryption. Charlie so has the president of the United States. David absolutely, strong encryption, critical for commerce, legitimate purposes we are also working quite hard to be able to develop intelligence. One of the other aspects of Cyber Intelligence that we are working on you mentioned this is social media. Everybody knows there is a lot of tweets and other information put out on social media by foreign persons. Its important, when we talk about our work in open source intelligence, that we are looking at foreign persons, not u. S. Persons. But isil, for instance, is an avid user of twitter. They tweet things out constantly. It can help us understand their plans, their intentions, their capabilities, their goals. We have finite resources. Running a human source in isil is difficult and dangerous. Charlie but you do it. David we do it. But we also combined with the human intelligence we collect the intelligence we collect in the open source. This is something that the cia has been doing throughout its history, taking what is given to us in the open and combining that with what we collect clandestinely. Charlie another part of the battle against isis or isil is that we read reports of the pentagon supporting some rebel troops in syria, some antiassad, antiisis troops. The cia is supporting others. How widespread is back . There have been a number of reports. David im not going to get into what the agency may be doing in terms of supporting anybody in syria. The work with the syrian kurds, which you are referring to, has been an important element of what the Defense Department has been doing in syria. There are factions among factions among kurds, certainly within syria there are an array of groups that are antiassad, antiisil. Charlie and some of them are antiassad, antiisil, and antiu. S. David for sure. Charlie can we assume that russia is in a stronger position because of assad . David assad is quite dependent on russian support. If you go back to last summer, i think the reason that we saw the russian intervention in the fall was that, over the summer and into the fall, assad was losing losing badly. The iranians were not able to stem it. Hezbollah was not able to stem it. The russians came in and certainly bolstered assads position. Charlie and said they were. David the russians also said their principal objective was to fight against isil. Charlie a strong state is crucial. He looks at libya, as does president obama, and says that is a disaster, because its a state without central authority. David what russia was most concerned about was losing its investment, as a word, in syria. Charlie what do you mean, in terms of david years and years of involvement in syria. They have a base. Its a place in the middle east where they have had some involvement for several decades now. To get back to your question of whether assad is stronger he was certainly bolstered by the russian assistance, but, if that is not there, and we have seen the cessation of hostilities over the last seven weeks or so charlie im going to get to that in a minute. David if the russians are not supporting assad, i think there is a fair question about how secure assad ought to feel. Charlie talk about this conflict between syria and iran. David what we contribute to this conversation is helping the president and senior policymakers understand irans perspective on the region, how they view their role, what they are doing in the region, why they are doing what they are doing. Likewise, the saudis we obviously have a much lesser relationship with the saudis than with the iranians. We have diplomatic relations. We have an understanding of what the saudis charlie why are they so upset . David the saudis and others in the gulf were concerned and expressed their concern with the nuclear deal with iran. They were concerned that that was somehow going to undermine their security. I think the president and National Security team and we have been involved in this as well have made it as clear as possible and have acted on this with the saudis and others in the gcc, that we have their back, that we are supporting them, and we understand that iran is involved in regional battling, is involved in interfering in regional affairs, whether it is in yemen, whether it is in syria, and that we are with them in protecting their countries against iranian meddling. Charlie as they, oh, so aptly demonstrated when iraq invaded kuwait, and it looked like they wanted to go to saudi arabia. David sure. Quite a number of years ago, but absolutely. Charlie heres what interests me in terms of saudi arabia. Everybody knows there is a relationship between the saudi royal family and the head of state in the country and the religious clerics within saudi arabia. How do you see their spreading of wahhabism, which some believe is a breeding ground, in part, for people who look at the most extreme elements of it, and think that it suggests to them that it is ok to join isil . David so, what what has encouraged people to join isil, even the most extreme elements of wahhabism and what isil is proclaiming as what i think what they are proclaiming and what isil does, there is a difference. The saudi royal familys relationship with the religious establishment in saudi arabia, and, frankly, as they understand their role as the custodian of the two mosques at the center of islam they have spread their view of islam around the world. There are those who make the argument that that has created the breeding ground for extremism. I think there is an important difference to be drawn between violent extremists who claim the mantle of religious charlie radical, extreme islam. David and a particular strain of islamic thought. Charlie the taliban seems to be on the march in afghanistan. They seem to beginning ground. They seem not willing to negotiate. What does that say to an Intelligence Officer . David what we see with the taliban is, you know, particularly with the onset of the new fighting season, which has, the last several weeks, begun again. The taliban feels emboldened. They feel they have the capability to challenge the Afghan Government. That obviously plays into the question as to the possibility of some sort of reconciliation between the afghani government the ghani government and the taliban. But we also work extremely closely through the Defense Department particularly and Afghan Security forces in devising better ways to fight against the taliban and to protect the government of National Unity in afghanistan. I think we see this fighting season as being a difficult one for the Afghan Government charlie how difficult . David i think it is going to be certainly as difficult as last years was. Charlie they continued steadily gaining. If they continue steadily gaining, they are going to overthrow the government. David they have been making some inroads and getting pushback. Kunduz, for instance. The taliban took kunduz briefly, then the Afghan Forces pushed back. There is fighting now further south in afghanistan. What the taliban has done over the last year or so is taking districts, taking outposts. They have not taken major population centers. We expect this fighting season more of the same, smallscale gains by the taliban, but the Afghan Forces, assuming they precede as effectively as possible, being able to hold back the taliban. Charlie one last question. North korea. What worries you . David what worries me is that north korea has nuclear weapons, that north korea has missile technology. They have perfected their shortrange missile technology. Charlie do they have the capacity to launch an Intercontinental NuclearNuclear Warhead . David theyve never tested an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. They have done space launches, as they did earlier this year, which is Technology Similar to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, but theyve never tested an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and they have never tested with a dummy warhead, to see whether they could have a reentry vehicle. That being said, north korea is a significant threat. They have nuclear bombs. They are working on their missile program. They have a leadership there that is that is very aggressive in their rhetoric, feels that they, you know, have some reason to feel threatened by the United States charlie not that we would, but they genuinely feel that. David i think they genuinely feel that. I think it is not a legitimate fear. I think the United States has made abundantly clear that we are not interested in overthrowing kim jongun. But it is a real threat. Charlie you were not a cia pers