Individuals like the tsarnaevs is and they do not hit our radar. They do not travel and communicate in the same way learn what they need to learn the internet and become radicalized of the internet. From that perspective, it poses a real challenge. As would brief the threat, overall, i would say it remains persistent. It is increasingly complex and diverse bit and diverse. First of all, always good to be here. Thank you for another great event. I want to commend matt for the great job he has done. But also, i think people should understand modern government. It is a really big deal for a current and former to sit next to each other. A lot about matts confidence as sit next to a guy who can say anything the hell he wants. Glad to keep them close. [laughter] i agree with his assessment of the threat. I would add a couple of small items. We have actually done, wouldve talked about the threats and other places that are terrible in the world. We have to remember how successful the counterterrorism activities have been over the last 12 years. If i asked a group like this on september 12 am a 2001, and the americans will be killed in the United States i al qaeda my guess is that answer would be about 1000, 10,000. I am almost certain nobody was a 18 house and which was the 18,000 which is the total number of People Killed by al qaeda in the u. S. In the past 12 years. We have done remarkably well. The threat is accurate. We also have to look at this and understand that we are never going to see any of these threats entirely but prevent a catastrophe. Will be susceptible to the smaller scale attacks we see like in boston. I would add we are always focus mostly on outlook item. Al qaeda. People started to be, slightly more aware of the threat of extremism mostly from has below hezbollah. We will undoubtedly face a renewed and invigorated shiite spider terrorist threat. We have seen one of this ambassador in washington and other attacks overseas. This is something that counterterrorism immunity especially with declining resources, we have to keep our eye on. In addition to what mike said, it will encapsulates the complexity of the challenge but to focus on syria. In syria, we have the to the assad regime. In the opposition, a growing Extremist Group that is seeking to become official affiliate of al qaeda. It is probably the most capable fighting force within the opposition erie it opposition. We have a shiite Extremist Group, hezbollah. Then, within that, we have the existence of chemical weapons. On top of that, the biggest concern is the flow of foreign fighters to syria. It has become the dominant battlefield in the world. We see foreign fighters one from western europe and in some cases to the United States to syria to fight as part of the opposition. The concern Going Forward is these individuals traveling to syria, become radicalized, trained, and returning as part of a Global Jihadist Movement to western europe and potentially the United States. It really elucidates the ways the threat is complicated and again persistent. To ask you about president obamas may speech on terrorism. We are at a crossroads. We need to ask ourselves hard questions and how we should refer to them. What the best speech change and what does it mean for your mission and had to change it if at all . It was an important speech. I am lucky to be there. I took some analysts no, sir. Not at all. Were at a crossroads. The president in some ways, this the Counterterrorism Community so many in this room, it really challenged us to do two things. To think hard about the threat and to be very precise and rigorous and how we defined the threat and not fall into traps like we fell into are sought after benghazi of a binary choice. It is either al qaeda or not. That is not the reality. It is much more complicated. It needs to be careful in how we define who is al qaeda and what is the threat because of course how we defined the threat is the crux of the developing a strategy. Thats the second part of how the president challenged us. How to think of the threat as we look to keep up the pressure also look to a time when we are not in a state of war. That also was a way in which he challenged everybody in this room who is part of the conversation. How important was that speech as policy . I think it is a critical speech. Generally, i align myself with almost everything the president said. 12 years later, it was probably the most copperheads of statement certainly by this president and arguably even going back to the time immediately after 9 11 how the u. S. Government and i lies should approach terrorism and allies should approach terrorism. I do not mean this as a political critique but as a political counterterrorism professional critique. There were some things that were not in the speech and part because his a president and you will not get into detail. The question for the National Security community which is key is to name a few is there really was discussion on homegrown terrorism. This is probably the threat most relevant to most american lives. It may not be the greatest threat but the most frequent threat and we have a long way to go. With really sharp and our spirit our spear overseas. I was disappointed of not having any mention of mass distraction. We have done a really good job of access to biological, ready logical, or nuclear devices. Radiological, or nuclear devices. It could be significant. We have to keep our eye on that. What is incredibly important is now it will change the way in which we look at this threat, what does that actually mean for programs and budgets and government organizations . Carter did a brilliant job this morning of talking about those concrete choices. We now have had the stooges Playing Field described by the president strategic Playing Field described by the president. With budget cuts, how are you going to allocate the finite resources in a sensible way across the Counterterrorism Community . The policy role have an enormous role in that process and it is not one that the u. S. Government has proved particularly effective at dealing with. I do not disagree with anything mike has said. It was an hourlong speech. It covered a lot of ground. An hour and 15 minutes. Aboutple were thinking these questions erie it on the one question, wmd, i would reiterate. Of course, the likelihood of wmd right now is low. We keep our eye on the wmd threats. We have been told about wouldve been told about two developments. Leaking of classified data, the wiki leaks and now edwards noted. Edward snowden. What from where you sit, what does he follow up from both of those development in terms of intelligence sharing and cooperation . Let me take the second part. Al qaeda had nothing to do with that. They are inclined to take advantage of what is happening. It is important to say it is not one dynamic in every country. If you look at tunisia, libya, they are all different. Is primary way for us that affecting our counterterrorism efforts as placing a greater degree of building relationships with emerging regimes. In libya, we are seeing a decrease in its capabilities to carry out counterterrorism efforts. We need to figure out how we are going to work with emerging government. The capabilities of wanting. In yemen, we have a Good Relationship and improving relationship with president heidi. In each case, we need to stay engaged and work with the legitimately selected government and those countries, but that is hard. Benghazi showed why that is hard. These are dangerous places and having our diplomats and our military and our intelligence officials in these locations. Is it on the leak, is there any demonstrated reduction of intelligence sharing because people said the United States cannot be trusted with secrets anymore, everything looks out . It remains to be seen on snowden. Especially with respect to europe and our european allies, how they may be be acting. In the city seen. It needs to be seen. First of all, i would be shocked if there are not indications of intelligence al qaeda and affiliated groups have not changed the way they operate based on these leaks. We have seen in every other said leak situation, it makes matts job harder. I was the president right after wiki leaks. Every place i went overseas for the hourlong meeting, we easily had halfanhour of that with me have with my head a bit off and being yelled off by our colleagues seeing how can you be so sloppy, how come you cannot control information, we will not share information with you. Were they idle threats . No, they were real. It is not that if the french get to the utep the tip, they will not tell us. They will be much more closer with the information that release. It undermines the relationships. Last but not least, the quietly underserved relationship, partnership between the u. S. Government is very patrick American Companies very patriotic American Companies is important going back to world war ii. I am a multinational ceo and ive been cooperating with the u. S. Government and the courts tell me to do it this way and is what i was supposed to do, my market is being killed because everybody is holding up the fact that you do not want to work with x because the nsa gets everything. In accordance with the law, much more difficult to read all three of those have serious implications. Ms first point on this. We have seen response to the leaks, Al Qaeda Affiliated groups seeking to change their tactics. Looking to see what they can learn and change how they communicate to avoid detection. Ofi think theres a lot mystery about what ntsd does and its role in the larger Counterterrorism Community. Lets talk about some of the central roles that it has. One of the changes that happened on your watch, mike, was the calling of names for targeting killing moved from the National Security council in the pentagon to being centralized. Theres been a lot of controversy about that. To the extent you could talk about, what is the role in developing and calling the targeted killing . It is an accurate. Not entirely. I will narrow it a bit. Fundamentally, the criticism we heard from congress and elsewhere, eric and others wrote about this. That you had in theory, the cia had a kill list, and there was another list and it did not match up. And that is not entirely true either. You have the possibility that you people responsible for operations making intelligence calls about how bad someone is or not. That can lead to, it can lead to perception about how we draw these analytic judgments about who is an imminent threat because they are plotting. What our role became an appropriate one is we are made up of analyst from cia, fbi it is not attached to anyone operation. That we could work with entire community and say, yes, mr. Smith is in fact plotting. He is in imminent threat. Sponsors Legal Authority as long service Legal Authority thomas authority, this is where well prioritize him to be detained or targeted or the like. That is important role. In the policy role, we work hard to develop options. There a lot of people who say the u. S. Government needs to be capturing the people and are killing them instead. In my experience, the idea that nobody wanted to catch anybody that we could is crazy. If you need to capture somebody, you captured them. We worked with the enter agency, the fbi, dhs to develop the options of what you could do with someone if there were captured and if they were arrested and things like that. That was a valuable role to make sure there was an interagency flavor and led to the decisions at the white house. We are pushing 10 years in existence next year. We are voting on the work building of the work that mike did them before him. We have worked to become a center of gravity of the analytics side in the planning side. Taking analysis for a example, the white house now looks to us to take a look at what is the threat going to look like after 2014. They also looked was to describe who is this guy and what is his role in the intelligence on him . One of the benefits we bring to doing that is everything we do in that regard is carbonated its a coordinated effort. Fusing information. It is also people. Analysts and officers from around the Community Working together to produce a product whether about the threat strategically or tactically that represents the view of the entire Intelligence Community. When that is presented to policymakers, it reflects that entire coordinated view. That is really valuable. Another issue that has come up is the data that you do not have access to and want. Last year, we changed the federal guidelines. In new guidelines allow you to basically get access to any government database. With the debate happened, you one group rejected. Take me through that debate. What was the thinking about changing the rules . And what government database do you have that you could not collect under the 2008 rules . Why should i not be terrified about it . It started under mike. A couple things right of the top. We do not collect any information ourselves. We get information from other agencies that they collect whether nsa, fbi. We are not collecting it. It is the lawfully connect the collected. It came after 2009 that we do not have access to some of the types of information that would help us like the underwear bomber. We had great access to threat information coming from the reports provided to us by cia, the nsa. What we do not have is the kind of access we needed to nonterrorism databases. Information about individuals applying for Refugee Status in the United States or for visas. Because what we need to do is have information and not just for a minute or a day or a week but long enough so we have the rate information from the cia, from a source, all we have is a name or a first name, what we do to compare the information to the other information we have also collected at the government has about people traveling care or seeking asylum so that we can then provided to the agencies that can act on it . It is my perspective that we were already doing it will be somewhat surprised i would have trouble doing. We worked very hard to work with the Civil Liberties and the community and dhs. What was the objection from dhs on the initial request for that database that worried the privacy officer . I think it was this, i concern. I understand the concern about aggregating data. We worked closely with dhs and privacy groups to design rules that would protect the data. All the usual things you would want and expect, audit training, oversight to make sure that we were doing that sets carefully as possible. We worked with the department of justice to have new guidelines approved by the general. This is as a beautifully carefully leaked statement by one individual. There were many other parts of dhs that absolutely wanted this to be done. Matt is right. Of course there are Civil Liberties issues. We are both lawyers. We do get these issues. You have to understand the wood saw that people can find themselves in. A few months before christmas day, i was up arguing for the extension of the patriot act, certain aspects of the patriot act. I had congressman after congressman say, why do you need to spy on americans is to mark what is going on . I had people yelling at me saying, why is my constituent watch listed . Three months later, it was why arent there more people on the watchlist . Fast forward to boston, why arent you spying on more americans . Why cant you collect more data . These issues are real issues. We have to stop flying the pendulum back and forth and get somewhere in the middle. The perfect example on this for dhs is, someone comes into the United States on january 1 and all you have is his name and phone number. Under the old guidelines, 91 days later that information had to be flushed from nctc systems. One day 91, if you got a tip from the cia that this number was associated with al qaeda, nctc wouldnt know. Imagine that hearing when the attack occurs. The issue here was, how long should nctc be able to keep this . The auditing, review, trust and verify. The old system wasnt calibrated post9 11. It wasnt calibrated post 2005. They were guidelines from 2000 and the world had changed. On the transparency point, we adopted these new guidelines and put them on our website. I still have a crick in my neck because last week, we had this great forum with representatives from a number of different groups on a wednesday, very concerned about our aggregation of data as well as nsa leaks. Less than 24 hours later, i was in a congressional hearing where the focus was on the boston and our failure to do more given the information we have received. It was a complete 180. Maybe that is right. Actually i am concerned when that happens for the Intelligence Community and intelligent professionals who need predictability. They need to be able to know where the line is in order to do our jobs. That swinging of the pendulum is problematic. It seems like this is an issue you will deal with a lot more Going Forward. The first decade of the nctc, you built up capabilities with overseas intelligence agencies, strong partnerships, but increasingly looking for data sets that the u. S. Government has and also state local officials. It seems like that penetration into the domestic sphere gets people more concerned. Talk to me about that and about the relationships you would like to build with state local officials. This has come up a couple times today. Some of the challenges we face in the domestic sphere. I do think that for the last several years we made real gains in how we interact and how the community as a whole interact looking overseas, making sure information is shared properly. It is much more difficult and challenging when you start looking at the picture inside the United States. We have a much more complicated structure of fbi and dhs at the federal level, and the thousands of state and local departments. And then you throw in