The Armed Services chairman who is retiring. We are starting off on that note. Then his last big bill, the Defense Authorization bill is going to be the first matter up for consideration. , when we knewht senate,forward with the there has been an agreement struck about 3 00 today. Earlierittle bit depending on the level of cooperation. There is going to be a series of votes that will lead to the passage of the Defense Authorization bill. And itat has happened passes, the bill will go to president obama. That, then we are in the end of the year negotiations on time and how to compress time in order to get the rest of the work done. When it comes to the spending bill, what are the chances that its going to pass the senate . Will the senate be in on saturday to get this done . Guest thats the big deal. There will 00 votes, be a series of negotiations between all 100 senators behind the scenes. They will figure out whether or has to go through to process of filing cloture cut off the debate. If that is the case, it would sunday. Until only two daysis of continuing resolutions, by saturday, either tonight or sometime saturday, they will get the rest of the work done. If you reached a point where all the procedural hurdles were in place and were being deployed by critics of the bill, the house would have to come in at least nominally to do another shortterm continuing resolution in order to keep the government open sunday and monday. Bernie sanders has said he is going to oppose the federal spending bill. Have other senators come out and said they are opposed to it as well . Guest there are certainly senators on the left who rv imminently opposed to the inclusion of the language provisionthe swaps from the dodd frank regulatory overhaul. Sanders i assume is in that camp and elizabeth warned has been waiting to charge on that. There are senators on the right who are against the fact that the bill does not take specific action to stop president obamas executive action on immigration. Of theseear how many people who have objections to one piece or other of the bill would try to actually hold up its advancement or vote against it. That is the sort of touch and go thing and we will see this afternoon. Host neil is with roll call. Thank you for your time this morning. The senate gaveled in a just a few minutes ago. Harry reid is on the floor right now. On can see live coverage cspan 2. Coveragering you live of the Cato Institute panel. We will show you a discussion of oversight of surveillance programs. At 4 30 p. M. , the closing session. Reaction from the white house from last nights vote. He will be speaking at the press briefing at noon eastern time. We will have live coverage on cspan. Here are some of the programs you will find on cspan. Politico reporters share stories about being on the campaign trail with senator max mcconnell. Local fundraiser on money in politics and how it is grown and changed. 10 00, shane harris on the militarys use of cyberspace to wage war. Panelay at 2 00, a including david keene on how Ronald Reagans career as an actor in spokesman for General Electric helped hone his communication skills. Annan at 8 00, frank shows clips of an interview about vietnam, watergate, and his resignation. You can find our schedule at www. Cspan. Org. You can email us. You can send us a tweet. Join the cspan conversation. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. John brennan called the enhanced Interrogation Program uncharted territory. He admitted they were unprepared for it. His comments came as he briefed the press. It was 8 46 a. M. On the morning of september 11, 2001 when the north tower of the World Trade Center in new york was struck by an aircraft commandeered by al queda terrorists. 17 minutes later, the clear blue skies over manhattan were pierced again by another hijacked aircraft, this one tearing into the adjacent south tower. At 9 37, the pentagon, the proud symbol and heart of the nations military, suffered a similar attack. At 10 03, a fourth plane shattered the serene landscape of shanksville, pennsylvania, as its passengers refused to allow al qaeda to use one more plane as a missile to strike our homeland. In the short span of 77 minutes, four terrorist attacks would forever change the history of our country. They would rob us of nearly 3,000 lives. It would ultimately cost us trillions of dollars. And they would plunge us into a seemingly never ending war against a globally dispersed collection of terrorists with a murderous agenda. As deputy executive director of c. I. A. On the morning of 9 11, i knew what it was like to belong to an agency that had been ringing the bell about al qaedas plans to attack. All of us at cia were devastated that operatives were able to carry out such horrific acts in and on american soil. While i remember walking the halls of cia that day to ensure that as many Agency Officers as possible had left the building as our headquarters here in langley, virginia was reported on the target list, i also remember that the men and women in our Counterterrorism Center stayed at their posts despite the danger. They worked through that day and that night and the following days and nights to piece together the clues as to what plans were underway to carry out yet more attacks. Their cia brothers and sisters dispursed around the globe, many in dangerous environments, did the same thing. Only 15 days after 9 11 on september 26, it was cia that put the First American boots on the ground in afghanistan. Less than two months after arriving, the United States suffered its First Casualty in afghanistan when a 32yearold cia officer named mike span was killed in action on november 25. Since mikes death, 20 other cia officers have lost their lives around the world at the hands of terrorists. The events of 9 11 will be forever seared into the memory of americans. Not only were our consciences shocked and our hearts and souls ripped open, so, too, our collective national sense of Homeland Security was shattered, much like the steel, concrete, flesh, bone and lives during those fateful 77 minutes. In the immediate aftermath of 9 11, our nation ached, it cried, and it prayed. In our pain, we pledged to come together as one and to do what we could to prevent bin laden and his killing machine from ever carrying out another attack against our beautiful country. Never again, we vowed, never again. Al qaeda had other ideas, as well as additional operatives and more plans to strike us again and again. With a globally distributed network that had concealed itself in many countries over many continents, al qaeda was poised, ready and prepared to pursue its violent agenda. Our government and our citizens recognized the urgency of the task to find and stop al qaeda before it could shed the blood of more innocent men, women and children, be it in america or be it in any other corner of the world. And as has been the case throughout its then 54year history, the cia was looked to for answers, not only to the questions on the threats we faced but also to questions about what we were going to do to stop future attacks. Cias mission in the wick of the 9 11 attacks would be a multidimensional one. Stopping al qaeda would require the cia to work closely with its Intelligence Community, military, Homeland Security and Law Enforcement partners. As well as with numerous intelligence and Security Services around the globe. To be successful, cia officers knew that they needed speed, agility, courage, resources, and most important, intelligence. Their mission was to acquire through human and technical operations and then to analyze with deep expertise whatever bits and pieces of information might help fill out the menacing yet incomplete puzzle of al qaedas terrorist plans. Indeed, there were numerous credible and very worrisome reports about a second and third wave of major attacks against the United States. And while we grieved, while we honored our dead, while we tended to our injured and while we embarked on the long process of recovery, we feared more blows from an enemy we couldnt see and an evil we couldnt fathom. This is the backdrop against which the agency was directed by president bush to carry out a program to detain terrorist suspects around the world. In many respects, the program was uncharted territory for the cia and we were not prepared. We had little experience housing detainees and precious few of our officers were trained interrogators. But the president authorized the effort six days after 9 11 and it was our job to carry it out. Over time, enhanced interrogation techniques, e. I. T. s, which the department of justice determined at the time to be lawful and duly authorized by the Bush Administration were introduced as a method of interrogation. As concerns about al qaedas terrorist plans endured a variety of these techniques were employed by cia officers on several dozen detainees over the course of five years before they ended in december of 2007. The legal advice under which they were authorized subsequently has been revoked. When the president came into office in january, 2009, he took the position that these techniques were contrary to our values and he unequivocally banned their use. He has consistently expressed the view that these techniques did significant damage to americas standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. Something i have experienced firsthand. But as the president stated this week, the Previous Administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country. While facing fears of further attacks and carrying out the responsibility to prevent more catastrophic loss of life. There were no easy answers. And whatever your views are on e. I. T. s, our nation and in particular this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secure. The same year the techniques were banned by the president , the Senate Select committee on intelligence, the ssci, initiated an indepth review of the detention and Interrogation Program. The cias implementation of the detention and Interrogation Program is a very legitimate oversight issue. And we gave the committee our full support, providing an unprecedented amount of sensitive cia documents to the committee and devoting considerable resources to help it with its review. Our hope was that it would offer an impartial and authoritative assessment of the program, help us learn from our mistakes, and inform how we conduct sensitive activities in the future. Unfortunately, the committee could not agree on a bipartisan way forward and no cia personnel were interviewed by the committee during the course of the investigation. This was unusual. In the vast majority of cases, sscis, congressional reports have been the result of collaborative bipartisan investigations. Over the course of my career, i have seen the value of the committees reviews. Even on politically sensitive matters such as the sscis investigation into the interrogation failures regarding weapons of mass destruction in iraq, the committee succeeded in producing a report that was supported unanimously. In that case, the committee reviewed tens of thousands of documents and conducted interviews with more than 200 officers from the interrogation Intelligence Community. Some of whom were interviewed up to four times. This week, the Senate Select committee on intelligence released the executive summary, findings and conclusions of its study of the agencys former detention and Interrogation Program. Vice chairman chambliss joined by five other senators also released the minority views. The authors clearly worked very hard to produce a report of this magnitude. Over several years, they sorted through over a million documents provided by the cia and their commitment to the task is obvious. Although we view the process undertaken by the committee when investigating the program as flawed, many aspects of their conclusions are sound and consistent with our own prior findings. Over the years, internal Agency Reviews including numerous investigations by our office of the Inspector General found fault in cias running of the program. We have acknowledged many of these mistakes in our response to the study last year and i will touch on some of them today. Acknowledging our mistakes and absorbing the lessons of the past is fundamental to our ability to succeed in our mission and is one of the great strengths of this organization. Even today, we know there are further organizational improvements to be made as a result of our review of the study and we are pursuing them. As i have already noted, the cia was unprepared to conduct a detention and Interrogation Program and our officers inadequately developed and monitored its initial activities. The agency failed to establish quickly the operational guidelines needed to govern the entire effort. In a limited number of cases, Agency Officers used interrogation techniques that had not been authorized, were abhorrent, and rightly should be repudiated by all. And we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes. It is vitally important to recognize, however, that the overwhelming majority of officers involved in the program at cia carried out their responsibilities faithfully and in accordance with the legal and policy guidance they were provided. They did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation. In fact, some of these officers raised objections and concerns with the program and with its implementation which is crucial to ensuring that the system works as it should and that we are able to adjust as needed. But the cia officers actions that did comport with the law and policy should neither be criticized nor conflated with the actions of the few who did not follow the guidance issued. At the same time, none of these lapses should be excused downplayed or denied. In some instances we simply failed to live up to the standards that we set for ourselves. That the American People expect of us. To address the concerns identified, the cia has implemented a number of reforms in an effort to make sure those mistakes never happen again. For example, as a result of our own investigations, and our review of the committees report, cia has taken steps to broaden the scope of our accountability reviews. Strengthen the planning, management, oversight and evaluation of our covert action programs, systematically reexamine the legal opinions underlying our sensitive programs and improve our recordkeeping for interactions with the congress. We are also carefully observing the new statutory requirement to provide our oversight committees with notice of any significant legal interpretation of the constitution or other u. S. Law affecting intelligence activities conducted by the cia. As to the issues on which we part ways with the committee, i have already stated that our reviews indicate that the detention and Interrogation Program produced useful interrogation that helped the United States thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. But let me be clear. We have not concluded that it was the use of eits within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees subjected to them. The cause and effect relationship between the use of eits and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is in my view unknowable. Irrespective of the role eits might play in a detainees provision of useful information, i believe effective noncoercive methods are available to elicit such information. Methods that do not have a counterproductive impact on our National Security and on our international standing. It is for these reasons that i fully support the president s decision to prohibit the use of eits. Another key point with which we take issue is the studys characterization of how cia briefed the program to the congress, the media and within the executive branch. Including at the white house. The record simply does not support the studys inference that the agency repeatedly systematically and intentionally misled others on the effectiveness of the program. To be clear, there were instances where representations that the program about the program that were used or approved by Agency Officers were inaccurate, imprecise, or fell short of our trade craft standards. We have acknowledged such mistakes. And i have been firm in declaring that they were unacceptable for an agency whose reputation and value to the policy maker rests upon the rescission of the language it uses every day in intelligence reporting and analysis. Primarily, however, the studys contention that we repeatedly and intentionally misled the public and the rest of the u. S. Government rests on the committees view that deans subjected to eits did not produce useful intelligence, a point on which we still fundamentally disagree. Now, there should be sufficient trust and credibility between our institutions, enabling us to disagree at times but also to come together and listen to each others perspectives. Our partnership with congress is crucial. In my view, there is no more important oversight relationship than the cia relationship with its Intelligence Committees. Particularly because we do so much of our work in secret, the congress serves as a critical check on our activities closely monitoring the agencys reporting and programs when the public cannot. One of the most frustrating aspects of the study is that it conveys a broader view of the cia and its officers as untrustworthy. That the institution and the workforce where is willing t