[applause] thank you all for being here. Looking for to this discussion. No one appears congenitally shy so im hoping all of you can ignore me and ask each other questions. Have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of lively subjects. Lets start with the basics and then towards the end of the conversation i want to move into the world we are in now, the digital age, age of social media which creates a whole new set of questions. Jill, let me start with you. Editorial decisionmaking, for our colleagues in the audience, it is a little bit like case law. Yesterday principles behind you, certain standards and then casebycase try to apply them to complex stuff. When the reporter come to you with a story that reveals National Security information. What are the principles that you have in mind when you evaluate what to publish . Example, iy in that wearingless it was some something externally sensitive are innately i would stake, i lives were at would encourage the journalists and reporter with the story to find more about it. In order to make very difficult decisions about what stories to actually publish a letter to hold a story whether to hold a story or in a very unusual situation, to actually not publish something, information really helps you. End, these decisions should say explicitly, are the most excruciating i confronted both as Washington Bureau chief because stories involving National Security and intelligence rigid in washington and as manager of the times and executive editor. That i always panelistss one of the this morning pointed out, we llye a constitutiona;; protected mandate to hold power accountable and keep the public informed. That is our first responsibility. In the balancing test, that has to be balanced. Story really going to cause harm to the country . As journalists, we are citizens want to dot to be everything we can to keep the current country safe. Our professional duty is really jobsform and i had these period meagerly after 9 11 but the war on terror and alter the end of the Bush Administration and by the obama s, and itation certainly closer to 9 11 there but fewer of these requests you have to ask yourself the fundamental question that actually one of down his colleagues put brilliantly which is if they were on terror is being waged in the name of the people, too that the people know about it shouldnt the people know about it and its dimensions . With all the new programs launched, they had not really some of the to dark side programs being carried out. End, you responded to several constituencies. Because youublic the importance of keeping them informed and Holding Power accountable. The country. You dont want to make a precipitous decision that could actually harm the country and then youre on reporters because you get into and as to the true shooting nature of these decisions that the reporters have worked really long on the stories and to get them ironclad , the sources have put themselves in harms way. They feel the credibility is on the line because the sources expect the story to be published and all of those are in the air. Did isst thing that i when an administration raised serious National Security concerns and asked the near times to either hold a story or not publish it entirely, you hit the pause button. Public that a lot of the has the impression that we get these leaks. Intelligence justams and then we publish them right away. I cannot be further from the case. I dont think it is right to just assume that administrations and president s and their chief aides are a firing wall and that being cavalier to publish something quickly i think its not the right response. I know over time because the request became more frequent to various news organizations to hold stories or kill stories. That there are news organizations that no longer call the white house for comment on some of the stories which is not always, the administration finds out that you have a sensitive story. To stay in addition for one more beat, in search of refer to oneere to easy to agree on, if you judge that publishing will directly lead to the death of individuals or the publishing of gratuitous operational detail where the messing up an ongoing battlefield movement, no public reason, is a relatively easy principles. But when you get to the assertion of harm to the country, National Security damage may involve less direct effects. Exposure of agreements between allies or other sensitive matters. How do you think through that territory . Define National Security damage why you considered whether to withhold a certain detail . We seek information about that and then try to make the best decision after having as much information as possible, including from experts of her own staff. Our own staff. The best answer with an illustration, the Pulitzer Prize winner, the intelligence agencies, she is a very gifted reporter who had many sources from the top to the bottom of Intelligence Agency and there came a time some years after that her she realized cia sources worker concerned about something, very worried about seven. This was not a leak. Nobody dump this on her, she was just picking up this. Its and pieces of information. There was a puzzle and it turned out to be the cia secret prisons abroad, particularly Eastern Europe were highvalue terror suspects are being held and questioned. We know some cases with course of questioning techniques. Once you piece together a lot of this, she did what she should do and when to resources in the cia and including the person in charge of Public Information and then she was sent to the senior person in charge of the entire operation and listen to them about what was going on. First, he was a note this is true. You want to know if this is true. You need to talk to the government to know if they it is true. You what to establish the veracity of it and established interNational Security concerns. Decisionsrent can doing to make . She kept me informed alter this. All through this. When we conclude that we were going to publish some kind of story and newark try to figure what to include, during my quartercentury of making these kinds of decisions, we surrender story but we often withheld very specific details. Things like conans operations. Names of individuals. Locations of where the earliest drones were shot from. Country iof the still dont want to say the name of that country. Not because the government was not to, but they said if we can do country at the time, it would end. We do not want to do that. We went to the cia at the director off the the cia or director of National Intelligence and listened to them argued that we should not run the story at all and as usual i asked lots of questions. What is the specific harm involved here . Harm to human life . Be bad for thest agency reputation. Secondly, it means our allies would not trust us. That is your problem, not ours. And we got to two things like setting out secret prisons. Shutting down sick prison. And there are other types of operations going on with more these countries. Counterterrorism cooperation. They were identified as the Country Holding some of these resins. You could bring that governments or under security cooperation. My ears perked up because you can do the storage without necessarily name in the countries. I told them as i always did, we will consider this and she was with us and she asked questions. For were more one form that my work. We were invited to the white ceo, and donald graham, and publisher and myself, the and he wasas there sitting in the one come on a childs am on the couch and the necessary goals National Security adviser was having hovering around. And the president made the same conversation and it kind of harms. I asked a lot of questions you most of which were answered by stephen hadley. Out, i asked specific questions and we would make a decision and it was my decision whether would be read by him. Which is what we always do. Out, when an adjustment in the room with his arm around my shoulder, i had nothing for some time and said youre not putting in those countries. He could tell that is where is headed. Thought, thatther is what we did. As a result, we took a lot of pills from people who thought it was terrible for us to reach the secret on the one side and a lot of people saying that we do not mean the countries, chicken. From the other side of the sure runningm through some of these conversations from the cia or the pentagon, what rules would you write . Frankly, my experience with leading newspapers like the times and Washington Post and wall street journal and others, was that they really did try to exercise good judgment. These are tough calls. It is not easy. That i have times those discussions was where we had the potential, if a story went out, that is sensitive source would probably be and it meant jeopardizing the life of that source and when i had the discussion. , thaters doing their jobs is what they go after. A lot them have good sources in the agency whether you like it or not. When you pick up these stories, you look at them and, frankly, i would say that nine out of 10 stories, they go. The reporter is doing his job. You dont particularly like the story getting out there but that is the name of the game. You that 10th story where but, on that 10th story where somebodys life is in jeopardy and you can make that case frankly, most the time i talked confirm the and reporters story. Reporter would be sensitive enough to take it to his bosses. I think the very fact that a light was in jeopardy was enough to kind of balance the scales. I was never in a situation where it involved a broader policy issue similar to what you described. Thank god. Thereways felt that was one time where it involved i actually talked with the editor of the post and i got a fair hearing. The end, they delayed the story and then ultimately, they said we will delay it for a while and then we would like to come back to you. And they did. I have to tell you, my experiences were that this was pretty straightforward and that i was really pleased that when you are making these decisions and dont forget that they have a reporter and they have a story. If it is a hot story, it will make a lot of news. To be able to call back from that because the National Interest is involved is not an easy call. But, at least in my experience, the papers always made the right call. Your commentscome on the principles question. You have been speaking in a very striking way about the need for transparency in agencies in order to build the credibility with the voting public that democracy requires. I. R. Number when you are at nsa being surprised that a reporter would call up and the phone number was answered and he used to be called no such agency. Though i asked for some help, the next thing i knew i was having lunch or coffee with you in your garden. Seemed tock that you have a selfconscious strategy of trying to build some kind of balance of visibility for a secret agency. What was on your mind in those days and what is the broader goal that you think you can reach . Mr. Hayden a lot of things to comment on. The traditional answer when someone called the Public Affairs office was, how did you get this number . We made a conscious effort. The phrase we used was to put a more human face on the agency. At the time, for nsa, we knew that we were getting into very uncharted territory. There was no National Debate about the appropriateness of an interceptingsa soviet Strategic Rocket placements, looking for words of interest like launch or Something Like that. [laughter] but, we knew that the 21st century equivalent of those isolated soviet command and control networks would be out pursuing terrorists, proliferator, traffic or associations. Gmail. At hotmail or we felt that we could not get the political sanctions or the money that we needed to pursue 21st century targets if we were still in the bunker at fort meade and hadnt built up a stronger sense of confidence that we could be on those networks, we could bump your emails, but we wouldnt miss treat them. It was a conscious effort to raise our profile. Very briefly, the last great nsa story was the snowden revelation. Metadata stuff. My old agency and administration was horribly flatfooted. They needed to be out there more telling their story. The way it was rode up took the story to a very dark corner of the room. It was very hard to explain what the agency was doing. The agency felt they were fine. After the great intelligence scandals of the 70s, the grand compromise with to take the oversight of intelligence which used to be and still is in most democracies, the province of the executive, and actually share oversight with the legislative branch. We have to select committees on intelligence now. Also, a special Court Whenever it touched americans. The 215 program, authorized by legislated by congress, overseen by the oversight committee, and were checked off by the fisa court. The is the medicineia madisonian trifecta. Without thought we were good to go and we werent. Reaction fromarp the general population and not tinfoil wing nuts with on their heads but really serious americans. What happens reinforcing what we tried to do in 1999 and 2000 what happened was that a lot of now said that no longer constituted consent of the governed. That may be consent of the governors. You may have told them, but you didnt tell me. That social contract that we had built on the compromise, we had real the social contract was american democracy wants to have a more personal knowledge of what its Intelligence Services do before they willingly validate the activities of the intelligence service. , we are going to shave points off of effectiveness. But my point is, if we are not more open, youre going to take a step away from us anyway and we are not going to do anything. Now, the great challenges, how do we inform the public to a degree that we have never informed them before in order to have the kind of legitimacy that the public used to concede to us simply by taking subdued by keeping a couple of committees. Couple of committees informed. I want to follow up on that about the communication you are talking about between the intelligence and Government Services on one hand and the journalist on the other. I am familiar with some of how it is being done. It has been very important for the protection of National Security or communication to go on between the journalists and the government. The advantage of the journalists for one thing to make sure it is accurate. In some cases it is complicated stuff where you dont understand if you dont have help and in other cases it might have been a proposal that never went into action and you dont find out and let the government cooperated. There are some things that will never be public because the National Security arm would greatly outweigh the public reasons to know that you are talking about. Post m has, the mr. Hayden the problem is, the post has been more responsible. Theyou go over here to guardian. Then you go to laura poitras. Attorney general eric holder was quoted last week as saying that he thought in the end that snowden had done some sort of public service. I dont know the context but that is what he was quoted as saying. He didnt break the law but what he did may have been public service. Coming from an attorney that saw the great number of presley prosecutions. End pressthe leak prosecutions. I wonder, in the end, if it was necessary to bring the public in . Mr. Hayden ive spoken a lot about this. Thatttom line is that young man accelerated but badly distorted a necessary national conversation. The other 98 of the stuff he gave to these reporters had nothing to do with it, it had to do with your nation, great britain, and australia collects legitimate foreign intelligence. I was offended by the attorney general thinking that that slice there somehow ameliorates all of that. You have an who, we in the intelligence agencies, we are dealing with national secrets, classified information. The president of the United States has the responsibility to defend the country using both covert and overt operations to protect the country. So, in order to maintain covert operations, you have to maintain classified information and you need people who swear and of to basically protect press basically protect classified information. Intelligence agencies could operate if everybody decides on their own what they think should be revealed and what they think ought to be held. The reality is that things are classified and you are sworn to protect classified information. When you have somebody who decides, i am going to dump a bunch of classified information because i dont like some of the things i am seeing, he violates the law antioch to be prosecuted for violating the law. He ought to be subject to justice and he tried. I think if you really felt loyalty to this country, there is no reason why he should hide out in russia. The outcome back here and face justice on that issue and he can present whatever defense he wants. So, it is wrong. Debate on the issue that he discussed, is that a good debate for this country to have . Of course it is. But that doesnt justify what he did. Willie lohman used to rob banks. Heroesnt make him a because we now know we should protect our money in the banks. The same thing is true for snowden. He violated the law. He is subject to being prosecuted under the law. That thed to that information that was revealed in fact did damage the security that we had developed in terms of being able to track terrorist. Terrorists is that dont use the same system anymore. So, we have got to redevelop our approach of how we track terrorists. It is impacted on lives that were out there because there were sources out there whose lives were jeopardized by virtue of revealing that information. So, understand the damage that was done. Should we have a debate on transparency and what we are doing . Absolutely. But, you dont do it by dumping a bunch of classified information that could jeopardize and damage the security of this country. Mr. Hayden the secretary and i are talking about snowden. That is not the way the conversation would go in some