Fundamentally not change the underlying operation of the program in the house and the senate. Republicans and democrats in the judiciary committees are just in a different place. And so the congress is split, i think, on these two. Last night president obama said to Chris Matthews that, you know, hes planning to make changes. He didnt specify what they were, and as you know, this group at the white house is working on thinking through what those changes might be. Do you have any sense, any predictions about what is likely able to happen, what is politically able to fly on the hill . I think this is an open question as to what the review group will recommend and what who is in the review group in. A variety of individuals appointed by president obama. I think the two most recognizable figures are Michael Morrell who now works for you. Who now works at the firm i am at and working at, and Richard Clark who was the counterterrorism adviser for clinton and for bush. And they and along with some others are charged with reviewing, essentially, the question of how to we reconcile how do we reconcile the tension between security and privacy and civil liberties. And so i dont know whats in their report. I expect itll be aggressive. I expect president obama will speak to it. In a matter of weeks. And this will drive the legislative agenda at least on intelligence next year. Great. Well, lets throw it open to your questions. If you have a question, can you wait for the mic and identify yourself and raise your hand . No questions. [inaudible conversations] you dealt with everything. Thats right. Theyre satisfied. [laughter] [inaudible] mike, weve talked about this before. The connectthedots point that you made is really interesting, and you started off your speech by saying the cia had all these functions, but in addition to them, it had the function of coordination. But it didnt have the authority to really make that happen. Um, seems to me that that coordination function, who wants that . I mean, do the intelligence agencies really want a coordinator, or would they prefer to be left alone . And i get to that question because, as you outlined, were still sort of stuck with that question where there is a coordinator, but its not really resourced. You dont really have the authorities to perform that function in an unambiguous way where you have control of peoples budgets and peoples institutions. And as a sort of followup to that, can you point to sort of, you know, an evolution with the director of National Intelligence where you think that he, east the president or the either the president or the previous one, specific examples where theyve really had this role, where its more than just sort of window dressing. Right. I think he was on to something. I mean, one of the points of the book is that the congress didnt spend enough time discussing the relationship between the cia and the dni. I think on the one happened, cia didnt want to be blamed for 9 11 and didnt hike the idea that they would, perhaps, have a new boss. But on the other hand, i dont think they wanted and are probably glad today that theyre not vested with coordinating other intelligence entities. Ive heard general hayden say hes not sure how his predecessors were able to do all of the work that was required across these different Mission Areas in the Central Intelligence agency. But by the same token, i dont think the cia wants to have the dni trying to get between the cia and the National Security council. As you know, the National Security could council and the a have a very intimate role in every presidency virtually. Of course, were aware of all the famous stories from the eisenhower and kennedy years about what the cia was doing for those prime ministers, and thats those prime ministers, and thats president s, and thats the source of the relationship. President s over time wanted to affect National Security policy and realized that a they didnt have enough tools to do it or at least didnt have what they wanted to be able to do in sort of a medium course of action between diplomacy and between military action. I think thats why they rely on covert action to this day, as a lever to influence national events. And i dont think the cia wanted an interloper. They dont want the dni trying to play an oversight role over what their activities are. You know, a couple of speaking of oversight, do you think, i mean, there have been a variety of discussions about how we could make the Drone Program more accountable, and some of them, i think, are kind of unworkable. For instance, having a sort of prereview board, i think theres going to be problems about that because, you know, things move quickly right. What about an afteraction review . Because i think its just natural in life if somebodys quaiding your homework grading your homework, youre going to spend more effort perhaps making sure its 100 accurate. And also we have an advantage that the military routinely [inaudible] where we kill civilians. We dont do that. If we inadvertently kill civilians in a cia drone strike. I mean, is there anything that we could do, wearing your past Intelligence Committee chief of staff hat that is realistic to make the program, you know, obviously president obama gave a big speech on may 23rd talking about some changes. Nothing really very substantive seems to have happened although the number of drone strikes in pakistan have dropped pretty dramatically. So of the proposals that are out there, is there anything that actually makes sense . I think this gets to the issue of congressional oversight. Yeah. I mean, having worked in congress for so many years, the reason these committees were set up is precisely so that there is a check on and an oversight of aggressive Intelligence Community action. A lot of people fault the congress for not doing aggressive enough oversight. I think the congress could do a better job of explaining what they do, and i think theres definitely room out there for more scholarship on what the appropriate role of oversight is. But i think most members of congress, at least the chairman of the two committees, would say thats our job. Its our job to check the homework of the Central Intelligence agency. We think were doing a pretty good job of it. Not that there couldnt be more or that there couldnt be some of the reforms that you suggest. But it really gets down to do you want to use the Intelligence Committees for the purposes they were created for, or do you want to create new be institutions so that they also will have a check on what the agency is up to. Yeah. Well, i guess the argument in favor of maybe having some independent body that was outside would be, you know, the Intelligence Committees, you know, theyre very close to the people that they right. And its a relatively small group of people, you know, what the sort of counterargument might be. Anyway, do you think there will be i mean, one of the ideas, of course, was to migrate that all into dod and make it no longer a cia function, and that doesnt seem to have happened so far because its complicated to do, it seems the main reason. Yeah. Judging from the paper, im not sure that its actually happened. I dont know, i mean, i guess if you subscribe to the view that cia ought to be sticking to collection of intelligence and analysis, then you feel better with the migration of authority to the department of defense. But i dont know how that necessarily leads to increased oversight. I guess the theory is dod would be able to talk about it more, and others would be able to check their work more. Yeah, i think thats part of it. And it is, obviously, sending an armed bomb into somebodys house is a military function, and it, you know, traditionally the cia, i mean, obviously, oss had a sort of quasimilitary function function. Theres no particular reason why it should be a cia function right. I guess, is the whole idea. And the apparatus at the department of defense be, justice, jags who are sort of at fault in these decisions all the time thats right. So the argument is it would have increased oversight. I think the dni does at least play some role in or awareness about these particular problem programs. Justice department does have to opine on their legality, and the white house, i think, does do a lot of work. I know the Bush White House does on trying to oversee these issues. So there are a lot of layers. I dont think i know this is a big issue. I dont know that congress is going to particularly get involved in that. I know they are really seized with the National Security agency issues, but well see how this developpings. If you do the board experiment where nsa, had those leaks hadnt happened right. I think there was growing movement. You started to get public hearings, i testified in one, there was more public discussion. Because, essentially, this is the worstkept secret in the world. A drone attack is a public event. I mean, theres been a lot of so there seemed to be more movement around discussing it, and the president s obviously talks about it. Talk a little edward snowden. Has he performed a useful Public Service . Were having a discussion in a much more informed way about what the nsa does whether you can degree or disagree with what agree or disagree with what theyre doing, but be he broke the law. You know, he was, he broke the law. But thats a different question than did he perform a Public Service when he broke the law. Well, im more of the view of having written this book and having studied a lot of the Commission Reports about intelligence failures, you know, its worth noting that just as long as as short as ten years ago Commission Reports were beating up the National Security agency for not keeping up with technological change, not collecting enough information, collecting Bad Information on iraq wmd. Indeed, the Major Commission work that examined the iraq wmd Program Actually faulted nsa for a variety of problems. So i sort of want to make sure that we dont legislate in anger about what the National Security agency has done, because the reason that they have mounted some of these programs is they were listening to what their Political Leadership said. And, indeed, arguably what much of the country was demanding after september 11th and after iraq which is that they needed to do a better job of providing a warning to our policymakers so that they might be able to avert a disaster like 9 11. And so, um, i want to be careful that we dont just whip saw the Intelligence Community one fiveyear period, you better get a lot better very quickly, and the you do, were going to get very mad at you because you were too good at some of the things you were doing. It seemed this group that is advising president obama, mike morrell and Richard Clark, who other is on it . There was peter swire, i believe he was a lawyer out there in chicago in a commission on American Progress, the committee on American Progress here. And the other two are escaping, although i know okay. It sort of sounds like a Nonpartisan Group or expert, i mean, morrell is a very nonpartisan guy. Dick clark worked for both bush and democrat and republican administrations. I think the people have seen it in different ways. Ive seen criticism that theyre all insiders yeah. Cronies of the president. Ive seen some people say you shouldnt have two people on there that have such intelligence backgrounds, and then ive heard people say, well, there isnt a real strong defender maybe except for Michael Morrell of the Intelligence Community. I think it depends on where you sit how you see the commission report, and i think were going to have to read it to develop do you think itll be public . Yes. Great. And when do you think its going to come out . Well, i think its going to come out in december that was the theory, yeah. But im not done there. I dont know for sure. I know the Government Shutdown probably complicated their work, but i hear around town that its coming out soon. This gentleman over here. [inaudible] wait for the microphone for one second, because that way cspan viewers can hear what youre saying. Bill tucker. Is our intelligence good enough that now in the coordination of it to prevent another 9 11, or do we know . Well, i think we have to kind of look at the record. We have, i think, prevented another major 9 11style attack at least, and so i think the Intelligence Community has undoubtedly what are you referring to . Im referring to generally the fact that nothing of that scale has happened. Im talking about other plots that have been foiled that you speak and write about and know very well. Some have slipped past like abdulmutallab, and we got lucky in that we were able to prevent that abdulmutallab was the socalled underwear bomber. The underwear bomber. 2009. So that actually goes to some of the big themes of your book which is the dni and National Counterterrorism center, they were supposed to make sure that because there were saturdays of information in the shards of information in the system, obviously easy to see postevent, the dad dropped the dime on his son. Right. He was on a sort of secondary list, a list for people to go into secondary. If hed got to detroit, he would have gone into secondary for additional screening. So that was a kind of example where the apparatus didnt quite work, or maybe thats an unfair critique of the apparatus. Well, so it gets down to what you think, you know tw yeah, should it be a mission of intelligence. Yeah. Are you going to be able to prevent every little event. Yeah. And i think the answer is, no, youre not going to always be able to operate perfectly. But to the larger thrust of your question, i think the Intelligence Community is doing a much better job on counterterrorism, and we as a result, i think, are safer at least from a large scale attack. The question that peter raises whether that is because of Institutional Reforms or just because we were spending up to 80 billion on the mission, doubling what we had spent before 9 11. So its debatable whether its because of the increased money focus and Lessons Learned from 9 11 or whether other time the institutional improvements as the commission, some would argue, whether that will lead to increased National Security down the road. I think the Institutional Reforms are an open question and still being debated. But the Intelligence Community certainly has improved its performance in the last ten years. Any other questions . If there are no other questions, um, thank you, mike, very much. Thank you. Book is for sale. Great book, blinking red, for everybody watching at home. Thats right. And youll be prepared to sign them, i think . Absolutely. Thank you so much. Very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you, mike. [applause] [inaudible conversations] every weekend booktv offers 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. Watch it here on cspan2. On tuesday former defense secretary robert gates will publish his memoir titled duty memoirs of a secretary at war. In the book mr. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both president s george w. Bush and president obama, discusses his management of the wars in afghanistan and iraq and his relationship with the white house and congress. Be in excerpts from the book that appeared on the wall street journal web site earlier this week, secretary gates writes about his conflicts with the Obama Administration he also writes about the pain of dealing with congress, noting that and on the topic of war, he opis that you can watch robert gates discs his book live from the National Constitution center in philadelphia this coming friday, january 17th, at 6 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Or catch the reair on booktv on sunday, january 19th, at 10 p. M. Eastern. Youre watching booktv. Next, david keith and Clive Hamilton debate the idea of scientifically manipulating the environment to address the threat of Global Warming. This is about an hour. Thanks, scott, for that introduction and for the invitation to come and debate climate engineering with david here today. Um, i want to talk a little bit about the science and some of the implications but more about the social and political meaning of what it would mean to have a geoengineered planet. And i want to draw on a bit of historical experience to get some idea of what that means. Now, david has become the foremost advocate of geoengineering as a response to Global Warming, and in his new book a case of climate engineering, he puts forward an innovative approach to solar geoengineering; that is, the use of a fleet of planes to inject sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere to create a layer of tiny particles between the sun and the be earth. And i should point out that today were going to be talking about this form of solar geoengineering sulfur aerosol spray. When scott said the problem is that geoengineering can be done quickly, unilaterally and cheaply, he was thinking of sulfate aerosol s