Men. Didnt teach the students, didnt have detailed responsibility anymore. The administrative board, joint administrative board, had responsibility for the progress and wellbeing of the students, the Extracurricular Activities were merged. The dorms were coresidential. So, the notion that there was a college there was frankly part of the same, like the thing that for decades, and engaged in some important endeavors for alumni and also that they a difference to students, older women who could serve as mentors, but college i think what finally happened when neil was president of harvard, linda will son president wilson, president of radcliffe, they engaged in two years of pretty quiet negotiations to try to establish as a fact what had been reality for many, many years. There wasnt a college left that never had a faculty. It had there just wasnt anything left as a real college to preserve. So the the amazing thing is that radcliffe survived survived 1,999th, not that it ended as a college. Thank you very much. [applause] to for coming, copies of the book are available in the room. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] tonight a debate on the future of the u. S. Economy, at 8 45, a history of william f. Buckleys longrunning program, identify firing line. On after are after words, former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell offers his thoughts a path for peace between israel and pal stein palastin. Good evening, and welcome to the center for Strategic International studies. Im andrew schwartz, Senior Vice President and its my honor to host James Kitfield and we are doing this in partnership with the center for the study of northwestern the center for the study of the presidency and congress. We were just talking upstairs. One of the really wonderful things about the center for the study of the presidency and congress and csis they were both founded by the late david apture. He was a remarkable man who we all loved and he lived to see this building, which was really terrific. He started over 50 years with admiral arley burk and to years we were at 18th and k, and less opulent surroundings to sale the least. Thats putting it mildly. We would have doing this book talk in basement with no windows and would never heat gotten here with pture an and to have the james James Kitfield here whos wherein another remarkable book. You know his bio. One of the best, best military reporters to ever work in this town. He is one of the best authors. He has the respect of the people that he interviews and writes about, and the respect of his readers and the respect of fellow journalists. Thank you for saying that. And certainly of the policy community, who consider him to be someone of just impeccable talent and character, and we have all learned quite a lot from James Kitfield over the years. The book is terrific, and i know that all of you, the holiday are coming up so dont buy one, buy two. For those of you at home who are watching on the webcast or cspan, theyre available on amazon, available wherever they sell books. Its a marvelous book, and i strongly recommend it. Everyone at csis will get through it by the end of the year, no doubt. Thank you for coming out on another calm evening in washington. Nothing much going on here. All quiet. But the sun is shining today and the sun is always shining on us. Were a bipartisan institution that aims to be constructive on policy and thats what we hope to talk about tonight to learn from james book and hope to take your questions. James, why dont you tell us why the name of the book bat and was the origin of the book. I thick twilight warriors. I was trying to convey that this groel terrorist movement, not a night or day, neither victory or defeat, neither war or criminality. Its a hybrid of it and its kind of this idea of perpetual conflict. So thats how i picked the name. The genesis of it was i was doing a lot of reporting around 2011, which i thought was a really watershed year for the post9 11 war on terror. Obama came into office. In the first two years he launched more drone strikes against terrorists, targeting terrorists, in pakistan than the Bush Administration had done in eight years. The joint special Operations Command had launched triple the number of strikes that it had launched each month. In the space of a year, 20102011 we killed more than half of the top 20 al qaeda lieutenants, senior level leaders. And in that year we also killed the two most want terrorists in the world, Osama Bin Laden and anwar awlaki, thed a of al qaeda in arabian peninsula. Sew reached the level of effectiveness i never seen in the coverage of what happened after 9 11, including the wars in iraq and afghanistan. So something was going on, and the same year, not by coincidence, president obama pulls of troops out of iraq, and the killed Osama Bin Laden, and ended most 9 11 wars, was keeping to a deadline to get out of afghanistan by 2014. So, clearly we were then he gave a speech in the second term in 2013, where he basically tried to define the war on terror as being over and that we had so decimated al qaeda that we could now sort of put it into a more normal threat level and get on with widening the an be tour of American Foreign policy. So there was something going on. We would trust this new targeted terrorist killings as being our main strategy against the war on terror and we could do that. That was interesting. We didnt know about the targeting and killing program. It was cloak in almost total secrecy. A few years ago, then denial not deny but failed to acknowledge what was behind the drone strikes and there were no leaks. Very few leaks. So we were relying on the new style of operations we knew nothing about. So is a journalist that intrigued me. And i also knew that this idea that al qaeda was done and that we could sort of downgrade it to a normal sort of threat, was not shared by a lot of the top intelligence guys, the top guys who actually did the targeting and killing program they killed a lot of leaders, the groups persisted, and so for those two reasons it was worth a real deep dive to see to understand this method of operation, being so successful and also understand the enemy and understand whether we this war is really over. How did we get so successful . It turns out that you mentioned prodigal soldiers, which we looked at the force that fought in the persian gulf war that was so effective of and we were still in the post vietnam malaise about the military being not very effective. And if you remember, key to that was Goldwater Nichols where they basically forced the services to stop their competition between each other and to be joined. That was a key part of the military becoming more effective. Turns out that with joint special Operations Commands task forces, Multi Agency Task forces in iraq and afghanistan, were almost perfect crucibles for forging a synergistic mod of operations and combining the skill set of intelligence agencies, joints special operations, direct action units, Law Enforcement agencies like the fbi, the dea and others, and they all operated under one roof in a war time visit a and and broke down the barriers and came up with an operation wall style who in the sum whose whole was better than the sum of its parts. The Record Number of targets that they hit did that surprise you . It did. Win one facet the day this incredible, high uptempo tempo of operations and that is because they turned the usual intelligence gathering equation on its head. Usually intelligence gathering informs operations so you gather intelligence to do operations. They were had gotten into this cycle of operations, called f3fa, find, finish, exploit, and analyze. And they that got the tempo of that was so industrial level that they start every target they fell in on gave them more targets, and just reached a virtual cycle and they were gettinged in the decisionmaking loop of al qaeda in a way that made their leaders very vulnerable. Lets talk about theres some news in the book, and its without controversy. Oh, good. But its its fascinating. In the book you talk about various characteristic officials, namely general flynn, who concluded in 2012 that the Obama Administration was seeking to suppress intelligence on islamic extremist threats in order to justify walking away from iraq, syria, afghanistan, and other countries that had fallen apart while he was president. Tell us about that. Thats one of the central tensions that i talked about earlier. This feeling amongst flynn was the chief Intelligence Officer for joint special Operations Command in iraq and afghanistan, so he was very close to the fight. Flynn, whose name is up for several jobs Donald TrumpsSenior National security adviser, alter ego, and he was so he was at the Defense Intelligence agency and was seeing intelligence about the throats of at any rate from al qaeda and other groups, loot from syria and other places, well. He showed me a chart, 2004 to 2014, the number of islamic extremist groups doubled at a time when the narrative was, threats gone away, we can go back to a new normal. He saw that the intelligence went up the klain of command it was diluted until lot of the threat warnings were being sort of diluted out of the intelligence assessment. We know learn that the pentagon Inspector General investigation found there were complaints. The alarmist intelligence analysis on the groth of isis disappeared. It was at the top level of the u. S. Central command where they pointed the finger. So, one of these things where when the narrative is coming out of the who is, out of the white house. Flynn is very upset and one of the reason his didnt get to serve his to third year at the Defense Intelligence agency. Just did a profile on him. He felter there frustrated that what he thought was a growing threat was being basically perceived by the public as a dying threat and explained by the white house as sort of we won this. That cautioned a caused a lot of tension, and flynn arraignments not everyone in the Intelligence Community but flynn represented a core group that felt the enemy was not a dead, that the enemy is an ideology and all of this groupser in the black banner, whether al qaeda or isis are taliban or al alshabaab, theyre united by an ideology, connectty tissue, personnel and the threat was growing and he felt that the white house was not explaining that threat to the public. Who i did he think that. Because he was speak intelligence he saw wasnt getting into the abouts daily brief, and the president s speeches were talking about basically this seminole Counterterrorism Group was describing al qaeda is decimated. The troops are coming home. We can basically rely on this Drone Program and keep america safe and thats the new normal. And he fought back against that. Didnt believe that. Is he still fighting that fight. He Still Believes that and hes going to be a very senior person so, yeah, one thing youll see from a Trump Administration is you wont talking about the threat as being bigger than just isis or altime its an ideology and wherever it raises its head and forms a group that puts the black banner territory, that were probably going to be fighting that group because its viral, antiwestern, intoll rand of islam, like shia, and intolerant of islam, like shia, so a different narrative coming out of the trump white house. Will what will that narrative be, though in terms of fighting counterterror . I think this is you know, i dont want to speak for Lieutenant General mike flynn. The narrative is going to be this war is not over. Honestly, if you see what president obama has done the last year in a year and a half he called isis as the jv team of terrorism. He is now talking about two years ago, about the war being over, and now talking about a generational struggle. If anyone was reluctant to put troops back in iraq it was president obama but he did it because he realized what a threat isis was. He has frozen the troop withdrawal from afghanistan because taliban is coming back. I think theres a general consensus now this conflict is generationality. A different kind of conflict. Not one we can walk away from because we won. The enemy gets the military says that and this enemy is fighting. Can you walk us through the electrons formation of u. S. Counterterrorism network and its operational style . The book talks about the partnerships. So, those joint task forces joint special Operations Command, under visionary leadership, Stanley Mcchrystal and bill mick raven and now scott miller, former Delta Force Commander that ethos of breaking down the walls therefore intelligent enforcement and military, finding synergistic style of operations that merges all their tall talents into a skill set, that has been expanded to our Global Counterterrorism Network go to the national counterat theism center its like the motherlode of the network they formed, and the enemy works in networks as well. Very flat organizations go to the major nodes Like National counterterrorism center, they have multiagency inside the center, called pursuit groups looking like a task force. If you go all over the country you see joints Terrorism Task forces and combined Law Enforcement and nod america not military but the combined the intelligence in the Law Enforcement community. Thats the norm now. We have a globespanning network of cores terrorism and ones in iraq dish thats a technological the front line Delta Force Team in iraq right now, irbil, has hundreds of analysts scattered all over the world, analyzing the drone surveillance from the drones flown from the air force base in arizona, analyze the what they call the defense Common Ground system, and they call it Remote Split Operations but its created a network that can turn the folk discuss and hard stare on any please in the argentina in a matter of seconds. In the earth in a matter of seconds. In the desert storm it took three days but now tied into a network that looks like what Stan Mccrystal made and then talk to the people of the network, the people from these agencies who rotated through joint task forces of now risen through the whole system and theyre working at National Counterterrorism center and theres experience level. They only know working together and its now that ethos pumps out there the entire global u. S. Counterterrorism network. Its generally in other words that before 9 11 and the cia and fbi had considerable barriers between them to say the least, and hampered their cooperation. The atmosphere you described now has really changed and the how has it changed and how is the removal of barriers been a positive development. Well, you raised an interestg point the fbi and the cia on these joint task forces, counteror whatever, use the joke you had to check your guns at the door or else they would shoot each other. The cultures were so antagonistic each other. The fbi, the beat cop kind of image. They were like oil and water. So, when they start these joints task force toes they literally had their work stations sort of isolated by crime scene tape. So the other guys wouldnt come over there and look over their shoulder. The National Counterterrorism, they brought the agencies together and had 15 different Computer Systems on their work stations because theyre all stove piped to their mother agency, not sharing with each other. They had at these task forces finally say, look, guys you have to put all your sources on the blackboard so everyone knows each others sources and you had to make a promise you cant poach each others sources and they realized they had some of the same sources being used by two or three or four agencies and telling them different things, contradictory things, that they war getting paid and so it went from there to a verdes separate fight where they all finally said to win this fight we have to work together, and that was a huge change, and its now, like i said,percolated up throughout the entire system. So, working together of course, the post9 11 Commission Report and all the reforms broke down the allowed that sharing hat was previously from the Church Committee back in the 19507s 1970s was not allowed. The intelligence sharing is now eons above writ was at 9 11. And one reason i want to write the book, thats what good looks like and i dont want us to lose that. Now we have yale and ohio state playing on the same field. Exactly. On the same team. Exactly. Nine mean running backs, quarterbacks. Got it. What did you discover as you peeled back these veils behind the terrorist targeting program . Well, one of the things i discovered was a much more granular understand offering the enemy. One of the fascinating parts of the book is where the fbi realized that its job is to protect americans and americans are being killed by these ied cells in kabul, so, brian mccally, who i profile in the book Tell White House he is, one of the u