The special effort tonight in the snow to get here I know it wasn't easy to do and it was probably kind of a psychological challenge as well to say I'm going to go out in the cold and go out in the snow and and we appreciate it very much >> You'll be interested to know that our guest speaker literally slogged through a bigger snow dump in the Washington area this morning to make it here for which we are all extremely grateful. He called me at ten o'clock this morning and I had already been on the road for two hours and had just barely made it out of the Washington area. They had the snow much earlier than we did. So for that reason as well I'm I'm very grateful that you're here this evening to hear him speak. Back in the day 250 years ago or so when I was in college. If an event like this one had been held on our campus >> Speaker from the Central Intelligence Agency there would've been student protesters outside probably throwing red paint on the outside of the building and chanting anti CIA slogans in the late 19 sixties and early seventies the CIA was a dirty word. The Vietnam War atmosphere of course played a role in that as did the intelligence agencies reputation for covert activities which many Americans considered unbecoming. The US democracy has f of putting it politely. They didn't call me a diplomatic correspondent for nothing. The CIA then was almost exclusively focused on the tensions of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. And the way those tensions played out in one place of the world or another 30 years later today Americans looked to the intelligence community and the CIA in particular to help defend against the threat of international terrorism. You'll recall that in the months immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11th in New York and Washington Americans were reluctant to even ask questions >> About the US intelligence communities for knowledge or handling of terrorism information. It really took about six months before journalists politicians and intelligence officials themselves. Seemed able to emerge from the post 9-1-1 fog to pose those kinds of difficult uncomfortable questions. And they were asked a congressional investigation was launched. And right now there's another investigation of US intelligence handling of terrorism information before 911 underway >> Just a couple of weeks ago we were all treated to Secretary of State Colin Cowles displaying previously secret intelligence information. Satellite photos communication intercepts excerpt to top-secret deep briefings of undercover agents and defectors. To make the US case for war against Iraq. Meanwhile the intelligence community is busy photographing the territory of North Korea and interviewing secret sources about that country's program of building nuclear and missile weapons. So intelligence and espionage are very much on our minds and in the news today >> Ordinary Americans are hearing about these topics more I would venture to say then they've heard about them in decades. And that's where we're going this winter and spring in the University of Delaware is annual global agenda. Speaker series. This year we're calling it spies lies and sneaky guys. But you'll see we have several sneaky girls on the program as well. Our series takes place on Wednesdays at 730 hearing Clayton Hall. We expect the renovation to the complete across the hall and the other side before our next event on March 12th. So we'll return to a nicely refurbished clayton Hall Auditorium at that time. The series is generously supported by the World Affairs Council of Wilmington. Some of whose directors are with us here tonight. And by the University of Delaware Center for International Studies the Department of Political Science and International Relations and the Department of Communication. As I have in recent years I want to warn you. Our speakers are not always going to make you feel good. You not necessarily going to leave this auditorium after each of our speakers agreeing with what they have to say you might find yourself genuinely disturbed by some of what you hear or uncomfortable about it. But that's the whole point >> I guarantee you'll come away seeing the world of espionage intelligence in a new light. By the end of this series. If you need information about the rest of the program there are some flyers in the back of the room actually there aren't there yet but I'll put them out there when we're done. And better yet check the website at www.UDL.edu slash global >> You can enter the spies lies and sneaky guys site from there. That site will be updated. It's a very cool site by the way created by University of Delaware students this year and the visual communication group of the UD art department which also gets credit for those terrific posters that many of you got in the mail or I've seen around the city. Now to introduce tonight's speaker I give you Professor James Magee Chair of the Political Science department without who's kind support and encouragement we would not be able to continue this. Speaker series Dr. Magee teaches constitutional law and American politics. He's been a stalwart here at UT since 1976 and a very good friend since I came here 3.5 years ago Professor Magee place >> Thank you Ralph I just want to as a student of constitutional law to introduce our speaker who's title of his talk is white hats accomplishments of the CIA. And as a student of constitutional law I routinely teach a case. When I get to teach the course dealing with the CIA that's number of them. But one of the most important ones stems from the provision of the Constitution are called Article one Section nine which requires and I read it a regular statement and the count of the recede some expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. This is part of the United States constitutionally. And yet the CIA is Very important institution very important agency with a secret budget and and a democratic society. Or that's a difficult thing to accept in a constitutional system. It is a provision. It is an activity that might be regarded as clearly unconstitutional. And I've taught this particular course for a long time but this particular case was 1974. At a time when the CIA was in was criticized so often. And yet it raises the question that I think is a very important question is democratic society. How much security do we want and how much freedom are we willing to surrender in an open and democratic society how much security do we want and how much open government are we willing to surrender to an institution such as the Central Intelligence Agency. Our speaker is uniquely qualified to address those questions. I told him that I was going to mention this earlier. David W carry is currently in business and he's Vice President of or one of the vice president of Oracle the information assurance section of the Oracle Corporation which he joined on September fourth 2001. Before that he served for 32 years at the Central Intelligence Agency culminating in 1997 when he was appointed the Executive Director of the Agency a position which usually is referred to as the Chief Operating Officer or the number three position in the Central Intelligence Agency. He served in that role for four years before accepting his position today with Oracle. At Oracle Mr. Kerry has built and currently directs the oracle Information Assurance Center located in Oracle's facility in Reston Virginia sort of Silicone Valley of the Metropolitan Washington DC area. This senator provides a venue to demonstrate Oracle's security-related technology. And for Oracle customers and partners to address a wide array of Information Assurance and Security challenges including business continuity. The centers personnel and work with partners in federal state and local government. The private sector and academia to enhance the understanding and application of information assurance technology. It is also it also provides the focus of Oracle's involvement with the critical infrastructure protection community. While he was Executive Director Mr. Kerry was responsible for overseeing not only the daily operations of the CIA but was also a principle in the agency's strategic planning. Before assuming that post was to carry held other important senior positions in the CIA including the director. In fact one of the founders of the director of central intelligence IQ crime and narcotics center He was also the director of the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian analysis and Deputy Director of the Office of Global Issues. Sounds like our Department of Political Science Mr. Kerry's accomplished and distinguished career with which he undertook his role at the CIA earned him many awards and accolades including the CIA directors metal that the DIA directors metal the CIA's distinguished career Intelligence Medal. The CIA's Distinguished Intelligence medal which you received twice. His work has also been recognized or rewarded outside the CIA. For example among many of his other tributes Mr. Kerry has received awards from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Drug Enforcement Administration the Department of State US Customs Service and the Office of National Drug Enforcement program. Mr. Carey is also experienced in counter-terrorism. And as well as the narcotics trade. And he retired just last year or in 2 thousand Lu. He is married and has one child he earned his Bachelor's degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University and is a blue Han at heart because he earned her master's in business administration from the University of Delaware. So in good university of delaware style Please join me in welcoming Mr. Kerry to the universe. Thank you it's good to be back. Edges as saying that the snow at State and Washington nowhere I thought I had left it. The when most of my friends learned that I was going to make a speech and CIA intelligence successes >> Had a common reaction that'll be a short speech. Some Assume that the agencies successes are classified and therefore there's not much for me to say those who had been nurtured on a seemingly never-ending public discussion of intelligence failures real and imagined merely thought there's nothing for me to talk about classified or not. The first group was partially right. There still are some intelligence successes that I can't talk about. Indeed the agency's greatest success may be the ability to keep at least some of those successes secret. But unfortunately for any of you who thought my remarks tonight would be brief the latter group was mostly wrong to some of my former colleagues and CIA This is one of their worst nightmares me a captive audience and an open microphone. Your only hope is that professor BEG lighter we'll use the hook. If I get too carried away. I remind you that the topic tonight is CIA successes. So my talk is going to be very one-sided. Moreover one of the challenges of speaking on intelligence successes is relevance. Until recently most of the examples that have made it to the public domain are dated and at first blush don't appear particularly relevant to today's world. Indeed the Cold War is somewhat distant memory even for many of us who worked at CIA during that time. And some of it sounds a bit strange Nevertheless I think it's important that I start with that era because the groundbreaking advances of that time did much to create the intelligence world we live in now and have a continued impact on the analytic operational and scientific efforts in the CIA. In September 1997 CIA celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of ceremonies and a huge tent in front of the headquarters building. One of those ceremonies honored 50 CIA trailblazers men and women who played a significant role in the agency's history to that date clearly the number could have been much higher but we'd like the alliteration of 50 trailblazers for 50 years. So we did our best to pare down the list. The tenth seeded 5 thousand and every seat was occupy earlier that morning we had discovered the tent was so large it had its own weather system. We put the ten up to shield us from the sun and rain. But with the humidity of Washington September we came in that morning to discover We had a cloud inside the tent and it was raining on the seats with a bunch of fans and paper towels we were able to dry everything off just in time for the ceremony. I'd like to talk about the agencies successes from the perspective of these trailblazers both to drive home the obvious point. That is the people not the institution that makes successes happen. And so that you better understand the can-do environment prevalent in the agency then and now some may think that atmosphere is summed up in the motto Admit nothing deny everything make counter accusations. But in my experience and in the successes that I'll describe the more appropriate motto is any place anytime for as long as it takes in the 19 fifties and for several decades to follow the major intelligence questions revolved around the Soviet Union and later China. Many have described that period in our history is a simpler time meaning I supposed that we knew who our enemy was and perhaps even more importantly we knew where our enemy was located. But because that enemy possess the means to annihilate the United States by using its intercontinental ballistic missiles the future of the world is literally at stake. Together with what was then called Eastern Europe the USSR in china covered roughly half the world's land mass and area that from an intelligence perspective was denied. The size of the Soviet military the number and location of Soviet missiles and warheads and the ability of the Soviet economy to support the arms race were largely unknowns. Many people in and out of government assume the worst and pressure was high to spend extravagantly to win the arms race. If only we could see what was behind Churchill's Iron Curtain. Trailblazers Richard Bissell John parent GA skiing their colleagues in the U2 spy plane. They built gave us our first chance. These may not be names that you've ever heard before. And of course neither they nor the CIA did it alone but CIA provided the leadership the funding and the first pilots and the partnership between CIA the Air Force and industry serves as a model that works today. The task must have seemed daunting design and build the plane that would fly higher than ever before carrying a yet to be designed camera that would allow us to take pictures of military complex never seen before. The effort began in 1954 and the plane that rolled out of Lockheed Skunk Works a short time later was on time and under budget. That's a success in itself. The plane was an ungainly looking thing at the time. It looked like it was mostly wing and every nook and cranny seemingly help fuel Getting off the ground was a real tribute to the courage of those first CIA pilots. But the plane itself is only part of the success. As I said a camera had to be invented and the science and modern imagery analysis had to be created to make sense of the photos the playing collected. The latter task fell to another trailblazer art Mundell recognized as the father of imagery analysis London built a world-class National Center for producing intelligence from overhead imagery which is now resident in the National Imagery and mapping agency or NEMA. The U2 also required a covert network around the world to launch and retrieve the plane. As a result of the U2 missions President Eisenhower knew for certain that there was no bomber gap or missile gap with the Soviet Union and could make decisions accordingly. The program went on to provide critical imagery during the Cuban Missile Crisis during the war in Southeast Asian and numerous Middle East conflicts including currently araC although CIA's involvement with the program ended many years ago. In dollar terms the cost to develop the U2 was modest especially by today's standards. But the human costs we're not 45 pilots and support personnel lost their lives during the first 20 years of the program. Even as the U2 was getting airborne Richard Bissell who's starting out another Impossible project taking pictures from space numerous movies and TVs 24 showcase real-time electrical optical and thermal images of terrorists and good guys alike and ability to turn satellites at a moment's notice to listen in on any conversation or activity of interest. Whether you believe that capability exists or not the roots of today's reconnaissance satellites started with Bissell and his team in the late 19 fifties. Again the challenge was simple. Put a camera system in space photograph denied areas and then bring the film back to the photo interpreters and an analyst's honor. As usual the only problem was it had never been done before. And again CIA Lockheed and the Air Force were involved with industry. This time there were plenty of false starts. Vehicles failed to achieve orbit. Some of the test flights never got off the ground. One carrying a payload of two mice was shut down shut down by the humidity sensor. It seems that the sensor was directly under the mouse's cage when the satellite was hoisted into position for launch the sensor apparently was unable to distinguish between water vapor and what I'll tall mouse paper. That recovery vehicle containing the exposed film posed other problems the vehicle or bucket as it was called was to be jettison from the satellite and caught by a plane travelling a device that looked like a trapeze. The plane was to fly over the parachute on the recovery vehicle snag the parachute or its lines and real in the vehicle. Practice may make perfect but practice was definitely necessary. The catch plane missed almost all the time. One by one missile and his colleagues work through the problems. Kodak found a way to use polyester instead of acetate film base to keep the extremely film thin film from tariff. A larger parachute slowed the recovery vehicles so that the plane could intercepted in mid air and the launch vehicle became ever more reliable. The first successful mission in August 1960 yielded more photography in the USSR than all the previous U2 missions over the Soviet Union combined. By the time the program ended in 1972 additional film buckets had been added to extend the life of the mission. A second camera gave coverage forward and aft allowing stereo readout and depth measurements that recovery vehicle was seldom if ever missed. Resolution had improved from 40 feet to five feet and all the Soviet missile sites had been imaged In discussing the Satellite Program Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms himself a trailblazer noted that it was the confidence in the ability of intelligence to monitor Soviet compliance that enabled President Nixon to enter into the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and assign the Arms Limitation Treaty. This first program called corona morphed into successive generations of satellites. In December 1976 a satellite known as the cage 11 was launched. Gone were the cameras in the buckets replaced by charge-coupled devices with the image transmitted as ones and zeros to earth as a satellite passed over its ground stations. The first successful corona mission lasted 17 orbits a matter of days. The first k-th 11 satellite flew for more than two years a total of 770 days in an orbit that took it from 250 miles above the earth to a height of 24 thousand miles. The next three Cage 11 missions lasted longer. Imagery drive intelligence or emit could tell you where the ICBMs complexes were but more technical electronic intelligence or Island was needed to understand the capabilities of those missiles. An organization was formed in the CIA in 1963 called the foreign missile and space analysis center or from sac. By now you've figured out we'd love acronyms. And if possible we love to pronounce them as words. Thumb sack needed the telemetry data transmitted when a Soviet missile was tested. With that data the analysts could better understand the range throwaway and other characteristics of the missile. Trailblazer Carl ducking headed from SEC which incidentally was home to Evan Heim. Another trailblazer a future head of the CIA's directorate of science and technology and a onetime fighting blue hen. The agency couldn't yet collect this information from space but it could from the ground areas closest to the Soviet test ranges where the mountains in Iran and their CIA established two sites Taxman one and to establish in 1965 tax me too was located some 650 miles southwest of the Soviet missile test range and operated until 1979 when the Shah was overthrown. That may have been a good collection site but it was a miserable place to live. The area was described as remote that's to kind. In reality was perched on a windy treeless mountaintop. While the site how's the most sophisticated collection gear the time the living conditions were primitive described by one of the CIA residence as like camping out for a year. I don't wanna get too graphic but a porter John would have been insignificant step up. The CIO CIA officers who spent a year at a time at these sites collected the data that once analyzed by foams that gave us the best appreciation to date of the threat posed by those Soviet missiles. There was another CIA success. Not all the technical collection efforts were above-ground. In 1955 a plan was hatched to dig a tunnel several 100 yards under the East under East Berlin and tap into East German communication system that carried a lot of Soviet traffic The tunnel was more than six feet high 15 feet underground and had concrete floor and walls. It ran ten feet below a trunk line at once tapped produced enough traffic to support 432 tape recorders. Analysis of these intercepts provided an exceptionally clear picture of the order of battle for the Soviet group of forces in East Germany. But it's difficult to assess intentions from outer space or from technical data. That's where trailblazer George Keith Walter and his colleagues in CIA's directorate of operations come in. That clandestine service is what most people think of when they think of CIA with their images forged by 07 spy games or TVs the agency but hopefully not alias. The truth is closer to let Cray and smileys people. That is a lot of detail grunt work to make sure that operations run with minimal risk when done properly the age old processes spot assess develop and recruit yields the people called agents assets or sources. This is the terminology that Hollywood seldom gets right. Cia has employees. Agents are the people who are willing to give us key information on the plans and intentions of those who are hostile to the US or its interests. Nowhere was this more important than in the heyday of the Cold War. Cia agents provided material that it was just not possible to attain by any other means. Consider traders buy their country. These people are heroes to us risking in many cases giving their lives to help the United States. Some were motivated by money somebody the chance to better the lives of their children but most because they believed in the ideals of this country and recognize the oppressive nature of their own homeland some were recruited in some volunteered but all had to be handled clandestinely and carefully using what's called trade craft. Operations officer George keys Balder handled the first significant penetration of Soviet military intelligence. Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr pop off. Off was a volunteer walking who approach to US official in Vienna in 1952 keys water a Russian speaker flew to Vienna for the first substantive meeting with pop off which is usually more involved with establishing the sources been FETs and motives than with obtaining secrets. Keys water ended up living out of a suitcase for months. He was pop-ups case officer from 1952 until 1958. When popup was arrested and shot after a mock trial apparently the victim of a careless remark by a junior British official that was overheard by george Blake Soviet spy. Pop off providing details on Soviet military and intelligence activities on the Soviet missile program. First information obtained by CIA and Soviet nuclear submarines. Sum of estimated this information saved the US a $0.5 billion in military research. And that was when $0.5 billion was a lot of money. Keys voter met pop off in Vienna and later in Berlin and pop off was posted East Germany between the Vienna in Germany assignments pop off served a tour in Moscow where the activities of the KGB second chief director and made it inadvisable to risk of meeting. Keys water was friend confidant sympathetic ear stern taskmaster and critic. For example forcing pop off to take more invasive measures to make meetings and pressuring him to hone his German a facility which allowed in In his career and to keep a lower profile near the safe houses where they met. Another volunteer kernel olig Minkowski reported for only a little less than a year and a half but the information he supplied was critical. A World War II hero been coffee was convinced that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had the Soviet Union on the road to ruin jointly run by CIA and the British secret intelligence service or MI6 from 1960 until he was arrested in 1962 and shot pan costs keep provided information on the intention strength and technological advancement of the USSR the state of Soviet military preparedness the number of nuclear missiles in problems with their guidance systems. An insider's look at the friction in the Soviet high command over whether Soviet military strategy should be based on nuclear weapons or general-purpose courses than coffee also provided a manual for the assets for missile allowing analysts to calculate with accuracy the amount of time it would take to assemble inactivate the missiles that the USSR ship to Cuba in 1962 President Kennedy and his advisors knew with some precision. The amount of time they have diplomatic initiatives before those missiles constituted a real threat. For his contributions pen Karski asked that he be made US citizen of the US or the UK and that he be given a commission in the US Army. Some of the best Russian spies or to be more accurate despise on Russia. We're not Russian at all. Kernel Kirklin ski was a Polish army officer who supplied us with more than 35 thousand pages of Soviet military documents from 1971 until 1981. When he defected to the United States the cleanses motivation was patriotic. He believe the pole should be free and that the only country that would support that was the United States. The material he provided detailed operational plans for a Soviet surprise attack on Western Europe and included scenarios for vehicular launch specifications for more than 200 advanced weapon systems and details of the Soviet plans to impose martial law in Poland. The list goes on and on some of these people were compromised by CIA trader ultra change and later FBI trader Hanson still others fell victim to the capabilities of the KGB to monitor and surveil us diplomats suspected of being intelligence officers. Fortunately the techniques developed by George keys water and others based on their pooled experience allowed CIA operations officers even officers in Moscow to operate under close surveillance and to communicate with agents either directly through clandestine meetings or indirectly through dead drops. These techniques were known as Moscow's rules. And other trailblazer helped develop the part of the Moscow rules to defeat surveillance. Disguises. Tony Mendez is an artist then and now who turned his talents to helping case officers escaped notice or to exfiltrate agents who had been detected or BY trade. I'll defer to to your speakers later in the spring or the collusion and Paul Redmond to discuss the counterintelligence practices of both sides. But in the mid 19 seventies Tony was able to devise and readily assumable disguised technique that gave Moscow base case officers the edge they needed to escape surveillance long enough to meet an agent or service a dead drop. Tony Mendez is probably best known for his role in the exfiltration from a RAM of the sixth American house guests as they were known. During the November 1979 takeover the American Embassy in Tehran By militant Iranian students six Americans who had been outside the compound managed to find refuge in the homes of the Canadian ambassador in his Chief Immigration Officer only months before Mendez head if it's exfiltrated and Iranian agent from Tehran and therefore had what we call local area knowledge. After considering the options Mendez and his colleagues created a fake Canadian movie company with offices in Hollywood and announced in variety the filming of a movie called Argo about Jason and the Argonauts. A production crew was to serve a filming venues including the marketplace in Tehran. With that backstop Tony and a colleague fluted Tehran to sets of false documents broke the news to the six house. Guess the new film crew. Although concerned about the risk a few days later in several rehearsals Later. Toni Let the house guest now adorned as any Hollywood based troops should be through the Tehran airport to safety. The American hand in the escape was hidden for some time less revenge be taken on the American hostages embassy CIA officers among them who would spend a total of 444 days in captivity. One of Tony's colleague from the skies business Robert Baer and wasn't selected as one of the trailblazers but he could have. He had a fine eye for detail while employed at the Pentagon. He noticed that the generals and VIPs parked a lot closer than he did displaying a parking pass on their dashboards. So he made. The forge paths never gave them away but someone eventually notice the junior Mr. Behr and climbing out of a car and the spaces reserved for the brass and turned him in the Pentagon fired. We took them out like Tony Mendez variant traveled the world helping case officers device disguises and that's for trading agents is lasting contribution within the agency was was the discovery of a way to color silicone the material used for those partial and full facial mask that Tom Cruise and his colleagues used so often in Mission Impossible and barbarians world though there were no camera angles or second takes his creations had to be perfect. They were in his efforts put his years ahead of Hollywood. So far I've talked about clandestine collection both from technical systems and from human sources. Ca is also charged with responsibilities for counterintelligence covert action and all sorts analysis. As I said a minute ago I'll defer to collusion in Redmond and counterintelligence but I want to say a few words about analysis and covert action. Most analysts work and highly dangerous environment. The policy arena of Washington DC. Well dangerous maybe the wrong word stressful may be a better one. The reason is that all too often the analyst is the one who brings the policymaker bad news policy isn't working. The analyst has to make sense of all the information that's collected not only from the clandestine sources but also from the newspapers media and other widely available information that's called open source. Sometimes that information is helpful sometimes it's not. But as I sat as the analyst job to sort through at all during the Cold War analyst made sense of the overhead imagery and technical data to assess the capabilities of individual weapon systems and studied the material collected from clandestine sources that Soviet military doctrine plans and intentions but measuring defense production is a whole assessing the ability of the economy to both support that defense establishment and feed the people of the Soviet Union Figuring out which politician was on the rise in which on the way out Ra issues subject to conjecture. Models were the order of the day especially for the economic issues. And we're used to measure defense production and economic performance of all kinds. These elaborate models were needed because of the dearth of data. We were so starved for data and work so hard and the models that If we obtain data on milk production by some cow in Kazakstan the model could crank through endless formula to give you total agriculture production for the country as a whole. It as much as agriculture accounted for 25% of Soviet GMP. This number was not unimportant. Today you would do it in nanoseconds and your laptop maybe even on your PDA. But when I started working at CIA we were working on manual mechanical calculators one step above and advocates on the political front the science or really the art of criminology was developed. Every tidbit on Soviet politicians was gleaned to determine who is in and who was out and to understand the attitudes and likely policies of those who emerged often a politician's fortunes would be assessed by who he stood next to on the Kremlin wall when all the leaders trotted out to review the May Day parade in Red Square or the frequency with which a politician was or wasn't mentioned. The two Soviet control daily newspapers prompted and his vest yet. The word prompter please truth in Russian and his best year means news. But even the Russians joke that there was no truth in Prague and no news in his Vesta. The appearance of a photo of a May Day parade which had obviously been doctored to move a politician up or down the line or to remove him altogether would start the criminologists buzzing. The world of analysis has its trailblazers as well. A premier analytic trailblazer is Sherman Kent. New analysts now spend the first five months or so of their careers as residents in a CIA school named after Kant where they learn the trade craft of analysis an unlearned much of what we've been taught about how to write a term paper depending on the topic your analysis today could be on the President's desk tomorrow in a publication designed by another trailblazer Richard layman. When Layman was asked to design a daily publication for President Kennedy initially came up with the President's Intelligence checklist. As I said earlier everything has to have an acronym. So the publication was abbreviated PIC l. And remember we love to pronounce acronyms. So PIC LV came pickle. Alice joke that they worked in the pickle factory. The publications now called the President's daily brief. But it's more commonly referred to as the PDB. Fortunately that's an acronym that can't be pronounced. Whether you're writing for the PDB or we're preparing the detailed assessment of the US USSR strategic balance is absolutely imperative that both you and the reader understand your assumptions. Understand what you know versus what you think. All that be communicated clearly but succinctly. If you're doing your job you're not just explaining why something happened but providing crew monetary intelligence giving the President and other senior policymakers an idea of likely what will happen that's hard and it's why analytic rigor and integrity are all important. The analysts sole responsibility is to speak truth to power. So how did we do during the Cold War in 1999 CIA Center for the Study of intelligence sponsored a three-day conference on that subject at Texas. A&m having declassified hundreds of pages of documents months earlier. So that scholars could judge for themselves. The abbreviated answer from that session was pretty **** good Remember it was a different time Soviet military power occupied the nation's attention much as terrorism does today schoolchildren practice civil defense drills and redirected to climb under their desks or sit in the halls with their heads between there needs to protect them from the nuclear blast. I was one of these kids and I bet some of you were as well. Anyway the mysteries associated with the Soviet defense industries ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons required policy neutral analysis to inform national security policy and such analysis could be in short supply in Washington when it came time to defend your budget request understanding the economy was a key to judging the future of Soviet military power. Those models I mentioned earlier allowed CIA analysts forecasts a slowdown and solely to economic growth as early as the 19 sixties at a time when many believe Khrushchev's rhetoric when he boasted that he would barriers economically. By the mid 19 eighties CIA analysts judge the Soviet economy can no longer support the country's military programs and started to warn of the possibility that the ruling regime could lose political control as the decade of the 19 eighties progress that understanding led to other sweeping judgments by 1987 CIA analysts warn to the deepening crisis and the Soviet Union and the likelihood of an implosion politically. Those analysts also judge the Soviet leader Gorbachev's domestic programs would define his foreign policy initiatives but that is domestic reforms would fail. Ironically it was grow buttressed political reforms that cause the economy to collapse not the other way around. And it was social issues the so-called nationality problem that led to the failure of those reforms. All that was laid out in a CIA report in April 19918 months before the Soviet Union officially collapse. That didn't make the CIA analysts very popular in the policy community both here and abroad that was still in the throes of CORBA mania. But the analysts got it right. Though in fairness no one expected it to happen as soon as it did. Speaking at that conference in 1999 former DCI Bob Gates noted that preventing surprise with CIA's mission and with respect to the Soviet collapse the agency fulfill that mission more than two years ahead of time. This appreciation was in stark contrast to the opinions and the media that CIA and the rest of the intelligence community had gotten it wrong. Of course there have been numerous other analytic successes CIA called attention to the signs of a Sino-Soviet split in the early 19 fifties though was not evident to all for almost a decade. Analyst track the movement of Soviet missiles into Cuba on a daily basis with trailblazer art mundell who I've mentioned before briefing president Kennedy frequently using U2 imagery. I said at the outset that I was going to present a one-sided view SCI history the successful side and in truth the analyst. But in truth the analyst did a terrific job during the Cuban Missile Crisis but they miss the initial call judging that the Soviets would not risk nuclear war by putting missiles on the island that misjudgment drove home the need to be able to think like your adversary Analysts correctly judge the relative military strengths of Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1967 allowing US policy makers to make informed judgments about the need to weigh in militarily. I'll not mentioned in 1973 war. During the Vietnam War analyst wage an uphill battle against overly optimistic policy makers. Throughout the war CIA analysis was generally sound and often ignored. This list goes on and on as well. But before I return to some issues that I think represent analytic breakthroughs I want to say a couple of words about another CIA mission area covert action. These two words often conjure up images of swashbuckling CIA officers overthrowing governments seemingly at whim. The reality is that covert action as the exclusive tool of the president. As defined by law covert action means an activity or activities of the United States government to influence political economic or military conditions abroad where it is intended that the role the United States government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. The need for covert action has long been recognized. Although it does not accord with the general sentiments are views of the United States to meddle with the domestic controversies of other countries. It cannot be unfair in the prosecution of a just war or the accomplishment of a reasonable piece to take advantage of the hospital cooperation of others that last statement was made by President James Madison August 22 1802 when he was Secretary of State. I don't know what the procedure was when Madison was alive but today know covert action program is initiated without a document called the finding that is signed by the president of finding can be relatively general instructing the agency to combat terrorism for example. Or it can be very narrow. The one thing of finding cannot do is instruct the CIA to break the US law. Covert action words best when its objectives are aligned with the country's overt policy such was the case during the Vietnam War with regard to CIA activities in Laos. Yeah it's prosecution of the so-called Secret War allows during the 19 sixties and 19 seventies has to be labeled as success whatever one's feelings about the war in Vietnam itself. Cia's involvement allows entailed the creation of an irregular army has some 10 thousand Lao and tribal guerrillas who took on regular North Vietnamese dummies Army Divisions mostly in northern Laos and helped vector US Air Force aircraft in on targets on the ** Chi Minh Trail in Central and Southern Laos. This army was run by and supported by no more than 400 CIA personnel at any one time station in Laos and northern tab several 100 Air America personnel supported the CIA effort. Precise figures on funding for this CIA effort or unavailable but its total is a small fraction of what it would have cost us 14 thousand regular US soldiers and South Vietnam. In terms of human cost in number of CIA and Air America personnel killed in Laos was less than 20. The flip side metric is the number of American soldiers who were not killed in Vietnam Vietnam because at what CIA did next door in Laos. Covert action was employed in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. That effort lasted a decade the CIA trailblazer Howard heart at the time the agency's chief of station and Pakistan was a driving force in launching this program. Despite the presence of the Soviet Union's 40th army Never less than a 100 thousand strong plus substantial detachments Is Soviet airpower Artillery armed forces and Special Forces troops. Afghan Mujahideen inflicted extraordinary damage on the Soviets as well as destroy the Soviet sizable surrogate communists Afghan army the military defeat also had a devastating effect on soviet internal affairs. Eduard Shevardnadze the last Soviet foreign minister under Gorbachev has written that the Afghan war was the last nail in the Soviet coffin. Covert action in Afghanistan seemed to be terms that go together. The most recent effort involves thing unfortunately as yet unsuccessful hunt for Osama bin Laden. And the preparation for the very overt US invasion and overthrow the Taliban regime. You've lived through this one so I won't dwell on the details. Many of those details can be found in today's press. Most recently in Time magazine cover story on the CIA secret army and Bob Woodward's book bush at war it used to require a security clearance to read that stuff. Woodward describes CIA >> He's within Afghanistan during the weeks before the US initiated his bombing campaign and before the US military put boots on the ground according to woodward presidential finding authorize the CIA to spread money and in some cases arms to unite the Afghan warlord warlords of the northern alliance into a more or less unified fighting force and totally claims the CIA spent 70 with some $70 million less than the cost of the cruise missile attack on bin Laden's training camp years before. But success was achieved not just because of the money. That was the ability of the CIA officers to use and expand the contacts relationships and presence. The CIA had maintained after the Soviets were expelled >> Sometime before the Soviet Union fell that became clear that all the capabilities I've spoken up needed to be brought together more effectively in order to combat terrorist narcotics traffickers other international criminal organizations and those who would proliferate weapons of mass destruction. I'd like dealing with the Soviet Union. These issues don't form around a single enemy or well-defined territory. This latter feature proved awkward for an agency organized along regional lines. The answer is something called a center an organization dedicated to a single issue. The first center was formed in 1986 by DCI Casey and is called the counter terrorist center or CTC. Remember we love those acronyms >> I'll return to CTCs recent activities in a minute but I want to talk about another center that was formed in 1989 by direction of DCI Webster. This one is called CNC. Originally the counter narcotics center. It's now the crime in her chaotic center. When DCI Woolsey decided we should tackle international organized crime. It was easier to redefine the acronym than to rename the center. So the counter narcotics center became the crime and narcotic center. The counter is now an implied. Trailblazer Howard heart was asked to setup CNC and he brought the same energy dedication and leadership to counter narcotics that he has shown in the Afghan war. I was fortunate to be tapped as his deputy for that first year and a half >> And returned after the Persian Gulf War to head the Center for another four years. As an CTC we brought operation officers and analysts together with representatives from the other intelligence community agencies in C and C we also added imagery analysts and representatives from the rest of the counter drug community including the law enforcement agencies and the Department of Defense. Well where the successes some would say just getting all those organizations to participate and getting a center stood up and is a success given the bureaucratic intransigence to new organizations. I degree since I lived through it but that's only the beginning. The development of a methodology to use satellite imagery to monitor the growth of opium poppy and coca around the world is in my view a success. These estimates gave US diplomats a scientifically derived number to use and convincing foreign leaders to attack the drug crops in their countries. The same data could be used and is to target eradication efforts and to confirm that the crop has actually been eradicated. At the time the Center was created most of the counter drug world was focused on introduction interdiction and drug bust. Cia analysts approach the cartels as organizations and targeted their weaknesses. Much as the FBI had targeted the Mafia. The result was a focus on the kingpins rather than hunt for low-level traffickers >> By going after the kingpins you could raise the cost of doing business. With that analytic understanding of the target we were able to join forces with the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to establish priorities and to ensure all relevant information was pulled. Another success with the ability to find dedicated liaison partners and even the most drug ravaged countries these men and women who risk their lives not to stop the flow of drugs to the United States but to rid their countries of the corrosive drug trade. Finally we defined a new role for the analysts and the agency. Many redrafted is targeting analysts totally immersed in the operational world using their analytic skill to spot an exploit weaknesses in the opposition. This has now become common throughout the agency but was not always bus with all those pieces of the puzzles assemble. We were able to attack the cartels first the midi in cartel and then the Cali Cartel. Both in their day were considered unassailable. The key as I said was a capture of the leadership. We found one king pin by following a man we had identified as is is is count excuse me as his accountant the count and use good trade craft and traveling from his home to the kingpins location taking several different buses and taxes often reversing course to see if he was being file. This is called an SDR or a surveillance detection group. Whenever I'm lost and my wife figures out that that's the case I claim merely to be running an SDR. She has invited. Anyway the account made two mistakes first in the macho world he lived and he ignored the two women and track suits who were out for their morning jog. They were actually police woman who had been jogging up and down a flight of stairs in the neighbourhood. He seemed to be headed for. They were able to confirm is identify identity and follow them for a bit. His second mistake was his cologne. Unable to follow closely the policeman or policewoman loss visual contact with them but could literally follow his scent After passing by one Matt mentioned the smell disappeared. Retracing our steps to smell came back. A king pin had been located. Other efforts led to the rest of all of the seniors and the Cali Cartel and causes demise. These were some of the victories in a counter drug effort the need for which will never had but they were important to demonstrate to all that these men and women and men were not beyond the law. The US assistance in this effort was meant to be behind the scenes covert if you will but a grateful police general could not contain himself and thank both DEA and CIA for their assistance at his press conference. So much for clandestine entity. The counter terrorist Center has in many respects and even tougher job >> Terrorists may have some geographic dependencies such as Al Qaeda training camps that were once located in the Sudan and then in Afghanistan but these are easily move and often depend more on political protection than on some physical infrastructure. And the material that terrorists need to wreak havoc is far easier to move. Then the tons of narcotics I've discussed here to the combination of intelligence and law enforcement methods can and has yielded noteworthy results. The focus today is of course on al-Qaeda and bin Laden and rightfully so. But there had been other groups had occupied our attention in the past. Terrorists such as Carlos to Jacqueline the abalone dollar organization had been captured destroyed or marginalized >> Even as Al-Qaida was rising to prominence in the mid 19 hundreds or 990s excuse me. Ctc had not only to work against that organization but also to battle the efforts of numerous other groups that targeted Americans are American interests. Clearly all that pales at least now in comparison to Al-Qaida. So what successes CI had there as deity it detail by Director tenant. Last October the answer is considerable. The agency's focus on Al-Qaida goes back. A decade or more has Bin Laden began its activities in Sudan. >> Ctc organized appropriately and its director tended to how blind pursuit of planned to hit Al-Qaeda's infrastructure work with foreign security services to carry out arrest disrupt and weaken Bin Laden's businesses and finances recruit or expose al-Qaeda operatives and bring bin Laden to justice. The latter task obviously has not been accomplished but by September 11th CIA in many instances jointly with FBI had rendered or delivered 70 terrorists to justice around the world broken up Al-Qa'ida cells in Jordan and we're planning attacks during the millennium celebrations there and elsewhere broken up terrorist cells in the Persian Gulf that we're planning to attack us associated military and civilian targets >> Broken up a plan to attack us facilities in Yemen and one to attack a US embassy or cultural center in Europe. And cause the arrest of still more al-Qaeda operatives worldwide many of them senior members of bin Laden's organization. Since 911 of course the operational tempo is increased even more. As I mentioned a moment ago CIA also establish a network of assets that produce the information needed by the US military for the invasion of Afghanistan. The balance sheet still favors Al-Qaeda unfortunately. But I think it's important to know remember two things. First much much has and is being done to protect all of us here tonight. And second we will never be rid of those who would do as harm Developments of CIA are fostered by the agency enter our lives in other ways as well. I'll leave it to you whether or not these should be considered intelligence successes. I've already told you a barbarians work and fashioning disguises out of silica. Bob retired in 1993 and is making a lasting contribution of another sort creating one-of-a-kind prosthetic devices for people who had been disfigured from fires accidents cancer birth defects and the like. It's an exacting are the one that literally changes people's lives. In other areas the pattern recognition that has been developed to aid imagery analyst looking for my new changes around missile sites or other target areas is being used for the early detection of branch breast cancer. The agency's efforts to miniaturize cameras led by CIA trailblazer Paul how has yielded technology that most of us have used for a long time. Advances in the information technology arena are being fostered today by into tell Venture Capital operation created by CIA. And one decision for which I'm especially grateful is the decision by the Office of Research and Development some 25 years ago to ask Larry Ellison to create the first relational database in FORTRAN or less. It was called Project Oracle. After the project was completed Ellis and got permission to use the Oracle name and the rest as they say is history. Oracle is now the world's largest enterprise software company. Why am I grateful for that when in case you missed it in the introduction that's where I work now. And of course where would Hollywood B without the CIA to vilify and occasionally champion I've mentioned several of the trailblazers tonight. There are of course many more just a complete list of 50 that we acknowledged in 1997. As you've heard me say several times tonight the list goes on and on. There's another list that CIA employees celebrate not celebrated in the sense of rejoice but celebrate and a sense of honor. That lists comprises the Book of honor CIA employees who have given their lives in the line of duty. Each person on that list is commemorated with a star carved into the marble wall in the foyer of the CIA headquarters building. As you might expect there are operations impair a military officers represented. There also analyst science scientists and support officers. Two of the people on the list were gunned down at the interest to CIA compound by mira Mao Qazi who was recently executed in Virginia. The hunt for Cassius is a success story in itself and puts meaning to that anywhere for as long as it takes portion of the informal motto I mentioned what must seem like hours ago. When I drafted these remarks a few weeks ago there were 79 stars. Unfortunately the IDA star has been added. A second CIA employee has lost his life in Afghanistan. I mentioned this list of honorees not to make the point that in intelligence work as a dangerous business where they're most agency employees aren't imminent danger. Because that wall up honored symbolizes the dedication and commitment to duty that I saw in all parts of the agency during my 32 years there. And that brings me to what I think is CIA's greatest success. The success and attracting people who cared deeply about the future of their country who are willing to work tirelessly to ensure that that future is bright and who are dedicated to getting the job done. If that appeals to any of the students here and invite you to join. I don't think you'll regret it. I never have. Thank you >> You understand that can tackle you understand I'm sure that he's still under certain kinds of limitations in in his after CIA afterlife. And I don't know what he'll say But it may well be occasions when he says I'm sorry I just can't discuss that. But let's let's fire away. Yes sir. Way in the back. Your question is will the CIA benefit from being collected under the umbrella of Homeland Security >> Lastly CIA isn't going to be part of the new department. Both CIA and FBI were left out of the plan. There are 222 other agencies that will be included in the Department of Homeland Security and CIA would be hard-pressed to meet all of their intelligence needs but we'll certainly give it a try. The one of the elements to meet those intelligence needs was announced by the President in his State of the Union speech a couple of Tuesdays ago and that's the terrorist threat integration center which is going to be set up with the CIA FBI officers and both DHS and DoD personnel and is being set up literally even as we speak. But Ci will continue to work overseas just as the FBI works domestically to try to support the new Department. Dod at Department of Defense DHS Department of Homeland Security. And neither one of them is pronounceable at least at this point I've always had a policy of alternating community members and students. So we've had a community member. Is there a student with a question yes >> Okay the questioner says she doesn't want to erode the positive image of the CIA presented by Mr. Kerry during this evening. But since He said earlier that the CIA was created essentially after Pearl Harbor and an effort to prevent a recurrence of that kind of surprise attack >> Doesn't feel about what happened on September 11th which appeared to be another surprise attack of that nature. I think that's a fair point. That is I remind you that the topic tonight with CIA successes. And I warned you it was going to be a very one-sided conversation speech NCI. Well I was going to say that some might say a speech NCA failures would take more than an evening. But I'm being flip it. There's absolutely no doubt that from many angles for the attack on September 11th was an intelligence failure. It wasn't just a Failure of the CIA was a failure of the entire intelligence community and the law enforcement community. Frankly. If you look at how quickly we learned about the 22 individuals who were involved in and the attacks. Clearly there was a lot of information available in this country on those individuals before 911. And so I think it was a systemic failure as much as an intelligence failure. Is that from that aspects there there's no getting around it is determined in an intelligence failure but I wouldn't term it a systemic failure. Was it a failure in the sense that there was a nugget of information that had gone undeveloped on analyzed on earth. That if you had on earth did you would've said aha they're going to attack the World Trade Center on September 11th and they're going to fly to airliners into into the towers. I sincerely believe that that is not the case that there was no piece of information that went on processed or unearth perhaps one of the Commission that was referred to at the beginning we'll find such but I don't think it is this. Remember the community with a question yes place because why the question is do you think Osama bin Laden is still alive and if you do why is it so hard to find and extremely tall Arab hooked up to a dialysis machine. Why was it so hard to find Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and 990s one. I think he's still alive I think more and more of the evidence points to to that. And I think the uncertainty about it is it's getting less and less. It's still not a not a total certainty but my personal view is that he is alive. Why you can't be found I don't know. He's obviously not. Doesn't want to be found. There's no signs of that. I'm aware of I remember I've been retired now for 14 months 16 months. But I've not seen anything that would indicate that he's resuming his activities that he has his retinue around them. It's those kinds of signatures that will lead them. Lead the authorities 2m. Not the fact that a six foot 46 foot five >> Guy pops out of a cave someplace. The question from a student. Am I missing Yes gather intelligence. The USA Patriot Act assist the CIA and improving its ability to gather intelligence >> I don't think most of the impact of the patriot act was done with CIA. It undoubtedly help because of the funding mechanisms that were involved in a patriarch but Patriot Act but I don't think the authorities very much expanded the authority UCI. I already had requested from the community. Yes sir. Ok I take it back them. We should wishes skip you and do you have any specific examples of terrorist attacks prevented since 911 I've been out of government since 911. Yeah that's what I read in the newspapers. I believe one of the the attacks one of the cells that was dismantled and Kuwait was planning an attack on a military installation in the golf that was post 911. There was the the cell that was destroyed in Yemen and the the planned attack on the cultural facility in Europe I think was post 911 that the tenant referred to. But that's what I have to go on is tennis public statements >> Now the last question was do you know anything about it in this country and answer was No question from a student student. Yes. That's fine. Okay personal question you graduated with a business degree from the University of Delaware I think your question was what persuaded you to to go into the CIA. Laughter I got the degree I taught for a year >> And how does it was to tear myself away from New York I had talked to a recruiter who had come through and the job sounded kind of interested they were interested in me because they needed some people to work on the Soviet economy especially the Soviet agricultural sector of the economy which accounted for about 25% of Soviet GNP. And as I said earlier was a critical intelligence issue at the time. My plan frankly was to go to the CIA rip them off for their educational benefits. I finished my PhD and go back to academia sometime someplace. As these things sometimes happen I never finished a PhD and I warn people that intelligence work is addictive. Rather than get out of there within five years 32 years went by. And it went by extremely fast. It's very interesting work. It's challenging it's it's a total learning environment that you'd be comfortable in. It's a constant learning environment and it's addictive >> Why don't you tell me you told the class earlier. I am asking David tell us short anecdote here that relates to this question. He was asked a similar question in our class session earlier today and told an interesting little story about it. He he was an agriculture and business expert and why would that be useful to the to the intelligence agency at the time turn seemed to me to have been a little interesting so intervene on that. Let me having trouble recalling which interesting little story >> And I just make it up to make up a different way. Now the the issue at the time was that there was a real focus as I said earlier this evening on the Soviet Union and the economy was the lynch pin of us. The question mark. I mean let me rephrase it was important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the academy to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the military establishment the the economy had to support that military establishment first and foremost and also feed its people. So what they were really looking for where people that could translate that into the economic variables that I was talking about. As I said so as Soviet agriculture accounted for about a quarter of Soviet GMP. So that was really the the attraction there. It led us to all sorts of things. Some of you may remember the great Soviet grain robbery in 1972. That was a political decision that caught everybody by surprise. Because prior to that time if the Soviets had a bad harvest they slaughtered livestock to reduce the demand for grain. It also meant that people reading bread and meat. So by the seventies there was a lot of pressure for them to catch up to the West and key consumer indices like the amount of meeting your diet. And so they decided to go out and buy grain rather than in than that kill livestock. The only problem was at the time we had a lot of green and we were subsidizing purchases by foreigners and others of American grain. So because they did it clandestinely they bought 20 million tons out on the open market but they bought it from the US Canada Argentina the other major suppliers. At the same time in a very strategic approach to all those sellers. The US ended up sir. The Soviet purchases are great. This was called the Soviet the great Soviet grain robbery by an author wrote a book on that subject that resulted in a question. Could we use imagery satellites to get a better idea of what the Soviet harvest was going to be. And we created a project interdisciplinary project that included agricultural economists agronomists imagery analysts Russian specialists a whole panoply of talents to focus on one thing. So it'd be grain crop. And we were able to list with some accuracy estimate to Soviet grain crop months before it was harvested and give policy makers and idea of how much green soviets were going to TBI. Ironically they became they came into the market year after year after year after that for 20 million tons of grain. So the intelligence question who came not when are they going to die 20 million tons of grain but when are they not going to buy 20 million tons of grain because we got dependant on the on the purchases >> I'm not sure that was the story that you wanted me to tell but I told him it made the connection. That's that's what I was trying to do that. There are people in the audience who hadn't heard that. And that makes the connection between what seem like completely disparate fields intelligence and Agriculture Economics. A question from x from the community. Yes sir. It's ancient history. What did the Church Commission do what was the effect of the Church Commission on the CIA you might want to briefly summarize what the Church Commission was. And that was before I was born >> If you wish the what the Church Committee added the phrase rogue elephant to the American lexicon. When referring to the CIA. It actually led to I think you could make this case. I'll defer to to constitutional experts I think it led to the oversight system that we have today. That there were irregularities at the church committee focused on and by calling attention to them lead to better oversight of the intelligence community as a whole and the CIA in particular. And the CIA is is in a strange position at answers to you but you have no way to know what's what and what it's doing. This is this is also a reference to the budget number. So the only recourse you have is hope that your elected officials who sit on the intelligence. Oversight committees are doing their jobs and there are two committees. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or Sci and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence or Hep-C as well as the two appropriations committees in the House and the Senate that have full oversight of the agency budget but also the agency activities. And I think that was in direct response >> To the Church Committee activities. I think. Ok a question from a student. Yes sir. Ok. The questioner says that Mr. Carey is characterize tonight the CIA role as transforming from largely focusing on the Soviet >> The Union in the Cold War to largely focusing on counter terrorism today is that the question is is that an accurate characterization and the follow-up was what else at the CIA focusing on today besides Counter-Terrorism. I think that is largely correct characterization. The popular image of some years ago when the Soviet Union actually fell was that that's all the CIA ever did. And so there were people walking through the halls mourning the passing of the Soviet Union because the arch enemy had gone away. In point of fact I me my own personal as a lead is probably about 60% of the organization focused on the Soviet Union at one in one way or another. During the heyday of the effort of the Soviet Union fell in 1989 the counter-terrorism centered that I mentioned started in 1986 and there was a pre-existing effort going back to 1981 on counter-terrorism same thing. In the case of counter narcotics that center was formed and 89 but we had a program in 1981 although a fledgling program the other issues are of import or the cliff ration of weapons of mass destruction including biological and chemical weapons which certainly hasn't tie into a counter-terrorism efforts but which is a very important topic in and of itself. The I think if you ask most people today with the top three priorities are to be counter terrorism counter terrorism counter-terrorism but there are an awful lot of things that are going on at the same time. And if I have a concern it's that those other activities counter narcotics work against weapons proliferate who's in the like. Maybe not be getting as much attention as they deserve given the focus on counter-terrorism >> I just would remind you the CIA is focusing on North Korea. That's part of weapons of mass destruction but it's also it's also kind of a political focus on on East Asia. Agents at the CIA officers at the CIA excuse me no agents their focus also on economic developments in in other countries do it. They'll keep certainly are keeping a close eye on Japan. Because of its economy that certainly are keeping a close eye on China. They're even watching the friends and allies in Europe to to be able to help the US government's predict what our friends and allies are likely to do in various political situations so I'm not questioning Mr. Kerry's characterization is counter-terrorism being the primary one but there certainly are other areas that are being focused on and have to be focused on because the next big thing that erupts somebody is going to turn to a guy like Dave carrier and say why didn't we know and he'll be able to say here it is sir it was on your desk and a question from a member of the community. Yes in the back sir >> Okay question is would you comment on the relationships between the CIA and other foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. I think you've already spoken a little bit about the domestic side but but please please. Excuse me >> Many of the activities that I talked about especially in the counter terrorism counter narcotics world. Counter narcotics areas absolutely depend on foreign liaison partners. Okay so those are the foreign intelligence services that we work with. The CIA works with around the world. I still get my pronouns a little mixed up. So you have to forgive me on that. That's an a very very important. Those are very important relationships and are really in some cases the operational arm of the agency certainly gives us more reach than otherwise might be the case. Within the US context the relationships between the agencies and very good. There's a lot of information that gets shared every day the one the relationship that's almost always pointed to is CIA FBI. And whether or not information is being shared is more is being shared today than ever before. There is there are senior officers from each organization working in the other organization. Some have referred to this as the exchange of passages but that works too >> And this new terrorist threat Integration Center that I spoke of is going to accelerate that role even more than it has been been already. For another view on that on the answer to that question you might want to go back to the website for last year's presentation at this event by Robert Blitzer of the FBI who also answered that question it at some great length the the webcast is available for you on the website there in the archive. A question from a student because they weren't Yes sir >> The question is considering the low tech nature of terrorism today and the question is cited flying airplanes into towers as a low tech. Example. Do you think the need for human intelligence is greater today than it's ever been. The answer is Absolutely. The whole bunches of myths. There was a myth there for a time there was myths that you couldn't recruited narcotics traffickers >> We proved that wrong and bringing down the meeting and colleague cartels. There's a myth that you can't recruit a terrorist. And and in some cases these are very very hard targets and both of those instances. You're talking in some cases about family members constituting constituting the cell the terrorist seller the necrotic cell. But there's other ways to get close to those people and the role of the Operations Officer I think is should be much enhanced and is being much enhanced. I would say probably the area that has received the most attention in the most growth >> And since most resources since about 1998 is the area of human intelligence that was ramped up even faster after 911. I'm sure that we'll take two more questions one from a member of the community and then there was a student question back there somewhere that I just saw sir over there right the question is about the security clearance process at the CIA and the questioner is asking whether whether it's true that people with skills in foreign languages particularly if there are foreign descent are having out a slower time being approved if not being denied and whether that's a drawback to the CIA >> This is a longstanding problem The When I applied to the agency I think I applied in probably October I got word from when I was on vacation in August that that I had made it through the system and was told that that was amazingly fast. Now that was admittedly 32 years ago 33 years ago. When I became executive director this was one of the first issues I I looked at. And what I found was the the average time was about nine months. But if you looked closely about the first three months was deciding whether or not to give the person an application. And that would be okay if you were doing some sort of assessment during that period of time by they weren't. They would fly people into having an interview and that person didn't do interviews on Tuesday. And so they'd fly and back and back and forth and back and forth and nothing was happening with the individual. So what we did was we centralize things in what's called the recruitment Senate We gave we put senior people from every part of the agency into the recruitment center. We told people you better make sure your requirements are up to date because if you want a level four or Farsi speaking PhD economist and recruitment center sees one they're going to hand them a conditional offer of employment on-the-spot. Now they still gotta get through the rest of the security process but they've got that application. And incidentally if anybody takes me up on my offer to apply to the AGC once you fill out that application make a Xerox copy of it because nobody will ever ask you for more information. It's 18 pages or 20 pages. So we instantly started giving people conditional offers of employment. When we started visiting college campuses we started doing it in the fall so that by the time we had gotten through the process it would be really spring. And so as people were graduating and starting to make their decisions about what job they were going to take they had our job offer not our application in hand to weigh against any other offers that they might get. So the process has gotten speeded up. Considerable amount the issue about languages and x and relatives overseas was once kind of a showstopper and theological. You want people that have native or near native language capabilities and they grew up in a household speaking a language not English. That's a good thing. Those households tend to have extended families that reach overseas. You want somebody that's had a life experience to include living overseas if possible especially if they're going to go into the clandestine service into the operations area. Those people are going to have contacts and friends overseas. So about again about 56 years ago >> The security processing kind of changed focus to recognized that that was a good thing. Okay last question from a student Yes sir. Through all of your years of service have you ever been personally disenchanted by a CIA policy that's a good one to end on. Yes I'm sure a lot of the the first the first I'll tell you the first issue that I tackled when I became executive director. In the post aims world. If you're CIA employee you get re-investigated periodically >> Which includes a polygraph nobody likes faith polygraph. But it's in the post aims world. It was people were being asked back for a second session. The third session of horse session it was really unfair and their reinvestigation for coming and just at a time when they were supposed to go on to another to another job. So put that job in limbo. I tried to get the calligraphers to narrow it down to one question. Are you aspiring if yes then we got a whole bunch of other questions. We want to ask you. If no please go on with your life and go on to your your next assignment it didn't get quite down to that level but we did reduce it to basically four questions. When we started the process much earlier in the assignment process so that peoples did not have to wave goodbye to their household effects as they got strapped into the polygraph chair. And that's been turned around. But it was a reaction. Some would say an overreaction and I would agree to be trail. And you have no idea of how hard something might that hits an organization. So it was it was not an unexpected overreaction I guess certainly needed to be corrected and we were able to do it. Before we say thanks to David and before you leave a quick note about our next program which I think should be a unique experience. On Wednesday March 12th we will have two speakers. Hear. Ole collusion was a Major General in the KGB the Soviet Union's espionage and intelligence agency during the Cold War. Paul Redmond was an intelligence officer for the CIA collagen spied on the United States from Washington DC Redmond spied on the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe and later became chief of counter intelligence at the CIA trying to stop guys like collagen. I imagine we'll get some real insight into the world of spy versus spy >> If you haven't already received one and you'd like one pick up a flier with a schedule of the rest of the program and do keep checking the website please I'm quite sure will have some changes later in the program to report to you and that website will be the way to do it. Also if you'd like to receive email notices of these events please print clearly your name your email address on one of the lists which we'll have. I don't know where they are Anna outside on the table outside the room. Okay thank you sorry. And now thank you very much for coming. Let's say thank you to our speaker. David carry
Global Agenda_2-26-2003_David Carey
From Robert Diiorio January 06, 2020
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Part of the Global Agenda 2003 Spies, Lies & Sneaky Guys series - Global Agenda 2-26-2003 David Carey
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