announcer: monday, the senate 3:00 p.m. in at eastern. at 5:00 p.m. they resume debate on rex tillerson as the next secretary of state. votewill take a procedural with a simple majority needed to advance the nomination. if cloture is invoked, the confirmation hearing will take place on wednesday. live coverage on c-span2. now, house intelligence committee ranking member adam schiff of california and former national security officials

discuss cyber hacking and the u.s. elections. the center for american progress action fund hosted the event. it is about an hour and -- an hour and 20 minutes. >> ready to go? i want to thank you all for coming today, including our panelists and of course representative schiff and his staff for their help including my tim -- my friend tim berger and -- tim who works for the congressmen on the intel committee. i will be brief because we have a lot of time -- do not have a lot of time and we have a lot to talk about. it is my honor to introduce representative adam schiff who represents california's 20 congressional school districts in los angeles county. representative schiff among other things is the ranking

democrat on the house permanent select committee on intelligence. he is the leader in all intelligence issues and has been particularly outspoken and thoughtful on the issue of russian interference in the recent u.s. presidential election. after the congressmen gives some opening remarks, he has agreed to participate in a panel -- he has led by agreed to participate in a panel. i also want to add that -- serving his country in the amount. jeremy bash, another old friend and colleague from the cia and the pentagon will be on the panel. jeremy is managing of global -- beacon global strategies and

was in excellent shape as that -- julie smith will also participate in the panel. she worked at the pentagon for vice president biden. she now works with jeremy at the center for new american security. if she is also one of the smartest people in town on europe and russia. finally, when i started studying detente wasnion, top focus. we then went to peering into putin's eyes, to reset to today. who knows what phrase we will come up with to describe the put.in-trump relationship. a line from an old "buffalo makes it clearg"

-- sums it up for the moment for me. "there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear." rep. schiff: thank you it is a , pleasure to join you today a special appreciation for american progress for the fabulous for the center does an invitation to come and speak with you today. there is a much -- there is a lot to talk about. i thought i would focus on the convergence of two trends in the world. the trend affecting russia and its place in the world and the worldview of vladimir putin as well as the trend of increasing weapon andcyber as a intow those trends come uniquely pernicious combination last november, which will bring us to the heart of the topic today. let me start by talking about russia with an anecdote from a

few years ago when i was oligarchd to a russian in los angeles and made the observation that it was a shame that medvedev hadn't been given a freer hand. i thought the relations between united states and russia could have been very different, that putin seemed very much to have a chip on his shoulder. that anything in the united states interest was high definition and pathetic to russia's interest. had putin given him greater autonomy they might've had a , different relationship in our countries might have been on a becauset trajectory there were a number of common interest. his answer was very dismissive. medvedev he said was nothing. do you know, he asked me, that medvedev's had at that medvedev at all times someone called the

pillow carrier? do you know what the job of the pillow carrier is. he said it was the job of the pillow carrier to smother the -- smother him in his sleep if he did something he didn't like. putin'sly, i think worldview sharpened after the mass protests in 2011 because they play such an informative role to the antipathy to secretary clinton. i think it is also an important chapter in modern russian history because the gravest concern for vladimir putin is the longevity of his regime. he saw mass protests and the russians think revolutions were inventions of the cia. what i mean -- when i meet with

the cia, i congratulate them on .heir omnipotence they have far greater capability than i am aware of, but nonetheless, this is apparently the russian perspective on things. i used to describe even as recently as a year ago the threat emanating from russia as a form of creeping authoritarianism coming from the kremlin. i would no longer say it is creeping. i have think we are not in a new cold war, but we are in a highly consequential war of ideas. not between communism and capitalism, but between authoritarianism and democracy and representative government. we see that obviously vividly in the russian propagation of its model and its desire to tear down the democracies in europe, tear down the american democracy. one of the core conclusions of

the intelligence community in terms of russian interference in our election was the desire to sow discord in the united states. this is, i think, a hugely important battle of ideas and sadly, in this battle of ideas you see autocracy on the march. you see countries in europe that are becoming increasingly autocratic, increasingly nationalist in their origin. you see changes here in the united states were our own new president displays often very authoritarian qualities and i think the weakening of europe, the brexit, all of these factors are greatly endangering the future of democracy and i think this is going to be the struggle of our times. briefly aboutw the other trend and that is the explosion of the potency of

cyber. have hadany countries a desire to blur the distinction between different kinds of cyber activity. there is, obviously, cyber for the purpose of theft, intellectual property. this is a problem we have had with many countries, but probably among the foremost, china for many years. you have cyber for the purposes of the gathering of foreign intelligence, which all nations that have cyber capability engage in. you have what we saw a recently in our own election cyber for the purposes of affecting political outcomes of meddling in the internal affairs of another country. we have seen this from russia in europe in the past. this was the first and most brazen example of cyber being utilized in those means here in the united states. , i think forally the united states is a

weapon.lly asymmetric it is easy and cheap to go on offense. it is phenomenally difficult and expensive to be on defense. they just need to find an opening. one of the illustrations i love to give is target when target was hacked. the hackers got into target through the hvac, the air-conditioning system because in an internet of things, you are only as secure as your least vulnerable point of entry and in that case it was apparently air-conditioning. it is the equivalent of a jewel heist where the thief climbed through the air-conditioning duct and they were able to go through the hvac system and migrate into financial data and then all of a sudden target has a huge problems -- had a huge problem on their hands. it can cheap to do and be done remotely and always with some level of deniability.

in the context of a nation-state actor who is doing damage to the united states, whether it is north korea attacking a company or russia attacking our democracy, it will always put the administration in a difficult position of proving its case when it makes attribution or deciding it cannot do so without giving up important sources and methods and making the decision not to attribute conduct. this gets me to a point i would like to conclude on and that is our new president is doing deep damage to himself and our country. he is doing this in many ways. he is doing this and his willingness to make up facts as he goes along and we are in the of the most recent flareup in the invention that millions of illegal immigrants voted. what is this have to do with

russia, national security, or anything else? they will become a time when the president is to be believed by the country. there will be a time when the president will need to make a case for what intelligence agencies tell him without revealing what sources of information are. if the president can't be believed by his own people, let alone our allies, if he has so -- has so impugned the credibility that the intelligence professionals are providing the best insight in the world, what hope does he have of persuading his own country, let alone our allies to make common cause to deal with a threat? this is i think an enormous problem. as you may remember as early as september, senator feinstein and i made the initial decision to go public with attribution of russia involvement in the hacking before the administration was willing to. obviously we were lying the administration to make the attribution. my argument was that the administration didn't need to reveal sources and methods, but

it did need to make attribution. certainly, whenever that is the case, you are going to have people in the public and the press saying "where is your proof? " but it will be very much in our interest for the government to make attribution and not disclose sources and methods. i'm sure the kremlin would like nothing better than the whole -- that a more full some accounting of how we know just what the russians were doing. right now, the russians are reversing -- reverse engineering everything in the open source report to try to figure out how we know what we know. i think it is very important the president have the confidence of the public to be able to come before the american people and say either the iranians are cheating or the north koreans are advancing on their miniaturization of a nuclear warhead or whatever the case may be that warrants action, it will be important that the president have credibility and i think there is no one who is doing more to undermine his own

credibility and legitimacy than this president is doing himself and i will define a coda on this revisiting the creation of black sites or going back to waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques, the consideration of a ban on visas to muslims in any form are colossal mistakes that will cost us relationships with our allies, many of whom we depend on in the war on terror and this is a chapter that many of us hoped we had turned a page on and i think it would be a tragic mistake for the country to revisit this and make the same mistakes all over again. on that optimistic note, i will conclude and i look forward to our discussion. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you. >> good morning, everybody and thank you for being here. thank you for the kind introduction of the congressman and out -- all of our distinguished panelists. we have julie and jeremy and .ongressman schiff i run the national security program here. there is a lot going on in the news. thank you for all of you for taking the time to be here and talk about what might be one of the most important issues we have faced as a country. panel bounce around the and come back here and try to save time for questions. i think we will have a bunch at the end. i think i would like to start jeremy, as the former chief of staff of the pentagon

and the cia. one of the things we saw this week was maybe an attempt by the president to bridge a divide by going to langley and talking to it was questionable whether it had the desired impact. what are the implications between the president and his intelligence agency? and what does that mean for us having the intelligence we need of the country? oni was at the agency december 30, 2009, a day we sent a dozen of our best officers to a post in eastern afghanistan to conduct a counterterrorism operation. .n operation that went wrong

he killed jennifer, darren, jeremy, and five others. those seven offices are memorialized at langley, as well as other members who lost their lives. it was disturbing and upsetting to a number of intelligence professionals that i have spoken to to see the president's presentation on saturday. there were four areas that i think this important relationship between the president and his intelligence --community will come into conflict. as a congressman noted about russia, the intelligence community has been warning about the threat posted by russia. an adult assessment

shared by the president and his team. second, on counterterrorism, the president said on saturday, we invented isis. and that we should have taken their oil. if you combine that with some of misguided terrorism -- for people who keep our country safe, and you combine that with going back to waterboarding, misguided usicies that will not make safer prevent terrorist attacks in our country, you see of collision that you see an making ourcollision jobs harder. era of alternative facts, what does an intelligence

officer do? credoelligence officer's is -- you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. knowntelligence officers they need to speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable, and when you start from the premise of alternative facts, lies, it undermines the whole premise of intelligence. intelligence is designed to put parameters around policy. estimates are that policy is guided by facts. every national security council meeting because of a factual predicate of. an intelligence picture -- factual predicated an intelligent picture. address, henaugural talked about america first.

the intelligence offices i know are globalists in their outlook and believe that american security depends on our interdependence with other countries. much of the work that our professionals do is working with other countries to keep a safe. who live people overseas, they like serving overseas, they are more like state department professionals more than anyone else in our government. they know understand that you have to be involved in the world. if we just pull up a drawbridge and retreat and have a nativist, nationalist approach to security, it will not work. for all of those reasons, i think we are potentially in for more stormy weather ahead. -- jeremy, the first point being long-standing

intelligence community assessments that russia is engaged in cyber threats with the united states. and what you do now focusing on cyber threats, what is the spectrum of threats we face? what should americans be worried about? >> i would start with a very simple declared of statement -- russia is the greatest threat to the united states in cyberspace in the world today, and we have known this for some time. just looking at the election, just looking at the breach of the dnc, or the revelation of the emails of john podesta and others, and looking at the fake

news, we see the current manifestations today, but that is not all there is to it. if we look at the whole spectrum of crime that congressman schiff refers to, and we know that russian organized crime operates within russian space, and what we don't have a clear demarcation about is what is the connection between russian organized crime and the russian state? well, if we cannot specifically identify that, we can look at a visible fact that is not happening, and that is russia is not cooperating with the united states and criminal investigations. people living in their country who have breached particular databases within this country, orther it be retail store

other kinds of economic activity within this country. if they are not prepared to do that, how can we assuredly separate russian organized crime on the russian state? from thezed crime russian state? take a look at our critical infrastructure from electricity, oil and natural gas, the financial sector, the retail sector -- all of these have areas of moment ability, and all of these -- areas of vulnerability, and all of these any crimeons that unit will use.

the entry of the dnc came through a fishing expedition that got into the dnc database. we know that somebody clicked on a site that opened up john podesta's email when it was a phishing expedition. mauer to getallows into systems, like in the case of target -- that is what allows malware to get into systems like in the case of target. all of these represent vectors into our country and vulnerable -- in vulnerable areas, whether they are manifested today as in the recent effort with respect to the election, or down the vulnerabilities that we will have to correct it come together in some bipartisan fashion to deal with this.

congress has made some modest steps in this area. but there is a lot more that can be done to allow the government and the private sector to work together in a much more concerted fashion with the ability to get companies and people to adopt the kinds of cyber practices that are necessary. the point about the internet of things, or industrial control systems, both of which have been built primarily without the , and allowotections individuals or countries to get into those systems and potentially be able to do significant damage to the united states, the economy, the security, and the personal safety of americans. i think this is something we will have to face up to. this is a big morning that we saw with respect -- this a big

start witht we respect to the election and it's only the tip of the iceberg. and we are going to have to pay more attention to it. i know congressman schiff is intent upon doing this, but it has got to be on both sides of the aisle, and it cannot be an argument about any regulation is a bad regulation. let's inc. about what kind of authorities we need to get to the government, and what kind of liability protection we need to get to the private sector. this kind of cooperation is actually necessary if you want to have any chance of dealing with this. but as congressman schiff said, it is a lot easier to do office and defense -- offense defense, but if you do not do defense at all, then shame on you. >> turning to you, julie. covers mentioned pointed out this russian activity. rand scissor is

a criminal nexus. -- and rand says this is a criminal nexus. us about the aims you think russia has against us, but also closer to home? julie: sure. everything we have talked about this morning -- russian acts of intimidation, aggression, packing, cyber attacks -- this is old news to our friends in europe shared they have been experience in this for years. they've been warning us about it. and they have been trying very hard to work with the united states to develop new tools, new set of relationships to address our shared vulnerabilities. the aim of russia and all of

this for both sides of the atlantic is crystal clear -- the fundamental aim of the russians is to begin -- is to weaken the space order.uled if the whole alphabet soup of e.u. --the you when, russia wants to undermine those institutions, and russia wants to divide europe from within and divide europe from the united states. how is it doing that? first, it is trying to interfere in the political process in europe and the political process here. it does that by getting involved directly in elections, as we have seen in the united states, now seeing any is tremendous spike in the cyber activities of the russians inside the german/political

system. a massive packing. ever since then, it has received increased activity. in can travel anywhere central europe and encounter similar anecdotes. the second thing that the russians are doing is using the media to try and create alternative news, alternative narratives, fictitious and to discredit the institutions that we have spent so many decades trying to build up on reform and adapt to the new security challenges. -- russia is by media outlets like in italy and investing billions of dollars in things like russia today. last year, it invested $1

billion in russia today. the tools we have to counter those efforts, strategic indications perspective just are dwarfed by comparison. we are not being innovative enough, we are not creative enough, and the russians are seizing on the fact that many of the bureaucratic institutions we used to adjust the challenges, are very cumbersome. the state department has tried to develop new ways of addressing these communication challenges, but they have failed in many ways. we are going to have to get a lot more innovative in addressing the challenges. i also mentioned that russia is directly funding some of the populist parties we see rising across their pay consonant. the best example is in paris. her budget for the election last time around came from the russians. a russian loan is public

knowledge, public information, and i can guarantee you as she prepares for the french election coming up this spring, one would expect a similar arrangement where the russians will be loaning her funds for her campaign going forward. the question is, what do we do about this with our european allies? we need to address a common vulnerabilities and bolster and strengthen the institutions in which we have invested for many decades. and we have to develop new capabilities to do with these challenges. what is our president doing right now? he is moving in the exact opposite direction. president trump is tilting towards russia, towards moscow. he speak very highly of russian leadership, of president putin personally, and talked about meeting with him to have some sort of warming in our bilateral ties. he has said very disparaging things about the european union, about specific european allies, about the nato alliance. and so, you can imagine, many of

you -- this is creating tremendous alarm among our european allies. they are worried about intelligence sharing with us. they are worried about how far they can trust the united states. and friendly, they are worried will undermines. in the institutions they have trusted. what we have to do is to make the case and reassure our allies that those of us want to see the transatlantic relationship strengthened. but also, challenge the president as he tries to foster some sort of kind ller, gentler relationship with the russians, and talk about the risk to our european allies of cutting a deal with the russians over the heads of our european partners, which are the strongest allies we have in the world. no other set of alliances and thees do more to help

security and safety of the united states and our friends in europe. and jeopardizing that would be a huge mistake. >> think you, julie. there are so many areas i can go to. arent to go back to -- you in the group that has seen the public and the halley classified on the whole spectrum of the threats it in discussing. i want to ask you a double barrel question. seen, how dou have you think a free, democratic society can respond to threats and emanate from autocratic societies, better playing by slightly different rules? do we need to stoop to this level? do we need to go on the offense? are there other ways we can strike back? the second part of my question, anothers -- and others can

address this -- what do you make of the fact -- i think it is fair to say the only entity person not criticized on twitter by the new president is actually that amerco 10 and russia -- actually is vladimir putin and russia. i would like to get your reaction to that. >> they are great questions. what i really think that congress needs to do and the intelligence agencies are a key part of this is first do a complete investigation of just what the russians did. questions, lot of some of which that of an partially answered, and some that have not answered at all, but we need to fully investigate just what did the russians do? what vectors did they use to attack our democracy? we are very aware of the hacking and the dumping of documents. we are also aware of the degree to which the propaganda was involved.

but other other vectors the russians used to influence our political process? one of those has gotten the most attention are allegations of our direct connection between the kremlin and the trunk campaign. a congress needs to investigate every aspect of what the russians. did -- what the russians did. then we need to know how they did it, why they did it, and obviously we need to develop a much better game plan for how we push back against every platform that the russians used? julie is exactly right. one of the most effective things they do is in the propaganda realm. about the voice of america for many people, it conjures up the old images of the radio microphones. image fors not a bad us to think about because in many respects, we are so far behind the ball in terms of meeting this onslaught of russian propaganda as if we're still using old-fashioned

broadcast radio to compete with the variety of platforms that the russians are using. everything from their paid media trolls to their slick rt, to the influence they have by not media platforms elsewhere, insinuating themselves and develop propaganda in europe. i think we need to understand the what techniques russians are using, and then we have to push back against each and every one. that does not mean we emulate the russians's nefarious conduct. madethe administration attribution and questions were first race to what our response should be, what i was advocating was that we work with our european partners, which have been the subject of the same kind of nefarious action, and we exact sanctions on russia. most painful thing

for the kremlin. it is something that bites their economy. it all comes back to putin and his fears of his longevity. the only thing that really threatens him is the deteriorating russian economy, and the ultimate impact that will have on the popularity of his regime. that is our most significant point of -- with the russians -- significant point of leverage with the russians. it does it mean we don't want to somehow further degrade what little they have left of democracy in russia. that is not in our interest to do, but there are ways we can send a message to the criminal that they will pay a price in the cyber world for interfering on our democracy. 's pointing back to rand on offense and defense -- we have to do more on offense, but we have to establish a deterrent, and i don't think we have done that at all. hack very vocal about the

, and not because it affected so many of my constituents, but i felt the lack of a more vigorous response to the north korea hack would be interpreted by others as saying that this is a low-cost, easily deniable way to attack our enemies. so, we have to establish a much more potent deterrent. that does not mean it is cyber tit-for-tat. with the situation with north korea, we can devastate north korea, but we are in many ways even more at risk because of the degree to which we are electronically wired and integrated. far more rudimentary tools north koreans have could week a lot of havoc on us. what i was advocating is that we do it gets north korea's attention.

make an effort to get information about just how bad their regime is. so they know if they mess with us again, they are going to have more their citizens exposed to have a are starting their own kind of ad just what turbo autocratic rule they have -- kind of a terrible autocratic rule they have. think it is so vitally important that we make common cause with the freedom of people around the world. i think our title as a leader of the free world is at risk when we cozy up to the kremlin. when we tell our friends that we may not have their backs. i think this causes our european allies to try to make common cause with the kremlin try to cut deals.

i would be a turbo turn of events, not just for us, but for people all over the world. your and among your not some other show of criticism or concern of moscow -- >> for all the reasons we have been discussing, this is infamously concerning to democrats and republicans alike. --gop colleagues i do not think the party of reagan is completely dead, it is just that we injured. after a suitable honeymoon period, there will be republicans that will find their voice and express alarm at our

playing a supportive roll to the russian propaganda and propagation of autocracy around the world. it is a part of the broader pathology of this president. positionis, he takes a -- in this case, one of adoration for vladimir putin, and when he is questioned, he doubled down. and when he is questioned again, he triples down again. he is tripling down his assertion that many of illegal immigrants voted. you can easily see the case of russia,n the case of where it is admiration, one thing leading to another, leading to another and an unwillingness to back down and admit error in this country is moving deeply off the rails. >> to tie together the russia/counterterrorism point, letting putin get his way means

to allow him to outsource to isis. president trump has set this, he will let russia take on isis and russia can do what it once in the name of taking on what they claim to be isis and al qaeda, which is potentially moderate syrians who could take their country back. that would be dangerous counterterrorism policy because it would take our eye off the ball of the external operation element within isis that are seeking to conduct operations in europe and the united states. and it would also like a potentially any hope of having an moderate syrian who could govern syria in the future. all of thatee with and i think we should keep our eye on syria, but i would just note that we should probably also keep our eye on russia's relationships with allies across the middle east. we have been very focused for all the right reasons on what russia has done and is doing inside syria.

but i think we should watch closely the very positive relationship now between russia and turkey, one of our nato allies. russia and egypt. russia and iran. is tryingt how russia to go bit by bit, country by country, and trying to undermine our relationships. , ouralled to question credibility as a partner. trying tos russia undermine our set of relationships across europe and divide europe from the united states, i would say watch the middle east because we have seen signs in the last year or so of some very interesting visit and relationships unfolding that are either unprecedented, or we have not seen that type of engagement for many, many decades. oni would add to that julie's point, what that means trump's viewdent

that perhaps america is too engaged in the world, in a drawback or quasi-isolationism represents an enormous threat to our future position in the world and our current position in the world, and in particular with respect to the middle east, we cannot allow that to happen in terms of our relationship with our middle eastern allies. and to go back to where we started, each one of those countries is equally vulnerable to cyber threats from russia in retaliation for the kinds of positions they may take that would be in our interest. worke are going to have to with them just as we have to work with the europeans in order to ensure that we are in the best position, and they are in the best position to defend themselves.

and we are going to have to be prepared to respond in a much more vigorous fashion than president trump has given us any indication of doing. me throw throw -- let a bit of a view from the white house. the american people are tired of these commitments overseas. and that our allies do not do enough. a few shared by president bush before him and president obama before him. better allies need to step up. and essentially calling everybody's bluff and expected he will get a better outcome. , atthat the american public least for those voted for president trump, are basically saying focus at home. of reinforce the notion that american leadership on the world stage is good for americans at home? >> his approach is designed to weaken nato.

julie: the polling data is very schizophrenic of what americans want. clearly, we are still feeling the aftermath of the iraq and afghanistan. no one wants to take over a country for 10 plus years and have 10 thousand ground troops engaged in a long-term military intervention. time, americans are worried about our standing in the world, global leadership, engagement. you don't have to like any like any president, you have to find that sweet spot. is,last thing i would say when you are in the room and crisis start hitting, the first comment that comes out of somebody in the back row is who is calling london, berlin, paris? who -- whent hit, ebola hit, who helped us? our allies.

look at the list of people involving counter isis terrorism? it is almost exclusively europeans. it has been up -- it is often popular to attack our systems around the world. democrats and republicans during presidential campaigns when asked, what would you cut developed the budget? even democrats a foreign assistance. you would think it was have our budget. united nations has always been a very popular punching bag. this election was very unique in that nato became the punching bag. the fallacy of all of this is that all of our involvement in , ourgn assistance a alliance is something we do

other than the rest of the world. we do not want to take on the obligation of defending the rest of the world without help. that he isee undermining these institutions, and particularly nato, it is dangerous to us. that we ought to be spending more here, that is always going to be a very popular point to make. on the restcumbent of us to understand the value from our international alliances -- to our security and prosperity -- to continue to make the case that we cannot withdraw. withdrawal is not the equivalent of security.

we have seen just how unfortunately come and particularly, the fight on terrorism, knows no national boundaries. and in the intelligence arena, we gain such tremendous value from our intelligence relationships and keeping our homeland secure. it will keep the company in jeopardy. not interested in the other people's dirty and well-being as well as your own and mutual benefit, it is hard to see how you get the kind of cooperation you need. rand? rand: that is absolutely true. -- how can we say they are

not prepared to commit themselves along with us in these kinds of situations? i want to go back to a point julie made about crisis management and tie it together. the standard process of crisis management is, the first pieces of information are almost always wrong or inaccurate. if the response is to the first piece of information to go out with the declaration, and you double down on the declaration when you have been challenged, how many raffles -- how many rat holes could we go down? that occurs in cyberspace also. the nasdaq breach that occurred number of years ago -- the first response on the attribution side was that it was china. kinds of knowledge in ans very easy to use

ip address to get into other's information. if that is the knee-jerk response to get out of the first cyber incident, that will lead us down the same kind of rat holes, listeners careful thought about how to deal with -- unless there is careful thought about how to deal with crisis management. >> we talked about this broad range of threats and focused on the threat of our political system. congressman, you said congress needs to close the investigate. else i the committee on intelligence is going to investigate and said it will conduct a thorough investigation. that will be mostly classified. we have said that we believe it is the kind of thing that requires a bipartisan commission during something that has the ability to be both inclusive

politically. to go wherever the evidence leads. would you generally agree with that? >> i certainly would. -- i have been urging we do we are in discussions with the majority to make sure the scope of that investigation does not wall off any areas out of bounds because we have to follow the evidence wherever it leads. but i think it makes little for them to be doing separate investigations of the same issue. reports thatrate may have a different take on matters. we would be much better off working together. after 9/11, there was a joint

inquiry that was 20 pages senated by the house and . we should follow that model. also, the significance of this, of a foreign adversarial power interfering in our democracy warrants some iraqi 9/11 commission. and i think the public would benefit from the completely apolitical nature of an investigation like that. --report i have one more question, which is pointing us back to a more theoretical level. you -- anybody can take this question. why do you think the idea -- sort of whether it

is prudent -- whether it is -- what isdogan going on inside our own country and other democracies opening up so many views and ideas that we may not see gathered? a lot of ideas have almost out of bounds not very long ago, would you think is going on here? julie: there are all sorts of reasons for it. the top list includes disaffection with globalization, feeling like folks are only filling the negative consequences, and that is paired with that in europe. .nd a weak economy economies that are really struggled since 2008 to recover from that crisis, but there is

also a tremendous disconnect between the institutions and the elites and national capitalism across europe. folks feeling like you don't get to participate in the decision-making inside the european union. that is paired with a number of very complex national security challenges whether it is counter terrorism challenges, or in your's case, mass migration -- or in europe's case, mass migration. and that is tied to long-standing challenges within integration of muslim minorities in those countries. it really stems from lots of different sources. it is really been a perfect storm. but fundamentally, folks are calling into question the governments that are leading them in their own nations paired with the multilateral institutions that are also weighing down, and having an impact on the lives. faith ina loss of

institutions, and loss of faith in the actual national government. only if you have a strong drink thereby -- the national council did a study that highlighted these global trends -- scarcity of resources, graphic changes -- geographic changes, the globalization affect, automation, the reversion to nativism, and the prediction was that it is going to get worse. it makes for very gloomy reading, but it is as good and next the nation -- as good and a explanation for the unrelated phenomenon between brexit, the election of donald trump, and a lot of other phenomenon around the world. i think it is a very good cautionary report in terms of the challenges we are going to have to meet from a national security perspective. alsowould add that it is

the case that it is a lot easier to mobilize people to be against something than it is to mobilize to be for something, particularly when the for has to take a lot of paragraphs to explain. and the against is three words or however many. and then even if you buy into the "for" the difficulty of "mplementing the "for proposition takes time. it means that people hear the words, and they don't to the results, or get it in and instagram -- or get it in an instant gratification kind of way. >> final question before i go to the audience for q&a. congressman, you mentioned that

everybody that has the capability to use them for espionage purposes, and the president has said, how come people are not as upset about what china has done? tell us what is it is a level why of the senate should be much greater? seen from many countries, we have seen some disruption. but this fundamentally different as we have not seen actors trying to you cyber tools and cyber capabilities to engage in a campaign to undermine our democracy. that is a fundamentally

different quality of attack on our country. >> jeremy is absolutely right. one of the aspects that makes this challenging his overtime, there had been interest in different countries or political players in its cure the differences between different kinds of cyber activity. china wasmean, when and is engaged in massive id theft -- i.t. theft, and edward ,nowden makes his disclosure i'm a chinese not distinguishing because it is not to their interests between the use of foreign intelligence gathering to give a competitive advantage to their industries from a foreign intelligence gathering. thatwe have a situation the russians go beyond the intelligence gathering. timey very well be at the

that the russian actors enter icy may have anticipated -- the ic may have anticipated that it would end there. see the president and his team wanting to blur the and thatween china ,ack, and russia and their hack which was the purpose of affecting the outcome of an election. so, when you have actors even within our democracy willing to obscure the differences between foreign intelligence gathering and interfering in political affairs, i think it is incumbent on us to try to develop where we can develop rules of the road. what is permissible in cyberspace? i think obama made some progress

saying that the espionage to be something we should agree on. i don't think we are ever going to be able to prevent or establish rules of the road that we cannot engage in foreign intelligence gathering. even if we did, no one would follow it, but we ought to establish a clear redline when it comes to the dumping of information to influence democratic outcomes. obviously, we are far from having done that. >> thank you. let me open it up and take some questions. right here. is the mic on? i have a question. charlie savage just got a hold of a three page executive order. the draft order would revoke mr. obama's executive order to close guantanamo, but also his directive to end cia black sites

and grant the red cross access to detainees. dot do you think that will to the u.s. standing in the world? jeremy, do you think the cia officers want to get back into the business of interrogation? it would be ak tragic mistake to repopulate guantanamo, or even keep it open , as the president-elect suggested on the campaign trail. maybe this is the part of the executive order. it is a recruiting magnet for jihad around the world, and it has been a black eye for the united states. once more, it is unnecessary because we have seen the criminal justice system work effectively far more than the tribunals incarcerate terrorists. it is an unnecessary black eyes well. the reopening of black sites, the re-examination of whether we ought to go back to eit's like

waterboarding or some other form, all of this i think is deeply disparaging to the country. it costs relationships with allies, who will not want to cooperate with us if they to the that may lead repopulating of guantanamo, or -- or someonet will be sent to a black site. from a counterterrorism perspective, it is deeply damaging. the final point i will make is i think it is corrosive to the morale of the ic if we ever get back into the business of enhanced interrogation techniques. i do not think it can help but have an impact on the people who participate in and those are supported. for the benefit of our own

personnel, it is not something we should engage in. >> we have not engaged in waterboarding since 2004, but we have somehow managed to keep our country safe. it was president bush who emptied the black sites, not president obama. president bush did it at the time that my kayden was up for confirmation. -- my kayden was up for confirmation. we have meant to keep our country safe because we have had to mark an effective counterterrorism policy in the previous decade. schiff,with congressman i do not think we should go back to those days because i think that would be a distraction. 0% appetiteexactly of doing that again. julie: if i could just quickly add, tens of thousands of foreign fighters have poured into syria over the last five or six years. a large portion of those foreign fighters come from europe and

hold european passports that enables them to travel freely to the united states. the best defense we have is our very deep counterterrorism cooperation with our european allies, particularly in the area of intelligence sharing and law enforcement. if the president pursues what you have outlined, and we have a return to waterboarding or black sites, or guantanamo, those very strong counterterrorism cooperation initiatives that we share with our closest allies will then be in jeopardy. >> the predicate of your question was is cia agents want to get back in the process of interrogation? they are involved with their counterparts in the fbi. that is the appropriate way it should be done as part of team america going to these detainees. ton the individual who tried

and airlines in detroit in 2009, when he was detained, a team -- a team was deployed to his hospital bed and got good information on who sent him and how he got into the country. that is how we should be doing business. >> one last point to follow up on jeremy, that agency and describing,ss he is it has not only been very successful, but has done very important research on what works and what doesn't work and informing intelligence community. that is the right model. and i hope we will take advantage of the work product that is produced. >> that was a very productive question. i in going to go to the gentleman with the maroon tie in the back. >> congressman, you mentioned

the sony hack. in the aftermath of that hack, it became public knowledge that part of the way we were able to attribute it to north korea was through software that intelligence committee had planted in systems that alerted them to the fact that the hack was going to occur before it happened. in the more recent hacks by russia, we may not have realized immediately that that information was going to be weaponized. how do we make a determination attack an oncoming cyber will be weaponized and influencing the upcoming election, as opposed to a low-level cyber threat? -- first ofart off , i do notologically

think there is a way to save this particular hack will be weaponized. but you have information of what our adversaries are doing and why they are doing it. sometimes, that will tell us the purpose of the cyber intrusion, but often, we may not know until later, and we have to anticipate how a hack might be used in how the data could be used. obviously, one of the things we will be looking at in terms of ourrussian hack is when agencies understood when they were penetrated, what kind of steps did they take? were they sufficient steps? nonetheless, it was easily within our imagination, or should have been, how bad could be used if the russians made a determination to do so? the other thing i want to bring

up with respect your question and the sony hack the russian hack, because i think this is something we need to do some introspection about. and that is, the russians and the north koreans use our own institutions and the media to hang the effectiveness of their attacks. sometimes the media was all too willing to be utilized in this manner. rememberse of sony, i taking strong issue at the time but the publication of salacious details about celebrities, producers were saying about them. that made good copy, but it actually played into the hands of the north koreans that wanted to destroy sony. that was deeply damaging to sony. of course, the public policy of those salacious emails was negligible or nonexistent. much morerd to the important situation where you have d&c and podesta emails.

i had conversations at major newspapers, and the argument i was trying to make unsuccessfully was, i am not going to say you should never publish something that is the result of a foreign adversarial power in attempt to mitigate public opinion. of publicbe things interest may feel compelled to publish, but that should never be done without context. all of your coverage, in my view, when you are going to be publishing a russian hack withent, should begin documents hacked by the russians showing thisose of court our democracy so the readers can evaluate why their famous -- value and why they are given this information? in terms of congress, we need to think long and hard about what president obama said during his press conference a few weeks ago

on the subject of the russian hack, and that is, our political process has become so hyper -- soan and so while hyper partisan, that everything is acceptable as long as it helps us and hurts them. enough republicans believe that it was ok for the russians to be hacking because it was helping their side. in this respect, i keep coming back to something -- window mockeries -- when democracies hang themselves, republicans will hand them the rope. we have to understand what we are doing facilitating the russians to dismantle our democracy. >> i'm sorry we are over time.

this was a terrific get together. thank you all so much for joining us. thank you all for coming. please give everyone around of applause. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> my name is ray mcgovern and we have and alumni group and we have been followed this issue closely. one of our members is a formal technical director. -- former technical director. in theerested

conclusions with respect to russian hacking more not conclusive regarding wikileaks. in other words, there is a big gap between alleged russian hacking and wikileaks. intelligence community does not know how or if that information got to wikileaks. u.s. cert has fact that russia did this. do you know more than obama? >> i would never claim to know more than obama. question.rious i have every confidence in the intelligence regarding russian hacking. >> james clyburn is a convicted -- james clapper is a convicted

-- >> i have every confidence that russians used wikileaks. i don't have any question in the conclusion -- >> you have every confidence but no evidence? that is bogus. [indiscernible conversation]

>> thank you all. thank you. thank you very much. >> thank you. conversation] >> president trump is speaking

with several foreign leaders today. the white house press schedule shows phone calls occurring throughout the day. this video of the president's call with russian president vladimir putin from earlier. japanese prime minister shenzhen abe said president trump acknowledges the importance of a military alliance. the leaders agreed to meet in washington for talks on peppery 10 -- february 10. later on today, the president has a call planned with australia's prime minister malcolm turnbull. minnesota senator amy klobuchar tweeted this --