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>> Good afternoon everybody and welcome.
I'm Susan Collins, the Joan in Sandford Weill Dean
of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
and I am just delighted to have all of you here
with us this afternoon.
This is the first of our policy talks
at the Ford School lecture series
for this new academic year.
We are very, very honored today to be joined by retired US--
United States Air Force General Michael Hayden.
Many of us tomorrow will get a chance to welcome the air force
to Ann Arbor as the Falcons take the field in the big house
and in advance of that, I would just like to have you join me
in doing an advance welcome, so to the Falcons.
[ Applause ]
I'll have the pleasure
of introducing General Hayden more fully in just a moment.
But I'd like first to say a little bit to begin
with some great history of what this lecture series what it
comes from.
Josh Rosenthal was a 1979 graduate of the University
of Michigan, who went on to earn a master's degree
in Public Policy from Princeton.
He worked in the fields of International Finance
and he died in the attacks on the World Trade Center
on September 11th in 2001.
Josh's mother Marilyn Rosenthal was a long-term Michigan
faculty member.
She wanted to shape positive meaning from what happened
on 9/11 and to honor her son's optimism about the world
and about how mutual understanding, dialogue
and analysis can improve communities both here
and abroad.
Marilyn and many others established the Josh Rosenthal
Education Fund which enables the Ford School each year
to bring leading public policy figures
to Ann Arbor each September.
And I know that there are some members of the Rosenthal family
with us today and we are particularly grateful
to be joined by Josh's aunt,
Mary Burke [phonetic] thank you for coming.
We are very grateful for your family's continued support
and inspiration in the Rosenthal Lecture Series.
Marilyn Rosenthal died in 2007 but I know
that she would have been so pleased and honored
to welcome the very distinguished General Michael
Hayden as this year's Rosenthal lecture.
During his 41 year career in the Air Force, General Hayden served
as the country's first deputy-- first Principal Deputy Director
of National Intelligence,
the highest ranking intelligence officer in the armed forces.
He was Director of the National Security Agency
from 1999 to 2005.
And in 2006, he was sworn in by President Bush as Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency.
General Hayden has two degrees in history
from Duquesne University and was a distinguished graduate
school-- a graduate of that school's ROTC program.
He did post graduate work at the Defense Intelligence School.
General Hayden has graciously agreed to take questions
from the audience after his remarks.
And so at around 1:30, members of our staff will come
down the aisles to pick up question cards from each of you
and I hope that you will share your questions with us.
Professors Bob Axelrod and Allan Stam will select questions along
with two of our graduate students,
Christina Hodge [phonetic] and Cynthia Rathinasamy
and then we will be able to have a question
and answer session with General Hayden.
And so with that, I ask you to please welcome me
and join inviting General Hayden to the podium
for his remarks, general?
[ Applause ]
>> Well, Dean Collins, thank you very much
for that kind introduction.
It may have noticed in the short biography
that I am not a graduate at the Air Force Academy, all right.
But I would ask you to take it easy on those cadets 'cause
in a year or two they'll be defending you.
[Laughter] Thanks for the opportunity to be
with you here this afternoon.
It's really an honor to be part
of this distinguished lecture series.
And so I want to be worthy of that honor and I want to do
and say something here this afternoon that adds
to our national discussion in our debates about the world
in which we find ourselves.
And given for the 11th anniversary of 9/11,
I've asked if I could talk about law and policy
in the war against al-Qaeda.
And albeit in military profession we genuinely do
bottom-line up front, what I would hope
to show you the next 35 minutes or so is
that despite all the long knives and sharp political rhetoric,
we have broadly arrived at a consensus as to how we want
to defend ourselves against this particular enemy.
But that's the end of the story, let me start at the beginning.
Let me start by actually referring to a mentor
of mine Brent Scowcroft.
I worked for General Scowcroft
in Bush 41s National Security Council.
We've stayed periodically in touch.
General Scowcroft had an article that he wrote
for the Atlantic Council about two or three months ago
in which he kind of described the word
in which we're located now and compared it to the world
in which he did most of his professional work.
In a way he described it was that, you know,
when he was in government.
Practically, all the pieces on the board that he was concerned
with were comprised of nation states
and the way he nudged pieces around the board was what you
and I today would call hard power,
as opposed to the current terms of soft power and smart power,
all right-- nation states hard power.
And what Brent then goes to point out is that in this era
of globalization, practically everything that's happened
for the last two decades, the telecommunications or commerce
or the internet, practically everything that's happened has
tended to weaken the nation state.
As opposed to the era in which he grew up,
the era of industrialization where practically everything,
culturally, economically, trade wise, politically,
seeing the strength in the nations, they just think back
and looking at the audience here, not all, you know,
student age think back when telecommunications were
such that they were either run by the state or run
by a state governed monopoly.
Remember those days?
And everything seemed to strengthen the state.
In this current era, everything seems
to erode the power of the state.
And there are lots of expression of this erosion of the power
of the state and the pushing of power down below the state level
to non-state actors even in the direction of individuals.
Lots of expressions of that, and terrorism is one
but it's not the only one.
I mean if we were here for a different topic,
I think we could fill the space up this afternoon talking
about cyber dangers, where someone in their mom's basement
or their dad's garage could actually cause great harm,
again the product
of globalization pushing power down.
On another day, we could talk about transnational crime
and what's happening in Mexico and what that means
for a national security.
Certainly not a state actor but clearly it has security impact,
not just on Mexico but on ourselves as well.
A third area in which this broad phenomenon
of globalization pushing power down is terrorism.
Hey look, I can remember the day when a religious fanatic
in a cave, near the Hindu Kush was not an item of concern
to anyone of us here but they are today
because of this globalization, connectedness,
connectivity and power down.
Now, even though-- even though everything I think General
Scowcroft said is right, you know, everything is moving
in the direction of weakening the nation state,
it is nonetheless the nation state that you
and I turned to, to defend us.
We still give the nation state the monopoly on the legal use
of violence in our own defense.
And you see the tension I'm trying
to describe for you here, okay.
We have threats coming at as
from new dimensions, from new directions.
And we have old forms, nation states to defend us.
That at the level of metaphysics is what happened to us
on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
And the struggle of the nation state--
hours, to deal with this new form
of threat is frankly what it is I'm here to talk about.
And this has been a struggle.
And as I've already suggested to you at the end of the day,
I think we've kind of broadly worked it out,
but there is still a lot of roughness on the edges--
it's to how we want to defend ourselves
against the very atypical threat.
Now, everyone in this room knows where they were in the morning
of September 11th, okay it's burned into your psyche
of the way for my parent's generation of December 7th,
was brought in to their psyche.
I was the director of the National Security Agency
and along the East coast I mean it was an absolutely
gorgeous day.
I don't think it got above of 75 or so in the Washington DC area.
It was an absolutely cloudless sky.
I remember staying up late the night before
to watch Monday night football.
It was actually the opening of that,
what was then the new stadium in Denver and like most of us
in the eastern times zone that mentioned went
to work a little tired because you stayed
up watching the end of the game.
9 o'clock or so, my executive assistant, Cindy Farkus comes in
and gives that first report that probably everyone
on this room has heard.
A plane has hit the World Trade Center.
And even though I'm the director of the National Security Agency
and I'm charged, you know, one of the team charged with your,
Defense, my instinct was the same as yours.
That's probably an accident, probably a small plane--
probably a small plane.
I go on with my meeting.
About 15 or 20 minutes later, Cindy comes back in and says,
plane at the other tower.
All right, and immediately, you know, this isn't accident,
I know it's al-Qaeda, but I'll get to that in a minute.
I turn to my executive assistant and said, "Get the head
of security up here right away."
And as the head of security got there, oh maybe seven, eight,
or nine minutes later, a federal named Kempt.
Kempt came in the door in my office and he is coming
in that door, Cindy-- again and the executive assistants coming
in to her door saying, "There are reports
of explosions on the mall."
You know that like most first reports turns
out to be not quite accurate, but it is a reflection
of the plane hitting-- hitting the Pentagon.
Poor Kempt's coming in,
he doesn't even have a chance to talk.
I just say, "Kempt, all nonessential personnel
out of the building now."
He does an immediate about face, makes the announcement
and our nonessential personnel.
I mean we're a headquarters in addition
to being the national security agency doing work at Fort Meade
in Maryland, nonessential personnel begin to leave.
I don't know exactly how many left, how many stayed.
We have about 15,000 people to come
to work there everyday easily more than 5,000 stayed
as the central personnel.
If you've ever seen those photos of NSA,
if you can't remember it, go check out one
of those Will Smith movies, Enemy of the State, okay,
and they got pictures of NSA with two kind
of high-rise buildings, okay?
Those are our headquarters buildings.
And for reasons that should be obvious
to this group now 11 years later,
I said try to get everybody out of the high rises and we moved
into a low rider building, a three-story building
which is actually was our original office building.
And I went down there and blessedly,
that's where our Op center was, that's where all the wires kind
to came together for global communications.
So in addition to being safer,
it was the place I would want to be anyway.
So I went down there about 10:30 or 10:45,
George Tenet called me.
George was that the DCI at that time, the head of CIA,
and George simply says, "Mike, what do you got?"
And I said, "George it's al-Qaeda,
we can already hear the celebratory gun fire" and some
of the things we were hearing
and not literally celebratory gun fire,
but you understand that--
the self congratulatory kind of conversations.
Of course, we all knew this could only be the work
of al-Qaeda.
So we began to fight the war, from that Op center
in the low rider building at Fort Meade.
It got to be about dusk and one of my folks came up to me
and said, "You know you're kind
of terrorism folks are a little--
are a little off balance right now.
You'll probably need to go talk to them."
I said, "That's right, good idea.
I should have thought of that."
I went our to our CTC shop, counter terrorism center, okay,
which was in one of the high rises near the top.
And they could not evacuate because I don't know
if you notice or not, but we actually do work at Fort Meade,
it's just not the headquarters.
We actually do an awful lot of our mission.
I mean so, these folks had headsets
on if you know what I mean, okay?
They are doing real time work and we can't afford the break
in coverage, the break in continuity if we say,
"Hey we want to-- we got to move all of your stuff and your files
and we're going to take you down."
I mean, it is impossible.
So they are there in the high rise.
I come through, it's just about dusk.
I can see the sky darkening
through the windows in the office.
Most of these individuals were Arab-Americans.
And so, you can imagine the professional trauma,
the personal trauma, the national trauma
that all them must have felt.
So I went through and I mean there's no time
to interrupt them.
This was-- this was kind of like "hand on shoulder" time
and keep it up, okay, we appreciate you being here
and just made my way through the office.
I'm almost without a sound that just trying to touch each one
of them, each one of the operators.
While I was there, a part
of the NSA National Security Agency Logistics Force was
in the room and they-- remember, it's dusk, they were tacking
up blackout curtains on the windows of this office building
in Glen Burnie, Maryland.
I couldn't see it from that room but if I had been
about 150 feet higher, you know, the building didn't go
that high, but if I had been about 10
to 15 stories further up, I could see Fort McHenry
which was one of the last areas of the United States
to be bombarded by an invading enemy.
And I had the thought as they're putting
up the blackout curtains, "Things are going
to be really different around here tomorrow."
We have entered in to an entirely new era.
We were going to go fight an enemy and then--
I mean, just use a little bit of my own history or background.
We were going to go fight an enemy
that did not accept the Treaty of Wesphalia, you know,
the one that kind of forced off the road
and Brent Scowcroft's chessboard nation states.
Frankly, they thought nation states were in the front to God
because it interfered with the direct connection of the will
of God to the will of the individual.
They also rejected Geneva, okay.
The primary tenant of the Geneva Convention is the distinction
between combatant and noncombatant.
This enemy did not make that distinction
for those they killed.
And interestingly, they did not make that distinction
for even themselves in that all
of their adherences were combatants of jihadists
in a very narrow meaning of that word in their eyes.
So, kind of harkening back to how it began,
here is a security structure built on Geneva,
built on Westphalia, meeting an enemy that was constructed
on neither of those premises.
Beyond that, beyond that, we Americans had figured out how
to make ourselves both secure and free.
We have this formula that worked for more than two centuries
of the life of the republic.
We divided stuff into bins, okay.
We put all of the foreign stuff over here
and we put all the domestic stuff over here.
We put all the intelligence derived information over here,
and we put all the law enforcement stuff over here.
And now, here was an enemy living in the scene
between foreign and domestic,
between intelligence and law enforcement.
For god's sake, one of the crews that hit one
of the World Trade Centers stayed at a motel
about four miles from my headquarters prior
to the attack.
So do you see the challenge?
Okay, new kind of threat, old kind of institutions.
How do you adapt the old institutions to the new threat?
Two days after 9/11, I gave the talk to the NSA workforce.
Actually, I gave the talk to an empty room, I was in front
of a TV camera and NSA being what it was,
everybody could see me globally at their work station.
I still have a copy of the speech.
I said some of the things you'd expect.
Number one, job one is defense, okay.
Attack characterization is there a second wave,
what else is coming towards us?
We'll play offense soon enough, but we're playing--
we're playing defense now, defense.
I know a lot of folks had some difficulty
with their family members coming to work.
One incident, about one spouse kind of throwing yourself
across of-- in front of the vehicle saying, "Don't go."
And so I needed to say something about the people over there.
And what I simply said was,
"I want to thank you for being here.
I know you probably have family members who are really worried
about you, but look at it on the bright side,
300 million Americans right now wished they had your job."
And finally I ended up this, a really get end it--
end the talk up with this.
I said, "Look all free peoples, all free peoples have to figure
out where in that kind of continuum between security
over here, and liberty over here, where it was they want
to kind of put their banner."
And I said, "We Americans, blessed by history,
blessed by oceans, blessed by circumstance,
we've always tended to put our banner way
over here, close to liberty.
What happened two days ago, is going to cause a lot of folks
to think about picking that banner up, and moving it
down that continuum in the direction of security.
So let me tell you what your job is, okay?
Your job is to keep America free
by making Americans feel safe again."
I did a graduation address at my alma mater Duquesne,
back in 2007, and I related something
to the story I just told you, and then concluded
to the graduates, the goal was to keep our nations safe
without changing our DNA as a people.
That was really hard work.
That was really challenging.
That was really, really contentious, okay?
You've seen this played out politically.
You've seen this played out in the national press.
You've seen it played out currently
with politicians perhaps
on the right side criticizing the current president
for not doing this, not doing that.
You saw the current president, when he was running
for president the first time,
talking about we have lost our way, we have lost our values.
You have the current attorney general in 2008,
talking about there must a reckoning,
because of the way the previous administration had acted
in the face of this new and unprecedented threat.
But let me repeat my hypothesis, despite the frequent drama
at the political level, America
and Americans have found a comfortable centerline
in what it is they want their government to do,
and what it is they accept their government doing.
It is that practical consensus that it's fostered
such powerful continuity between two vastly different presidents,
George W. Bush and Barack Obama, when it comes--
when it comes to this conflict.
Let me start with the most fundamental continuity
between the 43rd, and the 44th president of United States.
Both have said we are at war, both have said we are at war
with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
I was watching President Obama's inauguration
and carefully looking for signals with regard
to this very fundamental thing, and he actually said,
"We are a nation at war," which was somewhat satisfying
for someone from my background,
my point of view, but not definitive.
Well, no one would argue we're at war in Iraq,
no one would argue we're at war in Afghanistan.
I wanted evidence.
He believed that we were at war with the groups
that it attacked us on September 11th.
In august 2009, my wife Janine and I were in Phoenix,
Arizona for the VFW convention.
We were there almost in the front row,
and President Obama was the speaker,
and the president explicitly said, "We are at war
with al-Qaeda and its affiliates."
In other words, remember that Foreign
and Domestic Law Enforcement Intelligence, they're here
in the scene, how do we do this?
The president was going to use like his predecessor,
all the authorities he had in his backpack.
He would use law enforcement authorities,
when they were useful but he would not limit himself just
to law enforcement authorities.
He would actually use his authorities as commander
in chief to wage war against the foreign enemy.
I'm sure you all remember in 2009 after just a few weeks
in office, President Obama was awarded the noble piece prize,
by and large, I thought he was awarded
because he wasn't President Bush, okay?
And the Europeans wanted to confirm that fact.
[Laughter] Okay.
Do you recall his acceptance speech in Scandinavia?
Do you recall the scene?
I do. I watched it carefully.
You had the president kind of at the podium here,
and he's reading a speech,
and the camera shots coming from here, okay.
So, I'm-- we're seeing kind of the back of the president,
and then you're seeing the noble committee,
and all the other dignitaries that have been invited,
and there was a remarkable scene.
I've actually tested this in other folks
and they remember it the way I do.
So this is just not me, you know,
wishing the circumstance here.
As the president's giving his speech,
you look at the facial expression of the people
who would just giving him the noble prize and it looked--
it looked as if everyone
of their dogs had been run over by a bus.
[Laughter] Okay, I mean they had the most somber,
sad looks on their face because President Obama fundamentally
was giving them a lecture on just war theory,
and how from time to time it was his responsibility to use force,
to protect America and Americans.
I was invited to the German embassy in spring of 2007.
So I've been director of CIA for about a year.
Ambassador Scharioth was a German ambassador.
I'd like to explain this.
The German's were in the chair
of the European Union back in Europe.
So as a matter of courtesy, Ambassador Scharioth,
the German ambassador to the United States,
would about every two weeks have the other ambassadors
to the United States from the other states
of the European Union over for lunch, okay?
Germans in the chair, ambassadors to America
from the EU states over for lunch.
And he would then have an American come in
and be the lunchtime entertainer, all right.
The American would kind of give the lunchtime talk.
I'm not sure who else is there, I suspect the secretary
of state probably was invited once,
secretary of defenses was probably there.
So, now he invites me the Director
of the Central Intelligent Agency.
So I get invited after-- okay, I got a representative
from every country in the European Union there,
what would make an interesting speech.
I got it. Let's talk about renditions,
detentions and interrogations.
[Laughter] So, I did, okay?
And I began-- I began the conversation,
I had a great staff at CIA.
You are blessed as a people with the talent and morality
of the folks who are in your chief espionage service.
And I had a wonderful staff, they made great speeches.
It was rare that I would let anyone go without, you know,
the most irresistible temptation of anyone is to, you know,
fool around with someone else's pros so I would make changes.
But this one was so important
that an awful lot of it, I just wrote.
And I remember that page two or page three of that speech
on there, you know, we're about midway through lunch,
and you got about two dozen people in the room,
and I said "Look, to make sure we're all clear here,
let me tell you what I believe, what my government believes,
and what I believe my nation believes."
And then I gave th-- gathered European ambassadors
four senses.
I said "Number one, we are at nation at war.
Two, we are at war with the al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Three, this war is global in scope.
Four, I can only fulfill my responsibility to the citizens
of my republic by taking this fight
to that enemy wherever he may be, for war, al-Qaeda,
global, take the fight."
There was not another nation represented in that room
who agreed with any of those four senses.
Now, I'm not saying they didn't believe it for themselves.
They didn't.
I'm telling you they didn't think it was a legitimate for us
to believe that, and yet you've had two presidents,
the American Congress, and the American Court System
in essence signed up to all four of those senses.
This fellow name Saleh Nabhan, he died September of 2009.
He was killed by Navy SEALs in Somalia.
He was the chief of operations for Al-Shabaab,
which is the al-Qaeda affiliate in the Horn of Africa.
Navy SEALs approached his convoy on helicopters.
The SEALs did not dismount.
The SEALs according to the press accounts,
made no attempt to capture.
The SEALs fired with and from the helicopters,
destroyed the two vehicles, landed long enough
to in essence swab up enough of him
to make sure the DNA would prove they got the right guy
and then flew back to their carrier.
I am willing to hazard to you the judgment
that there is not an intelligence service
in Western Europe who would have given us the intelligence
to do what I just told you we did
if they knew that's what we were going to do.
Because of this fundamental disagreement
that we believe we are totally legitimate
in conducting a targeted killing outside
of internationally recognized theaters of combat.
Let's fast forward.
Let's go to May, okay, in Abbottabad,
the death of Bin Laden.
You all know the story, right?
You know, you're familiar and we followed the courier network,
we built that up over years.
The courier led us to Abbottabad, Leon Panetta,
my successor is building up the case,
trying to give the president enough confidence
but not getting too close to the target
that he actually scared the target away.
The president in the face
of somewhat ambiguous information has
to make a decision.
We decided to go, the helicopters go,
the first Blackhawk gets backwash remember?
It crushes, snaps off its rotor.
They go in and stormed the house.
They killed one of the couriers, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
They killed one of Bin Laden's sons.
They go up to the second floor.
They see Bin Laden and depending
on what version you're following now.
The one we got from the White House right afterwards
or the one that appears to be being narrated
in this new book by this Navy SEAL.
In an event, they shoot Bin Laden, right?
And then they radioed "Geronimo E.K.I.A..
Geronimo Bin Laden enemy killed in action",
an event we all celebrated.
Okay, somewhat satisfying for all of us,
particularly satisfying for folks
in the American Intelligence
and Special Operations Community who've been following him
for a decade.
But, just permit me, forgive me, let me rerun that tape.
Let me describe it for you in a slightly different way.
A heavily armed agent
of the United States government facing an unarmed man,
offering no visible resistance, shot and killed him,
an unarmed man wanted in the American Judicial System
for crimes against United States.
[ Pause ]
If you do not believe we are at war,
you got to read it according to Narrative B. Only
if you believe we're at war.
Do you understand that what the SEALs did is a perfectly
legitimate action and it was and it is
and I'm no way suggesting it was not
but you understand what I'm trying to say?
There's an underpinning here.
We're at war.
And so, we've seen all of these continuities
between two very different human beings,
President Bush and President Obama.
We are at war, targeted killings have continued.
In fact, if you look at the statistics,
targeted killings have increased under President Obama.
Renditions, okay, that's the extra judicial movement
of suspected terrorist from place A to place B. Our policy
under President Obama is the same as it was
under President Bush, is the same as it was
under President Clinton, powerful continuity.
Guantanamo, I know President Obama said shortly
after taking office, he's going to close Guantanamo in a year
but he did not, and why didn't he?
He didn't because of a bipartisan political consensus
in congress supported broadly by public opinion
but he shouldn't close it.
Yeah, back to continuity because we Americans have kind of agreed
on courses of action, indefinite detention, okay?
Eric Holder wanted to trial Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
the architect of 9/11 in New York,
that didn't work out, all right?
He's being tried by Military Commission which I'll get
to in a minute in Guantanamo.
But when Attorney General Holder was asked what
if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is acquitted
in the Article 3 court in New York?
And the Attorney General said, "Oh, we'll continue
to hold him anyways in enemy combatant, indefinite detention,
the same as his predecessor.
Military Commissions, as I said, the same as his predecessor.
I mean there's powerful continuity here, states secrets.
The Bush Administration was criticized
for invoking the State Secrets Argument
when many other things I've just described for you,
having contested in the American court system.
And the Bush Administration in my eyes rightly,
said we can't argue about that in court
because it will reveal things
that are still protecting Americans.
And despite a campaign that was based upon a very powerful
promise of transparency, President Obama and again,
in my view quite correctly has used the States Secrets Argument
in a variety of courts as much as President Bush.
Now I am personally grateful
for President Obama using the State Secrets Arguments--
State Secrets Arguments to stop some of these court proceedings
that I am personally named in some of these courts.
[Laughter] The one in which I am most personally named is
something called, what President Bush called the Terrorist
Surveillance Program which the New York Times called the
Domestic Surveillance Program.
I'm seeing a few people nod.
This is about intercepting messages entering
or leaving the United States that we believe we're affiliated
with al-Qaeda, big expose in the New York Times in December
of 2005, Pulitzer Prize for the authors in the Times piece.
Let's talk a little about that,
this Terrorist Surveillance Program
because I think it actually--
it actually enlivens something I'm trying to describe for you.
Remember I said Foreign
and Domestic Law Enforcement Intelligence
and I got an enemy here in the scene.
The 9/11 Commission recognized that.
The 9/11 Commission actually criticized my agency, NSA,
for being a little too timid when it came to trying
to intercept terrorist communications,
particularly terrorist communications
that might involve US persons.
In other words, communications won't end here--
here in the United States.
Remember, I told you 9/11 and I'm done in the Ops building
and we begin to fight the war and we got to play defense
and they want to play offense.
As a Director of NSA, you've got a fair amount of authority.
You can kind of dull things up a little bit.
You can get a little more aggressive
within your own authorities.
Now, you know, you can't be haphazard about this.
You've got to be thoughtful.
You certainly have to tell Congress
but you've got authority.
Well, guess what I did about 11 o'clock
in the morning of September 11th.
If I had authority to ratchet up, I ratcheted up, all right?
I dutifully called George Tenet.
Remember, George is the head
of the American Intelligence Committee.
I actually called the house
in Senate Intelligence Committees too.
So hey, I'm ratcheting up.
It's okay, good.
I told George.
Hey, you're ratcheting up.
You're getting a bit more aggressive.
You know, giving us a higher probability.
We would intercept those kinds of messages that would tell us
about the next attack.
So I told George this, I don't hear from George
for two or three days.
Then George calls me, "Hey Mike, I was in with the President
and Vice President, I told them what you were doing."
Now Gorge is making a joke here he said, "I told you were going
to jail, Mike" [laughs].
And the President and the Vice President says,
"Okay, we'll bail him out."
[Laughter] Okay.
What George was saying was I was being more aggressive
and that I was doing it within my authorities.
He was then asked, "Can he do anything more?"
So George calls me.
And George says, "Hey Mike,"
he's in with the President and Vice president.
"I told him what you're doing they said, "that's great
but can you do anything more?"
And I said, "George, not within my current authorities I can't."
And George said, "What could you do if you had more authority?"
I'll get back to you.
And I had it up with my people.
We decided there were some things we could do
but I would need more authorization,
it was an inherent in me as Director of NSA.
We took a dine with the President
and the President using his Article 2 authorities
as Commander In-Chief, remember, we are nation at war.
We are against an opposing armed enemy force.
Congress had already passed the AUMF, the Authorization
for the Use of Military Force which is as close
to a declaration of wars we will ever get in modern America.
And the President, as commander-in-chief, then said,
"Okay, Mike you laid these things
out I think those are good.
I want you to go do them and I'm authorizing you to do them
as commander-in-chief and here is the attorney general he's--
he signed off saying, "I have the authority to do that."
okay? I went back-- I went back to Fort Meade
and I took this question to my lawyers.
Okay, remember the framework we're talking about here.
Remember, new kind of threat, old kind of structure.
How do you adapt to the new reality?
And I went to my three top lawyers serially
so I wouldn't get a group answer.
And all three of them said,
"We believe the president has the authority
to authorize you to do this.
We believe the president
as commander-in-chief can authorize you to--
to intercept the communications we're describing."
And I-- you know, operation I can't go into details,
but fundamentally higher probability you're going
to intercept the communication, one end of which might be
in the United States related to the al-Qaeda threat, okay?
The New York Times blew that story
as I said in December of 2005.
There are-- there are tons of subplots for those
of you who followed this.
Remember the visit to Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room
at GW in March of 2004 and Al Gonzales and Andy Card
and Bob Mueller is pushing him back
and James Comey the Deputy Attorney General,
I mean if that intrigues you, I write it on one
of the cards, I asked question.
And anyway, this was incredibly contentious,
incredibly contentious.
Now, was it legal?
You bet. The FISA appellate court is ruled on this twice
and let me quote to you one of the rulings
from the FISA appellate court is called
in Ray shield [phonetic] we take as a given
that the president has inherent constitutional authorities
to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant
for foreign intelligence purposes.
Okay, so in terms of lawfulness, I'm fine.
Politically, this is a nuclear detonation,
all right, going on in DC.
Okay, sorry that's a long build up.
We're going to fast forward the tape.
We're now in 2008.
Congress in 2008, okay, is about to amend the FISA Act,
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
It's the law that governs everything I'm describing
to you here.
There are sharp debates.
Senator Obama opposes the law, but later changes his mind
and votes for the amendment to the FISA Act.
The FISA Act, not only legitimated everything President
Bush had told me almost everything.
President Bush had told me to do under his Article 2 authorities
as commander-in-chief but in fact,
gave the National Security Agency a great deal more
authority to do these kinds of things.
Sorry, that's a-- that's a long and involved segue here
to come back to the point as contentious as that was,
as bitter as the fighting was in 2005 when the story broke.
Legislation has passed three years later
but not only legitimates it but expands it.
Why? Because frankly, I think we've got powerful broad
agreement that we've got to do some things differently.
Now, I've made the point of the continuity between the 43rd
and the 44th president, obviously,
there are differences.
But the most primary difference,
the most fundamental difference has to do with detainees.
Recall when President Obama became president in one promised
to close Guantanamo something he was not able to do
but he also closed down CIAs black sites,
the sites where we held al-Qaeda senior leadership
for interrogation under special rules
that were authorized by President Bush.
That's a long and contentious argument
and an honest man differ as to the wisdom of that policy.
Clearly I was comfortable with it because for two
or three years we maintained the black sites although we had few
people in them as I thought a necessary tool
in the fight against the al-Qaeda.
President Obama-- President Obama on January 22nd directed
that we close the black sites and also I directed
that all interrogations would be done in accordance
with the army field manual not in accordance with some
of the techniques that CIA had approved.
If-- if you go to CIA.gov in your leisure time and go
to our public affairs site and go to the messages
to the workforce in January 22nd,
2009 I'm still the director, you can see my note
to the workforce reflecting President Obama's
executive order.
What I said to the workforce was President Obama has given us
exactly what we need.
President Obama has given us clear lines
within which he wants us to operate.
These are different from the lines we had before
but our only requirement is that the lines are clear.
And we will be as aggressive and as successful inside the new box
as we were inside-- inside the old box.
And so, as director, one out of the sense of lowly
to the elected commander-in-chief,
I was supportive.
But intellectually, personally I was supportive.
What we need from the president is clear guidance.
That's true and that remains true
and I meant what I just said.
But I never expected that we would actually get
out as a nation of the detention business.
I defy you to think of anyone we have captured and held outside
of Iraq or Afghanistan since January 2009.
We have given up detaining people.
Those of you who have fallen closely along there's been one,
his name is Warsame.
He was caught between Yemen and Somalia.
He was kept in the US Navy ship for about six weeks.
Other than him I know of no other example.
And much of our intelligence comes from detainees.
This is the one discontinuity between the 43rd
and the 44th president.
We have made it so politically dangerous
and so legally difficult that we don't capture anyone anymore.
We take another option.
We kill them.
Now, I don't morally oppose
that this is an opposing armed enemy force
and I certainly wasn't setting into a record
to my last two years as director
because I only put two additional people
in Guantanamo in 2007 and 2008.
But we are losing the opportunity to interrogate
and to learn about our enemy because I really do think we,
plural, not just the president, not just CIA, we, plural,
this is the one area where we really have not
yet worked out the consensus.
And so, we will not capture and detain and hold anyone
but we are not convinced we can put into an Article 3 court
at the end of the detention which is a far cry
from what the Geneva Convention, the laws of armed conflict
and the logic of being a nation at war suggest we should do.
And so, if I'm looking forward, all right and I have a truth
in lending here, I'm an advisor to the Romney campaign
but that's strictly an advisor not--
not an advocate, all right?
If we're looking forward,
I actually expect there's could have been some continuity
between a president Romney and his predecessor too
if that were to come to past.
I actually think and all of these things that seem to carry
over from 43 to 44, we'll carry over to 45.
The one additional one might be that we actually look for ways
to capture and detain people without needing to be CSI Miami
at a crime scene, in order to create the predicate
for a criminal case in an Article 3 court.
I can actually envision someone considering
and please don't read this
as the governors intent this is just me talking.
I can actually envision someone saying, "You know,
we can actually put a couple of more people in Guantanamo
because we are a nation at war and we do have the right
to detain enemy combats.
So, as I told you why am I in upfront,
amazing continuity we've got to find the centerline,
we're still arguing about this one thing but by
and large, we're kind of okay.
Look at the targeted killing program, you know,
the one I said most
of our European allies kind of go this like.
72 percent of you think that's a good idea.
It's hard to get 72 percent of American's degree in anything,
and 72 percent are strongly supportive of that effort.
Let me give you one final point before we open it
up to the questions and answers, okay?
And by the way, you've just had a 39 year military officer talk
to you for more than 40 minutes
without a PowerPoint slide, huh come on.
[ Applause ]
But if I had a slide here's where I need it.
[Laughter] And since I don't have it,
I would do hand puppets, okay?
If-- if, this is what we're doing now,
everything I described for you, the renditions,
the targeted killings, the state secrets,
the indefinite detentions and military commissions and so on,
if this is what we're doing now, this will get us kind
of our level of effort.
Most of the things we used to worry about are up here, okay?
9/11, up here, but what I'm saying is what we're doing now
is stopping this kind of stuff.
9/11. Bojinka, airliner plot over the Pacific,
East Africa embassies, up here.
2006 airliner plot out of United Kingdom,
you know the reason you can't take your aftershave
through that TSA checkpoint.
al-Qaeda, what al-Qaeda really wants to do is
that mass casualty attack against the iconic target
and because of this, 11 years of this,
I'm an intelligence officer, we're inherently pessimistic
so I never say never but it's really hard
to imagine how they pull this off, okay?
So what are we seeing now?
We're seeing some stuff down here, okay?
We're seeing that moped down the road.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day 2009 remember?
We're seeing Najibullah Zazi driving from Denver to New York
to try to put explosives in the New York Subway system.
We're seeing a drive by shooting
at an army recruiting station a Little Rock, Arkansas.
We're seeing Major Hasan at Fort Hood,
you see what I'm trying to describe.
Secretary Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security,
probably wouldn't put the way I'm going to put it
but in it what I'm going to tell you now is I think a very fair
assessment of what she has said publicly,
future al-Qaeda attacks against America are going
to be less well organized, less complex, less likely to succeed,
less lethal if they do succeed because of this
because they [inaudible] lost arm here.
They're just going to be more likely, okay?
And if you look at these kinds of attacks
down here I know we're going
to go watching American football game tomorrow but bare
with me while-- while I speak from on about the rest
of the world caused football, okay.
This is Patriot acts.
No matter how good our goalie is,
sooner or later this ball is going in the back of the net.
So now the question I have for you,
you know when I started this.
I talked about consensus and continuity and new threats
and old structures and we got to make adjustments,
now I got one for you.
Given what I just told you, not likely to happen, probably will.
What do you want me to do
with my left arm 'cause I can move it.
I can push it down.
I can actually work to make this less likely than it is today.
But the question I have for you is, what of your privacy,
whatever your convenience, what of your commerce,
do you want to give up as I push that on down.
I'm not a free agent here.
I'm your servant.
You got to give me some guidance, put very candidly,
how much more do you want to take off, take off when you go
through the line at the airport, okay?
And what we need is a nation going forward,
is that continuation of the very tough,
sometimes overly bitter conversation we've had
to get us here.
Do you want us to get more likely to do this?
Or you want to live with that?
And if you're going to live with that and frankly
if you ask me my personal view, I kind of am, if you're going
to live with that, we kind of metaphorically have
to kind of shake hands, okay?
Because if we say no, this is about as far as I want you to go
to guarantee my security, you've done some new
and creative things and I'm gladly comfortable with most
of them, although probably some in the room or not
but you get the point.
And I'm saying, "Well I can do more but you got to let me know
and you say, "No, we're kind of cool.
Leave it where it is".
Patriot acts far enough, okay.
Then you have to have the understanding
that when bad things happen, bad things happen.
No one did anything wrong in terms
of the people defending you, okay.
Nothing is broke.
It's just a natural consequence
of balancing a free society's liberty with its security.
That's where we've been, we've worked a lot of it out.
We still have some homework assignments
and that's why I came to kind of share that with you
because only an informed citizenry can inform the
government where it is you want your security services to be.
As we go forward in a world that is still quite dangerous.
And with that, let me stop and I'd be happy
to take any questions I may have generated.
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon sir.
My name is Christina and I'm a master's student
at the Gerald Ford School Public Policy.
Thank you for being here.
>> Thank you.
>> I'm going to read the first question from the audience.
There have been reports
that al-Qaeda units have been operating alongside the Free
Syrian Army in the Syrian Conflict.
Given that the US was discretely supporting the FSA,
how does the US and allies avoids supporting al-Qaeda?
>> Yup. Everybody hear the question?
>> No.
>> Try it again Christina.
>> Okay. There have been reports
that al-Qaeda units have been operating alongside the Free
Syrian Army in the Syrian conflict.
Given that the US has been discretely supporting the FSA,
how does the US and allies avoid supporting al-Qaeda?
>> Okay. Syria, Al Qaeda growing in strength,
you want to support the opposition to Assad but now part
of that opposition appears to be al-Qaeda, what are you to do?
This is the kind of question
that makes me delighted I'm out of government.
[Laughter] This really is a problem from hell.
What you have in Syria now, and I'll be very efficient
but just-- just a moment's background what you have
in Syria now is the opposition against the Assad regime playing
out on cellphone, videos and you
and I are watching it every night, right?
And-- the popular image of that is that the oppressed
against the oppressor and that's true.
But there's another story line,
and this is where intelligence comes in,
telling the policy maker it's not just what you're seeing.
It's not just oppressor and oppressed.
This is Sunni Alawite, this is sectarian.
And there are bunch of other groups in Syria, Jews,
Christians, and Kurds [phonetic] who have not yet voted.
They are not yet part of the opposition.
In fact, it kind of trend towards the Assad regime
because it's the devil they know
until those others groups vote oppressed and oppressor as true
as it is isn't the defining narrative.
It's Sunni Alawite, al-Qaeda-Sunni.
This is an absolute magnet drawing al-Qaeda into this fight
against the Alawite to an offshoot of Shia Islam, okay?
The longer this goes in my view, the more the al-Qaeda character
of the opposition grows which is a really dark picture
which then would suggest you well then we got
to act more quickly before this becomes a real al-Qaeda
flavor movement.
But I've already told you it's not yet just the oppressor
and oppressed, it's sectarian.
You want to get involved in another sectarian conflict?
So it is quite a dilemma.
The scenario you laid out is correct though.
al-Qaeda is there, and al Qaeda will grow in strength.
It would naturally go in strength.
These guys are prepared to die.
These guys are prepared to kill.
If you're fighting someone you think is your oppressor
and somebody shows up saying I'm ready to die, I'm ready to kill,
you're going to hug him.
And you're not going to ask too many questions.
The longer this goes, I fear the more that's going
to be the-- be the reality.
>> Sir my name is Cynthia Rathinasamy.
I'm also from the Ford School.
Thank you for being here today.
Next question is as the US' fighting groups
that do not wear uniforms or insignia
and do not honor Geneva our response includes attacking
targets that are often alongside noncombatants especially
when the CIA uses drone strikes,
are we not irreparably damaging Geneva?
What could this mean for a conventional war in the future?
>> Yeah, it's, it's impossible for me to comment
on specific operations, all right?
So let me just couch my answer and I'm just talking
about technology, all right?
And so we're not doing, not doing specific operations
by specific agencies in specific parts of the world.
But as an Airman, remember 39 years in the Air Force,
the drone-- UAV, I'm sorry.
The drone is a popular term.
We say RPV because we already do think there's a pilot.
He's just remote, remotely powered vehicle, all right?
It gives you an unblinking stare at the target.
This is not a fast moving F15 or F16 at 400 knots that has
to make a decision in a matter of a few seconds
to engage or not engage.
And RPV over a target can be there for hours if not days.
And it can give you almost a god's eye view
with the circumstances.
Are you sure that's who you believed with this?
How are they behaving?
Are there any nonmilitary age males there?
Are there any females there?
When was the last time you saw females there?
When was the last time you saw a nonmilitary aged males there?
If we were to attack this, what weapons would you recommend?
Why wouldn't you use a smaller weapon?
What if you use that weapon coming in from the Northeast
as opposed to the Southwest?
Give me the probability of death or injury coming this way
as opposed to that way.
You see what I'm trying to describe for you?
It gives you the opportunity
to be almost exquisite in your precision.
And so I think in one sense I'm kind
of rejecting the premise of the question.
That this is a-- that the use of RPVs, UAVs is kind
of a collateral damage engine.
In fact it's quite the opposite.
It actually gives you the opportunity to be
in an incredibly high standard, to avoid collateral damage.
>> Given that the war on al-Qaeda has focused
in recent time on Pakistan and the diplomatic difficulties
that have ensued, what do you think is the future
of the strategic partnership between America and Pakistan?
Most Pakistani's are concluding
that the defenses are now irreconcilable.
>> Yeah. This is-- it's a question about US
and Pakistani relations.
This is something we've worked on a lot.
The current Chief of Army Staff there Ashfaq Kayani was
my counterpart.
He was head of the Pakistani Intelligence Service for most
of my time as Director of CIA, a wonderful man
and wonderful officer.
All right.
As you might imagine, I went to Islamabad more
than once during my time
as Director 'cause this is a very important relationship,
a very important country.
I would go to Islamabad for a variety of reasons
and I would gently fly with the C17
and we had a little comfort pad in there.
So you can kind of had like airline chairs even though
with the transport aircraft
and they would give me briefing books like that.
All 17 hours in a route to read the books
and master whatever topic we were going to talk
to general Kayani
or his successor Ahmed Shuja Pasha about, okay?
Now hold that thought.
What constitutes Pakistan?
What's the glue?
What's the fundamental glue that keeps Pakistan together?
You and me we're together because of an idea frankly.
It's not blood I'm looking out here.
It's glue and not blood, all right.
Not even history.
Its belief in a political principle and you know you get
to be one of us by saying, "Yeah, I agree with that.
And I raise my right hand and I'll sign?"
Okay. What makes you German?
In that case, it's kind of blood.
Okay. I mean you could be an individual Turkish descent,
3rd generation in Germany and you're kind of still a Turk.
You can be a German living in the Crimea since the middle
of the 19th century and you're a German.
So understanding what makes a German.
And what makes a Pakistani?
I came up with two things.
It's not India.
An Islam, okay, look, I don't mean to make a lie to this
and I'm oversimplifying it.
So let me beg forgiveness to begin.
But there's a point to be made here.
It's not India and it's Islam.
Okay. Back to my C17, all right, my stock of binders,
I'm mastering the case,
we landed Islamabad, I got a [inaudible].
I talked to General Kayani.
No matter what's in those books,
fundamentally what are these I'm trying
to convince General Kayani
or a Successor General Pasha remember what
constitutes Pakistan.
Fundamentally, I'm trying to convince on the two things.
One, quit obsessing about the Indians.
Two, let you and me talk about making war
on this particularly virulent slice of Islam.
That's a really hard conversation, don't you think?
So fundamentally that-- I mean-- this is really basic.
Okay. This is almost primal.
It gets in the way of creating a constructive relationship
with the Pakistani's.
It's just hard work.
And by the way I hope you understand,
I'm not blaming anybody.
Okay. It's just the nature of reality at this moment.
>> What effect will sequestration,
if it actually occurs have on our defense capability?
>> Sequestration, what effect would it have
on our defense capability?
Secretary Panetta has said catastrophic.
I agree with Secretary Panetta, okay?
This is another half trillion over 10 years.
The Department of Defense is eight and a half a trillion.
Okay. And fundamentally
in a fairly orderly way it probably can eat some more cuts
but it can't digest them the way sequestration says
to digest them which is take every account
and take 11 percent out of it.
Okay. Imagine your own household account,
okay, you got less money.
Okay. But no, no, you can't juggle the money.
You just got to take 11 percent out of everything you have.
Do you know what happens
if you're 11 percent short on your mortgage?
That's kind of what sequestration does
to the Department of Defense, okay?
>> If we are at war with al-Qaeda
and its associates how will we know when we have won
and what will it signify?
>> Okay. I had a note here.
You saw me going back occasionally
and make sure I wasn't wondering too far.
And right here this is the last page, all right.
How do I know I'm done?
[ Laughter ]
That is a really good question.
That was going be the one after my left arm thing, okay.
And I bear with I'd used too much of your time and I want
to leave more space for that.
So I'm happy that someone brought that up.
You know the real answer is?
I don't know and that's a really good question.
And it's a question you should continue to ask folks like me,
I mean not necessarily retired folks like me,
but people still kind of doing what I was doing.
How do I know that we are safe enough, that it is time for us
to shift out of that "we are at war" model and go back
to more traditional ways of keeping us safe?
That's based upon an intelligence judgment.
It's based upon our judgment with regard to the resilience
of al-Qaeda and the reach of al-Qaeda.
And let me add an additional thought
and this Americans talking to Americans, okay.
Do you know the degree of political courage
that would be required of a national leader to say,
"I think we're done, we're going to scale back on this thing."
I mean that's-- that's way up there in the real hard
to do box, okay, because you make your self frankly
political vulnerable.
And therefore if we ever get to that point, it really will have
to be based upon a national bipartisan consensus.
It can't be if I stopped doing this,
I got an exposed right flank 'cause it will always be an
exposed right flank, all right?
And so back to the point I was trying
to suggest you this has got to be the product
of a very sincere dialogue among people.
It's kind of like the left arm thing.
You know, okay, Hayden I want you
to raise your left arm this time.
I know I'm increasing the odds, but we're shaking on it.
We understand.
We're all in agreement
and that's fundamentally what that question is.
And we are not at that point in my judgment.
That point will come someday and we will have
to have the courage to address it.
>> What are other departments in our government doing in ways
that are on a diplomatic level to deal with like al-Qaeda?
Is there anyone to deal with?
>> Yeah. What are other departments
of our government doing to deal with the al-Qaeda?
And are there other ways to deal with?
I'm going to take that question and run
at about 20 degrees right here and just kind
of answer the question I wished that question was.
Okay. You had me talking about targeted killings
and renditions, and Guantanamo and saying, "Hey,
that's not going to happen.
We're really safe," right?
What I'm describing for you here is that in dealing
with today's threat, in dealing
with that human being he's convinced he wants
to do you harm, your government is really good and it really is.
Okay. We really have kept that republic safe for about--
we've kept it so safe and this is the dark side.
They'd often don't come with us.
They come at other people now.
They don't come here.
That's a byproduct.
It's non-intended.
It's a reality.
But we have kept you safe.
But in the American military terms,
we would call that the close fight.
You know, that's the one we're fighting today,
that's about the guy who's already convinced he's going
to come kill you.
There's a deep fight here.
The deep fight is about the production rate of people
who were going to come to try to kill you
in 6, 12, 18, or 24 months.
And as successful as we've been on the close fight,
not so good on the deep fight?
Now we, you know, we did this in the Cold War, remember?
Then we had large armies in Europe,
the Ambassador know a bunch about this.
You know, we're defending the Fulda Gap in Southern Germany,
best army in the Germany, the American one,
defending the best scenery, Bavaria [phonetic] okay?
But while we held the Soviets, we also had this deep,
ideological conflict with them, did we not?
And we won that one.
Now whatever it is, you think of communism, you know,
I think it's a pretty bad theory of history, let alone bad theory
of government, you cannot argue
that communism is a western philosophy.
It was written by a German in a library in London.
And so in the Cold War, while we're kind of holding
in a close fight, we're--
we're scramming it up here in the deep fight, ideologically,
and we got authenticity.
This is about a western philosophy.
Now, fast-forward to this war,
we're doing real well in the close battle.
These guys convinced to want to kill us, we're stopping them.
The production rate though back here, is fundamentally about one
of the world's great monotheism.
It's fundamentally about Islam and what it really means.
And we don't have a lot authenticity in that thing.
Now, I know-- I know we are multicultural society
but fundamentally, we have European and African roots
and we're Judeo-Christian in our outlook.
So it is very hard for us to get seriously involved in a dispute
out here about the meaning of the Koran or the Hadith
and telling that Ummah, the general body of believers,
they should believe something different.
In fact, we probably make it worse as soon
as we engage in that fight.
And so for 10 years, we got butt kiss out here, okay?
We're not doing much and that 18 moths ago, something happened.
This fruit merchant set himself on fire in Tunisia
and you had this wave of protest and revolution, Tunisia, Libya,
Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen.
The heartland of al-Qaeda
and al-Qaeda was absolutely irrelevant to it.
It doesn't mean al-Qaeda won't exploit it,
but it was irrelevant to the movement.
And what was this movement about?
This movement was about responsive government,
responsible government, transparent government,
the rule of law, democracy, voting, wait a minute, wait,
we know some about this stuff.
As disruptive as the Arab awakening has been,
as in the near term and midterm caused us some serious
diplomatic and maybe even kind of terrorism challenges.
Over the longer term, it has created a new dialogue
in this deep fight, a dialogue
about which we have genuine legitimacy.
It can offer views and so in my personal view,
for the first time, we actually can engage
in this deeper ideological conflict in a way
that we never have before.
So at the end of the day, what that means is, other elements
of the American government besides your intelligence
and security services, besides the Department of Defense
and the CIA, need to get into this diplomatically,
politically, economically, in order, and, again, it's not ours
to control, it's not our to shape,
but at least foster a positive movement out here
about which we never had an opportunity
for the first nine years of this war.
>> General, this will be the last question.
>> Okay.
>> How does the new phenomenon of home grown terrorism fit
into the enemy combatant and noncombatant categories?
>> Yeah. That's a great question--
up here in hearing and a lot of these were homegrown, okay?
A lot of these Faisal Shahzad, Time Square,
homegrown, US citizen, okay?
Not in green card, US citizen.
Major Hasan, US military officer, okay?
I guess the first thing I'd point out to you is that this--
this problem is not zero, all right?
This homegrown, self-radicalized issue is not zero,
but whatever the number is, it is much smaller than it is
in many other countries in the west.
We do not share the kind of problem, for example,
that the British have with their population.
Why is that, because your CIA is better?
No, okay? It is that way because of who we are.
We are an immigrant people.
We are far more accepted of immigrant groups.
We are actually fully well practiced at assimilation.
The average Islamic income in the United States of America is
above the national average, right?
So there's no reason to despair about this,
but there will be issues.
This is where that we are at war
or is this a law enforcement problem,
really become sharp edge.
In my personal view, it will be the incredibly rare case why
US-- no I'm going to be careful here,
who are American citizens doing something
within the United States triggers that we are
at war approach as opposed to the law enforcement approach.
I'm trying not to be absolute here
because I can imagine our future circumstances, all right?
But here in my senses in that balance, okay,
but going in position is this is a job for FBI, not CIA, okay?
This is a job for the Michigan State Police,
not the Department of Defense, okay?
By the way, by and large, most of the information we knew,
okay, we knew about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the guy coming
into Detroit was all foreign-derived.
I frankly think it was a mistake to Mirandize him
after 50 minutes because our base of knowledge
of him is foreign intelligence.
To me, the right entry point was any combatant nation
at war deal with it that way.
On the other hand, if someone is discovered and prevented
in an attack in the United States by the FBI,
the roots of that information are law-enforcement derived.
The going in position is we ought to treat this
as a law enforcement problem and entered this into the American--
American court system.
I suppose that we stayed here long enough, we could think
of exceptions but in broad measure, my sense is that's--
that's how we should deal with it.
Well, I hope I've made it worth your while coming here
this afternoon.
I hope you've left with more questions than you had
when you came in, that was my intent.
And thank you very much for the opportunity and go Air Force.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, thank you so much General Hayden for your candid,
clear and thought-provoking presentation and also
for your insights on such very important issues.
I'd also like to thank the audience
for their thoughtful questions.
In a moment, we'll adjourn and I hope that all
of you will join us just across the walkway in the Alumni Center
for our reception, but with that please join me once again
in a final applause to thank General Hayden.
[ Applause ]