and moderator of our forum with i've seen john rods and many of you know our original speaker tonight sam harris chose to cancel his appearance here at the town hall forum just about ten days ago it was a surprise to us he told us that he had received so many threats against his life that he was concerned about appearing here in the twin cities and you know he's a well known author as an atheist and skewered every religion  spiritual without being religious something like that so i was going to ask him if he actually finally got religion but i don't have the chance to do that because of his sense that he was under threat and didn't want to  appear and it was his decision we don't we don't have any basis for understanding whether those threats are real or not in fact we'll discuss them maybe tonight but our first inclination frankly was is this kind of closed down the form and not have a forum tonight and then he said  ourselves no this is probably a topic that we need to talk about this is the kind of kind of thing that the forum existed do to have public conversation on issues that matter and this certainly is an issue that matters religious extremism in our midst in our city and so we decided instead to turn to a local expert who could engage in conversation with us on that topic and we're very honored that obscene jon ronson could join us this evening especially on such short notice i'm also grateful to susan mckenna who is the director of the form susan over here who managed to turn all this around so quickly that let's think susan for all she does welcome to the westminster town hall forum where for thirty four years we have a gauge the public in reflection and dialogue on the key issues of our day from an ethical perspective all forms are free and open to the public and information on upcoming events can be found online at westminster forum dot org you can like us on facebook and follow us on twitter as well my name is tim hart anderson on the senior minister at westminster presbyterian church located on nicol mall in beautiful downtown minneapolis and moderator of the forum in the last several weeks national attention has focused on minnesota as a center for religious extremism tonight i've seen john rod son who is a professor at william mitchell college of law in st paul and a leading authority on national security issues will explore the topic of religious extremism and terrorism how should we respond he brings a unique combination of professional experience in both law enforcement and intelligence activities to this issue is served as a federal prosecutor and as assistant general counsel at the cia and over the years he has advised officials from countries around the world on legal issues related to national security that way michel he is founder and director of the national security forum an organization committed to increasing public awareness and influencing public policy on the balance between liberty and security in american counterterrorism policies ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the westminster top off form i've seen john ro at this moment i may be the only one in this great setting that is happy that you lost your other speaker that by the end of the presentation there will be some people that will say that was not so bad and i have brought to family members at the end they're going to put their hands up and say i'm happy that that speaker cancel there is something divine about the number three there are three great religions judaism christianity and islam in christianity we speak about three manifestations of god the father the son and the holy ghost and i'm going to carry out this tradition of threes to give you three options during this presentation the first option it has to do with what you do with your eyes i'm fifty one so i need reading glasses so there's a barrier between me and you all but those of you that would like to close your eyes for the entire presentation you're welcome to do so close them now but please don't snow a second group if you like you can attempt to keep your eyes open the entire presentation this will be tiring by the end but you can continue to stare at me for fifty three minutes or most of you i invite you at various segments to visualize a visual image that makes sense and you'll count these visuals and you'll notice that somehow they divide by three now the first place that i'd like to take you to is london july seventh two thousand and five now we had the fortune of doing an event with minnesota public radio in london and we discussed the significance of this day now this is a day after nine eleven where there was a terrorist attack in london if you recall there were four suicide bombers they were killed and there were fifty two other people that were killed civilians innocents in the two in the bus and it's a sad day and we've had other said days the fight against terrorism so i don't want you to focus on that negative but i want you to think about the next day and my ideas are about what we do after the next attack and the british they have had more experience than we have in war and  terrorism and what you will see in london if you go back and this is the visual is to think of piccadilly circus an iconic location and people went about their business as usual they took the two they took the bus and implicit in that is that we will not allow threats from whatever sources to change our way of life we will be free we will be reasonable but we will go about our business now you're probably used to hearing the word first responders when we have an attack we read the nine eleven report about the success and lack of success from fire departments police departments the military we hear about the hospitals this is all the physical necessities to protect buildings to seal off areas and i think we've gotten very good in terms of physical preparedness now you would call it was not a terrorist incident that we had here in the twin cities but we had a bridge that went down the public sector the private sector they work very well we rebuilt the bridge so i'm not talking to you today about physical preparedness but i want you to have something else in mind and that is a kind of emotional preparedness to to say to yourself we're going to have another attack it's going to happen president bush said it president obama said it they don't get into the details of it because it's bad politics but i think we would be better as a nation if we accepted this that we're going to have an attack and ask ourselves how will we behave the next day and then the normative question how should we behave after the next attack and that's the core of what i'm asking you today and i have some ideas about what we should do in terms of the next attack well you're very kind to have me here to mention my cia and justice department experience and you're probably ready to hear these hard recommendations and there's going to be a lot of softness and what i and your second visual if you choose to close your eyes is to focus on the statue of liberty this great symbol of openness to all people of all face or whether they have faith or not and we're going to get together at that location after this attack and we're going to be holding hands we'll have yoga pants we're going to be flexible we're going to be open minded we're not going to turn on each other we're not going to identify people from particular groups but we're going to say that this group of individuals did something wrong how can we learn from it how can we reduce the chances of another attack now the speaker the council probably identified a particular threat that exists here in the twin cities and we've been getting coverage of the new york times and if something makes it to the new york times it's been validated in the country and around the world so let's let's talk about this community and i remember when i showed up here in two thousand and four i went to meet a former governor and i wanted to tell him about the events that we were going to do in this location hopefully in other locations and he told me what are you doing peddling fear and the next thing i knew it i was being escorted out of the office and i realize maybe maybe it's because i don't root for minnesota he could tell i was a duke fan but there was something deeper going on in this discussion is that he didn't want to talk about what was going on right here in the twin cities that i knew about from my friends in law enforcement and intelligence community i'll just go through some observations that we've heard this before but let's put it together and we know that we have the largest somali community in the united states now the estimates of that community are about  hundred thousand the united states and thirty to forty thousand right here but the new york times will say repeatedly we have the largest somali community here and they came like my parents seeking a better life they came fleeing problems in their home country and they had a refuge here how did they end up here i've asked them how did you all end up here i tend to have this conversation when it's twenty below zero with them and where we're asking ourselves yes one winter but why would anyone come back and they say that there was a church group of social services in the first group that came here after the problems of their country they were well received they got jobs and as happens with many immigrant groups then word spread back home and some when someone decided to come to the united states they didn't do the sensible thing and say let's go out to san diego where the weather is nice all year round they said you have a cousin you have a brother you have a grandfather that lives in the twin cities you go to the twin cities and that explains here and they've spread to other parts of the country why we have such a large somali community now there is a concern about radicalization and somalis are not the only group that susceptible to radicalization radicalization is something that happens to all people of faith or not faith but what we can see and maybe able to discuss this in the back and forth this kind of a conveyor belt going down the line of people willing to do certain services and then going all the way at the end of the conveyor belt where they're willing to kill other people or to kill themselves while killing other people when we had cia officers recruiting spies it's a similar conveyor belt you get people to do something for you then you ask them to do more you ask them to do more and you work on any type of weakness that you see economic problems resentment about what's going on here idealism about what's going on in their home country you use those human emotions to move toward a goal and we can see that in the recruiting that's going on of somalis today whether it's here or other parts of the country something that has made it even more difficult to track is the social media the internet facebook i mean this is different from the nine eleven generation in nine eleven people were using the internet to put messages but they were not using it as the sophisticated recruitment device that it is today and you'll see in the literature that they talk about jihadi is in the basement that you don't even need to go to a training camp you don't even need to be part of a group you can find fellow travelers there on the internet and some of these kids may be telling mom and dad they're doing their homework they're doing math and science when they're downloading videos they're getting manuals and this makes it very difficult to ferret out especially in a society that values its liberties we don't want to be snooping but we don't want people building bombs or concocting plots the new york times at various times has said that the counterterrorism investigation that goes on here in the twin cities is the most significant counterterrorism investigation since nine eleven that's disturbing probably to most citizens it gives me an opportunity having worked in this area from the twin cities he was recruited here and he went back to somalia fighting against what he considered oppressors but fighting for what the state department considered a designated terrorist group he blew him self up two thousand and eight and you don't have to be the head of the cia or the head of the f b i to figure out that that's a problem that if somebody is willing to blow himself up overseas it won't take much to turn that person back to the united states isolates in the news we're concerned about the situation in syria and iraq and we find out that that recruitment pipeline that involved twenty or so people here seems to be expanding that we have people not only going to somalia to train with al shabaab but we have people that are going to syria and iraq to fight against our interest so this is i mean this is a concern and for this visual i'd like you to imagine a tale of two cities but it's not the cities from dickens but it's the cities that are important to this community mogadishu in somalia a little mogadishu here today and to keep in mind what's going on in those two communities because they do have an interplay let me present you an alarming scenario and it plays into my idea of what we do after the next attack i have bad news while you've been here three men and one woman have been recruited in the twin cities and they are engaged in a terrorist attack they trained in somalia that al shabaab cap and they are now at the mall of america they watched what happened in mumbai at a series of hotels and they've carried out this plan at this moment and they're shooting people in the mall of america they're detonating bombs and there's a lot of blood there explosives and this has happened this is this is the reality that we're going to face when we leave this this fine city and i want you to ask what what are we going to do what should we do and that will be the test for all of us and it's a simple test between our brain or in our brain a battle between the front part of your brain the cortex and the back of your brain the reptilian side because you will be angry and you'll want to stop other people from doing this but i'm not sure that that's the right approach i've been asking you to close your eyes and have these visuals it would be easy for me to say visualize a brain scan i don't want you to do that i want you to visualize the american eagle if you notice the c incorporates the my national security form we have an eagle there and what i like about this symbol is that it represents two ideas that are not always imbalance but me to be one is to protect ourselves against the exterior threats to defend but at the same time that you're doing this to protect your liberties because the eagle stands for defense and liberty at the same time so that's a nice image for you to have in your minds think of that great american eagle doing both of those functions so how about a few comments about islam let's not dodge from this topic let's the muslim world if you do a wikipedia you'll see about one point six billion people some are devout some are less devolved some are shiite some are sudanese and within this community the number of people that are hard core sunni extremists is very small he has an al qaida a few hundred people that are with him and you probably can't talk them out of it but it's that next circle the people that might drive for them the people that will give a hundred dollars those are people whose minds can be changed and you might not necessarily change them by going out there and pointing fingers or fingers at them and telling them that they're a threat and then there's that third circle which will be all the muslims in the world and if they feel that you're attacking that second circle or people that are like them they will feel threatened and they may be radicalized or they may not help you so the visual that i want you here to imagine is three circles three circles there's a bull's eye that small  there's a second circle these help us and then there's a lot of space of a third circle and we as a country are fighting for the people in that second circle bring them to the peaceful side get them to help us even if they won't help get them to not be willing to help extremists and that's a daily task for all of us and i can see there's this gentleman here is saying you know professor that's all very nice but would you be practical now give us some ideas of what we can do right now that we've had the attack what recommendations do you have and i'll give you a few recommendation one of this one is to work on this idea of assimilation whether it's coaching soccer educational programs reaching out so that people whether somalis iranians what ever nationality so that they do not feel that they're on the march and get people like that to come to these kind of events reach out to them i mean this is one of our main lines of defense and the experts will tell you if somebody spends a lot of time here it's difficult for many of them to maintain that hatred because what we're generally good people now what was surprising about mohamed atta one of the nine eleven hijackers is that he spent a couple years here and maintain that hatred and as i said with that inner core there's only so much you can do i would increase the amount of electronic surveillance we're doing this is not going to be well received but i think the debates about a and snowden i think they're somewhat off the mark is after the next attack you'll look at back at those the debates and say this was off we need to have more electronic surveillance we need to be giving up some of our privacy to be able to ferret out some of these plots we need to be running more intelligence networks whether it's here or overseas human sources developing relationships whether it's the cia overseas whether it's the f b i here and then here's my professorial mode educational programs i think everyone should be required to take a course in anthropology and to look at where humans where they started and where they spread and if you really think that you're superior because you're a swede over the norwegians you need to go back for another course and then discussions about islam and don't get high i mind it because a muslim will then come back and tell you that if you only focus on the crusades the inquisition and what went on in northern ireland your religion may seem violent to many people there are negative aspects to islam and practice we can be aware of it but we don't have to emphasize it and blow it out of proportion so here's my seventh visual and this is this is a collage of faces of muslims the diversity of the muslim world and it's that the title under it says i am a muslim i am  you'll see africans you'll see blond blue haired blue eyed people that look like you all i am a muslim get used to it there are a lot of them now the the caviar as i head to the homestretch is that i don't have an answer to one scenario and i think the president agrees with me about this and we want to push this off if we have a catastrophic attack chemical biological or nuclear weapons i don't think that we are capable of a proper emotional response i think it's over it won't take the united states away physically but i don't think that we will live our life the way we did before it's too much death that's a catastrophic attack that's not the attack that we just had at the mall of america in my scenario that's not nine eleven that's not even a dirty bomb weak we can handle those kind of attacks we have the resilience as we showed in boston but if you have a bomb a nuclear bomb that goes off in an american city that's the end and i think most cia directors most intelligence officials will admit it's a new it will be a new era and that visual and it's a negative one is something out of a mad max movie who's seen that movie mad max mel gibson the early ones it's post that parka liptak and there's a still from that and keep your hands up because i need these votes that say i'm happy that rats and came here instead of that other speaker out let me give you some more bad news before you say to yourselves we can rise to this challenge that professor red has given us today our track  record is mixed in terms of dealing with crises the palmer raids if you heard of the palmer raids when we went after communists in the twenty's we saw reds everywhere red was the color in everybody's changed korematsu there's this ring a bell in turning one hundred twenty thousand japanese americans and japanese aliens in camps on trumped up charges of espionage sabotage there wasn't anything to it land owners in california they wanted to take the land of japanese farmers this was convenient world war two not such a great reaction and those of you that keep score republicans and democrats remember korematsu that was f d r that's how democrats watch the hostage crisis one nine hundred seventy nine to eighty one scapegoating that went on here we saw iranians everywhere they even considered me a threat american born my uncle was on a kill list but that reptilian brain said he looks like that he smells like that he eats the same food that they do i don't know that i trust him and i'm hoping that the cortex will take over so this is you know this is the negative image maybe some of you that haven't been pleased with the presentation will enjoy this but the images mean a detention camp that after all my service if something goes boom you w to be comfortable with me you won't feel safe with this american born person that's been trying to help his country and if our somali friends think that i'm picking on them i w child of immigrants my parents are both both muslims they're from iran i think iran conjures up as many negative images a somalia and we asked people deal with it embrace us we're not all terrorists so what we can what can we do and i don't want us to end on a sour note and i think tim is happy we're we're staying within time and how many times have you heard that a professor would speak twenty five to thirty and he stayed within his time limit this is an accomplishment in itself so i want you to know those of you that have been playing with these visuals i want you to open your eyes open them wide i want you to smile as things go on i want you to hug your neighbor i want you to rejoice remember you survived one of the worst winters in minnesota history you survived another year in what the new york times as early as the nineteenth century described as american siberia you made it you're up to the challenge you can handle another attack you can do it we trust you b the peace of allah and god be upon us all today as we handle these important i believe that's the first time a town hall forum audience has been asked to hug one another but restraint yourselves minnesotans i know you want to do it thank you thank you john aroused and you're listening to the westminster town hall forum broadcast  westminster presbyterian church on nicollet mall in downtown minneapolis my name is tim hart anderson the senior minister here at westminster presbyterian church and moderator of the forum or speaker is obscene with john rod sun a leading authority on national security and professor at william mitchell college of law in st paul while the ushers collect questions from the in house audience i'd like to invite the radio audience to join us at westminster church for our next forum on thursday october sixteenth at noon when distinguished journalist bob herbert will speak on the topic losing our way can we restart the american dream our events are always free and open to the public and further information can be found at our website westminster forum dot org and now john ross done if you would return to the pope and i will present the questions from our audience i'd like to return first to the three circles you mention now you said the inner circle radicalized extremists who who really we couldn't a factor change a few hundred of those the second circle i believe you said to me before the program a couple hundred thousand maybe several hundred thousand i wouldn't even go that high at not even that high ok let's let's say the tens of thousands but ok millions of thousands and the third circle of course the rest of islam a billion point five one point five plus muslims how are our policies affecting the size and the direction those circles go and what we're doing for instance right now in syria and iran what's your sense of whether that's driving people from the second circle into the inner circle or out toward the the vast majority of muslims if we focus on iraq and syria this is a delicate play for the president and all his advisors we know that we have a threat there this threat may have venture reach us in the united states it's destabilizing the region it would take discipline it would take courage not to do anything about the situation what's clear to the advisers is that by going into this area and bombing or rounding people up using force this is going to be played or distorted in the various media outlets and we're probably going to create people that do not like what we're doing so it's going to have that boomerang effect and that's the balance of the long term strategy versus the immediate strategy you'll hear somebody like david petraeus talk in these terms about the counterinsurgency aspect which is the long the long game for this and i've focused my remarks on this counterinsurgency but if you have an immediate threat you have to deal with the terrorism the counterterrorism the short term threat and sometimes those are in sync sometimes they're not does religious extremism really have anything to do with religion it it it may i think i think in this society people that are devout perhaps or in the minority of people that take their faith seriously for one of the first times in history are in a small group and they will seem to atheists agnostics they will seem extreme that they carry these views that even within these traditions you're going to have a range of practices some of which correspond with our society that is a blend of religious and non religious and some that will see some of that will seem extreme but i think the quote that tipping point for most is when you decide that you're going to kill other people because of their religion their thoughts or their group identification this is something that those three great religion should come together and say this is this is wrong you don't you don't pick out shiites if you're a sudden extremist to kill you don't pick out christians you don't pick out jews and with this type of extremism that we focused on they have attacked all of these groups and part of our long game is trying to remind the muslim world that muslims have probably been a higher proportion of the victims of suddenly extremist attacks whether it's al qaeda whether  in coming to the twin cities threats from religious extremists how can we assess whether those threats are real or not what's your reaction what's your feeling about that to diminish any of the explanations that you've heard if he has voice mails that he's had letters emails that are threatening sort and he's decided that he doesn't want to speak here because of that we'll have to accept that that he has that kind of information on the other hand if he's reading the new york times about our community and decided that this is a hotbed for radical acts i think that that is an extreme reaction in itself that people are safe here i feel safe the somali community feels safe they've had some people that have decided to go and train in camps they've been recruited for groups but as i said to a family member that i love  more than anything in this world i think that there was more of a threat in our drive from st paul to here today than there was any terrorist attack for me or anyone else here and some of you were driving with me and if you had that text at the same time that you were reaching around please don't do it you're going to hurt yourself and maybe hurt somebody else in your remarks you mentioned little mogadishu a neighborhood here in minneapolis how do how do we as a community open some dialogue across barriers that are cultural and ethnic and immigrant and nonimmigrant conversations that we presently are not having in the community between perhaps the community of little mogadishu and the rest of this city on these very issues it's difficult because you don't want to invade people's sense of their space what is familiar to them i think you want to you want to meet people on on their area where they where they like to eat where they go and smoke cigarettes where they have tea if you know a somali asked asked to be taken to that place it's also a great opportunity for interfaith dialogue because many of our somalis are devout revere their religion but they understand the christianity is also a religion of the book and if somebody if you reach out to them and say you want to talk about areas where you have things in common or common common difficulties that you have for people of faith whether they're christians whether they're jews or muslims i think most people would be receptive and i think a lot of the religious leaders in town have have been willing to have this kind of exchanges and we need to do more and not not only church the church find find out what they like to do whether they like to play soccer or other sports and we we were really i was playing soccer with my son at st paul and there was an area it was fairly clear that they were playing soccer among themselves it was a smaller group and we thought well maybe we won't be accepted into this group and they were far more welcoming than people playing sports on other playgrounds and we got over whatever inhibitions we had and there was no reason to have these inhibitions it's it's reaching out and i again disagree with him if you feel like hugging your neighbor go ahead and do it it'll it'll be ok and if anyone feels like how did me you come on up here i'll i'll give you a big hug and go a long way before that will happen effectively than they were in the years months and weeks and days before nine eleven the record was so bad before nine eleven they don't have to do much more to say that they're doing better and i i ask my friends in the f b i i know the f b i they're much more willing to talk about their work than the former cia or the current cia and i only had a few years at the cia i had six years of the justice department i ask him this question and they all tell me that we're we're doing better we're doing much better but i sense in their body language that maybe they were not doing as well as we should their their different organizations the f b i and the cia they have different cultures they have different tried to detonate explosives in his underwear and president obama was appalled because we had set up these memoranda better cooperation among the agencies we had set up the national counterterrorism center with this idea that you would take the bits and pieces of intelligence and put it together we had the bits and pieces there but we didn't put it together but keep in mind as they say they have to be one hundred percent effective all the time for you to be happy all it takes is one slip up and there's a there's a loss of life and there's damage to our american fabric so that's a high order but i'm hopeful i think i think they're doing better than they did i think we had an opportunity in the first few years after nine eleven before we pivot into iraq we were doing far better in afghanistan than people imagine we were winning the counterterrorism mission to borrow from what president obama said al qaeda was there in afghanistan saddam hussein was a secular leader didn't have any links with al qaeda if he did they were marginal and then we made this pivot for other reasons a country that was boxed in by no fly zones we should have finished the counterinsurgency job in afghanistan and then there would have been the possibility to address other other problems in other parts of the world but we have to play the hand that we have today and it's a very disturbing situation in syria and iraq but you might look back to the al qaeda problem and say that was easier to handle going into afghanistan once we had american well i don't see that there's an easy solution to what's going on in syria and iraq what do you see as the long range future of isis or i so i'm not a pick politician so i can tell you i have no idea and i think the president has no idea and they say that they're going to decimate them get rid of them that's the posturing that must come from politicians but they're hoping that they can reduce the threat from isis back here and reduce the destabilizing influence that has in the region this problem creates strange alliances remember isis is a sunni extremist group the syrian group is fighting against as is propped up by the iranians but we don't like the syrians or the iranians but they would be two very important partners in fighting isis and we keep courting iran asking them let's do something i mean iran wants the sanctions taken away and we missed an opportunity for cooperation i think earlier on with iran and they're they're playing the long game in the region and i don't i wonder from their perspective are they sincerely concerned about isis coming to th is it a threat or do they view it as something that will weaken our position in the middle east and they're probably sophisticated iranian officials that have each of those two views and they're debating that do we consider isis to be the problem a real problem if so then there are areas of cooperation with us or is this a way to bleed us in the middle east in that case they're not going to help us until only a few months ago really most of us had never heard of isis will there continue to be new extrem separatist groups splinter groups forming if isis is in fact defeated or degraded sure this is what the terrorism experts describe as a metastasizing is that  you go after one group it splinters you get more radical groups there are people that are talking to reporters at the new york times and other places saying that there are there are groups even worse than isis and i saw there are groups that are more radical and once you eliminate isis or ice or once you lower the threat then some of these groups will emerge and this is what president bush said this is what president obama said that this fight against extremism against terrorism is a generational fight that generations are twenty to thirty years and i think both of them meaning we went and number of years without any problems here in the united states we thought that there would be more attacks major attacks the united states we've gotten thirteen years that's not that long in the perspective of some of these terrorist groups it's obvious to you but let's repeat it the first attack on the world trade center was nine hundred ninety three they killed some people they took a part of the building they kept coming and they waited eight years and in that nasty and hateful way they finished the job so even if we've gone eight years ten years without an attack it's not done now the interesting question i'll turn is how do we know that we've won the war on terror how would you set up the metrics for that how many years do you have to go without an attack and some of you may be suspicious of me this props up a lot of spending by our national security machinery and asked from the perspective of a president me when can you tell the people relax it's not as bad as i said and then if you have an attack how the people will come after you and keep in mind that this president's name is barack hussein obama and i think he's worried about your reptilian response if something happens and you haven't protected the american homeland so he's going to err on the side of protecting rather than have you thought so concerned about you worried about your civil liberties he wants to make sure that something big doesn't go boom in an american city and it's a huge responsibility if we increase electronic surveillance as you recommend won't we won't we be giving in to terrorism by giving up our individual liberties that we seek to defend yes and in part we will but i think it's a it's a sacrifice that's worth making because if we have that next attack i think people will then put on the table far more aggressive measures i'm trying to put off that catastrophic attack i'm trying to figure out if we have a series of attacks of the next ten twenty years what is the reasonable long term framework for battling terrorists something something that doesn't swing back and forth and i'm i don't i don't spend much time if any on facebook or these areas i assume that somebody is listening to my phone conversations i try to be more eloquent i work on it it's it's not it's not tough with you remember the prior president he had a problem with subject verb predicate so i am happy to be here and that's a sentence that i'm doing better than one president  the united states how do you assess the actions of former n s a employee edward snowden who released information on this electronic surveillance done by the government was this an act of treason or the act of a whistleblower i was asked this question once before in minnesota public radio so for those of you that go on the archives i'm going to give the same answer the answer is both and it depends on point of view or emphasis from the standpoint of the american intelligence community you can't have people deciding that they can share top secret information with the russians or other groups you'll break down any military would decision any intelligence organization so this is an act of treason an act of espionage it's a crime that needs to be prosecuted on the other hand from the standpoint of citizens we feel that there's too much secrecy we don't know enough about our government i think many of us appreciate information so we can have a more robust debate on this proper balance of electronic surveillance within a democracy and i keep talking about balance there's another one of these balances that is very very difficult you have democracy which requires openness transparency but then you have agencies that need secrecy to be effective the cia the military the state department you can't tell people in syria where we're going to bomb in advance it will break down now how do you balance this what is the right level of secrecy and transparency that's very much in the eye of the beholder and it sometimes depends on whether your guy or gal is in the oval office and what i'm suggesting is let's think about a proper balance that will span a generation democrats republicans i i'm willing to accept a little bit more electronic surveillance but i'm i'm i'm not sure let's have the debate and i think the the president is not sure he's been calling for this debate with the american people to the find the right equilibrium point what's your position on aggressive interrogation or torture with suspected terrorists as a means to national security remember this was the big issue after nine eleven we did not interrogate that many people we're now killing rather than capturing and interrogating people by the use of drones i think the debates been simplified and i'd like to again create the third category the question is not to torture or not to torture there's one threshold of what we can do if we approach this problem from the law enforcement standpoint the f b i s rules due process that gets you about this far then there's a gap in that area you have some tactics that go beyond what the f b i can use that are below any reasonable definition of torture i'm not talking about waterboarding i'll give for example the idea of sleep deprivation a day of keeping somebody up two days at the definition of torture a severe physical or psychological pain i think you cheapen the word torture by saying a day of sleep deprivation is torture so if you had  and he's not giving you information and you're worried about active plots i is the president or i as it is advisor would be tempted to go beyond the f b i model and the president retains that discretion right now he said we will not torture but that's not as a matter of american law that's an executive order and he has this gray area that is permitted to him for these interrogations and the question i have for you all is is obama charming enough or duplicitous enough to say we don't torture we have this executive order and he signed a secret amendment to that executive order allowing some of these enhanced interrogations that's a problem for democracy but i think that the secrecy that goes with presidential power permits this and when you pick a president you're picking the possibility that someone would do that in addition to the possibility of taking us to war can you say something about the psychological profile of people that  are being drawn into the radical islamist groups from say europe or united states what are the the reasons that young men or women from somali neighborhood minneapolis might be drawn into joining a militant overseas that there's a whole host of reasons that i don't claim to have any particular profile or trait i don't think it exists within the law enforcement community i don't think it exists in the intelligence community and this is public record for a while we were trying to figure out what causes people to become traitors if we're recruiting spies or are people becoming spies for the other side and you find out that there's a whole range of reasons of why people are unhappy why they would do something that's a crime or why they would go on this conveyor belt but tim on this one point where the experts agree as we used to believe we have this narrative about muslims in europe and muslims in the united states and for a long time i thought that we had the happy muslims people muslims that come to america they're happy they're not going to do anything wrong in the muslims that they have in england in france those are the unhappy muslims they do bad things in those countries and they get recruited that narrative has broken down because if you go back on basic immigration patterns these muslim started in many of the same countries whether they had the family network or an opportunity some of them go to europe some of them go here through the social media we find out that there are a lot more connections now between european muslims and american muslims in this this broader radicalization process it's a problem it's been a problem for them it is a problem for us to what degree do policies that try to force assimilation for instance laws against wearing a burka in public to what degree are those contributing to the problem radicalization i we don't we don't force that upon people here we may have our social pressures but i think your your question or your question is getting into some of the practices in france and france is very adamant about protecting their secular values insisting that women take off the burkas or other headdress as a part of their their values there and i think i followed some of the reading i'm not an expert there but it seems that this is then bothering alienating some of the muslims there and it's definitely being discussed in capitals in the muslim world they point to france and say to their people or others look this is how they treat muslims they don't respect your religion and it has a possibility in terms of radicalize the last time we had a tunnel former speaker who told us that he was threatened coming to speak here was morris dees of the southern poverty law center and his work is focused on going after u s domestic based terrorists mostly christian extremists on the right and apparently there are several such groups in minnesota and he was threatened but he came anyway and spoke we haven't talked about domestic terrorist non islamist terrorist and timothy mcveigh comes to mind to what degree is that an actual threat today in our in our culture in our society do you think it's we have that potential in other groups and the mcveigh will then be the non non religious type of terrorists my sense is that relative to the threat that comes from muslim inspired groups at that that has receded but we may be letting down our guard and i want to make one one comment you heard some arabic words that's the invocation from the koran i'm not a religious mus lim it's the invocation to every chapter but i noticed some people were very troubled to hear her big words in the church and it means most compassionate most munis if it god and we all believe in the same god they say they're fulfilling your mission reactions i should point out that's not the first time arabic has been spoken in the sanctuary and we've been called to worship by arabic way vince from a local mosque but i know why the woman disapproved because i'm a persian speaking arabic with a persian access she said his arab this arabic is so bad and i think she wants to come up here and do that invocation when we finish and i i again embrace her and i bought her somebody has got to give this man a hug when this program him that's coming from you let me let me ask you about the minneapolis city council elected as a somali american from little mogadishu and now on our city council is that going to affect in a positive way t kind of assimilation you're talking about in our community how could it not we believe in democracy elections we're telling people if you want to push your values run for office vote for people that you accept in office how could it not  and i i believe that the election of obama was a great victory against some of the recruitment because of his immigrant background because of a grandfather that was a muslim what a great symbol for the united states that goes beyond politics the first election i watched some of the news i speak spanish and french and i watched the news programs there on the internet and they were asking among themselves they didn't know that there was an american the sitting in they said could this happen here could we have somebody with  's background to rise to the highest position in our democracy and the answer in the u k was no the answer in france was no and the consensus was that they were a generation away so i've given you some gloomy scenarios but that is good news that goes beyond his politics that it is something great for this country that you can elect somebody whose father came from africa right who has a crazy name i think it's one of the comedians that said this is the greatest politician right but  reminds you of iraq hosain it's going to remind you about saddam hussein but obama you confuse with osama and that's ok and that guy gets elected two times that's that's great we're ending on an upbeat note because it was a little bit rough earlier let me just ask you this knowing what you know and you know a lot more than the people in this room about religious extremism are you are you hopeful for american democracy and our future in this land yes we've had extreme views political views religious views and it seems to work in this country i talk to a religious iranian who is a former advisor to one of the presidents we're walking down the beach in venice in california and you have all kinds there and he had a big smile on his face and i said what's going on he said your country is the most amazing large intestine that i have ever seen you know what he meant but i said what do you mean he said you can take anything and you digest it and you seem to get nutrition from it that is great that's something to be proud of you began by saying you were going to offer us some really good visual imagery and you have you ended on a notable image thank you very much thank you jo