was big on everything that was faith based you know and and so he introduced the concept of faith based intelligence and i heard a story one time which illustrates what faith based intelligence is worth in a very vivid way and i'd like to draw from my irish heritage to tell you that story so religion but i do it my are your fa h thanks for getting it you know i talked i told a joke at the oxford union during that debate and there was nothing well elizabeth you were there right there didn't get it and then buff three minutes later hero and they all explained to one another and these are the rulers of great britain you know coming now before i forget i want to introduce elizabeth would you just stand up with the murray is one of our veteran intelligence professionals for and she was second in command of near east analysis she was the deputy national intelligence officer for the middle east when she retired three years ago now elizabeth three something like that and she decided to get as far away from washington d c as she could and and she founded bellingham washington was about as far as you can get so well that's where she settled down i haven't seen her since we're not together so it's nice that nice to have their reunion that was really quite an experience i like to share just a little bit of it and conjunction with us we're going to say we award a an award every year for integrity and intelligence around the suggestion that well maybe he's our nominee for this prize this year and to some of it seemed like a no brainer to others not so much the sam adams associates or as you would imagine intelligence professionals of various backgrounds and very serious military folks very senior officers and a lot of people felt very strongly will take a real look at this you know he has released a lot of very sensitive from ation and you know would it be harmful to our country or or maybe just harmful to the government for revealing what you know and he went through this and we waited a decent interval about six weeks and then we said well let's bring it to a vote you know we're sort of an action sort of group let's vote on it award in person we've always done it in person that's why we ended up in oxford the last award winner was thomas finger anybody know who thomas figaro is was that's really interesting isn't it because thomas finger stopped the united states from going to war with iran you know if the depok all of iraq where was the evidence was not mistaken folks it was fraudulent ok you know face based on intelligence it was worse than what was in what paisley thought was in that bed pan right and you know don't take my word for it jay rockefeller who is head of the senate intelligence committee after a five year study by the committee said that the evidence used to justify the war in iraq was unsubstantiated contradicted comma and even nonexistent period and quote now i ask you folks what non existent hellishness looks like forgery that kind of thing well anyhow after that was over it was behind us someone with some good sense said you know iran is next in the crosshairs it was very clear and so let's try to get somebody with a with a record for integrity to come in here and run the estimate on iran and they couldn't find anybody except in the state department the head of state department intelligence tom finger he was assistant secretary of state very senior official but he had been around the intelligence committee almost for now he's teaching at stanford in any case they asked him would you shepherd the estimate and use national intelligence estimates or so the acme of the intelligence project project and would you do the want any run come on in and do it it's not  this is not know why not he says well if you let me take three or four of my best experts on iran from the state department yeah i'll do it and he did and they did and he did all throughout two thousand and  struggled with this session and the record had been that every five years the intelligence community would pronounce since about one nine hundred ninety that you run is we think about five years away from nuclear weapons nine hundred ninety five they're about five years away from nuclear weapon one thousand two thousand probably about five years so if you got a little embarrassing ok so he threw out all the estimates and he did a background of study and he found out as some of you know  agreed to by all sixteen intelligence agencies of the united states government that iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of two thousand and three i'm not real good at arithmetic but i did the math before i came here that's ten years ago and had not recent work on a nuclear weapon now that judgment by the way has been reiterated in revalidated every year since informal testimony i wish i could brag about formal testimony from the national intelligence director but as you know he said self confessed perjurer because he denied that essay it had any did any collection on millions or hundreds of millions of americans and how it does mean something that every year the revalidated it and how do you stop the war well he didn't do it singlehandedly but it was a big surprise three weeks before the estimate came out first week of november two thousand and seven now ok george bush was saying iraq is about to get a nuclear weapon they're going to get a nuclear weapon we have to do something to stop that and somebody some press person says will  stars on their military hey you know what that would feel like that be crazy it would make iraq look like a volleyball game between mount st helens or the line academy you know and so what i think happened was they went to george bush and said now mr president this estimates terribly embarrassing us missing him express well it's out there and congress has and it's going to leak for sure it's leak and  threat still a threat like so many how how do i know that the stop the war well there are a lot of reasons but one is if you read bush's memoirs now i don't expect you to go out and buy the book please don't do not go out and buy the book if you're looking for the book you'll find it in the fiction section because because my code pink folks have made sure that he got there ok but you know and you can go you go to page four hundred seventy four something like that and bush in his own words must be is o word says this was a shocker an eye popping disclosure it deprived me of the military option for and this is a quote for how could i justify ordering our forces to attack the nuclear development facilities of a country that the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program bomber the put him through and he stuck around long enough to protect all those people who wrote the you know the analysts and then he left and went teaching a stanford down long story short he was at stanford in january  and i was invited to do a little debate there and one of those oxford debate things and so we said hey let's do the sam adams award in oxford and so he was our last to work he and he's unusual in as much as most of our sam adams awards are given to whistleblowers and it was you know tom figure that made it unnecessary for anybody to blow the whistle because he told the truth you know oh you know that's what we used to tell the truth so  the sam adams award is named after a colleague of mine who entered the cia at the same time i did it actually was the same day and one thousand nine hundred sixty three when john kennedy was president he had served in vietnam  and he's at a harvard really bright guy went to harvard law school said this is for the birds and you want to be you know you don't want to continue there so he came down to for this very attractive offer which attracted me as well of being an analyst for the cia were you would be given in your little inbox and most of you are probably old enough to remember that we used to have in boxes made it would you can you can't believe it when i talk to colleges they say what it's our inbox will come all manner of information from all you know from press from spies from toggery fief intercepted messages from you know from from wherever the f b i even shared information with us every now and then and then we would be responsible far enough away from washington to use to use the following word we would be accountable and we would be accountable for looking what what information was available and if it were important enough we would serve it up to the president and you know somebody might correct the syntax or misspellings but there was no political thing on this you know i mean we told it like it is and we had career protection for telling it like it was i bent many of us spent the noses of four star journals away at a joint by saying for example bombing you think  you think you're going to close the hoochie meant trail by palming you know when jop the general just just died i was thinking wow i remember those days there was lots of talk of the patter of little brown m from the m's that and how he didn't want to be the first president to lose a war and so he became the first president to lose war so there are those political things and intelligence and just do so much but i want to i want to tell you just to just a little bit about sam adams and what he stood for he was so bright that they give him the account of counting up how many enemy there were in south vietnam ok communist westmoreland's you know pretensions that he had imposed an artificial limit that could be no more than two hundred and ninety nine thousand vietnamese communists  arms couldn't be any more and that is that specific number do you have any doubts you know sort of like one thousand four hundred and twenty nine people killed like chemicals outside damascus you break anyhow in all seriousness sam went over to saigon found out that the general just wouldn't abide by the fact that the real numbers were between five hundred and six hundred thousand in the south right and in a bar that they have to kill so many every every week and the press isn't really smart and psycho but they do arithmetic you know and if all of a sudden he says well no there are twice as many or even that there's more than two hundred ninety nine thousand or that could be trouble i sell come out sam he says ray that day was august twentieth one thousand nine hundred sixty seven he said re we got a secret text secret notice notice means no dissemination cable in from saigon last night from general abrams who is general westmoreland's deputy was small and was traveling around somewhere in southeast asia now i have the text of that cable and like to read it to you just the portion that matters  because i don't want to misquote it i want to put on my glasses i can read it accept the higher numbers because we have been projecting an image of success over recent months and all available caviar it's an explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion i said sam he wrote that in a cable it's available in black and way he says yeah now abrams was a big tank commander and what to ok wasn't really good about what was going on in vietnam they named the tank after the big abrams tank so that was what he faced and to his credit i suppose sam obeyed all the rules and went through channels went to the inspector general of the of the cia try to get the director helms fired you can imagine how far he got with that went to the expected general defense department went to congress nobody would listen to him that was nine hundred sixty seven ok we had lost about twenty five thousand people the vietnamese had lost about one million five hundred people where do i get that that figure from secretary of defense mcnamara who says to feed the homeless three million people altogether ok and so sam went to as early death sudden heart attack at age fifty six i think it was no times bureau in washington the surprise here is that the new york times used to be an independent newspaper and actually they would print something like this without checking with the white house that you know they would they wouldn't ask for permission like they do now  they would put it on the front page and and that could have shortened the war because there was a document what you need is documents so to my friend dan ellsberg always says if you don't just speak out bringing the hide ok so what i'm saying here is that the sam adams award is made in recognition of sam he did the work but he didn't go out of channels and most of all whistleblowers had to k and it snowed  n the park parg par excellence an example of that because he saw what happened to bradley manning he said i don't want to be tortured by the marines for eight months and he saw what happened to tom drake senior executive who released information about billions and billions and billions of dollars being wasted on a system that deprived us of our rights under the fourth amendment where he and other experts within house had created a system that preserved those rights and was more efficient they went to the both of us son and told them finally he first went through all kinds of channels you know defense congress everything else didn't get anywhere so what would he do when he told them the justice department charged him with ten felonies under the espionage act he was going to be put away for thirty five years was told that you know and they brought these charges long story short radack who's a lawyer with the government accountability project but was a lawyer with the with the justice department took up the cause she did the p r of this he used the public defender the state of maryland for us he didn't have any money he had first defense and at the end the federal judge said you know you people you so called lawyers from the department yes you should be ashamed yourself you should be really ashamed of yourself this case had no basis from the beginning you wasted all our time and you put tom break through four years of persecution you should be ashamed of yourself now what did tom do i don't know how this works legally but he pled out to it to mr minor for having exceeded the authorized use of a government computer in other words he wrote a letter to his wife or something on our computers like that so the point here is that do to get out at that age i never could achieve my mission if i got through channels and so i figured out a way you know to do it and tom drake is looking at ed snowden and he said my god i never  concern of course was that you could sacrifice all this you give up everything maybe your life you said you're willing to do that and your main concern was nothing's going to happen right nothing happens are you aware at that stuff is happening  what he did was very artfully figure out a way to get in touch you know a confidential way with greenwald and laura laura poitras arranged to meet in hong kong and got all the stuff out and got to hong kong because he knew he could get the con conformational well up being intercepted and discovered he couldn't get to latin america any other way and so there he is one hundred con meets with them gives him the stuff and of course they're journalists they're not you know good samaritans or red cross people so they go back and write the story since there's it's not a whole you know hong kong is sort of delivering and who save sent his right hand person there sarah harrison down and he said you know do what you can see if you can get him you know get him he's got to go through moscow he wants to get out of anna's so talk to the russians and to end up in russia it was sort of like you know i was comparing it in my mind to columbus ok it was columbus day there were any goodman and i was thinking you know i remember a history book to start out this way about the discovery of the new world  america was discovered by somebody who's looking for something else next to your next two decade and next two centuries were spent trying to figure a way through it or around it it was named after somebody had nothing to do with the discovery of america and the people there would call people from the other side of the world you know history is very very chancy like that you know very ironic well here's here's that's not you know he wants he wants safety he wants security wants not to be killed so he wants to get this latin america has no intention of when he got the mosque we want to get around or through it right he couldn't and in the end because of the  imperiousness john kerry saying all right near putin i way we know there's no extradition agreement here but you must you must give up at snowden because we want and we say you must well that was a big mistake and so he said yeah come on in here now what's the result the height of irony it's known is to say in the safest place on the globe why well you may know that two weeks ago tuesday morning carefully reviews and decides who will live and who will die including american citizens i hope none of your shock to hear that they used to be a fifth amendment that would prevent that but me like yeah i'm aware he said like what's become of our country you know what's become a country this is not the mafia they're not supposed to be the mafia but this is mike rogers now tell you all secret here not to leave this room mike rogers is a failed special agent for the f b i how do you know that i won't tell you how i know that but some of the circumstantial evidence is that he left after four years you never leave the f b i after four years you just about to become vested right you just about to get all kinds of monuments and so forth well he left on the something of a cloud and now what he's doing he's overseeing the intelligence community in parts of the f b i well you know do you think maybe the f b i has something on which is that they could disclose and how the whole thing is so darn corrupt and of course this mass interception of mass on a string of communications you know that's what hoover did to a fairly well and that's what they they created a law against that and how so the thing with with snowden was just beautiful and i'd like to i think it's probably worth reading just a little bit of one of the she said to edward snowden you're in good company now snowden had talked about the work of a generation ok he wrote a statement for the european parliament committee on civil liberties justice and and home affairs and jesselyn went to geneva i think it was to read it and the title he gave it was the work of a generation starts here now she pointed out that the wager of our generation is beth come you described what ed had called the work of a generation it was one nine hundred fifty seven the year that cover you won the nobel prize for literature at weeks press the hope in the quality of a new generation and its increasing willingness to adopt slogans or idiology and to return to more tangible values he wrote quote we have nothing to lose except everything so let's go ahead this is the wager of our generation if we have to fail it is better in any case to have stood on the side of those who refused to be dogs and i resolved to pay the price that must be paid so that man can be something more than a dog come you rejected what he called the paltry the paltry privileges granted to those who adapt themselves to this world adding that quote those individuals who are fused the given will have to stand apart and they must accept this come you quote personally i have never wanted to stand  for there is a sort of solitude which is certainly the harshest thing or era forces upon us i feel its weight believe me but nevertheless i should not want to change errors for i know and respect the greatness wants truong lee against quote he said remaining aloof has always been possible in history when people did not approve they could always keep silent or talk of something else today everything is changed and even published a quote letter to a german friend an old friend that he had had for decades he said quote you the friend you said to me the greatness of my country germany is beyond price so like maybe he thought it was an exceptional country or maybe the sole indispensable country in the world ok the greatness of my country is beyond price anything is good that contributes to its greatness those who like us young germans are lucky enough to find a meaning in the destiny of our nation must sacrifice everything else and quote come you know i told you i cannot believe that everything must be subordinate to a single and there are means that cannot be excused and i should like to be able to love my country and still love justice i don't want for my country or greatness born of blood and false what i want to keep it alive by keeping justice a life you retorted the german come you sing to the german you retorted well then you don't love your country jesselyn wrapped it up by saying edward you don't love your country probably has a familiar ring to you but of course the truth is the very opposite let's take one more cue from beth karas who emphasized that quote truth needs witnesses we are honored that we're to be here at this time in this place to be your witnesses you have the full measure of our gratitude and support and that was just one of the statements coleen rowley read another in and i read a little russian poem that was really interesting we hosted officially by  titled nick which means prisoner or somebody kept in in captivity and he's sitting in in his little cell and he's looking out the window and he goes like this  who can't fly away he looks out and he sees this it's crow waving his wings and picking up a piece of of a dead animal and you know throwing it at the window to your  he's clutching at this thing and then he looks into the window and he looks at me as though he has the same thoughts that i have human we need to fly away to that place beyond the snowcapped mountains that i just saw flying in yesterday beyond the loosies that surround her our country and  beyond beyond where only the teachers the the wind and i can fly now why did it take you through all that well pushkin is there a national hero i mean he's and you can you know my fifty people attempt to render him stories translated into english he lived in the first part of the nineteenth century you know so he was part of that insurrection that really never got off the nice place how they rule themselves you know they heard about you know constitution and so without much preparation they drew themselves up before the square in st petersburg and sh and the u s cyber command cyber command we've heard about how we very artfully with the israelis set back the iranian nuclear development depend on battle ships or aircraft carrier is or b fifty two or thirty five it's going to be cyber and so the great big advantage that the united states now has t this all it takes you know to do this cyber warfare and there are just as many of them and some of them a better educated than there are of us ed to that the fact that n s a and our government to the degree it wants to do this cannot do it without people like edward snowden just can't do ok so this whole generations growing up technically incredibly professions ok and they want to have good jobs and a lot of them end up the n s a and other other places to get good pay but you know some of them maybe i don't know five percent have a conscience and some of them remember the solemn oath that all of us who serve in the armed forces you know to support and defend the constitution united states against all enemies foreign and domestic i mean that's what snowden remembers he was a soldier for while that's what i remember and we talked about that over dinner you know this is this is an oath that has an expiration date no it doesn't you know and so what do we do we supposed to sit back and and watch watch this happen you know i when i'm doing interviews these days people don't seem to have any concept of of the fourth amendment to the constitution and i know you do but i don't really see any way because you can see just by hearing it how much flaunted it is by what's been happening and quote the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place is to be searched and the persons or things to be seized and quote oh you put that up against the dragnet the collect everything mentality so you know the natural conclusion is that there's probable cause to believe that all of us are a bunch of her a straight how many terrorists here because we're all suspect they were all so expected terrorists you know yeah i mean look at it yeah and so so that's a measure of what we're up against now i said do something about the empire here so i'll say something about the empire well first i'll say what i learned first about the empire was about eight years old and my irish grandfather said grim and you've heard about the british empire do you know why they say that the sun never sets well after after world war two you know the story i remember when i was born a week before hitler began the war with poland and my first even in the womb i suppose you know people are really upset about all this know when i was nine i guess here's what the first policy paper of the newly created state department's policy planning council said now this was written by a fellow used to be my hero his name was well from moscow and so forth well this is what he said in the first policy paper this is set the policy for the u s after the war we have about fifty percent of the world's wealth but only six point three percent of the world's population so our real task in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity now to do so we will have to this is a direct quote folks i'm not paraphrasing to do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming we need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism we should cease to talk about the unreal objectives such as human rights the reason of living standards and democratization in the day is not far off when we will have to deal in street power concepts and quote happened at pearl harbor he was hellbent and determined that wouldn't happen again there'd be no surprises there would be a central place therefore central intelligence agency where in that inbox would come all manner of information somebody would be held accountable accountable for looking at it and warning about these things that most of you know that before pearl harbor the all manner of little things floating around from the f b i from the codebreakers from the people and embassy tokyo from the so that was not going to happen again so therefore central intelligence agency and this agency would report directly to the president i got to the pentagon you know truman knew that the pentagon always say the soviets were twelve feet tall and you know they were twelve feet tall you know the statement was said there are only three five feet tall you know that you know it so he need he did his own he need people who had no agenda except to tell the truth now i know you know even out here in the were told that we could tell it like it is and almost always we were able to do that there were exceptions ok but almost always took today so that's what truman wanted now what happened after world war two these very imaginative very courageous people came home from the s the office of strategic services it worked miracles you know in europe and in the far east theater and they came home to well deserved applause and then you know they said well thanks a lot for the applause but i mean like  e we hang around here i mean do you still need us or should we go back to our law firms or corporations you know back to academe and one nine hundred forty seven was when this all was happening the soviets had to over run eastern europe they were threatening greece and turkey and even italy and france for in some danger the k g b was all around the world overthrowing governments and so the question answered itself  major well ok that's all fair in love and war but then some idiot maybe it's the best word i can somebody had said well we're creating this secret agency for analysis they're going to have their own clandestine collection capability because they need some spice to get the stuff they can't get from the media so let's put them in with the analysts the legislation was changed with by one sentence being inserted and it said the director of central intelligence shall perform such other duties and tasks from time to time as the president of the united states shall direct now do not blanch from the word this gives the president and states the capability to have his own personal stop oh well he needs is the right guy in charge of the intelligence community if you don't play may just look quite short george tenet and george bush did together you know enhanced interrogation techniques some of you may know that comes from a german so so anyhow that's that's the background about how cia got had a structural default from the very strict structural falls say from the very beginning why do i mention that well because these swashbuckling guys who are going to overthrow governments were encouraged to do so by my hero george kennan he was largely responsible for this hybrid ok so that was  hundred seven national security act i mean it created the defense department and the air force and the national security council as well as the cia so it's a big deal ok and how that gave these operators the the means and  the profile to get all the money and to do whatever they were told and the first thing they were told was that way there's this upstart in iran i am the guy who was actual elected by the greenie and i don't know but he he thinks he can not get this he doesn't realize that the oil underneath the sands of iran that it belongs to british petroleum he thinks that the iranians should share more of the proceeds from this with forty seven three this is six years and to creationists yes you know this is what you do when you have an upstart third world dictator third world well he was actually elected but you know it doesn't matter this is what you have to do and so as you all and who did they bring in they bring the shah with us hated secret police suffolk who are just as bad as they can shop oh but he was on our side and he didn't like the russians if he didn't like the russians if you didn't like the russians and it's just like you know being against terrorists that don't matter what else you do you know where you have our support so that was fifty three fifty four the same thing happened in guatemala because the quantum olens thought may be united for children own most of their separate from the analysis director and directorate and it depended on the head of the intelligence community as to whether it did the right thing or the wrong thing and the president of course one fellow that i served under directly bill colby he musta learned from past mistakes but he was the most courageous and when it came out that there was a whole bunch of abuses in the fifty's and sixty's he defied kissinger admonition not to tell the truest congress he told the truth because you look i'm a lawyer you know i'm a lawyer and i respect the law this is the law i'm going to tell congress about the abuses and that those infuses included of pled nolo contendere ok i guess that's what they let white collar people plead to sometimes you know and you know what folks he went back to cia headquarters he was already out of the cia went back to cia headquarters and i've never seen such a crowd in our mammoth mammoth cafeteria welcoming him passing around the money at the hat and the two thousand or ten thousand whatever he was had to pay was collected like within the first hour and i say watch this couple of us analysts for speaking in from from the shadows there i said while you know this really is two different and distinct agencies we thought what would least i thought would colby do it was exactly good courageous course  canned by kissinger right after that and he met a very suspicious death and that's another story so that's just by way of saying that the cia has a kind of a hybrid thing and and that  that there are other tom fingers but there are also the richard helms says and george tenet's and every time i go to an airport and have to do all that charade i think disrespectfully george tenet because he had the power to share more information with the terrorism guy in the white house richard clarke and he had the power to speak out when he saw the not taking it as seriously as you know they didn't talk about al qaeda and osama bin laden until one week before nine eleven so let me just kind of finish up here and what i like to leave a lot of time for questions i think that the good news is is what i call the the no a principle i think more of us are are even chris hedges