Thank you very much for coming. I did use to teach while on active duty as a naval intelligence officer on the JMO faculty, so it's over 10 years ago, Jim Fitzsimons and I were just trying to remember when I was last year, really great to be back. And if the sound volume is okay, I'll just continue on. Can folks in the back hear me this way? Is that all right? Okay. I can speak up a bit more if need be. Let me mention that copies of the book that I'll be talking about and that we'll have a discussion about intelligence and surprise attack are available down in the bookstore and they tell me in fact they've already sold one, which is pretty exciting. It's just brand new. It's out, hasn't been reviewed anywhere. It's also available on Amazon and I do have some flyers here that in fact offer a discount from the publisher of Georgetown University Press, 30% off or something like that if you're interested in that. So I think what we'll do is talk for, I'll talk for maybe 35 minutes or so and then we'll have discussion about any and all things that you're interested in. Please if there's something that I say that doesn't make sense if I use an acronym or term that you'd like me to explain, jump in, but otherwise might be good if we hold most of our discussion until later on. Let me tell you about, I'm going to talk to you about why in my book and in my current work at the Naval Postgraduate School and I should say, almost forgot, that this is only my personal views. I'm not here as a representative of the Navy, although I'm a Navy civilian professor, but just my personal views. What I will be trying to do is convince you of something. I'll be trying to convince you that we in this country have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of intelligence failure and surprise, dating all the way back to Pearl Harbor and continuing today. And because most of our reforms of the intelligence community, most of our fixes of what seems to be wrong with intelligence, are based on that false understanding of why intelligence fails. I think we're not doing the right things about trying to make our intelligence better. But before I tell you about that and tell you how I developed that argument in my book and in my work, let me explain a little bit more about how I started out on this project and this subject. Really started back in the early days when I was a Naval Intelligence Officer. In fact, during the first week of basic intelligence training, we all were taught and told that a good intelligence officer needs to be a student of history. This is certainly a great building and place to be at to live that lesson. And we were taught that a good Naval Intelligence Officer needs to understand the lessons of the United States Naval Intelligence's worst failure ever at Pearl Harbor and needs to we need to try throughout our career to try to recreate, duplicate the greatest success for Naval Intelligence, which came only six months after Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. Now that was all great advice for a young ensigns kind of starting out on his Navy career, but they never told us anything more about how to do that, how to avoid the one disaster and how to succeed in being part of a great success. And for the next 21 years, I was too busy being a Naval Intelligence Officer, being a Navy Officer to really sort of pay attention to the bigger questions like that. So finally, after I retired, after I had been teaching on the military faculty here at the War College, I got a chance to start thinking about these bigger questions. What is it about intelligence and the intelligence community that seems to have so many failures? Why does it seem to screw up so often? And more importantly, how can it succeed? See if that works. I started in a maybe a little hard story in the back here to see some of the bullets, but I'll talk us through these things. I started by sort of going back to first principles, trying to understand, at a more theoretical, sort of big picture level, why it is that we understand that intelligence fails. I've got two quotes up here from a major study of a major American disaster that argue first, in case you can't read the quotes, first that we need to centralize our intelligence community better. And second that what we need to avoid disaster is to have more imagination. Any guesses where these quotes come from? 9-11 Commission, which is a great guess, and I appreciate you giving that one, turns out these quotes are from not the 9-11 Commission, but from the most, the largest, the major study into Pearl Harbor, the Joint Congressional Commission that looked at Pearl Harbor right after the war. But these two pieces of advice are exactly two of the main pieces of advice that the 9-11 Commission came up with after that disaster. And many folks who have noticed these similarities, apparently in the nature of the surprise and the intelligence failure, have argued that this leads us to a pretty pessimistic conclusion. I mean, if we haven't really learned anything since Pearl Harbor, if we haven't been able to avoid a major disaster, then kind of where do we stand? Many of us, after 9-11, I was here teaching on 9-11, many of us certainly noted many of the similarities between the scopes, the scales of the disasters, but also the scales of the surprises with Pearl Harbor and 9-11. So I wanted to try to figure out, all right, really, if we were making the same mistakes now, what does that mean? Have we, as much of the literature on intelligence, the open source academic literature, of course, everything I'm talking about is completely open source, but much of the academic literature on intelligence and surprise attack, especially that built up during the late Cold War era, looked at similar occasions such as this, where we seem to make the same mistake and concluded, we really can't learn much. After all, you can't predict the future, so intelligence has its limits, so we just have to learn to expect surprises. After most major failures, including more recent failures, such as the underwear bomber attempt, member Christmas Day in 2009, after the Boston Marathon bombings, we always seem to be looking back, and we see that there were warnings in the pipeline. And the question is, why didn't we see what now looks obvious? Why couldn't we, in the wording of the 9-11 Commission, why couldn't we connect the dots? Many intelligence experts and scholars have argued that the reasons are threefold and perhaps some others, but major three reasons that I've listed here that build up to what my dean at the Naval Postgraduate School, Jim Wurz, expert on surprise attack and intelligence, argues, he argues this is the first law of intelligence failure. There's always intelligence there. We don't understand it. So that leads to the initial primary problem. It's a failure of analysis, not collection. In intelligence speak, for intelligence types, it means that we're not failing in terms of gathering intelligence and information. We're failing in terms of understanding it, of analyzing it. And I was an analyst or a manager, a leader of analysts, for most of my 21 years, really suggests that I didn't know what I was doing. We often are argued, and maybe that's the case, but I'm moving on beyond that. It's a great thing about looking at history. You don't necessarily have to look at your own operations. Although I've been a part of intelligence failures plenty of times in my 21 year career, we can talk about that. We also lack imagination. We always see that, it seems to be. That's part of the conventional wisdom. And if we fail to produce any particular kind of intelligence, it's that we fail to produce the big picture, long range, strategic intelligence, strategic warning that typically presidents, flag officers, need. They often argue, don't get in the weeds, I need the big picture. What's the threat down the road? That's the conventional wisdom about why intelligence fails. And it's those sorts of problems that most of our intelligence reforms have been trying to fix, ever since Pearl Harbor, really, but specifically since 9-11. And I don't buy it. The main reason I don't buy it is because I think we've gone about the problem of understanding intelligence failure and success the wrong way. We look at cases of intelligence failure because those are what's handy. They happen a lot. And it's after intelligence failures, especially major disasters, that blue ribbon commissions form, studies are published, we can learn the sorts of things that otherwise were classified. Well, frankly, I think failure is what we might call an over-determined problem in social science analysis. There are lots of reasons why intelligence fails. What I want to understand is, why does intelligence succeed? And to do that, we need to study intelligence successes. And there's actually not much of a literature on intelligence successes. It's kind of like today with the NSA wiretapping and at least issues. We may want to talk about that later on. I still think our government is not doing a very good job. Maybe they're not able to do a good job of explaining their successes. What are they doing right? Well, again, I don't buy that. I think we need to understand that better as Americans, as citizens in our community. So success is understudied. And that's why in this book and in this project that I'm continuing, I challenge the conventional wisdom about why intelligence fails. And we'll see if I can convince you, at least, that there might be some value and a different view of it. I suspect that some of us today would like to talk a little bit more about Pearl Harbor Midway. Others, perhaps, in our Q&A would like to talk about more recent issues, terrorism, threats, those sorts of things. But as I say, I started out this project going back to sort of first principles, looking back at the findings of the studies that looked at Pearl Harbor. And again, a quote is hard to see from where you are. But we see, by looking at the Joint Congressional Commission that looked at Pearl Harbor, many of the same befudlements and puzzled statements that we saw after 9-11. How could it be, after Pearl Harbor, we asked ourselves, that the most capable, most expensive, most professional, most globe-girdling intelligence community in the history of the world could screw up this way? Well, we said the same thing after 9-11. The lessons of Pearl Harbor, as developed by that Joint Congressional Commission, covered a number of bases. But largely, the conclusions there were that the military leaders in charge failed us, and also that our analysis was uncoordinated, as we've been talking about already. What has come down as really the conventional wisdom about Pearl Harbor, what most of us think in terms of the intelligence failure, came from, of course, the famous book by Roberta Wallstetter, not published till quite some time later. And she argued that the famous, the bumper sticker there was that we couldn't detect the signals because they were lost in the noise. I don't think that's the case. I think that when we compare Pearl Harbor to Midway, we find that the nature of the signals, the nature of the intelligence at Midway was so much better. It suggested to me that the type of intelligence we need to succeed to prevent a bad thing from happening is actually much finer grain, much more specific, much more tactical in a military sense than we might expect. That's kind of depressing, but it's also possible. So this is what continued me to be thinking, and I then turned to the success at the Battle of Midway. What was it that worked at the Battle of Midway in terms of intelligence? As I'm sure most of you are aware, debates continue today, in fact, about Battle of Midway and the operational aspects of it, a tremendous operational victory. I'm looking at the intelligence side of things. As you probably also know, that the Navy in particular, we celebrate the victory at the Battle of Midway every year. This is a flyer from the most recent Naval Postgraduate School, the NPS dinner celebrating Midway. But what was different there? That's what I wanted to know. What I found by comparing Midway and Pearl Harbor was that the things that we typically conventionally assume go wrong when intelligence fails, they're not the things that went wrong and that appeared to be lacking. At the Battle of Midway, the intelligence picture before the Battle of Midway, for instance, there was a great deal of imagination. We weren't lacking for imagination. One important factor was that Pearl Harbor was itself what you might call a focusing event. It certainly focused our intelligence efforts on Japan, but they were largely focused on Japan and the Pacific ahead of time anyway. The main two factors in my theory about intelligence success, main two factors that I believe are required are, first of all, receptivity on the part of decision makers and the story of how Admiral Nimitz ultimately became receptive and listened to the warnings before Midway is a fascinating one. It took a lot of convincing, even for a fan of intelligence like Admiral Nimitz to believe this new fangled code breaking and cryptography, but it also took much more specific intelligence collection and the breaking of the Japanese codes than we had before Pearl Harbor. An example of how brilliant analysis, how connecting the dots didn't work for Midway came a couple of months before Midway. Many of you may be familiar with the story of what's come down to be thought of as the second attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese called it Operation K. It was an armed reconnaissance flight against Hawaii. Joe Rochefort, the senior cryptologic officer, the senior code breaker, new book out on him just in the last couple of years, a great, great book. Elliot Carson, I believe is the author there. Joe Rochefort had warned that he thought the Japanese might be planning something sneaky, maybe they'd sort of do some sort of a faint or operation toward Pearl Harbor. Nobody listened to him, he didn't have specific facts. He was just trying to connect the dots of uncoordinated intelligence, came up with brilliant analysis, nobody listened. And in fact, the Japanese did fly two long range flying boats over Pearl Harbor, dropped a couple of bombs and that exploded without harming anybody in the punch bowl down the beach from Honolulu if you've been to Hawaii, you know the area. So nobody was hurt, but the locals certainly realized the Japanese had done something again that could have killed people. Today we probably call that incident an act of terrorism. Joe Rochefort was called on the carpet the next day and the bosses demanded to know why didn't you warn us about this? And he said, I did. The problem was, I believe, he didn't have specifics about it. And without specific tactile level detailed intelligence, it's very difficult for decision makers to take difficult, expensive, unusual actions to prevent a threat even when several months after Pearl Harbor you would expect that the leaders at Pearl Harbor would be very receptive to warnings. Takes a lot to get decision makers to listen. Let's see here, there we go. So what I come down to is my theory that I then apply to more recent terrorist surprise attacks and homeland security, domestic security issues for America today. When does intelligence become actionable? As you may know, the term actionable intelligence, it's a big buzzword has been for a number of years. Everybody wants actionable intelligence. Beltway bandits provide actionable intelligence, but what is it? I think my study and my research helps sort of put a finger on it in order to be actionable and actually help us prevent bad things from happening. It needs to be much more specific than you might expect otherwise and it needs to be given to decision makers who are receptive. And that largely means they have to have a history of working with those intelligence assets and agencies and individuals. They know to trust the intelligence and actually listen to it. And when we think about intelligence success and failure in terms of how I look at actionable intelligence, those two main factors, very precise intelligence and receptive decision makers, I think we have a new prism, a new way of looking at the disaster of Pearl Harbor. There was plenty of imagination. There was plenty of all of the things that we, at least in the conventional wisdom, we believe we lack about intelligence. There was lots of long range strategic analysis. We can talk about this. When is enough of analysis correct? But still, there was plenty of warnings. The 9-11 Commission, other studies since then, in fact, I'll be modest enough to say that I think my book has the most comprehensive look, at the unclassified look, at the intelligence picture before 9-11 that's come out yet because I was able to make use of not only all the different products of the 9-11 Commission, but everything else that's come out since then. There was plenty of brilliant analysis. There was a failure of receptivity, obviously, and a failure of specific tactile intelligence on the specific threat. I've gone beyond 9-11 and developed what is the largest open source, publicly available data set of unsuccessful terrorist plots against Americans since 9-11. My full database goes back 25 years, but in the book I talk specifically about the more than 100 plots against Americans within the United States that have been foiled since 9-11. In a way, for a social scientist, the problem of terrorism is an easier one to get a handle on than the problem of conventional surprise attack because unfortunately, of course, it happens a lot more. Terrorist attacks happen a lot more often than conventional surprise attacks, but the good news is they are foiled much more often than conventional surprise attacks. And when you look at it, when you look at the court records and detailed documentation when it's available, we find that many foiled attacks have been attempted within the United States. And predominantly, they have been foiled, I'm looking at domestic attacks here, based on very specific intelligence, typically gathered by relatively low-level law enforcement sources, undercover officers, informants, tips from neighbors, those sorts of things. It's collection, not brilliant analysis, and it's relatively low-level, sort of typical commonplace intelligence collection. Not so much spies overseas or even NSA surveillance from what we know and what we can tell as Americans. Really quickly, let me just give an example comparing a recent case of intelligence failure with a recent case of intelligence success that I think illustrates how I believe the nature of the intelligence collected needs to be much more specific in case of success. The failure is that case of the underwear bomber in December of 2009. Now, he ended up not succeeding in his plot, but as you recall, he got on the plane, largely considered a failure of intelligence and warning. And yet, we had quite a bit of warning. Remember, the debates after that, his father had gone to the U.S. Embassy, even talked with CIA officials, evidently, all based on press reporting, warned that his son was falling in with a bag crowd. There are other indicators, other dots, that people afterward, including the White House, argued should have been connected. And when you think about it this way, sort of with 2020 hindsight, okay, we probably should have, it's easy to come up with a conclusion, we should have been able to know what was going on with the underwear bomber. But again, I don't think so. At least not when you compare a case of intelligence success. A case of intelligence success, also in 2009, was that of Zazi, remember this plot, he was the guy from Denver, driving across the country to New York City. He'd actually been trained overseas as a terrorist. He was a real threat. He was plotting with several others to carry out a series of bombings in the New York City subway system. And he was stopped. The type of intelligence we had on him was much more precise. We had him cold compared to the underwear bomber. My argument is I think this is the nature, the sort of intelligence we need in order to convince decision makers to do things and in order to give our law enforcement officials the tools and the information they need to arrest somebody and stop somebody. Because part of the theoretical analysis that I make about surprise attacks in my book is that surprise attacks, whether they're from conventional military foes or terrorist foes are really tactical operations. Sometimes in a military sense maybe sort of operational, but they're relatively small scale. In order to stop them, you need small scale precise tactical level information.  More general warnings such as that, well we think maybe there are people who are learning to fly planes but not land them or something like that. Those generally don't get traction with their decision makers and they don't give enough information for law enforcement to stop people. Let me just talk for a couple minutes about some of our more recent issues and controversies dealing with domestic security and intelligence and we may want to in the Q and A talk about some of these a little bit more and talk about how I think that my research and my argument helps us better understand the nature of these issues. First is the Boston Marathon bombings. It's a great question we talk about in the classes that I teach at the Naval Coast Graduate School. I hope we do here as well at the Naval War College. Was this an intelligence failure? Was this yet another case where there was enough warning? Now we heard, again, open source, we know the FBI had been warned by Russian officials. We had a number of other little dots. Why couldn't somebody connect the dots? Was there culpability here? Should our officials have known what was going on? I don't think so because I think that the nature of the warning that we had before that we know about before the Boston Marathon bombings falls into the category of so many other disasters and surprise attacks, it's just not enough for our officials to actually take action on. And there's one specific example that shows, and again, these are just sort of individual anecdotes. Really doesn't prove my argument, but I think it supports my argument that we need collection, much better collection, much more specific tactical intelligence. Before Boston, there was, as before, midway. There was lots of brilliant imaginative analysis going on in our intelligence community. In particular, by one of our 78 or so state and local intelligence fusion centers across this country that have been set up since 9-11. One of those is in Boston, the BRIC, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. And again, according to open source press reports, the BRIC had published before the Boston Marathon a threat assessment, as these centers usually do. And that threat assessment was brilliant. It was right on the money. It said, well, we believe that law enforcement needs to watch out for the possibility of an improvised explosive device. Might possibly be using pressure cooker bombs. Would be likely focused on the finish line of the marathon, where the most attention is. They seemed to have it cold. What they didn't have was specifics. They were brilliant analysts. And maybe to some extent, we could all think, we all probably would have come up with those sorts of assessments if we'd sat around with a couple of whiteboards for a few minutes. But nonetheless, they warned officials about what happened. I believe the reason why it still happened was because those warnings were just brilliant analysis without specifics behind it. We need that sort of specifics in order to stop things. I also think the Boston Marathon bombings illustrate what I'm looking at in further research, what you might call a paradox or a sort of dilemma of our domestic counterterrorism effort in this country. And that's that two of our major tools used in stopping terrorist attacks are handled by very different levels of our government. Intelligence is primarily handled at the national level. Sometimes local, like the Boston Regional Intelligence Center. But still, the major capabilities, budgets are all at the national level. While the level of our government that stops people on a day-to-day basis is our law enforcement level. It's the 800 and some thousand cops and state police and other law enforcement officials around this country working with the FBI in locally based joint terrorism task forces. And as we found in Boston, often those two levels of government and those two tools don't talk together as much as they should. You may have heard that a number of experts, including one former director of the CIA, argued after Boston that if these knuckleheads had been planning such an attack in New York City, it would have been stopped. In fact, many have argued that the New York Police Department, the NYPD intelligence effort, might be called today's gold standard for domestic intelligence and counterterrorism. They've had a lot of success stopping terrorists.  We could talk about that, perhaps. But they've had a lot of success in stopping people who wanted to kill people. And perhaps this is the gold standard today. But as you are probably quite aware, the NYPD programs are very controversial. Civil liberties groups, many folks are worried about the aggressive surveillance effort that the NYPD takes on its own, without much coordination with national-level authorities. Another general controversy over the last couple of years has been about our domestic intelligence and counterterrorism establishment. You may remember a couple of years ago, the Washington Post ran a series. I think it's still on their website. Really interesting. A book came out based on it as well, arguing that we have been building a top secret America in the US since 2011. And that that's not a good thing because we need to have a more public discussion. I agree we need to have a public discussion about all these issues, and we're not having a very good one. But actually, in this point, I think that what we might be seeing isn't so much a top secret America, but again, you can't see my bullet and my build slide. My big reveal is disappointing when my screen isn't big enough. I believe we're building a domestic surveillance system that's hiding in plain sight. We have a lot of different pieces of our domestic counterterrorism and domestic intelligence effort that are not necessarily in very super secret compartments. It's not SEAL Team 6 efforts, traditionally, within the United States. We have many efforts, such as these state and local intelligence centers, such as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, that I'd say hiding in plain sight. And that's not a good thing because what happens is when Americans like you and me, when civil liberties groups, when our leaders in Congress learn about these efforts, which are not secret, but they're not well known, often questions are raised and people are worried about it. Some parts of that America that's hiding in plain sight are producing classified work, such as the National Counter Terrorism Center. But even that organization is itself, it's not unknown to the public and to intelligence overseers. But what's even more interesting, and I spent a lot of my teaching time at the Naval Postgraduate School looking at the state and local intelligence centers, which are really still trying to find their way in America. But the picture, again, it's hard for you to see where you're sitting. But the picture is of the New Jersey State Fusion Center called the New Jersey Royk. It's actually, it's a large, well-funded organization, not quite as fancy as the National Counter Terrorism Center, but for instance, when Hurricane Sandy hit the New Jersey Royk, their Intelligence Fusion Center was able to act as a command and control communication center supporting the New Jersey efforts at disaster relief. That's a good thing, but my argument is when these sorts of things are largely hiding in plain sight, we don't understand them. We may not make use of them enough. Also, you probably can't see in the picture here, but this organization, as many of these state and local fusion centers are around the country, are run by law enforcement, typically by the state law enforcement agency. So it's the New Jersey State Troopers who are in uniform walking around in that center. So often when people look at this picture, if you're like me, your foot goes off the break a little bit when you see the state troopers picture in there. So the very law enforcement sensitive, our law enforcement heavy, which is a good thing, but it also means that we need to do a better job of coordinating our law enforcement capabilities in this country with our intelligence capabilities. This is a start, but only a start. We may want to talk a little bit about the NSA revelations. Now, I'll say, and I'd love to hear some comments about this, what you think. And speaking strictly, of course, as a private citizen here, I was shocked. Maybe it's like Casablanca, I was shocked. But I did not expect that the NSA that our intelligence community was keeping tabs on you and you and you and me as we're doing.  And essentially, my job was to tell the aviators and the others who collect intelligence don't collect on Americans. Well, we're collecting on Americans now. Maybe this is part of a new gold standard that we need to do. But it's fascinating to learn, for instance, that all of our phone calls are being tracked. Maybe it's just metadata, so maybe we don't have to worry about it. Maybe we do. Also, do you remember a couple of months ago that came out in the news that the Post Office, the US Postal Service, is keeping a record of every letter, every postcard mailed in this country? And the idea is, makes sense, if you look at it from a law enforcement point of view, that after the next anthrax episode or something like that, they could trace back and maybe even be able to track what five or six or dozen letters and postcards went through that process in center right before the subject letter with the anthrax and right after, because they might have been mailed by the same person. Fascinating capability. Americans didn't know about it. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. But I don't think we're having a good enough discussion as a country about these issues here. And I believe that my argument about the importance of collection to stop bad things from happening, to stop terrorist attacks, does suggest that the NSA massive collection programs may be a good thing. If we need better dots, if we need to collect the dots better in order to stop terrorist attacks and other things, then this may be a good way to do it. But my study also suggests that it's these specific pieces of intelligence that end up being effective. It's the needles in the haystacks that really stop things. I certainly hope, and I think we need to know more about this, I hope that metadata is not something that people get arrested on. I hope it's not big data that stops us, you and me from flying. I do believe it's little data that stops bad things from happening. So the real question then is whether or not the NSA and the rest of our intelligence community are able to sift through these huge haystacks they're collecting and find effectively the needles in there, the little data that stops bad things. Let me finish up here, second here and hopefully have some discussion. I hope that some people argue with me. I hope I've upset some apple carts. I think what does all this mean? Well, for me, it means when I think back 30 years or more to when I started out as a Naval Intelligence Officer, it tells me that sure, it's a good idea to try to spend our time, my time as a Naval Intelligence Officer, all of our time as Americans, trying to be part of a success and out of failure. But we haven't understood the type of intelligence that is necessary to make for a success. So I think our priorities in the intelligence community, intelligence reform efforts have been misguided. To some extent, we've gotten lucky. We've gotten lucky by preventing the 109 or so plots that I talk about in my book since 9-11. In rare occasions, domestically, we don't get lucky. I think probably what happened in the case of the Boston Marathon Bombers was that they were idiots, but they were lucky idiots. They just didn't talk to somebody who then called somebody. Somebody didn't see something and say something. They didn't happen to be part of a community that had an undercover officer. Maybe if they'd been in New York City, they would have. The good news is that a case like that is very rare. In more than 100 cases, other similar knuckleheads have been caught and have been stopped. So the answer isn't connecting the dots. We have it wrong. That conventional wisdom is reassuring, if you believe it, because it suggests what our intelligence community has been trying to do since 9-11 is hire better analysts. Use different training methodologies. Develop better sort of artificial intelligence methodologies to understand the intelligence better. That seems a little bit easier than the really tough job and the potentially difficult, dangerous for civil liberties job of collection. My argument is, though, it's collection that we need to match, obviously, with analysts as well. But it's collection where we're failing. So the good news is we may have a couple of examples of today's gold standard, of the sort of superb intelligence collection and analysis effort that can keep America safe as it did before Midway. But those episodes, those examples of the gold standard today are New York City, maybe the NSA, they're collecting the dots, but those dots are you and me. And I don't think we've had a good enough public discussion. We're really only starting that. Our leaders in Congress don't, I think it seems clear, have a good enough understanding of these issues. So we need to talk about this much better here. So that's what I hope that my book can sort of stimulate this national discussion, not only about how the failures and successes of past intelligence can inform our efforts today, but also where should we go in the future about domestic security in the American intelligence community? And I think that's all I've got. Let me say thank you, and I hope you have a discussion. So please. I'm not sure I can articulate it as well as you have, but let me spout for a couple minutes. Sure. I agree with you up to a point. Great. If you just agreed with me, then yeah, then we need somebody else. So thank you. I think our data gathering is adequate. NASA and I agree we need to collect the data. Okay. I think our data analysis to data mining is adequate. Data mining is adequate. Okay. And you know about data mining, not causality, but coincidence. And I suspect that the interpretation by the analyst is adequate. Okay. What I think the problem is is at the higher level. Here's what I'm going to try to articulate. A good analyst has to do forecasting with probabilities. Never 100% adequate. The decision makers are typically come from a legal background along with quarters. They want 100% assurance that they can get a conviction in court. That's a good point. So unless you can say with 100% certainty, and no one can, that something is going to happen, the decision maker is reluctant. I think that's a cultural problem. Now let me go back to NASA. Or NSA? We're seeing a pushback from the ACLU, the progressives, that gee, unless you know exactly that Mohammed is going to do something at a certain time, you're doing racial profiling and not all Muslims are bad. So therefore don't look at anything, okay? Don't put spies in the musts because it's, you know, racial profiling. Don't do stop and frisk. That's a big debate in New York City. Because 95% of the people are innocent. So again it's the 100% assurance and the culture to me says that the decision makers are reluctant to go out in the limb and go on probabilities and say, okay, the preponderance of evidence with a higher degree of confidence is going to something going to happen. And yes, there may be some fallout collateral damage, but I'm willing to take it. So what do you think about all that? What does that mean for you, sir? I don't want to cut you off, but I'm sorry. No, I'm just asking. So those sounds like all good statements. I'm not sure I can argue with any of that. What do you think is, where should we be going? What's your answer to those problems? I'll try to. I'll try to. Should we stop the tape? Is that what you mean? Somebody who gots to take the risk and say, okay, and I think I'll be running on something that the nurse said way back when. You wanted to be able to get the big decisions, the majority of the big decisions correct. And if the inconsequential small actions, if you had a 50% or 50% probability of success, that was fine, but I know I'm not quoting them correctly, but it's basically one of the big things and I want to get all of those or most of those right. And I don't see that in the present political environment.  Hmm, hmm, hmm, interesting, all right. Well, what would you think, for instance, about the administration's success in catching and killing bin Laden? That certainly is, that episode came out too late for me to discuss in this book, but that seems to have been a case where we didn't have the full, the hardened intelligence and the administration, President Obama made a tough call that turned out right. All the data analysis, all the programs that were developed before Obama came to power. His only contribution was after being told by Valerie Jarrett three times not to do it because of the political impact, he finally had the gut to say, okay, I think the probabilities are such high enough to do it. Remember, I think it was Valerie Jarrett that said three times, don't do it, okay? Interesting. So the Navy, the Intelligence Committee, they did a good job. It wasn't until it got to Holder and Jarrett and the political operatives that it turned out into whoever. Yeah, okay. So yeah. Well, you certainly make a good point about probabilities and in fact, much of my argument is that our intelligence community, we have been trying too hard. We've been making too much of developing methodologies, ways to sort of get from a 50% to maybe a 60% probability. We now, as is publicly known, we now in our national intelligence estimates, we provide explanations of what we mean when we say what we say. In other words, when we say probable, does that mean 51% is that? Well, frankly, I think all of that is just sort of, we're just moving through clouds here, marshmallows or something. And as we saw with the case of the search for bin Laden, I find that more interesting, the tenure search for bin Laden, more interesting than the actual killing of bin Laden, partly because that's not my side of things, you know, the operational side of things. But we still couldn't, despite, as we saw with the question after Pearl Harbor, despite the best, most expensive, most capable intelligence organization in the world, which after 9-11 was on the highest alert and had any budget that it wanted, it still took us 10 years to find the guy. And even then, I think it is fascinating and where one puts the success and blame certainly belongs to two different administrations, this whole effort, and I'd say the success, but it took 10 years. But still, the best we could do was, well, sort of, you know, 5%, 60%, 70%, which is fascinating. Now, here at the Naval War College, we spend, we certainly did spend when Jim and I were teaching our rising operational stars in the military about intelligence issues, we spent as much time teaching our 05s and 06s and future flag officers, we spent as much time teaching them about the limitations of intelligence and about the questions and the problems that will come up with intelligence as we did telling them about what intelligence can do. Because we all, whether you're an Army 06 or you're a public citizen, we all tend to think the American intelligence community can do everything, but it can't. What we don't have is, and I'll finish, sorry, my mini-speech here, what we don't have in America on the civilian side is any sort of a training and education system to help our rising stars on the civilian side, whether it's state or local, especially, but even at the national level, understand these sorts of things that over the last number of decades, we have gradually, slowly, begun to train and educate our military operational commanders. Let me speak on the civilian side. Then we do need to get some more folks involved, but please, yes, sir. I spent most of my time as a product planner of forecasters for industrial products. I was, had to take a look at a lot of factors, including what is the probability of success of my product? How am I gonna sell, what's the price, okay? And unless I was 100% certain that I'm gonna sell 437 next month, I couldn't get my boss's boss to agree. So there's a specific, specificity. That we can't get in the intelligence business. So it's not just the military, it's an industry. That's great. Or great points, thank you. Who else, what else? Sir, and then we'll come here and we'll run this way. Please. How do you deal with a normal C bias? I'm talking about the local arm enforcement level. Normal C bias? Yeah, it's connected to you and me, but if you'd have a bunch of dots that are not interested in becoming engaged. Okay. Basically said, everything's fine, somebody also take care of it. I see. The underserved end at the University of Boston, Dartmouth. I'm familiar with this, if you don't know, most of you don't. I'm in the Sheriff's Department, and I work in the Homeland Security End of it, and I'm there calling the bomb guy. I was required to give a talk to some emergency management people on the bomb that they use. And after the talk, the police chief of Dartmouth came to me and said, let me add this to your repertoire. He said, after those photographs came out, not one student, not one faculty member, administrator, or member of the security staff ever called his office, and I think that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took the FBI wandering around, able to find color and find the kids trying to follow us down the line. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. It's a very hard thing to beat. It is, and Alan, we were talking about that earlier as well, as I say that much of what I do at the Naval Postgraduate School is part of a program funded by DHS, Department of Homeland Security, to educate our state and local Homeland Security officials, largely the law enforcement, in these sorts of issues, that's only one start at this. But these local fusion centers can also be a help in educating our, in our programs, we have police chiefs, deputy fire chiefs, in learning about these issues. Because a police chief, when a police chief gets a piece of information, if it's not the typical sort of law enforcement cop stuff they're used to, they're gonna have the same skepticism that a political leader is likely to have when somebody walks in from an intelligence agency they've never heard of, or some new highfalutin intelligence sort of capability they're not familiar with, you're right, we need that education to let them, well to some extent, imagination isn't a bad thing. Well, it's a good point, right? But it, right, right, look, yep, and you sir, and then to you, and then in the back here. Have you ever compared British intelligence to our intelligence to one? Well, you know, an argument that I've made, and I still stick with this, is that we would do better for America if we had a centralized domestic intelligence organization such as the MI5, the British Domestic Security Organization. You know, MI6, they're the spies, the James Bond, they're the ones I'd like to be in my dreams. MI5 is what in real life tends to keep Britain safe, although they've certainly had their share of incidents. I don't think we're gonna get any sort of a new structure within the domestic U.S. unless another 9-11 shakes us up and we don't want that. But the problem is my belief, as long as we don't have something like an organized national effort as the British do, we're gonna continue having this sort of a pickup game of different organizations, different levels of government when we find out that the NSA or somebody else is doing something. We are shock, shock, shock that these are happening. We really don't have any concerted oversight over all these things. So I think that's a problem. British do it better that way. But they're also much smaller, much more centralized country. Whether or not we could, even if we wanted to, had the national will and the money to develop some sort of domestic central organization, I don't know if we could, but I think the problem is when we have nothing, there's nobody really in charge of what we're doing. Certainly, I do have. Bruce Levickson, entirely gone. Bruce. This concerns that private first class that is now resting in Russia, okay? Which, I'm sorry? Who are we speaking of? There's only one PFC that the Russians have did all the snooping for us. Oh, I'm sorry. Snowden, you're talking. Yes, no. Okay, I was trying to make a POW or, okay. Snowden, sure, sure. Okay, yep, yep. I'm sorry. Okay. It would appear to me that the operation of the basic unit in which he came to work each day and walked up and down with, I'm assuming, Rose, as opposed to thought and smarts and everything on the part of the real deep thinkers, there was no, I never heard that he had to go on duty and report to a corporal or, and then in turn, he went over what he's accomplished that day and they all, we put more security on a hundred pound bag of potatoes, okay? Then it would appear to me the way that organization operated. So it's not that we need more deep thinkers. Just somebody, just please sign this work, come in, check out. Interesting, yeah. Well, that makes sense. And it looks as if it wasn't just one organization though because he had bounced around parts of the intelligence community for some time and hadn't been stopped along the way. Just a couple of quick comments on that one. Yeah, I spoke recently about all these issues to an organization, another DOD organization that's out in the Monterey area called PERSEREC, the personal security organization that's a DOD level organization looking at and has been for a number of years at personnel security issues. And what it looks like, we face, in terms of finding the spy within, we face many of the same issues that we have with domestic law enforcement, for instance, and domestic terrorism, finding the terrorist within. And to some extent, what I would say is that the question is that balance between security and liberty, but on a very individual basis. In the intelligence community, in the military, we are used to being looked at and watched much more closely. And somehow for Snowden, that didn't seem to work, but even in the military then it's a question of all right, at what level, when somebody's behavior raises a certain level, at what level do you tell somebody? But the same applies then, this is what interests me on an even broader scale, it happens in all of our communities. We all know we're supposed to see something and say something. What does that mean when my buddy down the hall seems to be gambling a little bit more than I would like? Should I see something?  When he says that, well, you know, actually those radicals have a point of view, should we, when do we do it? When our law enforcement officials, our cops, are the ones in our society that are trained and have the legal right to make that sort of a call. It's tough for all of us as individuals. And so I'm not sure what I have, if I'd been working down the hall from Edward Snowden, what I have called somebody, I hope so, but I don't know. So that's what we're dealing with right now. I just say that normally in a situation, you could corporal over him, that checked him, what sort of supervision is sufficient, you don't need a genius, okay? Maybe so, that's right, that's right. All right, fascinating. And sir, and then way in the back. I also have a quick thing about the dots, about us. Yes. I produced the Boston Marathon of the Channel 5. Oh, really? Yes. And the ethnography report is in that category. And all we ever concerned, we're concerned about was snipers. We've never even been concerned about some of the parents and men involved. So, I don't know how we would get around that, but supposedly we should be at a great source of information throughout the arena days before the event, you know? Right. We're just never like, correct, we're just never briefed like that, including the Boston Colleges. Yeah. Well, and that suggests that the conventional argument is correct, and who's to say that my argument is correct, but that does suggest that we need more imagination. But you're pointing out that you just hadn't imagined that, so likely many other folks have also didn't imagine it. What I think I find when we look at cases of unsuccessful terrorist attacks in particular, we find there are many cases where imaginative people were thinking about those sorts of things, and they were in positions to do something about it. Certainly before 9-11, Richard Clark and many others were warning about a 9-11 sort of scenario. And so that's why I believe that having more imagination, setting up another red cell, having somebody else sort of sit around and sort of guess what the terrorists could do tomorrow, I don't think it's gonna do any difference, because even if we have the imagination to say, you know, maybe it's not a sniper, maybe somebody could take a pressure cooker bomb. There had also been threat assessments put out to U.S. law enforcement about pressure cooker bombs. But again, it's just a warning because maybe somebody in Chechnya had used one once. What cop is gonna worry about that? I'm not. That's not enough. It's not specific. That's why I believe that sort of enough of imagination and sort of coming up with scenarios, people don't act on imagined scenarios, which makes it tough. But good question, good point. Way in the back had a question. Then when we come to you, if I may, sir, please. Yeah, from the Washington Post story, yep. That's a great point in case everybody couldn't hear about the National Guard and rule for the National Guard. Maybe I'll come to you next, ma'am. The, in fact, a number of those state and local intelligence fusion centers around the country do have National Guardsmen working in them, whether they're recalled on active service with a National Guard or still in a sort of a drilling situation, the closest intelligence center to Monterey, California, where I live, is up in San Francisco, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. They're National Guardsmen there. But there are issues with the Pussycomitatus restrictions on military personnel carrying out law enforcement duties. So usually it's under very specific regulations such as laws that have passed to allow National Guard to assist with drug control efforts. Those sorts of things. So there's still some issues. We have to be careful about that because the National Guard are part of our military establishment. But I think we're actually doing a much better job of bringing them in. And ma'am, you had a point. And then maybe somebody else in the back I'll have to go to the back. You don't have anything on you. Um, a short answer would be no. Um, it's such a messy and terrible situation. And that brings up so many of the things we've been talking about. The role of contractors, the role of the CIA versus the military. But I guess the only point I'd say because I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert on that specific situation. But in my book, and again, I am partly to some extent selling my book here. You know, I don't make any money on it. I, as a government employee, I don't. But for instance, I have a chapter, a detailed analysis of the intelligence failings leading up to the East Africa Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998. And it's amazing and tragic how similar the situation seems to be. I mean, not in the specifics, not in the specific cases. But in Nairobi in 1998, there had been warnings that security was lax, the people in charge of watching out for that were warning about it. But the people back in Washington in particular, and the distance may be a factor here, don't seem to have paid enough attention to those warnings. Again, I don't know enough about the Benghazi case. I don't think any of us do because we don't know enough as Americans yet. But it does seem in this case, we were having the same problems that we used to. I would call that more of a force protection, basic security issue that the U.S. military has been dealing with for so many years, more than intelligence, but certainly it seems that warnings weren't listened to. Can I go back? I'm sorry, I don't want to just call on. Okay. I'm sorry, Mr. Nord. How often? How often, yeah. Right. Yeah, how often is good intelligence, Mr. Nord? Sort of two quick points on that one. One is that often in the conventional literature and conventional understanding of intelligence, in the books on intelligence failure, typically written by intelligence professionals, usually analysts, one of the common understandings about why intelligence fails is because decision makers didn't listen. To some extent that's a little bit sort of special pleading. It's intelligence types like me writing a book, saying it's because people didn't listen to me. But that does seem to be a problem.  I believe it's because we don't teach and educate them about intelligence enough they don't know what to do with it. But the other point on that one is that even though we seem to have this under this conception of the American intelligence community as screwing up all the time, and we're a whole bunch of idiots here, because we know more about intelligence failures than successes, I think that's a false impression. But the problem is, I believe, that when asked about that, our intelligence community and our national security leaders usually make a general statement such as we are saving lives every day and having successes every day, and that's all I can tell you about it. And I don't think that's good enough. And I don't think we need to hold our intelligence community leaders to only saying that little bit. I think we can say more without giving away secrets that would make us less safe. And the problem when our standard response is just that, we're doing a good job, trust us. Well, Americans and our Legion of Congress are finding they don't want to just trust us. We only have a couple of minutes, I think, sir. I just want to ask you a question regarding the Fourth Food shooting relative to the Snowden incident and relative to what you just talked about. That seems to me to be more like a policy issue than it does an information issue because the data was there from several commands. Well, in other words, it seems to be a case again where we have the information now. Organizations seem to be numb in terms of being able to deal with it. I think that is another case, a great case, unfortunately, a terrible case where there were warnings that we should have been listening to. And again, I would call that, that's not exactly force protection, but that's the sort of issue that the organization per-surrect that in the DoD system is organized to study this sort of thing they're looking at very hard. But again, it gets to that balance. Here it seems clearly that people in the chain of command and people should have warned about that. But I think so many of us are uncertain about that. We worry about whether to report on our friends and we need to understand that better just as during the Cold War in particular, those of us with sensitive security clearances were told it's your job to report on your friend if you think they might be selling secrets or something like that. Well, do we wanna go to that sort of situation with everybody in the military, that level of scrutiny, everybody in America? I'm not sure. But that seems to be the sort of attention that would have prevented that. But do we want that level of attention? Sir. What bothers me is all this sense of material, how it's being handled at the top. The IRS is an example which you could think is good to collect all this information, but how is it being used and that the people at the top have the background of being able to handle it and do it properly. Well, that is a fascinating part of this. Up until this past summer, whenever my students have asked me, military students, homeland security professionals, have asked me, do you think, Eric, you're from the intelligence community? I'm worried that maybe the NSA, because there are movies about the NSA, I think they're spying on us every day. I think they're tracking everything we do. My typical answer was usually, we're not that good because when it comes to big data, when it comes to doing these sorts of things, sort of the IRS or maybe the post office, there are examples they seem to get our mail lost all the time. Well, now it turns out the NSA apparently is doing a pretty good job of tracking us. Even the post office is tracking every letter. So I'm going to have to rethink my fears about the IRS, because maybe the IRS is good enough to do some damage if they wanted to. They're not just incompetent, so I don't know who the answers are. Please, sir. There's one good thing, and that's the value or the assets that we spend to protect our life here. So furthermore, how much more value do we need to put on our American lives to prevent all of these acts of terrorism or the crazy people, et cetera, et cetera? So and one point I want to make is there are counterintelligence people that if they had been more looking for suspects at the Boston Marathon bomb, they would have identified those two individuals immediately because they were on a mission. They had bulky backpacks. They were casually walking around Boston. They were making a beeline for where they were going. So how much more is it going to take to stop this insanity? And we also have to be prepared to give up some of our civil liberties or let them go for a period of time. In other words, if somebody wants to look in your bag and he's done it, fine. It's like when I was in the Army, you can give me a broadcast any place that he's done it. But if you're an American citizen, I don't know, let some of those things go. But then another thing, you have to look from over there, them trying to get here.  So that's what Auburn's setting against. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. We may want to leave it at that. All right. No, that's a great point. I'm going to get to it. That's a great point. I see Professor Hattendorf, I think back there, we're going to have to draw this to a close. Can I make a final comment? Can't see in the back. But what I would say to this is, again, you're pointing out the great point that we need to better have a discussion about that balance between security and liberty in this country. And what we are doing is after each disaster, we're sort of making it up as we go along. Now after the Boston Marathon bombing, the New York City Marathon, even the Big Sur Marathon that came shortly after the Boston Marathon, you can only carry clear plastic bags, those sorts of things. I mean, it's sort of a pickup game. We're sort of catching up. And my argument is, the problem is that in order to stop these bad things from happening ahead of time and not respond to them, unfortunately, history shows we need that much more intrusive collection and intelligence and surveillance, unfortunately. So maybe you're right. Maybe we need to sort of do what we did right after 9-11 and all sort of accept, okay, we're going to be watched much more closely for a while. And maybe we've gotten a little too complacent. But whatever your decision, my decision on that, we all make our own personal decisions. As a community, we have to come together on it. And I don't think we're having good enough discussion and informed debate enough about that. So I think we have to have that. Do we need to draw this to a close? I think people probably have to get to class and things like that. I'm glad to stay after we talk. Thank you very much.


Welcome to this episode of Talk of the Town. One of my favorite perennial things that we do, or I shouldn't say perennial, regular things that we do is to get an update on all things library here in town. I, like many, many of you, am a huge fan of the library, so I'm particularly glad to welcome the director of our libraries, Andrea and Nicolai, to let us know. Well, we're going to talk about several different things related to the library. First of all, Andrea, great to see you. Oh, so great to see you too, James. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's going to be fun. Speaking of, you know, the first thing I'd like to talk about, even though we're talking about an update and we'll be looking at what's, you know, coming up for people to anticipate, I can't help but ask you to talk a little bit from your perspective on something just concluded. And that is the month of March, most of it, or much of it, was devoted once again to a community read. And Arlington Reads together this year, I just found to be a particularly powerful mix of both events and the source itself. But let's hear what you, let's hear your thoughts on it. Yeah, well, I have to say, I mean, there couldn't have been a more topical subject for this year's community read and race relations and the topic of equity and the kinds of conversations that the community can and should be having about race in Arlington and in this country. And so our book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together with Cafeteria by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, offered really, it offered so much in terms of fuel for these conversations. I mean, we brought in, in addition to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, who we'll talk about in a minute, we had so many wonderful speakers and presenters and discussions going on, a lot of, I mean, all of them virtual, of course. And just when we think that everyone has been zoomed out, we see people come out for these programs and these discussions. And I was so heartened at the turnout for the Arlington Reads together events. It was great. The last program that happened was a poetry performance by Tim Hall, who is a performance poet who teaches at Berkeley and is originally from Detroit based in Boston. And he just had such a hopeful and beautiful message of love and trusting the process. That was the subject of his presentation, trusting the process and how even when you have doubts about yourself, your approach to a topic, your approach to a project, you've got to trust the process. You've got to trust all of the sort of guidelines in place that will help you and support you in that discussion, in that process. And so going back to the Dr. Tatum event, we had over 200 people on the active Zoom, plus folks who were watching on Facebook Live. And I was blown away. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day. It was the first truly gorgeous and beautiful day of like in the 60s. And so we were a little bit concerned that the nice weather would just draw away a lot of audience, but we were just really delighted at the turnout and Dr. Tatum was so powerful. She has such a warm and positive and she's a storyteller. She has such a beautiful way of relating to the topic of race and making it relatable to other people who might not be terribly familiar with it or comfortable talking about certain aspects of it. And I think I would just encourage anyone who did not get a chance to see her presentation, to tune into ACMI and watch it. It's a little over an hour and it is time incredibly well spent. Just fast forward through my introduction. I just give a bio just seriously, just fast, fast forward through me. Get to Dr. Tatum and Dr. McNeil because of course Dr. Tatum was in conversation with Rod McNeil from he's a superintendent, assistant superintendent of the school system in Arlington. And so he and Dr. Tatum had this just wonderful, wonderful, engaging discussion. And yeah, again, encourage anybody who didn't get a chance to see it to go watch. Yeah, let me just, if you don't mind, throw my own two cents in here. And that is to say, I was so impressed with that event as with many of the others. But also with Dr. Tatum in particular because I had some experience with her and with this book in the school I taught in, 13 years ago, I think it was. And we had a tremendous experience, difficult, challenging in ways that we absolutely needed and that reverberated for a long time afterwards. But my point is just she's been doing this a long time talking about this work, this aspect of the work that she does. And obviously this is just one piece of work that she does. But she has been at it a long time and I was so impressed by her ability that you've just cited to meet people wherever they might be in terms of tuning in and trying to begin to wrestle or be somewhere along the way towards wrestling with these things. For somebody who, like I said, has been having to have the same kinds of conversations for a very long time, she remains just very kind of vital and fresh and cheerful and kind and hopeful, you know? So in general that was something that I took from much of the many of the activities around. This is not just, this is hard work that we need to do, but also a sense of hopefulness and a trust, as you mentioned around Tim Hall, in that process, in this process that we're all engaged in and need to stay with and on top of for, you know, some untold amount of time going through. Yeah. And she really conveyed that it is possible that, you know, that we are doing it. Every time we have these conversations, every time we address this challenging subject, we're helping. We're helping and we're trusting the process. And I would also say that my observation of Dr. Tatum is that her commitment is contagious and it underscores what you just said about how you, you know, you worked or you learned from her years and years ago and that stayed with you.  And, and, you know, last thing from me is just she does a really great job. And I thought the conversation itself did of kind of elucidating without judgment the fact that there are, this is so many complicated layers to this. There are positives and negatives in places that you wouldn't have expected. And she navigates her audience in the book and, you know, in real life, so to speak, through that in, in so, so adroitly and, you know, again, I was just impressed anew with, with that. Anyway, certainly we should probably just keep going since both of us clearly were you know, much, much taken by and, and, you know, feel like there's so much in the, the conversations and activities that you guys presented throughout the month. But I know we have other stuff to talk about too. So you're ready to move on? I will. Yeah. That other stuff, talk about processes. Let's find out about a process that I think everybody who's listening is going to be, you know, their ears are going to be very, very much perked up for this. Yes, indeed, folks, we will be able to walk back into the library and stay there for a full 15 minutes under particular, you know, with with certain kinds of constraints. But it is great news. So first of all, thanks for sharing this with us. I, you know, it really is something I've been waiting for. And I imagine lots of other people too. So tell us how things are going to work. Sure, sure. So we know and we deeply appreciate that people, people's experience of the library, you know, it's a physical thing as well as, you know, I mean, you take away the materials, but ultimately, a lot of people miss being in the stacks and browsing and doing other things that they're accustomed to doing in the library, like making photocopies, the simple things that you rely on at the library to be able to do. So we know that 15 minutes is not a lot of time.  This is about supporting that experience of browsing, that experience of going through the stacks and finding what you want within the safety guidelines and the parameters that we need to work within to keep our staff and patrons safe. So the leadership team and I have been engaged in trying to figure out, you know, just how to how to how to support this next phase of library service over the last several months. And we will be launching this effective tomorrow, Friday, April 2nd. I'm not sure when this is airing. So Friday, April 2nd, you will be able to go on to the Robbins Library website. And the first link that you see under site links is going to be get a browsing pass. Click on that link and you are taken to a page where there are two options of passes to reserve. One is for the general collections, which is the first floor, second floor, third floor and the fourth floor friends book sale. And the other kind of pass and that's an individual pass, by the way.  And then we have a family pass for the children's room, which is going to be, I know, a hot ticket. So if you're reserving a family pass, all you have to do is indicate the number of people in your party. There's also an attestation for each type of pass. So before you come to the library, you need to be able to assure us that you are not experiencing symptoms, that you haven't been in close contact with someone who's positive and that you are feeling, you know, well and that you're going to wear your mask and keep social distance within the building, which we know people are so accustomed to now, but we do have that little attestation within the reservation form system. So once you get your pass and you have to reserve it at least a day in advance, so there will be plenty of passes available. You just have to reserve a day in advance. And then when you arrive at the library, it's going to be a little bit different looking. People are accustomed to doing drop in checkout. That's going to continue.  You can do that the same way that you have been all this time without an appointment. But if you do have an appointment, you're going to be all over in a line on your right. There's going to be blue arrows on the floor indicating that that's the browsing line. You're going to be greeted in a greeter table a little bit further into the lobby. And that person is just going to welcome you. It's going to make sure that you're there at your appointed time and they're going to make sure that you understand, you know, where you need to go in the library with the pass that you have. And just answer any simple questions that you may have about the experience and whatnot. We also have, of course, a lot of information on the browsing pass site about the things that you can and can't yet do in the library space. So once you're there, and by the way, you'll have 15 minutes to arrive. So if you are running a little bit late or you need to find parking, you have a little buffer within that appointment time. And so we don't want people stressing like, oh, if I'm not there right at 9 o'clock, they're not going to let me in. You've got a little buffer there. So we hope that between the helpful signage that we have in the library, the helpful staff who will be there to help guide people through our spaces if they need it, and some of the other measures that we're putting into place, people will be able to make the most of that supermarket sweep 15 minutes. So I'm having to talk about some of those other measures too. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I got to say, as a patron, really appreciative of the fact that you guys are working hard, because this sounds like a system that's going to be pretty complicated to get up and running and then maintain. And I think we'll delve into that a little bit more in a second. But to me, the simple fact is you guys had a choice of continuing to not be open until it's really 100% safe or something like that. But you're doing the harder thing, in a sense here, by allowing in a contingent way all of us to indeed access the library and get some of that magic that we are used to and rely on. So first of all, appreciation for that. But I am curious about various elements of this. One is, how will the 15 minutes work? Is this, I mean, I can't imagine that you can rely on an honor system. So especially if you're giving people a little buffer, so if somebody has a 9 o'clock appointment, let's say at 11 o'clock appointment, and they show up at 1108 and they pass into the library at 1110, does that mean that they get to 1125? And how do you figure that out? That kind of thing. That is exactly right about the honor system. We actually pride ourselves at the library in trusting people. First of all, we trust you to have a library card and use it. You could come in every day and walk away with all of our materials, and we would never know the difference. So we're very accustomed and comfortable at the library with working on the honor system. What we've also seen is that patrons are extremely respectful of one another and of the staff and of all of the rules that have gone into place to keep people safe during this time. I mean, we have seen almost 100% mask compliance and those few cases of non-mask compliance like are remedied in a minute because the person forgot or they just needed to adjust it in some way. So we are going to be trusting that people are going to be watching the clock, making sure that they keep their visits within 15 minutes. And we're not policing people. We don't like to police people anyway.  I mean, we have allowances for that. Part of why we are basing the capacity for browsing on the step three, if I'm getting this right, the state's phase three, step two capacity rules is because we wanted to build in some comfort with regard to that capacity. So it's very important to us that people do follow the rules and abide by the guidelines that we're putting into place. But provided most of the people do the right thing, we're comfortable with it. And obviously, if we need to revisit anything about it, we'll do so, but I feel really strong in this plan, the health department reviewed the plans. And I think that it's gonna be fine. I think people are gonna want more time. That's natural, but I really think between the again, the capacity limitations and the fact that we're really emphasizing the short-term appointment, we're emphasizing no seating by putting the chairs away, literally, physically. And that's how other libraries have been supporting this as well. It's been very much kind of honor system, readers. We're probably one of the only libraries with an online reservation system. And that was actually, it was important for us to set that up because of how our door and lobby space is configured. There was no other way to kind of monitor the appointment system. So that's why that's, I'm kidding. And I'm talking about that kind of online registration system in a second. I'm so glad that you mentioned in your response that the library basically trusts its patrons. I realized as you began to speak, I thought to myself, yeah, probably why wouldn't an honor system work when without being too over the top about this, it does feel over a long period of time spending a lot of hours in libraries for myself that there are spaces that do tend to bring out the best rather than the worst in people. And I think back to your guy's decision some years ago now to stop charging fines for people returning books and other materials late. And I think a lot of people's initial reaction to that was what, how can you open that door? And yet I have checked in with you periodically since then about that. And that system seems by all accounts to be working really, really well. I know again, speaking only for myself that I might hold onto a book a day or two longer so I can finish it or something like that. But I'm going to be mindful of getting that back because I know that somebody is very possibly waiting or going to find it browsing and want it, et cetera. I'm sure that's how everybody else feels and operates. And so I understand the confidence with which you are embarking on this and I'm really glad to hear that. But you were just mentioning that people have an opportunity and will need to really make some reservations online. Explain how that will work. Sure, and that's not the only option. We understand that not everyone has access to the internet and not even everyone has access to telephones for that matter. So there are a couple of other ways that you can get an appointment for browsing. You can call our hotline and you can also if you don't have access to a computer or a phone you can just go through to our circulation counter and the staff there can make an appointment for you for the next day or for the future. So we're accommodating, trying to build in some equity that way. But as far as you had asked about reserving a pass, right? I actually, I was thinking about the mobile checkout option. Oh, yes. I apologize. Mobile checkout, yes, yes. I misspoke, but that's what I wanted. No, that's okay. That's okay. I'm glad you misspoke. It gave me an opportunity to offer the other options available to those who want to reserve a pass. But mobile checkout, thank you for raising mobile checkout. So in your Minuteman app, which is anyone can download for free through your favorite app store. You can get the Minuteman Library Network app. And on that app, when you'll load in your library card number and in the my account section, which is this little person section, says view my record. Oops, nope. Sorry. I went too far into the app in the first place. So under my account, you have this option here. It's now, it's called mobile checkout. And right in the bottom on the left. Yeah, it might be in a different position on people's screens depending on how their app displays. But once you click mobile checkout, you get this little barcode reader. You can't really see it that well because I'm holding it up to another screen, but you get a barcode reader and you can check out anything that has a barcode in the library on the spot. So you can avoid all the lines. You can avoid the self checkout machine by using your mobile checkout app where you are standing in the library.  So don't try to scan the ISBN. That's for the retail environment. So you'll look for the Robin's Library barcode and you'll scan that and the item will be checked out to you right then and there. And it works not only for books and DVDs and any other types of materials. It also works for our Library of Things material or things, I should say. It works if you wanna walk up and check out even one of the Chromebooks that we have in our Library of Things right now. You can walk up to the shelf where we have all the Chromebooks lined up and check out a Chromebook for yourself. So it's really, it's a fabulous convenience for this time especially. And it was developed at the same time that the Contactless Pickup app was developed for libraries. So Minuteman works with the company to develop these new initiatives to help support whatever use the library is getting during COVID and this was one of the developments that came about as a result of the pandemic but also it's just a great thing to have even beyond the pandemic too. So we're so excited about mobile checkout. We hope you'll try it and we'll be there. Sorry, I missed the last thing you said there. I'm too busy checking out a book here. You don't have a book. I know you're at your house, James. So yeah. That, I mean, I have to say, as you just said, well beyond the pandemic that is a great little innovation for those of us who are, again, comfortable. I'm very used to now over the course of time using the mobile app for any number of things in terms of keeping track of what I've got, where it's at, et cetera. And so having that option now at my fingertips literally, I'm excited. That's great. It feels like magic when you do it for the first time. You're just like, is it really mine now? Can I really just walk out? I mean, even I feel that way when I'm, I've been using it for a couple of months now, but it really does feel empowering. And then when you go to my account in the app, there's the book that you just checked out. And you still get the reminders the same way that you do if you check out with a staff member. And we know, obviously, like this isn't, this mobile checkout does not replace our staff. I wanna emphasize that we have, there are a lot of reasons that you still need to go to the checkout point at our circulation desk, not least of all, because you have a hold to check out or a grab bag on reserve to check out. There are lots of things you need to do in person at the counter. Get a library card, for example, a physical card. So yeah, I mean, all the things that you just said have something in common, and that is that they are physical objects. How does the mobile checkout work with electronic materials? Well, if you're using electronic materials, you're likely doing it through Libby, which is a totally separate app on your phone. So you'll still reserve your digital books, your downloadable books and your downloadable audio books in the same way that you do now. Great, thanks for that clarification. One other thing I know I wanna ask you about, and that is, I've noticed from coming into the library for the contact, more or less contactless pickup, and now the modified pickup system over the last few months, that you have needed to be using the reading room, one of the most exquisite spaces in town, to, for staff operations, basically. I assume you're gonna have to continue to do that and that that is not gonna be a space that is available for browsers in their 15 minutes. That's true. We still have, we have to use the reading room to support socially distanced staff workstations. The circulation staff is our largest department at the library, and so it's a real beehive of activity. We need to spread people out. So we're using the circulation office that we of course normally have and then we have five socially distanced workstations in that reading room, including the two checkout points. So we're adding a checkout point. So anyway, it'll still be a little while before you can lounge in the reading room with your favorite book. But we know that people also just feel excited to just be back in the space and see the room. Even just seeing it is a nice thing for a lot of people. We know it's not the same. I'm not trying to introduce a downer into the conversation. I promise. I just wanted to clarify for myself and for others that that's the case. Makes a lot of sense, of course. But I know that I'm not the only one for whom the reading room in particular is just, it's a bit of a magical space. It's just, there's something about it. And so that's fine. We can afford to be patient for a while longer, especially again in acknowledgement of the fact of all the efforts you have made in order to be able to offer this opportunity to Arlington's reading public. Happy to do so. And I would be remiss if I did not mention Fox as well. I need to talk about Fox for a moment. We know that Fox Library users are very eager to get back into Fox as well. We're also eager to support the Fox and Robbins shop in the little, in the Fox Library space. But we have to keep Fox closed a little bit longer. Not least of all because we have Fox staff actually working at Robbins to support everything that we're doing at Robbins in the children's room and elsewhere. So we need to hold on to that staff for a while longer due to some shortages that we have experienced. And yet, and it also comes down to how we support both spaces in terms of the level of cleaning that needs to happen. There are a lot of considerations that go into supporting a public facility during COVID and we don't have the ability to support both facilities during this time being open to the same level. We always like to have a consistency of service between Robbins and Fox as much as we can. And so those are some of the reasons why Fox is gonna remain closed a little while longer. Well, you said a little bit earlier, whoa. You said a little bit earlier that you trust us and we certainly trust you and your judgment. So when Fox is open, we will celebrate that of course but we need to just kind of accept what progress has been made and it's clear progress. And also with one more note of thanks and appreciation for the fact that the library right from the get go with this in this pandemic to the central place in people's quality of life here in this town and has managed to adapt in highly successful ways to the constraints of the pandemic and still provide a lot of what you have always done for the community. So thanks for that. Well, thank you, James. We have a lot more road ahead of us but we're happy to be where we're able to be right now. Yeah, let's celebrate for a minute and then anticipate more work down the road, as you said. We will certainly be here to be a receptive, interested, engaged audience around every new step that you guys take. We will talk to you again soon but thanks so much for sharing this exciting news and also for revisiting what was a really successful community read this year at Arlington Meads Together that I think many people will remember and take forward with them. We hope so and thank you to ACMI for helping produce some of those programs. We're very grateful. Thank you to do so from our end. It's a great thing to be involved with. All right, that will wrap it up for today. I have been speaking to Andrea Nicolai who is the director of our libraries, Robins and Fox here in town. And I will see you, Andrea. I hope up in your office I'll wave when I come in and hopefully many of you out there in the audience as well as we begin to once again inhabit the space that we so love in our library. So for this library update, talk of the town, I'm James Milan. Thanks Andrea and thank you. We'll see you next time.


Let me briefly report on the results of this important conference here in Canberra. Our discussions this week have again underlined that dealing with the threat of improvised explosive devices is of course a very complex issue which cannot be addressed by any single agency or country alone. IEDs are the weapons of choice for terrorist groups for criminals. They pose one of the greatest threats to the safety and security of countries and individuals not just in conflict zones but around the world. It's still let's say the killer number one and not only posing threats to soldiers in the battlefield but also to civilians as we just this year have seen more than 10,000 casualties civilian casualties all around the globe. We are all in agreement at this conference that more needs to be done to address this threat and the forum has provided a very valuable and constructive way forward particularly through its support for the creation of the global alliance to counter improvised explosive devices. This coalition of willing partners will develop a coordinated international effort based on four key pillars which is component controls a very important part of a comprehensive strategy capacity building as many of our partners are very experienced and should share their experience with others who need this kind of support. Public awareness and of course one of the most important issues is the sharing of available information all around the globe. Through the global alliance we can focus law enforcement, military and diplomatic channels towards an international response to reduce the IED threats and of course to save lives. And that has been the basis of our meeting here in Canberra this week of course to save lives and to protect soldiers and civilians from this terrible threat. Interpol will provide its full support both to the global alliance and our common goal to make the world a safer place. We have a kind of mechanism already in place in Lyon and in our hub in Singapore to facilitate information sharing, the exchange of best practice to also support capacity building and training activities so this is the main role Interpol plays in this important exercise and enterprise and I'd like specifically to thank our partners the Australian Department of Defence and the Australian Federal Support for an outstanding partnership in this important international initiative. Thank you very much.